Two openings in Spain last month marked what Protestant leaders in that country believe could be a new era for “Spain’s persecuted minority.” One opening was of the first evangelical bookstore to operate with government permission, and the other was of the last church that had been closed by government order.

The bookstore—small by American standards, but very neat and ultra-modern—was opened in Barcelona May 24 with a dedication attended by most of the city’s evangelical leaders. It was the climax of thirteen years of work and prayer by Harold Kregel, a missionary from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who is in Spain under the European Worldwide Fellowship.

Speaker for the dedication was Dr. Jose Cardona, executive secretary of the Evangelical Defense Committee, through whose efforts—a year of constant work—government permission for the store was obtained.

Cardona explained that while some stores have previously sold evangelical books, they were not considered evangelical bookstores. The difference, he said, was one of basic representation rather than the kind of books sold.

Both Cardona and Kregel were almost ecstatic about display windows and the sign over the door. “Only a Spaniard can appreciate what this has cost us,” Cardona said. “It is more significant than you can possibly imagine.”

Before the erection of this lone sign with the words “Libreria Evangelica” on it, no public expression of any sort had been allowed for anything Protestant. This sign had required the special permission of three officials in Madrid—the minister of government, the minister of foreign affairs, and the minister of information and tourism.

Before coming to Barcelona for the dedication of the bookstore, Cardona had gone from his office in Madrid down to Chiclana de Segura to open the church there that had been closed for fifteen years. This was the last of more than fifty churches that had been sealed by government order.

That peak year was just five years ago, but the number of churches officially closed does not tell the whole story. About 80 per cent of those that were open did not have government permission and could have been closed at any time. This figure is now down to about 30 per cent, Cardona says, and he is confident that ultimately he will get a government permit for every church.

Cardona, who has been working on legal recognition for Spanish evangelicals for twelve years, lists three factors as contributing to the present relaxed climate:

1. Protestants have been united in their appeals to the government through the Evangelical Defense Committee. “Before this committee was formed five years ago, the government was never sure when it was dealing with recognized Protestants,” Cardona says.

“While the government avoids the words ‘religious liberty,’ it does want Protestant churches to ‘operate normally.’ This means they can get a permit to function, can change their location, can import books and literature as well as print them for the specific needs of their congregations,” Cardona explains.

These liberties do not apply to Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Scientists, and other sects, he says, for they are not recognized by the Protestants.

2. There are ministers in the government today who want a liberalization in church matters. They feel Spain must align herself with the prevailing attitudes in other European countries.

3. The encyclical declarations of Pope John XXIII produced a new mentality in some leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Spain. Cardona says the progressives and conservatives are divided, and this division has been beneficial to the evangelical cause.

Cardona feels that under Pope Paul the cause of religious liberty in Spain has regressed rather than progressed. He explains it this way: “Because Pope Paul has not aligned himself strongly with the proponents of religious liberty, the Spanish hierarchy believes the Vatican Council will not pass that schema.”

The government, he says, is waiting to see what the council decides and will adopt the position of the council whether the Spanish hierarchy favors it or not.

This forty-three-year-old champion of liberty firmly believes that whatever happens at the next session of the council, Spain can never go back to what it was. But neither does he believe full liberty will come overnight.

“There is too much prejudice against Protestants on the part of the average Spaniard which must be overcome,” he says.

Cardona lists three handicaps against which evangelicals in Spain must struggle. First is the feeling that Protestantism is a political movement, a charge that dates back to the Spanish Civil War. The second is the small number of Protestants—a maximum of 30,000 in the entire evangelical community, out of a total population of 31 million. He feels they can have a real influence on the country only as they grow. Finally he lists the outside support that most of the churches still receive. This gives credence to the charge of the hierarchy that Protestantism is a foreign religion with no roots in Spain.

Protestant Panorama

Committees representing the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada reported agreement on essential elements of faith and order for a union of the two denominations. A fifteen-page report, “Principles of Union,” indicated that the committee is ready to present a merger plan to the legislative assemblies of the two churches. The plan would climax twenty-two years of on-again, off-again negotiations.

A joint working relationship will be established between the United Church Board for World Ministries (United Church of Christ) and the division of world mission of the United Christian Missionary Society of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). “This action may logically lead to union of the two boards,” said Dr. Alford Carleton, executive vice-president of the UCBWM.

Miscellany

Latin America Evangelist was named periodical of the year by Evangelical Press Association. Among other awards was one given to the Baptist Record for an editorial, “Smoke over Mississippi,” which had also been cited by Associated Church Press.

Special religious events at the New York World’s Fair this summer will include “Word of Life Day” on June 19 and “Wycliffe Day” on July 28. The June 19 feature will include an evangelistic rally with Jack Wyrtzen at the Singer Bowl.

Personalia

Dr. Wayne Dehoney was re-elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dr. Horace L. Fenton, Jr., was named to succeed the late Dr. R. Kenneth Strachan as general director of the Latin America Mission.

The Rev. Ralph Norman Mould was named general secretary of the World Council of Christian Education and Sunday School Association. He will succeed the retiring Rev. Nelson Chappel on January 1, 1966.

Dr. H. Wilbert Norton of Wheaton College was hospitalized in Göttingen, Germany, following a traffic accident in which he and a missionary friend were injured.

Norman B. Rohrer succeeded Larry Ward as executive secretary of Evangelical Press Association.

They Say

“We will go down in history today as the institution which put the hood on backwards when it conferred its first honorary degree.”—President D. Ray Hostetter of Messiah College, after a faux pas in bestowing the doctorate on former President Eisenhower.

“According to Protestant thought, the medieval church became deformed in the popular sense of the word when it no longer conformed to its essential principle of fidelity to a divinely revealed Word of God. But modern Protestantism is becoming deformed in the philosophical sense (losing its form [forma], its internal structural principle which gives it its distinctive character) because it is not merely out of conformity with the principle of fidelity to a divinely revealed Word of God, but it has surrendered it entirely, even rejected it on principle.”—The Rev. Harold O. J. Brown, minister to students at Park Street Church, Boston, in an article in National Review.

In the first century of the Christian era, Jude wrote a short letter to some of the Christian churches. We are not absolutely certain who Jude was; he may have been one of the brothers of Jesus. We do know that he was a man with a deep and vigorous Christian faith. These challenging words make up the third verse in the New Testament letter bearing his name: “I fully intended, dear friends, to write to you about our common salvation, but I feel compelled to make my letter to you an earnest appeal to put up a real fight for the faith which has been once for all committed to those who belong to Christ” (Phillips).

“Put up a real fight for the faith.” These words contain a very important message for all Christians of every age, particularly those who have been called to be preachers of the Gospel. The King James Version and the Revised Standard Version use the word “contend.” The New English Bible has “join the struggle.” But whatever translation you prefer, the idea is clear: Christians are to engage in a battle, a mortal combat to uphold the faith that is more precious than life itself. We are to live and, if necessary, to die for Jesus Christ.

You don’t hear many church people talking about fighting for the faith these days. We fight for other things—for civil rights, world peace, better living standards, union of denominations. But the modern church is strangely silent about its responsibility to “put up a real fight for the faith.”

Does this mean that Jude’s call to arms is obsolete? Are we no longer Christian soldiers, marching as to war? Ought we just to give a nostalgic sigh and place Jude’s militant challenge up on the curiosity shelf, along with other antiques that are “no longer relevant”?

This would be a terrible mistake. We must do exactly the opposite. We desperately need to recover the spiritual ardor of Jude. Until we care enough about the Christian faith to contend for it, to fight for its integrity—until then we are not really ministers of the Gospel. We are little more than zombies, showing signs of life but lacking spiritual power.

Through the ages, the Church has been sickest in those times when God’s people saw no reason to contend for the faith. On the other hand, hasn’t the Church been most dynamic in those times when Christians were most willing to put up a fight in behalf of Christian truth—in the time of the Apostle Paul, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and Francis Asbury? That is why we are compelled to “put up a real fight for the faith which has been once for all committed to those who belong to Christ”—if we do indeed “belong” to him.

Not A Hunting License

The thought in this verse—and in fact in all of Jude’s letter—centers round the words “fight” and “faith.” There is danger in looking too shallowly, too superficially, at this verse. We can easily and disastrously become contentious in contending for the faith. We can use Jude 3 as a kind of theological hunting license, entitling us to go gunning for heresy and apostasy among those with whom we disagree for theological, sociological, or even personal reasons.

Each minister of the Gospel can make up an impressive list of the dangers threatening our Christian faith, such things as secularism, materialism, and many other anti-Christian forces in the world around us. Without minimizing the crucial importance of these external enemies, I suggest that there is another arena where Jesus calls us to contend for the faith. It is the arena within us. We must first of all “put up a real fight” at the place where the Christian faith is always most seriously challenged—in the minds and hearts of those who call themselves Christians and especially in the minds and hearts of preachers of the Word.

Jesus warns us against trying to take a speck out of our brother’s eye when we have a log in our own. “You hypocrite,” our Lord said, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:5, RSV). In this spirit, the spirit of our Lord himself, I invite you to go with me on a heresy hunt. Let us probe the depths within us. Let us “put up a real fight for the faith” in that inner arena where the most deadly enemies of the truth of Jesus Christ lurk. Here let us wage war against Satan. If you are anything like me, you have some dark corners of your life where the light of Christ has not yet penetrated. Here, I believe, is the place to begin contending for the faith—within those of us who have been saved by grace and are going on to perfection.

Pride: An Insidious Enemy

Let us contend, first, against pride. My faith is destroyed by the pride that causes me to feel better than the pastor whose congregation is half the size of mine. Deadly pride causes me to feel that my church and my pulpit are really truer to Christ than the church across town that cares nothing about racial integration or ecumenicity. Pride gnaws like a cutworm at the root of Christian faith. Pride’s forms are infinite, and its consequences are especially deadly to our ministry of the Gospel.

Let us also “put up a real fight” against our liking for luxury. Yes, it does make my “calling” more certain when the parsonage has a nice kitchen, when the pastor’s study has modern furniture and a carpet. Surely God calls me more loudly to this comfortable kind of a pastorate than to one where the study is just a hole in the wall with a file cabinet on one side and a mimeograph machine on the other.

Let us contend for the faith against our theology, too. It may be the most deadly threat simply because its danger is unrecognized. The very language and ideas of faith can become destroyers if theology becomes a substitute for lives yielded to Jesus as Lord. Our magnificent doctrinal constructions may be a veneer concealing from the world that deep in our hearts we are unconverted sinners. A theology can be like a rich and beautiful oriental rug thrown over the garbage of a life still untouched by him who alone has the power to purify.

Yes, “dear friends,” as Jude would say, we must “put up a real fight for the faith.” But let the front line be within us. Let us contend first against our own private heresies and apostasies.

Jude calls us Christians to battle for the faith. But what faith? Surely Jude could not have been a seminary man or he would not have made it sound so simple. Obviously, he was a fundamentalist. He cared about nothing but the central truth of the Gospel. For Jude everything worthwhile about the faith that had been delivered once for all was the simple declaration that “Jesus is the Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3). That is all. Jude saw all things in terms of Jesus Christ, the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption for all who would believe.

