Ideas

Preachers and Their Making

What should go into the making of a preacher depends upon what he is to do after he is made. Unless there is clarity about his task, there will be little assurance about his training. Continual revision of pre-seminary and seminary programs and objectives suggests either that there is considerable uncertainty about the nature of ministerial work or that the task is constantly changing.

A new assessment of the ministry has just been published by Augsburg Press, The Making of Ministers, with the subtitle, “Essays on Clergy Training Today” (Keith R. Bridston and Dwight W. Culvers, eds.). Fourteen churchmen each contribute a chapter. If, as Gibson Winters of the University of Chicago Divinity School contends, a seminarian is no longer the man called by God and set apart to proclaim the given message of the Gospel but often nothing more than a seeker after such truth as can only be found in the ever-varying, historical situations of life; if the “two-world notions underlying the theological formulations of Christian orthodoxy have been collapsing for centuries” and the gathering of Christian people into congregations is really out of date—then a new kind of training is indeed demanded.

On the other hand, if the primary task of the minister in these revolutionary times is still to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then much more will go into his making than concern for contact and communication between college and seminary and between Christ and culture, important as these are.

The weakness of this symposium lies not in its preoccupation with these matters but in its theological reconstruction of the biblical faith, for such reconstruction entails the danger of turning the task of preaching a message into that of finding a message to preach. When what goes into the making of a minister is determined by a criterion like this, it is small wonder that, as the statistics of the book indicate, many ministers are quite at sea about who they really are and what they are actually supposed to do.

C. Umhau Wolf, pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Toledo, Ohio, sounds almost out of context when he declares that ministers frequently indicate a need for much more Bible study than they were given but that this need goes unheeded by seminaries in which “requirements in Bible become more and more minimal.”

Who is to blame for the confusion? Wolf replies: “Berger may blame the community and the congregation; Sittler may blame the congregation and administrative headquarters and in a way put the blame directly … on the minister’s psychological problems. Colleges blame seminaries and seminaries blame colleges.… Pastors frequently blame both the seminary and the college, while college and seminary professors look down their noses as if the average parish pastor is a useless, ineffectual, unintellectual cog.” He also says, “If we find a theological orientation and have prerequisites for professorships, we will be well on the way toward reshaping the ministry.”

The need for some kind of overhaul in the training of ministers is apparent. But unless this overhaul is based upon a clear recognition that the first task of the minister is to preach the Gospel, confusion will not be dispelled, and the hungry sheep will continue to look up and not be fed.

It is essential to the making of any minister that he be taught to preach the biblical message. There is no true minister of Christ who does not in some way share the compulsion Paul voiced when he exclaimed, “Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel.” Because the Gospel is contained in the Holy Scriptures, acceptable preaching must be in some real sense expository preaching. If the Bible is God’s Word, then that Word ought to be preached.

But much evangelical preaching today is weak and shallow. In many churches the pulpit is ineffective not because the minister is a theological liberal but because, even though he is an evangelical, he says so little. Too often he is so little devoted to the study of the Bible and so far from being immersed in its thought-world that he lives from hand to mouth in finding subjects. As each Sunday draws near, he has to scramble about for something to say. The only deliverance out of this bondage to uncertainty is that the minister learn to “open the Scriptures” so that he may use them in much the same way in which Jesus himself used them.

Exposition, moreover, must have behind it a sturdy vertebrate theology. Not every man who lives with the weekly task of delivering sermons can be, or needs to be, a professional, academic-robed theologian. Yet no deeply effective preacher can do without “a pulpit theology.” As he speaks out of a broad yet solid theological understanding of the Scriptures, his sermons will breathe a sense of authority. Theological competence, though not expressed in technical theological terms, brings depth to preaching. And the man in the pew whose minister knows where he stands theologically will grow in faith and doctrine. But when the man in the pulpit lacks a strong theology, his sermons will not build up his hearers in the faith but will rather follow one another like unrelated items on a grocery list.

Despite their evangelicalism, conservative seminaries that offer inadequate study of the Scriptures, ignore historical theology, slight the development of their own doctrinal tradition, and simply pour into the minds of their students the thought of their most recently accepted systematic theologian, are themselves contributing to arid preaching without passion. Evangelical seminaries will make fewer strong preachers if their students can graduate without reading men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Wesley, and their modern successors. There is no substitute for first-hand encounter with the great seminal thinkers in theology.

The pulpit in our times is weak. Liberals ignore the only Gospel there is to preach; too many evangelical seminaries hand their students doctrine and theology all wrapped up in neat parcels to be believed and delivered without having first been made the subject of thoughtful and prayerful biblical study. As has just been said, theology is important. Yet not even the greatest of theologies is inspired, as are the Scriptures. Every system of doctrine devised by men stands in judgment under the Word of God, which remains the only unchanging rule of faith and practice.

To achieve a personal theology of the pulpit, the minister must learn to study the Scriptures with a mind not afraid of asking questions. For, essential though theology is, few things are more stultifying to good preaching than the practice of allowing the systematics learned in seminary to become a sacrosanct stereotype for interpreting the Bible. It must be acknowledged that conservative preaching is sometimes not a preaching of the Scriptures themselves but a preaching of seminary dogmatics.

Every minister should indeed be trained in a theological tradition. But he must master it instead of being mastered by it. Even though he is not a professional theologian, he should have a theology that he can rightfully call his own—not that he has originated it but that he has assimilated it and given it an impress from his own mind.

What is needed is a personalized theology. And for this the minister must learn to study the Scriptures with such curiosity and with such imagination that he repeatedly finds himself challenging, criticizing, and sometimes even contradicting what was taught him in seminary. The man who sees nothing in the Bible that disturbs the theology he learned from his professors and inherited from his particular tradition is not really studying the Scriptures. Nor will he be making sermons that come to life. Every preacher of the Word of God should search the Scriptures daily. Unless he does this throughout his ministry, he will fail to stand in deep commitment to his theological tradition and fail to enjoy the thrilling sense of freedom that comes from possessing a theology that, while given him by others, has become his possession through the discipline of his own thought.

Seminaries that train such ministers will not be confused and uncertain about what kind of men they are supposed to make. And such ministers will cease wondering about who they really are and what they ought to be doing and saying. But seminaries that no longer recognize that their first object is to train men to preach the Christian message will continue to be uncertain about what they are to make of the students who come to them.

The true unity of the Bible is, as Pascal said, found in “Jesus Christ, whom the two Testaments regard, the Old as its hope, the New as its model, and both as their center” (Pensée 739). On the Emmaus road the risen Lord placed in the hands of Cleopas and his companion the key to understanding the written Word when “beginning at Moses and all the proprets he expounded in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” It is for the seminary today to train preachers how to use that key in proclaiming the Gospel according to the Scriptures. Other things they will do; this they must do. Nothing can take the place of biblical preaching.

Much is being written these days that defines the task of the ministry as service to others. This literature speaks of “the total ministry of Christ” but defines ministerial service as doing almost everything except preaching. Yet no man will be more confused about himself than the minister who is busy doing things but has nothing to say.

Peril Of The Label

“Psychiatrists use dangerous words.” So says the noted psychiatrist Karl Menninger, founder of the famous Menninger Clinic, in a copyrighted article in a recent issue of the Saturday Evening Post. His counsel to fellow psychiatrists may and should be heeded by clergymen as well.

Dr. Menninger contrasts the harmless professional jargon of lawyers and archaeologists, for example, with the terms psychiatrists use, which can hurt people and cause them despair:

Words like “schizophrenia” and “manic-depressive” and “psychotic,” for example, frighten patients and worry their anxious relatives and friends. The use of these alarming terms also affects us psychiatrists. They lead us back into the pessimism and helplessness of the days when mental illness was thought to be made up of many specific “diseases,” and when each “disease” bore a formidable label and a gloomy prognosis.

Dr. Menninger is frank to say that we have all had spells of mental illness of varying intensity and duration, and what we need at such times is not a “label” but help. A label can ruin a career. One wrong word can “ruin a recovery.” It is not that he denies the existence of mental illness as such:

I agree with the American Medical Association and with the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health that mental illness is our No. 1 health problem. I do not think we help that problem by calling it a myth. But neither do I think we help it by persisting in obsolete terminology. Not only do these terms panic the patient but they discourage the doctor and permit him to justify a program of indifference and neglect.

The use of psychiatric terms, says Dr. Menninger, has reached the name-calling stage where people substitute “psychotics” and “psychopaths” for more traditional epithets such as “liars” and “skunks.” In answer to the question of what should be substituted for the technical terms, he says that often expressions that come from everyday life are more accurate, and that these do not have the same “dreadful or false implications.” For example, the expression “going to pieces” implies “those essential qualities of integration and steadiness which are the basis of our concept of the ‘vital balance.’ ”

The pessimistic effect the technical terms have on his fellow psychiatrists and others, claims Dr. Menninger, may explain why so little is done about mental illness. The situation is shocking enough: “… only about one fifth of the state hospitals for the mentally ill give patients any treatment.”

The awful fact that mental illness has become our number one health problem means that clergymen are encountering borderline cases more and more in their pastoral counseling sessions. And often the minister’s knowledge of psychiatry is borderline, too. It frequently goes little beyond knowledge of the terms Menninger warns against. The wise minister is aware of his limitations in this area, while the unwary is apt to form snap judgments and label a church member while consulting with his family. Sadly enough, such a label seems capable of traveling through a congregation with lightning-like speed. And the church, supposedly the repository of comfort and help, becomes rather a place of the whispered label and of haunting torment to the sufferer. “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.”

The wise minister will consider the authority that is often attributed to his words because of his station. He will recall that it was Paul who counseled: “Let us speak the truth in love; so shall we fully grow up into Christ.”

Significant Announcements From Rome

Two recent announcements from Rome are of high interest. One, emanating from the Pontifical Commission on Biblical Studies and ratified and approved by Pope Paul VI, redefined the limits of acceptable biblical scholarship within the Roman church. The other, made by the Pope in St. Peter’s Basilica on Pentecost, established a special Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christians headed by Paolo Cardinal Marella and analogous to the Secretariat for Christian Unity headed by Augustin Cardinal Bea.

