There is a new law in our land: Public Law 94–553 to be precise, most often called Copyright Law S. 22. But S. 22 does not really apply to the church, does it? A pastor from upstate New York speaks for many when he writes:

“For as long as I can remember, churches have mimeographed song sheets for banquets, meetings, conventions, etc. I understand it is illegal to reproduce copyrighted material in any fashion. Many youth groups have gotten together a collection of contemporary hymns and choruses and have mimeographed small song books, that is reproducing only the words. I think all of us in the Christian ministry want to be law abiding citizens, but we are not sure just what the law allows and what it does not allow.”

Even under a loose interpretation of the law reproducing copyrighted material is illegal. Taking something that belongs to someone else always is, particularly now under S. 22, which grants longer protection and greater rights for the creator. Not that the idea of a copyright law is anything new. Congress in 1790 first exercised its constitutional power “to promote the progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Three times since then, most recently in 1909, the copyright law has been modified. But over the last half-century, and more particularly in the last twenty years, with great technological change (photocopiers, tape recorders, cable television, and the like), the law has been revised and rewritten.

Initiated by Congress in 1955—twenty-two years ago—the new Copyright Law S. 22 was signed on October 16, 1976, by President Ford and became effective January 1, 1978. The new law, after agonizing and prolonged negotiations among representatives of artists and authors, publishers and producers, and the general public, strikes an equitable compromise between the right of copyright owners and the needs of the users. For example, the work of the author-creator is better protected under a new single system of statutory protection for all copyrighted works, whether published or unpublished. It extends the copyright fifty years beyond the life of the author—without renewal. Before, the work was copyrighted from the date of creation or production, usually for twenty-eight years with a second renewal period of another twenty-eight years. The new law has even extended the renewal period by nineteen years to seventy-five (rather than fifty-six) years for materials published before 1978. The new legislation also increases the regulatory role of the government. A new Copyright Royalty Tribunal is now charged with various rate-setting and royalty-distribution responsibilities in connection with cable television (CATV), juke boxes, pictorial works, public broadcasting, and sound recordings of music. None of these was covered in the old law.

Although the law gives five fundamental, exclusive rights to copyright owners—the rights of reproduction, adaptation, publication, performance, and display—it also extends the consumer’s “fair use” of copyrighted works. The principle of fair use is a specific limitation on the exclusive rights of the copyright owners. But it has its own limitations. S. 22 clearly specifies that criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research are not an infringement of copyright. For example, for teaching or scholarly research, a professor may make a copy of: a chapter from a book; an article from a periodical or a newspaper; a short story or a poem; a chart, graph, diagram, drawing, or cartoon; or a picture from a book, periodical, or newspaper. But in most instances only a single copy is allowed.

Factors considered under “Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use” include whether its use is for commercial or nonprofit educational purposes, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, the nature of the copyrighted work, and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Fair use copies are intended essentially to supplement not substitute the use of the purchased work.

Multiple copying and systematic reproduction require the prior permission of the copyright owner, with one exception: multiple copies for classroom use, not to exceed more than one copy per pupil in a course, may be made under certain provisions of brevity, spontaneity, and cumulative effect. For example, poetry, if less than 250 words and if printed on not more than two pages, whether it were the total poem or an excerpt, may be reproduced for classroom use. So may either a complete article, story, or essay of less than 2,500 words, or an excerpt from any work of prose not to exceed 1,000 words or 10 per cent of the work, whichever is less, but a minimum of 500 words. If a teacher decides that he or she needs to reproduce material right away and there is no time to request permission, then reproduction of materials under the guidelines is permissible.

Copying cannot, however, substitute for the purchase of books, workbooks, test questions, and exercises.

Copyrighted music to the student cannot be charged over the actual cost of photocopying. Further, the copying of materials cannot be for more than one course in the school in which the copies are made; only one item or two excerpts may be copied from the same author, or three from the same collective work or periodical volume during one class term; and only nine instances of multiple copying for one course during one class term is allowed.

Copyrighted music may be photocopied or reproduced when the publication is out of print or to replace lost or stolen copies, such as in an emergency at a performance. Single copies of printed or recorded music can also be made for academic purposes other than performance. But there are certain prohibitions. Your best safeguard is to check with the publisher.

Public performances where there are no direct or indirect commercial advantages or compensation to anyone involved is not an infringement of the new law. Under S. 22, Section 110, educational institutions as well as places of worship or other religious or charitable assemblies do not have to pay royalties.

Translations of the Bible are also copyrighted, much to the chagrin of some. Other than the King James (Authorized) Version, which is in the public domain (the copyright on it having expired), and the Hebrew and Greek testaments, new translations and paraphrases of the Bible are protected by the new copyright law, just as they were protected under the earlier copyright law.

Copyrighting a translation, of course, protects the huge investments made by the sponsoring companies or societies, recoverable only through the sale of the finished product. And it protects the translation from being modified by others. If Bible translations, or church music, or periodical articles, or books were not protected, who would pay for the cost involved in translating, or scoring, or printing?

Of course, under the fair use provision, the church can produce certain portions within specified uses of copyrighted materials provided credit is given: “Copyright” (or ©), together with the year(s) of the copyright, the copyright owner, and the source.

Longer excerpts may be reproduced at the discretion of the copyright owner. When seeking permission, the following ingredients are necessary: (1) title, author and/or editor, and edition of materials to be duplicated; (2) exact material(s) to be used, giving amount, page numbers, and so forth; (3) number of copies to be made; (4) purpose for which you want the material; (5) form of distribution; (6) whether or not the materials will be sold; and (7) method of reproduction. Requests should be sent with a self-addressed return envelope, and with address on the request form as well, to the permissions department of the publisher or company. Allow enough time for your request to be answered.

Additional detailed information on the new law may be obtained from the Association of American Publishers, 1707 L St. NW, Suite 480, Washington, D.C. 20036. Their booklet, “Explaining the New Copyright Law,” which costs one dollar, offers “a guide to legitimate photocopying of copyrighted materials.” Copies of the new statute may be obtained at no charge from the Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20559. The Copyright Office also has a mailing list for receiving update information.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

What apocryphal writings can teach us.

Recent discoveries in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, have turned up a Gospel of Thomas and other works that have attracted the attention of the press. For example, John Dart, religion writer for the Los Angeles Times, has written a popular exposition of the Nag Hammadi discovery entitled. The Laughing Savior (Harper & Row, 1976). These discoveries raise important questions: how do the apocryphal gospels compare with the four canonical gospels? What are these apocryphal gospels like? Have the words of Jesus been preserved outside the New Testament? A consideration of these issues can help us evaluate canonical traditions in a broader perspective.

The Apocryphal Gospels

The apocryphal gospels are non-canonical writings of a motley variety about the purported deeds and revelations of Jesus Christ. Though the Greek word apocrypha originally meant “hidden,” the church fathers used it to describe spurious writings foisted as gospels. Irenaeus refers to “an unspeakable number of apocryphal and spurious writings, which they themselves (i.e. heretics) had forged, to bewilder the minds of the foolish.” Although some of them are patterned after the canonical gospels, many bear little resemblance to them. As Origen noted, “The Church possesses four Gospels, heresy a great many.” Of the fifty-some apocryphal gospels, many are known simply by title only or by a few scattered quotations and allusions in the church fathers. A number of works, especially of the popular infancy gospels, have been preserved in late manuscripts and versions. Egypt has preserved some early papyrus and parchment copies, most notably in the Gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi.

Most apocryphal gospels fall into two categories: legendary, or heretical. The former category encompasses the infancy gospels. These are highly imaginative accounts of the Virgin Mary, the Nativity, and the childhood of Jesus. The second category includes works that were written to set forth the peculiar views of Jewish-Christian sects and Gnostics. Eusebius describes such works as follows: “Again, nothing could be farther from apostolic usage than the type of phraseology employed, while the ideas and implications of their contents are so irreconcilable with true orthodoxy that they stand revealed as the forgeries of heretics.” M.R. James in 1924 published a handy collection of extracts and abstracts of the apocryphal gospels in The Apocryphal New Testament (Clarendon, 1924). This has now been superseded by E. Hennecke and W. Schneelmecher, New Testament Apocrypha, I (Westminster, 1963).

