Protestant leaders seem convinced that the Church, in the name of the Church, has a God-given mandate to make pronouncements on any and every phase of social, economic, and political issues. Those who hold this view are, I fear, often listening to voices outside the Church that demand a “gospel” compatible with their own conception of ways in which to meet the chaotic and distressing conditions of our day.

Many alert and dedicated Christians feel that, when it involves itself primarily in social, political, and economic matters, the Church is forfeiting its role as the chief exponent of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and thus proving false to its calling. The plummeting influence of the Church in the nation as a whole appears to confirm this statement. When the Church has ventured into the secular field—particularly concerning matters on which men of equal piety and devotion to their Lord disagree—it has exchanged its spiritual role for one in which it may well find itself aligned with forces inimical both to itself and to society as a whole.

Some church leaders view with strong distaste the opinions of laymen who hold to the historic concept of the separation of church and state. Many of these laymen are deeply concerned that the distinction be kept clear, and primarily that the spiritual message of the Church speak to the basic need of redemption and regeneration, without which there can be no lasting social reform.

As the organizations of the major denominations are largely in the hands of men committed to church pronouncement-making and social activism, it is more or less the general practice of these denominations during the course of their annual meetings to make social pronouncements that thereby become the “official” position of the church.

Let us try to look at this matter objectively. The matter of a church’s entering into economics, social problems, and politics as a corporate group will not be solved by raising a false issue, as some have done. Many individuals who work for social reform want their churches to examine anew their spiritual calling. Sometimes these concerned laymen are accused of trying to “buy” the church. But thousands of men are apprehensive lest their churches sell their glorious spiritual heritage and obligation for a mess of secular pottage.

The Church (and I speak of all major denominations) has a heritage of faith firmly planted in the revelation of God in Christ as recorded in the Holy Scriptures. It has a heritage of strong convictions regarding the separation of church and state. To the Church alone has been committed the message of salvation from sin. It is the repository of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, which it is obligated to preach at home and abroad.

Any emphasis upon secular matters without a corresponding conviction about the content of the gospel message is a deviation that harms the Church and detracts from its influence upon the secular world, which its Lord commissioned it to reach. The Church does have a responsibility, but it is not one of secular deliverance; rather, it is the faithful witness to the Gospel, which is man’s only hope—now and for eternity.

Every minister of the Gospel, every Christian, has the right to preach or speak on social and other issues if he is so led by the Spirit. But the Church, as a corporate group, has a spiritual ministry from which its influence emanates; its basic task is to tell of the One who alone empowers men to live righteously. The message of the Church should lead to the regeneration of the individual through faith in Christ.

The Christian, as a citizen, should through personal activity—individually or corporately carried on—help in the reformation of society. But as sure as there is truth to be preached, the social order will never be changed to a marked degree until the hearts of the individuals who make up that order have been changed by the living Christ.

Unless the ministry and message of the Church is recognized for its spiritual content and uniqueness, the Church will surely become lost in the plethora of secular and humanitarian movements that depend upon man to change his own living conditions and destiny.

Because the Church is the sole custodian of the Gospel of redemption through the atoning work on Calvary, it must put first things first and be faithful to its heritage and its witnessing obligation. The concern for social reform can—and has already in many quarters—become an obsession that overshadows the primary task of the Church in the world.

Unless Christian citizens exercise their influence through the ballot box and through personal righteousness, the pronouncements of the churches go for nothing. Valid social concerns must be implemented by concerned Christians. For the corporate church to demand reforms, in the name of the Church, is a form of coercion, and this is not the spiritual healing to which the Church is committed. Furthermore, such actions of church courts support positions that may prove to be contrary to Christian ideals.

To illustrate: dedicated Christians disagree about laws having to do with the closed shop, right-to-work laws, birth control, abortion, deficit spending, and so on. A church that takes official action on any of these issues assumes a position that our Lord himself would not take. “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” he asked. And then he went on to utter these searching words: “Take heed, beware of covetousness; for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.”

When a church makes official pronouncements on secular matters, it finds itself suspect both within and outside the area where it is supposed to operate. This may seem to some to be a fine distinction, but it is a very necessary one. The minute a church becomes officially involved in secular areas, it begins to forfeit its power and witness in the spiritual field.

The Church should be guided by revealed principles that have their basis in the divine will. But this is very different from claiming divine authority to make pronouncements regarding particular programs, parties, and personalities.

I know of no one who wishes to “buy” any church or denomination. But I know of thousands of concerned Christians who do not wish to see the spiritual mission of the Church sold for a social program that can never save one soul from eternal loss.

EDITORIALS

Pick up a book, paper, or magazine that is discussing capitalism and communism, and you are almost sure to find the two systems treated as opposites. Certainly one can contrast them, just as one can contrast communism with democracy. But capitalism and communism do have some elements in common.

It is generally accepted that no nation in the world is genuinely communistic. Both the Soviet Union and Red China would agree to that. Indeed, the Soviet Union is socialist by its own designation—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Thus one would be forced to say that the worldwide struggle is between the capitalists and the socialists. Here again, however, one needs to be quite careful; there is a clear distinction between democratically socialist countries, such as Sweden, and dictatorial states like the communist countries. The most uninformed person quickly discovers that socialism is in a significant way capitalistic. What then is the difference between capitalism and socialism if both are capitalistic? Socialism is state capitalism; the state owns the means of production. Capitalism is individual or private; the means of production are owned not by the state but by individuals or groups of people.

The myth of the profit motive must also be destroyed. Capitalism is criticized constantly as immoral because of the profit motive. State capitalism or socialism also is, out of necessity, profit-oriented. Without surplus or profit there would be no economic progress. Moreover, there would be no teachers, no physicians, and no political leaders. They are not engaged in commodity production and must be supported by those who are. What is even more obvious is that if farmers consumed all they produced, a lot of people would go hungry. They must produce more than they consume if non-farmers are to be fed.

It is clear that when communists or socialists lambast the profit motive, they are not really saying they are opposed to profit. They couldn’t be and survive as nations. What they are saying is that they object to who makes the profit and how it is distributed under capitalism. The socialists want the state to get the profit and to determine its distribution. In the case of the Soviet Union, a small clique of self-perpetuating bureaucrats does this, also determining what goods are to be produced, and how much of the profits should be diverted from consumer goods to bombs, missiles, planes, armies, navies and space flights. In the end the people, except those who enjoy special privileges of power, pay the bills by what they must forgo, and the workers who produce the commodities do not get the full return of their labor. In traditional capitalism individuals rather than the state get the profits and determine their distribution. Since great masses of people share the profits, great masses determine the allocation of them. In West Germany capitalism has demonstrated a marked superiority over the socialism of East Germany, which is tied to the Soviet Union’s economic theories.

Since men are sinners subject to greed, laziness, the will to power and a dozen other liabilities, it is obvious that no system will work perfectly. Both economic systems are subject to men’s frailties. But the wider the diffusion of the profits and the greater the number of people who determine their distribution, the less likely a consolidation and misuse of power and profits. In developed countries, capitalism, despite its weaknesses, has a lot more going for it than socialism. But too often private capitalism has resulted in only a tiny percentage of a population controlling most of the country’s wealth. This unenlightened procedure has often promoted the rise of state capitalism.

In the United States the government by its power to tax has curbed capitalism so that wealth can no longer be increased from one generation to the next. This may be seen in several ways. First, no large amount of wealth can be passed on intact from father to children. The estate taxes are so prohibitive that the overwhelming proportion of a large estate would go to the government. Henry Ford II has retained only a small proportion of the money made by his father and grandfather. The rest went into the Ford Foundation. The multiplied wealth of the Rockefellers will, in a few short years, go either to the government or into foundations. John Kennedy’s father’s estate has wound up in the family foundation. Thus capitalism as an accumulating system, passing on and adding to succeeding generations wealth and power, simply is non-existent.

Moreover, in the United States recent legislation has been adopted to regulate foundations and to require the distribution of income and principal to charitable causes. Since the lifespan of foundations will be limited, it is obvious that they will have no controlling effect on American society. Most of their assets will go to educational, medical, humanitarian, and religious causes. This will enable private foundations to assist good causes that then need not look to government for financial support. It will make funds available for enterprises that government could not, would not, or ought not to fund.

A good case can be made for private capitalism from Scripture. Karl Marx himself recognized it even as he argued against it. He said that capitalism owes its life to the Mosaic commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” This is the foundation for the imprescriptible right to private property. The commandment not to steal is valid only if there are things that uniquely belong to a man and cannot be taken from him without breaking the command. Thus Marx said that Moses commandment was not from God (whose existence he denied) but a man-made ordinance designed to protect the property of the haves from the have-nots. But in the Bible the right to private property is always linked with responsible stewardship. Every man shall give account of the use of his material possessions to God. Capitalism that leaves God out of the picture can be a great evil, but capitalism combined with Christian stewardship can do more good for more men than any other economic system.

The Perils Of Publishing Satire

We are still smarting from some of the letters we received about, Gordon H. Clark’s essay, “A New Discovery in the Quest of the Historical Jesus.” An earlier experience had taught us that some people are likely to miss the point of a satirical piece and take it at face value, and so we supplied the information on the contents page that the essay was a “satire on scholarship.” That wasn’t enough, we find.

Let it be plainly said that Gordon Clark continues to be one of the doughtiest defenders of a high view of Scripture. We hope that his friend from student days who wrote to lament his capitulation to modern criticism will restore him to his rightful place.

Satire, according to one dictionary, is “the use of trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm, for the purpose of exposing or discrediting vice or folly.” Clark was spoofing those who tear apart and demythologize Scripture. Unfortunately, in recent years such way-out theories about Scripture have been advanced that Clark’s “theory” on “the gospel of diet” is perhaps not a whole lot kookier than some that are seriously meant. And he carried off his spoof with great skill. At least one editor blinked hard for a few moments when he first began to read about Clark’s “discovery.” For those who recognized the piece as satire, it was good fun. For those who didn’t, it came with a crunch.

Jesus used satire; Paul employed it in Corinthians; Ecclesiastes has some of it. As a literary form it has great value. We hope that those who were fooled will read Clark’s essay again and enjoy it for what it is.

Conserving The Faith

Bad-mouthing the Pope, albeit in dulcet tones, has become something of a fashionable pastime for reform-minded Roman Catholics. Many of them consider his stands on birth control, celibacy, clergy dissent, and ecumenicity to be frustratingly conservative and preconciliar, if not stubbornly reactionary.

His recent (January 5) apostolic exhortation to the world’s bishops was seen by some renewalists as a slap on the wrist of the theologians, and a slap on the back of his brothers in the episcopacy. Paul, speaking on the fifth anniversary of the end of Vatican II, pointedly reminded the “savants” that “however necessary the function of theologians, it is not to the learned that God has confided the duty of authentically interpreting the faith of the Church.” And, warning against radical demythologization, he lamented that “even the divine authority of Scripture is not left unquestioned.…”

The Pope’s frank message was a call to renewed obedience on the part of the bishops: “We shall take pains so to present to the men of this age God’s truth in its integrity and purity that they may gladly understand and assent to it.… That means trying to use a language easily accessible to them, answering their questions, arousing their interest, and helping them to discover, through poor human speech, the whole message of salvation brought to us by Jesus Christ.” And it was a defense of the Gospel against weakness of faith, narrowness of vision, and the inroads of secular humanism.

Barbara J. Nauer, assistant professor of English at Forest Park College in St. Louis, writes in a recent issue of the Jesuit magazine America: “His vocabulary has been disturbingly Tridentine. But the Pope’s general message has always been clear: mystery, the ineffable, the transcendent, the divine continue to impinge on the affairs of men, whether men see and understand this or not. The Kingdom and the world are not identical.”

We wish the pontiff would direct the same kind of concern to stripping away the extra-biblical accretions that through the centuries have fastened themselves to Catholic dogma. Nevertheless, evangelicals, and indeed the Church as a whole, in an important sense can be glad for Pope Paul’s avowed conservatism. It has served as an anchor against the most devastating of reform riptides that threaten to destroy the old in favor of the new.

