Unfounded ‘Secret’

The Secret Gospel (Harper & Row, 1973, 148 pp., $5.95) and Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Harvard University, 1973, 454 pp., $30), by Morton Smith, are reviewed by Ronald J. Sider, associate professor of history, Messiah College Campus at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Secret Gospel is more than the current annual volume in the headline-catching series of wildly speculative discoveries of the “real” historical Jesus (e.g., The Passover Plot, The Sacred Mushroom). While cataloguing the manuscripts in the ancient Orthodox monastery at Mar Saba in the Judean desert not very far from Qumran, Morton Smith (professor of ancient history at Columbia) discovered an important new document with significance for New Testament research. In both the popular and the heavily footnoted, scholarly version, however, Smith has combined very careful analysis of his significant discovery with a highly speculative reinterpretation of Jesus that is pockmarked with irresponsible inferences. Does, for instance, the fact that Jesus posted guards at Gethsemane demonstrate “that he had no intention of giving his life as a ransom for any”?

But first the important new document. Smith has discovered a hitherto unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria, an important Christian theologian of the latter part of the second century. In it, Clement says that Mark wrote his Gospel before Peter’s martyrdom in Rome and then took his notes and Peter’s to Alexandria and wrote an expanded, secret Gospel that was carefully preserved in the Alexandrian church. Further, Clement’s letter includes a long quotation (and another short one) allegedly from the longer edition of Mark’s Gospel!

Is the document authentic? On the basis of extremely painstaking analysis of such matters as the vocabulary and style of Clement and of the new letter, Smith concludes (and most of the distinguished scholars who examined his manuscript before its publication agree) that the letter is indeed from Clement. It is somewhat less certain that the alleged quotation from Mark is authentic, especially since Clement viewed apocryphal literature far more uncritically than any other church father. But Smith’s view, based on careful comparison of the vocabulary, phraseology, and grammatical peculiarities of the alleged Markan quotation and the four canonical gospels, that the quotation does stem from Mark may be correct. If it is, then his discovery is of major significance for New Testament scholarship.

But a new letter from an early church father or even a new, authentic story from the author of the second Gospel would not in itself create the headlines and controversy that Smith’s Secret Gospel has produced. The attention-grabber is Smith’s highly speculative picture of Jesus as a libertine magician. He depicts Jesus as a magician who thought he was possessed by a spirit as the result of an ecstatic experience in which he had traveled to the highest of the spherical bodies thought to encircle the earth. In a secret nocturnal baptismal rite, Jesus enabled others to have the same experience and thus to “enter the kingdom,” thereby becoming free from the law. Here is an example of Smith’s logic:

What really proves Jesus practiced magic is the essential content of most of the major stories in the Gospels. In Mark Jesus appears as one possessed by a spirit and thereby made the son of a god; so do magicians in the magical papyri. Other stories say he was fathered by a god; the same was said of other magicians [p. 105, Harper book].

If Smith means that he operates with the presupposition that Jesus could not have been the incarnate Son of God filled with the Holy Spirit, then one must challenge his dogmatic presuppositions. If on the other hand Smith uses the word “magician” to describe anyone who claims the power to work miracles and sees himself as divine, then to be sure the term applies to Jesus. But one must object that he has selected a term whose contemporary connotations will lead to serious misunderstanding. Unlike most magicians, Jesus saw all his activity as done in complete obedience to and total dependence on Jahweh. To argue (on the basis of the apocryphal Gospel of Peter!) that in crying “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus the magician was bewailing the loss of the obedient spirit on whom he had relied for his magical activity is simply absurd!

Responsible scholarship will challenge Smith at numerous other points. Here are a few:

1. He develops his (exceedingly brief) interpretation of the resurrection “visions” in terms of his own theoretical account without any attention to the primary sources. If the disciples experienced only visions, how could they have escaped a decisive refutation of their belief in the empty tomb by the religious authorities in Jerusalem?

2. His conception of the “Kingdom of Heaven” announced by Jesus is inadequate both because he fails to consider the parables of the kingdom and because he overlooks the fundamental eschatological character of the kingdom that Jesus announced (as Cullmann and others have shown, Jesus taught that the New Age had begun to invade the Old Aeon).

3. Surely it is unacceptable to call Jesus a “libertine” because he redefined his followers’ relationship to the law. (Smith calls Jesus a “figure notorious for his libertine teaching and practice” because he broke the Sabbath, neglected purity rules, did not fast, and was called a “winebibber.”

4. Smith’s reinterpretation of the history of the early Church is often highly speculative and free of all historical evidence. For instance, there is not a grain of evidence for his suggestion that James, the conservative administrator, asked the Pharisees and Herod Agrippa I for a “little timely persecution” to rid the Jerusalem church of Peter and other “libertine rivals.”

But these and numerous other fundamental weaknesses will not doom Smith’s two volumes to quick oblivion. His scholarly volume is important and will provoke continued controversy. Evangelicals ought to be in the middle of the debate.

It is very unfortunate, however, that Smith mixed together very careful linguistic analysis of an important new document with highly speculative and sometimes irresponsible interpretations. Nothing in the new document requires or supports his view of Jesus as a libertine or a magician (except that he performs a miracle!). This mixture of scholarly analysis and unfounded speculation may attract headlines, but it will not fool the careful reader.

The Real Church

The Church in Search of Its Self, by Robert S. Paul (Eerdmans, 1972, 384 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Carl G. Kromminga, professor of practical theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Will the real Church of Jesus Christ please stand up? To tell the truth, no single contestant can either make all his claims stick or be totally discredited. The three major ecclesiological types all claim to represent the true Church. Yet all three show characteristics that cast doubt on the claim.

Unlike the TV show, The Church in Search of Its Self has an emcee who also serves as the panel and contestants who are also the audience. Professor Paul, an expert in modern church history teaching at Pittsburgh Seminary, writes from a broad perspective gained during long service with the World Council of Churches. The audience he has in view is “the Church itself, in its variety,” and this includes “theologians, pastors, theological students, laymen, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Liberals, Conservatives.”

Paul serves as panel, but he has help. Initially, Ernst Troeltsch’s ecclesiological classification serves to distinguish the three contestants. The church-type “is the structure that the church assumes whenever men have attempted to identify the church closely with the society in which it is set.” Contestant one responds affirmatively and approvingly to questions about Constantinianism, the geographical parish, and the close alliance between church and state. This does not mean that he is to be identified completely with historic Roman Catholicism; Protestants, too, for many years and in many lands have found the “church-type” comfortable and have identified with it.

The second contestant is the “sect-type.” He responds favorably to church-talk that extols the prophetic and pilgrim character of the fellowship of believers. His polity predilection is congregationalist, his concern evangelistic, and his anthropology pessimistic.

The third contestant has no definitive name. He is simply, in Troeltsch’s classification, the “third type.” His theology and program are vague. He is mystical, socially idealistic, inclined to accent the immediacy of the Spirit, individualistic, and highly experiential.

Of course, the real Church of Jesus Christ can hardly stand up in the person of any of the three contestants, and none of the contestants can be completely identified with any current denomination or group of denominations. Traditionally, the three families of polity represented here, though differing on the form of the Church, agreed that a divinely sanctioned form did exist. Today, however, traditional-practical rather than principiant reasons often determine the allegiance of the three contestants to their classic type.

Professor Paul argues that the true form of the Church cannot be decided by an appeal to polity even when the particular polity in question claims divine sanction.

In other words, we have to get beyond the specific polities of former ages to the concern that was common to high churchmen of all kinds, the conviction that the Church is called into being by God, and that its form should bear a recognizable relationship to Jesus Christ and his gospel [p. 35].

The questions of the identity of the true Church and of the form in which it can be recognized cannot be answered by an attempt to make one of the contestants out to be authentic and the other two imposters. The issue is deeper:

It is the problem of establishing the basic authority on which any Christian proclamation can be made whether in word or form. Until that issue has been faced and resolved, not only the shape of the Church but even the essential content of the gospel will remain unclear [p. 36].

Roughly correlative to Troeltsch’s three types are three historic views of the nature of spiritual authority and the means by which it is transmitted and received. These answers, intended to validate the claim to the title “Church of Jesus Christ,” are obtained in these three ways: by appeal to the Church, by appeal to the Bible, and by appeal to the “Spirit.” In Part Two of this volume Professor Paul discusses each of these answers in careful, scholarly fashion.

Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches look to the Church’s historical continuity, its clergy’s apostolic succession, as the foundation for spiritual authority. The leaders of the Protestant Reformation, including the early Anabaptists, sought to justify their form of the Church by appealing directly to the New Testament picture of the Church. This restorationism soon became somewhat modified because of civil realities, but from time to time in this tradition basic restorationism has vigorously reasserted itself. In third-type churches, authority and its transmission are harder to identify. Quakers and Pentecostals of various stripes quite clearly belong to this type, which generally tends to appeal to Inner Light or the Spirit for ecclesiastical authority.

Paul shows that Luther and John Wesley, by accenting the evangelical experience, somewhat blended third-type concerns with those of historical continuity and biblical restorationism. This “solution” prevents the absolutizing of any single form of the appeal to divine authority.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

The Challenge of Religious Studies, by Kenneth G. Hawkins (Inter-Varsity, 150 pp., $2.50 pb). A helpful introduction to some of the issues that confront students who take courses in religious studies at secular universities. Should be put into the hands of all such students and read by parents and pastors also.

The Gospel and Frontier Peoples, edited by R. Pierce Beaver (William Carey [533 Hermosa St., South Pasadena, Calif. 91030], 405 pp., $2.95 pb.). A conference to discuss unique problems involved in evangelizing frontier—primarily tribal—cultures. Some of the papers produced are excellent, especially the research on Africa.

