A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation by Madeleine L’engle and Luci Shaw

The Risk of Birth

This is no time for a child to be born,

With the earth betrayed by war & hate

And a nova lighting the sky to warn

That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honour & truth were trampled by scorn—

Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by greed & pride the sky is torn—

Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

—Madeleine L’Engle

After Annunciation

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

There’d have been no room for the child.

—Madeleine L’Engle

Mary’s Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast

keep warm this small hot naked star

fallen to my arms. (Rest …

you who have had so far

to come.) Now nearness satisfies

the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies

whose vigor hurled

a universe. He sleeps

whose eyelids have not closed before.

His breath (so slight it seems

no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps

to sprout a world.

Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw,

he dreams,

hearing no music from his other spheres.

Breath, mouth, ears, eyes

he is curtailed

who overflowed all skies,

all years.

Older than eternity, now he

is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed

to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,

blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,

brought to this birth

for me to be new-born,

and for him to see me mended

I must see him torn.

—Luci Shaw

Made Flesh

After the bright beam of hot annunciation

fused heaven with dark earth

his searing sharply-focused light

went out for a while

eclipsed in amniotic gloom:

his cool immensity of splendor

his universal grace

small-folded in a warm dim

female space—

the Word stem-sentenced

to be nine months dumb—

infinity walled in a womb

until the next enormity—the Mighty,

after submission to a woman’s pains

helpless on a barn-bare floor

first-tasting bitter earth.

Now, I in him surrender

to the crush and cry of birth.

Because eternity

was closeted in time

he is my open

door to forever.

From his imprisonment my freedoms grow,

find wings.

Part of his body, I transcend this flesh.

From his sweet silence my mouth sings.

Out of his dark I glow.

My life, as his,

slips through death’s mesh,

time’s bars,

joins hands with heaven,

speaks with stars.

—Luci Shaw

The Tree

The children say the tree must reach the ceiling,

And so it does, angel on topmost branch,

Candy canes and golden globes and silver chains,

Trumpets that toot, and birds with feathered tails.

Each year we say, each year we fully mean:

“This is the loveliest tree of all.” This tree

Bedecked with love and tinsel reaches heaven.

A pagan throwback may have brought it here

Into our room, and yet these decked-out boughs

Can represent those other trees, the one

Through which we fell in pride, when Eve forgot

That freedom is man’s freedom to obey

And to adore, not to replace the light

With disobedient darkness and self-will.

On Twelfth Night when we strip the tree

And see its branches bare and winter cold

Outside the comfortable room, the tree

Is then the tree on which all darkness hanged,

Completing the betrayal that began

With that first stolen fruit. And then, O God,

This is the tree that Simon bore uphill,

This is the tree that held all love and life.

Forgive us, Lord, forgive us for that tree.

But now, still decked, adorned, in joy arrayed

For these great days of Christmas thanks and song,

This is the tree that lights our faltering way,

For when man’s first and proud rebellious act

Had reached its nadir on that hill of skulls

These shining, glimmering boughs remind us that

The knowledge that we stole was freely given

And we were sent the Spirit’s radiant strength

That we might know all things. We grasp for truth

And lose it till it comes to us by love.

The glory of Lebanon shines on this Christmas tree,

The tree of life that opens wide the gates.

The children say the tree must reach the ceiling,

And so it does: for me the tree has grown so high

It pierces through the vast and star-filled sky.

—Madeleine L’Engle

Virgin-Born Rabbits

Virgin-Born Rabbits

In recent years, one scarcely sees either a strong defense of the importance of the Virgin Birth to Christian faith or an outright attack against it as scientific nonsense and a handicap to faith. Why the apologetic shift to other battlegrounds? In part this miracle has become domesticated, making it easier for some people to believe. What with “virgin-born” rabbits and sober scientific explanations that virgin births are really not all that surprising, some even took seriously the claims of a contemporary English woman that her child, too, was virgin born. The qualification that only female offspring could come from a virgin birth seemed a trivial objection. The case against the virgin birth of Christ almost reduced itself to “We don’t like novelty.”

A major shift in world view has accompanied this scientific attitude of sweet reasonableness toward a virgin birth miracle, and has provided its broader context. Somehow, at the end of the twentieth century, it seems far less important to show that acceptable religion must fit into a natural and rational framework. The world had proved to be far more mysterious and unpredictable than we had imagined. Yesterday’s wonder has become today’s commonplace. Miracle no longer seems the same formidable obstacle to faith as previously. Of course, by the same token, many no longer see it as proof of any particular religion, demanding a verdict.

Emil Brunner represents a sort of halfway house between the older rationalistic approach to the Virgin Birth and the more value-oriented, existential approach to theology. In his early work The Mediator, for example, he attacked the Virgin Birth as a “biological interpretation” of the real miracle—the Incarnation. It represents, so he argued, an unwarranted “inquisitiveness” into how God became man. Many years later he sought to tone down the sharpness of his criticism. He was really not so much concerned to show that the Virgin Birth is intellectually unacceptable as to remove it as an unnecessary obstacle to faith. To Brunner, the truth of the Virgin Birth is inconsequential because the divine incarnation does not depend on the biological miracle of a literal parthenogenesis.

Born Of Mary, Born Of A Virgin

In the Bible the Virgin Birth is centrally a sign of “Immanuel”—God with us. The miracle of Christmas informs us that God has entered the human race. The Virgin Birth is a sign that the child born at Bethlehem was not just any ordinary human being. Jesus Christ, in fact, could not be accounted for merely as the child born to human parents by ordinary processes of generation.

The familiar words of the Apostles’ Creed, “born of the Virgin Mary,” refer to quite opposite but mutually complementary truths. “Born of Mary” tells us that beside a manger in the stable of an inn at ancient Bethlehem of Judea a human child was born. In Jesus Christ we have no alien, no Mork from another planet, but one of us—flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. Like us all, Jesus was formed in the womb of a woman, was brought into the world through the wonder of human birth, was nourished at his mother’s breast, and lived out his childhood in the midst of brothers, sisters, and cousins. Scripture tells us that he grew to manhood in nondescript Nazareth, and came to the fullness of his life’s ministry in the prospering culture of cities surrounding the Sea of Galilee.

In all these matters, Jesus of Nazareth did not differ materially from the rest of us. He and you and I are all one in the genuineness and fulness of our humanity.

But “born of the Virgin” points in the opposite direction. It is the sign that Jesus was different from all the rest of us. Natural processes of humankind could never have brought him into being. The Virgin Birth stands as a label over the Christmas child: “Not made by man!”

And man, here, must be taken generically. It was not just that Jesus had no human father. The birth of Jesus was something that humankind could not produce. As a human mother, Mary was just as helpless as Joseph to bring this child into existence.

Sex And Sin

Occasionally, the Virgin Birth is explained by its defenders as necessary to account for Christ’s sinlessness. It is as though our human bent to sin were inherited only through the male line. But women, too, are affected by sin and share in the sinful nature of the human race. Such a view of the Virgin Birth turns the matter upside-down. The Virgin Birth may explain the sinlessness of Christ, but only indirectly.

Directly, it is a sign that, though Jesus is fully human and though in his humanity he is, apart from sin, just like us, his humanity does not exhaust the truth about him. And Mary, though a woman of our race, could not account for all that he is, for he is both fully human and more than human.

Does the passage on the Virgin Birth teach that sex relations are necessarily evil, and therefore inappropriate if Mary was to bear a holy child? Thinking this, some believe that the Roman Catholic dogma of Mary’s immaculate conception would explain Christ’s sinlessness since, by this teaching, from birth on she would supposedly have been free from all taint of sin. But such a view of sex relations is alien to the structure of biblical teaching, beginning with the first command given Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply.”

It is true that all human acts since the Fall are tainted with sin. In this life we never act from absolutely pure motives. Still, sexual life is not inherently more affected by sin than other aspects of our common life. Sexual life is not essentially more evil than eating our daily bread or working in a factory. In his Institutes (II/13/4) Calvin puts all of this in good biblical order: “The generation of man is not unclean and vicious of itself, but is so as an accidental quality arising from the Fall.… We make Christ free of all stain not just because he was begotten of his mother without copulation with man, but because he was sanctified by the Spirit.”

Beyond Human Ability

More than this, the Virgin Birth is a sign not of sinlessness but of “Immanuel”—God with us. Through a special miracle of sanctification God could cause sinful parents to produce a sinless human offspring. But neither sinful nor holy human parents could produce an offspring who is God. That is beyond their humanity. And neither could a virgin human mother do this! It does not matter whether she was sinlessly holy from conception on (as most traditional Roman Catholics believed in the past), or a queen among women who yet possessed a sinful nature, did indeed sin, and therefore needed a Savior (as most Protestants believe). The Incarnation, by which the Sovereign God of the universe becomes born into the human race, raises the whole matter to a new dimension.

The words of the Apostles’ Creed, “Conceived by the Holy Ghost,” fill out the story on the positive side. Jesus Christ is not the son of the Holy Spirit as to his humanity. Rather, Jesus Christ, with respect to his humanity, had no father. We have here no mythological mating of a divine being with a human mother to produce a demigod. Jesus Christ was no hybrid, neither fully man, nor fully God; he was not merely half God and half man.

As the biblical context makes clear, no new person came into existence at the conception of the Virgin Mary. Rather, an eternal person, the second person of the Triune God, chose to come down into our human race and be born one of us. An eternal person in his own right, he took something new to himself—humanity, flesh and blood, our human life and nature—because he loved us unto salvation at a cross. Instead of an ordinary human baby, begotten by a man and born of a woman to produce a new person, the Spirit of God introduced into the body of Mary a Divine Person, who through the Virgin Birth added to himself all that is essential to humanity. This is the incarnation of the eternal God—God become also man—the mystery and the miracle of Christmas.

The deity of Jesus Christ, of course, does not rest upon his virgin birth. Christians believe in the deity of Christ for quite different reasons. Could God have become incarnate in some other way? That is not for us to say. Long ago we learned that in matters like these, where Scripture is silent, our highest wisdom is to refrain from making rash assertions.

Yet this is the way he chose to enter our race. And by excluding man from a process of human conception by which a new person is brought into being, we can understand better how, through the Virgin Birth, no mere person was formed. Rather, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the eternal God stooped down to be born of the Virgin Mary, and through her took on our humanity to become both true God and true man—two natures in one person.

KENNETH S. KANTZER

Ideas

The Miracle of Christmas

Kenneth S. Kantzer

Reaffirming the mystery of the Incarnation.

What is contemporary science saying about virgin births and religious miracles? How are people today treating the virgin birth of Christ? What are we to say about the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary? Does “virgin born” refer primarily to Christ’s deity, or to his sinlessness? At root, what is God’s message to us in the Virgin Birth?

It is time for an update on this doctrine. Fifty years ago the battle of the Virgin Birth wracked the church. It ranked along with the bodily resurrection of Christ, the infallibility of Scripture, and the second coming of Christ as one of five or six fundamentals of the faith under special attack.

Virgin-Born Rabbits

In recent years, one scarcely sees either a strong defense of the importance of the Virgin Birth to Christian faith or an outright attack against it as scientific nonsense and a handicap to faith. Why the apologetic shift to other battlegrounds? In part this miracle has become domesticated, making it easier for some people to believe. What with “virgin-born” rabbits and sober scientific explanations that virgin births are really not all that surprising, some even took seriously the claims of a contemporary English woman that her child, too, was virgin born. The qualification that only female offspring could come from a virgin birth seemed a trivial objection. The case against the virgin birth of Christ almost reduced itself to “We don’t like novelty.”

A major shift in world view has accompanied this scientific attitude of sweet reasonableness toward a virgin birth miracle, and has provided its broader context. Somehow, at the end of the twentieth century, it seems far less important to show that acceptable religion must fit into a natural and rational framework. The world had proved to be far more mysterious and unpredictable than we had imagined. Yesterday’s wonder has become today’s commonplace. Miracle no longer seems the same formidable obstacle to faith as previously. Of course, by the same token, many no longer see it as proof of any particular religion, demanding a verdict.

Emil Brunner represents a sort of halfway house between the older rationalistic approach to the Virgin Birth and the more value-oriented, existential approach to theology. In his early work The Mediator, for example, he attacked the Virgin Birth as a “biological interpretation” of the real miracle—the Incarnation. It represents, so he argued, an unwarranted “inquisitiveness” into how God became man. Many years later he sought to tone down the sharpness of his criticism. He was really not so much concerned to show that the Virgin Birth is intellectually unacceptable as to remove it as an unnecessary obstacle to faith. To Brunner, the truth of the Virgin Birth is inconsequential because the divine incarnation does not depend on the biological miracle of a literal parthenogenesis.

Born Of Mary, Born Of A Virgin

In the Bible the Virgin Birth is centrally a sign of “Immanuel”—God with us. The miracle of Christmas informs us that God has entered the human race. The Virgin Birth is a sign that the child born at Bethlehem was not just any ordinary human being. Jesus Christ, in fact, could not be accounted for merely as the child born to human parents by ordinary processes of generation.

The familiar words of the Apostles’ Creed, “born of the Virgin Mary,” refer to quite opposite but mutually complementary truths. “Born of Mary” tells us that beside a manger in the stable of an inn at ancient Bethlehem of Judea a human child was born. In Jesus Christ we have no alien, no Mork from another planet, but one of us—flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. Like us all, Jesus was formed in the womb of a woman, was brought into the world through the wonder of human birth, was nourished at his mother’s breast, and lived out his childhood in the midst of brothers, sisters, and cousins. Scripture tells us that he grew to manhood in nondescript Nazareth, and came to the fullness of his life’s ministry in the prospering culture of cities surrounding the Sea of Galilee.

In all these matters, Jesus of Nazareth did not differ materially from the rest of us. He and you and I are all one in the genuineness and fulness of our humanity.

But “born of the Virgin” points in the opposite direction. It is the sign that Jesus was different from all the rest of us. Natural processes of humankind could never have brought him into being. The Virgin Birth stands as a label over the Christmas child: “Not made by man!”

And man, here, must be taken generically. It was not just that Jesus had no human father. The birth of Jesus was something that humankind could not produce. As a human mother, Mary was just as helpless as Joseph to bring this child into existence.

Sex And Sin

Occasionally, the Virgin Birth is explained by its defenders as necessary to account for Christ’s sinlessness. It is as though our human bent to sin were inherited only through the male line. But women, too, are affected by sin and share in the sinful nature of the human race. Such a view of the Virgin Birth turns the matter upside-down. The Virgin Birth may explain the sinlessness of Christ, but only indirectly.

Directly, it is a sign that, though Jesus is fully human and though in his humanity he is, apart from sin, just like us, his humanity does not exhaust the truth about him. And Mary, though a woman of our race, could not account for all that he is, for he is both fully human and more than human.

Does the passage on the Virgin Birth teach that sex relations are necessarily evil, and therefore inappropriate if Mary was to bear a holy child? Thinking this, some believe that the Roman Catholic dogma of Mary’s immaculate conception would explain Christ’s sinlessness since, by this teaching, from birth on she would supposedly have been free from all taint of sin. But such a view of sex relations is alien to the structure of biblical teaching, beginning with the first command given Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply.”

It is true that all human acts since the Fall are tainted with sin. In this life we never act from absolutely pure motives. Still, sexual life is not inherently more affected by sin than other aspects of our common life. Sexual life is not essentially more evil than eating our daily bread or working in a factory. In his Institutes (II/13/4) Calvin puts all of this in good biblical order: “The generation of man is not unclean and vicious of itself, but is so as an accidental quality arising from the Fall.… We make Christ free of all stain not just because he was begotten of his mother without copulation with man, but because he was sanctified by the Spirit.”

Beyond Human Ability

More than this, the Virgin Birth is a sign not of sinlessness but of “Immanuel”—God with us. Through a special miracle of sanctification God could cause sinful parents to produce a sinless human offspring. But neither sinful nor holy human parents could produce an offspring who is God. That is beyond their humanity. And neither could a virgin human mother do this! It does not matter whether she was sinlessly holy from conception on (as most traditional Roman Catholics believed in the past), or a queen among women who yet possessed a sinful nature, did indeed sin, and therefore needed a Savior (as most Protestants believe). The Incarnation, by which the Sovereign God of the universe becomes born into the human race, raises the whole matter to a new dimension.

The words of the Apostles’ Creed, “Conceived by the Holy Ghost,” fill out the story on the positive side. Jesus Christ is not the son of the Holy Spirit as to his humanity. Rather, Jesus Christ, with respect to his humanity, had no father. We have here no mythological mating of a divine being with a human mother to produce a demigod. Jesus Christ was no hybrid, neither fully man, nor fully God; he was not merely half God and half man.

As the biblical context makes clear, no new person came into existence at the conception of the Virgin Mary. Rather, an eternal person, the second person of the Triune God, chose to come down into our human race and be born one of us. An eternal person in his own right, he took something new to himself—humanity, flesh and blood, our human life and nature—because he loved us unto salvation at a cross. Instead of an ordinary human baby, begotten by a man and born of a woman to produce a new person, the Spirit of God introduced into the body of Mary a Divine Person, who through the Virgin Birth added to himself all that is essential to humanity. This is the incarnation of the eternal God—God become also man—the mystery and the miracle of Christmas.

The deity of Jesus Christ, of course, does not rest upon his virgin birth. Christians believe in the deity of Christ for quite different reasons. Could God have become incarnate in some other way? That is not for us to say. Long ago we learned that in matters like these, where Scripture is silent, our highest wisdom is to refrain from making rash assertions.

Yet this is the way he chose to enter our race. And by excluding man from a process of human conception by which a new person is brought into being, we can understand better how, through the Virgin Birth, no mere person was formed. Rather, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the eternal God stooped down to be born of the Virgin Mary, and through her took on our humanity to become both true God and true man—two natures in one person.

KENNETH S. KANTZER

Eutychus and His Kin: December 14, 1984

Denomination For Every Family

Harvey Jackson announced today the formation of Denominations Aplenty, an organization committed to the idea that we need more denominations, not fewer. Eutychus interviewed Jackson at his Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, headquarters.

Eutychus: Why more denominations, Harv?

Jackson: Every man’s religion is a personal thing between him and God. Our goal for the eighties is for every family in the United States to have its own denomination. By the year 2000, we hope to extend that to a denomination for each and every family member.

Eutychus: That seems to fly in the face of Christian unity.

Jackson: Unity is a myth. Name one good thing that ever came out of large denominations.

Eutychus: Fellowship.

Jackson: All right, name another.

Eutychus: Peace, understanding …

Jackson: You’re missing the point. Ever since the Reformation we’ve been stressing more and more the priesthood of the believer. My organization is simply carrying that to its logical conclusion.

Think of the benefits: No more denominational politics, no more fights over who controls the church, no more petty theological disputes.

Listen, Euty: If you had your own denomination you could settle things nice and peacefully between you and God. There would be no hassles about organizations. Just happy Christians.

Eutychus: What’s your plan to carry out this mission?

Jackson: We’ve put together a “Start Your Own Denomination” kit that sells for $29.95. Each kit includes a cassette tape of Jane Fonda singing “I Gotta Be Me,” a book of unregistered names for new denominations, and quickie incorporation papers for the state in which you choose to register your denomination.

Eutychus: I don’t think I can endorse your plan, Harvey.

Jackson: Don’t worry about it. I’m only called to preach division; I can’t guarantee results.

EUTYCHUS

The SDA wall

“The Wall of Adventism” by Joan Craven [Oct. 19] is, as a whole, well balanced, and should be read carefully by Adventists and others. I do not believe the Sabbath presents an insurmountable wall; the wall is lack of understanding on both sides and a lack of desire to lessen that misunderstanding. Adventists, I believe, will draw nearer to other Christians when we begin to have a better comprehension of what Ellen White was and what she was not.

EUGENE LINCOLN

Fairview Oklahoma

Craven lauds an Adventist father who, according to her, told his daughter, “The denomination you belong to doesn’t matter. What matters is if you love Jesus.” Some denominations deny even the divinity and virgin birth of Jesus Christ; in Craven’s view, however, these or a thousand other errors are quite acceptable, just so you love Jesus. Come now: What honest Christian, Adventist or otherwise, can subscribe to such unscriptural drivel?

KEN CAMPBELL

Mead, Wash.

It’s too bad Craven remembered “Bible Ping-Pong” rather than “Jesus Loves Me” from her childhood. Her characterization of Adventism by way of selected anecdotes leaves a lot to be desired. For instance, she missed Adventist Bible teachers who assign their students to attend non-Adventist churches and to research their beliefs and practices; she missed my mother, who sent me to Baptist youth meetings when our Adventist church had none.

Her wall of separation crumbles on the final page, where she shows prominent Adventists writing for non-Adventist publishers, an Adventist bookstore being one of a non-Adventist publisher’s top academic customers, and Adventist parents being surprisingly open with their children who choose other denominations.

ROBERT W. NIXON

General Conference of

Seventh-day Adventists

Washington, D.C.

Adventism can be flawed. Heaven was flawed by a created being who won a third of the angels plus 100 percent success in Eden where he met total failure. I have two nephews who left the church, sons of an Adventist minister.

FRANK A. HOFANA

Norridge, Ill.

Keeping the Sabbath is not a man-made doctrine. There are many nominal Christians who “worship” on Sundays in a cold, formal way. The gospel is to force us from this, too. Still, finally, the Ten Commandments are not to be played with.

KENNETH LENTZ

Moorhead, Minn.

If everybody ought to keep the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, then why did God create the world in such a way that in the Land of the Midnight Sun and Midday Noon, for many months each year the solar orb is not seen to cross the horizon, making it absolutely impossible to see, no less observe, the time of the setting of the sun?

PAUL FREIWIRTH

Pembroke, N.C.

Christians and the 1984 election

You are to be commended for a thoughtful analysis of the American political scene in your October 5 and 19 issues. I would point, out though, that the record of Congressman Don Bonker (D-Wash.), one evangelical quoted frequently in the final article, illustrates the credibility problems Democrats have when they try to appeal to Christian voters by saying they represent the cause of social justice. While Bonker tells your magazine that “one out of ten verses in the synoptic Gospels deals with the question of wealth and poverty,” he has not been overly concerned about the unborn children of the poor, since he voted against amendments that would have barred Medicaid coverage of abortion and barred the use of federal and District funds to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia.

SAMUEL B. THIELMAN, M.D.

Durham, N.C.

Beth Spring [Oct. 5] reveals the discomfort of unreconstituted church-state separatists when repeating the stock charges of the so-called moderate Republicans. Her historical analysis missed the real story: the political activation of the Religious Right against the encroachments and abuses of secularism. This is not so much, as she would have it, a response to Reagan or classic Republicanism. What Reagan has succeeded in doing, however, is precisely what the new style of leadership is about—he found a parade and stepped in front of it. The unassayed theme, though, is the parade itself. I find it incomprehensible that when a national leader finally does identify with a sizable portion of the conservative agenda, a leading conservative publication then, instead of applauding, seems at once embarrassed and appears to lack the confidence to speak clearly its conscience.

REV. LESLIE L. BORSAY

Presbyterian Church of the Cross

Omaha, Nebr.

Bless you, CT! Into my small town, where politically thoughtful evangelicals seem as scarce as hen’s teeth, and where single-issue conservatives are thick as bugs on a bumper, comes your magazine twice a month to revive my mind and my heart. Your thought-provoking articles and detailed news coverage are a welcome supplement to my reading diet. Special congratulations to Beth Spring and Rodney Clapp for their objective, comprehensive, thoughtful, and biblical articles on the Republican and Democratic parties.

KAREN J. UNSWORTH

Rutland, Vt.

Rodney Clapp’s “Insight” into “What the Democrats Believe” [Oct. 19] was neither insightful nor believable. Trotting out the same old tiresome liberal clichés hardly constitutes a “closer look” at the issues of this campaign. The editors have done the readers a great disservice by allowing ludicrous generalities. How is it that the same magazine that purports to reveal the deeper meaning behind the not-so-deep metaphysics of Robert Schuller cannot present a clear summary of something so easily authenticated as the Democratic and Republican positions or records?

PAUL MILLER

New Ringgold, Pa.

I applaud Rodney Clapp’s article; he states the position of the Democrats well. Issues such as abortion, the nuclear arms race, and poverty must be dealt with. One cannot afford to base this election on a single issue; much is at stake. However, we must recognize that God can and will work through whoever gets elected.

DOMINIC SIMON

Crawfordsville, Ind.

Was your article “What the Democrats Believe” actually written for an evangelical readership? I wonder. If this is where evangelicalism is headed, I want off the train. I’ll call myself something else.

DAVID BELL

Monmouth, Oreg.

I am not registered to vote. I have no regrets. I think I am well informed.

ORVILLE RUTSCHMAN

Hesston, Kansas

Love, not mud

A special thanks to Gil Beers and Harold Smith for the editorial “Mudslinging in the Sanctuary” [Oct. 19]. I heartily concur with their comments. At a recent meeting of Independent Baptist pastors in our state, the preaching schedule was devoted to this subject of friendship, fellowship, and acceptance. For too long we have shot at one another when we should be loving one another.

REV. JOHN D. STRAIN

Westfair Baptist Church

Jacksonville, Ill.

