Second in a Series

We have noted the high mortality rate of contemporary theological theories, and the tactics many recent theologians have used to commend their novel views as authentically Christian. We now look at some other characteristics of neo-Protestant religious views.

3. The special appeal of each neo-Protestant religious theory lies in its dramatic correlation of some urgent concern or deep longing in contemporary life with segments of the scriptural revelation that have been obscured or neglected by other recent religious alternatives. Barth stressed anew an authoritative Divine Word; Bultmann, the critical importance of personal decision; Cullmann, the centrality of salvation-history; Moltmann, the irreducible importance of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead; Pannenberg, the revelatory significance of universal world history; and so on. Each view gains a magnetic hold on younger clergymen through the reassertion of certain facets of biblical theology. And each theory compounds the errors of its predecessors in two ways. It first superimposes upon the Bible an interpretative framework alien to it, and then subordinates other definitive elements of biblical theology to this.

These theories, then, gain a following in the Christian community by correlating theosophical or philosophical novelties with broken fragments of the biblical revelation. The Bible is not appealed to as an authoritative Book, plenarily inspired and constituting a divinely given rule of Christian truth.

4. In regard to knowledge of God as an objective reality, the formative theological views of the last hundred years are metaphysically agnostic. This trend crested into the ecumenical vision of a world church that raised social involvement above metaphysical consensus and creedal tests. Protestant modernism emphasized the experiential values of following Christ’s exemplary commitment to Divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood. While Barthian theology located faith’s center in divine disclosure rather than in religious experience, it depicted revelation as paradoxical: the truth of faith, it said, defies expression in universally valid propositions. Bultmann, however, insisted that the self at the center of existential revelation is not the divine self at all; it is rather, he affirmed, the human self.

Supposedly to enhance revelation, dialectical-existential theology disowned logically consistent knowledge of God and portrayed faith as a cognitively vacuous leap. The Continental theologians therefore affirmed as Christianity’s special distinctive what in the minds of logical positivists reduced Christianity to nonsense—the notion that the reality of God turns not on intelligible rational evidence and objectively valid truth but rather on personal decision and inner response. More recently such post-Bultmannian theologians as Fuchs and Ebeling, and even such proponents of external historical revelation as Moltmann and Pannenberg, have likewise deprived Christianity of any final cognitive affirmations about the ontological being of God.

This loss of the rationality of divine revelation in recent modern theology prepared the way for the notion of God’s demise: if God cannot be truly known for what he assertedly is, the Living God is in epistemic eclipse. Contemporary theologians show almost cultic fanaticism in forfeiting ontological knowledge of God’s nature as he is in himself. Their works remind one of Clifford Irving’s supposed revelations concerning the inaccessible Howard Hughes: publishing houses are available to disclose secrets of the life and deeds of the Great Unknown; biographers tell of special access vouchsafed to them alone; readers await an up-to-the-minute revision of what the existing versions declare to be the unchanging truth. Then—at last—the necessary authorization of legitimacy is found to be missing, and the real voice and word of the Invisible Shepherd, known and recognized by his sheep, is admitted to point another Way.

5. The attempt to resuscitate process theology as the wave of the future is faltering. Process theology is one among many ripples on an agitated theological surface. It lacks firm basis in the He-brew-Christian Scriptures, and is more a philosophical than a theological explanation. Its current appeal is largely limited to students unfamiliar with related proposals from earlier in this century; the present versions are much like a return of an old movie.

Liabilities of process theology are numerous. Among its intellectual difficulties, two stand out. First, it obscures God’s causal relation to the universe; the emphasis that the universe is as necessary to God as God is to the universe compromises the biblical doctrine of creation. Second, its insistence that God is an aspect of the whole of reality precludes any absolute distinction between good and evil. Indeed, the more intimately God is correlated with man and history—particularly in a century vexed by devastating international wars and the social violence of Nazism, Facism, and Communism, as well as the pervasive moral decline of the world—the more difficult it becomes to maintain any adequate view of sin.

6. The positive significance of radical contemporary views—for example, the “theology of revolution” and “black theology”—lies in their rejection of other sub-Christian alternatives rather than in any espousal of authentic and permanently valid positions. A commitment to violent revolutionary change cannot accommodate in any event a final theology or controlling Logos; what destroys all must sooner or later be self-destructive.

Revolutionary theology mounts an extreme reaction against the misidentification of the status quo as essentially just or as acceptably Christian, a costly error that the Christian Church has too often made. Black theology is a reactionary insistence that theology can be done only by blacks, a notion no less exaggerated and extreme than the assumption that God is white. To write Christian theology in terms of any culture-orientation is hazardous. The neglected emphasis that theology needs to revive is that the Christian revelation has permanent implications for all oppressed people.

7. The unenviable consequence of neo-Protestant theology’s revolt against reason and rationality is that its positions cannot be regarded as true. It should be apparent that any movement that disowns the instrumentality of reason in establishing theological positions or in validating its objectives cannot rationally defend its own perspectives. Philosophers may speak of religion as a “special kind” of truth, and theologians may deplore the pursuit of objective truth about God as prideful presumption; but unless the man in the street is convinced that spiritual claims belong to the same order of truth as life’s other persuasive commitments, he will not take Christian claims seriously. He will turn rather to cults that claim to give such knowledge or will probe the mystical, astrological, or merely magical. The religious revolt against reason is sure to issue in a harvest of aberrant and inventive alternatives to biblical faith. [To be continued.]

CARL F. H. HENRY

Evil is restrained either through man’s fear of God or man’s fear of man. Where there is fear neither of God nor of man, chaos and anarchy prevail.

Where good behavior stems from the fear of man, as in a totalitarian or strongly authoritarian state, this “goodness” is achieved at the price of personal freedom and is a form of slavery.

God has provided for mankind the norms for right living, and to those who put their trust in him he gives the power to live accordingly. Herein lie the basis and stamina of Christian character.

Character itself is an evidence of some restraining, energizing, and directing influence on a man’s life; and Christian character is a demonstration of the presence and power of the living Christ. It is a combination of faith in the revelation God has given of himself through his Son, and obedience to that revelation in daily living.

Christian character has been described as doing what is right when no one is looking and when one knows that his actions can never be tracked to their source. But it is far more than that. Christian character involves testing of thoughts and actions by God-given guidelines and then proceeding according to his revealed will and by the power of his indwelling Spirit, regardless of difficulties.

A nation is great when its citizens possess Christian character; when that character starts to erode, the nation’s fall has begun.

The evidences of such erosion are to be seen on every hand in our country. Dishonesty is flagrantly admitted. In fact, the entire business world seems in danger of coming apart at the seams through dishonest practices. The social life of the nation is also being eroded by the so-called new morality, which is nothing more or less than the old immorality dressed up in a tuxedo.

Political life seems given over to expediency rather than to the national interest to such an extent that one wonders who can be trusted to view issues and policies from the standpoint of right or wrong.

The Church’s influence for righteousness has also suffered the erosion of compromise and worldliness; church spokesmen often substitute man-made standards and philosophies for the clear “Thus saith the Lord” of the Bible.

But nowhere is the wearing down of Christian principles and ideals more evident than in the so-called sex revolution. The general attitude of permissiveness, together with ready availability of the pill, and other contraceptives, and courses in sex education that are confined to pathological and biological aspects and leave out God’s teachings about sex—all these, as well as the hell-inspired teaching that there are no absolutes, have combined to soften and erode away many of the spiritual directives and restraints that do so much to distinguish man from the lower animals.

As the basic concepts of Christian character are downgraded in present-day America, we are seeing good spoken of as evil and evil promoted as good. We see sins of every kind not only accepted but even glorified. We see young people following evil ways because their elders have failed to show them the God-ordained norms by which man should live.

We have come to the day when Christianity, the source of Christian character, is often exchanged for a “religion” lacking in spiritual perception and power because it no longer teaches Christ’s life, death on the Cross, and resurrection as revealed in the Scriptures.

A young minister who was a graduate of one of America’s oldest and most “prestigious” theological seminaries recently returned to his alma mater for a series of lectures. To his dismay, he found that many of the students regularly drank alcoholic beverages, were profane in their conversation, and were immoral in their way of life.

While this situation may possibly be the exception rather than the rule, it gives a sobering picture of the erosion that has gotten into the Church itself as a result of its tendency to drift with the tide of contemporary life rather than to stand firm and lift up an ensign for the holiness of God and his body, the Church.

The prophets of old denounced sin out of holy conviction. Speaking under the inspiration of the Spirit, they faithfully warned of impending judgment because of sin. For this they were denounced, and many of them sealed their testimony with their life’s blood. And the judgment they had announced inexorably came.

Today the denunciation of sins against a holy God is regarded in many quarters as “quaint,” “Victorian,” “fundamentalistic,” “a perversion of the Gospel of God’s love.” Such preaching is unpopular, and, where possible, ecclesiastical pressures, restrictions, and even persecution are vented on those who persist.

This erosion in individual character and in the corporate life of the nation goes on apace, and all must suffer. While men may consider the changes trivial, God is not mocked, and sin’s wages come nearer and nearer.

Basic to the problem is man’s substitution of error for revealed truth. For the average American the Bible is a closed book. Young people in school—from kindergarten to college and university—are ignorant of God’s standards for belief and conduct. They are pagans in a “Christian” land because God and his Word have been increasingly neglected. Little wonder that we have a generation of spiritual illiterates! Little wonder that on every hand we see moral and spiritual erosion!

The supreme question is whether Christian character can be restored in America. Can the disintegrating influences that have an ever accelerating effect on our way of life be overcome and a new and effective emphasis on lost values be established?

There is one way—and only one. It is a way few choose to take, but it is the one that is divinely ordained. The route back is clearly marked in Second Chronicles 7:14:

Humility (“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves”), prayer and seeking God (“and pray and seek my face”), repentance and conversion (“and turn from their wicked ways”); when these are present, God will grant forgiveness and healing (“then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land”).

