“When shall i start teaching my son about the Bible?” A Christian mother asked this question of her new pastor.

“How old is he?”

“Six,” she replied.

“Hurry home, woman, you have already lost five precious years,” the pastor exclaimed.

This is not a joke but a matter of the gravest importance. Too many parents assume that little children are not prepared to hear and understand spiritual truths, and in their ignorance they fritter away golden years of opportunity.

I am fully aware that some child psychologists, even leaders in Christian education, think that children should not be subjected to spiritual instruction before they are six. But I know from experience that little children are a fruitful field for just such teaching; they respond in a way that proves conclusively that these are indeed the golden years for Christian instruction.

The mind of a child does not operate in a vacuum. Even when he is only a few months old, impressions are being formed and character developed. What a tragedy to permit this formative period to pass without making an impact on him for God and his Word!

The hearts and minds of little children are amazingly receptive to outside impressions, for either good or evil. When our Lord affirmed, “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein,” he was speaking of those characteristics of a child that are worth emulating by all.

Some people deplore telling children stories of violence found in the Bible. But these usually depict heroism, divine guidance, and divine intervention, and carry with them the concept of man’s dependence on God. They thrill young minds and bring blessing to them then and on through life.

When one considers the violence in very unfunny “funnies,” on TV, and in the daily press, one is inclined to cry out against any effort to deprive children of stories about David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion’s den, and his three companions in the fiery furnace, to mention but a few.

Even more deplorable is the concerted effort on the part of some to protect children from the “gory” details of our Lord’s death on Calvary. Some parents have reprimanded Sunday-school teachers for mentioning the “blood of Christ” to their children. And yet, when such children are subjected to impressions of violence all around, why should they be denied the story of the death of the Son of God, and the cleansing and redeeming blood that flowed from Calvary?

One of the outstanding characteristics of children is their simple faith. How wonderful, then, is the opportunity to instill in their minds the truths about Christ that will form the basis for their own faith in him!

Children’s lack of sophistication is a quality I am sure the Lord loves. The Christian world is beset by a desire to be sophisticated, so much so that the simplicity of the Gospel is often lost in a maze of worldly wisdom. Not so with little children. They have implicit faith in their parents, and are willing to take the Scriptures at face value. Their hearts are a fertile soil for spiritual truths, their simplicity an example and warning to us who may value worldly wisdom too highly.

This lack of sophistication carries with it a receptiveness to the Gospel that should thrill those who witness God’s grace working in the hearts of little ones. Innocence in itself carries a warning and a challenge: woe to any who either take advantage of innocence for evil ends or ignore its potential for good.

That millions of children are born into unprepared homes is a tragic fact in each generation. Certainly to the Christian, it would seem axiomatic that the Christian home alone has in it the potentials for proper training. But that so many Christian homes fail in this regard is cause for real heart-searching on the part of those involved. Christ is the center of the Christian home, and he must become the center of child training if it is to be effective.

Even very small children will sense things they have never been told. They know whether parents are sincere in their spiritual aspirations for them or not. It is little use to speak of prayer to a child if the parents are never seen praying. Little use to speak of the importance of Bible study if the parents are never seen reading the Word. Why tell of Christ’s love and transforming power if our children do not see the effect of his presence in our lives?

But all these things can take place, and there can be fulfilled before our eyes the promise, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

It should not be forgotten that this promise speaks of the way he should go and not the way he wants to go. The truth that “foolishness is bound in the heart of a child” is evident to all who try to guide wayward little feet.

Fortunately, Christian parents are not left to carry out their task alone, nor do they lack the tools.

First, they have the privilege of praying for their children, as well as with them. God knows our weakness and our inability to train others for him. To that end he will give wisdom and guidance and the necessary grace to carry out the task. The power of prayer will never be understood this side of eternity. God hears and answers prayer, and he reaches out often to bring help and blessing to our children. This should be an unending source of comfort.

Secondly, he has given parents his Word. That so many children now grow to adulthood with no knowledge of the Christian faith is one of the tragedies of our day. Even many coming from Christian homes know little about the Bible because they have neither learned it from their parents nor read it regularly themselves.

In a very real sense the Bible is the foundation of true education. Reverential trust in God is the beginning of wisdom. A child who goes out into the world with a knowledge of and love for the Holy Scriptures has the best preparation possible.

Young Timothy was raised amid surroundings we today would call utterly primitive. But he had the best training a parent can give: “From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

The Christian parent has the same privilege to impart today.

On Recognizing The Enemy

In a recent Sunday-afternoon football game the halfback carrying the ball was tripped by a member of the opposing team. He jumped to his feet, slammed the ball on the ground, and headed for the offending tackle with blood in his eye. He was restrained by the referee. Later in the game he was tripped by a member of his own team. He rose and calmly, if glumly, walked back to the huddle.

General George Patton, if we are to believe the movie script writers, had such an intense feeling of rivalry for Britain’s Field Marshall Montgomery that he took unnecessary risks with his men to reach an objective before “Monty.”

Recently a fellow Christian made some uncomplimentary remarks to me about Pat Boone, apparently offended by his Mr. Clean image.

These items have led me to formulate the Beelzebub Principle: A person’s ability to recognize his enemy is in inverse proportion to the importance of that recognition.

It’s comparatively easy for a football player to recognize the enemy since football really isn’t important.

For a General Patton, it’s somewhat harder to recognize who the enemy is because war is important.

It’s virtually impossible for Christians to perceive their enemy because the matter is of supreme importance.

Sophisticated Christians, let me assure you that Pat Boone is not the enemy. Bob Jones, let me assure you that CHRISTIANITY TODAY is not the enemy. Evangelical friends, let me assure you that the Pope is not the enemy.

Even those who seem to be working against God are not really the enemy. Scripture holds out the possibility that these folks may desert to Jesus’ side just as we did.

The enemy, dear friends, is the prince of darkness grim, the prince of this world, the first murderer, the father of lies, who masquerades as an angel of light. And his cleverest victory is the successful promulgation of the Beelzebub Principle.

Now try to keep that straight in the future, will you?

EUTYCHUS V

TO CLIP AND CONSIDER

Thanks for using Nancy G. Westerfield’s [poem] “Placed by the Gideons” in the November 24 issue. Interesting topic to write on; interesting images; a poem to clip out and think on further. Greenville College ELVA MCALLASTER Greenville, Ill.

Professor of English

I really enjoy reading those poetry selections that you choose for printing. Modern and moving. So good to see Christian poetry updated and with it.

Jermyn, Pa.

D. CARVALHO

BREAKING OUT LIKE MEASLES

I am writing to you today to tell you that the article “Whither Episcopalians?” (Nov. 10) is not only repugnant to me as an evangelical Episcopalian but also far from the truth.… Please be assured that there are a great many clergy and bishops who take seriously their ordination vow of teaching nothing as necessary to eternal salvation but that which can be reasoned and concluded from Holy Scripture. Indeed, all of us clergy of the Episcopal Church, in signing the Oath of Conformity, have stated flatly that we believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to BE the Word of God—period. It is quite true, of course, that there are many other clergy and bishops who are not loyal to the profession of their faith at the time of their ordination, and who do give the impression of providing a “dealer’s choice” in what is to be believed as necessary to salvation and what is to be regarded as man’s word. But I cannot see how you can, in any sense of Christian charity, let alone journalistic responsibility, condemn the whole before the gaze of the American evangelical reading public for a situation affecting only a part of the Episcopal Church (however large a part at that!). And I cannot see how you can fail to acknowledge that the religion of Jesus Christ, especially as he can be known through his holy Word, is breaking out like measles all over the Episcopal Church!

Certainly the recent Episcopal Conference on Evangelism in Louisville was … a resounding affirmation … that the evangelical way in the Episcopal Church is vital, that the Word of God, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ in particular, is being honored in our tradition together with the Holy, Gospel Sacraments, without fear of the “consequences.”

BRUCE E. LEBARRON

Christ Episcopal Church

Bethany, Conn.

