A half century ago, liberals were taking over the power centers of almost every major old-line denomination in the United States. At that time, Bible-believing Christians divided into two groups: one was composed of those who left those denominations; the second, of those who stayed in their denominations and tried to build a general evangelical establishment. Looking back over the years, there have been problems on both sides.

Those Who Left

Looking back to the thirties, I can now say that an early mistake was made after we left the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Northern—now part of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.). It was a mistake that marked the “separatist movement” for years to come. There were many who, before the division, said they would not tolerate a liberal takeover; but when the time came, many of these remained in. Without judging their motives, it is true to say that the few who came out felt deserted and betrayed. Some of those who stayed in urged that the Constitutional Covenant Union—the vehicle for all of their working together previously—should not be dissolved so as to enable those who stayed in and those who came out to continue to work together. But in exasperation and, perhaps, some anger, those who left dissolved it at once. All the lines of a practical example of observable love among the brethren were destroyed.

The periodicals of those who left tended to devote more space to attacking people who differed with them on the issue of leaving than to dealing with the liberals. Things were said that are difficult to forget even now. Those who came out refused at times to pray with those who had not come out. Many who left broke off all forms of fellowship with true brothers in Christ who had not left. Christ’s command to love one another was destroyed. What was left was frequently a turning inward, a self-righteousness, a hardness. The impression often was left that coming out had made those who did so so right that anything could then be excused. Having learned such bad habits, they later treated each other badly when the resulting new groups had minor differences among themselves.

To be really Bible-believing Christians we need to practice, simultaneously, at each step of the way, two biblical principles. One principle is that of the purity of the visible church: Scripture commands that we must do more than just talk about the purity of the visible church, we must actually practice it, even when it is costly. The second principle is that of an observable love among all true Christians. In the flesh we can stress purity without love, or we can stress love without purity; we cannot stress both simultaneously. To do so we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Without that, a stress on purity becomes hard, proud, and legalistic; likewise, without it a stress on love becomes sheer compromise. Spirituality begins to have real meaning in our lives as we begin to exhibit simultaneously the holiness of God and the love of God. Without this simultaneous exhibition our marvelous God and Lord is not set forth. It is rather a caricature of him that is shown, and he is dishonored.

Happily, this hardness generally has greatly diminished over the years among the groups that withdrew—but we paid a terrible price for what was there in the earlier days.

One of the joys of my life occurred at the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Some men from the newly formed Presbyterian Church in America asked me to attend a meeting there, made up of men who had just left the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern) to form the PCA, and some men who had not left. Spokesmen representing both sides said that meeting was possible because of my voice and especially my book, The Church Before the Watching World. I could have wept, and perhaps I did. We can do better than we would naturally do—but not without foreseeing the fleshly dangers and looking to our living Lord for his strength and grace.

I see the second problem of those who left the UPCUSA as a confusion over where to place the basic chasm that marks off our identity. Is the chasm placed between Bible-believing churches and those that are not, or is it between those who are Presbyterian and Reformed and those who are not? When we go into a town to start a church, do we go there primarily motivated to build a church that is loyal to Presbyterianism and the Reformed Faith? Or do we go to build a church that will preach the gospel that historic, Bible-believing churches of all denominations hold, and then, on this side of that chasm, teach what we believe is true to the Bible with respect to our own denominational distinctives? The answers to these questions make a great deal of difference. There is a difference of motivation, of breadth and outreach. One view is catholic and biblical and gives promise of success—on two levels: first, in church growth and healthy outlook among those we reach; second, in providing leadership to the whole church of Christ. The other view is inverted and self-limiting—and sectarian.

Those Who Did Not Leave

Those who did not leave the liberally controlled denominations 50 years ago also developed two attitudes. The first was the birth of a general latitudinarianism. If those who came out were inclined to become hard, some of those who stayed in tended to become soft. Some said: This is not the moment to come out, but we will do so if such-and-such occurs. But the other attitude led some to develop their own kind of hardness—a decision to stay in no matter what happened.

If one accepts an ecclesiastical latitudinarianism, it is easy to step into a cooperative latitudinarianism that easily encompasses doctrine, including one’s view of Scripture. This is what happened historically. Out of the ecclesiastical latitudinarianism of the thirties and the forties has come the letdown with regard to Scripture in certain areas of evangelicalism in the eighties. Large sections of evangelicalism act as though it makes no real difference whether we hold the historic view of Scripture or the existential methodology that says the Bible is authoritative when it teaches religious things but not when it touches on what is historic or scientific, or on such things as the male/female relationship.

