How can such a small country have such immense problems? That is a question of observers who are trying to understand the complex situation in El Salvador. The Central American nation of 4.5 million has experienced tremendous upheaval and no little bloodletting in recent months.

There are civilian and military leaders struggling for control within the current government, leftist elements that would like to overthrow that government, and appeals being made from both sides—the leftists and the government—for popular support. Sadly, many of the people they would profess to help are being killed.

U.S. officials estimate 10,000 people were killed last year, most of them by members of that nation’s security forces acting on behalf of rightists. People also are victimized by violence from guerrillas. The result is that literally thousands of Salvadorians are fleeing the country, or living there in fear (see below).

But as is often the case in troubled nations, the Christian church has grown. The small Protestant population, about 150,000 or 3 percent, is having an impact on the society—even on some of its leaders.

At least three of the four members of the ruling civilian-military junta have had Bible study and prayer with their staffs. Junta president José Duarte, a graduate of Notre Dame University and close friend of its president, Theodore M. Hesburgh, and Col. Jaime Gutiérrez, junta vice-president and representative of the military, reportedly have made evangelical professions of faith. Duarte and José Morales Ehrlich, a liberal Christian Democrat who heads the country’s agrarian reform programs, have met on occasion with Assemblies of God and independent Baptist missionaries. (Little publicized is the report that former president Romero and his wife made professions of faith with evangelical pastors just prior to their ouster from the country.)

Current Protestant growth indicates something of a revival. For instance, churches affiliated with Central American Mission (now CAM International) boast of a 30 percent growth rate during the past year, compared to a 4 percent increase the year before.

Converts are coming from all levels of society. One CAM pastor describes the guerrilla who entered his office holding a beat-up tract he had been reading. The man said, “I’ve been in the field for eight months, and I have no peace in my heart. I would like to know more about Jesus Christ.” A number of army officers and soldiers also reportedly have made professions of faith and been baptized in churches in the capital city.

Pentecostal churches probably make the biggest impact in El Salvador, if for no other reason than numbers. The Assemblies of God has an estimated 75,000 members, or half the Protestant population. Other large Protestant groupings include independent Baptists, United Pentecostals, Apostolic Pentecostals, and the CAM churches. All are evangelical and conservative.

Other signs that the Salvadorian church is surviving—even thriving—despite the nation’s turmoil:

• An especially active San Salvador Baptist church reports a membership of 200 university students and over 100 professionals, along with a strong evangelistic outreach.

• More than 169,000 people were contacted, and 60,000 professions of faith made during last year’s Here’s Life program of Campus Crusade. That campaign continues, with decisions reported weekly.

• Assemblies of God evangelist Jorge Raschke from Puerto Rico attracted more than 80,000 people to the national stadium in San Salvador last November. In his April rally in Santa Ana, more than 70,000 people came. Raschke mixed fervent evangelism with a healing ministry, and numerous healings were noted—even reportedly documented cases of filling of teeth with silver.

• Christian literature is booming. An Assemblies of God literature missionary says sales are up 600 percent over last year. The Bible Society sells Bibles as fast as it can stock them.

• Churches are getting involved in education. The Assemblies of God have created a school system in San Salvador, which enrolls more than 5,000 children, mostly from poor homes. The Baptists and CAM churches also have school systems, which enroll some 15,000 to 20,000 additional students.

• An evangelical university of El Salvador is in formation and now ready to open its doors. The faculty includes Christian doctors, engineers, agronomists, and other professionals who will teach courses in their specialities. The government and general public greeted the university beginnings with enthusiasm.

Because of the violence and social upheaval, the churches have entered into relief activities and are looked to for more leadership in this area. The interdenominational group CESAD (Evangelical Salvadorian Committee for Relief and Development) was organized about two years ago to foster rural and agricultural projects, but the worsening situation forced it into mostly refugee work.

CESAD has sought to aid the more than 300,000 people that have been temporarily displaced at one time or another by the fighting. The committee provides food, clothing, medicines, and spiritual counsel. Its policy is to help anyone who does not bear arms.

In its struggle to find enough funds to carry out its responsibility, CESAD has obtained assistance from several U.S. missions, including the Christian Reformed church, the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, the Missouri Synod Lutherans, the Mennonite Central Committee, and World Vision.

CESAD was originally slated to receive funds from Church World Service ($79,000 during this year, according to the correspondence CESAD has in its files). CESAD was cut off from assistance by the National Council of Churches agency when (according to informed sources) it refused to become politically active against the present government.

The North American missionary presence has dropped more than 75 percent during the past year in El Salvador. The Assemblies of God, American Baptists, Christian Reformed, and many independent missionaries have been withdrawn. Interviews with these missionaries showed that few left voluntarily, but did so because mission boards under pressure from their constituencies ordered them to return home.

Some ministries have suffered or stopped because of the violence. An Assemblies of God pastor who had a successful farm cooperative was killed by Marxists who apparently felt he undercut their support among the people. Two young Pentecostal evangelists carrying electric megaphones were mistakenly shot by police who thought they were political terrorists. A Campus Crusade volunteer worker disappeared during an evangelistic campaign in a village. A Baptist pastor and three youths were kidnapped by a leftist group. Other pastors report visits from leftist organizers who demand they join up or be killed.

Several large evangelical churches in San Salvador have been forced by leftist elements to give up their morning offerings on threat of their buildings being burned. Whole congregations have fled the villages of heaviest fighting and have relocated elsewhere. Sources indicate that a few pastors and lay people (primarily from the American Baptist-related church) have been arrested or forced to flee the country by the government because of alleged involvement with the Marxists. Overall, most evangelical churches are reluctant to support the left since a disciplined core of Marxists controls it.

Generally, the political wranglings are too complex even for seasoned observers to understand. What the thousands of poor campesinos (or farm laborers) do know is violence and unrest; the churches are finding out that many would rather know Christ. Under difficult conditions, the churches are being called on to provide a ministry for both the physical and the spiritual needs.

Refugess

The Salvadorians’ Agony Spills Over Into Honduras

The refugee situation on the Honduras border was escalating daily last month as thousands of Salvadorians continued to flee their country. In the wake of the ongoing political and military conflict in El Salvador, some 40,000 peasants and day laborers have already entered Honduras and are scattered along the border in scanty camps and numerous villages.

In an effort to assess the needs of the refugees, the World Relief Corporation of the National Association of Evangelicals visited the border area with an inspection team headed by Jerry Ballard, executive director. Ministers of the Honduran government invited World Relief’s reactions and suggestions for solving the growing refugee crisis.

On April 2, the inspection team entered the border town of Colomoncagua. Nearby, 300 refugees had just arrived from El Salvador. Fleeing their country by night, these refugees traveled as many as 21 days to reach safety. In personal interviews, the refugees reported that some of their homes and possessions were burned and entire families caught in mortar attacks. Food was scarce and some people had not eaten for three days.

One father, who was holding his dead five-month-old baby in the middle of the huddled group of refugees, represented the countless personal tragedies. In contrast to the grieving father was a mother who had given birth to a child the night before, just 200 feet inside the Honduran border.

Andy Bishop, World Relief overseas ministry official, said at the border. “Prompt recognition of the problem and action by the Honduran government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and voluntary agencies have averted a disaster.”

U.S. officials estimate there are 75,000 to 80,000 refugees living in various camps inside El Salvador. These are operated by the government, the Red Cross, and the Catholic church. United Nations official Ingemar Cederberg told a reporter that the UN is aware of the presence of about 50,000 Salvadorian refugees in various parts of Central America, but that there could be three times that many.

MARY WHITMER

The healthy practice of communal discipline can reestablish our churches as holy refuges from the world.

Consider the term, “church discipline.” For many evangelical Christians, these words cast nightmarish images on the back of the mind—images of excommunication, inquisition, and witch-hunting. For others, it is a loving, positive term, a reminder of a time when they were brought back into the fold after they had been involved in sinful practice. For still others, it is a foreign term; it is something they have never encountered in a church.

Whatever pictures the expression calls up, Scripture makes it clear that church discipline exercised under the leadership of godly pastors, elders, and church members is a mark of a God-glorifying fellowship of believers (2 Cor. 5; Gal. 5:1–2).

Scripture clearly delineates the process of church discipline in other passages: Matthew 18:15–17; Matthew 5:23–26; James 5:19–20; and 2 Thessalonians 3:14–15. The steps of discipline might be summarized as follows:

If a Christian sins, he is to be restored through a personal confrontation by one who is spiritually mature. If no change results, two or three others are to accompany the original spokesman and again confront him. If there is still no change, the matter, along with the errant one, is to be brought before the church, and the offender is to be reprimanded publicly. If the problem persists, the church is to regard the sinner as a Gentile and tax gatherer.

Simple and clear as this process is, many Christians find it difficult. The question is, Why? Furthermore, what are the implications of the reasons they find it difficult? And finally, what actions can church members and leaders take to begin making the process of discipline a reality in the local church?

Through interviewing several prominent pastors and church leaders, I have discovered five general problems that have made discipline cumbersome. By identifying these, perhaps we can gain insight into how to change the situation.

1. People wonder whether discipline will do any good. If someone confronts another about a spiritual problem and the latter doesn’t like it, he can always leave the church and go elsewhere. There is often little communication between churches in the average community, and the erring Christian thus can easily hide his secret. Haddon Robinson, president of Denver Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, points out that, “Too often now when people join a church, they do so as consumers. If they like the product, they stay. If they do not, they leave. They can no more imagine a church disciplining them than they could a store that sells goods disciplining them. It is not the place of the seller to discipline the consumer. In our churches we have a consumer mentality.” The result is that confrontation often carries little clout except perhaps to drive people away.

