A dear friend of mine, born in Indonesia of Dutch parents, was caught with her mother in years of concentration camp during her childhood. She missed out on a whole period of life, not only in education and childhood toys and games but in basic nutrition.

A particularly horrifying practice in this particular Japanese camp had to do with the “food” served in bowls to the prisoners. What was offered day by day was a mixture. There was a certain amount of grain, meal, or rice, so that if anyone asked it could be said that enough basic food was being given to prevent starvation. But, as I said, this “food” was a mixture. Castor oil was mixed with all the bowls of mush; the food would therefore he expelled from the body before much nourishment could be absorbed into the system. One by one people died because the castor oil made it impossible for the food to accomplish what it would have accomplished had it been given in its original state.

How was it that this girl, her mother, and some others lived to tell the tale? There was a variety of work to be done, and some people worked in the gardens or in the kitchens, weeding lettuce or peeling vegetables for the non-prisoner’s meals. The little girl’s mother (and others) were able to put bits of food into their mouths and to hide a few leaves of lettuce or scraps of things to share later in the day. At the end of the time they were malnourished and depleted in every way, skin and bones devoid of energy, but they were still aliye and able slowly to gain a measure of health when proper food was provided. The lost years, however, could never be given back in this life, and the physical and psychological scars will never be entirely erased.

“Did you have a good day of prayer?” I asked a young theological student who had taken part in our special day of fasting and prayer. “No, I can’t say that I did. Really, you know, I find it difficult to define the difference between prayer and meditation. I can’t find the reality of trust for prayer.” He hesitated and then went on to say, “After you read Tillich and some other writers, somehow the doubts keep coming back, and you just wonder about things.”

Prayer—mixed with the wrong connotation of meditation. A personal God with whom one made in his image can communicate—mixed with a God afar off, unreachable. A created universe created by the Creator—mixed with a universe that evolved by chance through eons. A literal Adam and Eve who really made a choice and fell—mixed with a myth that takes its place with other myths. Phrases from God’s Word that are true, mixed with the castor oil of unbelief and compromise. A murky, oily mélange of God’s truth and Satan’s lies spooned into open mouths by Satan, who wanted to purge all the truth out of Eve’s system in the first place.

Who is being fed such spiritual mush in which the good food cannot be separated from castor oil that drives the food right out of the system? Many theological students are. And it is not just the theological students who find they are robbed of strength and trust. These students become the writers, the speakers, the pastors, and the teachers, and the debilitating mixture is then spooned out through books and sermons to people of all ages.

God speaks in Jeremiah: “The pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore shall they not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered” (Jer. 10:21). He goes on to say firmly: “Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD. Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people: ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, said the LORD.” He goes on to say that these scattered people are to be gathered up out of all countries and brought again to the fold, “and I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord” (Jer. 23:1–4).

“Oh, yes,” you may say, “this is speaking of Israel in a future time.” Right, but the Lord also has sheep who are meant to be fed day by day, week by week, in Christian churches now. Shepherds are supposed to feed their flocks with food that nourishes them spiritually, with the unadulterated truth of the Bible, the Word of God. Doubts are not to be mixed in. There is not to be a castor-oil mixture that takes away all the food and leaves nothing but gnawing fear and sick hunger. Those who are fed what God means pastors, shepherds, to feed them will not be fearful or dismayed or lacking.

What has happened? How does it all start? Jeremiah is given something to explain to Israel, and to us: “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13). It is a double thing. God’s people have turned away from him; the personal, infinite Creator has been denied, forsaken. Then the teaching stemming forth is like a vessel that is broken and cannot hold the water. The water of the Spirit cannot be poured out of a broken pitcher. And so, empty of water, the cracked pitcher pours emptiness into cracked cups!

God calls out to professors and students, pastors and people, to everyone of us who is in grave danger of being thrown into this “concentration camp.” God calls out: “Proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:12, 15).

The true food that will give us spiritual health and strength and cause us to grow and have spiritual energy and power is described by the words “knowledge and understanding.” God has made it undeniably clear that the teaching and preaching of pastors is to bring knowledge. There is to be “content,” the full content of the whole Word of God. This is to give comforting and satisfying knowledge that will push away fear and dismay. There is to be “understanding.” Questions are to be answered as well as possible. Things are to be put in several ways by patient teachers so that Sunday-school children, college students, seminarians, and congregations can really understand.

How sobering it is to realize that Jesus speaks to all his “Peters” down through the centuries when he says, “Lovest thou me? Feed my lambs. Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep.”

It is a serious responsibility to feed the flock, both the little lambs and the older sheep, with nourishing lasting food, the whole-grain, full-bodied wheat God prepared in his Word. The strength to fulfill this responsibility is available if we heed this word: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isa. 41:10).

Whatever we need to have forgiven, whatever we need to begin to do, whatever we need to go on doing where the going seems hard, let us keep on! God’s promise to help applies. Be fed. Feed others. Turn from the adulterated “mush,” and remember that it has left a weakness that is worse in some than in others. “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief”: this can be the beginning prayer time after time.

EDITH SCHAEFFER

At E.A.S.E. In Zion

The beginning of a new year is traditionally a time for getting rid of the old and making fresh starts. That is, of course, what New Year’s Resolutions are all about.

The genealogy of the New Year’s Resolution has been ably traced by Heinrich v. Schlunk in his five-volume introductory work, Einführung in das Studium der Neujahrsverbesserungsbe schlüsse mit Rücksicht auf erkenntniswissenschaftliche und existentielle Zusammenhänge. However, because this work is difficult to obtain, and because only portions of it are relevant for evangelicals, we will summarize its most salient point.

The New Year’s Resolution, it seems, arises from a reflective self-awareness of the fact that—to quote one ancient source—“we have done those things we ought not to have done and have left undone those things we ought to have done.” This self-awareness was called conscience in traditional theology, and conscience, despite its obsolescence, remains one of the most distressing psychological characteristics of present-day evangelicals, including many among the staff and subscribers of Christianity Today. (Was this perhaps why the late Karl Barth waggishly suggested that it ought to be called Christianity Yesterday?)

This reflective self-awareness, or conscience, used to produce a “purpose of amendment”—or a “commitment to greater obedience,” expressed, for example, in the above-mentioned New Year’s Resolutions. However, as was already noted by v. Schlunk in the historical work that laid the ground for his great “Einführung,” Die Neujahr-sverbesserungsbeschlüsse von Hammurabi bis Hubert Humphrey, most Resolutions remain inoperative, hence leading to further problems with conscience.

At one of the familiar academic conclaves held over the Christmas vacation, a number of concerned evangelicals banded together to form the Evangelical Association for Situation Ethics (EASE). Because the leading situation ethicists today are non-evangelicals, and because the leading evangelical ethicists are non-situationalists, some initial difficulty is being experienced in recruiting qualified members for EASE. However, once the familiar frustration with failed New Year’s Resolutions again descends on the evangelical community, it is felt that many will be led to take comfort from EASE and its persuasive way of adjusting ethical requirements to the changing situations and temptations of modern life. Its motto, with apologies to Kipling, is, “If you can keep the rules/When all about you break them/Perhaps you don’t understand the situation.” The twilight of good resolutions is upon us, and a more comfortable self-awareness is sure to await us. As a spokesmen for EASE told us, “We anticipate no problems for evangelicals from the widespread adoption of situation ethics, provided our exegesis is correct.”

Discerning The Devil

I want to tell you how glad I was to read the editorial “Witchcraft P.R.” (Dec. 6). You rightly discerned the character of this group, and you are to be commended for taking a public stand against them. I’ve known Tim Zell personally since our work began in St. Louis three years ago. He and nine other witches came to one of our services (an ex-warlock was preaching against the occult and witchcraft) and they disrupted the meeting, mocked the altar call, and Tim Zell tried to take over the service. He and his followers have started a Church of All Worlds and have actively spoken out against Christianity and tried recruiting people to witchcraft on many of the high school and college campuses. It seems that many of their followers got into this cult because they were searching for a spiritual experience—a hunger increased by drug use. This seems to be the next step down among Americans. As drugs die out in popularity, witchcraft and Satanism will increase. Now, more than ever, we need to be reaching America with the Gospel, saturating the hungry souls and reaping a great harvest.

The Rev. LARRY RICE

Director

New Life Evangelistic Center, Inc.

