An Evangelical Classic

A Short Life of Christ, by Everett F. Harrison (Eerdmans, 1968, 288 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Richard N. Longenecker, associate professor of New Testament history and theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

In “a study that confines itself to the highlights” of the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth, Professor Harrison gives us a work highly suitable for use by the student, the minister, and the earnest layman. The book is hardly a retelling of events or a tracing of travels in the ministry of Jesus, as one might expect from the title; nor is it a critical introduction to the narratives, something the author provided ably in an earlier work. Rather, A Short Life of Christ is an interpretive study on an introductory level of the most theologically significant aspects of Jesus’ life and work, and it incorporates, easily and naturally, such often diverse features as history, biblical theology, apologetics, devotional asides, and even something of homiletics. It is the work of a master New Testament scholar who knows how to lead his audience effectively into the major issues of the Gospels, and how to write clearly and warmly.

A weakness one might cite in what is on the whole a most intellectually satisfying and spiritually stimulating work is an imbalance in the selection of topics. In the first fourth of the book we are taken through our Lord’s birth, infancy, boyhood, baptism, and temptation; the last half treats the events of passion week, resurrection, and ascension; less than one-fourth is allotted to Jesus’ earthly ministry between the temptation and the triumphal entry—only fourteen pages to “Jesus as Teacher” and fourteen others to “The Miracles.” But the work is called “A Short Life of Christ”; and if the solution would have been to condense in other areas so as to have room to expand here, I withdraw my criticism. Exception might also be taken to the very brief interaction with “New Quest” historiography (so called). But, again, the author has warned us of brevity; and after all, something must be left to the classroom. Possibly more open to criticism are the treatments of (1) Jesus’ sinlessness, where a contradiction in the extent of Jesus’ identification with man seems to have imposed itself between page 81 and page 269, and (2) Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, where Harrison seems to reflect more an undigested Gerhardsson than himself in arguing on pages 87–89 that the sphere of conflict in Satan’s suggestion to cast himself down from the temple need only be mental.

Nevertheless, Harrison’s book must be commended as a little gem of a work that well deserves to become an evangelical classic. The presentation, while admittedly introductory, is perceptive and informed throughout; the prose is in many places almost lyrical; and the bibliographies at the close of each chapter signal the breadth of the discussion and provide direction for further study. Noteworthy also is the author’s lack of reference to his other published works, which indicates something of the character of the man himself—and which might be a first in scholarly production.

Worthwhile Words

Words Fitly Spoken, by Donald Grey Barnhouse (Tyndale House, 1969, 242 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Paul S. Rees, editor, “World Vision Magazine.”

Donald Grey Barnhouse knew the value of words, their potency when used precisely, their waywardness when used carelessly, their peril when used falsely. Hence the appropriateness of the title given to this Barnhouse anthology.

Selections have been made from editorial copy that Dr. Barnhouse wrote for his two successively edited magazines, Revelation and Eternity. These selections, numbering more than 150, are divided into a dozen categories or themes, beginning with “The Bible” and ending with “The Home.” Other subjects are: “God,” “Christ,” “The Tempter and Temptation,” “Sin,” “Salvation,” “The Church,” “Christian Life and Growth,” “Forgiveness,” “Witnessing,” and “Thanksgiving.”

Some of the pieces are worked out with ingenuity and beauty, as, for example, the one called “His Sovereignty,” in which Dr. Barnhouse goes to the hymns of the Church to support the all-embracing character of God’s purposes and beneficences. The word “all” is the key, and its message comes through in all sorts of hyphenations: God with His “all-commanding might,” or his “all-animating voice”; Christ with his “name all-victorious,” or his “all-redeeming love.”

Striking use of antithetical thought and phrasing appears in some of the pieces. In the one on “Discipleship,” our Lord’s word to the apostles, “If it were not so, I would have told you,” prompts the epigram: “The worst has been told; the best we cannot know now.”

Many of the pieces are made memorable by strong illustrations, as in the one on “The Sin of Willfulness,” in which a Valentine’s Day fire in a New Jersey public school was traced to an eight-year-old boy. Asked why he had set the fire, he said, “In class yesterday they took away my bubble gum!”

Some are poignant, as when, writing on “The Senior Citizen,” the author etches the loneliness of some of these “past seventies” by telling of a lovely lady in his Philadelphia congregation who once told him that she “bought her groceries one item at a time so she might hear the voice of the clerk speaking to her in a moment of conversation.”

If this collection abounds with fine things and strong, as it splendidly does, it is not without its sticky patches. To say, as our author does, “Then He went to the Cross and through the tomb, and perfect reconciliation was provided; now, God is for us,” is to raise a question of biblical and theological accuracy. There must be some more careful way of making the point, with respect to the event of the atonement, than by implying that before the Cross we had a hostile God and after the Cross a forgiving God.

Although there are additional passages where some readers will lift eyebrows and mentally enter a theological exception, nothing said here should be allowed to cast a shadow over the bright landscape of nearly every page Dr. Barnhouse has written.

A Sacred Universal Empire

The Holy Roman Empire, by Friedrich Heer (Praeger, 1968, 310 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Robert G. Clouse, associate professor of history, Indiana State University, Terre Haute.

“Five thousand years measure the flight path of the imperial eagle, as he makes his way from the temple towers of Eridu towards the setting sun, towards the evening mists veiling the future of the atomic age.” It is with the European attempt to build a sacred universal empire that this book deals. This Holy Roman Empire consisted of the largely Germanic and North Italian territories organized under Otto I, crowned emperor by the pope in 962. The ruler of this empire represented an attempt to maintain an ancient Roman tradition of European unity blessed by a Christian conception of divinely ordained authority. But because of constant friction with the papacy, by the fifteenth century the state was little more than a legal term for the trusteeship of the Germans. From 1273 the empire was dominated by the Habsburg family, which concentrated on dynastic expansion in central Europe. When Napoleon sought to establish a French-dominated empire, he insisted on the formal abolition of the Holy Roman Empire (July, 1806).

The author, Friedrich Heer, has done a magnificent work of synthesis, and his book should be read by all who are interested in medieval or early modern church history. He is professor of the history of ideas at Vienna University and is considered a leading intellectual historian. His range of interests is wide, his knowledge vast, and he writes in a fascinating way as his mind moves easily over the centuries.

Heer, a liberal Erasmian-type Catholic, contends that all ideas or events are radial, all lie like overlapping rings on the map of Europe and across the ages. Sometimes he connects these for his audience, as when, writing of the attitude toward the Slavs of the tenth-century Germans, he adds, “German soldiers who fought in Russia during the Second World War described the Russian people’s capacity for suffering in almost identical terms.” In discussing the Peace of Augsburg (1555) he mentions that the papacy finally recognized it in 1955. This was done because the pope realized that the peace saved the Empire from the Turks and “Pius no doubt had his own ‘Turks’ in mind, the present-day Communists.”

At times this approach causes inaccuracies, as Heer sees parallels and influences where they do not exist. Because of this he is led to relate a theology that preaches hell-fire with war; he hints at a relation between Hussite teaching and Hitler; and he believes that “our present world is a product of the puritanical Protestant west.… It is rational, bureaucratic, impersonal-objective. Ours is a technical civilization, from which Eros and Ludus are absent.”

Nevertheless, I heartily recommend this attractive book.

Examining Terminal Illness

On Death and Dying, by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Macmillan, 1969, 260 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Gary R. Collins, chairman, Division of Pastoral Psychology and Counseling, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

When you learn that someone you know has a terminal illness, how do you react? If you are like most people, you don’t want to discuss or even think about death, and when convenient to do so you avoid the dying person altogether. This is one conclusion reached by the psychiatrist who writes this book. Doctors, relatives, and even clergymen feel uncomfortable discussing death and fail to realize that the dying person needs to talk—especially with people who are understanding and not too busy to listen.

In writing about death and dying, Dr. Kübler-Ross boldly considers the anxieties, fears, desires, and needs of the terminally ill. A warm concern for people shines forth from almost every page. The book contains much useful information. The author distinguishes, for example, five stages in dying. When a person realizes that death is imminent, he reacts first with shock and denial. Then he becomes angry (“Why does it have to be me?”). He tries to bargain for more time (“If I get better, I’ll serve God for the rest of my life”). He has periods of depression. Finally he accepts the inevitable. Throughout all this there is hope that some new remedy will be found and that death will be put off for a few more years.

Interviews provide dramatic illustrative material, but here lies one of the book’s weaknesses. Almost half the pages are devoted to these interviews and case histories, and after a while this becomes boring. In addition, the author tends to be repetitious with her main points. My conclusion is that the book would have been better, and just as valuable, if it had been about one-third shorter.

