The days around Christmas may be the busiest time of the year for many a pastor and church. But thoughtlessness would be the worst evil to befall Christmastide. The Church from the early days has given prominence in the preparation of Christmas to John the Baptist and his call to “prepare the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight.” The eve of Christmas is as good a time as any to survey and mend one’s ways in the light not only of the first, but also of the second Coming.

In today’s evangelical churches one of the deepest needs is the need for biblically committed theology. A few months ago CHRISTIANITY TODAY carried an article by Rene Padilla on “A Church Without Theology.” He was speaking of the church in Latin America. But with evangelicals this calamity seems to be global.

In his opening address to the Lausanne congress, Billy Graham traced the change of direction in the missionary movement of the twentieth century back to “certain theological changes, subtly infiltrating Christian youth movements, causing some to weaken their ties to orthodox faith.” This is true. But it is not confined to the early part of the century. It is still going on.

This certainly holds true for the German scene. Much of its theology today is not of the kind that would awaken or strengthen a living relationship with God. The severe language of the Frankfurt and Berlin declarations on mission and ecumenism may be much better understood against the background of the effects of almost forty years of lack of evangelical theology, roughly since the deaths of Adolf Schlatter and Wilhelm Lütgert. Among these adverse effects are the general weakness of articulation of the evangelical stance and its consequent irrelevance in the public arena, especially the media, except in paid-for broadcasting time. These effects are also felt when evangelicals try to establish their own theological academies in order to remedy the situation, but find it difficult to staff them adequately with indigenous teachers.

Once the chain of tradition of biblical theology is broken one finds it very hard to connect again. As Ortega has said: Put your hands into the lap for one moment, and the jungle proceeds. How much more in forty years!

The worst outcome of this deficiency, though, is the loss of not a few gifted young men and women who, coming from evangelical homes, begin to study theology and end up as sidesmen of secularism or as propagandists of Marxist revolution, because no alternative way of thinking seemed available.

Some say that a similar weakness of evangelicalism may now be observed in Africa. At Lausanne, Gottfried Osei-Mensah, speaking of the future prospects of Christianity in that continent, said: “The phenomenal growth of the African independent churches shows syncretistic signs, perhaps unintentionally at present, but due to lack of biblical teaching.” Although the majority of African churches are said to be evangelical, there is at this moment no evangelical seminary leading to higher theological degrees. Efforts to get such an institution started at least for the French-speaking area do not as yet receive all the encouragement from evangelical quarters that they should get. So the best young men may again grow into theological liberalism, for there is in Africa a strong urge to learn.

In Asia, too, we hear of difficulties with young churches wherever there has been much emphasis on evangelism and very little on subsequent instruction. Where this is lacking churches are vulnerable to breakdown or to conquest by secularism and syncretism.

In the United States, though, evangelical Christians may think that all this is certainly not their problem and that they have all the theology they need. This may be a serious temptation to self-deceit. It may understandably arise from the fact that U. S. evangelicals often have their own church life and educational institutions right through all levels and so can afford something like a separate Christian culture.

But there are questions that keep coming up. Princeton once was a fortress of orthodoxy. What does it teach today? What happened to the World Student Christian Federation and International Missionary Council? Weren’t they both originally alive with evangelical conviction? Why do so many evangelical foundations after some time go the way of disease and decay? Some of the large denominations in the United States now have these problems.

The truth is that no one can simply keep out alien ideas from college or church in the long run. We are living in an age of almost atmospheric atheism, and seminaries cannot be turned into airtight tanks. There is ever that inborn tendency inside man toward moral autonomy and secularism. The challenge cannot be ignored; it must be answered, and that is part of the task of theology. A church is out-thought before it is out-fought.

Of course there is today much substantial teaching and literature in the field of evangelical Bible exegesis. There is conspicuously less in dogmatics and ethics. But systematic theology has the habit of setting the tone for theology and the church. The many reprints of older works of systematic theology in the United States, grateful as we are for them, nevertheless signal a serious lack and the dire need for an up-to-date presentation of biblical truths. As long as there is no public, living, evangelical alternative in theology, evangelical churches may win new believers, but they will continue to lose some of the best of their own sons and daughters. A Christian’s head cannot remain empty.

All those who are committed to Holy Scripture and will seek their answers there must quickly find their way back to full theological consciousness. We need an equilibrium of evangelism and teaching. Especially those working in the field of mission and evangelism are duty-bound to see that those who have found faith will also receive further instruction.

A church without theology has no answer to the challenge of today’s ideologies, to Marxism, Freudianism, secular humanism, and a host of others. Such a church will surely come to see the sad moment of mourning: “Those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed” (Lam. 2:22). Some of the theological educators at Lausanne who proudly pronounced they were mainly interested in methodology might well ponder their purposes again, not just their means.

This is, moreover, a strange moment of stillness in the torrents of theology. The great teachers of a past generation have gone, and it is not yet decided which turn theology will take. Here, too, there are large opportunities before us. There could indeed come a renaissance of evangelical theology. But it will certainly take hard work and the combined efforts of all who see the task set before them.—KLAUS BOCKMÜHL, professor at the St. Chrischona Pastors’ Training Institute, Basel, Switzerland.

When he made a confession of faith in Jesus Christ and became a Protestant in 1949, Dr. Ruben Gil lost his job as a journalist for the Falange (Spain’s only political party). “I had no work at all for nine months. I was persecuted,” he remembers.

But the Southern Baptist convert went on to become pastor of a Baptist church in Alicante on the east coast of Spain before becoming coordinator two years ago of the Iberian Congress on Evangelization. The gathering, held in the Congress and Exposition Palace of Madrid last June, drew more than 3,000 evangelicals from Spain and Portugal—the largest demonstration of Protestant unity in Spanish history.

“Evangelicals in Spain and Portugal have entered a new day,” commented Gil, who heads the OMS International mission unit in Madrid. Others who have watched political and religious tides in Spain for the past decade agree that religious liberty is steadily increasing in this land where 99 per cent of the 34 million inhabitants are considered Roman Catholic.

“What persecution there is, is provoked,” says Dr. Gil. Other evangelicals, like John Blake, who books and shows Billy Graham films throughout Spain, say this assessment is largely true but that pockets of resistance—especially in the conservative, rural areas of Spain—still exist.

In a sunny country that has been a virtual theocracy for 500 years, all Protestant and Jewish organizations founded since the Religious Freedom Law was implemented in 1968 annually must file with the government a list of the names and addresses of members, a financial statement, and a statement of belief. But the requirement is evidence of religious freedom, not oppression, an observer points out. Spain probably has the smallest Protestant minority of any country in the Western world.

And as Spain edges toward a new political era, there are signs of slow but steady democratization, evident particularly in the gradual loosening of ties between church and state. A process of transition was set in motion last July when General Francisco Franco, 81, the ruler of Spain since 1939, transferred power temporarily to Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon while Franco was gravely ill. Prince Juan Carlos, 36, heir to the now-vacant Spanish throne, will take over—it is presumed—upon the death of the autocratic Catholic chief of state.

Even under the absolute dominion of the Franco regime, the constitution approved in 1966 has provided for the gradual liberalization of the political system. The alliance between the Catholic Churches and the Falange is breaking up, observers say, because of forces within both the church and the government.

Explained one young priest: “Younger priests who studied at the time of Vatican II are generally interested in the brotherhood of man and are ecumenical. The older priests are more traditional, so there is a tension.”

The conservative bishops, though a strong and vocal minority, are waning in number and as a prop to the Franco regime.

The 1953 Concordat between Spain and the Vatican is still in force, however. Article 1 begins: “The Catholic Apostolic Roman religion will continue to be the sole religion of the Spanish nation and will enjoy the right and prerogatives which are due it in conformity with the Divine Law and the Canon Law.”

The Concordat lays down the rules between state and church. In return for control of the naming of Spanish bishops—an important political advantage for Franco—the Spanish government subsidizes the church with buildings, salaries, and tax benefits. It frees priests from the jurisdiction of civil courts and guarantees the sanctity of church buildings.

Though officials of the Spanish hierarchy, the Vatican, and the Franco government all agree the Concordat needs revising, efforts to do so have thus far failed. Archbishop Agostini Casaroli, the Vatican’s counterpart of Henry Kissinger, has held secret talks with Spanish officials in Madrid several times in the past year. Neither he nor his officers will tell the press what progress—if any—toward revising, or perhaps dropping, the Concordat has been made. Nevertheless, there are clear indications of Vatican backing of the emerging reform movement, according to clergyman Thomas S. Goslin of Madrid, a United Presbyterian attached to the Spanish Evangelical Church and the only American Protestant ecumenical missionary to Spain. “Winds of change are blowing everywhere,” he said during an interview in Madrid’s posh Euro-building Hotel where his English-speaking Community Church meets each Sunday morning in a lobby.

So far the Spaniards have reacted calmly as a momentous chapter in their history draws to an end. Franco has expressed hope that an orderly transition of power will preserve the continuity of the regime and shore it against any avalanches in the future. But pressures in the transition period are apt to be severe. Even evangelical leaders, who firmly approve the principle of church-state separation, have apprehensions over what could happen if the church-state cord is cut completely.

“Full separation may kill both [church and state],” reasoned Goslin, pointing out that together the two are a “real theocracy.” And evangelical cleric Jose Cardona, a Baptist minister who is the Spanish government’s mediator assigned to Protestant groups, was explicit: Full separation would cut off financial support from the government needed by the church.

The friendly, energetic Cardona, 50, is the man most responsible for the Religious Freedom Law, which gives recognition and legal standing to Protestants. He is secretary to a Madrid judicial court. But he is also secretary of the Evangelical Legal Assistance Service. Wearing that hat, he applies the religious liberty law to specific cases and goes to bat for victims of discrimination. His role in religious freedom is thus a key one, especially for evangelicals.

