The Problem of Freedom Within the Church

Light in the North: The Story of the Scottish Covenanters, by J. D. Douglas (Paternoster Press [London] and Eerdmans, 1964, 220 pp., 16s. and $3.75), is reviewed by John A. Mackay, president emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

This book on the Scottish Covenanters of the seventeenth century is the sixth volume in a new series on the “Advance of Christianity through the Ages,” which is being edited by a distinguished professor of the University of Manchester, F. F. Bruce. Its author, J. D. Douglas, is a scholar of growing stature, a man classically Christian and intelligently evangelical, who is deeply concerned about the Lordship of Christ in Church and society today.

It is a striking fact in the life of mankind that personalities and struggles associated with small nations have often had decisive world significance in shaping human thought and political structures. We think of history’s debt to Palestine and Greece, to Denmark and Holland. Where the English-speaking world is concerned, and very especially the United States, an unspeakable debt is due to the small land of Scotland, and very especially to a tragic epoch in that country’s history during the seventeenth century. To a descriptive analysis of this epoch in Scottish history, and to the formulation of the theological and political significance of what happened, Dr. Douglas devotes his attention in Light in the North. And this he does in such a way that the past speaks to the present. With fine scholarship, in which he combines an objective study of the original sources with critical acumen, and a moving appreciation of the priceless contribution of the Covenanters to the cause of religious freedom with due cognizance of their weaknesses and extremism, the author confronts his readers with an array of events, personalities, and issues that have profound significance for our time.

Conflict was the keynote of that historic epoch in Scottish history lasting from 1638, when the National Covenant was signed, to 1689, when the Revolution Settlement was adopted and the persecution era came to an end. In twenty-three years of that period, according to the inscription on the Martyr’s Monument in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh, “18,000 people of all classes, young and old and woman alike, had died for their faith or had been banished from their native land, some to Holland, some to plantations of the New World” (p. 114). All this happened as a consequence of violent encounters between kings and their people, between state and church, between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, between episcopacy and Presbyterianism. Over against the doctrine of the divine right of kings and the doctrine of the divine right of bishops sounded the proclamation of “the Crown Rights of the Redeemer.” Jesus Christ was proclaimed Lord over the state, over the Church, and over life in its wholeness. The proclamation “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” which is permanently enshrined in the Westminster Confession of Faith, set in high relief the importance of the individual as a free man under God and prepared the way for true democracy.

The present reviewer finds himself in total agreement with the author of Light in the North in the importance he attaches to the personality and witness of Samuel Rutherford. Rutherford, who began his working life as a devoted rural minister and died as the principal of St. Andrew’s University, wrote two famous tomes. One of these is a classic of Christian mysticism known as Rutherford’s Letters; the other is a book on constitutional law called Lex Rex which bears this significant subtitle: The Law and the Prince, A Dispute for the Just Prerogative of King and People. Rutherford is the symbol, the veritable incarnation of the dynamic costly relation between piety and politics that marked the covenanting era. The inevitable relation between these two orders begins to take on fresh meaning today in a country like the United States where the problem of Christian responsibility in secular society, the question of equal rights for all citizens, and the issues between church and state are being raised afresh.

In stressing the contemporaneity as well as the historical significance of what the Covenanters stood for, Dr. Douglas draws attention to certain extremities that marred their witness. Even Rutherford believed that the state should not tolerate heresy but bring heretics to judgment. The logic of this contention would justify what happened to Servetus in Geneva; it would excuse the attitude of the Spanish state towards Protestants; it would provide a basis for McCarthyism. Another extremity sometimes sounded was the “divine right of the presbytery.” Presbyterian, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and other Christian confessions have all suffered from arrogance. In the ecumenical era when ecclesiastical traditions are being transcended in the name of the One Church, a potentially new extremism must be carefully watched. Let the Church in none of its expressions, local or ecumenical, presume to take the place of Christ and challenge thereby the “Crown Rights of the Redeemer.”

Here is a book which illumines the past and shows to what an extent the road to tomorrow leads through yesterday.

JOHN MACKAY

An Exacting Labor

The Theology of Jewish Christianity, by Jean Danielou, S. J. (Regnery, 1964, 446 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by John H. Skilton, professor of New Testament language and literature, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This English edition of Daniélou’s scholarly work is more than a translation of the French edition of 1958. With special consideration for the needs of students, the author, working with the translator, has made significant modifications in the substance and arrangement of the text (p. ix).

In his highly demanding investigation, Daniélou endeavors to reconstruct a primitive Christian theology that made use of Jewish terminology—a theology to be placed in the period between the birth of Christ and the rise of Hellenistic theology in the works of the Apologists (p. 7). This theology “overlaps with the period generally known as that of the Apostolic Fathers, but its forms of thought and expression are not necessarily contemporary with theirs” (p. 10). The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic writings from Nag Hammadi has, in the author’s judgment, transformed the entire image of the early Church and has provided a “coherent setting” “which makes it possible in large measure to identify a great many elements in writings already familiar as belonging to a homogeneous body of thought which we may call the theology of Jewish Christianity” (p. 3). The “Jewish Christianity” with which Daniélou is concerned “should be understood to refer to the expression of Christianity in the thought-forms of Later Judaism” (p. 10).

This early theology, Daniélou holds, had limitations that detracted from its usefulness and led to its being supplanted (p. 4), but it was nevertheless essentially one with the orthodox theology of a later date. He finds that there is “little room to doubt that in all major features the Christian faith in its most archaic expression was even then what it always has been” (p. 408). His study leads to valuable reflections on the origin of Gnosticism (see pp. 159, 369). His position is that Gnosticism took over a Jewish-Christian gnosis and greatly changed it (p. 369).

The importance of Daniélou’s investigation and his conclusions should be manifest already, but it should be mentioned that in the course of his study he provides an enormous amount of information in convenient form. Whether or not one agrees with him completely in his opinions about sources and relationships, one can make use of the abundant materials he assembles and be grateful for his distinguished labor.

Reservation might be expressed about what the reviewer sees as too much readiness to find Essene influences (see, for example, pp. 341, 375). The author at times appears to be more concerned about relating elements in the Scriptures to extra-biblical materials than about recognizing or exhibiting the unity that binds them to other parts of the harmonious revelation that God has given in his Word. Satan in the Book of Job is held to be “not a fallen angel but a God-appointed Tempter” (p. 189), and connection is suggested with a tradition of a highly erroneous type. Different references to the Book of Life in Revelation are not adequately harmonized (pp. 197 f.). New Testament data regarding the resurrection and the ascension of Christ are left in seemingly unreconciled conflict (p. 250). The suggestion that the doctrine of the two yeserim may possibly be found in Paul (p. 358) seems to indicate a failure to grasp the real structure and system of the Pauline theology and to relate the part to the whole satisfactorily. The reference to Matthew 17:21 (p. 321) makes no mention of the grave textual problem affecting that verse.

These reservations and others that might be expressed should by no means obscure the value of the service Daniélou has performed in this very exacting investigation.

JOHN H. SKILTON

How They Did It In Corinth

The Corinthian Church: A Biblical Approach to Urban Culture, by William Baird (Abingdon, 1964, 224 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by S. Richey Kamm, professor of history and social science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The decline of the Protestant church as a vital evangelical force in the urban communities of America has been well described by Gibson Winter in The Suburban Captivity of the Churches. William Baird has now taken up the task of showing that the first-century Christian Church demonstrated a different movement, namely, growth and increasing spiritual vitality in the urbanized society of the first century.

Baird attempts to show that Paul’s Corinthian letters, especially the first, reveal the practical and the spiritual insights that gave transforming vitality to the witness of these early believers in a pagan world. In brief, he makes it plain that it was Paul’s stress upon the faith of the Church in the historical and imminent Saviour that provided the motivating dynamic for the phenomenal growth and power of the early Church in spite of Hellenistic urbanism.

Five topics are covered: unity, morality, secularism, worship, and death. In each the author endeavors to show that Paul’s exposition of the message of Christ as applied to the problem under consideration provides the groundwork for a solution.

Professor Baird’s treatment of these timeless issues is fresh and invigorating. His familiarity with the original language of the New Testament and his knowledge of Hellenistic culture enable him to probe to the heart of such problems as unity and idol worship and to demonstrate how the elevation of Christ’s message of salvation challenges the believer to the unreserved acceptance of God’s grace as the primary motivation in Christian growth.

His comments on art in church architecture and form in church ritual are penetrating. His treatment of the phenomenon of “glossolalia” is timely and understanding. And his exposition of the place of the doctrine of the Resurrection in Paul’s preaching is rewarding.

One may have reservations concerning the offhand manner in which Baird occasionally engages in controversy with Paul over his treatment of some theme in the Corinthian letters. Such outcroppings of cavalierness, however, do not destroy the substantial impression that the author has found much new inspiration in his attempt to read the Corinthian letters through the comparative spectra of contemporary and Hellenistic culture.

This reader found the book to be a gold mine of information and insights while conducting a series of lessons for adults on the Corinthian letters.

S. RICHEY KAMM

He Should Have Said More

The Right to Silence: Privileged Communication and the Pastor, by William Harold Tiemann (John Knox, 1964, 160 pp., $4), is reviewed by Merlin W. Call, attorney-at-law, Pasadena, California.

The subject of this treatise is the scope of the minister’s duty to disclose in legal proceedings the contents of confidential communications made to or by him in his role as a clergyman. Tiemann’s brief exposition is a most ambitious effort to consider several aspects of this subject: the legal history, especially under English common law; the ecclesiastical history, including the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, the Lutheran, and the Reformed churches’ attitudes; the present rules and uncertainties existing under the statutes and court decisions of the fifty states of this country and in federal courts under federal law, and even some possible constitutional questions; the factors to be considered in deciding what the laws on the subject should be; and, briefly, some suggestions about the conduct of ministers in situations in which the state would require disclosure.

The book reads easily and contains interesting observations on the theological significance of repentance and confession. Its appendices include reference to the current statutes in each state on privileged communications to clergymen, and its notes provide the reader with good references for additional enlightenment. For good measure the author includes an appendix on the remotely related subject of when communications on church matters are “privileged” under the laws of libel and slander. (“Privilege” in matters of libel refers to situations in which an otherwise defamatory statement may be made without the usual legal responsibility. This exemption from liability should be distinguished from the right to or “privilege” of “silence” discussed in the book, which is a freedom, under evidentiary and procedural rules, from being required to testify in court about a communication between the witness and another person.)

The book should be most helpful in stimulating needed reflection on the various aspects of the problem, but limitations of space apparently precluded a sharper delineation of the two aspects of the problem with most immediate relevance:

1. How should legislatures and courts balance the desirability of preserving the confidence of confession and counseling with the desirability of encouraging a free flow of information in the courtroom as a means to effective justice? This question must be considered from the viewpoint of the legislator and an effective system of justice and not only from the viewpoint of the minister. It must be recognized that from the legislator’s perspective similar questions of social policy may be involved in other counseling situations, including those of psychologists and psychiatrists, and that sound legislative policy requires application of right principles in a consistent manner.

2. How does the minister conduct himself when he finds his theological and ministerial judgments at war with the requirements of the state to disclose information? It seems difficult to answer this question except by applying to it the standards of a comprehensive philosophy of church and state and of the Christian’s obligation to the state, giving due regard to Romans 13 and First Peter 2. The author does not articulate such a philosophy. It is surely too easy an answer that whenever the minister’s judgment conflicts with the order of the state, he is free to ignore the state’s injunction in the name of purity of the faith. This is particularly true in matters (including that of when the minister should violate the state’s order to disclose communications made to him) wherein one must rely upon a line of human reasoning from scriptural principles, rather than upon more direct biblical authority, to sustain his judgment.

Moreover, assuming the rightness of a conclusion to resist disclosure in a particular case, the suggestion that the minister’s refusal to testify, after taking an oath “to tell … the whole truth …,” may be justified on the ground that “a formal oath in court ought not to bind a person to commit a sin” might be improved: should he not attempt to qualify his oath at the time it is administered rather than dismiss its integrity as a formality? Difficult decisions of Christian conscience should not find their solutions in oaths lightly assumed or lightly broken.

MERLIN W. CALL

Still Normative

The Athanasian Creed, by J. N. D. Kelly (Harper and Row, 1965, 140 pp., $3), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

In these Paddock Lectures delivered at the General Theological Seminary, New York, the principal of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, provides a noteworthy study of the origin and significance of the Athanasian Creed. The presentation sets the study in an atmosphere both ecclesiastically relevant and theologically exciting.

Although Principal Kelly supports the now widely held view that the exposition was not the work of Athanasius, he regards it nonetheless as one of the most splendid legacies of the patristic age. He traces the debate over its origin and assesses that debate. His verdict is that the Quicunque (as the creed is designated from its opening word) is an original exposition summarizing orthodox doctrine for instructional purposes; that it arose in south Gaul; that it reflects Augustinian elements but is even more indebted to the school of Lérins, and was probably composed late in the fifth century, possibly at the instigation of Caesarius.

What significance has the creed for our own day? In some measure Kelly sympathizes with those who are made uneasy by “the confident dogmatism with which the creed lays down the law, in considerable detail, about the inner life of the Godhead, and also by the way in which it appears to identify saving faith with a series of theological propositions”; and above all, by its assumption that eternal destiny is suspended on adhesion to “the detail of a highly technical, man-made formulary” (p. 125).

Although the author thinks these features undoubtedly limit the practical usefulness of the creed, he stresses its “immense positive value” for those who look “beyond externals.” We are told that “no other official document or creed sets forth, so incisively and with such majestic clarity, the profound theology implicit in the New Testament affirmation that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.’ And the distinctions it firmly draws are surely of lasting validity if Christianity is true at all.” If that be so, one would expect from Professor Kelly a closer correlation of practical usefulness and lasting validity than we seem to be offered. The technicality of language is no doubt a contemporary obstacle, but this ought to summon Christians to fuller understanding and to an effort to preserve the truth in simpler form.

Indeed, Kelly defends the creed as “entirely correct in the way it approaches” the truths of the triune Godhead and the Incarnation by its initial affirmation that Christian faith “consists in worshipping the divine Trinity” (and hence is more than intellectual assent). Moreover he locates the true significance of the damnatory clauses “in the reminder they give of the awful responsibility of making the right decision in matters of fundamental belief.” What remains unclear in Kelly’s evaluation, however, is the precise role of intellectual assent to revealed truths in saving faith.

