One drizzling evening in Singapore a dozen of us involved in the Asian-South Pacific Congress on Evangelism met for dinner at the home of the dean of the university medical school. So-called evangelical headliners made up the guest list.

When we discovered our host serves on the Singapore committee that decides who qualifies for the kidney bank and who is left to die, we became imaginatively introvert. To our surprise, if not dismay, we learned that, had any one of the twelve of us been in dire need of a kidney, he would not have stood a chance of survival; all of us were too old to be eligible for the kidney bank.

Ours is in many ways already a young people’s world. In his controversial Reith Lectures, Dr. Edmund Leach noted that this is especially so in fields of learning: whoever is now over forty-five left the classroom before the emergence of antibiotics, nuclear fission, jet aircraft, space rockets, and computers. Any teacher “with a white hair in his head is already hopelessly out of date,” he says, in such fields as microbiology, ethology, radio astronomy, and computer studies, where “the men under forty … ‘know what is worth’ knowing” (A Runaway World?, p. 74).

It is hardly true, of course, that youth now control the centers of world power. But they nonetheless have the near future firmly in their reach. On university and college campuses today are almost all coming leaders in politics, science, education, literature and the arts, journalism, radio and television, and religion.

What especially concerns me here is the “and religion”—particularly Christianity. For the future of the evangelical cause now surely depends in a strategic way upon dedicated young people.

Last summer I suggested at Canadian Keswick that for a bold confrontation of our age young Christians in their teens and twenties are now the most hopeful vanguard. Evangelical Christians must soon take to the streets to march and sing for the faith, and the older evangelicals, I surmise, are probably not suited for such a venture. Dedicated evangelical youth could turn the spiritual tide—unless they are infected by their parents’ timidity about openly conveying their convictions into the public arena.

My halting doubts about older evangelicals are not primarily based on their age. Nearly every Veterans’ Day parade includes an octogenarian who proudly shows his colors and reaffirms faith in his country, even though he can hardly keep step with the drums. Some spirits will never grow too old to march.

But is the generation of older evangelicals perchance a victim of a particular kind of premature senility? Does middle-age evangelicalism have a failure of nerve? Is there a discernible palpitation of heart in what ought to be a steady beat for the cause of Jesus Christ in the modern world? And does hesitancy about public engagement reflect a secret identification with the materialistic value-preference of our age, a hidden inner debate about spiritual realities in the struggle against the vogue ideas of a secular age, a reluctance to walk conspicuously on missionary frontiers through the streets of the new society? Is there more evangelical waffling than appears on the surface of our comfortably filled churches with their predictable routines and well-worn patterns of response? Do evangelical adults lack courage to do for their faith what a Marxist will do for his ideology and what many college students will do for a minority cause—that is, hoist colors eagerly in a hostile environment?

Or do the reservations about bold and creative involvement stem rather, or in part, from a failure to understand our generation? Are we aware that the mass media have become the most fantastically powerful human means of persuasion ever to have emerged in history, and that the Christian Church has a crucial and indispensable stake in this very arena of human persuasion?

It is easy enough to opt out of the public arena by simply dismissing street-marching as the prerogative of revolutionaries. Mass demonstrations, singing in the streets, or whatever else goes on outside the shelter of the churches—what is this but the trapping of radicals and revolutionary causes?

If that be the case, of course, it is only because Main Street has been forfeited to the radicals. The Apostle Paul was not beyond crusading for Christ in the Athenian market place. In his time the throngs were almost all outside the churches, and that strategic situation is now rapidly overtaking us again.

What I have in mind is not simply counter-mobilization, a sanctimonious parading that protests the protesters and ignores the protested. Nothing less is needed than modern Pauls to make sure the throngs outside know that Jesus Christ is risen and invites contemporary Epicureans and Stoics to meet him—either today or on the last day.

Nor is that all. I have long felt—and have said so—that evangelicals ought to be and to have been in the vanguard of the cause of human rights. Not that they ought to hop, skip, and jump whenever the secular movements of our time call for a show of mob pressure; that would place evangelicals in the tailguard, rather than the vanguard—though surely there is nothing wrong with a simultaneous show of concern when the cause of justice is at stake. Evangelicals ought in fact to see themselves in the mirror of events whenever some member of a minority is deprived of equal rights before the law; they too are a minority in the world, and are likely to continue to be so in the generations to come. When fellow Jews would have put the Apostle Paul to death after his conversion to Christ, he swiftly appealed to Caesar for equal treatment under the law, expecting impartiality even from a pagan empire. A government that does not preserve human equality before the law is neither the servant of God nor an ally of pure religion.

The mobbists are mistaken, of course, in their reliance on pressure and coercion, rather than on law and jurisprudence, for social change. In America a way remained open to carry their cause to and through the courts; if local statutes and politicians and citizens and even churchgoers seemed immovable, a single test case could have propelled the issue into the juridical process. Evangelicals could have shown the better way, but it was easier, and more popular, to deplore mobbism than to deplore injustice.

I have no interest, however, in enlisting the younger generation to sing but a single tune. What the world needs is the reality and vitality of a living faith in God—its transforming power in personal life, its high motivation for public righteousness, its holy joy that restores music to man’s soul and dignity and direction to his walk. Persons everywhere today are searching for a new ideal of life; they are panting for a new freedom. It is time we show them openly that America’s best young manhood and womanhood has discovered an adventurous role in the cosmic purpose of God by squaring life with Jesus of Nazareth.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Jesus did not come into the world to save good people; he came to save sinners. “Good people” were lost then, as they are today, as long as they trusted in their own “goodness.”

Our Lord’s running controversy with the Pharisees stemmed from this fatal mistake on their part. The Apostle Paul wrote of all unbelieving Jews, including the Pharisees: “Being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified” (Rom. 10:3, 4).

Is this not still a major problem today? Are there not many millions who have little or no notion of God’s plan of salvation and who believe that in some way they are earning their claim to heaven?

I feel strongly that one of the great weaknesses of the Church is preaching that obscures the clear teachings of Scripture about sin and salvation. With many ministers this began in seminaries where intellectual attainments have taken precedence over the Bible, to the point where men sit in judgment on the Word instead of allowing it to sit in judgment on them. I have talked with seminary students who scoff at the idea that the Bible is man’s infallible rule of faith and practice, and who take the position that in the world of our time we are witnessing God’s more recent and binding revelation.

Out of this view of God and the Scriptures has grown a new concept of the Church and the Christian message, one that is essentially humanistic and altogether of this world. According to this concept, the “lostness” of unrepentant sinners is wholly the result of the maladjustments and inequities of the social order; therefore, it is the social order that must be attacked, not sin at the personal level.

Is there not grave danger that the Church will work to cleanse “the outside of the cup and plate” of society while the inside—the hearts of men—remains filled with all manner of evil?

There is a bit of the Pharisee in all of us. How we love to parade our own “righteousness” for men to see, and how willing we are to distort Christianity to suit our own private interpretations! For these sins of spiritual pride and blindness we need to pray for forgiveness and deliverance.

Once the authority of the Scriptures is jettisoned we find all issues confused by the conflicting opinions of men. If it is assumed that men are saved by Christ’s death regardless of their own faith, then their environment becomes the chief object of the witness and work, and with devastating results. The focus is shifted from man’s personal responsibility to a holy God to the corporate sins of society and their effect on humanity as a whole. And out of this there has emerged the idea that revolution, not regeneration, is the answer to the world’s problems.

As a result, that with which we are now faced is “another gospel,” not the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the difference can be clearly seen when one considers the clear teachings of Scripture.

In the Bible we learn that sin is a revolt against God, an innate characteristic of man that is reflected in every part of his personality—disobedience to God in thought, word, and deed. We learn also the consequences of unforgiven sin—separation from God now and for eternity.

The enormity of sin and its effect on man is the only explanation for the loving act of God and his Son, and the blessed and continuing work of the Holy Spirit.

As the true Gospel is preached, the Holy Spirit impresses on men’s hearts a sense of the burden of sin, a realization of its nature and the resulting estrangement from God. This is a burden no man can remove; but many of us can attest to the sense of relief and joy when we know that forgiveness is ours.

Many years ago while I was a medical missionary in China I saw a man with an enormous tumor on his back that weighed him down day and night. The operation to remove the tumor was not particularly difficult, but his joy over his release was almost unbounded. How much greater the joy when sins are forgiven! David knew this when he wrote “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered.… Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Ps. 32:1, 11).

Why is there so little of this joy in the Church today? Because the fact and consequences of sin are played down, and because there is so little repentance and confession of sin. Is not the Church in fact perpetuating the deadly myth that men can and must save themselves by their own efforts and achievements?

Why are such words as confession, repentance, judgment, and salvation so rarely heard today? Is it not because of a deadly sophistication that causes men to feel themselves above and beyond such things? Surely our Lord’s words to the Laodicean church apply today: “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17). The message of forgiveness from personal sin through acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour has been neglected in favor of a new “gospel” of good works.

Let me repeat: The Bible teaches man’s need of a Saviour, the burden of sin, the fact of guilt before a holy God, the lostness of the unrepentant sinner, the necessity for repentance and confession of sin, and the certainty of forgiveness and newness of life in Christ. You be the judge as to how far short we fall of preaching, teaching, and believing the whole counsel of God in these matters.

Jesus came to “call sinners to repentance,” and this means the sins committed by individuals, as well as the corporate sins of society. He came not to pat any of us on the back but to remake us in his own likeness. I believe that it is precisely at this point that much preaching and teaching fails miserably. The heinous nature of sin and its effect on our lives is brushed aside while the plight of people in the mass is stressed, without regard to the fact that all of us are sinners who need a personal Saviour and that until Jesus is accepted as Saviour he cannot be Lord of our lives.

The world is a raging inferno. The Church must realize that it alone has the extinguisher—the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The water pistols of human programs are not the ultimate answer. What is needed is preaching “according to the Scriptures” made effective by the Holy Spirit.

In this way alone the destroying fires of Satan will be replaced by the holy fire of God’s Spirit.

L. NELSON BELL

Evangelist Billy Graham was interviewed by CHRISTIANITY TODAYon the twentieth anniversary of his first large-scale evangelistic campaign, held in the fall of 1949 in a tent in downtown Los Angeles. Mr. Graham made these remarks during the Southern California crusade in Anaheim last month.

What recollections come to mind of the Los Angeles campaign in 1949? What are some of the greatest lessons you’ve learned in the intervening years?