The route of humility, prayer, repentance, conversion, and healing ends at the Cross. There is much talk at present about “corporate sins,” but corporate sins are but the elongated shadows of personal sins, and revival and restoration is a very personal matter.

We need humbled minds and wills before the One who offers not only forgiveness and cleansing but the instilling in us of his own nature. Through his indwelling nature Christian character becomes a reality for us as individuals and also a positive force against the evils in our nation.

Defrocking The Stereotypes

The Returns of Love: A Contemporary Christian View of Homosexuality, by Alex Davidson (Inter-Varsity, 1971, 93 pp., $1.50 pb), and Forbidden Love: A Homosexual Looks For Help and Understanding, by John Drakeford (Word, 1971, 149 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by E. Mansell Pattison, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry, University of California, Irvine.

This is a day of militancy and confrontation. People and groups who have been oppressed and persecuted in our society are standing up to demand their human rights and proclaim their human dignity. The intensity of social ostracism and persecution is now reflected in the intensity of the counter-reaction; those most persecuted are now most militant. That the socio-cultural dynamic is comparable, whether that persecuted group be blacks, Chicanos, women, or homosexuals, is reflected in the loose coalition of the various militant lib movements.

One target of the militancy movements is stereotyping. The deviant is perceived not as a person, a flesh-and-blood being, but as a “stupid” black, a “silly” woman, a “dirty queer.” The stereotype begs the question. We think we already know all we need to know, and we respond to the deviant in terms of the stereotype. To use Buber’s terms, we see the deviant as an “It,” a thing, rather than a “Thou,” a person. The persecuted deviants demand to be seen, heard, and experienced as persons. And so each lib movement has produced its autobiographies, deviants sharing themselves, daring to be seen as they are. First it was the black autobiography, then the female autobiography, and now the homosexual autobiography. The tenor varies: some pleading, some poignant, some garrulous and defiant. But all these writers assert their humanity, reality, individual feeling and thought. The autobiography rips away the distorting cloak of stereotype and confronts us with a person.

These two slim volumes serve a humanizing purpose. Both are autobiographies by homosexuals who are devout Christians. They recount not only their homosexual conflict but also their conflict with religious conviction. They address the Christian church community and ask us to share their conflict and respond.

Although the two books are very different, they complement each other by illustrating the fallacy of stereotyping sexual perversion. The two men are very different types of homosexuals, and there are many other types. We cannot say, “If I’ve met one I’ve met them all.”

Alex Davidson (a pseudonym) writes in polished Brittanic prose a series of letters to his friend Peter to explain his homosexual self. He describes his loneliness, his search for closeness, warmth, love. He is excruciatingly aware of his homosexual orientation, yet because of his Christian convictions he considers homosexual acts a sin in which he will not indulge. Yet he finds himself falling in love with Peter, strongly desiring a physical liaison, yet rejecting that aspect of the relationship. Davidson is caught in a war between different parts of himself. How can he live and resolve the internal warfare, he asks? His story is incomplete. He leaves off at a point where he has just begun psychotherapy. But he leaves us with a clear picture of human turmoil.

The Drakeford book gives a different picture. Jeff Johnson has been a patient in one of Drakeford’s reality therapy groups, and writes his story after a relatively successful therapeutic experience. Davidson’s story is primarily one of internal conflict, whereas Johnson tells us about his external behavior. He briefly describes his childhood and early attempts at heterosexual relationships culminating in marriage. He becomes a successful church musician, while at the same time evolving into a practicing homosexual. His homosexual activities become more promiscuous, blatant, and bizarre. He propositions in rest rooms and theaters, cruises in the homosexual subculture, and eventually lands in jail, demoralized, defrocked, and deserted by his wife. Johnson tells it like it is, at times in a manner some will find crude. We are in the middle of his sordid mess. After jail he comes eventually to Drakeford and the last chapters describe his process of rehabilitation and attempted re-entry into the church community.

These two autobiographies are valuable but limited. They show how two very different types of homosexual Christians experience themselves. Yet though both men have been involved in psychotherapy, there is much they do not see in themselves. So we do not get a complete picture of homosexuality; we see it only from the partially blinded view of the participant.

It is a mistake to assume that the sexual perversion is the central conflict. Instead, the sexual orientation is an expression of multiple distortions in the maturation of personality. The homosexual is not just a normal person who happens to have a different sexual orientation. Homosexuality is a maldevelopment of the person. That is not to say that the homosexual cannot be an effective person who functions normally in many aspects of life, as do other people who have neurotic and psychotic disorders. But for the homosexual, the basic building blocks of human relations have been laid down and cemented askew.

The homosexual act is an attempt to restore personal wholeness. The driving force for all human relations is meaningful love relations. This same drive exists in the homosexual, but it assumes bizarre forms of expression. In the course of his development the homosexual has experienced distorting human relationships that impair his capacity for love and warp his methods of loving. Thus the homosexual has a constricted, maldeveloped base upon which to attempt to build a loving human relationship, and that relationship is narrowed to a dehumanized physical encounter. Loving is symbolized and experienced solely as genital sexuality, which leaves out the richness of person loving. The homosexual yearns for whole human love, tries to achieve it through sexuality, finds that vacuous, and is left after the sexual act alone, unloved, and unloving.

Neither book gives the reader a clear psychological picture of this maldevelopment. Nor should the reader take the self-descriptions and self-evaluations at face value. Despite the thousands of scientific articles in print, we still need a clear account for the informed public that goes beyond the self-portrayal given in books like these.

Drakeford, in his concluding overview, makes the mistake of taking Johnson’s self-perceptions at face value. In so doing he misleads the reader. In my opinion, Drakeford shows considerable clinical naïveté and little understanding of the psychodynamics of homosexuality. The reality therapy method has assumed faddish proportions, so that its laudable emphasis on real life action is often at the expense of any recognition of internal conflict that confounds reality action.

This leads to the matter of response by the church community. The church has joined society in saying to the homosexual, “You are to blame. We are not responsible. We will punish you.” In turn, the militant homosexual movement is saying to the church, “You are to blame. We are not responsible. We will retaliate for your punishment.” Both miss the point. Blame and punishment are irrelevant. It does no good to blame and punish the homosexual, or to blame and punish the church. The alternative is to say, “It does no good to blame anyone; we must share responsibility.” The next task for the church is to find out how it can assume its appropriate responsibility for the humanity of the homosexual.

Updated Authority

The Cambridge Ancient History, third edition, Volume 1, Part 2: Early History of the Middle East, edited by I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, and N. G. L. Hammond (Cambridge, 1971, 1,058 pp., $23.50), is reviewed by Carl E. Armerding, assistant professor of Old Testament, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Students of history have for years been consulting the various volumes of the Cambridge Ancient History (CAH) as an authoritative source of information, though for some time the last (second) edition of Volumes 1 and 2 has been seriously out of date. Beginning in 1964 individual fascicles (chapters) of a completely new edition of these volumes began to appear, with the publication of Carl Blegen’s Troy.

Now Volume 1 is complete with the publication of Part 2 covering the earliest historical period in the Middle East. The subject includes chapters on Egypt from the First Dynasty (ca. 3100 B.C.) through the end of the Twelfth Dynasty (1786 B.C.), on Mesopotamia from Pre-Dynastic times (3100 B.C.) through the beginning of Hammurabi’s Dynasty, and on Palestine, Anatolia, Crete, and Cyprus from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age through 1750 B.C. A chapter on Persia 2400–1800 B.C. rounds out the feast.

Among the contributors (many since deceased) are nine British, five American, and four Continental historians. Some of the fascicles issued in the early years of the project have been revised by later authors (note especially chapters XII and XX). In addition to major revisions, the bibliographies of all chapters have been brought up to date.

Students of the Bible will take special note of historical detail that parallels biblical material. Although the references to biblical events and characters are of necessity few, the period covered is rich in content paralleling the data of the book of Genesis. Among the discussions directly bearing on biblical matter, several are of particular interest. During the Twelfth Dynasty, Asiatic traders pictured on the well-known Beni Hasan tomb walls recall the visits of Abraham about the same time (p. 541). Specific reference is made to Joseph in a discussion of slave trade during the same period (p. 542). Abraham himself is tied to an Assyrian list of tent-dwelling kings through his grandson Dedan (Gen. 25:3), one of the kings whose names appear on the Assyrian list (p. 744). Moses and the children of Israel, though not within the period in question, are mentioned in connection with early Egyptian attitudes toward the Palestinian “sand-dwellers” who from the beginning of Egyptian history were constantly infringing on the pasture lands of the eastern Delta (p. 352).

Of more direct concern is the extensive treatment of Assyrian and Sumerian king lists, creation epics, and flood legends. Evidence is given for some kind of legendary, greater-than usual flood, and it is dated at about 2800 B.C.(p. 243). The early history of Babylonia also furnishes important comparative material in the development of government, arts and crafts, agriculture, writing, and urban life.

A minor special-interest item is found in connection with the penetration of Amorites into Anatolia and Syria. Hildegaard Lewy argues for the origin of the name “Bethlehem” from the West Semitic god “Lahmu” (well known from the creation story) and the earlier name “Ephratha” for the same city as originally representing a West Semitic deity “Ilaprat” (pp. 766, 720).

Attitudes toward carbon-14 method of dating vary within the book, and readers will be interested in the state of the science. In commenting on recent datings for samples from the Inanna temple at Nippur, M. E. L. Mallowan observes that these findings, together with other third millennium dates, are “consistently low by at least four or five centuries.” He quotes some authorities to the effect that some physical disturbance in the solar magnetic field may have affected the level of the carbon-14 activity (p. 242). He himself is reluctant to accept the adjustment, feeling that there is too much evidence to the contrary from other sources. By contrast, J. Mellaart is quite ready to raise the dates for the beginning of Early Bronze I in Anatolia by up to 750 years, in response to still-wanting carbon-14 evidence (p. 403). Such ambivalence, and the reasons for it, may lead to greater caution in future claims for the authority of the method, especially when samples from a given period are rare.

