From The Historian’S Side

New Testament History, by F. F. Bruce (Doubleday, 1971, 462 pp.,$8.95), is reviewed by W. Harold Mare, professor of New Testament language and literature, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

The author, the well-known professor of biblical criticism and exegesis at Manchester University, states at the outset of this excellent contribution to New Testament scholarship that he writes “as a historian, not as a theologian.” He treats the New Testament records as historically reliable.

Bruce begins this comprehensive survey of New Testament history with intertestamental political and religious developments, then discusses the New Testament period itself, and concludes with a description of the Church in its growth up to the fourth century. He skillfully integrates the various parts of the New Testament narrative into a continuous historical drama.

In his treatment of background, Bruce surveys the philosophical schools of the time, as well as the Jewish high priestly system and religious parties. He discusses the Qumran community, John the Baptist, and the ministry, trial, and death of Jesus. However, one could wish more had been said about Christ’s resurrection. Bruce also has helpful discussions on the house of the Herods and the Roman governors ruling over Judea.

He fully considers problems raised by important Scripture passages, such as the implications of the Jerusalem decree (Acts 15) for Jew and Gentile.

The author shows how archaeology illuminates New Testament history; for example, an early second-century Ephesian inscription sheds light on the narrative regarding the silver shrines made for Artemis (Acts 19). In addition, non-New Testament literary materials cited give new perspective in the study of some Scripture texts. That Job’s three daughters spoke with the tongues of angels (Testament of Job, first century B.C.) helps explain the illustration in First Corinthians 13:1 ff.; and it may well be that, as Bruce suggests, the deficient preaching of Apollos (Acts 18:24 ff.), who was from Alexandria, may have been due to the influence on him of the method of exegesis exemplified in Philo.

The book has frequent references to extra-biblical sources, both those outside the Church, such as Josephus, Philo, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, and Trajan, and those within the Church, such as Ignatius, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

Bruce’s book is evangelical, scholarly, and very readable. It can be profitably used as a textbook and as a resource book for seminars and private study. It will be of help to the pastor, the interested Bible student, and students and teachers in college and seminary. The excellent bibliography and indices greatly enhance its usefulness.

Those Fascinating Reformers

Reformers in the Wings, by David C. Steinmetz (Fortress, 1971, 240 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Ronald Sider, assistant professor of history, Messiah College campus at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In recent decades, Reformation scholarship has taken seriously the fact that those who played the lead roles in the drama that unfolded at Rome, Wittenberg, Zurich, and Geneva were supported by a distinguished cast of significant though less-known figures. Reformers in the Wings takes its place as one of several recent books that summarize the vast amount of contemporary scholarly work on some of the secondary Reformation figures. The author grants equal time to Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, and Radicals by writing five concise portraits of figures in each of these four categories.

Aware that Protestants did not have a monopoly on reformatio, Professor Steinmetz devotes part one to late medieval Catholic reform. The popular preacher Johannes Geiler von Kayserberg, the Augustinian theologian and monastic administrator Staupitz, the moderate Cardinal Contarini seeking reconciliation with the Protestants, the reform-minded Catholic humanist Faber Stapulensis and the British aristocrat and papal diplomat Cardinal Pole all receive sympathetic treatment. The second part, devoted to Lutheran reformers, is an interesting discussion of the refraction of Luther’s theology in the thought of several of his major co-workers. If Melanchthon slowly weakened Luther’s rejection of the freedom of the will in salvation, and Osiander became dissatisfied with the “cold doctrine” of forensic justification, Amsdorf tried to remain faithful to the master by asserting that good works are harmful for salvation. Brenz and Bugenhagen, for their part, faithfully pastored the flock and established lasting Lutheran church structures. Representatives of the Reformed tradition from Strasbourg (Bucer), Zurich (Bullinger), England (Hooper and Peter Martyr Vermigli) and Geneva (Beza) make up the third section.

Since the Radical Reformers are no longer stepchildren of Reformation scholarship, they also receive equal time. Steinmetz discusses Luther’s ally and then bitter foe, Karlstadt, the spiritualist Schwenckfeld, and three Anabaptists, Hubmaier, Denck, and Marpeck. Most significant perhaps is the author’s thesis in the chapter on Hubmaier, that Reformation typology notwithstanding, the Radical Reformers were not always radical. In their adoption of pacifism and their break with the medieval notion of a corpus Christianum, the Anabaptists did in fact break with the medieval past more radically than did Luther or Calvin. However, by stressing Hubmaier’s debt to late medieval nominalism in his thinking on justification and free will, Steinmetz is able to argue that on some other important issues the Magisterial Reformers represent a more radical break with late medieval theology than does Hubmaier, the “radical” Anabaptist.

By focusing on one or two central doctrines of each thinker, the author provides a good introduction to Reformation theology. Hermeneutics receives careful attention both in the chapter on Faber Stapulensis, who was very concerned with the problem of the letter and the spirit, and in the chapter on Marpeck, who rejected the Reformed view of the relation between the Old and New Testaments. The chapters on Peter Martyr Vermigli and Schwenckfeld provide an excellent discussion of Reformation Eucharistic thought. (In fact, the comparison of Lutheran and Reformed thinking on the Eucharist is so extensive that Vermigli is almost forgotten.) And the central doctrine of justification receives special attention in the sections on Contarini and Hubmaier. An additional virtue of the book’s discussion of theology is that the author (who studied under Professor Oberman) always includes a discussion of late medieval thinking in his concise sketches of the history of particular doctrines.

The preoccupation with theology (the author teaches at Lancaster Theological Seminary) is also the major weakness of the book. Some sixteenth-century politics occasionally sneaks into the text (e.g., in the chapter on Pole), but there is precious little economic and social history. Is there not, for instance, some interesting economic and technological history that should have been included in the chapter on the civil engineer Pilgram Marpeck?

Considering the scope of the book, it is remarkable that there are only a few minor mistakes. For instance, it is not accurate to say that Karlstadt was “aided in his radical reform by the so-called Zwickau prophets.” Although the bibliographies usually include the most recent material, the author overlooked Friedel Kriechbaum’s Grundziige der Theologie Karlstadts (1967). But the mistakes and oversights are infrequent.

Professor Steinmetz has provided us with concise, easily readable, reliable sketches of twenty fascinating Reformation figures.

Practical Reading

Counseling Christian Parents, by William S. Deal (Zondervan, 1970, 128 pp., paperback, $1.95), is reviewed by Robert G. Weinman, minister, First Presbyterian Church, Columbiana, Ohio.

Parents who want honest answers to their questions should not overlook Dr. Deal’s practical analysis and advice. He was formerly a college president and pastor and is now a professional counselor in marriage, family, and youth relations. He has counseled many young people and is greatly concerned with the breakdown of many families related to the Christian Church. In a delightful personal style, he discusses the origin, value, and meaning of life as God-centered. The result is highly personalized answers in specific areas of confusion and worry.

“The future happiness of children,” he says, “is quite largely conditioned in the early home life. They will either reap a harvest of blessing from this condition or be warped and twisted into insecure, fearful and unhappy people as they become adults.” This book is no magic solution for the thorny problems of child-rearing; but parents who take its message seriously and put its advice into practice will give a much better performance in their appointed role.

Those Active Old Testament Scholars

New Perspectives on the Old Testament, edited by J. Barton Payne (Word, 1970, 305 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Francis I. Andersen, professor of Old Testament literature, The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California.

At the twentieth annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, held in Philadelphia in 1968, an array of conservative scholars—mainly American, three from England, one from South Africa—reviewed the present state of Old Testament studies. Seventeen papers are now made available in this volume, the third symposium produced by the ETS.

The papers cover a wide range of topics and, predictably, vary in scope, in approach, in quality. Conservatives have responded to new learning in a variety of ways. Some have rejected new conclusions and firmly maintained old positions; others have welcomed modern discoveries and adjusted their views to fit; still others have made use of new knowledge and argued that, rightly interpreted, it only confirms traditional beliefs. Each of these three attitudes is represented in the present volume.

Some of the contributors mount a polemic against “liberal” criticism. Leon T. Wood, for instance, argues again for an early date for the Exodus, stating that adherents of a late date deny biblical inerrancy; archaeological data must fit biblical statements. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., argues that Genesis 1–11 is not mythological but historical. (His title—“The Literary Form of Genesis 1–11”—is misleading, for he discusses not the form as such but rather the content in terms of philological features and general credibility.)

Elmer B. Smick is more willing to welcome the light that Ugaritic throws on biblical poetry; while Derek Kidner is more cautious about finding parallels, let alone sources, for Old Testament Wisdom writings.

Several major contributions show the increasing influence of recent form-comparison studies on the understanding of Old Testament covenant-making. While many conservative writers have remained largely untouched by such developments, Meredith G. Kline and Kenneth A. Kitchen have taken a lead in exploiting them for apologetic and constructive purposes. Both continue their work in this volume, and the editor joins them with an extensive study of the theology of the covenant. Kline builds on his earlier work by pointing out the significance of ancient covenant forms for the establishment of a written canon.

Kitchen assails “deuteronism” (sic!) as imaginary. It is not so easy to dismiss generations of scholarship with the complexity of the problem and the ridicule—“its methods and results are vast literature of the subject are not alike absurd.” Those acquainted with likely to be persuaded by that kind of language. Kitchen bases his argument on analogies from the literature and culture of Egypt and of other countries in the Ancient Near East. In doing this he denies, not only the distinctiveness of the deuteronomic tradition within the Old Testament, but also the uniqueness of Old Testament thought within the ancient world. The difference lies rather in the power and truth with which these common concepts are used within the Old Testament. Conservatives are likely to be disturbed by this line of argumentation, for they have usually emphasized the uniqueness of Old Testament ideas as specially revealed by God and not derived from the cultural environment.

Besides review articles (Robert L. Alden’s article on the prophets is a bibliographical survey), the volume contains some original contributions reporting more technical research. Outstanding is Edwin M. Yamauchi’s study of “The Greek Words in Daniel.” He presents a brilliantly argued and richly documented case against the usual claim that Greek words point to a late date for Daniel. In a complementary study Gleason L. Archer, Jr., compares the Aramaic of Daniel with the language of the Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran, and finds them so unlike as to point to an early date for the former.

Bruce K. Waltke offers a fine detailed study of the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and questions the argument that when it agrees with LXX, this combination may be better than the Masoretic Text.

Despite its patchiness, the symposium contains much useful material, and is a welcome sign of continued activity of conservative Old Testament scholars.

Stammering Out The Truth

The Threat and the Power, by Hans-Joachim Kraus (John Knox, 1971, 107 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Marlin C. Hardman, pastor, Barcroft Bible Church, Arlington, Virginia.

In a day when many are more concerned with an “existential encounter” than with biblical authority, it is refreshing to read a book about preaching, especially from Germany! Here is practical food for thought well worth the time invested.

The author affirms with loving frankness his belief that preaching is the most important part of worship. He testifies: “The plight of preaching in the Protestant Church drove me to write this book.” In doing so he attacks the humanizing of God found in Bultmann, J. A. T. Robinson, Tillich, and others.

The thesis: “that in our time hermeneutics and homiletics have so distorted the decisive emphases in preaching that the question of authority has been pushed aside or even eliminated entirely.” Preoccupation with symptoms prevents us from discerning the real cause of the disease.

God doesn’t need to speak “in new ways.” We simply need to return to the authority of the Word itself, to let God use it as he planned. “Preaching that has authority wakes people up.”

The title and emphasis of the book are based partly on Luther’s translation of Isaiah 28:19—“Only assaults and threats teach us to listen to the Word.” Krause believes that this verse was for the Reformer “the guide for all attempts to apply the Word to life.”

Chapter four, “Listening and Studying Alone,” will make any God-called pastor re-evaluate his life. What keeps the average man from preaching with authority? Failure to make time for quiet, unhurried listening to the Word; thinking with his watch in his hands; lack of intensive study; reading the Bible only for something to preach; too much dependence on commentaries and study helps. As Kraus states: “When a man in the presence of the living God is transformed into a scholarly observer of God, his hearing is dulled, and he finds his path to power in proclamation blocked.”

One of the most stimulating aspects of this book is the author’s emphasis that the responsibility for preaching lies not only with the pastor but with the entire congregation. The gifts of the Spirit must be used.

Authority in preaching is not demonstrated by the emotional force with which the sermon is delivered. Kraus follows Luther in asserting that we must start with God who speaks, not with man who receives God’s Word. “Thus says the Lord” should be the claim for every sermon.

I especially appreciated the concluding chapter on prayer, which is an explication of Romans 8:26 and 27. “Proclamation can have authority only where life takes on a new direction in response to the Holy Spirit.”

Some may feel the author quotes Luther excessively, but I was encouraged to learn anew from him. Others will find the book lacking in certain clichés by which they judge a book to be typically evangelical. My only criticism is of the first chapter. In facing the problem that existentialism and the humanistic theologians present to preaching, it gets a bit weighty and is perhaps not the best introduction to the subject. However, this is by no means a major hindrance.

What is the power? The preaching of God’s Word with authority! The threat? It is to man’s self-assurance and pride. In the words of another: “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the god of the philosophers.”