Let me assure Mr. Wagner and others who share his concern, that John MacQuarrie is not authoritative or even representative in current Anglican thinking. The students at Virginia Seminary laugh at MacQuarrie’s ideas. Lest Mr. Wagner’s article convey a serious misconception, never has any one theologian spoken for the Anglican church, with the possible exceptions of Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker. I would encourage Mr. Wagner to ponder this when in his admiration for the Reformed tradition he shows a tendency to absolutize man’s theology. The Lord be praised for John Stott, and also for John Calvin, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Augustine. However, only Scripture is infallible; no theologian or tradition can provide an inerrant key to the understanding of Scripture. Similarly, no one party within the church can claim to be the church. I would consider myself to be an evangelical, but I would certainly not want to equate that label with God’s elect. I encourage fellow evangelicals in the Episcopal church to be more sensitive to the working of the Holy Spirit in Christians who also wear a Catholic or Pentecostal label.

Alexandria, Va.

ERNEST CURTIN

APOLITICAL PRECAUTIONS

I was disappointed to read your news story “Backing Their Man” by Barrie Doyle (Oct. 27).… The story implies that the Wheaton College Student Government initially favored Senator McGovern and invited only him, but that the president of the college overruled this invitation until President Nixon was also invited.

This was not the case. In fact, both Student Government and President Armerding took every precaution to be apolitical. Invitations were sent to both major candidates on the same day, and when McGovern offered to speak during Spiritual Emphasis Week, the students suggested that he come on another day. You may also be interested to know that President Nixon did send a representative to our campus. He was the Honorable Frank Sanders, undersecretary of the Navy.

W. E. WHITTINGTON

Student Body President

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

LIVING WITH THE PROBLEMS

Professor Yamauchi (Eutychus and His Kin, Nov. 10) has correctly raised some serious difficulties in dating Genesis Man just after 4000 B.C. I am myself very puzzled by the cave paintings in Spain and France. In her Prehistory Jacquetta Hawkes calls them “the most improbable event in human history.”

I am not troubled by the development of agriculture and towns. The building of elaborate nests is instinctive to birds. Bees have complex cities. The female hunting wasp (Hymenoptera Pompilidae) makes a mud receptacle, fills it with live insects, which she anesthetizes, and then lays one egg in the opening so that her offspring will have fresh meat. The skills of dolphins and bats are in some respects far superior to ours. These instinctive skills are all printed into the genetic code of each species. My point is that according to the Bible the only instinctive skill that differentiates Genesis Man from all other animals is the ability to worship and converse with God. The fact that so-called Stone Age tribespeople have degenerated in their worship of God is irrelevant. Missionaries will soon show that they too can worship God as we do.

I admitted that the intermediate periods after the Old Kingdom of Egypt and Early Dynastic Sumerian do not at present yield evidence of a cataclysm, but on the other hand written sources for this period are to my mind incredibly scanty.

Professor Yamauchi’s solution involved ditching “the traditional doctrine that Adam was the physical progenitor of mankind” (his words). I prefer to live with the problems. Leakey’s recent discovery in Kenya of a normal shaped human skull believed to be 2.5 million years old shows how quickly the certainties of evolutionary theory can be shattered.

Millbrook, Ont.

ROBERT BROW

KEEPING ABREAST

Just a note as a member of the secular press to say how much I appreciate the news section of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The issue of November 10 struck me as particularly interesting, and made me realize how helpful your efforts are to us in keeping abreast of developments among evangelical Christians. Keep up the good work.

The New York Times

EDWARD FISKE

New York, N. Y.

Religion Editor

STINGING HUMANS

I have appreciated the “What If …” cartoons, although perhaps sometimes the subtle points escape me. But the November 10 presentation of Aholiab is a real winner. So contemporary, so human, so stingingly human! Every issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is an inspiration for me.

Ronan, Mont.

WALTER H. ARP

It’s a great Christian publication. But that cartoon: juvenile humor, unfunny, a mockery rather than fun, a burlesque, tasteless, irritating, pointless, misses the mark, puerile, unworthy of the tone you create in the rest of the magazine. Berkeley, Calif.

BENJAMIN HARRIS

BEST BOOKS

In “Palestine/Israel” (Nov. 10) Faith L. Winger has provided concerned Christians with the best practical list of books I’ve yet seen on the Middle East.… The only real problem … is inherent in the limitations of American publishing and bookselling on the subject. So many of the best books are from foreign presses and difficult to obtain in our country.… A partial remedy for this problem has been provided by Americans for Middle East Understanding (475 Riverside Drive, New York, N. Y. 10027), which has imported … foreign titles which, as a non-profit organization, it sells at cost. It also sells at wholesale price many of the U. S. publications suggested by Miss Winger and distributes, free, Bradley Watkins’s essay, “Is the Modern State, Israel, a Fulfillment of Prophecy?,” which she mentions.

THE REVEREND L. HUMPHREY WALZ

Synod of New York

United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Syracuse, N. Y.

Having read extensively on the Middle East, both ancient and current history, I am delighted to have the bibliography presented by Miss Winger. I do think, however, that history from the Arab point of view is not as well represented in the bibliography as is that of the Israeli. May I suggest a few books that appear to me instructive additions to the list:

1. The Phoenix Land: The Civilization of Syria and Lebanon, by Robin Fedden, George Braziller, 1965.

2. The Arab Awakening, by George Antonius, Khayats, (Beirut, Lebanon).

3. What Price Israel, by Alfred Lilienthal, Regnery, 1953, and There Goes the Middle East, by Alfred Lilienthal, Devin-Adair, 1957.

4. Suez: The Twice Fought War, by Kennett Love, McGraw-Hill, 1969.

5. The Arabs, by Anthony Nutting, Potter, 1964, and The Other Side of the Coin, also by Nutting.

6. The Middle East in World Affairs, by George Lenczowski, Cornell, 1962. Sun City, Ariz. MCKINNIE L. PHELPS

AFTER FIVE YEARS

Concerning “Missouri Synod’s Troubled Campus” (Nov. 24): As a recent (six months ago) full-time student of five years at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, I feel that I need to disagree with President Tietjen’s statement that “it has not been their [students’] experience that the faculty is in basic conflict with Christian teaching. Quite the contrary. They’ve found a bold affirmation of the faith.” For five years I sat in classes at Concordia Seminary and listened to professor after professor allowing for beliefs that slowly but surely erode the Christian’s Church’s most precious gospel message. I am not speaking only of the biblical evidence concerning the six-day creation, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the historicity of Jonah, or the authenticity of the Red Sea crossing. What I am speaking of is the allowing of diverse and contradictory beliefs in the areas of the existence of angels and demons, the biological virgin birth of Christ, the miracles which the Bible clearly ascribes to the earthly Jesus, and the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I am convinced that many students as well as many in the field do not realize that the historical-critical method as demanded at the seminary, even with so-called Lutheran presuppositions, allows for the denial of all of the above plus much more.… If LCMS members continue to support this new kind of neo-liberal Christian belief system and do not support what President Preus has initiated, then in a few years’ time the conservative voice will not only no longer be heard; it will not even be tolerated.

Trinity Lutheran Church

TOM BAKER

Sturgis, Mich.

ONLY TYPEWRITERS

An inaccuracy appeared in “Federal Aid to Religion” (Nov. 10). The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada did not receive from CIDA $1,400,000, but rather $2,500. This was obtained under approval of the Kenya Educational Department for typewriters to enable us to initiate a typing course in one of our girls’ secondary schools. The only other dealing we have had with CIDA was to approve the seconding of one of our secondary-school teachers in Kenya to CIDA for a post which they wished to fill.

C. W. LYNN

Executive Director

Overseas Missions Department

The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada Toronto, Ont.

• We erred. The figures CIDA gave us included funds from private sources as well as government grants.—ED.

The whole tone of the news story would make Christians feel that their governments were carrying a large share of the cost of Christian missions. In the case of Overseas Missionary Fellowship, the statement is not true. They did not receive any money from CIDA.

Barrie, Ont.

MRS. A. S. MORROW

SINGING IN CRUSADES

We greatly appreciated your news story, “Singing in Our Church” (Nov. 10), about the Ethel Waters dinner. One correction: While we did show a short film on the life of Ethel Waters, the title of that film was not Time to Run. Time to Run is the latest dramatic production of World Wide Pictures and will not be premiered until late January in Memphis. Following that, it will be shown in hundreds of commercial theaters across the nation.