With Kelly’s conclusion (and perhaps in view of additional considerations also) the reviewer is in full accord: “For these reasons the Quicunque deserves to retain its place among the normative formulations of Christendom” (p. 126).

CARL F. H. HENRY

How Far Apart?

Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, by Hans Küng (Nelson, 1964, 332 pp., $7), is reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, professor of church history and historical theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

It is perhaps surprising that so interesting and challenging a work as this was not made available earlier in English. The original German edition was published in 1957, and its importance was recognized from the outset by both Protestants and Roman Catholics. Fortunately, the work has not been outmoded by recent developments, and it has now at last found an English form along with the humorous letter by Barth and a new preface by the author.

The purpose of the book is to compare Barth’s teaching on justification with Roman Catholic doctrine, not for the reviving of controversy but in the hope that the area of disagreement is less than supposed (even by Barth himself). To this end Küng divides the work into two parts. The first is a competent exposition of Barth’s position in Church Dogmatics, IV/1. The second is a statement of what Küng takes to be the real Roman Catholic teaching on the great themes of sin, grace, declaring righteous, the work of Christ, faith, and the divine glory.

The conclusions are surprising, since Küng does not think there are decisive differences in this area. This is not because Barth has compromised the Reformation doctrine, nor because Küng is deliberately straining his own church’s teaching. It is because, he thinks, there has been widespread misunderstanding of the Roman Catholic view. Roman Catholicism, too, believes that “Sacred Scripture has an absolute precedence” (p. 111). It cannot seriously differ when Barth “defines grace as the free personal favour of God” (p. 203). It acknowledges that justification means a “declaring just” (p. 213). It fully endorses the truth that “faith is actually trust” (p. 253), that “the sinner is justified through faith alone,” that this justifying faith “is a living faith” (p. 256), and that “justification through living faith is in no sense justification through faith and works” (pp. 256 f.). The cooperation that it teaches implies “no synergism in which God and man pull on the same rope” (p. 265). “Everything comes from God.… God’s glory is not belittled” (ibid.).

How does Küng support these conclusions, which, if correct, suggest that Barth’s criticism, and indeed the Reformation protest and the Roman Catholic counter-protest, have all been a disastrous misunderstanding? First, he musters all the evidence he ran from his authorities. Secondly, he applies a rule of relativizing to all polemical Roman Catholic works that might seem to teach to the contrary. Thirdly, he argues that the apparently difficult statements of Trent are a rebuttal of Lutheran extremes, not a comprehensive exposition (pp. 105 ff.). Fourthly, he relies on the thesis that “the implicit content of theology is always far fuller and richer than a specific formulation,” so that Roman Catholicism, too, regards any given definitions, not as frozen formulas, but as a living gift of the Spirit (pp. 102 f.). This means that parts of the truth may be obscured when the spotlight is elsewhere, but obscured truths are still part of the whole, and may be brought to light again later.

The humorous tone of Barth’s letter suggests that he himself is not entirely convinced that his own reading of Roman Catholicism is wrong and Küng’s correct. As he asks, “How do you explain the fact that all this could remain hidden for so long, and from so many, both outside and inside the church?” (pp. xx f.). To this question we might add two or three more. Why did Trent meet one extreme with another, instead of giving the full and balanced presentation? Again, is it really possible to hold to other Roman Catholic doctrines (e.g., on the pope or Mary) within a genuinely biblical view of justification (cf. Küng’s own admission that is there a “dark shadow” on Barth’s doctrine!—p. 278)? Finally, is there not still a basic divergence over the true sense in which justification is also a making righteous, as illustrated specifically in Küng’s weak discussion of the sense in which Roman Catholicism accepts the simul iustus et peccator?

Yet one would not wish to close on a destructive note. Here is great learning, with which far too few Protestant theologians are adequately equipped to interact. Here is a dogmatic wrestling with dogmatics, and with Barth the dogmatician, that exposes the hollowness of so much that passes for theology today. Here is a fresh presentation, even within Roman Catholicism, that is not content to echo the old definitions but is ready to submit the great themes to fresh biblical and historical examination. Perhaps the author’s hopes are too high and his expositions too naive; but he does at least open the way to a new and more amicable and promising discussion in which a substantial place is already found for the basic concerns of the Reformation.

G. W. BROMILEY

With The Common Touch

Preaching from John’s Gospel, by Kyle M. Yates (Broadman, 1964, 181 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by Paul S. Rees, vice-president at large, World Vision, Pasadena, California.

Kyle Yates is an author-scholar who wears his scholarship lightly and who writes, as he preaches, with the common touch. Scholars tend to address scholars, thereby limiting their circle of readers. Yates speaks to the journeyman preacher, the busy Sunday school teacher, the inquiring layman.

These twenty-five chapters carry the reader consecutively through the twenty-one chapters of the Fourth Gospel. The method is that of running exposition, with only minimal attempt at close exegesis. The quotations, aptly but sparingly used, scarcely reflect the immense background literature with which the author is acquainted. Practical applications break through again and again.

Although no effort was made to organize the material in homiletical form, the author provides numerous sermon suggestions and homiletical embryos.

A writer must be interpreted in terms of his purpose. Yates has taken seriously the evangelistic purpose of the Fourth Gospel: “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). Like the original author, the present commentator aims at inducing and enriching faith in history’s one Person whom to reject is death and to receive is life.

PAUL S. REES

Best Treatment

The Two Kingdoms: Ecclesiology in Carolingian Political Thought, by Karl F. Morrison (Princeton University, 1964, 297 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, professor of history, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

This book is a brief study of the relation of the Carolingian monarchs to the medieval Church. Professor Morrison studies his subject largely in context of the position assumed by Hincmar of Rheims. In studying the question, which assumed a new importance after the coronation of Charlemagne in A.D. 800, Morrison not only brings into focus the relation of Charlemagne and his successors to the Church in France and the papacy in Rome, but also gives an excellent description of Hincmar’s concept of the structure of ecclesiastical authority. For Hincmar the authority of the Church resided in the bishops collectively, not in the papacy in Rome. Morrison then argues that the conciliarist position is basic for the understanding of the relation between the Frankish monarchs and the clergy.

This isn’t the kind of book that the average minister would find useful in the preparation of sermons, but a close study of it will throw a great deal of light on the whole area of church-state relations. Morrison makes it quite clear that the theory and practice of the ninth-century monarchs and popes was not that of Innocent III or the Council of Trent. For all those who wish to gain a clearer understanding of ninth-century France and the Church of the day, this book will be excellent. It is the best treatment of this subject which has come to the attention of this reviewer.

C. GREGG SINGER

The Gospel Also Heals

The Healing of Persons, by Paul Tournier (Harper and Row, 1963, 300 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by L. Nelson Bell, executive editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Many Christians have close personal friends in the medical profession to whom they wish on occasion to give something with genuine Christian implications. The Healing of Persons is such a gift.

Dr. Tournier, a well-known Swiss physician and psychiatrist, is first of all an articulate Christian. In addition, he knows how to write so as to hold the attention of the reader.

The fascination of this book lies in the unending stories of patients who have been healed by a combination of professional skill and simple introduction to the Great Physician. The complete lack of pietism and preachments will impress the non-Christian reader. Furthermore, physicians will see in the author’s patients the problems with which they find themselves confronted every day. And laymen can find equal delight in this book because a glossary makes clear the meaning of technical words. There is also an index which makes it possible to look up subjects discussed in detail in connection with individual cases.

The author was a Christian before meeting Dr. Frank Buchman, founder of the Oxford Group, and in gratitude for the help he received he dedicated this volume to Dr. Buchman. But Dr. Tournier makes it clear that he dissociated himself from the movement after it changed both its name and its character.

Probably the outstanding impression given by this book is the depth of the author’s spiritual experience and convictions and his ability to bring to his patients a new dimension, a spiritual one, so that physical and spiritual healing become a reality, a new and transforming experience.

L. NELSON BELL

The Play And The Church

Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches, by M. D. Anderson (Cambridge, 1964, 248 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Nicholas Wolterstorff, associate professor of philosophy, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The author of this engrossing book aims to uncover the relation that existed between drama and liturgical imagery in medieval England. She observes that scholars have for the most part concentrated on one or the other of these two areas and have only seldom tried to trace interconnections. This “strip-cultivation,” as she calls it, has enormously enriched our understanding of both medieval drama and the imagery of medieval churches. It is the thesis of this book, however, that considerable further enrichment will result from a study in the interactions of these two prominent forms of medieval art. “If we use the powerful tools of modern specialisation to isolate one aspect of medieval culture from the rest, scholars may learn more about its technical structure, but the common reader will become like the child who finds a dull pebble in his pocket in place of something he remembers as a jewel.”

What the book reveals and establishes beyond a doubt is the unity of drama and liturgical imagery in medieval England. This is to be expected, of course, since both art forms were almost exclusively under the sponsorship or guidance of the Church—the aim of the Church in both cases being the education of the laity in the truths and history of the Christian faith. It is one thing, however, to believe that there must be such unity; it is quite another thing actually to see the unity in rich detail. This is what we have here: the tracing of parallels, of a variety of sorts, between medieval English plays and the imagery of the English churches.

The author aims at something considerably more ambitious, however, than merely tracing these parallels between drama and imagery. She wants also to establish that there was some direct interaction between these two forms of medieval art, and then to use the one form to illumine dark corners in the other. Though she does not neglect the use of plays to illumine mysterious bits of imagery, the author is especially interested in the use of imagery to illuminate the staging, costumes, properties, and other aspects of medieval drama. Of necessity, this is largely educated guesswork. We have no records telling us that the craftsmen of some church or their clerical supervisors were guided by some play performance in their designs, rather than by some text or illuminated manuscript. And the widespread destruction of play manuscripts and imagery during the Reformation led to the disappearance of vast amounts of possible evidence. Still, the author shows, beyond a reasonable doubt in my judgment, that the designers of the churches were often guided by their memory of some play performance. Thus with varying degrees of assurance we can guess at the appearance of a medieval play performance from the carvings and glass and paintings of the churches.

The book is organized around the history of drama. For each stage in the development of the English drama, the author discusses the parallels and likely interactions between drama and church imagery. There is no attempt to trace the stylistic history of these two arts. Rather, the author concentrates her attention on the iconographical features of the imagery and on the corresponding features of the dramas.

A book such as this irresistibly leads one to compare the place of the artist in medieval society with his place in contemporary society. The medieval artist was of course a craftsman, whereas we have come to regard “artist” and “craftsman” as contraries. For the most part, the medieval artist-craftsman executed designs or instructions given to him by some supervising cleric or suggested to him by tradition. And the aim of the whole artistic enterprise was also controlled—namely, to instruct the people in Christian truths and biblical history. The Renaissance notion that the artist should be as original and free from tradition as possible was still in the future; and the Romantic idea that the public owes the artist something but that the artist is wholly free and unfettered by obligations was even further in the future. Obviously the art of the Christian Church when the laity is educated should be different from what it was when the laity was illiterate. Yet I think there is something healthy and enviable in the relation of the medieval artist to his church and his society.

The author of this book does not engage in any such large-scale reflections on the proper place of the artist in society. What she does do, with vivid detail and lucid style, is convey a rich sense of how the dramatist and the visual artist jointly helped achieve the aims of the medieval Church.

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

Tribute To Luther

Martin Luther: A Biographical Study, by John M. Todd (Newman, 1964, 290 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by William A. Mueller, professor of church history, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Since the eminent Catholic Church historian Joseph Lortz published his two-volume work Die Reformation in Deutschland in 1941, a new epoch has begun in the attitude of Catholic historiography toward the Reformation. The book under discussion, written by a historically trained Catholic layman and publisher, is evidence of the new trend. In five well-knit parts the author analyzes and describes the childhood, school, and university experiences of Martin Luther, his parental background, Luther as a doctor and preacher, and finally Luther as a public figure and the new world that emerged from his efforts.

Todd is fair in his criticism of Luther’s opponents and judicious in discerning the gravamina of the Reformers, and he tries to come to grips with the ultimate concern of Luther’s theology and piety. He takes issue with Monsignor Ronald Knox, who in his work Enthusiasm tried to interpret Luther as a Schwaermer. Contrary to Knox, Todd avows that the Wittenberg Reformer “did not believe in a private revelation to himself, or in the arrival of some special dispensation, over and above what is to be expected at all times throughout the life of the Church. He believed in the Gospel and all the articles of the early creeds, and in a covenant between man and God, which had a personal relevance to every man. He had reformulated this relevance in Pauline terms” (p. 204).

Protestant scholars like Ficker, Vogelsang, or Erich Seeberg might differ with Todd’s blanket statement on Luther’s acceptance of the ancient creeds; yet basically Luther was a conservative in these matters.

The author astutely outlines the salient features of Luther’s terrific struggle for a gracious God. The Reformer’s thoughts, we are told, after the Wartburg exile, “led him more strongly than ever into his existential personal theology” (p. 203). The papal Curia, both before and after Worms, seemed unable to discern the deeper religious intentions of the Wittenberg monk. The papal bull Exsurge Domine of 1520 was “contradictory, lacking in clarity, and incidentally far less effective than it might have been” (p. 166). The people who prepared this papal bull against Luther “reflected the manoeuvring of individuals for their own personal reputation, and an indifference to truth whether factual or theological” (p. 165).

Like Lortz Mr. Todd evinces a high appreciation for Luther’s Bible translation. The latter’s “verbal felicity and its accuracy are a permanent witness to the calibre of Luther’s religion, to the thoroughness of his studies in the previous fifteen years, and to the power of his intellect” (p. 206). The followers of Denifle take notice, please! Luther rediscovered the human values of the heart of the Gospel as well as its divine and saving impact. The Reformer must not be seen exclusively in terms of an austere theology of justification, “but a return to the New Testament themes of the Fatherhood of God, the sending of the Son, and the Son’s message of forgiveness and love for all men” (p. 276).

WILLIAM A. MUELLER

From Chant To Belief

Understanding the Nicene Creed, by George W. Forell (Fortress, 1965, 122 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, associate professor of Bible, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This is a tidy package of sound doctrine for everyman. The book is not about the Nicene Creed—don’t let the title fool you. It is a neat and sometimes clever defense of the faith that the creed proclaims. Forell is not trying to educate scholars of ancient church history. Rather, he aims to confront people who chant the creed in the numinous setting of the liturgy with the challenge of belief or unbelief. To him the creed of the Church has something terribly important to say to people of the twentieth century, just as it did to people of the fourth. And his book is simply an account of what that something is. The reader is bound to understand it. The big question he faces is whether he will believe it.

