ANTIDISCONTEMPORANEITY

The other day I was given a lift home from the drugstore by a local pastor. The Reverend Byron Stanley—“Stan”—was in a troubled and sharing mood.

“We’ve got some real problems in the church here,” he began. “We’ve got an older group that has to be dragged into the twentieth century. I have to spend a good part of my time trying to stamp out seventeenth-century theology.”

I’ve always had trouble changing centuries into dates, but I finally got to 1600–1699. Then I tried desperately to think what had happened in that period. Shakespeare? Henry VIII? Voltaire? Blank.

Stan was continuing on at full steam when I found my way back to 1971.

“Seventeenth century?” I asked.

He stopped and gave me that cool look methodical thinkers reserve for daydreamers.

“Virgin birth, angels, devils, all that,” he replied.

“Oh, I thought those were first-century concepts.”

“In the first century they were only the mythic clothing of transcendental reality. It took the seventeenth century to enshrine them into literal truth.”

It came to me: The seventeenth century—those nefarious Westminster divines!

“I see,” I said, to hold up my end of the conversation.

“Not only do they propagate this kind of outmoded literalism—they also think it’s necessary to hold to this nonsense to be a Christian.”

“Hmm,” I responded.

“Little Torquemadas putting God in a box with a red ribbon on it,” he continued. “Telling him what he can do and can’t do. Trying to put theological straitjackets on other Christians. Heresy!”

He was reaching the climax of his indignation. I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time he had vented this particular spleen.

“Such narrowmindedness cannot be allowed to continue in the church. To be a Christian is to be open to life. There is simply no room in Christ’s church for such close-mindedness.”

“You’re right!” I eagerly responded. “Such wickedness can’t be allowed to go unchecked.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly say wickedness,” he protested. “But …”

“We must excise it like we would a cancer,” I continued.

“Well …” he said hesitantly.

“Why don’t you draw up a list of those subverting the church with doctrines like the virgin birth while I erect a stake and gather the faggots …”

He gave me a long black look. “Is that supposed to be a put-down?”

Stan is a very perceptive man, sometimes.

SUPPORTING REPORTING

The very fine story on EXPLO ’72, “Spiritual Bomb at Dallas” (Jan. 1), was greatly appreciated. We feel sure that it will help generate more prayer support and registrations for the ’72 student evangelism congress. We already have nearly 5,000 advance registrations.

Director of Media Information

EXPLO ’72

Dallas, Tex.

WHOSE FREEDOM?

The editorial “BJU and the IRS” (Jan. 15) disapproving of the Internal Revenue Service’s threat to withdraw Bob Jones University from a tax-exempt status is confusing. The editorial states that it “thinks the IRS action impinges upon |BJU’s] freedom of religion,” and in so stating fails to realize that the whole existence of BJU is to deny blacks their freedom of religion. The Christian’s concept of freedom of religion must be defined from the individual’s point of view (in this case the black Christian) and not from the point of view of an organization. Denying Christian blacks entrance into religious fellowship or worship with Christian whites is in effect forced segregation and denying of God-given and God-intended religious freedom, to say nothing of its effect upon the disjointing of the Church as the Body of Christ.

Assistant Professor of Sociology

The University of Georgia

Athens, Ga.

A friend from Chicago has sent me the clipping of your report of the tax-exemption threat to Bob Jones University (Jan. 1) and the editorial (Jan. 15) dealing with this problem. I would like to express to you my appreciation both for the accurate reporting of the situation and for the fairness of your editorial dealing with it.

We agree wholeheartedly with the position you take that if the government can take away the tax exemption of a Christian institution because of its religious convictions and its admissions policies, then it can by the same token take away the tax exemption of any church whose membership qualifications, administrative policies, or doctrinal position do not conform to an administrative whim. The issue at stake is not integration or segregation. Good men may differ on this question. The issue is constitutional freedom, which is a matter that concerns all Americans and which is certainly one that no fair-minded American believes should be granted or withheld by any agency but which is one of the “unalienable rights” of all Americans.

President

Bob Jones University

Greenville, S.C.

INACCURATE REPRODUCTION

I felt that Mr. Watson Mills’s review of Frederick Dale Bruner’s A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Jan. 15), though containing many good things, failed to do justice to the book. As I see it, Professor Bruner makes two main points in this book: (1) There is no biblical evidence for the theological tenet which is basic to both Pentecostalism and neo-Pentecostalism, namely, that every believer should seek a post-conversion “baptism in the Holy Spirit” in which the Spirit comes into his life in his fullness; and (2) according to the New Testament, the most important evidence for the presence of the Holy Spirit in one’s life is not essentially ecstatic (e.g., glossolalia) but ethical. The review mentioned neither of these points.

A reviewer has every right to disagree with an author, but he ought at least to reproduce accurately what he has written.

Calvin Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

THE FIRES OF REVIVAL

Please accept my thanks for including news coverage of the revival going on among the youth of our land (“Pacific Northwest: Revival in the ‘Underground,’ ” Jan. 29). We oldtimers seem to have overlooked the fact that when Jesus described himself as locked out of his own church at the end of the age, he is excluded from the Pharisaical fundamentalist outfits as well as from the Sadduccean liberal ones. We seem also to have overlooked the possibility that he might gain re-entrance from outside. How like God to hold back his tribulation judgment until the youth whom we have fed stones of institutional separatism and hypocritical churchism instead of Jesus the Bread of Life can find him apart from human failures through the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit alone! Perhaps we dare believe that these overcomers may yet be used of the Lord to bring the excluded Jesus back into a lukewarm Laodicea. Let’s not argue about where the fire is burning, but praise the Lord it is! The age began with a Pentecostal effusion; why not expect it to conclude in like manner. Keep us posted!

Head

Department of English

Athens College,

Athens, Ala.

I am very pleased and excited to see your article [on underground revival]. I thought it was very well done. I also appreciated the sidebar about the “First Tuesday” broadcast and Look article. I saw the broadcast and was very impressed.

Muskegon, Mich.

YELLING ‘WOLF’ ABOUT ABORTION

The latest issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Jan. 29) contains several interesting editorials. I appreciate the wide variety of issues covered. Indeed, CHRISTIANITY TODAY performs a needed service within the Christian community by urging a consideration of the issues from the bias of its editorial policy.… However, the editorial “Financing Murder” was written in the low-level style of judgmentalism. The language used could have been kept on the level of counsel or opinion; e.g., “to ignore the question of abortion is a serious mistake.” However, the suggestion that recent liberalization of abortion laws indicates “moral rot” is akin to pontification … as is the statement that “God does not overlook such evil”.… I felt that CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S writer … tried to rally support by, in effect, yelling “Wolf!”

Bethany Presbyterian Church

Tacoma, Wash.

After reading your vitriolic blurb on abortion, I immediately rechecked the cover to make sure this was not an early April Fool’s edition. Abortion is an extremely emotional issue in this country, and there is a greater need from evangelical circles for a serious and rational discussion of the issues. In spite of the attempt at rationality in the “Current Religious Thought” section of the same issue, I think that you have rendered a disservice to those attempting to give serious consideration to this moral problem.

St. Paul, Minn.

THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL

The first three-quarters of the editorial “San Francisco: Sodom Revisited” (Jan. 29) denounce San Francisco as a “Sodom” of the twentieth century. Further into the article the number of Christians is mentioned as a possible reason for the city’s “non-conversion” and its spiritual corruption. The author notes that of the city’s 750,000 population, 450,000 claim no religious affiliation.…

The citizens of San Francisco realize the struggle and are attempting to overcome its spiritual destruction. Let us not forget that with the power of the Holy Spirit large numbers are not needed to convert—only the Gospel is necessary.

Ft. Wayne, Ind.

The past year saw the appearance of several notable Old Testament books, both for the general reader and for the more academically inclined. In the survey that follows, those works designed for the reader without a seminary education are marked with an asterisk (*); titles not so marked will often prove useful to the same audience, but their primary thrust is in the field of scholarly debate or technical commentary. Here then are twenty-two top books, including some from late 1969, followed by a listing of other titles of worth.

Pride of place of any list belongs to the New English Bible-Old Testament and Apocrypha* (Cambridge and Oxford). This monumental effort by an interdenominational team of British scholars has given us the first standard version of the entire Bible in the idiom of the modern English-speaking world. If that idiom is at times peculiarly British (e.g., “corn” for “grain” in Genesis 42:2), this is only to be expected, and the sense is usually as clear to North American readers as the RSV is to those on the other side. Much could be said about the relatively few disturbing features, but what will count in the long run is the way in which this new translation enhances communication of the Word of God to people for whom that voice is now silent or indistinct.

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will welcome, in second place, a completely revised edition of The New Bible Commentary*, edited by D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer (Eerdmans). Although both the style of the 1953 edition and many of its contributors remain, a number of articles and book studies have been completely rewritten, usually by younger men. In the section of Old Testament introduction, articles have been expanded from four to six with the addition of essays on “The History of Literary Criticism” by the late E. J. Young and “Moses and the Pentateuch” by J. W. Wenham. Several important commentaries that appear in new form are “Genesis” by M. G. Kline, “I and II Samuel” by D. F. Payne, and “Amos” by J. A. Motyer; other articles (e.g., E. J. Young’s “Daniel”) are substantially untouched. Basic text for the commentary is now the RSV, and, in general, the articles are a bit more scholarly and less devotional. Critical positions, however, remain unchanged, with Moses still behind the Pentateuch (including Deuteronomy), Isaiah a unity, and Daniel written during the exile. American evangelicals would do well to notice that almost all contributors to this solidly conservative volume accept a late date for the Exodus.

HISTORY AND RELIGION OF ISRAEL From this point on we shall treat the books by category rather than in order of importance. Of special importance to evangelical readers is the release of R. K. Harrison’s Old Testament Times* (Eerdmans), a survey of the pre-history and history of Israel down through the first century. Readers will already be familiar with the author’s approach and effectiveness through his massive Introduction to the Old Testament, a book featured in last year’s list. There are no surprises in this year’s offering; the volume is a solid, readable, college-level textbook, fully cognizant of various scholarly positions but committed to a thoroughgoing evangelical position.