It is regrettable that this one who writes so perceptively about dying should apparently know so little about death. Once a patient asked to hear a passage read from the Bible. Dr. Kübler-Ross says she did not enjoy this “peculiar” assignment but accepted it—with “the dreaded thought that some of my colleagues might come in and laugh.” “I read the chapters,” she says “not really knowing what I had read.” The knowledge that God sent his Son so that believers “should not perish but have everlasting life” reduces one’s fear of death and brings the assurance that was expressed by one of the interviewed patients: “I have been at complete peace with myself.… I expect to be at home with the Lord when I die.”

No Solution Here

Introduction to the New Testament, by Willi Marxsen (Fortress, 1968, 269 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by John H. Skilton, professor of New Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This English translation of the third edition of Professor Willi Marxsen’s book can perform the service of introducing the author to many not acquainted with his work in German. It is a highly personalized volume that sets forth conclusions in the field of special introduction which Professor Marxsen endorses but that purposely—in part, at least, to conserve space—gives minimal attention to other views. Although this is conceived by the author as a virtue, it seriously limits the usefulness of the work and tends to make it less an introduction to the New Testament than an introduction to Professor Marxsen.

Those who disagree with Marxsen’s basic approach to the New Testament and its problems will disagree with a great many of the particular positions taken as a consequence of that approach, and even some of those whose approach is similar to the authors’ may at times wish their own conclusions on certain problems had been given a more extended hearing.

Marxsen holds that we cannot separate the disciplines of introduction and New Testament theology. He proceeds, however, to assess the New Testament from a viewpoint foreign to its own theology. He limits his study to the twenty-seven books of our New Testament, not because he considers those books to be the written Word of God, themselves revelation, but because of their early date and because most of them therefore “stand nearest in time to the once-for-allness of revelation. As we have no other access to revelation except by following back the line of tradition at the end of which we stand, we shall always arrive ultimately at one of the lines that had their origin then.” Without prejudice to basic principles and without creating any real problem, he holds the Didache might perhaps be substituted for Second Peter and First Clement for Jude.

This introduction is offered as an “approach” to the problems of the New Testament. It is the type of approach that is more successful in generating problems than in solving them.

Bonhoeffer: The Man

The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Mary Bosanquet (Harper & Row, 1969, 287 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by J. Murray Marshall, pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Flushing, New York.

In April. 1945, less than a month before the capitulation of the Third Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in Flossenbiirg, Germany. Since then his name has become a commonplace in theological circles, principally because of his Letters and Papers from Prison, in which he ventured the terms “religionless Christianity” and “world come of age.” While his other works also have been translated and widely circulated, it has remained for Mary Bosanquet to produce the first full biography of the man in English. (A work in German by Bonhoeffer’s close friend Eberhard Bethge is reportedly being translated into English.)

Miss Bosanquet has handled her difficult task with finesse. Not only has she reconstructed meticulously the details of Bonhoeffer’s background and life, but she also has interwoven extensive quotations from his writings to display the progress of his thought. The product emerges both as an informative, discerning sketch of a troubled time in German history and as a captivating account of a dynamic personality. Testimony to Miss Bosanquet’s success is borne by Bonhoeffer’s twin sister, Sabine Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, who says, “To have discovered in this book a distorted picture of the twin brother to whom I was bound with such powerful ties of affection would have been a bitter grief to me. But this has nowhere been the case.”

The Bonhoeffer pictured is the upper-middle-class German, endowed with a brilliant mind, educated in the classic fashion, ready to defend his own theological persuasions. His theology is not purely academic; he accepted the challenge of the pastorate, wherein he related the insights of the scholar to the needs of the common man. Moreover, he distinguished himself as a teacher of young men preparing for the pastoral vocation. He practiced consistently, and led his students to do likewise, the “secret discipline” of a life lived before the judgment of the Word of God and the presence of Christ. Early in his career Bonhoeffer noted that “nowadays we often ask whether we still have a use for God.” But he immediately added, “This is to put the question the wrong way round. The Church exists and God exists, and we are the ones being questioned.” And finally, as a Christian he found himself impelled to move with those who protested the tragic moral calamity of the Third Reich. So he lived—and died.

The question always remains, “What would Dietrich Bonhoeffer say to the interpretation and application of his thought today?” Miss Bosanquet notes:

Bonhoeffer was not destined to live on into the time when he might have explored these questions in depth and perhaps begun to approach here and there an answer; and in the years which have followed his death many have been appropriated and carried away, like stones from a half-built church, to be used as the foundation for theological superstructures for which he would have disclaimed responsibility [p. 256].

Later she says, “It is a hindrance to the full understanding of what Bonhoeffer was and is that sections of the Letters and Papers have so frequently been quoted as though they represented the end of a theological journey instead of its quite tentative beginnings.”

Undoubtedly Bonhoeffer’s complete works will be studied for years to come; his example of “secret discipline” might well be emulated. For understanding both the man and his works, Miss Bosanquet’s book is a most useful tool.

The Wesleys And Church Music

The Musical Wesleys, by Erik Routley (Oxford University, 1969, 272 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Paul K. Jewett, professor of systematic theology, Fuller Seminary, Pasadena, California.

This work is a specimen of the fine book-making one expects from the prestigious Oxford University Press, and its content is a tribute to the author’s learning. If there is a writer living who knows more about hymns and all that pertains to them than Erik Routley, I have not heard of him. The factual information, theological perception, and musical criticism Routley brings to the task in his several books on hymns and church music add up to an enviable erudition.

Probably only a few will read this book through word for word. The great Wesleys, John and Charles, are not major figures in the story. The book deals principally with Charles Wesley II; his brother, Samuel Wesley; and Samuel Wesley’s son, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the most learned and accomplished church musician of his day in England.

The work of any sensitive artist is profoundly affected by both his own makeup and the circumstances of his life and times, and Routley indulges in considerable psychological analysis of his subjects and elaboration of English society—its heritage, values, and struggles—at the time the Wesleys lived. This makes very interesting and informative reading. His conclusion is that while the senior Wesleys lived above their times, Charles II drifted with them, while Samuel and Samuel Sebastian struggled (but not very successfully) against them.

This book contains a good deal of musical criticism illuminating the state of English church music in the eighteenth century as well as the contribution of the Wesleys, their anthems, hymn tunes, and chants. Much of this material will be followed from afar by all but the specialist. Yet even here there is no wasted energy, no lazy moment; and the non-specialist will have his intellectual horizons enlarged by the perusal of these studies.

Book Briefs

Happiness Is Still Home Made, by T. Cecil Myers (Word, 1969, 127 pp., $3.95). Discusses principles and techniques for building a happy home life.

Religious Television Programs: A Study of Relevance, by A. William Bluem (Hastings House, 1969, 220 pp., $4.95). A study of the achievements and problems of religious television programming.

Take My Home, by Margaret Warde (Scripture Union, 1969, 96 pp., paperback, 5s). Describes how some Christians have used their homes in personal and group evangelism among various age groups.

Tongues: To Speak or Not to Speak, by Donald W. Burdick (Moody, 1969, 94 pp., paperback $.95). This study concludes that the modern tongues movement is not the same as the supernatural New Testament gift and that its dangers far outweigh its values.

Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspiration Since 1810, by James T. Burtchaell (Cambridge University, 1969, 341 pp., $9.50). Examines several views of inspiration advanced by Catholic thinkers in the nineteenth century and concludes that much present theorizing by Catholics on the subject is but a repetition of ideas stated by progressive thinkers a century ago.

L’Abri, by Edith Schaeffer (Tyndale House, 1969, 228 pp., $3.95). Those familiar with the ministry and writing of Francis Schaeffer will enjoy Mrs. Schaeffer’s account of the birth and growth of L’Abri Fellowship.

Evolution: The Theory of Teilhard De Chardin, by Bernard Delfgaauw (Harper & Row, 1969, 124 pp., $4). An analysis of the central theme in the thought of Teilhard de Chardin.

Ten Muslims Meet Christ, by William McElwee Miller (Eerdmans, 1969, 147 pp., paperback, $1.95). These stories of ten Muslims who came to know Christ serve as an encouraging reminder of the power of the Gospel to change lives even under the most difficult circumstances.

They Dare to Hope, by Fred Pearson (Eerdmans, 1969, 103 pp., paperback, $1.95). Investigates student unrest and argues that the Church has a unique opportunity to respond positively and lead to the social change the protestors seek.

The Dead Sea Scrolls 1947–1969, by Edmund Wilson (Oxford University, 1969, 320 pp., $6.50). The revised and expanded version of a controversial work on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Ministers Manual (Doran’s), edited by Charles L. Wallis (Harper & Row, 1969, 339 pp., $4.95). The new edition of this standard work is now available.

