Correspondent Jerome Politzer and Editorial Associate Cheryl Forbes covered the sixty-fourth triennial General Convention of the 3.5-million-member Protestant Episcopal Church in Louisville, Kentucky, September 29 through October 11. Here is their report:

“The three P.B.s were the basic issues at the convention—the Presiding Bishop, the Prayer Book, and the priesting of the biddies,” wise-cracked a bishop’s wife in summarizing the way it was at this year’s triennial meeting of the Episcopal Church. The Prayer Book issue—the traditional versus the contemporary—had threatened to raise many pre-convention temperatures (signs along Louisville’s highway I–65, for example, showed a padlocked prayer book with the words “Save the Prayer Book” painted large). But three more years of Services for Trial Use, commonly known as the Green Book, were approved with little debate by either the House of Bishops or the House of Deputies.

The other two issues didn’t go as smoothly. At the opening hearing on women’s ordination to the priesthood, only about half of the sixty-five scheduled speakers got to the podium. Women ordained to the diaconate (in the Episcopal Church there are three orders of ordination: the diaconate, the priesthood, and the episcopate) and priests favoring ordination of women pleaded with the crowded gallery not to ignore the vocational calling of many Episcopalians. Reasons for ordination of women were summed up by a deacon (in 1970 “deaconess” was dropped) serving in Auk Bay, Alaska, who told the gathering of her inability to administer communion to, baptize, or marry the isolated people with whom she works. But Dean James Carroll of the Chicago cathedral argued that to ordain women to the priesthood would damage ecumenical talks with both Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions. “Nothing less than our Catholic authenticity and evangelical integrity is at stake,” he concluded.

The deputies voted against ordination, maintaining the historic Anglican and Catholic practice of admitting only men to the priesthood and episcopate. Some said the complicated voting procedure was to blame for the defeat of the resolution. In the 904-member House of Deputies, half the delegates are clergy, half laity. A deputation (consisting of four clergy and four lay delegates from a diocese) can request a division of the house on any vote. Each diocese is then polled by clergy and lay order. A divided 2–2 vote in a clergy or lay delegation automatically counts as a negative vote. According to John Coburn, president of the House of Deputies, the reason for this rule is that the diocese and not the individual is the basic unit in the denomination.

On the ordination roll-call vote, fifty clergy delegations voted yes, forty-three no, and twenty were divided. The laity voted forty-nine yes, thirty-seven no, with twenty-six divided.

Earlier in the convention, the deputies voted down a move that would have changed the negative vote ruling. Later, the house approved a constitutional change that would make a vote by order possible only if three deputations request such a vote. The change requires a second reading at the next triennial convention, to be held in Minneapolis.

A related resolution aimed at keeping the issue alive at grass-roots level likewise failed.

At the defeat a deputy reassured the women deacons that “they were ordained before God, if not before the episcopate.” Deputies from pro-ordination dioceses declared that they would “continue to work for what they believed in,” and that the issue of women’s ordination would not go away. As Edgar Romig, rector of the Church of the Epiphany in the Washington, D. C., diocese, put it, “ordination of women will come up at every subsequent convention until it passes.”

Women deacons working with the committee on the ordination of women varied in their reactions. Twenty of the twenty-four women deacons who would have been eligible for ordination this January were actively present at the convention. Some of the older ones expressed a sense of frustration that ordination to the priesthood would come too late for them. In a statement, the group declared their outrage at the decision but proclaimed their determination not to “abandon our vocation.”

PRE-GAME WARMUP

Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn minces no words when it comes to disciplining a player or coach, nor does he mince words when it comes to his Christian stand.

At a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the University of Delaware earlier this year, Kuhn called athletes marked men who are admired and imitated. Urging his listeners—mainly high school and college athletes—to live Christ-like lives, Kuhn declared that “there is nothing I know more certain than that Christ lived for us and died for us on Calvary.”

Kuhn, a 48-year-old Episcopalian, sparked a chapel movement similar to the National Football League’s program among the National and American baseball leagues. According to Watson Spoelstra, an ex-sportswriter and a leader of the chapel movement, sixteen of the twenty-four teams now hold pre-game services on Sundays when they are on the road.

Of the play-off teams that vied for a place in the World Series, only the Cincinnati Reds hold regular chapel services, said Spoelstra. The services were begun by Reds manager Sparky Anderson after he attended a Spoelstra-led chapel at this year’s All Star game. While chapel services at some teams attract only a dozen or so, Anderson assembles everybody in the clubhouse for services, said Spoelstra.

Newark deacon Nancy Wittig considers the refusal to ordain women as “a definite move to the right” on the part of the church. Most of the deacons expected, she said, that at this convention ordination would be approved (it just narrowly lost in 1970). John Coburn, known as a leading advocate of ordination of women, could have changed the picture, asserted the Reverend Carol Anderson, who serves as his assistant. If he had stepped from the chair to speak in favor of the proposal, she insisted, “it would have turned the tide.”

Deacon Wittig, wife of a Methodist minister, refuses to consider leaving the church, saying she loves the Anglican tradition. Characterizing herself as “pro-evangelism—I attended Virginia Seminary and it was instilled into me”—she said she was looking forward to eventual ordination in her church. Some observers think that John Allin’s election to the office of presiding bishop immediately preceding the vote on women’s ordination (see following story) may have influenced the voting.

Others think Allin’s election may also influence the church in another way. While Allin feels the presiding bishop cannot lead or move the church in any one direction, the more liberal elements in the church fear he may indeed move the church away from “empowerment”—the term applied to the church’s controversial anti-poverty, self-help campaign. Conservatives say that the church itself has already moved from the years of emphasis on social action and that they are, in one bishop’s words, “very excited” about Allin’s election.

In a denominational survey initiated last fall to learn where the man in the pew sits on various issues, church education and evangelism received the highest priority from the 16,000 polled. “Empowerment” is apparently no longer given top priority, though even the most “evangelical” in the church do not reject the social-action emphasis as part of the proclamation of the Gospel.

Alexander Stewart, bishop of Western Massachusetts (and a trustee of Barrington College), while declaring that the church by 1970 was “close to spiritual bankruptcy,” said he does not want to see the church neglecting the social arena. But unless we “add the unique dimension that only Christians have, secular social agencies could do the same job.” Stewart calls empowerment the “sacred incantation these days.” And he too emphasized spiritual empowerment, “an empowerment from on high.” When asked which direction the church was taking, Stewart declared it was “very decidedly moving back to an evangelical trend.” The bishops are becoming increasingly aware of the mood of the laity, he said, but those who have viewed the thrust of the church totally in one direction may find it difficult to face in the other direction.

The major problem with the findings of the survey, however, is implementation. Bishop Coadjutor William G. Weinhauer of Western North Carolina says that the church is confused as to “materials and methodology” in education and evangelism. While Weinhauer hopes the church will move in a more biblically oriented direction, that is, in proclamation of the Gospel and nurture of the saints along with social aid to the oppressed, he thinks the church is “afraid to move” and “split down the middle.” And other than revision of the marriage canon¹A priest with consent of his bishop may now remarry a divorced person without waiting a year after legal decree of divorce, as was previously necessary. The new canon will become effective no later than January 1, 974., he said, “this convention has taken no great new adventuresome steps.”

Other bishops and deputies feel that Allin has a balanced perspective between empowerment and proclamation, but whether the church will turn to a more centrist—or rightist—position both politically and ecclesiastically depends somewhat, they say, on staff appointments in the national office after Allin takes over. Just what kinds of programs are developed in evangelism and education will also tell part of the story, they add. While evangelism and education don’t form big parts of the $13.6 million budget, church conservatives are unworried at this point. As one bishop said, spiritual renewal doesn’t cost a lot of money. William Folwell, bishop of Central Florida, said he’s not concerned this year because the national church doesn’t yet know how to program and budget for evangelism anyway. “But I may not feel the same next year.” (Folwell is scheduled to speak at next year’s Second Episcopal Charismatic Conference, to be held in Denver. Bishop William Frey of Colorado, himself a charismatic, spoke at this year’s meeting in Dallas.)

The black-empowerment funds of program director Leon Modeste were slashed by about 40 per cent in a shift to channel more money to other minorities—and, as one bishop said, to give headquarters more control over grants.

Allin in an interview told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that he wants to “respond to and hear what the church is saying.” “I hate to sound simplistic,” continued the presiding bishop-elect, “but the mission of the church can be summed up in John 3:16.” He wants to balance social activism and evangelical proclamation, viewing his—and the church’s—task as a “both/and” proposition, but recognizing that “we haven’t been doing a very fervent or eloquent job of evangelism.”

Amid speculation that he would replace most of the national staff, Allin said he doesn’t anticipate any major changes. Nor does he think that the office of Presiding Bishop needs more power. “I do not believe that I have been elevated, but pressed down into the center of the church’s business.”

Just what emphases the church will make its prime business in the next three years seems uncertain just now. As Coburn told a press gathering, the convention is at a standstill, unsure of which direction and which goals to pursue. But there is hope among a great many that the Episcopal Church may be getting back on the track of both serving the “oppressed, depressed, and the deprived” (Allin’s phrase) in Christ’s name and proclaiming his Gospel.

Bishop John: The New Chief Apostle

A benumbed John Maury Allin, 52, the Arkansas-born bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Mississippi and presiding bishop-elect, told the House of Deputies amid laughter and applause, “I don’t have a great speech—not that you didn’t give me time to prepare one.” He was referring to the unprecedented three-hour closed-session debate the deputies had over his election by the bishops to the highest office in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The clergy and delegates by a two-thirds vote ratified the election, hitherto a virtual rubber-stamp action.

Allin, elected on the second ballot by eighty-four votes—the bare minimum needed out of the 167 votes cast—will become, when consecrated, “chief apostle on earth,” according to church tradition and theology. He will be the church’s twenty-third presiding bishop, an office dating back to William White of Pennsylvania in 1789 but elective only since 1926. He is scheduled to begin the twelve-year term next June when strife-harried Presiding Bishop John E. Hines retires “to the golf course.” (Hines was not elected until the fifth ballot at the 1964 convention.)

For the first time in the church’s history the House of Bishops released the names of the nominees prior to election. Others: bishops Robert Spears (Rochester), Christoph Keller (Arkansas), J. Kilmer Myers (California), John Burt (Ohio). They received fifty-eight, twenty, three, and two second-ballot votes respectively. Allin is generally regarded as the most conservative of the five, Burt the most liberal.

The history-making debate in the House of Deputies arose because a minority report from the election committee questioned whether Allin will move the church backward, which means, according to observers, away from Hines’s social-action policies.

While Allin is considered by many to be a moderate-conservative, the presiding bishop-elect told a packed press conference that Mississippians would be surprised to hear it: “I would be called a liberal there.” Despite his record of racial reconciliation and aid to blacks, part of the opposition to his election came from northern black deputies.

Allin voted against the ordination of women at last year’s conference of bishops in New Orleans. The issue of ordination of women is “secondary,” he told reporters. “The primary issue is the renewal of the whole ministry of the church, which includes all orders.” He added that his stand against ordination of women had nothing to do with ability.

After graduating from both college and seminary at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, Allin was ordained deacon in 1944 and priest the following year. He currently chairs the executive committee of the joint commission on ecumenical relations and serves as a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic consultation.

When asked whether he would fire Leon Modeste, director of the denomination’s controversial anti-poverty program, a program that some see as dividing the church, Allin said, “Wait and see what happens.”

Allin claimed that his one qualification for office is “my many inadequacies,” and said he plans to seek his fellow bishops’ aid in fulfilling the office. He left immediately after the press conference to spend twenty-four hours in prayer and meditation about the future and the response he should make to his election.

In his brief address to the House of Deputies, Allin told members and visitors that his desire was to reconcile and renew the church. “You may have elected a fool, but I hope you have elected a fool for Christ’s sake.”

CHERYL FORBES

Blessed is the preacher who listens attentively to other public speakers, for he shall profit from their wisdom. Times without number this pastor’s drooping spirits have revived under the preaching of an E. Stanley Jones, a J. Sidlow Baxter, or an Alan Redpath. Hearing pulpit masters like these not only lifts me spiritually but also brings a note of freshness into my ministry. I owe it to my congregation to listen to great biblical preaching.

Occasionally my exposure to public speakers brings another kind of benefit. I may become aware of a flaw in the man’s delivery—some annoying habit that robs the message of its power. While seated in the audience I catch myself whispering to the preacher inside me, “Am I guilty of that mannerism? Is my congregation as distracted by my pulpit habits as I am by this speaker’s?”

While on vacation last summer my family and I attended a worship service in a Midwestern town. The young pastor, a recent seminary graduate, had obviously spent many hours preparing the sermon. His exposition of Scripture was thorough, and he applied the passage to our lives, but my attention wandered. Then I recognized the problem. The pastor was afflicted with a severe case of pulpit mannerisms. He had strong convictions about his subject, but his energy wasn’t being expressed in forceful gestures. Instead, his feelings were dissipated in a wide variety of shrugs and jerks.