We applaud Paul, as chief spokesman for the branch of Christianity claiming 580 million adherents, for courageously—often at the expense of popularity—sticking to his assertion that the primary task of the Church is, as he told the bishops, to preach Christ “as the Son of God made man to save us and to make us sharers in his life, and not as a merely human figure, however wonderful and attractive.”

Close Open Admission

Student riots are not new to this age, as we read in the article on page four. But today reasons for student rioting are often novel. As a result of student pressure, admission to the City University of New York is now open to anyone with a high-school diploma, whether or not he can read and write. And many graduates—both black and white—of New York City high schools cannot do either at anywhere near the college level. Presumably, those who enroll in City University will be helped to develop these basic skills.

These poorly equipped students need help, but open admission is not the answer. The upgrading of the secondary school system, which is needed badly, cannot be done overnight. Until the problem is solved at this level, perhaps crash programs or summer sessions could be initiated—as at some universities—to help those students who want and need a college education meet admission requirements.

Candid Candidacy

Without endorsing him, we wish to commend Senator George McGovern for openly declaring his candidacy for the Democratic party’s nomination to the Presidency. We need more, much more, candor in politics. For someone who obviously is running for the nomination to pretend that he is not certainly does nothing to contribute to the honesty and openness we desperately need in our relationships with one another.

We also need more exposure to the ideas and approaches of those men who are serious possibilities for the Presidency. Early formal announcement gives the public the chance to observe the problems of the country in light of the candidates’ proposals to meet them. And the longer a candidate is exposed to the glare of publicity, the better the voters’ opportunity to see whether he seems capable of enduring the grueling pressures of office. The Madison Avenue type of approach in which a candidate is promoted in much the same way that soap or cigarettes are—by image making, snappy tunes, clever jingles—should have no place in political campaigns.

We hope, moreover, that the candidates to replace President Nixon do not feel they have to oppose him at every point. Indeed, part of the candor politics needs much more of is the willingness to back a good idea regardless of who else promotes it. Too often measures seem to be supported or denounced not on their merits but rather on their associations. The incumbent President should not hesitate to take good ideas from the contenders, nor they from him.

By the ordination of God we in the United States live in a democracy; this means that as voters we all are part of the “powers that be” (Rom. 13:1), in that we have the power to select our leaders. To fail to exercise that power responsibly is to evade a stewardship entrusted to us by God. Early declarations by candidates and intensive scrutiny of their views should be encouraged, so that we can better judge their fitness for public trust.

Ecumenical Retreat

Time and time again over the last twenty years the General Board of the National Council of Churches has adopted ambitious programs only to see them founder for lack of funds. The General Board supposedly has a mandate from NCC member denominations to make ecumenical policy, but it lacks the wherewithal to implement the policy and make it stick. Because the denominations still hold the purse string, they have a de facto veto over General Board actions.

It was with such problems in mind that the NCC in 1969 undertook to restructure itself. A task force of ecumenical strategists well aware of the realities was appointed a year ago, and last month it proposed to the General Board a plan for a successor organization to the NCC (see News, page 44). The plan called for a decentralized structure wherein programs would be undertaken only when there was direct denominational support. To this extent at least, the task force’s plan is commendable. The effect, we can hope, would be to put an end to pronouncements in which the NCC purports to speak for 42.5 million churchgoers but in fact represents the views of only a fraction of these.

Not about to give up its political clout, the Genera! Board refused to accept the task force’s recommendation that the plan be presented to member denominations for study. First, the board said, a committee must be created to revise the plan and give it a more authoritarian orientation. In this action the General Board took a decidedly backward step.

A Season For All Men

The rainy season will soon be here, supplanting the season of sleet and snow. If only it could also change the prevailing indoor climate of smoke, which regrettably knows no season. Whatever the weather outside, in buses, planes, restaurants, and even elevators, at lunch counters and PTA meetings, it is the same: a white-gray, foul-smelling haze. The problem of inclement weather indoors is so acute that many people—the surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Jesse L. Steinfield, is one—suggest that legislation be passed to protect the non-smoker from the clouded air. To bring this to pass (and to decide on the constitutionality of such laws) will take time. Meanwhile, perhaps smokers could take note of a healthful principle of togetherness—that my rights stop where another’s begin (or perhaps that my air stops where another’s begins)—and exercise self-restraint. That would be a season for everyone to share and enjoy.

Ethics On The Line

Was there really a plot to kidnap Henry Kissinger and to set off explosives beneath government buildings?

Some speculation on the alleged scheme centers on whether it would have been consistent with the stated ideals of the Berrigan brothers and the other Roman Catholics indicted in the case. For their sake and for the sake of the Church as a whole, we hope that the government is mistaken and that these clerics did not violate their previously stated precepts of non-violence. The Church is in bad enough trouble without having to live down a reputation for harboring kidnappers and bombers.

Our hope is a bit dimmed by two considerations. The first is that historically the Society of Jesus is no stranger to political intrigue. The Jesuits, of whom Father Daniel Berrigan is one, were long associated with dubious casuistry. And though there has been reason to think they outgrew these in modern times, a passage in Berrigan’s book No Bars to Manhood gives pause. Berrigan recalls a comment made after he was summoned to Jesuit headquarters during one of the many times he was called on the carpet. “Do you want to know why you’re in trouble so frequently?” a Jesuit friend asked him. “It’s because you and some others show us what Jesuits can be. And that’s why we can’t stand you.”

The alleged absence of fixed norms is not, of course, peculiar to the Society of Jesus. It is at least as old as the Sophists of ancient Greece. And as new as situation ethics, which prevails to an alarming degree among today’s ecclesiastical radicals.

Remythologizing The Demythologized

This is the age of demythologization. The process extends well beyond the demythologizing of the Bible and has reached some of the heroes of American life. For example, at the Thanksgiving season Time magazine, in its religion page, rather airily laid bare a number of the foibles and failures of the Pilgrims of Plymouth fame. Evangelical historians have increasingly attacked the popular notion that the United States was founded as a Christian nation; they have given the impression that Christianity had little if anything to do with its birth. And George Washington has recently been accused of money-grabbing and of padding his expense accounts during the Revolutionary War.

The pendulum seems to have swung from uncritical adulation to hypercritical rejection. The need now is for a better measurement, an objective appraisal that balances achievements and strengths against failures and weaknesses. Certainly our Pilgrim forebears were human beings who did and said things we all regret. But they were also great people whose vision and accomplishments should be acknowledged. We have no wish to defend any wrong that Washington did; but on balance we reaffirm our gratitude for the yeoman service he rendered his country and the wisdom reflected in some of his addresses.

The Bible does nothing to hide the sins and defects of the great heroes of the faith of whom it tells. King David was an adulterer and a murderer, yet he is called a man after God’s own heart—not because of his weaknesses but because of his justifying faith that brought him into the family of God. The writer of Hebrews, in listing the great heroes of the faith, dwells not on their failures but on their finest accomplishments.

There has been one whose life was perfect and against whom no charge of fault or sin could be sustained. The rest of us are a hodge-podge of conflicting drives, of failures and successes. We can only hope that others will see both sides with enough grace to speak more of the good than of the bad. And perhaps we can admire afresh some of our tradional heroes.

The Holds In Life’S Countdowns

We live in a day of exploding change, of frantic dashes toward distant goals, of pressures that scream for instant solutions—a restless, impatient day. The Now Generation has no time to wait but rushes to get on with the action.

Yet in this Space Age day of urgency and demand, we had better hear God out: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10); “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa. 40:31). As space engineers provide for “holding” the countdown at certain points before liftoff until all systems are Go, so God imposes holds on our countdowns in life until all systems are Go.

The late V. Raymond Edman of Wheaton College saw the delays of life not as disappointments but as disciplines that prepared one for the bigger things of tomorrow.

Before Moses arose to lead his people from bondage, he languished in long obscurity in the desert. Before David ascended to the throne, he sorrowed in Adullam—and became a man after God’s own heart, a leader headed in the right spiritual direction. Before victory on the mountaintop, Elijah had to go to Cherith and Zarephath, where he learned the secret that makes prayer work, that takes words beyond the ceiling of the soul to the very heart of God. Afterward he asked for—and got—life-giving water for his desperately thirsty world. Paul, who was “turned on” to the power of God, spent years alone in Arabia getting the Gospel branded into every fiber of his life.

These people of God and hosts of others in history discovered the realities of God during periods of postponed accomplishment; such discovery could not have been made in the rush of turbulent activity, for which they were better prepared by having been delayed.

Whether it’s inactivity for activity, weakness for strength, silence for speaking, infirmity for health, sitting for service, forsakenness for friendship, or obscurity for opportunity—God never wastes anyone’s time. There is a higher purpose to his placing a hold on one’s countdown toward destiny.

Theology Made Interesting

Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, Volumes 4–6, edited by Karl Rahner, with Cornelius Ernst and Kevin Smyth (Herder and Herder, 1969–70. 426, 438, and 423 pp., $22.50 each), is reviewed by Leslie R. Keylock, pastor, Point Lookout Community Church, Point Lookout, New York.

In the light of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), G. C. Berkouwer saw that his book Conflict with Rome had become so dated that a mere revision was inadequate, and so he wrote The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism. Unfortunately American evangelicals who have written on Catholicism have not always been so sagacious. With a convenient encyclopedia of post-Vatican II theology like Sacramentum Mundi now available, no Protestant has any excuse for misrepresenting current Catholic thought.

The broad coverage of this theological encyclopedia makes the reader aware of the expanded understanding of the scope of the term theology in our day. Whereas theological studies traditionally have included primarily Old Testament, New Testament, historical theology and church history, dogmatics, and practical theology, these volumes also include articles in such relatively recent fields as ecumenical theology, comparative religion, and “Christian social doctrine.” Almost all the topics that have long been considered polemical (merit, purgatory, transubstantiation, works, to mention a few) are here treated in very brief articles that reflect an irenic or at least “non-traditional” spirit, underlining the fact that for progressive Catholic thought they have ceased to be of central concern. Also reflective of improved relations with other Christian bodies is the fact that ecumenical topics like “Protestantism” (Peter Meinhold’s sections are the best I have read by a Catholic) and “Reformation” and “Reform” (Joseph Lortz’s views of the Reformation are already somewhat dated; Viktor Conzemius’s discussion of reform is excellent) receive an almost disproportionate emphasis (thirty-four and thirty-seven columns). Only twelve articles in the three volumes receive lengthier treatment, including such non-confessional topics as “New Testament Books” (fifty) and “Old Testament Books” (sixty-seven). A number of the longer articles will no doubt be of marginal interest to many readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY—those, for example, on the history of the papacy, orders and ordination, religious orders, scholasticism, Catholic missions (the longest article in the whole encyclopedia), and spirituality.

Although the encyclopedia was published simultaneously in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and although the authors of articles come from many countries, this is still basically a German Catholic encyclopedia, as a quick glance over the list of contributors at the end of Volume 6 will readily indicate. From a Protestant perspective this is perhaps fortunate, because no other Catholic scholars have succeeded as well as the Germans in overcoming the deadly and dull scholastic phraseology of the old theology manuals. Even when Karl Rahner, the dominant influence in the whole encyclopedia, uses classical Aristotelian-Thomistic language, he gets beneath the words to a real understanding of the subject (no exegete would derive a doctrine of merit from the strange concatenation of verses he cites as evidence, however!). This is not the case with the conservative French Catholics, who almost without exception use the old language in a way that does not excite or stimulate the non-Thomistic reader. Occasionally this contrast is given an almost humorous turn, as when the French biblical scholar, Xavier Léon-Dufour, in “New Testament Books” says of the two-source theory of Synoptic history: “In actual fact, this dogma is only an opinion, and to our mind is a serious over-simplification of the literary evidence”—and Anton Vögtle in almost the very next article expressly adopts it! In the short article “Miracle,” a similar contrast in theological temperament is vividly evident in the discussions of Louis Monden and Johann Baptist Metz. All this difference shows is that a national Weltgeist influences theologians across confessional lines; British Protestant theologians are also more conservative, by and large, than their German counterparts.

