Key 73—for those who may be unfamiliar with the phrase—is literary jargon for the Great Commission. But it shortens the Great Commission to deal especially with 1973 and particularly with the United States and Canada. For these nations Key 73 could be the twentieth century’s most momentous turning time.

Every American city is an evangelistic target city. Some can also become evangelical model cities in the way they mobilize their resources for moral and spiritual renewal.

I am involved for two reasons. First, I am a Christian saved by Jesus Christ, and persuaded that those who are spiritually lost have a right to hear the good news of redemption and that we Christians have a duty to share it.

Second, five years ago I asked editorial colleagues at CHRISTIANITY TODAY to shape an editorial plea to the evangelical believers of America. It was entitled, “Somehow, Let’s Get Together,” and its message was simple: if we are believers who expect to be together in heaven to come, let’s get together down here—whatever may divide us—and help our neighbors find new life and new hope now and forever.

The winds of evangelical desire were blowing, and the editorial caught fire. Hundreds of readers wrote. Scores of leaders met with me once, twice, three times in a motel at Key Bridge on the Potomac. Now 130 denominations and Christian agencies have set 1973 as the year of cooperative evangelism across the United States and Canada.

When CHRISTIANITY TODAY wrote of “evangelical get-together,” much more was intended than cooperative evangelism; educational concern and social concern, on a biblical base for biblical ends, were also in view. Some people may forget that emphasis on a biblical base and biblical ends, and try to exploit Key 73 for ends of their own. There are confused ecclesiastics who think evangelism is politics, just as there are confused Christian educators who think a campus is Christian as long as classroom prayer is offered, even if modern theory crowds out the Scriptures in various disciplines of learning. That is probably why those who rallied to Key 73 decided to keep the proclamation of the evangel at the center of this first nationwide effort.

Nobody should be uncertain about the evangel: there is forgiveness of sin and new life through Jesus Christ the crucified and risen one. If that is true—and I unwaveringly believe it is—the holy will of God for man will not only turn individuals right side up: it will turn educational institutions truth side up, and it will turn social relationships just side up, if only men will give God his due.

The first step in shaping an evangelical strategy is to remember that we have no resources whatever for engineering the Kingdom of God, nor are our utopias his utopias. We are to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, not a technocratic society, or Walden II, or even a reclamation of the American dream, which has now become a nightmare. There is but one way to blast open an obdurate social consciousness, and that is to permeate it with the Holy Spirit. Unless our planning has prayer and power as prerequisites, we shall have a Tinkertoy program, and Key 73 will give way to Stone Wall 74.

Get a prayer meeting and home Bible study going now, where believers get to know one another and their fellow townspeople across realty lines, across racial lines, across social and cultural lines, across economic lines—until Christ the Great Lineleaper erases all differences in men except that between redeemed and impoverished.

Beyond that, that problem of strategy has only two prongs, as I see it; identifying the needy and directing our resources at helping them. Our problem is no longer the apostolic divide between Jew and Gentile, no longer the Reformation divide between Catholic and Protestant; whatever their labels, the vast masses today are in the main simply pagan about spiritual matters. The problem of distinguishing recruits from recipients, the regenerate from the remainder, should not be very difficult, although God alone discerns them infallibly. The test of our Christian commitment is whether we really love those who are given over to other life-styles and who are strangers to the love of God in Christ—whether we love them both for themselves and for what they are as fellow human beings bearing God’s image, whether we love them also for the sake of Christ, who offers authentic life and hope.

Each of us has special gifts to exercise spiritual outreach. The apostles chose as deacons those who had the gifts to do the job; let every Bible-believing church suggest its ablest men and women, and let no believer escape with the ruse that he or she is vocationally good for nothing to the cause of Christ.

In 1947 I asked the Pasadena (California) Christian Business Men’s Committee why the whole nation could be attracted to football games in the Rose Bowl and yet that huge stadium had no Easter Sunday witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Those twenty men asked Bob Pierce, then a Youth for Christ leader, to put on an Easter Sunrise service. It went $10,000 in the red. Few people (myself included) knew then that Bob mortgaged his home to pay the debt. Next year the CBMC decided they could not subcontract their Christian duty. They organized into committees according to their own talents and enlisted others to form a strong, active band of leaders. NBC gave free radio time from Alaska to Mexico. Easter 1973 will mark the twenty-fifth Rose Bowl sunrise service.

Clergy must enlist qualified laymen and support them in every way. Each of us must feel a burden for his own peer group. If we invest every point of contact for a touching of eternity, the glory of God could shine resplendent through the populace of North America.

If Key 73 becomes only an occasion for all the ministers and churches to do their own thing simultaneously, it will walk on crutches. The vision of Key 73 was that Christians also cooperate in doing whatever they can do to the outermost limits of a good conscience. Perhaps all can cooperate in some ways, some only in certain others; and in some forms of witness, some may stand alone. But a good conscience in the fulfillment of Key 73 may well mean Open Doorway 74 for evangelical Christianity in America.

Untreated cancer almost always means death. Sometimes the diagnosis is made too late to institute effective treatment. It is also possible for inadequate measures to spell doom. Fortunately, with early diagnosis and proper treatment, a high percentage of cures may be expected.

Sex obsession is a moral and spiritual cancer that has fixed itself on America and can destroy us as surely as untreated cancer destroys human life. The diagnosis can be confirmed by all who can see. Our literature, stage, screen, and accepted standards of life reek with a concentration on sex that has reached astonishing proportions.

Sex is a God-given force in which, within the bonds of wedded love, there is both righteousness and joy. Our trouble today is that “sex appeal” is in large measure a determining factor of life. The promotion of, acquiescence in, and submission to this godless concept of life threatens to destroy America.

If this diagnosis is correct—and it seems obvious that it is—then our great concern must be an effective treatment.

The basic cure lies in our acceptance of God’s standards for sexual conduct, and not those of the world. The Seventh Commandment states categorically: “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and this has never been abrogated. In addition, our Lord makes it clear in speaking on the subject that the lustful thought or look are involved in this commandment.

The best course on sex education is to be found within the pages of Scripture. Here we find the subject treated in a completely outspoken, uninhibited manner. That which is good and that which is evil in connection with sex are both made abundantly clear. In the Bible sex is treated in its wholesomeness, and its abuse is handled frankly.

I am convinced that “sex education” for children is psychologically unsound, for it places in the child’s mind an emphasis on sex that is unwholesome, and eventuates in more, not less, sexual experimentation. I am perfectly aware of the long limb I am climbing out on, but I feel certain that the solution to our sex problems is not to be found in the present biological and social approach. Only as God is recognized and honored as both the source and arbiter of moral law will people, young and old, look at sex in the right perspective.

One immediate objection is that only a minority of children come from Christian homes, that only a few hear the Bible read in the family circle or read it for themselves; thus a more universal approach must be had.

Well, across America there is a school lunch program by which children coming from underprivileged homes can have at least one hot meal a day. This is a good program that is meeting a real need.

If children are being fed in school to supplement an inadequate diet at home, why do some people object when it is suggested that children receive some spiritual instruction in school? Nothing more clearly illustrates the folly of unregenerate man. We are concerned about the bodily welfare of our children—and rightly so—but we look on spiritual instruction as “controversial,” outside the pale of public education.

To teach sectarian religion in schools would be contrary to our established principles, but the Ten Commandments are a part of the religious heritage of Jews, Roman Catholics, and Protestants. Why should not the Ten Commandments be read before all students at the opening of school every day? Here we have God’s moral law. It is not Christianity, but it is a part of the Christian faith. Let the words and the teaching of the Ten Commandments sink into the hearts and minds of young people—and for many this would be inevitable—and part of the moral problem of our day will be on its way to a solution.

Let every child hear daily, “Thou shalt not steal,” and the wrongness of dishonesty will become increasingly clear. Let each child hear daily, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and the evil of impure conduct will become real to many.

For that minority who profess no religion and who would loudly protest against the reading of the Ten Commandments as an infringement of their constitutional rights and those of their children, let their children be excused from the room while the Commandments are being read. Further than this, there should be no concession to free-thinkers, atheists, and the like; otherwise, the overwhelming majority of Americans will find themselves checked by and at the mercy of a godless minority.

I am not for one moment suggesting that this is the final solution to the sex delinquency rampant in our country today. But it is one step in the right direction.

Moral and spiritual concepts must be taught to a generation of adult delinquents. Parents have lost their sense of decency and moral responsibility to a degree unknown in the history of America and have transmitted to their children a laxness of attitude toward sex that is reaping a whirlwind of sex obsession.

Believing there is but one ultimate solution, and that it is found in the God-given standards revealed in the Holy Scriptures, I suggest an experiment to parents and for their children. The Book of Proverbs has thirty-one chapters, one for each day of the month. For each of twelve months read one chapter a day (beginning with the chapter corresponding to the date on which the experiment is begun), and I will promise on the basis of personal experience, the professional background of forty years as a practicing physician, and yet more years as a Christian, that every problem of youth will be found and met in that one book.

In Proverbs the evils of inordinate sex are made clear and the joy of married love is set forth. The problems out of which juvenile and adult delinquency are spawned are clearly delineated—so much so that one will either stop reading out of sheer conviction and rejection or cry out, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” and ask his help and guidance.

413 Sermons

Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching, thirteen volumes, edited by Clyde Fant, Jr., and William Pinson, Jr. (Word, 1971, 4,750 pp., $199.95), is reviewed by James Davey, minister, Arlington Memorial Church, Arlington, Virginia.

Just a year before the appearance of this set, a book from the same publisher declared that great preaching is no longer a worthy ministerial goal. I suspect that this monumental set will be a useful tool in preachers’ libraries long after the former book is forgotten. Since the high purchase price would seem to augur limited sales and little profit for Word, the set can perhaps be viewed as a form of penance.

The value to the professional library is obvious, but it is for the average pulpiteer, hard pressed to produce one, two, or more sermons each week, that it seems designed. Although the first twelve volumes are uncommonly good, the thirteenth really sets this apart from ordinary compilations of sermons. Volume 13, the index volume, does for preaching what Mortimer Adler’s Syntopicon did for the Great Books. The cross-referencing of texts and subjects, illustrations, homiletical aids, and so on makes this a most useful publication. Men who believe in preaching will want to keep the set handy.

A brief summary of major events and dates in the lives of each of the ninety-six preachers sampled is preceded by a portrait of the preacher that often demolishes the myth of physical charisma. This generally well written but necessarily taut biography reveals shaping influences on the preacher and pays particular attention to his method of sermon preparation and delivery. A bibliography concludes each introduction. Each volume has a fold-out flyleaf relating the lifetime of each preacher to the social, political, economic, and religious events of his day.