Gospels of Jesus’ Infancy and Parents

The accounts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, and the one episode of Jesus as a child in Luke 2:40–52, did not satisfy the curiosity of many Christians. Some people therefore invented infancy gospels that attributed numerous miracles to the child Jesus. This Jesus appears as a grotesquely petulant and dangerously powerful youngster.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was composed in the second century as Irenaeus alludes to an incident related in this work. It purports to describe miracles that Jesus performed between the ages of five and twelve. When Jesus was five he made twelve sparrows from clay, and then caused them to fly. When the son of Annas the scribe disturbed the pool that Jesus had collected, he cursed the child: “You insolent, godless dunderhead, … See, now you also shall wither like a tree.” A lad who accidentally bumped into Jesus was smitten dead. Others who accused him were blinded. A teacher who attempted to teach him the Alpha and the Beta was rebuked by the precocious Jesus. As an assistant in his father’s carpenter shop, Jesus was able to stretch beams of wood to the proper size. A desire to glorify Mary and to establish her perpetual virginity motivated some writers to describe the “brethren” of Jesus as the children of Joseph by a previous marriage (on this subject see John J. Gunther, “The Family of Jesus,” Evangelical Quarterly, 46, 1974, 25–41).

Among such works the earliest is The Protevangelium of James, which was composed in the second century in Egypt but which was not published until 1552. It served as a basis for the later Pseudo-Matthew, the Arabic and the Armenian infancy gospels, and the Nativity of Mary. These expanded accounts were incorporated in the Golden Legend, which had an enormous influence upon medieval Europe.

The Protevangelium describes the parents of Mary as the aged Anna and the wealthy Joachim. In a narrative patterned after the story of Samuel, Mary is dedicated at the age of three as a kind of Jewish “vestal virgin.” She is nurtured at the temple by angels until the age of twelve, when she is betrothed to Joseph, who is miraculously selected from a number of suitors. Joseph is portrayed as a widower with sons, an attempt to explain away the reference in Luke 2:7. Before the consummation of the marriage Joseph is horrified to discover that Mary is already six months pregnant. Both Mary and Joseph, however, demonstrate their innocence by drinking the waters of conviction (cf. Numbers 5:11–31). The birth of Jesus takes place in a cave, a tradition that is also mentioned by Justin Martyr. Mary is assisted in her delivery by a Hebrew midwife, and her virginity, notwithstanding the birth, is attested by Salome who is brought to the cave by the midwife.

The sixth-century Gelasian Decree condemned a work, The Assumption of Mary, which was composed in Greek in Egypt about AD 400. This work describes how after his ascension Jesus appears to Mary to announce her impending demise. After her death miracles of healing take place through the agency of her corpse. Mary, restored to life in her body, is then transported to Paradise. The Marian legends of the infancy gospels, especially as incorporated by Jacobus de Voragine in The Golden Legend (AD 1298), became widely known. The influence of the apocryphal gospels on literature and art through the Middle Ages (especially the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries) was enormous. These stories inspired Giotto to paint “The Exclusion of Joachim from the Temple,” Raphael to paint “The Betrothal of the Virgin,” and Titian to paint “The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple.” They contributed to the exaltation of Mary that culminated in the dogma of the assumption of the Virgin into heaven promulgated by Pius XII in 1950.

The Nag Hammadi Gospels

The discovery by accident in 1946 of twelve Coptic codices (manuscripts in books rather than scrolls) and a fragment of a thirteenth near Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt ranks as one of the most significant discoveries of all times. Among the fifty-three treatises are a number of works that are clearly Gnostic compositions, including some gospels. Gnosticism was a dualistic heresy that proclaimed salvation through gnosis or esoteric knowledge. It flourished in the second century AD. Whether it already existed in the first century AD or even in the pre-Christian era, as Bultmann assumed, has been a matter of great controversy.

The Coptic Gospel of Philip is a translation of a Greek composition of the second century. It belongs to the Valentinian sect of Gnosticism. There is an unusual stress on sacraments—baptism, chrism, “redemption,” and a “bridal chamber”—which recalls the Valentinian Marcosians. It is uncertain whether “the bridal chamber” was a symbolic rite or whether it was physical.

The Gospel of Philip 104.26–30 (#23) seems to be an attack on those who maintain a resurrection of the flesh: “Some are afraid lest they rise naked. Because of this they wish to rise in the flesh [it is they who are] naked.” In contrast, the Gospel of Philip 121.1–5 (#90) defends the concept of a present spiritual resurrection (cf. 2 Timothy 2:18): “Those who say, ‘They will die first and rise again,’ are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing.’ ”

Another Valentinian work, perhaps by Valentinus himself c. 140–145 AD before his break with the orthodox church, is The Gospel of Truth. As part of the codex bought for the Jung Institute in Zurich, it was the first of the Nag Hammadi works to be translated, appearing in 1956 as the Evangelium Veritatis. This maddeningly unsystematic essay is a meditation on the Gnostic understanding of the universe and salvation. Its opening words are: “The Gospel of Truth is a joy for them who have received the boon, through the Father of Truth, of knowing it by virtue of the Word who came from the Pleroma.” Ignorance about the Father produces anguish and terror; man without gnosis is like one who is enmeshed in a fog. It is Deceit who elaborated matter by a process of emanation, and who in anger nailed Jesus to a tree. Thereupon “having divested himself of these perishing rags, he (Jesus) clothed himself with the imperishability which none has power to take from him.”

The Gnostic antagonism to the material world resulted in the Docetic view of Christ; the Gnostics denied that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (1 John 4:3). As Christ had only the semblance of a body his sufferings on the cross were apparent, not real. According to the Gnostic Basilides it was a substitute Christ who died on the cross, a teaching echoed by Muhammad in the Qur’an 4:157.

The Agrapha of Jesus

The Greek word agrapha literally means “unwritten” things. The term Agrapha has come to designate sayings of Jesus not found in the authentic text of the canonical gospels. The most important recent study of the Agrapha is Joachim Jeremias, Unknown Sayings of Jesus (Alec R. Allenson, 1964). He selects eighteen sayings (including 1 Thess. 4:15 ff.) that he considers “perfectly compatible with synoptic traditions, whose authenticity admits of serious consideration.” Not everyone would agree with Jeremias’s estimate of the authenticity of extra-biblical sayings.

There are in the New Testament itself apart from the Gospels a number of sayings attributed to Christ: Acts 1:4 ff.; 11:16; 20:35; First Thessalonians 4:15 ff. (cf. Matt. 24:30 f.); and First Corinthians 7:10 (cf. Mark 10:11). Codex Bezae inserts at Matthew 20:28, “But seek to increase from that which is small, and from the greater to become less.” It is conceivable that the pericope of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) and the longer ending of Mark (16:9–20) were Agrapha later incorporated into the Textus Receptus.

The earliest attempt to collect the extra-canonical sayings of Jesus was by Papias of Hierapolis in Phrygia. Tertullian (De baptismo, ch. 20) reports that Christ said: “No man can obtain the kingdom of heaven, who has not gone through temptation.” Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis I. 24.158) records that Jesus said, “Ask for the great things and God will add to you what is small” (cf. Matt. 6:33). A popular statement, which is quoted or alluded to over fifty times in the church fathers, is the saying of Jesus. “Be approved money changers.” We should be like the money changers who can detect counterfeit coins from the genuine (cf. 1 Thess. 5:21).

A sensation was created in 1905 by the discovery of papyri at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, some of which contained purported sayings of Jesus. Among the papyri is an amulet that relates an incident in which Jesus confronts a self-righteous high priest and rebukes him as follows: “Woe to you blind that see not. Thou hast bathed thyself in water that is poured out, in which dogs and swine lie night and day and thou hast washed thyself and hast chafed thine outer skin, which prostitutes also and flute-girls anoint, bathe, chafe and rouge, in order to arouse desire in men, but within they are full of scorpions and of badness of every kind. But I and my disciples of whom thou sayest, that we have not immersed ourselves, have been immersed in the living … water.”

The Gospel of the Nazaraens (cited by Jerome, Adv. Pelag. iii. 2) has the following amplification of Matthew 18:21–22 with the Lord saying to Peter, “Yea, I say unto thee, until seventy times seven. For in the prophets also, after they were anointed by the Holy Spirit, the sinful word was found.” The point is that if even the holy prophets were not faultless, one should be willing to forbear a fault in a brother.

