One night about two years ago my phone rang and a voice said, “Raymond Berry has hurt his shoulder.”

A group from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes was visiting a local college, and I, with several hundred others, had listened to some of them give their testimonies. Then they had gone on to the gym to play a game of basketball with the college team and I had gone home to bed.

Berry was one of America’s most brilliant professional football players, top pass receiver for the previous year. His name was known to all sports-lovers and had been since his college days. He was now at the very top in professional circles.

I had years before retired from the practice of surgery, but this was an emergency, and I dressed as quickly as possible and drove to the gymnasium. There I found Berry, with a small group, in one of the dressing rooms.

Obviously he was suffering considerable pain, although he was stoical. His left arm hung useless, supported by his right hand, and both arm and shoulder were in an unnatural position. A superficial look could have led one to think this strong-looking man was in exceptionally fine shape; but he no longer was. He was suffering pain and was unable to move the arm, and his shoulder showed a depression where it should have been well rounded.

I could have said, “Raymond, you look fine and will soon be all right. All you need is some rest, a bath, and clean clothes. You are the victim of this rough environment. I will give you something to ease the pain. Then I will put a pad on your shoulder and cover it so it will look like the other, and no one will notice the difference. You can go ahead and use your right arm.”

But would that have helped? His trouble was that his shoulder was out of joint—dislocated! The head of the humerus was where it did not belong. It had torn through the ligaments surrounding the shoulder joint. Only one thing would remedy the situation: the shoulder had to be reduced, the head of the bone returned to the socket. That bone had to be “reconciled” to the place from which violence had torn it.

Reducing a dislocated shoulder on a muscular person without an anaesthetic is very difficult. In this case the common method of holding the elbow close to the body and then twisting the lower arm outward and upward did not work, as it had done for me many times in the past. So I laid Berry on the floor, took off my shoe, put a folded towel in his axilla (armpit), put my heel in his axilla, and pulled the arm, while another athlete held me. After a while the muscles relaxed and there was a sudden “pop,” and the dislocation was reduced. The pain was relieved, and I knew that within a week or so the shoulder would function normally.

Why this story? Let me add another. Many times during my years as a surgeon I was confronted by a person who was experiencing abdominal pain that often had begun in the pit of the stomach and later settled in the lower right quadrant of the abdomen. Often there was elevation of temperature, and pressure over the region caused considerable pain. The right knee would usually be flexed to ease muscle tension, and usually there was a look of anxiety on the patient’s face. Laboratory examination would show a rise in the leukocyte count with a shift to the left (showing that the body was manufacturing white blood cells to attack the inflammation).

I could have said, “Don’t worry, you’ve eaten something that does not agree with you. An injection of Demerol will ease the pain and a good dose of castor oil will take care of the undigested food.” In fact, I occasionally saw patients who had been so “treated,” only to find at operation a ruptured appendix and spreading peritonitis.

In the practice of medicine and surgery the physician is confronted with an unending parade of patients who come to him because they are experiencing symptoms. He is trained to discover the cause behind pain, dysfunction, and abnormalities, and then to treat the cause. One who treats symptoms only will ultimately find his patients seeking a more competent and honest doctor.

What about a world—a social order—convulsed by every form of evil? There is no “social order” that is not made up of people. The demonic antics of men separated from God are all about us and are indicative of a cause, a disease of the human heart that makes beasts of men and in so doing pollutes the whole world.

On every hand we see the results of man’s alienation (dislocation) from God. The symptoms vary from man to man and from generation to generation, but they all are rooted in sin, and the cure is theological, not sociological, spiritual, not secular.

Our world is desperately sick. America is faced with crime upon crime, crisis upon crisis. There are also countless millions with deep personal problems unknown to those about them. Sorrow, frustration, and uncertainty dominate the lives of many who seem carefree. All have needs that only God can remedy, for which Christ has the answer, to be applied by the Holy Spirit. The healing must be God’s, not man’s, and he offers that healing in the Gospel of his Son.

But there are “new physicians” abroad in the land, and their number is on the increase. There are social activists whose “cure” is sociological. One of their number, the moderator of one of the most prestigious presbyteries in his denomination, speaks of the “mission” of the Church in these terms: “I see the ministry in terms of social action, not in terms of preaching or the rest of the nonsense we went through years ago. In our day, we are more concerned about man than God. God can take care of himself.”

True concern for man as a person, and for the social order as a whole, begins with the recognition that man does not have the solution for his problem, that the answer is found in the cross and in no other place. God’s loving concern and his all-sufficient solution are found in the gift of his Son. The “folly” of that message, and a willingness to preach it against seemingly insurmountable odds, continue to be God’s way of solving the problems of this generation—and there is no other way.

Many seminaries are now graduating sociologists, not preachers. Many “ministers of the Gospel” are ignorant of the Word of God, the sword of the the Spirit. Many do not know the source of man’s problem and the nature of the enemy (“principalities, powers, the world rulers of this present darkness, … the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places”—Ephesians 6:12), and therefore they cannot wage a victorious battle.

What is desperately needed is faithful preaching of the Christ and his cross. There is no other Name, no other Way!

L. NELSON BELL

United Nations experts estimate that about fifty tons of heroin now reach the illicit drug market each year. That amounts to a minimum of ten billion doses, enough for three each to every man, woman, and child in the world.

The drug problem is more acute than even informed people imagine. It is probably most severe now in North America. Unless indifference is overcome and drastic measures are taken, drug abuse could get completely out of hand within a matter of months. National vitality may be at stake.

What makes the peril so great? The chief factor is that drug abuse tends to increase in a geometric progression. The point is often made that if one Christian were to win one convert each day, and that if each convert would in turn win another, the whole world population would be Christian in less than a month. The same progression could be applied to drug addiction. Users cannot quit and often become pushers (or thieves and even murderers) to finance their craving, soliciting others who also become addicts and in turn pushers, and so on. It is a chilling consideration.

Ralph de Jesus must currently be the most famous twelve-year-old boy in the world. He became known through the mass media after his testimony before a committee of the New York legislature investigating addiction among the young. Ralphie is a four-foot-tall, sixty-pound symbol of the terrifying wave of drug abuse among pre-adolescents. He is now being treated in an effort to get him off the habit of injecting heroin directly into his bloodstream.

Ralphie arouses our compassion, and that is right; but today’s drug addicts should also be arousing indignation. Drug abuse is not merely an unfortunately widespread personal problem. It is a crisis in which many people who have no connection with drugs are getting hurt. Drug users, because they must resort to crime and because during their “trips” their behavior goes awry, are a growing menace to an organized society and to law-abiding citizens. Much of the growing crime rate, in both city and suburb, can be attributed to the drug problem. After researching the situation, columnist Marquis Childs guessed that in New York City alone the theft bill of heroin addicts adds up to $2 billion a year.

The drug problem is the greatest blot on today’s youthful subculture. Many activities of young people today have a reasonable and even admirable foundation. But their inclination for drugs is one thing in which they are dead wrong, and they are thereby damaging the acceptability of their sound premises. Unfortunately, the non-using young are doing very little to counter this evil among their peers.

Young people try to defend their use of drugs by scoring adult hypocrisy. Let older people give up alcohol and tobacco, they say, before they indict other drugs. Even though it does not excuse the young, their point is well taken. Many evangelicals are on firmer ground in this matter because they have long opposed the use of alcohol and tobacco.

Currently, the most unsettled question in the drug problem is marijuana. Some say its use may be less harmful than imbibing liquor. There are uncertainties about marijuana, but there are also many uncertainties about alcohol and tobacco. Putting marijuana in a category quite separate from heroin and LSD, and reducing the penalties for its use, might actually help the nation to concentrate on the worst facets of the drug problem. Much money and manpower now spent on enforcing stringent laws against marijuana might better be used in countering harder drugs.

Young people ought to think more seriously about the possibility that the current wave of drug abuse among them is being fomented by anti-American (and antihuman) interests of the most selfish sort. Could it be that they are being made pawns in an international intrigue that is proving more effective than nuclear blackmail and guerrilla warfare? This fact cannot be ignored: a cold-blooded enemy might well resort to such means.

Enforcement and education are crucial weapons in the battle against the killer drugs, and Christians need to rally around both causes. We must consider ourselves to be in a literal war, whether or not a conspiracy is involved. Capital punishment of peddlers and retributive action against nations that de facto fail to restrict drug exports should be among our options.

Counter-measures should reach down to the individual and family level. Parents ought to caution their children discreetly but regularly. Travelers crossing borders should be alert against being used, and should not complain when customs agents search their baggage thoroughly. These inspectors, though in short supply, succeeded in making 3,425 separate seizures last year, and thus collected 54,818 pounds of heroin, opium, hashish, marijuana, cocaine, and other narcotics. Some was being smuggled in through hollowed-out crucifixes!

Drug abuse is a social issue in which Christians need to become involved—not in merely telling the government what to do but in helping arrest the problem and in ministering to victims. The churches should not fail to expose the evils of drug use and addiction. Every local congregation, especially those in large cities and suburbs, should have drug briefings for young people as well as adults.

The churches’ optimum effectiveness in combating drugs, however, lies at the level of motivating people against their use. Much has been said about why youngsters start using drugs. Whatever the reasons, Christianity gives them something better to live for. And where the faith is presented in its fullness and young people are challenged as they were in the early Church, drugs will be seen as a drag.

United Nations

Twenty-five years ago this April 25, forty-six nations that had been allied in the military struggle against Germany and Japan began a two-month meeting in San Francisco. The result was the charter for a permanent organization to be known as the United Nations.

In the words of the charter’s preamble, the first purpose of the U. N. was “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” In order to achieve this end, the U. N. was “to ensure … that armed forces shall not be used, save in the common interest.” Certain principles that were set forth in the second article of the charter we would do well to recall:

All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means.…

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.…

All Members … shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.

The organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.…

Simply to reread the original lofty intentions of the U. N. and then to recall some of the wars and threats of war in the past quarter-century should be enough to discourage the most ardent believer in mankind’s ability to tame itself. The Middle East, Korea, Hungary, Indochina, Czechoslovakia—these and other names are grim reminders that the Bible is right when it teaches that fallen men are by nature inclined to use force against one another.

Fears that the United Nations would prove to be an instrument of anti-Christ have so far been unfounded. It is difficult to imagine that the U. N. could obtain the necessary power without being so transformed as to be essentially a different organization from what it has been.

On the other hand, the hopes of those who thought the U. N. would usher in a Messianic Age, but without the Messiah, have surely been dashed. Informed Christians knew all along that peace could not be brought about by the good intentions of men. Christians must do what they can to live at peace with all men and to promote peace, but they do this with the knowledge that true peace will come only when the sovereignty of the Prince of Peace, the Lord Jesus Christ, is truly acknowledged upon all the earth.

As it enters its second quarter-century, the United Nations is a much weaker organization than the framers of the charter apparently intended it to be. This does not mean that it cannot serve some useful purposes. If it were not in existence, many if not most of its functions would have to be assumed by other organizations. To any view of the U. N. as a potential saviour, the Christian must continue to take exception. But to a more limited view that sees it as a useful agency for the international cooperation in which men are willing to engage, Christians, along with others, can lend their support.

The Great Contender

The April 4 pro-war demonstration in Washington was a great personal triumph for Carl McIntire. It makes little difference whether the paraders numbered 15,000 or 50,000. Turnouts for such happenings hinge largely upon the extent of advance promotion. Given McIntire’s meager means, a response of anything more than a few thousands must be considered successful.

Indeed, it was a moment of glory for the great contender. Only a few months ago McIntire seemed perched out on a lonely limb, isolated even from longtime friends who still shared his ideology. He surmised, however, that he could go it alone. What he needed was a spectacular achievement to show the scope of his personal influence, and he got it.

Many an evangelical groans at McIntire’s success. It must be particularly difficult for those in the American Council of Christian Churches who share his theological and political views, even his separatist stance, but who had the courage to get out from under his high-handedness. These are conscientious people who deserve the fellowship of other evangelical believers.

McIntire is an intelligent man, a master of polemic, one whose convictions do not waver. Although neither a great orator nor a particularly attractive platform personality, he knows how to capitalize on restlessness and on the desire of some fundamentalists for a “king.” Unfortunately, he tends to act more like a pope than a constitutional monarch.

We share McIntire’s doctrine insofar as it embraces classic biblical orthodoxy, including the full authority and reliability of Scripture. We part company with him at the point of his politicking, which in theory is not different from that of the National Council of Churches, and his seeming acceptance of certain questionable social positions. Particularly abhorrent has been his appropriation of a verse on the Resurrection, “Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory” (1 Corinthians 15:57), as a campaign slogan in behalf of a military triumph in Viet Nam.

We also are turned off by McIntire’s spirit, which goes beyond contending for the faith to contentiousness. He draws support for this attitude almost entirely from the Book of Jude, to the neglect of numerous other New Testament emphases. If Jesus and Paul had taken McIntire’s advice, they would have devoted their lives, not to ministries of evangelism and compassion, but to campaigning for influence in Rome and drawing people out of the synagogues.

Those Christians tempted to flex their muscle at the President need to reread the Epistle of Jude. The description of heretics is strongly worded, but Jude’s specific admonition to the saints is positive. The advice to “save with fear” is the last point in the list. Prior to that he urges: “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference.…”

Collaring Cost-Cutting

Now that the deadline for 1969 federal income-tax forms has passed, we can all breathe a little easier. Or can we? There is always that nagging possibility that somehow, somewhere, we made a mistake in filling out the 1040—and that the IRS will discover it.

Internal Revenue officials were a little suspicious about a deduction claim on one clergyman’s form: $450 for a “clerical collar.” Despite the leapfrogging cost of living, that seemed a little out of line. Called to account for his costly collar, the minister said he had made an innocent mistake: $450 should have been $4.50. Understanding IRS men let the clergyman pay the extra tax—plus 6 per cent interest.

But one shrewd auditor—was he a P.K.?—had a second guess. Sure enough, a scrutiny of past income-tax returns revealed that the minister consistently had trouble with decimals. For three years in a row things like $4.50 came out $450 in the deductions column. For this, the red-faced cleric paid added taxes, 6 per cent interest—and a 50 per cent penalty for fraud.

The Wall Street Journal tells the story in an article pointing out that tax evasion is growing; in some cases it’s considered “socially acceptable.” The temptation to cut corners is nothing new, but the Christian ought to be scrupulously honest in “rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s”—even when it hurts.

Nixon On The Schools

President Nixon’s lengthy statement on school desegregation is the kind one would expect from a political leader. Prophets are supposed to proclaim without compromise the standards of righteousness and to rebuke forthrightly the slightest deviations from them. Politicians, by contrast, are engaged in what has been called “the art of the possible.” They often have to settle for less than a whole loaf. If President Nixon, a politician, not a prophet, can secure equally good education for all citizens, then the nation will indeed have made progress.

We commend the President for his outright repudiation of de jure segregation, north and south. We commend him for his forthright call for the integration of faculties and administrations and for the equalization of physical facilities and educational equipment within a school district. If his administration follows the guidelines and if Congress appropriates the needed funds, then the federal government will be doing what it can to remove two out of the three major factors that make a school black.

As for the composition of the student body, the President recognizes that segregation can come about because of official actions, which he denounces, and also because of housing patterns. To the extent that segregation is the result of ethnic neighborhoods, President Nixon believes that school boards are not necessarily the best agencies to overcome it and are not obliged to attempt it.

The President defends the right of people to cluster in ethnic neighborhoods if they choose, but at the same time he calls for “the right and the ability of each person to decide for himself where and how he wants to live, whether as part of the ethnic enclave or as part of the larger society.” We wish that, in accordance with biblical teaching, the color of a people’s skin had no more to do with the way society functions than does the color of their eyes. Christians are obligated to function as Christians regardless of what others do. But the course that a society of unregenerate men takes attempting to live up to its ideals is more halting than what an individual can do.

Federal pressure upon segregated school districts has been and will continue to be necessary. But we believe that the combination of pressure plus latitude to local communities to work out their problems along various paths and through different agencies of government will be more likely to accomplish desired goals than a heavy-handed policy that further alienates people from the public schools, the central cities, and the federal government.

Nixon’s statement has left some Negroes filled with frustration and resentment. They feel they have been betrayed by one whose major concern is for his “Southern strategy” rather than for the plight of the black man. To them, terms such as “neighborhood school” and “quality education” are code words for segregation. It is imperative that Nixon give dynamic leadership in the continuing fight against racial discrimination in all institutions of our society. His statement could be used by segregationists to further their purposes, and the President must give the kind of leadership that will not allow this to happen. If he does, then maybe the day will come when we will no longer have two societies, unequal and strife-ridden.

Justice Still At Bat

First Clement Haynesworth went down swinging. Now G. Harrold Carswell, Mr. Nixon’s second choice to sit on the Supreme Court, has been fanned out by the opposition (the vote was 51 to 45 with four absentees). It was a cliff-hanger all the way, and for a time it looked as if Carswell might get to first base; but he didn’t. Now the President, baseball buff that he is, has a chance to send the third man of his choice to the plate. We are constrained to tell him, as if he didn’t already know it, that the first two strikeouts were less the result of good pitching than of poor hitting by the men at bat.

We hope the President has learned something from what must have been a shattering experience. When he sends the third batter into the game for the Senate to pitch to, he had better be sure his candidate has no racist overhang, no blot on his integrity, and a superb judicial batting average. It is unlikely that the Senate would strike such a man down, even if he were a strict constructionist of the Constitution.

Court Disruptions

The trial of the Chicago Seven has raised some interesting questions about how far a defendant may go in disrupting court procedures when he is being tried for violations of the law. This problem was further accentuated in New York City when a judge sent defendants to jail until they promised to behave themselves.

Every man is entitled to his day in court. And no one is presumed to be guilty until judge or jury or both find him so. But what is to be done with the clown whose courtroom antics impede his trial? Can a man be tried and convicted if he is banished from the courtroom? The Supreme Court has addressed itself to the matter and has chosen what we think to be the best of several alternatives. The court reasons that anyone who mocks the judicial processes loses, by his actions, rights he normally has. Box him in or take him out, the court directs, but continue the trial and reach a verdict. Anything less than this would lead to anarchy and make the attainment of justice impossible.

The opinion of the Supreme Court is consonant with the biblical teaching that all things should be done decently and in order—whether in religious assemblies or in courts of law. We have a notion that this verdict will quickly quell shenanigans and bring order in the court.

The Churches And Money

Reports continue to filter in that the churches are laboring under great handicaps because of the cop-out of the younger generation, a decline in interest in church among their elders, and decreased giving. And many churches, in an attempt to stem the tide, have made concessions that have worsened their plight. In their efforts to meet people where they are, to show the relevance of their message, and to speak to young people, the churches have sacrificed foundational principles whose loss would seem to be hastening their death.

A convincing demonstration of this is furnished by the latest issue of Colloquy, a magazine that purports to be “published especially for use by” the United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Like most religious periodicals, Colloquy is underwritten in part by the contributions of the church members. But it is unlikely that most people would want the money they have given for the work of the Church to be spent on a magazine that could have been produced by a secular organization not the least bit interested in Christianity—that is indeed incongruous with their Christian convictions.

The cover, nicely camouflaged so as to give an impression of decency, depicts a naked woman and a naked man. Lest the readers miss the point, the photograph is reproduced in black and white inside the magazine in a way that leaves little to the imagination.

A Philadelphia high-school teacher recounts the story of a sixteen-year-old girl whose parents were squares and brought her up with odd notions about virginity and the like. But she learned things that changed her view. “Jamie found out about sex. This time for real. And the strangest thing happened. She found out that what her parents had told her wasn’t true at all. Sex was a really beautiful thing.… And she had no feelings of guilt. In fact, she felt great! A friend introduced Jamie to marijuana, and Jamie turned on. It was the nicest thing she had ever done, and she felt fine about it.” Now Jamie has only one problem—how to keep her parents from knowing how wrong they were and from learning what she is doing. The author ends by saying: “So now, whenever I see Jamie, all I can say to her is, ‘I know what’s happening inside of you, and we both know that it is a good thing. So just don’t lose your cool.’ ” That’s all she has left to lose, we might add.

Another essayist says: “We must put an end to God-talk. God-talk is hopelessly irrelevant to the new generation’s perception of themselves and their world.… The irrelevance of God-talk for the new generation is evident in the fact that if one were to announce the death of God from the steps of most high schools or college chapels today, practically every student would ask him what else is new.”

Still another essayist deals with the sit-in at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the music festival at Woodstock. The MIT event was “beautiful,” he tells us. “The community was economically and socially communistic and politically a participatory democracy. It worked better than anyone could have expected.”

In a letter to the editor one clergyman said about a cartoon in a previous issue: “I found the language of the cartoon very offensive. The irreverent use of God’s name and the flippant use of the word ‘hell’ have, in my judgment, no place in any publication, much less a church publication.”

Now this may be the route the churches choose to go. And it may be that this is what the church members really want. But we doubt it. People are expressing their opinions by leaving their churches, by withholding their funds, or by joining the ultra-right as their only hope for remedial action. Undoubtedly tens of thousands of others will do the same when they find out what is really happening. Perhaps the revolution has already come—but not the one advocated by the radicals.

Evangelical Christianity’S Appeal

This could be evangelical Christianity’s finest hour. As observers of the American religious scene are noting these days, the laity is increasingly seeking personal commitment and participation in religious life—ingredients often lacking in many churches.

According to the Reverend Ben C. Johnson of Atlanta, head of the Institute of Church Renewal, a ministry of lay study and prayer teams in local churches: “I think we saw in the nineteen sixties the beginning of a movement of thousands of laymen at the grass-roots level—not organized and structured—who are saying, ‘We have encountered God and we have encountered each other.’ The struggle of the nineteen seventies will be to get the masses of churchgoers across the nation to grasp the reality of God as a Being who knows, feels, cares, and has purposes relating us to each other.”

This stirring among the laity unfortunately is taking place at the very time when many clergymen are floundering; not a few are leaving their ministerial office because they think the spiritual realm is no longer where the action is. As a result, points out an article in a recent issue of U. S. News and World Report, churches in the United States “are beginning to find themselves crippled in leadership at a time when rising numbers of laymen are seeking guidance on the meaning of religion in their lives and in the life of the community.”

At precisely this juncture, evangelical Christianity has an appeal unmatched by liberal activism or uninvolved pietism. As the U. S. Congress on Evangelism in Minneapolis vividly demonstrated last September, evangelicals are moving toward responsible social concern tied to a warm personal faith in Christ.

Let those who are disillusioned and bewildered over their role in church and society take heart! There are churches that weld a conservative theology with an enlightened social outlook. And let such churches actively seek those disenchanted with mere religiosity or with “sanctified” secularism.

Counterfeit Christianity

Many of today’s young people turn away from the Church because they are disillusioned with Christianity. The “Christianity” they have observed and experienced has left them empty and unsatisfied, so they look elsewhere for meaning and fulfillment in their lives. But is the “Christianity” that they reject the real item, or is it a counterfeit?

Counterfeit money can fool the unsuspecting victim, but the expert can tell the genuine from the phoney. To the untrained eye, paste jewelry may appear to be the real thing, but the experienced jeweler can readily spot the difference. The art critic can distinguish the original from the copy, though the ordinary observer may not see the difference.

In the world of religion a variety of beliefs and practices and institutions claim the name Christian. Some of these are counterfeit. In his parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13:26–30; 36–43) Jesus taught that there are both genuine believers and phoney imitations among those who claim to be the followers of Christ. Some are sincere Christians and some are merely using the name, going through the motions, playing church. The “tares” (literally “darnel”) to which Jesus referred closely resembled wheat in the early stages of growth and the roots of the wheat and darnel tended to intertwine. Since the attempt to separate them endangered the wheat crop, both were allowed to grow together until harvest, when the reapers could readily distinguish the useless weed.

In the same way real and make-believe Christians exist together in the world until Christ comes again to separate the two. In the meantime, our task is not to judge but to make certain that our own Christianity is not counterfeit. The real Christian is the person who has turned his life over to the control of the living Christ and who demonstrates that commitment in love (for God and for men) and service (to God and to other men for God’s sake) and obedience (to the will of God). That which bypasses a personal relationship to Christ or which avoids the outworking of that relationship in daily life is a worthless imitation. It may fool some men for the time being, but in the day of judgment God will openly expose it for what it is—counterfeit.

There is a related important truth that the parable does not point out. In real life the tares may at any moment be transformed into wheat. The person who realizes that his “Christianity” is empty and meaningless because it is not founded upon personal involvement with Christ can discover what it really means to be a Christian when he is willing to give himself to Christ. No one can blame the person who turns away in disgust from counterfeit Christianity, but the person who embraces the real thing has found life at its best.

Life With The Spider And The Specious

The death of Bertrand Russell reminded me of the time he wrote his own obituary—an exercise I would commend without malice to all readers of this journal. One sentence Russell applied to himself stuck with me: “His principles were curious, but, such as they were, they governed his actions.” (It has now got me reading the noble earl’s autobiography.)

Owen Smythe would have approved that sentiment. You have never heard of him? Do not fret—no one had, between the years 1962 and 1969, when O.S. lived in an Australian cave. When finally seen and arrested for vagrancy, the magistrate said of him: “He has made very little use of his life in an impressive way.” Overlooking the slight ambiguity, I would suggest that such pronouncers, be they judges or janitors, not only set themselves up as experts but imply that they themselves have made creditable progress along life’s way.

Forget for a moment that Owen Smythe had once been a house painter (a profession linked historically with some odd characters), and hear the defense he made at his trial. “I like caves,” he said simply, “and I like all the bush animals, the goannas, the pythons, and even the funnel-web spiders” (one of which had shared his cave). He said living by himself had advantages he was not likely to have by being civilized. I hope the irony was as deliberate as delicious.

O.S. had evidently found, like W. Whitman, that animals “do not sweat and whine about their condition … not one is demented with the mania of owning things.…” No wealth, no wistful questions, no heavy-hearted departures, no spiritual loss.

Or take Three Men in a Boat (I hope you know it), with Jerome K. Jerome’s indictment of those who overload their boat on the river of life, “swamping it with a store of foolish things”: fine clothes, big houses, hollow friendships, pretense, ostentation, fear of my neighbor, luxuries that cloy, pleasures that bore. “Throw the lumber over, man!” urges J.K.J. Take only what you need; make the going easier. “You will have time to think as well as to work … time to listen to the Aeolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heartstrings around us.…”

A dusty magazine of yesteryear tells me of a pious lady who had her house burgled. Next day at a prayer meeting (you see how long ago it was?) she thanked the Lord that he “had made her lighter for the upward flight.” I venture to think that the Lord smiled in acknowledgment.

EUTYCHUS IV

Otherwise Heavy

Just a note of special appreciation for “Dark Counsel at Easter” and “The Bunny and the Madonna” (Mar. 27). It is refreshing to see short, more sprightly articles in a magazine otherwise a little heavy.

ARNOLD BRINK

Burton Heights Christian Reformed Church

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Cover Comment?

I am intrigued by your cover for the March 27 issue. Is the center caption an editorial evaluation (concise, albeit) of The New English Bible Old Testament and The New Church Music?

DENIS W. H. MAC DOWELL

Morgantown, W. Va.

Hues Of Unity

I read with amusement and sincere concern the portraits of the church presented in comic relief by Russell Chandler in “Plan of Union: The Nose on COCU’s Face” and by Ron Durham in “Rainbow over Abilene” (Mar. 27): COCU, a Super-Church union in search of non-identity; the congregations of the Churches of Christ, identity in search of non-union.…

COCU searches for creeds which make no profession in order to offend no one; the Churches of Christ, while embracing the entire Bible as their common creed, cease not to offend some within. COCU is attempting to blend nine achromatic hues, while preserving black and white and while trying to prevent spurious emissions. The rainbow over Abilene contained at least seven colors being held together, yet apart, by colleges, editors, and sophomores.…

Communicants in COCU and the Churches of Christ can find unity in Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the Bible. If we search for unity of doctrine or creed as revealed by political theologians or editors of religious periodicals, we will never find it.

CHARLES WHITTLE

Middletown, N. J.

I cannot read about the recent COCU plenary session without turning to God in prayer and asking him to send his Holy Spirit down to today’s churches.… I am proud that Bishop Washburn from Minnesota dared to bring up the idea of “personal religion”—even if nobody clapped.

MRS. RODGER BRODIN

Minneapolis, Minn.

Root Perception

A fine contribution is J. L. Spradley’s “Christian Roots of Science” (Mar. 13). His sojourn in the Middle East has given him a perceptive insight into why the “scientific revolution” could not have occurred there.

RICHARD P. AULIE

Chicago, Ill.

I particularly appreciated Joseph L. Spradley’s article. The basis in Christianity of a world-affirming and orderly world-view has too often been entirely overlooked by science. This is a greatly needed corrective word.

However, I have problems with the evidence with which he supports some of his propositions. He rightly notes that Greek metaphysics could not adequately deal with the regularity in the universe, but to credit Thomistic theology with an interpretation of the Christian concept of regularity which contributed to the growing faith of the importance of science overlooks some important facts. It was the rigid philosophy of Scholasticism which vehemently opposed the objective findings of Copernicus because they were not in agreement with the traditional authoritative interpretations.…

Furthermore, his statement that “the idea of progress in applied science has its roots in the Augustinian teaching that history has a purpose culminating in the second coming of Christ” overlooks the early origin of the linear view of history in the religion of Israel, not to mention the eschatological message of first-century Christianity. The roots of the concept of purpose in history are not in Augustine, but in the Exodus theology of the Old Testament.…

Spradley does have a valid fear that science may not continue to rely on the Christian sources of progress. It is a matter of increasing alarm that the belief in the Christian hope has, in fact, given way to a belief in progress based on self-confidence. As even the self-centered belief in progress totters in the wake of the events of this century, only a return to the biblical doctrine of the blessed hope in the return of Jesus Christ can prevent the universal emergence of a nihilistic philosophy of despair.

R. LARRY SHELTON

Assistant Professor of Religion

Azusa Pacific College

Azusa, Calif.

Developing Deliverance

I was grieved as an evangelical that Mr. Howard in his otherwise fine article (“What About Unwed Mothers?,” Mar. 13) failed to make a single mention of an exciting development that promises soon to bring deliverance and new hope to the millions anguished by unwanted pregnancies. I am referring to the gallant struggle of Christians and others to remove the hideous abortion laws from our land.

The examples of loving action in his article were noble but to a growing number of Americans the genuineness of the compassion of the evangelical church is being questioned as they see our rigid non-biblical Victorian position on abortion immobilizing our action in this critical area where the principles of Christian love demand reform.

MILO MATHISON

Rindal Lutheran Parish

Fertile, Minn.

‘Dear Ann’

As a young adult and Christian, I would like to thank you for the continuous stream of useful and relevant articles found in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I really enjoyed your question and answer session with Ann Landers (Mar. 13). The “What If …” cartoons are usually very much on target and well presented.

MARTIN H. GALLAS

Springfield, Ill.

Dealing With Evangelism

I was absolutely delighted with your editorial “Shall We Evangelize the Jews?” (Mar. 13). I appreciated the fact that you steered clear of a discussion of methodology and dealt directly and thoroughly with the question. Your analysis was exact and incisive.

Undoubtedly you will get a lot of negative feedback, but on behalf of the Jewish people who are yet to be evangelized and won to Christ I want to say thank you and thank God!

MARTIN ROSEN

American Board of Missions to the Jews

New York, N.Y.

Your editorial was so fine, but the last paragraph was a shock. I am wondering if you did not mean to say God’s earthly people instead of “God’s chosen people” in referring to the Jews? In any event the Romans 11 passage refers the “his people” to the election of grace, and surely the chosen are the saved.…

Yes, we are interested in the Jews’ return to Palestine, but perhaps you are inadvertently linking the evangelical cause to Zionism. The fact that the Romans 11 passage is speaking of the salvation or revival of Israel, says not a word of the return to Palestine, and the fact that no promise is realized outside of Christ, must give us pause.

ROBERT K. CHURCHILL

Presbyterian Church

Calvary Orthodox

Sonora, Calif.

Prophetic Ecology

“Fulfilling God’s Cultural Mandate” (Feb. 27) is one of the clearest statements I have seen concerning the theological and religious problems involved [in ecology]. This topic provides an excellent opportunity for individual Christians and churches to carry out a prophetic role in condemning our society’s complacent affluence and our failure to love our neighbors.

But we also have a message of hope—that disaster can be averted by a true repentance, a thorough change of heart. Then we can use with gratitude and wisdom God’s good gifts of natural resources and advancing technology.

V. ELVING ANDERSON

Director

Dight Institute for Human Genetics

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minn.

Raising Dough For Dictators

I want to congratulate you on your fine editorial, “Inflationary Pains” (Feb. 13).

Not only is inflation morally wrong, but it can lead to the downfall of government.…

I keep under the glass on my desk a one million German mark bill issued September 1, 1923. In 1914 one million marks would buy over two million loaves of bread; only nine years later this same amount would not buy a single loaf. And Hitler took over.

The trends of history would seem to indicate that America is in store for a dictator unless the federal government stops inflating the money supply.

J. S. GRIGSBY, JR.

Secretary-Treasurer

Southern States Industrial Council

Nashville, Tenn.

Surveying The Top

Your use of information from my research (“Deans List Top Ten,” Jan. 30) was out of context and somewhat misleading. The title of my study was “Deans of students and their programs at selected Christian liberal arts colleges.” The three objectives of the study included: (1) discovery of the prototype dean of students at Christian liberal arts colleges (i.e., training, degrees, age, experience, etc.), (2) making comparisons with a national sample of secular deans, and (3) gathering information regarding organizational structure, policies and programs at the various colleges participating in the study. There was no attempt to develop a set of criteria by which Christian colleges would be evaluated or rated.… As I mentioned in the study, only four of those institutions receiving the most votes for inclusion in the top ten were selected by more than half the college administrators participating.…

Within the broad range of data collected by this study, this information was interesting and of some merit, but only so within the context of the study. To present a listing of the “top ten” and to cite my study as the “survey” upon which you base your presentation does a disservice to Christian higher education and to me as a researcher.

CRAIG E. SEATON

Dean of Students

Biola College

La Mirada, Calif.

Turning to more personal aspects of “tuned-in” teaching, I believe that the intellectual love affair requires the same kind of openness and self-revelation that a good marriage requires, though of course to a lesser degree. I believe that the teacher who is “with it” in the seventies will admit human frailty to his intensely personalistic students. I don’t mean that he will turn his classroom into a confessional, of course; but he will admit his errors and weaknesses wherever they impinge upon the classroom. Certainly he will correct any informational errors or personal misjudgments that he discovers after making them, and should in most cases apologize publicly for them. Nothing elicits the renewing power to apologize and repent like apology and repentence; and I believe that in the seventies young people will expect ever-increasing candidness about our common humanity.

Furthermore, I hope that the seventies will see the demise of the myth of objectivity so popular in secular classrooms, and in some Christian schools as well—the cult of presenting all ideas in a non-committal fashion with the advice that the student should then take his choice. Students are sick of uninvolved adults, and I believe they will turn off teachers who seem too lazy to choose among variant points of view. It is honest for me to identify precisely what my viewpoint is, with the important understanding that there is certainly no penalty for disagreement. It is not honest for me to pretend academic objectivity while I am subtly slanting the material in favor of the Christian world view or conservative politics or whatever. (Whether I am slanting the material consciously or unconsciously really isn’t the point.) The fact is that no one except a zombie could be truly objective, and honesty requires the precise identification of the point from which I am describing reality, since my vantage point will radically affect my description. In other words, I believe that the professor should profess and that the teacher should identify the window from which he views the world. Perhaps through love of the teacher, students will consider reality from his point of view and will even come to see things as he does; but even if they continue to disagree violently, his firm profession will make dialogue possible. No meaningful conversation can be held if nobody will take a stand.

In an unpublished paper on “The Concept of Authenticity,” Professor John Pageler of Wheaton College comments that as opposed to hedonistic boredom or speculative non-committal, “subjectivity demands involvement, concern, staking your existence.” It is this concern about total reality and immersion in it that modern students want to see in their teachers, not a dishwater objectivity. On the other hand, they also legitimately expect teachers to “keep their cool”—which is perhaps another way of asking that the classroom be preserved from proselytizing.

Please understand that by advocating subjectivity I am not advocating the presentation of only the teacher’s point of view. It is of course necessary that thoughtful consideration be given to many possibilities where many exist. It is also necessary that teachers resist the temptation to libel by label; for to label a point of view as “new morality” or “liberal” or “right wing” is not to deal with it, even though some students can be deceived into thinking so.

In this connection, I was interested to notice in recent advertisements of the Anchor Bible the following statement: “It is the first translation in history which concerns itself exclusively with what the Bible says, and not with a sectarian interpretation of what it means.… The distinguished general editors … have chosen contributors on the premise that scholarly integrity transcends religious differences.” It is that last phrase which arrested my attention: Scholarly integrity transcends religious differences. So it does—or so it should. Scholarly integrity requires that we handle truth respectfully and humbly, no matter what its source. Though the devil himself speak some bit of truth, as a Christian and a scholar I am committed to the grateful acceptance of that truth, even as I reject the context in which I found it. Scholarly integrity is admittedly more difficult to those who are passionately subjective and involved than it is for the polite hedonist or the non-committal speculator in ideas. But it is not impossible, as some educators claim. It is not impossible; it is simply difficult. The more serious I am about reality, the more I have to remind myself that when I recognize some aspect of truth in the words of my bitterest opponents, I must concede that truth. I must not refuse to see it in order to defend the investments of my own ego; I must remember that even from my enemies, “All truth is God’s truth.”

I am not, then, asking that teachers devote thoughtful classroom consideration exclusively to the viewpoints they personally accept. But I am asking—and I think that the students of the seventies will be asking—that in the course of presenting many points of view the teacher identify his own without equivocation, explaining why he accepts the one and rejects the others.

Some teachers will hesitate to make open profession of their personal ideas because of the danger that students will simply imitate, accepting (or pretending to accept) whatever they know to be the views of the teacher. I doubt that this will be much of a problem with the fiercely moral breed of students we will be facing in the seventies. Even if it is, such a tendency will create less of a problem than would our projection of an image of intellectual slackness. But I believe that as our classrooms become suffused with love and mutual respect for the individuality of every person, both present and absent, dead or alive, our students will begin to trust us with their honest thoughts.

If we consider the educational systems today’s young people are growing up in, many of them rewarding conformity and the servile echoing of the teacher or the textbook, we must recognize what a compliment it is when the student drops his mask of servility and begins to make attempts to communicate matters of real significance to himself. These communications are often disruptive and very unpredictable. But anyone who prefers his students to maintain an anonymous servility because he must protect himself from the discomfort of honest questioning should give up and leave the profession.

Perhaps some people would like to challenge my assumption that students of the seventies are going to be fiercely moral. Isn’t this the day of the moral revolution, of nudity and sexual permissiveness? Yes; but I frankly doubt that, person for person, sexual behavior is much worse now than it ever was, although it is certainly more open. The thing that is radically different is the increased brooding about personal responsibility, both in sex and in every other relationship of life, and especially the sense of corporate sin, the concern about social problems such as racial injustice, poverty, and war. As Myron Bloy has said, the student counter-culture has broken with “the individualistic, rationalistic, skeptical tradition of the last 300 years in favor of a communal, personalist, ‘committed’ life-style.… Its members assume that ‘truth’ is finally unitive (albeit mysterious) and alive … and that only moral engagement is responsive to its essential sentience” (“Alienated Youth, Their Counter Culture, and the Chaplain,” The Church Review, Nov., 1968, p. 12). These are great days to be alive and teaching!

Consider the fact that the recent movie most popular among teen-agers is Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. Until I saw this film I assumed that its popularity was based upon sensational, explicit love scenes, but I was mistaken. The film is gloriously beautiful, exceedingly tasteful, and imbued with a profound sense of social responsibility. The adult Montagues and Capulets have through the years allowed an old feud to claim many young lives; only the love-death of Romeo and Juliet puts an end to the meaningless violence.

The production would have rejoiced the heart of Shakespeare. It is authentically his play, filmed with the gorgeousness of Vermeer and Rembrandt, but interpreted so that it emphasizes the passionate commitment of the young in the late sixties. It is also played to emphasize the generation gap. When the old nurse counsels Juliet to betray her banished husband Romeo and marry Paris because this would be the easiest and most expedient thing to do, Juliet’s eyes gradually draw inward in shock and rejection. “You have comforted me marvellous much,” Juliet murmurs, vowing inwardly never to trust the old nurse again. Had the nurse been faithful to Romeo and Juliet, whose marriage she had furthered, it is very probable that with her help the young people would have survived. In other words, had the older generation been faithful to its moral commitments, the young would have been spared.

I do not believe that teen-agers are flocking to Romeo and Juliet for the easy triumph of blaming their elders for all the ills of the world. (After all, it is the hot-tempered young Tybalt who keeps the flames of discord stirred up.) Rather, I believe that many young people are at least vaguely aware that they are soon going to be adults and that moral issues must be faced at all ages. As a matter of fact, last year I asked two of my writing classes to express their gripes about my generation. Out of some sixty writers, only one blamed the generation gap on the elders. All the rest either shared the blame equally or took most of it upon themselves—surely a significant reaction.

To return to Romeo and Juliet: I think it is a hopeful sign that young people are so powerfully drawn to a film with the aesthetic and spiritual stature of this one. I also think that if we tune in to what all this tells us, we will hear that we had better exert an emotional as well as an intellectual influence in the classrooms of the seventies. We had better be ready to face the moral issues that are raised by the subjects we teach.

Jules Henry, a sociology professor from Washington University, ran a study of textbooks published in the sixties (“Education for Stupidity,” New York Review of Books, May 9, 1968, pp. 20–26). He discovered that “by leaving out and distorting information, textbooks strive for the goal of stupidity.” Among other harrowing examples, he cites the treatment of the atomic bomb in a selection of high-school history texts found in the Washington University library: there was either no mention at all of the casualties, or no admission that most of them were women and children; there was no mention of the fact that Japan was suing for peace long before the bombs were dropped. One even went so far as to say that the bombs were dropped only because the Japanese had turned deaf ears to President Truman’s attempts to make peace.

It would be inappropriate here to argue about Truman’s actions, or about the current war, or about domestic issues like the system of welfare; but I do believe that when such subjects arise in the classroom, the sidestepping of moral issues must cease. I believe that the fiercely moral students of the seventies will have nothing but scorn for the teacher who can speak about any form of injustice without manifesting a sense of sin and responsible concern.

It is at this point that the challenge for evangelicals becomes most acute. We must demonstrate by our participation that we are really the devotees of “pure religion and undefiled”—that we “keep ourselves unspotted from the world” by doing genuine battle with the mark of worldliness, which is egocentricity; and that we “visit the fatherless and widows” by doing everything we can for the contemporary underdog. Currently this means that, among other things, we must do our utmost to help the Negro and the Indian gain a respected place in the American community. Only thus can we demonstrate to our students and to the world at large that evangelical commitment does not mean social irresponsibility.

On the other hand, we face a challenge from the unbelieving student of the seventies, a challenge to show him that his sense of corporate sin should turn him to Christ, that he cannot expiate his guilt simply by teaching in ghetto schools or joining the Peace Corps, that his good works should come as companion to personal redemption rather than as a substitute for it (see Jan J. van Capelleveen, “A Theology for Today’s Youth,” Christianity Today, Aug. 22, 1969, pp. 11–13). But I believe that to talk about personal guilt to the exclusion of social, corporate guilt will only alienate the students of the seventies, will only confirm in them the widespread belief that evangelicals couldn’t care less about the tangible agonies of the twentieth century.

An area in which evangelical education has lagged behind academia at large is that of granting students serious responsibility for school planning and management. I believe and I hope that the students of the seventies will win greater responsibility for shaping curricula and for disciplining their own lives. I hope that Christian schools will work toward granting self-determination for individual students as they demonstrate the maturity to make their own inner-directed moral choices. For instance, I believe that class attendance requirements should be dropped for those students whose academic achievement demonstrates responsible effort, and that mature students should participate in many faculty and administrative committees, especially those pertaining to student regulations. I believe that concerned Christian teachers of the seventies should be active in seeking these goals.

Psychologist Carl Rogers rightly claims that only self-discovered, self-appropriated learning significantly influences behavior. At first glance, this concept makes a teacher feel unnecessary, and indeed some educators have interpreted it to mean that lectures and tests and conventional classrooms are totally worthless. But they are forgetting that one of the best primary sources for the student to use in self-appropriation and self-discovery is the personality of the teacher. Because we are primary sources for our students to study, what we are is far more important than what we say. Our love for our subject, for our students, for God, and for the world he created is the spark that may ignite similar love in our students.

Geoffrey Chaucer concludes his description of a medieval scholar with the deceptively obvious praise, “And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.” The praise is deceptively obvious because in reality there are many people who are willing to learn without teaching, and many people who are willing to teach without learning; but there are relatively few who are willing first to learn, and then to teach. In the seventies, I believe, the learning must be twofold. First, we must continue and renew our lifelong study of our subject areas as they revolve around Christ and reveal to us new facets of his glory. But secondly, and of equal importance, we must add to that study a newly intensified concentration on our students and what they are trying to tell us. We must put aside our selfishness, and must listen deliberately and often intuitively to their actions, the music they sing, and the words they speak, and must construct classes, texts, and research projects in order to reveal and develop maximum student potential. First we must listen, to learn what the vital issues are; then we must relate our knowledge to those issues. Gladly we must learn, and gladly teach.

Man doesn’t move in God’s direction easily. Shortcuts can help him down the path of service for a little way, but this will not last. Some church leaders keep hoping that stewardship executives and conferences will find some shortcut or some secret formula to move people to give, serve, and witness effectively. A pastor wrote us: “Motivational talks on stewardship are not needed. Supply what pastors lack: techniques of money-raising. Pastors should be presumed to know motivation. Please show us the ‘tricks of the trade.’ ”

None of us fully understands the truth and power of the Gospel as it affects lives, and that means we need to learn more about motivation in stewardship. Clear understanding and proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is intimately tied to stewardship commitment.

Recently I reviewed thirty-one current books on stewardship for their motivational content and discovered a very confusing picture. Inconsistencies abound, and some excellent statements on God’s grace and love in Christ Jesus are contradicted by legalistic concepts and methods. Many use the “will of God” as motivation, and many stop at the acknowledgment of God as owner and giver. “Man is accountable, so be ethical.” Some avoid legalism and suggest grace in their concepts, but give the impression of moral responsibility alone in their practical plans. One spells out God’s promises, the answer of love, and asks, “Is stewardship legalistic?” but fails to define or make the application. The duty motive and ownership by redemption is stressed: since Christ bought the Christian, it is now his duty to get to work. The “love of Christ” hardly ever gets above the level of the cliché, and motivation is perverted in one way or another. One book warns the reader, “Be sure your motives will find you out,” but devotes only two sentences to worthy motives even though it exposes fear, legal compulsion, and personal gratification as unworthy ones. The books ask “What shall I do with the Gospel?” instead of “What does the Gospel do to me and for me as a steward?”

Biblical exhortations to love and serve are addressed to those who are regenerate, who in communion with Christ possess what is required of them. Commands are always preceded by reminders of divine action to show where the strength for action comes. The directive to be God’s stewards comes after the miracle of deliverance and release from the house of bondage or the enslaved body.

“The greatest demonstration of God’s love for us has been his sending his only Son into the world to give us life through him” (1 John 4:9, Phillips). Love is the fountain of God, and it pours out all his gifts into the hearts of believers through the Spirit. Love is God’s “drawing power”—drawing men away from self, sinful pleasures, earthly temptations, drawing them to himself and all that he wills, to his peace and joy, his security and power. God’s love is his energy imparted to our lives, and this makes it possible to use these gifts faithfully. This love cannot be comprehended as only a noun—it must have the force of a verb. “Let us love not merely in theory or in words—let us love in sincerity and in practice!” (1 John 3:18, Phillips).

The world of complex human emotions and reactions was pierced for all time by Christ’s sacrifice of love. This love defies cataloguing and should pervade the Christian’s thinking, speech, and actions. Love is not simply an attitude that Jesus taught: it is the essence of his very being. Christ’s love is redemptive as he joins man’s common battle against wrong, accepting life in total obedience all the way to death and winning the victory in every way at every place. What is more practical—no tricks involved—than letting God judge, forgive, and empower for a revolutionary style of living? Not the desire for self-improvement but God’s grace makes us dynamic.

These facts are hard to learn and even harder to accept. Christian stewards need help in their search for the meanings of their behavior. They need to be challenged to serve from a “love which springs from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a genuine faith” (1 Tim. 1:5, Phillips). There is always the pull of many psychological factors to confuse even the faithful and move them toward an emphasis on meritorious works.

Think of the many options available for perverting man’s true motive for stewardship: the general good of the Kingdom, group pressure, pride or embarrassment, social approval, pity, tax exemption, conscience-salving, fear, owing the tithe, humanitarian ideals, loyalty, example of Christ, reward, and pursuit of happiness. Man wants acceptance or recognition, and he wants results in the way and time he desires. Some of these ways will destroy the integrity of the message, for they are a contradiction of the Gospel even though they succeed in raising funds. They may come from a desire to love God, but this does not give them sanction as motives. Only scriptural principles will produce scriptural giving habits. You cannot sow self and reap the Spirit.

Some church members are poor stewards because their lives are based upon convictions that are more secular, or pagan, than Christian. The solution is not to collect stewardship verses and inject them into Christians to get them to yield what the church needs, but to teach the Gospel so that the Holy Spirit knocks down human barriers in the heart and builds a house of love in the same place. God is concerned about motives: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Gal. 6:7, 8).

Just as forgiveness and regeneration are entirely a work of God that excludes every conditioning activity on man’s part, so stewardship is the energy that comes simply out of Christ’s power and cannot arise from our own ingenuity or strength. “The one who has begun his good work in you will go on developing it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6, Phillips). “Whoever renders service, [let him do it] as one who renders it by the strength which God supplies” (1 Peter 4:11b).

Forgiveness is the stepping stone to responsibility. When our own burden is lifted, we are prepared to lift the burden of others. As sin alienates man from God, so forgiveness reconciles him to God. The Atonement is the answer: forgiveness is the monumental difference in our capacity to be what God called us to be, to fulfill our eternal destiny. The stewardship call is a call to repentance, to salvation, to eternal life, to sanctification, to patience and suffering, to servanthood, to a glorious hope. The call is not primarily duties but gifts—gospel gifts—and the content of the gift is the forgiveness of sins. Each new experience of forgiveness is a new assurance that God works out his fatherly purposes of stewardship in our lives.

Stewardship starts always with a repentant heart, a change of mind, not merely an adjustment of one’s opinions about earthly values. To repent is to reverse completely one’s goal and standards in his stewardship outlook and practice. It is to be separated from the excess fleshly baggage that hampers stewards. This is the stewardship counsel of Psalm 51: God wants the sacrifice of the broken spirit and the contrite heart; only then is he pleased with offerings; only as he cleanses and opens one’s lips can one’s mouth utter God’s praise.

We find the aims and goals of service in Christ’s motivating power. Christ is the Head of the body, and in him centers all priority of service and cohesion of action. The church is always the church because of what God does and never because the members are busy in it. The heeding of human tradition, the giving over to the elemental spirits of success-seeking, covetousness, humanism, greed, and secularism, robs the church of its true nature. If members are distracted by unworthy goals and practices, the old nature will dominate and the member will be timid and weak for the stewardship tasks, vessels unfit for noble work, not ready for those good works God planned for them to do.

The basic business of the church is to provide a rich supply of the Word through which every member grows in knowledge, faith, godly living. It’s God’s plan we follow and his will we seek. Our stewardship committees do not belong to us, and our stewardship programs are not our personal genius come to flower. We are not to confuse man-made policies and forms with the eternal Word.

Imagination easily lags because there is little encouragement or drive to rise above and cut loose from the neatly defined categories we have accepted in order to be considered successful. Who dares to dream dreams and see visions when the task is so carefully regimented by accepted models of past performances and by reaching averages and just “getting by”? Men can manipulate and regulate God’s priests in such a way that they feel they have done enough when they have reached human goals. Some people can easily give $250 to help exceed a church budget without giving the biggest gift—self. Grace will keep stewards from being satisfied with the cheapness of minimum requirements.

When people decide what to give, their motivation should not center in the question, “What is the budget? What is my congregation asking?” The point of emphasis is the ability of the individual to give, not the calculated needs of the congregation. Duty and responsibility can be understood only in the context of man’s relation to God, not to men and needs. If needs and budgets become the focal point, then guilt and failure are measured by man’s standards.

Church goals are to be set by the Gospel itself. The gospel goal will point to the whole counsel of God and then surround the hearers with God’s grace by his Word. The church holds the goal of the Suffering Servant before its people and the total needs of the world in which the body of the Servant exists. The “giving potential of God” and the faithfulness of his promises is the big concern, not the “giving potential of people” and their faithfulness.

Frank Laubach wrote ten years ago, “We have five more years, perhaps ten. We are running a cosmic race with time.” The immensity of our world mission task cries out for us to forsake any small plans we might have, tear them up, and write new ones inspired by the Holy Spirit. Only he who believes is obedient, so our proclamation ought to be “Trust God to make you strong for your tasks!” rather than “Give according to your duty!”

Faith is the “yes” of the heart. Faith takes from God the strong feet to walk the servant path. Adoniram Judson affirmed, “The prospects are as bright as the promises of God.” God has done his part; now we must claim his gifts. “He has by his own action given us everything that is necessary for living the truly good life.… It is through him that God’s greatest and most precious promises have become available to us men, making it possible for you to escape the inevitable disintegration that lust produces in the world and to share God’s essential nature” (2 Pet. 1:3, 4, Phillips).

“Believe!” is our stewardship plea, not “Do!” If people believe God’s stewardship promises, they will do. “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness” (2 Cor. 9:10). That stewardship faith can never overdraw its account.

The forces threatening to pull the Christian liberal-arts college from its philosophical moorings are almost irresistible. Their influence in America has been increasing since the mid-nineteenth century, when they became noticeable. At that time, numbers of liberally educated American students, attracted by the academic specialization found in the German universities, began going to Germany for post-graduate degrees. Returning home, they held doctorates in fields that were narrower than those customary in America. Their expertise and desire for professional research, patterned after their foreign mentors, lent strong support to those educators already questioning the basic validity of the traditional American general education.

Although the process of reappraising American liberal-arts education has taken a couple of major turns since the mid-nineteenth century, the assumptions behind it still stem from the Enlightenment and its philosophical aftermath. These assumptions did not underlie the thinking of the colonists as they established the earliest American colleges, however; their thinking was closer to the philosophical orientation that gave rise to the medieval universities. And it was also closer to the interpretation of Christian theism upon which virtually every evangelical Christian college of the arts and sciences is founded. But it is a position whose implications for higher education are less and less understood and followed today.

This version of Christian theism holds that God is freely the creator and sustainer of a universe in which he has always manifested his “eternal power and deity” through his handiwork. God is infinite personality, in whose image man is created. As such, he is a rational, moral agent whose holy and just will determines absolutely the moral quality of the actions of every human being. Furthermore, he has revealed himself historically through his Son as an infinitely merciful and loving Being ready to redeem the entire life of any person so desiring, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit. This special or supernatural revelation through his Son is infallibly recorded and interpreted in the Holy Scriptures. Hence, they are the final arbiter and guide in all matters of faith and practice for those who are members of his Church universal.

To construct a world and life view around these basic doctrines requires certain assumptions that many educators today find difficult to accept. This difficulty derives from the naturalistic understanding of the scientific method, and has been intensified by the Enlightenment and subsequent philosophical developments. Earlier, the Christian theism of the medieval universities had viewed the world of experience as finitely real. This gave scientific endeavors a metaphysical justification. But what is more important, the reality ascribed to the objects of science was dependent upon a Being who designed the world in such a way that it could never be truly understood unless seen as tending toward him ontologically and pointing toward him epistemologically. Medieval science, then, looked for the purpose behind the phenomena studied. Science was an integral part of the Christian’s world and life view, because it facilitated the discovery of the meaning God has placed in his earthly creation. But later, when the experimental method came to be regarded as the proper method of science, the corresponding purpose of science was thought to be describing what happened and how it happened. The nature of the reality knowable by man also underwent redefinition.

Anyone who still refused to exchange his qualitative and teleological view of reality for the quantitative and mechanical one demanded by the new scientific method had to break his world and life view apart. The theological part would have to thrive on unreasoned religious belief, while the philosophical part would be grounded upon, but limited by, whatever the scientific method was adequate to handle—that is, only that which could be measured quantitatively and described mathematically.

Except for Roman Catholics, no significant thinkers reacting against this new use of the scientific method to define philosophical reality have turned back to the Christian theism of the medieval thinkers. Nevertheless, there have been groups of Christian theologians, such as the Puritan divines who established the colleges in colonial America, upon whom the leading philosophers of the day had little influence, for good or bad. They were largely untouched by the new view of God, man, and the world dominant in the Europe of their day. Their rationale for introducing higher education into the New World is more reminiscent of the last of the great integrative systems of orthodox Christian theism. That system appeared, of course, back in the Middle Ages.

More recent Christian educators, in overseeing and staffing institutions that are trying to maintain the liberal-arts tradition of the colonial colleges, have been unable to avoid interacting with the thinking of the day. In itself, this development is no doubt all for the good. But many of these men have proven equally unable to avoid compromising the Christian theism supposedly constructed around their conservative theological tenets. The result is a continual struggle within Christian colleges between those for whom the integration of religious faith and learning is the primary goal of a college education and those who share the dim view of this goal taken by the majority of American educators for over the past hundred years. The latter view, reduced to its logical implications, is more consistent with the Enlightenment’s proud deistic assessment of human culture, later philosophical developments notwithstanding.

No one wishes to argue that the intentional alteration of the basic fabric of American higher education in the mid-nineteenth century was done capriciously. The technological and social needs of the rapidly growing nation could no longer be met by colleges and universities that offered little more than a general education in the liberal arts and sciences. Nor can the Christian liberal-arts college today ignore such contemporary educational realities as the usefulness of the scientific method, the effectiveness of research in specialized fields at the university, the needs of the student as a whole person who is frequently immature and is in college for more than academic reasons, and the needs of our democracy for citizens trained in various socially helpful skills. But unlike the university, the Christian liberal-arts college is adaptable to providing the kind of synoptic, integrative education deemed philosophically possible by all educators in the Middle Ages and by the founders of the first colleges in the American colonies.

Such an education need not be viewed merely as a way of preserving and transmitting the cultural heritage of the past to the elite of the future. If it is to be described as Christian liberal-arts education, it must be grounded upon the conviction that reality can be known and systematically described. This means that no scientist may demand any kind of priority for the full understanding of reality. It means that no scholar in the humanities can ignore the assured results of the scientific study of God’s creation. It means that all branches of learning must be allowed to criticize and learn from one another. It means that no human knowledge can be truly grasped or interpreted outside the framework provided by God’s infallible Word. And it means that man’s ultimate happiness and purpose will be taught as lying in an ever closer conformity with God’s revealed will.

The unique purpose of the Christian liberal-arts college in providing the opportunity for an education of this type can easily be compromised by influences deriving ultimately from non-theistic sources. Such influences often encourage educators, when financial or other considerations force a decision, to sacrifice the philosophically integrative components of the college curriculum, and of the college scene in general. In their place are added components with greater value to the professor or student interested in specialization or in research, rather than in a general, liberalizing education. Such a professor or student may desire an inordinate emphasis on such things as the athletic program, or research facilities for the sciences or humanities, or a professionally tailored curriculum. The university provides for these needs, all of which are in themselves legitimate. But the college must never allow them to block its attempt to develop the student’s entire personality. The student in the Christian liberal-arts college must be able to gain a balanced perspective on all human knowledge as understood from the standpoint of Christian theism.

Compared with the university, the liberal-arts college is oriented more toward the accumulated wisdom of the past. It is interested less in increasing man’s total store of knowledge through investigation and research than in helping the student develop an understanding, appreciation, and critical evaluation of his cultural heritage. Such matters as the basic techniques of science, the needs of society, and the rudiments of business procedures will not be forgotten in the curriculum. But they must never be allowed to encroach upon the liberalizing courses. The graduate of a liberal-arts college should have a broad grasp of the insights into the human situation that men through the centuries have found most significant.

As a Christian college loses its liberalizing vision, it either ceases to be genuinely Christian or begins to dogmatize. Dogmatizing is as antithetical to a liberal-arts education as the compartmentalizing of knowledge found at the university. Dogmatizing in a Christian college prevents the student from gaining the intellectual poise and emotional stability necessary for leadership in the Christian community. Deprived of wide acquaintance with the basic problems and concerns of his fellow man now and in the past, uninformed about how mankind has dealt with these matters, the dogmatized student will be unable to decide for himself their relative merits. Instead, he will learn to labor under the false impression that the solutions his mentors have found for their generation’s problems are to be carried over into his own generation. What the student really needs is guidance in assessing the issues of the past and the present with confidence in himself, in the authority of Scripture, and in the assistance of the Holy Spirit. But from dogmatics he cannot avoid picking up a feeling of doubt about the relevance of his faith in Christ for the problems that have always confronted a human being most forcefully.

A similar apprehension about the significance of the Christian faith can be instilled in the hearts of students another way. A college can call itself Christian but see its real task as the training of Christians for meeting the specific needs of the community or for taking their place in the ranks of those engaged in scientific research, business, and other fields. Such training is indeed valuable, but it has no priority over the development of the whole man, which a truly Christian liberal-arts college claims to be able to accomplish uniquely. The Christian liberal-arts college whose main distinction is the demand of a commitment to Christ on the part of its faculty and students, but whose major objectives do not center around extending this commitment to the limits of man’s knowledge, gives the impression that the Christian either need not do this or cannot. Such a college would then not be a Christian liberal-arts college. It would be a training college for Christians who wish to prepare themselves for certain vocations and professions.

A college seriously intending to view the liberal arts and sciences within the framework of Christian theism can confidently affirm the possibility of accounting for both the natural order and man’s place in it in terms of God the creator and the Word of God incarnate. Anything less than this arises from a lack of faith in the sufficiency of God’s revelation of himself and his illumination of our minds. Christian theism can never countenance any theory of human knowledge and its boundaries that ignores the moral reasons for man’s existence. To the full extent of its manifestation to man, the existence and nature of God must be seen to have implications for all human knowledge and activity.

Guidance in the theoretical and practical implementation of this truth is the unique and primary purpose of the Christian liberal-arts college. Any goal less comprehensive and profound is a travesty of the relation between orthodox, evangelical Christian theism and the liberal arts in American higher education.

I am a first-generation American. My father was born in the north of Ireland. Driven by the poverty of the land, he immigrated to America. Here he found the opportunity to master his trade as a carpenter and earn a decent living.

My mother was born in the north of Italy. She saw no future for herself there, and so at seventeen she came to America to seek a better way of life. She became a traveling companion and a tutor in French and Italian in a wealthy home. She fell in love with a young Irishman and they were married.

One thing was always crystal clear to me: my parents loved America and cherished the freedom and opportunities this land provided. I remember well the day in 1929 when I returned from grade school and saw them holding their heads in their hands and weeping. The Olney National Bank had closed, and except for a small equity in the house and my father’s tools, all they had in the way of financial resources was gone. I can still see that Irish determination on my father’s face as he decided that this was not the end, that he could indeed start over again.

I also remember when sewers were being dug in front of our rowhouse in the northeast section of Philadelphia. The Italian ditch-diggers were my friends, and I often ate lunch with them during those summer days. One day when I came in all covered with mud, my mother said, “Robert, if you want to get ahead in America, somehow you’ve got to get a college education.” That was the first time I had ever heard of a college education. But I entered college in 1937 and was graduated in theology from Princeton in 1943.

It is through this kind of background that I must filter all my thinking about America. I found in my parents and in the opportunities they found here the confidence to believe that America is a land of hope.

Everywhere the prophets of gloom and defeat are raising their voices. It really doesn’t make much difference whether you listen to Walter Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley, whether you read the National Review, the New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times: the message voiced in different ways is essentially the same. “We are miserable sinners, the country is undone, there is absolutely no hope. All we can do is head for the wailing wall and there confess the sin of being Americans. The affluent society, which has been achieved after centuries of dreams, has now turned into a nightmare, with poverty multiplying, taxes piled upon taxes, uncontrolled inflation, the moral fiber of our people rotting, young people destroying themselves with pot and acid, everyone over thirty years of age shot through with hypocrisy and greed, no national leadership of any kind.” You have read it all and much more. The thing that seems to me to be so unusual about this flagellation is that no hope of any kind is held out except the total restructuring of society by violent means.

There are indeed things in America for which we ought to be ashamed, sins that require confession and repentance. But if we utterly destroy the confidence and moral strength of our people, then this country will be ripe for revolution.

In Europe last summer, I had the privilege of talking with people in high and responsible positions and with people in very ordinary circumstances of life. We talked for hours about America, its image and its influence. I began to examine critically some of the charges that are lodged against us as a people.

The problem of mass starvation arouses the conscience of the civilized world, and especially America. Many seem to think that America has not done all it could in this area. Perhaps we can and should do more, but mass starvation is largely the result of gross overpopulation and the lack of birth control, and of the false aspirations of rising nations. In the great nation of Egypt, the Nile River and the almost perfect climate make possible four complete crops every year. This gives promise that Egypt can again be the granary of the world. But the political leadership of Egypt has decided on a policy of industrialization at the expense of agricultural development. That begins to explain why there is famine in Egypt. We need to tell ourselves that America has done more than any other nation in history in attempting to alleviate starvation through people, money, commodities, and agricultural techniques.

In the complex and unpopular war in which we are involved, the suffering and atrocities beggar description. But it makes my blood boil when just about every world organization, including the World Council of Churches, condemns America for its participation, at the invitation of a sovereign nation, and says nothing about—or offers united praise for—the late Ho Chi Minh and the Communist forces from the North. I think it is about time that we recognize who our enemies are and realize that whatever the outcome may be, the major responsibility for this war rests on the Communist world. Let us stop accepting the guilt for something which we didn’t start but are involved in, and from which, unless there is peace with honor, there will be nothing but tragedy, mounting casualties, and a dollar drain.

Another matter troubling us is the crime on our streets. In vast areas of our cities, both black and white citizens are fearful of walking in their neighborhoods after dark. But 95 per cent of our citizens are not involved in the crime wave that is sweeping America, and I for one am not going to accept guilt for a situation which I didn’t create and for which I have no personal responsibility.

As for America’s race problem and poverty problem, definite progress is being made. In 1961, 22 per cent of all the people in America were listed as living in poverty. In 1969, the figure was 13 per cent. This is a decline of 11 million people. I know full well that this statistic doesn’t help very much if you are part of the 13 per cent living in poverty, but I am sick and tired of being told that we are doing nothing about this great human problem. When 11 million people have been lifted from poverty in less than eight years, we should take heart and get on with the job. The hopefulness of this situation is even more striking in the black community. In 1961, some 56 per cent of our black citizens lived in poverty; today 33 per cent do. That is, 23 per cent of our black neighbors have made a significant economic gain.

Statistics on personal income are encouraging also. White families have a median income of $8,900, black families $5,400. In 1960, there were only 20,000 black families with an income of $15,000 or more a year; today, there are 400,000 who make at least that much and 700,000 who earn $10,000 or more a year. This is real progress. I remind you of these statistical facts, not to whitewash or gloss over the terrible inequities in our land, but to thank God for the tremendous strides we have been able to make as we work together in a common cause.

In an address to a group of young people, one of the men in our congregation said, “There is no such thing as instant success. The problem is that part of our people have been in a long dark tunnel and they now see the light at the end of it and they are in a hurry to get into the sunshine.” This is understandable; but let us remember to thank God that we can see the light at the end.

Or think about the problem of tastes and standards in our literature and motion pictures. For years I have been part of the fight to keep the distribution of obscene books and motion pictures under some kind of control. This is a difficult task at best and almost impossible under the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court. But we can take heart at the phenomenal sales of a book entitled Good News for Modern Man. This is the New Testament in today’s English, and in less than three years the American Bible Society has sold over 17 million copies. Not all the American people are depraved, as we have often been led to believe.

In Austria last summer I took the “Sound of Music” tour in Salzburg. Many of us have been captivated by the magnificent scenes, the heart-warming story, and the lilting music of this lovely film. Did you know that this motion picture alone will probably gross over $200 million? Add to this the tremendous public response to Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady, and you wonder how Hollywood can be so stupid as to go all out for pornographic filth just to make money. There is an essential decency among our people that responds to wholesomeness in life and entertainment.

Our church, ministering in the heart of a great city, is an oasis for all kinds and conditions of people, especially young people. There is a generally accepted myth that American youth are alienated, misunderstood, lonely, and defiant. But much of their current image has been created by so-called sociological experts who get carried away with their own expertise. For the most part, I find them just people with their fair share of idealism, confusion, independence, and sincerity, and a large measure of impatience with the system.

To call them “the rejected generation” is absurd. Since some of us have failed as parents, we have expended all our energy, time, and talent in the pursuit of financial success. Yet never before have so many parents been informed and concerned—lovingly concerned—about their children. What on earth do our children have to feel rejected about? Too much affluence—perhaps! Too much parental indulgence—perhaps! But it is not fair always and under all conditions to fix the blame for the failure of our children on us as parents. Sure, we have failed, but on a percentage basis we are the most concerned parents in the history of our country.

My purpose is not to hand out rose-colored glasses so that we can tell ourselves to believe that God is in his heaven and all’s right with the world. God is in his heaven, but all is not right with the world. The world lives under the power of the Prince of Darkness. All I am pleading for is an honest reading of the record. That record, despite all its blemishes, is an encouraging one.

The thing that really disappoints me is the lack of understanding and appreciation for the American dream. America is composed of sinful human beings, and it has its faults and shortcomings; but they seem less significant when viewed alongside the accomplishments and fulfillment of the American way. There is a theme in our national heritage that can cause us to walk together to the music of distant drums. Bancroft, the historian, commenting on the Mayflower Compact signed on that tiny boat off the Massachusetts coast, said that in the opening words, “In the Name of God, Amen,” lay the birthplace of constitutional liberty. So the hope of constitutional liberty awaits fulfillment at a time when the words of Martin Luther King—“I have a dream that some day my four children may be judged not by the color of their skin but by their character”—will be realized for every citizen of this great land.

I say that this dream of the larger life for every man can be realized in America, and that the Christian faith has a significant part to play in its fulfillment. At a meeting in New York last year Billy Graham told of a conversation with a leading theoretician of the new left. This radical leader said, “Within five years we shall have either revolution or dictatorship.” “Can anything stop it?” Graham asked. “Only one thing can stop it, and that is a religious awakening.”

I do not know in what new direction the Holy Spirit will lead the Church, but I do know that the Christian faith speaks with relevance and power in the area of heart, mind, and actions.

We have faced difficult times in American history before. When Washington was at Valley Forge, the future of our country seemed to be in grave jeopardy. A third of Washington’s men had deserted, a third died from malnutrition, and only a scant third were left who were able-bodied. Yet in the snows of that incredible winter, prayers were answered, and out of the travail came the victory of the American Revolution. What could have seemed more hopeless than America’s plight during the Civil War, when brother was fighting brother and hate and distrust engulfed the country? But time after time Lincoln and his cabinet turned to God and, believing they had found his purpose for this country, they endured and the nation was saved.

In 1955, President Eisenhower gave an address with this theme: “The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice.” President Nixon has reminded us that our basic problem is a crisis of the spirit. Christianity was designed for just such a crisis. Eight hundred years before Jesus was born, God spoke through the Prophet Joel: “It shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions … and it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered …” (Joel 2:28, 32). There was a partial fulfillment of this great promise in the Pentecost experience of the Church. But the emphasis of true faith is never exclusively on what God did; it is always concerned with what God does now. There will be a great fulfillment of this truth in the days immediately preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ to judge the world. But in a very real sense this promise of the pouring out of God’s Spirit upon men so that they shall be able to see visions and dream dreams is available to all who believe. And it is everlastingly true, thank God, that “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.”

The Southern Baptist Convention is in trouble. Its woes stem from a problem that has wracked other denominations and movements over the years: the nature and extent of biblical authority. The roots of the problem lie deeply buried in the second half of the nineteenth century in German higher criticism, which has been the source of much American theological liberalism during the twentieth century.

The older denominations have generally felt the impact of German liberal theology much more than Southern Baptists. Until recently, graduates of Southern Baptist seminaries did not generally go overseas to study for the doctorate. They stayed home and completed their doctoral studies in one of the many denominational institutions. But this was not true for other denominations. The Presbyterians, for example, saw many of their finest scholars drinking at the fountains of higher criticism in Continental institutions. Some came back more deeply convinced that their evangelical views were sound; J. Gresham Machen is one outstanding evangelical scholar whose European educational experience failed to convince him that orthodoxy was not a tenable option. Others, however, quickly adopted and later propagated liberal views they picked up in Europe.

Now things have changed. More and more Southern Baptist scholars are pursuing graduate studies overseas. And many others are studying in schools in the United States that are not Southern Baptist and have long been exponents of German rationalism.

This broadening trend is one that the Southern Baptists share with other conservative groups, including the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. At the synod’s last annual sessions its incumbent president was defeated by Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus, an articulate theological conservative. But the struggle going on in the synod’s seminaries and colleges has by no means been decided.

Dr. Preus recently opened his heart in a letter to the pastors of the denomination. “Make no mistake about this, brothers,” he said. “What is at stake is not only inerrancy but the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself, the authority of Holy Scripture, the ‘quia’ subscription to the Lutheran confessions, and perhaps the very continued existence of Lutheranism as a confessional and confessing movement in the Christian world.” He concluded: “It would be far better for such people [i.e., the liberals] to leave our fellowship than to work from within to torment and ultimately destroy it.” Some indeed have suggested that the time has come for the synod to divide into two groups, with those of liberal and conservative conviction working out amicably a separation acceptable to both sides. So the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, like the Southern Baptist Convention, faces the question of biblical authority.

There is on the American scene an amorphous group identifiable primarily by the names of individuals but known to many under the regrettable label neo-evangelicalism. The term neo-evangelical probably had its beginning in an address delivered by Harold John Ockenga at the inaugural convocation of Fuller Theological Seminary in 1947. Since then a number of evangelical institutions and many individuals have been lumped under this umbrella term. Into this group has come the same problem of biblical authority.

One of the main purposes for the creation of Fuller Theological Seminary was to defend the old Warfield view of the Scriptures, a view that included inerrancy. About ten years ago the seminary was shaken by controversy over the question of biblical authority, and particularly inerrancy or infallibility. Some members of the faculty and the governing board of the institution resigned, but the controversy was not fully settled.

The seminary has as part of its doctrinal platform the assertion that the Bible is “free from all error in the whole and in the part.” This was unacceptable to some in the institution, and the process of revising the statement of faith began. Sometime this spring the trustees will be called upon to adopt a new statement of faith that omits this assertion from Fuller’s creedal commitment. The new statement will be more in harmony with the view of one protagonist in the school that there is revelatory and non-revelatory Scripture: that which is revelatory has no errors in it; that which is non-revelatory has errors. Other schools have been struggling with the same question, although perhaps with less public scrutiny than Fuller, an institution of national and international prominence whose image is inextricably tied to Charles E. Fuller, the face and voice of the famous “Old-Fashioned Revival Hour.”

The present agitation among Southern Baptists is hardly new but is notable for the large number of people involved, the seriousness of the assault, and the uncertainty of the outcome. The question of biblical authority has been raised before and has received answers. But whether earlier answers will continue to be satisfactory cannot yet be determined.

In 1879 the Toy case brought the issue of biblical infallibility to light. Crawford Howell Toy was an Old Testament professor at Southern Baptist Seminary who had studied in Germany. Acknowledging his “divergence from the prevailing views in the denomination,” he presented to the trustees of the seminary a paper outlining his position. At the same time he offered to resign if his viewpoint was not satisfactory. The board accepted his resignation with two dissenting votes.

At the heart of Toy’s position lay the conviction that the Bible is not infallible. He separated the spiritual message of the Book from historical, factual, and scientific matters. He held that the writers of Scripture were men of their times who entertained the prevalent ideas of the day about the universe, and that increased knowledge had revealed that these opinions were erroneous. “I find,” he said, “that the geography, astronomy and other physical science of the sacred writers was that of their times. It is not that of our times, it is not that which seems to us correct, but it has nothing to do with their message of religious truth from God.” He further said: “The prophets uttered everlasting truths which are embodied and fulfilled in Jesus Christ and with which the geographical and political details have no essential connection.” With regard to the New Testament he asserted: “I will not see lightly a historical or other inaccuracy in the Gospels or the Acts, but if I find such, they do not for me affect the divine teachings of these books. The centre of the New Testament is Christ himself, salvation is in him, and a historical error cannot affect the fact of his existence and his teachings.”

The issue raised by Toy in 1879 has come up again and again among Southern Baptists. It was against the backdrop of this sort of question that the convention adopted the Memphis Articles in 1925. These included a confession of faith that made the following statement about the Bible: “We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.”

Nearly four decades later the Kansas City Confession was adopted. It rose out of a controversy precipitated by the publication of a book on Genesis by a professor from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary “which some Baptists felt was not true to the historic position of Southern Baptists relative to the Scriptures.…” The 1963 action at Kansas City reiterated the assertion in the Memphis confession that the Bible is the Word of God and has “truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.” Before and after that decision, various Southern Baptist seminaries were disturbed by this question, and some professors, including the one from Midwestern, were removed from their chairs.

At this writing Southern Baptists are in greater turmoil over this question than ever before. There is more outward, vocal dissent, and the dissenters are more numerous and more determined. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that the attitude of the dissenters parallels that of Toy in 1879, who subjected his future to the decision of his brethren and departed from the fellowship once they had decided that his views did not accord with those of the denomination generally.

The controversy was deepened by the publication last year of Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True by Dr. W. A. Criswell, president of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. His book unquestionably was a response and a challenge to those in the convention who do not believe that the Bible is infallible. (Criswell occasionally overstates his case; for a review see the June 6, 1969, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, page 21.) The publication of the book by Broadman Press fanned the flames of discontent and brought violent reactions from those in the convention who disagreed with Criswell’s views. He then published another book under the auspices of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board. Robert Alley, professor of religion at the University of Richmond, called the second book “both sad and pathetic.” And Reuben Alley, editor of the Virginia Baptist weekly Religious Herald, wrote that the Sunday School board “made a grievous mistake by allowing itself to become an instrument for stirring already troubled waters and for widening the breach between groups within the Convention.”

The criticism leveled at Dr. Criswell produced its own reaction: Criswell announced he intended to run again for president of the convention. “After the criticism of my book,” he said, “I couldn’t turn my back on the whole thing.” It seems clear that he intends to make the question of biblical infallibility a convention-wide question and expects his re-election or defeat to determine the direction of Southern Baptists for some time to come.

More fuel has been added to the fire by the publication of the new Broadman Bible Commentary, under the editorship of Clifton J. Allen, a retiree from the Baptist Sunday School Board. Reviewing the first of the Old and the first of the New Testament volumes, one writer stated:

Unfortunately, from the viewpoint of the evangelical reader, the Old Testament volume reflects the negative critical theories of the current Old Testament scholarly consensus, and lacks the moderate conservatism of the New Testament volume.… Professor Davies holds that God has given us two sources of revelation, the Bible and nature, and that we should assess the truthfulness of Genesis in matters of fact in accordance with the findings of science.… This dodge … robs the plain assertions of Scripture of normative significance and makes faith meaningless. To allow that the Bible is mistaken in the testable (scientific) parts is to make the claim wholly unconvincing that it is truthful in the untestable (theological) parts.… The introductory article to the entire series elaborates the low view of biblical inspiration that accounts for the disappointing nature of the Old Testament volume. Editor Allen rejects verbal and plenary inspiration in favor of an imprecise “dynamic” theory [Clark Pinnock, in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 5, 1969, issue, page 17].

Allen says: “Therefore, a dynamic view of inspiration is not dependent on a mystical, inexplicable, and unverifiable inerrancy in every word of Scripture or on the concept that inspiration can allow no error of fact or substance.”

The criticism of the Genesis commentary has stoked other fires in different quarters. J. Walsh Watts, former professor of Hebrew and Old Testament interpretation at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, has entered the fray. “In response to requests from former students and intimate friends that I express my opinion of the treatment of Genesis in the Broadman Bible Commentary,” he said, “I feel compelled to write frankly—briefly but frankly.” After stating how he feels the commentary author undermines the infallibility of Scripture, Watts asks: “Can Southern Baptists remain loyal to their confession of faith in the inspiration of the Bible and promote a treatment that abuses it as this one does?” (Baptist and Reflector, March 5, 1970, pp. 6, 7).

More recently, members of the Association of Baptist Professors of Religion convened for their annual meeting at the First Baptist Church of Atlanta. Professor T. C. Smith from Furman University called for a new look at the canon, message, and authority of the Bible. According to the Capital Baptist, Smith “said that modern Christians should have as much liberty in determining their canon as the church fathers had in their time.… He said that modern scholarship has more valid criteria for selection of the canon than did religious leaders sixteen centuries ago.”

When the authority of the Bible is re-examined, Smith asserted, it is “the Bible, not God, whom we are questioning.” This points to the heart of the problem. Criswell says that the only certain knowledge we have of God is what God himself has revealed; that what God has chosen to reveal is found in Scripture; and that, therefore, to question Scripture is to question God. Smith on the other hand, says that to question the Bible is not to question God. Thus the final question is how much of the Bible is to be accepted as the source of religious knowledge.

Criswell has the vote of the convention on his side. Both in 1925 and in 1963 it declared that the Bible is the Word of God and has for its matter “truth without any mixture of error.” Smith and those of similar views are asking either that the convention change its statement on Scripture or that it allow those who disagree with that statement to continue in the convention, with the right to declare their opposing views freely and to seek to persuade others to them. Are not these persons placed in an ambiguous position in being related to a fellowship parts of whose confessions they cannot accept? Are they not opening themselves to the charge of dissidency and subversion so long as they remain within a group whose statements place them outside its pale?

It is likely that the struggle will erupt on the floor during the annual meeting of the convention in June. And the fact that the Association of Baptist Professors of Religion has agreed to deal with the question of the authority of the Bible at its meeting next year is a guarantee that the issue will not be settled quickly. The Southern Baptist Convention cannot avoid full exposure of the question much longer. Where it goes in the next decade or two will be determined by how it answers the challenge it now faces.

Southern Baptists—whither?

MARTIN LUTHER

If a really

Good man

Could have

Gotten hold of

Him

And chopped

Off

His highs

And filled in

His lows

And taught

Him to function

Within the

Framework

Of things

As they are

Luther might

Have grown up

Capable

Of managing

His father’s

Foundry.

LEWIS CHAMBERLAIN

For more than a year and a half we have been suffering from computer problems in our circulation of the magazine. The electronic monster has not always behaved itself, and some of our subscribers have written me personal letters after trying vainly to get their problems solved and start the magazine coming their way again. I apologize to all who have been caught up in this confusion. But the end of the problem is in sight!

From now on we will handle subscription records in our own offices, where we have installed equipment that we can operate ourselves. We will be able to change addresses and service accounts with a minimum of delay, and we want all our subscribers to know about the change. I invite subscribers to write me personally if one month from now the service is defective.

Our last print order was 149,000 copies. Why not recommend the magazine to a friend, or subscribe for him? We’ve fixed a goal of 200,000 for ourselves in the next two years. Help us meet that goal!

We hope readers take particular note of the essay in this issue by Harold O. J. Brown, in which he shows that neither evolution nor revolution is the true answer to the world’s needs. Brown speaks a clear word about what it means to be in the world and yet not of the world. We all need this counsel today.

Proposing a toast last year at the National Secular Society’s annual dinner in London, Lord Raglan said that he was an “Anglican agnostic.” He reminded his fellow unbelievers how much they owed to the Church of England. “For every twelve bishops,” he declared, “there are twelve different opinions—sometimes thirteen.”

Three years ago Charles Smith, one of the founders of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, ingeniously explained the decline of organized atheism. Churches, he said, had been relegated to being mere social centers, and Christianity had been watered down until it had become little more than “cheer ’em up stuff.”

There may be a decline in organized atheism in those United States (though I doubt it), but in these British Isles the Humanist Association is still striving energetically to ensure that its voice is heard, particularly in political circles. It encourages members to participate fully in the work of their political party (whatever it is); it cultivates and briefs humanist members of Parliament; it compiles a dossier on all MP’s and makes their views known to humanist constituents; and through its “Humanist Lobby” it presses humanist policies on parliamentarians of both Houses.

Its evangelical urgency is impressive, as it audaciously exhorts the faithful to anti-religious action. When the secretary for education announced he intended to retain in the new education bill compulsory religious instruction and a daily act of worship in state schools, the humanists were quick off the mark with a circular to their supporters. It bore this message, all in capitals: “Please write without fail to your MP; in this emergency we cannot afford a single passenger.… Write at least two letters.… Write now—and keep on writing!” Supporters were urged to write to the education secretary, to answer his reply, and to send copies to the Humanist Lobby for collation.

Impressed by their admirable organization, the editor of a British religious weekly quoted the circular in full and asked his Christians readers to write to the secretary approving his education bill and to send copies to the newspaper. He got responses from precisely three people. The sequel is depressing: the humanists continued to inundate public authorities and individuals with their ceaseless and strident propaganda; the religious paper, on the other hand, closed down three months later for lack of financial support.

Irreligion seems to be becoming ever more arrogant in England, where religion is currently in the doldrums. As an evangelical I tried telling myself that I ought not to be surprised at this phenomenon, which has good biblical warrant (2 Peter 3), but I’m always a bit uncomfortable about leaving it there. It certainly ought not to mean, for example, that evangelicals settle for holy uselessness and leave a whole area of Christian action to non-evangelicals and humanists who consider themselves to have a corner on compassion which we have abdicated as being outside our terms of reference.

But to come back to England. Here in an area smaller than Alabama we have an established church with one thousand million dollars in investments and the Queen at its head. Of it the former bishop of Woolwich has said: it has “become heavily institutionalized, with a crushing investment in maintenance.… It is absorbed in problems of supply and preoccupied with survival. The inertia of the machine is such that the financial allocations, the legalities, the channels of organization, the attitudes of mind, are all set in the direction of continuing and enhancing the status quo” (The New Reformation?, page 26). He might be right, though I feel vaguely disloyal about agreeing with Dr. Robinson. He could have added but didn’t (I researched this myself) that thirty-nine of the forty-three diocesans in England are Oxford/Cambridge educated. A status suspiciously quo!

There is another angle, one on which Malcolm Muggeridge has views. “Words cannot convey,” says one not customarily short of them, “the doctrinal confusion, ineptitude and sheer chicanery of the run-of-the-mill incumbent, with his Thirty-Nine Articles in which he does not even purport to believe, with his listless exhortations, mumbled prayers and half-baked confusion of the Christian faith with better housing,” and so on. Muggeridge is, of course, a former editor of Punch now hailed as the “Mephistophelian televisual guru of the faith,” his latter-day espousal of which has not blunted his sense of humor.

Let’s turn from a couple of mavericks and look at some recent utterances from the establishment proper. From rural England, the bishop of Bath and Wells predicted that there would be no revival of Christianity in Britain in the 1970s. Dr. Henderson had this gem in a message to his diocese: “I do not expect to see the long-awaited swing back or swing forward—whichever way you look at it—to faith and the permanent unchanging moral values.” And just to clinch things, the swinging prophet continued: “When that swing comes there will be a danger of it going too far to the extremes of puritanism, which is not a Christian alternative.” Oh dear, it looks as though Adolf Von Harnack was right, and that the relevant question for this modern age is not “Is Christianity true?” but rather “What is Christianity?”

If Bath and Wells offers no encouragement to his evangelical clergy, a colleague further north shows what he is doing about preserving those unchanging moral values. The bishop of Durham, according to a national newspaper that has an eye for such things, chaired a London meeting to launch a campaign by small gambling clubs to stay alive. Because of a government clamp-down (puritanical influence?), only thirty-one casinos will continue to operate here this summer. Why is this being done by the bishop, who is regarded as one of Anglicanism’s leading theologians? Because he regards entertainment clubs in his industrial diocese as useful social amenities, and realizes that many of them will have to close down when their gambling licenses are withdrawn.

A concluding commentary comes from George Target in his newly published shocker Tell It the Way It Is (Lutterworth, 9s.), describing the clerical top brass engaged in irrelevancies: “And the millions continue to wander about in the wilderness, strawberry jam on both sides of their Vitamin-Enriched daily bread, milk and honey flowing out of their ears—but hungry, without knowing it, for that other, living, bread … and are offered stale crusts of semantic chatter dipped in water from polluted wells, polythene packets of split hairs, and a Christ denatured and demythologized … (‘If anyone of them can explain it,’ said Alice … ‘I’ll give him sixpence’).” I don’t pretend to understand it all myself, but somehow I think it’s worth sharing.

J. D. DOUGLAS