MODERN MEN REGARD the Incarnation and the Atonement differently. They may believe in neither, but they would like to accept the Incarnation. They are attracted by the story of the little baby born in Bethlehem and the “peace on earth, good will toward men” that they link with his birth. They enjoy the traditional Christmas and would relish a historical basis for it.

But the Cross is different. They can accept this in the sense that a certain Jesus of Nazareth was put to death by crucifixion early in the first century. But if this is seen as anything more than the execution of an innocent man who died heroically, they will have none of it. When Christians talk about the Atonement they are simply repelled. They do not see how the death of a man in first-century Palestine can possibly have any effect now. And they do not want to see. The thought that a modern person’s salvation depends on the blood that flowed so long ago they find simply repulsive. There is nothing beautiful about the cross as there is about the Christmas story. So people reject it. And in rejecting it they reject the heart of Christianity.

Before the modern difficulty arose, the centrality of the Cross was so widely recognized that it influenced our language. We use the noun “crux” and the adjective “crucial” without stopping to think that the former is simply the Latin word for “cross” and the latter a derivative of the same word. Whenever we say “The crux of the matter is this,” or “That is the crucial point,” what we are really saying is, “Just as the cross is central to Christianity, so this point is central to my argument.”

This is not simply a habit of speech but a reflection of the New Testament. There the Cross dominates the whole. It occupies a disproportionate amount of space in the Gospels, disproportionate, that is, if we are thinking of the Gospels primarily as historical documents. And a good deal of what follows is taken up with the preaching of the Cross or with its interpretation. It is the death of our Lord Jesus Christ that is the significant thing for the New Testament writers.

This is so for an understanding of the way salvation is brought about. Human beings are saved not by some divine fiat or by their own best efforts but by what Christ’s death accomplished on their behalf. This is brought out in a variety of picturesque descriptions of what Christ’s death accomplished. Sometimes it is viewed as a process of redemption, the payment of a price to set men free, the price, of course, being the death of Christ. Or it is the means of reconciliation whereby persons whose sins had alienated them from God, made them His enemies, are now made one (Eph. 2:16). Sometimes salvation is viewed in legal terms as a process of justification, a declaration of acquittal. This is on the basis of Christ’s death (Rom. 5:9), as is the propitiation whereby the wrath of God is turned away from sinners who so justly deserved it (Rom. 3:25).

From the present point of view one of the most important ways of viewing Jesus’ death is that which sees it as the means of establishing a new covenant (Mark 14:24), for the whole Jewish religious system depended on the covenant. Israel was bound to God by a covenant (Exod. 24), and the whole of the Old Testament presupposes a people in covenant relationship with God. The same of course may be said of the New Testament, though there the people of God are viewed somewhat differently. In fact, it is a question whether we might not do better to speak of “the old covenant” and “the new covenant” as the divisions of our Bible rather than the old and new testaments. So when we have Jesus’ death referred to in convenantal terms we are dealing with something that goes to the heart of the matter, not anything peripheral.

We might go on, for there are other such terms. But it is not simply a matter of vocabulary. It is impossible to read, say, the Epistle to the Romans without seeing that for its author the Cross is right at the center of things quite apart from his exact choice of words to express this conviction. It is not easy in these days to put forward a theory of atonement that will command general assent. Indeed, it may be that in the end we may be inclined to say that no theory is adequate and that we need the contributions of quite a few theories to express something of what the Cross meant to the men of the New Testament.

But our inability to formulate any one theory of the Atonement that satisfies us should help us to see the importance of the Cross, not cause us to downgrade it. The modern impatience with theories of the Atonement is not necessarily a sign of spiritual greatness. It is much more likely to represent a refusal to think through an aspect of New Testament Christianity that is not congenial to persons of our culture. But we must be on our guard against allowing our cultural prejudices to dictate our understanding of theology. If we are to take our New Testaments seriously we will see the Cross as at the heart of a great salvation.

We will see it also as at the heart of the living out of that salvation in our day-by-day life. Jesus called on all who follow him to take up their cross daily and follow in his steps (Luke 9:23). The Christian sees everything in the light of Christ’s cross. Because his Saviour bore a cross, he is ready to take up one of his own. The Christian must begin his thinking on any aspect of the Christian life from the fact that he is one who had been died for.

That is why the Christian has a different idea about humility, for example, from that held by others. In the first century, men did not commonly regard humility as a virtue. A man who was really a man would stand up for his rights and make sure that people appreciated his merits. Not so the Christian. He could not see himself as deserving of praise on account of an exemplary life. He could not claim credit for having earned his salvation. Rather he saw himself as a sinner, one who had caused the Son of God to die. In the light of that dreadful responsibility how could he be other than humble?

Similarly, the Christian took his understanding of love from the Cross. “Herein is love,” wrote John, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). We can never understand love if we start from the human end. We must start with what God has done, with the Cross. Then only do we know real love.

For the believer, the cross has transformed everything. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is getting a facelift this spring. Our next issue will come to you with a crisper and, we hope, more inviting look. Through it we are trying to achieve a greater sense of continuity in the magazine and more readable pages.

The current economic pinch obliges us to revert at least temporarily to a self-cover as part of the change. By doing this, we save the cost of the extra press run that is necessary for a separate cover, plus the added expense of fine-finish paper and extra ink colors. We have chosen to do this rather than again raise subscription and/or advertising rates.

Our fresh, new look will be just a little behind the earth’s. Spring has already arrived in the northern hemisphere, and once again we can witness the wonders of the renewal of life all about us. If we let it, this renewal keeps us aware of the wonder of wonders—that Christ rose for our justification and offers new life to all. May you have a blessed Easter season.

Highlighting the semiannual meetings of the Governing Board of the National Council of Churches, held this month in Chicago, were the visit of twenty Soviet church leaders (see following story) and a debate on civil rights for homosexuals. If anti-Communist minister Carl McIntire and some ethnic groups had not shown up to hassle the Soviets, and if someone had omitted the word “pastors” from the gay resolution, reporters would have had to scratch to come up with something to write about.

There were few major actions. The delegates came out for the Equal Rights Amendments (a women’s issue) and asked member denominations to work for its passage. They asked that military aid to Cambodia and South Viet Nam be stopped. IBM was declared off-limits to church investors because its dealings in South Africa allegedly benefit whites and suppress blacks. It was suggested that when feasible a committee be sent to Cuba to look over the church-and-society scene. A task-force report on world hunger was affirmed.

Member churches were encouraged to join the NCC in seeking disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act “of any surveillance or other improper activities” carried out against them by the federal government. This move was motivated by unproven “indications and allegations” that federal agents had snooped around offices at 475 Riverside Drive (the NCC’s New York headquarters building) during 1971, 1972, and 1973, and had bugged staff telephones. Audits by the IRS were also carried out during this period.

In a bicentennial “message to the churches,” the delegates called for some rethinking of the American social order.

“When such institutions [as government] and their officials become self-serving and unresponsive to the people, they have forfeited their legitimacy,” the statement declared. “When government fails to secure the rights of citizens it is ‘the right of the people to alter or abolish it.’ ”

It went on to state that “property can no longer be held to be the inviolate, private possession of the one who controls it,” and that essential resources belong to the entire community, whether local, national, or global. If those who control the resources abuse or squander them or use them to enrich a few, said the statement, then “it is the inherent right of the community to assert the ownership” of them.

Withdrawn was a potentially explosive resolution asking for recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

In housekeeping matters, the Broadcast and Film Commission of the NCC and the Department of Information were merged into a new Communication Commission. Formulas and procedures were drawn up to ensure that future staff hiring will meet minority-group quotas.

An “ecumenical event” proposed for 1976 was put off until 1977 or later to provide enough time to involve Catholics and conservative Protestants outside the NCC. No attempts were made to specify what form the event should take.

The resolution on civil rights for homosexuals grew out of earlier NCC action that set up a committee to hold discussions with gay people. Brisk debate erupted among the delegates over one sentence in the resolution’s preamble:

“Many persons, including some of the members and pastors of some of our churches, have been and are being deprived of their civil rights in employment, housing, and full and equal protection of the law because of their affectional or sexual preference.”

The wording of the statement could have been interpreted by some to apply to a church that might refuse to ordain a self-avowed practicing homosexual or refuse to tolerate one as its pastor. ‘Those who interpret will see not only civil rights but also clergy rights,” insisted missions executive David Stowe of the United Church of Christ, despite disclaimers by the gay backers.

