DROP THAT NAME

Larry Silverwood addressed our business luncheon group on the art of dropping names. Names make more than news, he claimed. They make friends and money too. But a name won’t produce for you unless you drop it.

In the course of his talk, he worked in the name of every man in the room and quoted from Benjamin Franklin, Robert G. Lee, Julius Caesar, Jack Paar, Joe Stalin, Confucious, Paul Tillich, Gene Tunney, Will Rogers, President Kennedy, Moses, Casey Stengel, Mahatma Gandhi, William Gladstone, and Grandma Moses.

To gain such facility, you must begin by remembering names. Since use strengthens memory, an easy rule is to use at least one name in every sentence. Don’t say, “Is your report ready? It’s due in the main office.”

Say, “Jack, Joe wants your report, so I said to Mary, Jim’s the man to see Jack! Right, Jack?”

This method leads to more name-calling every day. In itself it won’t build up your image, though. For that you need big names. They’re yours for the picking. All you need is a pocketbook of quotations. Speeches should use a quotation from a famous person in every other sentence. People will be convinced even if they don’t know what you are talking about. Fill-in speeches are now available; they are compiled from quotations with a few blanks added where you can write in your commercial.

It’s better to use live names if you have met any famous people. TV can help here: “When I saw Senator B. B. Fuddle the other day, he said.…”

I asked Larry about ecclesiastical name-dropping. “Eutychus,” he said, “only the other day Bishop Smith was telling me that names make sermons. John Jones isn’t going to listen to what God says, but if you can quote Einstein, you’ve got him. The Bishop has been preaching from the genealogies in Numbers to crowd in more names.

“You want to be careful of brand-names,” he added. “If you quote something from John Calvin, add a balancing quote from John Wesley or Arminius. But, above all, keep working in the names of parishioners—in favorable contexts, of course.”

I explained that I wasn’t asking for myself; I can’t wait to pass this along to Pastor Peterson. As Khrushchev says, this will bury him!

EUTYCHUS

THE CHURCH IN BRITAIN

May I commend your British editors for a job well done, reporting “the spiritual condition of British churches” (July 31 issue).

We in the United States should learn from our brethren in Britain and “set our course anew, by way of the Cross of Christ to the home of the soul of all mankind.”

C. LYNN WHITE

Harlan Christian

Harlan, Ky.

The impression I have got so far is that the same dangers menace our religion there as in Britain, although the operation of the time-lag makes it less evident.

I only want to make one point. With much of what Canon Colquhoun has written I am bound to agree. But what he seems to fail to say is that one major reason for the ineffectiveness of the Church is an intellectual one. In a community in which so much emphasis is laid upon training in the various branches of science, much of what the clergy say and do must seem irrelevant and archaic. What your contributors seem to miss out is that the Christian movement is not only to save the bad people, but the good as well.…

Nobody knows better than I do how dangerous it may be to be over-intellectual; but ideas have a way of working down in society from the top, and I have always maintained with old Professor Burkitt that if the majority of the Fellows of Trinity College reject Christianity, it is going to have awkward repercussions not only among undergraduates but in the parishes of Cambridge city, where the college savants live.

A. C. BOUQUET

Trinity College

Cambridge, England

It seems to me that almost the same thing could be said about much of the religious climate in America.… The talents of our leaders ought to be going into spiritual program instead of promotion. And if the church were spiritually healthy we wouldn’t have to dope it up with all the various medicines of promotion.

C. W. FRANKE

Beth Eden E. U. B. Church

Rockford, Ill.

I am a Britisher presently resident and ministering in the United States.… I question [Mr. Colquhoun’s] conclusion that material prosperity is one of the main causes of a drift away from religion in Britain. Here in America we are much more materially prosperous than our English cousins, and yet despite apparent shallowness, there is still a great religious surge through the nation.

DAVID HOOD

Trinity Baptist

Wheat Ridge, Col.

Kindly send me some extra copies of this last issue …, the magnificent survey of the condition of the Christian Church in Great Britain. No religious journal in England would even dare attempt such a comprehensive presentation.

WILBUR M. SMITH

Prof. of English Bible

Fuller Seminary.

Pasadena, Calif.

THE CHRISTIAN IN ISRAEL

Permit me to comment briefly on “The Christian Witness in Israel” and your report “Jewish Mobs Stone New Church in Jerusalem” (July 31 issue). As you clearly point out, the law of Israel provides for complete freedom of worship and conscience, and police authorities in Israel are required by law to protect these rights on the part of members of every community. Israel’s population is comprised of Jews, Christians and Moslems, and there have been no instances of any difficulty or public feeling against the exercise of rights of conscience and worship.

The recent incident did not arise out of the practice of freedom of worship, but as the result of a very particular type of missionary activity. The Church of Christ has been set up in a strictly Jewish Orthodox quarter of Jerusalem. The question of proselytization must always be one of delicacy and tact, at least insofar as small children are concerned, whose parents, like American parents, might consider themselves entitled to be consulted on any efforts to instill in their children religious doctrine or beliefs. The Church of Christ minister concerned openly accepted upon himself, at the joint meeting on July 13 to which you referred, to cease trying to attract children to his church. In this context, the comment of the local police captain may be more clearly understood. I do not know whether the comment as reported is correct, nor would I venture to support or reject it. But a complete understanding was reached at that meeting and Israel’s police are continuing to take any steps necessary to extend such protection as the church in question might require. It is to be hoped that this will be facilitated by the exercise of suitable tact on the part of the missionaries concerned and the creation of a better relationship with the surrounding Orthodox Jewish population.…

E. Z’EV SUFOTT

First Secretary

Embassy of Israel

Washington, D. C.

The attack on the little church … reminded me vividly of the ordeal which we of The American European Bethel Mission went through some • years ago when an Orthodox Rabbi, a so-called “Rebbe,” with a group of his followers, called “Chasidim,” savagely attacked our orphanage in Haifa, breaking in through some of the doors of our building in an attempt to take out the children from the home. The police were notified by a neighbor, the French Consulate, who came and dispersed the attackers, and the leader, the “Rebbe,” was sentenced to jail by the magistrate in Haifa. Thereafter we were not further molested. The local press advised the public not to countenance or use such disgraceful methods.

Recently, however, the so-called “Anti-Missionary League” threatened reprisals against those who have children in our orphanage in Haifa, but the League was advised by the Minister of Education to use persuasion, not violence, in attempting to gain their objectives. That wise step was very greatly appreciated by us. However, the method of persuasion is being carried out, much to our regret, not without threatening, which already has affected some underprivileged children who have been taken out of our children’s home where they had the best of care—care which their guardians could not find elsewhere.

We did not dream that in the state of Israel we would have to meet with such problems as we encountered in Europe, mainly in Russia, 63 years ago, when those of us who were Hebrew Christians were denied the privilege of calling ourselves “Christians.” Now we meet with difficulties for calling ourselves “Hebrews” because of our faith in the promised Jewish Saviour, according to the holy Scriptures.

LEON ROSENBERG

Founder and General Director

The American-European Bethel Mission

Los Angeles, Calif.

PENTECOSTALISM

Let me be the first to congratulate you on the fine article (May We Pentecostals Speak?) by the Rev. Jack J. Chinn (July 17 issue).

JAMES C. KINCAID

Pentecostal Church of God Tabernacle

Ann Arbor, Mich.

After being in college for four years under “second blessing” schools, teaching one year in a Pentecostal school and six years of meditation, I would like to answer.… To be scriptural, Acts 2:4 says the Holy Spirit came “like a rush of a mighty wind” and “there appeared to them tongues as of fire.” I don’t see these in evidence today.…

Can you imagine, asking for a gift???

Acts 1:8 is very good, but Acts 5:32 is, also in the Bible. I see too much loose emotionalism and body contact, and not enough obeying for me to want to be a Pentecostal.

I myself have not found good contextual expository Bible preaching in the Pentecostal movement.

I reject their immature approach to solving man’s problems. You can’t overcome the sinfulness of sin at a simple crisis at an altar. The altar must be the man’s life.…

I don’t see how little dictators over their own personal flock can glorify Christ who is our leader. The Pentecostals fit into the first four chapters of I Corinthians perfectly. “I am of Roberts, Allen, Osborn, etc.” …

The Gospel of John tells us that the Holy Spirit will glorify Christ. I hear people say, “I got the Holy Spirit.” I don’t know what they have but the Bible is clear that they don’t have God!

Dare we make the moving of the Holy Spirit irrational fits in a moment of musical built-up emotionalism? Put quiet meditating on the Bible and sweet personal devotions into the personal life, then the mass meetings will be under the control of the Holy Spirit and God will be honored. Very few Pentecostals are Christians away from the mass meeting.… My blessing goes to the ones that are solid Christians, but the majority … need the advice of 1 Corinthians 13:11—“Grow up.”

EDWIN VRELL

Columbia, S. C.

Scriptural warrant for “speaking with tongues” as the “initial” evidence … of the baptism of the Holy Spirit … is sadly lacking. Pentecostals are embarassingly confined to three Scriptures in the Book of Acts as the burden of their proof.… A God who is not willing that any should perish has not left the secret of winning the lost to the sectarian interpretation of three brief passages.… Where in Scripture are spiritual gifts equated with either spiritual progress or spiritual power?

When modern Pentecostals argue for “speaking with tongues” as the initial evidence they are refusing to recognize the Holy Spirit’s movement in any other body but their own. The doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is plainly stated in 1 Corinthians 12:13. It is the same baptism as that of Matthew 3:11 and Acts 1:5. It is the blessed experience of all truly born-again believers. All of us have been made to drink into one Spirit as fulfillment of our Lord’s promise in John 7:37–39.

WILLIAM A. SPRINGSTEAD

Empire Baptist Church

Empire, Ore.

Nowhere in Scripture is the Christian told to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit! Also, speaking with tongues is not the great sign of the Spirit’s indwelling. Paul informs the carnal and sectarian Corinthian Christians that they were baptized with the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13) in spite of their low spiritual condition. It is clear then that the baptism work of the Spirit is … not one of service, testimony or tongues, but to be made members of that wondrous unity, the body of Christ. Paul writes to the mature Ephesian believers that they should be “filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18) which will evidence itself with the teaching of Scripture that immediately follows (Eph. 5:19, 20). Nowhere in Ephesians 5 and 6 is the baptism of the Spirit brought in to show that this is what is needed for the Spirit-filled life. They were already said to be “sealed” when they believed (Eph. 1:13) and were members of one body (2:22).

Finally, the fruit of the Spirit-filled life is given in several places so we might know who is and who is not filled with the Holy Spirit—Galatians 5:22–26; Ephesians 5:9, etc. Again, nowhere in these Scriptures are dreams, visions, ability to heal, tongues, or any other supernatural experiences mentioned as the evidence of the filling and fruit of the Holy Spirit.

RICHARD A. RAVEN

Washington, D. C.

FOR THE LONG, LONG EVENINGS

The lover sings, “It’s a long, long time from May to December.” But for the harried minister striving manfully, if vainly, to keep abreast of the torrential outpour of religious works flooding from the presses, the time is catastrophically fleeting. Though well aware that some are still battling through last September’s productions, the calendar inexorably bids us warn our readers of further enticing challenges to budgetary ingenuity as regards their time and money. We say “ingenuity” in the hope that “cutting down the wife’s wardrobe” will not be resorted to as a cure-all, for we wish to retain some measure of feminine enthusiasm for this feature. We recall Harper editor Eugene Exman’s recent word concerning the widening lay interest in religious publications. Speaking out of 33 years’ experience in religious publishing, Dr. Exman observed that up to 10 years ago, one looked to clergy, seminary and college professors, and student groups to justify publishing a book. But now there is more lay interest, particularly in biography, simple theology, and the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. There is an increase of college courses in these areas. And the growing interest in devotional literature, said Dr. Exman, is largely a lay interest, there being not so much among the clergy. Paperbacks reflect the broadening of reading at both the general level and the intellectual.

Here then is a sampler of the attractive autumn and winter books which have begun their journey to press, to our reviewers, and to you, our readers.

In the field of SYSTEMATIC AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY one is excited by the prospect of a new four-volume series on The Theology of St. Augustine, by A. D. R. Polman, professor of dogmatic theology at the Reformed Theological Seminary at Kampen, The Netherlands. Projected for November release by Eerdmans is Volume I: The Word of God in the Theology of St. Augustine. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, the volume fills a gap, for no previous work deals at length with the North African doctor’s view of special revelation. Our British Editorial Associate Philip E. Hughes finds here a “penetrating understanding of the mind of the famous Church Father.”

Another Dutch series from the same house, G. C. Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics, constitutes one of the great milestones of evangelical theology for this century. Now to be added to the series is Volume VIII, Man: the Image of God, which stresses man’s unity while taking cognizance of the complex and dynamic character of human behavior.

Muhlenberg Press also brings from Europe two significant theological works: in The Essence of Christianity, Lundensian theologian Anders Nygren identifies the essence as atonement, forgiveness, love in Jesus the World’s Perfecter, the late Tubingen theologian Karl Heim treats of restoration of right relationship between God and man through Jesus Christ.

The Epic of Revelation, by Mack B. Stokes (McGraw-Hill) ranges through many doctrines from creation to eschatology with an emphasis mainly on existential relevance. Kendig Brubaker Cully has written Sacraments: A Language of Faith (Christian Education Press) in language the layman can understand, pointing to the sacraments as a major worship resource. In eschatology, J. Barton Payne’s The Imminent Appearing of Christ (Eerdmans) contends for the classical post-tribulationist form of premillennialism.

Books on APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE include noted apologist Cornelius Van Til’s Christianity and Barthianism (Presbyterian and Reformed) crowning his extensive labors in this field. From Australia comes Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture, by Klaas Runia (Eerdmans). G. W. Bromiley, one of Barth’s translators, sees here fulfilled a long-standing need, a full exposition of Barth’s teaching on Scripture which brings it into lively interaction with the Reformation tradition and its modern proponents.

Karl Barth, by Jerome Hamer, O.P. (Newman Press), provides a searching study of Barth’s theology from a Roman Catholic viewpoint, while George H. Tavard affords the first full-length Roman Catholic study of Tillich’s theology in Paul Tillich and the Christian Message (Scribner’s), admiring but sharply critical: an opposition between the central Christian message and its “ontological” interpretation by Tillich does in fact exist, says Father Tavard. Gustave Weigel in Catholic Theology in Dialogue (Harper) surveys contemporary theology from a Catholic perspective as he continues probing the distance between the great branches of Christianity. Christianity Divided: Protestant and Roman Catholic Theological Issues, edited by Daniel J. Callahan and Heiko A. Oberman (Sheed & Ward) stresses the issues which divide, treating from both sides such questions as Scripture and tradition, the sacraments and justification. Barth, Weigel, and Oscar Cullmann are among the contributors. Roman Catholicism (Presbyterian and Reformed) is Loraine’s Boettner’s timely and extensive treatment of the many phases of the subject from evangelical perspective. The same house offers three more volumes in its Modern Thinkers Series: Tillich, by David H. Freeman; Toynbee, by C. Gregg Singer; and Wittgenstein, by William Young.

Encounters between philosophy and religion provide the theme of: Reason and God, by John E. Smith (Yale University Press) and Religious Experience and Truth, a symposium edited by Sydney Hook (New York University Press). On a related theme is Paul F. Schmidt’s Religious Knowledge (The Free Press of Glencoe).

Provocative in promise for the dialogue between Christianity and science are: Christian Belief and Science, by Cambridge scientist Robert E. D. Clark (Muhlenberg); Physicist and Christian, by Episcopal priest and atomic scientist William G. Pollard (Seabury); and The Bible in the Age of Science, by Alan Richardson (Westminster).

Dominant category of the fall and winter offerings appears to be that of CHURCH HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. Perhaps a listing of titles within a chronological perspective will indicate the wealth of material and conserve space: Gnosticism, by Robert M. Grant (Harper); From Glory to Glory, edited by Jean Danielou, selections from Gregory of Nyssa’s mystical writings, translated and annotated by Herbert Musurillo, S.J. (Scribner’s); The Emperor Theodosius and the Establishment of Christianity, by N. Q. King (Westminster); Charter of Christendom: The Significance of The City of God, by John O’Meara (Macmillan), Augustine’s classic examined; The Pre-Conquest Church in England, by Margaret Deanesly (Oxford), first volume of a new series: An Ecclesiastical History of England, under the general editorship of J. C. K. Dickinson; The Medieval University, by L. J. Daly, S.J. (Sheed & Ward); The Council of Constance: The Unification of the Church, translated by Louise Ropes Loomis, edited and annotated by John Hine Mundy and Kennedy Woody (Columbia University Press), a translation of three contemporary accounts of the Council; Reformation and Catholicity, by Gustaf Aulén, translated by Eric H. Wahlstrom (Muhlenberg); Luther and the Bible, by Willem Jan Kooiman, translated by John Schmidt (Muhlenberg); Luther and Melanchthon, edited by Vilmos Vajta (Muhlenberg), lectures delivered at the Second International Congress for Luther Research; The Man God Mastered, by Jean Cadier, promising biography of the titanic Frenchman John Calvin by the Dean of the Faculty of Protestant Theology, University of Montpellier, translated by O. R. Johnston (Eerdmans); Plain Mr. Knox, by Elizabeth Whitley (John Knox Press), biography of Calvin’s Scots counterpart by the wife of the present minister of Knox’s St Giles Cathedral; Anabaptism in Flanders, by A. L. E. Verheyden (Herald Press), covers period of 1530–1640; The Yale Edition of the Works of St. Thomas More, edited by Louis L. Martz, Richard S. Sylvester, and others, twin editions of More’s works—a 14-volume scholarly edition and a popular seven-volume edition, the latter beginning with St. Thomas More: Selected Letters, edited by Elizabeth F. Rogers (Yale University Press, which also releases St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography of His Works and of Moreana to the Year 1750, compiled by R. W. Gibson with a Bibliography of Utopiana compiled by R. W. Gibson and J. Max Patrick); The Catholics in England: 1559–1829, by M. D. R. Leys (Longmans, Green); Henry More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Platonist, by Aharon Lichtenstein (Harvard University Press); Swift and Anglican Rationalism, by Phillip Harth (University of Chicago Press); John Wesley, by Ingvar Haddal (Abingdon); David Brainerd: Beloved Yankee, by David Wynbeek (Eerdmans); Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce, by Ford K. Brown (Cambridge University Press), a new assessment of the Evangelical Revival in the Church of England at the beginning of the nineteenth century; Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, edited by C. S. Dessain, Volume XI, first of a series of volumes, this one covering October, 1845-December, 1846 (Nelson); Great Evangelical Preachers of Yesterday, by James McGraw (Abingdon), from Wycliffe to Jowett; American Protestantism, by Winthrop S. Hudson (University of Chicago Press); The Twentieth Century in Europe, by Kenneth Scott Latourette, Volume IV of the series Christianity in a Revolutionary Age (Harper); Luther in the 20th Century, by D. Peter Brunner and Bernard J. Holm (Augsburg), the relevance of Luther’s ideas today; Religion in the Soviet Union, by Walter Koslarz (St. Martin’s Press); The Wild Goats of Ein Gedi, by Herbert Weiner (Doubleday), Jewish and Christian religious life in modern Israel; The Ecumenical Movement, by Charles Boyer, S.J., Volume 138 of The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism (Hawthorne); and to summarize: Who’s Who in Church History, by Elgin S. Moyer (Moody Press).