Lest anyone think Billy Graham is now starting a church, it should be noted also that the inscription on the gift to Ethel Waters from the Billy Graham team recorded her fifteen years of singing in “our Crusades,” not (as the article said) “our church.”

World Wide Pictures

BILL BROWN

Burbank, Calif.

President

TO IGNORE OR TO TRADUCE

Your news story “Bishops Aye Women” (Nov. 24) is so slovenly that it is insulting to all members of the Episcopal Church.

The debate was not over women in the ministry; women are full ministers of the Episcopal Church, in the only order that the New Testament shows to have been open to women in apostolic days—the diaconate. The bishops were discussing the possibility of women being ordained to the episcopate and priesthood. The vote was 74 yea to 61 no, with 5 abstentions.

I speak as one of the bishops, and an enthusiastic supporter of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, when I tell you that it would be better to ignore us than to traduce us.

THE RIGHT REVEREND STANLEY ATKINS

The Diocese of Eau Claire

Eau Claire, Wisc.

SPAWNING GROUNDS

Those of us working with Clear Light Productions were very appreciative of the thoughtful, encouraging review of our multimedia show, CRY 3 (News, “CRY 3: Journey From Plastic City,” Nov. 24).

One correction worth mentioning, however, is that the missionary organization you print as Africa Evangelism is actually African Enterprise. This group of people operating out of South Africa and East Africa provided the spawning grounds for not only our production of CRY 3 but also another similar production, headed by Eric Miller (in conjunction with Inter-Varsity), called Twentyonehundred. Both CRY 3 and Twentyonehundred have seen tremendous impact among young people over the last two years. We have already received booking requests for CRY 3 as a result of your review—which proves your readership is definitely an involved one!

DON ANDRESON

Clear Light Productions, Inc.

President Newton, Mass.

• Sorry. (But a Clear Light Staffer gave us the wrong name!)—ED.

Every schoolboy knows how Galileo braved the Catholic Inquisition to put Copernicus on the map and the sun in the solar system. What they don’t always know is that scientists are capable of being just as prejudiced as are religionists.

A recent resolution of the National Academy of Sciences is a case in point. The academy strongly opposes the inclusion of the religious concept of the origin of life in California science textbooks—a course that has been urged on the State Board of Education, which was scheduled to … announce its verdict next month.

Many observers on the Western intellectual scene have been saying that we are coming out of the period of aggressive scientism that we have been in since the last century; but, if this resolution is any indication, scientism has just launched a counterattack.

It does no good to scream “monkey trial!” this late in the century. In the 1920s, bigoted religion was so strong that it could prevent science from teaching evolution. Now the shoe is on the other foot: bigoted science is trying to claim the field of origins for itself and to eliminate all other competitors.

The academy warns us that religion and science are “separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought whose presentation in the same context leads to misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious beliefs.” I’m a great believer in the interdisciplinary approach, and I frankly wonder if any two fields of thought are “mutually exclusive.”

But, no matter—anyone with a smattering of education knows that religion and science are different in many respects. Yet to assert so apodictically that “there is no question on which both science and religion can have something to say” is to say something that no one can really prove.

It is entirely possible that science and religion can work on the same question—in this case, the question of ultimate origins—and both contribute something valuable to the resolution of the problem. There is no sign on the door of religion reading, “No microscopes allowed.” Why should there be a sign on the door of science reading, “No faith allowed”?

Yet the National Academy of Sciences warns us that we must not introduce the concept of “the supernatural” into scientific studies because the concept is not subject to validation by scientists. This may be just its way of saying that the supernatural is not the natural, which you can see by the definition of the term.

If the academy is trying to tell us that science can’t deal with the nonempirical, or spiritual, that’s fine. But if it is suggesting that rational men, in their comprehensive efforts to understand the total universe, can’t postulate nonempirical explanations for things in their experience that can’t be accounted for on empirical grounds, then the academy is being unscientific itself.

It is true that science, as presently understood, can’t handle the concept of the supernatural. It is structured to study the empirical and repeatable, not the spiritual and the unique. But this proves nothing about the possible need to introduce the supernatural into a discussion of a special question, such as the problem of origins.

To study this problem might require, in addition to science, a discipline that handles the spiritual and unique. If science goes into origins, it ought to admit that the problem might transcend empirical categories and that such other disciplines as religion, theology, and philosophy could have something to say on the subject.

This is precisely what Dr. John Ford has been saying. He is a San Diego physician who, it so happens, is also vice-president of the State Board of Education. Ford has been joined by many religionists in his belief that it would be singularly unscientific for a scientist to affirm that “I can’t allow you to use other disciplines in handling this question of origins.”

I should think that a good educational system would allow many types of evidence and experiences to come into play as it deals with a question as complex as the problem of origins. To say that you can’t find God in a test tube or the soul under a microscope simply proves that you might be looking in the wrong place or with the wrong instrument. You can’t find fish in the desert or scorpions in the sea; you can’t pick up angstrom units on a Geiger counter or X-rays with a speedometer.

When we come to the real issue—the theory of evolution—anyone who meditates long on the problem will see clearly that this theory can’t establish itself beyond the possibility of replacement.

I personally feel that there is some cogent evidence for a simple theory of evolution—that is, for a basic hypothesis of change, progress, complexification of organic life on this planet. (There are also some knotty problems in the theory.) Exactly how this growth came about, whether by natural selection or by some other mechanism, is still hotly debated among scientists.

This simple theory of chance can be interpreted in a number of ways. For example: you can fit it rather easily into a world view of theism, and thus it would be illogical to rule out God just because you had evidence for a simple theory of growth.

A new theory could come along any day now and, using the same evidence, offer an intriguing possibility for rearrangement of the data or putting the same basic data into a new configuration—a simpler pattern that would make the old theory seem inadequate. This happens often in scientific thinking.

What I’m saying is that theories of origin always have a striking lack of finality about them. Plato called all of them “likely tales” (though he didn’t shrink from expounding his own tale in the Timaeus). Even those theories, like evolution, which have a certain power to explain the data, can’t establish themselves beyond doubt, because of the obvious problem of getting to the original facts. We would need to go back (in a time machine perhaps?) and directly observe the process of evolution going on before we could get dogmatic about the theory.

All theories of origin suffer from this same difficulty: they always keep us at a distance from what we need to see to be absolutely sure. This problem of distance makes it impossible to really experiment on the theory of evolution. We can only say that the hypothesis has some explanatory value for the facts that we do have, such as the fossil record and the structural similarity of man and animal.

Consequently, when Professor Melvin Calvin of UC Berkeley, speaking for the National Academy of Sciences, complained that the creation theory wasn’t subject to tests, he should have pointed out, in all fairness, that evolution has the same problem.

If science can’t establish one theory authoritatively, this means that other disciplines have the right to participate in the investigation of the question of origins. To prohibit this, as the academy wishes, could make science seem to assert, “Our discipline has already settled this question. We need no further discussion of it.”

Is this what the academy really means? Is there now no alternative to evolution?

Over 2,000 scientists now make up a body dedicated to the religious explanation of origins—the Creation Research Society, formed in 1968. When this many American scientists are committed to the creation view, I think we can safely say that creation is still a “live option” in the intellectual community, and it ought to be presented as such in any textbook that treats the problem of origins objectively.

If the National Academy of Sciences feels that the introduction of the creation alternatives in science textbooks would “affect the study of science for a generation,” I can only ask this question in response: “What will be the long-term effect of exposing students to only one hypothesis of origins, when the question of origins is still an open question?”

Or is it still an open question?—ARLIE J. HOOVER, professor of history and philosophy at the Malibu, California, campus of Pepperdine University. Reprinted from the Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1972.

One measure of the ethnocentrism of American evangelicals is the uncritical assumption that the evangelization of the world in this or any generation rests primarily on American, or at least Western, shoulders.

It is true that the churches of Europe and North America are responsible before God for the stewardship of their very considerable resources of men and materials. Since World War II some 60 per cent of world Protestant overseas missionary personnel and nearly 80 per cent of the finances have come from North American churches. Nevertheless, one must agree with Arthur Glasser’s words:

It is both physically impossible and demonstrably unscriptural that missionaries from the West are responsible to evangelize all the people of this generation throughout all the world.

