Off With The Old Face, On With The New

A New Face for the Church, by Lawrence O. Richards (Zondervan, 1970, 288 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Norman H. West, West Woods Bible Chapel, Hamden, Connecticut.

To use a current phrase, this book really blew my mind. It forced me to face up to the many ways in which our evangelical churches have fallen into meaningless ritualism, and to the fact that in our practice we often deny truths we profess to hold in theory. Mr. Richards argues, quite convincingly, that our local churches must change if they are going to be true to their calling and relevant to their members. “Measured against the divinely ordained pattern, much of our church life today stands out starkly as irrelevant, misshapen, and perverted.” “Like it or not, we have to agree that … somehow, through all our forms and organizations and agencies, vital Christian personalities are not being grown.”

However, in contrast to many other writers on renewal, Richards is firmly committed to working within the established church. “I am not … suggesting a ‘no church’ movement, in which small groups are the only form of gathered life,” he says. “I am suggesting instead that the church must be reorganized.”

In Section I, Richards briefly sketches the problems of today’s evangelical churches. “Many Christians … dutifully attend services and meetings, yet are burdened by the meaninglessness of so much that is traditionally a part of our churches.” “Today’s church does not promote mutual ministry.… The majority sit, silent, passive, listening to the Word.” “Today we prod the professional staff to ‘preach the gospel’ to the saints—who alone fill our churches—while a disinterested world passes by.” “The major deliberations of church leaders focus on organizational problems.… Is spiritual growth encouraged when the biblical values we profess are seldom actually discussed?… Yet we not only give such matters priority, but these then become the criteria by which we evaluate success. Is the Sunday School growing? Is the budget up?… Then the church is doing fine!”

In Section II he outlines biblical principles relating to the local church. His main point here is sure to stir controversy, both among social activists and among those who use church services for evangelism: “The function of the church is foremost and essentially the personality transformation of its members, and of itself as a community.” “The church … exists only for its members.” Richards contends that evangelism is not to be one of the purposes of our church gatherings, that it is to be carried on by individuals in their daily situations. And he feels we have been off target in devoting so much time to reaching children, rather than trying to reach their parents first.

Another major point is the importance of mutual ministry among believers. “Too often laymen see themselves as a different order of Christian than the clergy. The clergy are to evangelize. The layman is to pay his salary, and perhaps bring in the unsaved for the pastor to preach to.” “The entire New Testament concept of the church demands that the meetings of a church be structured for mutual ministry.… There must be openness in all our meetings to permit the participation of any and every member.”

What he says about leadership in the church is likely to shake up many pastors. “I can find no case in which local leadership was limited to one person. All New Testament references are to elders (plural), none to ‘the elder’ (e.g. leader) of the church at such-and-such.” Nevertheless, Richards devotes a chapter to the role of the pastor in change, a chapter that every pastor could read with profit.

In Section III he gives basic steps for transforming the church as it is to the church as it should be. Here he deals with the “small group” approach and has many insights into the strengths and weaknesses of such groups. Those who have worked with a home Bible-study group or would like to form one will find plenty of help here.

For me, the most helpful parts of the book were those dealing with Christian education. The author gives a good survey for analyzing the efficiency of a Christian-education program; those who use it will no doubt find it very discomforting!

His simple observation that effective Christian education and nurture must be centered in the home, rather than in the church, is what really “blew my mind.” Richards began to think about this when he visited a typical evangelical church:

I asked Sunday School teachers who had children in other departments to tell me (1) what their children in other departments were taught the past Sunday and (2) how they had guided the children to relate the Bible to experiences during the week. Not one person even knew what his child had studied.

Referring to Deuteronomy 6:1–6, Richards comments,

The passage … locates the context of such teaching [of children] and that context is daily life. Living together provides the ideal context for sharing God’s words.… Divorced from that life context, biblical teaching leads to deadened orthodoxy.… The ideal way is to bring into experiences we share with our families the perceptions of life God gives in the Word.

Some will think this book is the answer to church renewal; others will no doubt dismiss it as the idle speculation of a seminary professor in his ivy tower. But I hope most readers will accept it for what it is: an attempt by a very earnest Christian to stimulate other Christians to examine their local churches in the light of Scripture. The ideas expressed in this book have evidently been developing in Richards’s mind for several years, and he has tried to think through the implications of his “plan” for the reorganization of the church in such areas as foreign missions, stewardship, and church buildings.

Perhaps the most obvious weakness of the book is that, like other books on renewal, it tends to be overly idealistic. Also, Richards gives few examples of churches where the steps he advocates are being taken with success.

By all means buy and read this book. Pass it on to others and discuss it with them. You will be helped by it, and you may even find a “new face” for your church.

To Tell The Truth

Good News from Tolkien’s Middle Earth, by Gracia Fay Ellwood (Eerdmans, 1970 160 pp., paperback, $2.95), and The Shattered Ring: Science Fiction and the Quest for Meaning, by Lois and Stephen Rose (John Knox, 1970 127 pp., $3.50), are reviewed by Janet Rohler Greisch, Woodbridge, Virginia.

Truth wears many hats. One of the least likely, by the standards of a fact-centered technocracy, is fiction. That fiction is, nonetheless, a fitting garment for truth is reflected in such instances as Nathan’s use of narrative to prick David’s conscience. Even less likely garb is fantasy or myth. That it too has a hook on truth’s hatrack is the thesis of two recent books.

For Gracia Fay Ellwood, the discovery that J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantastic Middle Earth is, in fact, true is “good news.” Everything there is alive, she notes, and—good news!—there is more alive in our earth than may be apparent at first glance. Objects come to life in the unconscious, as psychic phenomena. Seeing that aliveness, says Mrs. Ellwood, is a matter of viewpoint; dispassionate, scientific objectivity is only one way to look at life.

Contemporary science fiction tends to agree, say Lois and Stephen Rose. Much of it seems to echo sentiments of Kurt Vonnegut: “I used to think that science would save us,” the middle-aged hero of youth once said, “but we can’t stand any more tremendous explosions either for or against democracy. Only in superstition is there hope.”

Not that recent works take all the science out of science fiction; settings maintain the familiar unfamiliarity of future worlds, far-flung galaxies, and post-holocaust societies. In such settings, say the Roses, the “new wave” of science-fiction writers create new myths, stories with “some special insight into the problems of life and death,” stories that explore inner as often as outer space. What they find—or at least seek optimistically—is newness, expanded human consciousness. Their hope can be fulfilled, the Roses claim, because myth shatters old boundaries of thought and deed.

Such a search for Reality beyond science and history is what popularized Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, according to Mrs. Ellwood. Having established the truth of myth in the first part of her book, she goes on to examine the Christ-symbolism of some of the heroes—the “good guys” who, despite “human limitation,” accomplish some “saving activity,” produce some “salutary effect.” Their heroic adventures, encompassing life, death, and a return to life, appeal to the reader in quest of meaning, integration, absolutes.

Many readers will raise eyebrows at some of the theology in these books; some will wrinkle their noses at the serious consideration given fantasy and science fiction. But Mrs. Ellwood and the Roses merit a tip of the hat for showing that imagination can—and often does—tell the truth.

Needed: A Reverence For Life

Science and Secularity: The Ethics of Technology, by Ian G. Barbour (Harper & Row, 1970 151 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Paul D. Brewer, professor of philosophy, Carson-Newman College, Jefferson City, Tennessee.

Professor Barbour’s book is concerned with the problem of values that has resulted from the many technological advances in recent years. In dealing with these complex issues he avoids technical jargon but also makes it clear that he understands the disciplines involved. Many similar attempts have been made by theologians totally unequipped in scientific method, or by scientists who are naive about theological methods, and the result has been that one discipline is defined in terms of the other. Professor Barbour is a physicist who has conducted scientific research and understands its method, and who also has had solid training in theology. His book offers us dedicated scholarship at its best.

Barbour first discusses modern science’s use of models for symbolically representing certain aspects of reality that are not directly accessible to man. These models are understood as partial and tentative ways of presenting the non-observable. The method of science is autonomous in its realm and should be so recognized and permitted to explore whatever falls within its area of investigation. With the recognition of its autonomy, there must also be the willingness to acknowledge that these tentative models do not displace all other approaches to experience.

Although modern science as a form of knowledge has important intellectual implications, it is as a form of power and control that it raises significant ethical issues. The technological innovations have such far-reaching effects that society can no longer allow the developments of applied science to depend solely on corporation profits. There is a necessity for more careful planning of technological change. Professor Barbour suggests the need for an ethic of nature that directs man to cultivate a reverence for life and a respect for the integrity of the natural order. A destructive technology can be redirected by a value orientation that is interested in the quality of man’s life in this world. The author suggests that biblical religion with its theological models can witness to dimensions of human experience not accessible to human reason, and can offer correctives for the dangers of a technological mentality.

Since both science and theology operate with models that are not to be taken literally but must be taken seriously, they learn from each other. The religious outlook can provide a framework for the technological application of scientific truth, but religion is not just a framework of value restraints. It must always be open to the whole range of modern knowledge that scientific method has opened. The disciplines can be fulfilling rather than antagonistic.

The book is well written and is an excellent introduction to this complex area. Though many who are theologically conservative will not approve Dr. Barbour’s process theology, a different theological model still must face the same questions. This book offers one option for dealing with the problem.

On Evangelism

How to Win Them, by John R. Bisagno and others (Broadman, 1971, 158 pp., paperback, $3.95), and People-Centered Evangelism, by John F. Havlik (Broadman, 1971, 92 pp., paperback, $1.75), are reviewed by John A. Baird, Jr., vice-president, Eastern Baptist College, St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

Southern Baptists have scored again with two new books on evangelism. Both will provide the minister plenty of questions and answers concerning this often misunderstood subject, which, as Havlik points out, must be “caught, not taught.”

How to Win Them contains thirteen talks from state evangelistic conferences. Pastors, professors, and denominational leaders give provocative illustrations to dramatize the dimensions of evangelism in this decade. One contributor, for example, portrays Jacob, the son of Abraham, as a Southern Baptist! He shows how the Old Testament leader and many contemporary Christians in Dixie substitute self, numbers, dollars, and organization for the power of prayer. Other memorable parts of the book are reflections on the arithmetic of death (124,000 persons per day), the values of adversity, the apartness of apartment dwellers, and what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The dreary limitations of the social gospel are placed in focus. Clean air and clean government will not in themselves suffice for sinful man.

The reader is treated to some lively writing, such as, “Some pastors are like stray dogs at a whistler’s convention.”

Each of the nine chapters of People-Centered Evangelism has the word “people” in its title. Probably the best chapter is on the Bible as a book of the people. Evangelism is defined as the principal distinction between Communism and Christianity, because it combines personal salvation with social justice. Havlik is also to be commended for saying that evangelism is the essence of the faith rather than, as some denominational literature implies, an option for specialists.

Regrettably, other things he says fall into the category of what might be called homiletical license. One did not need “clever lawyers” to avoid paying income tax if his total earnings were from municipal bonds. Nor is the “suburbanite riding his power mower” necessarily a man with an empty heart. For many, the chore is re-creative.

Newly Published

Shalom! The Biblical Concept of Peace, by Douglas J. Harris (Baker, 79 pp., paperback, $1.95), and Brethren and Pacifism, by Dale W. Brown (Brethren, 1970, 152 pp., paperback, $2). Many previously non-pacifist Christians are reopening discussion on the rightness of participating in war. The first book summarizes the biblical data. The second complements it with a survey of various kinds of pacifism, past and present, and includes the author’s advocacy of the kind he prefers; though written for Church of the Brethren readers, it can be helpful to a wider circle.

John Calvin: Selections From His Writings, edited by John Dillenberger (Doubleday, 1971, 590 pp., paperback, $2.45). An outstanding value, about two-fifths from the Institutes, the rest from the whole range of the great reformer’s ministry.

House of Acts, by John A. MacDonald (Creation House, 1970, 124 pp., $3.95). An evangelical pastor relates the joys and sorrows of his ministry among converted hippies, and documents part of the Jesus movement in the San Francisco area.

Tradition: Old and New, by F. F. Bruce (Zondervan, 1971, 184 pp., paperback, $2.95). Basically an excellent study of tradition in the apostolic and sub-apostolic church, but with considerable application to current proper and improper uses of “tradition.”

For Blacks Only: Black Strategies for Change in America, by Sterling Tucker (Eerdmans, 1971, 211 pp., $4.95). Reflections and suggestions that are highly readable and realistic. For whites also, but no explicit religious perspective.

To Apply the Gospel, by Henry Venn (Eerdmans, 1971, 243 pp., $6.95). Selections from the influential writings of the great nineteenth-century leader of the Church (of England) Missionary Society, ably edited by Max Warren.