Turning to OLD TESTAMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY, one sees the Decalogue as a compelling theme, witnessed by two works titled The Ten Commandments, by James Burton Coffman, Church of Christ minister (Revell) and Terence J. Finlay, Episcopal rector (Scribner’s), and a third volume called The Ten Commandments in Modern Perspective, by Baptist minister Owen M. Weatherly (John Knox Press). Other offerings: God’s Covenant of Blessing, by John P. Milton (Augustana); Ancient Israel—Its Life and Institutions, by Roland De Vaux (McGraw-Hill); The Living World of the Bible, M.-J. Steve (World Publishing Co.), a profusion of photographs and maps; and Prophecy and Religion, by John Skinner, studies in the life of Jeremiah (Cambridge).

In the field of NEW TESTAMENT, Zondervan announces a new translation: Norlie’s Simplified New Testament, by Olaf M. Norlie, which will include The Psalms for Today, a new translation by Roland K. Harrison. Eerdmans offers Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, by Philip E. Hughes, which sustains the quality of its series, The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Concordia releases The Word of the Lord Grows, by Martin H. Franzmann, a guide to origin, purpose, and meaning of the New Testament; Westminster, Paul and His Predecessors, by A. M. Hunter. John Knox Press presents Walter Lüthi’s The Letter to the Romans; Loizeaux, August Van Ryn’s Acts of the Apostles; and Harper, D. T. Niles’ As Seeing the Invisible, a study of the book of Revelation.

Spanning the two testaments is a remarkable five-volume set, The Illustrated World-of-the-Bible Library, the four Old Testament volumes having been revised by the board of editors from a 1959 Israeli work, Views of the Biblical World. For its dazzling photographic portrayal of Bible lands with each illustration tied to a text and commentary, McGraw-Hill announces an $87.50 price until June 1—$100 thereafter. Wives, look to your wardrobes!

In the critical area of MISSIONS, Eerdmans announces Pentecost and Missions, by Harry R. Boer (formerly of Calvin Seminary), on the nature and task of the Church, with foreword by W. A. Visser ’t Hooft; Zondervan, Facing the Unfinished Task, the messages of the Congress of Foreign Missions in Chicago last December, sponsored by Interdenominational Foreign Missions Association; and Doubleday, The Churches and Rapid Social Change, by Paul Abrecht, on the social and economic revolution in Asia, Africa, and South America and its effect on the indigenous churches.

And what of the mission to our young? In RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, evangelicals await Human Development, Learning and Teaching, by that able educator Cornelius Jaarsma, as he presents a Christian approach to educational psychology (Eerdmans). Rachel Flenderlite calls attention to the tragic influence of secular philosophies upon Christian education in Forgiveness and Hope (John Knox Press); while Bernhard E. Olson examines “roots of bias”—racial, ethnic, and religious—in Protestant church-schools (Yale University Press).

Then there is the cure of souls. In PASTORAL THEOLOGY, one awaits a Dutch work, Soul Care, by G. Brillenburg Wurth (Presbyterian and Reformed); of U. S. origin there is Daniel Day Williams’ The Minister and the Care of Souls (Harper); and to the minister’s relief comes Counseling for Church Leaders, by John W. Drakeford (Broadman)—how church leaders can share the pastor’s counseling load!

With this help, perhaps more can be done about THE PREACHER AND HIS SERMONS. Toward this end, read The Preacher’s Portrait in the New Testament, by John R. W. Stott, this being Fuller Seminary’s Payton Lectures by the London Minister and Queen’s Chaplain (Eerdmans). Baker announces further volumes in its series, Proclaiming the New Testament, edited by Ralph G. Turnbull: The Gospel of John, by Ronald Ward; The Epistles of 1–11 Peter, by Cary N. Weisiger III; and The Epistles of fames, I–II–III John, Jude, by Russell Bradley Jones. Joseph Sittler seeks to help the minister preach to his times in The Ecology of Faith, the Lyman Beecher Lectures (Muhlenberg).

In LITURGY AND WORSHIP, there are: Enter with joy, by Stephen F. Bayne, Jr. (Seabury); Christian Worship, by T. S. Garrett (Oxford); and The Worshipping Church, by James Earl Massey (Warner Press).

The theme ETHICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS covers a multitude of ills. On war and peace: The Christian and Power Politics, by Alan Booth (Association Press), “hard international realities in the light of the Gospel”; Pattern for Peace, compiled and edited by Harry W. Flannery (Newman Press), papal recommendations for the international order gathered from official commentaries of recent years. On a familiar deterrent to peace: Communism, Its Faith and Fallacies, by James D. Bales (Baker). On racial tension: Antislavery, by Dwight L. Dumond (University of Michigan Press), on the origins of the Civil War; Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin (Houghton Mifflin), a white disguised as a Negro in the South. On social action: Methodism and Society in the Twentieth Century, by Walter G. Muelder (Abingdon), development of the Methodist social conscience; Protests of an Ex-Organization Man, by Kermit Eby (Beacon Press), sharp criticism of over-organization of labor, religion, and education.

So there they are—many-splendoured in variety but waxing dissonant to the discriminate ear as the variant voices become shrill in defense of diverse canons of loyalty to the Word of God. Evangelical voices command a hearing but speak with nothing like the comparative volume of other eras … such as days when thunder rolled from Wittenberg, Zurich, Geneva, and Edinburgh.

There is yet too much contentment with less than the best in literary productivity. That truthful content ultimately outshines artistic error cannot be denied, but the servant of God may not be at ease until form and content are woven into a harmony of truth and beauty reflective, in a measure, of the glory of God.

FRANK FARRELL

Second in a Series (Part II)

Today Israel shows some return to the original sources of inspiration. Interest in the Bible is deeper than in the Talmud. Old Testament stories are taught from kindergarten on and the Israel Bible Study Association sponsors 400 study groups with almost 20,000 members. “The Book” is studied in the Hebrew University; whoever neglects this literature is considered uneducated. Ben-Gurion has said that even as The Promised Land is Israel’s physical homeland, so the Old Testament is her spiritual homeland. Further, he notes (with a measure of enthusiasm) that creation of the state “has been followed by an unprecedented wave of enthusiasm for the Bible among its people and an intense nation-wide interest in biblical studies.” There is even a nightly Old Testament reading on the radio. People are searching out the Bible, especially its historical references to the nation. These references sustain the belief that God has preserved the Jews for a particular purpose, and desires them to remain a distinct Jewish community. Even the New Testament is now widely read. This fact is quite remarkable considering that merely to possess the New Testament has long been viewed as sinful. It is found not only in the Hebrew University but also in some Kibbutzim and in many homes. Tourist guides use it to explain sacred sites. Although the New Testament is regarded mainly as religious literature and mystery, the British and Foreign Bible Society is printing a new Bible edition that combines the Hebrew Old Testament and the New Testament. Tendency to question the New Testament’s historical reliability, actually (and ironically) rests often not upon special Jewish objections but on destructive critical views of liberal Protestant scholars from Wellhausen to Bultmann.

Except for the older residents, many members of the Kibbutzim do not observe religious services and some even serve non-Kosher meat. Religious holidays are kept, but not primarily for their spiritual significance. The Bible is studied mainly as a book of history, and religious traditions seem to have few adherents. While modern Jews are not disposed actually to deny the validity of the religious dimension, they rather “take it for granted” as an aspect of historical-cultural heritage. And the young men and women who at 18 begin two years of military service often become what is described as “fanatically nationalistic.”

Contemporary Jewish thought also tends to downgrade the importance of “inner theological faith” with its demand for personal decision. Instead it emphasizes “historical faith” in divine providence and a “legal faith” in “keeping the commandments.” The resulting emphasis on self-reliance rather than on supernatural redemption may also reinforce a quite humanistic messianism. “I read the Book,” said one driver, “but everybody must save himself.” He pointed to persecutions suffered by the Jews. Hence “only in self-help does God help us” reinforces a “works-religion”; confidence in redemption by natural means is more acceptable than exposition of supernatural Messianic vision.

SPIRITUAL UPTURN IN ISRAEL?

Putting aside for the moment the question of Messiah’s identity, we ask for evidences of spiritual awakening in Israel.

There are 430 leaders in Israel whose duty it is to practice as rabbis, and thousands who do not practice are said to have sufficient knowledge of the Torah and of Judaism to do so. The director of the Rabbinical Center, seat of the chief rabbinate, contends that “a tremendous religious revival is going on in Israel, in contrast to just a socialist search for a better world (as in the Kibbutzim) that first reacted against religion generally and saw no religious commitment inherent in the Jewish state. Director Maurice A. Jaffe now finds “a growing thirst after Hebrew knowledge.” Many Israeli pioneers isolated love for their people and for their state from any love for God; some of the Kibbutzim even substituted the firing of guns for the religious confirmation ritual. But Kibbutzim socialist procedures proved disappointing and left a vacuum in the heart and life of both young and old. The result, says Director Jaffe (who keeps a copy of How to Solve Management Problems near the Torah) is a growing return to Jewish values and knowledge, and in some respects even a return to Jewish religion. “People who haven’t prayed for 30 years are coming to synagogue; some 80 per cent attended services at least on such high holidays as the Day of Atonement and the New Year; some 90 per cent of the total population eat Kosher meat.” While Reform and Liberal Judaism are not prohibited, their impact seems thwarted in many ways; they stand “virtually no chance at all.” More than 40 per cent of Israeli children receive state religious education.

Other observers, however, are not convinced of Israel’s so-called religious revival. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Professor of Comparative Religions R. J. Zwi Werblowsky insists no confident verdict is possible until research specialists canvass the army, Kibbutzim, and the population generally. He notes the difficulty of distinguishing spiritual from cultural manifestations in Israel, where so many aspects of religious tradition have reappeared in modern cultural patterns. Except for the last century, the Jews have never had a strictly secular culture pattern; the new Israeli society therefore quite naturally assumed religious overtones. Whether, however, “sabbath observance” has any more religious significance in Israel than do Sunday blue laws for multitudes of Americans is difficult to determine.

It must be granted, nonetheless, that many basic Jewish values do have unmistakable religious force. Determining what religious values function in society depends on how the essence of religion is defined. Professor Werblowsky thinks a “fair amount of traditionalism” is “not necessarily religious”; on the other hand he finds genuine religious commitments possible in nonstandard theological movements (including socialism). The Kibbutz notion of service, “a genuine drive for the redemption of society and self” by hard work, sharing, and justice, even its vision of “a new heaven and new earth” Werblowsky identifies more with Tolstoi than with the Old Testament. In Orthodox rabbinic Judaism as “a system of beliefs and behavior” Werblowsky sees nothing spiritually refreshing. The orthodox he considers “a small, militant minority” who interpret religious observance as an affirmation of faith. Since all Jewish families meet on Passover, however, the question of their regard for the sacramental life over and above social custom remains unanswered. Are degrees or amounts of observance a barometer of religious intensity or apathy? However unsatisfactory Professor Werblowsky’s “comparative religions” approach may be in its tendency to equate all religions, and especially to deflate the lofty distinctives of revealed religion, it raises basic and vital questions.

About 70 per cent of all Jews in Israel are “nonorthodox.” As such many would prefer a civil marriage. They must receive rabbinical marriage, however, since civil marriage is disallowed by law. When required by the law of the community, religious services at marriage and death are therefore no index of orthodoxy. Similarly, reading of the Old Tesament in basically antireligious communal settlements indicates the possible co-existence of virile anti-Judaism with virile Judaism. That one in seven marriages ends in divorce is simply accepted as a social phenomenon. All in all a great many Israelis seem vague and confused about religious ideals.

WHO IS A JEW?

The modern Jew is confused about the nature of Messiah. His answer to “who is a Jew?”—a question prompted by the 1961 Israeli census—is similarly ambiguous. Is being a Jew simply something ethnic? Is religio-moral character something quite irrelevant? Asked why the census questionnaire failed to anticipate the possibility of identifying a “Jew” by religion as well as by nationality, a representative of the Foreign Office replied, “We couldn’t care less (about his religion).” Premier Ben-Gurion, however, declared that a Jew is “one who believes the fifteenth Psalm.” Orthodox Jews insist that to modify the term “Jew” in any way whatever really evades complete and comprehensive identification. Orthodox Jewish rabbis are disposed to depict Israel as “wholly Orthodox, but with varying degrees of observance” (from total commitment to nonattendance at synagogue, and to nonobservance of traditions). To have a Jewish mother is Judaism’s established criterion of Jewry. On the other hand, Jewish free thinkers and nonreligionists wish to claim Jewish status by other considerations than acceptance of Judaism. Actually 70 percent of the population is non-Orthodox, a fact that complicates any religious definition of Jewry. If a nationalistic test alone is applied, are only Israeli Hebrews to be regarded as Jews?

The question “who is a Jew” with its physical-national and spiritual-moral implications occurred also in Jesus’ brush with the religious leaders in the first century. If descent from Abraham were merely a matter of physical being, Jesus asserted, “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (Matt. 3:9). Because the Jewish leaders rejected Abraham’s spiritual vision of justification by faith, and instead trusted in their own works, Jesus declared them more the children of the devil than the children of God and of Abraham (John 8:33–47). His essential point was that descent with its privileges is conditioned upon spiritual and moral conformity.

However tenuous it has been at times, the Jewish link to Judaism through 2000 years sometimes occasions the dismissal of all other religions as non-Jewish. Even the historic fact is obscured that Christianity and Judaism are related as fulfillment and promise. In the comprehensive modern definition of “Jew” the Christian Hebrew, curiously, is no longer considered a Jew at heart. This exclusion implies a peculiar judgment on Jesus of Nazareth, on Paul of Tarsus, and also on thousands of first century Christians. While formally in line with that of the Gospels, the modern comprehensive definition of “Jew” really represents a hardening toward Christianity. In modern Israeli terms neither the free-thinker, or Reform Jew, nor the Christian Hebrew is a first-rate Jew. And in a predominantly Jewish nation, the Arab Christian (who represents a substantial minority of the population) fares even worse ideologically despite the fact that the Proclamation of Independence disallows Jewish privilege over non-Jews, and pledges the state to uphold “the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race, or sex.”

THE JUDGMENT OF EICHMANN

Any comment on the Eichmann trial must be prefaced by open confession that this mass murder of six million Jews remains a dark blot on Gentile conscience, and that Christendom (through indifference rather than intention) shares in the guilt. To score the Jew for not seeing in Eichmann everyman’s potentiality for declension is cheap criticism unless one first registers with sad heart the fact of this unspeakable injustice of the Gentile against the Jew. What may be asked is this: Granted that a comprehensive overview of Nazi atrocities needed rehearsal to prick world conscience, and that Eichmann’s trial was conducted with judicial dignity, to what extent are judicial procedures—established to ascertain and punish guilt—properly used additionally as an educational, publicity and propaganda technic? And what is the real lesson of the trial? Has it clarified the line between personal delinquency and official duty? More pointedly, has it brought Jew and Gentile in the shadow of the horrors of modern history to face afresh the biblical verdict on human nature? Or has it subtly promoted our self-righteousness by assuring us all that the human race is somehow less wicked if only we can rid ourselves of Eichmann?

SCIENCE AND PROVIDENCE

Israel’s spiritual problem may be studied in several ways. Widespread revolt against her own orthodox traditions, and the consequent tendency to apply the messianic concept in novel and even secular directions is a theme reserved for a separate essay. Another facet of Israel’s spiritual predicament may be found in the unresolved—and unfaced—tension between the scientific and religious approaches to the nation’s history and destiny.

The tremendous emphasis on scientific method and techniques is one of the compelling features of this tiny land of Israel. Some philanthropic American Jews, especially those of more liberal religious persuasion, view the Technion and the Hebrew University as a twentieth century compensation for (and even as recreation of) the lost glory of the Hebrew Temple. (Israel came to statehood in 1948 and now has two nuclear reactors in construction.) When one puts alongside the 7500 students in the Hebrew University and its branches—of which more than 1000 students are pursuing careers in science—the 3500 students in various branches of the Technion, and the 600 scientists, researchers and technicians at the Weizmann Institute of Science, he senses the intensity of this emphasis. The overproduction of engineers is not the worst side of this problem, although Israel has already begun to export her engineering graduates to other lands, and the concentration on university vocational rather than liberal arts education raises the question how such skilled and professional workers will eventually be absorbed in a tiny land.

But the larger problem is one of mood and spirit, of science’s implications for the national outlook. It is one thing to justify scientific concentration because Israel is a modern country. But what of Israel’s claim to a providential and spiritual mission? Students in the Technion get little exposure to the humanities; moreover, while some study is offered in the history of science, there is scant emphasis on the philosophy of science. The scientific mind is indoctrinated to seek a wholly mechanical explanation of reality in terms of natural causality.

Ben-Gurion and other leaders have indeed sought to inscribe the sense of divine providence deeply upon the mind of the people, but this conviction is hardly self-sustaining, and it is quickly dissolved in a predominantly sensate and empirical environment. Even Ben-Gurion considers the pantheistic determinist Spinoza one of the great heroes. May it not be that for a generation deeply dedicated to science Spinoza more than Maimonides will determine the spirit of Israel’s leadership?

