Book Briefs: May 8, 1964

A Genealogy Of Violence

When the Word Is Given …, by Louis E. Lomax (World, 1963, 224 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Glenn W. Samuelson, associate professor of sociology, Eastern Baptist College, St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

The subtitle, “A Report of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World,” summarizes the contents of this book. The purpose is set forth in the introduction: “The summer of 1963 saw the Negro Revolt move into full view; it also saw the Black Muslims reach an almost incredible peak of public concern and notice. The intent of this work is to provide information and insight as companions to that concern.”

The movement centers around three personalities: W. D. Fard, the founder; Elijah Muhammad, the present leader; and Malcolm X, the recently deposed spokesman for the Black Muslims.

Part One, “The Coming of the Prophet,” presents the historical development and the practices of this extreme segregationist Negro sect. It all began with W. D. Fard in the Negro ghetto of Detroit in the 1930s. Paid sold his silks and satins from door to door during the day and held house meetings at night. He skillfully described the black man’s history and the white man’s destiny, and expounded an amazing brand of Islam.

His followers hired a hall, the Temple of Islam, to accommodate the growing movement. Fard, “The Supreme Ruler of the Universe,” believed that he had been sent to alert “the black people of America to the unlimited possibilities of the universal black man in a world now usurped, but temporarily so, by white ‘blue eyed devils.’ ”

The movement became formalized, and prospective members were put through rigid examinations. Four years after the first temple was formed, the University of Islam, a combination elementary and high school, was founded. To put down any trouble with unbelievers and the police, Fard organized “The Fruit of Islam,” a quasi-military organization.

The second personality whom the author describes is Elijah Muhammad, one of Fard’s Detroit converts. Elijah Poole, a Negro from Sandersville, Georgia, was born in 1897 into a Baptist minister’s family of thirteen children. Years later, with only a fourth-grade education, he moved to Detroit with his wife and two children. But the lure of Detroit proved a nightmare. Poole worked in factories at several different jobs until the Depression hit in 1929. Then in 1930 he heard Fard at one of the house meetings. In Poole’s words, Fard took him “out of the gutters in the streets of Detroit and taught me knowledge of Islam.”

Elijah Poole was tapped by Fard as the first chief minister of Islam and was given the “original name” Muhammad. Soon Elijah Muhammad assumed a growing role of leadership. He went to Chicago and established what has since become known as Temple Number Two, which is now the headquarters of the Black Muslim movement. Trouble in Detroit caused Muhammad to return there to assist in the situation. Mysteriously Fard disappeared, and in 1933 Elijah Muhammad became the leader of the movement.

Muhammad shared with Fard an affinity for getting into trouble with the law. However, like other men with a messianic complex, Muhammad seemed to grow both in stature and spirit behind bars. After his prison experience, Elijah Muhammad began to shout bold statements to his throng, calling the white man a snake, a devil by nature, evil, incapable of doing right. But despite his boldness, the movement stagnated under Muhammad’s leadership.

Then in the mid-forties Malcolm Little, later elevated to Malcolm X, rejuvenated the movement. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. His father, a Baptist minister, was a follower of the Black Nationist, Marcus Garvey, who felt that all Negroes should return to Africa to escape the oppression of the white man.

Malcolm X reports that the Ku Klux Klan burned down the family home when he was six. Shortly after Malcolm’s father set out to enter business he was found “with his head bashed and his body mangled under a streetcar.” Malcolm X believes that his father was lynched by white people who resented even the prospect of a Negro’s gaining some economic independence.

After the death of the father, the eleven children had to be separated. Malcolm was sent to an institution for boys, where he was a good student. He had difficulty, however, because he was the only Negro in the school. Leaving school, he went to New York City and became involved in underworld activities. His income often reached two thousand dollars a month.

Eventually Malcolm X went to prison for burglary. It was in 1947, in the maximum security prison at Concord, Massachusetts, that he was converted to the teachings of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad by one of his fellow prisoners who was a member of the Detroit temple. From that moment Malcolm neither smoked, cursed, drank, nor ran after women.

Five chapters are devoted to Malcolm X’s appearances and spellbinding speeches at various university campuses, such as Harvard, Queens, and Yale.

Louis E. Lomax, one of the nation’s best-known social critics and lecturers and author of The Reluctant African and The Negro Revolt, has written this impressive third volume. In his appraisal of the Black Muslim movement are these words: “Chilling though it may be, the Black Muslims have erected their teaching on a group experience common to all American Negroes. Few of us concur in their conviction and sentencing of the white race. But none of us can question the accuracy of the indictment on which that conviction rests. These men are waiting for integration to fail. They will … make us continually aware of what can happen if white men don’t learn to love before black men learn to hate.”

Here is a well-written book on a timely subject. An extra chapter should be added giving details of Elijah’s suspension of Malcolm X for making critical statements of President Kennedy following his assassination, and of Malcolm X’s new movement, known as Muslim Mosque, Inc.

GLENN W. SAMUELSON

Missions Reassessed

Missionary, Go Home, by James A. Scherer (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 188 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Peter C. Moore, associate director, The Council for Religion in Independent Schools, New York, New York.

The decline of western colonialism and the rise of militant nationalism to most analysts have spelled doom to the present structure of Christian missionary enterprise. Not all see this handwriting on the wall as unfortunate. Among those who do not is James Scherer, dean of the School of Missions at Chicago Lutheran Seminary. In Missionary, Go Home he views the twentieth century as the time for synthesis. The eighteenth-century pietistic “mission church” was the thesis, the nineteenth-century “indigenous church” its antithesis; and the twentieth century is the occasion for a synthesis of the best elements of each in a rebirth of genuine apostolic witness. This penetrating analysis of the virtues and vices of missionary activity from Paul to the present should be read by all who take the Great Commission seriously.

Scherer traces the history of missionary vices from the imperialistic mass conversions by early Christianized pagan rulers to the use of colonialism as a protective cloak for the reproduction of Western denominationalism, clericalism, and institutionalism on heathen soil. Today the false prophets and false apostles of these distortions are being told to go home by articulate non-Christians who view them as Western imperialists at prayer, and by emerging Christian leaders who view them as a hindrance to the task of evangelism.

A complete reappraisal of missionary motives and methods is needed, Scherer says. The scriptural pattern of witness to the Lordship of Christ through the life and words of Spirit-filled Christians has been replaced by the establishment and maintenance of impressive church-owned institutions. Foreign missionaries become the administrators, responsible for perpetuating the institutions, and local leadership is thus prevented from developing. The Spirit is quenched, and evangelism is replaced by “church work.” “The new situation summons us to return to Biblical and apostolic categories” (p. 151).

To some extent the eighteenth-century pietists, progenitors of modern missions (p. 85), and their successors in the evangelical awakening were on the right track. It is surprising that Scherer does not make more of this than he does. They were spiritually rather than institutionally oriented. They were genuinely ecumenical (e.g., The Royal Danish Mission to Tranquebar, which was authorized by the King of Denmark, staffed by German pietists, and supported by ranking Anglican bishops through the S.P.C.K.). But pietistic missions, he says, maintained a paternalistic attitude, fostered the illusion that mission was the responsibility of a spiritual hierarchy rather than of the Church as a whole, and for the most part fell into the denominationalism of the nineteenth century. The author seems unaware of the existence of interdenominational mission societies such as the China Inland Mission and the Africa Inland Mission.

Indigenization, generally considered to be that process whereby independent native churches become self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating, has largely been corrupted into institutionalism, professionalism, and sectarianism. True indigeneity for Scherer and the Willingen conference (1952) involves relatedness to the local culture, an adaptable and trained ministry, an inner spiritual life, and oneness in witness and obedience with other churches.

Three areas of criticism might be mentioned. First, Scherer finds the unity of the Church to be essentially that of a spiritual organism rather than that of an institutional organization but is unable to see grounds for encouragement in the very real interdenominational cooperation that does exist in many places. Secondly, in his reaction to the churchy activism and institutionalism, he makes the dangerously Nestorian assertion that “true Christian witness is always a divine work and never a human activity” (p. 24). The biblical pattern, for which he is such an able champion elsewhere, is rather the divine through the human. Thirdly, one wonders whether his plea for an international pool of missionary personnel and funds would not encourage more of the sort of over-bureaucratization to which he is so vehemently opposed.

The book does, however, deserve a wide audience. Its sensitivity to the critics of Christian missions, its description of the missionary needed today, its excellent reinterpretation of “to all nations,” its plea for a serving church, and above all its willingness to re-evaluate even the most cherished of missionary assumptions in the light of Scripture, make it a solid piece of work. It is unfortunate that there is no index.

PETER C. MOORE

Sit Down With Luther

Luther and the Reformation, by V. H. H. Green (Putnam, 1964, 208 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Paul Woolley, professor of church history, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Vivian H. H. Green is a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. So was John Wesley in his time. Three years ago Green published an attractive study of his predecessor, The Young Mr. Wesley. Now he has returned to the scene of his 1951 Renaissance and Reformation with this study of Martin Luther. It is a crashing success. One rises from it feeling that he has been sitting in the same room with Luther, listening to him talk and watching him work. He is here as a fellow human being, more penetrating, more vigorous, more courageous, more comprehending than we. Yet he is one of us—one who sees the abuses of life, who deplores the chicaneries and deceptions, but who, unlike the rest of us, is ready and willing to do something about it.

Fourteen years ago we had a great life of Luther in Bainton’s Here 1 Stand. Green does not tell us as much about Luther. He does not stand on Luther’s side as Bainton did. He does not commit himself to Protestantism. But he does something great. He puts us in a post of observation just above Luther’s shoulder at his desk, and as we watch Luther work he tells us what all this means in terms of the politics and economics of the day. Luther and the Reformation are put in column four, page one of the morning paper; and we can read all the other columns, too, and realize just what the problem is.

The book is written for the ordinary intelligent man. It is not encumbered with apparatus; there are, I think, three footnotes in the whole volume. Instead there is a glorious set of plates. Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Holbein, Titian, del Piombo are there. They say something about these actors of the Reformation in thrilling line.

Green has read the Freudian commentators on Luther. He uses them from time to time. He is not dogmatic about accepting their comments, and it is right to hear what they have to say. Life needs to be looked at whole.

Luther’s failure on church organization is not improperly excused or omitted. He was a genius, not a deity. He had not attained perfection. Green says so. Good.

If you want to know what it was like to live in Germany at the time of the Reformation and to cheer Luther on at his work, put this book under your arm, go to the fireside some evening, and start reading.

PAUL WOOLLEY

Matthew, The Theologian

Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew, by Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held (Westminster, 1963, 304 pp., $6.30), is reviewed by Robert H. Mounce, associate professor of biblical literature and Greek, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew is the joint publication of two doctoral dissertations by German pastors Gerhard Barth and Heinz Joachim Held, together with the reworking of two previously published essays by their professor, Günther Bornkamm. It is part of a series edited by Alan Richardson, C. F. D. Moule, and Floyd Filson called “The New Testament Library,” in which they intend to publish scholarly works on the background and interpretation of the New Testament.

Beginning with the established conclusion of Synoptic research—that the first three evangelists were collectors and editors of the tradition—the investigations go on to show that Matthew treats the material in such a way as to reveal a specific point of view and theological understanding of his own. The entire work is a movement beyond the present position of form-critical research and develops a deeper understanding of the contributions of each of the Synoptists. The writers would agree that the “theologies of the Synoptists” are modest in comparison with the Fourth Gospel, but insist that the interpretative element is far more pervasive than has heretofore been recognized. In a sense the book does for Matthew what Conzelmann has done for Luke and Marxsen and Robinson have done for Mark.

In “End-Expectation and Church in Matthew,” Bornkamm shows that the link between the two consists in the understanding of the law. The motive for the series of antitheses in Matthew 5 is to break through a law that has been perverted into formal legal statements and at the same time urge obedience to the radical demand of the divine will. Matthew is held to deliberately insert his understanding of law as love of God and neighbor into the Jewish scribal tradition. The short essay, “The Stilling of the Storm in Matthew,” is offered as an example of Matthew’s independent treatment of the tradition.

Barth’s contribution centers in “Matthew’s Understanding of the Law.” Here we learn that in opposition to the anti-nomians, Matthew maintains the abiding validity of the law, and against the rabbinate he argues that the law must be interpreted from the principle established in the love-commandment.

Held writes on “Matthew as Interpreter of the Miracle Stories.” By showing how Matthew uses both abbreviation and expansion, Held demonstrates that the Synoptist must be understood as an interpreter of tradition who has a definite goal in mind. The leading thoughts of Matthew’s retelling of the miracle stories are found to be the themes of faith and discipleship, and the purpose is the instruction of the Church. An interesting discovery is that in Matthew the miracle stories take on the form of the paradigm rather than narrative—a conclusion that tends to break down the unreal categories of form criticism.

It is not easy to criticize a book of this nature. That it is the work of painstaking scholarship cannot be denied. While at a number of minor points one might like to restate the questions, few would be so bold as to argue against the conclusions in broad outline.

The translation, by Percy Scott, is well done, although the German shows through in such places as the 115-word sentence on page 37. It is distinctly a work for the Neutestamentlicher but would offer a fine challenge to the pastor who would like to become involved relatively early in a movement back to understanding the Synoptist as theologian rather than mere compiler.

ROBERT H. MOUNCE

Thielicke’S Ethics

The Ethics of Sex, by Helmut Thielicke (Harper & Row, 1964, 338 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, director of health services and lecturer in psychiatry, University of Illinois, Urbana.

The realm of physical sexuality has been left largely without Christian guidance or has been put in a false light by traditional theology. Under the influence of Hellenistic hostility to the body, Paul was insensitive to eros. In a calamitous way, his attitude was handed along with the kerygma and became a mark of what Christianity was thought to be. In a new hermeneutical endeavor, the kerygmatic kernel must be separated from its original husk and be translated into our situation rather than transferred legalistically. Our historically changed situations, which cannot be found in direct form in the Bible, can be brought into relationship with the kerygma if we recognize that the original will of God is refracted as it passes through the medium of this aeon.

This is the groundwork upon which Thielicke has constructed his system of sexual ethics, a segment of his four-volume Theological Ethics, now in press. He acknowledges that this view of the kerygma became possible only through the breakdown of the doctrine of verbal inspiration and that Christianity is still suffering from this traumatic shock. He affirms, however, that such a concept enlarges both theological knowledge and the pastoral potential.