2. No one is clear about what sins we are to discipline. One pastor related to me the story of an elder who left his wife and children for a divorced woman. When the pastor confronted the man about the situation and told him divorce was sin, the man disagreed and said, “I really believe this is God’s will.” (Because of the sensitiveness of many of the illustrations given here, most will remain anonymous, including those that are positive.)

In today’s church, sin is often a hazy issue. In some cases, it has been reduced to drinking, smoking, adultery, dancing, and swearing. On the other hand, if Christians began cracking down on each other for any and every fault listed in Scripture, the result might be constant nit-picking and fault finding rather than the building up of one another in the faith. Thus, it is difficult to find the middle ground where action against a sin is clearly required—that is, except in extreme cases.

3. People fear for the outcome. Many Christians have been burned when they offered constructive criticism by way of admonishment and thus they recoil from ever trying it again. Often there are hard feelings, grudges, and the taking of sides, resulting in splits and power plays. It’s just not worth it, because so much trouble inevitably results. John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, wrote me, “There is a fear of offending people and driving them away.… People are afraid that it will create problems and scare people off.” People naturally shy away from creating situations when they recall greater problems have resulted in the past.

4. People associate discipline with excommunication, church courts, and intolerance. For this reason we reject the idea of putting someone through disciplinary circumstances for a minor fault. We’ve all seen pictures of the Salem witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, and more recently, the Iranian theocratic purges. When the church begins to judge people and starts legislating all kinds of laws and regulations, we believe it is off limits, becoming too political and legalistic.

5. People have few models of positive discipline to reflect on and do not know how to“speak the truth in love,” or “admonish the unruly,” or “restore those caught in a fault.” An old Christian aphorism states, “The average church takes on the personality of its pastor and leadership.” If the leaders are evangelists, the church often becomes highly evangelistic. Where leaders concentrate on “body life,” this is the practice. But many of the pastors interviewed felt that because of the other problems mentioned, and the lack of models, discipline is often regarded as just too touchy to become a consistent practice.

What are the implications of this? What are we teaching or not teaching that has caused these departures from Scripture?

First of all, the practice of discipline is probably not being sufficiently taught and applied in daily life by church leaders. That is most obvious. But second, many of us may have unwittingly communicated the notion that the preaching of the Word of God is more an intellectual exercise than a guide for living righteously and justly in the world. We have been so caught up in the battle for the Bible that we have lost the battle to obey the Bible. Third, success through numbers and building a “big” church may be overshadowing the need to build a pure church. Fourth, sin is often regarded as a private matter rather than a matter of the body; American individualism may be at fault. Finally, there is often no strong sense of responsibility to one another as part of Christ’s body.

In many respects, this is a uniquely American problem. Recent reports from churches all over the world and behind the Iron Curtain tell us that especially in areas of heavy persecution there is much discipline going on. Whether they like it or not, persecuted Christians take purity very seriously, and their commitment is very high. Perhaps it is too easy to be a Christian in America.

Yet, none of these problems indicates that the situation is hopeless. All of the pastors with whom I spoke told me that disciplinary procedures from lay to leadership levels are being used with success and are even creating a holy, heathful attitude in the local church. There are at least five practices in these churches that create a healthy, disciplinary environment. These practices indicate the direction other churches need to go to establish proper discipline within their bodies.

First, discipline is successful when people have a clear understanding of what sin is, and a love for holiness, according to such passages as Psalm 5:4–6 and 1 Peter 1:13–16. The problem cited earlier was that few people have a clear idea of what sins are to be disciplined. In response to this question, Dave Krueger, recently pastor of a church in Florida and now a staff member with Search Ministries, a discipleship organization in the U.S., cited 1 Peter 4:8, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” He said, “Loving people, moved by a spirit of forgiveness, do not focus on every little sin. If they perceive a persistent pattern of sinful behavior over a period of time, then they act according to Matthew 8:15–17. The first time they see it, they don’t confront it.” Krueger referred here to less extreme sins than, say, adultery, witchcraft, and drunkenness.

Krueger cultivated this mentality in his church through making God’s attitude toward sin clear (he hates it, judges it, and forgives it) and through practicing body life, whereby people were taught to go to one another if they had disputes, grievances, and errors. John MacArthur told me that in many cases, because his congregation has been taught God’s view of sin, many were restored in the first step of the disciplinary process: personal admonishing and confrontation. Such sins as comtemplating remarriage on unscriptural terms, separating or contemplating divorce, cheating in business, deception, taking advantage of others, slothfulness, and perversion all were dealt with by spiritual members of the congregation who spotted the sin, confronted the sinner, and helped him toward change and restoration.

The question is often asked, What sins are sufficient reasons to break fellowship with a believer? It should be pointed out, first, that the person involved in the sin must be a professing Christian. We can’t break fellowship with someone who does not even profess to be in the fellowship. Second, the lists of sins in Galatians 5:19–21; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Mark 7:21, and 2 Timothy 3:2–7 are a starting point. However, fellowship is not broken until it has been established that the sinner has finally resisted all attempts to effect change according to Matthew 18:15–17. That includes pledges of support in the effort to overcome the sin, as well as encouragement and help along the way. Most of those pastors interviewed for this article indicated that only when a Christian continues in his sin, without any confrontation by his brothers, does it get out of control. When there is an effort made to effect change immediately after the sin comes to light, rarely is discipline by disfellowshipping necessary.

There is a further issue: What sins prohibit Christians from holding office in the church? Considering that Christ forgives all sin, should the church prohibit someone from serving in the church because of a past, forgiven sin? Some churches disqualify divorced persons. Such disqualification is not clearly mandated by Scripture, but it would take an additional article to outline the problems involved. Ultimately, if a person is walking with Christ and has demonstrated maturity, and meets the requirements of 1 Timothy 3 and other related passages, then there is no past sin that should bar him or her from office. If, however, the past sin has continuing ramifications, as in the case of a man who can’t control his family, then this should be considered in light of the leadership passages.

Second, discipline is successful when membership in a church is regarded as a responsibility to love, admonish, encourage, and build up one another (Rom. 12:4–5). One pastor experienced the following situation:

A couple had been members of the church for several years, were involved in ministry, and seemed to be growing. Then it was rumored that the wife was seeing another man. No one confronted her. Two years later, when it began to be rumored that a divorce was imminent, the pastor confronted the woman, telling her she would be taken off the church’s rolls if she went through with the divorce. The woman was understandably upset. She complained that during the two years of the problem, no one had come to her. Yet now the pastor tells her the guillotine is about to fall. The situation could have deteriorated from there, but the pastor reacted with godly integrity. He apologized to the woman for not providing the proper spiritual counsel and support, and he committed himself to helping the couple in every possible way. While the situation is still bad, there has been no divorce. But the change in the pastor and the results in the congregation have been positive. He has been teaching the biblical concepts of confrontation and discipline, and many in his church are beginning to practice them on every level.

Another pastor experienced a situation in which an alcoholic woman was sinking deeper and deeper into her problem with no hope for change. When he and several godly men in the church got involved, the woman began to respond. Through the work of Alcoholics Anonymous and those men, the woman has dried out and is growing in faith. In membership classes, this pastor emphasizes responsibility to one another, and says he sees results every week.

Third, discipline is successful in churches where believers practice the confession of sin to one another on the personal, small group, and sometimes corporate levels (James 5:16). In one church, an elder was involved in some clandestine business practices. The pastor became aware of this, and confronted the elder. The man was repentant but did not honestly know what to do. He was brought before the elder board, which advised him to take a leave of absence until the situation was worked through and corrected; when he had demonstrated a clearly repentant spirit through change he would be restored as an elder. He counseled with the pastor and with others. His attitude was most positive, and he quickly cleaned up his sinful business situation. Then he approached the pastor and asked for some form of church service—anything, even janitorial. Previously, he had been a major teacher in the church, but there still remained a problem. The whole church knew of his sin, but not necessarily of his repentance. What was to be done? The man conferred again with the pastor and together they decided a public confession was necessary. He made his confession and it was followed by worship and prayer. The pastor told me that this elder’s actions built up the church and resulted in growth, both spiritually and otherwise.

In one United Presbyterian church, the confession of sin is practiced as a regular part of prayer in small groups. Often, the group’s advice, forgiveness, support, and sense of responsibility for the sinner’s growth results in uplift for both the group and the erring one.

Pastor Thomas Graham of Aisquith Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, preaches the practice of discipline and confession and has noted an influence even on the youth. In one case, a teen-aged girl was teasingly confronted by a leader about a small fault. She asked, “Am I forgiven?” The leader replied, “Sure.” Then she said, “Then will you forget about it and not talk about it anymore?” That teen had caught a glimpse of the freedom of forgiveness and, though the example may seem trivial, she demonstrated an understanding of real forgiveness after confession, an understanding she could only have gotten through seeing it exemplified in her parents, friends, and leaders.

Fourth, discipline is successful when people are taught how to admonish one another, to speak the truth in love, and to confront each other about sin (1 Thess. 5:12–15). Pastors who have taught the process note that only good has resulted for their churches, even when erring members have rejected the grievance and left. John MacArthur told me, “It seems to us that many, if not most of those who respond to the admonition by repenting become better, stronger, and more faithful Christians because of the experience.”

