The people next door got a dog last year and he hasn’t quit barking since. Their cute, yipping puppy has matured into a rangy, howling hound; his voice has deepened and it takes a heavier chain now to hold him, but otherwise the racket remains the same.

It is not they they haven’t tried to train the dog. In fact, his training has been most effective. After he barks for an hour or so, the girl comes out of the house ordering, “Sit! Stay! Come!” and lectures him on why he shouldn’t make so much noise. Then she throws a ball for the ecstatic animal to chase and goes back inside.

The dog is no dummy. He has learned what he’s been taught; if he barks long enough, someone will eventually come out and play ball with him.

One recent Sunday, I sympathized with my dog neighbor when I read still another anticult advertisement—and they are numerous. If you use the material offered (the ads promise), you will save your students from the false teachings of pseudo-Christian groups; these books or pamphlets will reveal the whole grim story. Usually the ads include an urgent testimonial: we’ve got to teach our kids what these cults believe.

The admonition is correct, of course; Christians should help people know truth. The assumption is what scares me: that being told what cults believe is sufficient to insure against believing them. In other words, the young person who is taught enough about a false cult will reject it.

On that same recent morning, I tangled with a junior high Sunday school class raised in the “tell them what’s right” teaching method. We are new to each other, and as we study the Bible I have been asking my students for their interpretations. The kids are rebelling. All their previous Sunday school teachers just gave them the facts, they complain. It is my job to teach them what the Bible says; how can they know what’s true unless somebody tells them? And I shake to think of my Sunday school kids encountering the cults in exactly that frame of mind: how can they know what’s true unless somebody tells them? The cults will be glad to oblige.

You know the universal shocked response when a church-raised youth joins an unbiblical group: he must have been kidnaped! He was taught the truth; he said he believed it. He would never of his own free will abandon his church for a cult.

But, in fact, he did of his own free will abandon his church for a cult. And it is likely his church prepared him well to do it—by suppressing his doubts, downplaying his questions, and encouraging blind belief.

During years of street witnessing, my husband, Dale, and I constantly talked with members of the “cults.” (I use the word to mean “unbiblical religious groups.”) I remember three marks of all those people. First (except for Scientologists and Krishna Consciousness), they lacked the glazed-eyed, hypnotized look expected of cult devotees. Second, they could explain why they decided to join—almost always because of the group’s overwhelming welcome and total commitment. And third, the cult members always knew what their cult believed. While they may not have known everything going on in the leadership (just as you may not know everything going on in the headquarters of your own denomination), they obviously knew what the cult preached: they were on the street preaching it.

The point is this: factual cult information is not enough to warn anybody away from false teaching. When the informed young person meets the cult, he still has to decide between his church’s prior warnings and the cult’s strong, persuasive evidence. They will insist “The Bible says …” They will blanket him with love. They will try to prevent his independent thoughts. They will pressure him to choose immediately. If he has no biblical basis for deciding then (on his own) what is true and false, he will decide for or against the group on some other basis—how much they love and accept him, for instance, or how committed they appear to be. He will not suddenly leap; he will make his choice—using the same standard he uses for his other choices.

The ads are right; of course we have to teach our kids what the cults believe. Beginning there, however, is beginning late—halfway through the process. Before we teach our kids what the cults believe, we have to teach ourselves what our kids believe. By that I do not mean “the answers that they know.” I mean what they believe: the everyday, assumed truths on which they function week after week.

Typical christian education is a rewarder of those who know the right facts. And the right facts are easily learned. When Sunday school teachers pose questions to check students’ “grasp of the material,” correct answers are praised. What is taught by this process, however, may be something quite different from curriculum aims. Young people catch on (and why not?) that what counts is to offer accepted answers: if you bark correctly and often enough, somebody will play ball.

But is there real communication between leader and learner? Do they even know whether they misunderstand each other?

When parents, pastors, and teachers intensely desire that young people know truth (and so turn out right), their goal can be elevated until the feelings and values of the real young person are irrelevant. His proper verbal responses soothe away doubts even when he bears little evidence of Christian commitment. Correct words are comforting. His behavior shows flashes of rebellion and his thoughts are a mystery, but he says the right things. We’re okay; he believes after all.

Yes, he believes. But what?

There is a third alternative besides glossing over the teen’s lack of interest or putting him with the unfaithful: find out what he thinks. Stir up a lively curiosity about the assumptions he does live on. He may not buy church doctrines, but he does buy something. Until you know what that something is you cannot really talk to him.

Churches often do not give a serious ear to teens’ thoughts. When Dale and I tell people we teach a junior high Sunday school class, their reaction is consistent—and unnerving. They laugh. Then they comment: “You’ve got a handful,” or “Good luck,” or “What a wild bunch.”

Junior high students are not a bunch; neither are high school people. Nobody is a bunch. Individuals have beliefs, and what they believe determines what they do. Assumptions have no minimum age.

Here is a firsthand example: I remember, during junior high, singing a hymn of repentance in church and wondering, “Why don’t we ever sing hymns about man’s goodness?” I had been through membership class. I had passed the tests and delivered the right answers. I also believed that man is half-good and half-bad, and I was vaguely curious why my church failed to acknowledge the good side once in a while.

If, as a young leader or teacher, you neglect to discover what students already believe, you are tossing potent Bible truths into an unexamined overhead hopper—and you may cause explosions: you do not know what is already in there. What cherished values are you asking them to give up? What will it cost them to believe what you say?

Young people who cannot air contrary assumptions may never see Scripture stand up to opposition. When will they find out how well the Bible handles questions? Is biblical truth so unconvincing that we must guard it from encountering any other view—even in the safe environment of a church classroom? The teacher who ignores young people’s real presuppositions robs them (and himself) of knocking ideas together and talking things through to find out what is most believable.

But, someone might object, if you let them say just anything in Sunday school, they might come to the wrong conclusions. Yes, that’s possible. But at least in Sunday school you have a fighting chance for your view of Scripture.

Besides, unless you are hypnotizing your kids (as the cults are accused of doing), they are already reaching their own conclusions anyway, no matter how much Bible they know. They decide whether to live by their friends’ opinions; they make up their minds whether and when to cheat in school; they determine which of their parents’ rules they will obey; they choose their own sexual behavior. If they have no opportunity to solve such matters biblically, then they solve them by other standards in which they are already well grounded.

When adults downplay the teen-ager’s doubts, he learns that church is not where you speak the truth, but where you say what is expected. Meanwhile, he continues to develop his own opinions: Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? Does my life have meaning? He inhabits his own suprachurch existence—the real world for which church is a weekly interruption to be played along with. And if he has been raised carefully in church, he is very good at looking like he really believes it all.

With his presuppositions so well buried, how does the young person respond to a lesson on the dangers of false cults? He responds the same way he does to everything else in church: with external agreement. He adds the fact to his warehouse—not the fact that the cult is wrong, but the fact that his church believes the cult is wrong. He and his church differ in other areas and coexist comfortably; what is different about cults?

The split between church and life will grow until there is total separation, at least emotionally and mentally, and probably physically. A country/pop singer interviewed on radio had grown up singing in choirs, but he abandoned his church’s theology, he said, when he found out about the size of the universe and the speed of light. I know his denomination, and nothing in their theology denies those or any other natural phenomena. No matter; he grew up thinking they taught a tiny universe. When he discovered astronomy, it sounded more trustworthy than Sunday school. One or the other world view had to give, and naturally his own beliefs won.

But what about the young person who is committed to Christ and believes what he has been taught from the Bible? Won’t knowing the errors of the cults prevent him from joining one of them? It may. But unless he has been trained to discern truth for himself, his knowledge of existing cults won’t help when he meets a new one he has never been told about. In fact, the person raised to have faith and believe what he is told is particularly vulnerable to the pseudo-Christian cults. (Dale and I watched one make gains on a Christian college campus.) The Jesus-preaching cults have the upper hand: they use the right words and they appear to be doing what many churches only discuss.

Remember, the young person still has to make a choice when he meets the cult head-on. Right biblical language and right actions will be there (the final tests as he has been taught them). He will see in the group tangible expressions of what he has heard for years is supposed to be true: total commitment, enthusiasm, togetherness, forsaking the world, witness, love. The cult will play on familiar religious feelings of warm fellowship, the longing to be in God’s will, repentance of worldliness, guilt at the thought of leaving. He will remember his church’s warnings, but the cult will succeed in convincing him his church was mistaken.

The church youth’s handicap at this point is that no one equipped him to examine conflicting religious views and make real decisions. He never saw Christianity as a rational, thinking faith, never learned to love God with his mind. After all, how can he know what is true unless somebody tells him? The cult will instruct him to believe and not question; and if his church has first taught him to believe and not question, the cult’s demand will present no dilemma at all.

Wheels That Are Wheels

Unknown to religious journalists, a quiet battle has been raging among fundamentalist leaders over where to build the “Bus Ministry Hall of Fame.” I would not know about this matter myself, except that I happened to board a Canton (Ohio) Baptist Temple bus while visiting Detroit. (I thought the bus was going to the airport. Live and learn.) Anyway, the bus captain was quite garrulous and gave me the details of the conflict.

“Some people vote for Hammond, Indiana, since the world’s largest Sunday school is there,” he said. “But I understand those folks are leasing their buses now. Isn’t there something in the Bible about God hating leasing?”

I assured him there was such a verse, at least in the King James Version. I checked my concordance later: Psalms 4:2 and 5:6.

“Some people are voting for Akron, Ohio, because there are big Sunday schools there. But there are big Sunday schools all over the country. So what?”

“Where do you want the Bus Hall of Fame built?” I asked.

“In Canton, Ohio, of course—where the Christian Hall of Fame is (never mind football). Our bus ministry will match anybody else’s!”

Later, I did some quiet research to discover just what would be displayed in the Bus Ministry Hall of Fame, should it be built anywhere. I will not reveal my sources, but they are unimpeachable and inerrant—and at war with each other. There will, of course, be portraits of the most successful bus captains, as well as hubcaps from the most successful buses. Posters will give statistics from various ministries. There will be one room devoted to various gifts and premiums that helped to lure riders on the buses.

Each large Sunday school is donating one part from a leading bus, and all the parts will be assembled into one superbus that will represent all the great buses in busdom. Sad to say, everybody wants to donate parts that can be seen—fenders and wheels—and there seems to be a shortage of parts that make the bus run. One church is preparing a multi-media presentation that shows the actual dispatching of the buses, complete with exhaust smell and horns.

Nobody wants to admit it, but one honest pastor plans to send in a display of a gasoline pump, with the sign on it: “This is where it all ended.” He will probably be outvoted, but at least his heart is in the right place, even if the Bus Hall of Fame isn’t in his city.

Driver! Driver! Stop—you’re going past my corner!