It is possible, of course, to quarrel with the selection of some preachers and the exclusion of others. Some will regret the absence of Kierkegaard or of a personal favorite such as Charles Hodge or J. Wilbur Chapman. But to find fault is like criticizing a fruit cup for having too many cherries and not enough pears. There is an enormous range of preachers and viewpoints, from Origen and Augustine and Francis of Assisi to John Henry Newman, Walter Rauschenbusch, Paul Tillich, Billy Graham, and D. Martyn Lloyd Jones. Surely this is the most comprehensive study of preachers and their chief product ever attempted.

This raises the question of what criteria were used to determine inclusion. Obviously the compilers did not hew to a narrow theological line in making their choices. And a cursory reading reveals that homiletical excellence is sometimes lacking. Indeed, some of the sermons might give even the poorest sort of preacher fresh courage. Those who skip the preface will often find themselves puzzled. For there the compilers make the distinction between a great sermon and a great preacher, the latter being defined as one who leaves an impact upon his age. With this framework established they leave the more technical and theological questions about preaching to other scholars.

If one wishes to sharpen his pulpit abilities by reading at least one sermon for each one he produces, he could well begin with the 413 samples in these volumes.

A Knack For Provoking

Theological Investigations, Volumes VII and VIII: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life, by Karl Rahner (Herder and Herder, 1971, 302 pp. each, $9.75 each), is reviewed by David F. Wells, associate professor of church history, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Karl Rahner is without doubt the most brilliant, versatile, provocative, and comprehensive of contemporary Catholic theologians; he can also be the most obscure, turgid, and frustrating to read. Two more English translations from the Schriften zur Theologie, then, are something of a mixed blessing! (His brother Hugo jokes that one day he will try to translate Karl into understandable German!)

These volumes contain essays on the spiritual life gathered from past writings. In Volume VII, Rahner moves from a consideration of faith in the contemporary world, to some meditations inspired by the life of Jesus (on such topics as the meaning of Christmas, death, and the festival of the future life), to some thoughts on Christian virtues (such as truthfulness, boldness, and mercy). The bulk of Volume VIII is concerned with callings in the church (childhood, laymen, women, intellectuals, and creative thinkers). It is preceded by Rahner’s theology of saints and followed by his counsel on how to venerate the Sacred Heart.

The connection between these themes is not obvious at first sight. One must remember, however, that Rahner’s method of thinking is essentially inductive and synthetic—he learned this from Martin Heidegger—and that his system is, in fact, cohesive and whole. The clue to this is his assumption concerning the “duality” of man, an assumption that runs through these essays and was first explained in his Geist in Welt (1936). He accepts Kant’s notion that the mind is unable to grasp directly non-empirical reality but counters that in its workings, the mind is preconditioned by the non-empirical reality it cannot grasp. So man involuntarily and perpetually gives utterance to the divine mystery he cannot know. Consequently, Rahner sees all aspects of conscious life, and hence of Christian life, as spokes that radiate out from the hub of ineffable mystery that he calls God. This is what connects these essays.

In one crucial passage, Rahner summarizes his concept of Christianity. It is, needless to say, a far cry from the four spiritual laws of Campus Crusade:

Christianity is the assent on the part of the whole community (Church) formulated and held explicitly by that community to the absolute mystery which exercises an inescapable power in and over our existence, and which we call God. It is our assent to that mystery as pardoning us and admitting us to a share in its own divinity, it is that mystery as imparting itself to us in a history shaped by man’s own free decisions as an intelligent being; and this self-bestowal of God in Jesus Christ manifests itself as finally and irrevocably victorious in history [VII, 60].

Rahner’s concessions to Kant, his dependence on Maréchal, Heidegger, and Blondel, render his thought unacceptable at many points. Nevertheless, his sheer intellectuality, his genius for questioning, his ability for opening up and developing themes, his knack for provoking and stimulating his readers, makes Rahner not only fascinating but in many respects valuable for the Protestant scholar.

The Slippery Type

Jesus and the Old Testament, by R. T. France (Inter-Varsity, 1971, 286 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Glenn A. Koch, associate professor of New Testament studies, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

R. T. France, professor of biblical studies at the University of Ife in Nigeria, thinks the Synoptic Gospels show a consistent and original pattern in Jesus’ use of the Old Testament. France is skeptical of the results of literary criticism and views with open hostility the practice of assuming the unreliability of the scriptural tradition unless it is proven true. France proposes to start from the other end and assume essential reliability unless there are good reasons for questioning it. This means accepting from the Synoptics nearly everything that is attributed to Jesus as coming from Jesus himself, without due regard for the fact that the words of Jesus and the Jesus tradition have been passed down to us by the evangelists and the Church. France appears to be attached to the views of Riesenfeld and Gerhardsson, who believe that Jesus taught his disciples by rote memorization.

The body of France’s argument concerns the text-form of the Old Testament quotations and Jesus’ typological use of the Old Testament. He believes the evidence on text-forms shows many cases where quotations attributed to Jesus reveal a Semitic origin (agreement with Masoretic Text or known Targums), and in no case, he says, does the text-form demand a Greek origin for Old Testament quotes attributed to Jesus. “It would be rash,” he says, “to deny the authenticity of any saying of Jesus, especially of those involving quotation from the Old Testament, unless there is evidence to the contrary in that particular case. When there is no such evidence, we may with confidence assume that the sayings of Jesus have been faithfully preserved.”

France’s discussion of typology is slippery and confusing. Having defined typology he lists as types of Jesus the following: Jonah, Solomon, David, the Priesthood, Elijah and Elisha, and Isaiah. Then he says, “Obviously not all the above can be claimed as clear examples of typology.” Later, when speaking of Israel as a type of Jesus, he concludes a section by saying, “But the principle on which the application is made is less that of typology proper, viz. a recurrent pattern, than an idea of continuity.” Typology runs so deep for France that it becomes Jesus’ own self-understanding, particularly in the temptation narrative, where Jesus’ relation to Israel in the wilderness is “no mere teaching device, but reflects his own basic conception of his status and ministry.”

When Jesus spoke of himself using Old Testament predictions, they were “without exception in their original intention eschatological,” which is meant to be neither a repudiation of “consistent eschatology” nor an unconditioned acceptance of “realized eschatology” but has both a present and a future aspect. Since Jesus saw the last days as begun, his echatological views could be called “inaugurated eschatology.”

France concludes by saying that Jesus’ use of the Old Testament “falls into a single coherent scheme, with himself as the focus,” and that his approach to the Old Testament is “so clearly contrasted with that of his Jewish contemporaries that they cannot be combined as they stand. The Christian use of the Old Testament is original, and stands inevitably alone.”

The New Testament must indeed be viewed and interpreted in the light of the Old Testament. However, one cannot place the Greek and Semitic worlds of thought in water-tight compartments, as France seems to do, and certainly one has to allow for the Church’s molding of the gospel tradition, which in his treatment of the Synoptics France does not do. Not all that France attributes to Jesus can with certainty be attributed to him. The problem here is basic methodology.

Sober View Of ‘Charisms’

The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church, by Edward C. O’Connor (Ave Maria, 1971, 301 pp., $1.95 pb), is reviewed by Charles Greenwood Thorne, Ephrata, Pennsylvania.

Pentecostalism has since 1967 gripped many thousands of Roman Catholics across the world, lay as well as clerical. In an account that was named best Catholic paperback of the year by the Catholic Press Association, Edward O’Connor begins by telling what happened when two lay staff members at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, prayed fervently for liturgical as well as personal renewal. Each day for months they recited the hymn from the Mass of Pentecost. Suddenly, in February, 1967, some twenty staff and students there experienced a “profound religious transformation” in which the charismatic gifts of tongues, prophecy, discernment of spirits, and exorcism were manifest. From that sprang a small prayer group that today attracts people from all over Pittsburgh. The seed spread initially to Notre Dame University, and then on to Michigan and both coasts.

O’Connor has written with a keen desire to report respectfully and amplify a great many events in the movement’s short history, demonstrate their genuineness as well as question implications, and view the movement within the history of spirituality. He concentrates on the Pentecostal community at Notre Dame, where he is a member of the theology department. He is an apologist, and there is hardly a page where his own deep concern for spirituality does not show through.

O’Connor’s enthusiasm for “Catholic Pentecostalism” causes him to jump from the second century to the present in tracing Pentecostalism, recognizing later patristic and medieval episodes but finally taking them comparatively lightly and ignoring 1500 to 1900.

Most important is his wisdom about the dangers Pentecostalism can breed, and the reasons adherents do and sometimes ought to leave it. He views the “charisms” soberly and constantly stresses that Pentecostalism seeks to bring man face to face with God, and to lift not replace the church.

Time For Fruitful Dialogue

Issues of Theological Warfare: Evangelicals and Liberals, by Richard J. Coleman (Eerdmans, 1972, 206 pp., $3.45 pb), is reviewed by Clark H. Pinnock, professor of theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Mr. Coleman, a United Presbyterian minister, is concerned over what he sees as the growing split in the major denominations between theological liberals and evangelicals. In this book he sets forth the basic positions of both camps on the fundamental issues that divide them, hoping to show that each side has some things to teach the other. He achieves his purpose remarkably well, without relativizing truth or appearing condescending to either side. He has mastered the arguments and concerns of each, and presents them with a lucidity often lacking in the proponents of those very positions.

At the conclusion of each of the five chapters, Coleman points out strengths and weaknesses of each side, explaining what is necessary for the dialogue to continue fruitfully. The demands he feels evangelicals ought to heed turn out to be ones they are already beginning to take seriously. That liberals will take as kindly to his criticisms of their theology is, in my opinion, less likely. Each chapter closes with some questions for further discussion and with suggested readings for liberals and evangelicals to acquaint them with the best thinking of the other side.

Coleman conducts a high-level discussion between liberals and evangelicals. At no time does he adduce a testimony from either camp that by its poor quality puts that side at a disadvantage. Reading his analysis of evangelical positions, for example, I was impressed again with the strength and beauty of evangelical theology and the astuteness of many of its ablest spokesmen. Coleman has grasped with considerable acumen the very heart of that theology. He does the same with liberal theology, and has if anything subjected it to greater criticism and demanded of it greater concessions.

The first chapter explores faith and Christology. How do we encounter Jesus Christ? Is it through meditation and prayer, or in the social context of worldly involvement? In evangelical theology, Coleman finds the basic movement of faith to be from the vertical to the horizontal, while in liberal theology it is the other way around. The same pattern appears in their Christologies: evangelicals emphasize the superhuman qualities of Christ that make him one with God, and liberals stress the human qualities of Jesus that make him one with man.