That the first announcement reflects concern regarding the doctrinal implications of such scholarly methods as form criticism and demythologizing seems evident from the declaration that “there are being diffused many writings in which the truth of the sayings and the acts contained in the Gospels is being put in doubt” and also from the statement that “some promoters of this method, motivated by rationalistic prejudices, refuse to recognize the existence of a supernatural order and the intervention of a personal God in the world, coming about through revelation properly presented, let alone the possibility of miracles and prophecies.” While the commission accepted the use of modern historical methods in biblical studies, it made plain the primacy of the theology and philosophy of the church over critical scholarship, the norm being the established doctrine rather than scholarly findings. The contrast between this and the assumption of liberal Protestant scholarship that doctrine is subject to continuing revision in accord with biblical criticism is evident. On the other hand, conservative evangelical scholarship, while not repudiating reverent historical methods, has its norm in the plenarily inspired Word of God, the infallible rule of faith and practice.

The other announcement, setting up a Secretariat for Non-Christians, is a major development that may well have historic effects. According to the Pope, the secretariat will deal with other than Christian religions in “loyal and respectful dialogue.” But to interpret it as a relaxation of Rome’s missionary thrust is probably a mistake. Dialogue, such as Raymond Lull carried on with Islam in the thirteenth century, is an effective method of witness, as the history of missions so clearly shows. It is significant that the Pope said that “the catholicity of the Church is still enormously deficient” because “innumerable peoples and entire continents are still outside Christian evangelism” and that he stressed the value of the term “Catholic,” which “characterized the true Church of Christ.”

For the Jews the establishment of the secretariat raises some real questions. If, as a Vatican spokesman has said, the Pope’s announcement means that all non-Christian faiths—Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and others—would come under the new secretariat, Jewish leaders may object to the implications of this classification in view of the unique relation between Judaism and Christianity that sets Judaism apart from all other non-Christian religions. Moreover, Jewish concern has already been expressed about the place under the new secretariat of the statement on Catholic-Jewish relations on which the second session of the Vatican Council last year failed to vote and which is to come before the third session as a separate declaration.

There may also be a strategic purpose behind the new secretariat in solidifying the confrontation with Communism of all who stand for religion of any kind. And for some it may be a straw in the wind that is perceptibly blowing in the direction of the great universal church some students of prophecy see on the horizon. At any rate, the establishment of the Secretariat for Non-Christians opens up vistas that Protestants will view with deep interest.

A Plea For ‘Sexual Democracy’

A professor of psychology at the University of Houston criticized people, according to an Associated Press report, who tell others what is right and wrong in the area of sex. They are “sexual fascists,” said Professor James L. McCary, and they are creating a mass of emotionally unhealthy people. Most of us, he told a group of university students, are sick. We allow others to impose on us ideas of what is sexually wrong and right, and deviating from them in practice, we feel “immoral, bad and wicked” and suffer from sexual neuroses and poor health.

He proposed that this “sexual fascism” be replaced by “sexual democracy” and went on to spell out the democratic approach to sex: “If a person is competent, well educated and adult, if he does not injure others or himself, if his behavior does not offend other people, then he should be able to make his own sexual decisions as to what is best for him.” He urged his student audience to throw off the sexual tyranny of a fascist majority.

His students assumably had little trouble classifying themselves among the “competent, well educated and adult.” And they doubtless thought secrecy the way “not to offend other people.” But if any student gave this “sexual democracy” serious thought, he found difficulty in determining what was “best for him” and yet would not “injure others.” In McCary’s sexual democracy no citizen may tell another what is sexually right. Each decides what is “best for himself.” The flaw in this code is that it provides no point of reference by which to judge what behavior is both best for oneself and non-injurious to other persons.

Sexual behavior is a highly personal matter, but it is never merely an individual matter, as the phrase “sexual relations” indicates. In sexuality another person is generally involved. Although we often hear it said of some practice, “it is not wrong in itself,” the fact is that nothing we do is really “in itself.” This is especially apparent in sexual relations.

It is absurd to call, as McCary does, an objective morality “sexual fascism.” If there is no objective moral law governing both parties, then McCary is right in asserting that it is arbitrary and fascistic for one person to tell another person what is right and what is wrong in sexual behavior. But if there is no objective law, the situation is worse than McCary realizes. For it is absurd to teach that any person who decides he is competent, well educated, and adult, and is offending and injuring no one, may behave sexually as seems “best for him.” Such a person is not bringing in the kingdom of sexual democracy. In the moral no less than the political realm, democracy without law is anarchy.

Is it fascistic and undemocratic to tell others what is moral or immoral in sexual behavior? Does not Professor McCary himself tell Houston students what is sexually right and wrong? If he were wholly consistent with his own position, he would teach students nothing about these matters. By teaching his own brand of sexual morality, he is imposing on others his ideas about what is right and wrong as truly as any Christian moralist who derives his standards from the revealed will of God has ever done.

This modern, democratic approach to sex is the road to boredom. And it is a short road. In the Christian view, sexual differentiation is a reflection of the image of God, and sexuality consequently is one of the profoundest mysteries of human personality. Precisely because sexuality is such a profound aspect of the mystery of human life, it requires transcendent guidance and governance. Which male (or female) is not a mystery to himself? What man or woman without some transcendent guidance really knows what is best for himself or what does not offend and does not injure others? When the mystery of sex is improperly invaded, the result is adulterous—impurity, a dirtying of oneself at the deepest level of his spirit—and quick boredom follows. Properly invaded, it is an endless road of profound satisfaction and ever-deepening human experience. Indeed, the mystery of sex is so profound that it is regarded in the Bible as the proper symbol of the relation between God and his people. In the Old Testament, Jehovah is the husband and Israel his wife. In the New Testament, Christ is the bridegroom and the Church his bride. And heaven’s joys are symbolized in “the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

Christian morality guards the mystery and banishes boredom.

The Baker Affair

The United States Senate has fallen on unhappy days and seems hesitant to apply corrective measures that would restore its stature and cleanse its soiled image. The staff of the Senate Rules Committee headed by Lennox P. McLendon in a report submitted to the committee has taken note of the fact that the Senate has suffered “the loss of much respect and prestige” in the Bobby Baker affair. The report charged that the former Senate majority secretary had engaged in gross improprieties in the course of building a personal fortune he recently valued in excess of $2 million. His salary was $19,600 a year. He had come to the Senate as a penniless page boy at the age of fourteen. While the report does not charge the Senate with responsibility for all Baker’s wrongdoings, it does make the point that “the Senate is responsible for putting Baker and others in places of responsibility without imposing upon them the enforceable standards of honesty and integrity the American people have every right to demand of all their public servants, high or low.”

The report calls for three fundamental reforms: (1) disclosure by senators, officers, and employees of business associations and income; (2) prohibition of association by these individuals with persons and organizations outside the Senate that are conducting business with the government; (3) requirement that all senators respond to requests from any Senate committee to testify about any knowledge they have of a subject under investigation.

Appearing at this late date, the third recommendation carries with it a certain irony. The committee majority had very obviously been unwilling to request senators to testify in the Baker case. The investigation was carried on with a languor unbecoming to the gravity of the case, and promising leads were never followed.

In contrast to Teapot Dome, the Baker case seems minor. But perhaps the former has something yet to teach us, particularly in the work of Montana’s two Democratic senators, Thomas J. Walsh and Burton K. Wheeler, who headed Senate investigative committees though Republicans controlled the Senate as well as the House. The work of the committees was effective, and terrible abuses of public trust were uncovered. But the public was apparently satisfied with the handling of the scandal, and the Coolidge administration was returned to office by a landslide.

Most senators today are arguing that civil rights is a moral issue, and we agree. But so is the integrity of the Senate. A whitewash ultimately satisfies nobody. “Murder will out,” as the saying goes. If the Senate is sitting on a volcano, the crust may be thinner than they think. But the public is entitled to know the truth of the matter. Self-criticism can be endured by a healthy organization, for self-criticism is itself a sign of health.

The Temptation Of The Specialist

“One of the most astonishing characteristics of scientists is that some of them are plain old-fashioned bigots. Their zeal has a fanatical, egocentric quality characterized by disdain and intolerance for anyone or any value not associated with a special area of intellectual activity.” The words of a preacher trying to pick a fight? No, these words are taken from an editorial that appeared in the April 24 issue of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Seeking to explain the origin of “scientific bigotry,” the editorial points to the “enormous pressures toward specialization” encountered by the science student. For the necessary concentration of effort, one of the student’s most useful psychological weapons is “to convince himself that the area of knowledge under study is indeed the most important possible. As a corollary all other intellectual pursuits can be ignored as worthless. It is necessary for virtually all scientists to adopt such rationalizations from time to time. To achieve success one must concentrate on performing a series of specific tasks with complete rigor.”

The editorial points out that one needs not only the ability to specialize but also the ability to escape the “web of his rationalizations.” The scientist lacking the latter is cut oil from other evolving knowledge. While specialization can lead to early establishment of a scientific reputation, in the end “it is often bitterly self-defeating.”

By way of footnote to this refreshingly candid editorial, we may add that one inclination of the bigot is to make pronouncements outside his field. The scientist-bigot faces awful temptations to pronounce, for example, on religious matters, and when he does so, falls readily into scientism. But this is a two-way street. Just as science is not the only vocation that tempts toward over-specialization, the scientist is not the only professional man to speak often with an air of authority outside his sphere. The theologian is vulnerable at this point if he gives the impression of speaking as a trained scientist.

Christians especially should be careful in handling facts in any field of knowledge, for they worship the One who made the gigantic claim that he is the truth. Reverence for the Saviour should lead us unerringly to reverence for truth, all the more so when we see ultimate truth bound up in the person of Jesus Christ. It was he who told his disciples that the truth would make them free, adding: “If the Son … shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” For the Christian, truth has a breadth born of the Creator himself. It is this dimension that effectually liberates from bigotry.

Theology

The Relevance of Repentance

L. Nelson Bell

If there should ever come a time that can truthfully be described as the “post-Christian” era, the reason for it will be that the Church no longer considers valid the things that are basic to Christianity. This trend already exists, so much so that the Church’s emphases are largely on peripheral matters. Like the Pharisees of old, we spend our time washing the outside of the cup while we pay little attention to the inside—sin in the human heart and God’s provision for its cleansing.