The Reformation disparagement of eros was overthrown by Romanticism. The awakening and vitalization of the individual eros is a realized fact in our time. Shall we give theological validity to the normative force of the factual, or denounce eros as the patron saint of eudaemonism? Unquestionably, when this development of individuality becomes idolatrous, the Christian pastor must oppose it. On the other hand, people in difficulty seek out secular counselors because they fear that the Church does not have sufficient flexibility to deal with the problems brought by modern individuality and eros. Pastoral care must be undergirded by a theology that will reach the person where he actually is today.

Thielicke begins the formulation of such a theology by contrasting eros anti agape. Eros is always egocentric, seeking self-fulfillment. Agape has as its object the imago Dei in one’s fellow man. He may not be worthy of love, but agape is a creative cause that produces loveworthiness. Where agape permeates the relationship, the happiness of the other person is sought in the whole breadth of common existence. Monogamy is the natural result of this attitude of “existence-for-the-other-person.”

Turning to the New Testament for guidance on the difficult problems of marriage and divorce, Thielicke finds Jesus declaring that in the sense of God’s original order of creation, marriage is indissoluble. Only two exceptions are allowed: the porneia of the wife and a mixed marriage in which the pagan partner takes the initiative. These provisions are not contradictory, in Thielicke’s view. Jesus’ citation of God’s original order is a call to repentance upon this age. The exceptions are allowed as an order of necessity, taking into account the real condition of man and the world in which he lives. Wrong is always inherent in the breakdown of a marriage, and divorce can never be looked upon as legitimate, even in historically changed situations. However, at times it may be necessary to conclude that it was not God who joined together two persons and that therefore the marriage itself was contrary to the order of creation. But even such a “justified” divorce violates the injunction of Jesus, which is immediate to every age.

Birth control is the first of several medical-ethical problems considered in the closing section on “Borderline Situations.” The order of creation demands that man act in responsible freedom rather than blindly follow the order of nature. While parenthood is intrinsic to the order of creation, personal companionship is the central emphasis of marriage. Either the large-scale adoption or rejection of birth control would naturalize the human relationship in marriage, rather than permit it to transcend nature as need might require.

Medical interruption of pregnancy, artificial insemination, and homosexuality conclude the section. Thielicke himself, in speaking of the “constitutionally predisposed” homosexual, exemplifies the doctrinaire prejudice that he deplores in this area. He pronounces the person with “endogenous homosexuality” as unsusceptible to medical or psychotherapeutic treatment and declares that the great majority of homosexuals belong in this classification. Building upon this doubtful premise, he reaches the grotesque conclusion that the person in this “irreversible situation” who cannot practice abstinence should “structure the man-man relationship in an ethically responsible way.” The Wolfenden report, which Thielicke quotes frequently, offers no support for such a view of homosexuality.

Despite a skillful translation, the book is beset by a difficult style and involved, discursive amplification. Thielicke constantly finds it necessary to “relativize” the sayings of Jesus and Paul to avoid transferring them “legalistically” to a changed historical situation. The modern worldview determines hermeneutic method.

The ethics is that of Thielicke, but the hermeneutics is the demythologizing of Bultmann.

ORVILLE S. WALTERS

Unpleasant Story

Race: The History of an Idea in America, by Thomas F. Gossett (Southern Methodist University, 1964, 512 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Tunis Romein, professor of philosophy, Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina.

Perhaps the outstanding feature of this volume is its extensive documentation. Fairly bulging with paragraph-length quotations from original sources, it is a scholarly work of considerable magnitude (a final fine-print summary of references runs to forty pages).

The author’s aim is to give a running account of the development of the idea of race in America, and to show the close relation between theory and practice in this developmental picture.

What seems surprising is the present-day vigor of the theory that races are basically equal in the light of a solid historical conviction that they are unequal. And it is also interesting to note, from the author’s long-range picture of the problem, that the race issue is almost as old as America itself and that a great deal of the story, historically speaking, involves race relations other than Negro-white.

Nor are the complexities and paradoxes and inconsistencies associated with the present-day race problems new. The great Jefferson, for example, constitutional propounder of equality for all men, did not seem to believe that this principle applied in any practical way to the Negro. Another interesting paradox is seen in the account of a prominent slave owner’s arguing from scriptural authority that all men came from a single source, and Charles Darwin, the agnostic, proposing the same view from a scientific bias; this seems to support the conclusion that fundamentally all men are equal. Yet neither the theologically minded nor the followers of Darwin seemed inclined to come up with this conclusion. Both the Church and science shared the prevailing view that for practical purposes men are basically unequal. And by inequality was meant that the white American, especially of English or Northern European origin, was superior to the Negro, the Indian, the Mexican, the Japanese, and even to certain nationalities from Southern Europe who had migrated to America.

This was the unfortunate story, according to the author, until almost the middle of the twentieth century, when a first significant breakthrough occurred. This was led by the secular anthropologists of whom Dr. Franz Boaz is credited as “doing more to combat racial prejudice than any other person in history.”

Race: The History of an Idea in America tends to concentrate on the bigoted and negative aspect of race relations, and this is a justifiable contribution. But surely there must be another side: a story worth telling about the less newsworthy but tremendously important constructive contributions to better race relations in our history, without which there would be no breakthroughs today, scientific or otherwise.

TUNIS ROMEIN

Book Briefs

From Purge to Coexistence: Essays on Stalin’s and Khrushchev’s Russia, by David J. Dallin (Regnery, 1964, 289 pp., $6.95). Essays that deal with the issues of Soviet foreign policy by an author who was a Menshevik, not a Bolshevik.

To Pray or Not to Pray!, by Charles Wesley Lowry (University Press, 1964, 250 pp., $5; student edition, $2.75). The author posits his arguments against the recent Supreme Court decisions on religion in public schools and against the retired Bishop Angus Dun’s support of them.

Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, Vol. I, by Hilda Graef (Sheed & Ward, 1963, 371 pp., $5.95). For Protestants who wonder about the place given Mary in Roman Catholicism.

Mastering Life with the Master, by Wesley H. Hager (Eerdmans, 1964, 105 pp., $2.50). How the Christian can live on a note of triumph and overcome sorrow, discouragement, doubt, loneliness, and other troubles of life, through faith in Jesus Christ.

365 Meditations for Teen-Agers, by Walter L. Cook (Abingdon, 1964, 222 pp., $2.50). Interestingly written, but religiously very lightweight, even for teen-agers.

The Eucharist in the New Testament, a symposium (Helicon, 1964, 160 pp., $3.50). For Protestants who want to know how Roman Catholics interpret the New Testament’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper.

Family Story, by Will Oursler (Funk & Wagnalls, 1963, 309 pp., $4.95). The story of the family of Fulton Oursler (author of The Greatest Story Ever Told, convert to Catholicism, onetime senior editor of Reader’s Digest, playwright, radio commentator), by a son, Will, who has written extensively on religion and crime.

Reformation Bible Pictures: Woodcuts from Early Lutheran and Emserian New Testaments, compiled by Kenneth A. Strand (Ann Arbor Publishers, 1963, 104 pp., $3.75). Woodcuts, story-telling pictures, found in Reformation-era Bibles, reflecting both the art and theology of the times.

Christoph Blumhardt and his Message, by R. Lejeune (Plough Publishing House, 1963, 242 pp., $3.75). Sermons and conversational-style essays by Christoph Blumhardt, with an eighty-seven-page introduction by R. Lejeune. Blumhardt played a significant role in the post-World War I theological development and deserves to be much better known.

Mind If I Differ?: A Catholic-Unitarian Dialogue, by Betty Mills and Lucille Hasley (Sheed & Ward, 1964, 210 pp., $3.95). Two women, one a Roman Catholic and one a Unitarian, without thought of publication exchanged letters expressing what their religion meant to them. The correspondence is extraordinarily lively, witty, and informative.

Revolutionary Theology in the Making: Barth-Thurneysen Correspondence 1914–1925, translated by James D. Smart (John Knox, 1964, 249 pp., $5). Selected correspondence from the 300 lively letters and cards that Barth and Thurneysen wrote each other discussing theology, sermon-making, parish work, and their early writings. The letters convey the warm friendship of the two men and open an intimate window, particularly on the development of Barth the man and Barth the theologian. Of considerable interest.

Christians Can Conquer: Challenging Messages for Challenging Times, by Robert Edward Humphreys (Exposition, 1964, 112 PP., $3).

Henry Sloane Coffin: The Man and His Ministry, by Morgan Phelps Noyes (Scribner’s, 1964, 278 pp., $5). The story of an outstanding liberal preacher and president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, seen in the context of his times.

Great Sermons on the Resurrection of Christ, compiled by Wilbur M. Smith (W. A. Wilde, 1964, 289 pp., $4.50). By celebrated preachers of the past; with biographical sketches and bibliographies.

Religion Ponders Science, edited by Edwin P. Booth (Appleton-Century, 1964, 302 pp., $5.95). “Religionists” little known, and little identified in the book, speak their mind on the place of religion in a day of science, under the editorship of a man who believes the Decalogue should be rewritten according to demands of science, and that Nicea and Trent, Calvin and Luther should disappear in the mists of the past. A more apt title: The Blind Look at the Blind

The Image of God and the Landscape of Death: Artists and Critics on Modern Art

EVERYONE WANTS TO UNDERSTAND ART. Why not try to understand the song of a bird?—Pablo Picasso.

THE LANGUAGE IMPOSES ITSELF quite strongly: it says, “You are trying to bend me to your inner experiences, but I cannot change the character of my limitations simply because I am not the same thing as your inner experiences though I may exist through them. Make a copy of what you see in nature but do not confuse this copy with emotional experiences that really consider or incorporate me”.… One of the important problems of the artists, therefore, is knowing how to bring the language of drawing and painting into relationship with feeling and idea.—Allen Leepa in The Challenge of Modern Art.

THE OBSERVER must learn to look at the picture as a representation of mood and not as a representation of object.—Wassily Kandinsky, of his work.

TO INHIBIT EXPERIMENT is to cut the jugular vein of creativity and to invite stagnation.… By probing beneath surface reality to emphasize basic order and structure, abstract art reveals a search for absolutes. Is not Christianity based on absolutes? Expressionists disclose personal emotional concepts on canvas. Is not Christianity concerned with the “inner man”? Modern art’s preoccupation with art theory forfeits communication to many, but underlying principles of design are essential to good art of any style, from the realistic to the non-objective. These principles are incorporated within the orderly scheme of creation which was initiated and is sustained by Jesus Christ.—Jane Lauber, artist.

MAN … HAS MADE OF ARDEN a landscape of death. In this garden I dwell, and in limning the horror, the degradation and the filth, I hold the cracked mirror up to nature.—Leonard Baskin, artist.

IT SEEMS TO ME that whether by conscious faith in God or by subconscious reaction man, the artist, has not ceased in his eternal wonder at the internal and external design of this universe. What the realistic vision of today’s pop artist perceives in the junkyards of our time may be working a kind of magic against our materialistic society. Is this magic so different from the wall paintings of Altamira? It is indeed an inescapable fact of history that the greatest art has communicated a truth more important than the art itself. Whether or not this new realism will bring truths as great as the Parthenon or the Chartres Cathedral, we can only wait through the dawn of its controversial popularities, its negative, anti-art monotones, its vitalities, knowing that it is a genuine expression of our time.—George Beattie, painter, and teacher of creative drawing at the School of Architecture of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

THE CHAOS, the messiness, the globs of paint, the extreme subjectivism of so much that is shown today under the label of abstract impressionism, has become intolerable.—Emily Genauer in the New York Herald Tribune.

THE BULK OF ABSTRACT ART in America has followed the course of least resistance and quickest profit.… [It] allows exceptional tolerance for incompetence and deception.—John Canaday, art critic of the New York Times.

SO WHAT HAPPENS when you take away the Virgin, and your feeling for her, and even your ability to make her image, and leave only the idea of her on a flat surface? Pretty soon you have only the idea of paint. Then Malevich with white-on-white. Then the bare canvas. Then nothing.—Jacques Lipchitz, sculptor.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM reflects the facelessness of our time. We’re falling for decor. And the so-called critics aren’t helping matters.—Mark Tobey, artist.

CONTEMPORARY ART is constantly inviting us to applaud the destruction of values which we still cherish, while the positive cause, for the sake of which the sacrifice is made, is rarely made clear. So that the sacrifices appear as acts of demolition … without any motive.—Leo Steinberg in Harper’s.

IN THOSE SPECIAL REALMS OF ART, above all painting, that once recorded the greatest freedom and creativeness, we find in our age that the symbols of the deepest expression of emotion and feeling are a succession of dehumanized nightmares.… The maimed fantasies, the organized frustrations that we see in every comprehensive exhibition of painting today are the evidence of a deeper personal abdication.… Man has become an exile in this mechanical world.… When society is healthy, the artist re-enforces its health; but when it is ailing, he too easily re-enforces its ailments.—Lewis Mumford, author.

THE NON-OBJECTIVE PAINTING claims validity only for its mechanics, for the material with which it is made and the manner of their organization. It rejects man, his life, his visions, his philosophies, his future.… There is no moral reason why art ought to go on if it has nothing further to express. Nor is there any moral or esthetic reason why the public ought to bend the knee in reverence before the mere fact of art.—Ben Shahn, artist.

I AM A BELIEVER and a conformist. Anyone can revolt.—Georges Rouault.

TO ADMIT FOR ONE MOMENT that the great artist has always been an idealist-moralist whose works have exerted their sway over lesser men by the passion of his will to communicate belief would be to admit the bankruptcy of modern art.—Selden Rodman, poet.

RIDICULOUS, SAD, TERRIBLE. So abstract are all these works that they are beyond critical judgment.—Leonardo Borghese.

Theology

Dynamic Simplicity

James H. Taylor, Sr.

Simplicity alone packs no dynamite. But it has amazing power when God is in it.

The Book of Nehemiah illustrates this truth. The walls of the city of God were in disrepair. Her gates were burned with fire, and, while many who could have helped were too busy with trivial things to care, God’s people were suffering grievous affliction. News of these tragic conditions burned deeply into Nehemiah’s soul.

A God-fearing layman, Nehemiah assumed the burden of rebuilding the city of God. In carrying out this task, he refused to be daunted by difficulties, dangers, or ridicule. Deliberately and apparently without any distinct call from the Lord other than his heart’s utter devotion to God and to the city of his fathers, he laid aside affluent comfort to respond to the appeal of a great need. To do this meant privation and very hard work. There were enemies, too. Their prestige having been challenged, these enemies were angry. Unprincipled in their avowed intent to overthrow the great work of restoration, they scorned and mocked.

Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, was one of them. He was unwittingly playing with dynamite. He scoffed at those he called “these feeble Jews.” But his words were an unintended compliment, for he had unconsciously stated the essential qualifications for all truly successful service for God: “feeble” (a sense of human helplessness before impossible tasks that cast men in humble dependence upon the Almighty) and “Jews” (God’s people). True “Jewish” lineage or family relationship with the Father now comes by the new birth through faith in Jesus Christ that makes us children of God. When Sanballat asked, “What do these feeble Jews?” he little dreamed of dynamite. And yet these Jews seemed almost uncannily dynamic.

Nehemiah had constant recourse to prayer. How else could the weak have triumphed against the concerted efforts and shameful intrigues of the strong? In spite of all Sanballat and his friends could do to hinder, the city wall was completed. They then realized that the work had been done by God.

About a generation earlier, another Jew, Mordecai of the Book of Esther, refused to bow down before a wicked and ruthless Persian prime minister. Hainan thought that to punish one man alone was altogether too trifling a vengeance for this’ slight to his pompous dignity and vast power; he would blot out the entire race. But the dynamite of God’s judgment unexpectedly blew up in his face and destroyed him with his whole family.

Seemingly feeble and helpless, but really upright and God-fearing, one man refused to bow before wickedness in high position. The odds were dreadfully stacked against him. Onlookers awaited with expectant interest what appeared to be the inevitable outcome. What earthly chance had Mordecai? But God ever uses the weak to confound the mighty. The despised Jew triumphed, and his people also were saved!

Still earlier by five centuries, a shepherd lad rejected the elaborate equipment that served King Saul so well in battle. It hampered David. The armor was good, but not for him. Though Saul was frankly skeptical, he was wise not to force his ideas on the boy. Goliath disdained the ruddy youth who with a simple sling and stones ran forward fearlessly in response to the champion’s haughty challenge. Simple faith in the name of Jehovah nerved David’s heart and steadied his hand. Earlier, in apparently defenseless and dangerous situations, the Lord had worked for him. He believed He would do it again. Sure enough, the pride of Philistia was humbled and her mighty hosts were routed because one young man who had courage and simple faith in God dared to go out alone and fight.

Having risen in triumph from the dead, our Lord Jesus gathered his little group around him. He was about to ascend to heaven. But a truly superhuman work remained to be done. His finished salvation had to be proclaimed throughout a hostile world to the end of the age. The challenge was both worldwide and timeless; it was not a one-generation commission. Not only were those who first listened to his words inadequate for such a job; all in whose hearts the Great Commission has burned ever since, regardless of talent, superior knowledge, and scientific equipment or methods, have also been inadequate. But there was and is dynamite in Jesus’ words.

Our Lord made no effort at elaborate organization. To a comparatively unknown and insignificant company he gave a simple commission, with the promise of the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence, his leading and power. That was all. Then he ascended to heaven.

But that was enough.

It was on Olivet, not far from Bethany, that our Lord gave this seemingly fantastic charge, “Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations … to the end of the age.” Even to this day skeptics object to its apparent folly. But was Jesus beside himself? Did his disciples mishear or misrepresent him? Not at all. The Son of God spoke with supreme authority, and to those who believed him he gave the promised power.

Is there need in the Church today to be careful lest foolishly we trade power for weakness, dynamic simplicity for impotent complexity? Over-extended, costly, and burdensome organization looks impressive but can be dangerous. Its cost is far more than can be counted in money, which, though important, is of lesser consideration. If confidence is misplaced in money, it tends to hinder spiritual vitality; like Saul’s armor it burdens and binds.

The Gospel without much organization often looks foolishly inadequate; but it sets free those who believe and enables them to withstand whatever hell may throw against them.

The Gospel is the power of God. Its simplicity is infinitely dynamic.

Fengshan, Formosa

- More from James H. Taylor, Sr.

Ideas

Civil Rights and Christian Concern

The Editors

History will evaluate 1964 with its decision on the civil rights bill as one of the critical years in our national annals. The issue now before the country is more than one of integration versus segregation; it has to do with the integrity of our democracy.

As the Senate debate moves toward the day of decision, one senses a feeling of inevitability. This is a time of hard choices, not just for the senators who must cast their votes but also for the rank and file of their fellow Americans. We are all involved. The hour is long past—if it ever was at hand—when a man or woman might stand and watch the civil rights struggle as from a window overlooking the busy street.

What is happening this spring in the Senate is not an academic debate in which one listens to affirmative, negative, and rebuttal, and then awaits the judges’ decision. No American, and least of all no Christian American, has the right to follow the civil rights debate unconcerned and unmoved. The vote on H.R. 7152 will indelibly affect the nation’s future.

Patriotism demands individual concern in a matter so close to the public welfare. And patriotism is neither sub-Christian nor outmoded, even in this sophisticated age. For Christians it is plainly enjoined in Scripture. Moreover, ethics are united with patriotism; no Christian can stand passively by when the good of others is jeopardized. Obedience to the law of love for one’s neighbor requires concern for the welfare of one’s neighbor.

The kind of civil rights bill the nation will have depends in the first instance upon how the Senate votes. But it is equally true that how the Senate votes will reflect public opinion. In fact, the extra weight that will tip the balance one way or the other will come from the people. As James Reston, the well-known Washington correspondent, has said, “In the end, the temper of the country is likely to decide the issue.”

What, then, are some guidelines for Christian concern regarding this great question? Four in particular may be listed: (1) The necessity for informed opinion. (2) The right of all Americans to equal rights of citizenship. (3) The obligation to respect those whose conscience leads them to convictions different from one’s own. (4) The recognition that, essential as legislation is, moral problems are ultimately solved not by passing laws but by changing hearts.

First, informed opinion is demanded of every Christian who is in earnest about fulfilling his civic responsibilities. Valid opinion cannot be derived from ignorance nor developed out of a fog of second-hand ideas. With an issue so important as civil rights, it is not enough to let others do one’s thinking or to reach conclusions based largely upon emotion.

If, as has already been stated, the climate of opinion will tip the balance in civil rights legislation, Christians to whom the moral aspects of the question must be paramount will have to take time and trouble to inform themselves about the issues at stake. This not only means reading what Senator X or Senator Y declares, what commentator A or pundit B writes, or what this newspaper or that news magazine says; it also means being familiar with the bill itself so as to know what its provisions are. Then, knowing what is involved, a Christian is obligated to come to his own conclusions thoughtfully and prayerfully. Only so does he earn, as it were, the right to add his weight to the growing amount of influence that is bound to affect the voting in the Senate.

Second, there is a major premise on which concerned opinion must rest. That premise is the constitutional right of all Americans to full citizenship. In particular, this means that no American should, because of his color, be deprived of his rights to vote, rest, eat, sleep, be educated, live, and work on the same basis as other citizens. Anything short of this is an intolerable deprivation of rights for one segment of the population, a deprivation that, by reason of its inherent injustice, violates basic morality.

Third, there is the obligation to respect the conscience of those who differ with their fellow Americans and fellow Christians regarding constitutional aspects of the legislation under consideration. The civil rights question is more than a controversy; it is a great conflict. In a conflict of such dimensions there are divergent convictions. Surely it is no compromise to recognize that however wrong one’s neighbor may appear to be, he may be sincerely and honestly wrong.

Therefore, to dechristianize those who disagree with certain aspects of the civil rights bill is incompatible with Christian love and tolerance. Moreover, to equate any particular position regarding the bill with the Gospel of Jesus Christ may come perilously close to the Galatian heresy of proclaiming “another gospel.” While justice for all, regardless of race, is an inescapable outcome of the Gospel, it is not itself the Gospel any more than any other fulfillment of the law of love is the Gospel. Let race prejudice and hatred be unmasked as the sin they surely are (and in the North as well as the South who is wholly free from them?); but let not a stand for civil justice or participation in demonstrations be confused with the Gospel through which alone men are redeemed by faith.

Fourth, there is the principle that law of itself, essential though it is, can be only a proximate, not the ultimate, solution of the deep problems of society. For the maintenance of the structure of society and the control of evil, laws are essential. Yet it may be that one of our national failings is the misconception that once a law is passed, a problem is forever settled. But laws must be obeyed, and ultimate obedience is a matter of the heart, not of compulsion, necessary though enforcement is. Sin is common to all, regardless of color. Therefore, Christian concern demands the ceaseless proclamation of the Gospel as the ground of ultimate reconciliation of the racial revolution.

There are also other matters of concern. While the Church should not engage in politics, as many evangelicals hold, it is nevertheless an inescapable obligation for Christians to take part in public affairs (see the lead editorial, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, January 17, 1964). Historically, amelioration of social problems has come through men and women whose hearts and consciences God has touched. The classic evangelical position is that the Gospel must be preached and that those whom Christ has redeemed will go out and serve as he leads them. If some Christians feel it their duty as individuals to stand side by side with their Negro brethren in the struggle, who is to say them nay? Are they not free to exercise their right of protest just as their more socially conservative brethren are free to respond in their way to the racial question? Yet granting this, it must also be said that restraint in demonstrations and respect for law are urgently needed; extremism and threats of violence will only impede the processes of legislation.

But what of the civil rights bill? Constitutional aspects of the methods of enforcement specified in it require safeguards against possible misuse of the great powers conferred. Thus the position of some that the bill must be passed without the alteration of a word is unwise. At certain points it should and probably will be amended. But the need for legislation exists.

Christians may differ about the civil rights bill. Yet the path of Christian responsibility is plain. It leads inevitably to a position worked out before God. And that position ought to be made known. If individuals ask, “What can I do?” let them voice their convictions to their senators now and in these troubled days pray for the Senate and all in places of leadership.

Evangelicals, and indeed the Church as a whole, have lagged in racial relations. Especially has segregation within the churches been a stumbling block. Had the Church really practiced the love and brotherhood it preaches, the present crisis might have been averted.

These failures have indeed been lamentable. But once they are confessed, they must be put aside and attention centered upon the needs and obligations of the present. In this time of decision, evangelical spectatorism must give way to evangelical action that supports, as conscience leads, such legislation as assures all citizens the freedoms guaranteed them in the Constitution.

The Secular Meaning Of The Gospel

This is written for those who are puzzled when they read about the “secular” meaning of the Gospel. In its original sense “secular” means “this world” and “this age,” in distinction from another, transcendent world and age. Many contemporary theologians explain the secular meaning of the Gospel, however, by defining the Gospel only in terms of this world and this age, because they recognize no other.

A reinterpretation of the Gospel to show its secular meaning is said to be demanded because twentieth-century man is a secular man. He has “come of age,” it is said, and no longer believes in the traditional Christian doctrines of the Incarnation, Virgin Birth, and Resurrection of Christ; of a divine Jesus, a Bible that is God’s Word, and a Church that is God’s new creation. All these, it is asserted, can no longer be accepted by the secular, twentieth-century man because each of these doctrines means that God himself has entered history. Since, according to the secular mind, God has not entered our world and our time, we must give up the religious and discover the secular meaning of the Gospel. To state the matter in more philosophical terms, we must eliminate the religious-metaphysical dimension in interpreting the Gospel and interpret it in the only dimensions left us, the historical and ethical. Such men as Rudolph Bultmann and Fritz Buri in Europe and Schubert M. Ogden in the United States are interpreting the Gospel in this secular way for secular men.

One of the most recent efforts at secular interpretation in the United States is that of Paul M. Van Buren. The heading over this editorial is the title of his new book, which carries a subtitle, “An Original Enquiry.” The book bears the marks of originality—Van Buren agrees wholly with none of the names mentioned—of competency, and of an enviable clarity of expression. The author, who is associate professor of theology at Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Texas, is very explicit about what his secular interpretation of the Gospel allows us twentieth-century men to believe, and what we must, if we are intelligent and really belong to our age, reject in the traditional interpretation.

Van Buren informs us that the secular man—that for him includes the Christian no less than the non-Christian—cannot believe that the doctrine of the Virgin Birth means someone was born of a virgin; that miracles actually occurred; that prayer is speaking to God; that the meaning of “the Word became flesh” is that Jesus was “very God of very God”; that a genuinely historical Jesus could be anything more than a man. All this the Christian of today must reject, unless he is willing to estrange himself from his world and time and sacrifice his intellect. But the truly intelligent secular Christian who is “come of age” belongs to his age; he is therefore as much concerned about such concrete matters as a change in the weather as is the next man, and as much as the next man will consult the weather bureau, not “take it to the Lord in prayer.”

To the reader of the foregoing, this may not sound like anything resembling an interpretation of the Gospel. In the judgment of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, this is not the Gospel.

Van Buren rejects Barth’s theological method because it does not, in his judgment, relate God’s Word to the secular world and its actualities in which men think, and move, and have their being. Van Buren also rejects Bultmann’s theological method, because he believes with Schubert M. Ogden that if it is consistently applied, it loses the necessity of a historical Jesus. We must, insists Van Buren, retain a historical Jesus, because a faith that has no object is pure subjectivity.

His chosen theological method is “linguistic analysis.” By this method he means to find out what the gospel writers and the early Church Fathers said or were trying to say about Jesus, in the thought modes of their day, in order to say it again in the thought patterns of the secular twentieth-century man, who no longer believes in a world other than the empirical one in which he lives. And by this method Van Buren discovers and announces the meaning of the Gospel for modern men: Jesus is a man, no more, but unique in that he possessed the freedom to live wholly for others with a freedom that is contagious.

Van Buren’s search for the meaning of the Gospel by linguistic analysis is permitted to discover no more than his secular world-view allows. The assumption that “this world” and “this age” cannot contain Deity dictates that his historical Jesus is a man and no more; and by the use of linguistic analysis he discovers that the biblical writers and the Church Fathers of Chalcedon were really trying to say just this—and no more!

World’S Fair: Religious Perspective

A World’s Fair is something of a monument to materialism. Man seems to be pounding his chest in pride and saying, “Look what I have achieved!” There may indeed be a kind of arrogance about such exhibitionism that is hardly compatible with a Christian spirit. Those who view this world exhibit as a vaunting symbol of human technological achievement without a joyous recognition of Him who created the wondrous potential on which it is grounded would do well to remember how easily history can undo our grand accomplishments.

