Unnatural Alliance

The Challenge of Marxism: A Christian Response, by Klaus Bockmühl (IVP, 1980, 187 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Terry L. Leckrone, minister, Christ United Methodist Church, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Many readers will question the need for another Christian critique of Marxism when the prevailing view is that the philosophy of Karl Marx is obsolete. But Klaus Bockmühl, professor of theology and ethics at Regent College, sees an exception to this view in the growing appeal of Marxism in the churches. It is this increasing openness to a Marxist-Christian alliance that motivated Bockmühl to write a book to help Christians meet the ideological challenge of Marxian socialism.

Writing of its new attraction in the non-Communist world, the author asserts that Marxism has stepped in and filled the “spiritual vacuum” created by secularism. Marx has become a “provider of meaning to life and … a savior from the spreading nihilism in the West.” Perhaps his most alarming observation is the growing acceptance of Marxist social ethics by Christians, including evangelicals.

The book counters this naïveté with a forceful and substantial argument that Marxism is more than a system yearning to redistribute wealth: “It is an all-encompassing system of thinking and living, a total conception of the world and humanity.” Marxism is an ideology that is “intrinsically atheistic”: a program for creating a new humanity and a new world. It is a secularized vision of the kingdom of God.

The detailed and scholarly analysis of Marxism and Christianity that follows is consistently orthodox and biblical. In the two major sections on the “Marxist Critique of Religion” and “Marxist-Leninist Ethics,” Bockmühl lays bare not only the weakness of Marxist criticism but also the bankruptcy of modern theology and ethics.

He shows that “mainline” Protestantism has no effective apologetic against Marxism because its theology is rooted in the same secularism that gave rise to historical materialism. In discussing Marxist-Leninist ethics, Bockmühl deals with the inherent contradiction of a deterministic world view, such as Marxism, attempting to develop an ethical system; it is a task that presupposes free moral choice. He further shows that Marx dealt with the problem by demanding action that cooperates with the inevitable movement of history toward a classless society. Lenin, the revolutionary organizer, lacked Marx’s preoccupation with the theoretical. His “ethics” were based on the premise that revolution must be self-determining and self-limiting. No moral values can be allowed to hinder its progress. Bockmühl counters these views by proposing that the church develop a biblically rooted, yet flexible approach to ethics that will enable it to act prophetically in the world.

If the reader still feels a philosophical synthesis is possible, the book’s final section, “Creating the New Man,” destroys that illusion. Marxism, while postulating the need for a new humanity, can offer no solution for liberating man from egotism (sin). Only Christianity with its doctrine of regeneration can provide the power for creation of the new man.

An unusual combination of scholarly insight, awareness of the weaknesses of modern Christianity, and a readable style make this a compelling book and one sorely needed in the church today. It is hoped that Bockmühl will write a sequel dealing with the newest and potentially most dangerous Marxist-Christian coalition, liberation theology.

Essays For Today

Belief, Faith, and Reason: Six Papers Presented at The Philadelphia Society’s Sixteenth Annual Meeting, edited by John A. Howard (Christian Journals, Limited, 1980, 120 pp., $13.95), is reviewed by Harold O. J. Brown, professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

The deliberately high-toned Philadelphia Society was founded in 1964 as a place for thinking conservative scholars to interact with and stimulate one another to creative thinking and productivity, primarily in economics, government, and the social sciences. Under the leadership of its 1979–80 president, John A. Howard, former president of Rockford College and now president of Rockford Institute, the society for the first time has devoted an entire annual meeting to the interaction between religion and the free society. The result is a series of lively papers, several of which individually would be worth the book’s price.

The most impressive in terms of sweep is the address, “Religion and Science: the Cosmic Connection,” by Stanley L. Jaki, historian, theologian, and scientist. He neatly sums up in this paper the monumental analysis of his magnum opus on science and religion, The Road of Science and the Ways to God (1978, Univ. of Chicago), and draws its implications for contemporary free society. In a nutshell, Jaki’s major thesis is the contention that natural science depended for its origin, and continues to depend for its vitality today, on the concept or doctrine that there is but one universe, and that it is the deliberate, thought-out handiwork of an intelligent Creator.

In the present essay, Professor Jaki goes on to contend that a free society can exist only when there is a shared consensus of moral values resting on an understanding of man and the universe as having a discernible purpose. This purpose, he contends, is visible in the created world order, but is also explicitly communicated in an intelligible revelation, capable of being understood by common-sense interpretation. Here he seems to come close to the Reformation concept of the claritas Scripturae, the intelligibility or perspicuity of Scripture.

But Jaki provocatively says that only a few religious traditions adequately understand the way in which God, his creation, and his verbal revelation in Scripture are integrally related to one another. He names, interestingly enough, traditionalist Roman Catholicism, orthodox Judaism, and fundamentalist Protestantism, but disqualifies—incorrectly, in this reader’s view—not only orthodox Lutheranism and Calvinism, but Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam as well. His approach is one of the most stimulating advances in the area of religious knowledge since Francis Schaeffer began his apologetic work with Escape from Reason and TheGod Who Is There.

If Jaki’s paper, while highly stimulating, requires an immense intellectual effort to comprehend, the one by Wall Street Journal critic Edmund Fuller, “Post-Christian Culture Today,” lightens the atmosphere with a brilliant and biting diatribe. Fuller sees contemporary Western society as tottering on the brink of spiritual suicide and a return to barbarism, and makes a powerful appeal for a revival of Christian culture. Dallin H. Oaks, former president of Brigham Young University, sounds a well-reasoned, persuasive appeal for a revision of our current absolutist doctrine of the total, hermetic separation of church and state. Coming from a Mormon, whose church in its early days suffered from a certain amount of meddling by the state, this appeal is doubly impressive.