Not all who stayed in the liberal-dominated denominations have done this, by any means. I do not believe, however, that those who made the choice to stay in no matter what happens can escape a latitudinarian mentality. They will struggle to paper over the difference regarding Scripture so as to keep an external veneer of evangelical unity—when indeed there is no unity at that crucial point of Scripture. When doctrinal latitudinarianism sets in, we can be sure both from church history and from personal observation that in one or two generations those who are taught by the churches and schools that hold this attitude will lose still more, and the line between evangelical and liberal will be lost.

Unless we reject the existential methodology as a whole, we will be confused in our thinking, and succumb to the general relativism of our day and compromise our ecclesiastical duties.

How Shall We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? This article is based on an address given at the Consultation on Presbyterian Alternatives in Pittsburgh, sponsored by the Presbyterian Church in America. Portions were published previously in the PCA Messenger of June 1980.

The second problem for those who did not leave the liberally controlled denominations is their natural tendency constantly to move back the line at which the final stand must be taken. For example, could such well-known evangelical Presbyterians as Clarence Macartney, Donald Grey Barnhouse, and T. Roland Phillips have stayed in a denomination in which the crucial issues are the ordination of women and the refusal to ordain a young pastor whose only “fault” is that while he says he will not preach against the ordination of women, he will not change his own view that it is unbiblical? Can you imagine that these men would have considered it a victory to have stalled the ordination of practicing homosexuals and lesbians? What do you think Macartney, Barnhouse, and Phillips would have said? Such a situation in their denomination would have been inconceivable to them.

Evangelicals must beware of false victories. The liberal denominational power structure knows how to keep Bible-believing Christians off balance. There are many possible false victories they can throw to evangelicals to prevent them from making a clear pullout. There are still those who say, “Don’t break up our ranks. Wait a while longer. Wait for this, wait for that.” Always wait, never act. But 50 years is a long time to wait while things are getting worse. Because of my failing health, I am in a good position to say that we do not have forever to take that courageous and costly stand for Christ we sometimes talk about.

Looking Ahead

Let us now shift our focus. What does the future hold? What can we expect for ourselves, our congregations, our physical and spiritual children in the days ahead? America is moving at great speed toward a totally humanistic society and state. Do we suppose this trend will leave our own little projects, lives, and churches untouched? When a San Francisco Orthodox Presbyterian congregation can be dragged into court for breaking the law against discrimination because it dismissed an avowed, practicing homosexual as an organist, can we be so deaf as not to hear all the warning bells?

Unfortunately, the liberal denominations often support humanistic trends, publicly and financially as well as formally. Is this what evangelicals should support, by denominational affiliation, with their names and their finances? If so, they support not only what is wrong, but what will destroy us in the rapidly worsening scene.

In what presbytery in the UPCUSA can you bring an ordained man under biblical discipline for holding false views of doctrine and expect him to be disciplined? We should first of all, of course, do all we can on a personal, loving level to help the liberal; but if he persists in his liberalism he should be brought under discipline, because the visible church should remain the faithful bride of Christ. The church is not the world. When a denomination comes to a place where such discipline cannot operate, then before the Lord her members must consider a second step: that step, with regard to the practice of the principle of the purity of the visible church, is with tears to step out. Not with flags flying, not with shouts of hurrah or thoughts that in this fallen world we can build a perfect church, but that step is taken with tears.

Evangelicals who come to this point must still keep on loving the liberals, and must do so because it is right. If we do not know how to take a firm stand against organized liberalism and still love the liberals, we have failed in half of the call to exhibit simultaneously the love and the holiness of God—before a watching world, before a watching church, before our children, before the watching angels, and before the face of the Lord himself.

This is not a day of retreat and despair. Christians can still make a difference if they put the Lord before ease in their congregations. But they need to have pastoral examples as well as teaching. Pastors cannot give either clear teaching or clear example if they exhibit a relativistic, latitudinarian stance toward liberalism, instead of a loving, clear, and courageous one. Pastors cannot give the example and leadership an often latitudinarian evangelical establishment needs today if they do not pay the price necessary. They must not just talk about the truth; they must practice truth where it is costly.

Evangelicals must work on the basis of a proper hierarchy of things. The real chasm must be between true Bible-believing Christians and others, not at a lesser point. The chasm is not between Lutherans and everybody else, or Baptists and everybody else, or Presbyterians and everybody else. If evangelicals do not exhibit this truth in the way they teach in their seminaries and in the churches they build, they cannot give the leadership the whole church of Christ needs. Further, not to do this is to fail to show love and unity among all true Christians as commanded by Christ. His command is for observable love and observable unity among all true Christians, not just among those of one denomination. The real chasm is between those who have bowed to the living God and his Son Jesus Christ—and thus also to the verbal, propositional communication of God’s Word, the Scripture—and those who have not.