‘The law guarantees that authorities must recognize the churches and their pastors, and it provides for new schools, churches, seminaries, Protestant books and magazines, radio broadcasts, and public meetings,” he said. Until the law was passed, Protestants couldn’t occupy buildings that looked like churches, couldn’t put up identifying signs—not even a cross on the outside of the building.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the new freedom has fragmented Spanish Protestantism, says Goslin. On the one hand, removal of pressure from the Catholic Church has increased dialogue between the conciliar Protestant groups and the Catholic hierarchy; on the other, this has alienated conservative and fundamental Protestants—many of whom are still bitterly anti-Catholic—from the ecumenical Protestants.

In 1972, for example, Bishop Antonio Briva Mirabent of Astorga gave a major address at the biennial synod of the Spanish Evangelical Church (the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church is the only other Spanish Protestant group to have official fellowship with Catholics). He was the first Catholic prelate to speak at a national Protestant gathering in Spain. In contrast, Catholics were not invited to the Iberian Congress on Evangelization.

Modern Protestantism in Spain dates to the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39. When Franco came to power—with insurgent forces and the help of Hitler and Mussolini—Protestant churches were prohibited and believers were scattered. Congregations gradually returned, however. Pastors were trained, and missionaries resumed work. From a mere handful in 1939, Spanish Protestants have grown—under difficult circumstances—to 30,000. Calling themselves “evangelicals” to avoid bad feelings attached to the word “Protestant,” they now have 400 meeting places and 350 national workers and pastors. And there are 150 North American missionaries in Spain.

The largest denominational groups are the Brethren Assemblies (known as the Plymouth Brethren in the U. S.), with 100 churches and preaching points, and nearly 10,000 members; the Spanish Evangelical Baptist Union, associated with the Southern Baptist Convention, with 100 meeting places, and 6,000 to 7,000 members; the Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches of Spain, with thirty-five churches and 3,000 members; the Spanish Evangelical Church, established in the nineteenth century, and representing historic Reformation Protestantism, with fifty churches and 3,000 members; the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church, about the same size, and various Pentecostal groups having a total of several thousand members.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses claim exceptional growth, and an ethnic church of several thousand thrives among the Gypsies. The heaviest concentration of evangelicals is along the east coast, particularly in the Barcelona area. One of the country’s three Protestant seminaries is there; the others are in Madrid. Combined enrollment is under a hundred.

The remaining resistance toward Protestant groups in Spain, say sources, centers around the use of public buildings for evangelistic meetings, military allegiance, and Canon Law as it relates to mixed marriages.

John Blake of Worldwide Pictures, a Billy Graham subsidiary, said that three times in the past three years local anti-Protestant pressure either kept him—or almost kept him—from showing Graham films. Protestants are not allowed to broadcast on Spanish television. A few religious programs are permitted on radio if stringent conditions are observed. Protestant churches, observes Goslin, cannot yet own real property or maintain bank accounts in the name of the congregation.

Goslin also points to a requirement of new military recruits: they must pledge allegiance to the Spanish flag during a ceremonial mass. Refusal may bring jail; some Protestant youths have preferred confinement to taking part.

Several months ago a Canon Law case involving a woman convert to the Spanish Evangelical Church received headline attention. The law says a Catholic can obtain a legal separation from a spouse if the partner becomes a member of a non-Catholic church. The woman convert tried unsuccessfully to contest her Catholic mate’s separation action—which included child custody and property settlement.

The Age Of Consent

Two leading British churchmen recently proposed liberalization of criminal law relating to rape, incest, prostitution, and the age of consent for both homosexual and heterosexual acts.

The proposals come from the Sexual Law Reform Society, whose chairman is Dr. John A. T. Robinson. As bishop of Woolwich he rocked the church establishment with his courtroom defense of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960, and with his book Honest to God a decade ago.

A member of the society’s working party that produced the report is Lord Timothy Beaumont, a millionaire Anglican priest who is treasurer of the Liberal party and was publisher of the now defunct radical left-wing fortnightly New Christian. Also on the working party is Anglican laywoman Monica Furlong, a best-selling author and journalist.

Among their recommendations:

The age of consent for both boys and girls to engage in homosexual as well as heterosexual acts should be lowered to 14 [the present age of consent for girls is 16 and for male homosexuals, 21]. Most other sexual offenses including rape and incest should be abolished or merged with other laws.… It should no longer be an offense to live on the earnings of prostitution nor to use premises as a brothel.

The report is not entirely permissive, however. It calls for sentences up to five years for having sexual relations with a girl or boy known to be under 14, and up to two years for procuring a boy or girl under 18 to engage in prostitution. It calls for maximum freedom of sexual choice and lists only three areas where restriction or punishment is needed: where there was no true consent, where one party was not fully responsible because of age or condition, or where direct public offense is given and complained of.

At a press conference to launch the report Bishop Robinson, now dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, described the present law governing sexual offenses as a “jungle.”

Reaction from other British churchmen has so far been cautious, though one evangelical leader commented: “At this rate Bishop Robinson will soon be defending Baby Chatterley’s Lover.”

JOHN CAPON

Religion In Transit

Representatives of sixteen religious publishing houses have formed the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, based in La Habra, California. Robert L. Mosier, president of Baptist Publications of Denver, was elected president. Don Brandenburgh of Whittier, California, is executive director.

Those fifteen-month-old Siamese twins separated in September by surgeon C. Everett Koop and a medical team at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia (see October 11 issue, page 46) left the hospital on Thanksgiving to return to the Dominican Republic. The evangelical Medical Assistance Programs of Wheaton, Illinois, with which Koop is associated, has assumed follow-up care.

Between January, 1957, and last June, Vice-President-designate Nelson Rockefeller contributed $24.7 million to charitable causes, he says, including $782,763 to religious groups. More than $250,000 went to New York Catholic work. Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, pastored by Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., received $132,312. The independent Union Church of Pocantico Hills, New York, of which Rockefeller is a member, received $29,596. A non-church item was $581,000 to the United Jewish Appeal in New York City.

Federal Communications Commission chief, Richard E. Wiley, a United Methodist, has been discussing with television network executives the growing complaints about the moral content of television programming. Several congressional committees want the FCC to report by the end of the month on what is being done to cut down on excessive explicit sexual content and violence on TV.

Members of First Baptist Church, Dallas, oversubscribed the church’s proposed $4 million budget for 1975 by more than $160,000.

The U. S. Supreme Court upheld the Church of the New Song as a proper religion and therefore entitled to the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment. New Song was founded in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary by prisoner Harry W. Theriault, self-styled bishop of the church. Theriault, now imprisoned in Texas, once testified the church began as a game (adherents claimed steak was a necessary element to their faith). The case began when Iowa prison officials refused New Song members access to the prison chapel.

Raymond Brown, principal of Spurgeon’s College, a Baptist institution in London, was elected president of the British Evangelical Alliance effective January 1, replacing Anglican pastor John Stott.

Dr. W. Sterling Cary, president of the National Council of Churches, will become executive minister of the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ when his NCC term ends in January.

By virtue of his new title in succeeding the retiring Michael Ramsey as archbishop of Canterbury and primate of the Church of England, Archbishop Donald Coggan will also become president of the British Council of Churches.

The Reinhold Niebuhr Award was conferred at the University of Chicago upon Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov and deposed South African church leader Beyers Naude. Both men were cited for their advocacy of human rights. Sakharov’s award was presented to a proxy. Each winner got a citation and $5,000.

Appeals have been pouring into the West in recent months from Soviet evangelicals seeking relief from oppression by authorities in their country. Some of the appeals have been addressed directly to United Nations general secretary Kurt Waldheim, the World Council of Churches, the Baptist World Alliance, and Christian leaders in the West. Some are copies of appeals sent to Soviet authorities. In many cases accompanying documents cite names, places, dates, and details of grievances.

A notable current case involves Soviet church leader Georgi Vins, 46, of Kiev in the Ukraine. Trained as an electrical engineer, he is secretary of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (CCECB), the dissident Baptist movement that the government says is illegal.

Vins, a founder of the CCECB, was arrested in 1966 after a Baptist demonstration outside Communist party headquarters in Moscow and sentenced to three years at hard labor in a prison camp. He emerged in 1969 broken in health. A new case was opened against him in 1970, but he went into hiding and carried on the direction of the CCECB secretly. Late last March the authorities found him and jailed him in Kiev pending trial.

One of those appealing on his behalf through open letters is Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, who himself is in hot water with the government for his outspoken advocacy of human rights. In an interview published in Dagen, a Stockholm daily, Sakharov says Vins is charged with vagrancy (not holding a job and hiding from the police), using religion for crime against the rights of citizens (living on the means of others), and violating church-state separation laws. He says Vins wants a Christian lawyer from the West (relatives have written the WCC requesting one) rather than an atheist who would not understand or be sympathetic toward the religious issues involved.

Vins’s mother Lidia spent three years in a Soviet prison camp (1970–1973) allegedly for protesting government harassment of her son and other CCECB leaders. She is among the thousands of Soviet citizens who have signed appeals this year to Soviet leaders asking that constitutional guarantees of religious freedom be implemented and the persecution stopped. She and others have also asked Waldheim to appoint a United Nations investigative commission to look into Soviet violation of human rights. (Her husband Pyotr Vins was arrested for religious activities and died in a prison camp some years ago—of torture, allege relatives.)

The CCECB is the product of a conflict within the main Protestant body in the U.S.S.R., the officially recognized All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (AUCECB), composed of Baptists, Pentecostals, Mennonites, and others. In 1960, under government direction, the AUCECB revised its structure, assuming a measure of central control over local church affairs—in opposition to traditional Baptist views of local autonomy. The AUCECB said it would recognize only those congregations that had been legally registered by the state, in effect giving the government a determining role in church life. (Two-thirds of the churches had been unable to obtain this registration, according to a historical sketch in the May–June issue of Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, published by Blahoslav S. Hruby at 475 Riverside Drive in New York City.)

