The state revenue agents wondered about the concerts by Mitch Miller, Robert Goulet, and Tony Bennett.

The California State Board of Equalization ruled last month that the Garden Grove Community Church (the Crystal Cathedral) is ineligible for property tax-exempt status. The church was further billed for $400,000 in back taxes, which may be augmented by a $100,000 tax penalty from the Orange County assessor’s office. Church officials estimate that the loss of exemption could cost them $250,000 a year.

State investigator William Grommet cites the increasing use of church facilities for ostensibly commercial purposes as the reason for the disqualification. The status of the church, according to Grommet, has been under review since 1981. The state board took the final action because, in their view, church officials had failed to provide documentations for its tax-exempt status.

Robert Schuller founded the Garden Grove church in 1955, beginning with services in a drive-in theater. He has since built a congregation of 10,000, housed in the imposing Crystal Cathedral, which has become an Orange County landmark. The revenues of Schuller’s ministries, including the popular “Hour of Power” television program, total nearly $30 million annually.

In addition to traditionally religious performances such as the “Glory of Christmas,” the cathedral has played host to opera singer Beverly Sills, pianist Victor Borge, and musical troupes from Lawrence Welk’s show. This season was to feature appearances by the Fifth Dimension, Roberta Peters, Tony Bennett, Mitch Miller, the piano duo of Ferrante and Teischer, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, and singer Robert Goulet, all of whom have had their performances canceled. Ticket prices had been as high as $14. The state also objected to the presence of a Ticketron agency on church property and activities such as aerobic dancing and Weight Watchers, which have also recently been canceled.

Church spokesman Fred Southard told the Los Angeles Times the previous week that the government review came as a total surprise, adding that “the whole area [of exemption criteria] is so gray. There are no sharply defined guidelines. They can’t seem to tell us what is wrong until after we do it.”

At a December 21 press conference, Schuller, who is known for his possibility-thinking philosophy, stated that his aim for the cathedral was to minister to the whole community. He cited the traditional role of cathedrals as centers of culture and outlined the many ministries of his congregation and the 300 people he employs.

Concerning the tax status, Schuller affirms that he does not believe there is a real difficulty. “We are used to tackling mountains,” he said. “A bump in the road is no problem.” He further stated that he believes the church’s tax-exempt status will be restored, but did not specify when.

Cathedral spokesman Mike Nason expects an immediate appeal and dialogue with government officials in which the necessary documentation for restoration of the church’s former status will be presented.

LLOYD BILLINGSLEY

For nearly five years, the fate of two Siberian Pentecostal families caught in an impasse between the United States and the Soviet Union has focused attention on religious persecution abroad. Throughout 1982, Congressman Don Bonker (D-Wash.) held hearings on the issue, demonstrating to his colleagues that the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs, living in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, are not alone in their trouble.

The series of nine subcommittee hearings examined the plight of Baha’is in Iran, Jews in Eastern Europe, Coptic Christians in Egypt, and incidents of religious intolerance in Asia and Latin America. The full House of Representatives responded on December 17 by passing a resolution that condemns “persecution and discrimination by any institution, group of persons, or person on grounds of religious or other beliefs.” It recommends that the United Nations establish a permanent working group to investigate specific charges of persecution.

The Senate allowed the measure to die in committee during the lame duck session last month, and it is unlikely to be pressed again in the new Congress. But Bonker and the Human Rights Subcommittee he chairs believe House passage succeeded in expressing a sense of the Congress and reinforces the stance of the U.S. delegation to the UN, where a more detailed resolution passed in late 1981 after 20 years of volatile negotiations.

In his statement at the final congressional hearing, Bonker said, “It is unlikely that the U.S. can end religious persecution, but we can make the issue an integral part of our foreign policy.”

Earnest Gordon, director of CREED (Christian Rescue Effort for the Emancipation of Dissidents), agrees that “the effectiveness lies in keeping the memory of the reality of persecution in the forefront. We need to do more of this.” Gordon, who is particularly concerned with the persecution of Christians abroad, said the time is right to apply pressure on the Soviet Union because of its recent change in leadership as well as “a very significant, steady religious revival among young people” behind the Iron Curtain.

Soviet intransigence has prevented UN action on its resolution ever since the general assembly voted in 1962 to address racial and religious discrimination in two separate resolutions. Efforts to condemn religious intolerance continued until the resolution passed on November 25, 1981.

In one of its most significant provisions, the UN resolution outlines specific rights that accompany religious freedom, including assembling for worship, maintaining a meeting place, writing and distributing publications, teaching religious beliefs, soliciting voluntary financial contributions, observing holidays, and maintaining communications nationally and internationally.

U.S. negotiator Thomas A. Johnson is reluctant to endorse Bonker’s call for instituting a working group, which would be a permanent fixture for investigating persecutions.

Johnson would rather emphasize efforts by nongovernmental organizations to apply pressure. These would include groups such as CREED and the American Jewish Committee already active on this front, as well as denominations and umbrella groups such as the National Council of Churches and National Association of Evangelicals.

Basically, this is the method the U.S. State Department has favored in its own battles over religious freedom. Gordon, however, questions the wisdom of the low-profile, hands-off approach, pointing out “it seems as though quiet diplomacy always favors the Soviet Union.” His experience with the “Siberian Seven” has reinforced his skepticism because since June 1978, the government has been unsuccessful in clearing a path through the wilderness of Soviet bureaucracy for the Christians trapped in the embassy.

New ties between two churches alter the ecumenical equation.

In early September, Lutherans in America and Europe made some momentous decisions that will carry them more solidly than ever into the mainline of ecumenical activity. Meeting in Finland, commissions of Lutheran and Anglican (Episcopal) churches each agreed to share communion with the other. At about the same time in the United States, the Protestant Episcopal Church responded favorably to the overtures of a number of Lutheran bodies that would permit Lutherans and Episcopalians to have communion with some limitation.

Lutheran groups—the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches—representing approximately two-thirds of American Lutheranism, decided to join by 1988 into one organization with a membership of 5.4 million. In an ecumenical age, news of new liaisons like these is not as newsworthy as, for example, the formation of the Church of South India, which brought together into one body a number of apparently disparate bodies. The Lutheran union and the Lutheran-Episcopal agreements seem more the result of the natural course of church history than unexpected actions in ecumenical history.

To the outsider, Episcopalians and Lutherans seem to be much the same, the former of English origin and the latter of Teutonic-Scandinavian background. Both have a more formal type of worship, most often with surplices, albs, and occasionally chasubles. Their Protestant brothers have quipped that with their liturgy and rituals, they are little more than Catholics without a pope. At certain points their histories have touched in real ways. The Augsburg Confession of the Lutherans and the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Episcopalians have a similar ring. Lutheran pastors have served as chaplains to the British monarchs of German heritage, who incidentally were the temporal heads of the Church of England. Swedish and German Lutherans in colonial America often became Episcopalians as English came to be their predominant language. Similarity in liturgical rite made this transfer easier. But resemblance in appearance should not cover up fundamental differences, as in matters of church polity and Communion.

