The new year brought with it a change in staff. Our beloved publisher Wilbur Benedict began a much earned retirement January 1. His successor is David Rehmeyer, of whom mention was made in a previous editor’s note. Mr. Rehmeyer’s place in the advertising department has been assumed by Charles R. Wright, who comes to us from a varied career in other Christian organizations and brings another note of youth and enthusiasm to our staff. Mr. Wright is a graduate of Wesley College.

Donald Tinder, who came to us as assistant editor last July, has received notice that his dissertation for the doctorate has been accepted and that Yale University will formally grant him the Ph.D. in June. He also holds the B.A. from Yale and the B.D. from Fuller Seminary. Kudos to him!

At the U. S. Congress on Evangelism in Minneapolis last September I happened to mention that my birthday fell on December 22. Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, who chaired the meetings, commissioned the audience to note the fact and send me birthday cards. I can now report that because of his influence I found myself with far more birthday greetings than I had ever received before. To all those who were kind enough to remember my birthday I express my appreciation, and I again wish for them and all our readers a happy 1970.

Old Time Religion And One Other

Last month I stumbled on a new release from Ecumenical Press Service. Dutifully if dully I picked it up, for this Geneva publication owes its popularity neither to exciting prose nor to sensational tidings. On the contrary, it takes itself very seriously, its veracity is unquestionable, its contents unsullied by humor. Nevertheless, the issue I saw gave me the mental staggers: “WCC to Launch Dialogue with Men of Living Faiths.”

What was this? A WCC admission of fallibility, or at least inadequacy, would have been momentous. But this went further, suggesting that the WCC’s minus could be rectified through talking with those for whom faith was positively alive. My thoughts raced as I sketched a tentative itinerary so that the seeking souls sent out two by two from Route de Ferney should not waste time in realizing what they lacked in living faith.

The exhilaration didn’t last. Never was disillusion more utter. That headline was just a shabby device to trick the guileless into reading on and discovering that a get-together of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims was planned. As sponsor, the WCC is putting up a sizable sum for the meeting, scheduled for next March in Lebanon.

EPS says that participants will be mainly “scholars … who have sufficient competence in at least one other religion beside their own.” Those unversed in the esoteric will find the terminology mind-boggling. What, for example, is the mark of having already attained “sufficient competence” in one’s own religion, much less in that of others? Who are the examiners who shall issue proficiency diplomas? What are the ground rules? And how about the scholar who can profess all four religions?

I do not yet know the names of those who will offer Christianity as their major at the dialogue. I know they will be men of broad sympathies who will go humbly “to learn” and will ensure that discussion is not snarled up by archaic ideas about the uniqueness of Christianity. Here the WCC can point proudly to its past record of not going all out for conversions.

Says a WCC staffer: “Today religious pluralism is no longer an academic point to be discussed but a fact of experience to be recognized.” Since we’re putting things on that unsatisfactory basis, let me offer another fact of experience. “To the Hindu philosopher,” said Arthur Mayhew, “all religions may be equally true; the administrator, comparing a Christian settlement with the pariah village at its gates, has good reason to know that they are not equally effective.”

EUTYCHUS IV

Hoover: Pro And Con

J. Edgar Hoover’s magnificent article, “The Interval Between” (Dec. 19), richly merits the widest reading.

GEORGE S. REAMEY

Highland Springs, Va.

Not only does Mr. Hoover fail to see the evils in our history to which lawlessness, nihilism, violence, and youthful rebellion are reacting; he is blind to the perverse sense of values and inhuman policies of the present against which these things are a protest. It is his kind of unwillingness to be awakened by protest that evokes more extreme forms of the same. If he is concerned about the loss of virtue, how can he overlook the racial discrimination that perpetuates the mental, social, political, and economic enslavement of almost an entire race of people? In bemoaning the evils of our day, he chooses to ignore our violent militarism that permits the continuation of a senseless war that is destroying a nation on the other side of our planet. He glosses over the pollution of our environment that will leave to a later generation the tragic legacy of poisoned air, land, and water. He brushes aside the charges of police brutality, thereby escaping his responsibility to grapple with the real oppressiveness of so much of our law-enforcement policy. He expresses no alarm over our degenerate sense of values that tolerates the shooting of children to protect property, or the shooting of black militants to protect white supremacy while the Mafia runs wild. The legal process tramples on the poor and caters to the rich by means of fines, bail, and pre-trial detention. Why won’t he see this as one of the major causes of the breakdown of respect for law and authority?

Mr. Hoover’s selection of the evils that he wishes to condemn and the virtues that he wishes to extol, as well as his uncritical devotion to the American dream (and the doctrine of “manifest destiny”), betray a blind patriotism which prophetic Christianity can never endorse. His selectivity allows him to praise a romanticized past that never existed and to shut his eyes to the past and present evils in our society that have brought us to a crisis that he deplores but does not understand. Reflective evangelical Christians will sense immediately that he has focused our attention on symptoms rather than causes, has thereby eliminated the need for national repentance, and has allowed us the comfort of going about business as usual (provided that we beef up our police forces and intensify the piety of our culture religion). He implies that we must be loyal to America because it is Christian, if not because we are Christians. Since when does such fervent devotion and blind loyalty to one’s fatherland become a demand of the Gospel that calls us into the international fellowship of God’s world-wide family?

VERNON GEURKINK

Madison Square Christian Reformed Church

Grand Rapids, Mich.

The article by J. Edgar Hoover is the best of its kind I have ever read.

R. E. MCDOWELL

Falling River Baptist Church

Brookneal, Va.

Books On Blacks

“Read, Baby, Read” (Dec. 19) commends the thief, dope-peddler, and pimp Malcolm X as a sensitive, highly intelligent black leader. Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver are also included in the recommended list of readings. No doubt one can learn something of the criminal mind by reading these authors; but the article would have been better had some elementary Christian morality been used in assessing the merits of these protagonists of riot, arson, and murder.

GORDON H. CLARK

Butler University

Indianapolis, Ind.

One might suggest these few additional books … Irving Howard’s The Christian Alternative to Socialism, Frank Meyer’s In Defense of Freedom, Russell Kirk’s Enemies of the Permanent Things, Leonard Read’s Let Freedom Ring, and George Schuyler’s Black and Conservative.

ROBERT M. METCALF, JR.

Memphis, Tenn.

May I also suggest Kenneth Stampp’s The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South.

RICHARD L. TROUTMAN

Associate Professor in History

Western Kentucky University

Bowling Green, Ky.

The Malicious Side

As one who is in touch with aspects of the evangelical situation in Great Britain, I was appalled to read the maliciously one-sided report of the position of Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (“Who Is Dividing British Evangelicals?,” News, Dec. 19).

It is true that Dr. Lloyd-Jones has stirred controversy by his criticism of the World Council of Churches. But it is also true that his main emphasis in recent years has been on the need for a real unity of all evangelicals. There is no one in either Britain or America who is more positively and urgently sounding the call to evangelical unity than Dr. Lloyd-Jones. It is utterly false journalism to ignore totally this central aspect of his ministry while condemning him for allegedly promoting dissension and disruption.

DONALD A. DUNKERLEY

Associate Pastor

The First Presbyterian Church

Babylon, N. Y.

America—North And Latin

Although we appreciate the interest of your magazine in informing about the First Congress on Evangelism held in Bogotá, Colombia (News, Dec. 19), we are somewhat annoyed about the expression that the congress had a “made in America” stamp (“Evangelism in Latin America”).

Anybody who is fairly acquainted on how the congress was organized, programmed, and administered will conclude that this was really a Latin-American congress with some support from outside. The executive committee who headed all the procedures was primarily a Latin-American committee selected on a regional basis; 85 per cent of the delegates were Latins, and of speakers nineteen were Latin Americans and only three were North Americans.

It is always interesting that reporters find minor matters of mentionable interest. The fact is that the still prevalent anti-Roman Catholic attitude among Latin American evangelicals is a natural product of past experience. Converts have always been far more unsympathetic with the Roman Catholic Church than the missionaries. In fact, missionaries at times have had to try and calm the troubled waters.

Finally, the report states that no votes were taken. Votes were taken on the declaration and the long-term planning; the delegations elected their representatives of future regional congresses starting with the United States (Latin American communities) that hope to have a congress in 1970.

CARLOS LASTRA

Co-President

Primer Congreso Latin-americano De Evangelizacion

Bogotá, Colombia

Wormy Aftertaste

The evaluation of Karl Barth by Klaas Runia (Dec. 5) was very good. However, the aftertaste is not so pleasant.…

Runia appears to place Barth outside the house of the religious existentialists. I cannot agree. Barth may stand in the doorway, but he faces in. Runia has discussed the weakness of Barth’s solution to the problem of the authority of God’s Word, but Runia has not clearly stated the most serious consequence of Barth’s theology of Scripture. Mysticism is the result, and the later theologians are not so much a break as they are a development. I think that with the addition of one or two of his well-written sentences Runia could have given us a much more balanced evaluation.

I, too, think that Barth was a great man and a Christian; but his theology had a worm at its root.

H. B. HARRINGTON

The Reformed Presbyterian (Covenanter) Church

Broomall, Pa.

Incalculable Boon

I appreciate very much the articles you print from time to time which bear on the relationship of the fine arts to the Christian life. In my opinion, the outstanding example of such articles to date is Leland Ryken’s “A Christian Approach to Literature” (Dec. 5).

Professor Ryken has said so well what has needed to be said so urgently, but, to my knowledge, has been said so feebly in evangelical circles. I believe it would be an incalculable spiritual boon if every born-again Christian would read, and reread, this article.

E. ROGER TAYLOR

Music Teacher

Canadian Nazarene College

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Insofar as Leland Ryken’s “approach to literature” connects “the Puritan ethic” with an unbiblical stance, it is libelous, The implication that Puritans neither recognized nor enjoyed beauty is reminiscent of H. L. Mencken’s caricatures, which make amusing reading but are bad history and hopelessly dated. A careless characterization of Puritanism by a Christian scholar is, moreover, especially unfortunate.… Seventeenth-century Massachusetts men were not insensitive to beauty, art, or even pleasure.

WILLIAM B. BEDFORD

Charlottesville, Va.

Balancing Camp

I strongly disagree with William Gwinn’s statement in the article on Christian camps (News, Dec. 5) that we need “a movement away from meeting-centered and speaker-centered camps to a more personal interaction between counselor and camper.…”

At Word of Life camps we emphasize both the centralized and decentralized program. We bring to our camps leading Bible teachers, evangelists, and missionaries, for God manifests his Word through preaching (Titus 1:2). We also have a top-notch counseling program by which we decentralize our program to bring the counselor together with the camper.

Let’s keep this thing in balance. We have found this works well not only in our camps in the United States but also at our camps in Brazil and Germany, and we plan to use this same procedure in the 100 camps that we hope, Lord willing, to establish around the world.

JACK WYRTZEN

Director

Word of Life Fellowship, Inc.

Orange, N. J.

No aspect of the American culture fares as poorly on television as organized religion. The economics of the medium, the secular mood of writers and producers, and the lack of evangelical zeal in the vocational dimension—these combine to effect an ecclesiastical blackout on our living room screens.

To the liberal mainstream of American Christendom, this is of little concern. Many a modern prophet does not regard the Christian message as distinctive and is not quite sure what the Church is for. His causes are championed aggressively enough in the mass media by revolutionary politicians and new-morality entertainers. So who needs the Church on television?

To the concerned evangelical, however, lack of visibility on the cultural frontiers should be a vital issue. He is under a biblical mandate to spread the word. He sees the potential to confront every man, woman, and child with the claims of Jesus Christ. And he feels that as a taxpayer and loyal citizen he deserves equal time in governmentally regulated media to present ideological options to the happiness-is-things or action-is-everything philosophies that pervade so much of today’s viewing. But all he gets is an occasional Billy Graham crusade and a small assortment of Sunday-morning services.

On page three of this issue, the reader will find a pioneering article in which Ronn Spargur seeks to insert a wedge for religious interests. Mr. Spargur presents a well-thought-out proposal that takes account of all sides of the problem. What he suggests is for the good of the country and the industry as well as the Church, and we feel it merits serious consideration.

Let one thing be clear. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is not launching an anti-media campaign, as Spiro T. Agnew has been accused of doing. Mr. Spargur’s article was written before the Vice-President raised the issue. We are part of the American media, and we recognize that although little of what Mr. Agnew said can be challenged directly, he never quite got to the heart of the problems involved. The role of journalism in a free society must be analyzed on a level higher than David Brinkley’s raised eyebrows. If there is an anti-administration consensus among Washington newsmen, the reason is surely something other than the similarity of their reading matter. As the Washington Post, one of the media attacked, acknowledged, “there is a decent and respectable case to be made that ‘a tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men’ represent ‘a concentration in power over American public opinion unknown in history,’ but Mr. Agnew has not made it.”

On the other hand, if Mr. Agnew’s indictment occasions a penetrating self-examination by the television industry, he will have done the nation a service. Such a rethinking is long overdue. Television programming is still patterned after that of radio in its heyday, though radio has long since shed its original format. The television industry will do itself a favor if it begins to move in fresh directions before the public begins to demand changes through some Ralph Nader.

Surely one of the first items on the reorientation agenda is the religious question. The ultimate solution may lie outside the inherent capabilities of the industry. The initiative of the religious community may well be more determinative, for the networks simply cannot be expected to hand over big blocks of precious time without compensation. Indeed, the free-time public-service policy that has been advocated by many leading churchmen and has been in partial effect on both radio and television for many years seems to be an utter failure. What it has meant in practice is that insignificant programs are aired when few people are tuned in.

But network executives need to be willing to bend some, and to offer some new counsel to the religious community. Some of them should sense their responsibility because they themselves are part of the religious community. One particularly useful framework for discussion is available in the National Religious Broadcasters, a strong organization of evangelical producers and station-owners that is holding its annual convention in Washington this month.

There are some—churchmen among them—who will claim that television is really not a suitable medium for the dissemination of Christian truth. It is primarily an avenue for home entertainment, they say, and the attempt to appropriate it for use as a religious conduit is hopeless.

One problem with that attitude is that it assumes that present TV programming is religiously neutral. But not even in entertainment is bias avoidable. Even the blandest kind usually makes some impact upon the mind, for good or evil. For all his self-sacrifice, no one can ever accuse Bob Hope of encouraging biblical morality.

Furthermore, we challenge the idea that television is merely an entertainment medium. Its greatest asset is immediacy. Regrettably, this great boon figures little in current programming. Only a fraction of the day’s fare is live, and much of what is live could just as well be taped. Except for sports events and an occasional development of great historic significance, we seldom get to see anything as it happens when it happens. Surely there are important things happening every day that are of enough general interest to warrant coverage by one network. Must there be entertainment on every channel every night?

Only as we raise such questions will we begin to open possibilities for a more authentic and useful portrayal of religious concerns. We agree with Mr. Agnew that television “consumers” need to speak up, but we feel that the religious question is infinitely more important than the political.

From the evangelical perspective, communications is never an end in itself. Prayer and the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit are essential in any spiritual penetration of the human mind. But the Holy Spirit uses communication to bring conviction. Is not our neglect of a prime communications opportunity a sign of our unwillingness to be led by the Spirit?

The Mafia

Newark, New Jersey, hit the headlines months ago when the Negro ghetto exploded violently and fire swept through the community, the direct result of Negro frustration and rage. Now the city has hit the headlines again, but for another reason. This time the white leadership of the city has been accused of malfeasance and indicted by the federal government for an assortment of crimes ranging from extortion and income-tax violations to willful failure to enforce anti-gambling laws. Behind it all lies the omnipresent Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, an organized crime syndicate that beggars description.

Anyone who condemns radical groups like the Black Panthers cannot overlook the even more unlawful and far more obnoxious gangsters who parade around in Cadillac limousines and winter in the plush spas of Florida. These are the people who are responsible for the peddling of dope in Harlem. They are right in the middle of the gambling rackets. And wherever prostitution flourishes, these vermin are around collecting their fees, soliciting policemen by bribery, and consorting with politicians who are anxious to do their bidding. They are the big fry who work seven days a week to spread their skeins of wickedness and to exploit the weak, the sinful, and the simple.

The battle against the Mafia is never won. They continue to multiply their species despite the strongest efforts of local and federal crime-busting agents. Money is their god and murder, if need be, their means to control the vice rackets, the gambling industry, and even the lawful businesses they engage in as a cover for their nefarious activities. If any sort of righteousness is to prevail in the nation, the wings of, the Mafia must be clipped and the bird itself made extinct if at all possible.

Panthers And ‘Pigs’

It is a popular sport in the present climate to defend lawbreakers and damn the police. That the raids on the hideouts of the Black Panthers should produce such a reaction is no surprise. “Police brutality,” “planned genocide,” “a conspiracy by law-enforcement agencies”—these are among the gentler charges mouthed by Black Panther sympathizers.

Some policemen are as reprehensible as the criminals they are supposed to curb. Some of them violate the canons of the law with impunity. These malefactors should be prosecuted as vigorously as any other lawbreakers. Arrogant, prejudiced policemen should be dismissed from their jobs. Unfortunately, the misconduct of this minority has served to give policemen in general a bad image. Yet tens of thousands of them are functioning creditably, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude.

Those whose hearts bleed for the Black Panthers (see News, page 32) should take a hard look at what they profess to be and what they are actually doing. They are collecting guns and ammunition in violation of local laws. They are engaged in a conspiracy to destroy the existing order. They have repeatedly made threats that, for want of evidence to the contrary, must be taken seriously by the police. They have stated that they intend to kill the “pigs” (the police) and have encouraged others to do the same. There is every reason to believe that they have coordinated their efforts around the country so that they represent a movement, not simply a number of isolated and unrelated gangs. Why there should not be a nationally coordinated effort to meet a nationally coordinated challenge remains to be shown.

If it can be shown to the satisfaction of a jury that the recent killings of Black Panthers were premeditated murders committed by policemen in violation of law, these policemen should be convicted and penalized. But this does not legitimatize the Black Panther organization nor justify the notion that law-enforcement agencies should regard the Panthers as respectable and leave them to their illegal devices.

It is true that the Black Panthers are a small minority and do not have the approval of the majority of the Negro community. Indeed, great numbers of Negroes are terrorized by them and will be glad to see their activities curtailed. At the same time it is quite proper for the police to watch them carefully and to make certain that they stay within the bounds of the law.

Beleaguered Israel

The Arab-Israeli pot continues to boil. It reached new intensity recently after the United States issued its new Mideast peace plan and the Arabs held a summit conference. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir sharply and almost completely rejected the U. S. proposal. The meeting of Arab leaders was less than a success, also; disaffection and disagreement exists among them as to what course the Arab world should pursue. It is clear that the Arabs and the Israelis are still poles apart, and it may be that the world will have to live with this impasse for decades to come. Already references have been made to the possibility of another hundred years’ war.

No one can remain unmoved by the plight of Jerusalem, a holy city for both Arab and Jew. The United States’ proposal to unify that city, guaranteeing free traffic through all parts of it, with Jordan and Israel “sharing in civic and economic responsibilities of city government,” is an ideal solution in a dream world free from sin. But given the innate sinfulness of men, it offers little prospect of success. Jerusalem signifies the nightmare that haunts the world. Israel has possession of the city and is hardly likely to yield to any demands to give it up. But both the Arabs and the Jews feel the city is theirs. Joint rule would only accentuate the hatreds that exist; yet to give one party control over the city would be an act of injustice to the other one.

The whole imbroglio leaves most of us frustrated, hopelessly wringing our hands over a grim problem for which there are no apparent answers. At least Christians know that men do not determine history. Once again we must look to God for some way out.

Bucking The Blue Laws

Sabbath-day observance has become almost a joke in contemporary society. This fact became especially apparent when recently two major department-store chains, Sears, Roebuck and Company and the J. C. Penney Company, broke a long-standing policy by opening some of their stores on Sundays. Other companies are entertaining thoughts of following suit. Sunday blue laws have been dropped in many places, and it is likely that these laws will be severely tested in other areas where a number of merchants have been arrested for selling “unnecessary” merchandise on Sunday.

Some have seen in these recent decisions movement toward a complete takeover of Sunday by the retail merchants. And it is feared that such a trend will seriously hamper the work of the churches. This may be true to some extent, but it is probable that laxity toward Sunday closing laws is a result rather than a cause of ineffectiveness in the Church. Many churches hold special services on other days in order to free parishioners for Sunday travel and recreation. The problem must be dealt with among those who claim to be God’s people rather than among those who may claim no allegiance to God’s will.

In a 1961 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of three Sunday closing statutes, the decision was made on the basis that Sunday laws are now intended to encourage, not religious observance, but rather the purely secular pursuits of rest, relaxation, and family togetherness. Certainly the observance of “blue laws” is not an indication of good spiritual health in our national life. Although we strongly advocate observance of the Lord’s day in obedience to Scripture, we cannot realistically expect from an ungodly society a genuine desire to follow the will of God at this point. Men must be brought to Jesus Christ as a basis for obedience to God’s will—and this must be our major concern.

A prohibition of Sunday “business as usual” may not be possible in our secular society; nevertheless, those whose convictions rule out Sunday work are protected by the law. The 1964 Civil Rights Act provides for the excusing of every employee from labor on his day of worship. In June of 1969 a United States District Court required a large company to rehire an employee who was discharged for refusing to work on his day of worship or to find a replacement. The court also required the company to reimburse him for the compensation he had lost. Christians can express their conviction about Sabbath-day observance by declining to work, and certainly Christian businessmen can demonstrate their obedience by shutting their places of business on Sunday and by refraining from requiring others to labor on their day of worship.

The Helplessly Hungry

Some people bring hunger on themselves, and even toward these the Christian must exercise compassion. But what of those in our affluent land who always go to bed hungry through no fault of their own—or worse yet, because of someone else’s avarice?

For the last several years there has been a concerted effort to get the U. S. government to do away with hunger in America. So far, it seems, this effort has been pretty much of a failure. The struggles and frustrations are documented comprehensively in a new book by reporter Nick Kotz, Let Them Eat Promises—The Politics of Hunger in America. Mr. Kotz writes, “The politics of hunger in America is a dismal story of human greed and callousness, of immorality sanctioned and aided by the government of the United States.”

So acute are the problems in achieving a political solution that it is surprising to find Mr. Kotz still trying at the end of the book. He surely recognizes the difficulty: “The nation has deluded itself repeatedly by assuming that passing laws with noble preambles or issuing well-meaning Presidential proclamations has actually solved problems. The nation discovers a problem, debates it fiercely, declares finally its decision to solve the problem, and then rushes off to a new concern with the apparent belief that wishes are automatically self-fulfilling in American government. Such, sadly, is not the case and the hunger issue is but the latest illustration of this point.”

We wonder if it ever occurred to Mr. Kotz that the answer may lie outside political institutions? Perhaps it is simply impossible to work effectively through voteconscious legislators and career-sensitive administrators. Maybe there is just enough evil in government that a program with no strings attached has no reasonable chance. Might there not be at least some hope in looking instead to some part of the private sector for a solution?

The hunger problem on the international scale is an infinitely greater problem, and the political obstacles loom comparably larger. What national leader wants to admit that his people are starving? Yet the problem has to be faced: is there then any way to transcend the political dimension?

