A Missions By-product of Restored China Relations

Some missions organizations envisioned benefits from the normalization of Chinese-American relations—they hoped new doors would open for evangelism to the mainland. But now, a number of missionary agencies stand to benefit in a monetary way: American missionary organizations whose properties were confiscated by the Communists in 1949 will receive $19.4 million in compensation. That figure represents about one-fourth of an $80.5 million total that the People’s Republic of China has agreed to pay to American claimants.

About one-fifth of the amount earmarked for religious organizations, or $3.5 million, will go to seven Roman Catholic orders. The remaining $15.9 million will be awarded to Protestant mission boards and to educational institutions they established.

The United States government has agreed to pay back an equal amount, roughly $81 million, to Chinese nationals whose property and assets in the United States were frozen in 1950, when the U.S. reacted against China’s involvement in the Korean War.

American claimants will be compensated at the rate of forty-one cents on the dollar for their properties, as valued in 1949 according to figures set by the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission. For example, a group holding Chinese assets valued at $ 10,000 in 1949, will receive $4,100 from the Chinese government. (Actually, the U.S. government requested about $190 million in compensation; the 41 percent repayment figure was arrived at so that compensations would be more or less equal. Frozen Chinese assets in the U.S. equalled the $81 million that is being repaid to U.S. interests.)

Slightly more than one-third of the $81 million compensation is due to U.S. interests before October 1. The balance will be paid over a five-year period in five equal yearly installments.

Mission boards that supervised Christian colleges in China are entitled to the largest amounts (see graph): the United Board for Christian Education in Asia, a multi-denominational agency that sponsored ten schools, and the board for Lingnan University. Other major recipients will be the American Baptists, the Young Men’s Christian Association, and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern).

Conspicuous by their absence are the United Presbyterians, United Methodists, United Church of Christ, and Southern Baptists. None of these groups filed claims for compensation during 1968 and 1969—as groups must have done in order to receive the compensations. The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission was formed in 1968 for the purpose of soliciting the claims, and claimants had to file before a July 1969 deadline.

George H. Hays, East Asia secretary of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, explained why Baptists declined to file for compensation. His group hoped that by holding its Chinese properties, Chinese Baptists might be able to reclaim them at a later date. He sees greater merit in this course of action, as against accepting monetary compensation that has been shrunk by inflation anyway.

L. Newton Thurber, East Asia director for the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Program Agency, gave two reasons why his group declined to file prior to the 1969 cut-off date.

1. Presbyterian holdings had been turned over to the Chinese for educational, medical, and evangelistic purposes. At the time of the filing, Presbyterian church buildings were still being used as churches. The Presbyterians felt they ought not to file for compensation for properties still being used for religious purposes.

2. The church believed the compensation process would obstruct the future normalization of Chinese-American relations.

According to some sources, the U.S. government originally asked groups to file compensation claims as a method for gauging the value of U.S. properties relinquished to China; they say that U.S. leaders perceived the compensations claims as a friendly settlement between nations, not as an act of adversaries. Filing reportedly was not understood as a commitment to accept funds in the event of normalization of relations between the two nations.

The United Methodist Church finds itself in a curious position. The denomination was formed in 1968 by the merging of two groups, the Methodist Church—which declined to file claims—and the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB)—which did file for compensation.

Edwin O. Fisher, Jr., associate general secretary of the UMC World Division of the Board of Global Ministries (and a former EUB missionary), says the EUB filed in order to keep its options open. He anticipated that the United Methodist Church would accept EUB compensations, and that a more important factor at this point is determining how those funds will be used. He recalled that $300,000 was exacted from China by the colonial powers at the end of the opium wars in 1942; the United States portion was used to fund exchange programs—an expenditure that he believes won widespread approval of the Chinese.

Is Psychology Religious?

Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship, by Paul C. Vitz (Eerdmans, 135 pp., $4.95 pb), is reviewed by Allan R. Andrews, assistant professor of psychology, North Shore Community College, Beverly, Massachusetts.

With the zealous intensity of a Luther-like reformer, Paul C. Vitz has hammered his theses to the cathedral door of contemporary psychology. Vitz attacks the modern psychological institution, which, he argues, has become a religion in the form of secular humanism preaching the gospel according to Selfism.

Specifically, Vitz levels five charges: it exists as a religion in great strength throughout the United States; it can be criticized on grounds independent of religion; it is hostile to most religions, especially Christianity; it raises “grave political and legal issues” because it is financed by tax dollars supporting the schools, universities, and social programs that promote it; and it has been systematically destroying individuals, families, and communities.

Vitz is no ill-informed, street-corner prophet of doom. He speaks as a personality and motivation theorist trained at Michigan and Stanford universities. He currently is an associate professor of psychology at New York University.

Four major theorists of the “self” draw Vitz’s most critical words: Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Erich Fromm, and Rollo May. Rogers appears as the chief offender for Vitz because he, more so than the others, has actively popularized his viewpoint in public seminars and less academic publications.

Vitz also scores selfist worship as he sees it expressed in the popular religious writings of Harry Emerson Fosdick and Norman Vincent Peale, making careful note of the influence of religious liberalism on self theory in psychology.

It becomes clear on careful reading that Vitz has singled out the human potential movement for special criticism. Vitz defends the doctrine of sin as being localized in the will of the individual, and not, as selfist psychology suggests, primarily in

the products of social organization. The problem of individual sin challenges the selfist notions of actualization, Vitz argues: “… the relentless and single-minded search for and glorification of the self is at direct cross-purposes with the Christian injunction to lose the self. Certainly Jesus Christ neither lived nor advocated a life that would qualify by today’s standards as ‘self-actualized.’ For the Christian the self is the problem, not the potential paradise. Understanding this problem involves an awareness of sin, especially the sin of pride: correcting this condition requires the practice of such un-self-actualized states as contrition and penitence, humility, obedience, and trust in God” (p. 91).

Despite some weaknesses in his quick analyses of the four theorists, the notion that psychology is generally hostile to Christianity is Vitz’s strongest thesis. The struggle to define the field of the psychology of religion in the twentieth century and the general reluctance of research psychologists to explore religious phenomena lends support to Vitz’s argument. A perusal of so-called “growth psychology” textbooks also lends credence to Vitz’s argument; these books do ignore the growth potential in religious commitment. Even the late Gordon Allport, in somewhat milder terms than Vitz’s, suggested that religion has become a contemporary taboo-topic much as the topic of human sexuality was taboo in the Vienna of Sigmund Freud.

In the major thesis of his book—that psychology has become a secular religion—Vitz is not precise enough in his depiction of psychology. I think Vitz has unguardedly assailed the whole corpus of humanistic psychology and hence failed to recognize much that is allied with a religious orientation in the discipline.

Vitz’s myopic criticism can be traced to his failure to distinguish narcissistic self-worship from a person-oriented phenomenology. Maslow, for example, has been extremely careful to avoid the implication of selfishness in elaborating the concept of self-actualization. (See his preface to Toward A Psychology of Being.) It appears, on this point at least, that Vitz has neglected his homework and rushed to blanket judgment on carefully articulated self- or person-oriented psychologies.