The AUCECB went on to appoint visiting “supervisors” who discouraged local-church evangelistic endeavors and tried to prevent young adults from joining. Youths under 18 were banned from membership outright.

Because of these and other AUCECB policies, a number of Baptist ministers, led by A. F. Prokofiev, G. K. Kriuchkov, and Georgi Vins, formed a so-called Initiative Group to press for reform and new leadership in the AUCECB. (This led to their being known variously as Initsiativniki or Initiative and Reform Baptists.)

An AUCECB congress in 1963 took up the issues, but the reformers were not there (most were in jail). The AUCECB officers were reelected. Some of the objectionable regulations, however, were rescinded. Nevertheless, the reformers established their own separate national fellowship in 1965, the CCECB—an outlaw organization, in the eyes of Soviet officials. In 1966 the AUCECB revised its constitution, apologized for the 1960 regulations, and asked the reformers to return. There was no effective response; Vins and the other leaders were in prison.

Meanwhile, a Council of Prisoners’ Relatives (CPR) had been organized at a Reform Baptist conference in Moscow in 1964. Its threefold purpose was to keep church members informed about persecution and imprisonments throughout the U.S.S.R., to petition the Soviet government on behalf of those imprisoned for religious activities, and to maintain files on prisoners and the children of Christians taken into state custody to prevent a Christian upbringing. The CPR also endeavored to provide material relief to families deprived of their breadwinners.

Over the years since then a steady flow of CPR-produced documents have reached the West. Many have been published in Hruby’s journal and in publications of Anglican scholar-researcher Michael Bourdeaux’s Center for the Study of Religion and Communism in the London suburb of Keston. Writing about the CPR in Bourdeaux’s journal Religion in Communist Lands, researcher Katharine Murray notes the absence of bitterness on the part of the CPR chroniclers. Underscoring their integrity, she states that no document from them has turned out “to be falsified, no single piece of information untrue.”

At the second secret conference of the CPR in 1970 an appeal was drafted asking the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) and others to help. It stated:

… If you keep silent now, deliverance and freedom to preach the Gospel will still come—but let this not happen without our taking part in it, for what should we say to Jesus? How have we carried out his command of love?

One of the most recent CPR documents is a sixty-one page report telling of raids of worship services (police seriously wounded a teen-age youth in an outdoor meeting on May 2), of an Odessa pastor found hanged to death in an exile camp, of forced injections and drugs (one Christian leader was blinded), of searches, heavy fines, and confiscation (of even children). Believers often cannot immediately pay stiff fines; authorities then confiscate furniture and other goods and sell the items to passersby, according to the document. Children of CCECB leaders are sometimes seized and shipped off to state institutions for atheistic indoctrination, the report indicates.

In April nearly 200 CCECB members addressed an appeal to Soviet leader A. N. Kosygin asking for the release of Vins and other religious prisoners, official recognition of the CCECB, and freedom to minister.

A new note has cropped up recently in CCECB documents (the CPR is a CCECB affiliate). For years the writers simply called on the Soviet Union to live up to its own constitution and grant freedom to the believers to practice their faith. Now, however, some speak of wanting to emigrate to any country “where our convictions will not be at variance with the laws of the land.”

For years the CCECB has operated at least two secret presses to publish its documents plus thousands of New Testaments, Scripture portions, hymnals, and other religious literature. The presses have long been the object of an intensive Soviet search. In late October the CCECB suffered a staggering blow when reportedly 200 Soviet police stormed a basement in Ligatne, Latvia, containing one of the presses. Six CCECB members were arrested and a large quantity of New Testaments and paper confiscated. Few within the CCECB knew of its location, and there is speculation that Vins or another CCECB leader may have been drugged or tortured into talking. (At a convention of psychiatrists in Oslo, 181 psychiatrists signed a statement calling for an end to “psychiatric persecution” in the U.S.S.R., and the Union of Swiss Physicians condemned the Soviet practice of sending dissidents to mental institutions.)

The CCECB publishing ventures no doubt encouraged other samizdat (unauthorized publishing efforts). Six Lithuanian Catholics were recently arrested for producing religious literature and circulating the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church. Sakharov appealed in their behalf to the WCC and to the recent Catholic synod in Rome. Five Lithuanian priests signed a statement saying “the authorities would not have had to resort to arresting these people if enough prayer books and catechisms and a minimum quantity of essential religious literature were produced in Lithuania, and if there were no discrimination against believers.”

So far, the appeals from Soviet believers to Christians in the West have not sparked the solidarity of response that characterizes the Jewish community’s reaction to the plight of Soviet Jewry. BWA officials are concerned, but they don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize the fragile bit of freedom and legitimacy enjoyed by the AUCEB. (The bulk of the nation’s Protestants, including thousands of former CCECB members, are in the AUCECB, among whose churches revival tides are flowing.)

The WCC, in the opinion of many, has been scandalously silent on the issue, partly out of fear of alienating Soviet representatives in the WCC. (WCC leader Emilio Castro in an interview in Lausanne last summer said he agonized over the WCC’s silence. Protests directed to a totalitarian government are virtually useless, he implied, and they may cause more harm than good.)

As for the United Nations, it has again postponed coming to grips with a declaration on religious intolerance.

In the meantime, Vins and other churchmen languish in Soviet jails. A statement signed by Vins’s four children asserts that Vins’s wife was fired from work for her religious beliefs in 1962 and it was years before someone would hire her. Daughter Natasha was fired last January from a hospital job allegedly because “religion and medicine are incompatible.” Son Petya (Peter) has completed his education but has not been hired anywhere, the statement points out. It closes with a vow addressed to Soviet authorities:

“If our father is not released and if measures are taken in prison which threaten his life, then know you that our entire family is filled with resolve to die alongside him. This we make known to you and believers around the world.”

OBSERVING THE DAY

Christmas in Zaire has fallen victim to President Mobuto Sese Seko’s “authenticity” campaign. Stricken as a public holiday because it is not authentically African, the day celebrated in the West as Christmas will be just another work and school day in the African nation. Of Zaire’s 23 million inhabitants, eight million are Catholics, two million are Protestants, and several million are Kimbanguists (members of an independent African church), and many of these are expected to observe the day privately and at night or early-morning services.

Dr. I. B. Bokeleale, head of the Church of Christ in Zaire, the Protestant church council, supports Mobuto. The date was taken from a pagan celebration anyway, he says, adding that the CCZ will meet in February “to pick our own day.”

It all calls to mind earlier controversies over the day. Christmas was outlawed for a time in England, observance of it was a prison offense in Massachusetts, and for nearly two centuries it was largely ignored in the New England states.

DAY OF ACCOUNTING

Student pastor David Finestead of the 150-member United Methodist Church in Lake Lotawana, Missouri, dramatized Christ’s “Parable of the Talents” in an unusual way. Finestead, 30, a former farm-machinery salesman, put $1,000 of his savings in the offering plate one Sunday several months ago and instructed his church members to take secretly whatever amount they wished, then return the Sunday before Thanksgiving for “a day of accounting.”

The members returned last month with more than $3,200. A widow who had taken $1 made jelly from apples in her backyard and sold it for twenty-five cents a jar. By plowing her profits back into ingredients, she was able to put $80 in the offering plate on the appointed day. A printer took $120 to finance wedding invitations and returned with $600. A teen-age girl took $10, bought auto wax, and came back with $30 from waxing cars. Two families took $130 between them and sponsored a community chili supper, more than doubling their investment.

After repaying Finestead his $1,000 the congregation will use the money to buy a used bus and some Christian-education materials.

Finestead, a graduate of Greenville College in Illinois and a student at St. Paul (United Methodist) Seminary in Kansas City, assumed the pastorate in June. One of the biggest blessings of the talents project, he says, is the unity it has brought to his congregation. “In a way, I bet $1,000 on my people. But I wasn’t worried,” he says.

The pastor’s faith in his people, comments an observer, has resulted in greater faith of the people in the Bible and God.

Under Investigation

Baptist pastor Iosif (Joseph) Ton of Ploesti, Romania, was still under police investigation early this month but not in jail, according to Baptist World Alliance executive C. Ronald Goulding of London, who recently visited him. Ton had written and circulated papers calling for full religious freedom in Romania (see November 22 issue, page 52). A colonel who led a seven-man search-and-seize operation at Ton’s house reportedly died of a heart attack four days later while listening to tapes of Ton’s sermons. Authorities say the cleric violated a law forbidding the unauthorized publication and distribution of printed materials.

A Nod For Charismatics

At last month’s semi-annual meeting of the Nation’s Catholic bishops, a committee of bishops issued an eight-page statement of guidelines on the so-called Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Overall, it expressed approval of the movement and extended encouragement to its members to continue with the renewal’s “positive and desirable directions.” It called on bishops to join priests in tying the movement closer “to the whole Church.”

The statement did warn of dangers: “elitism,” “biblical fundamentalism,” and reducing doctrinal content to “a felt religious experience.” In discussing the report, some bishops expressed reservations about the movement, mostly relating to matters of authority.

Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati, newly elected president of the bishops, said his own attitude and that of most of the bishops is “quite positive.”

In other action, the bishops called for twice-weekly fasting to help ease world hunger.

Way Out In Kansas

Founder-president Victor Paul Wierwille of The Way, an organization in New Knoxville, Ohio, is saying openly and directly what he’s been teaching quietly for years: “Jesus Christ is not God.”

That is the title of the lead article in the latest issue of The Way magazine and also of a book to be published in the spring by Wierwille. Jesus is important, but the Father “alone is God,” he asserts.

