Although it was quietly apparent from the first that the Synod of Bishops would not result in any shattering changes for the Roman Catholic Church, there were at least some surprises, and most of them for the Pope. The gathering set something of a precedent in that Pope Paul VI, sitting within the walls of the Vatican itself, took a quiet and orderly but nevertheless thorough tongue-lashing at every meeting of the synod—which he had called in the first place.

The synod lasted for two and a half weeks, October 11–28, and was originally labeled an emergency session. Pope Paul personally drafted its agenda. From this, and the tone of the call, it was generally assumed that he would use the synod as a platform for trying to squelch the liberals who are revolutionizing much of the Roman church, particularly in northern Europe and the United States.

This suspicion was somewhat confirmed by the speech the Pope gave in officially opening the synod. After offering some optimistic tidbits to the bishops by talking idealistically about the doctrine of collegiality (shared authority in the church), he came down hard on the central issue. He reminded the bishops that “supreme responsibility” and hence final authority in the church rests with the Pope.

“Our specific ministry as vicar of Christ,” he said, “cannot be conditional on the authority … of the episcopal college [bishops], which we are the first to wish to honor, defend and promote, but which would not be such were it to lack our support.” There was no question that this meant there was to be no lessening of his total and final authority.

This might have trampled freedom of debate at the synod from the start were it not for a quartet of determined liberal European cardinals. Bernard Jan Alfrink of Holland, Leo-Josef Suenens of Belgium, Julius Döpfner of Munich, and Franziskus König of Vienna were not about to let the opportunity pass, and because of them the Vatican press officers and strategists learned a costly lesson.

On the first working day of the synod, Cardinals Suenens and Alfrink leveled blasts directly at the Pope by criticizing his agenda for the synod as too restrictive.

Since no members of the press or unofficial observers were allowed at the synod meetings, nearly the only way to find out what went on was through the briefings given by the Vatican press office. But in the briefing after the synod session that day, the press was told nothing about the harsh speeches.

All would have been well except that the press has always had paid informers within the Vatican, and so the story got out. With the veil of secrecy tom aside, the Vatican press officers subsequently were surprisingly candid.

As the synod moved rather slowly through its course, a verbal tug-of-war took place in the Pope’s presence. A dozen or more cardinals and bishops would speak each day, and their polarization became rather easy to recognize. There were the liberals, the conservatives, and the fence-straddlers. Of the U. S. cardinals in attendance, Terence Cooke of New York and John Deardon of Detroit fell into either the second or last category, depending on differing interpretations of their speeches.

As the debate continued, it became clear not only that all the bishops support the idea of increased collegiality but also that each was interpreting collegiality on the basis of his own presuppositions. The liberals understood it as a method of siphoning power from the Pope to the bishops and a key to future liberalization. Conservatives were insisting that the official doctrine of collegiality allowed for the continued total authority of the Pope.

Each time a delicate issue came up it was referred to the Theological Commission for further study, and it became increasingly apparent that absolutely nothing clear would emerge from the sessions of the synod itself. That was borne out at the end when all the cardinals and bishops (including all the liberals who had spoken out) again pledged their support to the final authority of the Pope.

If the rather abstract synod meetings had been all that took place, the net result would have been minimal. But a good deal else was going on. A large group of dissident European priests held what became known as the “Counter-Synod” (see November 7 issue, page 46). John Cardinal Wright (formerly of Pittsburgh and now a member of the Roman Curia) held unofficial meetings with selected priests—and came up with the most concrete suggestion of all.

Wright says he had full papal approval to get together with priests and bishops at a church in Rome away from the Vatican. After listening to two days of speeches and suggestions, Wright said he would like to see an international meeting of priests in Rome in which all the problems of the modern priesthood could be voiced. The suggestion became one of the most important aspects of the synod, even though it did not come out of official proceedings. Such a priests’ convention has never been held in the Roman church, and though it could be an impotent forum, it could also lead toward eventual reform of the power structure.

As for the so-called rebel priests, their best asset was the press. Because they represented a counter-force to the Vatican, and because they had close ties with Cardinals Alfrink and Suenens, they got far more space than they would had the synod not been in session. At the end, Father George Malzone of the Center for Christian Renewal in Washington, D. C., who was an observer at the rebels’ meetings, said they amounted to nothing more than “an international study club.”

At the conclusion of the synod only two things had been accomplished: the establishment of a permanent synod secretariat at the Vatican, and a decision to hold regular synods every two years, “if possible.” Ten other suggestions were taken under consideration by the Pope.

For Catholic laymen and the rest of the world, the synod provides little more than interesting reading. Nothing has changed. To the ecumenical Protestant, it may mean a slowdown of communication between Catholics and other religious bodies. The Vatican is becoming more conscious of its internal affairs, and its reactions are becoming counter-centrifugal.

The Roman Catholic Church is under manifold pressures. Many Catholics want to reform the church from the inside out. Events like the synod are crucial to reform because the bishops are the middlemen.

The Center for Ecumenical Action in the Netherlands increased the pressure on the bishops during the synod by releasing a statement concerning the growing ruptures in the church: “The present situation is really serious. The Synod of Bishops must be aware of the fact that renewal will take place either with them or without them.” In contrast, however, England’s John Cardinal Heenan called the bishops’ synod “a victory for common sense and tolerance.”

Father Malzone summed up the situation by observing that Catholics are moving faster than their church. By the time any real changes are made, “the people may already have moved on to new forms.” Then, he asks, “will what the bishops have achieved have any meaning?”

BRIAN BASTIEN

Concrete Foundation For Faith

Where Is History Going?, by John W. Montgomery (Zondervan, 1969, 250 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by H. Crosby Englizian, librarian, Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, Portland, Oregon.

John W. Montgomery, a Lutheran who is chairman of the Division of Church History at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, examines here secular philosophies of history current in our day and finds they have four basic deficiencies: their goals have no necessitarian character; their criteria for what is historically significant are unrelated to absolute terms; their understanding of human nature is woefully deficient; and their gratuitous presupposition of ethical principles renders them suspect in the face of final truth.

Montgomery’s burden is to make a case for the necessity of an absolute historical perspective—provided solely by divine revelation—if one seeks to formulate a Christian philosophy of history and to avoid the errors he discusses in this book. For example, both Barth and Tillich have made a grievous mistake in divorcing history from theology; this dualism has led to a denial of the real history of, say, the incarnation and has made of the whole orthodox faith “a timeless, unsupportable religion of the order of Buddhism, Hinduism, and their theosophical counterparts.” Here the author quotes appreciatively Van Til: “We dare not follow Barth any more than we dare follow Bultmann.” (Why be surprised, indeed, that such a subjective, unverifiable neo-orthodox God should sooner or later be obliged to die at the hands of such as Van Buren, who as a student imbibed the thought of Barth!)

Montgomery sees evidences of a similar metahistory among evangelicals. Bernard Ramm and George Ladd appear to be guilty of a like divorcement. “Dr. Ladd makes Barth’s very mistake. He creates a metahistorical category of interpretation for the resurrection … to preserve its theological truth from historical criticism.” Montgomery asks: Given the objectivity of the events of Heilsgeschichte, why not use the language of objective facticity? “What are we afraid of?”

It may be, however, that he is a bit hard on Ramm when he makes him say that Scripture does not have demonstrable reality as historical revelation apart from the internal witness of the Spirit, and places a Barthian interpretation on this statement by suggesting Ramm is denying the objectivity of historical revelation, when in another place he admits Ramm’s innocence of such a denial. To be sure, Scripture is fully objective; but the witness of the Spirit is as necessary to Scripture as its objective character. Is it possible to conceive of Scripture apart from the Holy Spirit? Scripture is alive and God-breathed; therefore, no part of it, no study of it, is completely in order apart from the Spirit of God. Paul declares that the things of God are “examined” (1 Cor. 2:14) only in conjunction with the Spirit’s aid. The verb anakrinetai refers, interestingly enough, to a preliminary examination such as Dr. Montgomery teaches is necessary to determining the revelational validity of Scripture. Even such an examination, however, though made on the basis of accepted investigative principles, is misdirected apart from the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit’s witness does not make Scripture trustworthy (for it is this already), as Montgomery rightly avers, neither does the application of accepted principles of textual and historical analysis make it trustworthy.

Calvinist Gordon Clark rates an entire chapter. His Lutheran critic respectfully rakes him over the coals for failure to recognize the primary place of historical evidence in a truly Christian philosophy (“theology”) of history. Montgomery rejects Clark’s opinion that “no theory of history rests on an empirical basis” alone, and sharply disagrees with his further contention that “unless a thinker begins with God, he can never end with God, or get the facts either.” Our author counters that apart from objectively discoverable historical facts, beginning with God is an impossibility. The Bible, which speaks of God, is a sensory, historical object; therefore, before one can be sure it is revelation, one must examine the historical evidences concerning the Book. “Christian revelation is irreducibly historical.… Any attempts to reduce historical objectivity in the interests of revelational truth always and by logical necessity boomerang: they eliminate the possibility of all significant talk about revelation itself.”

“Can one begin with God … without facts?” asks Montgomery. No, but having the facts, God comes in mighty handy. One might suspect that perhaps Montgomery is arguing in a circle. To be sure, the Bible is a sensory, historical object; but since a Christian philosophy of history requires a biblical perspective, we must speak of the Bible not merely in any sensory way, even at the very beginning, but in a revelational way as well. Dr. Montgomery makes an admirable case for the facticity of the Bible, but what is the value of facts if one does not know what to do with them, or what to make of them? And who shall say what the facts really are? Even our author admits the existence of this difficulty!