Your correspondent on the go,

EUTYCHUS X

Fruitless Effort

I was impressed with the April 10 issue—the clean, bold format, so easy to read—showing concern for the practical as well as the aesthetic. The choice of articles was good, too. I especially appreciated “Perfectionism: Fraught with Fruits of Self-destruction” and the reminder of the importance of the grace of God. How refreshing after “How to … How I did it … How you should do it,” which make us feel we could be perfect if only we tried.

NETTIE CHALSON

American Missionary Fellowship

Villanova, Pa.

The perfectionism David Seamands appeared to address was not the holiness theology of entire sanctification, but a humanistic perfectionism. The confusion is increased since Seamands himself is in the “holiness” camp. Entire sanctification in no way encourages human effort at self-transformation, but insists that God has graciously provided for heart purity as well as forgiveness in Christ’s atonement. This is only realized through faith, not works, as the believer consecrates his entire self to God, loving him with his whole body, mind, and soul, thereby receiving cleansing of his heart. This “second work of grace” in no way resembles the perfectionism described.

REV. JOSEPH LIDDICK

Hess Road Wesleyan Church

Appleton, N.Y.

Perceiving The Pitfalls

What joy it was to read the article by Francis Schaeffer on 50 years of denominational ins and outs [April 10]. We stand on the verge of leaving the liberal United Methodist denomination. To read of the pitfalls of such action was helpful. To recognize the general latitudinarianism that develops in those who stay was even more helpful. I have seen this problem, even in the seminary I graduated from. I can no longer be satisfied with hollow victories. Dialogue has been a means of keeping evangelicals quiet. The efforts of thousands at our last general conference to install ordination of practicing homosexuals caused us to allow World Service to pass from asking to apportionment. The world needs Christ and I’m tired of wasting my time. We leave with sadness but, because of Schaeffer, with a deeper understanding of the problems and joys we face.

REV. RONALD R. PINARD

United Methodist Church

Peterborough, N.H.

Thoughtful Involvement

Public schools are required to respond to more societal demands than any other American social institution [“Values in the Public Schools,” April 10]. To respond to these pressures we need more rather than fewer Christians involved in American public schools. If we are to influence the nation’s youth, we must not abandon our schools. Evangelicals are needed as board members, teachers, and administrators. Unfortunately, public schools usually experience evangelicals in the role of gadfly; they appear only when upset and against some aspect of the school program.

When there are valid reasons for leaving the local public school, the motives of some conservative Christians are far from biblical. The schools they seek offer sterile, dogmatic interpretation of our social, political, and economic history; critical thinking is viewed as dangerous. Racist beliefs are frequently a latent motive for a private school.

Evangelicals can be productive, positive, influential citizens. Public school education welcomes thoughtful involvement of citizens concerned about the values and knowledge our children acquire.

DAVID W. SMITH

Director of Secondary Education

Noblesville, Ind.

You have made no attempt to present the case of Christians who believe it is sin to send our children to public schools. Crater’s article [“The Unproclaimed Priests of Public Education,” April 10] was a good example of the compromise conservative Christians have made. Crater exposes well one of the best kept secrets in our land today: humanism is a religion. However, he maintains that we must fight to improve the quality of education in the public school so that poor people won’t be deprived. His goal is to get the public schools back to “traditional” values and morals—an appropriate goal for a moderate humanist but not for a committed Christian. He states “we should make it known that we do not accept the attempt to use the schools to promote a particular religious viewpoint—theistic or non-theistic.” That is compromise. We who are Christian must support a thoroughly Christian viewpoint of life; the Christian school is part of the means to that end. The other part is the church, and by all means sincere and godly parents.

MICHAEL M. CHISM

San Diego, Calif.

In Defense Of Gibbs

I regret your attack upon attorney David Gibbs [“Does David Gibbs Practice Law …,” April 10]. I have not met Gibbs and Craze in person, but have corresponded with them, talked with them by telephone, and read their court transcripts and decisions.

If your most substantial allegation is true—that Gibbs and Craze frequently defend cases without adequate preparation—it is serious. But cases involving Christian liberties are mushrooming, and there are so few Christian lawyers willing and able to handle them. Most involve Christian churches, schools, or pastors who are unable to pay the costs of a proper defense. In their zeal to defend Christian liberties, Gibbs and Craze may well have become overextended. CT should exhort other Christian lawyers to relieve them by taking up the cause and representing some of these cases, and exhort Christian people and institutions to support these legal battles with their voices, finances, and prayers.

JOHN A. EIDSMOE

Tulsa, Okla.

The article was most helpful and accurate in one specific area. It pointed up clearly the philosophical differences that divide attorneys such as Ball and Gibbs. One believes there is a difference between a church and its school ministry; the other believes all ministries of a church are integral and thus inseparable. One holds the state has a right to some intervention in education; the other believes any state intervention involves tampering with the church. One believes there are limits on constitutional guarantees of religious freedom; the other believes there are none. It is unfortunate the philosophical issues could not have been dealt with. It appears that objectivity was abandoned while the author “took up sides” and launched an attack on the “other guys.”

REV. CHARLES R. WOOD

Grace Baptist Church

South Bend, Ind.

Not Mandatory

Your news story, “United Methodists Oust Clergy Who Fail to Promote Funding” [April 10], has factual misrepresentation that in fairness needs correction. No United Methodist church is “required to supply funds for the World Service apportionment.” Obviously, no local United Methodist church can be forced to pay any or all of the nine apportioned funds.

The 1980 United Methodist General Conference only eliminated the obligation of the district superintendent to inquire of each annual local church conference what is the local church acceptance of the World Service Fund apportionment. That inquiry is not now mandatory, bringing this in line with all general apportioned funds of the church. This is not making mandatory what was voluntary.

Further, the two ministers were quoted as having said that too much World Service funding went to causes they could not support, such as the World and National Councils of Churches. Reports indicate that the World Council of Churches received no World Service Funds in 1980; the National Council of Churches received slightly over one-half of 1 percent of the World Service Fund.

EWING T. WAYLAND

General Council on Finance and Administration

The United Methodist Church

Evanston, Ill.

From time to time, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has published articles exposing diploma mills which, for a price, deliver academic degrees without requiring an output of academic work. The unpleasant assignment this time fell to the lot of staff reporter Tom Minnery.

Unfortunately, many of the worst offenders in this educational racket are evangelicals. Some are in it only for the fast buck; we hope they are not evangelicals. Those who claim to be evangelical are a disgrace to the cause. Many more are well-meaning individuals who sincerely believe they are serving Christ by equipping Christian workers with bogus degrees. And, alas, plenty of Christian ministers are eager to snap up such cut-rate academic bargains. Ministers should recognize these degrees for what they are—a swindle; churches searching for an honest pastor should refuse to recognize fraudulent degrees.

Our children are our most precious possession. But strange as it may seem, parents often don’t even know their own children. Sandy Larsen discusses the intellectual and spiritual gulf between adults and teen-aged children. The first step in rearing children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord is to love them. But surely, next to loving them is to know them—to know them intimately. And that is not easy. It takes hard work and much patience to maintain a warm and close relationship with maturing offspring. And as with physical warmth, the secret of staying warm is never to grow cold. Time spent with our young children when they are small—and when we are tempted not to bother—cements a relationship and creates bridges of understanding and communication for the crucial teen-age years. We must learn to listen to our children, and that is not the same as waiting for them to finish talking so we can tell them what’s on our mind.

Like Mark Twain, who insisted that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated, I must deny the rumor that I have resigned as editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The kernel of truth at the center of this rumor is undoubtedly my notification to the magazine’s board at its last meeting that I would hand in my resignation at retirement age. I wanted only to warn them so they would have plenty of time to search for a successor. Except for an act of God or of the board (and they are not the same), I shall probably continue at my present post for a while.

Reflective Theology

I Believe in the Creator, by James M. Houston (Eerdmans, 1980, 287 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by William W. Wells, associate professor of church history and historical theology, Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, Illinois.

James Houston explains in his foreword that originally he was asked to write “I Believe in Creation.” He chose instead to write a book entitled I Believe in the Creator. In so doing, he shifted the focus of our attention from discussions on how God created the world, how long ago this may have happened, and how science and religion can be reconciled, toward reflections on the God who created. The word “believe” ceased to be a confession of what is believed and became rather a statement of faith in the Creator. I applaud his shift of focus. In discussions of this topic in particular, evangelicals tend to forget that in the Protestant tradition, the primary significance of the word “believe” is “trust,” not “assent.”

Having done that, Houston proceeded to write a book that will delight some and frustrate others. First of all, he is a poet, not a logician. The book has hardly a page without some kind of literary allusion, and the author often supplies a few stanzas of poetry to illustrate his point. This literary style may make the author’s ideas more accessible to some; the poetry will intrude for others.

But the book is unusual for a second reason. Houston believes in an integrative approach to learning and teaching. As a consequence, he feels obliged to reflect not only on the doctrine of the Creator, but also on the implications of that doctrine for related doctrines. As he points out, the God who creates does so through his Word, and hence reflection on the nature of God entails Christological reflection as well. God created man, and that fact leads to a discussion of theological anthropology; we created beings find ourselves in a created world where we create culture, and that too requires some reflection. As the author says (p. 143), “Creation and redemption cannot be isolated.” In short, Houston asserts that our understanding of God the Creator and his creation affects our understanding of all of life and culture.

Because of the book’s broad theological coverage and its literary character, students will find this a hard book to master. One needs to be somewhat familiar with the doctrinal material before reading Houston’s work. It is not a textbook. It will be useful elsewhere. I suspect that most copies of the book will be read reflectively, in the morning along with the Scripture, a page or two at a time. In that way, it will teach a good deal of theology by pointing to the Creator. And that, I think, is what the author had in mind.

God And Science Reconciled

Brains, Machines and Persons, by Donald MacKay (Eerdmans, 1980, 114 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Gord Wilson, a free-lance writer living in Bellingham, Washington.

Donald MacKay is a foremost authority in the field of cybernetics, which its founder Norbert Wiener defined as “the study of control and communication in animal and machine.” As a practicing Christian engaged in experimental brain research, MacKay is uniquely equipped to comment on the relationship between science and religion—something he has done in two previous books. Carefully distinguishing between mechanism and determinism, he found no contradiction in The Clockwork Universe between biblical faith and a mechanistic universe. Human Science and Human Dignity grew out of MacKay’s debates with behaviorist B. F. Skinner over behavior modification and covers a wealth of controversial topics that included genetic engineering, cloning, and the basis of freedom and dignity, ideas hotly disputed by behaviorists.

But MacKay is at his best in his latest offering, where he is on his home turf: brain science. Here he takes his place as a humanizer of science, translating abstract ideas at the forefront of research in an engaging, popular style with relevant, everyday examples. Each of MacKay’s books benefits from his own research, but here he includes explanatory diagrams and footnotes referencing his own technical papers and those of his colleagues. Unlike his previous works, this book does not presume a Christian audience and is thus more accessible to many readers.