This and other teachings considered way out by orthodox Christians will be expounded at The Way College of Emporia, Kansas. The forty-one-acre campus was acquired by Wierwille in September in an unusual transaction with the United Presbyterian-related College of Emporia, forced to close in 1973 because of a financial crunch. Wierwille refers to the transaction as a switch in affiliation rather than as a purchase, apparently aiming to retain the accreditation granted to the Presbyterian school, which was founded in 1892. He paid off a mortgage of $504,000 plus debts of $190,000, including unpaid 1973 salaries of the defunct school’s former teachers.

The Way college is expected to open early in 1975, with a student body of between 400 and 600 by fall. A corps of Way workers has been helping with renovation, estimated by Wierwille to cost $1.5 million.

Wierwille is a former Evangelical and Reformed minister who holds a master’s degree from Princeton Seminary (he also studied at Mission House College, the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Moody Bible Institute) and an honorary doctorate from Pike’s Peak Bible Seminary, a reputed degree mill. He blends unitarianism, dispensationalism (the Church began with Paul’s epistles), Calvinism, and charismatic teachings on tongues and healing, a mixture based on instruction he says the Lord revealed to him directly in 1942. His movement numbered only a few adults in Ohio until several years ago when he and his associates began foraging among young people in the Jesus movement.

Doing The Declaration

In an overcrowded and stuffy room at Chicago’s Wabash YMCA, the 115 participants of the second by-invitation-only Thanksgiving Workshop on Evangelical Social Concern split up into six task forces to consider ways of implementing last year’s declaration on social action (see December 21, 1973, issue, page 38). The groups drew up proposals dealing with consciousness-raising (evangelism was a top priority item in that group), women’s issues, economic life-styles, research and education, politics, and black concerns.

An economic-life-styles proposal calling on Christians to try to live on $2,000 a year per person evoked debate. The idea was suggested by Editor John F. Alexander of The Other Side, who headed the life-styles task force. Fellow task-force member Roger L. Dewey, editor of the Boston-based Inside magazine, argued against it, citing legalistic implications. Workshop planning-committee members Carl F. H. Henry, former editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and Conservative Baptist leader Rufus Jones said it reflected an inadequate biblical rationale.

The same objection was voiced by others concerning part of a twelve-point proposal from the women’s caucus, which among other things called for equal rights for women in the church in such matters as ordination, membership on policy-making boards, and staff employment. The proposal also called for monitoring Christian bookstores for “sexist publications” and for examining Bible translations and Christian-education materials for use of “sexist language.”

The group also appointed a committee to plan the first national evangelical feminist conference, to be held in about six months. (At last year’s meeting little visibility was given to the evangelical feminist position. For example, no women were on the original planning committee; two were added to help draft this year’s program. Only a handful of women were invited to last year’s workshop; nearly a third of this year’s participants were women.)

All the proposals were approved except one suggesting a national congress on biblical social action (too expensive). An affirmative vote for a proposal, however, did not necessarily indicate wholehearted endorsement. Chairman Ronald Sider, dean of Messiah College’s Philadelphia campus, stressed that yes votes merely meant that the coalition accepted items as “a valid means” for implementing the declaration, not that each person could or would follow through on each item. This led some to conclude that easy approval was given in order to maintain visible unity.

Several major problems surfaced during the weekend. Because of the six separate task forces, the overall thrust seemed fragmented to many participants. Said history professor Richard Pierard of Indiana State University: “Last year’s meeting was focused; we wrote the declaration. This year everyone was doing his or her own thing.”

Jim Wallis, editor of the Post-American, and Rufus Jones cited others: not enough attention to the biblical and theological bases for the proposals, nor enough time for discussion (a fifteen-minute time limit was set for debate on each proposal). Wallis, who headed the evangelism section, urged that at next year’s meeting—dates and place have not been decided yet—more time be given to theological considerations.

CHERYL FORBES

MARY HEMINGWAY

Mary Williams Hemingway belonged to the pith-helmet era of foreign missionary work. Born of missionary parents in China and educated at Oberlin College in Ohio, she spent forty years of her life as a Congregational missionary in China. While there, she helped in the hospital her missionary husband built, she taught Chinese women and children to read, and she told them about Jesus. She fought against the ages-old custom of foot-binding, delivering many girls from the ordeal. She stayed on throughout the Japanese invasion and occupation. Scores of refugees found shelter and food in her home. Then came the Communists, and she had to leave.

No pith-helmet missionary, Mary Hemingway died last month in Washington, D. C., at the age of 99.

Few noted her passing.

Terror For Life

Another African nation has imposed a reign of terror on its citizens and, as in the case of Chad currently and Burundi earlier, suffering is especially intense among Christian believers. One-fourth of the 308,000 citizens of the tiny West African Republic of Equatorial Africa are in exile, tens of thousands have been murdered, most of the parliament members elected in 1968 have disappeared, and the prisons are overflowing, according to an investigative report in One World, a World Council of Churches journal. It accuses President (for life) Francisco Macias Nguema, 50, of exercising a “ruthless dictatorship.”

The country is 98 per cent nominally Christian, mainly Roman Catholic, with strong Methodist and Presbyterian churches (the latter has about 10,000 communicants). Since 1968 most of the foreign missionaries have been expelled, and “the local clergy have been put under increasing pressure, including imprisonment and torture,” says the report.

Additional information came from the Swiss League for Human Rights, which says Christians are being harassed in an atmosphere of “militant atheism.” Church buildings have been confiscated, church leaders prevented from traveling, and special permits required for church meetings, asserts the league.

One World says a recent presidential decree requires priests and ministers to read a message extolling President Macias at every worship service, and every church building in the land to display his portrait.

Reforming The Reformed

These are troubled times for the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (GKN). The Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) issued an ultimatum to the GKN: Put your doctrinal household in order and rescind your decision “to support terrorism on our borders” or consider the ties between us broken. Earlier, the Reformed Churches in New Zealand voted to suspend its “sister church” relationship with the GKN, meaning that members transferring from GKN churches and visiting ministers must pass doctrinal muster before being allowed official entry. And in no case will women office-bearers from the GKN be received in any official capacity.

Meanwhile, the quadrennial synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (Colored) in South Africa, a “daughter church” of the NGK, decided that mission workers (most are white clergy on loan from the NGK) must assume full membership in the churches where they are serving, thereby coming under the authority of the mission church. In other resolutions the mission synod rejected the government’s ban on mixed marriages and called for mixed worship. After heated arguments a decision on whether to join the South African Council of Churches was postponed until the next synod.

Elsewhere on the Reformed scene, the synod of the separatist-minded Christian Reformed Churches in the Netherlands debated whether it should withdraw from Dr. Carl Mclntire’s International Council of Christian Churches. Unless there is considerable reform in the ICCC by the time of the next synod in three years, the synod says, it will withdraw. The synod alleged that McIntire exercises an almost papal authority, saying and doing things without consulting member churches. Among the demands: Allow member churches to dissociate themselves from certain declarations without censure; avoid giving the impression that Communism is the only enemy; don’t use worldly styles in battling for the faith; prevent personal declarations from being represented as the opinion of the whole organization; take an exclusivist position only where required by Scripture; and see that the content of all resolutions is biblically founded and theologically responsible.

Nigeria: Above Tradition

A Nigerian Congress on Evangelization (NCE) is planned for next August as a follow-up to the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne last summer. The sixty Nigerian ICOWE participants, one of the largest Third World contingents at Lausanne, are spearheading the effort. It will be held at the University of Ife, one of the country’s five universities. General Secretary J. A. Ayorinde of the Nigerian Baptist Convention is NCE honorary chairman, and evangelical leader Samuel O. Odunaike is executive chairman.

At its annual meeting last month the Nigerian Evangelical Fellowship (NEF) endorsed the NCE plans. The NEF also appointed its first full-time general secretary, West Indian Kenrick Sharpe, a Sudan Interior Mission worker.

After a lively discussion on the revival of African tradition and culture, the delegates passed a motion noting that Christianity had had “a vital part in the continent of Africa since the first century, A.D.” Their statement exhorted Christians to “examine and judge all culture and tradition, national and foreign, in the light of God’s universal and eternal laws, as recorded in His holy Scriptures.… That which is contrary to God’s laws must be rejected.”

W. HAROLD FULLER

“Now look, darling, I think Penelope ought to get married soon. She needs to be fulfilled, and more involved in life. I mean, she just needs something, anyone can tell. So I got her to fill out that card to take to the computer place—you stick in all the things that are important, like whether you like peanut butter and whether you like to sleep with the windows open and how you feel about animals and what you are allergic to. She’s already got an answer back, from just the right person, the computer said. The wedding ought to be soon.”

“Darling, everything is ready for the wedding tomorrow, but the most disastrous thing has happened. Penelope and Jack are perfect for each other—you know the computer doesn’t make any mistake. When they decided they both wanted to be missionaries, the mission-board computer took their cards and found out that they were just right for India. So here they are, all ready to go after their honeymoon to the school where they are to train first. Now comes the disastrous part. The school has a psychiatric test each one has to take to get in, and the most horrendous thing was found out about Jack: he’s a sesame seed! A sesame seed is a type, you know—the type that has a need to be admired by Indian women. It seems India would be the wrong place altogether—they’d be divorced within two years. A sesame-seed type is always like that. What are we going to do? When the computers and the psychiatrists clash there just isn’t anywhere to go next! I thought it would all be so easy, sure. No trial and error as in our grandparents’ day. But now this …”

Exaggerated? Not very. It is the direction evangelical groups are in danger of being sucked into. It is difficult to stand against the pull of twentieth-century solutions.

It is easy to take the first steps away from the reality of God’s existence. It is easy to take the first steps away from any practical difference God’s existence makes in our choices, in our daily lives. It is so easy to go to Egypt for help, and to forget that our help is supposed to come from the Lord.

Listen: “Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharoah, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion” (Isa. 30:1–3).

