Approximately five million Protestants in Zaire (formerly Congo; pronounced Zah-ear’) have been awaiting word from the government on how many churches will get legal recognition under a new law. They and more than 1,200 foreign missionaries currently serving in Zaire have become deeply apprehensive about the outcome.

A bill passed by the Zaire National Assembly and signed into law last December 31 by President Mobutu Sese Seko introduced restraints on religious activities not seen before in this country. But passage of the law came as no surprise to those familiar with a stiffly worded speech Mobutu made late last year against proliferation of sects. He warned, in effect, that he was going to put a stop to the nonsense.

Some say Zaire now has about 200 separate denominations. Others claim there are about 400 in the Lower Zaire Province alone. Most are breakaway movements from already existing groups. Once they organize separately, they immediately ask for personnalité civile (government recognition)—and for government money to run schools, whether they have any or not!

If the legislation as such was no surprise, its particulars were. They went far beyond restriction of splinter groups. The law in effect granted automatic government recognition to only three denominations: the Roman Catholic, the Kimbanguist (an independent African church now a member of the World Council of Churches), and the two-year-old Church of Christ in Zaire, which evolved out of the Congo Protestant Council amid much controversy. All other church groups were given until February 15 to join one of the three recognized denominations or to apply for separate legal status.

The big hitch in the law is a list of twelve conditions set forth as necessary for separate recognition. One condition is that the founder be physically and mentally sound, another that the group have at least $200,000 in a bank. Evidence must also be adduced that the organization seeking recognition is not a dissident of one of the three groups recognized at the outset. Many an observer has been inclined to feel that if the conditions are enforced very literally, most churches’ bids will be unsuccessful.

Unrecognized churches moved swiftly in response to the new law. Through an independent Council of Protestant Churches of Zaire, formed largely in opposition to the Church of Christ in Zaire, they sought and got counsel from government representatives. As a result, they drew up a statement asking the government to recognize their council instead of the CCZ as officially representative of Zaire’s Protestants. As a precautionary measure, in the event the government turned down the request, they appealed for recognition as a separate organization.

Meanwhile, Zaire’s minister of justice agreed to meet simultaneously with representatives of the CCZ and the CPCZ. The CCZ’s National Executive Committee balked at such a meeting, which was postponed and rescheduled. Finally, the minister of justice canceled the joint meeting and called in only the CPCZ.

During a twenty-minute meeting attended by some 100 churchmen, the minister simply summarized the new law and in essence declared it was not negotiable. “La loi c’est la loi (The law is the law),” he said. He criticized the CPCZ’s approach, observing that it had no right to ask for dissolution of the CCZ and the recognition of the CPCZ because the former had legal status while the latter did not. Bishop John Shungu, who took his United Methodist conference out of the CCZ, was cut off in mid-sentence when he tried to ask a question.

Some thought the harder line was a reaction by Zaire politicians against those who were trying to second-guess them or to put an interpretation upon the law not originally intended. Others felt that the CCZ’s president, Jean Bokeleale, who had been out of the country when the law was made public, had made his influence felt upon return.

The CCZ National Executive Committee met for several weeks after Bokeleale came home. The sessions apparently were prompted by concern that the government had initially shown too favorable an attitude toward the CPCZ. Another development was a series of letters attacking Bokeleale for misrepresenting the neutral position taken by the CCZ youth movement toward the church conflict, and for allegedly misusing funds to buy property for himself in Belgium and Kinshasa. Some voices within the CCZ demanded that a special synod be called, but the committee refused, possibly out of fear that there is growing disenchantment among the rank and file.

A complicating issue is the continuing refusal of constituent groups of the CCZ to change their articles of incorporation so that they are legally “communities” instead of “churches.” Until they do this, the CCZ is not in reality the super-church it claims to be. The National Executive Committee said the February 15 deadline also applied to that modification.

CPCZ representatives met the day after they saw the minister of justice and changed their strategy accordingly. They dropped their plea that the CCZ be dissolved and drafted a new application that merely requests separate recognition.

Forward, March!

Uganda president Idi Amin has decreed that all his armed-forces personnel must attend religious services at least three times a week. Amin, a Muslim, has been pushing for nationwide support of Anglican projects. Half of Uganda’s 9.6 million population is nominally Christian; 6 per cent is Moslem.

Wcc: Search For Settlements

Current problems in Northern Ireland are economic and political, says the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches. But “they arise out of past history—both political and religious—and therefore cannot avoid exciting religious feelings and partisanship,” according to a statement adopted by the twenty-six-member committee at its semi-annual meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, last month. Churchmen and politicians were asked to “intensify their efforts to find a settlement.”

A different strategy was proposed for Rhodesia. The committee urged WCC member churches to press their governments to apply economic and political sanctions against Rhodesia “so long as the racially discriminatory system prevails there.” It found “serious defects” in the proposed Anglo-Rho-desian settlement and called for release of political prisoners.

A date was set (July 20–August 10, 1975) for the WCC’s Fifth Assembly. It will be held in Indonesia.

Women Pray For Liberation

All-women rallies aren’t uncommon today, but the 6,000 women who gathered at the Los Angeles Sports Arena February 24 weren’t calling for more liberation—unless it might be spiritual liberation. The rally spearheaded the drive for “a prayer strategy for the nation.”

Mrs. Billy Graham and emcee Vonette Bright, wife of Campus Crusade for Christ president Bill Bright, keynoted the rally. Explo ’72—Crusade’s international congress on evangelism—and the Key 73 nationwide outreach will be major prayer targets for women all across the country, Mrs. Bright explained.

The plans call for mobilizing weekly prayer-cell meetings. In every major city throughout the country a prayer leader will be selected who will in turn select twenty prayer captains. Each captain will recruit twenty more women to serve as neighborhood prayer hostesses.

Mrs. Bright says Crusade and several women’s groups, including Martha Rountree’s Leadership Foundation and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, will share leadership roles. However, the latter group insisted it has no plans at this time to participate.

Welcome To The Table

After years of uncertainty, baptized members of all churches with a trinitarian basis will be admitted to Holy Communion in the Church of England. The voting figures showed a surprising 271–46 majority at the general synod meeting at Westminster. Curiously, nearly half of the diocesan bishops were absent, but those present voted solidly in favor. The canon will take effect when the royal assent is formally given.

But if that measure indicated some shifting of view by the establishment, it is apparent that the latter is still hankering after union with the Methodists, despite failure to produce the necessary majority vote in the past. The issue will be voted on once more in May. Anglican authorities estimate that more than 4,000 clergy will object on conscientious grounds if the merger passes, entitling them to special compensation. Their ministry would subsequently be restricted. An official spokesman said it was impossible at this stage to say how much the compensation bill would be.

That the amount is not important may be taken from certain information now available: assets held in trust for the Church of England total $1.1 billion, and annual income has risen to more than $66 million. The church commissioners own 166,208 acres of agricultural land in England.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Stock Questions

Two interdenominational groups have sent resolutions to several U. S. corporations questioning them about their involvement in war and apartheid.

The Church Project on U. S. Investments in Southern Africa filed stockholder proxy motions with four “representative” companies: General Motors, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Gulf Oil, and Mobil Oil. The group demanded a report from each company on its wage and personnel policies in South Africa. Spokesmen for the newly formed organization say U. S. corporations are directly and indirectly supporting South Africa’s apartheid.

Another group, Clergy and Laymen Concerned, which owns four shares of stock each in IT&T, General Electric, Honeywell, and Standard Oil of New Jersey, is trying to persuade these corporations to “cease and desist” from any participation in the air war in Indochina. CLC asked the companies to disclose the number of their defense contracts and to initiate or accelerate committee investigation for conversion to peaceful production.

Labor’S Version

The Ontario Labor Relations Board ominously suggested during a hearing that the Christian Labor Association of Canada “should not be certified by the Board” because it seems to be propagating “a version of Christianity not shared by … the majority of Christians and indeed not shared by many of the members of the Christian Reformed Church.”

Nevertheless, the board granted Theodore Hogeterp, a CLAC member, his requested exemption from paying union dues to an Oshawa local of the United Auto Workers union.

UAW witness Henry Semplonius, a district committeeman for the union and a member of the Christian Reformed Church, testified that 20 to 30 per cent of his congregation were also members of the UAW. He added that both his minister and Hogeterp’s Christian Reformed pastor disagree with the CLAC position.

Hogeterp won his case, but the hearing may have jeopardized the future of the CLAC.

LESLIE K. TARR

West Pakistan: Touch Of Love

As Christians help to nurse and feed war-ravaged Bangladesh (see March 3 issue, page 38), there are wounds that need tending in West Pakistan, and evangelicals are there.

At last month’s annual meeting of the Evangelical Fellowship of West Pakistan (EFWP), about seventy-five delegates voted to set up a relief fund to aid refugees and other war victims. Soul healing got a nod, too, with support voted for a national evangelist and his family. In lively forum discussions, many agreed that Christians need to demonstrate more love and extend more down-to-earth brotherly help.

Pastor Hidayet Masih was re-elected chairman, and Wycliffe Singh was named editor of Rafaqat, which services the EFWP membership of several hundred.

RALPH E. BROWN

Off Key

Eight years of feuding between a 51-year-old female ex-member of Mar Vista, California, First Baptist Church and the church’s minister has cost the lady wrangler $500, twenty days in jail, and three years probation.

Once a member in good standing, she had been enjoined since 1964 from setting foot on the church premises.

However, she was arrested at the church a few months ago after allegedly disrupting the services by singing off key, drowning out the minister, and using four-letter words. A jury recently convicted her on four misdemeanor counts.

Deaths

CHEN WEI-PING, 96, Methodist minister who served as dean of Nanking Theological Seminary, chief of chaplains of Nationalist Chinese armed forces, and President Chiang Kai-shek’s pastor; in Taipei, Taiwan.

EUGENE TISSERANT, 87, French priest, noted Orientalist, and dean of the Catholic Church’s Sacred College of Cardinals; in Albano, Italy, of a heart attack.

Religion In Transit

An interfaith $1.6 million “Chapel of the Astronauts,” to be paid for by voluntary donations, will be built on 5½ acres of John F. Kennedy Space Center land at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The non-profit backers say they want it to reflect “the intersection of time and eternity” and symbolize “the deep and lasting relationship of all men with God.”

Several experimental clinics, aimed at teaching a new “ovulation method” of birth control, will be set up by the Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles. It is based on the appearance and consistency of vaginal mucus at different times during the menstrual cycle.

After heated debate, the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania paid a tax bill of $545.25 owed by priest David M. Gracie of Philadelphia. Gracie refused to pay it in protest against the Indochina war. He will be paid his $14,175 annual salary in advance—minus the $545.25—so the Internal Revenue Service cannot bill the diocese again.

Despite visible bruises on the buttocks of a ten-year-old boy, a judge found the superintendent of the Fourth Baptist Christian Day School of Minneapolis innocent of assault. The judge ruled that the boy’s parents had delegated their authority to the school. The youth, now in a public school, was spanked with a wooden paddle for alleged misconduct.

Institute for Advanced Christian Studies board president Carl F. H. Henry says IFACS stands within $4,500 of reaching a $75,000 matching grant by Lilly Endowment with a March 31 deadline. During its five-year existence IFACS has awarded $75,500 to evangelical scholars working on research projects, and has sponsored invitational scholars’ conferences.

Last month’s Lutheran Youth Alive congress in Seattle drew 2,600 persons, almost twice the number expected. Closed-circuit TV helped to handle the overflow. Speaker David Preus, vice-president of the American Lutheran Church, said the independent LYA complements official Lutheran youth units and should not be seen as divisive. Hundreds professed first-time decisions for Christ.

Christ Jesus, 265-0730

Does Jesus Christ reside in Albuquerque, New Mexico? If you dial 505-265-0730 and ask for him, John Leary, a 32-year-old licensed minister and director of the Christian Embassy, will tell you he does. The Embassy is a Christian house ministry.

Leary, who works with student Pat Reilly, says he lists the Embassy’s number under Christ Jesus in the telephone directory to attract people “in trouble or in need of food and counseling.” Apparently, it works.

Reporting that dozens of people call each week, Leary admits that a few call to accuse him of disrespect or blasphemy. But most, he says, call for help. What he gives callers is a sympathetic ear, an invitation to visit the Christian Embassy, and a promise of prayer and fellowship. “We are just Christians who want to minister to others,” Leary explains.

The Texas Baptist Convention news magazine has come out editorially against a proposed address by President Nixon at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Editor John Hurt says he doesn’t want to give Nixon a political platform in an election year. Nixon, he adds, has supported issues opposed by Southern Baptists.

Southern Baptist membership advanced to 11.8 million in 1971, an increase of more than 196,000. There were 409,000 baptisms, a jump of 40,000 over the 1970 figure.

Three dozen dissidents tried to take over an annual session of the sixty-year-old Council of Hispanic American Ministries. Bedlam ensued, with enraged conservatives shouting down the intruders and calling on police to bounce them. The incident wrecked hopes of ecumenically unifying Spanish-speaking Christians, say insiders.

The United Presbyterian Council on Church and Society has endorsed busing as a way to integrate schools.

Personalia

Evangelist John Haggai will conduct an evangelistic crusade in Belfast in June and July.

Alexsei Bichkov, a pastor of the Moscow Baptist Church, has been elected general secretary of the All Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, succeeding the late Alexander Karev.

Billy Graham and associates preached to 43,286,881 people at crusades and rallies from 1950 through 1970, according to latest published statistics; 1,280,787 inquirers registered decisions during the same twenty years.