MacKay sees the Bible as authoritative and the scientific enterprise as valid; the two are complementary, not contradictory. Biblical religion occupies a unique place with regard to modern science, affirming, as it does, both an orderly, consistent universe (the basis of scientific method) as well as a whole spectrum of supernatural realities outside the scope of scientific inquiry. But MacKay’s purpose is not simply to persuade the “cultured despisers of religion”; it is also finally to settle the conflict of science versus religion, in favor of religion.

Excitement positively seethes from the book, and it must surely come as a breath of fresh air to know that biblical faith is no way damaged or debunked if the brain should be found to obey entirely physical processes. And surely it is bracing to know that no part of us need remain inexplicable to science in order to justify the biblical view of man—that we need not posit a “God of the gaps” to explain what science cannot at present, and that we need not hope and pray, like Descartes, that some organ called the “soul,” which disobeys physical laws, will be discovered.

Our dignity, MacKay insists, consists not in our being made of a special substance as distinct from other animals, nor in our being inexplicable in terms of physical processes. Rather, our worth is found in our capacity for relationships with God and others and in realizing our potential capability to be what God intended each of us to be as a uniquely endowed member of his body.

MacKay is on the cutting edge of cybernetics research. His most engaging discussion concerns artificial intelligence and consciousness, in which he reaches the pitch of science fiction. Can robots be conscious? If so, would that jeopardize human significance? Would artificial intelligence undermine the biblical view of human uniqueness? MacKay’s analysis is as interesting as his sometimes startling answers, and for all that. Brains, Machines and Persons just exceeds 100 pages of snappy and informative writing. As a popularizer, MacKay girds up heart and mind, compassion and courage, disarming both the skeptical scientist and the befuddled believer in one area in which, in fact, they do not disagree.

An Errant Guide

The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach, by Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim (Harper & Row, 1979, 484 pp., $20.00), is reviewed by W. Robert Godfrey, associate professor of church history, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Jack Rogers and Donald McKim have written a book that deserves careful examination. This book is important, for it speaks to a vital issue before the church, and appears to be a careful, scholarly investigation—and it has attracted a great deal of attention.

Rogers and McKim make their goal clear in the introduction: they want to discredit the doctrine of the Bible’s inerrancy. They maintain that inerrancy is a result of rationalistic scholasticism in the history of the church and is not the historical position of the “central church tradition” (p. xxiii). It was not, they argue, the position of Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Bernard, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, and the Westminster divines. They contend that inerrancy was the invention of scholastics like Francis Turretin (the seventeenth-century Swiss Reformed theologian), who passed the doctrine to America through men like Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, and B. B. Warfield. They further charge that the doctrine of inerrancy has been very harmful to the modern church.

The authors assert that this position recognizes that the authority of Scripture lies in its function, not its form. It is the message of salvation in Christ that is infallibly present in the Bible. The form—the words, the historical or scientific observations—of the Bible is open to scholarly investigation and may err without affecting the central message of the Scripture. Christians accept the Bible as God’s Word, not because it is inerrant, but because the Holy Spirit testifies that it is God’s Word of salvation in Christ. In speaking to man, God accommodated himself. This accommodation did not obscure the message of salvation, but it did lead to peripheral errors in the Bible, “weak and imperfect human speech” (p. 78).

Rogers and McKim support their thesis with a survey of church history, analyzing traditional attitudes toward the authority of Scripture. They argue that support for their thesis is found in the best ancient, medieval, and Reformation theologians. They trace a deviation from their position particularly in the seventeenth-century Lutheran and Reformed scholastics and in the theology of old Princeton Seminary. Their interest is focused on more recent eras of church history, with only about 70 pages on the first 1,500 years of the church, about 190 pages on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and about 200 pages on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book has a scholarly appearance, with indexes, bibliographies, an appendix, and 1,977 footnotes.

On careful analysis, however, this reviewer must conclude that the book fails to prove its central thesis. Indeed, it is apparent that the course of the argument is controlled by the authors’ goal to reject inerrancy. Rogers and McKim reveal historical myopia even in the introduction. They say, for example, “In this century both fundamentalism and modernism sometimes took extreme positions regarding the Bible” (p. xxiii). Such a characterization seriously underplays the reality of the threat posed to true Christianity by modernism’s attitudes to Scripture. Their treatment of Hodge and Warfield especially shows little historical sensitivity to the destructive attacks by biblical critics that the theologians of old Princeton faced, and they undervalue the importance of Princeton’s scholarship.

Beyond these problems of perspective are problems with the method Rogers and McKim use to define their thesis. They never grapple significantly with the problem of how function or message is to be separated from the form or words of Scripture. For example, they do not analyze the nineteenth-century developments that led many who criticized the form of Scripture ultimately to deviate from its message and to adopt another gospel. Further, the authors neither examine nor demonstrate their assertion that God’s accommodation to man in Scripture must involve error. Nor do they distinguish between the doctrine of inerrancy and the arguments for holding to that doctrine. They proceed as if all inerrantists were committed to a Thomistic methodology, ignoring non-Thomists like Cornelius Van Til.

Rogers and McKim might be forgiven for a lack of theological clarity if their historical survey were convincing. But it is not. They present arguments that are really non sequiturs and seriously misuse evidence both in presenting representatives of their “central church tradition” like Luther, Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Bavinck, and in presenting their key representative of scholasticism, Turretin. There is no space to document this charge fully, but some instances can demonstrate the weakness of their method.

Contrary to these authors, Luther did say that the Scriptures are inerrant: “… Scripture, which has never erred” (cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 6). Their examples of Luther attributing errors to Scripture (pp. 78, 87) are inaccurate. Luther says Scripture lacks Ciceronian eloquence in its style and that there are difficulties in harmonizing aspects of gospel accounts, but that is not a recognition of error in the Bible.

Calvin also recognizes the inerrancy of the Bible: “Let us, then, be assured that an unerring light is to be found there” (commentary on Ps. 119:105). He acknowledges that biblical writers paraphrase Old Testament verses, and wrote as theologians, not as scientists. But for Calvin, a paraphrase is not an error, and popular, nonscientific descriptions of natural phenomena are not errors. Indeed, in presenting Calvin, Rogers and McKim have made a serious error of their own. They state, “In his commentary on Acts 7:16, Calvin declared that Luke had ‘made a manifest error’ …” (p. 110). But Calvin does not say Luke erred. Calvin says “it is obvious that an error has been made.…” In context, Calvin is ascribing the error to a copyist in transmitting the text, not to the gospel writer.

The authors also see Kuyper and Bavinck as representatives of the central church tradition, presenting them as theologians who do not hold to inerrancy. But none of their evidence demonstrates that Kuyper or Bavinck ever identified errors in the Bible.

For Rogers and McKim, Turretin is the representative scholastic who developed a doctrine of inerrancy because of excessive concern for the form of the Bible. They present Turretin from the first sentence of the introduction as the key influence inspiring American inerrantists. They argue that Turretin loses sight of the central saving message of Scripture, along with the Reformers’ stress upon the role of the Spirit. They repeatedly insist that the idea of accommodation “was entirely absent from Turretin” (p. 177). But Rogers and McKim show no firsthand study of Turretin. They do not quote him directly, but appear to depend entirely on a Th.M. thesis from Princeton Seminary.

A cursory reading of Turretin, however, reveals quite a different picture from the one Rogers and McKim draw. For example, with respect to accommodation, Turretin said. “When he [God] speaks, he speaks not to himself, but to us, i.e., in accommodation to our capacity …” (Institutes, II, 19, 8). He taught that “the Spirit is the Teacher, Scripture is the doctrine which he teaches” (Institutes, II, 2, 9). His concern for the inerrant form of the Bible does not undermine his clear presentation of its saving message.

In their final chapter, “Recent Efforts to Recover the Reformed Tradition,” the authors reassert their thesis that there is a third alternative to dead conservatism and liberalism. They offer three recent examples of this alternative: Karl Barth, the Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer, and the Confession of 1967 of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Rogers and McKim seem uncritically favorable to these efforts to restore the true tradition of the church. Yet they do not examine the impact of these efforts. They do not look at the theology of the disciples of Karl Barth or the deteriorating state of theology in the Reformed churches in the Netherlands or in the UPCUSA.

Rogers and McKim’s book contains some interesting information, but its misinformation makes it unreliable as a whole. Beyond too many errors of fact, the book fails to be a trustworthy analysis of either the theology or the history of the doctrine of the Bible’s authority. Not only does it fail to recognize that a properly safeguarded doctrine of inerrancy is the historic position of the church, but neither does it show how the church can long maintain the message of salvation in Christ apart from confidence in the inerrant Word of God.

Recent Books On Church Ministry, Part Ii

The minister and his task continue to occupy the interest of publishers. In the last issue we looked at four categories of books relating to the ministry. Six additional categories that are ministry related are treated in this survey.

The Minister. Three new books are basically minister’s handbooks that cover task and relationships: Pastoring the Smaller Church, new printing (Zondervan), by John C. Thiessen; The Christian Minister: A Practical Approach to the Preaching Ministry (Standard), by Sam Stone; and A Minister’s Opportunities (Baker), by Ralph G. Turnbull. All are readable and helpful. There are some specialized works as well. Too Many Pastors? (Pilgrim), by Jackson Carroll and Robert Wilson, is a study of 12 denominations where there is an oversupply of pastors. Can I Make It One More Year? (John Knox), by Edgar M. Grider, offers advice on how to overcome the hazards of the ministry.

The Minister’s Wife.Who Is the Minister’s Wife? (Westminster), by Charlotte Ross, and What’s Happening to Clergy Marriages? (Abingdon), by David and Vera Mace, can be discussed together. Those two books represent a healthy new trend in Christian publishing: responsible treatment of the wife’s role in ministry. In the past it was easy simply to ignore the marital stress that a minister and his wife face, or even to glamorize the role of the wife. These books both remove the façade that those in the ministry know only too well hide some serious problems. The value of the books is not that they take away the illusions; it is rather in that they offer helpful observations, drawn from the practical experience of those who struggle and care. Hope is to be found here, which is what really matters in such sensitive areas of concern.

Leadership. Lawrence Richards and Clyde Hoeldtke have written a perceptive and practical textbook in A Theology of Church Leadership (Zondervan). Wheel Within the Wheel; Confronting the Management Crisis of the Pluralistic Church (John Knox), by Richard G. Hutcheson, Jr., is a challenging and powerful book that looks at management techniques and the Holy Spirit as solutions. Robert E. Bingham writes of Traps to Avoid in Good Administration (Broadman).