The warning is that if we as children of the Lord don’t come to him for counsel, don’t ask him for help, the strength of the help apart from him will be our confusion. This is the picture of our pushing aside the fact that access to the living God, the Creator of all the earth, the One who has all wisdom and understanding, the One who knows the future and can give counsel in the light of what is coming, is really open to us. We are told that he will help us; we are told to ask him for help; we are assured that as the Lamb died as our substitute, he also died to open the way directly to the Father with our requests. To spurn this offer of help, paid for with such costly sacrifice, and to seek “counsel but not of me” is to bring about an opposite result.

The contrast is made clear in another place in Isaiah: “For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.… Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God:” (Isa. 50:7, 10).

We may come frequently to foggy, dark places where we can’t see one step ahead. This is the place for showing God our trust of him, for taking literally the possibility of asking and then waiting for him to answer. The seventh and tenth verses combined offer a contrast to the eleventh, which is another warning of the same sort. Here is the picture given very vividly, along with another promise of a strongly negative result: “Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.”

A strong promise! If we refuse to wait in the dark place with our hand in God’s in trust, asking him to show us the next step, really depending upon him in prayer to answer us in this moment of history, and instead make all our own plans to unscramble our difficulties with all the “modern helps” we can find, God will not stop us—we can go on and light our own sparks and walk in the light of them. However, we can expect him to be speaking the truth when he says that the result will be that we “lie down in sorrow.”

“Ask of me”: this instruction is given to us over and over again. We are to be shown marvelous things as a result of asking. When can we be shown if we never ask at times when we are in drastic need of God’s solutions? As individuals, as twos and threes in a variety of relationships, family, friends, groups, churches, organizations—we need to demonstrate that we really believe God is there, he is accessible, and his promises are true. We need to demonstrate that we really believe his negative promises as well as his positive ones by the way we react to our need of help. We need to stop and consider whether we are in danger of showing that we really think “Egypt’s help” is more dependable.

How can we demonstrate to the angels and demons as well as to anyone who might be affected by our manner of reacting to a difficulty that we really believe in the existence of the God of the Bible? We are told to pray “without ceasing”—how much more thoroughly can we cease to pray than by turning our backs on the practical reality of God’s answering prayer?

“Call upon me in the day of trouble.” God speaks to each of us in our diversity of trouble—trouble in making a decision, trouble in finding the right house, trouble in knowing what we are fitted to do. “Call upon me in the day of trouble: and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.” Here is a result that does not speak of shame or confusion. Here is a result to be excited about, given in Psalm 50:15. If we lack wisdom, we are to ask of God.

First-Century Judaism

The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), Volume 1, by Emil Schürer, revised and edited by Gaza Vermas and Fergus Millar (T. and T. Clark, 1973, 614 pp., £10), and Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, Section One: The Jewish People in the First Century, Volume 1, edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern (Fortress, 1974, 560 pp., $25), are reviewed by W. Ward Gasque, associate professor of New Testament studies, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

All who are interested in the history of the Jewish people and in the study of the New Testament will welcome the appearance of these important series. The first has long been a standard tool of New Testament study, originally published in the first of three German editions in 1874 and translated into English a decade later. Although it was filled with invaluable information, Schürer had become quite dated. Hence it was with a sense of gratitude and also of eager anticipation that the scholarly world received the word a decade or so ago that Professor Matthew Black of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, had organized a team to translate the latest German edition (1909) and to correct, and update the three-volume work.

The second title is the first book in a projected series of ten volumes concentrating on the history of the relation between Judaism and Christianity. The series is being produced by an international team of scholars from both religions. The first eight volumes will focus on Judaism and Christianity in the latter’s first two centuries. The last two volumes will deal with the history of Jewish-Christian relations from the third century to modern times.

The revised Schürer is a much more technical work than the Compendia and therefore will be of special interest to those who have benefited from more advanced theological study and who have some knowledge of the biblical languages. Nevertheless, there is information for all who seek to understand the Jewish environment of early Christianity and who are willing to put forth some effort to search out the data desired.

The aim of the editors of Schürer’s History was “to salvage all that is still valid of Schürer’s monument and to offer it in a form that will permit the work to fulfill its original purpose.” They followed the basic structure of the original work while incorporating all revisions directly into the text. The major changes have been in the areas of bibliography, archaeology, and the correction and modernization of references to, and quotations from, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts, inscriptions, and the like. A brief new section mainly bibliographical—on the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls found in the Judean desert has been added, and a valuable excursus by the late Paul Winter on “Josephus on Jesus and James” has replaced older material. In addition, much new material and many corrections have been introduced on the basis of subsequent research, the result being an essentially new work.

The first volume of The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ treats the political history of the period from the Maccabean uprising to the final revolt against the Romans under Bar Kokhbar. It is introduced by a survey of the contribution of the study of archaeology, geography, chronology, numismatics, and epigraphy, and of the literary sources for the history of the period. These items contain superb bibliographies. Anyone interested in Josephus as a historian, the rabbinic literature, or the Judaean manuscript discoveries, for example, would be well advised to begin here and then to follow up by referring to the works listed in the bibliographies. The two volumes to be published subsequently will deal with the history of Jewish institutions and thought.

The work edited by Safrai and Stern covers some of the same area as Schürer, though chapter one on sources is the only place where there is a direct overlap between the two works, and in this case the treatment in the Compendia is both more extensive and less technical. Other subjects covered in this second work are the historical geography of Palestine (by the distinguished Israeli scholar, Michael Avi-Yonah), four important chapters on the Jewish Diaspora, Herod the Great and the Herodian dynasty, the Roman province of Judaea, Jewish self-government, and private law. Although written by scholars who are technically competent in their fields, the Compendia is intended for the use of pastors, priests, rabbis, teachers, and other non-specialists and is therefore much easier to handle than Schürer. There are also useful bibliographies, though these are not quite so extensive as those in Schürer.

All in all, the editors of both volumes have done their work admirably and have left the scholarly community greatly in their debt. If one is forced to choose between the two works, he should probably purchase Schürer, since it packs so much information into its pages. However, both volumes should be considered essential for all theological and religious studies libraries. The cost of each volume seems steep, until the presence of vast quantities of Greek and other non-Roman type contained in each is noted, and then the price seems quite moderate in view of current inflationary tendencies.

Alternative Languages

Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion, by Ian G. Barbour (Harper & Row, 1974, 198 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Walter B. Hearn, editor, “American Scientific Affiliation News,” Berkeley, California.

Ian Barbour’s books have been helpful to many Christians trained in science. They ring true to our scientific understanding, Christian commitment, and individual struggles to integrate these two aspects of our lives.

In Myths, Models, and Paradigms, Barbour reflects on recent developments in the philosophy of science and applies them to the philosophy of religion, to theology, and to personal faith. Recognizing that science is not so objective, nor religion so subjective, as has been claimed, he defends in both realms a position of “critical realism.”

Some philosophers dispute the possibility of meaningful language about God. The encounter with world religions has led some theologians to adopt a total religious relativism. Barbour will not settle for any resolution of issues between science and religion that attributes only non-cognitive functions to religious language in contrast to cognitive functions for scientific language. The ultimate price would be to give up any claims to truth for religious beliefs.

Barbour, who holds a doctorate in physics but is the head of the Department of Religion at Carleton College in Minnesota, focuses on the linguistic analysis prominent in contemporary philosophy. Even literary metaphors, he argues, are not merely “useful fictions”: they rest on analogies that are referential, and they alter our ways of seeing the world. Models, like metaphors, are analogical and open-ended, but are more systematically developed symbolic forms. Scientists generally take theoretical models seriously but not literally. Their models are “neither pictures of reality nor useful fictions; they are partial and inadequate ways of imagining what is not observable.” Barbour argues that religious models should be regarded in much the same way.

Beyond self-involving functions that have no counterparts in scientific language, a religious model may also direct attention to particular patterns in events:

It provides a perspective on the world and an interpretation of history and human experience. In particular, religious models are used in the interpretation of distinctive kinds of experience, such as awe and reverence, mystical joy, moral obligation, reorientation and reconciliation, and key historical events.

The wave-particle duality led physicists to accept the use of “complementary models.” Although Niels Bohr and others have extended this concept into other fields, Barbour would restrict the term “complementary” to models of the same entity and of the same logical type. He chides C. A. Coulson and D. M. MacKay for calling science and religion complementary accounts of reality, perhaps forgetting his own similar statement in Christianity and the Scientist (1960). Now he prefers to speak of science and religion as “alternative languages using alternative models.” In theology, he feels that Paul Tillich’s contrast of personal and impersonal symbols for God may closely parallel the wave-particle polarity in atomic physics.

Scientific models lead to theories which can be tested against observations, and to Barbour, doctrines are roughly equivalent to theories. Antony Flew challenged theists to make statements about God that are in principle falsifiable or give up the claim that our statements have any meaning. In response, Barbour reviews empiricist claims for scientific objectivity in the light of the last two decades of philosophical debate, commenting extensively on Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).

Kuhn maintained that observational data and criteria for assessing theories are “paradigm-dependent,” a paradigm being something like a “research tradition” transmitted through historical “exemplars.” Isaac Newton was the prime exemplar of classical mechanics, for example. Kuhn showed that paradigms are extremely resistant to falsification. When an overwhelming weight of cumulative evidence finally forces a “shift of paradigms,” the “scientific revolution” is more akin to a conversion than to a logical conclusion.

In religion, as in science, it is appropriate that a basic “paradigm” be held tenaciously but not irrevocably by the community committed to it. It is also appropriate for theological models within a “paradigm community” to be examined critically, affording a “conjunction of commitment and enquiry.” In a chapter on “The Christian Paradigm,” Barbour indicates what he considers distinctive features of the Christian tradition and its understanding of “its determinative exemplar, Jesus Christ.” William Austin’s proposal of Messiah and Logos as complimentary christological models fits Barbour’s conditions for complementarity more nearly than, say, the divine-human polarity.