Montgomery criticizes Ramm for his assertion that the “fanatical ‘objectivizing’ of Scripture can be as detrimental to its proper understanding as a frightful ‘subjectivizing,’ ” and goes on to declare, “There are no degrees of objectivity.” True, but objectivity may be spoiled by a failure to balance it properly with an equally important weight. According to the learned professor (450 names discussed or cited some 941 times in 240 pages), the determination of the revelatory character of Scripture must await an examination of its historical evidences. But will the latter always prove the former to every investigator?

The emphasis upon the necessity of the revelational-historical ingredient in a Christian philosophy of history is commendable, but one wonders if the author is not guilty of the error he finds in others: the tendency to give more to the way of sight than to the way of faith.

He does, nevertheless, recognize that there is a better way, “another way [than that of textual and historical analysis] to attest Christ’s claims.… ‘If any man’s will is to do his will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God.’ ” And this, I believe, brings us back to Gordon Clark’s God.

The Ecumenical Swindle

Power Without Glory, by Ian Henderson (John Knox, 1969, 184 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial representative,CHRISTIANITY TODAY, London, England.

Here we have a live-ammunition broadside fired across the bows of the ecumenical bark from an unlikely quarter. Ian Henderson, who died earlier this year, was professor of systematic theology at Glasgow University. Although he was trained under Brunner and Barth, it was with Bultmann that he latterly claimed theological kinship.

His thesis is simple. A cosmic swindle is being practiced; ecumenical discussions are never what they seem; the double-think and the double-tongue are inevitable; language is used to conceal motives; ecclesiastical takeover bids are proliferating alarmingly; failure to recognize institutional churches as power structures is leading to mass delusion; and, far from desiring organic unity, God finds the whole concept as distasteful as does this Scots professor. “In this ghastly internecine strife among Christians which the Ecumenical Movement has brought about, it is only the Ecumenical who knows how to hallow acrimony, only he can justify any barb, however vicious, in his knowledge that it is directed against those who are opposing Christ.”

Overstatement abounds as the author cavalierly sweeps through history and emerges with interpretations that are pressed into service in the anti-ecumenical crusade. Thus in the Church of South India, Anglican imperialism is allegedly advanced by a technique “so macabre as to be fascinating” (CSI policy accepted nonepiscopal ministers but stipulated future ordinations by bishops). At the deathbed of the last Protestant minister, warns Henderson, “the Anglicans will be waiting with the vultures. His last breath will be the signal for rejoicing to break out.…”

He is particularly waspish in discussing the Bishops’ Report that in the fifties tried to unite the national churches of England and Scotland. He calls it “a kind of Operation Naboth’s Vineyard” and throws doubts on the integrity of some of his fellow presbyters.

Among the signs of wretched proofreading in this book: “Sudan” on page 63 is “Sedan”; 1946 on page 78 should be 1646; and on page 107, 1960 should be 1966, at the start of a chapter in which Henderson owes his basic facts (and an acknowledgment) to the present reviewer.

I enjoy Ian Henderson’s writings, but I can’t bring myself to swallow them whole. They tell me that the Coming Great Church will persecute nonconformists, among them prominent theologians who cannot “honestly sign the Nicean or Chalcedonian creeds.” If this is to be the theological norm, the power-packed corridors of the WCC’s own Geneva H.Q. will be emptied to fill a few tumbrels.

Will Become A Standard

The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume II: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, edited by G. W. H. Lampe (Cambridge University, 1969, 566 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by John Gerstner, professor of church history, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The history of the Bible, essentially a popular theme, does not often receive scholarly handling. Yet there is a market for such a treatment, and not only among professional students. Within the last few years at least two scholarly treatments have appeared, one by Geddes MacGregor, and now this three-volume Cambridge work produced by a team of experts and edited by G. W. H. Lampe. Volume III (The West From the Reformation to the Present Day) has already appeared, and Volume I. From the Beginning to Jerome, is yet to come.

This is a history not only of the translations of the Bible but of the manuscripts, canon, exegesis, illumination, and liturgical use of the Bible as well. As for the history of the versions, no fewer than eight scholarly chapters deal with Latin, Gothic, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish vernacular editions. The volume concludes with a transitional study of the work of Erasmus. Useful, rare, well-executed plates embellish the text. Many excellent features distinguish this work, including fascinating studies of the original use of papyrus and vellum, the technicalia of illumination, the details of Jewish counter-attack to Christian exegesis of the Old Testament and the bearing of it all on the manuscripts.

This history attempts so much so well that one wonders why there is no adequate discussion of inspiration or biblical theology, or of the Bible-Church authority question. Such topics are not usually found in a history of the Bible, but then neither is a history of exegesis. In this volume there is the unevenness of handling usually seen in a composite production; and unfortunately, the editor does not quite succeed imposing a well-integrated structure. Grouping illustrations together in the rear of the book is no doubt less expensive, but in a definitive volume such as this would not the extra expense of working them into the textual discussion be justified?

Nevertheless, this is a masterly performance on a supremely important subject. The three volumes can hardly fail to become the standard history of the Bible.

Psychology Of Conversion

Personal Renewal Through Christian Conversion, by W. Curry Mavis (Beacon Hill, 1969, 165 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by James Edward Doty, president, Baker University, Baldwin City, Kansas.

W. Curry Mavis, professor of pastoral theology at Asbury Seminary since 1947, explains in his introduction, “Much of the experiential material of this book comes from the experiences of English-speaking evangelical Christians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” What he gives us in this readable volume is a careful, historical study of conversion in the English-speaking world, with emphasis on the eighteenth century. Indeed, a more accurate title might have been “Personal Renewal Through Christian Conversion in the Eighteenth Century.”

Mavis applies psychological insights of the twentieth century to the seventeenth and eighteenth. His understanding of Maslow, Jung, Lewin, Boisen, Outler, and Frankl makes some of the chapters highly contemporary. I feel the book would have been more valuable, however, had he said more about the spiritual struggle through which modern man is moving, applying insights of these giants through the most recent decades of their work.

John Wesley, Mavis says, “knew that the sinner must feel deeply a sense of need before he could accept the divine provisions of salvation from his sins.” The author agrees with Kierkegaard that “a consciousness of sin was essential in motivating a man to accept Christ.” The psychological-spiritual condition within a person, Mavis feels, serves an important function in the preparation for personal renewal in Christian conversion. He finds three main elements in this preparation: (1) the experience of guilt heightens the consciousness of selfhood, and the seeker is motivated to assume an increased degree of responsibility for his own life; (2) guilt as a psychic threat to the inner self motivates an open-minded man to re-examine the basic qualities of his life; (3) a sense of guilt creates within an awakened person a constructive anxiety that motivates him to accept Christ for personal renewal. If one sees oneself as a responsible individual, says the author, he is involved in a basic pattern in renewal. But the anonymity of our present day threatens this sense of selfhood.

This book will provide sermonic possibilities for the man who delves into eighteenth-century church history, but the shortage of illustrative material out of the twentieth century is a definite weakness. Perhaps the author will give us this in a future volume.

Focus On Unrest

The Urban Crisis, edited by David McKenna (Zondervan, 1969, 146 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Donald H. De-Young, pastor, Elmendorf Reformed Church, New York City.

In the catalogue of combat, the sequence of Watts, Detroit, and Newark is as identifiable as that of Pearl Harbor, Guam, and Normandy. I agree with this book that the urban scene is one of immediate crisis. The hazard is increased by the reluctance of our nation to appreciate the wisdom of Walt Kelly’s Pogo: “We have met the enemy and they is us!”

I therefore have a built-in appreciation for any effort that focuses on the unrest in our metropolitan complexes, and particular gratitude to David McKenna for laying this child of our times at the doorstep of the evangelical church. “We do not think of the city as Rich, Restless and Ripe,” he says. “Rather, we think of its Rumbles, Riot and Ruin. The city scares us and Christianity has never been more impotent than it is today in the concrete jungles.”

Contributors to the book were speakers at an Urban Crisis Seminar held at Spring Arbor College; they are Jerome P. Cavanagh, David O. Moberg, George Schermer, F. Brooks Sanders, Hubert G. Locke, Jerome Stromberg, Francis Keppel, and Mariano DiGangi.

It seems to me that in these academic environs there was some lack of down-to-earth perspective. For example, a series of five recommendations for action in the last summary chapter begins with a call to “continued study of the urban crisis” and ends with, “Therefore I dare you to show the way by following your compassion to some new area of human need.” If a vote were taken where I live and work, recommendation five would surely be moved to the head of the line!

Academia likes to place “experts” in the political, sociological, and religious world on the platform; this often makes for an antiseptic quality. When Dr. Keppel spoke about the problem of education, he daringly called for cooperation and partnership at all levels, thus suggesting that the wall separating the management of the schools and the rest of civil government be broken down. Yet there was no mention of the involvement of parents through community-action programs. Where I sit, the wall of educational expertise so jealously projected and protected by unionized professionals is being attacked by growing bands of parents who feel they don’t need the experts to understand that the system is failing our children.

The editor points out three items that through accuracy or irony find immediate relevance. (1) Mayor Cavanagh enunciated the “reparation principle.” (Enter: Mr. James Forman.) (2) Professor Locke called for a federal urban guerrilla force on standby alert. (Enter: the choral refrain of “law and order.”) (3) Dr. Keppel advocated greater state control of public education now controlled at the local level. (Enter: decentralization confrontations with I.S. 201, Oceanhill-Brownsville, and Two Bridges.) Then he said that when these proposals are heard “we will remember that they were advanced on the platform provided by the Urban Crisis Seminar at Spring Arbor College.” If so, I hope the experts will still have the stomach to follow compassion “to some new area of human need.”