The evangelization of the world is the task of the whole Church throughout the world. No Church attains fullness and maturity without participating to some degree in the missionary purpose of God (“February Theses,” East Asia Millions, May, 1961, p. 67).

Even if it were possible for the Christians of one country to evangelize the world, from a biblical perspective it would work an irreparable loss on believers in other lands, who are also under the mandate to “go disciple the nations.”

Today American evangelicals are becoming aware that in the twentieth century “the Church which is His Body” has at last become a worldwide reality. One of the important corollaries of this is that now the “home base” of missions is everywhere—wherever the Church is planted. This opens up the exciting possibility of church and mission cooperating in every nation to bring the whole Gospel to the whole world.

We are passing through an era in which many missions have pursued a pronounced objective of establishing “self-propagating, self-governing and self-supporting” churches. C. Peter Wagner in Frontiers in Missionary Strategy observes that the “three selfs” were useful and necessary concepts when mission societies were trying to shake off an inherited colonial and paternalistic mentality, but the terms have now become senile. We need to replace them with something more contemporary without losing what remains valid in the ideas they express.

Henry Lefever also cautions against the use of these terms, since “the New Testament speaks of ‘self’ only as something to be denied, or at least something to be discovered only through being set aside and forgotten” (with Peter Beyerhaus, The Responsible Church and the Foreign Missions, p. 16).

A church that is too self-conscious may also be self-centered and selfish, and not infrequently this has been a failing of so-called indigenous churches established as a result of this ideology. The Church was never intended to be self-centered; it is to be Christ-centered, with an outward, rather than inward, orientation to the world for which he died. In Archbishop Temple’s words, “The Church is the only society in the world which exists for the benefit of those who do not belong to it.”

The goal of mission is not simply establishing indigenous churches in the “third world” of Afericasia, but making disciples in the “fourth world,” which in the March, 1972, issue of Church Growth Bulletin Wagner defines as embracing “all those people who, regardless of where they may be located geographically, have yet to come to Christ. In that sense the fourth world is the top-priority objective of missions. This pushes the statement of the goal of missions one notch further than the indigenous church.”

Wagner pointedly asserts that “the proper goal of the Christian mission is not to establish an ‘indigenous church’.… The true goal of missions is making disciples” (Frontiers in Missionary Strategy, p. 168). Normally, indigenous national churches functioning on New Testament patterns should be the most effective instruments for implementing the Great Commission. But we all know of instances where local churches (in America as well as abroad) are not effective—and may actually be a hindrance—in discipling the fourth world. Where they can be helped to realize and pursue the Church’s primary objective—fine! But until they can be brought to do this, they may simply have to be bypassed in pursuit of the prime objective. The proper goal of missions is not simply planting indigenous churches in the third world; it is planting missionary churches that move out in responsibility to the fourth world of lost men.

A missionary from Cameroon reported that leaders of his mission were so committed to “indigenous principles” that when they heard of a new, responsive tribe they refused to evangelize it on the grounds that this was the responsibility of the younger churches. But the Cameroon church was not prepared, and the task was not carried out. Whenever so-called indigenous principles interfere with any church’s primary goal to disciple men and nations, they should be rethought or abandoned.

Simply establishing indigenous churches is no longer seen as an adequate goal of biblical missions unless such churches become “sending” churches in, and from, their own setting. The New Testament knows nothing of “receiving” churches that are not also in turn to be “sending” churches (1 Cor. 15:3; 2 Tim. 2:2). The early group of believers in Rome was a receiving church only until it could marshal its resources for sending the good news on to Spain and central Europe. We in the so-called sending churches of the West need to remember that we too were once on the receiving end of God’s message of reconciliation.

The truth remains that every church in every land ought to be and remain a sending church. Even in North America, the spiritual vitality of any fellowship of Christians should be measured not simply by the number of believers it attracts but by the number of disciples it sends out empowered for witness and service.

With respect to new churches Peter Beyerhaus advocates something similar when he says in the volume mentioned previously: “The ultimate aim of missions is no longer the organizational independence of the young Church; it is rather the building up of a Church which itself has a missionary outreach.” If we believe this to be the ultimate expression of the Great Commission, then we must regard the growing entrance into mission of churches on every continent as a cause for profound gratitude and continued encouragement in our day.

If Western nations and institutions are on the decline, God may well use the churches of Afericasia to bridge the gap as they increasingly are accepting the missionary responsibility that lies upon the Church in every place.

The emergence of foreign-mission societies in the third-world church is not altogether a new development. American evangelicals know the exploits of Livingstone and Moffett in opening large areas of Africa to the Gospel, but they have seldom heard of the unnamed or little-known local African missionaries who were responsible for much of the subsequent Christian advance in those areas.

One of the great accounts in missionary annals is the record of the evangelization of the Pacific Islands through the dedication of island inhabitants who went out under great risk and hardship in their small boats and canoes from Samoa, Fiji, and the Solomons to other island territories, until today three-fourths of the inhabitants of the South Pacific islands (apart from New Guinea) are reportedly members of Christian churches. Notable among these islander missionaries who crossed linguistic, cultural, and geographic boundaries with the Gospel are the more than a thousand members of the Melanesian Brotherhood who over the years worked so effectively for the Christianization of the islands, yet are all but unknown to most American mission enthusiasts.

Unfortunately, many indigenous national missionary organizations were more active around the turn of the century than they are today. To what extent does the responsibility for this lie with our generation of mission planners and activists?

What can we do to aid emerging churches overseas in developing a missions strategy and passion?

1. As American evangelicals and evangelical mission societies, we must clarify, sharpen, and update our own understanding of the biblical mandate for missions. The emphasis should be that the command to “preach the Gospel to every creature” and to “make disciples of all nations” must parallel and even supersede the intermediate goal of planting indigenous churches as a means of discipling the nations.

The Foreign Missions Department of the Assemblies of God recently restated its mission objectives to include an emphasis upon the Church’s continuing responsibility:

IN FOUR CELLS

(About Christians under attack: A parable)

Four girls sat in four little cells.

Gray soundproof walls were ink-smeared,

Scratched with graffiti.

When the spokesmen came to Cell 1

(Came shuffling, oozing;

Came like greasy smoke,

Like undulating snake backs)

They slithered whispers at her:

“Lonely, aren’t you?

Only … lonely …”

When she cried

Morosely enough

They let the cell walls disappear,

But she sees the same graffiti

On all other walls, everywhere,

Now.

Sees, sobbing; whining.

The girl in Cell 2

Was passive when they whispered,

But when they ran technicolored travelogues

Against a little fog screen

She smiled

And stepped over into

The next lurid journey.

“Lonely? Only …”

The spokesman whisper-snarled

For weeks on end

Inside Cell 3.

Weeks? Years.

She always nodded.

“Oh, yes.

But that’s quite irrelevant.

Of course, of course.

It matters, and doesn’t matter

Because He matters

So utterly.

You see?

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant.”

Their film screen wouldn’t coagulate

And finally they themselves couldn’t coagulate, either.

They flaked off into puddles of dust

And she swept them out

When she chopped the cell walls

Into kindling

For the big stone fireplace

In her oak-paneled living room.

(“And the street of the city

Was pure gold,

As it were transparent glass.”

Her city.)

Cell 4:

When she nodded agreement

At their very first whisper

They signaled to Neanderthal’s cousin

Who was waiting just outside.

They handcuffed her to Neanderthal’s cousin;

They fastened other chains to ankle, neck, and knee.

They flung a gummy plastic serape

Over her, over him,

Making them into another kind of Siamese twins.

And the spokesmen laughed at her

For the rest of her life,

Laughed like demons.

Well, of course.

Like what they were.

ELVA McALLASTER

The Foreign Missions Department is dedicated primarily to the fulfillment of the Great Commission—“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Its basic policy is to evangelize the world, establish churches after the New Testament pattern, and to train national believers to preach the Gospel both to their own people and in a continuing mission to other nations.

This statement of objectives, after affirming the importance of establishing indigenous churches as an instrument of fulfilling the Christian mission to the world, goes on to stress the need for missionary-national “cooperation and unity in the mutual God-given responsibility for complete world evangelization”:

In so doing, the missionary must not abdicate his responsibility to world evangelism and church planting, either by perpetuating the mission’s authority over the national church or by succumbing to nationalistic interests that would prevent him from fulfilling the Great Commission.