Let us be careful to keep things in their proper order. Let us find ways to show the church and the world that while we indeed maintain our denominational distinctives and do not minimize them, because we believe they are biblical, evangelicals are brothers in Christ in the severe battles of our day.

Learning from the mistakes both sides have made in the past, pastors who leave liberal-dominated denominations, with their congregations, can raise a testimony that may still turn both the churches and society around—for the salvation of souls, the building up of God’s people, and at least the slowing down of the slide toward a totally humanistic society and an authoritarian suppressive state.

Having done all these necessary things, let us never forget that while our call is first to be the faithful bride of Christ, that is not our total call. We are also called to be the bride in love with the divine bridegroom. This is our call for the days ahead.

Perfectionists must experience healing of their emotional wounds before they can accept God’s forgiveness.

Perfectionism is the most disturbing emotional problem among evangelical Christians. It walks into my office more often than any other single Christian hang-up.

What is perfectionism? It is a lot easier to describe than to define, so let us picture some of its symptoms.

1. Tyranny of the Ought. The chief characteristic of perfectionism is a constant, overall feeling of never doing well enough or being good enough. Karen Horney’s classic phrase describes it perfectly: “Perfectionism is the tyranny of the oughts.” “I ought to do better.” “I ought to have done better.” “I ought to be able to do better.” That goes from preparing a meal to praying to witnessing. The three favorite phrases of the perfectionist are: could have, should have, and would have. Always standing on tiptoe, always reaching, stretching, trying, but never quite making it.

2. Self-depreciation. If one does not feel good enough, he is likely to feel a continuous sense of low self-esteem, or self-depreciation, that leads to the feeling that God is never really pleased with him either. God is thought of as always saying, “Come on now, you can do better than that!” To which the perfectionist replies, “Of course.” Then he puts on his Avis button and tries a little harder. But try as he will, he always remains in second place, not first. Since he and God always demand first place, second is not quite good enough. So, back to the grindstone, back to the spiritual treadmill, back to the spiritual salt mines goes the perfectionist, with increased efforts to please himself and an increasingly demanding God, who is never quite satisfied.

3. Anxiety. The oughts and self-depreciation produce an oversensitive conscience with an overarching umbrella of guilt, anxiety, and condemnation. A great cloud hangs over the perfectionist’s head. It lifts once in a while; the sun shines through occasionally, like during revivals, deeper life conferences, and camp meetings, when he goes to the altar and prays and gets “reclaimed,” or “sanctified,” or “filled with the Spirit.” But it lasts just about as long as it did the previous time he made the same trip, went through the same process, and claimed the same blessing. Soon he falls off of spiritual cloud nine with a sickening thud. Try as he may, that general sense of divine disapproval—that condemnation—returns, nagging, knocking at the back door of his soul.

4. Legalism. The oversensitive conscience and the guilt of the perfectionist are usually accompanied by a great scrupulosity and legalism that rigidly overemphasize externals, do’s and don’ts, rules, and regulations. Why does legalism almost inevitably follow the first three symptoms of perfectionism?

The perfectionist, with his oversensitive conscience, his low self-esteem, and false sense of guilt, is naturally very sensitive to what other people think about him. Since he does not like himself, does not approve of himself, and is quite unsure of God’s approval, he desperately needs the approval of other people. He is easy prey to the opinions of other Christians. All the while the do’s and the don’ts are piling up, because more and more people have to be pleased. His halo has to be adjusted for this person, and readjusted for that one. He keeps fitting it this way and that way, and before he realizes what is happening, his halo has become what Paul called “a yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1).

The good news of God’s grace had broken into the lives of the Galatians and freed them from the spiritual yoke of the law. God’s way is not the way of perfect performance. No matter how much we try, we can never win God’s favor, Why? Because his favor, his being pleased with us, is a love gift of his grace.

To the Galatians, this seemed too good to be true, and they began to listen to voices in the marketplace. Maybe they listened to the Jerusalem legalists who said they had to keep all the law, including the ceremonial law. Maybe they listened to the Colossian asceticists who majored in giving up things in order to please God, observing special days and new moons and sabbaths. “They insisted on deliberate low self-esteem” (Col. 2:18). On “self-abasement.” They insisted on what Paul called regulations. Don’t handle this, don’t touch that, don’t taste this. Paul said. “Oh, they have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting rigor of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23).