World Scene

A Toronto meeting of United Church of Canada members to organize for opposition to union with the Anglican Church attracted only fifteen people. Leader William Morris and three supporters, including his wife and teen-age son, were opposed by four others in his move to establish an anti-merger organization; the remaining seven abstained. Sighed Morris: “There is so much apathy.”

Baptist churches in 115 countries have a total membership of 31.4 million, the Baptist World Alliance reported. Largest concentration is in North America, with 27.5 million.

Two major denominations in Puerto Rico—the United Methodist Church and the United Evangelical Church—will merge. The new group will have 112 churches with more than 20,000 members. In South-West Africa two Lutheran groups merged last month to form the 280,000-member United Evangelical Lutheran Church in South-West Africa.

In a reversal of last year’s stance, directors of the Canadian National Exhibition have banned church exhibition booths, ostensibly because of lack of space. Church officials are fighting the decision, and Canon Maurice Wilkinson of the Canadian Council of Churches is also criticizing the exhibition’s invitation to television evangelist Rex Humbard to stage a “Sunday grandstand show.”

Catholics and Lutherans in the Philippines have agreed to recognize the validity of baptism performed in either church.

There are signs that Christian television may be emerging from its long infancy. Christians are buying stations. New production groups are pushing beyond the hoary songs-and-a-sermon format. Programs for the videotape machine market are being circulated. Increasingly, the Gospel is getting past the barriers to the vast prime-time non-Christian audience. It all leads some observers to believe we have entered the Decade of the Tube in evangelical communication.

Last month WHCT-TV Channel 18 in Hartford began transmitting Christian programs. The station was a $2 million gift from RKO to minister Ray Schoch, who runs the two-year-old KHOF-TV Channel 30 in Glendale, California, a station devoted exclusively to Christian programming.

Also last month Latin American evangelist Luis Palau during a Costa Rica crusade held forth on thirty-two live call-in and counseling type programs while beaming videotaped programs on a second channel.

This month five Canadian denominations joined scripts and launched “Talk-in,” a thirteen-week series on CFTO-TV, Toronto, anchor station for CTV, the nation’s privately owned network. The group was offered fifty-two weeks of time, but leaders, nervous about the shortage of good production ideas, opted for the smaller chunk.

The National Council of Churches recently began publishing a Cable Information Service to advise churches about the fast-developing cable-TV field.

And Logos has just released Shout It From the Housetops, the story of broadcaster Pat Robertson, 42, and his pioneer work in Christian television as head of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Robertson, who could almost double for TV’s Dale Robertson, is an ordained Southern Baptist minister with a degree in law from Yale. His WYAH-TV Channel 27 in Portsmouth, Virginia, is the state’s most powerful television station. According to many TV people, it is also the best-equipped facility on the East Coast outside New York City. It boasts four of the latest RCA color cameras ($75,000 each) and several videotape machines ($125,000 each), as well as many thousands of dollars’ worth of film cameras, projectors, switchers, audio boards, and other sophisticated gadgetry. It even has a computer-like animation programmer that can create cartoons. Two large studios have dimmer capability, something a lot of big secular stations lack. A waterfall comes tumbling out of a mountain scene at the flick of a faucet.

Robertson started his venture with an initial stake of $70 in 1960. In November of that year, the Federal Communications Commission granted him a permit for the first TV station in America scheduled to broadcast 50 per cent or more religious time. (The late evangelist Percy Crawford bought a Philadelphia station in the fifties, but it went under financially, failing to achieve the quantity of religious programming he envisioned.)

The following fall WYAH-TV went on the air with one black-and-white camera and a handful of staffers. There were lapses as the cameraman changed lenses and location. Mice on occasion got fouled in the transmitter and blacked out the station, recalls Robertson. Once, he chuckles, the audio failed in the middle of a program, and someone on stage who knew sign language for the deaf finished the show.

The station today employs thirteen persons in production, a dozen in engineering, and three in marketing along with other personnel. The budget is $80,000 monthly; most of it is raised through contributions. An FM radio station is also housed in the facility (CBN operates six Christian radio stations in the United States and one in Bogota).

A recent addition to the CBN fold is WHAE-TV Channel 46 in Atlanta with a $50,000 monthly budget.

One of CBN’s most popular TV productions is the hour-long “Jim and Tammy” children’s show, begun in 1965 and now syndicated to stations in seventeen states. These include several NBC outlets. It pulls 2,000 letters a week, says host Jim Baker, 32. Viewers are invited to call follow-up counselors in the various localities. After one show a while back, he says, counselors reported 1,000 decisions for Christ.

The “700 Club” is another popular show. Robertson says he likes it “because it utilizes TV to the fullest.” It is a live audience-participation show; viewers call in prayer requests, relate experiences, and converse with studio guests and emcees. A bank of telephones is manned by volunteer counselors who get between 400 and 600 calls a night. The show originated as a fund-raising telethon in 1966 that turned into a revival right on the air, says Robertson.

Virtually all of CBN’s staff members have had the charismatic experience, beginning with Robertson, who says he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit while a student at Biblical Seminary in New York. Production manager Jerry Horstmann, 28, formerly with CBS and NBC, attends an anti-tongues Southern Baptist church but says he received the baptism while directing a telethon a few months ago.

Robertson soft-pedals Pentecostalism on the air, but Schoch’s KHOF-TV in Glendale does not. “We unabashedly proclaim the Full Gospel, and that is the secret of our success,” declares general manager Paul Crouch. The station operates on a $25,000 monthly budget with thirty-four fulltime staffers. It schedules eight hours of airtime daily, beginning at 3 P.M. Programming tends to be mostly of the music-and-sermons variety. But interest runs high, insists Crouch. One of the most popular is “Day of Discovery,” a music and Bible-study program emceed by Richard DeHaan, who teaches an anti-tongues position off the air.

Other stations not as well known are operated by charismatic groups in Miami, Dallas, Indianapolis, and Phoenix. Rex Humbard operates Channel 55 in Akron. CBN is dickering for outlets in Baltimore and Boston, and others are negotiating in Pittsburgh and Chicago.

Numerous churches televise their services. At the national level, Humbard, Billy Graham, Kathryn Kuhlman, and Oral Roberts are the most visible personalities. They spend millions of dollars to purchase regular time slots on hundreds of stations. Each also has produced expensive prime time “specials.” Critics claim the specials are little more than embellished versions of the usual songs-and-sermon format, but spokesmen for the four reply that the shows get results (decisions and dollars)—“and that’s what counts.”

One of Canada’s best-known religious telecasters is David Mainse, 34, a Pentecostal minister who gave up his church to work fulltime on his “Crossroads” program, now in its ninth year and carried on ninety stations. He uses music and interviews people.

Several small independent broadcasters report that interviews and panel discussions of current issues usually draw larger audiences than straight sermons. The businessmen who sponsor “God’s Good News” on television stations in Maryland and Washington, D. C., lean heavily on interviews.

Some stations offer free time to established religious groups, but often at hours most people are asleep. And many evangelicals have complained that Protestant time is doled out to liberal Council of Churches people.

But, asserts church PR director Charles Polcaster, 24, of Chicago: “The old mystique that stations are prejudiced against evangelicals is a lie. They will program evangelicals—if they are top notch communicators who can adapt to format.” To prove his point he has gotten his pastor on nearly every talk show in town. And this month the pastor communicated evangelical thought on a panel discussing extra-marital sex on WLS-TV, an ABC outlet.

Broadcasters are finding that religion is an in topic these days, and that secular stations will indeed use—and sometimes pay for—good religious productions. CBN is producing four-hour and six-hour packages for secular markets. The youthful Olde Towne Productions group of Philadelphia hopes to crack the youth market with contemporary music and a fresh approach.

Olde Towne was formed three years ago by Bible college students George King, his brother David, and Keith Lancaster. Recalls George King: “We knew that TV was where it’s at in communication. We had a vision for Christian TV. but we knew we couldn’t go with a stand-up preacher—it wouldn’t work with my age group.” Lancaster went on to get a degree in TV production while the Kings bore down on music. One of their ideas is a sort of musical version of First Tuesday. The pilot run, using poverty as a theme, will be aired by a Philadelphia station on prime time the night before Easter. The youths hope to syndicate the show nationwide.

Already syndicated: “The Feminine Touch” with Olde Towne’s Bev Richards. She shares recipes, discusses home-related issues (Women’s Lib, how to get along with hubby), and interviews personalities.

The Argentina-born Palau, one of Latin America’s best-known evangelists, believes that preaching is okay for the stadium but that something else works better in the studio: a simple rap session with his viewers. He has led many to Christ on the air. Converts are invited to come to the studio or a counseling center afterward. (In Quito, Ecuador, the secretary of the Communist party and an officer in the military junta prayed to receive Christ on the air.)

Many calls concern domestic and moral problems. After a week at Palau’s TV counseling center in Costa Rica, crusade coordinator Galo Vasquez commented bitterly, “Nowhere in Latin America have I seen an entire nation so troubled with matrimonial and sexual problems.” More than 10,000 packed the stadium to hear Palau preach.

Palau often buys simultaneous prime time on every channel in an area, guaranteeing a big audience—and perhaps a lasting impact on an entire nation.

Back In The Running

Brooks Hays, noted Baptist layman and former congressman, is challenging incumbent Wilmer Mizell of North Carolina for a seat in the U. S. House of Representatives. The 73-year-old Hays, a Democrat originally from Arkansas, is currently a vice-president of the National Council of Churches. Mizell, 41, a Republican and one-time major league pitcher, is also a devout layman. He belongs to the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

NEWS

The following report was prepared exclusively forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Forrest J. Boyd, White House correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System, who was among the newsmen accompanying President Nixon on his historic trip to Communist China:

As one of the few Americans able to enter China since the Communists took control of the mainland, I felt a special responsibility to try to find out something about the state of the Church, and what had happened to Christian believers. Before leaving Washington I got a briefing from people connected with World Vision’s China-watching post in Hong Kong and from the Reverend Richard Wurmbrand, a former prisoner of the Communists in Eastern Europe who has gathered considerable data on the plight of Christians in Marxist lands.

At the Shanghai Airport, where we first touched Chinese soil, all of us traveling with the Presidential party were given a two-page list of places we would visit. There were no churches on the list, so I inquired of Mao Kuo-hua, the interpreter assigned to me and author Theodore H. White, whether we could visit a church. I was told the request would be considered.

I subsequently reminded Mr. Mao of my request to visit a church, and on our last afternoon in Peking three of us were taken to a Catholic church not far from the Nationalities Hotel and the Great Hall of the People. With me were Bob Considine of the Hearst newspapers and Hugh Mulligan of Associated Press. Both are Roman Catholics. I belong to Fourth Presbyterian Church, Bethesda, Maryland. The word-for-word transcript of our recorded conversation with the priest shows how difficult it is to get information, how evasive and imprecise the Chinese are in their answers, and how impossible it is to reach a definitive conclusion as to how much freedom of religion there really is.

I was told there are both Protestant and Catholic churches open in China, but was unable to learn how many or where they were. I could not find out anything about the fate of Watchman Nee and other Christians reportedly imprisoned.

We talked first with two members of the congregation, who told us that the church was the largest and oldest in Peking, that the priest in charge was Mu Jun-hua, and that services were held every day. Then through our interpreter we talked to the priest himself (some of our questions were directed to the interpreter, some to the priest). Western correspondents resident in Peking were amazed that we got the interview.

Question. He looks very young. How old is he? Answer. Over 40.

Was he ordained by the Bishop of Peking? By the bishop of the Peking Diocese.

What year was that? 1956.

Since then the Bishop died? Right.

Do you call yourself a Father? Yes. Are you all Catholic? Yes, we are—no, two of us are.

Is your prayer book in Chinese or is it in Latin? At present we still use the Latin.

Despite the fact that the church is not connected with the Vatican anymore, is the belief and the order of service the same? The religious ceremonies, our services are the same.

Has Father been out of China? No.

Does the government allow complete freedom of worship? There is complete freedom for religious belief. It is stipulated in the constitution.

Why are there no altar boys, no little boys to assist at the services? Well, the educational undertakings in China have developed considerably, and at the age of 7, the children go to school. In order not to hinder their education, the parents don’t want them to come here, to be what you call them, altar boys.

Is Father aware of the fact that a famous American bishop named Walsh was a prisoner of the People’s Republic for about twenty years, and was released recently? I read it in the newspaper.

During the time he was a prisoner or when he was released? I read news items about when he was arrested, and I also read the news item about his release. He used the priest’s cloak with religion and carried out espionage activities for the CIA.

Does Father believe that? Yes.

We have heard that some Catholic believers were put in prison at the time of the liberation. Is this true, and if so, are they still in prison? Well, I know of no such information regarding your question. Maybe there is such information spread. They are slanders spread by those people with ulterior motives, and those people who are arrested. It is not because of their religious belief, but it is because they have carried out counter-revolutionary activities. That’s why they were arrested. And in our country there is full, complete freedom of religious belief.

In his answer about Bishop Walsh being an agent of the CIA, does he believe that this applies to all of the foreign missionaries who were in China? Were they espionage agents? Were they considered that? Not all of the foreign missionaries are of the type like Walsh. As you know, in old China, China was a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country, and the religious undertakings in those days were in the hands of the foreign missionaries. After the liberation many of these foreign missionaries realized that the consciousness of the Chinese people has enhanced, and when they saw this, many of them applied themselves to leave China after the liberation. So many of them left our country. There are also foreign missionaries who use their religion as their cloak and carried out activities that are detrimental to the interests of the people. With regard to these people, some of them were deported out from China and some of them were arrested, according to law. Not only Walsh was arrested because of espionage activities he carried out; there is also another Italian called Martino.… On October 1, 1950, he attempted to shoot in Tien An Men, because October 1 is a national holiday and people are celebrating the national holiday in Tien An Men. And this person, Martino, attempted to shoot in Tien An Men in order to kill the leadership of our country and with the people the government arrested him according to law.