The list of contributors would have been greatly improved if the authors of articles had been identified by more than just their names, since the vast majority are completely unknown in this country, even to Catholic theologians, and many of them deserve to be known.

Evangelical scholars are by now probably aware that most contemporary Roman Catholic scholars accept the conclusions of a moderate higher criticism. The authors of the biblical articles in Sacramentum Mundi are not exceptions; they adopt a modified Wellhausean approach to the sources of the Pentateuch, three distinct periods for the composition of Isaiah, a Maccabean date for Daniel, and pseudepigraphical authorship as a definite possibility or even probability for Second Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, the Pastoral Letters, First and Second Peter, and Jude.

Unfortunately, even in this encyclopedia the feeling still occasionally emerges that Catholic theologians are a bit too quick to point out Protestant weaknesses and a bit too reluctant to admit Catholic errors and distortions. And although asterisks are no longer used in bibliographies to indicate “safe” works, mediocre Catholic volumes are still sometimes slipped in beside major works by non-Catholics. Of course, et tu, Brute! would be a perfectly justified rejoinder.

Despite these criticisms, however, Sacramentum Mundi is the most interesting and certainly the most irenic encyclopedia of Catholic theology that has appeared in centuries.

Detecting Church Lobbies

The Growing Church Lobby in Washington, by James L. Adams (Eerdmans, 1970, 294 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by E. Russell Chandler, news editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

If James L. Adams didn’t know it when he wrote this book about details of religious influence in national policy, he does now: Most churchmen engaged in influencing the decisions of Congress or government administrative agencies don’t like to be called “lobbyists” or “church bureaucrats.”

At least three top United Methodist staff officials in Washington, D. C., have publicly faulted Adams, a veteran reporter and religion writer for the Cincinnati Post and Times-Star, for some of his definitions and designations; the book is filled with references to Methodist view points and to behind-the-scenes activities in the United Methodist Building hard by the Senate Office Building, the Supreme Court, and the Capitol. Here the United Methodists share space with at least seven other church agencies on Washington’s prestigious “Religion Row.”

Lobbying by any other name is still the growing game of more than a dozen church-related agencies in the nation’s capital. And, Adams points out, these agencies are powerful and entrenched.

Adams, an evangelical, gathered voluminous notes and completed scores of interviews for the book while he was in Washington during 1967 as a fellow at the Washington Journalism Center and a news intern at CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He finished the book in 1970. The Growing Church Lobby is an accurate chronologue of some of the key concerns of the religious lobby during the 1960s. Most chapters read like a detective novel: Adams tells “whodunit” and why as he spins out the interplay between government and church bureaucrats on four major topics: the 1964 civil-rights legislation, the fight over funding the Child Development Group of Mississippi, the church-state battle ensconced in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the peace issue, particularly in Viet Nam.

Adams concludes that the churches played a key role in the Civil Rights Act passage because there was a strong consensus for it in the pews, and racial equality was an “idea whose time had come.” But the Cincinnati journalist contends that never again in the decade did church lobbyists achieve commensurate clout.

The Rollicking, Controversial 1740S

The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740–1745, edited by Richard L. Bushman (Atheneum, 1970. 174 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Dirk Jellema, professor of history, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Perhaps surprisingly, this book should be of unusual interest to the average reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It is part of a continuing series that presents documents dealing with problems in pre-Revolutionary American history and attempts to encourage an independent evaluation by the college student. This present collection deals with that most spectacular of American revivals, the Great Awakening of the 1740s.

Was that notable event a great work of the Holy Spirit, or the product of a fanatical emotionalism that did more harm than good? The documents show spirited and often bitter argument on this point. The Great Awakening was sparked by the English Anglican revivalist George Whitefield and spread by like-minded colonial evangelists, Gilbert Tennant and many others. It was, in brief, successful, spectacular, sensational, and controversial.

Hear Nathan Cole report on his conversion, after hearing Whitefield (“a young, slim, slender youth”) preach: “God appeared unto me and made me skringe … I was shrinked into nothing …” and then, after accepting Christ, “I was swallowed up in God … and all the air was love.” On the other hand, hear Charles Chauncey on Whitefield (and Tennant): “He generally moved the passions, especially of the younger people, and the females among them … the Town, in general, was not much mended in those things wherein a reformation was greatly needed … preaching every day in the week, taking people off from their Callings, and introducing a neglect of all business but that of hearing him preach … ’tis scarce imaginable what excesses and extravagancies … never was [there] such a spirit of superstition and enthusiasm … it makes men spiritually proud and conceited beyond measure, infinitely censorious and uncharitable.…” But hear William Gaylord, who despite some reservations felt he “must heartily rejoice that Mr. Whitefield has been through the country preaching the Gospel in every place with such life and zeal as are rarely to be seen in this dead and frozen age.…” And many other contemporary observors give their evaluations, for or against the evangelists.

Opposition to the Awakening came especially for two reasons: first, many distrusted the emotionalism it engendered; secondly, and perhaps more importantly, its leaders began denouncing the established clergy as unworthy preachers—a course obviously leading to trouble. The occasional excesses of emotionalism (or were they typical?), the occasional tendencies to separatism (or were they inherent in the Awakening?), were pounced on by those eager to discredit it. The quarrels between the “Old Lights” and the “New Lights” (those favoring the Awakening), and the various positions in between, did indeed embitter the churches for a generation, with the “establishment” position slowly losing ground. Or, perhaps, the controversy increasingly seemed irrelevant as (a generation later) the more basic threat of deism and the Enlightenment became apparent.

The running commentary going with the documents is necessarily brief, but generally excellent: it makes a point often forgotten, that the Awakening aimed at a revitalized Christian community as well as individual conversions. It notes in passing influences from England and Scotland, but fails to tie in the affairs of the colonies with the general “revival” or “reform” movement in Europe, which included not only English Methodism but Dutch and German pietism (see for example James Tanis, Dutch Calvinistic Pietism in the Middle Colonies, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967; the career of T. J. Frelinghuysen is a striking example of such connections). Indeed, the question of why the Awakening came about is ignored.

A possible answer is along these lines: As the tremendous energies unleashed by the Genevan and Puritan dream of forcing all of society to follow the Bible drained off in a welter of religious wars, the Reformation—in the colonies as well as in Europe—settled down, content with an established position, in close alliance with Protestant governments. The dream then took a modified form: the revitalization of at least part of the society, the formation of at least a sub-society that would follow Christ fervently and faithfully. Hence the Awakening (which, incidentally, comes chronologically half-way between Cromwell and the Abolitionist movement).

Today’s “Jesus freaks,” “underground churches,” and the like are perhaps the early stirrings of something similar; as the evangelical dream of “Christian America” seems hopelessly eroded, and the churches seem linked to a secular establishment, cannot a sub-society at least turn joyously to fervent worship of Christ? Chauncey, as he observed the preaching of Whitefield, noted (though with a jaundiced eye) one form of the “enthusiasm” it produced: “Loud hearty laughing was one of the ways in which our new converts, almost everywhere, were wont to join together in expressing their joy at the conversion of others.” All in all, this collection of documents on the Great Awakening turns out to be both engrossing and relevant.

He unveils, however, their successful strategy for going over the head of Sargent Shriver, Office of Economic Opportunity chief, to get Vice-President Hubert Humphrey to force Shriver to refinance the controversial Mississippi Head Start program.

The chapters on federal aid to education give especially helpful background on the 1965 school bill; more important, the reader gains useful insights for assessing the plethora of church-state issues bound to reach the courts and legislatures in the next several years. These could well have more impact on the future of education than any thus far in the country’s history.

Adams feels church efforts to end the Viet Nam war have been particularly ineffective because the lobbyists have been unable to present a clear-cut choice of right and wrong behind which to unite. Because the religious leaders represent what Adams believes is only a segment of their churches, he refers to them as “generals without armies.”

The book concludes that church lobbyists are effective only when they have the backing of the majority of the people in the pews: “Government officials are both sensible and sensitive enough to know whether a lobbyist represents a wide spectrum of opinion or whether he is speaking for a small class of church bureaucrats who have lost contact with their constituents.”

Adams sees a valid role for the church lobbyist in pressing for better government. He can relay information back to his membership about imminent questions to be resolved in Congress (thus the voter can make more intelligent choices and individually write his congressmen). And he can sometimes provide helpful information to individual congressmen on technical or esoteric subjects. But his greatest task should be to express moral outrage rather than to proffer political and military advice.

“The church lobbyist is never more true to his calling than when he forces our national leaders to re-examine U. S. goals in the uncomfortable glare of biblical morality,” declares Adams. “The most relevant thing a church lobbyist can do is to remind persons in high places that even nations stand under the judgment of God.”

The book is well documented, is sprinkled with dry humor, and moves with a sprightly style. The chapter surveying Washington’s church lobbies, their personnel and how they operate, is itself worth the price of the book.

Newly Published

Your God Is Too White, by Columbus Salley and Ronald Behm (Inter-Varsity, 1970, 114 pp., paperback, $1.95). A good, documented overview of black history and present experience in America that lays the foundation for a clear, biblically based challenge to whites to break with racist “Christianity” and a call to both whites and blacks to become disciples of the true Christ.

The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, by Francis A. Schaeffer (Inter-Varsity, 1970, 153 pp., $3.95). Schaeffer calls for the Church to be orthodox (some would say “hyper-orthodox”) yet loving, uncompromising with the world yet compassionate toward it. Not a profound or well-edited book, but the exhortations to a more biblically informed life-style for individuals and congregations are much needed. On the other hand, some of the sideswipes at different evangelical approaches and at artists and thinkers are questionable.

New Perspectives on the Old Testament, edited by J. Barton Payne (Word, 1970, 305 pp., $6.95). Seventeen scholarly essays prepared for the twentieth anniversary meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in 1968. Among the contributors are teachers at Calvin, Covenant, Conservative Baptist, Dallas, Faith, Gordon-Conwell, Grand Rapids, Trinity, and Wheaton seminaries.

Contemporary Protestant Thought, by C. J. Curtis (Bruce, 1970, 225 pp., $6.95). A text for Catholic colleges by a Lutheran pastor who teaches at one of them. He says his “concern has been to present as broad … a perspective of the modern religious scene as possible,” and hence his exclusion of evangelical thinkers is to be regretted.

How to Win Them, by John R. Bisagno et al. (Broadman, 1971, 158 pp., $3.95). Thirteen recent messages by Southern Baptist leaders at their state evangelism conferences.

Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity, edited by John Moore and Harold Slusher (Zondervan, 1970, 548 pp., $9.95). The Creation Research Society has prepared an introductory text for schools and colleges that presents the “facts” of biology in a framework favoring instantaneous creation of the major kinds of life a relatively short time ago.

Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, by H. R. Rookmaaker (Inter-Varsity, 1970, 256 pp., paperback, $3.95). An evangelical art historian offers a well-illustrated survey of modern Western art for the purpose of theologically interacting with what this art exhibits, both as art and as a reflection of society. Stimulating and provocative. More such works, with varying perspectives, are needed.

Christ and Prometheus: A New Image of the Secular, by William F. Lynch (Notre Dame, 1970, 153 pp., $5.95). Christ and Prometheus have often been compared. In this book the author creates, from comparison of the Greek figure and the Messiah, an image of man searching for light. It is written in the form used by Aeschylus (though Aeschylus never used diagrams). Ingeniously conceived and cleverly completed.

The Single Reality, by Preston Harold and Winifred Babcock (Dodd, Mead, 1971, 386 pp., $7.95). This book seeks to combine science (specifically physics) with secular religion, creating a philosophy for the whole life, intended to move man into a new era. Just what that era is to be we are not told.

Letters to Polly, by Melvin Schoonover (Eerdmans, 1971, 106 pp., $3.95). Through his own illness and that of his daughter—both suffer from a rare bone disease—the author’s faith in Jesus of Nazareth has been strengthened.