Those are big questions. At the time we came to Los Angeles in 1949 we were using the names and methods of the so-called old-time evangelism of the early twentieth century and the latter part of the nineteenth. The word crusade was never used—it was called the “campaign,” and the counselors were called “personal workers.” In those days evangelists took love offerings. We used the same Gospel, but it was couched in quite a different framework.

The thing I remember most is the tremendous blessing of God. You have to put it in the context of its times. Mass evangelism was something of the past. During the thirties and the forties there were few evangelists. A crowd of 5,000 was almost unheard of until Youth for Christ came along and got larger crowds on Saturday nights.

There were some evangelists, like Dr. Rice and Dr. Appleman and Dr. Jones, who were having a joint campaign in Chicago about that time. They had three or four thousand people a night. That was considered a very successful meeting.

In those days no evangelist and no religion had much coverage in the press; as a matter of fact, you almost never saw anything about religion except on the back pages. About that time, God, in what I believe was his own way, broke through to give us this start in Los Angeles.

Before we came to Los Angeles, the committee out here put on an evangelistic campaign every year. They invited us for this year (1949) and I had the vision of something larger and greater than the committee had. I suggested they have a budget of $25,000; they said they could never raise that much money. So I wrote them, I remember, from Winona Lake, and I said, “Then I’m going to cancel, because I believe God wants us to do greater things than we’ve ever done before.” They finally said, “All right, we’ll try to make it a $25,000 budget and advertise it more extensively.”

If I remember correctly, the tent seated about 3,000. We started out probably two-thirds filled the opening service. We went on for three weeks, and we prayed each week after that as we extended to eight weeks. The crowds began to come, and the publicity gathered momentum. The Associated Press carried a major story …

Wasn’t it William Randolph Hearst who gave you major publicity?

Yes, Mr. Hearst had given this note to his editors: “Puff Graham.” We think that a maid in his home suggested to him that he get interested in the crusade. We know the name of the maid; she’s in San Diego, and we’ve heard from her. She talked to him, but she doesn’t know if that was the trigger or not. I never met Mr. Hearst. I never had any correspondence with him through all the years.

That was how it started. But the Associated Press, about three days later, carried a major story and said, “A new revivalist has arrived on the scene in America.” That appeared all across America and made the front page in many papers. Then Time carried a story and then Life carried a story. By the time we’d stayed eight weeks, interest had gathered all across America. When we went to Boston early in 1950, the meeting place could not contain the crowds. We moved to four different auditoriums—finally ending up on the Boston Common.

It all began here in Los Angeles, and I believe that it was God. I had a sense of great dependence and fear—I was not used to this type of publicity. I was afraid I would do something that would displease the Lord or make some mistake because people wanted to quote me on everything and I was not used to that.

I went back to Minneapolis, where I was president of Northwestern Bible College, and I remember the faculty met with me and we had a real session of prayer and great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. All of us were broken before the Lord.

The changes that have taken place since then are tremendous. We didn’t get many young people to meetings in those days. Even Youth for Christ was largely middle-aged people. Today it’s become youth crusades. Most of the people attending these crusades today are under twenty-five.

Another change: The team sat down one day and wrote out every criticism of mass evangelism that we could think of. We decided we were going to change all of that and lift the word evangelism back to what we believed to be a biblical position. We set about to do it in different ways. One was doing away with love offerings. I remember my love offering here in Los Angeles was so large that it was about twice what my total yearly salary is now.

As I look back, I can hardly believe that this is the way we did it, because our methods are so different today—far more efficient, more business-like. Of course one cannot help but change as he grows older, and as he travels, and as he meets leaders, and reads and studies.

What do you see ahead in the next decade for evangelical Christianity? There are some who have said that the U. S. Congress on Evangelism in Minneapolis could be a turning point. Do you agree?

I think evangelical Christianity is now “where the action is.” We have seen a breakthrough in Minneapolis, I think. For the first time the world realizes that evangelicals have always had a social concern—maybe not always as strong as they should have had, and certainly there has been a blind spot in many areas on the race question. But there has been a social concern. And missionary zeal.

All of this came out in Minneapolis, and I think many people in some of the more liberally oriented groups were quite surprised. I hope it’s going to have the effect of showing evangelicals that we do have social responsibility, and of showing the liberals that they need to be more orthodox in their faith.

‘Late Have I Loved Thee …’

Jesus Rediscovered, by Malcolm Muggeridge (Doubleday, 1969, 217 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial representative, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, London, England.

At the age of sixty-six, a former editor of Punch and former atheist here traces his late finding of faith. The book is crammed with the highly irregular. Muggeridge’s spiritual enlightenment, he relates, began during a journalistic stint in Moscow, and owes little to the Church as an institution. His credo is sketchy, and he is careful to profess no more than he really believes: “I see only fitfully, believe no creed wholly, have had no all-sufficing moment of illumination.” He is sympathetically agnostic about the Trinity, the Genesis creation story, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection.

Nonetheless, Muggeridge declares that in some sense he has been a perennial pilgrim on earth, having always had the conviction of being a displaced person (though on page 198 he seems to contradict this). This elicits a sentence at once curious and profound. “My first conscious recollection of life,” he says, “is of walking down the street … (when I was six) in someone else’s hat and wondering who I was.” For man to feel at home in the world would be “the ultimate disaster.”

Muggeridge was ever conscious of the Heavenly Hound’s pursuit. “I knew from the beginning, and turned away. The lucky thieves were crucified with their Saviour; You called me, and I didn’t go—those empty years, those empty words, that empty passion!” It sounds like Augustine (some will find the affinity significant), whom Muggeridge greatly admires. Other lights in his darkness include Pascal, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, and Simone Weil.

In places the language is earthy, perhaps not surprisingly in one with such intimate knowledge of the far country, but some (this reviewer among them) will find it a wholesome antidote if large doses of pious treacle are regularly taken into the system. Muggeridge possesses an engaging capacity for selfdenigration, and follows C. S. Lewis in that crafty disclaiming of theological nous which frustrates potential critics—and gives license to let fly with sly and astounding utterances.

All this makes for eminently readable stuff, whether it deals with South Africa (“the prevailing attitude to the black African patients was veterinary rather than medical”), a television encounter with a coterie of doctors (“appalling in their grossness, their total inability to see beyond mortal flesh and their carving knives”), or his visit to the WCC Uppsala Assembly (“they were able to agree about almost anything, because they believed almost nothing”). His chapter on the transplant controversy, ghoulishly titled “My True Love Hath My Heart,” is at least a cautionary tale for reckless drivers. On the divine demise his words are few and timely. “Dead or live, he is still God, and eternity ticks on even though all the clocks have stopped.”

He reveals that when he resigned as rector of Edinburgh University because he deplored the free distribution of contraceptives among students, the Roman Catholic chaplain wrote to rebuke him. This innocence by dissociation, incidentally, gave him a startling if temporary vogue in Scottish Calvinist circles.

An evangelical bookshop in London that had given this book a big build-up, got Muggeridge to come to sign autographs, and reaped some wordly profits from the sales, withdrew it from display in their front window when someone thought of trying it for orthodoxy. Muggeridge would have enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed his book.

Echoes Of Bultmann

An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament, by Hans Conzelmann (Harper & Row, 1969, 373 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Clark H. Pinnock, professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Here, fifteen years after the publication of Rudolf Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament, is a major treatment of the same field by one of his loyal disciples. There is no lessening of the historical pessimism, no apology for the anthropological conquest of the Gospel. Professor Conzelmann simply wishes to carry through the program Bultmann began, relating it to recent studies, especially those in the theology of the individual authors of the Synoptic Gospels. The result is a detailed reference book, richly annotated, summarizing the main issues in the field of New Testament theology. The book abounds in scholarly conjectures, which some will call brilliant, others merely speculative.

The work is divided into five parts. In the first, Professor Conzelmann attempts to reconstruct the primitive kerygma before Paul—no easy task for one whose capacity to doubt the biblical text is so highly developed. In this section, he abstracts chunks of material from various New Testament books and seeks to show a confusing diversity of mutually incompatible theologies circulating in this early period.

Part two treats the theology of the Synoptic tradition, which reflects largely community sayings overlying a very meager amount of genuine historical recollection. In a few swift pages, Conzelmann concludes that Jesus accepted none of the Christological titles applied to him in the gospel narratives. That picture of Christ is the product of the myth-making fantasy of the early Church, combined with the personal theological bias of the Synoptic authors themselves. The reader of these Gospels is thus doubly deceived.

The theology of Paul is the subject of part three and receives the most space. Only the “undisputedly authentic” letters are used as sources. Ephesians, Colossians, Second Thessalonians, and the Pastorals are excluded, as is the material in Acts. Each account of Paul’s conversion is regarded as legendary. Like Bultmann, Conzelmann is chiefly interested in Paul’s analysis of human existence. After all, for the new German pietism God’s dwelling place is not in heaven but in man’s own capacity for self-understanding. Conzelmann finds Paul’s eschatological hope confused and his “mythical idea of pre-existence [of Christ]” difficult to grasp. He says Paul was indifferent to the question of the factuality of the Resurrection (the index yields no reference to First Corinthians 15:14, 17). Conzelmann is an unreliable guide to Paul’s meaning because he is too eager to deliver Paul from it. He repeatedly misses Paul’s point because he is looking for something else.

Part four sketches the development after Paul, the alleged transition to nascent catholicism in “the third Christian generation,” and part five is devoted to the Johannine writings. The author of the Fourth Gospel was not an eyewitness of the life of Jesus. For that assertion Conzelmann feels no need of corroborating evidence. That is a trait of the whole book. Time and again the reader is expected to doubt the authenticity of biblical texts (even books!) on the strength of the professor’s word. The question that remains after the whole book is read is: If all our sources are as colored as Professor Conzelmann believes, how does he know (1) that they are, and (2) how they are?

Conzelmann hopes his work will help pastors, teachers, and laymen in their understanding of New Testament theology. If, however, that sacred book is related in any way to orthodox and evangelical interpretations of the Gospel, this hope will not be fulfilled. For here is no exposition of the central doctrines of Christ’s apostles, no recital of the mighty acts of God in history for his people. The author’s naturalist-existentialist approach to the Scripture of the New Covenant is that of blatant unbelief toward its proudest assertions. Why, when a constructive critical proposal exists for every negative one Conzelmann embraces, does he consistently adopt the destructive theory? Not, surely, because of the “critical method,” but because of his existential mindset. That this gospel fact is mythical or that doctrine is superstitious is not merely inconsequential to Conzelmann; it is actually an aid to his existential theology. For Conzelmann’s concept of faith is related to nothing factually existing or objectively true. New Testament theology is not what for centuries it has been taken to be. It is a kernel of existential truth disguised in mythical garb. But this is a very partial and truncated interpretation of the New Testament source. What for Conzelmann is merely the possibility of self-understanding is for evangelical believers the incredible, factual good news of one who came down from heaven for our salvation.