Romans, by Geoffrey B. Wilson (Banner of Truth Trust, 1969, 255 pp., paperback, 6s.). This brief verse-by-verse commentary abounds with quotes from a number of commentators.

Revivals in the Midst of the Years, by Benjamin Rice Lacy, Jr. (Royal, 1968, 193 pp., $3.95). This reprint of an earlier work surveys a number of the great revivals of church history.

The Compulsive Christian: To Be or Not to Be, by David Mason (Zondervan, 1969, 208 pp., $4.95). A survey of the various aspects of personality that must work together as a balanced team for the building of the “whole man.”

Sprint for the Sun, by Loren Young (Word, 1969, 90 pp., $2.95). A director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes shares lessons learned from a variety of “little things” he has experienced.

Insisting On The Grievance

Not so long ago, I was traveling in Asia under the auspices of a certain organization. In one city I met two colleagues whose next destination turned out to be the same as my own. We shared a car to the airport, checked in with the airline and out with passport control, then walked together to our plane. A certain sheepishness became apparent at that point, culminating in their going up the first-class gangway while I went to my own place. Ten minutes passed, during which time I confess to some mental and probably sinful exultation (I knew my friends).

Sure enough, just before takeoff, an airline official came into the economy section, identified me, and passed a message from my senior colleague that said, in effect: “Friend, come up higher, and I will pay the difference when we arrive.” With old-fashioned courtesy I said to the messenger: “Please express my thanks to Mr. X, and tell him I’d rather have the grievance.” He did so with seemly gravity, I discovered later. I naturally saw no reason to add that I had three seats to myself and would journey more comfortably than they.

Now, however, the tables have been turned on me, and I am writing under the weight of what can only be described as The Grievance Unsought. It came, fittingly, in an airport lounge where I was awaiting a tardy flight. Pushing his way through the crowd was a friend who has developed to a high degree the art of communicating anxiety. This time he excelled himself. Spotting me, he said loudly in passing, without breaking step: “Hi, Eut, I pray for you every Tuesday.” (He didn’t call me that, of course, but oddly used my full name—a piece of gamesmanship that always somehow puts one at a disadvantage in public.) That was all he said, but curious and even envious glances were thereafter directed by fellow travelers at the guy who was prayed for every Tuesday.

Maybe I can’t cope with true piety when I see it—cf. that letter from Canada (September 12 issue) that used four languages and acrid tone against me and Goethe for alleged anti-Zinzendorfian views, then added kind regards to me in the old divide et impera ploy.

But to return to the airport. My friend meant it kindly, but I feel menaced by a form of blackmail for which there is no legal redress. I wanted to protest: “But I don’t want you to pray for me; you will ask for all the wrong things unless you stop for a moment and let me tell you what to pray for.”

Alas, he was gone before I could persuade him that the principle was not enough—and tomorrow is another Tuesday. I went over to the window to watch his plane take off. I found myself bizarrely hoping he was traveling first class.

EUTYCHUS IV

Evangelism In Person

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is becoming an increasingly more helpful Christian magazine with every issue. Recent articles most helpful are: “Nudity in Biblical Perspective” by Stephen E. Smallman (Aug. 22) and “What Is Evangelism?” by Samuel H. Moffett (Aug. 22 and Sept. 12). My involvement as a volunteer police chaplain, with my church ministry, convinces me more than ever of the truth of Mr. Moffett’s statement: “Evangelism is the specific, articulate presention of the person [italics mine] and claims of Jesus Christ.”

WESTON F. COX

Evangelical Friends Church

Wichita, Kan.

More of Samuel Moffett, please, for poor laymen like me.

DONALD A. REED

Hummelstown, Pa.

I was very disappointed in Moffett’s definition of evangelism. In his view evangelism is “primarily preaching”.… His emphasis on preaching as the primary medium of evangelism is especially unfortunate in a day when media other than preaching are far more effective in reaching people. Granted, Dr. Moffet’s concept of preaching seems to be so all-inclusive that its true meaning is lost.…

If evangelism is confined to oral communication, does this mean that a deaf mute cannot evangelize or be evangelized? What about the immigrant? Must he wait until he has mastered the language of the land before becoming involved in evangelism? I feel that Dr. Moffett ascribes far too great an importance to words.

Evangelism was born when the logos became flesh (not words). Hence, evangelism takes place wherever Jesus Christ is made known to people. Certainly there are many ways to communicate Christ to a person. Speech is only one of them, and, in our day, perhaps no longer the most important one.

BERNARD SCHALM

North American Baptist College

Edmonton, Alberta

Thank you very much for “What Is Evangelism?” and “On Romans 8:28” (Sept. 12). These are great.

ODIE GREGG

Ramburne, Ala.

Bright Spots

Your editorial, “Times of Refreshing” (Sept. 12), is certainly appropriate and true to the facts. However, there is also a bright side to this dark picture. God is working on a large scale in other parts of the world. Revival fires are burning in parts of Africa and the East Indies, and news trickles out of Russia and China that many are coming to Christ in clandestine groups.

It should also be noted that there are increasing numbers of powerful radio stations beaming the Gospel into areas of the world where churches are not established.…

There is much to be said also for the number of strong testimonies building in strategic cities across the nation.

W. B. MUSSELMAN

Hunsberger Heights Baptist Church

Saginaw, Mich.

The Fight Is On

CHRISTIANITY TODAY outdid itself with insipid analysis and reporting in the editorial entitled “Reflections on Ulster” (Sept. 12). There it is stated that Protestants now fight Romanists because they know they have discriminated and fear reprisal.

Being a pastor to people who not long ago lived in Ulster, and whose families still remain there, leads me to suggest the struggle has arisen because of:

1. Communists. The London School of Economics and the University of Dublin’s Trinity College are literally seminaries (seedbeds) for revolutionary anarchists intent on Gospel-destruction (see the September 1, 1969, issue of On Target, Flesherton, Ontario, for the details of the exposé).

2. The biblical Evangel vs. substitutes. The Roman church under no amount of theological or sophistical contortions can be acknowledged as the biblical Gospel. So too, Ulster does have, even today, a mighty host of the biblical Evangel. Thus truth cannot compromise with a substitute of any stripe. Quebec province and some near-at-hand Irish communities graphically demonstrate what happens to the Evangel in Rome’s hands.

Furthermore, why all the bleating over a physical defense of conscience in Christ? Milquetoast passivism is no charity to truth! It was the “rock-heads” of Scottish Covenanters, and the hard-nosed Calvinists of the Low-Countries, which pushed the Roman juggernaut to its place three centuries ago. And they used more than words! Finally, how meaningless the Westminster Shorter Catechism becomes when it states Christ reigns as King on the grounds that he is “defending us” and “conquering all his and our enemies” if the editorial holds sway.

ROBERT MORE, JR.

Reformed Presbyterian Church

Almonte, Ontario

The Swing To Survivors

In the September 12 issue reference is made to Hurricane “Camille” in an editorial and again in a news report, “Tragedy at Pass Christian.” In these references several organizations are listed as “having swung into action to do the best they could to help the numbed survivors.” We are so very sorry that our organization was not named along with the rest, because we, too, “swung into action”.…

The Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC), a denominational board of the Christian Reformed Church, has for six years been active in world relief work. This board is made up entirely of laymen who work through the diaconates of the various churches. Our organization was active in the Alaskan earthquake, the eastern Iowa floods, and in many, many more disaster situations around the world.

J. L. DE GROOT

Director of Church Relations

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee

Grand Rapids, Mich.

A Shocking Possibility

I am concerned that an editorial addition to my report “Graham’s Vienna Visit” (News, Sept. 12) may convey a wrong impression. The offending line: “The Associated Press in Vienna said Prague church leaders were ‘shocked’ by Graham’s cancellation.”

The actual text of the Associated Press release was: “Graham was advised against the trip at this time when it may be considered a provocation by the Communist rulers who have shown nervousness in the face of the forthcoming first anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion, and thus came as a shock to Czechoslovak Baptist leaders who are here for the European Baptist Confederation.” The shock related to the possibility of cancellation rather than to the announcement of Mr. Graham’s final decision, which came after consultation with leaders concerned. Therefore it came as no shock but was met with gracious acceptance.

Neither was the move regarded as a “cancellation.” “Postponement” is more accurate. Mr. Graham’s promise to the 600 Czechoslovak conference delegates was: “Our visit is not canceled and, in God’s time, we will be there.”

DAVE FOSTER

Geneva, Switzerland

Such A Piece Of Work

I read Ed Plowman’s report on the “Summer of Discontent” (News, Sept. 12) here in the Division of Communications at Valley Forge, and was somewhat baffled that such a piece of work got into your news column.