Many religious leaders, however, have seen within the framework of sophisticated secularism a great opportunity for witness to the multitudes of viewers. They have seized this opportunity with the result that the New York World’s Fair, which opened April 22, has more extensive religious presentations than any previous global exhibition. Indeed, the grounds at Flushing Meadows are the setting for some very definite evangelistic action, and Christians will do well to place fair-goers on their prayer lists (for an enumeration of opportunities, see “Witness to the World” in the April 24 issue).

Among the various criticisms of the Protestant and Orthodox Center at the fair is a denunciation of its “disunity and non-involvement” by the United Church Herald, official publication of the United Church of Christ. It is true enough that the center embraces a conglomeration of religious displays. Yet how could it do otherwise in view of present realities? Spiritually, the body of Christ has union now in that the company of the regenerate is one in Jesus Christ. But the Church visible can be represented only as it is—fragmented and diverse.

‘Not Of An Age But For All Time’

The greatest gifts of man to the human race are the few books that stand, generation after generation, as ever-fixed marks above the tempest and are never shaken. When people talk of “the new morality,” when loyalties to government, to parents, to stern duty, to law, to principle are being questioned or denied, these books reaffirm the meanness of selfishness and evil, and the admirableness of decency and right.

The truly great novels or plays are like a little Judgment Day in whose pitiless light we see our motives and actions as they are. We are anatomized to see what breeds about our hearts. “This,” they say, “is your disease, and this is how it ends.”

As the holder of the mirror up to our nature, Shakespeare, after the Bible, stands first.

The age that produced the 1611 translation of the Bible also produced the supremely great writer, the quadricentennial of whose birth in the spring of 1564 is being celebrated this year. For nearly four centuries the plays of Shakespeare have steadily affirmed that there are eternal standards, and that disregard of them means death. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”

Although Shakespeare can never bring us to a knowledge of God, he does show us our fallen natures. The first step toward redemption is to see ourselves and our standards as small and despicable. The second is to realize the soul-shriveling result.

Those who never attend a church and never confront themselves with the eternal Word, whose standards are those of the loose world, may suddenly see themselves in Shakespeare’s eyes and be as convicted as Iago under the scornful eyes of his wife. Here your sins are played out before you. Are you, like Macbeth, willing to rise by the fall of others? Or, like Lady Macbeth, do you urge a soul on to evil? Are you a Gloucester unrepentant of youthful lechery? Do you abdicate your appointed task, like Lear? Are you an undaughterly Goneril? Are you an Antony betraying all for your “right to happiness”? Or, like Hamlet, are you caught in the ambiguities of your doubt?

Only some half-dozen of Shakespeare’s mature tragedies may “cleanse our emotions through pity and terror.” But we would also be poorer without that lyric of teen-age love, Romeo and Juliet; without The Merchant of Venice, in which Shakespeare transcends the prejudice of his time to let Shylock speak for his race; without that towering realist Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV. And how much poorer not to know the delightful heroines of his comedies who saved the day.

And last, we should be poor indeed without the incomparable verbal music and pictured wonder of lines that sing themselves in our memory, such as;

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great earth itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind.

What About Shared Time?

In the discussion about public support of parochial and private religious schools, shared time occupies a place of growing significance. The term was coined a few years ago by the superintendent of schools of Englewood, New Jersey, Dr. Harry L. Stearns, a United Presbyterian layman and a member of the Board of Christian Education of his denomination. As the words imply, the concept means that the school hours of the child are shared by the religious school and the public school. For the “value” subjects, such as religion and the humanities, the child may be taught in the parochial or private religious school; but in other areas, such as practical arts, physical education, science, and the like, he may go to the public school for his instruction. The idea, while revived under the label shared time, is not new; in certain localities, such sharing of school hours has been practiced for at least forty years. However, Dr. Stearns’s proposal led to private colloquia among churchmen and schoolmen that have done much to shape the development of the movement.

Today shared time shows evidence of considerable momentum. It has been discussed on Capitol Hill by Dr. Francis Keppel, United States Commissioner of Education. In a limited number of communities ranging from the Eastern seaboard to the West coast, it is in operation. Moreover, there is some ground for thinking that it may pass the test of constitutionality.

So far shared time has elicited most response from Roman Catholic educators. Where it is being practiced, Catholic parochial schools are generally involved. This probably reflects present Roman Catholic concern about the maintenance of its vast system of parochial education, a concern of which Mrs. Mary Perkins Ryan’s book, Are Parochial Schools the Answer?, with its bold proposal that the church give up its parochial system, is a leading symptom. What is doubtless a minority Catholic opinion is that of John G. Deedy, Jr., editor of the Pittsburgh Catholic, who expresses anxiety that shared time might, if very widely adopted, gravely jeopardize the public school.

What are some implications of shared time for evangelicals? It has both strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, it reinforces parental responsibility for the child’s education; its very raison d’être is to make possible the basic religious instruction of children according to their parents’ convictions. On the other hand, it involves compromise of the major premise upon which a comprehensive Christian philosophy of education rests—namely, that all truth is of God; for relegating some subjects to the secular school and retaining others as “value” subjects in the religious school violates the essential unity of Christian education. Aside from this philosophical objection, in the practice of shared time evangelicals may face problems resulting from Protestant diversity. Whereas the Roman Catholic school serves all its children, religious schools representing the consensus of Protestant views in particular communities might not be acceptable to evangelicals or other groups.

Yet the potentialities of shared time are not to be lightly dismissed. As it gains ground, evangelical Christian educators should study it with care.

A Hopeful Sign

“Our guard is up but our hand is out.” So spoke President Johnson as he announced, simultaneously with Premier Khrushchev, the American-Soviet-British decision to reduce production of fissionable materials. When added to previous reductions, the American move will mean an over-all decrease in production of enriched uranium by 40 per cent and of plutonium by 20 per cent. Premier Khrushchev announced a Soviet decision to discontinue construction of two atomic reactors, reduce substantially the production of uranium-235 for nuclear weapons, and allocate more fissionable materials for peaceful uses.

No treaty was involved, and the ease with which the agreement seemed to come speaks well for a mood of rising mutual confidence among the atomic powers. The reductions have no real military significance, for it is merely the growth of the “overkill” capacity of the nations involved that will be slowed. Almost a year ago, Pentagon officials said that nuclear production could be cut in half without affecting the status of American defense.

The latest move, then, is not in any way to be construed as disarmament. Its significance is rather to be seen in the hope that mutual confidence may grow to the point where one day the Soviet Union may agree to disarmament steps with the essential condition of inspection.

Christian compassion for all peoples and a dispassionate reading of twentieth-century diplomatic history compels us to insist upon safeguards in steps leading to nuclear disarmament. But compassion also thrusts aside any lack of interest in attaining such steps. President Johnson spoke of new pressures and realities that “make it permissible to hope that the pursuit of peace is in the interests of the Soviet Union as it is in ours.” During the last war, Winston Churchill pointed to Russian self-interest as a clue to the enigma that was Soviet foreign policy. The President warned that we must of course always guard against Communist subversion. “But anti-Communism alone will never suffice to ensure our liberty or never suffice to fulfill our dreams,” he added. To believe otherwise is to be radiantly optimistic about non-Communist evils, and it is to be darkly pessimistic about the vitality of American freedom before the rise of Communism.

“Quite amazing” aptly describes the emotional resilience of the common man that has enabled him to live on terms with the horrible specter of flaming nuclear annihilation. But this resilience should not render him insensitive to steps toward banishing the specter. The Christian’s ultimate hope for peace is God’s intervention. But in the meantime God is interested in man’s activity in this area, and Christians cannot but welcome even a small step toward mitigation of the nuclear threat.

The Time Of Solemn Assemblies

Spring is here and the grass is green, and if one wonders where the conventions are—they’re everywhere. Throughout the land synods, assemblies, and conferences are again convening to do the work of the Church. There will be endless reports on an endless number of churchly projects and labors. Delegates will rise to the lure of their own voices and make speeches on agenda matters they have not read. Some assemblies will move with the well-oiled efficiency of a large business; others will have three motions on the floor at one time.

There will be moments when the spirits of men of God ride high for what God has wrought, and hearts will bow in thanksgiving to the Lord of the Church. There will also be quiet times when prayers are offered for guidance in matters already decided in ecclesiastical cloakrooms by big-dealing churchmen, and knowing men will pray with uneasy hearts. Many decisions will be made, some wrong, some right. Many resolutions will be passed, some for action at the church back home, some for the sake of the press; and some, enacted for conscience’ sake, will be left to die in official archives.

There will also be moments of spiritual courage and clarity when men, both lay and clerical, speak up for a cause with the brave resolution of a Luther; and other moments of weakness, when men compromise both their own consciences and the Gospel. Every now and then, in this assembly and in that, a delegate will smile as he recalls the statement in the Book of Acts: “Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was in confusion; for the greater part knew not wherefore they were come together.”

But in them all, the large and the small, the Spirit of God will move; for this is the Church of Christ, the Body over which Christ is the Presiding Officer and in which his Spirit dwells.

Pray for the peace of the Church, for they that prosper shall love her.

Liberia At The Crossroads

For many years after its founding in 1821 as a Christian homeland for slaves returned from the United States, Liberia was Africa’s only republic. Today it is working toward a more effective role on a continent that has witnessed the swift emergence of thirty-three independent states, most of them in the last decade. Yet in technological progress and social democracy, Liberia lags behind many of its ascendant neighbors which boast political freedom but remain primarily in spiritual bondage.

A national feeling for Christian principles dates back to Liberia’s birth, and some of its present leaders still emphasize that Liberia’s role among the African nations must be that of spiritual leadership rather than political leadership or aggrandizement. Recent legislation assures Bible teaching in the public schools and prohibits Sunday trading. Liberia is the base of the Sudan Interior Mission’s African radio voice ELWA, which has a wide hearing. National leaders actively identified with Christian churches include President Tubman and Vice-President Tolbert. Not a few churches are soundly evangelical in doctrine and actively evangelistic in practice. Because the Americo-Liberians did not originally evangelize the indigenous tribes, the religion of many of this country’s one million inhabitants remains a strange mixture of Christianity, Islam, and animism.

The erection of huge government buildings is shunting funds from internal development in a land where food and housing costs are exorbitant. The economy of Monrovia, the capital, has been distorted by the influx of foreigners, and its entire population of 60,000 is indirectly affected. As the new highways are built, remote mission outposts and tribal villages find themselves no longer remote, but alongside the main arteries of modern travel. The result is an awakening people. Their discontents are not pervasive; despite a growing interest in material improvement, education, and health conditions, they remain a basically contented society.

The conspicuous vices against which Christianity must contend are not difficult to identify: social alcoholism (palm wine) and adultery, thievery and drug addiction; in the interior, witchcraft as well; and in political circles, not simply dishonesty and graft but sexual promiscuity. The Christian religion is sometimes misunderstood in terms of political idealism whose spiritual principles are more implicit than overt, with a lip-service to biblical vocabulary that lacks operational significance in life.

The churches are not faced with easy alternatives. The necessities of political reform as the nation reaches for a larger role in the African dialogue may bring changes that will leave the heart and will of the people unaltered. Though in public life are found men highly dedicated to Christian life and behavior, it is widely felt that Christianity is simply a religious feeling that separates one from paganism; that perpetuates a noble tradition within which one is born, married, and buried; and that demands only an avoidance of the more sensational sins. Among tribal people, moreover, one often finds a superstitious fear of the clergy. “You are our god,” one group of tribes-people told a visiting missionary.

Nationalization of Liberian churches is inevitable, and it will be slowed only if their effectiveness is impeded. Some churches supported abroad are reluctant to cut their ties swiftly lest “self-support” also lead to solicitation from other foreign concessions or to political pressures. The Moslems dispute that Liberia is a Christian nation, but there is little doubt that the Christian community has both a heritage and a missionary force that could supply fresh momentum to a determined witness for the Gospel. The nation stands at a significant crossroads on a continent that needs a clear Christian witness as never before.

- More from The Editors

Theology

The Predicament of Youth

L. Nelson Bell

Within the predicament of youth and its proper solution there rests not only their future as individuals but also the future of the nation.

An honest appraisal of the situation forces us to admit that the plight in which they find themselves is not of their making. They are being sent out into the world without either chart or compass, and we, their elders, are to blame. The young people of our generation are but an elongated shadow of us. The sins of the fathers are being visited on the children. The moral and spiritual decadence of adults is being reflected in an intensified departure from moral and spiritual values by young people who have no norm by which to judge their own actions or those of others.

There are those blithe souls who wax lyrical about the present generation either through ignorance or because of the spiritual blindness with which they themselves are afflicted. But the realistic Christian knows that young people are confronted by problems with which they cannot cope and are often making havoc of their lives.

Nevertheless, we are convinced that the average young person wants to know the score; he does want a spiritual confrontation and challenge, and in such a situation he often gladly capitulates to Christ as the living Saviour and makes Him the Lord of his life. It is indeed tragic that so few young people of today are confronted with such a challenge, by parents or by Church.

To write on the “predicament of youth” is useless unless one carefully evaluates the situation, much as a physician would carry out various diagnostic measures and then set up a line of procedure out of which a curative process may come.

Why are we confronted by a generation in which there is grave moral laxity and spiritual blindness? To say this situation does not exist is merely to beg the question. We recently talked with a law enforcement officer of many years, experience who literally threw up his hands at his problem—willful destruction of property, hooliganism, gang fights, open promiscuity, thievery, complete disrespect for what we call “law and order.” And on further questioning he admitted that these actions of young people do not originate “across the tracks”; they are often worse among those from homes where financial security is found and the social graces are practiced.

Basic to the problem is the undeniable fact that our young people have been let down by their elders. We live in a time when education is stressed, when the physical and hygienic welfare of children is provided for as in no other generation or land, and when the average young person has more economic security than ever before. We have done the things needed in the area of the physical and material. But we have neglected the things of the spirit.

We have forgotten for ourselves and our children that man does not live by bread alone; that he is more than an animal with animal appetites; that the values which count are eternal and not secular or material; that the higher man’s attainments in education and culture, the greater his capacity to sin—unless with these attainments there are at the same time the spiritual and moral controls that proceed solely from God and are revealed in his Word.

Parents are to blame for the predicament of youth wherever they have failed to instill in them a right sense of values, as found in the Bible.

The Church is to blame for the predicament of youth wherever it has sponsored “youth programs” that glorify the humanitarian aspects of Christian responsibility while neglecting instruction on how to become a Christian.