2. It is imperative that we communicate the missionary mandate by precept and example from the inception of all evangelistic and church-planting ministries.

A Chinese youth leader at the Singapore Congress on Evangelism commented that while he knows his missionary friends preach the missionary imperative on furlough in their homelands, he had never heard one preach a sermon on missions to the new churches they had helped bring into being in Asia. He went on to observe the same failure in most seminaries and Bible schools of his acquaintance: they had no courses on missions in their curriculum, he said. It is little wonder if pastors trained there have no informed and compelling sense of missionary outreach to communicate to their congregations.

Missionaries responsible for pastoral and lay training must be prepared to imbue new leaders with the principles and practice of multiplying disciples and churches, both in their immediate environment and across adjacent cultural and geographical boundaries.

3. Let new Christians everywhere prepare for immediate involvement in the evangelism of their own cultural “Jerusalem” (sometimes called M1), with the needs of their respective “Judea and Samaria” (i.e., communication at a slight cultural or geographical distance, M2) regularly set before them, so that some of those proved and approved of God through faithfulness in nearby witness may in time be entrusted with even more difficult missions to totally different peoples (the M3 dimension at “the ends of the earth”) as men and means become available.

4. Rather than simply internationalize existing mission organizations, let us encourage new church fellowships to develop their own patterns and forms of missionary expression.

We should be ready to share with them the best of what we have learned in a century and a half of the modern missionary movement, but then give these maturing churches full liberty under the Holy Spirit to determine what they will adopt as applicable to their situation and what they will modify or leave behind as relics of another day.

5. Finally, while seeking to manifest the unity of the Spirit through fellowship among like-minded participants in a world mission that transcends all boundaries of color and culture, let us not involve others in over-organization, nor embarrass them by insisting on ties that might compromise their effectiveness.

Above all, within the missionary movement of third-world churches we must respect the same principles of spiritual voluntarism that brought most of our missionary societies into being. Spontaneous response to the Spirit’s leading and voluntary participation by believers passionately devoted to making Christ known may well produce a greater tide of missionary advance in the third world than history has seen to date.

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 well-known sentence appeared in the late, great New York Sun as an editorial response to a letter from an eight-year-old girl asking whether there really was a Santa Claus. Since its publication in 1897 the editorial has become a classic year-end repeat along with other sub-Christian Christmas paraphernalia. Religiously, however, the writer was years ahead of himself. Consider this excerpt:

Not believe in Santa Claus? You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on that lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle to see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest men, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside the curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God, he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of children.

With slight adaptation this “Christmas” story could approximate much of the New Testament theology prominent in seminaries of the major denominations under the influence of Rudolph Bultmann and his fellow-traveling existentialists. Let’s “Christianize” some of the above sentences to prove the point.

On Easter Sunday you could have hired all the television cameramen and the news reporters to watch the tomb where the dead body of Jesus lay; but even if they did not see Jesus come out or even if his body was there, what would that prove? Nobody sees the Risen Christ but that is no sign that there is no Risen Christ. Only faith can push aside the curtain and view and picture that supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, dear Christians, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Risen Christ! Thank God, he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of Christians with good news.

The editor of the Sun and the existentially oriented exegetical scholars operate from the same philosophical base: they divide their area of concern—Santa Claus or religion—from history. Like Spinoza several centuries before, these scholars give science undisputed reign over fact and religion undisputed reign over piety. By comparison the old liberal theology, à la Adolf von Harnack and Harry Emerson Fosdick, was quite conservative. Its picture of Jesus might have been warped—the tolerant rabbi from Nazareth who taught brotherhood and whose religious moralisms resemble politicians’ speeches at prayer breakfasts—but the old liberalism did not contest the historical existence of Jesus or doubt that his message (though distorted by Paul and others) could be known. But beginning with Barth and going right down through Bultmann, Fuchs, Ebeling, Bornkamm, Käsemann, Marxsen, and their offspring in both Europe and America, theology and history have been practiced in two different and opposing fields.

For an analogy, let’s go back to Virginia and Santa Claus. Barth would say:

Yes, there is a Santa Claus, but I will not guard the chimney. In fact, I will ignore entirely the question of whether or not there is a chimney. Let’s get on with the story.

Bultmann would say:

Yes, there is a Santa Claus, and I will guard the chimney all night. My research—and you can be assured it was “objective and scholarly”—has convinced me that Santa Claus has never come down the chimney and never could. And not only that, the scientific mind set of the twentieth century has ruled out the possibilities of fat men coming down the small exhaust gas pipes on most homes. Most homes with advanced construction are capable of supporting a sleigh and eight reindeer (tiny variety), but aeronautical science finds “flying sleighs” impossible. Let’s forget about the empirical evidence. “No Santa Claus! Thank God, he lives, and he lives forever.”

Marxsen would say:

Nothing would be more destructive of Santa Claus than if we really discovered that there really was one. A real Santa Claus would destroy the dynamic quality of faith. The more our historical research rules out the possibility of Santa Claus, the more our faith will grow. Nobody sees (or can see) Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. Our growing ignorance of Santa Claus will only strengthen our faith in him.

Both Bultmann and Marxsen could say with the Sun editor: “Only faith … can push aside the curtain.”

What the editor and the scholars do is not necessarily deny history but ignore it. The stories of Santa Claus and Jesus Christ are told completely but without concern for the questions of what really happened and if it happened.

The existential theologians are not the first to flee from history into the realm of “faith”; the disease appeared in a benign form in the old “warm faith” of Pietism, in which the response to embarrassing historical questions was, “What does it matter? Only believe!” In fact, whenever history has become difficult because of the intellectual laziness of the Church or the offense of the cross, the Church has fled from history into faith. But whoever flees history flees from the virgin birth of Jesus, the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection, and the ascension. To forsake history, even in the name of faith, is to flee Jesus.

Faith is not the most important element in the Christian religion. History—here defined as what really happened—is more important than faith. The Christian message starts in history and is participating in history till that history comes to an end. The story of Jesus begins with these familiar words: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment when Quirinius was governor of Syria.” Those words anchor Jesus Christ in history, making him as much a part of that history as Caesar Augustus, Quirinius, or the other persons mentioned in Luke 3—Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod the Tetrarch, Philip the Tetrarch, Lysanias the Tetrarch, Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests. Christmas for a Christian means that at one particular time and no other, God appeared as a Man, Jesus Christ. God was Jewish! This appearance was unique, incapable of repetition. Even the indwelling of God, Christ, or the Spirit in the believer hardly comes close to being analogous to the incarnation. The very scandal or offense of the cross is that God was acting in ordinary history. Not even faith can erase the fact that God’s mighty acts are not timeless in the sense that they can take place at any time under a variety of circumstances but can be dated sometime between 6 B.C. and A.D. 27–29.

What happened in Palestine in the first half of the first century in our calendar time (Jesus’ life, death, resurrection) gave birth to the Word. This Word (the news about what happened) gives birth to individual Faith (one’s awareness of what happened in History and understanding of how this History benefits him eternally). History, Word, Faith is the correct order.

For the existentially oriented theologians the only components of Christianity are Word and Faith. The Faith of the first-century Christian community, say these New Testament scholars, gave us Jesus, Bible, apostles, sacraments, and even God (along with hope, love, joy, and peace). That Faith produced the Word (some message that just sits in the Bible without any explanation of how it got there) that in turn produces Faith (one becomes aware of this Word’s meaning in a particular situation without knowing what really happened or caring if anything happened in history at all). But Faith, despite all the glories attached to it, cannot live without the historical Jesus. Just as Virginia must one day have grown up and found out that while there might be peace, joy, and happiness in the world, there was really no Santa Claus, so also the Christian whose faith has depended on a Jesus amputated from history will discover that his “Jesus” really does not exist and never did.