Does failure to bridge the gulf between science and religion, and between religion and science represent a potential trouble-spot in Israeli ideology? Many leaders admit privately that it does, even while they concede that little is being done about the problem. Scientists at the Technion readily confess that mechanical techniques are inadequate to explain human personality even though this conviction may ride on the edge of humor. “The scientific model of a mechanical brain is usually masculine,” quipped one staff member, “because you can’t chart women on a slide rule.” But an even larger problem remains which the scientific enterprise in Israel quite ignores: The laboratory may produce a mechanical brain; almighty God alone can create a new heart.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

At an assembly of Protestant editors earlier this year, the chairman asked for a show of hands to determine how many had college journalism training. About 10 per cent responded. “All young fellows,” the chairman observed.

Neglect of education in Christian journalism is probably one of the key factors behind the somewhat inferior character of the contemporary Protestant press. No evangelical college in the United States has as much as a department of journalism. Only a handful of texts deal with religious journalism, and gaps abound.

It is only to be expected, therefore, that not a single religious periodical has enough popular appeal to be available on the average U. S. newsstand. Even the current religious boom has failed to achieve such a breakthrough. No one seems to be able (or willing) to put the Christian message into a context that would sustain the interest of a mass reading audience.

Evangelical publications in North America circulate almost exclusively within the evangelical constituency. They assume no appreciable evangelistic role in secular society. Their language and format confine their success for the most part to the evangelical sphere. Creativity is scarce.

By design or otherwise, a great number of religious periodicals operate virtually at the mercy of special interests represented by advertisers or publishers. Super-commercial orientation and provincial editorial policies make for a vapid publication. “Puffs” for advertisers ultimately backfire because the reader-consumer eventually recognizes them as editorial payola.

Some denominational papers tend to deteriorate to the house organ status. Even large circulations may be attributed less to quality content than to high-pressure promotional campaigns which prey on church-versus-church competition, denominational loyalties, and the local minister’s reputation in the eyes of ecclesiastical superiors. Church publication editors are constantly faced with the dilemma of settling for uninteresting editorial content to avoid the risk of more important controversial matter. The easy way is to echo attitudes which are in vogue with the denominational leadership.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has helped to usher in a new era of religious journalism which holds denominational allegiances in high esteem while transcending these in devout loyalty to the biblical witness in a readable, scholarly magazine attractive to ministers and lay leaders of varying persuasions. This new era might yet see the establishment of a religious news-feature weekly with grass-roots, newsstand appeal. Be that as it may, this much is certain: Literary and technical talent must be developed, and wider recognition achieved of the evangelistic potential of religious journalism.

For readers interested in this field, a bibliography in religious journalism follows. The list was compiled by Miss Marjorie Shelley, a missionary who recently earned a master’s degree in the religious journalism sequence of Syracuse University School of Journalism. Miss Shelley is now training Christian journalists and assisting in literature production in the Ivory Coast.

RELIGIOUS JOURNALISM BIBLIOGRAPHY

BACKGROUNDS IN COMMUNICATIONS

BOYD, MALCOLM, Crisis in Communication: A Christian Examination of the Mass Media. Doubleday, 1957, 128 pages, $2.95. A clergyman in the Episcopal Church, Boyd studies mass media as channels of Christian communication. He was formerly in advertising, television, and radio and is qualified to show how the media can be used for the highest ends.

DEWIRE, HARRY A., The Christian as Communicator. Westminster, 1961, 198 pages, $4.50. With Moreau’s Language and Religious Language, this book emerges to initiate the Westminster Studies in Christian communication. Westminster undertook the series because it felt that the “Christian faith needs to be made relevant to persons in the modern world in terms of the dynamic nature of the faith itself and the channels that are capable of conveying such a faith.”

DILLISTONE, F. W., Christianity and Communication. Scribner’s, 1957; London: Collins, 1956, 156 pages, 12s. 6d. The author discusses the principle of effective communication of the Christian message into the new technological age. The volume will prove valuable to missionaries concerned with communicating across culture barriers.

MOREAU, JULES LAURENCE, Language and Religious Language. Westminster, 1961, 207 pages, $4.50. See DeWire’s The Christian as Communicator above.

NIDA, EUGENE, Message and Mission: The Communication of the Christian Faith. Harper, 1960, 253 pages, $5. Covering some fundamentals of communication theory and linguistic science, Nida uses the methodological approach to relate theology and culture.

SCHRAMM, WILBUR, Responsibility in Mass Communication. Harper, 1957, 391 pages, $4.50. (Series 9 on Ethics and Economics of Society originated by a study committee of the National Council of Churches; foreword by Charles P. Taft; introduction by Reinhold Niebuhr.) In a thorough study of the ethics of the press, Schramm reanalyzes standards of press performance and considers the philosophy of public communication. The book is well documented and offers valuable references for further study.

EDITING

FERGUSON, ROWENA, Editing the Small Magazine. Columbia University Press, 1958, 271 pages, $4.50. Oxford, 36s.; Toronto, $5.25. This book offers practical guidance in each step of the editorial process for those editing small religious magazines.

PUBLICITY

BRODIE, WILLIAM A., Keeping Your Church in the News. Revell, 1942, 125 pages, $1. A practical guidebook, this work tells pastors how the press functions and how they should prepare copy and pictures as they submit church news.

BRODIE, WILLIAM A., Keeping Your Church Informed. Revell, 1944, 125 pages, $1.50. As a companion volume, this book deals with religious journalism in the church. It discusses direct mail, church papers, kinds of church literature and production of small mailing pieces. It is still valuable though outdated.

BROWN, RICHMOND O., Practical Church Publicity. Broadman, 1953, 174 pages, $2.25. Geared to help those who know nothing about church publicity to do a good job, this book catalogues publicity methods.

HENRY, CARL F. H., Successful Church Publicity. Zondervan, 1943 (2nd ed.), 332 pages, $2. Some religious journalism is included although the main body of the book is concerned with church publicity.

LEIDT, WILLIAM E., Publicity Goes to Church. Seabury, 1959, 122 pages, $2.75. Oxford (Toronto) $2.25. An executive in the Episcopal Church describes methods of printing, gives means of evaluating printing jobs, and generally justifies the use of publicity by the church.

STOODY, RALPH, A Handbook of Church Public Relations. Abingdon, 1959, 255 pages, $4. After discussing the church’s functions, the author surveys means by which television and radio serve the church.

STUBER, STANLEY I., Public Relations Manual for Churches. Doubleday, 1951, 284 pages, $3. Stuber covers a broad outline as he writes about the church’s defense before the world and then discusses techniques available to make it known.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND E., Interpreting the Church Through Press and Radio. Muhlenberg, 1951, 352 pages, $3.75. Problems facing local, area, denominational and international church leaders responsible for publicizing their groups are listed in part of the book. Techniques for using the press and radio are offered as well.

GENERAL SUMMARIES OF TECHNIQUES

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., Christian Journalism for Today. Judson, 1952, 252 pages, $3.50. The book includes addresses delivered at The Christian Writers and Editors’ Conferences at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Green Lake, Wisconsin, 1948–1951.

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., The Writers’ Conference Comes to You. Judson, 1956, 424 pages, $5. These are lectures given at various writers’ conferences. Topics include possibilities in the field of Christian journalism, how to write for religious markets, specialized writing fields, and related topics.

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., Techniques of Christian Writing. Judson, 1960, 382 pages, $5. Lectures from writers’ conferences of the past three years, this volume challenges the writer, outlines some how-to-do-its for fiction, article writing, writing for juveniles, and other areas in religious journalism.

OSTEYEE, EDITH T., Writing for Christian Publications. Judson, 1953, 206 pages, $3. Mrs. Osteyee gives advice on preparation of material for religious publishers. She bases her comments on her experiences and lessons she taught in the correspondence course of the Christian Authors’ Guild.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND, ed., Writing for the Religious Market. Association, 1956, 304 pages, $4. This is a practical guidebook developed from contributions of 18 prominent practitioners in specialized fields of writing. Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic authors offer their advice on “how-to-do-it.”

SPECIALIZED FIELDS

BACHMAN, JOHN W., The Church in the World of Radio-Television. Association, 1960, 191 pages, $3.50. This is an outgrowth of work by the National Council of Churches’ study commission on radio, television, and films.

GREENE, ROBERT S., Television Writing. Harper, 1952, 276 pages, $3.75. Although not geared particularly to the religious market this book offers a practical discussion of writing related to the television field.

GRISWOLD, C. T. and SCHMITZ, C. H., Broadcasting Religion. National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., 1954, 103 pages, paper, $1.50. This volume deals with the possibilities in religious broadcasting. Both authors are experienced in the field.

LAUBACH, FRANK C. and LAUBACH, ROBERT S., Toward World Literacy. Syracuse University Press, 1960, 335 pages, $4.75. For missionaries, workers with American illiterates, and writers who want to clarify their writing, this book offers a description of the famous Laubach literacy techniques but the last half is devoted to writing for new-literates. Readability scales and techniques add to its usefulness.

PARKER, EVERETT C., ELINOR INAMAN, and ROSS SNYDER, Religious Radio. Harper, 1948, 271 pages, $3. After covering the place of radio in the communication of ideas, the authors discuss writing and producing radio programs.

PARKER, EVERETT C., Religious Television. Harper, 1961, 244 pages, $4. This is a similar work for television.

WRITERS’ HELPS

GOSNELL, JANICE and ALLEN, MARY, editors, Christian Writers Market Handbook. Christian Writers’ Institute, 1956, 79 pages, $2, (being revised). A practical guide containing tips on how to write articles and other religious materials. It gives a listing of markets for each of the specialized fields.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND E., Careers in Religious Journalism. Association, 1955, 116 pages, $2.50. This survey of religious journalism as a vocation answers many questions about requirements and opportunities in careers with religious publications, TV, and radio stations and allied groups.

SECULAR BOOKS FOR WRITERS

ARTICLE WRITING

BIRD, GEORGE L., Article Writing and Marketing. Rinehart, 1955, 506 pages, $5 (revised ed.). A thorough work dealing with procedures in getting ideas for articles, outlining the article, markets, procedures to follow in sending material to editors, and techniques and tools essential to the craft.

STEIGLEMAN, WALTER A., Writing the Feature Article. Macmillan, 1950, 435 pages, $3.75. A volume offering techniques and principles of article writing.

EDITORIAL WRITING

WALDROP, A. GAYLE, Editor and Editorial Writer. Rinehart, 1955, 511 pages, $5, (revised edition). Editor-writer relationships are discussed to a degree, but the value of the book is its help to those who want to write editorially.

JUVENILE MATERIALS

LEDERER, WILLIAM J., Spare-Time Article Writing for Money. Norton, 1954, 268 pages, $3.75. The section on juvenile writing deserves special mention.

LEWIS, CLAUDIA, Writing for Young Children. Simon and Schuster, 1954, 115 pages, $3. Special problems and techniques of writing for children and an underlying comprehension of their needs and peculiar interests are all noted.

SHORT STORY WRITING

MOWERY, WILLIAM BYRON, Professional Short-Story Writing. Crowell, 1953, 273 pages, $3.50. Discussing plot, theme, scenes, and other short story techniques, the author offers a thorough guide to the craft of fiction writing. A writer could follow through step by step and having completed the procedure check his writing by the standards analyzed here.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

It is always tantalizing for a Christian interested in literature to speculate about the question of whether Shakespeare was a Christian. The materials for such speculation are, obviously, 1. what little we know about his life (and among that, several incidents—perhaps apocryphal—which give little evidence of piety), and 2. the corpus of his writings. Even though it is commonly assumed that he was at least a nominal member of the Church of England, an adherent of the Via Media of the Elizabethan Settlement, neither of the above sources answers the question with any finality. As for the first, it needs only to be pointed out that there was no Boswell for Shakespeare, and that the gall required for interviewing and the patience to pursue the minutiae of people’s lives are of fairly recent origin. And as for attempting to deduce Shakespeare’s personal response towards the Christian faith from his writings, we are confronted with an almost impossible task. It is commonly observed that Shakespeare is no systematic philosopher or theologian, that his plays are woven from many strands—the Christian among them—and that it is dangerous at any point to equate the speech of this or that character with Shakespeare’s own position. Thus, Hiram Haydn, in his book titled The Counter-Renaissance, after examining thoroughly the various winds of docrine which constituted Shakespeare’s intellectual climate, concludes:

Finally, then, I am admitting the traditional defeat. I can establish Shakespeare’s awareness of the intellectual conflicts of his time, his use of Counter-Renaissance ideas and themes. And I can indicate the consistent elements in his point of view as he expressed it in the major tragedies. Yet, when that is done, it is little enough. The man escapes me, as he escapes every one else. There are all the other plays to contradict me; other scholars’ material findings to suggest other influences than those I have cited, and other directions. Most of all, there is the man’s insistent interest in life as spectacle, rather than argument, and the incredible range of his creative sympathies (Scribner’s, 1950, p. 667).

I should like to discuss one of Shakespeare’s sonnets against the background of the above preface outlining the difficulty of any attempt to ascertain Shakespeare’s religion. This sonnet, number 129, seems to me to reflect in a rather pointed way Shakespeare’s acquaintance with the Christian tradition of life and thought.

REFLECTIONS ON SONNET 129

First, let me give a few introductory comments about the sonnet sequence in which this sonnet appears. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in all. Of these, 152 are usually regarded as a sequential unit; the other two fall outside the sequence. The group of 152 sonnets tells of Shakespeare’s relations with especially two persons: a male friend, whose excellence and virtue he never tires of recounting, and Shakespeare’s mistress, a married woman, “the Dark Lady,” who alternately attracts and repels the poet. Sonnet 129 falls within the group which deals with Shakespeare’s illicit liaison, and indicates the tension he experiences when confronted with the moral law on the one hand, and the beauty, grace, and charm of the woman on the other. In the well-known 129 he comments on the nausea, the bitter delusion which inevitably sets in upon moral dereliction. It will be helpful to have the sonnet before us:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjur’d, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust:

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight,

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and prov’d, a very woe;

Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

I should like to comment first of all on the interesting use of the words heaven and hell in the last line of the sonnet. Shakespeare has obviously derived these words from historic, medieval Christianity. Nevertheless, he has poured a new meaning into them, and has thus participated in a practice common to Renaissance writers, namely, the secularization of Christian terms. When he uses the word heaven he means, clearly, the anticipated realization of one’s sinful desires; by the word hell he means the remorse he subsequently suffers. Similarly, he employs in other sonnets such words as eternity, love, transgression, angel, bliss, damnation, judgment, hope, faith, grace, penance and hymn in ways foreign to their origin. He even adapts a line from the Lord’s prayer and applies it to his friend: “Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name …” (Sonnet 108). Thus, Shakespeare has contributed to that history of word changes which enables us now to speak blithely about angel food cake, devil’s food squares, and divinity strips.

But despite Shakespeare’s practice of transvaluating terms, the sonnet is permeated with a Christian sensibility. Let us examine it closer, and although we may not solve the problem with which this essay began, we can at least note an important tenet of Christian morality which Shakespeare exhibits for us.

In the first 12 lines Shakespeare makes three assertions about a sinful act—primarily adultery, we must suppose, although other sins are not precluded: 1. The act is essentially one, although it exists in three stages in time: anticipation, realization, and retrospect; 2. Each stage is characterized by irrationality, madness, perversity; 3. Sin is shameful, enervating, and deceptive. Then comes the couplet: “All this the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”

SPIRIT OF WESTERN HUMANISM

My contention is that Shakespeare, in the words “All this the world well knows,” is refuting a major premise of humanism—the principle that the good man will not knowingly do wrong, that enlightenment and understanding are so powerful that they must perforce flow into virtuous action, that right conduct and knowledge are two sides of the same coin. This premise was advanced first by Socrates, and continues to the very present. It is an intuition, which, despite numerous qualifications and occasional denials from past and present sources, has persisted as an article of faith with which man seemingly cannot do without, whatever be the metaphysics adduced in its support. One may at least say that no generation has been without those who could subscribe to Pope’s couplet:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen.…

This equation of the identity of knowledge and virtue represents a resilient and, in many ways, noble tradition. Its advocates include the intellectual giants of the West. To be sure, not all thought about ethics has adhered to Plato’s insistence that virtue stems from a knowledge of an ideal world which exerts a divine attraction upon the good man, nor have all idealistic philosophers put matters in the same way that Plato did. Nevertheless, the spirit of this premise has been woven into the very fabric of Western humanism. It underlies the traditional importance placed on education in Western thought (cf. the designation reform school). It was reflected by former Vice-President Nixon in the question he asked when he was being pelted and insulted during his South American tour: “Don’t you people want to hear any facts?” It underlies an observation made by a prisoner in a letter which appeared in a recent issue of the Atlantic (Sept., 1960): “Education and crime are incompatible.” And this assumption has been a key principle in the democratic venture.

THE CHRISTIAN ALTERNATIVE

Christianity has frequently found the equation of knowledge and virtue attractive, for it has experienced much misery from ignorance and from zeal unballasted by learning. It has been compelled to agree with humanism that neither hedonism nor experience are adequate substitutes for knowledge in the attainment of moral wisdom. However, it has taken issue with humanism on a crucial point, namely that enlightenment and knowledge are sufficient to deter one from evil. For one thing, Christian thought, generically speaking, has said that the inner law, man’s conscience, is sufficient to deprive man of the excuse of ignorance. Moreover, Christianity has had to recognize the existence of “presumptuous” sin (Ps. 19:13), sin which is committed in the face of better knowledge. And it has been able to present a staggering amount of evidence from history, past and present, to show that mere knowledge is insufficient to contain the perversity and irrationality of man.

John Calvin’s pronouncements on this subject can be regarded as typical of Christian thought. He discusses the matter at some length in his Institutes, Book II, ii, passim. In these pages he ascribes to man the faculty—imperfect though it is—of discriminating in a general way between good and evil, and he rejects as an extreme position the insistence of those who maintain that all sins arise from deliberate perversity and malice. Nevertheless, he takes issue with Plato for “imputing all sins to ignorance,” and observes further: “… sometimes the turpitude of the crime so oppresses the conscience of the sinner, that, no longer imposing on himself under the false image of virtue, he rushes into evil with the knowledge of his mind and the consent of his will.”