Psychology as Religion touches some very sensitive nerves. Its weakness lies in what appears a hurried attempt to cover too much ground in a short exposition. Nevertheless, the excesses and shortcomings within psychology he notes do indeed exist. We may perhaps now look for an Erasmus-like reformer who will coolly sharpen our focus on these crucial issues and begin to clarify where psychology stands vis-a-vis religion.

The Apocalypse On Its Own Terms

Revelations on Revelation: New Sounds for Old Symbols by Douglas Ezell (Word, 124 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Robert G. Campbell, pastor, Northwest Baptist Church, Ardmore, Oklahoma.

With so many books and commentaries in recent years on Revelation I wondered what possible new contribution this small book could make. But the reader is in for a delightful surprise. Ezell, who is professor of New Testament at Southwestern Baptist seminary, introduces to both layman and scholar a wealth of new insights. Using the background he gained from his doctoral dissertation on Revelation, he instructs the reader to interpret the Apocalypse from the viewpoint of “the cross-resurrection event” and not “by the process of event substitution.”

He defines “event substitution” as that obsession by some writers to see rockets, nuclear bombs, helicopters, tanks, the European Common Market, and so forth, as the focal point of interpreting Revelation. Instead, Ezell’s premise is that the language and images that John used are found in the “old biblical tradition,” i.e., apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament and other Jewish writings.

The author believes that John was a prophet, but not one who suddenly had been transported to the twentieth century. Instead, guided by the Holy Spirit, John drew on a common stock of symbols and images with standard meanings used by all apocalyptic authors. These symbols had well-established meanings for a first-century audience. The proper method of interpreting the Apocalypse would be to uncover the meaning of each symbol for its day. Only by doing this kind of background study can you arrive at what John’s message would be for all Christians in every century.

After having established this premise, Ezell proceeds to interpret many of the difficult passages in Revelation. Under the chapter headings of The Seals, Trumpets and Bowls; The 144,000; Time, and Times, and Half a Time; The 1,000 Year Reign; The New Heaven and the New Earth; and others, he deals with many of the obscure symbols of Revelation.

He uses simple language and includes “study questions” at the end of each chapter, which make this book ideal to use in small groups. Terms that often baffle the average church member are omitted and more familiar terms are substituted.

I welcome this book. It is much needed to push aside so many of the more bizarre approaches. It is another of the more responsible and sensible books on the subject.

Recent Books On How To Pray

This evaluation of six books is by Cecil Murphey, pastor, Riverdale Presbyterian Church, Riverdale, Georgia.

Arnold Prater’s You Can Pray As You Ought (Nelson, 128 pp., $2.95 pb) earns my four-star rating. The author writes excitingly. He is thoroughly honest about himself and does not try to sneak by with glib assertions of quickie answers. Prater handles the subject on a practical level, dealing with problems like public praying, praying for other people; yet all the time asserting in a positive voice, we can pray the way we feel we should.

So many of the chapters stand out, that it is hard to comment on one or two. But for me, the chapter on the five kinds of healing miracles offers a balanced and helpful look at praying for the sick.

Prater also includes an excellent section of questions with clear, biblical, and nondogmatic answers. His questions are the kind people ask all the time: How can I keep my mind from wandering? If God cannot violate free will, why pray for the salvation of another? To whom should I pray—Jesus, Father, or the Holy Spirit?

Lewis Maclachlan’s 21 Steps to Positive Prayer (Judson, 94 pp., $2.95 pb), gives a theology of prayer in simple language. Machlachlan leads the readers through twenty-one chapters that involve varied aspects. High marks for his short, to-the-point approach. People struggling to enrich their devotional life might find this helpful. It could easily be used as a three-week devotional starter. He also attempts to teach people how to pray, as he says in the preface. Maclachlan is not as successful here, at least in terms of specific directives, but the book is still worth reading.

The Exploding Mystery of Prayer (Seabury, 119 pp., $3.95 pb) will surprise you. While Maclachlan is more formal, Helen Shoemaker’s book encompasses a broader view of prayer. She nicely balances the God-and-me-alone relationship with the we-do-it-together-as-a-community concept of prayer. She writes from an evangelical stance about praying for our world, and especially for other nations. And there is—can you believe?—a chapter on prayer and Christian citizenship.

Shoemaker has lived through most of this century, but remains vitally alive and still searches for a deeper commitment to Christ. She writes with a warmth that makes you feel as though she is saying, “This is written especially for you.” Of all the Shoemaker books I have read, I rate this as her best.

If you are looking for something new, you will be disappointed in Prayer Power Unlimited (Moody, 177 pp., $5.95). In fact, the things J. Oswald Sanders writes about are very elemental in the area of prayer. But he writes with a direct and easily read style. He has an engaging way of communicating what other books on prayer have been saying for thirty years, and yet says it in modern setting. He quotes freely from the standard books on prayer. Sanders’ approach is to take a person who is just beginning or hesitates to begin learning about prayer. Here is a good primer on the devotional life.

Tired of reading all the subjective, experienced-oriented books on the inner life? In David Willis’ Daring Prayer (John Knox, 157 pp., $6.95), he writes for those who cannot play the prayer game anymore but still want to look at prayer again. He is not trying to psyche people up. He is opposed to making prayer purely utilitarian (i.e., those who testify, “I believe in prayer because it works” or “Prayer will make you rich”).

Willis states: “The identity of being new in Christ is based on a relationship which has already been established and in which we have already been included. We can only accept and grow in that identity, but we cannot ‘get’ it by any of our works even—or perhaps, especially—by prayer” (p. 31).

Using the Lord’s prayer as context, Daring Prayer presents theological reflections which Willis ably documents from church history, alongside his rationale for prayer. It is a well thought out book with the author reaffirming the significance of prayer in the Christian life.

I loved the title of Silvio Fittipaldi’s How to Pray Always Without Always Praying (Fides/Claretian, 110 pp., $2.95 pb). However, that light-touch title may lead astray. This is not a quick, grab-and-read-for-five-minutes-book. Of all the authors reviewed, probably only David Willis’ Daring Prayer demands as much serious thought for a theology of prayer.

For most people, prayer consists of words in quotation marks. Fittipaldi contends that such a narrow definition limits prayer. He begins with Paul’s exhortation “Pray always” but broadens the concept so that “the reality of prayer may be more fully recognized” (vii). He views prayer not so much as something that is done, but rather as an orientation in life.

On Suffering, By A Paralytic

A Step Further, by Joni Eareckson and Steve Estes (Zondervan, 192 pp., $6.95) is reviewed by Raymond Fisher, Elverson, Pennsylvania.

Writing simply about suffering is what the authors set out to do. They have done it very well. They also wanted to answer some questions that arose from Joni’s first book and they wanted to attack the contemporary attitude that holds that God exists for the benefit of Christians. Every generation of the church is prone to excess in one or more directions. At one time legalism had been dominant. Today, it is the belief that Christians must lead comfortable lives.

Joni (pronounced Johnny, not Joanie) became acquainted with Steve when a friend brought him over to help her counter the depression and bitterness following an accident that paralyzed her from the neck down. How Steve helped her learn to live a joyful life and how, as a result of that, she turned to drawing works of art with a pencil held between her teeth are described in her first book, Joni (also from Zondervan).