General features of the volume are excellent. The chapters are clearly subdivided; the book is provided with a fine set of indices, maps, and chronological tables; and bibliographies and footnoting are definitive. The slightly cumbersome system used in recording footnotes will be familiar from previous volumes. It has the disadvantage of requiring the reader to trace the original reference in the general bibliography, but with such a wealth of original and secondary source material given in reference, any other system would have been difficult to handle. Only a few printer’s errors were noted, and nothing that would detract from the considerable value of this authoritative history.

The one unfortunate fact that the editors must face is the speed with which new research will make yet a fourth edition necessary. In the meantime, we can all be thankful for the prodigious labors of each contributor in making available such a splendid reference work.

Newly Published

Jesus and the Poor: The Poverty Program of the First Christians, by Richard Batey (Harper & Row, 114 pp., $4.95). Those who claim to believe the Bible have not always let its teachings on poverty determine their own attitudes. This book, which includes an appendix on the poor in Israel, is a good summary and a starting-point for considering contemporary applications.

Studies in Dogmatics: The Return of Christ, by G. C. Berkouwer (Eerdmans, 477 pp., $9.95). Two more volumes of Berkouwer’s immense Studies in Dogmatics, printed as one, and containing a wealth of facts about the history of doctrine as well as Berkouwer’s own clearly expressed views about, e.g., the general resurrection (affirmed) and universalism (denied). Attempts to harmonize pre- and post-millennial views.

Enjoy the Christian Life, by Don Main-prize (Key [Box 991, Wheaton, Ill. 60187], 116 pp., $1.95 pb). Those who want to be good disciples but have been turned off by other “higher-deeper-crucified-victorious” Christian life books should give this one a try.

Closer Than a Brother, by David Winter (Harold Shaw, 160 pp., $1.45 pb). With an easy, sure touch Winter succeeds in modernizing The Practice of the Presence of God. Brother Lawrence’s message for both old and young is given new life; it shouldn’t be ignored.

Turning to God: A Study of Conversion in the Book of Acts and Today, by William Barclay (Baker, 103 pp., $1.50 pb). A logical, biblical discussion of God’s, man’s, and the Church’s role in “conversion.” Good for Bible studies with new converts or non-believers. Emphasizes contemporary need for a “turn around.”

The Call to Glory, by Jeane Dixon (Morrow, 192 pp., $4.95). This famous author combines a call to commitment to Jesus the Messiah with an affirmation of reincarnation and her own dreams—a strange mixture indeed!

The Kennedy Explosion, by E. Russell Chandler (David C. Cook, 125 pp., $.95 pb). The former CHRISTIANITY TODAY news editor tells the exciting story of James Kennedy, pastor of a church widely known for its emphasis on lay evangelism—the fast-growing Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in south Florida.

To Me It’s Wonderful, by Ethel Waters (Harper & Row, 162 pp., $5.95). Colorful, folksy autobiography filled with anecdotes, many about Billy Graham or his associates.

The Ethics of Martin Luther, by Paul Althaus (Fortress, 168 pp., $8.95). A concise and clear abstract of Luther’s teaching on many issues of continuing significance (e.g., civil government, divorce), posthumously translated from the original of one of Germany’s old-line conservatives. A useful digest.

Church and Theology, by Trutz Rendtorff (Westminster, 251 pp., $10). An obfuscatory discussion of the concept of the Church among Teutonic theologians and thinkers from J. S. Semler (1725–91) to Bultmann.

A Guide to Church Publicity, by Reg Westmoreland (Sweet [Box 4055, Austin, Tex. 78751], 103 pp., $4.95 pb). The most elementary of several manuals currently in print on how local congregations can get exposure in the mass media.

Is the Family Here to Stay?, by David Hubbard (Word, 97 pp., $2.95), and Hope For the Family, by Arnold de Graaf et al. (Wedge [Box 10, Sta. L, Toronto 10, Ontario], 52 pp., $1.25 pb). Two better-than-average treatments from evangelical perspective of a divine institution we can no longer take for granted.

More Light on the Gospel, by George M. Lamsa (Doubleday, 377 pp., $6.95). Often presents conjectures as certitudes, and exhibits theological deficiency in places (e.g., at Mark 15:34 “Why hast thou forsaken me?” becomes “For this I was spared”). Not recommended.

Morality, Law and Grace, by J. N. D. Anderson (Inter-Varsity, 128 pp., $1.95 pb). A balanced, biblically sound discussion in which a noted scholar in the field of comparative religion emphasizes some of the distinctives of biblical faith and morality, illustrating them by attention to modern issues such as civil disobedience and the “theology of revolution.”

Separated Brethren, by William J. Whalen (Our Sunday Visitor [Huntington, Ind. 46750], 302 pp., $5.95). Enlarged revision of a good introductory overview of eighteen Protestant denominations and also of various sects and non-Christian religions in the United States. Written by and for Catholics but without bias or much evaluation, hence of wider usefulness. Helpful bibliographies after each chapter.

You Are the World, by J. Krishnamurti (Harper & Row, 175 pp., $1.95 pb). The aged apostle of advaita (non-dualistic) vedanta continues his struggle to free man from conceptual thinking—i.e., from thinking that distinguishes human individuals, a personal God, the created world—and to persuade man that such distinctions are illusory. If a man can be convinced of this, of course, then most of his problems appear to him as illusions, too. This represents the extreme opposite to the biblical teaching that God is real, the created world is real, and individual persons are not only real but responsible to God.

An Eschatology of Victory, by J. Marcellus Kik (Presbyterian and Reformed, 268 pp., $3.95 pb), and Jesus’ Prophetic Sermon (Moody, 160 pp., $4.95). Two evangelical exegeses of Matthew 24; the former sees it teaching Christ’s return after a millennium, the latter sees him coming before. Kik’s book, a reprint, also exegetes Revelation 20.

Christian Biopolitics, by Kenneth Cauthen (Abingdon, 159 pp., $4). A Christian futurology that shows great imagination and lively optimism about where history is taking us but no interest in what the Bible says about the future.

Berkeley Journal: Jesus and the Street People—A Firsthand Report, by Clay Ford (Harper & Row, 109 pp., $4.95). An accurate, absorbing view of life in the street scene, told as it really is—wretchedness, humor, and all—by a young seminarian whose own relationship to Christ deepened as he lived and worked among Berkeley’s street people. Some valuable insights here.

Foundations of Theology, edited by Philip McShane, S. J. (University of Notre Dame, 257 pp., $10). Originally subtitled “Ongoing Collaboration,” this book is an attempt on the part of several scholars to interact with the outstanding Roman Catholic theologian Bernard Lonergan and his efforts to refashion the concepts of doctrine, authority, conversion, the Church, and other key points.

The New Testament as the Church’s Book, by Willi Marxsen (Fortress, 154 pp., $3.95 pb). Marxsen says, “Because of modern exegesis the non-theologian no longer knows what his relationship is to the New Testament.… [Therefore] it becomes the task of the theologian to show him.” We prefer the apostles.

Religious Language and Knowledge, edited by Robert H. Ayers and William T. Black-stone (University of Georgia, 149 pp., $5 pb), and God the Problem, by Gordon D. Kaufman (Harvard, 276 pp., $10). The first is a collection of essays delivered in Athens, Georgia, in 1965 when the “death of God” theology, derived in part from analytical philosophy, was hot news. It does contain several articles critical of the logical positivist view that religious language is meaningless, as well as a couple supporting it. Kaufman of Harvard addresses himself to the same subject, talking about God, in God the Problem. He works very hard to show that God-talk is not absurd, and as such the book is a contribution to the academic debate; but the smallness of its topic, its aversion to propositional revelation, and the great timidity of its conclusions reduce its value for other purposes.

In The Journals

Christian colleges are invited to write to Christian College Consortium (1400 Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, Ill. 60018) to be added to the mailing list for a new monthly tabloid, Universitas.

Bible schools and seminaries serving Spanish-reading students should subscribe to a new theological journal, Cuadernos de Teologia (Editorial La Aurora, Doblas 1753, Buenos Aires, Argentinas; $5 per volume of 4 numbers, appearing irregularly).

Two series of lectures, “Radical Social Movement and the Radical Church Tradition” and “Power and Violence: A Biblical Study” make up the first issue of Colloquium, a new monograph series launched by Bethany Theological Seminary, Oak Brook, Ill. 60521 (Church of the Brethren). Theological libraries should add the series to their collections.

One of the best magazine bargains is Home Missions (1350 Spring St., N.W., Atlanta, Ga. 30309; monthly, $1.50/year). It is by and for Southern Baptists, and contains much material of purely denominational concern. Yet enough of the frequently well-illustrated articles are of potential value to Christians generally to merit a wider readership. For example, in recent months, whole issues have been devoted to good treatments of the Jesus movement, the resurgence of occultism, and black Christianity

OF TENNIS SHOES AND BLUE STOCKINGS

We were at the Sunday-evening service. We had sung some half dozen hymns and the pastor had just suggested we pray when a quavering voice from the back of the church asked, “Couldn’t we sing hymn 392 before we pray?”

My teen-age son leaned over to me and commented, “Probably no one else in the whole room wants to sing number 392 but because some little old lady does we’re all gonna stand here and sing it.” He smilingly shook his head with obvious admiration for the power of little old ladies.

We did stand there and sing it—all five stanzas.

Unquestionably little old ladies have suffered a bad press in recent years. Just mention the term and our heads dance with visions of the WCTU and the DAR. We joke about little old ladies from Pasadena, little old ladies in tennis shoes, and blue-stockinged little old ladies.

The implication is that they are the most inflexible railers against young whippersnappers who have committed the sin of being young.

Frankly, I don’t believe it. If anything, little old ladies are less victims of the generation gap than others. I see LOLs passing on their faith to be-jeaned, long-haired youths without getting hung up about clothes and hair.

After all, a little old lady in a Lord and Taylor dress topped by a sweater rescued from the Goodwill box has something in common with a teen-ager in an army surplus coat and overpriced blue jeans.