How much of the Christian idea is Shakespeare expressing in his merely negative “none knows well?” It is hard to say. He does not go as far as Roger Ascham, an early contemporary, who in his The Scholemaster first juxtaposes and interrelates the classical and the Christian views on this subject, but then concludes: “Let God’s grace be the bit … Let God’s grace be the bridle.…” But if Shakespeare is less than explicitly Christian, he is at least taking issue with the ethical tenet just discussed, namely, that virtue, though it requires moral heroism and strenuous effort, can be realized through one’s own resources. Shakespeare seems to anticipate Cardinal Newman who points out the limitations of knowledge and even of a liberal education in these words:

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man (Discourse V, “Knowledge Its Own End,” from The Idea of a University, 1852).

Was Shakespeare a Christian? The answer, again, is that it is difficult to say with final certainty. But the sonnet just considered is one of any number of instances where it is obvious that Shakespeare had encountered the full impact of historic Christianity. Sonnet 146, for example, where the soul chides the body for neglecting the interior life, is reminiscent of many medieval poems on this subject.

There are still other data which indicate clearly that Shakespeare was aware of the Christian option of life and thought. For one thing, there is the strong moral concern, the ethical stimulation universally acknowledged in his plays. Moreover, such a speech as Portia’s mercy speech has no antecedent in Shakespeare’s sources and comes gratuitously—strong evidence that Shakespeare’s consciousness was suffused with the Christian habit of thought. Again, references to the Bible and biblical overtones are frequent. And consider, finally, such lines as these, written without obvious dramatic necessity, written also without inhibition or self-consciousness:

… All the souls that were were forfeit once;

And He that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy.

(Measure for Measure, II, ii, 73 ff.)

… King Pharamond … Who died within the year of our redemption Four hundred twenty-six; (Henry the Fifth, I, ii, 58 ff.)

Forthwith a power of English shall we levy;

… To chase these pagans in those holy fields

Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet

Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d

For our advantage on the bitter cross.

(Henry IV, Part I, I, i, 22 ff.)

There is a true beauty about these lines. It is difficult, or at least distressing, to suppose that the author of such lines as these should have spurned the resources of God’s better beauty, grace.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

The following list provides pastor and layman with a bibliography of the best available books additional to the Bible for deepening the spiritual life. Not all these works are in the strict genre of devotional literature, and some were certainly not written with a devotional intent. But it is safe to say that all are capable of performing radical spiritual surgery on sensitive Christian hearts.

Several criteria have been employed in the selection of titles:

1. Excluded on principle are works of general religiosity (for example, books by K. Gibran), works of general mysticism (Jakob Boehme, Madame Guyon), works doctrinally objectionable (Fulton Sheen’s Life of Christ), works of a social-gospel cast (Sheldon’s In His Steps), works reflecting simply the peace-of-mind or positive-thinking mood (Peale, Blanton), and works of sweetness-and-light (Grace Livingston Hill).

2. Only in-print titles are included. Thus the reader should not expect such classics as Adolph Saphir’s The Lord’s Prayer, David McIntyre’s Prayer Life of Our Lord, or Isaac Watts’ The World to Come; it is hoped that publishing houses engaged in reprinting services will bring back these and other great devotional writings of the past.

3. Only works written in English or available in English translation are included. Many writings of Continental divines of the late sixteenth to early eighteenth century are therefore outside the scope of this list (English translations are badly needed of such works as Johann Gerhard’s Homiliae XXXVI seu meditationes breves diebus dominicis atque festis accomodatae).

4. No more than one entry is given for a single author. The list could have been extended almost indefinitely under such names as Oswald Chambers; it is assumed that readers will make such extensions for themselves.

5. The least expensive worthwhile editions have been chosen when multiple editions are in print, and paperbound editions are cited if available and textually reliable. American prices have been given in most instances; the shrewd book buyer may well be successful in paring down some prices even further by ordering directly from England. It should be of interest that the total cost of the one hundred titles is only $260—roughly the purchase price of an inexpensive television set. In view of the low cost, individual pastors and local churches might well consider seriously the merits of buying the entire collection—which can serve as a proper basis for a lifetime of solid devotional reading. Surely $260 is little enough to implement Dwight Moody’s axiom, “No one has ever led a person closer to Christ than he is himself.”

My thanks to the Knox College Library, Toronto (Dr. Neil Smith, librarian); to the Moody Bible Institute Library, Chicago (Dr. Elgin S. Moyer, librarian) for access to a vast number of devotional writings from which this list has been in part prepared; also to the editorial staff of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and to Dr. William H. Wrighton, formerly professor of literature at the University of Georgia, for several helpful suggestions.—JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY, compiler.

ALLEINE, JOSEPH.An Alarm to Unconverted Sinners. Sovereign Grace Publishers, $2.

ALLEN, CHARLES L. All Things Are Possible through Prayer. Revell, $2.

ANDREWES, LANCELOT.Private Devotions. World, $1.75.

ARNDT, JOHANN.Devotions and Prayers (Selected and translated by John Joseph Stoudt). Baker, $1.50.

ARTHUR, WILLIAM.Tongue of Fire. Light and Life, $1.50.

ATHANASIUS.The Incarnation of the Word of God. Macmillan, $2.50.

AUDEN, W. H.Collected Poetry. Random House, $4.75. [Note especially “The Age of Anxiety”].

BAXTER, J. SIDLOW.Going Deeper. Zondervan, $2.95.

BAXTER, RICHARD.The Saint’s Everlasting Rest. Sovereign Grace Publishers, $2.

BONAR, HORATIUS.God’s Way of Holiness. Moody Press, $0.39.

BONHOEFFER, DIETRICH.Life Together. Harper, $2.

BOSTON, THOMAS.Human Nature in Its Fourfold State. Sovereign Grace Publishers, $4.95.

BOUNDS, E. M.Preacher and Prayer. Zondervan, $0.75.

BRAINERD, DAVID.Life and Diary (Edited by Jonathan Edwards). Moody Press, $0.89 [Condensed; unabridged edition out-of-print].

BROWNE, THOMAS.Religio Medici. Henry Regnery Co. [Gateway edition], $1.25.

BROWNING, ROBERT.Poetry and Prose (Edited by Humphrey S. Milford). Oxford University Press, $1.40.

BUNYAN, JOHN.The Pilgrim’s Progress. John C. Winston, $2.95 [This edition especially recommended because it identifies Scriptural quotations and allusions, and reproduces the Frederick Barnard illustrations; cf. C. S. Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Progress].

CALVIN, JOHN.Thine Is My Heart (Compiled by John H. Kromminga). Zondervan, $3.95.

CHAMBERS, OSWALD.My Utmost for His Highest. Dodd, Mead, $3.

CHYTRAEUS, DAVID.On Sacrifice (Translated and edited by John Warwick Montgomery). Concordia, [Scheduled for publication in Lent, 1962.]

CLARKE, SAMUEL.Precious Bible Promises. Grosset & Dunlap, $1.50.

DOBERSTEIN, JOHN W.Minister’s Prayer Book. Muhlenberg Press, $3.75.

DOERFFLER, ALFRED, et al. The Devotional Bible. 2 vols. Concordia, $7.

DONNE, JOHN.Sermons. Meridian, $1.35 [The great, critical edition of Donne’s sermons is published by the University of California Press].

DRUMMOND, HENRY.The Changed Life. Revell, $1.

DURBANVILLE, HENRY.Three Deadly Foes. B. McCall Barbour, 28 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh 1, Scotland, 5/– [$0.70].

EDMAN, V. RAYMOND.Storms and Starlight. Van Kampen Press, $2.50.

EDWARDS, JONATHAN.The History of Redemption. Kregel, $4.50 [Note also the modern, critical edition of Edwards’ works, now being published by Yale University Press].

ELIOT, T. S.Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. Harcourt, $4.50.

ELLIOT, ELISABETH.Through Gates of Splendor. Harper, $3.75.

FLETCHER, LIONEL B.Life Quest and Conquest. Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London, England, 1/– [$0.14].

FULLER, THOMAS.The Holy State and the Profane State. 2 vols. Columbia University Press, $8.

GOCKEL, HERMAN W.What Jesus Means to Me. Concordia, $1.25.

GORDON, A. J.The Ministry of the Spirit. Zondervan, $2.

GORDON, S. D.Quiet Talks on Prayer. Grosset & Dunlap, $1.50.

GOUDGE, E.Reward of Faith. Coward, $2.75.

GRAHAM, BILLY.The Secret of Happiness. Doubleday, $2.

GRUBB, NORMAN.The Law of Faith. Christian Literature Crusade, $2.25.

GUINNESS, HOWARD W.Sacrifice. Inter-Varsity Press, $0.50.

GUTHRIE, MALCOLM.Learning to Live. Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London, England, 5/– [$0.70].

GUTHRIE, WILLIAM.The Christian’s Great Interest. Kregel, $2.95.

HAAKONSON, R. P.Family Altar Readings. Moody Press, $3.50.

HALLESBY, O.Under His Wings. Augsburg Publishing House, $2.

HENRY, MATTHEW.Quest for Communion with God. Eerdmans, $1.50.

HOFFMANN, OSWALD C. J.Life Crucified. Eerdmans, $2.50.

HOPKINS, EVAN H.The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life. Sunday School Times, $1.50.

IRONSIDE, HENRY A.Continual Burnt Offering. Loizeaux, $1.50.

KRUMMACHER, F. W.The Suffering Saviour. Moody Press, $4.

KUYPER, ABRAHAM.The Death and Resurrection of Christ. Zondervan, $2.50.

LAW, WILLIAM.A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Dutton (Everyman’s Library), $1.85.

LAWRENCE, BROTHER.The Practice of the Presence of God. Revell, $0.40.

LEWIS, C. S.The Narnia Chronicles. 7 vols. Bles, London, England; and Bodley Head, London, England, $8 [Cf. John Warwick Montgomery’s article, The Chronicles of Narnia,” in Religious Education, Sept.–Oct., 1959].

LUTHER, MARTIN.Day by Day We Magnify Thee. Muhlenberg Press, $3.50 [Note also the 55-vol. edition of Luther’s most important works which is now being issued by Concordia Publishing House and Muhlenberg Press].

M’CHEYNE, ROBERT MURRAY.Memoirs. (Edited by Andrew Bonar). 2 vols. Moody Press, $1.78.

MACDONALD, GEORGE.An Anthology. (Edited by C. S. Lewis). Macmillan, $2.25.

MARSHALL, PETER.Prayers. McGraw-Hill, $3.95.

MAXWELL, L. E.Crowded to Christ. Erdmans, $3.

MEYER, F. B.Our Daily Walk. Zondervan, $3.50.

MILTON, JOHN.Paradise Lost (Edited by Northrop Frye). Rinehart, $0.95 [Cf. C. S. Lewis’ magnificent Preface to Paradise Lost].

MORGAN, G. CAMPBELL.The Life of the Christian. Revell, $1.25.

MORRIS, LEON.The Lord from Heaven. Eerdmans, $1.50.

MOULE, H. C. G.Charles Simeon. Inter-Varsity Press, $2.

MURRAY, ANDREW.God’s Best Secrets. Zondervan, $2.50.

NELSON, MARION H., M.D.Why Christians Crack Up. Moody Press, $2.50.

Oswald Chambers: His Life and Work (Second edition). Christian Literature Crusade, $3.75.

OWEN, JOHN.Temptation and Sin. Zondervan, $3.95.

OXENHAM, JOHN.Bees in Amber. Revell, $2.

PASCAL, BLAISE.The Pensées. Dutton (Everyman’s Library), $1.15.

PATON, ALAN.Cry, the Beloved Country. Scribner’s, $1.95.

PAXSON, RUTH.Life on the Highest Plane. Moody Press, $5.95.

PELIKAN, JAROSLAV.The Shape of Death: Life, Death, and Immortality in the Early Fathers. Abingdon, $2.25.

POLLOCK, J. C.The Cambridge Seven: A Call to Christian Service. Inter-Varsity Press, $1.

RAINSFORD, MARCUS.Our Lord Prays for His Own. Moody Press, $0.89 [condensed].

REDPATH, ALAN.Victorious Christian Living. Revell, $3.

RUTHERFORD, SAMUEL.Selected Letters. Allenson, $2.50.

RYLE, J. C.Holiness. Kregel, $3.95.

SANDERS, J. OSWALD.Christ Incomparable. Christian Literature Crusade, $3.

SAUER, ERICH.In the Arena of Faith. Eerdmans, $3.

SIMPSON, A. B.The Self Life and the Christ Life. Christian Publications, $1.75.

SMEATON, GEORGE.The Doctrine of the Atonement As Taught by Christ Himself. Zondervan, $5.95.

SPURGEON, CHARLES H.Morning and Evening. Zondervan, $3.95 [The unabridged edition].

STALKER, JAMES M.The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ. Zondervan, $2.

TAYLOR, DR. AND MRS. HOWARD.Hudson Taylor. 2 vols. Lutterworth Press, $9.50.

TAYLOR, J. HUDSON.Union and Communion. Moody Press, $0.39.

TAYLOR, JEREMY.The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. World, $1.75.

TAYLOR, MRS. HOWARD.Bordon of Yale. Moody Press, $0.89.

Theologia Germanica. World, $1.75.

THOMAS, W. H. GRIFFITH.Grace and Power. Eerdmans, $2.

THOMAS à KEMPIS, supposed author. The Imitation of Christ. Pocket Books, $0.35 [Especially attractive edition because of the illustrations by Valenti Angelo].

THOMPSON, FRANCIS.The Hound of Heaven. Morehouse, $0.45.

THOMSON, JAMES G. S. S.The Praying Christ. Eerdmans, $3.

TOLKIEN, J. R. R.The Lord of the Rings. 3 vols. Houghton, $15. [Includes: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King].

TORREY, R. A.The Power of Prayer. Zondervan, $2.50.

TOZER, A. W.The Divine Conquest. Christian Publications, $1.75.

WALTHER, CARL F. W.The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel. Concordia, $3.50.

WESLEY, JOHN.Devotions and Prayers (Compiled by Donald E. Demaray). Baker, $1.50.

WHYTE, ALEXANDER.Lord Teach Us To Pray. Harper, $2.25.

WILLIAMS, CHARLES.The Descent of the Dove. Meridian, $1.35 [Readers should also be reminded of his more difficult works—the supernatural novels, such as All Hallow’s Eve, and the poetical masterpieces, such as The Region of the Summer Stars].

WOOLMAN, JOHN.Journal. World, $1.75.

ZWEMER, SAMUEL.The Glory of the Cross. Zondervan, $0.75.

In Christ’s parable of Dives and Lazarus, we are told that between paradise and hell “there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.” An analogous gulf seems to separate Christians of our day from the great saints and devotional writers in the Church’s past. Approaches to life such as those advocated or described in the following quotations could hardly be more foreign to the actual life pattern of the average American Christian—be he layman or pastor:

Flee the company of worldly-living people as much as thou mayest: for the treating of worldly matters abateth greatly the fervour of spirit: though it be done with a good intent, we be anon deceived with vanity of the world, and in manner are made as thrall unto it, if we take not good heed.… Therefore it is necessary that we watch and pray, that the time pass not away from us in idleness. If it be lawful and expedient to speak, speak then of God and of such things as are to the edifying of thy soul or of thy neighbour’s (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans., Richard Whitford, p. 17).

I looked then, and saw a man named Evangelist coming to him, who asked, “Wherefore dost thou cry?”

He answered, “Sir, I perceive by the book in my hand, that I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment; and I find that I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second.”

Then said Evangelist, “Why not willing to die, since this life is attended with so many evils?” The man answered, “Because I fear that this burden that is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into Tophet. And, sir, if I be not fit to go to prison, I am not fit to go to judgment, and from thence to execution; and the thoughts of these things make me cry.”

Then said Evangelist, “If this be thy condition, why standest thou still?”

He answered, “Because I know not whither to so.” Then he gave him a parchment roll, and there was written within, “Flee from the wrath to come.”

The man, therefore, read it, and looking upon Evangelist very carefully, said, “Whither must I fly?” Then said Evangelist (pointing with his finger over a very wide field), “Do you see yonder wicket gate?” The man said, “No.” Then said the other, “Do you see yonder shining light?” He said, “I think I do.” Then said Evangelist, “Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto: so shalt thou see the gate; at which, when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what thou shalt do.” So I saw in my dream that the man began to run. Now, he had not run far from his own door, when his wife and children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears, and Tan on, crying, “Life! life! eternal life!” So he looked not behind him, but fled toward the middle of the plain (John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, pp. 8–10).

I found in myself a spirit of love, and warmth, and power, to address the poor Indians. God helped me to plead with them to “turn from all the vanities of the heathen to the living God.” I am persuaded the Lord touched their consciences for I never saw such attention raised in them before. And when I came away from them, I spent the whole time, while I was riding to my lodgings three miles distant, in prayer and praise to God.

After I rode more than two miles, it came into my mind to dedicate myself to God again; which I did with great solemnity and unspeakable satisfaction. Especially gave up myself to Him renewedly in the work of the ministry. And this I did by divine grace, I hope, without any exception or reserve; not in the least shrinking back from any difficulties that might attend this great and blessed work. I seemed to be most free, cheerful and full in this dedication of myself. My whole soul cried: “Lord, to Thee I dedicate myself! Oh, accept of me and let me be Thine forever. Lord, I desire nothing else; I desire nothing more. Oh, come, come, Lord, accept a poor worm. ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth, that I desire besides Thee’ ” (Jonathan Edwards, ed., The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, 1744; newly ed. by Philip E. Howard, Jr., Moody Press’ Wycliffe Series of Christian Classics, 1949, p. 169).

The reading of the Word and meditation on the promises have been increasingly precious to me of late. At first I allowed my desire to acquire the language (Chinese) speedily to have undue prominence and a deadening effect on my soul. But now, in the grace that passes all understanding, the Lord has again caused His face to shine upon me.…

I have been puzzling my brains again about a house, etc., but to no effect. So I have made it a matter of prayer, and have given it entirely into the Lord’s hands, and now I feel quite at peace about it. He will provide and be my guide in this and every other perplexing step (Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, pp. 38–39).