Episcopal ecumenical officer Peter Day asserted that a pastor “doesn’t have a civil right to be pastor of a church,” and he moved to strike “and pastors” from the sentence. President Robert Marshall of the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) lent a strong supportive argument. Churches have qualifications for their pastors, maintained Marshall, but “this statement would make the NCC the judge of those qualifications.” The Episcopal, LCA, and Orthodox delegations were virtually unanimous in their support of the deletion, but the move failed by a 42-to-60 vote.

Pastor William Grove of First Methodist Church in Pittsburgh next tried a second-best measure, calling for deletion of “employment, housing, and.” He was backed by several strong voices, including that of executive head William Thompson of the United Presbyterian Church, and the amendment passed 84 to 17. (Allowing for the handful of abstentions, the delegates—who numbered about 150 the first day—by the third day barely managed to meet the necessary two-fifths quorum of the board membership of 276.)

The entire statement was then passed overwhelmingly. The resolution section affirmed that homosexuals are entitled to the pastoral concern of the church, and it called for legislation guaranteeing the civil rights “of all persons without regard to their affectional or sexual preferences.” It asked the NCC to “explore the most effective ways of relating the theological insight of the churches on the effects of discrimination and prejudice to the lives of homosexual persons in the community and the churches.”

In other action, the executive committee released a financial report showing the NCC still on shaky financial ground. Most of the $9.4 million balance at the end of 1974 was in designated reserve funds, $8.7 million of it alone for overseas work, mostly for relief projects.

Several reporters, noting the relatively small turnout of delegates and sparse attendance at some sessions, asked whether NCC critics are perhaps correct in their assessment that the NCC is a dying organization. “We’re still in a transition following restructure,” replied General Secretary Claire Randall. “Don’t judge everything by what you see now.” Added Thompson: “The attendance is proportionately about the same as always.” The quorum may be too high, he said, especially when so many denominations today are in a financial bind and can’t always fund the travel of their delegates.

But, wondered a reporter, might that not in itself indicate something about the ranking of the NCC on denominational priority lists?

EASTER ON THE RUN

Tired of the usual Easter-dawn religious activities? Some who are might be interested in the Easter sunrise “Jogging Celebration” in the hills around Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania. The eleven-mile run—symbolical of the eleven disciples and the fact that Peter and John were running on the first Easter morn—is not a race, explains Haydn Gilmore, a pastor who wrote a book on jogging and is the originator of the event. It is intended to be an occasion of worship and joy, he says. There’s a catch: only experienced joggers who run four or more miles daily can take part, so it may not be exactly a change of pace for the participants.

Soviet Churchmen: Too Many Differences

Eighteen Soviet churchmen this month returned home with mixed impressions after three weeks of visiting in American church circles. They were wined and dined by their National Council of Churches hosts, grilled by reporters on the hard facts of Soviet church life, and picketed by groups ranging from American Lithuanian and Ukrainian Catholics to Latvian Lutherans and followers of anti-Communist minister Carl McIntire. In small groups, the Soviets took part in church services and visited church leaders and seminaries in a number of communities across the eastern half of the United States. The delegation was composed of thirteen Orthodox, one Baptist, one Catholic, one Armenian Apostolic, and two Lutheran churchmen.

One week was spent in theological discussions at Princeton Seminary with an NCC delegation that had visited the Soviet Union last year. The conversations revolved around two papers from each side: “Jesus Christ Frees—the nature of our freedom, our salvation in Christ” (Soviet Baptist leader Alexi M. Bichkov and McCormick Seminary professor Bruce Rigdon) and “Jesus Christ Unites” (Professor Alexei Osipov of the Moscow Theological Academy and Princeton Seminary professor Charles West).

The Princeton topics covered the theme of the World Council of Churches assembly scheduled for Nairobi, Kenya, in November. Some Americans had hoped a common Soviet-American statement could be presented at Nairobi, but the Soviets said this would not happen because there are too many confessional and political differences between the two groups. The Soviets at Princeton underscored the importance of the authority of Scripture while the Americans stressed the necessity of applying Scripture to all realms of life, including social and political sectors. A “joint communique” was drafted summarizing the highlights of the discussions.

At the NCC meeting in Chicago (see preceding story), several dozen ethnic demonstrators stormed into the hotel and accosted the Soviet churchmen as they emerged from an elevator en route to a press conference. Amid pushing and shoving, some protesters swore at the Soviets, and a Ukrainian Baptist from Chicago claimed a visiting churchman kicked her shin. Police escorting the churchmen stayed out of the fracas, and order was restored only after hotel security people arrived.

Obviously shaken, Ukrainian patriarch Filaret, leader of the Soviet delegation, asked at the press conference: “Is there a contradiction [here] between the right to manifest freedom and the right to security?” Later, McIntire told the Soviets he repudiated what had happened and said his own followers were not involved.

Despite the differences, the Soviets seemed to enjoy sparring verbally with McIntire, and he and Bichkov greeted each other in a warm semi-embrace after a good-natured exchange. McIntire had inquired about criticism of Bichkov by fellow Soviet Baptists. “Pray for our unity, Dr. McIntire, and we’ll pray for yours,” exhorted Bichkov with a knowing smile.

Generally, the Soviets denied the existence of religious repression in their country, but several hinted that while the laws of the land may not be “nice” they must be obeyed. When one reporter asked whether Bichkov might be a KGB agent, he shot back: “That’s an insult!”

At an NCC banquet in Chicago, the Soviets were toasted with donated wine (Bichkov and some American Baptists substituted water) and were given expensive crystal gifts donated by the Steuben glass firm in Ohio. Their air fare was reportedly paid for by Soviet church funds. The NCC underwrote their expenses in America.

HOTLINE PLACEMENT

Intercristo, a Christian agency in Seattle specializing in computerized matching of people to job openings with mission organizations, installed a toll-free number (800–426–0507) for a ninety-day period to hurry the matchmaking along.

Banned In Uganda

Controversial Uganda president Idi Amin, a Muslim, last month banned fourteen Christian groups, declaring them “dangerous to peace and order.” Among those outlawed: Campus Crusade for Christ, the Navigators, Child Evangelism Fellowship, Uganda Bible Society, Elim Fellowship, Pentecostal Assemblies of God, Uganda Church of Christ, and a Quaker group.

This leaves the Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox churches as the only three recognized Christian bodies in Uganda.

Word of Amin’s displeasure with the groups was first spread a year ago, and last month’s action merely makes official and final a de facto ban of some months. Curiously, Amin has told missionaries they are welcome to stay, but most have already left for reassignment elsewhere.

BENJAMIN OMORO

Religion In Transit

Some law enforcement officials and cattlemen investigating numerous mutilation killings of cattle throughout north Texas and Oklahoma believe they may be the work of Satanist cults. The animals had had their blood drained and their sexual organs, lips, and ears removed.

Some 25,000 complaints about violent and sexually oriented TV programs poured into the Federal Communications Committee last year, up from 2,000 in 1972. The FCC will ask Congress for legislation banning explicit “visual depiction” of obscene or indecent material. Meanwhile, the FCC commended voluntary network action setting aside 7 P.M. to 9 P.M. (8 P.M. in the Midwest) as family viewing time. Morality in Media leaders, however, say they don’t want objectionable material on TV at any time, and they will fight.

Pleasant surprise: The 176,000-member, 1,057-congregation Presbyterian Church in Canada had an increase of 12 per cent in denominational giving in 1974, and instead of an anticipated deficit, there was money left over from the $2.8 million income for extra projects.

An Ontario Supreme Court jury awarded $5,000 to the Church of Scientology of Toronto in its $1.5 million libel and defamation case against Tower Publishing of New York (The Scandal of Scientology, by Paulette Cooper) and a Toronto book distributor.

United Methodist missions executive Paul McCleary, 44, this month becomes executive director of Church World Service, the $25 million global-aid program of the National Council of Churches.

Mathematics professor Charles Hatfield of the University of Missouri-Rolla is the new president of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies.

Ten educational TV stations licensed to Catholic institutions have organized the Catholic Television Network.

The Viet Cong released two New Zealand Catholic missionary nuns who had

been missing since the January takeover of Phuoc Binh by the North Vietnamese. The women, captured while trying to lead 100 Montagnard orphans to safety, were imprisoned for more than two weeks, during which time the Viet Cong publicly disclaimed any knowledge of their fate.

DEATH

KENNETH G. HAMILTON, 82, retired educator, missionary, bishop, and chief administrative officer of the Moravian Church; in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Significant developments are piling up in the ongoing dispute over doctrine and policy in the 2.8-million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). Among them:

• A new group, Lutheran Church in Mission, has been formed by dissident “moderates” to provide a temporary transitional structure for churches that leave the Synod or are tossed out.

• The LCMS ended up with a $350,000 deficit last year, and its budget for 1975 projects a worse deficit that will require cutbacks in personnel and programs, including cooperative work with other Lutheran bodies.