In the end, Coleman asks evangelicals to correct their often distorted image of Christ by recognizing his demand for costly discipleship. But of liberals he insists that they recognize the necessity of commitment to a Christ who is not simply an ethical model but the transcendent one who dwells in us. It seems that in this case Coleman is asking evangelicals to be more fully biblical and liberals to make a basic shift.

Chapters two and three give a superbly fair and accurate statement of the evangelical and liberal positions on revelation and inspiration. Coleman even defines correctly the current discussion within evangelicalism of biblical inerrancy; in keeping with his concern for fairness and balance, he in no way exploits this as a damaging weakness. The writer would like it if evangelicals would more readily accept the conclusions of biblical criticism, but he is by no means blind to the fact that they are already engaged in scholarly study of the Bible.

Indeed, his criticisms of liberal theology turn out to be much more damaging, his suggestions to it more demanding. The time has come for liberals to realize the destructive effect upon Christian faith of unrestricted biblical criticism. Coleman calls upon them to reconsider their attitude in the light of the very theological principles that move evangelicals so deeply. He is right to argue that if they would do that a new day would dawn in the relations between the two groups.

The fourth chapter talks about prayer, providence, and the world. On the evangelical side, Coleman is concerned about a view of prayer and providence that is insensitive to the innocent suffering in the world, though in accord with the biblical concept of a personal God active in the flow of history and open to fellowship with man in prayer. Liberal theology, on the other hand, has moved away from a biblical view of God as a free, gracious person, and needs to make a basic theological correction.

The final chapter concerns the Church and social involvement, a topic on which evangelicals are much exercised and on which they have already largely accepted the kind of suggestions Coleman proposes. Again, he chides liberals for leaving out of their social involvement a clear testimony to the liberating Gospel of Jesus.

This is a very good book, and we hope it will become the basis for fruitful dialogue between liberals and evangelicals. While most of us accept in principle the thesis that we can learn from one another, we are indebted to Coleman for a serious discussion of particular questions on which this is true. It is time we left behind the attitude “I have all the answers, you have all the problems” and began to encounter one another with understanding and love in the spirit of the Gospel.

Newly Published

How We Got Our Bible, by Ralph Earle (Baker, 119 pp., $1.50 pb). An excellent introduction to the origin, transmission, and translation of the Scriptures. Highly recommended for youth and adult classes and for those who are confused by the plethora of versions available today.

Church Alive, by William LaSor (Regal, 429 pp., $1.95 pb). A very good non-technical commentary on Acts by a respected scholar.

The Ministry of Pastoral Counseling, by James Hamilton (Beacon Hill Press [Box 527, Kansas City, Mo. 64141], 126 pp., $1.95 pb). An elementary guide for the minister with little or no training or experience in the field. Published by the Nazarenes.

Celebration of Life: Studies in Modern Fiction, by William R. Mueller (Sheed and Ward, 289 pp., $8.95). A fine treatment of such authors as Joyce, Ellison, Mann, and Kafka. Each of the four parts (three authors in each part) is preceded by an introduction explaining the thesis, which is taken from the Bible.

Understanding the Old Testament, edited by Jessie Lace, and The Making of the Old Testament, edited by Enid Mellor (Cambridge, 191 pp. and 214 pp., $6.95 each, $2.95 pb). Introductory volumes to the “Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible,” intending to make available in a non-technical way the consensus of academic Bible scholars. The first introduces Israel’s neighbors and surveys her history. The second focuses on the literatures of Israel and her neighbors and on the transmission of the Old Testament.

Lutheranism in North America, 1914–1970, by Clifford Nelson (Augsburg, 315 pp., $7.50), A People Called Cumberland Presbyterians, by Ben Barrus, Milton Baughn, and Thomas Campbell (Frontier [1978 Union Ave., Memphis, Tenn. 38104], 625 pp., $10), and The Mennonite Church in India, 1897–1962, by John Allen Lapp (Herald, 277 pp., $8.95). Major, thoroughly documented denominational studies.

Sect, Cult and Church in Alberta, by W. E. Mann (University of Toronto, 166 pp., $3.50 pb). In recent decades forthright evangelicals have had more to do with governing Alberta than any other province or state on the continent. The province may also have the largest number of distinct denominations in proportion to population. Reprint of a 1955 scholarly study.

A Study of Generations, edited by Merton P. Strommen, Milo Brekke, Ralph Underwager, and Arthur Johnson (Augsburg, 411 pp., $12.50). A thorough study of American Lutherans between the ages of 15 and 65 from their three largest denominations. A valuable research tool, not only for Lutherans. It helps dispel the stereotypes of the three bodies. (See News, August 11 issue, page 36).

Probing the New Testament, by A. M. Hunter (John Knox, 156 pp., $2.45 pb). Sixty-four word studies by the retired New Testament professor at Aberdeen.

The Kingdom of God Visualized, by Ray Baughman (Moody, 286 pp., $5.95). For those who can’t wait, a thorough description of the millennium in the more or less standard dispensational understanding.

Understanding the Bible Through History and Archaeology, by Harry Orlinsky (KTAV, 292 pp., $7.95). A short history of ancient Israel (first published in 1954) by a professor at Hebrew Union College is combined with numerous illustrations and the appropriate Hebrew texts plus English translation.

The Occult Explosion, by Nat Freedland (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 270 pp., $6.95), Magic: An Occult Primer, by David Conway (Dutton, 286 pp., $11.95), The Occult Revolution, by Richard Woods (Herder and Herder, 240 pp., $6.50), Demons in the World Today: A Study of Occultism in the Light of God’s Word, by Merrill Unger (Tyndale, 209 pp., $1.95 pb), and Occult Experimentation: A Christian View, by Pat Brooks (Moody, 16 pp., $.10 pb). Occultism is gaining ground on its opposite, naturalism, for the title of chief contemporary rival to Christianity. Freedland and Conway may be consulted cautiously only by mature Christians who want to know what occultists actually do in their rituals. (We warn as strongly as we can not to find out first-hand.) Woods, a Dominican, reflects on causes for the resurgence of ancient paganism. Unger explains the miraculous elements of the religion. Brooks’s pamphlet is for wide distribution.

A Search For Christian Identity, by Oscar C. Plumb (Exposition, 204 pp., $5). A practical handbook of Christian counseling and psychology. Rather vague theologically, it offers a smorgasbord of opinions on basic doctrines; but it does contain usable practical material.

Victory Through Persecution, by Kurt Koch (Kregel, 62 pp., $1 pb). On continuing revival in Korea.

Religious Perspectives in Faulkner’s Fiction: Yoknapatawpha and Beyond, edited by J. Robert Barth (Notre Dame, 233 pp., $8.95). Essays exploring the Calvinism of one of this country’s best modern novelists. The writers consider Faulkner’s major novels and stories as well as some of his lesser known, more difficult works.

Salvation and Health: The Interlocking Processes of Life (Westminster, 174 pp., $5.95). A Princeton Seminary professor discusses the integration of body and spirit in harmonious, purposeful activity as a condition for wholeness of life. The suggestion of the title that the book deals with the Christian doctrine of salvation from sin is misleading.

A House For Hope, by William A. Beardslee (Westminster, 192 pp., $5.95). An un-distinguished addition to the growing number of books that seek to derive hope from process philosophy and theology rather than from biblical revelation and promise. Occasional helpful insights.

On Nurturing Christians, by Wayne R. Rood (Abingdon, 174 pp., $2.75 pb). An attempt to suggest a challenging program for Christian education; the author presents a low view of Jesus, is sloppy in his use of biblical concepts, and does not consider a personal knowledge of Christ to be a goal of his “nurturing” process.

Journey Away From God, by Robert Benedict (Revell, 189 pp., $4.95). A Westinghouse engineer stresses the conflicts he finds between currently prevailing scientific views and the Scriptures. He shows why he thinks that God created everything in six days about eight to twelve millennia ago and that a universal flood occurred some two to four millennia subsequently.

Like a Great River: An Introduction to Hinduism, by Herbert Stroup (Harper & Row, 200 pp., $5.95). A clearly written, systematic, and laudably objective account that enables the biblically trained reader to see the difference between “Indo-Aryan” and biblical religion. Strangely, Stroup overlooks the part played by Western occultists and theosophists such as Helena Blavatsky and Annie Besant in the revival of Hinduism.

What Kind of God?, by Heinz Zahrnt (Augsburg, 279 pp., $5.95). Germany’s leading theological journalist struggles to make his country’s modernist theology seem, not apostate, but an attempt to communicate with that elusive creature, “modern man.” Heavily Germano-centric and turgid.

Atheism and Alienation, by Patrick Masterson (Notre Dame, 188 pp., $7.95). A balanced, judicious history of the genealogy of modern philosophical atheism. Masterson shows the dead end to which atheistic philosophies lead, but leaves us there with only a hint of a return to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Holiness and Mental Health: A Guidebook for Pastoral Counseling, edited by Alfred Joyce and Mark Stem (Paulist, 135 pp., $1.25 pb), Pastoral Care in the Modern Hospital, by Heije Faber (Westminster, 148 pp., $4.95), Pastoral Care and Pastoral Theology, by Ian McIntosh (Westminster, 160 pp., $5.50), and Door of Hope: Dealing With Hidden Troubles, by Louise Long (Abingdon, 189 pp., $2.95 pb). Something of practical help for the pastor can be gleaned from each of these books by experienced counselors.

Sermons, by Charles H. Spurgeon (eight volumes, Tyndale Bible Society [Box 6006, MacDill AFB, Fla. 33608], c. 105 pp. each, $1.50 each pb). Each volume contains about a dozen sermons on a particular topic, such as faith or humility.

God, Money and You, by George Otis (Revell, 126 pp., $3.95). Christians in hot pursuit of material gain might really “profit” from reading this personal book by a millionaire converted in midlife.

Christian Marriage and Family Relationships, by Norman Wright (available from the author [13800 Biola Ave., La Mirada, Cal. 90638], 97 pp., $5 pb). Pastors and teachers could make good use of this resource syllabus for a course on the family by a Talbot Seminary professor and licensed counselor.

Angels and Ministers of Grace, by M. J. Field (Hill and Wang, 135 pp., $5.95). A naturalistic explanation for biblical prophets and angels provoked by the author’s experience as a psychiatrist and ethnologist in west Africa.

World in Rebellion, by John E. Hunter (Moody, 143 pp., $1.95 pb). Looking at the prominence of rebellion in many areas of life, the author presents the biblical Gospel as the true answer to the restlessness signified by rebellion.