For the Church to live by faith alone, without confronting hard historical and scientific questions, might be comfortable and undemanding if it were possible. This type of religion may be called “Christianity,” but it isn’t that. When religious truth (I don’t know how to express this better) supersedes historical truth, “God talk” becomes only a symbol for greater religious realities, and such basic Christian mysteries as incarnation, angels, miracles, and resurrection become realities that exist in the human mind without ties to specific happenings and people. In short, Christianity becomes dependent on such traits as joy, faith, hope, love, and beauty, and Jesus begins to look like Virginia’s Santa Claus:

Your mother, father, grandparents are all “Santa Claus.” He can be found where people are moved by the Christmas spirit to help their fellow men. The countless charities cause Santa Claus to become “incarnate” in the hearts of people all over the world.

At that point, the Church might as well switch religious symbols. After all, the story of Santa presents fewer difficulties than the one about Jesus. For one thing, we are only one century removed from the latest manuscript on the life of Santa Claus and nineteen centuries from ones about Jesus. For another, Santa’s sphere is global—he comes down from the North Pole and flies through the earth’s atmosphere—while Christ’s is universal—he comes down to earth from heaven. In the story of Santa Claus there is no mention of sin, wrath, persecution, or death. Santa Claus is good to all people and gives gifts to all people. (Universalism at its finest!) He makes no hard demands on anyone: a little goodness in December will be richly rewarded.

The story of Jesus, on the other hand, mentions human sin and God’s judgment of it and includes a horrible death scene. The miracle in Santa’s story—flying reindeer—could probably be reproduced today by making a sled airborne, one way or another. And reindeer on roofs and a man sliding down chimneys are less difficult to demonstrate. Not so with Jesus’ story. Modern science has yet to demonstrate how a virgin can have a child, how angels can talk and sing (and even what they are), and how God could become a man.

With Santa’s story established as a convenient and acceptable vehicle for religious truth, the New York Sun editorial would become important source material for the Christmas Eve sermon. For the sake of traditionalists in his congregation, the minister might want to substitute the words “Jesus Christ” for “Santa Claus.” Same number of syllables. No great problem.

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.”

C hristians who pray earnestly and regularly may nonetheless have an impoverished understanding of why they pray. They may base their practice on human analogy—“Jesus prayed and so should we.” But the real theological basis is the history of redemption: “Jesus entered into the new age of prayer, and we enter with him and after him.”

Luke in particular draws attention to the gaps in our theology of prayer. In his two-volume story of the words and works of Jesus, he gives prayer its theological place in the divinely directed history of redemption. Thirty-four of the eighty-four occurrences of the most common verb for prayer in the New Testament, proseuchomai, are in Luke’s writing.

Many scholars have noted the uniqueness of Luke’s account of the prayer life of Jesus. Luke speaks of nine prayers of Jesus, seven of which are mentioned only by him and not by the other gospel writers. Luke alone tells us that Jesus was praying when the heavens opened at his baptism (3:21). Luke alone tells us that Jesus was praying alone in Caesarea Philippi, and asked his disciples, “Who do the people say that I am?” (9:18). Luke alone tells us that Jesus took Peter and James and John up to the mount to pray when he was transfigured (9:28, 29). Luke alone records the request of Jesus’ disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (11:1). Luke alone tells the prayer parables of the friend at midnight asking for bread (11:5–8), the shameless widow begging the judge (18:1–8). Luke alone notes Jesus’ prayer for Peter that Satan would not “sift” him (22:31, 32), and his exhortation to the disciples to pray on their arrival at Gethsemane (22:40).

But though writers often point out the attention Luke gives to Jesus’ prayers, few go on to delve into the reasons for this emphasis. And so they cut the line connecting Luke’s portrait of Jesus as the Messiah, the inaugurator of the kingdom-day, and prayer. Luke’s account of the prayer life of Jesus and his people cannot be fully understood apart from Luke’s approach to the history of divine salvation. He writes of the prayer of Jesus as a basic reminder that a new page has been turned in God’s dealing with man. Jesus, the anointed of the Spirit, enters as Forerunner into the Age of the Spirit, and his life of prayer manifests this act of entering in. He prays “in the Holy Spirit” (recorded in Luke 10:21).

To Luke, Jesus’ prayers are eschatological. To Jesus himself, prayer was an eschatological activity, God’s link between the beginning of the fulfillment and its consummation in glory. The point of Jesus’ kingdom parable of the importunate widow is this, that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (18:1). But it is prayer in the light of the eschatological tension between the now and the not-yet. God will avenge his elect speedily, but the widow must call upon the judge repeatedly. Jesus has come and the kingdom has come. But now we must wait for that day when the righteous judge comes to fulfill his kingdom pledge of full salvation and full judgment. And till that day comes, in the tension time between the beginning of fulfillment and the consummation of fulfillment, Jesus says we are to “watch and pray.”

This eschatological perspective in prayer is a great feature of the Old Testament prophets. The prophets describe the time of the coming kingdom as a time of answered prayer. Isaiah had told Israel God would hear her prayers no longer (Isa. 1:15). “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear” (59:2). Isaiah means this as more than simply a divine reminder of the prerequisite of moral purity for answered prayer. God’s people, he was saying, were no longer a kingdom of priests. So God was going to send a true priest, and when he came, there would be a new beginning to our prayer life.

God is going to visit as he did in the garden of Eden.

And this time, his people will call and not flee (Isa. 58:9). God is going to “create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (65:17). And in this new paradise, the wolf and the lamb shall graze together, lions shall eat straw, and “before they call I will answer, while they are still speaking I will hear” (65:24).

In this new heavens and new earth, all shall pray and worship the Lord. Foreigners who join themselves to the Lord will be brought to God’s holy mountain (Isa. 56:6, 7). And the center of their joy will be God’s house of prayer, which “will be called a house of prayer for all people” (56:7). The last book of the Old Testament sounds the note of a coming great day of prayer. “From the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name” (Mal. 1:11).

Now, says Luke is his two-volume work, that great day of redemption has dawned, and Jesus, the captain of our salvation, has first entered in as the new Adam. The door opens with prayer. So the opening two chapters of Luke’s Gospel are divine talk-shows in which two themes are discussed: the new age come, prayers offered. While the people stand at prayer outside (1:10), the angel speaks to Zechariah of the coming of the Lord of the new day. Mary sings her prayers to God in praise of the One who has come (1:46 ff.). Zechariah is described in Luke’s eschatological shorthand phrase as “filled with the Holy Spirit” (1:67) and his prayer becomes prophecy, his prophecy prayer. “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel” (1:68). Simeon takes the baby kingdom-builder in his arms and prays. Anna sees God’s salvation “and she gave thanks to God” (2:38). The Old Testament flavor of these opening chapters moves from a textbook history approach to front-page newspaper journalism, as we participate in God’s unfolding history.

So the first place we read of prayer in the life of Jesus is at his baptism. While he is praying (3:21), the Holy Spirit comes as a dove to mark the opening of the final page in God’s history book, just as a dove had marked another new eschatological beginning earlier (Gen. 8:8 ff.). The heavens are opened, a signal of the beginning of the final dialogue between God and man, and Jesus is invested for the beginning of the new covenant, the day of prayer for all people. And that is signalized also by prayer.

Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days. He enters as the last Adam (something Luke draws special attention to by carefully placing his chronology between the baptism and the wilderness histories—3:23–38—and designating Jesus, at the climax of the chronology, as “the son of Adam, the son of God”). Jesus enters the wilderness as the Remnant, the Elect One (Isa. 42:1; 45:4). Israel had received its testing for forty years under the leadership of Moses. Now Christ, as the Remnant Israel, the new Moses, is tested. Will it be paradise lost or regained? Again, the context of the whole Messianic struggle is the context of prayer.

Twelve apostles are chosen in Luke 6 to proclaim the healing power of the kingdom here and now, to proclaim blessing to the poor here and now because theirs is the kingdom of God. Luke tells us that before that selection was made Christ “went out into the hills to pray; and all night he continued in prayer to God” (6:12). Jesus’ mission is not simply undergirded with prayer; it is to be identified with prayer.

At Caesarea Philippi, he reveals to his disciples in a clearer way than ever before his imminent death and resurrection in its relation to his Messianic purposes. And all this begins, says Luke, while he is praying alone (9:18). On the mount of transfiguration, Luke alone specifically tells us of the nature of the conversation Jesus had with Elijah and Moses: they were speaking of “his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (9:31). And Luke again relates the mission of Jesus—his death, his resurrection, this preview of coming glory—to prayer; Christ had gone up on the mountain to pray (9:28).