Book Briefs

The Christian’s Great Interest, by William Guthrie (Banner of Truth Trust, 1969, 207 pp., paperback, 5s.) Reprint of a Puritan classic that investigates two questions: How may one know whether or not he has a true and saving interest in Christ?, and, How may he acquire such an interest if he is without it?

Religion and Change, by David L. Edwards (Harper & Row, 1969, 383 pp., $8). A comprehensive survey and evaluation of changing patterns in church theology during the twentieth century, the “secular century.” Concludes that the old shape of Christian life and thought—reflected in both Catholic and Protestant conservatism—will not regain its place as the powerful religion of the West.

Not Made for Defeat, by Douglas Hall (Zondervan, 1969, 192 pp., paperback, $2.15). A biography of the outstanding missionary statesman Oswald J. Smith.

The Quiet Revolution, by James D. Smart (Westminster, 1969, 158 pp., paperback, $2.95). Although the author sees the gospel accounts as overlaid with later traditions, these studies of Jesus’ encounters with various persons provide interesting insights into the revolutionary character of his ministry.

The Image of Man in C. S. Lewis, by William Luther White (Abingdon, 1969, 239 pp., $5.95). An enlightening analysis of the doctrine of man reflected in the writings of C. S. Lewis.

The Titles of Jesus in Christology, by Ferdinand Hahn (World, 1969, 415 pp,. $12.50). A standard work on the history of the titles of Jesus is now made available in English.

Social Justice and the Latin Churches (John Knox, 1969, 137 pp., paperback, $2.95). A compilation of papers presented at the Second Latin American Conference on Church and Society, which met at El Tabo, Chile, in January, 1966.

New Testament Questions of Today, by Ernst Käsemann (Fortress, 1969, 305 pp., $6.75). Fifteen essays by a well-known and controversial New Testament scholar. Originally published in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Holy Holy Land, edited by Charles L. Wallis (Harper & Row, 1969, 224 pp., $4.95). A devotional anthology in poetry, prose, and photographs, related to various settings in the Holy Land.

Ways to Wake Up Your Church, by Edgar R. Trexler (Fortress, 1969, 152 pp., paperback, $2.95). Twenty-five exciting articles about ordinary congregations that have adapted to change. Encouraging examples that it can be done!

Jesus and Your Nice Church, by Ed Richter (Eerdmans, 1969, 88 pp., paperback, $1.65). A stimulating critique of the institutional church and suggestions for dealing with the problems.

Timothy the Young Elder, by Mary Helm Clarke (Herald, 1969, 208 pp., $4.95). A historical novel about Timothy, the faithful companion of the Apostle Paul.

In his book Preparing Instructional Objectives Robert F. Mager tells of the sea horse who cantered out to find his fortune and wound up in a shark’s belly. His problem: He didn’t know where he was going. The moral: Be sure your objectives are clear.

The pastor who takes seriously Ephesians 4:11–16 has his objective in Christian education stated for him. It is “the perfecting of the saints”—producing spiritually mature Christians. But how does a pastor know when he is achieving this?

In the generation past one didn’t ask this question. “Do your best and trust the Lord” seemed to be the order of the day. But this attitude is rapidly changing, and various methods of evaluation are being used. D. Campbell Wyckoff writes of some of the standard techniques in How to Evaluate the Christian Education Program of the Church.

Growing in popularity are the written Bible-knowledge tests. Scripture Press publishes achievement tests for the junior, young teen, high school, and adult department, designed to show how much Bible knowledge the student has gained in a quarter. The tests are usually made up of matching, multiple-choice, and rank-order items.

Other tests on general Bible knowledge are being developed. I have used profitably a test devised by Ruth Beechick and published by Southwestern College, Phoenix. Norman Wright at Talbot Theological Seminary has produced a test of 100 questions based on the curriculum of Gospel Light Publishing Company. According to Mr. Wright, it is the first major Bible-knowledge test for the preschool-through-eighth-grade age group.

Although use of these tests is an important step in the right direction, Bible knowledge is just one element of spiritual maturity. Two years ago I took on the job of pastoring a church of 700 members. When faced with the need to evaluate my success at “perfecting the saints,” I was stymied. The question that threw me was, “What constitutes spiritual maturity?”

J. Dwight Pentecost’s book Pattern for Maturity was a great help. He maintains that spiritual maturity involves three things: (1) knowledge of Scripture, (2) independent study of and personal interaction with Scripture, and (3) the ability to apply Scripture to practical Christian living.

Using these criteria I set out to devise a battery of tests that I finally called a “Spiritual Inventory Battery.” First there is Ruth Beechick’s ninety-four-question test of general Bible knowledge. The second test, one hundred questions, looks for knowledge of doctrine. The third, twenty questions, is designed to measure the dependence/independence factor. And the last test, one hundred questions, attempts to determine the student’s success at applying Bible truth to practical Christian living.

Some Christian educators feel that it is impossible to measure spiritual maturity. When asked, “How would you test for spiritual maturity?,” a few answered, “God only knows.” Psychologists, however, are measuring other “imponderables” in personality testing, and much is to be learned from their efforts.

If it is possible, for example, to measure nervousness and depression, it should not be difficult to discover evidences of the fruit of the Spirit. But here, admittedly, lies a serious error we must guard against in testing for maturity. We must not confuse the product of a strong, well-adjusted personality with that which is truly the work of the Holy Spirit. The person who has a very poor knowledge of the Bible and no desire to study it on his own but rates himself high in practical Christian living should be subject to careful evaluation. Is his life really what he claims it is? By whose power is he living it?

Another problem I have met is in the development of a doctrine test. We may agree that the spiritually mature believer is doctrinally “grounded in the faith,” but one cannot test in the areas of soteriology, pneumatology, and eschatology without taking into account the Calvinist-Arminian or dispensational-covenant disagreements. These and other differences among evangelicals should not, however, discourage us from testing knowledge of doctrine. Although mature believers may differ in their convictions, they should be able to show that they have a biblical base for what they believe. Their answers in these matters of debate are not as important (in this battery of tests) as a demonstration of general doctrinal literacy.

The Spiritual Inventory Battery is currently being used experimentally, and a computer program is being developed to tabulate the results. Although it is too early to publish conclusions, so far the experiment has been very encouraging. It has given us reason to think that the tests may become a valuable tool for measuring spiritual maturity.

The greatest difficulty in developing such tests is not the highly subjective task of measuring the imponderables. It is the task of convincing Christians to participate in the testing program. Christian educators who have employed written Bible-knowledge tests in churches have discovered that their students feel threatened when confronted with a test. They seem to think that a low score might bring reproach on them.

If written tests are to be used effectively in the churches, those who administer them must make it clear that their intent is not to unmask hypocrites but to find out how well they themselves are doing as spiritual leaders charged with the task of perfecting the saints.

—THE REV. ANDRE BUSTANOBY, Temple Baptist Church, Fullerton, California.

God looked into David’s heart. What did he see? He looks into your heart, and mine. What does he see?

Samuel saw tall, handsome Eliab and thought, Surely this is the man God wants me to anoint. But God said to Samuel, You are looking in the wrong place; this is not the man I have chosen. “For the LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7).

And the Bible tells us a remarkable thing: what God saw in David was such that David was spoken of as “a man after God’s own heart.” Centuries later the Apostle Paul, recounting the history of Israel in a sermon to the people of Antioch in Pisidia, said, “[God] raised up David to be their king; of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will’ ” (Acts 13:22).

What did God, with his all-searching, all-seeing eyes, see in David’s heart? What qualities made it possible for God to say David was a man after his own heart?

God saw a man of deep faith. As one reads the history of David’s life and the psalms he wrote, one realizes that here is a man who had unswerving faith in God. David knew that he, in common with all men, had an ultimate responsibility to God; that God is sovereign in all circumstances; that he is a God of abiding love, one who is faithful and absolutely trustworthy. The one uniting quality of the heroes of faith was their confidence in God. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

God saw in David a man of great courage. This physical courage had a spiritual quality, also, for it was based on the name and honor of God. Confronted with a crisis, one that found the armies of Israel fleeing from the taunts and threats of a giant, David offered to meet Goliath in personal combat, not out of bravado but because of his faith in God. “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand … that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is the LORD’S and he will give you into our hand” (1 Sam. 17:45, 47). His faith was vindicated, and he had a great victory.

God saw in David a depending heart. Out of his faith in God came an abiding sense of his dependence on God’s guidance and help. In the accounts of his many battles with the Philistines we find such statements as, “Therefore David inquired of the LORD, Shall I go …?” (1 Sam. 23:2). Faith that does not lead a man to seek God’s guidance is destined for trouble. We must believe not only that God is but that “he rewards those that seek him” (Heb. 11:6). More than a century ago Joseph Scriven expressed this thought, “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” David had a prayerful and depending heart, and it pleased God.

God saw in David’s heart a deep capacity for sorrow and contrition for sin. Here was a man who dared to confess his sins and ask for forgiveness.

One of the evidences of trustworthiness of the Bible is that it does not hide the faults, sins, and failures of its heroes. For example, it tells the sordid story of David’s adultery, deceit, subterfuge, and contrivance of murder. When he heard about a rich man who had robbed a poor neighbor of his pet lamb, rather than kill one of his own in entertaining a friend, David said to God’s prophet, Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die” (2 Sam. 12:5). One can imagine the horror that swept over him when Nathan said, “You are the man.”

Confronted with his sin, David admitted his guilt and said, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Out of this dreadful experience came Psalm 51, David’s prayer of confession and plea for forgiveness, and Psalm 32, which tells the joy and relief that come to those who know in their hearts they have been forgiven.