The Jerusalem legalists and the Colossian asceticists produced the Galatian dilutionists, the Galatian reversionists, They reverted to a mixture of faith and works, law and grace. When they mix law and grace, immature and sensitive believers can turn into emotionally neurotic perfectionists. They become guilt-ridden, overloaded, tight-haloed, unhappy, and uncomfortably yoked Christians. They are rigid in their outlook, frigid in their lovelessness, conforming to the approval and disapproval of others. Yet, paradoxically, they critically judge, and blame, and bind those same others.

5. Anger. The worst is yet to come. The perfectionist may not realize it, but down deep in his heart a kind of anger develops, a resentment against the oughts, against the Christian faith, against other Christians, against himself, and saddest of all, against God. Not really against the true God, not against the gracious, loving, self-giving God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. Their resentment is against a caricature of God. The perfectionist’s God is never satisfied, no matter how hard he tries, no matter what he gives up. This cruel god always ups the ante just a little, always demands a bit more, and then says, “Sorry, that wasn’t quite good enough.”

6. Denial. Sometimes the anger is recognized, the legalistic tyranny is seen for what it is: a desperate Satanic substitute for, or dilution of, true Christian perfection. Sometimes the perfectionist works through this, finds grace, and is marvelously set free. But too often the anger is never faced. Instead it is denied. The mixture of bad theology, legalism, sanctification by performance becomes frozen. Deep emotional problems set in. Mood changes are so great and so terrible that the person feels as if he is two different people.

Sometimes the strain becomes too much and one of two things happens: either there is a breakaway or a breakdown. One-third to one-half of my time is spent counseling people who have broken away. The person who breaks away just throws the whole thing over. He doesn’t become an unbeliever. He believes with his head, but he can’t believe with his heart. Perfectionism is impossible to live up to. He’s tried it so many times, and it has made him so miserable that he just leaves it behind and quits.

Others suffer a breakdown. The load is too heavy to bear. That’s what happened to Joseph R. Cooke, professor of anthropology at the University of Washington. A brilliant Ph.D., he was well trained in biblical theology and became a missionary teacher to Thailand. But after a few years, he left the mission field a broken man. A nervous breakdown left him unable any longer to preach, or teach, or even to read his Bible. As he put it, “I was a burden to my wife and useless to God and to others.” How did it happen?

Dr. Cooke tells about it in Free for the Taking (Revell). These are his words: “I invented an impossible God, and I had a nervous breakdown.” He believed in grace, he even taught it. But his real feelings about the God he lived with day by day did not correspond with his teaching. His God was nongracious and unpleasable. “God’s demands of me were so high, and his opinion of me was so low, there was no way for me to live except under his frown.… All day long He nagged me. “Why don’t you pray more? Why don’t you witness more? When will you ever learn self-discipline? How can you allow yourself to indulge in such wicked thoughts? Do this. Don’t do that. Yield, confess, work harder.’ … God was always using his love against me. He’d show me his nail-pierced hands, and then he would look at me glaringly and say, ‘Well, why aren’t you a better Christian? Get busy and live the way you ought to.’ … Most of all, I had a God who down underneath considered me to be less than dirt. Oh, he made a great ado about loving me but I believed that the day-to-day love and acceptance I longed for could only be mine if I let him crush nearly everything that was really me. When I came down to it, there was scarcely a word, or a feeling, or a thought, or a decision of mine that God really liked.”

It is understandable why a sincere Christian who feels this way would have a total breakdown. After years of preaching and counseling and praying with evangelical Christians, I know that this disease of perfectionism is very common in the churches.

There is only one ultimate cure for perfectionism: it is profound and yet as simple as the word grace. In the New Testament this word has a special meaning: “freely given, undeserved, unmerited, unearnable, and unrepayable favor.” It means that God’s loving acceptance of us has nothing to do with our worthiness, nothing to do with what we deserve. Grace is the face God wears when he meets our imperfection, sin, weakness, and failure. Grace is what God is, and what God does, when he meets the sinful and undeserving. Grace is pure gift, free for the taking. The perfectionist begins with some initial experience of grace in salvation or sanctification, and then moves into a life lived by effort and perfect performance. The day-to-day healing of the perfectionist takes place in his day-to-day believing, realizing his grace relationship with a loving, caring, heavenly Father.

But there is the rub, for sometimes this cannot happen. The realization of grace cannot be maintained by some people without a deep, inner healing of their past. God’s care cannot be felt by them without a “reprogramming” of all the bad that has been put into them by parents and family and teachers and preachers.

These perfectionists have been programmed to unrealistic expectations, impossible performance, conditional love, and a subtle theology of works. They cannot get rid of that overnight. No trip to the altar will automatically change that. The change requires time, understanding, healing, and above all, reprogramming—the renewal of the mind that brings transformation.