Insight Into Middle East

Religion in the Middle East, Volume I: Judaism and Christianity, and Volume II: Islam, edited by A. J. Arberry (Cambridge University, 1969, 1,343 pp., $22.50), is reviewed by Francis R. Steele, home secretary, North Africa Mission, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.

For an enormously complicated subject we now have a ponderously detailed source book. Yet a careful reading of relevant sections will be rewarding to the seriously interested spectator of the three-way conflict in the Middle East today.

These volumes came about as an attempt to discover grounds for resolving the well-nigh perpetual conflict among the three great religious systems stemming from Palestine. It was thought that a study of their origins and interrelations might prove profitable. The whole work was directed by a well-known Middle Eastern scholar, A. J. Arberry, professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge. Professor Arberry points out in the foreward that the essays were completed in 1966.

One serious but unavoidable handicap must be noted at the outset. There is much information, carefully researched and well presented, but a true biblical perspective is lacking. The interpretation of Christian theology in the concluding section of the second volume is given by one whose viewpoint is certainly not that of evangelicalism. Witness the following statement: “The Christian faith in Jesus as the Son of God … rests squarely within the Islamic confidence of God over all.” Later on this contributor, after deploring misunderstanding of the Incarnation, adds, “Nevertheless, the steadfast Jewish-Muslim rejection of the belief about God the Son … serves to keep always in the view the transcendent mystery which that belief might seem to have impugned.” Here is an intriguing bit of dialectic: denial of revealed doctrine preserves some elements of its truth!

Judaism is treated in about 240 pages by four scholars, Christianity in 350 pages by nine scholars, Islam in 350 pages by nineteen scholars. The synthesis, “The Three Religions on Concord and Conflict,” occupies 275 pages and was produced by five scholars. This is followed by a glossary, bibliography, and index totaling more than one hundred pages.

At first glance, the sheer size of this work makes it seem formidable. But the divisions into chapters by individual specialists facilitates reading. Anyone willing to spend a little time can find much information to help him understand current Middle East tensions.

For example, the contrast drawn between the cultural and social background of Jews in Eastern Europe and that of Jews in Central Europe helps to explain the tensions within the Zionist movement and also the political climate of Israel today. The deep-seated historic and religious antagonisms of the various Arab communities are shown to work against efforts to present a united front to Israel. And the cleavages between ancient Christian communities are seen as reducing the impact of the Church on the Middle East. On the other hand, the attempt to link all three faiths to a similar passion for “the land” seems, to me at least, unconvincing.

All too often, attitudes toward the conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors are based on simplistic assumptions. Naïve American Christians may view the situation from eschatological presuppositions and cheer on modern Israel as though her history were detailed fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. They appear to overlook the fact that there are thousands of Arab Christians, and that Israelis are not spiritual children of God. Such persons stand to gain a more informed opinion by a consideration of the facts presented in these volumes.

The price may discourage individual purchase of these books. But every Christian school and church with a library should have a set. Pastors concerned enough to initiate study courses on the issues underlying the Arab-Israel impasse will find here much helpful source material.

The Forerunner Of Jesus

John the Baptist as Witness and Martyr, by Marcus L. Loane (Zondervan, 1969, 122 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Leslie Hunt, principal, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.

With this study, Marcus Loane, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, adds another volume to his already impressive list of devotional books written for the general reader. Here he deals in depth with the life of John the Baptist, the nature of his task as witness, and his vital relationship to Jesus Christ, the Messiah. This study is not an academic exercise, concerned with sources and critical points, but rather an exposition of all the biblical passages where John the Baptist appears and where reference to him is made. Yet the author’s scholarship is in evidence, as he goes frequently to the Greek text to support a rendering and supplies brief notes at the back of the volume for those who wish to follow up the references and examine the Greek.

The figure of the Baptist in the garb of the ancient prophets comes alive as Loane vividly describes and interprets dramatic events in his life. Yet the strong emphasis throughout is to show how John points up the mission of Jesus. It is Christ’s figure that dominates; the Baptist is but a herald and witness. Loane devotes a whole section to the temptation of Jesus in the desert, an incident in which John does not appear at all, but which occurred right after his baptism of Jesus.

The author helpfully relates the scriptural passages to the problems of modern life. I heartily recommend this little book for devotional reading and a deeper understanding of John the Baptist’s life and mission.

Milestone In Catholic Theology

The Church, by Hans Küng (Sheed and Ward, 1968, 515 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by James Leo Garrett, professor of Christian theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

Dr. Küng’s Structures of the Church (1963) and the present volume, taken together, may be the most significant Roman Catholic treatment of the doctrine of the Church (except for conciliar documents such as Vatican II’s De ecclesia) since John of Torquemada’s Summa de Ecclesia (1486), often regarded as the first full-scale Roman Catholic treatise. In the first place, the rediscovered ecclesiology of the New Testament, informed by recent critical and exegetical research, forms the groundwork of this book to an extent unparalleled in earlier Catholic ecclesiological treatises. Second, Küng attempts a reinterpretation of the four classic Catholic marks or “signs” of the true Church in view of biblical, historical, and ecumenical considerations. And third, here a Roman Catholic ecclesiologist recognizes the validity of the (Pauline) charismatic ordering of the Church, both in the New Testament era and in later times, when coupled with the (Palestinian) permanent-pastoral ordering of the Church, and to ministering service as the essential function of all church officers.

Beginning with a survey of the history of Catholic ecclesiology, Küng proceeds to distinguish between the “nature” and the evil “un-nature” of the Church and to discount the distinction of visible churches versus visible Church lest the historical actuality of the Church be obscured. He then examines the relation of Jesus’ message concerning the reign of God to the Church, the meanings of the term “Church,” the time of the origin of the Church, and the similarities and differences between the Church and God’s Reign. Subsequently, using three New Testament concepts (the people of God, the creation of the Spirit, the Body of Christ) Küng expounds “the fundamental structure of the Church,” and in connection with this he discusses sympathetically three problems: the Church and the Jews, the Church and the “Enthusiasts,” and the Church and the heretics. Similarly, his reinterpretation of unity, catholicity, holiness, and apostolicity affords the occasion for dealing with the disunity and needed reunion of the churches, variant meanings of “catholicity” and the problematic formula “no salvation outside the Church,” the sinfulness and needed renewal of the Church, and faithfulness to the apostolic witness and continuation in the apostolic ministry as the valid aspects of the “apostolic succession.” Küng’s final section on church offices combines an explication of the priesthood of all believers with a reinterpretation of ecclesiastical office as ministering service and of papal domination in terms of selfless pastoral service.

Küng’s knowledge of the diverse theology of the New Testament and desire that it be a recognized norm for Catholic ecclesiology cannot be overemphasized. He provides an excellent exposition, for example, of the New Testament doctrine of the priesthood of all Christians. The impact of biblical theology in our time can be seen in the fact that the reviewer, a Southern Baptist, finds himself in full accord with this exposition of the universal priesthood by a Roman Catholic author.

Unfortunately, Küng tends with a slight Europacentric state-church bias to depreciate and unwittingly to misinterpret the radical wing of the Reformation and its heirs. One reason for this is his uncritical reliance on Ronald Knox’s Enthusiasm and his failure to use the growing corpus of recent scholarly literature on the Radical Reformation.

This author’s appeal for transformation of the papal office from domination into diakonia and his accurate identification of the issues posed by the papal primacy for non-Roman Catholic Christians invites serious conversation and observation on the part of evangelical Christians whose purpose is more constructive than polemical.

Christianity And Culture

The Vacuum of Unbelief , by Stuart Barton Babbage (Zondervan, 1969, 152 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Edward E. Ericson, Jr., associate professor of English, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

This volume is a worthy addition to the growing shelf of recent works that unite a thorough commitment to historic Christianity and an intelligent comprehension of contemporary culture. Dr. Babbage’s wide reading equips him well for his task.

The book consists of twenty essays touching on a wide range of topics: recurrent superstition, patriotism, attitudes toward time, the value of human personality, contemporary pressures toward standardization, the riddle of death, various kinds of love, racial justice, the sentimentalism of humanism, and more. Particularly recommended are the title essay, “The Balcony Approach to Life” (on spectatorship versus passionate involvement), and “Dung and Scum” (on human worth).

However, there are cavils. The main shortcoming is that the essays are so brief that they leave gapingly underdeveloped lines of thought. Chapter four, on the Christian view of the significance of the individual as opposed to twentieth-century mass movements that lead to subhumanizing, is one unhappy example. Another is the treatment of current spiritualism, which is too scanty to include reference to the spiritualist leanings of the late Bishop James Pike. Fewer topics and fuller development would have made a more valuable book. Argument is preferable to assertion.

Also, though Babbage usually uses his learning to good effect, he occasionally overkills with quotations. Some essays read like topical entries from a dictionary of quotations strung together with minimal commentary.

Then, there is a wavering from essay to essay between an analytic and a devotional tone. The final essay, on hands, actually borders on bathos. This wavering not only contributes to the unevenness of the book (even by the generous standards usually applied to a collection of essays) but also belies the claim of unity made for it.

The collection reads very easily (too easily? thoughts not packed tightly enough?) and is filled with random perceptive observations. It will be valuable for a person, believer or not, who wants some milk instead of meat. Its chief value is to add to the increasing weight of intelligent and relevant evangelical literature. By itself, it will have a decisive impact on very few.

Book Briefs

Subject Guide to Bible Stories, compiled by George Frederick Garland (Greenwood, 1969, 365 pp., $12). This helpful reference tool lists under a variety of topics the Bible stories that deal with each subject. Also includes a brief listing of stories dealing with leading Bible characters.

Conquest and Crisis, by John J. Davis (Baker, 1969, 176 pp., paperback, $2.95). Studies the texts of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth in the light of their historical, cultural, and theological backgrounds.

God and Man, by E. Schillebeeckx (Sheed and Ward, 1969, 308 pp., $6.95). A noted liberal Catholic theologian explores the major theological issues growing out of the development of secularization.