Beyond Cynicism: The Practice of Hope, by David O. Woodyard (Westminster, 112 pp., $2.95 pb). An attempt to get beyond the hopelessness of rationalistic cynicism by an irrational leap of faith that in some unclear way depends on Jesus. This book will not appeal to those looking for either intelligible or biblical content.

A Neglected Ministry

Successful Ministry to the Retarded, by Elmer L. Towns and Roberta L. Groff (Moody, 1972, 144 pp., $2.25 pb), is reviewed by Deborah C. Miller, a special-education major at the University of Maryland.

In this guide to understanding the physical and mental characteristics of the trainable retardate (I.Q. 30–55) and his learning potential, the authors illumine the retardate’s ability to know, understand, and accept the security and love of God. They stress the Sunday-school teacher’s role in developing this awareness in the retardate.

Trainables can and should be taught the plan of salvation on an elementary level. Their mental age is, of course, what primarily determines how accountable they are and what level of religious conceptualization they can reach.

The authors discuss programs for teaching retardates now in use in various churches in this country. They describe characteristics of a good teacher and tell of the importance of a teacher’s aide, concrete teaching methods, and a conducive setting.

The retardate’s learning is primarily a habit-forming process with more emphasis on conditioning than academic success. His learning processes can be encouraged through simple stories, playacting, pantomime, visual aids, creative art, and music. Religious concepts will mean more when expressed through channels other than language alone. The use of art and crafts and music allows the retardate to express feelings he cannot put into words, and gives him a sense of accomplishment.

Effective counseling methods are outlined that will help the retardate and his family accept him as the person he is. The importance of the counselor’s role in helping the retardate and his family cannot be stressed enough.

Although this book is intended for church and teacher use, it is recommended reading for anyone who wants to understand mental retardation.

HOW TO WIN THEOLOGICAL DEBATES

Here it is—the sequel to my popular “How to Confuse Laymen Forty-eight Sundays a Year”! You don’t have to wait another minute to learn how to win theological debates.

This isn’t just theory. These techniques work! You need to learn them if only for your own protection.

The old standard is the ad hominem technique. Don’t debate the issue; debate your opponent’s character.

Let’s take an example. Suppose someone says, “The plays of Tennessee Williams have more theology than all the modern ‘religious’ dramas put together.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re somewhat in the dark about Tennessee Williams and altogether ignorant of modern religious drama. You come back with something like, “The trouble with you, good friend, is that you want to write off the simple Christian who doesn’t have your theological awareness. You need to love and accept others no matter what their limitations!”

See how easily you’ve shifted the ground on him. Instead of challenging your non sequitur, an opponent will forget all about drama and come charging back with a defense of his character. If you can keep him off balance long enough the battle is won.

A variation of this technique involves overwhelming your opponent with smothering love. You put your arm around him in your most expansive manner, give him a brotherly hug, and simply say: “Bill, we love you even if you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’d probably prefer that you loathe him and answer his proposition, but it’s hard for a Christian to repudiate love. So he’ll smile weakly, drop the argument, and try to get away from you as soon as tactfully possible.

Non-direetive counseling provides another technique for non-debating. You reflect your opponent’s statement with a question mark at the end. To take the same example, with thoughtful look and furrowed brow you would respond: “You feel that Williams’s plays are essentially theological?”

Your opponent will think you know enough to question his thesis. He can’t afford to let you think he isn’t aware of all possible objections so he’ll begin to enumerate them.

He may respond with, “Oh, I know the religious plays seem more theological on the surface, but they lack understanding of the human dilemma!”

Now you have another question to hang around his neck: “I see, you feel Williams has real insight into the human dilemma?”

You can carry this on till your opponent has chased his tail for so long he’ll retire from the field exhausted.

A final technique is the “yes … and” method. With this method you can effectively reverse your opponent’s statement and so confuse the situation that he may agree with you. Suppose he says, “The Church must be concerned with redeeming the structures of society.”

Your answer is, “Yes, you’re exactly right, and to redeem the structures of society we must touch the hearts of men and bring them to a saving knowledge of Christ. You certainly hit the nail on the head!”

At this point the opposition will be confused. He can’t be sure you’re really trying to reverse his statement, and he won’t want to give up this kind of flattering support. So he’ll bend his position a little to give room for your amendment. If you play your cards right he may move away from his original position and remark to others what a perceptive mind you have.

Now go to it, friends. And just remember the one cardinal rule of theological debating: Never get sidetracked onto the issues.

TREATING UNIVERSALISM

The article “Presenting One Way to the Universalist” (July 28) was the most adequate and useful brief treatment of the subject we have seen. As you probably realize, the universalist viewpoint, with its related pantheistic attitude, is very popular, at least in a simplistic form, among young people today and provides the most common arguments against the claims of the Bible for these people.

Unfinished Business

Lennoxville, Quebec

Dr. Krishna rejects the view that “a loving God will surely receive a man sincerely seeking him in some remote region, such as Tibet, where the Gospel of Jesus Christ may never reach him at all.” This view is apparently rejected because “it makes Christian evangelism indefensible”.…

One should proceed with great caution when engaged in the business of listing and defining God’s actions, lest undue limits are placed upon Christ!… Should we not be willing to admit that Jesus may decide to reach that man in Tibet, regardless of geography and the availability of suitable evangelists?…

Let God do what he will! If Christ should decide to directly contact one who has no other means of hearing the Gospel, this certainly does not “make Christian evangelism indefensible.” It merely reinforces Christian evangelism. Shall the practice of medicine be considered indefensible because Christ sometimes effects miraculous cures?

Since Dr. Krishna opened his remarks with a quote of C. S. Lewis, I will close with one from Lewis’s Mere Christianity: “God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.” Lewis goes on to point out that such possibilities are no excuse (and certainly not a reason) for Christians to ignore the work that they are expected to do.

Los Alamos, N. Mex.

Let me express my appreciation of the fine testimony by Professor Krishna against Indo-Aryan universalism. I am in accord with the three areas in which he lifts up Christ: in his moral perfection, in his teaching, and in his resurrection. But does not the Gospel of John in the verse immediately following the one cited, that is, John 12:33, refer the text to still another way in which Christ was lifted up and in which we ought to lift him up as we present him to men: “This He said signifying what death He should die”? As often occurs there is a multiple meaning in John’s words, but certainly one of the meanings is that of presenting Jesus Christ as crucified in our stead.

Decatur, Ga.

THANKS FOR TIMELINESS

A friend made me a gift subscription to your fine magazine, and I want to thank you for recent timely articles which I found very interesting, particularly “Amish Education and Religious Freedom.” by Glenn D. Everett (June 9), and in the July 28 issue, Purushotman M. Krishna’s “Presenting One Way to the Universalist” … and the very understanding editorial “Whose Freedom?” about my denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Dr. Preus is carrying on valiantly.

Houston, Tex.

ON ROMAN INTOLERANCE

“A case can be made that much of the persecution of Protestants in certain countries with predominantly Catholic populations, such as Spain, has rightist political more than religious roots” (Editorials, “Neither Left Nor Right,” June 23). Not much of a case! The virtual total suppression of Protestant activity from 1939 to 1946, followed by the severe restrictions based upon legal disabilities from which Protestants suffered until recently, was based upon a concordat negotiated between Pope Pius XII and General Franco in terms of which Romanism was recognized as the established religion of Spain “to the exclusion of all others.” The sting was in the tail!

When, under world pressure, Franco endeavored to alleviate the legal and actual restrictions upon Protestants, the existence of this concordat proved a major stumbling-block.

The basis of Roman intolerance is the doctrine that Rome is the one and only true Christian church. That doctrine was not repudiated by Vatican Council II. In fact, it was emphatically reaffirmed in the document on religious liberty.

The Protestant Association Secretary of South Africa

Cape Town, South Africa

SECURE SECURITY

I have been a reader of your magazine for some years, and generally find the material it contains both interesting and helpful. But in the July 28 issue there is a brief editorial, “Insecure Security,” on which I am moved to comment.…

There is no duplicity in the Social Security system, and it seems to me most unfortunate that a magazine such as yours should make such a statement.…

Social Security has never failed an eligible person. Over 27 million persons are receiving regular monthly income under this program, insurance benefits paid for by the contribution of covered workers and their employers. And there is adequate provision for the future—unless Congress should take an unprecedented step and increase benefits without increasing contributions proportionately.…

The editorial states, … “Unlike private pension plans, however, the ‘trust fund’ is not invested but is spent for current expenses.… The insurance company would invest his money, the government merely spends it.” Surely there is misunderstanding here.… The trust fund … is managed by a Board of Trustees who report regularly to Congress on the state of the fund. The money in the fund can be used only to pay benefits to eligible persons, or for administration of the program, or it may be invested. The only way the government can get the money for current expenses is to borrow it from the fund, just as it borrows money from insurance companies, or banks, or individuals, by selling bonds. When a sufficient balance accumulates in the fund the trustees buy such bonds, and the fund earns interest on the bonds, as any owner would.…

To speak of the fund being bankrupt is nonsense. In the fiscal year 1970–71 … the assets of the fund increased by $1.7 billion.

Former member

U.S. Social Security Board

Washington, D. C.

CARING FOR THE ORPHANS

Your July 28 news article titled “Korean Orphan Appeal: How Long?” was commendable. It was well researched and … is a real contribution toward both better understanding of real needs of the children and better ways of solving these needs.…

The Christian Reformed World Relief Committee has endorsed foster care for several years. It has gone one step further in initiating an in-country adoption program known as “CAPOK”—Christian Adoption Program of Korea.… In 1969 CAPOK was licensed as the first in-country adoption program in Korea. A total of 1,500 adoptions have been completed. The work continues at a level of 200 or more children each year and is gradually being handled by an indigenous staff.… Our concern now is that national Christians will administer, support, and continue the program. Then the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee will also be ready to phase out of Korea.

Executive Director

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee

Grand Rapids, Mich.

RESTORING THE L.C.A.

There are many ultra conservative Lutherans who would probably like your canceling out of the Lutheran Church in America, but I suspect that in spite of your statistical report (News, “The Lutheran Generation,” August 11) the LCA considers itself very much a part of living Lutheranism. One doesn’t just typeset out three million Lutherans—before judgment day, anyway!

Ebenezer Lutheran Church

Milwaukee, Wisc.

• You’re right. The LCA lost only 38,000 members last year.—ED.

EDITORIAL FINE ART

Your editorial entitled “Whose Freedom?” (July 28) was a masterpiece of insight expressed very succinctly. The issue is indeed whether or not the AATS will intimidate its member seminaries when they teach unpopular doctrines regarding the Scriptures or anything else. Permit me to offer additional thoughts for another article:

1. Why have not the Concordia seminary faculty and its Board of Control appealed the AATS-imposed probation, as the AATS constitution permits?