Bridging the Generation Gap, by William L. Self (Broadman, 1970, 95 pp., paperback, $1.95). A prosaic treatment of a subject that has been discussed to death. The lack both of fresh insights and of a lively style condemns this book to failure.

Evangelical Directions for the Lutheran Church, edited by Erich Kiehl and Waldo J. Werning (2751 S. Karlov, Chicago, Ill. 60623, 1970, 165 pp., paperback, $2.45). Twenty-two messages to a congress in Chicago last summer concerned with loyalty to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions.

Our Many Selves, by Elizabeth O’Connor (Harper & Row, 1971, 201 pp., $4.95). For those who want to have dialogue with each of their different personalities, here are some exercises to help. This is very modern, very psychiatric, and very tiresome. Let’s get back to Augustine’s Confessions.

Christianity and Comparative Religion, by J. N. D. Anderson (Inter-Varsity, 1970, 126 pp., paperback, $1.95). A professor at the University of London who is a specialist in Islamic law offers a very stimulating and informative set of lectures in book form. Highly relevant in view of the growing interest in Eastern religions.

The Church in China: Its Vitality; Its Future?, by William H. Clark (Council Press, 1970, 212 pp., $4.95). The first half surveys Christianity in China from 635 to 1949; the second half surveys and reflects on the Church under Communism. The author was a Presbyterian missionary in China.

The Lutheran Ethic: The Impact of Religion on Laymen and Clergy, by Lawrence K. Kersten (Wayne State, 1970, 309 pp., $8.95). A thorough study of the views of Lutherans in Detroit, with about equal participation from the four largest branches, based on questionnaires and interviews. Extremely useful for revealing beliefs of the “grass roots” and for differences and trends within and between the denominations studied. Among laymen there is no correlation between theological and political liberalism.

People-Centered Evangelism, by John F. Havlik (Broadman, 1971, 92 pp., paperback, $1.75). This is an apologetic for people. God cares about people, and our evangelism should reflect this.

Be/Come Community, by James B. Ashbrook (Judson, 1971, 127 pp., paperback, $1.95). “This book is to be experienced as much as it is to be read”—an experience similar to that of a nightmare. The author suffers from a pseudo-with-it complex that should not have been made public.

The Ministry of Reconciliation, by Georgia Harkness (Abingdon, 1971, 160 pp., paperback, $2.45). The author defines and discusses reconciliation from the Bible, without restricting it to the role of churches only.

Women’s Liberation and the Church, edited by Sarah Bentley Doely (Association, 1970, 158 pp., paperback, $2.95). Essays by women involved in church work. Some are militant, others not.

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

PEANUT-BUTTER ANGST

We were all sitting around in a sensitivity group recently not getting anywhere very fast when a Methodist minister made some innocuous comment about there being “many opinions on the subject.”

Suddenly one of his laymen exploded. “You’re the wishy-washiest person I know. It’s never yea or nay with you. It’s always maybe or sometimes. You’re a towering pillar of Jello.”

We were all momentarily stunned. Most of us expected the minister to mount a counterattack. But to our surprise, he just looked at the floor. After a moment of heavy silence he began to speak, almost inaudibly. “You’re right,” he said. “I just can’t make decisions any more on things that involve others. And I know where it began.”

We all instinctively moved our chairs closer to him as he told this story:

“It happened about two years ago. We were working late in the church office putting out the newsletter. I had finished my part of the work, and the two secretaries-were collating the pages. Since it was getting late, I offered to go get sandwiches for everyone.

“A warning signal about the female mind should have gone off in my head when the first girl said, ‘Get me anything that looks good to you.’

“The second girl said, ‘I brought a sandwich with me, so just get me something that will go good with peanut butter.’

“At the sandwich shop I ordered two roast-beef sandwiches, fulfilling my instructions about what looked good to me. Then I told Sam, the owner, to give me a side order of something to go with a peanut-butter sandwich.

“He gave me a suspicious look and said, ‘I don’t serve peanut butter.’

“ ‘I know you don’t,’ I replied. ‘Just give me an order of whatever you’d choose to go with a peanut-butter sandwich.’

“ ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I ain’t your mother. I ain’t even your nursemaid. I got bagels, cheese cake, candy bars, pickles, cole slaw, fried onion rings, kippered herring, and cheese balls. Just tell me what you want and I’ll fix you up.’

“On the phone I tried to sound humorous and nonchalant as I said, ‘Look I can’t make this big decision by myself. What do you want to go with your peanut-butter sandwich?’

“ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘get me an order of potato salad.’

“I just stood there a minute, mind boggled. If I had thought a hundred years I would not have come up with potato salad.

“Can it be, I thought, that all these years in the church I’ve been making decisions on behalf of others assuming everyone is essentially like me when they may be peanut-butter and potato-salad eaters?

“Since then I haven’t been able to make a single meaningful decision that involves others,” he sadly concluded.

The moral of this story may be that the unity of the human race ends at the dinner table. Or it may be something much more profound. If it is, please let me know.

THANKFUL FOR THE POET

Thank you for the delightful discussion of Henry Vaughan, “The Poetry of Henry Vaughan” (Jan. 1). I enjoyed it very much, and look forward to more articles on Christian literary figures. How about one for C. S. Lewis?

Hightstown, N.J.

MORE RESEARCH NEEDED

I appreciated the article “The Problems and Prospects of Evangelical Radio” (Jan. 1). It is unfortunate that Mr. Wineke didn’t do a little more research before writing the article. Those of us deeply concerned about the future of “evangelistic” radio have long ago learned that we don’t get too many answers among our NRB brethren. We are all too “hung up” on listener support. And our fellow evangelical listeners have not been willing to pay for newer, more contemporary ventures in broadcasting. We have however, found other brethren in the WACC (World Association for Christian Communications) who have adopted a different pattern.…

Mr. Wineke might be surprised to hear how many good solidly “evangelical” broadcasts are presently being released outside the NRB label. I believe that CHRISTIANITY TODAY should, in the near future, have a feature article about ways in which we can use radio today for evangelism.

Director

Faith and Life Radio and Television

General Conference Mennonite Church

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Might I add my “Amen” to William R. Wineke’s article on evangelical radio. While religious and evangelical radio stations may render good service to the initiated, my experience in personal and “street” evangelism with the younger set indicates that infiltration of secular stations is the better method for proclaiming Christ. Despite the competition of TV and other entertainment media, most young people in a given locality are dedicated listeners to two or three popular stations. Thus the Edwin Hawkins Singers’s recording of “O Happy Day,” which was the “number one” record on both soul and rock stations for several weeks in 1969, did more to open people to conversation about the possibility of “Jesus washing my sins away” than anything (or even everything) broadcast on the local religious stations (one of which is indeed evangelical in perspective). While million-selling records might be hard to come up with, perhaps five-or ten-minute “spots” could be purchased on these stations, or a Sunday-afternoon hour of good contemporary Christian music á la Hawkins Singers, Larry Norman, and others, along with good between-records commentary on Christ and modern culture. We also have the wonderful example of Joel Nederhood on the “Back to God Hour,” where every Sunday morning, without any money-begging, he presents a clear, concise, faithful, and relevant message of our Lord, on the top rock station in the San Francisco Bay Area (KFRC).

Berkeley, Calif.

CLEARING UP INTERPRETATIONS

I am not sensitive to adverse criticism of my published work and can myself dish out the same in reviewing the work of others. However, readers of Robert Guelich’s review of A Survey of the New Testament (Jan. 1) would conclude that I had advocated the purpose of Mark to be evangelistic, the delay of the bridegroom in the parable of the ten virgins to stem from haggling over the dowry, and the statement, “He shall be called a Nazarene,” to relate to the Messianic Branch in Isaiah vis-à-vis a derivation of “Nazareth” from the Hebrew word for “branch”—all with some dogmatism and no attention to other possibilities. As a matter of fact, in the first two instances other interpretations are entertained, and in the third instance the explanation is put only in terms of probability. The derivation of “hate thy enemy” from rabbinical teaching is a manuscript error which Guelich’s remark happily brings to my attention: the reference should be to Essene teaching.

Professor of Biblical Studies

Westmont College

Santa Barbara, Calif.

JUST ADVOCACY?

I am frankly puzzled by Vernon C. Grounds’s [article] “Bombs or Bibles? Get Ready for Revolution!” (Jan. 15), characterizing my views in the book Movement and Revolution as “open advocacy of revolution.” The purpose of the book, and this is clearly stated at a number of points, is to encourage careful reflection of the traditional “just war” doctrine as it may apply to revolutionary action. Anyone who reads Movement and Revolution with care will, I believe, recognize it as an essentially conservative approach to the growing revolutionary consciousness in America and the world. Sympathetic criticism it may be; advocacy, open or otherwise, it is not.

Church of St. John the Evangelist

Brooklyn, N.Y.

The article seemed to me quite apropos to the times. Within three pages Dr. Grounds has done an admirable job of stating the problem, relating the proper role of the Church, and ending with a note of hope—that a Wesleyan-type revival is what is needed.

While we cannot condone the methods or many of the aims of the godless revolutionaries, I feel that the record of the evangelical churches in recognizing problems now coming to light has not been something of which they can be proud.

Editor

The Sabbath Sentinel

Fairview, Okla.

Shades of perpetual pride! Indeed, bombs or Bible. Get ready for revolution? Yes. Even agreed—Vernon Grounds—Christ’s way, not Peter’s. But with Christ, it must be all the way, not half-way. And I contend that until we abandon spiritual myopia for the laser beam of the Gospel, we will not be adequately armed to wage the war as Christ’s revolutionaries or to properly define the role of the Church. Only by adopting the whole armor of God shall we be able to withstand the counterforces and stem the tide of evil. For when we, in Christ’s army, are willing to let go our enemy—pride—and subjugate our wills to the chief commander, we shall see twentieth-century Belshazzers with trembling knees and crumbling kingdoms.

Okeene, Okla.

PERUSING SATIRE

I was greatly impressed by the advance in scholarship which was represented by Gordon H. Clark’s article. However, your editors failed to note the mathematical error which crept in: On page 13 Clark says that Jesus spoke of “productivity up to 100 per cent.” Now of course this error almost certainly crept in through the activity of some dull-minded copyist, for it is well known that Clark originally wrote in an accurate way, that increase of an hundredfold is “productivity up to 10,000 per cent.” The next sentence but one, too, has incorporated the anti-agricultural bias of the copyist/redactor.

All of this brings me to a major addition to the thesis of Clark. Supporting Jesus’ gospel of food is his emphasis on organic agriculture. Only two points need to be made in this regard. (1) When “tares” were sown in the wheat field, the compassion of the Master would not allow them to be rooted out. He realized the symbolic relationship of the two kinds of plant; and he did not wish to have the balance in nature disturbed. (2) The Lucan parable about the fig tree in the vineyard (Luke 13:6–9) shows the proper method of “spring that tree.” Hand work and organic fertilizer are necessary ingredients.

It is fortunate that in this decade the exciting advance has been made by Clark. In future years we will all remember that we saw it first in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Associate Professor of New Testament

Greenville College

Greenville, Ill.

Many thanks to Professor Gordon H. Clark for his masterful piece of satire, “A New Discovery in the Quest of the Historical Jesus” (Jan. 15). If he could have placed the article in one of the liberal theological journals under an assumed name, it would have been sadly amusing to follow the inevitable spate of “copycat” articles in other journals, a write-up in Time’s “Religion” section, courses in leading seminaries on “pastoral guidance in planning the family menu” and “epicurean influence on liturgical forms and formulas,” and reports of experimental worship experiences in fasting or gluttony in various churches.

The Presbyterian Churches of Eleanor, Pliny, and Winfield

Winfield, W. Va.

I find Gordon Clark’s [article] to be imposing and superfluous in verbiage, but attenuated in spirit, especially Holy Spirit. In his article, he makes frequent reference to Jesus. One thing I’ve not been able to determine: Is Dr. Clark for or against him?

President

Berean Christian College

Wichita, Kans.