John R. MacCormack, a Scottish Roman Catholic historian now at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, makes a strong case in “Religion in Freedom” for the vital influence of historic Christianity in developing free Western society.

In an essay devoted to “Religion in Contemporary Politics,” Stephen Tonsor of the University of Michigan points to the fact that belief has consequences—something Hitler and Stalin recognized better than the United States did. Part of the resistance to such movements as Moral Majority is the result of their violation of the tradition that whatever one believes religiously should not affect the way one acts politically. Tonsor argues that politics will necessarily have a religious element; the only question is, Which religion?

From the perspective of Robert Farrar Capon, the religion of contemporary culture is essentially narcissism. Capon charges evangelicalism and the “born-again” movement with being essentially an illusory religious catering to narcissism and the quick spiritual fix. His essay, “Religion in Contemporary Culture,” although full of provocative imagery and quotable bons mots, was largely a lament with less in the way of constructive proposals than those of his colleagues at the meeting.

For such a brief work, Belief, Faith, and Reason offers an amazing amount of stimulus and challenge, especially in areas where evangelicals have tended to be weak. It should provide valuable material for discussion, reflection, decision, and action.

Out Of The Wilderness

Beyond Loneliness: How You Can Understand and Overcome the Gnawing Feeling, by Elizabeth Skoglund (Doubleday, 1980, 150 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Raymond F. Pendleton, professor of pastoral psychology, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

This is yet another book by Elizabeth Skoglund that carries her unique seal—that is, a combination of personal vulnerability, expression of deep faith, and keen insight in an attempt to integrate the psychological and theological. She seeks to look at the nature of loneliness, and suggests ways of moving beyond it. Of particular significance is her emphasis on managing loneliness through the structuring of our lives, but she deals with other aspects of loneliness that are not often addressed: the loneliness of being overextended, and the danger of burning out. She deals with loneliness that can occur in an intimate relationship or in the fellowship of the body of Christ.

While some readers may have some minor, or perhaps even major, disagreements with her concept of sin, the book is another in Skoglund’s remarkable series of integrative attempts to help us learn how to live with the dilemmas of our everyday experience. It is a book for the lonely. It is especially a book for the counselor who wishes to find some ways of helping the counselee learn to manage loneliness. It is a book for the reflective, to help understand the deep, bruising impact of our culture on the soul of human beings.

All Are Saved Except …

Unconditional Good News, by Neal Punt (Eerdmans, 1980, 169 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by John Richard de Witt, professor of systematic theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi.

This stimulating book probes some profound theological issues with style and aplomb. Moreover, it is written by a busy pastor. Punt is a minister of the Christian Reformed church, committed to the Reformed theology, but at the same time radically critical of some of its teachings. It must not be thought, however, that his criticism is restricted to Calvinism. The book is directed against what he regards as a serious misunderstanding of biblical truth throughout all orthodox Christianity almost from the beginning. His aim is to establish and clarity what he calls “biblical universalism.”

According to Punt, it was in response to the universalism of Origen and others that the church came commonly to teach that all the posterity of Adam are lost, except. In the Middle Ages, all were regarded as lost “except those who continue to live in obedient fellowship with the church.” Lutherans, Calvinists, and Arminians have generally held that all are lost “except those who believe” (p. 3).

It is the thesis of Punt’s book, however, that this consensus fails to do justice to the universalistic passages in Scripture. From his own study he concludes that another formulation is called for, and that with some urgency: namely, “that all persons are elect in Christ except those who the Bible declares will be lost” (p. 16). In other words, the accent should fad, not on the “except,” but on the “all.” In his view, it is the inclusiveness of what God has done in Christ, rather than its exclusiveness, that should control our outlook.

Punt’s starting point is Romans 5:18, but he enlists many other universalistic passages as well to aid his argument. He insists that “Romans 5:18 and its immediate context do refer condemnation to all without distinction and justification of life to all without distinction” (p. 17). Thus he wants to speak of a real universalism. At the same time, he clearly eschews “absolute universalism” (p. 18). “An uncomplicated and biblically accurate description of ‘the exceptions’ referred to in our premise … is this: those who do not ‘see fit to acknowledge God’ (Rom. 1:28). Those who will be lost are those, and those only, who wilfully and ultimately refuse to acknowledge God—whether this refusal is expressed in indifference towards, violation of, or lack of conformity to the law (the will) of God as it has been made known to them” (p. 30).

Plainly enough Punt approaches his subject from a Calvinistic perspective. His chapter on “Biblical Particularism” shows that. He differs from others, however, in that he understands that particularism to include all—except the indifferent and disobedient. In his discussion of “What Faith Cannot Do,” he objects to such statements as these: there is “an essential correlation between faith and salvation” (Berkouwer, p. 101); “salvation depends on faith” (Packer); “no man can be in Christ but him who believes” (Bloesch, p. 102).

The problem he sees in such formulations is that they proceed from the assumption that “all persons are outside of Christ except those who the Bible declares will be saved” (p. 102). Hence, we are left with having to determine how sinners are to be brought into a right relationship with God in Christ. Arminians, he says, and some Lutherans hold that God himself is unable to save those who refuse to make the all-important decision to believe. Calvinists and some other Lutherans conclude, on the ground of what Scripture teaches about human helplessness in sin and the divine sovereignty, “that salvation is determined solely by the ‘all-decisive divine act of redemption’ ” (pp. 102–3).

On this account Punt is also able to assert that “the act or attitude of faith is not essential to establish a saving relationship with Christ” (p. 103). It is obvious how he can move from this to the statement that all infants dying in infancy and those mentally incapable of responding to or repudiating the gospel are saved (pp. 120ff.).