Having recently joined the staff of the division and having had an opportunity to observe some of the dynamics of the case on which Plowman reports, yet at the same time being removed from the history and emotion of it, I was quite amused to see Plowman used as a mouthpiece for one of the principals involved.

A. KENNETH CURTIS

Media Consultant

American Baptist Communications

Valley Forge, Pa.

Notice For Nudity

May I express commendation for the article by Stephen Smallman on nudity (Aug. 22). It was refreshing and stimulating to notice the biblical approach in the treatment of this evil which is sweeping across America and many other countries of the world. The line of thought was easy to follow and the language understandable.

MORRIS SWARTZENDRUBER

Sunnyside Mennonite Church

Kalona, Iowa

Let me say, with tongue in cheek, that I have known of some very cruel, vicious hateful women who seldom appeared in public except when well draped from head to toe.… On the other hand, that sexy leggy blonde in very short shorts casually walking along Main Street might be a nurse at the local hospital with a few hours off from her occupation of serving humanity. Perhaps nudity or near nudity gives a lady a good feeling of personal freedom which removes the hatred which might lead to murder or other crimes. Certainly a lot of heavy clothing she doesn’t need, especially in hot weather, would do nothing to remove such hatred.

JACK IMMELL

Buffalo, Okla.

A Beautiful Prayer

I don’t think your news report “Man’s New Domain” (Aug. 22) very complete. You did not give the complete text of the prayer delivered by Hornet Chaplain Piirtot before President Nixon, the Apollo 11 astronauts, and others.… It is a beautiful prayer of praise and thanksgiving ending “in the name of our Lord.”

MRS. R. HARDY

Edmonton, Alberta

• To complete the report and dispense beauty, we reprint the prayer.—ED.

Lord, God, our Heavenly Father, our minds are staggered and our spirit exalted with the magnitude and precision of this entire Apollo 11 mission. We have spent the past week in communal anxiety and hope as our astronauts sped through the glories and dangers of the heavens. As we try to understand and analyze the scope of this achievement for human life, our reason is overwhelmed with abounding gratitude and joy, even as we realize the increasing challenges of the future.

This magnificent event illustrates anew what man can accomplish when purpose is firm and intent corporate. A man on the moon was promised in this decade. And though some were unconvinced, the reality is with us this morning in the persons of astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. We applaud their splendid exploits and we pour out our thanksgiving for their safe return to us, to their families, to all mankind. From our inmost beings, we sing humble, yet exuberant, praise.

May the great effort and commitment seen in this project, Apollo, inspire our lives to move similarly in other areas of need. May we the people by our enthusiasm and devotion and insight move to new landings in brotherhood, human concern, and mutual respect. May our country, afire with inventive leadership and backed by a committed followership, blaze new trails into all areas of human cares.

See our enthusiasm and bless our joy with dedicated purpose for the many needs at hand. Link us in friendship with peoples throughout the world as we strive together to better the human condition. Grant us peace, beginning in our hearts, and a mind attuned with good will toward our neighbor. All this we pray, as our thanksgiving rings out to Thee, in the name of our Lord. Amen.

Divided Some Stand

I have just read “A Theology for Today’s Youth” (Aug. 22). It certainly shows distinctly what is wrong with today’s “believers.”

In a divided Christianity, where some … stand on a half dozen gospel sentences ignoring the rest of Scripture, and all hate each other to the point that they don’t want their youngsters to associate with or marry one another, and none have a feeling of equality with Christians of other races or economic standing or educational development, how can youngsters, or anyone, accept our religion as the most perfect way of life?… The Church gives us a watered-down, perverted Gospel and wonders why Christianity isn’t impressing our youth.…

When we can grasp the idea that the Word was in the beginning, became flesh, and dwelt among men, then became the written Word interpretable for our individual use by the Holy Spirit, then we would find spiritual unity with all believers, and the Church could become the Body of Christ for the world to see in action. And … the action is Christlike love put to work in faith and deeds by believers who have become God’s chosen people with power to overcome the world.

MRS. RODGER BRODIN

Minneapolis, Minn.

Any Good Book

I deeply appreciate the excellent evangelical journalism of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.… The quality of your articles is equal to that of any good book. You are to be commended for your leadership in the consideration of vital areas of concern to all evangelicals.

HUGH SPAULDING

Hutsonville, Ill.

Two continental congresses, scheduled within four months of each other, highlight the dilemma of Latin American Protestants in 1969. They symbolize the tensions building between extremists to the left and right within the evangelical church. They highlight the growing gap between Protestant leaders of North and South America. And they reveal the degree of polarization already present within the Latin American Protestant community.

July was the time and Buenos Aires the place of CELA III, the third Latin American Congress of Evangelicals (see August 22 issue, page 36). The Latin American Congress on Evangelism will be the other one. This will be held in Bogota in November, an evangelically sponsored follow-up to the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin.

The first of the ecumenically oriented CELA congresses was convened in Buenos Aires in 1949, the second in Lima, Peru, in 1961. Five years later, the Evangelical Federation of Brazil was to sponsor CELA III. But problems of relationship and confidence developed and CELA III was several times postponed until finally the Brazilian committee tossed the ball to the River Plate church federations (Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay).

With a strong assist from UNELAM (an ecumenically financed committee for the promotion of evangelical unity in Latin America), the congress finally came to birth in July, suffering from a fundamentalist boycott in some quarters. It is unfortunate that its leaders postponed it to within four months of the Latin American Congress on Evangelism. Many people who might have desired to be present at both have perhaps been forced to choose between the two. Nevertheless, attendance at CELA III was good, and representation—both geographical and denominational—was all that could be expected. A few evangelical missionaries probably stayed away as a result of the boycott recommended by an inter-mission committee in Latin America. But the effect of their absence was minimal.

One of the most significant factors of CELA III was the presence and influence of the Pentecostals. One delegate commented that apparently they have lost their fear of the ecumenicals. Since these large denominations (mostly Chilean and Brazilian) are self-supporting, they don’t worry about what a U. S. constituency might think of their association with World Council executives. Representing about 63 per cent of the communicant membership of the Protestant churches, the Pentecostals are beginning to find themselves as a group and want to have their proportionate share in shaping things in Latin America.

While CELA III’s tone was surprisingly evangelical—some of the more radical documents were returned to committee for rewriting, and many of the sermons, study papers, and lectures were refreshingly conservative—the congress, nevertheless, was problem-centered. Many of its leaders and planners seemed to be at least as concerned about the reforming of society in Latin America as about the evangelization of the continent.

The Bogotá congress in November promises a different emphasis. Its announced program reflects little consciousness of the deep and vexing social problems that currently are shaking the Latin American church, though its planners are undoubtedly aware of this lack and may be suggesting guidelines to serve as correctives. Bogotá’s carefully restricted invitations, inoffensive topics, and “safe” speakers cast a shadow very definitely to the right.

These two continental gatherings are symbols of a growing disunity in what to now has been a relatively homogeneous Latin American Protestant community. They represent the unhappy polarization of Christians who by and large are not really that far apart in doctrine but are responding to pressures—economic and otherwise—that can be traced to extremist elements in both wings and often to sources outside Latin America. The congresses accentuate differences that are primarily sociological, concerning attitudes towards social reform, revolution, economics, the role of the Christian in a developing society, and the priorities to be placed on these and other factors.

Social Development In Latin America

To understand the Church’s problems in Latin America, one needs to know about the social needs and frustrations of the continent. These can be summarized in two words: marginalized masses.

With a few notable exceptions (like Mexico, where land ownership and other social structures were radically altered by the revolution that culminated in 1917), the infusions of capital and the spotty prosperity seen in Latin America are just making the rich richer and—relatively, therefore—the poor poorer. Most people remain outside the mainstream of development. Latin America’s marginalized masses include the Indians (who in Bolivia make up 70 per cent of the population), the farmers (who average 70 per cent of the population throughout the continent), the slum dwellers (whose number is swelling alarmingly), the illiterates (nearly half the adult population), the children (one hundred million of them) without sufficient classrooms or prospects of employment, the peónes and other subsistence laborers.

Latin American society is riddled with injustice. Despite their sometimes liberal constitutions, the people have never lived under truly democratic conditions except in a few places, such as Costa Rica and Uruguay. In the Latin American wars of independence which were more or less contemporary with our own, the oligarchy simply wrested power from the crown and became the new establishment. Social structures persisted. Feudalism continued. Education remained the exclusive privilege of the elite. Peonage and serfdom continued as economic institutions. Government was never “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

As a result, the structures of government have always resisted revision and have generally alternated between conservative, elected authority—chosen by the literate elite—and military dictatorships. These are the centers of power, wealth, and privilege, with the clergy often throwing the balance one way or the other. Meanwhile, the rapidly growing masses continue to be marginalized.