The Church is to blame for the predicament of both parents and children whenever it has stressed superficial or peripheral matters and neglected the spiritual verities that are the heart of the Christian faith.

If the predicament of youth is to be solved, certain things must be done; and for many the time is late—too late.

There must be a dedication, or rededication, of parents to God through faith in his Son. Furthermore, many major denominations will find it necessary to revise completely both the philosophy and the content of their youth programs.

Inherent in all of this must be a new emphasis on Bible instruction and accompanying obedience to God’s laws. Certainly a part of youth’s plight stems from teachers of “religion” who neither know nor believe the divine revelation and have in its place followed the futile and wholly ineffective results of human speculation.

The average young person is a spiritual illiterate because he has been led to relegate the Scriptures to the realm of discarded folklore, instead of knowing and studying it as the most relevant and up-to-date book in all the world. In this he is the victim of an older generation infected with deadly unbelief.

But what of that great mass of young people living beyond the reach of godly parents or Christ-centered churches? It is well enough to speak of spiritual awakening within the home, of a revitalization of the Church and her programs through a revival of interest in things that are central; but while we pray for this, something must be done about those millions of young people who are living where Christ is not known and where little is being done to reach them.

To their predicament, concerned Christians must address themselves, realizing that the warfare in which they engage is spiritual and that the weapons are spiritual. We must remember, of course that spiritual methods and weapons are often at the same time secular, material, and practical. A good meal for a beggar is a spiritual tool in reaching his soul. An intelligently organized program for young people will have secular and material props, but it will be directed to their spiritual needs and will not be sidetracked until the spiritual objective is pressed to the hilt. And these young people must be reached where they are, not where we would like them to be.

Into the vacuum caused by the spiritual anemia of many denominational programs there have come a number of non-denominational organizations, some possibly superficial in their approach, but others—such as Young Life, the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, the Navigators, and Campus Crusade—thoroughly Christ and Bible-centered and oriented to the needs of students and young people. Wherever permitted to do so, they actively cooperate with local churches and denominational work. It is most unfortunate that these movements are often viewed with suspicion and attacked by the churches.

The predicament of youth has no quick or easy solution. It requires prayer and dedication of parents and the Church as a whole. These young people are the victims of neglect, indifference, and the inculcation of false values by the very people who should have led them to what is good.

The Gospel of God’s grace is not bound. It continues to be the power of God unto salvation. In it are the moral and spiritual values by which alone man can live. In it alone can the predicament of youth be solved.

- More from L. Nelson Bell

Eutychus and His Kin: May 8, 1964

A FINE HOW-DO-YOU-DO

A refreshing and diverting quality in college students is their ability as well as their willingness to say what they think—or even better, to say what a lot of other people think and don’t say; for example, the college in Ohio that refers to its religious emphasis week as “Be Kind to God Week.” This might be blasphemy; but if it is, it is a description of the blasphemy of that single week of tremendous effort in the direction of religion after fifty-one weeks of irreligion, anti-religion, and a general attitude on the part of the administration that everything else except religion ought to come first. Then in one week everyone has a whole lot of religion; but it is probably the kind of religion Bonhoeffer is talking about when he says he is in favor of Christianity but not in favor of religion, or perhaps what William Temple means when he says, “A lot of people are going to be surprised one day to find out that God is interested in a lot of things besides religion.”

All this comes to mind as I prepare myself today to give the invocation at a college rodeo. What does one pray about in such a situation? Most people don’t know what an invocation is in the first place; but when we recognize that the invocation “invokes” the presence and blessing of the Holy Spirit on the activities which are about to follow, the equation between calling God in and what does follow can be a little cloudy. Is this a prayer for good sportsmanship (something never mentioned in the Bible), or good success, or kindness to the horses, or kindness to the riders? That God is interested in all this sort of thing I am certain, but the guidelines for invocations are not readily apparent.

What shall we say of getting everyone in on the program, as, for example, at presidential inaugurations, so that the prayers shall be Christian in Christ’s name and Jewish not in Christ’s name and everybody on hand will be satisfied? Clergymen can check the power of their religion by how it is utilized at weddings, funerals, and confirmations. I think we can purify a little, too, by deciding how many things we shall try to make respectable just because we open them with prayer.

EUTYCHUS II

CHRISTIAN LOVE ENFORCED

Dr. Ilion T. Jones’s article, “Enforced Christianity?” (Apr. 10 issue), is a probing analysis we all need of the racial crisis, but it is long on sentiment and short on reality. My old professor falls into the familiar trap of dividing the world into spiritual and secular spheres and assuming that the Church is charged with responsibility for the first but not the second, that men will some day heed the Gospel enough to do right by their fellow man just because they overflow with good intentions. The great majority of Christians never have become that loving, and they aren’t likely to as long as they think the Church should say nothing about social issues.…

Christian love has to be expressed in practical terms and enforced with more than pious sentiment or the Church will become even more ineffectual than it is today.

WARREN C. MCCLAIN

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Pasadena, Calif.

Often when thinking of the civil rights movement my heart has bled for the Negro who has been treated so unjustly, but over and over again the word of Christ comes to me: What shall it profit the Negro if he gain all the civil rights guaranteed him but lose his own sold? The latter is the dynamic work of the Church—it is committed to this one great task, and the sooner we get to it the sooner will injustices be solved.

JOHN C. WILLIAMS

Secane, Pa.

The appropriateness of Dr. Jones’s significant article … was heightened by its appearing at the same time as news of the accidental death, in Cleveland, of a minister during a civil rights demonstration.…

It is to be hoped that Dr. Jones can lead his own denomination to reconsider the proposals set forth by Dr. Wilmore. For when a church chooses first to use pressure and coercion to achieve its objectives, it is sadly lacking in understanding of its true and distinguishing power. And if it should have no other recourse, if indeed it knows no other alternative, then “Ichabod” is written large above its door.

HARVEY L. MITCHELL

Colorado Springs, Colo.

Should be read by every professing Christian. Someone should have spoken out months ago against the curious and apparently common assumption that a Christian label is attached to anything done in the name of justice and equality.…

THOMAS W. CREWS

Wheaton. Md.

Why cannot the religious leaders sense the futility of enforcing legislation where hearts have not been set right in Christ?

The present world conditions should surely point up that the real need is for changed hearts from which only right action proceeds.…

The enforcing power of the Gospel of regenerative grace in Christ is needed, not enforced religious precepts on unregenerated hearts which only stirs up rebellions and confusion, yes, and every vile deed.

HENRY M. HANSEN

Hamlin Lutheran Church

Hamlin, Iowa

TREATMENT FOR NEW MORALITY

Howard Carson Blake (“ ‘The New Morality,’ ” Mar. 27 issue) exposes the wide metastasis of a long present, quietly progressive theological malignancy. The originator of this cancer is Satan himself. The mechanism of growth of the neoplasm is quite subtle.

Initially, well-meaning but unregenerate men don the Cloth. Eventually they realize their Spiritless ministry is but an ecclesiastical sham. Then, to prevent total collapse of themselves and their positions, they cast about for a topic which will penetrate the skeptical ear of the preoccupied world. Since mankind has always cherished the delusion that new and varied sexual experience is the universal panacea, the spiritually insolvent pulpiteer has a guaranteed, headline-getting subject.…

There is only one cure for this cancer, but it is radical. No conservative measures will avail. The patient must realize his perilous condition. He must turn to the Great Physician. Sin must be confessed. The atoning Blood must be applied. Spiritual rebirth must take place. A holy life must ensue. All other treatment has repeatedly failed.…

JAMES A. SHANE, JR., M.D.

Denver, Colo.

As a former student of Dr. Tillich and a postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church I can only emphatically agree with Mr. Blake’s opinions concerning Bishop Robinson’s efforts to rid the Church of all which is essentially at its very core, as well as of all living implications of these central truths.

DONALD K. WILLIAMS

Nashotah, Wis.

Excellent, well documented article.…

New York, N. Y.

R. N. USHER-WILSON

It is clear and convincing on the issue of faith and morality that many try to abuse and confuse.…

JOHN WARNER MOORE

Captain, Chaplain Corps, USN (Ret.)

Greenwich, Conn.

PAYING IGNORANCE HER TOLL

As a Presbyterian, howbeit of the Reformed persuasion, I found your news article, “Presbyterian Frontiers in New York” (Apr. 10 issue), quite interesting and very telling. Particularly interesting was the quotation, “Some people are waking up to the fact they are Presbyterians.” It is true that few Presbyterians realize that the Presbyterian church is not a democratic organization. But in the past (before the Auburn Heresy) this knowledge was not, it seems to me, particularly necessary. The direction of the General Assembly via Synod via Presbytery via Session was, on the whole, fairly close to God’s will on the matter.

But then apostasy set in in high places and in some cases took command. Now, many years later, some church members are awaking to the fact that ignorance of church government is costing them a virile testimony.

JOSEPH MCDONALD, JR.

Norristown, Pa.

BURDEN AND CROSS

In the article, “The Cost of Being a Christian” (Mar. 13 issue), we read: “A burden is something that a man bears because he must.… The cross of a Christian is voluntary.” But a burden is a heavy load, which may be voluntarily taken up. We are told, “Bear one another’s burdens.” We are not told to bear another’s crosses.…

JOHN Y. CROTHERS

Duarte, Calif.

INFORMAL EDUCATION

Thanks to Dr. James McDowell Richards for his article on “The Church and the World Today” in the March 27 issue. He has been a constant source of inspiration and strength to many of us in the South as we have witnessed his strong courage, his calm witness, and his devotion to Christ, the Head of the Church. I am a student of his, not a “former student,” for I [have] continued to learn from him after completing my formal education at Columbia Seminary.…

PARK MOORE

Trinity Presbyterian

Jackson, Miss.

DIVERSITY DELINEATED

I was surprised to read in your columns a devastatingly negative review of Gösta Lundström’s The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (Mar. 27 issue). The fact that there are several notable flaws in the book does not merit its unqualified condemnation. I agree with the reviewer that the book is incorrectly named; it would have been more accurately titled The Interpretation of the Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus. But is the author to be condemned for writing a history of recent interpretation of this controversial theme? We need such books that every serious student of the Bible may be aware of the great diversity in the history of interpretation. We are fortunate to have such classics as Albert Schweitzer’s Von Reimarus zu Wrede, and his Paul and His Interpreters. W. F. Howard’s The Fourth Gospel in Recent Criticism and Interpretation is an important tool in Johannine studies. Lundström’s book is a mine of information for the student who wishes to know the main currents of scholarship concerning the Kingdom of God. To be sure, Lundström does confuse T. W. Manson and William Manson; but more famous Continental scholars than Lundström have been guilty of this same confusion. Possibly Lundström can be charged with misinterpreting Joachim Jeremias; but Jeremias’s position is capable of diverse interpretations. In spite of unambiguous statements to the effect that the Kingdom of God is present as well as future, it is possible to interpret Jeremias as having a view of the Kingdom which is itself altogether future although the series of events which will bring the Kingdom have already been set in motion. What is present is not the Kingdom itself but the process which will soon bring the Kingdom. While Lundström could have handled this problem more effectively, lie has illustrated a real ambiguity in Jeremias’s position. In his own conclusion, Lundström stands with a growing number of scholars who see the Kingdom as both present and future. I do not feel he is guilty of the accusation of merely selecting bits and pieces from the scholars he has reviewed in an entirely uncreative synthesis. I am personally grateful that Oliver and Boyd in Britain and John Knox in America have made this book available in English. It is interesting that another study has appeared with precisely the same title which attempts the same history of interpretation, which was done by Norman Perrin as a doctoral dissertation under Professor Jeremias at Göttingen. Apparently we have needed such a book for some time.

GEORGE ELDON LADD

Prof. of New Testament History and Biblical Theology

Fuller Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

FOR WHITES ONLY

I feel that the letter from Dr. Harold T. Commons in the March 13 issue demands an answer. In effect, he is trying to make a very inadequate amount of whitewash cover a very large and very nasty situation.

The situation at the tip of South Africa when the first Dutch settlers arrived in the seventeenth century was analogous to that which obtained in Massachusetts and Virginia during the same period. Population was sparse, but it was there. From where else would the present Cape colored population have come? These people, largely Hottentots, were either enslaved or driven out, and they now live in desert refuge areas of southwest Africa.

In the nineteenth century, when the Dutch moved inland to escape the British government, they met the Xhosa and Zulus in the areas of the Fish and Kei Rivers and in Natal. Both groups arrived at the same time, and the conflict was a savage and bloody one on both sides.

But what we are dealing with is a present situation, in which there are 3,000,000 whites classifying 13,000,000 nonwhites as nonpersons. Ignoring who got there first (as I imagine Dr. Commons does in evaluating his own rights in America), what is the right thing to do? Surely the imposition by force of apartheid upon a majority who want no part of it bears little resemblance to the ideals which a “white civilization” is supposed to embody. If democracy and human rights are only for whites, then let’s say so and quit being hypocrites about it.

More important, however, for us, is the question of Christian responsibility and Christian ethics. In such a context as the South African one, and that in our own country, what does the Christian do who heeds without mental reservations the command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”?

CHARLES TABER

Research Assistant

Hartford Seminary Foundation

Hartford, Conn.

WE ARE ALL GUILTY

I wish to express my appreciation for the article, “The Anatomy of Anti-Semitism,” by James Daane (Mar. 13 issue), and wish to add the following thoughts:

1. In the Gospel of John a clear distinction is made between the “Jews” and the followers of Jesus who also were Jews. It was a religious distinction rather than racial.

2. If it is a racial question anti-Semitism would logically imply an anti-Jesus attitude.

3. The followers of Jesus at that time, though not yet called Christians, were in fact such. Judas was one of them. Hence, it was a Christian who betrayed Jesus. From the racial side, it was a Jew who preached with such great power at Pentecost. It was a Jew whom God chose as apostle to the Gentiles, and who gave us thirteen books of the New Testament.

4. It was the human race which crucified Jesus. Theologically, all are sinners. It was God’s eternal plan to save sinners through the death of his Son. But this does not mean that those who crucified Jesus were guiltless. If there had been no sin his sufferings and death would not have been necessary. We are all guilty.

5. If a different race had been chosen as God’s special people to whom the Messiah was sent, the result would have been the same.