Why is “repentance” a lost word in modern theological jargon?

The first reason is that the nature of sin and its offense against a holy God are played down. Excuses for man’s behavior are given in philosophical and psychological terms that completely evade man’s responsibility to God. Our parents, our environment, our physical condition are blamed for what we do, and many who presume to right men’s ills deny or ignore the basic cause of those ills. Our Lord spoke of the religious leaders of his day as “blind leaders of the blind,” and these certainly have their counterparts today. This is harsh language, but it needs to be spoken, for we are convinced that much that goes under the name “Christianity” in our time has not the remotest relation to Christ and his redeeming work.

Repentance, the very gateway to man’s salvation, is rarely mentioned today. Man in his blindness and self-righteousness does not know that he is a sinner in God’s sight, that the effect of that sin is spiritual death, and that God was so concerned about sin that he took the one step by which sin might be cleansed—the death of his Son.

We need to stop and to realize that in the Gospel there are two imperatives: first, God had no way to redeem men other than by the sacrifice of his Son; and, second, man has no other way than to believe and accept what God has done for him.

Those who have had to deal with alcoholics or drug addicts know that first the addict must have a sense of need and of his own helplessness before the process of healing can begin.

But we, in our wordly wisdom and sophistication, have all but eliminated from our Christian vocabulary and preaching any realization of the lostness of man and of his own inability to do anything about it.

Repentance is sorrow for having done something wrong. It is an admission of sinfulness and of its offense against a God too pure to behold evil. It is the realization that against sin there abides the anger of a holy God, an anger that no longer exists where repentance and cleansing have taken place.

David, guilty of adultery and murder, cried out to God: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.” He recognized that basic to all was his offense against the Holy One of Israel.

Job, convicted of his self-righteousness as he became aware of God’s holy presence, cried out: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5, 6).

The New Testament carries the theme of repentance from the ministry of John the Baptist down to the Revelation.

John called on men to repent. Our Lord, did the same. This was the message of the disciples and of the apostles as the early Church came into being, and an emphasis in John’s vision on Patmos.

One day men came to Jesus and told him of Pilate’s killing some Galileans and mingling their blood with their sacrifices. Our Lord’s reply was: “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2, 3). In like manner, in speaking of a local disaster that had taken the lives of eighteen people, he said: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

Repentance is more than an attitude of mind; it is a reaction of the will against sin. And true repentance carries with it not only a sense of sin against God but the prayer and determination to turn, by God’s grace, away from that sin.

It is easy to be “repentant” for something we have done when we get in trouble as a consequence, but that is not true repentance. Judas “repented” and then event out and committed suicide. We have known many people truly sorry for the consequences of sin, but that is not repentance.

What God requires is contrition for our sins, for he is holy, and fellowship with him has been broken. Paul makes this plain: “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Cor. 7:10).

The relevance of repentance to man’s forgiveness by God must be understood, for the two are inexorably linked together. Man repents, God forgives. Our Lord indicates this in his explanation of the gospel message to his disciples: “And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name …” (Luke 24:47).

We are prone to presume on the love and mercy of God. We trust in grace and ignore his holiness. Paul says: “Or despiseth thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4).

The writer has seen thousands of cases of leprosy. One type attacks the nerves so that local anesthesia results. The unfortunate victims of this often burn themselves because there is no sense of pain. Just so, one of the major problems in every generation is the lack of a sense of sin. As a result, spiritual anesthesia leads men to go on blithely in sin; and those who should warn them seem equally impervious to any conviction of offense.

Christ was unsparing in his denunciation of those who heard and did not repent, telling the people in the cities where so many of his mighty works were done that in the day of judgment it would be more tolerable for Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom.

Why has “repentance” become almost obsolete in theological vocabularies? This has not happened in a day, but as religious leaders have turned more and more from biblical concepts and terminology an entirely new philosophy has emerged. Sin is explained as something other than an offense against a holy God. Salvation is not something offered but something man already has—a universal condition.

Why repent for sins for which one is not responsible? Little wonder that the atoning blood of the Son of God shed on Calvary is “spurned” and “profaned” and the Spirit of grace is outraged!

Nowhere is the Church failing more in her God-ordained ministry than in neglecting to preach repentance for sin.

In the medical realm, a physician who denied or minimized the reality of cancer or questioned the necessity for early treatment would be called a charlatan.

Where the eternal destiny of man is at stake, shall the vital place of godly repentance be neglected in making the Gospel “relevant”?

Just that is happening.

Eutychus and His Kin: June 5, 1964

SO FAIR AND FOUL A DAY

For good collateral reading you may take your choice between a jet flight or a haircut. In case there are any female readers of this column, I suggest also a beauty parlor; there you find the happiest way to catch up on all the magazines you don’t want around your house. Nestled as I was on a jet recently, it suddenly occurred to me that the advertising in a magazine is more interesting than the articles. It also occurred to me that statistically, or odds-on, or you would surmise that, the ads ought to be more interesting than the articles, more interesting even than the stories—because the ad writers get paid more. This is a shift in values of which I think we ought to be increasingly aware.

If we can only remember that advertising writing is highly creative, that in itself is our best protection. Instead of worrying about the truth, we can accept this kind of writing for what it is: imagination, invention, and magic. We don’t have to believe it. All we have to do is enjoy, enjoy.

I don’t think our advertisers want us to know this, even though it is for our spiritual health that we do know it. The final blasphemy for which there is no forgiveness is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of truth. Such blasphemy is final and damning, because if we learn to call falsehood truth and truth falsehood, then even the word of salvation cannot penetrate, because the good news itself is a lie. How then could we believe the offer of forgiveness?

In his commentaries on the laws of England, Blackstone says, “A lie is the attempt to deceive.” In Milton’s Paradise Lost it was Satan who said, “Evil be thou my good.” We have been doing it to ourselves, and we are doing it to ourselves yet. “Don’t believe that—that’s just newspaper talk,” we say. The only trouble is that after a while we do believe it.

EUTYCHUS II

CIVIL RIGHTS

Regarding your … editorial, “Civil Rights and Christian Concern” (May 8 issue), I want to thank you for issuing another plea for Christians to express themselves on this matter. Many more such calls are needed because people who are not directly involved with issues they must face personally must nevertheless become aroused on the basis of moral principles. Until this happens we cannot look forward to adequate progress in righting existing wrongs. This is where preachers and editors in the Christian Church must assume courageous leadership.

The third point of your editorial, “the obligation to respect those whose conscience leads them to convictions different from one’s own,” is restated as “the obligation to respect the conscience of those who differ.…” These are not the same, and the difference is important. Since one’s conscience is subject to all kinds of perversions, I can hardly be called upon to respect the conscience of everyone else. Apparently Eichmann was following his conscience—at least that was his contention—but I cannot be expected to respect a conscience like that. There seem to be some consciences in our own land that are equally perverted.… On the other hand I must, as a Christian, accord to every other person at least the respect that comes from the knowledge that he is a person whom Christ died to redeem, and who is redeemable, however misguided he may be.

The fourth point disturbs me, not because of what it actually says, but because of what it nearly says and will be interpreted by many as saying. We hear on every hand a standard argument against civil rights legislation that “you cannot legislate morality”.… There is, of course, no question of passing moral legislation. We have had, and still have, a good deal of immoral legislation, some of which actually forbids moral action in the area of civil rights and race relations. It is high time we get some moral legislation in its place. The pending legislation may need modifying in some areas, but it is basically moral legislation, and its passing and enactment is a moral issue.…

Chicago, Ill.

SIGURD F. WESTBERG

• Our editorial plainly states that the civil rights issue is a moral one and agrees with reader Westberg in support of the pending legislation with modification in certain areas.—ED.

Your editorial on the civil rights issue is tops.…

RUSSELL T. HITT

Editor

Eternity Magazine

Philadelphia, Pa.

I especially appreciated your “therefore, Christian concern demands the ceaseless proclamation of the Gospel as the ground of ultimate reconciliation of the racial revolution.” This is the soundest word I have yet seen in the present racial conflict. We have no choice but to “forgive, as God through Christ forgave you” if we try to claim the title or position of Christian.

However, I cannot see this fight as a struggle to get justice for the Negroes. Churchmen are not concerned with justice, except as it is dispensed with mercy (hesed of the Old Testament, and agape of the New Testament). This is the Gospel.

Your closing switches us off the right track. Churchmen are not to be so concerned with “the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution,” but by the fact that our Creator has endowed us with these “unalienable rights”.…

BURR MORRIS

Presbyterian Church

Dimmitt, Tex.

Your editorial … was great.…

ALTON H. HARPE, JR.

Director

Baptist Student Union

Coral Gables, Fla.

I think you would be first to agree that the position you take is not … particularly novel. However, it was good to see in print a more or less frank discussion of this key issue of our time.

You say that “evangelicals, and indeed the Church as a whole, have lagged in racial relations. Especially has segregation within the churches been a stumbling block.” Yet for three columns preceding this statement you cautiously endorse corrective legislation while voicing many limitations to effective united action by evangelicals. While we need to be reminded that the Christian Gospel made relevant to the racial revolution may bring “ultimate reconciliation,” this approach, I fear, has often led to mere mouthing of an irrelevant Gospel (if it exists) and an utter lack of concrete action.

How refreshing … to read … the excellent news report of the recent assembly of the National Association of Evangelicals. Thank you for printing the courageous statement on civil rights that was adopted. The position is bold and forthright, and while not serving as a substitute for action, it is a solid foundation from which to begin to move. Why have conservative Protestants allowed their more liberal friends to steal their thunder on the very issue [to which] we believe we have a contribution to make?

To my knowledge, there were no evangelical leaders who participated publicly in the March on Washington or gave to the press at that time a statement from an evangelical point of view encouraging the civil rights movement.… We can be heartened by the attention the evangelical press is beginning to give to civil rights. Lead the way!

DONALD G. DAVIS, JR.

The General Library

University of California

Berkeley, Calif.

The editorial … is of great interest to us. Would it be possible to have enough copies … to send to our complete mailing list of 840?… We are quite anxious to place this article in all of our church homes.

FRED E. COLE

Coral Gables Congregational Church

Coral Gables, Fla.