St. Louis, Mo.

Viewing The Evidence

I was amazed at the level of editorial irresponsibility on the part of CHRISTIANITY TODAY in publishing the letter from a Dan Trotter suggesting that I, the Post-American, the “young evangelicals” etc. (his “kooks on the left”) be “excommunicated” from evangelicalism. The statements Trotter attributed to “one of the staff members of Wallis’s journal” are of course ridiculous, as any responsible checking would have uncovered. Where Trotter got such distortions is unknown to me or to our staff and associates.… In the recent controversy between “young evangelicals” and “establishment evangelicals,” there are probably some who would like to see further division and would be willing to help draw the battle lines. We oppose that divisive spirit that would provide a new way to split ourselves into opposing and hostile camps. We must together raise the issues involved in coming to a more holistic and biblical proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel, and not merely find new labels to increase fragmentation among us. That is our commitment and I hope that those who know us and have been involved with us in the recent controversies have seen evidence of that commitment.

Editor

Post-American

Chicago, Ill.

From Churchill

It is unfortunate that the writer of your editorial “Churchill and His Tryst” (Dec. 6) did not show greater awareness of the scholarship on the subject. It has been the judgment of several historians that some of this country’s foreign-policy problems stem from the fact that, far from being “largely disregarded,” Sir Winston’s Fulton speech was too well heeded, and that he had lost his touch in foreign affairs by that time. This is not to deny the military threat posed by the Soviet Union but to note that the threat was erroneously identified with unstable situations all over the globe, resulting in policies too broadly and fearfully conceived. Certainly a stand in favor of freedom and morals need not be tied to reckless or unrealistic policies. I wonder, incidentally, if many who applaud Churchill’s hard line in post-war policies realize that in the same speech he proposed that the United Nations “must immediately begin to be equipped with an international armed force.”

Instructor in History

Judson Baptist College

Portland, Ore.

At Least As Moral

I was startled to learn (Footnotes, Nov. 8) that since I (allegedly!) implied in the Chicago Declaration that “American economic structures are per se ‘racist and unjust,’ ” my only moral option was to renounce my U.S. citizenship. Nowhere in the Chicago Declaration did I assert that American economic structures are per se racist and unjust. I am not even sure what it would mean to assert that. Would one be talking about some pure form of laissez-faire capitalism that has not existed for decades? Would one mean the Keynesian economics as practiced in more recent decades? Is there some particular economic pattern that existed at some particular historic movement that is the “true, genuine” American economic pattern that one might then consider per se just or unjust?

If the abstract question is ambiguous, the immediate situation is not. I do believe that present economic structures are unjust. It is unjust when our President rejects a proposal for giving one million more tons of grain to starving Third World people because it would cause inflation in the United States; it is unjust when trade patterns, etc., force half the world to go to bed hungry while we live in unprecedented luxury.…

However, even if I had written (which I did not) that American economic structures are per se racist and unjust or even if I knew (which I do not) that this were the case, would the only moral option be a prompt renunciation of citizenship? I am strongly committed to the democratic process (and the events of the last two years have deepened that commitment). Hopefully the fundamental promise of democratic theory, viz., that every citizen has the right to work within the democratic process for desired changes, applies just as much to legislation on economics as to legislation on abortion or drugs; just as much to legislation producing fundamental structural change as to window-dressing legislation producing only superficial change. If then I think (as I do) that substantial changes in our economic structures are needed if we are to escape divine punishment for our injustice and oppression, surely working in a democratic way for orderly change would be a second option at least as “moral” as renunciation of citizenship.

Dean

Messiah College

(Philadelphia Campus)

Philadelphia, Pa.

Correcting Information

I am writing to correct false information [in] “Grenades in the Archbishop’s Mercedes,” by Lester Kinsolving (Oct. 11). I have never driven the two Arab sisters named Odeh in my car (Hilman). I never had anything to do with the blowing up of the Jewish supermarket in Jerusalem that took place on February 23, 1969.

When my house was attacked by Israeli troops at 1:30 A.M. on March 2, 1969 … my house, the church building, sanctuary, pulpit, and every corner of the church and all the surrounding church premises in Ramallah were thoroughly searched, but no explosives, no guns, no bombs, nothing at all was found.

Amman, Jordan

ERRATUM

Carl F. H. Henry was mistakenly identified in “Doing the Declaration” (News, December 20 issue, page 28) as a member of the workshop planning committee. He was one of the meeting’s speakers; his son, Paul Henry, is a member of the committee.

Yeshua In View

With the household of Israel our elders and young ones, linking and bonding the past with the future, we heed once again the divine call to service.

So begins the text of the new Seder, A Passover Haggadah, suggesting the purpose and history of the night ceremony that is to follow. Unwittingly, it also speaks for the theme of the two phono releases from the Messianic Jewish group “Lamb” entitled Lamb and Lamb II (Messianic Records, Box 37100, Cincinnati, Ohio 45222: see The Refiner’s Fire, November 8 issue, page 27). “Lamb”—the group—is Rick “Levi” Coghill, who is the arranger and producer as well as vocalist and guitarist, and Joel Chernoff, who does the composing and lead vocals along with background vocals and instrumentals. (Coghill is also the producer for the Jews for Jesus musical group, “Liberated Wailing Wall.”)

The two records complement each other. Side one of Lamb provides the background, using the image of God as “The Judge” and the woman who cannot forget her nursing child in “Hateesh-kach.” The song combines a cantor-like chant in English and a reiterated response in Hebrew quoting Isaiah 49:15 and 16 in a way suggestive of the cantor-choral interplay of the synagogue. The rest of side one affirms the Jewish hope for Messiah and unabashedly proclaims that Yeshua (Jesus) is he. Side two strikes a missionary note, as in the lead-off song “Time Is Running Out,” which uses a woodblock to tick off the minutes remaining to “bring in the children before their doom.”

In the sequel to the story, Lamb II questions and indicts the Jewish nation and pleads with it to consider Yeshua. From the hard-driving “Who Will You Blame?,” which demands that the listener “make your choice today: will you be in heaven or will you pay?,” to the peaceful assurances of “Comfort Ye My People,” an adaptation of Hosea 14:2–7, the listener hears God calling to his people. Lamb frequently uses the minor intonations of a droning cantor, updated to a folk-ballad effect. Throughout both albums and especially Lamb II, a subtle blending of the old cantor and folk modes with new instrumental and rhythmic effects imbues old Scriptures with new meaning. The adaptation of Psalm 47, “Clap Your Hands,” captivating in its use of instrumental effect and infectious rhythm, communicates victorious confidence in God. Surely David would have been dancing before the Lord on this number.

As at the close of the Seder, “Jerusalem Descending” looks to the hope of Israel, the return of Messiah and his kingdom. “Shuvee” points the way, and “Comfort Ye My People” gives the promise of healing.

Both albums integrate old and new—whether in ancient and modern sounds, prophecy fulfilled and prophecy anticipated, Old and New Testament images, or an old voice crying in the twentieth-century wilderness. Lamb II shows a little more musical maturity, as well as an even stronger Jewish flavor. If a choice must be made, the scale is perceptibly tipped toward Lamb II.

Coghill and Chernoff obviously know that their mission is to their own people. They are carrying out that mission with rare talent that will surely be admired even outside Jewish circles. They affirm the covenant expressed in the closing lines of the Haggadah, “to the service of God, to a great purpose for which the people of Israel lives: The preservation and affirmation of hope.” But unlike the Seder, they celebrate the Link bonding the past and the future, “the glory of Yeshua … coming into view.”—PATRICIA M. BALSAM, librarian, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Discussing Three Thorns

The Anniversary, a half-hour 16mm film recently released by Family Films, focuses on three thorny problems: boredom in work, choosing a vocation, and arranging life’s priorities.

Mark Slade of TV’s “High Chaparral” plays the lead role of a young Viet Nam veteran, Mike Hobarth. An assembly-line worker at a large automobile plant, Mike voices dissatisfaction with his job to his pregnant wife and to his father, who has worked at the same plant for twenty-three years. Neither Mike’s wife nor his father can understand his frustration; each feels personally threatened by his unrest.

The situation explodes at the parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration, where Mike’s younger brother Joe openly challenges his parents’ values and their rejection of his own life-style.