A. J. STIREWALT

Lutheran Church in America

Kobe, Japan

It seems to me that the author overlooked the statement of our Lord himself, as we find it in the Gospel of St. John 19:11. Pilate was interrogating the Lord for the second time; when our Saviour refused to answer Pilate, he said: “Dost thou not know, that I have the power to release thee, and power I have to crucify thee?” Jesus answered him: “Thou hadst no power against me, if it were not given thee from above (anothen); therefore the one who handed me over to thee, has the greater sin (hamartian).” The Lord has solved the problem for both, the Jews and us, pagans—Gentiles.

In the eyes of our Saviour the sin of his nations leaders is greater than that of Pilate. But this does not give us any excuse for treating the Jews as our enemies; to the contrary, it gives us the divine opportunity to prove to them that—with God’s help—we love them as persons and as our Lord’s Church both in deeds and all contacts with them.

Miami, Fla.

ANTONI M. TURKIEWICZ

FAILURE OF METHOD

Having just concluded a winter of study with Mr. T. A. Burkill on the Gospel of St. Mark, I would like to make a few observations concerning the review of his book Mysterious Revelation by Robert Preus (Mar. 13 issue). In his review Mr. Preus expressed some misgivings concerning Mr. Burkill’s approach, particularly with regard to his use of form criticism. As an alternative method, Mr. Preus offers an exegetical approach which does not “isolate” Mark but takes into account the “whole analogy of Scripture.”

First, may I suggest that there is an inherent danger in the particular approach which Mr. Preus, as a theologian, suggests. Too often a method which employs the “analogy of Scripture” obliterates the individuality of the Gospels. This refusal to “isolate” a Gospel reduces the accounts of the life of Jesus to a homogeneity which distorts their particular emphasis and obscures their distinctive beauty.

Second, under the influence of the Spirit of God there can be and is a legitimate development and interpretation of the life and ministry of Jesus in theological terms. Why must all of the theological insights of the New Testament be exclusively limited to the writers of the Epistles, as though the Evangelists were writing nothing but brute fact? It is the function of source criticism to enable us to see how the disciples have arranged, employed, and interpreted their material, whether it be in the form of written tradition or personal witness. To determine whether there is a Tendenz, what it is, and how far it goes, is the task of form criticism. Surely, Mr. Preus will agree that there are differences between the theology of Matthew and that of Mark.

A far more serious criticism of Mr. Burkill’s study is his acceptance and use of H. J. Cadbury’s methodological assumption that there are mixed motives in the Evangelists’ minds. These competing motivations allegedly prevent the gospel writer from working out his scheme with perfect logical coherence. In the case of Mark, Mr. Burkill concludes that “the Gospel affords ample indications that St. Mark is not completely satisfied with his general theory of the (messianic) secret …” (p. 280). Although Mark wishes to show that Jesus’ Messiahship was hidden from the public until his Resurrection, he is forced to reveal the secret prematurely. He does this in order to attribute the responsibility for Jesus’ death to the Jews and to synthesize … Jesus’ humiliation and glorification. Thus, Mark invents the story of the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and has Jesus confess the secret, even though it is not yet time. This, and other premature “leaks” in the messianic secret (such as the open confession at Bethany), Mr. Burkill ascribes to the tension between Mark’s scheme and his other motivations, such as his hostility toward the Jews.

Mr. Burkill’s attempt to get behind the Gospel and to read the mind of the author is admirable. But to present a theory which employs only part of the evidence, subsuming the rest under a presumed “conflict of motivation,” is hardly sound method, even on the grounds of form criticism. (Yet is not the “analogy of Scripture,” which eliminates the differences of Scripture in favor of some theological systematization, open to the same charge?) At this point Mr. Burkill’s failure of method threatens his entire theory, or at least, makes us wonder if there is not a more adequate interpretation of Mark’s Gospel and the messianic secret beyond that given by Wrede and Burkill.

GLENDON E. BRYCE

Calvary Baptist Church

Chicago, Ill.

RETURN TO INTEGRITY

I was overjoyed to read Addison H. Leitch’s comments under Current Religious Thought in the March 27 issue. With all of the legitimate and profound questions that always have and always will arise from the depths of the gospel stories and the biblical witness, he strikes a telling blow for a return to integrity of language for all of us who deal with the matters of the faith, whether from the pulpit or the seminary lectern. May his word spread far and wide and goad us all to a dearer statement of what the gospel witness plainly says and where we stand in relation to it.

JOSEPH C. FOWLER

Community Presbyterian Church

Edison, N. J.

Certainly we need men of knowledge in our seminaries and pulpits, but when any of them confuse those to whom they minister they should look to the future. A future when the laity finally deride that there are no understandable answers in the church—who do you think is going to be looking for a job? For those of mercenary bent, that is something to think about.

J. JACKSON

Charleston, W. Va.

Somewhere in the midst of all our myriad programs and feverish activity we must learn to teach and preach the prime necessity for a true conversion—a new birth, first and foremost. All else has meaning only in relation to this all-important experience.

ROBERT L. LOWRY

West Chester, Pa.

He says what needs to be said so clearly, so pungently, and yet with such good humor that it is hard to wait four or five issues for his next essay.

HARRY T. SCHUTTE

Covenant Presbyterian

Columbia, S. C.

AMERICAN EDUCATION

I have just finished reading your … February 28 issue.

You have crowded onto these few pages the best evidence of concern that those of us interested in Christian values should take a look at what is going on in American education. I have seen these and other forces at work in American higher education during the past five years.…

R. T. WILLIAMS

Vice-President

Pasadena College

Pasadena, Calif.

With all due respect for Dr. Gaebelein’s viewpoint concerning Conant’s book, The Education of American Teachers (Books in Review), I should like to point out that many people who have dedicated themselves to the training of teachers are very much disturbed by some of Conant’s recommendations. Dr. Conant may not have been “encumbered by the hazy professionalism that marks many educational theorists today,” but some feel that he certainly was encumbered by some other prejudices that stuck out all over the place. As a balance, readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY would do well to read another evaluation of Conant’s book in the January, 1964, issue of The Educational Forum. Here Dr. Broudy of the University of Illinois, a respected philosopher of education and one who has been in the business of training teachers for many years, raises some basic and serious questions about the Conant proposals.

Also, I think that we ought to be careful how we draw inferences from Conant’s book for Christian education. It could be that, if Conant’s recommendations were adopted, Christian education would fare no better than teacher education.

WILLIAM R. SHUNK

Chairman

Educational Foundations

Purdue University

Lafayette, Ind.

It is just exactly what a review ought to be and gives the meat of an important book to a lot of busy people.

JOHN CROCKER

Headmaster

Groton School

Groton, Mass.

Prayer, the Bible, and the Schools

Ronald C. Doll

A well-publicized cartoon shows two children kneeling in a corridor of a public elementary school. Their teacher, observing that the children are using dice to gamble, says with obvious relief in her voice, “Thank goodness! I thought at first you were praying.”

Perhaps the cartoon overdramatizes the situation of prayer and devotional Bible reading in the public schools as it exists a number of months after the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Abington School District vs. Schempp. However, the plain fact is that boards of education and administrators of public school systems are greatly confused about what exercise of religion and what religious instruction are allowable in the schools.

The extent of this confusion is demonstrated by these incidents. Recently a teacher remarked to his class in a public elementary school, “I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour. I trust him all the time.” What this teacher thought of the Christian religion became obvious to most of his young pupils. In a secondary school, another teacher said, “I’ve never paid much attention to this Jesus jazz.” The viewpoint of the second teacher became at least equally apparent. Why did the two teachers make their comments—in answer to incidental questioning by their pupils, or as carefully plotted efforts to influence the attitudes of the pupils? According to a recently assembled panel of lawyers and school administrators, motivation in each situation may affect its legality. What may teachers properly say about religion? In what respects has religion, an already controversial classroom issue, become more so since the early summer of 1963?

Other questions now arise. What, for instance, shall be done with baccalaureate services? Can the religious aspects of Christmas, Hannukah, and Easter be conveyed without violating the “establishment of religion” clause? Must not the activities of organizations like Hi-BA and Young Life be wholly eliminated from public school property?

In general, the responses of public school officials to these and similar questions are calculated to keep the officials and their schools out of trouble. Some superintendents and principals are now “running scared” in the direction of complete secularization of the public schools. My observation leads me to believe that, barring the somewhat unlikely adoption of a constitutional amendment to offset the court’s recent rulings, secularization of the schools will continue during coming years.

While administrators fret about the broad decisions they must make, classroom teachers continue to teach religion according to their individual persuasions. They do this by direct statement, by the teaching content and materials they choose, and by innuendo and implication. Teachers who are bent toward atheism or agnosticism teach these “religions.” Hume, Voltaire, and Paine are in the curriculum with Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther. The slant a teacher gives any set of ideas is likely, by the very nature of teaching, to be his own. Because we evangelicals cannot expect that more than a small minority of future public school teachers will be committed Christians, we cannot hope that the Christian education of our children may safely be left to the public schools, regardless of subsequent rulings of the courts.

An Unprepared Church

Unfortunately, the Protestant church is singularly unprepared to build our children’s faith. Its systems of parochial education reach only a small minority. Its one hour a week of Sunday school, which is sometimes supplemented with an additional hour of youth activity, while useful, is not enough. Something else needs to be done immediately to provide children with what they cannot receive in their secular schools: education in the true meaning of the Person, ongoing life, and eternal work of Christ.

Children of evangelicals often have the advantage of at least an unsystematic Christian education in their homes, but unchurched children especially need attention. With church, school, and home failing to give them spiritual support, they are usually rudderless. Their casual contacts with nominal Christianity may too easily be left to those ministers who say, “You don’t have to believe the Bible. For you, heaven is the good feeling you have inside when you do good deeds; hell is the bad feeling you experience when you do bad ones. Just resolve to straighten yourself up and fly right.” We evangelicals cannot afford to expose anyone’s children to such off-beam doctrine. Nor can we afford to let instruction in ethics, manners, and morals substitute for instruction in the Gospel of Christ. The public school can still offer a universalist version of the former, but the latter is clearly within the province of the Christian Church.

A church leader has said, “If ever we needed to act, it’s now. The little experience with religion which youngsters have had in the public schools has now faded, and the Church must step in to do the job it should have been doing all along.” The Roman Catholic Church is already taking action. A dozen orders of nuns have lately been founded to teach Catholicism to children who attend public schools. The Confraternity of Christian Doctrine is revising textbooks and developing visual aids for use in this program. More than 75,000 laymen with special training in catechetical instruction are now teaching the confraternity’s courses in “schools of religion,” some of which have been newly constructed near public schools. In their novel schools of religion, Roman Catholics are teaching religion only, leaving to the public schools the more expensive education of Catholic children. Soon, the Catholic Church may abandon large numbers of parochial school units. Having apparently lost the fight for substantial federal aid to elementary and secondary schools, the church may now decide to expend more of the energies of its teaching brothers, sisters, and laymen in prosecuting its chief goal, propagation of the faith. Leaving secular education to the public schools would probably free the church to offer religious education of real quality.

For some time, churches have utilized the practice of released time for religious instruction, whereby public schools release their pupils for an hour or so a week of religious teaching in churches of the parents’ choosing. We evangelicals should now seek extension of the released-time periods in our own communities, so that children may be taught in our churches during several additional hours each week. In most American communities, the public schools are now exceeding by one or two hours a day state legislative and administrative mandates concerning minimum daily sessions. Nearly everywhere in the United States, more than an hour a week of released time could be scheduled.

A somewhat broadened conception of released time is shared time, according to which parochial school children study part of each week in public schools and public school children elect courses in church-financed schools or institutes. The practice of sharing time can, in the future, enable large numbers of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish parochial schools to avoid lavishing funds on expensive programs in the sciences, vocational education, and other specialized services. Thus the American taxpayer may some day be required to shoulder the costs of both basic and specialized secular education for all children, while church funds are revoted strictly to religious education. If shared-time programs become increasingly popular, we may expect to see additional parochial and religiously oriented private schools established throughout the land.

Church School Reinforcement

Inasmuch as most of us evangelicals do not have a Christian day school to which to send our children, we are forced to think of means by which the teaching programs of our churches can be augmented and strengthened. If we were given two to five additional hours each week for Christian education, what could we do?

Three types of action would be needed. The first would be to secure the best teachers available and then give them pre-service preparation in systematic Christian education. A few teachers could be recruited from among the committed Christians now serving in the public schools; others could be found among retired Christian teachers, and still others, among our most effective Sunday school teachers. Wherever teachers were acquired, their effectiveness would be judged by their knowledge of subject matter, their ways of presenting it, and the response of children to them. (If our children should find their Christian education incompetently conducted, they would compare it unfavorably with their public school experience, and continuance of released time would be endangered.) To ensure reasonable competence, the part-time teachers in our church schools would need pre-service preparation in subject matter and in the best ways of presenting it. A Christian education director or another teacher of teachers could provide this type of leadership.

Secondly, we would need to determine the curriculum and its subsequent development. At the start, the better commercially published graded materials could be used. Eventually, however, rethinking the curriculum would include careful examination of scope, sequence, balance, and continuity. Additional published materials and some new and original ones would then be drawn upon eclectically.

The third course of action would be to procure equipment and materials that would make good teaching maximally possible. Teaching aids of many kinds are available today. They need, of course, to be selected and used wisely.

With competent teachers, a well-planned curriculum, and helpful materials, a few additional hours a week could profitably be spent in Christ-centered education—but not, of course, without cost. Effective teachers are worthy of their hire, and purchase of teaching materials increases the expense. If American churches had the funds that educational foundations have wasted, the problem of financing Christian education would be solved. In the absence of outside support, each congregation must decide whether extended Christian education of its children is worthy of sacrifice. A congregation too small or too poor to develop its own program could join with other churches in sponsoring an area-wide program.

Educational experimentation that has gathered strength for major impact has often originated within individual communities. Plans for meeting the challenge of creeping secularism may well begin there, also. Certainly, evangelicals have little to expect from national assemblies of church statesmen and politicians. Whatever is done must be done mainly by small groups of us working between the public schools and our own churches. And the right time for action is surely now!

In 1960 Dr. Billy Graham, during the only face-to-face conversation I have been privileged to have with him, asked me how I viewed the public schools as a source of spiritual strength for American youth. In good conscience I had to reply pessimistically, because the public schools have functions far removed from the spiritual, as we Christians perceive spiritual development. America’s major hope at the beginning of the present decade lay in the spiritual impact that church and home could make upon children. Surely, in the confusing aftermath of the Supreme Court’s rulings in Engel vs. Vitale and Abington School District vs. Schempp, our hope continues to lie in the same institutions. We are menaced only by a paralysis of discouragement that keeps us from taking concrete action.