The emphasis of this book is accurately described by something Luther said: “Victory belongs to the one who stammers the truth, not to the eloquent liar.”

An Encouraging Portent

The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity, by Richard N. Longenecker (Allenson, 1970, 178 pp., paperback, $5.45), is reviewed by Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

The appearance of Longenecker’s monograph in the important “Studies in Biblical Theology” series is an encouraging portent for American evangelical scholarship. The author, a professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is well known for his scholarly work Paul, Apostle of Liberty, published in 1964.

By making full use of the recently published Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, various Apocryphal works (e.g. Enoch), and canonical New Testament writings that are especially reflective of “Jewish” Christianity (e.g., Matthew, John, Hebrews, James), Longenecker examines the titles and concepts ascribed to Jesus by the early Jewish Christians.

He also presents some cogent suggestions as to why certain concepts—because of their possible implications in the circumstances of the times—were not used as much as one might expect. For example, why was not the suffering-servant theme of Isaiah 53 used more than it was in the New Testament? And why was there not more stress on the Davidic kingship of Jesus?

Longenecker concludes that the fundamental datum was, for Jesus, sonship; for the early Jewish Christians, “messiahship” on the basis of the resurrection; and for Paul and the Gentile Christians, the concept of lordship. He notes that the early Jewish Christians thought primarily in concepts derived from the Old Testament. And he suggests that it was the challenge of heretical teachings, such as at Colosse, that moved Paul to ascribe to Christ titles of supremacy in the cosmological sphere.

The author mentions only in passing an Arabic document recently published by the Israeli scholar Shlomo Pines that has attracted some attention in the secular press and has already been used as an authentic document of early Jewish Christianity by Hugh Schonfield in Those Incredible Christians. In addition to the articles Longenecker cites as critical of the historical worth of this medieval manuscript, one should note: S. M. Stern, “New Light on Judaeo-Christianity?,” Encounter, May, 1967, pages 53–57, and “Quotations from Apocryphal Gospels in cAbd al-Jabbar,” Journal of Theological Studies, XVIII (1967)., pages 34–57.

We look forward to more studies of the caliber of this monograph from Professor Longenecker, and from his evangelical colleagues.

Newly Published

The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, by Jaroslav Pelikan (Chicago, 394 pp., $15). First of five volumes to appear over the next ten years or so surveying the history of the development of doctrine; by a scholar who, well knowing the magnitude of the task, is bold enough to attempt it. Will probably become the standard work.

Hermeneutics, by Bernard L. Ramm et al. (Baker, 152 pp., paperback, $1.45). Preachers and Bible-class teachers can profit greatly from this book. The ten articles treat general principles plus such specifics as parables, types, and prophecy. Originally they were part of Baker’s Dictionary of Practical Theology; it is good that they are now available separately.

Straight Dope on Drugs, by Walter S. Krusich (Creation House, 126 pp., paperback, $1.95). A straightforward discussion of the effects and dangers of the major drugs. Krusich combines dramatic statistics and lurid true stories in an illustrated text designed to appeal to basically straight pre-teens and teens.

Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation, by Carl Bangs (Abingdon, 382 pp., $9.95). Probably will become the definitive work. Especially significant because it vividly presents the man and his background as well as theology and combines scholarship with a lively writing style.

China: The Puzzle, by Stan Mooneyham (World Vision, 74 pp., paperback, $.95), Christian and Muslim in Africa, by Noel Q. King (Harper & Row, 153 pp., $5.95), Profit for the Lord: Economic Activities in Moravian Missions and the Basel Mission Trading Company, by William J. Danker (Eerdmans, 183 pp., paperback, $3.95), Religion in Cuba Today, edited by Alice L. Hageman and Philip E. Wheaton (Association, 317 pp., $7.95), and Role of the Faith Mission: A Brazilian Case Study, by Fred E. Edwards (William Carey, 139 pp., paperback, $3.45). Competent studies of the Christian past, present, and prospects in various places.

Theology of the Liberating Word, edited by Frederick Herzog (Abingdon, 123, pp., paperback, $2.75). Four recent, technical essays by Germans on the nature of the Word of God collected by one who believes that “it is the unwillingness of American theology to root itself in the biblical word that [explains] the lack of any true authority” and who deplores any refusal to let the Word “function as an arbiter of truth.…”

The Future Shape of Ministry, by Urban T. Holmes III (Seabury, 310 pp., paperback, $4.50). Forsaking the verbiage and jargon that too often characterize a book on ministry, the author presents a thorough overview of the subject.

Interpreting Christian Holiness, by W. T. Purkiser (Beacon Hill, 70 pp., paperback, $1.25). An excellent, brief explanation of what believers in “entire sanctification” mean—and don’t mean—by their terms. Not likely to convince others, but at least should prevent cavalier disdain.

Sharing Groups in the Church, by Robert C. Leslie (Abingdon, 221 pp., paperback, $2.95). The subtitle invites the reader to get “involved” in sensitive, meaningful, action-oriented communication. Each section records parts of actual share-group conversations. A good introduction for those who feel the need for more probing discussions in the church.

Religion and Man: An Introduction, edited by W. Richard Comstock (Harper & Row, 676 pp., $9.95). Text for an introductory college course. Specialists write on the various religions of India, China, and Japan and on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Highly readable.

Pentecostalism: A Theological Viewpoint, by Donald L. Gelpi (Paulist, 234 pp., paperback, $1.95). A Jesuit philosophy teacher reflects on the Catholic charismatic movement, in which he participates. Sample: “The test of the authenticity of any charismatic experiences is the extent to which it leads one to share the ‘mind’ of the crucified Christ.” “In the matter of ‘Spirit-baptism’ it is dangerous and misleading to demand that the divine response be the gift of tongues.…”

The Black Church in America, edited by Hart M. Nelsen, Raytha L. Yokley, and Anne K. Nelsen (Basic Books, 375 pp., $10). Thirty-three well-chosen selections from various sources in this century are collected as a reader for sociology of religion and black-studies courses.

Christendom Divided, by Hans J. Hillerbrand (Westminster, 344 pp., $9.95). Yet another brief, authoritative overview of the beginnings of Protestantism. Distinguishes the religious, the theological, and the political reformations and greatly stresses the role of Luther.

Twelve Makers of Modern Protestant Thought, edited by George L. Hunt (Association, 140 pp., paperback, $2.25). Twelve men write on twelve thinkers simply and appreciatively. However, few of these “makers” would be considered Protestants by the Reformers.

Introduction to the Bible, by Donald J. Selby and James King West (Macmillan, 1,116 pp., $11.95). A well-done college-level text for teachers who are happy with the prevailing “orthodoxy” in mainstream biblical scholarship. The Old and New Testament sections are also available separately ($8.95 each).

Teeth on Edge, by Robert O. Fife (Baker, 135 pp., paperback, $1.95). The author argues that “racism is a dimension of human sin.… It is fundamentally a spiritual problem.” He explores interracial relations and differences over antislavery within the antebellum Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. Well documented. Worthwhile for all Christians.

A Survey of Bible Prophecy, by Arthur E. Bloomfield (Bethany, 238 pp., paperback, $2.95). Sees about ten and a half years intervening between the Rapture and Christ’s return. (The Great Tribulation precedes Daniel’s Seventieth Week.)

Historical Theology: Continuity and Change in Christian Doctrine, by Jaroslav Pelikan (Westminster, 228 pp., $9.95). A history of the historical study of doctrine with reflections on the relationships of biblical, historical, and systematic theology.

The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science, by Georgine Milmine (Baker, 495 pp., $5.95), The Armstrong Error, by Charles F. DeLoach (Logos, 117 pp., paperback, $.95), and The Scandal of Scientology, by Paulette Cooper (Tower, 220 pp., paperback, $.95). Although current devotees of these religions are unlikely to be convinced by these exposes, prospective members might be dissuaded. Milmine’s book was first published in 1909 but is still relevant.

The Church and the Secular Order in Reformation Thought, by John M. Tonkin (Columbia, 219 pp., $8). A comparative presentation of the rather diverse views of Luther, Calvin, and Menno Simons, in light of their medieval heritage.

The Search for Human Values, by Cornelius J. van der Poel (Paulist, 186 pp., $4.95). A modern Catholic reacts against strict adherence to rules to gain God’s favor. He tries, with only partial success, to bring together an evolutionary theory of values with what he sees as man’s task: to become fully human. Very good insights into the image of God, but his optimistic view of man’s ability entails an inadequate view of redemption.

The Christian Revolutionary, by Dale W. Brown (Eerdmans, 147 pp., paperback, $2.45). A Church of the Brethren leader, having become “involved in the idealism and activity of the New Left,” offers “a theological reflection on my involvement in that Movement.”

A History of Apologetics, by Avery Dulles (Corpus and Westminster, 307 pp., $9.95). A brief survey of the differing ways apologetes have approached their task. First half goes up to 1600 and the second halt treats equally both Catholics and Protestants.

Trajectories Through Early Christianity, by James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester (Fortress, 297 pp., $9.95), and Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, by Walter Bauer (Fortress, 326 pp., $12.50). Two books seeking to blur the distinction between canonical and non-canonical writings and between sub-apostolic orthodoxy and its competitors. Bauer was first published in German in 1934. Robinson and Koester enlarge upon his work in four essays each. They argue for the rearrangement of New Testament studies within the broader study of the first three centuries of Christian literature and history.

Constantine the Great, by John Holland Smith (Scribner, 359 pp., $8.95). The author sifts through idealized images of legends and early historical accounts to reconstruct the Constantine who rose to supreme power in Europe and Asia Minor. A novelist as well as historian, Smith presents the full political and religious context; yet tells the story well, focusing on the man’s character and showing it to be far from saintly.

Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East, by Joseph L. Grabill (Minnesota, 395 pp., $13.50). Secular historians are gradually becoming aware of the great importance of missionaries in contributing to American attitudes and actions regarding other nations. A historian of evangelical background writes a scholarly work on the influence of missionaries on American foreign policy (up to 1927) in a traditionally troubled area.

The Ministry and Message of Paul, by Richard N. Longenecker (Zondervan, 130 pp., paperback, $1.95). A first-rate scholar gives an accurate introductory overview of the life and teachings of the apostle.

The Philippine Church: Growth in a Changing Society, by Arthur Tuggy (Eerdmans, 191 pp., paperback, $3.45), and The Discipling of West Cameroon: A Study of Baptist Growth, by Lloyd E. Kwast (Eerdmans, 205 pp., paperback, $3.45). Two more books helping to make church history a global rather than a European discipline. The former surveys both Catholic and various Protestant activities while the latter focuses on one denomination in one part of the country.

Nun, Witch, Playmate: The Americanization of Sex, by Herbert W. Richardson (Harper & Row, 147 pp., $4.95). Very similar to the paper presented by Sister Janice Raymond at the Catholic National Association of Laity in July (see August 6 issue, page 37). The author analyzes the three major syndromes behind the sexual revolution.

Was Jesus a Pacifist?, by Chester Russell (Broadman, 96 pp., $2.95). No, but neither was he a militarist. God may guide some Christians to fight, others not.

EDITORIALS

“The central problem in moral philosophy,” says W. D. Hudson, “is that commonly known as the is-ought problem. How is what is the case related to what ought to be the case—statements of fact to moral judgments.” David Hume, the eighteenth-century philosopher, is commonly regarded as having been the first to surface the problem when he speculated “that a reason should be given for what seems altogether inconceivable,” namely, the transition from the usual way of tieing together propositions, is and is not, to normative conclusions connected with an ought or ought not (A Treatise on Human Nature). Many thinkers since then have pronounced the logical gap unbridgeable, but an increasing number of philosophers are now challenging this view. The debate is intensive, and the outcome will be significant, because on it hinges the question whether there can be a rational relation between the descriptive and the prescriptive, that is, between science and ethics.

A parallel issue, or perhaps the same one expressed in different terms, now preoccupies the Church in general and the conciliar movement in particular. How do we get from the way things are to the way they should be, from the bad to the good? “Deliver us from evil,” Jesus prayed while in human flesh. Salvation is man’s eternal quest, and the first meaning given for the word in the standard Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary is “the saving of man from the power and effects of sin.” How to achieve this salvation is a paramount question facing the Church and the world.

In a sense, therefore, it is not surprising that the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism should choose the theme “Salvation Today” for its next meeting, to be held in Indonesia in December of 1972. Within the communions that make up the World Council of Churches, of which the commission is a part, there has been a growing divergence in the understanding of salvation as the content and aim of Christian mission.

In another sense, however, the choice of theme is appalling because it reopens discussions of a theological question that was settled long ago, and should be so regarded. Certainly John R. Mott, who greatly influenced the International Missionary Council, the predecessor to the CWME, had no doubts about it. His concern was not the content of salvation but its proclamation. And even as late as 1961, when the IMC became part of the WCC, it was explicitly stated that the aim would be “to further the proclamation to the whole world of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the end that all men may believe in him and be saved.”

Why, then, is the WCC now making the basic tenet of the Christian faith a debatable and presumably open and negotiable matter?