It is a cause for rejoicing when theology opens the way to more effective ministry and evangelism. One cannot help but appreciate Punt’s transparent pastoral motivation in presenting us with this challenging and able treatise. He is to be thanked also for having called to our attention once again and with such earnestness the glorious biblical pronouncements on the cosmic extent of the work of Christ.

One wonders, however, whether Punt’s exegesis of Romans 5:18 (and other texts) is ready preferable to that of Herman N. Ridderbos, whose interpretation he explicitly rejects. Is it ready so evident in Scripture that death in sin has been done away for all but those who “wilfully and ultimately refuse to acknowledge God”? Is the Bible as silent as Punt claims on the eternal roots of condemnation? Can it be said with such certainty that death in infancy is a positive proof of election? Does the argument that supports this view not also necessarily involve a shift in the biblical doctrine of sin? If we speak as Punt does, are we not in danger of reducing the biblical imperative of repentance and faith, an imperative so significant that eternal issues are said to hang on it (Luke 13:3, 5; John 3:16; Acts 16:31)?

One hopes the appearance of Punt’s book will be followed by a thorough discussion of the questions he has raised and the answers he has suggested.

Briefly Noted

Biographical. We often find mirrored in the lives of others our better self—the self we would like to be. This collection of biographically oriented books puts that mirror before us.

Augustine: Wayward Genius (Baker), by David Bentley-Taylor, shows some of the deep shadows as well as the bright sunshine that fell across the great bishop of Hippo’s life. Marina Warner’s Joan of Arc (Knopf) ably presents Joan as the image of female heroism. The prize-winning fictional biography of Luther’s wife, Katherine(Northwestern), by Clara S. Schreiber, is now available in paperback. A very interesting book for ministers is When Adam Clarke Preached, People Listened (Beacon Hill of Kansas City), by Wesley Tracy, which is about one of the greatest Wesleyan preachers of the late eighteenth century. From roughly the same epoc comes Letters and Memoir of Joseph Charles Philpot (Baker), another extraordinary British preacher. Probably the definitive biography is George Müller (Harold Shaw), by Roger Steer, now available in paperback. Müller’s life remains something of a mystery and a challenge to the present day. Theologians will appreciate the Autobiography of Augustus Hopkins Strong (Judson), Crerar Douglas, editor. It recounts the Baptist theologian’s life, including such personal touches as his whirlwind courtship (engaged in one week), and his son’s loss of faith.

Two literary characters who figured prominently in the nineteenth-century religious thought are treated well in John Ruskin: The Passionate Moralist (Knopf), by Joan Abse, and Waldo Emerson (Viking), by Gay Wilson Allan.

Southern Baptist mission work is epitomized well in David Gomes: When Faith Triumphs (Broadman), by Anne McWilliams. Gomes is a remarkable contemporary Brazilian evangelist. Margaret of Molokai (Word), by Mel White, is the grim but triumphant story of work among lepers in Hawaii. In the Potter’s Hand (Augsburg) is the somewhat sugar-coated autobiography of Gretchen Quie, wife of Minnesota’s Governor Al Quie. I Wouldn’t Take Nothin’ for My Journey (Johnson), by Leonidas H. Berry, is the not-so-sugar-coated history of two centuries of an Afro-American minister’s family. Bruce Olson (Christian Herald), by Andres Küng, tells of Olson’s work with the Indians of Colombia, asking, against the backdrop of charges and countercharges leveled at missionaries, if he was a missionary or a colonizer.

A chilling yet stirring tale about the awful days of Nazi Germany is One Woman Against the Reich (Bethany House), by Helmut W. Ziefle.

J. Gresham Machen (Kregel), by Henry W. Corey, is described as a “silhouette,” and so it is; someone ought to write a definitive biography. A new annotated edition of the absolutely outstanding biography Teilhard (McGraw-Hill), by Mary Lukas and Ellen Lukas, has now appeared in paperback.

Thomas Merton continues to attract attention with two well-done works: Thomas Merton’s Dark Path (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by William H. Shannon, and Thomas Merton, revised edition (Doubleday/Image), by Cornelia and Irving Süssman.

We need to surrender some smaller ambitions and guide our youth into missionary service.

How can churches provide an atmosphere in which young people are motivated to involvement and interest in missions?

By Example

If students are to catch a vision for the world, the church first must provide models who have such a vision:

The pastor. Young people will notice when the pastor prays for missionaries or mentions unreached peoples. A globe on his desk, a map in his office, or an affirming word to students who are interestested in missions will demonstrate that he has a vision beyond the local community.

The youth leader(s). The youth minister, lay leaders, or sponsors can provide the greatest example by their own willingness to consider missionary service. When teen-agers candidly ask, “Why aren’t you a missionary?,” they had better have a reply.

The parents. Parents have special opportunities to set examples of world concern. Conversations at the dinner table, prayer as a family, or expressed openness about missions can give parents lasting (although not always visible) effects on children.

Visiting missionaries. Missionaries who take the time to know (and be known by) church youth can leave a tremendous impression. Young people want to know “what it’s really like.” Seeing missionaries who hurt, fail, and yet succeed through Christ show youth that God uses normal people in missions service.

Through Exposure

The usual practice of many churches is to have a high-powered missions emphasis once a year. Although useful for disseminating information, these do not always provide the best environments for initial decision making regarding missions. The best decisions young people make at these conferences are the result of consistent exposure to world missions throughout the year:

In the church at large. The whole church must work at keeping aware of needs, opportunities, and circumstances around the world. Bulletin boards, church newsletters, and missionary profiles in the services are excellent means.

In the youth group. Regular information can be provided by students on the missions committee. Visiting missionaries can provide firsthand acquaintance with their work when they participate in Sunday school classes. Quizzes, skits, and fun activities can all be part of the process.