The Father was French-educated? By French priests? Yes.

Do you speak French? No. When we studied, we studied Latin.

The seminary you went to was here in Peking? Where you studied to be a priest? Yes. In Peking.

All Chinese priests then on the faculty? There were also French faculty.

Were they spies, the ones on the faculty then, or were they good priests? Well, among them, there were some good and there were some bad.

Do the Chinese priests marry now since the liberation? No, they do not marry.

You say there are no more altar boys, and I understand very few young people come to your church. Therefore, they will not be church-goers, they will not be practicing Catholics, let’s say. Does that mean eventually the Chinese Catholic church will die out as the old members die off and one day there will be no Chinese Catholic church, because everybody will be dead? Well, China is a country of multi-religions and multinationalities, and in our country we have the freedom of religious belief.

How many come to church? If they come in big numbers, as many as 500. But in times when there are a very few people, just a few.

Mostly old people? More old people, and fewer among the young people.

Do you know if there are any Protestant churches in Peking? There are.

Do you know how many or what the names are? We don’t know, but we know that there are.

Is there a bureau of religion or department of religion in the government? There is a civil-affairs bureau in the government, and they also handle the questions of religion. If there is any problem involved with the church, then we may ask their assistance.

Father, do you feel as close to God as, let’s say, a priest in Germany who has his allegiance to the Vatican, or do you feel like you are choosing a different way to God? I believe in the Catholic doctrine, and as you know, we love our great leader, Chairman Mao, our motherland, and also are led by the Communist party. We regard this as proper. Those are the things that we should do. And we regard those foreign priests who have carried out the work of subversive activities or instruments toward the Chinese people, those acts are not in conformity with the Bible. We regard that what we have done is more in conformity with the doctrine of the Church as well as the Bible.

What contribution do you think the church can make to society in China under Chairman Mao and the People’s Republic? Well, we are doing our part together with the people of the whole country in construction of socialism in our country.

The announced doctrine of Communism is atheism. Chairman Mao, and I suppose Premier Chou En-lai, are atheists, as are many other officials, I would think. How does he feel about serving the purposes of a government whose leaders don’t believe in the existence of what he says a mass for? Well, the Communists are atheists, but this will not hinder us from our contribution to the construction of socialism. There are policies as formulated by the Communist party that provide for those people who believe in religion, provide a freedom of religious belief, so in this way we can construct socialism together with the people of the whole country.

How many confessions would Father hear in a week? Every week there are confessions. Several dozen.

Chinese Evangelism: Checking It Out

Of the estimated 25 million Chinese who live outside the People’s Republic of China, 500,000 live in North America, 350,000 of them in the United States. And immigrants are arriving daily.

A look at current evangelistic work among them may offer a clue to how Red China will be evangelized—and by whom—if the doors open wider. Most of the outreach to American Chinese is being carried out by Chinese believers.

For reasons of culture and language the family-minded Chinese tend to be clannish, even about church. More than 200 Chinese churches have been established in North America (more than one-fourth are in the San Francisco Bay region), and there is a flourishing movement of nameless “Little Flock” type house groups patterned after the teachings of Chinese pietist Watchman Nee.

One of the largest and oldest Chinese churches in the country is the Chinese Cumberland Presbyterian Church in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It dates from 1872. More than 600 persons attend regularly, half of them in their teens and twenties. Pastor Ernest Chan, 33, a Fuller Seminary graduate, conducts services in both Cantonese and English. (Most of the San Francisco area’s 60,000 Chinese speak Cantonese. Nationally, Cantonese and Mandarin are the two major dialects. Many Chinese communities and churches operate schools to teach children their ancestral language and culture, which accounts partially for a strong sense of national heritage and pride in even second- and third-generation American-born Chinese.)

Chan says “tremendous” spiritual activity and interest is evident among the young. “In the past few weeks our students have led thirty Chinese kids to Christ at San Francisco State College,” he asserted in an interview. Many of his young people have received Campus Crusade training. They are engaged in street witnessing, home Bible-study groups, and weekend gospel-music tours.

Chan is chairman of the city’s Chinese Christian Union, a ten-church alliance that sponsors evangelistic rallies, radio broadcasts, and joint services. He is also coordinating a North American Congress of Chinese Evangelicals to be held on the West Coast in December. The congress is an outgrowth of the last Inter-Varsity missions conference at Urbana.

Program chairman for the upcoming congress is Moses Chow, 47, head of Ambassadors for Christ, a Chinese outreach organization based in Washington, D. C. Chow says evangelical tides are running high among clergymen. Whereas the majority of Chinese ministers fifteen years ago were theologically liberal, two-thirds are evangelicals today, he estimates. He blames the earlier liberalism on the seminary training offered by mainline denominations.

Chow’s organization sends young Chinese believers to Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and Taiwan as short-term missionary workers. Additionally, there are dozens of American-trained Chinese missionaries working full-time in the Orient, he says. And meanwhile, evangelical schools in Asia are graduating hundreds of students. Increasingly, the Chinese abroad are being reached by Chinese.

On the home front, outreach is picking up on a number of campuses. Chow’s daughter Joyce, a University of Maryland student, says dozens of Chinese students on her campus have formed a Bible-study and outreach group. “God is doing a wonderful work among the Chinese these days,” she says. “We have a deep burden to reach our own people for Christ.”

Other outreach organizations include Los Angeles-based Chinese for Christ headed by Calvin Chao and Detroit’s Chinese Christian Missions led by Tom Wong. The Gospel Center in Berkeley, steered by Moses Yu of Chinese for Christ, conducts a large ministry among University of California students. Many internationals, as well as Chinese Americans, have reportedly professed Christ there.

Both Chan and Chow agree that reaction to President Nixon’s trip by the Chinese in America has been mixed.

“At first our people were disappointed, but now they think that maybe some good, like increased travel permission, will come of it,” commented Chan. “The reaction elsewhere outside the mainland is universally negative, though.”

“Regardless of politics the Chinese are a proud people,” Chow stated. “They remember that barbarians used to come and bow down to the emperors. What Nixon did,” he added with an inscrutable smile, “revived the memories.”

Last fall a missionary with the China Bible Fund of Hong Kong told Wesley Seminary students in Washington that, on the basis of interviews of those who travel across the border, he believes evangelical Christianity on the mainland has more than doubled in size under Mao. He said that two of Shanghai’s house congregations, for instance, have since the early fifties grown to more than forty such groups.

Chow, however, says most of the believers he talked with in Hong Kong last year doubt that such growth is true. But persons returning from the People’s Republic did tell him of meeting relatives “who still love Christ” and of a Christianity alive in the underground.

Chow also tells of a recent meeting he had with a Chinese communist official in this country. The Communist insisted that his nation allowed religious freedom—“freedom to believe, freedom not to believe.” Evangelism, he conceded, is thus disallowed.

Chow gave him a new-script Bible and asked him to verify the accuracy of the script. The official said he would take the Bible back to the People’s Republic and check it out.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Mcintire Marches On

Radio preacher Carl McIntire has been busier than usual the past few weeks. He returned from an Asian trip and put the finishing touches on a fund-raising campaign for overseas relief that grossed, he says, more than $1 million. He picketed an anti-war convocation in Kansas City and explained his hard-line position to seminarians who invited him in from the cold. Then he embarked on a whirlwind nationwide tour to twenty cities to protest President Nixon’s visit to Red China. His itinerary included a demonstration in San Francisco’s Chinatown that drew thirty-two persons.

Time didn’t matter: he scheduled a 12:30 A.M. protest rally at the San Antonio airport. He was fogged out of New Orleans and rained on at a preachin of 200 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where he announced plans for a march to be held on the eve of Nixon’s May 22 departure for Moscow.

Christian educator Lois LeBar’s “educational cycle” of biblical objectives, current needs, program, evaluation, and revised needs is well known to Christian educators. But often we can’t put the theory of the cycle into practice because we are without tools to help us.

Two years ago in this column I told about my development of a battery of tests designed to evaluate programs that are attempting to fulfill the biblical imperative of producing spiritually mature people (November 21, 1969, issue, p. 22). The series is called “The Spiritual Inventory Battery” (SIB).

The SIB follows the criteria for maturity outlined by J. Dwight Pentecost in Pattern For Maturity. Pentecost maintains that spiritual maturity involves three things: (1) knowledge of Scripture, (2) independent study of and personal interaction with Scripture, and (3) ability to apply Scripture to Christian living.

To measure proficiency in these areas, approximately 400 tests were administered and scored with the help of a computer, and participants were given a print-out of their test results. But the program, limited by computer capability, was inadequate. We could give a print-out only of the scores of the individual tests and the cumulative total. We could not get into the theory of maturity evaluation, which we now are able to do.

The new program provides a print-out of five profiles for a given group and for every person in the group taking the battery. The first is a “Maturity Evaluation Profile.” That gets to the heart of the matter of spiritual maturity. First, scores on each test are tabulated. Then the computer compares the scores on the tests dealing with Bible knowledge and Christian experience. The theory is that the Christian experience should be directly correlated with biblical knowledge. This correlation can be computed in terms of maturity level. The person with a high knowledge score and low experience score or a high experience score and low knowledge score is not correlating biblical knowledge with Christian experience and thus would have a lower maturity level than the person who does correlate them.

People are at widely varying levels of Christian experience because of time of conversion and other personal factors. For that reason, every person taking the tests is put into a statistical section. The statistical section takes into account the following personal data: age, sex, length of time a Christian, length of time attending church regularly, length of time attending Sunday school regularly, last grade completed (elementary through graduate school). The information obtained puts every person into one of 2,048 statistical sections. This makes it possible to give the examinee an idea of how he compares with others of similar background. The profile also offers information on how well the individual’s group did on the tests and the average score of all who have ever taken them.

With this profile the person examined may see not only what his test scores and maturity level are, but also how his performance compares with those of his statistical section, the group taking the test with him, and all who have taken the test.

When the “Maturity Evaluation Profile” is scored on a group taking the test, two sets of figures are shown. They are the test scores and maturity level of the group and of all who have ever taken the test. The group examiner may use these figures to see how his group compares with the norm.

The next four profiles provide information (for the group taking the tests and for each person in the group) on performance on each test in the battery. There are four, measuring general Bible knowledge, knowledge of doctrine, degree of independent Bible study, and degree to which Bible truth is applied to Christian living. The first two tests form the “knowledge” part of the battery, and the latter two the “experience” part.

By examining these four profiles, the individual or group may determine areas of weakness in either knowledge or experience. And it is here that the battery becomes a valuable aid in evaluation. For example, the individual (or group) tested may look at his profile on the first test and see whether he is weak in Old Testament or New Testament and specifically what section of the Bible he is weakest in. His profile on the second test will reveal what area of doctrine he is weak in. This profile breaks down doctrine into the ten areas of systematic theology. The profiles on the other tests show the specific areas of Christian experience where the examinee needs strengthening.

The battery is now ready for further experimental use. More samples must be gathered before reliable norms can be established, and the questions on the test must be screened for validity.

The first report on the Spiritual Inventory Battery brought more than seventy-five inquiries. I hope many of these who have inquired and many others will participate in testing and development. The courage churches have shown in their willingness to evaluate their teaching results portends a healthy future for Christian education.—The REV. ANDRE BUSTANOBY, Temple Baptist Church, Fullerton, California.

There hangs on a wall in our home a picture that, though simple, makes a tremendous point. Two lambs are resting peacefully on the ground; behind them is a large hand, and drooling and snarling behind that hand are several ferocious wolves. The lambs are lying in perfect peace, despite the danger, because the hand is restraining their enemies.

Most Christians respond to this portrayal of God’s protecting hand and rejoice that he still loves and cares for his own today.

At the same time there are many who want to take advantage of the concept of God’s love without admitting that the love of God is but one facet of his being.

The stern words of John the Baptist to the Pharisees and Sadducees—the religious leaders of his day—carried deep meaning: “Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” And this warning is not dated. The wrath of God is seen today and will be seen in the final judgment.

God’s wrath is not against the sinner because he is a sinner, but against sin, wherever it is found. Only in this light can we understand the implications of the Cross. Our Saviour’s death was not a sentimental example; it was an act of necessity. Only the death of the Son of God had in it the necessary cleansing power—the power to deliver man from the guilt and penalty of sin’s affront to a holy God.

In John 3:36 we read: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Either John was wrong, speaking in ignorance or deliberate falsehood, or he was affirming a truth in which there is both unspeakable comfort and warning of dire peril.

Is your concept of God and his Son a travesty of the truth? God is love, but he is also a consuming fire. He is love, but he also exercises a holy wrath against which nothing can stand. The writer of the Proverbs tells us, “The expectation of the wicked is wrath,” and such it is today. The fact that many preachers ignore this truth is something for which they will certainly be held responsible.

Years ago Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” brought literally thousands into the kingdom of God, for men were led to see themselves as God sees them and they cried out for forgiveness. What a far cry from most preaching today! Instead of being confronted by his sin and its consequences, the average sinner walks away from a sermon with the smug feeling that he is a pretty decent fellow. He may even think he has done God an honor by being seen in church.