God saw in David a man capable of rising to the heights of worship and praise. David’s experience of faith, courage, dependence, and forgiveness brought forth a deep sense of God’s love, and with it paeans of praise and worship. Again and again in the Psalms he expresses the thought, “Let men thank the LORD, for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to the children of men” (Ps. 107:8).

We should ponder his words: “Praise the LORD! O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever. Who can utter the mighty doings of the LORD, or show forth all his praise?” (Ps. 106:1, 2). How often do our own hearts respond with such wonder, praise, and glory for our Lord? Certainly not often enough.

God saw in David a man sensitive to his works of creation. David was not an astronomer, but he saw the glory of God proclaimed in his universe. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1), he declared, and his psalms are filled with references to the God of creation.

God saw in David a man willing to share in a deep personal relationship with himself. To David, God was wonderfully real, personal, and near, a constant companion, his source of peace and his hope forever. Only a man with a keen awareness of the near and personal relationship God offers his own could have written the Twenty-third Psalm. Here David tells of his own Shepherd who cared and provided for him, and of whom he could say, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.”

We certainly do not know all that God saw in David’s heart, all that made him a “man after God’s own heart,” but it must have been wonderful.

What does he see in your heart and mine? Be very aware of the fact that he sees everything that is there. In the words of the psalmist, “Would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart” (Ps. 44:21). To the church in Thyatira the risen Lord said, “And all the churches shall know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve” (Rev. 2:23).

Those searching, all-knowing, all-evaluating eyes continue to look, to probe deep down to the thoughts and intents of the hearts of men. He judges actions and motives, “and before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13).

The scrutiny of man can make one very uncomfortable—how much more the scrutiny of those loving, searching eyes of the God of Eternity!

God is looking into your heart and mine. What does he see? If we want him more than all else in this world and the next, he knows it. And if we do not, he knows it.

L. NELSON BELL

Driving Out The Fundamentals

The recent passing of Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick brought press notices suggesting that the ninety-one-year-old pastor was most commonly remembered for his part in the so-called fundamentalist controversy. As it happened, I had this summer been reading a sermon of his that dealt with this theme. It was preached forty-six years ago in New York’s First Presbyterian Church, and was entitled, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”

In churches controlled by fundamentalists, Fosdick suggested, the policy says to young folk: “Come, and we will feed you opinions from a spoon. No thinking is allowed here except such as bring you to certain specified, predetermined conclusions.” He pitched that angle strong before going on to expatiate on the stark contrast of a world situation smelling to high heaven (a naïve concept at that time yet unexploded by the Bishop of Woolwich, who was three at the time).

Dr. Fosdick’s conclusion was a masterpiece of its kind: “And now, in the presence of colossal problems, which must be solved in Christ’s name and for Christ’s sake, the Fundamentalists propose to drive out from the Christian churches all the consecrated souls who do not agree with their theory of inspiration. What immeasurable folly! Well, they are not going to do it; certainly not in this vicinity. I do not even know in this congregation whether anybody has been tempted to be a Fundamentalist. Never in this church have I caught one accent of intolerance. God keep us always so …” (the italics are mine).

There is no record of how many resisted temptation that day and went forward to dedicate their lives to the crusade against fundamentalism. No studious neutrality. Intolerance not to be tolerated. (What was it the preacher said: “No thinking is allowed here …”?)

Against such a presupposition one hesitates to quote the Bible with its intolerant commands (didn’t they tell us it wasn’t inspired?), but how about a word from a broadminded Hindu? Said Rabindranath Tagore: “If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.”

In commending a book entitled Our Living Bible, a journal I saw last month says: “Based upon the latest archeological research, this illuminating book by a distinguished editorial board contains over 100,000 words of text. The entire work is non-theological.” If that description is accurate, this volume is obviously a must for those engaged in the unrelenting struggle to ensure that the fundamentalists (whoever they are) shall not win.

EUTYCHUS IV

Justified Glow

I didn’t attend the U. S. Congress on Evangelism but heard glowing reports. If Leighton Ford’s address, “Evangelism in a Day of Revolution” (Oct. 24), is fairly typical, I’m sure this response was justified.

ROBERT L. CARTER

Terre Haute, Ind.

After several years attempting to equate the obvious failure of the evangelical church with the vibrancy manifested in the Book of Acts, I feel that Mr. Ford has presented cogent arguments for a change, not in the message which is “ever old, ever new,” but in the methodology.

KENNETH MEYER

Annandale, Va.

Mad Devil

Great, great, great! That’s what I think of Lon Woodrum’s little story, “If Dropouts Turn On” (Oct. 24). I was completely with those who feel that we evangelicals should be in the thick of where the action is, to plant the Cross right in the middle of the action. When I finished reading the little story, I amened it and then prayed a little prayer: “Dear Lord, please help me to do this thing that makes the devil the maddest.”

BILL SOLOMON

First Presbyterian Church

Cedartown, Ga.

In this brief but penetrating analysis of the present “religious” crisis, there is a freshness and originality which is quite pleasing.…

May I continue to be (with God’s help) a “turned-on” evangelical who is doing “her thing”—trying to reach the pious, “religious,” and lost Roman Catholics in this city and this province.

LOIS STEWART

Quebec, Que.

Fundamentalism’s Fashion

Concerning your editorial, “Harry Emerson Fosdick” (Oct. 24), his reference to fundamentalism as reactionary rather than orthodox is technically correct, accuracy being a virtue practiced by Mr. Fosdick in contrast to a great many of those who opposed him.

While Dr. Fosdick’s theology may leave something to be desired in certain areas, he never forced it upon his hearers with threats of hell-fire to those who disagreed. The fundamentalists were the ones who talked about the spirit of Christ and exhibited so little of it, while Fosdick became the living example of that spirit.…

Unfortunately, as you state, fundamentalism is by no means dead; in fact, it is well and alive, dressed up in the new clothes of respectability called neo-evangelicalism. However, this fact is in no way indicative of divine approval nor changes the judgment that it is essentially heretical.

JAMES A. ROHNE

Charlottesville, Va.

Bad For Good

Your editorial “Mass Media and Church Reform” (Oct. 24) is classic, and this is to say thanks. There is nothing wrong with the good old gospel story except the bad old ways of sharing and communicating it. We do not have to make it appealing and attractive. We cannot anyway. It is for us to release its appeal and attraction and to refuse to defile it with our own worn-out methods and clumsiness.

DONALD F. HAYNES

Glendale, Calif.

Amen For ‘Angels’

I enjoy your reporting on Billy Graham.… He is a man who stands out from all others in my estimation as one to whom God has given the gift of evangelism. For the first time I learned the somewhat romantic details about the beginning of his evangelistic ministry at Anaheim and was really thrilled to read the splendid report “At Home with the Angels” (Oct. 24). This is worth a real hallelujah amen!

(The Rev.) ARTHUR F. WESLEY

Lakeland, Fla.

Pleasing The Devil

The writing of L. Nelson Bell, always wholesome and timely, was especially so in his recent article entitled “Beware!” (A Layman and His Faith, Oct. 24).

I can think of few things that would please the devil more than for evangelicals to dissipate their energies in futile humanistic efforts instead of preaching the Gospel to a confused and spiritually lost generation. Hearts changed by grace are the only hope of needed changes in society.

PASCAL P. BELEW

Church of the Nazarene Evangelist

Danville, Ill.

“Beware!” was far and away the most offensive piece that CHRISTIANITY TODAY has ever published.…

The fact is that 90 per cent of the members of our evangelical churches are still completely inert regarding men’s social and physical needs. They are far from being in danger of the errors Dr. Bell warns against. They haven’t even begun to get involved in social problems. They are unmoved, unsympathetic, self-righteous, and harsh in their judgments of the poor, people on welfare, minorities, and other forms of sinners. In short, they are un-Christian and ought to be told so. Instead, Dr. Bell’s article has the effect of encouraging them in their inactivity. I believe it will be a long time before the evangelical churches need the corrective he offers.

This article might have a helpful function if printed in the Christian Century. There it might have been prophetic. Here it is simply pathetic.

GEORGE VAN ALSTINE

Evangelical Baptist Church

Sharon, Mass.

Latin Evangelism

The article by W. Dayton Roberts (“Latin American Protestants: Which Way Will They Go?,” Oct. 10), which purported to advocate moderation in the problems of evangelicals in Latin America, belied such a goal by its incendiary language.…

It seems strange indeed that Mr. Roberts should call into question the value of a congress dedicated to increasing interest in evangelism throughout the continent. It seems most appropriate that such a congress should be held to share the vision for spreading the Gospel in Latin America in days of great opportunity. Already Latin America has inspired evangelicals in other continents to renewed efforts in outreach. This congress should intensify the growth of the churches there.…

This is not to say that the congress will be insensitive to the massive, surging problems of the society in which this witness must be conducted. On the contrary, the congress will deal with the role of the Church in the present situation.

WADE T. COGGINS

Asst. Executive Secretary

Evangelical Foreign Missions Association

Washington, D. C.

Roberts’s analysis of the Latin American versus the North American concept of “revolution” is incisive, and we would agree that “the true revolution is something else. The word itself suggests a turning of the wheels of progress wherein anachronistic structures are displaced and a new order of things is initiated.” This, however, does not mean that Castro’s Cuba is a shining example of “genuine revolution of total social dimensions” (in the Christian view).

All of us are aware of the tension between individualistic evangelism and social involvement. It is our prayer that as we come together in Bogotá the evangelistic task, so badly out of focus in our contemporary world, will be brought back into true biblical perspective as a result of this gathering and that its definition will indeed be sharpened by the grindstone of scriptural authority.