Thomas Wieser, secretary for the study, defends it on several grounds. First, he says that in the context of ecumenical dialogue, a belief in Christ for salvation may impede or foreclose discussion—after all, one must have “radical openness” to the dialogue partner. He also suggests that the issue should be recanvassed because of the increasing prevalence of the idea that secular man needs no divine savior, a throwback, undoubtedly, to universalism and perhaps even pantheism. Moreover, he says, some people affirm that God’s saving work is not being accomplished through the Church alone; indeed that the Church itself “is in need of being saved, i.e., liberated from imprisonment by traditional attitudes, institutions and activities which prevent it from being a missionary church and which repel people from participating in its life.”

Even more important, Wieser cites recent infatuation with what is called “humanization,” which dates back to the WCC’s 1968 assembly at Uppsala, as another attitude affecting the Christian conception of mission. This will perhaps be the most controversial aspect of the study because biblical support will be adduced. The other trends, though perhaps more “heretical,” haven’t nearly as much momentum, and their advocates are unpersuasive because they argue almost entirely on other-than-scriptural grounds (the WCC still is “a fellowship of churches which confess Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures …”).

What is this humanization? It is described in theoretical terms as modern man’s struggle for his humanity amidst destructive forces. The Church’s part is seen as identifying with the world and taking part in efforts to achieve human rights, social justice, and world community. When these goals are reached, mankind will apparently have attained “full humanity.”

Such ideals are lofty enough in their own right. But more needs to be said. It can be argued that evil is pervasive in man and that in this sense his “humanity” needs to be overcome rather than realized. What is the resource for overcoming evil? It is no small point. The underlying thinking among these “humanizers” seems to be a carryover from the old emphasis on divine immanence. Indeed, the whole approach is only too reminiscent of the old social gospel that looks for a human utopia in which man is reconciled to man without first being reconciled to God. Sin is simply not reckoned with.

When the WCC begins to tell us how to engage in humanization, the theory becomes even more suspect. Almost invariably, humanization turns out to be a campaign to resolve man’s internal problems by political and economic means, leaving the heart untouched. And even then the methodological emphasis is highly selective, with certain evils and certain ideologies getting nearly all the attention. In recent years, the focus has been upon racism and the war in Viet Nam. The means advocated for bringing an end to both have been conceived in very narrow terms that hardly do justice to the “humanity” of all those involved. Meanwhile, religious liberty, which one would think essential for full humanization, has scarcely been mentioned.

Evangelicals do not quarrel with humanization when it is equated with service to fellow man. In fact, they see it as a Christian duty. But they affirm that the prerequisite to social compassion lies not in the political or economic realm, because we are still here dealing exclusively with man and man is not the solution but the problem. The answer comes only from God. And as Peter Beyerhaus suggested in the International Review of Mission, these views cannot be compatible:

There is no bridge which leads us over from a social concept of humanization to the biblical mystery that by Christ’s sacrifice we were not only vested with our true humanity according to his image, but made children of God and thus partakers of his divine life.

There is indeed a trail from the is to the ought, but man by himself cannot find it. As E. M. B. Green declared in The Meaning of Salvation, no man lives up to his own standards, let alone God’s. That’s why he needs to have God rescue him.

A Time To Dream

“We are such stuff/As dreams are made on,” said Prospero in The Tempest. This is true for everyone, for within us all lies freedom to choose our dreams and goals. For some, the dream is eternal; Paul, for instance, chose to strive for God’s “Well done.” For others, such as a fifteen-year-old “groupie” who recently committed suicide, the dream is elusive, ephemeral. This girl chose not to strive but to succumb; her dreams were futile and unrealistic. She explained in her suicide note that she could not face a humdrum life of unfulfilled daydreams.

Man’s existential muscles need active, purposeful dreams for strength; passive dreams drain energy, Charles Williams, the Christian novelist of the occult, considers this. In Descent Into Hell, Hugh, one of the novel’s characters, remarks that “daydreaming without limits is silly.” It can also be dangerous. Without specific, challenging dreams, man easily drifts into a pattern of lethargy and even despair.

Summertime offers prime time for daydreaming. In that shady, pleasant corner of the yard, with a glass of iced tea near at hand, let’s dream as Paul dreamed—with purpose, for eternity.

Tinfoil Tribute To God

Paul had a mind for beauty. He told the Philippians to think about beautiful, pure, and lovely things. That’s a hard command to follow consistently, even when we can see all around us the unspoiled beauty of God’s creation; impure, unjust, unlovely thoughts readily crowd in to spoil our enjoyment of a glowing sunset or a sparkling mountain lake. What if we were surrounded by man’s defilement of that creation—by rotting tenements, rat-ridden alleys, garbage-littered streets?

James Hampton, who grew up in a Washington, D. C., ghetto, had the imagination to see the beautiful in the midst of the ugly. He had a vision of heaven, and from it he created “The Throne of the Third Heaven,” a work twenty feet deep and thirty feet wide, consisting of more than 250 pieces. For fourteen years Hampton worked on his tribute to God in a rented garage. Out of worthless junk—broken bottles, burnt-out bulbs, old cardboard, splintered furniture, discarded jelly jars, and lots and lots of silver and gold foil—this laborer fashioned thrones, pulpits, angels, and crowns glittering in their primitive, Aztec-like splendor. “The Throne of the Third Heaven” is now on display at the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington.

Hampton’s achievement makes us grateful for and a little wide-eyed over God’s gift of imagination; it also makes us consider how seldom we realize that gift’s potential for beauty. This creator of a throne presents a vivid lesson to us all on how we can glorify the omnipotent creator through the transforming power of imagination.

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY are reminded that two of our summer issues appear three weeks apart. The issue you are now reading is the second of the pair separated by three-week intervals. With the next issue, to be dated September 10, we will return to our regular fortnightly schedule.

Wage-Price Spiral: Up Up And Away

This has been the summer for strikes, real and threatened. Steel, copper, railroad, telephone, and telegraph workers have been among the dramatis personae. Very substantial wage-increase contracts (30 to 40 per cent over thirty-six- and forty-two-month periods) have been signed. Almost instantly the steel-makers posted an 8 per cent increase in prices. The old wage and price spiral was working overtime; the administration strategy for holding the line on inflation seems to have failed. As Labor Day approaches there is little sign of solution.

The railroad strike was particularly unfortunate. It showed again the interrelatedness of the various segments of our economic system and how one segment can inflict irreversible damage on multitudes of people. Famers who had to plow under their produce and farm laborers who had no work suffered greatly. The consumer is paying higher prices for fruits and vegetables. People engaged in marketing operations had little or no business. Surely in a mature industrial culture the legitimate needs of labor and industry could be satisfied in a less disastrous way.

Economically, things generally are in a mess. America has a trade deficit, our balance of payments is adverse, the dollar is under assault, our world markets are crumbling and there is a whopping budgetary deficit.

Wage rises can be offset by increased production, and to some extent improved technological processes will have this result. But shoddy workmanship, employee thefts, assembly-line fatigue, and the prevalent philosophy of doing as little work as possible are a drag on the productive process.

The notion that profit-making is immoral needs to be dispelled. If all the businesses in America or even in the Soviet Union went profitless for two years, those nations would be virtually bankrupt. The more profits businessmen make, the more tax money flows into the government. A healthy business climate and healthy profits keep employment up and supply the funds needed for operating the government.

Unfortunately, every economic system is riddled by man’s sinfulness. There is covetousness and cupidity. Labor unions are big business today, and each seeks benefits for itself without due regard for the common good. Some business executives work to fix prices, engage in collusion, and in various ways bend or violate the law to their own advantage.

If the economic house of America or any nation is to be put in order two maxims need to be engraved on all our machinery and hung in the office of every executive: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you; Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Affirming Religious Freedom

Were all employers faithful Christians—or at least obedient to the New Testament guidelines on master-servant relationships—the trade union movement might well have been unnecessary. In this non-Christian world, however, the necessary checks against unjust exploitation by greedy employers provided by organized labor have been, on the whole, for good. But the unfair, exploitative actions of labor unions and their leadership testify to the universality of sin and refute the simplistic notions about “good guys” and “bad guys.”

Governmental constraints against labor abuses are as essential as labor restraints on management. Recently the Ontario government ruled that labor unions cannot demand personal allegiance as condition for employment when such association violates religious beliefs. We applaud Ontario for joining the ranks of other jurisdictions allowing conscientious objectors to pay the equivalent of union dues to recognized charities.

We believe that biblical teaching calls for us to uphold religious freedom before the law regardless of our approval of the particular religious conviction (except when the rights of others are harmed). In the Ontario cases the employees have not explained why they feel that association with a non-Christian employer is permissable while association with a non-Christian union—even as a nominal dues-payer—is not. Nevertheless, we agree with the government’s decision to distinguish union membership from employment in order to avoid trampling sincere religious convictions without the gravest of reasons.

Banana-Peel Heroes

One of the quaint and memorable lines from the old days of radio was Molly’s repeated rebuke to Fibber,

“ ‘Tain’t funny, McGee!”

That line might well be enshrined as the motto of our age. Very little strikes us as funny today. The prevailing winds of existentialism have blown away the fragile bubble of humor. Life, we are led to believe through countless movies, books, and songs, is just a stupendous, unfunny joke at our expense.

Man apart from God always paints himself as the great tragic hero, the larger-than-life-size figure who must bravely struggle along on the darkling plain of hopelessness and meaninglessness.

This tragic view of life is the ultimate idolatry, assuming as it does the centrality of man. The hardest admission for a man to make is that he is not God. But only when he does this is true humor possible.

Incongruity, often cited as the basic element in humor, is the name of our existence. Here we are mere creatures, subject to indignities on the order of slipping on banana peels, who yet have been granted the privilege of thinking our Creator’s thoughts after him.

Acknowledging this incongruity liberates a man and makes possible both true humor and true worship.

No Private Affair

Although the various branches of Eastern Orthodoxy compose the largest single group within the World Council of Churches, Western knowledge of their doctrines and outlook is at best sketchy. Even a conscientious effort to understand Orthodoxy is often unavailing. Many Protestants will feel their need of enlightenment underscored by the announcement this summer of a prayer that will do nothing at all for the national tourist organization. The prayer, issued by the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church, asks:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on the cities, the islands and the villages of our Orthodox Fatherland, as well as the Holy monasteries, which are scourged by the world touristic wave. Grace us with a solution of this dramatic problem and protect our brethren who are sorely tried by the modernistic spirit of these contemporary western invaders.

While highly original and in one sense much needed, the prayer holds out no possibility that some of the two million strangers to hit Greece this year may be “angels unawares,” nor even that they may come with benevolent, non-proselytizing views. With the passing of each annual scourge, the Greeks have the further difficulty of knowing what to do with the estimated $250 million that the wandering ones gladly spend in what has traditionally been a hospitable land.

Many Orthodox apparently want to be left alone. This was confirmed to us earlier this year in a letter of complaint from the Reverend Dr. Robert G. Stephanopoulos, director of the interchurch office of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America (an administrative oversight compounded by sheer forgetfulness kept us from publishing it). Father Stephanopoulos wrote in response to a CHRISTIANITY TODAY editorial commenting on the religious situation in Greece, where evangelical mission leader Spiros Zodhiates had been acquitted of charges of proselytism. The letter challenged our presentation of the facts in the case and went on to say that the teachings of Mr. Zodhiates are in many instances contrary to the teachings of the Orthodox faith and therefore deserved to be condemned.

Father Stephanopoulos further spoke of “not only ecclesiastical but cultural imperialism.” He deplored “the usual evangelical insensitivity to the historical and religious cultural conditions still existing in nations other than our own, conditions much too complex to be adequately comprehended let alone solved in simplistic terms such as yours.” He pointed out that the Orthodox believed that theirs is “the one true [his italics] Christian Church,” though he conceded that the Church of Greece stands in need of reform (“so does CHRISTIANITY TODAY,” he added parenthetically). And he said there are “admirable indications of genuine renewal in the Greek Church.”

We rejoice at any indication of true biblical renewal. And surely Orthodoxy has no corner on the need. What is disappointing is that many Orthodox leaders seem to regard interchange of ideas as unwarranted interference. Apparently it does not occur to them that “foreign” influence gave the Greeks what they possess of Christian truth right now.

Traditional Orthodoxy with its high view of Scripture has much in common with modern evangelical views. There is a theological gap, to be sure, but the gap is not as great as that between, say, those who hold a propositional view of revelation and those who do not.

Evangelicals may be “arrogant,” according to the Orthodox way of looking at things, in thinking they have something to offer. But there is a growing trend among evangelicals toward the kind of humility that allows us to say: Perhaps the Orthodox have valid emphases that we have neglected. Differences can be disagreeable, but they can also serve to bring us together long enough to see each other’s strengths as well as weaknesses.

The Church Unites

Paul discusses three kinds of unity in chapter four of Ephesians. One is a unity that is to be proclaimed, a unity that, though not always exhibited, is nevertheless true. Men, happily, cannot alter it. This is the unity of the one body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism, God and Father (vv. 4–6).

Another unity is one that generally the new believer finds with his fellow Christians, a “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Maintaining it requires the hard work of practicing lowliness, meekness, patience, and forbearance in love (vv. 2, 3). These virtues are all too rare, and hence so is this kind of unity.