This current issue (May 8) impressed me as being unusually interesting, varied, and informative. I refer not least to your editorial about “Civil Rights and Christian Concern”—a subject as difficult as it is vital today. Also to the article of Chaplain Ernest Gordon, whom I have known chiefly through his strong book, Through the Valley of the Kwai.

Since I have been struggling with Thielicke’s current book, The Ethics of Sex, I was impressed and helped by the current review.… I had known Thielicke as a preacher, notably in his strong and moving sermons, The Waiting Father.

Lakeland, Fla.

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

The page 47 comments, “Civil Rights Bill—Pro and Con,” in the April 24 issue were interesting.

First, it seems to me it would be wise to stress the fact, “a right always has a parallel responsibility.” “The right to do has a duty to do right as an escort.”

Then the following quote from Gardiner Spring (1785–1873) seems worth repeating: “Never, with the Bible in our hands, can we deny rights to another, which under the same circumstances, we would claim for ourselves.”

Finally, I believe, “the Golden Rule is a natural basis for a peaceful earth.”

Higginsville, Mo.

DAVE NOLTE

WINTER ON SPRING STREET

Since I am a member of the New York Presbytery I read George Williams’s article with great interest (News, Apr. 10 issue).

I appreciate the fact that Mr. Williams was genuinely attempting to be fair and to quote both sides of the issues.… However, I was quite disturbed on the reporting of the closing of the Spring Street Church.… There are a few points made in the article with which I would like to take issue.

1. It was insinuated that the church was closed in order that the presbytery might gain $400,000. You do not say that what motivated immediate action was that the Salvation Army was closing down their building and they supplied the heat for the church. It was estimated that if the church was to continue they would need $100,000 for renovation and $11,000 per year for operating cost. Those who attend (approximately 25) could raise only $5,230 per year.

2. The article gave the impression that many in the church were “fighting to stay alive.” If this is true, then why was the Sunday school closed down? The truth is that no one in the church was willing to teach the seven high school students who were in active attendance in Sunday school. Is this “fighting to stay alive”?

3. It was claimed that there was a “fair prospect that large apartment houses would be built in the area.” At the presbytery meeting Elder Bitner brought in a chart showing apartment houses already in the area. At no time was there any indication that the men and women of the congregation made an attempt to evangelize these buildings. Of what value would new apartment houses be?…

4. The remark that a presbytery official (name not mentioned) said that “the church was closed with the specific aim of scattering its congregation,” was very unfair.… I firmly believe that in this incident the presbytery has acted decently and in order.…

FRANK N. KIK

First United Presbyterian

Queens Village, N. Y.

CALIFORNIA CONSIDERS LOTTERY

What may appear to be so plausible in the much publicized lottery proposal for California may turn out to be quite clandestine, as revealed in the experiences of the New Hampshire venture into this same scheme.

State administrators there are discovering that their proposed panacea for their taxation ills has run [afoul of] the United States Postal Code. According to Section 4005, Title 39, mail destined for a scheme may be withheld from the operator of said scheme and returned to sender after having been stamped “fraudulent.” This applies to any lottery whether fraudulent or not.

[A Post Office Department pamphlet (“The Law vs. Lotteries,” P. I. 15) states:] “The explicit language of the lottery statute leaves no room to doubt that Congress intended to prohibit the use of the mails in any way to serve the interests of a lottery or those taking part in it.… It should also be noted that the postal law provides no exception for lotteries conducted by churches, fraternal groups, or any other worthy organizations; nor does it exempt games of chance which are legal under state laws. Many years ago, the postal law was amended so that it would clearly apply to any lottery, whether legal or not. Therefore, the Post Office Department must enforce the statute uniformly and without regard to laws which various states have enacted declaring certain games of chance to be permissible.”

Would not California run into this same snag—if and when it would embark on so foolish a venture?

Pasadena, Calif.

FRANK H. NELSON

ACTION IN APPALACHIA

Permit me to take this … opportunity of commending … Dr. Rolston for [his] very fine description of religion in the mountains as it appeared in your March 27 issue under the title, “Appalachia: Mountains of Poverty.” We would concur with the majority of the author’s findings as corroborated by our sixteen months of research here in Kanawha County, West Virginia, which concluded on January 31, 1964. This research, which was conducted under the name of Charleston Youth Community, Inc., was made possible by a grant from the President’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime. The research included a section on the role of the church in the life of children and youth.

Action for Appalachian Youth is an outgrowth of these research findings and is a comprehensive demonstration program attempting to speak to some of the urgent needs of our southern Appalachian people.…

GORDON S. JAECK

Director

Action for Appalachian Youth, Inc.

Charleston, W. Va.

Theology

Once Married … Twice Wed

Edith A. Rees

Had the choice been mine, I probably would not have decided to be a minister’s wife. In the early imaginative years so important in the life of a teen-ager, I was going to marry a doctor. How differently it worked out. My best friend married the doctor, and I fell hopelessly in love with a minister. Looking back, I realize it was not so much that I choose the role as that Someone choose the role for me.

Being young I was only partially aware that my life as a minister’s wife would be different from that of most women. I would not only be married to a minister, but I would also be wed to his job. And I would not be able to escape from it, for the objectives of his high calling were too important and the job too challenging: namely, winning souls to Christ, strengthening and deepening the spiritual lives of his parishioners, and, in every way possible, enhancing the moral tone of the community.

In the first years of marriage, the minister’s wife faces many adjustments and new commitments. If her husband’s work compels him to travel, as was true in our early marriage, she must adjust to being left alone frequently. I never enjoyed saying “Good-bye,” nor did I ever really get accustomed to being alone; but I had to learn to accept this understandingly. After all, it is a part of the commitment. It has been a great encouragement and comfort to receive an occasional letter telling me that God had a special place for “those who stay by the stuff,” or to have someone clasp my hand and say, “You have a real share in your husband’s work.”

My husband’s one long pastorate began when he was invited to be a guest minister for one year in a large downtown church that had a long and illustrious history. Instead of one year, we stayed almost twenty. Because the church was well established, I missed many of the experiences—both valuable and amusing—that make such good reading when related by other ministers’ wives. They can tell of situations they faced or opportunities they had in a small, new, perhaps rural church where they were really needed to make things go.

The church we served was not only well established; it was also well run. I did not have to assume leadership, as many ministers’ wives have had to do. Was I then to be withdrawn and inactive? Not at all. Neither I nor my friends in the church wanted it this way. After all, there was the women’s organization with its many committees on which to serve, the chairmanship of a prayer and missionary circle to fill, the work of a deaconess to do.

My husband and I have always believed that the claims of the home have priority. Our home, I should explain, was nine miles from the church, so it was not the “goldfish bowl” type of parsonage. While this gave us a measure of privacy, I am sure we missed much in the way of fellowship with parishioners and were deprived of many an opportunity to entertain those who would have been a benediction to our home.

Always an early riser, my husband customarily left for the church at five o’clock in the morning. As he became busier and busier, I discovered that one way to help him was simply to be understanding about the duties that kept him away from his home and family. At least I would not add to his many pressures by putting him under strain about leaving his family alone so much. If the wife of a minister can give him the assurance that she is doing her best to carry on at home in his absence, she has done much to give him rest of mind and heart.

Our children, like those of most ministers, have been able to say a prayer from the time they learned to talk. The first was usually a lisping table grace, and it was not always easy for us to keep a straight face. When our eldest child was very small, she formed her prayers at the table with her head bowed but with her eyes wide open, peeking through the spread fingers of little hands with which she covered her face. One day, quickly viewing all she saw spread before her, she began thanking the Lord “for our potatoes and our carrots and our bread and butter.” Then she stopped suddenly and, not wishing to be impolite, said: “Oh, pardon me, Lord, we don’t have any butter.”

There are varied opinions as to how much a pastor’s wife should entertain. Carolyn Blackwood, in her book The Pastor’s Wife, quotes answers she received on a questionnaire, “How Much Entertaining Should the Pastor’s Wife Do?” Some replied: “not any”; “little if any”; “her friends, if she likes.” Others said: “A little entertaining at the manse is nice.” I believe the woman who marries a minister should realize she must work hard to excel in the art of entertaining. Usually it is easy to do well what one likes to do.

In my entertaining I never had to fear that I would be criticized for trying to outdo others in our parish. I was in a Scandinavian congregation where entertaining beautifully, yet with exquisite simplicity, was the natural thing. In fact, I was the pupil and the other women were teachers.

Moses

Bare-soled he waits,

Bowed hare-headed, stripped to the heart,

Eyes narrowing, hands to his face against the heat,

Watching.

Hissing, the dust-dry leaves and cobwebs shrivel

Baring the thin curved thorns woven with gold

And the black-elbowed branches

Wrapped in a web of flame.

(An incandescence brighter

Than burnished mountain under a burnished sky.)

Wondering, he waits

In the hot shadow of the smoking Voice.

Observes no quivering flake of ash

Blow down-draft from the holy blaze,

None glowing on the ground.

Shrinking, himself, before the scorching blast,

He sees the unshrinking thorny stems—alive,

Seared but still strong, uncharred, piercing the fire.

Enveloped now in burning, ardent Speech,

He feels the hot sparks touching his tinder soul

To turn him into flame!

LUCI SHAW

“Fools,” it is said, “rush in where angels fear to tread.” Soon after getting settled in the parish where we were to be for so long, I decided it was time to entertain the church board for dinner. I would have forty guests, twenty of them charming and experienced hostesses. That was a big order for anyone, I thought—and by the time the evening was over I realized how big. I ask: if the gravy had to be spilled all over a man’s suit, why did it have to be that of the chairman of the board of trustees?

If I were asked how I have helped my husband as a minister, my answer would probably differ from that of other ministers’ wives. Anyone familiar with my husband’s preaching would quickly agree that I could be of little or no help in his homiletical efforts. Oh, I can point out an awkward gesture, or suggest that he passed up several good stopping places in his sermon—but no more.

Yet no matter how excellent the preacher, there are always those to keep him humble. Sometimes a little child can do it. Our small daughter often noticed that her father buried his head in his hands while sitting on the platform waiting to preach. Finally her curiosity led her to ask, “Daddy, when you’re on the platform getting ready to preach, why do you always put your head in your hands?” He answered, “Why, darling, I’m asking the Lord to help me with my sermon.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then pursued, “Well, why doesn’t he do it?”