Traditionally, in Latin America, the Roman Catholic Church has been linked with the status quo and has winked at conditions creating greater pressures on the underprivileged populace. The Protestant churches, on the other hand, have often found the warmest reception to their preaching of the Gospel in the underprivileged classes, particularly in the urban laboring masses and among the isolated farmers. Notably, the Pentecostal emphasis has drawn large followings in the burgeoning cities like Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City.

One would expect, therefore, that the Catholic Church would defend the status quo and the Protestant churches call for social revolution. Historically this has tended to be true. But things are changing. While on the one hand the Catholic hierarchy is becoming aware of its social blindspots and is repudiating its colonial posture in favor of radical reform, on the other hand the Protestant community—basically conservative in origin and attitude—increasingly is reacting against Communism and other extremes, and is assuming an other-worldly position that involves zealous preaching of the Gospel to needy individuals but naïvely assumes that all social evils will take care of themselves.

Revolution And Revolutionary Attitudes

Despite our annual celebration of July 4, the very word revolution scares most North Americans. Many of us have inherited from our Protestant background an innate respect for the “powers that be.” This is a concept derived directly from the thirteenth chapter of Romans, an acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God. To this we have linked a deep-rooted respect for the due process of law—“Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.” And although we recognize that legality and justice are not always synonymous, nevertheless, if we must choose between them, we will prefer legality because in the long run it is the only permanent and impersonal guarantor of justice. We tend to be patient, therefore, with the gangsters or racketeers whom the law has as yet been unable to touch. A man is innocent until legally proven guilty.

When extended into international relations, this same attitude makes the United States more indulgent toward the Latin American governments of the oligarchy or of the military, as long as they can demonstrate a de facto legality of tenure. Thus the United States supports dictators or military cliques up and down the continent in open deviation from our own political philosophy.

The average Latin American does not share this viewpoint. He is accustomed to seeing corruption and nepotism in high places. He does not identify human authority with God. He has too often seen his church jump from one bandwagon to another. He is impatient with the due process of law—perhaps because he has seen it too often warped and thwarted. His preference is for flaming justice. He is governed by passion, not logic. His historical memory flashes back not to the signing of a Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia but to Simón Bolivar of Jose San Martin, mounted on a white charger, brandishing a sword, leading the liberating forces against the colonial troops of the Spanish emperor. His history and his temperament combine to give him a disposition for revolution, and this has become for him an accepted way of life.

True, most revolutions in Latin America are not really that. They are simply coups d’état, perhaps the only expedient whereby power may be passed from one regime to another when power and government have become so highly centralized and personalized that no normal mechanisms can exist for their orderly transition. The palace revolution does not really change things very much. The bloodshed is not ordinarily excessive, and the coup at least assures the termination of one regime of graft and makes it necessary for its successor to start from scratch!

The true revolution is something else. The word itself suggests a turning of the wheels of progress wherein anachronistic structures are displaced and a new order of things is initiated. The agrarian reform of the Mexican revolution, for example, redistributed more than half of the nation’s productive land among 2.6 million peasants, creating unprecedented demands for transportation, building materials, and other products of industry that completely restructured the national economy. Bolivia, too, has undergone profound social change as a result of its revolution and the nationalization of the mines and petroleum industries. And Castro’s Cuba, in painful isolation from the rest of the continent, is laboring to bring forth a genuine revolution of total social dimensions.

Using the word in this latter sense of radical social change, I think we must accept the inevitability of revolution in Latin America. The status quo cannot long endure. The rough reception accorded Nelson Rockefeller on his recent fact-finding tours is evidence enough of the urgency of Latin American sentiments. “We can’t wait for traditional programs and normal evolution,” is the cry. “We need action now—to feed our hungry children, to provide jobs for our graduates, to abolish our expensive armies, to develop our diminishing resources.”

The Church should not pin its hopes falsely on a complacent gradualism, nor should it turn to a bloody apocalypse or violent revolution. Its prophetic role is not to espouse apocalyptic action but to denounce evil. However, it is called to minister in a context of revolution, and it cannot pretend ignorance of social wickedness nor fail to focus God’s Word upon it. Neither may it comfort itself into thinking that by peddling a biblical variety of other-worldly piety it is proclaiming the whole counsel of God.

Polarization And The Christian Church

Conversion of individuals does not in itself change society. Nor does a changed society assure the conversion of its individual members. But there is a profound causal relation between man and his environment and an equally profound responsibility incumbent upon him within it. Inevitably they interact. And neither can be ignored.

Without reducing the tempo of its Christian witness to people as individuals, therefore, the Church must be alert to its social environment and not retreat from any God-given responsibility to help change the climate within which it is expected to minister to the total needs of men.

It is this tension between an individualistic evangelism and a posture of social involvement that is polarizing Christians in Latin America. Voices from the left were heard at CELA III in Buenos Aires. Voices from the right are programmed for the evangelism congress in Bogotá. But there is little evidence that the left and right are really listening to each other. Doctrinally, in Latin America the left and right are not too far apart. But the pressures from the United States—scarred by the liberal-fundamentalist controversy of a generation ago and the current confrontation with the “new evangelism”—are tending to push them into an unhealthy polarization that is bound to be detrimental to the Body of Christ.

The CELA III program is now in the past. There is nothing we can do about it except pray that the delegates were given clear insights into the priorities of apostolic patterns in evangelism, and that they were reawakened to the inescapable calling of personal witness for Jesus Christ without losing the concern for the total needs of man that has traditionally characterized the conciliar posture.

But Bogotá still lies ahead. To its leaders we can direct some pointed questions:

1. Will the delegates be challenged by an exposure to the galloping pace of economic and social problems in Latin America? Will the coming famine, the armies of the unemployed, and the breakdown of educational and public services be reflected in the definitions of our evangelistic task?

2. What kind of call should we be issuing to dissident elements in the Roman Catholic Church today? Will congress delegates hear anything about renewal within the Roman community? the Catholic Family Movement? the posture of Protestantism in a new climate of religious pluralism?

3. Will there be any effort to examine constructively the forms and structures of the Latin American church? its peculiar patterns of lay and clerical leadership? its sterile reflections of North American perspectives? Does it deserve the confidence of Latin American society? Is it demonstrating the revolutionary power of the Gospel?

4. Will the purpose of the congress be clearly one of unity rather than divisiveness? Will the tendencies towards polarization be consciously resisted? Will Christian brothers from north and south and left and right have real dialogue with one another concerning the overwhelming pressures and problems that hinder our evangelistic purpose? Or will the hand say to the foot, “I have no need of thee”?

Some of the documents and findings of the CELA III congress should be helpful. They are too eloquent to be ignored. The Bogotá delegates must be humble enough and open enough to get the message. We need to listen to what the Spirit has said to the churches—to all the churches. This is basic to any serious assessment of today’s evangelistic task.

To fulfill God’s purpose for it and the aspirations of its sponsors, the Bogotá congress must seek to enlist the whole Body of Christ in the total task of evangelizing Latin America, not in the mood of a decade ago but in the contemporary context of revolution.

W. Dayton Roberts is associate and general director of the Latin America Mission and has been a missionary in Colombia and Costa Rica for nearly thirty years. He is a graduate of Wheaton College and Princeton Seminary.

If there is anything wrong with our praying, part of the reason may be that we confuse it with language. We assume that we are talking with God.

We have certain terms that perpetuate and reinforce this impression. We say we “talk to God,” “tell him things,” are assured of his “understanding” and “memory” (although we consider it appropriate from time to time to remind him of what we have already informed him or of what we have petitioned from him). We do all this because we believe that God has personality, that he is in fact a Person. He therefore is expected to behave toward us as people do, linguistically as well as volitionally.

This continuity between the normal use of language and prayer is further manifested in the particular contexts in which Protestant prayers are so often uttered. There is no sacrifice, no incense, no darkened room. Transition from man-directed to God-directed communication is smooth. There may be a group of people talking among themselves or being addressed by one person, but when it comes time to pray, all that happens is that the person of the addressee becomes invisible. Talk goes on, but no one can see the person to whom it is directed. It is as if a message were being tape-recorded to send to God.

So casual are we about our public praying that there is little control over what precedes the “prayer time.” I have been in missionary prayer meetings (too many of them) when the time for “prayer requests” could hardly be distinguished from what goes on over a cup of coffee. People’s names were mentioned in connection with praying for their going on furlough, their return to the field, their health needs, but we also got descriptions of a bad boat trip and how So-and-So’s daughter got lost at the Orly Airport, as well as information about that article in Reader’s Digest that told about the disease Bob had to go to the hospital about.