In Peninsula Bible Church, Palo Alto, California, where its pastor, Ray Stedman, is noted for his teachings on “body life,” the practice of admonishing one another and of church discipline is taught and applied. In one case, a homosexual was confronted about his problem. The church leaders went through the whole process of discipline without immediate results and the man was finally regarded as a non-Christian (which Stedman believes is the biblical admonition, not excommunication). Five years later, the homosexual repented and wrote a letter to the church acknowledging his sin and affirming his recommitment. The man wrote, “It is impossible for me to retrace my footsteps and right every wrong; however, I welcome the opportunity to meet and pray with any individuals who have something against me that needs resolution. I am looking and waiting for the further grace and mercy of God in this matter. What you have bound on earth has been bound in heaven, and I now know your actions were done in love for my own good and that of the body of Christ.” This is healing discipline.

It might be asked, What sins should a believer confront another about? Paul’s statement in Galatians 6:1, “To be caught in a fault,” actually covers all overt sins. In effect, there is no sin that we should consider out of bounds or beyond our spiritual maturity to admonish a brother about. What is out of bounds, though, is for a sinning Christian to confront another sinning Christian. Paul specifically says, “Let he that is spiritual restore …” His restriction is not on the kind of sin, but on the qualities of the confronter: he must be pure and upright.

Fifth and last, discipline is successful when there are follow-up and support for those who have sinned. In many of the cases cited, the disciplinary procedure was not simply a confrontation situation, but also a restoration process in which the sinner was helped through counsel and support to overcome his problem. Thomas Graham has even set up in his church a “nouthetic counseling center” expressly to help those who are caught in faults and need biblical advice to resolve their problems. He has personally seen many positive results from the work.

In light of all these principles, some action must be taken on the part of church leaders, pastors, and members. There are several efforts we can make to create a healthy church discipline environment and so restore purity and holiness to our churches. First, study Scripture to gain God’s view of sin and what he regards as sin, and inculcate it into your outlook on life. Second, recognize that you have a grave responsibility to the body of Christ and that you are called to admonish those who sin, and then to support them. Third, begin by being open yourself with your brothers and sisters in personal confession of sin, seeking their counsel and support. Fourth, study the pertinent passages on discipline (listed earlier) and begin to practice it on a personal level. Finally, never merely admonish someone; always assure individuals of your love and your help through the repentance process.

Practicing these principles as a way of life could break the power of the flesh over some in our churches, and make the churches more habitable, functional, and comfortable refuges from the world.

Wedding Dress

“… to him that worketh not, but believeth …”

You have your work clothes on, my Dear,

That simply will not do!

The Wedding’s near. Please will you wear

The garments bought for you!

(Romans 4:5)

Jane W. Lauber

Will man acknowledge who he is before he is able to alter what he should become?

Carrying with it both risk and benefit, the genetic age is upon us, and one thing is sure—“the future ain’t what it used to be!”

Arthur Kornberg, professor of biochemistry at Stanford University, says of recent advances, “We are on the verge of a revolution in the chemical basis of medicine that is as profound as the revolutionary developments in physics and chemistry early in this century that gave us quantum mechanics and a new understanding of the atom and its arrangements.

“We have already learned how to take apart and rearrange DNA—deoxyribonucleic acid—in which the chemistry of heredity is spelled out. As a result it’s now very simple to create new genetic arrangements, to make new chromosomes and new species.

“In many respcts, these discoveries will change the basis of modern medicine, much as antibiotics did several decades ago.” Perhaps, for instance, within the next two decades a chemical analysis of the brain will provide the first clear explanation of the broad scope of human emotions—a launching pad to the core of consciousness and thought, and their relation to brain structure and function.

We have reached an intersection in human destiny that rattles our complacency and asks, “Where are we going and do we really want to get there?”

Robert Sinsheimer of the University of California, Santa Cruz, notes that today is a time of “intense self-doubt, corroding confidence, and a crippling resolve; a time of troubled present and ominous future.… Hence, it is not surprising that so great a triumph as man’s discovery of the molecular basis of inheritance should provoke fear instead of joy, breed suspicion instead of zest, and spawn the troubled anguish of indecision instead of the proud relief of understanding.”

Science bristles at any interference with its right to freedom of inquiry. It is a camp divided; some say, “It’s our job to do the research, and society’s job to cope with what we do.” But others admit the wake of hazard left by the course of nuclear fission, and, like Alvin Toffler, caution, “If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future we shall be compelled to endure it. And that could be worse.”

We are developing ways to manipulate the genetic programming of the very structure of life. These methods hold promise for what geneticists call “an escape from the tyranny of inheritance.” This is good news for eliminating genetically based diseases. But, we ask, At what price? A society parented in a laboratory, controlled by scientists, robbed of humanity?

In our society, we develop our ethics by gathering information, discussing it publicly, deciding and acting individually, and, in time, by arriving at a consensus of what appears to be good for mankind. Our personal and social ethical codes are authorized by common consent, then implemented through legislation.

As push comes to shove, self-interest groups are jockeying for position to influence the age. It is imperative that we examine the issues and respond from a biblical understanding of the sanctity of God’s gift of life.

Creating To Specification

The issue of manipulating reproduction triggered public concern with the birth in 1978 in Oldham, England, of Louise Brown, the first baby conceived in vitro (in a test tube). Since that time, Dr. Mukherjec of Calcutta, India, has safely delivered a child fertilized from a frozen embryo, a technique that ushers in the potential of selective breeding from life placed “on hold.” Commercial exploitation of what is now being called the ultimate consumer trip has already been established through corporations such as IDANT in New York. It pays $20 for each “acceptable” ejaculate from some 60 carefully selected regular depositors to its sperm bank. The frozen sperm units are then sold for $35 to subscribing doctors.

Gemetrics in Chicago offers gender selection through technologies capable of separating X chromosome- and Y chromosome-carrying sperm (male sperm swim faster, making separation easier) and has successfully engineered 10 full-term births, 7 boys and 3 girls.

The surrogate mother (advertised as womb for rent), receives a fee of between $10,000 and $20,000 per term. Dr. Richard Levine, a Louisville, Kentucky, physician, has 25 women under contract as surrogates. Five pregnancies are under way and he anticipates 100 or more babies delivered through his service by the end of 1981. The program hit a snag in January, however, when Attorney General Steven L. Beshear filed for a declaratory judgment on the ground that this violates the Kentucky adoption statutes. In Doe v. Kelley, the Michigan lower court has said surrogate mothering is illegal because a mother may not be paid money for giving up her right to her own natural child. Children may not be sold in Michigan.

Contracts covering parents and surrogate mothers have brought a new dimension into biolaw. Most states prohibit an exchange of money as payment for adopting children. Lawyers and jurists are now considering whether surrogate services violate statutes prohibiting prostitution. Possible arguments charging discrimination may be sounded if a man is permitted to sell his sperm, but a woman is not permitted to rent her womb!

The good news that parents desperate for a child of their own may get one by reproductive manipulation, must be balanced against the potential bad news.

Applications are now being sent to single men and women for these reproductive consumer services—launching yet another assault on the already shaky traditional family. Will in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, and surrogate wombs for rent be available to single people? Will they be extended to the homosexual? Will laboratory-controlled bioparenting produce a quasi-orphaned society?

Science will reach the ultimate in reproductive manipulation when in vitro fertilization extends to incubation in an artificial womb for full-term laboratory delivery. Scientists have anticipated this technology for the very near future and have already achieved it in part by sustaining premature babies with increasing success—at Children’s Hospital, San Diego, one has been delivered 23 weeks from conception, weighing only one pound one ounce.

There is enormous appeal in the right of every child to be born free of genetic defects, and bioengineered to be the most productive human possible. But what are we to do with the substandard embryo, and who is qualified to decide the acceptable standards? Screening through amniocentesis, ultrasound scanning, and fetos-copy provides options that further complicate the already explosive issue of abortion.

Controversial theologian Joseph Fletcher even claims, “To deliberately and knowingly bring a diseased or defective child into the world injures society, very probably injures the family, and certainly injures the individual who is born in that condition.”

In 1979, a New Jersey court ruled that even though impaired (in this case, with Down’s Syndrome), life was more valuable than no life at all. It observed that the ability to “love and be loved and to experience happiness and pleasure—emotions which are truly the essence of life,” was more important than the suffering endured.

But on the opposite side, in a June 1980 decision involving Tay-Sachs disease, Judge Bernard Jefferson of the California Court of Appeals affirmed the “unbirthright” of a child when he ruled that not only parents, but possibly even a physician and laboratory, could be sued for negligently not having aborted the fetus.

Dr. Jokichi Takamine, president of the Alcoholism Council of Southern California, says research shows that genetics plays a classic role in predisposition toward alcoholism (10 to 20 percent on the mother’s side; 25 to 55 percent on the father’s side). Since alcoholism is a major sociological problem, this poses the serious question of whether genetic abortion will be called for on such frivolous grounds as predisposition toward alcoholism. Abortion for reasons of depression or gender might be next.

Does the fetus have the right, independent of society or even of its own parents, to be born? Such a question will generate strands in a tangled web that will keep courtrooms tied up in legal debate over many years.

Statistics on longevity show that the number of people living to reach 100 years or over has increased 43 percent in the last five years.

Biomedicine has given us artificial corneas and lenses, artificial intestines, and synthetic joints and limbs. At the University of Southern California, research continues toward developing an artificial pancreas—a device that will monitor the level of blood sugar in the body and, when necessary, automatically dispense corrective doses of insulin.

A nuclear-powered heart that will run continuously and automatically far longer than the average human lifespan is being tested in animals. Scientists at the University of Utah have produced an artificial kidney, to be carried in a backpack. Miniaturization will make it possible to implant surgically an electrodialysis unit. Synthetic blood is being studied, not to substitute completely for blood, but to augment massive transfusions in open-heart surgery and total blood recirculation.