Mike comes to Joe’s defense and unexpectedly announces his own decision to leave his job in order to pursue a more personally meaningful alternative. He calms his stunned parents by reaffirming his belief in work and responsibility and especially in Christ, who will undergird him in his new venture.

The unanswered questions posed by this film makes it ideally suited for church discussion groups of any age. This timely resource can be rented for $25 from Family Films, 5823 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, California 90038.—CAROL PRESTER MCFADDEN, editor, Canon Press, Washington, D. C.

Newly Pressed

Of the many records we have received since the last appearance of Newly Pressed (November 22 issue, page 22) six are worthy of mention. Some of them will be considered in more detail later. The first four are on a Word record label (Myrrh or Light). In the realm of good, original, contemporary Christian music, Word has no really close competitor.

In The 2nd Chapter of Acts* with footnotes, the vocal trio of two women and a man (unnamed; MST-6526) has a soft, folk-rock gospel sound. Side two is more intriguing than one. For Petra, Bob Hartman does guitar, banjo, vocals; Greg Hough, guitar, mandolin, vocals; Bill Glover, drums, percussion; and John DeGroff, bass (MST-6527). The lead vocalist (either Hartman or Hough—not specified) sounds similar to Larry Norman, who records for MGM, and the opening cut on the album is definitely in the Norman style. “Back Sliding Blues,” the longest song on the album, is without question the best. The cover of Forgiven …, by Ron Salsbury and the J. C. Power Outlet (John Pantano, Dave Edwards, and Bruce Neal), shows fine imagination (MST-6528). All songs were written by Salsbury. The first solo album for Danniebelle Hall, Danniebelle (65–5638), highlights songs she has written. Andraé Crouch, with whom she has been singing for the past couple of years, helped produce the album.

Testimony, by Tom and Sherry Green, is available from Big Rock records (1836 South Ash, Wichita, Kans. 67211; HFS-228). Their sound is more country blues than the other five albums, and Sherry Green’s voice is well suited to that style.

Paul Clark’s latest album, Come Into His Presence, subtitled “Songs From the Savior, Volume Three,” features Jay Truax, John Mehler, Phil Keaggy, Mike Burhart, and Bill Speer (Sonrise, P.O. Box 7060, Van Nuys, Calif. 91409; SMC-007), some of whom have played backup on his two previous albums. The quiet, mellow sound is effective.

CHERYL FORBES

When Saul of Tarsus became the Apostle Paul, he encountered many obstacles in his Christian life. He was beaten, imprisoned, stoned, and chased from city to city. But perhaps his worst problem was the one he wrote about to the Christians at Corinth:

Lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness [2 Cor. 12:7–9, KJV].

The exact nature of Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” has been the subject of endless speculation and countless term papers. Even the translators are not quite sure what to do with the phrase. The King James interpreters gave it its literal meaning. The Today’s English Version reads, “I was given a painful physical ailment.…” This follows the common line of interpretation, that the thorn in the flesh of Paul probably was physical. The New English Version also follows this line: “I was given a sharp physical pain.…” But in the footnote, an alternative reading is given: “Or, a painful wound to my pride (literally a stake, or thorn, for the flesh.)” Here is another idea, that Paul’s thorn was not a physical ailment but rather a wound to his pride. Behind the uncertainty about the nature of Paul’s thorn lies a real message to every Christian: no matter what his own thorn, God’s grace is sufficient.

For many Christians, the thorn is literally in the flesh. The thing that seems to be a curse to their Christian life is blindness or deafness or some other serious physical ailment.

Not long ago I was visiting in the home of a young Christian family. Eventually the conversation turned to the most serious problem in the lives of this Christian couple: the woman suffered from recurring arthritic attacks in her leg and hip joints. At times she could not get up to care for their young children without terrible pain. She was only in her mid-twenties, and these attacks brought not only physical pain but also periods of depression.

For a long time, this couple and a prayer group they attended had been praying together that God would remove this ailment. But he had not done so. The couple was in deep spiritual distress, wondering why God would not cure her affliction. When I pointed out that he might be saying no and that they might be required simply to accept that, as Paul had, they were quite startled. But once they accepted the truth that God’s strength can be made perfect in our weakness, they were able to walk in a fuller trust of the wisdom of Christ.

Another man I know lives in constant misery, with severe uncontrollable diabetes complicated by heart trouble. For the past several years he has been in the hospital as much as he has been at home. He has long been unable to work to support his family and is in constant pain. But when I go to visit this man, he cheers meup. Long ago he realized that God was not going to remove his thorn. He accepted the fact and is satisfied with the grace of God’s salvation.

It has been my observation that the spiritual thorn—the strong recurring temptation—is often more serious than the physical one. To get a clearer understanding of this problem let us look at what Paul wrote in his first letter to the believers at Corinth:

Surely you know that the wicked will not receive God’s Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral, or worship idols, or are adulterers, or homosexual perverts, or who rob, or are greedy, or are drunkards, or who slander others, or are lawbreakers—none of these will receive God’s Kingdom. Some of you were like that. But you have been cleansed from sin; you have been dedicated to God; you have been put right with God through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God [1 Cor. 6:9–11, TEV].

This passage gives an idea of the kinds of sins that the Corinthian saints had formerly been involved in. Now they had been cleansed from sin and dedicated to God. But had all these former temptations departed? The answer seems to be a definite no. Although they had been cleansed and their sins counted against them no more, the habits of their former lives still weighed heavily on them. These temptations became their thorns in the flesh, a burden in their Christian lives. And so it still is today. The habits and sins of a former life become the messengers of Satan to buffet the Christian in his new life.

Let us take a few examples from the list Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Paul said that some of the Christians had formerly been drunkards. Are we to think that after they became believers in Christ they no longer were tempted by alcoholic beverages? Anyone who has seen a former alcoholic come to Christ knows this is not so. The temptation is likely to remain, at times very difficult to bear, often requiring resistance to the end of his life on earth. For some it is a thorn in the flesh that God does not remove.

Some of the Corinthian Christians had formerly been adulterers. Now they had been put right with God through Jesus Christ. But the temptation of lust does not disappear as if by magic. It still remains strongly implanted in many Christians, and becomes their thorn in the flesh.

In the past few years five ministers among my own acquaintances have become intimately involved with their secretaries or other women in their churches. Did this suddenly just happen? Or was it the result of some long-hidden thorn that the person could no longer restrain by himself? I incline toward the latter view.

Another type of person who became a Christian in Corinth was the thief. Undoubtedly several of these people had formerly made their living by stealing items and selling them in the thieves’ market in the city. On becoming Christians they had to find a new means of livelihood. But being cleansed from sin through Jesus Christ did not mean they were no longer tempted by the lure of easy money. The temptation may have remained and become to these persons a thorn in the flesh. To the end of their days, perhaps, when they saw some object of value lying unprotected, they had to fight the temptation to pick it up and carry it off. Although the temptation may have weakened as the years passed, it may have remained a hindrance in their spiritual lives.

A fourth type of person mentioned by the Apostle has been the object of a great deal of study recently. Paul noted that although some of the members of Christ’s body at Corinth had formerly been homosexuals, they had now been cleansed from sin, dedicated to God, and put right with God through Jesus Christ. A homosexual who becomes redeemed cannot continue to remain homosexual in his or her behavior, because practicing homosexuals cannot have any part in God’s kingdom. The sexual behavior must change.

Many psychologists say that homosexuality has its roots in a person’s past experiences, and that we cannot expect him to overcome his past. Indeed, the practice of homosexuality is like every other type of sin in being rooted in past experiences. The Christian who has been a homosexual will probably continue to have homosexual temptations, perhaps severely so. It is likely to be his thorn in the flesh. But temptation is not a sin. The sin is in succumbing to the temptation. It is no more of a sin for a former homosexual to be tempted with a homosexual urge than for a former alcoholic to be tempted to drunkenness. But to yield to the temptation would indeed be sin.

“Why won’t you remove my thorn, God?” we ask. “I would certainly be a better servant for you without it.” The answer dawns on us slowly: the Lord knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows what things can strengthen us spiritually. He knows what things will harm us.

Paul told why the Lord gave him a thorn in the first place: “to keep me from being puffed up with pride …” (2 Cor. 2:7). This is also obviously why the Lord would not remove it. The human memory is sometimes very short. The Lord knows that if the thorn is removed, we may soon forget that all our accomplishments are achieved through the indwelling of the Spirit of God; we may start being puffed up with pride in what we will soon consider to be our own accomplishments. If we begin to have pride in ourselves, we may soon stop trusting in Jesus Christ.