Pastoral Care. Well over a hundred books have appeared in this general category. All cannot be mentioned here; those that deal with the basic issues from a pastor’s point of view are listed. Four books have appeared under the rubric of healing. Blessed to Be a Blessing (Upper Room), by James K. Wagner, shows how to have an intentional healing ministry in the church. Christian Healing Rediscovered (Inter Varsity), by Roy Lawrence, is a guide to spiritual, mental, and physical wholeness. Whole Person Medicine (InterVarsity), edited by David E. Allen, Lewis P. Bird, and Robert Herrmann, is an excellent series of papers that looks at healing and the whole person. Howard W. Stone examines Using Behavioral Methods in Pastoral Counseling (Fortress), and Douglas A. Anderson looks at New Approaches to Family Pastoral Care (Fortress). Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work (John Knox), by Eugene H. Peterson, draws on the Old Testament to meet counseling needs and develop pastoral effectiveness. Pastoral Counseling and Preaching (Westminster), by Donald Capps, is a theological quest for an integrated ministry. On a specific and neglected topic, Harold H. Wilke offers some guidelines for ministering to the handicapped in Creating the Caring Congregation (Abingdon). Westminster Press has continued its valuable “Christian Care Books” series with volumes 7 to 12 covering these topics: Mid-Life Crises, by William E. Hulme; Understanding Aging Parents, by Andrew and Judith Lester; For Grandparents: Wonders and Worries, by Myron and Mary Ben Madden; Coping with Abuse in the Family, by Wesley Monfalcone; Parents of the Homosexual, by David and Shirley Switzer; and Parents and Discipline, by Herbert Wagemaker. Wayne Oates has written a handbook to cover this set, titled simply Pastor’s Handbook, Vol. II (Westminster). Not everything is equally helpful, but that the subjects are dealt with is itself beneficial.

Church School. Three interesting historical books are now available: The Big Little School (Abingdon), by Robert W. Lynn and Elliott Wright; 200 Years—and Still Counting (Victor), by Wesley R. Willis; and B. W. Spilman: The Sunday School Man (Broadman), by C. Sylvester Green. Church growth methodology has reached the church school in Growth: A New Vision for the Sunday School (Church Growth Press, 150 S. Los Robles #600, Pasadena, Calif.), by Charles Arn, Donald McGavran, and Win Arn. The Super Superintendent (Accent), by Harold S. Westing, is a very fine book on church school management.

Career Opportunities. An excellent book listing many hundreds of job opportunities, complete with addresses and advice, is Career Opportunities in Religion (Hawthorn) by William Gentz.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Critiques of Secularism. Malcolm Muggeridge writes in his own inimitable way of The End of Christendom (Eerdmans). Ernest Gordon’s Me, Myself and Who? (Logos) is a vigorous attack on humanism. Illusions of Faith (Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa), by Carlos G. Prado, is a critique of noncreedal religion. The Secularist Heresy (Servant) and Where Do We Stand? (Servant), both by Harry Blamires, are excellent reading. If you haven’t discovered Blamires yet, do yourself a favor and read these books. Ronald B. Mayers tries to defend Religious Ministry in a Transcendentless Culture (Univ. Press of America), but he appears to have sold out (or almost) too soon. Still, there are some good things here. Sacred Cows (Zondervan), by J. A. Walter, is a trenchant attack on contemporary idolatry that compels one to look again to the Christian alternative. Saint Hereticus is present again in The Hereticus Papers, Volume II (Westminster), edited by Robert McAfee Brown, who is to be thanked for keeping such treasures from oblivion.

Baptism. In Baptizo-Dip-Only (distributed by Primitive Baptist Library), W. A. Jarrel argues strongly that—naturally—baptizo means dip only. Klock & Klock has reprinted Johannes Warns’s excellent Baptism, which is a doctrinal and historical defense of believer’s baptism. Both Edmund Fairfield, Letters on Baptism (American Presbyterian Press, Columbus, N.J.), and W. A. Mackay, Immersion and Immersionists: A Refutation (American Presbyterian Press), disagree. These two reprints defend the pedobaptist position.

Theology. Lutheran:We Believe and Teach (Fortress), by Martin J. Heinecken; Presbyterian:The Westminster Confession for Today (John Knox), by George S. Hendry, and Our Presbyterian Belief (John Knox), by Felix B. Gear; Pentecostal Free Will Baptist:Pentecostal Doctrines, a Wesleyan Approach, Vol. I (The Heritage Press), by Ned D. Sauls; Methodist:Essentials of Wesleyan Theology (Zondervan), by Paul A. Mickey; Anabaptist/Mennonite:A Third Way (Herald Press), by Paul Lederach; and Roman Catholic:The Credo of the People of God (Franciscan Herald), by Candido Pozo. All of these books are well done and worth reading.

Revisions and reprints have also appeared. Henry C. Thiessen’s perennial favorite, Lectures in Systematic Theology (Eerdmans), has been neatly revised by V. D. Doerksen. Klock & Klock has published W. G. T. Shedd’s 1889 Dogmatic Theology in four volumes. Thomas Nelson has also made it available, but in three beautiful volumes. Shedd’s standard work, History of Christian Doctrine, two volumes, is available from Klock & Klock.

The Word of Truth (Eerdmans), by Southern Baptist Dale Moody, is a very fine summary of Christian doctrine. It shows thorough acquaintance with modern thinking and is biblical rather than dogmatic in focus. Ingredients of the Christian Faith (Tyndale), by Keith Hardman, is a layman’s guide to Christian doctrine. It is clearly written and free from denominational bias, a very good introduction for someone who knows little about the faith. John Carmody in Theology for the 1980s (Westminster) looks at a series of topics (nature, society, church, self, God, Christ) primarily as they were discussed during the 1970s and projects where the discussion will lead in the 1980s. This is a helpful survey. The Seed of the Woman (Doorway Publications), by Arthur C. Custance, is a detailed theological statement arguing for the necessity and unity of fundamental (and conservative) theological principles. Asian Christian Theology (Westminster), edited by Douglas J. Elwood, looks at theology as practiced by Eastern believers. The creativity and ingenuity of some of the thinking is challenging, and this is a fine survey.

The higher the temperature of revival, the stronger must be the scriptural caldron in which the medicine is prepared.

What does the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture have to do with revival? In the contemporary evangelical scene, there are those who would see little relation between the two, either because of pietistic discomfort with interconnections between Word and Spirit, or because of rationalistic dissatisfaction with the very idea of an errorless revelation. If one has such negative feelings, a good antidote is provided by a close look at the great French revival of the nineteenth century.

That movement—still referred to simply as “Le Réveil” (The Revival) in francophone Europe—swept across Switzerland, France, and Belgium more than a century ago, revitalizing formalistic, dead churches wherever it touched them. Thousands of souls were saved, lives were transformed, and missionary outreach to French colonies and settlements all over the globe became a matter of first priority. Even today, local European churches where the revival centered are palpably different from those that stood aside from it: in Strasbourg, for example, St Pierre-le-Vieux, which had little to do with the revival, is without any real dynamic, while its companion in name, St Pierre-le-Jeune, a focus of the revival, displays vital, gospel-centered preaching.

The origin of the Réveil reads like the plot of a romantic novel. (Perhaps Romans 8:28 permits the generalization that all Christian history will one day be seen as just such a romance.)

The story begins in Scotland before the French Revolution. One David Bogue (1750–1825) attended Edinburgh University while still a teen-ager and received a license as a preacher of the gospel. He later developed a plan for foreign missions that led to the creation of the London Missionary Society—among whose missionaries were Robert Moffat and David Livingstone—and was a key figure in the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society. His missionary zeal stemmed very directly from his high view of the Scriptures: in 1801, he published An Essay on the Divine Authority of the New Testament; its popularity was attested by rapid translations into French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In 1815, he received an honorary doctorate of divinity from Yale, whose president at the time was the scholarly revivalist and hymn writer, Timothy Dwight (“I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord”).

Bogue had a profound personal influence on the spiritual development of Robert Haldane (1764–1842), who, after a brief time as a student at Edinburgh University and in naval service against the French, came under Bogue’s tutelage. Haldane sold his family estate to provide funds for a plan to do missionary work in India, but the East India Company refused to sanction the scheme. (Interestingly enough—again the curtains of eternity are briefly pulled aside—a massacre of Europeans later occurred on the very spot where this missionary settlement would have been located.) Haldane then devoted his inheritance to building churches and seminaries in Scotland and in conducting personal evangelistic efforts on the Continent. His three most influential publications were The Evidences and Authority of Divine Revelation, The Authenticity and Inspiration of the Scriptures, and his Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans.

Haldane’s Romans commentary had appeared first in a shorter French version. The reason has been well set forth by Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his foreword to the 1958 reprint edition of the English version:

“In 1816 Robert Haldane, being about fifty years of age, went to Switzerland and to Geneva. There, to all outward appearances as if by accident, he came into contact with a number of students who were studying for the ministry. They were all blind to spiritual truth but felt much attracted to Haldane and to what he said. He arranged, therefore, that they should come regularly twice a week to the rooms where he was staying and there he took them through and expounded to them Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. One by one they were converted, and their conversion led to a true Revival of religion, not only in Switzerland, but also in France. They included such men as Merle D’Aubigné, the writer of the classic ‘History of the Reformation,’ Frédéric Monod who became the chief founder of the Free Churches in France, Bonifas who became a theologian of great ability, Louis Gaussen, the author of ‘Theopneustia,’ a book on the inspiration of the Scriptures, and César Malan. There were also others who were greatly used of God in the revival. It was at the request of such men that Robert Haldane decided to put into print what he had been telling them.”

Thus did the Book of Romans—in the hands of one who believed every word of it—produce another great series of conversions, this time commencing with rationalistic theological students. (One thinks of Wesley’s conversion on hearing Luther’s Preface to Romans read at Aldersgate, and Karl Barth’s shift from liberalism to at least a modified orthodoxy by way of his studies of Romans.)

French clergyman Reuben Saillens refers to the Réveil as “Haldane’s Revival” and gives as one of its “main characteristics” that “it maintained the absolute authority and Divine inspiration of the Bible.” Gaussen’s Theopneustia—displaying on every page the influence of Bogue and Haldane—remains a classic treatment and defense of the inerrancy of the Bible.

Some years ago, Scandinavian Bishop Bo Giertz, long irritated by those who set personal evangelism in opposition to great liturgy, showed their compatibility—indeed, interdependence—in his essay, Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening. The time has surely come to recognize an even greater interrelation between revival and the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. It is no accident that the great revivalists (Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody, Graham, etc.) have been unqualified Bible believers. The higher the temperature of revival, the stronger must be the scriptural caldron in which the medicine of immortality is being prepared. This is the overarching lesson of the French Réveil.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY¹An attorney-theologian, Dr. Montgomery is dean of the Simon Greenleaf School of Law, Costa Mesa, California, and director of studies at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France.

One could answer this question rationally, with the cool detachment of statistics. There are 4.3 billion inhabitants of planet Earth, and one-fifth are destitute. Every day, 10,000 succumb to starvation, and die. Meanwhile, more than another one-fifth live in affluence, consume four-fifths of the world’s income, and contribute to Third World development the derisory annual sum of $45 billion, while spending 21 times that amount on armaments.

Or one could approach the question emotionally, with the hot-blooded indignation aroused by the sights, sounds, and smells of poverty. Arriving in Calcutta a few weeks ago, I found the city enveloped in a malodorous pall of smoke from a myriad fires fueled with cow dung. An emaciated woman clutching an emaciated baby stretched out an emaciated hand for baksheesh. A quarter of a million people sleep on the city’s sidewalks, and human beings are reduced to foraging like dogs in its garbage dumps.