Probably Jude got some of his conviction from that great fundamentalist of Tarsus, who wrote to the Christians at Corinth, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2, RSV). For Christians, there is really no other faith than that. Everything significant for Christians takes its rise in him who was “wounded for our transgressions.” Everything worth anything at all comes to a focus upon the One who “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7, RSV). The Alpha and Omega of authentic Christian faith is he who “humbled himself” and was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

It is time to get rid of our fuzzy thinking about the Christian faith. Away with our pseudo-intellectual distractions! Let us put aside childish things. Let Christians stop wallowing in the philosophical swampland of existentialism. Let us rise above the popular kind of blase relativism that says it’s “okay” to believe anything at all because God is “a nice guy” and “all he cares about is sincerity.” Away with these delusions! They are deathtraps. They are enemies of vital Christian faith. They are abominations.

There is only one kind of faith that matters in the sight of God. Only one. Jude knew what it is, and so did the Apostle Paul. So have real Christians over all the centuries known what it is. It is the kind of faith that causes the unutterable joy of knowing personally the meaning of Paul’s words in the second chapter of Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

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.

In 1934, msgr. Ronald knox’s father, a former Anglican Bishop of Manchester, protested strongly against the omission from Crockford’s Clerical Directory of clergy serving in the Church of England in South Africa. The names were quickly restored. In 1962, the first issue of the directory after Dr. Michael Ramsey went to Canterbury, they were omitted again. Justifying this, the anonymous author quoted extensively from Episcopi Vagantes by H. R. T. Brandreth, who was at that time chaplain to the British Embassy in Paris.

This book gives a bizarre and distinctly unedifying account of a motley assortment of itinerant prelates. In the process, Brandreth made some misleading statements about the CESA and its senior bishop, the Right Rev. G. F. B. Morris, for which he was compelled to publish a complete apology. The offending edition was withdrawn from sale. As Crockford has not yet followed with an apology, a number of leading evangelicals in England and Australia have asked that their names also be omitted until those of the CESA clergy are restored.

Behind all this is the anomaly that South Africa has two Anglican churches (see “A House Divided,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Editorials, February 14, 1964). The Church of the Province of South Africa has more than a million members, is predominantly Anglo-Catholic, and is “recognized” in Canterbury. The CESA has 25,000 members, adheres firmly to the Prayer Book and the Thirty-Nine Articles, and (like a large part of Christendom) is not regarded by Canterbury as being “in communion.” The CESA cannot be ignored, however, for at its head is a bishop whose episcopal credentials are indisputable: G. F. B. Morris was consecrated by Archbishop William Temple on June 3, 1943, and was Bishop in North Africa until 1954, when he incurred the wrath of Temple’s successor, Geoffrey Fisher, by going to the CESA and thus putting himself “outside the fellowship of the Anglican communion.”

In the course of some confusing public statements, Dr. Fisher found it necessary to say that he had not excommunicated Bishop Morris—which was perhaps as well, for none of the canonical grounds for excommunication was present. “Under current regulations and practice,” continued the primate, “he, like other Non-conformists, may be admitted to communion under certain circumstances.…” It became apparent that the archbishop had a curious conception of the Anglican communion, a body which, as the CESA pointed out, has “no constitution, no doctrinal basis, no governing body and no legal status.” The only test of membership, avers the CESA, is historical connection with the Church of England. If this be the norm, then the CESA claim is undeniable, and Fisher’s action is seen to be entirely arbitrary. He brought no charges, gave Bishop Morris no opportunity to defend himself, and offered no right of appeal. However misguided his reaction at the time, Lord Fisher is known to hold views that throw no doubt on the validity of Bishop Morris’s episcopal status.

Evidence suggests that the present Archbishop of Canterbury may have a different opinion. A former CESA rector, ordained by Bishop Morris and now in England, has been “conditionally reordained” by the Bishop of London. When CHRISTIANITY TODAY inquired about official policy in these cases, the Church Information Office at Westminster, after some delay, stated: “Conditional reordination is very rarely used, but in this instance the Metropolitans advised that it was desirable in order to remove any shadow of doubt concerning the validity of this clergyman’s orders.” Apart from the fact that the term “reordination” is surely by Anglican standards an illogical one, the Bishop of London’s action could have far-reaching implications ecumenically. A burning issue in England at present is the process by which Methodist ministers will be accepted into the Church of England if the current merger proposals are accepted by both sides. “No doubt,” comments a CESA layman, “the Methodists will be interested to see that an ordination by Bishop Morris is not adequate for the Bishop of London.”

Meanwhile, no policy of peaceful coexistence is followed by the CPSA, for its Ven. W. V. Gregorowski in June, 1964, made a violent written attack on the CESA, during which he said: “It ought therefore to be clearly stated that any member of the Church of the Province, or for that matter, any member of the Church of England or of the Anglican Communion, who joins in worship with the body concerned, is breaking fellowship with and being disloyal to the church to which they belong. That means being disloyal to the part of the family of God to which He has called us, and so to our Lord Himself.” No commentary on this pronouncement is necessary.

Last March the Bishop of Johannesburg (CPSA) made reference to the CESA as an “unrecognized sect,” but the facts and the bishop are at variance. The validity of the CESA’s position was upheld by the Privy Council as far back as 1884. Far from being an unrecognized sect, this church is a member of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod and of the Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion; it broadcasts regularly over the South African Broadcasting Corporation and figures on official government census forms.

In 1963 the CESA erected six new churches for its work among Africans, and the following year it organized a month’s evangelistic campaign in Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Cape Town, conducted by the Rev. A. W. Rainsbury, a prominent Anglican evangelical from England. In Johannesburg, the venue was the City Hall; in Cape Town, it was the Groote Kerk, the mother church of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa.

Two incidents at the CESA annual synod last fall show wherein lies the true strength of this valiant little body. Right at the beginning of the meetings there were ninety minutes of corporate prayer, “a continuous stream of intercession as one immediately followed another in bringing the needs of the Church to the throne of Grace.” The synod was later told that all the CESA’s African clergy had taken it upon themselves to teach their people the meaning of Christian giving by tithing themselves. One-tenth of a minister’s stipend equals about $3.30 a month. From this it might be assumed that the CPSA has good cause for alarm.

The major role of the evangelical movement in church history is traced by Associate Editor Harold Lindsell. A chronology of significant evangelistic events (page 7) extends through the present day.

The editorial “A Door Swings Open” relates the growing interest in transdenominational ecumenical cooperation.

The news section features reports from several major church conventions—United Presbyterian, Southern Baptist, and American Baptist. Also, from Great Britain come reports of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and the Convocations of Canterbury and York.

Nineteen well-known evangelical churchmen held out hope last month for a broad program of Christian cooperation embracing more than 20,000,000 Americans and Canadians. They voiced the prospect following a three-day round of talks at a Rocky Mountain retreat. All were said to have agreed on the feasibility of joint evangelical action in five areas: evangelism, theological dialogue, social action, problems in higher education, and college student work.

One veteran observer said it was the most representative gathering of evangelical leaders since 1942, when the National Association of Evangelicals was founded. The scope of the consultation far exceeded that of NAE, theologically and ecclesiastically, although NAE was active in the planning and participation.

Among participants and observers were President Wayne Dehoney of the Southern Baptist Convention, a Missouri Synod Lutheran churchman, and a Christian Reformed educator. Also participating were CHRISTIANITY TODAY Editor Carl F. H. Henry (American Baptist), Editor G. Aiken Taylor of the Presbyterian Journal, and Editor W. T. Purkiser of Herald of Holiness (Church of the Nazarene). None of the denominational representatives was an official appointee. Some participants shared a reticence toward publicity of the discussions, insisting that their engagement was on an individual basis.

But the consultation coincided with a mounting conviction by prominent evangelicals in many communions that some program of transdenominational coordination and cooperation is increasingly desirable and in fact imperative.

A news release issued by one spokesman following the consultation stated:

“While recognizing large obstacles to agreement in matters pertaining to the internal life of their churches, consultation participants also noted that in the active and aggressive execution of the mission of the church, differences seemed much less formidable.” (See also the editorial, “A Door Swings Open,” p. 24.)

The consultation took place at the castle-like home of The Navigators, Glen Eyrie, in Colorado Springs. Expenses of the meeting were underwritten by a foundation. A second session may be planned for next year.

Was the meeting a reaction to or a potential evangelical counterpart of the Consultation on Church Union, the Blake-Pike venture which seeks to merge six U. S. denominations with a combined membership of more than 20,000,000?

The nineteen churchmen would emphatically deny such a suggestion. One conferee volunteered that “nobody thought to mention Dr. Blake or Dr. Pike or the COCU projection; our burden was for the fulfillment of New Testament imperatives.” Most participants would contend that Christian unity already exists in their common evangelical commitment, and that the challenge is one of joining hands in a transdenominational reflection of that unity in study and work.

Some evangelicals feel that theirs is the best defined and most widely held strain of Protestant thought in North America today, with large blocs of adherents in virtually all denominations (see succeeding story on a survey of theological alignments and “Who Are the Evangelicals?,” p. 3).

The consultation spokesman issued an eight-point list of agreements among participants:

“That evangelical Christianity has a job to do, to revitalize its approach to modern society. Joint efforts to this end are clearly indicated.

“That evangelicals share a common emphasis upon Jesus Christ in the proclamation of the Gospel.

“That evangelicals could together enrich the quality and refine the character of evangelism for a more total penetration.

“That a critical frontier of the Church is the inner city and that a joint evangelical strategy is needed to penetrate and minister to the modern concrete jungle.

“That the evangelical missionary program offers opportunities for witnessing on a world-wide basis to the reality of evangelical brotherhood.

“That the social concern among evangelicals is quite strong; but that a theology for such a concern needs joint development.

“That an urgent need exists for penetrating the educational world with competent evangelical scholarship and student services to strengthen evangelical students.”

“That the failures of modern campus ministries call for a radical examination of all approaches to students today; and a strengthening of the best through joint strategies.”

The Glen Eyrie consultation seemed to be part of a trend among evangelicals toward summit-type meetings aimed at meeting the issues of the day. Noted evangelicals have also been meeting quietly for several years with ecumenical churchmen for dialogue on church-state issues, and with some evangelical ecumenical leaders for sharing of general concerns.

Here are summit-type evangelical meetings presently scheduled:

—World Congress on Evangelism in West Berlin, October 26–November 4, 1966, to include 1,200 delegates, observers, and other invited guests, sponsored by CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

—Congress on the Church’s Worldwide Mission in Wheaton, Illinois, April 9–16, 1966, to include 600 missionary executives and educators, sponsored by the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association and the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association.

—A conference of scholars, tentatively set for this summer, to discuss whether evangelicals should draft a new translation of Scripture.

—Another conference of scholars, in a seminar on the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures, next summer.

How Many Evangelicals?