It’s those of us in our forties who get clenched eyebrows over such things, not the LOLs. They’re more culturally liberated. They’ve seen enough to know that what’s odd today may be high fashion tomorrow.

Contrary to popular myth, little old ladies don’t get shaken up by changes in the church. A new Sunday-school curriculum doesn’t seem to the typical LOL to offer the threat of destroying the church or the possibility of bringing in the kingdom. She taught the class her own way under the old curriculum and she’ll teach it her way under the new. And surprisingly, God will probably accomplish something through it.

Little old ladies are liberated women in the truest sense. They’re free to be themselves. Who but a liberated person would interrupt the appointed order of things to request hymn 392?

Above all, little old ladies seem to know who they are and what they believe. That alone sets them apart from a majority of church-goers.

RELEVANCE COMMENTS

Thank you for Kenneth Hamilton’s article, “The Irrelevance of Relevance” (March 31). It is some of the clearest thinking on the subject that I’ve read in a long time. I read it with great appreciation.

Loxley, Ala.

ON FRIENDSHIP

It was a very great pleasure for me to read Dr. Paul H. Wright’s article, “Friendship For God’s Sake” (March 3). This is a magnificent presentation … of the very facts of friendship.… I heartily concur … that those of us who are committed to the Way of Jesus Christ not only need to develop some very strong personal friendships; we also need to be friendly to those who have no friends—those who need someone to love and understand them.… It seems to me that if more of us would adapt this doctrine of Christian friendship in our relations with others, even in secular and business contacts, much of the hatred and distrust in our society would be alleviated by our very concern for other human beings rather than just for ourselves.

Trenton, N. J.

FROM THREE ‘FUDDLERS’

I am disappointed that John Warwick Montgomery labeled as “class three fuddlers” (Current Religious Thought, “Having a Fuddled Easter?,” March 31) a team of which I was a part. At Dr. Montgomery’s seminary campus, as well as at other colleges and seminaries, I spoke about developing a biblical pattern of giving reasons for the faith. It is a pattern that centers on “reverencing Christ as Lord in your hearts” (1 Pet. 3:15). If Christ is our Lord, we must follow him also in the manner in which we give testimony to the world (cf. 1 Tim. 6:12, 13).

Naturally this involves an appeal to miraculous works (“evidences”) which confirm the doctrine (1 Cor. 15:3–11; John 5:30–47; Heb. 2:4). But: (1) within the New Testament, appeal to miraculous works and witnesses always takes place, not in a vacuum, but upon the presupposition of God’s words in the Old Testament (particularly the doctrines of creation and providence). (2) Historical judgments ought not to “lord it over the Gospel”: the unbeliever may never be given the right to bring the Word of God into subjection to his own corrupt standards of truth (cf. how Jesus puts Pilate “on trial” in John 18). (3) There is nothing more sure than the Word of God, from which that Word now needs to be “proved” reliable. Christ the Son of the living God is more sure than any sense data or (secular) historical documents that we use scientifically (cf. Rom. 3:4). (4) We must proclaim God’s Word as surely true, not merely as “probably true.” From one end to the other the Bible testifies that no man, anywhere, has any right to call God’s Word in question with a “probably so” (Gen. 3:1; Job 38–42; Ps. 73:11–15; Mal. 3:17; Mat. 12:38–42; John 18:38; and so on). Those who say “Probably so (but also possibly not), on the basis of historical evidence,” cherish their own judgments more than the Word.

Such is a summary of what I said. If Dr. Montgomery had heard my talk, he might have understood better, I hope, that our team was striving to be rooted not in an abstract a priori but in Christ and his Word. I only ask that Dr. Montgomery too should base his criticisms on Scripture. As brothers in Christ, we need to go beyond the obvious fact that the Bible uses “evidences.”

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

The issue is not historicity or possibility of proof, as Montgomery claims; rather, it is the question of the propriety of basing one’s apologetic on these foundations without taking into account the presuppositions of the natural man. Of course Van Til does not teach that sin makes man inhuman (A Christian Theory of Knowledge, p. 231). It is his method as opposed to the traditional approach which does not vitiate the clarity of revelation and relegate it to the realm of probability. Also, contrary to the charge, he does not propagate blind faith (A Christian Theory of Knowledge, p. 32). What he does do is challenge the idea of a neutral reasoning and show clearly the Christian confidence in the law of non-contradiction as over against the non-believer’s concept of the same (An Introduction to Theology, p. 11).

The precise issue then between Montgomery and the presuppositionalist is Van Til’s challenge to the unbeliever at the very beginning of the apologetical question concerning analogical reasoning and the self-attesting Christ of Scripture versus an abstract realm of possibility and logic.

Denver, Colo.

As a recent graduate of “a certain Calvinistic institution that shall remain nameless” I was amused to read that a team of my fellow “class three fuddlers” should manage to make copy in CHRISTIANITY TODAY by fuddling the waters of facticity at Trinity.… Unbelief, when we get down to real basics, is not a problem of inadequate evidence or poorly argued logic; it is a matter of willful rebellion against the God of the facts. The team of my fellow fuddlers doesn’t believe in hiding the glorious facts under a bushel, but in proclaiming them openly as Paul did at Areopagus. But logic and facts will not dent the intellectual defenses of those who have neither eyes to see nor ears to hear. “If they will not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead”.…

We “class-three fuddlers” argue, not that the evidence is meager—the evidence abounds, from the stars in heaven to the five hundred witnesses of First Corinthians 15:6—but that men are not disposed to admit the evidence or able to weigh it until the Spirit unshackles the bonds of sin. The Gospel is God’s power unto salvation, and the foolishness of preaching his appointed means of saving. Let traveling minstrels in these days bring this glad news of merriment and hope, and expect the Spirit of power to open hearts to the truth.

The first three articles of the same issue by Peterson, Woodrum, and Hamilton were just excellent. I read them with much personal profit and enjoyment.

Alliance, Ohio

WHAT HAPPENED TO ORDER?

Ho, to brother slovens! After reading Eutychus (Eutychus and His Kin, “Sloven Power,” March 17), I quickly went to First Corinthians 14:40 and blacked out the entire verse.

Villa Park, Ill.

… AND NOTHING’S CHANGED

Again, exactly a year later, the pages of CHRISTIANITY TODAY have been given to those who deny the inspiration of Mark 16:9–20 (“Resurrection Quartet,” March 31).… The author of the article would have us believe that Mark ends at verse 8—and we are to add the details and somehow imagine the resurrection and the ending. I believe in the Holy Spirit—and I am sure he never did anything by half measures—at any rate he would never dignify the ravings of Greisbach or Lachmann. I do wish CHRISTIANITY TODAY would print the other side of this matter. This is the only fair thing to do.

Runnemede, N. J.

• Some of the editors do accept Mark 16:9–20 as genuine, but our writers are allowed reasonable liberty to reflect such differing views among evangelicals.—ED.

SUBTLE ANTI-SEMITISM?

With regard to the “Personalia” item [in the news section] of your April 14 issue concerning Bishop Frensdorff of Nevada: He is not a “Jew,” he is a Christian: he has been converted to Christ, baptized, and confirmed; therefore he is a Christian of the Anglican communion. It would certainly have been proper to have said, “… a convert from Judaism, born in Germany of parents who died, etc.…”

I am reminded of the time not too long ago when the WASP governing board of an eastern country club (most of whom were Episcopalians!) refused a young lady the privilege of having her debutante ball at the club because she chose as her escort a confirmed Episcopalian whose mother was also Episcopalian but whose father was Jewish. They still considered him a “Jew.” The same strange prejudice seems to lie behind your quiet little item about a “Jew” who was “ordained” over a “gambling casino.”

Incidentally, he was consecrated, not ordained. A candidate for the various ministries of the Episcopal Church is made a deacon, ordained a priest, and consecrated a bishop.

With that out of my system, may I commend you for your superb and Christian editorial on the subject of amnesty for our young men in Canada and elsewhere. It is the clearest statement I have yet read. Thank you!

(THE REV.) WILLIAM K. HUBBELL

Lexington, Ky.

GOOD NEWS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY … is a joy and inspiration to me. I am constantly fascinated by the good news of the Gospel as it is having results in various parts of the world. I know of no other religious publication that provides as much inspiration and information of a positive nature. Too many publications are argumentative and pessimistic, and, one would almost think, glory in the demise of the church.… Thank you for the article “Bibles in the Barracks: God and the Military” by Edward E. Plowman (News, March 31). This was a fascinating article and took a great deal of research and effort.… Keep up this type of reporting and we’ll continue publicizing your paper.

Redford Baptist Church

Detroit, Mich.

NO ONE’S HAPPY

The April 14 column (Eutychus and His Kin, “More Plane Talk”) containing replies to those ten readers who criticized (or questioned) Eutychus’s former literary efforts was so funny. Why, afterwards, did I want to cry?

East Weymouth, Mass.

I went to seminary to escape alcohol.

This may seem somewhat ludicrous to you, as it now does to me. But beyond the genuine belief that God had called me into the ministry, there was the sick notion that I could flee from John Barleycorn behind the ivy-covered walls of a theological cloister.

I did not know then that an alcoholic, or incipient alcoholic, will find a drink anywhere—if he hurts enough. I did not know then that a “geographical cure” is doomed to failure, that an alcoholic needs a new heart, a new spiritual outlook, not a new environment.

I began my alcoholic odyssey as a newsman and ended it as a clergyman. In the sodden interim, I managed to write my senior seminary thesis in a ginmill, escape for a time to an alcoholic’s paradise abroad, be hospitalized twice—and yet remain the object of concern of the Hound of Heaven.

God’s grace has been particularly evident in the fact that, unlike a lot of other alcoholics, I was able to keep my family intact—thanks to the never-failing support of a praying wife. Had I lost my family, I am sure I would not be writing this article, much less be preaching with all my heart the unsearchable riches of His grace. Can human nature be redeemed? You bet it can! I stand in my own pulpit as Exhibit A!