There are, of course, a few things that give the superficial impression of discontinuity. There may be a “prayer hymn,” for example, something slow and sweet to provide transition from the gospel songs—sometimes chosen for their bounciness and ability to produce a feeling of general euphoria—to the more staid time of prayer. In some places people assume a different posture for praying, although this seems to be going out of fashion.

But the things that best distinguish prayer talk from normal talk are linguistic. It is here that “thee” and “thou” are used. Here too are heard such fillers as “O Lord” and “Dear Jesus.” (It is interesting that the usual fillers “er” and “uh” are heard quite rarely in extemporaneous prayers.) Even more noticeable, to outsiders at least, are the intonational patterns and paralinguistic features that accompany all praying, things like stress patterns, certain configurations of pitch contours (all of which can be represented quite easily in linguistic notation), voice quality, and voice tremors.

Everybody has his own style, of course, his own praying language, just as each of us has his own idiolect even though we all speak English. The distinguishing features may be particular intonational patterns (the rhythm of one’s voice), particular words and phrases, particular topics. It would not be difficult to imitate some people’s style. In one part of Africa today there are many preachers who start out their prayers similiarly intoning their native-language equivalent for “Our Heavenly Father” because of their three-year exposure to the prayers of the dean of their Bible institute.

This discontinuity between talking and praying is superficial, for in what way does a particular sing-song way of praying, for example, distinguish praying from talking? Does it make of prayer something truly different, something profound and genuinely religious? This is its function, of course. Again, the person who pronounces his words differently (like using the Spanish r sound in the word spirit) or who uses a different vocabulary has good motives. He does not want to talk to God as he would to just anyone.

At least this would be the explanation some might give to their linguistic behavior in prayer. But the fact of the matter is that this is not so. A person prays in the religious dialect of his own denomination or church. In some circles it is very easy to identify the new Christians from those who have been active in church for several decades. The new Christian has not yet learned to use the cliché-ridden language that he mistakes for piety. (Things are changing, however. In many circles the new Christian does not want to worry so much about getting all mixed up with his “thou” and “wantst”—or is it “wantest”?)

There is discontinuity between praying and talking, but not where most people expect it. And because it goes unrecognized, it has an effect on praying that sincere Christians would not want.

The difference between talking and praying, from a linguistic point of view, is that in praying there is no behavioral feedback. Praying is like talking with yourself. Or it is like talking to an audience—seen or unseen, it does not make any difference—whose response is unsolicited and not expected.

One of the fundamental characteristics of language is that it is social. Animals make noises and give one another signals, but human beings interact in very complex ways. If the purpose of talking is to communicate, then language is structured to make this possible. This is why there are so many redundant features in all natural languages (such as marking plurality twice in “these dogs” though “this dogs” or “these dog” would serve just as well).

And human behavior is also patterned to facilitate communication. A person speaking is intimately joined to his listener. Whether he realizes it or not, his performance as a speaker—what he says and how he says it—is determined by the other person, whether the latter agrees with him or not. This is why we nod our heads or grunt “uh huh” when we are being spoken to, to cite the most obvious thing about feedback. Try listening impassively, and your friend will think something is wrong. When he first misses the cue he expects, he may double back and repeat something. Missing a few more cues he may move his body or speak a little louder. Finally he will ask, “What’s wrong?”

No, communication between human beings cannot go on and on without any assurance that what we say is an accurate and honest expression of what we want to communicate. So our prayers become involuted. They become, as Jesus warned us they would, “vain repetitions.” We babble on like the child who asks his question and never waits for the answer. Saying prayers, going through the religious routine—these become more important than communicating a real message to a God who listens and cares.

Let us not hide behind the assurance that the Spirit understands our weakness and intercedes for us (Rom. 8:26, 27). Let us not assume that no matter how we put our words together, everything is going to be all right. (Here is one more place where 8:28 can not apply.)

Everything can not be all right when what we say prevents God from responding to us (we usually say “speaking to us”). Yes, God does interact with us as we pray, but because it is not in the usual human way, we go on “saying” our prayers expecting no feedback—and getting none.

As a linguist I say that most praying is not talking with God, or if this is language, then it is a pretty one-sided affair! But as a Christian, I know that there is feedback. If we are willing to wait for it, we will have it. It depends on whether we want to hog the show or whether we want to let Him have his turn.

It takes time, of course. It may mean periods of silence instead of verbal activity. But most of all, it requires honesty. Every statement, every bit of information, must be examined as to sincerity and truthfulness. We have to do this. God is not here to raise his eyebrows in surprise or wrinkle the corner of his mouth in disbelief. But he will do the same—and more—as he works through our spirit to talk to us.

William J. Samarin is associate professor of anthropology and linguistics at the University of Toronto. He holds the B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkely. For nine years he served as a missionary in Africa.

In Existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre says that God does not exist and that consequently there is no a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.

If Sartre is right, the future of the world is bleak and uncertain, for then life has no meaning beyond what man gives it, and any meaning he gives it will perish with him.

But is he right? According to Marjorie Grene (Introduction to Existentialism), Sartre sees a contradiction in the concept causa sui and thus holds that the existence of God is impossible. This concept implies, on the one hand, that God exists from the necessity of his own nature alone, and, on the other hand, that he stands in relation to himself, that he is what he is not, that he is in the manner of consciousness, which is aware of not being its own foundation, and thus exists not from the necessity of his own nature but contingently. Neither of these contentions, however, seems warranted. As causa sui there is no inner necessity in God beyond his own determination; and causa and sui are not different agents but one and the same being. God is self-dependent in his existence, not dependent on something other than himself. In him cause and self are one. In view of this, all contingency vanishes.

Sartre’s argument, we must conclude, fails to rule out God’s existence. As far as it is concerned, therefore, God may exist. And if God may exist, then even according to Sartre a priori Good may, too, and the world need not be so bleak and meaningless as his view implies.

But this is not all we can say. We can state reasons for Christian belief, and notably for belief in God, that appear quite cogent when correctly formulated and understood, and it is the purpose of this essay to do so.

We might begin, as does J. B. Phillips in Ring of Truth, with an appeal to the fact that “no man could ever have invented such a character as Jesus,” and call attention to the implication this has for the Bible’s interpretation of him. We might also speak of the integrative value of Christian principles for human life, the new level of moral experience to which a believer in God rises, the effectiveness of theocentric prayer, and the witness of nature and of history as a whole. But we shall pass by good reasons of this kind and point rather to more intellectual grounds for belief, grounds that are often minimized but that deserve thoughtful attention.

When one reflects carefully, he becomes aware that there is eternal truth that is super-individual and objective, and not dependent on any finite mind. Something, whatever it may be, is so. To deny or to question this is to confirm, for the denial itself posits, and the questioning itself assumes, that something is so. All men may not know this truth, and no man may know much of it; but intelligent, reflective men cannot escape it. Its reality is given with our rationality. Without it all would be unintelligible.

Even when one says that something is only probable, he implies it, for nothing could be probable if there were no truth. Probability is an estimate of a view with regard to its truth. Moreover, we say that something is probable, and thereby refer to an objective situation.

And if we take all time and all reality into consideration, we must also grant that this truth is all-inclusive. There is not the smallest part of an atom it does not involve, nor the faintest sound or the slightest movement. It includes the facts of history, the import and true nature of the laws and categories of thought and of the principles of mathematics, the factuality of any possibilities there may be. Furthermore, it is one. Any part of it cannot contradict any other or be complete without including its relation to all other parts.

Nor—and this is of special significance—does it subsist by itself. We have no experience, and can form no conception, of truth that is not known. It may be independent of any finite mind, but it is hardly independent of all minds. As there can be no perception without a perceiver, or thought without a thinker, so there can be no truth without an awareness of it.

From the foregoing it would seem to follow that there must be a universal and eternal mind that apprehends all truth—in other words, a being that in some respects at least is quite like the Christian God. As Sartre is doubtless right when he contends that there is no a priori Good if there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it, so the view (in principle already advanced by St. Augustine) is doubtless right that eternal, universal truth can be there only if it is apprehended by a comparable mind. Yet there is a difference here. That a priori Good is there may not be immediately clear by itself; but that truth is there is, and this implies the apprehending mind.