THE WINDS OF MODERNITY

It is natural to ask why such passages as these breathe an atmosphere almost totally different from that in church life today. Several contributing factors can be cited, all of which must be taken into account for a full explanation. First of all, one must note what Andrew Dickson White termed “the warfare of science with theology” which, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has resulted in the growth of a mechanistic, reductionist attitude on the part of both scientist and nonscientist. Scientific method presupposes a closed universe governed by invariable law; in such a universe, religious devotion and prayer for specifics seem archaic and meaningless. “Among the professional and scientific classes it has been the inability of traditional religion to justify itself in the light of modern science … that has led to the rapid growth of a tolerant indifference, a skeptical agnosticism, or a dogmatic atheism” (John Herman Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind, p. 535). Secondly, and more important, we have the secular “success philosophy” which has turned generations of Americans (church members included) from seeking God to seeking personal achievement and recognition by society. “The major influence affecting religious beliefs and attitudes has been the growth of our manifold secular faiths and interests.… Though men repeat the old phrases their real concern has turned elsewhere” (Ibid., p. 538). In the secularistic activism of modern life, few find time or motivation for devotional exercises. Thirdly, observation of the churches themselves reveals that organized religion has shifted its goals to accord more fully with the modern temper. “The main stress of religious energy [has been turned] away from the supernatural to the social, from transcending the human to the serving of human needs.… It is not that the churches practice a conscious hypocrisy about Christian teachings but rather that religious doctrines have been turned into counters in a game men play to bring their consciences to terms with their universe. It is less a question of what the pastors say than the fact that they are no longer listened to. Having lost the capacity for belief, they have lost also the power to instill belief.” (Max Lerner, America As a Civilization, pp. 708, 711. The Rev. Mackerel is a fictional example of the suburban modernist clergyman; he receives a salary raise when he makes the stirring sermonic point that “It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us”). But this is not the only way that the church has widened the gap between the ideal and the real in Christian devotional life.

In their writings, not a few twentieth-century theologians have (in many cases unwittingly) encouraged the trend away from Christian devotional exercises. I refer not merely to publications by religious liberals who would justify an anthropocentric religion (e.g., Curtis W. Reese, The Meaning of Humanism) nor solely to works by those who would interpret prayer largely in terms of introspection or meditation (e.g., William Adams Brown, The Life of Prayer in a World of Science, especially pp. 13–15) influential as such writings have been. What concerns me more is the doctrinal emphasis characteristic of some of the foremost theologians within the Reformation framework of belief.

MODERN THEOLOGY WIDENS THE GULF

For several decades, Karl Barth and the so-called “neo-orthodox” school of Christian thought have excessively stressed the sovereignty and transcendence of God. The work of Rudolph Otto (cf. Walter Leibrecht, ed., Religion and Culture; Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, pp. 6, 10; also Barth’s recent work, The Humanity of God; and note especially Otto’s Idea of the Holy), and the Kierkegaard revival (cf. Jaroslav Pelikan, Pools for Christ, 1955, pp. 1–27), have likewise moved the gravitational center of theology. Nygren’s Agape and Eros (Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. by Philip S. Watson, see especially part I) has sharply distinguished God’s unmotivated, selfless, unconditioned love from all varieties of human desire. Now obviously no Christian who subjects his theology to the testimony of Revelation would deny the great contribution which this transcendence movement has made. In an era of watered-down, man-centered, social-gospel liberalism, Barth’s Commentary on Romans came as a clarion-call to a Reformation re-emphasis on justification by grace alone. However, the neo-orthodox and Lundensian movements do not seem productive of a positive attitude in the devotional realm. In his Basic Christian Ethics Ramsey writes:

One has to go in heavily for analogy, or even commute back and forth from one meaning to another, ever to suppose that “love,” or any other single term, can adequately convey the meaning of a Christian’s response to God and also his love for neighbor. The words “faith,” “obedience,” “humility,” and—to indicate greater intimacy and warmth—the words “gratitude” and “thankfulness,” and—to keep the distance between God and man—the expression “to glorify” are preferable, singly or as a cluster, for describing how Christians think of themselves standing in relation to God.… Strictly speaking, the Christian church is not a community of prayer, but a community of memory.… Strictly speaking, Christians are not lovers of God; they are theodidacti, “taught of God” (Paul Ramsey, Basic Christian Ethics, pp. 129, 132; cf. Nygren, op cit., pp. 212–14, 219).

When such radical stress is placed upon the “otherness of God,” and when one observes the frightening extent to which Christian devotional writers have sometimes slipped into eros-synergism (examples of synergistic error in Christian devotional classics may be found in such works as Francis de Sales’ Introduction to a Devout Life, ed. by Thomas S. Kepler, and John Wesley’s Christian Perfection, ed. by Thomas S. Kepler. A precedent for all such eros-related devotional literature was Augustine’s De quantitate animae, where Augustine “distinguishes seven aspects of the Soul, or rather seven steps, gradus, by which it climbs to its perfection” (Edward Kennard Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages, p. 260), and thus downgraded if not degraded the ideal of the saint’s true devotion, it does not seem strange that the present-day Christian pastor-finds it easy, amid his hectic and activistic responsibilities, to rationalize a very loose attitude toward the “quest for holiness.” And the clergyman’s personal reticence in this regard has as a logical consequent a laissez-faire approach to the devotional lives of his parishioners—out of whose homes come a good number of the church members of the next generation. If one assumes that this situation is not the ideal one, can a Revelation-based theology present a more balanced approach?

THE BIBLE AND THE LIFE OF FAITH

Not all great exhibitions of Christian devotion are to be found in the distant past. The following is a 1951 diary entry by James Elliot who, in January, 1956, was killed while attempting to bring the Christian message to the Auca Indians in Ecuador.

I walked out to the hill just now. It is exalting, delicious. To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coat tail and the heavens hailing your heart—to gaze and glory and give oneself again to God, what more could a man ask? Oh the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth. I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Perhaps in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, smell His garments and smile into my Lover’s eyes—ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself (“Excerpts from Jim Elliot’s Diary,” His Magazine, Apr., 1956, p. 9).

How have such modern saints of God reconciled a life of personal devotion with the Reformation principle of sola gratia? The basic answer is, I believe, that they have given proper weight to the two other cardinal watchwords of Protestant theology: sola scriptura and sola fide.

One of the most remarkable—and to many in our day, most irritating—characteristic of the great Protestant Reformers was their insistence that the Bible be allowed to speak for itself, that its message be not limited either by existing cultural conditions or by predetermined religio-philosophical conceptions. To Calvin, for example, it would have been inconceivable to allow the low spiritual state of the city of Geneva to influence biblical teaching as to how people ought to live. Calvin’s problem, as he saw it, was not to fit the biblical message to the time but to discover precisely what the Bible teaches, and then to conform the culture to that divine message. Luther, in dealing with the scholastics, was not impressed by the flawless logic of the medieval synthesis, for he saw it as a substitution of human categories for the revelational basis of Christian theology. If the Bible, taken on its own ground, opposed the whole idea of human merit by which the medieval church justified its practice, then the problem was not to engage in finer casuistry in biblical interpretation but unequivocally to conform church life and theology to God’s Word.

The Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura which grew out of the precise position just described asserts that “the prophetic and apostolic writing of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged.” (Formula of Concord, epitome, part 1; cf. Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. 1, part 10: “The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture).” The question with regard to the devotional life, viewed from this perspective, is simply this: What does the Bible say on the matter? And the answer is no less clean-cut. The New Testament contains literally thousands of explicit commands with regard to growth in Christian life. Moreover, it has been frequently noted that the Pauline writings, which comprise such a large portion of the New Testament, typically employ an outline consisting of “doctrine,” then “response” (e.g., Romans, where the ouv of 12:1 divides the book into two such sections. Sanday and Headlam comment on this verse: “We now reach the concluding portion of the Epistle, that devoted to the practical application of the previous discussion. An equally marked division between the theoretical and the practical portion is found in the Epistle to the Ephesians (chap. 4); and one similar, although not so strongly marked, in Galatians (v. 1 or 2); Colossians (3:1); 1 Thessalonians (4:1); 2 Thessalonians (3:6). A comparison with the Epistles of St. Peter and St. John will show how special a characteristic of St. Paul is this method of construction” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 5th ed., p. 351). And over against the Lundensian suspicion of agape-love directed toward God, we have Jesus’ crucial summation of the Decalogue in the words “Thou shalt love [agapāseis] the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:30; cf. Matt. 22:37; Luke 10:27).

THE LIFE OF FAITH AND JUSTIFICATION

But biblical teaching in this matter goes beyond the sphere of command. It relates the devotional life directly to the central truth of justification. Man is not commanded to love God because his salvation is unsure—in order to obtain merit in God’s eyes. To the contrary, the command comes because the Christian has already been saved, and a life in communion with God is the only consistent possibility in light of so great salvation. “We love him,” John says, “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,” was one of our Lord’s frequent emphases. The central theme of James’ often-misunderstood epistle is that “faith without works is dead.” Adolf Köberle has made this point with telling effect:

The justification of prayerlessness has never been derived from the article of justification. It was the age of the Illumination that first brought about that weakening of fervor and of discipline in prayer which our race has not yet succeeded in overcoming.… Properly understood the use of such discipline can never endanger the nature of the Gospel but, on the contrary, will only demonstrate and strengthen it.… That the suppression of our self-love requires unrelenting self-discipline certainly deprives us of every basis for self-satisfaction, every idea of meritorious action, and sternly directs the one who is fasting to seek the forgiveness of sins.… The admonition of Scripture to the disciples and the congregations to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof, to mortify our members, to strive to enter in through the strait gate, to fight a good fight, to strive to attain the goal—all these admonitions after all only testify how easily the believer may still be lost and what full measure of grace is needed if any one is to be saved (Adolf Köberle, The Quest for Holiness, trans. from the 3d German edition by John C. Mattes, Augsburg, 1938, pp. 174, 184–85).

Thus the very nature of God’s free, unmerited grace, as revealed in the Bible and expressed on the Cross, necessitates a devotional response of the whole man to God. Only if this is understood does the Reformation concept of sola fide—with fides seen both as faith and as faithfulness—carry its proper theological weight. The Word of our God is unique in that it alone “stands forever” (Isa. 40:8), and that its first and great commandment is still to “love the Lord thy God.” If the testimony of Holy Writ is rendered ineffective through attempts to make God’s revelation fit predetermined categories, the result will always be heresy and weakness. God grant then, where the devotional life is concerned, that we (clergyman and layman alike) may pray not only “God be merciful to me a sinner” but also “Lord, increase our faith.”

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Considerable discussion has arisen among the faithful over an article which appeared in the August number of Redbook magazine entitled “The Startling Beliefs of our Future Ministers.” Redbook magazine is pleased to call itself “The Magazine for Young Adults,” and I think we can understand a little of what they have in mind. They want to appeal to that stratum of our society which is alert and aware and nicely sun-tanned, the people who attach their Chris-Crafts to their station wagons and throw their Scuba on the top as three happy healthy children gather up their Indian suits and the Sealyham puppy. Soon they will all be drinking Pepsi-Cola while they “think young.” In the cool of the evening they will charcoal-broil some steaks and eat garlic bread with other young adults and speak knowingly of Jackie Kennedy, The Chapman Report, and Zen Buddism. On religion, they will likely engage in “Interesting Discussions” and someone will probably comment on a friend who is as they say “on a religious kick.” Since Redbook has to sell magazines in order to sell advertising, they have to know what “young adults” like. In the August issue they have “The Startling Beliefs of Our Future Ministers” advertised on the cover along with such young adult interests as “Why Wives Can’t Express Their Love” and “The First Lady’s Favorite Menus and Recipes” and “The Most Beautiful Woman In The World.” One would be tempted to expatiate further on the “image” of young American adulthood that the editors have in mind or wish to create, but we evade this temptation reluctantly and turn to their findings on our future ministers.

The starting place which they choose is the well publicized and already frequently discussed views of Bishop James Pike of California who is alleged to have declared that the virgin birth of Christ is a myth along with the myth of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Since an episcopal bishop can talk like this and get away with it in the Episcopal church the question naturally arises what Episcopalians believe and whether Episcopalian bishops have to believe what Episcopalians officially say they believe. Moreover, if leaders of the church are passing such judgments, how will these positions be reflected in the beliefs of our future ministers? Are we, as Redbook suggests, about to see the rise of a “new clergyman”? This becomes a burden of their research which they turned over to Lewis Harris and Associates, a public opinion research firm who by interview technique sampled divinity students at eight leading theological schools “including Yale Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Augsburg College Seminary in Minneapolis.” We are not told who the other seminaries of the eight were but we are told that more than a hundred students were interviewed. The breakdown by denominations gave the Methodists about one third of the total, 15 per cent were Baptists, 11 per cent were Episcopal, ten per cent Presbyterian and six per cent for Congregationalists and Lutherans each. The remaining 22 per cent caught up Pentecostals, Brethren, Church of God and some who were “uncommitted,” and they probably mean uncommitted to any particlar denomination. These percentages do not necessarily follow the percentages of these denominations within Protestanism but this is a minor criticism.

Although the article is supposed to reflect “scientific sampling” the burden of the article has to do with recording particular interview responses rather than percentages. In this way the article is out of balance as a “scientific” sampling because there is no way of knowing from these conversations whether we have a fair representation of viewpoints or whether we do not have rather the more interesting answers from the more interesting students, keeping in mind that a radical answer is usually more interesting than a conservative one especially in a popular magazine for “young adults.” In typical journalese, we hear from “a six-foot-three Episcopalian … a 32-year-old father of three little girls … a slender Cincinnati Baptist peppered with freckles … etc.,” and this hardly makes matters more scientific. This is not the fault of Lewis Harris and Associates but is the fault of statistics which are not usually quite breezy enough.

Such statistics as do appear are worth pondering. We discover in their response to Dean Pike’s comments, for this is the outline more or less followed, that only “44 per cent believe in the virgin birth of Christ. Only 29 per cent believe there is a real heaven and hell, only 46 per cent believe that Jesus ascended physically whole into heaven after his crucifixion.” On the subject of the divinity of Christ, we are told that 89 per cent believe in the divinity of Christ but that many of them want to define the word “divinity” and we are not told what the 11 per cent who do not believe in Christ’s divinity do believe, especially when the definition of the word “divinity” allows considerable latitude verging, I would judge, toward the Unitarian position. Take for example the remark of a Congregationalist: “every man has a spark of divinity in him.… Jesus had more than any man who has yet been born.” And the same student went on to say, “but I believe that all of us are more Godlike than we know,” which is a long way out from our ordinary views of original sin.

If we take these percentages and throw them over against the confessional statements of the denominations represented in the sampling, we face once again what I believe is the most serious problem or perhaps the most widespread confusion, or both, in modern Protestantism. We start with our confessional statements which a certain percentage of people, including theological students, and even theological professors believe as they stand. Then, we discover all kinds of gradations of belief inside the denominations expressing some kind of loyalty to the confessional statement but refusing to be pressured on any particulars in the confession. Then there are those who take positions diametrically opposed to the creedal statements of their own denominations. Any attempt to say “cease and desist” is branded “witch hunting,” and the mere raising of such questions brands one as a “fundy.” Witch hunters and fundies are bad things these days.

In all honesty and in all peace must we not state again what we believe and insist on loyalty? Anything less is confusion and these young divinity students illustrate it.

During CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S sixth publication year, which begins with the October 9 issue, this review will be contributed in sequence by the following: Dr. J. D. Douglas, Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, Dr. Addison H. Leitch, Dr. Philip E. Hughes and Dr. Harold B. Kuhn.—ED.

Where God Broke Through: The Sacred Sites

Baker’s Bible Atlas, by Charles F. Pfeiffer (Baker, 1961, 333 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Wilbur M. Smith, Professor of English Bible, Fuller Theological Seminary.

During the last five years, four important Bible atlases have appeared in English, and the appearance of a fifth can only be justified if it has merits which give it distinct value. The four preceding Bible atlases of outstanding merit are the Westminster Bible Atlas, by Wright and Filson; the Nelson Bible Atlas, edited by Grollenburg; the Rand McNally Bible Atlas, by Kraeling; and the Geography of the Bible, by Baly and published by Lutterworth Press. We will use the initials W, N, and R in reference to the first three respectively for purposes of comparison.

As to words in the text, the Baker Atlas has about the same as W and N, while R has more than three times the amount of text of any of the other three. The Baker Atlas uses the Hammond maps, as well as a number of black and white maps, totaling 43, which is considerably more than any of the others, although the maps of W and N are decidedly larger and therefore more easily read. The Baker Atlas has the least number of illustrations, 74, as compared to W with 110, N with 408, R with 265, and even Baly with 97. The Baker Adas may be purchased at a figure below the other three. W and N are $15 each, and R is $8.95.

The editor of this volume is professor of Old Testament at Gordon College. He is well equipped linguistically and otherwise to edit a volume like this, and every page bears testimony to the care with which the project has been carried out. The style is clear, even attractive, and the entire work is thoroughly conservative, more so than the Westminster or the Rand McNally.

Books of this type must always conform to a certain general sequence of subjects, and this one is no exception, except for its last three chapters on “The Centuries Between,” “The Bible Lands Today,” and a fine study of “Biblical Archaeology in the Twentieth Century.”

I thought when I studied Kraeling’s chapter on the “Table of Nations,” as recorded in Genesis 10, that it could hardly be improved upon, but Pfeiffer on this list of nations has definitely improved on Kraeling in his treatment of the descendants of Canaan. For some reason, however, towards the end he seems to have lost interest in the subject, and of the 17 descendants of Arphaxad nothing is said about 13 of them. Chapter XXIV, “The Geography of the Book of Revelation,” is not quite satisfactory, for a thorough discussion of such a subject should also include Jerusalem, the Euphrates River, and Megiddo. In the table of contents the title is more accurate, “The Seven Churches of Revelation.”