DOUBLE TALK ON BJU

Your editorial “BJU and the IRS” (Jan. 15) is … doubletalk on the matter of racism. While you … do not agree with “racial discrmination” as practiced by Bob Jones University, you do accept their racial bias [by agreeing] that “blacks are not … harmed by being refused admission to BJU.” Bob Jones could hardly ask for more.

Knollwood Church of the Nazarene

Dayton, Ohio

Ancient Israel

The history of Israel is a crowded field, and you should spend your dollar wisely. Perhaps the most inspirational and also scholarly (though not always conservative) book available is John Bright’s A History of Israel (Westminster, 1959). Although Bright holds views on critical questions relating to books such as Isaiah and Daniel that will not be acceptable to many evangelicals, his work is still the one major Old Testament history that combines theological with historical insights to make the period live. The only other major technical work on the contemporary market is The History of Israel, by M. Noth (Harper & Row, translation, 1960), a book that is at once more radical in its criticism and less readable than Bright. For a somewhat shorter survey by a foremost evangelical scholar, F. F. Bruce’s Israel and the Nations (Eerdmans, 1963) is highly recommended, though it lacks (as does Noth) any treatment of the patriarchal age. More complete than Bruce, and equally conservative, is the new Old Testament Times (Eerdmans, 1970), by R. K. Harrison. Harrison, like Bright, draws heavily on archaeological material and constantly translates the contribution of the Ancient Near East into non-technical language, making his book extremely useful for the average Christian. Another new work, this one from L. J. Wood, A Survey of Israel’s History (Zondervan, 1970), represents a more “fundamentalist” approach, but is carefully documented. A well-known synopsis is W. F. Albright’s short but invaluable book, The Biblical Period From Abraham to Ezra (Harper & Row, 1963). It is especially important as the personal statement of America’s leading archaeologist and is quite worth the purchase for the footnoting alone.

Three books that look at Israel’s history more by corresponding literary unit of the Old Testament than by chronological period merit mention. M. A. Beek’s A Journey Through the Old Testament (Hodder and Stoughton, translation, 1959) is a personal and warmly devotional guided tour through Old Testament Scripture led by a Dutch pastor and professor with an evident delight in the journey. A shorter book, more theological in its outline, is R. Rendtorff’s God’s History: A Way Through the Old Testament (Westminster, translation, 1969). Although much of the same material will be found in a good introduction or a history of Israel, either of these two volumes will give you a brief, useful survey of the subject. S. J. Schultz’s The Old Testament Speaks (Harper & Row, 1960) is a college textbook presenting the history of Israel in much the same form as do the words of the Bible, but the author makes no real attempt to interact with either critical or theological questions.

SERIES Three series on Ancient Israel are worth noticing. The “Old Testament History Series” (Baker), all volumes written by C. F. Pfeiffer, is to consist of eight short, conservatively oriented monographs on periods from the patriarchal age to the intertestamental era. Six have already appeared. The author’s interest is archaeological and historical rather than literary or theological, but the volumes are a useful addition to available material. Different in outlook, though also intended for popular consumption, is the “Backgrounds to the Bible” series, edited by B. Vawter (Prentice-Hall, 1966 ff.). The volumes vary from the elementary presentation of E. Maly’s The World of David and Solomon to the rather technical and scholarly work by J. L. McKenzie, The World of the Judges; the authors are all Roman Catholics of a more liberal perspective. Four volumes on Ancient Israel have been published in a third series, the “New Clarendon Bible” (Oxford, 1966 ff.). They provide survey information, together with commentary on various Old Testament portions, and are designed for use as textbooks.

SPECIAL STUDIES Just a few of the many studies on particular periods of Israel’s history may be mentioned. For the troublesome problem of the exodus, there is still nothing to compare with H. H. Rowley’s From Joseph to Joshua (British Academy, 1950), though one should also consult the many articles referred to that favor an earlier date for the event.

For the equally thorny problem of the chronology of the monarchy, the last word (well, almost!) has been spoken by E. R. Thiele in his Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Eerdmans, 1965). Not a book for bedtime reading, but its conclusions have been so influential that it should not be overlooked.

A third general period in Israel’s history for which new light is still forthcoming is that of the exile and return. D. J. Wiseman’s Chronicles of Chaldean Kings (626–556 B.C.) (British Museum, 1956), though not primarily on Israel, provides basic additional information on the capture of Jerusalem. The author, professor of Assyriology at the University of London and editor of the Tyndale Old Testament commentaries, can be expected to provide us with more of this kind of important material in the future, particularly relating to the dimly lit period of the post-exilic community in Jerusalem. For a reliable, more biblically oriented, popular survey of available material on the exile, A. Parrot’s short book Babylon and the Old Testament (SCM, 1958) may be recommended.

CULTURE You will want at least one book dealing with religious, cultural, social, and political backgrounds of the Old Testament. Perhaps the best popular treatment of these aspects of ancient Hebrew culture is still Canon E. W. Heaton’s Everyday Life in Old Testament Times (Batsford, 1956). The Old Testament World (Fortress, translation, 1966), by M. Noth, is useful for the advanced student; it deals with matters such as chronology, archaeology, and textual criticism, in addition to the religious and cultural forms of the world in which God’s Old Testament people lived and moved. However, the standard cultural history on Israel is still R. deVaux’s Ancient Israel (McGraw-Hill, translation, 1961), a truly outstanding book that will appeal to scholar and beginner alike. The author draws his material from his many years of archaeological and biblical study in the Holy Land, and includes sections on family, civil, military, and religious institutions. For a sociological and psychological analysis of the same data, J. Pedersen’s classic (though frightfully expensive) work, Israel: Its Life and Culture (Oxford, revised, 1959), is without peer. Although few pastors or students will be able to afford Pedersen, they should be aware of its existence and familiar with its general contents, since it has had great influence in Old Testament scholarship.

Ancient Near East

Perhaps the most important development of the twentieth century for Old Testament studies is the wealth of new data available for reconstructing the world into which the biblical revelation came. A basic book for methodology and direction in this field is K. A. Kitchen’s Ancient Orient and the Old Testament (Inter-Varsity, 1966). Kitchen has succeeded in showing why historical and linguistic backgrounds are important and calls for a radical break with nineteenth-century biblical scholarship and its superimposed structure of Western philosophical presuppositions.

But more than methodology is required. Any study of the Old Testament is going to call for sound knowledge of the history of the Ancient Near East. Naturally the ideal is to learn the languages of the period, read the documents, and learn first-hand; but for most students or pastors this is impossible. However, an excellent selection of historical work is available from which a basic library may be constructed. Perhaps the best serious treatment in the English language is the multi-volume Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge, various dates). For Volumes I and II a revised edition is in process of publication (don’t use the older set, which is badly out of date). On a more popular level, and dealing with material from a more directly biblical standpoint, is J. Finegan’s Light From the Ancient Past (Princeton, revised, 1959). A paperback edition is now published in two volumes, the first of which sketches Old Testament backgrounds and is recommended as a basic book for pastor and layman. Equally important, but on a more interpretative level, are two attractive paperbacks by C. H. Gordon that attempt to get behind the biblical material by pointing out cross-cultural data from various parts of the Eastern Mediterranean world. The Ancient Near East (Norton, revised, 1965) gives a succinct overview from Homer’s Greece to Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilization (Norton, revised, 1965) is built on the thesis that the world of Homer is one with the world of the Bible, with evidence cited from Minoan Crete and the Ugarit tables in support of the idea. Each of these books has stimulated its share of controversy, but is invaluable in giving an overview of a world that (as its author clearly demonstrates) was a living, culturally inter-related society. Additional cultural parallels and contrasts across this society are covered in S. Moscati’s popular The Face of the Ancient Orient (Routledge and Kegan Paul; 1960), while a short résumé of the area for beginners is found in S. J. Schwantes’s A Short History of the Ancient Near East (Baker, 1965).

SOURCES Source materials from various parts of the biblical world are available (in translation) either in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, edited by J. B. Pritchard (Princeton, revised, 1969), or in Documents from Old Testament Times, edited by D. W. Thomas (Nelson, 1958). ANET is the standard, but DOTT, though less comprehensive, is adequate for most purposes and is available in paperback; the introductory comments concerning each of the documents are very helpful.

ILLUSTRATIONS No study of the biblical world is complete without the visual dimension, and this is supplied by The Ancient Near East in Pictures (Princeton, revised, 1969), edited by J. B. Pritchard. This is the standard academic collection of archaeological pictures related to the world of the Old Testament. For color photography at its best, the National Geographic Society’s Everyday Life in Bible Times (1967) has no peer. Those who wrote for the volume are all top biblical scholars, rounding out a presentation equally at home on the coffee table or in the study. Many other good collections of color photographs of the Ancient Near East are available, such as Views of the Biblical World (five volumes, Jerusalem: International, 1961) and an abridgment of it, Our Living Bible. Such collections are usually expensive but can often be obtained at discount prices.

MESOPOTAMIA Information on the land of the Tigris and Euphrates, an area rich in biblically related material, may be had from many sources. In addition to the Cambridge Ancient History, mentioned above, there are the excellent full-length surveys by H. W. F. Saggs (The Greatness That Was Babylon, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1962) and A. L. Oppenheim (Ancient Mesopotamia, Chicago, 1964). S. N. Kramer, a specialist in the Sumerians, a people whose highly developed civilization provides a backdrop for the earliest patriarchal period (Abraham came from Sumeria), has contributed two worthwhile books in his field. The Sumerians (Chicago, 1964) is the best general treatment available, while History Begins at Sumer (Doubleday, 1959) highlights twenty-seven “firsts,” including the first flood narrative and the first law code.

For specific biblical parallels, the short survey by G. Larue, Babylon and the Bible (Baker, 1969), is very helpful (though he ignores the Book of Daniel). E. Yamauchi’s Greece and Babylon (Baker, 1967) traces early contacts between Mesopotamia and the Aegean area, with an analysis of the critical problem of Daniel thrown in. Babylonian flood and creation accounts are covered definitively in two volumes by A. Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago, 1963) and The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago, 1963). They are marked by carefully documented arguments and cautious conclusions; both books are available in paperback and would make a valuable addition to any student’s library. Another monograph of direct interest to the biblical student is C. H. Gordon’s short summary, Hammurapi’s Code (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965). This booklet will answer many questions about relationships between Moses and the great Babylonian lawgiver.

EGYPT Moving to the land of the Nile, where cultural parallels are somewhat less frequent but where history touches on that of the Hebrews at various points, we find again an abundance of available material. We recommend J. A. Wilson’s readable paperback The Culture of Ancient Egypt, (Chicago, 1951), but it needs to be read in connection with some standard history. Such a history is J. H. Breasted’s dated A History of Egypt (1905, currently published by Bantam), which is probably the best until the revised Cambridge Ancient History volume appears. A. Gardiner’s Egypt of the Pharaohs (Oxford, 1961), however, has the advantage of half a century’s additional research. K. A. Kitchen’s article on “Egypt” in the New Bible Dictionary is especially commendable.

One topic of particular interest to the Bible student is the exodus from Egypt. Much has been written on it, particularly in journals and standard histories of Israel, and the reader should be aware of the differences that exist in dating that event; there is no consensus even among evangelical scholars. A short, popular treatment of the period is C. F. Pfeiffer, Egypt and the Exodus (Baker, 1964). The same author has written Tell el Amarna and the Bible (Baker, 1966), covering the important correspondence between the “heretical” Pharaoh Akhenaton and his vassal-kings in Palestine during the period claimed by many conservative scholars for the exodus.

Public attention has been concentrated for several years on attempts in many communities to achieve school desegregation. But few people have taken much note of the effects on schools of the United States Supreme Court decisions on required school prayer (Engle v. Vitale, 1962) and Bible reading (Schempp v. Abington, 1963). These decisions did not remove God from the classroom. They did not even remove religion from the classroom. But they did force school officials to take a new look at the role of religion in the public-school program.