How could I best help my husband carry his heavy load? By being understanding and patient in regard to his work, for that work always had to come first.

Although twenty years as a pastor’s wife have taught me many things, now, after five years away from the pastorate, I discover that I am still facing new adjustments and still learning lessons. I am not the only one who has to make adjustments, of course. No husband can travel over 2½ million miles by air alone and sleep under his own roof only three weeks in a year without a deep concern for a wife at home.

Let’s face it, perhaps I am lonely. But am I going to feel sorry for myself? How dare I? Instead, I am going to be happy about each pastors’ conference held in another land. I am going to try to realize what it means to the missionaries to have a time of refreshment and renewal in a mountain retreat in India.

It has been my privilege to accompany my husband on some of his missionary journeys. Since our children are married, it is no longer necessary that I stay home. But when I must be alone, I shall continue to read Paul’s word in Philippians 4:11—“I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”

There is no other way. And I would want no other, for I am happily married to a minister and enthusiastically wed to his job.

Edith A. Rees is the wife of Dr. Paul S. Rees, who since 1958 has been vice-president at large of World Vision, Inc., and who for twenty of his thirty-eight years in the pastorate served as minister of First Covenant Church of Minneapolis. Mrs. Rees attended Asbury College.

The Minister and the Public Library

Marie D. Loizeaux

The library profession began centuries ago with scholars who recorded their own research and later collected and preserved the writings of others. Eventually groups of these writings were assembled in libraries where they were accessible to others.

But the library is modern as well as ancient. Through the years methods have been developed to make the accumulated knowledge of the centuries more available to more readers. What was once the sole possession of scholars has in our time become the heritage of every reader in the land.

A library is a center of past, present, and future; it contains the records that are mankind’s memory of the past and introduces the voice of the present, which combines with the memory of the past to supply guidance and build strength for the future.

A striking example of the way libraries can help utilize what has gone before was related in a national magazine a few years ago. Several hundred men were assigned to a research project during World War II. In some cases the studies required a period of two weeks, in others as much as six weeks. It was a costly undertaking in terms of both money and manpower. Later a management expert called in to investigate the project largely because of its high cost found to the amazement of those in charge that in 50 per cent of the studies, the same or better data could have been obtained almost at once simply by going to the library (cf. “Try Your Library First,” Rotarian, October, 1955).

No two libraries are alike; and while the realm of science, so linked with discovery, may appear to be a special illustration of the way the past can be of benefit to the present in providing a foundation for the future, the fact remains that this principle is inherent in every branch of knowledge and thus pertains to every library.

Religion has played a deep and important part in the development of many nations. In America Christianity has provided the foundation and bulwark of our way of life. It has given us the faith and the moral principles, brought here by the Pilgrims and their successors, that have made this country great. What was this faith? And what were these spiritual and moral principles that have entered so deeply into our national heritage? Surely this faith and these principles need to be recalled so that they may be applied to our day.

Who were the pioneers—of faith and thought—who endowed so rich a heritage for those who came after them? Christian literature tells us the answers. History reveals what our spiritual forebears did; biography goes deeper to tell who and what they were. Among the great source documents of the human mind and spirit, the books of Christian leaders and thinkers like Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, a Kempis, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, Bunyan, Edwards, and Wesley are basic. So with the writings of great theologians of our day. Moreover, novels by and about men and women of faith can so focus minds and hearts on the Christ whom they exalt that faith may be kindled and lives changed. Who could read Ben Hur or Quo Vadis? and not be moved? And who could fail to be stirred by sagas of the modern-day martyrs in Ecuador: Through Gates of Splendor and The Savage My Kinsman?

Christian literature is indeed a priceless and continuing inheritance, and among those most aware of its potential are ministers. But where will they get the books? If the minister is reasonably near his college or seminary, or perhaps his denominational headquarters, he will naturally tend to seek his reference materials there. If he has an extensive personal library, or is fortunate enough to have a book allowance, it may be that most of his reading needs are met, especially in view of the wide selection of inexpensive paperbacks now available. But if the minister is remote from a college, seminary, or denominational library and has not been able to build a personal library that can keep pace with his wide and expanding professional interests, he will find that his local public library can serve him well and that it is indeed eager to do so.

The Right Books For All

Public libraries are committed to being “all things to all people” and to providing “the right book for the right person at the right time.” They seek to serve as many as possible as fully as possible. They go to great lengths to meet and, indeed, to anticipate the needs and interests of varied readers—whoever they may be and whenever they may come. Nor do they wait for people to come; rather, libraries seek out this group and that—all for whom the library can bring added depth to professional or personal life.

Public libraries achieve universality of a sort through the taxation that makes them—in theory, at least—belong to all. But each public library must build its collection and its services primarily for the public that uses it, and there are many individuals and many groups that seldom call upon its resources. Although there are, of course, many exceptions, ministers appear to be among the less active users of public libraries.

What use might a minister make of his local public library? Some questions will point to the answer. Does he need homiletical material? Reference statistics? Information about social trends? The minister should be familiar not only with the great Christian classics but also with current books and magazines in his field. Wide reading in current affairs (both national and international) and acquaintance with the secular literature of the day are essential if a minister is to be in rapport with the people. If he is to interpret life in the light of the Scriptures, he must know not only the Scriptures but also life as it is lived today.

Moreover, some of the best illustrations in the minister’s sermons come not from books of illustrations but from his personal reading. His pastoral responsibilities require wide information in such areas as psychology and interpersonal relationships. The library’s music, drama, and art sections are helpful for special observances or for his understanding of modern culture. Does he need reference data or supplementary material for courses he is taking or articles he is writing? Does he have the slant he needs in working with young people or other groups in his church? What books does he recommend to his congregation? Does he inform himself on both sides of controversial issues? Does he relate news of archaeological findings to the Scriptures? On all these subjects the library has books or, if not, might get books if requested to do so.

How can the public library develop more active service to the local ministers? The first steps would be to ascertain its ministerial “public” and to make known its resources. It might begin by inviting the ministerial association to hold a meeting at the library and to see at first hand its varied scope. The librarian might explain how books are selected, how the library’s share of tax money is spent, and ways in which the library needs help in expanding its book stock and its services. He might point out possibilities for enlarging the minister’s personal insight into community and family life. (Here some information about what the community is reading would be enlightening.) He could invite reviews of appropriate books and magazines and suggestions for services that would be helpful. The library could regularly alert the association when new books and periodicals of special interest were received. It could oiler some measure of cooperation with church groups and arrange special exhibits. The opportunities are many, provided that the interest is present.

But such activity cannot be one-sided. The library has many calls upon its time and resources, and it should not be urged to provide materials unless the materials will be used. Neither is it fair to expect a library to build a religious collection out of proportion to the circle of readers that might be expected to use it.

Building For Balance

How do public libraries “build” a collection? With what is at hand as a nucleus, efforts are made—through purchase and gifts—to close up gaps and to fill in areas that are incomplete. Few librarians in public libraries know enough about the field of religion to make a balanced selection of volumes. Therefore they must rely on reviews and bibliographies, on “standard” catalogs, and on lists compiled by religious groups. Here the local ministerial association can be of invaluable assistance in suggesting works that would be useful to its members. Also welcome would be suggestions about religious periodicals and scholarly journals.

While the thought of censorship is anathema to librarians, the omission of some titles, particularly those on one side of a controversial issue, results in a certain censorship no less insidious because it is unconscious. Thus the local evangelical should make sure that the conservative point of view is included as well as the liberal one, which is more likely to be cited on current lists inasmuch as most list-making bodies appear to be liberally oriented. Selections made by these groups are important and need to be included; but they represent only part of what has been written on the subject and cannot, without their counterparts, form a proper balance. Thus, if the library has Barth and Tillich it should also offer Berkouwer and Carnell. If it adds The Interpreter’s Bible and Hastings’ Bible Dictionary it might well provide The New Bible Commentary and The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. A balanced collection is a service to the general reader as well as to the minister, for the interested layman who is unfamiliar with the niceties of theological thought can hardly be a discerning reader unless a well-rounded selection is available to him.

Few members of the community are more concerned with books and reading than are ministers. They should know their public libraries. Their librarians should know them and should be ready to place at their disposal professional experience and advice.

Marie D. Loizeaux spent many years in library work. She served as a librarian at the New Rochelle (New York) Public Library and was editor of the “Wilson Library Bulletin” from 1943 to 1959. Miss Loizeaux studied library science at Columbia University and is now editor for Loizeaux Brothers publishing house.

Alexander Maclaren: Monarch of the Pulpit

John Pitts

Maclaren of Manchester, as he was generally called, died just over half a century ago, after fifty-seven years as a British minister. During that long period he was twice elected president of the Baptist Union, and he was the first president of the Baptist World Alliance when it was founded at the turn of the century. The first twelve years of his ministry were spent in obscurity, in what was then the little town of Southampton; from there he went to Union Chapel, Manchester, where he reigned as a pulpit monarch for forty-five years. Maclaren often spoke of the twelve years of obscurity as having been of immense value as a preparation for what afterwards became his great period. “The trouble with you young men,” he said to a group of seminary students, “is that on graduation you get pitch-forked into a prominent position, and you cannot resist the temptation to attend this tea-meeting, serve on that committee, when you ought to remain in your study and do there the work that is of first importance in serving your day and generation according to the will of God.” The preacher certainly took his own advice in Southampton and did not stray far from it during his great ministry in Manchester.

Maclaren was first, foremost, and always a preacher of the Eternal Word of God, “mighty in the Scriptures” and pre-eminent as an expositor of biblical truth. Indeed, it is easy to see why Maclaren came to be known as the “Prince of Expositors.” He has been described as “the supreme example, the perfect type, of the classic Protestant tradition of expository preaching.” How true that statement is may be judged from his many sermon volumes, especially the three series of Sermons Preached in Manchester (containing some of his best efforts), and from his many volumes of Expositions of Holy Scripture (in which that on Genesis and that on Colossians are regarded as outstanding), as well as from his several contributions to The Expositor’s Bible (especially his three volumes on the Psalms).