VERGIL GERBER

Executive Secretary

Evangelical Committee on Latin America

Wheaton, Ill.

Political Products

I agree that a memorial service would be fitting for all the victims of Ho wherever they may be—even his own people reluctantly following him (“Hooray for Ho?,” Oct. 10).

Your view that the Boston University seminary students are not politicians seems to overlook the political nature of men. Even, and especially, seminary students who correct wrongs by doing wrong can be political, and probably will be so in the pulpit.… Perhaps not enough laymen know or appreciate that the products of some of these schools are going to have a vast influence on this country and the world.

W. G. LYNCH

Lake Charles, La.

The Pressure Of Prayer

After reading the October 10 issue I started to wonder whether the “Open Letter to President Nixon” might not come as yet another pressure upon a man already pressured almost beyond endurance.

Instead of writing him subscribing to your suggestion, I felt constrained to drop him a thank-you note for all that he is seeking to do for us and the world and assuring him of my constant prayer.

HAZEL OLSEN

Toronto, Ont.

Heading Up The Body

Your editorial “Every Christian A Minister” (Oct. 10) was an excellent example of the astonishingly superficial thinking on this subject which is so prevalent among evangelical clergy. When are you going to come to grips with the fact that you cannot expect a man to behave like a minister out in the world when he is not recognized as a minister within the Church?…

Every day, hundreds of believers are waking up to the realization of their amazing potential as ministers of Christ. Many, all over the country, are beginning to meet as expressions of the “body of Christ” as described in First Corinthians 12. Most are meeting in homes, and clergymen are not part of the picture. Many former clergymen, like myself, are learning to become members of the body, rather than miniature heads. Those who refuse may find themselves with no congregation to hear that “indispensable” Sunday-morning sermon. Things are changing, brethren; get with it!

GARY HENLEY

Oak Park, Ill.

Hurrah For Happiness

Hurrah for Addison Leitch and his last two paragraphs in “Art Is Long” (Current Religious Thought, Oct. 10).…

Let’s quit emphasizing the sexually discorded life of David, and remember that there was a pure Joseph in Pharoah’s court; quit emphasizing the utter financial and spiritual failure of Judas and look at the redemption work in Matthew the Publican, or in Zacchaeus; quit emphasizing the self-righteous failure of the Pharisees and hear Paul testifying that “salvation is not of works”.…

Artists who possess a real personal faith in Christ can truthfully paint a picture depicting the rescue of a bad man, can write a song inviting people to the liberty of salvation, and can produce a play or script that ends well and right.

L. K. SIDER

Calvary Missionary Church

Hamilton, Ont.

The Light is blinding; when the scales fall, you’re in Damascus, headed out into the desert. As Dante discovered, the way Home is the long way around, and the Celestial Rose is the end (which enfolds the beginning).… C. S. Lewis knew the angels and how it was with them—an exhilarating awe for even the best man. But don’t we all long for the Day when we can bear the Light and join the angels in telling it like He is, join the dance moving, as Lewis has it, “farther up and farther in”?

F. EUGENE WARREN

Rolla, Mo.

Balancing Sex

Thank you for the timely article “Sex Education in Public Schools” (Sept. 26). Although I’m sure you will receive some static from the “fringe” element, the article presented a fair and well-balanced approach to a topic that has been distorted and misunderstood by many within the evangelical subculture.

RONALD M. ENROTH

Assistant Professor of Sociology Westmont College

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Degrading our United States seems to be the theme so many are on the band wagon for with sex education rather than the concern of uplifting this country with culture.

MRS. F. J. SCHULTZ, SR.

Abbeyville, S. C.

I was encouraged to see the positive article “Sex Education in Public Schools.” It was more objective than most of your articles which deal with the issues of our day.…

As social-science department chairman at El Dorado High School in Placentia, California, I have charge of the sex-education program at our school. Believe me, it can be an area which causes more witch hunts today than yesterday’s Communism and un-American charges. I consider myself an evangelical; however I am very upset at times over the emotion displayed by my fellow churchmen over the issues of the day. What makes it particularly sad is that their campaigns are not founded on a fountain of knowledge.

RICHARD P. VOUGA

Yorba Linda, Calif.

While I appreciate Mr. Huffman’s emphasis on the need for a truly biblical theology of sex among evangelicals, I wonder if we are not evading our responsibility as Christians when we condone the presentation of the “unbiblical, relativistic point of view” that inevitably accompanies the discussion of codes of sexual conduct in the public school. While ideally we should be able to teach moral values in school, from a practical standpoint it has become impossible to agree on judgments of “right” and “wrong” to which our classroom teachers will adhere—taught, as they are, in a relativistic approach in the university. The Christian parent is hard put to it to counteract such teaching at home.…

As Christians, we can and should support the dignified teaching of the biological facts of reproduction and of the principles of family living, but the objectives of the sex-education programs typified by SIECUS lend themselves far too easily to misuse and the cause of evil to be excused and accepted by a Christian.

DORIS M. ARAUJO, M.D.

Anaheim, Calif.

In my opinion, the primary responsibility for sex education within an evangelical and biblical framework is in the home; but unfortunately, many parents have abdicated their responsibility in this area, and the evangelical churches have often failed to support and help the parents in this matter of sex education. It is therefore to some extent the fault of the parents and the churches that the public schools have stepped into the breach with a view to trying to remedy the deficiencies in this area. I feel that we as Christian parents should do our utmost to fulfill our obligations in the matter of a healthy, biblically oriented sex education for our children, and that the pastors and youth leaders of our evangelical churches should be ready and willing to give guidance and counsel to parents whenever necessary in these most important matters.

W. C. JOHNSON, M.D.

Hanover, Mass.

What Keeps Us Going

Allow me to express appreciation for your gracious reference to me in “100, and Going Strong” (News, Sept. 26).

You are helping, more than you can know, in keeping many of us going on.

W. A. MOORE

Sumner, Wash.

Enriching Wealth

Just a note to thank you for the continuing wealth of inspiring material which fills each issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. My ministry is being enriched and deepened.

JERRY SWEITZER

Martinton Church of Christ

Martinton, Ill.

Some activist professors have told me in recent weeks that Henry Ford was right when he said that history was bunk, and that even a study of history will be of no use to coming generations. Everywhere we look, the extremist minority is convinced that the present moment, however exciting or ridiculous, is the thing that matters and that deliberate rejection of the past is the only way to look upon a future where all men are brothers in a peaceful world.

Loren Eiseley, professor of anthropology and the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in a recent editorial in Science: “A yearning for a life of noble savagery without the accumulated burdens of history seems in danger of engulfing a whole generation, as it did the French philosophs and their eighteenth-century followers. Those individuals who persist in pursuing the mind-destroying drug of constant action have not only confined themselves to an increasingly chaotic present—they are also, by the deliberate abandonment of their past, destroying the conceptual tools and values that are the means of introducing the rational into the oncoming future.” Moreover, we are a society apparently bemused in purpose, yet secretly homesick for a world of lost tranquility.

Well, perhaps the activist professors are right, perhaps we have been wasting our time on irrelevant matters like history; the complicated mosaic of the past may mean nothing at all. Yet experience suggests, as Will Durant once put it, that an old tradition must not be too quickly rejected since our ancestors were not all fools. Another way of saying the same thing is that there is nothing new under the sun except arrangement. Mercy, justice, and integrity have always been there and are there still, even now in an increasingly unpredictable and violent world. But these facts and principles are seen from time to time in new arrangements, new lights, new words, new equations.

Of what specific value is history, which in the end is simply journalism in another form? It might be well for the Now generation (and its parents) to take a look at the history of Rome whose decline and fall were brought about by factors and events painfully paralleling some of the things we are now going through in materialistic America. Rome, for example, found it necessary to raise taxes higher and higher as time went by to pay for foreign wars, preparations for war, or the social consequences of war. Soldiers discovered, however, that the pay they received when they returned from a campaign bought less than a smaller income had bought before they left home—the inflationary nature of military spending continually raised the price of everything.

Little by little, law and morals broke down and inflation soared. By the reign of Diocletian in the fourth century A.D. gold could buy only a fraction of what it had in the Golden Age that began with the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. Lesser coinage eventually was inflated out of sight, then revalued. Violence grew to become so much a part of the daily routine of the average Roman that almost all of his diversions were obscenely cruel, particularly mass entertainment. In the end, constant inflation and weakening of moral fiber opened Rome to the sack of the Visigoths, and only the pleas of Pope Leo I saved the city and its populace from annihilation.

In the eighteenth century—a student of history may learn—Thomas Paine became world renowned as a political theorist: his Common Sense hastened the Declaration of Independence; his pamphlets sustained colonial revolutionaries until victory came; and his defense of the French Revolution (The Rights of Man) made him an unprecedented hero in France. Yet, after a triumphant Paris greeting in 1792, Paine was imprisoned by newer revolutionaries less than a year later in an “increasingly chaotic present.” In the Reign of Terror that followed, Robespierre and his followers triumphed over the moderates, assassinated most of the opposition leaders—as they had in turn assassinated royal prisoners—and Robespierre himself was executed when his final excesses frightened even his own associates.

Who needs history? President Garfield called history the unrolled scroll of prophecy, and it is said that those who do not heed it are condemned to relive it. Who among us who lived through a year of bombing in London would be willing to bear another, with or without atomic warheads? Not many, surely. Yet each hour of each day we in this country and the Soviets in theirs—as well as others with lesser reserves—manufacture and stock-pile hydrogen bombs of such unbelievably destructive force that on both sides of the curtain there are already enough of these monsters to destroy within one week every city of any size in Europe and North America.

The revolution of the Now generation is not wholly idiotic and its adherents not all crazy kids with long hair and loose morals. Student violence usually grows from a kernel of truth and a moral judgment on the part of a good percentage of those who participate that the world they are about to inherit is wrong and needs righting. Men are not equal, men are hungry, men kill one another and have in their vaults the power to destroy all and everyone. But in his haste to overcome injustice, to outlaw war, to bring equality among men, to feed the hungry, and to aid the afflicted, the activist would be wise not to disregard knowledge of the past, since if he does he is, as Robespierre, likely to endure it.

Richard L. Tobin is associate publisher of “Saturday Review.” “Who Needs History?” appeared in the September 6 issue of that magazine and is reprinted here by permission (copyright 1969, Saturday Review Incorporated).

The Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D. C., is in a rather shabby row house. The living room has been converted into an office and bookstore, the double-size dining room into a lecture hall, and upstairs bedrooms into offices and classrooms. But despite this architectural nonconformity, to say nothing of its utter rejection of theological considerations, Scientology persists in calling itself a church. Moreover, it makes a special pitch to Christians by attempting to harmonize the teachings of founder L. Ron Hubbard with Scripture. Forty-four pages of the booklet Scientology and the Bible are set up in parallel columns with this objective. That often there is not the remotest correspondence between the Hubbard passages and the accompanying biblical quotations may be seen in the following examples:

Although all these examples are from the New Testament, numerous comparisons from the Old Testament are given as well, the vast majority of them from the Book of Proverbs.

Absent from Scientology practice are the basic constituents of the Christian religion: reverent faith, prayer, worship, reading of and preaching from the Christian Scriptures, observance of the sacraments as instituted and explained in the New Testament.

But if Scientology is not a bona fide religion, what is it? An organization of quack psychologists who are exploiting the emotionally and mentally distraught for financial gain? This appears to be the consensus of the critics. When Scientology was banned in the province of Victoria in Australia, a government report described it as “the world’s largest organization of unqualified persons engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy.” The report continues: “The theories of Scientology are fantastic and impossible, the principles perverted and ill-founded, and the techniques debased and harmful.” In an article in Today’s Health, Ralph Lee Smith concurs:

Couched in pseudoscientific terms and rites, this dangerous cult claims to help mentally or emotionally disturbed persons, for sizable fees. Scientology has grown into a very profitable worldwide enterprise … and a serious threat to health.… Scientology is a cult which thrives on glowing promises that are heady stuff for the lonely, the weak, the confused, the ineffectual, and the mentally or emotionally ill [Today’s Health, December, 1968].

In 1963 the Food and Drug Administration raided the Founding Church and impounded 100 E-meters and books labeled with “therapeutic claims charged to be false.” In February, 1969, the U. S. Court of Appeals overturned a Federal Court ruling supporting the Food and Drug Administration “until the Government can refute the claim that Scientology is a religion … protected by the right of freedom of worship.” Judge J. Skelly Wright ruled, that until proven otherwise, the Scientology practice of “auditing” must be assumed to be comparable to the Roman Catholic confession, and Scientology literature comparable to Holy Scripture.

Articles exposing Scientology as a dangerous fraud relate numerous examples of persons who claim they were swindled by unscrupulous Scientologists. The Saturday Evening Post tells of a Florida millionaire who was fleeced out of $28,000 in processing fees in less than two years. According to Today’s Health, a Los Angeles housewife marched angrily into court with the charge that she had spent $4,000 for Scientology processing “on assurance that it would help her overcome frigidity.” The ironical outcome of her investment was that her husband divorced her. And Alan Levy, in the November 15, 1968, issue of Life, tells of his reportorial pilgrimage to Saint Hill (a sprawling English manor, thirty-one miles from London, that became Scientology’s international headquarters in 1959) to enroll in an advanced course advertised at $390. Upon arrival he was informed that the cost of tuition alone would be $3,150, “plus living expenses, payable in advance.” (Had the Scientologists smelled a rat?)

Founder L. Ron Hubbard’s financial relationship to the Scientology enterprise has come under investigation. When world headquarters were moved to Saint Hill ten years ago, Hubbard imposed a 10 per cent assessment on all fees collected by Scientology centers across the world, payable to him. At that time the annual take by the Founding Church alone reportedly approached $200,000. In 1966 Hubbard received a $240,000 fee from the movement for “the good will of his name” (Time, August 23, 1968). Two years later he “forgave” the organization a $13 million debt for “services rendered,” a move described by Time as an “understandable act of charity considering that he has boasted to friends of having $7,000,000 stashed away in two numbered Swiss bank accounts.” When the organization ran into stormy weather in the British Parliament, Hubbard bailed out and headed for the Mediterranean on his 3,300-ton yacht, with its blue-uniformed crew of 200 sailors and students. There he dabbles in oceanographic research while the furor created by his controversial brainchild continues unabated. In August, 1968, he cabled Saint Hill, “I have finished my work. Now it’s up to others.”

Even if we assume complete honesty and sincerity on the part of its practitioners and promoters, Scientology must be viewed as a dangerous and menacing cult—psychologically, socially, physically, and spiritually.

Psychologically. Submitting to dianetic processing for the treatment of deep-seated anxiety or emotional disturbance is like going to the village butcher for a gallbladder operation. Psychologists have condemned the technique as “amateurish and potentially dangerous meddling with serious mental problems” (Today’s Health, December, 1968). Just how “auditing” endangers mental health may be seen from this description in the article in Today’s Health:

Instead of discussing present reality, the auditor wishes to push the preclear into a world of fantasy.… When the preclear is eager to cooperate, is fully under the sway of the auditor’s will and the apparently scientific verdict of the E-meter, he accepts the auditor’s statement that he is suppressing something, even if he can’t remember anything. Sooner or later he begins to exhibit symptoms resembling those of schizophrenia. These symptoms are encouraged; the preclear is given to believe that the hallucinations he is experiencing are factual incidents of the thetan’s past, and that his discovery of them is the high road to health and freedom.

Socially. British Health Minister Kenneth Robinson warned that Scientology is “socially harmful.” It has been so judged because it was formerly the practice of Scientology auditors to counsel “disconnection” in cases of “familial suppression.” In my interview with Miss Anne Ursprung, head executive of the Founding Church, she assured me that the church, evidently bowing to criticism, no longer advises this. But Scientology is socially harmful for other reasons. Through the combination of interior group loyalty and exterior rejection, Scientologists have developed the self-image of a persecuted messiah sect. This has resulted in hostility toward those who find fault with their beliefs and practices. Four of the ten resolves in “The Code of a Scientologist” stress this sensitivity. Perhaps the tenth, “To engage in no unseemly disputes with the uninformed on the subject of my profession,” explains why Miss Ursprung, subsequent to our interview, has refused to respond to my repeated efforts to contact her by mail and by telephone to obtain further information. During the interview, I asked her reaction to the numerous attacks on Scientology in the press. She observed that Scientology, like Christianity in Roman times, is a new religion—radically different, often misunderstood, and therefore persecuted.

Another liability of Scientology is its utter lack of social concern. It could hardly be criticized for this omission were it to abandon the pretense of being a religion. But to pose as a church, while neglecting the responsibilities of a church in the community, nation, and world, is reprehensible. Scientology offers society nothing except an expensive and highly dubious method of psychotherapy, the goal of which is self-improvement, self-mastery, personal happiness. The door to salvation is shut to those who cannot afford to pay the price of processing. Nothing is said about the plight of the poor, the sick, the homeless, the oppressed.

Also socially harmful is Scientology’s unscriptural law of retaliation. “Never fear to hurt another in a just cause,” admonishes the Code of Honour. And the Scientology code contains the pledge, “To punish to the fullest extent of my power anyone misusing or degrading Scientology to harmful ends.” Apparently the Scientologist is to be his own judge, jury, and policeman.

Physically. According to Hubbard’s “non-germ theory of disease,” most of the diseases that plague mankind, including arthritis, allergies, sinus infection, ulcers, tuberculosis, cancer, and even the common cold, are psychosomatic and can be cured through Scientology. The subtle deception of Scientology is that there is just enough truth in it to make it work in many cases. If, as one of the Doctors Mayo once said, 70 per cent of our ills are mentally induced, then any method by which afflicted persons can be persuaded that they are being helped or cured will prove effective. This, of course, is the key to the success of Christian Science, Unity, hypnotism, and even much healing that takes place through orthodox Christian channels. The danger in these approaches to physical disability is that the afflicted person will abandon professional medical treatment in favor of mental therapy and thus expose himself to the possibility of disastrous physical and mental consequences.

Spiritually. Scientologists’ veneration of Hubbard approaches Christians’ veneration of Jesus Christ. Pictures of him and quotations from his writings adorn the walls of the various classrooms and offices of the Founding Church. A sculptured bust of Hubbard is displayed prominently at the front of the lecture hall. Hubbard evidently is considered infallible in matters of Scientology belief and practice. Answering the charge that the sect is therefore authoritarian, Sir James Hort replied, “You’re free to disagree with him, and if you do that’s fine—Scientology is not for you.” With such an authority, who needs the Bible? Scientology further asserts that only it can rescue man and the world from the predicaments in which they find themselves. With such a savior, who needs Christ? Scientology inculcates the notion that man is the master of his own destiny—that the engram-erased brain is capable of overcoming all obstacles and solving all problems. With such a mechanism, who needs God? Scientology offers gnosticism as a substitute for the Gospel.