The publication of any book by the late Yehezkel Kaufmann is news. A new release gives us additional portions of his seven-volume Hebrew-language History of the Religion of Israel under the title The Babylonian Captivity and Deutero-Isaiah (Union of American Hebrew Congregations). The polemic against liberal Protestantism’s now dated evolutionary hypothesis is continued, with special attention given to the supposed “gentile” mission of “Second Isaiah.” Universalism, Kaufmann argues, pre-dates the exile, and furthermore, Deutero-Isaiah is a good orthodox Jew whose adherence to the ritual commandments renders fatuous any attempt to remake him in the image of a liberal Protestant. An extended discussion of Isaiah 40–66 (seen as a unity) is highlighted by a comprehensive discussion of the Servant Songs (the Servant can in no way be an individual!), and the book closes with two helpful appendices.

A third book on the history of Israel deals with the beginnings of nationhood. Rudolf Smend in Yahweh War and Tribal Confederation (Abingdon) pursues the thesis that Yahweh War rather than an amphictyonic cult center provides the original element in Israel’s tradition. Only the Song of Deborah is seen as a firm text from the period of the Judges, and from this limited source-material the picture emerges of a ten-tribe Yahwistic Holy War tradition, separate from the “central sanctuary” traditions and lacking an ark or other cult object as a focal point. Although the translation (by Max Rogers) is not always smooth, the book will make fascinating reading for those concerned with the continuing debate on origins (following the work of Alt, Noth, and von Rad).

THEOLOGY Easily the most important book for Old Testament theology (though its concern encompasses a broader field) is Brevard S. Childs’s Biblical Theology in Crisis (Westminster). Childs chronicles the rise of a distinctly American “biblical theology movement” in the years just following the Second World War, noting its strengths and weaknesses and finally its slow dissolution and collapse as a major force in the early sixties. In the challenge of the social revolution, both biblical theology and neo-orthodoxy became irrelevant as the focus shifted (a la Robinson and Cox) from “a theology of history in the past to a theology of history in the present, which means politics.” Childs’s own most important contribution comes in his refusal to surrender up a biblical theology. The question is rather: Where do we go in shaping a new biblical theology? The answer? Back to the Bible, in the context of the normative canon of the Christian Church (rather than “some form of positivity behind the text”), with a special reference to the great exegetical tradition represented by Calvin, Luther, et al. Although not primarily for the general reader, this volume deserves wide dissemination among evangelicals and should be read by every pastor concerned with biblical preaching today.

A short book with a value out of all proportion to its brevity is Claus Westermann’s The Old Testament and Jesus Christ* (Augsburg). This important study of the relation between the Testaments presents an alternative to the traditional practice of taking individual texts out of context, showing rather that Christ is relevant to the main portions of the Old Testament. The Servant Songs, for example, must be seen as part of the total thrust of the prophetic message in its original historical context, and a relationship to the New Testament arises when a fresh context duplicates the conditions of the old.

The theological motif of “rebellion and forgiveness” is reviewed in a compact book by Andrew C. Tunyogi, The Rebellions of Israel (John Knox). Although it is a very useful study of the theme, its value is somewhat limited by Tunyogi’s contention that the documents we have represent not the faith of a historically rooted Israel but the theology of the redactors who shaped the documents. The chasm between faith and history, so widely criticized in von Rad, is here even broader. For those able to overcome such a barrier, this is a valuable study of the working of divine grace both among God’s ancient people and through the children of the New Covenant.

INTERPRETATION Recently several important works dealing with the use of the Old Testament in church or synagogue have been published, two of which focus on Luther’s important contribution to Old Testament study. In From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Harvard), J. S. Preus first traces the history of medieval hermeneutics from Augustine to the contemporaries of Luther and then devotes a second part to the young Luther, showing him breaking out of the medieval understanding of the Old Testament as merely Christological. A second book, Heinrich Bornkamm’s readable Luther and the Old Testament* (Fortress, translated from the German edition of 1948), is the first modern study of Luther’s considerable exegetical work on the Old Testament. In view of the many diverse hermeneutical traditions claiming descent from Luther, this book should be a “must” for those interested in biblical interpretation. Chapters on the “Old Testament as Mirror of Life,” “The God of the Old Testament,” and “The Old Testament as Word of God” are followed by an excellent, documented study of Luther’s “Christian” principles of biblical translation. Complete footnoting, bibliography, and a helpful appendix citing the reformer’s Old Testament interpretations and the texts in which they are available make this volume basic to further study.

Fresh study of historical interpretation (and especially that of Luther) inevitably leads to new interest in rabbinic handling of the same passages. The need for an objective and scholarly analysis of a methodology Luther neither understood nor accepted is supplied in John Bowker’s The Targums and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge). Although the subject is by nature technical, the book is a model of clarity and intelligibility, providing for the non-academic reader a handbook of many uses. Part I of the study is an account of the growth and background of the Targums (Aramaic interpretive translations of Hebrew Scriptures), together with a helpful introduction to various other writings often referred to but infrequently defined (e.g., Tosefta, Tanhuma, Aboth de-Rabbi Nathan). Part II, the major portion of the book, consists of selected chapters of Genesis in the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan, together with critical notations and variations. Several appendices are important for Old Testament study (e.g., “Recognized Variants in the Septuagint,” “The Seven and Thirteen Rules of Interpretation”). Bibliography and indices are complete.

COMMENTARIES Easily the most important original commentary of 1970 is William McKane’s large Proverbs: A New Approach (Westminster). Among the assets are: a new translation of Proverbs, an excellent study of Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom literature (150 pages), and a study of the development and forms of the literature in Proverbs. The latter is partially dependent on an historical reconstruction developed in McKane’s earlier book, Prophets and Wise Men (Allenson, 1965), conclusions that have by no means gained universal acceptance. Among the liabilities, perhaps the most striking is the contrast between the succinct, trenchant style of Proverbs and the prolixity of the commentator. The rearrangement in order of McKane’s form-critical conclusions may be a hindrance to some.

In the same series, a translation from German, Walther Eichrodt’s Ezekiel (Westminster), provides the first major commentary on that prophet to appear in English for over thirty years. The introductory matter is informative, including a history of the prophet’s time (594–571 B.C.), the form of the prophetic proclamation, and some notes on the prophet himself. The translation and commentary takes some liberty with the order of the text and even omits some verses considered secondary, but these are adequately covered in footnotes. Eichrodt’s views on the prophet-priest tension are most stimulating, and his exegesis is thorough.

While on the subject of Ezekiel we should mention a less ambitious but carefully done volume by John B. Taylor, Ezekiel* (Eerdmans and Inter-Varsity). Bible students will appreciate the excellent introduction covering major interpretative problems of Ezekiel (but in layman’s language) and giving a succinct overview of the prophet’s life and message. The commentary never loses sight of the prophetic commission as communicator of the Word of God, with the key note struck in the introductory comment, “God revealed Himself to Ezekiel, not by propositions regarding His character but in personal encounter … The false prophet can chatter glibly about God, because he has never met Him. The man of God comes out from His presence indelibly marked with the glory of his Lord.” Something of that same glory is sure to rub off on the one who will spend time with Ezekiel under the guidance of this small volume.

A second exposition designed for the general reader, Frank E. Gaebelein’s Four Minor Prophets: Their Message for Today* (Moody), represents the devotional commentary come of age. Though we might wish for this volume the same level of original scholarship demonstrated by Taylor (Gaebelein is heavily dependent on Pusey, von Orelli, Ellison, G. A. Smith, and others), we cannot fault the book for mishandling of material. The subtitle indicates the author’s interest, and in his capable literary hand Obadiah, Jonah, Habakkuk, and Haggai speak with penetrating clarity to the issues of 1970. Evangelicals who have been accustomed to flights of speculative fancy in prophetic interpretation will be surprised (and challenged) to find in Gaebelein’s Habakkuk a man belonging “to the noble company of those who care deeply about the ethical problems of their times.” This concomitant to the dynamic message “the just shall live by faith” marks the dual thrust of the entire book, giving us a fresh and contemporary look at four of the little-used Minor Prophets.

Our next selection, though not properly a commentary, is concerned with analysis of 264 passages from the Book of Job, giving alternate meanings based on Ugaritic (and other Northwest Semitic) grammatical and lexical studies. Not surprisingly, Northwest Semitic Grammar and Job (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute), by Anton Blommerde turns out to be a dissertation supervised by M. Dahood. No one today need be reminded of the caution required in such an undertaking (cf. James Barr’s various works, especially Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, Oxford, 1968), and it should be noted that Blommerde has taken pains to realize some of the limitations in his kind of task. The principle behind his method is simple: The consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible must not be emended (contra the old Biblia Hebraica3), but the vowels are anybody’s fair guess. Such veneration of the Massoretic Text may ultimately prove a false idolatry, but for now it is a welcome change from the excessive freedom with which a past generation altered the reading.

MISCELLANEOUS Two important Festschriften were issued in 1970. Translating and Understanding the Old Testament, essays in honor of Herbert G. May (Abingdon), is edited by H. T. Frank and W. L. Reed and represents a primarily American contribution. J. Muilenburg studies terms for adversity in Jeremiah, M. Burrows decides that Jonah is a particular kind of satire, R. de Vaux opts for a late formation of Judah as it existed in the monarchy, G. W. Anderson contends that the Sinaitic Covenant, not an amphictyony, created Israel’s unity, W. F. Albright again finds donkeys but no camel caravans in the Late Bronze Age, H. M. Orlinsky fails to find internationalism in the Old Testament, and G. E. Wright appeals to Luther, Calvin, and even (indirectly) B. B. Warfield to reaffirm his conviction that revelation belongs to the realm of historical knowledge (and in the process he raps the “new evangelicals” for having produced little significant biblical, especially Old Testament, scholarship). Other contributors include J. P. Hyatt, W. F. Stinespring, D. Baly, and N. Glueck. Of equal stimulation is Proclamation and Presence (John Knox), edited by J. I. Durham and J. R. Porter, in honor of G. Henton Davies. Most of the contributors are European. N. W. Porteous discusses the personal element in biblical interpretation, R. de Vaux sums up recent research concerning the name YHWH, O. Eissfeldt suggests a reason for the apparent mixing of geographical references to Shechem and Gilgal in five passages from Deuteronomy and Joshua, J. R. Porter (following M. R. Kline) finds royal and dynastic features in the Deuteronomic narrative of Joshua’s installation as the second Moses, D. R. Ap-Thomas argues that Solomon’s parashim were mares rather than horsemen, W. Eichrodt suggests that Isaiah’s avoidance of the term “covenant” reflects not an ignorance of the concept but a concern that then-current misunderstandings of the idea not interfere with his call to covenant-faith, J. Bright examines again the prophetic “Confessions” in Jeremiah and concludes (contra Reventlow) that they represent a personal as well as a cultic form, and H. Cazelles discovers a Hurrian prototype for the return of the ideal king in Ezekiel. These contributors, together with G. Widengren, J. Weingreen, E. Wurthwein, J. Muilenburg, A. R. Johnson, and J. I. Durham, have given us a first-rate collection.