In an effort to determine the theological sympathies of the laity in the large American Protestant denominations, CHRISTIANITY TODAY surveyed a group of key churchmen from coast to coast. The results, although inconclusive as reliable statistics, nonetheless tend to confirm the opinions of most observers of the American scene that the laity is considerably more conservative on theological issues than the clergy. The responses also suggest that evangelicals are numerically strong even in the mainstream denominations whose leadership is liberal.

Survey questionnaires asked the churchmen to estimate separately what percentage of the laity and clergy in their denominations were theologically liberal, neo-orthodox, conservative, and non-classifiable.

One top official of a large denomination estimated that 60 per cent of the laity and 15 per cent of the clergy are theologically conservative, 30 per cent of the laity and 15 per cent of the clergy neo-orthodox, and 10 per cent of the membership and 70 per cent of the clergy liberal.

A seminary professor in the same denomination asserted that most ministers, church workers, and members belong in a “central” theological category. He said only 5 per cent of the ministers belonged in the neoorthodox designation and that the members and church workers “never heard of it.”

Cordiality In Evangelism

British Columbia is the California of Canada, with a booming economy and natural playgrounds. A rapidly increasing population seeking to escape the rigors of life in other parts of the country finds fun and fortune on the west coast. In such an environment the Christian churches, with few exceptions, do not find an easy road.

To this area Leighton Ford and his team came to conduct a crusade in the 6,000-seat Agrodome at the Pacific National Exhibition Grounds, May 2–16. A crusade by Ford in the interior British Columbia city of Prince George two years ago sparked interest in the Lower Mainland, and soon a small committee of the concerned was at work. Vancouver, like most sizable North American cities, has two ministerial groups: an ecumenically oriented council of churches and a separatistically inclined evangelical association. Both groups were initially uncertain, but as time went on the right wing of the one and the left wing of the other coalesced into a cordial fellowship.

The name of Leighton Ford was virtually unknown in Vancouver, but on the afternoon of May 2 some 11,500 packed the Agrodome and filled to overflowing an adjacent building where the crusade service was carried by closed circuit TV. The attendance never went below 6,000, and the total for the two weeks was 104,300, with over 1,200 decisions for Christ.

This was just the first phase of the crusade, for from June 25 to July 4 Leighton Ford and his team will be back, joined by Billy Graham for the closing three days.

IAN S. RENNIE

Crusades In Spain

Some of the largest evangelistic campaigns ever held in Spain took place in May under the leadership of Fernando Vangioni, an associate evangelist on the Billy Graham team from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Accompanied by George Sanchez, overseas director for The Navigators, Vangioni conducted united crusades in Madrid, Zaragoza, and Barcelona. The meetings were to continue into June with a crusade in Sevilla and single church meetings in the north of Spain.

Hundreds were making public commitments to Christ.

Felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific—and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Keats of course confused Cortez with Balboa, but this seemed a minor lapse when compared with the confusion of viewpoints crying for notice last month in the Ohio capital named for yet another explorer of the Spanish Main. Site of the 177th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., Columbus proved a place of discovery for Presbyterians. Ecclesiastical crosscurrents were uncovered, and beneath these was disclosed an undertow of opinion that the theological voyage of American Presbyterians in this century is now in perilous waters.

The assembly commissioners (Presbyterianese for “delegates”) put in a hard week, but they seemed well aware that May 22 and 25 were the key dates that could be decisive in setting the course of their church for a generation or more. These were the days on which the proposed new confession of faith was to be debated (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY News, May 7, 1965). But in the corridors, every day was confession day, and on two occasions the Special Committee on a Brief Statement of Faith met late at night with groups of commissioners who wished to quiz them on the theology of the confession.

These discussions flowered in a total of more than three hours of floor debate, and when it was all over a largely conservative minority had been blocked, by a vote of 643 to 110, in its attempt to keep the church’s governing body from receiving and thus giving implicit approval to the report of the drafting committee. Recommendations were also endorsed by the assembly commending the new 4,200-word document to the 3.3 million church members for study, authorizing the appointment of a fifteen-member committee to consider amendments to the document, and asking that the drafting committee be continued as consultants to the new committee.

That committee will place its recommendations before next year’s General Assembly meeting in Boston. If its report is approved, the new confession will go to the church’s 195 presbyteries for a vote. If approved by a two-thirds majority of these, the document will go to the 1967 assembly for final action—hence its name: “The Confession of 1967.” This statement of faith is only one of a Book of Confessions proposed for “adoption,” which includes: the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, the Scots Confession (1560), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), the Barmen (German) Declaration of 1934, and the seventeenth-century Westminster Confession and Shorter Catechism. Omitted is the Larger Catechism; this and the other two Westminster documents at present constitute the denomination’s only official confessional standards.

Chairman of the drafting committee, Professor Edward A. Dowey of Princeton Theological Seminary presented a masterly case for the new confession, though he was never able to convince the press that in its practical outworking the confession would simply be an augmentation of existing creedal statements rather than tending to replace them in popular Presbyterian usage. The latter possibility is regarded as particularly serious inasmuch as the new statement contains no doctrine of the Trinity or of the deity of Christ.

In introducing the document to the assembly, Dowey spoke of its incomparable importance to the future “direction and redirection of the life of our church.” He said significantly that the new document “expresses what we already are as a church.” Essential elements of the Westminster system, such as the doctrines of the double covenant and double predestination, “have dropped out of sight.”

Chief spokesman for the conservatives was highly respected Dr. William T. Strong, a Los Angeles minister whose origins like Dowey’s are in the old United Presbyterian Church of North America, a more conservative body than the former Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. with which it merged in 1958 to form the present denomination. He maintained that the drafting committee was appointed by the Union Assembly of 1958 in order to prepare a confessional statement “similar in scope and in theological character” to the former United Presbyterian confessional statement of 1925 and the Westminster Confession of Faith, these to be brought up to date only in terminology and simplified for more popular consumption. He charged betrayal of that agreement, citing the drafting committee’s declaration that the new confession “is not designed to define the faith of Presbyterians.” He made a motion for dismissal of the committee, rejection of their report, and appointment of a new committee to “carry out the terms of contract” of the union.

Dowey responded that the new confession was closer to Calvin than to the Westminster Confession by virtue of the committee’s having organized it around the doctrine of revelation, not inspiration. “But,” he added, “we still have the Westminster doctrine of inspiration, and it will not be held against anyone for holding it.”

Moderator William P. Thompson, a lawyer from Wichita, Kansas, who ably presided over the assembly, indicated that a vote to receive the report meant that the assembly would be giving approval in a general way. Strong’s motion to reject it lost heavily, ending the Saturday action.

Before the debate was resumed the following Tuesday, the two late-night sessions with the committee were held. In answering a protest on the absence of any reference to the Virgin Birth in the new confession, Professor Arnold Come of San Francisco Seminary said that contemporary theology does not necessarily regard the Virgin Birth stories as representing the exclusive way of holding to the Incarnation.

There was obviously considerable unrest over the confession’s lack of a doctrine of inspiration and some of its statements on the Bible. For example: While Christ is named “the one sufficient revelation of God” and the “Word of God incarnate,” the Scriptures are not referred to as the Word of God in any sense, written or otherwise, though their words are termed “the words of men.” They are described as the “normative witness” to the revelation which is Christ. Commissioners objected to the term “normative” to a degree which led Dowey to the conclusion that it will have to come out, though he said the committee wished to reserve the word “authoritative” for application only to the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. He recalled his own shock as a student at his discovery of “mistakes in the Bible.”

By late Tuesday afternoon twenty-eight commissioners had expressed a desire to speak to the new confession. They were to speak in the order in which they had applied except that pros and cons alternated. Additional time was docketed for debate in the evening so that twelve speakers were heard in all before the assembly closed debate. Part of it went like this:

• “It is time to broaden our confessional base. I was uneasy about the way I took my ordination vows with their tacit distinction between the spirit and letter of the confession.”

• “The new confession will involve a change in our present ordination vows. The Bible will no longer be our final reference point. You can’t tell if our polity is Episcopal or Presbyterian or whether our theology is Arminian or Calvinist.”

• “It speaks to the basic sickness in society, alienation of men from themselves, each other, and from God.”

• “It says in effect that the Bible is fallible. There is thus no firm basis of God’s moral law.”

• “It has in view the Reformed faith more than the Anglo-Saxon tradition of Westminster.”

• “It points toward gnosticism, saying literary and historical scholarship are required for understanding the Bible.”

In his summary speech culminating seven years of labor, a tired Dowey almost overcome with emotion said, “Our Reformation fathers would be proud of us for dealing with the matter this way.”

The assembly’s vote of approval for the report came after attempts to amend the confession toward a higher view of Scripture failed. Yet Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake gave assurances of an attempt to include stronger representation on that side of the question in the composition of the new committee.

The only recourse left to conservatives at this assembly was to register a protest, which Strong did and to which the assembly replied. But conservatives maintain that there is a real chance of defeating the new confession at presbytery level when it goes there for vote.

After the first day’s debate on the confession, a markedly different form of protest came by way of a picket line of fifty-one representatives of the Bible Presbyterian Church, which was holding a concurrent synod in Columbus. Leader of the group was Dr. Carl McIntire, who carried a sign which read, “We told you so in 1933.”

Ecumenical concerns occupied a prominent place on the agenda, and Princeton Seminary’s President James McCord presented a sort of ultimate ecumenical benediction ranging from Paul Tillich to Billy Graham: “May the Ground of Being bless you real good!” The assembly voted down a motion to pull the church out of the “Blake-Pike” talks; it was assured that no slight was intended last month when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Southern), voted to bar United Presbyterians from three-year-old unity talks with the Reformed Church in America; it received a personal visit and greetings from the Very Rev. John J. Carberry, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Columbus; and it counseled fellow Presbyterians to attend Roman Catholic Mass occasionally in the interest of furthering Christian understanding.

In other action, the assembly:

• Sent to the presbyteries for approval an overture to standardize examinations to be given candidates for the ministry.

• Approved for study a plan which would radically reorganize church government along regional lines.

• Declared that it “finds no scriptural or theological grounds for condemning or prohibiting the marriage of a man and a woman of different races.”

The assembly also commended “the sound exercise” of the ministry of Blake, its chief executive officer, in view of circulation of charges concerning the “alleged abuse of the authority of his office,” Specifics accompanying the charges were characterized as consisting “largely of innuendo and opinions.”

But this did not end the matter. Dr. Edward Stimson, twice host pastor to the General Assembly and now pastor of the 2,500-member Dundee Presbyterian Church of Omaha. Nebraska, called a press conference on the steps of the meeting site, the Veterans Memorial Auditorium. He identified himself as “a vocal leader of the loyal United Presbyterian opposition.” In past years he has served on the Advisory Committee on Education and Social Action. Theologically, he made it clear that he was not a conservative but rather an “evangelical liberal,” and he identified himself with attacks on “the evils in Barthian theology” from the liberal left. He professed support for the ecumenical movement with possible union along federal lines and organic mergers among churches of the same denominational families.