Origen cites the same work in his commentary on Matthew 19:16 ff., the story of the rich young man: “But the rich man then began to scratch his head and it pleased him not. And the Lord said to him: ‘How canst thou say, “I have fulfilled the law and the prophets?” For it stands written in the law: Love thy neighbor as thyself; and behold, many of thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are begrimed with dirt and die of hunger—and thy house is full of many good things and nothing at all comes forth from it to them!’ ” (Cf. James 2:15–16; 1 John 3:17). Jeremias argues that this may be an independent version, but others maintain that this is a novelistic expansion of the original story.

The Gospel of Thomas

Among the Nag Hammadi texts one of the most significant is The Gospel of Thomas, which was probably composed in Edessa in Syria about AD 140. It consists entirely of 114 login or sayings of Jesus—the most extensive collection of non-canonical sayings of Jesus extant. Of these a number parallel sayings found in the Oxyrhynchus papyri, dated to AD 150. Forty of the logia are entirely new.

Most of the sayings are clearly colored by an ascetic variety of Gnosticism, or by Encratism, a movement that also stressed sexual abnegation. Some scholars, however, have argued that some of the sayings are based on an independent Aramaic tradition.

Among sayings regarded as possibly authentic is logion 8, which has a parable that may be compared with the parable of the hidden treasure (Matt. 13:44) and of the pearl of great price (Matt. 13:45–46): “And He said, ‘The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea, he drew it up from the sea full of small fish; among them he found a large (and) good fish; that wise fisherman, he threw all the small fish down into the sea; he chose the large fish without regret.’ ”

Logion 82 contains a saying that is also known from Origen: “He who is near me is near the fire; he who is far from me is far from the kingdom!” Jeremias believes that a possible early allusion to this saying may be found in Ignatius’s statement to the Smyrnaeans that he was “near to the sword, near to God.”

The final logion reads: “Simon Peter said to them: ‘Let Mary (Magdalene) go out from among us, because women are not worthy of the Life.’ Jesus said: ‘See, I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ” This refers to the ultimate reunification of the sexes, which would overcome the separation of the sexes that the Gnostics blamed for the origin of human evil.

A Secret Gospel of Mark?

In 1973 Morton Smith, a distinguished ancient historian, published a manuscript that he had discovered in 1958 at the monastery of Mar Saba, southeast of Jerusalem. The eighteenth-century manuscript, copied on two-and-a-half blank pages of a book, contains part of a letter ascribed to Clement of Alexandria who flourished AD 164–214 (Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, Harvard, 1973, and The Secret Gospel. Harper & Row, 1973).

With considerable erudition Smith presents a strong case for the authenticity of the letter, which maintains that the Carpocratian Gnostics derived their doctrines from a secret gospel of Mark. It asserts that after Peter’s death at Rome, Mark came to Alexandria and composed a more spiritual gospel for those who were being perfected. Passages that are cited from this gospel include the description of the raising of a dead youth by Jesus. After his resurrection the youth came to Jesus with only a linen cloth over his nude body, “and he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God.”

Smith, however, goes far beyond the evidence in suggesting that this alleged gospel is earlier than canonical Mark, and in speculating that the original essence of Christianity was erotic magic. Clement’s letter seems to be no more than a testimony to still another apocryphal gospel. Only those who are prepared to believe the worst about Christianity will welcome his radical views about the hitherto unsuspected nature of Christ as a purveyor of erotic magic.

Comparative Evaluations

The apocryphal gospels, even the earliest and soberest among them, can hardly be compared with the canonical gospels. The former are all patently secondary and legendary or obviously slanted. Commenting on the infancy gospels, Morton Enslin concludes: “Their total effect is to send us back to the canonical gospels with fresh approval of their chaste restraint in failing to fill in the intriguing hidden years.”

A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, the editors of the Ante-Nicene Library, observe that while the apocryphal gospels afford us “curious glimpses of the state of the Christian conscience, and of modes of thought in the first centuries of our era, the predominant impression which they leave on our minds is a profound sense of the immeasurable superiority, the unapproachable simplicity and majesty, of the Canonical Writings.”

The study of the Agrapha, particularly in the apocryphal gospels, reveals the relative poverty and inferiority of the mass of the extra-canonical literature, and by contrast highlights the precious value of the sayings of Jesus preserved in the New Testament. As Jeremias concludes: “… the extra-canonical literature, taken as a whole, manifests a surprising poverty. The bulk of it is legendary, and bears the clear mark of forgery. Only here and there, amid a mass of worthless rubbish, do we come across a priceless jewel.”

The findings of six months and fifty thousand miles of travel.

What does the parachurch renewal movement tell us about potential new life within the institutional church? That is the question my wife, Nancy, and I repeatedly asked ourselves as we spent six months visiting what Donald Bloesch calls “centers of Christian renewal.”

Six months was not long enough and fifty thousand miles crisscrossing the world was not far enough to gain a comprehensive view of what God is doing outside normal church structures. But in that time and space we visited forty-three Christian communities scattered across the United States and the world and spent from one to ten days with each one. Those forty-three communities are only a fraction of the more than fifteen hundred retreat and renewal centers that can be identified. They are hardly a base for dogmatic generalizations, but it was a broad enough sampling to profoundly enrich our lives and to rekindle our expectations of new life in the church. The communities we visited covered a broad spectrum—Catholic and Protestant, evangelical and ecumenical, church-sponsored and independent, charismatic and conventional, permanent and temporary. They included not only formal retreat centers and traditional monasteries but communal groups, new Protestant monastic orders on the continent that have emerged from the youth revolt of the 60’s, the European residential schools of evangelism based upon community life and governed by a common discipline, variations in Christian group living associated with the charismatic and Jesus people movements, and human laboratories applying principles of behavioral science to Christian interpersonal relationships. Each movement wants to share the common life in Christ with searching, often suffering people. In this broad and inclusive sense I use the term “renewal movement” here.

Whether monastic or scholastic, each group I visited wanted to share the common life in Christ with searching, suffering people.

All of these movements believe not only that the Holy Spirit is alive today but that he is a person of incredible variety and flexibility. Both the merry Mary Sisters in Darmstadt, Germany and the intellectually oriented students of Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri in Switzerland reflect this, as do the liturgical worship of the white-clad Protestant monks in Taizé and the spontaneous barefoot congregation of Yahweh in Illinois. Or contrast the weekend of silence in an Ignation-inspired retreat at Kirkridge in the mountains of Pennsylvania and the primal screams induced by the spiritual therapy of Cecil Osborne and his associates in California; the life of meditation and prayer by the young men of Jesus Bruderschaff and the involvement in urban life by the young men of Christusträger (both German groups seek to carry out the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience): the happy houseparties of Lee Abbey in England and the sober prayer vigils of Grandchamps in Switzerland; the stress upon Christian group dynamics by Faith at Work and the emphasis upon individual solitude by the St. Augustine monks in Michigan; the surrender to the Holy Spirit that deliberately avoids glossolalia at Keswick and the surrender that encourages it at nearby St. Michaels-en-belfry; the reflective journal-keeping taught by Ira Progoff and the spontaneous, prophetic utterances encouraged by Graham Pulkingham; the social concern for industrialized society at Iona and the evangelistic passion for unsaved people at Capernwray. These emphases, of course, are not mutually exclusive. There is a time and place for everything, not only for Kohilath in Ecclesiastes but for modern questers of the Spirit also. Nevertheless, God seems to have committed one major emphasis or another to different leaders who have strong personalities. It is a leader’s almost exclusive concentration upon it that gives depth and vitality to a ministry. Those people who offer small doses of many different experiences because they all have value seem to make little lasting impact. The varieties of religious experience, to use William James’s phrase, are not all found in one person. Each individual reflects a limited view of Christ, and together the varying views reveal the Spirit’s diversity.

In each of the communities I visited certain beliefs recurred. I hope that the local church can capture some of the vitality of these beliefs, six in particular. Not all of the spiritual communities emphasize them to the same degree, and occasionally one is exaggerated out of proportion. But each belief is common to every group I visited.