Responsible Sexuality—Now, by Deane William Ferm (Seabury, 1971, 179 pp., $4.95). The author bases his idea of responsible sexuality on love—a commitment between two persons. The right or wrong of premarital intercourse is not the issue, “for this is to put the entire emphasis on the sex act itself.”

Subduing the Cosmos: Cybernetics ana Man’s Future, by Kenneth Vaux (John Knox, 1970, 197 pp., $5.95). In putting the first man on the moon we have reached “the beginning of adulthood of the human race.” The future of this adulthood, and the problems to be faced, are considered in relation to cybernetics.

Alone at High Noon, by Emile Calliet (Zondervan, 1971, 94 pp., $2.95). The problem of loneliness haunts all men. Blaise Pascal and Baudelaire, among others, struggled to conquer the emptiness of solitude. But solitude can also be creative and rewarding if man’s soul is at peace with God. This is a book to calm the spirit and refresh the mind with new insights into an age-old question.

The Religion of the Republic, edited by Elwyn A. Smith (Fortress, 1971, 296 pp., $8.95). Eleven scholars offer essays from varying perspectives on different aspects of a “common denominator” quasi-religion in the United States. Especially timely in view of an increasingly felt need to distinguish clearly evangelicalism from Americanism.

When the Walls Come Tumblin’ Down, by Gordon C. Hunter (Word 1970, 139 pp., $3.95). Reconciliation is the word for our time. All of us need to be reconciled to God and to one another. Here the author explores this need, offering practical suggestions for help on both the spiritual and physical levels of life.

A Sensitive Man and the Christ, by Robert K. Hudnut (Fortress, 1971, 110 pp., paperback, $2.50). “The thrust of a man’s life is to move from thinking to feeling. It is to become sensitive.” Without sensitivity, says the author, no man can know Christ, others, or himself. Using the apostles as examples, Hudnut tells how to obtain this vulnerable sensitivity.

Faith and Philosophical Enquiry, by D. Z. Phillips (Schocken, 1971, 285 pp., $9). Thirteen previously published papers by a leading British philosopher.

The Golden Core of Religion, by Alexander Skutch (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, 270 pp., $6.95). The major contribution made by religion throughout history has been the idea of caring for and about things, says Skutch. This is a very sweet theory, but unfortunately most people practice little of such caring.

Human Energy and Activation of Energy, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, 191 and 416 pp., $5.95 and $7.50). Thirty-four previously unpublished essays written between 1931 and 1955.

Immortality, Religion, and Morals, by Ashley Montagu (Hawthorn, 1971, 176 pp., $6.95). Essays that depend heavily on literary sources (T. S. Eliot, John Donne, Emerson) for the ideas prosaically promoted. An anthology of the authors quoted, retaining the same title, would have been more interesting.

Born to Burn, by Wendell Wallace (Logos International, 1970, 95 pp., $1.95). Deeply moving account of a black pastor’s search for spiritual power, and his discovery that Jesus can unite blacks and whites, radicals and straights in a new kind of family under the same church roof.

The Conspiracy of the Young, by Paul Lauter and Florence Howe (World, 1970, 399 pp., $8.50). An important book, thoroughly documented, revealing some amazing facts about the various revolutions taking place.

The Evolution of Christian Thought, by T. A. Burkill (Cornell, 1971, 504 pp., $12.50). A rather conventional survey, that needs supplementing for the recent period to give balance. Useful as a refresher for seminary graduates.

Dialogue and Tradition, by Jacob Bernard Agus (Abelard-Schuman, 1971, 621 pp., $12.95). “The central theme of this collection of essays is the tension between tradition and dialogue.… The dialogue between Jews and Christians in our day is but one manifestation of a many-sided quest.” A thorough, comprehensive treatment of this subject.

Contemplation in a World of Action, by Thomas Merton (Doubleday, 1971, 384 pp., $7.95). A collection of articles, many previously published, on contemporary monasticism by a widely read monk. Many seek to make a case for having more hermits.

The Triple Knowledge: An Exposition of the Heidelberg Catechism, by Herman Hoeksema (Kregel, 1971, c. 2,100 pp., three volumes, $24.95). The last two volumes are due later this year. A reprint in full of a work originally appearing in ten volumes, 1943–56.

Parables of Jesus, by Edmund Flood (Paulist, 1970, 64 pp., paperback, $.75). A helpful book for those having little familiarity with the background and cultural setting of Jesus’ parables. The explanations are succinct and pointed.

Roman Catholic Modernism, by Bernard M. G. Reardon (Stanford, 1971, 251 pp., $7.95). Selections from the writings around the turn of the century by Loisy, Tyrrell, Hugel, Blondel, and others, who, it now turns out, had their way after all.

Leave a Little Dust, by Rachel Conrad Wahlberg (Fortress, 1971, 140 pp., paperback, $2.50). A practical, interesting book about woman’s role in marriage.

Some of the above books will later be reviewed at greater length.

EDITORIALS

The discovery a few months ago of the remains of a victim of crucifixion revealed that this form of execution may well have been even more torturous and barbaric than the literary evidence had indicated. The body was contorted into an unnatural position. The nails pierced the forearms instead of the palms. The cruelty of men to men is here seen at its basest in that this means of capital punishment was used by one of the more enlightened governments of the time!

Those who bear the name Christian must never allow the ornate gold or fine wood crosses of our day to obscure the fact that the cross in the first century was an official means of executing criminals. Among law-abiding Roman citizens, to glory in a cross made no more sense than for someone today to glory in an electric chair or firing squad or hangman’s noose.

But God showed the first Christians that it was their sins that sent Christ to the cross. They were enabled to look beyond the scandal of a condemned man to see that God used Jewish rejection and Roman “justice” to make it possible for the sins of all men to be forgiven through the bloody sacrifice of his sinless son. It was what God did at Calvary, not man, that enables us to call that Friday “Good.”

As the centuries passed, men overlooked the challenge to the Roman Empire that identification with one of her alleged enemies implied. They came to accept the cross as a covering for sin. But offense remained. For most men were unprepared to accept the death of Christ as the sole and sufficient means of their acceptance into the family of God as forgiven and cleansed sons. Men wanted in some way, large or small, to earn their salvation. Christendom was scandalized when men arose to proclaim the forgiveness of sins solely because of Christ’s death on the cross, apart from any human ceremony or work.

Even today, many labor far and wide to proclaim a “gospel” that does not offer acceptance with God on the basis of what Christ did on the cross alone. What it prescribes is Christ’s death plus something we do.

Others today do not so much pervert the message of the cross as ignore it; they seem to sense no need to have their sins paid for by the death of another. Indeed, they’re offended at the serious suggestion that they are heinous sinners in the sight of a righteous God. To be sure, men will joke about being sinners. And they will freely discuss the sins of others—of long-hairs or hard-hats, welfare recipients or establishment-types, communists or capitalists, peace-marchers or war profiteers, conservation nuts or industrial polluters. There is indeed a strong sense of sin in our day—but the sins of others are what most men are concerned about. Their own sins are denied, excused, blamed on others. So the aspect of the cross most scandalous to men today is not that its victim was considered a criminal, nor that the cross provided the sole and sufficient means of atoning for sins, but rather the assertion that man—each man—has sins that need to be taken care of in this drastic way.

The Church has handled previous kinds of offense by meeting the issue head-on. Christ crucified was proclaimed regardless of the consequences. The imperial authorities might take action lest the power of Rome be undermined; the ecclesiastical authorities might rail lest the power of their institutions over the lives of men be sapped; the people might scoff at the message because they were loyal citizens or because they liked the delusion that they had a role in their salvation; yet still the message was boldly proclaimed.

Regardless of the changing attitudes and responses of men, whether or not men feel a need for salvation, the Christian is to be faithful in proclaiming Christ’s death on the cross as the only and complete means of reconciling rebellious man to his loving but just creator. We should not be surprised when men scoff at or ignore this message; men have always taken offense at the cross. But the Holy Spirit, as he does his work of convicting men of their personal sins, has proved able to overcome all kinds of objections to the cross in order to make men see that this cruel instrument of execution, this sign of human bestiality, was the means God used to bring us to himself.

Explosive Power: Carnal Or Christian

The bombing of the Capitol was a despicable act. Experience has shown that we have little right to speculate about who did it; the assassins of the Kennedy brothers were hardly representative of most of their political opponents. We can hope, however, that the culprits are found before some future outburst results in death. And we need to recognize anew that some persons in our midst are so disaffected with our country that they have given up on normal means of winning others to their point of view. Bombings, like the tantrums of children, are among the tactics they use to dramatize their rage.

Although they arouse feelings of hostility in most of us, bombers need to be seen as persons for whom Christ died. If they knew him as Saviour and Lord, they would recognize that their hopes for a just society are not in vain, that one day Christ will reign, that one day there will be no more wars and injustice and sickness, not to mention fallible congressmen. And they will also recognize that human attempts to improve society are to be neither dependent on unrighteous methods nor judged by their success in making men better. We are to do right even when others do wrong, and even when our doing right does not bring about the desired improvement.

If those whose perverted passion for righteousness leads them to wrongdoing (in part because they have given up on achieving their goals) could only see the One who in righteousness will one day reign, their passion could be diverted into truly constructive channels. We who are Christians must never forget that before he saw the light and was converted, the Apostle Paul was as vigorous in his opposition to the Church with the means at his disposal as is any violent revolutionary of our own day.

Honesty In Government

A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of ten Americans do not think the administration is telling the people all they should know about the Viet Nam war. Certainly high government spokesmen severely undermined their credibility when they used a pipe acquired months ago in testimony before a congressional committee in a way that implied it had just been obtained from a severed pipeline along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Truth-in-advertising and truth-in-lending laws have recently been enacted. Do we need to legislate “truth-in-testimony” for the executive branch? And for that matter, don’t we need enforced laws on “truth-in-campaign-financing” for legislators?

Inadvertently we learned recently that we cannot trust what the government tells us in the event of nuclear attack. In the wake of the largely unheeded, and fortunately mistaken, notice to radio stations to go off the air because of impending attack, it was learned that radio stations years before had been instructed that, in the event of attack, they were to broadcast reassuring messages that our air force was devastating the enemy in retaliation!

Repeatedly in the Scriptures the Christian is told he must be honest and truthful, within the guidelines of love and what contributes to edification. There may be times when it is appropriate to withhold information. But for the government to attempt to deceive the people is folly. Christians in every level of government have the responsibility to be truthful in all their dealings and to correct untruth wherever possible. In this way they not only obey their Lord but help strengthen, instead of undermine, the confidence of the people in the civil authorities.

Easter: Made In Israel

Hippity, hoppity, Easter’s on its way, springing straight out of the Holy Land. Israel produced the makings of Easter well before this year’s commemoration of the event that silences the knell of death to sing of life renewed, that shatters the somber chill of winter to celebrate the emergence of spring.

The significance of Christ’s resurrection needs no seasonal reinforcement, of course, and Down Under there is none. Instead in Australia, where April is autumn, this Easter’s signs of new life are finger-lickin’ good—and made in Israel. Perhaps there is nothing strange about chocolate eggs and rabbits coming from the Holy Land to fill the Easter baskets used to observe Christ’s resurrection. But from crucifixion to confection is a remarkable hop.

Draft Defiance

On Monday, March 8, heavyweight champion Joe Frazier decisively beat Muhammad Ali, whose life in and out of the ring has been disrupted for more than three years by his efforts to avoid the draft. Curiously, that same day the Supreme Court rendered a decision that, while it did not concern Ali directly, did speak to the issue of selective conscientious objection.

Guy P. Gillette and Louis A. Negre had argued that they were opposed in principle not to all war but to the one being waged in Viet Nam. The court ruled that conscientious objectors, religious or otherwise, must be opposed to “participation in war in any form.” Objection to a specific war affords no grounds for relief from military service. The vote of the court was 8 to 1.

The decision of the high court is sound if for no other reason than that the alternative would be chaotic. However, it still leaves unanswered the question of what Christians ought to do if they conscientiously believe that a particular war is immoral. No one can dispute the fact that some wars are immoral and offensive to Christian conscience. Any Christian who feels this way about a particular war should obey his conscience and refuse to serve. When God’s law and Caesar’s are at variance, then God’s law must prevail. The Christian who so determines must then face and accept whatever penalty he is required to pay for his refusal to obey Caesar’s law if he wishes to stay within Caesar’s domain. This is suffering for righteousness’ sake. He is free not to obey, but he is not free to run away from the consequences of his disobedience. Nor is he free to presume that his decision is infallible and that other Christians who see matters differently are necessarily wrong.