What can we, the people of God, members of Christ’s body, do about these problems that plague our Christian growth? First, we must recognize that we all have our thorns in the flesh and that the thorns of other Christians may be very different from our own. When we learn of a temptation that another Christian is subject to, we ought not to be shocked. Although the temptations of others may not tempt us at all, we must remember that no temptation has overtaken any Christian except those that are common to mankind.

A second thing to remember is that God will not allow us to be tempted more than we are able to resist. Sometimes he may remove a problem completely. Occasionally, a former drunkard who comes to Christ is never again tempted by alcohol. God may have removed the temptation because he knows this particular person could not bear it. But these cases are unusual; normally a thorn like alcoholism remains deeply imbedded in the flesh and requires special grace to resist throughout the Christian’s earthly life.

Third, let us note that God has not left the individual Christian at the mercy of these thorns without any relief. With every temptation God has provided a way of escape, perhaps through fasting, prayer and petitioning until the temptation has passed.

Sometimes we need help from a Christian brother or sister. In Galatians 6:2 Paul wrote, “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” We may need to flee to others for counseling, encouragement, and prayer with and for us in order to overcome severe attacks by Satan.

For other Christians to help us they must know what our thorn is. They need to be aware of our deepest temptations and trials. The Scriptures say, “Confess your faults to one another” (James 5:16). We need to be aware of each other’s thorns so that we can help in times of greatest stress.

Most Christians do not act toward fellow believers with the honest, selfless concern Christ intended in his admonition to love one another. Often when we hear of a Christian brother’s thorn in the flesh, instead of helping him we hurt him further by gossiping about his weakness. Yet listed with other sinners ineligible for God’s kingdom is the slanderer. It does not take a new Christian long to learn to keep his trials to himself and attempt to overcome them alone. Our thorns are hidden deep within each of us, and we are doubly plagued by them. We suffer both from the thorn itself and from the fear that our temptation will become known to our fellow believers.

Our responsibility is to help our brother, not to heap more hurt on him. We need to have more concern for the spiritual growth of our fellow believers. When we learn of the thorns of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we must simply accept both them and their thorns; and they must accept us and ours. Let us stand ready to help one another whenever we are needed.

The Church of Jesus Christ on this earth is composed not of perfect, spiritually mature people but of people striving in the Master’s strength toward perfection. In our striving we can gain assurance from God’s words, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

The high destiny of every human soul, that destiny which we affirm in the reading of Psalm 139, makes many a Christian chill with distaste at the very mention of abortion. Such a threat to the right to life, the right to God-given privileges and mandates, is in their view simply and frankly appalling. God gave life, and gives life as a continuing gift, a gift always to be welcomed no matter how inauspicious its beginnings. There is no child who should not have been born (or almost none, if we wish to leave some margin), for redemption is freely offered to all human beings, none excepted, and the privilege of drawing even one breath of fresh air is more profound than we can ever imagine. Made in the Image of God, that is what man is all about. Who shall say that it is nothing?

But our enthusiasm for the mystery of life and for the secret of the human soul so perfectly “knit together” in the foreknowledge of God can sometimes turn into a blinding enthusiasm. “Sold” on life, and on God himself, we are struck dumb at the thought that anyone could actually want an abortion. The sooner we can dispense with the arguments and protestations of such a person, the sooner we can get back to the realities we love so well.

But the temptation to put down quickly the abortionist view when it confronts us has led to certain short circuits in our ability to communicate. And at a time when anti-abortion amendments petitions are circulating widely among evangelical Christians we need to think out our reasons for this keenly felt stand. In the days ahead we will have to be communicating more and more about this vital subject. We must do so without those short circuits that cut off our listeners before we make our point; we want to speak worthily, as God would have us. For if we don’t explain our own minds, and God’s, a little better than we sometimes have done, we may even lose our opportunity to make a difference—though we may not ultimately believe that we can frustrate God’s purposes.

Since we believe that what we read in the Bible is true, is from God himself, and since we often sense from our reading of that Word that we are right about a lot of important things, we may feel especially secure about an issue such as this. But sometimes, especially on an issue we care a great deal about, we have a bad way of explaining ourselves. We can’t get enough distance from the subject to hear the sound of what we say, and when we have finished we can tell by the look in our listener’s eyes that we have somehow said it all wrong. In fact we even suspect, sometimes, that we have made God come off sounding illogical, and we know that isn’t fair to him or to the issue we defend in his name.

So if stepping back for a minute will help at all, perhaps we can re-examine some of our tactics and our words. If we don’t like this thing called Abortion, let’s untangle our strategy, so that our reasoning makes some better sense on its own grounds. First of all we need to avoid what lies closest at hand on such an issue, the use of emotionally charged words accompanied by a shaking of the head. Trundling out words like “evil” and “disastrous” and “dangerous” just confuses the issue. Such words may give vent to how we feel about the subject, but we need to explain why. If abortion is undesirable, it must be so for soundly stated biblical reasons, reasons that even our listeners will say sound clear enough, if we have avoided the temptation to dismiss the issue emotionally, as hastily as possible, or by proof-texting our way around the real biblical underpinnings for our argument. Nothing short of careful biblical exegesis will do, exegesis that considers at least two things: not only the “moment” when human life originates, but, even more significantly, God’s purpose in making man at all.

Some clear and well expressed understanding of the high purposes of God in creating man and offering life will then temper our handling of the medical facts in the abortion issue, so that we can in the same way stand back from emotional and judgmental phrases and let the medical information do its own work. Let us seek out objective medical research on the life-status of the fetus at the moment of conception. Such purely medical data, carefully rendered, should stand by itself; we shouldn’t have to prop it up with moral judgments. For instance, if the live fetus disintegrates during suction abortion, let that information stand as an awesome fact to do its own work. But on the other hand, if some of the facts suggest that abortion is not as medically dangerous to the woman as we “wish” it were, for the sake of finding a deterrent to the practice, let’s not juggle those facts to make it sound mysterious and fearful. Statistics say that the risk of abortion to the mother in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy is three times less than the risk to her in a full-term birth. Abortions in the early weeks, therefore, cannot be labeled “dangerous,” and any such statements must be balanced against the risk of full-term births. What risk there is in abortion occurs during the twelve-to-twenty-week period rather than in the early weeks, and even that risk is proportionately small. To pretend otherwise would be shady, and unworthy of our calling.

We don’t need that kind of an approach. It is unworthy of all we stand for in the name of Christ. And there are better reasons and approaches—real, human, important ones. Abortion can better be opposed because it hurts everyone, the mother and father as well as the fetus. We need soundly researched statistical analysis of the psychological after effects of abortion, rather than threatening statements about “how awful it is.” We need carefully documented follow-up statistics. Let us have an informed sociologist to do our homework for us, and let us study his findings. For instance, let him question the parents of the aborted fetus three years later. Do they ever think about that never-born child? These awesome aspects will keep us from the lesser tactics.

The most dangerous thing we can do is to leave the issue at the purely emotional level, consciously or inadvertently introducing language that may permanently cloud the issue. For instance, we may announce that “abortion rates are high in Communist countries” or that “Hitler’s regime practiced abortion,” hoping to make the hearer respond, “If Communists and Nazis are for abortion, I know I’m not!” Such logical traps are a clear case of perpetuating “short circuits,” and God deserves better.

If we are convinced about the real difficulties of abortion and prefer to stand for the God-given mandate of life, we must be sure we make ourselves clear to everyone who is listening, Christian and non-Christian. Christians have tender consciences and believe in the Word of God. But abortion hurts everyone, not just those who believe that Word. Let us come up with arguments that speak to everyone, not just to that closed circle of believers whom we represent. We cannot force our convictions upon anyone else, but we can at least offer clarity. We must have a carefully articulated “apologia,” one whose language speaks to everyone, one that clarifies why it is God’s plan that human life is too significant to interrupt, to accept or reject as one likes.