What Is Form Criticism?, by Edgar V. McKnight (Fortress, 1969, 86 pp., paperback, $2.25). Though evangelicals will find themselves in disagreement with the author’s sympathetic treatment of form criticism, this work can serve as a useful introduction to the history and technique of this approach to Scripture. A companion volume, What Is Redaction Criticism?, by Norman Parrin, serves a similar purpose for a closely related method.

Studies in Philippine Church History, edited by Gerald H. Anderson (Cornell University, 1969, 421 pp., $14.50). Essays that provide a wealth of information on this aspect of the history of Christian missions.

The Geneva Bible, introduction by Lloyd E. Berry (University of Wisconsin, 1969, $29.50). A facsimile of the 1560 edition of one of the most influential and widely read translations of the English Bible.

Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France, by Brian G. Armstrong (University of Wisconsin, 1969, 330 pp., $12.50). Asserts the close similarity between Calvin and the French Reformer Moïse Amyrant, who was tried for heresy by Calvin’s followers after Calvin’s death, and contends that the Calvinism commonly accepted today is not an accurate representation of Calvin’s thought.

Cheers For Charles And Chatterley

Some years ago I went across the ocean, having been invited, surprisingly, to lecture at an ancient university. My topic compelled some consideration of an English king who lost his head, the tercentenary of which “melancholy scene” had elicited some abrasive comments from modern Puritan scholars. Before I embarked on my first lecture, a venerable clergyman approached me and intoned sepulchrally: “Speak a good word for King Charles the Martyr.” I did. And said one for O. Cromwell, too, which holy wobbling did a power of no good to my listeners and reputation.

I had forgotten the incident till the other day when I read in a learned journal an article by John Robinson, the retiring Bishop of Woolwich. Reviewing his ten years in that post, he contrived to do so without once mentioning God, much less essaying any speak-a-good-wordiness. I of course exclude the unwitting reference into which he was betrayed in referring to the title Honest to God.

Incidentally this best-seller, his participation in the New English Bible translation, and his testimony in court to the wholesome influence of Lady Chatterley’s Lover he refers to as “three success stories of the past decade.” With this moving gesture of defiance he went off to be dean of Trinity College, with which the heir-apparent to the British throne is connected. It is comforting to know that the latter, though another Charles, is a sensible young man whose head is unlikely to be moved by latter-day opponents of divine right.

You will find no coyness about naming the name of God in Dorothy L. Sayers’s essay “The Shattering Dogmas of the Christian Tradition” (in Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World, just published by Eerdmans). “That you cannot have Christian principles without Christ,” wrote Miss Sayers, “is becoming increasingly clear because their validity as principles depends on Christ’s authority.… It is not true at all that dogma is ‘hopelessly irrelevant’ to the life and thought of the average man. What is true is that ministers … often assert that it is, present it for consideration as though it were, and, in fact, by their faulty exposition of it make it so.”

In this view detective novelist Miss Sayers, a quite considerable theologian on the side, is at one with another versatile character. Billy Sunday said many skeptics had told him: “Bill, if you will only preach the Principles of Christianity instead of the Person, we will find no fault with you.” Came the reply, engaging but firm: “Nothing doing, old top!”

EUTYCHUS IV

A Real Classic

Never have I been disappointed in an article by Dr. Calvin D. Linton or Dr. Addison H. Leitch! These men write with such penetrating depth, such clarity, and such simplicity, and their subject matter is always so relevant that I feel deeply moved and inspired when finishing any article by them. Dr. Linton’s “Delusion and Reality” (Oct. 10) is truly a masterpiece—a classic.

FRANCES JOHNS

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Communicating Congress

My heartfelt thanks for the clarity and objectivity of David Kucharsky’s report (News, Sept. 26) on the U. S. Congress on Evangelism! It is regrettable that some of his colleagues in the mass media were something less than fair and accurate in their coverage. In some instances I found myself asking, “Can this possibly be a description of the same congress—with its outpouring of blessings and inspiration—in which I participated?”

Perhaps this serves a useful purpose, though, in pointing up the fact that for much too long we have talked “among ourselves” and have failed to communicate the basic gospel message effectively to others.

WILBUR R. ATEN

Central Christian Church

Brownsville, Tex.

As a lay person attending the U. S. Congress on Evangelism in Minneapolis I was blessed, I was inspired, I was uplifted.…

We sat together. We fellowshiped. We listened, and we learned. Elements were introduced from time to time that were not completely in the spirit of the occasion; but love suffereth long, and is kind. So, we listened first and foremost to speakers who stated the purposes that had brought us from the far comers of the nation.

It is with deep appreciation that I review in thought the vast efforts of the dedicated men who had the vision, the initiative, and the fortitude to make the congress possible. Surely the prayers of thousands of delegates have gone heavenward in their behalf.

LEORA HARRIS

Johnstown, Pa.

The Problem Of Peace

Concerning your “Open Letter to Mr. Nixon” (Oct. 10), I must take issue with your presentation of the problem.… Is our problem “to keep them from winning” on the battlefield, or conference table, or is it what you cite as that which our nation does not know—“what to do to bring peace?”

You seem much more concerned about justifying the United States and its involvement than you do about peace.… I wonder if God’s peace will be concerned with who wins at the conference table?

GREGORY SEEBER

Webster Groves, Mo.

SIECUS At Sea

“Sex Education in Public Schools” (Sept. 26) succinctly summarized and ably analyzed the efforts of SIECUS to provide reasonable guidelines in today’s pluralistic society. Evangelical Christians will do well to thoughtfully utilize the best of SIECUS material without leveling blunderbusses at one organization’s efforts to chart a course in rather unknown seas. Particularly at the junior-high and senior-high levels, it is difficult to see why public schools should not supplement whatever home instruction has been given with competent films and discussions on human sexuality in the larger context of personal and family values.…

Since the AMA’s brochure on sex education recognizes in its title that “Facts Are Not Enough,” Christians should assist local educators in discovering the basic principles and attitudes necessary for such instruction.

The question as to whether a common community ethic can be found which is compatible with the Christian faith can be answered in the affirmative. Church and home education then may augment this effort and pinpoint our distinctive Christian ethic at those places where it definitively transcends a humanistic one.

Ideally the Church would offer seminars for both students and parents on family-life education. Here the facts of biology could be wedded to the values of the Christian ethic. Having organized and participated in numerous such programs, I have found the response most gratifying.

LEWIS P. BIRD

Eastern Regional Director

Christian Medical Society

Havertown, Pa.

Your editorial, “Sex-Education Controversy” (Oct. 10), makes sweeping indictments of persons and groups opposing sex education as it is presently being presented and used in our public-school system. May we humbly suggest that you be more specific than you were in this editorial, when you make counter-accusations.…

Your final paragraph would be a fitting close to an otherwise poor presentation, had you deleted the first sentence. Here again you make sweeping accusations, without being specific at all.

What, may we ask, can be gained by making such statements, without any supporting documentation?

Finally, may one humbly suggest that, before you attempt to editorialize again on this subject, you inform yourself much more thoroughly than you seem to have done before you penned this article.

A. C. CLAASSEN

Potwin, Kan.

James Huffman’s article presented much worthy material corroborated by my findings as a recent consultant for parents here in Lubbock. Too much opposition stems from rumor, panic reaction, and ignorance of the problems.…

However, my criticisms of our local situation, if true generally, should be considered more thoroughly: (1) Sexed proponents have presented no evidence their courses are accomplishing what they say they are supposed to—i.e., young people being helped “to avoid getting into trouble.” (2) SIECUS personnel are often humanist and mold their material accordingly, thus further establishing naturalistic humanism as the state religion. (3) Administrative sloppiness allows material for (sex) segregated classes to be shown to mixed classes and unpreviewed material to be dumped on the classroom teacher.

CHARLES A. CLOUGH

Lubbock Bible Church

Lubbock, Tex.

I have been a public-school teacher for fifty years—always in the underprivileged areas of Detroit. I know … the need for sex education, but not without moral background.…

Dr. Mary Calderone is quoted in several articles I have read as saying, “Sex is for fun … great sexual pleasure.” That is purely pagan!…

Please make sure you are not misled about these materials. Many of our teachers are, like myself, sick at heart over the material being used.

LOUISE SULLIVAN

Detroit, Mich.

As an educator working directly with such a program. I am only too aware of all that you have reported. I appreciated the accuracy and the thoroughness of the article. It comes at a time when massive doses of misinformation and insinuation are inundating communities throughout the United States. I also appreciated the way in which the article pointed to positive action on the part of the Church in regard to this issue and suggested that the Church stop hiding its collective head in the hope that the subject will go away.

Thank you for a most needed and accurate article. It tells it like it is!

RICHARD ULLMANN

General Consultant

Campbell Union School District

Campbell, Calif.

Huffman’s defense of SIECUS is shocking, as SIECUS’s major objective expressed in books published by its leaders is definitely anti-Christian. Huffman shows only a superficial acquaintance with the philosophy and objectives of SIECUS. Evidently Huffman accepts SIECUS’s position that there are no moral absolutes but as society’s social mores change the Church must be prepared to change its position.

In Maryland the Citizens Committee was organized by grass-roots parents protesting the sneaking in of sex education by the protagonists of the new morality. Our protests have been made on moral and constitutional grounds only.…

The best approach to a settlement of the issues involved—relating to the rights of parents with religious convictions to having their children exposed to teaching contrary to their personal conviction—is through the interpretation of parents’ rights by the U. S. Supreme Court, and we are hopeful of securing such a landmark decision. Other legal steps are also being undertaken to protect the parents’ rights.

A more objective approach is needed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY than the one-sided appraisals that have appeared.

(The Rev.) STANLEY M. ANDREWS

President

Maryland Citizens’ Committee for Decency and Morality

Rockville, Md.

The Size Of Evil

If “A Look at the Problem of Evil” (Sept. 26) does no more than leave the heart with the peace of resignation and the mind reeling, is it worth looking?…

I suggest that the question of evil and the suffering that comes with it can and should and must be answered in our modern world which is so deeply conscious of its suffering. And I submit that the Christian answer must … come to the question from the eschaton, the end. It can only be seen in the dawn of the Kingdom of God.… In the neglect of Christian eschatology lies the failure of this article. God answers the question of evil from the vantage point of the Kingdom, doing full justice to its three components. We need not be left with so little to face so much!

HANS W. ZEGERIUS

Knox Presbyterian Church

Dunnville, Ont.