Jesus Is Lord

That simple, personal confession dominated every group, from the most sophisticated to the very elemental. The Colossians-inspired motto of Keswick, “All One In Christ,” was the basis of genuine fellowship, cutting through all the things that so often separate God’s children. People who apply Christ’s life to our world in radically different ways find unity in a common allegiance to him. Theological variations that have proved to be watershed points in church history lost their divisiveness: for example, the mode of baptism, the nature of Jesus’ presence at his table, the preservation of the saints, the structure of church government, the details of eschatology, and even the delineation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

As I traveled I found myself united with persons who interpret the Bible and Christian experience very differently than I do. For example, in Germany I, a Baptist, was invited to serve the Eucharist along with a Dutch-Reformed pastor, a Japanese holiness pastor, and a Norwegian Lutheran pastor. The service was conducted in German for people who in World War II had been enemies of those who now served them. To rephrase Paul: “Here there cannot be German and American, circumcised and uncircumcised, Lutheran and Baptist, black and white, but Christ is all and in all” (Col. 3:11). What the ecumenical movement has been unable to accomplish organizationally in all these years the renewal movement has effected spiritually almost overnight. It has made us one in Christ. This is not to gainsay the importance of institutional collaboration; but it is to say that grass-roots unity at the bottom is more authentic than structural unity at the top. Although church scholars must continue to discuss the doctrines that separate the branches of Christendom, renewed laypeople already have fellowship with people of divergent viewpoints because of this common commitment.

The Importance of Scripture

Although biblical hermeneutics and interpretations varied, I found people genuinely relying on Scripture. Usually the approach was devotional rather than systematic, and at times comprehensive exegesis was lacking. But it was nonetheless valid. Christ in the heart and the Bible in the hand are adequate guides for the ordinary Christian.

I was inspired as I strolled through community after community to find people poring over their Bibles under trees or in gardens or by the water. Even the liturgies chanted at Taizé or intoned at Cerne Abbas consisted largely of the Scriptures, especially of the Psalms. In most of the English-speaking centers the Psalms also were sung, which reflects an enduring Scottish influence. And in the charismatic groups scores of biblical texts had been set to music and were sung spontaneously and beautifully, sometimes without accompaniment, sometimes with a guitar, but only rarely with a piano. New song books for worship in which the Scriptures play a dominant role have come out of this.

In some places Bible exposition occupied a central place, notably at L’Abri and at Keswick. Most of the Sunday morning worship at the Huemoz church associated with L’Abri was given to the reading of the Scriptures (three lengthy passages) and their interpretation in a forty-minute sermon. A hallmark of Keswick is a minimum of music and “preliminaries” and a maximum of preaching. Every Sunday and evening service includes two full-length sermons separated by only a hymn. I found briefer homilies preached and specific sessions set aside for serious Bible study in each community.

Aids to individual Bible study generally were available. Most centers maintained libraries where, to my surprise, the largest section tended not to be on devotional but on exegetical materials. These collections of books vary from 15,000 volumes to only a few shelves. All were open shelves with check-outs on the honor system. I found the largest libraries in the order of size, at Hillfield Friary, St. Augustine House, Schloss Mittersill, Lee Abbey, L’Abri, and Iona. I wish I could have spent more time at each one.

In addition to books, however, a number of these centers have valuable tape libraries. The most extensive is at L’Abri where much of the program is based upon listening to tapes. Francis Schaeffer alone is available on twelve hundred hours of tape. Another major tape collection is at Laity Lodge in Texas. There more than a thousand tapes, consisting mostly of messages brought at various retreat programs at the Lodge since its inception, are indexed.

A Rule to Live By

Nearly all of the spiritual renewal centers I visited had some kind of a rule of life. Usually this was printed and varied from a small book at Taizé to a pocket card at Yokefellows. Only in rare instances did I find an open community in which no formal spiritual discipline was demanded. Usually these were the charismatic extended families in which the personal spiritual development of each member was open to the others.

The least demanding discipline called for simple attendance at the daily Eucharist and weekly community meetings, while the most demanding exacted a lifetime commitment to the traditional vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. A whole range of promises fell between those two, all of them including daily, personal prayer. The more historic communities, following the Roman Catholic orders, provided both postulant and novitiate periods before final vows were taken, thus giving the new member up to three years to conclude that God was indeed calling him into this kind of life. In the case of the celibate, final vows are often viewed as a spiritual marriage to Christ. Both men and women wear rings as evidence of their life-long commitment to Christ.

Except for the Catholic and Episcopal traditions, this movement is just beginning in the United States. I spent a few days at St. Augustine House with America’s lone Lutheran monk and his Catholic associate. The Sisters of Mary—also Lutheran-oriented—have established a Canaan outpost in Arizona and other monastic orders are beginning to be represented. I would guess on the basis of my European observations that we will see more American youth taking these life-long vows in their own devotion to Christ.

Typical of the less stringent vows is the Yokefellow pledge. It is similar to the old Kirkridge rule and calls for daily Bible reading and prayer, weekly attendance at a church service, tithing one’s income to the Lord’s work, and consciously seeking to serve Christ. There are many variants of this, and many signers. The Shaker-town pledge adds a stewardship concern for one’s environment. These are groups that prescribe the hours of corporate prayer. While with them I participated in as many as six services a day, though usually the number was three. None of the formulae, however, are as comprehensive or as detailed as the Benedictine Rule out of which all of them arise. Whether in response to the discipleship ideals of our Lord or in reaction to the libertarianism of a secularized culture, the commitment of new generations of young Christians to a life of rigorous self-denial is one of the hopeful signs on the horizon of the church.

A Simple Lifestyle

Although commitment to a simple lifestyle is included in the vow of poverty, it is a way of life at most of the other renewal centers also. It stands in contrast to the over-indulgence of the Western world and aligns itself with the hungry of the developing nations. This emphasis on frugality takes many forms. In the extended families it means community ownership of everything and community decision-making regarding the wisest use of all resources. I visited a family in York that included eight adults and some children. Only three of the adults worked. However, they all lived on the three salaries so that the other five could contribute their work to the Kingdom of God. Their primary point in living together was to be able to release more money and more time to the Lord’s work. As a result each person was provided the basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, and each person lived on a persona allowance of about nine dollars a week. This included the Anglican pastor in whose manse the enlarged family lived together.

To the Sisters of Mary in Germany a simple lifestyle meant living more simply than even their retreat guests. Their rooms, the only private place they had, were small—just large enough for a bed, dresser, and chair. The community of 180 ate whatever was produced by their chickens, cows, and vegetable gardens, plus whatever might be given to them by friends in answer to prayer. They did no shopping or weekly menu planning. They lived on what was at hand. Often this was meager. But, like Paul, they have learned in all things to be content. And not only to be content but to be joyful. In spite of their austere life a radiant happiness and spirit of continuous celebration is the prevailing mood.

To the Community of Iona in Scotland frugality meant what one of my fellow retreat guests called “Spartan existence.” There the members want their way of life to reflect their identification with the exploited and poor of industrial Glasgow. To a modest extent their guests share this with them. At Jackgruppen Haus in Germany it meant a strict vegetarian diet so that more grain could be shared with the starving people of the world.

No one complained. They trust in God’s providence, depend on prayer, and are joyful in the Lord’s provision. Practical questions about savings, insurance, and security—all important to me—seemed irrelevant to them in their moment-by-moment reliance upon the Lord. Nor did I find a spirit of criticism about fellow Christians who chose to live differently. One thoughtful leader said that this way of life was not for everyone and that it required a special call from God. There was recognition that God uses both poverty and wealth and that the ultimate issue is the way we use whatever God gives us.

About the Cover: Salem Acres was one of the communities Dr. Lundquist visited during his six-month pilgrimage. Pictured is founder-pastor Lester “Dad” Anderson holding one of his eighty or so parishioners. The “spontaneous barefoot congregations of Yahweh” moved to its present location, an eighty-acre farm in northwestern Illinois, in 1970. Its history as a community goes back another twenty years.

The community provides growing space for many people whose spiritual awakenings began in the Jesus movement of the 60s. They strive to emulate the New Testament models of discipling one another and holding all things common, and they focus on a charismatic, informed expression of a second blessing. They use Old Testament tradition in their observance of the Sabbath.

Involvement With Suffering People

The religious communities of Europe and the Christian human relations laboratories of America share this concern. Non-Christian groups as well have this goal, but I discovered it to be a hallmark of the renewal movement. I did not find a self-centered preoccupation with a person’s interior life that dulled sensitivity to the wounds of others. This contrasted sharply to the stereotype of a monastic life. Everywhere I sensed a dual focus; love for weaker members of the immediate community and compassion for those suffering in the world at large. Social action—tender loving care—became a normal way to express a personal devotion to Christ.