Some experts say that if present growth continues, the mass of humanity in a few centuries will exceed the entire mass of the earth. That may be a little hard to comprehend, but it should not be hard to understand that we are running out of resources. The world is already beginning to experience a shortage of materials of great importance to a technological society, such as mercury, tin, silver, and cobalt. In food production, there is also uncertainty.

There are things, of course, that can be done. We need not be witnesses to the extinction of humanity. Triticale, a superior new species of grain, believed to be the first ever devised by man, is just one example of steps that can be taken. What is needed more than anything else is the right kind of motivation, and it becomes increasingly evident that politics cannot provide it.

This is where the Church comes in, and where the principle of love is brought to bear. Only in the Christian faith is pure incentive found. Some churchmen have had blind spots, some have been hypocrites, some have exploited religious position for ulterior ends. But the fact remains that over the historical sweep of the last two thousand years the most humane movements have grown out of Christian roots. The scriptural charge to each believer is the highest ideal, and only when we refocus upon the Christian dynamic will we find the best motivation for tackling and resolving the great problems of our time.

The Clergy Discount: Boon Or Bane?

In many communities and in some industries, the practice of clergy discounts continues. For the many ministers with low incomes (see page 26 of our December 5 issue), these discounts can be an important help in making ends at least come close together. However, a better way is for full-time ministers to be supported adequately by the people of God so that they can conduct their affairs in the world of commerce in the normal way.

Many business and professional men cannot help thinking they do God a favor when they give clergy discounts. Accordingly, the subconscious feeling is likely to be present that God will “discount” his standards when he examines their lives; they may consider themselves virtuous because of their beneficence to men of the cloth. Moreover, the pastor who accepts discounts leaves open the possibility that this will influence the content of his preaching; we do not wish to irritate those who bestow favors on us.

Rather than give discounts, Christian businessmen should increase their giving to the church so that ministerial salaries can be raised. To be sure, members of a congregation might insist on rendering their vocational services at low or no cost as one of their ways of contributing to the Lord’s work. Also, certain businesses might give discounts to various classes of customers as a means of generating trade, and in cases like this ministers might gratefully accept the discount. But in general the better way is for ministerial incomes to be adequate so that clergy discounts can be discontinued.

The Autonomous Man

Nebuchadnezzar the mighty king of Babylon was a man of consummate pride. He had it made as head of the greatest empire of his day. Responsible only to himself, with all nations lying prostrate before his feet, he could do as he pleased—or so he thought. He was a prototype of the autonomous man, the one who walks in independence and feels no need to look up to anyone else or to bow before any king or power.

God sent Nebuchadnezzar a dream, one that neither he nor his underlings could interpret. Only Daniel, God’s prophet, was able to tell him its meaning. Boldly Daniel dared to add to the interpretation a word of spiritual counsel for the king. Having said that the king would be driven from among men and live like an animal with his mind clouded, Daniel offered him a way out if he resisted pride and looked to God. “Let my counsel be acceptable to you” said Daniel. “Break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your tranquillity.”

Nebuchadnezzar spurned Daniel’s advice and at last proclaimed, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power?” The words had barely fallen from his lips when judgment came. He lost his senses, was driven from among men, and ate grass like an animal.

The time came when Nebuchadnezzar learned the hard way the lesson he refused to learn when he was riding high. At last he discovered that pride goes before a fall and that the man who fails to give God his due place is always the loser. Then it was that he forsook pride, perhaps the source of most sin, and acknowledged what he should have known in the first place—that God stands above even the highest king and brings to dust all who exhibit pride. His reason returned to him and he exclaimed: “I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives for ever; for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing.… None can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What doest thou?’ ”

We are small, and there is nothing in any of us to commend us to God. We are dependent, not autonomous. What place is there for pride? God hates it, and its wages is death. Buy therefore humility, a precious jewel that shines like the sun and adorns its possessor with beauty and God’s approval.

EVEN AT 20,000 FEET we had been enveloped in clouds, and as the plane descended we realized we were passing through unusual turbulence while at the same time we were surrounded by a pall of blackness. We could sense that our descent was rapid, and at times the force of the storm caused the plane to toss like a leaf.

On and on, and down and down, we went. Almost every passenger had his eyes glued to the windows; some were ill, many were acutely apprehensive.

After what seemed an age there was a momentary rift in the clouds, and below we could see land. Then all was dark again and we continued on our course. But we had seen the earth, and before long we broke out of the low-lying clouds and landed safely at our intended airport, very relieved and very thankful.

There were certain fixed elements in this experience: accurate instruments, an experienced crew, the land beneath and the airport, which had not moved.

In the realm of the spirit there are fixed elements that mean comfort and assurance for the believer. Like Isaiah we live in a deeply disturbed world. We find the prophet saying: “Ah, the thunder of many peoples, they thunder like the thundering of the sea! Ah, the roar of nations, they roar like the roaring of mighty waters! The nations roar like the roaring of many waters, but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away, chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind and whirling dust before the storm” (Isa. 17:12, 13).

There is no peace in looking to man. There is no hope in the things man makes. There is grave danger in rejoicing in his ability to effect change. There is certain disaster in forgetting God. Again we read: “You have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge” (Isa. 17:10a).

It is said that the changes that have taken place in the past sixty years are greater than those between the time of Noah and the sailing of the Mayflower. Change occurs in many areas of life; many things must change. But let us never forget that some things are unchangeable.

One of the grave philosophical errors of our time is the affirmation that all things are relative, that nothing is fixed. From this false premise many harmful deductions follow.

It is often pointed out that to say there are no absolutes is to make an absolute statement. There are many absolutes, and on them rests man’s hope for time and eternity. That we live in a time of accelerating change makes it all the more necessary for man to place his faith in those absolutes.

God’s truth is not relative; it is unchanging from age to age. The psalmist says, “Long have I known from thy testimonies that thou hast founded them for ever” (Ps. 119:152).

Jesus, the Christ of the Scriptures, is an absolute. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews expresses this vital truth in these words: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8). It is significant that this warning follows: “Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings” (v. 9a). Those who now reject the finality of the biblical revelation of Christ simply add to the confusion of our times.

The person and work of the Holy Spirit, his deity and his power within the hearts of men, are absolutes. To read some theologians today, one would think there was no such person as the One sent into the world to bear witness to the truth. The fact is that God is working right now, independently of worldly power or might, by the blessed ministry of the third person of the Trinity.

The moral laws of God are absolutes. He must be our only object of worship. No image shall be made for the purpose of worship. God’s name is holy, not to be taken in vain. One day in seven is necessary for man’s spiritual and physical rest. Parents are to be honored. Murder is always wrong; so is adultery; so is stealing. And God condemns the false witness and the covetous heart.

Deny the absolutes of God’s moral law and anything can happen. The new morality and situation ethics are the natural outcome of rejecting God’s absolutes. In such a rejection, how great the chaos man creates for himself!

As the panic of a drowning man changes to confidence when he finds a rock on which to stand, so one caught in the swirling changes and uncertainties of a world in rebellion against God finds hope and peace when he rests his all on Christ, the sure Foundation.

We are truly living in a time such as that predicted by Daniel: “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase” (Dan. 12:4b). Knowledge without wisdom, however, makes man a prisoner of his own innate sinfulness. The vast changes that have taken place and will continue to take place in the world stagger the imagination, but none of them can change the human heart. Man continues to commit the very same sins he committed thousands of years ago. Amid all the change, the absolute of evil in the heart of man continues.

It was in answer to this “absolute” of man’s sinfulness that God sent his Son with the “absolute” of regeneration for all who will believe in the efficacy of the Cross.

The restlessness of today’s youth is a confession of frustration and emptiness. Many young people are idealistic, but they do not know the One who can translate human idealism into divine transformation. Millions of parents have failed because they have put things first in their lives, only to find that things crumble to ashes with the using, leaving a haunting emptiness.

The psalmist had discovered the secret of faith in the One who is absolute: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.… ‘Be still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth!’ The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge” (Ps. 46:1–3, 10, 11).

For man, living in a changing and a deeply troubled world, God has a word of certainty and a hope that is absolute. Only too often the yearnings of the human soul are inarticulate. They must be stirred by the Spirit, speaking in and through God’s written Word. What comfort in words like these: “God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose.… We have this promise as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf” (Heb. 6:17, 19, 20).

Men need this word of assurance. They need to realize that their hope is in God, not man, and that while they see change and decay on every hand, there is One who never changes.

This is the glory and the hope of the Gospel!

L. NELSON BELL

Attack On Human Autonomy

A Christian Theory of Knowledge, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1969, 390 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Ronald H. Nash, director of the Graduate Program in Humanities, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green.

No student of Christian theology and philosophy should regard his education as complete until he has carefully worked his way through at least one of Professor Van Til’s books. In this extension of his earlier Defense of the Faith, Van Til continues his attack on all systems of thought that exalt the automony of man at the expense of the sovereign God of the Scriptures. If God is sovereign, nothing can be above him (such as the laws of logic) or can exist independently of him (such as “facts”). Human knowledge is impossible unless man’s knowledge is analogical of the divine knowledge, that is, unless man thinks God’s thoughts after him. Van Til’s purpose in this book is to show modern man the relevance of Christianity by demonstrating that only Christianity has the answers to the questions that modern thought seeks in vain.

The thesis of modern theology, philosophy, and science is that “nothing can be said conceptually about a God who is above what Kant calls the world of phenomena, the world of experience.” But, Van Til counters, if the God of Christian theism does not exist (or cannot be known), then Chance is ultimate. And if Chance is ultimate, then nothing (neither words, nor thoughts, nor events) can have any meaning. But if nothing has meaning, it is impossible to deny (or affirm) the existence of God or anything else. The effort to eliminate God turns out to be self-defeating. “If Christian theism is not true, then nothing is true.… So far as modern thought is not based upon the presupposition of the truth of Christianity it is lost in utter darkness. Christianity is the only alternative to chaos.” The “death of God” is simply the inevitable result of the elevation of autonomous man over God. It is what we should have expected all along.

The foundation of all non-Christian thought is the presupposition of human autonomy. Van Til is especially hard on non-Reformed Christians who try to support their faith by appeals to logic, to “facts,” or to probability. If God is sovereign, neither he nor his Word can be compromised by such appeals. Van Til also attacks (correctly, I think) the modern dialectical approach to the Scriptures, which prides itself on its “dialogue” with modern man. The dialogue is spurious, Van Til contends, because the Christ presented by dialectical theology is a Christ that no one can know.

While Van Til devotes space to several of his critics (Floyd Hamilton and J. Oliver Buswell, Jr.), his book does not contain one reference to the man who over the years has offered the most serious objections to his position. I am referring to Van Til’s “fellow Calvinist,” Gordon Clark of Butler University. Clark continues to be concerned over the qualitative difference that exists in Van Til’s system between the divine and human knowledge. According to Van Til, God’s knowledge and man’s do not (and cannot) coincide at a single point, from which it follows that no proposition can mean the same thing to God and man. Clark’s contention is then that Van Til’s view leads to skepticism, because if God knows all truth and man’s “knowledge” does not coincide with what God knows at a single point, then man does not possess knowledge. Until Van Til answers this objection, I must agree with Clark.

I have several objections of my own, also. All Van Til’s conclusions are supposed to follow from the principles set forth in his first three chapters, but it is exactly at this point that his argument is weakest. Take, for example, his defense of the Scriptures. Like Van Til, I believe in the authority and the inspiration of the Bible. But so far as the ultimate validity of his system is concerned, everything depends on Van Til’s ability to defend the authority of the Scriptures without making any appeal to logic or to “facts.” He argues then that the authority of the Scriptures is self-attesting.

As I see it, a self-attesting truth is one that cannot be questioned. A good example of a self-attesting truth would be an analytic statement like “All bachelors are unmarried men.” No evidence can be offered that could throw the truth of this statement into question; no evidence is even needed to support its truth. But in the case of the Scriptures, even Van Til admits that there are problems. He does not think the problems are sufficient to undermine the authority of the Bible, but the important thing here is his recognition that problems do exist. I fail to understand how a system of truth that faces problems which even Van Til admits may never be fully resolved (see page 35) can be self-attesting.

A second problem concerns Van Til’s peculiar understanding of the term fact. It is impossible, he argues, to separate a fact from its ultimate interpretation, which means God’s interpretation. I am willing to grant this, but how is a sincere disciple of Van Til supposed to know when his facts are God-interpreted? When they are consistent with the Scriptures? Hardly, for the Bible says nothing about most of the facts in question. When our interpretation coincides with God’s? Hardly, for we must never forget that there is no point of identity between the divine and human knowledge. I contend then that Van Til’s use of “fact” is vacuous, since there is no way for man to know when his facts are God-interpreted.

Finally, I am most uncomfortable in the presence of Van Til’s treatment of logic, which he derides as a test of truth. Yet at the same time, he warns that we must not take the biblical teaching about both divine sovereignty and human responsibility as a contradiction. In fact, he admits on the bottom of page 38 that the presence of a logical contradiction in the Bible would be evidence against the Bible’s claim to be the Word of God. For the life of me, I cannot understand this vacillating use of logic. It looks very much as if Van Til introduces logic when it is convenient and ushers it out the back door when it is no longer needed.

I believe these problems are serious. But I do not think they detract from the importance of this book or from Van Til’s stature as one of the most important and original Christian apologists of this century.

New Testament Potpourri

Neotestamentica et Semitica, edited by E. Earle Ellis and Max Wilcox (T. and T. Clark, 1969, 297 pp., 55s.) is reviewed by Robert H. Gundry, chairman of the division of biblical studies and philosophy, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Not expecting to agree with everything in a critical Festschrift, one nevertheless hopes for learning and stimulus. This book does not disappoint. Its twenty-two technical articles, all by well-known biblical scholars, cover Principal Black’s three areas of special interest: New Testament interpretation, textual criticism, and Semitic backgrounds. One article is in French, four in German, and the rest in English. Only a sampling is here possible.

N. A. Dahl finds Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac behind Romans 3:24, 25; 8:32; and Galatians 3:13, 14; he claims that Paul was drawing from prior Jewish-Christian theology of atonement, and interprets that theology in terms of the Jewish haggadic idea that God grants redemption as an adequate reward to Abraham for his sacrifice of Isaac.

W. D. Davies discusses the moral teaching of the early Church. But does he really answer his own question whether according to the New Testament the Church should try to transform the outside world? He excuses the early Church for not doing so by noting its lack of status and its expectation of a near Parousia, and he emphasizes its ethical example. But are we to go beyond that, or stick to the primitive paradigm?

In an impressive study of Matthew 18:3, J. Dupont rejects the alleged Semitism, “Unless you become little children again,” and treats the statement as a floating logion differently inserted by Matthew and Mark.

E. E. Ellis suggests that Christian midrash on Old Testament passages stands behind some New Testament quotations of the Old. Application of the term midrash is a gain, but the basic idea seems to echo what Dodd said about Christian use of Old Testament text-plots. Indeed, Dodd’s discovery of text-plots would have been the best substantiation for the suggestion of Ellis, had he but mentioned them.

C. F. D. Moule defends the unity and authenticity of Mark 4:1–20 (including the interpretation of the parable of the sower) and argues that parables were pedagogical challenges and thus only in a subdued sense damnatory to spiritual dullards.

E. Stauffer demonstrates that in some Christian literature the designation of Jesus as the son of Mary was recognized as a charge of illegitimacy and therefore suppressed (where not thus recognized, it was retained as indicative of miraculous birth). Stauffer then revives Zahn’s interpretation of Matthew’s nativity account as sober apologetic in the face of that charge—and thus not fanciful haggadah.

K. Aland dates the short ending of Mark in the second century before the long ending and as a counter to the statement that the women “spoke nothing to no one” (16:8).

F. F. Bruce discusses the use and interpretation of Daniel at Qumran. One misses an explanation how Daniel attained canonical status so quickly under a Maccabean date of writing.

And there is more—including useful indexes, a curriculum vitae of Principal Black, and a bibliography of his writings. Altogether a fitting tribute to a master among scholars.

Joins Scholarship And Reverence

The Old Testament of the Jerusalem Bible, edited by Alexander Jones (Doubleday, 1969, 1,587 pp., $11.95), is reviewed by Ludwig R. M. Dewitz, associate professor of Old Testament Language, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

While in some areas of current Christian debate the heritage of the Reformation seems to be forgotten, it is certainly very much brought to the fore by the continuing and wide interest in making the Bible to be heard again as God’s Word.

The Old Testament translation of the Jerusalem Bible is another attempt to render the Hebrew and Aramaic text in an English version that avoids archaic, fossilized phrasing and preserves the vivid directness of biblical narrative and prophetic oracle.

The “lo” and “behold” of the older versions is rendered as “see” (Gen. 1:29; 3:22) or very pointedly as “here” or “here it is” (Isa. 7:14; 42:1). Similarly, the use of the Hebrew word for “and,” which produces a certain monotone in older translations, is rendered in various ways (such as “when,” “now,” and “but,”) or is happily left out (Gen. 3:20; 12:1).

However, the great merit of the translation lies not so much in the rendering of particular words as in the general structure of phrases. Thus the repetitive phrase about the six days in Genesis one is well given as “evening came and morning came.” In Psalms 2:1–3, the staccato rhythm of the Hebrew seems to be reflected in the words: “Why this uproar among the nations? Why this impotent muttering of pagans—kings on earth rising in revolt, princes plotting against Yahweh and his Anointed, ‘Now let us break their fetters! Now let us throw off their yoke!’ ”

A special merit of the translation is the consistent rendering of the tetragrammaton YHWH as Yahweh. This eliminates the danger that the usual rendering—“Lord”—will become merely a synonym for “God,” or that attention will be drawn to his sovereign office as ruler, when in reality the use of YHWH conveys the special personal relationship of the Covenant God to his people and the world.

As in every translation, problems arise, especially where the original text is far from clear. It is difficult to understand why, for instance, Psalm 16:2, 3 is expressed in a way that certainly necessitates the explanatory footnote, when the possibility of the RSV rendering is much clearer. Where the given Hebrew text is corrected in translation, this is stated in the notes, and generally the versions or the Dead Sea Scrolls are cited, if they support the translation. This could also have been done in Isaiah 21:8, where the Isaiah Scroll supports the translation “the look-out” for the erroneous “a lion” in the Massoretic text.

This Old Testament translation offers far more than a translation. The notes throughout are given for clarification as well as for theological perspective. Although it is a Roman Catholic work, based on the 1956 French edition of La Sainte Bible produced by the Dominican Biblical School in Jerusalem under the leadership of Père de Vaux, the notes in general do not betray what Protestants may regard as a particular Roman Catholic bias.

In the English version, the notes are a translation from the French, while the text has been newly translated from the original languages. The short introductions to the various sections of the Old Testament are excellent. What is most refreshing is that the Old Testament is regarded as part of the Christian Bible; thus the notes draw attention to any messianic significance and do not fail to point out relevant passages in the New Testament. Verses like Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 7:14, and Psalms 110:1 arc a few of a host where the notes are very helpful.

Since this is a Roman Catholic version, the Apocrypha are distributed through the Old Testament, joined to the books and episodes where they belong.

All in all, we have here a felicitous product of the best of modern scholarship joined with a deep reverence and devotion for the Bible as the Word of God.

‘Don’T Think, But Look!’

New Essays on Religious Language, edited by Dallas M. High (Oxford, 1969, 235 pp., $5), is reviewed by Alvin Plantinga, professor of philosophy, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The essential feature of this collection of essays is, according to its editor, “that rather than prescribing limits for the meaning of religious language or arguing over preconceived categories for religious talk, something done a decade or so ago, the authors, without saying so, have taken seriously the later Wittgenstein’s lesson to ‘look and see’ or as he puts it in another way, ‘don’t think, but look!’ ” Perhaps the most interesting piece is Robert Coburn’s “A Neglected Use of Theological Language”—a carefully wrought explanation and defense of the idea that an essential feature of theological statements is to answer religious limiting questions (Why am I here? Why is life sometimes so cruel? Why should I keep my promises?) in such a way as to preclude further inquiry.

Another interesting piece is “The Justification of Religious Belief,” in which Basil Mitchell objects to the view that there are no ways of arguing for, or defending, or rationally choosing between, competing world views or total systems. Yet although he refutes Alastair McIntyre’s argument, Mitchell doesn’t really answer the question on the tip of our tongues: how does one go about making rational choices between such competing systems?

Three essays—William Poteat’s “God and the ‘Private I’ ” and “Birth, Suicide and the Doctrine of Creation: an Exploration of Analogies,” and I. T. Ramsey’s “Paradox in Religion”—unite in finding illuminating parallels between the “logics” of the words God and I. Thus, for example, Ramsey: “The logical behavior of ‘I’ then, being grounded in a disclosure and ultimately distinct from all descriptive language while nevertheless associated with it, is a good clue to that of ‘God,’ and we can expect the paradoxes of ‘I’ to help us somewhat in our logical exploration of unavoidable religious paradox, to help us distinguish the bogus from the defensible.”

Two other pieces compare religion and science: Ramsey’s “Religion and Science: A Philosopher’s Approach” and Frederick Ferré’s “Mapping the Logic of Modals in Science and Theology.” I thought these interesting, but in need of a much more searching and thorough inquiry into contemporary physics and its logic. In addition, there are Erich Heller’s “Ludwig Wittgenstein: Unphilosophical Notes,” Paul Holmer’s “Wittgenstein and Theology,” and C. B. Daly’s “Metaphysics and the Limits of Language.”

Book Briefs

Captives of the Word, by Louis and Bess Cochran (Doubleday, 1969, 274 pp., $5.95). A narrative history of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Christian Churches (independent), and the Churches of Christ.

Speaking from the Pulpit, by Wayne Mannebach and Joseph Mazza (Judson, 1969, 128 pp., $4.95). Relates techniques of effective public speaking to the preparation and delivery of sermons.

The Christian Way, by John W. Miller (Herald, 1969, 136 pp., paperback, $1.50). A study manual based on the Sermon on the Mount.

Pastoral Care in Crucial Human Situations, by Wayne E. Oates and Andrew D. Lester (Judson, 1969, 206 pp., $6.50). Ministers with clinical experience share their insights about how the pastor can minister to people caught in certain difficult situations (e.g., parents of mentally retarded children, parents of children with cancer, emotionally disturbed adolescents, chronically ill persons).

Design for Evangelism, by Joe Hale (Tidings, 1969, 119 pp., paperback, $1.95). Relates the ministry of evangelism to both the deep conflicts within men and the great social issues of the contemporary scene.

Like Father Like Son Like Hell!, by Robert R. Hansel (Seabury, 1969, 126 pp., $3.95). Contends that the roots of adult-youth alienation are not in a chronological age gap but in an “assumption gap”—the new generation rejects the assumption that the young are nobodies waiting around to become somebodies.

Enjoy Your Bible, by Irving L. Jensen (Moody, 1969, 127 pp., paperback. S.50). Suggestions to make personal Bible study more stimulating.

Exploring Christianity, by David F. Siemens Jr. (Moody, 1969, 127 pp., paperback, $.50). This popular apologetic for Christianity surveys the evidence presented by miracles, prophecy, and the character and teachings of Christ.

Breakthrough: Rediscovery of the Holy Spirit, by Alan Walker (Abingdon, 1969, 92 pp., $2.75). Traces the weakness of mankind and impotence of the Church to the loss of the power of the Holy Spirit in our churches and personal lives.

Revolution Now!, by Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ, 1969, 207 pp., paperback, $.60). The president of Campus Crusade for Christ believes that the Great Commission can be fulfilled in our generation; in this volume he tells how it can be done.

Last Things, compiled by H. Leo Eddleman (Zondervan, 1969, 160 pp., $3.95). A symposium of prophetic messages by evangelicals representing a broad spectrum of viewpoints.

Helping the Retarded to Know God, by Hans Hahn and Werner Raasch (Concordia, 1969, 112 pp., paperback, $1.95). A manual covering all phases of Christian education for the mentally retarded. A leaders’ guide for use in class study.

The Promise of Bonhoeffer, by Benjamin A. Reist (Lippincott, 1969, 128 pp., $3.50). Latest addition to the “Promise of Theology” series, which deals with the life and work of major figures in contemporary theology.

In Castro’s Clutches, by Clifton Edgar Fite (Moody, 1969, 158 pp., $3.95). The story of James David Fite, a missionary to Cuba who was imprisoned there by the Communists for over three years.

Fifty Key Words: The Church, by William Stewart (John Knox, 1969, 84 pp., paperback, $1.65). Brief explanation of the meaning and use of fifty bywords relating to the Church.

Mo Bradley and Thailand, by Donald C. Lord (Eerdmans, 1969, 227 pp., paperback, $3.95). Biographical study of a pioneer missionary’s ministry in Thailand from 1836 to 1873.

Suicide is not a new problem. Samson took his life so as to avenge his enemies in the process. Yet Samson made the list in Hebrews 11 of those “who had by faith obtained an excellent repute.” Saul too took his life rather than be tortured and killed by his enemies. Likewise his armor-bearer killed himself. Abimelech committed suicide because he assumed he was mortally wounded. He did not wish it said that he had been killed by a woman. Ahithophel committed suicide in a rather orderly fashion after his counsel had been rejected by Absalom.

In the New Testament, we find Judas Iscariot, overcome with guilt, taking his life. The very center of Christian faith is the One who said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Christ permitted his own death so that he might abolish death and bring life to his followers.

The World Health Organization estimates that each day an average of at least 1,000 persons commit suicide. And a conservative estimate of the ratio of attempted suicide to achieved suicide is eight to one. Norway, Holland, Ireland, and Spain are countries with low suicide rates throughout the twentieth century. Switzerland, Austria, and Denmark have persistently high rates, while both Canada and the United States have consistently been in the middle range. Canada’s rate was 8.6 per 100,000 persons, in 1966. In recent years the rate in the United States has been 10 or 11 per 100,000. That is, about 25,000 Americans kill themselves annually. Suicide is the tenth most common cause of death for all Americans. It is in fourth place among teen-agers and second place among college students.

Factors that have shown a statistical correlation with a high rate of suicide include being divorced and to a lesser extent being widowed or single. The occupations of law and medicine are associated with a high rate, and within medicine psychiatrists have the highest rate. There are approximately three male suicides for every female suicide. Attempted suicide presents a different picture; here women outnumber men about three to one. High rates in America are also associated with being white, elderly, or mentally ill, coming from a broken home, or having an alcoholic parent. Periods of economic depression are associated with high suicide rates. So are cultures such as the Japanese that take a permissive attitude toward suicide.

Low rates in America are associated with being married, being black, and having good mental health. Low rates are also associated with wartime and with countries that have a strong prohibitory attitude toward suicide, such as Spain and Italy.

Myths About Suicide

Myth 1. The rate of suicide is steadily rising in the United States. The truth is there has been little overall change in the rate during this century.

Myth 2. Suicide and attempted suicide are the same class of behavior. Most commonly, suicides are committed by those who want to die. Attempted suicide is often a cry for help. Attempted suicide and actual suicide represent two different, though overlapping, populations.

Myth 3. Suicide is a problem of a specific class of people. Suicide is sometimes referred to as “the curse of the poor” or the “disease of the rich.” But in reality it is very “democratic” and is represented fairly proportionately through all levels of society.

Myth 4. In the United States, suicide is more common among Protestants than among Catholics. Studies in this area are not conclusive, and some have even shown the opposite. Most studies tell nothing about the extent of religious commitment of either Protestants or Catholics involved and therefore have little meaning.

Myth 5. People who talk about suicide don’t commit suicide. About 80 per cent of those who take their own lives have communicated their intention to someone prior to the act. Suicides do not usually occur without warning, and threats must be taken seriously.

Myth 6. Once a person is suicidal, he is suicidal forever. If the reasons for the person’s suicide attempt can be remedied, he no longer remains suicidal.

Myth 7. Suicide is inherited or runs in families. It is an individual matter that can be prevented.

Myth 8. All suicidal persons are mentally ill; suicide is always the action of a psychotic person. There is considerable evidence that a sane person can commit suicide. A person with no moral objection to suicide may rationally do just that. On a large scale there have been examples of this among the hara-kiri-indoctrinated Japanese on their Kamikaze flights in World War II, and in the Hindu custom of suttee in which widows cremated themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres. A more recent example is the suicides of the Buddhist monks in Viet Nam.

Myth 9. If a person is a Christian, he will not commit suicide. This is, unfortunately, not true, as both physicians and clergymen could readily testify. Nor should we be surprised by this fact. Many things have a bearing on our mental health, including our genetics, possible intrauterine damage, early childhood experiences, our biochemistry, our physical health, the organic functioning of our brain, and the vicissitudes of life, as well as our Christian faith and experience. It is therefore understandable that faith is not a guarantee of mental health. Christians do develop serious depressions, schizophrenia, and organic brain conditions—all of which carry some danger of suicide.

Why Suicide?

One of the problems in studying suicide is that the person of our concern is put out of our reach by the very act that makes us wish to know and study him. Suicide represents a final, common pathway of many diverse circumstances in differing people.

Sociologists have been very concerned with the understanding of suicide. For the past half century the theories of Durkheim have been influential. He tended to view suicide as a product of certain kinds of societies. His central concept was “social integration,” which he maintained was inversely related to suicide rates. That is, where social solidarity is strong, there will be little suicide; where it is weak or shattered, there will be more. Sociological studies of the problem of suicide still emphasize social disorganization, social mobility, and social isolation as factors influencing suicide rates.

Psychiatrists and psychologists have focused more on the individual person. In psychiatric theories of suicide, shame, guilt, inferiority, and alienation are recurring themes. Shame is the feeling that one has not reached his own or others’ standards. Guilt is the feeling of having done something wrong. And on both the conscious and the unconscious level, shame and guilt produce feelings of inferiority. Closely related to this is the concept of alienation. Feeling inferior alienates one not only from others but also—when there is a gross discrepancy between the person one would like to be and the person one realizes he is—from oneself. These feelings contribute to the development of loneliness and isolation, so that life may come to seem more horrible than death.

It is often said that suicidal people are very self-centered and very angry with themselves and others. For many people, self-esteem depends upon a continuous flow of success of various kinds. Personal failures result in the loss of self-esteem. Furthermore, suicidal people may have experienced frustration of their dependency needs; that is, over and over they have found that people let them down. All these experiences generate hostility and lead a person to conclude he is not very important; a low feeling of self-worth, if not outright self-hatred, follows.

Maurice L. Farber has recently proposed a general theory of suicide in which he attempts to integrate the individual and social dynamics (Theory of Suicide, Funk and Wagnalls, 1968). That is, he has sought to find both the psychological and the cultural routes of suicide. He presents good evidence that the various individual dynamics can be combined in a theory that the probability of suicide varies inversely with a person’s hope. Hope is defined as “a confident expectation that a desired outcome will occur.” The common denominator of all suicides is a despairing hopelessness, often the consequence of a psychiatric breakdown but also possible in “sane” but psychologically vulnerable persons. The most basic feeling within the person who commits suicide is an impaired feeling of competence. This has its origins in childhood experiences and is often compounded in adult life by a series of failures—occupational, social, and/or marital. “Nervous breakdowns” and alcoholism often result, and these increase the feeling of incompetence. The vulnerable person reaches the place where he can see no path to a tolerable existence.

Turning to society, Farber says that there are suicide-producing forces in every culture and that suicide rates are an expression of the cultures in which they occur. Once again, the unifying principle that determines rates within a given culture is the degree of hope that the culture engenders for its members. He suggests that the society that has low suicide rates will be one in which the individual members provide support for one another and have reason for a good degree of hope for the future.

Factors in a society that decrease the feeling of hope increase the incidence of suicide. Among these factors are high demands for being competent at all times in a very competitive, unforgiving milieu, or demands for a great deal of interpersonal giving. The person who lacks a feeling of competence may need to be dependent and may find himself unable to give.

Christian Faith And Suicide

If hope is the best preventative for suicide, does Christianity play a role? Our God is called by Paul “the God of hope” (Rom. 15:13). A relationship with Jesus Christ promises the individual a forgiveness that takes away shame and guilt, and an ultimate promise to wipe out all the differences between the ideal self and the real self. This makes living with one’s real self a lot easier and brings meaning and purpose into life. One is related not only to a heavenly Father in a mutual love relationship from which obedience follows readily but also, as a result, to all of mankind. Fellow men are seen in a different light. They are no longer just threats to one’s hopes and securities in the battle for survival; they are those for whom Christ came to earth and gave up his life in love. A relationship with Christ offers a new sense of personal worth. Feelings of incompetence and hopelessness are countered by the awareness of God’s love and concern.

These changes within a person instill a new hope. The threats in the external world are put in a new perspective, for when a person comes into a relationship with Christ, his whole value-system changes. No longer are his primary concerns those things that moths can get at and rust can ruin; no longer are the fragile status symbols necessary. The prime value to the Christian is his loving relationship with God through Christ. The ordinary threats to material existence such as financial loss, loss of reputation, suffering, tragedy—these have a totally new meaning. Even aging and death are positive experiences for those who increasingly value their relationship with Christ, and who increasingly are less concerned about their material possessions. For them, death is freedom from physical limitations of this world and a new closeness to their primary love-object. It is of interest to compare the hope of Paul as found in Romans 8:31–38 with the hope of Nietzsche, who said that the thought of suicide is sometimes “a great consolation; by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.”

A society that does not offer much hope is said to have a higher rate of suicide. There seems to be much that works against hope in our society today. As one looks at the problems of racial strife, war, civil disobedience, inequality of law, the extremes of the far right and the new left, poverty, exploding population, violence, and escape in drugs, one wonders why there are not more suicides.

Christian faith offers a view of life and history based on faith in the sovereign God of the universe; this results in an attitude neither paralyzed by the pessimism of the modern existentialist nor headed for the later discouragement of the modern utopian. Christians see a reasonable hope in this world and a perfect hope in the world to come. Within this framework, they are free—indeed, compelled—to work for the betterment of mankind and the relief of human suffering.

The Challenge Of Suicide

As Christians, we cannot condone suicide. We believe in the sanctity of every human life, a sanctity derived from the fact that man is created in the image of God. However, as Christians we must relate to others in a manner that shows that our opposition to suicide does not mean that we lack sympathy for those who have committed suicide or are contemplating it, or for those who are left behind after suicide.

Christians have been in the forefront of society in expressing their desire to prevent suicide. The first modern American suicide-prevention agency was the “Save a Life League” begun in New York City by a Baptist minister, Harry Warren, in 1906. In the same year in London, the Salvation Army launched its Anti-Suicide Bureau. Both of these organizations still function. In 1953 the Samaritans started a similar program in London initiated by an Anglican clergyman, Chad Varah; its primary purpose was the systematic befriending of ordinary people by ordinary people. By 1966 this organization had seventy-five branches in the British Isles. These services have been widely acclaimed in secular circles.

The problem of suicide is a challenge to us as individual Christians to exhibit an increased concern for those round about us. As the Church seeks to meet those needs in society that play a part in the chain of events leading to suicide, so must the individuals who are the Church meet these needs in other individuals. Dare we let the Christ-like life take over in us? Have we caught the significance of the fact that in serving and helping others, we are serving Christ? Do we really live as if Christ is present for us in suffering humanity? Are we as closely identified with the poor, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned, the outcasts—that is, those without hope—as Christ was? Do we even want our indifference healed?

Louis I. Dublin concluded a sociological study of suicide by stating, “The remedy then is to make the social group more consistent and more coherent; to make its members realize their mutual interdependence; and to aim toward creating a society that fulfills the needs of each member in it” (Suicide: A Sociological and Statistical Study, Ronald Press, 1963). Similarly, Farber says, “Suicide will be reduced by the introduction into society of sources of hope, of institutions that foster the sense of competence, that supply something of succorance and even love.” This is the challenge!

Farber also describes the problem, however: “The established religions provide hope for some, but in the main they no longer engage the emotions sufficiently deeply to provide a nourishing, anti-suicidal hope.” I wonder if some of us share some blame for this last statement. While it is essential to be both orthodox and loving, it is essential to be known more for our love than for our orthodoxy!

Christians sometimes find it difficult to make a specifically Christian assessment of the various circumstances of life. This is particularly so in regard to the three fundamental forms of life: marriage, work, and society. Martin Luther recognized and stressed these spheres of community as being the natural forms of human life intended by the Creator within which it was possible to serve and glorify God. In The Divine Imperative Brunner points out that these forms of community or orders of creation are all “independent of faith, and of the love which flows from faith.… Their nature and their existence are recognized by means of reason, not by faith” (Lutterworth, 1953, p. 335).

Luther himself was particularly sensitive to the medieval notion that by renouncing the normal patterns and following a religious vocation one could graduate from works of “obligation” to works of “supererogation,” from the “precepts,” to be fulfilled by all, to the “counsels,” to be fulfilled by only a privileged few. On the contrary, Luther insisted, within the orders of creation we find our vocation and glorify God. Marriage, as one of these fundamental forms of community, is not just a concession to human weakness but a proper and honorable vocation within which the imitation of Christ is both possible and necessary. As one modern writer has said,

Our Lord had but one vocation—to be the agent of God’s saving work for men. It was a vocation universal in its significance which precluded any private vocation. We have our private vocations, our husbands, it may be, and fathers, and have our professional or business responsibilities. We have to seek to be faithful in our callings as he was faithful to his, but we may not copy his acts as if our vocation were identical with his [S. Cave, The Christian Way, Nisbet, 1955, p. 153].

Before we leave this general topic of the orders of creation, we need to hear the important reminder of Brunner that human sin has affected both our understanding of these orders and also their historic form:

They are created by the natural psychophysical powers of men; but this does not mean that they have been created aright, in accordance with the Divine Will.… Marriage, family life, and the education of children exist outside the range of the influence of the Christian revelation. But the clear knowledge of “right” marriage, of the “right” estimate of the value of children, the “right” aim of education is not a universal possession of human reason.… The most important task of a Christian ethic of society is that of throwing light upon the relation between the natural existence and understanding of the existing forms of community, and the Divine Will, perceived by faith [The Divine Imperative, pp. 335, 336].

In other words, as Christians enlightened by the biblical word we recognize the presence of a distortion passing right through creation, not least through those very forms within which we are called to live. In their present form, as Brunner again reminds us, “they witness quite as much to human sin … as to the divine creation.”

The Bible makes no apology for the fact that our existence is a bodily one. It does not share either the Greek philosophic contempt for the body or the same society’s obvious fascination with the human form. The body is neither despised as an encumbrance nor gloried in as though it were the vehicle and sphere of ultimate experience. Therefore, within the biblical perspective, the extremes of asceticism or indulgence will never express the proper use of our bodies. We are created a psychophysical unity, and throughout the Bible the dissolution of this unity is not contemplated. Our bodies, says St. Paul, are “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19), and “the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead … shall also quicken your mortal bodies … (Rom. 8:11). Although we cannot foresee the character of our ultimate futures, we are assured by the resurrection of Jesus that we shall enjoy an embodied mode of existence appropriate to the final purposes of God (1 Cor. 15:35–38, 42–44).

We exist also in a state of sexual polarity. “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27). Here again the Bible preserves the balance between fear and fixation—between self-denial and self-gratification.

Sexual polarity in the Bible has a twofold purpose. First, it is unitive. This fact is illustrated in Genesis 2:18–25. Man is made not for isolation but for companionship and fellowship. The woman fulfills this role. The man and the woman complement and fulfill each other, and the unity of the two finds its perfect physical expression in the act of coition. The Bible indicates that the sexual union consummated in this physical way is a primary expression of God’s will for creatures made in his image, and it must not be subject to interference from outside (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:5, 6). No finer expression of this unitive desire between the sexes can be found within the Bible than the memorable lyrics of the Song of Songs. It is always a mistake to allegorize this part of the Old Testament. The Song of Songs witnesses to the possibility of an intense and pure union between two lovers (cf. Gen. 2:23, 24) and stands as a permanent rebuke to those who would distort human affections and responses in an attempt to achieve a purer religion.

Second, sexual polarity is procreative. The very act that is the physical expression of union and is also, therefore, a means of improving and deepening this union is the act that makes possible the bearing of children. Thus coition is not only unitive but also procreative in its divine intention (Gen. 1:27, 28). This does not mean that every act of coition must have conception as a goal or that the possibility of conception should always be allowed to exist; it does mean that the generative aspect is an irrevocable part of the character of coition, and it strongly underlines the biblical teaching that coition belongs only to that context within which the bearing and rearing of children is possible—that is, a union of a man and a woman that is intended to be permanent. As this is also the logical requirement of the unitive character of sexual polarity, the inappropriateness of sexual consummation outside a permanent union is doubly clear.

At least five aspects of marriage call for comment. The first is the centrality of consent. The essence of the marriage contract is the consent of the two parties to unify their lives. Stuart Barton Babbage writes clearly on this:

There has been frequent debate as to whether consent or consummation constitutes the “essence” of marriage. According to the dictum of Ulpian it is consent, not cohabitation, that makes a marriage. This view was incorporated into the canon law of the Church and is reflected in the Church’s marriage service. The intention of the parties to live together in lifelong fidelity and love is expressed by the public exchange of vows: “Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?” And the simple, affirmative answer is “I will.” An identical question is then addressed to the bride with the additional requirement of obedience [Sex and Sanity, Hodder and Stoughton, 1965, p. 41].

“Consummation,” he adds, “is the proper consequence of consent: it is the secret ratification and confirmation by the man and the woman of the public vow and covenant between them made.” This means that where there is this consent, the essence of the marriage of the two people has been fulfilled. Society may, of course, prohibit certain unions by law, and it may ask all who exchange their consents to declare their intentions publicly and have their marriages registered (both for the clarification of social administration and for the safeguarding of the lives and union of the couples concerned and any children they may have), but this public affirmation is not itself part of the essence of marriage. Neither religion nor priest nor ceremony of any kind (religious or otherwise) belongs to the essence of marriage. This means that where there is a legitimate union of two lives lacking the sanction of society (“de facto marriages”) the essence of marriage is present. The only “sin” of this “living in sin” is the deliberate forfeiting of safeguards and advantages that society provides and that true love and concern would, or should, certainly want.

We turn now to motives. Marriage, approved by the state, is that form of association between a man and a woman within which it is possible and right to pursue a full union of persons and within which it is both possible and right (normally) to bear children and raise a family. The Bible also indicates that it is the proper sphere within which to find sexual release and fulfillment (1 Cor. 7:9). In St. Paul’s discussion of this motive for marriage, he takes for granted the readiness for family responsibilities that this obviously entails, and he stresses the need for mutual consideration between marriage partners before he recommends matrimony as a haven for unruly sexual drives (1 Cor. 7:1–9). (John Calvin’s remark, “It is one thing to burn, it is another to feel heat,” is worth noting.)

A third aspect of this many-sided topic of marriage is monogamy. It is plain in the light of biblical teaching that God’s ideal for marriage is monogamy. This is the clear implication of Genesis 2, and it is of the very nature of love between the sexes that it excludes a third person. “Genuine love,” says Brunner, “is single-minded—indeed that is its power. Genuine love … always feels: ‘it is with this particular person that I wish to live alone and for always’ ” (The Divine Imperative, p. 347). The monogamous logic of love is further strengthened by the structural relationships brought about by childbearing. Brunner speaks of this as a “trinity of being.” He says, “The seeing eyes of all three, our mutual knowledge of one another and of this relation, holds us firmly to one another.” Where, of course, as in parts of the Old Testament, we come across instances of polygamy, we recognize the tendency of the procreative motive in marriage to dominate at the expense of the unitive motive. But whether this was always the case or not, the Old Testament record of polygamy is rarely without its tensions and sorrows.

A further consideration arising from our biblical understanding of marriage is the importance of fidelity. It is clearly intertwined with love and inseparable from it in a properly fulfilled union. Love in the vigor of its initial enthusiasm readily pledges its fidelity, but it is this pledge of fidelity that generally makes possible the continuation and maturation of love. Again, Brunner’s words are good:

Through the marriage vows the feeling of love is absorbed into the personal will; this alone provides the guarantee to the other party which justifies the venture of such a life companionship. Marriage which is based only upon love is inevitably accompanied by the fear that love may fade, and thus by fear of the dissolution of the marriage; it may even be accompanied by something still worse (which owing to the imperfect nature of natural love, is not infrequent)—a secret reckoning on the possibility of freedom to contract another union, should this one prove unsatisfying. “Companionate marriage” or “experimental marriage” is never true marriage, because it lacks the most essential element, that is, the obligation to be faithful [The Divine Imperative, pp. 357, 358].

He continues:

It is a mistake to say: “If the love is genuine, it will be permanent!” That is simply bad psychology. Of course love, as a fact of nature, means, “intends,” to last forever, but it cannot guarantee its permanence … The spiritual, personal sense of being bound causes natural love, which is in itself unstable, to become stable; it is this, and not the rare exception of a naturally permanent inexhaustible energy of love, which is the secret of a “happy” marriage [p. 360].

Fidelity is one of the great characteristics of God. He is the “faithful one” who “keeps covenant with his people,” and this characteristic God expects in his people also (Num. 30:2; cf. Mal. 2:14–16).

Our last subject within this discussion of the marriage bond is that of order within the family. Paul’s pronouncement about our unity in Christ (Gal. 3:28) is not intended to exclude the various roles and functions that we fulfill within life. The man and the woman differ in physical strength and in psychological approach and in generative function. The husband is intended to protect and provide for his wife. There is, according to the New Testament, an order within marriage. “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). This is spoken of more fully in Ephesians 5:23–25: “The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.”

This then is the pattern. The lordship of the husband is to be patterned on the lordship of Christ (cf. John 13:13–15). Lordship within marriage, says Babbage, means “not aggressive domination but humble service. It means eager and solicitous concern for the happiness and welfare of the other. The wife, for her part, is to respond to her husband’s loving concern with cheerful obedience” (Sex and Sanity, p. 41).

The marriage bond, as St. Paul recognizes, is the human earthly symbol of the relationship between Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:25–33). Christ, the Last Adam, awaits his Eve in the Paradise of God (Rev. 2:7). It is not God’s will that his Son should stand alone! The heavenly future prospect of the unified people of God gathered around Christ, the Head and Saviour of his body and bride, the Church, does not envisage the continuation of the earthly marriage relationship (Matt. 22:30). Like many other gifts and privileges in this life, marriage belongs to those things that are “in part” and will be “done away” when “that which is perfect is come” (1 Cor. 13:10).

Despite the blueprint for marriage in the Bible, marriages do, in fact, break down. The Law of Moses recognized this in the Old Testament (Deut. 24:1–4). The provision for divorce was limited in at least two ways: A man could not divorce a wife whom he had accused falsely of unchastity before her marriage (Deut. 22:13–19), nor a wife whom he had been forced to marry after ravishing her (Deut. 22:28, 29; cf. Exod. 22:16, 17). The divorced wife could remarry, but she could not marry a priest (Lev. 21:7, 14), nor could she remarry her former husband if she had consummated a union with another man in the meantime.

In the Old Testament God reveals himself as the faithful husband of Israel (e.g., Ezek. 16, Hosea) whose fidelity to the covenant agreement brings salvation and renewal to his people. God, who hates the betrayal of oaths (Num. 30:2), is particularly severe in his complaint against those who betray their wives (Mal. 2:14–16). Against the background of this fact, the permission of Deuteronomy 24 notwithstanding, it is somewhat incongruous that by the time of the New Testament era the influential rabbinical school of Hillel was condoning divorce for almost any reason a man might care to nominate. The school of Shammai, on the other hand, restricted the grounds of divorce to unchastity in the wife.

The sayings of Jesus on the matter of divorce are found in Matthew 5:31, 32 and 19:3–12; Mark 10:2–12, and Luke 16:18. Those in Matthew are the same as the one in Luke except for the exceptive clause, while the saying in Mark, though it shares the occasion in common with Matthew 19, refers to the wife as initiating the divorce.

“Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.” The exception found here (Matt. 19:9) and in Matthew 5:32 has been a subject of much dispute. Some scholars regard it as a later insertion—an early attempt to modify the “new law” of Jesus by permitting the major marital offense of the Old Testament as a ground of divorce. Others regard it as original and part of a pronouncement that does, in fact, endorse the views of Shammai (compare Matthew 19:3 with Mark 10:2 for different forms of the initial question), or regard it as original but referring to an act of adultery or fornication prior to the marriage that would make the woman an adulteress if she were to consummate a marriage with someone other than the previous partner. She belongs to her former lover. Still others regard the exception as genuine and as being the only ground that makes a remarriage (as distinct from a divorce) possible. The possibility that all the sayings are authentic pronouncements of Jesus belonging to different occasions can certainly be maintained. As for the narratives in Matthew 19 and Mark 10, if the question in Matthew 19:3 is thought to be more probable than the one in Mark 10:2, then the case for the genuineness of the exceptive clause is strengthened.

Jesus’ words may be understood in several ways. (1) They may be interpreted as deliberately revising the law of Deuteronomy 24 by excluding divorce or remarriage altogether (Mark, Luke), or as excluding divorce and remarriage except where adultery is involved (Matthew), or as permitting divorce (i.e., separation), but not remarriage (Mark, Luke)—except on grounds of adultery (Matthew). (2) They may be regarded as teaching an ideal of total prohibition of divorce that was modified by the early Church (Matthew), either as a maximum concession (adultery) or just as one ground, thereby conceding the possibility of further modifications in the light of Matthew 19:11, 12. (3) They may be regarded not as a fresh piece of legislation replacing the old but as an exposition of the “ideal” (Gen. 2:24 f.) against which all our actions (including those within the law) may be judged. All divorces and remarriages are the rupturing of an ideal, a frustration of the monogamous and unitive pattern that affirms the antithetical pattern of adultery—of simultaneous (i.e., within the lifetime of the original partners) alternative unions. (When adultery has already occurred, the breach in the divine pattern has already taken place [cf. 1 Cor. 6:15, 16]. This would support the possible authenticity of the exceptive clause in Matthew 5 and 19.)

Jesus allows that human sin being what it is, the alternative pattern is tolerated under the Law; but by reiterating the ideal (also in the Law) he thrusts his audience into the position where they must see if their reluctance to fulfill the ideal is due to a “hardness of heart” for which they can offer no excuse but ought, on the contrary, to repent, and press toward the ideal. Hardness of heart continues, and so does divorce as its remedy. But all this falls below the ideal and is judged by it. Human laws are, in part, concessions to fallen nature. The ideal lists our assessment of the actual and makes us realize that even when we are legally innocent we may be actually guilty before God. Jesus, here as elsewhere, does not legislate but confronts us with the divine pattern and says, in effect, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

In First Corinthians 7:9–17 the Apostle addresses himself to Christians living under the word of God and seeking to realize, therefore, the ideals of God in their lives. Paul’s command, based on Jesus’ perspective in Matthew 19, is that there should be no divorce and remarriage (vv. 9–11). Both parties should work toward union, not dissolution. To the mixed marriages, however, Paul does not believe that he has the same right of appeal. The unbeliever does not endorse the divine pattern and cannot be made to act on the basis of something he does not accept as true. If the unbeliever is content to stay, all is well; but if he leaves (“to depart” probably implies divorce), then the believer should not contest the issue or struggle to save an impossible relationship (vv. 12–17). One can only assume that where there is a divorce arising from this latter situation, the believer is at liberty to make up his own mind about remarriage in the light of Matthew 19 and such realities as First Corinthians 7:9.

It seems that at least three lines of action follow from the above discussion. First, there is a pressing need for Christians and churches to instruct their families and congregations about the Christian understanding of marriage and to encourage the pursuit of this ideal despite the different standards that our society condones.

Second, there is a continuing need to inform society about Christian ideals but in a context that makes it clear that the Christian message is not just an ethical exhortation—it is a call to repentance and an offer of salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ. Within this context it needs to be pointed out that the prevalence of divorce in our societies is not just a sign of human “frailty” but also a sign of human “sin.” Our generation needs to hear the words of the Reformation homily:

For this folly is ever from our tender age grown up with us, to have a desire to rule, to think highly of ourself, so that none thinketh it meet to give place to another. That wicked vice of stubborn will and self-love is more meet to break and dissever the love of heart, than to preserve concord. Wherefore married persons must apply their minds in most earnest wise to concord, and must crave continually of God the help of his Holy Spirit, so to rule their hearts and to knit their minds together, that they be not dissevered by any division of discord [“An Homily of the State of Matrimony” from Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to Be Read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, London: SPCK, 1851, p. 535].

Repentance, forgiveness, and prayer are all instruments of remedy of which we hear too little in our unsettled times.

Third, there is a strong need for many churches or denominations to make realistic decisions about the remarrying of divorced people and the reception of divorced and remarried individuals and couples into the life of the congregation. No one would suggest that such decisions are easily made, but too often the possibility of making them has been complicated either by the view of marriage as a sacrament or by the assumption that Jesus rescinded the right of divorce laid down in Deuteronomy 24. Yet even when these confusions are removed, there remains a tension between the individual case and the general standards and truths to which a church witnesses in its institutional forms.

Reviewing national television coverage of General Eisenhower’s funeral, James Reston wrote:

It demonstrated how national television can bring before the people the things that touch their noblest instincts, and in the process reminded us of how seldom we use their remarkable power for this purpose.

Eisenhower, the church and television were unifying forces of tremendous power for good in America in these last few tragic days. They touched some old and worthy echo in the American spirit which politics, religion and television usually repel.

… And through this remarkable instrument of television, the people responded to it with a solemnity and sincerity no cynic could deny.

Reston’s analysis in his New York Times column challenges both the Church and the television industry. It says that if the Church and television can come to terms, television can emerge from its cultural wasteland and the Church can escape its Sunday-morning ghetto. The Eisenhower funeral showed that television has the potential to reach the spirit of man, and that the Church can merit prime-time attention.

As a seasoned Washington correspondent and national observer (and now vice-president of the Times), Reston has suggested a formula: Take an open network attitude toward religious programming, combine it with a church willing to plumb creatively the depths of visual communication, and blend well. The result can be imaginative prime-time telecasting that projects the spiritual, not the animal, nature of man.

This isn’t being done consistently today. Television has the principle that programs should follow Sunday-service and material fare. The Church has not made a strong effort to gain representative video exposure. And the Christian public has not demanded a reasonable share of television time for spiritual programming.

For the most part, churches are not inclined to give up the principle that programs should follow Sunday-service formats. They have produced few contemporary programs able to entertain and to tempt the viewer’s spiritual appetite at the same time. The churches are still trying to reach people within the confines of formal worship, and not on the level where they live.

Here is an obvious impasse. Television is not going to make any time concessions until religious programming shows that it can compete. And religious programming is not going to compete until talented people are convinced that what they create is not going to be buried in the Sunday-morning ghetto.

The answers to the quandary are not simple. They will not be found within the framework of such insipid programs as “The Flying Nun,” nor in reruns of The Robe. And they will not be provided by lengthy discussions of the latest theological fads.

The answers will come if the Church takes the initiative and begins to seek impact on the same creative level as the independent producer who puts together series after series of pilot films in an effort to convince the networks to buy. But the motive from the Church’s perspective has to be a desire to reach people. If this desire is as great as the secular producer’s desire for fame and money, and if there is enough willingness to research the points of relevance, the Church should be able to create programs that compete successfully.

Above all, the Church has to realize that just as evangelism must assume many different postures (as shown at the recent U. S. Congress on Evangelism), so spiritual television programming must find expression in a variety of situation contexts.

Here is the meat of what the Church can portray: examples of believers on the firing line of contemporary events and needs; enactments of Christian heritage, perhaps in a spiritually oriented “Saga of Western Man” series; modern-parable presentations of the Christian message in ways able to speak to all age groups; and exposure of the great music, art, and literature of the Church with an emphasis on the Church’s ability to continue to inspire the arts today. Always the approaches must be artistic and imaginative.

If the Church is going to be persuaded to invest its time, talent, energy, and resources in visually communicative projects, they must have some assurances from the networks. Each network must be as open, from a prime-time perspective, to what the Church may produce competitively as it is to the offerings screened each year by secular producers. Network executives will have to be willing to look at and listen to what the Church has to say. And the dusty arguments about audience ratings and lack of sponsor interest will have to be discarded. The gates that guard prime time from so-called special-interest and minority programming will have to be opened. Network officials will have to agree to guidance and to agree also that the criteria for evaluating church productions will be at least the same as those applied to secular programming.

A merger of interest and responsibility between the television industry and organized religion can take place. For it to happen, however, the networks must be willing to provide the incentive. Just as there is a combining of purpose in providing total coverage of such events as the funeral of a president, so there must be a combining of purpose by the networks to allow creative programming with a spiritual emphasis. By opening the same hour of prime time one night each week—at the start—and filling that hour with a variety of spiritually oriented programs, the networks can take a major step toward encouraging the production of such programs.

Scheduling spiritual programming during the same time period will diminish the possibility of channel-changing by viewers, and as the Church responds creatively to the opportunity, the increasing excellence of this programming will make it able to compete with secular efforts.

Each network will schedule its own programs during this hour. Local independent stations may be persuaded to cooperate by using separate, syndicated material.

This idea opens prime time to spiritual programming, but it also requires competition. Producers (and viewers) will decide which programs or series will survive and which will be cancelled.

Time will not be provided on a free, public-service basis. Sponsorship will have to be sought, and programs and series will be purchased by the networks on the same financial scale as that applied to secular programming. Such an arrangement will allow various church and church-related organizations to recoup production expenses and at the same time provide a possible new source of funds for other evangelistic activities.

The economic possibilities of this idea should be tantalizing to businessmen and advertising executives, especially to those whose products or budgets have not previously seemed conducive to TV sales. Sponsorship of religious-bloc programs can, for example, come from major church-related business and industries. There are large insurance companies that direct sales programs primarily at church members and ministers, and there are book publishers and record manufacturers who do the same.

Time will not be divided up between “Methodist Minutes” and the “Catholic Hour.” Networks can get around such compartmentalization by establishing a counseling committee representing the broadest cross section of spiritual life in America. But denominations will have to compete on the same basis as independent producers.

Initial dialogue aiming at an interdenominational, inter-network agreement should take place in an informal meeting, perhaps as a spinoff of the Religious Communications Congress. Church and network executives must be on hand. Guidelines should be established and a channel for church-network consultation developed. At this point it may be possible to establish a committee to keep communications open between churches and networks. But organization must be kept to a minimum, to allow for the freest, most competitive situation in the development of programming.

A target date for initial submissions could be the spring of 1972, with scheduling beginning the fall of that year or in 1973.

The idea of church and network working together is fraught with dangers, and criticism and complaints are inevitable. Some will see a sinister conspiracy to deprive atheists of their civil rights. Some church groups and individuals will not participate because they will fear the possibility of liberal or conservative theological control of programming.

But the potential for spiritual renewal is too great to permit the project to be inhibited by the fainthearted and the suspicious who put personal philosophies ahead of Christian commitment. The history of the Christian religion is seasoned by the boldness of its saints. Paul, in helping to forge a spiritual force in the world, was shipwrecked three times, publicly flogged eight times, stoned once, imprisoned, starved, and finally killed. He kept confronting the doubters and unbelievers, however, and was an instrument used by God to change the course of history.

For Paul, the results were worth the risks. They should also be for us.

What effect will tax reform have upon local congregations, denominations, and religious organizations?

The Tax Reform Act of 1969, passed by both houses of Congress on December 22, contains a number of provisions which have a direct bearing upon income for religious causes. President Nixon signed the bill into law on December 30.

The bill’s possible impact upon the churches was considered to be especially significant now that some religious groups are reporting significant declines in income. Here is a rundown on specifics in the tax reform measure as they relate to charitable giving and as they were finally agreed upon in the conference report which Congress approved:

On the broad scale, individuals, including contributors to churches, get more take-home pay. The 10 per cent income tax surcharge was to be reduced to 5 per cent as of January 1 and eliminated by July.

People willing and able to give substantial sums to charitable causes get more incentive to do so with the raising of the ceiling for regular charitable deductions from 30 to 50 per cent. A special unlimited charitable deduction, however, is phased out.

Religious groups that get financial help from foundations may be affected somewhat adversely because foundations now for the first time are called to pay a 4 per cent tax on investment income. This may be offset to a degree by a new provision that requires foundations to pay out to charity at least 6 per cent of their net worth each year.

One highly-controversial tax loophole is closed in the imposition of the 48 per cent corporation tax upon most businesses operated by churches. A number of churches have been borrowing money to buy businesses, then leasing them back to their original owners who no longer had to pay income tax because they now belonged to “non-profit corporations.”¹Officially, a law went into effect January 1 in California which requires some church businesses to pay state corporation taxes. Under the revision, if such businesses carried on operations prior to May 27, 1969, they will not have to begin paying the tax until 1976.

One major exception was specifically written in for radio and television stations. The language excepts trades or businesses which consist “of providing services under license issued by a Federal regulatory agency, which is carried on by a religious order or by an educational institution … maintained by such religious order, and which was so carried on before May 27, 1959 [sic], and less than 10 per cent of the net income of which for each taxable year is used for activities which are not related to the purpose constituting the basis for the religious order’s exemption.”

Tax-exempt groups are given rules on the acquisition of income-producing property. In general, the property must be “in the neighborhood of other property owned by the organization” and the organization must intend to use the property for its tax-exempt purpose within ten years. The income for that ten years, however, is tax free.

In this connection, there is a special rule for “a church or convention or association of churches.” These are given fifteen tax-free years and are not subject to the neighborhood test.

The measure provides that the books of church groups may be examined by the government if there is reason to suspect unrelated business income.

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

High Court Weighs Church Tax Exemptions

This could be the year that the U. S. Supreme Court throws the entire American religious establishment into a financial tizzy.

The court is now preparing a decision on a case brought by Frederick Walz, a recluse New York lawyer who is challenging the legality of the tax exemption granted all church-owned property. The case was argued before the court on November 19. Announcement of the outcome could come anytime between now and next summer.

Baptist Press newsman W. Barry Garrett said, “If Walz wins, and if the court decides that tax exemption of church property is unconstitutional, both the church and the government will be in trouble. Many churches will be able to pay their taxes, but others will not be able to meet the bill. Government will face the problem of disposition of church property if the taxes are not paid.”

A decision for Walz would probably mean the biggest windfall in public revenue in American history. Churches in the United States now own an estimated $102 billion worth of lands and buildings. If and when these are assessessed, the resultant income could indeed spell tax relief at the local and state levels. There would undoubtedly be immediate demands in Congress, however, for a constitutional amendment to override the court decision (and chances are it would eventually be adopted).

Eleven amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs were filed in the case, known as Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York. Only one, submitted by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, supported Walz. Those aligned against him included the U. S. Catholic Conference, the National Council of Churches, the Episcopal Diocese of New York, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, the Synagogue Council of America, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Americans United, and the attorneys general of thirty-seven states.

The Baptist Joint Committee argued that constitutionally guaranteed religious liberty “requires, by right, the freedom from taxation of property used for religious purposes.”

Americans United contended that the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment does not make mandatory the exemption of houses of worship from tax, but concluded that such tax exemption does not constitute an “establishment of religion.”

The Rev. Dean Kelley, NCC spokesman, testified that “houses for the assembly of people to worship and to hear the Gospel of their religious faith arc essential to the free exercise of the religious belief of all the principal religious communions.… For the state to tax such religious houses and the ground which furnishes their foundation is in essence to tax the religion of which they are an essential part and evangelistic expression and exercise.…”

The Synagogue Council of America pointed out that the First Amendment prohibits the state from supporting churches and churches from financing the state.

The U. S. Catholic Conference argued that taxing churches would “substantially impair the flourishing of religious liberty in the United States.”

The case involves a vacant plot of land 22 by 29 feet on Staten Island. Walz bought the property in 1967 and pays $5.55 yearly taxes on it.

South African Christians: Apartheid And Elections

With racial separation a key campaign issue, South Africa’s two major political parties are stumping for the Christian vote.

The rival pro-apartheid parties—the right-wing Christian National Party led by Dr. Albert Hertzog and the ruling Nationalist Party led by Prime Minister John Vorster—are vying to win the upcoming elections in the strife-torn land. Seventy-two per cent of all South Africans, and 94 per cent of the politically active white population, are registered members of Christian churches.

“For the first time,” says Hertzog, “we now have a party based on the infallible word of God. For the first time the Afrikaaners will now have a Christian national party.”

Answers Vorster: “We have always accepted that the Nationalist Party is based in word and deed on the infallible word of God, and that the party follows the Christian road.”

Hertzog, a former high-ranking member of Vorster’s cabinet, led the right-wingers out of the ruling party last September, charging that Vorster was going “soft” on the color question. The Nationalist Party first came to power in 1948, on an apartheid platform, claiming that the interests of the various South African racial groups would best be served by a policy of separatism.

Within the past two decades, two major debates have been quietly fought out within the Christian churches of South Africa: (1) whether or not the churches believing apartheid to be unchristian should openly condemn it, and (2) whether Christian brotherhood should be interpreted to mean that the Church and its local congregations should be multi-racial.

Panthers And Preachers

“It is hard to like the Panthers,” wrote Father Edward J. O’Donnell in the St. Louis Review last month; “they preach hatred in the coarsest terms.” Yet, he said, the Bill of Rights applies to them too: “It is only when the rights of the most radical, the most dangerous, and the most objectionable are protected that the rights of any of us can be safe” (see editorial, page 25).

He is not the only churchman preserving Black Panthers. Memorial services for Fred Hampton, slain last month in a battle with police, have been held in New York City, Washington, D. C., Cleveland, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Harvard’s Harvey Cox, Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd, and lay Catholic theologian Rosemary Rcuther led 100 New Yorkers in a “Celebration for Liberation of the Black Panthers and other Political Prisoners.” Cox called the exorcism service an “ancient and venerable Christian tradition aimed at driving out evil spirits.”

In front of the Justice Department building in the nation’s capital, Episcopal and Catholic priests held a requiem mass for Hampton. “We are here,” said the Reverend William Wendt of St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church, “because there is oppression in the land,” and the Black Panthers are severely oppressed.

In Cleveland, Ohio, Representative Louis Stokes told war protesters at First Methodist Church that a lawyer for the Panthers has evidence of a “systematic plan in effect to exterminate” the party. “If the police can kill Black Panthers today with impunity,” asked the black U. S. congressman, “what is to prevent them from killing members of white organizations tomorrow?”

The controversial black Catholic priest who conducted Hampton’s funeral service in Chicago charged that the Panther leader had been “murdered because he was young, gifted and black.” Police and Panthers differ as to who fired the first shot in the gunfire that killed the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois Black Panthers. Several church groups have called for investigations of the shooting.

Glide Memorial Methodist Church was the scene of a San Francisco rally to protest alleged police harassment of Black Panthers. The mostly white and mostly young audience heard Panther chief-of-staff David Hilliard, who threatened to kill President Nixon, reiterate his party’s commitment to use “revolutionary violence” against American “imperialism.”

With few exceptions, the division has been between the English-speaking churches, which traditionally have led the anti-apartheid movement, and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch Reformed churches, from which the Nationalist Party has drawn most of its support.

The Reformed churches have declared that they cannot associate themselves unreservedly with the general cry for equality and unity, believing that eventual and permanent subordination of one group by another can be avoided only by a “just” but total separation. The anti-apartheid churches believe that racial separatism is “a demonstration of unbelief in the Gospel,” and that apartheid brings disruption and suffering.

Numerically, more South Africans belong to anti-apartheid churches, but the Dutch Reformed claim the overwhelming majority of the Afrikaaners, the only group with political power.

Recently, however, things have been changing as the anti-apartheid churches have gained more confidence and voice. The pro-apartheid ranks are split, and the extremist wing is not in power. Prime Minister Vorster now finds himself forced to strike a moderate pose. He has said that he has no answer to the race question and is willing to let responsible groups look for one.²Alan Paton, author of Cry, the Beloved Country and leader of South Africa’s Liberal party before the government prohibited multi-racial political organizations in May, 1968, is quoted in an interview by the New York Times as saying that he finds some hope of change in the country’s racial policies, and that the bitter feud between Vorster and Hertzog is cooling. Paton was also quoted as saying: “Vorster heads a power clique, but we are not in the hands of a madman.”

Churches are getting bolder: A sign at the entrance of St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in Cape Town reads—“This cathedral is open to welcome men and women of all races to all services at all times.” This is in defiance of a 1957 law forbidding integrated worship.

Last July, as a follow-up of the 1968 Message to the People issued by the South African Council of Churches, a two-year study project was set up to seek an alternative to apartheid. The 2,500-word message called on the Christians of South Africa to ponder whether their first loyalty should be to an ethnic group and a political idea, or to Christ.

Across the country, many church leaders and rank-and-file members are now asserting that no one who believes in Christ should be excluded from any church worship service, that Christians should take a keener interest in political and social action, and that there should be better contact between the government and leaders accepted by non-whites.

ODHIAMBO W. OKITE

A happy new year to all our readers! This issue brings with it, in lieu of the usual editorial pages, observations from young evangelicals, most of whom are under thirty. They were selected from differing fields of endeavor to offer their ideas and interpretations of the seventies. They and others like them will be in positions of leadership in the years ahead. We hope to continue to attract younger writers and readers.

In this issue we also present reflections from an octogenarian—John Mackay, who looks back across the years and shares with us some of the lessons he has learned. Members of the younger generation can learn much from history if they take time to do so. And they are bound to repeat the mistakes of their forebears if they fail at this point.

From our editor-at-large, Carl F. H. Henry, we have the presidential address he delivered at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. Ministers, professors, and students will be challenged by this essay and will no doubt turn to it again from time to time.

We end the year with some sickness in our staff members’ homes but with gratitude to God for his preserving and sustaining mercies. And we enter the new year with glad anticipation and joyous hope.