John Brown, in his Yale Lectures on “Puritan Preaching in England,” offers a penetrating analysis of Maclaren’s preaching. He stresses the fact that Maclaren spoke with “crystal clearness” and that the preacher’s “great intellectual and literary qualities” were “suffused with intense spiritual earnestness.” But the qualities he emphasizes most of all about Maclaren are these:

1. His teaching is firmly based upon, and is a careful exposition of, the revelation God has given to us in the Scriptures.

2. His intelligent reverence for the Scriptures is accompanied with, or rather grows out of, his firm belief in the historical facts related in Scripture.

3. His preaching is intensely practical in character, not in the sense of ethical instruction in the duties of daily life, though that is not absent, but of clear and definite instruction as to the rationale of the divine life in the souls of men—its nature, its beginnings, its after-developments, and the spiritual forces by which it is begun and carried on. In this teaching the contrast between the natural and spiritual man is emphasized; and the need for faith in Christ for the change from the one to the other is asserted.

In a general way this was true of most of his contemporaries, but Maclaren’s preaching had the stamp of genius upon it (as did that of Spurgeon and Parker). In fact, these men all did their work at a time when the task of the man in the pulpit was just that—the interpretation and application of God’s truth as found in the Scriptures. They regarded their task as that of opening the treasures of Holy Writ to the saints and to the sinners, if the latter would hear (as they did then in greater numbers than they do today). It was usual in the morning service to edify the believer by recounting and illustrating the precious promises of God’s Word, and in the evening it was the solemn task of the preacher to urge the sinner to realize his lost condition and to “flee from the wrath to come.” But in a very real sense the Bible itself was the preacher; the function of the man in the pulpit was to extract from the Sacred Volume, and exhibit for all to see, the inexhaustible riches of divine truth which otherwise might go unappreciated and unappropriated.

The Monarch And The Bible

Underlying this view of preaching was a very definite theory of the nature and purpose of the Bible as God’s message of redemptive love to mankind. Despite the impact of the scientific naturalism and the influence of the emerging higher criticism of the Scriptures, much in evidence in the latter half of the last century, most Christian people believed in the full inspiration of every part of Holy Writ and had no doubts of the Bible’s divine authority. Maclaren shared this fundamental conviction. To him the Sacred Volume was the divinely provided source of man’s knowledge of spiritual things.

That was the foundation of his preaching, and every sermon had this vital principle as its suppressed major premise. He used the whole Bible—indeed, in view of the paucity of his extra-biblical references and illustrations, we may almost say that he used only the Bible—and any suggestion of a “Shorter Bible for Schools and Colleges” (an idea scarcely heard of in his time) would have got no support from him. As Ernest Jeffs puts it in his Princes of the Modern Pulpit:

All Scripture was for edification: the sternness of God’s judgments, the wrath of the prophets, the philosophy of Paul. Christ was central, and the Cross was central in one’s thought of Christ; but the whole Bible had its rich and profound lessons for the human heart.… The charm of Maclaren’s preaching was intellectual and artistic. It lay in the logical closeness and firmness of his exposition, the architectural culmination of proof and argument, the warmth and richness of his metaphor and illustration; and under all this was the stern challenge to righteousness and repentance, breaking into sunshine, so to speak, when the emphasis changes from the God who judges to the Jesus who redeems.

The great Joseph Parker once said to an audience of preachers: “I haven’t written a sermon for years,” and his hearers began to applaud. Parker impatiently signaled for silence and then thundered, as only he could: “But, remember, for years I did little else save write sermons.” It is difficult to believe, but many of Maclaren’s best sermons were not written until after they were preached. Like Spurgeon, the Manchester preacher would put a few notes on a single sheet of paper and from this brief skeleton would deliver a discourse having on it all the marks of the most careful preparation. And it was carefully prepared, but indirectly rather than directly. He would write reams and reams of theological essays, many of which would be thrown into the wastepaper basket. But such strenuous toil and hard self-discipline paid handsome dividends. He did not need to write every sermon before delivery, and yet every discourse had on it all the marks of the finished literary and homiletic creation. Either by deliberate intention or by happy circumstance (perhaps a mixture of both), Maclaren was able to escape the ecclesiastical odd-jobbing in which so many American ministers of today have to engage. He was essentially a student. His study was a study, not a lounge, certainly not an office. He had no telephone to interrupt his “adventure of ideas” and thus was able to escape unnecessary calls upon his time.

Maclaren used to say, referring to an older contemporary: “Binney taught me how to preach.” Thomas Binney is hardly a name to ministers today. He was pastor of the King’s Weigh House Church in West London (in more recent years the scene of the ministry of the brilliant and erratic William E. Orchard) and may be remembered by some as the author of the hymn “Eternal Light.” In the year that Binney was chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, Maclaren preached the annual sermon of the London Missionary Society. His theme was “The Secret of Power,” on the text: “Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said, Because of your unbelief” (Matt. 17:19, 20a). Binney said afterwards: “I went home and wept, for not only had I failed to live up to the ideal Maclaren set before us, I had not even tried to live up to it.” Another comment had reference to the preacher’s expressive and impressive pulpit gestures. Said Binney: “Never before did I understand the Old Testament text, ‘The Lord said by the hand of Moses.’ ”

Clothing A Sermon Skeleton

A few years later Maclaren preached the Congregational Union sermon, the first time an outsider had been asked to do so. He spoke on “The Exhortation of Barnabas,” from Acts 11:23: “Who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.” Most preachers would probably regard his divisions as threadbare:

1. What He Saw

2. What He Felt

3. What He Said

In Maclaren’s skillful hands, however, they became the framework of a most moving sermon on the work of the ministry.

One of the best of Maclaren’s earliest Manchester sermons is entitled, “Sons and Heirs,” on the text: “If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17a). The divisions are:

1. No Inheritance without Sonship

2. No Sonship without Spiritual Birth

3. No Spiritual Birth without Christ

4. No Christ without Faith

Could anyone improve on that outline? One more sermon may be mentioned, that on “The Obscure Apostles” based on Matthew 10:5a: “These twelve Jesus sent forth.” The opening sentence would stab any lethargic spirit “broad awake”: “And half of these twelve are never heard of again as doing any work for Christ.” Then follows a most useful and encouraging discourse on the great worth of the forgotten and unrecorded work of the great number of humble believers.

Maclaren’s sermons were not short; most of them ran to about 4,000 words, and some were longer. Every one must have taken at least forty minutes to deliver. But so intense and skillful was the preacher in presenting his message that when he finished, his hearers were disappointed that the sermon was ended.

Nor were Maclaren’s sermon titles striking—at least, they would not be thought so today. They have the virtue of keeping close to the biblical passages on which the sermons are based. It is interesting to speculate on the titles that might be used today by the preacher who wished his press advertising to catch on. Maclaren’s sermon on “The Obscure Apostles” might be captioned: “The Importance of Being a Nobody”; the one on “The Exhortation of Barnabas” could be called: “Give Your Visitor a Break”; and that on “Sons and Heirs” might be headed: “You’ve Got a Fortune—Spend It.” He has a striking sermon on “Anxious Care” (Matt. 6:24, 25) in which, after pointing out the difference between foresight and foreboding, he affirms that anxiety is (1) unnecessary, (2) heathenish, and (3) futile. It is difficult to think of Maclaren giving this sermon the title: “How to Handle Your Anxiety Neurosis.”

Maclaren was a gospel preacher in the highest sense of the phrase, and he rejoiced in the description. But he is better described as a Bible scholar than as a biblical scholar. His biblical scholarship was, of course, more than adequate. He was familiar with the literary and historical problems of Holy Writ, and he was a first-class Greek and Hebrew scholar. But he never allowed consideration of the problems to spill over into the pulpit; and though he believed in sound exegesis, he would not permit exegesis to overpower exposition. He believed that it was his sole business in the pulpit to expound the Word of God, and that this was something more than explaining the meaning of a scriptural passage: it meant the application of divine truth to the spiritual needs of the hearer.

It may also be said of Maclaren that he was more of a Bible scholar than a theologian. Of course, he knew his theology. But he was not a theologian in the technical sense. He could not have preached a series of sermons like those contained in Dale’s Christian Doctrine, nor written a book on the Atonement like Denney’s The Death of Christ. But he knew the great truths of the Gospel, and it was his joyous task to set forth those truths in the context of the Sacred Word.

He was certainly not interested in the philosophical type of sermon. He knew the philosophies, knew how they came and went; but he could never be accused of “hanging on to the skirts” of any philosopher, no matter how distinguished or how well disposed to the Christian faith. He used to tell with great gusto of the old verger of St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Oxford (the university church in which the Bampton Lectures are given), who said to a party of visiting tourists: “I’ve heard every sermon and every lecture given in this ere church for the past forty years, and thank God I’m a Christian still.”

There is much of permanent value to the contemporary preacher in Maclaren’s sermons and expositions, even though it might be inadvisable to imitate his style. As William Robertson Nicoll put it in his obituary notice of his friend:

It is difficult to believe that his Expositions of the Bible will be superseded. Will there ever be again such a combination of spiritual insight, of scholarship, of passion, of style, of keen intellectual power? He was clearly a man of genius and men of genius are rare. So long as preachers care to teach from the Scriptures they will find their best guide and help in him.

Exaggeration? A little, it may be! But Robertson Nicoll was no mean judge of greatness in preaching, or of the essentials of the Christian faith. At any rate, there is enough truth in what he said of Alexander Maclaren for us preachers today—even though we live in a very different world—to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.”

A Prayer In Bed

Dear Lord, one day

I shall lie thus and pray

Stretched out upon my bed,

Within few days or hours

Of being dead.

And I shall seek

Then for the words to speak,

And scarce shall find them,

Being very weak.

There shall be hardly strength

To say the words if they be found, at length.

Take, then, my now clear prayer,

Make it apply when shadowy words shall flee;

When the body, busy and dying,

May eclipse the soul.

I pray Thee now, while pray I can,

Then look, in mercy look,

Upon my weakness—look and heed

When there can be no prayer

Except my need!

SAMUEL M. SHOEMAKER

John Pitts has held pastorates in London and Liverpool, England; Montreal, Canada; Bloomfield, New Jersey; and Nassau, Bahamas. A minister of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., he now lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He holds the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of London and is a graduate in theology from Spurgeon’s College, London.