While my faith in Jesus Christ has never been stronger, my hope that the institutional church will help to reclaim the suffering alcoholic is much more limited. I used to blame my alcoholism on the narrow fundamentalism of my youth. No longer. I discovered that my liberal colleagues would offer me a drink to prove their own “liberation.” They would use and abuse the alcoholic with an abandonment unknown in warmly evangelical circles. The sad truth is that nobody likes a drunk.

The size of the problem is staggering. Dr. Roger Egeberg of the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has labeled alcoholism the number-one public-health problem; it affects nine million Americans—far more than the number addicted to all other drugs. And the National Council on Alcoholism calls this disease, which cripples entire families, the most neglected illness in our society.

Evangelicals can make a valuable contribution in this area once they see that alcoholism is a reflection of a much wider national malaise. In a sense, the problem of the problem drinker is the problem of Everyman. It is true that for the alcoholic the abuse of alcohol is the immediate problem for which a solution must be found. But this problem is symptomatic of a much deeper distress that hits all of us in varying degrees. We are all united in our sin, suffering, and need of salvation. Who has not been able to identify personally with the dilemma of St. Paul:

When I come up against the Law I want to do good, but in practice I do evil. My conscious mind wholeheartedly endorses the Law, yet I observe an entirely different principle at work in my nature. This is in continual conflict with my conscious attitude, and makes me an unwilling prisoner to the law of sin and death. In my mind I am God’s willing servant, but in my own nature I am bound fast, as I say, to the law of sin and death. It is an agonizing situation, and who on earth can set me free from the clutches of my own sinful nature? I thank God there is a way out through Jesus Christ our Lord [Rom. 7:21–25, Phillips].

The apostle’s dilemma was certainly my own. I sought indeed to be “God’s willing servant.” But the law of sin and death—epitomized for me in the bottom of a bottle—held me fast until I found the way out through Jesus Christ with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.

But is this not the experience of Everyman? Of every twice-born child of God? Alcohol may not be the problem; the law of sin and death may grip other men in many guises. But all of us are but mere beggars for the grace of God. All of us must find in Christ the way out of our human dilemmas.

This is no mere homiletical point. It is the crucial point for those who seek to minister to the alcoholic and his or her family. For a stereotype of the alcoholic is no more valid than the stereotype of a “lazy” Mexican, a “radical” black, or a “shyster” Jew.

Psychotherapists may characterize alcoholics as being immature or overly dependent. The alcoholic may, in fact, be easily frustrated and unable to handle pain. But so are other men. And when the alcoholic comes to his senses in the far country—after his brain clears and his body has been mended—he may grow in grace and maturity faster than others who have not shared his experience in the valley of the shadow of death or the pit of hell.

The most obvious problem of the problem drinker is, of course, the abuse of alcohol. Millions of Americans at every stratum of society are afflicted by this “disease without a cure.” Alcoholism is also called “the family disease” because it unleashes its fury upon those closest and dearest to the alcoholic. Its effect upon industry can only be calculated in billions of dollars annually. What it does to our highway death toll was graphically illustrated by an official of the U. S. Department of Transportation. There would be intensive public reaction, he said, if the airlines lost a new 747 jumbo jet filled with passengers every week. Yet very little is said about the fact that a number equal to that carried on a 747 lose their lives each week because of alcohol-related slaughter on the highways.

Temperance groups and most evangelical churches have long identified John Barleycorn with the devil, and there is ample biblical, sociological, and psychiatric evidence to support this point of view. Something satanic must be at work when a man or woman will sacrifice home, job, and self-respect for vomiting, blackouts, the shakes, convulsions, delirium tremens, and finally death. Nothing other than the satanic can explain why a man or woman, once delivered from the ravages of alcohol, will return to the bottle that caused his downfall. Man, created a little lower than the angels, can become worse than a beast under the sway of the bottle.

However, Alcoholics Anonymous has traditionally avoided any association with temperance lobbies. Its slogan is “Live and Let Live.” Its members subscribe to the belief that their own lives had become unmanageable and that they themselves were powerless over alcohol. The purpose of their fellowship is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.

This tradition began early in the history of the AA fellowship. Its beloved co-founder, Bill W., experienced a mighty spiritual transformation in New York City’s Towns Hospital. Doctors had decided Bill was a hopeless drunk. But Bill never took a drink again, once he came face-to-face with what he called “the God of the preachers.”

Bill’s immediate inclination was to evangelize. He wanted to infuse much of the substance of orthodox Christian doctrine into the veins of the infant AA fellowship. To their deaths, Bill W. and AA’s second co-founder, Dr. Bob, were devout Christians.

However, early failures to sober up other drunks through evangelistic appeals convinced these once-sodden saints that they would have to change their approach. They soon discovered that they needed to clear an alcoholic’s brain to prepare the way for the Holy Spirit to change his heart.

Bill’s doctor encouraged him to skip talking about his conversion and instead emphasize the medical aspects of alcoholism. This point was reinforced by atheist and agnostic AA members who forcefully pressed the point that many alcoholics, those who had abandoned the God of their youth in their distress, would never enter the fellowship if it smacked of yet another rescue mission.

Although AA has never lost its stress on the spiritual aspects of the program, early in its history the emphasis shifted from sin to sickness. Its working definition of alcoholism sees it as a threefold disease, physical, mental, spiritual. Once the drinker has crossed that invisible line from social to problem drinking, he can never safely drink again. Not even beer. For once he has lost control of his drinking, the alcoholic becomes the victim of a physical allergy coupled with a mental obsession. Most medical testimony bears this position out.

Another great friend of Alcoholics Anonymous was Dr. E. M. Jellinek, who wrote the definitive study The Disease Concept of Alcoholism and played a leading role in the establishment of the Yale School of Alcoholic Studies (now at Rutgers). The possibility that uncontrolled drinking was a disease was hinted at as far back as Aristotle’s time, possibly even by Isaiah (5:11). However, it was left to Dr. Jellinek and the American Medical Association (1957) to give authoritative medical support to this view.

The disease concept of alcoholism has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it has helped to lay to rest those old myths that the problem drinker, if not a moral degenerate, was at least less than a man, and that he could drink if he would only exercise will power and learn to drink like a man. This the alcoholic cannot do, and the disease concept has helped to instill this truth into the minds of the problem drinker and the public. On the other hand, the disease concept can be—and has been—used by practicing alcoholics to justify their drinking. Edward J. McGoldrick, Jr., author of The Conquest of Alcohol, makes the point that many alcoholics rationalize their way into another binge by saying: “I am the victim of an incurable disease. I’m hopeless so I may as well drink myself into an early death.”

The recovering alcoholic eventually discovers that his problem is not alcohol alone. It is himself. In the AA Grapevine an AA member commented that her last “slip” occurred when she neglected to remember the last half of AA’s First Suggested Step toward recovery. “I had no trouble in remembering I was powerless over alcohol,” she wrote, “but I kept forgetting my life was unmanageable.”

At the same time, it should be pointed out that alcoholics are not alone in living lives of organized confusion and quiet desperation. Many of us fear change because it threatens our sense of security and stability. Our arrogance, aggression, hostility, and pride often cause us to lash out in a desperate effort to maintain our sense of sovereignty. We will not give up playing god. Recognizing these feelings of autonomy in ourselves can help us understand the situation of the suffering alcoholic. He just doesn’t want to admit that he is not the master of his own ship, that he cannot control his life. He tries his best to maintain the illusion that all he needs to do is cut down, or change his drink, or shift from soda to water as a chaser.

This is why it is so agonizingly difficult to work with an alcoholic who has not “hit bottom.” It tears the heart of the person who genuinely wants to help to have to tell a concerned loved one that nothing can be done for a practicing alcoholic until he himself cries out for help. Psychotherapists such as Dr. Harry Tiebout say that there must be a complete deflation of the ego, that the alcoholic must admit he is powerless. Jesus put it another way in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The boy in that story started on the road to recovery immediately after he came to his senses and abandoned his own sense of personal sovereignty. Happiness was at home with the waiting Father, and so it is for us all.

If unmanageability characterizes the lives of many of us, it is especially characteristic of the alcoholic’s family life. The spouse and children stand by helplessly as a personality degenerates before their eyes. In the face of mental or physical assaults, the response of family members often is retaliation or the threat of retaliation. Where there is no open abuse, guilt is often felt within the family circle. The nagging question arises: What have I done to make him do this? This is usually an exercise in futility. The far more positive approach, as Al-Anon Family Groups suggest, is for family members to admit that their own lives have become unmanageable, that they too are powerless over alcohol. Within this therapeutic framework, family members can begin to cope with their own emotional problems. They will be encouraged to adopt the Twelve Suggested Steps of AA as their own and to learn to give their alcoholic understanding, not sympathy. They will learn that there is a world of difference between the two. They will learn to live with the enemy within; and, by God’s grace, in time the enemy will grow weaker as they themselves move from faith to faith.

The recovering problem drinker and his family eventually discover that they must always face the problem of unthinking people round about them. For them, Jean-Paul Sartre’s words are often tragically true: “Hell is other people.” The scandal is that this can be as true within the Church as in the world outside its doors.

One problem facing the alcoholic who is struggling to achieve sobriety is that people who give lip service to the disease concept of alcoholism deep down may still believe it is solely a moral problem. An illustration of this fact is the case of Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa. Here is a man who has not taken a drink since 1954. Yet the press thoughtlessly refers to him as a reformed alcoholic rather than as a recovering one. When pressed for his feelings about having an alcoholic in the White House, Senator Hughes reportedly replied he would feel safer with a non-drinker, rather than a “social drinker,” controlling that lethal button that could plunge the world into war. This testifies convincingly to the power for good that recovering alcoholics can have in our tragically fragmented world.

That hell can indeed be other people is also evident when one considers psychotherapists who suggest to men and women raised from the pit of hell that perhaps they can drink again socially; when one sees airlines currying the accounts of professional men who are alcoholics by advertising full bar service in airborne lounges; when one hears of bosses and associates feeding rumors of another binge when an alcoholic is out because of sickness; or when one hears of evangelicals who shun the sick alcoholic as if he had the plague. The tragedy of tragedies, it seems to me, is that we bask in the Gospel of grace for ourselves but judge others by the false gospel of works righteousness. No wonder St. Hereticus observed:

The power of hell is strongest where

The odor of sanctity fills the air.