Many members had joined these communities because of their personal needs, physical, emotional, or spiritual. Some of them were just emerging from the drug culture; some were from estranged families; some were emotionally disturbed and possibly demon-possessed; and some were simply bewildered by life and were trying to find their way in it. During my travels I visited with all these types of people. The extended families were special havens for them but so were the more formal religious communities. The monks at Cerne Abbas had room for juvenile offenders and vagrant wanderers; Iona had a distinctive mission to those it termed “single, homeless persons”; Scargill was a refuge for a school teacher seeking God’s will for her life; in the United States, Salem Acres makes itself vulnerable in reaching out to help youth from the counter-culture; and even the temporary communities brought together by Faith at Work or Yokefellows are characterized by a deep emotional investment in one another. This is not the main function of these groups but it is a natural outgrowth.

I often saw the results of this concern. It cost people time, attention, and energy, as well as patience. Many of the groups exercised a spiritual healing ministry. It was not uncommon to find myself at a healing meeting where in the name of Christ members of the community would surround a person, lay their hands upon him, and pray quietly and earnestly for his deliverance. In a Catholic setting I joined some people in laying hands upon a kneeling priest who needed God’s help when he went into another room to pray for a woman dying of cancer. Of course there was a difference in the confident expectation of a charismatic group in America and the submissive commitment of an Anglican group in Britain. But both cared and loved and prayed.

Such tenderness not only nourished the life of the community itself but reached out in love to embrace the world. One group sent reconciliation teams to war-torn Ireland. A German community developed a special mission to Israel as an act of repentance for the wrongs done under Hitler. A monastic community sent both money and members to help people in the starvation areas of Africa. The Iona Community carried on a program of aid for chemical dependents. Taizé leaders were involved in both peace and environmental discussions under the auspices of the United Nations. In many places on both continents people fasted regularly so that money and food could go to feed the hungry. To these people concerned with the cultivation of their own walk with the Saviour there was an eager acceptance of Jesus’ direction: “Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of my brethren you have done it unto me.”

Celebration Through the Arts

Graham Pulkingham’s group on the Isle of Cumbrae in Scotland calls itself the Community of Celebration. This reflects a desire to joyfully relate all of life to God. And it appeared to me that this also is one of the universal notes in the renewal movement.

That did not always come through as dynamically as it did with the Sisters of Mary in Darmstadt. There 3,000 songs had been composed covering nearly all of life’s experiences. They were sung spontaneously and expressively. On Sunday afternoons special festivals were observed in the Herald Jesus Chapel. Simple musical plays about Christ’s teaching were written by the sisters. Energetic depictions of biblical events were carved into both interior and exterior plaster walls, using a technique of cutting at various depths through successive layers of colored plaster. Use of art forms was everywhere. Some of the art was better than others, but all of it related man’s creativity to his worship of God. Laity Lodge has experimented with “creative weeks” when people are invited to learn how to express themselves through the arts. These have become some of the most popular retreats at the center.

Biblical symbolism often appeared. The Lord’s Supper was observed universally and frequently. Never in such a brief time have I participated in it so frequently. Some of my happy recollections include the Episcopalian priest in Texas who announced it as a feast and encouraged everyone to eat and drink heartily; largely, I suspected, because he had blessed too much and in his view of the sacraments all of it had to be consumed. Or moving forward in the semi-darkness of the early morning in Taizé chapel to receive communion at the hands of a volunteer youth assisting the monks. Or being surrounded by cows in a pasture in Devonshire, England, as we were led in an outdoor Anglican service. Or serving the elements myself to a waiting line of handicapped people in wheelchairs. Or experiencing the closing Keswick service given over completely to sharing the bread and the chalice with five thousand people.

No one seemed so preoccupied with his interior life that he was unaware of the wounds of others.

Other biblical symbols were also used. Footwashing, for one. A picture of humility and service, it showed up in such diverse places as the charismatically-inclined Congregation of Yahweh and the philosophically-oriented Yokefellows. At Iona a practice had begun of ceremonially washing the feet of vagabonds on the basis that this act was especially appropriate for those who tramped the streets of Glasgow. In each of these contexts the act seemed quite right.

And the biblical dance, too, is reappearing. I saw it in Kentucky, in Illinois, and in Yorkshire, England. Some of it was interpretive dancing to accompany biblical texts. Some of it was congregational dancing to express the sheer joy of the Lord. None of it was social dancing. David Watson, pastor of St. Michaels-en-belfry, has made an exhaustive study of the dance in the Old Testament and hopes that it can be redeemed as an art form and brought back into the Western church to celebrate the glory of the Lord.

The holy kiss and the warm embrace as a Christian greeting is found all over the world. I saw it most strikingly in Russia—men kissing men and women kissing women. Also I saw in a Faith at Work conference in America where men and women warmly embraced each other—and it made me squirm a little. But physical touch, in friendship, in encouragement, and in concern, has become a natural expression of Christian love. There is a lighthearted, carefree spontaneity about all of these expressions. They grow out of a rich, personal experience that says, it’s a joy to be a Christian.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

A pagan love turned Christward.

Sheldon Vanauken has written what some people might call an old-fashioned, and somewhat improbable, love story; improbable because it occurs in this century. But this is a true story, the story of life with his wife Davy, which ended in her early death from an obscure liver disease. “A Severe Mercy” is also the tale of two pagans turned Christian and the part that C.S. Lewis, another pagan turned Christian, played in their conversion.

That evening began my friendship with Lewis. It was a very deep friendship on my part: no man ever did so much to shape my mind, quite aside from Christianity, which of course shaped my wholes life. I have never loved a man more.

The story moves from Vanauken’s home, Glenmerle, to Hawaii during World War II, to the Florida Keys (where he and his wife lived and sailed in a small sloop), to Yale, to Virginia, and then to Oxford. There the pagan life ended and the Shining Barrier that he and Davy had put around their love at the outset of their lives together was finally threatened-not by another man or woman, not by “creeping separateness,” or money, or any of the numerous small problems that break marriages today, but by God. Davy became a Christian first, but Vanauken, confused and uncertain, hung back for a few more months. During that time he wrote to Lewis, asking his advice. Lewis replied promptly.

The contradiction ‘we must have faith to believe and must believe to have faith’ belongs to the same class as those by which the Eleatic philosophers proved that all motion was impossible. And there are many others. You can’t swim unless you can support yourself in water & you can’t support yourself in water unless you can swim. Or again, in an act of volition (e.g. getting up in the morning) is the very beginning of the act itself voluntary or involuntary? If voluntary then you must have willed it, … you were willing already, … it was not really the beginning. If involuntary, then the continuation of the act (being determined by the first moment) is involuntary too. But in spite of this we do swim, & we do get out of bed.

I do not think there is a demonstrative proof (like Euclid) of Christianity, nor of the existence of matter, nor of the good will & honesty of my best & oldest friends. I think all three are (except perhaps the second) far more probable than the alternatives. The case for Xtianity in general is well given by Chesterton; and I tried to do something in my Broadcast Talks. As to why God doesn’t make it demonstratively clear: are we sure that He is even interested in the kind of Theism which wd. be a compelled logical assent to a conclusive argument? Are we interested in it in personal matters? I demand from my friend a trust in my good faith which is certain without demonstrative proof. It wouldn’t be confidence at all if he waited for rigourous proof. Hang it all, the very fairy-tales embody the truth. Othello believed in Desdemona’s innocence when it was proved: but that was too late. Lear believed in Cordelia’s love when it was proved: but that was too late. ‘His praise is lost who stays till all commend.’ The magnanimity, the generosity wh. will trust on a reasonable probability, is required of us. But supposing one believed and was wrong after all? Why, then you wd. have paid the universe a compliment it doesn’t deserve. Your error wd. even so be more interesting & important than the reality. And yet how cd. that be? How cd. an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?

Note that life after death, which still seems to you the essential thing, was itself a late revelation. God trained the Hebrews for centuries to believe in Him without promising them an after-life, and, blessings on Him, he trained me in the same way for about a year. It is like the disguised prince in the fairy tale who wins the heroine’s love before she knows he is anything more than a woodcutter. What wd. be a bribe if it came first had better come last.