A final unity in this chapter is one attained through cooperative work. It is not something that simply is, nor is it something we have when we first believe and need to work to keep. Rather it is the “unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” that accompanies Christian maturity (v. 13). This maturity is not something to be realized only in heaven; it is contrasted with the immaturity of those who are “carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men …” (v. 14). Basic oneness instead of conflict in doctrine is attainable as the body of Christ “upbuilds itself in love,” which in turn is possible only “when each part is working properly” (v. 16).

Each Christian should constantly be aware of his responsibility to proclaim the unity that is and to help attain and maintain the unity that should be.

For the average christian, certainly for those active in the give and take of living in today’s world, resting in the Lord is not easy. I do not mean that we question his power or wisdom, but most of us have an urge to go about solving our problems in our own way, and in our own strength. In doing this we cause ourselves untold heartaches, while our problems remain and even multiply.

“Hang loose,” a phrase popular with the young, is wonderfully expressive. A proper hanging loose in our daily lives can be the source of a new and satisfying realization of the presence and power of Christ. The same thought has been expressed for years in the words, “Let go and let God.”

Any traveler stumbling through the night in unfamiliar surroundings would rejoice to have a friend appear—one who knew the way and its pitfalls—and to hear him say, “Here, take my hand, I’ll lead you through safely.”

Perhaps one of the chief stumbling blocks for the Christian is the failure to understand that Jesus offers just such help and comfort. We have so depersonalized Christ that we think of him in abstract terms only, while he wants to be as close to us as hands or feet.

Christians themselves are often as “up tight” as other people in confronting the problems of life, both the so-called minor details of daily living and the major problems from which none of us can escape. But that is not true Christian living. God wants us to hang loose so that he can demonstrate his marvelous love and omnipotent wisdom and power.

Many a drowning person has gone down to a watery grave because he refused to relax in the arms of his would-be rescuer. Many a fledgling pilot has taken himself and his instructor to death because his hand “froze” on the stick. And many a Christian has lived in misery all the days of his life because he has never learned to hang loose and let Christ become the Lord of his daily life.

There are admonitions in the thirty-seventh Psalm that apply well to the Christian in his life’s journey. Take, for instance, the words “fret not.” What worriers we are! We forget that God is still sovereign and that he is perfectly aware of all that troubles us.

Another admonition reminds us to “trust in the Lord”—to turn everything over to him, for he is worthy of our trust. God is not a man, limited by time, space, and circumstances. His love, wisdom, and power are infinite, and he wants us to trust him, regardless of what our limited vision reveals.

“Take delight in the Lord.” He deserves our praise, worship, and thanksgiving. Instead, how often we act as though we were spiritual orphans. Our Father is living, and we should rejoice in this fact.

“Commit your way to the Lord.” Take your hand off the steering wheel of life and let him do the driving. Childish? No, it is just the opposite, for it is the only way to peace and safety!

“Be still before the Lord.” Stop talking and listen. God must sometimes look on us with a sense of frustration as he sees our feverish activity, when what we need is to be still and know that he is God.

“Refrain from anger and forsake wrath.” Losing one’s temper only confuses the issue and can lead to serious complications. We need to relax and realize that the battle is the Lord’s, not ours.

“Depart from evil and do good.” It is impossible to be relaxed before God if we are living in disobedience to his revealed will. David made a clean breast of his sins and cast himself on the mercy of God. He wrote, “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 66:18). Why? Because nothing is hid from him: “Thou has set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance” (Ps. 90:8). We can never hang loose in God’s presence if there is unconfessed and unforsaken sin in our lives.

“Wait for the Lord.” How hard we find this, because we are impatient and prone to think that our estimate of time and circumstances is correct. God knows all about our problems before they develop, and he has the solution if we will but let him work out his perfect will.

Unquestionably ours is the most uptight generation in history. The amazing developments of science have brought the world an unprecedented sense of uncertainty and tension. Men everywhere have in some degree a feeling of impending disaster. As one listens to the “news” of the world, how little there is to bring joy and hope! “Hang loose” in such circumstances? For the Christian the answer is an unequivocal yes. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear …”—regardless of what happens.

Some will say, “This may work for others, but the burdens of my heart come from without. I am concerned about loved ones and other people, and this legitimate concern is a burden I cannot bear.” Listen: “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved” (Ps. 55:22). We need to pray for the faith and grace of Isaiah, who said, “The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know I shall not be put to shame” (Isa. 50:7). Isaiah had learned to hang loose through faith in the faithfulness of God.

The Apostle Paul too demonstrated the ability to hang loose, even though he suffered for his Lord as few have. “If God is for us, who is against us?” he wrote, certain that the one to whom he had committed his all was the omnipotent and faithful Creator.

As we read our newspapers and hear the news broadcast hour after hour, Satan tempts us to give way to despair. But the Christian can relax in the truth Moses proclaimed millenniums ago: “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God” (Ps. 90:1, 2). The simplicity and majesty of knowing that our God is from everlasting to everlasting places him above and beyond every circumstance of life. We can be quiet and confidently watch God work.

How tragic that even Christians live as though the solutions to their problems had to be of their own devising! How wonderful to turn these problems over to an all loving, all wise, and all powerful God and watch him work!

“O for the faith to do this,” some may exclaim. Well, God will supply the necessary faith if we place all we have in his hands. The psalmist prayed, “Let me hear in the morning thy steadfast love, for in thee I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to thee I lift up my soul” (Ps. 143:8). If we pray this prayer from the heart, we will find ourselves ceasing to struggle in the entanglements of life. Then we will find tension lessening in the realization that God is undertaking for us.

Hanging loose requires faith, and it requires obedience. That is all God requires of us.

HOT PINK MYSTERY

By the sheerest chance I too have become the possessor of a secret document. It happened when a routine note on a small square of hot pink paper arrived from the copy editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Following a lifetime habit I turned it over before discarding it. There on the other side was this list:

him

jam

name

hue

true

sue

smite

Pursuing the public’s right to know, I queried the writer about the meaning of the list. Her blasé answer was, “I could tell you, but a little mystery in your life is a good thing.”

Now I ask you, what kind of an answer is that for a seeker of truth? And think of the theological ramifications.

Picture, if you will, King Belshazzar and his guest just getting comfortably into their bacchanalian blast when suddenly the fingers of a man’s hand appear from nowhere and trace on the wall the words MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. The king, pale and trembling, is helped to his throne.

The wise men are summoned but can make nothing of the words. Word of the emergency reaches the queen. She rushes in to remind the king that Daniel is the expert unraveler of mysteries.

Soon Daniel arrives. He examines the writing, smiles, and turns to the king saying, “I could tell you the meaning, but a little mystery in your life is a good thing.”

Or picture the Apostle Paul picking up his pen and writing to the Christians at Corinth: “Listen, I would unfold a mystery for you but a little mystery in your lives is a good thing.”

Not to be put off in such a cavalier manner I submitted the hot pink document to an expert cryptologist. His firm conclusion is that either (a) the copy editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is part of a cabal plotting to assassinate someone known as “true sue” because she has blackened the name of “him” and gotten him into a jam, or (b) she was testing a new fountain pen.

And so I want to warn my cryptic correspondent that I will be watching the papers for any news of the untimely demise of “true sue,” and also to remind her, if these are idle scribblings, that we will be called to account for every idle word—not the least of which are him, jam, name, hue, true, sue, and especially smite.

DELIGHTFUL EXCELLENCE

Permit me a few words of sincere appreciation for CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S excellent reporting on Christianity of all denominations, and on such helpful articles and editorials.

I was delighted with your report on the National Council of Churches’ rebuff (News, “NCC: A Rare Rebuff,” July 2).… The article in the same issue on possible discovery of Noah’s Ark (Current Religious Thought, “Ark Fever”) was interesting.… I also enjoyed “Unfulfilled Prophecies of Karl Marx,” by Colin Brown.

In the July 16 issue, I was delighted to find your timely and up-to-date report on our UCC Synod meeting at Grand Rapids (News, “Rejuvenating the UCC?”). All the details of the meeting were faithfully set down. Best of all in that issue was that wonderful study by Geoffrey W. Bromiley on the “Six Certainties About the Lord’s Supper.” Never before had I seen such a comprehensive outline of the blessings of this beloved sacrament of our Lord.… We praise God for your great magazine and pray his continued blessings upon your consecrated Christian work.

Shannon, Ill.

ALL KINDS OF POWER

I was surprised to read your editorial in the June 18 issue, “Portfolio Power.” You say, “Who is to say that ceasing to do business in countries whose governments condone racism (which we agree is wrong) will remove that evil …?” Should we not take a stand against evil [even though] our stand might not eliminate the evil? As I understand the Christian responsibility it is to stand against evil … whether [their position] is effective or not. The churches are in the best position to take such a stand because they are not so tied in with the economy as businesses.… Let us use our influence and our portfolio power and whatever power we have to try to change the evils of the world. If you do not feel like taking this action yourself you should not discourage the people who do.

Librarian

Third Baptist Church

St. Louis, Mo.

WEAK LINK?

I have certainly enjoyed Calvin D. Linton’s articles on literary style (“Literary Style in Religious Writing, June 18 and July 2) … However … I would like to point out two misleading statements in them.… In his first article Dr. Linton comments on the prose style of the “sparrow in the mead hall” episode in Bede.… The prose is not Bede’s but that of an anonymous translator. Bede finished writing his Latin Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum in 731.… In his second article Dr. Linton states that the Kentish translations of Sully’s sermons “remind us that we are in the age when Malory’s Morte d’Arthur helped to do for English prose what Chaucer did for poetry.” Morte d’Arthur was finished late in 1469 or 70; Chaucer died in 1400. These dates are far removed from the date cited for the Laud manuscript. It’s true that [both] dates fall in the Middle English period … but isn’t it a bit farfetched to state that works written more than 200 years apart are in the same “age” and that they played a similar role in providing “a literary standard and a link between Anglo-Saxon and modern English”?

The Church of the Resurrection

Warwick, R. I.

This two-part series should do much to encourage finer writing for God’s glory. These were two of the most beautiful articles that CHRISTIANITY TODAY has carried this year.

Assistant Editor

Decision

Minneapolis, Minn.

A QUESTION OF CREDENTIALS

With reference to the article “Ark Fever,” by John Warwick Montgomery (Current Religious Thought, July 2): Montgomery quotes, “Recent problems with SEARCH efforts—specifically the arrest of members of the group last summer in Turkey when they endeavoured to climb Ararat’s north face without obtaining approval—have reduced to nil the chances that this group will fulfill what Navarra calls his ‘greatest desire.’ ”

I suggest Montgomery gets his facts straight before making statements like the one above which can be harmful to SEARCH and its volunteer group of dedicated helpers.

The statement is untrue, and I would like to place it on record that no members of the 1970 Mt. Ararat expedition were arrested. Secondly, all work by SEARCH on the mountain last summer was carried out with the full authority of the Turkish officials. Because of extenuating circumstances within their own system they asked us to stop operations for reasons of “national security.” This happened to other groups engaged in archaeological investigations.

The chances of fulfilling Navarra’s greatest desire are excellent, and I look forward to the day when we can return to Ararat to continue our work on this archaeological enigma.

Project Director, Mt. Ararat Expedition

SEARCH Foundation, Inc.

Washington, D. C.

Although I do not wish to question the integrity of any individual concerned in this matter, I must stand by the letter of the statements made in my “Current Religious Thought” article.… My information is based upon personal conversations with a government official, with a high official of the Turkish Mountain Guides Association, with a research scientist and others who were present when these events transpired. I myself stayed in the same hotel that the SEARCH team members had occupied, and I discussed the matter in detail with hotel staff (who, interestingly enough, expressed the eager desire to “lynch” certain members of the organization who, after they had been forced off the mountain owing to their lack of proper government credentials, insisted that others, not connected with their group, likewise be asked to cease exploratory activity on Ararat even though they had secured the required local permissions). All of these data may, to be sure, prove erroneous (in a contingent world, anything is possible), but I find them most convincing. CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S readers must judge for themselves.

Strasbourg, France

TO CATCH TRIPE

A pledge to the Eutychus V religious book award program (“Writer’s Cramp,” July 16). To category three—tripe award—I pledge $500 annually. This would be a boon to ecologists! Keep up the good work.

Augusta, Ga.

UNAUTHORITATIVE ANALYZING FROM AFAR

Peter Geiger, who interviewed me briefly on the telephone, has grossly misquoted me in his news story (“Iron Curtain Bibles: Smugglers Too Smug?,” July 16) and, we understand, Dr. Lovrec as well. He is wrong when he says that Christian literature cannot be printed abroad and legally imported into Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia is an “open” country and cannot be classified with Iron Curtain countries which suffer severe restrictions in the importation of Christian materials. While Underground Evangelism prints considerable Christian material in Italy because of the cheaper printing costs in that country, we import legally into Yugoslavia. Underground Evangelism has never referred to smuggling in Yugoslavia. We do not engage in “smuggling” because it is not necessary. Our strategies are flexible and adaptable to the needs of each country we work in. Underground Evangelism’s policy has always been to “do all we can through open channels, but not to stop there.” In other words, … we are bound to obey God rather than man.

