War On Statistics

As the new American Congress girds up its loins to meet the challenges of our era, one high-priority item is the matter of gun control. Dozens of bills, ranging from the mere expression of pious wishes to Draconian severity, have already been introduced on this popular subject. Eutychus would scarcely venture to oppose something that has such good intentions behind it. On the other hand, since gun control has taken on the nature of a crusade (and we all know how bad the Crusades were), and since it is largely justified by crime statistics, it may be well to point out a few perplexing facts.

There is indeed a high crime rate in the United States, and not least among the crimes committed here is murder, which occurs at a rate of 8.5 per 100,000. Of the murders, just about half are committed with guns (4.21 per 100,000). Therefore we have more than 8,000 such murders per year. Perhaps we could reduce the number of gun murders by making guns harder to obtain. (There appear to be even more gun suicides per year, according to World Health Organization statistics, but presumably suicides would go on even without guns.) Of course, even in the absence of guns murder probably would not cease, for some people are killed without guns (France, for example, has a murder rate of 3.2 per 100,000, but only 0.24 are committed with guns).

There are approximately 100,000,000 handguns supposedly in private possession in the United States. That would be a lot to collect. We can assume that it would be harder to collect them from the violence-prone than from meek and inoffensive gun-owners who seldom resort to using them anyway. Hence reducing guns in circulation by, say, half, or 50,000,000 would not necessarily reduce the gun murder rate by half. Even in countries with stringent firearms controls, such as West Germany and Northern Ireland, terrorists and criminals still seem able to get all they need. So while we do not question the desirability of better gun control, we would caution against thinking that even a law requiring confiscation will necessarily produce a significant improvement in the quality of life (or manner of death) in America.

Since lawmakers are influenced by statistics, one other group makes interesting material for reflection. A rate of 8,000 murders per year committed with 100,000,000 handguns means 8 murders per 100,000 guns, almost exactly the same as the murder rate for the population as a whole; this means that, facing a person or a gun, one is almost exactly as likely to be killed by the person as killed with the gun. On the other hand, the motor-vehicle death rate is 27.6 per 100,000,000 (U.S. Public Health Service). Since there are about 120,000,000 automobiles registered in the United States (1972), this means 23 killings per 100,000 cars, or almost three times as many deaths per available car as deaths per available gun. Since cars are therefore three times as dangerous as guns, and since all of us are surrounded by cars, we should be very anxious, until we recall that, unlike the really dangerous drivers, the really dangerous gun-owners keep their weapons where we cannot see them (the shark has pretty teeth, dear …).

These statistics have not been sufficiently well analyzed to permit us to draw fully binding conclusions from them, but at the very least it should be evident that only sweeping measures need be considered, and that even then we should not expect results overnight.

For Orientation

I found the articles in the February 14, issue, for the most part, to be excellent in content style. They came at a crucial moment for me as an educator in a Bible college. I recommend that reprints of “Can a Seminary Stand Fast?” by Harold O. J. Brown and “Guidelines For Prospective Seminarians” by Andre Bustanoby be made available as soon as possible. Both these articles should be very valuable to a wide spectrum of Bible colleges and seminaries in their orientation programs.

Registrar and Professor

Foundations Bible College

Dunn, N. C.

I was impressed with the scope and sensitivity toward seminary students in Bustanoby’s article, “Guidelines For Prospective Seminarians.” Due to the increasing numbers of women who are now attending or planning to attend seminaries, I feel the author needs to broaden his base of reference to include all persons interested in seminaries, not just men. His guidelines are applicable to all people. Why use words that limit his writing to include only the male gender of our population?

St. Paul, Minn.

It seems to me that a seminary board and faculty must decide whether the school will be a professional school of ministry or a graduate school of theology.… The professional school of ministry would aim at training men and women for the pastoral ministry. There would be a small core faculty to head each department. The bulk of the faculty would be persons invited to campus for a week, a month or a semester.… The graduate school of theology would be just that. A strong faculty of theologians brought together to “grow” theologians. There is a serious dearth of theologians coming along because there is no real place in America for such a growth process to take place. The students in such a school would not be forced to take courses that would be meaningless to them. They would have the time for serious contemplation, reading and discussion.

First Baptist Church

Ballston Spa, N. Y.

Harold Brown’s article asks a crucial question. The history of theological education in the United States shows that the answer has been “no.” Brown correctly identified several elements which have historically been part of the spiritual vitality of evangelical seminaries.… My study of the history of theological education suggests a fourth.… A dynamic seminary-church relationship has been part of the secret. Historically, those seminaries for which there has been a trusting relationship with the churches have been strong in faith and productive in the practical ministry. But the passion for ministering can easily be replaced either by dogmatic particularism or by latitudinarian toleration. Neither extreme is useful, and either one can precede overt departures from the faith.

Assistant to the President

Roberts Wesleyan College

Rochester, N. Y.

Surely for Brown to support the statement that “Fuller too has undergone a shift in emphasis” by speaking of “the exasperated departure of several of its best-known conservatives” is terribly unbalanced. There are many reasons why a teacher may become exasperated, not all of which have to do with the theological posture of a seminary. On the other side one could have noted that “several of its best-known conservatives” remained at the seminary; and then the names of Geoffrey Bromiley, Everett Harrison, and Wilbur Smith could be listed. Dr. Smith retired honorably at the compulsory age of sixty-nine and while he has taught since at other schools, demonstrated his good faith in Fuller by donating to the school his personal library of more than 40,000 volumes.

A further implication of Brown’s article is that Harvard Divinity School, Princeton, Andover-Newton Seminary, and Fuller Seminary are all the same sort of school, which, in the eyes of someone who has been involved in some way with all four schools, is certainly not so.

The Grantham Church

Grantham, Pa.

Losing Ardor

As an ardent reader and admirer of CHRISTIANITY TODAY I could hardly believe that you would accept for publication the advertisement that appears on page 3 of the February 28 issue.… Could the publishers and management staff actually believe that the medical profession in the United States, the FDA, the National Cancer Institute, the AMA, etc. would actually suppress a proven cancer therapy? Worse yet, cancer victims grasping at any possible ray of hope will frequently, after reading material like this, seek the unproven treatments and at the same time delay in the use of known valuable modalities of therapy.… You have lost a good deal of my respect in the quality of your publication by accepting this ad, and I am sure this could also be said for many other of your professional readers.

Ridgewood, N. J.

No Muzzling

Your lead news story, “The Muzzling of Christians in Korea” (Jan. 31), must have the most direct possible challenge. Since the article attempts to separate the Communist involvement or Marxist sympathizers from the genuine Christians you are contributing to the deception and disruption that the Communists are seeking to perpetrate. Especially you confirm the way in which the Communists desire to exploit the Christians and now the evangelicals.

It is most significant that the article is totally devoid of any substantive information about what the Communists are doing in this field of religion and how it is their primary function to discredit and if possible remove President Park Chung Hee. I can speak with firsthand information both from the standpoint of our Christians in Korea and also from the standpoint of the government. The office of the International Council of Christian Churches which we maintain in Seoul and the Korean Council of Christian Churches, which is affiliated with us, report that there is no religious persecution and no muzzling of Christians in South Korea.

International Council of Christian Churches

Collingswood, N. J.

The Empty Face Of Evil

Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis’s powerful retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, focuses on the face of evil—its definition and habitation. Orual, the selfish Queen of Glome and sister of Psyche, narrates the tale. She meets the gods face to face and must cope with the inevitable result. The queen’s mentality is a mixed one. She has all the dark fear of the gods that so pervades her tale, but she also has a Grecian logic instilled by her beloved schoolmaster the Fox, a slave from Greece.

Queen Orual tries to make the gods the villains of the tale, to put them “in the dock,” as modern man has done with God (see Lewis’s essay “God in the Dock,” in the collection of essays under that title published by Eerdmans).

Although Orual always speaks as if there were several gods, her tale revolves around two, the dark, bloody Ungit of the temple of Glome and the son of Ungit, the Shadowbrute or Beast of the Grey Mountain. These two are the barbaric versions of the Greek Aphrodite and Cupid. The tale, too, is the same. The beautiful Psyche is sacrificed to appease the gods, who are thought to be jealous of her beauty.

From Orual’s point of view, the gods are dark and malicious creatures, allowing men little moments of pleasure only to dash the poor creatures down again. She complains:

The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us big before they prick us [Till We Have Faces, A Myth Retold, Time Incorporated, 1966, p. 86; succeeding references are to this edition].

Worse yet, the gods do not allow men to plan their own little idiocies and blasphemies; they increase the pain by diverse cruelties:

It is, in its way, admirable, this divine skill. It was not enough for the gods to kill her; they must make her father the murderer [p. 70].

Throughout her narrative, Orual complains in this way about the workings of the gods.

Not only does she point up the capricious and malicious intentions of the gods; she also stresses the dark and bloody aspect of holiness. Her description of Ungit evokes all that is most lush and terrifying in the archetypical earth mother:

In the furthest recess of her house where she sits it is so dark that you cannot see her well, but in summer enough light may come down from the smoke-holes in the roof to show her a little. She is a black stone without head or hands or face, and a very strong goddess [p. 4].

Not only is she ugly, but her worship is less than symbolic. It consists mainly of ritual sex and blood sacrifices. Orual discusses the gods with the Fox and so tells him of Ungit:

That was how I came to tell him all about Ungit, about the girls who are kept in her house, and the presents that brides have to make to her, and how we sometimes, in a bad year, have to cut someone’s throat and pour the blood over her [p. 7].

All these complaints are merely the most spectacular ones Orual can make against the gods. Their real malignancy in her opinion is based on the very ambiguity of their natures. If Ungit were just bloody or the Shadowbrute just cruel, then men might be able to cope with them. Not so, however. Worst of all there is the frightful possibility that they might be real and beautiful rather than loathsome, but so capricious as to refuse to let men know their true natures.

Orual’s central problem is the one common to modern man. Everything that happens to Psyche on the mountain might be illusion and fantasy. It might also be real. There is no way to know until the knowing can do no good. The situation is similar to that in the modern spectacular novel The Exorcist. Everything might be caused or at least explained by natural phenomena and psychic disorders, but there is an equal chance that the supernatural could be responsible. The human being must choose what to believe, for the gods or demons are not telling.

Psyche never doubts the real and benevolent natures of the gods, whereas Orual with her rational training and her angry loathing continually wavers between doubt and despair. The thing that most enhances Orual’s doubts is the exact meshing of Psyche’s childhood fantasies with her later vision of the god of the mountain. Throughout her childhood Psyche insisted that she would marry the god of the mountain and live in his palace. Later when Orual finds her, apparently in rags, Psyche insists her dream has come true. Orual, good psychologist that she is, is convinced that Psyche in her fear and loneliness has only gone mad and come to believe in her own fantasy world.

At the same time, however, Orual believes it may be possible, only very slightly possible, that the god is there after all. The most ambiguous thing that happens to Orual is that she looks up in the morning mist and sees the palace of the god. Then immediately it fades into swirling shadow. Orual asks in query against the gods:

That moment when I either saw or thought I saw the House—does it tell against the gods or against me? Would they (if they answered) make it a part of their defense? say it was a sign, a hint, beckoning me to answer the riddle one way rather than the other? I’ll not grant them that. What is the use of a sign which is itself only another riddle?

She goes on to speculate on her sleepy, disturbed state at the time she spied the palace and ends in doubt:

They set the riddle and then allow a seeming that can’t be tested and can only quicken and thicken the tormenting whirlpool of your guesswork. If they had an honest intention to guide us, why is their guidance not plain? Psyche could speak plain when she was three; do you tell me the gods have not yet come so far? [p. 118].

Despite the vision, however, the doubt is so strong that Orual must give in to the practical fear that her sister is fantasizing and needs to be awakened.