These decisions mean at the least that school officials:

1. May not prescribe formal prayer, Bible readings, or other exercises that may be construed to be acts of worship.

2. Cannot assume that all their students are Christians, or even that all of them adhere to some religion.

These two Supreme Court decisions were not anti-religious. Rather, they affirmed that our society is based on genuine religious freedom. And this religious freedom must be more, history has shown, than mere religious toleration. Evangelicals are convinced that Christianity is the one true religion. However, other religious groups have the same opinion of their own beliefs. In a society that assures impartial religious liberty, the government must remain neutral. In effect, it must act as though all religions were true; as the U. S. Supreme Court said in 1871 (Watson v. Jones), “the law knows no heresy …” Assumption by the government of the superiority of one religion over another implants the seeds of religious persecution in the social structure.

Furthermore, the government must respect a citizen’s right to have no religion. As Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson pointed out in his dissent to Zorach v. Clauson (1952), “the day this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion—except for the sect that can win political power.” Of course, a balance must be struck. The Illinois Supreme Court noted in 1913 (Reichwald v. Catholic Bishop) that “the man of no religion has a right to act in accordance with his lack of religion, but no right to insist that others shall have no religion.”

How does one preserve true religious liberty while not restricting the rights of those with religious commitment? Some school administrators reacted to the Supreme Court decisions on prayer and Bible reading by ignoring them. In some parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, for instance, these decisions were defied openly. Many assumed that the court had countered a widespread United States tradition. They seem unaware that public-school prayers and Bible readings were prohibited by, for instance, the 1902 California state constitution and state supreme court decisions in Nebraska (1902), Illinois (1910), and Louisiana (1915). Admittedly, public-school prayer and Bible reading had been upheld by the supreme courts of several other states, but these practices were by no means universal in this country’s public schools. And the misguided attitude of some who advocated these practices may be seen in a 1904 Kansas supreme court decision (Billard v. Board of Education): the court supported the practice of reading the Lord’s Prayer and Bible selections as a disciplinary device to quiet the students at the beginning of the school day and not “to inculcate any religious dogmas.” Some indication of the attitude of state legislatures that authorized these practices may be found in Tennessee’s placing the requirement for Bible reading in an obscure section of the general education law.

But the U. S. Supreme Court challenged school administrators to find an answer to the dilemma of public-school religious neutrality. Speaking for the majority in Schempp v. Abington, Justice Tom Clark explained that “nothing we have said here indicates that … study of the Bible or of religion, when presented, objectively as part of a program of education, may not be effected consistent with the First Amendment. This suggestion accelerated introduction of Bible and religion courses in high schools scattered across the country. (The National Education Association has encouraged development of such courses for nearly twenty years.) Also, new courses were developed for state-wide use in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Florida, and Nebraska.

In reviewing the Student’s Guide to Religious Literature of the West and other Pennsylvania materials, Dr. C. John Miller, a member of the Westminster Seminary faculty, noted the evident “naturalistic bias of the writers” of this syllabus and concluded that it is not “openly atheistic. Rather it is a poorly camouflaged presentation of doctrines slanted … toward anti-biblical naturalism” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, August 1, 1969). The material has since been revised.

Last year I reviewed some of the Florida and Indiana curriculum units. The Florida Religion and Social Studies Project publication dealt with American religious history and related social problems. The material was theologically neutral and seemed to meet the Supreme Court challenge.

The Indiana curriculum units were a different story. On Teaching the Bible as Literature, published by the Indiana University Press, happily is not typical of the material used in Indiana public-school courses, but it is a disturbing suggestion of what the future may hold. Financed by a U. S. Office of Education grant (which in itself raises church-state questions, it contains basic materials for a series of English literature units on the Old Testament. The book is subject to all the weaknesses noted in the Pennsylvania materials by Dr. Miller. The authors claim that their book provides a springboard for free classroom inquiry. But they begin by rejecting any teacher who disagrees with them and holds that Scripture is inspired and that God exists and acts in history. Further cause for concern is an essay from another Indiana University Press volume that appeared at about the same time. University education professor Stanley Ballinger contends that objectivity has no place in public-school teaching about religion, and that atheism has special rights and intellectual and moral superiority.

Development of courses in Bible and religion will continue. And, of course, not all the curriculum materials will be as objectionable to evangelicals as are these Pennsylvania and Indiana productions.

What, then, should evangelicals do?

1. Recognize that Christians do not dominate our society. As Franklin Littell, William Marnell, and others have clearly shown, this has never been a Christian nation in the classic sense. One cannot reasonably discover a theocratic political structure in the U. S. Constitution. Despite more than a century of effort by the National Reform Association and the Christian Amendment Movement, this country has never been made formally subject to the rule of Jesus Christ. But it is true, as Supreme Court justice William Douglas (speaking for the majority in Zorach v. Clauson, 1952) noted, that “we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” This country is a secular state in which religion in general and particular religious groups may function.

2. Learn to live as a Christian minority in an increasingly non-Christian society. Evangelicals are fifty years past the time when they could manipulate legislatures to achieve their goals. We can no longer dominate the political, social, or cultural structures of our country. But we can demand that our beliefs not be discriminated against. (The judicial structure recognizes the evangelical’s right to responsible witness. As an example, in November, 1969, the Alameda, California, County Counsel ruled that a local evangelical high-school student could witness on campus so long as he did not interfere with school operation.) On one hand, we must apply the basic rule for life in a democracy: The liberty we deny to others, we deny ultimately to ourselves. On the other hand, evangelicals must learn to select with care the issues they champion. For instance, as John Blanchard, Jr. pointed out in United Evangelical Action (February, 1967), “it is a waste of time and energy and effort for Christians to endeavor to impose legislation concerning prayer upon a society that no longer believes in prayer.” And it is equally unrealistic to attempt to ban the teaching of evolution from the public schools. But it is inexcusable for evangelicals nationwide not to lend active support to California parents who are seeking to restore mention in high-school science courses of the belief that the universe was created by God. Too often, we have argued the wrong cause at the wrong place and time.

3. Encourage Christian public-school teachers. Evangelicals can no longer avoid direct concern for the needs and problems of the public schools. James Panoch and David Barr of the Religious Instruction Association (Box 533, Fort Wayne, Indiana 46801) are correct when they charge in their book Religion Goes to School that “the church, largely unconscious of the good that could come from the proper use of the Bible and religion in the schools, has withdrawn from the public education.” In an increasingly mobile and secular society, the public-school classroom has become one of the few places where all aspects of community life meet. In the ultimate urban complex, the Christian public-school teacher may become a prime home missionary. Yet we fail to consider a call to this work as much a Christian call as that received by any minister or missionary. Evangelicals need also to encourage those Christians who are already in the classroom. The National Educators Fellowship, an organization of Christian professional educators in the public schools, seeks to provide such encouragement. Local congregations can assist in strengthening existing chapters and in organizing new ones (for information write to: Mr. E. A. Patchen, P.O. Box 243, South Pasadena, California 91030).

4. Strengthen local congregational Christian-education programs. If evangelicals do not revitalize church and home teaching about religious matters, the public schools will take the teaching of religion away from us; the actions of school administrators and classroom teachers make this clear. Evangelicals are not yet serious about assuring quality Christian education in the local church. They have yet to dedicate themselves to true Christian education. Very little of what goes on in the typical local church can be called good Christian education. Despite the best of intentions and a lot of effort, much of what is done in the name of Christian education is self-fulfilling busy work.

Until recent years, the public schools were used five days a week as agencies of general religious and moral training. Evangelicals supplemented this with a scant hour of particular religious instruction each week in Sunday school. This will no longer suffice. We are part of a generation that is far better educated than any in history, and education has become for many a life-long activity. Evangelical Christian education has failed to keep pace with these developments.

Evangelicals need to find a new approach to religious education in the local church. They should agree that religious training for all our people is of prime importance. Then, all the church’s activities should be evaluated in the light of that primacy. For one example, there is no God-ordained limit to the time to be given to education in our churches. It may be best in some congregations to give three hours or more on Sundays to this task, even at the expense of the formal worship hour. Or it may be advisable to maintain a day-long school on Saturday, or to establish after-school classes as some Jewish congregations have done for many years. Secular adult-education classes that extend well into the late evening hours demonstrate that busy adults can be reached when the educational program challenges them.

There is a growing concern among parents about the wasted weeks of the public-school summer vacation. Perhaps there might be a special summer church-school session, one that is much more intensive than vacation Bible school and is operated in somewhat the same manner as public-school summer sessions.

Furthermore, evangelicals have yet to explore the new developments in educational technology. There are few if any programmed texts in Christian education. Fewer still have been the attempts to develop cassette tape recordings as self-study tools. And no one seems to have thought seriously about the potential for preschool Christian education of audio-visual ventures like television’s “Sesame Street.” The Holy Spirit cannot be expected to honor a refusal to make full use of the best tools available.

Belden Menkus is a free-lance management consultant in Bergenfield, New Jersey. He is the author of several books, One of which is “Meet the American Jew.”

The church college is fighting for its life. To many, the problem is primarily one of dollars and scholars. There is a dollar drain. Runaway inflation and reduced denominational support make it increasingly difficult to pay competitive salaries, construct attractive physical facilities, and offer a wide range of student services. There is also a brain drain. It is becoming harder to recruit good students and teachers. The church school once enjoyed a virtual monopoly in higher education; now it must compete for students with the much less expensive state universities and community colleges. In this struggle the church college often is hindered by a poor image; besides being “too expensive,” it is “too paternalistic” and “too pietistic.” Moreover, it is not easy to find professors who are well trained, creative in the classroom and laboratory, concerned for the students’ personal maturity, committed to evangelical Christianity, and willing to work long hours in trying circumstances for low pay.

Some suggest that since all these problems are essentially financial, there really is nothing wrong with the church college that money could not cure. But the problem is much deeper than these matters of faculty, funds, and facilities. The real crisis is one of function and philosophy. Just what is the real purpose of a church college? Our affluent generation could support the church college if a convincing case could be made for its temporal relevance and eternal value. Our difficulty is that we have often offered the public an inadequate rationale for our existence. The two most common arguments in favor of the church school have to do with Christian humanism and personalism.

1. It is frequently suggested that the church college deserves support because of its commitment to a liberal arts education. But this theory is seldom substantiated in practice. Many church colleges are really mini-universities, including professional schools of theology, music, law, nursing, and education. Liberal arts offerings affect only some of the students. This situation is a consequence of the history of the church college. These schools were founded, not to educate a small elite in the liberal arts, but to train pastors and teachers to serve the people. Christian service in church and community was the initial motivation. Although many church schools have excellent programs in the liberal arts, this was neither their original nor their primary purpose.

2. It is often suggested also that the church college deserves support because of its commitment to “person-centered” education. The campus is said to be characterized by “smallness” and “friendliness.” It is true that many of these colleges have limited enrollments; but would they cease to be true church colleges if they grew larger? Furthermore, smallness is not necessarily a virtue. Instead of leading to community and collegiality, it can generate complacency, a sense of cozy stagnation, and a kind of monastic isolation from the larger society. In an age of bigness smallness can be a liability. Smallness can mean a lack of opportunities for personal and professional growth because of a narrow and confining atmosphere. As one critic quipped, “This is a small Christian school, all right—a school for small Christians.” Furthermore, the church college holds no monopoly on “friendly personal attention”; it is available at secular institutions as well. Also, what kind of personal attention is meant—academic, moral, or spiritual?

The real case for the church college is grounded neither in humanism nor in personalism but in a radical theism. The church college insists that all dimensions of man’s life rest under the sovereignty of God. It therefore begins the educational process with a declaration of man’s dependence upon the Deity. Such an institution confesses that the values of humanism and personalism are impossible apart from God and that the entire man, not simply his aptitudes and attitudes, must be nurtured. Because of this conviction, the church college, as one university charter states it, is pledged to the promotion of religion, learning, and morality. This threefold purpose is its uniqueness.