This new book is a fusion of the ideas of such writers as C. S. Lewis and Edith Schaeffer as well as principles the authors have learned from experience, illustrasted by events from Joni’s life. In this respect it is very different from her first book. This is a book of concepts made more readable by being combined with examples from life.

The book was written on an eighth-grade reading level, which, the authors believe, is where the average adult Christian is. Moreover, they learned that Joni was being read by many more children than they had expected. They wanted A Step Further to reach the same audience. For example, one section describes a time she fell off her wheelchair:

“I felt my face strike the asphalt.… My body seemed to bounce on the surface and rolled near the front of our Ford wagon.

“Oh, no!” I heard Sherry exclaim.… People began to crowd around, … but I had to tightly shut my eyes to keep out the blood. I remember moving my neck slightly to make sure it hadn’t been broken (and) running my tongue over my teeth to check if any had been knocked out.…

Immediately someone knelt near me and cradled my head in her hands on her lap. It was Julie. “Are you okay?” she managed. I opened my eyes just long enough to see her brush the hair out of my face; her hands were wet with blood. She kept asking me if I was okay, and I just nodded. Stifled sobs made me aware that she was trying to hide her crying from me. In spite of her tears, she felt it her responsibility to keep calm and stable.

It was just then that I began struggling with my own responsibility. Earlier that week … I had tried to explain that we are to face our trials without complaining.… Now I was being given the chance.… How was I going to respond? (pp. 28–29).

Of the five sections of the book, the one on healing will doubtless arouse the most discussion and controversy. Joni and Steve spent nearly half of the fourteen months they worked on the book just on this originally unplanned section. They maintain that though God can bring glory to himself in our modern world through healing, he often chooses to honor himself by showing the world how well Christians can face trials. One might still have a few questions after reading the section, such as, “How can one pray in faith when he is uncertain of the end result?” Basically, however, they defend their position very well. Most important, they acknowledge that in such a controversial issue no one has the final word.

The ideas are not always presented in logical order, and awkward wording and faulty grammar occasionally disrupt the smoothness of the book.

It is important, however, not to overemphasize these weaknesses. If this book is as widely read as was its predecessor, Joni and Steve’s goal of presenting important ideas about suffering to the average Christian will definitely be accomplished.

A Christian concept of euthanasia distinguishes prolonging life from prolonged dying.

If only the word were still used in its true and original meaning, we would all believe in euthanasia. For it means “dying well,” and we who aspire to be good-living people should aspire to be good-dying people too. Moreover, the “goodness” of the dying process should include practical thoughtfulness in settling our affairs and making our will, a calm trust in God who through Christ has conquered death, and the reasonable expectation that modern drugs can now relieve the symptoms and control the pain which accompany much terminal illness.

Further, a Christian concept of euthanasia draws a legitimate distinction between prolonging life and prolonging the process of dying. The Hippocratic oath commits doctors to fight for human life, but not to practice what has been aptly termed “meddlesome medicine,” namely the giving of useless and even distressing treatment to a patient whose disease is irreversible. True terminal care should enable the dying to die with peace and dignity. Indeed, as Professor Paul Ramsey of Princeton has written, “to be allowed to die is a precious human right.” Similarly, in the use of drugs there is a distinction “between a determination to relieve suffering in order to minimize the trauma of death and a deliberate decision to precipitate death in order to end the trauma of suffering” (J.N.D. Anderson in Issues of Life and Death, 1976).

Nowadays, however, the term “euthanasia” is used (usually prefaced by the adjective “voluntary”) as a euphemism for “mercy-killing.” It describes the deliberate administration of a lethal dose to a patient who requests it and whose condition is burdensome but not fatal. In Britain the Voluntary Euthanasia Bill of 1969, which was rejected by Parliament, would have permitted such euthanasia in the case of a person suffering from “a serious physical illness or impairment reasonably thought … to be incurable and expected to cause him severe distress or render him incapable of rational existence.” But when does “rational existence” cease? In the contemporary debate, the advocates of “mercy-killing” concentrate less on the senile, whose dulled mental faculties tend to reduce their physical suffering, than on the young whose alert minds make their bodily incapacity all the more distressing.

Brian Clark’s play Whose Life Is It Anyway?, which has been drawing enthusiastic crowds to the Savoy Theatre in London, presents a powerful argument for mercy-killing. Its main character is Ken Harrison (brilliantly played by Tom Conti), a professional sculptor who, paralyzed from the neck down as the result of an accident, will never be able to sculpt again. Throughout the play, able only to move his head and to speak, he lies in his hospital bed and occupies the center of the stage. One’s deep sympathy is aroused for him by the heartless professionalism of the nursing Sister, the shallow evasiveness of the consultant (“I’m a Doctor not a Judge”), and the embarrassing insensitivity of the hospital chaplain who describes the patient as “God’s chosen vessel into which people pour their compassion” (ribald guffaws from the audience).

The ground on which Ken Harrison bases his plea to be helped to end his life is straightforward: “I don’t want to go on living, because I’m no longer human.” “I’m dead already.… Life is self-supporting; I’m not. I’m never able to direct anything. I’m in the power of other people.” “It’s a question of dignity. Now only my brain functions. I am in fact dead. It’s an indignity; it’s inhumane to preserve my life. Dignity starts with choice.” His argument is paradoxical: since a life without choice is not a human life, the only way for him to become human again is to choose to die. The play therefore has a misleading title. The issue it raises is not “whose life is it anyway?” but “what is human life anyway?”

It is here, then, that our Christian critique of Ken Harrison’s case would have to begin. If living means choosing, could he not equally have chosen to live rather than die? Besides, life is more than choice, more too than the artistic creativity in which he could no longer engage. Life is relationships. And Harrison’s keen intelligence, sense of humor, and warmth of personality make rich relationships possible for him. But he shuns these, and this to me is the most significant flaw in the play. Although consultant, psychiatrist, resident intern, Sister, nurse, social worker, cleaner, attorney, and judge all come in and out of the ward in the course of their duties, Ken Harrison receives no visitors. He has broken his engagement, and asked his fiancée and his parents not to visit him. No friends come to see him either. But this creates an artificial situation. By cutting himself off from those who love him most he has deliberately dehumanized his own life. Further, no reference is made either to the possibility of a relationship with God, or to the after life.

Joni Eareckson offers us a striking contrast, the more telling because it comes from real life, and not from the stage. For she too is a quadriplegic, who as an athletic girl of seventeen broke her neck in a diving accident in Chesapeake Bay. In Joni (Zondervan, 1976), her bestselling autobiography, she is splendidly honest about her struggles with despair. “Why can’t they just let me die?” she asked. When she realized that she would never walk again, or use her arms, or be able to marry her boy friend, she was bewildered and angry, she felt betrayed by God, and she tried to escape into a world of fantasy. Attempting to recall her to reality, her friend Diana said to her: “The past is dead, Joni, you’re alive.” “Am I?” Joni responded; “this isn’t living.”