The Power Of The Home

The beginning of every honored institution on earth is at the family hearth. The roots of state and local government reach back into the home. The concepts of theoretical ethics and practical morals all have their derivation in the home. The resulting attitudes toward life and all its relationships come from the home.

To be more concrete, the first nursery was a home. The first school was a home. The first hospital was a home. The first manufacturing establishment was in a home. And the first religious society was organized in the unecclesiastical atmosphere of a home dedicated to God.

Nationally, the home is our first line of defense. Not in our armies and navies, our airplanes and submarines, our bombs and missiles, however necessary and vital these may be, but in homes pleasing to God is the first line of our national defense. The integrity and the durability, the morality and the sobriety of any nation are determined and directed, molded and modified by the influence of its homes. Here in our own land we as a nation can never rise above the spiritual level of our homes.

The presence or the absence of homes pleasing to God will go far to determine the future weal or woe of any people. Those who seek to elevate and dignify, to purify and sanctify the homes of our nation are doing more, as they have done more, and will do more for the welfare of our nation, for its permanence, and for its final glory, than all of our statesmen who have ever lived. Nationally, this is where we who believe in God can do more to make life count for good than in any other area.

The power of the ideal home is spiritual. Behind all and beyond all, beneath all and above all, the power of the home appears at its best in the realm of eternal values. When the mind of the little child is filled with the truth of God, when the heart of the little child is filled with the love of God, and when the life of the little child is directed toward doing the will of God, then within that heart and life have been created impressions, habits, and ideals that will never die.

“I tried to be an atheist,” said a certain man not long ago, “but every time I reached the point where I was ready to renounce my faith, I seemed again to feel my mother’s hand on my head, and to hear her prayer that I had heard a hundred times, ‘God bless and keep my boy!’ ” From the prayers of that godly mother the grown son could never get away.

After Reuben A. Torrey had become a widely known evangelist he made the following statement: “I grew up in a godly home, but I was ungodly. I reached young manhood ungodly, unsaved, careless about the things of the soul. And then I went away from home, an unsaved man. But I went away with my mother’s words ringing in my ears, ‘Reuben, when the way back is dark, son, call upon God, call upon God!’

“I wandered far, farther than I had ever dreamed that I could wander. Then one night in a hotel room I planned to commit suicide. As I made all the preparations, there came flashing in my mind the words of my darling mother, ‘Reuben, when the hour is dark, son, call upon God, call upon God!’ Then in the depths of despair in my hotel room I knelt by my bed and called upon God. And instead of taking my own life I gave my life to the Lord Jesus.”

No child will forever get away from the influence of a Christian mother or a Christian father. Never!—From a sermon by Perry F. Webb, pastor, First Baptist Church, San Antonio, Texas, in Special Day Sermons for Evangelicals, edited by Andrew W. Blackwood, Channel Press, Great Neck, New York.

Ronald C. Doll is professor of education at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He holds the B.A., M.A., and Ed.D. from Columbia University. His most recent books, both published in early 1964, are entitled “Individualizing Instruction” and “Curriculum Improvement: Decision-Making and Process.”

- More from Ronald C. Doll

Distinctives of a Christian College

Thomas B. Mcdormand

Christian colleges must not seek justification for their existence in terms of the objectives of secular education only. Christian educators have always viewed truth as essentially indivisible. All truth is of God, and God has made it available to man for the enrichment of his life, for a profounder understanding of his Creator, and for the greater good of all the sons of men. The Church has seen human personality in its tripartite nature—body, mind, and soul—and has recognized the interaction and interdependence of these parts. Thus education and religion have been viewed by the Church as complementary aspects of one life process. Teaching and preaching have been viewed as functions of the Church in its task of making known the whole will and purpose of God, and of fitting men for worthy citizenship in the Kingdom of God and in the kingdoms of men. The Church has been an educator, not in an attempt to gain secular power and influence, but in an effort to liberate men from the deadening hand of secularization, so that they might fulfill their high calling as children of God, co-workers with him.

Education under Christian auspices must affirm the fact of God and be committed to the principle that in Christ—and in him alone—“all things consist,” or “hold together” (Col. 1:17). It must realize that the fullness of truth and the understanding of the significance and use of truth must be discovered ultimately in the fullness of glory that shines in the face of the incarnate Word, the Son of God.

Our age is bedeviled by a blight of “isms”—secularism that reduces all of life to the commonplace; determinism that reflects the arrogant, God-denying views that blind historical or naturalistic forces determine the course of history and the nature of man; rationalism that sets the human mind upon the throne of the universe and seeks salvation in reason and the pronouncements of science. All such pretensions are but expressions of man’s sinful egoism, his surrender to the ancient deception of the devil, “Ye shall be as gods.”

If education is to be concerned with reality, it must recognize that man’s fundamental adjustment is not to nature or society but to God, who is the fountainhead of all things. If education is concerned with the development of personality, it must, in its view of the human person, take into account his divine origin and destiny, the fact that he has been created in the image of God and that his heart will ever be restless until it finds rest in God. Contemporary literature echoes and re-echoes the wistful longing of modern man for meaning in existence, his painful sense of impoverishment when denied the transcendental dimension of the soul. T. S. Eliot, whose poetry repeatedly reflects this distressing frustration of the human soul devoid of faith, imprisoned in a realm of the finite and transitory, has Celia Copplestone say, in “The Cocktail Party,”

It’s not the feeling of anything I’ve ever done

Which I might get away from, or of anything in me

I could get rid of—but of emptiness, of failure

Toward someone, or something, outside myself;

And I feel I must … atone—is that the word?

And it is precisely the right word, for it declares man’s outcast state until he is “reconciled to God,” until by faith and obedience he has discovered who and what he is, and until this awareness of true identity drives him directly to him with whom he must be “at one.”

To confess the sovereignty of God is to believe in his continuous activity in human history and for man’s salvation. He who is the source of all things and the fullness of truth must be seen as constantly involved in the process of self-disclosure, the gracious act of revelation of who he is, of what he declares, and of what he desires of his creation and of his creatures. A theocentric epistemology alone can lead man to the apprehension of the wide ranges of truth from whose vantage point alone a uni-verse is discovered, and all aspects of truth integrated into a coherent whole. The immanental without the transcendental is, in the final analysis, inscrutable. The knowledge of God crowns all other knowledge, interpreting and coordinating it in enduring depth.

Man’s best knowledge and noblest experience repudiate any out-and-out rationalism, any materialistic determinism, any pathetic insistence upon the ultimacy of the “things of this world.” The gods we fashion with our own hands as projections of our sinful human hearts have no power to teach or to save us. If education is “a preparation for life,” it must relate itself to the true nature of human personality and to the principles of life that are built into the nature of things. To ignore the truth that comes from God is to injure oneself in futile, presumptuous efforts to ignore or change the unchanging purposes of him who rules all things.

Thus the truth that comes by revelation, apprehended by the faculty of faith, must crown the educative process in Christian colleges.

Our age suffers from the attempt to alienate faith from reason, to deny faith as a faculty for the apprehension of truth significant for human welfare. Much of the secularism of our time derives from this misguided epistemological approach. The dichotomy is, of course, an old one. Thomas Aquinas fought a battle for us all in his philosophical attempt to reconcile faith and science, reason and revelation. The contemporary revival of Thomism will not meet the epistemological need of our time, but it challenges the Christian college to deal vigorously and deeply with the pretensions of a secular world and an arrogant intellectualism.

Reason Without Vision

Certainly reason devoid of faith, reason reduced to a two-dimensional world, reason without a soul, is tragically limited. It lacks the wings of vision. It lacks the richest motivations and the most satisfying rewards. It lacks a continuity and a principle of integration without which intellectual inquiry would, in the long view, be reduced in “height, and depth, and length and breadth.” “Without faith it is impossible to please God”—or ultimately man—in the classroom, in the laboratory, or in the functioning of life itself. It is when man’s reason and God’s revelation meet in a glorious marriage in faith that truth in its many-splendored nature is most quickly perceived and most humbly and worthily applied for the benefit of the children of God. The eye of faith can add richly to that which the eye of flesh beholds in every field of human inquiry. Here is found one of the greatest justifications for Christian institutions of higher learning. Reason alone cannot, as Descartes held, discern the ultimate principles by which “the edifice of knowledge can be built.” Hence the Christian college relates reason and revelation without apology.

The nature of man derives from the nature of God and inheres in the divine nature. Consequently man’s capacities must be developed so that he may fulfill his destiny and serve the fundamental needs of his society. Christian education relates primarily to persons rather than to subject matter, and its success is to be determined in terms of the kind of persons it produces.

Basic to the task of a Christian college is its commitment to the purpose of producing people who are spiritually as well as intellectually developed. If man has a soul as well as a body, then the developmental process to which education addresses itself must include concern for spiritual development and for the total functioning of personality in its total environment—an environment that involves God and people, the world visible and invisible, the here and now and the hereafter, and responsibilities dictated by moral and ethical principles having historical continuity and divine sanction.

The Fine Art Of Living

Christianity makes man the supreme object of the divine love and the most significant element in the complex of life. The gift of Christ for man’s redemption from the forces that would first downgrade and then destroy him, graciously and gloriously reveals the worth of human personality. The Christian college insists that to knowledge must be added wisdom; to vocational competence must be added skill in the fine art of living; to facts must be added an understanding of the attitudes and relations that produce happiness for the person and the highest welfare of those whom his life touches. A man is essentially a monstrosity if he is intellectually alert but morally dull and insensate; if he is well equipped for a vocation but ill equipped to live happily with people and usefully as a member of society; if he is skilled in asking questions but deeply disturbed because he knows no fundamental answers. The Christian college believes that knowing how to live is just as important as knowing how to make a living.

There is only One who knows the end from the beginning; only One who can correlate all the diverse events of time in conformity to a unifying principle, an overarching purpose. To Christian faith such biblical terms as eschatos, kairos, and teleos declare the fact that the events of the passing hour are determined by the ultimate purposes of God for his people and his world. They are determined, not by economic or sociological forces inherent in the process of history, but by divinely ordered principles that are beyond the passing moment and outside the temporal scene. History is “His story” in very truth, and can be interpreted aright only in the light of a knowledge of His providential grace and truth. “Things present and things to come” can be interpreted only by those who are not “separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” The Lord of history is the “God of our salvation,” so that only the redeemed in him can view with equanimity the chaotic events of any period of history and say, “None of these things move me,” because “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”

Such faith saves reason from blind despair. Such faith must inform the best teaching of history, philosophy, literature, science, and the social sciences. The fundamental unity of all knowledge comes to light in applying this principle of historical continuity and coherence. It demands that every great teacher be to some extent a theologian, and that theological convictions constitute the unitive principles of interdisciplinary interdependence.

Thomas B. McDormand is president of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Eastern Baptist College. From 1958 to 1961 he was vice-president of Acadia University (Nova Scotia), from which he has the A.B. (Th.) degree magna cum laude. He also holds the Th.D. (Victoria University, Toronto) and the D.D. (McMaster University).

- More from Thomas B. Mcdormand

The Missionary Calling

David B. Woodward

Within a month after my return from furlough to my missionary assignment I had received ten invitations to serve on church boards and committees. I faced a familiar problem. The offers covered a variety of useful and attractive activities, each with merit.

The trouble lay in the relative strength of the call to service in the Christian community as compared to the call to the unevangelized masses around me. I could quickly fill all my time with Christian nurture to the exclusion of Christian witness. No one was pressing me to reach the lost sheep, even when there were ninety-nine outside the fold for every one in it. I decided that I would accept only as many jobs ministering to the Church as I could balance with jobs ministering for the Church in behalf of a needy world.

I asked myself, “What does it mean to bear this name of missionary, to have this call?” Too often in these days the function of the foreign missionary is defined solely in terms of his being a messenger, a sent one, rather than in terms of his message and those to whom he takes it. If he is simply a messenger to some other part of the world, then he may fairly be designated as a fraternal worker, a messenger from one church to another. Within this broad definition representatives from the younger churches can visit us and call themselves “missionaries” to the American churches.

Valuable as these forms of inter-church activity may be, they do not fulfill the basic function of the Christian missionary. What is the scriptural pattern we can follow? It is a picture of a distinctive calling. “Separate me Barnabas and Paul,” said the Holy Spirit, and in obedience the Church set them apart for the work of new area evangelism and church planting.

The missionary is a messenger to the world rather than to the Church. He bears good news from those who have had the privilege of receiving the Gospel to those who need it. The pioneer missionary has no doubt about his call and where it will lead him. But the missionary generations that follow him live in grave danger of becoming captive to the institutions that the pioneer has fathered.

The more church bureaucracy crystallizes around the missionary, the less likely he is to be in dialogue with the world. He tends to become desk-bound brass rather than front-line soldier. The pressures favor his helping existing work instead of promoting new work. There is no end to what he can do for the Church. All this keeps him from direct contact with the world, but he hopes that his absorption in the Christian community will yet benefit the non-Christian population outside. Church leaders remind him that the Church itself is an instrument of evangelism. It seems to him that he can best serve the world by serving the Church. He is encouraged to believe that he is most effective when training others as evangelists. Of course, he may wonder at times how well he can teach the theory of evangelism without leading the way in its practice.

The process deprives the missionary of his primary function. He should be busy out where the Church is unformed. Even though he may be teacher, trainer, counselor, pastor, and administrator part of the time, his responsibility as evangelist should take top priority.

Paul, while mindful of the care of the churches, kept an eye on Rome and Spain. He knew how to move out and away. He loved his spiritual children enough to leave them even though he longed for them. He refused to be the victim of his own success. He would not allow the proclamation of the Gospel to be smothered by the entreaties of his best friends.

Do we know how to move out and away? The symbol of the ecumenical movement is a ship with a cross in it, riding on the waves of the sea. The Lord Jesus Christ is indeed in the midst of the Church, and the Church is but a small vessel among restless waves. This symbol however, is a self-centered picture of the Church. What we need is another symbol that places the cross out on those waves where it can beckon to those in the security of the ship. Christ is not only in the Church; he is also in the world. He calls to us, and this is a missionary call. It is not at all comfortable or easy. It means getting out of the ship and walking on the water. This no one can do without his eyes on Jesus.