What if we should, by our careful preparation and clear thinking, actually convince someone away from abortion? That is only the beginning for us. We must be prepared as Christians to help that person face the difficult circumstances of her decision. It is not enough to congratulate ourselves that we have found a better argument and gotten rid of the logical fallacies surrounding it. It is not enough to say “Aha, I convinced her,” and then go home. Choosing to bear a child is a hard and immense decision. Even the legitimate and long-desired child is not carried and borne easily by its mother. Every expectant mother needs compassion and reassurance during that long waiting period. We need to provide vital companionship and unusual reassurance, in the most humane way we can, for the one who chooses to bypass abortion and endure an initially unwanted pregnancy. Let us further praise the unwed mother who shows the courage not to try to correct one mistake with another. Enough of harsh and judgmental treatment from the Christian brotherhood. Such courageous women, and the men who choose to stand by them, demand our love.

Perhaps we can also activate our adoption and counseling services to do more to encourage unwed mothers to bear these children. Can these agencies work any more closely with Christian doctors in pre-abortion counseling to assure these women that their child has a future? Can the Christian doctors with antiabortion convictions seek out these agencies and initiate some new kind of help for the expectant mothers and their unborn children? And if both agencies and doctors are already doing some of these things to counteract the overwhelming abortion trend, are we adequately aware of them?

And as for the rest of us, let us learn to love without “dissimulation.” If we know an unwed pregnant woman, let us show her compassion and kindness. We are more often reluctant to talk with her; we are embarrassed for her and confused about what to say. If she chooses to bear the child, we need to encourage her, to come out in her active support. Anyone willing to work out the consequences for an act, rather than avoid them, should be supported by the Christian. And if an unwed woman chooses not only to bear but to keep her child, let us still give her our emotional support and, even more, our material assistance, even though we might disagree with the latter decision. She is accepting the consequences for her action in a remarkable way.

But what of those whom we convince too late? We need even more compassion for the woman who undergoes an abortion and then too late learns to grieve over the decision. Let us remind ourselves and that person of the forgiveness and plentiful grace that Christ offers and that Christians daily offer on Christ’s behalf. Let us not close the door on those who go ahead with abortion. There is still room for them in the company of God. Let us be sure we make room for them among ourselves, too.

Because we believe the unborn child is important to God, we need two things: clear thinking on a difficult subject, and love. Then, as we rejoice in God’s omnipotence and redemptive purposes for the unborn, we will be reminded time and again of the quality of his love:

For thou didst form my inward parts,

thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.…

Thou knowest me right well;

my frame was not hidden from thee,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.

Thy eyes behold my unformed substance;

in thy book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

With a suddenness that no one could have predicted, courses in the Bible as literature have become common in high schools and colleges during the past five years. Each year more publishers add anthologies of biblical literature to their offerings. Two years ago one textbook publisher found through market research that the literature of the Bible was one of the three areas of greatest demand in high school literature, and since then the demand has greatly increased.

The literary study of the Bible is currently a leading subject on the programs at teachers’ conventions. For the past two years, for the first time, the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association included a section on teaching the Bible as literature. The Indiana University Summer Institute on Teaching the Bible in Secondary English, designed for high school teachers, has completed its fifth year and has attracted wide attention. A national clearinghouse called the Public Education Religion Studies Center (Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio 45431) has devoted a major part of its program to promoting the literary study of the Bible in public schools.

This trend has obvious implications for evangelical Christians. Interest in the Bible goes far beyond the academic world, where the revival of interest began. Reading the Bible as literature is something that involves parents (especially those whose children are enrolled in courses in biblical literature), biblical scholars, ministers, Bible study leaders, and anyone else who reads the Bible.

There has long been a latent, half-articulate resistance among evangelical Christians to the idea of the Bible as literature. One of the most frequently quoted statements on the subject is this one by C. S. Lewis:

[The Bible is] not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that it does not invite, it excludes or repels, the merely aesthetic approach. You can read it as literature only by a tour de force. You are cutting wood against the grain, using the tool for a purpose it was not intended to serve [The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version].

People who cite this against the practice of reading the Bible as literature overlook the fact that Lewis intended his stricture against reading the Bible only as literature, that is, without believing its doctrinal content. That Lewis recognized the need for a literary approach to the Bible is evident from his introductory remarks in Reflections on the Psalms, where he writes, “There is a … sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are.”

Evangelicals who resist the idea of reading the Bible as literature do so for two chief reasons. First, belief in the Bible as the inspired Word of God has led Christians to place it in a different category from other books; some are wary of applying ordinary literary terms to the Bible on the assumption that to do this would put it on a level with the works of uninspired and even unchristian writers. Secondly, to speak of the Bible as literature implies to many people that it is being treated “only” as literature and that its religious content is ignored. At best this is frivolous, some have concluded, and at worst it destroys the real purpose of reading the Bible, namely, attaining belief in God and his truth.

These objections are unwarranted. They arise mainly from a misunderstanding. And so, any defense of reading the Bible as literature might profitably begin with an explanation of what is not meant by the phrase.

To say that much of the Bible is literary in no way casts a shadow over its truth content. Nor does it imply that the Bible is fictional rather than historical; literature can be either. Even where it is fictional, the fictionality does not detract from its truthfulness, as is evident in the parables of Scripture, for example. To say that the Bible must be approached as literature does not imply a preoccupation with matters of style. It does not even have to imply a disregard for theological analysis or practical application.

What does it mean to read the Bible as literature? I wish to suggest two answers. First of all, reading the Bible as literature means approaching a given part by asking the questions that are appropriate to its literary form. The Bible is full of conventional literary forms or genres, including narrative or story, epic, tragedy, satire, lyric poetry, epithalamion, elegy, encomium, proverb, parable, pastoral, prophecy, gospel, epistle, oratory, and apocalypse. Every literary form has its conventions or principles. To read the Bible as literature is to ask the questions that are appropriate to its literary forms.

Take the story, for example, a literary form that is particularly important in biblical literature. If every part of the Bible were an expository essay, the right question to ask about any passage would be, What is the writer’s thesis and how does he develop his argument? This is how many people read the entire Bible, including the stories. But a storyteller has no thesis to develop—he has a story to tell. The appropriate questions to ask of a story are different from those we ask of an expository essay or a sermon. Among them are these: How is the story structured and unified? What are the plot conflicts, and how are they resolved? How do individual episodes relate to the overriding framework? How are the characters described, and how do they develop as the story unfolds? How is the setting of the story important? What use does the writer make of narrative devices such as dramatic irony, foreshadowing, climax, symbolism, and allusion? Eventually a literary analysis of a story will ask what themes are embodied in the story. It is important to realize, however, that the thematic question, What is the writer’s message?, can be answered only if we first ask the narrative question, What happens to the characters in the story? Until we scrutinize the story as a series of events involving characters, we cannot make propositional statements about the content. Acceptance of this principle is part of what is meant by reading the Bible as literature.

Satires, such as the book of Jonah and Christ’s parable of the pharisee and publican, should be approached with the questions, What is the object of attack? What historical particulars occasioned the attack? What literary ingredients (such as characters, action, setting, imagery) make up the vehicle by which the satire is presented? Is the satiric tone laughing or bitter?

The literary conventions of a tragedy, such as the story of Saul, should lead us to ask, How is the tragic hero characterized? What is the hero’s predicament? What is the nature of the hero’s tragic choice? Is there a flaw of character evident in his tragic choice? What form does his catastrophe and suffering take? Does the hero attain perception?

When we come to lyric poetry, our narrative questions will not help us, because a lyric poet does not aim to tell a story. His intention is to express the reflective and emotional side of human experience. The important questions here become, What emotional or reflective experience is being presented? What elements of pattern and unity and artistic design does the poem have? What meanings are embodied in the images and figures of speech? What feelings does the poet communicate with his exclamation, hyperboles, allusions, personifications, and rhetorical questions?

To summarize, reading the Bible as literature means first of all paying close attention to the characteristics inherent in the various literary forms. This is simply a way of saying that to read the Bible as literature we must learn to ask the right questions of the biblical text. The usual theological categories are not the only ones necessary for understanding the Bible.

Reading the Bible as literature also means reading it with a keen appreciation for the experiential, as distinct from abstract reasoning or propositional discourse. There is no necessary quarrel between the literary and propositional modes of discouse. The Bible contains an abundance of both forms, and all literature, no matter how concrete, embodies themes and ultimately a world view. It remains true, however, that literature tends to avoid the propositional in favor of immediate, concrete experience. Literature presents human experience. The literary impulse leads a writer to present an evil character in action instead of discoursing abstractly about vice, for example.