I decided to catalogue his mannerisms for my own future reference. The young man swayed from side to side like a strap-hanging commuter in rush-hour traffic. He pulled compulsively on his left ear lobe and rubbed his nose until mine started to itch. By the time he arrived at his third point he was scratching the top of his head in an abstracted manner. The man was actually preaching two sermons, one with his voice and the other with his body. Most of us concentrated on the latter. That morning I learned how nervous mannerisms can blunt the effectiveness of a well-planned sermon.

Most ministers will recall that their basic homiletics course included at least one lecture on “Everything You Wanted to Know About Mannerisms But Were Afraid to Ask.” We were taught to be natural before a congregation, as if we were conversing with a friend. But it doesn’t feel natural to stand on a platform and speak to a crowd, so many of us develop nervous actions.

There are facial mannerisms such as the smile or frown that never changes, no matter what the mood of the message. When a speaker’s face is frozen in a smile the audience may doubt his sincerity. If he always frowns the people may consider him belligerent.

Many mannerisms result from poor eye contact. We have all observed the speaker who stares out a window, gazes at the floor, or casts his eyes upward as though he doesn’t trust the ceiling. There are nervous speakers whose shifty eyes give the impression that they are afraid of exposing their real thoughts and feelings. Good eye contact adds an important dimension to preaching. Listeners get the feeling that the preacher has something important to communicate to each one.

Most distracting mannerisms involve the hand. Do you tug at an article of clothing? Fold your hands behind your back? Frequently remove and replace your glasses?

I once attended a concert where the guest pianist used the brief intervals when the orchestra played without him to dab at perspiration with a collection of colored handkerchiefs. He never went to the same pocket twice, and wouldn’t replace the handkerchief until a split second before joining the orchestra again. Those who knew when the piano was supposed to come in held their collective breath while the virtuoso dabbed away at his bald head. He didn’t miss a beat, but the audience was so intent on his mannerism that we missed out on the beautiful orchestral playing.

Many preachers need an occasional reminder that putting hands into pockets is forbidden. This practice gives the impression of carelessness and laziness. The audience gets a message that the speaker isn’t free and confident. Besides, pocketed hands cannot be used for meaningful gestures.

A preacher may be unaware of his mannerisms; he may need to ask someone in the congregation to watch for them. Then the place to begin curing them is with attitude. Natural gestures accompany the natural expression of feelings. When a speaker becomes inhibited in the expression of these deep feelings he is easy prey for mannerisms.

It is often helpful to practice a message before a mirror. But be positive in your rehearsal. Instead of trying to catch those nervous mannerisms, concentrate on gestures until they feel graceful and natural to you.

Have something to do with your hands. A speaker whose hands are not under control appears uncomfortable, and an uncomfortable speaker makes for an uncomfortable audience. When not in use, hands should rest quietly at the speaker’s sides.

Watch other speakers in action, not only public speakers at meetings but actors and other speakers on television. You may want to turn down the sound and just observe their movements. Several speech therapists advise speakers to study cartoons in papers and magazines. Cartoonists tend to exaggerate bodily action.

Paul S. Rees offers a final word of advice. “Let preachers remember that visible details have a strange power over listeners. The hand may be a friend or a foe to sermonic effectiveness.”—The Rev. DAVID S. MCCARTHY, Advent Christian Church, Somerville, Massachusetts.

This column by the late Executive Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYis reprinted from the November 8,1963, issue.

One of the many fine things in the old Chinese culture was the sense of responsibility. “This thing [or matter] is on your body” means, “The responsibility is yours and you will be held accountable”—and it worked.

There were times, of course, when this acceptance of full responsibility stemmed from fear, while in many instances “face” may have been the motivating factor—the one appealed to felt a sense of pride in being so trusted. On the other hand, it often came from a deep sense of loyalty.

Man’s responsibility to God is a real and abiding precept of the Christian faith, but even the practicing Christian often fails to realize how strong and persuasive this responsibility is.

We are prone to think our conduct is a matter of option, choice, personal decision, when in fact the question is one of direct personal responsibility to God and therefore can be determined only in the light of God’s revealed will.

The Ten Commandments are God’s moral and spiritual laws in two areas—man’s responsibility to God and to his fellow man. Our Lord summed them up in one word: “love,” toward God and toward our brothers. Most Christians will acknowledge this principle in theory, but they often fail in practice.

Responsibility is not merely a matter of making a Christian profession, after which we live in a spiritual vacuum, set apart from God as far as daily obligations are concerned. The fact is that every day should be lived in the light of our responsibility to God—every act, decision, thought, and motive should come under this concept.

Once we recognize this and act upon it, we are well on the way to achieving inner peace and outward effectiveness.

This does not mean that the way becomes easier; it may become much harder, for the loving will of God for us often includes difficulties, even persecutions. But being obedient to God’s will and recognizing our basic and ultimate responsibility to him transforms this allegiance into obedience and enables us to act and react with God as our companion and helper.

Every day we are confronted with decisions that must be made, problems having to do with our own lives and those of others. The obedient heart, deeply aware of ultimate responsibility to God, makes decisions that will glorify God and bring honor to his name.

Man is a responsible creature, responsible to God. When this basic truth is either unknown or violated, chaos results—chaos in individual lives and in nations as a whole.

“In God We Trust” on our currency is a tacit admission of our national responsibility to God. Current trends that will make our national life purely secular confuse the issue with the separation of church and state. The fact is that men and nations are responsible to God and evade this responsibility to their own undoing.

I have known Christians who, while fully aware of their personal responsibility to God, were nevertheless utterly miserable. This came from their failure to understand the nature of that responsibility. In every minor detail of their daily existence they would stop to ask God what he wanted them to do, then look for some leading or omen that would reveal his will for them. The result was often a life of vacillation, uncertainty, and frustration. They failed to use sanctified common sense.

When we surrender our lives to Christ, a Pilot comes on board the ship of life; the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our hearts, and he makes the decisions for us. This is not to deny that we repeatedly need and receive specific leading for specific problems. But it is to say that the person filled with and directed by the Spirit will make the right decisions as a rule; he has already made a complete commitment to God, a recognition of personal responsibility to him, so that certain attitudes and actions are fixed in the light of God’s revealed will about them.

The Bible is filled with illustrations of those who were aware of their responsibility to God and because of this acted for his glory and their own good.

Joseph was tempted by Potiphar’s wife. There was the occasion, the place, and the pull of the flesh. But Joseph’s answer was, “How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” His decision was predicated not on his own desires but on responsibility and obedience to God.

Daniel and his friends were offered the dainties of the king’s table; but a sense of higher responsibility was theirs, and they chose a simpler fare.

Later, confronted with another choice—worshiping the king or dying in a fiery furnace—they recognized their responsibility to God and defied the king.

In his later years Daniel had to choose between hauling down his colors and refraining from open worship of God for a season, or the consequences of worship. He chose God and found himself in a den of lions. He had a sense of his responsibility to God above all else.

In the Acts of the Apostles we read of the arrest of Peter and John and the officials’ demand that they cease preaching in the name of Jesus. Their reply rings down through the centuries as a challenge to Christians today: “Whether it be right in the sight of God to harken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19, 20).

Cultivating a sense of responsibility to God is both a definite act and a process. On the one hand it is involved in regeneration, when we consciously accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and make him the Lord of our lives. It is also involved in the work of sanctification, wherein we grow in our apprehension of God, our obedience to him, and our willingness to serve him.

Basic to all is man’s recognition of the complete sovereignty of God. We are responsible to him because we are his by creation and redemption. If we admit his sovereignty, we must recognize our own responsibility to know and do his will. This should not be an onerous duty; rather, it is a joyous privilege, for God requires nothing of us for which he will not at the same time supply the wisdom, guidance, and strength.

Frustrated? Uncertain? Miserable? The answer is not to be found in man-made panaceas or in multiplied activities. Rather it is to be found in this command: “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10).

Admit God’s right to command and guide, and recognize your responsibility to him. Act on this basic truth, and you will see life in proper perspective.

An Intriguing Synthesis

History of the Old Testament, by Claus Schedl (five volumes, Alba House, 1973, 2,071 pp., $45), is reviewed by Carl Edwin Armerding, assistant professor of Old Testament, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

This monumental work by an Austrian Redemptorist priest and professor will be of special interest to evangelical Christians because it represents current conservative Roman Catholic scholarship. Schedl has assembled in five volumes the result of a lifetime of research, combining a full awareness and acceptance of critical scholarship with a theological and almost devotional approach to the Word of God. His foreword, which is repeated in each volume, should be read by anyone who has struggled with the proper relation between what the author calls “profane exegesis” (philology, literary criticism, archaeology, and historical study) and a recognition of the divine inspiration and resultant “spiritual” interpretation of the Bible. Schedl affirms wholeheartedly that the exegete must be concerned with the former and claims (rightly, I believe) that “the personal religious conviction of the investigator plays no role in this.” But the Christian scholar must not, yea cannot, stop at this level. He must go on if he is going to recognize the “inexhaustible reality of the Bible word.” He must recognize the grand unity of the whole. “The words are all oriented toward the Word. The Old Testament is the ‘educator towards Christ.’ Thus, if you tell how you look at Christ, I will tell you how you read the Old Testament.” The foreword closes with a quote from Origen that retains its freshness to this day.

First and foremost, Schedl is a supernaturalist. He has no fear of seeing a God who, in history as in the Bible, intervened in his creation in a special way. No less a figure than J. Gresham Machen claimed that this was the real watershed between an evangelical and a liberal view of Scripture. In a day when the “inerrancy” debate continues to fragment the evangelical world, we would do well to remind ourselves of this much more basic distinction. Schedl, whose use of critical methodology, though very restricted and cautious (conservatives will like much of what he says on critical issues), goes well beyond what is considered “kosher” in evangelical schools, clearly affirms the supernatural as follows:

For the God of the Bible, the miraculous is the most natural thing in the world. The God who has created all the universe … truly has the power to supply his representatives on earth with the credentials of miracle. The God of Israel is a God of miracles, a God who can always, and everywhere, do anything he wills” [IV, 50].

It is only in this context, according to the author, that distinctions between legend and history or novel and biography can be worked out.

In specific matters of critical methodology, Schedl is representative of the more moderate Roman Catholic scholar of today. He quotes Pontifical Commissions more than once (this is one of the few specifically Catholic features of the work) and seems to try to work within their guidelines, in a day when many of his brethren seem to make the language of such bodies mean the opposite of what it says. In actual fact, Schedl seems more dedicated to the principle of literary and form criticism than to the use of either. Literary and form-critical principles are used to determine the genre of the stories in Genesis 1–11 and the cycles of Elijah and Elisha, but never is a narrative divided into its component documents nor are various strata dated by means of Sitz im Leben. This, in a book that pays lip service to the results of current scholarship, is most surprising and will certainly draw negative response from critical reviewers. A good example of what the author means by form criticism is seen in Volume I, a section beginning on page 277, in which the existence of both a Yahwistic and an Elohistic document is questioned. Instead, Schedl affirms the study of the structural unity of the passage (Genesis 3, in this case) according to formal principles of its final production. That this is not form criticism in the traditional sense is apparent to anyone who has worked in Old Testament; what Schedl is committed to, both in literary and in form-critical terms, is a methodology not unlike that followed by some theologically conservative Protestants.

The books are a veritable library of intriguing suggestions and conclusions. Before examining some of these in detail, we should look at the general scope and purpose of the work. The History of the Old Testament is much more than just a history (à la Bright, Noth, or Bruce). It is rather a comprehensive, theological-expositional library of biblical studies, fitted around and into a narrative history of biblical times from Abraham to the conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 B.C. Although bibliography and footnotes are directed to the scholar, the body of material seems prepared with the parish priest or intelligent layman in mind. The tone is pietistic and sometimes even sermonic (e.g., II, 138, “In the antithesis between Moses and Aaron we also note the distinction between true and false leadership …”). Theology as well as history form the subject matter, and one could do worse than use the set as a theology textbook. P. Heinisch, O. Procksch, and W. Eichrodt top the list of Schedl’s favorite theologians. The work of G. von Rad, which had not appeared when the earlier volumes were issued, is discussed in Volume III and following, but that author’s historical skepticism is generally rejected.

The translation is not always smooth, and there are such differences between Volume I and the remaining volumes that one can hardly recommend the entire set for any given purpose. As a detailed, though slightly outdated, history of Israel, which beautifully integrates the study of biblical sources with its narrative, the last four volumes can be used as a text. While the work lacks the concise quality of the works of Bright and Bruce, it is not wordy or repetitious. It simply covers more; to write a history cum theology cum commentary in less space is impossible. Little in the work belies its Roman Catholic origin, and I predict a useful life for the set within Pentecostal circles. The price, though steep, is not unreasonable in today’s market. More care might have been taken in such a production to avoid small errors of translation and spelling, and the binding should have been stronger for a reference set.

Volume I deserves individual treatment, as it has been totally revised from the German edition and stands alone both in methodology and in subject matter. Everything from a review of ancient Near Eastern history to a full discussion of the origins of the world and man is included, set in the context of an exposition of Genesis 1–11. In the former section, the work could have been written by any well-informed student of the field, and the conclusions are fairly standard. Schedl does depart from the norm in dating Abraham to ca. 1500 B.C. (following C. Gordon), a conclusion that is inconsistent with his later (though written earlier) volumes (see II, 29).

In the field of human origins (Gen. 3–11) the author is less interested in questions of science and Scripture than in the literary and theological meaning of the text. He blames the scientist for finding error in the text when its “methodology is essentially different from that of the natural sciences” and the biblical scholar for capitulating “far too quickly in face of the ‘clear findings of natural sciences’ ” and seeking to “save the Bible by harmonizing and concordizing.” The creation narratives are seen as a simple and straightforward credo of faith that, when set over against ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies (stories of world origins), tell us clearly what God intended us to know. A long discussion of evolution rejects Darwinian philosophical presuppositions (Darwin “transgressed the boundaries of a natural science”) and even questions the whole theory on the basis of certain open questions in paleontology, biology, philosophy, theology and ethnology. But Schedl is no classic fundamentalist, for it is with man and his purpose rather than with science and its limitations that he is concerned. He is content with the formulation of Teilhard de Chardin that “man has entered into existence noiselessly,” but for man’s purpose and destiny he feels that the word of the Bible is loud and clear. Much of the book is concerned to answer the theological questions that determine a Christian view of man.

At once the most intriguing and also the most disturbing part of Volume I is its preoccupation with numerology. I have purposely saved this for last as the book has great merit even apart from the dominant place given to this subject. Furthermore, the remaining volumes in the set show no evidence that the author had in fact discovered this theme or been gripped by its importance prior to his latest revision of the opening volume. In short, the first volume is completely obsessed with a kind of cabbalistic notion that the number of words, letters, and phrases has a mystical significance, the unlocking of which is the key to understanding. The task of biblical theology (says Schedl) is to work with the present form of the text (I, 278 ff.) (contra form criticism), and the method is to determine the principles of “wisdom” by which the Spirit of God led in the formulation of the structural unity of the section. This is illustrated in some detail in a study of Genesis 1:1–2:3, and Schedl seeks to show (following the Jewish scholar Gershom Scholem) that the symbolic value of the numbers comes, not from the Middle Ages as cabbalistic inventions, but from the final period of biblical history itself. That this final period, in the case of Genesis 1, is as late as the post-exilic Jewish community, is no problem for Schedl, for he sees in the final as well as the earlier stages the superintending work of the inspiring Spirit of God. Schedl is convinced of the importance of the number 11 (10 plus 1) in this “pre-cabbalistic Judaism” of the second-temple period, and attempts to show how it influenced the structure of Genesis at every point. For many a reviewer this will be the determining factor in his rejection of the entire set; on the other hand, the work is sure to attract a host of admirers for whom this kind of research is considered basic Bible study. I hope that neither admirers nor detractors will be so influenced by the author’s numerology that they miss whatever else he has to say.

Volume II, which appeared originally in 1956, is unrevised in translation and covers the period from Abraham to the Judges. Conclusions are generally conservative, and the author is heavily influenced by the results of archaeological research done by such men as W. F. Albright and N. Glueck. The patriarchs are affirmed as historical personages and the narrative is constantly treated as a basic, reliable source. Much is made of ancient Near Eastern parallels. Moses is seen as the “primary author” of all the narratives, together with the legal material attributed to him in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, though much flexibility is allowed for post-Mosaic additions to the text. The Exodus and Conquest are maintained as historical, though the manna incident is explained naturalistically (but its having been withheld on the seventh day is a miracle!). Mosaic law is favorably contrasted to that of Assyria and Babylonia, and harmonistic solutions are given to such nagging critical problems as the origin of tabernacle and sacrifice. Through it all, Schedl’s primary interest is unquestionably for the reader to see God at work, through his ancient servants, beginning and furthering the process of education toward the final coming of the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ.

The third volume treats the period of Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon. Again, critical problems tend to be simplified and harmonized (though clearly not ignored), and there is a good theological discussion of the whole. The ambivalence of the text of Samuel toward kingship is interpreted as God’s work, using an idea that was originally contrary to his will to bring about the great institution (kingship) that would ultimately define the role and function of God’s own Son.

Sections on Psalm and Wisdom research round out the volume. Luther’s break with medieval tradition on the Psalms is discussed, together with subsequent Protestant and Catholic efforts, and Schedl takes a position closer to Luther than to either medieval Catholics or liberal Protestants. The material on Proverbs and the Song of Solomon is also most useful, and positions taken are quite consistent with current Reformed scholarship.

Volume IV, entitled The Age of the Prophets, treats the divided monarchy through the exile. Basic to the presentation is the thesis that the cult-worship of Israel was originally unified at one site (Shiloh), and that it was only after the destruction of that city that the problems of plural shrines and non-Yahwistic worship entered. The powerful “Queen-mother” office in Judah is seen as responsible for much of the trouble (a thesis that rests on slender foundations, especially in the north, where little consistent data regarding queen-mothers is given). Both Elijah and Elisha are seen as historical figures who performed actual miracles, though the account of each is amplified in the process of time. Theologically, Elijah is presented as a second Moses, with various parallels intriguingly drawn. Schedl seems a bit shaky in his analysis of the Baal cults and their role vis à vis the bull cult of Jeroboam. It is not clear whether corrupt Yahwism or pagan Baalism is envisaged, particularly in the period following Elijah (e.g., in the days of Amos and Hosea).

The volume has a chapter on each of the important prophets. Analysis of Isaiah finds collections of that prophet’s own preaching in chapters 1–35, while later chapters are the result of preaching by one or more of his later disciples. Schedl’s hermeneutical principles are illustrated by his handling of the “ ‘almah” passage in Isaiah 7:14, together with the servant passages of “Deutero-Isaiah” (in Volume V). Unlike liberal scholarship, which finds no original reference to the Messiah in either, Schedl sees in each an original historical reference that, though important for interpretation, can never give the full import of the passage. This comes only with the New Age, the time of fulfillment, when a new prophet, also inspired by God, could see in the former passage a virgin birth and in the latter a picture of the suffering Christ.

A final volume, entitled The Fullness of Time, brings the history down to 63 B.C. but devotes most of its attention to an analysis of various post-exilic books. Too much attention is given to Daniel (36 pp.), Judith (21 pp.), Esther (22 pp.) and Tobit (20 pp.), and too little to “Second” Isaiah (16 pp.), Haggai and Zechariah (6 pp.), and Malachi, Obadiah, and Joel (7 pp.). Daniel is considered a book with two or three stages, the first of which contained the visions of a genuine historical figure named Daniel living in Babylon in the sixth century B.C. The last stage is the Maccabean reinterpretation of the earlier visions, making their message contemporary to its own needs. The author’s historical analysis of the Daniel phase is unique: Darius the Mede is equated with Darius the Great, to whom the title “The Mede” was given, not for genealogical or ethnic reasons, but because he defeated the revolting Medes in a contest for power in 521 B.C.! Even the Nebuchadnezzar of chapter two is not the Nebuchadnezzar with whom we are familiar but a Nebuchadnezzar IV, who revolted against the Persian empire in 521. All of this requires a fair degree of textual and historical shuffling, including even a claim that Daniel was born in exile and reared in the Babylonian court rather than having been involved in a deportation as Daniel 1:1 suggests. One final note on Daniel: his four kingdoms of chapter seven are seen as four kings of his own day, which were reinterpreted to be the kingdoms of Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece only at a later time!

Esther is also given full treatment. Arguments against the historicity of Esther are rejected, and Schedl affirms that the theological lesson must grow out of the historical event. The point is this: Israel, separate from the nations, was always a mystery to itself and its surroundings, and it remained such until the concept passed over into the new Israel.

Treatment of Ezra and Nehemiah produces no surprises. Ezra’s coming is dated to the thirty-seventh year of Artaxerxes, in a now-popular emendation of Ezra 7:8. A fine introduction to the Wisdom of Ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) is followed by a somewhat ineffective defense of the orthodoxy of the Wisdom of Solomon, and the closing statement shows how Daniel (obviously a favorite of the author) is really the prophet who binds the testaments together.

As can be seen from the preceding remarks, there is much that seems erratic in the work of this gentle Austrian theologian and exegete. To some the erratic will appear brilliant and creative, while to others it will be a stumbling block. To me, however, the dominant impression of the whole is not to be summed up in its weaknesses. I prefer to see in the work an example of what can be produced when a dedicated Christian scholar, who loves God and his Word, sets out to produce a synthesis between his own studies, his church and its teaching, and the work of contemporary scholars from every tradition. If the result is not fully satisfying to any one group (and it certainly does not fully satisfy me as an evangelical), that seems almost inevitable. But we are the richer for Professor Schedl’s efforts, and I wish for his labors a long and fruitful life. It would be nice to think that the first edition will soon be sold out so that a new edition can correct the printing and translation errors, making the books even more useful for the English-speaking audience.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

Dictionary of Christian Ethics, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (Baker and Canon [1014 Washington Building, Washington, D.C. 20005], 726 pp., $16.95). Nearly 300 evangelicals contribute hundreds of essays, long and short, on seemingly every conceivable ethical topic. Essential for the library of every preacher and Bible teacher, and should be recommended to one’s local high school, college, and public libraries.

A Yankee Reformer in Chile: The Life and Works of David Trumbull, by Irven Paul (William Carey [533 Hermosa St., South Pasadena, Cal. 91030], 155 pp., n.p., pb). Trumbull was a nineteenth-century missionary to Valparaiso. His impact was not limited to the church but was evident also in educational and political concerns.

The Gospel of Matthew, by William Hendriksen (Baker, 1,015 pp., $14.95). A major addition to a highly regarded New Testament commentary series by one man, a retired Christian Reformed pastor and seminary teacher.

Readings on the Sociology of Religion, edited by Thomas and Janet O’Dea (Prentice-Hall, 244 pp., n.p., pb). Twenty-six selections on religion old and new, east and west.

Where the Love Is, by Gordon McLean (Word, 123 pp., $3.95). A Youth for Christ director relates Bible themes to life. Underlined by engaging and dramatic accounts of young people whose lives were transformed by meeting Christ.

The Seduction of the Spirit, by Harvey Cox (Simon and Schuster, 350 pp., $8.95). The celebrated author of The Secular City offers a book of theological reflections fused with autobiography. His stress is on “the people’s religion” as distinguished from that of the elite.

American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank and File Opinion, 1937–1969, by Alfred O. Hero, Jr. (Duke University, 552 pp., $9.75). Extensive surveys and sensible analysis provide valuable insights into clergy and congregational attitudes. However, the section “Toward More Effective Churches” assumes that effective churches will reflect the foreign-policy views of liberal theologians. Worth reading, nonetheless.

How to Study the Bible, edited by John B. Job (Inter-Varsity, 110 pp., $1.95 pb). Provides direction for the serious student of the Bible. The emphasis is on personal work by the individual. The writers suggest possible approaches, such as “Analyzing a Book,” “Word Study,” and ‘Theme Study,” with examples of each. An excellent guide.

Knowing God, by J. I. Packer (Inter-Varsity, 254 pp., $5.95). An excellent volume coming out of the conviction that a profound ignorance of God—both of his ways and of communion with him—“lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today.” Originally written as a series in a British periodical, the book offers excellent biblical exposition in restating scriptural doctrine as well as in application to the needs of our age.

Did I Say That?, by John McKenzie (Thomas More [180 N. Wabash, Chcago, Ill. 60601], 222 pp., $7.95). A leading American Catholic theologian’s free-wheeling thoughts and challenges on almost any subject. Originally published as magazine articles, topics range from “The Deluge Myth” and “Academic Freedom” to “The Historical Jesus of Superstar.”

New Testament Fire in the Philippines, by Jim Montgomery (William Carey Library, 209 pp., $2.50 pb). The field director of Overseas Crusades in the Philippines analyzes the mushrooming success of Foursquare Pentecostal missions in that land. He refrains from debating usual points of diversion in an attempt to grasp the principles at work. Conclusion is a challenge for evangelicals to review and revise present methods.

True or False?, edited by David Otis Fuller (Kregel, 295 pp., $2.95 pb). Four essays defending the textual variations underlying the King James over against the views of the great majority of evangelical biblical scholars.

Schleiermacher: Life and Thought, by Martin Redeker (Fortress, 221 pp., $4.50 pb). Translation of a general introduction to Schleiermacher that combines thorough biographical material and the development of his philosophical-theological systems. A clear presentation of this formative liberal theologian.

More Newly Published, page 36.

Family Devotions With School Age Children, by Lois E. LeBar (Revell, 253 pp., $7.50, $3.95 pb). More than 100 suggested devotions with various biblical passages correlated with contemporary examples and questions for discussion. Arranged by subject, but a good index enables parents to select material especially suitable for that particular day. Most applicable for older elementary and junior-highs.

Ways of Being Religious, edited by Frederick Streng, Charles Lloyd, Jr., and Jay Allen (Prentice-Hall, 627 pp., $9.95). Three Southern Methodist University professors have arranged a hundred selections into eight distinct “ways” of traditional encounters with the holy and mysticism to various non-transcendent forms such as “social gospel” and drug ecstasy. Each “way” has excerpts from advocates, interpreters, and critics. Commendably includes the great hymn “Amazing Grace,” and excerpts from Paul of Tarsus and C. S. Lewis.

Winds of Change in Christian Missions, by J. Herbert Kane (Moody, 160 pp., $2.25 pb). Honest, almost critical look at missions as they exist today by a professor at Trinity Seminary. Presents a realistic appraisal of what has happened with missions and what lies ahead.

Take Her, Mr. Wesley, by John W. Drakeford (Word, 142 pp., $4.95). The story of John Wesley’s early ministry and his love for Miss Sophia Hopkey. Factually related but filled with warmth and understanding.

The Heart of Healing, by George Bennett (Judson, 125 pp., $2.50 pb). The author, a minister with the Church of England, believes that “the heart of healing is the heart of the gospel; and the heart of the gospel is the victory of Christ.” Cases of both physical and spiritual healings are recounted.

An Hour to the Stone Age, by Shirley Horne (Moody, 208 pp., $2.95 pb). A fast-moving, well-written account of the missionary work among the Dani people of the West New Guinea Central Highlands. Traces the effort from the postwar conception to the present-day indigenous church.

The Evangelical Renaissance, by Donald G. Bloesch (Eerdmans, 157 pp., $2.95 pb). An analysis of the resurgence of evangelical theology since the fifties and of the hallmarks of evangelicalism. The author, who calls himself both evangelical and ecumenical, stresses the need of reconciliation in the Church fostered “through a common rededication to the message and imperatives of Holy Scripture.”

Union With Christ, by Norman Douty (Reiner Publications [Swengel, Pa. 17880], 274 pp., $7.95). A thorough treatment of a central doctrine in the New Testament by an evangelical minister. Sometimes devotional with practical applications.

The Salvation Tree, by John Killinger (Harper & Row, 169 pp., $5.95). In terms of contemporary images, literature, and issues the author contrasts modern modes of salvation (education, political revolution, technology) with the promise of the future kingdom that Jesus gives. Reflects Moltmann’s theology. Perceptive of the message of contemporary culture, weak in biblical orthodoxy.

The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land (Eerdmans, 141 pp., $1.95 pb) and C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian (Regal, 242 pp., $4.95 and $2.95 pb), both by Kathryn Ann Lindskoog. Interest in Lewis, who died ten years ago, shows no signs of abating. The first book is a study of the seven Narnia tales, which were ostensibly written for children. The second attempts to present systematically various theological views of Lewis drawn from the whole range of his writings.

The Barnabas Bible, by Graham Jeffrey (Harper & Row, 256 pp., $4.95). No, not another translation! Rather it is a series of cartoons that paraphrase certain scriptural events, parables, and sayings. The intention is to drive home the point more forcefully while evoking a chuckle.

A New Joy, by Colleen Townsend Evans (Revell, 124 pp., $3.95). Sensing the need to have Scripture “come alive” in her own life, the author relates her adventure of discovering the Bible’s relevance to daily experience. A refreshing application of the Beatitudes to the life-style of a modern woman.

Defusing Clergy Conflicts

Clergy in the Cross Fire, by Donald P. Smith (Westminster, 1973, 232 pp., $7.50, $4.95 pb), is reviewed by Russell Chandler, journalist, teacher, and pastor, Columbia, California.

If you are a harried minister in today’s age of identity crises, caught in the cross fire of conflicting expectations, cheer up. You are not alone. Only one-sixth of the labor force in the United States is free of job tension, according to a survey on role conflict and identity cited in this book. And the minister’s role problems are often more severe than the average worker’s.

So says Donald P. Smith, as he takes a Jeffrey K. Hadden-type (The Gathering Storm in the Churches) look at the rift between pulpit and pew. Smith, general director of the Vocation Agency for United Presbyterians, uses ample research as the basis for a probe of “relevant concepts of ministry” and the clarification of its ambiguities. Next, he examines role theory and some results of studies on the “management and reduction of role conflict.” A third section deals with ways to help clergymen ease conflicts. And finally, he helpfully explains goal-setting and performance review.

Smith goes at his task from the perspective of social psychology, which in itself is valid. But the fact that he does not refer to Scripture or suggest that prayer and searching the Word may help a confused cleric will be for evangelicals a disappointment, if not a near-fatal flaw in the book.

Recurring themes are Smith’s findings that ministers tend to have a giant distaste for administration and an intense thirst for more effective communication, both with ministerial colleagues and with parishioners. The section on goal-setting, borrowing heavily from expertise developed in industry and professional organizations, is the most enlightening part of the volume.

Smith reasons thus: Clergy and laity frequently have differing understandings of what the minister ought to do; there is great need for dialogue so that laymen and ministers can understand each other; it is important to make role conflicts visible so they can be dealt with, and discussion of clergy roles appears to be an effective method of bringing clergy and laity closer together; in the face of role conflict or ambiguity, people tend to withdraw rather than increase their efforts to communicate; an active stance on the part of the clergy—rather than passivity—is needed to reduce role conflict.

Smith pleads for “a more conscious, careful, and concrete setting of goals that are informed by a knowledge of the minister’s calling, his particular gifts, and the congregation’s sense of mission within its particular constellation of opportunities and problems.”

The author then gets specific. His discussion of minister as employee vs. minister as autonomous professional goes to the heart of much ministerial agony. The autonomous-professional concept will be more to the liking of many ministers, Smith declares, but it’s inadequate. The clergyman also has an organizational type of accountability that makes him different from other professionals.

Clergy in the Cross Fire would have been improved by more specific anecdotal material and the use of dialogue. Few, if any, noted evangelicals were consulted, and programs and statistics from smaller and predominantly evangelical bodies are conspicuously lacking, both in the body of the work and in the eleven appendixes.

And though Smith does refer to the minister’s calling of God, the reader is left to wrestle anew with the question, Does the Lord put a premium on success or on faithfulness?

Fumbling Frustrations

If you’ve ever watched a child trying to perform a task slightly beyond his level of coordination you probably know the kind of frustration the fumbling of others can cause.

Because I suffer from this kind of vicarious frustration I could understand the feelings of a football fan in Colorado, sort of. The newspapers report that this true-blue Denver fan tried to commit suicide because “I can’t stand their fumbling any more.” The Broncos fumbled seven times during the game that precipitated his action, losing the ball to the opposition five of the times.

I tried to think of what that news story would be like in other contexts of frustration.

LOUISVILLE, Ky., October 2 (APC)—An Episcopal bishop, despondent over the performance of his peers, tried to kill himself, deputies reported today.

The bishop, whose name was withheld, hanged himself with his stole but was discovered in time.

The county sheriff’s office said that the bishop wrote a note before attempting suicide.

“I have been a member of the house of bishops for fifteen years and I can’t stand their fumbling any more,” the note said.

Or how about:

SANTA MARIA, Calif., October 2 (APC)—A magazine subscriber, despondent over trying to get his address changed, tried to kill himself, deputies reported today.

Francisco Johnson leapt from a thirty-foot-high stack of magazines but was only slightly injured.

Johnson had tried for several months to have his address changed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine. After twelve fruitless letters he suddenly began receiving twelve copies of the magazine every two weeks.

The sheriff’s office reported that Johnson left a note before attempting suicide.

“I’ve been a fan of CHRISTIANITY TODAY since its founding and I just can’t stand their fumbling any more,” the note said.

Or:

MESOPOTAMIA, Adar 2 (ZAP)—A devastating flood struck this area today, sweeping away a whole civilization.

For some years a local prophet has been prophesying a great deluge.

There are reports that a voice from heaven was heard at the beginning of the downpour saying, “I just couldn’t stand their fumbling any more.”

EUTYCHUS V

Claims, Contentions, And Copernicus

I received my first issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (a little worse for having traveled within the U. S. postal system) and I was very pleased.… I read R. Laird Harris’s “Copernicus and the Church” (Sept. 14) with great interest and general agreement. However, I would like to fault him with one factual error and one erroneous innuendo.

The error concerns the date when Ptolemy’s Almagest first made its way into European intellectual circles. It is true that the Almagest did not see a Latin translation of the Greek manuscript until the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. But a Latin translation of the ninth-century Arabic translation did exist from the time of Gerard of Chremona (twelfth century).… The innuendo in the last two sentences of Harris’s essay can hardly be believed in the days after Jerome J. Langford’s Galileo, Science, and the Church.… Laying Galileo’s difficulties with the Roman church at the feet of the hoary myth of that church’s general hostility to science is unforgivable. This claim ignores the facts of that conflict to the extent that the entire facts will ever be known, as well as diminishes the importance that any cosmology plays in the average man’s theological thought life.

PETER FORD, O.S.B.

Saint Andrew’s Priory

Valyermo, Calif.

For The Whole Family

I am very much encouraged by Clark Pinnock’s article ‘The New Pentecostalism: Reflections by a Well-Wisher” (Sept. 14).…

It would seem to me that our brother has unwittingly revealed to us one of, if not the greatest of, the problems in this whole issue. After clearly arguing that the sole condition for the fullness of the Spirit is that of faith (sola fide), he goes on to say that “there must be an abiding in Christ and a walking in the Spirit.” This he considers to be the precise point that “the new Pentecostals can teach the broader evangelical community”.… Is not this the very same truth that we in the mainstream of the evangelical community already profess to believe? Perhaps he means to say that they can teach us experientially what we already know theologically. In any case, is it not just possible that in this, as well as in many other points, our differences stem from the same terminology used in different ways or, more likely, different terminology used to mean the same thing?…

I, for one, must respond to Dr. Pinnock’s searching question at the conclusion of his article by unequivocally stating that it seems to me impossible that “our professed openness to the fullness of the Spirit be reconciled with our overall negative attitude toward a movement that in its deepest intentions desires nothing else itself and gives abundant evidence of possessing a spiritual fullness that we desperately need in our midst.” May God grant it to his “whole family.”

RICHARD E. STROUT

Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

It seems to me that there have been too many articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY which are sympathetic to Pentecostal teachings and none supporting strictly conservative teachings based on what the Bible actually says and means rather than on some people’s “experiences”.… There is no real connection between the babbling tongues of the Pentecostals and the gift of the Spirit given at Pentecost. And these babblings, or ecstatic (emotional) tongues, do nothing to evangelize or edify others.… E. Mansell Pattison in “Behavioral Science Research on the Nature of Glossolalia” (Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, Sept., 1968) concludes that these ecstatic tongues are not a spiritual phenomena, seeing them as being emotional or sometimes pathological. He shows that this type of tongue (which is really a partial form of a language familiar to the speaker) has been spoken since ancient times by people of many different cultures and beliefs (east Indians, Egyptians, Chinese, Mormons, etc.).

MRS. ROBERT FISCHER

Palos Verdes, Calif.

Surely, Dr. Pinnock, we should be open to “bona fide spiritual gifts God is pouring out on us in these days.” But how can glossolalia be certified as bona fide?

There are those, like Dr. William J. Samarin and Dr. William E. Welmers, who as linguistic experts have listened to countless taped “utterances” without a single discovery of a genuine tongue. Dr. Samarin would allow that the utterance of such syllables may have value. Dr. Welmers would classify them as “non-tongues,” to which the command “Forbid not to speak with tongues” would not apply.…

The confidence in the “baptism” gives to many a neo-Pentecostal a grace in utterance which appears in his life in other ways as well. His spirit is uplifted. We should not begrudge him this. But he should look well to the question of whether it really is bona fide.

EDWARDS E. ELLIOTT

The Garden Grove Orthodox Presbyterian Church

Garden Grove, Calif.

Led By The Spirit

The article “Biblical Directives For Worship” by Bernard Schalm (Sept. 14) was very perceptive in its treatment of worship as it was carried out in the early Church and its direction of change down to our present time. However, in one paragraph the question is asked if the church of the twentieth century should “return to the simple, spontaneous worship of the early Church.” The answer, “impossible,” contradicts fact, since groups all around the globe in this, the twentieth century, meet for the four-part worship of Acts 2:42 without benefit of any leader but the spirit of God within the believers gathered together.

MRS. JAMES BOYD

Rochester, N. Y.

Mennonite Music

Eutychus V (September 14) gave a fine review of the album “Be a Christian” as “singable contemporary Christian music.” The album is available through Minority Ministries Council, Box 370, Elkhart, Indiana 46514. Eutychus V, in identifying Mrs. Sowell as the wife of a Mennonite pastor, asks whether there are any black Mennonites. At a recent Mennonite World Conference, we learned that one-third of the Mennonite world population is non-white.

VIRGIL J. BRENNEMAN

Goshen, Ind.

Aid To Africa

A warm “thank you” for mentioning World Relief Commission as one of the Christian agencies rushing to help people caught in “Africa’s Creeping Calamity” (News, Sept. 14). This tragedy has been in the making for years but the public is just beginning to hear about it. We commend Barrie Doyle on his informative, well-written news article alerting evangelicals to the need.

We are glad to report there has already been some response from your readers. Any contributions received will be put to work immediately, not only to stave off death by starvation but to help resettle those who have been forced from their native areas by drought.…

We appreciate CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S timely emphasis on social concerns. Caring about others is a practical way to show our love for our Lord.

EVERETT S. GRAFFAM

Executive Vice President

World Relief Commission

Valley Forge, Pa.

On Removing Beams

I was sorry to see another Lord-I-thank-thee-that-we-aren’t-like-those-awful-Russians editorial in the September 14 issue (“Unfreedom of Speech in the U. S. S. R.”). I find it difficult to reconcile this sort of practice with all the talk about the authority of Scripture. We do less homage … to the authority of Scripture by defending the unity of Isaiah than we would by taking more seriously our Lord’s admonition to get the beam out of our own eye first.

MEROLD WESTPHAL

Department of Philosophy

Yale University

New Haven, Conn.

Scientists Vs. Materialists

I wish to thank Harold O. J. Brown for his report on the recent annual conference of the American Scientific Affiliation (News, “Change and Providence,” Sept. 14). I would like to make just a few comments to help clarify matters for your readers.

The ASA is referred to “as a fellowship of scientists.” This is true, but it is not as relevant as the fact that the ASA is a fellowship of Chrisian men and women of science, who regard themselves to be members of the evangelical brotherhood.

It would be most unfortunate if the final sentence of the article were taken to represent in any sense the attitude of the members of the ASA. Dr. Brown writes, “Materialists should not be allowed to impose their views on others, but may preserve their own tranquility without being challenged by theists.” It is very much the business of the ASA to challenge materialists [and there is] a continuing stream of articles in the Journal ASA to this effect.

RICHARD H. BUBE

Editor

Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation

Stanford, Calif.

Through The Jungle

As a member of the “straight” society, I was disappointed in the recent article “Homosexuals and the Church” (Sept. 28). Even though I agree with the basic premise, this article has no sensitivity or understanding to a human problem. Why quote from the gay society and insert italics and brackets to prejudice the reader? Better not quote lest we are guilty of violating another’s personhood especially when tromping through this psychological jungle.

Please, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, walk gently on the souls of humans, for I, too, am one.

JERRY R. FREED

General Manager

Bethel Publishing

Elkhart, Ind.

Art, Artist, And Audience

The frequency with which we use the word “gap” points to the number of broken relationships in our society. We speak of the credibility gap, the communications gap, and the generation gap, to name a few. No phrase has yet been coined, however, for the undeniable gap that exists today between artist and audience. The absence of such a phrase is perhaps an indication of the insignificant place art occupies in our culture, including the evangelical Christian community. We North Americans read few excellent novels, read poetry even less, yearn for past classics in music, rarely attend the theater, and view much of modern painting with suspicion.

A closer look into our own lives as evangelicals will verify the gap. When we do use art (which is exactly what we do—we “use” it), we tend to decorate our walls with a slick seascape or sentimentalized Jesus; we readily celebrate a book by a public figure (especially, it seems, one from the entertainment industry) about his or her Christian faith, assuming that this person has suddenly become an outstanding writer, and congratulating ourselves that he or she is now on our side; we tend to produce stories, novels, and films with an overt evangelistic, soul-saving intent instead of works that present a Christian point of view with fidelity to the norms of art. I recently talked with a student who had composed an ambitious piece of music for a senior recital; his first question to me was, “Do you think it will convert anyone?”

The rift that has developed between the artist and the public should be deeply distressing to the evangelical Christian, for he ought to recognize that art is not merely a decorative ruffle on the garment of society but is expressive of its very warp and woof, and that art is one of God’s choicest gifts to man.

But rift there is. The public sees the artist as an eccentric freak, and the artist sees the public as a philistine beast. Listen to the vituperation of some literary figures. In the words of Alexander Pope, “The public is a fool.” “The public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble,” added Thomas Carlyle. “The public is just a great baby,” chimed in John Ruskin. And Oscar Wilde, caught in the sterility of his aestheticism, declared, “The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.” The French poet Jean Cocteau was no more charitably inclined: “If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.” Thornton Wilder adds to the chorus, “The public for which masterpieces are intended is not on this earth.”

The blame for this gap does not rest with the public. Modern art all too often yields meager rewards insofar as it expresses much of the spiritual bankruptcy of our time. One soon grows tired of the degradation in the work of Andy Warhol, the stark violence of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, the sadistic necrophilia of the Alice Cooper rock bank, the technicolor swirls of Jackson Pollock, the masochistic boredom of Sartre’s No Exit. When God is thought to be dead, man is no longer man, and artists can only record the struggle, the futile search for meaning. Like Richard Bach they may desperately attempt to salvage man’s innate goodness; or they may take a place at the other end of the contemporary spectrum and like Samuel Beckett yield themselves to absurdist despair.

Another disturbing factor is the elitist nature of so much art. I once took a graduate seminar in modern American poetry that consisted solely of an attempt to decipher the intellectualized obscurity of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. Who but a few literati and academics read the works of Pound, Wallace Stevens, James Joyce, and Hart Crane, to name just a few? It often seems as if artists have given up on the public and are writing only for one another.

It has not always been like this. If one looks at the history of drama, for instance, one notices a close relation between artist and audience. The drama of the Greeks was an integral part of their religion. The morality play was performed on a wagon in a medieval town, surrounded by audience. And despite Shakespeare’s frequent reference to the rabble, his public was an appreciative theater-going audience. Much art that we now consider classic spoke to a broad contemporary audience.

Undoubtedly the Romantic conception of the artist as a wild-eyed visionary, a seer in the grip of divine inspiration, a prophet who will communicate to the unwashed hoi polloi the truth of the gods—this conception of the artist is still with us, and does an injustice to a Christian view of the artist as being fully human as he goes about his artistic activity in obedience to God or some pseudo-god. As H. R. Rookmaaker says in Art and the Public Today,

If the Christian defines the artist as a prophet, he makes it impossible for himself to listen critically to the message of this prophet: either he has to deny a given artist the capacity of prophecy if he is not a Christian, thus contradicting himself, or he must accept the artist’s message, which must lead him to the acceptance of non-Christian ideas, which eventually leads to secularization [L’Abri Fellowship, 1968, p. 36].

It is also true, I suppose, that art has fared badly in our society for the same reason that belief in the miracles of Christ fares badly today. We live in a pragmatistic society in which truth, if it exists, must be verifiable; our truth must be in accord with scientific data (a TV commercial is likely to try to tell us that “9½ doctors out of 10 recommend …”). We approach art expecting to be able to “explain” it fully and immediately, to “understand” it in all its ramifications, and when we can’t, we say impatiently, “Yes, but what does it mean?,” not realizing that much art communicates and offers enjoyment long before its meaning is fully understood—if it ever is.

Perhaps the type of work performed today by much of the populace is also a factor. A man who has just spent eight mind-numbing hours repeating a routine activity is not likely to sit down with a Solzhenitsyn novel when he comes home. He is more likely to relax by watching “Hawaii Five-O.” Nor can we blame him—he is more sinned against than sinning. As the man on the Detroit automobile assembly line said, “What do I think about while I work? Raquel Welch.”

I believe that our age of commercialism and mediocrity (the first often successfully courts the second) has also been one of the main factors acting to dull people’s senses to art. A person who is used to not thinking as he watches television will not appreciate bona fide art, nor will one for whom evil is readily personified in black-clad villains.

What is truly insidious is the “steady influence,” observed by T. S. Eliot,

which operates silently in any mass society organized for profit, for the depression of standards of art and culture. The increasing organization of advertisement and propaganda—or the influencing of masses of men by any means except through their intelligence—is all against them. The economic system is against them; the chaos of ideals and confusion of thought in our large-scale mass education is against them [“Idea of a Christian Society,” Christianity and Culture, Harcourt, 1949, p. 32].

I wonder how good a job our schools are doing in developing children’s aesthetic sensitivity—or perhaps I should say, how good a job our schools are permitted to do, considering the amount of money usually allocated for the arts. Isn’t it true, especially in private and parochial schools, that whenever funds are low, art as a subject is often sacrificed for the “important” subjects such as mathematics and science?

We should treat the problem at its deepest level. God’s virtual banishment from the universe since the seventeenth century, and the subsequent deification and fall of man, have had the result that man’s place as a creature in God’s creation has become increasingly distorted. As soon as—to quote Pope—“the proper study of mankind is man,” as soon as man defines himself in horizontal terms only, he distorts his proper place in the creation, and we should therefore not be surprised that broken relationships result. The artist-audience rift is one of these broken relationships.

When we in the evangelical Christian community begin to speak of a solution to this rift, we must begin with our individual selves. The true artist among us will have to recognize that the public is not an ignorant boor but is made up of the body of Christ, to whom he has an obligation also as artist (Gal. 6:10), and the rest of humanity, to whom he can point out redemption, the beauty of God’s creation, and the ravages of sin. He will also have to realize that to write or paint for a small, elite coterie of artists only is eventually to render his art sterile and effete.

Similarly, the public must become more receptive to its artists, must be informed about the art they produce, must avail itself of the valuable contribution artists can make. As a matter of fact, the greater responsibility may lie with the public. Flannery O’Connor, a sensitive Christian fiction writer, has said:

There are those who maintain that you can’t demand anything of the reader. They say the reader knows nothing about art, and that if you’re going to reach him, you have to be humble enough to descend to his level. This supposes either that the aim of art is to teach, which it is not, or that to create anything which is simply a good in itself is a waste of time. Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it [Mystery and Manners, Noonday, 1970, p. 189].

But if I am correct in stating that the most basic reason for the artist-audience gap is our living in a secularized culture that defines a man solely in terms of himself, resulting in broken relationships, then we must recognize that the matter goes beyond individualistic concerns, goes beyond an attempt by both sides to be a bit “nicer” to each other.

What is involved, in other words, is a realization on our part that the battle between the Kingdom of Light and the Powers of Darkness is waged also in the realm of art, and that the Christian community must therefore be engaged in the monumental task of wresting not only art but also the culture within which it is expressed away from the dominant secular spirits of our day.

That is certainly no mean task, nor one that will be done in our human power. Nevertheless, it is important that we see the problem truly, and not pretend that it is smaller than it is.

And, lest I be accused of hoping for a new heaven on this earth, let me quote O’Connor again:

I don’t believe that we shall have great religious fiction until we have again that happy combination of believing artist and believing society. Until that time, the novelist will have to do the best he can in travail with the world he has. He may find in the end that instead of reflecting the image at the heart of things, he has only reflected our broken condition and, through it, the face of the devil we are possessed by. This is a modest achievement, but perhaps a necessary one [ibid., p. 168].

O’Connor could be right.

Hugh Cook is an instructor in English,

Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa.

The Jewish existentialist philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) enthusiastically endorsed the Great Commission. In effect he said, “Go, by all means go into all the world and preach the Gospel! Don’t let anybody or anything stop you from going! And your hearers, they should come! There is no other way for them but to come!” Yet at the same time this man rejected Christ and called himself “anti-Christian.”

Rosenzweig’s view of Christian evangelism is stated clearly in one of his letters. He says, “We are wholly agreed as to what Christ and his Church mean to the world: no one can reach the Father save through him.” But he goes on to say: “The situation is quite different for one who does not have to reach the Father because he is already with him. And this is true of the people of Israel (although not of individual Jews)” (Franz Rosenzweig, His Life and Thought, edited by N. Glazer, Shocken, 1967, p. 341). This has been called his “Two Covenant Theory,” for he visualizes two covenants made with man by God. One covenant is with non-Jewish man through Christ, the other with Jewish man through his membership in Israel, the covenant people.

Some Gentile theologians have praised this statement as a great breakthrough in Jewish/Christian relations. But anybody who reflects on its implications for the Gospel as it is found in the New Testament will see a vital principle at stake here that we surrender only at our peril.

The man who formulated this controversial idea, which he takes from the Lord’s words in John 14:6, was born on Christmas Day 1886 into an affluent Jewish family in Cassel, Germany. The home was a hive of social and cultural activity, but little attention was given to the Jewish religion. Several of Rosenzweig’s relatives converted to Christianity, something that was common in the period. Rosenzweig said himself at a later date, “Conversion takes away the best from us, not the worst.” His teacher Hermann Cohen said, “Many of our young people … are … seduced into conversion,” and he mentioned that it was “the higher classes” among the Jews that were going over to Christianity. One Jewish writer, I. Cohen, cites a figure of 224,000 Jewish conversions to Christianity in the nineteenth century. German Jewry in Rosenzweig’s day was in the middle of this. Also at this time a Jew in Germany would feel rather overwhelmed by the strong influence of Christianity on German life. Karl Marx complained about it. Rosenzweig commented on it to his mother, saying, “We are Christian in everything!”

So Rosenzweig in his youth was not strongly influenced for Judaism but did feel the powerful influence of Christianity, which was very much the dominant faith in his milieu. His studies took him into medicine and then history and philosophy, and he went on to write a standard work on Hegel entitled Hegel and the State. He reacted against Hegel’s system, however, and tended toward an existential “life-oriented” position. He became friendly with one of his teachers, a Hebrew Christian named Rosenstock-Huessy, and under his influence came to the conclusion that Judaism was passé and bankrupt and that the only way open to him was to be baptized as a Christian.

Rosenzweig said to his mother at this time, “There is only one way, Jesus.” It is important to notice this realization of the person of Jesus. He is not talking about a mere cultural or social identification with Christianity but seizes on personal discipleship as the key to the Christian life. Also at this time he accepted the authenticity of the whole fabric of institutional Christianity. Instead of seeing it as a Constantinian perversion of the original New Testament Church as many contemporary critics did, he saw it as the kingdom of God on earth, marching out in triumph across the lands of the whole earth. So Rosenzweig had a high view of the Christian life and a high view of the Church; these he kept even after he turned his back on both.

This dramatic reversal came in October, 1913, when he attended an Atonement Day service in a Berlin synagogue. He renounced his resolve to become a Christian and in fact took a position that he described as anti-Christian. He decided to devote himself to the study and propagation of Judaism. But the remarkable thing was that he still maintained that Jesus was the only way to God and that the Church was the divinely chosen instrument for bringing the world to God. So here we see a very subtle mind at work. No wonder Gentile writers have acclaimed his position as a breakthrough in Jewish/Christian relations and Jewish writers have denounced it as a sell-out to the Christians. But in fact it was neither. Rather it was a very ingenious way of diverting Christian attention away from the Jews. That was Rosenzweig’s immediate aim. Describing his major work, The Star of Redemption, he said, “The ecclesiastical point of The Star [is that] there must not be an organized mission to the Jews.”

If Rosenzweig’s idea is taken up by professing Christians as a valid interpretation of the Great Commission, then evangelism as we know it is paralyzed. So I would like to examine his position, not just as it applies to Jews but as it applies, by extension, to every ethnic and racial group.

Summed up, Rosenzweig’s message about the Church and Israel was that God works through both but for different groups of people. For the mass of humanity he has the Church, which presents Jesus Christ, who is the Way to the Father for all the nations of the world. No man can come to the Father except through the Son; the Son is the only Way to the Father. But Jews are an exception, not because they can come some other way but because they do not need to come! They are already with the Father. Jewish blood ensures an automatic fellowship with the Father, without any recourse to the mediation of Jesus Christ, which Rosenzweig admitted was essential for all other people.

By this subtle interpretation of the Lord’s words in John 14:6 he seemed to achieve the impossible. He kept his high view of Christ and the Church, but alongside this he placed his personal rejection of Christ, and claimed that the text allowed this for himself and all other Jews. Strangely enough, this is a concession that some professing Christians are willing to allow. Even some evangelicals who hold confused ideas about the role of Israel in God’s plan allow this idea to restrain them in holding out the Gospel to their Jewish neighbors.

One of the great exegetical problems that any Bible-believing Christian must face is the need to work out an eschatology that does not do violence to gospel principles. Unfortunately, there are those who try to keep eschatology and gospel truth in separate compartments in their thinking; they do not allow themselves to reflect on the implications that one body of doctrine has for the other. This is especially true of evangelical thought about Israel. Do we interpret the teaching about sacrifices in Ezekiel by what we read in Hebrews or vice versa? Do we understand the references to Israel in the Book of Revelation by what we read in Romans and Galatians or vice versa?

Rosenzweig’s thought comes to us as a challenge, for if we accept his interpretation of Israel’s role in God’s plan our whole approach toward evangelism of the Jews and ultimately everybody else is thrown off balance. He asserts that the Jew is by nature at one with God. He says, “That ‘connection of the innermost heart with God’ which the heathen can only reach through Jesus is something the Jew already possesses, providing that his Judaism is not withheld from him by force; he possesses it by nature, through having been born one of the Chosen People” (Glatzer, op. cit., p. 27). This is a declaration that by race and blood the Jew is at one with God and therefore has no need of the mediation of Jesus Christ.

But he also makes a parallel claim for the religion of Judaism. He says in The Star of Redemption that on the Day of Atonement the Jew “kneels only in beholding the immediate nearness of God.” This word immediate” must be understood literally because he says elsewhere that Israel walks “without mediator in the light of God’s countenance.” Again speaking of the Jew’s observing the Day of Atonement he says, “In this moment, he is as close to God, as near to his throne, as it is ever accorded man to be.” And so, in Rosenzweig’s view, a group of 14 million people have immediate access to God on the grounds of race and religion, and this access is impossible to all the other three billion of the world’s population. All these other people must come to the Father through Jesus according to his scheme.

Two principles in Rosenzweig’s scheme take us beyond the specifically Jewish relevance of the Two Covenant theory. These are the principles of race and religion as grounds for exemption from the need for Christ’s mediation. And when we look at Israel and Judaism we see the summit point in each category. National pride being what it is, not everybody would consider the Jewish people as a race as being anywhere near the summit of mankind. But disregarding such characteristics as physique, intellect, and talent, we are faced with the facts that God chose Israel as the unique channel of his revelation and that the Son of God took on himself “the seed of Abraham” (Heb. 2:16). No other nation can make a claim to match this one. So in a sense we can say that Israel’s claim to racial exemption surpasses all other such claims based on race. If the people that was graced by the Incarnation is included in the Gospel, then no other race can hope to present a better claim for exemption.

In the matter of religion, Judaism is the only non-Christian faith that can make what seems to be a Bible-based argument for a divine origin. In the case of rabbinic tradition I think this claim has to be disallowed, but the fact remains that Judaism has the best case to present of all the non-Christian religions of the world. So if a practicer of Judaism needs to come through Christ, then no adherent of any other religion, whether of ancient or modern origin, can claim exemption from the claims of Christ.

What this does for us is to throw us back onto the basic presuppositions of the gospel message. One of these is the solidarity of the whole human race. Paul tells us that “God … hath made of one blood all nations of men” (Acts 17:26). This is not to say that racial and cultural differences are not real or are not to be taken seriously. What is meant is that on a certain level in God’s plan they are irrelevant. Racial differences are very often most obvious in the outward appearance, and we are told that this is what man sees. But God looks on the heart (1 Sam. 16:7), and here, in this seat of the human personality, our racial solidarity is inescapable. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). That was said by a Jew to Jews, and nobody of any race can escape its application to himself. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), said Paul; this is one of the basic premises of the Gospel. Even one exception to this rule, apart from the Lord Jesus, who is himself the remedy for this universal sin, would invalidate the universal Gospel, for the Gospel would no longer apply to the whole human race as it purports to do.

Another problem introduced by this “racial redemption” concept is its tendency to stir up a chauvinistic reaction to the Gospel from people of other races. What Rosenzweig is saying to the Indian or the Chinese as well as to the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin is, “If you were of Jewish blood you would not need Christ; as you are not, you must come to the Father through him.” This makes a comparison between races that the Bible does not make. The natural tendency to pride of race is transcended by a Gospel that calls to us on the basis of our common humanity. But as soon as the Gospel becomes a challenge to the worth of any particular racial category it becomes offensive for that reason, and an unnecessary confrontation is precipitated. Before God, all mankind is one in its need of redemption, and we have the obligation to tell every nation, every human creature, that God is calling all men everywhere to repent.

This leaves us with the other claim to exemption that Rosenzweig raises, that of religion. What right have we to challenge another person’s faith? The answer given to this question is often “None!” But the Gospel of Jesus Christ claims to be universally applicable. Through Jesus, God is calling all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). And when the Lord Jesus says, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6), the term “no man” must be understood to include Jewish man even if his religion can claim to stem from Abraham and Moses. In fact, the Lord Jesus makes the point that of all people a true son of Abraham would be the first to come to him (John 8:39) and a true disciple of Moses would recognize in him the one of whom Moses testified (John 5:46).

The religion of the Old Testament is in no way an alternative to Jesus Christ, a means of enabling Israel to get right with God without coming to the cross of Christ. On the contrary, the Law and the prophets and the writings were given to prepare Israel for their meeting with the Lord Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and the King of the Jews. Rabbinic Judaism, however, is intended as an alternative to the Gospel, and it does involve a rejection of Christ and his Gospel, even though the Hebrew Bible is full of teaching that points to Christ. In doing this it cuts itself off from any real continuity with the Mosaic revelation and stands as a post-Christian phenomenon whose antecedents are difficult to trace with any real certainty before the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. Elijah and Isaiah were not rabbinic Jews, and all the most recent discoveries about Jewish religious life in Second Temple times have served to emphasize the diversity of streams within Judaism rather than to confirm the monolithic picture of Rabbinic Judaism that some Jewish historians try to read back into the past.

The Judaism put forward by Rosenzweig as an alternative to the Gospel of Jesus Christ lacks certain vital and indispensable elements that give meaning to the Mosaic religion. The mediation of the Aaronic priesthood and the blood sacrifices, which both point to Christ, are missing and in effect are rejected, even though lip-service is still paid to them. Judaism still has elements of the Mosaic system, and for this reason it stands higher than any other non-Christian religion. But our New Testament shows us that even while the Temple was still standing the Lord Jesus called Jews to repent and believe the Gospel. It was to a master in Israel, Nicodemus, that Jesus said, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). If the Gospel does not apply to Jews, then it got off to a bad start, because all the first hearers and all the first believers were Jews who were told specifically that “the promise is unto you and to your children” (Acts 2:39). The children of Abraham, the heirs of Moses, needed Christ. How much more the heirs of Akiba and Maimonides? And how much more do the followers of Muhammad and Buddha need Christ? No man-made religion can serve as an alternative to Christ and his Gospel. And even the one religion that could claim divine origin was intended to be a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ (Gal. 3:24).

So we can see in the relation of the Gospel to the Jew a paradigm of its relation to men of every race and religion. The Lord Jesus says, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me,” and despite what Rosenzweig or any other writer of any other faith may say, all men do need to come to the Father. As we invite them to come through the Lord Jesus, we know that we are presenting to them the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that in him they have their only chance of finding peace with God.

Cursed be Canaan;

a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.

Blessed by theLORDmy God be Shem;

and let Canaan be his slave.

God enlarge Japheth,

and let him dwell in the tents of Shem;

and let Canaan be his slave [Genesis 9:25–27].

That the curse of Ham cannot be applied to black people is easily shown from the text itself. What is usually missed is the astonishing unfolding of world history that the words of this oracle refer to.

To interpret the oracle we will need to understand the Table of Nations given in Genesis 10. Scholars have generally assumed that this outline of racial origins is ignorant guesswork based on the geographical locations of the peoples that surrounded Israel many centuries after the time of Abraham. In his Introduction to the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1969) R. K. Harrison says that “the Table of Nations is unquestionably of ancient origin” (p. 559). He argues that the source of Genesis 10:2–11:10a is a typical cuneiform tablet, probably belonging to Shem’s own family history, “written either from personal knowledge or from other reliable sources” (p. 548). He also points out that the biblical interest in exactly kept genealogies is not unique. “The excavations at Mari have shown the extent to which genealogical tables were treasured in antiquity as a means of establishing pedigree” (p. 547).

Now according to this ancient document our world was populated after the flood by races descended from the three sons of Noah. Since the Medes (Madai) and Greeks (Javan) are clearly identified, Genesis 10:2–5 obviously refers to the Indo-European nations. Scholars have shown that the Nordic and Germanic tribes of Europe, the Romans and Greeks, the early Iranians of Persia, and the Aryan tribes that invaded India about 1800 B.C. spoke a group of languages so closely related in both grammar and vocabulary that they must come from a common original. Let us then use the biblical classification and call these languages “Japhethite.”

Next we have a Hamitic group of nations (Gen. 10:6–20). Ham had four sons named Cush, Egypt (Mizraim), Put, and Canaan. The eldest son, Cush, had a son called Nimrod, who established “Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar.” Now the difficulty is that the people of this area spoke Akkadian, which is usually called a Semitic language. Canaanite was also a Semitic language, as were Hebrew and Arabic.

This is, however, only a difficulty of terminology. Beginning with A. L. Schlözer (1781) scholars have assumed that since Abraham was a Semite, and he spoke Hebrew, Hebrew should be called a Semitic language. Then as such languages as Arabic, Akkadian, Phoenician, Canaanite, and Moabite were also found to be of this group, they too were called Semitic languages. This error of terminology makes it impossible to make sense of the many biblical references to Canaanites, children of Ham, and children of Shem. To use the biblical terminology we should distinguish between Abraham’s race, which was Shemitic, and his spoken language, Hebrew, which was “the language of Canaan” (Isa. 19:18). I will argue that Abraham’s ancestral language was Sumerian, that he spoke Akkadian before leaving Ur, and that he found it easy to learn Canaanite, another Hamitic (usually called Semitic) tongue as he moved west.

Now if scholars had taken the Table of Nations seriously, they would have looked for four closely related groups of Hamitic languages. There were the sons of Cush, who spoke Akkadian, the sons of Mizraim, who spoke Egyptian, the sons of Put, who spoke various African dialects, and the sons of Canaan, who spoke Canaanite and Phoenician. The Table of Nations also states that the Philistines (Casluhim) and Minoans (Caphthorim) were descended from the Egyptians. Having despised the biblical genealogy, scholars have had to put in many years of painstaking work to discover that the Akkadian of Babylon was related to Canaanite and Phoenician (usually called West Semitic). Then it was found that Egyptian had structural similarity to both Canaanite and various African languages like Galla, Somali, and Berber (Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 1950, p. 2). Finally in 1962 Cyrus H. Gordon proved that Linear A, which was probably the language of the Minoan civilization of Crete, was related to Canaanite and Phoenician (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 15, 1963, pp. 3–8). Cyrus Gordon’s Ugarit and Minoan Crete (1966) showed how the Minoans arrived suddenly about 1800 B.C. with a fully developed civilization from Egypt.

Taken together these discoveries suggest a confirmation of the Egyptian group of nations in Genesis 10:13 and their relation to their Canaanite cousins in Genesis 10:15–20. Evidently the writer of the Table of Nations cuneiform tablet 4,000 years ago had first-hand knowledge of these racial relationships.

What then was the original language of Abraham? We have seen that the Bible is quite clear that he was not a Hamite, though he spoke one or more of the Hamitic (usually called Semitic) languages. We know that his father came from Ur (Gen. 11:31), and it is certain that Sumerian was spoken in that city during the Neo-Sumerian empire (2100–1960 B.C.). Sumerian was still spoken in people’s homes after 1960 B.C., but it was already being replaced by Akkadian for trade and official purposes throughout the Babylonian empire. Rather like Latin in the Middle Ages, Sumerian continued to be used for another thousand years for magical purposes, astronomy, and law (New Bible Dictionary, p. 1,223).

Now in view of the tremendous importance of the Sumerian people and language, it seems incredible that the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 would totally ignore the people and language of Abraham’s birthplace. If Abraham was in fact a Sumerian, this would be no problem.

The truly Shemitic races, descended from Shem, are stated to be: Elam, Asshur, Arphachshad, Lud, and Aram (Gen. 10:22). Since Abraham was descended from Shem’s third son, Arphachshad, it seems likely that the Arphachshadites spoke Sumerian in the area of Ur. What then of the four other racial groups?

We do know that there was a race of Elamites, presumably descended from Shem’s older son. The Sumerians and Elamites were neighbors and often fought against each other, and from about 2000 B.C. kings with Elamite names often reigned in Ur. Furthermore, scholars have established that Sumerian and Elamite are both agglutinative languages, and both are quite distinct from the Indo-European and Hamitic (usually called Semitic) groups of languages. That two languages are agglutinative does not prove they have a common root, but at least it shows that a family connection is possible. Scholars have so far very little historical or religious Elamite literature to work on, and there are many problems in other agglutinative languages such as Hurrian and Urartian.

W. F. Albright and T. O. Lambdon suggest that Elamite is related through Brahui of Pakistan to the ancient Dravidian languages of South India (“The Evidence of Language,” Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. I, Part 1, 1970, p. 154). Excavations on the island of Bahrein (known as Ur-Nanshe in Sumerian) and in other coastal areas of the Persian Gulf have established many connections between the Indus-Valley civilization of India and the Sumerians in Ur (see Geoffrey Bibby, Looking For Dilmun, New York, 1970).

The Table of Nations then tells us that the original Assyrians (Asshur) and Arameans (Aram) were descended from the same truly Shemitic family. Since both of these nations later spoke languages akin to Akkadian, we would have to assume that they abandoned their original Sumerian and/or Elamite type languages when their culture was swamped by the Babylonians. Although archaeologists have so far ignored this clue, they would be wise to take the Table of Nations seriously, and at least consider this racial connection. Even Amos, a thousand years later, still knew that the Arameans originally came from Kir (Amos 9:7), and Isaiah links Kir with Elam (Isaiah 22:6). Another son of Shem was Lud, who might be the ancestor of the ancient kings of Lydia in Asia Minor.

As can be seen from a Bible atlas, we should imagine the sons of Shem stretching at one time from Asia Minor, through the mountains to the north of the Tigris, to Sumerian Ur, the Persian Gulf, and across into North India. If these people were all viewed as one language group, of which Elamite only remained as a spoken language, we can understand the significance of the famous inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. These were written in three languages, Old Persian representing the Japhethites, Elamite for the Shemites, and Akkadian from the Hamitic group of languages.

If Abraham was a Shemite by race who spoke Sumerian as his family language in Ur, we can picture the situation as the Neo-Sumerian civilization ended in 1960 B.C. Already Terah and his sons would be speaking Akkadian, and looking west to Babylon and beyond. We can understand why the family settled among the Arameans of Haran, since these were blood-brothers who probably still spoke their ancestral language but were already being assimilated into Hamitic culture.

Abraham himself pushed on south by God’s command into Canaanite, and therefore potentially hostile Hamitic, territory. The language would, however, be no problem to him, since it was closely related to the Akkadian dialects of the Babylonian empire. There was the obvious temptation for Abraham and his children to merge by marriage with the Hamitic population. Ishmael’s mother and wife were both Egyptian. Abraham insisted that his servant travel back to Haran to find a Shemitic wife for Isaac. Whereas Esau contented himself with two local girls, Jacob went and served fourteen years for Leah and Rachel from his own race. All this and much else becomes clear if we stick to the biblical terminology and call Abraham a Shemite, but avoid the term Semitic for the Akkadian and Canaanite peoples among whom he lived.

Now, armed with the exact terminology of the Table of Nations, we can grasp the tremendous significance of the curse of Ham with which this study began. The curse is clearly limited to the descendants of Ham’s fourth son, Canaan. The children of Canaan included Amorites, Girgashites, Jebusites, etc. of the promised land, plus the Sidonians who were the Canaanites of Phoenicia (Gen. 10:15–19). Our text refers to three different movements that disastrously affected this group of Canaanite nations.

The first sentence tells us that the descendants of Canaan were to be enslaved by brother Hamites. This in fact kept on happening over a period of a thousand years. In the fifteenth century B.C. Canaanite states were under the domination of Egypt. From 841 B.C. for about the next two centuries the Canaanites of Phoenicia were repeatedly dominated by Akkadian kings, who had occupied the territory called Assyria. Later, as prophesied by both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the Phoenicians came under the Akkadians from Babylonia (see New Bible Dictionary under Tyre, pp. 1302–1303).

Secondly, in our text we are told that the Canaanites were to be enslaved by the descendants of Shem. This was fulfilled when Abraham’s descendants, who had kept their Shemitic identity, multiplied in Egypt and came back to defeat Og and Sihon, Amorite kings of Transjordan, and then overcame the Canaanite tribes west of the Jordan under Joshua.

In the third part of Noah’s prophecy it is stated that the Canaanites are also to be enslaved by Japhethites, or Indo-Europeans. This took place when the people of Tyre and Sidon, who were the only Canaanites who still retained a national identity, were subjugated by Greeks under Alexander the Great. This still left the expatriate Canaanites of the Phoenician colonies, who fought so valiantly against the Japhethite Romans in the Punic wars until the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. This date would then mark the completion of the curse of Ham on the Canaanites, who had ceased to be a nation by New Testament times.

Obviously this astonishing prophecy has nothing to do with the black peoples of today. Whether the races of Africa were descended from Mizraim, or from Put, or from a mixture of Shemites and Hamites, they are definitely not classed as Canaanites, and so cannot be under the curse of Ham.

Finally, we note that in the third section of the prophecy Japhethites are to be “enlarged,” and they will occupy Shemitic territory. By about 1800 B.C. invading Indo-Europeans had taken over Asia Minor and overthrown the ancient Shemitic kingdom of Lydia. The great Hittite empire was definitely Indo-European, and it ruled over large areas of what had been Shemitic territory. Later the Medes and Persians occupied the territory of the Shemitic Elamites. If the Indus-Valley civilization of India was racially the same as the Sumerians, then they also would have been Shemites who were ousted by invading Japhethite Aryans about 1800 B.C. In any case, according to Noah’s prophecy the movement of Japhethite peoples into “the tents of Shem” was taking place on a massive scale in the Old Testament period. Eventually, of course, the children of Japheth “enlarged” into Europe and across into North America.

The so-called curse of Ham should be retrieved from crankish misuse by racists. It is in fact a capsule prophecy that sums up vast movements of ancient history. It makes clear that God is in control of the empires of men. Most Old Testament scholars have dismissed Genesis 9 and 10 as garbled myths that cannot be taken seriously. That is no longer an honest attitude. The Almighty did not intend us to be ignorant concerning our early ancestry.

Martin Luther, as every school boy knows, challenged the Roman Catholic Church and founded Protestantism by denying that Christians need other men to mediate between themselves and God. The Christian, alone with his Bible, was his own priest; all Christians were priests and had the privilege—indeed, were under the necessity—of dealing with God face to face. Luther stated this often and with piercing clarity, as for example in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) when he discussed the pretenses of Roman Catholic “priests”:

If they were forced to grant that all of us that have been baptized are equally priests, as indeed we are …, they would then know that they have no right to rule over us except insofar as we freely concede it. For thus it is written in 1 Peter 2: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and a priestly royalty.” Therefore we are all priests, as many of us as are Christians.

Americans like this idea. Is this not what life is all about—one man facing up to his responsibilities on his own two feet and not trying to hide in the crowd? Just as the ideal American stands alone in warfare, in industry, or even in the civil-rights movement and achieves dignity and worth through his own efforts, so the American Christian must face Almighty God alone and come to terms with Him on his own. Luther was the first to champion this idea in modern times, and we honor him for that. We are thankful that he developed the idea of “the priesthood of all believers,” an idea that has reached its fullest expression in our land.

And yet if we examine more of the Luther corpus, we discover some strangely dissonant ideas, ideas that make us wonder if Luther is really “one of us” or sees things “our way.” For the same Luther who said, “We are all priests,” also said, “Whoever seeks Christ must find the church,” and again, “I believe no one can be saved who is not part of this community [the church] and does not live in harmony with it in one faith, word, sacrament, hope, and love.” This is surely an incongruity—how could the same person proclaim that everyone must face God alone and yet that salvation is found in the Church?

We in America know what the church is. It is an organization we join after scouting out the various alternatives. Churches are evaluated on the basis of what they can offer us by way of inspiration, warm feelings, or entertainment. It is our custom to regard the churches not as centers of interpersonal relationships under the Word of God but as sanctified emporiums competing with weekend camper trips, Little League baseball, and television for the straitened free time of the people. They are places of cooperation where we must be quite careful not to step on anyone’s toes lest that person flee to the church down the block.

As a consequence we usually do not get very involved with one another as church members, choosing rather to focus our church friendships on non-controversial topics. The project-centered activities of “successful” churches, such as Vacation Bible School, missionary crusades, day camps, and fund drives, can usually be accomplished with a minimum of personal commitment to others. Indeed they sometimes even act as buffers to keep people from spending time and energy with one another. It is a constant wonder how little church members know of their fellow members even after years of attendance and participation. Since, as priests, we do not need anyone to mediate between ourselves and God, we will let the minister take care of the odd person or two who feels in need of a boost from spiritual counseling. Church has its place and so do our fellow believers; but since we are our own priests, these are not of utmost importance to us and must take a back seat to our individual dealings with God. With this attitude prevailing in America, our churches have tended to be weak while extra-ecclesiastical efforts such as evangelistic crusades or civil-rights involvement, which draw us into non-reflective action instead of personal interaction, have been prominent.

If this caricature of the American church is not a drastic distortion of the actual religious thinking of many modern Christians, it would be particularly instructive to listen to Martin Luther as he discusses what it means to be a priest before God and what it means to be a Church in which all the members are priests before God. For what Martin Luther meant by the priesthood of believers was a far fuller concept than ours and his esteem for the Church as the corporate body of believing priests was much higher than our own. In fact, he argued with great urgency that the Church is of supreme importance precisely because it is filled with priests. Before looking at the connection Luther saw between the priesthood of believers and the Church, it would be well to examine in a little more detail his concept of believer’s priesthood.

The Priesthood Of Believers

Luther used two basic arguments to undergird his idea of the priesthood of all believers. First, he was convinced by a simple syllogism that in Christ all believers share equally in the priesthood. Christ is a priest; in Christ we become like him; therefore, we too are priests. Or in his own words: “Since [Christ] is a priest and we are his brethren, all Christians have the power and must fulfill the commandment to preach and to come before God with our intercessions for one another and to sacrifice ourselves to God” (Epistle S. Petri qepredigt …).

In the second place, Luther saw that Scripture itself tells the Christian he is an eternal priest superior even to the old Levitic order: “The scriptures of God … assert, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek’ ” (Concerning the Ministry). But in this second instance the Christian has more than the bare word of Scripture, said Luther: he has that word quickened in his hearing until it becomes the voice of his Shepherd, the very Word of God himself (That a Christian Assembly …). It is this living Word in a believer that creates a priest of God, that equips the Christian for a life of service to God. This Word involves the power of the Holy Spirit, which converts men and sets them on the path of sanctification. Luther described Christians as ones “inwardly taught by God” and as having “God’s word … on [their] side.” And this, to Luther, was the simple fact that made the humblest Christian peasant the equal of the mightiest Christian lord. Luther could boldly state: “Therefore, when we grant the Word to anyone, we cannot deny anything to him pertaining to the exercise of his priesthood” (Concerning the Ministry).

It was on this basis, then, that Luther denounced the hierarchy of spiritual being on which the Roman Catholic Church rested. No one had the right to claim an exalted spiritual status or to denigrate another as somehow less Christian: “For since we have proved all of these things to be the common property of all Christians, no one individual can arise by his own authority and arrogate to himself alone what belongs to all” (Concerning the Ministry). This type of thinking explains why Luther could admonish the Augsburg Diet in 1530 to recognize the Roman Catholic Church as a false church because it advocated unbiblical papal prerogatives and granted extraordinary privileges to its priests. And it explained to Luther why the Roman Catholic establishment raged against him so—his proclamation of the clear Word of God concerning the equal status of all Christians cut their feet of clay right out from under them.

The Church

But if this was the status of individual believers, what place could the church have? How could the Church be important if believers were their own priests and could approach God on their own? Luther’s reply to this question was simply that the Church is important because it is made up exclusively of priests. The modern Protestant concept of believer’s priesthood is, in fact, far from the concept Luther proposed. He did not see the priesthood of believers as a warrant for individualistic posturing before God and closed-hearted isolation from other members of the Church. On the contrary, a priest for Luther was one who, although he had the privilege of standing before God, also had definite rights and duties among men because of his special status as God’s priest.

A simple dictionary definition of the word “priest” clues us in to this insight. For a priest is someone who performs religious duties for other people. To be a priest certainly means that one can come face to face before God; yes, indeed! But the reverse side of priesthood is that one has a responsibility and privilege of working among others as God’s representative. This seems like an obvious matter, but it has eluded most American Christians, who have traditionally prided themselves on their independence and self-reliance in church as well as in the world.

Only when we understand this concept of the priesthood of all believers does Luther’s fastidiousness in giving names to the Church make sense. For Luther was concerned that the Church’s true nature as a body of priests not be obscured by formal terms that stressed structure and hid the essential aspect of priestly intercommunion. Luther much preferred the phrase “a holy Christian people” (sancta catholica Christiana) to the bare word “church” (ecclesia). Ecclesia, he thought, is often taken to mean the church building, a most unfortunate usage; it is occasionally used to refer to the Christians in any one particular area or era, and this is somewhat better; but in reality the Church is the communion of all holy Christian people from all time, a reality that the word “church” obscures. Luther felt that the abuses of the papal hierarchy might have been reduced if ecclesia had been understood as “a holy Christian people,” the true meaning of the body of Christ. In German, Luther favored words for the church such as Haufe (group) or Versammlung (assembly) rather than such words as Gemeinschaft (association). In this he was faithful to the New Testament usage of ecclesia, for there ecclesia always means God’s “called-out ones” all over the world or those gathered in a specific place.

Through whatever words he could find, Luther was determined to eliminate static, parochial, or institutional connotations of the word “church” and to refocus attention on the gathering of individual Christians under the Word of God. The communio sanctorum (communion of saints), which Luther saw as the key definition of the Church, had to mean both the gathering of holy people and the communion among them if the Church was ever to reflect its actual importance as that entity in which Christian priests are active. For it was in the communion of believers that priesthood played such an important role. If we in our day are to regain a sound view of the importance of the Church, we too will have to see it as a place in which Christian priests are active toward one another and active corporately in the world.

Christian Priests In The Church

On several occasions Luther outlined just what the duties and responsibilities of Christian priests were. In Concerning the Ministry, a letter to the Bohemian Christians written in 1523, he described in some detail the rights and privileges that a Christian priest bore as he represented God to other Christians and the world. These rights and privileges had in the popular mind of his day been restricted to a tight coterie of the spiritual elite. In our day these matters have been equally neglected because of our preoccupation with the fact that we stand as priests directly before God. The Bohemians, remnants of the Hussite movement, were concerned with problems involved in obtaining an ordained ministry. Luther not only defended their right to select or approve their own ministers but also said that as Christians their rights and duties extended into many other areas of service for the brotherhood: the ministry of the Word, the right to baptize, to administer the Lord’s Supper, to exercise the office of the keys, to sacrifice their bodies to Christ (as per Romans 12:1), to pray for one another, and to judge doctrinal teaching. In sum, the papists had illicitly tried to tear from the Bohemians the presence of the Holy Spirit that inhered in every Christian and that bestowed the above rights on all believers. And these were primarily rights to be exercised with, for, or to other Christians and the world. These rights and duties contrast sharply with the casual relationships common among modern church members.

In an earlier tract of that same year, That a Christian Assembly or Congregation has the Right and Power to judge all Teaching …, Luther had defended even more explicitly the right of every Christian to take an active role in proclaiming the teaching of the Church. Offensive teaching was not to be an occasion to leave the Church, as it would be construed in the American situation, but a call to work with the other members to correct the error. He cited many Scripture passages (e.g., Matt. 7:15; John 6:45) to buttress this defense of “private judgment,” always, we must remember, harking back to the biblical Word-in-the believer as that which equips him and gives him the responsibility to judge teaching. And Luther concluded with a very strong statement: “Here again it is certain that a Christian not only has the right and power to teach God’s word but has the duty to do so on pain of losing his soul and of God’s disfavor.” Therefore, to be a priest meant that each believer had to be a preacher of the Gospel for the benefit of his fellow believers and also non-Christians.

But for Luther the responsibilities of Christian priests went much further than preaching the Gospel or exercising a sustained concern about the content of teaching. The priesthood of all Christians meant that a believer may be the agency through which his brother can be assured of the forgiveness of his sins. Luther wrote in 1522:

This means that I may go to my good friend and say to him, “Dear friend, this is the trouble and the difficulty which I am having with sin,” and he should be free to say to me, “Your sins are forgiven, go in the peace of God.” You should absolutely believe that your sins are forgiven as though Christ himself were your father confessor—as long as your friend does this in the name of God [Acht Sermones].

Believer’s priesthood meant also that a Christian’s goods and his spiritual exercises were forfeit to the needs of the Church. In 1520 Luther wrote in an exposition of the Ten Commandments:

I believe that in this community of Christendom all things are common, the goods of one belong to the other, and that no one possesses anything that is his own. As a result all prayers and all good works of the entire community help me and every believer; they all stand by and strengthen each other in every time of life and of death so that each one bears the other’s burdens, as St. Paul teaches [Eine kurze Form der 10 Gebote].

And Luther could even write that in an almost eucharistic sense believers partake of one another as all partake and are partaken by Christ:

And just as one member serves another in such an integrated body, so each one eats and drinks the other; that is, each consumes the other in every drink, and each one is food and drink for the other, so that we are simply food and drink to one another, just as Christ is simply food and drink to us [Vom Anbeten des Sakraments].

The Priesthood Of Believers And The Church

That, says Luther, is what the priesthood of believers means. These are some of the things entailed among the responsibilities of those who have been granted the exalted privilege of communing directly with God through the sole mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is why the Church was so important for Luther, because he saw it as the place where the priesthood of the individual could find its natural expression and could benefit from the ministration of other priestly believers. Paul Althaus sums this up nicely in his Theology of Martin Luther: “The universal priesthood expresses not religious individualism but its exact opposite, the reality of the congregation as a community” (Fortress, 1966, p. 314). And because it is where Christian priests are active, the community (i.e., the Church) takes on immense significance. The concept of priesthood advocated by go-it-alone Protestantism is a momentous distortion of Luther’s teaching because it fails to realize the immense importance of the Church for Christian priests.

Luther was not playing games when he laid such great significance on the Church. In his eyes the role of the Church was so great that a proper understanding of its function was a true requirement for Christian life. All Christians were priests, and all priests needed to function. By this very functioning the Gospel became alive and changed men for God. As Althaus once again summarizes well: “This seems to be the greatest thing about the community for Luther: God’s word, the gospel, is always near and present to me so that I am everywhere surrounded by its sound and do not need to ask for it. It is close to me in every brother, for he may, in God’s name, speak it to me in my trouble” (p. 318).

It was this concept of priesthood, therefore, involving both rights before God and definite, spiritual responsibilities to others in the Church and in the world, which led Luther to say, “Whoever seeks Christ must find the church” and “I believe no one can be saved who is not part of this community and does not live in harmony with it.” The care and concern shown by a true priest for his Christian brother or for a prospective Christian did not create a barrier between God and man as the Roman Catholic priesthood had. True Christian priesthood was rather a conduit through which the love of God in Christ Jesus could be channeled to another person with great immediacy.

Furthermore, it was as Christian priests took their responsibilities to one another seriously that the Church became the place where the Holy Spirit works faith and sanctification in the life of the believer. Because the Holy Spirit was active in Christian people, not only or even primarily for their own benefit, others in the Church would be strengthened in the faith. That is, as God’s priests ministered to one another, the Holy Spirit was active in building up the Church through the interlocking and mutually supporting activity of its members.

These ideas signaled a revolution in the concept of the Church. In place of a hierarchical and stratified ecclesiastical structure, Luther proposed a model based on the equality of all members under their head, Christ. He replaced the rule of the oligarchical few, not, as we in America are inclined to believe, with the rule of the democratic many, but with the rule of the eternal Son of God who was active in all true members. And as Jesus in his life on the earth lived and died for others, so must his children, those in whom he lives, spend their lives in service for others on an individual basis: first to their brothers in Christ and then to the world. The salvation Christ has accomplished for his children is the keystone of the Church, for this salvation enables all Christians to act as finite images of Christ in ministry to others.

The Book of Revelation contains a stirring résumé of all that Luther was trying to say about the relation of the priesthood and the Church. In Revelation 5:9, 10 it is recorded:

And they sang a new song, saying: “Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals, for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”

The church, which when it is purified and gathered will be the triumphant Kingdom of God, consists of priests. Through the blood of the Lamb they have been ransomed for God. They now have the immeasurable privilege of coming before him face to face clothed in the blood of their Saviour; they have the equally immeasurable privilege of representing their Lord to fellow believers and the world. And this service will reach its fulfillment when all the priests of God serve as the rulers of the earth.

The foundation of the Church and the source of salvation for individuals are identical: the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and his triumphant resurrection, which led even captivity captive. Martin Luther saw that the Church and the salvation of individuals were bound by this, their common origin. When we realize what it means to be a priest of God as Luther realized it, to have not only the right to stand before God but also the responsibility to act as his presence to others, we will come to value the Church as Luther did. For the Church is the place that God has ordained for his priests to be active in personal service to one another and to the world. The Church is simply God’s living temple in which the priests of God are active in ministry to one another and to those whom God has ordained to bring into that communion.

For this high view of our calling as priests in Christ Jesus, it would not be asking too much to relinquish our proud and self-serving concept of priesthood as a selfishly guarded “right” pertaining only to our status before God. To be a priest is to be a servant; it is to act as Christ did in ministering the Gospel to others. And the Church must be the primary place for this service. With great clarity Martin Luther stated the bedrock truth of Christianity that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. With equal clarity he understood, and calls us today to understand, that the gift of faith also brings responsibility to believers. Chief among them is the necessity to exercise priestly functions in the church and thereby to restore the Church, the bride of Christ, to its rightful place of honor in the kingdom of God.