There is a third way of approaching the question of the poor—one that should stimulate our reason and emotions simultaneously—and that is through Scripture. Consider Psalm 113:5–8: “Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down upon the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes.…”

What is distinctively characteristic of Yahweh, the psalmist writes, is not just that he reigns on high, or that he condescends to our depths, but that he actually “raises the poor from the dust.” That is the kind of God he is. Hannah quoted this after the birth of Samuel; Mary alluded to it when she learned she was to be the mother of the Messiah. Jesus kept repeating that “he who exalts himself will be humbled, while he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Who, then, are “the poor” whom God “raises from the dust”?

First, and economically speaking, there are the indigent poor, deprived of the basic necessities of life. God commanded his people in the law not to harden their hearts or shut their hands against the poor, but to maintain those who could not maintain themselves, taking them home and feeding them without charge. If an Israelite loaned money, he was not to exact interest. If he took a pledge, he was not to go into the poor person’s house to fetch it, but to wait outside until it was brought. If he took as pledge the person’s cloak, he was to restore it before nightfall, because a cloak by day was a blanket by night. Employers were to pay wages to their workers on the same day. Farmers were not to reap a field “to its very border,” or gather the gleanings of the harvest, or strip a vine or olive tree bare; the leftovers were for the poor, the alien, the widow, the orphan.

The wisdom literature underlined this: “Blessed is he who considers the poor.” Why? Because “he who mocks the poor insults his Maker,” whereas “he who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord.” No wonder our Lord fed the hungry, made friends with the poor, and promised that if we do likewise we shall find ourselves ministering to him “in this distressing disguise” (as Mother Teresa puts it).

Second, and sociopolitically speaking, there are the powerless poor, the victims of human oppression. The Old Testament recognizes that poverty is sometimes due to laziness, gluttony, or extravagance, but usually attributes it to the sins of others. Moreover, injustice tends to deteriorate because the poor are powerless to change it. Yet if the poor have no human helper, God “stands at the right hand of the needy” and “maintains the cause of the afflicted.” So the law contains strong prohibitions against perverting the justice due to the poor, the wisdom literature requires kings and judges to “give justice to the weak and fatherless” and “maintains the rights of the poor and needy,” and the prophets fulminate against national leaders who “trample the head of the poor into the dust.” Thus, the concern of the biblical writers goes beyond philanthropy to social justice.

Third, and spiritually speaking, there are the humble poor. Oppressed by men, they look to God for help, and put their trust in him. So “the poor” came to be a synonym for “the pious,” and their condition a symbol of and stimulus to the dependence of faith. This is specially clear in the Psalter; for example, “this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles” (Ps. 34:6).

In these ways God “raises the poor from the dust,” for he lifts them out of the dust of penury, oppression, and helplessness. God concerns himself both with the materially poor and powerless, and with the morally humble and meek. Yet his attitude to these groups differs, for the former is an outward and sociological condition which he opposes, while the latter is an inward and spiritual condition which he approves.

The only community in which these concepts are combined is a church that is witnessing to the kingdom of God. The Old Testament expectation was of an ideal king who would “judge the poor with righteousness,” “decide with equity for the meek of the earth,” and grant these blessings to the “humble and lowly.” The fulfillment in Jesus corresponds to this, for he spoke of the righteousness of his kingdom and at the same time said that the good news would be preached, and the kingdom given, to “the poor.” These can be neither the sociologically poor (or salvation would be limited to the proletariat), nor the spiritually poor (or the facts of Jesus’ ministry to the poor and hungry would be overlooked), but to those who are both. To them the kingdom of God is proclaimed as a free gift of salvation and as a promise of justice.

The Christian church should exemplify these truths. On the one hand, it consists entirely of the spiritually poor, who acknowledge that they have no merit to plead, and so receive the kingdom as a gift. On the other hand, the church should not tolerate material poverty in its own fellowship. If there is one community in the world in which justice is secured for the poor and need is eliminated, this should be the church.

The church, if it exemplifies both ideals of the kingdom, will bear witness to the paradox of poverty. If we want the new community of Jesus to offer a radical alternative to the world around us, then we must set ourselves simultaneously to eradicate the evil of material poverty (because we hate injustice) and to cultivate the good of spiritual poverty (because we love humility).

If we ask how we well-to-do Christians should express solidarity with the poor, it seems that the first option, to “become poor,” is the vocation of some but not all. The selling and giving of the early Jerusalem Christians was clearly voluntary. The opposite extreme, to “stay rich and ignore the poor,” is not an admissable option.

The rich cannot ignore the poor of this world, but must do something for them. A rich Christian is not a contradiction in terms; but a Christian who lives richly, spending his wealth upon self and family, is a contradiction. The third option, to which all of us are called, is to live a life of generosity and of simple contentment. “We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content” (1 Tim. 6:7–8).

JOHN R. W. STOTT¹Mr. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church in London, England.

The twentieth century allowed painting to become purer, less literary.

“Painting Is the music of God, the inner reflection of his luminous perfection.” And so it was—400 years ago when Michelangelo penned those words. But is it today? Christianity, for most painters, has lost the ability to stimulate. Religion is no longer a driving force in Western culture, or so some say.

Does this mean there is no religious art now being produced by important painters? No. Acknowledged or not, the Creator remains behind all forms of positive artistic expression. Though no longer at the service of a specific dogma, artists still respond to their “religious” impulses.

The most significant body of religious art in the last 30 years has been produced by a trio of artists belonging to a branch of abstract expressionism. Known as “color-field” painters (so-called because of their use of enormous canvases covered with fields—or “flames” or “clouds”—of usually solid pigmentation), Clifford Still, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman forged a new kind of art that distinguished them from their gesture-painting, existentially minded cousins (Jackson Pollock et al.).

Innovative as their compositional styles were, these painters seldom discussed formal matters. Paramount in their thinking was subject matter—ironic as that may seem to the uninitiated viewer of their abstract paintings. Rejecting the forms and symbols of organized religion, Still, Rothko, and Newman sought to thrust themselves into the transcendental realm of experience through their art. In 1948, Barnett Newman declared:

“We are reasserting man’s natural desire for the exalted, for a concern with our relationships to the absolute emotions. We do not need the obsolete props of an outmoded and antiquated legend. We are creating images whose reality is self-evident.… We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of Western European painting. Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or life, we are making [them] out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.”

Turning their backs on the quest for beauty that preoccupied most Western artists for centuries, these painters reached out to grasp what seemed to them a more primordial, simpler emotion. It was as if they hoped to drive modern man—and his sophisticated sensibilities—back to a time, long past, when primitives stood in raptured silence before stone idols. Such a goal explains their use of huge canvases as a device to swallow up the viewer in the work itself (unlike most large pictures, these paintings are designed to be seen close up).

The power these paintings exude is undeniable. Recently in New York, Rothko (who, along with Newman, died in 1970) and Still have had major retrospectives. Still especially retains the ability to overwhelm the viewer. Despite one critic’s objection that “the artist does not impress one as an outsize talent,” these canvases, with their leaping, pulsating flames of color, do evoke emotions in the onlooker.

But what emotions? With his gruff—even sloppy—application of paint to the canvas, Still is apparently attempting to reject beauty in his work. Yet he fails—some of his paintings are quite beautiful. Color is, after all, one of God’s loftiest inventions. Rothko, Newman, and Still, because of their dependence on color, cannot avoid an inherent beauty in their paintings. Herein lies the tragedy: these artists, like so many contemporary painters, have rejected the source of their inspiration. Having renounced the biblical explanation of their longing for transcendent truth as irrelevant, they “sat in darkness and the deepest gloom, prisoners suffering in iron chains, for they had rebelled against the words of God” (Ps. 107:10–11, NIV).

Yet Christian artists must explain why these paintings are so effective. Could it be these artists are correct in their assumption that the old forms of religious art no longer communicate to modern men? Perhaps Jacques Maritain is right when he advises us that “the distinction between ‘church art’ or ‘sacred art’ and an art that is religious not by virtue of its intended purpose but only by virtue of the character and the inspiration, is only too evident, for what is most lacking nowadays in a great number of works of sacred art is just precisely a truly religious character.”

Can christian artists use the compositional discoveries of the color-field painters and infuse them with new content, or even redeem the original meanings these artists sought to convey? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is necessary to move beyond this stage.

One thing, however, is clear: Christian art cannot go backwards. Philosophers like Francis Schaeffer and the late H. R. Rookmaaker seem to be pointing artists back to the Reformation period and earlier for models. Rookmaaker particularly laments the painter’s shift from craftsman to apostle of “High Art.” In his last pamphlet, Art Needs No Justification, Rookmaaker argues that nineteenth-century painting marked the decline of subject matter as the primary concern of the artist, “leading in our century to the rise of nonfigurative art.” Chronologically he is correct. However, he explains this shift almost totally in terms of the rise of humanism and the Age of Reason—in other words, philosophically. Though acknowledging the invention of photography “may have played a part in this,” Rookmaaker totally underestimates the impact photography had on the painter. Freed from his social responsibilities as a recorder of history, the artist explored new techniques and avenues of expression.

Actually the Christian painter had begun to lose his distinctive function even earlier. Before the invention of printing when handwritten copies of Scripture were scarce, and people who had the ability to read them even scarcer, the artist was compelled to depict biblical stories in a literary fashion. Is it coincidence that religious art began to flounder as the distribution of Scripture increased? Too many Christian artists today are attempting to fill the outmoded and unnecessary role Pope Gregory the Great enunciated centuries ago: “Painting can do for the illiterate what writing can do for those who read.”

Like it or not (and, as a painter, I like it), the twentieth century allowed painting to become a purer, less literary, more direct vehicle of the artist’s emotions. Nostalgically evoking a lost age of innocence does not help the contemporary Christian artist communicate to his fellows. It is imperative that we speak in the language of our time, a task that challenges the best in any artist. As Maritain concludes: “Do not say that a Christian art is impossible. Say rather that it is difficult, doubly difficult—fourfold difficult, because it is difficult to be an artist and very difficult to be a Christian. Say that the difficulty becomes tremendous when the entire age lives far from Christ, for the artist is greatly dependent upon the spirit of his time. But has courage ever been lacking on earth?”

MARK MARCHAK¹Mr. Marchak is himself a painter. He is New York City coordinator for the Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society.

Sider and North spar over issue at Gordon-Conwell Seminary.

Should Christians be pushing civil government to take an active role in the reduction of worldwide poverty? Two Christian scholars met April 6 at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, to debate the biblical evidence of civil government’s role in relief of the poor.

Ronald J. Sider, author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and professor of theology and ethics at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, charged that the biblical concept of justice demands that Christians work politically to break down the structural causes of poverty. Gary North, president of the Institute for Christian Economics and a staff member of the Chalcedon Foundation, agreed Christians do have a duty to feed the poor. But he argued that efforts should be made through the church, not civil government.