This is not coincidence. Jesus’ prayers are another window onto his relationship with the Father, and the task given him by his Father. A new way of praying is born, for One has come who displays a new and exclusive relation to the Father, one that has no analogy (10:21, 22). The disciples sense this. “He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples’ ” (11:1).

There is more here than a group of men impressed with the prayer life of Jesus. Their question reveals far more than simply their failures in learning how to pray. Joachim Jeremias reminds us that religious groups in Jesus’ day apparently had characteristic prayers (New Testament Theology, Scribner, 1971, p. 170). The Pharisees had such prayers, as did the community at Qumran, and the disciples of John the Baptist. Now Jesus’ disciples ask, “Give us a fixed prayer that will correspond with your message and your work. Teach us to pray as men should pray who are partaking now in the kingdom of God and yet waiting also for its final fulfillment.”

So Jesus teaches us how to pray in the new age. The heart of the prayer he taught is the heart of his message and his mission—the coming of the kingdom. “Thy kingdom come,” he says. And in connection with that kingdom’s coming, may the name of God be hallowed, may the will of God be done (Matt. 6:33; 5:19, 20). May there be a realization here and now of the saving gifts and blessings of God—forgiveness of sins (Jer. 31:34; Matt. 18:23 ff.) and bread “for the coming day.” May there be preservation from the apostasy of the last terrible hour of temptation, present now (John 16:33) but still to come in its fullest sense. For all these things, the followers of Jesus are to seek, to ask, to find (11:9 ff.). And they will not be disappointed.

The final great cycle of prayer in Luke’s Gospel comes where now we should expect it—at the place where all the Gospels draw us, the place of Jesus’ kingdom-enthronement, his death and resurrection. Luke alone tells us Jesus is strengthened by an angel in the garden in preparation for his coming judgment-salvation ordeal. And Luke tells us that in prayer he gives up his soul as an offering for sin to the Father (22:39–46). Two of the three last words of Jesus on the cross recorded by Luke are prayers (23:34, 46). And to this, Hebrews adds the note that through his prayer he is raised from the dead. “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear” (Heb. 5:7). The resurrection of Jesus, the climax of Book One, is a response to the prayer of the God-man, Jesus.

At this point Luke reinforces the link between Jesus at prayer and his Church in 1972 at prayer. For he has a second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, to write his history of all that Jesus, through the Spirit, does and teaches (Acts 1:1). Jesus has entered the new age of the Spirit in prayer. Now his people enter that age after him. And the same characteristic of the new age marks them as well, these people who “devoted” themselves to prayer” (1:14). Acts provides the link between Jesus and his covenant people, the prayer sign for the people who live in the between-times. The last verses of the Gospel had centered in a climax of prayer and praise (24:52, 53). In the opening verses of Acts the center is still prayer. Only now it is inauguration, not climax. And it is Jesus’ people at prayer, not Jesus.

The Messianic, kingdom ministry of Jesus now becomes the Messianic, kingdom ministry of Jesus’ people. And, with both Jesus and his people, it is a ministry related to prayer. “In prayer” a replacement for Judas is appointed to the ministry of the apostolate (1:24). “After praying,” the church sets apart the seven and initiates the ministry of waiting on tables (6:6). After fasting and prayer, the church at Antioch sends Barnabas and Saul to fulfill Christ’s commission (13:2, 3). Elders are appointed in the struggling new churches of Asia Minor “with prayers and fasting” (14:23).

Just as Jesus manifested the kingdom blessings of salvation and forgiveness of sins, the blessings of the new day of new prayer, so also the Church manifests those same kingdom blessings in that same new day of prayer. The comparison is not a devotional exercise of “like-and” but a history-of-redemption exercise of “initiation-succession-consummation.” Paul and Silas proclaim the kingdom blessing of salvation to the Philippian jailor at midnight, and they preface their evangel of the kingdom with prayer and singing (16:25) in the prison. Jesus announces the coming of the kingdom through his mighty signs of healing, recovery of sight to the blind, life to the dead, and the early Church announces that same kingdom, come in Christ and coming in Christ, through those same mighty signs. Peter prays and calls, in kingdom-power anticipation, and the dead Tabitha arises (9:40). Paul prays and the sick are healed (28:8). Jesus comes in prayer to “proclaim release to the captives,” and the early Church’s vigil of prayer brings freedom to the captive Peter; the kingdom blessing of prisoners set free becomes reality (12:12).

The new Age of the Spirit will see old men dreaming dreams and young men seeing visions (2:17). Peter sees a sheet let down from heaven, and Luke tells us it happened when he “went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray” (10:10). Cornelius sees a man in shining garments. “Call for Peter,” the man says. And when Peter comes, Cornelius tells him, “I was praying in my house” (10:30).

God’s cure for what Dennis Clark has called “the aggressive know-it-all do-it-now disease of western Christianity” lies precisely here: putting the gem of prayer in a setting not of pietistic devotional exercise but of God-centered redemptive history, seeing the age of the kingdom come and coming as the age of prayer between the times, writing on the cover of your little book of recorded prayer requests, as an elderly Korean evangelist did on his, a title: “The book of the kingdom of God.”

When this link between God’s redemptive ordering of history and his demands on our individual lives is severed, prayer has a way of floating away from the center, of becoming peripheral to the heart of things. Long before the “new theologian” begins to question the validity of preaching, he has questioned the validity of prayer. Why shouldn’t he? The evangelical long ago confined it to that neat little compartment of “housekeeping projects” known as the devotional life, the schizophrenic bungalow “around the back” of what Daniel Poling has spoken of as “the biggest buildings-and-grounds, construction-and-shrub-trimming period of Christian history.” “Radical Christianity,” either to the left or to the right of center, is looking for roots to reform. Very seldom does it look at prayer as a root.

Any evangelical pastor who lacks Luke’s insight may adopt a pragmatic view of prayer, and look for theological heresies in the footnotes rather than at the prayer meetings. He prays without a theological consciousness of the place of prayer in God’s redemptive history, its vital part in kingdom reality. To that extent, he misses the theological reasons why one prominent American cleric was supposed to have said once to the New York state legislature: “I’m not going to pray for you. There are certain things a man does for himself. He has to blow his own nose, make his own love, and say his own prayers.”

One says his own prayers, draws his own breath, insofar as he realizes that God, through Christ, has placed him in the center of a whole new beginning, an astronaut in a new atmosphere, the first day of the new creation, the age of new prayer.

A little verse by Mary Coleridge keeps running through my mind. It begins with a pretty Christmas picture and ends with a kind of threat: “I saw a stable, low and very bare/A little child in a manger.… The safety of the world was lying there/And the world’s danger.” The poem begins with all the happy memories of a child’s Christmas and progresses, as we progress in our later years, to another kind of understanding.

I find myself a little suspicious of those who write autobiographies that are perfectly clear and specific about what they experienced and what they understood in their childhood. My memories are not so sound, and with the best of will and the hardest effect at remembering I end up with many blanks; but I usually do gather some overall impressions out of the confused and usually rosy glow. Christmas, for example, was always a good thing, but a confused thing: fireplaces and candy canes, Christmas entertainments and those awful church goodies (pure delights then), whisperings and surprises. There was the morning of the bicycle, and that time I awoke early in the morning to go down for a first peek only to discover that my dad was just on his way to bed. Later came that awful day when a bunch of us were seated on the front steps of somebody’s house, doing whatever youngsters do on front steps, clustered about with tricycles, balls, dolls, sticks, and cookies, and little Josephine Hunter (how her name sticks in my mind) told me there was no Santa Claus. I dashed home to get the straight story from my mother, who had some kind of lame excuse about the spirit of Santa Claus and the spirit of Christmas and the Spirit of God and his great gift of Jesus, which had to do with all the Christmas gifts. It simply wouldn’t do then, but it worked out better later. Under the tree we had a train mixed up with a crèche and some sheep on a hillside behind the railroad station, and a series of doodads that broke up before Christmas dinner, but a Christmas dinner that was good for food and a delight to the eyes. Then there was the day that girl from our second grade caught fire in her flannelette nightgown on Christmas morning and the Christmas day a wounded soldier was a visitor in our home. You took the bad with the good, but it was mostly good.

The big change in Christmas comes when you begin to notice that most of your Christmas gifts have become “useful” instead of fun. (Of course, money was always both useful and fun.) Then comes the biggest change of all: your own children appear on the scene, and you begin to give instead of get. That becomes the best of all. Somehow in your anxiety to give and make happy in the giving there is a great insight into a loving Father, who loves us with an everlasting love and would shower gifts on us continually and surely must want us to be happy and grateful. One can continue to grow up into an appreciation of all that.

But other things come to mind. The Christmas-card picture of Christmas always has shadows in the background. There were no halos there, and maybe the manger was cold and dirty. One thing we are sure of is that Herod used this homey occasion for his slaughter of the innocents: all kinds of babies were killed and mothers pierced to the heart. The flight to Egypt makes a nice picture, with the little burro and all, but it was a flight in fear. The return to Nazareth was under the threat of continued cruelty in those cruel days, and as the boy Jesus grew up in that little country town his mother’s heart was often pierced—long before the cross—as she pondered his destiny. The baby was called Jesus (Joshua, Jason—Saviour) because he would save his people from their sins, but he could do it only along the Via Dolorosa, and they nailed his fine, pure body to a tree, and his mother was there. It is all a strange, strange story, but men have come to see that it is THE story; it is the plot of history, the meaning of things for the whole of the cosmos.

This one whose birth meant that many others would have to die for him, this one who promised wars and rumors of wars, this one who died in agony between two thieves, who brought out the best in men and also their worst—this one was called the Prince of Peace. It is a strange title for such a one, for one who lived and died as he did, who set so many desperate currents loose in history. Did something go wrong somewhere or have we read it all wrong?

The Prince of Peace: “The safety of the world was lying there/And the world’s danger.” Our trouble is that we want the Peace without the Prince. Neither men nor nations will have him rule over them, and that is the world’s danger, because that one who called himself the Way did not allow for any other way and we refuse to follow that Way. From the garden of Eden to the gardens of upper suburbia it is still a question of obedience: we will not obey and so we are shut out of Paradise. It is not that God would keep Paradise from us—he longs for us to have it as any loving Father would; but he cannot give it to us apart from the only Way in which Paradise is possible. We are fighting against God and so fighting against our highest felicity (in his will is our peace), and it is not that God will not but that he cannot. Our disobedience is not only against the basic essence of our beings, our creaturehood, our dependence and contingence, but against the structure of everything, against the stars in their courses, against the way things are, really are. As H. H. Farmer once said, “If you go against the grain of the universe you will get splinters.”

A friend of mine who likes to twit me about my religion delights in throwing up the condition of the world today after two thousand years of the Prince of Peace. I am shut up to only one defense. We cannot have the Peace without the Prince, and we still refuse to have him. The Bible is clear: “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end,” but we still want his peace without his government. Note how Paul speaks of the armor of the Christian and how specifically and directly one may have the helmet and the shield and the sword, but when it comes to peace he speaks of our feet being “shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” And there are the “things that make for peace.”

Peace is likely the prayer of every sensitive heart in these awful days, but the hope of peace seems farther and farther away as larger and larger combinations of power challenge one another with greater and greater engines of destruction. If only they would not “learn war any more,” if Africa or Palestine or Russia or China would only settle down, maybe then we could have some peace. But “from whence come wars and fightings among us? Come they not hence, even of our lusts that war in our members?” Would a multiplication of my own heart to the hearts of all men bring peace or war? Where does the problem lie? Am I myself a center of peace or of discord? How quickly do I flare up and over what inanities? What bitterness do I nurse, what resentments do I harbor? It all moves out from men to nations: we cry peace and there is no peace.

The Great Commission seems such an old and ordinary program in the midst of all the other programs clamoring for attention, all the utopias. World missions seems a weak and ineffective kind of effort over against atomic power and space flight, and in human terms it is. So was a babe in a manger and a boy in Nazareth, and a poor rabbi on a cross. But the foolishness of God is wiser, the weakness of God is stronger. If you can believe that, you will still hold on to that kind of Prince with that kind of Way until the Peace comes. If you cannot so believe, the available options seem to have pretty well run out.

JOHN III

Dusk’s

rooftop;

night and house

cast in questioning blue.

Cricket’s abrasive song rebirthrebirth rebirth.

I ascended the gravelly stair.

Strange truth

shone in his eyes

when I first saw him—

authority,

different from my bickering order.

Without greeting

he set before me

the strangest thing …

he spoke of spiritual

labor pains—

the meaning plagues me.

Marvel not,

he said,

the body of wind can be had

but must be born.

MATT BROWN

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.”

Christianity Today’s essay contest drew tremendous response—not surprisingly, considering the timeliness of the topic and the plenitude of the prizes. There were around 400 entries. The judges met in mid-December, and we expect to announce the winners early in 1973.

This will be the first time in more than a quarter of a century that my wife and I will have no children with us for Christmas. And in England, California, Michigan, and Minnesota our four will be separated from one another as well as from us. But we’re on the move, too. The World Council’s missionary arm is meeting in Bangkok right after Christmas, and I’ll be there to cover the discussion of “Salvation Today.” Be sure to see our lead editorial on that subject (page 22), which was written by one of our editors-at-large.

The year’s end is a good time to pay tribute to a diligent staff. For CHRISTIANITY TODAY to appear in your mailbox twenty-five times a year requires the services of many competent and committed persons in addition to those whose names are listed on our masthead. My thanks to all our staff members, to you who read us (whether with knitted brow, gritted teeth, or a euphoric smile!), and to those whose gifts have enabled us to balance our budget. A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all.

Congressman John Buchanan, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, is doubling as interim pastor of the 250-member Riverside (Southern) Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. A member of the congregation, he made the move from pew to pulpit after Pastor and Mrs. Frank Foster were killed in a plane crash en route to the American Baptist Convention in Denver last May. Buchanan, 43, a Republican from Democratic territory in Alabama, will commence his fifth term in Congress next month. He was pastor of an Alabama church before entering politics.

From Politics To Editing

James M. Wall, who ran for Congress as a Democrat in suburban Chicago unsuccessfully, wasn’t worried about finding a job. The editor’s chair at the ailing Christian Century, down to 30,000 paid subscribers, was being held for him. It had been vacant since last May, when Alan Geyer resigned.

Wall is an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, having grown up in Southern Methodist circles. He served as editor of the UMC’s Christian Advocate from 1963 until June of this year. He has worked in the fields of film (Eerdmans published his Church and Cinema), sportswriting (with the Atlanta Journal), and politics (he chaired the Illinois McGovern caucus at the Democratic convention).

Wall insists on a “dialogical relation with culture” and intends, he says, to keep the Century abreast of the latest developments in film, politics, and the arts in particular. “We also intend to cover Key 73. We have several articles scheduled. We consider it an important event and will deal seriously with it.”

Wall’s other concerns are, naturally, to increase circulation (“a concern any editor has”) and “generally increase the quality of the magazine.” Wall added, “We would like the Christian Century to evolve into a more effective magazine.” He cited the updating and improving of the news section as a major goal. “I have, however, no specific changes in mind. The staff will stay the same, as will the basic theological outlook. Naturally the magazine will begin to reflect my concerns and interests.” One change has been made, however: the magazine severed its relation with England’s New Christian, whose editor will now serve as the Century’s European correspondent.

CHERYL FORBES

Vote Against ‘Civil Religion’

A colloquium on “Civil Religion in America” co-sponsored last month by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and Southeastern (Southern) Baptist Seminary adopted a statement calling for continuous judgment of “civil religion.” It also deplored “tendencies of certain proselytizing movements which do not adequately respect the integrity of diverse religious and cultural groups and which manifest inadequate respect for personhood.”

Suggesting that civil religion has frequently “masked or sanctioned racism, anti-Semitism, and prejudice,” the paper called for “personal and collective repentance for the diverse ways in which we have abused the dignity of persons through our personal and institutional bigotries.”

The resolution, according to the AJC, “marks the first time that a Southern Baptist group joined in a resolution repudiating proselytism of other groups, including Jews.” An AJC leader told reporters he had Key 73 in mind.