This is how it happened in one young man’s life. Don was raised in a very strict evangelical family. Everything they believed in their heads was right and everything they practiced in interpersonal relationships was wrong. Don was taught one thing, but he caught an opposite message, and he was in great conflict.

Don grew up with unpredictable, conditional love. He was given to understand from his earliest infancy and childhood, “You will be loved if.…” “We will accept and approve of you when.…” “You will be loved because of … if you.…” He grew up feeling that he never pleased his parents.

Don came to see me as a young adult in his thirties because of his depressions. They were more frequent and lasting longer, and he was frightened. Some well-meaning friends made it worse by telling him that his problem was entirely spiritual. They said, “Truly spirit-filled Christians never have such feelings. They always feel joy and praise for God.” Don had a double sense of guilt: he had a problem, and he felt guilty because he had the problem.

It wasn’t easy for him to accept and to understand God’s love and grace, and to feel it at the gut level. It sounds very easy, but when every single experience in interpersonal relationships from childhood to adulthood contradicts grace and love, it is very difficult to believe it and feel it.

Don had an additional problem. During those down times of deep depression, he had entered into wrong relationships with girls. He used first one girl, and then another, to help him pull out of his depression. That was sin, and he knew it. Such misuse of another person added to his guilt, so he had real guilt on top of his pseudoguilt. Again and again he had gone through the whole cycle of tears, repentance, salvation, renewed promises, only to break them later.

During a year of counseling, there was healing and reprogramming. Don tried many times to maneuver me into rejecting him, to withdrawing my loving acceptance of him. He was trying to get me to act like his mom and dad did, and to act the way he thought God did. Slowly, but surely, Don discovered grace in God’s incredible and unconditional acceptance of him as a person. He got more control over his thoughts and his actions. His depressions began to lift, until now he has the normal ups and downs that we all have. Whenever I see Don alone, he comes up and smiles and says, “Doc, it’s still too good to be true, but it’s still true!”

That’s the message. The trouble with the perfectionist is that he has been programmed to think it is too good to be true.

It Is Not Every Question That Deserves An Answer

If there are questionnaires in heaven. I will demand in-and-out privileges.

Questionnaires frighten me. I panic when I see one, and I am a basket case by the time I am through filling it out. The people sitting around me all move away one by one. They do it in subtle ways, like going for a drink and never coming back, or throwing their pen across the room and retrieving it.

I can never remember my auto license number, and I haven’t a ghost of a chance when it comes to my social security number. I can remember the name of my third-grade art teacher, but not my mother’s maiden name. I get migraine headaches trying to recall my blood type.

Last week, I had to go to the dentist. You guessed it: his receptionist had me fill out a questionnaire. (No, in a dentist’s office, you fill in the questionnaire. Sorry about that.) Well, I remembered my name and address, and I had my social security number on the Blue Cross card in my wallet. So far, so good. The question that gave me apoplexy was: “Are you now pregnant?” Having been born male, I have never had to answer that question. I wrote: “I hope not, but I think my guppies are.” The receptionist didn’t think it was funny.

“What prompted you to come here?” stultified me. I replied: “I was driving past, saw your sign, and thought I’d stop.” What prompts anybody to go to a dentist? “My left lower wisdom tooth sent me.” I should have added: “This is the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth.”

Of all types of questionnaires, ministerial questionnaires are the worst. They are sent out by pastoral search committees who are searching for pastors. The last one I received (who is suggesting my name?) had 10 pages to it, and half of the questions my own mother couldn’t answer. “Has anybody in your family ever been tried for heresy? Burned at the stake?” How about this one: “What do you wear when you preach?” (A smile? A black suit? A morning coat? A robe?) I became so desperate filling out one questionnaire that I wrote down any answer that came to my mind. “What is the title of your latest book?” Answer: Teach Yourself Embalming. In their acknowledgement letter, the committee enclosed a gift certificate to any local counseling center.

Are all these religious questions really necessary? I can just hear Jesus calling, “Fill out this questionnaire, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!” After all, Paul’s quick spiritual survey had only two questions to it: “Who art thou. Lord? What wilt thou have me to do?” Now, that’s the kind of questionnaire that accomplishes something.

EUTYCHUS X

On Being An Imitator

Your comments on plagiarism (Eutychus. Feb. 6] were both enlightening and entertaining. Many of us have heard more of Spurgeon’s sermons than we’ll ever know.

Not wishing to be accused of the same crime, I’ll give credit and quote a beloved pastor of my teen-age days in Oklahoma. Rev. W. E. Lowe, who has been with the Lord for many years now, used to say, “It’s better to be an imitator than no ’tater a’tall.”