A third Festschrift undoubtedly equals in quality the two just mentioned, though I have not yet seen it. Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century (Doubleday), edited by J. A. Sanders, honors Professor Nelson Glueck and, as the title and Glueck’s work would indicate, concerns itself more with archaeology than with interpretation.

Papers presented at a special Old Testament meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society have been edited by J. Barton Payne and published as New Perspectives on the Old Testament (Word). Several writers deal with the covenant, including K. A. Kitchen discussing forms of covenant in the late second millennium, M. G. Kline using the same background to find implications for the canon, and the editor discussing the covenant as the covenant of Yahweh. Near Eastern studies are represented by C. E. DeVries on Egyptian research, J. S. Wright correlating Esther and Persian/Greek history, W. C. Kaiser with a form-critical study of Genesis 1–11, and L. T. Wood again affirming an early date for the Exodus. Linguistic and textual articles by E. B. Smick (Ugaritic light on Psalms), B. K. Waltke (textual studies in the Samaritan Pentateuch), G. L. Archer (the Aramaic of Daniel compared with the Genesis Apocryphon), and R. L. Harris (Dead Sea Scrolls and the Massoretic Text) provide interesting reading. E. Yamauchi returns to a favorite subject in tracing early (eighth-fourth century B.C.) Greek influence in the Near East. D. Kidner looks at Wisdom literature in its Near Eastern setting; R. L. Alden summarizes publication on the prophets since 1945; and finally M. H. Woudstra, A. A. MacRae, and P. A. Verhoef discuss various matters of interpretation.

A solid contribution to Hebrew studies comes from the pen of Francis 1. Andersen as Volume XIV in the “Journal of Biblical Literature Monograph Series.” The Hebrew Verbless Clause in the Pentateuch (Abingdon) examines the grammatical form traditionally known as the nominal sentence in light of modern linguistic categories and formulates a set of rules for describing all kinds of verbless clauses possible in Hebrew. The author, a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, has demonstrated in this thorough study the kind of contribution open to an evangelical who is willing to do his homework.

These are just a few of the many Old Testament studies published last year. Although it is a rare book that can be called a publishing landmark, many of the contributions are solid and show the continued vitality of the field.

In the following space we list additional titles of significance, in the hope that each reader may find just that “plum” for his own taste.

BOYD, R. T., Tells, Tombs and Treasure* (Baker). Important only because it will circulate widely. Superficial and often dangerously misleading text accompanying some excellent archaeological photos. Pastors be warned.

CANSDALE, G., All the Animals of the Bible Lands* (Zondervan). A solid study by a zoologist who is also church-warden of All Souls, London.

DAHOOD, M., Psalms, Volume III. Covers Psalms 101–150. This year’s only offering in the “Anchor Bible” series.

DAVIS, J. J., The Birth of a Kingdom: Studies in I-II Samuel and 1 Kings 1–11* (Baker). Second in a series of Old Testament studies by this author. References are a bit dated, but the book is still valuable for the lay reader.

ELLISON, H. L., The Message of the Old Testament* (Eerdmans). Superb articles on the Old Testament here collected in book form.

FRETHEIM, T. E., Creation, Fall, and Flood* (Augsburg). Popularizes the variant treatments of Genesis 1–11. Critical, but with some discerning theological content.

GEHMAN, H. S. (ed.), Westminster Dictionary of the Bible* (Westminster). A complete revision of a major reference work after more than twenty-five years.

HOPKINS, I. W. J., Jerusalem: A Study in Urban Geography (Baker). Technical but reliable treatment of both modern and ancient Jerusalem by a specialist.

KRAELING, E. G., The Prophets (Rand McNally). A major study by an experienced Old Testament scholar.

LAPP, P. W., Biblical Archaeology and History* (World). The 1966 Haskell Lectures at Oberlin College on the relation between archaeology and the Bible. A good treatment for the non-professional.

LAURIN, R. B. (ed.), Contemporary Old Testament Theologians (Judson). A chapter on each of the authors of seven widely used surveys of Old Testament theology available in English. Very worthwhile.

PEARCE, E. K. V., Who Was Adam* (Paternoster). An anthropologist and theologian finds in the New Stone Age revolution a connection with Adam’s commission to “till the ground and keep it.”

SARNA, N. M., Understanding Genesis: The Heritage of Biblical Israel* (Schocken). A welcome paperback edition of the outstanding commentary on Genesis issued in recent years.

SIMONS, J., The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament (Brill). Another expensive but foundational study that attempts a restoration of various geographical phrases or boundary descriptions.

WATTS, J. D. W., Obadiah (Eerdmans). Attempts a short history of Edom and finds in the successive oracles (outside of Obadiah) against Edom a developing role for that nation. Obadiah is seen in this context.

WOOD, L. J., A Survey of Israel’s History* (Zondervan). Meets the need long felt by American fundamentalists for a carefully documented history of Israel in which all the answers are “right.” Although some may feel his conclusions are far too facile, Wood is no obscurantist and has produced a valuable text for Bible school or class.

YOUNG, E. J., Isaiah, Volume II (Eerdmans). This posthumous work, long promised, has finally appeared, and the final volume is due soon. It is welcome news that the Old Testament portion of the “New International Commentary” is now moving forward again under the editorial hand of R. K. Harrison.

Carl E. Armerding is assistant professor of Old Testament at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. He received the B.D. degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the Ph.D. from Brandeis University.

A year without a new volume of Kittel’s Theological Dictionary is a year without an anchor, and this means I had to depart from the custom of the past three years and cast around for a substitute to take the place of this monumental wordbook. Happily, I did not have to seek far. The outstanding religious publishing event of last year (particularly from the evangelical side) was the appearance of the New Bible Commentary: Revised (Inter-Varsity and Eerdmans), edited by D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer. It is obviously impossible to mention all the New Testament contributors and invidious to single out a few. The whole New Testament section represents a notable achievement in expository scholarship and, though it is not in the same class as Kittel, it will be at least as useful to the pastor and Sunday-school teacher in making available to him a compendium of serviceable information on the background, contents, and teachings of the books of the New Testament canon. Of similar usefulness is A New Testament Commentary (Zondervan), edited by G. C. D. Howley, F. F. Bruce, and H. L. Ellison. Both volumes deserve wide circulation.

A collection of essays that aspires to the same league as Kittel is published under the title Apostolic History and the Gospel (Eerdmans), edited by Ward Gasque and Ralph Martin. Here twenty-four scholars (some of them of international reputation, such as Bruce Metzger, William Barclay, George Ladd, C. F. D. Moule, and Matthew Black) have joined forces to say something worthwhile in the twin fields on which F. F. Bruce has already made his mark, the Acts of the Apostles as a document of early Christian history and the Pauline Gospel. In honor of his sixtieth birthday, they pay Bruce deserved tribute in this symposium; and more, they help forward in many instances the contemporary discussion of Luke-Acts and the Pauline epistles by summarizing current study and breaking new ground. The result is a volume that will take its place both on the library shelf and in the classroom. It is a book full of good things, and I am proud to be able to bathe in the reflected glory of a publication worthy of a great scholar.

That scholar’s own work is on view in his NewTestament History (Oliphants). Bruce has gone on record (more than one contributor to his Festschrift appeals to this dictum) as saying that “a man cannot be a good theologian unless he is a good historian.” How good a historian he is may be seen from this survey of the period extending from Alexander the Great to the end of the first century. As befits a classical scholar, he is at his best when he deals with the Graeco-Roman background of the Gospels, Acts, and epistles; and his book contains a wealth of incidental information that will light up the message of the New Testament. He deals less fully with the development of ideas, especially of a theological nature, within the period and says virtually nothing about the inner life of the early Christian communities. This is a loss, but a man has to set limits somewhere in this vast territory.

By striking coincidence, these gaps in Bruce’s survey are admirably filled by a very full examination of New Testament Christianity published by Leonhard Goppelt under the English title Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times (Harper). He takes as his starting point Easter and Pentecost and traces the multiform development of the Church through its various cultural, geographical, environmental, and above all theological changes as the Christian mission branched out from Jerusalem to encompass the ends of the world. Goppelt’s final chapters on the place of tradition, the struggle with incipient heresy, the evolution of the ministry, and the rise of liturgical forms bring us right to the center of current New Testament study, especially as it comes under left-wing European influence. It is good to begin with Goppelt’s clear statement of the data before exposing oneself to some of the finely spun theories offered today on the strength of a scholarly “say-so.”

To take one example: for the past few years an issue that has greatly excited Lutheran congregations in Germany has been the definition of heresy. The Confessional Movement, No Other Gospel, has reacted sharply to what it regards as highly dangerous trends within the Bultmannian wing of its church and has called for a censure of its leading exponents. Now it is the turn of these academicians to enter the fray, and one of its leaders, Ernst Kasemann, has done so with a straight-from-the-shoulder piece called Jesus Means Freedom (Fortress). This is not the place to break a lance with a leading post-Bultmannian as he seeks to state plainly and without equivocation what the New Testament message means to him today. We need simply recognize that here is a slender volume that will enable us to see the issues at stake in an updated German Kirchenkampf. One thing is clear. Vital matters are under discussion, and if Kasemann is anywhere near correct in his assessment of the New Testament documents, then all talk of the unity of the New Testament kerygma ought to be abandoned forthwith. What a heavy price to pay in any modern reconstruction of the Gospel!