The Epistles to the Corinthians, by E. M. Robertson, and The Gospel of Luke, by John Drury (Macmillan, 154 and 220 pp., $1.50 each, pb). The popular, recently thoroughly revised translation of the New Testament by J. B. Phillips is now to have its own commentary series of twelve volumes, of which these are the first to appear. Drury says of the Virgin Birth, “We are in a region more legend than history,” and of the Resurrection, “Something ‘actually happened’.…, but just what is no longer accessible to us.” Robertson, by contrast, like Phillips himself, expresses no such skepticism.

China: Christian Students Face the Revolution, by David Adeney (Inter-Varsity, 130 pp., $1.50 pb). The story of Christians, especially students, during the turmoil of the Chinese civil war and under the Communist regime since then. An inspiration and example for Christians everywhere. Highly recommended.

Commitment Without Ideology, by Daniel Batson, Christiaan Beker, and Malcolm Clark (Pilgrim, 207 pp., $6.95). Three professors develop a theology that departs from orthodoxy. It is based upon the experience of interpersonal relationships and heavily indebted to existential philosophy.

African Traditional Religion: A Definition, by Bolaji Idowu (Orbis, 228 pp., $5.95). A scholarly rebuttal of what the author sees as the tendency of Western religionists to view indigenous religion in Africa too superficially and without due respect. He describes what he perceives to be the genuine African religion. Strongly reflects growing African self-awareness.

I Will Be Called John, by Lawrence Elliott (Reader’s Digest, 338 pp., $10.00). A journalist portrays the life of Pope John XXIII in warm, human terms. Focuses on the time before he became Pope. Easy and enjoyable reading.

Travail and Vision, by Lewis Lupton (Olive Tree [2 Milnthorpe Road, London W. 4, England], 190 pp. each, $11 each). Two more volumes on the history of the Geneva Bible (the one the Pilgrims brought with them). Splendidly illustrated, they are a real treasure for those interested either in translations or in Reformed theology. Each volume can be read with profit independently of the others in the series.

Inside Story of Mormonism, by Einar Anderson (Kregel, 162 pp., $2.95 pb). Well informed, clear writing on the history, doctrines, and practices of Mormonism by a convert from it. A good book in this area.

Joy, by Barbara Evans and Pat Boone (Creation, 144 pp., $3.95). A young lesbian’s search for fulfillment is expressed in this exchange of letters with the well-known Christian, whose warm and encouraging replies are instrumental in her transformation. The first-hand account of her struggles, even after conversion, and their solution through Christ provide useful insights for the reader.

Blest Be the Tie That Frees, by Ken Berven (Augsburg, 104 pp., $1.95 pb). The special emphasis of this book is that of the sufficiency of God’s grace, not our works, as the basis for our salvation and relationship with God. A very effective presentation of the Gospel using stories, self-history, and Bible exposition. Highly recommended.

Sex Is a Parent Affair, by Letha Scanzoni (Regal, 261 pp., $4.95 and $1.95 pb). Excellent help for Christian parents in dealing with their children’s questions on sex.

Jesus and the Pharisees, by John Bowker (Cambridge, 192 pp., $13.50). An introductory discussion that despite the title, contains only a brief discussion of Christ’s association with the Pharisees. Major portion consists of translations of the relevant Greek and Semitic sources.

Sex and Marriage in Utopian Communities: Nineteenth Century America, by Raymond Lee Muncy (Indiana University, 275 pp., $10). A well written, broadly researched analysis. Essentially a socio-historical study.

Let’s Succeed With Our Teenagers, by Jay Kesler (David C. Cook, 127 pp., $1.25 pb). Seeks to build bridges instead of walls between parents and teens. Helpful examination of various aspects in this relationship.

Politics: A Case For Christian Action, by Robert D. Linder and Richard V. Pierard (Inter-Varsity, 155 pp., $1.75 pb). Two college professors, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, provide a refreshing and challenging perspective on a topic in serious question today: Christian involvement in politics. Though written for collegians, this volume deserves attention from anyone seeking a correlation between his faith and his personal activity in the political realm. Working from biblical foundations, the authors seek to reestablish the Christian’s position of “salt and light” in the world through a people-oriented approach to politics. Well documented, helpful bibliography.

The Idea of God and Human Freedom, by Wolfhart Pannenberg (Westminster, 213 pp., $6.95). A collection of loosely related essays, including a helpful and informative (though not impeccable) examination of the frequently misunderstood relation between the Bible, myth, and Christian tradition. Includes several good arguments against atheistic criticism of the theological and evangelistic enterprise, and a new and somewhat problematic interpretation of Hegel’s relation to Christianity.

Gilbert Haven: Methodist Abolitionist, by William Gravely (Abingdon, 272 pp., $8.95). A scholarly, well-written biography that emphasizes the zealous reaction of a Methodist minister against the passage in 1850 of the Fugitive Slave Law. Haven sought, without notable success, to galvanize the nation against racial inequality.

Genesis 1–11, by R. Davidson (118 pp., $5.95, $2.95 pb), Isaiah 1–39, by A. S. Herbert (219 pp., $9.95, $3.95 pb), and The First and Second Books of the Maccabees, by John Bartlett (358 pp., $14.95, $4.95 pb). Latest additions by Cambridge University Press to its multi-volume commentary on the New English Bible.

The Key to Heaven and Conversations With the Devil, by Lester Kolakowski (Grove, 168 pp., $6.95). Two works in one volume by a post-Marxist humanist: a collection of Bible stories retold with political and ethical morals, and conversations between Satan and prominent personalities in church history. Witty, satirical use of dialectical argument to disclaim absolutes in society. The author has been expelled from the Polish Communist party and now teaches at Oxford.

The Flow of Religious Instruction, by James Michael Lee (Pflaum/Standard, 379 pp., $4.95 pb). Professors of religious education will want to be familiar with this major work in their field.

They Meet the Master, by Robert E. Coleman (Christian Outreach [Box 22037, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 33315], 149 pp., $2.95 pb). A manual for both individual and group study of biblical principles of evangelism. Well presented and artistically creative.

The First Fundamental: God, by Robert Lightner (Nelson, 160 pp., $5.95). Survey of the nature, existence, and character of God by a Dallas Seminary professor. Sound study that counters many academic and popular views of God.

Kahlil Gibran: Wings of Thought, by Joseph P. Ghougassion (Philosophical Library, 243 pp., $7.50). Intellectual presentation of renowned mystic’s life and philosophy, inferred from his perennially best-selling writings. Since so many people are attracted to the thought of this Lebanese immigrant to America, it is useful to have it scrutinized, even in this far from definitive way.

Faith and Virtue, by David Harned (Pilgrim, 190 pp., $6.95). A discussion of faith, hope, and love as developed through natural theology. Views them as virtues that are learned in social experience and explores their relations to a nebulous form of Christianity.

Jesus, Where Are You Taking Us?, edited by Norris Wogen (Creation House, 250 pp., $4.95). Ten messages from the First International Lutheran Conference on the Holy Spirit held in Minneapolis in August, 1972. Speakers represent viewpoints of the “charismatic movement.”

Zen, Drugs, and Mysticism, by R. C. Zaehner (Pantheon, 223 pp., $6.95). An outstanding Roman Catholic specialist in Oriental religions, who has previously written persuasively of the unique authority and value of biblical religion, appears to have second thoughts as he contemplates what Christian mysticism has in common with drug-induced religious experience and with the philosophy of Zen. Provocative but weak, because of the author’s own uncertainties; concludes on the wistful note that, despite all clerical bureaucracy, hypocrisy, and Pharisaism, Christianity is worth another try.

The Challenge of the Other Americans, by Sergio Franco (Beacon Hill, 119 pp., $1 pb). Certain Christians sin in the way they feel and act toward the poor and the ethnic minorities. This obviously creates barriers to presenting the Gospel. The author discusses the problems and suggests Christian responses. A sensitive, solidly Christian book published by the Nazarenes.

A Slow and Certain Light, by Elisabeth Elliot (Word, 122 pp., $3.95). Insights, based on Scripture and personal experiences, into how and why God guides as he does. Avoiding pat answers, it is humbly and sympathetically written.

Gifts and Ministries, by Arnold Bittlinger (Eerdmans, 108 pp., $1.95 pb). A balanced exegetical study by a theologian in the charismatic movement.

The Religious and Philosophical Foundations in the Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Ernest Lyght (Vantage, 96 pp., $3.75). A master’s thesis tracing the growth of King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Develops and discusses King’s key purpose as the linking of Christian love and Gandhian methods of nonviolent disruption in an attempt to stir the American “conscience.” A useful companion to biographical presentations of King.

Religion in Contemporary Thought, edited by George F. McLean (Alba, 326 pp., $4.95 pb). Fourteen essays by noted contemporary scholars, focusing largely on atheism, secularity, and the “death of God.” Several of the essays seek to discern a redeemingly religious dimension to modern humanistic secularism.

Teaching the Old Testament in English Classes, by James S. Ackerman, et al. (Indiana University, 494 pp., $12.50, $4.95 pb). The author’s intentions are to increase understanding of the literary products of the Hebrew faith by placing them in their historical setting. However, the views presented are quite unacceptable to evangelicals even when allowance is made for the aim of teaching about religion rather than indoctrination.

Jesus as Seen by His Contemporaries, by Etienne Trocmé (Westminster, 134 pp., $4.95). Trocmé does an excellent job of discussing various modern “schools” of thought on who Jesus was and what he said and did. Despite some excellent suggestions as to a few images that the apostles might have had about Christ, Trocmé himself fails to develop a full, vivid picture of Christ. Indeed, he suggests that Christ must remain a mystery, not completely definable by any group.