• Seminex (Seminary in Exile), the 400-student protest school founded by Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) dissidents, celebrated its first anniversary last month in surprisingly good fiscal health, received accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools, and named ousted Concordia head John Tietjen—a central figure in the dispute—as president.

• Various reconciliation efforts either have not gotten off the ground of have reached an impasse, each side holding out for conditions unacceptable to the other.

• Faculty-administrative relationships took a sudden turn for the worst at Concordia Teachers College in River Forest, Illinois, an important Missouri Synod school. Moreover, things are simmering at Concordia Seminary in Springfield, Illinois, long considered the Synod’s conservative bastion, and at other Synod schools.

• Ecclesiastical charges have been lodged against several LCMS district presidents, conservative laymen are organizing Doctrinal Concerns Committees to keep an eye out for erring pastors, and some congregations are being torn apart in the turmoil (at least one notable split took place recently).

The new Lutheran Church in Mission (LCIM) organization was founded last month at a Chicago meeting of ninety persons representing forty-eight congregations in twenty-two states. Two of its key architects are pastors Omar Stuenkel of Maple Heights, Ohio, and Thomas Spitz of Manhassat, New York. Spitz resigned last year as chief executive of the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., a cooperative pan-Lutheran agency, to fight the policies of the conservative administration of LCMS president J. A. O. Preus. The LCIM people seemed agreed, at least at the outset, that their function is not to start a splinter denomination but rather to form a “standby organization” to hold together churches leaving the LCMS until a possible alignment with another Lutheran body can be worked out. Chief among the leaders’ fears is that such congregations will instead opt for completely independent status, a move deemed “strategically disastrous, morally irresponsible, and theologically frivolous.”

LCIM is made up of members of ELIM (Evangelical Lutherans in Mission), the anti-Preus group that sponsors Seminex and an opposition mission program. From its inception in 1973, ELIM has disavowed schism, choosing to support dissident leaders while working for a reversal of positions adopted at the biennial LCMS convention in New Orleans in 1973 (see August 10, 1973, issue, page 40). LCIM, on the other hand, says it doesn’t want division either but wants to be ready if it happens. Its leaders see little hope for detente at the biennial LCMS meeting to be held in July in Anaheim, California, and they believe a number of churches will bolt from the Synod out of frustration and anger.

Five LCMS conservative leaders (including Preus) and five moderates (including Tietjen) have met three times to discuss their differences. At the last session, the ELIM spokesmen listed four prerequisites to further negotiations: an end to the use of doctrinal statements passed at conventions as the measure of a member’s loyalty to Scripture; a halt to terminating the ministries of people because of their opposition to synodical resolutions and their support of ELIM; acceptance of Seminex graduates as qualified for the LCMS ministry; and repudiation of policies and actions of the Board of Missions that led to mass resignations of the staff last year.

For their part, the Preus forces refused to budge on their demand for doctrinal conformity, are unwilling to compromise any further on the issue of certification of Seminex graduates, and feel it may be next to impossible for them to rein in all the heresy-hunters who may be loose in the Synod.

A theological convocation on “How big is the umbrella?” will be held next month in St. Louis. Some 300 key LCMS clergymen and laymen are expected to attend. It will feature debate by eleven LCMS theologians on the nature and function of Scripture. An official release describes the event as “a major effort to reach consensus in current theological concerns,” to determine what must be held and what is not essential.

The controversy was given a major share of the blame for the denomination’s financial woes. Preus says those districts where support of Seminex is strongest have let the Synod down.

One of the casualties is the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A. (LCUSA). The Synod will give about $200,000 less this year than last, some $350,000 under the $858,000 LCUSA says is the Synod’s fair share. It is no secret that Preus has been unhappy with LCUSA’s campus, educational, and public-affairs ministries, and especially with its news operation. These were among the designated targets of the LCMS slashback. Directors of LCUSA, caught unprepared, met this month to assess the damage and to determine immediate remedial steps. LCUSA head George Harkins says steep cutbacks and personnel reductions will be necessary by June. Meanwhile, Lutheran Church in America and American Lutheran Church officials say they may have to reconsider the “fabric of partnership” in LCUSA since the Missouri Synod took major action without consulting them, the first time this has happened.

In issuing its budget report, the LCMS board asked “divisive splinter groups within the Synod” to dissolve and publications to refrain from “inflammatory rhetoric.”

Earlier, Preus issued a nineteen-page report on the state of the church. He mentioned membership losses, a “serious decline” in Sunday-school enrollment (25,000 fewer last year), and lagging missions outreach as sources of major concern. Sound doctrine, unity, and progress are the three main needs, he said. The Seminex faculty, he asserted, is the “greatest factor” in the ongoing divisiveness. Two dozen of the 140 Seminex 1974 graduates have undergone procedures with Concordia Seminary certifying them for ordination, he said. (The Seminex degrees were granted through the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, a Lutheran Church in America school, in an arrangement upheld as legal by an Illinois court.) Preus then instructed district presidents to stop ordaining and placing uncertified graduates. He also warned that churches that are a party to such actions are “inviting expulsion.”

Preus went on to ask forgiveness “for my own sins and failure,” pledging he would strive to restore peace and good will to synod life “to the extent that this is possible in keeping with the scriptural and confessional stance of our Synod.”

The report also mentioned the need for peace within the synod’s Asian churches. Last month Preus asked chairman Waldo Werning of the foreign-missions board to apologize to the Hong Kong conference of the Synod for any part he may have had in a schism there last May. Church leaders in Hong Kong accused Werning of writing secret letters to dissidents encouraging the split. Werning attributes it all to a misunderstanding.

This month Iowa district official Alvin L. Barry became executive secretary of the LCMS missions board, replacing William H. Kohn, who resigned last year in a dispute over policy. Kohn is heading up ELIM’s missions arm, which has figured in the overseas unrest.

Peace is indeed a rare commodity in the Missouri Synod these days. At the 350-student Concordia Teachers College in January the faculty senate gave a 21-to-4 no-confidence vote to the fourteen-month-old administration of Dr. Paul Zimmerman. Zimmerman, who chaired the LCMS fact-finding committee that investigated Concordia Seminary, was accused of producing a “tension-filled educational environment” that “threatens the quality of education at this college.” The contracts of several faculty members had not been renewed, and several others reportedly quit over policy differences.

Teachers have also been leaving Concordia Seminary in Springfield, where Robert Preus (brother of the LCMS president) was named president last year. One of them, Victor Bohlmann—brother of Concordia, St. Louis, acting president Ralph Bohlmann—criticized the board’s delayed-tenure policies. “It’s not possible for me to work in an institution which lacks integrity,” he said in quitting.

On another front, various church groups filed charges of malfeasance against three district presidents: Rudolph P. F. Ressmeyer of the Atlantic District, Waldemar Meyer of the Colorado District, and Paul Jacobs of the California-Nevada District. A church in Queens, New York, based the charge against Ressmeyer on his placement of uncertified ministerial candidates. The hearing was conducted by district officials, who dismissed the charges. Now the Queens church is appealing, and it is possible that the case—along with others—could land on the floor at Anaheim, creating further grief.

At this month’s meeting of the LCMS fiscal commission, attended by most of the thirty-eight district presidents, Preus stated that many, “starting with myself, have said and done things for which we should ask forgiveness, and I do. I want to say that I am going to try in every way to seek peace. As one example, I have no desire or intention to take action against a district president unless requested to do so by the Synod. I pledge my support and love to the district presidents.”

His remarks were applauded but came about the same time another LCMS commission announced rules governing the removal of a district president from office.

The fighting is not confined to academic and administrative circles. Salem Lutheran Church of Black Jack, Missouri, a 1,300-member congregation, voted 243 to 50 (with 87 abstentions) to abolish the post of senior pastor. Leaders attributed their actions to a need to cut a sizable chunk out of the church’s $225,000 budget, but observers say it was simply a matter of conservatives’ wanting to shed an ELIM-backing pastor, Paul R. Heckman. Of the approximately 500 people at the meeting, 175 walked out in protest. Spokesmen later announced that fifty families were organizing a new congregation, apparently with Heckman as pastor. Some 400 were attending his worship services this month.

Prospecting for peace in the Missouri Synod may prove to be as frustrating to Preus as searching for the proverbial pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow.

BOOK BOOM

Religious book sales are still booming, and many publishers are calling 1974 their record year. Cokesbury marketing manager Gerald Battle says his twenty-eight United Methodist-sponsored stores “are selling more religious books of every kind than at any time in our history” (Cokesbury was founded in 1789). The 1,850 stores affiliated with the evangelical Christian Booksellers Association report 1974 sales were up an average of 14.2 per cent. Sales in CBA stores totaled more than $170 million last year, estimates CBA head John Bass. The average CBA store grossed $47,000 in 1967; the average in 1974 was $93,000.

United Presbyterians: An Issue Of Conscience

What may prove to be the most serious doctrinal crisis of its seventeen-year history is now shaping up in the United Presbyterian Church (UPC). It began with the denomination’s high court verdict last November overruling the decision of the Pittsburgh Presbytery to ordain Walter Wynn Kenyon, a 1974 graduate of Pittsburgh Seminary (see January 31 issue, page 28). Kenyon had said he could not in good conscience ordain a woman to be a ruling elder, a position in conflict with the denomination’s stand.

A beneficiary of the controversy has been the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the product of a schism among Southern Presbyterians which has grown from 45,000 at its inception in December, 1973, to nearly 80,000 communicants in 370 congregations in twenty-seven states, according to PCA national missions executive Larry Mills. Since the Kenyon decision, six UPC ministers have resigned and four congregations have split over the issue. Also, at least six other churches have been affected by a ruling issued in January by UPC chief executive William Thompson, who determined that previously ordained elders and deacons—as well as ministers—cannot be reinstalled if they hold to the non-ordination of women. (The Presbyterian bodies that formed the UPC endorsed women’s ordination decades ago, but the Thompson ruling made conformity mandatory.)

A recent UPC minister to join the exodus to the PCA is Richard E. Knodel, Jr., who explained that he has long been dissatisfied over liberal trends in the UPC, and that the Kenyon decision was the last straw. He resigned his 415-member two-church rural charge in Plain Grove, Pennsylvania, to begin a new work for the PCA elsewhere. Pleas by several parishoners, however, persuaded him to remain and organize a PCA church nearby. A township building was rented and the first service this month was attended by more than fifty people, two-thirds of them from the Plain Grove churches who organized themselves into the Church of the Living Word. The offering totaled $600.

Major splits have occurred in Pitts-burgh-area and Akron, Ohio, churches. When pastor Arthur C. Broadwick of the 564-member Union Church in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, was warned by a committee of the Pittsburgh Presbytery that he should desist from promoting his negative views on ordaining women or “peaceably withdraw,” a third of the congregation reorganized, affiliated with the PCA as Providence Presbyterian Church, and called Broadwick and assistant minister Randy Johovich to serve them. The breakaway group, which has met at a Holiday Inn since February, is off and running with morning and evening attendances of 200 and 120 respectively. Included in the new congregation are ten of Union’s fifteen elders, twelve of eighteen deacons, nine of ten advanced-level Bible teachers, all fifteen members of the evangelism team, all of the youth-work directors, and three-fourths of the choir. A budget of $57,000 has been pledged.

When Mrs. James M. Oxley was nominated from the floor and elected to the session of the 293-member Allenside church in Akron at a January, 1974, meeting, some members objected that they didn’t understand that the vote to close the nominations meant a vote for Mrs. Oxley. A second election was held and a man was substituted for Mrs. Oxley. Pastor Carl W. Bogue, Jr., had expressed his opposition to ordaining women. Mrs. Oxley’s election subsequently was sustained by the local presbytery and the regional synod. She has not been ordained pending an appeal to the UPC’s highest judicial body. The appeal argues that the second election was held according to legal reconsideration procedures.

Interestingly, four of Allenside’s elders and two deacons elected this past January could not be installed under the recent ruling by Thompson. In the resulting upheaval, all but one of the trustees, over half of the elders and deacons, and almost all of the Sunday school teachers and youth leaders withdrew. Bogue, however, has chosen to stay on at Allenside, at least for the time being. Mills meanwhile met with eighty-four members of the dissident group this month in a service at a junior high school.

Mills reports recent correspondence from UPC ministers in California, Colorado, New Mexico, and New Jersey. He anticipates that the number of PCA churches in Pennsylvania may climb from two to between eight and fifteen within months. A substantial number (at least half, he thinks) of the Presbyterian students attending Gordon-Conwell seminary have indicated interest in the PCA. Another source estimates that one-third of Gordon-Conwell’s 100-plus UPC students cannot be ordained in the UPC because of their stand on the ordination issue.

Staunch UPC Calvinists have been meeting privately to contemplate future action. Many have decided to await the outcome of the 1975 General Assembly, which meets in Cincinnati in May. At least two presbyteries are weighing overtures (resolutions) requesting constitutional changes that would permit exception to the rule in individual cases of conscience. Strong support is expected from many who disagree with the dissenters but nevertheless believe that a church broad enough to embrace universalists, for example, should be able to find room in its fellowship for those who are doctrinally sound but have scruples against ordaining women.

JOSEPH M. HOPKINS

Joint Tenancy

An overflow crowd was on hand last month for the opening of Canada’s first joint Catholic-Presbyterian church, located on the east side of Toronto. Known as the Flemingdon Park Catholic-Presbyterian Worship Centre, the $450,000 facility houses the John XXIII Catholic congregation and the Gateway Community Church.

It all started when the developers of a 25,000-resident housing complex got into financial trouble, leading to the elimination of several proposed churches from the plan. The Presbyterians (nearly 100) had bought a building, but the Catholics (about 300), with no property, were meeting on school and community premises. After a series of legal battles, community park land was offered to churches on the condition that it be developed ecumenically. At first, the Presbyterians tried to interest other denominations in a cooperative project with the Catholics, but without success. So they undertook it themselves. The land was leased for ninety-nine years at $1 a year.

The main problem was not theology (Catholic rector Rodda Regis, says the groups found much in common) but contrasting methods of church government. In a Catholic church the priest is the hub and decision-maker, while Presbyterians run the church through representative bodies called “courts.” Explained Presbyterian pastor Rodger Talbot: “We almost had to have a caucus before any joint meeting. If anyone said something, especially me, the Presbyterians would argue back and forth. But when the priest expressed his view, all the Catholics were likely to vote with him!”

Father Regis, a Franciscan, likes simplicity. So the issue of having statues or a crucifix in the jointly used 450-seat sanctuary, which would trouble the Protestants, wasn’t an important consideration for him.

But because of differences in styles and concepts of worship, they had to struggle with questions like whether to have movable pews (no) and whether the sanctuary could be used for purposes other than worship (yes). Agreement on who will use the sanctuary when came easily enough.

In addition to offices for the clergy, there is a specifically Catholic chapel and a Presbyterian lounge, with kitchenette, for small groups. A large room and two classrooms will be used by both congregations and for community activities.

VALERIE DUNN

FIGHTING NUN

When a 24-year-old robber grabbed a bag filled with $2,400 in cash and fled from an office in a Chicago South Side parochial school, Sister Ann Rubly took off after him. Outside, the thief turned, pointed at her with hand in pocket, and threatened, “If you follow me, I’ll blow your brains out.” He hit her and ran again.

Undeterred, the 30-year-old Sister Ann—all 135 pounds of her—tackled him, and he fell to the sidewalk. Passersby helped to hold him until two policewomen happened on the scene and took him into custody.

“I couldn’t see him get away with that money,” commented Sister Ann. She said she didn’t realize until the last minute that the thief, an ex-con who had attempted to murder a Chicago policeman in 1971, had no gun.

Together Against Hunger

An “Interreligious Coalition on World Hunger” is being established to enable religious leaders “to consider together the short- and long-term aspects of the present crisis.”

Plans for the coalition were laid at a recent meeting of sixty representatives of “four major religious communities of our nation—Roman Catholics, Jews, Evangelicals, and Protestants and Orthodox related to the National Council of Churches.” The group met for two days at the National 4-H Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Correspondent John Novotney of Religious News Service reported that the new coalition would be formally brought into being at a meeting of the steering committee in mid-March in New York. The committee consists of Sister Carol Coston, O. P., of The Network, an organization of nuns; Father J. Bryan Hehir, associate secretary for international justice and peace of the U. S. Catholic Conference; Dr. Ronald Sider, dean of Messiah College’s Philadelphia campus; Dr. Eugene Stockwell, head of the Division of Overseas Ministries of the National Council of Churches; and Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.

A statement issued at the close of the meeting said that a major purpose of the coalition would be to sponsor a National Conference on Religion and World Hunger early in 1976.

Of the sixty participants, fifteen were from evangelical groups, fifteen from the Roman Catholic Church, fifteen from Protestant and Orthodox churches related to the NCC, and fifteen from Jewish bodies.

The evangelicals were among those identified with the Chicago Declaration of evangelical social concern.

Sider said the evangelical-ecumenical encounter indicated that the NCC “is taking evangelicals seriously and that evangelicals are becoming involved in social issues.”

“But I don’t intend to back off my biblical commitment,” he added. In the past, he said, evangelicals have been described as concerned about “pot, pubs, and pornography, but not with institutional racism and economic injustice. Both are sins that need to be confessed, neither more nor less than the other.”

The consultation statement said participants “share certain common realities and assumptions” which include: “A faith rooted in Scriptures, with the pastoral and prophetic Word that binds us by God’s act as a community under God; a common sense of responsibility for the sin that leads to hunger and starvation for many in our nation and around the world; a determination that Jews and Christians can and must come together to tackle the present crisis with some new unity; and a hope that God will take our efforts and multiply them beyond what we can now foresee, to accomplish God’s purposes on earth for a more just and full life for all persons.”

Most of these books were written chiefly to assist the professional counselor and the pastor. This survey includes books by non-Christians of which the Christian counselor should be aware. The inclusion of a book does not necessarily mean endorsement of the author’s point of view.

CRISIS Psychological Assessment of Suicide Risk edited by Charles Neuringer (Charles C. Thomas) is a collection of articles on ways of assessing suicide risk, such as the use of lethality scales, the use of psychological tests, and analysis of the characteristics of suicidal persons. The book points out, however, that a unifying paradigm for the assessment of suicide risk has not yet been developed. Responding to Suicidal Crisis by Doman Lum (Eerdmans) tells how the church can respond to persons in crisis. Crisis Intervention edited by Gerald Specter and William Claiborn (Behavioral Publications) is a collection of essays from the Second Annual Symposium on Community-Clinical Psychology held at the University of Maryland. The Minister as Crisis Counselor by David K. Switzer (Abingdon) gives special direction to the minister who is called on to counsel in crisis. Although the author’s view of the sinfulness of man may raise questions, he offers helpful information on the pathology of grief and ministry to the grief-stricken.

Anticipatory Grief edited by Bernard Schoenberg et al. (Columbia University), a collection of articles by professionals in the fields of medicine, mental health, and the ministry, offers excellent insight into the care of the dying and their families. Anticipatory grief, the phenomenon of grief prior to actual loss, is discussed from the standpoint of both the variety of human responses and how those so grieving can be cared for effectively.

But Deliver Us From Evil by John Richards (Seabury) approaches the subject of pastoral care with the demonic dimension in view. Richards incorporates both the spiritual and medical aspects of pastoral care into his study. He sincerely believes that the blood of Christ is powerful medicine in the battle against Satan.

PSYCHOSIS Retreat From Sanity by Malcolm Bowers, Jr. (Human Sciences) examines how the psychotic crosses into the world of psychosis and various treatments. Adolescent Patients in Transition by Millie Grob and Judith Singer (Behavioral) examines the impact of psychiatric hospitalization on adolescents. The Anatomy of Mental Illness by Arthur Janov (Berkley) offers a theoretical basis for his earlier work Primal Scream.Understanding Mental Illness: A Layman’s Guide by Nancy Andreasen (Augsburg) offers a readable survey of disorders of the mind that the author calls “psychiatric illness.” She offers suggestions on how the layman can help the psychotic and discusses treatments available.

GROUP COUNSELING—Experiences in Groups by W. R. Bion (Ballantine) offers a technical analysis of groups by a pioneer in the field. His discussion of the “dependency group” offers valuable insights into the church congregation as a dependency group. Group Counseling and Therapy Techniques in Special Settings by Richard Hardy and John Cull (Thomas) tells how to do group counseling of the handicapped, adolescents in a school setting, the disadvantaged, married couples, drug offenders, and other special groups. Passing reference to the Esalen Institute should be ignored. The Pastor and Marriage Group Counseling by Richard B. Wilke (Abingdon) is the best of the three in this category. He offers pastors a methodology for enriching marriages in the church and recovering lost koinonia through group renewal.

COUNSELING ETHICS Opponents of psychotherapy and behaviorism will like John Garcia’s Psychofraud and Ethical Therapy (Whitemore). The author asserts that the therapeutic method, not the goal, is all important. Symposium in Love by Mary Curtin (Behavioral) and Sexuality and the Counseling Pastor by Herbert Stroup and Norma Wood offer special help to the counselor in dealing with his own sexuality in the counseling situation. Parts of Curtin’s book are without value to the Christian counselor, but her chapter on “Sexual Contact Between Patient and Therapist” is especially valuable. It is refreshing to see a secular counselor thoroughly discourage such contact.

PSYCHOLOGY Religious Systems and Psychotherapy edited by Richard Cox (Thomas) examines the major world religions from the psychotherapeutic and mental-health point of view. An evangelical point of view is ably presented by John Vayhinger of the Anderson College School of Theology. The Psychology of Religion by Wayne Oates (Word) is a topical approach to the subject by a well-known seminary professor. Clergyman’s Psychological Handbook by Clinton McLenmore (Eerdmans) is well written, well organized, and packed with information; I rate it one of the most helpful books in this review. Biblical and Psychological Perspectives For Christian Counselors edited by Robert K. Bower (William Carey) is by no means exhaustive, as the editor admits, but it is a good effort at reconciling the Bible and psychology. Anger, conscience, and the Holy Spirit are dealt with at length. The brief discussion of common grace is valuable for the Christian counselor.

H. Norman Wright’s The Christian Use of Emotional Power (Revell) is an excellent, well-informed work on anxiety, depression, anger, and self-image. Wright’s discussion of endogenous depression and the role the hypothalamus plays in depression sets his book apart from the usual Christian writings on the subject that make depression a purely “spiritual” problem. His book is sound biblically and psychologically.

THEORIES AND THERAPIES Psychodrama: Theory and Therapy by Ira Greenberg (Behavioral) is a highly informative treatment of the theory and practice of a controversial therapy. In Behavior Modification Procedure: A Sourcebook edited by Edwin Thomas (Aldine), twenty-five selections from works that describe the technical application of behavior modification are organized into a sourcebook. Christian counselors who wish to judge this therapy by first-hand investigation will find here a comprehensive overview. The technically minded counselor will find interesting the chapter on “Instrumentation in Behavior Therapy.” Love Therapy by Paul Morris (Tyndale) combines the biblical command to love with the responsibility theme of reality therapy. The author also finds value in group therapy and finds touching a valid part of therapeutic love.

Game Free by Thomas Oden (Harper & Row) takes a critical look at transactional analysis. He looks beyond intimacy to the religious dimension, which he finds inadequate in TA. The reader will want to compare what Oden says with Muriel James’s Born to Love (Addison-Wesley), in which she applies TA to church life. Who Says I,m OK? by Alan Reuther (Concordia) does a good job of delineating the OKness that comes from feeling validated as a human being and that which comes from being “worthied” by Christ. It retains the best of psychological studies on TA theory without making it another gospel.

Finally, the well-known Christian counselor Jay Adams offers The Christian Counselor’s Manual (Baker) as a sequel to Competent to Counsel. It attempts to show the reader how to go about Christian counseling. Adams takes to task many therapeutic approaches, among them behavior modification. Before accepting his judgment that Dobson’s approach is “cold and godless” the reader will want to read Dobson’s Hide or Seek. Adams argues that only organic dysfunction can properly be called “mental illness.” Readers will want to compare Adams’s view with Nancy Andreasen’s in Understanding Mental Illness (Augsburg). Andreasen is not so willing to limit the idea of mental illness only to organic dysfunction.—ANDRE BUSTANOBY, marriage and family counselor, Bowie, Maryland.

Both Jewish And Christian

Hebrew Christianity: The Thirteenth Tribe, by B. Z. Sobel (Wiley, 1974, 413 pp., $12.50), and Hebrew Christianity: Its Theology, History and Philosophy, by Arnold Fruchtenbaum (Canon, 1974, 139 pp., $2.50 pb), are reviewed by Belden Menkus, Bergenfield, New Jersey.

Is the emergence of separate Hebrew-Christian congregations a legitimate development—a recapturing of a historically valid practice? Do these fellowships, with their distinctive terminology and liturgy, belong within the broad Christian spectrum? Or are they the result of some aberration?

From completely different perspectives, these two books attempt to answer these and related questions. Neither author presents his case very well.

In general, the authors do agree on the definition of Hebrew Christianity. It is a local church fellowship—possibly a formally organized congregation—composed of Christians of Jewish birth. In the minds of both authors this group appears to be distinct from the mission or evangelistic agency witnessing particularly to Jews. Yet both at times confuse the two types of organizations.

Sobel, a Haifa University sociology professor, was at one time a staff member of the Anti-Defamation League. He views Hebrew Christianity as some sort of cult or sect. Fruchtenbaum, staff editor of the American Board of Missions to the Jews, sees the Hebrew-Christian congregation as a recovery of the biblical norm.

The Sobel book appears to be an attempt to expand a 10- or 12-year-old research paper into a more substantial study. What results is something less than the structured objectivity one expects from a competent scholar. The book appears to have been a problem for both the author and the publisher. Troubled by reflections on the methods he has used to gather data on one Hebrew Christian group, Sobel recognizes that he has “knowingly entered into relations in which I did not … tell the whole truth.” And the editor of the series of which this is a part, Yale University sociology professor Irving Zaretsky, appended to Sobel’s work a chapter that attempts to compensate for the deficiencies of his study.

Sobel’s study has many defects. These are the main ones:

1. Personal bias. Early in the study he states that “in the … Hebrew Christian Alliance … there were relatively few individual participants whom I could have called healthy or normal. There were and are an inordinate number of depressives associated with the phenomenon of Hebrew Christianity, including a number of people with marked suicidal tendencies.” A scholar does not make judgments like these without documenting them or demonstrating his credentials for making them.

2. Selective distortion. Sobel quotes from Christian sources that are as much as sixty or seventy years old as though they had been published just a few months before his book went to press. And he avoids citing—or is simply unaware of—current evangelical writings. For instance, he fails to cite any of the extensive post-1948 Southern Baptist writings on Jewish/Christian relations.

3. Inadequate research. Sobel does not appear, for instance, to know the difference between “evangelical” and “evangelistic,” or to realize that ordained Baptist clergy are regular ministers and routinely perform weddings and funerals.

I suspect that Sobel would refuse to accept student work prepared this poorly.

Sobel assumes that Hebrew Christianity is some sort of aberration. By contrast, Fruchtenbaum defends it as Bible-based normalcy. His contention is fairly simple:

• The world is divided into two classes of people, Jews and Gentiles.

• This distinction carries over into the redemptive experience: there are two types of Christians, Jews and Gentiles. Fruchtenbaum concludes that a Jew who does not maintain his or her Jewish identity after becoming a Christian has not been truly redeemed.

At this point Fruchtenbaum’s problems begin. He tries to lay a biblical/historical basis for this conclusion, but it does not hang together. Spiritual gifts are not conditioned upon one’s ancestry. And he does not seem to know what to do with the Hebrew Christian’s children.

Fruchtenbaum has additional problems with two other matters.

• Church membership. He concludes that the “Hebrew Christian should be a member of the local church along with Gentile believers.” Yet his development of a distinctive Hebrew Christian liturgy (represented by a modified wedding service appended to the book) clearly suggests evolution of separate Hebrew Christian congregations.

• Jewish ceremonies. He contends that the Law of Moses does not apply to the Hebrew Christian and includes a long warning against legalism. Yet he concludes that the Hebrew Christian is obligated to observe at least the six major annual festivals of Judaism. And he suggests that some sort of Hebrew Christian Sabbath observance is called for. Frutchenbaum ignores kashruth and similar obligations in Judaism.

Frutchenbaum seems to place the Hebrew Christian in some sort of half-converted position. That poorly serves the observant Jew, other Christians, and Hebrew Christians themselves.

The Bible As Literature

The Literature of the Bible, by Leland Ryken (Zondervan, 1974, 356 pp., $7.95), Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, edited by Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis (Abingdon, 1974, 352 pp., $6.95 pb), and Mystery of the Gospel. by D. Bruce Lockerbie (Eerdmans, 1974, 125 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Lockerbie and Ryken seem to write with two different purposes in mind; actually both try to explain the importance of imagination. Lockerbie asks, “What is creativity and why is it important to man?” In answering the question he considers Scripture first and several contemporary Christian writers—Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, John Updike, and T. S. Eliot—second.

Scripture tells us what place imagination has in God’s creation; certain writers show how it can be used. Ryken, on the other hand, tells us how writers of the Bible used their imaginations. He makes no apology for dealing with biblical literature in terms of modern literary criticism. Consciously or unconsciously, writers in the Bible did use certain literary forms—such as tragedy, satire, and lyric poetry—he explains.

Ryken’s first chapter tells the reader what modern critical tools and terms will be used. He relies heavily on Northrop Frye in fitting literature into four basic categories: tragedy, comedy, romance, anti-romance. The author thinks archetypal criticism is “one of the most fruitful approaches to biblical literature,” and Frye is perhaps the leading exponent of archetypal criticism. For readers who have no background in modern literary criticism, Ryken sucessfully simplifies some of its basic ideas. Even for those familiar with Frye and others, Ryken’s summary provides a good handle on the material.

Ryken is at his best in dealing with the Psalms, Job, and Revelation. Even with the most familiar Psalms his treatment brings needed freshness and emotional immediacy to a rereading of them. The final chapter, on the Book of Revelation, is a welcome change from some literalistic approaches to the book that fail to analyze the metaphorical and imagistic language. The glossary of literary terms is also helpful for the beginning student. However, Ryken is not as convincing in categorizing certain historical passages as epic, tragedy, or satire.

One of the best chapters in the collection edited by Kenneth Gros Louis is that by Ryken on “Literary Criticism of the Bible: Some Fallacies.” Ryken competently dissects the problems of so-called literary criticism of the Bible. It is not, he explains, really literary criticism. Therefore, literature teachers have no outside resources to use when teaching a course on biblical literature. The Gros Louis volume and Ryken’s book provide correctives for that problem. The former considers the Old Testament more thoroughly than the New; Ryken balances Gros Louis. Some chapters in Literary Interpretations may be too advanced for the high school student, but older students will be helped by them (e.g., “Paradox and Symmetry in the Joseph Narrative” and “The Literary Context of the Moses Birth Story”).

All three books could profitably be used together in a course on imagination and Scripture. They make familiar Bible narratives and ideas fresh and clear.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Relativism in Contemporary Christian Ethics, by Millard Erickson (Baker, 170 pp., $3.95 pb). A leading evangelical theology professor gives an informal critique of many prominent strands of current writing on morality and offers a constructive alternative.

Secure Forever, by Harold Barker (Loizeaux, 190 pp., $2.50 pb). An exegetical defense of the doctrine of the eternal security of the believer, with special attention to biblical passages that seem to point to a different conclusion.

Abortion and the Meaning of Personhood, by Clifford Bajema (Baker, 114 pp., $3.95 pb), and Abortion: The Trojan Horse, by Janet and Robert Patterson (Nelson, 178 pp., $3.50 pb). Two evangelical “right-to-life” books. Both are multi-faceted, but the former is more legal and the latter more medical.

Church Membership and Intercommunion, edited by J. Kent R. Murray (Dimension, 305 pp., $9.95). Papers presented at the tenth Downside Symposium. Concerns intercommunion among the English Free, Anglican, and Roman Catholic churches.

Is Faith Obsolete?, by Robert McAfee Brown (Westminster, 157 pp., $6.50), What to Believe?, by Carl Kreig (Fortress, 113 pp., $3.25 pb), God, by Heinrich Ott (John Knox, 124 pp., $3.95 pb), and An Introduction to Christian Theology Today, by Stephen Sykes (John Knox, 153 pp., $3.50 pb). Attempts by professional theologians to communicate with ordinary believers or seekers. There are useful insights and approaches, but the books are insufficiently biblical to be recommended for their intended audience.

Christ and Revolution, by Marcel Clement (123 pp., $6.95), The Cult of Revolution in the Church, by John Eppstein (160 pp., $6.95), and Pagans in the Pulpit, by Richard Wheeler (137 pp., $7.95). Three Arlington House books attacking the growing advocacy of socialism within Christian circles. The first two are Catholic-oriented.

Understanding Suffering, by B. W. Woods (Baker, 176 pp., $2.45 pb). The author positively approaches suffering with an examination of its perspectives, causes, role, and power. Thorough and helpful resource.

One World made its debut in November as a monthly magazine of the World Council of Churches. It intends to go behind the headlines to comment on events of significance to professing Christians everywhere. The first issue includes a report on anti-Christian and other repressive activities in Equatorial Guinea and a discussion between evangelical leader Paul Little and WCC evangelism director Emilio Castro. All Bible-college and seminary libraries should subscribe. (P.O. Box 66, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland; $9/year—sent airmail.)

Love and Sex: What It’s All About, by Wilson Grant (Zondervan, 172 pp., $1.50 pb), HIS Guide to Sex, Singleness and Marriage, edited by C. Stephen Board (InterVarsity, 130 pp., $1.95 pb), Two to Get Ready, by Anthony Florio (Revell, 155 pp., $4.95), and One Plus One, by Tim Timmons (Canon, 80 pp., $3.95). Four biblically based books. Grant, a physician, presents an excellent guide for young teens. The second is a collection of outstanding articles from His, a magazine for collegians. Florio makes a strong case for couples to get premarital counseling from someone who is qualified. Timmons’s is suitable for presentation by a minister to newlyweds.