Adherence to the normative Gospel of apostolic Christianity does not, however, commit us to a message of deadpan, monochrome uniformity, as Michael Green makes clear in his full and scholarly survey of Evangelism in the Early Church (Eerdmans). This book will appeal to a wide constituency. Pastors, missionaries, teachers of the New Testament and early church history, and indeed church members will find this a fascinating volume. Especially for those who are disturbed by the way in which the preaching of the Gospel tends to get blurred because the preacher’s aim is out of focus, this book will have the effect of sharpening the vision of what the early believers said and did when they discharged the dominical commission. Not the least valuable service Green renders is that he pursues his enquiry beyond the New Testament canon and lays under tribute some often neglected material from the Apostolic Fathers up to the time of Origen.

That the past year yielded a significant batch of commentaries is encouraging, for signs that scholars are still at work at the exegetical task of elucidating Scripture means that something of long-lasting value is being accomplished. Surely this side of scholarly enterprise will endure when more ephemeral broadsheets are forgotten. Outstanding in the list of commentary works is Raymond Brown’s second volume on the Gospel According to John in the “Anchor Bible” series (Doubleday). This reasonably priced yet lengthy exposition covers John 13–21 and represents the best in ecumenical Roman Catholic scholarship, judicious and painstakingly comprehensive. Yet the Protestant minister seeking guidance for his pulpit responsibility will not be disappointed when he turns to consult Father Brown. The Fourth Gospel is full of nuances and shades of unexpected meaning that this commentator, as an exponent of the sensus plenior interpretation of Scripture, is well qualified to bring out. But always the historical-grammatical control imposes its authority; the result is a commentary that is exegetically faithful to the text and at the same time devotionally helpful.

Not quite in the same tradition but worthy to stand beside Brown’s work on John is the English version of Eduard Schweizer’s commentary on Mark. Originally prepared for the series Das Neue Testament Deutsch, this volume appears as The Good News according to Mark (John Knox), incorporating the text of Mark according to Today’s English Version (also known as “Good News for Modern Man”). The standpoint is one of a moderate form-critical approach tempered by two considerations. For one thing, Schweizer reflects the influence of the latest editorial criticism which gives the evangelist more credence as an independent writer and not simply as a scissors-and-paste compiler of existing traditions; then, this commentator brings out the theological significance of Mark’s gospel book in an admirable fashion and shows how Mark sought to address a situation in the early Church that imperatively required a full-length “Life of Jesus” based on history.

The recognition that Mark was a theologian in his own right and not simply a faceless purveyor of anonymous traditions that were circulating in the precanonical state of gospel development is an advance usually credited to W. Marxsen. But a few years before Marxsen wrote, the Scandinavian Harald Riesenfeld had opened up this possibility in an essay. Now a revised form of that essay has become available in English under the caption, “On the Composition of the Gospel of Mark,” printed in a volume of collected essays, The Gospel Tradition (Fortress). Included here is Riesenfeld’s now famous dissertation on “The Gospel Tradition and Its Beginnings,” which in 1959 sent up the trial balloon that the teaching of Jesus was committed to memory by the disciples in rabbinic fashion and constituted a “holy word” to be passed on in the emergent churches. That thesis has encountered heavy weather and strong gusts of criticism since it was first launched; in fact, the balloon is hardly still airborne, at least in the form Riesenfeld first gave to it. But students will be glad to have the basic text handily available, though some notation of recent appraisal may well have been added by the translators (who deserve a cheer for putting the original Swedish into English).

Returning to the list of serviceable commentaries on the biblical text, we should not allow the unpretentious format of J. L. Houlden’s Paul’s Letters from Prison (Pelican) to blind us to the tremendous amount of solid study that has gone into its making. Again it is the preacher who will be grateful for many illuminating insights when he comes to take a text from Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, or Philippians. Not all the critical positions in this volume will command universal assent, but for packing so much information and comment into a convenient paperback, the author merits an accolade.

There is a title in the paperback market that should not be omitted. Not a commentary in the exact sense, James Boice’s Witness and Revelation in the Gospel of John (Zondervan) fills the much needed role of giving the reader perspective and guidance as he approaches this spiritual Gospel. The study is partly linguistic and partly expository, as John’s key terms, “witness,” and “testimony,” are set in the context of his purpose. Boice concludes that John tells the story of Jesus from the perspective of diverse witnesses. Some authors claim to have found the key to unlock this enigmatic Gospel; Boice is more modest, yet he has presented a valuable set of clues in this readable doctoral thesis.

On the more technical side of Johannine studies, George Johnston’s The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John (Cambridge) is to be welcomed for the light it sheds on both the meaning of the term Paraclete (taken to be the personal representative and agent of the Father and the Son particularly active in apostolic preaching, teaching, and witnessing) and the polemic purpose of the Gospel (which is to rebut heretical claims made by those who would tear apart the revealed God and the human Jesus of Nazareth). This at least is one reader’s conclusion at the end of this rather recondite work. But no such hesitation concerning an author’s final conclusion arises from the reading of a book of a different genre. I refer to Frederick Bruner’s A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Eerdmans). The author has two aims in view. He wants to systematize the teaching of the modern Pentecostal movement on the subject of the baptism in the Holy Spirit (and as a by-product he has given us a standard bibliography of Pentecostal writers, both mainline and marginal). Then, he passes this teaching under critical scrutiny and tests it by the yardstick of an in-depth study of Second Corinthians 10–13 that asks questions many professional New Testament interpreters in the upper echelons are posing today: Who were Paul’s opponents at Corinth? What was the nature of their false teaching? Bruner’s answer is partly expected since he has done his exegetical work at Hamburg (Paul’s enemies are adherents of a gnosticizing movement that bypassed the cross of the earthly Jesus and gave unwarranted place to an immediate spiritual experience that displaced the need for “by faith alone”). What he goes on to infer will cause a furor in days when Pentecostals are drawing closer to the older denominations: Corinthian heresy is an anticipated Pentecostalism that has substituted the fullness of the Spirit in a second work of grace for glorying in the cross alone. By this touchstone modern Pentecostalism grazes the edge of heresy with its insistence on a separate dispensation of the Spirit that (says Bruner) extrudes Christ.

It must be significant that yet another book offers a full-scale treatment of the biblical undergirding for a doctrine of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Allenson). A young British evangelical, James D. G. Dunn, takes a close look at the deceptively simple issue of the place of the Holy Spirit in the total complex event of becoming a Christian. The Pentecostal requires that this descriptive process be widened to include an experience of the baptism of the Spirit as a conscious event subsequent to conversion. Others on the “sacramental” flank of Christendom distinguish two comings of the Spirit, one at conversion-initiation, the other in Confirmation. Dunn finds fault with both these positions, though he is more sympathetic toward the Pentecostal appeal to experience as being an inalienable part of the New Testament picture. Some of his severest strictures, however, fall on a Baptist understanding of the rite of initiation as a “mere symbol.” In an impressive way he ties together the apostolic teaching and sets down his conclusion, which relates the Spirit and baptism thus: “As the Spirit is the vehicle of saving grace, so baptism is the vehicle of saving faith.”

Luke’s purpose in his Gospel and Acts is often referred to as his concern to set forth a drama of salvation-history in which he has historicized the story of Jesus and attached symbolic or theological significance to the various stages of his ministry. It is a mark of the vigor of another younger scholar, I. Howard Marshall, that in Luke: Historian and Theologian (Paternoster) he opposes this prevailing notion associated with the weighty name of Conzelmann and his school and defends the view that Luke’s chief interest is with salvation per se, and that he has not manipulated gospel history and trimmed it to fit a preconceived scheme. Marshall’s total effort is well executed, but I was disappointed in his conclusion that Luke did not write to deal with a particular problem or situation in the church. I disagree, because that motivation-less writing does not otherwise seem to be found in the New Testament.

At an opposite extreme stands L. Gaston’s mammoth study, No Stone on Another (Brill). His purpose is much wider than his subtitle—“Studies in the Significance of the Fall of Jerusalem in the Synoptic Gospels”—implies; the book is a far-ranging excursion over the whole New Testament terrain. Conclusions do not come easily to this student of the Synoptic apocalypses, but his one main contention seems proven: When we seek to reconcile Jesus’ expectation of the kingdom of God for Israel in the near future with his prediction of historical catastrophe for the nation at the fall of Jerusalem, we should begin by placing Jesus in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets whose bailiwick was contingent prophecy and not commitment to a rigid apocalyptic timetable. “Promise and threat are not predictions but alternatives,” says Gaston. This estimate of Jesus’ eschatological role puts him in a different camp from the political freedom-fighters known as Zealots. An answer in popular form to the allegation that Jesus was a Zealot comes from Oscar Cullmann’s expanded public lecture, Jesus and the Revolutionaries (Harper & Row). A too facile identification is often made on the supposition that Jesus could not have remained aloof from the political and economic tensions of his native countrymen, but Cullmann has no difficulty in showing that there are more ways than one (armed rebellion) of being a patriot and that his eschatological mission as servant of God precluded his acceptance of a Zealot manifesto. In fact, seizure of a worldly throne was precisely the temptation he refused in the wilderness as he thereafter set his face to the cross. He was crucified by the Romans because he had in the first place been rejected by his own nation. The changing fortunes of the Jewish people when faced with the challenge of Jesus and the apostles are sketched in full by Peter Richardson in Israel in the Apostolic Church (Cambridge). How the Church of the mid-second century came to be a Gentile composition self-consciously defined over against Israel is depicted with particular skill.

No survey of recent literature would be complete without some allusion to studies in gnosticism. A useful contribution to our limited knowledge in this field has been offered by Frederick H. Borsch, The Christian and Gnostic Son of Man (Allenson). He has been able to weave the latest documents from the Coptic library in upper Egypt into his answer to the question why the second-century gnostics came to use the title “Son of Man,” one that the orthodox Christians passed by. His tentative solution is that they picked up an interpretation of the Son of Man found in the language of sectarian Judaism and not directly attributable to the canonical Gospels. His argument raises afresh the much canvassed debate of why our Gospels speak of Jesus as Son of Man and whether after all a background in the Psalms and the prophets rivals that of the apocalyptic literature.