Biochemists at George Washington University think that one day we will be able to regenerate arms and legs; they are encouraged in this by the chemical combination present in children (but lacking in adults) that permits spontaneous regrowth of fingertips. Studies in Philadelphia bring the possibility of regrowing damaged organs through cloning. One scientist at the Wistar Institute introduced hydrocortisone into the culture of “old” human cells, giving them the thrust to continue “reproducing.” Scientists may refine and expand this technology to induce the regeneration of organs.

Studies at Cal Tech and laboratories around the country are pushing hard toward a method of shutting off the body’s aging process. Once the genetic time clock is found, researchers can regulate it.

With the millions of possibilities from recombinant DNA and genetic surgery, scientists anticipate the eventual control of genetically based diseases. This alone might extend life to a length reminiscent of the patriarchs! Some futurists are even convinced that we are approaching what they call an “Impending Society of Immortals.”

Behavior Modification

Neurobiologists are discovering that memory, concentration, fear, aggression, joy, love, peace, and a long list of other human functions and emotions are directly linked to chemical and electrical transmitters in the brain. A few whiffs of vasopressin can stimulate memory in cases of amnesia and senility. Lithium is aiding the successful treatment of mental disorders. At Stanford, researchers have found that naloxone, a chemical known to block the action of endorphins in the brain, has brought relief to severely impaired schizophrenics who have auditory hallucinations.

Others, in test runs, are successfully stimulating the brain electronically to ease chronic pain, give back the use of paralyzed limbs, and, in some cases, to modify behavior.

All this is good news, but we may be given pause on learning that over one million school children in the United States are now on some type of drug that modifies behavior for the purpose of improving their function, both in and out of the classroom. Ritalin and Dexedrine arc those drugs most commonly used.

Research at the Tulane University School of Medicine shows that students injected with ACTH (adrenocorticotrophic hormone) and MSH (melanocyte-stimulating hormone) were better able to spend longer and more effective periods in concentrating on their studies and also to remember geometrical figures that were flashed before them.

Since calculators, computers, videotapes, and an increasing number of “external” aids are an acceptable part of the educational process, proponents of gene therapy ask why we should not program “internal” biochemical and biogenetic change for future generations. To a school system plagued with violence and deteriorating academic achievement, control through behavior modification and gene therapy is tempting. The great leap forward in scientific discovery has awakened public response. That we may eliminate the problems of retarded children and schizophrenics, empty our mental hospitals through genetic and chemical processes, and wipe out sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, Gauche’s, and other genetic diseases to free our children from “the chromosomal lottery,” is all good news. But again, we ask ourselves, At what price?

Biohazard

How does scientific freedom intersect with social responsibility? A decade ago, international experts gathered together at a symposium in New York to consider “Ethical Issues in Human Genetics.”

At that time, Robert Sinsheimer of Cal Tech (he is now chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz) was a powerful voice of caution with his penetrating statements. “For what purpose,” he asked, “should we alter our genes? To whom should we give this power? To those who have already perverted physics into atomic weapons, chemistry into poison gas, or electronics into guided missiles? If we make men gods, are they to be gods of war?”

He further declared, “One of the greatest threats to the rational development of genetic modification will appear if it should become captive to irrational nationalist purposes. For this reason I think it is imperative that we begin now to establish international cooperation in, and regulation of, this entire enterprise.”

In June 1980, by a slim 5-to-4 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court applied the patent law written by Thomas Jefferson in 1793 to new forms of life created in the laboratory—living organisms. (The generally accepted definition of “living” is that a substance be capable of reproducing, a process such as occurs in cell division.)

The Supreme Court deliberately chose not to address what one might regard as the deeper issues, either of philosophy, or ethics, or biological hazard. In their opinion, that was not their job (but rather, the responsibility of Congress). Their job was simply to decide whether or not, under the terms of the patent laws of 1793 and subsequent modifications, living organisms were or were not included. They decided by a margin of one vote that they were included and could be patented.

In an interview with Dr. Sinsheimer, I asked, “Is this going to head us into a commercial exploitation of certain genetic consumer items?” He replied, “Sure—no question about it!” Such commercial development of biotechnology could well limit free exchange of information at the level of laboratory research.

On the critical subject of risk, or “biohazard,” Sinsheimer warned of advertently or inadvertently creating something we do not want: “Dangerous organisms already exist, but that doesn’t mean one couldn’t add new ones, or one that had particularly noxious qualities. I don’t think it’s likely, but it is possible.”

By its guidelines, the National Institutes of Health still forbids many experiments as too dangerous. This raises an old paradox: “If the research is safe, why will science agree to restrictions?” and, “If science agrees to restrictions, how can it claim the research is safe?”

In August 1980, the news broke that Ian Kennedy, a virologist at the University of California, San Diego, studying the sindbis virus, had cloned a rare African forest virus, semliki, which had a higher risk classification and was not approved for cloning under NIH safety guidelines. This was believed to be the first such violation of the federal government’s regulations on cloning and recombinant DNA. The university’s biosafety committee put the cloned material in a special “containment” freezer and launched an investigation. Kennedy has vacated his position.

Sinsheimer commented, “This illustrates one of the concerns people have had—that scientists do make mistakes, and accidents do happen. You don’t always accomplish what you set out to accomplish. That’s why some of us felt that’s a reason for maintaining more stringent guidelines. This is an illustration that all procedures are fallible.”

In waving the flag of caution, Sinsheimer is joined by many other internationally respected scientists. In a letter to Science magazine titled “The Dangers of Genetic Meddling,” Erwin Chargaff of Columbia University says, “You can stop splitting the atom; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs, but you cannot recall a new form of life! Once you have constructed a viable E. coli cell carrying a plasmid DNA into which a piece of eukaryotic DNA has been spliced, it will survive you, and your children, and your children’s children.… The world is given to us on loan. We come and we go; and after a time we leave earth and air and water to others who come after us. My generation, or perhaps the one preceding mine, has been the first to engage, under the leadership of the exact sciences, in a destructive colonial war against nature. The future will curse us for it.”

On the other hand, Arthur Kornberg calls for a balanced response: “Any knowledge can be misapplied. Whether scientists engage in improper activity will ultimately depend on the ethics and morality of the community. But if you operate in a climate of fear in which you see only the unfortunate and evil developments, then you simply can’t make any progress.”

Christian Perspective

Some knowledge accumulates faster than the wisdom to manage it. Some have defined this as “dangerous knowledge.” Looking at some recent discoveries, we are tempted to exclaim, “We ain’t wise enough to be this smart!”

A Christian response to the good news/bad news on the biogenetic manipulation of life comes from Lewis Smedes, professor of ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California:

“Christians are given two ingredients that exist in tension. One of them is our belief in the supremacy of a sovereign God. He is a God who superintends life. But he superintends it in a way that is collaborative with human agencies. He even does this to the point of working out his divine providence through such radically new technologies as genetic tampering or genetic manipulation—or to use much nicer words, genetic surgery or genetic counseling.

“The second ingredient in the tension is the human propensity for evil. The potential for evil in this new technology is great. Are we going to live in a society where some people have the prerogative of basically altering the humanity of other people, whether it is still in the embryo stage of growth, or fully developed? The arrogance of that is enough to give us pause. Plain and simple common sense says, ‘Please go slowly, with all careful deliberation. We have at stake the future of the human race!’ ”

As those who survived the experiments at Auschwitz will attest, political control of scientific technology has etched its horror across history. It is a legacy we must remember.

The expanding dimensions of knowledge present the Pandora dilemma—promise in counterpoint with peril. We too may become the victims of our own unleashed curiosity. Will the decisions we make as a generation change not only the course of human destiny but the very structure of human life? To quote Chargaff, will “the future curse us for it”? We pray not.

As never before, it is crucial that Christians rise responsibly to defend a root of its biblical foundation—the sanctity of human life.

“In the beginning God created.… God created man in his own image, … male and female created he them.”

If man is to play God, then Genesis will need to be redefined.

Because of the potential for bringing positive change toward more effective evangelism in the churches, the American Festival of Evangelism at Kansas City, Missouri, July 27–30, is a significant event. In this interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY managing editor Jim Reapsome, the festival’s executive coordinator, Paul Benjamin, tells of the need in the churches and how the festival is aimed to meet those needs. Dr. Benjamin headed the National Church Growth Research Center in Washington, D.C., since 1974. Prior to that he taught at Lincoln, Illinois, Christian Seminary. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College, Butler University, and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dr. Benjamin, how did you first get interested in church growth?

After I finished my doctorate at Northern Baptist Seminary in 1959, I went to Lincoln Christian Seminary and helped to develop their church growth department. In 1968–69 I took a year and then two summers to do postdoctoral work in American studies and church growth at the University of Iowa.

During my early years at Lincoln, my wife and I were involved in evangelistic meetings. She would do the music and I would do the preaching. I also taught classes in the mornings and we went out calling in the afternoons.

You had an interesting combination of theory and practice.

Yes, but I began to see, as time went on, that the local church’s week of revival meetings was not reaching many people. The local church revival was more of a “pep up the saints” campaign than it was an outreach to the lost.

Why was that?

It was because we had neglected some New Testament patterns of worship and witness. We had forgotten that the early church was not only a worshiping congregation, but also a witnessing congregation.

Do you think the traditional week of revival meetings is still pretty much the pattern around the country today?

Yes. Many churches are still relying on revival to reach the lost. But revival should be the training session to prepare the saved to reach the lost.

What have you been doing to change the old pattern?