It is quite clear from what you say that you have conscious wishes on both sides. And now, another point about wishes. A wish may lead to false beliefs, granted. But what does the existence of the wish suggest? At one time I was much impressed by Arnold’s line ‘Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.’ But surely, tho’ it doesn’t prove that one particular man will get food, it does prove that there is such a thing as food! i.e. if we were a species that didn’t normally eat, weren’t designed to eat, wd. we feel hungry? You say the materialist universe is ‘ugly’. I wonder how you discovered that! If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or wd. not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (‘How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married! I can hardly believe it!’) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.…

But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you’ll get away!

That letter frightened Vanauken. But he soon realized that he could not turn back.

In my old easy-going theism. I had regarded Christianity as a sort of fairy tale; and I had neither accepted nor rejected Jesus, since I had never, in fact, encountered him. Now I had. The position was not, as I had been comfortably thinking all these months, merely a question of whether I was to accept the Messiah or not. It was a question of whether I was to accept Him—or reject. My God! There was a gap behind me, too. Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble—but what of the leap to rejection? There might be no certainty that Christ was God,—but, by God, there was no certainty that He was not.… This was not to be borne. I could not reject Jesus. There was only one thing to do, once I had seen the gap behind me. I turned away from it and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.…

We were now Christians. Davy perhaps had got used to it. But I—I a Christian! I, who had been wont to regard Christians with pitying dislike, must now confess myself to be one. I did so, with shrinking and pride. Indeed, I felt a curious mixture of emotions: a sort of embarrassment among my more worldly and presumably non-Christian friends, some of whom would have accepted my becoming a Buddhist or an atheist with less amazement, and a sort of pride as though I had done something laudable—or done God a favour. I was half inclined to conceal my faith, and yet it seemed to me that If I were to take a stand for Christ, my lord, I must wear his colours.

There was perhaps a want of humility. Even my saying at the moment of conversion ‘I choose to believe’ instead of ‘I believe’, although they may come to the same thing in the end, had something about it of the last-ditch stand. The banner of my independence dipped, lying in the dust and myself kneeling, but somehow proudly still. I did homage to Christ as one pledges his sword and his fealty to a king. In reality, I suspect, it was not like that at all: I did not choose; I was chosen. The loving prayers of Davy and the rest—the prayers of C.S. Lewis, not just his books and letters—these did the work of the King. And yet there is this to be said for the pledged sword, even though it be so only in one’s own mind: if in some future year faith should weaken, one cannot in honour forswear the fealty tendered in ‘I choose to believe.’

The Oxford days soon ended and Davy and Vanauken returned to the States, to Lynchburg, Virginia, where Vanauken had a teaching position. They had said to themselves that they were coming home. Instead, they found themselves suffering from a kind of reverse culture shock. American life displeased them. They had planned for a home that they tentatively named “Ladywood,” but what they had was a drab bungalow they called “Li’l Dreary.” Despite the problems, they slowly adjusted to life at Lynchburg College and to their additional surprise found themselves the center of a Christian discussion group.

Thus, completely unplanned, our Christian group was born. The girl and her friend became a dozen students. Week after week they came and were welcomed. Some dropped away and others took their places. We had not started it. It had just happened, and it went on of its own accord. We simply accepted, though, as I wrote in the Journal we were ‘awed and joyful’—awed at the work of the Spirit, joyful that God was using us. It was all, in the Charles Williams words we loved, the Great Dance. Many of these students became real Christians, a great many indeed over the years. We read things from C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams and Dorothy Sayers. We discussed the Apostolic faith and answered the hundreds of questions. At the same time we scoffed at solemnity and the mushy sentimentality of some Protestant circles, as well as the incredible view that ‘alcohol’ was sin. The Christianity we represented was sunny and joyous, with all the room in the world for humour and gaiety, and yet at the same time rigorous and glorious. So we laughed and joked and poured out the wine but challenged their minds and souls. And the students smiled and abandoned the solemn voices they had been taught to use in speaking about such things, gaily drinking the wine and discovering a Christ who was a blazing reality.

Davy and I, with our closeness of understanding and love, made an almost perfect team. No doubt it was I who insisted upon the intellectual rigour and logic that C.S. Lewis had taught me. And Davy, ‘so eager and loving’ as I wrote then, was the one who made the love of God a flame in the room. Both of us felt that this group in this moment of time was our vocation. When we and the students knelt at the end of an evening in silent prayer—the only spoken words being my ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost’ at the beginning and the whispered amens as each one finished his prayer—the room, lighted then only by the glowing fire, seemed charged with holiness.

Vanauken’s “pagan impulses” did not leave him satisfied with his new life with Davy. He longed for the old days when he and Davy were isolated from the rest of the world.

I became more troubled as the year moved on, which, in turn, troubled Davy. While still in Oxford, we had talked … of the need to be alone, with leisure, in order to reconcile and bring into harmony our pagan dream of love and beauty and this overwhelming Christianity.… How did the Shining Barrier stand under the Light? But Li’l Dreary was not Ladywood. There was little of leisure or being alone together. And I was remembering—being stabbed by remembrance—the images from the old pagan days: the gay companionship, the love of life and beauty, the dedication to our love, schooner outward bound to far islands.

But we were Christians now. Davy, with the eagerness that was part of her very being, was flinging herself into the service of the Incarnate God. I, too, was serving Him: the morning and evening prayers with Davy, the church, the student group, the challenges that I tried to make implicit in my teaching. Indeed, it was I who at Oxford had seen and written in our Journal: ‘It is not possible to be “incidently a Christian”. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing.’ And I would no doubt have affirmed that statement still, with my mind. Davy was affirming it with her whole being. And Christianity was first in my concerns. Intellectually I was wholly committed to its truth. And yet I was holding something back. But for Davy it really was ‘overwhelmingly first’—nothing held back. She was literally pouring out her life in Christ’s service.…

The heat that summer was frightful. The heat and the jungle. And we were used to England. No air-conditioning. We should hardly have had the energy to talk if we had had time. In July I became worried about Davy’s tiredness—tiredness coupled with a slight swelling of her ankles—and insisted that she see our doctor. He said she was overdoing and must work part-time only. So now I did issue a command: she must stop working altogether. Accordingly, she gave in her notice.

Davy did not say so then, but she secretly thought—perhaps only briefly—that she was going to die. She prayed that she be allowed to live one more year for the sake of the Christian group. But I did not know.…

Davy one night, having contemplated Holiness, said she was restless and would sleep in the guestroom. But she did not sleep: she prayed. All night, like the saints, she wrestled in prayer. Some say that prayer, even prayer for what God desires, releases power by the operation of a deep spiritual law; and to offer up what one loves may release still more. However that may be, Davy that night offered up her life. For me—that my soul might be fulfilled.… Now, as I fixed my eyes on the Island in the West and looked not Eastward, she humbly proposed holy exchange. It was between her and the Incarnate One. I was not to know then.

A few months after that Davy came down with a virus that left her drained of energy; the doctor insisted that she enter a hospital for some extensive tests. The results showed that Davy would die, probably within six months. Vanauken had to tell her.

As I drove in the morning sunshine to Charlottesville, I thought of her offering-up her life for me in the previous autumn. Was this the result? Then I thought with a kind of awe of her belief in July a year ago that she might be going to die, and her asking God then for ‘one more year’ for the sake of the student group; now it was another July—one more year, indeed—and I was on my way to tell her of her death. Any recovery is but a stay of the death that is our common doom: she had had what she asked for. One more year. Was it right for me to ask for more? Was it right for me to ask when she had offered-up her life? How should I approach God? What should I say to the Incarnate God who made the world and suffered it to crucify Him? I thought of Grey Goose, never again to sail the waters of this world; I thought of poetry, including my own, and of all dear things; I thought of Islands in the West. Then I rolled it all together into a ball. If she died, I might—since, under God, I must not act to follow her—I might live for years. Those years and all of beauty they might contain I put into the ball. And then I offered-up all of it to the King: take all I have ever dreamed, all I may ever long for including the death I shall certainly long for: I offer it up, oh Christ, for her, for her best good, death or life. This was my offering-up. I asked God to take all, all that was or would ever be, in holy exchange, not for her spared life which would be my good but not perhaps hers, but for her good, whatever it might be. Later I would pray that she might recover but only if it were for her good. That offering-up was perhaps the most purely holy and purely loving act of my life.