2. Should not seminary vice-president Arthur Repp now resign his position as vice-president of the AATS to avoid a conflict of interest?

You did a real service to your readership by exposing the AATS action for what it is. I sincerely hope many in our Synod will profit by the editorial and refuse to “knuckle under” to the demands of the AATS and those among us who would use the threat of loss of accreditation to stifle a faithful witness to Christ and his Word.

University Lutheran Church

Muncie, Ind.

Indeed, with or without “official” or unofficial “accreditation,” no church can survive as a true church of Jesus Christ if it cannot—or will not—teach its future pastors to rely on the sole, supreme, sufficient authority of Scripture, involving both its truthfulness and trustworthiness.

With the Father’s full heavenly “accreditation” (baptism and transfiguration) the Teacher come from God told those in disagreement with his teaching (and interpretation), “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). Who approves—“accredits”—whom, and why, and how?

Trinity Lutheran Church

Billings, Mont.

I wish to thank you for printing “Whose Freedom?” The last few sentences express exactly my feelings in this matter concerning Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

San Antonio, Tex.

CRUSADE COVERAGE

Leslie K. Tarr’s news article “Graham in Cleveland: Action at Second Base” (August 11) provided excellent coverage of the crusade.… One thought from a fan not only of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and Billy Graham but also of the Cleveland Indians: please note that Frank Duffy is the shortstop and Jack Brohamer relinquished his second-base position to Graham.

Zionsville, Pa.

ANSWERING THE HUMANISTS

Thank you so much for running the article on Matthew 25:31–46, “On Separating Sheep From Goats” (August 11). I must admit that I, too, have been intimidated by the humanist’s use of this passage. One of my colleagues used to use it to prove that the approach in Robinson’s Honest to God was based on biblical teaching. I never knew exactly how to respond, except with the same rejoinder that Thebeau used, that such a universalistic interpretation flatly contradicted most of the New Testament. Thebeau’s suggestion that a favorable response to the Christian message is implied in the parable is also suggested by the fact that the righteous replied to Christ by calling him “Lord.”

Pepperdine University

Los Angeles, Calif.

Someone goofed on that sheep-goat article. Since when must we separate faith and works? You can separate between sheep and goats, and between faith and works as steps of experience, but you always find both faith and works in the same person! You find the means of salvation and the mark of salvation in the same person if he lives long enough after regeneration, but that doesn’t mean that the mark is the means.

Cynthiana Baptist Church

Cynthiana, Ky.

Thebeau begins his exegesis with the assumption that the judgment in the passage is of nations as corporate nations, and that the sheep and goats are nations. This interpretation leads to theological problems as serious as those of the “social-gospel advocates.” Does he mean to imply that the eternal destiny of the individual citizens of a nation is to be determined by the conduct of the nation as a whole?…

Obviously the judgment in the passage is of individuals.… The ta ethne of the passage refers to the nations of the world—the Gentiles—in the sense of the whole human race as over against just the Jews or Israel. The same word translated “nations” is used in the Great Commission and by Paul in Romans 16:26 in this sense.…

Christ is not speaking of the basis or means by which an individual becomes a sheep or goat but is speaking of the distinguishing marks of sheep and goats—and there is a vast difference.… His sheep hear his voice and follow him—they do his will.

(REV.) DOUGLAS ROGERS

Rock Hill, Mo.

The author errs in equating the judgment of Matthew 25:31–46 with the Last Judgment of Revelation 20:11–15, which involves the resurrected wicked dead. The judgment of Matthew 25 is a judgment of the living nations at the revelation of Christ at his Second Coming and occurs on the earth, not in heaven as the Last Judgment does, and transpires immediately preceeding the Millennium (see also Joel 3:2).

Little Rock, Ark.

AIDING CHRISTIAN LOVE

I think that the cartoon page “As Christians See One Another” in the August 11 issue was great. If Christians can start getting past the stereotyping of those who take an opposite position, meaningful discussion can take place, and true Christian love can win out. You are aiding the cause.

Kokomo, Ind.

MIXED ALLIANCES

A friend has just called my attention to a reference in a recent issue of your magazine to my father’s statement urging cooperation among Christians (“Getting It Together For Jesus,” July 7). I think it is quite typical of New Evangelical ethics that you would take a dead man’s quotation out of context and misapply it to make it appear that he was urging the very thing which he spent his life opposing—compromise with infidelity, cultism, Roman Catholicism, and apostasy. My father’s reference to receiving a hound dog if he came barking for Jesus Christ was used in opposing division among Bible-believing Christians because of doctrinal interpretations, another thing altogether from the sort of mixed alliances advocated by Key 73. My father never considered a man as serving Jesus Christ if that man was taking honors from the Roman Catholic Church, the World Council, and apostasy.

Chancellor

Bob Jones University

Greenville, S. C.

EXPOSING ATROCITIES

In regard to your editorial, “The Immoral Antidote” in the July 7 issue, your remarks about the atrocities mentioned by Mr. Wurmbrand and Roman Braga needed to be printed. Your last paragraph was unnecessary, especially the phrase “excessive repetition”.… With the heavy barrage of left-wing propaganda about “religious freedom” in Russia, the contributions of these men are appreciated. When Americans are calling for amnesty to draft-dodgers and an end to “the immoral war” in Viet Nam, we need to be reminded that the Communists are bloodthirsty revolutionaries who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.…

The American people have become apathetic because of so many years of tranquility. It almost went unnoticed when our Navy men of the U.S.S. Pueblo reported similar atrocities they suffered in North Korea. You should have hailed Wurmbrand’s report and invited him to write an article exposing other atrocities. Wurmbrand is rapidly writing an appendix, twentieth-century style, to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

Broadbay Hills Baptist Church

Winston-Salem, N. C.

ON OBSERVING THE SABBATH

In regard to the your editorial “Sunday Laws and Human Welfare” (July 28): the author does no better job in trying to conceal the real issue than a kitten hiding under the bed while his tail is showing.… He can spare his crocodile tears for the store employee. One cannot be sure that given certain time off from regular work he will use it properly and according to ideal principles. Nor must he be compelled in this respect if we wish to continue to be a free nation under God.

Many merchants are of Jewish origin. They were emphatically taught to observe the real fourth commandment given to man from creation to everlasting as a sign between God and his people. How would we feel if the Jew tried to force us to observe the Sabbath of the Decalogue, the only day bearing God’s blessing? Can we then justify ourselves in palming off to him another day which bears only the inscription of tradition?

Santa Rosa, Calif.

In an editorial entitled “Insecure Security” (July 28 issue) we criticized the system of Social Security currently practiced in the United States—not the desirability of retirement, survivors’, and disability benefits, but the confusing and, we believe, misleading terminology and arguments used to sell Social Security to the voting public. The editorial called forth a swarm of comments from readers (see, for example, p. 21).

We do not suggest that the U. S. government is going to default on its promises, but we do feel there is a notable gap between what is being promised and what is being done to make fulfillment possible. We asked an independent financial analyst to present the facts of the situation as he sees them. Elgin Groseclose is a financial consultant with Groseclose, Williams and Associates in Washington, D. C., and executive director of the Institute for Monetary Research.

When the Lord provided the Children of Israel with manna each day sufficient for the day, those who saved it for the morrow found that “it bred worms and stank.” Those who find in the Bible economic wisdom as well as divine truth may ponder the Israelite experience with manna in considering the efforts, public and private, to set aside financial reserves against old age, incapacity, or unemployment. Under the prevailing monetary system and theory, financial reserves are like manna, with a “taste of wafers made with honey” that nevertheless melt, when the sun of adversity arises, into nothing.

The reason is that money has ceased to represent tangible wealth and is no more than an evidence of debt, either public or private. To be precise, a bank balance or savings account may appear to be a solid reserve to the depositor, but what he holds is only the IOU of the institution: the bank or the savings institution promptly disburses the sum as a loan that the lender immediately spends for either goods or services. The insubstantiality of the deposit is concealed by a facade of guarantees, public and private, and by the continual replenishment of the institution’s funds by new deposits. One need only postulate a community crisis, such as a universal bank failure like that of 1933, or an invasion by a foreign foe, to discover the fragility of money. In such an event, unlikely but not inconceivable, where would these reserves be?

Some people consider Federal Reserve notes and other currency that misers store in old trunks to be safer than the bank. These, too, are no more than notes of hand, no longer backed by any precious substance such as gold.

The implications of this are not always clear to advocates of a public pension system such as the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Fund, commonly known as Social Security. (It is this fund, not the Disability Insurance Fund or other programs, that is the subject of this article.) Again, no tangible wealth supports the reserve, since it is invested in bonds, that is, debt obligations. Moreover, what hastens the impermanence—the manna quality—of the OASI reserve is that the funds represented by the bonds are largely sterile and non-productive, adding an inflationary leverage to the economy and thereby diminishing the value of the dollars collected. This is because the OASI reserve—unlike one’s private savings in, say, a building and loan society, which flow into wealth creating uses like new homes—is invested in government bonds and hence devoted to financing federal deficits incurred in support of what is generally regarded as non-productive expenditures, such as foreign aid, foreign military costs, and welfare payments to persons not working or producing.

This is not the extent of the inflationary, or dollar-depreciating, consequences of Social Security. Contrary to its name and the fond belief of many, the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Fund is not insurance as commonly understood. Insurance implies the existence of reserves accumulated from premiums and interest payments thereon sufficient to meet computed liabilities. Actuarial estimates made in 1959 by W. Rulon Williamson, former actuary of the system, calculated that under the benefits then in effect the unfunded actuarial liability was between $350 and $650 billion, depending upon the mode of calculation, as against an accumulation in the fund of less than $35 billion. This is, of course, fortunate; if the fund were actuarially sound it would provide such a reservoir for deficit financing, such an engine of inflation, as to appall the most ardent Keynesian.

As another leading actuary, Geoffrey N. Calvert, long ago pointed out in a government brief before the Supreme Court, “Social security must be viewed as a welfare instrument to which legal concepts of ‘insurance,’ ‘property,’ ‘vested rights,’ ‘annuities,’ etc. can be applied only at the risk of a serious distortion of language.” There is no paid-in or cash surrender value, and a wage-earner normally has to reach age sixty-five—a matter out of human hands—to obtain benefits from his many years of payments. Even his widow, if he dies prematurely, cannot benefit until she attains age sixty-two.