Sider laid out the biblical foundation for the argument that Christians should be concerned for the poor; North agreed with his main point.

The two men were far from agreement, however, on the critical question of what all that means to the church today. Sider argued that while charity and volunteerism are necessary, they are not enough in themselves. According to the prophets, he said, it is not just the individual poor person God is concerned with; it is also the social system that contributes to his poverty.

The prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and others condemn the rich for either gaining wealth by oppression and treachery or for turning a deaf ear to the cries of the poor, Sider said. God never intended there to be a wide social gap between rich and poor, he contended. The jubilee concept laid down in Leviticus is proof that “God does not want such a disadvantage.” When the Hebrews first occupied the land of Canaan, God divided the land equally, and “he wanted that arrangement to remain and to continue,” said Sider, to be sure every person “had an equal share in and means of providing wealth.” The legal return of land every 50 years to its original owner insured that equality, he noted.

The jubilee underlines the biblical basis for an “institutionalized mechanism” for the relief of poverty “rather than haphazard handouts by wealthy philanthropists,” Sider claimed. The Christian’s duty then, he said, is to “demand that civil government design programs” to provide the poorer members of society with the resources they need to earn their fair share of the wealth.

But North charged that the state cannot be trusted with the task of reducing poverty. Confessing he held the Puritan view in a four-centuries-old debate between Puritans and Anabaptists on this issue, North cited atrocities in American history as proving foreign aid often “leads to imperialism internationally.” Money sent to help the poor in the fields, he said, is used instead to build up urban complexes 40 stories high and to create large bureaucracies (e.g., the Bureau of Indian Affairs) where government employees end up absorbing the money intended for the poor.

When Old Testament prophets came upon nations that had strayed from God’s standard, they directed rulers back to the law. The church today must do likewise, North stated. “Christians are to serve as salt,” and, he said, salt had two purposes in Bible times: it was used for flavoring and for destruction. “If we do our task well,” said North, “we’re going to replace the prevailing civil order.” Then Christians can establish a new government that would be “unquestionably geared to justice.”

Meanwhile, the church is to be a model to the nation in working for the relief of the poor and hungry. Christians should tithe a tenth of their income and a portion of that should go to the alleviation of poverty.

But Christians need to be freed from the tyranny of taxation so they can give more freely to charity, North continued. “And the Bible has just the solution. 1 Samuel 8 sets a limit on the amount the state can tax its people according to God’s law, at 10 percent; and that is how it should be done today.”

North also challenged the idea that redistribution of the wealth would benefit the poor for more than one or two years and charged the motivating force of its proponents is envy. Envy, or “tearing down the rich just to get even,” he said, originated with Satan.

Many Christians today feel guilty for having wealth, but if they are tithing, they have no reason to feel guilty, North stated. “If Christians began to tithe, they would change the face of the earth.” God blesses those who follow his law, and his law demands giving 10 percent of one’s earnings to God’s work.

But the models North chose to illustrate this point raised a few eyebrows among his audience of 200 seminarians and professors. He praised the Mormons for building churches without going into debt, and Herbert Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God for its obedience to the required tithe. Of Armstrong’s church, North said, “Look at the blessings God has given to that church. It’s incredible.”

In his summary, Sider said Christians should use “reasoned, intelligent analysis” to make social changes “in light of what the Bible says we should be doing.” But North disagreed. He argued the Bible indeed is specific, and that what was good enough for the Old Testament prophets is good enough for him.

The Legislative Scene

Abortion Factions Skirmish Over Koop Appointment

Congressional supporters of C. Everett Koop are confident they can overcome a legislative roadblock that is threatening his appointment as U.S. surgeon general. Koop, chief surgeon at Philadelphia’s Children’s Hospital, is a well-known evangelical. Those who oppose him are doing so because of his strong stands against abortion and homosexuality, and they have found a technicality to use against him.

The technicality is that Koop, 64, is six months over the age limit for the surgeon general’s job, making it necessary to pass a bill exempting him. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) attached the legislation onto an unrelated bill (dealing with credit cards), and the Senate passed it. When it got to the House, however, Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill (D-Mass.) found an obscure procedure to strip the amendment and deposit it in the House Health and Environment Subcommittee.

The chairman of that subcommittee is Henry Waxman (D-Cal.), one of the sponsors of a national gay rights bill, who differs with Koop’s conservative positions. Waxman called a subcommittee hearing to open a broad-range attack on Koop, and was further annoyed when Koop did not appear to defend himself. Waxman said last month that “Dr. Koop frightens me. He does not have a public health background, he’s dogmatically denounced those who disagree with him, and his intemperate views make me wonder about his and the administration’s judgment.”

There was plenty of opposition to Koop at Waxman’s hearing. A spokesman for the American Public Health Association said that although Koop was “a distinguished pediatric surgeon,” he was untrained in public health. A spokesman for the National Gay Health Coalition said, “Koop appears to have strongly held beliefs about homosexuality which are not supported by established medical thought, practice, or science.” A spokesman for a women’s proabortion group also criticized him.

Because the House passed the credit-card bill without the age exemption for Koop (as well as five other amendments the Senate added to the bill), a House-Senate conference committee, composed of members of both houses, will meet to reconcile the differences. Koop supporters hope the age exemption will be put back during the conference; if not, they have another strategy. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) has introduced the age exemption as a separate bill. Although it has also been sent to Waxman’s subcommittee. Koop partisans hope to use a discharge petition to spring it out of the subcommittee directly to the House floor, where they believe it would pass easily. The discharge petition, however, is a cumbersome procedure that does not usually work.

Carl Anderson, an assistant to Senator Helms, said, “We’ll do whatever has to be done to get this thing.

Mennonites after Smoketown

A Call To Move Beyond The Peace Issue To Evangelism

Signals keep coming from Smoketown. This was observable at a recent Mennonite gathering in Berne, Indiana, where some 200 pastors and lay leaders talked and prayed about restoring the Mennonite tradition to a firm evangelical footing.

They reaffirmed most of the concerns coming out of the so-called Smoketowr Consultation two years ago (held in Smoketown, Pennsylvania): reaffirmatior of the authority of Scripture, need for renewed evangelistic emphasis, and a reexamination of priorities, with the emphasis on the saving power of the gospel.

A five-member convening group (four of them pastors) planned this second inter-Mennonite meeting, or “Consultation or Continuing Concerns,” as a way to spreac the vision of the earlier one, and to share new concerns. The meeting, in the Berne First Mennonite Church, was open to anyone, whereas Smoketown was a small, by-invitation-only gathering of about 20 pastors, educators, and lay leaders.

A general feeling underlying both meetings was that Mennonite bodies have overemphasized their historic peace and social emphases at the expense of evangelism and discipleship, among other things. Several well-known Mennonite leaders echoed this in Berne, and touched on the broader issue of secularism. Some spoke to the grassroots criticism that Mennonite colleges have lost accountability to the local churches, and are being affected by liberalism.

Albert Epp, Henderson, Nebraska, pastor who, with host pastor and fellow convener Kenneth Bauman of Berne serve the two largest congregations in the 60,000-member General Conference Mennonite church, opened the two-day session with a devotional, pointing out the power of prayer at Pentecost.

When people become affluent or educated, warned Epp, one of the first casualties is prayer. “We have not because we ask not. Prayer can rescue the Mennonite brotherhood from shipwreck. The Holy Spirit can do in a minute what you and can’t do in a lifetime.”

Theologian Myron S. Augsburger, immediate past president of Eastern Mennonite College and presently a scholar-in-residence at Princeton Theological Seminary, was concerned that “academic and cultural pseudo-sophistication not rob us of the freedom to share Christ.” Later in the meeting, speaker Benjamin Sprunger, past president of Bluffton (Ohio) College, was asked what he sees as the redeeming factor for the Mennonite church. He responded: “The Scripture speaks for ancient times, present times, and future times. Out of that presupposition we must find our way and not let that get diluted by secular and contemporary thought. We cannot ignore psychology, sociology, and science, but we cannot let those replace God’s Word.”

In the third major address, moderator Vernon Wiebe of the Mennonite Brethren church praised his denomination for being “unashamedly evangelical and Anabaptist.” He noted, however, that sometimes “we have been afraid to join together in spiritual exercises. We are comfortable with relief sales, but not the study of the Word.”

Eugene Witmer of Smoketown chaired the findings committee, which arrived at a list of 15 concerns. Witmer, also a convener of the Berne meeting, cited in an interview “sharp lines” of concern that prompted the meeting—for instance, the desire to address Mennonites “who place so much attention on the peace issue, but are strangely silent on abortion and alcoholism.”

Conveners said attendance was about 150 percent better than expected, with many persons coming at their own expense. In many respects, the meeting mirrored developments in other denominations, where conservatives are trying to restore traditional, evangelical emphases.

North American Scene

Parents of John W. Hinckley, Jr., the man charged with the presidential assassination attempt, made a Christian commitment in 1978. Since then they have given heavily to overseas relief and development projects, including those of World Vision. Jack Hinckley is a water resources consultant for World Vision, and reportedly had expressed concern about his son to some of the organization’s staff and requested special prayer for him.

Called a devout fundamentalist Christian by acquaintances, Edward Michael Richardson, 22, of New Haven, Connecticut, was indicted last month on two counts of threatening the life of President Reagan. Federal investigators were checking similarities between Richardson’s alleged threats and a letter received by TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. He turned over to the FBI a note he received March 25 with the message scrawled on the back of a ministry fund-raising envelope: “Ronald Reagan will be shot to death and this country turned back to the left.”

An interfaith forum was organized last month in Jefferson City, Missouri, with some observers calling it a new breakthrough for interfaith relations. Missouri leaders of 11 Protestant denominations, and four Roman Catholic bishops, announced formation of the so-called Missouri Christian Leadership Forum. Its purpose will be dialogue and possible cooperation on mutual concerns, such as issues before the Missouri legislature. The forum includes groups such as the Missouri Baptist Convention, and Catholics. The latter had refused membership in the Missouri Council of Churches, which they saw as too liberal and structured.

Groups have a constitutional right to pass out literature at airports without notifying authorities in advance. So ruled the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month. The court called unconstitutional a Portland, Oregon, ordinance that required groups to give one day’s notice before picketing or distributing literature at the city’s airport, and to provide names, addresses, and telephone numbers of those sponsoring the distribution. The decision reversed a U.S. District Court ruling upholding the ordinance, which was challenged by Jews for Jesus chairman Moishe Rosen. He had been arrested for violating the ordinance while distributing literature at the Portland terminal.