The youth group should also provide opportunities to respond to needs, such as raising funds, or assigning research projects concerning life decisions. Films and educational materials can shed additional light.

In the home. Learning about missions at home might mean studying a specific country or contributing to a specific financial need. Subscribing to National Geographic, buying a world map for the family room, or making family vacations “missionary” adventures can be part of the best exposure a student can receive.

With Experience

There is an abundance of summer and short-term mission opportunities in missions, but most are limited to youth who have had at least one year of college. This unfortunately neglects junior and senior high school students who are more readily influenced than college students. The challenge to the local church is to give these young people missionary experiences during their teen years. With such experiences, students can enter college or vocations with an understanding of world needs and opportunities and a sense that “God wants to use my life; I can make a difference.”

To make maximum use of these service opportunities, the following ingredients should be blended in the planning:

1. Make preparation demands. These might include research projects, Scripture memory, training seminars, or registration costs.

2. Plan for teamwork. Teens encounter their best growth experiences when they understand they must serve together as a team, regardless of personal affinities.

3. Introduce them to missionaries. Discussion and interaction with missionaries will help destroy stereotypes about Christian service and the people who do it.

4. Acquaint them with the culture. Broad understanding of a new cultural setting will enable students to see God at work in people and through cultural expressions much different from their own.

5. Make the project an adventure. Students’ experience in serving should include some level of adventure. It could start with the adventure of seeing God provide the needed money. It might include a mountain climb, or a ride to the top of a skyscraper.

6. Make the work measurable. If students are to sense that “God wants to use me,” they need to see visible results. If they return home knowing they painted a house or planted a field, they know God used them to meet a specific need.

7. Allow for feedback. Young people need help in articulating what they have learned. Follow-up requires asking questions and making evaluations that will help engrave the experiences on their memories.

8. Affirm them after the project. Interviews in a worship service, articles in the church newspaper, or appropriate praise from the pastor or missions committee will tell the students they did a good job and the church is proud of them.

Assuming that we are praying and working to motivate our youth toward world missions, how can we measure the results to see if we are accomplishing our goal?

Servanthood. If young people understand world missions, they should begin to understand that God has called all Christians to lay down their lives for others. If students are growing in their motivation to serve, then we are doing a good job.

World awareness. The healthy “bombardment” of vision for reaching the world should result in youth who view life from a broader perspective. As this enlarges, there should be an accompanying increased concern for international affairs and for others outside the students’ cultural group.

Missionaries. If we can communicate God’s burden for the world, the long-term results will be people who, through full-time and tent-making ministries, will go into the world as witnesses for Jesus Christ.

It is said that Saint Francis Xavier challenged the students of his day to give up their “small ambitions and come … preach the gospel of Christ.”

The challenge today is not to the students as much as it is to the church. We need to give up our small ambitions to see some of our youth venture out in missionary service.

PAUL BORTHWICK

Mr. Borthwick, minister of youth at Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts, has coordinated 19 youth mission teams to eight countries.

There may not be another movie like it for a long time—if ever.

In conversation among many intelligent people, the mention of Jesus. Christ often brings an awkward silence. In film, it is even worse. Attempts to grapple with truth, Scripture, or God are regularly greeted with hoots of derision. But there may be hope.

The British Chariots of Fire is a work of restraint and intensity that offers the Christian moviegoer a variety of admirable cinematic and real-life achievements. The main characters were plucked out of history, not the imagination of a screenwriter, in this film story of two athletes representing Great Britain in the Paris Olympics of 1924. It is a masterful re-creation of Great Britain in the early part of the century, and gives its audience a sense of people and culture not too far removed from our own. And it is rare that a feature film accurately portrays one of its main characters as a committed Christian.

Eric Liddell is a devout Scottish evangelical who is also a rugby star and world-class runner. When not involved with student evangelism or training for missionary work in China, he churns up and down the Scottish highlands, preparing for the Olympics. He runs to bring glory to God, but in his time and family, the dichotomy between world and soul is more finely drawn than it is today. It is not always an easy task for Liddell—balancing his faith’s service with his body’s speed. He is a man who serves God first.

Harold Abrahams is the son of a Lithuanian Jew who has labored to give his son every opportunity at honor and success. Abrahams enters Cambridge University and strives to excel at running in order to come to terms with his heritage and the subtle but disturbing prejudice he feels in the Anglo-Saxon culture. He is at once arrogant and broodingly sympathetic in his struggle. Surrounded by the elite society of university and royalty, Abrahams is single-mindedly set on success.

The film is honest in showing both men, their contrasting lives and motives for success. Both of them went on to bestow long-term effects on their generation. Abrahams served as a lawyer and athletic figure for the balance of his life. Liddell was a man whose influence Catherine Marshall described as having had an impact on the life of her husband Peter. Abrahams outlived Liddell, dying four years ago in England. Liddell died in a Japanese prison camp in China at the end of World War II.

Director Hugh Hudson has created a world of utter believability, while allowing director of photography David Watkin to interject a near-mythic quality through his sensitive composition and lighting. Though the film may be hard for younger children to follow because of the alternating stories of the two runners, the dramatic action will more than compensate for any obscurity. The parallels of their lives are a thought-provoking juxtaposition of two very different noble and committed men.

The film’s effective re-creation of an age past is admirable. We see Cambridge in all its beauty, with glimpses of its chapels, cloisters, mullioned windows, and dining halls. There is also Scotland in a rustic loveliness. The re-creation of the Paris Olympics is a nostalgic revelation. Gone are the thousands and thousands of spectators; the few movie cameras in sight are run by crank-turning cameramen in tweed caps.