The usual way of reading and discussing the Bible leans decidedly toward theological abstraction. The basic vocabulary consists of such terms as creation, providence, sin, salvation, faith, love, and obedience. Reading the Bible as literature is necessary to balance the picture toward the experiential. The stories of the Bible are about providence, redemption, and judgment, but they are also full of adventure, mystery, rescue, suspense, courageous heroes, beautiful heroines, villains who get their comeuppance, boy heroes, pageantry, and celebration. Similarly, the Psalms are, on the one side, theological in content; yet they are also about the weather, trees, crops, lions, hunters, rocks of refuge, and human feelings such as terror and trust and joy. The book of Job is thematically about the philosophical problem of why the righteous suffer, but on another level it is about an ash heap, physical pain, psychological alienation and despair and anger, snow, hail, mountain goats, the ostrich, and the horse.

Perhaps we might say that to read the Bible as literature we must recover our ability to respond to biblical literature with a child’s sense of wonder. Certainly it requires a greater responsiveness to the immediate, experiential aspect of biblical literature than our theological bent has encouraged.

Why is a literary approach to the Bible necessary, especially since we seem to have gotten along without it for so long? I have already said that it is needed as an aid to understanding what the Bible says. Any piece of writing must be read in terms of what it is. A reader of Scripture is opening the door to misunderstanding whenever he ignores the literary principles of various literary forms. When he fails to ask literary questions he will go astray, interpreting figurative expressions as if they were intended literally, looking for theological propositions in a lyric poem that contains mainly an outpouring of human emotion or in a story that is mainly a record of events, allegorizing the Song of Solomon because he does not know how to respond to love poetry, turning Jonah into a model prophet because he fails to understand how satire works, regarding Ecclesiastes as wholly pessimistic because he overlooks its dialectical pattern and its quest structure, and so forth. Belief in the authority of the Bible will not by itself be sufficient for understanding if the reader ignores the literary principles that underlie the Bible and determine much of its meaning.

A second reason why we should read the Bible as literature is that this is how we appreciate its artistic beauty. Not much can be said to commend biblical scholars and preachers on this score. They have taught us a great deal about the Bible as a repository of truth and a guide to righteous conduct, but where do we learn about the Bible as an object of beauty and a source of artistic enrichment? Any consciously artistic work of literature has an aesthetic dimension that exists quite apart from the content. This purely artistic residue, made up of the usual elements of artistic form such as unity, progression, design, balance, contrast, repetition, and variation, is part of the beauty that every writer of literature communicates through his form, whatever his subject matter may be. It is this beauty that gets short-changed in the usual treatments of the Bible.

The parts of the Bible that are the most artistically wrought are sometimes relatively short on theological material or homiletic potential. The story of Ruth, for example, lends itself to much literary discussion, while commentaries on the book are short and sermons rare. The story of David and Goliath is full of narrative technique but by itself light in theological material. Psalm 23 possesses a wealth of poetic technique and artistry all out of proportion to what it says theologically about providence. If we continue to think only in theological categories we will slight works that are both important and high in their human appeal. What is needed is a set of literary terms and expectations and responses that will do justice to the artistic beauty of these works.

Reading the Bible as literature offers a third benefit, in addition to being an aid to understanding and artistic enrichment: the possibility of recovering and sustaining the wonder and delight of Bible reading. Our tendency has been to bury the Bible under too much abstract theology and historical background, failing to respond to its wealth of stories and characters and poems. A person who reads the Bible regularly needs variety. Many readers have discovered that reading the Bible as literature is a revitalizing practice. What is true of these readers can be true of ministers, Sunday-school teachers, and discussion leaders as well.

The literary approach to the Bible has large implications for biblical scholarship. For one thing, it is one of the best correctives to some of the abuses of negatively critical biblical scholarship. In particular, a genuinely literary approach to the Bible can counteract the tendency to reduce the biblical text to a series of fragments, the obsession with sources (real and imagined), the speculation about how many redactors worked on a text, an overemphasis on historical and linguistic background, and a disparagement of the supernatural element in biblical literature. On the other side, conservative biblical scholarship has neglected questions of literary form almost entirely. It, too, has been absorbed with questions of historicity, authorship, and theology to the neglect of biblical works as finished literary products. Surely the time has come for biblical scholars to move beyond the highly specialized study of what lies behind the Bible to a consideration of the text as a literary whole that communicates its message through literary forms.

How should we view the literary study of the Bible in the school classroom, where the current interest seems to have begun? I suggest that evangelical Christians affirm such study of the Bible in principle, while being critical of certain forms the movement has taken to date. The impetus for studying the Bible in public schools came with the Supreme Court’s Schempp decision of 1963, which stated, “It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities.” In principle the teaching of the Bible as literature is something that Christians should welcome. The initiative is currently in public education, and Christian schools should follow their lead. The argument that Christian schools, with their abundance of Bible courses, do not need a literature-of-the-Bible course taught by the English department is invalid, since the approaches taken by biblical scholars and literary critics are very different.

Although courses in the literature of the Bible are good in principle, in practice they often fail both academically and in acceptability to evangelical Christians. The chief problem is that the approach has not been genuinely literary. Sensing a lack of helpful literary criticism, teachers have taken biblical scholarship as their model instead of relying on their own knowledge of literature and literary criticism. Instead of asking literary questions of the text, many teachers have talked instead about sources, the documentary hypothesis, and historical background. This procedure has erred academically because the theories of the prevailing biblical scholarship have been presented as facts. Non-evangelical scholarship is so solidly entrenched that it is often regarded as factual, while the evangelical position is relegated to the status of a mere bias or theory.

In this climate of opinion, evangelicals cannot be expected to endorse what is taught in courses on the literature of the Bible. The solution to the problem is to insist that such courses be truly literary in nature. If the biblical text is approached as a work of literature, people of all religious persuasions can meet on a common ground in studying it. Literary discussions of the Bible are beginning to appear in print, with the result that teachers of biblical literature should find it increasingly easy to escape the problems posed by following the model of biblical scholarship.

Reading the Bible as literature is not simply a new fad. It is actually a heritage from the Reformation and Renaissance. Renaissance poets and rhetoricians showed a high regard for the literary dimension of the Bible. Such major English poets as Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, and Milton paraphrased the Psalms in English, partly as a kind of poetic apprenticeship. This practice attests the acceptance of biblical poetry as a model of poetic form and style. The noblest monument of Renaissance literary theory, Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology For Poesy, repeatedly draws upon the Bible for illustrations of literary forms. Petrarch wrote that “to call Christ now a lion, now a lamb, now a worm, what pray is that if not poetical? And you will find thousands of such things in the Scriptures, so very many that I cannot attempt to enumerate them.” During the Renaissance, moreover, English grammar schools gave considerable attention to the rhetorical style of the Bible, and at least five books of rhetoric were based mainly or solely on biblical examples. The author of one of these manuals of composition wrote regarding the Bible, “The Figurative … Elegancies of that blessed Book … abound with the most excellent and divinest eloquence.”

Most instructive of all is the example of the greatest English poet, John Milton. When writing a poem, Milton used biblical as well as classical models as guides. He speaks of the book of Job as a brief epic, the Song of Solomon as a pastoral drama, Revelation as a “tragedy,” by which he meant drama, and biblical lyrics as songs. It is obvious that Milton was accustomed to looking at the Bible in terms of literary forms. An early biographer of Milton tells us that when the blind poet was working on Paradise Lost he would daily listen to readings from the Bible as well as other literature. “David’s Psalms,” writes the biographer, “were in esteem with him above all poetry.” That this esteem was literary and artistic as well as doctrinal is evident from Milton’s own statement that the lyric poems of the Bible, “not in their divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition, may be easily made appear over all the kinds of lyric poesy to be incomparable.”

I urge a recovery of this kind of view of Scripture.

Pass the Word Along

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I recently saw myself on a telecast that celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Billy Graham’s first large crusade. Somehow I never look or sound the way I think I do. Fortunately, I rarely have to see and hear the replay—and I have kind friends. CHRISTIANITY TODAY was co-sponsor of the three-night Hollywood Bowl celebration last September. What the TV audience did not know is that the appeal for famine relief at the Bowl yielded $25,000. Billy Graham suggested that the money go to Africa, and it is now at work feeding the hungry there.