A Layman Speaks to the Pulpit

William J. Samarin

Speaking is so important to us that we often tolerate an abundance of nonsense to get a few specks of substance. Yet our tolerance has limits, and he who questions, doubts, or wonders aloud whether what is said is worth saying, or said well, often exposes himself to censure.

I shall nonetheless raise my voice. Here in a public way, using an extension of the gift of language, I make my protest against the superficialities, the inanities, and the irrelevance of much that we must tolerate in preaching today.

This is not the first such protest. Others have expressed some of my own dismay at the state of Christian education, and perhaps some—such as those whose pastor “can’t preach” and whose Sunday school teachers “can’t teach”—have even more reason to despair than I.

For their sake, and partly for my own, I attempt this analysis of the crisis in Christian communication.

I write as a layman. This makes a difference. After twenty years of Christian service—as Sunday school teacher, youth director, assistant pastor, missionary—I now find myself “retired” to the benches. Week after week I make up part of the audience for whose benefit sincere preachers preach, dedicated teachers teach, and diligent writers write.

What are they telling me?

What they mean to tell me, of course, is what God has revealed in the Bible. They want me to know all the riches of God’s grace and to experience his power. They want me to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit and be a living vessel of the Spirit of God.

To do all this they must use language.

Language is a strange and marvelous phenomenon. It is one of the most distinctly human characteristics. By it men interact and accomplish things that make them think they are gods. It is a tool that permits the formulation of profound and exquisite thoughts. It is the vehicle to sublimity.

The cost of sublimity is, however, inanity. To achieve the heights, we must tolerate the pedestrian. Like a trout swimming in the pool, we await the chance speck of nourishment. With a great tolerance, we wait for an instructive word or heart-touching challenge. All this is part of the human situation.

But we ask more than the stray blessing. The Church is an institution committed to the most efficient utilization of the faculties God gave to his children. We expect more from our prophets than a chance remark. Life is too short and they confront us too rarely for us to depend on a random blow to hit its mark in our souls.

The “schools of the prophets” abound in such great numbers that we justly expect more than we get. There are seminaries, Sunday school conferences, teacher-training programs—not to count the Sunday school quarterlies, monthly magazines, and other literature—that exist to assure us of our nourishment.

Famine In The Churches

Why then a “famine of the Word”—for there is indeed a famine. Will it take a “peasants’ revolt” to awaken the clergy to our predicament? Not all parts of the United States have the blessing of a few “good churches.” More common are the areas where one would have to drive for several hours, if not a day, to find a preacher who makes God talk to men in direct, authentic, and quotable sermons. Were it not for denominational loyalties, family traditions, and practical considerations too numerous to mention, many a preacher would certainly find himself with only a handful of the undiscriminating faithful.

There are, however, more discriminating laymen than one can imagine. They know when they are truly being fed. Why then are their voices not more often heard?

One reason is that in places that really count, they are not given the opportunity to speak. They cannot influence the teaching of homiletics or the writing of Christian literature. Only in the local church is there a possibility of contributing to better communication. They do, after all, participate in the selection of their church personnel.

A second reason is that too many laymen do not fully understand the nature of the problem that leaves them feeling so helpless and unhelped in their Christian experience. Everything sounds right, but very little hits hard. Unless they have deliberately visited many a church, of every shade of Protestantism, they know only what is characteristic of their own kind.

A third reason for the silence of laymen is that, without a carefully reasoned evaluation of the problem and without the high-level means of dealing with the fundamental issues, they must resort to only one means of response: the occasional demurrer in class or conversation. Taken seriously, these comments would have some impact; but they are ignored and even suppressed. Who would dare to tell the pastor that his sermon was poorly structured or that his statements were superficial or inaccurate? Such comments are interpreted as criticisms, as are comments made in the church class. True dialogue is unwelcome. Answers to questions—the expected answers, of course—are always sought; but questions from the class seem to challenge orthodoxy. This is why laymen feel intimidated.

The sheep, more discriminating than they are often given credit for being, are not responsible for the present situation. Why then this famine? Here is the answer, or part of the answer: too much evangelical preaching is irrelevant today because, although biblicistic, it fails to be truly and powerfully biblical.

From Texts To Themes

At the root of the problem, as I see it, is the arbitrary association of biblical texts with generalized propositions. (The use of the word “arbitrary” is important, as will soon be seen.) These propositions are the themes of the messages. Almost anything can be represented, of course; but as a matter of fact, the themes are somewhat predictable, once the age of the speaker, his denomination, and his theological training are known.

One Sunday school quarterly I once used for a seventh-grade class dealt with such subjects as: the study of God’s Word, the importance of following Christ, witnessing by word and life, daily cleansing from sin, times of testing in a Christian’s life, and the like (the reader can make his own list), all under the major theme of the Christian’s “walk.” (Sermons could just as easily have been used as an illustration, but the quarterly has the advantage of being anonymously written.)

These themes are unassailable. But because of their generality and their predictability, they have no punch. In linguistic terminology, these themes have no, or very little, “information.” (The sentences “This man sings” and “These men sing” mark number, singular or plural, three times. One could more efficiently say “This man sing” and “This men sing”; marking number two extra times has no information value.)

Because these themes are formulated in grammatical utterances, we unthinkingly assume that they are informative propositions. In actual fact, they are mere clichés. Some of them are like slogans; they hardly do more than arouse assent and group identification.

Other such formulations are ritualistic. Don’t we have a fairly good idea what the pastor is going to say at the sick-bed, or the prayer meeting, or the evangelistic meeting? It is less important, one feels, that he say something of value than that he say something. The moment demands speech, and the clergyman, equipped with a repertory of appropriate themes, is prepared for it.

Such a ministry is by no means shorn of scriptural allusions. Any message may be replete with documentation. The impression given, moreover, is that Scripture is the source of the propositions. This may be far from the truth. Rather than being derived from Scripture, the propositions have only the most tenuous relationship to Scripture. For this reason the relationship was described above as arbitrary.

When preachers reject logic for the questionable purpose of getting their point across, they do an injustice to the Word of God, insult the intelligence of the audience, and fail in what they sought to do. When I lose the train of thought, it isn’t just that my mind has wandered: I can’t see how the preacher got where he is from where he started.

Improvement in Christian communication can come, but it will come, first, only to the degree that truth is drawn from the Word of God. The problem is, of course, that such preaching—expository preaching—is impossible without profound understanding of the biblical text. It requires a depth of theological learning and a real sense of living and of being human that far too few spokesmen for Christianity have.

Secondly, improvement will come when communications are made with a keen sense of vulnerability. This is a characteristic that is absent from cliché-ridden, slogan-proclaiming, hortatory messages. When I agree with all my preacher has said, he has taught me nothing. True preaching (apart from some aspects of the declaration of the Gospel), like true teaching, engages the hearer in a dialogue. This dialogue involves the active investigation of a subject, “active” because two parties contribute. My part in the pew is to challenge the truthfulness and the appropriateness of what I am told. “Does it hold water? Does it ring a bell?” These are the tests of vulnerability.

There are preachers who shrink from exposing themselves. They make themselves invulnerable by taking up the armor of bombastic histrionics, obfuscating illogicality, and oft-strained, dogmatized tradition. Their voice cries out through the armor’s helmet—but it is muffled.

Only a few feet separate the pew from the pulpit. A muffled voice from the pulpit hardly spans even this small distance; unmuffled, it would ring out over space and through time unmeasured.

William J. Samarin, assistant professor of linguistics at the Hartford Seminary Foundation, holds the degrees of B.Th. (Biola) and B.A. and Ph.D. (University of California). He served as a missionary in the Central African Republic (1951–60) under the Brethren Church.

What’s My Line?

Craig Skinner

Any game that can last fifteen years on national television with panel members guessing the vocations of such people as a jelly-bean polisher, false-eyelash fitter, pretzel bender, sausage stuffer, and mosquito counter must surely have the interest of the public. “What’s My Line?” has just this, and the experts are stumped approximately two-thirds of the time with such contestants as these and others, like the ladybug salesman, the beehive inspector, and the manufacturer of false teeth for cows.

Ask any congregation what the preacher’s vocation is and the answers will entertain even if they do not edify; ask any pastor’s conference or convention committee to define the pastor’s task and you have the promise of an entertainment beyond television’s wildest dreams.

This was not the case with Paul. To the question “What’s my line?” he made a constructive answer; in fact he devoted almost half a chapter in his second Corinthian epistle to discussion of it (2 Cor. 5:14–20). What’s our line? His answer is clear and concise: We are ambassadors! We are ministers of highest rank and privilege, responsible for the delivery of a message. We are in the business of publishing, proclaiming, revealing, announcing, preaching the Good News of God. This means that we are ambassadors and not diplomats. The ambassador’s responsibility is to declare policy, not debate it. But part of our problem in the ministry today is that while we are called to be ambassadors, we tend to behave like diplomats.

We become negotiators, artful at managing compromise and skilled at securing advantages in the meeting of terms, tending to bring the New Testament demands of discipleship down to those that people are willing to meet. We become spiritual hucksters offering salvation on the bargain counter, cheapening the dynamic revelation of God in Christ in order to swell our church’s membership or to appease it.

In this same passage (vss. 18 and 19) we are told our charge is to deliver the ministry of reconciliation. We are called to declare the terms of forgiveness made possible through the atonement rendered at Calvary. We are to bring souls to face sin and judgment and to beseech them to accept the God-provided way of redemption. This is an ambassador’s function, but in our diplomacy we so often fall prey to the ministry of rationalization. Over-influenced by some facets of modern psychiatry, we view sin as a product of the social matrix of civilization. We help shelve personal responsibility for sin in the individual by shifting its burden to the environment. We forget that the end of such a line is the destruction of the essential freedom of individual personality and the abandonment of the self to the pressures of evil. This is not our line! We are ambassadors, not diplomats. Christ always faced his hearers with sin and its consequence, and then with his forgiveness. We are called, not to negotiate terms of surrender or to win others into the Kingdom by subtle subterfuge, but to be clear ambassadors bearing the truth of reconciliation by grace.

To be consistent, some of us ought to send a memo to our membership committee along the following lines:

In nineteen hundred sixty-four

We must enlist three hundred more

And every one a tither!

By nineteen hundred sixty-five

Some may be dead and some alive

We don’t care if they’re either!