Gillette and Negre, who did not base their cases on Christian grounds, lost their fight. Now let them pay the price for their convictions. Muhammad Ali lost a boxing match the same day. It remains to be seen whether he soon will lose a second and perhaps greater battle over the draft.

Labor’S Double Standard?

Organized labor relies heavily on the support of society at large. Its clout would be appreciably diminished if it did not resort to a variety of social pressures to sign up workers as members. In any office or shop where a union is recognized as bargaining agent by the employer, the individual employee most likely does not have a truly free choice on whether or not to join the union. Labor’s rationale for coercion is that everyone who benefits from collective bargaining should contribute to it.

Our society has accepted this infringement upon individual freedom, for better or worse, feeling that the benefits outweigh the loss of liberty. Unfortunately, however, labor seems lately to be reluctant to recognize its debt to society. Unions still have a long way to go in eliminating racial discrimination, but they are resisting government proposals designed to help correct biased policies and practices.

The nation’s construction unions issued a strongly worded statement last month saying they would fight government-imposed quotas on non-white workers in apprenticeship programs. We agree that quotas are probably not the answer. But isn’t it merely something of a twist on the quota principle that enables the unions to achieve a de facto closed shop? If the government shouldn’t force the unions to take in applicants it doesn’t want, why should the unions be allowed to force into membership workers who don’t want to join?

Home As A Wicked Stepmother

No Christian who travels extensively behind the Iron Curtain can return without a somber new awareness of the value of religious liberty, linked with deep compassion for fellow believers subject to harsh restrictions. Surprisingly, however, these believers seem to accept their lot with little apparent consciousness of an exile other than that common to all Christians who are strangers and pilgrims on earth.

That it is very different with the Jews of the Soviet Union has again been poignantly highlighted by a letter published last month in the Times of London from Mr. and Mrs. Valentin Prussakov of Moscow—a letter that, the newspaper said subsequently, “may be their death warrant.” The couple tell of frequent unsuccessful applications to leave for Israel, and cannot understand the official refusal to let them go. In support of an incontestable principle they cite Pravda (March 6, 1970): “Every citizen has the right freely to select his citizenship, and to live in one or another state.… This is a democratic, progressive principle.” They appeal to all people of the free world for help “to escape from a country which for us is a wicked stepmother, and depart to our spiritual home—Israel.” It is difficult to reconcile the Soviet detention of Jews legitimately wishing to leave the country with Moscow’s continued denials of anti-Semitism in any form.

An all-party motion on the plight of Jews in Russia has so far attracted the signatures of more than half of Britain’s members of parliament. On another front, it is to us inexplicable that the World Council of Churches, with all its laudable concern for the downtrodden in whitest Africa, should have made no pronouncement on this subject at its Addis Ababa meeting.

At last month’s Brussels world conference on Soviet Jewry, Simon Wiesenthal told how a French delegate to the conference was telephoned at two A.M. by a Russian Jew. “Why are you calling me at this hour?” came the demand. “Because,” said the man, “you were sleeping.”

Stoking The Flames

Bernadette Devlin, in a chapel appearance at Mercer University last month, delivered a tirade against the United States and capitalism, attributing all the world’s ills to those who disagreed with her economics. For such a simplistic diagnosis the young Irish radical got a standing ovation from the audience at the Southern Baptist school in Macon, Georgia. It is difficult to see how an academic community can justify such an approach to problem-solving. In our view, it merely fuels the flames of Miss Devlin’s equally irrational extremist adversaries.

An Invitation To Passover

A million or more Jews—along with millions of other Americans—will behold the Lamb of God on a prime-time color telecast next month, if sponsors’ hopes are fulfilled (see News, page 40). Just as Christ at the Last Supper used the occasion of the traditional Passover to communicate new spiritual realities, the special television production skillfully and tastefully superimposes those realities upon the modern practice of the Passover. In a bold—and expensive—departure from tradition, the American Board of Missions to the Jews is using a twentieth-century means to communicate Christ to the masses. We applaud the mission’s action. The project deserves evangelicals’ support, both through prayer and through gifts.

Readers may send names and addresses of Jewish friends to the American Board of Missions to the Jews, 236 West 72nd Street, New York City 10023.

Surprised By Piety

Two liberal scholars who recently completed an extensive survey of churchgoers have concluded that piety and prejudice don’t necessarily go together after all!

Dr. Thomas C. Campbell, associate professor of church and community at Chicago Theological Seminary, and Yoshio Fukuyama, professor of religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, concentrated on the United Church of Christ, which is easily one of the most liberal of American denominations. Their findings, published in The Fragmented Layman (Pilgrim Press) suggest a contrast to the famous Glock and Stark survey, which found that churchgoers were more prejudiced than non-churchgoers. According to Campbell and Fukuyama, “the devotional man in this study of a liberal denomination was more likely to favor action in the area of civil justice,” as well as in many other areas of social concern.

Campbell and Fukuyama questioned more than 8,000 churchgoers. Those who accepted a credo of religious beliefs without any personal involvement proved more prejudiced socially than those who insisted on daily devotional prayer and Bible reading as necessary parts of the Christian life.

The two sociologists, both active church members and liberals, were admittedly surprised by the results. In announcing their findings, they called for a reevaluation of and reemphasis on the devotional life of the church, “recognizing that devotionalism is often seriously questioned within churches of the more liberal Protestant type” and that “piety is very often a pejorative term and concept.”

Statistically, Campbell and Fukuyama have shown that devotionalism does not inhibit concern for social justice. But the study did not survey the actions of churchgoers, only their stated attitudes. Paper proof is not enough to prod liberals to promote “the devotional life of the church.” Without deeds to back up words, piety may remain a second-rate interest of the church.

Keeping Uncle Sam Afloat

With the April 15 federal income-tax deadline fast approaching, the following will hardly lift harried taxpayers out of the doldrums: The average American will pay more than $3.20 in taxes for every calendar day this year. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce points out that governments of all levels will collect an estimated $1,175 in taxes from each man, woman, and child in the country. That’s almost twice the per-capita figure of $628 in 1960, itself nearly double the 1950 figure of $337. In 1940, per-capita taxes were a mere $96.

Hand-wringing won’t help. But the whopping tax bite causes us to wonder how much Mr. Average Christian is spending each calendar day for advancing the Kingdom of God. A safe bet is that it’s nowhere near double what he spent in 1960, or twelve times his 1940 contributions. (Reports from forty-eight Protestant church bodies show that in 1969 their confirmed members gave an average of $99.68 during the year, just over 27 cents per day.)

If Christians upped their giving to the cause of Christ as substantially as they have been required to increase their tax dollars, maybe Uncle Sam would soon find he didn’t need such inflated levies to stay afloat.

The Fat God Gives

The Reverend Ronald Stephens, a clergyman of the Church of England, wants to be completely modern in his witness. To accomplish this he has signed a contract to film margarine commercials. Part of the script reads: “Margarine has goodness in it. And the body needs the fats of margarine as the soul needs God.”

Food imagery is not as incongruous with Christian witness as it might first appear. The Bible is filled with such imagery; Paul, for example, often compared meat to God’s Word. In Stephens’s commercial the food image has a double thrust, for it is that of fullness, of eating the fat of both physical and spiritual worlds. It reminds us that God’s goodness is evident on both these levels. As Nehemiah said to the people of Israel: “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared … for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10).

Living Proof

The early-morning light of revival has dawned upon countless thousands of persons in recent months, a morning of new life into which joy has come. In fact, the joy is so noticeable that even hard-bitten secular magazine reporters and network television producers have commented about it. It is a joy that is expressed not only in songs and smiles but also in attitudes and dispositions. And it is living proof that Jesus Christ is alive and well, for Christian joy has its source in him.

One of the tasks of the Holy Spirit is to translate the dynamic traits of Christ’s life into the personal experience of believers. Joy is among these traits (John 17:13). Through the Spirit’s husbandry it can blossom and become fruit in our lives (Gal. 5:22).

This joy transcended the sorrow of the cross (Heb. 12:2). In the same unspeakable way it can survive the deepest woes as well as the slight irritations of our earthly sojourn (Jas. 1:2; 1 Pet. 1:6–8). We may not be able to explain it, but we can experience it. Its roots are in a total commitment to God.

There are, of course, many bright and clear reasons for joy. Having Jesus as a personal friend. Answered prayers. Christian fellowship. Being included in God’s plans. And even heaven shares our joy over a new birth in the household of faith (Luke 15:7).

These are conditions that evoke joyous responses in words, songs, and sanctified laughter—a welcome symphony for our otherwise rather joyless age. More importantly, beneath every true expression of Christian joy is an abiding experience (John 15:4, 11). So let’s open our souls’ windows and let the Son shine in!

First of Three Parts

Three years ago I was bored with the Sunday church services over which I presided. The Order of Worship had developed rigor mortis: the doxology, the hymns, the prayers, the special music, the responses, the announcements and offering, and the sermon had over the years settled into virtually the same slots in the church bulletin week after week. Stand, sit, sing, pray, listen, speak—we had programmed ourselves right into a rut.

By the dictates of tradition (and possibly the church constitution), I did most of the talking while the congregation did most of the listening for most of the Sundays every year.

As a result we came down with a painful case of The Uncomfortable Pew, and attendance sagged (I wasn’t the only one bored). We had ample ecclesia but little koinonia.

At the same time, fortunately, our youth groups were thriving. Our high schoolers and collegians began asking pushy questions. “Pastor, why can’t we have more life in our church services?” “What if the Holy Spirit’s agenda isn’t the same as the one you have in the Sunday bulletin; would he have a chance?” “How do we find out about God’s blessings in the lives of the other people who attend our church?” “Will we ever have a sense of spiritual togetherness?”

I considered resigning, but God wouldn’t let me go. We didn’t need a new man—we needed new life.

I took a summer sabbatical to pray, think, and view our church from a distance. When I returned, I cautiously became a co-conspirator with a few others in a revolution aimed at gradual overthrow of the established order of service. Although we mounted renewal efforts along a wide front, we chose to give prime attention at first to the Sunday-morning service, because that was the one time during the week when most of our people were together. We knew that God’s blessings came in many packages, not just the ones marked pulpit or preacher, so we made room for the people to participate. And, to prevent the ruin of otherwise good things through repetition, we determined that for as long as possible we would not structure any two services alike.

To give God sufficient opportunity to take matters into his own hands, we even adventurously scheduled some “unstructured” services. (I confess that at first I carried notes and lists of hymns to these meetings—just in case!)

The same location, time, and familiar faces up front every week provided the necessary sense of continuity and stability; longtime members did not feel they were being uprooted.

Within a few months interest and attendance picked up, and our meetings gained a reputation of being among the most exciting in the city. Members would call and apologize for an upcoming weekend vacation trip, then conclude with something like, “I really hate to be away on Sunday, pastor. I just know I’ll miss something I shouldn’t.” They were talking about vital fellowship, not sermons or guest superstars.

These services spanned the generation gap. The ratio of college-age young people to the rest of the congregation was reputed to be the highest for miles around. The next largest group was the over-sixty set. We were an urban church.

Best of all, the Holy Spirit was liberated in our midst. No dancing in the aisles, no shouting, no rah-rah platforming or anything like that. It was simply a soul-stirring sense that he was present in the lives of his people, and that we believers truly were “members one of another.” Often when I entered the sanctuary for a service I could feel a radiant atmosphere of love and joy. There was an air of expectancy, too, because we knew that God had been at work in people’s lives during the week, and we anticipated sharing in those blessings. Koinonia had come!

It could not have come had we bypassed the practical application of some basic truths. A partial list:

1. The Church is Christ’s; he—not the minister—must be the predominant figure when believers come together. Jesus is “in the midst.” This involves our attitude—and the occasion to express it together.

2. The Church is Christ’s body. Members have affectional and functional relationships to one another. This involves interpersonal ministry—and the opportunity for it to happen.

3. The Church is a miraculous fusion of people to each other (Col. 3:11), with positional and practical realities. The Holy Spirit is both convener and catalyst of this dynamic community. He must have freedom to do his work not only in lives of individual Christians but also in the corporate life of the Church—when believers are together.

4. The Church has no divinely prescribed structure or forms to which believers must adhere when they meet together. (Our liturgical roots are not very deep in history. Those who do claim to practice the pattern of the early Church surely would admit that forms extant then were but extensions and adaptations of Jewish synagogue styles that in turn were forged of utility during the Exile. We have scriptural guidelines for behavior when we are together but none for an Order of Worship. We are not even told when or how often to schedule communion. Those who are by tradition committed to liturgy can make use of prefixes—spontaneous, free, contemporary—or adapt or work around the liturgy to give koinonia a chance. Vatican II and denominational reform movements reflect this need.)