Stimson charged Blake with “abuse of the great powers of his office” in initiating the Blake-Pike proposal for merger with other denominations. That proposal, he said, “put into jeopardy the ministry of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Presbyterian ministers like me—if his purpose succeeds, we’ll have to leave the church, which will no longer be free and Presbyterian reformed.… We may feel that we should take whole presbyteries and synods with us … before serving under monarchical bishops and submitting to a mutual laying on of hands which could be interpreted by high Anglicans as giving us an addition to our ordination so that we could perform the sacraments as within the historic episcopate.” Stimson sees the attempt to reorganize the church along the lines of regional synods as the introduction of prelacy into the church.

Stimson’s other chief concern, along with preservation of Presbyterian polity, is the moral purity of the church. He decries the absence from the new confession of reference to the moral law, and points to a student publication at San Francisco Theological Seminary as an example of the type of morality produced by a “peculiar type of Barthianism”: “When the scandal of pornography and encouragement of social acceptance of homosexuality in the student paper … was publicized in the Presbyterian Journal, April 28, I secured the original evidence … and saw that the president of the seminary [Dr. Theodore A. Gill], author of the lead article, is the primary cause.” Concern that the church should care about the “atmosphere of sick sexuality in one of its seminaries was not sufficiently heeded.”

The Standing Committee on Theological Education reported earlier to the General Assembly that the seminary administration had “expressed embarrassment and regret over this publication” and had taken steps “which preclude repetition of such an incident.”

The General Assembly declared that no action was necessary on petitions from four presbyteries requesting reaffirmation of “the church’s adherence to its historic moral standards.” The assembly “does indeed reaffirm its adherence to our historic moral standards.…” Reference was made to action taken by the 1962 assembly.

It was one of the liveliest General Assemblies within memory. Even so, it seemed but a prelude.

The World: ‘Your Baby’

For the 3,000 American Baptist Convention delegates, meeting in San Francisco’s big Civic Auditorium May 19–23, the most controversial issue was whether the convention should continue meeting once a year or go to a biennial schedule. By a two-to-one majority the delegates voted to continue meeting yearly.

President J. Lester Harnish presided over the convention, whose theme was “One Lord, One World, One Mission.” The sessions, attended also by 5,000 visitors, were characterized as bland by some observers.

Dr. Henry Pitney Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary in New York addressed the opening session on “The Holy Spirit at Work in the World Today.” He said that Western culture is “far gone toward moral degeneration.” We must look to Asia, Africa, and Latin America for dynamic “for recovery and renewal and resumed advance.” In a position paper on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, Dr. Gerhard Spiegler of Berkeley Baptist Divinity School left his audience apathetic. “The Holy Spirit abhors the rigor mortis of dogmatic finality,” he said, and the “Holy Spirit is not a general possession but a specific endowment.” The inimitable Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy delivered a fine but routine address at an evening session. Pastor O. Dean Nelson of Park Ridge, Illinois, passionately called for the church to react to poverty, prejudice, intimidation, and loneliness. The program committee’s highest expectations were realized in Dr. Culbert Rutenber of Andover Newton Theological Seminary, who was enthusiastically applauded as he presented to the church for reconciliation “a broken, howling, disease-ridden world, with all its sores.” It is “your baby,” he said. Dr. Robert Campbell of California Baptist Theological Seminary urged the delegates, in a richly rewarding address, to accept God’s commission to “disciple the nations for Christ.”

The meetings emphasized the theme of personal involvement. Convention resolutions committed the denomination “to fulfill the task of redemptively confronting our world with the Lordship of Christ, transforming the political, social, economic, family and individual life.” Such statements reflected the reorientation of evangelism by the Secretary of the Division of Evangelism, Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, who wrote that “evangelism … must be addressed also to the renewal and reshaping of society, so that our human communities—our home, schools, neighborhoods, industries, and cities—may become open societies, provisional embodiments of the New Humanity, which is God’s goal for the world, hence God’s goal and purpose in evangelism.… The result has been a ministry which reflects this radical understanding of evangelism [italics added], even while conserving the values in established program.” President Harnish had arranged for “Operation Outreach,” in which the delegates were to ring San Francisco doorbells on Sunday to bring men the Gospel, but not more than 25 per cent of the delegates had registered to help as late as Saturday afternoon.

A small intensely earnest group tried to take the ABC out of the National Council of Churches. The effort proved abortive as the delegates overwhelmingly expressed their continued confidence in the NCC. Delegates also voted to condemn all forms of racial segregation, registered their opposition to gambling and obscenity, recommended a re-evaluation of U. S. relations “with all governments to which the United States does not now extend recognition” (without mentioning Red China), and adopted a spate of resolutions on public welfare, women, human rights, immigration. South African apartheid, world economic development, and public welfare programs. The convention recommended that the Baptist World Alliance send official observers to the fourth session of Vatican Council II. Some noted with humor the resolution condemning right-and left-wing extremism, since the ABC’s Anabaptist antecedents were among the most extreme of all religious groups.

Harvard professor-elect Harvey Cox of Andover Newton addressed a luncheon sponsored by the Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board of the ABC for 1,600 ministers. He strongly endorsed a departure from “denominationalism” and a transformation into something “radically new.”

The ABC is one of the few major denominations that have failed to grow over the past fifty years. Its membership is only slightly larger, the number of foreign missionaries has declined substantially, and hundreds of thousands of former members have left the denomination to form the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches and the Conservative Baptist Association of America. For the past seven years it has failed to meet its annual budget. But it looks ahead with optimism. A budget of more than $12 million was adopted, and a world mission campaign was launched to secure $20 million in the next few years.

Edwin Tuller was re-elected general secretary, and Robert G. Torbet, dean of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, assumed presidential leadership of the 1½ million American Baptists with their 6,200 churches.

HAROLD LINDSELL

A Censure Attempt

A resolution that would have made Bishop James A. Pike unwelcome in the Pittsburgh area was defeated at the one-hundredth annual meeting of the Pittsburgh Episcopal Diocese. The proposal charged that Pike “had the audacity to suggest that another clergyman of the church, disagreeing with the bishop’s views, be brought to trial for heresy.”

“Only the charity of the Christian congregation spares the bishop of California from a similar trial,” the resolution said.

The proposal was put before the meeting by John W. Patrick, senior warden of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, as the result of opinions expressed by Pike on a Pittsburgh visit. Pike referred to an Episcopal clergyman at Selma, Alabama, who said he would not allow a demonstration in his church.

The Rev. Canon Robert E. Merry, chairman of the committee on canons in the Pittsburgh Diocese, was one of a number of clergymen who opposed the resolution during debate.

“The question is not on the views of Bishop Pike,” Merry said. “Many of us would be against his views. The question is the right of a convention to censure a bishop. The bishop is the divinely ordered leader of the diocese and subject only to the House of Bishops.”

Charting A Strategy

Resolutions recognizing the need for improved Protestant-Roman Catholic relations and outlining steps toward formation of a federation of minority churches were passed last month at the second Italian Evangelical Congress.

Both actions were reported to be rather cautious and vague and were said to have represented a compromise between progressive and conservative factions, according to Religious News Service.

Among the 300 official delegates to the five-day conclave, Baptists, Methodists, and Waldensians were seen favoring increased dialogue with Catholics and acceleration of the federative process.

Pentecostals, Adventists, the Salvation Army, and several smaller groups advocated a more rigid stand against Catholicism and expressed fear that a formal evangelical federation might limit their individual activities.

The meeting was held in Rome. The only Roman Catholics present were those representing news media.

There are now about 130,000 Protestants in Italy. The last such congress was held in November of 1920.

From Calvin To Calder

“Onward, Christian soldiers, not too fast in front,” sang a porter at Edinburgh’s fruit market as the fathers and brethren made their way uphill to the Church of Scotland General Assembly last month. First impressions suggested this year’s crop of commissioners were a docile bunch, for when the Lord High Commissioner, Lord Birsay, announced as is customary the Queen’s resolution “to maintain Presbyterian church government in Scotland,” there was not the ripple of approval so noticeable in previous years. The docility was deceptive, as was to be seen in later sessions.

In his address Lord Birsay had some outspoken things to say about what passes for contemporary culture. “Some few treat the most of us in writing, drama, art and music and the spoken word like morons,” he said. “Undisciplined orgies and obscenities … rationalized as being in the name of so-called adult freedom of choice … ignore the ‘child in the midst.’ ”

Some found these words not irrelevant a few days later when, after a stormy and highly emotional debate, the assembly withdrew an invitation to speak extended by its youth committee to Mr. John Calder, a publisher not conspicuous for Christian sympathies. Mr. Calder was remembered chiefly for his part in the notorious “nude in the gallery” affair at the Edinburgh Festival two years ago, and the present invitation to him was compared by one lay commissioner, a medical specialist from Glasgow, to asking Al Capone to address the police commissioners. The assembly voted on a motion by the Rev. lain Campbell, minister of a country parish in Perthshire. He was not afraid that Mr. Calder would say something shocking at the youth meeting; he objected because Mr. Calder stood for a way of life that he took no pains to hide and was “not ashamed of being a publisher of pornographic books”—and indeed thought that by these he was doing the public a service.

The voting (478–341) showed Calvin to have triumphed over Calder and caused the kind of correspondence in Scottish national dailies so typical of a people that takes its religion seriously. In Mr. Calder’s place as speaker on the traditional assembly youth night was Professor James Whyte of St. Andrews University, who described the assembly’s ban as “sheer folly” and as “one of the most remarkable examples of censorship in the history of mankind.” Continued Dr. Whyte, who teaches Christian ethics. “I suppose you realize the significance of my presence here tonight. The nearest thing our church can find to an agnostic is a theological professor but this is only because we have not got any bishops to fall back on.”

The assembly had earlier received a rebuff from the Free Church General Assembly meeting across the street, when that body by a 46–38 vote made it clear that the Auld Kirk’s moderator. Dr. Archibald Watt, on his courtesy visit would not be allowed to address them. It is 122 years since the Disruption, but Free Kirk memories are long, and the present Establishment came in for the customary modicum of plain speaking. “They have taken away our discipline; they have taken away our Lord’s Day …,” declaimed the Rev. Murdo Macaulay of Lewis, that most Calvinistic of Hebridean islands. “Is it right for us to acknowledge these people as representatives and as people on the same basis as ourselves?”

The larger assembly, having had it suggested that its moderator should not cross the street at all under such conditions, would not hear of it. Neither would the moderator himself, and the visit was duly paid. Two ministers and six elders of the Free Kirk Assembly walked out in protest at even this compromise, though it involved little more than two men shaking hands in public. (Admittedly Dr. Watt effected a piece of oneupmanship by directing some remarks to his fellow moderator in order to be overheard by the assembly he was not allowed to address.)

The big kirk paid tribute to Dr. John Mott, “one of the truly apostolic figures of this century,” the centenary of whose birth fell while the assembly was in session; heard that Church of Scotland members gave an average of twenty-five cents a week (“less than the cost of a daily newspaper”); called for control of gambling in so-called private clubs; decided a further year’s study was necessary before resuming discussion on the thorny question of ordaining women (at present only one of Scotland’s five Presbyterian bodies does this); and declined to change its official policy on alcohol from “temperance” to “total abstinence.”