Handbooks that serve a modest aim of acquainting hard-pressed students with what the theological pundits are thinking fill a niche. New Testament Issues, edited by Richard Batey (Harper), is a collection of significant articles ranging across a broad spectrum from Bultmann and Conzelmann on the left to A. M. Hunter and C. E. B. Cranfield on the right. Somewhere in the middle is W. Pannenberg, whose essay (“Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?”) takes, we are informed, a more conservative position than that of his larger works. But a couple of quotations seem incapable of improvement: The resurrection of Jesus was “a unique but real event which occurred prior to all human experience of it”; and “Jesus is the final revelation of God and therefore, he himself is God.”

Other notable publications in New Testament studies last year were:

ALLEN, C. J. (ed.), Broadman Bible Commentary: Volume 9. Luke and John, and Volume 10. Acts-I Corinthians. Helpful expositions, based on the RSV, direct attention to the evangelists’ central thrust. The portion dealing with Romans is especially commendable. (In the Old Testament, Leviticus to Nehemiah is also available now.)

BAMMEL, E. (ed.), The Trial of Jesus (Allenson). Historical essays on the Jewish and Roman backgrounds of the trial of Jesus mainly by Cambridge-trained pupils of C. F. D. Moule in his honor.

BARRETT, C. K., The Signs of an Apostle (Epworth). Studies arising out of the author’s prolonged attention to Second Corinthians 10–13.

BEARDSLEE, W. A., Literary Criticism of the New Testament (Fortress). A useful statement of the literary forms used in the New Testament offered as a prolegomenon to academic study.

BOWMAN, J. W., Which Jesus? (Westminster). A students’ manual that surveys the options in the area of New Testament Christology. Bowman’s final choice is traditional, according to the O. Cullmann-T. W. Manson line.

EVANS, C. F., The Resurrection and the New Testament (Allenson). A comprehensive discussion of the relevant New Testament passages but still undecided as to the Resurrection’s historicity.

FENTON, J. C., The Gospel According to John (Oxford). A clear, helpful guide to John that sees the evangelist as highlighting the christological issues implicit in the Synoptics.

GUNDRY, R. H., A Survey of the New Testament (Zondervan). Yet another College text, enlivened by some discussion pointers.

GUTHRIE, D., A Shorter Life of Christ (Zondervan). No trace of form-critical influence deters the author from weaving together the data from the four gospels into a readable life of Jesus.

HARVEY, A. E., The New English Bible: A Companion to the New Testament (Oxford). A straightforward guide to the New Testament literature based on the NEB and written in limpid prose. Excellent for beginners in the field.

MARXSEN, W., The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (Fortress). An important book of lectures given to clarify the issues surrounding the resurrection accounts in the New Testament, from a left-wing position for which discrepancies are more interesting than harmonizations.

PHIPPS, W. E., Was Jesus Married? (Harper & Row). The eye-catching title should not be misunderstood. Although the author’s thesis (which gives an affirmative answer to his question) is doubtful, his book contains a lot of important discussion on Christian attitudes toward celibacy and marriage.

POLLARD, T. E., Johannine Christology and the Early Church (Cambridge). A careful study based on first-hand materials of the problems of the Trinity and the person of Christ from the fourth Gospel to Marcellus of Ancyra. This will be an indispensable text for students of early Christology and the development of doctrine especially relative to the Arian controversy.

TAYLOR, V., New Testament Essays (Epworth). Posthumous publication of essays by one of England’s leading Methodist scholars, marking an era that is now closing.

WILSON, W. R., The Execution of Jesus (Scribner). A lucid account of the interaction between Jesus and the political forces of his day that clears him of any direct involvement with the power structures. Jesus was not personally implicated in political movements of his day, only caught up in them.

Ralph P. Martin is professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. He holds the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Manchester and the Ph.D. from the University of London.

The past year has produced some good books on church history and theology, though more from the standpoint of solid learning than of theological originality. One serious problem is inflation. Rising prices make it very hard for pastors and students to purchase the many books they should. Perhaps church boards or wealthier persons might help here. Another problem, one less easily solved, is finding time to do the reading.

Out of the wide range of 1970 titles, the following twenty are offered as works deserving special notice. Some others that might equally well have been included in the selection are mentioned in a few paragraphs at the end.

1. and 2. Pride of place must surely go to the last two volumes in “Library of Christian Classics.” Volume IX, ably edited by W. Pauck (Westminster), has interesting extracts from Melanchthon and Bucer., while Volume XVII, edited by E. G. Rupp with assistance from N. Marlow, P. Watson, and B. Drewery (Westminster), is devoted to the debate between Erasmus and Luther. These books, important in their own right, form a fitting conclusion to a combined American and British series that over the past twenty years has made available either new texts or translations from the early fathers to the reformers. Ignorance of theological history can have no valid excuse in the face of this series.

3. and 4. Mention of a great series reminds us that the Luther translation is now moving into its later stages. Two additions have been made this past year, Volumes 39 and 47. The former is in the section on Church and Ministry, the latter in that on The Christian in Society. Both of these are published by Fortress, which is responsible for Volumes 31 onward (the earlier volumes were published by Concordia). The English-speaking world has had a long wait for a comprehensive edition of Luther, and the set hardly stands in need of external commendation.

5. In relation to Luther, an important secondary aid has also been added with the translation of the fine study by G. E. Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought (Fortress). Ebeling is a scholar of distinction and writes on a subject of stature. If the work is called an introduction, it is so at a deep level at which Ebeling explores the problems in such critical areas as law and gospel or wrath and mercy.

6. In the field of general church history. R. M. Grant has put us in his debt with a very good book on the early Church, Augustus to Constantine (Harper & Row). It is not easy to capture or retain interest on this well-trodden path, but by offering a freshness of style and approach and occasional new insights and information, the author has succeeded admirably.

7. At the other end of the chronological scale is the second volume of Owen Chadwick’s The Victorian Church (Oxford). While this will be of special interest for British readers, American and British church history during this period cannot be insulated from each other, and the phrase “the Victorian age” has more than parochial reference. To this authoritative study Dr. Chadwick brings not only the solid core of information but also a ready pen and perspicacious eye.

8. Biography is an important branch of church history, and the year has brought two biographies of interest. The first deals with the great evangelist George Whitefield and is by A. A. Dallimore (Volume I, Banner of Truth). It is the first installment of a full-scale account of one of the greatest figures in modern evangelism, one who made a decisive impact on the American colonies as well as his native England. The continuation will be awaited with eager anticipation.

9. The second biography bids fair to be the definitive account of that great figure of our own century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and is a product of the one best equipped to write it, E. Bethge (Harper & Row). This large book incorporates unpublished materials (secret papers, diaries, and letters) brought to light by many years of research. The Bonhoeffer presented here is a balanced one, not exploited to serve other interests. He is all the more impressive for that very reason.

10. In the field of historical theology, R. Preus has written a significant book on The Theology of Post-ReformationLutheranism (Concordia). What he gives us here is a detailed account of the so-called Protestant Scholasticism on its Lutheran side. Since much of the basic material is hard to get at, this secondary but very knowledgeable account is doubly useful. It makes possible an intelligent appraisal of the qualities as well as the defects of an attempt at serious dogmatics.

11. Another work of historical theology that deals with a matter of common concern today is Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge), by R. A. Markus. Augustine is, of course, a many-sided figure, and particularly in his thinking on church and world he exercised a practical as well as a theoretical influence. This is a book to be read not merely for information but also for insight.

12. A more strictly dogmatic enquiry is the Sacra Doctrina of Per Erik Perrson (Fortress), which, as the subtitle tells us, delves again into the relation between reason and revelation in Thomas Aquinas. With a certain ecumenical slant, Perrson takes the line that has become increasingly common in Aquinas studies, that revelation is really primary in Thomas and that his theology is basically biblical rather than philosophical. If this understanding is correct, then Thomism might finally turn out to be an ally of the Reformation! But one must not jump to conclusions too hastily.

13. Tackling some of the same questions in an independent study, R. J. Blaikie in “Secular Christianity” and God Who Acts (Eerdmans) has written a thoughtful book in which he rejects the modern split between subject and object and presents the personal God who acts in history, as the Bible records. The particular point of this work is to show that secular Christianity distorts the Gospel by putting it in terms of its own false presuppositions. In contrast the author sees opening before man a new world of thought “to which the concept of action seems to be the key.”

14. Also breaking new ground, this time in theological sociology, is the striking work by J. Ellul called in the English translation The Meaning of the City (Eerdmans). This is not a piece of sociology nor indeed of sociological theology. As stated, it is a work of theological sociology. Far from trying to refashion Christianity after an urban pattern, Ellul subjects the city itself to a devastating biblical analysis that is all the more crushing for its prophetic simplicity. Unfortunately it is perhaps too much to hope that our modern planners and secularizers and sociologizers will take note, though it seems plain enough that the facts are with the Bible.

15. Turning now to a different area we find a large and challenging book on Evangelism in the Early Church by Michael Green (Eerdmans) in which New Testament and patristic studies overlap. The author here takes up again the ancient question of how the early expansion of the Church was achieved. If he has unearthed little that is new, he has done a valuable job by bringing the materials into focus. He has also asked some searching questions when comparing early evangelism with many of its modern forms.

16. Another excellent work from a missionary perspective is Understanding Church Growth (Eerdmans), in which D. McGavran presents the case not merely for his own special work but also for new dedication to the missionary task in what he shows to be an age of considerable expansion and almost unparalleled opportunity. Supported by a host of detailed studies and also by A. Tippett’s Church Growth and the Word of God (Eerdmans), this is a book to be read and acted upon.

17. This has been a busy year in ethical discussion—practice is another matter—and once again it is perhaps J. Ellul who has spoken the most disturbing word in his book Violence (Seabury). In this work Ellul, a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War, cuts right across both the Christian refusal of force on the one side and the Christian justification of force (whether for order or revolution) on the other. Instead he offers what he takes to be both a more biblical and also a more realistic position, despite the logical difficulties that will undoubtedly be urged against it.

18. Liturgically the most important volume of the year is the new one by Horton Davies on Worship and Theology in England (Princeton), in which the area covered is that of the Reformation. This is a big, informative, and discerning book that embodies the results of many years of research and reflection. It will also command a wider audience than that of pure liturgists, for the author is naturally led by his subject into many significant questions of dogmatics and ecclesiastical history.