To sum up our work in Yugoslavia, we print as much Christian material as we can inside Yugoslavia and legally support the printing and sending of literature in from Italy. This is quite different to Mr. Geiger’s statement to the effect that we “print material in Italy for smuggling into Yugoslavia despite the apparent freedom to print anything inside Yugoslavia.” He contradicts himself when he says that Bibles are legally imported from London.

Mr. Geiger apparently did not go behind the Iron Curtain to appraise the situation there. Instead, he reported on the needs of those countries from a country which, thank God, does not yet suffer the repressions of hard-line Communism. How can one give an authoritative report from afar?…

One last thought: It is Communist policy to persecute the Christians and suppress the Word of God. In Russia, for instance, while the Communists proclaim the existence of freedom of religion, their persecution of the Church gives the lie to this. This was a fact of life under Communism long before anyone thought of smuggling Bibles and gospel helps to these countries. To blame it on Bible smuggling ignores history.

President

Underground Evangelism International

Glendale, Calif.

• Mr. Geiger explains that a Yugoslavian law requires imprimatura on all publications printed in the languages of Yugoslavia. A Yugoslavian citizen or agency must take legal responsibility, as demonstrated by the imprimatur, for all literature distributed in the country.—ED.

The record Dr. Rogers quoted is not exact. The missions doing the same work and located in different countries of the world broadcast regularly to Communist countries over eight radio stations such as Far East Broadcasting Company, Radio Quito, and Radio Monaco. Their broadcastings go on right now and have never been considered as political haranguing. I personally never speak on any of the broadcasting stations for the simple fact that I lead a group of missions in thirty countries and don’t have time for this. Mr. Rogers could not have asked why he could not any longer hear Reverend Wurmbrand speaking from Monaco because he has never heard Reverend Wurmbrand speaking from there in any language accessible to him.

There is also a contradiction in this article. You write that “Lovrec’s work is financially supported” [in part] by the organization Underground Evangelism. A few sentences further you quote Mr. Lovrec as complaining that “Underground Evangelism publishes all the details which the Communist governments need to keep the Christians under their thumbs.” The two assertions contradict each other. I believe that the latter is the true one and I agree with it.

I consider that there is no purpose to smuggle religious literature into Yugoslavia, where the dictatorship is much less harsh than in other places. In Red China, North Korea, and the Soviet Union, they would have no Christian literature if it were not smuggled in.

The Reverend Robert Munn, when stating that the American smuggling activities heap coals of repression upon the heads of believers in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, should have also substantiated this assertion by some facts of arrests. In none of these countries is even one single Christian sentenced for having received Bibles from abroad. They are all very thankful to have gotten them. If Mr. Munn knows better, he should give us the names of those who are victims of repression.

General Director

Jesus to the Communist World, Inc.

Glendale, Calif.

SHOUTING AMEN

I am writing a letter of commendation for material of unusual excellence in your issue of July 2.… I share the Editor’s respect and admiration for Billy Graham, and these feelings date back on the beginning of his crusades (“Reflections on a Crusader,” July 2). I have checked carefully the topic sentence of each of the paragraphs. If I were a Methodist, I would shout “Amen” long and loud. I would like to thank Dr. Lindsell for using his superb writing skill to commend one of the most worthy world leaders of our generation. Billy deserves a good word that carries weight. Now and then I hear niggling comments about him and his methods by liberals who remind me of irresponsible demonstrators on the Mall trying to hack chips out of the majestic Washington Monument.

Tyler, Texas

MUST READING

Your latest issue (July 16) demonstrates again why CHRISTIANITY TODAY is must reading for me and most other parish ministers. Having recently tried to think through my understanding of the Lord’s Supper, the six certainties by Geoffrey Bromiley came as a welcome summation. It is the most concise and helpful statement on the Lord’s Supper that I have read.

The same issue carried editorials with significant interest to a busy pastor seeking to form opinions on current issues. But the lead editorial on the “Jesus movement” was superb. You have managed to state your reservations without condemning and to express your joy without sounding like a “promoter.” It caps your years of factual, honest, and searching reporting.

However, this issue has destroyed the myth that Eutychus V writes with tongue in cheek. Has he been fooling us all along or did he just momentarily slip into realism in proposing his religious book award program? I debated the possibility that this might be one more put-on. But any man proposing to offer an award for tripe-type books has to be serious. Well, honest, anyway.

My initial contribution to the financial awards will be forthcoming just as soon as a fellow minister shares with me some of the massive royalties received from his psychedelic dust-jacketed reprint of condensed Puritan theology.

Arlington Memorial Church

Arlington, Va.

Dr. Bromiley’s scholarly and devotional article will surely be used by many a minister in his own expositions on the theme.

Colorado Springs, Colo.

WHAT MIDDLE OF THE ROAD CAN DO

One of the conclusions reached by Harold O. J. Brown in his article “Dreams of a Third Age” (July 16) is an example of a type of thinking that has kept man in mental and spiritual chains since the time of Christ.

There are many Christians today who take a middle-of-the-road position between Charles Reich (“Greening of America”), who, according to Brown, “simply discards Christianity” because it “encourages man to expect fulfillment in heaven rather than here on earth,” and Brown, who simply discards any thinking that does not accept the “fact” that “the future, until Christ comes again, is just more of the present age, grown a little older, and that the present age is doomed to perish, with all its brilliance, all its misery, all its wisdom, and all its self-deception.”

These Christians deeply love Christ and expect his judgment in the future. However, they are unwilling to sit around in a mental and physical stupor and wait for it. There may indeed be a chance for heaven here on earth if we free man’s mind and encourage him to be sensitive, creative, and responsible. And if, after all our efforts, Christ in his wisdom decides to bring about his Kingdom (which admittedly may be different from the one we see in our dreams), then we can only be better for having really lived, really tried, really acted on life’s greatest stage … earth.

Eugene, Oreg.

DISTURBING MOTIVATION

Thank you for the interesting news story, “Catholics Get the Spirit” (July 16). If I may, however, I would like to point out that the investigation conducted by the Catholic hierarchy in 1968 and 1969 was not motivated by the fact that they were “disturbed.” It was Bishop Leven, of San Antonio, Texas, who urged them to investigate the movement because he was convinced of its importance.

Department of Theology

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Ind.

FEED THE ENEMY

In regard to the support given by United Presbyterian Christians to insure a fair trial for Angela Davis (“United Presbyterians and Angela Davis,” July 16), has the editor ever considered St. Paul’s words, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; by doing this you will heap live coals on his head” (Rom. 12:20)? Perhaps our brother Christians in the Presbyterian Church should be commended for their act of compassion upon one who is dedicated to the Church’s destruction. Surely they should not be condemned.

(THE REV.) JOHN T. GEACH

Englewood, Ohio

AN EXECUTIVE ORDER?

Your editorial of July 16, entitled “The Right To Know,” was certainly well written and needed. However, when you referred to Title 5, United States Code, Section 552, and suggested that the newspapers in question should have used it to obtain release of the secret report, you showed either ignorance or insincerity. You stated, “In the case of the Pentagon papers, we wonder why the Times did not avail itself of its rights under Section 552 of Title 5, United States Code.” You then quoted a few lines from part (a), which explained the method of obtaining improperly withheld records. But had you read further, or checked out your information firsthand, you would have noted under part (b): “This section does not apply to matters that are—(1) specifically required by Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of the national defense or foreign policy.” Please suggest another alternative.

Dallas, Tex.

• To our knowledge no such Executive order has ever been issued to protect the Pentagon papers.—ED.

Leaders of “A Celebration of Evangelism,” to be held September 20–24 in Cincinnati, recently met to exchange views on what it takes to proclaim the Gospel effectively in our world. A shortened text is presented here toCHRISTIANITY TODAYreaders in the hope that some of the insights will be considered worthy of emulation on a wider scope. Participants in the discussion were the Reverend Gary Demarest of La Canada Presbyterian Church in La Canada, California; Executive Director Bruce Larson of Faith at Work, New York; the Reverend Richard C. Halverson of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland; President Lars Granberg of Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa; Walter Shepherd, former Presbyterian missionary; the Reverend Robert Pitman of Casa Linda Presbyterian Church in Dallas; and the Reverend Howard C. Blake, executive secretary of A Celebration of Evangelism.

Question: Gentlemen, each of you has a reputation in the evangelical church not only for being deeply concerned with evangelism but also for being able to get others involved in it. What do you say to those who have committed themselves to Christ and want to get turned on to evangelism?

LARSON: I’m not sure telling them anything will do it, but sharing an experience might. When we discover that the Cross means we can be reconciled not just to God or our neighbor but to ourselves, and realize that God says, “I love you unconditionally just as you are, and no amount of improvement on your part will make me love you more than I do right now”—that kind of an experience of the Cross turns a person on to share with others.

Q: Before we go farther, I’d like to hear a brief answer to a basic question: What is evangelism?

SHEPHERD: Evangelism is not keeping secret the life that Jesus Christ has given me.

DEMAREST: Sharing in word, life, and deed the good news of God’s love in Christ.

PITMAN: Evangelism is to know Jesus Christ, to know that he is a real person, that he is alive today, that he loves us, that he wants to be involved in our lives, and that he wants us to be involved in his life and in what he is doing in the world today.

LARSON: I think evangelism is introducing people to the Evangel (who is Jesus). Jesus said, “If I, the Son, shall set you free, you’ll be free indeed.” So the results of evangelism are that a man is set free from destructive habits, self-hate, and all the rest. But he is also set free to lose his life and become involved in the lives of others by the power of the indwelling Christ.

HALVERSON: Evangelism is what happens when one is in fellowship with Jesus Christ and in fellowship with others who are in fellowship with Jesus Christ.

Q: Can you give any suggestions about how a local church could develop its emphasis and enthusiasm in evangelism?

LARSON: When Christians experience the grace of God during the week by doing the will of God, being in small groups, trying to find ways to be obedient in their families and on their jobs, then we can lead them in a celebration on Sunday of what has been happening during the week. But what we frequently find is people who have not had an experience of Christ during the week coming to church to “have an experience.” That’s all wrong. And we shouldn’t let that kind of expectation—that wanting to turn the Sunday service into a make-up period on the subject of God—dominate our Sunday services. We don’t come to church on Sunday to experience God, but to celebrate the fact that we’ve been with him through the week in various ways.

DEMAREST: I think the greatest reward of the pastorate today, one that many of us are experiencing throughout the country, is seeing people come alive as they discover their own gifts of evangelism—sharing and communicating their faith more by giving themselves to people than by talking. In the process, they discover that they are exercising a ministry of evangelism. They are the evangelists! To watch them come alive is very exciting.

SHEPHERD: To me, a great deal of what we have been saying about rediscovering the Church’s role, function, mission, has to do with the individual member who has come to know the resurrected Christ. It has to do with his participation, his involvement, in that ongoing mission to the world.

PITMAN: I was in a home meeting a short time ago in which the question was asked, “What do you want to see happen in your church? Not a voice was raised in favor of a building program or reorganization of the Sunday school. The emphasis was on people and the needs of people. When you discover that the Church is people, not brick and mortar or institutional form, this is the beginning of Celebration.

Q: Let’s press this a little further. None of you seems to be talking about an evangelism “program.” Just what kind of forms do you find this new life taking?

HALVERSON: One of the most revolutionary texts for me personally was that passage in Mark where it is recorded that Jesus chose twelve to be with him. It seems to me you can put the weight of all the training, the orientation, and the instruction that Jesus planned for the twelve in that little preposition with. The important thing was that he was with them. They were with him. And I think that not only pastors but also the officers and the people of the church must learn to be with people, just for the sake of being with them. Not even for the sake of winning them to Christ (because that would be like wanting to be with them to sell them insurance), but just being with them because you love them.

Q: Are you saying that the conscious decision to get to know someone so that we can win him to Christ is detrimental to evangelism?

HALVERSON: I believe it is. I believe that attitude communicates a kind of commercial spirit, much as if you are trying to sell something. Your motivation might be absolutely right, but think what the person is feeling. What he thinks is, “He doesn’t love me; he just wants a convert.” And then he thinks, “If I don’t do whatever he wants me to do, he will be disappointed.” And then he will do something just to please us. The interesting thing (and alarming to us who are committed to evangelism) is that again and again and again we don’t relate to people. We don’t love people. We try to win them to Christ. We don’t get a response, and boy, that’s the end. We don’t have anything more to do with them. They’re out!

PITMAN: I think one of the problems of the modern church is that we have become absolutely obsessed with statistics—too interested in the numbers of converts we put on our rolls each year. We have lost sight of the fact that we’re in the people-God business. We’re not just compilers of statistics on baptisms.

Q: Today’s youth culture gets a lot of headlines. How do you get evangelism across the generation gap?

LARSON: If we love as Jesus loved, which certainly means being vulnerable, then old people who are lonely, frightened, and insecure can identify with young people who are lonely and frightened and insecure. Once you go into any kind of depth at all about your life and witness to it, it bridges all the generation gaps.

HALVERSON: I’m involved in a congregation where a “generation gap” simply doesn’t exist because somehow we got the idea that one of the things that happened at Pentecost was that the Lord created a community. Those people were one. They loved one another; they served one another; they were conscious of belonging to one another, of needing one another. There was mutual dependence and a sense of responsibility to one another. When this kind of community exists, I don’t think you’re very conscious of ages or generation gaps.

DEMAREST: There is also a freedom from barriers caused by external appearance. Maybe in southern California we are more sensitive to this, but I’m still amazed how many people have a real struggle getting through the long hair, the beard, the beads, the clothing, to the person. And it’s true in reverse with the kids. They have a hard time getting through the suit and tie to the person. The Gospel gets us across the age thing—it also gets us across the externals. We really can get free from all the cultural externals and hangups. The Gospel gives us that freedom to always go for the person and not get blocked out by the externals.

Q: What kind of relation do you see between social action and personal evangelism?

LARSON: I think there is a reaction in the Church today to the old polarity of social action versus evangelism. They were both impersonal. Nothing was more impersonal than the old “personal” evangelism, which really meant scalp-hunting or doctrine-pushing or decision-card-signing. Nobody knew anybody. The old social action was just as impersonal. It was a group of bleeding-heart liberals dreaming up a program for some ghetto and going down and pushing it on them. The reaction to that was typically, “Don’t try to change our lives with a program. Give us yourselves and live with us for a bit and together we’ll find the program that may lift the burden.” I think we’re coming into a deeply personal age where there’s going to be a new kind of social action and a new kind of evangelism where people get involved with one another.

DEMAREST: I think we have to do a lot of homework on the distinction between social concern and social action. Most of us have been willing to be socially concerned on an individual level, but we have hedged on social action that involves us in political legislation to change structures that may contribute to the suffering. We evangelicals have been quick to put the first-aid station at the bottom of the cliff, but we haven’t been as quick to be at the top of the cliff and change the dangerous terrain.

Q: Do you see “signs of the times” that give particular urgency to evangelism in our day?

GRANBERG: Gilbert Murray, the great Oxford classicist, described the Hellenistic Age in which our Lord was born as a period of the failure of nerve. It was a divided age—socially divided into slave and free, religiously divided. What gave that age hope was the “fear not” of the angels announcing the birth of Christ and the example of the new people of God, who were genuinely for one another in an age of strife and division. There are many parallels with present history. People are searching for ways to be brought together. I think the most effective binder between people is the person of Jesus Christ and the new spirit he has the power to infuse into men.

DEMAREST: In the Church we have been either silent or timid about proclaiming the Gospel with its frankly supernatural aspects grounded in God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. And then, just as we have been about to surrender to a humanistic orientation, we suddenly find the young generation of “Consciousness III” (according to Charles Reich) turning to the supernatural, the mystical—astrology, magic, and all that. I think we realize that the Gospel in its openly supernatural aspects is more relevant than ever.

Q: Are you saying that while many of us within the Church question the relevance of our own faith, people outside the Church are turning to it with new enthusiasm?

DEMAREST: I’m not sure they are turning to the same faith, but I think they are disillusioned with the purely horizontal orientation—the supremacy of science, the effort to eliminate the supernatural. I’m just saying there is a new openness on their part. They see much more to life and to this world than what we can measure and taste and touch.

LARSON: The three big words of the student revolution today—love, joy, peace—just happen to be the first three fruits of the Holy Spirit. There is a hunger for God in young people; we Christians ought to cheer for this hunger and interpret it to them.

HALVERSON: There is a sense, too, in which some leaders today (local, national, and international) feel that they have used up all their options. That man has done all he can do collectively and individually and that things simply aren’t working. It’s almost as if our solutions are feeding the problems. But when they hear who Christ is, what he came to do, they may be very responsive.

Q: Each of you is working very hard planning for the Celebration of Evangelism to be held in September. What do you see as its goals?

DEMAREST: I feel that the Celebration has emerged out of a desire to combine denominational efforts in the Presbyterian and Reformed family and bring about a new awareness of contemporary evangelism. As we talk together we will feel that the Gospel is to be celebrated in our day and that evangelism properly involves us in celebration. The people who come to the Celebration will be enriched by the cross-pollination of ideas from all parts of the country, learning from one another what’s happening in evangelism.

LARSON: My priority goal for this time is not to increase the use of mass evangelism, or even to evangelize people, but rather to provide a place where Christians can come and learn how to be evangelists. This is the day of the lay apostolate, and I hope that thousands will be equipped there to go out in the streets of America and into offices and schools and lead people to Christ.

PITMAN: I think that the element of renewal is in our minds, too. I personally feel that the Celebration is going to be directed to the grass roots of the church—the local pastor, the local congregation, the church officers. We expect the people of the churches to be renewed and thus more effective in their outreach for Jesus Christ wherever they are. I hope the Celebration will enable us all to discover that spiritual renewal is more than a deep-seated hope of man—it’s the very heartbeat of God.

GRANBERG: I hope the Celebration of Evangelism will be a time when we recapture the vision of the first century and learn to live together as a new people, a people of one heart and mind. I hope that this will be a time and place when young people, their parents, and perhaps their grandparents will get together to discover ways to reach people for Christ.

BLAKE: Let me just add a footnote. I think the Church needs a Celebration of Evangelism badly for its own sake. We’ve gone through a phase of soul-searching that sometimes reached masochistic proportions. I think this Celebration will give us a chance to quit looking at our own inner workings, our own shortcomings, and refocus on Jesus Christ, and then through Christ to rediscover one another as fellow members of the body of Christ. With this kind of rediscovery we will be able to turn outside and share Jesus Christ with the world.

In the roughly two thousand years of its existence, the Church of Christ on earth has known periods of relative stability and periods of acute instability. There is no doubt what kind of a period we are living through now. Protestantism has been in almost constant turmoil for fifty years with theological and ecclesiastical divisions crossing denominational lines and such a bedlam of opinion being voiced that it is difficult at times to perceive what, if anything, is meant by Protestantism.

Earlier during this period, more than a few sensitive souls slipped away to find spiritual stability in the monolithic shelter of the church of Rome. Now that shelter is no longer available, for the winds of change are blowing through that church with an even greater force. It is impossible today in ecumenical discussion to know immediately whether a speaker is Catholic or Protestant. Some of the most radical ideas I have recently heard concerning doctrine, liturgy, and Christian action have come from Catholic clergy. The total picture now is one of confusion and instability paralleled only by the times of the Reformation and the first four centuries of the Church.

It is in this situation that I raise the issue of conversion, meaning the turning of a man or woman from unbelief to belief or from one kind of belief to another. The phrase “the right to convert” has two meanings, according to whether we are using the verb intransitively or transitively. Intransitively it means my right to change to another religion. Transitively it means my right to attempt to persuade someone else to accept the religion I believe to be true.

The question of conversion is bound to come to the surface in a period of instability like ours. With no strong convictions locking us into the traditional denominations and with a rampant secularism undermining basic beliefs in every church, “conversion” means something very different from what it meant a generation or two ago. The questions used to be of this sort: “Why did so-and-so convert to Catholicism?” and “How can we convert the heathen?” Now they are more likely to be: “Why shouldn’t I become a Buddhist?” and “What right have we to impose Christianity on anyone else?”

Many of the hymns in our book were written during what was roughly the last great period of stability. That’s why we often find them so unsatisfactory today. They date from a time when nearly everyone in the Western world was securely lodged in a church home labeled Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist. Catholic, or whatever. It was considered perfectly proper, indeed desirable, that occasionally someone from outside should be converted into our church home, but calamitous, if not unthinkable, that anyone should be converted out. Beyond these church homes lay the heathen world, usually thought of as distant and foreign. The accepted view within the churches was that there was an obligation to export the Gospel to the heathen, and despite the caricatures of this missionary effort, we should recognize the heroism and devotion behind it and the lasting effects of much that was done. What troubles us now is not the adventure of the missionary but the attitude of those at home. I balk at asking a congregation to sing the old missionary hymn “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” since it contains these lines: “Can we whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high,/Can we to men benighted the lamp of life deny?” However differently you and I may conceive of Christian mission today, at least we would agree in saying: “Let’s not put it that way.”

Perhaps some reader is now thinking: “Yes, thank God we’ve finally got rid of that old-fashioned idea that we should export our religion. I’ve always thought we should leave other people with the religion that suits them.” May I quickly add that this notion of a religious status quo to be respected is equally old-fashioned. We are not living in a world of fixed religious frontiers. We are in perhaps the most fluid situation for faith the world has ever known. Conversion is happening on a huge scale whether we like it or not. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and the secular ideologies of Communism and nationalism are competing for the soul of modern man. In many parts of the world these faiths are moving in as tribal religions die out. Perhaps some Christians are now ready to write off the command of Christ, “Go forth therefore and make all nations my disciples” (Matt. 28:19). The indications are, however, that others are hearing and obeying in the name of their lord. There has been no more missionary-minded faith since the early days of Christianity and Islam than modern Communism. One way or another across a rapidly contracting world, this is the era of conversion.

Let’s look first at the right to convert in the sense of our right to choose a new religion. You may want to say that this is a fundamental right recognized universally as “freedom of worship.” But this right has not been recognized in the past, nor is it recognized everywhere today. When all Europe lay under the sway of the medieval church, there was no right to convert; the very suggestion that you might be toying with other religious ideas than orthodox Catholicism was enough to threaten you with the ultimate sanctions of church and state. Nor was there any right to convert in most of the Protestant states formed after the Reformation. The Pilgrims sought out this land as an escape from enforced conformity, but we cannot pretend that the new society they created here happily recognized everyone’s right to convert.

Real religious liberty has grown very slowly within Christendom. Until comparatively recent times, the ideal was nourished of a community in which everyone accepted the prevailing religion. Not to do so was regarded as a crime against the state. Anyone asserting a right to convert to another religion was a “miscreant”—literally, one who believes wrongly.

One or two countries still deny or legally hamper the right to convert. In others, converting from the established faith leads to social ostracism and loss of rights. But the ideal of complete religious freedom is now accepted by the leadership of both Protestant and Catholic churches. The document on religious liberty proclaimed by Vatican II was a landmark in this struggle.

But there is a difference between a theoretical acceptance of the right to convert and our reaction when such a right is exerted in our own immediate circle. Religion is tied in with so many other social traditions and prejudices that anyone asserting the right to convert is apt to run into trouble. When the hero of Love Story presents his fiancée of Italian-Catholic background to his thoroughly WASP parents, the freeze-out that followed has religious implications. These two young people had no thought of converting, but we realize that his father is typical of many of his generation who would infinitely rather that their children lapsed quietly and decently from conventional Protestantism than conscientiously embrace another faith. The question is: Do you and I really admit the right of persons dear to us to convert from the faith in which they were raised?

There is, of course, a question of maturity. I am not suggesting that children should be encouraged to convert to any religion that happens to take their passing fancy, and we have a right to caution against conversion under the influence of some attractive personality or temporary passion. But I am saying that in this age of religious instability we must assert the right of any mature person to follow the truth as he sees it, no matter how wrongheaded it seems to us. Genuine religion is a matter of free choice. “Choose you this day whom you will serve,” said Joshua to the people of Israel. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” We have a duty to search for the truth that is offered us, a responsibility toward whatever light is given, and the right to convert.

Christians, of all people, should be prepared to grant the right of free inquiry and free decision. For if we believe that Jesus Christ is indeed “the way, the truth, and the life,” we cannot be afraid of religious freedom. We need to recapture the confidence once nobly expressed by John Milton:

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injury by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

“A free and open encounter.” These words remind us of the other way in which we speak of the right to convert: our right to proclaim and persuade in the name of the Truth we believe. From the beginning the Christian Gospel was presented to the world in a free and open encounter. It was a missionary faith. The apostles were, by definition, those who were “sent out”—and sent out to convert, to make disciples. No other kind of Christianity is found in the New Testament. If we today meet as Christians at worship, if we find strength in the faith and inspiration in Christian service, we owe all this to those who long ago went out to convert. When St. Paul stood on an Asian promontory and had a vision of a European beckoning him with the words, “Come over and help us,” it never occurred to him to reply: “Why should I? They’ve got their own religion.” The Gospel—the evangel—immediately developed a verb; to “evangelize” was part of what it meant to be a Christian.

What has panned to evangelism in our day? Why is there an almost visible tremor of resistance when a congregation is summoned to go out and evangelize? There is intense evangelistic activity among the churches and sects that are regarded as narrow or fanatical, but the mainline churches seem to have suffered a fearful loss of nerve. Why? What makes our traditional congregations so loathe to commit themselves to the work of evangelism, so terrified of the right to convert?

There seem to be two major reasons.

First, there is the confusion between evangelism and proselytism. Proselytism is an arrogant and often unscrupulous attempt to win converts to one’s own particular brand of religion. If members of one church set out to recruit members from other churches or faiths by offering all kinds of inducements and threats on the assumption that only in their church can anyone be saved, that is proselytism. It may come as a shock to many Christians that some of the strongest words Jesus ever used were in condemnation of this sort of thing. Addressing a particular school of religious leaders he said: “Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You travel over sea and land to win one convert, and when you have won him you make him twice as fit for hell as you are yourselves.” He is talking of fanatically religious people whose aim is to thrust their own brand of religion on others and who deny others the right to discover a greater truth for themselves. “You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces: you do not enter yourselves, and when others are entering, you stop them.” This is the tragedy of proselytism: it not only acts with a ruthless imperialism but actually hinders the discovery of the Gospel of Christ.

What has made evangelism a dirty word for some in our day is actually an experience of proselytism. We have seen people of a ferocious religious intolerance win over to their views some decent soul who thereupon in the name of God is transformed into a fanatic. We have known religious scrap-hunters who would do anything to convert their neighbor to their narrow community with its suffocating rules. So we tend to say: “Let’s try to be Christians and leave others alone.”

But this is to confuse evangelism with proselytism. To put it briefly: The proselytizer is the one who grabs his neighbor by the throat saying: “I have the whole truth; accept it or be damned!” The evangelist is the one who says: “I have found something wonderful; I have found the Christ; come and see!” These two attitudes are as different as heaven and hell. The true evangelist forswears all pressure, all physical or mental bullying. He is not concerned primarily with the expansion of his own particular religious community or with the success of his own techniques. He simply knows what Christ has done for him and means to him, and longs that others should share this experience. He is concerned with people, people in their deepest needs, and not with triumphant argument or spectacular results. He wants to be an instrument of the Holy Spirit, a communicator of Christ. And he quietly asserts the right to convert, knowing that it is not he but Christ who really does the converting.

Here we come to the second, and more serious, reason why we have muted the right to convert. Is our failure to evangelize not in the end traceable to a weakness of belief, a lack of total commitment to Christ? If he does not really mean all that much in our lives, if he is not really central, then naturally we have nothing we feel is important enough to pass on. It is when we realize what Christ means in our lives, when we awake to the thought of what it would mean to try to live without him, that we are irresistibly drawn to make him known. The “right to convert” is a rather pompous way of expressing this impulse, but the answer to anyone who says, “You have no right to try to bring others to Christ,” is, “When I happily share all my other enthusiasms and discoveries, why should I bottle up what means more to me than anything else?” The first disciples were told by the authorities in Jerusalem after Pentecost that they were not “to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus,” and their reply was: “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”

Evangelism began some years before that. The Fourth Gospel tells usthat Andrew met Jesus in the company of John the Baptist. “The first thing he did,” the story goes on, “was to find his brother Simon. He said to him, ‘We have found the Christ.’ He brought him to Jesus.” That is evangelism. It happens in a thousand ways. There is no pattern. There is only the deep desire that others should know who Christ is and what he can be for them.

Around us are thousands who profess no faith at all, who are totally unconnected with any religious community. If Christ means to us what we say he does, can we have no desire that they should find him too? May the Spirit move among the churches, not only to reanimate our faith, but also to help us become more outgoing, more committed to evangelizing. Somewhere there is this week a piece of evangelism for each of us, in his own way, to do. For the Lord is still saying to us all: “Go … and make disciples.”

David H. C. Read is minister of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He was born in Scotland and has the B.D. from New College, Edinburgh. He previously served as first chaplain of the University of Edinburgh and a chaplain to the Queen in Scotland. The latest of his many books is “Religion Without Wrappings.”

It is the simplest words that have the most “culture.” Work is one of those rich terms, wrinkled and soft with history. The first description of work ever offered may be the best, and it came rather as a pronouncement. The Lord said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.… In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread …” (Gen. 3:17, 19).

Sorrow and sweat! That is what work is.

A later definition, one of the best around, is contained in Horace Bushnell’s book Work and Play. Work, Bushnell says, is what we must do; play is what we want to do. Work is what we do to get something else; play is what we do for its own sake. In Eden, Adam tilled and tended the garden as the Lord has instructed him because he wanted to; although he perspired and needed rest, necessity and desire were one thing to him. In exile, Adam worked because he had to. He toiled as before, but the joy had gone out of it, and only necessity was left.

A man jogging, and a child racing—which of them is working? Here is the same activity, running. The man runs because he needs to lose weight; the little boy is pretending he’s at the Olympics. Work is a state of the mind, or spirit. In the strongest terms, work is what we would rather avoid doing, what we dread doing, what we hate to do.

Work is not in the thing being done; it is not in the way the thing is done; it is in the attitude we bring to what is to be done. As the Bible shows, work is activity carried out under a certain spiritual condition, a condition that is universal. And the remedy for the condition can be nothing other than a spiritual remedy.

Obvious? Hardly. For well over a hundred years, Western man (and now Eastern) has been trying to beat the work hitch. Modern technology and Communism have taken their places in a long list of competitors for the loyalties of gullible man. The technocrat says that leisure is man’s true end, and so he builds one labor-saving device after another, shortens the work week, lengthens the pay and vacations, and waits for the day when machines will do all the work. Meanwhile, Communism seems to tell man that work is a delusion created by capital to enslave the laborer. Abolish capitalism, says the Communist, divide the wealth equally among “the people,” and then no one will have to work much because all will be working equally.

Biblical man saw the end of work only in heaven. Technological and Communist man regard work as something to be abolished on earth.

Democracy, particularly as practiced in America, has greatly affected the popular conception of work. For centuries a man had to follow his father’s trade, with no hope of change unless the Church or the king discovered him and took him away to school to be a priest, an accountant, or a scribe. Broad political suffrage and a freely operating economy on a new continent changed all that. Men were at last set free to choose their vocations, limited only by their abilities. Competing with one another for wealth and influence, they plunged into a thousand different enterprises in the new land. Work became a kind of liberation for them as forests fell, railroads pounded across the prairies, cities arose on the hills and swamps, and gold flowed like a mighty river.

Technology promising men the transfer of all their labor to machines, Communist philosophy promising them the abolition of work by political fiat, modern Western democracy offering them the chance to turn work into play by choosing their own vocations—with such powerful movements gripping the imagination of men, the old biblical work ethic may seem threatened with collapse.

But Communism hasn’t abolished work, nor has it come close to equalizing it. Ask the ordinary Chinese or Soviet laborer if his state-assigned job fulfills him. Modern technology hasn’t abolished work either; it has simply made it, for many people, less fulfilling, downright boring. And multitudes wearily find that their freely chosen vocations soon become a treadmill of drudgery.

What of the new leisure that was to open a new life of culture to the world? At times leisure only frees people from long hours at the job so that they can find other work in their spare hours! After being spared the necessity of doing everything from warming themselves to entertaining themselves, many find that extra time lies heavy on their hands; they become restless and irritable. The real trouble is within. They discover that the condition causing “work” is the condition of their souls. The new leisure that was to bring so many golden hours of pleasure turns unchanged habits into a snare.

The Bible is right. There is no escape from the curse of work. So long as men are in their present spiritual condition, they will always work.

The spiritual condition of the curse has a second aspect. The remedies of Communism and technology, the democratic principle of free choice—these mistake the nature of the ill and thus fail. Eric Voegelin has pointed out how the world-lusting socialist programs are built on a passionate hatred of the world as it is and of the God who made it. The alienation, the sense of being “flung” into existence (Heidegger), so familiar to man in his lostness, is declared by the adherents of these systems to be the product of either an evil capitalism or an insufficiently realized evolution. Only they have the true knowledge of metaphysical reality; and they labor to demolish the old world, so that the new may emerge, and in their time! But, as Voegelin says, “the structure of the order of being will not change because one finds it defective and runs away from it. The attempt at world destruction will not destroy the world, but will only increase the disorder in society” (Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, p. 12). Modern revolution generates a whirlwind of delusions.

There is a proper longing for a higher and freer state of being that is just as old as the world-lust. This longing, however, seeks relief in another direction; it looks beyond the world for peace and satisfaction. It recognizes that man originates not in flesh but in spirit, and that the spirit can be satisfied with nothing less than reunion with the God who made it. All activity that drives us away from God ends up as work; all work that leads us to God ends up as joy.

There was One who knew how to reconcile work and fulfillment perfectly. He told his disciples to do the work of God while they still had daylight. He had come from the Father, bringing the longed-for Light with him. He asked only that they stop their work long enough to look at him—carefully, considerately—because he knew that if they did, they could see all the way Home through his eyes. They could see the Way back in his company. He could show them how to reconcile work—any work—and joy, by the work of believing in him.

Because man is an immortal creature, his work can have meaning only when it is engaged with eternal purpose. For such high ends, nothing is too mean a discipline, not even sweeping floors or feeding pigs; and nothing is so high, not even the presidency and management of a modern government, that it cannot be turned into hourly soul-work.

Christian discipleship is the glorious alchemy that can turn unprofitable labor into inspiration and growth. Discipleship is the “work” for which we were created. The effects of discipleship are the only rewards from our time on earth that we can take with us into the next world. Our growth in character, energized by the Light over us, will endure. It is designed for life in eternity.

Let us have no delusions about dispensing with work. Work is a dispensation of God and the only way out of our condition. It is a necessity that matches our situation, and no law or political delusion can abolish it.

The true abolition of work is the transmutation of work into a discipline that rebuilds our souls. It is the daily holy offering of the self, the job, temporal aims, all the trivia, hurts, sleep, and games to God as so many building blocks for the spirit. There is no salvation from work; there is only salvation in work—work, that is, caught up in discipleship. Changing Carlyle a little, we can say, “Blessed is the man who has found this work; let him ask for no other blessedness.”

One day we shall be concentrating on our work and be surprised to find how easy it has become. We shall say to ourselves in our newfound strength and skill, “This is the only thing I would want to do, ever.” And looking around us we shall see we are standing under the Tree of Life by the river of water of life.

Byron C. Lambert is dean of the Rutherford (New Jersey) campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. He has the B.D. from Butler University School of Religion and the Ph.D. in cultural history from the University of Chicago.

Who is the latest hero of the youth culture? Jesus Christ, it seems. The trappings of the “Jesus movement” are by now familiar: bell bottoms, beads, and long hair, gospel-rock music, underground papers, marches in the streets, confrontation evangelism, coffeehouses and communes. “So Jesus has become ‘hip’ this year,” quips the cynic. “ ‘Jesus people,’ ‘Jesus freaks’—it’s all a fad.” Is it really?

To be sure, the broad evangelical awakening going on today bears the marks of the so-called youth culture. To write it off for this reason, however, would be shallow for the critic and disastrous for the church. The Jesus movement must be given more than a cheap sociological and psychological explanation.

Where did it all begin? Out of the ashes of Haight-Ashbury? As an aftermath to the Sunset Strip riots? Among the disillusioned of the drug culture? Yes, and much more. The movement began spontaneously over a wide front. In the last three years, the West Coast, the supposed center of sensual pleasure, has ironically reached a flash point of despair over this world and spiritual longing for another.

The igniting took many forms: the political spark of the Christian World Liberation Front in Berkeley, offering an alternative to dominant Marxism; the Pentecostal spark of Calvary Chapel, a church context for wide revival; the youth-culture spark of “The Salt Company Coffee House” in Hollywood, communicating to this generation in gospel-folk rock music; the communal spark of “The Mesa” in Palo Alto, and “Jesus parties” attended by hundreds of teen-agers; the militant spark of the “Jesus Army” in Seattle; the student-ministry spark of “The Light and Power House” near UCLA; the hippie spark of several hundred youth forming “The Church in the Park” in Covina; the denominational spark of “Lutheran Youth Alive”; the underground-paper spark of the Hollywood Free Paper and many others.

What are distinguishing features of the Jesus movement? First of all, this spiritual outburst is student led. The initiative has passed from the professional Christian worker, be he pastor, youth leader, or campus-ministry staff member. Up until now, youth evangelism has been inaugurated by adults. Now it comes by youth. The same hip teen-ager who last year turned his friends on to drugs may now be turning them on to Jesus. In an era when students have led the protest against war and racism, we should not be surprised that they have taken the Gospel of Christ and moved it into their world. Tens of thousands evangelize today rather than just a few paid professionals.

Furthermore, this student leadership is emerging out of the youth culture with integrity. We are not being subjected to the embarrassing spectacle of adults who look like flower-children with pot bellies. We would expect composer Larry Norman to release an album of gospel-rock music because this music is Larry. His conversion has not suddenly given him a taste for Christian tunes in waltz and fox-trot tempo. Lonnie Frisbee, of Calvary Chapel, wears long hair and a beard as he preaches to thousands, because Lonnie was a long-haired “freak” before his conversion. Becoming a Christian has not meant a crew cut because that’s not Lonnie.

The Gospel of the incarnation is being acted out again in the youth culture, as the Word becomes flesh in these particular lives and their particular style. The institutional church that has no contact with the culture of this generation is being confronted by a new breed of Christians who call this culture home. Whether the churches can embrace these authentic Christians in their own culture is an open question, and with the answer rests much of the future.

A Methodist pastor in Houston asked me recently whether the Jesus movement was not just a resurgence of old “fundamentalism.” By this he apparently meant a rigid orthodoxy, a hardened legalism, a cultural negativism. Sadly, he had missed the heart of the movement, which is both personal and spiritual. Youth who have been saturated with rock music, sex, and drugs are not reverting to a sterile, authoritarian religion. The new birth, the death to ego that they were promised through LSD but never found, are now theirs in Christ. Some areas of the movement are caught up in speaking in tongues, again finding a profound spiritual experience filling the hole drugs had left. While the churches have often been little more than social clubs, youth today are finding spiritual power and life back on the streets, where it was in the first century.

Another important element of today’s awakening is its communal nature. Love is not a thesis or a slogan; it’s an experience and a life. The false dichotomy of evangelical and social gospel does not exist on the personal level for these new Christians. While perhaps naïve about the social implications of the love ethic, they love one another and show it with an outstretched hand or a meal. Again and again reporters are staggered by the shining faces and the embraces of these young believers. That there are hundreds of Christian communes on the West Coast is more than a hangover from the hippie world; it is the fulfillment of the quest for community by alienated youth.

Jesus said that the mark of discipleship is love “one to another.” In countless living situations that love is now demonstrated. At the Virgil House, a Christian commune on Virgil Street in Hollywood, scores of drug addicts, street people, and “crashers” have found their lives transformed by the love of Christ displayed in the residents’ warm fellowship. New forms of discipleship are emerging, and the materialism and individualism of nominal church members are being “put down.” Worship has turned heavily toward experience. Jesus is not an idea but a presence to be realized in feeling as well as thinking. Youth who have hallucinated on LSD will not be satisfied by cold, impersonal liturgies where all the action is in the pulpit or at the altar.

At the same time, this awakening is bringing a return to the Bible. The issue of truth is again before us, not just the pragmatism and functionalism of modern America. Most of these new Christians “take the Bible literally.” What does this mean? It means, first of all, that they reject modern philosophy and theology that they feel are merely mental games, “head trips.” If it is true that this is an irrational age, this is not all bad for evangelical Christianity. The doctrine of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ are not rational. Rationalism created an anti-supernatural bias and a destructive biblical criticism that have undermined the Christianity of several generations. Through the acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God on faith, biblical Christianity with its absolute ethics is again being taught and believed in the land.

In looking at the Jesus movement, thoughtful Christians raise some questions. A speaker can get a crowd to roar simply by pointing heavenward and shouting, “Jesus is coming soon!” This apocalyptic attitude is as much cultural as theological. Despair over the population spiral, hydrogen stockpiles, and pollution is easily met by Christian hope, especially for youth who have dropped out. The danger of this in excess is the loss of a sense of history and the abandonment of social responsibility by the “now” Christian. The New Testament holds the tension; it must not be broken.

Unfortunately, the rejection of this world’s system often becomes a rejection of this world, especially by those who are in adolescent rebellion anyway. It is discouraging to walk along Hollywood Boulevard and be greeted by “Repent or perish” rather than “Jesus loves you.” Social alienation finds its extreme beyond the commune in modern monastic orders such as the “Children of God,” who renounce employment and private property for a continual indoctrination and an imposed discipline.

In a sensate culture the stress on experience is to be expected. The New Testament is filled with feeling words. Once again, however, this must be held in tension. There is truth for the mind as well as love for the heart. A super-subjectivism holds many new Christians, and they describe Jesus in drug language as the “ultimate trip” or the “greatest high.” This often leads to false expectations in dealing with personal problems and living in this world. One seldom hears the hard words of Jesus on discipleship and suffering. Any psychological insight is too often rejected out of hand as “worldly.” The danger of over-subjectivity must be balanced by serious Bible study and mature reflection. If the organized church rejects these unconventional believers, where will they get the teaching they need?

As a counter to the permissive society and to the extreme subjectivism just described, other new believers fall into legalism. This is a natural danger for any new Christian. For most of these problems the answer is simple: association with mature members of Christ’s body who are secure in their freedom. This is the real challenge of the Jesus movement: Can the organized church welcome these new Christians with love and patience?

Adult Christianity in America is too often up tight and performance-oriented. We preach justification by faith and live justification by works. Our worship tends to be cold and impersonal. We are guilty of judging by appearance, as did the Pharisees. Now a new stream of the Spirit is moving across the land. Tens of thousands of youth are “turning on” to Jesus. They need to find the full body of Christ. They need to know of Christ’s Lordship over all of life. They need grounding in the Word of God. Their gifts to us are zeal, and love in true community. Can we receive from them and give to them? This decade of church history will be determined not by the success or failure of the NCC and COCU but by our response to the Jesus movement.

Donald M. Williams is minister to college students at Hollywood Presbyterian Church in California. He has the Ph.D. from Union Seminary and Columbia University and held a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. He is a founder of several projects in Hollywood: a drug rehabilitation program, Virgil House Christian Communal, the Salt Company Coffeehouse, Art Company, and Art and Book Store.

The host rose to his feet, waited for silence, and then in a toast heard round the world declared: “The Chinese people and the American people have always been friendly to each other. We express our good wishes for the American sportsmen and people.”

A few weeks, even days, before, this statement of people-to-people good will would have been considered highly unlikely. But something had happened in Peking’s inner chambers to alter the twenty-year-old policy of keeping the Americans at a well marked distance. As incredible as it seemed, American athletes and newsmen were now standing on the ancient Chinese earth—and a leading member of the All-China Sports Federation was offering a toast to their health.

That week all other news stories took a back page. And for once, the leading news dispatch from Asia was not laced with body counts, success or failure of the latest bombing mission, and pathetic tales of refugees in flight, though the war continued and Asian suffering was no less intense.

The historic ping pong tournament quickly set new diplomatic wheels turning, and within a matter of weeks President Nixon was electrifying the world with an announcement that he planned to visit Red China.

China’s smile was both predictable and baffling. Analysts began analyzing. Commentators commented. Practitioners of that esoteric science called “China watching” watched and listened more carefully than ever before.

What does it all mean? Is this a sincere gesture of friendship to the United States, or is it a defiant move calculated to agitate the leaders in the Kremlin? Is it the start of a long and painful process of cementing cracks in international relations? Or is it simply a knee-jerk reaction to the American government’s relaxation of certain travel and trade restrictions?

There are lots of questions, and few solid answers. But one thing is certain: China continues to ease out of her two-decade-old, largely self-imposed isolation.

To argue that China is removing all barriers to the West would be the height of naïveté. But it does appear that there might now be greater opportunity for an open forum between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Although even our age of instant everything has not made Peking and Washington allies overnight, obstacles now seem somewhat less formidable.

Chou En-lai is certainly not forsaking his half-century-old dedication to Communism, which he espoused during his student days in France. As host at-large for the Americans he simply exercised his strong other side—that of Chou En-lai the statesman, the capable go-between who played the key role of moderate so well during China’s recent Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Peking’s instant thaw chilled some, but most Americans seemed to warm quickly to China’s diplo-athletic move. Congressmen, athletes, tourists who had been everywhere else, and professional and arm-chair China-watchers began seeking visas to visit China. Promoters of the feminine form made efforts to invite Chinese models (in padded blue jackets and trousers?) to participate in an American beauty contest. Chinese table-tennis players were invited to play in the United States. American tennis professionals began searching for mainland Chinese who could be asked to take part in a U. S. tennis tournament.

Evangelical Christians throughout the United States joined in the excitement. “Could this be the open door for which we’ve prayed so long?” many asked. For some weeks one group had rhapsodized that a campaign for the evangelization of China “would begin exactly sixty days after the U. S. State Department approves travel into China.”

This concern for China should be recognized as well-meaning, but much of the thinking is woefully misguided.

Even before the table-tennis team went into China, one Christian group with an apparent flair for the dramatic suggested that 1,000 three-man teams be immediately mobilized to evangelize the China mainland—a feat to be carried out by a “two-week crusade.” These traveling triumvirates—composed of preacher, musician, and layman—would be the vanguard for the new thrust into China. The literature this group sent out challenged the reader: “Let us be ready to be first” into China with the Gospel.

And you can bet your fortune cookies that in the days ahead this kind of thing will be proliferated by malinformed Christians who, though they mean well, are so immersed in the concept of “send the foreign missionary to China” that they show shocking insensitivity to the China scene as it actually is.

Another Christian mission has stated in its official China policy that when its missionaries go back to China, they should return to districts where they formerly worked and “dig up” any treasure they might have buried there at the time of their hasty 1949–50 retreat.

Is there really a chance we will return to a place of former ministry and act like the mob of capitalist lackeys that Peking has so effectively convinced its people we are? Are our actions going to support the time-worn accusations that all foreigners are suspect and that missionaries from the “bad old days” were nothing more than poachers on Chinese terrain, guilty of an opportunistic Christian capitalism?

During this time of a newly heightened awareness of China, Christian missions need to scrutinize their motivation for involvement. Is this the historical time for the foreign missionary even to consider a move back into China? If it is true, as some reports indicate, that the Body of Christ in China is very much alive and functioning, is it not possible that by rushing in we might quench the work of the Holy Spirit already begun in the lives of Chinese believers?

Christian missions must determine before God that they are more concerned for China and its people than for a possible “big story” to adorn the front page of a newsletter. Just how sensitive are we to the needs of Christ’s disciples on the mainland? Have we seriously considered our potential future relationship to that body of believers? Do we really empathize with these witnesses who have shared Jesus Christ with fellow Chinese during years of suffering and persecution? Or would we, given the chance, ride rough-shod over that body with a foreign import that does it “the way it has always been done”?

Another piece of Christian literature on China recently predicted that when Mao Tse-tung dies, the government will come crashing down and China will immediately fling its doors open wide, readily accepting the Gospel.

Such thinking is painfully wishful. Groups that make such irresponsible statements seem to be unaware that the government is currently run by a committee, and that China has always been and always will be too big to crumble all at once. In fact, the future Chinese leaders who are waiting in the wings may well be more totalitarian and ruthless in their management of the country than those presently in control.

I suggest that we read the signals from Peking with considerably more care, especially at this time of heightened excitement. Chou En-lai has invited a few Americans in to China to have a peek. He did not say, “Welcome to open house!” Chou told the visitors that a new page had been opened in Chinese-American relations. He did not say that major policy problems between Peking and Washington had been solved, or that solutions were imminent. It does not appear very likely that Americans, Europeans, and any other camera-laden visitors will be rushing into China in the near future. China may some day play host to the ubiquitous Western tourist, but not just yet.

Evangelistic zeal must be maintained. But Christians, whose primary concern should be sharing the message of redemption in Christ, need to subordinate their desire to be the “first ones into China” to a prayerful waiting on God for his direction. All of us involved in Christian mission need to pray that God will deliver us from that kind of promotional activity that leads us to capitalize on the suffering of others for the untidy purpose of keeping our own operations solvent. Rather than contributing to an already foggy situation by high-strung rhetoric and high-handed appeals based on incomplete evidence, should we not as Christians humbly ask God to direct our thoughts toward China, so that we may know his purpose for that country of 800 million?

Good strategy always involves a process and seldom includes an immediate solution. Our concern for China needs to take a form a great deal more substantial than hastily-conceived plans hatched from a few weeks of unrealistic enthusiasm.

It is always tempting to draw a major conclusion from a minor premise, and we are close to doing just that regarding China. Perhaps Toynbee was right when he observed that Americans are like a large dog, wagging its tail in a small room. Americans are well known for their generosity, boldness, and periodic reckless advances. Sometimes we are so raring to go that we become blind to the possible negative repercussions of our actions.

In The New Man for Our Time, Elton Trueblood reminds the reader that “error is neither patent absurdity nor obvious falsehood; for the most part, it is truth out of context.” For a Christian to want to share his faith is right. For a follower of Christ to want to see Chinese on the mainland come to know God reflects obedience to the Great Commission. But the important questions remain: Who, how, when? We will be guilty of driving truth out of context if we do not supply the right answers to these questions. And at this point, the answers are written deep in the heart of God.

Robert Larson is executive secretary of the Asia Study Group, a Hong Kong-based service ministry of World Vision International that has primary study interests in Mainland China. He previously did three years of research in Hong Kong for Far East Broadcasting Company. He has a master’s in Chinese language and literature from Stanford.

If this has been a summer for strikes, it has also been a summer for salvation. Reports filtering in from all over the country show that large numbers of people are being converted. In the Billy Graham campaign in Oakland, California, the spiritual temperature was high even though the weather was uncommonly cold for midsummer, and the response to the invitation was proportionately greater than that in any other campaign Mr. Graham has conducted in a quarter of a century.

European evangelism is bound to get a big boost by the European Congress on Evangelism, to be held in Amsterdam August 28 to September 4. I expect to cover it personally and to seek out contributors to our columns, for CHRISTIANITY TODAY has a worldwide ministry.

One of our British contributing editors, the Reverend Maurice A. P. Wood, principal of Oak Hill Theological College, has been appointed bishop of Norwich. Congratulations are in order to this Anglican who has both a keen evangelistic passion and a scholar’s bent, and who in service to his country in wartime won the Distinguished Service Cross.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has among its writers and editorial staff a number of women. Shortly we expect to list some women among our contributing editors also, an overdue step. We’ll announce these additions in due time.

The last issue of September marks the end of our fifteenth year of publication. I’d appreciate greatly the prayers of God’s people that we may not only inform our readers of what is happening but provide dynamic and positive leadership, looking toward a great spiritual awakening in this last third of the twentieth century.