Forell does his work well. His style, in the C. S. Lewis tradition, is unaffected and crystal clear. His analogies are novel; and what is more, they are good ones. He is a professor at Iowa State University. It is reassuring to an evangelical to know that a writer with his convictions and obvious talent is teaching religion there.

LEWIS B. SMEDES

Paganism And Israel

The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, by Yehezkel Kaufmann, translated and abridged by Moshe Greenberg (University of Chicago, 1963, 486 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by H. L. Ellison, senior tutor, Moorlands Bible College, Dawlish, England.

Dr. Kaufmann was born in Russia in 1889 and died in Israel in 1963. He received both a traditional Jewish and a modern humanistic education. After the first World War he emigrated to Palestine. Despite his outstanding talents, he did not receive adequate recognition until he became professor of the Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1949, a post he held for eight years. The lack of recognition was due partly to his rationalism in the eyes of the orthodox Jewish scholars and his eccentricity of view in the eyes of the liberal ones, and partly to the manner in which he expressed himself.

Even though he was Jewry’s leading Old Testament scholar, he remained virtually unknown to Western scholars because his main works were written in Hebrew. Apart from the present abridged translation, only a monograph on the conquest of Canaan has appeared in English. The Religion of Israel is an abridgment of the first seven volumes of an eight-volume History of Israelite Religion, which appeared between 1937 and 1956 and is his most important work. The translator shows every sign of having done both translation and abridgment competently, but the reviewer is incapable of judging whether full justice to the original has been done.

The first two chapters deal with the pagan religion that surrounded Israel as it is described by the Bible and as it was in fact. Kaufmann argues that the biblical language can be explained only by ignorance of the spirit of paganism, but it may equally well be due to the prophetic outlook of its writers. The third chapter shows conclusively that the biblical religion is not one struggling out of polytheism and reaching out to monotheism. The fourth chapter is an interesting but not entirely successful attempt to show that the popular religion, with all its faults, was essentially different from that of Israel’s pagan neighbors.

The five chapters of the second part are an attempt to justify this position by a study of Israel’s religion down to the exile. The author accepts much of the critical position but makes the Priestly narrative and code very much earlier than Deuteronomy, which he dates just before the time of Josiah. His views on the early date of P have already had an influence on some writers, and his minimizing of the pagan element in the popular religion of Israel fits in with some modern tendencies. I cannot doubt, however, that he has gone too far in his denial of the corruption of popular religion.

The third part deals with the canonical prophets from Amos to Ezekiel. Little here is novel, but in his treatment of Hosea he betrays the basic weakness of his view of popular religion. He has to divide Hosea in two and assign the first three chapters to the reign of Ahab, so as to make the Baalization of Israel’s religion merely a passing phase in the official circles round Ahab.

This is the type of book with which few, if any, will agree completely, but which cannot fail to stimulate the reader with an adequate background. It should, however, be shunned by those unfamiliar with standard higher criticism, the more so because it can be properly understood only as a reaction against this criticism. There is no bibliography in this shortened version, and the impression is given that Kaufmann paid little attention to post-Wellhausen critical views. This may, however, be due to the wide-scale omission of critical discussion on many key points.

H. L. ELLISON

Variations On A Theme

Remember, I Am Coming Soon, edited by Gilbert W. Kirby (Victory Press, 1964, 96 pp., 9s. 6d.), is reviewed by J. G. Norman, minister, George Road Baptist Church, Birmingham, England.

The secretary of the Evangelical Alliance has edited a symposium by well-known evangelical ministers on the Second Advent. According to the introduction, the book is intended “to emphasize the fact of our Lord’s coming and its practical implications.” The contributors have deliberately abstained from expressing particular interpretations of the doctrine.

The result is four essays that provide “variations on a theme.” They will no doubt be quite inoffensive to the great majority of evangelical Christians. But will they be anything more? Do they take us very far? The danger in a book of this kind is that it simply tells us the things that we know, leaving unanswered the questions that really perplex us. The present book does not entirely avoid this danger; but nevertheless its publication is timely, if only to remind evangelicals of the practical importance of the doctrine. In the reviewer’s experience, many Christians, when the Second Coming is mentioned, are really interested only in prognostications of the future; their interest evaporates when the ethical and spiritual implications are brought out. It is to be hoped that such a fate will not befall this book, for it follows the New Testament in being more interested in discovering the effect on Christian living than in unraveling future events. Besides stating very strongly the certain fact of our Lord’s return, the writers underline what should be its effect upon Christians in their daily life and witness. A certain amount of overlapping is inevitable, but this serves to give a welcome stress to the main point.

There are some useful word-studies in the first two essays, a broad survey of the doctrine in Scripture in the third, and a suitable and effective challenge to service in the last. In addition to Mr. Kirby, the editor, the contributors are R. Peter Johnston, A. Skevington Wood, J. A. Caiger, and Leith Samuel—names that for many in Britain are sufficient commendation.

J. G. NORMAN

Book Briefs

This People Israel: The Meaning of Jewish Existence, by Leo Baeck (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 403 pp., $9.50). A scholarly, informative, highly liberal interpretation that sees the continued existence of the Jewish people as a progressive revelation of God and a deepening of the covenant that the Jews are said to have made with God. It seems to have escaped Baeck that, according to the Old Testament, the Jews did not make a covenant with God: God made a covenant with the Jews.

A Minister’s Obstacles, enlarged, revised edition, by Ralph G. Turnbull (Revell, 1964, 192 pp., $2.95). Worth reprinting because it’s worth reading. First published in 1946, it discusses the pitfalls and problems of the ministry.

Graham Taylor: Pioneer for Social Justice 1851–1938, by Louise C. Wade (University of Chicago, 1964, 268 pp., $7.50).

Meaning and Truth in Religion, by William A. Christian (Princeton University, 1964, 273 pp., $6). An extended essay in the area of the philosophy of religion that seeks, on the basis of inclusive religious phenomena, to discover norms by which the truth or untruth of religious claims may be determined.

Metaphysics and Religious Language, by Frank B. Dilley (Columbia University, 1964, 173 pp., $4). Dr. Dilley undertakes to explain the nature of philosophical disagreements: they are neither semantic nor psychiatric; they are deeper than factual because metaphysics is based on a sort of, religious faith. In an excellent exposition of the difficulties of various schools of thought, the author tries to avoid excluding or deciding for any view. He succeeds quite well, except perhaps in his discussion of religious symbolism.

Poverty on a Small Planet: A Christian Looks at Living Standards, by Edward Rogers (Macmillan, 1965, 127 pp., §2.95). Rogers argues that for the first time poverty can be eliminated the world over.

Paperbacks

The Secular City, by Harvey Cox (Macmillan, 1965, 276 pp., $1.45). A secularization of Christianity in which it is held that God may so reveal himself in the future, as he did once to Moses, that a new name for him may then be in order. A thoroughgoing reduction of biblical revelation to historicism.

Who Is My Neighbor?: Christian Compassion in the Welfare Society, by Paul Peachey (Faith and Life, 1964, 44 pp., $.75). An analysis of Mennonite thought and practice in such areas as welfare for all, the nature of the welfare society, and the Christian task in the welfare society. Provocative.

26 Years on the Losing Side, by Conrad Jensen (American Tract Society, 1964, 83 pp., $.85). A retired policeman tells what he has seen in New York’s notorious Twenty-third Precinct and pleads for a return to Christian foundations. As the title suggests, the author sees the real solution to society’s crime and immorality in that religious area that lies beyond the area of law and its enforcement.

European Background and History of Evangelical Free Church [of America] Foreign Missions, by H. Wilbert Norton (Christian Service Foundation, 1964, 297 pp., $1.95). Revised edition; first published in 1959.

Prophecy and the Church, by Oswald T. Allis (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964, 339 pp., $3). An examination of the claim of dispensationalists that the Christian Church is a mystery parenthesis that interrupts the fulfillment to Israel of the Kingdom prophecies of the Old Testament.

Crowded to Christ, by L. E. Maxwell (Eerdmans, 1964, 354 pp., $2.25). A book that knifes Christians to practice in their lives what they believe and confess in their hearts. First printed in 1950, the book was widely received and many times reprinted.

Changing Patterns in Christian Education, by Marshall C. Dendy (John Knox. 1965, 96 pp., $1.50). Lectures on the educational views of Calvin and Knox, particularly as they are said to bear on the Covenant Life Curriculum produced by the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) and the Reformed Church in America. Although cast within the terms of the Covenant, the author’s Arminianism shows.

A notable evidence of the reflorescence of theological scholarship among British evangelicals is the launching of a new publishing venture by a young Anglican layman, Mr. Gervase E. Duffield—no light undertaking in these days of high costs and fierce competition! But Mr. Duffield is nothing if not determined and energetic, and, with the support of a distinguished panel of theologians, he has got off to a flying start. Under the imprint of the Marcham Manor Press a number of paperbacks have already appeared in which contemporary ecclesiastical and ecumenical issues are effectively and intelligently discussed. And there will be more to follow. Under the imprint of the Sutton Courtenay Press an ambitious scheme for the publication of new works on the Reformers and their successors and for the republication of important Reformation classics is now in hand. The Work of William Tyndale, the first volume in the series, has met with the approbation of reviewers in both religious and secular journals. The second (of which I shall have more to say in a moment) is devoted to the writings of Archbishop Cranmer, and other volumes now in preparation will be concerned with the Anglican Homilies, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, and the Zurich Letters of the Reformers.

The Work of Thomas Cranmer is ably edited by Mr. Duffield and is adorned with an admirably instructive introductory essay on Cranmer’s theology by Dr. J. I. Packer. The appraisal of Cranmer as a theologian of the first rank is long overdue; it has become a settled custom to depict him as drawn along in the theological wake of Bishop Ridley. The writings of the two men, both of them fine scholars, are there for us to study, and it has always seemed to me that Cranmer stands a head above Ridley as a mature and weighty thinker (though it must in fairness be said that Ridley’s literary output, in comparison with Cranmer’s, was disappointingly meager). In any case, Cranmer was the magisterial architect of the Book of Common Prayer, which is still unmatched in the field of scriptural worship, and, as Dr. Packer observes, this in itself “is indirect testimony to his strength as a theologian, for creative liturgical work only succeeds when the liturgist knows exactly what theological content should go into each service.… If Cranmer’s services pass muster as masterpieces of Christian worship, there is at least a presumption that the theology behind them is also in the master class.”

By natural inclination Cranmer was the careful student. The exacting demands of precise and painstaking scholarship were never uncongenial to him. His library was the envy not only of fellow scholars but even of universities, containing as it did the great works of all the ages, classical, patristic, and contemporary. Unfortunately, the library was dispersed after his martyrdom and there is no exhaustive inventory of its contents. Some 450 works which are known to have belonged to it are still extant today. The catalogue included in the volume before us is an interesting feature, especially as the volumes in it were for use, not for show. Not only was he a tireless reader; it was also his practice to mark the books as he read them. It was upon this foundation of solid learning that he built and reached the assurance of his convictions. Thus, in disputing with his opponent Gardiner, he was able to say: “I, having exercised myself in the study of Scripture and divinity from my youth (whereof I give most hearty lauds and thanks to God), have learned now to go alone, and do examine, judge, and write all such weighty matters myself; although, I thank God, I am neither so arrogant nor so wilful that I will refuse the good advice, counsel, and admonition of any man, be he man or master, friend or foe.”

Of the works of Cranmer contained in this present volume, the longest and the most important is his Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament. It is a composition of epoch-making significance for the Church of England. Also of special interest, as it relates to another crucial landmark in English religious history, is his Preface to the Great Bible of 1540, which by royal injunction had been set up in every parish church of the land.

The worth of this volume is enhanced by the inclusion of a selection of Cranmer’s letters. Of these, the ones addressed to leaders of the Reformed churches on the Continent show him impressively taking the lead in the role of ecumenical statesman. Indeed, one of Cranmer’s most cherished projects was his scheme for convening a council of the best theological minds of the day for the purpose of hammering out an agreed statement on all the main points of Christian doctrine—and especially the doctrine of the Eucharist, over which Lutherans and Calvinists were seriously divided—thereby ensuring fruitful harmony among the churches in their own day and for the generations to come. Calvin responded that he would not shrink from crossing ten seas, if need be, for the fulfillment of this grand objective.

But it was not to be; for Mary came to the throne and Cranmer and other leaders of the Reformation in England suffered martyrdom. Thomas Cranmer may still speak to us, however, in this ecumenical age in which we live—if we will only listen—and remind us not merely that unity is of high value but also that Christian harmony can never be purchased at the expense of truth. And so we must labor and pray for unity; we must plan and confer, and show a spirit of loving and candid openness to those who differ from us theologically and liturgically; but rather than compromise or be turned aside from the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ we must, like Thomas Cranmer, be willing even to lay down our lives.

There are three portraits of Cranmer in this volume. The first is a contemporary likeness by the German artist Gerlach Flicke, who died in London in 1558, two years after Cranmer was martyred. The second, by an unknown artist, would seem to have been painted early in the seventeenth century, the likeness probably being taken from the face mask first engraved for Beza’s Icones in 1581. The third portrait, believed till recently to be genuine, was examined by X-ray at the National Portrait Gallery last year and shown to be a forgery. The original portrait was quite clearly that of a Roman Catholic cardinal dating from about 1570, and some considerable time later it was altered into a likeness of Cranmer. Indeed, subsequent investigation has indicated that the cardinal portrayed was none other than a Spanish Grand Inquisitor! That he should thus have been transformed may certainly be regarded as one of the ironies of history, and there would seem to be an invitation here to drive home a homiletic lesson by drawing a parable from this portrait—but just what lesson would depend on one’s attitude to the Reformation! There is a story in the New Testament of a persecutor’s being transformed into an apostle. It may at least be agreed that there is every possibility that Cranmer, had he not been won to the Protestant cause, would have been raised to the cardinal’s eminence.

A Sponsoring Committee of fifty-five key evangelical leaders from twenty countries was announced this month for the World Congress on Evangelism.

“We have been fortunate to enlist men who have been active on many frontiers of Christian advance in our century,” said Dr. Billy Graham, evangelist and honorary chairman of the congress, and Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of Christianity Today and chairman of the congress, in a joint statement.