Religion And Society

Promoting religion is the primary function of a church college. If this purpose is minimized or compromised, the institution is reduced to mediocrity. Professor Elton Trueblood has described such a tragedy:

The plight of the ex-Christian college is a really deplorable one. Once the commitment to Christ is rejected or forgotten, such an institution, lacking the strength of the state institutions, becomes nondescript. As long as the Christian college maintains its vision of wholeness, it is often a place of tremendous hope in the creation of a civilization, but its major effectiveness ends when the wholeness ends. Its greatness declines when it ceases to hold the love of God and the love of learning in a single context [The New Man for Our Time, p. 41].

As a service institution, the Christian college promotes religion for the sake of both church and society.

The church college’s services to the Church are fairly obvious. It is the mind of the Church at work, wrestling with the Word of God. The result is sound biblical theology. It is the school of the Church, training a new generation for leadership in the Christian community. The result is an enthusiastic and educated ministry—both lay and clerical. The church college is the ministry of the Church, witnessing to the academic sector of society that Christ is the Truth they seek. The result is high-caliber evangelism and stimulating apologetics.

Less clear, however, is how the church college makes itself useful to a secular society. By its very existence the Christian college says that religion is the leaven of society, and that without theology, technology results in mechanized barbarism, and that apart from loyalty to Christ, culture deteriorates into hedonism. The Christian educator is convinced that a religious faith stands at the center of every great civilization. Undergirding the cultures of India and China are faiths rooted in supernatural values. Behind the brilliance of the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman empires stood the influence of Islam. Byzantine civilization was sustained for over a thousand years by Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It is, however, especially Western civilization that is a product of the Gospel. Occidental culture was born in the Church. It was Christianity that preserved the classics of antiquity and passed them on to the Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic barbarians of Europe. To unlettered peoples the Church brought an evangelistic message that not only saved souls but also made literary languages out of obscure dialects. The medieval synthesis of Christianity and the classics, the first independent flowering of a distinctly European civilization, occurred in the nourishing context of Roman Catholicism. The amazing artistic, literary, scientific, and commercial explosion of early modern times received strength and inspiration from the Protestant Reformation.

But is religion still vital to the needs of civilization? Here contemporary critics aim their attack. Perhaps religion was central to culture in a rural, traditional society. Today, however, we live in the “secular city” and man has “come of age.” Our need is for “religionless Christianity.” The church college, therefore, by promoting a theocentric kind of religion has become irrelevant and obsolete.

Or has it? To affirm the absolute sovereignty of God is the most relevant thing a church college can do! This is its greatest service to society for two reasons:

1. It is a call to wholeness. A healthy society is one with a strong sense of community. For community to exist, something or somebody must be shared in common. There must be a powerful center that pulls isolated individuals together into a meaningful unity. What that integrating idea of individual is determines the character and direction of the community. And here is our present predicament. Contemporary culture is fragmented. We have subcultures and social agglomerations, but no real community. None of our modern ideologies has been strong enough to create lasting community. Lacking the power of a persuasive faith, our century has turned to military dictators who use coercion to create a social collective. Force and terror declare that modern civilization lacks a heart, at its center there is only a void. The secularism loosed by the Enlightenment has eroded the spiritual ties that once bound society together and has banished from its center the only Person who truthfully said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”

Nowhere is the resultant disintegration more visible than in the university. The function of a university is to be the mind of humanity. And yet the corporate intellect, lacking any integrative convictions, has fallen victim to a severe case of academic schizophrenia. A veritable babel of voices rises from the multiversity, and no clear line of direction is indicated. Mental confusion is combined with purposeless agitation. Could there be any greater indication that modern man is sick?

The church college, if it is true to its calling, can offer a corrective message. Religion unites, as a suggested Latin root, religare (“to bind together,” or “to integrate”) indicates. Religion provides the framework for community. At the heart of this community stands the Individual who said, “I am the truth.” This Healing Saviour, if we ask him, can cast out the seven demons that have occupied the empty house of intellect. The mind finds its Master, and sanity and wholeness are restored to school and society.

2. It is a call for help. As Josiah Royce wrote:

Man is an infinitely needy creature. He wants endlessly numerous special things—food, sleep, pleasure, fellowship, power …, peace in all its elusive forms, love in its countless disguises—in brief, all the objects of desire. But amongst these infinitely manifold needs, the need for salvation stands out … as a need that is peculiarly paramount.… [The Sources of Religious Insight, pp. 11, 12].

Modern man needs God more than ever before—because he is more dependent upon the Deity than any of his ancestors! Never in the history of Western civilization has the biblical affirmation of man’s dependence upon God been more relevant. As the British Methodist scholar C. Cyril Eastwood has observed, “every new discovery increases our moral and spiritual responsibility. The truth is: man is now more dependent upon God, not less” (Life and Thought in the Ancient World, p. 49). In an era of immense power, we need more than ever before the restraining force of God’s Law and the redeeming might of Christ’s Love. Without them, we will perish. The mission of the church college is to make known the law and love of God by the persuasive promotion of biblical religion.

Faith And Learning

Perhaps it is granted that there is a need for an institution to promote the study of biblical religion. But is that a proper function of a university? Isn’t this need already fulfilled much better by theological seminaries and Bible schools? Why should we attempt to combine in one institution the study of both sacred and secular knowledge? Indeed, is it possible to pursue the study of truth from revelation and reason simultaneously without confusing the two? Two groups have steadfastly insisted on the incompatibility of Christianity and a college of arts and sciences:

1. On the one hand there are the radical evangelicals who regard reason as the “devil’s whore,” who insist that biblical revelation contains the only truth that is profitable to a believer. With Tertullian, they ask:

What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? What between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?… After Christ Jesus we desire no subtle theories, no acute inquiries after the gospel.… [De praescriptione haerecticorum, vii].

2. On the other hand there are the thoroughgoing secularists who regard revelation as superstition. Truth is discovered, not donated, they believe, and investigation, not inspiration, is the way to understand the world. This approach is highly empirical and places a great premium on experience. Since doubt, not faith, is the basis of knowledge, genuine scientific studies could never occur in a church college context where there is a prior commitment to theistic values; this is an unwarranted restriction on the freedom of thought. Furthermore, the church college is not open to the world. Because it is a closed society, it could not possibly be interested in new knowledge. It is committed to indoctrination and the collection of decision cards.

Perhaps it would be sufficient to answer both objectors with a sentence from St. Bernard of Clairvaux: “It ill becomes a spouse of the Word to be stupid.” But a deeper issue is involved. Despite their differences, the radical evangelicals and the secularists share certain misconceptions concerning the relation of faith and knowledge. They fail to realize that biblical religion makes the three fundamental affirmations that are indispensable to the educational process:

1. The Bible teaches the unity and universality of truth. Before the Greeks discovered this insight through philosophy, the Hebrews received it by means of revelation. It is the confession of the Pentateuch—“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deut. 6:4)—that makes the academy possible. The oneness of God implies and insures the unity of knowledge. Because of monotheism, the Hebrews were able to reject polytheism, with its plurality of revelations, and henotheism, with its relativity of loyalties. Armed with this faith, the evangelical educator has an important ministry to perform. He can affirm the harmony of truth received through all the sciences (sacred, natural, and social), for the three books of God—Scripture, Nature, and History—all have the same Author. Clement of Alexandria said it quite well in the third century: “God is the source of all good things; of some primarily, as of the old and new Testaments; of others by consequence, as of philosophy” (Stromateis, I, v. 28). The Christian scholar is called upon to be an agent of reconciliation in an academic world that is severely compartmentalized. By witnessing to the unity of truth he will correct two further faults in the modern university: the alienation of facts from values and the rampant relativism that has deprived academic man of the power to discern and judge.

2. The Bible teaches the reliability of sanctified reason. Next to relativism, the biggest crisis on campus is the revolt against reason. In the institutions devoted to intellectual endeavor, we often witness the use of force rather than persuasion. Action, not reflection, is the current message, power, not principles, the motto.

The loss of confidence in the rational process is a sort of academic death-wish. Professor Abraham Kaplan has written:

The new treason of the intellectuals is that we have shared and even contributed to the current loss of faith in the power of the human mind to cope with human problems, faith in the worth of reasoned discussion, faith even in the possibility of objective truth [The Travesty of the Philosophers,” Change, January–February, 1970, p. 13].

The collapse of rationality has led to a form of scholastic insanity on campus. The university has not “blown its mind”—it has lost its mind.

The task of the Christian scholar today is to reaffirm the reliability of reason. Paradoxically enough, we do this not by reason but by faith. The problem is that nothing in this world, including the rational process, is self-explanatory, self-sufficient, and capable of self-justification. That reason is a trustworthy guide to the mysteries of the universe, that the laws of logic are valid, and that the mind is not simply a byproduct of chemical-physical processes—these are all confessions of faith. But our faith has its Reason, the Eternal Mind of God disclosed to us in Jesus Christ. The Christian educator believes that reason is a guide to truth, not illusion, because his mind has met the mind of the Master. Behind the events of history, the life-processes, the patterns of nature, the motion of the universe, and the matter all around, there is a Mind—Reason Eternal. He has revealed himself to us; as Paul exclaims, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33). “For who has known the mind of the Lord …?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 1:16). Christ, our Brother and Saviour, is also, as John discloses, the Reason (Logos) by which the world operates (John 1:1). By his indwelling, our minds are renewed (see Ephesians 4:23) and are freed from illusions, fantasies, and myths. In his communion we find the unity of subjective and objective knowledge in a Person. Through the Master we find the integration of all dimensions of selfhood—emotion, mind, and will—in a total love that is passionate, intellectual, and volitional (see the Great Commandment, Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). Because Christ is faithful, we realize that the world is a place of purpose, pattern (ratio, the stem of our word reason, implies the notion of “pattern”), and personal values. On the basis of these assumptions, donated by revelation, we can go on to make discoveries by human reason.

Apart from this meeting of human and divine minds in Christ, there is no assurance that reason is reliable, that the universe is one of meaning, not simply one of absurd coincidences and random chance. Natural intellect is bound to end up with confusion and despair. Bertrand Russell, regarded by many as this century’s most noteworthy philosopher, ended up with only cosmic chaos. Without the guidance of Christ, the Reason, he could perceive only that “man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving” and that human history is but the result of “accidental collocations of atoms” (Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays, p. 47). But thanks be to God for the Light of Reason, the revelation of Jesus Christ! Because of this we envision purpose and our minds find rest. With Isaiah, the evangelical educator testifies, “Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.…” (Isa. 26:3).

3. The Bible teaches the priority of experience. Scholarship requires more than a belief in the unity of truth and the validity of reason. It has to rest in experience. As Josiah Royce has written, “Without intense and intimate personal feeling, you never learn any valuable truths whatever about life, about its ideals, or about its problems …” (The Sources of Religious Insight, p. 30). The empirical nature of knowledge and the importance of experience have been demonstrated by contemporary science.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no inherent conflict between science and religion; both rest on experience. In this sense evangelical Christianity is quite “scientific” because it is thoroughly experiential. Throughout the Bible the appeal is to a personal experience of God. The psalmist states, “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8), an admonition fulfilled in the spiritual eating and drinking of the Lord’s Supper! “Come and see” is his invitation (Ps. 66:16), for—

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Day unto day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

… their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

Psalm 19:1, 2, 4

The biblical writer urges us to “come and see what God has done: he is terrible in his deeds among men” (Ps. 66:5). The Prophet Isaiah reports his moving experience with the angel of the Lord, who “touched my mouth, and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven’ ” (Isa. 6:7). Paul, in his sermon to the scholars on Mars Hill, stressed the experiential nature of religion, confessing that the Lord made men so “that they should seek God, in the hope they might feel after him and find him” (Acts 17:27). Christianity, therefore, is very empirical, very experiential, very “scientific.” The supernatural is known, not by philosophical speculation nor by vivid artistic imagination, but by direct personal participation in the Spirit of God—through conversion, prayer, Scripture, the sacraments, and service. Here the natural and the supernatural intersect. Because of its strong emphasis on experience, evangelical Christianity can speak meaningfully to men of science. The church college, therefore, will have two types of laboratories on its campus: a science hall, in which to experience the wonders of the world, and a chapel, in which to encounter that world’s Author and Redeemer. For is it not the personal knowledge of God as Saviour that gives meaning and direction to the objective knowledge of the creation?