I received many calls from churches and religious groups wanting help in church growth after we established our church growth department at Lincoln Christian Seminary. I had to make a decision between teaching daily on the seminary campus, and driving across the country visiting congregations, speaking to various groups, and so on. I therefore gave up a localized campus for a peripatetic one. I have continued teaching across the years, but I have done it on a broader geographical basis.

Also, the National Church Growth Research Center came into existence as a reflection of concern for the four out of five American congregations that are not growing. As I began to delve more deeply into this problem of nongrowth—a subject of investigation that I made my primary target when I spent two years at the University of Iowa—I decided that most congregational leaders have to change the way they think about the church before they can grow. For example, they have the idea the preacher is the only one who can evangelize. Furthermore, preachers have not taken hold of the equipping ministry concept, or they are so involved in pastoral responsibilities they do not have time to evangelize.

You have, therefore, in most local congregations a situation where there is really no one specifically involved in evangelism. It was to try to reorient the thinking of American leadership in local churches that I wrote what we call the American Church Growth Study Series: The Growing Congregation, How in the World?, and The Equipping Ministry.

You are basically addressing yourself to the question of how to get the churches out of this traditional approach to evangelism. What are you trying to get them to do instead?

I’m not trying to downgrade the revival. I simply point out that the usual revival meetings alone are not going to reach the thousands of people in our communities who are without Christ.

In an interview, executive coordinator Paul Benjamin explains the needs and goals that have shaped the practical and inspirational dimensions of this festival.

Where do you place the blame? Is it the pastor? Or is it that laymen don’t want to be involved in any kind of a different approach?

That’s part of the problem. But also part of the problem is a misunderstanding of the minister’s role. The idea has been that he is to do all the evangelizing, while the other people say, “Well, we aren’t prepared to do that.” The truth of the matter is that they are afraid to do it. They need to be encouraged and helped.

According to the best statistics, four out of five American churches are still not growing.

You’re saying that 80 percent of all churches are in a rut?

I would say that 80 percent have not been able to find a growth pattern.

If four out of five churches aren’t growing, could you make a ballpark guess about how many of them are interested in growing?

A major portion of the churches are looking for help, and the major number of the preaching ministers are looking for help.

Do you think perhaps we are turning the corner?

We are turning the comer. That is one reason why I became interested in the American Festival of Evangelism. I felt this would be a major step of progress.

What are the festival’s goals?

We want to bring 20,000 leaders from local churches to Kansas City, with the purpose of preparing them and equipping them to go back to their churches and do effective evangelism.

Your strategy will be a combination of instruction and inspiration?

Right! Instruction and inspiration, and also a tremendous variety of resources and materials.

We are inviting all the major religious groups with evangelism departments, as well as any of the church agencies interested in evangelism, to come and have exhibits and show us what they have.

Do you have any idea about how many church bodies will be there?

No, I don’t. More than a hundred groups have expressed interest in the festival.

How did the festival idea get started?

Tom Zimmerman, a member of the North American Lausanne Committee, was requested to convene a group of American churchmen in Saint Louis in 1978. The purpose of that meeting was to find out what kind of interest there would be in having an American festival. At that meeting it was almost unanimous that there should be some kind of meeting in America focusing on evangelism, especially in view of the fact that there had been no meeting similar to this for 12 years. The previous U.S. Congress on Evangelism was an invitation-only type of meeting; it was not a rank-and-file meeting. It was beamed toward denominational leadership, not primarily toward the local churches.

How is the festival being administered now?

The festival has two offices—one in Washington, D.C. (P.O. Box 17093, Washington, D.C. 20041), and a local arrangements and registration office at the festival location (P.O. Box 1981, Kansas City, Mo. 64141). A national planning committee of 42 church leaders is chaired by Dr. Zimmerman, Assemblies of God executive from Springfield, Missouri. The executive committee also includes C. B. Hogue, Southern Baptist evangelism leader; Ted Engstrom, of World Vision; Erwin Kolb, Lutheran executive for evangelism, and Ted Raedeke, World Home Bible League, both of Saint Louis.

The administrative staff includes Richard R. Hamilton, who heads the Kansas City office, and Robert L. Hart, who heads the Washington information office. While not formally related to the growing America for Jesus movement or other similar organizations, the festival is generating broad interest in cooperative evangelism on community and national levels.

J. Duncan Brown is chairman of the finance committee and Vonette Bright is chairman of the prayer committee. In the latter regard, under the leadership of Wyatt Lipscomb, a Texas attorney, nearly a million people were involved in Inauguration Day prayer meetings sponsored by the festival.

A lot of people are asking, “Who needs another evangelism congress?” How do you answer that?

By referring to the fact that this festival is focused on American evangelism, and that there has never been a meeting like this, that I know of, in all the history of America.

If you had the platform now to talk to some church, what reasons would you give for sending the pastor and lay leaders to this meeting?

I would tell them that they could learn more about evangelism in four days at this meeting than at any other type of gathering. They should know that at this meeting our definition of evangelism goes beyond leading the lost to Christ to helping them become responsible members of the churches and equipping them for ministry to others.

How can they get the most out of the festival?

In addition to the plenary sessions, they can take in some of the more than 200 workshops and seminars. The major emphasis of the entire festival will be on practical help.

What do you see the role of the prominent speakers to be—people like Billy Graham, Luis Palau, Jill Briscoe, Harold Carter, Jerry Kirk, and Adrian Rogers?

They have been recognized across America for their contribution to evangelism. Since the festival is for everybody, we don’t want to overlook people who have been recognized for what they have done. We want to include them, but at the same time we will be including hundreds of other less well-known speakers, who work in some specialized area of evangelism.

How do you disabuse people of the notion that this is just another religious P.R. stunt? Isn’t “festival” a poor word for what you are trying to accomplish?

The dictionary states that a festival is a festive community observance to celebrate a notable person. So the focus in Kansas City will be on Jesus Christ. It will be a time to celebrate and praise him. Also, “festival” describes a time to celebrate the harvest of an important product. What is more important than the harvest of lives? There’s another reason for having this festival at this time. The stunning statistics of George Gallup, Jr., indicate that there is a harvest. What could the churches do that would be more appropriate for their mission and task than to launch a massive evangelizing, discipling, equipping meeting at a time when, obviously, the American people are showing such receptivity?

There’s the spiritual hunger out there that Gallup has told us about. Do you see any signs that evangelism is going to be tougher?

What I see is probably a full decade of tremendous opportunity for the churches, such as we’ve never had before. The church in America during the 1980s faces a golden opportunity.

How do you help people understand that at the Festival of Evangelism you will not just be talking about mass crusades?

Our definition of evangelism helps to offset that. We’re saying that evangelism has to go beyond the decision-making stage. It has to go on to responsible church membership and, furthermore, it has to go on to ministry. An evangelism that does not lead us to ministry has not led us far enough. Perhaps no one is doing everything, but everyone is doing something. We want them to come and make their contribution. We are not disparaging any type of evangelism that is helping people come to Christ.

You are not trying to play down mass crusades?

Oh, no. In fact, Billy Graham is having the closing dedication service. Bill and Vonette Bright are very deeply involved. The program is the most representative of any program that has ever taken place on American soil.

Will individual churches and evangelistic agencies have a place on the program, apart from exhibits?

We have purposely left all day Friday open. That will give an opportunity for any agency or group or church body to meet. As a result of what they have learned, they can go ahead and plan and talk about their own strategy. A number of these groups have already indicated that they will meet on Friday. They will, in a sense, convene their own meeting. We have rented all the space up through Friday night. Our program closes out on Thursday; from then on they can plan their own programs. All they need to do is let us know what size room they want, whether it is to be a food function, and what time.

Will there be a sharp focus on reaching minorities?

Yes. There will be sessions on evangelism among ethnic minorities; Hispanic evangelism; intercultural evangelism; evangelizing Muslims; evangelizing the cults; evangelizing refugees; evangelizing the poor; evangelizing the secularists; coffee-time evangelizing, evangelizing intellectuals, and so on.

So if people want to specialize, will there be enough input in the program to satisfy them?

Yes, if they avail themselves of some of the resources. We have picked leaders for these workshops who have either written or produced something in the field.

What are the 36 “parable churches” on the program.

They are churches that have shown 10 percent growth per year for the last ten years. The pastors and their laymen will be there, and will tell how they are doing the job in their communities. They are following the discipleship and equipping concept. You can go there and hear their story, and they will have materials to pass out.

Are you sensing growing interest in the festival?

Let me say it has not only been necessary to build the “train” for the festival, it has also been necessary to build the “track.” My position with the festival did not begin full-time until January 1, 1980. We have used this past year to do a great deal of spadework, to make contacts with the major religious groups, and to encourage their participation and support. So far as I know, the American Festival has the broadest base of support and participation of any major gathering in American history. There is a tremendous amount of good will toward the festival from church leaders. At the same time, we have an almost Herculean task of reaching out to the grassroots areas.

There were some folks at the beginning who didn’t think it was going to turn out very well. I think the festival has been coming down the track, but some people were not watching for it, and now it’s bigger than they ever anticipated it would be.

With this issue, we begin a new column by Ruth Bell Graham, brief snippets—observations, reflections—out of her life. Homemaker, author (Sitting by My Laughing Fire, Word, 1977), wife of evangelist Billy Graham, her brief, pithy comments will add a new dimension to CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Discussing the column in a recent letter to CT, she shared the following experience quite literally out of her life as she wrote the words of this first column on the subject of pressure:

I had no sooner gotten started when I got word that a Chinese pastor and his wife I had been permitted to call on in China had been reimprisoned by the antitheistic regime because of something I had said to them. I placed a call to a nearby office, only to have the rumor confirmed (later found false).