The film does not moralize. We are not compelled to mock either Abrahams or Liddell. In other hands, the film would easily have taken sides—after all, each man represented a certain different approach to life—but their spirit of competition is peripheral to the real drama. It is to the film makers’ credit that they centered on the internal struggles and aspirations of the pair. In so doing they created a work that allows these two people to be just that—two real people and not idealized figures in a calculated, contrived sports or religious story. It is this integrity that is the film’s transcending strength. We can be thankful that the story was not written with propagandistic intent, for it would have been emptied of its power. As it stands, it is supremely persuasive.

Empathy is generated for both characters through their races. The audience can experience through slow-motion photography, precise camera angles, and superb use of the synthesizer the pain and joy they might otherwise miss. They understand what a race really means to these runners. We feel their intense desires, both on the track and in their personal lives. When Abrahams loses for the first time, the audience watches the race at regular speed, but afterwards, a desolated Abrahams sits alone in the stands and the audience flashes back with him to his moments of defeat. In so doing, this becomes more than a mere sports film. Running affects these runners’ entire lives, yet in the film it becomes a symbol for more than their individual lives. When Britain’s Olympic team runs along the shore in their white running suits, they portray the timelessness of human dignity.

This film will strike a chord in many Christians much deeper than nostalgia or athletics. Eric Liddell was born in China. His parents were missionaries and he followed their work in China with his own. His achievements in running were not easily realized. Along with grueling training, he endured the tension between his call to missionary service and the God-given talent of his speed.

When concerned friends and relatives confront Liddell in the film with the possibility that his running might be encroaching on his spiritual life and devotion, he struggles. Eventually he reaches the conclusion that it was God who made him fast. A friend urges him to “run for God and let the whole world stand in wonder.” Run he does, but at the Paris Olympics he finds that his qualifying heat is scheduled for Sunday.

It does not matter whether the issue of athletics on the Lord’s Day is important to the viewer. (It was, no doubt, a big issue at the time.) Liddell is a man who knows what he believes—a man of conviction. The combined forces of the press, the British Olympic Committee, and the Prince of Wales cannot budge him. The confrontation scene is unforgettable.

Through this film, Liddell touches our world as well. His “muscular Christianity” was completed with a heart both humble and strong. In seeing his life on the screen, we Christians should view him as an example of human dignity, a challenge of Christ-like integrity and commitment wherein we might “mount up with wings like eagles … run, and not be weary.”

Chariots of fire is a must-see. But adequate preparation must be made—namely, a large handkerchief, some friends to share the experience, and an early showing to allow plenty of time for discussion. For those who miss it, there may not be anything like it again for a long time—if ever.

Besides being a great movie on every count, this film should alert artistic minds to new frontiers—the vast, uncharted, unwritten, unfilmed, unacted territory of the Christian life and experience; regions of truth, courage, and beauty where few have dared to tread. Clearly, the possibilities are there, even for a mass audience.

LLOYD BILLINGSLEY and KENT HUGHES

Mr. Billingsley is a writer in Poway, California; Mr. Hughes is senior pastor of College Church, Wheaton, Illinois.

“I saac was the son of a great father,” F. W. Boreham wrote, “and the father of a great son.” And Isaac was more: he was a digger of wells.

One has to live in the desert to fully appreciate wells—especially when one’s flocks and herds depend on the water they provide. “Deep wells tap the life-giving water beneath the surface of the earth, but the animals cannot reach it. The shepherd must draw the water with a bucket and offer each animal a drink (Gilbert Beers, in the Book of Life, vol. 1).

In John 4, Jesus, wearied by walking in the heat of the noonday sun, sat beside a well that Isaac’s son Jacob had dug centuries before. It was in Samaria, and a woman came at midday to get water. He knew women in that time and place did their water carrying in the cool of the mornings and evenings. This one chose the heat of noon for a reason, and Jesus saw right through her pretense. He always does.

He asked her for a drink. Imagine—the Great Shepherd asking a little black sheep for a drink! But it worked. Why, she wondered suspiciously, did he, a Jew, ask a favor of a Samaritan? (You can read the background of those Jewish-Samaritan tensions in 2 Kings 19:24–31.)

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is who asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Deftly she changed the subject. “Sir,” she said, “you have nothing to draw with and the water is deep. Where can you get this living water?”

We have now shifted gears completely. From H2O we have gone to the Water of Life. Here was a thirsty Shepherd, an even thirstier sheep, and many more in that village coming to drink of him.

Since that day there have been many thirsty sheep—and perhaps shepherds, too—who thought they could improve on that Water. William Cowper wrote:

“Letting down buckets into empty wells and growing old with the drawing nothing up.”

Theologians debate the Bible on TV.

Theologians to debate bible inerrancy announced the Chattanooga News-Free Press in a full-page story on the coming verbal joust in a local TV studio. Participants were Fuller Theological Seminary’s Jack Rogers and Westminster (New Wilmington, Pa.) College’s Peter Mackey versus John D. Woodbridge and Donald A. Carson from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Rogers and Mackey were “representing the view that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God, but errant in certain matters,” with Woodbridge and Carson contending that the Bible “is inerrant in all that it teaches.”

Reservations for 175 studio seats, with the opportunity to ask questions, were quickly snapped up. At debate time (December 7), the line of hopefuls and those holding reservations stretched into the parking lot of WDEF-TV, which had rented its facilities to the “John Ankerberg Show” (see accompanying story).

Standing in the audience, Ankerberg referred to Rogers’s The Authority and lnterpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (Eternity magazine’s 1980 Book of the Year). Many evangelical scholars critized the book (CT, Sept. 4, 1981, p. 16). “What do you mean when you say in your book that the Bible is authoritative?” Ankerberg asked Rogers.

The bearded Rogers replied, “I mean that the Bible is the bottom line …, the kind of book that is alive by the breath of God.”