Meanwhile, separated by the width of a street, the moderator of the Free Church General Assembly, the Rev. James W. Fraser, pointed out that they were not hostile to the idea of true ecumenicity. The objection was rather against “an ecumenicity so poverty-stricken in its credal statements and so all-embracing that it stretches out one hand to conservative Protestants and the other to the Church of Rome.” He described the much-heralded wind of change in the Roman communion as “merely a gentle zephyr,” and affirmed that it “would take a hurricane to blow away the false dogmas and unscriptural ritual … entrenched for centuries.”

An even more scathing attack on Rome was made in Inverness at the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church, which fired a broadside also at the Church of Scotland for its departure from the fourth commandment. During the year, it was announced, the F.P.’s had dispatched twenty-six protests to various sources against Sabbath desecration, including four to Prince Philip for playing polo on Sunday, and one each to Princess Margaret and Princess Alexandra for traveling by air on Sunday.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Secrecy And The Kirk

For the first time in its history the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has discussed the issues involved in being members of secret societies or Freemasons. In the voice that has electrified open-air audiences for forty years, the kirk’s senior evangelist, Dr. D. P. Thomson, spearheaded the attack. He moved that the assembly remind ministers and members that their vows of membership in the body of Christ take precedence over all other vows; that in Christ alone there is salvation for men; and that the supreme rule for faith and life is to be found in the Scriptures.

The motion was lost by a substantial majority, and an even larger vote defeated an addendum that called the church’s attention to the notable services made by Masons to the cause of Christ and his Church.

The outcome was that the assembly merely expressed gratitude to the Panel on Doctrine for its report on the subject. This had suggested that two separate questions were involved: (a) Are secret activities necessarily incompatible with the Christian life? (b) Is it permissible for the Christian to commit himself to action the nature of which is as yet concealed from him?

To (a) the panel gave the opinion that secrecy is necessary to some activities, is desirable in others (e.g. a large part of married life), and may be permissible in others. Though secrecy and secret oaths have cloaked evil activities (Kenya, South Africa, United States), it can be used to defeat such activities.

To (b) the panel commented that where persons were in doubt about the wisdom of the “blank check” type of action, they ought to refrain from it. Some of the panel members went further, and criticized the fact that the initiate is required to commit himself to Masonry in the way that a Christian should only commit himself to Christ. J. D. DOUGLAS

A Reason For Dissent

At a rare joint sitting last month in Westminster, the Anglican Convocations of Canterbury and York extended another wary hand to English Methodists by approving a series of resolutions. The first of these expressed desire for full communion and eventual union. The second acknowledged difficulties and hesitations found in reports from the dioceses but saw sufficient support for the controversial service of reconciliation, Methodist acceptance of the “historic episcopate” and episcopal ordination as the rule for the future, and a first stage of full communion to be followed by a second stage of organic union. It was further resolved that a joint Anglican-Methodist commission examine some crucial questions needing clarification before Stage I of the union proposals could be implemented, and that the bishops should meanwhile encourage closer fellowship with the Methodists in work and worship. These resolutions have now been transmitted to the Methodist Church, due to meet next month.

The Rev. R. P. P. Johnston, vicar of Islington and the only member of the reporting committee who withheld support from the proposed service of reconciliation, cited diocesan clergy reaction as one reason for his dissent. In Salisbury diocese, he pointed out, 289 said they would be prepared to take part in the service and 89 said they would not. In Ripon the respective figures were 85–81, in Worcester 98–22 (with 47 abstentions), in Truro 39–138 (22 abstentions). “The dissenters,” said Mr. Johnston, “cannot be written off as the lunatic fringe.” Deep theological objections were involved, and it would be right to go forward only if the present scheme were adopted by overwhelming majorities in both churches.

J. D. DOUGLAS

A LONG DAY’S JOURNEY

One of the newspapers had a cartoon on a favorite theme, namely, a women’s club and its president, who was introducing the speaker as follows: “Our good friend Wilma Sue, who has just spent three days in Washington, will now review the condition of the country.”

I recently spent three days in Washington with about the same result.

Item: A high school principal told me that thirty-four girls in his high school were dropped this year because of pregnancy, and that two of the girls in the high school had set up a brothel across the street from the high school and induced some of their friends to participate in the program. He insisted, however, that the biggest problem among high school students from his viewpoint was liquor.

Item: A mother came to me in some distress because her daughter, who had been a “good church-goer all her life,” was finishing up her first year at the university and had lost all her religion because of her great admiration for a professor of philosophy who thought Christianity was a very funny thing indeed for an intelligent person to believe in. The university apparently was not allowed to teach religion but was allowed to teach irreligion. “I wish you would speak to her and straighten her out,” said the mother. Since we had less than an hour ahead of us, I wasn’t quite sure where to start.

Item: I was introduced to a barefoot boy with a beard who looked that way, he said, “just for kicks.” His parents had allowed him to go to a weekend beach party in Florida and thought, “He seems to have the strangest ideas.”

Item: They had a senior walk-out at one of the high schools that held up traffic in every direction. Among the cars that left the high school there were twenty-two white convertibles with red leather trim. Having a white convertible is a “fun thing” these days, and it does seem a shame to deprive young people of their fun.

But let’s not get legalistic.

WHO’S WHO?

Dr. Carnell is to be commended for his kindly though incisive reply to Dr. Grislis (May 21 issue). An additional reply also seems pertinent. Dr. Grislis seems to assume that all liberals are Christians. This leads to Karl Barth’s inclusion of Ludwig Feuerbach among the Protestant theologians whom we must take “seriously.” But how can anyone have confidence that an outright atheist, or even a theologian who substitutes music for the preaching of the Word, is a Christian?

The idea that there are “honest” differences of opinion, on which Dr. Grislis so greatly relies, is entirely irrelevant. Saul of Tarsus, when he persecuted the Christians, had an honest difference of opinion; he was not a hypocrite; and he was not a Christian. The idea that sincerity covers all sins and all heresies is a false idea and underscores a weakness in the argument that makes use of it.

Butler University

Indianapolis, Ind.

Thank you for your article … by Dr. Egil Grislis, and especially for his comment on John 17:22. Surely the unity which Christ expresses in this prayer is to be both spiritual (doctrinal) and physical (organizational).…

I am sure that God wants the same kind of unity in his Christian family (the household of God) as he does in each individual family unit.

St. John’s United Church of Christ Marine City, Mich.

I believe the conservative has a certain image of the liberal, and the liberal has a certain image of the conservative. But we might be amazed to discover, if we could know each other better, that our images don’t quite do justice to the good qualities that are on both sides.

The Methodist Church

Advance, Ind.

Concerning my faith and theology, I consider the words “conservative” and “orthodox” to be fairly accurate adjectives. Reading “Conservatives and Liberals Do Not Need Each Other” I’d like to say to E. J. Carnell, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a liberal.”

The Methodist Larger Parish

Winnebago, Ill.

The liberal has too much love in him, as Dr. Grislis seems to perceive, to accuse anyone of heresy. Besides, to a liberal, heresy isn’t particularly important. On the other hand, as Dr. Carnell implies, an identical intentness of focus on divine plan, conscious or unconscious, suggests “stupidity” to the liberal, “truth” to the conservative.

Asst. Manager

Conservative Publishing Company Falls City, Neb.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you.” Can liberal or conservative? Does he who told us not to judge tell us to determine who is part of his Body? He has taught us how to recognize false prophets.…

Columbus, Ohio

EVOLUTION

The essay entitled “Man, a Created Being: What of an Animal Ancestry?” by Leonard Verduin (May 21 issue) together with the discussions by Mixter, Ramm, Clark, and Henry came close to the heart of some of the contemporary aspects of the creation-evolution dilemma. Since the vast majority of evangelical, to say nothing of frankly fundamentalist, pastors and theologians are still fighting a much outmoded and somewhat discredited Darwinism, it is stimulating to see an attempt to come into the twentieth century. However, from the perspective of a state university biologist, some key points in the current nature of the problem need to be further emphasized.

Verduin has put his linger on some neglected theological aspects of the problem. It is imperative for conservative theologians to avoid two major pitfalls that tend to discredit the Scriptures and weaken the case for a consistent doctrine of creation. First is the tendency to consider the interpretations of the great theologians of one or two or three hundred years ago as what the Scripture actually says. Just because it is pre-evolutionary science it is not automatically biblical! Without rejecting evolution outright and without swallowing it hook, line, and sinker, we need to examine both the scientific data and the theories in the light of all possible interpretations of Scripture.

Secondly, as indicated by Ramm, Verduin’s emphasis on the importance of both the proccssivc and the irruptive is vital. Too often the so-called theism of fundamentalism has been a distressingly unbiblical deism. In this way we have been defending the “God of the gaps”; and as the gaps get smaller so does our God. The God of the Bible is the God of Providence as well as Creation, the God of the natural as well as the supernatural.

Clark mentioned at least one botanist who admitted that “the botanical evidence for evolution is nil.” It is important to realize that this is not an isolated instance. Other scientists (e.g., Kerkut, Hanson, Sokal, and Sneath) have in recent years challenged their colleagues to face up to some of the unanswered (and unanswerable) dilemmas of the broad scope of “general evolution.” This does not deny a considerable amount of “special evolution”; and such limited evolution does not conflict in any way with the Scripture. It is, however, a healthy admission that all is not well with that part of evolution that is so problematical to Christians.

Finally, although not mentioned by any of the participants, we should recognize (as stated by Dr. Elving Anderson, president of the American Scientific Affiliation and reported in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 7 issue) that the real conflict is between biblical theism and a philosophy of evolution, “evolutionism.” While such a philosophy presumes to have its support in the “theory of evolution” or even the “fact of evolution,” it is merely the religion of the non-Christian who will not or cannot accept the Word of God. And the weaker the truly factual support for the philosophy the louder will be the dogmatic acclamations of the “fact”!

Professor of Zoology

University of New Hampshire

Durham, N. H.

With keen interest I read Mr. Verduin’s essay.… Permit me to share … some observations based on the Hebrew text of the Genesis account.

Significant is the simple fact that the Genesis narrative asserts that both man (Gen. 2:7) and beast (2:19) were formed by God out of the ground or dust of the ground. In Genesis 1:24–27 the substance from which beast and man were created is not mentioned. Both, however, were called “living creature” after they were created or became alive. It is unfortunate that Mr. Verduin uses the English translation “living soul” in his discussion of Genesis 2:7. This pinpoints the need for an extended article on Genesis 1–2 clarifying to the modern reader—both scholar and layman—what the Hebrew text tells us about the creation of man.

“Living creature” is the term used for beast or animal in numerous references throughout this narrative (cf. 1:24 and 2:19). When man is created, he likewise is called a “living creature” in 2:7. Without taking into consideration the context, this verse explicitly states that when this dust-form, into which God breathed the breath of life, became alive, it was a “living creature” similar to beast and thus classified in the animal kingdom. That he was distinct from other “living creature” already created is clearly delineated in the context in both chapters.