All five continents are represented on the committee, which is the first announced list of delegates to the congress, scheduled to be held in West Berlin. October 26-November 4, 1966. In all, the congress will gather some 1,200 delegates, observers, and newsmen to West Berlin’s famed Kongresshalle, a stone’s throw from the East-West border. The congress is a tenth-anniversary project of Christianity Today.

In addition to Graham and Henry, the following were named to the Sponsoring Committee:

The Rev. Tom Allan, M.A., Craigton, Scotland: Minister, Church of Scotland, and author of Tell Scotland and other books. (Presbyterian)

Professor Ishaya S. Audu, M.B., B.S., Lagos, Nigeria; Department of Pediatrics, Medical Faculty, University of Lagos. (Anglican)

The Rev. Jean-Paul Benoit, Paris, France; President, French Evangelical Alliance. (Reformed Church of France)

Sir Cyril Black, M.P., London, England; Member of Parliament. (Baptist)

Mr. Hans Bürki, M.A., Ph.D., Angelrain, Switzerland; Swiss Studenten Mission. (Reformed Church of Switzerland)

The Rev. Baker James Cauthen, Th.D., D.D., Richmond, Virginia; Executive Secretary, Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. (Southern Baptist)

The Rev. Boris Decorvet, Litt.B., B.D., Geneva, Switzerland; Pastor in the National Church of Switzerland. (Reformed) The Rev. Wayne Dehoney, B.D., D.D., Jackson, Tennessee; President, Southern Baptist Convention, and Pastor, First Baptist Church, Jackson, Tennessee. (Southern Baptist)

The Rev. Harry Denman, D.D., Litt.D., Nashville, Tennessee; formerly General Secretary, General Board of Evangelism, The Methodist Church. (Methodist)

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Otto Dibelius, Ph.D., LL.D., Berlin, Germany; Evangelical Bishop of Berlin. (Lutheran)

The Rev. Bishop Timothy S. K. Dzao, LL.D., D.D., Kowloon, Hong Kong; Bishop of Ling Liang World-Wide Evangelistic Mission. (Independent)

Mr. Elmer Engstrom, D.Sc., LL.D., New York, New York; President, Radio Corporation of America. (Presbyterian)

The Rev. William Fitch, B.D., Ph.D., Toronto, Canada; Minister, Knox Presbyterian Church. (Presbyterian Church in Canada)

The Rev. C. Darby Fulton, D.D., LL.D., Decatur, Georgia; Past Executive Secretary, Board of World Missions, Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Presbyterian U. S.)

The Rev. Arthur F. Glasser, B.D., D.D., Gladwyne, Pennsylvania; Home Director for North America of Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Reformed Presbyterian, Evangelical Synod) The Rev. Umberto M. Gorietti, Rome, Italy; General Secretary, Assemblies of God in Italy. (Assemblies of God)

The Most Reverend Archbishop Hugh Gough, M.A., O.B.E., Sydney, Australia; Primate of Australia, Archbishop of Sydney. (Anglican)

The Rev. Richard C. Halverson, Th.B., LL.D., Washington, D. C.; Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church, and Vice-President, World Vision. (United Presbyterian)

The Rev. Kyung Chik Han, B.D., D.D., Seoul, Korea; Pastor, Young Nak Presbyterian Church. (Presbyterian)

The Rev. J. Lester Harnish, M.Th., D.D., Portland, Oregon; President, American Baptist Convention, and Pastor, First Baptist Church, Portland. (American Baptist)

The Rev. Akira Hatori, B.A., B.D., Tokyo. Japan; Radio Evangelist, and Chairman of the Board, Japan Bible Seminary. (Gospel Evangelistic Church)

The Rev. Ross F. Hidy, San Francisco, California; Pastor, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. (Lutheran Church in America) The Rt. Rev. Bishop A. W. Goodwin Hudson, London, England; Bishop in The Church of England; Rector, St. Paul’s Church (Portman Square). (Anglican)

The Rev. Canon Leslie Hunt, M.Th., D.D., Toronto, Canada; Principal, Wycliffe College. (Anglican)

Professor Norman C. Hunt, B.Comm., Ph.D., Edinburgh, Scotland; Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Edinburgh. (Baptist)

The Rt. Rev. Bishop A. G. Jebaraj, Palayamkottai, South India; Bishop of the Church of South India. (Church of South India)

The Rev. Timothy Kamau, Nairobi. Kenya; Radio Evangelist. (Africa Inland Church)

The Rev. Gilbert Kirby, M.A., London, England; General Secretary, World Evangelical Fellowship, and General Secretary. The Evangelical Alliance. (British Congregational)

The Rev. A. Kurumada, D.D., Tokyo, Japan; President, Fukein Remnei Church. (Japan Holiness Church)

The Rev. Michael Kyriakakis, B.D., Athens, Greece; Pastor, First Evangelical Church. (Greek Evangelical Church)

The Rev. Robert J. Lamont, L.H.D., Th.D., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Minister, First Presbyterian Church. (United Presbyterian)

The Rev. Ruben Lores, B.A., San Jose, Costa Rica; International Coordinator of Evangelism-in-Depth, Latin America Mission. (Baptist)

The Rev. Duke McCall, D.D., Litt.D., Louisville, Kentucky; President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. (Southern Baptist)

The Hon. Ernest C. Manning, LL.D., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Premier, Province of Alberta. (Baptist)

Mr. E. K. Martin, Soppo, West Cameroon. Africa; Director of Education, Cameroon Baptist Mission. (German Baptist)

The Rev. Benjamin Moraes, B.S. in Th., Ph.D., Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Pastor, Presbyterian Church, Copacabana, and Professor and Head of Law Department, University of Guanabara. (Presbyterian)

The Rev. John T. Mpaayei, B.A., MA., Nairobi, Kenya; Secretary, The Bible Society in East Africa. (Africa Inland Church)

The Rev. Harold John Ockenga, LL.D., D.D., Boston, Massachusetts; Pastor, Park Street Church. (Congregational)

Mr. René Pache, LL.D., Vennes-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland; President, Emmaüs Bible Institute. (Christian Brethren)

The Rev. Gordon Powell, M.A., B.D., Sydney, Australia; Pastor, St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church. (Presbyterian)

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Chandu Ray, S.T.D., D.D., Karachi, Pakistan; Bishop of Karachi, Church of England. (Anglican)

The Rev. Asdrubal Rios, Maricaibo, Venezuela; President, Evangelical Church of Venezuela. (Evangelical Church of Venezuela)

The Rev. Paul Schmidt, Berlin, Germany; Director, European Evangelical Alliance. (Baptist)

The Rev. Paul Sorensen, Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Assemblies of God)

¹Strachan, just prior to his death in February, agreed to serve. The Rev. R. Kenneth Strachan, Th.M., LL.D., San Jose, Costa Rica; General Director, Latin America Mission. (United Presbyterian)

The Rev. John R. W. Stott, B.A., M.A., London, England; Rector, All Souls Church, Langham Place. (Anglican)

The Rev. Clyde W. Taylor, M.A., D.D., Washington, D. C.; General Director, National Association of Evangelicals. (Baptist) The Rev. Andre Thobois, Paris, France; President, Baptist Federation of France. (Baptist Federation of France)

Pastor Fernando V. Vangioni, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Evangelist, and President, Latin American Committee on Evangelism. (Brethren)

Mr. I. Ben Wati, B.D., M.A., New Delhi, India; Executive Secretary, Evangelical Fellowship of India. (Baptist)

Mr. C. Stacey Woods. A.B., B.Th., Lausanne, Switzerland; General Secretary, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. (Christian Brethren)

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Friedrich Wunderlich, Ph.D., D.D., Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Bishop of Germany. The Methodist Church. (Methodist)

The Rev. Thomas F. Zimmerman, D.D., Springfield, Missouri; General Superintendent, Assemblies of God. (Assemblies of God).

Miscellany

The first Christian service ever permitted in the modern stadium of Northern Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim capital of Kaduna turned out to be the largest gathering of any kind to assemble in the stadium. Negro evangelist Howard O. Jones preached to a crowd of 16,000 at the closing meeting of a crusade sponsored by New Life for All, an inter-mission evangelistic project. A telecast followed.

A government survey shows that American clergymen have an average of 17.1 years of education but draw a median salary of only $4.008. In a list of 321 occupations, clergymen’s salary ranks 245th.

Evangel College of Springfield, Missouri, won regional accreditation last month. It was granted membership in the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools as a four-year college of arts and sciences. Evangel, operated by the Assemblies of God, has an enrollment of 720.

An official Bible for Protestants as well as Roman Catholics seems a distinct possibility in the Philippines. Preliminary studies were disclosed last month during the annual session of the Advisory Council of the Philippine Bible House in Manila.

Personalia

Dr. Sterling W. Brown was named president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. He has served as executive vice-president of the organization since 1953.

Dr. Meredith Kline is resigning from the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary to become professor of Old Testament at Gordon Divinity School.

Dr. Clark H. Pinnock, lecturer in the faculty of theology at the University of Manchester, has been named assistant professor in the Department of New Testament at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dr. J. E. Lesslie Newbigin, an associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches and director of its Division of World Mission and Evangelism, has been named bishop of the Madras Diocese of the Church of South India.

The symbolic focus of the fourth annual meeting of the Consultation on Church Union (Blake merger proposal) shone upon an eighteenth-century log church building where Barton W. Stone in 1804 launched one wing of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) unity movement. Three years before, one of America’s greatest revivals had taken place in the area surrounding this Cane Ridge Meeting House in the rolling country near Paris, Kentucky.

This month, most of the fifty-four representatives of the six church bodies engaged in merger talks (besides the Disciples, these are the Episcopal Church, Methodist, Church, Evangelical United Brethren Church, United Church of Christ, and United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.) journeyed from Lexington for a singular meeting that saw Episcopal bishops take communion at a service presided over by Disciple lay elders.

Though Stone’s call to unity was in part a reaction against many of the ecclesiastical features proposed thus far by COCU, the point of historical continuity of ecumenical concern was made on the same day on which the consultation, now back in Lexington, got down to concrete action. Without discussion or dissent, it established a special commission to draw up “the outline of a possible plan of union” before next year’s meeting. In related action, COCU said that this is “a critical time” for those churches that have been sending observer-consultants to the meetings to become participants. Word would be welcome from any such church “that it desires an invitation to appoint a member” to the plan-of-union commission, provided that the church “expresses at the same time its desire to become a participant.”

The six communions quickly named their commission members: Disciples—Dr. George G. Beazley of Indianapolis, president of the Disciples’ Council on Christian Unity; EUB—Dr. Paul Washburn of Dayton, Ohio, executive director of his denomination’s Commission on Church Union; Methodist—Bishop F. Gerald Ensley of Columbus, Ohio, pro tem appointee until the Methodists’ Commission on Ecumenical Affairs meets to make an official appointment; Episcopal—the Rt. Rev. Stephen F. Bayne, Jr., director of the Overseas Department and first vice-president of his church; UCC—Dr. Paul S. Minear, professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School; UPUSA—Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of his denomination and originator of COCU.

It was generally agreed that all of this constituted a signal recovery from the acknowledged setback at last year’s Princeton meeting, where Methodist and Episcopal representatives were restive under the pace of the merger proposal. At that time, Methodists listed a series of stumbling blocks. But this year both Methodist and Episcopal ecumenical commissions had been changed, and the outlook of each delegation was more positive toward COCU, though the Methodists spoke with two voices. Their delegation chairman, Bishop James K. Mathews of Boston, was agreeable to the point of “lively expectation” to the procedure toward a plan of union. But Ensley, chairman of the Methodist Commission on Ecumenical Affairs, spoke forbiddingly of any quick merger developments concerning Methodists apart from their proposed union with the EUB Church, which appears near confirmation. He indicated that if this union succeeded, it would be hard to get Methodists excited enough to vote on another one for a number of years. This sort of opinion is of great concern to COCU leaders, for Methodists constitute nearly half of the almost 22 million church members involved in the consultation.

The thorniest problem for the consultation was what to do with the historic episcopate. In seeking a passage between Scylla and Charybdis, the consultation approved a report which said: “We have reached the point where we are willing to explore the outlines of a united church which accepts the historic episcopate as symbol and agent of the continuity of the Church and its ministry with the witnesses of our Lord’s resurrection.”

But the commission report, denying an exclusiveness to the historic episcopate, refers to a broader “continuity” that would encompass the traditions of all the participating churches. While some churches consider the historic episcopate the essential guardian of the Christian tradition, the document points out, others depend on “a continuity in apostolic teaching, guarded by a presbyterial succession,” or a continuity maintained “through the apostolic faith, worship and witness of congregations and associations.… We are convinced that these positions are not incompatible.”

A rite would be developed to “symbolize and effect the uniting of the various ministerial traditions.”

Before conclusion of the four-day meeting, three Negro churches—the African Methodist Episcopal, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal—indicated their intention to become full participants in COCU. The three, which have a combined membership of 2.5 million, have been engaged in unity talks among themselves for over two years.

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox observers noted their doctrinal differences with COCU, the former indicating that the Church of Rome takes doctrine rather more seriously than the consultation does.

Dr. Horace L. Villee of Columbus, Mississippi, of the Presbyterian Church U. S. (Southern), said: “We have always had one holy, catholic Church which includes all true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. I question the necessity of organized unity because faith binds us together.”

Dr. Blake said that agreement to draw up a plan of union does not even mean participants favor a united church, but that something more concrete is now needed to find where consultation members actually do stand in this regard.

Predictions on this seemed not as freely forthcoming as formerly. The meeting had taken place in the Crystal Ballroom of Lexington’s Phoenix Hotel. There was no evident reason for changing the name to the Crystal Ball Room.

Mountaintop Merger

In a converted resort hotel now occupied by Covenant College at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, the General Synods of the Evangelical Presbyterian and Reformed Presbyterian Churches consummated a merger this month. The new denomination, to be known as the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, embraces some 100 congregations. Dr. Marion D. Barnes was chosen president of the college.

Statues Vs. Fire Extinguishers

A fog of dissension seemed to be settling over Roman Catholicism this month. Non-Catholics saw the big issue as birth control (see page 45), but many Catholics were becoming increasing vocal about such things as liturgy reform, and some regarded the transition as tantamount to “Protestantizing” the church.

The infighting continued to build up despite the rebuke given by Pope Paul VI on March 31 to elements in Roman Catholicism that “seem to have nothing else to give Catholic life than bitter, destructive and systematic criticism.” He appealed for unity.