I hadn’t gotten over the shock when I got a call from a young friend about to be released from prison. He is a great guy, with real potential, but he sounded as if he were experiencing the spiritual “bends” at the prospect of facing the real world again He needed reassurance and a lead to a job. A call to Chuck Colson’s office got that one fixed up.

I had just settled back to pontificating about pressure when I got a call that a lady had shot and killed herself in the home of a friend down the mountain. Would I come? Gathering up old towels, cleaning material, and a bunch of plastic bags, I headed down. A man from the rescue squad was doing a first-rate job of cleaning up, and helped me stuff the bedspreads and curtains into the trunk of my car before the two young girls got back from school. When they returned, I gathered them and their mother up and brought them home to spend the night while neighbors repainted the room.

The next morning I went out to check on the bedspreads and curtains before sending them to the cleaners, and suddenly thought to myself, “What am I doing out here in the driveway picking brains off curtains when I should be writing a column on pressure?”

The next one was going to be on tension. I’m not sure I’ve got the nerve.

A mutilated blob floated on the surface of the ocean. “A depth fish,” explained the captain of the small fishing boat. There are fish living so far beneath the ocean surface that when one happens to be caught and hauled to the surface along with the rest of the fisherman’s catch, it is unable to exist without the pressure that holds it together: it simply explodes.

There are people like this. They live continually under incredible pressure. But when for some reason that pressure is removed, they fall apart. Newspapers have told us of Russian writers, dissidents expelled from their homeland now living in a neutral country, who have become unproductive. I know children of a Christian family, living under unbelievable pressures of a hostile regime, who have grown up firm in their Christian faith and commitment. I have read about other children who fled that same environment, growing up in America with all her “freedoms” and “permissiveness,” who drifted away over the years from the faith of their childhood.

Much has been written about tension, pressure, and friction—mostly on ways to escape them. We have become a generation of escape artists.

J. N. Darby translates Psalm 11:1 thus: “In pressure thou hast enlarged me.” William Barclay tells us that the Greek word for affliction (as in 2 Cor. 6:4) means “pressures.” They are, he says, “the things that press sore upon us. Originally it expressed sheer physical pressure on a man.… The sheer pressure of the demands of life upon one.”

Have you ever studied an old stone arch? The capstone supports the weight of the whole: it bears the pressure. We appreciate the value of pressure when we see a tourniquet applied and the flow of blood stopped to the saving of a person’s life.

J. Hudson Taylor, that great missionary statesman, used to say we should not mind how great the pressure is—only where the pressure lies. If we make sure it never comes between us and our Lord, then the greater the pressure, the more it presses us to him.

Actor Dustin Hoffman says of director Mike Nichols, “Mike has grace under pressure” (Look magazine, April 2, 1968). What a lovely thing to have said of one! Perhaps our secret of “grace under pressure” lies in accepting that pressure as from the Lord. It may be an interruption, it may be one more request than we think we can fulfill, one more responsibility than we think we can manage. Yet as we accept it as from him, asking him to teach us what he would have us learn through the experience and to use it for the good of others and for his glory, pressure will have fulfilled its purpose.

An old copy of the London Times has this thought-provoking statement: “The grace of vital perseverance is that quality of patience which is always equal to the pressure of the passing moment, because it is rooted in that eternal order over which the passing moment has no power.”

No one can deny the magnitude and the importance of the Ebla tablets. Hebrew scholars will have much work before them to assess their full significance.

Spectacular discoveries have been made recently at Tell Mardikh, ancient Ebla, which lies about 40 miles south of Aleppo in northern Syria. The 50-foot-high mound covers 140 acres, and is one of the largest in an area which has had little exploration.

The site has been excavated since 1964 by Italians under the direction of Paolo Matthiae. No one, however, could have guessed the importance of Ebla before the discovery there of texts in 1974. With the clearing of Palace G in 1975, a royal archive of about 15,000 tablets was discovered just lying in heaps! An additional 1,600 tablets were recovered in 1976.

There has been sharp disagreement between the excavator, Matthiae, and the epigrapher, Giovanni Pettinato, over the dates of these texts. On the evidence of paleography (comparative scripts), Pettinato prefers a date of 2580–2450 B.C. On the basis of archaeological correlations, Matthiae suggests 2400–2250 B.C. The recent discovery of a seal of the Egyptian king, Pepi I (2332–2283 B.C.), would favor the later date.

Preliminary analyses by Pettinato indicate that about 80 percent of the texts are in Sumerian and 20 percent in a hitherto unknown Semitic language, Eblaite, which he classifies as Paleo-Canaanite, akin to such West Semitic dialects as Ugaritic and Hebrew. On the other hand, I. Gelb argues that Eblaite is an independent Semitic dialect with many affinities with Akkadian, the East Semitic language used by Babylonians and Assyrians.

It should be explained that the Sumerian words functioned as logograms, that is, they were pronounced as Eblaite, just as the Chinese characters borrowed by the Japanese are given Japanese pronunciations. In a somewhat similar fashion in English, the Latin abbreviations e.g. and etc. are read “for example” and “and so forth,” rather than “exempli gratia” and “et cetera.”

In any case, the texts promise to be of tremendous importance for the study of the words of the Old Testament. Some tablets are huge. There is one super text that contains up to 6,000 lines of inscriptions written on both sides of a single tablet! There are bilingual Sumerian/Eblaite word lists; one example (with 18 duplicate copies) lists 1,000 words. Among literary texts is a flood story and a creation narrative. The latter reads in part: “Lord of heaven and earth, You had not made the earth exist, you created [it], You had not established the solar light, you created [it], You had not [yet] made exist the morning light.…”

Administrative tablets reveal that the population of greater Ebla totaled 260,000. Among the 1,500 place names noted are the earliest references to such sites in Palestine as Salem (i.e., Jerusalem, cf. Gen. 14:18), Akko, Hazor, Megiddo, Dor, Joppa, Lachish, Ashdod, and Gaza.

Most startling—and even electrifying—was the declaration by Pettinato at a conference in Saint Louis in 1976 that there were five names in the Ebla texts corresponding to the five cities around the Dead Sea mentioned in Genesis 14:2—Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela. Prof. David Noel Freedman of the University of Michigan, and editor of The Biblical Archeologist, had arranged the visit of the Italian excavators to the U.S. At a meal with Pettinato one day, he asked him if he could recall the names of the kings of any of these cities. Pettinato thought awhile, then wrote a name on a piece of paper and handed it to Freedman: he had written the name of a king of one of the five cities—the king of Gomorrah, Birsha.

Later, however, much to Freedman’s chagrin, Pettinato retracted much of what he had said to Freedman. Upon rechecking, he found no Birsha, king of Gomorrah. Matthiae and the new epigrapher, A. Archi, deny identification of sa-du-ma with Sodom. In a recent interview, Pettinato maintained that si-da-mu (another name) and i-ma-ar “remind” us of the names of Sodom and Gomorrah, and za-e-ar recalls the district of Zoar on the southern shore of the Dead Sea.

The possibility that Sodom is named in the Ebla texts has stimulated Professor Freedman to reevaluate the patriarchal narratives in a highly positive direction. He wishes to raise the date of Abraham to the period of the Ebla texts, that is, to the Early Bronze III, or about the twenty-fourth century B.C. This would fit the view of W. Rast and R. Schaub. They have identified five Early Bronze tells on the southeast shore of the Dead Sea—Bab edh-Dhra, Numeira, Safi, Feifa, Khanazir—as the five cities of the plain. Thus far, only the first two tells have been excavated. There is evidence that Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira were destroyed by fire in the Early Bronze III period, c. 2300 B.C. Burned spongy charcoal is found on the surface, and the sites were never reoccupied. The lowering of the waters in the southern part of the Dead Sea in recent years reveals no remains of ruined cities there, as some had suggested. These five tells therefore seem to Rast and Schaub to be the only suitable candidates for the five cities of the plain.

Such a raising of the date of Abraham by three to even five centuries from the twenty-first to nineteenth century B.C. horizon that has usually been assigned to the patriarch, creates obvious problems. Other scholars, including Pettinato, think the Ebla materials are prepatriarchal. The occurrence of an Ur in the region of Harran in the Ebla texts has raised again the possibility of a northern Ur for Abraham’s home rather than the famous Sumerian Ur, a suggestion long maintained by Cyrus H. Gordon.

To illustrate the fact that archaeology is not a pure science but an activity where politics and personalities are involved, we must note two unfortunate controversies that have developed over the Ebla discoveries.

Matthiae, the excavator, had been working for ten years at the site when the first texts were discovered. One can understand his chagrin when he found that the epigrapher, Pettinato, the only man who could read the texts, was receiving all of the publicity. Eventually the two men no longer spoke to each other. There followed an attempt to work together on a ten-man committee of international scholars who were assigned the responsibility of publishing the texts. Then, Pettinato resigned after Matthaie found he was assigning texts he had been working on to other scholars. He was replaced by the new epigrapher, A. Archi, who has criticized many of Pettinato’s readings. In response, Pettinato describes Archi as a Hittitologist who should learn to read Sumerian!

Matthiae has written to publishers and editors asking them not to publish Pettinato’s materials. Pettinato, who had already made numerous copies, published a catalogue of 6,643 tablets in 1979. This includes a listing of 90 percent of the Ebla materials; the other 10,000 catalogued numbers represent but tiny fragments. Pettinato and some unnamed colleagues are now preparing transcriptions and translations which they hope to publish within the next ten years—at a faster rate than those of Matthiae’s rival committee.