19. Ecumenically one of the most interesting works is The Ecumenical Advance (SPCK), edited by H. E. Fey, which is Volume II of the history of the ecumenical movement so ably begun by Rouse and Neill. It is perhaps unfortunate that the change in authorship or editorship has involved a certain disjunctiveness, but this is an important account of the further development of what is, for good or ill, a most significant movement.

20. Finally it might be noted that the sixth and last volume of Sacramentum Mundi, edited by Karl Rahner (Herder and Herder), has now been published. This is a comprehensive attempt to gather the fruits of Roman Catholic rethinking into a single series. Naturally the articles are uneven in quality, and one can find many discouraging things to balance the more encouraging. Nevertheless, this is a monumental encyclopedia, and it now finds a worthy companion in the shorter Sacramentum Verbi, an encyclopedia of biblical theology.

A few remarks might now be devoted to some of the other titles worth noting. Eighteenth-century thought is well represented by new editions of the Reimarus Fragments (Fortress) and Rousseau’s Religious Writings, edited by R. Grimsley (Oxford). There has also been a surge of Puritan publications largely under the inspiration of Peter Toon, who has just edited The Correspondence of John Owen (James Clarke) consisting of hitherto unknown letters. A symposium edited by the same scholar deals with Puritans and the Millennium and the Future of Israel (Clarke). From a later period, J. E. Meeter has given us a collection of the smaller pieces of a fine scholar in Selected Shorter Writings of B. B. Warfield (Presbyterian and Reformed).

Important historical studies include a good account of The Norman Achievement (University of California) by D. C. Douglas, assessments of The Anabaptists and Religious Liberty in the Sixteenth Century (Fortress) by H. S. Bender and Reform in Leopold’s Congo (John Knox) by S. Shaloff, and a new work on Constantine (Dial) by R. MacMullen. W. S. Hudson has edited a thought-provoking symposium on Nationalism and Religion in America (Harper & Row). Two noteworthy works on American evangelical history are E. Sandeen’s The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Chicago) and G. Marsden’s The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience (Yale).

There has been a flurry of activity in the study of individual theologians. To the works on Augustine and Aquinas already listed we may add Peter Abelard by L. Grane (Harcourt, Brace and World), The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Martin Bucer by W. P. Stephens (Cambridge), and John Bunyan (Eerdmans), in which R. L. Greaves tries to piece together the famous author’s theology. Nor should one omit the small but penetrating book on Karl Barth by T. H. L. Parker (Eerdmans).

Theology offers a varied array. J. K. S. Reid has a brief survey of Christian Apologetics (Eerdmans), and T. F. Torrance’s new book, God and Rationality, a sequel to Theological Science, is almost if not quite ready. What promises to be a good series on “The Philosophy of Religion,” edited by J. Hick, has also made a good start with Arguments for the Existence of God by the editor and Concepts of Deity by H. P. Owen. Another good book now available in English is The Knowledge of God by H. Bouillard (Burns and Oates). Karl Rahner continues his Theological Investigations, Volume VI (Helicon). An attempt is made to keep the death-of-God theology alive in The Theology of Altizer, Critique and Response, edited by J. B. Cobb (Westminster); the prognosis, however, is not good. A far more constructive study is All Things Made New, by L. Smedes (Eerdmans).

Hermeneutics and ecumenics can always be relied on for a title or two. The former gives us a good work by H. M. Kuitert, Do You Understand What You Read? (Eerdmans); a challenging one by J. D. Smart, The Strange Silence of the Bible (Westminster); and a practical symposium Interpreting God’s Word Today, edited by S. Kistemaker (Baker). Ecumenics produces some strange phenomena. While Roman Catholics worry about Bishops and People (Westminster, by the Catholic Theological Faculty of Tubingen), Lutherans are asking about Episcopacy in the Lutheran Church? (Fortress), edited by I. Asheim and V. R. Gold, and John Kromminga raises the general question: All One Body We (Eerdmans).

Some varied items may be noted in conclusion. P. Tournier again produces a new book, A Place for You (Harper & Row), and J. Ellul, equally prolific, writes forcefully about Prayer and Modern Man (Seabury). Fletcher tells us about Moral Responsibility (Westminster), and J. A. T. Robinson asks about Christian Freedom in a Permissive Society (Westminster). A useful Dictionary of Comparative Religion, edited by S. G. F. Brandon (Scribner), will fill a gap for some; choirs and organists may learn from C. Dearnley about English Church Music 1650–1750 (Oxford).

Geoffrey W. Bromiley is professor of church history and historical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He holds the M.A. from Cambridge University and the Ph.D. and D.Litt. from the University of Edinburgh.

I write this on the patio of a hotel in Jamaica, far from the roar and the rush and the cold of the nation’s capital. The ocean, blue and green, depending on how the clouds cast their shadows, is approaching full tide, and not far away is a reef marked by white breakers that lazily wend their way to the shore.

The island of Jamaica was discovered in 1494 by Columbus, whose explorations were financed by Isabella of Spain. My wife brought along a biography of Isabella’s daughter, Catherine, who was married to Henry VIII. Catherine’s poignant story rends the heart, and the reader can only pay tribute to a lady whose cause was just and whose treatment was shabby. She emerges as a far more heroic figure than time-serving Cardinal Wolsey, the papal legate Cardinal Campeggio, and even the pope himself.

Unfortunately, the welfare of Christ’s Church on earth has often been tied to people who, if not graceless, were at least lacking in sanctification. In our day the Church is afflicted by those who profess one thing and do another, who lie without remorse, and who sacrifice principle without the slightest blush.

The greatest need of Christianity in our generation is not for more church members but for better ones, not for those who profess commitment to the will of God but for those who do it, not for those who claim to be moved by the Spirit of God but for those whose life-style is such that men everywhere know without being told that these persons belong to Jesus Christ.

Crisis over authority! No single subject gets more talk these days than this. The crisis extends beyond the many forms of anarchism that threaten established governments and reaches those who are concerned about the Church. Many people today who are willing to accept the authority of God are deeply dubious about the authority of human officials. For these people, the office-bearers of the Church have lost their power to speak for God.

The question is very real: are the various forms of churchly authority still credible, in their speaking or their silence, their actions or their inaction? That a crisis in authority can arise is closely related to the fact that the New Testament lets us know how God’s authority is exercised. It is exercised in and through an authority invested in men. Stranger and more striking still is the fact that there appears to be an identity between God’s authority and that exercised by men. “He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me …” (Luke 10:16). Again, “He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man but God” (1 Thess. 4:8). Even in the Old Testament we meet the apparent equation of God’s with man’s word: “they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me,” says the Lord to Samuel (1 Sam. 8:7).

Human authority! The vox humana rings into human ears, but it comes with the overtones of God. The most striking instance in this union of human and divine voices comes to view in connection with the forgiveness of sins. When Jesus forgave sins he was branded a blasphemer; for who can forgive sins but God (Mark 2:7; Matt. 9:3; Luke 5:21)? Can we really speak of a man’s voice functioning for God when it comes to forgiving sins?

In reaction to the Roman Catholic view of authority in connection with the power of absolution, Protestantism has denied the legitimacy of the vox humana in the sphere of forgiveness. Can a man ever be secure in his pardon if it comes from a mere man? Is not the forgiving of sins a transcendent event, a divine privilege?

We must keep in mind that the Gospel never lets us have reason to fear a competition of man’s voice with God’s own. When it comes to authority, we may well remember Jesus’ words: “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:23). These words were spoken right after the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples. And in Matthew 16:19 we discover again the close marriage between what happens on earth and what happens in heaven.

The keys of the kingdom are put in wrinkled human hands. All the temptations and dangers that surround this fact may not permit us to minimize its reality. The entire New Testament is replete with instances of apostolic use of authority. Apostles are not much in themselves, to be sure (1 Cor. 3:7); but they are collaborators with God (3:9), and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4:1). The ministry of reconciliation was entrusted to them, as ambassadors of Christ, “as though God did beseech you by us” (2 Cor. 5:21). This “as though” is not a sort of fiction. It is a pointer to a reality, the reality of the vox Dei in and through the vox humana.

Taking all this into account, we surely have no grounds for denying the reality of human authority. Certainly the failures and weaknesses of our fellow men give us no grounds. There is a profound mystery in the way that salvation comes within our horizon through human functionality. Time and again, people have been discontent with this mystery, and have wanted to hear another kind of voice, something with more certainty, and productive of more stable guaranties. The human voice is so commonplace, so unlike God’s. We want something more sure, more reassuring. We want the pure Word of God. When we fail to get such a Word, we are tempted to be discouraged, discomforted. At least, some of us go this route.

But the route God takes is another. It is a way on which men can misuse the authority God gives them. They sometimes think they can “channel” the salvation of God into an establishment pipeline, can use the keys to open and shut the doors to the kingdom arbitrarily. God’s way is also a way on which people can fail to hear his Word because it all sounds so very ordinary, so very human. Paul is aware of this danger when he proclaims the Word. He does not take it for granted that the Church will listen to him. No, he thanks God without let-up because “when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man but, as it is in truth, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13).

There is a dimension of depth in that human word of authority. Here we have a perspective of the mystery of faith; the fellowship and discipleship of Christ develops dynamically when this Word works its own dynamic. When the bearers of office come into the limelight of controversy and crisis, it is not a mere matter of theory or theology that is involved. It touches the strange ways of God in his approach to men, and it has to do with human certainty on the way into the future.

We are all tempted to lose sight of this unique dimension of God’s way with us. All of Christian life, all of churchly life, is involved whenever we close our ears to the Word of God that comes to us in the servant-form of the human word. Only the Holy Spirit can keep us from falling into this denial of God’s manner of speaking to us.

It is easy to lapse into a sense of insecurity when we hear the welter of human voices beating their way to our attention. The young boy, Samuel, was in the same boat, but finally he did hear the right voice. According to the story in First Samuel 3, the voice of God came to him without a human medium (it was not Eli’s voice). His answer was, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (3:10). We, in the time of fulfillment, have to listen to human voices, speaking, out of the fullness of Christ’s own authority.