The liturgy reform is particularly repugnant to Roman Catholic traditionalists. Niches in sanctuary walls are beginning to house more fire extinguishers than statues, priests face the people, the congregation stands more frequently than it kneels, and hymns composed by Protestants are frequently heard.

Father Gommar Albert DePauw, Belgian-born professor of moral theology at St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland, conducted a short-lived campaign in behalf of a so-called Catholic Traditionalist Movement, charging that Roman Catholic churchgoers are being “brainwashed” into acceptance of reforms they do not want.

After a flurry of publicity, DePauw announced he had “disassociated” himself from the movement on orders from his superior, Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, Archbishop of Baltimore.

Earlier, DePauw had said that a “high-ranking Vatican official” had sent him his “blessings.”

He also had claimed the support of thirty bishops. But he never did identify a prelate backer.

Liturgical reform was permissive, said DePauw, not mandatory. He urged a national referendum among Roman Catholics to determine their “exact sentiments” on liturgical reform.

DePauw had a variety of comments during a news conference in New York. He said extremists are trying to curtail devotion to the Virgin Mary and to downgrade the supremacy of the pope.

On Mass changes: “No longer the sacrament of Calvary but a songfest with the overtones of a hootenanny.”

Art, Missions, And Finances

A Lutheran clergyman in Germany proposes that churches sell their art treasures to finance mission work in developing countries.

Pastor Erwin Haberer of Nuremberg, in an article in the Gazette of the Lutheran Church of Bavaria, called it “grotesque” that some Protestant churches possess valuable art treasures while other churches are hardly able to finance vital needs.

He asked whether a medieval wood-carved madonna valued at $25, 000 must remain in the possession of and be displayed in a church. Sale of such works would make it possible to keep the churches, he said, instead of turning them into “museums with grilled windows and alarm systems.” He referred to security measures to curb the growing number of thefts of art objects.

The ‘Wretched’ Evangelicals

The Archbishop of Canterbury unleashed an attack on evangelicals during his Australian tour last month. Referring to the Sydney diocese, Dr. Michael Ramsey said, “It needs something done about its partisanship immediately.”

According to a widely publicized press interview, the archbishop described as “very unhealthy” the overwhelmingly evangelical character of the diocese. “Now that I’ve seen it for myself,” he said, “I think something must be done as soon as possible. There can be no room within our church for wretched, narrow-minded, out-of-date partisanship.”

The prospect of action by the English primate against Anglican evangelicals in Sydney raised the eyebrows of many an observer. They contend that he has no jurisdiction to take any action. The primate of the Anglican church in Australia is Dr. Hugh Gough, Archbishop of Sydney.

Comments an editorial in the Anglican, an Australian independent weekly that has criticized Dr. Gough on occasion, “Dr. Ramsey only said openly … what almost every other distinguished overseas visitor to Sydney has said privately for at least fifteen years past.” At the same time, it continues, Sydney holds no monopoly of partisanship and has a splendid record in mission work; “these are the things, not churchmanship, which truly matter.”

There are dioceses in Australia as pronouncedly high church as Sydney is evangelical, said a prominent English evangelical, the Rev. John R. Sertin, secretary of Church Society; the fact that the archbishop in visiting them sounded no corresponding warning indicated that Dr. Ramsey himself is not free of the partisanship which he professes to dislike so much, and of which English evangelicals could speak so feelingly.

Paying tribute to Dr. Ramsey’s biblical and pastoral messages to church people in the diocese of Sydney, Moore Theological College’s vice-principal, the Rev. Donald Robinson, added, “It seems a pity he left us with these one-sided words of criticism.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

After years of determined effort the Orthodox bloc in the coalition government of Israel succeeded last month in securing the passage of an anti-conversion bill in the Knesset (Parliament).

Under the new law, six months’ imprisonment can be imposed for direct attempts to convert Jewish minors. Such conversion is prohibited unless consent in writing is provided by both parents, by a court, or by the surviving parent or guardian. If the child is over the age of ten, his own consent is required as well.

Some time ago the Knesset rejected a bill substantially intended to prohibit missionary activity. The defeated bill, proposed by Rabbi Shlomo Lorincz of the National Religious Party (Orthodox), stipulated:

No person shall accept into an educational institution in which religious instruction or religious worship takes place, a minor belonging to another religion, except with the written consent of the head of the religion to which the minor belongs.

The new law is considerably less than the Orthodox rabbis had hoped for. They wanted included in the law a provision requiring permission of the rabbi, as well as the consent of the parents, before a minor could convert.

As it now stands, the law not only prohibits Jewish minors from converting to another religion but also prohibits minor children of mixed marriages from converting to Judaism without both parents’ consent.

The law actually provides little that has not been observed since the days of the British mandate. For nearly fifty years no minor in the Holy Land under eighteen years of age has been allowed to convert if his parents object.

The present bill received government support for two reasons. First, although it is short of the law that the Orthodox wanted, it will calm the majority of Israel’s population that is uneasy over occasional exaggerated reports of the conversion of minors.

Second, the new measure provides Israel with an anti-conversion law that does not violate Article 18 of the Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations and signed by Israel, for the law applies only to minors.

Dr. Maas Boertien, executive secretary of the United Christian Council in Israel (Protestant), thought that the bill represented no great defeat for the liberal forces in Israel. Such a bill has been expected for some time, and it could have been much worse.

Dr. Solomon Birnbaum, director of the Beth El Children’s Home and School in Haifa, showed little enthusiasm for the new law. He fears that it will give fanatical religious groups a “handle with which to cause trouble.” His school was one that suffered a raid by Yeshiva students in September, 1963, and has been a target for repeated Orthodox Jewish attacks.

Dr. Birnbaum insists that his school does not entice children to convert. Before a Jewish student can enter his school, the parents are advised that both the Old and New Testaments are taught. Both parents must sign their approval. They are free to take their children out of the school at any time.

“It is the parents who do the enticing,” he said. “We have a long waiting list of children whose parents wish to enroll them in our school.”

The provision for heavy punishment to be meted out to anyone converting a child to or from Judaism without meeting the legal requirements will have to be tested in the courts before the real effect of the law will be known.

A Case Of Intervention

The Sheraton hotel in Tel-Aviv, Israel, canceled a Christian Science lecture under pressure from the local Religious Council. The group threatened to remove the hotel’s kashrut certificate if the lecture took place.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the head of the Tel Aviv Religious Council, along with other orthodox groups in the country, had intervened with the Sheraton management. The lecture was to have been delivered by Mr. Charles Louis Reilly of Los Angeles on March 7.

Mr. Pinhas Sheinman, chairman of the Religious Council, told reporters that “Christian Scientists are a fifth column both in the field of education and in the field of religion in this country.” A Christian Science member emphatically denied that Christian Scientists in Israel are engaged in any missionary activity whatever.

DWIGHT L. BAKER

Cuban Arrests

Two Southern Baptist missionaries were among some sixty Protestant pastors and laymen whose arrests were announced by Havana Radio this month. They were charged with operating a spy ring.

Reports from Havana said that two-thirds of all Baptist pastors in western Cuba had been taken into custody and accused of passing military information.

The Americans arrested were Dr. Herbert Caudill, 61, superintendent of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board work in the western part of Cuba, and his son-in-law, the Rev. David Fite, 31, who had been teaching in a theological school in Havana and serving as pastor of a suburban church.

Dr. Arthur B. Rutledge, executive secretary of the Home Mission Board, said he was shocked that Caudill would even be considered as involved in subversive activities. It was pointed out that while in the United States last year for medical treatment Caudill refused even to discuss Cuban politics so as not to jeopardize his spiritual ministry.

Caudill’s wife apparently was not seized. Neither were Fite’s wife (the Caudills’ daughter) nor the three Fite children.

Havana Radio charged that Caudill and other clergymen organized a counter-revolutionary group for missions of espionage and subversion.

Caudill has served in Cuba since 1929 and Fite since 1960. Both are graduates of Mercer University, Macon, Georgia. Caudill studied at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Fite at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Two women missionaries who served under the Southern Baptist board were expelled from Cuba in July, 1963.

Some Cuban refugees suggested that this month’s arrests of clergymen were aimed at discouraging Easter observances.

The School Aid Bill

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which represents a vast new approach to federal school aid, moved toward almost certain enactment this month. The bill is historic because it represents the first broad program of federal aid to schools below the college level. Some observers feel that it marks a serious encroachment upon the principle of church-state separation.

The measure passed the House by an overwhelming margin. Several attempts to amend it in the Senate were defeated (one amendment would have provided for a judicial review to determine the constitutionality of aid to parochial school children). Senators backing the administration’s education program resisted amendments to avoid sending the bill into conference.

The most costly aspect of the bill is its anti-poverty feature. More than a billion dollars is allocated for the education of children of low-income families.

The bill gives a tremendous boost to the shared-time or dual school enrollment concept, wherein children attend Christian or other private schools for some classes and public schools or centers for other courses.

Sexual Dialogue

Modern man’s preoccupation with sex seems now to be taking on ecclesiastical aspects.

At Judson Memorial Church (American Baptist) in New York’s Greenwich Village, a dance program last month included a number in which a man and woman, both nude, moved across the stage in a face-to-face embrace.

The pastor of the church, the Rev. Howard Moody, in an article earlier this year in Christianity and Crisis, called for a new definition of obscenity.

“For Christians the truly obscene ought not to be slick-paper nudity, nor the vulgarities of dirty old or young literati, nor even ‘weirdo’ films showing transvestite orgies or male genitalia,” said Moody. “What is obscene is that material, whether sexual or not, that has as its basic motivation and purpose the degradation, debasement and dehumanizing of persons.” The word “nigger” from “the sneering lips of a Bull Connor” is the dirtiest word in the English language, according to Pastor Moody.

In California, a group of Protestant clergymen have formed the Council of Religion and the Homosexual, purportedly to “establish a dialogue” between homosexuals and the religious community. A spokesman has said that the group will “try to get laws passed which don’t discriminate against homosexuals.”

The group’s first big showdown came last New Year’s Day at a fund-raising ball for the benefit of homosexuals which the ministers helped to sponsor. Police broke up the ball and arrested five men and a woman. Two of the men were charged with lewd conduct on the dance floor after an official warning against public intimacies. The ministers protested the police intrusion.

In Washington, an inter-faith conference was held to attract attention to the rising tide of obscenity. After two days of discussion, a list of resolutions was drawn up calling for action against pornography at all government levels. Religious leaders and church groups were urged to show more concern and to exercise more initiative on local levels.

Bills have been introduced in Congress providing for the creation of a presidential commission to consider all aspects of the obscenity problem.

Sunday Elections

The Lord’s Day Alliance of the United States is calling for the defeat of a U. S. Senate bill to legalize Sunday elections. The bill, introduced by Republican Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, would become effective in 1968.

The Rev. Samuel A. Jeanes, interim executive director of the alliance, said the legislation “would constitute an unwarranted intrusion upon the day when most of the people of our nation worship.”

The world lent an ear to Rome this month after Vatican sources indicated that a papal pronouncement on birth control could be expected before Easter.

The pressure for some amplification of the Roman Catholic teaching on the role of sex in marriage has been building up for years. Not until recent months, however, has there been open argument among Catholics for modification of the church’s traditional view that the use of contraceptives is immoral.

Even Pope Paul VI has stressed the urgency of the situation. He acknowledged that the problem was “deeply preoccupying public opinion in the world and also, very justly, husbands and wives and their pastors.”

The question was posed most dramatically during two days last year—October 29 and 30—when the Vatican Council was in its third session. This was when three distinguished Council Fathers joined in calling for a re-examination of the church’s doctrine on marriage, postulated by St. Augustine fifteen centuries ago (“Intercourse is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented”) and reaffirmed by Pope Pius XI in 1930 in his encyclical “Christian Marriage.” The three were Leo Joseph Cardinal Suenens, Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, Belgium; Melkite Patriarch Maximos IV Saigh of Antioch (now a cardinal); and Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, Archbishop of Montreal.

The discussion on the council floor produced no definite decision and probably prompted greater debate outside the council. Last month, twenty influential Catholic lay men and women in England sent a report to a Vatican commission urging that the use of contraceptives in marriage be permitted. The report argued that since the church has accepted family planning through the use of the “safe period” and preached the positive value and unitive purpose of sexual intercourse in marriage, the absolute prohibition of contraception seemed “strongly unintegrated.”

The episcopal enfant terrible of English Roman Catholicism, Archbishop Thomas Roberts, recently predicted that his church would lose a large number of members unless it changed its attitude on birth control. Roberts, a Jesuit and former Archbishop of Bombay, thus defied the Pope’s wish, conveyed by John Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, that same week, for a moratorium on birth control discussion. This followed the suspension of two young English priests who had criticized Catholic teaching on the subject.

Pope Paul did not announce until last June the formation of a special birth control commission. Actually, however, the commission held its first meeting in the fall of 1963, when it was asked to advise the Holy See on the population question, with particular reference to United Nations policy. The second meeting was held in February, 1964, and a third meeting was planned for next September.

Late in March, however, the commission members—increased from twenty-five to more than fifty—were urgently called to Rome because, it is understood, the Pope wanted advice regarding progestine-estrogen pills, which introduce female hormone compounds that prevent ovulation. The commission includes theologians, medical doctors, social scientists, and psychologists.

Religious News Service has relayed reports that “three schools of thought have been represented in the commission, whose membership and deliberations have been shrouded in the utmost secrecy.” Supposedly one group opposed any radical change in the church’s traditional stand against artificial methods of birth control, while another favored permitting the new pill to augment the present rhythm system sanctioned by the church. A third group reportedly favored wider use of the pill, which Father Bernhard Haring, noted German theologian, has asserted does not interfere with the conjugal act but merely affects the functions of nature.

Another report said that several members of the commission believed a consensus of a sort had been reached that regards as morally acceptable the limited use of the pill to regularize a woman with erratic menstrual cycles on her doctor’s advice and with the approval of her confessor.

There seems little doubt that public sentiment, religious and otherwise, is shifting increasingly toward acceptance of birth control. In the United States, the Gallup Poll registered a 25 per cent shift over eighteen months of Roman Catholic opinion toward a position favoring making birth control information available “anywhere in the United States to anyone who wants it.” The New York Times reported on March 28 that tax support for birth control is increasing across the nation at all levels of government. The Ford Foundation recently announced it has committed $34.5 million for birth control research and training centers in the United States and abroad. One of the ironies of the Vatican opposition to the pill has been that Dr. John Rock, who is given much of the credit for its development, is a Roman Catholic.