How, then, did Joni come to reevaluate the fundamental meaning of human life? It is partly that she acquired extraordinary skill in drawing and painting with her mouth. More than that, she was surrounded by the supportive love of her parents, sisters, and friends. But most important of all, she gained a spiritual perspective. She came to see that her paralysis was only temporary, that one day she will receive a new and glorious body, and that meanwhile her chair is a “tool” to fashion her like Christ. For by it, as she once told 2,000 young people in Kansas City, “God transformed an immature and headstrong teenager into a self-reliant young woman who is learning to rejoice in suffering.” Her second book A Step Further (Zondervan, 1978) expresses a yet stronger resolve to “let God be God” and a yet clearer conviction that “suffering gets us ready for heaven.” (See review, p. 36.) I guess she might even agree, despite all her frustration and grief, that she is more genuinely human now, not less. Her example is an inspiration to many.

John R. W. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church, London, England.

I’ve been waiting six years to see C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on television. I first heard about the possibility, an Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation project, in 1973 at the Episcopal Convention. Caroline Rakestraw, executive director of the organization, has been waiting much longer than that.

Rakestraw first learned of the book from Lewis; she was in London to produce some recordings by him. She decided after reading Lion that it would make a wonderful television show. The Lilly Endowment helped the foundation obtain from the Lewis estate the film rights to all seven books. Then, the foundation worked on the project with Children’s Television Workshop, producers of Sesame Street and The Electric Company.

The result was the two-part animation special aired on CBS this month. (Although CBS delayed announcement of the special, hoping to keep the other networks from counterprogramming serious competition, NBC found out anyway, and scheduled a reshowing of Franco Zeferelli’s Jesus of Nazareth film, to run for four nights in April, with the first two parts shown opposite Lion. Some footage not shown the first time—many of the miracle scenes—was aired in the April rerun.) Kraft, the sponsor, spent about $3 million on the show.

Rakestraw and the foundation wanted Lion to reach a wide family audience. Lewis never intended his stories to become part of a children’s ghetto. He read fairy stories as an adult; he wanted adults to read his fairy stories. And certainly, this was a program for the whole family.

Fortunately, that message is not submerged by the adaptation. I read the script (not a final, edited copy, though) and previewed about half an hour of the two-hour program. It was enough to indicate the quality of the animation, the acting, and the music.

I am perhaps too familiar with Narnia to judge objectively. When I think of the books, I think of Pauline Baynes’s drawings. The animated characters are quite unlike her line work. My first thoughts were—but that doesn’t look like Lucy, or Aslan. But the voices are so right, the tones and nuances handled so well, that before five minutes, that animated character was Lucy.

With Aslan I was sure to have difficulty. I had seen a still shot of the character. Too thin, I thought, almost emaciated. But the section showing Aslan on his way to die for Edmund won me over. The slow, ponderous gait of the lion, and his heavy, pain-filled voice make the animation drawing right.

The music, too, fits the tale. There is some delightful orchestration when Mr. Tumnus and Lucy go off to tea at the opening of the story—lots of tripping trills and perky pizzicato. The music changes appropriately and ominously when Mr. Tumnus rushes Lucy off, after confessing to her his wicked deeds.

The White Witch is simply a triumph. (In fact, all the evil characters are well done. It’s easy to see how much fun the animators had with them.) Her voice, her costume (can you say that an animated character has a costume?), her imperious manner, all are exactly in the right spirit. She can produce shivers of fear in children, particularly when she is about to slay Aslan. She shouts that she will rule Narnia forever. That final word reverberates throughout the land—a terrifying sound, even for an adult. I was worried that we would see her strike Aslan and get the full view of the bloodied knife. (It would have looked good on color television.) I’m happy that the producers showed discretion at this point. As the White Witch raises her arm to strike, the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, telling us the deed has been done.

Lest anyone think I’ve been hired by the network for this puffery, I have a couple of quibbles. Mr. Tumnus hasn’t got a tail. Now that might not matter to most people, but Lewis makes much of that tail, as does Mr. Tumnus later. He says one of his punishments will be that the Witch will cut it off. Too late. An animator beat her to it. I agree with CBS spokeswoman Peggy Rienow that children wouldn’t notice it, or care. But I did. So might other Lewis fans.

Another quibble is with the color of Mr. Tumnus. I am prejudiced. I admit that right away. I don’t like forest green hair or magenta (roughly purply red) faces. Fauns are woodsy creatures, and, I think, might want to blend in with their surroundings. Sorry, Mr. Tumnus. Children probably loved the splashy colors. But I will credit Mr. Tumnus as being one of the best “criers” I’ve seen on television in a long time.

I feel somewhat in the same position as Peter Pan, when he urged his audience to clap for Tinker Bell and save her life. I want everybody to clap for Lion. Write CBS. Write Kraft. With a successful Lion, next year maybe we’ll have Prince Caspian, and then Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and so on, until all seven have been done. And that will be worth sore hands.

Cheryl Forbes is an editor-at-large; she is at present serving as an editor with Genesis Project in New York City.

Not letting the streets alone.

When William Booth came to preach in Brixton Theatre he stayed at the London home of Alexander and Helen Glegg. More than sixty years later, their younger son Lindsay told me about that weekend with the founder of the Salvation Army.

The General’s secretary came in advance to make the arrangements. He fixed a bell by the side of his leader’s bed, and carried a wire up the stairs to his own room, where a battery and bell were connected. “The General might be ill in the night and require me,” explained the officer. “He might even die in the night, and I should be by his side to take down his last words.”

But there was no sign of the General’s dying just then. Lindsay says he kept them very much alive over that weekend. “I will never forget his face or his sermon in the Brixton Theatre. He gripped you by his dominating personality. His piercing eyes seemed to look right through you, and his long white beard made you think of the rugged prophets of old. The General preached that night on the Flood, and his very appearance almost made one think that Noah himself had returned to warn us of judgment to come. I can see him now describing the breaking of the storm and the men beating on the door of the ark and in their anguish crying out, ‘My God, it’s shut!”

The General had just been to see King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace, and was full of his visit and of how interested the King had been in his conversion accounts. To Lindsay, Booth said, “I never had the advantages you had. I never had the education you have. But there came a day in my life when I said to God, ‘Lord, thou shalt have all there is of William Booth’—and thereafter God blessed me.”

Yet the man received by royalty and given the freedom of the city of London had been sneered at and pilloried at the start of his career. Born on April 10, 1829, he had grown up amid poverty, became a pawnbroker’s assistant, then a Methodist pastor. But he was restless even when preaching to a full congregation on industrial Tyneside. His preface to In Darkest England and the Way Out explains why: “When but a mere child, the degradation and helpless misery of the poor stockingers of my native town, wandering gaunt and hunger stricken through the streets … kindled in my heart yearnings to help the poor which have continued to this day.” He saw too that here were men and women as sinners needing a Savior, so he concentrated all his power in seeking to snatch them from the jaws of something worse than death.