After examining four common models of God’s relation to the world, Barbour outlines the “process” model he feels is best suited to support an environmental ethic. Acknowledging that metaphysical categories are inescapable in theology, he warns against identifying religious beliefs with any closed metaphysical system. He seems to have adopted process insights into his theology without accepting the whole process metaphysics of A. N. White-head.

To Barbour, “religious beliefs are open to discussion, and grounds for preference can be given.” Although he refuses to accept the cultural or personal relativism that has often replaced it, he takes issue with “the absolutism of orthodoxy, which asserts that one religion is true and other religions are false.” Some Christians who differ with Barbour on one or more points may wonder if they disagree over models only or if they belong to different paradigm communities. Nevertheless, he writes with clarity about complex issues from the standpoint of Christian belief. Reading Myths, Models, and Paradigms is a good way to review recent philosophical controversy bearing on science and Christian faith.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

No Time For Tombstones: Life and Death in the Vietnamese Jungle, by James and Marti Hefley (Tyndale, 125 pp. $2.95 pb). Inspiring tale of the martyrdom in Viet Nam of two missionaries and the conversion of the U. S. government worker captured with them.

Help Thou My Unbelief, by Manford Gutzke (Nelson, 124 pp., $5.95). A retired seminary professor traces his personal path from skepticism to faith. Interesting.

Who Was Jesus?, by E. M. Blaiklock (Moody, 124 pp., $1.95 pb). Basic presentation by a classics professor of evidence about Jesus from both secular and inspired sources.

Abingdon Marriage Manual, by Perry Biddle (Abingdon, 254 pp., $4.95). Pocket-size collection of contemporary wedding services and procedural guides to various aspects of the service and reception. To augment the traditional resources.

The Recovery of the Sacred, by James Hitchcock (Seabury, 175 pp., $6.95). Study of the modern liturgical revolution. Claims that desacrelization has resulted in loss of purpose and vision in the Catholic Church. Applicable to all Christians.

Eating and Drinking With Jesus, by Arthur Cochran (Westminister, 208 pp., $9). A scholarly, readable study of biblical references to food and beverage, presenting the Eucharist in this broader context rather than as a distinctive “sacrament.” Thought-provoking.

Learning to Listen, Lord, by Harold Rogers (Word, 104 pp., $1.95 pb). A short but practical discussion of prayer with hints for improving one’s communication with God.

Philosophical Anthropology, by Michael Landmann (Westminster, 256 pp., $7.50). A survey of man’s reflection upon himself from the Greek philosophers and the biblical prophets through more recent biological and social-science approaches. This is the fifth language in which the book has appeared since 1969.

Healing, by Francis MacNutt (Ave Maria, 333 pp., $6.50, $3.50 pb). A Dominican, after contacts with some Protestants, became a leading Catholic proponent of the healing ministry as an ordinary part of life. He presents various principles and answers a variety of questions through theological reflection and his own purportedly successful ministry.

Something More, by Catherine Marshall (McGraw-Hill, 316 pp., $6.95). Deals with questions of suffering, death, forgiveness, and rebellion. The well-known author shares her personal struggles and the answers God has given her. Top quality inspirational reading.

Deus Destroyed, by George Elison (Harvard, 242 pp., $18). Major study of the first century of Christian evangelization in Japan (1549–1639), which was brought to a violent end by government repression. Half of the book consists of translations of key anti-Christian documents.

To See the Kingdom, by James Fowler (Abingdon, 292 pp., $10.95). Among scholars, H. Richard Niebuhr was probably more influential than his better-known brother Reinhold. This study of his thought is a welcome companion to Niebuhr’s own writings.

The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust, edited by Franklin Littell and Herbert Locke (Wayne State University, 328 pp., $15.95). Sixteen scholarly papers examining various aspects of Christian, Jewish, and Nazi relationships. Timely.

Gideon’s Gang: A Case Study of the Church in Social Action, by Jeffrey Hadden and Charles Longino (Pilgrim, 245 pp., $6.95). Two activists lament the passing of the involved 1960s into the more personal 1970s. They focus especially on a Dayton congregation, the lessons to be learned, and the example set.

Religion and Revolution, by Guenter Lewy (Oxford, 694 pp., $17.50). A very important study of seventeen situations where religion was closely linked with political change, e.g., the Maccabean revolt, radical Anabaptists, the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, Gandhi in India, and Nasser in Egypt.

Seeking For the Kingdom of God, by Eberhard and Emmy Arnold (Plough, 284 pp., $7.50). Documents from earlier in this century relating to the origins of the Society of Brothers, whose four communities in England and the eastern United States have since early 1974 been in fellowship with the some two hundred Hutterite colonies of the Midwest.

Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum (Harvard, 231 pp., $10). A new slant on the 1692 episode. Sets the events against the backdrop of the social pressures of family difficulties, church differences, and community changes.

Winning Ways, by LeRoy Eims (Victor, 160 pp., $1.75 pb). The director of evangelism for the Navigators presents some practical means and tips for witnessing on the street without being offensive.

Miracle at City Hall, by Al Palmquist (Bethany Fellowship, 173 pp., $2.45 pb). Autobiographical account of the experiences of a policeman with an extensive ministry among drug addicts and other criminals.

The Devil Loves a Shining Mark, by Jim Vaus (Word, 157 pp., $5.95). Autobiography of a gangster converted at Billy Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles crusade who subsequently ministered in Harlem.

Religion in Public Education, edited by David Engel (Paulist, 278 pp., $5.95 pb). Twenty previously published essays of considerable value to those interested in the legal teaching of religion in public schools.

An Introduction to Homiletics, by Donald Demaray (Baker, 156 pp., $4.95). Good, basic material for the prospective or haphazard preacher.

The Cardinal Protectors of England: Rome and the Tudors Before the Reformation, by William Wilkie (Cambridge, 262 pp., $14.50). Careful study of the period from 1485 to 1539, with special reference to the protectors serving from 1514 until King Henry’s divorce and remarriage in 1533.

Apartheid and the Archbishop: The Life and Times of Geoffrey Clayton, by Alan Paton (Scribners, 311 pp., $10). The famous author presents a well-written biography of an Anglican proponent of social justice. As much a history of the times as of the man.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, by Charles Couasnon (Oxford, 92 pp., $9.75). Detailed history of one of the best-known church buildings. Numerous photographs.

Ecumenism: Boon or Bane, by Bert Black (Review and Herald, 320 pp., $8.95). A major balanced and critical look at mainstream ecumenism as expressed by World Council of Churches members and, increasingly of late, by Roman Catholicism. The author often refers specifically to Seventh-day Adventist concerns, but these are generally shared among evangelicals. This book is therefore of value to those both inside and outside the WCC who want a well-documented presentation of why so many Christians are (and ought to be) unhappy with it.

NEW PERIODICALS

Communio is a responsible and scholarly journal representing conservative Catholics disturbed by the blurring, by many of their co-religionists, of distinctions between Catholics and non-Catholics and non-Christians. Since far more publicity is given to Catholic innovators, this quarterly belongs in college and public libraries for the sake of balance. (Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash. 99202; $8/year.)

Incite is an English-language periodical started in August, 1974, in Europe with what appears to be a Francis Schaeffer-like approach to understanding the world so as to facilitate better communication of biblical truth. The first issue includes five reprints (the largest excerpted from Os Guinness’s The Dust of Death) plus a study of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. Subscriptions currently are free. (Box 10035, Amsterdam, Netherlands.)

Christianity Applied is more than just a new name (and larger size) for Applied Christianity (and before that Christian Economics). Before, the political-economic opinions fell within a fairly narrow range (staunchly conservative of the libertarian variety). Now the views promise to be somewhat more diverse (though it is not likely to be confused with Post-American), with the intention of motivating and guiding Christians to apply biblical principles to current questions in society. The first issue, October, 1974, focused on politics (and included a major reprint from Eternity). The November issue dealt with abortion. (7960 Crescent Ave., Buena Park, Cal. 90620; 75¢ per copy or $7/year.) (Post-American, by the way devoted its August–September issue to a consideration of feminism from an unconventionally evangelical perspective. [1105 W. Lawrence, Chicago, Ill. 60640; 50¢ per copy or $5/year.])

Religion in Communist Lands, the bi-monthly launched in 1973 by the highly respected British student of the subject, Michael Bourdeaux, now has a sponsor in America, the Society for the Study of Religion and Communism. This is an essential source for accurate information. Subscriptions are $10/year. Write the society at Box 601, Elgin, Illinois 60120.

Family Life Today is a monthly launched by Gospel Light in December, 1974, containing brief articles on the home and ideas for family activities. Features guidelines for a weekly “family night” to promote a neglected aspect of Christian life. (110 W. Broadway, Glendale, Calif. 91204; $7.25/year, also bulk rates and heavy promotion through bookstores.)

Origins is the semi-annual journal of the Geoscience Research Institute, which is based at two Seventh-day Adventist universities. The first two issues contain eighteen articles, reports, and reviews of interest to those with a special concern for the relationships of current geology and biology with biblical revelation. (Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, Calif.) 92354; $4/year.)

Church Missionary Helps Quarterly is a very helpful resource and idea interchange to enable congregations to find out what others are doing that might work for them in promoting mission-mindedness. (Box 66, Santa Clara, Calif. 95050; $3.75/year.)

The first is a series of GrafikTrakts, handsome folders of poetry and graphics, is entitled “Rumors of Light” and contains eleven poems by Eugene Warren, editor of the series; several of them appeared first in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. (Warren’s poem in the September 14, 1973, issue was named best poem in the annual periodical competition of the Evangelical Press Association.) The second GrafikTrakt will be “The Weight of Resurrection” by Lionel Basney. (75¢ for GrafikTrakt 1, $3.50 for a series of six; 107 South Rolla, Rolla, Mo. 65401.)