DALE CANNON

Tempe, Ariz.

“How Much Profit?”

I read with interest Cronkhite’s “Making the Gospel Free” [Feb. 6]. The crucial point is, as he says, “How much profit is too much?”

I appeal to CT to initiate exploration of this moral question on a broader front. It’s true, of course, that the issue of profit versus ministry is more clearly drawn in “Christian work.” But the basic notion of acceptable profit is one to which Christians should direct their attention; after all, all of the life of all Christians is to be “unto God.” The essential tenet of capitalism seems at times to be “whatever the market will bear.” We might well ask the extent to which Christians should be involved in the financial concerns of the oil companies, or the practice of law or medicine, all of which in our present society might be seen as having inordinately high rates of return in a monopolized market, and indeed for commodities which everyone in our society needs. Other such examples might be present too, of course.

It is said by some that greed is one of the driving forces behind the economic troubles facing our country. Perhaps Christians are not immune. I hope CT will face the question of whether it is a disease of the soul, or just “good business.”

DONALD A. BURQUEST

Cedar Hill. Tex.

Science And Biblical Truth

My problem with the editorial lies in the strategy of insisting that “scientific creationism” be included in a discussion of origins.

Whatever the validity of “scientific creationism” as science, the imposition of such a two-model system raises a number of questions. First, this approach asks the student to make a choice between two options, either or both of which may not be understood or equally well stated by the teacher. The result could be a case so weighted in one direction that the other is barely seen—a result all too evident in many Christian schools.

Second, is “scientific creationism” a good statement of what Christians believe about origins? It seems highly improbable that such a statement would find agreement among more than a narrow segment of evangelicals.

Third, is science the place to impose one’s Christian view on the public school system? I find the ideas expressed in the social sciences at the school my children attend far more destructive of their faith than those few points in science where Scripture and science are said to conflict. Is the two-model approach in biology to be followed by two-model legislation in psychology, history, art, physical education, and music?

I would suggest a different approach—one that would involve clerics and laity in a dynamic relation with the public schools. This would require Christian involvement in the schools at all levels. If one is willing to give time to working with children, school teachers and administrators are far more willing to invite people in to express alternative views on religiously sensitive topics—quiet infiltration rather than bombastic confrontation.

JOHN HAAS. JR

Gordon College

Wenham, Mass.

Women’S Role

Your lead line on the cover of the February 20 issue, “Women’s Role in Church and Family: Going Back to Scripture,” intrigued me. It is unfortunate the editorial that introduced the subject did not follow that high and proper strategy. In one interpretive leap, the editor jumped from the solid rock of Galatians 3:28 to a highly speculative and debatable conclusion, “the right to ordain women.”

If CT is going to take this position on the ordination of women, let us at least have the benefit of your own biblical scholarship in support of this conclusion. To do less is to jeopardize your credibility. How did you arrive at such a firm and sweeping conclusion after reading the articles pro and con? I could not.

REV. ROBERT C. FREDERICH

Galilee Baptist Church

Denver, Colo.

Frankly, I’m a bit dismayed that CT has taken a public stand in favor of the ordination of women. It seems to me that both you and Stouffer [“The Ordination of Women: Yes”] make the mistake of reading too much into Galatians 3:28. It is my firm conviction that Paul is not making a broad statement there to the effect that men and women are equal in all situations—in the home, church, and marketplace—as well as in the kingdom of God. To me, it seems obvious that the context of his argument in the whole epistle restricts his statement to the last sphere only. In Galatians, Paul refutes the idea that there were different classes of Christians, namely, those who have “merely” believed in Christ, and those who have both believed and been circumcised. Paul is at pains to insist that there is only one basis of acceptance by God, and that is the completed work of Christ. He does not deal with ecclesiastical or domestic order in this letter.

But Scripture does teach, on the grounds of Creation and Fall principles, that men and women have differing roles and functions in the domestic and ecclesiastical economies. To deny that men and women can be unequal in authority and role in the home or church while at the same time being equal (or “one”) in Christ must lead to denying that the Father could be “greater” than Christ (John 14:28) while at the same time being “one” with him (John 10:30). There is no more inconsistency on the human plane than there is on the divine.

LAWRENCE A. PILE

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

The writer of the editorial evidently believes that Paul forbade women speaking in the church because they were “untaught women.” He also says that in 1 Timothy 2:11–12 Paul had in mind “immature, ill-taught Christians.” This, I believe, is his own supposition.

What was not mentioned in the article was that the apostle Paul falls back upon what God had previously said about the role of women. “They are to be under obedience, as also saith the law” (1 Cor. 14:34).