By now it was December. The doctor had said that Davy would die either in a coma or bleeding internally or through the eyeballs. They had both prayed that if she must die she would die conscious of what was happening. But that month it looked as though their prayer had been denied. Davy went into a coma.

The following day when I came and whistled the recognition signal under her window, there was no reply. Of course she might be talking to the doctor. But when I entered the room, I saw that they had put bed-railings up to keep her from falling out. The nurse told me that she was going into coma. The nurse spoke to her, but there was no reply. I spoke to her and said I had come. She smiled angelically, but did not open her eyes. I said, ‘Open your eyes, dearling.’ She smiled again, but that was all. I said, ‘Your eyes are still shut. I can’t see you if your eyes are shut, can I?’ She gave a faint giggle, but nothing more. I sat there beside her for an hour or two, holding her hand; and then I had to leave.

That night when I returned she had sunk deeper into the coma. The doctor came and spoke to her, but there was no response. He thought that she would never come out of it.… The next day they began intra-venous feeding. She was totally unresponsive to doctors or nurses. Then I found that I could reach her. If I spoke of Laddie or Glenmerle, she would murmur. I told her about Laddie having hold of the pig’s tail, and she gave a delighted giggle—to the amazement of a nurse who came in just then. I asked the nurse to bring me something for her to eat. The nurse said it wouldn’t work but brought it. I told Davy to open her mouth, and she did, and I put the spoon in it, telling her to swallow, and she did that. I fed her the whole dishful, as though she were a baby. The nurse tried it, but Davy could not hear any voice but mine. After that the hospital forgot visiting hours and 1 forgot classes: I fed her all her meals.

The Shepherds’ Reformation

The new apostates’ breath

Shrivels divinity up.

Unproved assumptions gauge

Their scholarship: their lord’s

The Spirit of the Age.

They stab with secular swords

The wounded side

Of the Crucified,

And holding the holy cup

They urge the ultimate death.

As suavely they speak the Creed,

With every word forsworn,

From His Father’s side

And His fainting Bride

The Son of God is torn.

The flung stone shatters

The blue stained glass:

The Light of Heaven scatters

Upon the pitying grass.

—But what if He’s risen indeed?

SHELDON VANAUKEN

And i talked her out of that coma.

A month later, Vanauken had a call at three A.M. Davy was dying. She had no pain and she was completely rational. Her life was slowing to a stop. They prayed together and reminded each other of the great love they bore for the other. She knew that she was dying.

Her fingers moved to each corner of my mouth, as we had always done. And I gave her fingers little corner-of-the-mouth kisses, as we had always done. Then her arm fell slowly back. Past seeing and past speaking, with the last of her failing strength, she had said goodbye.…

One of the letters I wrote the day after her death was to C.S. Lewis. I told him how she died and how I meant to scatter her ashes at St. Stephen’s, as she and I had planned. But we had also thought it might be fitting for a handful of those ashes to be scattered at little Binsey church near Oxford. Would he—Lewis—do it? There was no reply to my letter, and I decided he must be away from Oxford.

I, therefore, entrusted the tiny packet to my friend Edmund Dews, who, indeed, had first taken us to Binsey-by-the-well.…

But Lewis was not away: he was waiting for the ashes. His letter had been lost in the post. Now he heard from Edmund.…

I heard from your friend about 2 days ago, and today I have got your letter of Feb. 5. I am most distressed to find that my answer to your previous letter has never reached you; particularly since its miscarriage has left you in doubt whether I wd. have accepted the v. sacred office of scattering the ashes. I wd. have liked to do (if you can understand) for the v. reason that I wd. not have liked doing it, since a deep spiritual gaucheie makes (me) uneasy in any ceremonial act; and I wd. have wished in that way to be honoured with a share, however tiny, in this Cross.… And how you re-assure me when, to describe your own state, you use the simple, obvious, yet now so rare, word sad. Neither more nor less nor other than sad. It suggests a clean wound—much here for tears, but ‘nothing but good and fair’. And I am sure it is never sadness—a proper, straight natural response to loss—that does people harm, but all the other things, all the resentment, dismay, doubt and self-pity with wh. it is usually complicated.… I sometimes wonder whether bereavement is not, at bottom, the easiest and least perilous of the ways in wh. men lose the happiness of youthful love. For I believe it must always be lost in some way: every merely natural love has to be crucified before it can achieve resurrection and the happy old couples have come through a difficult death and re-birth. But far more have missed the re-birth. Your MS, as you well say, has now gone safe to the Printer.…

C.S. Lewis was to be the friend in my loss and grief, the one hand in mine as I walked through a dark and desolate night. Other friends gave me love, and it was a fire to warm me. But Lewis was the friend I needed, the friend who would go with me down to the bedrock of meaning. I told him the insights that came to me through my grief observed—the title of the book he would write on his own future bereavement—and he gave me not only love but wisdom and understanding and, when necessary, severity.…

Your letter is a wonderfully clear and beautiful expression of an experience often desired but not often achieved to the degree you and Jean [Davy] achieved it. My reason for sending it back is my belief that if you re-read it often, till you can look at it as if it were someone else’s story, you will in the end think as I do (but of course far more deeply & fruitfully than I can, because it will cost you so much more) about a life so wholly (at first) devoted to US. Not only as I do, but as the whole ‘sense’ of the human family wd. on their various levels. Begin at the bottom. What wd. the grosser Pagans think? They’d say there was excess in it, that it wd. provoke the Nemesis of the gods; they wd. ‘see the red light.’ Go up one: the finer Pagans wd. blame each withdrawal from the claims of common humanity as unmanly, uncitizenly, uxorious. If Stoics they wd. say that to try to wrest part of the whole (US) into a self-sufficing Whole on its own was ‘contrary to nature’. Then come to Christians. They wd. of course agree that man & wife are ‘one flesh’; they wd. perhaps admit that this was most admirably realised by Jean and you. But surely they wd. add that this One Flesh must not (and in the long run cannot) ‘live to itself’ any more than the single individual. It was not made, any more than he, to be its Own End. It was made for God and (in Him) for its neighbours—first and foremost among them the children it ought to have produced. (The idea behind your voluntary sterility, that an experience, e.g. maternity, wh. cannot be shared shd. on that account be avoided, is surely v. unsound. For a. (forgive me) the conjugal act itself depends on opposite, reciprocal and therefore unsharable experiences. Did you want her to feel she had a woman in bed with her? b. The experience of a woman denied maternity is one you did not & could not share with her. To be denied paternity is different, trivial in comparison.)

One way or another the thing had to die. Perpetual springtime is not allowed. You were not cutting the wood of life according to the grain. There are various possible ways in wh. it cd. have died tho’ both the parties went on living. You have been treated with a severe mercy. You have been brought to see (how true & how v. frequent this is!) that you were jealous of God. So from US you have been led back to US AND GOD; it remains to go on to GOD AND US. She was further on than you, and she can help you more where she now is than she could have done on earth. You must go on. That is one of the many reasons why suicide is out of the question. (Another is the absence of any ground for believing that death by that route wd. reunite you with her. Why should it? You might be digging an eternally unbridgeable chasm. Disobedience is not the way to get nearer to the obedient.)

There’s no other man, in such affliction as yours, to whom I’d dare write so plainly. And that, if you can believe me, is the strongest proof of my belief in you and love for you. To fools and weaklings one writes soft things. You spared her (v. wrongly) the pains of childbirth: do not evade your own, the travail you must undergo while Christ is being born in you. Do you imagine she herself can now have any greater care about you than that this spiritual maternity of yours shd. be patiently suffered & joyfully delivered?…

The central thrust of the Severe Mercy letter came in the next-to-the-last paragraph.… It was death—Davy’s death—that was the severe mercy. There is no doubt at all that Lewis is saying precisely that. That death, so full of suffering for us both, suffering that still overwhelmed my life, was yet a severe mercy. A mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love.…

Davy and I, in Lewis’s words, ‘admirably realised’ the Christian ideal of man and wife as One Flesh. That was the Shining Barrier: and in so far as the Shining Barrier meant closeness, dearness, sharing, and, in a word, love, it must surely, have been sanctified by God. To avoid creeping separateness in the name of love was simply being true to the sacrament of marriage.