It is the marvel and the gift of God’s ways with us that, as we accept the mystery and let him lead us into the unknown ahead, he overcomes our fears and buttresses us in our weaknesses. We need not be uncertain about God’s Word as it comes in human form; we can simply let it lead and speak to us. There is reason to give God constant thanks that he sends us new men, over and over again, to speak his Word, and leads people, over and over again, to discern in their vox humana the voice of the Good Shepherd. These are his sheep, the ones who hear his voice. And he “goes before them, and the sheep follow him.” Where? On unknown ways into an unknown future. But they are his ways. We are summoned to walk on them by the unique authority that has been entrusted to the mere voice of mere men.

On January 2, 1921, the Sunday-evening service of Calvary Episcopal Church was broadcast on KDKA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the first religious broadcast to be sent out over a commercial station. Letters and phone calls poured in, most of them highly compliementary.

“And religious broadcasting,” related Dr. Eugene R. Bertermann, president of National Religious Broadcasters, in an address commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the KDKA program, “then spread rapidly.” Although most Christians believed in the potential of the new medium for spreading the Gospel, there were a few doubters. Some questioned the propriety of invading the sanctity of a sanctuary with a microphone.

Last month, at NRB’s twenty-eighth annual convention in Washington, D. C., there were still some doubters. None, of course, questioned the use of radio and television for religious programming (there are now about 250 religious radio stations in the United States, about 150 of which are NRB affiliates, and two Christian television stations; other applications are pending). Today’s doubters are those who disapprove of “sainted stations” using rock music as an idiom for transmitting the Gospel to teens who are turned on to the beat sound but turned off to staid religion.

The communications gap—it appeared mostly between the younger NRB members and the oldsters—was visible early and remained largely unbridged during the three days of workshops, speeches, and presentations.

The Youth Programming Seminar the first night started the debate off in high gear when a dozen Christian disc jockeys had their say about what is reaching—and not reaching—the now generation.

Disapproving tongue-clucking was audible as Dr. John Broger, director of the U.S. Armed Forces Network, introduced the subject with a panorama presentation showing how the youth culture communicates itself through posters, psychedelic art, acid rock, and drug jargon. The DJ panel followed it up, accusing some of the older religious broadcasters of “not knowing where it’s at” with today’s kids.

Led off by converted drug addict Scott Ross of Freeville, New York, the DJs almost unanimously insisted that rock music, intelligently handled by those who understand youth, can be used to communicate the Gospel. Ross, who finally emerged with his own faith after surviving the onus of “being a ‘PK’ [preacher’s kid]—the whole bit” tells youth on his rock-oriented shows that Jesus is a good trip, “a soul man who can save you.” He now has three secretaries to handle mountains of mail. Unabashed, simple “Jesus talk” sinks home with most teen-agers, Ross feels.

In contrast, religious programs that steer away from anything but traditional format and sounds are hard pressed to reach young people, several spokesmen admitted. Still, most church-oriented, “faith-supported” stations hesitate to experiment for fear of losing listener support and dollars.

Defending rock, Dave Thompson of Mennonite Broadcasts declared: “Rock music is evangelistic.… It converts people to something. People listen to music, not preachers.” Others, like Paul Linder of Creative Sound Productions, emphasized the need for Christian rock music that “tells of Jesus.”

Working in this field is arranger-conducter Ralph Carmichael, who led a music forum at the convention. Some staid, traditional broadcasters came prepared to shoot him down, claiming that the Holy Spirit certainly couldn’t use this music to bring about conversion. The debate was not resolved last month, and the topic will doubtless surface as a key issue in determining the direction for evangelical religious broadcasting in its second half-century.

The convention had its moments of nostalgia (a multi-media presentation of early radio shows on Long Beach, California’s KGER), glamour (the Golden Anniversary Banquet, broadcast live overseas via Trans World Radio and satellite), and prestige (Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird appealing to the 700 delegates to help free American prisoners of war in Southeast Asia).

“You in this audience can do much to help those men and their loved ones through this bitter ordeal,” Laird said, noting that massive letter-writing campaigns and other efforts have recently improved the POWs’ situation slightly. Laird denounced Communist disregard of Geneva Convention regulations for prisoners and said the latest prisoner list provided by Hanoi is not complete. (See related story, page 53.)

The NRB, largest and oldest association in religious broadcasting (400 organizational members compose three-fourths of the worldwide religious broadcasting field), carries considerable weight with the Federal Communications Commission. Four of the FCC’s seven commissioners were on hand for a luncheon meeting addressed by their head, Dean Burch, who quipped: “It’s one of the few times we have a quorum.”

Burch stressed the need for government to create a “favorable climate” for religious broadcasting. The NRB should expect no favors and will get none, he said, adding: “We’re here to tell you that you won’t get the short end of the stick, either.”

Speaking about the controversial Fairness Doctrine, Burch declared it is “not applicable to a religious presentation as such.” Thus, equal time does not have to be given Roman Catholics after a Protestant broadcast, for example, nor does an atheist have a right to equal time on a station airing the views of a theist. The doctrine does apply, Burch said, when positions are taken by a speaker on political, ecological, or other “controversial issues of great importance.”

Burch urged “local common sense” in handling controversial programming, and answered a criticism raised from the floor that the FCC seems to favor time for liberal views over the hearing of conservative ones. “The duty of the commission,” he said, “is not to see that any one view is brought forth, but that an opportunity for all to be heard is given.”

Meanwhile, a new North American ecumenical group was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, in December: the North American Broadcast Section of the World Association for Christian Communication. About 125 religious broadcasters from Catholic, Protestant, and evangelical churches assembled to discuss mutual concerns. Theological differences were openly admitted and respected. NRB members subscribe to a statement of faith (the National Association of Evangelicals’ doctrinal affirmation) upholding the infallible authority of the Bible, the deity of Christ, and the necessity of personal salvation.

The grants made to African liberation movements and others received resounding support when the World Council of Churches Central Committee met last month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Swept on by impassioned African speeches of rare evangelical fervor (“don’t put up your hands unless you really mean it”), delegates voted without dissentient voice that the grants were in line with the decision made at the 1969 meeting at Canterbury to further a program to combat racism. No South African was present among the 103 members who gathered for the twelve-day meeting in the 7,500-foot high capital city, seat of the Organization of African Unity.

During discussion it was pointed out that while the grants were made without control over the manner in which they would be used, the nineteen recipient groups had given assurances that they would spend the money not for military projects but for “activities in harmony with the purposes” of the WCC. None of the recipient bodies is operating against a Marxist regime.

Echoing the views of other Britons, longtime delegate Bishop Oliver Tomkins of Bristol said that he had not grasped at Canterbury the full implications of the decision made there, that Central Committee members had had no warning of the Executive Committee’s awarding of the $200,000 in grants, and that they had been caused embarrassment by reading about it first in the public press. The bishop wanted further discussion of the Christian attitude toward violent revolution in relation to the just war and in a violent world (a study of this subject is being undertaken under WCC auspices).

Youth observer Milton D. Whittaker was indignant about American churches that passed resolutions favoring the WCC action but benefited from South African investments; the chaplains who bless military occasions; and the lack of balance that makes pronouncement against violence only in selected areas. On the whole, however, the WCC executive and staff had anticipated a much rougher ride, and privately expressed surprise that West German opposition, previously expressed in a forceful way, had not materialized.

In its statement the committee stressed that “violence is in many cases inherent in the maintenance of the status quo.” Nevertheless, “the WCC does not and cannot identify itself completely with any political movement, nor does it pass judgment on those victims of racism who are driven to violence as the only way left to them to redress grievances and so open the way for a new and more just social order.”

Member churches were asked to support the 1971 United Nations International Year for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, and a new appeal was made to them to reach the $500,000 goal projected at Canterbury. In addition to the WCC’s own allocation of $200,000 from special funds, more than $140,000 has so far been received.

There were confusing elements about the discussion. While at Canterbury white racism had been regarded as “the most dangerous form” of racism, the Addis plenary debate and decisions gave the impression that it was almost the only form. General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake came under fire on a related theme during the first press conference. What about persecution in the Southern Sudan? asked a pressman. What about anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union? What about the WCC’s relationship generally with the Communist world? Was there not a certain selectivity and imbalance in the WCC’s statements?

“I reject your assumptions,” Blake retorted heatedly, “all of them.” He denied that the WCC was biased. In support of his assertion of impartiality he mentioned WCC intervention in the recent Spanish and Russian criminal cases. There was more than a hint here also that criticism was ill informed, and that quiet negotiations were always going on behind the scenes in certain areas that might be prejudiced by publicity. Blake asked for more confidence in the integrity of the WCC—an appeal that perhaps fell strangely on journalistic ears.

Quizzed about his own future, Blake said he had told the WCC that when he reached 65 in November this year he would be “eligible to retire on full pension,” but that he would make himself available thereafter in order to make the transition easier for his successor. It was later announced that an appointments committee will make a recommendation at the next Central Committee meeting, to be held in Holland in the summer of 1972.

Another subject that could have lent itself to much controversy—and didn’t—was the dialogue with men of other faiths. In a major paper, WCC staffer Stanley J. Samartha gave three reasons for dialogue: God himself entered into relationship with men of all faiths and in all ages in the person of Jesus Christ; Christ’s freedom and love constrain us to be in fellowship with strangers “so that all may become fellow citizens in the household of God”; Christ has promised that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth, and dialogue is one way to further that quest.

The Indian theologian said that dialogue must take place in freedom—the freedom to be committed to one’s own faith, to be open to that of others, and not to come to these others making the ground rules by which discussion was to be conducted. The same point was expanded by the metropolitan of Mount Lebanon. But Swiss Protestant leader Jacques Rossel was dubious. “The Christian comes from the Cross and the Resurrection,” he declared, “and is going toward the fulfillment of all things in Christ.” John Coventry Smith, a WCC president, found some very different faiths get along well because they don’t believe much of anything.

During this debate it became clear that the Orthodox contingent did not like what it saw to be the Western tendency to separate Christ from the rest of creation, while the Westerners had misgivings about the way the Orthodox talked about the Holy Spirit altogether apart from Christ.