That the OASI is in fact a pay-as-you-go system is illustrated by the results from the 1970 fiscal year, for which the trustees of the fund reported net “contributions” (euphemism for taxes) of $30 billion and benefit payments of $26 billion. This flow of funds does not lessen the inflationary impact; rather, it accelerates it, for again, under the peculiar theory in which the system was conceived, beneficiaries are discouraged from engaging in productive activities by the penalty imposed on earnings in excess of $1,680 a year. The net result of this is to take out of the productive economy some 30 million persons, most of whom are still socially and economically useful, while at the same time injecting some $26 billion of purchasing power. This creates the classical imbalance between money in circulation and goods in the market that pushes prices upward and the value of the dollar downward.

The melting of the manna of Social Security may be traced in the declining value of the benefits. The dollars that wage-earners paid in during the early years of the system have now dissolved to about a third of their original purchasing power—partly the effect of a system that enables a government continually to run into debt (a phenomenon, incidentally, that began with the Social Security system and has run concurrently with it ever since).

The idea that a Social Security system is the national equivalent of the “well-stocked family cellar,” to which the arch-conservative Herbert Hoover was wont to refer, is an illusion whose recent historic parallel is that which held the French nation in thrall when John Law proposed to coin the very soil of the realm into money.

To conclude, economists and churchmen have yet to deal with the implications of our Lord’s injunction, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”

The foundation of the Church is Jesus Christ. Scripture reveals him, and therefore it has been regarded by the Church as the written Word of God and held in highest esteem. The testimony of the Church to Scripture is one in which its inspiration, authority, and infallibility have been taught, and its truth-claim accepted. In recent times, however, a sustained interest in comparative religion and biblical higher criticism has challenged the truth-claim of Scripture and called into question the normative orthodox view of revelation, inspiration, authority, and infallibility. Therefore, some word must be said about the canon of Scripture and the attitude of the Church toward it over the centuries.

Iii Historical Summary

1. The canon of Scripture. Historically, which books belonged in the Old Testament and the New Testament was determined differently. In Jesus’ day, the Greek Septuagint (Old Testament) already existed and included not only the Old Testament books that Protestants generally acknowledge to be canonical but also the apocryphal books, which they do not accept. The latter were written in Greek.

The Old Testament Scripture was divided into three categories: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The books of the Law and the Prophets were firmly fixed by New Testament times. But there were differences of opinion about certain of the books included in the Writings. By A.D. 90, Josephus could write that the canon of the Old Testament was fixed and unalterable and did not include the apocryphal books. It has even been asserted by some that the rabbis at the Council of Jamnia (c. A.D. 100) excluded the Apocrypha from the Old Testament canon. The Apocrypha, which the Jews did not regard as canonical, was included in Jerome’s Vulgate, although he did so reluctantly. This was generally accepted by the Church as part of Scripture from the fourth century. The Reformers, however, refused to regard the Apocrypha as Scripture since it was not included in the Hebrew canon, although it was in the Greek Septuagint. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent (1545–63) continued to include the Apocrypha as part of the canon of Old Testament.

The canon of the New Testament was fixed after a long battle. By the end of the second century, the four gospels and thirteen letters of Paul were universally regarded as Scripture, and by the end of the fourth century, the New Testament as now known was fixed, although doubts persisted about the books of Hebrews, Jude, Second Peter, Second and Third John, and the Revelation.

2. Jesus and Josephus and the Old Testament. It is certain that Jesus was familiar with the Hebrew Old Testament canon and unequivocally affirmed that its books are inspired, infallible, and authoritative. Liberal and conservative scholars alike generally agree that Jesus believed, as the Jews of his day did, that the Old Testament was inerrant and everywhere binding on men. So did the apostles of Jesus. Moreover, nothing in the gospels suggests that Jesus ever raised any questions about the truth-claims of the Old Testament.

The Jewish historian Josephus, in his treatise Contra Apionem, insisted on the inviolability of the Old Testament and did so in words that called for complete historical reliability and freedom from error. Eusebius, the church historian, quoted Josephus as believing that the Old Testament books had unique authority and sanctity, that they were to be regarded as “oracles of God,” and that they contained no discrepancies of fact.

3. The early church fathers. Once the question of the canon was settled it was almost universally believed that the books of the Bible were the infallible Word of God written. It is true that inspiration and infallibility were not pivotal issues as the Christological controversies were. Some of the early churchmen held to a mechanical dictation view of the process of inscripturation, and all of them spoke of Scripture in the highest terms and agreed that it was the ultimate source of authority.

In the Appeal to the Greeks (8, 38), the unknown author clearly accepted verbal inspiration, although he seemed to limit inspiration to that which had for its purpose the impartation of religious truths. Justin Martyr (Dialogue With Trypho, 65) held to full inspiration and authority, declaring that there are no contradictions in Scripture. Athenagoras (A Plea For the Christians, 9) believed that the writers were passive human instruments played upon by God as men play on harps. Irenaeus (Against Heresies, I, 10; III, 16; IV, 20, 34) said God came upon the writers of Scripture so that they had perfect knowledge on every subject. He called the Scriptures “perfect.” Tertullian (On Prescription Against Heretics, 22) averred that the Holy Spirit so aided the writers of Scripture “that there was nothing of which they were ignorant.”

Augustine was undoubtedly the greatest of the church fathers. Of the Scriptures he wrote (Letters of St. Augustine, LXXXII, 3):

For I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it. As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teachings as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves, or by arguments addressed to my reason. I believe, my brother, that this is your opinion as well as mine. I do not need to say that I do not suppose you to wish your books to be read like those of the prophets or of the apostles, concerning which it would be wrong to doubt that they are free from error.

4. The Roman Catholic Church. This church has consistently taught that the Bible is inspired and also that it is inerrant. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910 edition, p. 48) says:

For the last three centuries there have been authors—theologians, exegetes, and especially apologists, such as Holden, Rohling, Lenormont, di Bartoli, and others—who maintained, with more or less confidence, that inspiration was limited to moral and dogmatic teaching, excluding everything in the Bible relating to history and the natural sciences. They think that, in this way, a whole mass of difficulties against the inerrancy of the Bible would be removed. But the Church has never ceased to protest against this attempt to restrict the inspiration of the sacred books. This is what took place when Mgr. d’Hulst, Rector of the Institut Catholique of Paris, gave a sympathetic account of this opinion in “Le Correspondent” of 25 Jan. 1893. The reply was quickly forthcoming in the Encyclical “Providentissimus Deus” of the same year. In that Encyclical Leo XIII said: “It will never be lawful to restrict inspiration to certain parts of the Holy Scriptures, or to grant that the sacred writer could have made a mistake. Nor may the opinion of those be tolerated, who, in order to get out of these difficulties, do not hesitate to suppose that Divine inspiration extends only to what touches faith and morals, on the false plea that the true meaning is sought less in what God has said than in the motive for which He has said it.” In fact, a limited inspiration contradicts Christian tradition and theological teaching.

As for the inerrancy of the inspired text it is to the Inspirer that it must finally be attributed, and it matters little if God has insured the truth of His scripture by the grace of inspiration itself, as the adherents of verbal inspiration teach, rather than by a providential assistance.

The Roman Catholic Church did not stop with biblical infallibility. It added tradition as an additional source of revelation, and the magisterium (teaching authority) of the church was used to determine the meaning of Scripture. Thus the church built upon the doctrine of the church fathers and exceeded anything they could have imagined.

5. The Reformers. The Reformation represented a return to the teachings of the apostles and prophets. The Reformers vigorously opposed tradition as a source of revelation. They had no patience with the magisterium of the Church. Sola scriptura to the Reformers meant the Bible alone, minus tradition. It left no room whatever for the Church as the final teaching authority. The universal priesthood of all believers brought interpretation of the Scripture back to the individual under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Churches, creeds, and men were all subject to the Scripture and nothing else.

6. Warfield and liberalism. At no time during the first nineteen centuries of the Christian era did the question of inspiration and authority rack the Church as did the Christological and anthropological controversies of the early centuries when the nature of the pre-incarnate and the incarnate Christ and the Augustinian-Pelagian differences were being decided. Only from the nineteenth century on, when German higher criticism and the study of the comparative religion dominated the scene, did inspiration, infallibility, and authority become a watershed.

During the last one hundred years there have been radical departures from both Reformation and Catholic views of Scripture. In Protestantism, it was highlighted at the turn of the century by the struggle between the Princeton divines (the Hodges and Warfield) and their opponents, a key leader of whom was Charles Augustus Briggs of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In the ensuing battle, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. affirmed the views of Warfield, and Briggs was defrocked. The 1920s became a battlefield over biblical inspiration for Presbyterians and many other denominations. Liberalism triumphed over orthodoxy by the 1930s in America even while Europe was embracing the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth, whose work on Romans appeared in 1919. By the mid-1930s liberalism’s advance appeared to have been halted decisively by neo-orthodoxy, and orthodoxy itself seemed to have gained a new lease on life. In the 1940s neo-evangelicalism became a live option, but its impetus was hampered quickly when, having been established as a counterbalance to fundamentalism on the right and neo-orthodoxy and liberalism on the left, it was itself fractured by the inroads of higher criticism.

It appears that the inspiration of the Scripture will continue to be a pivotal problem for the Church at large. There is little doubt that any marked departure from the historic view of the Church on this matter leads to further heresies and finally to apostasy.

American education careens from generation to generation, supported at times by a heady idealism, at other times by financial expediency. We have passed from a period of optimism into the latter stages of widespread distress over the state of our schools.

Uniformly, writers on education in America recognize the symptoms of the problem; they are too apparent to be ignored. These symptoms range from reading inefficiency throughout whole schools to intellectual malaise among graduate students in selective universities. They manifest themselves in parental outrage and in armed encounters between undergraduates and the National Guard. But these, we point out again, are only symptoms of the problem. Treating any or all of them does nothing to eliminate the problem itself, for the problem in today’s education is, at root, the problem with today’s society: it is glutted with its own secularism.

The restoration of personal values is what today’s youth seek. They want to become, as Paul Tournier puts it, “whole persons in a broken world.” Even the Port Huron Statement, issued in 1962 by Students for a Democratic Society, cannot be ignored in spite of subsequent violence committed in the name of SDS. It said, in part:

We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love.… We oppose the depersonalization that reduces human beings to the status of things.… Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distances between man and man today.

“Our most pressing educational problem,” says Charles Silberman, “is not how to increase the efficiency of the schools; it is how to create and maintain a humane society.” Yet a humane society can never be derived from a secular matrix, for secularism, with its emphasis upon things as opposed to persons, lacks humaneness and human concern. But there is and always has been a solution available to those who wish it. The American tradition of freedom of choice in education has preserved the American independent schools and among them the Christian schools practicing Christian education.