Currents in Theology and Mission began bi-monthly publication in August as the journal of Concordia Seminary in Exile. This is an important first-hand source for hearing the views of those out of favor with the current Missouri Synod leadership. The aim is to present scholarly articles so that pastors and laymen, not just other scholars, can understand them. (1205 Manchester Rd., St. Louis, Mo. 63131; $7/year.)

All across the united states some of the largest and most aggressive churches are offering schools for church leaders. In most of them the faculty is composed solely of the staff of the host church, and the lectures deal with details of how that particular super church performs its diverse ministries. I want to survey the schools held by five of the largest of these churches.

California: “Leadership Institute”

Garden Grove Community Church in Orange County, California, held its first “Institute For Successful Church Leadership” in 1970. This congregation, whose membership exceeds 6,000, sponsors four institutes a year. It attempts to limit enrollment to 175.

Each lanuary, April, September, and November an institute begins on a Wednesday and concludes on Saturday, led by approximately ten church staff members and one national or international guest speaker. Dr. Robert Schuller, Garden Grove’s pastor, directs five of the sessions. Included in the registration fee of approximately $135 are five cassette tapes of the lectures by Dr. Schuller, a thick notebook, and several lunches and an evening banquet. Class topics include: how to set challenging goals, fund-raising, how to reach the unreached, every member a missionary, how to make a small church significant, and how to advertise and publicize.

Schuller, a Reformed Church of America minister, began Garden Grove Church in a drive-in movie lot and has developed a nationally known “drive-in” ministry. The church now has 350 Sunday-school teachers and has helped launch thirteen new congregations.

The Midwest: “Pastor’S School”

First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, whose pastor is Dr. Jack Hyles, now officially has the world’s largest Sunday-school with an all-time high of more than 23,000 present in December, 1973. It owns more than a hundred buses. Its Pastor’s School began in 1964. Registration at the 1974 school was 2,311. The tuition fee is about $20. This annual conference takes place in March, from Monday through Friday.

Dr. Hyles leads several of the many sessions. Topics include: the pastor and his people, church music, elementary children, church business, deacons, junior work, Christian schools, nursery, promoting the Sunday school, the church secretary, the invitation and baptism, ministry to the retarded, the teacher-officer meeting, teen-age Sunday-school work, pastoral leadership, shut-ins, and teen-age soul-winning. There is no printed schedule; every registrant attends every class. Usually one or two guest preachers are invited in for special evening services. All other speakers are church staff members.

The Everglades: “Evangelism Clinic”

During the past decade an explosively exciting congregation of Presbyterians under the leadership of Dr. James Kennedy has drawn a lot of attention to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The church has surpassed 2,000 in membership, and the pastor’s book entitled Evangelism Explosion has marked Coral Ridge as a major center for training Christians to carry out reproductive evangelism. More than 300 “evangelists” go out from Coral Ridge regularly each month to invite people to accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

The evangelism clinic, begun in 1967, is held more than once each year, and enrollment is usually limited to 100. The church’s pastor and staff are its leaders. The registration fee has been $175 for the five days of training.

This clinic concentrates on the specific evangelistic techniques used successfully at Coral Ridge. It differs from the other schools in that it deals much less with the place of the total Christian education and finance programs of the church. The clinic offers church-centered training in evangelism and some counseling. After a film and lectures, laymen each take two pastors into homes in the Fort Lauderdale area for actual witnessing training.

The Southwest: “School Of The Prophets”

In the heart of downtown Dallas, Texas, is First Baptist Church, a congregation of 17,000 members with 260 full-time employees. Dr. W. A. Criswell is pastor, and there are fifteen ministers of Christian education on the staff and several assistant pastors. The average weekly attendance is above 5,000.

The “School of the Prophets,” which began in 1971, meets each March. The tuition of approximately $40 includes a 300-page syllabus, covering every area of ministry at the church, and the noon lunches. Classes begin on Monday and finish on Sunday. Six of the twenty hours are led by Dr. Criswell and the remaining fourteen by his staff. All participants hear the same information.

The curriculum is divided into twenty-four sessions. Ten are led by the pastor, in pastoral ministry, sermon preparation, study habits, soul-winning, using the telephone to visit, counseling, and the crucial task of selecting, supporting and supervising a staff. Nine sessions in educational ministry led by various members cover work with various age groups, mission education, and outreach to business and professional adults. Additional classes of one session each which are led by the staff include: church music, recreation, inner-city missions, bus evangelism, budget control, church uses of computers, wills and trusts, radio and television, church publications, and free news coverage.

Virginia: “Workers’ Conference”

The names of Dr. Jerry Falwell and Thomas Road Baptist Church have become identified with “saturation evangelism.” Located in the hill country of Lynchburg, Virginia, the church has a membership of 10,000. During 1970, the church printed, for free distribution, more than four million books and pamphlets. Youth meetings at the church have attracted as many as 2,500 teen-agers. From 1966 to 1970 the average weekly Sunday-school attendance went from 750 to over 5,000.

Thomas Road holds a “Pastor’s School and Worker’s Conference” each June. The fee has been around $25. The 1973 conference used forty-four speakers, all but five of them members of the staff of Thomas Road.

Topics include Bible memorization, how to organize finances for the small church, Sunday-school bus ministry, how to have a disciplined class, how to get people excited about attendance contests, how to prepare sermons, prison ministry, differences in methodology between fundamentalism and evangelicalism, the pastor’s wife, how to prepare curriculum, how to start a Christian day school, how to win souls to Christ, the importance of Christian families in the church, and church use of computers.

Each of these churches began as small, struggling congregation. Each has a success story it is willing to share. These churches believe that God wants successful, growing, soul-winning churches. That is what their schools are all about.—JOHN N. VAUGHAN, associate pastor, Trinity Baptist Church, Memphis, Tennessee.

How Many Angels

When wags wish to mock those concerned with spiritual truth and sound doctrine, they frequently deride them for quarreling over “how many angels can dance on the point of a pin.” This question is attributed to a medieval scholastic disputation, but extensive reading in the Latin Fathers has failed to locate the exact source. Following the example of the U. S. Supreme Court about certain “constitutional” rights, however, we may well say, “We can’t find it, but we’re sure it must be there. It’s so in harmony with the spirit of medieval theology.”

The interesting thing about the angels and the pin is that even if we can’t find the citation, the question itself is not only “typical” but also actually relevant. The question, you see, is whether there is anything material about angels. For if there is nothing material about them, a limitless number can occupy a minuscule space. But if there is any material substance to angels at all, then the number, while it may be immense, is necessarily limited (finite). So the question really asks whether there is a truly spiritual reality that is entirely independent of physical, material dimensions. The philosophical materialist would deny this, claiming that only matter is real. The opposing philosophical school, idealism, alleges (unwisely, it is true) that only the idea is ultimately real.

This “medieval quarrel” may never have been seriously argued, but it is a valid reminder of the fact that biblical, historic Christianity is neither materialistic nor idealistic. The materialist would say, “There are no angels.” The idealist might counter, “There is no individual pin, only the idea (or spirit) of pin-ness.” The Christian may wonder whether angels, who are basically spiritual beings, may not have some tiny material component, however infinitesimal. But he is not in doubt as to whether angels are real. Nor does he doubt the existential and ontological reality of individual pins.

As the Nicene Creed has it, God is the Creator of “all things visible and invisible.” He has created a universe that is incredibly rich and has both material and spiritual components. Both aspects are real. There are pins, and we should try not to sit on them, and there are angels, real messengers of a real God who do his bidding. How many may be in the vicinity of any particular pin is, in one sense, a facetious question. But in another sense the question exhibits, in a wry way, the truth that God has created both a visible, material world and material beings, and a spiritual, immaterial world and its beings—and us, who have a share in both.

Feeling Touch

While Dr. Linton has written a thoughtful article, it really lacks feeling (“How Are You Feeling?,” Oct. 11). I am grateful that God made us “feeling” persons. Jesus was a feeling person. He wept, had joy, loved, was angered, disappointed, felt rejected, unwanted. While the thought process of the brain is necessary, without the feeling it is cold, sterile, and dull. At times I listen to sermons that are really boring because I know that it has passed through the minister’s head but never his heart. The problems that we experience in helping families and marriages in counseling are that they can express little feeling toward each other. They may have an intellectual commitment, but without feeling, they cannot touch each other’s lives.

Let’s not let T/A, Gestalt, and all the new behavioral sciences have a corner on the emotions and feelings so that persons have to turn to these experiences to find their personhood. Some emotional sharing might allow us to discover anew some of the fruits of the spirit, i.e., love, joy, peace.

Director

Presbyterian Counseling Service

Seattle, Wash.

“How Are You Feeling?” by Calvin D. Linton, was fantastic. It stated in logical, literary, and biblical terms exactly the place of human emotion in the process of salvation. You are to be commended on publishing such a splendid article, and the author is, likewise, to be commended on the writing of such.

Central Baptist Church

Gainesville, Ga.

For A Forum

I was amused by the editorial in your October 25 issue, “The Breadth of Christian Art.” The writer seemed to be afraid that many young Christian artists are going to focus their talents into doing “secular” art. Ha! This statement housed in a magazine that devoted a total of nine column inches in that fifty-four-page issue to editorial art—two minuscule cartoons. Beautiful and expensive four-color printing was wasted on your cover by having as your graphics mechanical, rub-off lettering.… The Refiner’s Fire happens to be one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite magazines. The column’s overriding theme seems to be, “We need good Christian art(s)!” Let me paraphrase a mutual friend of ours: “Thou that preachest that there should be good Christian art done by today’s Christian artists, dost thou provide a forum for said art and artists?”

Sonday Funnies Comic Corp.