The Rev. C. Stanley Lowell of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State has reported on a worldwide study of birth control laws. He says the following countries have laws which “at least partially or in some areas prohibit” birth control: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Eire, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and the United States (a test case on Connecticut’s birth control law is before the U. S. Supreme Court).

Perhaps the most balanced viewpoint on birth control came in a new statement of order from the Lutheran Church of Bavaria. The statement said there is no objection to birth control when practiced by married couples as a matter of “personal responsibility.” It added, however, that it would be “a sin against the divine creative order” and therefore absolutely objectionable to restrict the number of children because of “selfishness” and “egotism.”

Any Objections?

“To be or not to be, that is the question.” Hamlet raised the question after existence. Scientists today are raising it before existence.

The day of test-tube human embryos, grown by scientists, may be as little as ten or twenty years away, according to a report in the April issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal. As its authority the report quotes Dr. H. Bentley Glass of Johns Hopkins University, described as one of the world’s leading geneticists.

The goal of scientists is to reduce birth defects and diseases and give “reliably healthy” babies to those who might have to remain childless otherwise. The Journal report attributes to Glass the conviction that “before too long male sperm cells and female ova or egg cells will be grown in laboratory cultures. The next step would be joining the two to produce the series of dividing cells that form a human embryo.” The report adds:

“The egg cells used could be the wife’s. The sperm—if the husband is infertile, which is common—could come, for example, from a sperm bank controlled by a hospital. The resulting embryo could then be implanted into the womb and become a healthy baby. Indeed, this technique might be far more reliable than present-day artificial insemination, with the donor chosen by a doctor.”

But what about the ethical implications, Glass asks. “Would it be murder to dispose of embryos when an experiment is done? Or are we justified in refraining from such studies when they might lead to advances of enormous benefit?”

The doctor admits that he himself is not sure what the religious and ethical answers to such questions are. But he wants to know. And he is asking leaders in the fields of religion, science, and medicine to find the answers now—not after the event.

Roman Catholics have traditionally rejected contraceptives on the ground that they thwart the normal processes of nature. But if Glass’s confident predictions come true, barren women will soon rejoice—and the sterile husband no less—not by thwarting but by abetting nature’s processes. The old instinctive inhibition against placing unnatural obstacles in nature’s way—which some Protestants share—would lose much of its force.

Yet the assist science would seem to give nature will raise intricate and thorny issues. For the questions must be faced whether the function of sexual love can be ethically transferred to laboratory manipulations and whether the nature of marriage is achieved when the greatest symbol that two have become one flesh is produced, not in the flesh, but in the laboratory.

Christians often complain that science ignores religion. At this crucial place where science stands on the margin of the mystery of life, sex, and marriage, the help of religion is being specifically requested—before the event.

The Question Of Guilt

A Passion Sunday remark by Pope Paul VI stirred protests from Jewish leaders. The pontiff had referred to the clash between Jesus and the Hebrew people and, in the words of a Vatican source, “used the historical fact of the Jews’ killing of Christ to re-illustrate the human phenomenon in today’s world of the general rejection of Christ.”

There were various translations made of what Pope Paul said, and some of them were interpreted as implying “collective Jewish guilt” for the crucifixion of Christ. A “Jewish declaration” that won the preliminary approval of the Second Vatican Council last fall renounces collective Jewish guilt for the crucifixion.

For Services To Religion

The Religious Public Relations Council awarded citations to three newspapers, a television station, and two radio stations at its thirty-sixth annual convention in Minneapolis this month.

Chosen were the Los Angeles Times, the Charlotte (North Carolina) News, the National Observer, station KPIX-TV of San Francisco, radio station KMBC of Kansas City, Missouri, and radio station WBBM of Chicago.

The religion editors of the three winning newspapers were honored by being designated RPRC “fellows.” They were Dan Thrapp of the Los Angeles Times, Sue Tit-comb Creighton of the Charlotte News, and Lee E. Dirks of the weekly National Observer.

Also designated a “fellow” was John Gallos, religion editor of station WCCO-TV, Minneapolis. The station won an RPRC award last year for a religious news program written, edited, and announced by Gallos.

This year’s awards were given “in recognition of outstanding service rendered to organized religion” and “continued efforts on behalf of all faiths to advance the spiritual life of our nation.”

The RPRC is composed of public relations and communications specialists from thirty-eight denominations, interchurch agencies, and various interdenominational bodies.

Seminar On Scripture

A seminar on the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures is being planned for next year, with an international group of evangelical scholars scheduled to be the participants. Dr. Harold Ockenga, pastor of Park Street Church (Congregational), Boston, is chairman of the organizing committee. Date and location of the seminar have not been determined.

The Friends United Meeting

Beginning January 1, 1966, the Five Years Meeting of Friends will be known as the Friends United Meeting as a result of action taken at the organization’s executive council meeting in Richmond, Indiana, last month.

The old name became misleading in 1960 when the body decided to meet triennially instead of every five years. The executive council was empowered to establish a new name that would be more accurate and reflect increased cooperation among fourteen separate Quaker affiliations.

For the most part, Quaker groups holding membership in the newly designated Friends United Meeting employ full-time ministers. Meetings for worship are planned, with a sermon, anthem, and congregational hymns.

Another major body of Quakers is the Friends General Conference. Most of the congregations represented in this body follow the old Quaker practice of unprogrammed meetings for worship on the basis of silence. Some Quaker groups belong to both organizations.

Both organizations cooperate in the American Friends Service Committee, as do other more conservative yearly meetings.

Confronting The Urban Challenge

Philadelphia College of Bible is inaugurating a social-work major in which students will combine classroom training with direct field experience.

“There is a growing demand for qualified, professionally trained Christian social workers,” says the Rev. Charles Y. Furness, director of the college’s newly established Bible Social Work Division.

“Singing ‘I’ll be a sunbeam for Jesus’ is all right as far as it goes. Becoming ‘a contact for Jesus’ in some area of social service focuses the light of the Gospel upon specific areas of human need.”

Furness declares that to make effective contact for Christ “requires highly professional training by an experienced social worker with years of technical ‘know-how.’ ” The new PCB program is structured to give pre-professional, biblically oriented training in social-work fundamentals. Some sixty hours of Bible and related subjects will be required in addition to a major of twenty-two hours of social-work requirements.

Field work placement for social-work majors will be coordinated through the Philadelphia Health and Welfare Council.

Furness, who holds a master’s degree from the Rutgers Graduate School of Social Work and a B.D. from Reformed Episcopal Seminary, is already teaching a social-work class at PCB. The full program will become operative in the fall.

Neurotics And The Church

Two couples going through marital crises went to their pastor for advice. The pastor concluded that both marriages were ruined but felt compelled to advise against divorce. Subsequently, two of the four persons abandoned their church and their faith. The other two committed suicide.

“Ecclesiastical order has been saved, but the people are dead,” was the pastor’s cry. “Where can we ministers learn something about correct and compassionate pastoral counseling?”

Dr. Klaus Thomas, who spoke on “neurotic religion” before the Academy of Religion and Mental Health in Washington, D. C., last month, uses the example above in his book on suicide prevention. He is spending a year in America on an advisory basis at St. Elizabeths Hospital, a mental institution in Washington, where he gives lectures to ministers and seminarians on how to do pastoral counseling, defining the complementary roles of pastor and psychoanalyst and urging ministers to stay in their role rather than trying to be analysts.

Dr. Thomas himself, who is fifty years old, is both a practicing psychiatrist and a Lutheran minister. He is also founder and director of the Suicide Prevention Center in his home town of Berlin, to which since its beginning in 1956 thousands of people have come for help.

Berlin has the highest suicide rate in the world. Since World War II, with the exception of one year, East Berlin’s rate has been higher than West Berlin’s, and the indications are that the rate has risen still higher in East Berlin since the erection of the wall.

But Dr. Thomas talks more about religious factors than political ones. “Nearly everyone who commits suicide has religious problems and doubts, though only half of them talk about them,” he says. Ministers themselves have come to the center for counseling. Among the first 200 people who came were 94 pastors. Of the first 531 cases of severe neurosis, more than a third were diagnosed as “ecclesiogenic,” a term used to describe neuroses that, says Dr. Thomas, stem from a religiously legalistic, antiphysical upbringing.

He calls such cases “tragic.” Numerous case histories in his files involve ministers who suffered from various forms of perversion. Through counseling at the center, thirty of the first 200 ecclesiogenic neurotics were healed, and forty others were partially healed. Some of the others visited the center only once.

Dr. Thomas believes in the therapeutic value of prayer and the laying on of hands, which, he says, “dissolves tensions and difficulties and brings a peace of mind that otherwise can only be achieved in sessions lasting several hours.”

He also advocates a theology that would positively affirm the “eroticism” of the Song of Solomon without falling into libertinism.

To meet the need for counseling, which far exceeds the supply of trained counselers, he recommends the clinical training of lay volunteers as well as ministers.

Dr. Thomas’s own schedule this year attests to the demand. He is at his desk at St. Elizabeths as early as 4 A.M.; advice-seekers call him at his home long distance late at night. He also lectures at two seminaries and takes out-of-town speaking engagements.

“We asked Dr. Thomas to join our staff for a year in order to benefit from his considerable experience in working with people who have lost hope and the will to live,” says the Rev. Ernest E. Bruder, director of Protestant chaplain activities at St. Elizabeths. “This is a situation which vitally concerns both the minister and the psychiatrist—and Dr. Thomas is both.”

A Correction For Preachers

The old sermon illustration about the elements in the human body being worth less than a dollar may fall victim to inflation.

Charles Allen Thomas, retiring board chairman of the Monsanto Company, said last month that basic chemical elements in the body are worth only about 99 cents on the open market. He added, however, that the human body is composed of nucleic acids and enzymes that cannot be evaluated.

“Each of us possesses more than a pound of these materials and I am happy to say that at present going prices, these chemicals today have a market value of approximately $800,” he told a stockholders’ meeting in St. Louis.

Words For Victory

Evangelical literature by and large is suffering from pernicious anemia, says Sherwood E. Wirt, editor of Decision. But Wirt and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association are developing a therapy through an annual School of Christian Writing. This year’s sessions are scheduled for June 28–30 in Minneapolis.

“We hope to develop a corps of Christian writers in the United States and Canada who will forsake, renounce, and eschew forever the habits of laziness bred from ignorance, and will use words the way Winston Churchill used them—to win victories,” Wirt declares.

Applicants may write to the registrar. Mrs. Doris Anderson, 1300 Harmon Place, Minneapolis.

Facing The World

A chapel with strikingly modern architectural lines will be built on the campus of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. It will have a southern exposure facing the atomic accelerator at the University of Texas and the dome of the State Capitol. These, said a spokesman, are “symbolic in part of the world to which the Church is a servant.”

A groundbreaking is planned for next month, and the chapel is scheduled for completion in September. It will have a normal seating capacity of 150. For special events the chapel will be able to accommodate 250.

READING FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

The words of David B. Truman, dean of Columbia: “We are in danger of producing a generation that has spent more years than its predecessors in educational institutions but has not gained the kind of literacy that was once regarded as the mark of an educated man.”

Having read this I wondered why. At the same time I picked up a bibliography of readings put out by the National Education Association of Washington, D. C. There were fifty-two titles on the list as well as a note promising more of the same if you wanted it.

Listen to some of the titles. Experiments in Independent Reading, Guiding Children’s Reading through Experience, The Improvement of Reading, On and On in Reading, Growing into Reading, and the prize of them all, Readings on Reading. And so it goes for all fifty-two titles.

It has been one of my basic beliefs that the best teaching in the whole educational scheme is done by those wonderfully devoted women in the first and second grades. From my own experience and that of people I know, I surely have no complaints with what they get done year after year. What worries me is how any sober teacher of integrity can possibly “keep up” with a bibliography of fifty-two books on just the subject of reading. Furthermore, is reading really so tough? And furthermore, do you get the suspicion I do—that most of what is listed on a bibliography is there because too many people have to “publish or perish” or because there is nothing more impressive to a certain level of educated mind than a mimeographed bibliography? This sort of thing can push us eventually to a twentieth-century Tower of Babel.

As an old McGuffey Reader fan, I am more interested in content than in technique, in big ideas than in controlled vocabularies. And what I say goes also for too much stuff under the general heading of Christian education. Our much “learning” will make us mad.

SELMA

As one who has had frequent occasion in the past to be critical of your stand on social issues, I would like to thank you for the forthrightness of your editorial “Flood Tide in Selma” (Mar. 26 issue), and commend you for the vigor with which you spoke.

Certainly the events since the tragic march of March 7 have indicated that the Church is at long last irrevocably involved in the civil rights struggle, and we must all hope that this is one point where we can unambiguously make common cause together, regardless of what things may separate us elsewhere.

Professor of Religion

Stanford University

Stanford, Calif.

Only the ultimate in ecclesiastical arrogance would compel a minister to brazenly assume that he must leave the subways, Central Parks, blood-bathed streets, the Harlems, canceled basketball tournaments, narcotics, political corruption, obscenity by the barrels, racial gang wars, etc., etc., ad nauseam, and come to “wicked ole Alabama” and set our house in order.…

You have problems in the Northern cities, and our prayers, sympathy, and Christian understanding go out to you. We are not going to parade in your streets (how long would I as a white Southern minister last demonstrating in Detroit?), make mockery of the cause of Christ, arrogantly enter your communities and rudely set your efforts in reverse, and create a distorted image of your community.…

First Baptist Church

Andalusia, Ala.

Prayer is to be made in the quiet of one’s own closet, not for show in the streets.… Birmingham, Ala.

Most of these traveling troubleshooters have a record behind them of subversive activities in some front organization.…

Church of the Nazarene

Port St. Joe, Fla.

You have done an excellent job of canonizing James J. Reeb, the Selma victim. I suggest, however, that Mr. Reeb is not a martyred saint, but a murdered sinner.…

I suggest turning to the Book of Philemon and reading where Paul … sent a slave, who was deprived of his civil rights, back to his master.

Certainly no one would suggest that Paul endorsed slavery. Paul believed, just as James Reeb, that Onesimus stood on equal footing of equality before the Lord and his fellow man (by right if not in fact); he believed in civil rights. But he didn’t call his fellow preachers and march on the house of Philemon. He took the only legal recourse—he sent the slave home, not because he condoned slavery, but because he condemned lawlessness.