Christian education takes as its view of the world the assumption, in St. Paul’s words, that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.” The Christian educator must offer training for the mind and body; he must prepare his students for their responsibilities in society. But he must also point them to their need to find favor with God. This he will do by example as well as by direct teaching. His aim in so doing will always be to lead his students and himself in inquiring after the two ultimate questions asked long ago by St. Paul: “Who art thou, Lord?” and “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”

It should be clear to anyone close to American public schools that what Jacques Ellul calls the “technological state” intends to eliminate the human teacher. He will be replaced by a machine in as many instances as practicable, as soon as possible. So says the most influential of the behavioral psychologists, B. F. Skinner: “You can teach much more effectively with devices of one kind or another. In the future they will be commonplace in all instructional situations.”

Although the arguments offered in favor of Skinner’s “teaching machines” are often related to dollars, the primary reason advocated is not merely financial. It is, instead, “educational accountability,” a piece of jargon that measures the degree to which a teacher—human or mechanical—can bring the class to a prescribed level of accomplishment, following a prescribed program of study. The measurement is calculated in terms of “behavioral change.” “That’s all teaching is,” Skinner says, “arranging contingencies which bring about changes in behavior.”

Presumably a human teacher could help his class achieve these “behavioral changes,” although Skinner suggests otherwise. The human teacher possesses dangerous liabilities as far as technology is concerned. He has his own opinions; he is also capable of veering from the approved syllabus. Not so the obedient computer. It is never sick or late or preoccupied with personal problems. It is steady, reliable, and therefore efficient.

Hildegard Hilton, writing in the Connecticut English Journal, reports on an editorial in an educational products catalog. It complains that among “impediments to objective evaluation of products” is “the teaching profession’s concern for children rather than things.” Can this be so?

No wonder, then, that our youth rebel, that the interdiction on an IBM card—“Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate”—has become a slogan for a generation that sees itself, again in Ellul’s words, “smoothed out, like a pair of pants under a steam iron.”

The result of technocracy’s reduction of man to a cybernetic cipher will be, to quote Stanley Burnshaw, “to break through the seamless web” of our wholeness as physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual beings. When that happens, Burnshaw contends, man will have experienced the loss of Eden all over again. He will know, to his sorrow, the loss of “the primary pattern of human awareness and consciousness: the unitary condition of the species—man in a seamless web of relationships.”

It is this web of relationships that marks the Christian school as long as it continues its heritage: the well-trained, loving teacher caring for the body, mind, and soul of his pupil. This fact will before long distinguish the Christian school from its dehumanizing counterparts; it will also turn the Christian school into a place of refuge for parents who wish to retain the personhood of their children.

In some schools, shorthanded by financial difficulties, the pragmatic can-do teacher seems more useful than the philosophical theorist. Yet it is wrong to assign the value of any Christian teacher on the basis of either/or—either the man of action or the man of reflection. Instead Christian education needs a both/and approach—both the philosophical study of Christian education with its difficult questions and a practical testing of the applications derived from that study. This duality ought to be part of the equipment of every teacher who presumes to serve in the Christian school.

We need Christian art and scholarship practiced by Christian artists and scholars. Those who qualify will be recognizable through willingness to give witness to their personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord; through their desire to use their art and intellect to communicate the love of God to the whole world; through their earnest efforts to follow the aesthetic and spiritual principles laid down in the Scriptures, particularly in St. Paul’s admonition, “Whatever is true … honorable … just … pure … lovely … think about these things.”

They will differ from artists and scholars who are not Christian in several respects, not the least of which is the worth accorded the human being as a potential child of God, reconciled to him by faith. The Christian artist, the Christian scholar, will have as his “unifying principle,” to quote Frank Gaebelein, “the recognition that all truth is God’s truth.” This will be his axiom. He will know, with Maritain, that “truth does not depend on us but on what is.” As for what is, the Christian will find that authoritatively stated in the Bible. Thus truth—the truth about God and man, time and eternity, redemption and judgment—he will take as his world-view, the promontory from which he looks out upon life.

The Christian world-view, encompassing all knowledge within the framework of God’s truth, does not admit of compromise. There is no such thing as part-time Christian education. One cannot decide as an English teacher, for example, to stress the evident implications of Christian truth in King Lear or A Farewell to Arms and not insist upon the same standard of truth in the teaching of rhetoric or grammar. The fact that these implications may be somewhat more difficult for the teacher to discern is no indication that they are not present. Too often the failure of professing Christian teachers to find the integration of truth and their discipline results from their inadequate grasp of the subject. Better scholarship produces better saints.

In total candor, it must be said that when a Christian teacher does not represent the whole truth about his subject, including its implicit spiritual ramifications, he is guilty of a serious omission. To the degree that he stands aside from what he knows to be a fuller description of truth, the Christian teacher has diminished his students’ apperception of truth.

The most urgent issues for a Christian curriculum may be summed up by the great Christian commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” To love the Lord God is more than a spiritual act; to love one’s neighbor is more than an emotional gesture; to love and respect oneself is more than a psychological necessity. These are also to be expressed through our minds, through a conscious appreciation of the grandeur of God and the relationship we experience with him and others.

It is no cheap formula to say that love for God may be stimulated through the study of mathematics and science as descriptions of the universe he has created. Love for neighbor may be engendered by a study of world history, anthropology, geography, the languages and cultures of other people. Love and respect for self, which Jesus tied to love for others, may be developed through an appreciation for the total human being; it may also result from the study of literature, national history, and art; it should come from a growing desire to express oneself in language and in other forms of communication.

The curriculum of the Christian school must instill in its students a respect for the past; it must prepare them for the future. But it cannot afford to ignore its responsibilities in the present. Christianity for too long has given its energies to past and future, earning from some critics an accusation of being an obscurantist religion. To be relevant means to be pertinent to the times. The present struggles in American society will continue to be upon us, no doubt in greater intensity, in the years ahead. The Christian school must bring upon these conflicts the light of its biblical perspective.

Issues such as citizenship, poverty, race, and war must be discussed with openness. Current events, about which so many Americans seem oblivious, must not be treated lightly by the Christian educator. The Twenty-sixth Amendment now enfranchises the eighteen-year-old. What will be his political philosophy? The Christian school must accept the bulk of responsibility for enlightening each of its pupils to the political process. Here again, the wholly sedentary approach must be discarded. Students from every Christian school must converge on political assemblies—from town meetings to the Congress of the United States. They must meet local legislators, county executives, and town supervisors of highways and sewers. They must learn why traffic lights seem to take an inordinate length of time to be installed; they must come to understand why the selling of detergents has been banned in their county; they must know both sides of the welfare problem, the housing problem, the labor-management problem.

Idols In A Museum

Skinny green goddesses

shrined in glass boxes—

incense-drencht, deep-carvd

temple walls

lit with hidden tubes—

a huge fresco of Buddha

& 10,000 flower worlds—

a weatherd statue

of a zen monk listening

to one foot passing—

before these bits of stone,

wood, fading paint,

pass the art students,

the noisy families who

don’t hear the chants trappt

in old walls.

In their sterile air

the idols smell no

incense, devour no grain,

or blood … are fed

on the idle stares of tourists,

honord by the guide’s lecture.

On another floor,

in a medieval chapel,

shadows genuflect

to a Christ fixt in wooden

agony—but the prints

of pierced feet lead out

to sunshine.

EUGENE WARREN

For the Christian school to achieve success in its mission requires a new attitude toward excellence. As D. Elton Trueblood has warned, “We must, as Christians, stress excellence. Holy shoddy is still shoddy.” To an embarrassing degree some Christian schools have fostered a spirit of contentment with the second-rate as long as the spiritual attitude remains commendable. Such schools, James Kallas says, offer “a substitution of piety for intellectual effort.” Well-meaning teachers encourage pseudo-Christian explications of literature (Penelope is the faithful Church waiting for the imminent return of Odysseus as emblematic of the Second Coming of Christ).

But Joseph Haroutunian rightly insists, “Christian schools must educate better and not worse than secular schools.” To do so requires a commitment to excellence from each administrator, teacher, and staff worker; it requires the daily practice of such a commitment. In the pursuit of excellence no aspect of the school’s daily business or the individual teacher’s behavior can be set aside as unrelated to the goal. No activity or gesture may be discounted. The school will be what the man is, and the man is known by his common traits.

Yet a warning is necessary to the Christian artist and scholar and to the Christian school pursuing excellence. The pitfall of intellectual pride awaits the haughty, as the Book of Proverbs warns. No teacher, whatever his religious profession, was ever truly successful if his pedagogy became mere pedantry, a show of his superior knowledge. H. L. Mencken advised that the best teacher is “one who is essentially childlike.” Certainly it is not the man who knows much who is the excellent teacher but the man who knows how to express what he knows so that others may learn it.

In one of the truly profound statements about education, Alfred North Whitehead says, “Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness.” Unfortunately, Whitehead’s definition of greatness, in the context of his remark, rises no higher than the classical literature of Greece and Rome. The Christion artist and scholar, the Christian school, knows a higher source. Examples of purposeful living and estimable character are inadequate of themselves unless they point to the source of true excellence, in the Person of Jesus Christ the Lord.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the English Department at the Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This essay is excerpted from his book “The Way They Should Go,” to be released this fall, and is used by permission of the publisher, Oxford University Press.

Is there an environmental crisis? The accumulative impact of recent disasters and the publication of stirring books have created a general sense of crisis since 1969, but there remains considerable confusion about the problem and how to solve it.

Some experts say there is no problem. These “cornucopia economists” assure us there is still standing room available on earth, even though the global population will double by the end of this century to about seven billion people. Some over-specialized scientists who have eyes only for their own highly developed disciplines don’t entirely deny the crisis but cling to the assertion that we have a lot to learn about our environment. They ask, for example, how we can fight air pollution when we are still ignorant of the nature of 70 per cent of the pollutants in the atmosphere. And of course there are businessmen with vested interests as resource-users who assume environmental deterioration is only a technical issue anyway, one that other techniques can solve.

On the other hand, politicians generally affirm that there is a crisis, as evidenced by new legislation enacted in many countries, by the United Nations environmental conference held in Stockholm in June, by the several UNESCO conferences already held, and by the support of celebrations like Conservation Year and Earth Day. Environmentalists have been alarmed for some time. Now moralists of many persuasions are beginning to think of the crisis as one not just of the physical environment but also of society.

Beyond these technical controversies, however, there are five basic causes of confusion that Christians should be warned against. After all, Jesus himself admonished his disciples, “Take care that no one misleads you” (Matt. 24:4).