For Booth, the Lord’s requirements involved loosing the chains of injustice, freeing captive and oppressed, sharing food and home, clothing the naked, and carrying out family responsibilities. He could claim good biblical warrant, but such views disturbed a Victorian England that upheld God-appointed stations, especially for the poor. Even Booth’s colleagues of the Methodist New Connexion were uneasy about this. Booth was unmoved: to speak of godly poverty was no indication that God approved destitution. For him there was here no theological issue: people did not stop dying in hopelessness and squalor while theologians discussed nice points of controversial divinity (they still don’t). Happily, God is never particular about giving all of his most-used servants a good education. Booth pressed on, warmly supported by the remarkable Catherine, whom he married in 1855.

Ten years later he began in London’s East End “The Christian Mission,” a rescue operation aimed at what Matthew Arnold called “these vast, miserable, unmanageable masses of sunken people.” One summer evening he was found supervising preparations for his first evangelistic service in London’s Mile End Road. As a boy was attaching to a length of rope the naphtha lamps that would illumine the big tent, William Booth murmured, “One of these days they will be stringing lights like that around the world.”

From the outset his Salvation Army (a name adopted in 1878) waged war on a dual front: against the pinch of poverty and the power of sin. The cause was hindered during early years as the Army was shunned by the establishment and roughly handled by the very submerged tenth of humanity that was Booth’s special concern. Mobs jeered, threw stones, broke windows, vandalized property. Magistrates and police offered little protection. By the end of 1884,600 Salvationists had gone to prison in defense of their right to preach in the open air. “Why don’t you people stop in your buildings and let the streets alone?” demanded one furious police superintendent.

That was precisely what William Booth would not do. Bound for the land of the pure and the holy they might be, but on the way Booth and his helpers went into places the church never knew existed. They sought the castaways, exposed vice, provided homes and food and employment and medical care, reconciled families, and gave unwelcome publicity to frightful social conditions no other agency would tackle. Even after the turn of the century the Cheapside branch of Thomas Cook’s could tell novelist Jack London: “We are not accustomed to take travelers to the East End. We receive no call to take them there, and we know nothing about the place at all.”

Booth followed the sixteenth-century Thomas More in holding that the devil was a proud spirit who could not bear to be mocked. So they mocked him, identified him as the chief enemy, challenged his monopoly of “all the best tunes,” and adapted to the latter such disrespectful words as “The old devil’s crown has got to come down, And that with a hullabaloo!” The avowed purpose of the big drum was, of course, to deafen the devil.

The General fearlessly waged war against such evils as sweated labor and girls sold into prostitution (“the career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice”). Booth, incidentally, anticipated Women’s Lib in establishing from the beginning the principle that women share in the work equally with men.

There were dark moments. Catherine died of cancer in 1890, and William faced the last twenty-two years of the campaign alone. Two sons and a daughter defected because of personal differences and disputes over discipline. Accused of lining his pockets at public expense, Booth agreed to an investigation of his financial affairs by an impartial committee chaired by a former governor of New Zealand. In December 1892, a 69-page report completely exonerated him.

His Army spread throughout the world—to the Americas, Africa, Australia, Asia, as well as into Europe—but Booth was always very much in control. A writer sent to interview him said he expected to meet a visionary and saint, and found instead the astutest businessman in the city. “You feel,” said the reporter, “if he had applied himself to winning wealth instead of to winning souls, he would have become the Rockefeller of England.… When he passes the Stock Exchange, he must say, ‘There but for the grace of God goes William Booth.’ ” Instead, Booth was responsible for a whole network of social and regenerative agencies throughout the world. Lord Wolseley once described him as the world’s greatest organizer.

As the nineteenth century closed, Booth gradually became acceptable: freeman of London, honorary doctor of Oxford, guest at the coronation of Edward VII, and of the U.S. Senate, which he opened with prayer. There remained pockets of resistance in the Church of England. Bishops might no longer air malicious and unproven charges in the privileged confines of the House of Lords, but there was a vague feeling that the Army was somehow uncouth. When Booth tried once to get permission for a service in St. Paul’s, the Dean’s refusal of such hospitality was not unlinked to his question about whether any of the guests would wear hobnailed boots likely to scratch the marble.

And, of course, the Army observed no sacraments, though they denied they were against them. Perhaps the wranglings these had caused in other churches did not encourage Booth to change his mind. “Your people do not have the Lord’s Supper,” said a school inspector once to a Salvationist pupil. “No, sir.” “Then what do they put in its place?” “Farthing breakfasts for starving children, sir.”

Yet as early as 1882 Randall Davidson, later archbishop of Canterbury, offered four reasons for the Salvation Army’s progress: nothing succeeds like success; the new movement put its converts to work; the personal testimony of those converts was an effective method of evangelism; and preaching and teaching were given in language people could understand.

And they had William Booth, who knew and could speak to the condition of ordinary people. Here he is, electrifying an audience, talking about Judas, seeing him in his mind’s eye. “What is this man doing?” he asks. “He is—counting. And whispering, ‘One, two, three … ten, twenty, thirty!’ Then like a lost soul he cries out, ‘Ah! That was what I sold heaven for—that was what I sold my soul for. There is the gate of heaven, there is the throne of God, shining in the faraway distance. Ah! For this I sold it all.’ And if ever you go to hell, Judas will come to you, and count his silver over in your ears—and you will show him the price you paid for your soul too!”

In 1912 William Booth died—or, as the message said, “The General has laid down his sword”—and people of all ranks were among the many thousands of mourners who gathered in London for a farewell that was both tearful and joyful.

In 1965 I was in an Albert Hall crammed to capacity for the centenary celebrations. William Booth’s Army had marched a long way since that tent meeting in the Mile End Road. Now among the speakers testifying to the Army’s splendid record of service through many an arduous campaign were Queen Elizabeth II and Britain’s Home Secretary. The many distinguished guests included Cardinal Heenan of Westminster, whose entry was the signal for an astonishing standing ovation.

When Dr. Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury, told the assembly he had never met a gloomy Salvationist, a solitary “Hallelujah” resounded from the balcony. William Booth would have approved that.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

The church fathers called Easter, “Pascha,” a word derived from the Hebrew word, Pesach, which means Passover, a name pointing to Jewish origins for this Christian festival. Therefore, to better understand the nature and practice of Easter, it is helpful to look at the Jewish Passover as it was practiced when the Christian church began.

Passover commemorated Israel’s redemption out of slavery in Egypt—a dramatic display of God’s saving action in history. Israel was commanded to preserve the memory of this action forever by means of an annual feast. Quite likely, by the first century A.D. the Passover meal had a set form to follow. Certain things had to be done in order that the Passover might be celebrated properly, for every action had its special meaning. Everyone, even the servant, was to eat reclining, as this was the Roman custom for free men. They ate the feast in the night, because it was in the night that the Lord passed over his people. The food included a Passover lamb that had been sacrificed, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. When the food was brought in, the son would ask his father why this night was different from all other nights. The father would then instruct his son, reading and explaining the Passover story from Deuteronomy. Rabbi Gamaliel is quoted as saying that in order to fulfill the Passover, the verses concerning three things must be explained: “ ‘Passover’—because God passed over the houses of our fathers in Egypt; unleavened bread—because our fathers were redeemed from Egypt; bitter herbs—because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our fathers in Egypt” (Mishna, Pesahim 10.5).