Mr. Reeb had been participating in and encouraging civil disobedience. His death is tragic, shameful, and sinful. But his actions were inexcusable in spite of this.…

County Line Church of Christ

Axton, Va.

Those who have protested voting irregularities in the South have yet to register their protest about voting irregularities in Chicago. Brutality in Alabama has stirred them to action, but there were no marches for the martyred missionaries of the Congo who were brutally attacked by Communist cannibals.… These lovers of mankind mourn when a meddling Unitarian is murdered, but have not one tear to shed when a policeman gives his life in the line of duty. These people will parade before news-reel cameras when some American in this country is deprived of his rights, but they will not protest, parade, nor petition the President for that uncounted number of Americans who have been deprived of all their rights because they are forcibly detained by Communist governments. Does not this consistent pattern of inconsistent demonstrating betray the demonstrators?

Ashburn Baptist

Chicago, Ill.

Though I do not always agree with your point of view I want to express to you my deep gratitude for your most perceptive and forthright editorial.… In this expression of Christian concern for the tragedy in Selma, Alabama, you have evinced the prophetic sensitivity which certainly ought to characterize Christians of all theological views. May I therefore indicate to you my gratitude for your forthrightness, indeed rightness, of this statement.

Department of Preaching and Worship

Saint Paul School of Theology

Kansas City, Mo.

We must remember that the Scriptures not only teach “brotherhood” for the Church, but we are also enjoined to “do good to all men,” which makes those who are supporting civil injustice, and white supremacy, to be actively against that which is right, and just.…

How can missionary work succeed, when those who claim to be the champions of fundamental Christianity are beaming their anti-Negro, anti-civil-rights programs to Africa and other parts of the world, in support of white supremacy against the less privileged races?

Berlin Bible Church

Narrowsburg, N.Y.

Re “The Clergy March on Alabama” (News, Mar. 26 issue): True, it would have been better if Alabama clergymen, or better still, lay churchmen, had taken up the cause of Alabama Negroes. The stark truth is that they remained silent along with “the host of evangelicals in America.”

Who was to break the silence? The local white power structure had already passed by on the other side of the street. They may have deplored the circumstances of Negroes, but, even more, they were afraid to break the social mores of the South and to suffer social crucifixion. In this day of mass communication the other side of the street is brought as close as our television screen. Men of compassion, clergy and laymen alike, responded to the Alabama tragedy as readily as the good Samaritan.

As for the fear of ecclesiastical examples being set on the side of civil disobedience, it seems that evangelical Protestants have short memories. The birth of Protestantism was cradled in civil disobedience; and so was the birth of America. At the time it happened it was said that man’s law was being broken for the sake of the higher law of God. Why are the so-called followers of One who so clearly led the way over and beyond social conformity afraid to break the unjust traditions of our nation?

Dir. of Adult Program

Central YMCA

Philadelphia, Pa.

Mr. James Reeb would still be alive today if he had been minding his business in Boston, helping the underprivileged people, instead of going in a “totalitarian atmosphere instructed by Martin Luther King.”

I lived in east Tennessee for several years, and I believe I can understand both sides of this issue a little better than if I had never lived there. “Taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots” is anti-freedom, anti-Christian, and anti-American.…

Educational Director

Taylor Street Church of Christ

Hobbs, N. M.

Could it be that “evangelicals in America who remained silent” about events in Selma remained silent because of embarrassment! Have we not been caught in the embarrassing position of sending our young people to colleges where segregation is taught (i.e., Bob Jones University, where Governor George Wallace was awarded an honorary doctor’s degree last year)? Perhaps we are silent because we use ministers in our conference circuits whose churches practice segregation. Perhaps it’s the beam in our own eye that keeps us silent.

If Dr. King uses “fantastic prooftexting,” great segments of evangelical Christianity practice segregation based on a misuse of Scripture. Ought we not to raise our voices and call this fantastic?…

Hartford, Conn.

Selma has very, very fine reserved people—Christian people who have behaved exceptionally well under these trying circumstances.

We have no hate for the Negro, and they are treated well.…

Huntsville, Ala.

When whites, especially Southern whites, decide that they are fully as good as the blacks, the entire problem will be better prepared for dissolution. In any 100-year period, when have the Caucasians come as far and as fast as the Negroes?

Bloomsburg, Pa.

There is much truth in “Selma: Parable of the Old South” (News, Mar. 12 issue). But there is one fact which the whole country knows, but which I have never seen hinted at in any publication, North or South.

It harks back to colonial days, and both North and South are implicated. Many white men—I fear a decided majority of them—exploited the Negro women to mix the races. Many Negroes in this country are blood-relations of the old Southern aristocracy; and as sons of their fathers, why shouldn’t they enjoy the standing, socially and nationally of their fathers?

Incidentally, I do not think it is pleasing to God for races to mix.… I am reminded here of Micah 7:6: “… the son dishonoreth the father.… A man’s enemies are the men of his own house.” Doubtless this applies to the Northern man as well as the man of the South.

A second fact: … The North, during Reconstruction days, in order to humiliate the South as much as possible, proceeded to put, or try to put, the Negroes above the defeated white man—which was a bit galling to the Southerners. By this the “Yankees” dropped the “seed” of hatred and rebellion, and the “harvest season” is now. It also prevented, or greatly delayed, a feeling of brotherhood between the North and the South.

High Point, N. C.

The Communists have been very discouraged about the smooth way the South has handled all their heckling. But, to get justifiable scenes and reports, they excite “outsiders” to add to the confusion and to make a killing so they can praise a martyr.…

Steelville, Mo.

The white clergy want things done “gradually”—what do they mean? Isn’t 100 years gradual enough? Any honest person will admit that the white race in the South will never move one inch except when forced to do so.…

Ann Arbor, Mich.

EMPTY TOMB AND EARLY CHURCH

Thank you for the fine discussion, “Faith, History, and the Resurrection” (Mar. 26 issue). I would simply like to question Professor Moreau’s last statement that “preoccupation with the facticity of … the resurrection … is quite foreign to the attitude of the early Church.”

In Matthew 28:6, the angel not only says, “He is not here; for he has risen, as he said,” but also, “Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead.” Certainly the “Come see …” serves a verificational purpose as well as an apologetic. (I see no way to set these purposes in antithesis as Professor Moreau does.) Mark 16:6 also has this “see the place where they laid him.” What else is this but an appeal for them to believe that the resurrection of Jesus was a historical fact?

What is the point of Luke 24:11, “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them,” but to set up the problem of verification? And, if we skip verse 12 as being textually insecure, what is the point of verses 36–43, the “see my hands and my feet” and “handle me and see” and the eating of physical food before them, except to verify to them the facticity of a bodily resurrection.…

Philadelphia, Pa.

Wonder how much the average layman would profit by such a discourse. It would seem that each one of the speakers tries his best to outdo the previous one in hairsplitting.…

Minneapolis, Minn.

I am particularly enjoying the current issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and your discussion on “Faith, History, and the Resurrection”.…

Park Avenue Methodist Church

Minneapolis, Minn.

WHEN REASONING IS FOOLISH

In reference to J. G. M.’s article, “Is the Bible the Word of God?” (Mar. 26 issue): The Authorized King James version of 1611 of the original Greek and Hebrew Holy Scriptures is perfect and without error—in other words, infallible.

The same Holy Ghost that inspired the eight writers of the Greek New Testament to protect them from error was also with the scribe who reproduced the original script (“autograph”) and the subsequent scribe who reproduced the reproduction until the invention of printing. The same Holy Ghost was with the authorized King James revisers who relied quite heavily on William Tyndale’s translation from the Greek into the English in 1525.

A man is inspired by God when he is being used by Him to fulfill one of His acts but usually erring much of the rest of the time when dealing in earthly matters. To reason any other way is foolish—and dangerous.

The Authorized King James is the only true English version of the Holy Scriptures. Covina, Calif.

TWIG BENDS, LIGHT DOESN’T

Allow me to point out a scientific error in Dr. Bell’s contribution for March 12.

The property of bending light to go around corners is properly called “fiber optics.” Actually the light is not bent. When light enters an elongated body of high refractive index such as the plastic, methyl methacrylate, known commercially as Lucite or Plexiglass, the light tends to be confined within the walls of the body in the same way as water is within a pipe. Thus, it is possible to view one end of a bundle of rods of this material and see an object placed in front of the opposite end of the bundle, even though the bundle might be tied in a knot as mentioned.

The laser has no relation to fiber optics. Ordinary light tends to diffuse in all directions, as ripples extend out from a stone dropped in a pond. By the use of lenses or mirrors, light can be directed in a more confined path. However the laser concentrates and intensifies light in much more intense manner so that the narrow beam possesses the high energy needed to weld detached retinas, bore holes in steel, etc. The ability of a magnifying glass to gather light to a point is commonplace. The laser gathers light also, but directs it into a beam rather than a spot.

Each of the two phenomena mentioned by Dr. Bell affords interesting object lessons in various areas of life, but if they are not kept in their proper places, they produce a confused impression.

Washington, D. C.

TO RESTORE THE CHURCHILLIAN

Perhaps I ought to be the first to point out that the quotation from Churchill in my recent letter (Mar. 12 issue) was garbled so as to begin: “We regret with scorn.…” That, it seems to me, is not at all Churchillian, and it weakens the whole statement. What he really said was “We reject.…”

The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N.Y.

A WAY THROUGH THE WOOD

Thank you for your magnificent series of articles on contemporary European theological trends.… I could not begin to tell you how this has provided for me (and, I am sure, for countless others) a “way through the wood,” and provided us with a completely new kind of enlightenment on the theological issues with which we are involved.…

Glasgow, Scotland

The articles on contemporary European theology [provide] an excellent historical survey.…

Baker Book House

Grand Rapids, Mich.

It is obvious that these theologians are drowning in their own verbiage and at the same time are dragging down with them many innocent victims, especially young seminarians.…

WEST LEBANON, N. Y.

Comment on the anarchy of present-day theological thought: Every man thought according to what seemed right in his own eyes (compare Judges 17:6).

Lookout Mountain, Tenn.

AND TODAY IT’S JAFFA

Dr. J. Lester Harnish [in] “Keep Those Windows Open” (Jan. 29 issue) stated that he attended church services in Haifa in a church that had been built in the … [traditional] spot where Simon the tanner had his house.… My Bible states that Simon the tanner lived in Joppa and that is where Peter had his vision.… Minnetonka, Minn.

FRIENDLY CORRECTION

We are interested in the article by Harold B. Kuhn about the Society of Friends appearing in your issue of February 26. We should like to call the attention of Harold Kuhn, and of your readers also, to two statements in that article which we believe are somewhat misleading. The first is that “General Conference Friends” have been absorbed “into groups of Friends formerly labeled ‘orthodox.’ ” This is not true. Friends belonging to Friends General Conference were not absorbed into the former “orthodox” group. What has happened is that within the last ten years in a number of sections of the country formerly divided groups of Friends have reunited as equals, but Friends General Conference has very far from disappeared. It is, in fact, now the central organization holding together at least 32,000 Friends in many parts of the United States.

The other statement that we question is the one saying that Quaker Life is the major publication of the Society of Friends. It is true that Quaker Life is the official publication of the Five Years Meeting of Friends and is an excellent magazine, but Friends Journal, sponsored by Friends General Conference, is, I believe, an equally influential organ of present-day Quakerism.…

Friends Journal

Editor

Philadelphia, Pa.

WEARY OF WAITING

Dr. Wayne Dehoney (Jan. 29 issue) is no doubt right in his judgment that “Southern Baptists have generally believed that the ultimate objective of the current ecumenical thrust is organic union.” Yet there are many Southern Baptists who know that this is not the case and who respect the National Council’s intent as stated in its constitution, that “the Council shall have no authority … to limit the autonomy of the churches cooperating with it.”

It is unfortunate that Dr. Dehoney failed to mention one of the main reasons why Southern Baptists have been wary of the ecumenical movement. We have been afraid to speak out on controversial issues, whereas the National Council has had the courage to relate Christianity to the controversial issues of the day. We have been intimidated against applying the implications of our faith to the racial revolution all around us. Yet it is far easier to oppose the ecumenical movement on theological grounds than to confess this failing.

I am confident that I speak for an increasing number of Southern Baptists who are weary of waiting for our denomination to join hands with the larger Christian community.

Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist

Chapel Hill, N.C.

DIMINISHING RETURNS

For many years I have heard vigorous discussion on both sides of the question, “Do pastors belong in politics?” Some of your readers concerned with finding an answer might find some food for thought in this story:

Last summer a local pastor was holding a successful revival in a rural section in the South. In fact, he finished up the first week by baptizing eighteen converts. But because the local election was a week away and he was seeking office, he cut the revival effort short and went out electioneering. When the election was over he had received only eight votes in the community where he had baptized eighteen less than a week before.

Bergenfield, N.J.

This issue announces the fifty-five-member Sponsoring Committee for the World Congress on Evangelism, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S tenth-anniversary project scheduled for West Berlin October 26 to November 4, 1966. The committee includes influential evangelical leaders from twenty countries. CHRISTIANITY TODAY solicits the prayer of Christians everywhere that the congress will light the fuse for a spiritual explosion with worldwide impact. The complete list of Sponsoring Committee members begins on page 53.

Christianity is a world religion. The ecumenical movement as expressed in the World Council of Churches operates on a global basis. The Roman Catholic Church with its emerging ecumenism is likewise global and impinges on the WCC on all fronts. In addition to the religious movements of our day, other significant forces cannot be dismissed lightly—Russian and Chinese Communism, African nationalism, secularism, scientism, racial fomentation, and the specter of overpopulation.

All this tends to discourage any assessment of the fortunes of the faith in national and regional terms. Yet it is time to take the pulse of American Christianity, to evaluate its assets and liabilities. How is the faith faring in America? What discernible forces are at work in our midst and how will they help or hinder the churches?

The liabilities of American Christianity include the following:

1. An absence of authentic theological concern and interest in churches, colleges, and even seminaries that has impoverished the sources of great preaching. In too many American churches and schools, theology has been displaced by psychology and sociology.

2. The dearth of prayer in many churches except on a superficial basis (“the next moment for our missionaries”) and dwindling or dead midweek prayer meetings that are concerned with everything except prayer.

3. The unfortunate trend of extending the dogma of separation of church and state to the point where atheistic and secularistic philosophies replace Christian presuppositions.