Akron, Ohio

Non-Completion

In a news story you referred to a book written by Paul Daniel Neidermyer on the Pennsylvania “Plain People” (Oct. 25). It stated among other things that Mr. Neidermyer is a senior in this institution. This is in error. He was a student here from September, 1968, to May, 1970, when he withdrew without completing his course.

Registrar

The Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church

Philadelphia, Penna.

From History

I am more than a little distressed that a church historian would make assumptions without the facts of history as presented in “The Reformation: Will History Repeat Itself?” (Oct. 25). It is well documented that the Anabaptists did not expect “that there would be an alliance between the faith chosen and the institutional and political environment in which it lived.” They espoused the free-church concept from their beginning.

The writer also assumes that the Anabaptists would have used the arm of the state to advance their cause. This cannot be substantiated from the events of the time or from the 450-year history of the Anabaptists and their spiritual descendants.

Olar, S. C.

Wrong Background

In the news item about Billy James Hargis (“Hargis on the Shelf,” Nov. 22), [you say], “Hargis … has a Southern Baptist background.” Not so. Billy James Hargis has a conservative Christian Church background (the same as your former managing editor, the late James DeForest Murch). Hargis attended (but did not graduate from) Ozark Bible College, a Christian Church college, in Joplin, Missouri; he was minister with the First Christian Church in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, before embarking on the Christian Crusade ministry; and he is still listed in the “Directory of the Ministry of Christian Churches.”

Decatur Christian Church

Decatur, Ala.

Gide’S Philoctetes’: Half-Truths About Christianity

We read imaginative works for entertainment or for the aesthetic experience, rarely to pick a quarrel with the underlying world view. In scientific and philosophical treatises or serious articles, logical fallacies and misinformation are brought to light sooner or later; in imaginative works, on the other hand, they are generally excused or ignored. Yet untruths that the reader unconsciously absorbs may have an eternal effect upon his character and destiny.

To illustrate how the “belles lettres” frequently perpetrate half-truths, often without the author’s conscious intention, I should like to use a play by André Gide, Philoctetes or the Three Moralities. This work by the distinguished French moralist and Nobel prize winner is short, simple, and available in English, and it illustrates the point perfectly. My intention is not to give a thorough aesthetic analysis but rather to treat the work from a philosophical standpoint. (All my quotations from the play are from André Gide, Le Théâtre Complet, I, Ides et Calendes, 1947; the translations are mine.)

In this play, first published in 1898, there are three characters, each supposedly typifying a distinct ethical code. Note that the subtitle reads “The Three Moralities” and not simply “Three Moralities.” Surely we are to infer that the list is exhaustive, that all moral codes can be classified under one of these three basic types. If this is so, then may we not expect one of the three characters to give a reasonably true picture of Christian ethics?

In this variation of the classic myth Philoctetes had been abandoned on a lonely island because of a snake bite that would not heal. His groaning and the stench from the wound were demoralizing the army. For the good of the greatest number the Greeks put him ashore with the famous Herculean bow and arrows as his only means of livelihood.

Now, ten years later, in response to the oracle’s assertion that the Greeks cannot win the war without the bow and arrows, Ulysses is returning to the island to recover them by stealth. Knowing that Philoctetes will suspect him of some treachery because of his crafty reputation (or at least that is his excuse), Ulysses is taking along the guileless and unsuspecting Neoptolemus to do the dirty deed. When the time comes to seize the weapons there is nothing to hinder Ulysses from doing it himself, but he refuses. Why? Was he not so sure after all that the gods had spoken? Was he ashamed, or afraid? The reader is never told. In the meantime Philoctetes voluntarily takes his own life, more for self-fulfillment than to help the Greeks. Through the questioning of Neoptolemus, the hypocrisy of Ulysses, as well as other features of his absolutistic code, is cleverly brought out. Ulysses represents blind submission to an objective and universal moral code. Some of the implications of such a morality are shown to be:

1. Utilitarianism or the greatest good of the greatest number. (“And so are we supposed to submit the valor of an army to the distress, to the lamentations of single man?” [p. 149]).

2 The end justifies any means. (“Therefore we shall take possession of them by trickery” [p. 150]).

3. Insincerity. The reason Ulysses gives Neoptolemus for refusing to seize the weapons himself is not the real one. (“If he sees me alone he is going to suspect some ruse” [p. 151].) We know this because when Ulysses has the opportunity to take them he says: “Neoptolemus is a child: Let him obey” (p. 177).

4. Lack of artistic sensibility. Ulysses cannot understand Philoctetes, as we see by his misinterpretation of Philoctetes’ voluntary death. (“I should like him to know that I find him admirable … and that … thanks to him, we shall be victorious” [p. 177].) As we learn from Philoctetes’ dying soliloquy, it was for himself that he acted. On the other hand, Philoctetes understood Ulysses very well and predicted that Ulysses would misunderstand the reason for his sacrifice.

5. No moral progress. Ulysses is the same at the end as the beginning, whereas the other two have made considerable moral progress: Neoptolemus by open-mindedly observing both Philoctetes and Ulysses and coming to his own conclusion about their points of view, and Philoctetes by learning that there is no virtue in the traditional sense.

Neoptolemus, who is an immature but sincere seeker after truth, is shocked by Ulysses’ standard, and so is the reader. With a shrug, Ulysses’ code is dismissed. Without giving such a reprehensible theory a second thought we direct our attention to the two remaining ethical views.

The usual discussion of this play revolves around the moralities of Philoctetes and Neoptolemus. Which one was Gide advocating? Gide has been noted not for taking sides, for presenting various points of view and letting the reader draw his own conclusions. It is not surprising that the unwary infer neutrality on Gide’s part, for both Philoctetes and Neoptolemus are sympathetically portrayed. I think that Gide did not take sides here because both positions were acceptable to him. In fact, I think that he deliberately invented two characters who would represent what he conceived to be the two poles of a sincere relativism.

Philoctetes was by nature extremely egoistic while Neoptolemus was very much inclined toward altruism. Neither one, however, set up egoism or altruism as an end outside himself. These leanings were a matter of temperament and purely subjective. Moral progress for Philoctetes would have to be in the direction of altruism since he was beginning from the egoistic pole. For Neoptolemus the only direction to move would be toward egoism. Note also that if Neoptolemus’s and Philoctetes’ evolving moralities are both acceptable because each one is tailored to suit the particular temperament and needs of an individual at a certain stage in his development, then these two characters really represent only one type of ethics, the relativistic one; the three moralities are reduced to two, with Ulysses embodying an absolutistic position.

If we are not on guard, we shall miss the other half of the teaching, which is much more subtly presented. This is in accord with Gide’s method as he was to reveal it in his diary for 1931: “If I do not assert more, it is because I believe insinuation to be more effective.” In addition to learning that moral codes must be subjective and provisional, we discover that objective and inflexible codes are not live options. In fact, as we have seen, absolutistic views are never seriously considered. This might not matter so much except for the fact that the subtitle of the play, as well as the content, implies an all-inclusive treatment of ethical views.

Which character is supposed to represent Christianity? Someone might be tempted to see in Philoctetes a type of Christ because in the end he lays down his life. We are shown that this was good by the one scene that constitutes the last act. Here we see a perfectly happy Philoctetes, now surrounded by a vibrant nature instead of the ice of the earlier scenes, having finally created the beauty that he had previously struggled so hard to produce. By a beautiful deed he has achieved immortality in the minds of men.

Is this Christianity? For obvious reasons it is not the biblical variety. Gide’s Christianity was almost always based upon his own opinions rather than upon the Scriptures or the Church. Consider, for example, this entry from the diary for May, 1910: “But my Christianity springs only from Christ. Between him and me, I consider Calvin and St. Paul as two equally harmful screens.” Also, years later, in 1949, he asked in a radio interview: “Peut-on être un saint sans Dieu, c’est le seul problème qui m’intéresse?” I think Philoctetes was an attempt to answer this very question years before it was posed in these particular words.

If Philoctetes’ morality is not biblical, then to whom may we ascribe the scriptural view? Obviously the only possible place for it is with Ulysses. Doubtless Gide thought he was disposing of the traditional Judeo-Christian view in this absolutist. Before attempting to evaluate Ulysses’ position in the light of Christianity it will be necessary to discuss ethics in more technical terms. (For this I have relied heavily on Gordon H. Clark’s A Christian View of Men and Things, Eerdmans, 1952, pages 151–93.)

For convenience all ethical theories may be divided into two categories. One group is called teleological because the virtue of an act is judged in the light of the consequences. The other is ateleological: the goodness or badness of an act is to be discovered in the act itself. The common man reasons that it would be absurd to hold a person accountable for consequences he cannot control.

Ulysses’ morality is clearly teleological. If the disjunction is complete, as Gide implies, then Ulysses must be the spokesman for all such theories. In rejecting Ulysses’ ethics, therefore, we automatically throw out all teleological ethics.

The difficulty with this procedure is that there are two types of ethics that judge virtue in the light of the consequences, and they are quite dissimilar. Ulysses’ variety advocates the greatest good of the greatest number and is generally called utilitarianism; the other is known as egoism or, if pleasure is the end, as hedonism. Teleological egoism is not at all the same as Philoctetes’ egoistic leanings. Gide probably felt secure in assuming that no one—least of all a Christian—would want to try to make a case for egoism or hedonism. What he failed to realize is that if one thinks of pleasure as the enjoyment of a special relationship to God that begins with regeneration and lasts forever, then Christianity might be considered egoistic and even hedonistic. Christianity is patently teleological, but what Gide did not see is that on the Christian view the consequences are broad enough to include what happens to the character of the agent.

Intentionally or unintentionally, Gide misrepresented the historic biblical position on morality. Like many famous authors he did so in such a way as to prejudice the uncritical reader without the reader’s realizing it.

MARY M. CRUMPACKER¹Mary M. Crumpacker is associate professor of foreign languages and literature at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana.