The writers, producers, and sponsors of the now defunct TV show “Bridget Loves Bernie” would probably claim they were doing a public service by helping to combat the barriers that prevent TRUE Love from bridging religious differences. In reality, they were doing a great disservice to the audience, especially the teenage audience, by glossing over the serious problems that a Catholic-Jewish marriage entails. For the sake of a laugh, this program encouraged ridicule of traditional religious values that are rooted in experience and fact. It also encouraged young people contemplating a mixed marriage to avoid facing hard decisions that will only become more difficult when there are children to be raised.

Let’s look at the facts of mixed marriage. It has been known for some time that marriage between two people of different religious backgrounds is more likely to end in divorce than marriage within one religious group. A study in a suburb of Washington, D. C., of more than 13,000 families found the rate of divorce or separation was 2½ times as high for mixed Catholic-Protestant marriages as for in-group marriages. Similarly, a study in Michigan of more than 4,000 cases found the divorce rate for Catholic-Protestant marriages was almost three times that of in-group marriages. The number of Jewish-Gentile marriages in both studies was so small that no figures are given. However, it seems logical that, if anything, the problems in a Jewish-Gentile marriage would be much greater than those in a marriage where at least both are Christian.

That the problems are not solely religious but also cultural and psychological is shown by the fact that in both studies those who said they themselves had no religion had the highest divorce rate. That religion is an important factor is shown by the fact that where one party converted to the religion of the other, the divorce rate was reduced by 25 per cent. It did not matter which way the conversion went.

These studies were made in the 1930s and the 1940s. Today most young people think that things have changed. Therefore, two recent studies should be examined closely. The first is an analysis of all divorces filed for in California in 1971. Of the 143,664 divorce reports filed, 2,242, or 1.6 per cent, were filed by a Jew married to a Jew. (This represents 2.4 per cent of all interfaith marriages. Since Jews are 3 per cent of the population of California, this indicates that the Jewish divorce rate is 20 per cent below the average.) There were 2,430 filed by a Jew married to a Gentile. Therefore, 52 per cent of all divorces involving a Jew were in mixed marriages. Since the mixed-marriage rate in the late 1950s and 1960s when these people married was probably between 10 per cent and 15 per cent and surely no higher than 20 per cent, the divorce rate is at least 2½ to 3½ times as high for Jewish-Gentile marriages as for Jewish marriages. Also, mixed marriages tend to break up sooner: 50 per cent of the Jewish marriages ended in divorce within 8½ years after marriage; 50 per cent of the Jewish-Gentile marriages ended in divorce within 4½ years. For Catholics the 1971 California figures are similar. In fact, the number of divorces of Catholics married to non-Catholics exceeded the divorces of Catholic couples by 56 per cent to 44 per cent.

In another study, Christensen and Barber examined marriage and divorce records in Indiana for all couples married in 1960 and divorced during the next five years. Catholics and Jews had a divorce rate 79 per cent and 69 per cent below the average respectively. However, Catholics who married non-Catholics had a divorce or annulment rate five times as high as those who married within the faith, and for Jewish mixed marriages the rate was six times as high as that for in-group marriages.

These hard facts of life are especially important for Jews and Catholics because they are the least likely to unify their out-marriages by conversion. As we have seen, conversion reduces the Protestant-Catholic mixed-marriage divorce rate by 25 per cent. I would estimate that conversion reduces the Christian-Jewish mixed marriage rate by almost 50 per cent. Yet a recent study of 3,189 students at eighteen colleges and universities by Judson T. Landis found that Catholics are most willing to marry outside the faith and Jews least willing, and that both Catholics and Jews are less willing to change to the faith of the spouse than Protestants are. (Of the Catholics, 82 per cent said they would marry outside the faith, but only 15 per cent said they would change to the faith of the spouse. The corresponding percentages for Jews were 59 per cent and 14 per cent. Of the Protestant students, 65 per cent said they would marry outside the faith and 35 per cent of those said they would change to the faith of the spouse.) Women of all three faiths expressed greater willingness than men to change to the faith of the spouse. The difference between the high number of those willing to marry out, and the low numbers of those willing to accept the religious identity of the person they wish to marry is particularly striking for both Catholics and Jews.

One reason why Jews and Catholics have a below-average divorce rate is that selecting a mate from within one’s own religious community vastly increases the chances of sharing the same underlying, and often subconscious, values and convictions. In fact, some sociologists think that the reason Protestants have a higher divorce rate is that we lump all Protestants together instead of separating the liberals from the conservatives. In terms of values and background, a Congregationalist is as remote from a Baptist or an Adventist as from a Catholic or a Jew. That for both Protestants and Catholics the divorce rate is 25 per cent lower in cases where conversion has occurred may mean that the partner who converts was already closer to the values of the other’s religious background than to his own. It has even been suggested that one of the reasons people marry outside their religious community is that they find the personality type produced by another religious system more desirable.

One of the most helpful things any clergyman can do for a couple planning a mixed marriage is to make them face these problems, and help them solve them. Often, being accommodating is helpful in the short run and misleading in the long run. A clergyman who causes difficulties before a marriage might help make things work better in the long run.

Ninety per cent of American rabbis will not perform a wedding ceremony unless both parties are Jewish at the time of the marriage. A Synagogue wedding is not a sacrament. It is a public proclamation of the couple’s desire to establish a Jewish home and raise their children as Jews. The couple pledge themselves to each other “according to the rules of Moses [the Torah] and Israel [the Jewish people].” The marriage contract (Ketuba) is essentially a civil contract between two persons. The presence of a rabbi is necessary only to make sure that everything is done as it should be. Any blessings from God come only to the extent that they are deserved by any righteous person. For this reason Jews will almost always prefer a civil marriage to a Christian one. The ten per cent of rabbis who will perform a mixed marriage have requirements similar to those of the Catholic Church.

The problems facing a Jew and a Christian planning marriage are manifold. And this is all as it should be. It is better to face the issues and make the difficult decisions before marriage and children rather than after. Those people who hope to overcome the real difficulties frequently present in such a mixed marriage by ignoring or avoiding them, or by attempting to placate both sides through some kind of double or joint ceremony, are only providing a disservice to the young couple. Whatever problems they might encounter before they are married will only intensify when they have the responsibility of training their children. Whatever solution they might decide upon is easier to reach in advance without the added emotional involvement that children arouse. On the other hand, if they are unable to reach any solution they should know about it before they are married. Better to break up an engagement than a marriage, especially if the marriage breaks up after there are children.

Of all the factors associated with a higher-than-aver-age divorce rate (such as teenage marriage, pre-marriage pregnancy, previous divorce, elopement) for Jews and Catholics an interfaith marriage increases the divorce rate more than any other single factor. Marriage is too important, and divorce too frequent, for people to pretend that by being liberal, helpful, accommodating, or what have you, one can smooth the path to marital bliss.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

A personal account by a noted classics scholar

Nearly nineteen hundred years have passed since John added the last words to the New Testament; a little over nineteen hundred have slipped into history since the first words of the same book were written. Until recently I should have said without hesitation that those first pages were the first letter to the Corinthian church. But in 1972 a fragment of Mark’s Gospel was deciphered that was dated before identification, at A.D. 50. It came from Qumran on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea, from one of the caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and, if the date is sustained, it antedates the Corinthian letter by two years and takes the second Gospel back fourteen years nearer to the time of Christ. Before this discovery I should never have claimed a date earlier than A.D. 64.

So fresh and continually expanding is biblical scholarship. John’s Gospel provides striking illustration. It is thirty years since, in strong reaction against Bultmann and his school, A. G. Olmstead insisted that the narratives of John could be the oldest part of the gospel tradition, going back to Aramaic narratives earlier than A.D. 40, and a long sequence of small archaeological discoveries have all, since the Second World War, pressed toward that same conclusion. To list a few of them: First, John, much more frequently than the Synoptists, uses the term “rabbi.” This was thought to indicate a second-century origin for the Gospel, when the term “rabbi” began to be used in the synagogues. However, in 1930 E. L. Sukenik discovered an ossuary in an ancient tomb that was certainly much earlier than the second century. These earthenware or stone containers for the bones of the dead bore names and titles, and Sukenik’s find bore the title of Rabbi Theodotion.

This was two years before the Nazareth Decree was published, that strange slab of stone from Nazareth bearing a decree of Claudius that throws vivid light on the story of the empty tomb. And in 1935 G. H. Roberts found a fragment of papyrus in the collection in Manchester’s John Rylands Library that may be dated to before A.D. 130. It contained a portion of John’s text. In 1935 two other scholars published a larger papyrus fragment of slightly later date containing a harmony of the Gospels, including passages from John. Books, in those days, were not rapidly multiplied or rapidly worn out, so tattered remnants from a thousand miles away from Ephesus, where the book was written, and dating to something near a generation of John’s last activities, support with great strength the authority and historical worth of the Gospel.

Ossuary inscriptions also bear the common names of John’s Gospel, which was irresponsibly dismissed as fictional—not only Mary but also Martha, Elizabeth, Salome, Johanna, and others. The name Lazarus, a form for Eleazar, is common. Topographical allusions have similarly been under strong attack, on the allegation that the writer did not know Palestine. Father Vincent has uncovered and identified Gabbatha, or The Pavement, a fine Roman stone floor under the Ecce Homo Arch, 2,500 square meters of it. It was the court of the Tower of Antonia, headquarters of the Jerusalem garrison, a rocky elevation above the surrounding terrain, very properly called Gabbatha, “an elevation.” The importance of this identification is that it takes the tradition back to a date before the Great Rebellion of A.D. 66 to 70. When the city fell, the Pavement was lost under fallen masonry. Other names and places—Aenon and Sychar, for two examples out of many—have been similarly identified, and in like fashion point to a pre-rebellion tradition.

Recent archaeology has destroyed much nonsense and will destroy more. And I use the word nonsense deliberately, for theories and speculations find currency in biblical scholarship that would not be tolerated for a moment in any other branch of literary or historical criticism. Alfred Loisy, the French modernist scholar, suggested that John, or whoever wrote John (Loisy held the theory of mid-second-century origin) added five colonnades to the pool of John 5 simply to remind the reader of the five books of the Law, the Pentateuch, which Jesus came to fulfill. Israeli excavations have quite recently shown that before A.D. 70 there was, in fact, a large rectangular pool with a colonnade on each of the four sides, and one across the middle.

But all this is in long illustration of what I remarked about the vitality and progress of biblical scholarship. John’s Gospel, which I chose for illustration, matters. Much depends on those first eighteen verses, on the words said to Nicodemus, on the vivid story of the dawn race to the tomb of Peter and John. Since 1927 I have lectured almost every year on John’s Gospel and written on John’s writings, but there was much I did not know as sharply as I do now from recent studies.

Again let me illustrate. In May, 1972, I chanced upon a sculptured panel of stone in the Athens Archaeological Museum. It depicted the myth of the worship of the Earth Mother, Demeter, the ruins of whose temple stand at Eleusis, now an industrial suburb of Athens. Kore, daughter of Demeter, had been carried off by Pluto, god of the underworld, to be his bride, and in desperate search for her daughter, the legend said, Demeter was hospitably received by the king of Eleusis. She was entertained by him until Zeus, the chief god, forced a compromise by which Kore stayed in the underworld for six months and returned to earth to her mother for the remaining six months of the year. Hence winter and summer, the reflection of the Earth Mother’s grief and withdrawal, bounty and joy.

Hence, too, a religion, not ignoble, whereby each year specially prepared and purified initiates were received into the cult, and were said to share Kore’s resurrection and be “born again.” This was the sort of myth that C. S. Lewis thought had some premonitory significance of future truth. The exact nature of the ceremonies of initiation that took place at the Eleusis temple is a mystery, for the “born again” were not allowed to divulge what took place, but we know that the climax, when the great spiritual renewal was thought to take place, was marked by the uplifting of an ear of corn, the symbol of death and resurrection.

The ritual arose from the fact that, according to the legend, when Demeter left the king’s house, in return for the hospitality she had received she gave to the little prince Triptolemos a grain of wheat. She told him it had to be planted and to die, and if it died would bear much fruit. This is how corn came to man, and since Demeter was also called Ceres, we perpetuate the old story whenever we eat cereals.

But in the Archaelogical Museum I came much nearer to reality before the scultpured panel. It showed Demeter presenting the grain of wheat to the prince. I did not lack a text when I spoke next day to the Athens Evangelical Church: “And there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the festival, and they came to Philip and asked him, saying: ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.’ And Jesus said: ‘Truly, I tell you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains a corn of wheat. If it die, it brings forth much fruit’ ” (John 12:20 ff.). The Lord was telling the visitors that they had an inkling of truth in one of their own cults. How Paul picked up the thread (1 Cor. 15:35–38), obviously aware of Christ’s saying, which John was not to write down for another forty years, is another story. He was writing to Corinth, and the road to Corinth from Athens, which he trod, runs through Eleusis.

The month of May, 1972, was indeed for me a month of new awareness, especially about John and Paul. Round the seven churches of Asia, and in John’s own Ephesus, I saw illustration of what I knew, that the Word of God is alive and relevant, continually opening new vistas of understanding. Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colossae, lying in a triangle in the great, wide, green Lycus valley, seemed alive with the words of the apostles. “And when this letter is read among you, have it also read in the church of Laodicea,” writes Paul to Colossae (Col. 4:16), and the words echo strangely up the ten-mile-wide valley plain between the two walls of hills. I stood on a pile of stones in a wide mass of crops—oats, wheat, and barley—and read aloud the letter John wrote to Laodicea. The ground is scattered with worn stone, and rough with the buried remains of the most affluent town in Asia Minor, so rich that it refused relief from the Roman senate after the great earthquake. It was “rich and increased with goods and had need of nothing” (Rev. 3:14–18). And on the ridge a few miles away one could see the cliff of silica terraces running in gleaming pools of thermal water from the springs of the spa which is Heliopolis. The people of both rich and easy-going towns, where the spirit of the town had invaded the church, knew what John meant when he said: “You are neither cold nor hot, and because you are lukewarm I will spit you from my mouth.” That soda-laden water, in view of Laodicea, invites precisely that rejection.

We went down to Ephesus where Paul’s and John’s paths tangled, took ship, and crossed to Patmos, where all the words of Revelation were vividly real. The conviction came to me that John was in protective custody, sent out of Ephesus for his safety, as the authorities sent Paul, and that the aged bishop in exile had the run of the island. From the top one can look down on the little white town and the two harbors that almost cut the island in two. The sun was sloping and turning the sea to a flat sheet of gold. It was John’s sea of glass, the sea that is never absent from sight or sound. “His voice was as the sound of many waters.…” My granddaughter and I climbed down, cutting through scree and thicket, a Byzantine churchyard, steps and lanes, pursued all the time by a vast uplifted mass of cumulus, shot with lightning and rumbling with thunder. One could imagine John writing, as great gouts of rain fell like bullets: “Round the throne was a rainbow like an emerald and from the throne came stabs of lightning and voices of thunder” (Rev. 4:5, 6).

Paul, that great and vastly intelligent man, has become especially real and new to me. In Corinth last year I sat where Gallio, the governor of Achaia, sat, on the stone platform in the ruined Corinth marketplace, and read aloud in Greek and English the speech of that very noble gentleman, Seneca’s respected and admired brother: “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or crime, Jews, I should have reason to listen to you. But since it is a matter of quibbling about words and names, and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to adjudicate on these matters” (Acts 18:12–17). It was one of the few occasions in his life when Paul had not been able to say a word, but I think he never forgot the scene. Down at the other end of the marketplace still stands part of the temple of Apollo that survived the Roman sack of the city in 146 B.C. I can imagine Paul had the picture vividly in his mind when he wrote to that unruly congregation a year or two later. “You are the temples of the Holy Spirit, for God has said, I will live in you.…” There stands the ruin, windswept, clean, with the sky and the purple gulf showing through the eight Doric columns.

I have followed Paul through Acts and the Epistles, and back to Acts, and on to the pastoral letters, getting to know his ardent nature, his burdens for the church, his anxieties, his tenderness, his love, his friendships, his strife and pain. I have been with him in the home and on the road, in the pulpit and on shipboard. I once sailed along the length of Crete, below the southern coast, where the Alexandrian grainship sought to edge westward out of the wild wind blowing from the steppes of Europe as the rising air above the hot Sahara sucked in the chill of the Black Sea. It was in A.D. 59 perhaps, about the beginning of November, when sailing was considered dangerous. The ship-owner was anxious to get his cargo to Rome, and risked it. The western end of Crete rises mountainously into a clump of snow-capped peaks, and those high valleys and slopes take the northerlies, twist and funnel them and hurl their strength down on to the sea. This is what happened in November, 1912 or 1913 years ago. The lumbering galley was caught and hurled blindly west, the captain fighting not to be driven into the great oblong bay on the north African coast where a thousand wrecks in the shallow waters now make a paradise for underwater archaeologists. They jettisoned the cargo and put ropes round the hull to bind the straining timbers. It is a superbly told story; Paul’s gifts of leadership and dauntless courage stand out.

They were flung ashore on Malta and one almost breathes with relief, for Colossians, Philippians, Ephesians, Philemon, and Titus had not been written yet. They were the work of the years in protective custody in Rome, and the period of release and freedom that followed. Add also the first letter to Timothy. The second letter came in Paul’s second imprisonment, a darker and harsher experience that ended in death. It was about A.D. 67, and Paul was taken in Troas, so hastily that he left his books and cloak behind him—or perhaps he was arrested in the street and did not wish to incriminate his host by returning to fetch them.

Another deep and illuminating recent experience has been the study and exposition of the second letter to Timothy. I have caught the urgency of that book, its uncompromising stand for an unpolluted Gospel, its stem insistence that there is no other task for the Church. “Preach the gospel, when opportunity comes, or when you have to make the opportunity.… All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the faith and correcting false ideas. It straightens out a man’s life, and trains him for upright living” (2 Tim. 4:2, 3:16, 17).

I have felt that inspiration. Listen to earlier words in that third chapter and feel it too. “Timothy, grasp the fact in the last days there will be difficult times. Men will be utterly selfish, greedy for money, braggarts, contemptuous, profane of speech, rebels against their parents, without gratitude or religion or natural affection, implacable, slanderous, uncontrolled, untamable, hating the good, traitors, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, with a form of religion which denies religion worth and reality.” Rome of A.D. 67 or the Western world of 1973? But into this devil’s brew of moral breakdown with faith unconquerable, Paul sent the Gospel and the Word. He had left Timothy, a timid and not very robust young man, in Ephesus, in charge of the little band of Christians there. John had not yet arrived, it seems. With sublime optimism Paul thus attacked the evil world.

For such a world what hope is there save in rediscovery of the Bible? The old greatness of the English people was built round the Bible. That famous old classic Green’s Short History of the English People is still worth reading. In his eighth chapter, which covers the twenty years from 1583 to 1603, J. R. Green tells of the great moral reformation that swept over Britain. “England became the people of a book, and that book was the Bible. It was yet the one English book which was familiar to every Englishman. It was read in churches and read at home, and everywhere its words, as they fell on ears which custom had not deadened, kindled a startling enthusiasm.”

Four centuries ago it was quick and powerful. The narratives, the parables, the cutting edge of the prophets’ voices, the appeal of the Gospel, the indictment of sin, prayer, song, psalm, the stern commandments and the warnings of judgment, came to a land denied such treasure, and transformed it. The Bible molded English prose and inspired great poetry. We think of Milton, who was born in 1608, and Bunyan, born twenty years later. The Bible shaped and fashioned the nation’s character and made England a free man’s haven. “One dominant influence,” Green continues, “told on human action. A new conception of life and of man superseded the old. A new moral and religious impulse spread through every class. The whole temper of the nation felt the change.”

The Times of London recently carried the obituary of a distinguished classical scholar, Dr. E. V. Rieu. I had known him as a translator for many years, for he was the scholar who rendered Homer into very modern English for the “Penguin Classics.” Rieu was sixty, and a lifelong agnostic when the same firm invited him to translate the Gospels. His son remarked: “It will be interesting to see what father makes of the four Gospels. It will be even more interesting to see what the four Gospels make of father.” The answer was soon forthcoming. A year later Dr. Rieu, convinced and converted, joined the Church of England.

In a radio interview with J. B. Phillips, Rieu confessed that he had undertaken the task of translation because of “an intense desire to satisfy himself as to the authenticity and spiritual content of the Gospels.” He was determined to approach the documents as if they were newly discovered Greek manuscripts. “Did you not get the feeling,” asked Canon Phillips, “that the whole material was extraordinarily alive?” The classical scholar agreed. “I got the deepest feeling,” he replied. “My work changed me. I came to the conclusion that these words bear the seal of the Son of Man and God. And they’re the Magna Carta of the human spirit.” “I found it particularly thrilling,” Phillips concluded, “to hear a man who is a scholar of the first rank, as well as a man of wisdom and experience, openly admitting that these words written long ago were alive with power. They bore to him as to me, the ring of truth” (J. B. Phillips, The Ring of Truth).

And that, of course, is what the writer to the Hebrews (4:12) said nineteen centuries ago. Let me give it to you in the Living Bible rendering, an appropriate version for such a word: “For whatever God says to us is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest sword, cutting swift and deep into our innermost thoughts and desires … exposing us for what we really are.”

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

The July/August issue of Trends magazine may have jolted a few United Presbyterians out of their hammocks or beach chairs or whatever else they had settled down in for some leisurely summer reading. The magazine is produced by the denomination’s Program Agency “as a resource for study by older youth and adults.” And the message for older youth and adults in this summer issue was: Homosexuality should be accepted as a variant life-style; the homosexual relationship is neither unnatural, sinful, nor sick. Practicing homosexuals were portrayed as whole, healthy, appealing persons.

Trends writers argued that the laws against homosexuality should be abolished, and that homosexuals should not be kept out of the armed forces nor denied any jobs open to heterosexuals. They claimed that practicing homosexuals are not dangerous to morals or a threat to young people. Interestingly enough, less than a month after the magazine was in the mails the Houston, Texas, homosexual murder case came to light. At least twenty-seven boys and young men had been tortured, subjected to homosexual assaults, and brutally killed in what was the worst mass murder in American history. But this was, of course, a wildly extreme case and cannot be said to reflect upon the tendencies of homosexuals in general any more than the rape-murder of a woman by a man reflects upon heterosexuals in general.

My purpose here is not to consider the case for or against laws restricting homosexual conduct. Nor will I discuss whether homosexuals should be given equal job opportunities in business, government, and the armed forces. I will not here make a case against private homosexual activities between consenting adults. My intention is to deal with two questions: What is the Christian or biblical view of homosexuality? And what should the attitude of the churches be toward the place of homosexuals in their midst?

To define my terms, I accept the definitions laid down in Trends:

Homosexual: Having a preference for intimate relationships with persons of the same sex.

Gay: Being free from shame, guilt, misgivings, or regret over being homosexual.

Heterosexual: Having a preference for intimate relations with persons of the opposite sex.

Straight: Not deviating from the general norm or the prescribed pattern [p. 6].

I exclude from discussion non-practicing homosexuals; there is no reason why they should not be received into any church and ordained to any ministry. My concern here is with practicing homosexuals.

Trends makes effective use of the technique of brain-washing. The purpose is to create in the opponents of homosexual conduct a sense of guilt, and to persuade them that they are persecutors and oppressors of an unjustly maligned group of healthy, honest, brave, and appealing people who only want rights that belong to them but have been denied them. How well do the arguments stand up to the dictates of reason and biblical revelation?

1. The autobiographical account of Bill Johnson illustrates what might be called the sob-story technique, designed to create sympathy at the emotional level but devoid of biblical support save for a few general statements about God’s love and grace. We will let him speak for himself.

I am gay and I make that affirmation with joy and pride.

I am a good person. I know that caring, honesty and mutual responsibility are the foundation of my relating to other persons. I [know] of the beauty of same-sex relationships, of intimacy with another man, of gay love.

Bill Johnson graduated from the Pacific School of Religion and sought ordination in the United Church of Christ. He found it hard going.

My ordination would not have been challenged had I not affirmed my gayness.

As in most experiences of human interaction, the ways in which persons related or failed to relate to me [note: not how he relates to other people but how other people relate to him] told me more about those persons than about myself.

Many persons sought unsuccessfully [my italics] to separate the issue from the person. This tactic is the essence of dehumanization [note: as though it were wrong to seek objective standards that apply irrespective of the person or persons involved; to do so is a “tactic” and is “dehumanization,” an emotionladen term that discards the question of truth and seeks to create sympathy while avoiding the issue] and is, I have come to learn, the way in which most [my italics] heterosexuals seek to relate to gay persons.

His determination to be ordained, though ultimately successful, brought him through rough waters:

Suddenly I found myself face to face with a leader of the persons who had regularly opposed my request for ordination. He looked me in the eye and said, “You make me sick. All my life I’ve been a good family man. You’re a disgrace, not a man. If this is what the church wants, I won’t be part of it.” He was gone before I could reply.

No sooner had he left when another hostile delegate cornered me. Angrily he spouted, “I hope you’re happy, you pervert. This is going to destroy the church!” And he spit in my face.

I was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Christ on June 25, 1972.… Looking back on the experience, I marvel that I endured it.… I am glad that I am gay.… I believe my position is rooted in the gospel of the Christ.

The testimony of William Johnson (he is now executive director of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual) was impressive for its advocacy of autonomous selfhood; he can do as he pleases and let the chips fall where they may. “My feeling,” he said, “that I, and all human beings, have the right to self-definition and the right to relate, without fear, with whomsoever we choose to relate, caused me to take the step of affirming my sexual feelings within the Christian community.” And this position, he says, “is rooted in the gospel of the Christ.” Shades of the Book of Judges, where each man did what was right in his own eyes. If this view is to be found in the “gospel of the Christ,” it is exceedingly strange that responsible scholars have not found it there yet.

2. Editor Dennis Shoemaker of Trends portrays homosexuals he met in the course of his research as nice persons, whole persons, persons whose life-style is only a variation of the heterosexual pattern. He attended a symposium on religion and the homosexual claiming that he didn’t want to go, and didn’t want his mind changed. “But I went and it was,” he says. The chairpersons “were friendly, charming, on-the-ball types, who didn’t at all look like ‘homos’ ” (any more, we might remark parenthetically, than murderers must look like murderers, or prostitutes like prostitutes, or pickpockets like thieves). Later he went to a gay nightclub that featured a stage show. He thought it was in very bad taste but on reflection stated, “I would say it was in no worse taste than the nudie girl shows featured at dozens of night spots in the nearby area that cater to heterosexuals.”

Shoemaker was particularly interested in the homosexual poet Paul Mariah. He could feel the “magnetism of his humanity” and spoke of Mariah’s “mystical religious experience.” Mariah “came through as a person of warmth, charm and exuberance, a deeply reflective and sensitive human being whose taste of the bitterness of life had lent him the gift of grace and radiancy. He may be described simply as ‘a whole person.’ ”

Shoemaker saw films depicting homosexual love acts, designed to clinch the argument expressed by one homosexual: “One kind of sexual activity ought to be as legal and acceptable as another, because they are all so similar.” Shoemaker “agreed that such knowledge was important and also to his point that the sexual act was not all that different from what heterosexuals do if they are in any way creative. But my appetite for such knowledge was sated.”

3. The Reverend James E. Sandmire, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, a homosexual congregation, asserts in Trends, “I’m a gay man and a minister. I expect to go home tonight to my gay lover with whom I have lived for thirteen years. Tomorrow I expect to preach to my congregation and to administer Communion to them. And I think God and I will feel quite good about it all.” Sandmire came from a Mormon background, graduated from Harvard College, and for years sublimated his homosexual leanings, even entering into marriage. But two weeks after his marriage he fell in love with a man in Salt Lake City, and “suddenly he was all that mattered.”

Sandmire says he had to face objective reality, by which he means the fact that he was gay and was going to stay gay. The other objective reality the homosexual has to face, Sandmire says, is this:

That he isn’t sick, and that he doesn’t even feel sick. He isn’t sinful either. In my case, I felt that God answered my prayers and that I was close to him. So my intellectual reaction was this: Society says that I am sick and that I am sinful, but I feel neither. Therefore I have to make a decision. Am I or am I not? I decided at that point I wasn’t. And interestingly enough, I really wasn’t. When I decided I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t sick. And when I decided I wasn’t sinful, God seemed more open in his dealings with me.

Florence Bryant, one of the editors of Trends, furthers Sandmire’s argument. She first adduces her own case: she was married, divorced, and remarried. Since she had divorced one man and married another while the first was still living, she says, according to the Bible she committed adultery. And since she was warmly accepted and supported in the fellowship of the church, why shouldn’t homosexuals who also have broken the law of God be similarly received? For after all, may it not be that “biological females and biological males each contain masculine and femine qualities? Would such an interpretation rule out homosexuality as being God-willed for some individuals and heterosexuality as being God-willed for others?” This would negate, of course, the biblical assertion that homosexuality is sinful; but even if it is sinful, none of the passages in the Bible “says that homosexual acts are any more heinous in the sight of God than other sins nonsexual in nature, such as drunkenness and greed.” She speaks favorably of the emerging attitude that homosexuals are neither sinful nor sick. Homosexuality is merely “a variant sexual preference.” In 1963 an English Quakers’ committee reported, she says, “that homosexuality was a natural, morally neutral condition, no more to be deplored than left-handedness in respect to right-handedness.… A homosexual relationship can be just as selfless and loving as a heterosexual one. Therefore, the committee said, it cannot be morally worse.”

4. In a preface to this issue of Trends, the editors acknowledge that both the Book of Leviticus and the Apostle Paul condemn homosexuality as a prime example of sin. But “Christian doctrine holds that both are subject to a higher authority, to a law that commends love rather than scorn.” The editors say they “have chosen to emphasize this perspective [that homosexuality is neither a sickness nor a sin] because we believe it is most in keeping with the biblical doctrine of grace for all persons.” In view of this, “the burden seems to shift away from the homosexual, who now has less need to determine his innocence or guilt than does the church to explain its history of discriminatory attitudes and practice toward the homosexual. How will the church deal with its own sin of oppression?”

This issue of Trends was an effective propaganda piece for the increasingly accepted view that homosexuality is a legitimate sexual variation. What should evangelicals say in response?

1. The essayists in Trends take pains to emphasize that gay people are nice people, normal except for their gayness (which of course they regard as not abnormal). The fact is, obviously, that some gay people are nice and some are nasty, just as there are heterosexual people of both sorts. Being gay certainly does not mean that one must be crude, unpleasant, boorish, or arrogant. Homosexuals cannot always be identified as such, and many successfully conceal their sexual tendency throughout their lives.

But let no one suppose that all homosexuals are innocent people who keep to themselves and do nothing to try to induce straights to take part in homosexual acts. The sex urge in mankind, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is very strong. Just as some heterosexuals who engage in fornication and adultery actively seek out partners in their sin, so do some homosexuals solicit partners, often in straight society. My own son was solicited in a train by a homosexual. Clergymen have been known to try to seduce members of their own sex in their churches, sometimes their younger fellow clergymen.

In saying this we must grant that there are no activities of homosexuals that cannot be duplicated in varying forms by heterosexuals, masochists, sadists, and the like. But to try to use the immoral and biblically condemned activities of non-homosexuals to justify another form of immorality is futile. In condemning homosexual activity, the Christian must be equally firm in condemning heterosexual immorality as well. And the immoral heterosexual is neither better nor worse than the practicing homosexual. Both come under divine judgment.

The Scriptures are very clear about a point that rightly vexes homosexuals. Everywhere Scripture dictates that believers are to love sinners even as they hate their sins. The lack of compassion many Christians show for homosexuals is inexcusable. It may be easier to show compassion for the drunkard and the adulterer than for the homosexual. But this ought not to be. Christians who are deeply offended by homosexual behavior must still reflect the compassion of Christ for sheep who have gone astray. And they must have a heart of loving concern for homosexuals’ redemption and for their personhood, however much it has been defiled by sin.

2. What does the Bible say about homosexuality?

The Old Testament Scriptures (e.g., Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13—the book of Leviticus is the book of the holiness code or the way of life for a covenant people) prescribe the death penalty for homosexual acts. But there are other prohibitions in the Levitical code that no one would think of requiring today. They have been superseded or abolished under the new covenant. Why not adopt the same attitude toward homosexuality?

The answer is plain. The New Testament (and thus the new covenant, which speaks to the people of God in this age of the Church and of the Holy Spirit) also condemns homosexuality while it does not repeat nor advocate some of the other prohibitions of the old covenant. Paul declares that homosexuals shall not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9, 10).

But Paul does not single out homosexuals as special offenders. He says that idolators, adulterers, thieves, coveters, drunkards, and extortioners shall not inherit the kingdom, either. And he also says that the Corinthians have been delivered from these sinful habits: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11). There is hope for the homosexual. He can be delivered from his sin—just as adulterers, drunkards, and idolators can.

The Bible condemns homosexual behavior and says that homosexuals cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Whether a homosexual feels good about his homosexuality or proclaims that he has no sense of guilt doesn’t alter the biblical prohibition. Good feelings cannot deliver him from the judgment of God. If he does not repent he is doomed, but he is not alone. So are all other unrepentant sinners. God is no respecter of persons; he is also no respecter of one’s sexual appetites. Hell will be partially populated by “caring, honest, whole persons” who were proud that they were gay.

3. If the biblical commandments about homosexuality are set aside and homosexuality is viewed as only a variant life-style, then other sinners can use the same logic to justify their own aberrations. Prostitutes, for example, can argue that their activities do not represent sickness or sin, only a different life-style, and that they can’t help the way their sexual instincts lead them. Fornicators and adulterers can argue that their behavior is not deviant, only variant, and perfectly acceptable so long as it doesn’t harm others. Indeed, fornication and adultery are not contrary to nature even though expressly forbidden by the law of God, whereas homosexuality is also a violation of nature itself.

4. The editors of Trends say, “At the very least, then, we can conclude from this that homosexually oriented people ought to be received within the church, and society generally, on the same basis as everyone else. We are all sinful, and we are all equally redeemable.”

It is quite true that all men are sinful. It is also true that all men are redeemable. But the redemption of men does more than secure their acceptance by God and supply them with the grace of justification. They are also delivered from sin’s thralldom. No one can be justified who does not repent. And repentance includes a turning from the old life and the old sins.

One writer in Trends misuses the Scripture when she talks about the woman taken in adultery. (Although this account is not found in some of the oldest extant manuscripts, we will regard it as part of the autographs of Scripture.) Florence Bryant states that “Christians who condemn homosexuals as sinners might do well to remember what Jesus said in the case of the woman taken in the act of adultery, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ ” She seems unaware of what the law said about adultery. Both the man and the woman taken in the act were to be stoned. Here the wicked scribes and Pharisees brought only the woman. Since she had been taken in the act of adultery, her partner must have been known. But he was not brought before Jesus. (Indeed, the partner might even have been one of the accusers.) Jesus knew their intent and suggested that any one of them who was without sin should cast the first stone. But when Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn thee,” he was saying nothing more than that the law required at least two witnesses for the sentence to be passed and the judgment executed. And there were no witnesses against this woman. Moreover, Jesus stated that she was a sinner and guilty, for after this he said to her: “Go, and sin no more.” The homosexual can be forgiven his sin by Jesus too. But with the word of forgiveness comes the word of admonition: “Go, and sin no more.” To conclude that the homosexual who comes to Christ can continue to be a practicing homosexual and remain in a state of grace is to misread the Scripture. If he remains a homosexual, whatever else may be true, he cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

This brings us to the question of admitting homosexuals to the church—to membership, to baptism and the Lord’s supper, and to ordination. The church cannot admit those whom God excludes. It must make it clear that the homosexual cannot continue in his sin and still be with God (see James 2:14–26). A church that decides to show compassion toward the homosexual by admitting him to full rights and privileges shows a false compassion that confirms the sinner in his wicked ways.

It is discrimination on the part of the church to exclude homosexuals, but it is not oppression. Discrimination lies at the heart of Christianity. The ax of God’s holiness and righteousness divides the saved from the lost. The church does not admit atheists and agnostics to its fellowship, and this is discrimination; it does not admit unitarians either. Nor should it admit fornicators, adulterers, and drunkards, whom the Scriptures say are not eligible for admission to the fellowship of the saints.

Homosexuals have a just complaint when they say that churches often selectively apply the Word of God: they disbar homosexuals but take in others whose activities Scripture condemns. The churches should certainly cease this hypocrisy and apply justice evenhandedly. Idolators, revilers, drunkards, robbers, fornicators, and adulterers should be treated the same way homosexuals are treated. Paul says “not to associate with anyone” who is guilty of these things. “Drive out the wicked person from among you” (1 Cor. 5:11–13).

Churches make a grave mistake in admitting to their fellowship those who do not meet the required standards of God. It is dangerous to permit within the churches those who insist upon diminishing the biblical standards and compromising the law of God. Members of any church who permit this to happen and who support policies that undermine the plain teachings of Scripture can be sure that they have supported an evil that will bring down upon their church God’s judgment.

Those who stand in opposition to homosexuality are frequently accused of being uncompassionate, unprogressive, and out of tune with modern developments. But as Harry Blamires ably points out, Christianity “is supernaturally grounded, revealed not manufactured, imposed not chosen, authoritative, objective and irresistible.… No human being invented the Christian faith. It was God’s idea. If you think it a bad idea, you’d better blame God.… He gave us this Christianity. We can accept it. We can reject it. But we can’t tamper with it as though it were something put together by human hands or human brains” (The Christian Mind, pp. 119, 118). The final and the conclusive argument against homosexuality does not come from the psychologists, the sociologists, the secularists, or the humanists. It comes from God, who has spoken his word against it and has never stuttered in his speech.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

This issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY marks the end of our seventeenth year. During this semi-score and seven the magazine seems to have fared better than the world into which it was launched. The United Nations is in disarray, and the World Council of Churches has chartered a new course that is sending the good ship Oikoumene in a direction never intended at the 1948 launching. Globally man is faced with immense problems. The poor nations are getting poorer. The Chinese are seeking desperately to become a nuclear and thus a world power. The Russians are once again stifling dissent at home. The Israelis are busily constructing a defense system against the Arabs, who in turn are using our dependence on their oil to isolate the Jews.

Amid all this there has been a marked decline in morality around the globe, which has been abetted by decadent, complacent, secularized churches. Such churches set their course not by the fixed pole of the Scriptures but according to the vagaries of human opinion. For an illustration of this kind of thinking see my article on homosexuality and the church (page 8), which calls for fidelity to revealed truth and prescriptive ethics.

The Gospel of Mark well deserves the attention it is receiving from modern students of the Bible. A recent book by Jack Finegan of Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley added to the swell of interest in Mark even though Professor Finegan’s contribution is in the form of a novel! Finegan’s adventure story, Mark of the Taw (John Knox, 1972), deals with a fictitious Greek papyrus scroll entitled “Of Mark” that he was supposed to have secured in Alexandria, Egypt, during the early days of the 1967 war between Israel and the Arab nations. The book is written so cleverly that one might assume at first reading that such a scroll was actually discovered! Finegan gives his readers imaginative insights into Mark’s life and work that, if true, would certainly be of inestimable importance for biblical study.

Again in 1972 another writer claimed more seriously to have identified Greek papyri scroll fragments from Qumran as belonging to the Gospel of Mark. José O’Callaghan of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome set forth his position in the interesting article entitled “New Testament Papyri in Cave 7 of Qumran.”

After giving careful attention to his theory, I concluded that he failed to demonstrate that Mark’s Gospel was truly in Cave 7 at Qumran. Therefore his discovery of Mark’s Gospel seems to be as “fictitious” as the admittedly fictitious scroll in Finegan’s novel. In an article in Expository Times (Sept., 1972), “The Earliest Fragments of the New Testament,” I raise questions about O’Callaghan’s identifications and give the critical Greek sources.

It is evident that O’Callaghan has since won many adherents for his views. I welcome the opportunity to set forth a few objections to O’Callaghan’s theory in this journal, since the first mention in these pages (issue of March 31, 1972) was sympathetic toward O’Callaghan’s position.

The “fragments of Mark” O’Callaghan used to make his identification are not new. They were published ten years ago as “Unidentified Fragments” from Cave 7 of Qumran. The accompanying map, showing familiar landmarks about Qumran, help the reader to locate Cave 7 in relation to the ruins of Qumran. Cave 7, located at the southern end of the flat ridge on which Qumran is built, is only a stone’s throw from the main buildings of the Qumran community center. It is in the immediate vicinity of Caves 8, 9, and 10.

AN INTRODUCTORY WORD

About a year ago a small sensation was created in the world of biblical scholarship when the media picked up information about an essay written in Spanish and published in the scholarly Roman Catholic journal Biblica. The essay suggested that certain fragments found among the Dead Sea Scrolls were to be identified with various New Testament writings. The author, José O’Callaghan, who teaches in Rome and Barcelona, puts forward a striking suggestion about the Gospel of Mark. Identifying a tiny fragment from the scrolls with Mark 6:52 and 53 and following the latest possible data suggested by the original auditor in the official Dead Sea Scrolls publication series, he pointed to a date prior to A.D. 50 for the origin of Mark. If his thesis were to prove correct, the results would be revolutionary for New Testament scholarship, since A.D. 50 is at least a decade earlier than almost any scholar would presently date Mark and some twenty or thirty years earlier than the date advocated by many. (The original would have to have been written no later than A.D. 40, since the Qumran fragment could hardly be any closer to the original than this.) Furthermore, O’Callaghan went on to suggest identifications for eight other fragments from Qumran with New Testament writings (three of Mark, one each of Romans, Acts, James, First Timothy, and Second Peter), all of them dated before A.D. 100. The implications of these suggestions are sweeping.

O’Callaghan’s suggestions were received very cautiously by biblical scholars, even by conservatives who would, understandably, be only too glad to welcome new evidence that would push the writing of the Gospels back to an early period in the Church’s history. A few, however, embraced O’Callaghan’s “discoveries” with open arms and pressed his conclusions into the service of Christian apologetics. Thus one well-known evangelical scholar commented:

The discovery is colossal! I think there is no question that Dr. O’Callaghan’s main points will stand up under investigation.…

The confirmation of an early date for the Gospel of Mark both in its reporting of the words of Jesus and in its narrative sections is a heavy blow at negative criticism. An early date for Acts, James and Romans does not so much upset current theories, but nevertheless it is a welcome support for the evangelical position.

Another writer wrote: “If [O’Callaghan] is correct, all contemporary Barthian and Bultmannian views of the New Testament’s formation will come crashing down in one inglorious heap.” But the more typical reaction was that, in view of the fragmentary nature of the evidence and the uncertainty of O’Callaghan’s reconstruction, it was best to suspend judgment until the material could be thoroughly examined by a variety of scholars.

O’Callaghan’s work has now been checked by a number of scholars, and nearly all have concluded that his suggestions are extremely unlikely (for reasons similar to those given in Professor Vardaman’s article). Scholars such as C. H. Roberts, G. Vermes, Frank M. Cross, F. F. Bruce, David Noel Freedman, G. Ernest Wright, Gordon D. Fee, Colin J. Hemer, and others have all gone on record against the probability of these or any other Qumran fragments’ being identified with New Testament documents. It seems likely that their judgment will stand.

This case should serve as a lesson to evangelicals. The desire to defend the trustworthiness of the Word of God is a worthy one, but one must be very careful how this is done. It brings little honor to the cause of the Gospel to use an unproven theory for apologetic purposes. Not only does a hypothesis (which is what O’Callaghan put forward) prove nothing, but it can raise serious questions concerning the truthfulness of one’s position if the data are subsequently shown to have been misinterpreted. Those who are dismayed when the critics of Christianity accept as proven unlikely theories that seem to run counter to the claims of Christian faith should not rush to any hypothesis that seems to support the Christian point of view without the most careful investigation.

One further point needs to be noted. Although O’Callaghan’s hypothesis would demand a radical reorientation of New Testament scholarship in some areas, its implications are not quite as great as some have suggested. On the one hand, if the Gospel of Mark had in fact been written in A.D. 40 rather than in A.D. 60 or 70 or even later, it would not follow that it would therefore necessarily be more reliable. On the other hand, a late date for Mark does not mean that it is unreliable. One must not forget that some of the most radical critics—for example, E. R. Goodenough—have dated all of the Gospels very early while regarding them as essentially untrustworthy, and that many conservative scholars date some of the Gospels as late as A.D. 80 or 90. If one believes in the inspiration of the New Testament writings, the date of an individual book seems relatively unimportant—at least it is not a factor in guaranteeing its reliability. Conversely, if one has made a prior judgment that causes him to reject the central fact taught in the Gospels, i.e., the Incarnation, it seems unlikely that an attempt to push their dating back a couple of decades will lead him to accept them as trustworthy.—W. WARD GASQUE, assistant professor of New Testament, Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.

The scrap of papyrus that O’Callaghan identifies with Mark 6:52, 53 is only 1½ by 1⅛ inches. Its small size, of course, does not mean that it could not be a fragment of the Gospel of Mark. I have been studying a seal of King Agrippa I (cf. Acts 12) that is only 9/16 of an inch long and 7/16 of an inch wide. Nevertheless the seal is covered with tiny Greek letters that give repeatedly the full titles of Agrippa: “King Agrippa, Friend of Caesar, Friend of Romans, Pious.” The seal is unquestionably the very seal of the king who killed James the Apostle and who tried to kill Simon Peter. The Greek letters are crowded on the seal so closely that it simply defies the imagination to try to count each occurrence! If O’Callaghan were able to identify a sufficient number of small letters on the fragment in question, scholars everywhere would gladly accept the evidence. But he has not.

O’Callaghan does not restrict his identifications to Mark but thinks he has been able to recognize other fragments of New Testament books in the Greek papyri from Cave 7. He uses extremely small fragments to make these identifications (most no bigger than fingernails!). The number of words and letter groups on each is small. But his methods of identification are questionable, and it was easy to predict that most New Testament scholars would resist his conclusions. Since he promises to provide further evidence in a forthcoming article, we can defer a final judgment until that evidence can be considered.

O’Callaghan is obviously a competent scholar, well acquainted with the esoteric science of Greek paleography. His very competence has doubtless excited the hopes of opponents of Rudolf Bultmann that O’Callaghan would provide them with the exact evidence needed to demolish the positions of the famous German scholar. Indeed, if O’Callaghan had identified a fragment of Mark’s Gospel dating conclusively around A.D. 50, he would have weakened Bultmann’s position considerably. Regrettably, we must continue to dispute with Bultmann using other weapons than by the evidence furnished by O’Callaghan, for it does not stand up. Yet I do find O’Callaghan’s theory stimulating, even though it is unlikely. Let us now consider only a few of the arguments against O’Callaghan’s theory.

1. O’Callaghan has to change the traditional text of Mark considerably to identify Greek materials from Qumran Cave 7 (7Q5 and 7Q6, 1) with Mark’s Gospel. He has to omit in Mark 6:52, 53 the phrase “to the land” [of Gennesareth] in order to crowd the traditional Greek text of Mark into the allowable line space of the papyrus (7Q5) he has identified with Mark. He also has to change the traditional spelling of the Greek expression “having crossed over” (by substituting a “T” for a “D”) to arrive at his identification. Whatever manuscript support (quite slim) O’Callaghan might find for his changed readings, it is not as weighty as the contrary evidence of the best manuscripts (see the eighth edition of Tischendorf and Nestle-Aland).

One might argue that in the case of the tiny fragment of John’s Gospel identified by Roberts in 1935 there were noted slight differences in spelling and word arrangements between the present text of John and the earliest form of that book. But the problem is more serious with the identifications proposed by O’Callaghan.

JOHN THE BAPTIST

Raucous John skilled in epiplexis

pounds the pious ears of Pharisees,

stumps the desert to raise a righteous caucus

and clear the streets of unbelief for Jesus.

The locust/honey diet makes him lithe,

the rough leather jerkin shows him humble.

His lungs are purged of cant by desert air,

his Isaianic eyes alert to wonder.

Expert Messiah-watcher, he, not fooled

by desert sharpers greedy for miracles

and promising easy kingdoms, is faithfully

awake to give the inaugural word, “Behold!”

EUGENE H. PETERSON

2. There is not enough writing preserved on any of the Greek papyri O’Callaghan uses to make any assured identification of any one of them. If one could establish with confidence that O’Callaghan had correctly identified Mark 6:52, 53 with 7Q5, then one might be prepared to accept some of the other equations proposed by O’Callaghan (that is, that other New Testament papyri are to be found in Cave 7 also). But O’Callaghan has by no means demonstrated that 7Q5 is really Mark 6:52, 53. Hence it is presumptuous to reason as he does and assume that since he has identified the Gospel of Mark from Cave 7, then other New Testament books must be sought in the other tiny scraps from Cave 7.

Even the few letters preserved on the papyrus that O’Callaghan wants to identify with Mark 6:52, 53 are quite difficult to identify. And where the letters are complete enough that one can make some sense out of them, the result is that only very common Greek words such as “the” or perhaps “them” or “and” can be identified. The key words needed to establish O’Callaghan’s theory solidly are simply not complete enough to enable us to be sure. Unfortunately for him, the key words of lines 4 and 5 of the papyrus can easily be understood in ways other than what O’Callaghan suggests. The few preserved letters in line 5 of 7Q5 could be restored as “has been dedicated” (Greek anathesen) instead of “they lashed to shore” as O’Callaghan understands them. And instead of “Gennesareth,” which O’Callaghan finds in line 4, one could restore just as easily some form of the Greek word “begotten,” as the original editor, Baillet, did.

In a penetrating article in the Journal of Theological Studies (Oct., 1972), C. H. Roberts shows that the identifications O’Callaghan made with portions of the New Testament can just as well, if not better, be made with portions of the Old Testament.

3. The fact that the papyri in question come from Qumran makes it improbable that they have any connection with early Christian writings. The facts are quite clear that the overly legalistic Essenes of Qumran were quite distinct from the Christians. In all the vast collections of Essenic materials edited thus far by the scholars who have worked with the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran, nothing has been identified as distinctly Christian material. While we must not close our minds to this possibility, there is no good reason to accept it at the present time.

4. The exact date of the papyri in question is not known conclusively. O’Callaghan wanted to say that he could identify the fragments in question as from the Gospel of Mark and followed the editors of Discoveries in the Judean Desert, Volume III (Oxford, 1962) in dating 7Q5 to a period around A.D. 50. But it is important to note what the original editor of the fragment did say: “The writing pertains to the formal script and can be dated between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50.” It is hard to be precise with Greek writings of a formal type. Unless one finds a precise chronological clue, one must allow the broad limits of a century for some writings of this type (as our papyrus). Thus the papyrus in question could antedate the birth of Jesus (as early as B.C. 50), in which case it certainly could not be the Gospel of Mark, or any other New Testament work, for that matter.

5. There still remain uncertainties concerning the accurate reading of the main Greek papyrus O’Callaghan identifies with Mark (7Q5). This uncertainty is due to the poor preservation of the papyrus right at the places where the readings are most critical for his theory. In any case, when one compares the reconstruction of the papyrus by Roberts-Baillet, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, III, with that of O’Callaghan, one immediately notices differences between these authorities. The restoration of the text is therefore quite uncertain. I suggest an alternative reading in the illustration.

The following notes might be helpful on the text at this point:

Line 1. This line is completely undecipherable with any degree of assurance. Only a smear of ink remains in the highest part of the papyrus.

Line 2. One cannot be sure that the word is to be restored as O’Callaghan resores it. AUTOI or TOI are also possible. The following letter is difficult to restore as “E” (eta) as O’Callaghan does. The stance of the letter is quite different from the “E” of line 4. Therefore I suggest (in broken lines) an “A” (alpha) in that position. Parts of this “alpha” seem to be detectable on each side of the lacuna there. Following this lacuna, enough of the next letter seems to be preserved to make doubtful the reading of a “K” (kappa) at that spot.

Line 3. The identity of an “E” (eta) as the first recognizable letter in this line is not certain, since no trace remains of the crossbar of that letter in the section of the papyrus that is preserved sufficiently well to determine the letter’s identity if it were an “Ē” (eta). The first letter could be a “P” (pi).

The form of the “T” (tau) in line 2, with a gently arched, extended crossbar to the left, raises a question concerning the identity of the first Greek letter following the word “KAI” (= “and” in Greek); the letter in question could be a Greek “P” (pi). If so this makes O’Callaghan’s reading “crossing over” impossible, and at best he can salvage only “PERASANTES” (= crossing) out of the text! The “I” (iota) in “KAI” (“and”) in line 3 curves off to the left at the bottom of the letter (cf. the same feature in line 2). This evidence favors the possibility that we must read “P” (pi) instead of “TI” (tau + iota) in line 3.

Lines 4 and 5. Other possibilities for reading the letters here are noted above.

We can confidently say, therefore, that O’Callaghan’s theory remains unlikely. In other words, we are led step by step to the conviction that O’Callaghan has not as yet demonstrated sufficiently that Qumran Cave 7 has yielded fragments of Mark’s Gospel. What we have thus far may be only figments of the imagination instead of fragments of the New Testament.

Bibliographical Note

José O’Callaghan’s original article appeared (in Spanish) in Biblica 53 (1972), pp. 91–100. An English translation was published as a supplement to Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972), No. 2, along with the English translation of an Italian article by Carlo M. Martini, which accompanied O’Callaghan’s in Biblica. Further articles by O’Callaghan appeared in Biblica 53 (1972), pp. 362–67 (on First Timothy), and pp. 517–33 (replying to critics).

The most useful information available to the layman was published in a series of articles by David Estrada, William White, Jr., and F. F. Bruce in Eternity (June 1972) and reprinted as an offprint ($. 50 from The Evangelical Foundation, 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19103). The photographs of the Qumran fragments under discussion are excellently produced, and early comments by a number of scholars are included. It should be noted, however, that the weight of academic opinion has not tended to support the views of Estrada and White.

Other important comments include: P. Benoit, “Nouvelle note sur les fragments grecs de la grotte 7 de Qumrân (Planche I),” Revue Biblique 80 (January, 1973), pp. 5–12 (contains clearer photographs of fragments which tell against some of O’Callaghan’s readings); David M. Estrada, “On the Latest Identification of New Testament Documents,” Westminster Theological Journal 34 (1972), pp. 109–17; Gordon D. Fee, “Some Dissenting Notes on 7Q5 = Mark 6:52–53,” Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (March, 1973), pp. 109–12; Paul Garnet, “O’Callaghan’s Fragments,” Evangelical Quarterly 45 (1973), pp. 6–12; Colin J. Hemer, “New Testament Fragments at Qumran?,” Tyndale Bulletin 23 (1972), pp. 125–28, and “Fragments of Mark at Qumran,” TSF Bulletin 64 (Autumn, 1972), p. 11; C. H. Roberts, “On Some Presumed Papyrus Fragments of the New Testament From Qumran,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 23 (Oct., 1972), pp. 446–47; J. Vardaman, “The Earliest Fragments of the New Testament?,” Expository Times 83 (1972), pp. 374–76; William White, Jr., “O’Callaghan’s Identifications: Confirmation and Its Consequences,” Westminster Theological Journal 35 (1972), pp. 15–20. Estrada and White are more positive toward O’Callaghan’s hypothesis than other scholars mentioned above.

First in an Open-ended Series

When the american thinks of European contributions to current religious thought, he thinks German. Since the nineteenth century, when the seminar system of the German universities injected a new standard of rigorous scholarship into American graduate schools, America has never ceased to be awed by the imposing edifice of German thought. Who else produces “Handbooks” that are invariably encyclopedias, and reference works so detailed as to preclude completion?

In theology particularly, where the American inferiority complex reigns with no little justification (superficial, pragmatic modernism vs. superficial, pious fundamentalism), German religious thought seems to dominate without competition: the three B’s, Barth, Bultmann, and Bonhoeffer, and their reactors and semi-reactors: Cullmann, Stauffer, Pannenberg, Moltmann, and the post-Bultmannians.

But German scholarship in general has shown an appalling loss of the forest of values in the trees of documentation (scientific experimentation on human beings during the Third Reich); and someone has wryly commented that America has become the elephants’ graveyard of old German theological heresies. Perhaps the time has come to look to another linguistic area for insights on current religious thought. In this and subsequent articles—at irregular intervals—we shall observe major examples of French religious thinking.

Three years ago, Lucien Goldmann died suddenly at a relatively young age, fifty-seven. Born at Bucharest, he had become one of the most important Marxist thinkers writing in the French language. While studying at Vienna in the 1930s he came into contact with the early writings of Herbert Marcuse; as a student in Paris, he found it prudent to leave the country to avoid Nazi persecution, and was released from internment in a Swiss refugee camp through the efforts of Jean Piaget. He took his doctorate at Zurich, producing a dissertation on Kant and dialectic thinking.

What turned Goldmann into a convinced, lifelong Marxist was his encounter during his “Swiss period” with the work of Georg Lukacs, who offered an alternative to Nazi barbarism and the dogmatic Marxism of Stalin. Goldmann strove to integrate Lukacs’s “open” and humanistic Marxism with Piaget’s genetic epistemology. After the liberation, Goldmann returned to Paris, took a second doctorate, and published a series of studies that established his reputation as a serious and sensitive thinker, concerned with the implications of ultimate philosophical and political commitment on all realms of human activity. In May, 1968, he took part in the student revolts which brought the French nation virtually to a standstill—and which, ironically and dialectically, through a backlash effect, put DeGaulle back in power with an even stronger mandate from the people to restore order. Two years later atheist Goldmann and Catholic DeGaulle stood at the bar of judgment, both doubtless surprised to be there, but for different reasons.

Goldmann was haunted throughout his career by the problem of God. He spent seven years on a work entitled The Hidden God, a Study of the Tragic Vision in the Pensées of Pascal and the Theatre of Racine (Le Dieu caché). This work is regarded as a landmark in the Marxist analysis of literature. The thrust of Goldmann’s argument is that Pascal and Racine rightly opposed the rationalist vision of the world characteristic of Descartes and the mechanists: for Pascal and Racine, God is “hidden,” dialectically present and absent at the same time in an awesome universe. This God is more important than all empirical data and sense objects, and his presence devalues the world while his simultaneous absence leaves the world as the only focus of man’s attention. This is the tragic vision: man has no choice but to strive to realize an unrealizable value. For Goldmann, over against “orthodox” Marxist thinkers (who castigated his analysis), this is the fundamental element in the true Marxist dialectic: Marxist commitment involves the same choice as Pascal’s wager—“risk, the chance of failure, the hope of success.” There is no final proof, either way, but Goldmann, in contrast with Pascal, opts for an immanent (not transcendent), materialistic (not spiritual) understanding of the whole of reality. If Marx turned Hegel upside down, Goldmann may be said to do a parallel inversion of Pascal.

Orthodox Marxists are quite right to view Goldmann’s understanding of dialectic as a betrayal of their traditional position, but this is what makes it so interesting. Here we have a Marxist who is willing to admit that no decisive evidential case can be made for Marxist commitment, and that ultimately the Marxist responds to the same “tragic vision” as the artist or writer, though in a different way. In other words, Goldmann offers good reason to believe what most non-Marxists have long suspected, namely, that Marxism is not a scientifically based world-view but an aesthetic commitment: the cry of the Communist Manifesto for societal change at any cost, not the involuted reasoning of Das Kapital.

But is Pascal’s Christianity (or our own) likewise a “wager” apart from evidence, with no neutral way of determining what evidence means? This fundamental issue was sharpened in a debate that Goldmann had in 1958 with Eric Voegelin, a conservative political theorist and believer in transcendence. The occasion was an international colloquium on philosophy of history (L’histoire et ses interprétations, ed. Raymond Aron, Mouton, 1961). Goldmann: “I should like to know the basis of your value judgment. One could regard the idea of transcendence as a decadent phenomenon.” Voegelin: “Historically, there is an experience of transcendence.” Goldmann: “There have been in history thousands of experiences which critical analysis has afterwards reduced to the level of illusions. Religion doesn’t need to be connected with the idea of the supernatural.”

Is the Christian claim reducible to illusion? Is it an option no more compelling than its opposite in a world of tragic vision? Pascal himself certainly did not think so, for his Pensées are replete with evidence for the uniqueness of the Bible, its perfect definition of the human dilemma, its fulfilled prophecies concerning the Messiah, and the historical veracity of Christ’s miraculous birth, ministry, and resurrection. Goldmann has reminded us that materialism and Marxism are houses built upon sand. Let us remind the world that the Christian wager is not a blind leap into the unknown but commitment founded on rock—on the only foundation, even Jesus Christ our Lord.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Low Overhead

A Jesuit priest, the former president of Gonzaga University in Spokane, is looking forward to his third year of heading a unique college with no campus, no buildings, no dorms, no library, no cafeteria, and almost no administration or funds. About 175 students are expected to show up this month at New College, which rents space in a Sausalito waterfront warehouse across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

The Reverend John Leary started the nondenominational school two years ago with sixteen students and $2,500. After winding up with $183 in the bank after the first year, the school expanded spending $190,000 last year, and projecting a $518,000 budget this year. Tuition is $1,000 a semester; accreditation is only on the horizon.

The school seeks “an alternative to conventional higher education,” with town-hall type policy-making, extensive student participation, and a highly flexible curriculum.

Ex-President Tietjen: Lutheran In Limbo

As expected, President John Tietjen of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis was axed by the school’s eleven-member board of control. But the board—meeting for the first time since it came under conservative dominance at the rip-roaring Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod convention in New Orleans (see August 10 issue, pages 40–43)—also voted to “delay implementation of the suspension until constitutional and legal opinions are obtained.” Therefore Tietjen will stay on the job at least temporarily, though perhaps stripped of some administrative powers. His backers in the moderate-liberal wing of the LCMS have vowed to fight his removal.

Meanwhile, dismissed Concordia instructor Arlis J. Ehlen—one of the storm centers in the Concordia controversy—was hired by Luther College of Decorah, Iowa, an American Lutheran Church school.

Not Intentional

It is no secret that the federal Securities and Exchange Commission has been taking a long, hard look at religious organizations that raise money by selling bonds nationwide. Several prominent television preachers and their organizations have gotten into a lot of trouble by failing to conform to SEC regulations, especially in the matter of disclosure to prospective investors. Among the latest: television evangelist Cecil Todd of Ohio and Pastor Jerry Falwell of the fast-growing 13,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Both were ordered to stop selling bonds and to get their financial affairs in order.

The SEC complaint against Falwell’s church involved $6.5 million in bonds sold to 1,600 investors since 1971. Liabilities exceeded assets by $4.8 million and the church’s bank accounts were all overdrawn, alleged the SEC in federal court. It asked that the “grossly insolvent” church be placed in receivership.

Falwell fought the charges bitterly, and last month a court-supervised compromise was worked out, but it amounts to de facto receivership. A “special finance committee” whose five members are not members of Thomas Road will take charge of all the church’s assets and properties, keep its books, and in effect operate the church. Falwell insists—and the SEC agrees—that there was no intentional wrongdoing.

Because of all the trouble Falwell has had to cut back his “Old Time Gospel Hour” to 360 television stations, including 147 in Canada, from a high of 460 a few months ago (he’s also on 102 radio stations), sell his twin-engine forty-seat Convair (he still has a seven-seat Cessna), and cut back on employees, mostly part-timers in the church’s college and academy.

Falwell, 39, says he is out to build the biggest church in the world. A native of Lynchburg, he has been at the church since founding it seventeen years ago.

Diabetic Deaths

Two diabetics, a continent apart, died last month of insulin insufficiency. Both had attended revival-healing services, and relatives of both had thrown away life-saving supplies of the drug insulin in the belief that God would heal them.

In Bakersfield, California, the parents of an eleven-year-old boy refused to plan a funeral, kept the body in a funeral home, and held healing services because they believed the boy would be resurrected. Wesley Parker died in a diabetic comma after a faith healer at his parents’ Assembly of God church “cured” him. The parents then allegedly threw away the insulin. (Diabetics must take regular, usually daily, injections of the drug to keep sugar in the blood below a fatal level.)

The parents refused an autopsy, claiming God would raise the boy after four days as he did with Lazarus. Police contemplated possible criminal action against Lawrence Parker, the boy’s father.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, Ontario, a coroner’s jury declared a 19-year-old man a “religious misfit” after his wife died. The jury was told that Patricia Cowan, 20, attended the revival service of an unnamed sect and her husband, Mark, then stopped insulin injections, believing she would be healed. The jury was told that Cowan intended to become a faith healer with his own television program and that his wife would be his “miracle cure.”

The jury—which has no legal authority other than to make recommendations to prevent similar deaths—asked Toronto police to investigate the death further, and recommended a requirement that all religious cults be licensed and that cult leaders be certified by theological schools.

Lutheran Youth ‘Live’

The CBS television network plans to carry a thirty-minute “live” report on “Discovery ’73,” the first All-Lutheran Youth Gathering, held in Houston last month (see August 31 issue, page 42). The program, to be aired September 16 as part of the CBS series “Lamp Unto My Feet,” will feature commentary by youth participants as well as slides and film. Among the Astrodome participants of the five-day convention were Lutheran scholar Roland Bainton, Andrae Crouch and the Disciples, evangelist Tom Skinner, and former Illinois Lieutenant Governor Paul Simon.

Parish The Church

Now that its wind has changed direction, pressing for local congregational rather than denominational union, COCU will probably keep watchful eyes on the United Christian Parish (UCP) in Reston, Virginia. UCP is believed to be the nation’s only ecumenical congregation involving five denominations and the only one essentially using COCU’s parish plan.

Nearly a decade ago, Reston planners wanted to create thirty-five

INJURED CAUSE

That bomb blast at the British embassy in Washington was laid at the pro-Catholic Irish Republican Army’s door by Scotland Yard. If so, the IRA again damaged its cause. The most severely injured victim was embassy employee Mrs. Nora Murray, a Catholic, who was born in County Galway, Republic of Ireland, and who attended a Catholic convent in Tuam, Ireland.

churches for their “new town.” (There are 22,000 residents now and an eventual 75,000 anticipated.) The Virginia Methodist Conference assigned the Reverend Robert Regan to begin a pioneering congregation and Redeemer Methodist Church was formed.

But in 1967, Regan and other ecumenicists from the Disciples of Christ, the United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. began considering COCU’s parish plan. (Episcopalians also took part in the discussions but opted to have a separate congregation.)

The UCP wasn’t officially born until this year, though Regan said developing an ecumenical parish has probably been a lot easier in the created community of Reston than it would be in a town where denominational ties run deep.

One source of delay was the red tape involved in getting the approval of the four regional judicatories involved in the venture (the UCC Atlantic Conference, the Disciples’ Christian Church-Capital Area, the National Capital Union Presbytery, and the Virginia Conference for United Methodism). The United Methodists changed their laws to allow parish union a year ago, and the presbytery gave its sanction in mid-May.

Before the merger, Redeemer Methodist Church (now the focal structure of UCP) had 560 members and a healthy $78,000 budget. Regan said another problem was working out a financial plan that would not hurt the Methodist benevolence programs and would still meet the approval of other participating denominations. The percentage formula agreed upon is effective only for this year on the UCP’s present $106,098 budget; next year’s benevolences will be equally divided.

The 775 UCP charter signers have membership in all five denominations. Members can attend services either at the UCP building or at a temporary location in a Reston school. Regan said plans are being made for another building. Eventually there are to be four congregations and seven ministers. Regan now co-pastors the parish with the Reverend Douglas Ibach (formerly of Knox United Presbyterian Church, Falls Church, Virginia), with the help of a Wesley Seminary student, Jonathan Baker.

The heartbeat of the UCP is its twelve-member Parish Board. In line with COCU’s plan, UCP officials are ordained locally.

The congregations work as one in evangelism, social service, and mission programs, whereas the worship format and educational programs are left to each congregation’s preference.

The UCP building is used occasionally by Unitarian and Roman Catholic groups and regularly for Jewish services on Friday nights and Saturdays. Social services include a child-care center and housing developments.

Bavaria ’74

As the North American continent-wide evangelistic thrust Key 73 passed its halfway point, Christians in Munich, Germany, announced plans for “Bavaria ’74.” In a three-week period during the fall of 1974 the Gospel is to be brought to every house in the region between Munich, Straubing, and Passau. This means the Aktion (project) will blanket about one-quarter of Bavaria, the largest West German state. Planners envision a wide spectrum of evangelistic techniques.

Religion In Transit

Snake-handling preachers Liston Pack and Alfred Ball of the Holiness Church of God in Jesus Name were jailed in Newport, Tennessee, for disobeying a court injunction against handling poisonous snakes in church services and for failure to pay fines imposed in a recent case in which a church member nearly lost an arm from snake bite.

New York’s state law on obscenity was declared unconstitutional by state supreme court judge Abraham J. Gellinoff, who ruled in a case involving four allegedly obscene movies that the court had no way to gauge community standards “at this stage.”

Bob Jones University Press has a new bi-monthly magazine, Faith For the Family. The first issue contained a blistering attack on Key 73 (“The Prostitution of Evangelism,” by G. Archer Weniger) and a defense of “true” fundamentalism by Ian Paisley of Northern Ireland.

Recent figures released by the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus show that there are 171 black priests, 715 black religious sisters (all but a handful are in three sisterhoods in New Orleans, Baltimore, and Harlem), and 300 black youths enrolled in Catholic seminaries across the United States (only seventy of them are preparing for the ministry). Only thirty of the nation’s black parishes are headed by black pastors. The other black priests serve in non-parochial functions.

Catholic archbishop Robert J. Dwyer of Portland, Oregon, writing in the Catholic weekly Twin Circle, lambasted Pentecostalism. He charged that its roots are in the condemned heresies of Gnosticism and Montanism. The danger is that its doesn’t need the church, its authority, or its sacraments, he said. He also spoke sarcastically of the recent conference of Catholic Pentecostals at Notre Dame, in which Cardinal Leo Suenens of Belgium enthusiastically participated.

Delegates at the annual meeting of the 5,300-member Seventh Day Baptist General Conference voted 335 to 250 to withdraw from the National Council of Churches, mostly because of the NCC’s political orientation and involvement. Sales executive Ernest F. Bond of Galena, Ohio, was installed as president.

A non-credit course in “voodoo magic and witchcraft” is being offered at the University of Tennessee. It will be taught by Mr. and Mrs. Francis A. Torrence, who say they have organized the First Church of Voodoo.

Personalia

A. U. S. district judge has ruled that mail-order minister-maker Kirby Hensley of Modesto, California, was denied a fair trial when he was convicted in 1969 of illegally selling his doctor of divinity degrees and handed a $625 fine and a one-year suspended jail sentence. Delighted by the ruling, “Bishop” Hensley, founder of the Universal Life Church, says he’s going to “go to town” in selling more degrees at $24. He claims he has ordained more than two million ministers by mail.

An American woman theologian, retired professor Marion Kelleran of Virginia (Episcopal) Seminary in Alexandria, was elected chairperson of the Anglican Consultative Council, a global organization of churches representing 47 million members. The council refused to take a stand on ordination of women.

Missouri Southern Baptist executive secretary Earl O. Harding died last month of a heart attack. He had been under fire in the controversial handling of more than $50,000 of denominational funds (see August 31 issue, page 46).

World Scene

The Hungarian Bible Council has been accepted as an associate member of the United Bible Societies, bringing to fifty-six the number of national societies in the UBS.

Speakers at a World Islamic Youth conference in Tripoli, Libya, charged that Muslims in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria are undergoing severe persecution for their faith.

Imagine a four-year liberal arts college where:

—students may design their own majors;

—there are no classes on Wednesdays (the four-day week promotes productivity, the faculty has learned);

—students follow a diversified quarter calendar with three ten-week courses in fall and spring, and one-month courses for three months in the winter and three in the summer;

—financial surpluses have been banked for the past four years while more than half of the state’s private colleges have been in the red for each of the past three years.

—Ninety per cent of the operating budget of $1 million a year is raised from tuition, but there are only 400 full-time students who pay $1,400 per year (experts say a college needs at least 1,200 students to stay alive in today’s spiraling cost vortex).

Such a college, one might suppose, must be a radical-chic, secular institution with avant-garde personnel cutting a new swath in the education field.

To be sure, Pacific College in Fresno, California, is avant-garde. And its programs and financial plan are on the leading edge of higher education.

But the school is firmly anchored in tradition, too, and is affiliated with a small, evangelical denomination usually thought of as lukewarm toward—if not in outright opposition to—higher education.

“About half of us Mennonites believe in it.” declared Pacific’s president Dr. Arthur J. Wiebe, during an interview on the twenty-acre campus where twenty-nine faculty members, the majority having Ph.D.s, will face a new crop of students this month.