The fundamentals of scholarship—a belief in the integrity of truth, the reliability of reason, and the experimental method—all have roots deep in evangelical Christianity. When they are severed from their source, it is doubtful whether these procedures can continue to bear fruit. They simply are not self-sustaining. The vocation of the Christian scholar is to be a bridge-builder between a confused and atrophying culture and its origins in the Living God. If we don’t construct that bridge, who will?

Personality And Morality

Perhaps we can see the contribution of the church college to faith and learning. Does it also have a role in morality? Indeed! It is a teacher. The church college affirms moral values because of Christ’s command to share the entire revelation with the world (“teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” Matthew 28:20). It also realizes that the most urgent demand of today’s youth is for meaning. “The Graduate,” soaked with sun, suds, and sex, wanders through his affluent society and says, with Septimius Severus, “I have had everything and nothing was worth very much.” Our ministry is to witness to what is really worthwhile. Furthermore, true Christian knowledge is impossible apart from piety. As Philip Jacob Spener wrote,

To obtain a genuine, living, active and salutary knowledge of divine things it is not enough to read and search the Scriptures, but it is necessary that love of Christ be added, that is, that one beware of sins against conscience, by which an obstacle is raised against the Holy Spirit, and that one earnestly cultivate piety [Pia Desideria, translated by Theodore G. Tappert, p. 106].

But the ministry of the Christian college goes beyond simply teaching the way. It has a word for moral dropouts, for it is a pastor with absolution for the learner who gets lost. Guilt is our predicament. We need to hear again the good news that God accepts us—even when we are ethical failures. Isn’t this the heart of the message of the Scriptures, which are given to make us “wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15)? Let it therefore be at the heart of every church college that we, “who were dead in trespasses … God made alive … having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:13, 14). If this is our message, then the church college is really relevant, for it results in not merely a diploma but an eternal rendezvous with the Truth himself!

C. George Fry is assistant professor of history at Capital University. He is an ordained Lutheran minister, and he holds the Ph.D. degree from Ohio State University.

More and more one hears it said that the present age—in particular its young people—is more decadent and confused than any in the past. Pessimists, self-made prophets, and too many preachers seem to take delight in decrying the conditions of our society. (Some even make their living at it.) This pessimism is often born of a misreading and therefore a misuse of history. The writer of Ecclesiastes warns in the seventh chapter and tenth verse: “Say not thou what is the cause that the former days were better than these? For thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.”

It is tempting to conclude that many in the Church who forecast doom, who cry out against change in society, who complain about the fads and vagaries of youth and brandish statistics of increased crime, sin, and immorality, are consciously or unconsciously using scare tactics to expand the Kingdom of God. (Accuracy would be better served if, when comparing one age or era to another, they made a careful distinction between an absolute number and a percentage.) The issue here is the nature of the Gospel: Does the Gospel need to be presented against a background of national and worldwide fear, gloom, and despair to be effective? Surely its impact is not dependent upon cultural crepe-hanging.

Too often the response of the alarmist is born of ignorance. Although he may justifiably be repulsed by the events and trends of the day, he is likely to be blind to the fact that they are hardly unique or new. Most, though not all, of our current problems and ruptures are modern counterparts of past circumstances.

To listen to some interpreters of our present age, life in the first century (or the nineteenth) was close to ideal. But the basic issues of human nature and society have not changed; we have just achieved more efficient and flamboyant ways of expressing ourselves. A quick review of the past, particularly of problems concerning higher education and youth, shows us we are not living in “the worst of times.”

Unrest on College Campuses. The history of higher education, European as well as American, is bursting with incidents of college unrest, rioting, and rebellion. Oxford University has an extensive early heritage of pitched battles between “town and gown,” conflicts that involved hundreds of participants and resulted in more than a few deaths. Cambridge University was founded in the early thirteenth century as a direct response to three days of rioting and killing, which began after students killed a bartender. Nothing up to our own time, including the current unrest and violence on campus, surpasses the violence of the early medieval university.

Harvard University was the site of numerous strikes and riots in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including the Great Butter Rebellion of 1766, the Bread and Butter Rebellion of 1805, and the Rotten Cabbage Rebellion of 1807. Yale’s first Fireman’s Riot, in 1841, was serious enough, but more like a maypole dance compared to the Second Fireman’s Riot, 1854, in which students as well as firemen were killed. In succeeding years, faculty and presidents alike were whipped and kidnapped, and a few were even shot by students. Other students went on window-smashing rampages, dynamited buildings, and in general created havoc, often as a means of protesting inadequate learning conditions. It is important, and possibly even comforting, to note that the focus of modern collegiate rebellion has shifted beyond the kitchen to more cosmic issues.

Student Control of Universities. This “demand” has deep roots in the history of higher education. Continental medieval universities were characterized by two basic models, the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. The early history of the University of Bologna featured student control of education. Professors were required to obtain student permission in order to be absent from the city and then were forced to sign a bond, insuring that they would return within a specified time limit. Professors were paid by the students, and the most popular received the highest pay. If too few students showed up for a lecture, the professor was fined. At that, the student determined the curriculum, the order of subject matter, and who would teach. Professors could be fined for skipping the most difficult sections of lectures and for failing to complete their arranged lectures on schedule. This was made even more difficult by the often imposed rule that professors should begin at the sound of the bell and had to finish at least one minute after the ending bell sounded. Most disgracing of all, professors were required to obtain permission from the students before marrying. Such rules and policies make current demands for student participation appear less menancing and certainly less novel.

Irreligion and Disbelief on Campuses. Religion and education were mutually dependent in our early history, from the time of the nine colonial colleges. The nineteenth century witnessed the birth of close to 600 church-related colleges before the Civil War. These institutions were administered by presidents, trustees, and teachers, most of whom had strong Protestant religious convictions. This situation changed after the mid-nineteenth century with the advent of the secular university and the dawn of the new industrial-technological age.

To assume that higher education and religion have continually been closely associated in American higher education is false. A more critical look at the history of American higher education shows that irreligion on college campuses is not new. Disbelief was quite common as early as the immediate post-Revolutionary period. During that era when approximately 10 per cent of Americans held formal church membership, when the blasphemous pamphlets of Thomas Paine were the most popular reading of the day, and when French deism seemed irresistable, colleges were not unaffected. At Yale in 1795, one student could think of only eleven others who could be termed “professors of religion.” Another could remember only four or five “religionists” in 1799—and recalled that at communion, only one undergraduate appeared (W. H. Cowley, A History of American Higher Education, unpublished manuscript, 1964, chap. 4, p. 9). Most of the handful of colleges operating between the Revolution and the second Great Awakening succumbed to the effects of that highly secularized age. The fact that this age was soon followed by religious revival on college campuses may give hope to those who view contemporary higher education as a bastion of disbelief.

Rioting and Draft Resistance. This phenomenon is not unique to our nation or time either, nor has it always accompanied the decline of nations. The 1863 draft and race riots in New York City makes Watts and Detroit seem mild. In that confrontation, seventy were killed during three days of burning, rioting, and looting, in response to new draft calls. Telephone wires were cut. The city police chief was beaten, dragged through the streets, thrown in a horsefeeding pond, and rolled in the filth of the gutter. The police station was burned while rioters fought pitched battles with police. Those victimized most by the rioters were the rich and their homes, the blacks (even a black children’s orphanage), and children (James McCague, “Long Hot Summer—1863,” Mankind, I, 8, pp. 10–18). Labor riots and melees in the late nineteenth century also underline the fact that present rioting and lawlessness may not automatically signal the end of our nation’s greatness.

Immorality, rebellion among the young, wars, racism, and world conflict are often mentioned as indicators of the depravity and seriousness of our times, and yet each of these areas, too, has prototypes as far back as the classical world, not to mention medieval and early modern times. One need only remember or read about our own post-World War I era to realize that hate, bigotry, killing, racism, immorality, and rebellion are nothing new.

That the past may have been more riotous and immoral than the present gives no cause to rejoice about the present, nor any kind of justification for current ills in our society. What I am asserting is that a generation (like today’s parents and grandparents) that tries to bury its troubles and anxieties in alcohol, illicit sex, hate, tacit approval of several varieties of violence, and status-seeking can hardly accuse a generation that turns to drugs and free love of “going to the dogs”. Those of us who consider ourselves “young” often wonder why members of the older generation (sometimes a matter of attitude rather than chronology) take such a dim view of modern times. We cynically wonder if it is not partly because their safe, protected, comfortable, and too often segregated world has been challenged and stirred by conscience and idealism. We hasten to observe that the young have yet to demonstrate workable solutions to the myriad of problems, both recurring and new, that face us.

There are major differences between our era and those of past times, including these: (1) there are more people; (2) we have developed better and quicker methods to broadcast current events (and by doing so we change not only the effects but sometimes the very nature of the events); (3) we are probably more honest and open about our problems today; (4) high expectations for American society, too long unrealized and now coupled with renewed vision and idealism, have come to haunt us and make us feel frustrated and impatient; (5) we have achieved a certain control over nature and life, including the possibility of self-destruction on a grandiose scale.

Yet these differences have not seemed to forestall the resurgence of important problems in society, especially among college youth. If we tend to view these problems as recurrences, we can be optimistic, because we know they have been solved before.

Youth are the focus for many who decry the age in which we live. Yet we should be thankful for a good deal of what our young people today are saying, and particularly for their idealism, which so often becomes blunted and deformed by what we call the “harsh realities” of life. Some of us who have become used to those harsh realities (and at times even supportive of them) may not like the way youth express that idealism, or the clothes they wear, or even the surroundings in which they live, but part of what they are saying and living is encouraging. This is true when we view the majority of youth, and even when we listen to the much-maligned minority, who are described by a variety of demeaning terms. Here is some of what they are saying and living:

1. People and life are more important than money, goods, and material objects, and even some traditional structures that tend to perpetuate the priorities of the material world.

2. Quality of life is more essential and desirable than quantity; in other words, what happens is more important than how many we claim it is happening to.

3. Action is more important than profession—in fact, profession amounts to hypocrisy unless accompanied by related action.

4. Cooperation is often more important and regenerative than competition.

This is encouraging, because those four principles are matters about which Jesus spoke often. He often mentioned the danger of becoming captured by the material world, and he continually called us to lead a pure and undefiled life that is pleasing to God and beneficial to man—to care for quality more than quantity. Furthermore, his actions always defined his profession. And he certified the principle of cooperation by his relationship with God and mankind.

If youth can live by what they propose, the future is bright. Perhaps we can even dare to hope for solutions to such problems of racism, poverty, war, urban decay, and the misuse of environment.

Gerald C. Tiffin is professor of general education at San Jose Bible College in San Jose, California. He earned a Ph.D. in the history of education at Stanford.

Is it possible that genuine spiritual renewal may be around the corner? Indeed, may it not have already started? Anyone familiar with recent happenings must sense that God is at work in a special way among our young people. The Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship Urbana missionary conference attracted 12,000 visitors and delegates. Campus Crusade for Christ gathered thousands in six cities in North America over the holidays, and Crusaders descended in large numbers on the Pasadena Rose Parade and the Cotton Bowl football game. The Asbury revival, now a year old, spread to many college campuses over America, and the spiritual tone of many Christian institutions is higher than it has been for some years. The “Jesus people” phenomenon is blossoming mostly without the aid of any institution.

What is especially striking about our young people who get turned on by Christ (even though there may sometimes be zeal without knowledge) is their desire to share their experience of Christ with others and the fearlessness with which they do it. They remind me of Dwight L. Moody, whose straightforward, uninhibited personal witness was perhaps even more effective percentage-wise than his large evangelistic campaigns.

Billy Graham has campaigns scheduled for Chicago, Irving, Texas (Dallas-Fort Worth), and Oakland, California, later this year. I hope that somehow our turned-on young Christians can be geared into these evangelistic thrusts so that the combined advantage of mass witness and individual witness can be achieved. If thousands of Christian young people were to hit the streets of these cities, they might well usher in another great awakening.