Awaken Psyche she does, but it is Orual who must bear the face of reality. She sees the god above the river, and this time there can be no doubt. “A monster—the Shadowbrute that I and all Glome had imagined—would have subdued me less than the beauty this face wore.” The god rejects Orual pitilessly, seeming to imply that all her doubts “had been trumped-up foolery, dust blown in my own eyes by myself.” Her defense is that it had not seemed so, that perhaps the god had altered the past by making himself known. She questions again the mercy of the gods: “And if they can indeed change the past, why do they never do so in mercy?” (p. 152).

Mercy is what Orual cannot find in the faces of her gods. That lack of mercy is her charge. Later, when she goes on her journey to foreign lands and hears the original tale of Cupid and Psyche, she says of it:

It was as if the gods themselves had first laughed, and then spat in my face.… It’s a story belonging to a different world, a world in which the gods show themselves clearly and don’t torment men with glimpses, not unveil to one what they hide from another, nor ask you to believe what contradicts your eyes and ears and nose and tongue and fingers [pp. 212, 213].

The first section of her book ends with her final restatement of the same desperate theme:

To hint and hover, to draw near us in dreams and oracles, or in a waking vision that vanishes as soon as seen, to be dead silent when we question them and then glide back and whisper (words we cannot understand) in our ears when we most wish to be free of them, and to show to one what they hide from another; what is all this but cat-and-mouse play, blindman’s buff, and mere jugglery? Why must holy places be dark places? I say, therefore, that there is no creature (toad, scorpion, or serpent) so noxious to man as the gods. Let them answer my charge if they can [p. 218].

So ends Orual’s charge against the gods.

Lewis seems to be saying that evil appears to be the responsibility if not the folly of the gods. They are dark, mysterious, and capricious, unable to be understood or evaded. One must note again the nature of the gods in this situation. They appear to be like spoiled children, playing with men for their personal sport and distraction. They are very like the wicked King or Orual’s nurse, the foolish Batta, determined to act for their own pleasure and diversion, uninterested in the effects their actions are going to have on unfortunate mortals.

It is not, of course, Lewis who is saying such things at all; it is Orual. For her, all evil is concentrated in the actions of the gods. The reader, however, is caught up in the story, so that he or she is tempted to begin to sympathize with Orual, to begin to reject any notion of benevolent deity and to accept the likelihood that malevolence does go back to the very basis of the supernatural structure beyond the natural universe. With the second section of the text, however, this impression changes. It is not the gods who are evil; it is man, or, more specifically, it is a woman.

The process of self-understanding through which Orual passes is a terrifying one because it speaks with such truth. As an old woman, she had finished her text against the gods with the words “no answer.” She opens her work again because she has received an answer in the form of various dreams and waking visions, all evoked by some astounding personal revelations. Orual encounters at the end of her life the uncomfortable truth about her own nature. Essentially what she discovers is that rather than loving those whom she thought she loved, she has used them up, devouring their strengths and energies. Like the demanding mother and wife in The Great Divorce, Orual asked everything from those she claimed to love. Her foolish second sister, Redival, she rejected for the witty teacher, the Fox, and for the lovely Psyche. Bardia, the captain of the guard, Orual’s real love, she used up so that he became worn and exhausted in her service. And worst of all, Psyche she condemned to ceaseless wandering not because she loved Psyche but because Psyche’s love for the god made Orual mad with jealousy.

Orual comes to realize that the selfishness was not the god’s but her own. While she had been blaming others, it was she who had possessed and devoured every good thing within her reach, she who had snatched selfishly at whatever she had wanted. She realized that her ugliness is not alone in her face but goes to the base of her being. Her face is like the swollen rock face of Ungit, covered with sacrificial blood. She says:

It was I who was Ungit. That ruinous face was mine. I was that Batta-thing, that all-devouring womblike, yet barren, thing. Glome was a web. I was a swollen spider squat at its center, gorged with men’s stolen lives [p. 242],

The worst kind of evil is the wrong kind of love, love that clutches and possesses rather than loosening and liberating.

The horrible self-awareness, however, is not all that Orual receives from the gods in their answer. She also sees a vision in which Psyche journeys to Hades and brings back a case of beauty for Orual. The beauty is, of course, the self-awareness that makes her see that evil is within and not without and that it can be overcome only by unselfish love. Moreover, unselfish love can be achieved only when one is aware of his or her own motivations. Lewis, through Orual, says it this way:

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy. of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they bear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces? [p. 257].

Orual had been the wicked sister, sacrificing her younger sister for jealousy, but is was not the simple jealousy of the old legend. It was the jealousy of a love that seeks to possess the beloved, even at the cost of breaking that beloved’s heart. The jealousy of the possessive lover, be he mate or parent or child or sister, has destructive potential far greater than any mere resentment of one sister for another’s good fortune in marriage.

That is Lewis’s final statement on evil. Essentially, it is the wrong kind of love. It is childish and unable to see beyond its own ends and interests. It is love Eve had for Adam when she doomed him to death because she did not want to be deprived of his company. It is the opposite of the love described in First Corinthians 13. It is that dark glass in the lines: “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor. 13:12). Evil is the desire to have, to own, to devour others rather than to let them be and grow in their own ways and times. It is Orual’s grace and blessing that, despite her own worst efforts, the gods allow her to see her corrupt self in time. She dies redeemed, aware of the nature of real love.

Such a marvelous molding of Lewis’s ideas on evil does not happen so clearly in his fiction until this last work. He has had the ideas before and has certainly portrayed the evil characters as petty tyrants and nasty villains, but he has never connected all the threads so beautifully so that the natures of his creations melded with the import of his ideas as they do in his creation of Orual. When one sees her motivations, hidden as they have been, one sees where the source of evil had been all along.

Evil is the face of blank, malicious selfishness. It turns in upon itself, again and again unable to look out to others. No other person is there for his or her own sake but only for the feeding and care of the evil-doer. What the evil man calls love is only a sort of hunger aimed at the total consumption of the emotional lives of those around him. What he calls justice is the selfish granting of his own welfare and pleasure, whether on a personal or a universal scale. And what he calls good is that which will benefit his own aims at the expense or despite the needs of those around him. He is evil not because he wills to be an evil man but because he can do nothing else but will his own narrow desires. For Lewis, the only way to stop evil in others is to condemn its meager emptiness; the only way to stop it in ourselves is to look inward through the dark glass to try to see our real faces beyond.

JANICE WITHERSPOON NEULEIB¹Janice Witherspoon Neuleib is assistant professor of English at Illinois State University, Normal.

A generation ago, when mainline churches in the United States were still growing, concern for Reformed doctrine was often noticeably absent in American religious life. Whether because of defection from distinctly Reformed doctrines by the major Presbyterian and Reformed bodies, secular rejection of religion as a significant force in life, or the mere weakness and silence of those who stand within the Presbyterian tradition, distinctly Calvinistic doctrines were seldom heard, despite holding operations in such bastions of the Reformed faith as Westminster Seminary and Calvin College and Seminary of the Christian Reformed Church.

In our day, a time when many denominations are declining and religion is apparently losing its hold, there appears to be a renewed interest in Calvinistic theology and a resurgence of those committed to the doctrines of grace summarized in the Reformed standards: the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, the Canons of Dort, the Belgic Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism. Ways are being found to highlight the Reformed faith nationally.

On the local level, observers have noted with some surprise the impressive growth of important Reformed colleges and seminaries. Covenant College, located at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, reports a record number of students for the current school year. Its sister institution, Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, has had a 20 per cent increase since 1972. Even more remarkable is the growth of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, now highly regarded by the breakaway 80,000-member Presbyterian Church in America (briefly called the National Presbyterian Church), although many of its faculty and students have not given up on the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Southern). The Jackson seminary has grown from 17 students in 1966 to 214 today. The older Westminster Seminary also reports an upswing in attendance after a number of fairly static years, including a 50 per cent increase in new students this year. Each of these schools is committed to the divine inspiration, authority, and infallibility of the Scriptures as the written Word of God and to the Westminster and other Reformed standards as containing that system of doctrine found in Scripture.

There is an upsurge of independent churches stressing that they are “Reformed Baptists.”

Also important are the many theological institutes and conferences being held across the country. This winter the Australian Forum, sponsored by Present Truth magazine, held fifteen such conferences, featuring Editor Robert D. Brinsmead and Geoffrey J. Paxton of Australia. A similar effort known as the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology will be held for the second time this spring in both Los Angeles and Philadelphia with J. I. Packer of England and Ralph L. Keiper of the Conservative Baptist Seminary, Denver, Colorado, as featured speakers. This conference is now partially sponsored by Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns, a group of conservative ministers within the United Presbyterian Church. In Florida, the Pensacola Theological Institute is in its nineteenth year.

In western Pennsylvania the Ligonier Valley Study Center, directed by resident theologian Robert C. Sproul, continues to hold frequent student and adult conferences and has experienced unusual interest in its work. Its tape ministry is particularly well received.

Now there is talk of a possible Congress of Presbyterian and Reformed Christians on the North American continent in 1976. The congress is being conceived as an attempt to focus distinctly Reformed insights upon contemporary problems and “to raise a witness for an infallible Word of God, the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ, and for the Reformed Faith in particular,” as an advance congress paper puts it. According to current plans, overall responsibility for the congress would fall to the Board of Directors of the five-year-old National Presbyterian and Reformed Fellowship.

Does this momentum signify a new departure or merely a return to old paths and ways? Those who go by the name Calvinist affirm the latter. To begin with, they believe that the doctrines of grace known as Calvinism were certainly not invented by Calvin, nor were they characteristic of his thought alone during the Reformation period. These are strong Calvinistic statements in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the epistles of Paul, Peter, John, and the other New Testament writers. Augustine argued the case for the same truths over against the denials of Pelagius, insisting that men and women are so helplessly lost in sin that they cannot even choose God until God himself intervenes in grace to open their eyes to see the truth concerning Christ and moves their recalcitrant wills to yield to him and be saved.

Luther himself was a “Calvinist” in all the essential doctrines, although this is not reflected in the subsequent development of Lutheranism. So was Zwingli. The Puritans were also Calvinists, and through them and their teaching England and Scotland experienced the greatest and most pervasive national revivals the world has ever seen. In that number were the heirs of John Knox: Thomas Cartwright, Richard Stibbes, Richard Baxter, Matthew Henry, John Owen, and others. In America thousands were influenced by Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, and George Whitefield, each of whom was Reformed in his doctrines.

The modern missionary movement received nearly all its direction and initial impetus from those in the Reformed and Puritan tradition. The list includes such men as William Carey, John Ryland, Henry Martyn, Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, John G. Paton, John R. Mott, and many others. For all these the doctrines of grace were not an appendage to Christian thought, something that could be temporarily set aside in the interests of a greater, so-called evangelical unity; these doctrines were central to their faith, and fired and gave form to their preaching and missionary efforts. The new Calvinists are raising their banner in the confidence of being at one with this vast host.

If there really is a resurgence of the Reformed faith in our day, then the Church at large will soon be hearing a number of truths more clearly.

1. It will be hearing in ever sharper terms of the desperate and totally hopeless state of the lost. It will be hearing that man is indeed dead in trespasses and sins and that he has absolutely no hope of responding to the Gospel even when it is preached in power unless God first intervenes to give him life. This will mean fewer appeals to “give your heart to Jesus” and more declarations of God’s just wrath against sin and the consequently desperate state of the ungodly.

2. There will be a renewed emphasis upon God’s grace as the only possible source of salvation. This involves a renewed emphasis upon election. For if man cannot choose God, man can therefore be saved only if God chooses to save him. And this he does. This is the Christian’s greatest joy and wonder.

3. Preaching will increasingly stress God’s sovereignty and power. For God does not elect men to salvation in a way that can be frustrated by man’s stubborn reserve or disobedience. Rather, his election also accomplishes salvation. No doubt many Calvinists have misconstrued God’s elective action, implying at times that men and women are little more than robots whom God manipulates into salvation against their will. This is not right. God does not save men regardless of their will; he makes them willing to come to him. Nevertheless, he does make them willing, and he is never frustrated in so doing. This is the point.