Another reason to believe in God is that the existence and nature of things needs to be explained. Something cannot come from nothing. If once there had been absolutely nothing—no God, no matter, no space or time, not even any possibilities—nothing would ever have eventuated. Even the naturalist seems to grant this when to explain the existence of the world today he says that it has always been there. But this explanation will hardly do. If a man were to point to an automobile and say, “That vehicle has always been there just as it is,” would anyone believe him? And why should it be different in respect to the world? Does the principle that here applies to its parts differ from that which applies to it as a whole? Simply to say that the world has always been there at best accounts for the fact that it exists. It does not explain how it exists or why. Nor does it measure up to the rational requirement formulated by Leibniz—a requirement many recognize as a law of thought—that whatever exists or is true must have a sufficient reason why it should be as it is and not otherwise.

To contend that the world has always existed as an explanation of its existence is really an appeal to pure chance. But existence by pure chance is inconceivable. It seems to be pretty much in the same class with getting something from nothing. In neither case is there a reason, source, or cause for what exists. The thought of the world always having been only adds infinite past time to the situation, something that itself needs to be accounted for.

It seems clear that everything must have a sufficient reason, or adequate explanation, for its existence and nature; and such an explanation, it appears, can in the last analysis be found only in a self-existing reality—that is, in a reality that is the cause of, and has a reason for, its own existence and being.

We might put it this way. For its existence and nature everything must be dependent either on itself or on something else. But things cannot go on being dependent on one another without end, for, as Thomas Aquinas already showed, that would never provide an explanation that needed no further explanation. Somewhere the series of dependent things must end in a reality that is truly self-dependent, or else the original need for an explanation remains. This means a reality that is wholly self-determined and the determiner of all else that is determined. Anything short of this would not be truly self-dependent and self-existent. It would be, not wholly self-originating and self-explaining, but dependent on circumstances beyond its control.

Reason calls for a truly self-existent and all-determining reality as the explanation of the world. And in calling for this it also by implication calls for an allknowing and almighty being, for only such a being could truly determine itself and all other things. Again, it appears, we have by reason arrived at a reality possessing some of the basic attributes of the Christian God.

But someone may ask: Granted that your reasoning is sound, are there not still equally rational considerations that impugn it? What about the criticisms of Hume and Kant?

As for Hume, he may be right that in some instances at least we do not observe power being transmitted from one event to another. But that does not mean that power, or some causal factor, is not operative in those instances. We may grant that as far as sense experience goes, no necessary connection is perceived and something might even come from nothing. But reason does not allow this. According to it, every event and thing must have a sufficient reason, including events in what from the point of view of sense perception may appear to be but an invariable sequence.

If Hume, as some hold, understands St. Thomas Aquinas and others after him to object to an infinite regression of causes merely because it leads them beyond their powers of conceiving, he evidently misconstrues their thought. It is not the supposed absurdity of infinity they project to, but the failure of an infinite regression of secondary causes to explain adequately anything that they affirm.

Kant believed that the principle of causality did not apply beyond the phenomenal world, and that pure reason encountered difficulty in seeking to apply it beyond this world. As some have understood him, he found a contradiction in the causal argument that may be stated as follows: A first, or ultimate, cause of the world would be a first link in a chain of causes and effects; but as a member of a causal series it could not be a first link, since every event in a causal series depends on a prior event or state.

With respect to the first contention, we would observe that a cause for the existence of the world is a logical requirement that, like the law of non-contradiction, presents itself to our minds as universally valid. That all things must have a sufficient reason and that something cannot come from nothing or by pure chance is an immediate and clear intellectual insight. Sense perception could not be more immediate and clear, and may be less dependable.

And as for the contradiction, it is to be recognized that God as the cause of the world need not be the first in a series of causes and effects, nor need or can he be uncaused, or what Kant described as “an absolute spontaneity of causes, by which a series of phenomena, proceeding according to natural law, begins by itself” (Critique of Pure Reason, translated by F. Max Müller, 1927, p. 364). In fact, the whole realm of causes and effects is more like a meshwork or a ball of interlocking rings than a chain of links; and God is not one of the rings, but the self-existing and all-determining Source and Ground of the whole.

The mystery of God is great. His self-existence is unique. It goes beyond man’s experience and full comprehension. But it is not in conflict with reason. On the contrary, nothing less will satisfy reason.

But what about the view held by some positivists that logic is merely operational and conventional, devoid of any ontological character or implication? Or to put it otherwise, may reason validate the existence of God, but its validation be basically worthless?

Three observations should serve to answer this question.

First, this view falls by its own implications. Even if regarded as true, it would remain merely operational and conventional, for it depends on a logic which is allegedly such. And if it is merely operational and conventional, it is not true in any meaningful, ontological sense.

Secondly, it misapprehends, as Brand Blanshard points out, the nature of some logical principles (Reason and Analysis, pp. 271–281). The truth of this statement is confirmed by the fact that no one has succeeded in living up to the theory that logic is merely conventional.

Thirdly, sense experience, on which positivists rely for verification of the meaning of a statement, itself depends on logic for its intelligibility. Without this it would be confusing. It is in terms of such concepts as likeness and difference, quality and quantity, necessity and contingency, relation and freedom, subject and object, affirmation and negation, that we understand the sensible world. The process of verification also involves these. How then could there be a dependable experience of this world, or verification of anything, if logic were purely conventional?

In closing it should be observed that there are those who distinguish between the god of the philosophers and the true and living God of the Bible. In the light of the preceding, the questionable character of such a distinction seems clear. Not all the gods of the philosophers may be acceptable; but any god that is not also the God of sound reason can hardly be the true and living God.

Peter H. Monsma is chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Grove City College, Pennsylvania. he holds teh A.B. from Calvin College, the A.M. from the University of Michigan, the Th.B. from Princeton Theological seminary, and teh Ph.D. from Columbia.

This is a day when there is much talk about the real, the valid, the authentic, the basic. In the jargon of our times we are interminably buffeted by such terms as “relevance,” “telling it like it is,” and “doing your own thing.”

It is also a time when, perhaps, there is abroad, in all the noise and clamor, less authenticity, less reality, less awareness of ourselves as we truly-are (that is, as we spiritually are) than ever before in the history of our nation. Man, always susceptible to delusions, is in a veritable trough of emotionalism, romanticism, anti-intellectualism. The consequence is a chaotic welter of impressions of ourselves—who we are, what we are here for, how we got here, and where we are headed. One man sees the skies filled with marvelous airplanes and space with astronauts, and concludes that we are at the pinnacle of civilization because of our machines. Another sees technology as a snare and a delusion, evidence only of the dehumanization and mechanization of the human spirit. One sees bulging libraries, packed with the latest studies of sociological processes, urban structures, educational theories, and religious reform, and concludes that we must have the answers to all our age-old problems. Others see only intellectual obfuscation, proliferation of the irrelevant, and nonsense.

Totally lacking is any kind of national—much less any kind of planetary—creed, set of beliefs, pattern of values, established goals. And none will ever be found, until we discover again a fixed center, a motionless center, to give meaning to all our motion. Without a sense of direction, motion becomes meaningless, a mere waste of energy, leading to exhaustion and death, as one lost in a wilderness dissipates his waning strength and finally collapses.

My present theme, however, is not this rather trite one of the spiritual and intellectual aimlessness of our times. It is, rather, a very specific and all-permeating truth about human life, startlingly visible, I believe, in modern life, but seen at all periods.

The Bible teaches many “hard truths,” truths that run counter to our natural inclinations and desires. Some of the teachings of Jesus are of this sort, “hard,” and we read that after he uttered some of them, many of his disciples abandoned him and followed him no more.

Of course life itself, quite apart from divine revelation, is often hard, not simply in episode but in principle. The inescapable fact that consequences follow actions, for example, is hard to accept. We are all familiar with the now-standard plea of student militants for amnesty, in advance, for whatever they are about to do. But life does not work that way. I cannot make a bargain with the law of gravity to protect me when I jump from the window. In the physical realm we slowly learn to accept this fact, and the codified results are called laws of nature. The Bible teaches that the law of inescapable consequences is equally true in the moral realm.

But I wish to narrow my theme even further. The very specific “hard” truth I have in mind is best conveyed in the words of Isaiah: “Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations. I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not” (Isa. 66:3, 4).

Two interlinked assertions: “They have chosen their own ways” and “I will choose their delusions.” Amazing juxtaposition, uttering a deep truth.

In Milton’s Paradise Lost this truth is expressed in what may be called the “Satanic predicament,” which is simply the fact that the rebel against God does not thereafter freely choose his own paths and his own way. Rather, judgment—silently, invisibly, unalterably—is handed down. Satan in Paradise Lost thinks that his every step is his own; actually his every step is controlled by God. Satan conceives that, now free, he can create his own environment, see himself as he truly is, conduct himself in the light of his own wisdom. Instead, he finds that all he can do is invert that which he already knows. If Paradise was filled with light, he can show his rebellion and freedom by filling Pandemonium with darkness; if Paradise was motivated by love, Pandemonium can be motivated by hatred and envy; if the nature of Paradise is order and harmony, Pandemonium can be disorder and discord.