A week of prayer emphasizing a call to national confession of sin and repentance is scheduled May 31 to June 7 as a prelude to this summer’s American Festival of Evangelism in Kansas City, Missouri. Festival spokesman Norval Hadley explained, “We are urging Christians to unite in prayer for America. We want God to help us see our condition as he sees it.” Hadley suggested churches provide opportunities for organized prayer during the week: prayer groups, prayer with sister churches, prayer partners, 24-hour prayer and fasting chains, and so on. The prayer week culminates on Pentecost Sunday, the day designated for the annual prayer effort for world evangelization sponsored by the Lausanne Comittee for World Evangelization.

Personalia

War hero and sportsman Joe Foss was appointed international chairman of the billion-dollar evangelization campaign, Here’s Life, World, sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ International. Foss, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient during World War II and the first commissioner of the old American Football League, succeeds Wallace E. Johnson, cofounder of Holiday Inns, who asked to be relieved after suffering a mild heart attack last fall.

Asia missions veteran Samuel H. Moffett, 65, accepted a three-year appointment as professor of ecumenics and mission at Princeton Theological Seminary. Moffett currently is vice-president of Presbyterian Seminary in South Korea, and a long-time missionary there. He has spent the last several years doing research for a book that will chronicle the history of the Christian church in East Asia.

Academia: Ronald Youngblood, dean of Wheaton College Graduate School, has resigned and will join the Old Testament department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, next fall; James Plueddemann, chairman of the school’s Christian ministries department, was named acting dean effective July 1. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary profesor David M. Scholer, Wheaton College and Harvard Divinity School trained, was appointed dean at 200-student Northern Baptist Theological Seminary near Chicago, succeeding Gerald Borchert, now at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

World Scene

Four out of fifteen Protestant churches in Lyon, France, have been destroyed by arson this year. The latest, a Pentecostal assembly structure that seated more than 500, was set ablaze in the early morning hours of Sunday, March 29. An outdoor baptismal service to have been held on the premises had been publicized for that evening. After the three January burnings, police increased surveillance of the evangelicals’ properties. So far they have no suspects in the acts of destruction, which evidence a common pattern of sabotage.

Pope John Paul II will visit World Council of Churches headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, next month. The June 5 visit to Philip Potter, WCC general secretary, and other council officials is the second papal visit. Pope Paul VI paid a visit to the ecumenical center in 1969.

The Helsinki follow-up conference in Madrid has failed to inhibit Soviet authorities in oppression of religious believers. Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin’s appeal of his 10-year sentence has been rejected, and presumably he has been transported from prison to a labor camp. Boris Perchatkin, a spokesman for the Pentecostal emigration movement who contacted foreign journalists in Moscow, has been sentenced to two years of labor. Eight Baptists arrested last June while operating a clandestine printing press have received sentences ranging from three to five years each, and the press has been confiscated. Keston College also reports sentences for five other believers.

One in every two refugees in the world today is African. This shift may come as a surprise to many who grew accustomed to associating “refugee” with Southeast Asian “boat people.” Poul Hartling, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, points out that Africa, with only 12 percent of the world’s population, has almost 50 percent of its refugees—some five million. Four out of five African refugees have found asylum in countries that are themselves among the least developed in the world. Host countries, says Hartling, have responded with traditional African hospitality. “The problem,” he says, “is that their hospitality is being offered from an empty table. Help from outside is crucial.”

An official Protestant delegation from China took part in an Asian Christian consultation in Hong Kong last month. It was the first such visit outside the People’s Republic since the Communist takeover 32 years ago. The delegation was headed by Bishop Ding Guanxuan (K. H. Ting), president of the China Christian Council and chairman of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (CT, Jan. 2, 1981, p. 46). Among Ding’s statements, as reported in the South China Morning Post:

Only a minority of Chinese are Communists and the majority are both patriotic and theistic. Even though currently unable to meet the demand, the TSPM will not accept help in making Bibles available. The movement’s long-term policy, he said, is to enable every Protestant to own a copy of the Bible, many of which were burned during the cultural revolution. Religious broadcasts into China not approved by the TSPM would be considered unfriendly.

Liberation theology is at issue in school’s year of evaluation.

President Carmelo Alvarez speaks almost proudly of 1981 as being “our year of evaluation.” At the invitation of the school’s board of directors, a seven-member team of theologians visited Latin America Biblical Seminary in San José, Costa Rica.

This commission, selected to represent a broad spectrum of national and theological backgrounds, launched a full inspection in a week’s time. They talked with three former presidents of the school, with faculty who have recently resigned, students, and current school administrators. They are studying the school’s curriculum and facilities.

Commission member Garth Rosell, academic dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, explained there is no accrediting agency in the Latin American world, such as the Association of Theological Schools. The seminary’s board of directors therefore “is very interested in input.”

Yet Rosell would be the first to admit the reasons for the study (the seminary avoids the term “investigation”) go far deeper. The school’s alleged overemphasis on so-called liberation theology has earned it sharp verbal attacks since the middle 1970s. Some observers, even former president Plutarco Bonilla (1975–78), question its academic credibility, as well as its educational slant. The school hit a financial crunch when many conservative churches withdrew their support.

When the commission releases its full report next month, the many nonbinding recommendations may appear uncomplimentary to the school. Commission head Cecilio Arrastía, a Hispanic programs official with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., acknowledged “there are problems … theological problems.”

Still, even many of the most severe critics assert their concern is to help the school, not hurt it. Established in 1923 by Latin America Mission founders Harry and Susan Strachan under the motto “For Christ and Latin America,” the interdenominational seminary (in Spanish, “Seminario Biblico Latinoamerica,” or SBL) for years held the reputation as providing the finest theological education for Latin American evangelicals. The school took the lead in providing pastoral training, which was taught by Latin Americans, and relevant to the Latin church and culture.

But in its creditable efforts to relate theology to the troubled Latin American society, the seminary apparently upset a majority of its conservative, Protestant constituency. These grassroots evangelicals feel the seminary traded its historic emphasis on evangelism and building up the local church for a left-wing, political one.

The seminary is small by North American standards—presently there are about 80 students in on-campus bachelor’s and licentiate (master’s) programs in theology, and another 100 or so in the “theological education at a distance” program. Yet its actual, and potential, influence is strong. Students come from practically all Latin American countries. The growing Latin American Protestant church needs trained leaders, and there are not all that many schools to choose from. If Latin America’s evangelical churches can’t send pastoral candidates to SBL, where can they send them?

The Central American Mission’s seminary in Guatemala City is highly regarded, although some Latin theologians regard it as too conservative and dispensationalist. The U.S. Southern Baptists have seminaries in Cali, Colombia, and Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Evangelical Alliance Mission and the Evangelical Free Church of America jointly operate one in Maracay, Venezuela. If there is a criticism of these, it is that too few nationals serve on the respective faculties. The interdenominational ISEDET in Buenos Aires has top-flight academicians, but most Latin conservatives would feel uncomfortable there. One evangelical called it “the Union Seminary of Latin America.” Good Baptist, but Portuguese-language, seminaries in Brazil are also cited.

But aside from these, many Latin evangelicals see only the separatist and conservative Bible institutes (many of these are tiny Pentecostal or fundamentalist schools) and liberal mainstream denominational schools. Theologian John Stam, who recently resigned from the SBL staff, sees a need for a good “third alternative,” somewhere between these conservative and liberal extremes. In his eyes, such a school would be “radical evangelical”—progressive in its approach to social issues, and evangelical in theology.

Whether SBL will assume a leading role remains a question mark. Conservative evangelicals right now are skeptical. (Latin Americans frequently use the term “evangelical” to describe any Protestant.) But many do feel something can be learned by studying events there, which highlight key trends in the developing Latin American theology. A central question is: Can the Latin church address crucial social issues—such as poverty and political unrest—and at the same time be biblically sound and evangelistically active?

Some missionaries and educators trace many of the school’s criticisms to North America evangelicals who do not really understand the Latin scene, and who air knee-jerk suspicions when something does not exactly fit their U.S.-formed concept of what a seminary should be and teach. Seminary officials frequently remind others that SBL is not a U.S.-owned or-operated school. It is owned and administered by an association of Latin American Christian leaders, and is responsible for its own financing and personnel.

Because many North Americans think the Latin America Mission in the U.S.A. somehow controls the seminary, LAM-USA officials have spent a lot of their time denying responsibility for what goes on there. While LAM-USA missionaries may serve on the school’s faculty, the seminary functions independently of the U.S.-based mission.

In 1971, the Latin America Mission was totally restructured and its many departments of ministry, including the seminary, became autonomous. Now, LAM-USA, LAM-Canada, and the seminary are among the some 25 separate entities that are members of the Community of Latin America Evangelical Ministries (CLAME).

Independence from U.S.-based controls meant development of programs and ideals not always in line with those with which U.S. missioners feel comfortable. In the case of SBL, U.S. missioners became increasingly unhappy with the school’s drift toward liberation theology. The seminary rumbled through some troubled times in the middle 1970s, with ideological conflicts and numerous faculty changes.

Developments to Watch in Today’s Latin Church

Several trends characterize today’s church in Latin America, according to CLAME general secretary and CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent Paul Pretiz of San José, Costa Rica:

• Continued growth of the charismatic movement, which has brought new vitality to the Roman Catholic church, and a crop of first-time Bible readers. Catholic charismatics often meet in house prayer groups, and, while many are rejected by the Catholic hierarchy, prefer keeping their Catholic identity rather than forming a Protestant one.

• Sprouting of the small, grassroots worship communities, or base communities, among Catholics. There are 150,000 to 200,000 of these (an estimated 100,000 in Brazil) in Latin America. The groups have grown spontaneously, without a linking network, and generally are composed of the poor, who are reading the Bible and seeing its social implications.

• Consolidation by the Catholic hierarchy, boosted by recent visits to Brazil and Mexico by the conservative Pope John Paul II. They are seeking to reaffirm traditional doctrine and bring offshoot groups “back into the fold.”

• New ecumenicity among Protestants. Certain key Latin evangelicals are establishing a continent-wide fraternal body, CONELA (Consultation of Evangelicals in Latin America). They see their group as the conservatives’ alternative to the fledgling Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) with its World Council of Churches ties. This group formed out of a meeting of 40 Latin Americans attending the 1980 Consultation on World Evangelization in Thailand. Executive secretary Marcelino Ortiz cited CONELA goals, including a transdenominational meeting in early 1982, an information network, and pastors’ retreats.

• Development by local congregations of new worship models that are non-Western, and fitted to the Latin context. Experiments in evangelistic programs and theological education by extension also characterize many Protestant groups.

Concerns refocused when LAM-USA decided 18 months ago no longer to endorse the seminary publicly. LAM-USA board initiated a year-long study in February 1979 to determine what should be the mission’s continuing relationship with SBL.

In the report, issued a year later, LAM-USA noted its freedom to declare any of its theological or ideological differences of conviction or emphasis with the seminary. The mission also said it would continue sponsoring missionaries on the faculty. Finally, LAM-USA declared it “may also choose not to promote the SBL and to exercise its own criteria as it continues to engage in the communication of Latin American realities.”

The mission communicated this report to certain key supporters and, as it has worked out in practice, said LAM-USA spokesman John Rasmussen, “we are no longer endorsing the seminary.” The mission no longer endorses the SBL in its publications, or raises funds for the school.

Another recent development involves the Association of Costa Rican Bible Churches, which is composed mostly of congregations started by LAM missionaries. The association is starting its own Bible school in order to provide an alternative for the majority of the association’s 56 churches who do not support the seminary, said association administrator and LAM-USA missionary Bill Brown.

Also, the resignation of Professor Stam shocked many observers, because Stam had identified so closely with the seminary’s push for a theological slant that more closely identified with the Latin American context.

Stam, a professor at the school for 24 years, emphasized in an interview that his resignation was not meant as a statement against the seminary’s theological stance. Rather, he wanted to devote more time to grassroots pastoral work in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, as well as teach religion at the National University in Heredia, Costa Rica.

However, he did admit his resignation was intended as an “alarm clock” for those who would allow the seminary to drift farther from its evangelical moorings.

He also noted questions about lifestyle, such as standards now allowing students at the seminary to smoke, even though many conservative Latin churches would never accept a pastor who smoked and feel this would be the “kiss of death” to a student’s ministry. Stam’s resignation is one of at least five by faculty members who left during the past year for a variety of reasons.

Richard Foulkes, who heads the seminary’s department of Bible and Christian thought, and his wife, Irene, Greek professor and director of the theological education “at a distance” program, are the last LAM-USA missionaries on contract with the seminary. LAM-USA associate Thomas Hanks teaches Old Testament there apart from his duties with a student ministry, but without a contract. He resigned from the faculty six years ago in disgust over a cutback in Bible courses, but stayed on, while working to strengthen and add to those that are offered. Mennonites Laverne and Harriett Rusch-man are the only other North Americans on a full-time staff of 14.

Richard Foulkes and Hanks, while they agree certain evangelical doctrines have been neglected at SBL, presently intend to stay at the seminary and see it through its crisis period. They praise the school’s efforts to relate to crucial social issues in Latin America. They would not agree with all the views of certain liberation theologians on the faculty, but affirm the professors are evangelicals.

One professor who left, Kenneth Mulholland, cautions North Americans against judging the school through their own filters. “This isn’t the old modernist controversy like we had in the U.S.,” he said.

Mulholland, who left SBL last August for Columbia (South Carolina) Graduate School of Bible and Missions, believes all staff members affirm “classical, evangelical theology,” and would not quarrel with such key doctrines as the Virgin Birth. In fact, SBL in 1974 approved a conservative faith statement, “Affirmation of Faith and Commitment,” for its faculty. But what sets certain Latin scholars apart from others, Mulholland says, is their areas of emphasis.

At the seminary right now, the main emphasis is social ethics, Mulholland believes. Problems come if an emphasis like this distorts biblical doctrines, such as the nature of man, he said.

Liberation theologians with a Marxist slant “view man as inherently good, and corrupted by social structures, while Christians view man as fallen, and with evil proceeding from the inside out. Structures only magnify that evil,” he noted.

He believes the seminary could “turn itself around” with renewed commitment to evangelism and the local church. “If those concerns came pressing in, with the school’s biblical evangelical heritage, it could regain the balance it has lost.”

Questions about SBL always gravitate back to the so-called liberation theology, since this is the subject on which many believe it has gone off the deep end.

Liberation theology works generally from identification with the poor, oppressed, and alleged victims of exploitative societies. Because the term means different things to different people, a better term is said to be “theologies of liberation.” Latin theologians often call it Latin American theology, calling it the first attempt since the early church to develop a systematic theology outside the European context.

Evangelicals rebut those liberation theologians who view Christ as a political messiah, and who use Marxist thought as the starting point for their ideology. Most cite as redeeming factors its emphasis on faith practice, and its push to better the plight of the poor.¹Protestant treatments of liberation theology are found in: J. Andrew Kirk’s Liberation Theology: An Evangelical View from the Third World (John Knox, 1980); Orlando Costas’s The Church and Its Mission: A Shattering Critique from Ihe Third World (Tyndale, 1975); Carl E. Annerding’s Evangelicals and Liberation (Baker, 1977); Robert McAfee Brown’s Theology in a New Key: Responding to Liberation Theologies (Westminster Press, 1978); chapters from Tensions in Contemporary Theology, edited by Stanley Gundry and Alan F. Johnson (Moody Press. 1979); and the W. Dayton Roberts article in ct. Oct. 19. 1979. “Where Has Liberation Theology Gone Wrong?”

Seminary professor Hanks, for instance, believes the emphasis on the poor is a key issue that North American evangelicals are ignoring. He says North Americans generally blame poverty on “underdevelopment,” or a person’s laziness or lack of education. However, he cites more than 120 biblical texts naming “oppression” as the cause of poverty. The church’s responsibility is locating those sources of oppression, and then denouncing them in the mode of the biblical prophets, he believes.

The central complaint against SBL has been its alleged overemphasis on the left-wing political aspects of liberation theology, and a weak and flawed theological perspective on the subject.

George Taylor, who left the seminary last December to accept a teaching post at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary near Chicago, says the seminary is right in teaching liberation theology. Such teaching is needed in the Third World because of its “identification with the poor,” he said. However, Taylor, a Panamanian who taught for 18 years at the seminary and was its interim president in 1974–75, adds that “maybe I was not in agreement with its heavy emphasis on politics.” He believes poverty must be addressed in the political arena, as well as the theological, but that the seminary now gives greater emphasis to the political aspect.

Former seminary president Bonilla criticized the trends of the seminary more blatantly. Bonilla, a native of the Canary Islands who resigned last year from the faculty but is teaching a preaching course there without a contract, says the faculty and students are wrapped up in “political sloganism.” The theological course work has been diluted so much that the school lacks academic respectability, he asserts.

Bonilla adds: “It seems to me that justification by faith is no longer one of the main themes at the seminary. I’m not saying the faculty don’t believe it, but they take for granted the theology and ignore it. The courses in theology are very weak.”

Foulkes sees his continued role at the seminary as “keeping the biblical content high.” He laments the loss of Stam, a skilled New Testament theologian, but he is optimistic about the skills of new faculty members brought in to fill recent vacancies. He relies on Hanks to provide expertise in the Old Testament courses. Hanks complains of a “brain drain” of Latin American scholars; some of the most talented Latin theologians accept teaching posts in the States, such as Taylor, and Orlando Costas (whose resignation from the seminary in the middle 1970s over the liberal drift created tensions that some seminary sources say are still felt).

Hanks and Foulkes both agree the seminary should attune students to the political realities of Latin America. Hanks did note problems can result if impressionable students get a one-sided view in the process. He describes a hypothetical SBL student as one who may be a new Christian and “may have read the Book of John and not much else.” The student may attend one class under an outspoken liberation theologian at SBL, and also classes at the University of Costa Rica (as many SBL students do) under a Marxist professor. With no counterbalancing explanations, before long the student “doesn’t know where he’s at,” Hanks notes.

SBL president Alvarez, from Puerto Rico and the Disciples of Christ, says, “We want to help students understand what is going on in their own countries,” adding that the seminary can’t tell anyone what to believe.

Alvarez, 33, a doctoral candidate in church history who has done graduate study in the U.S., criticizes North American Christians as “playing the church business and not taking seriously what it means to proclaim the kingdom.”

People close to the seminary cite the election of a successor to Alvarez—whose three-year term expires in November—as crucial to the seminary’s future, and are hoping for a conservative evangelical. Former president Bonilla said he was asked to seek the post but turned it down because the seminary faculty “don’t show a willingness to change.”

The seven-member commission’s report may provide direction to the seminary’s board. The team—not all members being conservative evangelicals by North American definition—has divided the work, each member focusing on a certain aspect of SBL. Besides Arrastia and Rosell, team members include Thomas Liggett, president of Christian Theological Seminary (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis; SBL alumni Julia Esquivel of Guatemala and Rodrigo Zapata of Ecuador (with HCJB in Quito); Aníbal Guzmán, a Bolivian Methodist; and Francis Ringer, of Lancaster (Pa.) Theological Seminary (United Church of Christ).

When the team reports back to the SBL board with its full report in late June, commission head Arrastia hopes the results will be given a good hearing. The idea was that the report be used for SBL’s long-range planning through the next 10 to 15 years.

Hanging in the balance, he says, is whether SBL “stays an evangelical seminary, or takes the full route of liberation theology.”

Guatemala

Guatemalan Pastors: Between A Rock And A Hard Place

The Guatemalan pastors interviewed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked that their names be withheld for their personal safety.

“We are trapped between right-wing and left-wing terrorists,” reported Guatemalan pastors recently. “Please ask Christians all over the world to pray for Guatemala, and for the believers here.”

Violence has stained this emerald green Central American republic many times in its 160-year history. But rarely did the violence become as savage and sustained as it has during the current right-left battle for domination. Up to 25 violent deaths are reported daily in the national press, and many citizens believe the toll may be greater.

Leaders of the Guatemalan evangelical church have tried to maintain a neutral position in the current political shooting match. But neither side seems content with the evangelicals’ neutrality.

“First the leftist guerrillas come and want us to give them food and information, or they ask to use our church buildings for political meetings,” said one pastor. “If we refuse, they accuse us of supporting the right-wing terrorists. Then the rightists come and ask us for information or want us to preach against the leftists. If we don’t cooperate with them, they accuse us of defending the leftist guerrillas.”

When a church leader does give in to the pressures, he is immediately marked by the other side for harassment, threatening letters and phone calls, or death. One informed source reported that three lay pastors were killed in Huehuetenango in late January. The same source also said that up to 10 local church leaders died violently during the first two months of 1981. Specific figures are hard to secure because some deaths have occurred in isolated indigenous areas, and local people are afraid to report the deaths because of possible reprisals.

A climate of violent revenge has moved into some sections of the country and is a factor in many killings. An assassin will eliminate a client’s personal enemy for as little as $50. Some pastors have received anonymous threatening letters, presumably from disgruntled church members, which alarm them and their families.

In other cases, right or left elements engage in “cleaning the record” operations. If any citizen has in the past belonged to or participated in political movements of either stripe, his adversaries may eliminate him for past actions, no matter what his current political attitude may be. Scores of Guatemalans have been shot in such “cleaning” operations. Church leaders who learn that their names are on a cleaning list will often leave the country hastily.

Rightist officials are attempting to bring evangelicals into government programs to reunite Guatemala’s people. There is, however, the fear that joining such a program may create a leftist backlash against the evangelical church.

Meanwhile, and in spite of the tension, churches are full. One pastor related, “We are seeing a harvest of conversions. The situation has awakened interest in the gospel, and people are coming to Christ.”

“Christ is the only solution for Guatemala,” he went on. “As people repent of their hate and fear, and are reconciled by the Lord, they become new creatures.”

Evangelist Luis Palau carried out a nationwide mass media crusade in Guatemala during April, using radio, television, newspapers, and thousands of specially prepared booklets.