As Paul deplored the legalism that diverted the Galatian Christians from the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, so evangelicals must deplore those false premises that divert Scientologists from God’s grace in Christ: the naïve assumption that our human nature is untainted with evil, that man’s computer-brain is capable of errorless understanding and judgment, that perfect knowledge automatically produces perfect behavior, that human repentance and divine grace are unnecessary, and above all that God (most Scientologists will grant his existence) is really irrelevant to the human situation.

Scientology: religion or racket? Or is there a third option? Is it instead an organization of theologically disoriented persons who, in the absence of intelligent understanding of and commitment to Jesus Christ and his Gospel, have fallen prey to a false gospel of spurious knowledge and vain methods of self-improvement? Our churches must assume a share of responsibility for the situation that has given rise to this and indeed all other heretical deviations of our time. For the cults, as J. K. Van Baalen has said, are “the unpaid bills of the churches.” It is doubtless true that many of Christianity’s dropouts are turned off by the Gospel itself and not merely by the churches. But it is also true that the standard denominations, generally speaking, have been guilty of promoting a crossless churchianity that demands practically nothing of its members. Is it possible for a person to unite with the church and remain a church member for many years without knowing Christ, Christian doctrine, the Bible, and the true meaning of Christian discipleship? Tragically, the answer is yes.

I asked Anne Ursprung whether the transition from Christianity to Scientology had involved much shifting of gears on her part. She replied that it had not, that even as a Southern Baptist she had always been convinced that man’s nature is basically good. What is the answer? A tightening up of church discipline? An educational campaign to combat biblical ignorance and doctrinal confusion? A return to fundamentals in home training, pulpit utterances, youth programs, and community and world outreach? All these. But above all, exercise of extreme care that those inducted into church membership, particularly young people, have a genuine experience of Christian conversion—and that beyond their initial commitment they are nurtured into maturity of Christian faith and life. In these ways—and only in these ways—the churches can help to prevent the erosion of their membership by Scientology and other misguided and misguiding cults.

Joseph Martin Hopkins is associate professor in the Department of Bible and Philosophy at Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, where he received the B.Mus. He also holds the B.Th. (from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary) and Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh).

We are living in perilous times. The few weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day are filled with danger. More fires occur in homes during this period than at any other time of the year. More people travel on the highways, increasing the accident totals proportionately. And more people gain unneeded weight during this season than any other. The average American finds not only his cup running over but also his cookie jar, candy dish, and dinner plate.

The image of the jolly fat man is slowly changing as more people become aware of the dangers and disadvantages of obesity. Dieting has blossomed into a big business, and the list of diet foods and diet books grows longer every day. Health clubs and beauty spas have bulging memberships. One cigarette company now promotes a brand for women that is “slimmer than the fat cigarettes men smoke.” We’ve come a long way, friends.

But the problem of gluttony is still very real for some 40 million Americans, many of whom occupy a pew or a pulpit every Sunday. I heard one minister say, patting his protruding middle, that he was proud of his “chicken graveyard.” He was joking when he should have been repenting.

A recent study by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company showed that the male who is 20 per cent overweight has a 43 per cent greater chance of developing heart disease and a 53 per cent greater chance of having cerebral hemorrhages, and is 133 per cent more susceptible to contracting diabetes. In other words, a person who habitually overeats is digging his grave with a spoon. This should be of vital interest to every woman upon whose menu planning the family diet depends. Mrs. Dale Carnegie, in How to Help Your Husband Get Ahead, said:

Want to know how to kill your husband—and get away with it? Don’t bother with cyanide, blunt instruments or revolvers—just feed him a steady diet of rich pastries and heavy starches until he is at least 15 to 25 per cent overweight! Then sit back and think what a good-looking widow you’ll make—because it won’t be long now.

According to the experts, between 70 and 80 per cent more men than women die in their early fifties.

Many of us never know what little will power we have until we try dieting. Diets are never fun. Most people who become casualties in the war against fat simply lack sufficiently strong motivation.

Guideposts magazine recently published an account of how one person found a key to a meaningful reducing program. Mary Bowers MacKorell was told by her doctor to take off several pounds. She quickly went through the syndrome of diet plans, dietetic foods, and calorie counting, but she couldn’t seem to find the necessary will power. One day she received in the mail a pamphlet appealing for money to help feed needy children. On the cover was a picture of a dark-skinned boy whose scrawny chest and limbs made him look like a tiny skeleton. The sight of this starving child was a kind of spiritual shock treatment, she says. It started her thinking about how she could take off her unneeded pounds and at the same time help to put some desperately needed pounds on the body of a starving child.

At last I had a spiritual motivation for reducing. Under God’s guidance I formed a practical plan and carried it through. For a period of ten days I ate only two meals each day, skipping lunch. Each day at the lunch hour I sipped a sugar-free drink and looked at the picture of the starving boy. I prayed God to bless him and let my extra weight be transferred to him or someone like him. For each lunch omitted I placed in a box one dollar saved.

The result was exactly as I had hoped. My experiment began on August 10 and ended August 19. In that ten-day period I had not only saved $110 but lost exactly five pounds.

This jubilant girl made two important discoveries: There is a way of escape from gluttony, as from every other temptation (1 Cor. 10:13); and one’s own problems are often solved by helping others.

What higher motivation could one have than that of serving God by helping someone in need? Unfortunately, after all is said and done, more is said than done. An anonymous writer has vividly described the “Be-ye-warmed-and-filled” philosophy:

I was hungry

and you formed a humanities club

and discussed my hunger.

Thank you.

I was imprisoned

and you crept off quietly

to your chapel in the cellar

and prayed for my release.

I was naked

and in your mind

you debated the morality of my

appearance.

I was sick

and you knelt and thanked God for

your health.

I was homeless

and you preached to me

of the spiritual shelter of the

love of God.

I was lonely

and you left me alone

to pray for me.

You seem so holy;

so close to God;

But I’m still very hungry,

and lonely,

and cold.

The Mosaic law declared that the fat of the sacrificed animals belonged to the Lord and was to be burned as an offering to him (Lev. 3:16). Perhaps the overweight Christian could reverently let his body be a “living sacrifice” to God (Rom. 12:1) by “burning off” extra pounds through dieting or fasting. Once he determines he is going to lose weight and realizes that the Lord will help him, the next step is to decide how his “Fasting Fund” will be used. Worthy outlets abound. Some people might like to help feed or clothe hungry families, in their own community or far away. Others may choose to support an orphan child in another land (this can be done for as little as $10 per month). Others may prefer to give spiritual food to persons whose souls are undernourished; a check to the American Bible Society or the mission work of a congregation will help meet this need.

You can lose weight. And you can help others. We think of a philanthropist as someone who contributes great sums of money to worthy causes; yet the word itself is derived from two Greek words, philos, “loving,” and anthropos, “man.” Each of us can be a philanthropist—a “loving man.” Each of us can give of himself to help others.

Stanley Paregien is associate minister of the Mayfair Church of Christ in Oklahoma City. He recieved the M.A. degree from the University of New Mexico and is working toward a Ph.D. in speech at the University of Oklahoma.

A man whom I know (he is a Christian) has an odd hang-up: he is fascinated—almost paralyzed—by the sight of a hearse. It is not fear he experiences when he sees a hearse, nor is it glee. His feeling is ambiguous; but the mixture certainly includes perplexity, recoil, attraction, and bemusement.

As far as I know, the perplexity in his feeling about the hearse arises from some such questions as: Who came up with such a design for this vehicle? It is sleek, glittering, quiet, and comfortable. There is something peculiar about the way the long roof rises away and back from the tinted windshield—one isn’t sure whether the thing is a limousine or a truck. Or again, What do we mean by this luxury with which we surround a death: polished woods, simonized cars, pomp, hush, and slow processions through the streets, everyone—bystanders and mourners alike—tacitly agreeing without the help of sirens and flashing lights that here is something that requires utter precedence. “Stand away from death,” it seems to say, or “Here comes the lofty corpse.” The mourners themselves seem to take on a dreadful prerogative simply by virtue of their connection with the thing. Or again, the question arises, To whom is all this ceremony addressed? The dead person? us? the bystanders? the gods? Nobody is going to argue that a pick-up truck wouldn’t serve as well to convey the item from the chapel to the graveyard. What, precisely, are we telling ourselves by this spectacle? Or again, why this kind of spectacle? There are a thousand ways of marking death: some tribes dance and sing; others feast; others do almost nothing; we do this. Why?

And so on—an array of perplexing questions. But there is also a feeling of recoil. This is easy enough to appreciate—who of us doesn’t feel this in the face of death? But the why of this feeling of recoil is something else. Where does it come from? After all, death is surely the most common event in human experience, more common even than marriage or child-bearing, since plenty of people experience death without experiencing these other things. In fact, nobody in history (except Enoch and Elijah) has escaped it, not even the Son of Man. And nobody will, we know quite well (except, Christians believe, those who happen to be around when, at the end of human history, the Son of Man appears in his exaltation). So why should there be this shrinking away from the most common event of all?

For one thing, of course, we shrink from it because it represents the dead end (no pun intended) of any experience we can know anything about. It is the river across which there is one-way traffic only. Nobody comes back. When Hamlet was wondering to himself whether life was worth living (and he had various reasons for thinking that it wasn’t), he concluded that he’d better go on where he was rather than try out “the undiscovered country, from whose bourne/No traveller returns.” There is no interchange of news between our world and any other. When someone we know is obliged to make that journey, we are left desolate on the beach, as it were, with not so much as a plume of smoke from a receding ship to tell us which way the route lies. Even the Bible, which Christians believe gives us some word that pierces beyond the barrier, is strangely silent as to the experience of a person beyond death. Whatever the realm is like, it is under the lordship of a prince who himself once experienced the awful crossing. That is about all the Bible says. (St. Paul expresses his anticipation of being “with Christ,” and in another place speaks of people who have made the journey as being asleep. And St. John, of course, describes tremendous climactic events in the court of heaven, complete with visions of gold and crystal and jewels and music and light and pageantry; but no one can pretend to have much idea as to exactly what that “undiscovered country” is like.)