Organizational Climates and Careers: The Work Lives of Priests, by Douglas Hall and Benjamin Schneider (Seminar, 312 pp., $11.95). Sociological and behavioral analysis of the career development of Catholic priests in the archdiosese of Hartford. Evaluates interaction of numerous factors in a specialized manner. Intended more for sociologists than for clergy.

Adventuring For Christ in Changing Times, by James DeForest Murch (Restoration Press [Box 391, Louisville, Ky. 40201], 350 pp., n.p.). Murch’s autobiography, completed about a year before his recent death, is an interesting, detailed recounting of his experiences both in the Christian publishing world and as a leading figure among the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental). Murch was managing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY 1958–61.

Where Is the Bible Silent: Essays on the Campbell-Stone Religious Restoration of America, by Russel N. Squire (Southland Press [1220 S. Maple Ave., Los Angeles, Calif. 90015], 145 pp., n.p., pb). On origins and conflicts of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ movement. In discussing differences, such as the use of instrumental music, the author (a member of a non-instrumental congregation) urges non-judgmental attitudes where the Bible is not explicit.

God as Woman, Woman as God, by J. Edgar Burns (Paulist, 89 pp., $1.25 pb). A brief study of woman’s relation to deity in religious literature and tradition. The author suggests that a view of God as feminine as well as masculine will “redress” the imbalance of a male-oriented culture. Interesting.

Story and Promise: A Brief Theology of the Gospel About Jesus, by Robert W. Jenson (Fortress, 198 pp., $3.95 pb). An imaginative story line but very little about the Jesus of the Gospels. Tries to be constructive but deprives the biblical “stories” of any substantial claim to reliability.

Theology and Intelligibility, by Michael Durrant (Routledge and Kegan Paul [9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108], 204 pp., $11.50). A learned attempt by a man well versed in Hellenistic, patristic, and Thomistic thought to refute the concept of even a limited ability to know God and to dismiss the Trinity as meaningless, particularly Augustine’s teaching on the subject. Highly technical; should be alarming to any who would rely on philosophy to support faith in the Trinity.

Godmen of India, by Peter Brent (Quadrangle, 346 pp., $10.00). A journalistic portrayal of Hinduism, its history, tenets, and present activities as found in the author’s travels through India. Particularly focuses on the role of gurus.

In Hoc Signo?, by Glen Gabert, Jr. (Kennikat [Port Washington, N.Y. 11050], 139 pp., $6.95). A history of Roman Catholic parochial education in the United States. Interesting, well written, footnoted.

Part Three contains excellent analyses of contemporary Protestant and Roman Catholic ecclesiological thinking. The ecclesiologies of Claude Welch, Langdon Gilkey, Gibson Winter, and Harvey Cox, for example, are examined in detail and perceptively criticized. Forty-five pages are devoted to the question whether post-Vatican II Catholicism represents “Catholic reform” or “Roman rebellion.” In addition to the documents of Vatican II, the writings of Avery Dulles, Gregory Baum, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Hans Küng, and others serve as a foil for this discussion.

All this sets the stage for Part Four, “Future Prospect,” in which Paul gets at the root issue: the true identity of the Church is determined by the identity of God and Christ as revealed in the Gospel. The Church is the servant of God’s purpose, of his will toward the world. Here the accent falls on the fact that God is the God who acts, who supremely reveals himself in Christ’s reconciling action, and who calls the Church into a servanthood reflecting that of the Incarnate Lord.

The God-given character of the Church stems, not from its conformity to a divinely ordained pattern of polity, but from the fact that God has given the Church his Spirit. Church renewal must start with “what it believes about God,” and the recent self-criticism of the Church should be gratefully received as a corrective judgment by God’s Spirit on the Church. Indeed, Paul maintains, the Church is not structureless, but form must be dictated by the calling to proclaim God “in word, deed, and presence.” Church union efforts must begin at this center and not at the historical edges of the Church reflected in differing polities.

Paul’s thesis that the doctrine of God is fundamental to the doctrine of the Church is sound. But I question whether his own doctrine of God is complete enough to give an adequately biblical foundation to the form and work of the Church. For example, in a footnote (p. 368) he implies that the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is Docetic: if God is his Father and Mary his mother, Jesus is not fully man. Paul rightly rejects the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, but in calling into question the doctrine of the Virgin Birth he is clearly at odds with the primary accounts of the Incarnation found in Matthew and Luke.

A further deficiency is Paul’s vagueness on the nature of the reconciliation God effects between men and himself in Christ. The grace that has created us and sustains us seems to be regarded as simply continuous and on one plane with the grace that redeems us. In order for man again to be responsive to grace, his arrogance must “dissolve in gratitude.” But how can this transformation occur unless the offensiveness of our arrogance is juridically removed from the presence of the holy God? According to the Bible, to achieve that crucial goal the Father sent his Son into the world to die an accursed death on the cross. The arrogance of man will not dissolve into humble gratitude simply by his observing the Church as a reconciled community. For that community, if it truly bears witness to the whole truth of God set forth in Scripture, acknowledges that its life of servanthood and gratitude is rooted in the vicarious atonement for sin effected by the Son. When confronted by the need for and fruits of that kind of an atonement, human arrogance does not automatically melt into gratitude; rather, the atoning cross proves to be a stumbling block to the Jew and folly to the Gentile.

The Church in Search of Its Self renders excellent service in setting forth the components of the Church’s contemporary quest for self-understanding. The assertion that this quest will constantly prove frustrating unless it is motivated by a sound biblical theology is most welcome. But the theology offered here needs substantial correction in the light of all that Scripture reveals about the Triune God if it is to help the Church gain true self-understanding.

IN THE JOURNALS

Reference Services Review is a new and very useful tool for all libraries. Published quarterly, it includes reviews of new reference books, plus an index to reviews of them in more than threescore other journals, among which CHRISTIANITY TODAY is honored to be the Protestant representative. Subscriptions are $10/year. Write Pierian Press, Box 1808, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106.

Volume 5 of Fides et Historia has 140 pages of essays and reviews by evangelical historians on a wide range of subjects, including “The Horatio Alger Myth,” ‘The Early Franciscans,” “Sources of Pietistic Fundamentalism,” “John Warwick Montgomery and the Objectivist Apologetics Movement,” and “Billy Graham: Preacher of the Gospel or Mentor of Middle America?” Special price for this volume is $3. For a copy and information on regular subscriptions to the twice-yearly journal write: Conference on Faith and History, Department of History, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809.

Christian teachers, whether in public or in non-public schools, should be familiar with the journal of the Association of Christian Teachers. Three issues/year of Spectrum are available for £1 from 47 Marylebone Lane, London W.1., England. Although it is of primary interest to Britishers, its relevance extends to other English-speaking countries.

A new journal from Britain, entitled simply Christian, has recently begun publication under the auspices of the Institute of Christian Studies (not to be confused with a school of the same name in Toronto). The first issue includes numerous articles and reports on various forms of church renewal and Christian affirmation (7 Margaret St., London W.1, England, $9/year).

The third annual issue of Studia Biblica et Theologica has appeared with five essays by Fuller Seminary students on such topics as Wisdom and Habakkuk, the Parousia in the Synoptics, and the Commandment of Love. For 1974, the journal plans two issues and will welcome essays from other seminaries (135 N. Oakland Ave., Pasadena, Cal. 91101; $2/issue).

Be Serious!

Among the books treasured by my father is a small, slightly mildewed gem entitled Songs of Men. It’s a book of lusty and mostly harmless verse. In it is an ode to “the little red god” with the lines:

He’s neither a fool with a frozen smile

Nor a sad old toad in a cask of bile.

If the world is ever divided up between fools with frozen smiles and sad old toads, there’s no question where I’ll be placed.

Seriousness is repeatedly urged on me by both inferiors and superiors. Even my children join in the cry: “Daddy, be serious.”

Whenever I hear that, I am impressed with the depth of Adam’s fall. Grown men who should know better actually encourage seriousness as a virtue. Little children have been led to believe they must be serious.

In the beginning it was not so! Man was made to be a frolicsome creature, full of joy and mirth.

God put him into a garden and said, “Be playful.” But the serpent said, “Be serious.” Our first parents believed the serpent, and we’ve been condemned to seriousness ever since.

What burst of madness made them exchange mirthful innocence for knowledgeable seriousness?

Their choice began that trail of events that often obliges us to adopt a sober mien. All those things about which we must be serious—wars, death, suffering, taxes, earning a living—are a result of that fall.

Even that most serious of things, the proclamation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to all the world, is a result of the fall. In this fallen world God says, “Be serious for a little while so that we can be mirthful forever.”

When John says that God shall wipe away every tear, he is using grossly exaggerated understatement. It isn’t that God will just comfort our sorrows but that he will restore us to the divine playfulness lost for us in Eden.

Mirth is what it was all about in the beginning and mirth is what it will be all about in the end.

EUTYCHUS V

In Reverse

Harris has taken us backward and not forward in our understanding of the cultural milieu of early modern science (“Copernicus and the Church,” Sept. 14). His peculiar prejudices have led him to suggest that Copernican astronomy, from the start, was condemned “in Catholic circles, tied as much to Aristotle as to the Bible,” while “Protestant theologians, at least, were open to and often encouraged the new science.” This he attributes “to principles of authoritative approach taken by the Roman church in distinction to the Protestant method of searching the Scriptures to see whether these things were so.” Such a simplistic view is a misleading caricature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Christianity. The reader who is interested in the problems of religion and the rise of modern science is advised to refer to Hooykaas’s book, briefly quoted in Harris’s article (reviewed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, February 2, 1973). There is also a wealth of quality articles in scholarly journals. It is a pity Harris did not avail himself of any of these.