The proofreading and indexing have not been done as carefully as one could wish. I do not ever recall seeing the name of Caesar Tiberius spelled Tiberias, and the distinguished archaeologist and late professor Woolley is sometimes referred to here as Wooley. While Sellin is referred to in the text, he is not in the index, and likewise Cyrus H. Gordon and others. The index references are not complete: for example, Kraeling is given one reference in the index, but I have found at least three other occurrences in the text itself.

There are three matters concerning this work which one acquainted with this type of literature will recognize as serious weaknesses. In the first place, nowhere in the volume is there any reference to relevant literature. The Westminster Atlas has given us excellent helps along this line, and Baly presents us with a wonderful bibliography.

In the second place, and this seems to me a serious matter, one is surprised to find in page after page of discussions of biblical events a total absence of biblical references. On page 136 nearly a full column is devoted to discussing Saul’s death, including a number of geographical details, but the reader would not know from the text where to find an account in the Bible of the event. If he thinks of it, he must turn to the word “Beth-shan” in the Geographical Gazetteer at the end of the book where he will find 16 lines of material about this town, with adequate references. In the chapter on “The Life of Christ” in the paragraphs on Caesarea Philippi, Bethany, and Ephraim, there are no references to the places in the Gospels where the events in these places are recorded. On pages 30 and 31, where a number of rivers are discussed, hardly any of them contain references to the scriptural data. The most amazing illustration of serious lack of reference material is in the chapter titled “Exile and Restoration,” where in five successive pages one finds only two incidental references, both to the early chapters of Ezra.

A double index, as it were, one technical as the Geographical Gazetteer, and a general index of names will no doubt cause some confusion, much turning of pages, and delay in ascertaining certain information which one will necessarily seek in a work like this. More serious, however, is the vast amount of material which is absolutely irrelevant to basic biblical investigation in the Geographical Gazetteer. There are innumerable paragraphs on many obscure towns in Gaul, others in Spain, Italy, Greece, strange names in Armenia, et cetera, and a good deal of discussion of the Saxons, Britain, Canterbury, London, Lincoln, and even the English Channel! Not only do these towns have no relation to biblical geography, but in many cases the amount of material assigned to them is not proportionately assigned as, for example, the five lines of small type given to Lutetia, an early name for Paris, and then 10 more lines to Paris itself, which together is more space than is assigned to the two more or less significant biblical towns of Jezreel and Derbe!

The amount of material assigned to these extra-biblical sites occupies 10 full columns, or nearly one-seventh of the entire Gazetteer. No doubt the reason for inserting all of this is that the editor has included a map of the spread of Christianity, and I suppose he felt compelled to say something about the scores of geographical terms on this map in the Gazetteer. It would have been better had he omitted the map, and omitted this comparatively irrelevant material, to allow him more space for biblical matters.

In spite of these criticisms, however, the atlas is eminently worthwhile. It illuminates many passages in the Word of God and will prove an excellent guide for anyone beginning the study of biblical history. The approach to the great events of redemptive history is not only one of open-mindedness, supported with accurate scholarship, but one of reverence as well. I am sure that many institutions will immediately adopt this work as a text for the basically-important subjects it discusses. The makeup of the volume is in every way of high quality.

WILBUR M. SMITH

John Calvin: No Fatalist

Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, by John Calvin, newly translated and introduced by J. K. S. Reid (Jas. Clarke, 1961, 191 pp., 17s. 6d), is reviewed by Herbert M. Carson, Vicar of St. Pauls, Cambridge, England.

In popular image Calvin is a fatalistic thinker for whom God’s chief concern is to damn irretrievably and unjustly the bulk of the human race. Unhappily some who would not care to be considered as representing the popular mind, share the same misunderstanding. Professor Reid’s new translation may dispel such prejudices by showing what Calvin really did teach on this doctrine.

The work represents the Genevan’s mature reflections on the subject (he had already treated it in The Institutes), and the occasion of its production was the attack on his position by two critics, Pighius and Georgius. The form is therefore polemical, and the modern reader may find it repellent if he is unfamiliar with the abusive epithets of sixteenth-century theologians. The fact that it deals with critics of Calvin’s day does not limit the book’s significance to historians, for the objections of his opponents are those which still recur in the minds of those who study the doctrine. In fact, the very critcism of Pighius is voiced in the introduction by Professor Reid. It is interesting to compare the former’s objection (p. 55) with Reid’s remarks on page 44. The only difference is that the sixteenth-century theologian writes more lucidly than the twentieth-century commentator!

The characteristics of Calvin’s approach are his extensive quotations from Augustine, and his readiness to deal with biblical evidence. The former shows his doctrine was not a novel product coined in Geneva. The latter demonstrates that, whether one agrees with Calvin or not, it must be admitted that this is no philosopher engaged in metaphysical speculation, but a serious exegete grappling with the Scriptures.

There is a succinct summary of what Calvin believes to be the biblical position on page 58. “God by His eternal goodwill which has no cause outside itself, destined those whom He pleased to salvation, rejecting the rest; those whom He dignified by gratuitous adoption He illumined by His Spirit, so that they receive life offered in Christ, while others voluntarily disbelieve, so that they may remain in darkness destitute of the light of faith.” To establish this, he faces these objections. Does this doctrine make God unjust? Is God not represented thus as the author of evil? Is God’s foreknowledge not being ignored as the real key to the problem? (On this Calvin aptly comments: “The real question is whether what He foresees is what He will make of them, or what they will be in themselves.” p. 71.) What of the Christian’s assurance of salvation? How does the preaching of the Gospel fare at the hands of this doctrine? He faces these questions honestly, and answers from the Bible.

One last word. Is it really profitable to give such sustained study to this doctrine? Calvin replies (p. 56): “It is rather a solid argument excellently fitted to the use of the godly. For it builds up faith soundly, trains us to humility, elevates us to admiration of the immense goodness of God towards us, and excites us to praise this goodness.”

HERBERT M. CARSON

The Bible In English

No Greater Heritage, by Charles Gulston (Paternoster, 1960, 256 pp., 15s., and Eerdmans, 1961, 233 pp., $1.95, paperback), is reviewed by Joyce M. Horn, Research Historian, London University.

The one hundred and twentieth anniversary of a Bible being presented to the Boers, who embarked on the great South African trek of 1837, inspired this book on biblical translations. It ranges in content from Bede and King Alfred to Wycliffe and Tyndale, and from the King James Version to recent discoveries and the work of modern Bible societies.

The story is told with enthusiasm and a sense of the romantic. It is intended for popular reading and those with little historical knowledge. Church historians will find it at times fanciful and speculative, and not always entirely accurate. The Dark Ages, for instance, are seriously distorted by an over-dependence on Bede. More important is the disproportionate balance of the book. Together Wycliffe and Tyndale account for more than half of it, and Tyndale’s 70 pages compare with seven on subsequent translations. This latter chapter could have been expanded, and some assessment of twentieth-century versions would have completed the story. On the other hand it is readily confessed that the dramatic chapters on Tyndale are the most absorbing part of the book. In places the style is rambling, and the suspense, latent in some events, is in some measure dissipated by the author’s tendency to betray the conclusion of the story before it is reached. Despite the blemishes the book does impart something of the author’s confidence in the power and relevance of the Word of God.

J. M. HORN

Shadow Of Bultmann

The Study of Divinity, by D. E. Nineham (SPCK, 1960, 27 pp., 5s. 6d.), is reviewed by Gervase E. Duffield, London Manager,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Professor Nineham is the first occupant of the newly-created chair of divinity in London University. In this inaugural lecture he was unable to follow the common precedent of surveying the work of his predecessors, and so he set out to explore the nature of the subject he was to teach.

The first ingredient in the study of divinity is a knowledge of texts and linguistics, but we are warned that “etymology is a notoriously bad guide to the meaning words bear in practice” (p. 7). “The reader of ancient writings needs more than a good text and a good lexicon” (p. 17). And so the second ingredient is seen to be a knowledge of the life, culture, and thought of the ancient world, for words acquire meanings and overtones that do not always appear in dictionaries.

Thirdly, the student needs to examine the total content of the Bible viewed as a unity. By way of contrast with nineteenth-century liberalism, this is a great gain and a result of the modern biblical theology movement. But even when the total message of the biblical revelation is ascertained, it must still be communicated to the ordinary man. Dr. Nineham recognizes the parting of the ways here. Some assert that if the Bible uses a category, “then simply by virtue of its widespread use in the Bible, that category has indefeasible validity; if modern man can make nothing of it, that is a defect in him to be corrected by appropriate training” (p. 22). Others wish to demythologize the Bible, strip it of its primitive thought-forms, and refurnish it with modern equivalents. The author prefers the latter method, though he admits some of its dangers. But is he right in his choice? To judge from recent attempts at demythologizing by Bultmann, Gogarten, and others, the enterprise is perilous indeed. To distinguish the “real Gospel” from early thought is difficult and hazardous, if not impossible. What all too often happens is that the resultant message is so watered down to make it acceptable that it is scarcely recognizable as biblical at all. Persistent rumors that some of Bultmann’s pupils are abandoning their faith are not therefore surprising.

The lecture ends on a happier note. The student must understand the culture to which he is addressing his biblical message. As the old Puritan divine put it, the minister must know two books, the book of ordinary life, and the Book of God. Finally, the student of divinity must be a man of prayer and seek to wait on God.

G. E. DUFFIELD

Deluge And Debate

The Genesis Flood, by Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb, Jr. (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961, 518 pages, $8.95), is reviewed by Donald C. Boardman, Chairman, Department of Geology, Wheaton College (Illinois).

Evangelical Christians today are faced with problems of the proper interpretation of scientific data. More young people are being trained in our colleges and universities than ever before. Leaders in the evangelical world have a responsibility toward those students, who are children of God through trust in Jesus Christ as Lord, in strengthening their faith as they explore the mysteries of science. There is therefore great need for books which will help these and other Christians in an unbelieving world. Unfortunately, despite much obvious work on the part of the authors, this volume is not such a book.

The Genesis Flood presents five theses:

1. The Noahic flood was universal rather than local (chaps. I, II, III).

2. Uniformitarianism cannot be compatible with a Christian interpretation of Scripture (chap. IV).

3. The rock strata and fossils everywhere were deposited by the Noahic flood (chaps. V, VI).

4. The earth is much younger than geologists have proposed (chap. VII).

5. The flood occurred three to five thousand years before Abraham (App. II).

One of the major difficulties of this book is that the authors overlook a basic premise of scientists, namely, that the scientist looks critically at his methods and conclusions, because he realizes that as soon as he is positive that he is completely right in his conclusions, he ceases to be a true scientist. This does not mean that the scientist cannot have confidence in conclusions he has reached, but he does recognize that all conclusions are the result of the present state of his knowledge. It is customary, therefore, in scientific papers to mention the problems engendered by the conclusions. Thus almost every scientific paper will have some statements discussing the difficulties of the method employed and problems with the conclusion reached. The authors of this book have based many of their arguments against accepted scientific theories upon quotations of this nature. An example is shown by their statement on the subject of varves.

Varves are the seasonal deposits of sediments in lakes. During the summer the sediments tend to be thicker and more oxidized than those deposited during the winter time. By counting the seasonal layers in a lake deposit, it is possible to determine how many years elapsed in the laying down of the total thickness of sediment. The dating of sediments by varves is a complex matter. It requires detailed study of the layers. Workers in this field recognize that it is difficult to make very exact interpretations as to the length of time taken to make the deposits. The authors of The Genesis Flood quote R. F. Flint of Yale who has listed some of these difficulties. One would get the impression that Flint does not accept varve dating. On the contrary, geologists including Flint have confidence that general age dating can be done with varves and that they indicate sedimentation has been going on for a much longer period of time than Morris and Whitcomb propose.

A second difficulty seems to be that many quotations in the book are from secondary sources. An example is seen on pages 418–419 where the authors are attempting to prove that the many layers of petrified trees in Yellowstone Park are the result of the Noahic flood. The quotations are from (1) an article by J. L. Kulp in the American Scientific Affiliation Journal, (2) Arnold’s Introduction to Paleobotany, and (3) Miller’s Introduction to Historical Geology. None of these reports describes direct observations of the area. Each, however, is consistent with the original report. Morris and Whitcomb give a description which they evidently made from an illustration which Miller copied from a United States Geological Survey report of about 1890, and reach a conclusion which is different from that of any author quoted. The authors might have taken the desciption which the original author had made, or better yet, consulted some worker who has recently studied the area. Dr. Erling Dorf, a paleobotanist at Princeton University, has spent a number of years investigating this succession of petrified forests. He has described his work quite fully in the 1960 Billings Geological Society Guidebook. He shows that there are over 30 successive forests which grew to maturity and were covered with volcanic ash. The top of the ash bed in each case weathered to form soil in which the next forest grew. The authors of The Genesis Flood cannot believe the evidence thus shown as it indicates much more time than their hypothesis can accept.

It is doubtful if any of the five theses proposed in this volume is proved. In fact, most of them would probably be rejected by any reader who took the time to look up some of the references given as evidence. Dr. McCampbell who wrote the foreword has quite accurately evaluated the viewpoint of the authors when he says (p. XVII): “The various methods of geological time-measurement are analyzed and their basic assumptions adjudged inadequate by them, whenever these assumptions lead to results in contradiction to biblical inferences.” After reviewing the arguments of the book, the author of the foreword concludes: “From the writer’s viewpoint as a professional geologist, these explanations and contentions are difficult to accept.” This will probably be the conclusion of most scientists and Bible scholars.

DONALD C. BOARDMAN

Humor, A Gift Of God

Serve Him With Mirth, by Leslie B. Flynn (Zondervan, 1961, 191 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, Vice President, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Flynn shows convincingly that God made man to laugh and that humor is an integral element of real life. He argues that they are a saving salt without which man would be poorer. To bulwark his thesis he cites many biblical instances in which humor is the controlling factor. These illustrations are timely and provocative. The book concludes with the final laughter of God, and in an appendix there are a number of excellent anecdotes which are mirth-provoking and usable for any minister or lay person who is in the public eye.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Vs. Nonbiblical Dualism

Sex and the Church, edited by Oscar E. Feucht, Harry G. Coiner, Alfred von Rohr Sauer, and Paul G. Hansen (Concordia, 1961, 277 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Robert Paul Roth, Professor of New Testament and Dean of the Graduate School, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.

This book is the fifth volume in a series on marriage and family research by a team of professors and pastors in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. A most thorough investigation is made of sex attitudes in the Old and New Testaments, the ancient Church Fathers, the Middle Ages, the period of the Reformation, the subsequent Age of Orthodoxy, the influence of Puritanism, Pietism and Rationalism, and the pronouncements of various Lutheran bodies in America to the present day. A comparative study of Protestant and Roman Catholic views is placed alongside an examination of current sociological research of such authors as van de Velde, Kinsey, Duvall, and Landis. The thoroughness and objectivity of this church-sponsored publication demonstrates the integrity of purpose in the team of authors. No point of view is slighted. All facts are reported with utmost candor.

The historical survey revealed a marked change in sex attitudes beginning after New Testament times and carrying through the Middle Ages but not completely absent even today. The biblical view held sex to be basically a good element in the original creation with the purpose of marriage to be primarily for the fulfillment of our being in the image of God, the sacramental union of person with person. A blessed result of this was procreation, endearing love, and companionship. A nonbiblical dualism crept into Christendom, however, which has taught that sex is basically evil but tolerated only for the procreation of the race. This has colored both Roman Catholic and Protestant views in that for Romanists the married state was considered less holy than the celibate and for Protestants sex became excused only through strained theological rationalizations. The inevitable reaction of modernism with its “radar objectivity” exposed the deceit in the general practice of sex, but, although no salutary direction has been agreed upon by the social scientists, most agree that the old restrictions of chastity before and fidelity within marriage make for a happier and more stable community. Within the secular point of view, no reason can be found why this should be so. The final chapter of the book provides a compendium of answers to basic questions answered according to the Christian understanding of sinful man living in the redemption of Christ. Here sex is seen to be not a concession to the flesh but the God-pleasing fulfillment of man’s blessed creaturehood as the image of God. From the Christian point of view our knowledge in sex can only be compared with the knowledge of Christ for his Church. Procreation in sex can only be compared with the creation of God himself. And edifying companionship in sex can only be compared with the communion of Christ with his friends.

ROBERT PAUL ROTH

Exemplar For Piety

A Faith of Our Own, by Austin Farrer (World Publishing Co., 1961, 224 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, Professor of Bible, Calvin College.

Anyone planning to write a book on practical Christianity would do well to read Dr. Farrer’s book first. One ought to read it, not for its theology but for a fine example of how to write a book. Farrer’s theology, from this Calvinist’s perspective, ranges from excellent to rather doubtful. But his form is first-rate. Dr. Farrer is a poet of feeling, a priest of perception, and a scholar of sense. Moreover, he is a disciplined writer. He makes his point without preaching it, he is practical without being superficial, and he finds the final answer to Christian living in grace rather than gimmicks. He made at least one reader reconsider some of his sub-Christian attitudes and habits. And he made at least one teacher think of many better ways of saying some things than he had done before. Dr. Farrer writes the kind of book that I would like one day to write.

Resisting the temptation to quote an example of theology that I could poke holes in, I offer instead a taste of Farrer’s devotion: “O God, save me from myself, save me from myself; this frivolous self which plays with your creation, this vain self which is clever about your creation, this greedy self which exploits your creation, this lazy self which soothes itself with your creation; this self which throws the thick shadow of its own purposes and desires in every direction in which I try to look, so that I cannot see what it is that you, my Lord and God, are showing to me! Teach me to stand out of my own light and let your daylight shine.” Though I object to some of his Anglo-Catholic theology, I devoutly admire Farrer’s Christian piety.

LEWIS B. SMEDES

Letters From Dr. Fosdick

Dear Mr. Brown, by Harry Emerson Fosdick (Harper, 1961, 191 pp., $3), is reviewed by William D. Livingstone, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, San Diego, California.

One always looks forward eagerly to a book by Dr. Fosdick. He has been for several decades one of the outstanding preachers and religious writers in America. Though he is now in his eighties, he still displays the same brilliance of mind, warmth of spirit, and facility of tongue and pen. His books are immensely readable, and this volume is no exception. He writes not with a glassy polish but with a ruggedness that commands one’s interest and attention, and his work is full and rich with references to persons outstanding in many different fields. To read one of Dr. Fosdick’s books is a rewarding experience.