We may not know in what combination the chemicals existed in the dust when God started to make man or beast, but one thing the text clearly asserts is that God used ground or dust of the ground to make “living creature” (beast) and “living creature” (man). A reasonable interpretation of “ground” or “dust of the ground” is that it was inanimate. As soon as it was animated, regardless of the method used by God, this product was called “living creature.” Both beast and man were molded out of this same material (Gen. 2:7, 19), but concerning man the additional information is supplied that God breathed into him the breath of life to make him a “living creature.”

The simplest and most obvious interpretation of this Genesis narrative which takes all the facts into consideration seems to exclude the use of lower forms of life in the creation of man. The account does not say that God used “living creature” to make “living creature” but that God began with earthy material to make man and beast—one made in the likeness of God and the other not. Sound exegesis of the Hebrew text seems to be wanting in support of “hints” for man’s supposed animal ancestry. The weight of textual evidence seems to eliminate process in the original creation of man as simply but profoundly stated in the Genesis narrative.

Chairman

Dept. of Bible and Philosophy

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

Whereas [Mr. Verduin] seemed to deny an “ictic” interpretation of Genesis one and two, he also shows that no scientific evidence exists to prove the gradual evolution of man. Did the same man write the following two statements in the same article? “Nothing seems to have been farther from his intention than the idea of a mighty creator bringing all creaturedom into existence by a snap of the fingers as it were” (p. 10); “For all the field work tells us, man popped onto the scene all of a sudden—precisely as Genesis has it” (p. 15).

Community Brethren Church

Los Angeles, Calif.

Ape genes cannot by any process build man.

1. There is no originating mutation.

2. There is no passing on of acquired characters.

3. There is no genetic additive in mutagenic ray!

4. Science hasn’t yet printed a one-page leaflet on originating mutation or additives and how to get them!…

Evolution Protest Movement

Canterbury, Conn.

You write: “The antiquity of the earth and of man-like forms of life is no longer in dispute.” I fear that someone has been neglecting his reading, for the age of both is open to much question.

As to the age of the earth, I am aware of all the arguments for its great antiquity—the uranium-to-lead ratios, the deductions from the velocity of light, etc., etc., but (to say the least) they all rest upon assumptions that cannot be demonstrated as facts; it simply cannot be proved that the earth is more than a few thousand years old.…

I, for one, have a God great and wise enough to make the clock, wind it, set it, and start it running—all in six days.

The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N. Y.

Who is trying to fool whom? In the May 7 issue in a news report … entitled “Evolution vs. Evolutionism,” we find the characteristic evasionary tactics employed by the new evangelicalism.…

There is not one indication in that report that Dr. V. Elving Anderson rejects the theory of evolution, only that he is opposed to an evolution which rejects any theistic basis. In the name of Christian ethics, let alone fair play or intellectual honesty, it is about time that the American Scientific Affiliation new evangelicals came out from behind their camouflage if not outright deceit. This is the same cunning tactic repeated which was used by the modernists in their “take-over” at the close of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century in our country.

Donald Smith Memorial Baptist Church

Oak Lawn, Ill.

NCC AND SOUTHERN BAPTISTS

Contrary to the statements of Mr. Robert Seymour in the April 23 issue (Eutychus). I believe that the majority of Southern Baptists agree with the statements of Dr. Wayne Dehoney about joining the National Council of Churches for the reasons which Dr. Dehoney states. As far as I am able to determine I know of no Southern Baptist church which has been intimidated against “applying the implications of our faith to the racial revolution all around us” or to any other problem of our day. Southern Baptist churches are independent and autonomous bodies.…

Baptist churches do fear the specter of organic union. We have seen numerous Protestant bodies merging in the immediate past, and there is now conversation concerning the largest merger of all. We believe that Southern Baptists have a distinctive witness for our day. We believe that we would lose more than we could gain through organic union.… On the local level, where churches really do their work if it is done at all, the majority of Baptists are at one with other churches in areas of social concern and in fellowship. This is true especially in the small towns where the majority of our churches are found.

Most of us do admit our fear of aligning ourselves with the NCC. We seem to be not alone in our fears of this organization, as members of churches which do belong to it are expressing their fears also. Baptists pride themselves on their local autonomy. If we remain true to our heritage it will be impossible for us to join the National Council. The Southern Baptist Convention cannot do so since it does not consist of an organic union of the churches which are affiliated with it.…

First Baptist Church

Robersonville, N. C.

THE WHY

Whoever wrote the following words in a CHRISTIANITY TODAY editorial of March 26 is greatly misinformed about the present religious status of the YMCA: “Today the agencies in which Mott was interested (with the exception of the YMCA, which has virtually surrendered the spiritual principles of its founder) have been combined into one monolithic organization.”

Since Association Press is the publication division of the National Board of YMCAs, I know, as its director, that the YMCA is vitally involved in the spiritual principles which John R. Mott promoted so creatively. In fact, the YMCA is now in one of the best positions of any organization to be the Christian demonstration center for the application of the kind of Christianity advocated by Dr. Mott.

Association Press

New York, N. Y.

Director

• The principles of George Williams, the founder, and of John R. Mott included what Mott said as chairman of the Executive Committee of the Student Volunteer Movement in 1910: “Above all, the college men and college women … must be led to surrender themselves wholly to Jesus Christ as Lord and let Him determine their life decisions and dominate them in every relationship.… The one crucial, all-important question [is] whether or not they will yield to Christ His rightful place as the Lord and Master of their lives.” Dr. Stuber notes that the YMCA “is now in one of the best positions of any organization to be the Christian demonstration center for the application of the kind of Christianity advocated by Dr. Mott.” Doubtless some branches remain energetically faithful to the original intention. But many need to revert to that intention—to lead men to Christ as Saviour and Lord.—ED.

VALIDITY OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH

The article by William Young (April 9 issue) … raises a number of problems. First, positivists do not deny meaning to historical statements because they may be given a religious interpretation. Their anti-supernaturalistic bias will show in their probable rejection of the virgin birth of Jesus as false rather than meaningless. But they would insist that the deity of Jesus Christ is meaningless, not false.

Second, logical principles are not tautologies, because they are not—to speak loosely—true by virtue of the logical form. They are rather analytic, true by virtue of the meanings of the terms employed.

Third, the problem of the irrationalist is not met by insisting that logical principles say something about the world. It has been held that they only say something about the logical order which man imposes on the world. So this form of skepticism cannot be met by Young’s approach. In fact, his statement, “There is no great gulf fixed between necessary truths of reason and ordinary truths of fact,” tends to play into their hands.

Fourth, I do not detect a recognition of the marked human limitations which restrict any attempt at philosophical or theological structuring of the world, or, for that matter, any human thinking. There are only a handful of propositions which are absolutely apodictic. Even the apodictic certainty of mathematical sentences depends on the assumption of the Peano-Frege-Russell, Euclid-Hilbert, or similar sets of axioms. These axioms are not necessarily valid, despite the nearly universal acceptance of the mathematical theorems which follow from them.

The crux of the matter, so far as Christianity is concerned, is the self-authenticating testimony of Scripture, discussed by Ramm in the Witness of the Spirit and Pattern of Religions Authority. But this does not lead to a demonstration which is logically compelling to the one who is not receiving the testimony of the Holy Spirit. That is, Christianity is not apodictically certain.

Lecturer in Philosophy

Los Angeles City College

Los Angeles, Calif.

In reply to … David Siemens’s letter:

1. In my article, I did not charge positivists with denying meaning to historical statements because they may be given a religious interpretation. My point was that positivists deny that historical statements can have religious significance. Mr. Siemens and I are agreed that they would reject the deity of Christ as meaningless.

2. I am not distinguishing tautologies from analytical propositions, but am adopting a terminology that has become standard among logicians since Wittgenstein (cf. Tractatus 6.1: “The propositions of logic are tautologies”).

3. Skepticism can be met, on Christian principles, by insisting that God has created the world according to a plan exhibiting logical order. From this it follows both that the laws of logic say something about the order of the world as created by God and that universal necessary laws and contingent empirical facts are bound inseparably together in God’s all-embracing purpose.

4. Formulations of mathematical theorems are valid only within particular frameworks of axioms. But the mathematical order of the actual or even possible worlds rests unchanging in the eternal thought of God.

Asst. Prof. of Philosophy

University of Rhode Island

Kingston, R. I.

RIGHT TO WORK

You are to be congratulated on the editorial (“Labor Laws”) … in the May 21 issue on … Section 148 of the Taft-Hartley law.

It is amazing how few people understand the implications of compulsory unionism. It not only violates the basic principles of our American free institutions, but it is contrary to the fundamental tenet of Christianity which recognizes the dignity of the individual and the sacredness of human personality which are inherent in the right of free choice.…

Elkhart, Ind.

IT’S THE ONE AT IOWA CITY

We at Christus House send our thanks for your April 9 news article on the Christus House Community program at the University of Iowa. We appreciate George Williams’s fine reporting.…

Christus House is at the State University of Iowa (Iowa City), as you point out at the beginning of the article. However, you later locate us at Iowa State, which is Iowa’s other great university (at Ames). With similar names, even Iowans continually confuse them. Thus, we gladly follow the policy of our new president, referring to our campus as the University of Iowa.

Lutheran Campus Pastor

State University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa

FASCINATION OF FORCE

Congratulations on your editorial in the April 23 issue referring to the so-called “ministerial opinion poll” sent out recently to ministers of all denominations.

I agree that the questions were “obviously weighted” in favor of a position leaning heavily toward Communism and opposed to the stated policy of our own nation. In addition to the comment that these same ministers were in favor of using force in Alabama, I would observe that they are also noted for attempts to form one big church in search of political power for themselves—some would like to make the National Council of Churches a coercive, rather than a cooperative, body. I am thankful that the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches had the wisdom to stay out of the National Council.

Instead of returning the questionnaire to the senders, I forwarded it to my congressman with the comment that the tax-exempt status of this group should be reinvestigated. The law states clearly that tax exemption must not be given to any group which uses any major part of its revenue for the purposes of influencing legislation or other political purposes.

First Congregational Church

Beaver Falls, Pa.

Theology and Preaching, by Heinrich Ott, translated by Harold Knight (Westminster, 1965, 157 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

To what low estate has dogmatic theology fallen in the Anglo-Saxon world! The original German title, Dogmatik und Verkündigung, was changed in the English translation, the translator explains, because neither the term “dogmatics” nor the term “proclamation” “is at once familiar to the Anglo-Saxon reader.” If this is so—and I think it is—it only points up how badly the English-speaking sector of the Church needs the main emphasis of this book.