For a long time I thought that any attempts to bring significant change into such sacred institutions as the morning worship service would cause serious dissension among members. Not so, if change occurs by evolution instead of sudden revolution, and if the members are deftly drawn in as participants in the change-making processes.

Another myth I believed was that only small churches could have the kind of services that spawn koinonia, but recently I learned that the attendance at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California, jumped from 250 to nearly 1,000 during Sunday-night “Body Life” services.

In next month’s Workshop column. Part II of this article will list many of the koinonia-supportive features we introduced in our morning services. Part III will describe the evening services at Peninsula Bible Church.—EDWARD E. PLOWMAN, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY; formerly pastor of Park Presidio Baptist Church, San Francisco.

Of all man’s physical endowments, none is more precious than the ability to see. Only those deprived of sight after having known its blessings can fully appreciate it.

In the dictionary we find the eye spoken of as the faculty of discrimination, perception, or discernment, and there are repeated references to the eye in Scripture. These scriptural references usually have a spiritual application. Let us consider some of them.

Spiritual blindness is ascribed by Isaiah to those who should be God’s watchmen but have failed: “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber” (Isa. 56:10).

This same spiritual blindness is ascribed to deceitful teachers such as the Pharisees of our Lord’s day: “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind” (Matt. 15:14).

Those who willfully rejected the truth in all ages were said to be spiritually blind. Isaiah described the condition in his day: “See ye indeed, but perceive not” (Isa. 6:9), and our Lord said the same was true in Israel during his ministry. Paul wrote: “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (2 Cor. 4:4). And this is still true today.

But one does not have to be blind to have a serious vision problem. Like our physical eyes, our spiritual eyes can be out of focus, causing us to confuse immediate advantage with eternal values, secular issues with spiritual, human accomplishments with the work of God, and our own opinions with the divine revelation.

The Apostle Paul speaks of those whose spiritual eyes are in focus: “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). Properly focused eyes belong to those who set their sights on things that are above, those who see a city beyond the earthly sphere and who long for others to see it too.

Then there is the evil eye—the eye of him who judges the acts of God by human standards, even daring to criticize God. Jesus speaks of the impossibility of clear sight with such an eye: “If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt. 6:23). Again he refers to the darkness that exists for those whose eyes are evil, in Luke 11:34, when he says, “When thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.”

Sometimes vision is hampered by a foreign body in the eye. A speck of dirt, a cinder, or anything else in the eye causes discomfort and distortion of sight.

The more our faults cause us pain and irritation, the more prone we are to see the shortcomings of others—to prejudge, misjudge, criticize, and slander. Concerning this all too human tendency, our Lord asked, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and fail to notice the plank in your own?” (Matt. 7:3, Phillips).

Then there is the downcast eye, that which sees only the problems and sorrows of life and refuses to look up to the One who is sufficient for all things. Peter walked safely on the water to meet the Lord until he looked down and allowed the winds and the waves—the utter impossibility of what he was doing—to give him an earthly view of a heavenly experience.

The psalmist looks up (Ps. 121:1), knowing that his help comes from the Lord, the Creator of the universe. Paul tells us to seek and set our affections on the things that are above. We are to look to God and not to this world. Our Lord, in describing conditions that will prevail near the end of the age, says to believers, “When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28).

In like manner, he calls us to our responsibility for world evangelization: “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35).

How often our eyes are selfish and calculating! Since the time when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6, RSV), men have disobeyed God for a fancied personal advantage, only to find in time that they have exchanged eternity for a mess of secular pottage.

Many of us have looked at material things and have deliberately put them first. We have forgotten Christ’s command. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” and his promise that the necessities of life would surely follow such a choice.

We live in a day when the lustful eye is a deadly spiritual disease. Men love to have it so, and women do all they can to further it. The Apostle Peter describes our day with painful accuracy; “These are the men who delight in daylight self-indulgence.… Their eyes cannot look at a woman without lust” (2 Pet. 2:13, 14, Phillips). There is more to “girl-watching” than meets the eye. It is the lust of the heart.

The aged Apostle John tells us that all things attached to this world, including the “lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” will pass away, “but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever” (1 John 2:17).

Strange to say, many have deliberately closed eyes—eyes that cannot see because of prejudice, presuppositions, unbelief. Our Lord wept over the people of Jerusalem because they had willfully rejected spiritual truths; “now they are hid from thine eyes,” he said (Luke 19:42). Here we have the weeping eyes of the Lord of love, and the self-blinded eyes of those he had come to redeem. And our own generation is no different. Some eyes are closed because of laziness, some because of fearfulness, and some because of a deadly indifference.

But for all diseases, all impairments of vision, there is a sure cure.

The Laodicean church—so like the Church of today—was urged to admit its wretched condition (“miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Rev. 3:17), and, among other things, to anoint its eyes with Spirit-provided eye-salve, so that it might see.

Our Lord came preaching and healing, giving physical sight to many who were blind and spiritual sight to all who would receive him. And today he offers spiritual sight for the taking. The Holy Spirit opens blinded eyes so that sinners can see. His Word brings spiritual light. “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law,” the psalmist prayed. Little wonder that Satan attacks the Bible so viciously. He knows it brings sight to those who read and believe!

Pride closes the door to spiritual sight. Like the beggars of old, we must come seeking the boon of sight once more: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David.… Lord, that our eyes may be opened” (Matt. 20:31, 33). Until we admit our blindness, we will never be in a position to receive his healing touch. But when we do, we too can sing, “Once I was blind, but now 1 can see!”

PLUMB WISE

Jim Barclay is basically an average looking man. Average height, average build—but with that lean bony face that speaks of his origin in Appalachia. Jim is a Christian by profession and a carpenter by trade.

The other day he was doing some remodeling in my home. “That wall looks crooked,” I said.

“Nary a bit of it!” he replied.

After I had made a few other valuable suggestions Jim said, “I reckon it’s about all a man can do in life to master one trade. You write, don’t you?”

And so we began discussing our mutual difficulties in working for a living. “You know, it ain’t always easy to be a Christian,” he said. “You got to do your best, be fair to the other fellow in what you charge, and give a friend a break when you can—and all the while make a livin’ for your brood. And after you make a living, you got to live and try to raise your family right. Whup the kids often enough but keep on lovin’em.”

“You know, you do all you can for your kids and they still grieve you,” he said somewhat sadly. “They love you but they grieve you.”

“My least son went out and joined the Army and now he’s AWOL,” he continued, shaking his head and laughing the laugh of one who can see the incongruous twist even in a personally painful situation.

“He’s just a baby. He’s so young he don’t realize what he’s doin’ to hisself. But I love him and I haven’t given up on him. I think the Lord is dealing with his heart and they aint no limit to what he can do.”

The conversation moved on to less important matters, and then somehow we were talking about drinking. “Some folks think it’s all right to drink that wine and beer,” he said.

Always the devil’s advocate, I said, “Well, I think you’d have a hard time making a case from the Bible that drinking is wrong in and of itself apart from the abuse.”

He thought for a moment and said, “Yes, but it has a way of leadin’ on to other things. And besides, why see how close you come to sin? Why not see how far you can stay away from it?”

As I went upstairs to do other things I was followed by the sound of his voice as he softly sang “Precious Lord.”

Later, after Jim had gone, I was thinking about this man and reflecting happily on his faith and commitment to Christ. But as I thought further, my good feeling turned to shame when I realized that it was necessary for me to adjust to the idea of a wise carpenter.

A DIFFERENCE THAT HELPS

Patricia Ward’s “The Challenge of Student Idealists” (Jan. 29) is a most interesting, and extremely relevant, article. There is one important qualification that I would like to make, and that is that the “love, selflessness, and sharing [that] few Christians could deny” is not the same “love, selflessness, and sharing” that this group of college students believe in.

Although the symbols are the same, and to a limited extent the outward manifestations of the contents, the spiritual roots are very different—and conflicting. Rather than posing a problem for the evangelist, though, this difference can be effectively used to help students to come to know Christ Jesus. Indeed, it is fruitful to compare the hedonism, occultism, mysticism, and hallucinating experiences which result from an egocentric or anthropocentric “spirit” with the fruits of the Spirit! Stanford, Calif.

WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

In “The Ninety-second Congress: A Religious Census” (Dec. 4) you incorrectly listed Parren J. Mitchell (D.-Md.) as a Methodist. Representative Mitchell, who is the first black congressman elected in the history of Maryland, is, in fact, a very devout and active member of St. Katherine’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore.… The Methodists take credit away from us for the Wesleys, and we would hate to see them do the same thing with regard to the congressman.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Westville, N. J.

• So would we. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.—ED.

GOOD CLEANSING ACTION

The column “Ecology of the Spirit” (Jan. 29) by L. Nelson Bell was very enlightening. I’m glad to know someone is working to help clean up what is published in Christian magazines. I hope by reading the article … other people will be inspired to take action along this line.

Spokane, Wash.

AN OPENING SALVO

I wish to commend you for the … vigorous, clear, and effective editorial “Financing Murder” (Jan. 29). You have proclaimed prophetically … “the demands of the Eternal against the hedonistic, now-oriented culture.” We have been hoping for such forthright denunciation of this growing and growingly accepted practice of “infanticide upon demand,” and we hope it is but an opening salvo. Christian people must not be allowed to be lulled into tacit acceptance of this monstrous immorality of our permissive and decadent culture.

Lavallette, N.J.

THE WARRING ELEMENTS

Professor Hamilton’s critique of “The New Evangelism” (Jan. 29) made many excellent points. His reliance upon Barth in the critique, however, makes me uneasy. For it is a post-Barthian development that new social theologians like Moltmann, Pannenberg, Braaten, and Cox have evolved a theology which is political and eschatological in character to be both secular and Christian. As Barth introduced a theological basis for Christian-Marxist dialogue, so the new social theology has many affinities with the Marxist view of the relation of thought and acting.

Further, Barth’s theological affirmation about the activity of God in history and society became meaningless, if not impossible, because his biblical theology accepted the naturalistic account of space-time events. For Harvey Cox, Barth’s covenant theology provides the basis for a sweeping kind of Christian humanism. It alters in no way the secular, humanistic dimensions. However, the integration of the secular and the Christian view has proved difficult in Barth as well as new social evangelism; the secular elements war against the Christian ones, and the former prevail.

It is at this point that Professor Hamilton’s proposal to “hold sacred and secular in tension” is a report of experience rather than a better alternative to the problematic integration of the two different views, an alternative derived from the social relevance of the Gospel and a God-willed structure for society. One may be afraid that his leaning to Barth and Bonhoeffer makes his conservative alternative rather futile.

Chicago, Ill.

MAJORING ON MINORS

The article by Belden Menkus, “Evangelical Responsibility in Public Education” (Feb. 12), was both well documented and interesting, especially the mention of the National Reform Association and the Christian Amendment Movement (recently renamed the Christian Government Movement).

It seems the article may imply that their century of work (failure?) therefore proves that the United States is in truth a “religious people” with a “Supreme Being” and yet a “secular state.” Disregarding the apparent contradiction and in defense of the C.G.M., two questions are asked:

1. Does even a Supreme Court justice’s statement make it a valid antithesis to the C.G.M.? The Athenians also were fanatically religious, including devotion to their Unrealized God (Acts 17:22, 23). That was not the True God of Paul and the C.G.M. however.

2. Does calling the United States a “secular state” make that verity? Recalling Paul in verse 28 now, “for in him [God] we live, and are being moved, and have our being”.… Has the author biblically demonstrated that a figment of a “secular state” (i.e., neutral to God, autonomous to God’s Kingdom) can exist? Doesn’t Romans 13:1 explicitly state that “the powers that be are ordained of God”?

Consequently, the author himself majored on minors—school religion—whereas he should have treated the authority beneath schools (government), as the Christian Government Movement does.

Reformed Presbyterian Church

Almonte, Ontario

ABUSING GOD’S WORD

The editorial, “Capitalism vs. Communism” (Feb. 12), contains some surprising errors of fact and analysis. For example, Sweden is not a socialistic nation; in fact, “private enterprise is almost as prevalent in that country as in the United States” (Grossman, Economic Systems, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 67). Also, your allegation that “estate taxes are so prohibitive that the overwhelming proportion of a large estate would go to the government” is simply contrary to readily available facts.

You state that “a good case can be made for private capitalism from Scripture” and then assert (following Marx!) that “Thou shalt not steal” implies the existence of private property in productive resources. This is logically fallacious. A society might, for example stipulate that all productive resources will be publicly owned but that consumer goods may be privately owned. This, in fact, resembles the situation in totalitarian socialist nations. Would not the biblical prohibition against theft apply to consumer goods? Moreover, theft from government is surely just as contrary to this commandment as theft from private owners of wealth.

Even your allegation that stewardship of possessions requires private ownership is not logically valid. A Christian is certainly responsible to God for the use of all material things which he controls or utilizes, regardless of whether he owns them, rents them, or even merely borrows them.

Although I am no theologian, I would have thought that an evangelical publication would consider any attempt to build a biblical case for capitalism or any other man-made economic or political system a gross abuse of God’s Word.

Prof. of Economics

Carthage College

Kenosha, Wis.

NO TO ‘BUMP AND GRIND’

With regard to Mr. Chandler’s story, “Religious Broadcasting Marks Fiftieth Year” (Feb. 12), our conviction is that rock music is aimed at the groin and not at the heart. Obscene music has no … place in God’s house.… If … this bump and grind “music” is not obscene, then what is it? Read what the Reverend David Wilkerson says about kids being hooked on rock music.… [Using it] to accompany religious verse does not redeem it.

Covington, Ky.

NO BESMIRCH INTENDED

Editorial comment, “The Perils of Publishing Satire” (Feb. 12), called attention [to this problem]. The perils of publishing responses to satire may be greater still. I was greatly disturbed by what appeared to be a scribal error in the otherwise helpful letter of Professor Charles Dillman of Greenville College, published in that same issue. In adding to the thesis of the earlier article by Gordon Clark, Mr. Dillman states, according to the published document, “He realized the symbolic relationship of the two kinds of plant.” I am confident that the word intended is symbiotic. I am anxious lest the reputation of Greenville College and of Mr. Dillman be besmirched by the printing of a document which would suggest that a symbolic, rather than literal, evangelical interpretation of Scripture is practiced either by the institution (my own esteemed alma mater) or the professor.

Wilmore, Ky.

• Professor Dillman also wrote “sparing” rather than “spring.” He is not so esoteric as to try to “spring” a tree. We apologize “10,000 per cent.”—ED.

SCHOLARLY PSYCHEDELICS?

I am wondering—is the cover design (Feb. 26) supposed to be psychedelic in nature? If so, is the impression meant to be given that the books reviewed inside (the issue’s theme) give a psychedelic experience? I thought that books (good ones) were to produce rational and responsible experience, rather than the opposite which is often associated with psychedelic drugs, etc. Just wondering.

Executive Vice-President

Southeastern Bible College

Birmingham, Ala.

The burden of proof rests always with the affirmative. This is a law of forensics which is unalterable. Today we have COCU’s proposal for church union, but many people wonder why. What problems will it solve? The real question is not whether the present proposal for union is acceptable, but whether any proposal of merger can provide answers to the real problems of the church, which are legion.

COCU had its birth when, riding the crest of a merger, Eugene Carson Blake made his proposal in California ten years ago. The newly formed United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. then felt that merger was the answer to problems that were hardly in focus at that time. Reduced overhead would, it was thought, make more money available for mission. One central government would eliminate complications. The evangelistic thrust would be sharpened. Divisions would be healed.

But merger did not achieve any of these. Indeed, each of the problems was enlarged. Missionaries have been withdrawn from the fields by the hundreds since 1960. Overhead has zoomed upward. Division has been aggravated. Evangelism in our denomination has become almost nonexistent. The church has lost its influence. Religious dropouts have skyrocketed in number. Merger has in no way resolved the church’s real problems.

Can structural unity answer the needs of today’s church? All evidence is to the contrary. The Roman Catholic Church has enjoyed structural unity since its inception, yet its problems are as bad or worse than those of protestantism. While strong leaders within romanism are seeking to decentralize its government and to achieve a more democratic structure, having seen that structural unity does not answer its needs, nine protestant denominations are seeking to move in the opposite direction. They propose to establish a church government which will place the power in the hands of a few, namely one pastor and two elected representative laymen for each congregation; these persons to be a part of a “parish council” which will handle the government for the people, rather than government by the people. Nor will the “parish council” have any geographical order or sense.

Why are we going in this direction? No proof has been offered that the new merger will resolve any of our real problems. The only reason we have the COCU proposal today is that it seemed the thing to do in

1960. But the past decade has made the proposal obsolete because we now see that our problems are beyond the reach of merger. Why do we proceed with a plan which a decade of experience has proved will only lead to greater complexities, greater waste, greater loss, greater defeat and no advances? This the proponents of the plan have apparently not dealt with. They have not fulfilled their simplest forensic responsibility. They lay before us a plan born out of an obsolete hope, that the union of denominations would add strength. A decade of time has proven that a forlorn hope.

Perhaps what we have missed is that we can have union without structural unification. The Christian community is growing more and more solid without merger. Brothers don’t have to be twins. They don’t even need to be members of the same family. Nine strings of pearls combined on one thread will unify them and make them longer, and will also make them more apt to tangle and become unusable. And, more expensive.

Wars are fought and won by many battalions fighting under different flags but under the same general.

Perhaps we should start emphasizing that common generalship rather than structural unity. And it might be well to do it quickly before we lose too many battles and endanger the outcome of the war.

How can COCU solve our real problems? It seems highly unlikely that it will resolve any, but rather add to their complexity.—WILLIAM R. MCGEARY, JR., pastor. Sunset Hills United Presbyterian Church, Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Reprinted by permission from Monday Morning (February 8, 1971)..

RESOLUTION

I could live friendless

(except for a friend)

Homeless

(except I know home)

Live forever as case in point

(except for the obvious tomb)

Then

I should live silent

(except for a word)

Stilted

(except for grace)

And keep quite inhospitable

in that underground room

(except for my hosted place)

SANDRA DUGUID

This paper was read to an assembly of Anglican priests and youth leaders at the “Carmarthen Conference for Youth Leaders and Junior Clergy” of the Church in Wales at Carmarthen during Easter, 1945, and is reprinted from “God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics” by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper (Eerdmans, 1970, pp. 89–103). In the first part, Lewis suggested to these church leaders that in their attempts to reach their “uneducated and unbelieving” countrymen, they should realize that these people are likely to (1) be very skeptical about history, (2) distrust ancient texts, and (3) have almost no sense of sin.

(4) We must learn the language of our audience. And let me say at the outset that it is no use at all laying down a priori what the ‘plain man’ does or does not understand. You have to find out by experience. Thus most of us would have supposed that the change from ‘may truly and indifferently minister justice’ to ‘may truly and impartially’ made that place easier to the uneducated (the first quotation is from the prayer for the ‘Whole state of Christ’s Church’ in the service of Holy Communion, Prayer Book [1662]; the second is the revised form of that same phrase as found in the 1928 Prayer Book); but a priest of my acquaintance discovered that his sexton saw no difficulty in indifferently (‘It means making no difference between one man and another’ he said) but had no idea what impartially meant.

On this question of language the best thing I can do is to make a list of words which are used by the people in a sense different from ours.

Atonement. Does not really exist in a spoken modern English, though it would be recognized as ‘a religious word.’ In so far as it conveys any meaning to the uneducated I think it means compensation. No one word will express to them what Christians mean by Atonement: you must paraphrase.

Being. (Noun) Never means merely ‘entity’ in popular speech. Often it means what we should call a ‘personal being’ (e.g. a man said to me ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost but I don’t think He is a being!’).

Catholic means Papistical.

Charity. Means (a) Alms, (b) A ‘charitable organization,’ (c) Much more rarely—indulgence (i.e. a ‘charitable’ attitude towards a man is conceived as one that denies or condones his sins, not as one that loves the sinner in spite of them).

Christian. Has come to include almost no idea of belief. Usually a vague term of approval. The question ‘What do you call a Christian?’ has been asked of me again and again. The answer they wish to receive is ‘A Christian is a decent chap who’s unselfish etc.’

Church. Means (a) A sacred building, (b) The clergy. Does not suggest to them the ‘company of all faithful people’ (a phrase which occurs in the prayer of ‘Thanksgiving’ at the end of the service of Holy Communion). Generally used in a bad sense. Direct defence of the Church is part of our duty: but use of the word Church where there is no time to defend it alienates sympathy and should be avoided where possible.

Creative. Now means merely ‘talented,’ ‘original.’ The idea of creation in the theological sense is absent from their minds.

Creature means ‘beast,’ ‘irrational animal.’ Such an expression as ‘We are only creatures’ would almost certainly be misunderstood.

Crucifixion, Cross etc. Centuries of hymnody and religious cant have so exhausted these words that they now very faintly—if at all—convey the idea of execution by torture. It is better to paraphrase; and, for the same reason, to say flogged for New Testament scourged (Matt. 27:26; Mark 15:15; John 19:1).

Dogma. Used by the people only in a bad sense to mean ‘unproved assertion delivered in an arrogant manner.’

Immaculate Conception. In the mouth of an uneducated speaker always means Virgin Birth.

Morality means chastity.

Personal. I had argued for at least ten minutes with a man about the existence of a ‘personal devil’ before I discovered that personal meant to him corporeal. I suspect this of being widespread. When they say they don’t believe in a ‘personal’ God they may often mean only that they are not anthropomorphists.

Potential. When used at all is used in an engineering sense: never means ‘possible.’

Primitive. Means crude, clumsy, unfinished, inefficient. ‘Primitive Christianity’ would not mean to them at all what it does to you.

Sacrifice. Has no associations with temple and altar. They are familiar with this word only in the journalistic sense (‘The Nation must be prepared for heavy sacrifices’).

Spiritual. Means primarily immaterial, incorporeal, but with serious confusions from the Christian uses of πνεῦμα (which means ‘spirit,’ as in 1 Cor. 14:12). Hence the idea that whatever is ‘spiritual’ in the sense of ‘non-sensuous’ is somehow better than anything sensuous: e.g., they don’t really believe that envy could be as bad as drunkenness.

Vulgarity. Usually means obscenity or ‘smut.’ There are bad confusions (and not only in uneducated minds) between: (a) The obscene or lascivious: what is calculated to provoke lust. (b) The indecorous: what offends against good taste or propriety. (c) The vulgar proper: what is socially ‘low.’ ‘Good’ people tend to think (b) as sinful as (a) with the result that others feel (a) to be just as innocent as (b).

To conclude—you must translate every bit of your Theology into the vernacular. This is very troublesome and it means you can say very little in half an hour, but it is essential. It is also of the greatest service to your own thought. I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one’s own meaning. A passage from some theological work for translation into the vernacular ought to be a compulsory paper in every Ordination examination.

I turn now to the question of the actual attack. This may be either emotional or intellectual. If I speak only of the intellectual kind, that is not because I undervalue the other but because, not having been given the gifts necessary for carrying it out, I cannot give advice about it. But I wish to say most emphatically that where a speaker has that gift, the direct evangelical appeal of the ‘Come to Jesus’ type can be as overwhelming today as it was a hundred years ago. I have seen it done, preluded by a religious film and accompanied by hymn singing, and with very remarkable effect. I cannot do it: but those who can ought to do it with all their might. I am not sure that the ideal missionary team ought not to consist of one who argues and one who (in the fullest sense of the word) preaches. Put up your arguer first to undermine their intellectual prejudices; then let the evangelist proper launch his appeal. I have seen this done with great success. But here I must concern myself only with the intellectual attack. Non omnia possumus omnes (‘Not all things can we all do,’ Virgil, Eclogues, bk. VIII, line 63).

And first, a word of encouragement. Uneducated people are not irrational people. I have found that they will endure, and can follow, quite a lot of sustained argument if you go slowly. Often, indeed, the novelty of it (for they have seldom met it before) delights them.

Do not attempt to water Christianity down. There must be no pretence that you can have it with the Supernatural left out. So far as I can see Christianity is precisely the one religion from which the miraculous cannot be separated. You must frankly argue for supernaturalism from the very outset.

The two popular ‘difficulties’ you will probably have to deal with are these. (1) ‘Now that we know how huge the universe is and how insignificant the Earth, it is ridiculous to believe that the universal God should be specially interested in our concerns.’ In answer to this you must first correct their error about fact. The insignificance of Earth in relation to the universe is not a modern discovery: nearly 2,000 years ago Ptolemy (Almagest, bk. 1, ch. v) said that in relation to the distance of the fixed stars Earth must be treated as a mathematical point without magnitude. Secondly, you should point out that Christianity says what God has done for Man; it doesn’t say (because it doesn’t know) what He has or has not done in other parts of the universe. Thirdly, you might recall the parable of the one lost sheep (Matt. 18:11–14; Luke 15:4–7). If Earth has been specially sought by God (which we don’t know) that may not imply that it is the most important thing in the universe, but only that it has strayed. Finally, challenge the whole tendency to identify size and importance. Is an elephant more important than a man, or a man’s leg than his brain?