At every point Satan’s predicament is that, unwillingly, unwittingly, he condemns himself. At his moment of highest arrogance and power, when he addresses myriad ranks of fallen angels, suddenly he finds his legs entwining themselves, becoming serpentine coils, until, cast to earth, he writhes and hisses.

There is a distant echo of the Satanic predicament in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Having willed his own freedom and deity, Stephen finds he is able to invent nothing, only to invert what he knows of God and his ways. Just as the medieval Satanic cults could think of nothing to do except to say the Lord’s Prayer backwards, to involve ritual in filth instead of beauty, to praise and laud darkness and tyranny instead of light and love, so all men in all places enslave themselves when they rebel against God and condemn themselves merely to reversing all that God is. The rebel finds he possesses no power of creation, true creation, the making of something from nothing. As a creature of God, made for God’s glory, he has no purpose, no role, no objective, in one sense no reality, once he is willfully severed from allegiance to him who alone is Creator. “Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruits of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it (Jer. 6:19).” “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou has forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of Hosts” (Jer. 2:19).

Men love to pretend that “this evil thing,” this rebellion, is innocent, or at worst the mere result of ignorance and circumstance. This, indeed, is one of the delusions they unknowingly fix upon themselves: that man is the product of random accident, without meaning or purpose, and hence without responsibility for his actions. Writes Bertrand Russell (surely, in the earthly sense, one of the most brilliant minds of our century):

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcomes of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the fast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built [A Free Man’s Worship, December, 1903; printed in the Independent Review].

The Apostle Peter, however, asserts that disbelief in the purposefulness of the universe, and in the fact that God made it, is willful: “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water” (2 Pet. 3:5).

We hear many smiling and sophisticated statements from cynics to the effect that we should live it up while we can, while we are free, and not anticipate the judgment, if any. What they do not realize is that God’s judgment of delusions is already upon them, not theoretically or metaphysically, but literally: they even now labor under the delusions God has chosen for them.

The first exhilaration of declaring defiance of God is heady. Remember Milton’s depiction of Adam and Eve immediately after the Fall; remember Faustus in Marlowe’s play—the excitement, the delighted anticipation of total freedom. No rules to hamper desire; no restraints to impede gratification; no conscience to utter its dull warning.

In some ways, we have seen the Western world go through this period of euphoria, when, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, prophets like H. G. Wells and G. B. Shaw were preaching victory through humanism, man’s own unaided rule of his planet. “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” announced Henley. Man is a totally material being, insisted T. H. Huxley, and material may be manipulated so as to produce inevitable progress. All environments tend inevitably toward perfection, intoned Charles Darwin.

How quaint all this optimism seems now. How absurd to declare, standing on a plundered, polluted, blood-soaked planet, that all environments tend inevitably toward perfection! Surely God chose a fearful delusion when he led rebellious man into the paths of materialistic humanism. How visible now the dross behind the early glitter of optimism, the horror behind the smiling image of man self-deified (“Glory to man in the highest,” cried Swinburne).

The disillusionment of our day is well expressed in a few words from the “Theatre for Ideas,” held in New York City in March, 1969. Said Robert Lowell: “The world is absolutely out of control now, and it’s not going to be saved by reason or unreason.” Said Norman Mailer: “Somewhere, something incredible happened in history—the wrong guys won.” Similarly, Robert Jay Clifton, summarizing a position taken by Arthur Koestler in a new book, writes: “It is easy these days—this century—to defend the idea that something ails man.” And he quotes Koestler as presuming “ ‘some built-in error or deficiency,’ or more vividly, ‘a screw loose in the human mind.… He suffers from an endemic form of paranoia’ ” (New York Times Book Review, April 7, 1968, p. 3.)

This diagnosis of an inherent dis-ease is accurate; but there still continues the effort to blame it on something outside the responsibility of man—on genes, or an extra chromosome, or chance, or even the stars. The Bible does not permit this: “We have turned every one to his own way” (Isa. 53:6). “They have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations” (Isa. 66:3). “There is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths” (Isa. 59:8). “I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts” (Isa. 65:2). “They refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law.…” (Zech. 7:11, 12). And, with typical irony, the author of Ecclesiastes: “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment” (11:9).

Our Brave New World, our 1984, are almost upon us. The delusion of a universe without God has shown, through its cosmetics, the lineaments of a corpse. Writes the modern English painter, Francis Bacon: “Life itself is a tragic thing. We watch ourselves from the cradle, performing into decay. Man now realizes that he is an accident, a completely futile thing, that he has to play out the game without reason” (Time, Nov. 1, 1963). And how appropriate it is for Jim Morrison of the rock group known as The Doors to say: “I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that has no meaning. It seems to me to be the road to freedom” (Time, Nov. 24, 1967).

Now, to this point I have spoken of only one of the myriad delusions rebellious man has suffered from as a result of the judgment of God upon disobedience. Clearly the list is endless—the delusion of power, of hedonistic self-indulgence, of statism, of scientism, of ecclesiastical authoritarianism, of spiritualism, and so on. I will comment, however, on only one other, one that follows naturally upon the contemporary abandonment of the delusion of materialistic humanism.

If, as I think, the voice of automatic human progress these days sounds dim and cracked; if the instruments of social harmony are shattered on the rock of self-aggrandizement, racial strife, and militant nationalism; if the hope that more science will inevitably better the human lot lies in rubble; if when we look outward we see only (if we are young) a discredited Establishment or (if we are old) disorderly, uneducated, and perhaps uneducable youth—if all this, where do we turn next?

One of the unsung high priests of our day, D. H. Lawrence, gives us a deluded answer: Turn inward. “This place,” he wrote—meaning the world about us—“is no good.” “One must look for another world.” “This world is only a tomb.” “I must step off in space somewhere.” And the only direction left is inward.

Only by turning in to himself, by introspection, by defining good as the unpremeditated eruption of self-ness, by declaring that our isness is our entirety, by intensifying that isness through happenings, be-ins, and group-gropes—only by these means shall we at last find meaning and peace.

This, the current delusion, leads man into the darkest and most hopeless prison of all; for to declare my perfect freedom from everything—from environment, from home, from state, from rules, from society, from parents, from universe—simply to be—is infallibly to declare my total irrelevance. That which has no ties of relationship to anything whatever is, by definition, irrelevant, related to nothing.

Even worse, men have, as Wyndham Lewis wrote in Blast No. 1 several decades ago, “a loathesome deformity called Self; affliction got through indiscriminate rubbing against their fellows: social excrescence.… Only one operation can cure it: the suicide’s knife.” “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Self-love festers inevitably into self-disgust. The highest form of self-criticism, as the cynic has said, is suicide. Just as the delusion of a God-less universe leads to the horrors of infinite chaos and meaninglessness for social, corporate man, so the delusion that the individual can find freedom and release by living entirely within himself leads to the vision of “self” as graphically offered in a “pop” song: “A splotch, a blotch. Be careful of the blob.… It creeps, and leaps, and glides and slides across the floor. Beware the blob.”

Judgment is not withheld. “God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will not whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready. He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death” (Ps. 7:11–13). Remember the cry of Samuel Beckett’s character in The Unnamable: “… where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

“They mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy” (2 Chron. 36:16). The Bible speaks of a place for those whose rebellion against God is eternal, and calls it Hell. But if we want a description of what that place is like, in detail and feeling, we need only turn to the writings of those who have faithfully followed the delusion of self-as-center.

Among the more fearful consequences of this delusion is the willful, deliberate, hideous murder of one of our divine attributes: Reason. Once the central irrationality has taken place in the words, “I am my own All-in-All,” then there fly out random fragments of the disintegrated mind, the jagged, cutting pieces of man’s disordered creativity, forming so many modern novels, plays, pictures, philosophies. Truly, as certain French existentialists have said, the problem of the nineteenth century was the death of God; that of the twentieth century is the death of man.

I turn now from two delusions—the delusion of a God-less, random universe, and the delusion of total self-centeredness—to one great reality. It is this: Just as God is faithful to bring judgment upon the rebel, so he is infinitely long-suffering and gracious to the repentant wanderer who returns to him. “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 18:23). We may choose what words God will address to us. Either: “I will choose [thy] delusions.” Or: “I will instruct thee and teach in the way which thou shalt go; I will guide thee with mine eye” (Ps. 32:8). “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me” (Ps. 50:15). “And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you; I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you” (Isa. 46:4).

Calvin D. Linton is professor of English literate and dean of Columbian College, The George washington University, Washington, D.C. He holds the A.B. from George Washington and the A.M. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins.