Valentine’s Day holds more significance for the Rev. Francis V. Crumley than for most people, for it was on February 14, 1932, that Crumley gave his heart to Christ. Crumley’s conversion is particularly important in the perspective of North American Christianity because he went on to become a leader of the rescue-mission movement during a period of crucial transition.

That transition is in full sway, and Crumley, now 61, wants to see it through. He is the superintendent of the Central Union Mission in Washington, D. C., and president of the International Union of Gospel Missions.

“Primarily because of urban-renewal programs,” Crumley says, “missions everywhere are faced with relocation or adopting new ministries.” Most are taking the latter route, but that isn’t always an easy answer. Crumley notes that when urban-renewal gets rid of one Skid Row it often creates five or six smaller ones elsewhere. And it’s becoming ever more difficult to start large new missions in metropolitan areas.

One thing is certain: Rescue missions are needed in many inner-city areas more than ever before. Christians seeking to exercise their faith can find no better place, for human problems seem to be taking on an ever wider variety in crowded downtown areas. Rescue missions still carry through their historic emphasis as a haven for helpless alcoholics, but the picture is changing.

“Rescue missions have been branching out into other phases of social service with a religious orientation,” Crumley says. “Our ministries now run the gamut from pre-natal care to old folks’ homes.” In between are such efforts as homes for unwed mothers, child-care centers, Bible classes for all, personal counseling, Christian day schools, aid for hippies, and medical and dental clinics.

Many of the several hundred inner-city rescue missions scattered across North America have become large-scale enterprises with annual budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Among the largest are missions in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. The biggest in the world is one in Australia that employs 107 people full-time. A number of smaller cities are also able to support substantial efforts: Among these are Great Falls, Montana; Asheville, North Carolina; Flagstaff, Arizona; London, Ontario; Parkersburg, West Virginia; Anchorage, Alaska; and Hagerstown, Maryland. The oldest is the McAuley Water Street Mission in New York.

In a number of cities, doctors and dentists are donating professional services to rescue missions. Crumley estimates that between 35 and 40 per cent of rescue missions are now involved in some kind of medical ministry. The Island of Hope in Omaha, Nebraska, has resident interns on duty through a special cooperative arrangement with local hospitals.

Rescue-mission superintendents say that churches and individual Christians get more return per dollar in rescue-mission work than in any other ministry. “Examination of financial records will enlighten you to the fact that your rescue-mission dollar goes far beyond your expectation,” says F. Dickson Marshall of the City Rescue Mission in New Castle, Pennsylvania. “It is a place where the dollar does the work of a dollar,” says Alonzo M. Heath of Bakersfield, California. “Budgets are not weighted down with salary designations, but most of the mission’s dollars are spent right on the job.”

Interestingly, rescue-mission work is attracting a number of younger men, even though salaries are way below par (a recent survey showed that among 155 rescue missions, only three paid their superintendents more than $10,000 a year). The International Union has a training program for would-be rescue-mission workers, and Philadelphia College of Bible has a specially tailored curriculum. A number of PCB graduates go on to get a master’s degree in social work at the University of Pennsylvania before getting into rescue-mission work.

Crumley says that a Supreme Court decision several years ago recognizing alcoholism as a disease has taken something of a burden from the shoulders of rescue missions. A number of cities are establishing “withdrawal centers” for alcoholics. Crumley welcomes this development, though he hopes that rescue-missions can continue to expand their own kind of help for alcoholics.

Crumley does not apologize for the missions’ insistence on proclaiming Christ’s redeeming love and atoning work as they carry on their ministries of compassion. Professional social workers in secular agencies tend to look down upon the rescue missions because of this stipulation. But Crumley points out that modern social service has its own prescribed routine, and that government-subsidized social work demands that a patient adhere to this routine if he is going to get help. Similarly, rescue missions have their own requirements. “If a man is going to eat God’s food,” Crumley says, “he should also be willing to hear God’s word. We make no bones about it.”

In rescue missions where there are well-trained workers, personal counseling ministries are growing. But Crumley says that about 90 per cent of rescue missions still hold nightly preaching services. Local churches usually supply the speakers, and thereby often enable laymen to get involved.

How are rescue missions financed? Most income is derived from churches that include the missions in their budgets and from individual contributions. A few get united-fund charity help and tax dollars.

Crumley was born in New Bedford. Massachusetts, and left home for Philadelphia when he was eighteen. He spent his first day in Philadelphia in a saloon. But a grocer around the corner from where he lived took a personal interest in him and brought him to a men’s Bible class at the Lawndale Methodist Church. After his conversion Crumley worked his way through Bible school and subsequently pastored churches in the Philadelphia area. Throughout this time he did volunteer work at the Eighth Street Wayside Mission and in fact met his wife there. He was appointed superintendent of the mission in 1943, and several years later took a similar position at another mission in Philadelphia run by the Sunday Breakfast Association. He came to Washington in 1965.

“The rescue-mission is a spiritual station where the Gospel goes forth that lives might be transformed by the power of its message,” says Crumley. “I believe in the rescue-mission ministry because God does—and blesses it.”

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Reaching The Unchurched

A telephone survey designed to locate the unchurched was credited with encouraging new commitments to Christ during a two-week crusade conducted by Leighton Ford in Tampa, Florida.

The January meetings, initiated by the Tampa Ministers Association, drew an aggregate crowd of 75,000. The closing service was held January 25 in Tampa’s Curtis Hixon Hall with a near capacity crowd of 6,250.

Ford urged the audience to “identify with Christ. Lay your life on the line and demonstrate that you belong to him. I’m not simply talking about coming forward in a meeting. But in your home, in your school, in your business, begin to live for him and stand for him. Then we will see a transformation take place in this society.”

The telephone campaign got to approximately two-thirds of Tampa’s population of 400,000, and of these 60 per cent indicated they were unchurched. Prior to the crusade, local churches were encouraged to make contact with these people.

A spokesman said that “an unusually high percentage of inquirers indicated that they had no church connection whatsoever,” and it was believed that this was the direct result of the calls made.

Several noted sports figures were featured on the crusade program. The musicians included George Beverly Shea, Ethel Waters, and folksinger John Fischer. Billy Graham’s mother spoke briefly during a family-night service.

The 38-year-old Ford is an associate of Graham and married to his sister. He alternates with Graham as speaker on the weekly “Hour of Decision” radio broadcast, which is heard around the world. A native of Canada, he lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is author of The Christian Persuader, published by Harper in 1966, and delivered one of the major addresses at the 1969 U.S. Congress on Evangelism.

Court decisions that permitted local congregations to keep their properties after they withdrew from denominations were allowed to stand last month in decisions handed down by the U. S. Supreme Court.

The high court refused to hear appeals from the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. and the Maryland and Virginia Eldership of the Churches of God, which sought legal rights to properties of congregations that had seceded (see editorial, p. 26).

The decisions were a surprise. One seasoned reporter of the religious scene, Bob Bell, Jr., of the Nashville Banner, wrote that “church property rights became a whole new ball game” as a result of the court’s refusal to review the cases.

The Presbyterian case was up before the court for a second time. It involved two Savannah congregations, Hull Memorial and Eastern Heights, that withdrew from the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. in 1966 charging that the denomination had changed its tenets. Lawyers for the denomination sought to get title to the properties using the argument of “implied trust.” The idea behind this theory was that the congregations had been built up by people who went there because the churches were Presbyterian, and that the local trustees held the property for the denomination.

Georgia courts accepted this theory initially, but said that implied trust involved theological standards and that the two congregations were right in saying that the denomination had departed from its original theological base. The U. S. Supreme Court turned back the case last year, saying “First Amendment values are plainly jeopardized when church property litigation is made to turn on the resolution by civil courts of controversies over religious doctrine and practice.” The court declared that the First Amendment “commands civil courts to decide church property disputes without resolving underlying controversies over religious doctrine.”

The Georgia court then countered by saying that if theological doctrines cannot be considered, then the implied-trust theory is invalid and the denomination had no basis on which to claim the property. The Supreme Court has just refused to review that decision.

Ordinarily, mere refusal of the Supreme Court to hear appeals is not regarded as substantial precedent for future cases. This litigation, however, will probably encourage more congregations to secede and take their property with them. Chances of success vary, depending on how church constitutions and articles of incorporation are written.

Seceding churches will also try to appeal to comments made in the Churches of God decision by Justice William J. Brennan (who is a Roman Catholic). Brennan’s comments, specifically concurred in by Justices William O. Douglas and Thurgood Marshall, noted that a state “may adopt any one of various approaches for settling church property disputes so long as it involves no consideration of doctrinal matters, whether the ritual and liturgy of worship or the tenets of faith.”

Who Is A Jew?

In a historic pronouncement last month, the Israeli Supreme Court drew a legal distinction between “peoplehood” (nationality) and religion of the Jewish people. The judges ruled in a 5–4 decision that the government must register the children of a Jewish father and gentile mother.

The nature of Jewry has long been in dispute. The current case involves an Israeli naval officer whose wife refused conversion to Judaism but fully joined her husband’s concept of “belonging to the Jewish people.” The government would not register their children, claiming that the Jewish religion and peoplehood are indivisible as defined by the Halachah, Jewish religious law, which recognizes as Jews only children of a Jewish mother or a convert to Judaism.

Zoning Law Seen Banning Bible Classes

The community of La Canada, California, is not usually where the action is—religiously or otherwise. The official weekly news service of the Evangelical Press Association, which operates out of La Canada, normally must handle its reportage by remote control. But in January something finally happened right in La Canada, and EPA News Service director Norman B. Rohrer was on the spot. Here is the full text of his story:

Can’t a law-abiding citizen invite friends to his home for Bible study?

Not in La Canada, California, according to the Los Angeles County Office of the District Attorney—or at least if the class becomes large and meets regularly.

For some months now, the Reverend Donald Sills, of United Community Church in nearby Glendale, has been inviting young people to his home in La Canada for Bible study. No advertising was made, but notice of the meetings passed informally between young people of the foothill communities, and some fifty to one hundred people regularly showed up.

They had no music, few refreshments, and were cautioned to park their cars so neighbors would not be inconvenienced.

But the Reverend Mr. Sills has been told by Deputy District Attorney Joseph V. Siler that he is in violation of the Los Angeles County Zoning Ordinance 1494, Section 202, in that he is conducting regularly scheduled public Bible studies in a residence in zone R-1. “These scheduled meetings constitute public assembly and as a use of property it is not specifically permitted in a residential zone,” the notice reads.

The DA acted on a complaint, but the Sills family doesn’t know where it might have come from.

The informal Bible classes are called “Anything Goes,” a reference to the freedom of discussion topics. They’re held about twice a month on a quiet secluded street high on the hill near the Angeles Crest Highway, which crosses the Sierra Madre mountain range.

As is expected of a minister of the Gospel, Mr. Sills is not a troublemaker, but he is questioning the law that is closing his Bible class. The most recent gathering (January 22) brought fifty-five young people in late teens or early twenties for a discussion that centered around the second coming of the Lord. Two teen-agers, Mr. Sills said, gave their hearts to the Lord at the evening gathering.

An avalanche of support has been phoned and mailed to the minister, who serves as Christian education director for Dr. Stuart McBirnie, a Glendale pastor heard nationwide on radio through his program “The Voice of Americanism.”

Apparently the title “Anything Goes” appears a bit too ambitious in the eyes of the Regional Planning Commission and the District Attorney.

‘Trying To Look Responsible’

An inner-city church of 220 members has offered to pay the city of Portland, Oregon, for police and fire protection, sewerage, and street lighting.

Leaders of Centenary-Wilbur Methodist Church think the church will pay about $700 a year to end a “free ride” given to it by taxpayers. The official board unanimously approved the offer. A number of congregations across the country have now allocated funds to government agencies.

The church has a building valued at $245,000, on which it owes $15,000.

“We are trying to look responsible,” said A. Harper Richardson, the church’s minister. “It doesn’t help evangelism for us to get a free ride and others to pay the tax for us.”

WATFORD REED

Regulating Compassion

The Mennonite Central Committee, a relief agency operating on behalf of American and Canadian Mennonites, is experiencing frustration in its attempt to give away surplus Canadian wheat to starving villagers in India.

The Canadian section of the MCC, based in Winnipeg at the heart of Canadian wheatland, says it could use 250 tons of wheat and flour in its projects in India. Mennonite farmers in western Canada are willing to donate the grain, but the Canadian Wheat Board, the government regulatory agency, refused to allow it.

The board states that the move could clog already jammed facilities and would also interfere with Canadian grain markets. The Mennonites counter both objections. They say they would deliver the grain directly to oceangoing vessels and thereby bypass overburdened grain-handling facilities. They further pledge that they will distribute the grain only to their own overseas projects.

The Mennonites’ annoyance at the government’s two years of delaying tactics is reaching the breaking point. They are wondering about staging a test case of civil disobedience. A truckload of bagged grain could be shipped directly to Vancouver without the necessary permission of the board. The government would then be forced to decide if it was prepared to prosecute a church group for trying to help starving people.

LESLIE K. TARR

India: The Way To Life

The teeming millions in India would have been totally unaware of what was happening in Deolali, 140 miles from Bombay. Neither the dry landscape, the rugged hills, the sight of military barracks in the distance, nor the goods train that steamed way out of sight gave the slightest hint of the events that in the next four days would challenge some 300 men and women into becoming “vehicles of God’s purpose for the land in this day.”

It was January 4, 1970, and Christian leaders had come from all corners of India for the first All India Congress on Evangelism. For months congress coordinator B. A. Prabhakar and others had worked to plan this gathering, convened by the Evangelical Fellowship of India. Now excitement was at high pitch. Thoughts went back to Berlin, when thirty-five Indian delegates attended the World Congress on Evangelism, and then to Singapore, when more than one hundred represented India at the Asian Congress on Evangelism.

As the clock showed 5:40 P.M., EFI executive secretary Ben Wati stood to open the event: “With the psalmist let us say, ‘This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.’ ” Suddenly there came the consciousness that each one present was part of what could be the most significant event for the cause of Christ in India.

Sessions continued till January 8. The well prepared strategy papers offered practical consideration of such important matters as how to counteract syncretism and universalism, how to communicate to the Hindu and Muslim, how to determine whether social concern is biblical, how to use tracts more effectively, how to be more effective in the role of personal evangelist.

After the papers were read, twenty discussion groups provided an opportunity for delegates to discuss problems in the light of their own involvement. And in regional groups they tackled issues being faced in various sections of the land.

Thirty-seven prayer cells met each morning. Later came a Bible-study hour in which John Paul, a noted Bible teacher from Bihar, vividly outlined the making of a man of God and knowledge of the Lord. “Our religious life must be the outcome of our knowledge of Christ,” he said. “What is required is a personal knowledge of his love. Evangelism must be the flowing out of this love.”

Each evening the day’s highlights were recaptured as EFI chairman Dr. K. Thirmumalai, Youth for Christ president Victor Manogarom, and Mr. H. Mirchulal of the Allahabad Bible Seminary spoke at the last meeting of the day.

At the final session of the congress, delegates sang movingly, “The vision of a dying world is vast before our eyes. We feel the heartbeat of its need, we hear its feeble cries.…” Then came the thrilling moment when all stood to read together the congress declaration. “… We confess we have often failed to meet the needs and the challenge of our times …,” they said. “Therefore the Lord enabling us we shall seek to mobilize the whole Church in India to reach our land with the Gospel.… We pledge to stand together in witness and service.…”

Many went away ready to face the challenge immediately. One delegate from Punjab wrote, “When I go back I shall call the church leaders and laymen of the 135 churches in my area for a seminar on evangelism. I’m just waiting to get more involved in evangelism and to challenge them to do the same.”

The congress is over, but its impact has only begun. Questions loom large (What have we achieved? What now?), and the task seems greater than before. But 300 men and women have pledged to face it and to show India “the way to a true and abundant life.”

KEN R. GNANAKAN

Uncovering The Mystery

Members of an international search team dedicated to finding out the origin of ancient wood found on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey hope to get to the bottom of the mystery this summer and next.

SEARCH (Scientific Exploration and Archaeological Research Foundation) of Washington, D. C., announced a $1 million fund drive last month in Los Angeles. Some of the team members believe wood found at the edge of a glacier near the 14,000-foot level last summer (see September 12, 1969, issue, page 48) is from Noah’s ark.

Samples taken there then have been tested, and the tooled wood is said to be between 1,500 and 1,600 years old—a figure that doesn’t square with carbon-test dating of samples found at the same spot in 1955. That wood was said to be four to five thousand years old.

Ralph A. Lenton, Arctic Institute of North America explorer and leader of the twenty-five-man team, said plans are now under way to establish a camp on the mountain early this summer. Some 900,000 cubic meters of ice and rock must be chipped away to free the “ancient artifact,” Lenton said. At least one helicopter and one plane are needed for the job, which could be completed in the summer of 1971.

Seventh-day Adventist Harry Crawford of Denver, who has scaled Mount Ararat seven times, will head the engineering contingent of SEARCH. The 35-year-old mountaineer calls the venture “the most significant expedition since the moon landing.”

Oaths In Kenya

Her husband had been dragged out of their home, near Rungiri Church in Kenya’s Central Province, to be “oathed,” and on refusing he had been fatally beaten. Now as she stood barefoot beside her husband’s coffin in the hot midday sun, she could recognize some of her husband’s killers among the solemn-faced mourners, some of whom now wore police uniforms.

“My late husband and I have forgiven all you people of Rungiri,” she told the mourners in a quiet composed voice. “We have forgiven all those who came to our home to fetch us, those who tortured us. My husband asked me before his death to inform you that he had forgiven all who had been connected with his death.”

The speech was the shortest of the occasion but the most memorable one. Across the Kenya nation today, people repeat the words of Samwel Githenji’s widow, extending the same kind of forgiveness to the whole Kikuyu tribe.

The strange wave of forcing oaths was designed primarily to close the ranks of the Kikuyu and consolidate the tribe’s dominant position in the government. It had created deep distrust and fear among other tribes, particularly the Kikuyu’s traditional rivals, the Luos, who were embittered by the assassination by a Kikuyu of Tom Mboya in July.

The oath-taking apparently started on a small scale before Mboya’s death, and is suspected to be linked with it. But it reached its peak shortly after the assassination, when it involved kidnapping people from their homes or on journeys, grievous assault, and extortion of money and goods to make people act contrary to their conscience. The oath-taking resulted in commitments to lie, steal, murder, and both sack and appoint people in jobs for the cause. By December 6, election day, more than 90 per cent of the Kikuyus had been oathed, according to reliable sources.

The relatively small number of committed Kikuyu Christians formed the backbone of resistance to oathing, and became the target for brutality. Church leaders and the Christian press led the attack against the oath-taking, despite initial government denials that it was happening and the extreme caution of the local press.

When the government formally ordered an investigation, the Catholic Mirror commented: “How efficient will this belated official admission and action be? Time will tell. It is difficult to be optimistic.” And it was the controversial Christian newspaper Target that broke the spine-chilling news of the oath-taking to the Kenya public. In a front-page editorial, Target accused “the selfish few Kikuyu leaders” who were behind the oath-taking for “killing our unity.”

On September 21, a crowd of 50,000 Kikuyu Christians of all denominations met at the Anglican Cathedral at Fort Hall to declare, “Our loyalty first is to the Lord Jesus Christ.” After expressing wholehearted support for the constitution in its entirety, the crowd, “in obedience to the teaching of the Bible and recognizing that all authority is delivered from God,” denounced “all oathing now being administered on citizens, particularly to Christians against their will, contrary to both Christ’s teaching and the constitution of this Republic.”

The Christian Council of Kenya also issued a strong appeal to all Christians in the country to renounce any oath-taking and pledge themselves to work for national unity. The council reportedly tried in secret to persuade those responsible to put an end to the dangerous development.

The oath-taking seems to have stopped now, perhaps because the elections are over. At the elections the general good sense of the country triumphed; more than 60 per cent of the members of the former parliament were defeated at the one-party election, and no serious incidents were reported.

An Arab Common Bible

A new Arabic common Bible translation is being produced under the sponsorship of the United Bible Societies. The project is a cooperative effort of Arab Christians from several religious groups and all parts of the Arab world.

Decision to work on the translation is a result of an agreement reached by Arab church leaders a year ago. Additional groundwork for the project was laid last fall when nearly fifty Arab Christians from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Kuwait, and Iraq met in Beirut for three weeks. The conference was directed by Dr. Roland C. Stevenson, United Bible Societies’ translation consultant in East Africa and the Arab world.

Bishops, pastors, priests, professors, writers, and other professional persons attended the conference.

LILLIAN HARRIS DEAN

Don’t ask Marshall McLuhan what he believes. “I never make value judgments,” the scholarly Canadian process-prober told several hundred evangelical radio-TV communicators last month.

He ventured some tentative observations, however, about the propagation of Christianity in the modern world. “As Gospel salesmen,” McLuhan said, “remember that you are selling something that most people are terrified of … The Gospel has long been sold by the aid of very bad news, namely hell fire. And I think we’re going to find that an indispensable dimension of it … Christ never failed to harp on that note. And I think you’ll find that you’re not going to sell very much Gospel without a lot of bad news.”

McLuhan’s point was that people prefer bad news to good news because bad news provides them with a “survival emotion” while good news threatens them with change, “and most people don’t want to be different at all.”

The 58-year-old McLuhan’s comments on the communication of the Gospel came across with rare (for him) clarity. Much of the rest of his talk appeared to baffle the audience in the Congressional Ballroom of Washington’s Statler Hilton Hotel. The occasion was the twenty-seventh annual convention of National Religious Broadcasters, and tall, distinguished-looking McLuhan, one of the most enigmatic but nevertheless charismatic figures of our time, seemed to be relishing the moment. Though a media theoretician, he has rarely spoken out on religious communication.

“The most violent form of violence is prayer,” he declared. “The Kingdom of God suffereth violence, and that is the only way anyone ever got in. Prayer as violence is as important a notion as the medium is the message. Prayer is petition which consists of banging and slamming on gates until they open.”

At one point, the usually gentlemanly McLuhan interrupted a question to assert that “in the case of Jesus Christ, we are dealing with the Word made flesh, which suggests the medium and the message as one.”

Radical theology, he suggested, is in keeping with the current age’s shift from concept to precept: “When they say God is dead they mean the old clockmaker put up there by Newton. He’s certainly concept … That God certainly died 150 years ago. These are purely conceptual gods. They have nothing to do with the thing, the being.”

McLuhan is sometimes considered an empiricist who doesn’t bother to try to verify his observations. He has won considerable attention because a number of his insights, though unproved, nevertheless arouse the reaction, “That’s right. Why hasn’t anyone else thought of that?”

McLuhan argued that “as Christianity swells out to become a kind of world-wide thing it dies.” He added that when Christianity “becomes environmental it loses that inner face necessary for the transforming power, that resonance that occurs between the little minority and the great big dark ground. When that bigger ground relationship loses its proportion, then the Church by becoming ground becomes a monster. When the bigger ground emerges you have a monster.” McLuhan himself is a Roman Catholic.

Dial 686-3061 For Help

Marble Collegiate Church in New York launched a twenty-four-hour telephone counseling service this month.

“What’s your problem?” asked Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the noted minister of the church. “Name it and when you dial 686-3061, a staff of volunteers and professional experts will try to help you in your search for an answer.”

The counselors are equipped with a wide assortment of reference resources—from Bibles to law books. The staff for the new service includes 150 volunteers who have gone through a fifteen-week training program and a full-time professional staff of seven. They will seek to help callers on every conceivable subject from religion to rhetoric—or tell the callers where assistance can be found.

On another note, he said, “One of the peculiarities of instant speed [in the new electric technology] is the drop-out. I suggest that Christians are all drop-outs. That’s what it means to be unworthy. All Christians have to be drop-outs. A drop-out is a person who sets up a gap between him and something else.”

According to McLuhan, one of the dynamics of our time is that the West is going east and the East is going west. “The East,” he said, “is the inner trip, and the West has always been the goal-oriented outer dynamic trip. The Western world is going inner. The Eastern world is going outer …”

Seemingly contradicting his view of the demise of Christianity, McLuhan said that “we are moving into a very religious age”: “the visual life has yielded to a resonating, auditory life. ESP is back. The occult is back. The hidden forms of feeling are now become obsessional.”

McLuhan, who can put a $1,500 price tag on a speech, reportedly came to the Washington convention without so much as the promise of travel reimbursement so that he could have the benefit of exchange with religious communicators.

Mormons Stand Pat

Shortly after his church reaffirmed its ban on blacks in the priesthood (see “Mormons and Blacks,” January 30 issue), a Mormon college professor disclosed that the church president once told him that practice would change. But prophet, seer, and revelator David O. McKay died on January 18 without altering the priestly policy. And his successor, 93-year-old Joseph Fielding Smith, a church apostle for sixty years, is less likely to make the change.

Because McKay was the most liberal president the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had, many Mormons wonder that he failed to admit Negroes to the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder. Yet Dr. Sterling M. McMurrin, a Mormon who heads the University of Utah graduate school, quotes McKay as telling him in 1954, “We believe that we have scriptural precedent for withholding the priesthood from the Negro. It is a practice, not a doctrine, and the practice will some day be changed. And that’s all there is to it.” When McMurrin revealed the interview just before McKay’s death, the president’s son said that his father had seen the statement in 1968 and affirmed then that it was “essentially correct.”

Long a critic of that practice, McMurrin at one time faced excommunication, but McKay quashed the move. McMurrin called McKay’s liberalism a “heartfelt feeling” that went “against the grain” of many of his conservative counselors who during the closing years of his administration were increasingly influential.

The day after McKay’s funeral, one of those counselors was named tenth Mormon president. Joseph Fielding Smith, whose great-uncle founded the church 140 years ago and whose father and cousin served as presidents, has long considered black skin God’s punishment for Cain’s murder of Abel. “Not only was Cain called upon to suffer,” Smith has stated, “but because of his wickedness he became the father of an inferior race.”

In 1963 Look magazine quoted Smith as saying, “Darkies are wonderful people, and they have their place in the church.” In fact, the church counts about 200 blacks among its 2.8 million members. Two—perhaps three—dark faces are now visible in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

One of the new president’s first official acts was to choose his counselors. The new group does not include Hugh B. Brown, a liberal voice among McKay’s aides. Smith’s first counselor is Harold B. Lee, who as senior apostle will no doubt succeed him in a few years as president.

David Oman McKay had led the Mormon church for almost nineteen years when he died in Salt Lake City. He was born in Utah in 1873 (four years before Brigham Young died), the oldest child of a second-generation-Mormon couple. He learned leadership and responsibility early. When he was eight, his father went to Britain as a missionary, leaving David in charge at home. As a youth he read Shakespeare, Robert Burns, and other classics of English literature while doing farm chores. Even in his old age he could recall long passages of literature memorized on the farm. In later years he frequently retired there to meditate.

Mormons And Ecumenism

The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints won recognition last month of its eligibility for membership in the National Council of Churches. The NCC General Board extended the recognition by voice vote with no audible dissent.

The Reorganized Church is the second largest Mormon body, but its 1,000-church total is far eclipsed by the Salt Lake City group, which claims about 4,500 churches in the United States. Leaders of the Reorganized group, which has headquarters in Independence, Missouri, assured NCC officials that they did not bar blacks from the priesthood.

The effect of the recognition means that the denomination can participate in the work of NCC agencies. It had expressed particular interest in the NCC Broadcasting and Film Commission. There was no indication that actual council membership was being considered. To be able to join, denominations merely need to certify that they agree with the preamble to the NCC constitution, which notes that the council is composed of “communions which confess Jesus Christ as Divine Lord and Savior.”

When he was 20, McKay began teaching school, and later went to the University of Utah, where he graduated at the top of his class in 1897. After two years as a missionary in Scotland, he returned to Utah and began teaching English. By then, the federal prosecution of Mormons for polygamy and theocracy that had reduced the church to a low point of 200,000 members had ended, and Mormonism came out of hiding. One of its most promising young men was David O. McKay, and at 32 he became the youngest member of the Council of Twelve Apostles, the church’s governing body.

During his first fifteen years on the council, McKay concentrated on education. Then he began traveling. In thirteen months he visited all the church missions (except in South Africa), covering 62,500 miles, the most extensive trip of any Mormon leader to that time. His travels led to the global outlook of his presidency, reflected in his response to a question about the most important moment in his life. “The feeling of such peace and satisfaction and love for all God’s children, which comes late in life after more than eighty years of work in the church and travels among people of all lands,” was the moment he singled out.

After seventeen years as a counselor in the First Presidency, the church’s highest executive body, McKay succeeded George Albert Smith as president. Under his leadership as ninth Mormon president, membership grew to nearly three million, mostly outside the United States, requiring five new temples (for major rites, not weekly worship) and enlarged educational facilities.

McKay was always willing to talk with church members, who called him “the loving father of his people.” His genial personality helped overcome some long-standing frictions with Roman Catholics and Protestants. At his death, Richard Nixon declared, “The Mormon Church has been deprived of a distinguished and great leader. And America has lost a foremost citizen and human being.”

JANET ROHLER

During the twentieth century the God of our fathers has become a philosophical paradox and a theological problem. Now, toward the end of the century, God is emerging as a question with ambiguous answers.

Few volumes survey this distressing religious drift as instructively as Heinz Zahrnt’s The Question of God: Protestant Theology in the Twentieth Century (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969), an overview of big names and mass ideas in Continental perspective.

It is no easy task to square the conviction that theologians are a trained cadre of scholars whose studies are specially ordered for the sake of conceptually clear comprehension of divine reality and truth with their extensive current disagreement over the essential content of Christianity and the significance of Jesus Christ. No longer can one hurriedly laugh off the Bible-institute graduate who defined contemporary theology as a post-apostolic invention of the anti-Christ. Neo-Protestant theologians use the term God variantly, ambiguously, confusedly, and improperly. Contradiction of one another’s views runs so deep that the misuse of God’s name has become an evident feature of current theological inquiry. An ecumenical age ought to be no less concerned about this intellectual misconstruction of Christianity than about the institutional misconstruction of the Church.

The merry-go-round of God-theory rotates from Karl Barth’s early stress on the infinite qualitative difference between God and man to Herbert Braun’s emphasis that God “happens” in interpersonal relations. Hobbyhorses rise and fall carrying banners that proclaim God’s reality, non-objectivity, non-existence, subjectivity, silence, absence, and death. About recent schemas from Barth to Tillich, observers are tempted to remark, “By their prepositions ye shall know them”; we are alternatively offered a God “beyond,” “up there,” “in here,” “down under,” and so forth.

One vitiating feature of neo-Protestant theology is surely its lamentable forfeiture of cognitive knowledge of God. Until this costly mistake is avoided, the question of God must wait for better answers. Simple believers who still treasure the Bible as required reading will have a sounder view of the Living God than academicians who take this course.

All neo-Protestant theologians anchor their religious theorizing to an espousal of divine revelation of sorts. Revelation they characteristically correlate not with conceptual knowledge but with non-cognitive response. Neo-Protestant theologians disown any divine communication of truths by God about himself. This bequeaths the theologian the task not of expounding what God has cognitively disclosed in his revelation but of venturing a personality sketch of the Divine in the absence of ontological disclosure.

Almost all neo-Protestant dogmaticians emphasize the relativity of human assertions about God. Few presume to utter one final sentence or word of literal truth about God (althought they do not trouble to remind readers of this when they come down hard on the side of their private certitudes).

Wolfhart Pannenberg has been reminding neo-Protestant theologians that the Bible identifies revelation with the divine communication of all sorts of information. If the significance of this fact were rediscovered, contemporary theology would take an important turn. But Pannenberg too considers our conceptual knowledge of God obscure because it is couched in the language of praise. He insists, however, that all history—and not simply a single isolated enclave of special saving-events—must be viewed as a locus of divine revelation.

Moltmann and Cullmann locate divine disclosure in special external saving-events. To Cullmann’s credit, although he too shies away from divine conceptual disclosure of ontological truth, he views the scripturally given meaning of saving-events as integral to the revelation.

Moltmann orients the biblical saving-events, and especially Jesus’ historical resurrection, to a futuristic theology of hope; the result is the relativizing of all past revelational-knowledge.

These efforts seek to reinforce and to deepen the Barthian emphasis on revelation as a miraculous supernatural event addressed to man from without and above. But they are too halting to turn the tide. Some post-Moltmannians already array the theology of “hope” against a theology of “faith” (which might require a correlation with external historical events); they view Moltmann’s emphasis on the historical resurrection of Jesus as a failure to demythologize, and they detach their theology of hope from any anticipatory consummating in history.

The early Barth viewed divine revelation as God’s personal self-communication to man, consummated internally by responsive trust. Revelation occurs only in person-to-person confrontation; it includes no communication of concepts or truths about God, but is the self-impartation of divine love issuing in responsive faith and fellowship. Since nature and history are presumably a closed system of cause and effect, no divine disclosure is admissible in the world or in society as a whole. The saving-events—including Christ’s incarnation and resurrection—are somehow tangential to the history that the historian knows.

Bultmann demythologized Christianity of “miracles” that Barth had already consigned outside the arena of historical and scientific import. With broader sympathy for positivist prejudices, Bultmann dismissed the supernatural and miraculous as mere verbal mythical coding for an inner existential experience. Revelation, he contended, is not supernaturally addressed to man from without and above, but is transcendently concealed in the events and experiences of the world. It does not provide new knowledge of God; rather, in faith God’s address in the Word shapes a new human self-understanding.

Bultmann’s more radical critics regard such references to the God who confronts man transcendently in Jesus Christ the Word as an invitation to a further wielding of the demythologizing ax.

Some argue that the critical center of authentic human existence need be located only in man’s sense of moral imperative.

Communist tacticians are also ready with Marxian proposals for what new human self-understanding implies. What’s more, in expounding the case for dialectical materialism as definitive of ultimate reality, they do not abandon the relevance of reason. They are delighted to welcome neo-Protestant dialogue that takes Christianity out of effective contention.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Andy Hardy And The Divine Percentage

It’s odd how often profundity sneaks in where you least expect it, making you wonder sourly whether it was intentional, or why you didn’t think of it yourself. At least that’s how I tend to react, and it does me no credit. I mention this after having perused press reports in different places of interviews with three movie stars. Perhaps I was wrong in anticipating meager intellectual fare, for who are potentially more equipped to recognize reality than those given to make-believe?

Here, first, was Jerry Lewis defending himself against critics who praise the slapstick classics yet ignore his movies. “It’s their loss,” he commented, “that they don’t examine the film carefully enough.… It takes a great deal of intelligence to understand what life is all about, and life does include slapstick.”

The point is irrefutable. Charlie Chaplin, who proved it once for all in City Lights and other moving pieces, underlined it last year when asked for an octogenarian’s advice to the young. One could sense the poised pencils as the maestro pondered. Then came the accumulated wisdom of eight decades: “Don’t go to Harvard University without a steel helmet.” Anti-climax? No, sir!

But what interested me even more than the others was the account of a newspaper interview with Mickey Rooney. The former boy wonder, Hollywood’s most popular star (they said) three decades or so ago, has a story and a philosophy both pathetic and revealing.

Nudging his half century, divorced six times and now married yet again, Rooney is quoted as saying: “Thank heaven I’m a religious man. When things get too bad, even for me, I get my strength from meditating on Sundays.”

The words may fall strangely on the ear, but the man who made and spent millions has in some sense fastened on a tremendous truth. “God,” he declared, “gave me everything and more—much more—than a single human being has a right to expect on this earth: talent, fame, and fortune … but I knew they were only on loan to me; that soon they would all pass. Trouble is, what I hadn’t realized was how high the interest on God’s loan was!”

Well, some might have expressed themselves rather differently, but the impact of the whole confession suggests that those Sunday meditations may yet bring Mr. Rooney nearer the God whose workings he so clearly acknowledges. It reminded me of James Melville’s words long ago: “No man can show the right way better than he who hath oft-times chanced upon by-roads.”

EUTYCHUS IV

Aye—And Nay—To ‘Eye’

Congratulations to you on the issue of January 2 and particularly on “Young Churchmen Eye the Seventies.”

It is reassuring to read statements by young Christian thinkers, lay and clergy, who appear to be in touch with their own times and at the same time alive to the Christian Church.

JOSEPH H. HEARTBERG

Executive Secretary

New Jersey Baptist Convention

East Orange, N. J.

What they are saying, if I read them correctly, is that establishment evangelicalism is going to have to be more compassionately involved in social and environmental problems, and less rigidly defensive about a specific set of doctrines, if it is not to lose many of its most dedicated and alert young people.

ROBISON B. JAMES

Associate Professor of Religion

University of Richmond

Richmond, Va.

The Age of Aquarius, it appears, will shortly give way to the Age of Ecology.… Indeed, one of the youthful editorialists (Howard Moffett)—my own age, incidentally—admonished believers that they were poisoning their streams with filth and their hearts with hate. I thought, Poor boy, he does have a pretty bad hang-up.…

The very idea that anyone would think that the task of the Church is in any way related to purification of air and water, important though this may be, seems to speak volumes for the lurid confusion which now reigns as to the real mission of the Church. Perhaps one of our problems is the hesitance to come to grips with theological pollution in our own ranks.

RICHARD H. MACKAY

Watertown, Mass.

Mr. Moffett has sensed very correctly that our problems … are not alone rooted in Viet Nam, inflation.… But, in seeing “no panacea—Christian or otherwise,” I wonder if Mr. Moffett has placed a finger on what is really our basic ill—that of not knowing the extent and power of Christianity.… A converted society, possible only through conversion of individuals, can make matters different.… The basic doctrines of Scripture, which we’ve neglected … must again be made clear from the pulpit, clear in our lives.

DAVID W. SLATER

Delmar, N. Y.

I was amazed at a statement made by Howard M. Moffett, “I believe that one of the most serious sins of the Church has been to suggest that to convert our society would be to save it.”

I am not unmindful that there are tremendous injustices in the world today and that many persons who are nominal members of churches contribute to these injustices. However … I truly believe that if we could convert “our society,” this very conversion would literally impel all individuals to try to live according to the teachings of our Saviour and thus to lessen the injustices of the world.

A. A. PAGE

President Emeritus

Pikeville College

Pikeville, Ky.

It is readily apparent to the younger generation, of which I am a part, that if Christianity is to survive and maintain its service to God, many changes must be made within the thought-patterns and lives of its leaders.… To live the “abundant life,” one must … make decisions from the viewpoint of love (Phil. 1:9–11).… This means that as a disciple of Jesus, one must use biblical principles (and for sure they exist) in decision-making.

PHILIP D. HOLLEY

Oneonta, Ala.

Really, I’m surprised. I suspect Dr. Reidel is, too. Ecology is a topic in biological science, not physical science. The distinction is not social science/physical science but social science/science.

JOHN A. CRAMER

Instructor in Physics

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

I regret that the one with whom I must take issue is the son of your illustrious Editor-at-Large when he says, “The under-thirty generation rejects the sectarian tendencies and the overly personalistic ethics of establishment evangelicalism”—whatever that means. To answer him I quote from your lead article by Dr. John A. Mackay in his excellent reminiscence, “In quest of the most effective way to make Christ and the Gospel real and relevant I learned the incarnational approach to the human situation,” and his following comments. Mr. Henry closes with a conservative statement, for which we are glad. Also in answer to his first statement I would quote from another of the younger writers, Ensign Peter M. Smith, “It seems to me the best vehicle for spreading the Gospel of Christianity is on the personal level.”

JAMES A. ADAMS

Salisbury, Mo.

Breathless Discoveries

Any testimony and observation offered by Dr. John A. Mackay, (“Life’s Chief Discoveries,” Jan. 2), is always appreciated.

FRANKLIN M. SEGLER

Professor of Pastoral Ministry

Southwestern Baptist Seminary

Fort Worth, Tex.

Please! I am holding my breath waiting for the rest of John A. Mackay’s third discovery. Please have him write it and then you publish it before he dies or I do.

DOUGLAS H. STIMERS

Mona Shores Baptist Church

Muskegon, Mich.

Chill From China

“It Can Happen Here” (A Layman and His Faith, Jan. 2) is compelling to the thoughtful American—it is also chilling.

WALTER A. OLSON

Longmont, Colo.

It is a pleasure and inspiration to read i “It Can Happen Here.” I fully agree with its emphasis as I was in China during the takeover and left to have freedom after three years through a divine deliverance.… My father was the Presbyterian minister in Nanhsuchow for twenty-two years until he was killed during the Japanese occupation in 1943.

LUKE H. C. SHENG, M. D.

Brighton, Mich.

Desperate Dreams

In my estimation Dr. Espy’s proposal for the creation of a “General Ecumenical Council” (News, Dec. 19, Jan. 2) is another well-baited trap for evangelicals. It is another effort on the part of desperate NCC leaders whose inclusive ecclesiastical dreams have not succeeded in bringing all together into one organization. How could evangelicals sit in fraternal relationship with those who deny the authority of the Bible and salvation by faith alone in the shed blood of Jesus Christ any more in this new proposed organization than they could in the old?

These are days to be alert and remember that the enemy will use every means possible to weaken the voice of truth and to deceive the very elect.… When are we going to stop trying to impress the world by agreeing with it? We only make fools out of ourselves and show ourselves to be spiritually weak and anemic, lacking in conviction, depending upon power of influence with men rather than on the power of God available in our lives through the fulness of the Holy Spirit.

BILL COWELL

Emmanuel Baptist Church

Marion, Kan.

Enjoyable Parts

I want to compliment you on your fine magazine. The articles, editorials, and the news from a Christian point of view are the parts I enjoy the most.… As I will be eventually entering the ministry, I feel that your magazine will benefit me greatly in the next few years at college. I also have plans to attend law school. I am sure a Christian magazine will help there, too.

PAUL STEBELTON

Milligan College, Tenn.

Who’s going to buy religious books in the seventies? During the sixties religious books rolled off the presses in record numbers, but a jittery feeling about the future is robbing publishers of most of their satisfaction over past successes. And their concern is well founded.

Already some religious houses have been dissolved; others have been forced into mergers or have found it necessary to diversify in the direction of non-religious publications. Trade publishers are finding the religious market increasingly less fruitful.

Why the apparent decline of interest in religious books? There are many possible explanations, and any attempt to provide one is pretty well confined to the realm of speculation. But certainly, part of the answer is to be found in the current revolutionary changes in the world of religion. Problems in the book trade are but symptoms of problems in the Church. Three developments are especially worthy of note.

Revolt against the institutional church. No one can foretell just what will happen to the institutional church in the coming decade; but if it is to reclaim a place of substantial influence in society, it must come to grips with the fact that form without content has left many disillusioned and disinterested. They feel the Church has done little to meet their own personal needs or to deal with the problems of contemporary society. No doubt some who are essentially irreligious use the Church as a scapegoat for their rebellion against God, but there are others who affirm their sincere dedication to Christ and impatience with the Church in the same breath (e.g., Malcolm Muggeridge in Jesus Rediscovered, one of the most intriguing books of the past year).

This dissatisfaction with the Church will have a continuous effect upon book publishing. Institution-oriented books will give way to books dealing with the more personal side of religion and books that relate the Church and its message to the great social concerns of our day. In this connection it is interesting to note that some of Billy Graham’s books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and dialects, and sales of his works are many times those of other religious authors by the same publisher. Several factors may contribute to this success, but no doubt the most important is the common hunger of the human heart for some word on how to find a right relationship with God and with other men.

Rebellion against authority. This phenomenon is not confined to the Church, of course, but it has been strikingly evident there. Rebellion against church authority has been most apparent in the Catholic Church; however, the even more significant denial of the authority of Scripture is affecting Protestants as well as Catholics. In the past, most religious books at least made some claim to be based on Scripture, but this is no longer so. Many people, it seems—even those who call themselves Christians—are not greatly concerned about what the Bible (or the Church) has to say, especially if it conflicts with their own ideas. (However, Bibles continue to sell very well—it would be interesting to know just who’s buying them and who’s reading them, and why). The question of authority has provided material for many a book during the past year; but the subject is already at its saturation point. And increasing defiance of authority is going to work against publication success with books that can really be called “religious,” as that term has commonly been used.

Rejection of the transcendence of God. With the breakdown of biblical authority, it is not surprising that God himself has been called on the carpet to face the charge that he does not exist—at least not in the way the Church has generally defined his existence. The trend has been toward humanizing God and deifying man, a process that found its clearest expression for a time in the “death of God theology” but is also reflected in Bishop Robinson’s Honest to God, Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity,” the “secularization of Christianity,” humanistic existentialism, the worship of science, and even in much of the recent “theology of hope.” When God’s existence is questioned, or when he is divested of his deity by whatever theologian may be on center stage at the moment, religious publishers find slim pickings in their search for material. (A partial solution has been the use of the term religious to describe anything even remotely related to religion.) Some of these theological fads have sold many books, but publishers are still left with a shaky foundation on which to build their plans for the future.

Although evangelicals are unhappy with the institutional church, they want no part of any movement away from biblical authority or the transcendence of God. And publishers geared to the evangelical market find themselves in a more stable position than other religious publishers. Perhaps the most noteworthy development in evangelical circles is the increasing concern to relate the Gospel to social issues, a trend reflected in recent evangelical book lists.

But evangelical publishers are not without their problems, and perhaps the most disturbing is the apparent lack of evangelical readers for solid, meaty books. Although a number of very useful evangelical books appeared during the past year (see Choice Evangelical Books, page 21—a list limited at least partially by lack of space), many others are not worth the time it takes to read them. Among these are theologically shallow “inspirational” books that do not come to grips with either Scripture or the world, and sensational books on prophecy that do little or nothing to establish Christians in the faith and challenge them to action. The Christian should spend his time on books that will help him assimilate the Word of God and meet the sweeping challenges and opportunities of life in today’s world. A book diet that leaves out meaty instruction in the Scriptures will stunt the growth of faith, leaving it inactive and weak. Some evangelicals say with a certain pride that they “don’t know any theology,” and evangelicalism has at times reflected the shallowness that comes from such a lack. If some churchmen are in danger of sacrificing theology at the altar of unbelief under the pretense of being relevant, evangelicals must not be guilty of sacrificing both theology and relevance at the altar of apathy under the pretense of interest in more “spiritual” things.

Publishers will publish what people will buy. Evangelicals will probably continue to buy religious books in the coming decade. We hope they will request and read more and more books that are deeply rooted in biblical theology and relate that theology to the problems they will face in the seventies.

The Freedom To Destroy Freedom

During the recent seizure of the president’s office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the invaders followed the now established pattern of destroying property and making a general nuisance of themselves. Their ostensible purpose was to force MIT professors to stop using their considerable talents in the service of the federal government.

What struck us as important was that these students and non-students, claiming freedom to do their thing, were using that freedom to attempt to restrict the freedom of the university and its faculty members to do their thing. The inconsistency points straight back to the peculiar ethics of Marxism. The Communists say: “We demand freedom when you are in control, for that is your principle. We take away freedom when we are in control, for freedom is not our principle.” The outworking of this philosophy has been evident in Czechoslovakia and more recently in the suppression of writers in the Soviet Union.

Freedom is the trademark of democracy, which, in turn, is related to the Christian faith, from which true freedom springs. With Christianity rapidly losing its vitality, we have reason to fear that freedom will ultimately be a casualty as well.

Inflationary Pains

The January Notes from the Foundation for Economic Education pointed out that inflation is a cruel and unjust tax. Few of us would disagree. But at the same time most of us are afflicted with cupidity. We want higher wages for less work; we want more government benefits and lower taxes; we condemn rising prices while we condone greater government expenditures. To put it simply, we want to have our cake and eat it too.

Do we ever learn from history, or are we bound to repeat endlessly the follies of earlier generations that paid dearly for economic ineptitude? How it is possible to spend ourselves into riches has never been explained—and never will be. It is a fairy tale for kiddies, of little value for adults in a real world.

Certain basic economic principles can be deduced from Scripture. One is that inflation is a form of theft. Another is that neighbor love is violated when those least able to protect themselves are victimized by the cruelties of inflation. Still another—one that is plainly stated—is that as men sow, so shall they reap. We are now reaping the economic plight we have sown, and there is no painless way to stop the process. A solution is going to be costly. Most of us give little evidence of being earnest enough about stopping inflation that we are ready to pay the price.

The Shape Of Collections To Come

Reflection on the recent speculation about religion in the seventies reveals what is surely a glaring omission. Someone, wethinks, should have forecast the demise in this decade of those typically round, felt-bottomed church offering plates. They are, after all, a bit anachronistic now that gifts come typically in rectangular checks, envelopes, or dollar bills instead of circular pieces of gold or silver. Relevant receptacles, it seems, would be similarly shaped, but even corners on collection baskets have had their day in church—on the ends of long poles passed by beadles.

Real relevance may have to coin a pay-as-you-pray plan like that of the Vermont church that now has in its vestibule a credit-card machine for contributions. “We’re moving into a credit-card age,” charges the pastor, “and there’s no reason the church should remain aloof.” And for the eighties, oracles envision computer centers that will simply deduct from the parishioner’s account his preplanned contribution and pass it into the account of the church of his choice.

What such procedures will mean to “the worship of tithes and offerings” is a question to ponder these long winter evenings. Could it be that giving will be cheerier unfolded, unspindled, and unmutilated?

Christ, Christians, And Christianity

A recent newsletter from the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship struck a responsive chord. On college campuses, says Inter-Varsity president John W. Alexander, “Christians lack vision and vitality. There appears to be little of anything going on in personal evangelism, in group evangelism, in campus prayer meetings or Bible study.” He goes on to speak of his concern for “the increasing lack of biblical awareness in United States Christians, their weakness in understanding scriptural truth—and in living it out to the full in their intellectual, social, and cultural aspects of life. Because of this many non-Christians are turned against Christianity—for they don’t see the image of Christ in those who profess his name.”

Alexander then quotes Lew Alcindor, famous Negro All America basketball player, who graduated from UCLA last year and said of his experience there: “… The Bible had no further meaning for me. The Bible and its teaching had produced all these hate-filled people.… It seemed to me that there was nothing in the world as unlike Christ as Christians.”

How dark the night, how great the sloth that has overtaken us! We are needy people who cannot give to others what we do not have ourselves. Shall we not pray: O God! Do it again! Come in mighty power.

The Lenten Season

February 15 is the first Sunday of Lent, a period long observed by Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches as well as Anglican and some Lutheran churches. By and large the Protestant churches have not celebrated the whole season of Lent but have concentrated their attention on Holy Week.

In earlier times Lent was observed for forty days, in keeping with the temptation of Jesus. When Sundays were ruled out as fast days, the period of time was extended so that there were forty fast days in addition to the Sundays through Easter. The season was used not only for fasting but also for celebrating the rite of baptism of new believers (who had been instructed to engage in penance, of which fasting was a visible outward sign), and for considering the passion of Jesus Christ.

The custom of fasting seems to have been lost to most Christians, particularly in those countries where people have the most to eat and where abstaining from food would serve a useful physical function. Fasting has value as a way of turning attention from material to spiritual things and heightening the believer’s perception of God and of the still, small voice that speaks to man.

The attention of the world has been centered in Biafra, where it is apparent that millions of people have been fasting, not by choice but by grim necessity. The war is over but hunger still abounds. The sight of suffering children who—if they manage to survive—will be damaged for life by malnutrition should arouse our consciences and cause us to respond quickly. By foregoing one meal a day or even desserts for the Lenten period, we could gather millions of dollars to help these fellow human beings to whom our hearts go out in sympathy. Pick your relief agency and send your gift—now!

Church Property Rights

In America congregations have never had any problem withdrawing from their denominations, except when they wanted to take their church buildings with them. At that point, setting aside Paul’s prohibition against litigation between Christians (1 Cor. 6:1–8), the denomination has often gone to court to claim the property. Usually the central organization has acted in behalf of a minority of the congregation’s members that wished to stay loyal to the denomination.

Court decisions have been wildly inconsistent, even within states. Reversals of lower-court decisions often seem to be the rule rather than the exception. Historical affirmation of congregational polity have often not made much difference, as Baptist churches around the country have learned over the past few decades. What has mattered, and will even more in the light of a recent Supreme Court action, is who explicitly owns the property according to civil law.

Usually courts have not inquired into doctrinal matters to judge whether changes in the denomination generally permit a dissenting congregation to leave and take its building with it. Now the courts may not inquire into matters of ecclesiastical polity either. In the recent action, two Georgia congregations formerly with the (Southern) Presbyterian Church in the U. S. had their property held by trustees. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld their claim to the property on the charge that the denomination had changed doctrinally. The U. S. Supreme Court, rightly, we believe, told the Georgia court that the constitution forbade it to claim competence in theological matters. So the Georgia court changed its basis for allowing the congregation to claim the property. If it lacked competence theologically, it said, it was also incapable of examining the ecclesiastical claims of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. that, according to presbyterian polity, an “implied trust” granted the property to the denomination in case the local trustees wanted to leave. The denomination again appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, which this time refused to hear the case, allowing the Georgia court decision to stand.

We applaud this decision in what may well be a landmark case. While it seems to hinge on a technicality, the principle is clear: Church property disputes are to be handled like any others; there is no “religious” property law. No claims regarding theology or church polity can be evaluated by the courts. Congregational attempts to keep property because the national body has changed are vain. Denominational claims to property on the basis of reversionary clauses should the congregation depart from “customary usages” are not likely to work.

Connectional denominations certainly will be affected by the action to the extent that the property is not fully owned by the central body itself, as was the case with the Georgia Presbyterians. Often the property is owned by the bishop or diocese or conference or presbytery. The Supreme Court’s action seems to indicate that if such a regional jurisdiction wished to dissociate from the national body it could take its property with it. Claims that, for example, Roman Catholic dioceses must act in accordance with papal wishes on such matters could not be entertained. Religious laws not only do not apply but cannot be examined by the courts.

One implication is clear: Congregations should be at least as scrupulous about their legal titles as they are about their fire insurance. One hopes that fire does not strike. Similarly, congregations that are presently happy about their denominational relationship hope that this continues indefinitely. But it may not.

Christian responsibility calls for setting one’s legal affairs in order. The documents that pertain to ownership of church property should be carefully reviewed, and all references to theological or ecclesiological matters, including statements of faith, should be so arranged that they bear no relation to ownership. If there ever is a dispute, the courts will disregard the religious elements anyway, so title to the property should be as independent of such considerations as fire insurance already is.

The Liars Among Us

Why all the credibility gaps? On what grounds can the public be deliberately deceived?

The principles of the so-called new morality suggest a way in which a public official can completely misrepresent a situation and still convince himself he has done well. All he has to do is be persuaded in his own mind that such fabrication will be in the best interests of the public.

To be sure, situation ethics has a built-in attractiveness. It is particularly easy in the social sector: who is to know what is ultimately good in the corporate sense? Virtually anything can be justified if one tries hard enough.

We wonder if the new morality hasn’t been making something of an impression upon politicians. A recent New York Times Book Review article asserts that there was “so much official lying” during the past decade that there is now a striking radical temper among the best young historians. The article declares that there is “more skepticism than ever of traditional academic perspectives on history.”

The free world must ask itself seriously whether it is going to surrender objective standards of right and wrong. To do so would be in effect to subordinate truth to political bias—as the Communists do. Such capitulation invites the wrath of God both in this world and the next.

Is Your God Too Big?

In certain ways most of us have too small a concept of God, but in other ways, we may think of him as too big. How is that?

Consider our leaders here on earth. We do not trouble them with small things; their time is reserved for the most important matters. It’s only natural, then, that this attitude be transferred to God. But this is just another way in which God is not like men. He is indeed far greater than we can imagine, but part of his greatness lies in his attention to the smallest detail. The Apostle Paul tells us we are to bring all our concerns to God, not just the big ones.

After commanding us to rejoice all the time in Philippians 4:4, Paul helpfully explains how this difficult command can be obeyed. He assures us that “the Lord is at hand” (v. 5), which means, as the context suggests, that he is accessible, not remote the way our leaders on earth are. Then in verse 6 Paul tells us that to rejoice always we are to be free of anxious concern; the two are mutually exclusive. Next he tells us what to do whenever anything appears to cause us anxiety: “… with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” How big must something be to be taken to God? No bigger than it must be to disrupt our joy! As we all know, trivial things have a way of causing considerable consternation: a traffic light turns red just as we get to it; the shopping list is missing just when we want it; the car breaks down just after we’ve had it repaired. We all have disturbances that are so minor we hesitate to mention them to others, but God wants us to bring them to him.

Whether a particular request is major or minor, an important adjunct is thanksgiving. Thanksgiving causes us to remind ourselves of God’s faithfulness in the past, how he stood by us in previous difficulties, how they were eventually resolved or we were given grace to bear them. This is probably the key to the marvelous promise that follows the call to pray. “The peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (v. 7). This constant peace, which permits the constant joy to which we are called, is not something we can easily explain; in fact, Paul says it passes understanding. But this doesn’t make it less real. Although most of us would have a hard time explaining light, we know it is available.

If we who are Christians do not enjoy peace and joy continually, then we should take stock of ourselves regarding the call to pray in everything. Perhaps we have been operating with too big a concept of God. Or rather, perhaps we do not realize that he is so big that he wants us to bring our little problems—and our little thanksgivings—to him just as surely as we bring the big ones.

Christianity is not a negative religion; it is a glorious Yes. The Apostle Paul tells us, “All the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor. 1:20a). Our Lord makes it plain that redemption means passing from a negative (“perishing”) state to a positive one—that of eternal life.

But when one has said yes to Jesus Christ, accepting him as Saviour and making him Lord of life, he comes to realize that there are negatives that are a part of the Christian’s daily life. Because he is in the world but not of it, he finds that no becomes a very important word and a very important attitude of life. Jesus says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself [say no to self] and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).

This saying no to self is a continuing requirement for the Christian. However, it involves a distinction many earnest believers fail to make. For such people, not doing this or that, not going to this place or the other, is the sign of whether or not a person is actually a Christian, and whether or not they may have fellowship with him. From this attitude to modern Pharisaism there is but a short step, and some unwittingly take it.

Being a Christian involves but two things—faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to his revealed will.

But obedience does involve the clear leading of the Holy Spirit as well as convictions about God’s will. The Apostle Paul makes plain in word and by example what being a Christian means: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). That means saying no to self. While life lasts we are confronted by temptations inherent in the flesh, and they must be dealt with by rejection.

As is true in so many aspects of the Christian faith, we find here a paradox. Jesus says, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39). And again, “Whosoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:33).

When confronted with an issue that requires a yes or no, what criteria do we have? We must say no to anything that (a) injures the body, (b) defiles the spirit, or (c) contaminates the mind. This is not an oversimplification but a practical basis for ordering our lives as Christians.

The body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, but there is always the temptation to defile it. Therefore the Apostle Paul tells us, “You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19b, 20). Easy to comply with? No! But God always gives the grace to carry out his holy requirements. We do not know by what particular sins of the flesh the Apostle Paul found himself tempted, but he says, “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:25–27).

The trend of the world is to defile the spirit, and we find ourselves confronted daily by things that would further this defilement. Unless cleansed by the blood of Christ, the heart is a filthy thing. Jesus tells us, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man” (Matt. 15:19, 20a).

If we are honest we must admit guilt in this area of our lives—unworthy thoughts, so easy to hide from others, that sometimes find expression in evil actions. We are born with contaminated minds, minds set on the flesh and not on the Spirit. That is why we must be converted, changed. The Apostle Paul tells us bluntly, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:6–8).

It becomes obvious that for the Christian there are many things to which he must say no. Yet it is axiomatic that God requires nothing of us for which he has not made full provision—the convictions that make us say no, the way of escape when temptations come, the grace for every contingency of life.

For the Christian this means putting first things first. It means facing in the right direction. It means learning the lesson, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:1–3).

The “death” of the Christian is hard to understand; the “crucifixion” of self seems unattainable. But both are very real. One of the most sublime statements in the Bible is that of Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

This is the central teaching of the Gospel: Christ in us, and instead of us; a new way of life, a new set of standards, a new code of ethics—all in and of Christ. This is not asceticism but the appropriating of all that a loving and living Saviour provides for his own. Such living is by the grace of God, but there is also an act of the will whereby we appropriate and submit to God’s truth.

Submission to the will of an all-wise, all-loving God is the very essence of the Christian life. Many years ago Horatius Bonar put prayer for the grace of submission in these words:

Thy way, not mine, O Lord,

However dark it be!

Lead me by Thine own hand;

Choose out the path for me.

Smooth let it be or rough,

It will still be best;

Winding or straight, it leads

Right onward to Thy rest.

I dare not choose my lot;

I would not if I might:

Choose Thou for me, my God

So shall I walk aright.

The Kingdom that I seek

Is Thine; so let the way

That leads to it be Thine,

Else I must surely stray.

Take Thou my cup, and it

With joy or sorrow fill

As best to Thee may seem:

Choose thou my good and ill.

Not mine, not mine the choice

In things or great or small;

Be Thou my Guide, my Strength,

My Wisdom and my All.

The One who is the eternal Yes has said an eternal No on the Cross—Yes for man’s redemption, No to the power of Satan. It remains for us, by his grace, to walk as he would have us walk.

One of the precious paradoxes of it all is that his yoke proves wonderfully easy and his burden unbelievably light. If we say yes to him, he will enable us to say no to evil.

L. NELSON BELL

Although the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY do not endorse the total content of each of these volumes, the authors write from a generally evangelical perspective.

BABBAGE, STUART BARTON, The Vacuum of Unbelief (Zondervan, 152 pp., $3.95). These non-technical essays on a variety of subjects examine the role and status of Christianity in the spiritual vacuum of modern culture.

BARKER, GLENN W., WILLIAM L. LANE, and J. RAMSEY MICHAELS, The New Testament Speaks (Harper & Row, 445 pp., $6.50). A scholarly study of the background, development, and content of the New Testament.

BERKOUWER, G. C., The Sacraments (Eerdmans, 304 pp., $7.50). In the tenth volume of his valuable “Studies in Dogmatics,” this outstanding Dutch theologian expounds and defends the Reformed teaching on the sacraments and evaluates other views.

BLAIKLOCK, E. M., editor, The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Atlas (Zondervan, 491 pp., $9.95). Following the chronology of biblical events, this valuable reference work sketches the cultural and geographical background of the Scriptures.

BROWN, COLIN, Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Inter-Varsity, 319 pp., paperback, $2.50). This bird’s-eye view of the history of philosophy down to the present day and of its relations with Christianity will prove very helpful to the layman.

BROWN, HAROLD O. J., The Protest of a Troubled Protestant (Arlington House, 282 pp., $5.95). A committed Christian scholar candidly examines the many weaknesses and problems besieging the Church.

BRUCE, F. F., New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes (Eerdmans, 122 pp. $3.95). Originally presented as the Payton Lectures at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1968, this exegetical study investigates the New Testament’s continuing use of several Old Testament themes.

CLOUSE, ROBERT, editor, Protest and Politics (Attic Press, 271 pp., $5.95). A provocative challenge to evangelicals to seize the opportunities of Christian citizenship in controversial areas.

ELLIOT, ELISABETH.Furnace of the Lord (Doubleday, 129 pp., $4.95). This personal account of the city of Jerusalem—its historic sites and the sufferings of its people—portrays people and cultures in conflict.

ELLISON, H. L., Prophets of Israel (Eerdmans, 176 pp., $4.50). Sketches the political and religious context in which the prophets to the northern tribes ministered, and applies their message to the problems of present-day society.

FREEMAN, HOBART E., Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets (Moody, 384 pp., $6.95). Investigates the nature of prophecy and surveys each prophetic book, discussing the prophet and his message as well as introductory matters.

HARRISON, R. K., Introduction to the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1,325 pp., $12.50). This major introduction to the Old Testament, including a review of Old Testament studies and a supplement on the Apocrypha, is sure to be controversial and will demand the attention of evangelicals.

HENRY, CARL F. H., Faith at the Frontiers (Moody, 204 pp., $3.95). These addresses by the former editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY demonstrate how evangelical thought can effectively confront the issues of contemporary society.

HOWARD, THOMAS, An Antique Drum: The World as Image (Lippincott, 157 pp., $5.95). The author of Christ the Tiger finds a “diagram of glory” in the humdrum experiences of life in a world that is “a dazzling pattern of images of the eternal.”

JEEVES, MALCOLM A., The Scientific Enterprise and the Christian Faith (Inter-Varsity, 165 pp., $4.50). This volume, based on ideas presented at a week-long conference of thirty-six scientists, emphasizes the harmonious relation between modern science and biblical Christian faith.

LINDSELL, HAROLD, When You Pray (Tyndale House, 182 pp., $3.95). In straightforward, understandable, and practical language the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY outlines the biblical principles on which to build an effective prayer life.

MAIER, PAUL, Pontius Pilate (Doubleday, 370 pp., $5.95). A historically accurate biographical novel that offers some interesting insights into the character of the Roman governor under whom Christ was crucified.

MIKOLASKI, SAMUEL J., editor, The Creative Theology of P. T. Forsyth (Eerdmans, 250 pp., $6.95). Selections from the writings of this great English theologian introduce the reader to his major themes and reflect his devotion to Jesus Christ.

MONTGOMERY, JOHN W., Where Is History Going? (Zondervan, 250 pp., $5.95). This stimulating critique of several current philosophies of history sees the case for Christianity as founded upon objective historical facts.

MORRIS, LEON, Studies in the Fourth Gospel (Eerdmans, 374 pp., $8.95). An outstanding evangelical New Testament scholar carefully investigates, in the light of the available evidence, some of the problems associated with John’s Gospel.

NASH, RONALD H., editor, Ideas of History (Dutton, two volumes, 291 and 369 pp., $8.95 each). This analysis of selections from the major philosophies of history from Augustine to Toynbee affirms Jesus Christ as the center of world history.

POLLOCK, JOHN, The Apostle: A Life of Paul (Doubleday, 224 pp., $4.95). This stimulating biography of one of the central figures of church history is based upon careful scholarship and accurately reflects the biblical sources.

REES, PAUL S., Don’t Sleep Through the Revolution (Word, 130 pp., $2.95). This compilation of stimulating editorials from World Vision Magazine is designed to arouse evangelicals out of indifference to the problems of our day.

SCHAEFFER, FRANCIS, Death in the City (Inter-Varsity, 143 pp., $1.95). Exposes the hunger of a godless world and asserts the need for reformation (return to the teachings of Scripture) and revival (subjection of life to the Holy Spirit) in today’s Church if it is to speak to our culture.

SPITZER, WALTER O., and CARLYLE L. SAYLOR, editors, Birth Control and the Christian (Tyndale House, 589 pp., $6.95). Evangelical theologians, physicians, lawyers, and sociologists explore problems of life and reproduction.

VAN TIL, CORNELIUS, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Presbyterian and Reformed, 390 pp., $6.50). Attacks all systems of thought that exalt the autonomy of man at the expense of the sovereign God of the Scriptures.

WIRT, SHERWOOD E., Passport to Life City (Harper & Row, 207 pp., $4.95). This modern Pilgrim’s Progress portrays allegorically what it means to search for the living God in our generation and confronts the reader with a challenging concern for twentieth-century problems.

Once again we present our annual Spring Book Forecast to give our readers an overview of the religious publishing field and to put them on the lookout for volumes that may be of special interest to them. Many of the spring titles focus on the host of problems and issues confronting both Church and society; we hope evangelicals will come forth with solid contributions in this area. Only time will tell whether promising titles can deliver the goods in content. As in the past we have asked publishers to designate what they feel will be their most significant publications; these selections are indicated by an asterisk. We have used the symbols (p) to indicate paperbacks and (rp) to designate out-of-print books that are being reissued.

AESTHETICS, ARCHITECTURE, MUSICABINGDON: Now Songs compiled by M. Stewart and Companion to the Hymnal by Gealy, Lovelace, and Young. JUDSON: Hymnbook for Christian Worship. PEGASUS: Aesthetics: An Introduction by G. Dickie. PRAEGER: Churches in Rock: Early Christian Art in Ethiopia by G. Gerster.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCEARLINGTON HOUSE: *Christian Counter-Attack by Lunn and Lean. BAKER: Interpreting God’s Word Today by S. Kistemaker. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: Damned Through the Church by J. W. Montgomery, The Bible and Spiritual Criticism by A. Pierson, and Questions on the Cults by W. Martin. CONCORDIA: Rock Strata and the Bible Record edited by P. Zimmermann. EERDMANS: All Things Made New by L. Smedes, Do You Understand What You Read? by H. Kuitert, The Man Born to Be King by D. Sayers, and *The Meaning of the City by J. Ellul. FORTRESS: * Who Shall Live? edited by K. Vaux. GREENWOOD: The Validity of Death and Other Essays in Existential Philosophy by P. Koestenbaum. INTER-VARSITY: Christianity: The Witness of History by J. N. D. Anderson (p). JUDSON: God’s Way with Men by N. Pittenger, The Hidden Face of Pain by J. Sarano, God in the New World by L. Geering (p), and Layman’s Answer by E. M. Blaiklock (p). MACMILLAN: Do Religious Claims Make Sense? by S. Brown. MOODY: Evolution on Trial by C. Reno. Answer for the Now Generation by C. F. H. Henry (p), Inspiration and Authority by R. Pache, and *Emit by R. Crane and G. Smith (p). OXFORD: Existentialism by M. Warnock. PEGASUS: Ethical Theory: An Introduction by L. Schwartz, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction by W. Capitan, and Myth of the Ideal City by R. Mucchielli. PRAEGER: Islam in Africa: A Short History by J. Humphrey. PRINCETON: Yoga: Immortality and Freedom by M. Eliade. SCRIBNER: Philosophy and Religious Belief by G. Thomas and The Marxist Criticism of Religion by H. Gollwitzer. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: The Letters of Josiah Royce edited by J. Clendenning. WESTMINSTER: Secularization and the Protestant Prospect edited by J. Childress and D. Harned (p), Hope in This World, by W. Baker (p), Positive Religion in a Revolutionary Time by E. Rust, We Believe in God edited by R. Davies (p), and The Magnificent Frolic by B. Wood (p). ZONDERVAN: The Protest of a Troubled Protestant by H. Brown (p). Who Moved the Stone? by F. Morison (p) (rp), and Heredity: A Study of Science and the Bible by W. Tinkle (p).

ARCHAEOLOGYEERDMANS: The Dead Sea Isaiah Scrolls by J. Rosenbloom. PRAEGER: Archeology in the Holy Land by K. Kenyon and Mexican Cities of the Gods: An Archaeological Guide by H. Helfritz. PRINCETON: The Highlands of Phrygia: Sites and Monuments by C. Haspels. ZONDERVAN: Archaeology of the New Testament by E. M. Blaiklock.

BIBLE COMMENTARIES AND DICTIONARIESBAKER: The Gospel of Mark by H. Hobbs, Exposition of Psalms by H. Leupold, Ruth and Esther by C. Anderson (p), and Book of Joel by M. DeGangi (p). BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: Young’s Literal Translation of the Bible (p) (rp). BROADMAN: *The Broadman Bible Commentary, Volumes 2, 3, 9, and 10, edited by C. Allen. CONCORDIA: (“Concordia Commentary Series”) Acts by R. Smith and Pastoral Epistles and Philemon by H. Moellering and V. Bartling. GREENWOOD: Subject Guide to Bible Stories by G. Garland. WESTMINSTER: *The New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible by H. Gehman. ZONDERVAN: Zechariah: Prophet of Messiah’s Glory by M. Unger (rp), Ellicott’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (rp), and *A New Testament Commentary by F. F. Bruce et al.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, GENERALBAKER: General Introduction to the Holy Scriptures by C. Briggs. JUDSON: This Covenant People by H. Malmborg, G. Peck, and E. Taylor (p) and Postage Stamps and the Bible Story by A. Gould. OXFORD: The Bible as Literature by T. Henn. SCRIPTURE PRESS: *Know What You Believe by P. Little (p). SIMON AND SCHUSTER: The Bible Designed to Be Read by E. Bates. WORD: For God’s Sake, Be Human by J. Killinger. ZONDERVAN: The Strategic Grasp of the Bible by J. Sidlow Baxter, The Hidden Revolution: Toward A Recovery of Biblical Piety by B. Shelley, Love Is Now by P. Gillquist, and The Late Great Planet Earth by H. Lindsey and C. Carlson.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, OLD TESTAMENTABINGDON: The Hebrew Verbless Clause in the Pentateuch by F. Anderson, Translating and Understanding the Old Testament edited by W. Reed, and Yahweh War and Tribal Confederation by R. Smend. CONCORDIA: Luther’s Works, Volume 6: Lectures on Genesis and Volume 15: Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes and the Last Words of David.EERDMANS: Message of the Old Testament by H. Ellison, (“Scripture Union Series”) Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel by J. Wright, Isaiah, Volume III, by E. Young, and Old Testament Times by R. K. Harrison. INTER-VARSITY: (“Tyndale Old Testament Commentary”) Ezekiel by J. Taylor. JOHN KNOX: Proclamation and Presence: Old Testament Essays in Honor of Gwynne Henton Davies edited by J. Durham and J. Porter, and Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics edited by C. Westermann. JUDSON: The Layman’s Introduction to the Old Testament by R. Laurin (p) and The Drama of the Psalms by D. Anders-Richards (p). MACMILLAN: The Relevance of the Prophets (revised edition) by R. B. Y. Scott. UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Time of Burning by B. Napier. WESTMINSTER: Proverbs: A Commentary by W. McKane. WORD: New Perspectives on the Old Testament compiled by B. Payne.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, NEW TESTAMENTABINGDON: Auxiliary Studies in the Bible by R. Montgomery and W. Stegner, John Celebrates the Gospel by E. Saunders, Jesus: Man for Today by T. Morton, and Kyrios Christos by W. Bousset. BROADMAN: John’s Letters—Light for Living by L. Leavell. EERDMANS: The Gospel of John by Leon Morris and (“Scripture Union Series”) I and II Timothy, Titus, Philemon, James, Hebrews by Leon Morris. FORTRESS: Literary Criticism of the New Testament by W. Beardslee (p), Luke the Historian in Recent Study by C. Barrett, and The Lord’s Supper as a Christological Problem by W. Marxsen (p). INTER-VARSITY: The Man from Outside by G. Bridger (p) and Studies in Leadership: Philippians by B. Boyd (p). JOHN KNOX: *The Good News According to Mark by E. Schweizer. JUDSON: My Lord Speaks by S. Benko (p). MACMILLAN: The Founder of Christianity by C. Dodd, Jesus 0’5 by W. Harenberg, and Questions About Jesus by J. Michl. MOODY: Romans: Power for Modern Man by C. Bartlett (p), Galatians: Freedom for Modern Man by C. Bartlett (p), The Gospel of Mark by R. Earle (p), The Gospel of Luke by G. Luck (p), The Epistles of John by D. Burdick (p), and Studies in Luke, Romans, Hebrews by I. Jensen (p). WESTMINSTER: Hope in This World by W. C. Baker (p), God’s Revelation: A Way Through the New Testament by U. Wilckens (p), and Which Jesus? by J. Bowman (p). ZONDERVAN: RSV Interlinear New Testament by I. Marshall, Witness and Revelation in the Gospel of John by J. Boice (p), The New Berkeley New Testament and A Survey of the New Testament by R. Gundry.

BIOGRAPHYABINGDON: I Remain Unvanquished by A. and D. Ward. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: So Restless, So Lonely by B. Palmer. DOUBLEDAY: A Second Birthday by W. Stringfellow. EERDMANS: John Bunyan by R. Greaves and Karl Barth by T. Parker. FORTRESS: The Man Who Moved a Mountain by R. Davids. FUNK AND WAGNALLS: The New Mission of Pope John XXIII by V. Gorresio. INTER-VARSITY: My Parents Are Impossible by W. Trobisch (p). MCGRAW-HILL: Letters to His Family by Pope John XXIII. MOODY: The Small Woman of the Inn of the Sixth Happiness by G. Aylward, Walter Wilson the Beloved Physician by K. Gangel, and The Man from Steamtown by J. Adair (p). PRAEGER: *King: A Critical Biography (Dr. Martin Luther King) by D. Lewis. ZONDERVAN: Born Out of Conflict by B. Song, Discoveries by E. Price (new edition), Adventurers with God by J. Hefley (p) (rp), Tortured for His Faith by H. Popov (p), At Least We Were Married by T. Thomas, and I Wish l Had Known, a symposium (p).

CHURCH HISTORYABINGDON: Easter: A Pictorial Pilgrimage by P. Benoit et al., Thomas Coke: Apostle of Methodism by J. Vickers, and Major Religions of the World by M. Bach. CONCORDIA: The Church of the Middle Ages by C. Volz and The Church of the Renaissance and Reformation by K. Dannenfeldt. DOUBLEDAY: The Farm Boy and the Angel by C. Carmer and From Fertility Cult to Worship by W. Harrelson (p). FORTRESS: Luther: An Introduction to His Thought by G. Ebeling, Luther’s Works, Volume 39—Church and Ministry 1, edited by E. Gritsch, The Anabaptists and Religious Liberty in the Sixteenth Century by H. Bender (p), and The Council of Trent, the ‘Spiritual Exercises’ and the Catholic Reform by R. McNally, S. J. (p). JOHN KNOX: With the Spirit’s Sword: The Drama of Spiritual Warfare in the Theology of John Calvin by C. Hall (p) and (“Ecumenical Studies in History”) Christian Initiation by C. Wainwright. OXFORD: The Victorian Church, 1860–1914 by O. Chadwick. PRINCETON: Worship and Theology in England: Volume I: Cranmer to Hooker, 1534–1603 by H. Davies. SCRIBNER: *Religion in Ancient History: Studies in Ideas, Man and Events by S. Brandon. SHEED AND WARD: *Seven Revolutions: The Response of the Religious Establishment by F. Houtart.

DEVOTIONALABINGDON: Youth Meditations by W. Cook, The Sanctuary by W. Fridy, and Putting Your Faith to Work by J. Redhead. BAKER: Living Stones by G. Sweeting and Fingertip Devotions by A. Bolding (p). BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: Why Jesus? by F. Huegel (p). BROADMAN: Happiness Is God’s Gift by R. McMillan and Being Christ-like by H. Wahking. CONCORDIA: Pray for Joy by M. Franzmann, I Meet God Through the Strangest People (devotions for ages 9–13) by D. Burow, Man at Prayer by R. Gesch, Hurry Home Where You Belong by O. Hoffmann, and Can I Forgive God? by L. Brandt. DOUBLEDAY: Seed of the New Age by S. Sikking. FORTRESS: Words to See By by M. Bolduan. INTER-VARSITY: This Morning with God, Volume II, edited by C. Adeney (p). JUDSON: Bruised Reeds by W. Molton and D. Breed (p) and Make Mine Coffee, anonymous (p). SHEED AND WARD: Dynamic Contemplation by P. Hinnebusch and Who Am I? Second Thoughts on Man, His Loves, His Gods by L. Streiker. TYNDALE: Words of Wisdom (an arrangement and paraphrase of Psalms and Proverbs) by Billy Graham. WORD: When Sorrow Comes by R. Ozment, As Far as I Can Step by V. Law, and Seasons of the Soul by N. Peerman. ZONDERVAN: Genesis: A Devotional Exposition by D. Barnhouse.

DRAMA, FICTION, POETRYBAKER: Go Till You Guess Bible Games by A. Wells (p) and Life of Christ in Crossword Puzzle by L. Johnson (p). BROADMAN: Bible Dramas for Older Boys and Girls by S. Miller and Dramatic Programs for Christmas by C. McGee (p). CONCORDIA: India the Hungry by I. Muskie. EERDMANS: The Elements of John Updike by K. and A. Hamilton and Good News from Tolkien’s Middle Earth by G. Ellwood. FORTRESS: Saturday Waiting by J. Nilssen. JUDSON: Lindy by J. Higgins (p). MOODY: My Son, My Son by B. Palmer, No Ring on Her Finger by M. Woodford, The Road Winds On by F. Arnold (p), Vinegar Boy by A. Hawse, Buried Alive by V. Matson, In Crossfire of Hate by M. Wall, Captain Daley’s Crew (four titles) by C. Massey (p), Danny Orlis (two titles) by B. Palmer (p), Scotty (three titles) by B. Swinford (p), Faith at Work for Peggy by D. Martin (p), Indian Drums and Broken Arrows by C. Massey (p), Felicia Cartright by B. Palmer (p), and Jim Dunlap (three titles) by B. Palmer (p). UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Poetry of Francis Warner by F. Warner. ZONDERVAN: The Girl in 906 by D. Hall, Heartbeats by J. Drescher, and At Your Age, Miss Russell? by L. Heerman.

ECUMENICS, INTER-FAITH DIALOGUEEERDMANS: Reformed Bishops and Catholic Elders by E. Heideman and Reconciliation in Today’s World edited by A. Miller. MACMILLAN: Ethical Nationhood by M. Kaplan. OXFORD: Alive to God: Muslim and Christian Prayer edited by K. Cragg and The Christian Faith and Other Faiths by S. Neill. WESTMINSTER: Spirit, Faith and Church by W. Pannenberg, Theology and Church in Times of Change by E. L. Long, Jr., The Crumbling Walls by L. Mudge (p), and The Ecumenical Advance by H. Fey.

ETHICAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND CULTURAL STUDIESABINGDON: *Crisis in Eden by F. Elder, Rock 2000 by H. Ward, Jesus and the Disinherited by H. Thurman, Religion in Communist China by R. Bush, The Mad Morality by V. Eller (p), The Politics of Doomsday by E. Jorstad, and A Burden and an Ache by C. McConkey (p). BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: The Christian Family by L. Christenson. CONCORDIA: The Christian Encounters: The Age of Technology by H. Beck (p), The Christian Encounters: Government Economic Policy and Individual Welfare by H. Gram (p), Right, Wrong, or What? by P. Steinke (p), and Christian Family Living by E. May (p). DOUBLEDAY: The Gathering Storm in the Churches by J. Hadden (p), While Men Slept by L. N. Bell, *The Promise: Ethics in the Kingdom of God by V. Eller, and No Bars to Manhood by D. Berrigan. EERDMANS: The New Left and Christian Radicalism by A. Gish, For Whites Only by R. Terry, Solving Marital Problems by R. Bower, Whose Land Is Palestine by F. Epp, Lobbying for the Lord in Washington by J. Adams, and Unholy Smoke by G. Target. FORTRESS: Black Power and the American Myth by C. Vivian, Christ and Humanity edited by I. Asheim (p), The Churches and the Nations by O. Nolde, and Churches on the Move by G. Vallquist (p). INTER-VARSITY: Unafraid to Be by R. Etchells (p). JOHN KNOX: The Tragic Protest by D. Anderson, The Shattered Ring: Scenario for the Future by L. and S. Rose, and The Clown and the Crocodile by J. McLellan (p). JUDSON: *The Black Vanguard by R. Brisbane. MACMILLAN: Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality by D. Callahan, New Morality or No Morality? by R. Campbell, and Piety in the Public Schools by R. Michaelsen. MCGRAW-HILL: Morality and Eros by R. Rubenstein. MOODY: Answers to Youth Hangups by D. Hillis (p), What’s in It for Me? by L. Richards (p), Man, Am I Uptight! by D. Augsburger, This Way to Life by D. Prime (p), Spiritual Manpower by J. Sanders (p), and God’s Provisions for Holy Living by W. Culbertson (p). PAULIST: Violence edited by C. Sugg. PEGASUS: The Economics of the Ghetto by C. Bell, Politics of Pollution by J. Davies, Community Control: The Black Demand for Participation in Large American Cities by A. Altshuler, and Birth Control by G. Hardin. PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY: Faith and Reason: Essays in the Religious and Scientific Imagination by F. Plotkin. PRAEGER: Patriarch and Prophets: Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church Today by M. Bourdeaux. PRINCETON: *The Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities edited by P. Ramsey and J. Wilson and Religious Humanism and the Victorian Novel: George Eliot, Walter Pater, and Samuel Butler by U. Knoepflmacher. SHEED AND WARD: The House Divided: Poverty, Race, Religion and the Family of Man by T. and M. Melady, New Horizons for the Priesthood by A. Greeley, Ghetto Kids by L. Cole, Alien Giants: America and Africa in History by E. Chester, and Religious Attitudes and War by R. Drinan. SIMON AND SCHUSTER: The Presence of the Word by W. Ong (p) and The Vatican Empire by N. LoBello (p). UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Despair and Hope for Our Time by F. Gogarten, A New America by M. Goodman, and The Bitter Pill by V. Johannas. WESTMINSTER: The Radical Suburb by J. B. Orr and F. Nichelson. ZONDERVAN: The Art of Understanding Your Mate by C. Osborne, Sex Is Not Sinful by J. Wyrtzen (p), Magic in Marriage by J. Jauncey (p) (rp), The Family in Dialogue by A. Bell (p) (rp) and For Adults Only by L. Granberg (p).

LITURGY, WORSHIPABINGDON: Off to a Good Start by A. Ingram (p). BAKER: Prayer Meeting Outlines by C. Pentz (p). CONCORDIA: Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume VII edited by T. Hoelty-Nickel. FORTRESS: Campus Prayers for the ’70s by J. Vannorsdall (p). JOHN KNOX: Cries from the Hurting Edges of the World by O. Rumpf (p). OXFORD: A Short History of the Western Liturgy by T. Klauser. ZONDERVAN: Prayer—Conversing with God (youth edition) by R. Rinker (p).

MISSIONS, EVANGELISM, CHURCH OUTREACHABINGDON: Christ’s Suburban Body by W. Baily and W. McElvaney. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: World in Revolt by M. Schlink (p). BROADMAN: They Changed My China by M. Wong (p) and Advance: A History of Southern Baptist Foreign Missions by B. Cauthen et al. (p). CONCORDIA: The Christian’s Mission by R. Schulz (p). DOUBLEDAY: Shadows in the Valley by F. Kostyu. EERDMANS: Batak Blood and Protestant Soul by P. Pederson, Latin American Theology: Radical or Evangelical by C. Wagner, Understanding Church Growth by D. McGavran, Story of the Christian Church in India and Pakistan by S. Neill, Church Growth and the Word of God by A. Tippett, The Road Ahead: A Theology for the Church in Mission by J. Piet, A Brief History of Islam by H. Boer, The Americanization of an Immigrant Congregation by E. Bruins, Ecumenicity and Evangelism by D. Stowe, A History of Christianity in Japanby R. Drummond, and To Apply the Gospel: Selections from the Writings of Henry Venn by M. Warren. JOHN KNOX: Reform in Leopold’s Congo by S. Shaloff. JUDSON: Stranger in the Pew by K. Conners. MOODY: Growing Young Churches by M. Hodges (p), Nests Above the Abyss by I. Kuhn (p), Red Sky at Night by L. Lyall (p), and If I Were a Jew by R. G. Lee (p). RANDOM HOUSE: As I Live and Breathe by M. Boyd. TYNDALE: Transformed by H. Kooiman. WESTMINSTER: The Ecumenical Advance by H. Fey, Encounter with World Religions by R. Young, and On the Dragon Hills by R. Lautenschlager. WORD: Break-Through by T. Rees. ZONDERVAN: An Evangelical Theology of Missions by H. Lindsell (p) (revision of Philosophy of Christian Missions), Cannibal Valley by R. Hitt (p) (rp), Saturation Evangelism by G. W. Peters (p) (rp), and Share Your Faith by R. Hitt (p).

PASTORAL THEOLOGY (PREACHING, COUNSELING, CHURCH ADMINISTRATION)ABINGDON: The Affable Enemy by W. Fisher, The Power to Bless by M. Madden, Pastoral Care in the Liberal Churches edited by J. Adams and S. Hiltner, and Learning About Pastoral Care by C. Kemp. BAKER: Jesus Came Preaching by G. Buttrick (p) and History of Preaching II by E. Dargan (p). BEACON HILL: *When You Get to the End of Yourself by W. Perkiser, Words of Men at the Cross by C. Strait, Tables of Stone for Modern Living by R. Denny, and Easy to Live With by L. Parrott. CONCORDIA: I Hate to Bother You, But … by W. Hulme (p) and Church Business Methods by E. Walz (p). EERDMANS: The Reform of the Church by D. Bloesch and All One Body We by J. Kromminga. JOHN KNOX: Conflict and Understanding in Marriage by P. Plattner. JUDSON: Tell It to the Children by V. Kane. SHEED AND WARD: Discerning the Spirit: Foundations and Futures of Religious Life by D. Gelpi, S. J., Psychology of Authority by W. Meissner, The Future of the Christian Sunday by C. Kiesling, and Pastoral Psychology by C. Weber. TYNDALE: Ministers Research Service by W. Kerr. UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Creative Suffering by A. Paton (p), Minister on the Spot by J. Dittes (p), and Ex-Pastors by G. Jud et al. (p). WESTMINSTER: People Need People by S. Southard (p). WORD: Where God Comes In: The Divine Plus in Counseling by W. Crane. ZONDERVAN: How to Get Along with People in the Church by A. Bell (p) (rp) and Walter L. Wilson’s Illustrations from Science by A. Sparks (p).

RELIGIOUS EDUCATIONABINGDON: You Can Teach Creatively by E. Allstrom, Helping Children with the Mystery of Death by E. Reed, Professional Education for Ministry by E. Thornton, and Understanding Christian Education by W. Rood. BAKER: Miracles of the Master by L. Caldwell (p), Fifty-two Little Devotional Programs for the Primary Child by L. Autry (p), Up-to-Date Object Lessons by J. Sargent (p), and Instructive Object Lessons by J. Schofield (p). CONCORDIA: (“Church Teachers Library” edited by D. Griffin) What Has God Done Lately? (p), Well, What Is Teaching? (p), The Subject Is Persons (p), and New Ways to Learn (p). INTER-VARSITY: Encounter with Books edited by H. Merchant (p). JOHN KNOX: Free as the Wind by H. Wilkinson (p). JUDSON: Team Building in Church Groups by N. Geyer and S. Noll (p) and This Covenant People by H. Malmborg, G. Peck, and E. Taylor (p). MOODY: Easy Object Lessons by C. Ryrie (p), Creative Bible Teaching by L. Richards, Leadership for Church Education by K. Gangel, The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes (with records) by K. Taylor, Bible Baseball #2 by H. Fischer (p), and Bible Quiz Pads #3 and #4 by E. Wall (p). PAULIST: Experiential Catechetics by J. LeDu and M. van Caster, S. J., There’s More Than One Way by R. Neighbor and M. Ryan, and Third Living Room Dialogue by J. Young. PEGASUS: Teaching with Feeling by H. Greenberg (p). PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY: The Field of Zen by D. Suzuki. WESTMINSTER: God Made Us a Good World by G. Priester (p) and Learning and Teaching Through the Senses by K. Tobey (p). ZONDERVAN: Creative Crafts by J. Edwards (p).

SERMONSABINGDON: The Pig’s Brother and Other Children’s Sermons by S. Johnson and The Urgent Now by J. Armstrong. BAKER: Gospel Hour Sermons by G. Brooks (p), Suggested Sermon Outlines by W. Stevens (p), Whole Armour of God by J. Jowett (p), In Remembrance of Me, by A. Whyte (p), Sermons on Biblical Characters by C. Chappell (p), Treasury of Quiet Talks by S. Gordon (p), Inspiring Talks for All Occasions by M. Gosselink (p), Wings of the Morning by G. Morrison (p), 1400 Ideas for Speakers and Toastmasters by H. Prochnow (p), Sermons and Outlines for Special Occasions by J. Stalker (p), 1001 Sentence Sermons by C. Pentz (p), More Sermon Outlines and Bible Readings by F. Marsh (p), Sermons for Children by D. Laird (p), Fifty New Sermon Outlines by W. Compton (p), and Crowded Detours by D. Mallough. FAITH: *No Other Name—The Passion and Commandments of Our Lord by A. Graf. JUDSON: Facing Today’s Demands by J. Ban (p). ZONDERVAN: New Library of Spurgeon’s Sermons (twelve volumes), Communion Meditations and Prayers by J. Gwynne, Re-Entry by J. White, and Simple Sermons for a Sinful Age by W. H. Ford.

THEOLOGYABINGDON: Life Begins at Death by L. Weatherhead, Bonhoeffer’s Theology: Classical and Revolutionary by J. Woelfel, A History of Christian Thought, Volume I, by J. Gonzalez, and The Coming Faith by C. Marney. BAKER: Pauline and Other Studies in Early Christianity by W. Ramsay, The Holy Spirit by A. Pink, and Divine Healing by R. Torrey (p). BEACON HILL: John Wesley: Christian Revolutionary by M. Wynkoop. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: *The Suicide of Christian Theology by J. W. Montgomery and How to Find Freedom from the Power of Sin by T. Hegre. CONCORDIA: I Found the Way by B. Ulrich, Break Out by H. Brokering (p), *The Two Natures in Christ by M. Chemnitz, and The Prolegomena to Lutheran Dogmatics by R. Preus. DOUBLEDAY: Projections: Shaping an American Theology for the Future by T. O’Meara and D. Weisser and Toward a Reconstruction of Religion by E. Fontinell. EERDMANS: Somewhat Less Than God by L. Verduin, A Theology of the Holy Spirit by D. Bruner, and Sin by G. Berkouwer. FORTRESS: What Is Man? by W. Pannenberg, Jesus Means Freedom by E. Käsemann (p), Divine Humanness by A. Siirala, The Future of Hope edited by W. Capps, and The Gospel Tradition by H. Riesenfeld. INTER-VARSITY: *Christ the Controversialist by J. R. W. Stott (p) and Establishing Basic Beliefs by G. Lewis (p). MACMILLAN: New Theology No. 7 edited by M. Marty and D. Peerman and Theology for Non-Theologians edited by H. Schultz. MCGRAW-HILL: Summa Theologiae, Volume 45, by Thomas Aquinas. MOODY: The Grace of God by C. Ryrie (p), The Divine Comforter by J. D. Pentecost (p), and Gleanings from the Scriptures by A. Pink. PAULIST: Basic Catechetical Perspectives by F. Coudreau. PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY: The Creation of Death and Life by R. King. PRAEGER: Concepts of God in Africa by J. Mbiti. PRENTICE-HALL: Readings in the Theology of the Church by E. Dirkswager, Jr. SHEED AND WARD: Dissent in and for the Church: Theologians and Humanae Vitae by C. Curran et al., The Responsibility of Dissent: The Church and Academic Freedom by J. Hunt and T. Connelly, Faith—Can Man Still Believe? by L. Monden, The Lively Debate: Response to Humanae Vitae by W. Shannon, and American Culture and the Quest for Christ by A. Padovano. WESTMINSTER: Biblical Theology in Crisis by B. Childs, Spirit, Faith and Church by W. Pannenberg, We Believe in God by R. Davies (p), The Doctrine of God by R. Smith, and Theology and Church in Times of Change by E. Long, Jr.

Two features have marked the majority of additions to the New Testament bookshelf in 1969. There have been volumes that fall into the category of resource material. These are usually large surveys that are intended not to be read for pleasure but to be consulted for information whenever the reader wishes to verify a fact, a date, or a precise point of exegesis. Then there are ground-breaking studies that send the reader off in a new direction, expose some neglected vein of gospel truth, or give a sharp knock to “assured results” of traditional or critical confidence. The past year has brought an interesting group of studies in this category.

But first to the reference works. Pride of place once again goes to the English version of Kittel’s Dictionary. Volume six offers a thousand pages of closely packed information on all manner of New Testament themes, both strictly theological and unlikely non-theological. Under the former head are long, authoritative essays on peira/peirasmos, meaning “trial, temptation”; pisteuo, “I believe”; pleres/pleroma, translated “full, fullness”; pneuma, rendered “spirit,” both human and divine; and prophetes, which one hardly need explain except to say that Israel’s prophetic movement gets as much attention as in any Old Testament wordbook. Among the less theological themes we find such ordinary words as the verbs “to do” (both poieo and prasso) and the nouns “war” (polemos, an article that has a timely message for a year of violent revolution and antiwar demonstrations) and “foot” (pous). Some terms quite obviously cry out for inclusion, such as “circumcision” (peritome) and “shepherd” (poimen), while others hold surprises for the curious. We think of the amount of theological significance Jeremias squeezes from polloi (“many”) or the relevance for modern Christian sex ethics of such a forbidding term as porne (“prostitute”). “Something for everyone” might well be the motto for this year’s Kittel, and we gratefully accept what is offered with renewed thanks to the army of contributors, the translator, and Eerdmans, the publisher.

Equal in size and weight is the massive Roman Catholic Jerome Biblical Commentary (Chapman), which devotes nearly half of its sections to New Testament matters. The stance is moderately critical on such issues as authorship and authenticity, but due recognition is given to Protestant conservative scholarship in the splendidly full reading lists. The theological value of the biblical text is much in prominence, and there are some fine essays offered under the captions “Hermeneutics” and “Inspiration and Inerrancy.”

More books that provide useful tools on the historical side of New Testament study are J. Jeremias’s newly translated detailed discussion of Jewish customs, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (SCM), and Bo Reicke’s The New Testament Era (Fortress; Black). Jeremias writes from the perspective of his unrivaled knowledge of life in Palestine, both ancient and modern; with careful documentation from the Jewish sources he gives probably all there is to know about economic, social, and religious life in the holy city at the time when Jesus walked its streets. Bultmannian scholars have a low opinion of the possibility of knowing Jesus “after the flesh,” but in Jeremias’s hands this source of information is not to be despised. Jesus Rediscovered (Doubleday; Collins) by Malcolm Muggeridge is the latest illustration of this fact. Reicke’s study takes us into the world of the Bible from 500 B.C. to A.D. 100 and sets us straight on the lists of Syrian rulers, Roman emperors, and Jewish high priests. Not very exciting stuff, but all part of the biblical witness that God sent his Son in the fullness of time and that this mighty event of redemption was not done in a corner.

Another important volume that needs close attention to its details of history is George Ogg’s The Chronology of the Life of Paul (Epworth). The author is the doyen of New Testament specialists in the field of gospel and apostolic chronology, a fact recognized by both the theological right and the left. As proof we mention that he has similar articles in Inter-Varsity’s New Bible Dictionary and Peake’s Commentary. All should therefore profit from his new book on Paul’s life, traced from the cradle (in Tarsus) to the grave (in Rome). The worth of this book lies below the surface; much valuable information of contemporary events sets the Apostle in his first-century frame.

In Ogg’s book history is studied for its own sake. Not so for S. G. F. Brandon, who places a great gulf between the historical reporting of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus and the theological meaning of that event. In his The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (Batsford), he returns to a subject that has been his interest for several years: the alleged political involvement of Jesus and his followers. Part of his case is a well-informed and attractively presented account of political life and historical conditions in Judaea from 4 B.C. to A.D. 70. But when he comes to give a highly individualized interpretation of the gospel facts, he offers a reconstruction of Christian origins that catches our breath: Jesus was mixed up with a violent, nationalist, anti-Roman movement known as the Zealots. And this implication with power politics is (says Brandon) the real reason for his death. The Gospels have obscured this unpleasant reality because they were written to make life tolerable for Christians in the empire, especially after the Fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when the Jews had acquired a reputation for rebellion. Brandon’s thesis has commanded little sympathy, mainly because he is to be charged with the very thing of which he accuses the evangelists: tendentiousness and a selectivity of the evidence that enables him to reach his verdicts with a show of plausibility. Significantly, neither Jeremias nor Reicke makes much of the theological importance of the Zealots in New Testament times. But this deficiency did not prevent a Newsweek accolade from hailing Brandon as the modern counterpart of Albert Schweitzer because of his daring and heretical views!

In Brandon’s reappraisal much is made of the Gospel written by Mark, who (so it is argued) retells the trial of Jesus in such a way that the scandal of a Roman crucifixion is explained away. From Germany comes a rival view of Mark’s purpose, published by W. Marxsen as Mark the Evangelist (English translation from Abingdon). This book has already achieved fame on the European continent, where it marked the advent of a new phase of gospel study known as “redaction criticism.” In a word, this approach to the Gospels seeks to explore the entire gospel story (as distinct from the individual sections of which it is made up) as the product of the distinctive evangelist. Marxsen’s aim in this pioneering work was to place the Gospel of Mark in the setting of the evangelist’s church situation. He found the historical occasion for Mark’s publication in the outbreak of the Jewish war in A.D. 66 and suggested that Mark wrote to warn and challenge the Palestinian church to flee from Jerusalem to Galilee, where the Lord would appear to them. As with Brandon’s novel thesis, this reconstruction has won few adherents, but the method Marxsen used of taking the Gospel as a whole has been welcomed on all sides, and marks a real step forward beyond the cul-de-sacs of literary and form criticism.

In Hans Conzelmann’s An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament (SCM), we can see how deeply this newer study has affected the understanding of the Synoptics. Each evangelist is credited with a distinctive theological emphasis, and even provides data for an enquiry into Jesus’ own self-awareness as raw materials for an indirect Christology. This is significant. The immediate predecessor of Conzelmann’s book as a theology of the New Testament was Bultmann’s influential volumes—and he simply passed over the witness of the Synoptics as reflecting developed church tradition. So the latest book is more positive in its approach to the gospel sources as well as to theological themes in Paul, Hebrews, and John. There are numerous valuable insights (especially into the later books of the canon), but the shadow of Bultmann still falls heavily across the page.

Another significant volume to emerge from the post-Bultmannian stable is the collection of essays by Ernst Käsemann entitled New Testament Questions of Today (SCM; Fortress). Obviously this book is required reading for any who wish to keep alert to the mental gyrations of European and American scholars in the Bultmann school. Certain features are expected as Kasemann repeatedly attacks the twin enemies of what he deems to be authentic New Testament religion: legalistic orthodoxy and enthusiasm. Much of his exegetical work reflects a defensive attitude stimulated by the opposition within pietistic Lutheranism to Bultmannian radicalism. But not all the essays are so slanted.

To turn from the Conzelmann-Käsemann axis to the writings of F. F. Bruce and Leon Morris is to enter another world of thought. Explicitly in his opening chapter of a volume carrying the scriptural text as its title, This Is That: The New Testament Development of Some Old Testament Themes (Eerdmans; Paternoster) Bruce dissociates himself from Bultmann’s denial of a salvation-history attitude to the Bible’s story. For Bultmann, the Old Testament is in no sense a preparation for the Gospel. This negativism entails a great loss, as Bruce’s fine chapters clearly show. He takes a few of the chief themes, motifs, and images that are used as vehicles of revelation in the Old Testament and show how the New Testament writers adopt and adapt them to convey the perfect revelation in Jesus the Messiah of Israel and the Church’s Lord. The rule of God, the salvation of God, the people of God, and the servant of God—these are the selected topics, all handled with expert scholarship and obvious enthusiasm.

Leon Morris’s Studies in the Fourth Gospel (Eerdmans) stands in the same evangelical tradition, but it is more about the way the Gospel has been interpreted than about the Gospel itself. The author has taken up a defensive posture against current denials of such traditional matters as the apostolic authorship and the Gospel’s historicity, and seeks to demonstrate that these positions are still viable. With that laudable effort there can be no quarrel, except that his method is largely to play off one set of scholars against another. One chapter is just a tussle between Westcott (on the right) and Barrett (on the left). There is value here in having the arguments pro and con marshaled so fully, but our impression is that the Johannine storm center has shifted considerably from these issues to the even deeper concern of whether John’s Gospel is canonical or not, a question recently posed by Käsemann. Perhaps Morris’s forthcoming commentary on the Gospel will address itself to these matters.

Two other studies on the fourth Gospel should be noted; one is convincing, the other not so. W. H. Cadman’s posthumous work entitled The Open Heaven (Blackwell) bypasses much that occupies Morris’s interest in terms of the Gospel’s background; instead it goes to the heart of the evangelist’s presentation of his chief theme, the person of Christ. John’s aim is to show that God’s “eternal purpose is being enacted in [Jesus’] own life and ministry and will reach its full accomplishment in His impending passion and its aftermath, the sending of the Spirit.” The upshot of this discussion is to relate the Johannine Christ more closely with Paul’s Christology and indeed with the Jesus of the Synoptics. Nathaniel Micklem in his Behold the Man (Bles) also wishes to correlate John’s theology with that of the Synoptics, but his enterprise is marred by a dubious literary analysis that separates out hypothetical oral traditions and apostolic reminiscences from the editorial work of the evangelist, and by a revival of some old liberal ideas that betray a rationalizing tendency (e.g., Lazarus was not dead but in a comatose state from which Jesus called him).

Of a different caliber is the monumental study of all strata of New Testament Christology presented by Ferdinand Hahn as The Titles of Jesus in Christology (Lutterworth; World). On any showing this is a major work that passes under review the main appellations of Jesus (Son of Man, Lord, Christ, Son of David, Son of God) in the various phases of development within the canonical literature. To be sure, the attempt to apportion the titles among the so-called strata of tradition is somewhat speculative and arbitrary, because lines of development do not always run straight. But Hahn has assembled a vast amount of information and exegesis that will repay careful appraisal.

Three titles published within the year are closely connected by a common topic. They are concerned to call in question some current principles of gospel methodology, and, while they are full of technical discussions, they do speak a relevant word in answer to the burning question, What may we know today of the Jesus of history? Gerald Downing in his The Church and Jesus (SCM) is content to place a number of searching question marks against an easy acceptance of criteria by which the modern gospel critic determines what he regards as authentic or inauthentic in the gospel records. The implied assumption on his part is that he knows in advance what the early Church was capable of preserving and originating. But this “quest for the primitive Church” is just as problematic (on form-critical grounds) as the quest for Jesus; and the whole method invites us a logical impasse. Downing quotes R. P. C. Hanson to good effect: “If [on critical assumptions] nothing is certainly original then we cannot be sure that anything is certainly secondary.”

E. P. Sanders (in The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition, Cambridge) pursues a different tack by calling in question the propriety of labeling any part of the gospel tradition “early” or “late.” To be sure, modern scholars work with accepted canons, such as length, detail, and Semitic flavor, and often unthinkingly conclude that this evidence is compelling. For example, a narrative that is shorter than its parallels, less detailed, and full of Semitisms will be treated as earlier. Sanders’s study exposes the factual weaknesses of the entire method when treated as a set of cast-iron laws and thus upturns a considerable corpus of assured results in the field of gospel origins. Markan priority has taken a hard knock in this painstakingly erudite work.

And still another cherished assumption, beloved by the form critics, falls under the ax, if the results of J. Arthur Baird’s Audience Criticism and the Historical Jesus (Westminster) are to be believed. He is interested in the phenomena of the Synoptic audiences whom Jesus addressed. Usually these are dismissed as editorial creations, having no basis in fact. But no one until now has assembled all the data for inspection; armed with an IBM computer, Baird has classified all the references and comes up with some unusual results. Of prime importance is his estimate of Jesus’ sayings that as a body they possess “a rare stability and integrity, reflecting a church deeply concerned from a very early period to preserve the exact words and ideas of Jesus, and uniquely successful in so doing.” So it is back to the drawing board for the would-be solver of the Synoptic problem!

Fitting nowhere into a neat pigeon-hole of New Testament books in 1969 are I. Howard Marshall’s comprehensive study of all the passages dealing with apostasy and falling away, Kept by the Power of God (Epworth), and Marshall D. Johnson’s The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies (Cambridge). The former raises some issues with which the dogmatic theologian will have to grapple, especially if his Calvinistic conviction is to remain intact. Johnson’s treatment of birth-lists concludes that the evangelists framed these more for theological than for historical purposes.

As a tail-piece a volume of collected essays in honor of Matthew Black has appeared under the caption Neotestamentica et Semitica (T. and T. Clark). The editors have brought together a galaxy of names from the international world of New Testament interpreters, and as expected the fruit of their writing is first-class fare from which it would be invidious to choose any special item. The entire volume is indicative of the good year it has been for the New Testament library, especially for the shelf marked “the four Gospels.”

Also published in the year were: A New Testament Commentary, edited by G. C. D. Howley (Pickering and Inglis); P. Benoit, The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus (Darton, Longman and Todd); G. W. H. Lampe, St. Luke and the Church of Jerusalem (Athlone); H. Chadwick, The Enigma of St. Paul (Athlone); A. J. B. Higgins, The Tradition about Jesus (Oliver and Boyd); S. Sandmel, The First Christian Century in Judaism and Christianity (Oxford); J. D. Kingsbury, Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13 (SPCK); W. Marxsen, Beginnings of Christology (Fortress); R. Bultmann, Faith and Understanding (SCM); C. Westermann, Handbook to the New Testament (Augsburg); S. Brown, Apostasy and Perseverance in the Theology of Luke (Biblical Institute, Rome); The New Testament Speaks, edited by G. W. Barker, W. L. Lane, and J. R. Michaels (Harper & Row); J. N. D. Kelly, Epistles of Peter and Jude (Harper & Row; Black); D. E. H. Whiteley, New Clarendon Bible: Thessalonians (Oxford); L. Morris, Tyndale New Testament Commentary: Revelation (Eerdmans); C. C. Anderson, Critical Quests of Jesus (Eerdmans); and A. A. T. Ehrhardt, The Acts of the Apostles (Manchester University).