The Faces of Jesus, by Frederick Buechner, photographs by Lee Boltin (Simon and Schuster, 256 pp., $35). Events of Jesus’ life depicted by artists around the world using various means from today’s felt-tip pens to medieval sculpture, with a wide range of talent. A coffee-table item that will appeal to many.

New Vision of Glory, by Richard Holloway (Seabury, 198 pp., $5.95), Myth, History and Faith: The Remythologizing of Christianity, by Morton Kelsey (Paulist, 185 pp., $4.50 pb), and A New Age in Theology: The Marriage of Faith and History and the De-ghettoization of Christian Thought, by Claude Geffre (Paulist, 119 pp., $3.95 pb). One new trend in modern theology seems to be a reawakening of belief in the resurrection of Christ. Each of these books offers a strong defense of the historicity of the act as well as varying applications of its significance. The first stresses this in theological terms and developments. The second places this in the context of the question of evil and Jesus in history. The last imposes it in the latest Catholic hermeneutical debate.

The Kings Depart, by Alyn Brodsky (Harper & Row, 298 pp., $8.95). Scholarly yet highly readable recounting of the Maccabee dynasty in pre-Roman Palestine, with an analysis of its impact on the Western world.

Make Straight the Way of the Lord (Knopf, 254 pp., $7.95), Warriors of Peace (Knopf, 226 pp., $7.95), Gandhi to Vinoba (Schocken, 231 pp., $7.95), and Principles and Precepts of the Return to the Obvious (Schocken, 157 pp., $4.95), all by Lanza del Vasto. The author is a leading French pacifist who since 1936 has attempted to practice Gandhian philosophy within a Christian context. (Vinoba is widely recognized in India as Gandhi’s successor.)

Unger’s Guide to the Bible, by Merrill Unger (Tyndale, 790 pp., $12.95). The same author has a smaller, cheaper Bible handbook from Moody. This volume incorporates the same kind of book-by-book summary but more briefly, and also includes an alphabetical dictionary of biblical terms and a concordance.

Dealing With Death

Death in the Secular City, by Russell Aldwinckle (Eerdmans, 1974, 197 pp., $3.95 pb), Dealing With Death, by D. P. Brooks (Broadman, 1974, 126 pp., $1.50 pb), The Last Enemy, by Richard Doss (Harper & Row, 1974, 104 pp., $4.95), and The Last Enemy, by Richard Wolff (Canon, 1974, 80 pp., $1.75 pb), are reviewed by Douglas K. Stuart, assistant professor of biblical languages and literature, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Death as a topic is somewhat in vogue these days. Regrettably, most recent writing on death has been either descriptive, treating the stages of dying (usually: denial, anger, depression, acceptance, hope), or else merely analytical, evaluating the psychological effects of death on families or societies. Rare is any word on the ultimate meaning of death, and rarer still any firm proclamation of life after death—except from spiritualists, zany Eastern self-styled messiahs, and other cultists now farming good land abandoned by Christians who moved on in search of “relevance.”

Therefore, four new Christian books on death and dying ought to be most welcome, since with copious reference to the Scriptures and Christian theology they would speak clearly of the hope of escape from death’s sting and victory available to all who will follow Christ—right? Well, at least half right.

Two books, those by Brooks and Doss, will probably receive limited attention. Neither comes across as forceful or reassuring, and both depend more on the opinions of non-Christian American psychologists and sociologists than on the Bible or Christian theology.

Both Brooks and Doss begin with the assumption that whereas Americans once were confident in the face of death, twentieth-century Americans (including Christians) are now neurotically anxious over death, seeking to defy its inevitability, even to deny its existence.

Brooks carries this rather far. Quoting from disparate views on death by psychologists and psychoanalysts including Jung, Rollo May, Robert Lifton, G. W. Wahl, and others, Brooks soberly advances the thesis that repressed anxiety over death is at the root of “personality disorders,” “a fundamentally altered … conduct of life,” our “excessive preoccupation with sex,” “the drug culture,” “the move by young Americans … to rural areas,” “the flood of violence in our society,” and “the Vietnam War.” Apparently he really believes that such things were absent from other centuries and cultures.

Despite this shaky start, Brooks does address himself to some important topics in such chapters as “How to Relate to a Dying Person,” “Coping With Grief,” “Biblical Views of Death,” and “Questions People Ask About Death and the Beyond.” However, his exploration of these subjects is too superficial—much in the manner of a Sunday-school quarterly whose purpose is to raise discussion points but not give answers. (Brooks is an editor of church educational materials.)

Some of his assertions leave the reader hanging, waiting for an explanation or at least some definitions. He says, for example, that cremation, opposed for centuries by “Christian doctrine,” is now accepted in “Christian nations.” He states that the thief on the cross “evidently” had eternal life. He argues at length that a funeral should emphasize the finality of death, yet accepts what is normally considered a contradictory practice, open-casket wakes.

In the final (and best—most biblical) chapter, “Questions People Ask,” some doubtful reasoning supports major arguments: “Bible students are in general agreement that we will know our loved ones in eternity,” or “In view of the moral law. of the universe, surely God will provide an existence in which rewards and punishment can be continued.”

Brooks gives us structure and scope but not satisfying content. Still, his book might be put to good use were not the book by Wolff so much better.

Like Brooks, Doss finds twentieth-century Americans incapable of approaching death with composure. Since 1900, death “has become a taboo subject,” he says quoting sociologist David Fulton, and this has produced “an unhealthy neurosis.”

Although Doss teaches theology at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, his book is only partly theological. It is more often oriented toward the sociological and psychological, in the manner of much current neo-orthodox theology. Doss relies heavily on American psychologists, especially Freudians such as Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. Most of his observations about death and its meaning depend not on Scripture but on such surprisingly unified sources as “a majority of physicians,” or on “behavioral scientists [who] agree that ours is a death-denying society.” Doss’s theology is heavily existential-relational; his answers to the ultimate questions come not from Scripture but from what he calls theological reflection. He early rejects orthodox Christianity’s view of sin and death as contained in the major creeds and confessions. It “is not the gospel” but “a traditional framework no longer adequate to present either the gospel or the meaning of death to people in our secular age.” Presumably, the Gospel should be changed to appeal to non-Christians.

Doss also caricatures what he considers the negative world-and-life view of the Bible:

The thought of a human being who could have lived forever but lost his immortality by eating a piece of fruit seems incredible. And the idea that the sin of Adam became the cause of death for all men is morally reprehensible [p. 24].

Doss suggests that his own theology, which “places primary importance on man,” is more realistic since it is derived from the “formative resources of the Christian community, the Bible, experience, traditions, culture and reason.”

In chapters on “A Theological Style for Interpreting Death,” “Death and the Meaning of Life,” and “The Significance of Death,” relational language is prominent: faith in Christ gives us “an interpretive response to reality.” The central problem of modern Western man is his “experience of himself as without individual significance” (quoting Rollo May). Sin becomes “the refusal to be self-critical.” Rather than present the Gospel to the dying, we should seek to implement a “relational theology of love.” By listening to the patient and discussing “questions of immediate concern” we may enable him “to deal with the crisis of meaning.”

Doss ends with a chapter on his own belief in a life after death, described not as the supposedly neo-platonic survival or going-on found in Christian orthodoxy but as a need-fulfilling rise to “new levels of potential and creativity and fulfillment,” according to the “images and symbols” of the Scripture (rather than its actual statements).

Aldwinckle, a professor at McMaster University Divinity College in Ontario, is plainly a more skillful theologian and writer. His book is the most erudite and also the longest of the four. Subtitled “Life After Death in Contemporary Theology and Philosophy,” it presents orderly critiques of the afterlife positions of prominent theologians of the current century known for the positions on death: Altizer, Barth, Teilhard, Austin Farrer, Gordon Kaufmann, Moltmann, the Niebuhrs, Pannenberg, I. T. Ramsey, J. A. T. Robinson, Thielicke, and Tillich. Aldwinckle also reviews irenically yet incisively the positions of a number of biblical scholars, including Barr, Bultmann, Cullman, and H. W. Robinson. He provides perhaps the clearest exploration to be found anywhere of the inconsistencies of Bultmann’s attempts to redefine biblical faith in terms of existential “truth” rather than historical, factual reality.

In addition, Aldwinckle covers the major classical theological and philosophical positions (including Hume, Spinoza, Schleiermacher) and even some cosmological theories (Einstein, Gamov, and Hoyle).