“You called Warfield’s theory that the Bible is inerrant a ‘novel’ approach?”

“Yes,” Rogers replied.

“You view the Bible as salvation history and not to give infallible [information]?” Ankerberg continued.

“That’s right.”

“This is the view of the early church?”

“Right.”

Swinging to Woodbridge, Ankerberg cited the Trinity professor’s 71-page review of Rogers’s book in the Trinity Journal. “You dispute Rogers’s claim that inerrancy is not found in the church fathers, in Calvin and Luther?”

“Yes. I checked his footnotes,” Woodbridge replied, to a chorus of chuckles from the audience.

Rogers frowned, perhaps recognizing that he was the villain to most of the audience: “Augustine said the purpose of the Bible is not science, but salvation.”

Retorted Woodbridge, “Augustine also wrote of disastrous consequences to those who admit one false statement in the Bible.”

Rogers seemed to concede that Augustine, Calvin, and Luther held to an infallible Bible, but noted that they spoke as “prescientific people.” They didn’t know anything about what we know of science.… People in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could accept the authority of the Bible apart from our twentieth century mindset. “The question” Rogers continued, “is whether their perspective and the Bible’s perspective is the same as modern science.”

“The Bible never intended to teach us anything about the [physical] universe,” Rogers further contended. “I think many of the biblical writers assume the world was flat. They described the world as flat. They described the world as they saw it. They were talking in ancient Mideastern ways and they were not in error.”

Ankerberg accepted a question from the audience addressed to Woodbridge: “What impact would it have if you admitted the Bible to be wrong in scientific areas? What would that do in other areas?”

“Many correlate [the alleged errors in science] in other ways. They would mistrust salvation.”

Rogers had been eyeballing Woodbridge closely. “You don’t have to deny biblical authority to allow human beings to be human beings,” the Fuller professor insisted. [The scientific statements] that they made weren’t errors in their day; why do we have to impose our standards on them? Some of the things we know may be judged untrue by future science.”

After a break, during which Ankerberg announced that defectors from the Jehovah’s Witnesses would be appearing on a future program, a member of the audience asked Rogers, “If areas of the Word of God are not true, who determines [which]?”

Rogers: “Scripture gives us guidelines. Take the dietary laws …”

Mackey (breaking in): “The whole problem [continues to be] how we determine error. Take Genesis 1 and 2. If you take each passage as being historical and scientific, you have conflict. You have to look at God’s intentions. But I don’t think these are errors. You must look at the intent of Scripture.” Mackey, who is writing a book on C. S. Lewis, said Lewis did not take the Edenic account as history. He saw it, said Mackey, as “a folk tale teaching the nature of human sinfulness.”

Ankerberg: “Jesus spoke about Adam. Was there a real Adam? Can you answer that?”

When Mackey remained silent, Carson declared, “I can.” The studio audience applauded.

Rogers to Carson: “Could a serious evangelical understand that [the Eden account] differently?”

Carson: “I’m not saying there are no metaphors in Genesis.”

“Evangelicals seem split,” Ankerberg observed. “Can they ever unite on their view of Scripture?”

“We don’t disagree about the authority of the Bible,” Rogers replied, “but how we interpret particular passages.”

When Ankerberg asked, “What can we all agree on?” Mackey responded, “We generally agree on the great orthodoxies of the Trinity, the Cross, the Resurrection, the authority of the Bible.” Mackey added that this is where evangelicals differ with Bultmann: “He and his disciples hold an antisupernatural bias. They don’t accept these great orthodoxies.”

Ankerberg: “How can evangelicals stay together?”

Mackey: “By talking to each other. Very often our ecclesiastical position becomes normative, when we ought to start with the Bible.”

No one disputed this point, but the definition of biblical inerrancy remained in question. All agreed that the Bible uses figurative language and that it does not speak in the language of a scientific or historical textbook. But is the Bible inerrant when it touches on matters of history or science? Is it contined to the time and mindset of the biblical writers, or does it hold true across all time? The Chattanooga video debate did not clearly bring agreement on these questions.

Rogers and Mackey consistently contended that the gap between them and their opponents was not as big as it might seem. “They are making a mountain out of a molehill,” Rogers insisted, “because they’re afraid of consequences that I don’t think will happen. I think [the CT] editorial (May 29, 1981, p. 12) was very fair. I’d like to build on that consensus and that’s what I hope this [dialogue] will do.”

Woodbridge and Carson voted for more dialogue also, while steadfastly maintaining that the differences were crucial to the faith and doctrine of the church.

Ankerberg edited the debate into four weekly, half-hour programs, with the first airing the third Sunday and Tuesday evenings in January over the CBN cable network, and on several independent Christian stations.

Video Debates: An Ankerberg Specialty

He looks so much like the Dutch boy on the paint can that you’re surprised at hearing the name is John Ankerberg. Performing on camera, he could easily be mistaken for a network show host—which he is, on the CBN satellite cable network. But his show is not your typical evangelical production, either in format or guests. Ankerberg features video debates between leading Christians and non-Christians, and between Christians with opposing views on the hottest issues of today. He gives his non-Christian guests a show-biz promotion and ample opportunity to present their positions.

“When I start to do a program on a certain topic,” Ankerberg said, “I tell representatives of the non-Christian view to send us their best people. Often we get the top man for no fee. Then I ask evangelical friends around the country, ‘Who is our best person in this area?’ I call him and say, ‘Look, I’m going to have this non-Christian on, and will you come and defend the biblical position?’ I seldom get a ‘no.’ ”

Ankerberg has long been a well-known name in the evangelical world. John’s father, Floyd, succeeded Billy Graham as staff evangelist for Youth for Christ (YFC). John grew up on the evangelism circuit, traveling summers with his father.