CHARLES D. KAY

Department of the History of Science

The Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, Md.

“Copernicus and the Church” could have been developed into a really significant theme, of the hazard to truth when religion too blindly attacks the theorems proposed by science. After all, many Christians even today feel that their beliefs are threatened by the various theories offered by science to explain such phenomena as the development of mountains or—more emphatically—mountain lions. Instead Harris seems to be telling us that Copernicus really didn’t encounter all that much serious opposition from religion.… This was an occasion where we could celebrate the mutual search for truth, by science from without, by religion from within—and each with its own lexicon. We should not have glossed over the fact that religion at times responds to the arrogance of science with the arrogance of unreason instead of the balm of love.

WILLIAM H. NAUMANN

Los Angeles, Calif.

Attention

In your February 2 issue you printed my initial report on the WCC Bangkok consultation on missions which I telexed from Bangkok in the midst of the congress (“Bangkok Consultation: Salvation Isn’t the Same Today”). Through a delay in the transmission of the telex it was received much later, I understand. As a result liberty was taken by your editorial staff in changing the text of my report in several places, the most regrettable one being: “… almost laughably—an offer to help with the evangelical Congress on World Evangelization to be held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in July 1974.” This is an ungentlemanly remark which I would never have written. The motion to offer cooperation with ICOWE was made after I had telexed my report and returned to Tokyo. It has caused me embarrassment, and I request that you bring this to the attention of your readership. The facts and actions of the Bangkok conference and assembly speak for themselves.

DONALD E. HOKE

Director

International Congress on World Evangelization

Lausanne, Switzerland

Reforming Jews

Thank you for noting the reformation of Jews for Jesus under Hineni Ministries (News, “Jews For Jesus: Under New Management,” Sept. 28). I think that Richard Cohen, complaining about converts who demonstrate in synagogues, must have had someone else in mind. The Jews for Jesus group here in Corte Madera and throughout the Bay area would never demonstrate in the synagogue or do anything to violate the sanctity of Jewish worship.… For us, the synagogue is still the House of the Book, where the Scriptures are read reverently. When we attend synagogue, it is not our practice to seek to evangelize but to worship with our fellow Jews.

It is true that in the street we are highly visible, but our basic strategy is through the distribution of literature and outdoor evangelism.

MOISHE ROSEN

Jews For Jesus

Corte Madera, Calif.

My complaint “about young Jewish converts who demonstrate in synagogues” was made to a reporter in Portland, Oregon, and referred specifically to a few Jewish believers in that city. These Jewish believers had, for several months, harassed the Jewish community in that city during their worship services—to the point that police had to be called to calm their misguided enthusiasm. I do not feel that this type of activity is advantageous in sharing the Gospel with my Jewish friends and brothers. As a man of conscience I cannot at any time condone harassment of any religious worship service, no matter how pure the motivation would seem.

Your inference that my statement regarding the Portland “Jews for Jesus” tactics referred to Martin “Moishe” Rosen is incorrect and untrue. Our prayers are with Martin, and we wish only the Lord’s abundant blessings on the endeavors of Hineni Ministries.

RICHARD COHEN

American Board of Missions to the Jews

Hollywood, Calif.

I attended one demonstration in front of the San Francisco Soviet consulate where the Jews for Jesus joined quite amicably with other Jewish groups to protest the U.S.S.R.’s failure to free Soviet Jewry. Some members of the radical Jewish Defense League physically attacked Moishe Rosen without provocation at that demonstration, and other Jewish leaders came over to apologize to him for the incident. On another occasion, I attended synagogue with Rosen and then, after the service, sat in on a frank but respectful discussion he had with the rabbi about their theological differences. The Jews for Jesus love their tradition and their people, and they also love Christ. Most of the opposition they encounter comes from those who fail or refuse to understand their sincere desire both to affirm their Jewishness (as Paul and other first-century Jewish-Christians did) and to glorify Christ.

WILLIAM G. PROCTOR, JR.

New York, N. Y.

The article implies strongly that Moishe Rosen and the Jews for Jesus hold little regard for the sanctity of the synagogue and that their rather bold approach to evangelism makes them a bunch of rowdies and trouble-makers. Since I personally know almost every one of the Jews for Jesus and have, in fact, participated in their “colorful and aggressive evangelistic activities,” I can say that this caricature is not at all accurate. I have rarely found more basic respect for the Jewish community and for the foundations of the Jewish worship than in these people. The Jews for Jesus attitude of regard for Jewishness is rooted in their biblical conviction that, rather than ceasing to be Jewish when they believe in Jesus as the Mashiach [Messiah], they fulfill God’s original intent when He made the covenant with Abraham.

P. J. HALLOWELL

Lawrence, Kans.

In Error

I wish to call your attention to a serious untruth contained in “Assemblies Assemble” (News, Sept. 14). Your article states, “An AOG clergyman who commits adultery or homosexual acts will now be placed on two-year suspension with counseling provided by his district presbytery.” The resolution adopted by the Assemblies of God Council in session has nothing to do with “homosexual acts” whatsoever. The plain fact is that the long-standing regulation on homosexuals still stands untouched and unaltered. That position provides that one who has been found to be a homosexual shall never be admitted to credentials again.… A minister who commits adultery may or may not be eligible for rehabilitation. This is a determination which must be made by the district presbytery.

In the same issue under the heading “Diabetic Deaths” the statement occurs that “Wesley Parker died in a diabetic coma after a faith healer at his parents’ Assembly of God church ‘cured’ him.” The facts show that the parents were not members of the Assemblies of God church and had not been for the period of three months previous thereto due to a doctrinal difference. They also show that the visiting evangelist did not pronounce any “cure” but that at the request of the parents he did offer prayer in behalf of the boy. The facts also show that there were no instructions given by the evangelist or pastor that would in any way affect the continued and regular use of insulin as prescribed by the doctor. The decision to destroy the insulin and to discontinue the injections was one made entirely and solely by the parents of the boy.

BARTLETT PETERSON

General Secretary

General Council of the Assemblies of God

Springfield, Mo.

Revealing Relations

Thank you for E. M. Blaiklock’s article, “More and More, Scripture Lives!” (Sept. 28). It is wonderful to have verified in some new ways what so many of us already have discovered—that Scripture does indeed live. When we have known and loved the Bible for many years these new authentications are not essential, but they are very refreshing. It is encouraging to see how quick and keen the writers of the New Testament were to relate the revelation to well-known myths in order to get the message right into the heart of hearers or readers. All who deeply love the Gospel According to St. John will surely find their faith quickened by the reference to the “grain of wheat falling into the ground,” and its instant bringing to Greek minds the myth of Ceres and Demeter. And how alive becomes the sentence, “I will spew you out of my mouth,” when the Laodiceans could not help the flashing into their minds of the soda-laden springs nearby, unfit for drinking.

DONALD E. KOHLSTAEDT

Spokane, Wash.

Plain Answer

Thank you for Harold Lindsell’s excellent and timely article, “Homosexuals and the Church.…” When CHRISTIANITY TODAY arrived this morning and I noticed mention of the subject on the cover, it was in a sense an answer to prayer. I … read the article immediately.

STAN IZON

Executive Associate

The Leighton Ford Crusades Office

Rexdale, Ontario

Life’S Sudsy Situations

Soap operas customarily maintain a low profile, bubbling up only as the butt of jokes. This summer, though, they have been notable for their absence, and soap fans clearly have not appreciated the replacement serial that asks the questions: Will Sam Ervin and Howard Baker find out when Richard Nixon really knew about the Watergate break-in? Will Richard Nixon tell his side of the story? Will John Dean find happiness with Maureen now that he has told the truth? Judging by their outcry, viewers are more interested in the stories that ask, Will Tess Prentiss be convicted of murdering Bobby Mackey? Will Rod Harrington learn that the baby recently born to his wife is actually Steven Cord’s son? Will Virgil Paris be apprehended for his assault of Ginger Cooper? Will aspiring reporter Belle Kincaid discover that race car driver Robert Landers is the son of her husband deserted years earlier?

Of course, soap operas don’t ask questions any more; nor does an announcer recap yesterday’s events or indicate scene changes by intoning, “Meanwhile.…” Those features, along with two-hour dinners and two-year pregnancies, died with radio. In those halcyon radio days, the constant listener could hear as many as twenty-eight stories a day; television has nearly halved that number but doubled the length of each from fifteen to thirty minutes.

Whatever other changes television has wrought, content remains remarkably constant. And a more improbable cluster of crises is hard to conceive. Where else but in soap land could there exist for every dozen people at least one murderer and one victim, one adulterer and one innocent spouse, one person causing and one suffering some other kind of sexual crisis, and one person with a physical handicap or disease. The current ubiquitous crisis is one of fatherhood. Given assaults, affairs, and artificial insemination, hardly a baby born or expected lives or will live with both biological parents.

But the subject matter is not totally unlike that of prime-time TV—or, for that matter, that of Shakespeare’s plays: murder, blackmail, kidnapping, illness, love and marriage, birth and death. One difference is a matter of emphasis. Daytime stories focus on male-female relationships and include matters like rape, adultery, unwed mothers, abortion, and frigidity. Although they are often described as titillating, dialogue is rarely explicit. One day on “As the World Turns,” Tom Hughes said of his wife, “Carol doesn’t want to be alone with me.” Responded his father, “You’re putting that delicately.” Similarly, to see much passion in soap-opera love scenes requires considerable imagination.

The saddest element of the sudsy subjects is their lack of humor. Only once in recent months has a sequence been intentionally amusing. Al and Lucille Weeks of “General Hospital” each plotted to give the other a surprise birthday party on the same day. Al decided to surprise his wife further by redecorating their apartment and he became, to the glee of fellow hospital employees, the caricature of a man stumbling out of his element—sincerely but ineptly doing the living room in green, purple, red-white-blue, and brown.

One obvious difference between daytime and prime-time TV is the daytime lack of action. Fires, car accidents, fights, and the like generally are heard about rather than seen for the same reason such events rarely appear in the theater. The result is that the soaps are talky—passive rather than active, telling rather than showing.

Another glaring difference between daytime TV and prime-time TV and Shakespeare (besides, in the case of Shakespeare, greatness) is the length of time necessary to resolve a crisis; what takes one or two hours in the evening or on the stage may take thirty daytime hours. Each half-hour soap opera includes nearly a dozen commercials and about that many inter-related story lines in various stages of development. After enough of the past is related to make the present meaningful to new viewers, only enough time remains to inch each story along to a peak—or at least a high foothill—that will keep viewers coming back.

And that, after all, is what makes television run: a dramatic story leads viewers to the fountain of commercials where they imbibe, perhaps subconsciously, the importance of mirror-like dishes and floors, white, bright clothes, flaky pie crusts, and soft, shiny, manageable hair with not a streak of gray. Viewers buy the products—thus paying for the TV time that sold them—because they know, subconsciously perhaps, that these products work: the beautiful homes and people exist before their eyes.

Indeed, decor and fashions are about the most artistic elements of soap operas. Despite the titular claim to kinship with, say, Aida, “The Edge of Night” and “Secret Storm” (and the rest of television, for that matter) have no intrinsic claim to similar stature. The soaps are, however, the form of drama most readily available during the day. As drama, their glaring weakness is characterization. If the residents of Peyton Place, Somerset, Centerville, Woodbridge, and the rest have more facets than their radio ancestors, they still demonstrate little depth or development. And, since people remain subordinate to plot, almost any sort of character can be plugged into any role. For example, the role of police Lieutenant Ed Hall on “One Life to Live” could be played by a woman or a white person without any substantive change in the story. Likewise the part of Ben Grant or Somerset’s Delaney Brands could be played by a black actor. But it isn’t, nor is the role of any other professional likely to be. With only a couple of black men and, recently, one Asian woman, minority groups are less represented on the soaps than anywhere else in videoland. Women typically appear in service roles—nurse, secretary—only occasionally as professional people, and rarely in administrative or management positions.

The serials’ small towns apparently exist without sanitation workers, sales clerks, and teachers, but breathes there a soap with folks so well it has no doctor? Or lawyer? Hardly. Yet with rare exceptions, clergymen appear only for weddings. When Adam Drake and Nicole Travis were married in August on “The Edge of Night,” a local Protestant minister was summoned to the home of the lawyer where the ceremony was to take place. Comments about his “new church on the edge of town” and his questions about plans of the couple made it clear that the wedding party and guests knew little about him and he knew less about them. Nevertheless, the couple and the wedding guests joined to repeat the Lord’s Prayer; somewhere, the viewer must assume, these people acquired at least the rudiments of a Christian background.

One of the exceptions to this concept of the clergy is a doctor on “As the World Turns.” Until a few months ago he was a minister who apparently had originally practiced medicine. (A viewer with longer experience than I will have to recap the early details of this character’s life.) His recent turn to medicine, he avowed at the time, was not to be construed as the church’s loss: it seemed to him the physical and spiritual ministries were compatible. However, a spiritual ministry is not a very noticeable part of the story.

The other exception is Father Mark Reddin of “Secret Storm,” whose exodus from the priesthood to marry widow Laurie Stevens last spring got news-magazine notice. It was the closest the soaps have come to spiritual crisis. Death, disease, and disaster strike daily, but nary a priest, minister, or rabbi calls to counsel or console. No matter of life or death seems to conjure thoughts of eternity. Indeed, death often seems only the means of writing a character out of the story, and life is primarily the process of exorcising villains.

The soaps are a sort of modern morality play. That is, they are at the core a dramatic conflict between good and evil, with characters almost exclusively one or the other. In medieval morality plays, however, good was eternal salvation; in soap-opera morality, good is this-worldly happiness, resulting from honesty. Thus the conflict Diana Taylor feels for letting her husband believe he is the father of the baby she is expecting will almost certainly be resolved with a revelation of the truth. Thus Amy Kincaid experienced vast relief when she admitted to husband Kevin that her baby was conceived by artificial insemination. Thus the marriage of doctors Joe and Sarah will very likely survive his revelation of a fleeting attraction for another woman. Thus innocent Adam Drake will surely not be convicted of the murder of Jake Berman. In each of these instances, and many others, the good achieved will be a smooth, unruffled married life—at least until another crisis arises. And in the course of the ups and downs there is enough hardship for the viewer to feel that her (or his) life is not so bad after all and enough pleasantness to keep the viewer dissatisfied with that life.

The woman who works at home caring for her children rarely has a lunch hour or coffee break free of her responsibilities and routine; nor is her work confined to an eight-hour shift. If she can salvage the time, by all means let her find a diversion that works—tennis, daydreaming, soap operas. But if she is a Christian, her diversion must by all means be an activity done to the glory of God. That is, she must approach her entertainment with a mind saturated with the Truth and Beauty of God and come away from it with those qualities heightened. That is not to say that her activity must be solemn but to insist that her intellect, itself a gift of God, not cease to function. A discerning mind may or may not have room for soaps, but in any case it must not suspend judgment informed by the Word of God.

JANET ROHLER GREISCH

Why does a man become an atheist? “That’s an easy question!” replies the atheist. “I chose atheism objectively, after a careful, dispassionate examination of all the relevant evidence.”

Really? I wonder. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is just a front. I suspect that a lot of “hidden persuaders” gnaw at one’s mind when he is forming a world-view. Frederick Nietzsche suggested that to understand a man’s whole philosophy you look first at his ethics. Find out how he wants to behave and then examine the rest of his thought; you may find a cause-and-effect relation that you didn’t expect.

I agree with Nietzsche. I think that many unbelievers have an ethical prejudice when they choose a life philosophy. As Cornelius van Til was fond of saying, “A sinner has a sinner’s ax to grind.” Aldous Huxley admitted as much. “I had motives,” he confessed, “for not wanting the world to have meaning, consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.” No person is without guilt. Alleviating the sense of guilt is a daily problem for the psychiatrist; everybody does something to get rid of it. The Christian is convinced that both his sin and his guilt are taken away when he believes in Jesus Christ. The unbeliever also, in a sense, holds to a doctrine of “justification by faith.” Or rather, justification by antifaith. The thing he erects as his metaphysical ultimate is the thing in which he places his trust, devotion, and obedience. His life philosophy is what takes away his guilt and neutralizes his sin. Once he has chosen a secular, naturalistic philosophy he can say with the Apostle Paul (Romans 8:1), “There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in——,” filling in the blank with whatever he has chosen.

The process is really quite simple. In these times when there is a smorgasbord of non-religious world-views to choose from, the sinner can easily select a theory that makes his sin a function of something other than his own will. He consciously or unconsciously passes the buck to something outside himself—to nature, matter, or society. He must never choose Christian theism, for this would require belief in individual choice and personal responsibility, and that belief would dramatize his sin, not remove it. He must choose a theory that allows him to say, “I can’t help it.”

1. For instance, the unbelieving sinner may choose the philosophy of humanism, which neutralizes sin by asserting that moral error is usually a result of mere ignorance. “Knowledge is virtue,” as Socrates and many ancient Greeks were quoted as saying (Plato, Protagoras, #345. Ignorance, furthermore, usually results from lack of opportunity, not basic moral culpability. Give a person the opportunity to get a good education, to increase his knowledge, to train his mind, and he will eventually conquer his bad behavior.

This same optimistic view of man afflicted many thinkers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In his History of Human Progress (1794), the Marquis de Condorcet wrote that “no bounds have been fixed to the improvement of the human faculties,” and that “the perfectibility of man is absolutely indefinite.”

The great Immanuel Kant expatiated on the Perpetual Peace (1795) that would come when enlightened statecraft directed the political affairs of men. It seemed as if the Christian doctrine of original sin was going to expire on the altar of human dignity.

“The dignity of man!” Today the words die on our lips. Since Kant and Condorcet we’ve seen the Reign of Terror, two world wars, Fascism, Hitler, the Stalin purges, Auschwitz, the Final Solution, the bomb. Not many people still believe in the essential goodness of man, although this brand of humanism is always an option for escaping the reality of sin. An unbeliever nowadays will more likely neutralize his guilt with some form of behavioral determinism, whether biological, psychological, or social.

2. Biological determinism dodges the issue of personal sin by attributing misconduct to some malfunction of the physiological organism. In other words, the body gets the blame. Sometimes man’s problems are naïvely explained as the unfortunate legacy of his animal background, as in the popular but pseudo-scientific works of Robert Ardrey (African Genesis, Territorial Imperative).

At other times human aggression and associated urges are explained by an evolutionary lag in the growth of the human brain. This theory says that the neo-cortex, the “new brain,” the locus of purely human faculties, grew so quickly as man evolved from the primates that it couldn’t completely establish control over the old brain, the seat of the animal instincts, the sources of irrational or impulsive behavior. Sinful man is merely, by this account, an evolutionary miscarriage, a biological freak. As G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “One of the animals just went off its head.”