The meaning of the Passover was more than a simple commemoration of God’s past deliverance of Israel from Egypt. It also included a sense of present personal involvement. Those who partook of the annual meal participated in the events of the Exodus: “In every generation a man must regard himself as if he came forth himself out of Egypt” (Mishna, Pesahim 10.5). This idea of personal involvement is seen clearly in the words of an ancient Passover hymn entitled, Dayenu. It concludes with these words: “Then how much more, doubled and redoubled, is the claim the Omnipresent has upon our thankfulness. For he did take us out of Egypt, and execute judgments on them, and judgments on their gods, and slay their first-born, and give us their substance, and tear the Sea apart for us, and bring us through it dry, and sink our oppressors in the midst of it, and satisfy our needs in the desert for forty years, and feed us manna, and give us the Sabbath and bring us to Mount Sinai, and give us the Torah, and bring us into the Land of Israel, and build us the House of his choosing to atone for all our sins.”

In addition, the ancient Passover celebration probably included another significant aspect of redemption: future final redemption of Israel. Rabbinic tradition included such sayings as the following comment on Exodus 12:42: “In that night they were redeemed, and in that night they will be redeemed in the future.” This future redemption was closely associated in the minds of the Jews with the coming of the Messiah.

Very likely the earliest Christians continued to keep the Jewish Passover: the synoptic writers agree that the Passover season was the time of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. John, seemingly, is even more specific, asserting that Jesus was sentenced to die at about the sixth hour of the day of preparation—the very time when the Jews were preparing for the feast of Passover by killing the paschal lamb. Early in the church’s history Christians designated Jesus as the Lamb of God, and the significance of this title was fully articulated by Paul when he wrote: “Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7). And from the Book of Acts it is clear that Christians did not immediately abandon all their Jewish practices. Although the early Church continued to celebrate the Passover, it became infused with new meaning because of the redemptive acts of Christ that took place during Passover.

During the second century, disagreements arose over when to celebrate the Pascha. Some Christians wanted to and did celebrate Pascha on the fourteenth of Nisan, the traditional Passover date, irrespective of the day on which it fell, just as their Jewish ancestors had done for centuries before them. Others—the vast majority of Christians—celebrated Pascha on the Sunday immediately following the fourteenth of Nisan, for on that day their Lord completed their redemption by his resurrection. Although the early churches disagreed on when to celebrate the Pascha, they primarily agreed on the elements to be included and on the meaning of the celebration. For most Christians the paschal liturgy included a fast, whose length varied with different communities, and an all-night vigil which may have included Scripture readings, a sermon (see the March 24, 1978, issue, pp. 23–26), prayers, baptism, and the Eucharist.

For all early Christians the meaning of this celebration was similar to that of the Jewish Passover. Above all else, the Pascha was a celebration of redemption. The redemption of the Jews from Egypt typified the believer’s redemption from sin, with the paschal lamb being Christ. Melito of Sardis wrote, “For he was led as a lamb and slaughtered as a sheep; he ransomed us from the ruin of the world as from the land of Egypt, and freed us from the slavery of the devil as the hand of Pharaoh, and sealed our souls with his own Spirit and the members of our bodies with his own blood” (Homily, 67). He continued: “This is he who rescued us from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from death to life, from oppression to an eternal kingdom, and made us a new priesthood and a chosen people forever” (Homily, 68). These words are almost identical with the words spoken in the Jewish Passover celebration: “He brought us out from bondage to freedom, from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning to a festival-day, and from darkness to great light, and from servitude to redemption” (Mishna, Pesahim, 10.5). The similarity of these two passages pinpoints how the Pascha took from the Passover its meaning as that festival where God’s redemption was celebrated.

The meanings of baptism and the Eucharist for early Christians also show that the Pascha was, in its essence, celebration of redemption. Early believers saw baptism as that act by which you died with Christ to the old way of life, and rose to a new life, a life united to Christ and his body, the church. So baptism was an active experiencing of the redemption celebrated in the Pascha.

This was true also of the Eucharist. When the early Christians celebrated the Eucharist they not only remembered the historical events of the death and resurrection of Christ. They experienced immediate fellowship with the resurrected Lord. For in the eucharistic meal the early Christians not only looked back to the Lord’s redemptive work—the events of his life, death, and resurrection—but also they personally experienced these events through the living presence of the victorious Lord in their community (Matt. 18:20). And at the same time they looked forward to his return when he would establish his kingdom in its fullness. So Pascha, taking its meaning from Passover, was at the same time a celebration of Christ’s historic work of redemption and participation in those events by the believers.

We are becoming mere observers of Christ’s redemptive acts, and not participants in them.

As the early Christians celebrated the Pascha, they knew that their redemption came about through the sinless life of Christ, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. All of these isolated events were celebrated on one single night: the early Christian Pascha was a festival that united the distinct elements of God’s plan of redemption and celebrated them as one glorious whole.

But the passage of time changed Pascha to Easter, and it changed the nature of the festival from an eschatological celebration that embraced past, present, and future, to a historical one that emphasized the individual events. The triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the other events of Christ’s last week on earth—each assumed major significance. Even sites where these events took place were given special attention and reverence. Thus the one great act of redemption was disjointed as day, place, and happening were put into a historical framework. For example, we concentrate on the Passion of Christ on Good Friday and on his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

I believe these changes have presented a serious impediment to worship for anyone who reverently approaches the Easter season. If Easter now focuses attention chiefly on the past historical events of Christ’s passion, as I suspect it does, these events may become separated from each other and locked in time. Are we in danger of becoming a mere observer of Christ’s redemptive acts and not a participant in them?

Can Easter ever again be the joyful celebration of God’s unified work of redemption that it once was? We must see it as a celebration of redemption and by faith we must expect to experience that redemption personally and in community. No change for the better is likely, however, unless we grasp the true nature and importance that the Pascha had for the early believers.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

because we are all

betrayers, guilty, taking

silver & eating

body & blood & asking

is it I & hearing him

say yes

it would be easy for us all

to rush out & hang ourselves

but if we find grace

to cry & wait out the days

after the voice of morning has crowed

in our ears & broken

our hearts

he will be there

to ask us each again

do you love me

Luci Shaw

Something happened in which the disciples in these appearances were confronted with a reality which also in our language cannot be expressed in any other way than by that symbolical and metaphorical expression of the hope beyond death, the resurrection from the dead. Please understand me correctly. Only the name we give to this event is symbolic, metaphorical, but not the reality of the event itself. The latter is so absolutely unique that we have no other name for this than the metaphorical expression of the apocalyptical expectation. In this sense, the resurrection of Jesus is a historical event, an event that really happened at that time.

Up to a very recent date it has repeatedly been said that this would violate the laws of nature. But contemporary physicists have become much more careful before making such statements, not because of special microphysical results but because of a more precise consciousness of the fact that general laws do not make possible an absolutely certain prediction about the possibility of single events, except in the case where all possible conditions can be taken into account. This might be possible in an experiment, but not in the process of the world as a whole.

If the resurrection would mean revivification of the corpse, then we must really say this would hardly be thinkable from the point of view of the natural sciences. The range of the possible conditions in this model could be surveyed, so that such an event, although not entirely impossible theoretically, must practically be excluded. The beginning and end of an event which is understood in this way lie in the realm of the world known to our experience. After life has ceased for several seconds, or in special cases, for several minutes, irreversible processes of dissolution have begun. The concept of transformation is different, however, since we only know the starting point, but not the final point of this process. We speak of this on the basis of the appearances and, indeed, only in a metaphorical language.

Now, someone may ask: even if the resurrection of Jesus is certain as an event that really happened, what would that mean? Would it be possible to recognize by this that Jesus was the Son of God, that he was the One who died on the cross for the sins of all men? This is precisely the case. If the resurrection of the dead really happened with Jesus and if one understands the meaning of this event in connection with the pre-Easter activity and destiny of Jesus, then all the assertions of the early Christian message of Christ are only a development of the meaning included in this event—also expressed in a way relative to that time. That can be proved and shown step by step, if one follows the way in which the message of Christ developed out of the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, thus expressing the inner meaning of this event in its original context. That this event has such an absolute meaning consists in the fact that the resurrection of Jesus stands in a close connection with the final destiny of man. With the resurrection of Jesus, what for all other men is still to come has been realized. Therefore, now man’s attitude towards Jesus as a man is decisive for his future destiny, this was the claim made by Jesus before the events in Jerusalem. Thus, man has a hope beyond death through community with Jesus. In his destiny the final destiny of all men became an event, and through this Jesus proclaimed that the eternal destiny of all people will be decided by the attitude they have toward him.

Thus, Jesus is the final revelation of God and, therefore, he himself is God. This doctrine adds nothing essential to the events of the resurrection of Jesus; it only makes clear the inner meaning of that event.

“Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6).

Each of the four Gospels announces that the tomb in which the crucified Jesus had been buried on Friday afternoon was empty on Easter morning. Their testimony is supported by the primitive preaching recorded in Acts: “his flesh did not see corruption” (2:31), and echoed by the apostle Paul who, in agreement with the Jerusalem apostles, wrote that “Jesus died, was buried, and rose again on the third day” (1 Cor. 15:3–4, 11). By an action of God the Father, the tomb wherein Jesus had been placed was emptied of its contents, and Jesus, body and soul, was raised to newness of life, his earthly body having been transformed onto the eschatological plane. Through the clarity of their testimony and the spiritual power of this truth upon Christians from then until now, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ has been the historic conviction of the church and the normative meaning of the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed, “… on the third day he rose again from the dead.”

Despite this evidence, there persists an effort to dematerialize belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Last year a novel appeared by Charles Templeton entitled Act of God. It tells a story about the discovery of Jesus’ body and the church’s attempt to keep news of this from the general public. More intriguing than the novel itself—its plot centers upon precisely that supposed discovery which the historical evidence assures us did not occur—has been the reaction to that possibility by liberal churchmen. Ernest Howse, for example, a long-time pastor of the Bloor Street United Church in Toronto, explained in a newspaper column that Templeton’s central hypothesis held no cogency at all for him, since the discovery of Jesus’ bones would have no effect whatever upon his belief in Jesus’ “resurrection.” People only feel threatened by such a possible discovery, he feels, if they confuse poetry with fact, when they would do better to recognize that whatever happened to the body of Jesus could have no effect upon the spiritual and moral impact of his life, which has been effective across the centuries. Howse believes in the “resurrection” of Jesus, but not in the physical sense.

Harvard theologian Gordon D. Kaufman expresses a similar conviction. While recognizing that the earliest Christians themselves believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus who died on the cross, Kaufman finds it impossible to agree with their interpretation (their belief being caused by hallucinatory visions of the risen Christ). Instead, he posits a continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith of a rather different kind. In his opinion, the central claim of the church in proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection was “that the God who had been acting through Jesus’ ministry and especially in his death was still actively at work in the community of believers.” Not the transformation of Jesus’ body, but the continued effectiveness of God’s action, he claims, is the theologically important point they wished to make. Kaufman, to his credit, is not denying that belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the conviction about God’s continued activity were closely connected in the minds of those earliest Christians; he feels simply that for him as a modern theologian they are not inextricably connected. In his view, the true meaning of the historical event called “Jesus’ resurrection” concerns not the fate of Jesus’ body, but the ongoing divine work of redeeming mankind. He holds that resurrection faith can be safely dematerialized without doing serious damage to the real significance of that event (Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective, pp. 411–34, 467f.).

It is thus common to encounter liberal Christians who, rather than believe the New Testament claim as it stands, regard faith in the risen Christ as independent of the empty tomb, which is taken to be unessential and separable from the article of faith itself. God did not need, it is argued, the relic of Jesus’ earthly body in order to establish continuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith; there was no requirement for the tomb to be empty for God to be able to raise Christ to new life.

We must now ask how this position was reached, and what our attitude to it should be. It is surprising to find belief in Jesus’ resurrection interpreted in a manner foreign both to the plain teachings of the New Testament and to the ordinary meaning this word conveys. Why would anybody want to confess the resurrection of Jesus in so misleading and even deceptive a way?

Several of the reasons usually advanced are so weak as to suggest that real reasons lie deeper. We will allude to three of these.

1. It is common to find reference to conflicts and inconsistencies that are said to exist in the resurrection narratives. At a number of points the details in one of the accounts do not match up precisely with details in the others. Less often mentioned is the fact that the differences involved are relatively slight, and can be harmonized without much strain. Their existence may actually enhance the credibility of the reports by removing any suggestion of collusion between the various witnesses. This is certainly no reason for abandoning what the four Gospels all unequivocally state in perfect agreement regarding the bodily resurrection.

2. Another reason regularly heard is the claim that the apostle Paul meant something quite different by his use of the term resurrection than the Gospel writers did. Not only does he fail to mention the empty tomb, the argument goes, but he also thinks of resurrected existence in radically different terms from that of flesh and blood (1 Cor. 15:50); the raising of Jesus’ body could not have been of any interest to him in the light of his theology of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.

The point, however, is far from decisive. Why should Paul juxtapose “he was buried” and “he was raised, and the life to which it was raised was on a higher plane than the flesh and blood plane on which it existed earlier? A bodily resurrection is indeed assumed, too, both in his teaching on baptism in which a body is symbolically buried in water and raised up out of it (Rom. 6:4), and in the promise he gives that our lowly body will be changed to be like Christ’s glorious body through the power of God (Phil. 3:21). There is no compelling reason to interpret Paul in any other way than as giving yet another powerful witness to the reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ.

3. Still another reason sometimes advanced suggests the possibility that the Jewish mind had no other concept available to it for expressing victory over death except resurrection, so Christian faith got conceptualized in this way even though there was no factual basis for it. This objection is simply inaccurate. In the book of Wisdom, survival after death of the just is described in terms of immortality granted by God—a concept not confined to Jews of the Diaspora (Wisdom 3:1–8). Had the early Christians merely wanted to say that Jesus was alive in the spiritual realm after his death they could have said so without dragging in the notion of resurrection, whose sharp meaning would have introduced serious misunderstanding.