Today we hear it said that Paul based his teachings about women on the culture of the day, the unlearned condition of women in his day. But not once does Paul resort to such an argument. His argument is based on “as also saith the law.”

REV. WILLIAM G. KENNELL

Trinity Lutheran Church

Cantonment. Fla.

Stouffer seems bent upon equating submission with inferiority and authority with superiority. This is the position of the women’s liberation movement, but I am surprised to find it in the thinking of an evangelical pastor.

One thing he overlooked is the obvious fact that in the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3, God requires the individual to be the husband of one wife. If ordination of women is taught in Scripture, why are there no qualifications for female elders?

It is strange indeed that women’s advocates such as Stouffer didn’t come along until the world began to put forth such antibiblical teachings. Where have such men been all these years? And how could they have overlooked such an important doctrine as women’s rights?

REV. JAMES R. OWEN

Baytown Community Church

Baytown, Tex.

Thank you for your excellent articles on “Women’s Role in Church and Family.” The picture is wonderful. Maybe that stiff breeze will help blow away some cobwebs!

About two years ago, I was asked to teach a young adult Sunday school class. I agreed to do so only if my husband would agree to teach with me—keeping me “under his umbrella.” Their questions regarding this thinking started my husband and me on a journey. We had to face the possibility that our position was more traditional than biblical. The ensuing process of in-depth study and prayer has been difficult, painful, and finally rewarding. Our position has been articulated by Pastor Stouffer.

NANCY L. LINDSLEY

Orinda. Calif.

The Mickelsens’ approach to the meaning of headship (kephale) was interesting [“The ‘Head’ of the Epistles”]. But is it not true that one of the major reasons why “traditional” churches are so ineffectual today is that they have ignored the leadership role (authority) of Jesus Christ? He is the originator, completer, and enabler of the church, to be sure. But he is also its Lord. He is the one from whom we in the church should receive marching orders. How many disappointments have arisen because we ask the Lord to support and nurture our own plans rather than his! The Mickelsens bring out a frequently neglected meaning of kephale, but at the same time they diminish the richness and fullness of the word in its 1 Corinthians 11:3 context.

CLAIR MERRITT

West Lafayette, Ind.

Simply because she is asked to submit to her husband (Paul’s overwhelming use of the word aner in man-woman texts), a woman is not thereby compelled to submit to every male in the congregation on the basis of 1 Timothy 2:12. And then there are lots of single and widowed women who are free of a husband’s special direction. In any case, all our women need to be functioning within the body appropriate to their abilities apart from sexual bias.

MERLIN SHORB

Silver Spring, Md.

I am too well aware of both sides of the argument. But perhaps we are concentrating on the wrong questions. Jesus never seemed to notice male or female, but was constantly aware of ministry! Is a conversion brought about by the power of God’s Holy Spirit through a female vessel worth less than if God had used a male? Balaam was “saved” by an ass! God will use who he wants and what he wants. (I find no Pauline theology covering the virtue of being an ass rather than a horse.)

Surely the tempter reads with relish our debates. As we draw line after line of jargon, who is minding the church? Certainly Jesus is the Lord of the church, but he has appointed, called, and commissioned earthly stewards. Clergy operate in ministry uniquely equipped with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Those gifts are asexual. There is no masculine list or feminine list. God uses our whole selves to express his truths, not the other way around. In my home, I am wife, mother, and woman. In my church, I am pastor, not woman pastor. I have joys and struggles in my parish—victories and problems. But none of them stem from my gender.

Brother Austin and Brother George. I appreciate your scholarship and attention to detail. But in the long run, I must ask the question, “Are you winning anybody?” Let’s put this part of the debate to rest and ask God’s questions about harvest instead.

REV. JAIME POTTER MILLER

Galloway United Methodist Church

Franklin, Pa.

Your recent issues covering a Christian’s response to war and the role of women in the church deserve special recognition. They do so not just for the quality of the articles, but also for placing detailed arguments for two different positions side by side. I want to thank you for this approach for two reasons. First, it exposes us to a wider range of knowledge than is normally allowed. Though you must exercise your conscience in stating editorial positions and your prerogative to convince others of their validity, you need not deny access to competing views. Any journal that cannot present in detail the logic of the “other side” never gives any credence to the reader’s intelligence and argues from the most repressive stance imaginable: “Believe me, because you’re ignorant of any other alternative.”