Discounting Discounts

Of all the “What If …” cartoons I have enjoyed over the years, by far the best in my opinion is, “Paul, don’t forget to ask if they give a clergy discount” (Sept. 26).…

If, as we so loudly claim, our God is able to supply all our need, surely we need not manipulate people to get it.

Church members who do not pay their pastors on a par with their own earnings must accept the blame for exposing said pastors to the temptation of Paul’s friend in Lawing’s cartoon.

KEITH MARTIN

Central Baptist Church

Wallaceburg, Ont.

All religion, historically speaking, has depended and must depend for the masses of mankind upon authority,” wrote Leslie Stephen (History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, I, 175). “A creed built on elaborate syllogisms is a creed with ‘perhaps’ in it, and no such creed can command men’s emotions.” Stephen was doubtless right, but the function of authority is more fundamental to religion than he implies. It seeks not merely to appeal to men’s emotions but to bring their minds to a knowledge of the truth. We believe that Christianity is founded on truth (cf. John 17:3), and that if this were not so, it would not be a viable religion. According to its own premises, if it were not true, then it could not be authoritative.

For Christians the authority of God is mediated through his word, the Bible. Even among the orthodox, however, there are those who tend to give greater weight to some parts of the Bible than others without adequate reason. It is not simply a question of interpreting the Old Testament by the New Testament, or the obscure passages by the clear. They regard the recorded words of Christ, for example, as being of more importance than those of Peter or Paul, and even distinguish between them in order to set them up in opposition. I once heard Lord Soper on the radio “refute” Paul with words from the Sermon on the Mount. Others have gone so far as to characterize Paul as the great perverter of the Christian faith. No less a scholar than T. W. Manson thought that the early Church’s acceptance of apostolic authority was a “calamity and the complete reversal of the original intention of Jesus” (The Teaching of Jesus, p. 242).

Now this appears to be a very dangerous line of thought, for it reflects a failure to perceive that the Bible, though composed of many books, is essentially one Book. It is a single organism, and to excise one part in order to preserve another is not just surgery—it is mutilation. Spending some time exploring the nature of apostolic authority seems justified, for it is obvious that even the authority of Christ, who never wrote a book, is dependent on the veracity of the witness of the apostles. And since the case of Paul, the author of the bulk of the New Testament epistles, is on the surface somewhat different, we must pay special attention to him.

First, we must remember that the apostolic band was formed by Jesus himself. We read in Mark 3:14, “He appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons” (see also Luke 6:13; Acts 1:15–26). An apostle was a person specially chosen for a specific purpose—to carry the evangel to the world (John 17:8, 14, 17, 18). Initially the apostles’ preaching seemed largely confined to urging men to repent and prepare for the inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven, but even in this they were commissioned as Christ’s representatives. That their authority was essentially his authority is made unmistakably clear in Matthew 10:40 (and John 13:20): “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” This can only mean that what they said, preaching in Christ’s name, God said, and it shows that they were to be placed in the same category as the Old Testament prophets, who were God’s mouthpieces.

Secondly, Jesus taught his chosen band both before and after his death and resurrection that they would be guided in what they taught by the Holy Spirit. The first chapter of Acts reveals that Jesus devoted most of his attention before his ascension to preparing the apostles to be his authoritative representatives in laying the foundations of the Church. Once the Holy Spirit had come there could be no doubt about their authority, for it was sealed not only by the general acceptance of their teaching that came with power (Acts 2:41) but by the signs and wonders they were able to perform in Jesus’ name (Acts 2:43; 3:1–10).

But if this establishes for most the authority of the original apostles, who had been with Christ and were, apart from any supernaturally endowed power, eyewitnesses of his majesty, how does Paul fit into the picture? Is he not something of a gate-crasher and therefore an impostor? What right had he to call himself an apostle as he does time and time again? He frequently begins his epistles with an assertion of his apostleship, as if by doing so he would ensure that his writings would be received as authoritative. But a personal assertion proves nothing to us. What we need is unimpeachable credentials. So we ask, What are Paul’s?

First, Paul’s authority stems from its foundation in the Old Testament. As a Hebrew born of Hebrews and a Pharisee (Phil. 3:5), set apart before his birth (Gal. 1:15), he was nurtured in the Scriptures. His words to Timothy reveal his estimate of the Law and the Prophets: “All Scripture is inspired by God …” (2 Tim. 3:16; cf. Rom. 15:4). But it is important to note that unlike the unbelieving Jews over whose hearts there was a veil, he interprets them christologically—“the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15; cf. 1 Cor. 2:16). It is hardly surprising, then, that Paul appeals repeatedly to the Old Testament in his teaching. It is part of the one rock of revelation from which his theology is hewn, as a reading of Romans and Galatians, for example, bears out. He makes no attempt to force together two opposing revelations into a questionable synthesis à la Hegel. He sees the plan of salvation in its divine unity (1 Cor. 15:3, 4), and so he can testify authoritatively to Jew and Gentile alike (Acts 26:22, 23; Eph. 3:1–13).

Secondly, Paul’s conversion is of crucial significance for an understanding of the question before us. Apart from it we should be hard pressed to find reasons for the pervasive influence of Paul in the early Church. Setting aside the trappings of the story for a while and devoting our attention to the words spoken by our Lord on this momentous occasion, we realize that Paul was in fact commissioned there and then as a “chosen instrument” to take the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles (Acts 9:15). So he exchanged the authority he had from the chief priests to persecute Christians (v. 14) for that of preaching the good news (cf. Acts 26:16 ff.). Temporarily blinded, he was later somewhat diffidently received by Ananias, restored to sight, and “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:17). His good faith at least was soon demonstrated when he “confounded the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ” and earned persecution for his trouble (Acts 9:22, 23). A life had indeed been transformed.

Thirdly, Paul’s conversion experience is of profound importance for another reason. In his own eyes and in those of his contemporaries, the authority of his commission stemmed not simply from the words of Christ uttered on that occasion but from the fact that he actually saw the Lord (cf. Acts 22:14). Besides noting that this was accepted by Luke, who as the author of Acts recorded it, we should realize that Paul, when arguing his apostleship in First Corinthians 9:1 and 2, directs attention to it. Again in First Corinthans 15:8, in cataloguing witnesses of the risen Lord, he says, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” It should hardly surprise us to find the resurrection a basic element of his teaching. In this area he lacked nothing in comparison with the rest of the apostles. H. N. Ridderbos sums up the position succinctly: “In this encounter with the person of the exalted Christ is to be found the starting point of Paul’s apostolic preaching, as well as the real significance of his conversion, and it is this confrontation to which he appeals again and again to justify his preaching of Christ” (Paul and Jesus p. 46).

It is noteworthy, in the fourth place, that Paul is never weary of pointing out that he is the recipient of revelation. The truth of Christ that he has is divine and not of man (cf. Gal. 1:1; Eph. 3:3). He said once when his disciples were veering away from his teaching that “the gospel which was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11, 12). He went so far as to put under a curse any who preached a gospel contrary to the one he preached (vv. 8, 9).

Now all this is very significant. For if he was speaking the truth when he said he did not “confer with flesh and blood” nor with those who were apostles before him, we should expect what he taught to differ in many respects from their teaching. Discounting telepathy, this must inevitably have been the case unless he and they received the Gospel from the same source, from the Lord Jesus himself. This is precisely what occurred, and in itself provides one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the truth of the New Testament.

What is more, nowhere do we find any suggestion that Paul and the other apostles disagreed about their basic teaching; rather, their essential unity is asserted (cf. 1 Cor. 15:11). The incident recorded in Galatians 2 rightly understood serves to strengthen this point, for it concerned practice, not principles, about which there was complete unanimity. Paul saw clearly that Peter was being inconsistent in refusing to eat with Gentiles, and he took him to task “that the truth of the Gospel might be preserved.” As J. G. Machen observed, “The very nature of the charge which Paul brought against Peter, therefore, attests a fundamental unity of principle between the two apostles. Paul condemned Peter for ‘hypocrisy’; not for false principles, but for concealment of true principles” (The Origin of Paul’s Religion, p. 124). In the same chapter Paul records that when James, Peter, and John, the reputed pillars of the Church, perceived the grace that had been given to him, they extended the right hand of fellowship to him. There is no reason to suppose that they ever went back on this; and as if to confirm the impression of mutual accord already gained, Peter in his second epistle refers to Paul as “our beloved brother” who “wrote to you according to the wisdom given him” (note the expression), and then by implication classifies his writings as part of Scripture (2 Pet. 3:16). Peter’s attitude is hardly the one we should expect of an acknowledged leader of the Church going through its initial teething troubles if he felt himself confronted by a militant usurper of apostolic authority. We are thus driven to the conclusion that Paul’s claims were justified in the eyes of his colleagues and that his enemies, the Judaizers, were refuted by the very authorities to whom they appealed (Acts 15).

It is relevant to ask why Paul should have been called in a different manner from his fellow apostles. There seem to have been three main reasons: First, Paul’s dramatic and singular conversion was and remains today one of the most powerful testimonies to the truth of Christianity; second, his personal authority, coupled with “the insignia of the apostleship,” equipped him for his God-given role as leader of the mission to the Gentiles; and third, this in turn gave him the scope he needed to operate at long distances from Jerusalem and lent speed and effectiveness to his work.

I have already suggested that had there been any doubt at all in Luke’s mind about Paul’s standing as an apostle, he could never have written about him as he did in the Acts. If modern writers claim to detect an antithesis between the words of Paul and those of Jesus, Luke, who recorded both, seemed blissfully unaware of it. The mere idea would have appeared absurd to him, since it would have involved a denial of Paul’s calling. In actual fact Luke refers to Paul’s teaching in Acts as “the word of the Lord” (13:49). It is in this same book that we learn how God blessed Paul’s labors with all the signs of power that Peter, for example, was accustomed to (Acts 14:3; 15:12; 2 Cor. 12:12). Not surprisingly, Paul recognizes that the success of his ministry is dependent not on his own ability, eloquence, and knowledge but on God. In First Corinthians 2:13 he says, “We impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit,” and so the word comes with power (cf. 1 Cor. 1:17). His Thessalonian disciples accepted his Gospel “not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in … believers” (1 Thess. 2:13).

Paul was, of course, definite about the authority of his writings, which is of great importance to us. We have already seen how Peter wrote of him and how Paul addressed the Galatians. It is worth weighing in our minds words he uses in other epistles. He gives advice about marriage in First Corinthians 7 as one who has the Spirit of God. Although he has no explicit command of the Lord, he gives his judgment “as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy” (v. 25). Later in the same letter he says that what he is writing is a command of the Lord (1 Cor. 14:37). He points out in Second Corinthians 10:11 that his letters in his absence are as authoritative as his words would be in his presence. In First Thessalonians 5:27 he makes it evident that his epistle should be read to all believers. Clearly “the churches must bow to Paul’s rulings (1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15), and those who will not must be put out of fellowship till they come to a better mind (2 Thess. 3:6, 14)” (J. I. Packer, ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God, p. 64).

In our study so far we have seen that apostolic authority, including that of Paul, was supreme in the New Testament Church. It is clear that all the apostles were granted the power to speak and write divine truth as they were led by the Holy Spirit. Admittedly, in the providence of God, the literary efforts of some of them have not come down to us, but this in no way detracts from the force of our argument. As far as we can tell, there was never any fundamental disagreement among them about the essential nature of the Gospel. And if in some sense the work of Paul in particular was creative, it was based firmly on the foundation that Christ laid (1 Cor. 11:23; 1 Tim. 6:3) and was brought about by the indwelling of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10–13).

But how did the sub-apostolic Church and later generations react? For them the preaching and teaching of the apostles were preserved and their authority crystallized in their writings, which eventually formed the New Testament canon. This is not to say that certain of the books that constitute the New Testament were never called in question. But it can be said with confidence that in the end all were recognized as having apostolic testimony behind them and therefore as binding on all believers. The idea that the Church impulsively took various writings and proceeded to endow them with an authority they would not otherwise have had must be rejected. All the Church did, guided by the Holy Spirit, was to recognize writings that were inherently canonical on the basis of their apostolic background. Thus the idea prevailed that “the several books were, as common usage expressed it, ‘written by the Holy Spirit’; the human author served as God’s instrument, and his tongue was, in the words of the Psalmist (45:1) which were frequently applied in this sense, ‘the pen of a ready writer’ ” (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 61). They were seen to be in effect as much the words of Christ even when not recorded as such, because what they convey is the Word of God. As Packer says, the apostolic “tradition” (2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6) is still “the sound doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:10) and remains in the twentieth century as before the test and norm for the faith and life of the churches.

To posit an antithesis between the words of Paul and those of Christ is to fail to perceive that Christ made himself, as Warfield expresses it, “an accomplice before the fact in all they taught,” and consequently to drive a wedge through the whole conception of apostolic authority and to render it impotent. A house divided against itself cannot stand; the reason why the Church appears to rock on its foundations today may well be located at this point (cf. Matt. 7:21–29). There is but one solution—to follow the lead given by him who said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18), and accept the messengers he sent in his name. This may require great humility, but after all, we must remember that in the last resort we are submitting not to Paul or any other human authority but to Christ himself. If Jesus was prepared to accept the yoke of the prophets, who are we to refuse the apostles whom he chose? For the disciple is not greater than his master, and that master said, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me.”

H. K. Stothard is further education tutor at the Village College, Peterborough, England. He holds teh B.A. and Certificate of Education from Nottingham University.

THE COMPLEX

You see,

I carry on these avant-garde

and probing (but probably

meaningless) conversations

with the nameless counterfoil

within my thoughts

against a backdrop of

rattling washer and

yes, we’ll have dog-dogs for lunch

and no, you can’t go out yet

and I wonder why pain matters

when I can’t even describe it

adequately enough for treatment

and it ends up every time that

there is so very much to the world

and I am so very small

a pebble on the ocean floor

yet terribly aware of the storm’s roar

and terribly afraid

of Him who holds it all

yet totally His through His love

and again

this unknown other

weeps through me

for men.

If I could weep for them myself

with His integrity

perhaps the pain

would be relieved.

POLLYANNA SEDZIOL

“Islam is Christianity’s greatest challenge.” In that succinct sentence the Reverend Melvin A. Wittler, a United Church of Christ missionary in Turkey, summarized an afternoon’s conversation concerning Christianity and the Middle East. His words lingered in my mind as I left Bible House in Istanbul on a late August afternoon and walked through the congested Egyptian Spice Market toward the Galata Bridge, connecting artery between the old and new parts of the city. Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, was once the theological capital of Christendom; today it is one of Islam’s largest and most sacred cities. From the chief minaret of the massive Yeni Valide Camii, or New Mosque, came the clear voice of the muezzin uttering the Muslim’s call to prayer that is also a confession of faith: “I bear witness that there is no god except God; I bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of God.” As the invitation echoed over the sounds of street, market, and harbor, it seemed to offer eloquent testimony to the accuracy of Wittler’s remark.

No matter how one views the issue—theologically, historically, or practically—Islam is Christianity’s chief rival for the loyalty of mankind.

First, theologically, Islam is Christianity’s most skillful and articulate intellectual competitor. Since it is the only world religion born since the advent of Christianity, its very existence is a challenge to the finality of the Gospel. Islam is also the only universal faith that claims to have surpassed and superseded Christianity. This is done, not by a rejection of Jesus, but by a radical reinterpretation of the man and his meaning.

Starting with the affirmation that Muhammad is the last and greatest apostle of God, Islam relegates Jesus to the position of the penultimate prophet. He is honored as the next to last in a series of twenty-eight prophets stretching back through Alexander the Great and Abraham to Adam. In the teachings of Muhammad, recorded in the Koran, are found the ultimate and uncorrupted revelations of the will of God. God’s message given to mankind through Jesus was adulterated by the Church, especially Paul. In due season, however, the Comforter promised by Jesus appeared in the person of Muhammad. The truth was restored. Muhammad, therefore, must eclipse Christ as God’s last word; the Koran must correct the confused narratives of the New Testament; the good advice of the Prophet must replace the good news of the Savior; the crescent must be substituted for the cross.

From its inception, therefore, Islam has been Christianity’s most dangerous doctrinal challenge. It offers “another Christ,” “another gospel,” another way of salvation. With a peculiar Christology, a divergent revelation, and an alternative presentation of the prophetic succession, Islam holds up to the world an interpretation of holy history and the life of Christ radically different from that reported in the Scriptures. For this reason some of the medieval fathers regarded Islam as a Christian heresy. It was a doctrinal deviation similar to Arianism. Regardless of the merits of that position, the danger is obvious. Islam takes the principles, personalities, events, and promises of sacred history and revises and uses this familiar material in a manner foreign to the spirit and letter of primitive Christianity. This new synthesis is presented to the world as the pristine revelation of God. It is precisely at this point that Islam becomes Christianity’s greatest theological challenge, for it is the oldest and most widespread surviving revision of the Gospel.

Second, historically, next to Judaism, Islam is Christianity’s oldest competitor. It is also the most successful. Only the confrontation with Israel dates back further than the thirteen-century-old conflict between Christianity and Islam. Islam has also been the only world religion to win great numbers of converts from Christianity. From the seventh century until modern times the Church steadily lost ground to Islam. From Morocco to Mesopotamia, countries once under the cross took up the crescent. Palestine, the home of Jesus and the early Church, became an early addition to the caliphate. Egypt, the motherland of Christian monasticism and a center of theological reflection from Origen to Athanasius, came into the orbit of Mecca. North Africa, where all Western theology had its roots in the labors of such Latin fathers as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine of Hippo, was incorporated into the world of Islam. Anatolia, the site of Paul’s early journeys, of the ecumenical councils, and of much of patristic theology, became a province of Islam. Of the five great patriarchates of the ancient Church—Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—only Rome remained free from Muslim conquest. From Spain to Syria Christianity retreated from the lands that gave it its birth and early nurture. And except for the Iberian and Balkan peninsulas, Christianity has never recovered areas lost to Islam.

Third, practically, Islam is Christianity’s greatest missionary competitor. It is Christianity’s major rival today for the allegiance of the peoples of the developing nations of Asia and Africa. Even in urban America there is some interest in Islam in the ghettos. With nearly 500 million adherents, Islam is second in size only to Christianity. This world of Islam, stretching from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean across three continents to the islands of the Pacific, is the earth’s largest missionary field. Yet the Muslim peoples through the centuries have remained the most unresponsive of all nations to the appeal of the missionary witness. In its very inception, Islam stands as a judgment on the Church of the seventh century for its failure to evangelize Arabia; by its continued existence, it testifies to the most tragic failure of the Church’s evangelistic mission in the successive ages. This alone would make Islam Christianity’s greatest challenge.

To begin to meet the challenge of Islam, we must ask two questions. First, why have we failed? And second, what do we have to offer the Middle East?

Why Have We Failed?

The results of evangelization in the Middle East, when measured statistically, have been meager. The explanation for this lies in large measure in the various cultural, political, and spiritual difficulties involved in witnessing in the Muslim world.

First, there is the cultural barrier. Christianity is both a native and a stranger in the Middle East. It had its birth in Palestine, which is geographically at the heart of the Middle East, and the Church during its first seven centuries was centered around the eastern Mediterranean. No one could deny that Christianity was an Asian religion. Yet today Christianity is regarded in the area as Western, and the Church is often felt to be an alien element in the Middle East. As in the first, so in the twentieth century, Christ “came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (John 1:11).

In part this is because Christianity is believed to be the religion of foreigners. It is described as the Greek Church, or the Roman Church, or the European Church, or the American Church. This opinion is reinforced by the legacy of thirteen centuries of armed conflict between the Muslim and Christian communities. Christians still recall with sorrow the armies of Islam, both Arabic and Ottoman, and lament the loss of the East. The Muslims remember with distaste the Christian counterattack in the Crusades. More distinct in their memory is the record of Western imperialism in the region, beginning with the French annexation of Algeria in 1830 and climaxing in the occupation of the Arab lands after the defeat of the Turks in World War I. Today this historical animosity is kept alive in the Muslim mind by the Western origin of, and continued support for, the nation of Israel. Christianity is thus identified with a rival civilization: the West. To turn Christian would be to ally oneself with the alien oppressor.

This suspicion appears to be confirmed by the absence of indigenous Christian churches in the Middle East. There are exceptions, of course, as in Lebanon. But one searches in vain for a native Turkish, Arabic, or Persian church. In most of the area Christianity is the religion of ethnic minorities, as Greeks and Armenians. To compound the problem, the loyalty of these groups is sometimes questioned, and for a Muslim to join such a church would be to defect from “the nation of Islam” and associate himself with elements regarded as a “fifth column.”

A closely connected cultural difficulty concerns the status of Christians. Christianity is viewed as the religion of an inferior class of people. Many Muslims believe that the communicants of the Christian churches—Coptic, Greek, Armenian, Syrian—are descended from losers; they are considered to be the heirs of people inferior in arms to the Arabs and the Turks in the Middle Ages. Though tolerated (and in the Middle Ages Islam was much more tolerant than Catholic Europe), these subjugated peoples were relegated to a religious ghetto and a secondary place in society. Cut off from the larger community by custom, conviction, conscience, and social class (sometimes also by language), the ethnic churches became passive, pessimistic, and introverted. They neither sought nor welcomed converts from the Muslim world; indeed, they were frequently forbidden to do so. The churches were isolated from society. At the same time many Muslims came to feel a real pride in their religion and became convinced that to turn Christian would be to exchange a higher for a lower status. Christianity is the religion of slaves and subjects, Islam that of masters and rulers.

The result of these cultural developments has been that Christianity is severed from its roots in the region. As a “cut flower religion,” it flourished for a while under Muslim rule and then withered. It will be very difficult for Christianity to overcome these cultural barriers in the Middle East.

Second, there is the political barrier. Dr. Roderic H. Davison, professor of history at George Washington University, once said that in the Middle East “religion is politics, politics is religion.” The American concept of the separation of church and state is quite new to the area. From the time of Muhammad, Muslims believed that legal, political, military, and spiritual powers should be united. The Koran was to be the law of the land; citizenship was determined by religious commitment; the state was to embody the community of Islam. Under the caliphate, such a fusion of religion and politics existed from the seventh until the twentieth century.

Since the abolition of the caliphate after World War I, different patterns have come to prevail. Some Muslim states, such as Turkey, have tried to separate religion from political administration; others, such as Pakistan (which means “Holy Land”), with its capital at Islamabad (“City of Islam”), have attempted to revive the Muslim theocracy. Regardless of the alternative chosen—the secular or the sacred state—restrictions, either statutory or implied, circumscribe the work of the missionary. These limitations concern such matters as proselyting, holding public meetings, church construction, and the consequences of a change of faith. They exist because in the Middle East religious activity is by definition political action. Such conditions make it very difficult to establish church life as we know it in the United States.

Akin to the problem of politics is that of group solidarity. Individualism as known in the Western world scarcely exists in the Middle East. Identity is discovered through membership in groups: the family, the nation, and the community of Islam. With the political restrictions that prevail, virtually the only way Christians can witness is by personal testimony on a one-to-one basis. This is indeed the approach most familiar to evangelicals. Problems arise, however, in the case of a conversion to Christianity. The convert is cut off from his former communities of meaning, and there is often no strong church fellowship with which he can identify. Social, economic, and even political persecution sometimes follow. Under these circumstances, some feel that if the Middle East is to come to Christ, it will have to be by a mass movement away from Islam to the Gospel. Communities will have to be converted. Yet mass evangelism is prohibited.

A further political factor is the upsurge of conservative Islam in the region. The Pakistani theocracy has been admired by orthodox Muslims from Turkey to Indonesia. Even in Turkey, the most secular of the Muslim states, a major Islamic revival has been under way since the early 1950s. Politicians, often Muslim in name only, sometimes use the rhetoric of religion and promise to further the ideals of a theocracy. Islam is increasingly being identified as a “national religion” with a privileged position throughout the area.

Third, there is the spiritual barrier. Part of this wall against Christianity has been constructed by the poor witness to the faith offered by some Westerners in the Middle East—some soldiers, hippies, and tourists seeking “a vacation from religion.” The impression created is that the Christian is a gavur (“unbeliever”) who is without spiritual or moral convictions. This confirms Islam’s view of the West as the “House of War” still living in “The Age of Ignorance.” Furthermore, while the Middle Easterners admire Western technology and seek to imitate it, they are unimpressed by Occidental theology. The Christian world, by failing to exemplify the faith it confesses, has given a poor witness to the world of Islam.

The major spiritual obstacle, however, is the Muslim’s belief that he already knows the story of Jesus: the tale of a prophet, born of the Virgin Mary, who preached a moral message, who met opposition, but who was saved by God from crucifixion by the substitutionary death of Judas Iscariot on the cross. Inoculated with this version of the Passion history, the Muslim seems to become immunized against the New Testament account of the Christ who died on the cross as a substitute for a sinful race of Judases. The cross is to the Muslim world what it was to ancient Israel—a stumbling block.

What Can We Offer?

In view of the enormous difficulties involved in witnessing in the Middle East, some have asked, Why persist? What is the motivation for remaining at a task that is so frustrating and unrewarding? The answer is in what we have to offer the Muslim world: love for a man, the Middle East’s most famous son, Jesus Christ. In this there is a five-fold rationale for the Church’s mission to the Middle East:

1. First, we witness because of the command of Christ that “you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Today we must reverse the order of advance given in this injunction and return from the ends of the earth to Samaria, Judea, and Jerusalem. The Church must reenter the Middle East with an invitation to discipleship so that our Lord’s Semitic kinsmen after the flesh may become his brethren according to the Spirit.

2. Second, we witness because of the truth of Christ. Truth is universal, and, as Alec Vidler has written of Christianity, “either it is true for all men, whether they know it or not; or it is true for no one, not even for those people who are under the illusion that it is true” (Christian Belief, p. 10). To a Muslim who still asks of an inscrutable deity, “Who has known the mind of the Lord …?” (Isa. 40:13), we can come with the enlightening promise, “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

3. Third, we witness to the fullness of Christ. Our mission to the Middle East is our prayer in action that the day will come when the Muslim peoples will know Jesus not simply as Prophet-Teacher but also as Saviour-King. Our message to them is the same as that of Paul to the Philippians, of “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:5–11).

4. Fourth, we witness to the grace of Christ, that in Christ “all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:19, 20).

5. Fifth, we witness to the fellowship of Christ, in which there is no east or west, no Jew or Arab, no male or female. This is the community of reconciliation that could mean a new day for the Middle East with a spiritual reunion of Europe and Asia, the end of the estrangement between Abraham’s sons, and an emancipation declaration for the Muslim woman. Christ, up to now the barrier between Christian, Jew, and Muslim, can become, by the grace of God, the bridge to oneness in the Gospel.

Islam is Christianity’s greatest challenge—and Christianity’s greatest opportunity. Surely the Spirit, using sanctified reason, will show us a way to find new methods of penetrating the Muslim world with the message of Christ.

C. George Fry, an ordained Lutheran minister, is assistant professor of history at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio. He holds the Ph.D. from Ohio State. Last summer he was in Istanbul studying Turkish Islam on a grant from the Regional Council for International Education.

Offices of the American Psychiatric Association are located in the seventeen hundred block of Eighteenth Street Northwest, Washington, D.C. The Founding Church of Scientology is at 1812 Nineteenth Street, one block farther out. Figuratively speaking, the world’s largest mental-health organization is considerably farther out than that.

Even its members will concede that it is far out. After a hurried interview with Miss Anne Ursprung, top executive of the Founding Church, I managed an extension of time by driving her and fellow staff member Esther Mangold to the airport to pick up a couple of Scientologists, Leon and Mitch, who were arriving from New York. As we returned to the city, I asked if it were true that many hippies are interested in Scientology. Leon explained that hippies, having been turned off by the churches, are drawn to Scientology because it represents a radical departure from tradition. Magazine articles denouncing Scientology have elicited an enthusiastic reaction from the hippie community. “If the establishment is against it, it must be good,” they reason.

“Do hippies forsake drugs when they embrace Scientology?” I asked. “Yes, they do,” replied Anne. “When Scientology turns them on, they no longer need drugs. In fact, you might call Scientology the ‘turned-on religion.’ ”

But the Scientology bandwagon had started to roll long before the press denunciations began. A year ago Life estimated world membership at between two and three million, several hundred thousand of them in the United States. Not bad for an infant organization less than two decades old! There are twenty-five Scientology centers throughout the world: one in England, one in Scotland, one in Denmark, one in Rhodesia, four in South Africa, three in Australia, one in New Zealand, one in Canada, and eleven in the United States (Washington, New York, Miami, Detroit, Minneapolis, Austin, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Honolulu).

The charismatic figure who began this mushrooming cult is Lafayette Ronald (L. Ron) Hubbard, millionaire science-fiction writer, explorer, and retired naval officer who claims to be the real-life “Mr. Roberts” from the movie of that name. Hubbard was born in Nebraska in 1911, the son of a career officer in the U. S. Navy and the grandson of a wealthy Montana cattle-rancher. While the family lived in Washington, “Elron” became “the youngest Eagle Scout in Amercia” and a fast friend of then-President Coolidge’s son Calvin, Jr. It is thought that Calvin’s premature death may have sparked Hubbard’s quest for the secrets of mental and physical health.

During the late twenties Navy duty took the Hubbard family to the Far East, where L. Ron traveled widely and was exposed to a number of the influences that helped to shape his emerging philosophy. He returned to the States in 1930 to enter college. Until a few years ago, when the facts were openly challenged, Scientology literature listed Hubbard as a 1934 graduate of George Washington University with a B.S. in civil engineering, and the recipient of a Ph.D. degree from Sequoia University in 1950. However, George Washington denies ever having granted Hubbard a degree, affirming only that he matriculated as a freshman in 1930, flunked physics, was placed on probation, and dropped out at the end of his second year. As for the alleged Ph.D. degree, if an institution bearing the name of Sequoia University even exists, the burden of proof rests upon Hubbard and the Scientologists.

After college, Hubbard led several scientific expeditions into the primitive jungles of Central America, and in 1936, at the age of twenty-five, he joined the exclusive Explorer’s Club in New York City. During this period he flowered as a prolific writer of both fact and fiction, and was called to Hollywood to write the first of several scenarios.

After five years of naval service during World War II, Hubbard became critically ill. Crippled, blind, and twice declared dead by doctors, he rebounded to perfect health, he says, by applying the principles later described in his book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. This 435-page volume, the culmination of years of research, was written in the space of sixty days and sold 100,000 copies within three months of its publication in 1950. Its eclectic sources include, says Hubbard in the book, “the medicine man of the Goldi people of Manchuria, the shamans of North Borneo, Sioux medicine men, the cults of Los Angeles … modern psychology (Jung, Adler, Freud, Pavlov) … a magician whose ancestors served in the court of Kublai Khan and a Hindu who could hypnotize cats” (p. 128). Buddhism seems to have played a prominent role; Hubbard describes it as “the only organization which has had the goal of Total Freedom.” Dianetics, he says, revived that search after a silence of nearly 2,500 years. Nuclear philosophy also was tapped. As Time describes it (August 23, 1968), the philosophy of Scientology “is billed as a sort of religion of religions, combining parts of Hindu Veda and Dharma, Taoism, Old Testament wisdom, Buddhist principles of brotherly love and compassion, the early Greeks, Lucretius, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and Freud.”