Finally the committee approved, as part of an interim policy statement, regular consultations with those of other faiths, with priority given to bilateral dialogues of a specific nature, such as the major human problems of justice, development, and peace.

Greek and other Orthodox leaders also did not like the way Blake and other council members handled a dispute over council recognition of the newly formed Orthodox Church in America (see February 27 issue, page 37). Accusing the council of “taking sides in a canonical dispute among Orthodox,” the Greeks boycotted the council’s final business session and closing worship service.

At the opening session of the Central Committee, Emperor Haile Selassie I, Lion of Judah (claimed to be the 225th in the Solomonic line), said that developing countries always welcomed any technical and material assistance offered them in the spirit of Christian love. But, added the 78-year-old monarch who last year celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his accession: “All aid proffered by any Christian organization should be free from any political motivation and from all contamination by ideological microbes, and should be directed exclusively to the welfare of mankind and to the development of the standard of living of human beings.”

Replying, Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft said the forces of division made the task of the WCC harder as time goes on. “Precisely at the time when we need more than ever the reintegration of humanity,” said the former WCC general secretary, “the disintegrating processes are stronger than ever.” The force of reintegration that could overcome the confusion is the Holy Spirit, he added.

The Central Committee also:

• Commended British church efforts to persuade the Heath government not to resume the sale of arms to South Africa.

• Heard that the WCC expected a $70,000 deficit in its 1971 general budget.

• Agreed to appeal for funds to assist the Canadian Council of Churches in serving draft-age immigrants from the United States on the basis that this was a service to individuals, who like others have become refugees, without judgment on the reason for their predicament.

• Elected as a WCC president, in place of the late D. T. Niles, Professor (Mrs.) Kiyoka Takeda Cho, 53, Japanese cultural anthropologist.

• Called upon the nations of the world to abolish capital punishment because it violates “the sanctity of life.”

• Accepted six new applications for WCC membership,* bringing the total number of WCC member and associate churches to 252.

The Central Committee sessions were held just after the Ethiopian Christmas season and were adjourned for one day so that participants could join in the Timkhat (Epiphany) celebrations, including a dinner given for them and for Ethiopian church and state dignitaries.

NEWS

A surprisingly intense effort to clip the political wings of the National Council of Churches met predictable resistance at a decision-making level last month.

The NCC has long been criticized for issuing pronouncements and advocating actions identified with the ideological left. Under an arrangement suggested by the NCC General Board’s special restructure task force, the “advocacy function” would be relegated to a secondary level and made optional for member denominations.

The General Board didn’t take kindly to the plan. “This model might make the wrong people happy,” said Methodist bishop James Mathews, a noted activist. Leaders of black denominations were especially critical. “Many of us are jealous for the heritage of the National Council,” said one.

The decentralization effort grows partly out of a desire of some churchmen to make American conciliar ecumenism more inclusive, and partly out of the fact that the present NCC has had a hard time paying its bills. One General Board member who had just come from the World Council of Churches Central Committee meeting in Ethiopia said that the WCC, in apparent contrast, is undergoing greater centralization (see story, page 46).

The fifteen-member restructure task force, headed by the Reverend Arie R. Brouwer, had worked for a year determining what kind of an organization should supplant the present NCC. Its plan was unveiled at the General Board’s four-day winter meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, and decentralization was the key recommendation.

“This model is an interim plan for a particular period in history,” the task force declared. It pointed to “a great distrust of centralized authority, great pressure to include previously unempowered minorities, and a great desire for more open channels available to participation at all levels” and said that in light of such conditions “it seems impossible and therefore unwise to try to build a strong central structure which demands firm commitments of members.”

The task force added that if conditions change in the next ten years or so, another structure could then be worked out.

The task force wanted the General Board to revise the model and then refer it to member communions for evaluation and response. This, it was said, could be done “without prejudice to any later decision.” But the General Board balked. Instead, it ordered NCC president Cynthia Wedel to appoint a new “Committee on Future Ecumenical Structure” to revise the model, giving more emphasis to the following:

“1. The advocacy function of a central representative body which gives meaningful unified consideration and witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“2. Centralized development of priorities and the concomitant budget accountability and program development.

“3. The development of a system which provides for the empowerment of minorities at every level and flexible approaches at the point of action and a facilitative style of staff leadership.”

The action was largely the result of a move by the United Church of Christ delegation. Interestingly, UCC president Robert Moss had served on the task force.

Efforts to make the proposed new structure more attractive to communions outside the present NCC may have been damaged by a speech delivered to the General Board the night before the action on the model was taken. The speech was that of Bishop Joseph L. Bernardin, general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). The bishop was reported to be ill, and his address was read by Monsignor Bernard Law, executive director of the NCCB’s Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

In it the bishop underscored perfect unity as the goal of ecumenism and quoted the Decree of Ecumenism from Vatican II: “This unity, we believe, dwells in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time.”

He acknowledged that “it may have been viewed as more diplomatic” if he had not included that sentence in the address. But he said that “in the interest of truth and understanding … two points must be understood by us all. The first is this: A Catholic view of ecumenism sees as its goal what might be variously referred to as perfect ecclesiastical communion, ecclesial unity, or organic unity.… The second point is this: The Catholic Church does have an understanding of herself as possessing elements of the unity willed by Christ for his Church which are not present to the same degree in other Christian churches and ecclesial communities.”

The next day a black church leader stated on the floor that he took exception to the implication that he was being invited “back home.” “I have never left home,” he said. “My home is where I am now.” Earlier in the meeting a black board member asked what the price would be of bringing in Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans. “Some of us will not sell our souls for a mess of pottage,” he said.

Bernardin was quoted as saying that the possibility of Roman Catholic membership in the World Council of Churches is “being studied in all its aspects by the Catholic Church,” but that it “is a question the complexity of which becomes more evident the more deeply it is studied.”

Young people, who have participated in NCC affairs more actively in recent months, said little during the Louisville meeting. The most vehement expression came in the response made by a young woman who had served on the task force to a board member’s complaint that the task force had been “tinkering” with the NCC. That remark alienated her so much, she said, that she was tempted to get on the telephone and call for demonstrations like those that had made a shambles of the NCC’s 1969 General Assembly in Detroit.

Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, NCC general secretary, who originated the restructure effort at the Detroit meeting, commented: “We have been through a critical period.” He said he was happy at the way things turned out in Louisville but conceded that the lack of discussion of the theological bases of conciliarism has been a “shortcoming.” At present, membership is open to those communions that “confess Jesus Christ as Divine Saviour and Lord.”

Espy had called for creation of a broadly inclusive General Ecumenical Congress that would meet periodically in the interest of unified expression. The task force perpetuated that idea by recommending that an annual “Inter-Church Conference” be held. The conference, whose name the task force changed to “Conference of Christian Churches,” would not take any binding actions on its member agencies.

Action would be at the level of self-governing and self-sustaining “consortia” organized separately from the conference. These consortia would be originated for a specific purpose by any two or more communions.

Espy originally wanted so-called para-ecclesiastical organizations to have some significant role in the conciliar structure. This designation could include such diverse groups as the American Bible Society, the National Committee of Black Churchmen, and Campus Crusade for Christ. Now, Espy says, he feels that only churches should be directly involved in structures.

Espy’s report to the Louisville meeting included a critique of the task-force model. Most of its features, he said, “I heartily affirm.” Significantly, however, he said he wanted to see the functions of the Interchurch Conference broadened so that it could issue pronouncements.¹Latest stand taken by the General Board accuses the Harrisburg grand jury of violating rights of accused persons by naming “co-conspirators” without indicting them. The board took the action after hearing a speech by Congressman William Anderson (D.-Tenn.) defending the Berrigan brothers. He declared: “The Interchurch Conference should be given the explicit freedom to address its views on urgent subjects, in its own name, to the general public and the government.”

This year will probably tell the story. The new committee, headed by Dr. Thomas Liggett of the Christian Church (Disciples), is to get official reaction from communions on its revised model in time for the General Board to adopt an approved model at a September meeting in New Orleans.

Degree Decree

Carl McIntire’s embattled Shelton College in Cape May, New Jersey, has had its degree of troubles. Last year its academic dean was ousted for not having a valid bachelor’s degree—to say nothing of the master’s and doctoral degrees he had claimed (see May 22 issue, page 38). And last month the state Department of Higher Education revoked the license of the small, fundamentalist school.

But the shutting off of its degree-granting privileges did not daunt either McIntire or Shelton’s faculty. “We don’t expect to close; we’re going to continue as if we have accreditation,” Dean Edwin Larson told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He added that the school’s standards were “up to snuff” and that the board had exceeded its powers in revoking Shelton’s license.

Larson confirmed that the decision would be appealed in court and a $5 million damage suit filed against the board. McIntire was more vociferous: “It’s a liberal frame-up and the premeditated murder of a Christian college.”

The board said Shelton has “substantial academic deficiencies, coupled with a lack in institutional integrity and administrative competence.” It also charged the college with a lack of “candor in dealing with the public, students, and the state.”

The 140-student college has been aswirl in controversy since it moved to New Jersey in 1954. McIntire recently bought property at Cape Canaveral, Florida, that includes a college site.

Walking Inn

The Christian Service Corps, based in Washington, D. C., has walked its way into new headquarters: a 106-room, seven-story hotel.

The actual move from five scattered offices throughout the city took place this month, but the “money-raising walk” for the agency known as the Christian Peace Corps happened last November. Then sponsors paid from a penny to $10 a mile for CSC volunteer hikers, who trekked over a twenty-five-mile route. The walkers marched to the tune of $13,000—enough to guarantee a lease-purchase option on the Alturas Hotel on Sixteenth Street in northwest Washington, and to pay the first month’s rent and operating expenses.

The corps, which has trained and placed 110 evangelicals in educational, business, clerical, ministerial, communications, and other fields since it was organized by the Reverend Robert Meyers almost six years ago, will use the first floor of the hotel for offices. Training and housing facilities for corpsmen will be located on the second floor, and the rest of the building will be leased to Christian groups and individuals.

The hotel, renamed the Christian Inn, will specialize in youth seminars. Room rentals and a coffee shop are expected to make the venture self-supporting, according to Walter Heywood, hotel manager and assistant to director Meyers.