Second. I’m grateful because it points up weaknesses in our attempts to bring biblical wisdom to current issues. Two different people use the same Scriptures, the same Greek study, and the same exegetical guidelines to prove two entirely different positions. This should well remind us that our understanding of the Word cannot be totally entrusted to academic tools, valuable as they are, but to the cry of our hearts, “Father, teach us your ways, that we might walk in your paths.” In our own exegeses, we would be reminded that our defiant arrogance in our presently held positions is our greatest barrier to truth and growth. The prayer cannot be prayed alone, but must be the humble search of all of us together.

REV. WAYNE L. JACOBSEN

The Savior’s Community Church

Visalia. Calif.

Your description was quite accurate [“Does Your Husband Need Jesus?”]. The unequally yoked wife is not a full member, either in the home or in the church. This is, however, an angle that your article has not exposed. Any program that includes unsaved husbands should warn its participants that these husbands are carnal, tuned to the world, and therefore “brotherly” embraces and other familiarities that take place among Christians are not always in order.

KATHY LOYD

Washington, D. C.

How can you talk about “Women at the Helm” and not have any articles by women who are currently acting as ministers? The weight of the articles you printed did not take seriously the ability or the call of women to minister in the body of Christ. Out of five articles and two vignettes dealing with the role of women in their families and in the church, only one took seriously the responsibility of women to say “yes” when Christ calls them to minister to others in and for him. I am firmly convinced that when the church or individuals in it keep anyone, Jew. Greek, slave, free, male, or female from following the call of Christ to minister to his body, then that church or individual is in sin.

REV. LINDA J. BRINDLE

Salem Friends Meeting

Liberty, Ind.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry after reading Lillian Hitt’s “My Submission Brought Freedom and Fulfillment.” It brought to mind a recent tiling project my husband and I worked on. When the 10-inch squares coincidentally worked out perfectly in one corner of the floor on which we were laying them, we laughed, and tongue in cheek, pointed to it as an obvious sign from God that it was his will that we lay floor tile. I’m sure Mrs. Hitt is very happily married, but how sad that we Christians look for omens of God’s will and presence in the material parts of our lives like our coffee containers and floor tile. How much better it would be if, instead, we would look harder for him within ourselves.

CHERYL MOROSCO

La Habra, Calif.

Proselytizing Without Pressure

I am grateful that the barriers that have existed so long between Jewish religious thinkers and the Christian church are gradually being lowered and that meaningful discussion is taking place across the divide [News, Jan. 23]. I was rather perplexed, however, by the distinction that certain evangelical participants made between witnessing and proselytizing. It seems to me that the word “proselyte” is very much a Humpty Dumpty word. “ ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is.’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things’ ” (Alice Through the Looking Glass).

Historically, the word meant a convert from Judaism to Christianity, and correctly used today, it means a convert from one religion to another, without any ominous overtones. The particular connotation given by the participants where they said it “includes coercion and propaganda techniques unworthy of the gospel” is a purely subjective definition with no lexicographical authority. I feel that when evangelicals refute proselytizing they unwittingly fall into a trap that effectively means denying the divine command to preach the good news to Jew and Gentile, and first to the Jew.

REV.MURDO A. MACLEOD

Kent, England

To Christian parents, few things in this world are quite so important as the education of their children. Most evangelical Christians still enroll their children in public schools. But increasingly, they find their children subject to religious and moral influences of almost overwhelming force. To their dismay, they discover that the public schools are no longer the mother of basic morality and traditional values. Too often they are instead the spawning ground of ethical relativism, and secular humanism becomes the “established” religion providing the philosophical framework for these new anti-Christian values. Many evangelicals are convinced that private schools are the only long-term answer.

But many other evangelicals have elected to remain within the public school system and fight back. To their surprise, they discover that teachers and school administrators are often on their side. Secular humanism is a minority religion in America. And we must not permit it, falsely in the name of freedom, to destroy our freedom by imposing its religion and education and philosophy upon our public schools. In this issue, three articles (by Christenson. Freeman, and Crater) and an editorial point out our dangerous plight and to a way out of this educational impasse. You won’t agree with all of them. But as an evangelical, you can’t afford to shut your eyes to the problem and do nothing.

It’ Easter, and no Easter issue would be complete without an article on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. J. I. Packer draws some insights from our Lord’s post-resurrection ministry that are badly needed by us all. Also in this issue. Francis Schaeffer, with characteristic honesty, confesses mistakes from the past as he discusses with great delicacy and sympathy an issue that still deeply troubles the church today. Finally. David Seamands. Wesleyan pastor of the Asbury College Church, refutes “perfectionism” in a way that will delight the heart of any Reformed theologian in the tradition of Luther and Calvin. In so doing, he remains loyal to his Wesleyan tradition, for the kind of “perfection” he opposes. Wesley himself would have abhorred.