3. Psychological determinism focuses on a more specific section of the human organism, the hereditary drives in the Id or the Unconscious. Sigmund Freud branded forever on the modern mind the idea that some mysterious, hidden realm—call it passion, emotion, instinct, unconscious force—is the true “reality,” and that it mightily determines who men are and how they act.

Freud was rather pessimistic, on the whole, about man’s chances for happiness. In Civilization and Its Discontents he painted a dismal picture of neurotic man, struggling desperately to live in a world where social order demands renunciation of the strongest drives in human nature. Human beings are a good deal less rational and innately virtuous than the optimists of the Enlightenment felt, but I doubt if they are as morally blind and as hopelessly unreasonable as Freudian pessimists of the twentieth century think. The main point to remember is that Freud’s system has no way to make man responsible for his blindness.

4. Sociological determinism takes the searchlight off individual man and blames all human problems on the structure of society. Thinkers like Karl Marx and J. J. Rousseau felt that man is born free, innocent, and without the profit motive but that by some mysterious process society and civilization always develop greed.

Classical Marxism teaches that all immorality arises from the multi-class organization of society that has dominated history: slave and master, serf and lord, proletariat and bourgeois, have-not and have. Hence, when the classless society arrives and all become members of the same class (proletariat), sin will die out, exploitation will cease, and the state will wither away.

Rousseau and other Enlightenment philosophers insisted that a “cultural lag” or an inertia in social and political institutions caused man’s moral problems. Kings, priests, nobles, capitalists, czars, police, bureaucrats—someone is always fouling up the works. One articulate radical before the French Revolution claimed that society would never be right until “every king is strangled with the guts of every priest.”

Sinful man thus shows great ingenuity in his efforts to fabricate secular alternatives to explain sin. When one surveys all these salvation surrogates, certain general features of all non-Christian secular explanations of sin stand out.

1. First, all alternatives destroy the essential paradox of human nature, the balance between dignity and wretchedness. Humanism upholds the dignity of man but without the balancing ingredient of fallenness. Most determinisms admit the wretchedness of man but lose sight of his potential dignity. Only in Christian theology is there an appreciation of both the heights and the depths of human nature. Man is, in Pascal’s words, “judge of all things, a ridiculous earthworm, who is the repository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the glory and the scum of the world” (Pensées, #246).

2. All secular alternatives make sin a natural fact rather than a moral fact. They make sin a function of something other than the ego. Humanism makes sin a function of the intellect; determinism makes it a function of either body, or Id, or society. In all cases, the guilty will is exonerated and sin is thrown into the material, scientific world of the is, rather than into the spiritual, transcendent realm of the ought.

3. By thus making sin merely a concrete datum, all four alternatives lend themselves to human self-therapy, to social engineering. And when sinful man tries to heal himself, his attempt leads to all sorts of ethical quackery. Man, says the unbeliever, can save himself, but only if he will turn over his life to the teacher, or to B. F. Skinner, or to the psychiatrist, or to Chairman Mao.

4. Finally, all forms of determinism dehumanize man. They take away his sin, true, but only at the price of reducing him to the status of a natural fact, a chunk of matter, a machine, a mere animal—in short, an object, not a subject. B. F. Skinner told the truth when he entitled his manifesto of behaviorism Beyond Freedom and Dignity; he might just as well have added: Beyond Humanity, Selfhood, and Personality.

Christianity says that man’s problem is not really a brain-lag or a culture-lag but a will-lag, an ego-lag. The problem of sin is in man himself, in the deepest part of his being, at the very core of personality, in his will. This will, as Luther argued, is in bondage and refuses to live according to the divinely ordained law of its being, the law of love, no matter how favorable the physical or social conditions may be.

If this is true, then no amount of body engineering, education, psychiatry, or social engineering really attacks the problem of sin at its roots. Man’s help will have to come from someone who can renew his mind and transform his will. “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good,” said Jesus, “and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks,” (Luke 6:45).

By now, the advantages of the Christian world-view ought to be obvious: if a person can face the truth that he is to blame for his own sin, then Jesus Christ can remove both sin and guilt without dehumanizing him! To me, that’s Good News, very good news indeed. As Francis Schaeffer emphasizes in all his books, no matter how sinful a man becomes he can never cease to be a creature made in the image of God, with the capacity to respond to the divine initiative. We need to tell modern man in the clearest possible terms that all his secular alternatives to Christ leave him both unsaved and dehumanized. We need to tell him that only in Jesus Christ can he both remain human and be justified from sin and freed from guilt.

Few of the volumes of commentary written on the works of Clive Staples Lewis examine his concept of sexuality. Some deal with his views of marriage and sexual morality, but they do not mention the more basic views on which his opinions rest. Yet Lewis’s view of the metaphysical status of sexuality is necessary to support these secondary opinions. Although he does not say a great deal about the matter, it seems certain that he viewed sexuality or gender as a reality that transcends the biological. It has being. In a day of sexual revolution, this view should have major implications for Christians. Open marriage, women’s liberation, and sex therapy should all be evaluated on the basis of a Christian view of sexuality. Lewis provides such a basis.

In two of his three space novels, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, Lewis is bold in expressing the view that sexuality is not merely a biological phenomenon but a transcendent reality. Perhaps he felt safe in promoting this audacious philosophy here because these are works of fiction. Yet there are hints of the view all through his works.

In Perelandra Lewis notes that in most languages, certain inanimate objects are linguistically treated as masculine, while others are treated as feminine. Mountains are masculine, trees feminine. He uses this as a springboard for the assertion that masculinity and femininity are based on distinctions that are more than biological. After physical sensations disappear, sex remains. “In denying that sexual life, as we now understand it, makes any part of the final beautitude, it is not of course necessary to suppose that the distinction of the sexes will disappear. What is no longer needed for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendour” (Miracles). In Perelandra this splendour is personified in the angels Perelandra and Malacandra. When these gods appear to Ransom, the space traveler around whom the story gravitates, they have no distinguishing structural characteristics; yet Ransom sees them as belonging to two different sexes. At this point, Lewis makes his most obvious statements about the ontological status of sexuality (or gender) through the character of Ransom:

Gender is a reality and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things which has feminine gender; there are many others and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless.… The male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine.… Their reproductive functions, their differences in shape and size partly exhibit, partly also confuse and misrepresent, the real polarity [Perelandra, Macmillan, 1944, p. 200].

There are fundamental and transcendent characteristics distinguishing the sexes. Sexuality (masculine and feminine) has a mode of being beyond third-dimensional existence. The distinctions and definitions of sexuality become sharper as one ascends the hierarchy of being.

In That Hideous Strength this view is again pressed home. Jane Studdock, the main female figure in the story, suffers from feelings that her sex has been treated unfairly. She believes that females are forced to surrender to males. Marriage is the primary propagator of this atrocity. No one will make Jane surrender. She stands as a soldier guarding her identity against all intrusions, sexual or otherwise. Yet, she is finally forced to come to grips with the meaning inherent in the two sexes. After viewing spiritual life as vague and sexless, she is forced to see the sharp polarity between the sexes that exists in the spiritual realm as well as the biological realm. She contemplates the transcendence of sexuality.

Now the suspicion dawned on her that there might be differences and contrasts all the way up, richer, sharper, even fiercer at every rung of the ascent … a shocking contrast [in] reality which would have to be repeated—but in larger and more disturbing modes—on the highest level of all [That Hideous Strength, Macmillan, 1946, p. 365],

Jane has rejected her husband because of his masculinity—the conquering and demanding aspects of his being. Yet she cannot go on rejecting masculinity when it is presented to her, not just as a fact of life, but as a fact of all existence here and beyond. Ransom explains to her the meaning of her rebellion. “The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it” (p. 316). Lewis, through Ransom, is suggesting that our images of God as a masculine Being are not the false illusions of a chauvinist imagination; they are inspired. The masculine Being demands man’s surrender. Some “souls can bypass the male and go on to meet something far more masculine, higher up, to which they make a yet deeper surrender.” It is in this demand for obedience that the masculine nature is grounded—the feminine is grounded in obedience.

Even the Narnia tales for children contain evidences of Lewis’s view of sexuality. Narnia is a land of chivalry where the most valiant knight is a slightly oversized, talking mouse. In Narnia separate codes of conduct distinguish the sexes. In “The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader,’ ” when Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace appear on the ship, Lucy is immediately given the King’s cabin. Eustace, whose women’s liberationist mother has taught him that the sexes must be treated identically, believes that “that sort of thing is really lowering girls.” But the sexes are not identical and must not be treated so. Their differences are not merely biological. In Prince Caspian Lucy describes the trees as masculine and feminine based on non-biological characteristics. The slender, silver, showery birch is a girl, the hard, wizened, hearty oak is a man, and the smooth, stately beech is a lady. There are characteristics in the trees themselves that determine the genders of their human forms. Perhaps they mirror eternal forms of the sexes. Lewis, in The Last Battle, exposes his neo-Platonic thought when he describes Narnia as an imperfect copy of a real Narnia that has no end. It may be supposed that he sees the sexes also as copies of more real, transcendent models.