I would suggest your editors reread the last two paragraphs on p. 144 of Bad News for Modern Man. Having read Franky [Schaeffer]’s book, it is quite clear that he is speaking of evangelicals as “we.” It would seem that Beers and Smith are upset because he “calls them out.” Whether Jesus used invectives when he chased out the moneychangers, I don’t know. The fact remains, however, that he did chase them out.

STEVE OTT

Amarillo, Tex.

Your editorial makes some valid points. We should certainly love others who also follow Christ, but I would like to make a distinction, as Jesus did, between lay people and those in leadership positions who claim to speak for the Founder of the Christian church. Christ clearly condemned (and Paul does, too) the false teachers and apostates who slip in and mislead the flock. People are beginning to wake up to the fact that a lot of what is being taught in some seminaries and “Christian” colleges is not Christian at all. Appeals to “love” to mask false teaching (on abortion, for example) have nothing to do with love at all.

CAL THOMAS

The Moral Majority, Inc.

Lynchburg, Va.

I heartily endorse the editorial, and suggest CT practice what it preaches in the Eutychus and His Kin column: No more letters that simply call names or make accusations without support.

DR. RICHARD MAYER

St. Louis, Mo.

Franky Schaeffer a “self-appointed” leader? Somehow I take that inherently derogatory description as CT’s own form of mudslinging. (Or is it loving confrontation?)

SUE STORM

Hume, Ill.

Voting for Christians—or “infidels”

“When ‘Infidels’ Run for Office,” by Mark Noll [Oct. 5], provided a perspective that was provocative as well as informative regarding the problematic role of the Christian in the voting process. It was very helpful to focus upon an instance in American history where the election of an “infidel” proved to be a wise choice. Yet, the conclusions regarding the proper religious assessment of a candidate lacked a sense of biblical direction. The Bible says little or nothing about how to sort through political demogoguery, nor does it state how to evaluate a candidate’s platform; but it certainly speaks explicitly about the purpose of government: justice must be served. Whether the candidate is a believer or unbeliever makes no difference. The application of this biblical truth would have safeguarded against the religious prejudice that shrouded the understanding of the colonial “evangelicals” during the election of 1800.

STEPHEN A. WETTERHAN

Middletown, Ohio

I think a different lesson is to be learned. The election of 1800 was a key fork in the road in determining the relationship between church and state in the United States. Is not the statement “separation of church and state” at the vanguard of all the attempts to exclude religious thinking from the free market of ideas and the workings of government? This statement of Jefferson’s, not found in any of the documents on which our government is founded, is accorded the authority of the Constitution itself. The Christian leaders in 1800 rightly understood the election as a confrontation between the veiled humanism of the enlightenment and the Christian belief system. We are now reaping the fruit of that election 200 years later in the secularization of society and a government that is uncommonly uncomfortable with God.

BRAD W. JENSEN

Portland, Oreg.

You have done a great service by giving a perspective of history and of origins of the issues.

REV. WARD MCCABE

San Jose, Calif.

Judging Schuller

Some of the responses to your articles regarding Robert Schuller remind me of lines by Chang Tsu, a Chinese philosopher of the fourth century B.C.:

How shall I talk of the sea to the frog, if he has never left his pond?

How shall I talk of the frost to the bird of the summer land if it has never left the land of its birth?

How shall I talk of life with a sage if he’s the prisoner of his doctrine?

Let Schuller be judged by the fruit of his ministry in the conversion of the secular world rather than whether or not he is a “fellow-prisoner of doctrine.”

F. RODERICK DAIL

Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Watching Maranatha

When I read “A Team of Cult Watchers Challenges a Growing Campus Ministry” [Aug. 10], I thought that you had addressed an important issue in relation to Christians keeping a watchful, concerned, and caring eye on one another. When I read the responses [Oct. 5], I wondered if these people were writing about the same article I thought I had read. So I reread the article. Then I reread the letters. One writer referred to Mr. Frame’s “alarming lack of objectivity,” that he “casts doubt upon an impressive list of endorsements.” Yet it was pointed out that the organization used a picture and a statement of Billy Graham without knowledge or permission of Mr. Graham’s evangelistic association. With this in mind, how should I view Maranatha’s other endorsements?

MIKAL SMITH

Long Beach, Calif.

I was not going to write regarding your discussion of Maranatha until I read your readers’ responses. As a pastor and campus minister, we have been dealing with Maranatha’s groups for six years. The experience has been most disturbing. Thank you for your article. All I have seen in the Christian media has been praise for Maranatha. I had begun to think that those of us in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama were dealing with isolated cases of fanaticism.

REV. MICHAEL D. NELSON

Hendersonville Chapel

Hendersonville, Tenn.

Withdrawing that IVP book

I read “InterVarsity Withdraws a Book Opposed by Prolifers” [Sept. 21] with sadness. Why withdraw a book? IVCF apparently lacks convictions and integrity, lacks forethought and afterthought, and so therefore withdrew the book without biblical reasons for doing so after publishing the book without biblical reasons for doing so (at least as far as the abortion chapter goes).

MARK RENTZ

Tempe, Ariz.

Shame on you, James McLeish, president of IVP, and Jimmy Locklear, public relations director, for allowing the threat of financial withdrawal from your ministry to cause you to back down from what you first believed to be a perfectly moral decision to publish Dr. Jones’s book. Shame on you, Curt Young, and your Christian Action Council, and you, Joseph Scheidler, and your Pro-Life Action League for being afraid to allow opposing views to be distributed through the Christian community. And shame on you, Franky Schaeffer. Your father stood for intellectual integrity and honesty and never backed down from an honest opponent.

REV. DENNIS L. ZIMMERMAN

Third Presbyterian Church

Fort Wayne, Ind.

Playing Bible games

Your story about “Bible trivia” games [Oct. 5] reminds me of many hours of enjoyment, excitement, and profitable Bible learning that I and thousands of others have appreciated for years in the form of “Bible quiz” activities of many sorts. I thank God for these and for the creative entrepreneurs who have invested time and money to encourage Christians and others to have fun while learning more about the Bible. I, for one, am not offended that the secular Trivia Pursuit “craze” has sparked this new enthusiasm for Bible quiz games. Nor am I offended that some of the publishers may turn a handsome cash profit. Christian publishing houses have been doing that for years while providing the church with helpful published materials.

AL HIEBERT, PH.D.

Winnipeg Bible College

Otterburne, Man., Canada

That article taught important lessons about the paucity of Christian creativity; the nature of Christian commerce; and the readiness of Christians to trivialize their faith for fun and profit. But then, if you can’t beat them, join them!

LARRY PAVLICEK

Richfield, Minn.

New & Notable Books

The following books have been chosen from publishers’ lists of recent releases or those forthcoming in the next few months. Content descriptions are condensed from those supplied by publishers.

Abingdon Press

Harold Ivan Smith, Tear Catchers (October)

The author, director for Tear Catchers, a ministry of compassion in Kansas City, Missouri, writes to help men to explore inner potential, to help women who wish to better understand mates, and to help couples who desire a more intimate marriage.

Albert C. Outler, editor, The Works of John Wesley (May, Vol. 1; other volumes through November 1988)

A series of four volumes of John Wesley’s sermons compiled by the professor emeritus of theology at Perkins School of Theology.

Paul Washburn, An Unfinished Church: A Brief History of the Union of the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church

A chronicle of behind-the-scenes events.

Acropolis Books

Sandy Golden, Driving the Drunk Off the Road

A handbook for community action coming from the author’s personal experience.

The Alliance for Prenatal Research and Services, The Father Book: Pregnancy and Beyond

A guide to pregnancy and childbirth, written especially for fathers.

University Of Alabama Press

Dabney Adams Hart, Through the Open Door: A New Look at C. S. Lewis (July)

Focuses on Lewis the scholar, critic, and teacher.

Augsburg Publishing House

Judy Hyland, In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (July)

A story of the author’s imprisonment in the Philippines with 500 American missionaries in 1941.

Christmas: The Annual of Christmas Literature and Art

Volume 54 of a quality annual with poetry, literature, art, and Christmas customs.

Bethany House Publishers

J. W. Jepson, Don’t Blame It All on Adam (June)

A layman’s guide to the theology of Charles G. Finney.

James Bjornstad, Sun Myung Moon & the Unification Church (July)

A 64-page booklet answering frequently asked questions about the subject.

Andrew Murray, The Believer’s Full Blessing of Pentecost (one of 11 books of Andrew Murray reprinted).

George MacDonald, The Musician’s Quest (the sixth in a series of MacDonald reprints).

Broadman Press

Leroy Fitts, A History of Black Baptists (July)

Comprehensive history of black Baptist heritage.