(2) ‘People believed in miracles in the Old Days because they didn’t then know that they were contrary to the Laws of Nature.’ But they did. If St. Joseph didn’t know that a virgin birth was contrary to Nature (i.e. if he didn’t know the normal origin of babies) why, on discovering his wife’s pregnancy, was he ‘minded to put her away’ (Matt. 1:19)? Obviously, no event would be recorded as a wonder unless the recorders knew the natural order and saw that this was an exception. If people didn’t yet know that the Sun rose in the East they wouldn’t be even interested in its once rising in the West. They would not record it as a miraculum—nor indeed record it at all. The very idea of ‘miracle’ presupposes knowledge of the Laws of Nature; you can’t have the idea of an exception until you have the idea of a rule.

It is very difficult to produce arguments on the popular level for the existence of God. And many of the most popular arguments seem to me invalid. Some of these may be produced in discussion by friendly members of the audience. This raises the whole problem of the ‘embarrassing supporter.’ It is brutal (and dangerous) to repel him; it is often dishonest to agree with what he says. I usually try to avoid saying anything about the validity of his argument in itself and reply, ‘Yes. That may do for you and me. But I’m afraid if we take that line our friend here on my left might say etc. etc.’

Fortunately, though very oddly, I have found that people are usually disposed to hear the divinity of Our Lord discussed before going into the existence of God. When I began I used, if I were giving two lectures, to devote the first to mere Theism; but I soon gave up this method because it seemed to arouse little interest. The number of clear and determined atheists is apparently not very large.

When we come to the Incarnation itself, I usually find that some form of the aut Deus aut malus homo (‘Either God or a bad man’) can be used. The majority of them start with the idea of the ‘great human teacher’ who was deified by His superstitious followers. It must be pointed out how very improbable this is among Jews and how different to anything that happened with Plato, Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed. The Lord’s own words and claims (of which many are quite ignorant) must be forced home. (The whole case, on a popular level, is very well put indeed in Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.)

Something will usually have to be said about the historicity of the Gospels. You who are trained theologians will be able to do this in ways which I could not. My own line was to say that I was a professional literary critic and I thought I did know the difference between legend and historical writing: that the Gospels were certainly not legends (in one sense they’re not good enough): and that if they are not history then they are realistic prose fiction of a kind which actually never existed before the eighteenth century. Little episodes such as Jesus writing in the dust when they brought Him the woman taken in adultery (John 8:3–8) (which have no doctrinal significance at all) are the mark.

One of the great difficulties is to keep before the audience’s mind the question of Truth. They always think you are recommending Christianity not because it is true but because it is good. And in the discussion they will at every moment try to escape from the issue ‘True—or False’ into stuff about a good society, or morals, or the incomes of Bishops, or the Spanish Inquisition, or France, or Poland—or anything whatever. You have to keep forcing them back, and again back, to the real point. Only thus will you be able to undermine (a) Their belief that a certain amount of ‘religion’ is desirable but one mustn’t carry it too far. One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important. (b) Their firm disbelief of Article XVIII in the Prayer Book (Of obtaining eternal Salvation by the Name of Christ, which says ‘They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved’). Of course it should be pointed out that, though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life. And it should (at least in my judgement) be made clear that we are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected. But, on the other hand, I think we must attack wherever we meet it the nonsensical idea that mutually exclusive propositions about God can both be true.

For my own part, I have sometimes told my audience that the only two things really worth considering are Christianity and Hinduism. (Islam is only the greatest of the Christian heresies, Buddhism only the greatest of the Hindu heresies. Real Paganism is dead. All that was best in Judaism and Platonism survives in Christianity.) There isn’t really, for an adult mind, this infinite variety of religions to consider. We may salva reverentia (‘Without outraging reverence’) divide religions, as we do soups, into ‘thick’ and ‘clear.’ By Thick I mean those which have orgies and ecstasies and mysteries and local attachments: Africa is full of Thick religions. By Clear I mean those which are philosophical, ethical and universalizing: Stoicism, Buddhism, and the Ethical Society are Clear religions. Now if there is a true religion it must be both Thick and Clear; for the true God must have made both the child and the man, both the savage and the citizen, both the head and the belly. And the only two religions that fulfil this condition are Hinduism and Christianity. But Hinduism fulfils it imperfectly. The clear religion of the neighbouring temple go side by side. The Brahmin hermit doesn’t bother about the temple prostitution nor the worshipper in the temple about the hermit’s metaphysics. But Christianity really breaks down the middle wall of the partition. It takes a convert from central Africa and tells him to obey an enlightened universalist ethic: it takes a twentieth-century academic prig like me and tells me to go fasting to a Mystery, to drink the blood of the Lord. The savage convert has to be Clear: I have to be Thick. That is how one knows one has come to the real religion.

One last word. I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as from our intellectual counters, into the Reality—from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself. That also is why we need one another’s continual help—oremus pro invicem (‘Let us pray for each other’).

I find myself standing in a no-man’s-land.

I have deep sympathy for social revolution. I am disturbed, however, by radical churchmen who emphasize social action but have little Gospel. They promote voter registration, march in protests, conduct study classes, fight racism, struggle for the rights of migrants, agitate against the war in Viet Nam—all things that ought to be done—but they have little concern for forgiveness of sin, the new life of faith, and a joyous and vibrant relation to Christ alive.

I have a deep commitment to evangelical Christianity. Yet I am equally disturbed by evangelicals, especially Bible-belt fundamentalists, who are gung-ho to get people converted but who have little social vision and less social action. They say, “Preach the Gospel but stay out of politics,” meaning: “Don’t disturb things in our community.” “No race mixing,” meaning: “Keep the Negroes out of our schools and our lily-white churches.” “Poor people are just lazy,” meaning: “We don’t want to pay our maids and janitors honest wages.” “People in the slums just don’t want anything better,” meaning: “We don’t care if people rot in the inner-city cesspools while we go about our business in suburbia.”

Believe me when I say I have prayed earnestly that I will be able to speak about this in terms of urgent love. I want both the activists and the pietists to see the failure of half-gospels. Elton Trueblood is right: intense social action without a life of devotion produces damaging results, “one of which is calculated arrogance” (The New Man for Our Time, p. 21). But he also says that while concentrated attention upon devotion, evangelism, and piety may lead us to focus upon the love of Christ, it may also lead us to “forget those whom Christ loves” (p. 27). Both the social activists and the evangelicals need to become reconciled to a larger Gospel than either has ever known alone.

About seventy years ago the social gospel arose, with some good aspects despite its rather defective theology. But evangelicals wouldn’t touch it, and the possibility of a merger of social action and evangelism was lost at a time when that combination was sorely needed. Later the Federal Council of Churches tried to implement the social gospel and unite it with evangelism—particularly under the leadership of Jesse Bader. But that effort was soon dissipated into a largely social and political concern.

Theological liberalism lacked both an evangelical Gospel and an urgent motivation. Neo-orthodoxy might have helped had it not been so obsessed with human sinfulness. It is curious that a movement that accurately diagnosed the disease of human sin failed to offer an experience of salvation to cure the condition.

The radical theologians of our time are still too confused to offer much help. They have a concern for social action, but their ministry is largely man to man. Their emphasis upon acknowledging our humanity tends to erase any distinction between the Christian and the sinner.

A New Evangelism

Now evangelism has re-emerged, through departments of evangelism in the churches and extra-church movements such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, and the work of Billy Graham and other evangelists. I thoroughly approve these efforts; I want them also to be concerned for the social sins of our times and to correct not only men’s souls but their social behavior.

I do not want to be misunderstood: we may provide the most effective social revolution possible and still have a pagan society. Permit me to quote what I have written elsewhere:

I get the impression that we often conclude that if we establish day-care centers, tutoring classes, recreation for juveniles, half-way houses for alcoholics, counseling opportunities for confused adults, if we minister to hippies, operate coffeehouses, live in the inner city, engage in protest rallies, promote open housing, and all the other needed activities to heal the hurt of people—that the kingdom is thereby established.

The fact is: we can do every single one of these things, and do them all perfectly, and still never be the people of God nor proclaim the Gospel [“Dilemmas of an Evangelical Methodist,” Christian Advocate, Dec. 25, 1969, p. 8].

On the other hand, if we engage in traditional evangelism but fail to take our places at the disease centers of society, we still have a pagan culture. It may be an ecclesiastical form of paganism, but it is paganism nonetheless.

Revolutions are part of the climate of the times—the Marxist revolution, the hippie revolution, the ecological, ecumenical, and racial revolutions—and the most radical of all is the Revolution of Christ. Unless we are committed to this certainty, we shall miss the golden opportunity of our day. The seventies demand a revolution big enough to match the glamour of the Gospel!

What are some of the signs of this Christian revolution?

• A young priest resigned from a well-to-do Episcopal parish to establish Emmaus House in the heart of the inner city. He lives among exploited people, and the “House” is a center for their struggle for recognition. He is their representative in search of open housing, adequate wages, better education, medical care, justice in court, and other social improvements.

• Cliff-dwellers in apartment houses stirred the soul of a church, and it now pays a young couple to live among them with no job description except that people there need Christ.

• A professor in an evangelical seminary takes groups of students into the Harlem and Chicago ghettos to live among the poor people. He tells me that though some seminary supporters are surprised, when they see the results they approve.

• Youth in a Methodist church prepared special music for a Sunday-night service. Wearing semi-hippie garb and strumming guitars, they sang their own arrangement: “Where have all the meek ones gone—long time ago?” “Where have all the mourners gone—long time ago?” “Where have all the peacemakers gone—long time ago?” Never had the Sermon on the Mount so moved a congregation as on that night!

• Two couples, college graduates, took over an unused school building and made of it a “Christ Center.” In the “Catacombs,” runaways, addicts, lonely outcasts, university students—a cross section of downtown city life—find food, shelter, friendship, worship, and a new way of life.

• Students who are committed to non-violence join marches, not to burn and brutalize but to act as reconcilers and keep violence from erupting. Quietly standing between groups that hate each other, they are able to get the hotheads to “cool it.”

• Two Anglican missionaries fled from China to Hong Kong, where they found that the nearest thing to Red China was the Old Walled City, a refuge for criminals, prostitutes, and drug addicts. Though the area was out of bounds for Westerners, Mrs. Donithorne opened a milk bar, established a school, conducted worship, loved the unfortunate people, while her husband celebrated Holy Communion.

• A white Methodist congregation in Atlanta requested the appointment of a black man as pastor. This church was determined to minister where the people lived.

• A little baby lay helpless in a hospital bed in Korea, tubes inserted into his nose and mouth. He was a pathetic bit of humanity. But the child would soon be up and busy, said the doctor, a life saved through love. This child had been rescued from the city dump heap by evangelical Christians.

• One of our Candler graduates, after extensive studies in pastoral care and faithful ministry as a hospital chaplain, chose to join the staff of a Negro Baptist church in Atlanta. Here he found an open door of service—a white man among black people, a Methodist in a Baptist church. His wife, a polio victim on crutches, also a Candler graduate and an ordained Methodist minister, stood with him. Last summer he was robbed, shot, and killed while at work. His wife demonstrated a triumphant faith in that dark hour, even offering a prayer of victory at the cemetery. John Howard, a white martyr in a black community, joins others who have lost their lives for the Kingdom. And his ministry continues among those he loved.

• In Saigon, four men, in a ten-ton truck with a $40,000 cargo of critical medical supplies, felt God wanted them in Cambodia. They struggled through battles, open fields, and blasted highways to get to Phnom Penh, where they met a war casualty—one among thousands. But let them tell their story:

He was only twenty-eight, with a wife and child. He had lost a leg and his eyesight while defending his village against the Viet Cong. The disfiguring scars on his face were still a raw pink. I put my arm around his shoulder to reassure him, and felt the tense muscles start to relax. His fingers quietly explored their way over the sides of the chair down to the wheels. It took only a moment for the realization to sink in that this was a wheelchair—his wheelchair. And then his scarred face broke into a smile, accented by a trickle of tears from his sightless eyes. I will not soon forget that moment of emotion when I saw love unlock a life.… We had a time of thanksgiving … that God had protected us … and that He had allowed evangelical Christians to be the first on the scene with this tangible expression of love and concern for the suffering Cambodian people [letter from W. Stanley Mooneyham, president of World Vision International, July 6, 1970].

• Devoted Christian young people in Berkeley, California, have united to present Christ at the center of militant protest—to members of the SDS, Black Panthers, Mao Tse-tung followers, and all the rest. Through witness groups, personal testimony, underground newspapers, public meetings, and daily contacts, they salvage disillusioned youth and turn them on for Jesus!

Many other examples could be given, for there is an “endless line of splendor” reaching around the world. Never has the door been so wide open for evangelism as now. In fact, as E. Stanley Jones says, “not only is the door open—the whole side of the house is down!” What is required is a wholehearted advance using sanctified imagination to grasp this opportunity for Christ. Timid, take-it-or-leave-it evangelism is out of place in our day.