Three-quarters of the twentieth century have ended, and the cherished dreams of the human heart for peace, prosperity, education, and leisure have not been realized for most of the world. What have we to look forward to? Famine? Wars? Economic dislocation? Scarcity? None of us knows. But Christians have a blessed certainty: Christ, whose incarnation we just celebrated; Christ, who is with us in the person of the Holy Spirit; Christ, who is coming again. Our real hope for 1975 is in him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

“The lives Christians live are no different from the lives other people live. Christians are not meant to be different.” Thus a distinguished member of one of the mainline denominations developed his thesis that, while believers have accepted certain moral and ethical values, this may equally well be said of some atheists and agnostics. If the Christian has any distinguishing marks they are not in the area of conduct.

He went on to maintain that Christians are deluding themselves if they think they are any better than others in the community. He was saying that Christians ought not to be different, not that they ought to but do not measure up. The followers of Christ have a duty to identify themselves with the community. They must not cut themselves off in the conviction that they are different from other men. Indeed, my friend detected a tendency to spiritual pride among Christians and thought that the sooner they abandon any pretense at being better than others the better—the better both for themselves (it would inject a note of realism into their living) and for their community (Christians would join wholeheartedly in its affairs with no inhibitions).

These days it is scarcely necessary to emphasize that the Christian is a member of a community and that he has a duty as a member of that community. The adherents of “secular Christianity” have stressed that the place of the Christian is right in the middle of the community where secular men are. He must live his Christian life precisely there. He must know the heartache and the struggle, not try to insulate himself from it.

This is an insight we dare not surrender. To build up a ghetto mentality is fatal. The Christian faith is not some delicate plant that can survive only within the confines of a closed community. It is a faith that can and must be lived where the going is hard, where the affairs of men are decided and the issues squarely joined.

But it is quite another thing to say that the Christian must be indistinguishable from other men as he goes about his life in the arena of public life. “And such were some of you” (1 Cor. 6:11) follows a catalogue of sins habitually found in the community from which the Corinthian Christians had come. “You did not so learn Christ” (Eph. 4:20) follows another such list.

New Testament Christians were expected to live lives different significantly from those of men in the unbelieving world in which they had their being. Indeed, they were to be known by their differences. Jesus himself said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35), and he prayed that they might be “perfectly one” so that the world would know that the Father had sent him (John 17:23).

We cannot dismiss such passages by regarding the little defeats and victories of individual Christians as of no great importance in the providence of God. Some, it is true, reason that Christians are in the world to be the servant Church. They should accordingly go on with the business of serving the community wherever the need appears, unconcerned about whether they seem different or not. To do otherwise is to be preoccupied with self and by that very fact to defeat the purpose of God.

Now it is true that in some respects the Christian is to be like others in the community. He is a citizen like others. He pays his taxes and performs his civic duties. He should never adopt a “holier than thou” attitude but should see himself as a sinner like all others. He must not strive self-consciously to be different. All this is true.

But to make it the whole story is to overlook the fact that in the New Testament the Church is the beloved community, a holy temple in the Lord, a kingdom of priests, and much more. It is impossible to take the New Testament seriously and conclude that Christians were never meant to be indistinguishable from the community. They are to play their full part in the community, but that is not the same thing.

The tragedy is that Christians in our day all too often resemble and differ from the community in the wrong things. We take our place as full members of the community, but that usually means that we are just as conventional as society in general. We accept the values of the community instead of those of Christ. It is not for nothing that Christians are so often identified with a Western middle-class ethos. Even when we engage in missionary work we tend to insist that not only the faith but the interpretation of the faith that is normally given in our own culture is mandatory.

We make contemporary values in our society the standard, not the Bible. We are conventional. We confuse middle-class norms and habits with morality. Like the Pharisee we thank God that we are not like other men. But the others almost always turn out to be those whom our society rejects. And in the process, again like the Pharisee, we show ourselves to be exactly like some other men, the establishment men of our day.

And when we are different from the community we are different because we are smug and self-satisfied, because we feel that God is our Protector in a special sense. We are different because we have our own way of saying, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, tht temple of the Lord are these.”

John V. Taylor finds that most “really believing Christians are more scrupulous, patient and personally caring than others,” perhaps more unselfish, possessed of “a far stronger sense of meaning and purpose in life.” But he finds also among Christians “just as much greed, apathy and prejudice in our attitudes to society, and probably rather more intolerance and depression” (The Go-Between God, p. 124).

This is a careful weighing up of the pros and the cons, with a recognition of the not inconsiderable Christian achievement. But in the end Taylor is constrained to ask, “What has become of the new manhood and the new age?”

And that is the question I want to ask, too. It is so plain in the New Testament that the Christian is much more than a representative of his culture who has a yen to serve that it is worth asking where the contemporary Church has gone wrong. Christ came to bring men new life, not simply to tidy up the old life a trifle. He died to bring men a real redemption from sin, not what Thielicke has called “the flim-flam of respectable Christianity.” He left on record a call to all his followers to take up a cross. And he promised to send them the Holy Spirit.

This adds up to a sizable piece of spiritual equipment. As the New Testament puts it, Christians have a great deal going for them. In providing for redemption and for sanctification God has done much for every one of his people. He might reasonably expect more from us than he usually gets.

The New Testament pictures for us men who in the light of what God has done turned their world upside down—and who leave us with the challenge to do the same for ours.

Relations between the Vatican and Israel are somewhat strained these days. Last month, after Melkite Catholic archbishop Hilarion Capucci of Jerusalem was found guilty by an Israeli court of smuggling arms and explosives for Palestinian guerrillas and sentenced to twelve years in prison, the Vatican voiced its “profound regret and sorrow” over the sentencing. It said the court action could only “aggravate” tensions in the Holy Land. Israeli officials and newspapers reacted with surprise and concern that the Vatican failed to condemn the prelate’s actions. Arab leaders and some Israeli newspapers asked that Capucci, 52, be deported instead of jailed, but authorities indicated last month he would have to serve his sentence.

The Syrian-born Capucci, prelate over 4,500 Eastern-rite Roman Catholics (most of them Arabs) in central Israel, was arrested last August after his return from a trip to Lebanon. Police found large quantities of weapons and explosives stashed in his Mercedes sedan (see October 11, 1974, issue, page 15).

Throughout his trial Capucci maintained that he was innocent and that the charges against him were “trumped up” because of his defense of the rights of the Palestine people. He told the three-judge Israeli court he could not recognize its validity because “Jerusalem is an Arabic city and Israeli law does not apply here.”

Capucci’s case resulted in turmoil within the Melkite church (the Melkites are descendants of Eastern Orthodox members who united with Rome in 1724 while retaining some distinct customs, one of many such Eastern-rite groups). Melkite archbishop Joseph Raya of Acre, overseer of 40,000 Melkites in northern Israel, criticized Capucci after the arrest, saying a clergyman who engages in terrorist activities violates the spirit of Jesus. Raya earlier had defended the Jews’ right to Jerusalem and had made other statements friendly toward Israel. Beirut newspapers denounced him as the “Zionist bishop of Israel,” and pressure was apparently applied by Patriarch Maximos V Hakim, the Beirut-based world head of the Melkites and Raya’s predecessor in Israel. In September Raya announced his resignation and left for a retreat house in Canada. Many Jewish and Christian leaders in Israel expressed regret at his departure, describing him as a man of God and truth who stood by his convictions.

Other ominous clouds appeared last month. A spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) vowed that no effort would be spared to secure Capucci’s release.

Ethiopia: Atop A Time Bomb

Overseas missionaries serving in Ethiopia have been relatively unaffected by the political turmoil of the past few months. Mission executives say there have been no hassles with the military government, and the Lutheran World Federation-operated radio station RVOG (Radio Voice of the Gospel) in Addis Ababa has been operating normally.

With nationals involved in politics, however, it’s a different story. Among the fifty-nine executed in November was former Ethiopian premier Endalkachew Makonnen, president of the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations. And among those in jail awaiting trial last month was Emmanuel Abraham, 61, a former minister of mines, who is president of the 200,000-member Evangelical (Lutheran) Church of Mekane Yesus.