4. The rejection of the Christian world-view in public education and the substitution of an evolutionary outlook that exalts naturalism.

5. The absence of great Bible preaching from the American pulpit and the neglect of sustained Bible study in the pews, leading to the substitution of sociological analyses for the message of spiritual regeneration and a compromise of the Christian claim in the churches themselves.

6. A growing disposition by the American populace to accept salacious literature and films without protest and to tolerate standards of conduct far below the biblical norms, and to do so with complacency or in the name of liberty and freedom.

7. The concern for the Madison Avenue “image” more than for fact which fosters the illusion that whatever is of interest to the news media is historically decisive, and that what men do is more important than what they are.

8. The slump and secularization of moral and ethical standards in the churches themselves as membership qualifications are lowered and church discipline is forgotten.

9. The failure of non-evangelical churches to preach the Gospel while they emphasize economics and social action, as well as the failure of the evangelical churches that emphasize the Gospel to apply its principles systematically to society.

Yet American Christianity is not without impressive assets that belie the claims of the Jeremiahs who say we live in the post-Christian era or that Christianity is ready for the mortician. Among these assets are:

1. A free press that gives sympathetic coverage to religion.

2. Separation of church and state—a principle which, regrettably, is being steadily eroded by sectarian pressures upon politicians for public funds.

3. The continuing popularity of church attendance as a desirable social and cultural practice as well as the example of a President whose inauguration was preceded by a service of divine worship.

4. An open religious situation conducive to voluntary personal commitment and public approval in contrast to totalitarian religious or atheistic situations.

5. The revival of mass evangelism associated especially with Billy Graham’s crusades and reflected in noteworthy campaigns of lesser-known revivalists.

6. The increasingly active participation of some laymen in the life and leadership of the churches, and their relatively high sense of missionary responsibility and stewardship.

7. The existence of accredited Christian educational institutions at all levels that perpetuate the biblical world-life view amid the secular climate of public education and of some private education.

8. The emergence of neighborhood Bible study “cells” held in homes and attended by unchurched adults. Often such groups are compensating for the neglect of serious Bible study in the churches; but in noteworthy instances they are sponsored by churches committed to a scriptural ministry.

If American Christianity is to move forward in power, it must have certain things. Among these are:

1. A recovery of the divine authority of the Bible in the churches generally instead of just among those in the evangelical tradition.

2. A new and powerful work of the Holy Spirit in and out of the Christian community that will produce true Christian unity, not motivated by a spirit of “togetherness” after the fashion of a “religious ‘U. N.’ ” but based upon common acceptance of the eternal verities.

3. A new understanding of how churches grow with the knowledge that church mergers in themselves neither guarantee spiritual and theological vigor nor necessarily lead to growth or an increase in baptisms.

4. A return to the primary task of the Church, which is making disciples of men for Jesus Christ, building them up in the faith until they have been conformed to Christ’s image, and then challenging them to deal with social and humanitarian problems in the spirit and in the name of Christ.

5. A renewed understanding of the biblical teaching that spiritual life consists, not in programs, buildings, and budgets, but in the devout service of Jesus Christ.

When these things come to pass, new life and vigor will come to the Church of Jesus Christ.

The Price Of Peace

The international press gave an overwhelmingly favorable report of the Second All-Christian Peace Assembly held in Prague last summer. Excerpts in support of this claim are given in the magazine published by the Christian Peace Conference, in a survey by the Rev. Karoly Toth of Budapest, a member of the editorial board. The evidence adduced appears impressive, testifying to the removal of prejudice and distrust and to the opening up of new vistas as old suspicions are seen to be groundless.

Those with suspicions yet undulled may notice some odd features about this survey, apart altogether from a certain selectivity and the absence of detailed criticism. In its first page, for example, there are quotations from what seems a representative group of press reports: two in English, one each in German, French, and Italian. All of them had grasped the great significance of the assembly and warmly commended it to their various readers; yet not one of the publications concerned is named on the official list of journals accredited at Prague. This curious fact might suggest that the writers of these reports, if they were in attendance at all, came in a less objective category than that of newsmen, and their assessment should be regarded accordingly. Many of the succeeding excerpts are similarly from non-journalistic participants; others say very little, but the source is listed as a thoroughly reputable Continental daily.

The bulletin concludes that from its analysis of press response the CPC has “found its place and service in the ecumenical life at the side of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church.” It further claims that Dr. Martin Niemöller’s intervention in one assembly debate indicated “the actual temptation of anti-communistic preaching in the churches of the Federal Republic and other Western countries … and proved that the sermons in the socialistic countries were free from the temptation of anti-capitalism or anti-westernism.” The representative of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, present on that occasion, would strongly deny that it proved anything of the sort (see “Engineering Peace in Prague,” July 31, 1964).

One column of the bulletin purports to deal with four criticisms of the movement—none of which turns out to be of much importance. Even there, however, each alleged criticism is so rounded off that the (mild) wrath of men is somehow interpreted as praising the organizers. The one note that gives a passing nod to the real burning issue is slipped in unobtrusively: “Despite the fear of many people still that the movement of the Prague Christian Peace Conference serves too one-sidedly the political interests of the East,” a Swiss paper is quoted as saying, “the idea that forms its basis has created a stir all over the world today.” No one is likely to deny that the world is interested in peace.

The facility of utilizing other people’s words is seen also in another article in the bulletin, entitled “The British Broadcasting Corporation on the Second All-Christian Peace Assembly.” It gives the gist of a program organized by the Rev. Paul Oestreicher, BBC religious producer, who is also chairman of the CPC’s British committee. In this broadcast, President Johnson was quoted as having said in a speech last May: “We will continue to build bridges across the gulf which has divided us from Eastern Europe. They will be bridges of increased trade, of ideas, of visitors, and of humanitarian aid.” To which Oestreicher added: “It would be strange indeed if in this situation the Christian Church was not itself engaged in this work of bridge-building. The Prague Peace Conference can truthfully say that it was beginning to construct shaky footbridges when the politicians were still busy dynamiting existing ones.” Oestreicher has since left the BBC for a post with the British Council of Churches.

Why A New Confession?

In Saul Bellow’s Herzog he picks up a useful word from a psychiatrist: “Neuroses might be graded by the inability to tolerate ambiguous situations.” And the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. may be headed for some neurotic times. The old securities and the new confession, the middle-class virtues and the freedom marches, the big money all around and the new poverty frontier, the old moralities and the “new morality,” the pride in the democracy of presbytery structures and the anguished outcries about the Hierarchy and the Establishment, the subtleties of 475 Riverside and the sturdy simplicities of Nebraska—maybe the new confession at Columbus will depress the panic button, with things flying loose in all directions.

For reasons of state (the masses have to be handled carefully for their own good) the confession has been held back except for some discreet releases in Time and the New York Times, or in the official channels of Presbyterian Life, where it looks good. If the releases reflect the official position (Professor Dowey’s?), Presbyterian ministers have for years now been vowing loyalty to the Westminster Confession with tongue in cheek or crossed fingers. If this kind of loyalty is condoned in the old creed, why do the ministers need a new one? Just keep the old one. If it’s not binding anyway, what do we need a new one for? And if it isn’t representative or binding, why is it needed? Or perhaps we need a new creed every year to meet the new day, or every day to meet the existential situation? Meanwhile, it is known by one and all that in a so-called confessional church, confession is not now nearly so important as adjustment or cooperation or peacefulness. Use the official publications, but don’t be concerned about the theological content. For the peace and purity of the Church, stick to the peace.

Does the great “know how” in these matters mean that the new confession will be passed by 1967? Are the General Assembly and presbyteries as constituted wise enough or patient enough really to debate theological issues? How many informed laymen know what is at stake in Westminster vs. 1967, or how will they find out? The theologians will silence the laymen and the professors will silence the clergy. History will be made and the press releases will look good, and it will be said that the Church has made an epochal decision.

But as a member of Parliament once said of the British, “that a thing is an anomaly they consider no argument against it whatever.”

Christianity And Affluence

A “District News Letter” sent out by an Ohio district superintendent of The Methodist Church contains some statements that should not go unchallenged.

On “Christianity and Affluence,” a subject worthy of deep study in a society such as ours, the paper approves an ideological climate more suggestive of Moscow than of Sinai.

The moral outlook of Christianity, says the superintendent of the Youngstown District, “disapproves of material wealth—not just of vulgarity of ostentation or unequal distribution, but of the moral pursuit of wealth as such.” If this is not a repudiation of the profit motive per se, then Superintendent Norman M. Parr has not made himself clear.

We read: “Probably our greatest single need in the second half of the Twentieth Century is the faith with which to tackle the task of building an affluent society throughout the world. The traditional Christian outlook does not provide such a faith, but equally we find a growing recognition among non-Christians that we shall not find such a faith merely by abandoning Christianity in favor of humanism. Humanism by itself is incapable of popular moral appeal; the moral energy in the past has been negative, based on its opposition to the superstitions and inhumanities which used the name of religion.

“I am not alone in my belief that we need a new kind of Christianity—a Christianity which does not make the mistake of treating the Bible as a textbook for living.…”

This proposed “new kind of Christianity” would reduce the redemptive work of Christ to a change in the material balance of this age.

The author of this remarkable letter ends it with these words: “True Christianity is not imitation of Christ, but the furthering of His revolution.”

We wonder.

One More Day?

A communication from the Grand-dad’s Day Council, Incorporated, reminds us that the first Sunday after Labor Day has been officially designated as “National Grand-dad’s Day.” This new day has been the subject, the council says, of “proclamations by mayors and other important people”; it has been recognized by the World’s Fair “with Georgie Jessel as Master of Ceremonies” and marked by golf and bowling tournaments all over the country.

All this leaves one disenchanted. To add the public sentimentality of a “Grand-dad’s Day” to Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, which are already tarnished by commercialization, is a doubtful contribution to the respect for elders Scripture enjoins. Think also of the added burden on the ministers of preparing an annual Grand-dad’s Day sermon—right after the Labor Day sermon at that. And why not go on to Grandma’s Day and Aunt’s and Uncle’s Days? No; instead of naming a day for Grand-dad, it would be better to reconsider the current American trend of consigning him and Grandma to the loveless care of strangers rather than giving them an honored place in the home.

After all, what is Sunday for? The day men are commanded to keep holy is the day for honoring the living God, of whom the psalmist said, “he is thy Lord; and worship thou him.”

Halting Red Aggression In Viet Nam

Speaking of the Roman patriot Cicero, Sulla, the Roman military dictator, said two thousand years ago: “There are soldiers who never bore a sword, and brave men who died in no battle.” Against a backdrop of international proposals that America pull out of Viet Nam and pressures by press and pulpit to negotiate in the face of Communist aggression, President Johnson has spoken to the American people as a brave soldier.

The President has placed the Viet Nam situation in proper perspective. Simply stated, the problem exists because North Viet Nam coveted control of South Viet Nam and viciously breached that country’s sovereignty by naked aggression. The United States is fighting to fulfill its pledged word of honor to defend South Viet Nam against such aggression. In this fulfillment, Mr. Johnson affirmed, “We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw, either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.” Behind these words lie three sound ideas: (1) South Viet Nam has the right of self-determination; (2) Communist aggression in Southeast Asia must be resisted; (3) world order must be strengthened. American policy does not yield one inch to those who want peace at any price, and who never seem to condemn Communist aggression or even understand the nature of its threat.

The United States has no ulterior motives, wants no territory, and is willing to help in the development and growth of Southeast Asia. But to Hanoi and Peking the message was loud and clear: There will be no withdrawal. No possibility exists of military successes for aggressors. Only the thinnest edge of American power has been unleashed.

The aggressors would be foolish indeed not to take a close look at the offer of unconditional discussion, although the Chinese, expectedly, rejected it at once. This offer was accompanied by the promise of a billion-dollar American investment in the economic development of the crowded Asian sector of the world. The President challenged Russia to join in this peaceful development by investing its own resources in plowshares rather than in swords. Russian response to this overture will test the sincerity of her professed “peaceful” aims in what may be a choice between the olive branch and the bomb. Moved by idealism, the President called for food to feed the hungry, taken from the overflowing American granaries, and looked to a time of peace when medicine and education would improve the lot of the hard-pressed millions. In support of this idea he quoted from the Scriptures. But his moving challenge to accept either life or death fell short of the biblical truth that God sets eternal life and eternal death before all men—and that the best things in life are assured only to those who choose eternal life.

The present situation is not without irony. Some say Mr. Johnson’s policy is the one represented by Barry Goldwater and repudiated by the electorate in the choice of Johnson over Goldwater. This is a gross oversimplification. It may indeed be true that Mr. Goldwater read the signs better than Mr. Johnson a year ago. What Goldwater feared has happened. But the President now discerns what he may not have seen then.

In a democracy, the right to dissent is ever present. Always there will be those who disagree with any policy formulated by the party in power. It may be hoped that Mr. Johnson will not yield to opponents of a sound policy in Viet Nam—those who neither sense nor see the true nature of our present dilemma, and whose hopes for withdrawal would precipitate another Munich. America is still the greatest bastion for freedom, and it holds the greatest military power in world history. This power must be used responsibly when principle, freedom, and truth are at stake.

Like A Russian Ballot

If it were not high tragedy, it would pass for high comedy. Under auspices of the tax-exempt Fellowship of Reconciliation (Clergymen’s Emergency Committee for Vietnam), Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, former president of the National Council of Churches, circulated a prepaid “ministerial opinion poll for the benefit of the White House.” Anybody seeking evidence of ecclesiastical objectivity would find little in its obviously weighted alternatives. Significantly, neither option gave any hint that Communist aggression is wrong, nor that America’s defense of self-determination by small nations should be commended. Rather, the clergy had this choice (“Just check one … then detach and mail”):

( ) I favor intensifying and extending the war in Vietnam.

( ) I would like the United States to initiate efforts now to negotiate peace in Vietnam.

If some anti-Communist organization had sponsored an equally prejudiced poll, loud ecclesiastical voices would have cried “foul.” Such an alternative might read:

( ) I favor conferring sanctity upon Communist staging areas and Communist aggression, and an immediately negotiated “Munich” in Vietnam.

( ) I approve containment of Communist aggression and self-determination for all nations threatened by aggressors.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation lost tax-exemption only to have it restored after some difficulty. Many clergymen who in this poll registered opposition to America’s military involvement in Viet Nam were the same ones who recently urged force, and lots of it, in Alabama.