In saying this, however, I as an evangelical cannot help but feel disappointment especially when Dr. Fosdick deals with theological matters as he does in this present volume. The format of the book is a supposed series of letters written to a young man who is inquiring about religion, and specifically about the Christian faith. Dr. Fosdick deals intelligently with various aspects of the young man’s inquiry, and yet what he sets forth as Christianity is quite different from the historic Christian faith. Fosdick is apparently still an unreconstructed modernist, and in his discussion he continues, as he has done in the past, to downgrade the supernatural, downgrade God, downgrade the Bible, Christ, miracles, the atonement, and the Church. The influence of this man over the years has been incalculable though, from the reviewer’s viewpoint, tragically on the wrong side. Who knows what might have happened in Protestantism if his great mind and influential voice had been on the side of evangelical Christianity? As it is, Fosdick presents God as a personal and immanent Being, but the doctrine of the Trinity is discounted; he interprets the term “supernatural” as an “upper compartment” rather than that God is not bound by the laws which he himself has established but is free to work with and through them; and he denies miracles along with much of the supernatural element in the Bible. Having thus blurred the uniqueness of Christianity, he puts the Christian faith on a level with non-Christian religions and tries to see the best in all of them. Repudiating the biblical doctrine of substitutionary atonement, Fosdick writes: “Can you imagine a modern courtroom in a civilized country where an innocent man would be deliberately punished for another man’s crime?” He comments, “Only in certain belated theologies it is retained as an explanation of our Lord’s death.” Along with other modernists, he believes that redemption is not the unique work of Christ. He says, “Christ’s life of saviorhood is to be continued in the vicarious sacrifice of His disciples’ lives.”

It is always of interest to me to note the use that modernists make of the Bible. They are quick to deny the validity of any passage of Scripture with which they disagree, but will naively resort to “proof-texts” to support their own opinions. Fosdick’s attitude toward war is a case in point. He uses a quotation of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew to prove his point regarding the futility of war: “All who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Now this is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus says this, and yet Dr. Fosdick has denied the Virgin Birth for the reason that it is referred to in only two Gospels. If the story of the Virgin Birth is not true, how then can we know that this account of Jesus’ words is true? This seems to me to be the strange dilemma in which a modernist finds himself. In conclusion I would say that Dear Mr. Brown is a very readable volume, but from the point of view of the Christian faith not a very edifying one.

WILLIAM D. LIVINGSTONE

Paulinism

Paul and His Recent Interpreters, by E. Earle Ellis (Eerdmans, 1961, 63 pp., $1.75, paperback), is reviewed by Ralph Gwinn, Associate Professor of Religion, Knoxville College.

Here is an important, well-written, thoroughly-documented work. A casual perusal of the authors in the index will reveal the careful scholarship of the author. The book begins with a brief review of Paul’s life, reviews some of the chronological and introductory questions, and gives the background of Paul’s thought. Then follow two chapters dealing with two specific areas, namely, Pauline eschatology and the authorship of the Pastorals.

The author approaches the former question by a thorough study of 2 Corinthians 5:1–10, and shows that this passage is neither Platonic nor Gnostic in its background but is Hebraic and in accord with the teaching of Christ in the Gospels.

In the chapter on the authorship of the Pastorals, Dr. Ellis forces a reappraisal of the whole question. An easy acceptance of non-Pauline authorship is hardly possible in the light of this study.

The book is worthy of careful consideration.

RALPH GWINN

South Of The Border

Land of Eldorado, by Sante Uberto Barbieri (Friendship Press, 1961, 162 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by C. Stanley Lowell, Editor of Church and State.

This is the best general book on the religious situation in Latin America that I have read since the somewhat more copious treatment by Dr. Stanley Rycroft, Religion and Faith in Latin America. The Land of Eldorado is written by the right man—Sante Uberto Barbieri of Buenos Aires. Soundly evangelical, ruggedly outspoken, a man of rare wisdom and patience, this Methodist bishop has become one of the best-known Protestant leaders in Latin America. He writes from long experience and from all the deep Protestant conviction of a convert from Rome.

Bishop Barbieri has a way of illuminating complex matters with felicitous bursts of words. His quick description of the priest-police alliance (p. 14) which has meant so much misery to Protestants could not have been more succintly done.

This Methodist bishop has sympathetic regard for groups like the Pentecostals who have been so active and fruitful in Latin America. He notes that “75 per cent of the 6000 missionaries working in Latin America and the West Indies have been sent by the so-called ‘non-historical’ groups.”

There are quotations from the bulletins of the Reverend James Goff, Presbyterian missionary of Barranquilla, who is secretary of the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia. I wish the writer had devoted some space to one of Mr. Golf’s busy sidelines, namely, that of publicizing via his bulletins every act of violence perpetrated against Protestants in Colombia. His relentless publicity has caused consternation among the Roman hierarchy, and a steady diminution of anti-Protestant outbreaks has resulted. Mr. Golf’s life has frequently been threatened.

Bishop Barbieri discusses sympathetically the problems created by Protestant proliferation and also the prospects of the ecumenical movement in these countries. He bewails lack of communication among the groups and hopes that ecumenicity will find more favor than it has to this point. He feels there is particular value in a co-operative effort for the training of Protestant clergy. Yet the bishop wisely and realistically sees that the virile Protestant leadership in Latin America today is not to be found in the old line Protestant denominations but is evidenced in new groups whose very names may be unknown to many Protestants north of the border.

C. STANLEY LOWELL

Adequacy Of The Faith

Christ and Human Values, by Albert Clayton Reid (Broadman, 1961, 109 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Stuart Cornelius Hackett, Professor of Philosophy, Louisiana College.

These eight popular and inspirational lectures, originally delivered at Mercer University in connection with a religious emphasis week, express a familiar theme. Dr. Reid, professor and chairman of the department of philosophy at Wake Forest College, emphasizes the thesis that humanity confronts a multiple crisis from which it can be extricated only through a revitalized Christian faith which surges forth into every area of personal and social life with transforming ethical power.

This brief book is neither philosophy nor theology, although it contains smatterings of both. Instead, it is a graphic account of moral conditions and a personal confession of the adequacy of faith in Christ to solve the problems posed by these conditions. In the course of pursuing this main line of thought, the author discusses such varied topics as the demand for excellence in the Christian ministry, the importance of the humanities as a foundation for adequate education, and the necessity for controlling environmental influences which play a decisive role in character formation. In short, the book calls not for searching critical analysis but for a passing word of appreciation for its motivation of deeper moral concern and strengthened Christian commitment.

STUART CORNELIUS HACKETT

Religion And Psychology

Disorders of the Emotional and Spiritual Life, by W. L. Northridge (Channel Press, 1961, 125 pp., $3) and Victory Over Suffering, by A. Graham Ikin (Channel Press, 1961, 144 pp., $2.50), are reviewed by Theodore J. Jansma, Chaplain-Counselor of the Christian Sanitorium, Wyckoff, New Jersey.

These books deal with the same subject but in a different way. They are the products of firsthand and wide experience, as reflected in the many case illustrations presented, but the experience of the two authors differs as widely as the personality and orientation of each. Northridge combines a pastoral concern with a considerable knowledge of psychiatry and psychology. The doctor and the pastor find a happy meeting in him. He offers much helpful insight on some of the common emotional problems, such as depression, doubt, grief, the sin against the Holy Spirit, and others. Ikin is more of a mystic, a sort of faith healer, though more sophisticated and sober than the usual sort. At times she seems to drift off into spiritism and parapsychology, but she is by no means an obscurantist with respect to dynamic psychology.

Both authors belong to a liberal school of theology, Ikin being the more outspoken. She views the Old Testament as primitive religion with a vengeful god, in contrast with a New Testament picture of a warm and accepting god. Both writers have much to say about forgiveness, but they define it more in humanistic than Christian terms. Ikin sees sin as a failure to be our best selves rather than as an affront to a holy God. Both of them link forgiveness with the death of Christ, but they omit the substitution of Christ and his satisfaction of divine justice.

The books are compact and readable and, if read with discrimination, they provide many stimulating ideas.

THEODORE J. JANSMA

Counsel For Counselors

The Minister as Marriage Counselor, by Charles William Stewart (Abingdon, 1961, 223 pp., $4), is reviewed by Hugh David Burcham, Pastor of First United Presbyterian Church, Oakland, California.

The author of this book writes out of his deep concern that for all the need there is for marriage counseling, and for all the opportunities for the parish minister to make a contribution to society in this field from a Christian perspective, no more than ten per cent of the ministers in America really measure up by training and experience as qualified counselors.

Dr. Stewart, currently professor of psychology of religion and counseling at Iliff School of Theology, has served pastorates in Connecticut and New Jersey. He has written widely in the field of counseling, and has served as President of the Marriage Council of Denver, Colorado. His present book, while intended primarily for ministers and divinity students, is largely nontechnical in language, and should be helpful to any interested layman. The text is supplemented by an appendix that lists training organizations available to ministers in the field of marriage counseling, and a bibliography of good recent books in the field.

The author divides the total area of marriage counseling into three subareas: (1) pre-marital counseling, (2) marriage counseling (with husband and/or wife but not primarily involving children), and (3) family counseling. The bulk of the volume is given to a consideration of the minister’s opportunities in each of these three areas. Of particular interest in developing his idea of counseling procedure is his “role-playing” technique in which the minister as counselor seeks to draw from those he counsels their own solutions to the problems they face. In nondirective relationship to them, the minister serves as a stimulus, catalyst, and guide; not as one who holds all the answers.

The degree of “permissive” atmosphere which the author champions throughout the counseling experience may seem to some an excessive bending over backwards: “The counselor does not advise separation, just as he does not advise ‘staying married.’ Such advice takes the reins of responsibility out of the couple’s hands. Rather he is for the individuals, for their right to choose their own destiny under God” (p. 81). While there may be little to argue against such a role for the counselor in dealing with couples who are committed to Christian standards, the question may well be raised about couples who are neither committed nor even aware of historic Christian standards. Does the author’s kind of counseling procedure, if persistently followed, really provide them with what they may well urgently need at the time they come to the minister—that is, real guidance to and understanding of Christian standards, and support in motivating such persons toward those standards?

The closing chapters on “Group Marriage Counseling,” “A Pastoral Counseling Center,” and “Family Life Education in the Church,” contained for me some new ideas that challenged the sufficiency of my own pastoral ministry in these areas. They made me feel—as I think the author designed—that more than a few of us pastors have a considerable way to go before we can begin to regard ourselves adequate in the service we are rendering as marriage counselors, either to members of our church or to the larger community.

HUGH DAVID BURCHAM

Boy, School, And Parent

Letters From a Headmaster’s Study, by Charles Martin (Oxford, 1961, 126 pp., $3), is reviewed by Frank E. Gaebelein, Headmaster of The Stony Brook School.

This small volume is made up of 15 letters written by Canon Charles Martin of St. Albans School in Washington, D. C., to parents of the boys attending the school. The letters, which are actually informal essays, deal with questions of interest and concern to fathers and mothers. Among the subjects treated are “Hard Work,” “Understanding Your Boy,” “Discipline Is Necessary,” “Holidays, Parents, and Parties,” and “Sex: An Attitude Toward It.”

These chapters are full of good sense, firm conviction tolerantly expressed, kindly understanding, and earnest religious application. Insights that a psychologist might phrase in technical language are set forth by Dr. Martin in readable and companionable style. Although the letters were written by an Episcopal clergyman about a particular school and for a particular group of parents, the advice they contain and their Christian orientation are of more than denominational significance. Some readers may find the discussion of adolescent drinking under parental supervision a little too concessive, although Dr. Martin makes it plain that he desires abstinence for his boys.

It is possible for a man to spend many years teaching boys and dealing with parents and yet know comparatively little about them. The writer of these letters is not such a man. That his 30 years in education have taught him much is evidenced by the wisdom that shines through these pages. As one of his colleagues in the headmastership, I am indebted to him for communicating so unpretentiously and effectively some very important truths about youth and education and the God-given obligations of parenthood.

Whether their sons attend an independent school like St. Albans or whether they attend a public high school, fathers and mothers will find a good deal in this book to help them understand their boys. And teachers, school heads, and ministers will also find it of much value.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN

A capacity crowd in Filadelfia Hall in Oslo, Norway, witnessed the opening of the tenth World Methodist Conference on August 17. Surrounding the rostrum were 49 flags representing nations in which Methodists live. His Majesty King Olav V of Norway led a list of dignitaries who were on hand for the opening, in addition to more than 2,000 members, delegates, and representatives.

The theme of the conference, “New Life in the Spirit,” came into early prominence through the presidential address by Dr. Harold Roberts, principal of Richmond College, London, in terms of Methodism’s need for “the recovery of a positive theological emphasis.” The address set the mood for the entire nine-day conference, which was basically theological in emphasis. Speaker after speaker echoed Dr. Roberts’ insistence upon a solid doctrinal foundation as the only secure basis for the personal and subjective appropriation of grace. Christian experience, however understood, was certainly not regarded by the speakers at Oslo as something which floats nebulously upon the ether of mere human responses.

An early emphasis upon the basis of the biblical understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, grounded in studies of both the Old and the New Testaments, undergirded the theological orientation of the conference sessions. Well-received was the clear assertion of the discontinuity between God’s Spirit and the spirit of man, made with emphasis by Dr. Percy Scott, principal of Hartley-Victoria College of Manchester, England. Such an assertion marks a radical departure from the theological mood of a generation ago. So does the note struck by Dr. Maldwyn L. Edwards, president of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, to the effect that the place of man’s willingness to accept grace is the sole point at which God and man can meet in effective relationship. Parallel to this was a statement by Dr. Hurst Anderson, president of American University, that even “the most Christlike humanism” can never be a substitute for the Christian Gospel.

Conference leaders explored with especial care the question of the work of God’s Spirit. Accepting the historic theological formulation of the doctrine of the Person of the Holy Spirit, they sought to explore the distinctive Wesleyan understanding of the Holy Spirit’s operation in the lives of men. Many of the conclusions drawn were extremely general: that the Holy Spirit is “the one mighty agent of regeneration and sanctification,” and that Reinhold Niebuhr makes too little of the power of grace to effect social transformation. There was an expressed rejection of mere “token righteousness,” in favor of a sanctification of the whole of life.

Conference speakers and leaders of discussion groups sought to apply this theme to several areas of church concern—to youth work and youth problems, to international relations, to education, and to the pressing question of man’s social and economic life. No major common denominator to these discussions was discernible beyond the broad generalization that there is a “mind of the Spirit” to be discerned, and the expressed hope that group discussions may serve to clarify this for the Church.

There were searchings of heart among “the people called Methodists” at Oslo, particularly at three points. The first two of these searchings were concerned with the denomination’s outreach to the world, the third related itself to its place in the ecumenical movement.

There was an expression of concern at the manner in which Methodism’s social outreach can and should be implemented. The Social Creed of the Church underwent searching criticism, particularly for the omission, in its classic formulation, of any direct reference to the Holy Spirit. The emphasis of the present conference stood in bold contrast to this, and by implication called into question the major thrust of the denomination’s social outreach for three decades following 1910. Dr. Mack B. Stokes, associate dean and professor of systematic theology at Candler School of Theology, in Atlanta, gave an address which was vitally significant to the conference’s exploration of the theme “New Life in the Spirit” as it relates to the society of our day. There was wide agreement in the gathering that the energizing of the Holy Spirit is the sine qua non of a vital social outreach.

The second area of heart searching was that suggested by the inability of the Church to deal with greater effectiveness with many of the specific sore areas in today’s life. This was voiced by representatives from all lands, particularly from Great Britain and the United States. Leaders expressed continuing concern at the rising tide of materialism, and at the inability of the Church to provide an effective spiritual counterthrust. This acknowledgment found expression especially in the discussions relating to the Church’s seeming lack of rapport with youth.

Youth work received much attention during the course of the sessions. The accent fell upon the need for making the Church’s witness relevant to young people, and upon the imperative need for a quality of spiritual life upon the part of adults which will render the Christian message attractive to youth.

A third area of self-analysis was that of the relation of the strengthening of the Methodist Church (and this was the explicit purpose of the conference) to the deepening of the ecumenical spirit. After all, ecumenicity does demand the surrender of some denominational prerogatives to the wider Church. This appears to be one of the questions which remains unsettled in Methodism. For the present, the conference let the issue rest, with the assumption that a strengthened Methodist Church would ultimately issue in good for the Oikumené.

As noted above, the major pattern of the tenth World Methodist Conference was theological. No doubt a great deal of ecclesiastical work was performed in committees. Attention was given to revision of the Constitution of the Conference, and to further denominational unions, particularly the proposed merger of the Evangelical United Brethren Church with The Methodist Church. The question of closer rapport with the several Negro Methodist bodies in the United States was also considered, and several new agencies within the conference were projected.

Missions received a great deal of attention, the churches of Latin America, Africa, and Eastern and Southeastern Asia being ably represented in the conference program. Ten delegates represented also the lands of Eastern Europe, five from East Germany, two each from Poland and Czechoslovakia, and one from Yugoslavia.

Among addresses delivered toward the end of the conference, three deserve special notice. Dean William R. Cannon of Candler School of Theology presented on the closing morning an address titled, “The Work of the Holy Spirit in Personal Life” which abounded in deep insights and careful distinctions.

The second message to which special attention should be drawn was that given by the executive secretary of U. S. Methodism’s Board of Evangelism, Dr. Harry Denman on the subject, “The Universal Gospel.” Dr. Denman expressed, in fine combination, the dual thrust of the Christian Gospel, as it is designed to touch the life of the individual, and through him the disturbed areas of man’s corporate life. In a manner characteristic of himself, he stressed the mandate of Christ to reach the people whom institutional religion has neglected in the past.

The incoming president of the World Methodist Conference, Bishop Fred Pierce Corson of Philadelphia, delivered the final message, “Greater Achievement through the Spirit.” Bishop Corson called Methodists to a six-pronged thrust into today’s world, beginning with “a more convincing theological impact,” and issuing in Methodism’s increased spiritual role as a positive force in today’s world. He emphasized that this can be achieved “only through and by the Holy Spirit working in us.”