But the Shining Barrier was more than that. In its Appeal to Love—what is best for our love—as the sole criterion of all decisions, it was in violation of the Law; for what was best for our love might not be in accordance with our love and duty to our neighbour. And the Shining Barrier contained an ultimate defiance of God in our resolute intention to die together in the last long dive.

But the Shining Barrier had been breached by God’s assault troops, including C.S. Lewis in the van; and we had bent the knee. The Appeal had been broken, to my dismay; and the last long dive had been forbidden, to our haunting sorrow in hospital. We had thought our love invulnerable; and so perhaps it was to the world, as long as the Barrier stood. But God had breached it, after which our love was vulnerable to any menace.

In the Severe Mercy Letter, Lewis said: “You have been brought to see … that you were jealous of God.” So I had said to him: it had been one of the sharp and shattering insights of my agonised grief. Jealous of my God! Or jealous of my lover’s Divine Lover. This was precisely what it had been when I moped about Li’l Dreary.… Mea culpa in truth. Of course I hadn’t known I was jealous of God. It was an almost unthinkable thought, and it remained unthought—and even more unthinkable—while I was pleading for Davy’s life in the hospital months and pouring my strength into my total commitment to her. But the jealousy was there. And God knew.

Neither the fact that our love had become vulnerable through the breach in the Shining Barrier nor the fact that I was, almost latently, jealous of God affected us in those last months in hospital when I was living for her and she was dying for God. Still, the Barrier was breached and the jealousy was there.… My moment of selfless offering-up had been for her best good, which may come to the same thing as the Kingdom’s good, but is not the same in intention. My commitment was to her. If, unimaginably, my duty to God had seemed to require my leaving her there in hospital to cope alone, I would not have done it. Never. As Lewis rightly saw, I had moved from ‘us’ to ‘us-and-God’ but was still light-years from ‘God-and-us’ in my pagan heart. I, therefore, conclude that—unless God had compelled me by Grace—I should not have become as wholly committed as she.

More than two years later the second death occurred when the sense of the presence of Davy disappeared for him. And in the emptiness that it left he longed again for the grief that would bring Davy’s presence back to him. But in what was the final death of Davy something C.S. Lewis had said to him the first time he left Oxford remained with him.

‘At all events,’ he said with a cheerful grin, ‘we’ll certainly meet again, here—or there.’ … ‘I shan’t say goodbye.…’ Then he plunged into the traffic. I stood there watching him. When he reached the pavement on the other side, he turned around as though he knew somehow that I would still be standing there in front of the Eastgate. Then he raised his voice in a great roar that easily overcame the noise of the cars and buses. Heads turned and at least one car swerved. ‘Besides,’ he bellowed with a great grin, ‘Christians NEVER say goodbye!’.…

When I myself come to cross that boundary that she has crossed, I think I shall find her hand and hear her voice first of all.

On Feeling Cooped Up

The morning news told of a woman in these United States who had her name changed from Coopurman to Coopurpurson.

I can understand why.

There must have been zillions of people who made jokes like, “Where’s Clark Kent?” or “When did Clark make you an honest woman, Lois?” (A recent column by Russell Baker in the New York Times documented the American public’s tolerance of living arrangements outside marriage for at least fifty years in the comics: Tarzan/Jane, Buck Rogers/Wilma, Clark Kent/Lois.)

With the upcoming movie on Superman, Ms. Coopurman must have become rather desperate.

So I understand her desire to change her name.

What I don’t understand is why she chose Coopurpurson. It sounds a lot like a caged tomcat, or a hemorrhaging rooster.

I suggest that Ms. Coopurman rethink the whole business before the judge’s decree becomes final. For alternatives, I suggest Coopurmarket, Coopurstar, Coopurbowl, or Coopurhuman. Or, if she feels unwanted, Coopurnumerary or Coopursensitive. If she intends to marry, she might consider Coopurunion.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Where Thanks Are Due

I do not take the time with sufficient frequency to give thanks where thanks are due, either to God or man. Let me take this moment of your time to do so on this occasion.

The November 18th issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY was excellent. Although I have been noting improvement in the quality of the periodical right along, that issue was worthy of special note. The Owens article on “The Price of Praise,” the Leggett Refiner’s Fire on “Of Heroes and Devils: The Supernatural on Film,” the Johnston review in Books of the Authority/Theology issue, the Linder news report on GDR tensions, and the Bockmühl essay on natural law were all thought-provoking and significant. Thank you again for exciting reading.

MICHAEL R. ROTHAAR

Christus Victor Lutheran Church

Dearborn Heights, Mich.

Virginia Stem Owens’s article was one of the most thought-provoking bits of reading that I have done recently. When I finished the article, I had to bow my head and ask forgiveness of my Creator for ignoring his marvelous creation and at the same time ask for grace to take time to see what he has given to me and all men in this great universe.

DAVID R. CHRISTENSON

Bethel Lutheran Church

Fergus Falls, Minn.

I just finished reading “The Price of Praise” by Virginia Owens. It is a touching article with great depth of truth. Thank you for printing it.

ERROL D. BOSLEY

First Baptist Church

Centralia, Ill.

One word describes Paul Leggett’s evaluation of the Gothic cinema: superb! Despite some glaring miscalculations (Terence Fisher is, by no stretch of the intellect, “the greatest director in the history of film”—his bloodletting is no substitute for the mood and atmosphere found in the older movies directed by James Whale and Tod Browning), Leggett has written the finest, the most levelheaded, and objective critique of fantasy films I have ever read by a Christian.

He correctly traces the roots of Gothic literature and cinema back to the medieval morality plays. And Leggett astutely observes that current films in this genre have betrayed their purpose—now evil conquers good. The author’s depth of understanding is a welcome departure from the shallowly pious remonstrations against “horror movies.” I trust CHRISTIANITY TODAY will offer us more from this fine writer.

MARK MARCHAK

Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society

New York, N.Y.

An Education Eye-Opener

Thank you for including Robert C. Sproul’s tremendous contribution (“You Can’t Tell a School By Its Name,” Nov. 4). It may open some fast closing eyes. We hope some of us are not too late.

JAMES R. BLACK

The Milledgeville Brethren Church

Milledgeville, Ill.

We Believe In …

San Francisco Theological Seminary dissociates itself completely from the statements concerning Jesus’ resurrection and divinity attributed to Dr. Edward Hobbs in the September 7, 1977, issue of the Los Angeles Times (Editorials, “What Seminaries Don’t Believe,” Nov. 4).

First of all, the nine schools of the Graduate Theological Union are totally independent and autonomous institutions, all but one being directly related and responsible to their several ecclesiastical bodies. Each has its own program and faculty, and differ considerably from each other. It is a strictly agreed upon policy that no one can or should undertake to speak for the GTU schools in general. Therefore Dr. Hobbs should have spoken only for himself as an individual. A number of the heads of the GTU schools have personally assured me that their faculties adhere firmly to belief in Jesus as the Incarnation of the Son of God and in Jesus’ bodily resurrection.

Members of the Faculty of San Francisco Theological Seminary, meeting on September 20, 1977, agreed unanimously that the Times article in no way represents their teachings, and drew attention to the fact that they stand by their ordination vow of commitment to our church’s tradition of a firm belief in the Incarnation and Resurrection. It should be pointed out that “resurrection” in Christian doctrine implicitly means “bodily,” as distinguished from the Greek concept of immortality of the soul.

It may also be of interest that Dr. Edward Hobbs has claimed that the Los Angeles Times article misrepresents his views and has asserted his belief in the Trinity, Incarnation, and bodily Resurrection.

ARNOLD B. COME

President

San Francisco Theological Seminary

San Anselmo, Calif.

Christmas is over. We are a few days into the new year, and only one football game remains to be played. A conference of evangelicals last month agreed that we can anticipate some rough economic times ahead. Christians should prepare by living far more simply now. The United States in particular seems headed for judgment, which will be brought on by its failure to obey basic economic and other laws. I hope the scenario is wrong, but I suspect it is correct.

I am delighted to report that Dr. Kenneth Kantzer is already doing some editorial work; he starts full time in February. By the time I retire in May the transition will be complete. C.T. has a great future. We are grateful for our more than 150,000 subscribers.