Lewis further examines the transcendence of sexuality in his non-fiction when he deals with marriage. Here the masculine and feminine roles become symbolic of Christ and the Church—Christ’s demands and the believer’s obedience. As Lewis says in The Four Loves, “Marriage is the mystical image of the union between God and man.” In the sexual act, the man and woman act as representatives of “the masculinity and femininity of the world, all that is assailant and responsive.… The man does play Sky-Father and the woman Earth-Mother; he does play Form … she Matter.” In their nudity all the individual, personal characteristics are stripped off and the “universal He and She are emphasized.” They represent universal male and female. They represent the Church and Christ; the Church and Christ represent femininity and masculinity. In the imagery describing Christ and the Church, says Lewis in his essay “Priestesses in the Church,” “we are dealing with male and female, not merely as facts of nature, but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge” (in God in the Dock). Masculinity and femininity are grounded in distinctions far beyond the biological level. They are transcendent realities. Sexuality is grounded in the Being of God and his creation. God is ultimately masculine. There can be no female priests because God must be represented by masculinity. The creation is feminine; it is subordinate to God. Although beings in the creation may possess masculine characteristics, all are feminine in relation to God. The distinction is not phenomenal but real.

Although Lewis is not explicit about the characterisics of masculine and feminine, he yields some hints on what he believes them to be. The personification of the gods in Perelandra is a good starting point. Perelandra, as the feminine deity, is described as warmth, life, and melody. She is introspective. She reminds one of rolling seas, mossy stones, and murmuring winds. She is arc and Malacandra is angle. Likewise, the femininity that Jane is forced to accept in That Hideous Strength is based on more directly sensual characteristics. She is forced to suppose that her virtue lies in sweetness and freshness rather than intellect and accomplishment. Her husband, when tempted by scientific fantasies, is kept in touch with reality not by thinking about her doctoral thesis but by thinking about her vivacity. He thinks of her as “deep wells and knee-deep meadows of happiness, rivers of freshness, enchanted gardens of leisure, which he could not enter, but he could have spoiled.” Her image is opposed to the dry, vague, purely intellectual atmosphere of Belbury; her image is distinct, sensual, and emotional. Grace Ironwood is unappealing because she is merely dry and authoritarian. She is a warden, a policewoman. She is somewhat repulsive because her authority has distorted her femininity (although it need not have). Yet this is not to say that intelligence is unfeminine or that women are illogical. Lewis, in A Grief Observed, describes his own wife in this manner: “Her mind was lithe and quick and muscular as a leopard.” If he thought it unfeminine to be so, he would certainly not have said this of his wife.

Femininity is also described in the Narnia tales. The girls in Narnia are more sensitive to violence and less competitive than their male counterparts. In Prince Caspian, Susan shies away from Edmund’s fight with Trumpkin the Dwarf, and both Lucy and Susan leave the ugly job of skinning the bear to the men. When it is Susan’s turn to put the already once-defeated Dwarf in his place, Lewis describes her as being “so tender-hearted that she almost hated to beat someone who’d been eaten already.” Apparently the gentleman’s competition means less to her than to her brothers. In The Last Battle, Jill reveals her feminine dislike for ugliness when she is sickened by the sight of the evil god, Tash. She also exhibits what appears to be a mostly feminine trait of mercy when she protects Puzzle from the punishment he deserves. Although these traits are exhibited by both sexes in degrees, Lewis seems to believe that women are more often warm, soft, and merciful.

Masculinity, on the other hand, as seen in Perelandra in the character of Malacandra, is cold, hard, and vigilant. Man is watchful for enemies, a warrior and a rock. In That Hideous Strength the masculine in man is demanding, “loud, irruptive, and possessive … the golden lion, the bearded bull.” In Narnia there reigns Aslan, the Golden Lion, who exhibits ultimately masculine characteristics. Aslan is the Christ of Narnia, and his masculinity cannot be doubted. He is strong, stern, and forceful, yet tender and playful. He exhibits both masculine and feminine characteristics, but in degrees appropriate to a masculine being. Whereas Malacandra and Perelandra are purely masculine and purely feminine, Aslan, in his humanity, combines both. The boys in the Narnia stories also exhibit masculine characteristics. Lucy exclaims in The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader,” “That’s the worst of doing anything with boys. You’re all such swaggering, bullying idiots.” This is, of course, masculine aggression seen from a feminine point of view. In The Last Battle, Lewis contrasts masculine matter-of-factness with feminine excitement. Jill’s enthusiasm is squelched by Eustace’s mere factuality. But later Eustace gets his rebuke when he angrily scolds the Dwarfs. “No warrior scolds. Courteous words or else hard knocks are his only language.” This is masculinity in the land of chivalry. Masculinity is nobility, strength. It is not softly affectionate, but stern, yet tender.

NOVEMBER PSALM

The master Metalsmith, it seems,

Forged the autumn woods in hues of bronze

And fashioned leaves—

of copper, brass, and finest gold—

That clashed like cymbals in the chilly winds.

Then

Tiring of their noise and ruddy glow

the Master

Bid the leaves clatter to the ground

And forged the woods again

of silver silence.

SUSAN M. WOODCOCK

The two sexes meet in the marriage union. There the masculine is given authority over the feminine as Christ has authority over the Church. The male is responsible to love his wife and give himself for her as Christ gave himself for the Church. It is because of this sacrifice that the husband may ask obedience of his wife. The obedience is the humility of the wife and must be matched by the humility of her husband, her lover. The obedience is not a subsuming of the wife’s personality by her husband but a union of both personalities into a new one. In Perelandra the life of an individual is described as “finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated.” In the marriage union the authority is held by the man, but servitude belongs to both. As Christ serves the Church, so the man must serve the woman as she serves him. “Obedience and rule are more like a dance than a drill—specially between man and woman where the roles are always changing” (That Hideous Strength). Both must have humility; both must command and both obey. Yet when a decision must be made between the roles, the authority of the man dominates because the characteristics of the sexes demand it.

Lewis’s point is that the sexes belong to broad categories of masculine and feminine. Sexuality is grounded in ultimate reality. The creation is ultimately feminine to the ultimate masculinity of Christ. The believers are united to Christ in a marriage union that provides the model for “natural” marriages. Such reality is created by God and is not to be tampered with. Today’s views of sexuality and marriage are based on the belief that sex is merely a biological phenomenon and has little meaning outside its reproductive function. Therefore, divorce or the transfer of sexual characteristics is of little consequence. Lewis would take issue with this. He seems to have viewed sexuality as a metaphysical reality defined by God. Man must not distort God’s created images of sexuality.

A decade has passed since the death of C. S. Lewis, one of the great literary scholars of our century and its ablest apologist for the Christian faith. In an age when fashions change overnight, and when (as Stephen Spender has said) a poet can be “modern” for no longer than a decade, we need to remember something Lewis says in the first page of what is, to my mind, his greatest scholarly book, The Allegory of Love: “Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through a station: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.” Heritage, continuity, hierarchy—these are unifying themes in all Lewis’s writing as literary critic or philosopher (he always disavowed the role of theologian).

Some sixteen years before Lewis published the words quoted, T. S. Eliot had written:

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.… What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it.… Some one has said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that which we know [“Tradition and Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot: Selected Essays, Harcourt, 1932, p. 4].

C. S. Lewis has become that which we know. Few literary scholars, even the best, do more than add facts to our body of knowledge. Lewis has altered our sensibility, the way we think about things; he has given us words and phrases by which we grasp vital ideas; he has given us a pattern of feeling within which we better comprehend artistic and Christian truths. He is one of those rare writers who leave us different from what we were before we read him. His extraordinary learning, integrity, taste, artistry, and sensibility combine, one instinctively feels, to authenticate his vision. Familiar topics—the Middle Ages, Milton, courtly love, humanism, platonism, the Fall, Hell, Heaven—are suddenly revitalized and (above all) inter-related, touched, and made moving by his intense but always disciplined feeling.

So far I have referred chiefly to his professional career as a scholar and teacher of literature. By most who will read these words, however, he is best loved as a writer on Christian themes, or as the creator of brilliantly imaginative novels of another world. In all three areas his reputation has since his death suffered no decline (as often happens when a reputation is importantly related to a personality). A quick glance at a standard annual bibliography, that of the Publications of the Modern Language Association, shows that the number of scholarly articles and books about him and his work has steadily increased over the years—two in 1965, six in 1966, seven in 1967, eleven in 1968, eight in 1969, twenty in 1970, and twenty-one in 1971. The esteem in which he is increasingly held by the secular professional world is important, for he was the unremitting defender in that world of an unpopular and to some an anti-intellectual position, that of conservative Christian faith.

One of Lewis’s major contributions as a literary historian and scholar was to show that the great watershed in Western sensibility came not with the Renaissance, as is still often popularly preached, but with the Romantic movement. To the non-specialist, this may sound undramatic; but the intellectual and aesthetic implications are immense, and not only regarding the way literary history is viewed. In showing that the basic alteration in man’s view of himself in modern history (that is, since A.D. 500) is the eighteenth-century shift from a God-centered universe of order, hierarchy, purpose, and “dance and harmony” to a man-centered (that is, a self-centered) cosmology of the psyche, Lewis has provided a frame within which we can better understand the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and more fully accept the validity of Scripture’s warning that to worship the creature rather than the Creator is to bring disarray to all aspects of human existence.

Lewis also illuminates one’s understanding of “modern literature,” notably the nature of the romantic hero as rebel. He no more denies or diminishes the spine-tingling excitement of a Byron’s Manfred or a Joyce’s Dedalus than he denies the beauty and grandeur of Satan in Paradise Lost. But he shows that underlying the deification of man or angel is unreason, or nonsense, and inextricable involvement in the “Satanic predicament,” where “original” becomes merely “opposite,” and “creativity” “imitation.” He demonstrates that while pity and terror are properly generated by the cosmic rebel, there is, too, perfect propriety in laughter at his pretensions of grandeur, an element of humor that causes him “that sitteth in the heaven to laugh.” He who puffs himself up as a god must accept laughter as his meed, for to the right-minded such ineffable hubris is funny. Lewis has pinpointed the absurdity in the essay “God in the Dock”: “The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock.”

Although the scope of his learning and the variety of his scholarly competence appear in almost every page he ever wrote, they are perhaps most impressively concentrated and permanently on display in two enduring works: English Literature in the Sixteenth Century and The Allegory of Love, the latter dealing in masterly fashion with that intricate, richly symbolic, and closely woven tapestry of medieval literary art, where only the most erudite dare speak to other scholars. Central to Lewis’s success in the tough, often brutally competitive, secular world of literary scholarship was his ability to fight on equal intellectual terms with anyone. He scorned the tendency of some to substitute Christian piety for intellectual rigor, and to claim immunity from standards of art and higher learning on the grounds of their orthodoxy. In an address to a group at Oxford on the topic “Christianity and Literature,” he began by questioning whether such a subject permitted any discussion:

I knew, of course, that Christian story and sentiment were among the things on which literature could be written, and, conversely, that literature was one of the ways in which Christian sentiment could be expressed and Christian story told; but there seemed nothing more to be said of Christianity in this connection than of any of the hundred and one things that men make books about.… Of Christian Literature, then, in the sense of “work aiming at literary value and written by Christians for Christians,” you see that I have really nothing to say and believe that nothing can be said [Christian Reflections, Eerdmans, 1967, p. 1].

His (Pauline) principle was quite clear: The Christian is to do all to the glory of God, and his own duty and calling were within the realm of scholarship, as a professor of literature. Before he was converted, he says, he had assumed that becoming a Christian necessarily meant that one must change his work. He learned otherwise, and did the job in which he found himself.

In philosophy (again remembering his diffidence about claiming the role of theologian), a field in which he was trained and in which he began his academic career, Lewis’s contributions are equally varied, and no two Lewis admirers will agree on a selection. To my mind, however, a major, if not the chief, service he performed was to demonstrate that the Christian faith need fear no intellectual assault. This was coupled with demonstrations of the futility of science when applied outside its proper, restricted area; and of the rational deficiencies of materialism, naturalism, and romantic sentimentalism as sufficient means by which to understand ourselves and the cosmos. (An excellent example is in his paper “The Funeral of the Great Myth,” in Christian Reflections.) Trained in the debating arenas of Oxford and Cambridge, where, in cuts and parries with the finest verbal swordsmen of the world, the dueler whose blade slips on the form of a Greek verb or on an infelicitous use of a Latin quotation is quickly bled, Lewis was a feared and respected warrior. No one fights regularly and often in those fields unwounded, and Lewis bore his share of scars. But in combat such as this, he was the kind of champion that comes along only once in a century. No zeal for the faith, no passion of love for God, no personal purity of conduct, however such things may be the cause of heavenly rewards, could (humanly speaking) break through the ring of steel that Lewis, usually alone, faced. He had to meet his antagonists on their own terms. His erudition, his learning, his reputation had to match or exceed theirs, and nothing less than innate intellectual brilliance and a lifetime of disciplined study could have prepared him. True it is, of course, that the Holy Spirit may, if he wills, confound the counsels of the worldly wise by the words of the simple; but it must have rejoiced the hearts of the angels to see one of the King’s knights bring to the dust the proud crests of some of his Satanic Majesty’s finest chivalry—on his own, as it were. Lewis once said:

If all the world were Christian it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now—not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground—would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past.… The learned life then is, for some, a duty [“Learning in War-Time,” The Weight of Glory, Macmillan, 1949, p. 50].

More generally appreciated by the mass of his readers than his mastery of the art of philosophical discourse and debate is his writing on the Christian experience—how it feels, or can feel, to be a Christian. He always tested his thought on his pulses, and a quality of deep feeling lurks behind almost every dispassionate, impeccable sentence. He never forgets that the Christian life is one of powerful emotion (as the Bible makes abundantly clear), and one does not readily think of anyone (save possibly Jeremy Taylor) who can so quicken the heartbeat and make taut the normally flaccid nerves by suggesting what is now a reality, and what is in store, for the Christian. Here it is not only the power and variety of his own emotions, but also the astonishing creativity of his imagination that infuses his words.

This brings us to the last of the basic kinds of his work that require brief retrospective notice, his novels. In our age of “science fiction,” major writers of fantastic stories about other worlds display two basic techniques. The one makes the most of technological elaboration; the other strives to imagine and actualize new modes of basic sensibility. Lewis is of the second sort, and has no equal in his ability to “dislocate” us (a term someone used in speaking of Walter De La Mare) from reality, as we know it, and to convince our minds and senses of another kind of existence, one distinguished from our own not merely by diminished or exaggerated dimensions but by newly created ones. This is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.

No rehearsal of Lewis’s accomplishments—and surely not so cursory a one as this—can cast a net over the personality that, as a soul animates a body, gives distinctive vitality to his words. He is one of a rather small company of great writers (Thomas Browne, for example, and Dr. Johnson are among them) whose personalities shine through their lines and become an important part of the reader’s experience. On the surface, in Lewis’s case, this appears strange, for there is no apparent effort to reveal himself—rather the contrary. No quirkiness, no conscious cleverness of imagery, no stylistic pirouettes are permitted to disturb the almost severe exactitude and rational rigor of his style. One senses, instead, a distinctive element of austerity, remoteness, and privacy; but one is moved by the consciousness of powerful emotion under strict control, of deep passion carefully harnessed, and of a dignity that does not suppress feeling so much as dress it in formal robes fit for public view. (One is reminded of the powerful austerity with which Rachmaninoff played his own music in concert.) Whether his company communicated this sense to those who knew him I am not fortunate enough to know; and no matter, for I speak only of the effect of his writing, in which this fact is clear: one cannot read him without intense participation, mind and emotions. To be able thus to fuse in harmonious combination intellectual abstraction and emotional excitement is a rare and precious gift; it is demonstrative, in a fragmented age, of the compatibility of all the parts of our beings, hinting at the joy of physical, psychic, and spiritual unity that will be the heritage of the redeemed.

On the purely aesthetic level, Lewis was quite aware, and wrote, of the mingling of austerity (in the older Latin sense) and intense feeling. He sees it in Milton’s depiction of Adam and Eve (the “Virgin majestie” of Eve), refuting fatuous imaginings of our first parents as simple primitives. He finds it frequently in Shakespeare, reminding us that for Bassanio’s sake Portia wishes herself trebled “twenty times herself, a thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich,” and describes herself, as things are, “the full … sum of nothing,” “an unlesson’d girl.” “It is prettily said,” Lewis adds, “and sincerely said. But I should feel sorry for the common man, such as myself, who was led by this speech into the egregious mistake of walking into Belmont and behaving as though Portia were an unlessoned girl. A man’s forehead reddens to think of it” (A Preface to Paradise Lost). Lewis’s writing gives us something of this same sense—of a man gracious, urbane, and approachable, but always possessed of a sense of hierarchy, decorum, and propriety, making it unthinkable to rush upon him with a hearty slap on the back and the use of his first name—a gruesome experience that the English defer as long as possible by listing only the initials of their given names. I know some who find him “cold,” “arrogant,” and “disdainful”; but such assessments emanate from the kind of sensibility that cannot distinguish between the understated control of emotion in, say, a lyric from the Greek Anthology, and the barbaric yawps of rock music bands screaming of their own emptiness. They have no sense of “the pattern deep hidden in the dance, hidden so deep that shallow spectators cannot see it, [which] alone gives beauty to the wild, free gestures that fill it.… The heavenly frolic arises from an orchestra which is in tune; the rules of courtesy make perfect ease and freedom between those who obey them” (A Preface to Paradise Lost).

As to the more technical aspects of his style, it is apparent that among its features are a precision and felicity of phrase, an intricate but utterly clear syntax, and a rhythmic grace that are the products of both great labor and high literary gifts. He has labored hard to make the anguish of polishing and perfecting his style invisible to the reader. He does not, as Byron was said to do, write “with the careless ease of a noble lord.” Or, to shift to the words of Sheridan, he remembers that one may write with ease to show his breeding, “but easy writing’s vile hard reading.”

In each of at least three major areas, Lewis’s reputation is independently secure: as a literary critic and historian; as a philosopher (and psychologist, really); and as a writer of fiction. In addition, his books for children would assure him of remembrance, were they not overshadowed by the greatness of his other work. One century cannot hope to see again such an assemblage of gifts.

But I keep groping for a better statement of what he really did, knowing that nothing I have said gets to the heart of it. So let him do it, even if tangentially and unintentionally: “In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now,” he says in “The Weight of Glory,” “I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.…”

The paper shortage has caught up with us: part of this issue is on our usual paper stock, the rest on a different grade. Thankfully we do have paper of one kind or another to last till year’s end. We are praying that the Canadian papermill strike will end soon.

In these days of paper shortages and postal increases, a magazine that managed to strengthen its ties to a good typographer might be thought to have done well. We’ve done it—without even trying. On October 21 our able production coordinator, Jeanne Willett, was married to John Nichols, partner and general manager of Cooke Typographers, which sets all our type. We wish for them God’s blessing upon their life together.

This issue focuses on C. S. Lewis, who died ten years ago this month (November 22). Editor-at-large Calvin Linton surveys Lewis’s achievements as a literary scholar and Christian apologist. Joan Lloyd (a student of another of our editors-at-large, Tom Howard) deals with Lewis’s concept of sexuality. And the lead editorial draws attention to his novels (renewing my intention to read them; I have worked through his writings that deal directly with theological matters).