4. There will be a new emphasis upon particular redemption (often called limited atonement), that is, the doctrine that Jesus died in a particular way for a particular people, with the result that their sins and only theirs are removed. This does not deny that the death of Christ relates to the world at large in some fashion. But it does deny that his death is ineffective in the case of the vast multitudes who do not believe, as it must be if he died for them and they are yet not saved.

5. Finally, there will be a new and comforting stress upon God’s steadfast perseverance with his people so that none of those whom he has called and for whom Christ died is lost.

We shall be hearing some of the greatest texts of the Word of God once again, and they shall be taken seriously. For example, John 6:44: “No one can come to me, except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day.” Or John 10:27–30: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.” In these texts and others, the sovereignty of God in salvation and indeed in all things is clarified and the need of man revealed.

Will the Calvinists carry the field? They have done it before. They may again, if the flaws that marred earlier efforts are corrected and the love of God infuses their lives and preaching. Too often the Calvinists have become theologically brittle and highly critical of other theological positions and of one another. They have refused to work with those who have not expressed themselves in precisely their terms. They have allowed no theological flexibility, even in such uncertain areas as eschatology. But today’s upsurge shows signs of being different. Among the younger Calvinists at least there has appeared a new openness in discussion, and there is an awareness of the need for “observable love” toward all Christians, as Francis Schaeffer declared to crowds meeting for the second General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America last fall.

With those elements—faith in the divine inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures, sound Reformed doctrine, and observable love—the new Calvinists may usher in a new day.

Conformity is repugnant to a strong individualist. What kind of an adjustment can be expected if such a person is a Christian? Over and over again, the Bible exhorts us to be of one mind: “Fulfill ye my joy, that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.” (Phil. 2:2); “… stand fast in one spirit, with one mind” (Phil. 1:27); “be of the same mind one toward another” (Rom. 12:16); “… keep those whom thou has given me, that they may be one” (John 17:11). Can it be that God, who made each person unique, who knows the very number of hairs on each head, suddenly demands that each of these masterpieces lose his freedom to be “other-minded” when he comes to have faith in Christ? Does this prescribed oneness mean that my desire to remain “me” conflicts with the life that Christ gives?

A quick “yes” to this question betrays a failure to understand the new kind of freedom that Christ gives when he gives new life. There is a definite distinction in Scripture between the life that I lose in Christ and the life that I lead in Christ. The life I lose is my ego, my will, my desire to satisfy myself and make myself the master of my soul (Rom. 12:1). In the life I henceforth lead I strive to be myself in total dependence on the living Christ to renew my mind (Rom. 12:2) and eventually to take me where he is (John 14:2, 3).

This transformation of mind is accomplished solely by the indwelling Spirit of God (Rom. 8:5–8), whose presence is made possible only by the death and resurrection of Christ (John 16:7). The Apostle Paul describes this sequence of death and life as we experience it here on earth: “I have been crucified with Christ: and I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the real life I now have within this body is a result of my trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20, Living Bible).

This new life, then, no longer seeks to satisfy the self, which is crucified, but is spiritually inclined to seek after the things of the Spirit. We get a clear indication from the following verse that the Holy Spirit is free—as gloriously free as the wind—and moves in ways man cannot predict: “The wind bloweth where it willeth, and thou hearest the sound of it, but canst not tell from where it cometh, and where it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). We also know from Scripture that the spirit glorifies none other but the Son, who made the new life possible (John 16:13, 14). We know, too, that the Spirit never violates the Law of Christ, which is love (Gal. 5:14).

All Christians must conform to these basic concepts of losing an old life and leading a new one in Christ, but this presents no problem even to the strong-willed. The grace of God that he freely receives when the Holy Spirit breathes new life into him makes him willing and able to believe these concepts with all his heart.

But within this framework of principle, which is unalterable truth, vast areas of differences exist—and rightly so, as I understand the revelation of the Church, the Body of Christ. This Mystical Body with Christ as the head is made analogous to the functioning of a physical body (1 Cor. 12). Each minute part has a God-given nature that contributes to the health of the body as long as it functions according to that nature. Although I lose my old identity when I become a member of Christ’s body, my new life demands a new me with a new function. Perhaps I will be a preacher, a teacher, a helper, or any one of the numerous workers mentioned in the Bible who will build up the Church and bind it together. A part of a totality, I become more of an individual than ever before because the totality depends upon me to function according to my God-given nature. Driven by God’s love for unity, I personally and continually will to respond to the control center—the head, Christ—in order to discover and perform the unique function of his will.

As each part is faithful to follow the Spirit in this way, the original masterpieces of human individuality begin to emerge to form that total and complete unity which is God’s perfect plan. Even though the parts are all different, all are of one mind, for each draws from the one mind of Christ. This kind of oneness does not demand conformity.

This diversity of function is readily acceptable in the Church because it can be understood in these terms. But what happens when the diversity is one of behavior and life-style instead? Church members who believe in the Spirit’s freedom to produce diverse functions in the Body may suddenly insist that oneness of mind means conformity in conduct. They are reluctant to accept a nonconformist.

Many areas of our lives are not prescribed in detail in the Bible but are established within the principle of liberty instead. Not fully understanding this liberty and lacking the courage to walk by faith, we develop an insecurity that causes a serious problem in our attitude toward others.

Take, for example, the common reaction against the life-style of the Jesus people. Without getting involved in a controversy over the validity of their conversions (there are wolves in sheep’s clothing in every move-fent and church organization where the Spirit breathes new life), let us look at Scripture to establish our attitudes on such points as long hair, mod clothes, rock music, and arm-raising. Keep in mind that we are still talking about true believers who are born again according to the Word of God and whose doctrine is within that framework of unalterable truth.

Consider this verse, which sets the stage for numerous differences in our attitudes and activities: “All things are lawful unto me, but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Cor. 6:12). The paraphrase from the Living Bible reads this way: “I can do anythink I want to if Christ has not said no, but some things aren’t good for me. Even if I am allowed to do them, I’ll refuse to if I think they might get such a grip on me that I can’t easily stop when I want to.” Since people vary in the kinds and strengths of their temptations, what holds power over one person may have little effect on another.

For example, one new Christian just emerging from the unsavory depths of a rock culture may find it impossible to praise the Lord in gospel rock music. He realizes that anything resembling his old life still holds power over him, so on the basis of First Corinthians 6:12 he wisely chooses not to engage in any remembrance of it. On the other hand, another new Christian from the same culture may be powerfully used by the Lord in the very environment out of which he came. When the bonds from his old life are broken and hold no power over him, he is free to participate in many of the old activities for the sake of winning others to Christ. This participation, which may include wearing long hair and mod clothes, and listening to and playing rock music, is based on First Corinthians 9:22, which says: “Whatever a person is like, I try to find common ground with him so that he will let me tell him about Christ and let Christ save him” (Living Bible). (For a fuller understanding of this concept of liberty, read Romans 14:1–23; 15:1–7; and First Corinthians 8:6–13.)

Is it possible, then, that this nonconforming liberty can also reflect a oneness of mind among believers? Yes, it can! When we are convinced by the Word that vast differences rightly exist within the Church even in areas of behavior and life-style, then we are free to accept the other Body members who differ from us, trusting them to follow the Lord as he directs and depending upon them to help keep the Body healthy. Each believer should seek the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit rather than adhering to rigid rules that disregard his individuality and his uniqueness in Christ. When a believer is free in the Spirit himself, he is able to believe in his brother’s freedom; and since there is but one Spirit, there is one mind between them, however different they appear to be!

Of course, our response to the Spirit and our decisions will inevitably change as we “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18). I believe that as we grow—as we experience more of the Spirit’s release from bondage to worldly pleasure—we become freer to choose our involvements from a broader scope of activities that put us in contact with those whom Christ is calling. The activities themselves lose their power to control us as we become more filled with the Spirit. Through this process we reflect a more accurate image of our Lord, for when we choose not to get involved for the sake of a weaker brother, we are acting in true humility. Humility and submission toward another is possible only from a position of great strength if it is to be an operation of God’s redeeming love and not cowardice in disguise.

This is the kind of strength and love we are witnessing in many daring Christian experiments today. Beautiful conversions and deeper commitments to the Living Christ, founded on the great fundamental truths of Christianity, are emerging from all sorts of non-traditional atmospheres today, and we need to be open to these in the spirit of freedom. Among the ministries bearing fruit are community-living groups, home church groups, coffeehouses, city street workers (many of these are giving way to city communities), publications that engage in direct confrontations on controversial matters, and gatherings where believers praise the Lord with open arms.

Take Will Campbell, for example, who once had wide experiences within the organized church. He has since chosen to function as a Body member from the outside, and in an interview he described his understanding of Christian freedom:

If God be God, He can work anywhere He wants to, including the mahogany pews, the red carpets, the stained glass and all the rest. I’m not trying to limit God, all I know is He’s not calling me under the steeple. I can’t say that for anybody else [“Will Campbell: Door Interview,” The Wittenburg Door, June-July, 1974, p. 12].

The Wittenburg Door is another example of Christian freedom brought about by strength. Here is a magazine so firmly determined to stand for solid biblical beliefs that it has chosen to be vulnerable to the legalism of the churches by exposing controversial issues. According to its editor, Denny Rydberg, one of its chief concerns is that Christians be challenged to reexamine their “sacred cows” and traditions that are not based on Scripture and to recognize the need for change within the Church. This challenge is being accepted by those whose integrity is frustrated by the hypocrisy in much of what is termed “Christian” living.

In 1942, Clarence Jordon broke off from tradition when he established the inter-racial Christian community of Koinonia Farm in the southern part of Georgia. Even such a scriptural practice as the common treasury subjected them to accusations of Communism!

What causes these reactions? Are these “radicals,” “liberals,” or “rebels” really wrong, or is it that we do not understand what they are trying to do? I am afraid that fear of apostasy is what has caused many a brother to deny a brother! People seem to find it easier to stagnate in that fear, defending their own positions, than to try to grow in wisdom, discernment, and love. Is it really so difficult to believe that we are all only a part of the Truth, a part of the process of the life of the Body, and that “for now we see in a mirror darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12)?

I believe that we Christians, we true, born-again Christians—will never experience unity until we are enabled by our own strength in Christ to admit the validity of another’s position in the Body even though it differs from our own. I believe that it is through this liberty that we discover a oneness of mind in the Spirit, and that through this oneness we finally experience true love one for another. I believe that all this happens because God does allow an individualist the freedom to be newly unique when he is baptized by the Spirit into that One Body of Christ!

Still the most venerable version of the Bible is the one prefaced by a panegyric to a king. And what a king! He appears like “the Sun in his strength,” dispels darkness, brings blessing, peace, and true happiness. He zealously defends the faith, stoutly attacks the Man of Sin, talks religion in the home, goes often to church, encourages teachers of the Word, and is divinely endowed with “many singular and extraordinary graces.” The king was James I of Great Britain and Ireland (James VI in Scotland), who died 350 years ago this month. The occasion was the publication in 1611 of the version of the Bible that bears his name. And the eulogy was largely undeserved. Inerrancy has nothing to do with the dedication prefaced to the KJV, which provides no identifiable description of the very fallible Scot referred to at the French court as “the wisest fool in Christendom.”

His early circumstances make pitiable reading; here was a truly deprived child. Son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her ill-fated second husband Lord Darnley (who was to die violently within the year), James was born in 1566. The Reformation had come to Scotland six years earlier, making precarious the Catholic Mary’s tenure of the throne—a position further jeopardized by fatal character flaws. James had barely begun his second year when he was proclaimed king by Protestant lords who forced his mother to abdicate. She left Scotland in 1568; he was never to see her again. His minority was marked by bitter struggles for possession of the bewildered boy, who was meanwhile educated in the classical manner by George Buchanan and Peter Young and well schooled in the Reformed faith.

James neither forgot nor forgave the strict regime to which he was subjected, and soon decided that monarchy and presbytery were as antithetical as God and the devil. Later he put it more tersely: “No bishop, no king.” In 1584 the Black Acts declared him head of the church as well as of the state, called for crown-appointed bishops in the Kirk, forbade general assemblies without the royal sanction, and banned ministers from discussing public affairs on penalty of treason. The ministers protested but were powerless; the Protestant lords who had helped them achieve the Reformation withdrew their support after James, exercising his “kingcraft,” lavished on them gifts of the pre-Reformation church’s property.

It was James VI’s undoing that he had never known a time when he was not king. Enthusiastically he espoused the theory of divine right. God had made him “a little God to sit on [the] throne, and to rule over other men.” It was blasphemy “to dispute what a King may do in the height of his power.” This suicidal doctrine was to cause the death of his son (Charles I), subject the United Kingdom to some years of military dictatorship (under Cromwell), cost his grandson (James II/VII) the throne, and topple the Stuart dynasty.

James could be unpredictable and conciliatory, seeming to favor Presbyterianism and dismissing Anglican ritual as “an ill-said Mass in English,” but the closing years of the century were dominated by the need to advance his claim, through family descent, to succeed the aging Queen Elizabeth. The throne of England was evidently worth an ill-said Mass or two. It was worth also the life of his mother, whose execution by Elizabeth in 1587 went unprotested. James maintained contact with prominent Englishmen. Indirectly pursuing the same goal, he even had amicable correspondence with the Pope, and had a wild dream of joining forces with him to form one great united church of God.

Meanwhile in Scotland, Andrew Melville, John Knox’s successor, in 1596 seized the royal sleeve, called James “God’s sillie vassal,” and reminded him of the Kingdom of Christ in which he (James) had no exalted status but only ordinary membership. No king by divine right could let that pass. James persisted in promoting episcopacy in the land, and made the general assembly a tool to carry out his demands. By 1599 he was strong enough to scoff at his clerical critics in Basilikon Doron: “What is betwixt the pride of a glorious Nebuchadnezzar and the preposterous humility of our puritan ministers, claiming to their parity, and crying, ‘We are all but vile worms’; and yet will judge and give law to their king, but will be judged nor controlled by none.” Melville was subsequently confined in the Tower of London for four years, then banished for life; some twenty other ministers were deposed or exiled.

In 1603 James became the first king of the United Kingdom of England and Scotland, thus disposing overnight of a troublesome border (though it was not until 1707 that the Act of Union was formalized). Ireland too had been pacified. Spain had been beaten off. The foundation of England’s naval supremacy had been laid. Trade was expanding, wealth increasing. And James immodestly reminded the Commons of their latest bonus: “the blessings which God in my Person hath bestowed upon you all.”

Some share in the blessings was anticipated by English Catholics and Puritans who had suffered much under Elizabeth: Catholics because this was Mary Stuart’s son, Puritans because James had been bred in Calvinist orthodoxy. James was to disappoint them both. After initial concessions to Catholics, a combination of greed and cold feet made him restore fines for recusancy, reviving Catholic discontent and provoking the abortive Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Sporadic interest in Catholicism shown by his wife, Anne of Denmark, irritated rather than influenced the king.

But Puritans fared just as badly. The 1604 Hampton Court Conference, called by James “for the hearing, and for the determining, things pretended to be amiss in the Church,” developed into an occasion of anti-Puritan bullying wherein the king was eagerly abetted by the bishops. The latter had been properly obsequious to the new monarch: James was hailed as “a living library and a walking study,” and Richard Bancroft thanked God for a king unparalleled since the time of Christ (the primacy was his reward in due course). The Puritans succeeded only in gaining some minor alterations to the Book of Common Prayer.

Hampton Court would have been remembered chiefly for the king’s boorishness but for a motion by Oxford scholar and moderate Puritan John Reynolds. Pointing to the deficiencies of versions made in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, he suggested that a new translation of the Bible should be undertaken. Bancroft did some automatic sneering, but James’s imagination was immediately caught. In a moment a decision was taken that was to touch the lives of countless millions all over the world. Conceived amid the otherwise uninspired atmosphere at Hampton Court, the King James Version is still the best-seller of all time. To associate his name rather than any other with it is no mere courtesy: James organized, collaborated with, and encouraged the forty-seven leading biblical scholars who took seven years over the project.

While it was going on, however, James relentlessly pursued his campaign against the Puritans. Three hundred clergymen were expelled from their livings, but James did not stop at deprivation: nonconformists were declared incapable of suing for lawful debts, could be imprisoned for life unless they made satisfaction to the church, and were to be refused Christian burial when they died. Many of the persecuted left for the Low Countries; some were later to join The Mayflower.

James’s cruelty was seen in other ways, too. Three aristocrats who had plotted against him were taken to the scaffold and directed to say farewell to friends and make peace with God. Then as the first one was about to be dispatched the king’s representative ordered a brief postponement. So also with the second and third, until news was finally given the three of the reprieve James had all along intended (Dostoevsky would well know how they must have felt). James shut up Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower for thirteen years, all the time under sentence of death, released him briefly, then, on the instigation of the Spanish ambassador, executed Elizabeth’s erstwhile favorite in 1618.

James may have “known the stomach” of his Scottish subjects, but in his attempt to extend absolute monarchy to England he overreached himself. He clashed with parliament, dissolved it in 1611, called another for two months of 1614 in the vain hope of raising funds, then allowed seven years to pass while he ruled without a parliament. This rift was to prove a deadly legacy for Charles I, during whose reign the whole smoldering question of parliamentary privilege and prerogative was to burst into flames that temporarily destroyed the monarchy.

Reverting to Scotland, James established there a completely episcopal system. In 1616 a new confession of faith, catechism, liturgy, and Book of Canons were forced upon the general assembly. In 1618 the notorious Five Articles of Perth decreed kneeling at communion, private communion in cases of necessity, private baptism in like cases, observance of the great annual festivals of the Church, and confirmation by the bishops. The Scots gagged not so much on the details but on the principle: here was the hand of a despot tearing the crown from the head of Christ, the only king of his

Church. Coupled with the fact that James’s choice of bishops did not always reflect godly piety, the royal policy helped provoke the testimony of the Covenanters and implant a dislike of episcopacy among native Scots that persists to this day.

A “shambling pedant” of unprepossessing appearance, with spindly legs and an overlarge tongue, undignified in speech and behavior, James is a curiously pathetic figure in that he alone of the later Stuarts has found few defenders. And this although Mary was more disreputable, Charles I more bigoted, Charles II godless, James II fickle and bent on bringing England back to Rome. James I was more idiosyncratic and complex than any of them. He had curbed the feudal system in Scotland in a way his successors could not do—and profited by it materially. His reign in England was comparatively free of foreign strife—yet was full of domestic intrigue and violence. He encouraged colonial expansion—sometimes driving religious men out of the country. He was generous to a fault—but the fault was a penchant for young, good-looking favorites who were advanced and gained inordinate influence over him. He appointed “mean men” to high places.

The extent of his personal religion is not clear, though he “knew the language.” Self-interest governed much of his policy-making, and this led inevitably to his avoidance of what Charles Williams calls “the desperate contingencies of the soul.” He did retain, however, a vivid sense of the power and enmity of the devil, and even wrote a book (Daemonologie) on the subject. In Scotland he witnessed the torturing of suspected practitioners of the black arts during the last decades of the sixteenth century, reportedly executed more witches over a period than did the Inquisition, and wondered why the devil should prefer to work through old women rather than young ones. James was also the last British sovereign to burn heretics (two men who had denied the deity of Christ).

On the “filthie noveltie” of smoking he wrote trenchantly in his Counterblaste against Tobacco (1604): it was an abuse which involved “sinning against God, harming … persons and goods, and raking also thereby the markes and notes of vanitie upon you.… A custome lothsome to the Eye, hateful to the Nose, harmefull to the Braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.” On Sunday observance he was more ambivalent: he encouraged people after service to participate in dancing, archery, and athletics—but drew the line at bear-baiting and bowling.

In his last three years he was a pitiable figure in his dotage, fearful of death, convinced that everyone was plotting against him, cheerful only when drunk, seldom going to bed sober, so that the French ambassador could report home about him: “All things end with the goblet.” His Bible version is the improbable monument of his age—a reminder to us, perhaps, of God’s astonishing capacity for writing straight with crooked lines.

Open nearly any text in ancient history or Western civilization used widely in colleges and universities today and you will find a generally sympathetic, if compressed, version of Jesus’ life, which ends with some variation of the statement that he was crucified by Pontius Pilate and died as a result. No ranking historian anywhere in the world shares the ultimate criticism voiced by German philosopher Bruno Bauer in the last century that Jesus was a myth, that he never lived in fact. And no one denies that Jesus died from crucifixion, since thousands of Roman victims died that way.

So far, so good. It is what happened after the first Good Friday that is reported inconsistently in our secular histories. And for good reason: historians worship objectivity, their texts will be used by students of all faiths, and the secular scholar simply cannot report a preternatural event in the past as fact of history without mortal risk to his academic reputation. If a Christian, he may personally believe in the Easter triumph over death, but he usually tries to prevent this bias of faith from intruding into his works.

Most authors use one of two devices to cover the Easter phenomenon in their history books:

1. Silence. Some texts avoid any reference whatever to events “on the third day.” After Jesus dies, in these versions, there is an immediate shift to the growth of the early Church in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Even what the earliest church had to “grow on,” i.e., the Resurrection kerygma, is often missing in such accounts, leaving the unchurched reader to wonder what the fuss involving one Jesus of Nazareth was all about.

2. Qualifying the report. Other texts seem to begin as confessionally as one of the Gospels but then add the all-important qualifier. For example: “Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning, so his followers confidently believed.” Or: “… according to claims made in the Gospels.” This approach is the more accurate way of conveying the early Christian proclamation, and is fairer to all concerned. Many church histories, too, make no greater claims for the first Easter than this sort of objective report.

Much Christian literature, similarly, refers to Jesus’ resurrection and the empty tomb as phenomena that can be approached only by faith, not through the discipline of history. This, however, is not necessarily true, especially in the case of the empty tomb. Nor is all evidence for the Easter phenomena confined to the New Testament, as so many, Christians and non-Christians alike, seem to assume.

The Resurrection

The actual moment of Jesus’ triumph over death, even according to the Gospels, was witnessed by no one, and the reports of his resurrection in the Gospels convey a claim for the supernatural that is either believed, doubted, or disbelieved today. Hence it is solely a matter of faith, so the argument runs, not of evidence or proof.

Admittedly, there is no “100-per-cent-airtight” logical, philosophical, or historical proof for the Resurrection; if there were, from a purely human vantage point every intelligent person who examined the evidence would be forced to believe. The science of history can, however, penetrate at least to the outer periphery of the events of the first Easter, and what it detects at these fringes is extraordinary.

Any ancient historian would have to admit that a profound religious explosion occurred in Jerusalem shortly after Christ’s crucifixion, since its repercussions shook distant Rome with incredible speed. A pagan Roman author who detested Christianity had to admit that only thirty-one years after the death of Jesus, “a great number” of his followers in the distant imperial capital believed so strongly in his resurrection that they gave up their lives in Nero’s great persecution of 64 A.D. (Tacitus, Annals xv, 44).

For a philosophy or teaching to spread that far that fast is absolutely unparalleled in the ancient world, and historians have not devoted enough attention to the implications here. The conversion claims at Pentecost (3,000, then 5,000 according to Acts 2 ff.) on the basis of a triumphant Easter faith take on a new credibility against such a background.

As the historian moves closer to Judea to sample other peripheral evidence for the Resurrection—apart from the core testimony of the Easter Gospels—he is impressed with the variety of what, in our atomic age, might be called the “fall-out” from the Easter explosion on those nearest to the event. The psychological change in the disciples is striking. What transformed Peter, the man who could be unhinged by questions from a servant girl, into so bold a spokesman for the faith that the whole Sanhedrin could not silence him? If the disciples had deceitfully tried to string a new faith on the world—motivated by some hazy wish-fulfillment—would they have gone on to give their very lives for this fraud? Cearly, they deemed themselves eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, for myths do not make martyrs.

The transformation of James the Just, Jesus’ doubting brother, and of Paul, a convinced enemy of the fledgling church, is even more striking, as is the conversion of the many Jerusalem priests cited in Acts 6:7.

One of the Jewish beliefs held with most tenacity is observance of the Sabbath, and yet Christian Jews transferred their worship from Saturday to Sunday, which they termed “the Lord’s Day.” Only some drastic consideration would have introduced this change: their weekly celebration of the Resurrection.

The birth and growth of the Christian Church itself, its survival and expansion across nineteen centuries, offer telling evidence for a mighty launching. Could it all have been rooted in a fraud, or did something happen that Sunday dawn that has snared the belief of almost 800 million people in the present generation alone?

Ordinarily, then, the peripheral evidence would suggest that the core evidence—the Resurrection claims of the Gospels—is justified. Yet secular historians will not stamp the term HISTORICAL FACT across the Resurrection. Why not? Simply because the Resurrection involves the supernatural. If it did not, historians long ago, using the same rules of their craft, would most probably have accorded Easter the same status of sober fact as, say, the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44 B.C.

Regrettably, they demand that the more unlikely the story, the stronger the evidence required for it. So if something supernatural is claimed, the evidence needed to support it has to be of an overwhelming, categorical nature—indeed, direct eyewitness. But such absolute evidence for the Resurrection disappeared with the death of the last eyewitnesses nineteen centuries ago. Although such demands are clearly unfair to the seven ancient sources reporting the events of the first Easter—the four Gospels, Acts, and the letters of Paul and Peter—this is the prevailing attitude among historians today.

The Empty Tomb

Historians have long overlooked the other phenomenon of Easter morning, the empty tomb. Many theologians too have claimed that the proclamation of the early Church centered in a risen Christ, not an empty tomb, and that the latter was only a subsequent concern of the Church. This may be true, but only because of the relative significance of the two Easter phenomena, and the fact that the latter is quite obviously implicit in the former. Both the Gospels and the early Church affirm the “He is not here” immediately after the “He is risen,” with an additional thrust: “Behold the place where they laid him.”

The two concepts might have been divorced if Easter had taken place at Athens, not Jerusalem. In Greece, a Platonist might have affirmed the resurrection of Jesus’ spirit while his body lay moldering in an obviously occupied tomb. But for a Jew, there was no resurrection without a very physical and bodily resurrection of the flesh. The modern concept of a Christianity that would retain its validity even if the dead body of Jesus were discovered would have been philosophical nonsense to St. Paul and the early Church.

Aside from any theological considerations of Easter, however, there is extremely important historical evidence for the empty tomb, which has not received sufficient attention from either Christian or secular historians. Quite apart from the Easter Gospels and their (to the secular historian) supernatural bias, there is strong circumstantial evidence as well as some surprising hostile evidence for an empty tomb.

The circumstantial evidence may be familiar enough, but it is impressive. It deals with the question “Where did Christianity first begin?” To this the answer must be: “Only one spot on earth—the city of Jerusalem.” But this is the very last place it could have started if Jesus’ tomb had remained occupied, since anyone producing a dead Jesus would have driven a wooden stake through the heart of an incipient Christianity inflamed by his supposed resurrection. What happened in Jerusalem seven weeks after the first Easter could have taken place only if Jesus’ body were somehow missing from Joseph’s tomb, for otherwise the Temple establishment, in its imbroglio with the Apostles, would simply have aborted the movement by making a brief trip over to the sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea and unveiling Exhibit A. They did not do this, because they knew the tomb was empty. Their official explanation for it—that the disciples had stolen the body—was an admission that the sepulcher was indeed vacant.

The objection will inevitably arise: But the supposed failure of the authorities to produce Jesus’ body rests only on New Testament sources biased in favor of Christianity. True, it rests on them, but not only on them. In my book First Easter I discuss some important, yet long overlooked, evidence deriving from purely Jewish and Roman sources and tradition, ranging from Josephus to the fifth-century compilation called the Toledoth Jeshu. What is important about these references, which also admit an empty tomb, is their standing as what historians term “positive evidence from a hostile source,” which is the strongest kind of historical evidence. In essence, this means that if a source admits a fact decidedly not in its favor, then that fact is genuine. Or, as the ancients might put it: “If Cicero, who despised Catiline, admitted that the wretch had one good quality among a host of bad ones—courage—then we must conclude that Catiline was at least courageous.”

Well, into the second century A.D., and long after Matthew recorded its first instance, the Jerusalem authorities continued to admit an empty tomb by ascribing it to the disciples’ stealing the body. In his Dialogue With Trypho, Justin Martyr, who came from neighboring Samaria, reported c. 150 A.D. that Judean authorities even sent specially commissioned men across the Mediterranean to counter Christian claims with this explanation of the Resurrection (108).

The appeal to church fathers often strikes one as an appeal to a remote and secondary source, centuries after a biblical event. Not so in the case of Justin, one of the earliest and most important of the Christian apologists. He lived close to New Testament Judea in both space and time. He was intimately enough acquainted with other details of the life of Christ that he could report that Jesus was born in a cave at Bethlehem, not the traditional stable (Dialogue, 78), and that he personally had seen some plows and yokes made by Joseph and Jesus in their carpenter shop up in Nazareth, which he thought of excellent, durable quality (88).

A Datum Of History?

Does any early source, friendly or hostile, claim that Jesus’ tomb was occupied after that Easter, i.e., that the sepulcher was not empty, that a body still reposed inside it? Such a claim would have been an obvious slash through the Gordian knot of Resurrection proclamations in the early Church. Yet no authority in any way close to the event in space or time makes this claim—to my knowledge—for at least the first four centuries after Christ, though I am still researching this point and might be mistaken. The hostile sources agree that the tomb was empty!

Accordingly, if all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that the sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was buried, was actually empty on the morning of the first Easter. And no shed of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy, or archaeology that would disprove this statement.

Does this, then, prove the Resurrection? No, certainly not. An empty tomb does not prove a resurrection, although the reverse is true: a resurrection would require an empty tomb. Its occupancy, indeed, would have effectively disproved it.

As with “proofs” for his own existence, God evidently requires that “leap of faith” beyond the empirical evidence in the case of the Resurrection. But it may be time for our history books, secular or religious, to include another datum after the otherwise objectively reported Crucifixion: “On the Sunday morning following his Friday execution, the tomb in which Jesus of Nazareth was buried … stood empty.”

Two or three times a year, at some conference or other, I hear bleak prognostications of the future of the Christian colleges. Sometimes the reference is to their financial plight—many of them are mortgaged to the hilt, and the additional specters of inflation, unemployment, and a plummeted stock market are hardly propitious for material progress. At other times the reference is to an anticipated drop in enrollment because of the spiraling cost of education, the declining birth rate, and changing evaluations of a college education. More often the reference is to the fact that on some church college campuses students seem more antagonistic to faith than on state university campuses, while at some evangelical schools they are more prone to take their faith for granted than to elucidate and integrate it.

Of these concerns the last is the most disconcerting, since colleges presumably have their justification in being the intellectually critical centers of society. The mood on many church-related campuses recently prompted a nationally known scholar who lectures to many students to ask, Is the Christian college a lost cause?

A comprehensive reply to that question is impossible, of course. And obviously not all Christian colleges fall into the same mold, although most would claim some common excellencies. One of these pluses is the assurance that students are treated as individual persons and not as nameless and faceless statistics. An amusing personal experience prods me to question somewhat their fulfillment of that claim. Three years ago I requested catalogues from several evangelical colleges. My inquiries were apparently computerized, for ever since my modest request I have been getting “De Carl” letters inviting me to come for an interview for freshman application, to bring my parents to Parents’ Week, or to see what Homecoming is like.

But back to the question. Since I was one of eight or ten observers of the American scene to whom the inquiry was addressed, let me superimpose it over some notes in my “education” folder. Perhaps that’s being like the university student who changed an examination question so it would fit the answer he knew. But there is, I think, some intrinsic connection between the following comments and the present crisis on church-related campuses.

In 1795 Timothy Dwight was called to the presidency of Yale, whose post-war student body was marked by extensive infidelity and moral laxity. Some students were better known to one another by the adopted names of notorious French and English infidels than by their own. Besides carrying administrative burdens President Dwight as professor of theology taught the seniors. It was his custom to turn their classroom forensic tendencies into a debate over central Christian issues, and while the tenor of the class was at first intellectually rebellious and hostile, he gradually convinced the students of the superficiality of their arguments. Before long infidelity had no place to hide; it soon became as popular on campus to be openly identified as a Christian as it had been to be a pagan.

For ten years Dwight refused permanent assignment as professor of theology and accepted only annual reappointment. While his position as president did not require it, he nonetheless soon after induction delivered a lecture series on “Evidences of Divine Revelation.” His biographer notes: “He held the Scriptures to be a plain intelligible Revelation of the Will of God; and every man who has them, to be equally responsible for his faith as for his practice.” The value of friendship and applause Dwight considered “less than nothing” alongside the value of truth and a clear conscience before God. Yet he treasured as well the visible fruits of the Christian life.

In our day of evangelical exuberance it will surprise some that Dwight never spoke of himself as a Christian; his humility was such that he was reluctant to mention his own spiritual attainments, believing that mere professions count little and that genuine piety is unostentatious. He spoke rather of God’s great and precious promises, and witnessed by his life that he was free of distressing doubts and apprehensions.

One of his sermons, on the text “the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” (Jer. 8:20), twice brought a revival among students; on one of these occasions half the student body united with the college church after hearing the sermon.

There were great odds against the kind of leadership embodied by Timothy Dwight. He himself had been a Yale student at a time when administrative problems, lack of discipline, and loose views of morals and religion plagued the campus, and he sacrificed much of the academic value of his first two years. At the outset of his junior year he rededicated himself to properly motivated study, rising often to study by candlelight even before morning prayers at 5:30. As a senior he devoted fourteen hours a day to his studies, and he was graduated in 1769 at the age of seventeen at the head of his class. His hopes of pursuing law studies were shattered by health problems; by twenty-three he had lost all effective use of his eyes for reading and study, and in addition he endured constant and sometimes severe pain that was to try him for the remaining forty years of his life. (Two thousand miles of walking and three thousand miles of horseback-riding in a single year were credited for the measure of recovery that enabled him to serve as a chaplain to Revolutionary War troops. He wrote the song “Columbia.”)

While he was president and professor at Yale, Dwight’s eyesight became so weak that he could scarcely read or write more than a single sentence in preparation. At times he suffered such excruciating pain behind his eyes that he walked many miles in the middle of the night to encourage a modicum of sleep. As a professor of divinity he regularly preached a sermon each Sunday of the college term—a hundred sermons over the four-year span—dictating the content in advance to a secretary early in the week over a period of a day and a half and then preaching the following Lord’s Day without notes. He used illustrations from the history of the nations and from prominent biographies as well as from the history of thought.

Dwight was active in projecting a society for foreign missions, and also an American counterpart to the British and Foreign Bible Society (the American Bible Society was formed in the last year of his life), and he rejoiced in reports here and there of spiritual revivals. He knew, however, that academic power is what justifies the existence of a college, and to the presentation of Christian truth he brought not only a devout spirit and respected tradition but also a disciplined mind.

Europe has recently seen a number of interesting reactions to the Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization and its covenant. One is the genuine appreciation the covenant must have found in influential circles of the Bishops’ Synod in Rome last November. It appears that copies of the covenant were circulated at the synod, and that some of the leading men would have loved to issue a comparable affirmation.

Reports of the Bishops’ Synod focused mostly on the intriguing aspects of church government. The subject matter that was the same as Lausanne’s, evangelization, received less attention. Yet one gets the impression that most of the main problems that plague Protestant unity were also alive at Rome, and that in the end the Pope and the bishops found answers similar to those of the Lausanne Covenant:

• Social service, yes; but no reduction of the message to a mere “social gospel.”

• Dialogue, yes; but no reduction of the uniqueness of Christ.

• Indigenization, yes; but not at the price of a moratorium on the internationality of the Christian faith.

Another echo of Lausanne is the remarkably friendly acceptance of its covenant within the mainline Protestant churches. The recent synod of the West German United Protestant Church on the subject of mission is a case in point. But a certain uneasiness remains. Leading opinion-makers today say: If Lausanne represents the spirit of evangelicalism, why all the fuss with the confessing movement and its Frankfurt and Berlin declarations? And the religious press in their reports from Lausanne were quick to intimate that this was a dogmatic provincialism that had by no means beset evangelicals in the rest of the world.

But it would be foolish to ignore the fundamental differences that still exist and cannot be explained away as matters of local church politics. They are of a basic theological nature. No appeals to church unity by leading figures, no amount of glossing over the hard facts that have created unrest in past years, will be able to remove this antagonism. It is no good, for instance, to try to calm the Christian public by saying that Bangkok 1973 only mentioned but did not vote for the moratorium on missionaries and money, when Lusaka 1974 did just that. Not even a declaration of loyalty to the Church’s task of mission (as given by all main speakers at the Berlin synod) and the willingness to quote the statistic of 2.7 billion unreached are enough.

“Mission” can mean many things nowadays. There is a strong tendency to interpret mission as inter-religious dialogue with reciprocity of witness, founded upon the assumption that Christ is at work in all religions. Here proclamation of the Gospel is debunked as propaganda, and preaching as an expression of a deplorable crusade mentality. On the other hand we see the social concern that is a necessary element of every true Christian stance almost identified with something very close to zealotism, i.e., including armed struggle for political liberation. The third motif (which is behind the moratorium idea), the quest for indigenization and nationalization of the Gospel, in some recent prominent statements comes near to rejecting not only Western cassocks and harmoniums but also the centrality of justification of the sinner. To let these things go unchecked for the sake of peace means to do theology with half-closed eyes.

It is no help either to earmark the debate as a mere folly of quarrelsome West German theologians who may already have a bad reputation for this particular pastime. Whoever does not see these developments as touching the very identity of the Church and its mission may not yet be fully awake.

I predict trouble ahead.

I marvel, for instance, at the stubbornness of some high-powered dialogians who will not even be corrected by the clear definition of possible Christian forms of dialogue given by Visser ’t Hooft in his 1972 Berkelbach-van-der-Sprenkel lectures. I shake my head over the obstinacy with which they, in order to push their ontological understanding of salvation, continue on all continents to quote John 3:16 without its distinction “whosoever believeth in him,” and Second Corinthians 5:19 without the following verse. I wonder what makes theologians go on and on quoting the reception of Isaiah 61 in Jesus’ sermon at Nazareth, Luke 4, as a program of socio-political liberation although his following activity in Galilee was nothing of the kind. I also observe the astonishing thrust with which some African theologians seemingly without apprehension propose the nationalization of Christianity although internationality is fundamental to the Church and although nationalized Christianity already has a sorry record of becoming the lackey of political nationalism in many lands.

Now I am sure that the battle is not a matter of progressive vs. conservatives or of ecumenicals vs. evangelicals. When I hear the working aims of mission as recently put by an evangelical speaker reduced again to “conversion of the individual and planting of churches,” I do not know whether I must be evangelical or ecumenical. It is wrong to reduce the Gospel. I want to be strictly biblical, and I shan’t bother about accepted party borders.

Biblical truth often consists of two times 100 per cent, a fact that our common or garden logic will not accept and often uses to create division. Mission is the proclamation of the kingship of Christ. He is indeed the Lord coming as a servant, but as the servant he also is the Lord. He is the example of the new humanity on earth, but not without his heavenly authority.

What we need is exact biblical-theological analysis. We need to study in depth the biblical meaning of dialogue (as John Stott began to do at Lausanne), and of the ways of God’s preparatory work with the non-Christian. We need to study thoroughly the forms and content of the prophets’ social messages, in contrast to ambiguous language in hastily drafted conference documents. And we might do well to concern ourselves with former experiences of unconditional indigenization in the history of Christianity. The sad seduction of the German church by nationalism in 1933 is one of the latest. Behind all this of course looms the question of the authority of the Bible, on which we need to work through to fresh clarity.

These are troubled days. But let us no longer avoid such work. Charles de Foucauld, the great saint and martyr of the Sahara, one day noted that Jerusalem was rebuilt in angustia temporum, under the pressures of the day. He added:

Difficulties are no passing states-of-affair, the end of which must be waited for, like the end of a storm, so that we would go on working when the weather has calmed. No, they are normal, and we must reckon that we will be “under the pressures of the day” for all the good we intend to do.

One of the most contested issues facing the recently elected Greek parliament concerns church and state relations. It has to do with the drafting of a new constitution aimed at establishing Greece as a democracy. A vote on it is scheduled this month.

The first article of the old constitution states: “The Kingdom of Greece is of the Eastern Orthodox religion. All forms of proselytizing against the established church are prohibited.” This article inspired and encouraged all sorts of restrictions against evangelicals, trials, and even imprisonment for as simple an act as giving away a modern-language New Testament. Throughout the years it has been the sword of Damocles hanging over all evangelical practices. While the majority of the population—nominally Orthodox—was referred to as Christian, the remainder was designated heterodox.

A special constitutional committee is now reconsidering matters. Liberal and left-wing members in the parliament, along with certain members of Premier Karamanlis’s ruling party, say the old article is anachronistic, and they favor deletion of the proselytism clause. Some want outright separation of church and state.

Greece’s small evangelical community is united in endorsing the removal of all restrictions on advocating one’s faith, but their leaders say they are willing to settle for the removal of the stigmatic proselytism reference. They have organized special teach-in sessions accompanied by fasting and prayer.

All 300 parliament members, even the Moscow-leaning Marxists, are at least nominally members of the Orthodox faith. Their degree of commitment, however, is something else. The undersecretary of education, whose department handles all matters of religion, is pressing for a thoroughgoing prochurch constitution. He wants pre-eminence for the Orthodox Church and a ban against proselytism of its members. He proposes an oath of office in which the president swears in the name of the church “to guide the prevailing religion.”

The move to frame a liberal constitution was denounced in a large meeting in Athens organized by the Union of Greek Theologians. “This is an attempt to deny the heritage of the Greek Orthodox,” asserted one speaker. He then warned: “If the representatives elected by the nation finally settle in bringing a constitution to their liking … the silent majority will rise like a lion to agonize for its beliefs and will bring radical changes in the country.” The union went on record in favor of a strict pro-church constitution.

I. Sergakis, a member of the centrist party, suggested in parliament that if proselytism is prohibited in the new constitution, it ought to be defined. Further, protection must be granted to all religions and not just one, he maintained.

A prominent member of Papandreou’s Socialist party lobbied for gradual separation of church and state. This church-state relationship, he said, has created innumerable problems. He criticized the clause on proselytism as a restriction of freedom that is in the end harmful to the Orthodox Church itself. The church, he castigated, seeks to enforce its dogmas through the state machine. He also came out for the rights of persons who are conscientious objectors for religious reasons. Such rights do not exist now, and anyone refusing to take arms is sentenced severely.

FUTURE SHOCK—ALMOST

Freedom ought to precede the demands of the Orthodox clergy, asserted another deputy, who said he believes the church will flourish if left to compete with other religions. He also criticized the independent status of Mt. Athos—Greece’s ancient monastery in the north—which is actually a small state within the country, claiming uncontested right to great treasures accumulated over a period of more than 1,000 years. He urged parliament to nationalize the monastery.

Observers foresee a compromise. They do not anticipate strong statements upholding conscience and freedom in the realm of religion. Nor do they see state-church forces having complete sway.

Fountain Trust, a non-denominational organization that leads the charismatic movement in Britain, made—as it turned out—a crucial decision when it was launched ten years ago.

“We hesitated a long time over the name,” says director Michael Harper, a former Anglican clergyman. “The first choice had been Watergate Trust, but somehow it didn’t sound quite right.”

ROGER DAY

Sharing, Yes; Imperialism, No

Radical revisions of traditional mission patterns were projected at a week-long meeting of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) at a seaside ecumenical center in Portugal last month. The eighty commission members present called for discussions on how missionaries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America could be sent to Europe and North America. They agreed, on the other hand, that a moratorium on the sending of funds and personnel by Western churches was “one possible way to create mature relationships of churches in mission.”

Evangelism consultants maintained that “evangelism [cannot be] allowed to have a trace of imperialistic motivation.” One Third World delegate spoke bitterly of caricatures of “Africans and Asians who speak of moratorium but go around with their begging bowls behind their backs.”

Dr. Emilio Castro, the Uruguayan Methodist who heads the commission, said that while the “reaching the unreached” concept of last summer’s International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne can be criticized as “superficial” and “imperialistic,” it makes the valid point that the Christian Gospel is to be shared. WCC evangelism secretary Gerhard Hoffman said he believes the agendas of the ecumenical movement and evangelical fellowships are “gradually converging.”

The CWME was born out of the merger of the International Missionary Council and the WCC in 1958.

First Things First

Presiding Bishop John M. Allin of the Episcopal Church insists that he will not call a special denominational convention to deal with the ordination of women to the priesthood. Lamenting all the attention the ordination issue is getting, he says the church has more important matters needing immediate attention, and ordination can await the action of next year’s convention.

Nevertheless, developments over attempts to force the issue are mounting:

• A board of inquiry last month was studying whether four bishops should be brought to trial for ordaining eleven women deacons to the priesthood in Philadelphia last year, an action later ruled invalid by the House of Bishops. The four are: Robert L. DeWitt, resigned bishop of Pennsylvania; Edward R. Welles, retired bishop of Western Missouri; retired bishop Daniel Corrigan of the national executive staff; and Bishop J. Antonio Ramos of Costa Rica.

• Trials are pending for William A. Wendt, rector of St. Stephen’s and the Incarnation Church in Washington, D. C., and Peter Beebe, rector of Christ Church in Oberlin, Ohio, for permitting two of the eleven women to perform priestly functions in connection with Communion (Carter Heyward, who teaches at Union Seminary, and Alison Cheek of Virginia). The charges involve church discipline rather than doctrine. If found guilty of violating church law and vows of obedience, the rectors could be reprimanded or suspended but not expelled from the ministry.

• Retired bishops Anson Phelps Stokes and Frederick C. Lawrence protested the offer of the Episcopal Divinity School of Cambridge to hire two of the women as teachers (Carter Heyward and Suzanne Hiatt) and to permit them to celebrate Communion.

• Bishop John H. Burt of Ohio announced he will resign as “an act of conscience” if next year’s general convention fails to approve ordination.

• Several pro-ordination bishops rejected requests by their diocesan policy-making committees to regularize the ordinations of members of the Philadelphia Eleven in their dioceses. The bishops asked that action be postponed until after the general assembly, when the church as a whole can vote on the issue. (In the last convention vote on the issue, the House of Bishops voted to extend ordination to women, but the measure failed to get the necessary majority among the clergy and lay delegates in the House of Deputies.)

• Two organizations have sprung up to press the issue: Women’s Ordination Now, seeking what its title says (the Philadelphia Eleven are members), and the National Coalition for Women’s Ordination to the Priesthood and the Episcopacy, drafting legislation for the coming convention.

Clearly, Allin will have a tough time trying to get attention shifted to those other “more important” matters he’s concerned about.

Death Pact

A suicide note and overdoses of sleeping pills preceded the deaths of the noted Protestant theologian Henry Pitney Van Dusen, 77, and his wife, 80, it was disclosed last month. A New York Times report said they were members of the Euthanasia Society and had talked of suicide with family and friends. Both were in failing health.

Mrs. Van Dusen died on January 28. Her husband was said to have vomited the pills and lived until February 13.

Van Dusen, a Presbyterian*, was president of Union Seminary in New York from 1944 until 1963. He took a leading role in ecumenical affairs and was one of the architects of the World Council of Churches.

The Times dispatch by religion writer Kenneth A. Briggs said the Van Dusens left behind a statement saying there were many old people who would die of natural causes if not kept alive medically and expressing the resolve not to “die in a nursing home.” The statement ended with a prayer: “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.… Grant us Thy peace.”

Religion In Transit

Five Arizona dairy executives are performing charity work and four dairy firms are donating products worth $175,000 instead of serving jail terms or paying fines as the result of price-fixing charges. The charities include missions operated by St. Vincent de Paul Society (Catholic) and the Salvation Army. Criticizing the judge’s alternative sentences, a Justice Department attorney said: “Charitable work should be aspired to rather than used as punishment.”

Southern Baptist membership reached 12.5 million last year, a 1.8 per cent gain. Total denominational receipts reached $1.3 billion, a 11.4 per cent increase.

Some citizens distressed about certain TV programs find sponsors to be more responsive to their complaints than station executives and producers. National Television Advertising is a directory listing names and addresses of sponsors (Daccardo Publications, 3245 Wisconsin Avenue, Berwyn, Illinois 61402, $1.50).

Republican congressman Jerry Pettis, 58, a Seventh-day Adventist leader from Loma Linda, California, was killed when his light plane crashed into a mountain in Southern California.

Because 1974 expenditures exceeded income by $2.3 million, the executive board of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) has ordered a 20 per cent reduction in projected spending this year. A hiring freeze, funding of only “highest priority” programs, and a ban on new commitments are among emergency measures handed down. Full salaries will continue until at least May. Restructure costs were blamed for a large share of the deficit.

Canon Press, the book publishing arm of CHRISTIANITY TODAY since 1972, has been purchased by Baker Book House of Grand Rapids.

Amid increasing controversy in the United Methodist Churches over the issue of homosexuality, the denomination’s Division of Ordained Ministry last month issued a statement pointing out that the church has officially declared homosexual practice to be incompatible with Christian teaching. “It thereby precludes the ordination of self-proclaimed homosexuals to the ordained ministry,” commented the division. There is need for further study on the topic, it added.

Personalia

John Allen Knight is the new editor of Herald of Holiness, the Church of the Nazarene fortnightly. Knight, who was president of Mount Vernon Nazarene College in Ohio, succeeds the retiring W. T. Purkiser, who served as editor for fourteen years. Denominational executive Donald Gibson of Ohio will take Knight’s place at Mount Vernon.

Resigned: Frank R. Barth, 57, as president of Gustavus Adolphus College (Lutheran Church in America) in St. Peter, Minnesota. His reason: “A good college president should stay five or six years and then get out [because] by then he’s used up his ideas and it’s time for a new person, a new program, and a new emphasis.”

Charles Schoenherr, a Wheaton College-trained educator, will become president of 460-student Sterling College, an evangelical United Presbyterian school in Kansas. He replaces Robert Baptista, who will become president of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana.

DEATHS

FRANKLIN DEWEY COGSWELL, 86, former missionary executive of the National Council of Churches and editor of its Friendship Press for forty years; in Boulder, Colorado.

ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, 77, born Elijah Poole to Georgia sharecroppers, patriarch of the 50,000-plus-member Nation of Islam (Black Muslims); in Chicago, of heart failure.

ORVILLE S. WALTERS, 71, University of Illinois psychiatry professor, member of the Free Methodist Church, and president of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies; in Peoria, Illinois, of cancer.

World Scene

Four Welsh denominations entered into a covenant to work for union: the Church in Wales (Anglican), the Presbyterian Church of Wales, the Methodist Church, and the United Reformed Church. Pending are the requests of ten Baptist congregations wishing to join the group.

Leaders of the 130,000-member Romanian Assemblies of God say they have received a government-authorized shipment of 2,500 Bibles from the United Bible Societies. About 100,000 new Bibles are reportedly being printed in Romania for the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Plans have been made to evacuate fifteen American workers from a 100-bed children’s hospital in Da Nang, South Viet Nam, in the event of a North Vietnamese takeover. It is operated by the World Relief Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals. Da Nang is now isolated from the rest of the country. A spokesman says the hospital is serving North Vietnamese and Viet Cong as well as the South Vietnamese.

The 30,000-member Waldensian and 9,000-member Methodist churches of Italy urged members not to take part in observances of the 1975 Holy Year proclaimed by Pope Paul. The activities (to which non-Catholics have been invited) represent “a religiosity that falsifies the relation between faith and God … and they are a cover for a situation in which injustice reigns supreme,” said their statement. Meanwhile, a leading Waldensian pastor and a prominent Methodist one suggested that involvement in the Communistparty and in Christian ministry are not mutually exclusive.

Italy’s highest court ruled that the legal ban on abortion is “partly unconstitutional.” The court said a pregnancy could be ended without criminal violation if the health of the mother is endangered by its continuation. The Vatican declared that the ruling was “questionable and of extreme gravity,” and it warned that the decision “does not free human and Christian conscience” from the duty to apply moral standards to the issue.

Pastor Ted Noffs of Sydney’s Wayside Chapel, Australia’s largest Methodist church, was formally accused of heresy. A committee of eight will examine the charges, which concern Noffs’s beliefs about the Atonement. If found guilty, he could be expelled from the ministry. Noffs, who has been in theological hot water for years with conservatives, says Jesus laid down no doctrines. Heresy is the failure to love people and to act for suffering man, he asserted.

Julio Cesar Ruibal, the Bolivian Catholic-Pentecostal youth evangelist converted under Kathryn Kuhlman, has dropped out of the mass-evangelism scene in South America—and out of sight. He is reportedly secluded in a missionary commune near Bogota, Colombia, operated by Hannah Lowe, head of New York City’s New Testamet Missionary Fellowship. The fellowship was the object of “deprogramming” attempts and court cases last year.

“Are we to deliberately abandon a small country in the midst of its life and death struggle?” wrote President Ford last month as he appealed to Congress for aid for Cambodia.

Political considerations aside, more than the survival of the nation of some seven million souls is at stake. The crisis comes at a time of responsiveness to the Gospel on a scale unprecedented in the Buddhist country’s history. Last year the Khmer Evangelical Church, associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) and embracing nearly all the Protestant congregations in the land, experienced a 300 per cent increase in growth, according to CMA spokesmen. In the event of a Communist takeover, growth will be curtailed and Christian activities severely restricted, if the Communists follow their pattern elsewhere.

“I fully expect to be behind bars one day because of my love for Jesus Christ,” commented one young Cambodian believer to reporter Robert Larson of World Vision.

That believer’s pessimism about the future of his land is shared by people in high places in Washington and diplomatic circles elsewhere. It will take more than guns, ammunition, and food to save the government, they say. The fighting has gone on for many years, accompanied by riots, strikes, and looting. Skyrocketing inflation, widespread malnutrition, and disease ravaged the people. Once, food was plentiful and available (with rice a principal export), and just about everybody had a piece of the lush land. Now there are hundreds of thousands of hungry refugees. There aren’t enough doctors, nurses, medical supplies, or hospitals. (World Vision has built a 125-bed hospital and given it to the Khmer church.)

Morale is gone, and so are the lives of many of Cambodia’s defenders. Among the dead, badly wounded, and missing are scores of young men who professed Christ three years ago in the nation’s first public evangelistic meetings.

As President Ford pleaded with Congress the CMA was evacuating its ten missionaries and two short-term doctors from Phnom Penh, whose population has swelled from 600,000 to two million. A handful of World Vision workers from several nations and a half-dozen Seventh-day Adventist student missionaries and relief workers were standing by at month’s end.

Christianity is a relatively recent arrival on the Cambodian scene. The Khmer kingdom was founded about the time of Christ, flourished into an empire that dominated Southeast Asia until the fifteenth century or so, then floundered, becoming a pawn in struggles between its powerful neighbors. In the 1860s Cambodia’s monarchy came under French control. Norodom Sihanouk became king in 1941 at age 19 and ruled until 1955. In 1949 the nation became a state in the French Union, but when fighting between the French and the Viet Minh Communists of North Viet Nam spilled across the border, Sihanouk declared Cambodia an independent country in 1953.

Sihanouk abdicated in 1955 in favor of his father. Upon his father’s death in 1960 he became chief of state. In 1965 he broke off diplomatic relations with the United States after planes attacked Viet Cong forces fleeing from South Viet Nam into Cambodia. A crisis occurred in the late 1960s when the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese seized chunks of territory. Relations with the U. S. were restored in 1969, and in 1970 Premier Lon Nol, a general, ousted Sihanouk in a coup. The national assembly declared Cambodia a republic (with Lon Nol as president) and changed the country’s name to the Khmer Republic. Sihanouk went into exile in Peking.

The first Protestant missionary, A. L. Hammond of the CMA, arrived in 1923. Other workers joined him, but the going was slow. The Buddhists in 1933 pushed through a ban on missionary expansion. Believers (most of them peasants) were harassed. A Bible was published in 1954, most of it translated by Hammond.

By 1965—when the American missionaries were evicted—fewer than 600 had been baptized, and there were only a dozen or so churches. The churches, accused of being American agencies, were closed, and the pastors were forced to sign pledges not to propagate the “foreign” religion. Four who did not sign were jailed. One of them was Son Sonne, now the nation’s leading evangelist and director of the Cambodian Bible Society.

During this period Tiang Chhirc, a youth who had been sent to a French military academy, was converted through reading a Bible that had been stowed in his suitcase by his Christian peasant parents. Upon his return home, he became a major in the army, and later was named deputy minister of defense. On the side, he began gathering believers together for worship.

Another youth, Minh Voan, was led to Christ by a CMA graduate student while studying at the University of Georgia. He returned home an outspoken witness, was deprived of a government job, and became an executive with Shell Oil. Later he joined the World Vision staff.

Chhirc and Voan discovered each other and agreed that Christians had to meet openly and let their faith be known. A judo club in Phenom Penh was refurbished to serve as a church.

With the change in government came a freer climate, the release of the pastors, the reopening of the few churches, and the return of missionaries.

Chhirc and Voan were joined by another new convert, artist Chea Thay Seng, director of the National Museum, probably Cambodia’s best-educated person (he later became Inspector of the Ministry of Culture). At Christmas time in 1971, having decided Jesus should be proclaimed publicly, they rented a 700-seat auditorium. This was followed up with a national church conference in April, 1972, attended by 300 Christians. Mass evangelistic rallies were held at a 1,200-seat facility immediately after the conference and again in November. World Vision’s Stanley Mooneyham was the main speaker. In all, more than 3,000 persons made professions of faith, many of them young men (see January 5, 1973, issue, page 45).

At a Buddhist rally of 1,200 students in January, 1973, about half indicated they had become followers of Jesus. The leader announced he too had become one.

Lay leaders meanwhile organized home Bible-study groups and encouraged fellow believers to share their faith person to person. Doctors, professors, and Buddhist priests were in the ranks of those who accepted Christ.

Among the converts were music professor Mau Vanna, writer of the Khmer national anthem; Pech Bun Nil, commissioner of the National Civilian Police; and Men Ny Boun, president of the Supreme Court. Boun attended a church service at the invitation of CMA chairman Merle Graven. At the conclusion of the service he professed faith in Christ. The following Sunday he gave a testimony, saying he had been searching for truth for twenty-one years and had found it in the Bible in 1966. “Last week I made the truth my own,” he said. “The light of the world lit my candle.”

Under the leadership of such men the church has grown. As of last month there were thirty-eight congregations in Cambodia, twenty-seven of them in Phnom Penh. More than 3,000 people were attending services, with 1,300 in Sunday schools. In one period last year, reports CMA missionary Eugene Hall, the person-to-person sharing was accounting for nearly 100 professions of faith per week. More than 100 were attending daily Bible studies in a youth center in the capital.

A new convert from a refugee area last year asked Son Sonne to come and preach outside his house. Large crowds gathered, and within five weeks there were 500 new believers. Today there are 1,800, divided into four congregations, says a CMA executive.