At 13, he enrolled at Mount Prospect (Ill.) High School, not knowing a single student. By graduation, he had developed a YFC Bible club of over 400 teenagers at the school.

As a student at the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle Campus) and later at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, he was Inter-Varsity’s (IV) counterpart to Campus Crusade’s Josh McDowell. He spoke and debated on more than 78 American college and university campuses and led IV’S Chicago Evangelism Project (sponsor of coffeehouses on Chicago’s North Side during the turbulent sixties). While at Trinity, Ankerberg commuted to campus speaking engagements in a private plane, returning the next day to classes.

“Questions from students that I couldn’t answer,” Ankerberg recalls, “I took back to my profs at Trinity.” One of his professors was John Montgomery, whom Ankerberg terms “the best apologist we’ve got in the evangelical world.”

After Trinity, Ankerberg helped establish the Willow Creek Community Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, a church which grew from 100 to 3,000 adult members in 36 months. Then he launched into full-time evangelism, holding city-wide crusades in major cities of Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe.

He got into television in Kansas City with YFC’S Al Metsker, a close friend of his father. Metsker set up a Christian TV station and gave Ankerberg time for “Roundtable.” Ankerberg sat on a high table and answered questions from a circle of Christians.

Ankerberg is shooting for five programs a week on four Christian satellite cable networks (CBN, PTL, Trinity, and National Christian Network). With a live audience, he wants a format similar to Phil Donahue’s, “except that our program will always include the Christian position. That’s unique in Christian broadcasting today, but the idea isn’t new. Paul used it in debating with the pagan philosophers at Athens.”

“Evangelicals have a big arsenal,” Ankerberg notes, “and I intend to use it against the biggest non-Christian philosophies. Take Francis Schaeffer. Wouldn’t he be great against B. F. Skinner?”

North American Scene

Thirty new United Presbyterian churches will be launched in 1982, due to a series of grants from the denomination’s Mission Development Grants Committee. The committee approved an amount of $522,000 to finance the developments, which will include Hispanic, black, Korean, Formosan, and Anglo congregations. Other funds will go to redevelop churches in such places as the Nevada mining town of Tonapah. The UPCUSA church there, once strengthened by the grant, will be the only congregation of a major Protestant denomination within 100 miles.

Three Lutheran groups are considering merger. A proposal for unity is being drafted by leaders of the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. An authorized poll of conventions of each of the three denominations showed convention delegates in favor of the merger by a 6-to-l margin.

White Protestant congregations in Miami, Florida, are going to have to reach out to more Latinos and blacks to survive. That was the conclusion of a study by the Miami District of the United Methodist Church; it showed a net loss of 10,000 members over the last decade. The heavy influx into Miami of both races has significantly altered the city’s population. Its black population is now larger than any city in the South except Houston.

The Dallas Mennonite Fellowship is working to establish a Center for Peace Research, Education and Action in that city. The fellowship, in a recent meeting, instructed a committee to begin a search for a director of the center. The center would encourage scholarly study in the areas of peace and peacemaking, create educational programs for area churches, and be directly involved in peacemaking on a smaller scale in the mediation of disputes.

All five officers of the American Atheists’ Los Angeles chapter have resigned in a dispute with national leaders Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her son Jon Garth Murray. The dispute arose over a conflict with the city of Santa Monica about Christmas displays. The Los Angeles atheists agreed not to contest a nativity scene in a park if the atheists could have their own exhibit. It depicted the “pagan origins” of the holiday. “California can ruin everything for atheists,” O’Hair said. “If we go in [as part of the Santa Monica display], we only add to their [nativity scenes] right to be there.”

Bill Bright thinks the Lord will tarry.

In 1951, when William R. Bright was a young and successful fancy-foods manufacturer in Los Angeles, he and his wife, Vonette, felt called to full-time Christian work. They launched an evangelism ministry at the nearby UCLA campus. Recently, 30 years and 150 countries later, Bright looked back on the diverse worldwide organization, Campus Crusade for Christ International, and predicted the best was still ahead:

“It is inconceivable to me that God, who is not willing that any should perish … would come and terminate the harvest—the greatest spiritual harvest in the history of the world,” he told hundreds of present and former staff and ministry friends attending an anniversary dinner at Crusade’s Arrowhead Springs headquarters near San Bernardino.

Believing that Christ’s return is not imminent because God wants to save more souls, Bright is gearing up his staff of more than 14,500 to lead at least a billion persons to the Lord during the 1980s. Emphasizing the crusade’s concept of “spiritual multiplication,” Bright announced these plans for the decade: acceleration of present programs, including multilanguage radio broadcasts; expanded use of the film Jesus for worldwide evangelism; establishment of additional centers to train pastors and lay leaders in evangelism and discipleship methods; and development of a Bible-based international graduate university on property already acquired near San Diego.

Burgeoning from its original thrust to campus leaders during the 1950s, Campus Crusade now ministers not only to the college world but also to churches, high-school students, families, prisoners, military personnel, athletes, and business and professional leaders. Other branches, Bright reminded, include communicating the faith through music and drama, and the unique Agape program, through which Christian professionals such as physicians, nurses and teachers use their skills in a spiritual outreach in Third World countries.

Though there has been much growth since the humble beginning at UCLA 30 years ago, there has been no change in the crusade’s basic principles, Bright insisted. The goal is to obey the Great Commission; there has always been financial disclosure and no big cash reserves (administrative and fund-raising expenses have for years been 9 percent and 7 percent, respectively); nearly all staff members, the Brights included, raise their own support for modest fixed salaries. The work is interdenominational, but it is not a church.