H. B. K.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. H. Orton Wiley, 83, noted Arminian theologian and past president of the Pasadena (California) College of the Church of the Nazarene; in Pasadena … Bishop Georg Olof Rosenqvist, 68, for seven years the head of the Lutheran Church of Finland’s Porvoo Diocese, comprising all Swedish-speaking congregations in the country; in Helsinki … Dr. Ernest Milton Halliday, 83, retired Congregational home missions administrator; in New York City.

Appointments: As speaker for “The Bible Study Hour,” Dr. D. Reginald Thomas, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Germantown, Pa. Thomas succeeds the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse for the program which is broadcast weekly by the NBC radio network and 50 independent U. S. stations … as president of the San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Arno Q. Weniger … as president of Spring Arbor (Mich.) College of The Free Methodist Church, Dr. David L. McKenna … as Bishop of Bradford in the Church of England, the Rt. Rev. Clements George St. Michael Parker … as Bishop of Edinburgh in the Episcopal Church in Scotland, Canon Kenneth Moir Carey … as staff consultant of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Rabbi Arthur Gilbert.

Elections: As moderator of the North American Baptist General Conference, Edwin H. Marklein … as president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, E. E. (Tad) Wieman … as president of the National Conference of the Methodist Youth Fellowship, Leslie Parish … as president of the National Mennonite Youth Fellowship, Marion Bontrager.

Seed Scattering

Hundreds of Protestant ministers in and around Philadelphia returned from vacation to a spiritual phenomenon. Evangelist Billy Graham’s call to repentance had become the rallying point for a degree of Christian co-operation never before achieved in the area. Religious indifference was being dispelled at a time of year when ordinarily it is at its peak.

As the crusade moved into its final week and a climactic rally in Philadelphia’s 100,000-seat Municipal Stadium September 17, even the most stiff-necked skeptic had to concede a grass-roots breakthrough in the fourth largest U. S. city, historic hub of the Eastern Seaboard population concentration.

Despite rain, heat, and the attraction of beach and mountain, an aggregate of some 210,000 turned out for the first 10 meetings of the crusade, with nearly 5,000 of these making public confessions of Christ.

The intensity of the crusade was mirrored in press coverage. The Bulletin and the Inquirer, Philadelphia’s two largest dailies, featured front-page crusade stories in virtually every edition for more than a week.

“It’s like putting a Gospel tract in the hands of every Philadelphian every day,” commented Graham.

The initial meetings were held in cavernous Convention Hall, which in 1948 played host to three political conventions (the candidates: Harry Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, and Henry A. Wallace). The crusade moved out-of-doors for the second week end and a trio of memorable meetings in Municipal Stadium. The first of the stadium meetings proceeded through a drenching rain while some 35,000 persons, most of them young people, huddled under raincoats and umbrellas.

The usual invitation was given and while it was still raining, approximately 1,300 stepped forward to record decisions.

A team member said it was “almost a festival spirit for the Lord.”

Two days later, some 50,000 sat under a boiling sun at the stadium. The temperature was in the nineties.

The crusade returned temporarily to Convention Hall the following Tuesday. By the starting hour the hall had been filled to legal capacity (about 15,000, including standees) and another 3,500 were obliged to stand in the street for the entire service to listen via the public address system. The following night saw another overflow crowd which was steered into a large room adjoining the hall.

The vacation season seemed to have no appreciable effect upon the crusade’s appeal to various walks of life. Tattooed truck drivers sat with prim stenographers while crew-cut adolescents shared sons books with buxom matrons. Among the first to respond to Graham’s invitation were a lawyer, a dentist, a nuclear physicist, a Main Line debutante, and a high school football star.

Some observers attributed the far-reaching effect of the crusade in part to a growing awareness of the acute international situation.

As usual, Graham took no credit to himself. He reiterated that his role was merely that of a seed scatterer, and he reminded his audiences that only divine action could cause the seeds to sprout:

“The Holy Spirit has prepared you for this hour. He’s calling for you. Don’t resist him!”

Television Crusade

An eight-night television crusade which will cost the Graham organization an estimated $500,000 or more is scheduled to begin Sunday, September 17, in many principal U. S. cities.

The crusade will consist of eight hour-long programs which are to be scheduled on consecutive nights, concluding September 24.

It represents the most intensive mass media evangelistic effort ever attempted.

The programs are being filmed while the evangelist’s Philadelphia crusade is in progress. One of them will show the August 25 meeting in Municipal Stadium where 35,000 persons sat in the rain for the entire service and 1,300 stepped forward onto the soggy turf to present their lives to Christ.

The television films will be preserved and will be offered in England to local churches for consecutive eight-night showings.

Here is a partial listing of U. S. cities and stations which have scheduled the TV crusade:

A Baptist’s Challenge

A Baptist minister in Orlando, Florida, is challenging Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev to join in a worldwide prayer crusade for peace.

The Rev. Auburn Hayes, pastor of the Colonial Baptist Church, cabled an invitation to the Russian leader last month to attend a prayer meeting in Moscow or East Berlin.

Hayes is founder of the Worldwide Prayer Fellowship which will launch a prayer crusade for world peace September 24 to help counteract the Communist Party Progress in Moscow in October.

In his message Hayes told the premier: “You are talking about peace. We are praying for peace. Why can’t we join in this crusade? Prayer is more powerful than all the atomic bombs in the world.”

No Recovery

The Christian Brothers winery in Sacramento, California, apparently will not be able to recover $489,000 paid in federal taxes in 1951, 1952, and 1955.

Federal Judge Sherrill Halbert’s midsummer ruling rejected the brothers’ plea, which claimed that the winery was part of their institution at Napa, California, developing produce used to support the order’s 14 schools.

Halbert ruled that the De La Salle Institute operated by the Christian Brothers was exempt from taxation as a church institution, but that the winery was a taxable adjunct of the institute.

Winery operations were reorganized in 1957 to avoid further tax difficulties, and were incorporated as the Monte La Salle Vineyards, a tax-paying corporation owned by the brothers.

The federal government in 1958 sued to collect taxes from the brothers, claiming that the winery operation was not tax-exempt under the law. The case was decided in favor of the government, and the Christian Brothers paid the taxes under protest, later appealing the decision.

Fallout Pews

North Carolina’s Roman Catholic churches, following a suggestion by Bishop Vincent S. Waters of Raleigh, are converting basements into fallout shelters, stocked with supplies, for use in the event of nuclear attack. The project has already been completed at the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Raleigh. Another church in Charlotte which is laying similar plans will be able to accommodate 300 persons.

Orthodox Ecumenism

Archbishop Iakovos, Greek Orthodox primate of North and South America, says there may be some major progress toward union of all Orthodox churches in the Western Hemisphere within the next two years.

At a press conference preceding the opening of the tenth international conference of the Greek Orthodox Youth of America in New York last month, the archbishop said the Orthodox bodies are on the “right path” toward union and some announcement on this subject might be forthcoming within two years.

“We must organize ourselves into one Orthodox Church in the Americas and make our contribution to the culture and the civilization more essential,” he said.

Discussing the Pan-Orthodox meeting scheduled to be held this month on the island of Rhodes, the archbishop said the movement toward Christian unity will be one of the major topics there.

Called by Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras of Istanbul, supreme leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Pan-Orthodox meeting is a preliminary gathering to prepare for the larger Pan-Orthodox Council which will follow at a date which is yet to be announced.

Lutheran Dissolution?

The strife-ridden Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America should be dissolved, according to a resolution adopted last month at the annual convention of the 15,000-member Evangelical Lutheran Synod in Mankato, Minnesota.

The ELS, smallest of four members belonging to the 90-year-old conference, also voted to reaffirm the suspension of fellowship relations with the 2,400,000-member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, which has been in effect since 1955. The Missouri Synod is the largest conference body.

The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, second largest conference body with some 350,000 members, voted a similar suspension last month.

Since two of the conference’s synods now refuse to have fellowship with the Missouri Synod, the conference is no longer functioning according to its intended purpose and its existence “is no longer truthful,” the resolution said.

Assemblies’ Advances

The Assemblies of God (international headquarters in Springfield, Missouri) met in their 29th biennial business convention in Memorial Coliseum, Portland, Oregon, August 23–29. Some 4,600 persons registered, representing 20,692 churches in the United States and 70 foreign countries with a total membership of 1,254,048. The U. S. statistics this year show 508,602 members in 8,233 churches. In 1916 the Assemblies had 118 churches with a total membership of 6,703.

Legislation enacted in Portland authorizes establishing 8,000 new churches in the next 10 years. The Assemblies’ outreach abroad is illustrated by its foreign missionary giving: nearly $5,000,000 in 1960.

At a foreign missions rally, the Calvary Temple of Denver was awarded a plaque for raising $115,000 in two years.

“Global Conquest” is the Assemblies program for gathering funds to undergird missions in three ways: 1. literature; 2. training of nationals; and 3. direct evangelism.

Some time ago the denomination’s Executive Presbytery authorized closing of the Assemblies’ office in the Interchurch Center, New York, and discontinuance of cooperation with Church World Service. Among actions taken by the General Presbytery were the first changes of its doctrinal statement since its original adoption in 1916. The changes, made after a two-year study of the denomination’s “Statement of Fundamental Truths,” strengthen the position on the doctrine of the Scriptures, the deity of Christ, the Church, baptism by the Holy Ghost, and salvation.

Said General Superintendent Thomas F. Zimmerman, who is also president of the National Association of Evangelicals:

“The Assemblies of God has been a bulwark for fundamentalism in these modern days and has, without compromise, stood for the great truths of the Bible for which men in the past have been willing to give their lives.”

A resolution adopted by the convention which authorized the 8,000 additional churches in the next decade also called for the first 500 within a year. The very first of these churches will be located in Norwalk, Connecticut, and the funds for it were raised on the spot.

A second resolution authorized establishment of a theological seminary. Still another called for the denomination to assume responsibility for a television program which might eventually be nationwide.

A resolution which would have made each organization of the denomination responsible to the Executive Presbytery was postponed until the next convention. Considerable discussion arose over the eligibility of laymen to hold office in the General Council.

“Revivaltime,” radio voice of the Assemblies of God, continues over an average of 340 stations at a biennial cost of about $988,000, of which some 50 per cent is given by churches.

Ground was broken in 1960 for a denominational administration building and publishing plant which will cost about $3,000,000. It is scheduled to be in use before the end of the year, housing about 550 headquarters employees. The 8,300 Assemblies’ Sunday Schools were challenged to raise $200,000 needed for furnishings.

Among those who addressed the convention which frequently had public attendances of more than 7,000 was Governor Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Mayor Terry Schrunk of Portland, Zimmerman, and the Rev. J. P. Hogan, assistant superintendent and executive director of foreign missions.

Ecumenical Indoctrination

The premium was on histrionics last month as the ecumenical movement paraded its ideological colors before 1,825 hand-picked delegates at the North American Ecumenical Youth Assembly in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sponsors called it the most widely representative gathering of young Christians ever held in North America.

It was a well-tailored indoctrination in the desirability of organizational unity among Christians, but it fell short of being comprehensive in that it skimmed over the theological hazards implicit in Christian inclusivism.

The week-long program relied heavily upon dramatics to put across its broad “message of reconciliation” as in one platform act when a veil picturing the head of Christ was cut apart as a symbol of the “scandal of division.”

Nearly 40 denominations were represented by the delegates, most of them high school juniors and seniors or college freshmen and sophomores. Each was selected by his denomination. Conveniently, the assembly was held in conjunction with the national youth meetings of 12 major denominations.

Some observers felt that most of the young delegates regarded the presentations somewhat passively. The program appeared to transpire in pre-packaged fashion devoid of spontaneity. These observers felt that this lack of enthusiasm must have disappointed the program’s sponsors, who spared little expense in their effort to communicate ecumenism effectively.

The program included two stage productions which had been especially commissioned by the assembly-planning committee and which were enacted by professional casts imported from New York for the occasion. One of the productions was subsequently referred to by a platform speaker as “that sordid play.” He quoted the playright as saying that there was no message and that the purpose was simply to show a “glimpse of life.”

The assembly was held under auspices of the National Council of Churches, the Canadian Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and the World Council of Christian Education. It was the second in a WCC series. The first, for Europeans, was held at Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1960, and the third is scheduled for December 1962, in Africa.

These assemblies include no legislative sessions, hence no resolutions or statements. Talk of a common communion service such as one which sidelighted the Lausanne assembly came from the Ann Arbor platform repeatedly, but a move to organize delegates for a similar service failed to gain much support.

Principal speakers at Ann Arbor were Dr. George Johnston, principal of United Theological College in Montreal, who led a daily Bible study on 2 Corinthians 5–6 and related passages; U. Kyaw Than, Burmese Baptist layman who is associate general secretary of the East Asia Christian Conference; and William String-fellow, Episcopal layman who practices law in the East Harlem section of New York.

Worship services each morning were led by representatives of various traditions, including Greek Archbishop Iakovos and Salvation Army Commissioner Norman S. Marshall.

In his closing address Stringfellow asserted that the trouble with the assembly was that it was not ecumenical. Absence of Roman Catholic and “some evangelical Protestant” delegations was mentioned several times. Stringfellow also derided what he called “the American idea of religion,” which he said is “openly hos tile to the biblical description of the Church as the Body of Christ living in the midst of the world on behalf of the world.”

A Minor Test

The so-called “Blake-Pike” proposal to merge United Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and the United Church of Christ faces a minor test in Detroit this month at the triennial General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

It is virtually a foregone conclusion that the convention will vote to pursue merger conversations. The Episcopal Joint Commission on Approaches to Unity reportedly has already decided to recommend the move on the convention floor and to suggest also that invitations be extended to representatives of the Polish National Catholic Church to enter into the merger conversations as well.

Undoubtedly the “stone of stumbling and rock of offence” to merger lies in the area of the historic episcopate. Some Episcopal voices have already stated that the real choice in merger is between Pan-Protestantism (which is church union) on the one side, and Catholicity or the acceptance of the historic episcopate (which is re-union, not union) on the other.

Inasmuch as Blake has called for the establishment of a church that is “truly catholic, and truly evangelical,” some observers feel that he is willing to scrap the historic Reformed view of the church and to accept the episcopate. To do so would be to come to terms with Episcopalian requirements which claim that the episcopate is organic to the Church.

Such a concession might also entail views such as those which appeared in The American Church Quarterly declaring that “Christendom … can never conceivably be reunited on a Protestant basis” and asserting that present union churches are a “clubbing together of small minorities of non-Roman, non-Orthodox Christians for the sake of carrying on the work of schism more effectively.”

The editorial also states:

“The sixteenth century Reformation largely failed because it produced schism rather than integral reform. The raison d’être of the Ecumenical Movement is thus that it seeks to undo this unhappy consequence of the sixteenth century. Unfortunately this implied criticism of the sixteenth century Reformation is, in the strategy of the Ecumenical Movement, either suppressed or its explication avoided in devious ways.”

A Missionary’s Exit

A British missionary, arrested in Lisbon on July 19 and held for 36 days without charges being pressed against him, was deported last month by the Portuguese government.

Dr. Cecil Scott, British representative on the Evangelical League for Missionary and Educational Work in Portugal, was escorted from a Lisbon jail to the airport, where he was placed aboard a plane bound for Paris. His wife accompanied him.

No formal charges were ever made against the missionary, a resident of Lisbon for many years, who had performed mission service in Angola. The police report of July 19 merely stated that he had been picked up for questioning.

However, his arrest—and that of American Methodist missionary Raymond E. Noah in Angola—came at a time when official Portuguese agencies were charging that the departure of 41 foreign students from the country could be attributed to a “clandestine organization” which had been active in Portugal “spreading rumors that overseas students risk persecution.”

An Overseas Ministry statement also said that “certain persons connected with Protestant activities” in Angola “are more directly employed in campaigning against the Portuguese authorities than in achieving their evangelistic aims.”

The American missionary was released in Lisbon eight days before the deportation of Dr. Scott. After being placed in the custody of U. S. Embassy officials, Mr. Noah left the country via plane to Geneva, Switzerland.

Libel In Bible?

Lawyers are being libeled by The New English Bible, Ontario’s Attorney General Kelso Roberts charged in a public address in Sarnia last month.

Roberts spoke to an audience made up largely of lawyers—among them Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker—at the opening of a county courthouse.

The attorney general noted that the new version of the Bible substituted the word “lawyer” for “scribe” so that the profession is linked consistently to Pharisees.

He cited one passage: “Alas you lawyers and pharisees, hypocrites …”

“This,” said Roberts, “is the unkindest slur of all.”

He added that the scholars must have had “their tongues in cheeks” in making the translation. The word “lawyer” is not related in any way to “scribe,” he said. In ancient times “scribe” was used to designate a public servant who wrote, kept accounts, transcribed manuscripts, and interpreted ecclesiastical works, Roberts declared.

Native Sects

Many parts of South Africa are witnessing a mushroom growth of native sects in which attempts to “Africanize” Christianity are blended with superstitious beliefs and old tribal customs.

One of the most common sights in all cities of the lower half of Africa is a gathering of African men and women in a vacant plot on Sunday afternoons. They are dressed in white, with colored sashes, and they shuffle or stamp their feet around a man beating a tom-tom.

Sometimes these white-robed crowds gather round a tree, declared “holy” by the leader or “prophet” of the group. Others gather near cemeteries, and in some places one can see a dozen groups at the same time.

But all these sects have one thing in common—the tom-tom which pulses its way through every ceremony. It dates back from about 1930 when a preacher in Northern Transvaal is said to have had a vision that he should use a tom-tom to praise the Lord. He did—and started a vogue which has not yet burned itself out.

Buddhism for Burma

The establishment of Buddhism as the state religion of Burma was assured when the Chamber of Nationalities, the nation’s upper legislative house in Rangoon, endorsed the government hill by a vote of 100 to 15.

Action of the Chamber of Nationalities followed the earlier vote of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, which had approved the state religion measure by a vote of 220 to 15.

It was announced that the Parliament would be called in to a joint session to pass a State Religion Promotion Act, one that will send into motion the government organization and program involved in establishing the state religion.

Because Buddhism is the dominant religion in Burma and because of Premier U Nu’s pressure on legislators, passage of the state religion measure had been foreordained from the time it was proposed.