A world-wide outcry by church leaders and others over the executions and imprisonments may have saved a number of lives, including that of the deposed Emperor Haile Selassie, the colorful “Lion of Judah” who reigned over the state Ethiopian Orthodox Church. (About 35 per cent of the 27 million Ethiopians are listed as members. Muslims make up an equal percentage, and 25 per cent are designated pagan.) Selassie delivered an address at the 1966 Berlin World Congress on Evangelism.

The complex political situation involves the rebellious province of Eritrea, land reform, near-famine conditions in some parts, Christian-Muslim tensions, and power grabbing.

Some church leaders say the missionaries are sitting on a time bomb.

HIS AND HERS

His last name was Schmidt, hers was Campbell. But the married couple believed in equality and in sharing everything, so they joined their names with a hyphen.

Both Tom Campbell-Schmidt, 28, and Patty Campbell-Schmidt, 25, are ordained Presbyterian ministers. They share one position as associate minister of Newport United Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Washington. Each is on the job half the time, each gets half the pay, and each does half the household work.

Religion In Transit

Among those killed in the recent TWA plane crash near Washington, D. C., was Epifania R. Castro Resposo, director of Church World Service’s planned-parenthood program. She was formerly a leader in theological education in the Philippines. (The CWF is the relief arm of the National Council of Churches.)

The 150-student Mid-America Baptist Seminary will move this year from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee, where it has purchased a Jewish synagogue adjacent to Bellevue (Southern) Baptist Church. The two-year-old school, founded by Southern Baptists troubled by alleged liberal trends in denominational seminaries, will use Bellevue and the converted synagogue as its campus.

United Church of Christ membership has declined from 2.06 million in 1964 to 1.89 million currently. President Robert V. Moss called for “a new type of evangelism” to counter the slippage.

Divorce in America continues on the upswing, according to Bureau of Census findings. There were 63 divorced persons last year for every 1,000 married persons living with their spouses, compared to 47 in 1970 and 35 in 1960. In the twelve-month period ending in March there were 925,000 divorces, an increase of some 200,000 over the estimated 703,000 divorces in all of 1973.

Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who last month announced his candidacy for the U. S. presidency, is an active Southern Baptist lay leader. He has helped with evangelistic campaigns of Billy Graham and Campus Crusade for Christ, and is himself an outspoken witness for Christ.

Thanks to a change of heart by the rules committee, the new charter of the Democratic party contains in its preamble a reference to being “under God.”

Teen-age Guru Maharaj Ji has decided to leave his $80,000 mansion in Denver and move to a $400,000 estate in the Los Angeles suburb of Malibu, taking along a new sports-car addition, a $22,000 Jensen. In Nelson, British Columbia, Darby McNeal, 31, wants to give her $400,000 inheritance to the guru’s Divine Light Mission, but her sister has asked the B. C. Supreme Court to intervene. Meanwhile, the guru’s New York business agent was indicted on charges of conspiracy, fraud, and sale of unregistered stock.

Anglican bishop John Bothwell, 48, of Niagara, Ontario, couldn’t get any of his thirty-four colleagues in the Canadian House of Bishops to second his motion that individual bishops be allowed to ordain women priests for their own dioceses. The denomination’s General Synod voted approval of women priests more than a year ago, but the bishops decided to bring the issue back for ratification at the 1975 synod.

The sometimes controversial Bruce McLeod, 45, resigned as pastor of the influential Bloor Street United Church in Toronto. No trouble. He says he merely wants time to reevaluate ministerial priorities.

The United Methodist Church sold nearly five acres of its proposed national headquarters property in Washington, D. C., to a condominium developer for $2.2 million cash. (The church retained 11.8 acres of the original nineteen-acre parcel, which cost $1.5 million in 1957.)

The Southern Baptist Convention appointed 250 foreign missionaries in 1974, bringing the total of foreign workers to more than 2,600, an SBC record.

Young Life, an evangelical youth-ministry organization based in Colorado, received a $500,000 grant from the Lilly foundation. To be given over the next two years, the amount completes a $1 million commitment. Young Life will use the funds mainly for field staff recruiting and training. The group now has 425 field staffers.

Personalia

Come mid-January, William M. “Fish Bait” Miller, 65, will head home to Mississippi and maybe a favorite fishing hole there. Miller, a Southern Baptist whose witness is well known on Capitol Hill, lost during a vote of the Democrat caucus his $40,000-per-year post as House doorkeeper, a job he has held for twenty-five years.

Major General Roy M. Terry, a United Methodist clergyman who recently retired as Air Force chief of chaplains, has joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes as head of its church-related ministries.

Episcopal priest Graham Pulkingham, well-known leader of the charismatic Church of the Redeemer parish in Houston, has resigned to head up a charismatic church on the Isle of Cumbrae, Scotland. A renewal group he developed in London last year will move to Cumbrae, and its outreach ministry will be linked to that of the Houston church.

New presidents: Southern Baptist pastor Landrum P. Leavell II, 48, of Wichita Falls, Texas, to New Orleans Baptist Seminary; Assemblies of God minister Robert H. Spence to the 1,165-student Evangel College in Springfield, Missouri; Church of the Brethren leader J. Henry Long to American Leprosy Missions.

Prominent fundamentalist pastor and author David Otis Fuller, 71, has retired after forty years as pastor of the Wealthy Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

A black American Baptist clergyman, Theodore R. Britton, Jr., who has been serving as an executive with the federal Housing and Urban Affairs department (HUD), was nominated by President Ford to be ambassador to Barbados and Granada.

Evangelism-in-Depth expert Charles E. Koch, Jr., was appointed executive director of the New Jersey-based Latin America Mission, which has 196 missionaries. Koch, a graduate of Philadelphia College of Bible and Houghton College, joined LAM in 1961.

United Methodist executive David James Randolph, a former professor at Drew seminary, is the new senior minister of Christ Church in New York City, succeeding the retired Harold A. Bosley. Bosley’s predecessor at the United Methodist church was the late Ralph W. Sockman, who served there for forty years.

World Scene

The Christian Church in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, has appointed three pastor-evangelists to serve the growing congregation on remote Selayar Island. Since 1972, some 500 members have been baptized and nearly 300 are awaiting baptism, according to an Indonesian Council of Churches report.

A World Council of Churches commission reports the WCC has channeled more than $1.2 million worth of agricultural aid, medical help, and educational supplies to liberation movements in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.

In one of his first acts as Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglican prelate Donald Coggan launched an $8.2 million appeal to preserve Canterbury Cathedral from the ravages of weather and chemical pollution in the air. The church’s sandstone shell is flaking and its twelfth-century glass windows are endangered. Annually, two million tourists visit the shrine, which marks the spot where Augustine brought Christianity to England in Saxon times.

Some 300,000 pilgrims were expected to journey to Goa on the west coast of India by January 5 for perhaps the last viewing of what is reputed to be the undecayed body of the Catholic missionary Francis Xavier, who died in 1552. It has been shown thirteen times at intervals of about ten years. Church authorities say this may be the last viewing; the body is showing signs of deterioration.

By a single vote, members of the Norwegian Parliament defeated a government proposal for free abortion. Because the socialists have a narrow majority, it was thought the measure would carry, but a socialist M. P. representing a predominantly evangelical sector voted against the government proposal. Socialist premier Tryggve Bratteli says he will try again.

A recent BBC television poll found that only 29 per cent of the British people believe in a personal God (a drop of 9 per cent from poll findings ten years ago) and 39 per cent believe in life after death (down 14 per cent). Forty-two per cent never go to church, and another 11 per cent attend rarely.

Fire recently destroyed the stately old 105-room Powerscourt House in Enniskerry, Ireland. The mansion, built about 1720, was the scene of prophetic conferences in the 1830s. Here in 1833 Plymouth Brethren teacher J. N. Darby expounded the view that the Church will be raptured out of the world before the start of the tribulation mentioned in Bible prophecy.

Under a recently enacted law in Libya, Muslims and non-Muslims alike will be liable to between ten and forty lashes for drinking, selling, possessing, or making alcohol. Anyone found guilty of offering a Muslim an alcoholic drink is subject to a jail term of up to six months. Other laws call for the amputation of a convicted thief’s right hand and for imprisonment and public flogging of adulterers and fornicators.

Bishop Mortimer Arias of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Bolivia reports membership of the denomination doubled in the last four years, from 2,000 to more than 4,000.

DEATH

STEPHEN GILL SPOTTSWOOD, 77, retired bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and board chairman of the NAACP; in Washington, D. C., of cancer.