Ebbie C. Smith, Balanced Church Growth (October)

An approach to church growth modeled on servanthood.

Lloyd Elder, Blueprints (June)

Gives a vision of where Southern Baptists are and suggests challenging goals for the future.

M. Thomas Starkes, God’s Commissioned People (August)

A history of Christian missions with maps, index, and time lines.

Christian Books International

Andrew Murray, The Blood of the Cross, The Ministry of Intercession, Waiting on God, and Absolute Surrender

Four in a series of 11 Andrew Murray reprints.

Anne Arnott, The Secret Country of C. S. Lewis

Small biography of Lewis.

Columbia University Press

Furio Colombo, God in America (October)

Asks the question: Will the fine line between church and state survive the new era of religious involvement?

Crossway Books

George Barna and William Paul McKay, Vital Signs (August)

Deals with the way evangelical Christians have responded to the challenges of emerging social trends.

John Eidsmoe, God and Caesar (July)

How should Christians be involved in their government?

Doubleday & Company

Eugene Kennedy, The Now and Future Church (September)

Radical changes are taking place in the American Roman Catholic church. Are these leading this church into renewal or disintegration?

Elyce Wakerman, Father Loss (October)

Studies women who lost their fathers at an early age and the impact on their lives.

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

George Goldberg, Reconsecrating America (September)

Argues that the current debate over church-state relationships is unnecessary.

Robert Knille, As I Was Saying (November)

A Chesterton reader.

Stephen V. Monsma, Pursuing Justice in a Sinful World (October)

Examines ways to reconcile the world of political ideals with the gritty world of political action.

Epiphany (Ballantine)

Madeleine L’Engle, A Winter’s Love (February)

A novel set in the French Alps.

Fortress Press

Kurt Aland, A History of Christianity, Vol. 1 (February)

From the beginnings to the Reformation.

Martin Brecht, Martin Luther (February)

A major biography (592 pp.) of Luther, focusing on his youth, 1483–1521.

Harold Shaw Publishers

The Shaw Pocket Bible Handbook

Brief summaries of each book of the Bible, with more than 160 photos, maps, and charts.

Madeleine L’Engle, The Twenty-four Days before Christmas

A family prepares for a new arrival in time for Christmas.

Luci Shaw, editor, A Widening Light

More than 30 contemporary Christian poets portray the Incarnation.

Harvest House Publishers

Jim Smoke, Living Beyond Divorce

Explores the fears, questions, and discoveries of being single after a divorce.

Intervarsity Press

Tim Stafford, The Friendship Gap

Talks about hurdles to transcultural relationships, such as missionaries and the people to whom they minister as well as the people back home.

Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (revised)

Updates the situation around the world since the book was first published, and responds to critics by reconsidering and reformulating his arguments.

Kregel Publications

F. B. Meyer, Choice Notes on the Psalms (October)

Reprint of a classic. Features inner struggles of David and prophetic references to Christ.

Adolph Saphir, Our Lord’s Pattern for Prayer and The Unity of Scripture

Two reprinted classics. The first is based on the Lord’s Prayer. The second shows the unity between the Old and New Testaments.

Loyola University Press

John R. Connery, S.J., Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective

Traces the development of the Roman Catholic attitude toward abortion from the beginning of the Christian era to the middle of the twentieth century.

Macmillan Publishing Co.

Bruce Bernard, The Bible and Its Painters (October)

Selections of over 200 paintings in full color with the biblical texts they illustrate, arranged according to the books of the Bible.

Mcgill Queen’S University Press

G. A. Rawlyk, Ravished by the Spirit (October)

A sympathetic yet critical account of the effect of Nova Scotia preacher Henry Alline and his New Light disciples on the nineteenth-century evangelical ethos of Nova Scotia.

Kurt Bowen, Protestants in a Catholic State

Shows what happened to the Protestant minority, and especially the Church of Ireland, from 1922 to the present time.

Moody Press

Walter C. Kaiser, Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament (April 1985)

Seeks to find an authentic representation of the way the Old Testament was used by the New Testament writers.

Ruth Johnson Jay, Mary Slessor: White Queen of the Cannibals (January 1985)

A biography of a woman who left Scotland to bring the gospel and education to the primitive people of Calibar.

Cyril J. Barber, The Minister’s Library (February 1985)

To help pastors, seminarians, and Christian students get the most from their personal library.

Morehouse-Barlow Co.

Lawrence Reimer and James Wagner, The Hospital Handbook (October)

A practical guide to hospital visitation.

Multnomah Press

Jerry S. Herbert, America, Christian or Secular?

Compilation of views of several spokesmen, with an overview of our nation’s heritage to help evangelicals think about our country’s origin.

Michael Green, New Life, New Lifestyle

Talks about the new life of a born-again believer—changes, doubts, difficulties. Published originally by Hodder & Stoughton, England.

Thomas Nelson Books

Thomas Howard, Evangelical Is Not Enough (July)

Howard grew up in the familiar worship patterns of evangelicalism. Now he sets forth the appreciation he has gained for liturgical worship.

A. Berkeley Mickelsen, Daniel and Revelation: Riddles or Realities? (July)

Guides the reader to see these two books in the context of their times and in the light of their meaning for today.

Putnam Publishing

Lea Bramnick and Anita Simon, The Parents’ Solution Book: Your Child from Five to Twelve (November)

Handbook to the problems of parenting.

Random House

Marcy Jackson, The Grandparent Book

A book where grandparents can record the grandchild’s development and heritage.

Servant Publications

William Stanmeyer, The Seduction of Society (October)

Defines pornography and traces its rapid spread into virtually all areas of our culture in recent years. Pays special attention to pornography’s victims. Helps readers understand pornography and how to eliminate it.

Lynn Buzzard and Laura Campbell, Holy Disobedience (October)

Provides biblically based answers to the questions about how and when Christians should adopt resistance as a righteous course of action.

Richard Keyes, Beyond Identity (September)

Shows how God rebuilds man’s sense of self through the experience of daily life—in marriage and family life, work, emotions, prayer, and even in failure.

Tyndale House Publishers

Paul Welter, Learning from Children (August)

A personal quest into a child’s universe, and the experiences of other adults in their involvement with children.

Robert G. Barnes, Single Parenting: A Wilderness Journey (October)

Answers questions for single parents pertaining to self-esteem, finances, sex education, discipline, value building, remarriage, and visitation.

Jim Rayburn III, Dance, Children, Dance (October)

A biography of Jim Rayburn, founder of Young Life, written by his son. Its purpose is to help other men and women of God as they find their faith and individualism somewhat out of step with the world of conventional Christianity.

Victor Books

Warren Wiersbe, From Worry to Worship

Studies in the Book of Habakkuk about worry and fear. To help the reader conquer especially fears about the future.

Lynn Buzzard and James Barlow, Who Should Live? Who Should Die?

Explores some of the medical choices becoming moral dilemmas—organ harvesting, genetic engineering, defining death, rights of the fetus, euthanasia, living will, the right to die.

Bartlett and Margaret Hess, Never Say Old

Helps the reader discover his or her own individual style for creative aging, so that the mature years will be full of new challenges and joy.

Viking Press

Jonathan Miller and David Pelham, The Facts of Life (October)

The miracle of human reproduction is described in three-dimensional, movable illustrations that follow the development of a baby from conception to birth. Author Miller is a medical doctor.

Westminster Press

James Barr, Beyond Fundamentalism (November)

Argues that an understanding of biblical authority has to begin with an acceptance of what the Bible really is, and not by forcing upon it a preconceived dogmatic scheme. Focuses especially on ways in which understandings of Scripture can and must change as individuals grow in Christian maturity.

Michael Mazir-Ali, Islam: A Christian Perspective (September)

Presented from the viewpoint of one who is a Christian with a Muslim background, living in a Muslim world. Is both critical and sympathetic to Islam.

Robert McAfee Brown, Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (September)

After presenting the challenges of selected Bible passages, the author addresses those who may feel threatened by the message, showing that the Bible, seen in this different way, is a book of power and promise for all.

Word Publishing

John P. Newport, Paul Tillich (June)

Analyzes the diverse elements that contribute to Tillich’s systematic theology and his personal life. Gives some biographical material. One of the Makers of the Modern Theological Mind series.

Dee Jepson, Women: Beyond Equal Rights (July)

Appointed in 1982 to be the presidential liaison with women’s organizations, and wife of a U.S. senator, the author shows how God has given women unique capacities. She argues that women do not need to seek identity through causes, husbands, or children.

Gary Smalley, The Key to Your Child’s Heart (October)

Family counselor Gary Smalley shows how to weave strong family ties and avoid the withdrawal syndrome. He tells how to be adequate parents without being perfect.

Zondervan Books

Elias Chacour, with David Hazard, Blood Brothers (October)

Combines the story of a Palestinian Christian and the history of Christians in the Middle East with a new view of Bible prophecy and the Zionist movement. Deals with the struggles between Palestinians and Israelis.

Donald G. Bloesch, Crumbling Foundations (December)

Christianity is under attack by secular culture and society. Diagnoses the sickness that afflicts the Christian church and the forces that have been eroding faith.

Leland Ryken, Reading the Bible as Literature (January 1985)

A guide to the literary aspects of the Bible. Describes the literary forms of the Bible and explores the corresponding activities that these require of the reader.

Bible Student’s Commentary (November)

A five-volume commentary of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, translated from the Korke Verklaring, a series of commentaries on the entire Bible. It is adapted to, and incorporates, the NIV text. Additional volumes to come.

Alfred Marshall, The NASB Interlinear Greek-English New Testament (December)

Marshall’s interlinear New Testament was first published in 1958 with the King James Version. Now it is available with the New American Standard Bible.

Choice Books

The following five books make up this quarter’s selection of Choice Books—those special titles CHRISTIANITY TODAY feels are worthy of a thoughtful second look. They are provided as a starting point from which to begin your own pursuit of the best in today’s writing—and thinking.

Heresies, by Harold O. J. Brown (Doubleday & Company, 1984, 477 pp.; $17.95)

Prof. Harold O. J. Brown sets his 477-page discussion of heresies against the backdrop of the four creeds historically accepted by believers: Apostles’, Nicene, Athanasian, and Chalcedonian. Throughout history, Brown says, when people have been unable to accept these specific statements of belief—and yet have been equally unwilling to abandon their allegiances to Jesus—heretical doctrines have resulted that were espoused openly by literally millions of people.

Among these heretics were: the Gnostics, who accepted Jesus as Savior of the world yet incorporated into their beliefs a mystical spectrum of nonbiblical ideas of Near East origin; the Modalists, who upheld the deity of Jesus yet abandoned the diversity of persons within the Godhead; the Monophysites, who insisted that Jesus could not have had two distinct natures; and the Bogomils, who taught that God was supreme and a totally spiritual being, but that he had two sons: Satanael, the elder, and Jesus, the younger.

Heresies leaves the reader with sharp portraits of these heretics, as well as historical glimpses of heresy fighters, reformers, and the meanings of orthodoxy, and it shows how each fits into the overall picture of Christianity’s history

Five terms best define the nature of this hefty book and the shades of the author’s scholarship. First, the book presents a realistic perspective on the larger effects of heresy. While its terrible, negative power must be realized and understood, heresy has also had a positive effect on Christian orthodoxy—that of clarification and documentation. “It is heresy,” says Brown, “which offers us some of the best evidence for orthodoxy.”

Second, the book is unique in its wholeness, intricately discussing both heretical groups and “radical” Christian groups often overlooked in such histories. As Prof. George Williams of Harvard University says in his foreword, “The author also accords much more space than is ordinarily the case to the Anabaptists (Mennonites) and other radicals usually bypassed in disdain or scorn.”

Third, the book reads well and seems uncluttered even amid the enormous cast of characters and happenings. The nonintellectual is not totally overwhelmed, and can feel that Brown is conscious of the fact that non theologians may well venture into his historical trek.

Fourth, the book includes a dimension of compassion, as Brown castigates the cruel ways heretics have been tortured and abused in history.

And fifth, though Brown’s compassion softens and tempers a document that could otherwise be biting and hard in the wrong hands, he remains unwavering in his depiction of heresy as a negative thing.

An Excerpt: Creeds played a prominent part in the daily worship and life of early Christians. To a degree that is hard for twentieth-century people to grasp, the early church believed that it was absolutely vital to know and accept some very specific statements about the nature and attributes of God and his Son Jesus Christ. It was so important that all Christians were required to repeat them frequently, to learn them by heart. The modern dichotomy between faith as trust and faith as acceptance of specific doctrines—usually coupled with a strong bias in favor of faith as “trust” without the need for “rigid doctrines”—would have been incomprehensible to the early Christians, who could trust Christ in the midst of persecution precisely because they were persuaded that certain very specific things about him are true.

Beyond Forgiveness, by Don Baker (Multnomah Press, 1984, 102 pp.; $7.95)

The situation could hardly be more shattering. An assistant pastor, married for 28 years, is found to have committed adultery with ten women, at ministries in three churches, over the past 13 years. The pastoral staff must respond. But how? Surreptitiously send the man away? Ignore the incidents? Or put Jesus’ words in Matthew 18 (“If a brother sins …”) into action?

Pastor Don Baker’s church decided to discipline, with love, the fallen pastor; and his book recounts this difficult period of confrontation and decision making. (It was an unavoidably emotional time, of course; and not every church member agreed with the process or its outcome.) The book includes a practical, but theologically respectable, overview of the relevant biblical texts, then follows with a moving account of the disciplinary probation and eventual restoration of the fallen assistant pastor.

Beyond Forgiveness does not address the legal pitfalls of church discipline. It does, however, deal with matters ultimately more sensitive and crucial, if less visible: the holiness of a church, and the sure but healing correction of a repentant sinner. As commented Earl Radmacher, president of Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, the story proves that it is “possible to maintain love and purity in balance.”

In times so wildly out of balance, that proof is significant indeed.

An Excerpt: [Greg stepped into the pulpit before the congregation.] “I stand before you as an example of what Pastor was preaching about tonight,” Greg said. “I stand here to ask your forgiveness for inexcusable behavior. I have resigned, I am surrendering my ordination, because I have been unfaithful to my wife, here and in two prior churches.…

“I beg your forgiveness—I plead for it—and I do pray that if any of you are considering some similar course of action, that you will see what it’s costing and turn away from it and allow God to cleanse you. I believe He has cleansed me, but the scars will always remain.”

… Greg lost control … and sobbed openly before the people. I felt clumsy for him. I wanted to stand and help him, to support him … but, no, this was not the moment for me to interfere with the sacred act of confession. The deep, deep struggles that ensue when sin and repentance lock themselves together in a struggle to the death must be allowed to continue. Sin must be destroyed—it cannot be comforted.

Beacon Dictionary of Theology, edited by Richard S. Taylor (Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1984, 559 pp.; $29.95).

The fact that this dictionary is the first of its kind written from an unabashedly Wesleyan-Arminian perspective makes it noteworthy. The fact that it is a work of intellectual integrity makes it choice.

The Beacon Dictionary of Theology is a comprehensive volume featuring 954 topics addressed by 157 writers, including Dennis Kinlaw and Donald Joy of Asbury Theological Seminary, and Paul Bassett and Alex Deasley of the Nazarene Theological Seminary. In addition, the contributions of noted non-Wesleyans are also represented throughout, including those of Harold J. Ockenga and Donald G. Bloesch.

Edited by Richard S. Taylor, a Nazarene, whose own efforts liberally pepper the book, the BDT makes a more than admirable attempt at making its subject matter editorially accessible to the Ph.D. and pew sitter alike. The use of “theologisms” and muddied terminologies has been restrained; and those decidedly few foreign words used have been ably transliterated into English. All subjects are alphabetically indexed and are extensively cross-referenced. “If the reader encounters more verbal fog than he can comfortably handle,” Taylor writes in the preface, “he should glance at the cross-references and proceed to a related article. Perhaps by following through in this way the fog will be dispelled.” It usually is.

The book’s upfront bias does occasionally get in the way. For example, in his article on Calvinism, Taylor writes: “Calvinism can be faulted for its inadequate conception of the present possibilities of grace for both inner and outer holiness. Strange grace, that can overwhelm the will in conversion but cannot energize it against sin!” Such polemic will make the BDT open season for those insisting on objectivity in a dictionary of theology.

Another qualified weakness is the breadth of subject matter. One cannot always determine the rationale for including such topics as “Apostolic Canons and Constitutions.” One also wonders about the rationale for matching author to subject. For example, how objective a look at women’s ordination can be gotten from Christian feminist Nancy Hardesty?

These criticisms notwithstanding, the book is a solid piece of scholarship from a segment of evangelicalism whose theologies have long been overlooked.

An Excerpt: Salvation: … Salvation comes only through Jesus Christ who offers his own sinless life as a substitute for the guilty. He died that believers may live eternally. This idea of a sinner, treated as though he had never sinned because his guilt is borne by the Son of God himself, is the central and most distinctive feature of the Christian religion.

Thus salvation from personal sin involves the removal of guilt and also the sentence of death. Positively it bestows the new status of “joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17; cf. 1 Pet. 3:7). It may be experienced immediately when one believes. It is also a continuing process as one grows in grace and in the knowledge of Christ (2 Pet. 1:3–11). Finally, salvation occurs when one receives the commendation following the Last Judgment, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant; … enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Matt. 25:21). The climax of the salvation theme, and of the Bible itself, is found in Rev. 21:3—“Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them”; God and man in at-one-ment.…

What Christians Should Know About Jews and Judaism, by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (Word, 1984, 336 pp.; $13.95).

Threatening collapse at the slightest misunderstanding or show of insensitivity, interfaith bridge building is nevertheless the consuming passion of a growing number of evangelicals and Jews. Little wonder, then, that the carefully researched and highly readable What Christians Should Know About Jews and Judaism receives praise and commendation from a broad range of evangelical leaders.

Adding to the book’s credibilty (and visibility) is Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein’s own avowed passion for strengthening Jewish-evangelical relations. His call to cooperate comes through loud and clear in an earlier “primer” written to the Jewish community, entitled Understanding Evangelicals: A Guide for the Jewish Community, and now actively made manifest in his teaching post at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Throughout the first, and largest, section of this, his most recent book, Eckstein gives evangelicals a greater appreciation for the Jew’s commitment to Jewish law, Israel, and tradition. In the concluding chapters, he reminds Christians of the painful lessons to be learned from the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, all the while examining the potentials and pitfalls of Jewish-evangelical dialogue.

Of particular interest to evangelicals will be Eckstein’s views on missions. “Whatever the motivation,” writes the author, “Christian missions that single Jews out for conversion are regarded by Jews as a form of anti-Semitism—yet another attempt to destroy them.”

While evangelicals may disagree with these and certain other assessments (for example, Eckstein refers to “messianic Judaism” as an “assault against the quintessence of the Jewish faith—the uniqueness and oneness of God”), the sensitive reader cannot help but come away feeling that greater compassion and sensitivity are at hand.

In the final analysis, Eckstein’s carefully placed brick in the interfaith bridge will do much to make evangelicals more aware of their own Jewish heritage. It will also give the reader the perspective of a man who seeks conciliation—more than compromise—between Christians and Jews.

An Excerpt: Some Jews view theological conversations with Christians as futile, or even worse, as potentially divisive and harmful. They believe that the sole intent of Christians in such forums is to convert them and that “dialogue” under such conditions will accomplish nothing.

Still others treat dialogue as an act of civility in a pluralistic society, something one engages in gracefully, albeit ephemerally.…

Christians come to dialogue with Jews for a variety of reasons, as well.… Personal experience has taught me that some Christians view dialogue as a means of reconciliation, a healing bridge, enabling them to make amends for their tradition’s past and to become sensitized to issues of anti-Semitism in the present and future.… For others, dialogue provides a respectable forum within which they can fulfill their Christian obligation to preach the gospel.

The Search for Christian America, by Mark Noll, Nathan O. Hatch, and George M. Marsden (Crossway Books, 1983, 183 pp.; $6.95).

There is a puzzling dichotomy developing between constitutional lawyers and historians over the nature of America’s religious past. Harvard law professor Harold Berman writes that where laws are disengaged from underlying moral values, civilizations fall. And attorney-author John Whitehead quotes justice after Supreme Court justice in his writings who acknowledge that America was founded on religious values, and that its people are a religious people.

But does that religious fervor equate with biblical Christianity? That is the cautionary message of The Search for Christian America.

Its authors, all highly regarded evangelical professors of American church history, tell us forthrightly what they turned up in their search: “We feel that a careful study of the facts of history shows that early America does not deserve to be considered uniquely, distinctly, or even predominantly Christian, if we mean by the word ‘Christian’ a state of society reflecting the ideals presented in Scripture.” Tough words, indeed; but there is more. The authors also conclude that the very idea of a “Christian nation” is harmful to the work of the church.

These claims notwithstanding, Noll and company do argue for America’s deep religious roots—roots nurtured, not surprisingly, by Christianity. They moreover make distinctions that many need to be reminded of.

As a whole, the book is orderly, well edited, and intended for the layman. It will make readers think a bit more carefully before employing the term “Christian” in a political debate. And it makes an apt counterbalance in this year of fundamentalist politics.

An Excerpt: Was Puritan New England such a model Christian culture? The Puritans thought of themselves as a “city on a hill” for the world to imitate. In fact, their culture did display many admirable features. Yet their achievements were flawed in some basic and most ironic ways. The corruption of the best often becomes the worst. And in this case, some of the best Puritan principles were transformed for the worse in the actual historical setting. Most ironically, probably the principal factor turning the Puritan cultural achievement into a highly ambiguous one was the very concept that is the central theme of this chapter—the idea that one can create a truly Christian culture.

Praying When God Is Absent

Anthony Bloom

Maybe we wouldn’t want to meet him face to face.

When we begin to pray, God may seem to be absent. Obviously I am not speaking of a real absence—God is never really absent—but of the sense of absence which we have. We stand before God and we shout into an empty sky, out of which there is no reply. What ought we to think of this situation?

First of all, it is very important to remember that prayer is an encounter and a relationship, … and this relationship cannot be forced either on us or on God. The fact that God can make himself present or can leave us with the sense of his absence is part of this live and real relationship. If we could mechanically draw him into an encounter, force him to meet us, simply because we have chosen this moment to meet him, there would be no relationship and no encounter. A relationship must begin and develop in mutual freedom. The second very important thing is that a meeting face to face with God is always a moment of judgment for us. We cannot meet God in prayer … and not be either saved or condemned. I do not mean this in major terms of eternal damnation or eternal salvation already given and received, but it is always a critical moment, a crisis. “Crisis” comes from the Greek and means “judgment.” To meet God face to face in prayer is a critical moment in our lives, and thanks be to him that he does not always present himself to us when we wish to meet him, because we might not be able to endure such a meeting. Remember the many passages in Scripture in which we are told how bad it is to find oneself face to face with God, because God is power, God is truth, God is purity. Therefore, the first thought we ought to have when we do not tangibly perceive the divine presence, is a thought of gratitude. God is merciful; he does not come in an untimely way. He gives us a chance to judge ourselves, to understand, and not to come into his presence at a moment when it would mean condemnation.

In order to be able to pray, we must be within the situation which is defined as the kingdom of God. We must recognize that he is God, that he is King, that we must surrender to him. We must at least be concerned with his will, even if we are not yet capable of fulfilling it. So often what we would like to have through prayer, through the deep relationship with God which we long for, is simply another period of happiness; we are not prepared to sell all that we have in order to buy the pearl of great price. Then how should we get this pearl of great price? Is it not the same as in human relationships; when a man or a woman experiences love for another, other people no longer matter in the same way.

Isn’t that what could, what should, happen with regard to all our riches when we turn to God? Surely they should become pale and gray, just a general background against which the only figure that matters would appear in intense relief? We would like just one touch of heavenly blue in the general picture of our life, in which there are so many dark sides. God is prepared to be outside it, he is prepared to take it up completely as a cross, but he is not prepared to be simply part of our life.

So when we think of the absence of God, is it not worthwhile to ask ourselves whom we blame for it? We always blame God, we always accuse him … of being absent, of never being there when he is needed, never answering when he is addressed. At times … we say piously “God is testing my patience, my faith, my humility.” We find all sorts of ways of turning God’s judgment on us into a new way of praising ourselves. We are so patient that we can put up even with God!

What we must start with, if we wish to pray, is the certainty that we are sinners in need of salvation, that we are cut off from God and that we cannot live without him, and that all we can offer God is our desperate longing to be made such that God will … receive us in repentance, receive us with mercy and with love. And so from the outset prayer is really our humble ascent toward God, a moment when we turn Godwards, shy of coming near, knowing that if we meet him too soon, before his grace has had time to help us to be capable of meeting him, it will be judgment. And all we can do is to turn to him with all the reverence, all the veneration, the worshipful adoration, the fear of God of which we are capable, with all the attention and earnestness which we may possess, and ask him to do something with us that will make us capable of meeting him face to face, not for judgment, nor for condemnation, but for eternal life.

Metropolitan Bloom, a Russian Orthodox archbishop, is the author of several books, including God and Man and Courage to Pray. This excerpt is taken, with permission, from Beginning to Pray (Paulist Press, 1970).

Speaking out: Oh No! Anything but Central America

John A. Bernbaum

Evangelicals should stop ignoring its volatile problems.

For the average North American trying to understand the events in Central America, frustration and confusion are the first fruits of any serious study. To begin with, Central America is not familiar territory. As James Reston noted, most North Americans will do anything for Central America except read about it.

One problem encountered when studying events in that part of the world is gaining a true understanding of what is actually happening there. This is complicated by a historical myopia that is especially evident on the political Right. Conservatives have a propensity to view the conflict in Central America without regard for the history that shaped the current crisis.

An example of this can be taken from the current debate over U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. The United States has a long and unfortunate history of military intervention in the internal affairs of this country. The U.S. landed marrines in Nicaragua in 1912, and they stayed there until 1933. In fact, of the 30 times since 1850 that the U.S. has intervened militarily in Central America, 11 of these interventions involved our troops in Nicaragua. Moreover, the government of Somoza, who is often referred to as the “last marine,” was a creation of the United States. And our government openly supported the Somoza family’s repressive dictatorship for 43 years.

How can we dismiss this history so easily in our public debates? Is there any wonder why the present government in Nicaragua is bracing for another U.S. invasion? In light of what we have done before, and in light of the events in Grenada last year, is this a surprise?

Still another problem causing confusion in the national debate over our Central American policy is the tendency of some to openly criticize authoritarian governments of the Right, while at the same time often embracing repressive socialist or Marxist governments on the Left.

The ruling junta in Nicaragua, for example, is not a gang of Marxist villians tied irrevocably to Cuba’s Castro, as the Right sometimes pictures them, but neither are they benevolent representatives of the people out to create a democracy where power truly resides with the people. There is no doubt that more people are better off now than they were before, and that the human rights situation in Nicaragua is better than that of its neighbors in El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras. But the country is still being run by a Marxist elite, and political dissension is severely curtailed.

The current conflict between the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church and the government in Managua is one illustration of this lack of freedom, both political and religious. Censorship of the press is another. And the role of approximately 2,000 Cubans, many in key leadership positions in the intelligence and defense areas, is still another. On this last point, all the members of the Kissinger Commission were agreed that Cuban involvement was a key factor in determining the orientation of the new government. Why are liberals unwilling to admit this? The evidence of significant Cuban involvement cannot be lightly dismissed.

Beyond these multiple complications, however, is perhaps a more fundamental problem at the very root of our current foreign policy debate. Both liberals and conservatives narrowly frame their views within the confines of what they term the “national interests” of the United States. What will further U.S. security? What will protect U.S. economic interests? What will prevent upheaval so that illegal immigrants do not stream across the borders of the United States?

As Jim Dekker pointed out in The Reformed Journal, the Kissinger Commission’s mandate was to study Central America as it relates to U.S. interests. That, in fact, is the usual limitation established in any public debate over U.S. policy. Liberals and conservatives may disagree over what our national interests are, but for both the bottom line remains self-interest.

It is here that evangelicals have an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the public debate by helping to widen the parameters of the discussion. The myth of “power politics” or so-called political realism has captivated both the liberal and conservative camps. Both have assumed that acting in our own national self-interest is the aim of any government. The “will to power,” which characterizes the ambition of the modern nation-state according to this view, is what foreign policy is all about. Therefore, in the hardball world of international affairs, “you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

When the Catholic bishops asked about the governing purpose of international politics in their much-publicized pastoral letter, they refused to accept the answer that the final measure of a policy was how it advanced the national security of the nation. The bishops recognized that national security has assumed the character of moral duty and has become the categorical imperative to which the foreign policy establishment is bound. They noted that Scripture reveals that the governing purpose of political authorities should be to ensure justice and peace for all. In traditional language, the purpose of politics is to enhance the “common good.”

Until we are able to attack the illusion that national self-interest or self-preservation is the primary goal of foreign policy, we will never escape the crisis in which we are embroiled in Central America or anywhere else. Most evangelicals recognize that if they lived their lives in a selfish way and only cared about their own needs and desires as individuals, this would be disobedient to God’s commands and would lead to injustice.

What is true for the individual should be true for the nation as well.

Dr. Bembaum is vice-president of the 73-member Christian College Coalition, and director of the coalition’s American Studies Program.

Refiner’s Fire: The Frank Capra Touch

Rodney Clapp

In a few weeks, trees sprout red and green lights that blink. The crèches emerge (despite the ACLU’s wise men). Carol singers and bells appear, as do hot cider, candy canes, angel hair, geographically displaced reindeer, and a Frank Capra film.

One moment—what was that last item? A Frank Capra film? Indeed: this list is checked twice, and we mean it. It’s a Wonderful Life, made by Capra in 1946, shows up on television every holiday season as surely as snowmen on December lawns.

Among the director’s masterpieces are It Happened One Night and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But Capra (now nearly 90 years old) considers It’s a Wonderful Life, a two-hour motion picture conceived from a Christmas card, the best of all.

Capra’s early life was no Christmas card. His family left Sicily in 1903, summoned to fabled America by a letter from a disappeared brother thought dead for five years. In California Capra’s father hoped to work himself and his family out of poverty. But one morning Papa was found in the well house—his chest crushed between the teeth of two large gears, the long pump belt wrapped wildly around his body.

Frank Capra afforded college by holding two jobs and a daily schedule that began at 3:30 A.M. and ended at 10 P.M. Then (as Capra tells it in his autobiography) he drifted for three years, “running, looking, sinking lower.” Sunk low enough, he desperately answered a want ad and got into the movie business. There he gradually ascended from flunky to film editor to director.

All this helps to account for a prominent Capra theme. There is, really, no little person. Each is “an island of human dignity.” Others could make films about the “grand sweeps of history.” Capra contented himself with easily overlooked but noble individuals, every one “of a piece” with God.

In It’s a Wonderful Life, the “island of human dignity” is named George Bailey, played by James Stewart. The film begins with George on the verge of suicide. As a young man, he dreamed dreams. But life’s circumstances keep him in the unfamed hamlet of his birth. He selflessly gives of himself time and time again, skipping college and sending his younger brother instead, missing the heroics of war because of an ear injury suffered as a youth to prevent a fatal accident, taking over the Bailey Building and Loan to assist his inept uncle.

He has generously lent money for homes to the working man, and done so in the face of the spiteful and powerful Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), who taunts him with “frittering his life away” on “riff-raff.” It comes to this: One Christmas Eve, George Bailey’s bumbling uncle loses the day’s bank deposit, and the Building and Loan is in jeopardy. George will go to prison, accused of theft. Sniping at his wife (Donna Reed) and raging at his children, he stumbles into the night, set to jump into the river and meet his Maker. He meets, instead, an angel named Clarence Oddbody.

Clarence averts the suicide and shows George Bailey how the world would have been without him. The town, instead of Bedford Falls, is now called Pottersville. The working class have no homes, but a row of honky tonks where they drink themselves forgetful. His uncle lost the business and went insane years ago. His brother did not live to fly a war plane and rescue a shipful of sailors, but died as a boy—since George was not there to save him when he fell, ice-skating, through the ice. George, who formerly wished he had never been born, now sees that his quiet life is not so insignificant.

It is, of course, sentimental. At points the famous “Capra-corn” threatens to pop over all sides and inundate the whole. But it doesn’t: it surges and tumbles wonderfully at the edge of the pot, right up to the predictably happy ending, replete with strains of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” and neighbors and “riff-raff” regaling George Bailey with long-earned praise.

But fine as everything on the screen is, some of the film’s brightest aspects were known only behind the camera. The prom scene, for instance—wherein pranksters activate the movable gym floor and dancers spill into the swimming pool beneath—was not in the original script. Capra learned about the pool only after he rented the gymnasium for filming. He slowed production expressly to conjure some way to incorporate the pool. Consider, too, that Capra accomplished It’s a Wonderful Life after four years away from Hollywood, making World War II propaganda films for the Pentagon. His star, Jimmy Stewart, back on the screen after a six-year absence, was understandably nervous about his returning role. But the tragedy he saw as a bomber pilot over Germany deepened him—probably as a man, certainly as an actor.

Just straightening its tired back after reeling through a war and a depression, this country needed some grace, a gift, in 1946. Frank Capra, self-professed “Christmas Catholic” who attends Mass once or twice a year to “be lifted out of my shoes by the passion and resurrection of Christ,” bore no theologically intricate gift. Not intricate, but a perennial Christian gift: the annunciation that, under heaven, the lives of common men and women are only apparently obscure. Those lives are, in fact, of a consequence beyond human comprehension. “Strange, isn’t it?” Clarence Oddbody told George Bailey. “Each man’s life touches everybody else’s life. And when he’s not there anymore he leaves an awful hole.”

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