In nineteen hundred sixty-six

Our records we can surely fix

The more we have the better!

For nineteen-hundred sixty-seven

Will show a group removed to heaven

We can transfer each letter!

By nineteen hundred sixty-eight

Another crowd will make the Gate

And some may be remoter!

Then if we drop them from our list

No one will even note them missed

But we’ll have made our quota!

What’s our line? Paul says further: We are representatives! “Ambassadors for Christ … in Christ’s stead … (vs. 20). He confronts the world through us; we stand, for the world, in the place of Christ. We represent, that is, we re-present, him! This means we are representatives and not salesmen! Our calling is not to smooth-talk people into faith; our commission is not to handshake them into fellowship, to rib-tickle them into good humor, or even to coerce them into cooperative action. We are not leaders of local clubs for the morally minded, the ethically interested, or the biblically orientated. Despite our churches’ demands, we are called not to be salesmen but to be representatives, to serve in the place of Christ as under-shepherds, to re-present him to others. Deep down our congregations hunger for the prophetic voice.

There is no substitute for the representation of Christ in the ministry. We must model our line upon his, preaching the Gospel, healing the broken-hearted, delivering captives, recovering sight for the blind, setting at liberty the bruised, and proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord. It is good for an ambassador to know his age and his people. It is well for a representative to be thoroughly aware of factors of communication and interpretation. But each must be certain of his commission, aware of his authority and of his reservoirs of power, before he begins to have relevance. R. W. Dale once made this response to a young English preacher who declaimed how essential it was to preach to the times and to serve a menu of current relevance in preaching: “Young man, don’t preach to the times! Go and preach to broken hearts and you will preach to the eternities!” The same word came from the lips of a man of great distinction found regularly in a little New England church in the early nineteenth century. Asked why he was so regular in worship at the village when he paid scant attention to the great churches and distinguished preachers of Washington, he replied, “In Washington they preach to Daniel Webster the statesman and orator; here in this village this man preaches to Daniel Webster the sinner.” The people of the world want representatives, not salesmen. They need to meet the challenge of a living Christ, and this they can do only through transformed personalities.

God’S Sword Thrusts

AFTER I LEFT HOME to gain an education in this education-minded society, many problems confronted me. A conversion experience of 2½ years before had been the genesis of the motivating power causing me to prepare for the ministry. It was at this period of time, which was dominated by the fact that few funds were available, that the Spirit of God brought to my attention Romans 8:31b: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Frequently circumstances returned me to this promise for direct assurance.

God’s providence led, not to the ministry of the pastorate nor to the ministry of missions, but to the ministry of education. This involved tedious years of graduate study during which time I was forced to question my Christian faith. Security of mind and faith was again supplied by promisese such as Romans 8:31b. By these continual “shots in the arm” God led me into the ministry of training men’s minds.—GEORGE GIACUMAKIS, JR., assistant professor of history, Orange State College, Fullerton, California.

What’s our line? Paul says again: We are servants! Constrained by love we no longer live unto ourselves but serve Christ and others for his sake (vss. 14–16). The undeserved love of the Cross thrusts us into service. We love because He first loved us. The ministry is not only ambassadorial declaration and representative introduction; it is also work for others. We deal in a service, and we are not self-employed. We are servants and not masters. It is easy to be a master and hard to be a servant. A master marches far in advance of his company and often loses touch with those he is trying to lead. A true leader is a true servant, always near enough to be in sight, to help a wounded comrade, to share the group burden, to participate in the total service; always ready to abandon the special privilege of his office to render essential help. A true leader is a true servant. When a pastor hands a cross of discipleship to a congregation, they may cry, “Away with him!”—unless he has first taken up the cross himself.

How much our Leader was a Servant. He faced the errors of those he sought to lead. He said they were sheep without a shepherd, chickens without a mother; but he wept for them as he said it, not for himself, and he took the servant’s part of suffering from the cradle to the Cross to win them back and gather them in. No critical, arrogant word was ever wrung from him. There was no trace of self-pity, though all forsook him and he was left to serve alone.

Through his service he won them. He sat at night with Nicodemus. At the dawn he rescued a ship sinking in the lake. In the noon-hot sun he paused to talk with a fallen woman by a well. In the evening he was at Capernaum with the lame, the halt, and the blind pressing him and making demands upon him; and he loved and served them all. Though exhausted he made the disciples return the children to his knee. He climbed no ivory tower. His ministry was great because it revolved around great identification and was applied in great service.

Then let me be like him: a true leader; servant, not master; representative, not salesman; ambassador, not diplomat. Let me be like Paul! That’s my line! Let me be like poor William, whom everyone in the village thought mad because he cobbled to live and starved to read, but whom God used in a ministry that generated modern missions. Let me feel as he felt when, after forty years in India without furlough and seven years without a convert, he said in death, “Speak little of William Carey, but much of William Carey’s Saviour.” Let me take as my charge that which he regarded as the proper objective of every missionary, “to set an infinite value on the souls of men.” Let me place no boundary to service, no limit to love. Let me pass the Cross and its redemption as the point of no return; for if God thought enough of the gospel ministry to put the blood of his Son into its foundation, then dare I leave this line?

Craig Skinner is pastor of the Fortified Hills Baptist Church of Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from the Sydney Baptist Seminary, Australia, and holds the Th.M degree from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Current Religious Thought: May 22, 1964

G. C. Berkouwer

The subject of “early Catholicism” has become one of the more interesting and important themes of current theological discussion. The phrase is used to suggest that given elements of the life and structure of the Roman Catholic Church were present in the very early days of the Church, even in the New Testament period. What makes the notion of special interest is that it is not limited to Roman theologians. It would seem that Protestants are coming to the defense of Rome in this respect.

E. Käsemann, a Protestant who has written a good deal about the early Church, has discerned an important aspect of Catholicism in the development of church practice in New Testament areas not directly influenced by Paul. He is not the first to have seen such tendencies in Second Peter, for example. It has been said before that Peter opened the door for authoritative, churchly exegesis of Scripture (e.g., “no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation,” 2 Pet. 1:20). But beyond this Käsemann sees catholicizing influences wherever offices play a large role in church life. He sees in the offices a divergence from the Pauline emphasis on the charismatic gifts of the Spirit. Each believer, in Paul’s terms, received the Spirit and his gifts at baptism. But as time went on, believers no longer dared trust in the charismatic gifts. And so the established offices became increasingly important. (For Käsemann’s most recent writing on the subject, see “Paulus und der Frü-Katholicismus” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 1963.)

Käsemann’s view has been discussed extensively by such Roman scholars as Hans Küng. This famous young Catholic theologian expresses gratitude for Käsemann’s insight that Catholic tendencies are indeed present in the New Testament. This Küng sees as an advantage, since Protestants have on the whole refused to recognize anything of a Roman Catholic nature within the Scriptures. But what Käsemann sees as a corrupting influence, Küng is glad to accept as an essential factor in Christ’s Church. Anyone who accepts the entire New Testament as normative for the Church, rather than critically dissecting a canon within the canon, will have no trouble with the catholicizing tendencies in the New Testament. Küng then pleads for letting the entire New Testament speak with the same authority. By doing that we shall open the way for a discussion in new depth, for we shall then cease our talk of a “Romanizing” or an “institutionalizing” tendency and begin asking whether there is not a direct line that leads from within the New Testament to the Catholic Church. This is the way Küng responds to Käsemann.

One can certainly object to Käsemann on the score of a false antithesis between office and Spirit. The distinction is not new, nor is it novel to see the terms placed in opposition to each other. The notion that the institutional church is an unbiblical development is known to any reader of Harnack and Sohm. Emil Brunner, more recently, has also argued (both in his The Misunderstanding of the Church and in Vol. III of his dogmatics) that the Church began as a purely pneumatic-charismatic movement and then hardened into the organized institution with its ordered offices.

This thesis has not gone unchallenged within Protestant circles, of course, as has been seen in von Campenhausen’s warning against a too simplistic view of the early Catholic developments in the New Testament and against a fear of the institutional elements in the New Testament Church. He demonstrates that the Church was not driven by exigencies to develop an organization, but rather used the offices in the service of the Spirit. The institution with its regular offices can be taken up in service of the Spirit on behalf of the congregation. This view was also held by the Reformers, who never seemed to have trouble with the rise of offices in the New Testament Church. Obviously, the problem of early Catholicism has changed form since the Reformation, and one must conclude that the Rome-Reformation controversy has been only confused by the introduction of an antithesis between Spirit and institution.

The real question is not whether the offices of the Church arc legitimate or not. There is no real difference of opinion between Rome and the Reformation here. And when Küng objects that Käsemann recognizes early Catholic elements in the New Testament but then rejects them, he speaks in a way we can understand. But Küng is not winning a point against the Reformation with this objection, for the Reformers did not reject the offices. He does emphasize Luther’s theology of the priesthood of believers. But he knows that Luther did not reject the special offices in the name of the universal office. And he knows that Calvin, like Luther, declined vigorously any suggestion of an antithesis between Spirit and office (cf. Institutes, IV.iii).

The discussion between Roman Catholic and Reformation theology can be very meaningful in our day if it is confined to the real issues that separate them. Käsemann’s argument has only an appearance of improving the Roman Catholic position; it has really done Rome no service. And it surely has not made the Protestant position any clearer. Rome would never wish to prove its legitimacy by demonstrating a tension between Pauline Spirit theology and Petrine institution theology. And Protestantism will not be served by accepting a tension or contradiction between the two. The real issue between Rome and Protestantism concerning the structure of the Church will be discussed fruitfully only if both sides move out from the witness of the entire New Testament.

About This Issue: May 22, 1964

John T. McNeill give a detailed description of the character and personality of John Calvin, the four-hundredth anniversary of whose death the world will mark next week (page 3). Ronald S. Wallace analyzes Calvin’s methods of biblical interpretation (page 8). An editorial on his legacy for today (page 20) places him among the pre-eminent geniuses of the Christian era.

Dr. Piper’s article (page 11) reviews the problems of culture that confront Christian churches in non-Western countries.

The News Section, beginning on page 30, includes reports from the Methodist General Conference in Pittsburgh and the Presbyterian U. S. General Assembly in Montreat, North Carolina.

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