The missionary may have some misgivings as he sits in the boat and urges young national Christians to go out and walk on the water. He is likely to vent his dissatisfaction by blaming the Church. Actually, if he is drawn aside from his main task, if he neglects his call, he has himself to blame. The missionary is not called primarily to be a supervisor, a caretaker, or an adviser behind the scenes. His is the call of the pioneer. He has a call to the unimagined, to the untried, to the unfinished. When he is deflected from evangelism, when he submits to a crushing load of organizational minutiae, whose fault is it? His very own. It is up to him to maintain, meekly but firmly, his integrity as a prophet. He must not forsake his calling.

But are all missionaries called to be evangelists? I have been using “missionary” as a generic term and defining it in terms of aggressive evangelism. Is “aggressive” a bad word for a soldier of Jesus Christ? One can be aggressive and still be sweet about it, as Paul was before Agrippa!

Of course, some missionaries do not fit the category of evangelist but still contribute largely to the evangelistic efforts of others. And evangelism is not confined to missionaries. Some pastors in highly organized churches are imaginative pioneers and masters of soul-winning. Nevertheless, there is a missionary type, a unique missionary gift recognizable in the Church.

God be praised that we have men who are church planters, others who are church builders, and even those who are church preservers. The current emphasis on the Church as mission blurs the varied gifts and callings in the Church. Some men are called to be missionaries. That is where they are most at liberty in the Spirit. These men and women do not require a ready-made parish, for the world is their parish.

It is strange that in those parts of the world where the Church is numerically weakest, we often see this type of person discounted in the work of church extension. Foreign missions are urged to come under the supervision of the younger churches; but do they thereby become integrated into corresponding bodies, the local national missions? Are the missionaries joined together with national workers of similar gifts and purpose? Not always. They are more likely to be assigned to established work than to new endeavor. They are apt to be told, and to accept the assumption readily, that national workers make better evangelists.

Young missionaries are particularly susceptible to these views if they are surrounded by mature, well-trained national Christian workers. It is healthful for them to have an inferiority complex provided that it does not lead them to mistrust the power of the Holy Spirit. He is no respecter of persons. He can use even a missionary.

The greatest confusion about the function of the missionary does not lie in the minds of the leaders of the younger churches or in the minds of board secretaries in the home lands. It is in the minds of missionaries themselves. Is their attention fixed on the unfinished task? If they know their calling, they can speak a prophetic word to the Church at home and abroad about the lost of this world. Also, as prophets to men under judgment they can declare the message of salvation.

The missionary movement of the last century has been prophetic both within and without the Church. In its relation to the priestly, pastoral core of the Church, it has maintained a relatively happy balance. This working partnership will continue as long as the missionary is willing to say, “The Lord is calling me to walk out on the water to him,” while the minister both at home and abroad replies, “Go; you have my blessing.”

The Uncommitted

In the deep wood, no road,

on the dark sea, too many stars,

through old and new ways faring,

without direction, mapless,

wanders the untrammeled mind.

Pale in the west, the sickled moon

after the bright sun’s dying,

faint the perfume of the fading rose

and red as blood the dogwood leaf

when beauty touches the unsuspecting heart.

But what is beauty? What is good?

Who are the guilty? What is truth?

A wrinkled brow, a knowing shrug,

a sleepless night perhaps,

and then a little washing of the hands.

Twisted vine and upper room and olive grove

recall nothing to the mind;

Golgotha and the Emmaus road

bring neither tear nor burning,

and the white moveless stone Pieta

impresses only as a work of art.

Is it not wiser to withhold judgment,

to withdraw the hand, avert the eye,

to keep the head unbowed, the knee unbent,

to walk into the Shadow companionless,

still testing all things and committed to nothing?

JAMES WESLEY INGLES

David B. Woodward, a minister of the United Presbyterian Church and formerly a missionary in Chinese Tibet, is general secretary of the China Sunday School Association in Taiwan. He received degrees from Davidson College and Princeton Theological Seminary.

- More from David B. Woodward

Theology

The Roots of Christian Humanism

Bernard Ramm

What are the necessary ingredients in forming a philosophy of higher education both at the college level and at the theological level? The situation at the time of the Reformation provides an answer to this question.

Humanism, a movement that lasted over three hundred years, was part of the background of the Reformation. At that time humanism was a spirit of free inquiry in contrast to a fixed philosophical tradition in Aristotle or the dogmatic decrees of the Church. It was in the best sense an attempt to be scholarly and academic. It had one great desire: to return to classical culture.

The classics of Greece and Rome were works produced by the outstanding poets, philosophers, and historians of the Greek and Roman period. Humanists believed that by studying the Greek and Latin languages, with the help of commentaries, grammars, lexicons, and histories, they could recover this era. Humanistic learning therefore stands in radical contrast to the scholasticism that prevailed in university education at the time of the Reformation.

One of the accomplishments of humanists was to understand thoroughly the weaknesses of the Roman Catholic Church in their day. They realized that the church desperately needed some kind of revitalization. Yet the amazing thing is that these humanists were not reformers. They were enmeshed in their Latin and Greek and philosophical studies, and although they presented all the weaknesses of the church, they never actively sought remedies. The humanist mentality finds the mentality of the reformer uncongenial. The pure scholar, the research worker concerned with the pursuit of truth and not with the achievement of truth, the person interested in the mechanics of scholarship and not in the burning issues of life, never becomes a reformer.

What has just been said applies to Christian colleges. I have spent twenty years teaching in colleges and seminaries and universities, and I still find the humanist mentality in our Christian education. Much about the humanist tradition is good and noble—the desire to be fair, to be academic, to be scholarly, to get away from partisanship and see the truth as it is. Basically, however, the humanist mentality does not include the elements of a reformer or of a revivalist in the good sense of the word.

What Luther knew, the humanists knew also; yet the Reformation did not originate in the humanist camp. It began, rather, with those men such as Luther who wholly dedicated themselves to the Word of God.

In the course of a trip to Rome Luther became disenchanted with Rome, but this disenchantment was not unusual. Indeed, it was typical for travelers from other parts of Europe to see in Rome the problems of the curia, the papacy, and the church, and then to return home completely disillusioned. Rome to them stood for the center of Christianity, for everything holy and sacred and wonderful. But when they got there many found it to be a mockery of the Christian religion. It was not Luther’s journey to Rome that made him a burning reformer.

The Reformer And The Bible

Where, then, did Luther’s tremendous reformation spirit originate? It came primarily from Scripture. At the age of thirty-two Luther was made a doctor of the Bible, his task being to give lectures on the Bible to monks and students. When he began his career in 1505, he was thoroughly a child of the church and a captive of the four-fold hermeneutical system, in which every passage of Scripture is given four interpretations.

Why was Luther able so incredibly to defy the whole Roman Catholic Church? The church had the power to take his life. It was an institution that had stood for 1,500 years—and one monk in a primitive part of Germany challenged everything that the pope and the papal nuncio had said. Why could Luther do this? Because he broke through to a profound understanding of the heart and core of the Word of God.

Between 1509 and 1518 Luther completely buried himself in the study of Sacred Scripture, particularly the Psalms, Hebrews, Galatians, Romans, and Genesis. It was out of this tremendous biblical background, this deep understanding of the meaning of the Scriptures, that this monk withstood the Roman Catholic Church in all her power and wrested from her the Reformed churches which we call Lutheran today.

The Reformation did not, then, grow out of humanism; it arose out of a profound investigation of the content of Sacred Scripture.

With this new insight into Scripture came the new synthesis—the new understanding of justification by faith, of the priesthood of believers, of the Christian Church, of the way of the Christian man. In other words, a completely different understanding of the Christian faith came about through a profound and diligent study of Sacred Scripture.

It was a saturation of the Word of God at tremendous depth that brought about the Reformation. Then an unusual thing happened: there was a marriage of humanism and the Reformation. Luther by his own studies actually achieved the humanistic standards of research in ancient documents. He was not in the proper sense a humanist. But by the diligent way in which he applied himself to the Word of God, he virtually arrived at the humanist view that a document must be understood in its literary-historical sense and in its original languages.

So Luther broke open an entirely new way to study the Bible and initiated a new hermeneutical theory. Just as soon as he heard of the new humanism he espoused it.

Melanchthon At Wittenberg

And then in 1518, the year after Luther published his famous tract against indulgences, a very important thing happened: Melanchthon arrived on the scene at the University of Wittenberg.

Melanchthon was completely given over to humanism, in contrast to the sterile traditionalism of the average Roman Catholic faculty. He had begun as a tutor at the University of Tübingen, which was deep in tradition; but tradition did not hold his attention. Therefore, when the invitation came he quickly moved to Wittenberg, carrying with him the new spirit of humanism. He remade the university and greatly influenced education all over Germany, and from then until his death, the University of Wittenberg manifested a remarkable combination of humanistic learning and Christian theology. In short, Melanchthon also joined together the Reformation and the new humanism. In so doing, he brought to the Reformation great academic dignity.

Turn now to John Calvin. Calvin took a high view of Scripture as the inspired, holy, authoritative Word of God, and he too accomplished remarkable things. He used the tools of the new humanism to produce what is, measured by our contemporary standards, the first truly scientific commentary on the Holy Scriptures. Why was John Calvin the first scholar in 1,500 years to give the Church a scientific commentary on the Bible? The reason is that he not only possessed a sense of the majesty and divinity of Scripture but also was a humanist. Thus he took the tools of humanism and applied them to biblical exegesis.

What really brought the Reformation to pass? What gave it stature? Why was it so successful in winning one-third of Europe away from the Roman Catholic Church? The answer is plain. The Reformation was a happy synthesis of humanism and, in the good sense, biblicism. Without these two elements, there never would have been a Reformation.

This brings us to higher education today, to the theological seminary as well as the college. I believe that the synthesis of the Reformation is what we ought to have today. We need the union of a strong biblicism, a strong and deep theology (exegetically, historically, and comparatively), with the liberal arts. It is this fusion that makes for greatness in Christian higher education.

There are some who specialize in memorizing the Bible and in sheer mastery of its content. What is important, however, is not how much of the surface is covered but how deeply it is penetrated. A student who has bypassed the liberal arts, and who therefore has bypassed a real education, simply does not have the intellectual lung power to dive in deeply. He does not have the tools for profound scholarship. Such lack of a liberal arts background breaks down the synthesis that is so essential to Christian education.

On the other hand, there are a great number of colleges called Christian that are dominated by religious liberalism. And what have they produced? Sophisticated works, to be sure, but works lacking great depth. For they too have in their own way broken down the synthesis without which first-rate Christian education cannot exist. In such colleges and universities the usual course in religion is no stronger than pabulum, for there is no penetration, no experience of being mastered by the Scripture.

The Word of God is not something that we grasp; it is something that grasps us. If we are overpowered by a critical attitude, we never get to the point where the Bible lays hold upon us. All we have is sophisticated courses in religious education devoid of dynamic. Thus the colleges committed to a rationalistic, critical view of Scripture have broken down the synthesis. They have honored humanism or liberal arts but have failed to recognize the depth, the vitality, the power, the authority of the written Word of God and the living Word of God.

The conclusion is plain. Christian education will be great only when it is a synthesis of biblicism and humanism. On the one hand, we must uphold the integrity of the liberal arts and demand that liberal arts courses in our Christian colleges be competently taught. On the other hand, we must maintain the dignity, the authority, and the depth of the revealed Word of God that we have in Sacred Scripture. Only then shall we have the synthesis that makes for greatness.

Any school, college, or seminary that breaks down this synthesis is headed for mediocrity. To become so preoccupied even with evangelism and the Gospel and the Bible as to depreciate the liberal arts is to clip the wings of Christian education and to stultify those powers that are essential to becoming mighty in the Scriptures. For it is possible to be religious and at the same time mediocre.

Contrariwise, there is the great temptation for a school to become only humanistic, simply an academic institution with religion pushed to one side. This too is a real peril. For the institution that implies that religion courses are for the sentimental and the immature and that the only solid courses are in the liberal arts is doomed to spiritual mediocrity.

Greatness is found only as we bring together in a happy, harmonious synthesis a profound study of Sacred Scripture and the integrity of the liberal arts.

At The Church Door

As I stood meditating within the sanctuary of God’s house, I heard an insistent knock upon the door. “Why does someone knock upon the door of God’s house?” I asked myself. “Does he expect me to stop my worship to open a door?” But I went to the door and opened it. “Enter,” I said. “It is wet and cold out there.”

My words were addressed to a man who, though dirty and shabby, had a certain air of authority. Looking me straight in the eye he said, “Come out with me and see the world and its need. Come out and walk the streets; share with me the pain and toil of life.”

“Sir,” I replied, “the church is warm and comfortable. Come in and discuss your problems with me. Come in and we will try to make things right.”

“But my need is out here,” cried the man, “in my home—in the factory where I work—in the bar and bowling alley where I play.”

“Ah, sir,” I reproached him, “do not take me to your shame. Leave the wrong. Come in and forget.”

The man turned his head, looking down the sloshy street. “I can’t forget my friends, my children,” he said sadly. “They are out here. We need to wash, but we do not know how. Come out and wash our feet.”

“But sir,” I complained, drawing the door to me a little, “consider my schedule; look here on my calendar. See the neat lines of events. My life is split up into activities that keep me here.”

The man turned and looked into the street. Then he pointed to a house and demanded, “Who lives there?”

“Why, Mr. and Mrs. No Good,” I replied. “They never go to church.”

“Do you know the hell they live in?” he asked. “Do you know of her unfaithfulness? of his constant drinking? of their young child’s lying to get attention? of their older boy’s seeking after thrills?”

“Of course,” I sighed. “Who doesn’t? We stand ready to receive them when they straighten out.”

“But,” pleaded the tattered man, “they need you to go to them and love them and share their problems.”

“Me?” I nearly shouted. “Me? Are there no AA workers? Have they closed the mental institutions? Where is the welfare agency?”

The man slowly turned and started down the stairs. I closed the door as quickly and quietly as possible, leaning against it. And from somewhere I heard the words: “When saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”—DONALD B. MOFFETT, minister, First United Presbyterian Church, Pataskala, Ohio.

Bernard Ramm is professor of systematic theology and apologetics at California Baptist Theological Seminary, Covina, California. This essay is adapted from a convocation address Dr. Ramm gave in September, 1963, at Bethel College and Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.

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