So that a Christian, even though his confidence in Christ reaches across the barrier that we call death, may well find in himself a very human response to the idea of his own or somebody else’s demise. Our experience of life is in terms of flesh and blood: we know ourselves this way (this is my hand; this is my nose here in the mirror; this is my stomach that aches) and we know everyone else this way (she has beautiful eyes; I love her smile; he has a loud voice). So that when this whole way of experiencing things comes to an end, and decay and rot take over and ruin everything we know of ourselves and people we love, naturally there is a recoil. We would be monsters if we treated the event lightly, no matter how lively our faith in death’s Conqueror.

It is this awareness, in part at least, that lies at the root of the horror that has always surrounded the idea of death in human imagination. The fascination of all ghost stories and tales of the macabre derives from this horror we feel in the presence of the thing that dissolves the flesh and leaves only grotesquery in its wake.

For, in a sense, death is the ultimate horror (cf. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”). It is a tearing asunder of something that ought not to be torn asunder: it is the tearing apart of body and spirit, and this is not what a human being is made for. When body and spirit are together, we have a person. When they are not together, we have, not a person, but a corpse and a ghost, and neither of these things arouses anything but horror in us. Suddenly we are confronted with a thing. It appears in every respect exactly as the person we knew, but it is not he. But it is he—or at least it is certainly every molecule we ever knew of him. But, our imagination insists, it is not he. And so it goes, back and forth. This that is left of him, but that is not he, is still much more important to us than that bookcase over there.

People who are accustomed to thinking about death in large and triumphant terms—who believe, that is, in the One who “destroyed him that hath the power of death,” and who say “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”—these people are sometimes baffled to discover that, when they are suddenly pushed face to face with death, they find grief and confusion and sickness of soul, feelings they might expect from others who have no confidence in death’s Destroyer. In a way, these people (Christians, in a word) have a double difficulty: on the one hand they experience all the usual human feelings in the face of death, but on the other they may be nagged by the idea that they ought not to give way like this, and that they ought to be experiencing joy and victory—that they ought to be living witnesses to their claim that death has no more terror for them.

Why is this? Here they are, weeping at graves like the rest of humanity, trying for dear life to hold on to their sanity when their world has been blasted by a death. Are they hypocrites? Do they just say those things about victory, and not mean them?

Probably any Christian who has thought about it, and certainly anyone who has grappled with death, has faced these questions. Where is my faith now? Where is the victory I’m supposed to know? The Scriptures tell me about a blessed hope, and about the death of death, and about glory and joy and exultation, and here I am nearly mad with grief and desolation. Is the whole thing a farce? Where, indeed, is my God?

And there it is. That is the question. For it is the question that was asked by the Lord when he finally came up against the ultimate horror. He who knew exactly what he was doing and who he was and what was at stake, whose obedience to his Father was perfect, was almost crushed in that hour. And in his extremity he called out to what seemed a deaf heaven, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Of all inappropriate times for God to withdraw his presence and help, this was the most inappropriate. Here was his own Son, at the crux of history and eternity, gasping under the assault of death itself, and the gates of heaven were shut, hidden behind the black clouds that swirl over Golgotha. What an appalling betrayal! How is one to make any sense of it all?

We can make sense of it only by seizing hold of the paradox that in some sense (it is a mystery) God, who is above creation and human experience, really did subject himself to the conditions of that creation and experience. It was not a masquerade. It was not a charade. There was nothing bogus about the Incarnation. The Son of God referred to himself as the Son of Man with good reason. For he was the archetypal Man: he was Man as man was meant to be—the second Adam, that is. Hence his human experience was real. When, “for us men and for our salvation [he] came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man,” he was not pretending. He was an authentic man, not a visiting god disguised as a man, who could fly away from the limitations of human experience at any point he chose. If the Incarnation means anything at all, it means that the God whom we worship has participated radically in our experience, and by that participation has raised our human experience to glory.

Hence, his experience of death, like his experience of everything else, was real. It was a human experience of death. While he was God, he was also wholly man (it is a mystery), and as that man, he had to encounter experience as we do. Hunger, fatigue, loneliness, pleasure, irritation, temptation, pain, and finally death—these things weren’t shadows on the wall for him. He really was hungry and tired and lonely and irritated. And he really did suffer horrible pain. And He knew horror and fear when Death came stalking toward him. For that is what the human experience of death is. Death is the final outrage to our humanity (note that it was death that entered via sin in Eden—death, the ultimate insult to God’s chief handiwork).

And so, even though Jesus knew that he was appointed to conquer death, and that eventually everything would be delivered into his hands, his experience at the time of his death was wholly real. It was not as though he could say, “Right, for the next three days we will go through the motions of being overcome by death. I will, as it were, suffer and ‘die,’ but I know quite well that triumph is a mere moment away, when my mother and my friends will come upon an empty grave, and when I will have wrecked forever the sovereignty of death.” Presumably he knew all this. But we must not for a moment suppose that his bloody sweat in Gethsemane was merely a good performance by a superb actor. That Man there was in an agony of fear and horror—so much so that he finally asked to be let off. He who knew his name was Messiah and Immanuel quailed. But there followed immediately that epochal “Nevertheless.”

The point of all this is that Jesus’ knowledge of what was ultimately at stake did not cancel the human reality of his experience of things. When he approached the grave of Lazarus, for example, what made him weep? Surely he knew what he would do. In five minutes the man would be there before them, alive and well. Why weep about something (death) that had no real power? Would it not have been more appropriate, considering his position as Messiah, for Jesus to have smiled knowingly and said a few things to Lazarus’s friends about rejoicing in hope? Didn’t he have a responsibility here to show that the joy of the Lord is one’s strength in all situations? Surely his weeping wouldn’t enhance his witness.

And yet he wept. Who knows the source of those tears? But whatever they were about, they weren’t crocodile tears. Jesus was not a humbug. Presumably, at that moment, his experience of the death of Lazarus was real. He had lost a friend, and this is an experience that makes human beings weep. The defeat of this friend by death appeared as an outrage and a grotesquery to Jesus, and he wept.

Jesus’ response to this situation, and to his own experience of death, points up something that seems to me to be important about our (Christians’) responses to human experience. We may feel, because we see Something Else behind experience (the hand of God, that is, behind suffering or loss or death—or pleasure, for that matter), that we are not to allow those experiences their full weight, since they are “only” means to an end. That is, we feel that we have here on this earth no continuing city, and that therefore our experiences here are minimally important. “What does it matter in the light of eternity?” we sometimes say, in a brave show of spirituality. And this is a question we do well to ask ourselves when our attention and affection get siphoned off to trivialities, when we lose a sense of proportion about things that are patently fleeting. But this perspective on things can lead us rather subtly into a frame of mind that eventually disavows the validity of human experience, and sees Christian experience as something having to do only with the spirit and eternity.

If we slip into this kind of thinking, we are doing something that is natural to the devout mind. Naturally eternity seems more important than time, and heaven than earth, and spirit than flesh. But this is not quite true, or at least no Christian can take quite this view; for if it is true, then God was engaged in trivialities in such acts as the Creation, and the Incarnation, and the Resurrection. For all these mighty acts have to do with time and the concrete. Other religions seek an escape from time and the flesh into a realm of pure eternal spirit. Christianity does not. Because of the Incarnation, it has time and the flesh right at the heart of its vision of things.

This is not to say, as popular modern Protestantism seems to be saying, that Christianity has nothing at all to do with “pie in the sky by and by,” and that it’s no use talking about airy-fairy things when our cities and universities are burning up with unrest, and so on. For any serious Christian knows that those “airy-fairy” things are precisely what give meaning to this life here: that our life exists in the context of the eternal, and that when we fail to see this, we become idolaters and are reduced to the sort of thing that destroyed Sodom and Babylon and Corinth and Rome.

So that a Christian’s understanding of his human experience is not, on the one hand, the notion that human experience is just some vexatious procession of unreal events to be gotten through as quickly as possible so that we may get on to the “real” things (heaven); nor is it, on the other hand, the idolatrous view that this is all there is to it, and that events have no meaning at all beyond themselves. Rather, a Christian believes (again, because of the Incarnation) in the enormous significance of common human experience (eating, drinking, work, sexuality, suffering, death), and sees it all as the arena in which the process of his salvation occurs. And he understands this process of salvation, not as changing him into an angel or a pure spirit, but as making him into exactly the kind of being God had in mind when he made man (Adam)—a being characterized by flesh and blood, and choosing to worship and obey the Lord God through all the motions and experiences of human life. St. Paul calls it being transformed into the image of Christ, who was, of course, the Second Adam—the one figure in history, that is, who demonstrated what it means to be perfectly human.

And that Man, by his human life, attested to the reality and validity of our human experience. Hunger was real for him, and loneliness and suffering and death, and he never pretended that the long view—what he knew was ultimately true—canceled the reality of the present experience. Hence he wept at Lazarus’s grave, and recoiled at the horror of his own death. And hence we, who follow him, need feel no guilt or confusion if, despite our faith in ultimate Joy, we experience death as awful.

Thomas Howard teaches English at St. Bernard’s School in New York. He holds the B.A. degree from Wheaton College and the M.A. from the University of Illinois, and is currently a candidate for the Ph.D. at New York University. He is the Author of the book “Christ the Tiger.”