The alcoholic pastor knows this only too well. There are times when the physical and emotional drain put upon his resources seems too great. Then he must retire to the safety of his AA group. For he finds there understanding and compassion which, sad to say, he often fails to find among his own colleagues and within his own congregation, no matter how dear to his heart.

This is not to suggest that Alcoholics Anonymous is a perfect reflection of the Kingdom of God. It is not. It is made up of people, with all their failings and all their strengths. For myself, I have found the AA fellowship successful when all other therapies failed. Yet I would not question for a minute that a loving God uses other means to raise the suffering alcoholic to a new life for His glory.

It is my own firm conviction that an AA member who has not yet accepted the spiritual side of the program is missing out on the highest and best. Happily, my own group consists of a warm evangelical bloc. We share not only one another’s sorrows but also one another’s joys. My own testimony is this: As my blessed Lord turned the water into wine at Cana, he turned my wine into water through the new birth of the Spirit—and the AA friendship. For that, I am a grateful alcoholic. Praise his wonderful Name forever!

The author is an alcoholic Presbyterian minister. In keeping with AA tradition, he is remaining anonymous.

In 1893 Booker T. Washington took a train ride of more than two thousand miles round trip from Boston for a sixty-minute visit to Atlanta. His sole purpose was to give a five-minute address at the convention of the International Christian Workers Association, which had provided his first chance to speak before a predominantly white audience in the South. While the significance of this event is relatively well known (in that this remarkable dedication of the black educator led directly toward his opportunity two years later to gain international attention for his cause in his famous “Atlanta Exposition Address”), an incidental aspect of the story points to a characteristic of the American evangelical heritage that has been largely forgotten.

The organization to which Washington spoke, the International Christian Workers Association, was a gathering of men who in the next generation would be known as “fundamentalists.” Its president was Reuben A. Torrey, later a founder and the dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA), an editor of The Fundamentals, and an organizer of the World Christian Fundamentals Association. The board of directors included as well such evangelical leaders as A. J. Gordon, founder of the schools that now bear his name, and James E. Gray, who later was for many years the president of Moody Bible Institute and a prominent spokesman for the fundamentalist cause.

In the late decades of the nineteenth century, these men, together with their associates in the influential Christian Workers Association, were promoting a wide variety of evangelistic and humanitarian programs directed largely toward the poor and the outcasts throughout American society, especially in the cities. Evangelism was their chief concern, but integral aspects of their direct work with the needy were clubs, excursions, and farms for the children of the urban poor, rescue-mission programs of food and shelter, work by nurses in hospitals, visiting tenements and prisons, distributing ice in the summer and wood in the winter, work with blacks and Indians, medical missions, and many other sacrificial acts of Christian mercy. Aaron Abell, a reliable historian of the Christian response to the problems of the city, describes the Christian Workers Association and the “humanitarian endeavors” of these thousands of “active devotees of social Christianity” as the most important of the Protestant social-service programs of this era.

American evangelicals today have much to gain by recovering and understanding more of their nineteenth-century heritage of social concern; it can help them not only to set the record straight on a little emphasized aspect of their heritage but also to understand themselves. In recent years many evangelicals, reflecting a variety of social philosophies, have been urging that charitable response to social problems should be more prominent in our preaching and practice. Critics of evangelicals, on the other hand, have been saying for many years that the “other-worldly” concerns in our evangelism preclude much social compassion. By pointing to our heritage of nineteenth-century revivalism intimately related to vast efforts for social betterment, we can show the fallacy of our critics’ claims and at the same time find precedents for urging increased social concerns not as a startling departure but as a recovery and renewal of our own tradition. We can learn as well of the various emphases our predecessors successfully used to urge the application of the Gospel to men’s earthly needs.

Varieties Of Social Concern

Revivalism was the leading theme in nineteenth-century American Protestantism, and the revival provided much of the impetus for social concern. Strong moral strains rang out the messages of the popular evangelists. They graphically depicted the enormity of men’s sins, urged repentance and dependence on God’s grace, and demanded lives dedicated to moral purity. Individual sin and individual righteousness were dominant themes, but individuals, the revivalists proclaimed, were implicated in the sins of the groups and the nation to which they belonged, and converted individuals must apply the Gospel of justice and love to all relationships in society.

In response, many converted persons banded together in “voluntary societies” to proclaim and apply God’s Word throughout the nation and the world. During the first half of the century hundreds of these societies sprang up, promoting missions, charity, and reform. Together, they rivaled the federal government in total expenditures—the “benevolent empire,” they were sometimes called. In the realm of social reform, the leadership of revivalists and their converts in the anti-slavery and temperance crusades was the most conspicuous illustration of how preaching the Gospel and applying it to the sources of degradation in society went hand in hand.

Together with the overall moral impact of the revivals, and the Scripture, prayer, and piety behind every benevolent enterprise, a number of distinct traditions and emphases shaped the general evangelical passion for love and justice among men. One major influence was the expectation of the imminent coming of Christ’s kingdom. According to the very popular “postmillennial” teaching of the day, the kingdom age would be introduced by a millennium of spiritual blessings and the spread of righteousness culminating in Christ’s personal return. Nations, evangelists often urged, must turn toward righteousness and purge themselves of all sins and exploitations so they could receive the blessings of the spiritual age. Fervor for such a national moral mission was frequently intensified by a second distinct teaching, the “perfectionist” doctrine found widely among Methodists and among the followers of the great evangelist Charles G. Finney. Together these postmillennial and perfectionist emphases—both of which flourished especially in the middle decades of the century—strongly encouraged works of charity and augmented zeal for a sanctified society following God’s law. (The best work on these emphases is that of the evangelical historian Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform, Harper Torchbooks, 1965 [1957].)

Other emphases in evangelical social concern, popularized by revivalists, grew out of their tradition of scholarship. Far from being anti-intellectual, as is sometimes supposed, evangelicals dominated nineteenth-century American college education, and accordingly much of the century’s academic analysis in areas now known as economics, sociology, or political science was provided by evangelical “moral philosophers.” In these areas the long academic tradition of New England Puritanism was still widely influential through most of the century. Accordingly evangelicals still talked about God’s covenant with the American people, a Puritan tradition stressing that God would bless or curse a people collectively according to whether they kept his laws.

A related theme, particularly popular in nineteenth-century analysis, was the more general concept of “the moral government of God”; it was believed that God’s universal sovereignty made it necessary to conform all aspects of society to God’s moral law. A significant implication of this was that evangelical social service was not confined to individual acts of charity, as is often claimed. Rather, social and moral legislation, as the anti-slavery and temperance movements again exemplify, were major interests of many nineteenth-century revivalists.

There were, to be sure, strongly individualistic emphases as well in the teachings of evangelical moral philosophers. These were especially prominent in their economic theory, which did much to shape responses to social questions. Laissez-faire capitalism and the individual’s opportunity to work his way to success were standard teachings. While, as has often been noted, this emphasis on free enterprise and individual success certainly reflected the prevailing economic “liberalism” of the day, it is significant to note as well that the evangelical theorists always went beyond the secular doctrine in placing their strongest stress on the necessity of true charity. “Disinterested benevolence” was the term they most often used to characterize this basic Christian obligation. Francis Wayland, for instance, the Baptist president of Brown University, author of the most popular nineteenth-century American texts on moral philosophy and economics, and an unrelenting champion of free enterprise, was typical of evangelicals when in connection with the obligation of benevolence he affirmed: “All that we possess is God’s, and we are under obligation to use it all as he wills. His will is that we consider every talent as a trust and that we seek our happiness from the use of it, not in self-gratification, but in ministering to the happiness of others.”

All these evangelical emphases—the moral force of revivalism, expectation of an imminent millennium, “perfectionism,” the covenant, “the moral government of God,” confidence in free enterprise and the individual, and “disinterested benevolence”—did not represent disagreements as much as variations on a common theme, that sacrificial service to fellow men must be integrated with evangelism. Today, perhaps few, if any, evangelicals would agree with every one of these emphases; and reevaluation of specific means and rationales for applying the Gospel to changing social needs is always appropriate. Yet any such criticisms of our predecessors’ specific social teachings should not blind us to their example: they were dedicated to serving God by ministering to all the spiritual and material needs of others. We should be reminded as well that each expression of this dedication was built upon a serious effort to understand and apply the teachings of Scripture, especially those summarized in the command, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Fundamentalist Background

The vitality of evangelicals’ commitment to ministering to every sort of human need is evident in their response to the changing social conditions in America after the Civil War. In an era often noted for its complacency, evangelicals by contrast were searching for new fields of service. Since the frontiers of America were now in the rapidly expanding cities, the revivalists, who had a tradition of moving with the frontiers, now turned their strongest efforts toward urban problems. Compassion for lost souls was the primary motive for evangelical volunteers to live and work in the slums of the overcrowded cities. While most middle-class Americans of this period seemed to prefer to ignore the almost overwhelming needs of the urban poor or to blame them on immigrants, Christian workers were there serving the poor with both the good news of salvation and programs for meeting immediate material needs. (I am grateful to Dr. Norris Magnuson for the use, prior to publication, of his manuscript “Salvation in the Slums: Evangelical Social Welfare Work, 1865–1920,” which provides valuable documentation and insights on this subject.)

The connections, noted at the outset of this account, between these aspects of social service and later fundamentalism have rarely been emphasized. One reason is that many historians have assumed that evangelical “other-worldly” concerns for “soul saving” were necessarily antithetical to concern to improve human conditions in this world. Accordingly they often suggest that modern social Christianity could not begin until liberal theology—a kind of desupernaturalized post-millennialism—had paved the way for the “social gospel,” after about 1890. A related assumption is that since the forerunners of fundamentalism frequently were pre-millennialists, they necessarily lacked real incentive to improve current social conditions, because they saw little hope for society before Christ’s personal return. Yet the fact is that if we look at the men who during the 1870s and 1880s were leaders in urban social service, we find that many of them were the very premillennialists who were also laying the groundwork for much of later fundamentalism.