Now: Some Convictions

In my struggle with this theme, some convictions have emerged.

In the future, less and less evangelism will be done at the church building. There will be less emphasis upon the church as a place to go; it will be, rather, a crusade in which to participate. No place is out of bounds for him who is mastered by Christ alive. I understand the comment of the half-drunk woman in a pub who had repeatedly seen the minister come in and sit among the drinkers. She finally said, “I know why you are here. You are here to represent Jesus” (Gordon Winch, in Listen to the World). The Gospel from a drunk!

Evangelism must be structured around the needs of people in the world. We are called to invade for Christ any place where there is a sub-Christian living. As Oral Roberts so often says, “a need exists to be met.” It must never be said that the Black Muslims are more concerned with the education of Negroes than are evangelicals. It must never be said that SDS agitators on campuses are more concerned for peace than are evangelicals. It must never be said that the Black Panthers are more concerned about feeding hungry children in ghettos than are evangelicals. It must never be said that marchers in civil-rights protests are more concerned for poor people than are evangelicals. It must never be said that labor unions and the Coca-Cola Company are more concerned for migrants than are evangelicals. Wherever there is a human need, that is where we belong.

There must be a simplification of our message and mission. We must confront confused and suspicious people clearly with Christ and his Way. We may have to apologize for the failure of organized Christianity, but we never have to apologize for Christ. Over forty years ago the Jerusalem Meeting of the International Missionary Council adopted a statement that stresses the central authority of Christ for our task: “We believe in a Christ-like world. We know nothing better; we can be content with nothing less” (Report of the Jerusalem Meeting, 1928, p. 406). I like the attitude of E. Stanley Jones: “I am a candidate for conversion. Bring me something better than Jesus and his Way, and I’ll take it.”

“Therefore …”

After analyzing a situation and giving a theological judgment, Paul headed his directives for action, “Therefore.” I have no directives, but I do have some suggestions.

All Christians should give adequate time to a thorough study of the needs of the community, problems in such areas as drugs, crime, slums, hippies, migrants, pornography, racism, family life, unemployment, housing, disease, poverty, affluence, and recreation. Three questions ought to be asked and answered: (1) What are the specific facts? (2) What should we do about them? (3) When do we begin—and how?

We should take a new look at theological seminaries; they may be doing more harm than good. What can we expect from our pulpits when their occupants are men trained under teachers who profess no faith in God, doubt his existence, regard Jesus as only a good man and not a Saviour, have no place for prayer, minimize the authority of the Bible, dismiss any idea of spiritually transformed lives under the Holy Spirit, do not believe in life after death, and have long since come to regard our evangelical heritage as out of date. I do not suggest that seminaries become Bible institutes, though at present worse things may be happening. But if there is little hope in giving major attention to the Gospel in our seminaries, which I suspect is true, at least the fairness doctrine ought to provide evangelicals with equal time. Unfortunately, it seems to be more and more difficult to secure evangelicals as faculty members.

Some method should be devised to utilize the methods and dynamic of various evangelical movements. No one has a monopoly on how to make the Gospel meaningful; we can learn from anyone committed to Christ and his mission. This is a call to unite in a crusade to turn America and the world toward the Cross.

We need an evangelism of ideas—conversion in attitudes. It is not sufficient to secure commitments to Christ unless there are substantial changes in the way we think. Attitudes of superiority, greed, racism, apathy, deadly routine religion, the status quo, and all the rest need to be brought to the altar to be changed. We must go to our knees in godly sorrow and repentance for the sub-Christian attitudes that we possess—and that possess us.

But, of course, there is one supreme secret of it all: Everything done in evangelism for revolution must be born in prayer. The number-one need in evangelism today is the need for prayer. Billy Graham is right: the secret of his ministry lies in the consecrated prayer of vast numbers of people. I do not attempt to explain it, but I believe that in some strange way beyond our understanding, “effectual, fervent prayer” still availeth much. It is not “To your tents, O Israel.” It is “To your altars, O Church of the living Christ!”

I close with words from Leighton Ford: “God’s revolution is going to go on, with or without you and me. But I don’t want to get left behind. So this is my prayer: Lord start a revolution, and start it in me!” Amen!

Radical Chic Is Out

Stewart Alsop pointed out recently that “radical chic suddenly isn’t chic any more. Instead, it has become a bore, and because it has become a bore, it is dying” (Newsweek, Dec. 14, 1970). He is referring, of course, to the latest “feast of unreason,” the New Left and its catastrophic effect upon thought and action in America. And he seems to be correct in his analysis. The New Left movement is a failure and a crashing bore, and the sooner it passes from sight, the better we will all be.

But radical chic as a style or a response is a problem for the churches also, and churches are much slower to change than the society at large. If we are not careful, society may well pass on to other preoccupations while the churches are left holding the bag. That would be most unchic! So let’s consider some of the specifics of radical chic, identify its tone and style, and ponder how to aid its passing from the Christian scene.

Radical chic is an empty-headed student defacing the walls of a university he is attending with scholarship aid and under an open-door policy with the inscription, “America is a fascist state.”

Radical chic is the ponderous announcement by the ultra in theologians that “God is dead” before any real work has been done to see whether the reports of this death might be, as Mark Twain said, “greatly exaggerated.”

Radical chic is deploring the bigness, anonymity, and destructive alienation caused by the merging of business and industries into heartless conglomerates while working from extra-parish positions to further the objectives of COCU.

Radical chic is complaining about waste in government while spending more on pet food than on feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and healing the sick (the benevolent outreach of any viable church).

Radical chic is moaning about the meaninglessness of life while churches are unattended and libraries and museums are ignored.

Radical chic is, in other words, a cop-out. It is a mood, style, or attitude that permits the chic to be radically for an ideal while ignoring pressing realities such as truth and hard work and self-discipline.

A world “run by burly sinners” is precisely the world to turn the tin-pot saints of the radical chic movement into objects of derision and contempt. And as this contempt gathers momentum in the larger society, the Church, while abetting the process, must see to it that all the pressing issues of our contemporary life that have been frustrated and obscured by this movement are still held steadily before us, waiting for those who are serious and ready to work—poverty, war, injustices and discrimination against women and Negroes, abuse of the environment, overpopulation. The radically chic are the prodigal sons of our time. Both society and the Church are the waiting father, waiting and hoping for the return to serious business of those who really want to work.—PAUL DOUGLAS, pastor, First Congregational Church, Rootstown, Ohio.

Claude H. Thompson is on the faculty of Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He has the B.D. and Ph.D. from Drew University. He is the author of “Theology of the Kerygma.”

DEAR BLACK PERSON:

Thank you for your wonderful letter (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, January 15, 1971). You wrote as a representative of your race, and I can only wish that your attitude of loving concern were the attitude of all blacks everywhere. Alas, it is not. But I can certainly understand why not. I have read Donald B. Gibson’s “The Negro: An Essay on Definition” (Yale Review, March, 1968), and have learned that one cannot speak of a monolithic Black-American culture in the same way that one can speak of Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans. For black Americans lack the common language, religion, and habits of social interaction that other ethnic groups possess. Black Americans lack these cohesive elements because they were systematically destroyed by white slave traders and slave masters.

I am ashamed of what my race has done to yours, and I understand that unless my race permits yours to discover the roots of its heritage and thus formulate a common culture, the only cohesive force your race can possibly have is defensiveness against the white establishment. I understand that certain black leaders have tried to develop a group identity by stressing violence as retaliation for centuries of white injustice. I understand that others have been more constructive, and have demanded instead that history books be rewritten and that black-studies courses be developed, with black instructors, so that your people may find themselves and understand their heritage and recover the proper pride that has been stolen from them. I realize, to my sorrow, that many whites have regarded these demands as trouble-making, instead of recognizing that you are asking only for what white people have had all along: an opportunity to explore their historical identity. I therefore cannot claim to speak for the whole white race as I write this letter. Although I am sure that many others feel as I do, I can speak only for myself.

For many years I was guilty of ignorance of your plight. I was ignorant because the history books I studied, the newspapers I read, and the radio and television that gave me the news were all slanted in favor of whiteness. I did not know that the Watts riot was precipitated by two incidents in which policemen on duty raped black women. I did not know that in 1966 a five-year-old black girl was raped by a white employee of the Head Start program, and that the incident was never even investigated. I did not know that black men were routinely but rudely questioned just for walking along the street, or that black homes were frequently invaded without benefit of warrant. Things like that never got into the news that reached me. Your people knew, I suppose, through their own newspapers or through the grapevine; and I suppose they thought I knew and did not care.

Last year I held a discussion in my classroom with several leaders of the Paterson State College Black Student Union. They accused me of willful ignorance—of not knowing the full facts of racial injustice because it would have been too uncomfortable for me to know. Seething with hatred, they also accused me of having personally killed and enslaved their forefathers, identifying me with my race as if I had been on the spot during every lynching ever perpetrated. It would have made just as much sense for me to accuse them of beating me up when I was in fifth grade. But I understood that the black students who pummeled me when I was a little girl were striking out not at me personally but at what I symbolized to them—the white oppressor. And although those violent fifth- and sixth-graders were black, I could by no means identify them with the Black Student Union leaders who faced me in my college classroom. For I believe we must approach one another as individuals, not as symbols or abstractions. Otherwise, all is surely lost.

But in a sense those Black Student Unionists were right about willful ignorance. Even though until very recently my newspapers did not tell me about brutal injustices, writers like William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell and Richard Wright had for many years been describing the atrocities perpetrated against your people in the South. Why had I chosen to assume that these were “only fiction,” or else represented “isolated cases”? Why had I refused to use my common sense, which would have told me that human nature does not change as one drives across the Mason-Dixon line, and that the combination of a position of authority (like a blue uniform and a white skin) and a vulnerable person without money or prestige (especially with a black skin) will often bring out the sadistic streak in human nature? Why had I simply not thought about these things?

I am guilty. I admit my guilt. But more importantly, I have repented, I have sought the forgiveness of the Christ-Saviour of white and black and every man, and I am seeking to educate myself and others so that the gap of interracial misunderstanding and abuse may yet be closed. With all my heart I echo the words of Dick Gregory in The Shadow That Scares Me:

To do justice means to treat all men with respect and human dignity—Negroes, whites, cops, and all of creation. To love kindness is to consciously seek an atmosphere of human dwelling in which the rights and needs of all men are respected. To walk humbly means to maintain an air of sensitivity which seeks first to understand human expression rather than to thwart or suppress it. Such is the climate of justice. And when that climate is created, respect for law and order—even an increase of genuine love—will follow [p. 87].

I was especially touched by this statement in your letter: “I am telling you these things because I want you to know me.” I feel the same way about you: I am telling you these things because I want you to know me. I want you to know that in order to raise my level of awareness, I have been sitting at the feet of black authors like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin (especially his Notes of a Native Son) and William Pannell and Tom Skinner; I have read and pondered Black Rage; and I have forced myself to read about white-perpetrated atrocities past and present. I have attended black talent shows and plays where I have been almost the only white person present, and have felt the shriveling sense of being in the spurned minority. It was good for me—it made me realize how the single black student in a classroom full of whites must often feel.

And I want you to know that I have left the church that mysteriously contained no black people even though there was a black community only minutes away, and have moved into a church where black families are present and welcome at social events as well as formal services. I will never again content myself with the hypocritical formula that “they are welcome if they want to come.” I have faced the fact that I would not go to an all-black church without a special invitation, and that black people are not any more eager to be rejected than I am.

Please know that many of us refuse to patronize a diner near Paterson State College because the management will not serve black people. Our boycott isn’t much of a contribution to justice, but at least we are trying. And I want you to know that I am endeavoring to help a young black man at an evangelical college who is being persecuted because he has not been sufficiently humble to suit the administration. Would you believe, Black Person, that this administration permitted the formation of a Black Student Union on its campus but stipulated that its members should have “nothing to do with racial problems”? (How is it possible to be black in 1971 America and have nothing to do with racial problems?) But yes, I suppose you would believe, because you have experienced so much radical injustice. I am broken-hearted at the callousness and hypocrisy of these evangelical leaders, and I am saddened by the realization that this is not the only case of such current and continuing persecution. I want to help this young man win the degree his college has threatened to withhold because of his “pugilistic attitude.” and I want to help him reach his goal of studying at a major theological seminary. We need loving and intelligent young people like him. And evangelicalism desperately needs something that black people are in a unique position to supply: soul.