Lutherans have never made polity—whether it is episcopal, presbyterial, or congregational—the touchstone of their faith in the way the Episcopalians have, who stress the office of the bishop in apostolic succession. The issue of polity then may not be insurmountable as the three uniting Lutheran churches in America have already adopted the historic title of bishop for their denominational presidents. Though a Lutheran theological commission will shortly investigate the theological and historical understanding of the office of bishop, it seems inevitable that the future consecration of bishops in the new church will use bishops of apostolic tradition in the Episcopal and the Swedish Lutheran traditions. A similar process has already been adopted in some churches that have no previous claim to such a succession. Should this happen, and it seems inevitable that it will, the Lutherans will in fact surrender their historic belief that polity, whether episcopal, presbyterial, or congregational, does not belong to the essence of the church.

A more formidable problem, however, is the matter of Holy Communion. The Episcopal church, with its Thirty-Nine Articles, permits a latitude in the understanding of Holy Communion that is not only not allowed but specifically condemned by one of the Lutheran Confessions, the Formula of Concord, to which at least the American Lutheran Church binds itself. Lutherans historically have insisted that the earthly elements of the sacraments must be viewed as Christ’s body and blood, while the Episcopal view sees Christ’s presence in the general sacramental action and not specifically in the elements. Consubstantiation, the view that Christ’s body and blood is given with bread and wine, without further specific definition, correctly describes the Episcopal but not the Lutheran view. This might be a moot question since a variety of positions are openly and widely held in the Episcopal church, including the practice of sacramental reservation. European Lutherans, on the other hand, have reached several agreements with Reformed (Calvinist) churches. In practice, the old Lutheran custom of “closed” Communion, the understanding that only those sharing the same confession may share in the sacrament, is rarely, if ever, practiced by any of the churches involved in the agreements.

The drive for one united Lutheran church in America is a clear historical victory for the movement that since the colonial days has been moving away from a distinctively Lutheran position. An attempt to merge Lutherans and Episcopalians in New York was barely halted in the early nineteenth century. Many Lutheran pastors, including the son of Henry Mühlenberg, the patriarch of American Lutheranism, did in fact become Episcopalian ministers. In colonial Virginia, Lutheran pastors went to England for Episcopal ordination in order to carry out a legitimately recognized ministry. By the end of the nineteenth century, American Lutheranism had reversed itself and moved in a sharply conservative and traditional direction. Not only the Missouri Synod, but those churches comprising the now 2.3-million-member American Lutheran Church, had adopted strong confessionally Lutheran stands.

For a time, the more ecumenically minded churches once forming the United Lutheran Church and now 3.1-million-member Lutheran Church in America gave up their goals for a wider participation with other Protestant groups. Twentieth-century theological developments that have recognized various New Testament theologies and have had a greater concern for ecumenical participation have again influenced the direction of American Lutheranism. It virtually returned to where it stood in colonial times and during the first years of the American nation.

The Lutheran union announced for 1988 and the announcement of reciprocal arrangements with the Episcopalians are clearly decisive victories for the tradition represented in the Lutheran Church in America. The American Lutheran Church, which occupied a middle position sometimes very close to the conservative Missouri Synod, has vacated its mediating position and adopted the historic position expressed in the Lutheran Church in America. Theologically this means that among the 8.5 million Lutherans in America, no denomination can safely claim the middle ground as its own position. On the left will stand the new Lutheran organization, with 5.4 million; to the right will be the Missouri Synod, with 2.7 million members and the Wisconsin Synod with approximately 400,000.

For a generation, some have called for, and prophesied, a twofold division in American Lutheranism. Whether or not this is a case of a self-fufilled prophecy, it has nevertheless come true.

With one historic movement in Lutheranism having reached its prophetically destined conclusion over a period of two centuries, the next question focuses on where the Missouri Synod will find itself in the next generation or two. The crisis years of the 1970s siphoned off approximately 100,000 members into the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, which stated one of its goals to be a wider ecumenical participation. Many others who share these views remained within the synod, though they do not have the same numerical strength they had in the 1970s. Some have predicted it will only be a matter of time before the synod finds itself drifting with the ecumenical tides. Though the Missouri Synod finds itself decisively on the right in the spectrum of American Lutheranism, it unenviably finds itself without any significant ecclesiastical alliances in North America. No longer in fellowship with the American Lutheran Church (since 1981), it enjoys no significant relationships with its former partner, the Wisconsin Synod. A new challenge for the next decade lies before those Lutherans who resisted in the 1970s what once seemed an inevitable ecumenical conclusion for them at midcentury.

Somewhere a father is telling himself, “I wish my daughter would pack up, leave home, and never come back; God knows she has driven us crazy.” But he remembers a promise he made when she was baptized, and he sticks with her in hurting love.

Somewhere a woman is telling herself, “I want to get out of this marriage and start over with someone who really loves me; God knows the clod I married has given me reason for cashing him in.” But she remembers a promise she made when she married him and she sticks with him in hopeful love.

Somewhere a minister is telling himself, “I want to chuck this job and get into something with a better payoff; God knows my congregation has given me second-degree burnout.” But he remembers the promise he made when he was ordained, and he sticks with the church in pastoral love.

Some people still make promises and keep those they make. When they do, they help make life around them more stably human. Promise keeping is a powerful means of grace in a time when people hardly depend on each other to remember and live by their word.

Some people still have ships they will not abandon, even when the ship seems to be sinking.

Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost.

Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck.

But why? Why make any promises at all? And if you do make them, why keep them? Why not tune in to growth and change and the maximizing of your feelings? Why worry about a word once spoken, or about a memory that binds you to that word? Promise keeping may be a sucker’s game: sticking with what you stuck yourself with. That may be the surest way to becoming a loser. When you can move on to maximal pleasure and profit, why not cut the cords and let others pick up the pieces? Why make a promise, and why keep the promises you made?

The answer to the nettlesome whys of promise making is this, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition; U. of Chicago, 1958): the only way to overcome the unpredictability of your future is the power of promising. If forgiving is the only remedy for your painful past, promising is the only remedy for your uncertain future.

A human promise is an awesome reality. When a woman makes a promise, she thrusts her hand into the unpredictable circumstances of her tomorrow and creates an enclave of predictable reality. When a man makes a promise, he creates an island of certainty in a heaving ocean of uncertainty. Can any human act, other than the act of forgiving, be more divine?

Here is reason enough, then, to give some hard thought to the wonderworking power of promising. Maybe it is one lost key to the better society we all pray for.

I look at the mystery of human promising from three vistas: Human destiny is resting wholly on a promise; human freedom comes to its own only in a promise; and, human community can be saved only through the making and keeping of promises. Maybe, from these three vantage points (suggested to me by Paul Ford), we can rediscover a few dimensions of the wonderfully human event called a promise.

Human Destiny Rests On A Promise

The future of the human family rides on the fragile fibers of a promise spoken. One thing assures us that the cosmos will not climax its arduous odyssey by turning itself into a stinking garbage heap. Only one thing affirms that the human romance will have a happy ending, and that the earth will be populated one day by a redeemed family living in justice and shalom. The one thread by which everything hangs is a promise spoken and not forgotten.

A common Chaldean named Abraham burned his bridges behind him and strode off into his unpredictable future as he gambled on the reliability of a promise uttered by a Presence he had scarcely begun to feel. And so the new possibility for history began.

The romance got going again when Moses tried to get a better fix on the identity of this Presence, this invisible Awesome One, the Ineffable. “What is your name?” he dared to ask. And the answer came (in John Courtney Murray’s provocative translation): “I am he who will be there with you” (Exod. 3:14). This was his name. It was all Moses needed to know; maybe it was all he could know. “I am he who will be there with you; count on it.”

No one on earth at that time could have predicted the spectacular rise and dismal falls of the people who were created by the promise implicit in God’s name. Unpredictable circumstances combined with an uncontrolled compulsion to commit national suicide kept their future in constant doubt. Only the power of the promise kept them together. The One whose name is “I am he who will be there with you” kept coming back to them.

Then, in an unsuspecting setting, a man from Galilee talked to his friends about sealing the ancient promise in his blood and, a day later, he spilled it over God’s ground on a mound they called Golgotha. “I am he who will be there with you” was there with us, dying, then rising, and then being there with us to the end of the world.

No one on earth now can predict the future of the natives of planet Earth by any evidential data. What will it be, a cosmic garbage heap? Or will it be a new earth where righteousness has finally taken hold? Not a cosmic heap, says Peter: rather, a new earth. How so? By whose crystal ball? According to what indicators, and from what internal evidence? With no crystal ball and no internal evidence, “We wait according to his promise” (2 Peter 3:13). Again, the whole thing hangs on a promise.

The data from our own environment, natural or human, is ambiguous at best. James Gustafson published the first volume of his important work on ethics (Ethics in a Theocentric Perspective, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982), having given it, he tells us, 30 years of homework. In it he shares his melancholy judgment that nothing in nature assures him that nature is essentially friendly to the human species, and nothing disclosed in history confirms the hope that we are on a track leading to the City of God. We all have a humanoid bias that cosmic odds must be tilted in favor of the human race. But there is nothing solid to buttress the anthropocentric prejudice.

Nothing? Nothing at all—except one thing: a promise made by Someone whose name is “I am he who will be there with you.”

Human destiny rests on a promise freely given and reliably remembered. Besides providing a believing basis for hope, this means that whenever you and I make and keep a promise we are as close to being like God as we can ever be. When you say to anyone that you will be there with her, you are only a millimeter beneath the angels.

Freedom Comes Alive In A Promise

Whenever a mere human being makes a promise, he stakes a claim on freedom. A promise is a momentous claim that the person who makes it has the power to act freely to bring order and dependability into the unpredictable future. If you fear, as I do, our penchant for promise breaking, consider this: it is almost a miracle that anyone should ever dare to make a promise.

When we make a promise we take it on our feeble wills to keep a future rendezvous with someone in circumstances we cannot possibly predict. We take it on ourselves to create our future with someone else no matter what fate or destiny may have in store. This is almost ultimate freedom.

When I make a promise, I bear witness that my future with you is not locked into a bionic beam by which I was stuck with the fateful combinations of X’s and Y’s in the hand I was dealt out of my parents’ genetic deck.

When I make a promise, I testify that I was not routed along some unalterable itinerary by the psychic conditioning visited on me by my slightly wacky parents.

When I make a promise I declare that my future with people who depend on me is not predetermined by the mixed-up culture of my tender years.

I am not fated, I am not determined, I am not a lump of human dough whipped into shape by the contingent reinforcement and aversive conditioning of my past. I know as well as the next person that I cannot create my life de novo; I am well aware that much of what I am and what I do is a gift or a curse from my past. But when I make a promise to anyone I rise above all the conditioning that limits me.

No German shepherd ever promised to be there with me. No home computer ever promised to be a loyal help, meet for the contemporary householder. Only a person can make a promise. And when he does, he is most free.

The paradox of promising is that we freely bind ourselves to keep the promises we make. We limit our freedom so that we can be free to be there with someone in his future’s unpredictable storms. “The person who makes a vow,” said Chesterton, “makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place.” And he gives up freedom in order to keep it.

When you make a promise, you tie yourself to other persons by the unseen fibers of loyalty. You agree to stick with people you are stuck with. When everything else tells them they can count on nothing, they count on you. When they do not have the faintest notion of what in the world is going on around them, they will know that you are going to be there with them. You have created a small sanctuary of trust within the jungle of unpredictability: you have made a promise that you intend to keep.

A promise, then, is the human essence of freedom after the style of God—it is your freedom to be there with someone even though you cannot tell what “being there” is going to be like for you.

The Power Of Promise Makes Human Community Possible

We can have a human community only if persons within are able to keep the thread of their identity amid all their life’s passages. A person, in the long run, gets this identity from the promises he makes. We know someone as the same person today that he or she was yesterday by the promises that person made yesterday and keeps today.

Some people ask who they are and expect their feelings to tell them. But feelings are flickering flames that fade after every fitful stimulus. Some people ask who they are and expect their achievements to tell them. But the things we accomplish always leave a core of character unrevealed. Some people ask who they are and expect visions of their ideal self to tell them. But our visions can only tell us what we want to be, not what we are.

Maybe we can best find out who and what we are by asking about the promises we have made to other people and the promises we are trying to keep for their sakes. Hannah Arendt is worth hearing out: “Without being bound to the fulfillment of our promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each person’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities.” Promise making is the social bond that tells us who we are in our life together.

Remember Thomas More? Meg, his beautiful daughter, begged him to save his life by renouncing an oath he had once made. All he had to do to save his skin was to go back on a vow. But to deny a vow is to deny oneself: “When a man takes an oath, Meg, he is holding his own self in his hand, like water. And if he opens his fingers then he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

But it is not only that I know myself in the mirror of my promises. My people, the ones who belong to me, who depend on me, also know me by the promises I have made. What I promise is what I am and will be to them. Only if they really know what I am can they live with me in trust. They know me in the important way, not by reading my analyst’s notes, but by knowing my power to keep promises.

Everything in our lives together depends on the power of people to make and keep promises. To paraphrase Chesterton: “On that single string—of a person bound to his promise—hangs everything from nuclear disarmament to a family reunion, from a successful revolution to a return ticket to Pasadena.”

Thomas Carlyle, toward the end of his three volumes on the history of the French Revolution, observes that the revolution did not fail because of a single and grievous error in the chambers of power, but because ordinary people in ordinary places stopped keeping their promises in their minor posts of ordinary responsibility.

Perhaps the church cannot be a force for redemptive change in our throwaway society until those of us who belong to it renew our commitment to promise in the society of the promise-making Lord. Evangelical social ethic? Of course, urgent! But let us not, in changing structures, forget the old job of nurturing each other to be people who dare to make promises and have the courage to keep the promises we make.

Promise making obviously begins with the intimate communities, and if we fail there, we can forget our covenants to renew the metropolis. Take marriage. When a woman marries, she takes on a new name: “I am she who will be there with you.” What sublime arrogance; it sounds like an imitation of God. But we had better imitate the promise-making God. Or else.

When I married my wife, I had hardly a smidgen of sense for what I was getting into with her. How could I know how much she would change over 25 years? How could I know how much I would change? My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me. The connecting link with my old self has always been the memory of the name I took on back there: “I am he who will be there with you.” When we slough off that name, lose that identity, we can hardly find ourselves again. And the bonds that connect us to others will be frayed to breaking.

Extend marriage to a family. What makes a family? A family must be more than a spillover of two persons’ reckless passions. A family must be more than what the census bureau says it is: two or more persons related by blood and living under the same roof. A family has to be even more than a modern management device by which the oldsters are in charge of shuffling the youngsters around to the external experts who do the real rearing. A family must be more. And it is.

A family is a community created by the promise of two people who care for persons they bring into the world until those persons are able to care for themselves. Parents are people of promise. They remember their promise even when the family is a hotbed of anger, grief, and pain—as families tend sometimes to be. The psalmist said that the man who has a quiver full of children is the most happy fellow. I suspect he said it before his own children had reached adolescence. But no matter. A family is created and kept together, not because parenting is so much fun, but because two people dared to make and dared to keep their promise.

But a marriage and family are only the easiest communities to get into focus. All human community, from the ghetto to the global village, depends on the power of promising. Where people no longer have the inner daring to make serious promises or the grit to keep them, human community becomes a combat zone of competing self-maximizers. We are at sea; life is all open-ended, loose-jointed, tossed around in the backwash of unpredictability. Where others cannot assume that I will be there with them as promised, I have helped abolish community.

I oversimplify, of course.

There are promises we should never make. And there are some promises, once made, that nobody should keep. The power of promise making is easily perverted. Like alcohol, promises can be put to silly and sinister uses. Besides, life gets so complicated, and we get so muddle-headed, that to keep one promise sometimes requires us to break another. We foul the lines, get our promises at sixes and sevens with each other, which is no surprise. To say that we ought to be careful when we make our promises only underscores the truth our generation has almost forgotten: a promise is a godlike thing, and it is the only human hold we have on our future.

A Time essay reminded us, not long ago, that not every word with the look of a promise should be seen as a real promise. There are snorts of political bravado that grandstanding candidates pass off as promises. (“I will never lie to the people.”) There are heroic bluffs that humiliated generals theatricalize as promises. (“I shall return.”) There are erotic exaggerations that romantic lovers gurgle as if they were making promises. (“I shall love you with undying passion.”) There are fakes that remind us that somewhere there are real promises that people mean really to keep.

I do not pretend to understand all the psychic dynamics of promise making. And I know I need the grace and power of God to make promises these days. But I submit that the community of faith will do well to put the nurturing of promise-making and promise-keeping people high on its list of goals for the coming decade.

When we make and keep promises we are most of all like the God whose name is “I am he who will be there with you.” Among all the dimensions of the mature person in Christ, none comes closer to the character of our Lord than the daring to make a promise and the courage to keep the promises we make.

When we make and keep a promise we are acting in the power that sets people free. If to be free in Christ is to be free indeed, then to be free indeed is to be free to limit our freedom by promising to be there with the people who trust us.

Promises summon the sort of social integrity that lays the ground floor for all community. Life together survives as a human togetherness, not on a diet of warm feelings, but on the tough fibers of promise keeping. It is not easy. There are times when the inner logic and deserving needs of self-fulfillment seduce us to opt for self-maximizing even if to maximize ourselves we need to break promises to others. Promising—and keeping promises—is the tough-test social duty of our time but, down the pike, it is the only human, the only redemptive way.

In my previous piece on forgiving (CT, Jan. 7) and in this one on promising, I have been captivated by a two-directional power of grace in our living. As I search the pages of redemptive history for the moral essence of God’s character, what comes to me is this: God is, par excellence, in the character he reveals, the One who creates for us a new past and a new future by forgiving and promising. And as I read the pages of human experience, I think I see here and there mere men and women sharing in God’s life to this creative extent: they create a new past for themselves by forgiving people who have hurt them and they create a future for others by making promises to people who need them. As I see it, there are subtle miracles of human freedom. The neglect of them in our time may hasten disaster. Renewal of our power to practice them may yet save us.

The strapping young father hoisted his son to his shoulders where he sat happily, each leg firmly held in one of his father’s strong hands. From this vantage point, the little guy had a breadth of view he could not otherwise have enjoyed.

He was also safe—safe from the blistering hot sand, the onrushing waves, even from occasional sharp shells or broken glass. And he could go indefinitely without getting tired. His short legs wouldn’t have to run to keep up with his dad’s. On those broad shoulders “keeping up” was no problem.

I was watching the pair from our friends’ lovely condominium, and I thought of the aging Moses, who reminded the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 1:31: “The Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son.” God also assures us in Isaiah 46:4: “And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will l carry you; I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.”

Being lifted up and carried so securely is not limited to a little boy on a beach; it also includes those of old age with gray hair.

That strong young father on the beach was a reassuring reminder that there is One who lifts and carries us. That One is our heavenly Father himself.

Hebrew-speaking Christian leaders in Israel speak up.

“There’s a widespread consensus in Israel that to be Jewish [a very diverse phenomenon in modern Israel] is at the very least to be non-Christian.”

This observation was made from the podium at a recent national conference of Hebrew-speaking Christian leaders in Israel, where the subject of Jewish identity came up repeatedly. Admittedly, relatively few Jews are hostile to Christians as such. Yet they are generally convinced that while Christianity may be a proper enough state for Gentiles it is inconceivable for Jews. A witty journalist doing a rather sarcastic piece on missions in Israel and Hebrew Christians some years ago remarked that the latter term made as much sense as a “drunken teetotaler” or a “white Negro.”

Of course, Hebrew-speaking Christians soften the semantic clash by reverting to the semitic root behind the Greek word Christianos (follower of Christos or the Messiah). They call themselves Yehudim Meshihiim, which literally means “Jewish Messianists.” The term “Messianist” was used by the great nineteenth-century Christian scholar Franz Delitzsch, whose translation of the New Testament into Hebrew is still in wide use among Hebrew readers.

Hebrew Christianity as a distinct movement within the body of Christ may be traced back to the roots of the church. Its witness was clearly divided between circumcised and Gentiles (Gal. 2:7–9), with circumcised Christians maintaining their life and witness among the wider Jewish people (Acts 21:20–26). Paul’s concept of the unity of Jew and Gentile in the body of Christ (Eph. 2:11–22) was designed to break down “the dividing wall of hostility,” but certainly not to cause the distinctive elements within that unity to disintegrate.

With the passage of time, one of history’s strangest conspiracies developed. The later synagogue and the triumphant church combined to suppress any possibility for continued Jewish life within the context of Christian faith. The synagogue totally banished the Hebrew Christian, declaring him outcast and dead to Israel; the church assured him that he was no longer a Jew and even forbade him to practice anything that might remind him of his Jewish identity.

Only within the past century and a half have church and synagogue been weakened sufficiently in their respective communities to permit a resurgence of a movement as radically dissenting as Hebrew Christianity. In this period it has not had to face the dire consequences that religious establishments—Jewish and Christian—were once able to impose on dissenters. While until fairly recently Hebrew Christians have been given scant recognition even by acknowledgment of their presence, little could be done to prevent them from functioning as a splinter community within free, pluralistic Hebrew and Christian societies.

Modern Zionism provided an even stronger impetus to the Hebrew Christian movement. Jewish sociologist B. Z. Sobel, in his study of Hebrew Christianity (which he sardonically dubbed “the thirteenth tribe”), said: “Hebrew Christianity began to achieve stability and organizational sophistication at about the same period in history that witnessed the emergence and phenomenal growth of political Zionism as a force among the Jews of the Western world.”

Zionism stressed the peoplehood of the Jews, with religious belief and affiliation quite optional. Many of the early Zionists (like some of their contemporary successors) vigorously rejected the religious option in favor of modern rationalist ideologies. By the force of logic, some secular Zionists were compelled to acknowledge the right of Jews to be not only agnostics but even adherents of religious beliefs outside mainstream Judaism.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew and a pioneer Zionist, openly called upon Hebrew Christians to join the movement of return to Zion alongside their Orthodox and secularist brethren. Nevertheless, a hitch developed some 60 years later when a Polish Hebrew Carmelite monk put the matter to a formal test in the young Jewish state. At issue was his right to be a citizen of Israel as a Jew ethnically, but as a Catholic by religion. In a majority decision, the Israeli High Court ruled against him. They explained that the average Jew could not accept that a convert to another religion remained a Jew under the terms of Israeli immigrant law, or that a separation could be made between Jewish ethnicity and Jewish religion.

A subsequent case by an American Jewess, Eileen Dorflinger, put the issue in terms somewhat less stark than Hebrew Catholicism. She denied that she was a member of another religion since her beliefs were Jewish in source and content. In a brief filed with the court, she cited copiously from the Old and New Testaments to prove the Jewishness of her faith in Yeshua (Jesus). Her case also foundered when the judges ruled that Israeli immigration law did not grant automatic citizenship to members of a religion other than Judaism. (They might seek naturalization without conversion to Judaism.) The court concluded that purely by Christian standards her beliefs were in accord with the Christian religion. Nevertheless, both she and the Hebrew Catholic monk have remained in the country to this day, although they are registered as non-Jewish residents.

The bulk of Israel’s resident Hebrew Christians are either native to the country or have come to faith after arriving in Israel. Some were Hebrew Christian immigrants whose claim to being Jewish was not challenged by the officials they dealt with. A few who have been challenged have been granted permanent residence under a different law from the one applying to most Jewish immigrants. A few have been denied admission or the right of residence, sometimes on the suspicion that they were engaged in missionary activity.

In itself missionary activity is by no means illegal in Israel, but the authorities do what they can to control the flow of missionaries into the country. And Hebrew-Christian missionaries are not their first preference. A few have legally operated in the country as members of recognized missionary societies. (Of course, they are classed as Christians, not Hebrews.) Nevertheless, several years ago Hebrew members of a British missionary society in Israel applied for permanent residence, and were granted it upon presentation of proof of their Jewish origin. One, a young woman physician, was even asked to serve in the Israel Defence Forces alongside others of her profession and age group. A Hebrew-Christian colleague of hers continues to do his annual reserve duty, as do most resident Hebrew Christians.

Christian critics of Israel often point to the dilemma of Hebrew Christians in Israel as evidence of things unproven in someone else’s prophetic end-time scheme. “A Christian Hebrew is such an anomaly in the eyes of the State of Israel that he or she is not recognized as a bona fide Jew,” Mark Hanna has written in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, to bolster his thesis that “Israel today is not the people of God” (cr, Jan. 22, 1982, p. 17).

Oddly enough, Israeli Hebrew Christians would more likely come to a different conclusion. Several hundred Israeli Hebrews from the Galilee to the Negev live, worship, and witness openly to their faith in Christ within Israeli society. This is for them sufficient proof that the apostle Paul’s teaching about the remnant in Israel still applies.

It will be recalled that the apostle made an analogy between the 7,000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal of Elijah’s generation and the Hebrew Christians of his own day (Romans 11:1–4). Modern Israeli Hebrew Christians see themselves as part of that same remnant within Israel. It is true that they may have even less mainstream recognition than Elijah’s 7,000 or Paul’s larger community (Acts 21:20 speaks of thousands of Hebrew Christians in Palestine). But they are still living proof that “God has not cast off his people whom he foreknew” (Romans 11:2).

Meanwhile, a generation of “Jewish Messianists,” to use their preferred term, is growing up in the Jewish national homeland. Small, mainly fringe zealot groups do harass them from time to time, and mass media coverage can be biased, although by no means is this always true. In the wake of zealot attacks upon them, Hebrew Christians have been given opportunities to present their “case” before a national public on radio, TV, and in some of the Hebrew newspapers. Nevertheless, social and family pressures can be psychologically intense. But Hebrew Christians continue to create new forms of Hebrew worship, literature, fellowship, and congregational structures within the life of contemporary Israel.

Hebrew Christians are still heavily influenced and divided by “the two and seventy jarring sects” of Christendom, who have carried their diversified practices and creeds into the intense and fluid Israeli context. Israeli Yehudim Meshihiim are still a good distance away from the point where they may declare in anything like a common voice, “We are the Israeli church of the circumcision within the body of Christ.” All the congregations in Israel have both Jewish and Gentile members, but there are ongoing efforts to create noncongregational frameworks in which Jewish believers in Jesus living within a predominantly Jewish society can corporately tackle their specific problems.

Hebrew Christians today are engaged in what one leader described as a “two-pronged protest”—to the church, which has resisted their Jewishness within the body of Christ, and to Israel, which has resisted their Messianic faith within the body of the Jewish people. Two-front battles, even spiritual ones, are never easy to wage. In the midst of the fray it would be well for both the church and Israel to heed the counsel of Rabbi Gamaliel—still good counsel in Jerusalem today, as elsewhere: “For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God” (Acts 5:38–39, NIV).

Aloe Verily, Inc.

I fell asleep the other night while reading the Christian Yellow Pages and dreamed a wondrous dream. I was wandering about Wall Street in New York when I saw a big brass plate anchored by a white doorway, which read, Aloe Verily, Inc.

I entered and was greeted by a cheery lady wearing a small lapel pin that appeared to be a tiny flowering cactus with a cross rising out of it. She smiled.

“Pardon me,” I said, “I was looking for an …”

“Exciting career in the Aloe Verily Corporation?”

She had taken the words right out of my mouth. I felt awkward and slow of speech. “Yes,” I said at last, “could you tell me more about Aloe Verily? I’m a pretty shy person and I once tried selling New Life Vitamins and didn’t do so well.”

“Sir,” she said, “Do you have three friends?”

I smiled weakly, almost insulted. “Everybody has three friends,” I said.

“All you have to do is get them together for an Alpha Aloe Bible Study. An AABS, as we say in the trade!” She smiled broadly.

“Alpha Aloe?” I felt foolish asking her, for Alpha obviously stood for Christ and Aloe for the cactus balsam cosmetics that were making Christians everywhere more lovely.

“Alpha stands for Christ,” she said excitedly, “And Aloe for our cactus balsam cosmetics …”

“Never mind,” I said, “I have three friends—four when they’re all in town. I can get them together.”

“Good,” she said, “Once we get them together—after the Bible study—we will serve them a nice ice-chilled Aloe Vitalizer. Then we’ll give them a Radiant Aloe facial and try to sell them a New Life Aloette Kit, which includes their Bible-Alpha cassette study tapes to clear the inner mind as well as the Aloe Verily lotion control and nutrient program.”

“How much?” I asked.

“How much for what?” she replied, and then went on: “My dear, we at Aloe Verily never talk about how much—money cannot be considered in lieu of the total inner and outer cleansing of Alpha control.”

“How much will this cost my three friends?”

“Only a few cents per day.”

“For how long?”

“For three years.”

“What’s in this for Aloe Verily?” I felt shame in asking such a question.

“The question is not what it costs your three friends; you see, it could be free for them, just as it is for you.” There was a pause, I thought of Harry, Jake, and Bill. Would they go for Aloe Verily?

“Remember,” she said, “Cleanliness is next to godliness, and Aloe Verily means clean!”

It was a company slogan.

“How could it be free for Harry, Jake, and Bill?” I asked.

“Well, if they each have three friends and agree to have an Alpha Aloe Bible Study …”

“Then they get a tall, chilled glass of Alpha Aloe Vitalizer and Radiant Aloe facial and New Life Aloette Kit …”

“Precisely,” she beamed, “And you get an override on all they sell.”

“Does this mean that if Harry, Jake, and Bill’s nine friends each have three friends that I could be swimming in Aloe Verily?”

“If Harry, Jake, and Bill’s 27 contacts all buy Aloe Verily and establish three contacts, you could eventually be making enough money that you could quit going to the Bible studies altogether.”

It was a lovely idea but I had to ask, “Miss, do you have three friends?”

She hung her head sadly. “I used to,” she said.

EUTYCHUS

Money: Not A Cure-All

“The Other Side of Thanksgiving” [Nov. 26] points out an overwhelming truth: “Money itself is no guarantee of success in development.” Particularly among government foreign aid programs, money is too often regarded as the cure-all for the Third World’s massive problems. The facts point the other way.

This is not to say that gifts of money, food, and other commodities are not helpful as emergency measures. But we have seen low-cost development programs transform communities in Guatemala and Ecuador. A 50 percent cut in infant mortality, dramatically increased food production, safe water, better housing, waste disposal—all these have been realized with minimal funding on our part, but maximum investment in time and relationships by our field staff who work with the people.

Catalyst for these changes is the indigenous church, which ministers to the spiritual and physical needs of their people.

LARRY E. DIXON

MAP International

Carol Stream, Ill.

I was very disappointed to discover your omission of the Salvation Army’s extensive work in the Third World countries.

It was indeed a blessing to discover the selfless and dedicated work that is represented by the numerous organizations mentioned throughout your article. However, your oversight of the Salvation Army was not only disappointing, but shows a lack of sufficient research before composition of an article.

LIEUTENANT RALPH BUKIEWICZ

The Salvation Army

Rock Island, Ill.

Academic Freedom Needed

As a witness at the Arkansas creation-evolution trial, I read with amazement your report [News, Nov. 26]. Does this mean the judge will now overturn his ruling, since that is exactly opposite of what he ruled on January 5, 1982 (see my Creator in the Courtroom, Mott Media, pp. 174–77)?

I did note that there was a catch in the reported words of Judge Overton. Evidence for a Creator will be allowed only when a majority of scientists believe it is valid. What about a 76 percent majority of the citizens who now believe it is valid to teach both? Since when did a scientific aristocracy take over our schools? Remember Galileo. Pray for academic freedom.

NORMAN L. GEISLER

Dallas, Texas

Misleading Reference

Thank you for the farewell interview with Kenneth Kantzer [“Reflections: Five Years of Change,” Nov. 26]. Among his perceptive comments there is, however, a misleading reference to a merger of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and the World Evangelical Fellowship as a “foregone conclusion.”

Actually, cooperation, not merger, is the situation. At the Consultation on World Evangelization in 1980, the desirability of a merger was thoroughly discussed, but not recommended. However, cooperation in mutual projects related to world evangelization, as for example, the Consultation on the Relationship Between Evangelism and Social Responsibility held last June, is not only possible, but much to be desired.

WEF plays a unique role as a membership-based organization that covers many important areas of evangelical concern. LCWE is an unofficial movement of individuals and groups covenanting together to stimulate world evangelization. Both groups have unique roles and vital futures, but their potential may be diverted by undue expectations of merger.

LEIGHTON FORD

LCWE

Charlotte, N.C.

The Great Noodle!

Regarding “Noodles: A New Symbol?” [Nov. 26], I would like to advance the following symbolism: Noodles clearly represent sermons! Eutychus says, “Noodles are plastic.” I have heard my share of “plastic” sermons. “Noodles are dry—often. Usually they are yellow.” A courageous sermon? Just how long has it been since you heard a sermon so bold that, unless his congregation is aroused to action, the pastor is a “squished noodle”?

As for the admonition to “beware the fellowship where they seem to be a congregational symbol,” if noodles represent sermons, you could be right! If you have noticed that noodles are “chummy when they are warm,” then let’s warm up the crowd with a little more of God’s Spirit and they won’t care what they eat, as long as it is “together.” I would rather meet a noodle that is “unable to stand firm in hot water” than the humans I have met in that flimsy, slippery condition!

NANCEE L. DICKSON

La Mesa, Calif.

Pertinent Information

In reference to your article “Better Ways to Combat Cults Are Being Developed” [Nov. 26], the article puts Mr. Scharff in a positive light. Gary Scharff was invited to my home on November 9 to talk to me. The invitation came from my parents. The unusual thing is that I’m not in a cult. I’m a Hebrew Christian.

The article seemed to indicate that these people were active only when people are in cults. Mr. Scharff made no distinction between cults and Hebrew Christianity.

MARLENE LEWIS

Bronx, N.Y.

Patronizing Statements

Mr. Clark’s statements concerning Hispanics in “Hispanics: The Harvest Field at Home” [Nov. 12] were in general very patronizing. He states that there are over 12 million Hispanics residing in the U.S. The correct estimate is more like 20 to 25 million (Evangelical Missions, Oct. 1980). Hispanics become isolated because of the prejudice that exists in the Anglo churches. Furthermore, the Hispanic church is one of the fastest-growing churches in our large cities, while Anglo churches are moving away into the suburbs.

The basic factor that unites Hispanics is their culture and the way they relate to one another. Because one can speak a language does not mean that he or she understands a group of people. In order to accomplish a successful ministry you must be able to understand the language. But more important, you must be able to understand the culture.

JORGE LUIS GAUTIER

South Hamilton, Mass.

Erroneous And Distorted

Your article on People for the American Way [News, Nov. 12] contained numerous factual errors, distortions, and false charges.

You quote the Moral Majority as denying any participation in censorship or book burning. Yet Rev. Falwell sends out thousands of letters urging his followers to scour their libraries and says “Books that don’t accurately present the American heritage must be eliminated.” And Rev. Tim LaHaye, who serves on the Moral Majority’s board of directors, endorses the public destruction services (record and book burning events) of the Peters Brothers on his nationally syndicated television program.

You suggest that the Moral Majority leader calling for executing homosexuals is an isolated incident. Yet the national secretary and first executive director of that organization have also made virtually identical statements. And Rev. Falwell calls on his followers to “stop homosexuals dead in their tracks.”

ANTHONY T. PODESTA

People for the American Way

Washington, D.C.

Cinema

Monsignor

A Frank Perry film;

Twentieth Century-Fox

Monsignor is a film with a confession: Hollywood cannot yet make engaging films about either religious themes or people. Last year’s Chariots of Fire (British) showed that it is possible to explore cinematically the subject of spirituality, and it stirred hopes of similar films to follow. Monsignor is not one of them.

We never learn why Father Flaherty (Christopher Reeve) becomes a priest—certainly a legitimate question for the central character. As a chaplain in World War II, he risks his life to administer last rites to a dying soldier, then opens fire on advancing Nazis. This deed attracts the attention of American officials in the Vatican, although Flaherty exhibits a Mennonite-like angst (“Forgive me, I have killed for my country”). Once installed in Rome he turns into a wheeling, dealing, fornicating mafioso in gaiters; a half-souled kingpin in a nefarious army-Mafia-Vatican axis who continues to exude charm and recite Latin well.

Similarly, the promiscuous postulant (Genevieve Bujold) with whom Flaherty becomes romantically involved remains mostly an enigma. Their meeting is utterly contrived and their potentially interesting relationship is left undeveloped. Flaherty hides the fact that he is a priest, but admits he has a “secret.” When she demands to know, the result is an unintentionally funny Lois Lane-Clark Kent confrontation not lost on audiences. None of this is the fault of Reeve or Bujold; the former is miscast, and the latter is wasted in this film.

What remains is a hopelessly muddled plot, lightly sprinkled with nudity and violence, which alternately slogs through cliché-ridden scenes in the innards of the Vatican or leaps from Rome to Sicily to New York before petering out into nothing after two hours. The cardinals and pope (portrayed like a senile E.T.) are mere costume epic figures. As a war-time period piece, the film fails to convince. Monsignor deserves quick excommunication from theaters. Audiences who want to see religious characters—even in their failings—thoroughly and honestly portrayed will have to wait.

Reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a writer living in Southern California.

David Watson’s “block-busting” book urges moving beyond conditional allegiance and forming an alternative society.

From the time of Jesus’ struggles with his recalcitrant disciples to today, Christians have struggled with the full meaning of the concept of discipleship. Within American Christianity, thanks to the research of such scholars as Timothy Smith, we now know that a sharp disjunction between the personal and social aspects of the gospel was not part of the original vision of such evangelical leaders as Charles Finney, Orange Scott, and others. Further, the great voluntary movements of the last century were efforts by believers to give redemptive social expression to their faith. To the extent that others were brought into genuine Christian commitment, these movements were programs in discipleship.

Unfortunately, people now seem to be more interested in procuring the temporal rather than the spiritual benefits of Christian social service. To the extent that this is tolerated, the mandate to discipleship can be confused with philanthropy. There is a wide gulf between these two objectives. Although philanthropy has often been implemented with apparently benevolent, selfless motivation, it possesses no inherent safeguard to prevent it from becoming self-justifying and moralistic. True disciple making is enabling God’s kingdom to be made manifest upon earth as it is in heaven.

It is heartening to see that the vital importance of disciple making is being acknowledged once again. Christian publishing in the 1980s might well be designated as the decade of discipleship. Not only has the classical literature in this field—like Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship—continued to prosper, there is also emerging a new group of author-lecturers who are recalling the church to the Great Commission. These include United Methodist George Hunter, head of his denomination’s Division of Evangelism, and Quaker Richard Foster, who has given new focus to the disciplines of the spiritual life.

Other writers in this field have developed theologies of discipleship rooted in the historical traditions of Christianity. These include the studies of Richard Lovelace (Reformed), Robert Tuttle (Wesleyan), Peter Williams and the Ann Arbor community (Roman Catholic), and Peter Gillquist (Evangelical Orthodox Church), to name a few.

The most recent entry is David Watson’s Called and Committed: World-Changing Discipleship (Harold Shaw, 1982). This work by an innovative British pastor has been acclaimed as “blockbusting” by J. I. Packer. It is built upon his experience as pastor of a small Anglican parish that he transformed into a thriving community of believers, as well as his subsequent work as a global spokesman for discipleship that includes a mission among British political leaders in Parliament. He is currently a visiting professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.

In a series of tersely written, straightforward chapters, marked by Bible-based clarity, Watson draws a clear distinction between conditional and unconditional discipleship. He offers his readers a sharp challenge to opt for the latter. Devoting little space to an analysis of the disarray in present-day Christianity, he instead explores several dimensions of Jesus’ call to discipleship that are also to be normative for believers today. In addition to obedience and service, these dimensions include the call to live simply and to suffer.

After examining the call to discipleship, Watson analyzes several dimensions of Christian community as the goal of discipleship, and the context in which it can be nurtured. He also considers the relation between discipleship and the means of grace, spiritual warfare, and evangelism. As a Briton, he gives American Christians a disarming perspective upon their church life: despite impressive facilities that feature “quality performance” and “obvious business efficiency,” he writes with sadness that “in such lavish environments I had to struggle to sense God’s presence and hear his voice” (p. 170).

By contrast, he insists that the community into which God calls us is to be an “alternate society” where fellowship means more than casual acquaintance and whose existence represents a life of “loving defiance” that challenges the status quo concerning covetousness, oppression, or self-centeredness. He warns that Christians must deepen their commitment to one another in community to prepare for the persecution to which believers are being increasingly exposed, especially in places where totalitarianism prevails.

Among the most timely features of Called and Committed is the author’s admonition concerning some of the more controversial features of the charismatic movement that impinge upon discipleship. First, he critiques the Fort Lauderdale “Shepherding Movement.” By nurturing dependence upon a shepherd-discipler, he notes a tendency toward legalism, authoritarianism, and divisiveness that can lead to an unhealthy dependence upon a “new priesthood.” He also observes that its leaders have become sensitive to such criticisms and have manifested a desire to correct these aberrations. Second, he affirms the validity of praying in tongues, contending that it is “not so much irrational as suprarational.” When properly understood, it is a way of opening the natural self to the presence of God. However, he does not consider the need to interpret tongues for understanding (as in 1 Cor. 14:13–15).

Third, he discusses the distinction between two New Testament terms for word, logos and rhema. Scripture, he contends, cannot support the view that the former refers to the total objective word of God and the latter the particular personal word that God may address to a person or group. However, even though this distinction cannot be defended on clear exegetical grounds throughout Scripture, it may still have validity as a theological construct, and not without some biblical support, as Charles Farah has maintained in From the Pinnacle of the Temple.

Watson is to be commended for not skirting controversial issues in his quest for the meaning of “unconditional discipleship.” He has written with compassion and urgency, so that our awareness of the discipleship needed for the 1980s has been enhanced.

Reviewed by J. Steven O’Malley, member of the faculty in the School of Theology, Oral Roberts University.

Christianity’S Solid Foundation

The Case for Christianity, by Colin Chapman (Eerdmans, 1981, 313 pp., $19.95), is reviewed by Mark M. Hanna, associate professor of philosophy of religion, Talbot Theological Seminary, La Mirada, California.

The need for diverse and fresh presentations of the Christian faith in an apologetic mode is unending. The ever-changing cultural and intellectual climate requires the kind of relevant and cogent material assembled in this beautifully crafted “Eerdmans Handbook.” The publisher and the author (who was ordained in the Church of England and is now regional secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students in Lebanon) have put together a volume that is probably the most attractive book of apologetics available today, from the arrangement of the text to the scores of color and black-and-white photographs that are found throughout the book. It includes an index, and more than 1,000 documented quotations from many books of the Bible and a wide variety of thinkers.

Much of the content of this volume first appeared in Chapman’s book, Christianity on Trial. Here it is completely recast to give it a greater personal appeal by starting with not abstract, but human, questions. These include “Who or what am I?” “What is the meaning of my existence?” “How are we to make moral choices?” “Why is there suffering, and how can we live with it?” “How am I to face death?” “Is there life after death?” “What hope is there for the human race?” I find this approach especially effective with the non-Christian, and it enhances the value of this book as an evangelistic tool.

Chapman next provides an exposition of Christian answers and the major reasons for maintaining that the Christian world view is true. After an examination of competing philosophical and religious claims, he focuses on the person and work of Christ as the crucial touchstone for deciding among them. A brief, concluding chapter invites the reader to test world views and make sure he understands what it means to become a believer by repenting and believing in Christ.

Chapman rightly makes the question of truth the ultimate issue. Although he finds theistic arguments to be of virtually no value, he contends that the divine revelation that Christianity claims is adequately supported as true by an appeal to logic, history, observation, and experience. What verification means in history, philosophy, and science is essentially applicable to Christian beliefs.

An occasional statement (e.g., the first paragraph on p. 182) may be misleading, undoubtedly due to brevity of treatment and inadequate cohesiveness in relating material in one section to another. That is a minor flaw, however. Overall, this is a very useful volume. It provides wide-ranging material on numerous philosophies, ideologies, and religions in a crisp, readable, and handy form. One should not expect, however, to find a high level of philosophical sophistication here. Nevertheless, it ought to be in the library of every church and school, and it deserves wide employment by Christians for strengthening their own faith and aiding them in persuading others of its truthfulness.

The Struggle To Change

My Weakness—His Strength: The Personal Face of Renewal, by Robert G. Girard (Zondervan, 1981, 199 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Leonard George Goss, managing editor, Evangelical Book Club, Milford, Michigan.

A church, we are told, does not encounter change in struggle with new ideas without change occuring in its leaders. This book is about the change in one church leader, Robert Girard. Pastors and lay leaders alike will be interested in Girard’s latest book. The former pastor of Our Heritage Wesleyan Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, Girard wrote the very popular Brethren, Hang Loose (1973) and Brethren, Hang Together (1979), both of which described the struggles of renewal at the Scottsdale church. In this book, the author offers a new perspective not on congregational renewal, but on personal renewal. He writes, “The pursuit of renaissance in our church has resulted in an intensive struggle to experience my own personal renewal.”

This book was written in the after-math of a long personal inventory during which the author discovered who he was and how he came to a fuller, more perceptive surrender to God. This “personality inventory” allowed Girard to be freed inwardly from destructive emotional habits that disrupt life and, having been inwardly freed, he was enabled really to obey Christ.

In offering the reader his “broad-daylight style,” Girard reveals that leaders, too, have problems similar to our own. Many Christians still refuse to regard Christian leaders as real people who have trouble loving their enemies, or with materialism, legalism, or lust. Girard himself is an early leader in the church renewal movement. After more than a decade he is still in the forefront of that movement, and admits to having gone through deep waters. He learned, sometimes painfully, how to respond to God’s own example of reaching out to build intimacy.

The theme of the book is that even for thoroughly orthodox Christians, committed to the renaissance of the church, it is one’s “emotional philosophy of life” that really counts. Is our personal religion one of doubt, fear, negativism, and materialism? For Girard, “Faith must be activated on the level of the emotions and affections that move my life and control my behavior.” (He does not say that the faith that saves is a mere emotional assent to Jesus; he says that we must live our way into the body of Christ, to respond to Christ’s words.)

The author has kept something of a “hit-or-miss” journal through the years, which reflects on his personal spiritual journey and his meditations in times of crisis. Some journal excerpts are included throughout the book. However, the publisher’s decision to combine these past thoughts (set in a different type face) with his current reflections is unfortunate, as the book often becomes confusing and unwieldy, even for one reading carefully.

My Weakness—His Strength is about discerning the gifts of ministry and spiritual leadership that are essential to assist growing Christians. The book is one pastor’s highly successful attempt to expound on Paul’s dictum, “Gods strength is made perfect in weakness.”

Where is the balanced message that a “future shocked” generation needs to hear?

Rapid technological advances, dizzying change, and uprooting is future shock at work in modern society. This has produced two widely contrasting theological responses: optimism and pessimism.

Early in this century, Walter Rauschenbusch, the optimistic social gospeler, proclaimed: “If at this juncture we can rally sufficient religious faith and moral strength to snap the bonds of evil and turn the present unparalleled economic and intellectual resources of humanity to the harmonious development of a true social life, the generations yet unborn will mark this as that great day of the Lord for which the ages waited.”

This liberal optimism, however, was soon shattered by World War I. Unparalleled technological advances did not lead to prosperity, but to undreamed-of destruction. Progressive social movements did not produce the millenium, but rather a worldwide depression and a second, even more destructive, world war.

Understandably, the neo-orthodox theology, which succeeded the optimistic liberal movements, reacted pessimistically to the accelerated pace of historical change.

Rudolf Bultmann grimly observed that future history might well end in total destruction. In any case, it would be governed entirely by social and physical laws: God would never act directly in the spheres of economics, politics, or nature.

Having abolished hope for history as a whole, Bultmann reduced faith to the isolated individual’s readiness to enter confidently into the darkness of the future; to “freedom from anxiety in the face of nothing.”

The neo-orthodox movement, however, also called for renewed biblical emphases. Despite Bultmann, these theologians often challenged the neglect of, or despair over, history’s future.

Many scholars rightly noted that the biblical God acts through promises and fulfillments. Although the fulfillments (such as Christ’s coming) are brought about by God’s transcendent power, they occur within human history. And promise and fulfillment did not end with Christ. Jesus promised the Spirit, who would renew people in this life, and his own return, which would transform this earth.

Influenced by this biblical motif of promise and fulfillment, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann have insisted that the future will not be governed by alleged scientific laws alone. History, society, and nature remain open to God’s creative, inbreaking power. To be sure, these theologians do not discuss future events—Christ’s return, the millenium, and so on—as precisely as many evangelicals would like. Nevertheless, they provide a theological rationale, developed in dialogue with modern science, for regarding history as being open to God’s transforming activity.

Many other theologians, however, appear somewhat schizophrenic from an evangelical perspective. On one hand, two world wars and the shadow of nuclear annihilation have made a full return to the earlier liberal optimism impossible. This century seems to have confirmed what evangelicals have always held: that apart from a God who can act directly within the social and natural worlds, history moves not toward salvation but toward destruction.

On the other hand, few modern theologians can surrender the biblical hope entirely. Most continue to speak enthusiastically about the future. Yet, if their God is unable to bring about a truly transformed future, how can they really assert this?

While most theology—indeed, most of humanity—wavers between well-founded pessimism and ill-founded (but unquenchable) optimism about the future, the time is propitious for evangelical theology. Evangelicals must speak—and they must do so in understandable language—of the hopelessness of history apart from God, and also of a God who will guide history to a meaningful goal.

Historically evangelicals have tried to do this by stressing that God’s future is both continuous and discontinuous with the present. Evil will be destroyed when Christ returns, but he will also transform whatever is worth saving.

However, today some evangelicals are stressing the heavenly reward of the individual or the godlessness of the present time so heavily that the historical continuity of God’s purpose becomes obscure. They fail to assure despairing humanity that God is active even during the darkest hours, and that Christlike deeds point the way to the coming kingdom.

Yet others have become so involved in social and political activity that the discontinuity in God’s purpose becomes blurred. They fail to caution a superficially optimistic humanity that ultimate solution of its problems depends on a God whose activity utterly transcends ours.

If evangelical theology can realistically face the brokenness of contemporary experience, yet without escaping into exaggerated otherworldliness or pessimism; if it can offer guidance for today’s urgent social tasks, yet without settling for shortsighted, superficial optimism—then we will be able to articulate the balanced message that a “future shocked” generation so badly needs to hear.

THOMAS FINGER¹Dr. Finger is associate professor of systematic theology at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Lombard, Illinois.