A striking example is Stephen H. Tyng, Jr., a prominent Episcopal clergyman in New York City whose church hosted the first major American “Bible and Prophecy Conference” of premillennialists in 1878. In that same year Tyng’s church was granted a substantial endowment by some New York philanthropists to continue its notable “support of undenominational, evangelistic, and humanitarian work among the poor in New York City.” Without recognizing Tyng’s premillennial ties, some historians have even placed him among the forerunners of the “social gospel.”

Other men closely tied to the prophecy movement were prominent innovators in bringing Christ’s work to the cities. A. J. Gordon and Arthur T. Pierson, for instance, were among the pioneers in developing urban “institutional churches” that provided a wide variety of socially helpful services to their communities. Dwight L. Moody began his evangelistic efforts among the poor in Chicago and never lost interest in such work; he inspired many of his associates to carry it on. Moody Bible Institute was founded in 1886 as an innovative attempt to provide a “training school for Christian workers” oriented to the surrounding urban needs. Associates of Moody, such as Reuben A. Torrey, who founded the Christian Workers Association the same year, showed similar concerns. Evangelism was their overriding motive, but practical humanitarian compassion was surely there as well. B. H. Warner, a Washington, D. C., banker, remarked to the Christian Workers Convention in 1892:

Religion is a practical thing when it walks down into the lowest dives of our land and takes those who have been buried in sin and wickedness, and lifts them up, cleanses them and sets them to work to uplift the rest of humanity.… Is not religion a practical thing that can induce people from all walks of life to consecrate their services to the bettering of mankind?

Or as Booker T. Washington said in an address to the same convention that would lead to his first invitation to Atlanta the next year, “My friends, my heart has been drawn to this convention mostly, if I understand its object correctly, because it seeks not only to save the soul but the body as well.”

A Forgotten Heritage?

Although twentieth-century American evangelicals have been as renowned as their predecessors for evangelistic zeal, they have seldom been recognized in the way their nineteenth-century forebears were for leadership in charitable programs to meet social needs. The historical explanation for this change is, at least in large part, fairly evident. Early in the twentieth century liberal theology allied itself rather firmly with a social program labeled “the social gospel.” In many cases liberal theology virtually became solely a social philosophy. In response, many evangelicals emphasized that no “gospel” was the Gospel if it was not based on the biblical fundamentals of God’s work of redemption. These “fundamentalists” thus decisively rejected liberal theology; and liberal theology became so closely tied to a social philosophy that fundamentalists understandably rejected that entire social program as well.

One result was that during the era of the modernist controversy, evangelistic-minded Protestants seemed no longer to be responding to social questions as positively as their predecessors had. Some important charitable works, such as medical missions and rescue missions, did indeed continue to flourish, as did many individual acts of charity. Furthermore, evangelicals could point to many lives, delivered by the Gospel from many of the worst effects of sin, as significant contributions to relieving misery in society. Yet when the term “social gospel” necessarily became anathema because of its associations with liberal theology, evangelical leadership in a broad area of collective working against injustice and for widespread concern for all men’s needs seemed to have diminished.

Many evangelicals today are reevaluating these aspects of their immediate twentieth-century heritage, and perhaps that heritage may be better understood when seen in its apparent contrasts to earlier precedents. Tradition, of course, is not a sufficient guide in our discussions of how we should apply the Gospel. God’s Word must be the test, and in that light deficiencies can be found in any era. These were many blind spots in nineteenth-century evangelical social thought, as there are, no doubt, in our own. Yet a historical perspective can assure us at least that we can undertake a variety of approaches to social application of the Gospel without necessarily diminishing our zeal for the purity of God’s Word proclaimed in evangelism.

Frank and constructive discussion of some important differences on social questions among evangelicals today is therefore very much in order. But discussion itself, of course, is not a sufficient response. Whatever our differences concerning specific programs, we can be united in our commitment to a truly evangelical witness in renewed and sacrificial efforts to serve Christ and our fellow men.

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

As Christians observe Mother’s Day, their thoughts appropriately turn to an archetypal mother: to the mother within whose flesh Divinity became flesh. Ever since the Reformation, Protestants have tended, in their scorn for Madonna-worship, to ignore what all Christians can learn from her. Mary’s experiences were unparalleled in human history; yet at significant points they can provide a pattern for all Christians.

First, we note the total submission to God’s will for her personal life expressed in Luke 1:38: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”

Our attention tends to glide too smoothly over the surface of those familiar words. What must have whirled within her consciousness on that annunciation day and in succeeding days? Surely there was uncertainty, fear of misunderstanding, fear of opprobrium, fear of unknown unknowns. Which of us, facing a decision to accept Christ initially or to accept any new yielding to him, has not experienced similar emotions? But how often is our response so wholly affirmative, so accepting?

In the instant of the angelic greeting, did Mary have any prophetic awareness that her acceptance and submission would mean an arduous trip over interminable hills during the final stages of pregnancy? (To see Mary more intelligently and more humanly, one who has never been pregnant might ask any pregnant woman, any mother, what it would have been like to walk or ride a donkey across all those hills between Nazareth and Bethlehem.) Did Mary have any inkling that “be it unto me” would mean an exile in Egypt, and the sword-piercings that would come to her own heart when His was pierced by a Roman blade?

Perhaps she did. One would think, however, that she did not yet know what she gave assent to; that like any of us she agreed sight unseen; that her acceptance of God’s will was just that, acceptance of God’s will. Acceptance of the unknown, the never before experienced, the potentially ominous; acceptance of that which may carry a bitter price to the ego of the one who says “be it unto me.”

Mary accepted, and saw herself as “the handmaid of the Lord.” In her submission she was an exemplar for any Christian of any era, for any Christian at any level of spiritual maturity, for any stumbling seeker after an encounter with the Holy. “Be it unto me according to thy word” is an appropriate response—the only totally appropriate response—in any of the circumstances of life. In practical decisions of mundane affairs, in one’s efforts toward specific Christian service, in the prunings of the believer’s soul that the Holy Spirit would carry out day by day: “Be it unto me according to thy word.”

Secondly, Luke 2:51 suggests that Mary found and understood the roles of authority and responsibility within God’s plan: “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.…” Her son was divine, and she knew that fact from the Annunciation moment, from the first moments when he began to become flesh within her flesh. Yet Divinity as a human teen-ager “was subject unto” human parenthood. In accepting the authority of God over her life (“be it unto me”), Mary accepted also the role of a disciplining mother. Imagination supplies conjectures as to what being “subject” meant, day by day. When to get up. When to go to bed. When to bring water from the village well. When to carry lumber into the carpenter shop. When to give fraternal care to the other children. When to help with the grubbiest chores in a peasant household. Whatever the details, he was “subject unto” his parents.

One wonders if Mary sometimes squirmed against and questioned the task of instructing and disciplining Deity. However difficult she may have found it to do, she carried her responsibility: her Son was subject unto her and her husband. The implications seem inescapable for any family, or larger group, that thinks carefully about Christian life-styles. Even in (or especially in) an era that tends to see adults as being subject unto their teenagers rather than vice versa, the implications are inescapable.

Next, she was a meditating mother. The record continues in Luke 2:51: “His mother kept all these sayings in her heart.” And the Christmas story reported (Luke 2:19) that Mary “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” Again, her experiences were unique among those of all human beings, and yet she was an archetype, a pattern for all mortals. She is especially a pattern for hurried, flurried, materialistic Americans who do not know how to ponder on anything, who do not know even faintly how to ponder upon God’s actions in their own lives.

How often do we even linger through an organ postlude after a Sunday-morning service to “ponder” on God’s word that has just been preached to us? How often do we watch a sunset through, and ponder? How often do we ponder His doings while we commute, or shop, or clean floors, or pull weeds in a garden? How often do we “ponder” together, in conversation with other Christians, His ways with us?

Mary was, furthermore, one who gave leadership to the Christian community in its communal prayer. Among the scriptural allusions to her, one of the strangely neglected ones is Acts 1:14; in their preparation for Pentecost, the disciples in the upper room “continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus.” Obviously they were not praying to His Father through her; she was a supplicator with them, a part of the “one accord.” But one would assume that her presence, named by name, contributed strength and energy, faith and fervor, to the apostolic prayers, and that she was a resource in “supplication” on many other unnamed occasions. Without undue extrapolation from Acts 1:14, one would assume that she knew, as intensely as did any of the others in that prayer fellowship, the yearnings that preceded Pentecost and the vitality that succeeded it.

Every Christian community (tiny local church, mission, denomination, fellowship, or organization) needs those who are ready to join “with one accord,” on all sorts of occasions, “in prayer and supplication.” Within the community, every day brings its opportunities, its pressures, its sorrows, its yearnings; every community needs a Mary—many a Mary—to carry the weight of supplication within, and for, and beyond the community.

In her prayer, and in the other ways we have noted, Mary is an inspiration and pattern for us all.

Petra

I am the one who walked the waves with you,

lighter than spindrift,

stepping wave to wave …

Now, as the sound of one cock’s final crow

echoes the palace walls,

I, who warmed my ego at the fires of ridicule,

have turned from you again.

O cauterizing gaze that probes and burns

then does no longer look,

O Lord, my God,

this granite heart you chose and named,

once warmed by sun,

becomes no more than part of Adam’s curse—

a leaden lump that sinks and sinks …

Reach out your hand to me once more.

You know I love you still.

Greater than Moses, smite this rock

that I may ever pour your praises out.

Lift me to walk the waves once more.

MARIE J. POST

Elva McAllaster is spending a year as poet in residence at Westmont College, Santa Barbara. She is professor of English at Greenville College, Greenville, Illinois. She received the Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.