Another disturbing aspect has been the intrusion of Middle Eastern politics. The excavations are in Syria, a country hostile to Israel. The Syrian authorities, disturbed at the alleged biblical connections being published by the press, put pressure on Pettinato and on Matthiae. As a result, in a letter to a Syrian periodical in 1977, Pettinato denied that there were any such connections—even though in his 1976 article in The Biblical Archeologist he himself had made such claims.

No one can deny the magnitude and the importance of the Ebla tablets. But one should not prematurely exaggerate their importance for biblical studies. That will be possible only after scholars are able to assess for themselves the evidence of published texts. Then, the true significance of Ebla will emerge.

Post Script

After completing this article, I received copies of Paolo Matthiae, Ebla: An Empire Rediscovered (1981), and Giovanni Pettinato, The Archives of Ebla: An Empire Inscribed in Clay (in proof), both released by Doubleday. The first work is a translation of the Italian, Ebla: Un Impero Ritrovato, published in 1977, and the latter a translation of Ebla: Un Impero Inciso nell’Argilla, published in 1979.

Matthiae’s book, which is dedicated to the personnel of the Directorate-General of Antiquities of the Syrian Arab Republic, gives an excellent overview of excavations in Syria, Lebanon, and northwestern Iraq. He stresses the fact that Ebla reveals the unsuspected antiquity and originality of a Syrian city in the third millennium B.C. The numerous photos of the excavations are unfortunately poorer in the English than in the Italian edition. The “Bibliographical Note” is simply a translation of the Italian, as no attempt has been made to list works published after 1977.

Pettinato’s volume will be eagerly welcomed by scholars. Not only is it based on his firsthand knowledge of the texts, but it also provides scores of texts both in transcription as well as in translation. The erstwhile epigrapher of the Ebla mission discloses that as of 1979 there were still 23 cases of perhaps 4,000 tablets and fragments awaiting inventory. He gives a moving account of the excitement he sensed as he first read and deciphered the texts. He summarizes what was known of Ebla from cuneiform texts before its identification with Tell Mardikh. He then deals systematically with what the texts reveal as to the language, history, society, economy, culture, and religion of Ebla.

Matthiae and Pettinato differ sharply in interpretation of both major and minor points. They still differ on the dating of the archives, and disagree on how the tablets were arranged on the shelves. Pettinato affirms the existence of the divine name Ya, and the attestation of the legendary Dudiya of Ashur—both of which Matthiae denies.

In his final chapter on “The Significance of Tell-Mardikh-Ebla …,” Matthiae omits any discussion of implications for Palestine or the Old Testament. In an English preface written in 1979, Matthiae denies that there is any documentary evidence at Ebla for “proof of the historical accuracy of the Bible patriarchs, news of a cult of Yahwe at Ebla, a mention of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and other cities of the plain, and a literary text with the story of the Flood” (p. 11).

Pettinato, who emphasizes the importance of the Ebla texts for the better understanding of Sumerian and Canaanite languages, believes that Eblaite can shed light on Hebrew. In an appendix to his book, Ebla, Ugarit, and the Bible, Mitchell Dahood, the well-known Ugaritic scholar, provides specific examples of the clarification of Hebrew texts from the Eblaite evidence. Hebrew scholars will have much work before them to assess fully the significance of some 3,000 Eblaite words (cf. 2,600 Ugaritic words) for the Old Testament.

Israeli officials increasingly view the growing evangelical Christian movement in the United States as a potent ally in the long struggle between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors. Because of their frequently literal interpretation of Abraham’s covenant—granting the land of Canaan to Abraham and his “seed”—evangelical Christians make natural supporters of the Israeli cause, they say.

Politically, evangelicals attracted to Israel cover a wide range, from moderates who view the Jewish state as an underdog fighting for survival, to fundamentalists convinced that Israel will play a central role in that final, apocalyptic chapter of history that climaxes with the Second Coming. From either angle, they often end up supporting Israel.

Israeli officials, noting that the evangelicals are 40 million strong in the United States, say they welcome the Christian backing regardless of its results. But, they add, the principal question is, How will it be translated into practical terms—and what effects will it have on Reagan administration policies?

According to Chaya Fisher, director of the Pilgrimage Promotion Division in Israel’s Ministry of Trade and Tourism, 100,000 U.S. Christians visited the Jewish state in 1980. Their itineraries reflect a desire “to know and understand Israelis” and “a positive, friendly outlook,” he said.

Even more valuable to Israel, perhaps, are those within the United States who have organized pro-Israeli movements outside their churches and denominations.

The alliance appears surprising because, traditionally, Israel and the Zionist movement have had strong ties with U.S. labor and the northern liberal establishment, which includes many Jews, and with which the evangelicals often take issue.

Israeli information officer Chafets, speaking about the activities of the fundamentalist Christians, said, “What we don’t know is what effect this will have on [President] Reagan, who clearly benefited in his election from the Christian right. Will they become a pressure group and will they affect policy? Those are the questions.”

WILLIAM CLAIBORNE

Reprinted from the Washington Post, March 23, 1981; used by permission.

The international environment of the 1980s will not be one in which we can afford to ascribe benign or passive motives to the Soviets and their allies. It is very clear that, using the lever of their unprecedented military strength, the Soviets intend to create instabilities throughout the world and then keep the United States immobilized and pinned down by the threat of an unfavorable direct military confrontation. As long as we allow a differential in military strengths, we can expect that blatant exploitations of international instabilities will affect our ability to depend on foreign resources, our prestige in the world, our ability to trade freely with other nations, and very soon, affect directly our daily lives.

The international attitude of our nation must be one of awareness and preparation. Individual Americans like you, preparing careers and livelihoods, cannot be blind, ignorant, or uninterested in these realities. We will all be called upon in one way or another, at the very minimum, to express a sense of national understanding and purpose, as we face the difficult job of standing up to a power with murderous intentions and tremendous capacity for domination in its attempts to exert its control in every part of the globe.

HENRY G. CISNEROS¹Mr. Cisneros is the Hispanic-American mayor of San Antonio, Texas.

Recent talk by public figures about winning or even surviving a nuclear war must reflect a widespread failure to appreciate a medical reality: any nuclear war would inevitably cause death, disease, and suffering of epidemic proportions. Effective medical interventions on any realistic scale would be impossible. This reality, in turn, leads to the same conclusion public health specialists have reached for such contemporary epidemics as those of lung cancer and heart disease: prevention is essential for effective control.

HOWARD H. HIATT²Dr. Hiatt is dean of Harvard University School of Public Health.

What We Need Is An Occasion For Daring

Our nation desperately needs a new holiday. The old ones are worn out and the citizens are weary of trying to pump them up every year. To remedy this situation, I have a suggestion: let’s make May 20 “Adventure Day.”

Oh, I can hear that question in your mind: “Why should May 20 become ‘Adventure Day’ in our nation?” Simply because that date is associated with many noted people whose lives were filled with daring and adventure. Permit me to spread my scholarly researches before you. The following events occurred on May 20:

1498—Vasco de Gama arrived in India after a difficult voyage.

1506—Christopher Columbus died in poverty, waiting for his ship to come in, while his wife cried, “Sale on! Sale on!”

1818—William Fargo, one of the founders of Wells Fargo, was born.

1856—David Livingstone completed his difficult march across Africa, west to east. (He heard a chief say, “Go east, white man, go east!”)

1927—Col. Charles Lindbergh started his nonstop flight to Paris.

1932—Amelia Earhart began her famous flight that made her the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Actually, she had flown across the Atlantic four years before, but that was as a standby passenger and it didn’t count.

Now, have I convinced you? Of course I have!

How, then, shall we celebrate “Adventure Day”? By each of us doing something daring and adventurous. I append some examples.

If I were Dr. Carl F.H. Henry, I would use only three-syllable words all day. If I were Dr. Robert Schuller, I would stand in my pulpit and demonstrate how David killed Goliath. If I were Dr. Bill Bright, I would share a nontransferable concept (if there is such a thing). If I were Dr. Ted Engstrom, I would arrive late to a “Managing Your Time” seminar, and then receive a telegram reminding me I was supposed to be in a meeting somewhere in Asia Minor.

Get the idea? Now, it is up to you to decide how you will spend this day. Away with caution! Be an evangelical adventurer—and nobody will recognize you!

EUTYCHUS X

The Unmeasurable Ingredient

I was amused by the juxtaposition of the two articles in the March 27 issue: “Church Growth: A Limitation of Numbers?” where the danger of sciences such as sociology, which measure only quantifiable growth, is followed by an article by a professor of sociology in which the effectiveness of evangelism is measured in part by statistics (quantifiable growth).

Apart from this, I am afraid I would fall into the category of people Terry Hulbert categorized as those to whom it seemed that Petersen used “an axe instead of a scalpel.” Besides the obvious references throughout Acts that McGavran has mentioned, one of McGavran’s original church growth colleagues, A. R. Tippett, spoke forcefully to the work of the Holy Spirit: “You can take a Christian fellowship group and study it anthropologically as an institution, and see ‘how it ticks,’ but if you carry your research to the ultimate conclusion you will have to admit that there is still one element which registers in your data but cannot be explained in human or processual terms. I call this the non-cultural factor. It is, of course, the Holy Spirit. He is at work. Anthropologically I know how the church ticks, but another factor has to be introduced before the ticking is regulated as it should be.”

Petersen has evidently overlooked this quote as he implies that church-growth advocates leave out this element.

CLYDE COOK

President, O.C. Ministries

Santa Clara, Calif.