I realize that evangelicals are not the only offenders. Perhaps we are not even the worst offenders. But we are offenders, God help us. God forgive us. And please, Black Person, give us your forgiveness too. Keep on writing to us, keep on teaching us, keep on praying for us. Sometimes we insult you without even realizing it, as when some of us call you “colored people.” We just haven’t stopped to think about the fact that we too are colored, except that we happen to be colored a different color. It has never occurred to us that there could be any implied insult in such a word, a hint of a difference that just isn’t there. Please forgive our ignorance and enlighten us.

Some of us still haven’t caught on that the Wordless Book and all such imagery of black (bad) hearts and white (good) hearts is a vast insult to your race. We simply haven’t imagined how it would feel to be dark-skinned children listening to the white-skinned lady talking about how if only we will open our hearts to Jesus, we can be delivered from what we are and become the way she already is by birth. Most of us haven’t meant to damage the self-concept of your children, but it is getting to the point where our ignorance is unforgivable. Please continue to push back the frontiers of our awareness so that we may develop consciences where before we have been seared by the hot iron of our careless habits.

I have one more confession to make. I am often self-conscious about my friendly feelings toward a black person, fearing that I may be exhibiting prejudice in reverse, perhaps using that person to alleviate my own white guilt. Sometimes I wish I could look at people and not even notice what color their skin is; yet if my wish came true, a great deal of the variety would go out of life. It might be almost as boring as being impervious to the differences between men and women. So—if I am wrong, please correct me—I think that the important goal to strive for in all my relationships is caring for other individuals as individuals, as unique people who are in their own way every inch as valid as I am in mine. I want to learn from your people, and I want to share my experience and friendship with you. I can understand why you will be a bit suspicious of me at first. But please, judge me not by my color but by my individual spirit. Whenever you catch me in what seems to be hypocrisy, please tell me. I want to be honest with you, with everyone. I want to understand you. I want to love you and be loved by you, for we are all members of the family of man. And please, when I reach out my hand in friendship toward you, take it.

Your fellow human being,

A WHITE PERSON

Virginia R. Mollenkott is associate professor of English at Paterson State College in New Jersey. She has the Ph.D. from New York University and has written “Adamant and Stone Chips” and “In Search of Balance.”

Each of the four Gospels concludes with an account of the great victory of Jesus over death and the grave in his resurrection from the dead. However, if my memory serves me aright, during four decades of participation in Easter worship services I have rarely—if ever—heard an Easter sermon based on Mark’s account in 16:1–8. This is somewhat remarkable, since I have been associated during all these years with churches concerned to preach the “whole Gospel”; surely the whole Gospel should, through the years, include all of the Gospels.

There are, admittedly, reasons for the neglect of this passage. For one thing, Mark 16:1–8 does not relate an actual resurrection appearance. Rather, it speaks of the empty tomb, and promises an appearance of Jesus to the disciples—and Peter: “He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you” (Mark 16:6, 7).

Added to this is a serious textual difficulty. In the King James Version, the sixteenth chapter of Mark concludes at verse 20. But in the Revised Standard Version, the primary text concludes with 16:8. A note from the translators states that “other texts and versions add as 16:9–20 the following passage” and then prints what is essentially the text found in the King James Version. The recent and widely used translation of the New Testament issued by the American Bible Society, Good News for Modern Man (Today’s English Version), places Mark 16:9–20 after 16:8 under the special heading “An Old Ending of the Gospel.” Most modern versions, including the Revised Standard Version and Today’s English Version, also take note of “Another Old Ending” (the TEV heading), a short ending consisting of verses 9 and 10 only.

The problem created by variation in the manuscript tradition has a direct bearing upon the interpretation of the text—the first task of preaching. If 16:8 is indeed the intended conclusion of Mark’s work, then the interpreter must find meaning in a text that concludes with an empty tomb and a promise—and above all the fearful flight from the tomb of women who had come to attend to Jesus’ dead body. If 16:20 is accepted as the conclusion, these apparent “deficiencies” disappear. A copyist or holder of an ancient manuscript of Mark that concluded with 16:8 might have felt the need to supplement the text with material available in the other Gospels. Many scholars believe that this did happen, and that Mark 16:9–20 reveals a strong dependence upon Luke’s resurrection narrative.

It is the thesis of this essay that both the textual tradition and the internal testimony warrant the conclusion, or working hypothesis, that Mark 16:8 is the original and intended ending of Mark’s gospel. What is more, as we shall see, this understanding of Mark opens the way to the perception of a great meaning of the resurrection that is not as forcefully affirmed in the other gospel narratives, which go on to narrate various resurrection appearances.

We cannot here discuss in detail the reasons why Mark 16:8 stands as the best-attested conclusion among our ancient manuscripts. (The better commentaries on Mark’s Gospel provide extended discussion of this matter; a fine review of the data is also available in The Witness of Matthew and Mark to Christ, by N. B. Stonehouse, Tyndale, 1944.) We offer only the following summary observations:

1. The longer ending, 16:9–20, is “missing” in the oldest manuscripts.

2. Important testimony by ancient writers, notably Eusebius, indicates that the most accurate copies, and almost all copies known to him, ended with the words found at the end of 16:8, “for they were afraid.”

3. A number of important manuscripts and ancient versions clearly presuppose some kind of break at Mark 16:8.

4. No single text type gives decisive support to the longer ending.

5. The longer ending is apparently dependent upon Luke’s Gospel.

These observations do not negate the value of the longer ending; they do suggest that, for careful study of the text, we do best to work with Mark 16:8 as the original and intended end of Mark’s Gospel. The internal witness of the Gospel reinforces this conclusion.

We turn now to the contextual reasons for seeking to understand Mark 16:1–8, as well as the entire Gospel of Mark, from the point of view that verse 8 is the final verse of the Gospel. Perhaps the most important observation is that Mark 16:1–8 does give decisive testimony to both the empty grave and the appearances of the Risen Lord to his disciples: the tomb is open (16:4). It is occupied not by Jesus’ body but by a heavenly messenger (16:5). The messenger affirms that the body is absent because Jesus is risen (16:6), and that Jesus is going before his disciples into Galilee, where they shall again see him (16:7). The amazement and fear of the women (16:5, 8) are the characteristic response throughout Mark’s Gospel of persons confronted by God’s authority and power in Jesus (cf. Mark 4:40 f.; 5:42; 6:2, 50; 7:37, 9:6). Students of Scripture need not be reminded that wherever God revealed himself, man stood bowed in awe of his majesty and power. The resurrection commands the same response!

Still, Mark 16:8 seems to be an abrupt way to conclude a Gospel—with no appearance, but rather a flight in silent fear. Yet this is not uncharacteristic of Mark; the style is abrupt throughout. The book begins in the middle of things, for, unlike the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and John, it makes no attempt to account for Jesus’ earthly or divine origins. The narrative simply begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. Thus Mark’s gospel is unique among the Gospels both in its way of beginning and in its way of conclusion—not to mention its rather compact narrative throughout. (This does not prevent Mark from a more detailed narrative of the events he does include.)

On the other hand, it is reasonably certain that Mark’s readers had long before heard the kind of telling of the Easter story that is reflected in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (15:1 ff.). This knowledge that the readers were informed of the Easter appearances in the basic Christian proclamation allowed for a narrative that led up to the appearances without including them. There was no rule about what a gospel witness should or should not include. No, readers of the Gospels do best to receive them as they are. From this standpoint, it is wrong to believe that Mark’s narrative must have included resurrection appearances just because the other Gospels do. And if, as most scholars believe, Mark’s Gospel was the first written, then there is even less reason to use the other Gospels to measure Mark.

Interpreters of Mark dwell too much on the last sentence of 16:8. There is no rule that the very last sentence of a section contains its point. Studies of the Gospels have shown us that we must pay attention to a whole section. In many of Mark’s accounts, a word of Jesus that appears near the end (cf. 2:17; 2:27) seems to be the strong point of the story. Similarly, the statement in 16:7 that what has happened is according to what Jesus has said draws our attention to that verse within the larger narrative section, 16:1–8.

There is one decisive observation that overshadows all we have said thus far and provides the decisive clue for interpreting the resurrection in Mark’s Gospel. This clue is located in the final words of the messenger (rather than the last clause of 16:8): “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you” (Mark 16:7). “As he told you”—Jesus is presented as the one whose word pointed to, and is now validated by, the resurrection. After Caesarea Philippi, Jesus began to instruct the disciples about his imminent death and resurrection (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:32–34). He climaxed this teaching by showing at the Last Supper how his disciples would betray him, how he would be smitten in accordance with the word of the Prophet Zechariah (13:7), and how he would go before them into Galilee after he was raised from the dead (Mark 14:27, 28). The messenger at the tomb says, in effect, that the prophecy of Jesus has come true, just as he had promised. In other words, all that is happening in the resurrection events is a fulfillment of the very word of Jesus.

This text parallels other important texts in Mark’s Gospel. In Jesus and the Twelve (Eerdmans, 1968), I sought to show in detail how Mark stresses Jesus’ appearance in history as Divine Teacher, and emphasizes the words of Jesus throughout the Gospel. Three chief texts especially illustrate this fact: (1) At the Transfiguration, the voice of God calls for the disciples to listen to Jesus, the beloved Son (9:7). (2) Just prior to this, after Caesarea Philippi, Jesus declared that a man’s eternal destiny depends upon his response to Jesus and his word: “For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38; cf. 8:34; 10:29, 30). (3) And in Jesus’ prophetic discourse on the Mount of Olives he tells the disciples that “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mark 13:31).

Thus, in the Gospel of Mark, everything hangs upon the word of Jesus—and one’s attitude toward that word. This word is an active and powerful word, and we see it everywhere in Mark’s narrative of Jesus’ ministry. The resurrection narrative is the final and decisive confirmation of that authority (cf. Mark 1:22, 27; 6:2; 12:34) of his word.

Modern readers of the Gospel who have read and heard the story of the resurrection many times over are not in a favored position to perceive the striking nature of this text. A modern counterpart (albeit a feeble one) may be found in the story of the famous home run that Babe Ruth once called. Ruth allegedly waved his bat at the upper stands, signifying where the next swing of the bat would loft the ball, and then proceeded to pay off on his striking promise.

It was important for the early Church not only that Jesus was raised but that he had himself anticipated and promised this great work of God. For one thing, after Easter the Church had to find its way into the future through the word of Jesus (rather than his bodily presence), illuminated to them by the promised Holy Spirit. The Church was assured that it could live under and out of this word of Jesus, for that word had been confirmed by God’s great life-giving deed. There is a relation between the word of Jesus and the resurrection. Jesus promised this great work of God, and it came to pass just as he had promised. This fact stands at the heart of Christian faith and devotion and is nowhere more decisively attested than in the (for many) problematic ending of Mark’s Gospel!

We may conclude with an important related observation: The degree to which the resurrection is central in the Gospels, and in the entire New Testament, should be the measure of its importance for any understanding and articulation of a doctrine of Scripture. Using Mark as our example, we should affirm that in the resurrection there is a sign of the veracity and power of all Jesus’ words (and deeds). As in Mark’s narrative the resurrection is the foundation and capstone, so should it be in our efforts to express the meaning of the process by which the scriptural testimony to Christ was given to us through God’s chosen messengers. Not our preconceived ideas and philosophies but the fact of the resurrection is what matters. That is not to say that a study of the resurrection answers all questions about a doctrine of Scripture; it is to say that all attempts to provide a doctrine of Scripture that fail to assign a central place to the resurrection are answers to the wrong questions. One of the paradoxes of conservative biblical scholarship is that it emphasizes the doctrine of Scripture and the fact of the resurrection but seldom vitally relates the two. This may explain the highly theoretical and arid nature of all too many discussions of this vital issue.

We may bring in Paul as a witness here. In the great fifteenth chapter of his letter to the Corinthian church, he categorically asserts that “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). Their faith was first of all a response to Paul’s preaching of the resurrection of Christ (1 Cor. 15:1–11!), and our faith is a response to that same word of preaching today. For preaching issues from Holy Scripture. Our faith, the word of apostolic preaching, the fact of the resurrection—these are all bound up in one parcel. We may note here, not incidentally, that strong Christian faith will always go hand in hand with a strong faith in the resurrection and in the Word of God written. Where one is weak, all will be weak.

Rather than ignoring Mark 16:1–8 in preaching and meditation at Easter time, we can find it a point of beginning for all preaching, including the celebration of Easter. It is time to view this as a basic text, one that can cast an important light upon all other Easter texts. As did the disciples of old, we need to see the resurrection of Jesus, from the very start, as the great climax of his messianic ministry, which happened on the disciples’ behalf and our behalf “as he told us.”

Robert P. Meye is professor of biblical theology at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Oak Brook, Illinois. He received the B.D. and Th.M. from Fuller Seminary and the D.Theol. from the University of Basel.