The fortieth chapter of Isaiah is full of divine comfort, caution, and challenge. It breathes comfort as God tells his ancient people that the day of deliverance is as bright as his promises. He declares: “The glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it” (v. 5). It is a chapter of caution, for in the sentences that follow God warns his people to beware of likening the Creator of the universe to a graven image and a lifeless idol. The concluding paragraph, however, is supremely one of challenge, for it calls God’s people to renewed endeavors despite the weakness of the flesh and the wiles of the devil. The message of these final verses is that of the secret of strength.

To understand this secret, we must consider, first of all:

The Peril Of Expended Strength

“He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall” (vv. 29, 30). In language familiar to us all, the prophet here outlines a perilous sequence. First there is a weariness that leads to weakness, and then a weakness that culminates in utter collapse. The words are intended to convey the danger of expended strength; and every one of us knows how alert the devil is to take advantage of this condition in our spiritual lives.

In Old Testament times Moses cautioned the children of Israel of this peril of expended strength. He warned: “Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way.… how he … smote … all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary” (Deut. 25:17, 18). Then there is that instance when David found himself in deadly combat with one of the sons of the giants, and would have been slain but for the intervention of his faithful servant Abishai. The reason for David’s threatened defeat is that he had “waxed faint” (2 Sam. 21:15).

The Word of God and practical experience teach us that there are two ways in which spiritual strength can be expended. First of all, there are the demands of service. God has promised abundant strength to those who are prepared to appropriate it. But the very fact that he increases strength presupposes the expenditure of that strength in daily service.

The earthly life of our Lord Jesus illustrates this fact. When an ailing woman pressed through a thronging crowd to touch the hem of his garment and was healed of her disease, “Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30). That word “virtue” can be translated “strength.” The release of healing power in that moment was, for Jesus, an expenditure of strength. And this was true of his teaching and preaching, as well as his healing ministry.

No one can exert an impact upon a godless world without expending strength. The demands of service take a toll on our resources.

But in the second place, there are the dissipations of sin. Perhaps the most sobering example of this expenditure of strength is sin in the life of Samson. Here was a man who was endowed with unusual powers, he has been known throughout the centuries as the Hercules of the Old Testament. But there came a moment in his experience when he tampered with sin and by doing so lost his strength, his sight, and his service for God.

One moment we can be in touch with the throne of God and living in glorious victory; then we can be utterly defeated through failure to draw upon the reserves of heaven. How we need to beware, then, of the peril of expended strength!

This leads us to another aspect:

The Principle Of Exchanged Strength

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (v. 31). The word chalaph—“renew”—can also be rendered “change” or “exchange.” Scholars suggest the word is associated with the process by which the molting eagle exchanges its old feathers for new ones, and so is fitted for its phenomenal flights.

Those who are familiar with the writings of J. Hudson Taylor will recall that he made much of what he calls “the exchanged life.” And Taylor was right, for this is the supreme fact of the Christian life—exchanging what we are for all that Christ is; it is the principle of normal Christian living. We begin the spiritual life that way and we continue and consummate it on the same basis.

The secret of this exchanged life is gathered up for us in that little word “wait”—“they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” As we study this word “wait” we see at least three conditions that bring us into the joy and fullness of the exchanged life. There is the waiting of dedication. This is the attitude not of rebellion but rather of submission. While there is rebellion in our hearts there is consequent impatience, restlessness, and frustration; but where there is submission to all the will of God there is restfulness before the Lord.

“When my agony of soul was at its height,” wrote Hudson Taylor,

a sentence in a letter … was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. [The writer of the letter], who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did, wrote … “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.” As I read I saw it all! “If we believe not, he abideth faithful.” I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how the joy flowed!) that He had said, “I will never leave you.” “Ah, there is rest!” I thought. “I have striven in vain to rest in him. I’ll strive no more. For has he not promised to abide with me—never to leave me, never to fail me?” And, He never will! [“The Life of Rest,” Good News Publishers].

Paul brings this same thought out beautifully in his Epistle to the Philippians, where, having learned the secret of restfulness in the will of God, he declares, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Do we know the waiting of dedication? Can we say with the psalmist, “I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry”?

There is also the waiting of supplication. Implicit in this word “wait” is the idea of supplication and prayerfulness. This, of course, is where the exchange is made. As we breathe our need to heaven, he answers with his help. As we confess our sin, he imparts his cleansing. As we admit our weakness, he infuses divine strength.

A glorious line in one of the psalms (96:6) puts this perfectly: “Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.” If we are to know the exchange of strength and the transformation of our character into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ, then the secret is in the sanctuary. This is the place of prayer and supplication. Neglect the sanctuary and strength is gone. The sanctuary represents not only public worship but also private devotion. We must remember throughout our lives that “strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.”

There is, finally, the waiting of expectation. There is no point in waiting if there is no expectation. This is why James the Apostle says that when we come to God in prayer we should “ask in faith, nothing wavering: for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord” (James 1:6, 7). On the other hand, to believe expectantly that God will meet our needs is to be rewarded with divine strength; the Bible says that “in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength.” The quietness of prayer and the confidence of expectation bring the answer of spiritual strength.

This, then, is the principle of exchanged strength. The strength of man is utter weakness, but when he exchanges it for divine strength the Christian becomes endued with power for any eventuality.

This brings us to the concluding point:

The Purpose Of Employed Strength

“They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (v. 31). With striking imagery we are here introduced to the exciting and exhilarating adventures we can have with God. Some have suggested that the language describes the three stages of Christian development: mounting up with wings as eagles represents children; running and not being weary represents young men; and walking and not fainting represents fathers.

As impressive as this is, I am inclined to interpret the passage differently. I believe that the purpose for which God releases divine strength is to prepare us for three areas of Christian experience. First, there is the area of life’s special exaltations—“they shall mount up with wings as eagles.” W. E. Vine in his commentary on Isaiah points out that “the eagle is characterized by three things: rapidity of flight, power of scent, and keenness of vision.” And then he adds: “So our mounting up is not only a matter of rising above difficulties, but involves a joyous and quick discernment of the will of God for us, and the keen vision of Himself by faith” (Isaiah, 1946, p. 98).

The eagle is the only bird that can fly into the eye of the sun. It has a special lid that protects the retina from the dazzling brightness and unrelenting heat of the sun. This is why the Gospel of John is likened to the eagle: there the Apostle flies into the very eye of the sun and reveals truths of transcendent wonder and beauty. We need special strength for these exalted experiences of life.

Paul gives testimony to this fact when he tells us that his prayer for the Ephesian Christians was that God would strengthen them by his might in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith (Eph. 3:16, 17). There is nothing more wonderful in all the world than the glory of the indwelling Christ. To enter into the full experience of the Saviour’s indwelling, to know the depth, height, length, and breadth of divine love, we must be strengthened with might by God’s Spirit in the inner man. Perhaps one of the reasons why we do not enjoy these exaltations of life more often is because we do not take time to wait upon the Lord for the needed strength.

Then, secondly, there is the area of life’s crucial obligations—“they shall run, and not be weary.” We cannot afford to play at church or to procrastinate in soul-winning. The messenger of the Good News must have winged feet. I love the story of Philip the evangelist, who was called out of a revival in the city of Samaria and told to join himself to the carriage of the Ethiopian eunuch, returning to his homeland in North Africa. Perhaps Philip hesitated somewhat when he first saw this black man sitting in his chariot and reading Isaiah the prophet. But then came the word of the Spirit unto him, saying, “Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.” And we read that “Philip ran … to him” (Acts 8:30).

The crucial obligations of every true Christian are those of carrying the Gospel to the far ends of the earth. The task is to be done as quickly as possible. For this we need special strength to run and not be weary. We cannot loiter or be lazy in fulfilling the King’s business. For such demands as this we need the exchanged life with its divine strength.

With the exaltations of life and the obligations of life there is, thirdly, the area of life’s normal activities—“they shall walk, and not faint” (v. 31). “The daily round and common task,” our everyday duties and hobbies and pastimes, call for a steady plodding every moment of every hour. I believe this is why the Christian life, in its totality, is described as “a walk.” Seven times over in the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians we are told how to walk; and strange as it may seem, this is the area in which we are most likely to faint. We all want special exaltations, and if our dedication to God is true we want to be involved in crucial obligations. But when it comes to the normal activities, we tend to rely on our own strength, and when we do this we collapse. The text we are studying underscores the truth that appears again and again throughout the Word of God: that in and of ourselves we cannot please God. Whether we are flying, running, or walking, we need the strength of God. Failure to recognize this is the cause of spiritual bankruptcy and moral breakdown in the Church of Jesus Christ today.

We need to heed Isaiah’s message on the secret of strength. We need to remember the peril of expended strength; then we can enter into the joy and purpose of employed strength. God is saying to us, “They that wait upon the Lord shall exchange their strength”—for his.

Stephen F. Olford has served as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New York City since 1959. He was born in Zambia of missionary parents and studied in England at St. Luke’s College and the Missionary Training Colony.

Our executive editor, Dr. L. Nelson Bell, has been nominated, along with three others, for the post of moderator of the 112th Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The Asheville, North Carolina, Presbytery unanimously endorsed him. Dr. Andrew Jumper, St. Louis minister, expressed the opinion that Dr. Bell “is the best man to promote reconciliation within the Church,” which has been divided factionally for some years. In my quite biased opinion, there couldn’t be a better candidate; I heartily commend to our Southern Presbyterian brethren this layman and his faith.

I am happy to announce the appointment of Edward E. Plowman as news editor. He acted as backstop for Russell Chandler (whose family’s allergies, incidentally, have virtually disappeared in the beneficent California sunshine) and has handled the news desk on a trial basis since Chandler’s departure in January. Ed has amply demonstrated his journalistic skills and has a perceptive hold on current happenings in the religious realm. In due season we hope to add another news journalist to our staff to help us continue to give our readers what I think is without doubt the best available coverage of religious news.

An article and an editorial in this issue deal with one of the nation’s most crippling problems. Every American is affected, directly or indirectly, by the misuse of alcohol.