On our behalf, Aldwinckle has asked and answered some basic questions: What have prominent theological and philosophical thinkers said about death and life after death? How can their positions be grouped? What are their strengths, their faults? Constantly present is Aldwinckle’s refreshing confidence that in orthodox, biblical theology we have the ultimate criteria for accepting, rejecting, or refining these positions. The result is a readable, remarkably thorough, patient, often brilliant, and sometimes devastating exposure of the current thinking on the afterlife among theological heavyweights.

A book like this is not for everyone. But educated Christians who have done a good deal of reading and thinking about death and the afterlife will receive it gratefully, and probably will refer to it regularly.

But note: Aldwinckle is not merely a commentator. He advances some tightly reasoned arguments of his own—one or two of which are at least mildly controversial. An example is his claim, in a chapter on “Hell and Judgment,” that neither Jesus nor the New Testament authors present Hell as a place of eternal, conscious punishment. Evangelicals continually need to examine the New Testament evidence for a doctrine of eternal punishment, as opposed to the Scripture’s “death” or the “second death,” as the negative corollary to eternal life.

Aldwinckle concludes with an appeal for practicality. Our hope for a just, fulfilled eternal life should guarantee not otherworldliness but just the opposite—a devotion to work all the harder in this life to hasten God’s Kingdom. Because historical progress toward social justice is at best painfully slow, a reformer who lacks confidence in God’s eventual eternal rule of justice is likely either to abandon his cause in despair or to resort to armed violence to achieve immediate results. Only the biblical Christian, with no “premature despair of this world,” need never taste the “inevitable bitterness and frustration of a hope which rests entirely on an earthly bliss which by its very nature must be transient.”

The book most likely to receive wide use by evangelicals will be The Last Enemy by Richard Wolff, a self-educated German Jew converted to Christianity. At only $1.75 it offers a concise (eighty pages) yet rarely skimpy treatment of the subject, free from American myopia.

Like Aldwinckle, Wolff writes engagingly. His historical and topical summaries are interesting. What he says reflects an up-to-date perspective, and he knows current cultural and religious trends. Wolff includes two valuable chapters on topics not treated at length in the other books: “Death in the Eastern Tradition” and “Suicide.” His views on the latter are unexpectedly compassionate. Christians have often condemned suicide as a voluntary act. Wolff, however, recognizes the non-rational, emotional basis of most suicides, although he does not mention recent evidence that a high percentage of those who take their own lives are schizophrenics, whose illness is increasingly accepted as biochemically based.

Wolff is always simple and direct. His chapter titles reflect this: “The Problem,” “Definitions,” “Evasions,” ‘The Fear of Death,” “Christian Perspectives,” among others. The final chapter surveys burial practices from ancient times to the often outrageously expensive modern American version. Because “when the influence of the church weakens, the undertaker assumes a quasi-priestly role,” Wolff urges Christians to take the lead in reviewing both customs and cost, with an eye to “simplicity, and the resurrection hope.” Here is an ally for the pastor who is fed up with the pagan funeral-home control over Christian burials, and who longs for a re-establishment of fully Christian church funerals that celebrate Christ’s decisive victory over death.

Perhaps most agreeable of all the features of Wolff’s book is his plain good judgment about the facts: Death is unpleasant; it has always been feared and avoided, not just in modern America; the Bible (contra Doss) contains a wealth of teaching on death; the often mentioned Hebrew-Greek dichotomy of viewpoints between the Old and the New Testament is illusory; and so forth. Wolff also gives some helpful statistics on such points as hospital deaths (80 per cent in the United States), attempted suicides (200,000 per year), life spans (a twenty-two-year increase since 1910), and cremation costs ($35 to $150).

The Last Enemy, one of many books Wolff has written, is certainly among his best. It ought to receive usage in church groups (at the college or adult level). Alone among the four, it would make an entirely appropriate gift to a person facing death, or to one bereaved.

“I WISH I HAD FAITH to pray for a house with the space we need, in the right location.” “I wish I had faith to pray for an apartment at a rent we could afford.” “I wish I had the faith to pray literally for food—it’s becoming a real problem these days.” “I wish I had the faith to pray that our garden crop would grow.” “I wish I had faith to believe God could intervene in history in answer to prayer.” “I wish I had faith to take God’s promises about prayer literally in just some area of my life.” “I wish God’s existence and presence were real to me. I guess I just don’t have the right kind of faith, because when I pray it seems like a recitation of words.” “I wish I had faith to pray for the needs of my children with expectancy.” “I wish I had faith to pray for our church, or other people I know, with certainty that there would be some results.” “I wish I had faith to pray for the Lord’s return with the excitement of real hope.”

Is there some magic formula to be discovered for manufacturing “faith”? Is there a key to unlock a supply cupboard containing the “faith” some people seem to have discovered? Is there a mysterious level that only the properly initiated can reach, where “faith” is then freely given?

By whose definition has the word “faith” come to have a mystical twist, suggesting a hushed atmosphere with sights, sounds, and feelings enveloping the fortunate ones and driving out ordinary thought forms and logical understanding? Who has spread the idea that faith is separated from reason and mind, that it is to be “experienced” even as people “experience” a light show with rock music, or is to be like a state of “spiritual” floating, achieved perhaps by swallowing or smoking some chemical or plant substance? What definition opens the way to “faith” for an elite who have had some sort of an Experience that others must duplicate or else be left in the cold? Is there a beginning place for exercising “faith,” as one exercises one’s muscles, when one is a Christian?

God speaks to us clearly concerning the base for faith and the primary exercise for our faith: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). “Hearing” has to do with physical ears, first of all, but also with the mind. “Hearing” is accompanied by some sort of action in our minds if words in a language we understand are being used. Ears and mind are simultaneously involved. And we cannot think of what we hear as being some vague music that flows through us without touching a thought process: God speaks here of verbalized “sound,” the word of God, truth being unfolded by the use of a succession of meaningful words in human language.

The “word of God” is the Bible. What makes it different is, not that it involves some mystical kind of feeling that bypasses language, but that it is what God has revealed to man, and is therefore Truth. Language can be used to say things that are not true, to deceive, to stir up responses that are wrong, to twist people’s thinking. But in God’s Word, a trustworthy, perfectly just and holy person is verbalizing something that can be depended upon completely. We should be shaken with the realization that we are not reading something another human being has said so that we have a “right” to our “opinion”; we are to accept what is being said as true.

We are to listen to God’s definition of “faith” with careful expectation of discovering what we have overlooked before, of really learning something that is true, and that is to be learned with the equipment God has given us, just as we learn arithmetic and spelling or how to bake a cake, plant a garden, or build a house that will stand the storms. Understanding does not come immediately in the learning process in most areas of life; it usually takes some time. The first requirement of understanding is hearing, listening, paying attention to the content of what is being said.

God tells us in Hebrews 11:3, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” What a staggering statement of fact, as well as a definition of what we are to start with in our exercise of faith. We are thrust back to the beginning of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and we are told to believe that the living God spoke the truth when he said he created the heavens and the earth. We are told to demonstrate or exercise our faith before God himself, and any others who know about it, by believing that God spoke the truth when he said that he created all things. We are to read with eagerness the Genesis account, thrilling at the opportunity to have faith, to start at the starting place God has given, and to state in the most emphatic way we can in our own way—playing an accompaniment on the piano, or flute, or violin, using poetry or painting, prose spoken or written—“I have faith to believe you, God, Creator, to believe that you have made what I see, taste, smell, and hear. I believe what you have verbalized in your word. I believe in your creation of the universe. Thank you.”

In Second Peter 3:2–4 we are warned of scoffers who will be scornful about the literalness or truth of the promises of the coming of Jesus the second time. They will say that nothing has ever changed in history, that things simply continue as they always have. In verse 5 a sharp finger is pointed at us in warning for this moment of twentieth-century temptation to Christians: “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.” Here is the negative of the faith set forth in Hebrews 11. Here is a willful putting aside of the beginning point, and a demonstration that then the “ending point” is also gone. Can we have faith for the present moment of literally trusting the promises connected with prayer? Can we have assurance and expectancy and literal hope of the second coming and “willfully forget” or turn away from, push aside, ignore, the command to dwell on creation? As the psalmist speaks in Psalm 33 of praising God and singing unto him, his song is based on believing, his faith that “by the word of the Lord were the heavens made.… For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.”

It is the God of Creation in whom we are to have faith. It is his spoken word we are to believe when he tells us he created. As we come with our requests “with thanksgiving” and thank God for what he has done in the past, we are to include in our thanksgiving creation. “Let them praise the name of the Lord: for he commanded, and they were created.”

‘Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God.” Let us cast ourselves on our faces and cry out for a reality of that faith to be such as will be pleasing to God. He has given us the starting place, clearly. It is his definition of faith.