When the missionaries were ejected in 1965, some went to the Mekong Delta region of South Viet Nam to work among the one million Khmers who live there. For years there was little response, but in the last fifteen months there has been a spiritual explosion, with hundreds of conversions. The Cambodian Christians have sent a missionary to help out there, as have the South Vietnamese churches.

Overshadowing the joy of revival, however, are the tragedies of war: the bloodshed, the scorched-earth policies of the Communist-led Khmer Rouge insurgents (an estimated 50,000), the children who die almost daily of malnutrition in World Vision’s clinic because it is too late to help them.

And now they say it is too late to help Cambodia.

Out Of The Huddle, Onto The Field

Peace, it’s wonderful—now that a higher level of compatibility has been attained by two of the nation’s top sports-outreach ministries. In the last several years a few shins have been bruised and noses bloodied—figuratively speaking—in the combat for the attention of the glamour guy, the professional athlete. As a result, the believers, especially in football and baseball, have often been mystified by divisions or cracks in the message of love.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) has national offices in Kansas City, Missouri, and came on the scene first. It has chapters at more than 1,600 high schools and nearly 250 colleges. Professionals are recruited to help out with special FCA programs and summer activities. Athletes in Action (AIA) is part of Campus Crusade for Christ and is based in southern California.

In general, FCA is sometimes presented by AIA critics as “too wishy-washy” in presenting the life-changing claims of Jesus Christ and too inclusive in its purpose and whom it embraces. Flip the coin and you get the idea that AIA men are “button-holers” who will never take no for an answer—or even: “An unbeliever will pray with an AIA man just to get rid of him.”

Early this year AIA director Dave Hannah stopped off in Kansas City for a long visit with John Erickson, FCA president. Dallas became the next negotiation center during an AIA-arranged conference last month of Christian professional athletes and their spouses. This time Hannah was host to Erickson, and the talks included a top FCA executive, football coach Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys. Later, Bill Krisher, director of the FCA summer conference program, sat in on many AIA sessions.

“We’ve never been as far apart as some people think,” commented Hannah afterward. But it was obvious they were closer at achieving understanding and at setting up ground rules for coexistence, and the dialogue will continue. Staff men assigned to Erickson and Hannah will huddle soon to talk out their problems at the local level, where competing programs in the past have bid for the involvement of the same athletes, especially on college campuses. Banned would be the practice of one group’s raiding another one that is well established. Friction over such tactics has led some coaches to expell both groups from campus.

The five-day Dallas conference brought together eighty couples, representing mostly football and baseball, for Bible study, rap sessions, and witnessing experiences at schools and hospitals. A players’ committee, headed by guard Norm Evans of the Miami Dolphins football team, assisted AIA staffers in arranging the conference, held at an airport motel.

Howard Hendricks of Dallas Seminary exhorted the players to “learn how to pray out on the field; be men of God wherever you are.” Evangelist Tom Skinner, chaplain of the Washington Redskins, said, “People are looking to Christians for alternatives. You can become live models in sports of what’s happening in heaven.”

Peppery third-base coach Tom Lasorda of the pennant-winning Los Angeles Dodgers summed up the conference’s value for most: “My wife and I leave here closer to God.” Said the wife of a Baltimore infielder: “Wives in pro sports are so much in the shadow. It’s nice to know you’ve got sisters in the Lord there with you.” Baseball participants liked it so well they are planning a spiritual conference of their own next November, possibly in Chicago.

WATSON SPOELSTRA

Changing The Guard

The Southern Baptist Sunday School Board, with more than 1,400 employees and a 1975 budget of $60 million, is the world’s largest religious publishing house. Last month Grady C. Cothen, former president of New Orleans Baptist Seminary, was installed as the agency’s top executive, succeeding James L. Sullivan, who retired after twenty-two years.

Both men are theological conservatives, and they say that because most Southern Baptists are, too, they don’t worry about a liberal takeover of the denomination. Cothen, in an inaugural ceremony, told board members and employees that his study of the various forms of biblical criticism convinced him that the view of the Bible he got as a boy from his parents is still valid.

BOB BELL, JR.

Continuing The Courtship

Merger talks between the 2.8 million-member United Presbyterian Church and the 900,000-member Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern) have been going on since 1969. That’s okay, says patient moderator Robert Lamar, co-chairman of the union committee. “The courtship has to include enough time to make it a strong marriage.”

A revised draft plan for union is currently under study among local congregations in both denominations. It will be revised further, incorporating changes suggested by the study. A final plan of union could be presented to the general assemblies of both churches next year, provided the PCUS this year approves new confessional standards, also under study. If the plan is approved by the assemblies and by two-thirds of the 152 UPC presbyteries and three-fourths of the sixty PCUS presbyteries, the two bodies could merge by the action of the 1977 assemblies. This would end a division that has lasted 113 years.

Too Much To Give Up

Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC), troubled about the possible loss of their traditional authority, last month seriously damaged plans to create a new 3.2-million-member denomination in their country.

Since 1943, the one-million-member ACC and the 2.16-million-constituent United Church of Canada (UCC) have been talking merger. In 1965, a guidelines statement setting forth basic principles was adopted. Four years later the 7,000-member Canadian section of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) joined the merger talks. Prounion leaders forged ahead with negotiations, and a plan of union was generally agreed upon in 1972. The plan called for the new church to have a president as overall head, two vice-presidents, and bishops (a concession by the United Church), but not with the powers Anglican bishops now possess.

Even with revisions, said the thirty Anglican bishops in rejecting the plan of union, “most of us doubt that there is serious hope for a successful outcome.” Opposition to the ordination of women figured in their decision (the United Church has ordained women ministers). The bishops’ statement was only an expression of opinion, but it carries great weight in the church.

The bishops’ action spurred prounion forces in the ACC to act. Meeting in what some called a “crisis situation,” the National Executive Council of the ACC ordered a poll to determine the views of the grass roots on whether union talks should continue. The council also committed itself to continuing negotiation, stating that the search for “true and lasting union” is a “primary” goal even though the present plan of union might be unacceptable.

Disappointed UCC and Disciples officials, on the verge of ending the talks because of the bleak prospects, found encouragement in the council’s action and decided to keep negotiating.

Admonished

For years, the views of prominent Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Küng have embarrassed—and angered—the Vatican. He has all but dismissed the doctrine of papal infallibility, and he believes that the laity, not just the clergy, can consecrate the Eucharist (transform the elements into the Body of Christ).

Last month, after supposedly years of investigation of Küng’s views, the Vatican’s high tribunal on matters of faith announced that his beliefs are in conflict with the church. The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith admonished him “in the future” not to use his position as a theology professor or other platforms to promulgate his “mistaken views.” But he was not asked to renounce his views, and no disciplinary action was announced or threatened—reportedly the first time in history the tribunal did not take disciplinary steps against a church member judged to be in error. The German bishops, divided on Küng, requested that he not be punished.

Küng, 46, who teaches at the University of Tübingen, a state school in West Germany, said afterward that he will “not tolerate being prevented from pursuing my theological service to my fellow man.”

Much of the dispute centers on two of Küng’s books, The Church (1967) and Infallible?—An Inquiry (1971). Citing an analysis of Scripture and historical examples wherein Popes have erred, Küng concludes that the doctrine of papal infallibility is virtually meaningless and theologically weak. On the other hand, he says, God’s saving truth will be preserved through the Church despite errors by its leaders.

In July, 1973, the Sacred Congregation—at the behest of the Pope—issued a 4,000-word declaration condemning theologians who question papal infallibility and other doctrines. No names were mentioned, but everybody knew it was directed at Küng.

Korea: Still Speaking Out

After winning from the South Korean electorate a vote of confidence in his policies, President Park Chung Hee last month suggested he would seek reconciliation with the churches and universities. Then he released 168 of the 202 prisoners being held on political charges. These included Catholic bishop Daniel Tji (or Chi) Hak Soun, well-known Presbyterian pastor Park Hyong Kyu, and all the other clergy, religious educators, and officers of Christian students groups jailed over the past year in connection with political unrest (see January 31 issue, page 24).

If the president expected things to settle down and everybody to return gratefully to quiet pursuits, he was mistaken. Thousands gathered in Seoul’s Myongdong Cathedral as Tji celebrated a mass. Afterwards they greeted him with wave after wave of applause, and they also cheered and applauded a resolution of the National Council of Catholic Priests calling for a continued struggle “for the restoration of human rights” in South Korea.

Some 500 persons, including a dozen foreign missionaries, jammed into a prayer meeting at the headquarters of the Korea National Council of Churches (KNCC) to welcome some of the prisoners. They met beneath a banner proclaiming: “O Lord, please abolish the Yushin constitution” (the basis of the president’s unrestricted authority). Pastor Park called on the government to repent or face “the certain judgment of the Lord.” He said he’d be willing to compromise with the government if it showed “sincerity.” But, said he, “this is the age of falsehood.”

KNCC general secretary Kim Kwan Suk said the effort by the churches since last summer has brought a new aspect to the political life of Korea. “The churches are now involved, and that is a good thing,” he said. “We are hoping for a method leading to a peaceful change of government, in which the people have a voice.… This government is not a dictatorship as such, but there is misuse of power. The government is not being used for the welfare of the people.”

Prior to their release the prisoners were required to sign a paper pledging to be silent about their incarceration. A number of them, however, charged publicly that they had been tortured. Government authorities, pointing out that the release was on the basis of suspended sentences rather than amnesty, warned against any further speaking out.

Good News

Portions of the Bible were published in twenty-four new languages in 1974, according to the American Bible Society. So far, Scriptures have been printed in 1,549 tongues.

Olympic Outreach

Aide Olympic Chrétienne, established last September to coordinate evangelical outreach at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, has secured a wide base of support. Dr. Peter Foggin, a bilingual Quebec university professor and a Plymouth Brethren leader, has been appointed full-time executive director.

Already seven functioning commissions are at work to facilitate reaching the anticipated six million international visitors, Montreal’s three million residents, and the 10,000 athletes. Commissions are: literature, athletes, social services, youth, crusade evangelism, discipleship, and linguistic-cultural cooperation.

LESLIE K. TARR

Prospects In Portugal

The collapse last year of Portugal’s 48-year-old conservative dictatorship opened the floodgates to change. For one thing, it has resulted in unprecedented freedom for the 35,000 Protestants in the predominantly Catholic country. “We have more liberty than ever before,” commented a Greater Europe Mission worker.

Open-air services, previously banned, are now freely allowed. The late dictator Antonio Salazar was suspicious of all such gatherings, fearing that they might be turned to political ends. All religious meetings therefore had to be held in approved chapels. Also, Protestants are now able to incorporate. This gives them a legal existence and freedom before the law. When a case of suspected discrimination arises, they have a legal right to protest.

Freedom in Portugal has a disruptive side, however. The Catholic Church has seen a serious erosion of its favored position. Currently a law to legalize divorce is pending in the legislature. Clandestine abortions are quite readily available, and contraceptives can be purchased. Soon a new concordat with Rome will be negotiated, and it will further curtail Catholic privilege.

The church has other troubles. Catholics are increasingly unfaithful to their church. Attendance at Mass is declining. Monasteries and convents are closing. There are fewer candidates for the priesthood.

The new iconoclastic spirit among the people also finds expression in political realms. A serious anti-American attitude is emerging. Some have circulated the rumor that the CIA caused a recent cholera epidemic by bombing Portgual with germ-laden bombs. Such rumors are usually introduced and fostered by Marxist and Maoist elements in the population. Some church leaders fear that these radically socialistic propagandists could jeopardize the Billy Graham crusade planned for Lisbon next September, his first-ever campaign in Portugal.

Fifty-five political parties have popped up in Portugal since the revolution, the vast majority of them leftist. The present military-installed provisional leaders, Premier Vasco Gonçalves and President Francisco Gomes, are described as moderately left, and they have strong Communist party support. Portugese Protestants are eyeing the upcoming elections with prayerful concern. An assembly is to be elected in April to draw up a new constitution, with elections for a legislative body and president scheduled six months later. A triumph by Marxist or Maoist contenders could signal the end of religious liberty.

WAYNE DETZLER