The Prophet Isaiah says: “Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it” (Isa. 13:9). To apply this solely to the coming judgment on the Israel of that day is a mistake. God continues to work in the same way, and this warning can well include America of 1972. For us the prayer of Habakkuk remains valid: “O Lord … in wrath remember mercy.”

The loving forgiveness of God is just as real as his wrath; his love and mercy are as available as his judgment is certain. The Apostle Paul had no illusions about the matter. In Romans 2:5 he speaks of the man who “after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” Later in this same letter Paul says: “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (5:9).

But today many consider the idea of the “blood atonement” to be passé. Recently a prominent church leader spoke to a large group of women and in the course of his address warned them against emphasizing the blood of Christ, urging them instead to stress God’s love.

This incident brings to mind these words: “Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy [common] thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?” (Heb. 10:29). How can we ignore such words, or these: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31), or, “For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).

Countless souls are being lulled into a false sense of security by those who ignore or deny the fact of God’s wrath against sin. His wrath is not anger as we sinners know anger, nor is it peevishness or arbitrariness. Rather it is a holy wrath by a holy God, a wrath directed against sin in every form, a wrath so great that the Son of God suffered death and separation from his Father to deliver those who believe from the wrath to come.

The Apostle Paul speaks of those who had “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10).

In those solemn words of the last book of the Bible we read: “And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together,” and the peoples of the earth cried out to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” (Rev. 6:14–17).

Can the Gospel be properly preached other than against the backdrop of the wrath of God?

A prominent minister recently observed that all we need to do is tap sinners on the shoulder and tell them they are saved and that they should go out and live like Christians. What a travesty on the Gospel! What a failure to preach the whole counsel of God! What a caricature of the holiness of God! What a failure to understand the implications of the Cross!

When we picture the gentle Christ, the One who would not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax, we must face the other side, the day when the words of Paul will be fulfilled: “And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 1:7–9).

Preacher, are you warning of the wrath to come? There is a bridge out down the road. Are you keeping quiet about it?

SLOVEN POWER

It happened at the PTA-sponsored “Back to School” night. I was talking to my son’s algebra teacher, and she had just pointed out that to improve his grade a student could retake any examination in which he had done poorly.

She then added in a guilty aside, “Of course, sometimes it’s hard to remember just which test they’re taking over. I guess I’m not a very organized person.”

My heart went out to her immediately. From my own experience I knew the years of intimidation she must have faced at the hands of the world’s neatniks.

Obviously we two are members of the last great unorganized minority—the fellowship of the disorganized. All of us who are a part of that minority bear the scars of our encounters with the neat majority. You can recognize us by our slightly paranoid air. The neat power structure has done its job on us. We have been objects of scorn, rebuke, and ridicule.

Secretaries have brought perfect strangers to my office door to gape in open disbelief at the disarray. On receiving my resignation one employer replied with malice, “Well, there goes four bucks for another waste basket. Up till now we haven’t needed one for your office—it’s all on your desk.”

My first college roommate was a man of appalling orderliness. He was a spit-and-polish Navy man who believed that neatness was next to godliness. As far as I was concerned, neatness was next to impossible.

One of my friends complains his wife is so orderly that when he returns from a midnight visit to the bathroom he finds his bed made.

The interesting thing about these encounters is that it’s always the non-neat person who is left with a sense of guilt. It has been communicated to us since childhood that God is on the side of fastidiousness. Go clean your room, we are told; you don’t want Jesus to be unhappy.

Well, friends, I’m here to raise the banner against neatness. Hold your head up high, teacher; the kids are learning algebra in your class, and that’s what an algebra class is all about.

Untidy minority of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our shame.

You see, we non-neat people have been liberated. We have learned that orderliness is a means and not the end. It can safely be sacrificed when unnecessary to the end.

But, brother slovens, we must not judge others as we have been judged. Let your hearts be filled with mercy. Remember that even the fastidious are created in God’s image, and that inside every neat person there’s an untidy one struggling to get out.

IMAGINATION NEEDED

I was happy and encouraged by David Barr’s article, “Religion in Schools: Four Questions Evangelicals Ask” (Jan. 21). As department head of a course in our local regional high school, Moral and Social Development, I am often asked by my Christian friends if I don’t think such a course is really a waste of time due to the lack of an emphasis on personal salvation through Christ.… I feel that the types of courses we are offering … not only keep the door open to a fair discussion of our evangelical beliefs and convictions, but allow all our students to consider God, religion, and moral convictions in an appropriate setting. I feel that all too often we as evangelicals allow ourselves to be defeated by default.… I trust that Barr’s article will encourage Christians to think positively in regard to such education and put some imagination to its advantages rather than its disadvantages.

Lennoxville, Quebec

David L. Barr’s article finds in me a ready affirmative response. It was Jesus, I recall, who said, “Whoever has the will to do the will of God shall know whether my teaching comes from him or is merely my own” (John 7:17, NEB). He knew that whether the conditions in which the Word of God was given utterance were ideal or not, those who received it with open minds and hearts would respond favorably. Also, the Apostle Paul asked three questions closely related to those Barr calls to our attention: “Now how can they call on one in whom they have never believed? How can they believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how can they hear unless someone proclaims him?” (Rom. 10:14, Phillips). Perhaps, then, it is those of us who are too particular about the public-school Bible reading and study conditions who are most guilty of denying the millions of unevangelized youth their best, and for some their only, opportunity of hearing the Word of God, which is still “like fire, and like the hammer which breaks the rock in pieces” (Jer. 23:29).

Eugene, Oreg.

Leaving aside the four questions, a more basic issue arises with the attitude Mr. Barr employs in testing objectivity. “Historical honesty and the study of divergent points of view” mean different things to different people, and hopefully such differences exist between Christians and non-Christians. If the Scriptures are the Word of God, then knowledge and morals are possible, and one may talk about testing for objectivity (the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom): if the Scriptures are not, then there is no logical reason for there to be meaning in this universe, and therefore no historical honesty nor study. Since one must start from one of these assumptions, the answer to whether the Bible is the Word of God is not difficult to obtain.

Cambridge, Mass.

ANOTHER OPTION

Thank you for the balance you bring to the perspective of seminary education (“The Seminary as a Source of Renewal,” by Richard Lovelace, Jan. 21). However, is there not another major option for church renewal and correcting “the defects of a century of lay evangelicalism”? Why not theological training geared on a graduate level for laymen to erase this lack? Or must we go on accentuating the schism between a trained clergy and an unlearned laity? Is it not necessary for seminaries to drop their “don’t take up the space unless you plan on professional ministry” mentality? What graduate schools are willing to teach laymen to be Reformation men and women “of scriptural doctrine, depth of piety, and breadth of learning”?

Vancouver, British Columbia

GOVERNMENT-SUPPORTED CHRISTIANITY?

Bishop Harmon’s article “Church and State: A Relation in Equity” (Feb. 4) confuses more than clarifies the issues he addresses. He seems more interested in restoring the colonial stance of Massachusetts than in going the way of Roger Williams. He appears more concerned that all religious options be given some degree of equity than he is in recovering the New Testament’s teaching regarding church and state. It is hardly helpful to emphasize the ways in which church and state can never be utterly separate. Surely it would be better to point his readers to those ways in which church and state could be more consistently separate.

The revolutionary New Testament insight which Harmon obscures, if not rejects, is that it is entirely possible to have “liberty and justice for all” even when men worship in a great diversity of ways or not at all. It is possible to have peace and civic order in the public square along with freedom of religious belief. The New Testament conceives of society as a composite entity; i.e., composed of factions. This conception does not imply or produce either chaos or deterioration in the courthouse. This conception of society has been called “one of the New Testament’s boldest innovations” by the Christian Reformed scholar Leonard Verduin. Strange indeed is it that Christians should so often be calling for a pre-Christian type of culture-religion, which is really all an Americanized Christianity is.

Author Harmon argues for equity while assuming that a beneficent Protestantism will predominate. The New Testament doctrine is that the state with its rightful powers is ordained of God even if the state should be explicitly anti-Christian—as indeed it was in apostolic times. Consequently, it is neither fair nor pertinent for Harmon to say: “To rule for no-religion in the public schools or in the state at large is to establish anti-religion by legal fiat.” To be sure, neutrality is impossible if Christianity desires the favor and protection of the law, but neutrality is possible if government neither supports nor promotes any particular religious belief. In such a case, however, the religious belief of the majority can not fairly claim, as Bishop Harmon does, that the absence of support for the majority’s religious interests amounts to anti-religion.

Police protection is not a valid illustration of Harmon’s thesis that there cannot be separation of church and state in every respect. For the maintenance of civil peace is precisely the policeman’s calling, regardless of what religious faith is promulgated inside the buildings he passes on his beat.

Neither can we who hold to a more rigorous separation be changed with advocating anarchy! Yet Harmon comes close to suggesting this when he speaks to those “churchmen who say they want a church totally free of government.” I know of no such churchmen!

I see no reason why I must be coupled with an advocate of atheism simply because I also favor the removal of “In God We Trust” from our coins and the removal of all chaplaincy service in Congress, the legislatures, and the armed services. If civil government is ordained of God outside of grace, then Christianity need not seek government support for its welfare.

Scottdale Mennonite Church

Scottdale, Pa.

Bishop Harmon’s article points out very clearly some of the consequences we face as a result of this nation going so far overboard in its effort to insure the separation of church and state. The remedies we keep proposing are somewhat like rubbing Vaseline on the chest to cure stomach ulcers. We are not going quite deep enough.

Our nation, in the Constitution by which we are governed, needs to make its acknowledgment of the divine authority and law. Forty or more of our state constitutions contain their divine acknowledgments. Our federal constitution contains none. Too long we have been rendering unto Caesar that which belongs to God.

Sharon Reformed Presbyterian Church

Morning Sun, Iowa

NO SUCH AFFLUENCE

Thank you for the excellent news coverage of the Evangel College Washington Studies Program—1972 (“Students Seek Answer: What Can One Man Do?,” Feb. 4). The project has made a significant contribution to our Jan-Term program and to the experience of our students in political science and social studies areas.

One sentence (“Last year the course cost the college $15,000 for twelve students) leaves the impression that excessive costs were incurred by the college for the project. Please assure any inquirers that we do not enjoy such affluence, and that the Washington Studies Program is self-supporting. Members of our Washington constituency make this possible.

Dean

Evangel College

Springfield, Mo.

SMUG ASSAULT

I think your … cartoon depicting a policeman coming to the aid of an assaulted victim but stopping and saying, “Sorry, sir, I’m a pacifist” (“What If …,” Feb. 18) to be a dehumanizing assault on a Christian witness of peace. With thousands of persons needlessly dying in Northern Ireland and Indochina, this cartoonist is smug and hinders other Christians actively working for peace. Is this the stand of CHRISTIANITY TODAY? For the future, an equally funny cartoon would be, “Kill a Commie for Christ.”

Greensboro, N. C.

TWO MORE MISSIONS

In the news article “Mission: Bangladesh” (Feb. 4) you state that only two missions have missionaries in both “East” Pakistan and “West” Pakistan. But the Assemblies of God has work in both areas. In the East it is the U. S. mission board, and in the West it is under the British, Swedish, and Finnish mission boards and is much larger. The U. S. [board] has worked there and intends to enter in a permanent way soon. The Seventh-day Adventists also have a small work with a large hospital in the West, along with their larger work in the East.

Director

New Life International

Fresno, Calif.

For Sensitive Christians

Man in Transition: The Psychology of Human Development, by Gary Collins (Creation House, 1971, 203 pp., $4.95), and The Christian’s Handbook of Psychiatry, by O. Quentin Hyder (Revell, 1971, 192 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Lawrence J. Crabb, director, Psychological Counseling Center, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton.

Many Christians have tended to assume that their faith somehow provided immunity from psychological problems. A corollary assumption has been that the services of psychology and psychiatry are at best unnecessary for the Christian and at worst dangerously hostile to biblical beliefs. Two books, one by Quentin Hyder, a psychiatrist, and the other by Gary Collins, a clinical psychologist, should help clear away any vestigial remains of such thinking.

Dr. Hyder’s exceptionally readable book avoids the use of confusing technical jargon without sacrificing professional sophistication. After concisely sketching the development of psychiatry, Hyder devotes most of the book to a fairly detailed but understandable summary of the causes, nature, and treatment of the more common emotional disorders.

The particular value of this discussion lies in its sensible integration of basic psychiatric knowledge with biblical truth. Especially helpful is Hyder’s emphasis on the value of spiritual resources for the maintenance and restoration of general psychological health. He discusses forgiveness, security, guidance, fellowship, identity, and structure as factors in a Christian’s life that contribute to emotional stability.

Hyder does not oversell psychotherapy by urging anyone with problems to run to the nearest therapist; he rather suggests that observing some common-sense principles (such as: exercise, don’t overwork, get enough sleep) should help a person handle the less serious problems of daily living. One might wish he said more about the two important questions of when professional help is needed and when a Christian therapist is definitely preferable to a non-Christian.

After discussing mental illness within the framework of conventional psychiatric classification, Hyder strongly endorses a system of therapy (Reality Therapy) that denies the conception of mental illness upon which this traditional classification is based. Despite this apparent contradiction, Hyder’s advocacy of William Glasser’s Reality Therapy will please evangelicals (myself included) who like to stress the importance of individual responsibility and meaningful interpersonal involvement (real fellowship), the two cardinal features of Glasser’s approach.

Any Christian who is sensitive to the emotional needs of his fellow human beings will find Hyder’s book extremely helpful, not as a how-to manual for counseling but rather as an easily understood discussion, from a clear Christian perspective, of the broad and complex field of mental disorder.