Heinrich Ott, former pastor of a large congregation in Basel, is Karl Barth’s successor at the University of Basel. The purpose of his book is to present “a programme of work in dogmatics, arranged with reference to Questions 1–11 of the Heidelberg Catechism.” Lest the man who regards himself as only a preacher lose interest, let it be said immediately that Ott’s basic contention is that preaching and dogmatic (systematic) theological activity are only variant aspects of a single task. “Dogmatics and preaching flow into each other.” Therefore, “in order to be able to preach at all well, the preacher must engage in dogmatic reflection … while the dogmatic theologian, in order to teach dogma well and truly … must constantly bear in mind the mission of preaching.” Ott declares, “That preacher who purposed to be nothing other than a preacher … would be a bad preacher, a preacher without heart and conscience. And the dogmatist who proposed to be nothing other than a dogmatist and to leave to the pastor the concern with the practical task of church preaching would be a bad church teacher.” He continues, “The separation between the duties of preaching and theological teaching is a purely practical technical division of labour.” And “dogmatics then may not desire to be anything other than a kind of norm for preaching.” Dogmatics exists for “the sake of preaching”; it is a “reflective function of preaching itself”; it is a “preaching to preachers.” And finally: “Hence, dogmatic teaching would be disclosed as bad dogmatic teaching, if it is shown to be inadequate to the mission of preaching.” Therefore, although dogmatic pursuits and the proclamation of the Word of God are not identical, there is a direct continuity between them; they are but two reflections of the Church’s single task of understanding and proclaiming the one Word of God.

Ott here points to one of the great weaknesses in modern preaching, both evangelical and liberal. Even evangelical sermons often lack that resonance and that timbre which a sermon can possess only when it comes out of a large, rich background of a consciously held theology. Sermons without such a background—however orthodox and pious—run shallow and thin, tending to proclaim human moralisms rather than the Word of God himself. Even orthodox sermons that lack the resonance of the Eternal are flat and unmoving.

To illustrate that “preaching and dogmatics are in the last resort a single activity of the Church, two aspects of one and the same thing,” Ott turns to the Heidelberg Catechism. In its first question, “What is your only comfort in life and death?,” and its answer in nuce, “I belong to Jesus Christ,” Ott finds the whole truth that must be preached and the whole truth of dogmatics. The preacher need not preach about everything in every sermon, for if he explains his selected biblical text rightly, the whole Word of God is expressed. For each biblical fact and truth presents God himself. Thus Ott sees the entire catechism as but an unfolding of this one fundamental truth about God.

Ott, like Karl Barth, finds the Heidelberg Catechism especially congenial because its presentation of Christian truth is not objective and impersonal. On the contrary, the form of presentation is that of the Christian speaking out of his faith. The catechism is not speech about faith; it is faith, speaking out of itself, about itself—or, more fully, about the God in whom it believes.

The Heidelberg Catechism thus lends itself to that kind of Christian existentialism which contends that dogmatics can only be the more reflective, systematic expression of what can be, and is, both preached and believed. From this point Ott moves on—and in my judgment without warrant—to the position that only that which can be experienced can be preached, believed, and properly included in dogmatics. Therefore, he urges that the Fall of Man, with its original guilt, did not take place in the history of man, for man has no experience of the Fall or of an original state of rectitude. These are rather “transcendental events,” events that indeed happened but that, because they are transcendent, can be experienced by man in any age. In this view, says Ott, and not in the traditional ones (including that of the Heidelberg Catechism), man’s fall into sin can be preached and believed, and can be the content of a dogmatics that is in continuity with preaching. Thus Ott turns the Fall and the saving facts of history into transcendent events in order to define them as events that can be empirically experienced. How else, he asks, could a preacher assume the responsibility of preaching, and how else could a man believe that man by nature hates God and his neighbor and is personally responsible for the sin of Adam?

In his discussion of the Law of God, Ott seems willing to regard “man under Law” as historical man, that is, man in his historical situations and responsibilities. In this way the Law of God is indeed brought within the realm of the empirical experience of every man, even though he has no experience of its giving on Sinai. Yet Ott here departs from one of the Heidelberg Catechism’s fundamental teachings: that the source of man’s knowledge of his sin and misery is out of the Law of God, i.e., is not learned from experience but is learned from its disclosure in divine revelation.

But apart from these criticisms—and other points might be criticized, such as Ott’s manner of relating divine love and wrath—this book can render the much needed service of showing the necessary interrelatedness of dogmatics and preaching. For in this Ott is surely correct, even though the theology by which he illustrates it is something less than wholly acceptable.

In Modern Dress

As Matthew Saw the Master, by William P. Barker (Revell, 1964, 154 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Louis H. Benes, editor, The Church Herald, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This book is a very readable exposition of the more important passages in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Beginning each time with Matthew’s description of events in the life of our Lord, the author quickly puts the ancient stories into contemporary language and settings. This attempt to get the biblical characters into modern dress and situations helps the reader to see himself and his friends among them, thus making the biblical scenes more vivid and realistic. The jacket describes this book as a commentary, but it is really an illustrative exposition concentrating on selected passages of this Gospel.

Written for everyman rather than for the specialist, this treatment of the Gospel is popular rather than profound, with innumerable illustrations (some of which have been published before) that both illuminate the record and inspire the heart. Mr. Barker, it is quite evident, believes the gospel record, and is concerned that others also shall discover its reality, understand it, and believe it for their own salvation.

LOUSIS H. BENES

Plucking Pizzicato

Poems, by C. S. Lewis (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965, 142 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Thomas H. Howard, graduate assistant in English, University of Illinois, Urbana.

This is the best—the glorious best—of Lewis. For here, with the gemlike beauty and hardness that poetry alone can achieve, are his ideas about the nature of things that lay behind all of his writings. One passes from poem to poem, thunderstruck with beauty, wanting to shout, “Oh this is true, this is a thousand times true, this is Truth.”

The volume is divided into five sections that are topical rather than chronological. The poems range from the unabashedly mythological “Narnian Suite” (“With plucking pizzicato and the prattle of kettledrum …”), to sophisticated experiments in prosody with sonnets and Pindaric odes, to personal prayers that recall Donne and Herbert.

One never has the feeling that Lewis is being merely arcane in the allusions to classical and Norse mythology with which these poems are fraught. There is, rather, the breezy, liberating sense of an enormous affirmation of all human experience. One sees here a man whose knowledge of God and the world had set him free from fear. He can talk of Pan and Aphrodite and dryads and “full-bellied tankards foamy-topped” and nuptial beds and godlike bodies with the same joy and acceptance that he brings to the chalice and Host.

Lewis is never afraid of the naive, the moving, or the lyric, but he severely avoids the treacly and bathetic. He writes simply and clearly of anguish, grief, and disenchantment that one knows full well were personal, but there is never the shadow of self-pity or sentimentalism. He was his own most ruthless inquisitor.

On the dust jacket of the book there is the remark that Lewis fell his verse was “rather out of the main stream” of modern poetry. He was right. This will mean to some, of course, that it is not worth reading. One can only say that these poems are as worth reading as those of Donne and Keats, whose poetry had to wait. We will be the losers if we leave it to our grandchildren to discover this volume of genuine poetry.

THOMAS H. HOWARD

Hit By The Word

The Relevance of Science: Creation and Cosmogony, by C. F. von Weizsacker (Harper and Row, 1964, 192 pp., $5), is reviewed by Howard A. Redmond, associate professor of religion and philosophy. Whitworth College, Spokane. Washington.

Some books are full of surprises. One would hardly expect that lectures on science given by a German physicist in the English-speaking world’s most prestigious lectureship would be clear and uncomplicated. And one would not assume a technical knowledge of the Bible and theology in one whose major training was in science. But Von Weizsacker, in these Gifford Lectures for 1959–1960, shows a knowledge of both historical and contemporary theological positions that at times would do credit to a specialist in religious studies. The book is interesting and readable and shows the author’s versatility.

Its thesis can be stated simply. Science—or more accurately scientism, which is faith in science—has become the religion of the modern world. This process is described as secularization, in which a non-religious concept or system takes the place of the religious. A scientific illustration of the process is the fact that whereas God formerly was held to be infinite and the world finite, now the world assumes this divine attribute, and infinity is secularized. The same movement is seen in the social sciences, in which the chiliasm (millennialism) of early Christianity is taken over by a secular and even anti-Christian movement such as Marxism. Christianity, with its faith in an orderly God and hence an ordered world, had much to do with the development of science, which is in fact “the gift of Christianity to the modern mind.” But this stepchild of Christianity turned and slew its parent with the weapon inherited from him. The result is a secularized civilization, a society living on the fruits of Christianity but cut off from its roots.

The thesis of secularization, in which the place of God is taken by that which is less than God, is by no means a new one. Tillich meant much the same thing by his concept of the demonic. And former students of John Mackay will remember his detailed analysis of the process by which the German state under Hitler became a church-state with messiah, holy book, and code of living. The author is to, be commended for extending this analysis to the realm of science. His general thesis, that faith in science has become the religion of our time, is indeed convincing. But some of the specifics seem strained and artificial. Is it really true, for example, that belief in an infinite God has been replaced by belief in an infinite universe? For one thing, it is questionable whether the concept of infinity, which is primarily a mathematical idea, is of the essence of religious thought or feeling (though I would vigorously dissent from Brightman and others who argue for God’s finitude); and furthermore, many scientists now say, as did Einstein, that the universe is finite. But a weak strain of argument here or there does not take away from the basic soundness of his thesis.

Some readers may find the book’s greatest interest to lie not in the main line of the argument but in some of the bypaths. There are many interesting facts about the history of science, in the discussion of which the author rightly debunks such commonly held misconceptions as that Copernicus was the first to propose a heliocentric astronomy, that Galileo was a martyr or near-martyr, and that medieval thought was sterile and of little value. He even speaks a good word for the Church’s intention in the trials of Galileo—an unusual gesture for a historian of science! Occasional obiter dicta in non-scientific fields, such as the comment that the Gospel of John was “not far from a gnostic one,” will irritate those whose scholarship in these areas is greater than the author’s. But the net effect is positive; the book is both helpful and interesting. It is a particularly pleasant surprise to hear a first-rate scientist, in a famous lectureship, confess his faith by declaring, even while apologizing for the awkwardness of the English phrase, that he has “been hit by the word of Christ.” A book that combines high scholarship with such faith is surely worth looking into.

HOWARD A. REDMOND

A View Of History

The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, by D. S. Russell (Westminster, 1964, 464 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by James P. Martin, associate professor of New Testament, Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, Richmond.

This excellent volume in the “Old Testament Library” series provides invaluable knowledge of both the inter-testamental period and the background of the eschatological and apocalyptic thought of the New Testament. Jewish apocalyptic cannot be adjudged to be a private interest of overspecialized scholars. The debate concerning New Testament eschatology cannot be intelligently furthered without considering the historical origins of many of its important and leading theological motifs within the apocalyptic thought of late Judaism. Modern history, too, is frequently denoted “apocalyptic,” but such a denotation carries little intelligible meaning unless one has learned something of the character of the apocalyptic consciousness and historical methodology. This book will guide the interested reader to a knowledge of the subject which will transcend the common clichés about the pessimism of apocalyptic thought and its supposed lack of historical sense.