Only one-third of the student body is Mennonite Brethren, the church that has operated Pacific since it was founded as a Bible institute in 1944. Other students represent thirty some denominations, and about ten per cent of the students are non-Christian.

Still, this unusual school is avowedly in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition begun in sixteenth-century Holland under Menno Simons, the man who gave the movement its name. Pacific is one of eight small Mennonite colleges in the United States¹Others are Tabor in Hillsboro, Kansas, also operated by the Mennonite Brethren Church; Bethel in Newton, Kansas, Bluffton in Ohio, and Freeman Junior College in South Dakota, all associated with the General Conference Mennonite Church; and Hesston (Junior) in Kansas. Goshen in Indiana, and Eastern Mennonite in Harrisonburg, Virginia, (Old) Mennonite Church schools.; it is the newest and most modern.

The unique welding of biblical faith and Christian life-style with the latest concepts in educational theory and student decision-making accounts for the success of Pacific, says its president. Pacific became fully accredited in 1965, five years after Wiebe took over the helm.

Indeed, a report by a blue-ribbon accrediting commission earlier this year said “the ideals of the Mennonite Brethren are alive and well at Pacific.” The centerfold of Pacific’s catalogue spells out “the Pacific College Idea: a Christian college, a prophetic college, a non-sectarian college, an experimental college, an Anabaptist-Mennonite college, a liberal arts college, a community.”

Said the accrediting commission: “Pacific College constitutes a small but vital example of genuine pluralism in American higher education.” Although the college hopes its students will believe in Christ and the ultimate authority of the Bible, it “will not discriminate against students who cannot freely and honestly make such a commitment.”

President Wiebe says that’s where Pacific differs from other evangelical colleges like Biola and Westmont: “A Christian college must be willing to admit at least a limited number of non-Christians in order to be truly Christian. Christian faith is sharing Christ with those who are non-Christian. This keeps us honest.… It’s a tough row to hoe.… The easier choice would be to go the other way.” (Biblical studies and attendance at chapel and convocations are required of all, however.)

How does Pacific stay afloat financially in waters rocking most college craft? Outside of a small subsidy from the denomination (which has 15,000 members in the United States and 15,000 more in Canada) and modest individual gifts, Pacific depends on a carefully thought-out plan involving its in-service program, one of the biggest in the country and already the largest in the field of math in California. Last school year, for example, 4,600 students, including many elementary teachers from around the state, took Pacific’s in-service courses, offered evenings and on Saturdays, mostly off campus. Tuition from this program, which uses material produced by a private corporation headed by Wiebe, keeps Pacific in the black and provides part-time employment for many students.

“We have the freedom to be experimental in the conservative theological tradition,” declares Wiebe. Of his son, who graduated with a self-designed major in cultural history, he says: “He has already read more widely than I did for my doctorate at Stanford.”

Each freshman is required to take a basic course on “what it means to get a college education and be an educated person.” From then on he may follow a pre-planned program or make up his own—with guidance.

This year, for example, some students elected biblical studies while pursuing an inner-city ministry in a Los Angeles ghetto; another group studied Spanish and Mexican culture in Mexico for a month; another spent March at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, a delegation of coeds from Osaka Schoin Women’s College in Japan studied American culture and English at Pacific, staying in a dorm vacated by the students who were in Israel. Pacific coeds remaining in Fresno studied Japanese from Osaka faculty who came with their students. Last summer another Pacific group lived on a Navajo reservation to study Indian culture.

Pacific offers a bachelor’s degree with majors in the core areas of the liberal arts, as well as education courses leading to teaching credentials. The fastest-growing major, spokesmen say, is “Contemporary Christian Ministries,” designed to prepare students for new forms of service on campuses and in the inner city and non-traditional youth, prison, and resort ministries. The Mennonite Brethren’s only seminary, Mennonite Brethren Biblical, with an enrollment of fifty-five, adjoins the Pacific campus.

Besides taking understandable pride in plugging into what he calls the “best educational research in the nation,” Wiebe is pleased that his small, church-related school is taking the lead in another college activity: sports. Pacific’s track team bested cross-town Fresno State College (14,000 students), 83–81 last spring. Pacific boasts four current All-Americans, including the national champion pole-vaulter.

Change And Providence

“Creation, Evolution, and Molecular Biology” was the theme of the twenty-eighth annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation held at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. The ASA, founded in 1941 as a fellowship of scientists (a master’s or higher degree in a scientific field is required for full membership), has twin objectives: (1) “to investigate any area relating Christian faith and science,” and (2) “to make known the results of such investigations for comment and criticism by the Christian community and by the scientific community.” It has grown from five founding members in 1941 to nearly 2,000 today. Its magazine, the Journal of the ASA, has a circulation of 3,500.

The 1973 meeting was devoted largely to the implications of molecular biology, especially the work on the genetic code pioneered by Watson and Crick in 1953. Molecular biology appears to some scientists—for example, French Nobel-prize-winning biologist Jacques Monod, author of Chance and Necessity—to offer the key to a completely materialistic understanding of the universe.

Professor Robert L. Herrmann of the Boston University School of Medicine theorized that “with the date on the universality of the code and a theoretical framework for its origin, the description of life’s origins in a purely mechanistic sense would appear to lie within the grasp of modern molecular biology,” but insisted that the mechanistic explanation by no means excludes God’s creative and controlling activity: “The true picture is that God acts in all of Reality.… Science gives us the view of how life may have come about. Its view is descriptive, and does not in any ultimate way account for what it describes.”

In the discussions following the various lectures, a number of scientists objected to any suggestion that a mechanistic explanation now appears possible, to say nothing of probable. Professor Wayne Friar of the King’s College offered evidence from protein study indicating that despite evident similarities between life forms at the molecular level there are also irreducible differences, suggesting that there must be limits to the possibility of using evolutionary theory to explain the existing variety of living organisms.

ASA speakers and members seemed concerned to defend the legitimacy of theistic evolution as the process whereby God may well have carried out some of his Creation work, and many barbs were cast at the “creationist” or “fiat creationist” view maintained by, among others, members of the Creation Research Society. Most of the speakers on the program were concerned that Christians not read things into the Bible that in their view are not there, such as a six-(short) day Creation.

But when the Reverend Herman J. Eckelmann, pastor in Ithaca and engineer at the Cornell University Space Center, argued that “the Word of God never said God made the universe out of nothing,” he ran into vigorous opposition. Eckelmann’s position on creation ex nihilo, out of nothing, appears to be that while the doctrine is logically persuasive, Genesis does not explicitly teach it. A number of scholars contradicted him and argued that Genesis 1:1, in its context, can refer only to creation ex nihilo. Eckelmann contends that the Genesis report refers to God’s “causing the earth to bring forth” the various types of plant and animal life, a statement consistent with an evolutionary origin, but that it explicitly teaches the unique, special creation of Adam and Eve.

Several of the speakers made a point of testifying of their own conversion and personal faith and of their confidence in the Scripture as the infallible rule of faith and practice. The consensus appears to be that while all the members of the ASA repudiate a mechanistic or naturalistic interpretation of the origin of life, a majority of them argue that a theory of God-directed, theistic evolution is consistent with biblical teaching and fits scientific observations much better than the view that God created the various existing major life forms by instantaneous fiat.

Although several lecturers agreed with assertions from the floor that modern scientific evidence seems to call for a divine creative intelligence directing the evolutionary process in order to permit it to work, there was no suggestion that the battle should be carried to the materialists’ own camp on those grounds. Materialists should not be allowed to impose their views on others, but may preserve their own tranquility without being challenged by theists.

HAROLD O. J. BROWN

Assemblies Assemble

While maintaining their traditional objection to divorce, the Assemblies of God (AOG) have agreed to open their doors to divorced and remarried persons under a set of new proposals accepted by the denomination’s General Council in Miami last month.

The changes allow persons to join local assemblies even though their marriage relations may be “entangled.” Divorced and remarried persons will be allowed to serve in all functions of the church except pastor and deacon. Remarriage of divorced persons, while frowned on, may be permitted “under exceptional Circumstances,” said delegates, though a local pastor will not be required to perform such a ceremony if it would trouble his conscience.

In related matters, the nearly 3,000 delegates also approved leniency for ministers who have moral, spiritual, or monetary problems that embarrass the church. The thirty-fifth biennial council approved a program of rehabilitation rather than ouster when a minister shows a repentant attitude. An AOG clergyman who commits adultery or homosexual acts will now be placed on two-year suspension with counseling provided by his district presbytery. Those who habitually get into debt or who openly declare a change in doctrinal views will get a one-year suspension with an accompanying rehabilitation program.

In other actions, the council adopted resolutions objecting to sex-oriented radio talk shows and to “growing permissiveness” in television. Reelected general superintendent of the AOG was Thomas Zimmerman, superintendent since 1960. Delegates were told that the AOG had a growth rate of 9.9 per cent over the past two years—the largest increase since the 1950s—with a jump of 64,180. (The AOG now has a total membership of 710,000.) Additionally, overseas membership in ninety-one countries doubled over the past six years to nearly four million; officials predict it will top five million by 1975. Delegates were also told that 415 new churches were opened in the past two years, bringing the total to 8,871.

Crumbling Kingdom

He had tendered his resignation earlier this year, but Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader Ralph Abernathy emerged from the group’s Indianapolis convention still in charge of the faltering civil-rights movement.

The SCLC board of directors refused to accept his resignation last month, to the applause of some 1,000 delegates—and suggestions by opponents that Abernathy had never intended to step down but instead had lobbied hard for a new mandate as SCLC president.

Whatever Abernathy’s intentions, he is faced with a crumbling organization far removed from the heyday of Martin Luther King and the burgeoning civil-rights movement. Where once King commanded an organization that received more than $1 million in donations annually, Abernathy is faced with a $65,000 debt and few signs that immediate financial aid is forthcoming.

Support from both blacks and whites has dropped, and splits (Jesse Jackson left after a spat and formed his own group, People United to Save Humanity, and at the last minute King’s widow, Coretta, decided not to attend the convention) further trouble the 16-year-old group.

Despite its mounting problems, however, the SCLC voted its top honor—the Martin Luther King, Jr., Award—to a white United Methodist minister, John P. Adams. He is the first white to receive the award. Adams, director of law, justice, and community relations for his church’s board of church and society, was described as a “middle man” in racial, campus, and political crises. (He was a liaison between police and protesters in Newark, Detroit, and Milwaukee in 1967 and between the church and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, during which he and Abernathy were arrested for blocking sidewalks. Adams was also an intermediary during the recent Indian takeover of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.)

In other actions, the convention approved its first major reorganization since King’s death by appointing five regional vice-presidents and regional directors plus a full-time executive director for the Atlanta headquarters.

The Good News Is Gaining

The Good News Movement seems to be here to stay. Although a number of evangelical lobbies in the liberally dominated mainline denominations are struggling, the “Forum for Scriptural Christianity within the United Methodist Church” showed growing vitality at its fourth annual convocation, held last month at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. A record number of more than 2,000 persons attended. Strategists and theoreticians unveiled the first of a series of articulate position papers that observers understood as a repudiation of sheer polemic in favor of constructive input. Good News leaders are calling a special consortium to discuss the declining number of United Methodist missionaries and the substitution of social programs for overseas evangelism.

Perpetuating Presbyterianism

Depending on your point of view, either a new denomination will come into being or an old one will be revived when the first or constituting General Assembly of the Continuing Presbyterian Church (CPC) meets December 4 in Birmingham, Alabama.

The call for the assembly came from churchmen who attended a three-day “advisory convention” in Asheville, North Carolina, last month. They came mostly from congregations that have voted to sever ties with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. because of theologically liberal trends in that denomination.

The Continuing Presbyterian Church movement was credited with a following of more than 200 congregations with a combined membership of 40,000.

Those who attended the Asheville meeting acted in effect as a committee making recommendations to the forthcoming assembly. The proposals include adoption of doctrinal standards (certain versions of the Westminster Confession of Faith with Larger and Shorter Catechisms and the 1933 PCUS Book of Church Order).

Long before Bible prophecy books hit the bookstands with dire predictions about coming famines, a major drought and famine was in the making in central west Africa. This year, after five years without appreciable rain and repeated crop failures, a famine of immense proportions has struck at the agriculture-based economies of eight sub-Sahara nations. A death toll of some six million people may result by November, according to one United Nations estimate.

Church and missionary relief agencies have already begun gearing up for what no doubt will be one of the longest emergency relief operations in recent years.

Abandoned villages, children with bloated bellies, and the rotting carcases of millions of head of cattle are mute testimony to the extent of the famine, which affects the nations of Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger Republic, Senegal, Sudan and Upper Volta. The emergency area spreads across 2,600 miles of parched, dust-laden land south of the Sahara desert, stretching across the African continent from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.

Sudan Interior Mission (SIM), the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA), the World Relief Commission (WRC) of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Assemblies of God, Food for the Hungry (FFH), and Church World Service (CWS) of the National Council of Churches are among the groups engaged in relief work in the affected area.

Said WRC administrative vice-president George Doud: “This is probably the worst disaster we’ve faced. Certainly it’s the most widespread.” He called the current drought and famine “a creeping giant” that rose up through many years of meager rainfall, cattle overgrazing, and poor agricultural planning. Although the area has a long history of drought cycles, authorities on the spot say the current one is the worst ever.

Water holes and rivers have dried up. Dust storms and insects provide what little movement there is on the landscape. Millions of sheep, cattle, and goats—a mainstay of the national economies and the only source of livelihood for many of the nomadic tribesmen of the area—have already died. A South African bush pilot, after flying over parts of Niger and Mali, told Food for the Hungry president Larry Ward that dead cattle dotted the landscape “in multiplied thousands.” Ward, who spent two weeks in Senegal, Mali, and Upper Volta, is now scouring North America for food donations from manufacturers.

More than 25 million people—mostly nomads—are affected by the famine and related diseases. Sanitation facilities are strained to the limit in the few cities in the area as hordes of refugees flee the villages for government food-distribution centers. The number of people who have died is virtually impossible to estimate because of the nomadic way of life of many of the victims.

In fabled Timbuktu, thousands of nomads are pouring into a Malian government refugee camp. But some authorities say they may have waited too long. Malnutrition and disease have gripped many to the point that food now available may not save them. The camp is one of several government centers located in Mali’s Sixth Region—a desert area twice the size of France. Refugees are entering the camp at a rate of 100 per day, with the current camp population set at over 7,500—all totally dependent on government hand-outs. To date, Mali categorizes some 250,000 as refugees.

The drought also brought a further problem—the Sahara. As formerly productive areas burn up in the searing heat, the desert moves in. In some places, said Doud, the Sahara is moving south and claiming land at a rate of fourteen miles per year. This makes prospects for rehabilitating the land extremely poor, he pointed out. (The affected nations are listed by the U. N. as among the poorest in the world. Money to fight the Sahara will be hard to come by.)

As a result, said Doud, emergency relief—the job of providing food, medicine, and water to keep people alive—may continue for several years and then be followed by long-term redevelopment aid. “There is little or no hope for the 1973 crop,” he said, “so that even a year from now there will be no significant differences in the problem.” Even with normal rainfall, he added, it will take three to five years to get the area back on an even keel. “The evangelical community must be prepared for years of appeals for funds.”

Hitherto, evangelicals have been slow getting behind the agency. By late August, after six weeks of appeals, the agency had netted only $2,000 to send to Africa. It has budgeted, and expects to receive, up to $23,000 more in the immediate future. CWS, meanwhile, has already shipped nearly 250,000 tons of food and medical supplies valued at close to $100,000. Evangelist Billy Graham donated the offering from the final service of his Minneapolis crusade—more than $71,000 (see August 10 issue, page 29). And associate evangelist Howard O. Jones is making an assessment visit to the region.

Even if agencies can provide immediate relief, however, the conditions for future famines will remain unless the agencies start long-term redevelopment relief. Among proposed projects are livestock feeding stations, breeding programs for livestock, reforestation programs to reclaim overgrazed land, and rehabilitation of Sahara-claimed land.

“We’re just beginning,” Doud said of WRC’s relief work. “We’ve got to help host nations develop new techniques to break the drought cycle.”

Despite the widespread hunger, mission boards and denominations say their staffs are little affected materially. “Their biggest problem is empathy with those around them,” said Kerry Lovering, editor of SIM’s Africa Now. “They have so much while others have so little. They’re giving away everything they have.”

SIM, which has fifty-three missionaries in Niger, twenty-nine in Upper Volta, and more than 300 in Ethiopia, is operating food-distribution centers in cooperation with the various governments.

At Tahoua and Maradi, in Niger, the mission put several staff members on full-time famine relief. Also, at Maradi, staffers at the mission-run agricultural school are cooperating with government officials on long-range plans to break the drought cycle. Included are new irrigation methods, deep-well digging, and reforestation projects. The mission also opened food centers at Alamata and Mai Chau in the heart of the worst hit areas of Ethiopia. Every day at Alamata, says Lovering, about ten people die from starvation and related causes.

CMA missionaries on the scene appealed to denominational headquarters to supply food rather than money. And, says a CMA spokesman, the denomination is negotiating with American farmers for the food. (However, food shortages in the United States and elsewhere in the world are hampering efforts by all agencies. Several officials whose agencies depend on the availability of government food resources say the situation is “calamitous.”) Cash for CMA grain purchases will come from the more than $5,000 raised by the Alliance Witness in an appeal to denominational supporters.

CMA staff, who operate in Mali and Upper Volta, report too that seed crops failed twice this year, and hopes for a third crop of millet and rice rest on the slender hope that sparse July rains provided enough water. In addition, they report that all available seed grain in the two countries was used up in the aborted plantings and by starving farmers who ate the seed instead of sowing it.

There are evangelistic overtones to the crisis. Muslims and missionaries are working together on relief projects, and missionaries are finding that many of the area’s inhabitants are now more curious about Christianity. Ward reports that national Christians are carrying sacks of food to the neediest families in several villages, telling recipients that the food comes “in the name of Jesus.”

Not even 5 per cent of the people profess any form of Christianity in the Muslim-dominated region. According to figures compiled by various evangelical agencies, fewer than 5 per cent of Chad’s 3.5 million people are Christians. With eighty-two missionaries in the land-locked country that means one missionary for every 42,000 people. Similar figures hold true for the other affected nations. Mali has forty-five Protestant missionaries serving a Protestant population of 8–10,000 in a nation of more than five million. Catholic followers number roughly 20,000 in this former French colony. Few figures are available on Mauritania, although estimates suggest that less than 0.5 per cent of the population is Christian.

While mission boards and relief agencies rush food to government staging areas (primarily Dakar, the Atlantic seaport capital of Senegal) they are running into severe problems in trying to get supplies to the interior. Poor roads, a lack of trucks, and too few railroads have caused some congestion of supplies in Dakar. And what little rain has fallen recently has fouled up the dirt roads more than it has alleviated the water shortage, one glum missionary told a Western newspaper reporter. On top of this, political complications have caused log jams.

Food airlifts began earlier this year when the U. S. and Belgian air forces started flying supplies from Dakar to devastated areas of Mali and Niger. The U. S. Agency for International Development (AID) supplied 150,000 metric tons of food grains and said another 100,000 tons were on the way. (AID predicted the famine in July, 1972, and began stockpiling supplies, said Doud.)

Meanwhile, agencies are faced with the tough job of financing their relief efforts. Already strained appeal channels may be hard to keep open in the face of the long-term money need ahead. In the five years since the drought began, relief agencies pumped up aid for Biafra, Bangladesh, the Peruvian and Nicaraguan earthquakes, and continuing famine in India.

And those prophecy books say the worst is yet to come.

This column by the late Executive Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYis reprinted from the October 25, 1963, issue.

We usually associate Abraham with faith, and rightly so. He is spoken of as the “father of the faithful,” and three different religions claim him as such.

The Apostle Paul argued justification by faith on the basis of Abraham’s imputed righteousness, the result of his unquestioning belief in God and His promises.

Martin Luther stood immovable on the affirmation, “The just shall live by faith,” and this sublime truth became a cornerstone of the Reformation.

We Christians rejoice in the fact that we are saved by faith, not works; that it is the pure grace of God through faith on our part which makes us whole.

But strange to say we often overlook the necessity for obedience. Obedience is faith in action. What validity can there be in a profession of faith that is not confirmed by obedience to the will of God? Are there not many Christians who are living in a state of suspended spiritual animation, truly accepting Christ as Saviour, but living without obedience to his revealed will and therefore never having him as the active Lord of life?

Years ago, Saul, king of Israel, disobeyed God, saving some of the spoils of a victory even though he had been commanded to destroy all. His excuse: he had preserved the best of the flocks to be used for a sacrifice to God.

But we read: “And Samuel said [to Saul], Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to harken than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15:22).

Many a Christian is covering up disobedience under the false front of supposedly Christian activity. We fool ourselves by deliberately disobeying God and engaging in frantic work for the Church or some other Christian cause, thinking our duplicity is unnoticed by God.

The Bible is full of references to obedience, of the importance of man’s recognizing God’s authority and submitting to it. But there is entirely too little said nowadays about obedience as an integral part of the Christian faith. The confession of the lips and belief in the heart must be validated by obedience of the will.

God is sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Such attributes should in themselves elicit obedience. For where he is sovereign, we are dependent; where he is omniscient, we are ignorant; where he is omnipotent, we are powerless; where he is omnipresent, we are limited by time, space, and circumstance. Furthermore, despite the grandeur of his Person as Creator, he deals with us, his creatures, with infinite love and patience. Certainly at no point are we more foolish than in our disobedience.

Little wonder that we Christians repeatedly find ourselves in difficult situations! Living in rebellion to God’s perfect will, we bypass him and go our own ways—only to meet frustration and defeat. Even animals can be taught obedience to commands or gentle pressures. But we stubbornly take the bit in our own teeth and then complain because of difficulties that are the natural result of our own disobedience.

Obedience has its reward, now and for eternity. Disobedience is deadly, its effect going on forever. We live in an age of disobedience. Delinquency, adult and juvenile, stems from a willful rejection of the laws of God in favor of one’s own way.

Obedience requires knowledge of God’s will, faith in his goodness, and confidence in his promises. The Bible is wonderfully explicit in many areas and in others lays down principles that are to guide our lives. Obedience therefore requires knowledge of and faith in the written Word.

Our problem is not so much to know what the will of God for us may be as to be willing to obey that will. God has not left himself without a witness; by clear and direct leading of the Holy Spirit, in Bible study, during prayer, through contacts with others, by combinations of circumstances, God makes his will known. But knowing his will, what are we doing about it?

We started this discussion with Abraham as an example of faith. From his faith there proceded an obedience that in turn led to a promise and a covenant, “because thou hast obeyed my voice.” Who can fully imagine the anguish of Abraham’s heart when he was told to offer his son as a sacrifice? But the writer of Hebrews describes his faith in these words: “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son. Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure” (Heb. 11:17–19).

Here faith and obedience are so intermingled no one can say where the one began and the other ended. Abraham’s confidence, his assurance, his faith acted to effect an obedience which God honored, both for Abraham’s good and for His own glory.

We should search our own hearts to find out whether we are holding back something we should be yielding to God in obedience. God is never unreasonable, nor does he ever make a mistake. Although we readily acknowledge this fact as a concept of God, we often deny it in practice.

Obedience is a matter of outward action and of inward discipline. There are many things we should do or not do in the realm of personal habits and interpersonal relations, but obedience also involves something more. Paul writes: “Our battle is to bring down every deceptive fantasy and every imposing defense that men erect against the true knowledge of God. We even fight to capture every thought until it acknowledges the authority of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4, 5, Phillips).

Authority! Authority demands obedience, and that is where we fail. We confess Christ as Saviour, but we deny his authority to command our obedience to his will.

For Christians this should be a matter of deep concern, for peace of heart and mind, along with usefulness in the work of God’s kingdom, is at stake. We cannot prosper in our spiritual lives so long as we are disobedient to God’s revealed will. Nor can he use us for his glory while we knowingly live in a state of rebellion.

Obedience is a matter of sanctification, of growing in our knowledge and performance of God’s will. At times it involves taking a step in the dark; but that matters little, for the One who commands is also the One who will guide and strengthen, and out of obedience there surely comes the outpouring of God’s blessings—blessings reserved for the obedient heart and will. L. NELSON BELL