Dr. Collins’s book, also refreshingly free from unnecessary technical language, offers an excellent overview of the particular problems and adjustments facing people during four stages of life: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and middle and old age. His book is scholarly yet simple, reflecting a broad knowledge of psychological research and an all too rare ability to communicate scientific findings to the average layman.

This author’s practical discussion of how the developmental needs of people in each age group can be effectively met within the church will make his book invaluable to Christians concerned about the role of the local church in today’s world. In a recent survey to which Collins refers, two reasons offered by young people for dropping out of churches were (1) they did not feel that the church was really concerned about their personal needs and (2) the Bible did not touch their lives. Rather than giving up on the church. Collins suggests that it can and should become a more meaningful framework within which persons in all age groups and circumstances can find the help and encouragement available through the person of Christ. Collins insists that church life should be based upon a clear understanding of the needs of people, an understanding that can be greatly enhanced by the insights of psychology.

If what Collins says about people and their problems were thoroughly digested and if his suggestions were tailored to individual settings and then carried out, the above stated reasons for dropping out of the church would soon lose their validity. Collins’s book is a clear must for Christians involved in any phase of church ministry.

The Broad And Narrow

Atlas of the Biblical World, by Denis Baly and A. D. Tushingham (World, 1971, 208 pp., $12.95), is reviewed by Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

A valuable and unique geographical reference has been prepared by Denis Baly with the assistance of A. D. Tushingham. Baly, author of the well-known work The Geography of the Bible (1957), is head of the religion department at Kenyon College in Ohio. He is well acquainted with the Middle East, having spent fifteen years in the Holy Land. In preparing the atlas Professor Baly traveled more than 30,000 miles in the Near East during 1966–67.

A. D. Tushingham, who contributed a short chapter on “Archaeology and Ancient Environments” and the chapter on Jerusalem, is the chief archaeologist of the Royal Ontario Museum and was a co-director with Kathleen Kenyon of the 1961–67 excavations in Jerusalem.

The title Atlas of the Biblical World is somewhat misleading, as in its scope the work is more restricted in one direction and more comprehensive in another than most biblical atlases. Italy is not included at all, and Greece is treated as a peripheral area. On the other hand, such areas as Syria, Anatolia, Arabia, and Iran are treated in considerable detail.

Baly has provided illuminating chapters on the geology, climate, and natural regions of the Middle East. Of the forty-nine maps, the fourteen in color are quite superb and give panoramic views of the Middle East, based in part on photos taken by space satellites. Baly himself took all sixty-nine photographs. The sixteen color plates are magnificent and provide some uncommon views of topographical features. Most of the black-and-white photos are unfortunately darker than one would wish, but these too offer some unusual vistas.

As in any work of this scope, some minor flaws can be noted. The maps for the New Testament period are quite inadequate. For example, there is no map of Palestine south of Neapolis for this period! The map of Palestine between the Testaments includes such sites as Machaerus and Masada but omits such sites as Bethlehem and Herodium.

Some of the historical statements in the text are questionable. To say that “Zoroastrianism seems to have been a driving force behind the amazing Persian conquests” is an unwarranted speculation. The greatest conquests of the Persians were made by Cyrus the Great, who was certainly not a convert of Zoroaster.

Baly adopts the lower dating of 1728–1686 for Hammurabi at one point (p. 106) and then a few pages later (p. 124) opts for the higher dating of 1792–1750 for the same king!

An especially valuable feature of the atlas is a sixteen-page index to the maps in which Baly has given the modern names of the ancient sites and has in some cases listed alternative locations. For example, he notes that Debir, traditionally located at Tell Beit Mirsim, has been placed at Khirbet Rabud by some recent studies.

A number of his identifications need to be questioned. The Sumerian city of Lagash can no longer be identified with Tello but must be placed at al-Hiba. Baly accepts the identification of Raamses with San al-Hagar rather than with Qantir (cf., however, E. Uphill, “Pithom and Raamses,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 27 [1968], 291–316; 28 [1969], 15–39). But the location of Raamses on his maps of Egypt is too far northwest to represent the location of San al-Hagar.

He identifies Succoth in Transjordan with Tell Deir Alla, but the excavator of the latter site, H. J. Franken, has rejected such an identification. The reader is not warned either in the text or on the maps that such identifications as Gath with T. Shari‘a are subject to considerable controversy; Aharoni and Rainey, for example, have presented a strong case for placing Gath at Tell es-Safi.

Baly has not incorporated the discovery of the Israeli surveys of the Golan heights made in 1967–68 that showed that the great highway from Egypt to Damascus passed south rather than north of the Sea of Galilee.

Although the atlas was published in 1971, Baly wrote his preface in March, 1969, and Tushingham’s article on Jerusalem includes no references later than 1968. Although the authors cannot be held responsible for developments since they submitted their manuscript, one would expect at least a passing mention of the Israeli excavations in Jerusalem under Benjamin Mazar begun in 1968.

Tushingham’s chapter on Jerusalem incorporates the important results of Kenyon’s excavations in Jerusalem conducted in 1961–67. He now suggests that the central Tyropoeon Valley is the Hinnom Valley rather than the more western valley that has traditionally borne that name. Tushingham is quite aware of the tentative nature of his proposed reconstructions of Jerusalem in Old Testament times. It would have been even more prudent if the hypothetical nature of these reconstructions had been clearly indicated on the maps.

For example, Tushingham holds that excavations have supported the conclusion that the western hill of Jerusalem was unwalled in the Old Testament period. In 1969, however, N. Avigad discovered a city wall dated to the eighth to seventh century B.C. some 200 meters west of the temple mount, which would indicate that the Mishneh (“The Second Quarter”) was a large area west of the City of David rather than a narrow strip east of the Ophel ridge as Tushingham envisioned. (Cf. N. Avigad, “Excavations in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, Jerusalem, 1970,” Israel Exploration Journal, 20 [1970], 129–34.)

I would conclude that this atlas is too broad to serve as the biblical atlas for laymen. On the other hand, it is an especially valuable supplementary reference for teachers and serious students of the ancient Near East, providing maps and discussions of areas treated only superficially, if at all, in more conventional biblical atlases.

What Makes Pentecostalism Tick?

People, Power, Change: Movements of Social Transformation, by Luther P. Gerlach and Virginia H. Hine (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, 280 pp., $6.75), is reviewed by William J. Samarin, professor of anthropology and linguistics, University of Toronto.

Pentecostalism is the main topic of this book, and the goal is to explain the internal dynamics of this movement, how it developed, and how it has spread (p. 222). The result is a major contribution to the history of Christianity.

Its approach is fresh, because the authors come to their task unencumbered by religious tradition or bias. They confront what in my opinion is the only vital movement within Protestantism today, convinced that it is a revolutionary movement for both the people who participate in it and the churches that react to it.

The book shows how much can be learned about Christianity through social-scientific analysis. For this is what the book is: an examination of movements as mechanisms for social change. Social change is the scholarly topic the authors address themselves to, and Pentecostalism was chosen because it provided them with a dynamic example of change through a “transforming experience.”

What they wanted to know, in effect, was: “What makes Pentecostalism tick?” The answer, of course, is the book itself. (The reader is fortunate that the answer is not too long, nor too expensive, and not at all pedantically written.) They found five key factors: a decentralized organization, face-to-face (that is, personal) recruitment, personal commitment resulting from an identity-altering experience and a “bridge-burning” act, an answer-giving ideology, and opposition.

Other answers had to be rejected. The authors had started their research by trying to explain Pentecostalism as others had before them, in terms of social disorganization, deprivation, and psychological maladjustment. Unlike many detractors of Pentecostalism who continue to cite—without any critical perceptivity—early psychological and sociological studies, these authors find that such studies do not really account for the dynamics of Pentecostalism. (They do not stand alone. There is a growing body of scientific study showing that Pentecostals are, to put it simply, not aberrant people. My own Tongues of Men and Angels focuses on glossolalia but comes to the same conclusion.)

The authors tested the validity of the five factors by analyzing the Black Power movement (described in considerable length) and examining what had been written on several other movements, some political (Communism) and some religious (New Guinea cargo cults). I for one am convinced.

The book is very simply and neatly organized. After a comprehensive but down-to-earth introduction, the Pentecostal and Black Power movements are described in a general way in two separate chapters. Then follow chapters dealing with each of the five key factors. At the end the authors step down from their scholarly podium into the arena of life to answer the reader’s “So what? What has this got to do with real life?” This chapter is entitled “New Perspectives”; perhaps the authors really meant “Prophecies,” for they make some hair-raising speculations about what the effects on American society from the Black Power and radical youth movements might be.

They speculate very little about the effects of neo-Pentecostalism on Christianity, surprising in view of the book’s emphasis on Pentecostalism. Perhaps this is because they found it puzzling that Pentecostals are not trying to change the established church so much as they are trying to change themselves.

If this book has any weakness, it is only that it has very little historical perspective. There are a few references to the Reformation, the rise of Methodism, and such, but history is not used in developing the schema, in giving it diachronic validity.

Yet when I was reading the book, I felt I was reading about some people in Palestine who were taught a new way for a new life, a way to which they were won by personal testimony, a way to which they committed themselves after turning their backs on (repenting of) their old ways, a way that was opposed by the establishment but never suppressed because of its adaptive and decentralized organization. That was Christianity long ago. And that seems to be Pentecostalism today.

Newly Published

How to Build an Evangelistic Church, by John Bisagno, and You Can Reach People Now, by James Coggin and Bernard Spooner (Broadman, 160 pp. each, $3.95 each), Church Aflame, by Jerry Falwell and Elmer Towns (Impact [136 N. 4th Ave., Nashville, Tenn. 37219], 191 pp., $4.95), and Full Circle: The Creative Church For Today’s Society, by David Mains (Word, 217 pp., $4.95). Not all congregations of the “institutional church” are in decline. Here are the stories of four that are flourishing with suggestions on how others can do likewise. The first three are very big and Baptist, located in a suburb (of Oklahoma City), downtown in a large city (Fort Worth), and in a town (Lynchburg, Virginia). The last, the young Circle Church of inner-city Chicago, offers the most imitable example.

A Commentary on the Revelation of John, by George Eldon Ladd (Eerdmans, 308 pp., $6.95). Commentaries on the last book of the Bible are legion, but Ladd’s truly deserves wide circulation among laymen and ministers. Those who hold to amillennial views or to premillennial views at variance with Ladd’s own especially need to consult this work lest they hold an interpretation without due consideration of responsible alternatives.

Encyclopedia Judaica, edited by Cecil Roth (16 volumes, Macmillan, 12,000 pp., $500). A definitive, up-to-date work. Since the Jewish people have such wide distribution and pervasive influence, its reference value for students in most fields is obvious.

Ways to Help Them Learn and Ways to Plan and Organize Your Sunday School, by the International Center for Learning (8 volumes, Regal, c. 140 pp. each, $1.95 each, pb). Two series of four books each (for Early Childhood, Children, Youth, and Adults) that are filled with helpful suggestions and examples and solidly based. Highly recommended.

Military Chaplains, edited by Harvey G. Cox, Jr. (American Report Press [637 W. 125th St., New York, N.Y. 10027], 161 pp., $2.45 pb). An ably executed, pacifist-oriented critique presupposing “that the chaplaincy in the American military today … is a social fact that can and ought to be questioned.”

A Prejudiced Protestant Takes a New Look at the Catholic Church, by James C. Hefley (Revell, 128 pp., $3.95). The author reflects changes in the Roman church and in evangelical-fundamentalist attitudes toward it as he describes his own change of mind over the last few years; as a personal testimony, his account is not interested in theological precision.

My Brother Paul, by Richard L. Rubenstein (Harper & Row, 209 pp., $5.95). A twentieth-century Jewish theologian who does not believe Jesus was the Messiah writes about the greatest Jewish theologian of them all, who did.

Just the Greatest, by Carl Nelson (Inter-Varsity, 96 pp., $1.25 pb). An upbeat, energetic explanation of the greatest event in human history—the crucifixion of Christ.

The Reality of the Resurrection, by Merrill C. Tenney (Moody, 221 pp., $4.95). A reprint of a 1963 book explaining the uniqueness of Christianity’s teaching on the resurrection contrasted with the views of other religions and arguing powerfully for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Sex Education: The Schools and the Churches, by Harold W. Minor, Joseph B. Muyskens, and Margaret N. Alexander (John Knox, 80 pp., $1.95 pb). A useful study/action guide for those concerned with attacks against sex-education programs.

The Tabernacle: Camping With God, by Stephen F. Olford (Loizeaux, 187 pp., $3.95). The widely known pastor of Calvary Baptist in New York finds abundant meaning for Christians in ancient Israel’s holy tent.

Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies: Volume II, edited by Carl S. Meyer (Foundation for Reformation Research [6477 San Bonita Ave., St. Louis, Mo. 63105], 118 pp., n.p., pb). The six essayists include Robert Linder on biblical authority in the writings of Pierre Viret and W. Stanford Reid on Calvinist psalmody.

Jewish-Christian Relations in Today’s World, edited by James E. Wood, Jr. (Baylor University, 164 pp., $4.50). A collection of essays that offers much thought-provoking and informative material, though the editor seems to exaggerate early Christian anti-Semitism and to overlook the fact that Jews as well as Gentiles must turn to Christ for “religious renewal.” Useful bibliography.

Is Revolution Change?, edited by Brian Griffiths (Inter-Varsity, 111 pp., $1.25 pb). Five authors, including two Latin Americans, assess the humanistic presuppositions behind the revolutionary ferment of our day. While they admit the seriousness of the social and economic conditions that revolution seeks to transform, they deny its ability to transform the human heart, and thus the possibility that it means real change.

The Conscience of a Christian, by T. B. Maston (Word, 157 pp., $3.95). Sixty short, sprightly essays on important moral and ethical issues, grouped under headings such as “Sex and Sex Relations,” “Life and Death,” and “Citizenship.”

The Ethics of Karl Barth, by Robert E. Willis (E. J. Brill, 456 pp., 68 guilders). A massive, detailed effort to present the ethics of the great Basel dogmatician in a systematic way, not as definitive, but as pointing the way for future development.

Help! I’m a Layman, by Kenneth Chafin (Word, 131 pp., $.95 pb). Paperback edition of an excellent reappraisal of the mission of the Church today and the layman’s role in that mission. Shows how religion relates to every phase of life—such as business, politics, war, peace.

Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism, by John H. Yoder (Herald, 142 pp., $1.95 pb). Pacifism is a multi-faceted philosophy; Yoder explores many of the facets, from “the pacifism of Christian cosmopolitanism” to “the pacifism of the Messianic community.” An excellent overview.

You Can’t Con God, by Tank Harrison (Abingdon, 64 pp., $1.25 pb). The refreshing, enthusiastic testimony of a Memphis, Tennessee, detective who discovered the truth in the title of this book.

Growing Old and How to Cope With It, by Alfons Deeken (Paulist Press, 103 pp., $1.25 pb). A practical, sensitive, and timely discussion firmly based on Scripture. His examples from literature are especially helpful for grasping the problem.

Has the Catholic Church Gone Mad?, by John Eppstein (Arlington House, 173 pp., $6.95). A convert to Catholicism in 1919, John Eppstein shares his dismay at the chaos he sees in doctrine and practice.

There We Sat Down: Talmudic Judaism in the Making, by Jacob Neusner (Abingdon, 158 pp., $2.95 pb). An abridgment by the author of his five-volume History of the Jews in Babylonia. It focuses on the character of Judaism in the age and place that saw the reshaping of the religion from what we see in the Bible to what has prevailed since the first century.

Ditt ord är sanning (Thy Word Is Truth), edited by Seth Erlandsson (Uppsala: Stiftelsen Biblicum, 285 pp., approx. $7). A festschrift in honor of David Hedegård, 1891–1971, the grand old man of biblical orthodoxy in Scandinavia. Contains numerous articles on the authority of Scripture.

A new systematic theology, the first such work by an evangelical author in some time, appeared in 1971: Charles F. Baker’s A Dispensational Theology (Grace Bible College). The dispensationalist perspective leads, as would be expected, to unusual thoroughness in dealing with such topics as Creation and the return of Christ; the presentation is straightforward and clear.

REVELATION AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD After the sole systematic offering, we may properly turn to books on knowledge, revelation, and authority, deservedly led by Arthur F. Holmes, Faith Seeks Understanding: A Christian Approach to Knowledge (Eerdmans). Holmes has chosen for his title the name of Karl Barth’s early work on the medieval scholastic theologian Anselm of Canterbury, who held that the understanding could go very far indeed in its knowledge of God before the aid of revelation and faith became necessary. Holmes has no such optimistic hopes: his effort is to show that Christian faith, while not based on reason alone, is a reasonable alternative to other positions, which falsely claim to be objective and scientific. Thomas F. Torrance has given us God and Rationality (Oxford), essays and lectures dedicated to Barth’s memory. It contains a new and good introductory chapter on “Theological Rationality.” Torrance is convinced that theology must live up to the standards set by the other academic disciplines, including the natural sciences. It seems unfortunate that a man who is so close to the center both of Reformed orthodoxy and of evangelical piety here pays no attention to the mainstream of evangelical thought on the subject, while giving great attention to the non-evangelical theologians who dominate the universities. This defect, already noticeable in Holmes’s book, becomes quite objectionable in Jerry H. Gill, The Possibility of Religious Knowledge (Eerdmans). Although presumably writing for an evangelical audience, Gill largely confines himself to a technical discussion of linguistic analysis, and while he deals with Bultmann, Tillich, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, et al., he does not so much as mention the outstanding evangelical thinkers in the field of religious epistemology: neither the late Karl Heim of Tübingen, with his detailed analysis of religious knowledge as personal knowledge, nor the systematic works of Herman Dooyeweerd and Cornelius Van Til, nor even the readily accessible and much discussed Francis Schaeffer, whose popular works have brought the epistemological question before the wider Christian public. It is hard to understand why so many of these writers, each of whom would surely like to feel he is contributing to the general scholarly discussion, zealously ignore genuine evangelical efforts and confine themselves to discussing scholars who are at best less than fully evangelical. The same tendency is evident though less objectionable in a work on another subject, Theology and Metaphysics, by James Richmond (Schocken). Richmond attempts to rehabilitate both theological and metaphysical discussion and to show that healthy Christian theology needs some overall metaphysical scheme or vision to bring man’s experience and knowledge of the world into a rational unity—precisely what scholars as different as Herman Dooyeweerd and Rachel King have tried to give it.

Another aspect of religious epistemology is treated by Donald Bloesch in The Ground of Certainty: Towards an Evangelical Theology of Revelation (Eerdmans). Unfortunately his view of Scripture is that it can offer us only relative certainty, i.e., assurance with regard to salvation, but no unified structure of knowledge. It would seem that this is a false alternative, for Scripture can teach true and objective propositions even though it may not present a unified, structured world-view. Bloesch feels that one can arrive at certainty about the subjective effect of biblical revelation but not about its objective content. Despite his careful qualifications, to view the Bible as deficient and fallible apart from the proclamation of the Church and the light of faith implanted in man by the Holy Spirit is to miss the best starting-point for a theology of revelation.

Far less dialectical and at the same time more clearly on target with respect both to certainty and to revelation is Clark H. Pinnock, Biblical Revelation: The Foundation of Christian Theology (Moody). Pinnock gives a surprising amount of material in this 256-page work: a good discussion of current views on hermeneutics and inspiration, a treatment of objections to biblical authority and of modern evidences in favor of it, and also a clear and full presentation of the historic Protestant view of revelation and inspiration in the tradition of B. B. Warfield. Much the same spirit but quite a different approach characterizes Kenneth Hamilton’s 1970 Payton Lectures at Fuller Seminary, Words and the Word (Eerdmans). Hamilton takes the specifically biblical approach to religious knowledge and authority seriously in terms of a revelation that is verbal and propositional. It is a valuable if brief treatment, but unlike Pinnock, Hamilton abstains from serious interaction with other evangelical thinkers.

A final work on the question of authority is F. F. Bruce’s Tradition, Old and New (Zondervan), which reexamines the relation between scriptural and extra-scriptural traditions.

FAITH AND HISTORY From Germany, Wolfhart Pannenberg has addressed himself to the question of faith and history, among several other current issues, in lectures and papers (some of them previously published in English) collected in two slender but substantially priced volumes, Basic Questions in Theology (Fortress). To many American evangelicals, Pannenberg appears as the most encouraging figure on the German theological horizon, chiefly because of the radical break he makes with most academic theologians by insisting on the historical nature of the Resurrection and by attempting to close the traditional but artificial gap between Geschichte and Historie (history as meaningful experience and history as a subject of research and study). Evangelicals will be less enthusiastic about such essays as “What Is Truth?,” in which Pannenberg takes a subjective, process view of truth, one that seems to preclude objective, propositional revelation. Nevertheless, Pannenberg’s two volumes offer some useful alternatives to the standard German existentialist fare available in English translation.

Evidence that mythologization is not confined to Germans is given by William J. Duggan in Myth and Christian Belief (Fides), which includes a good deal more myth than Christian belief. In the tradition of comparative religion, Duggan emphasizes the similarities between the Gospel and characteristic myths, showing little interest in the Bible’s unique content and value. Curiously, the same press gave us John Scullion’s The Theology of Inspiration, a study that is both more representative of traditional Roman Catholic thinking and much more compatible with evangelical views of biblical authority.

There is little new available on individual modern theologians. Noteworthy is Andre Dumas’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theologian of Reality (Macmillan). An interpretation of Bonhoeffer as a Christian Hegelian, it gives a balanced presentation of the widely diverging ways in which man and his work are interpreted. Ewert H. Cousins has put together a number of essays by modern thinkers as different as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Schubert M. Ogden in Process Theology: Basic Writings by the Key Thinkers of a Major Modern Movement(Newman), offering a convenient selection of works that illustrate one of the more popular modern alternatives to biblical Christianity.

DOCTRINES On the doctrine of God, Vincent P. Miceli has given us The Gods of Atheism (Arlington) dedicated to Pope Paul VI. Miceli’s book has as its leitmotif the idea that the term atheism in reality covers many forms of idolatry. This sometimes leads him to a rather far-fetched analysis, but it is widely applicable. His discussion of the nineteenth-century figures Feuerbach, Marx, and Comte is especially valuable, as is his presentation of the unfamiliar but important contemporary French thinker Merleau-Ponty. The chapters on modern figures like Van Buren, Altizer, and Cox are less useful, but the final chapter, “The Idolatrous Heart of Modern Humanism,” is very impressive. Remaining with the First Article of the Creed, we come to Gustaf Wingren’s The Flight from Creation (Augsburg), a very brief monograph on an important theme. Wingren scores the modern tendency, both in theology and in ethics, to bypass God the Creator and to begin with Christ the Redeemer. In the course of his exposition, he gives a useful summary of his own work to date.

AFTER THE STROKE

The embolism loose

from the heart

lodged in the brain

a sudden confusion of language

paralysis

and the end of speech

As for man, his days are as grass.

Psalm 103:15a

Beside your bed,

I cannot speak the prayer

that begs for your recovery.

The Groaning Spirit

who gives us leave to pray

withholds that comfort.

He has given me, instead,

sleeplessness,

open eyes to watch

the sweet liquid, fortified,

drip three days

into your needled arm.

My mouth stays shut.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.

Psalm 103:1a

It is no easy thing

to bless the Lord in Buffalo

where you lie

stroke still and dumb.

My watch is pointless,

kept only for myself.

The nurses, crisp professionals,

need neither me

nor my questions.

The heat of your room drives

me out into the street.

The 5 A.M. winter wind

is cold. Its voice,

a quick thin blade, slips

through the layered wool I wear

and speaks deep into my side

the word that alters all.

He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

Psalm 103:10

In the therapy room

they held you by a belt

stood you up and told you,

Walk.

You thought hard,

clutched the rails

and throwing your foot

like a loose shoe

stepped into the pain

and did not stop

until you’d walked it through.

But there were others there,

almost as young as you,

whose only grace

was the white webbed belt

around their waists.

Who satisfied thy mouth with good things.

Psalm 103:5a

When your words returned,

they came at random,

jumped from your lips

out of context

and refused to lie down

in sentences;

but they did return.

And slowly felt your lips

and tongue divide the syllables

until, one day, dominated,

they spoke as ordered

and blessed the name of God.

JOHN LEAX

Passing on to Christology, we have three books: Peter Hodgson’s Jesus—Word and Presence: An Essay in Christology (Fortress); a posthumous publication by Friedrich Gogarten, Christ the Crisis (John Knox); and Piet Schoonenberg’s The Christ, translated from the Dutch (Herder and Herder). None of the three is satisfactory from an evangelical perspective. Christ the Crisis, the final book of the old dialectical theologian, offers a refresher course in the themes of the older existentialist theology popularized by Bultmann. Gogarten holds that Jesus’ proclamation is by its very nature completely unverifiable, and maintains the existentialist position of realized eschatology, i.e., that the judgment occurs here and now in the moment of existential encounter. He does not even consider the resurrection or return of Jesus Christ; this seems odd in view of his title, but to do so would be out of place in his highly existentialistic and subjective world of thought. Both his concepts and his style make for difficult reading, and he offers no substantiation for his views other than his own speculation and the existentialist tradition. Hodgson’s Jesus—Word and Presence hardly offers us more substance, as he too abandons real history. His alternative is a timeless realm in which the resurrection is at once past, present, and future. He follows Willi Marxen and others of his ilk in viewing the New Testament proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus as an inference without substance or content. The book by the Roman Catholic, Schoonenberg, is more valuable. He gives a good résumé of early and medieval teaching on Christology. While he questions the usefulness of the ancient creedal formulations today, he generally affirms their validity and provides a clear and helpful presentation of the way in which they developed. A very useful text for the history of Christology, Schoonenberg’s book is less satisfactory when he attempts to restate the orthodox position for today. He does his best to rehabilitate “modern” theology (e.g., Willi Marxen) as having “strayed far less from the faith … than was at first supposed.” He builds to some extent on Teilhard de Chardin, and while he identifies Altizer as a pantheist rather than a Christian, he curiously sees some hope of arriving at a valid position via Altizer’s method.

The eleventh volume of G. C. Berkouwer’s massive Studies in Dogmatics has appeared: Sin (Eerdmans). Berkouwer’s work is the only Protestant “summa” of our day to rival the late Karl Barth’s unfinished Church Dogmatics in magnitude, but it is of course more clearly in the historic Reformed tradition. Berkouwer is especially helpful in his treatment of the much abused and often misunderstood doctrine of original sin. He clearly distinguishes the biblical teaching from both the monistic view that God is the ultimate author of sin and the dualistic idea that sin is an evil power equal to God.

The question of The Lord’s Day is treated by Paul K. Jewett (Eerdmans). This short book bears the subtitle A Theological Guide to the Christian Day of Worship, yet is actually more of a history than a theology of Lord’s Day observance. As such it is interesting and informative. Jewett concludes with practical advice for Christians in a post-Constantinian situation in which the state no longer protects and encourages Sunday observance. Interestingly, he suggests that in a society where the majority is Christian, the state should protect the jobs of non-Christians who refuse to work on their own day of rest, whereas Christians should be willing to lose their jobs rather than accept Sunday work.

APOLOGETICS Questions of theological method, but especially the presuppositionalist apologetics of Cornelius Van Til and the reactions of sympathizers and critics to it, form the subject of the Van Til festschrift Jerusalem and Athens, edited by E. Robert Geehan (Presbyterian and Reformed). Contributors include Herman Dooyeweerd, James I. Packer, and John W. Montgomery. There is also a discussion of the relations between Van Til and the late Edward J. Carnell. In another essay collection, Clark H. Pinnock and David F. Wells have edited a number of theologians’ proposals Towards a Theology for the Future (Creation House). The contributors attempt to point the way in which evangelical theological studies ought to develop in a changing world—not “theology of revolution.”

Apologetically useful material from writers who do not profess Christianity but who criticize important anti-Christian mentalities comes from Eliseo Vivas in Contra Marcuse (Arlington) and Norman MacBeth in Darwin Retried (Gambit). Although Vivas becomes rather acid at times, he gives the reader the benefit of his careful reading of Marcuse’s extremely difficult writings. The Marcuse variety of Marxism is important for the radical new left and has also influenced a number of younger Christians. What Vivas says will be helpful for anyone having to deal with Marcuse’s ideas or enthusiasts. Naturalistic evolution, by contrast, is not a philosophy confined to the universities or to political radicals; it is taught as doctrine in almost all schools, public and private, around the world, usually in such a way as to rule out any divine activity in the origin of life, whether by creation or by theistic evolution. In Darwin Retried, MacBeth argues that if William Jennings Bryan had tried Darwinism on its merits instead of trying to defend his own variety of fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial would have been a disaster for the evolutionist position (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, January 21, 1972, p. 26). One of the most remarkable and original books by an evangelical writer is Rachel H. King’s The Creation of Death and Life (Philosophical Library), which unfortunately has not received the attention it deserves. It is a thoroughgoing attempt to situate the biblical doctrine on such important subjects as creation, sin, and the future life in the scientific landscape as we know it today. She deals extensively with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that disorder is constantly increasing in the universe. King’s thesis is that this law makes naturalistic evolution unthinkable. Her alternative vision rivals Teilhard de Chardin’s in breadth but is far more biblical both in intention and in execution.

ROMAN CATHOLICISM The prolific Tübingen professor Hans Küng offers us a bombshell with Infallible? An Inquiry (Doubleday). His arguments are on a par with those of Ignaz von Döllinger against papal infallibility on the occasion of the First Vatican Council. Döllinger left the Roman church after the council, because he could not accept the papal claim. Küng seems determined to stay in, and although Catholics have called Infallible? a “Protestant book,” it seems unlikely that he will be disciplined for it. Küng seems to hold a process view of truth and to think that the rest of the church ought to do so as well. This means more than the traditional Catholic idea that doctrine develops, as expounded by Cardinal Newman, for according to Küng’s view, what the First Vatican Council proclaimed as true in 1870 is not to be understood as true today—except by the addition of enough qualifications to reverse its 1870 meaning. The ensuing controversy has been evaluated in The Infallibility Debate (Paulist), edited by John J. Kirvan, in which two Catholic essayists try to rationalize Küng’s departure from Catholic teaching as no departure, while a third Catholic finds his position Protestant and a Protestant finds it neither fish nor fowl. The dismay of the typical traditional Catholic at Küng and similar Catholic innovators is mirrored in John Eppstein’s Has the Catholic Church Gone Mad? (Arlington). Despite its sensationalistic title, this is a sober book, and makes informative reading for the Protestant who would like to understand how many and possibly most practicing Catholics feel about what is going on in their church today. The Paulist Press has also given us a highly favorable and articulate presentation of Catholic Pentecostalism by Donald L. Gelpi, Pentecostalism: A Theological Viewpoint. Gelpi, like Eppstein but unlike Küng, has secured an imprimatur for his book, which unfortunately does not say much about the points on which Pentecostalism would seem to challenge traditional Catholic doctrine and structure.

ETHICS The past year saw an impressive output of books on ethics, headed by an English translation of Danish professor Knud E. Løgstrup’s The Ethical Demand (Fortress). Løgstrup gives a prominent place in his book to modern novelists such as D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster. He is very hostile to prescribed norms in ethics, and considers “Christian ethics” impossible, for which reason he is said by Wingren (cf. above) to have a deficient view of the Creation order.

James M. Gustafson presents a series of essays in Christian Ethics and the Community (Pilgrim Press), assembled by Charles M. Sweezey to form a remarkably unified and balanced work, one that takes note of fully biblical ethical systems but generally favors a biblically influenced Christian humanism. More systematic and squarely based on biblical revelation is Norman Geisler’s Ethics: Alternatives and Issues (Zondervan), which uses contemporary situations (such as the Pueblo incident of 1968) and problems (pollution) to develop a full-fledged evangelical ethics.

A more ecumenical, modern-day casuistic handbook, Moral Issues and Christian Responses, edited by Paul T. Jersild and Dale A. Johnson (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), deals with the gamut of modern and traditional ethical dilemmas but offers no solid answers. The difference between the Catholic and the general Protestant approach to ethics is systematically examined by Roger Mehl in a brief but perceptive study, Catholic Ethics and Protestant Ethics (Westminster). New Trends in Moral Theology (Newman) by George M. Reagan is a Catholic work that moves away from prescriptive biblical ethics and natural law in an attempt to find a basis for conduct in a broadly based Christian humanism. James P. Smurl has given us Religious Ethics: A Systems Approach (Prentice-Hall), in which he discards the specificity of Christian ethics and tries to establish a common method and content for various ethical systems.

The most comprehensive Protestant work after Geisler’s is William Barclay, Ethics in a Permissive Society (Westminster). Simple, because it was originally presented on television, this book is generally faithful to biblical norms. It tries to make them understandable as the wise instructions of a loving Father instead of as the capricious commands of a tyrant, but it does not water them down. It is a little less explicit on some current topics such as sexual morality than one might wish. More systematic and including more individual topics is Bernard Ramm’s The Right, the Good, and the Happy (Word), written for people without an academic background in philosophy or ethics; it is valuable but short. Another evangelical writer, L. Harold DeWolf, has given us Responsible Freedom: Guidelines to Christian Action (Harper & Row), in which he works out general principles of moral decision and relates them to biblical and theological material.

The alternative Reformation or Revolution is treated at length by E. L. Hebden Taylor in his book of the same name, subtitled A Study of Modern Society in the Light of a Reformational and Scriptural Pluralism (Craig), a very thorough historical, philosophical, and theological analysis. The same problem is treated in simple terms by Harold O. J. Brown in Christianity and the Class Struggle (Arlington and Zondervan).

Last year was marked by the publication of a large number of worthwhile volumes related to study of the New Testament. There has been one large gap, however: not enough truly worthwhile books for the non-specialist. The needs of the biblical scholar and theological student have been served well with a host of excellent commentaries, translations of important German works, creatively original monographs, and valuable collections of essays. But the needs of the lay Bible student have been sadly neglected. Most of the books published for him were either too inaccurate or too superficial to be of real help.

Leading the list is the first volume of a multi-volume theology of the New Testament by the eminent German scholar Joachim Jeremias. New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus (Scribners) is a model of twentieth-century biblical scholarship. It contains a wealth of information for the preacher and teacher who is willing to brush the dust off his Greek Testament and dig in; here is enough food for both shepherd and flock for many weeks.

Jeremias’s work is significant for a number of reasons. First, he (unlike many of his German colleagues) takes an essentially conservative view toward the reliability of the gospel records: the Synoptic Gospels, which form the basis of his study, are accepted as giving an essentially authentic picture of Jesus and his teachings. Current criteria for judging a gospel tradition’s authenticity are turned on their head with the statement that “in the synoptic tradition it is the inauthenticity, and not the authenticity, of the sayings of Jesus that must be demonstrated.” (This would seem to be the obviously correct approach, were it not that the converse has been stated so often recently!) Secondly, the author’s main concern is the New Testament itself, rather than the writings of scholars who make their livelihood by the study of the New Testament (though the secondary literature is by no means overlooked). Thirdly, the proclamation of Jesus is seen, quite rightly, to be the starting place, indeed the foundation, for a theology of the New Testament. If the pastor or theological student buys only one book this year, let it be this one!

A major commentary on the Bible being written by evangelical scholars is the “New International Commentary,” under the editorship of F. F. Bruce for the New Testament. Last year saw the publication of an important addition to the series in the massive Commentary on the Gospel of John by Leon Morris (Eerdmans). The author, an Australian Anglican and a regular contributor to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is one of the younger initiators of the current resurgence of evangelical biblical scholarship that began in Britain in the fifties. A collection of his essays on the Fourth Gospel appeared in 1969, and this, together with the high standard of Morris’s other published works, gave us reason to expect great things from the present commentary. Our hopes were not in vain! This commentary of more than nine hundred pages takes its place alongside any of the recent works on John—and the past decade has seen the publication of more than its share of important commentaries on this Gospel—as one of the best. Its format is such that it will be of value to all serious Bible students and not only to those who know Greek. If I felt inclined toward prophecy, I would predict that Morris’s volume, like the older commentary by Westcott, will continue in print and be used to the blessing of the Christian Church when many of the other recent works on the Fourth Gospel will have long since been forgotten.

The American publication of F. F. Bruce’s New Testament History (Doubleday) is a testimony to the growing strength of evangelical scholarship: not only are conservative scholars stepping outside normal evangelical publication channels more often, and frequently by invitation, but they are also writing some of the standard works in the field. Bruce’s volume, though not radically different from the histories by Filson and Reicke, is undoubtedly the best all-round study in the field and is certain to have a wide circulation as a basic textbook in seminaries and colleges. Although it is rather heavy going at times (beginners will be well advised to skip over the early chapters on the intertestamental period and come back to them later), it will be of interest to all serious Bible students. The author wears his learning lightly, and his lucid style wins for him a place of honor in that all too small cadre of scholars whose works are read and appreciated by ordinary Christian laymen and pastors as well as by their professional colleagues. It is gratifying that the publisher has made Bruce’s work available in very attractive American dress and in paperback as well as hardback. This year also saw American publication of Bruce’s Tradition: Old and New (Zondervan), a useful introduction to commonly misunderstood aspects of the writing, compilation, and interpretation of the New Testament.

Another book that should find a wide audience is N. E. Han’s A Parsing Guide to the Greek New Testament (Herald). Rather than using alphabetical order, like Bagster’s, Han goes verse by verse. Although Greek teachers may not appreciate it, beginning students, at least, will certainly find it helpful.

COMMENTARIES Nineteen seventy-one could well be called the year of the commentary. In addition to Morris on John, an unusually large number of other important volumes were published. Colossians and Philemon by Eduard Lohse (Fortress), the first volume in the “Hermeneia” series, takes pride of place as a model of an exegetical commentary and as the most beautifully produced volume of any of those mentioned in this survey article. One seldom thinks of a critical commentary as a work of art, but this one is—right down to the choice of typeface (it even has an appendix explaining the use of symbols and other aspects of the design). In the more important area of content as well the volume must be given an A plus. The commentary is full enough to be helpful but does not waste words; even though it is a translation of a German original published in 1968 (in the Meyer series), it has been brought up to date and put into smooth, natural English. The introductions are brief; matters usually discussed at the beginning of a commentary are discussed in the context of the exegesis or in excursuses appropriately placed in the text. Even the thorny question of the Pauline authorship of Colossians is left open till the end of the commentary. Despite the tenuous nature of the case for the view that the epistle stems from a circle of Paul’s disciples who preserved, studied, and developed his teaching (Philemon is considered genuine), one does not feel that Lohse has prejudged the case; furthermore, the exegesis of Colossians as a whole is relatively independent of the question of authorship, and those who differ with Lohse on the matter (as I do) will still find his work of great value.

The award for the most original commentary of the year goes to the late W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann, who jointly produced the latest New Testament addition to the “Anchor Bible.” Matthew: A New Translation With an Introduction and Notes (Doubleday) is an extremely interesting commentary, though it can hardly be recommended as the definitive work on the First Gospel. In many ways it is a refreshing work—the authors differ with nearly the whole world of contemporary New Testament scholarship regarding the general conclusions of gospel criticism, and this is not entirely a fault. Still, one has the feeling that many of the conclusions stated rather dogmatically in the lengthy introduction have not been thoroughly researched but represent the authors’ opinions, or even hunches, ingenious though they be. The New Testament scholar who is concerned with matters of gospel criticism cannot afford to ignore the material presented and the conclusions suggested, but the general Bible student and the pastor will have to wait for a more adequate, up-to-date commentary on Matthew to meet his needs.

Two additional commentaries in the Meyer series that have been translated from German into English are The Gospel of John by Rudolf Bultmann and The Acts of the Apostles by Ernst Haenchen (both Westminster). Both works have been indispensable tools for academic work on John or Acts since the first editions appeared two and three decades ago. Both represent radical approaches to these writings (i.e., they take an extremely negative view of the historical value of John and Acts and write from an existentialist theological perspective), but the authors are noted scholars and have written works with which all who are concerned with the study of early Christianity must come to terms. Once again the publisher is to be commended for bringing out American editions that are less expensive than their British counterparts.

Five commentaries that the non-specialist will find of value are F. F. Bruce, First and Second Corinthians (Oliphants); James M. Boice, Philippians: An Expositional Commentary (Zondervan); D. E. Hiebert, The Thessalonian Epistles (Moody); Ernest Best, First Peter (Oliphants); and F. F. Bruce, The Epistles of John (Revell). Boice’s expositions originated as radio sermons on the “Bible Study Hour” and are not only exegetically helpful but also related to the practical problems of everyday Christian living. The Oliphant volumes are in the “New Century Bible,” a relatively new series that already contains several admirable commentaries; unfortunately the series has not found an American publisher. Each is useful and will be of help to the theological student, pastor, and advanced lay Bible student.

A commentary on the whole New Testament by Martin Franzmann was published along with the complete text of the RSV as the Concordia Bible With Notes (Concordia). Distinctively Lutheran elements are restrained; all evangelicals can use this profitably as a New Testament for study.

JESUS CHRIST Two leading New Testament scholars who have given us very personal records of their convictions concerning Jesus are the Swiss theologian Eduard Schweizer and C. H. Dodd, the doyen of British biblical scholarship. Neither would be described as “evangelical” or “conservative” in the normal use of those words, but each comes through as a person deeply committed to Jesus Christ. Jesus (John Knox), Schweizer’s testimony, is the more personal of the two; if one were to edit out the occasional theological judgment and, more often, the extreme critical opinions that punctuate the book, the result would be a fairly orthodox exposition with a somewhat pietist flavor. It may seem strange that a deep, personal faith in Jesus as Lord can co-exist with Bultmannianism, or something like it—but there it is.

Dodd’s book, The Founder of Christianity (Macmillan), is more conservative but less devotional in tone than Schweizer’s Jesus. Whereas Schweizer reaches beyond the Gospels to the rest of the New Testament and is concerned with the place of Jesus in the faith of the early Church, Dodd focuses on the “historical Jesus” whom he believes can be discerned in the gospel records. In this regard he takes a much more positive view of the historical value of the Gospel than is common in some circles—though he is scarcely a fundamentalist (in spite of what some might think who have read only H. Trevor-Roper’s now famous review). Quite rightly, Dodd stresses the importance of passages like Luke 1:1–4, where the author states that he fully intends to write an account that is historically reliable, and the strong case that exists for the essential historicity of the Gospels, even the Fourth Gospel.

Jesus and Man’s Hope, edited by D. G. Miller and D. Y. Hadidian (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary), is the title of a varied but fascinating two-volume collection of papers originally presented at the “Festival on the Gospels” held in April, 1970, to mark the one hundred seventy-fifth anniversary of Pittsburgh Seminary. Contributors include leading Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars of varied theological perspectives and a few non-theologians (of whom R. M. Frye is by far the most interesting). That each of the lead papers on each of the Gospels should question some of the fundamental assumptions of “mainstream” gospel criticism, and give plausible reasons for doing so, indicates the state of flux that exists in this area of New Testament research.

PAUL THE APOSTLE Two fairly non-technical works on the life and teaching of Paul are Gunther Bornkamm’s Paul (Harper & Row) and The Ministry and Message of Paul by Richard Longenecker (Zondervan). Bornkamm, a former student of Rudolf Bultmann who has tended to become a little more conservative than his mentor, attempts to reconstruct, first the life and work of the Apostle, and then the central features of his theology. The resulting work is admirable, and the student can use it with profit if he keeps in mind the dubious presuppositions that underlie the Heidelberg professor’s work (such as the historical unreliability of Acts or the genuineness of only seven of Paul’s epistles). Bornkamm rightly stresses, however, the continuity between the messages of Jesus and Paul. Longenecker’s study takes a more conservative but by no means less competent approach. The author has studied Paul and his place in early Christianity for many years and has distinguished himself by an earlier and more technical work, Paul: Apostle of Liberty. Most of the material contained in the book was written for the forthcoming Zondervan Pictorial Bible Encyclopedia and is a foretaste (I hope) of good things to come.

Two more technical works devoted to Paul are The Sayings of Jesus in the Churches of Paul by David L. Dungan (Fortress) and Perspectives on Paul by Ernst Käsemann (Fortress). The former, centering primarily on First Corinthians 7:10 and 11 and 9:14, seeks to determine the extent and manner of Paul’s use of the tradition used by the Synoptic Evangelists; the author’s conclusion is that “Paul stands squarely within the tradition that led to the Synoptic gospels,” effectively countering the view of some that the Apostle knew only a few sayings of Jesus. The volume by Kasemann offers in English dress seven scholarly and sometimes polemical essays dealing with Paul’s anthropology, the saving significance of the death of Jesus in Paul, justification and Heilsgeschichte in Romans, the faith of Abraham (Romans 4), the body of Christ, liberty in worship, and the Pauline antithesis between spirit and letter. As always Kasemann stimulates one to look afresh at the text of Scripture, but he is hardly the best guide available, in either historical methodology or theology.

COLLECTED ESSAYS One of the most creatively original of recent collections of essays on the New Testament is Law in the New Testament by J. Duncan M. Derrett (Darton, Longman and Todd), professor of Oriental Laws in the University of London. Derrett’s essays are models of historical scholarship and draw on a wide knowledge of rabbinics and Oriental legal thinking. All but one of the eighteen chapters relate to the Gospels, with a strong emphasis on the parables. There is a valuable chapter on the trial of Jesus and also on Romans 7:1–4. No student of the life and teachings of Jesus can afford to overlook this volume. Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament by J. A. Fitzmyer (G. Chapman), a leading Aramaic scholar, offers an equal treat for the scholar. Subjects include: the use of the Old Testament in Qumran and in the New Testament, the Semitic background of various gospel texts and phrases, First Corinthians 11:10 and Second Corinthians 6:14–7:1 in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Melchizedek (the subject of two essays), Jewish Christianity in Acts in the light of the Qumran documents, the Bar Cochba period, the Oxyrhynchus Sayings of Jesus and the so-called Gospel according to Thomas, and the similarities and dissimilarities between the Ebionites and the Qumran community. Not exactly bedtime reading, but biblical and historical scholarship at its best!

The Future of Our Religious Past, edited by James M. Robinson (Harper & Row), contains a selection of essays from the 1964 festschrift for Rudolf Bultmann on his eightieth birthday, now available in English for the first time. More than half the essays are concerned primarily with the New Testament and are by some of the big names in scholarship (mostly German): Nils Dahl (on history and eschatology in the light of the Scrolls), W. G. Kümmel (eschatology and the proclamation of Jesus), E. Käsemann (reconciliation in the New Testament), H. Koester (early Christian heresy), J. M. Robinson (the literary genre of “Q”), H. Thyen (“baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”), E. Dinkler (Peter’s confession), G. Bornkamm (Matthew 28:16–20), and H. Conzelmann (the background of the wisdom motif). One of the more interesting contributions is found in the “theology and philosophy” section in the form of a philosophical meditation on Romans 7 by Hans Jonas.

John and Qumran (G. Chapman) contains nine important essays that relate the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Fourth Gospel. Two are by the editor, James H. Charlesworth (a comparison of the dualism of IQS 3:13–4:26 with that of John; Qumran, John, and the Odes of Solomon). Also included are an introductory essay by Raymond E. Brown on the Scrolls and the New Testament, Qumran and the theology of John by James L. Price, the Johannine Paraclete and the Qumran writings by A. R. C. Leaney, the calendar of Qumran and the passion narrative in John by A. Jaubert (a most important essay!), Qumran, John, and Jewish Christianity by G. Quispel, First John and Qumran by M.-E. Bois-mard, and the origin of the Gospel according to John by W. H. Brownlee. There is a select bibliography of writings on the subject, as well as full indexes.

A final collection of essays worthy of mention is the festschrift for Joachim Jeremias, Der Ruf Jesu und die Antwort der Gemeinde (The Call of Jesus and the Answer of the Church) (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), edited by E. Lohse and others. The contributors are all former students of Jeremias. A few of them, for example Norman Perrin and Eduard Lohse, have already achieved international fame as scholars, and we may expect to hear more from them in the future. There is nothing particularly earthshaking about the essays, but they all represent a high quality of scholarship and are worthy of the great man they seek to honor. A valuable feature is the long bibliography of the writings of Jeremias, which contains a subject and Scripture index.

HISTORY OF EXEGESIS A subdiscipline of biblical studies that is increasingly coming into its own is the history of biblical interpretation. Four valuable additions to the field appeared during the past year. Herrschaft und Unterwerfung Christi (Lordship and Subjection of Christ) (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck) is the title of a study of First Corinthians 15:24–28 in the writings of the Fathers up to the end of the fourth century. T. H. L. Parker has written a much needed introduction to Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries (Eerdmans) that will doubtless prove to be a very useful tool for students of Calvin and New Testament exegetes alike. V. Noskov Olsen, a Seventh-day Adventist scholar, has published his Basel dissertation on The New Testament Logia on Divorce: A Study of Their Interpretation From Erasmus to Milton (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck); the author illustrates how difficult it is for those who profess submission to the authority of the Bible to be truly objective in their interpretation of its teaching. David R. Catchpole’s The Trial of Jesus: A Study in the Gospels and Jewish Historiography From 1770 to the Present Day (Leiden: E. J. Brill) offers an excellent introduction to both Jewish interpretation of the Gospels and the gospel texts themselves. Among the various emphases is the need for scholars to take the tradition preserved in Luke more seriously than they have tended to do in the past.

SPECIALIZED STUDIES A plethora of academic treatises poured from the presses last year, gladdening the heart of every New Testament scholar. The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity (A. R. Allenson) by R. N. Longenecker of Trinity in the “Studies in Biblical Theology” series discusses Christological titles under three headings: (1) images and motifs that are distinctively Jewish Christian, (2) affirmations related to messiahship, (3) titles associated with lordship. The introductory chapter on methodology is very important and is worthy of reflection. Longenecker has blazed the trail for younger American evangelical scholars who want to make a mark for God in the arena of biblical scholarship. Luke: Historian and Theologian by I. H. Marshall (Zondervan) is another example of the type of work needed.

Two additional titles that have advanced the cause of Lucan research are R. F. Zehnle, Peter’s Pentecost Discourse: Tradition and Lukan Reinterpretation in Peter’s Speeches of Acts 2 and 3 (Abingdon), and T. Schramm, Der Markus-Stoff bei Lukas (The Marcan Material in Luke) (Cambridge). Zehnle offers a careful study of Petrine sermons in Acts 2 and 3 that attempts to relate them to the theology and literary structure of Acts. The work by Schramm serves as a corrective to some research done on the Lucan writings during the past two decades, especially by Germans.

Creation and Redemption: A Study in Pauline Theology (Leiden: E. J. Brill) by J. G. Gibbs is a study of Romans 5:12–21; 8:18–39; First Corinthians 8:6; Ephesians 1:3–14; Philippians 2:6–11; Colossians 1:15–20, and related passages. The thesis is that Paul’s thought “began with the lordship of Christ and in that light saw the relation between creation and redemption.” The NewTestament Christological Hymns: Their Historical Religious Background (Cambridge) by Jack T. Sanders deals with two of the same passages, Philippians 2 and Colossians 1, plus Ephesians 2:14–16; First Timothy 3:16; First Peter 3:18–22; Hebrews 1:3, and John 1:1–18. Sanders’s approach and conclusions are quite different from those of Gibbs; he judges the background of these early Christian hymns to be a syncretistic form of pre-Christian Judaism when there existed an emerging mythical configuration that could be attached to various redeemer figures. Wisdom, Christology, and Law in Matthew’s Gospel (Harvard) by M. Jack Suggs is a similar though less technical study.

The Literary Devices in John’s Gospel (Basel: F. Reinhardt Verlag) by David W. Wead introduces a refreshing approach to the Fourth Gospel. Wead (who teaches at Emmanuel School of Religion, a seminary of the conservative Christian Churches) forsakes the normal categories of New Testament criticism and seeks to apply some of the insights of ordinary literary criticism. The introductory chapter on the author’s point of view(s) is probably Wead’s most original contribution, though his subsequent discussions of the use of sign, double meaning, irony, and metaphor are all helpful. The work is full of exegetical insight. The Faithful Sayings in the Pastoral Letters by George W. Knight III (Presbyterian and Reformed) is the published form of a Free University of Amsterdam dissertation on the five passages in the Pastorals that contain the expression pistos ho logos (“faithful is the saying”). These sayings are regarded as quotations rather than compositions of the author, that is, creedal or liturgical expressions of the early Church’s faith and life.

Other monographs to be noted are E. Fuchs, Jesus: Wort und Tat (Jesus: Word and Deed) (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck), a further contribution to the discussion about the “New Hermeneutic” by a leading disciple of Bultmann; R. H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (Macmillan), an attempt to unravel the traditions concerning the resurrection of Jesus; L. E. Keck, A Future For the Historical Jesus (Abingdon), a discussion for the non-specialist of the place of Jesus in preaching and theology; J. M. Robinson and H. Koester, Trajectories Through Early Christianity (Fortress), an esoteric work based on the assumption that Jesus of Nazareth was “purely human”; and T. J. Weeden, Mark: Traditions in Conflict (Fortress), a highly speculative work that will be of interest to specialists. Finally, there appeared three translations that need no introduction to the scholars for whom they are intended: W. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Fortress); W. Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth (Abingdon); and J. Weiss, Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (Fortress).