If Bright has relaxed the timetable a bit for completing the “Here’s Life, World” evangelism thrust to reach everyone with the gospel, it is because he believes the Lord will tarry and that righteousness exalts the nation and heals the land. In the thirtieth anniversary issue of Worldwide Challenge magazine, Bright reckoned that the “Here’s Life, America” campaign caused a reportedly dramatic drop in crime in 1976 and 1977—the years “Here’s Life” campaigns were held in all but three of America’s major cities.

“Further,” declared Bright, “the divorce rate, which had been accelerating rapidly, leveled off in 1976 and 1977, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Surely this is God’s doing. To Him be all the glory.…”

Today “Here’s Life, World” encircles the globe; Bright paused only a moment to look back. What of the future? he was asked.

He told a reporter, “What we have seen thus far is just the introduction, the prelude, to a movement that will accomplish may times more … than anything done so far.”

Church Of God Puts ‘Charlie Brown’ On Tv

It begins with Charlie Brown. It ends with Charlie Brown. It does not focus on a central, charismatic personality, and it has no solicitations for money. “The Doctor Is In,” a 58-minute special produced by the Church of God, is not typical religious television.

“The Doctor” is a $500,000 project taken on by the small, Anderson, Indiana-based denomination. Produced by the denomination’s Mass Communication Board, the program is based on the premise that too much religious television is watched only by persons who are already religious. The Church of God—with the aid of Charlie Brown and Lucy of the “Peanuts” cartoon strip—is taking a “one-time shot” at the national unchurched audience. It will air in nearly 200 cities during the period of January through April.

Charles Schulz, creator of “Peanuts,” grew up in the Church of God and continues to support it. He agreed not only to do animation for the television special, but to appear on camera. Besides Charlie Brown and his creator, the program will feature singers Bill and Gloria Gaither, Church of God pastors, and interviews with inmates at an Indiana prison.

Christmas pageant is reputed to be the country’s largest.

No one has ever accused Robert Schuller of thinking small. He has compared his Christmas pageant, “The Glory of Christmas, a Living Nativity” to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the recent royal wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer. It is, he says, “the largest such production in the history of Christianity in the United States.”

The Crystal Cathedral, already a Southern California landmark and tourist attraction, is a fitting shrine for the performance. Its towering structure of glass and trusses forms an expansive vault of acute angles and airy, open space. It is almost an outdoor setting. By any score, it is a far cry from the days when Schuller held services on the roof of a rented drive-in movie snack bar.

In preparation for over a year, the program was orchestrated by Robert F. Jani, whose credits include the Bicentennial Fireworks Salute in New York Harbor, numerous television specials, and Super Bowl half-time extravaganzas. He is currently executive producer of Radio City Music Hall in New York and creative director of Walt Disney Productions. He cites early pageants by Francis of Assisi as his inspiration for the project.

The costumes, which would do Cecil B. DeMille proud, were based on famous paintings and were three months in preparation. Every cast member who wears one—almost 400 in all—has a double. Their schedules are monitored by a computer.

Only one member of the cast sings (a shepherd), with the rest pantomiming a prerecorded sound track. The choral portion was done recently in the cathedral, while the 120-piece orchestra backing was recorded last summer in London. Selections include traditional favorites, climaxed by Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus from Messiah.

The electronics and lighting would match any Hollywood set for sophistication. Forty famous paintings project onto a 75-foot backdrop curtain, changing with each musical selection. The lights of Bethlehem and the stars twinkle. On the other side of the stage, a convoy of angels appears in the 40-foot crèche. Spotlights from the distant reaches of the cathedral illumine successive entourages of shepherds and wise men. In a crowning moment, the 90-foot doors open, giving entrance to a shaft of light from the heavens, focused on the manger. It is actually a 2,000-watt beam projected up through the floor beneath the manager and visible outside for miles.

And then there are the animals. Sixteen of them—donkeys, rams, and camels—accompany the throngs of shepherds and admirers. At least one of them has movie experience: the camel Sheba appeared in Richard Pryor’s biblical farce Wholly Moses. A Mediterranean donkey who refused to follow the procession provided the show’s only tense moment.

Narrating all this in a deep, resonant bass is Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger in Kellogg’s cereal commercials. His prerecorded track is piped through speakers on the backs of pews.

Schuller, known worldwide for his seminars and televised “Hour of Power,” draws mixed reactions from church and public alike. These range from fierce loyalty to undisguised enmity.

There will be, no doubt, squads of Scrooges who will see this epic as his biggest bull’s eye ever. Certainly, the $1 million production cost, $6.50–$12.50 ticket prices, the schedule of 40 performances, albums and cassettes ($10 each), and mass media advertising campaign present easy, obvious targets.

Most who attended, however (from as far away as Phoenix), echoed a familiar exclamation of narrator Ravenscroft from his Kellogg’s advertising days—“Grrreeeat!” For those who feel otherwise, it must be admitted that a project of this magnitude is not done with mirrors, nor a lack of imagination.

Reform Jews Reach Out To Gain New Members

The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), departing from a tradition of nearly 500 years, will launch a nationwide campaign aimed at “spreading the message of Judaism” to non-Jews. The decision was made at the UAHC’S fifty-sixth biennial assembly in December.

The UAHC, the central body of Reform Judaism, is quick to add that the terms “missionizing” or “proselytizing” are inappropriate to describe what it wants to do. The union will reach out to non-Jewish partners in mixed marriages, to the children of such marriages, and to persons who have no religious preferences. “Reform Jewish ‘outreach’ should in no way seek to convert to Judaism people who identify with other religions,” an assembly report said.

The assembly’s action reverses a Jewish tradition against seeking converts that dates back to the Spanish Inquisition. (The UAHC represents some 1.25 million Reform Jews in 750 Reform synagogues.)

Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the UAHC, said Reform congregations will welcome “Jews by choice,” that is, individuals who have converted to Judaism.