1. Beware of panaceas and fads. It seems inherent in man to look for simple answers to complex problems. He seems to symbolize his needs in this manner and to confuse the symbols with the actual remedies. Is this true of the present environmental issue? Is it a gimmick of our day, born yesterday and gone tomorrow? Is it just a symptom of change, a simplistic symbol of man’s unease concerning his whole destiny?

Some suspect the ecology issue because it has appeared so suddenly. Before 1969 the general public was scarcely aware of it. True, George Perkins Marsh had given dire warnings in his book Man and the Land, published in 1874. But Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring didn’t appear until 1962. Between these two events only professional groups such as conservationists and geographers were really awake to the issue. A few years ago ecologists were considered to be primarily bird-watchers! Now the ecologist is on the topmost pedestal of our society as philosopher, theologian, planner, and general statesman of the welfare of mankind. If it has arisen so suddenly, might the issue not be as suddenly bypassed in the public mind by other, newly relevant issues? This is the danger: if something else replaces the environment as the object of public concern, will a genuine crisis then confront an apathetic public?

While it has its faddish aspects, ecology is more than a fad. We should view our times as a “crisis of crises,” as John Platt has suggested. The deeper we go into it, the more poignantly we realize the vast series of problems we are up against. It is not one major issue that now faces us but a whole galaxy of shattering problems, all of them coming to a point of crisis that threatens the entire human enterprise within the next fifteen to thirty years. Very few sober-minded scientists believe it is possible for the human race to survive far into the third millennium.

2. Beware of false emphases. In 1930, as Irving Babbit looked back to the previous century, he noted the irony of American history: “No age ever grew so ecstatic over natural beauty as the nineteenth century; at the same time no age ever did so much to deface nature” (Rousseau and Romanticism, p. 301). The age of Audubon, Thoreau, and Muir was also the age of the dust-bowls, deforestation, and urban sprawl. The new wilderness dwellers were concerned not about the oppressive social realities of Boston, New York, or Chicago but about escape to nature. This cult of the simple, rustic life as an escape from the metropolitan realities is still with us:

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world and am free

[Wendrell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things,” The New York Times, March 3, 1968].

Some environmental enthusiasts today may be seeking in nature solace from both the social issues of our day and the individual pressures of contemporary life.

Militant blacks in American ghettos tend to consider ecology a false and diversionary issue, irrelevant to the needs of the masses. Does the environmental issue distract attention from the points of social vulnerability where real and radical changes ought to be made? Should not our primary concern be people rather than things—even the environmental thing?

We must also be sure that pollution is not turned into big business. Man in his duplicity is quite capable of making one branch of a corporation an environmental offender while another branch of the same company turns out anti-pollution products. James Ridgeway’s The Politics of Pollution (1970) shows that some leaders of capitalist enterprise are on the bandwagon too. Often the worst sinners are the greatest preachers, as current advertising of some companies reveals. This method of neutralizing an issue has been called “desublimation.” When the chief polluters lead an anti-pollution crusade, they control protest by desublimating it, by bringing it out into the open, and even appearing to identify with it. It is the old adage: “If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.” We need to avoid the trap of duplicity by dealing with environmental deterioration at its source instead of making a new and separate industry out of depollution.

3. Beware of false judgments. Since 1966 Lynn White, Richard Means, Ian McHarg, and others have argued that it is the biblical view of man’s attitude to nature that has made man the manipulator and destroyer of the environment. Such a charge cannot be dismissed lightly; it has been taken up by Nobel prize-winning biologists such as René Dubos and Joshua Lederberg, as well as by some theologians.

It is of course true that the implicit belief-structure in the rationality and harmony of the universe, which made science possible, is a derivation of Christian theology. It is also true that Christian societies have been destructive of the environment, though it could certainly be argued that they have not been the only destroyers. But we challenge White and his followers on their biblical exegesis, or rather their lack of it.

Does the Bible, notably in the Genesis passages cited by White, provide a warrant for man’s exploitive and arrogant attitude toward nature? On the contrary, man is viewed as a steward over nature. To “subdue” it (Gen. 1:28) also means to be responsible for it. The Bible clearly distinguishes the utilization of nature from the wanton destruction of nature, as Deuteronomy 20:19, 20 makes clear:

When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them; for you may eat of them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field men that they should be besieged by you? Only the trees which you know are not trees for food may you destroy and cut down that you may build siege-works against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.

Moreover, the urban experiences of man outside the garden (Gen. 4–11) provide a graphic reminder of the ambiguity of man’s increasing power. These episodes show that each stage of civilization’s growth (represented in Genesis 5:17 f.; 9:18; 11:32) is reflected in an increased capacity for violence, injustice, exploitation, themselves all products of that civilization. Today’s environmental threat simply reflects the increased powers of ambiguities within our civilization. The immense increase of retaliatory power available in modern thermonuclear, chemical, and biological technology demands a correspondingly increased moral and spiritual commitment to principles of global concern, both ecological and social. White and his followers are too simplistic in their identification of the source of the trouble.

4. Beware of false analogies. If the Bible does not support the exploitation of nature, neither does it engender the worship of nature. Yet analogies have been used to make it do so. In the seventeenth century, the analogy of the clock and the clockmaker to explain the universe and the Creator led to a mechanistic view of the universe that still hangs on. In the nineteenth century, “evolution” became the analogue of biological theory that was applied to all the social behavior of man. Now it looks as if “ecology” will become a new analogue, applicable to late twentieth-century secularism.

An indication of what to expect has been given by Richard A. Underwood in “Ecological and Psychedelic Approaches to Theology” (Soundings, 1969). Ecology, he says, seeks the restoration of nature. It is therefore the contemporary scientific expression of cosmic redemption, the possibility of a realized eschatology. As a transcendental science it focuses attention upon the totality of life, calling for a reinterpretation of the man-nature relation. But ecology itself cannot bring about this reinterpretation, and Underwood concludes: “If ecology cannot succeed without a reorientation which is at base religious, and if religion of the culture itself is anti-ecological, then what is the way out?”

The answer Underwood suggests is psychedelic experience, a new kind of revealed religion, as ecology is a new kind of natural theology. Both thrust man into the interconnectedness of things, felt bodily and engendering new visions of reality. Both unite understanding and action, so that while ecology seeks an understanding of nature, which in turn involves a metanoia by scientific man to new efforts to save nature, the psychedelic experience seeks a restoration of the self in the midst of a nature corrupted by rationality.

This kind of analogical reasoning is of course nonsense, but dangerous nonsense that many swallow even though it suffers from A. N. Whitehead’s “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” and G. E. Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy” that values can be derived from facts. These leaps from one dimension to another are the cause of much contemporary heresy. Associated then with the gulf between the material and the personal, the natural and the supernatural, is dualism. Dualism, in turn, is the root cause of man’s alienation from his physical environment, as well as from his fellow men. It is this that engenders man’s manipulation of nature as well as the social engineering of his fellow.

5. Beware of false solutions.

Ecology Action East, which publishes a radical journal, has argued that do-good ecological liberals cannot do more than delay the final catastrophe because they fail to make the connection between violence on the environment and the society that perpetrates that violence. They attack only the effects, not the causes, and technology becomes a convenient scapegoat while the deep-seated social conditions that make machines and technical processes harmful are bypassed. So far this is powerful stuff, but then such radicalism whimpers out with feeble suggestions for spontaneous self-development of the young, freedom to eroticize experience in all its forms, the promotion of joyous artfulness in life and work. But if all restraints are released from society to engender anarchy, how then will the earth fare?

Nor will a reinforcement of conventional religion help us, even if it is dished up in a new guise called “ecological theology.” Reshaping religion with ecological perspectives may be of religious interest. Reshaping religion with psychedelic experimentation may produce new mystical experiences. But biblical faith stands opposed to such “religion”; such efforts of man to reach God by human efforts are idolatry. The biblical God is the Creator of nature and man. The heavens declare the glory of God, but the heavens are not God. Man will not find God in ecology, for God speaks directly to man.

However, the ecological issue is indeed challenging Christians to a radical life-style that may bring us closer to the Christianity of the early Church and instill more realism in Christian living.

In the first place, the ecological crisis challenges our attitudes to both the physical environment and our fellow men. It requires us to consider more deeply what and who man is, since matters of environmental quality depend ultimately upon our appraisals of man himself. Perhaps the environmental issue can provide new and meaningful symbols of man’s needs. Perhaps too it can unify his aspirations and give them content.

In the second place, the environmental issue challenges us to go beyond knowledge, to do something, and that quickly. This sense of both realism and urgency should also permeate our Christian calling, for we are being summoned to new and deep senses of responsibility. Man is not just the thinker or the maker; he is the responsible agent. He is able to harness his thought and his technology to make the fitting response to what is happening. As John Black points out in his book, The Dominion of Man: The Search For Ecological Responsibility (1970), “If western civilization has failed, it has failed because it has been unable to find a concept which would engender a feeling of responsibility, for the use to which we put our control over nature.”

In critical periods of Israel’s history this emphasis on man as responsive was heightened by the challenge: “What does the Lord require of thee?” For us Christ is the paradigm of responsibility, the cure for the mass-mindedness of our day. He gives us the motive for right attitudes toward our environment and toward the needs of the underprivileged.

In the third place, the ecological crisis reminds us forcibly of the interdependence of life, the “web” of life. Because the earth’s environment is no respecter of nationalism, provincialism, racism, or individualism, there may be in eco-politics common ground for international understanding and cooperation. At the same time the ecological sense of interdependence may also help curb the gigantic sense of individualism bred by our affluence, inside as well as outside the Church.

In the fourth place, ecology provides an awareness of limits by making it clear that the resources of the earth are limited, and subject to delicate balances. There can be no sense of responsibility, no response to the interrelatedness of life, if we continue to push the GNP. That contemporary disease of pleonexema, the itch for “more,” so stimulated by the advertising and industrial powers of our society, must be contained. We must impose ceilings on our wants and luxuries. Likewise we must curtail our procreative freedom to bring more babies into an overpopulated world. To impose limits on human activity will, however, create enormous new problems for government, legislation, and authority.

In the fifth and final place, the Christian must lead in a new life-style that encompasses all these needs. Where does he begin? Perhaps in the regular practice of tithing his income. Learning to give first a tenth and then even more of it will tell the world more about his responsible stewardship on behalf of the earth and his fellow men than any academic discussion. This reduction in income can begin to count environmentally when he runs his car as long as the body and engine hold together and runs his house within a simple economy. This is one way Christians can start to control the environmental crisis now upon us.

James M. Houston is principal of Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and special lecturer at the University of British Columbia. He has the M.A. from Edinburgh University and the D.Phil. from Oxford.