Many other weak and ineffective reasons are advanced to sidestep belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, but it is all too apparent that the real reasons are philosophical and theological, not empirical and historical. Let us look at the latter.

The true reason why liberal theologians seek to sidestep the strong New Testament witness to the bodily and physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is an unbiblical philosophy of religion at work in their revisionist theologies. It stems from a humanistic view of history, which makes the event of resurrection unacceptable because it is incredible. Such an assumption makes necessary a novel reinterpretation of faith divorced from fact. Bultmann with admirable plainness states what others often seek to conceal: “A historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable” (Kerygma and Myth, p. 42). Bultmann’s presupposition derives from David Hume and Ernst Troeltsch, and involves a narrow conception of historical reality that excludes from the outset the credibility of the resurrection claim. Pursuing this line of thought, a person is faced with two alternatives: either to turn away from a Christian position, or to revise his understanding of faith so that it can exist unthreatened by the denial of its factual basis. If faith can just be detached from the relativities and naturalistic tone of ordinary history, it can flourish free from any falsification of the type Templeton proposes in what Francis Schaeffer has called its “upper story,” unassailed by any of the acids of historical criticism.

How attractive such a proposal must seem to those who desire to maintain faith but who cannot bring themselves to accept the historical conditions on which the New Testament says faith must rest! It enables them to escape from the skeptical consequences of their own humanistic criticism while holding onto the subjective benefits of faith, simply by divorcing the gospel from its historical foundations. All they must deny is the truth Paul stated: “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). According to this new view, faith and fact are not so precariously joined.

A biblically oriented Christian, however, must ask whose logic is better, Paul’s or Bultmann’s. Quite apart from the question of Paul’s infallibility as an apostle of Christ, is it not plain that the New Testament as a whole supports his argument? None of the biblical witnesses place the saving acts of God in a realm detached from ordinary history; none of them locate faith at the level of subjective meaning indifferent to matters of fact. However attractive for apologetic reasons the new proposal may at first appear, it is surely utterly wrong-headed and the results are ultimately disastrous. There is only one history, and the Bible declares that God raised up Christ in that very realm—not in some misty supra-history running parallel to it and never intersecting with it. Evangelical Christians ought to reject the positivistic assumptions that take history to be a closed continuum of cause and effect which disallows the freedom of God to act in history for the salvation of mankind and open their minds instead to the glorious possibility that historical reality is the way the Bible describes it. When the gospel was first preached in the Roman Empire, its acceptance involved the repudiation of all manner of spurious notions about the universe that were rampant in the hellenistic world. So today, where the gospel of Christ is preached, the demand is made that positivistic assumptions about history be put aside and the magnificent truth about God’s powerful intervention in the midst of it be accepted in its place. To the person in this frame of mind the claim about the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a glorious truth, not an awkward embarrassment.

But why, apart from the New Testament authoritative claim and its intrinsic plausibility, is it important to hold the resurrection as an event that affected Jesus’ earthly body? Granted, the apostles believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and those who claim to be established upon the foundation of their teachings should be expected to believe it too. But what truths are there contained in this belief that move the discussion ahead to the area of its significance for us today? Why did God raise Christ bodily? There are at least three interrelated reasons.

The first is evidential in nature. The resurrection of Jesus represents the verdict of the Father upon the obedience of the Son. In that public and dramatic event God pronounced by means of a deed that transcends the alphabet of human power his approval and acceptance of Jesus’ suffering and death on behalf of the human race. It also sealed and confirmed the pre-Easter claims and activity of Jesus in which our Lord stood in God’s place and confronted mankind with his claim about the kingdom of God. Though seized and put to shameful death by wicked men, Jesus was snatched from corruption and powerfully declared to be the exalted Son of God (Rom. 1:4). Nothing less than the bodily resurrection of Jesus would have sufficed to convince his disciples of the truth of his vindication in the face of opposition and his victory over the powers of death. And according to the unanimous witness of the New Testament writers it was the fact of the bodily resurrection that convinced them. Had any of them believed that the resurrection was poetry and not fact, as Howse suggests, they would never have left their fishing nets to preach the gospel. There would have been no gospel.

The second reason is closely connected to the first. The verdict of the Father rested upon Jesus as the Savior of sinners. It represented his declaration and assurance that the redemptive work of the One in whom we are chosen to be saved has been successfully accomplished and accepted. Jesus’ resurrection was at the same time his justification (1 Tim. 3:16) and our justification as well (Rom. 4:25). In his death Jesus was crucified as if he were a wrongdoer—indeed, as a substitute for sinners; and in his resurrection the great exchange is validated by God so that sinners who cling to him in faith rise to the status of acceptance and justification themselves because of his work (Heb. 9:26). Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24), and having put them all away forever (Heb. 9:26), received glorification in the same body also on our behalf. In the resurrection of Jesus, God raised us up to newness of life with him and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 2:6). If Christ’s body is still under the power of death, he has failed as our representative, and there is no atonement for sins. Paul made that connection clear when he said, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). In short, if Christ has been raised bodily, we stand acquitted if we are related to him through faith. In not letting his chosen and holy one see the corruption of death, God fulfilled the scriptural promises by exalting and lifting up his faithful servant, so that through his vicarious suffering the will of the Lord for the salvation of sinners might be seen to have become effective.

But there is a third reason which helps to explain the basis of the two others. It has to do with the meaning of resurrection in the apocalyptic expectation, which, in contrast to the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul, hopes for the complete redemption of man, body and soul. Salvation in the light of the resurrection involves an enlargement and enhancement rather than a diminution of life. It speaks of the total transformation of the whole person in the new creation that God has promised, wherein this mortal puts on immortality and this corruptible incorruption (1 Cor. 15:53; 2 Cor. 5:4). To reduce the resurrection to an immaterial symbol of new life is to rob salvation as the New Testament understands it of the dimension of world transformation, and to push it in the direction of Greek thought. Bodily resurrection is important because it signifies the salvation of creation and creaturely existence, not simply the liberation of man’s spiritual essence. Christ’s resurrection is a promissory event, what Paul calls “first fruits,” which gives mankind concrete proof and substance to the hope entertained by the people of God for total transformation at the end of history. Through Christ, the last Adam, has come the resurrection unto life of all who are in Christ (1 Cor. 15:20–23). Although the future life will be unimaginably glorious, it will be life in space and time. And although delivered from the bondage of corruption, it will be life in the new heavens and earth wherein dwells righteousness. The real meaning of the denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus is in the end a refusal of the cosmic significance of Christian salvation. It is the refusal to believe that the God who created all things is able to subdue all things and bring about a new world.

The habitual thinking of this present humanistic age conditions us to receive with skepticism the angel’s announcement of the empty tomb. It has affected some so keenly as to lead them to deny the good news and maintain it is not so, and to cling desperately to a dematerialized resurrection concept suspended halfway between belief and unbelief. Let us not allow this world’s thinking to squeeze us into its mold, but let us arise on Easter morning to confess with joyful and believing hearts God’s victory over sin and death through the literal resurrection of the body of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.