But the end is not yet. Hubbard’s pursuit of a therapy capable of curing all human ills led him along the route of hypnotism, narco-synthesis (“the practice of inducing sleep with drugs and then talking to the patient to draw out buried thoughts”), amnesia sleep, automatic writing, clairvoyance, and exorcism. All were rejected. Then at last came the great enlightenment. The brain is the “electronic calculator”—a flawless computer that functions perfectly except when fouled up by “engrams” (traumatic memories that trigger pain). Get rid of these survival-threatening engrams and you have an “optimum brain.” Anxieties and illnesses promptly disappear.

The splash created by this do-it-yourself method of psychotherapy was enormous (approximately 500,000 followers) but short-lived. Overhead organization and professionally administered techniques were lacking. A new strategy was called for. Thus Scientology arose from the ashes of Dianetics in the Year of Our Lord 1952.

To replace the self-therapy of Dianetics, Hubbard devised the E-meter (Hubbard Electrometer) or “truth detector”—a battery-operated device consisting of two tin cans hooked up to a dial. The Scientology counterpart of Mark Hopkins and a student at opposite ends of a log is an “auditor” (Scientology expert) and a “preclear” (novice, seeker) on opposite sides of an E-meter. The auditor watches the dial as the preclear, holding the cans, replies to questions designed to bring to the surface hidden engrams. When the subject is able to identify and confront without fear all these malevolent gremlins (that is, when the E-meter needle ceases to fluctuate reflexively as the engrams are trotted out one by one), he is said to be a “clear.”

Some engrams, according to Scientologists, are prenatal, even harking back to previous existences. Hubbard goes so far as to insist “that individuals cannot be rehabilitated unless the prenatal engrams are accepted” (Dianetics, p. 102). In an article entitled “Scientology: Menace to Mental Health,” Ralph Lee Smith cites a preclear who, upon ransacking his subconscious, allegedly discovered that:

His thetan [spirit] had inhabited the body of a doll on the planet Mars, 469,476,600 years ago. Martians seized the doll and took it to a temple, where it was zapped by a bishop’s gun while the congregation chanted “God is Love.” The thetan was then put into an ice cube, placed aboard a flying saucer, and dropped off at Planet ZX 432, where it was given a robot body, then put to work unloading flying saucers. Being a bit unruly, it zapped another robot to death and was shipped off in a flying saucer to be punished. But the saucer exploded, and the thetan fell into space [Today’s Health, December, 1968].

Another preclear “recalled that he had been Marc Antony. He remembered Cleopatra, but she apparently had given him such a whopping engram that he couldn’t recall the battles of Philippi and Actium.”

The cover blurb on Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought boasts: “No such knowledge has ever before existed and no such results have ever before been attainable by Man as those which can be reached by a study of this brief volume.” Inside the 136-page paperback, the reader encounters a host of similar claims:

This book is a summation, in brief, of the results of 50,000 years of thinking men.… What has been attempted by a thousand universities and foundations at a cost of billions has been completed quietly here [p. 5].

Freedom from ignorance is at hand. Perhaps that was the Kingdom of Heaven [p. 9].

… Scientology established bio-physics.… Biophysics only became feasible when it was discovered in Scientology that a fixed electrical field existed surrounding a body entirely independent of, but influenceable by, the human mind [p. 70].

It is the only science or study known which is capable of uniformly producing marked and significant increases in intelligence and general ability. Scientolology processing among other things can improve the intelligent quotient of an individual, his ability or desire to communicate, his social attitudes, his capability and domestic harmony, his fertility, his artistic creativity, his reaction time and his health [p. 98].

With Scientology man can prevent insanity, criminality and war.… The only race that matters at this moment is the one being run between Scientology and the atomic bomb [p. 128].

But the description of the supernatural attainments of Scientology is not limited to generalities. Specific miracles are claimed. Hubbard himself testifies that his thetan has visited Venus once and Heaven twice. (Incidentally, the second of his three wives testified that he was “hopelessly insane.”) “Tens of thousands of case histories” record miraculous healings of mind and body through Scientology techniques. The claim is made that through the creation of “mental energy,” up to thirty pounds have been added to or subtracted from a person’s body weight. Furthermore, Scientology can “raise the intelligence quotient of a person about one point per hour of processing” (A Brief Biography of L. Ron Hubbard, p. 10). At that astounding rate, the cost of producing an Einstein, at $30 per processing hour, would be relatively small. And to think that the ability to accomplish these miracles can be attained in a period of weeks and for only a few hundred dollars!

It is a curious thing that a great many intelligent, well educated, and apparently well balanced people have flocked to this movement. Take Anne Ursprung, for example. Reared in Texas, she was active in Southern Baptist youth work and at one time wanted to become a Christian-education director. At Baylor University she majored in English and history, and after her graduation she accepted a job as an English teacher in the District of Columbia. Her active involvement in Scientology began in November, 1967, when she began teaching evening classes at the Founding Church while continuing her daytime job in the Washington public-school system. The following February she became a full-time employee of the church, and in July she was elevated to the position of “assistant guardian,” the local congregation’s highest administrative office. Modest, poised, elegant in dress and manner, Miss Ursprung could easily pass for the Christian-education worker she once hoped to become.

Esther Mangold, another full-time employee of the Founding Church, is a graduate of the Westminster Choir College and once served as minister of music in a large mainline church in the Midwest.

Just recently, in response to punitive measures by the British Parliament, the organization published a pamphlet entitled A Report to Members of Parliament on Scientology. The booklet contains testimonies by an impressive list of Scientologists, among them a dental surgeon, two medical doctors, a former chemistry professor now devoting his life to Scientology, a Ph.D. professor of languages, and a mechanical engineer. All laud Scientology as the panacea for all ills, individual and social.

According to Miss Ursprung, the Scientology ranks have been swelled by a considerable number of Protestant clergymen. Perhaps the best explanation for this incongruity is that most people consider Scientology not a religion but a school of psychotherapy, despite Scientology claims to the contrary. Although Miss Ursprung classified Dianetics, forerunner of Scientology, as a “science of mind,” she insists that Scientology is “a religion, a religious philosophy, a way of life.” The distinction is based on Scientology’s “eight dynamics.” The first four, which come under the purview of Dianetics, are the survival instincts of (1) self, (2) sex and family, (3) group (school, society, town, nation), and (4) mankind (all races and nations). The last four relate to man as a spiritual being: (5) the animal dynamic (the urge to preserve animal and vegetable life), (6) the MEST (matter, energy, space, time) dynamic (the urge to preserve the physical universe), (7) the spiritual dynamic (the urge to perpetuate spiritual existence in the here and now), and (8) the Infinity or God dynamic (the instinct relating to immortal existence beyond the earthly life). Oddly enough, the one area most directly involving religious experience is ruled out of bounds. Hubbard emphasizes, “It is carefully observed here that the science of Scientology does not intrude into the Dynamic of the Supreme Being” (Scientology, pp. 39, 40).

By what stretch of the imagination, then, can Scientology be classified as a religion? Miss Ursprung’s answer is that a man’s relation with the Supreme Being is an individual matter. Self-understanding is the primary goal of Scientology. A man cannot know his Maker until he first of all knows himself. But, she insists, reverential attitudes are definitely encouraged in the movement. She quoted from Hubbard’s 1951 volume, Science of Survival: “No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring one, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being. It is an empirical observation that men without a strong and lasting faith in a Supreme Being are less capable, less ethical, and less valuable to themselves and society.”

I was still puzzled. How could an organization erected on a theistic foundation, calling itself a church, be utterly divorced from prayer, worship, the Scriptures, and the sacraments? In the booklet Ceremonies of the Founding Church of Scientology are found marriage, christening, and funeral liturgies, not one of which includes a single prayer or reference to the Deity. This “informal christening” service, actually performed by L. Ron Hubbard and recommended as a guide, illustrates these omissions:

O.K. The parents of these children will bring them front and centre. (Speaking to the child): This is Mr. —— and this is Mrs. —— I’m introducing to the audience right now. And—— and—— have decided to be godfather and godmother, so we’re all set.

Here we go. (To the child): How are you? All right. Now your name is——. You got that? Good. There you are. Did that upset you? Now, do you realize that you’re a member of the HASI (Hubbard Association of Scientologists, International)? Pretty good, huh?

All right. Now I want to introduce you to your father. This is Mr.——. (To the parent): Come over here. (To the child): And here’s your mother.

And now, in case you get into trouble and want to borrow some quarters here’s Mr.——. See him? He’s your godfather. Now, take a look at him. That’s right.

And here’s——, in case you want some real good auditing; she’s your godmother. Got it?

Now you are suitably christened. Don’t worry about it, it could be worse. O.K. Thank you very much. They’ll treat you all right.

In a Scientology church service, the booklet explains, “we do not use prayers, attitudes of piety, or threats of damnation. We use the facts, the truths, the understandings that have been discovered in the science of Scientology. We do not read from the Bible (or the Koran or the Torah or the Vedic Hymns, for that matter) and say to the people … ‘Now this is something you have got to believe.’ ” Music selected for the service is to be “pleasant to listen to and not strongly associated with the wrath of the gods or helpless dependence on the whim of an unknown being.” The sermon “is ALWAYS on some phase of Scientology and how it can be of use to those present.” A taped lecture by L. Ron Hubbard is suggested as appropriate for this purpose.

In the December, 1968, issue of the New Zealand Methodist there appeared a discussion between Sir James Hort, a minister in the Church of Scientology, and three Protestant clergymen. The following excerpt is instructive:

Hort: The eighth dynamic is not inquired into. It is left to individual people to understand for themselves in time.

Ramage [the Reverend I.C.E.]: Before you reach the eighth dynamic, you wouldn’t feel that God has any part in your progress through the other stages?

Hort: I think the answer is no. This is somewhere where the Christian religion and ours would differ.

In an earlier comment, Hort had observed (regarding Scientology church services), “If an atheist or agnostic comes into Scientology, then our service is there for him.”

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