Russell provides a thorough analysis of Jewish apocalyptic in the period between 200 B.C. and A.D. 100. His major divisions of discussion are: The Nature and Identity of Jewish Apocalyptic, The Method of Jewish Apocalyptic, and The Message of Jewish Apocalyptic. The table of contents is a thorough guide to the materials of these divisions. The important matters discussed under “method” include the relation of apocalyptic and prophecy, and the nature of the apocalyptic consciousness and inspiration. While Daniel may be the first and the greatest of all Jewish apocalyptic writings, apocalyptic itself originated in a much earlier period. Its taproot went deep into the prophets, particularly the post-exilic prophets. Although apocalyptic is concerned about the fulfillment of prophecy, it is not merely imitative but is “prophecy in a new idiom.” It is concerned about the future Day of the Lord and the era beyond it that comprises a hope bounded by time. Both prophecy and apocalyptic combine forthtelling and foretelling. Although concern for the fast-approaching End made eschatology and not ethics the dominating interest of the apocalyptists, it Would be wrong to imagine that they had no concern for ethics. Behind the eschatological hopes of the apocalyptist was the deep conviction that the righteousness of God would at last be vindicated (p. 101). Apocalyptic was not an escape mechanism. The stories of Daniel prove the opposite. Furthermore, the doctrine of the last judgment is the most characteristic doctrine of Jewish apocalyptic. It is the great event toward which the whole universe is moving, and this event will vindicate once and for all God’s righteous purpose (p. 380).

Russell rejects some common explanations for the pseudonymous character of apocalyptic writings. We cannot agree with Charles’s conclusions drawn from an alleged autocracy of the Law (p. 131), nor with the theory of literary convention. Rather, the practice is based on certain factors in Hebrew psychology for which there is no exact parallel in modern thought. These are the idea of corporate personality, the peculiar time-consciousness of the Hebrews, and the significance of the proper name in Hebrew thought. Biblical psychology is further elaborated in a chapter on apocalyptic consciousness in which Russell describes the various meanings of such terms as soul and spirit, and the influences of Greek and Hebrew patterns of thinking on the unity of personality and the nature of man.

The apocalyptists believed they had been given a message from God but were not interested in supplying data to substantiate any particular theory of inspiration. Our literary categories and analyses, our distinctions between the subjective and the objective, do not solve our problems of understanding the apocalyptist. The evidence which exists for genuine psychic experience behind reported dreams and visions (pp. 164 ff.) opens up new possibilities for understanding these writers on their terms. This evidence would also suggest that a purely literary approach to apocalyptic is insufficient to disclose the kind of activity carried on by apocalyptists.

The first aspect of the message of Jewish apocalyptic discussed is the idea of human history and divine control. Here we are introduced to the modern scholarly contribution to the biblical understanding of time (Barr, Eichrodt, Cullmann). The use of chronology in the Old Testament and the distinctive conception of “filled” or qualitative time are brought to bear upon such matters as contemporaneity, eternity, and the cyclic theory of the ages. This leads to a consideration of the question of the unity of history. R. H. Charles had argued that the idea of the unity of history originated with the apocalyptists. Russell thinks that the apocalyptists were not pioneers but middlemen in this regard, and that the origin of the concept of unity of history goes back to the prophets (p. 219). This concept is, of course, a corollary of the unity of God, and is inseparable from the sense of divine purpose. Because of their sense of the divine purpose, it is only half true to accuse the apocalyptists of holding to a pessimistic view of history. They did not give up to despair; “they were men of faith who could see within history, through history and beyond history the working out of God’s triumphant purpose” (p. 220). Other features of the apocalyptic understanding of history treated at some length are the systematic arrangement of history (pp. 224 f.) and the predetermination of history (pp. 230 f.).

Closely related to the apocalyptic understanding of history is the expectancy of the End. The differences of the apocalyptists’ eschatology from that of the prophetic writings are set forth in order to show that apocalyptic developed a new eschatology, which, as Mowinckel styled it, is at once “dualistic, cosmic, universalistic, transcendental and individualistic” (p. 269). The new interpretation of God’s purpose is reflected in the tension between the Messiah and Son of Man concepts. Within the structure of apocalyptic eschatology, several themes may be traced, such as signs of the End, Antichrist, creation and re-creation, and the relation of beginning to End. Russell points out in his chapter on the messianic kingdom that the common New Testament term, Kingdom of God (heaven), is not to be found anywhere in the Old Testament or in the apocalyptic writings, but that nevertheless the idea of the Kingdom is basic to both bodies of literature.

Of particular importance is the material on the enigmatic figure of the Son of Man. It is certainly significant to know that the ideas of Son of Man and the Messiah not only are different in their origins but also represent two separate strands of eschatological expectation and indicate two distinct emphases of “messianic” hope (p. 331). Could it be that the restriction of ideas about the Son of Man to a relatively small group of Jews would help explain why the early Church made so little use of them in their preaching to Diaspora Judaism, and would tend to support the argument that the complex Son of Man sayings in the gospel tradition reflect historical material transmitted by the Church rather than material created by the primitive Church for preaching purposes? It may well be that the Church transmitted the Son of Man sayings as it received them not only because there was little historical cause for changing them but also because the Church itself did not fully understand them and so recorded them largely “as is.”

Other chapters in this illuminating and helpful book examine the subjects of angels and demons and life after death. On the latter Russell observes that, “not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body is the key to the apocalyptic interpretation of the life beyond death” (p. 373). This is one more indication that New Testament ideas are related to, or dependent upon, Jewish apocalyptic, and it is one of the most important indications. Russell argues that Daniel 12:2, 3 is of the utmost significance for the development of the resurrection belief. This passage reappears in Jesus’ discourse in John 5:28 in Which the resurrection of, the last day is the goal to which the world proceeds in its history, and the destiny of man depends on his response to the word of the Son of God who has already the power to give life because he alone has life in himself. In John, as in the rest of the New Testament, the resurrection of the dead is not only the goal of history; it is also “Christo-centric.” That is, the New Testament does not merely say that there will be a resurrection—it rather proclaims Jesus, who was raised from the dead by God, the first-fruits of the resurrection of the dead, and who is himself the resurrection and the life.

JAMES P. MARTIN

Half-Way House

The Problem of God in Philosophy of Religion, by Henry Duméry (Northwestern University, 1964, 189 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The French Catholic philosopher Henry Duméry declares that “the God of philosophers is from the start a theft and a blunder,” on the ground that religion worships the one God that philosophical inquiry must evaluate. But in his philosophy of religion, he proposes to shun religious evidence in arriving at the religious object. He rejects the Thomistic proof from causality and invokes the radical transcendence of God in the interest of a phenomenological and dialectical approach to metaphysics. Yet consciousness is viewed as the creator of all signification, including the meaning of being. But he moves beyond any reduction of reality to the sensible, rational, and transcendental, to affirm the Absolute or God.

Duméry is half Thomist, half contemporary, and his resultant metaphysics not only lacks a sure ground in revealed truth but also does not clearly issue as a self-evident deduction from his principles. He recognizes that religion demands a metaphysics of the One if it is to be significant but arrives at a trans-determinate God. This reviewer tends to agree with critics who find here a Gnostic religion of sorts, a speculative blend of religion and philosophy. Duméry minimizes both the noetic predicament of the sinner and the consequent indispensability of special divine disclosure in arriving at an adequate and authentic metaphysics. The antithesis of the god of philosophers and the god of tradition is to be overcome, not by a secular half-way house, but by comprehension of the whole of reality and life through the revelation of the self-revealed God.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Book Briefs

The Modern Tradition: Background of Modern Literature, edited by Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson (Oxford, 1965, 953 pp., $13.75). An anthology of modern literature selected to reflect the complex of views and beliefs of what is called the “modern tradition.” If read critically, the book provides a profound insight into the making of the modern mind. To attain such a profound insight, however, the reader must take recourse to his own mental devices, for he must cope not only with the selected literature but also with the question of the validity of the editors’ interpretative arrangement of material, and with their uncertainty as to whether modern literature is the background or the constitutive element of “modern tradition.” Even the jacket cover suggests the uncertainty concerning the nature of the source.

Distilled Wisdom, edited by Alfred Armand Montapert (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 355 pp., $5.95). A successful businessman presents gathered words of wisdom under alphabetically arranged subjects.

Luther’s Works, Volume IV: Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 21–25, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan (Concordia, 1964, 443 pp., $6). Luther’s simple, colorful interpretation.

Introduction to Hebrew, by Moshe Greenberg (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 214 pp., $7.95). A grammar with graduated readings oriented around the story of Joseph.

The Anchor Bible, Volume 21: Jeremiah, introduction, translation, and notes by John Bright (Doubleday, 1964, 372 pp., $7). Not a commentary but a fresh translation with ample introduction and comment to make the book living and intelligible. High scholarship achieves a recapture of the stylistic techniques of the original Hebrew.

The Composition and Order of the Fourth Gospel: Bultmann’s Literary Theory, by Dwight Moody Smith, Jr. (Yale University, 1965, 272 pp., $10). A dissertation that shows how Bultmann arranges the material of John’s Gospel.

The Book of the Revelation, by Lehman Strauss (Loizeaux, 1964, 381 pp., $4.50). A popular, extensive, evangelical commentary.

The Promise and the Presence, by Harry N. Huxhold (Concordia, 1965, 252 pp., $4.50). A collection of sermons, mostly expository, on the Old Testament by a preacher who believes the Old Testament is indispensable.

A Beginner’s Reader-Grammar for New Testament Greek, by Ernest Cadman Colwell in collaboration with Ernest W. Tune (Harper and Row, 1965, 111 pp., $3.75). A text that follows the method of moving from reading to grammar rather than vice versa.

A Thousand Months to Remember, autobiography of Joseph Martin Dawson (Baylor University, 1964, 280 pp., $4.95). The life story of an interesting and influential Baptist who long advocated separation of church and state and the absolute freedom of press and the pulpit.

God’s Time and Ours, by Leonard Griffith (Abingdon, 1964, 212 pp., $3). Sermons for festivals and seasons of the Christian year.

Theology of Worship in 17th-Century Lutheranism, by Friedrich Kalb, translated by Henry P. A. Hamann (Concordia, 1965, 192 pp., $3.95). An examination of seventeenth-century Lutheranism to discover what it did to impoverish liturgical life in the Lutheran churches.

Pictorial Biblical Encyclopedia, edited by Gaalyahu Cornfield (Macmillan, 1964, 720 pp., $17.50). Excellent pictures and maps and an extensive commentary on selected subjects, with a Jewish interpretation.

Ultimate Questions: An Anthology of Modern Russian Religious Thought, edited by Alexander Schememann (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 311 pp., $6.95). In the rich tradition of Berdyaev and Dostoevsky, this anthology of Russian religious reflections will appeal to readers of Kierkegaard, Camus, and Buber who are interested in the theological and cultural renaissance that marked Russia early in this century.

The World of Josephus, by G. A. Williamson (Little, Brown, 1964, 318 pp., $6). A very readable account.

Understanding and Helping the Narcotic Addict, by Tommie L. Duncan (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 143 pp., $2.95). Answers questions ministers ask about narcotic addiction.

George of Bohemia: King of Heretics, by Frederick G. Heymann (Princeton University, 1965, 671 pp., $15). Scholarly and detailed study of the young fifteenth-century Czech king who led the Utraquist Party (of Hussite stock), and whom the Roman Catholics named “king of the heretics.” The author shows that the Czech Reformation survived and persisted in the development of later reform ideas in Germany and Switzerland.