Thank you for using the article on church growth in which Petersen has the audacity to question and analyze the “sacred cow” of numerical growth at any price. Big is not necessarily beautiful, nor is bigger better.

Petersen is being very fair and appreciative of those who have given us needed help in becoming visionary, but he sounds some needed warnings about being captivated by the multitude syndrome. What is the mission of the church? “Be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8).

REV. MELVIN L. LOGE

Evangelical Free Church

McCook, Nebr.

I become very perturbed over these people who set themselves up as experts on numerical church growth. This is not growth, it is expansion. And expansion is not what the church (the body) of Christ should be striving for; rather it should be growth in Christ. A church could expand to 5,000 members and still have zero growth. Real growth of a church should be measured in the growth of each member in Christ.

MABEL H. FRASER

Waterbury, Vt.

I could appreciate Petersen’s concern over reducing people to cold, hard statistics, but it must be remembered that church growth is a discipline not unlike the other disciplines that go into the make-up of the Christian faith. Most people would be distressed if they were made to read books on theology all the time, where our basic doctrines are defined in minute terms. As I look back on having to do this in seminary, I realize now that this information is presented so that it might be applied with caution and sensitivity as we attempt to teach and preach the nature of our faith.

Church growth applies to the church in the same way. For years we have been fed statistics that to a large degree infuriated lay people, and befuddled pastors and staff members. The church-growth discipline gives us a way of interpretation and finding out what these numbers and trends mean in an ever-changing world.

REV. ROY THOMAS

Valley Baptist Church

Middletown, Pa.

“Church Growth” helpfully critiques the underlying premises of the church-growth movement. The writer’s dialectical approach, setting opposing views over against each other to arrive at a judicious and restrained position, is commendable.

But he veers from this method when he says, “The church is an organism, not an organization.” Moreover, he signals this as his point of greatest disagreement with the movement he critiques.

Why not be dialectical here too? Is not the church, wherever it exists concretely in this world, both an organism and an organization? Why must it be only one or the other? In both Testaments, organization is an important aspect of the life of God’s people. All of nature shows us that unless organisms get organized they not only fail to grow, they cease to exist.

I have observed a few of those who want to repudiate organization in the church as in some way evil. If they win their point with those they lead, the result is not pure organism. They set aside existing structures only to replace them with organization according to their own lights.

DONALD N. BASTIAN

Bishop, Free Methodist Church

Etobicoke, Ontario

Using All Scriptural Means

Firebaugh’s report, “How Effective Are City-wide Crusades?” [March 27], comes like the touch of a friendly hand on a weary shoulder. The science of evangelism is providing us with fresh, clear understandings of how to communicate the gospel. Let us utilize all scripturally endorsed means of evangelism in a unified whole.

Perhaps we could start by engraving in stone Firebaugh’s fundamental maxim that “crusades are effective to the extent that they mobilize individuals in an area. For this the role of the local church is paramount.” Personal evangelism does not make crusade evangelism unnecessary; rather, personal evangelism makes crusade evangelism effective. Crusade evangelism provides the greatest focal point for the intensive, concerted exercise of personal evangelism.

REV. J. W. JEPSON

Assembly of God Church

Oregon City, Oreg.

In some cities where church-growth seminars have been held, crusades have often provided the only adequate basis for achieving the outreach goals of a local congregation. In other situations, seminars have motivated churches to want to grow, but many such congregations have lacked the creative skills to plan effective ways to reach out to the communities they serve. Against such a background, a crusade has often provided an excellent basis for many of these churches to realize the hopes and goals the church-growth seminars had earlier projected.

NORMAN PELL

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Chatswood, Australia

Survival Issues Confronted

I was glad your March 27 editorial, “SALT II: The Only Alternative to Annihilation?” addressed the problem of nuclear war. Evangelicals have avoided it for too long. Homosexuality, the ordination of women, abortion, pornography, and other such matters fade into insignificance when compared to the possibility of the annihilation of our human race. I can’t imagine the prophets being silent on the subject.

NOLAN J. MCCLURG

Edmonds, Wash.

Concerning a new SALT: the Scriptures teach that God-fearing nations should not make agreements with God-opposing governments. The history of Israel is an example to us. God will vindicate his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night.

JAY MARSTON

Twisp, Wash.

Thanks to isolationism, McCarthyism, and “flower childrenism,” talk among responsible people regarding issues of war and peace has become mutually exclusive. The ultimate irony is that the issue of peace has itself become a battleground between extreme factions at both ends of the social and political spectrum.

The beauty of your editorial is that it seeks to “break down the dividing wall of hostility” that exists between these two camps, and often stands tall within the hearts of individual believers. You offer inclusion. No longer do we think in terms of us or them but instead, in the larger sense, as stewards of this earth, of the whole creation.

REV. DONALD H. SMITH

Beechmont Presbyterian Church

Louisville, Ky.

The growing likelihood of nuclear war is the greatest moral issue of our day. I was greatly heartened, therefore, to read the editorial on SALT II. To some, the nuclear arms race may seem like an issue that should be restricted to political science. But the preservation of life on earth is a profoundly religious matter.

STEVE MCKINDLEY

Elkhart, Ind.

Your statement, “Monetary costs of the imminent arms race threaten to destroy our free society” is a standard liberal argument. It bypasses the alternative to a free society—godless communism. Our total resources should be spent on annihilating this enemy. Of course, this would not have to be with nuclear weapons only.

JAMES C. WARNER

Rockford, Ill.

Positive Performance

Carl F. H. Henry’s comments [March 13] about the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) demonstrated a lack of understanding regarding its history and role. The record will show that NAE has enjoyed a fair measure of success in what it set out to accomplish some 39 years ago, namely, (1) to provide an alternative to the Federal Council of Churches (today the National Council of Churches), (2) to overcome the isolation that existed among conservative Christians, and (3) to provide a positive Christian witness through effective evangelical cooperation.

NAE is not an evangelistic association. We believe evangelism is the work of the churches we serve. But our Evangelism and Home Missions Association has a solid track record in this regard, and a casual reading of the personnel involved in the forthcoming American Festival of Evangelism (Kansas City, July 27–30) will reveal that NAE is making a significant contribution to its total program development. Further, our Office of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., has provided evangelicals with accurate, timely information, enabling them to be responsibly involved.

As for NAE’s supposed failure to effectively coordinate fellow evangelicals in the mainline ecumenical churches, I suggest Henry look again. NAE has provided and continues to provide fellowship and support for evangelicals in mainline denominations. Some of our strongest and most faithful supporters are mainline churches that are well known for their evangelical stance, and six of our past presidents came from mainline denominations.

Henry should understand that a large percentage of the evangelicals in mainline churches are preoccupied with the struggles going on within those denominations and are not in a position at this time to consider fellowship with other evangelicals across denominational lines. Our experience has shown that when these evangelicals are ready to identify with evangelicals outside their own churches or denominations, they have little problem in joining NAE. They are attracted by its solid statement of faith, by its record of responsible united action, and by its success in working with local churches from more than 70 denominations.

BILLY A. MELVIN

Executive Director, NAE

Wheaton, Ill.

Facts And Figures

The force of Koteskey’s article, “Growing Up Too Late, Too Soon” [March 13], is weakened by an inaccurate assumption that age at menarche from 1000 B.C. to about A.D. 1840 was 18. There is ample evidence to suggest that the age in classical antiquity was 14. For example, the Hippocratic corpus gives the age as 14. The same age is given by Aristotle (d. 322 B.C.); by Soranus, Galen, and Rufus (all second century A.D.), and by Oribasius, a fourth-century A.D. physician.

During the Middle Ages, Salernitan medical literature, and Hildegard of Bingen, one of the earliest German medical writers (twelfth century) indicate a lower limit of 12 and an upper limit of 15. In the thirteenth century, Gilbertus Anglicus gave 12 as a lower limit; Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 14; and Albertus Magnus, 13. Thomas Aquinas writes that girls generally became pubescent in their twelfth year. In the fourteenth century, John of Gaddesden gave a range of 12 to 14, and in the fifteenth century, Ortolff of Bavaria indicated 12 as the lower limit.

Given Koteskey’s assumption that both girls and boys did not reach puberty until 18 years of age prior to around 1840, it seems quite remarkable that he did not find it at least somewhat strange that the Puritans encouraged early marriage. Although prepubescent children do engage in various kinds of “sexual” activity, if Puritan children did not go through puberty until 18 years of age, it seems unlikely that their elders would have hastened their prepubescent children into marriage so that they would avoid the premarital sexual relations for which they would not have had physical capacity.

DARREL W. AMUNDSEN

Bellingham, Wash.

Ronald Koteskey replies:

Nothing Mr. Amundsen says weakens the force of my article. My assumption was that “puberty was later than the ages at which teens could go to work and be legally married.” In order to claim that adolescence existed in antiquity or the Middle Ages, Amundsen would have to show that the average age at menarche was below the legal age for marriage—and in none of the data he cites was that the case. Note that in most cases he cites the lower limit was 12, exactly the legal age for marriage. Thus there was no adolescence. (For simplicity, I drew the figure with the age of menarche straight across at age 18. It would have made the figure confusing to have it weaving up and down across the legal age for marriage for boys.)

The Puritans, like the other cultures mentioned, encouraged marriage at puberty or as soon after that as possible. Even though the average age at menarche may have been 16 or 17, many (about half) would have reached puberty before that time, and these are the ones who would be encouraged to get married.

Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published. Since all are subject to condensation, those of 100 to 150 words are preferred. Address letters to Eutychus and His Kin,CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60187.