First in a Series of Three Articles

“How are things in Glocca Morra?” asks Sharon in Finian’s Rainbow. The answer is “Grandish” for an Irish lass whose utopia is the green of Erin. Evangelicals will be saddened to learn that in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, once a utopian model of conservative theology (as represented by such luminaries as Walther and Pieper) and of missionary zeal (one thinks especially of Walter Maier), things are now far from grandish.

They are, in fact, compromisish; and so serious is the problem on doctrinal, ecumenical, and administrative levels that unless the forthcoming Convention of the Church at Denver in July reverses the trend, Missouri will certainly go the way of all flesh: into irreversible theological confusion and unionistic indifferentism.

Is it really possible that doctrinal disunity now characterizes the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a church body whose hallmark has been rigorous adherence to Reformation confessions as true expressions of the teaching of the inerrant Scriptures? Here is the depressing answer of the greatest living orthodox Lutheran dogmatician, Hermann Sasse, formerly of Erlangen and now a professor of theology in Australia: “It is exactly twenty years that I set out from Germany for St. Louis to discover with deep disappointment that your church was divided. Through all these years I have shared the grave concern of the conservatives in your church. My prayer is that Denver will mean a turning point. There will be a new presidency. If this is to be only a repetition of the politics of uncertainty and compromise, it would mean the fall of the last great confessional Church” (communication of May 13, 1968).

In the 1940s, a cloud no larger than a man’s hand arose in Missouri in the so-called “Chicago Statement of the 44,” a manifesto of clergy dissatisfied with the synod’s strict position on church fellowship. The “Statementarians” had some good points to make, but their real concerns went far beyond the fellowship issue; they desired a Missouri Synod in which more emphasis would be placed on ecumenical involvement. The synod administration did not air the problem or deal with it decisively. It was swept under the rug by persuading all concerned to “withdraw” (but not retract) the Chicago Statement (pastoral letter of President Behnken, January 18, 1947). The consequence was the established presence of an informal but articulate “liberal” faction in Missouri, devoted to modernization.

In the intervening years, those of liberalizing mind-set have vastly increased their influence, particularly in the administrative and publications echelons of the excessively centralized denomination, and in its two major educational institutions: Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and Concordia Teachers College, River Forest, Illinois.

So fractured is doctrinal unity in Missouri that a group of Eastern District liberals has actually formulated a resolution to make Missouri a full member of the NCC, LWF, and WCC on the ground that “it is utter audacity to assume that unified orthodoxy (or theological agreement) is even a remote possibility within our own Synod.”

The Missouri Synod has been particularly noteworthy both for its uncompromising stand on biblical inerrancy (in line with the Lutheran Formula of Concord, which expressly states, following Luther, that “God’s Word alone is and should remain the only standard and rule, to which the writings of no man should be regarded equal, but to it everything should be subordinated”), and for its insistence on the verbal proclamation of the propositional, biblical Gospel through a Christian school system and by all available communications media. Now, however, both the message and its clear proclamation are under question.

The doctrine of scriptural inerrancy is outrightly denied by some Missouri Synod clergymen (e.g., Robert Scharlemann), and no disciplinary action is taken. Professors such as Walter Bouman at River Forest and Robert H. Smith at St. Louis distinguish the “scholastic” inerrancy view of traditional Missouri theology from their own allegedly “evangelical” view of the Bible. Writes Smith in the October, 1968, Lutheran Forum: “In the scholastic view the Bible alone is inspired and inerrant, and it is therefore the sole authority in all matters of doctrine, history, science, and what have you. In the confessional or evangelical view every Christian is inspired when he believes in and bears witness to Jesus as Lord.”

The effect of this downgrading of the Bible has been a corresponding lack of confidence in presenting its propositional message. Thus Dr. John Elliott, in a series of lectures at Missouri’s annual Mission Institute in 1966, offered a non-verbal approach to evangelism that seriously confused the Gospel with social action. At the close of the institute, one of the most respected communications specialists in the Synod, Dr. Herman Gockel (author of What Jesus Means to Me), wrote to Professor Elliott: “The position which you have taken in this respect is untenable.” And Elliott himself, after a meeting on the subject with the undersigned and others, wrote quite frankly of the “manifestation of two quite different, if not irreconcilable, approaches toward the understanding and interpretation of both the Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Symbols.”

Prior to the 1967 Convention of the Missouri Synod in New York, the Free Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland sent a fraternal warning to her sister church in America. One of the closing paragraphs of that monitum well expresses the path Missouri must take if her present doctrinal situation is to be remedied:

“The witness of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod during the past decades, resulting especially from internal unity, has echoed throughout the world. Now, that unity has disappeared and it is openly stated that a portion of the Synod is conservative, a portion, super-conservative, and a portion, liberal. Nevertheless, the Confessions prescribe agreement in doctrine as a necessary qualification for the preservation of the unity of the church. We believe that the prevailing situation can be corrected only with the help of efficient, objective, doctrinal discipline, which God has commanded and for which He has provided the weapons (1 Pet. 4:11; Gal. 1:8; 5:9; 2 Cor. 6:14; Tit. 3:10, 11 etc.). If the great majority (some believe as much as 90 per cent) of the Synod is still obedient to God’s Word, it should not be impossible to restore doctrinal unity. If all those faithful to God’s Word join the fight against liberalism and ecumenism and choose as their weapon the doctrinal discipline prescribed by God’s Word, the precious heritage of the Reformation will be saved and Christ’s name will be glorified among us.”

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

(The second article in this series will appear in the March 28 issue, the third June 6.)

Most of us heaved a sigh of relief when the old year went out and the new came in. The old year was one of turmoil, frustration, heartache, and distress. Many of its most pressing problems and awesome challenges have come along with us into 1969. Who knows how they will be faced and mastered? But one thing we do know. The greatest need of mankind for 1969 is the rediscovery of a sovereign God who has not abdicated and who is very much concerned and involved in what mankind thinks and does. In faithfulness his hand is ever stretched out to redeem lost men and to make them children and heirs of his kingdom.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY remains committed to the task of presenting evangelical truth in all its facets; of speaking prophetically to the issues facing the Church, and doing this in the spirit of Christ. We welcome to our pages each year those who explore issues we might not otherwise touch—be it in the Eutychus, Layman, Current Religious Thought, or Minister’s Workshop columns. These writers and our essayists may sometimes provoke reaction on our editorial pages, where the opinions of the editors are expressed.

One of the nicest gifts in 1969 will be the return to the pages of the magazine of former editor Carl Henry. In the spring he will begin a column that will appear every other issue.

Among those feeling their lumps as a result of campus disturbances at San Francisco State College are two clergymen whom police clubbed and arrested on riot charges: Lutheran campus pastor Gerald Pederson, 43, and Methodist Claire Nesmith, 50, father of two State students. Demanding jury trials, the pair said they and other ministers intended only to prevent violence by “both sides.”

Churches and preachers have figured prominently in the strife-pocked dispute over militants’ insistence that the campus be closed down until fifteen “non-negotiable” demands are met, including creation of a black-studies department (under way), virtual student control over curriculum and policies, unlimited and unqualified enrollment, amnesty for strikers, and others.

Ecumenical House, a joint campus-ministry center located across the street from State, has been the scene of much strike and police activity. Acting college President S. I. Hayakawa called it “a staging area for revolution.” Militants representing the Black Students Union, Students for a Democratic Society, Third World movement, and other groups had made the house their headquarters. But complaints from neighbors and from irate church members to denominational executives pressured the campus ministry’s board to cancel such house use. Strike leaders then moved downtown to Glide Methodist Church, where activist Cecil Williams, a vocal black backer of the strike, is pastor.

All the campus ministers expressed sympathy toward the strike, even though only a fraction of the school’s 18,000 students (less than half of whom are fulltime) voted for it. Says Presbyterian staffer John Clinton Jones: “State is a microcosm of America’s urban problems; students want self-determination, and they ought to get it.” A pacifist, he says he opposes student violence but understands “why it occurs.”

The campus clergy, in opposition to the open campus policy of Hayakawa, obtained the use of a dozen nearby churches for scores of off-campus classes, attended mostly by strike sympathizers. Ecumenical House served as communications center. Several pastors and church boards later decided to support Hayakawa, however, and they ousted the classes. American Baptist Magnus Berglund told reporters, “We are for law and order.”

Jones and his colleagues accuse college trustees of choosing Hayakawa, a noted semanticist and a respected friend of the black community, for the purpose of political manipulation and to divide the blacks.

It is no secret that many black leaders deplore the headlined agitation by the mostly white SDS and other radical groups in the name of black causes. One committee of black Baptist ministers issued a statement urging black students “not to allow their needs and grievances to be exploited by radical students of any color who are more interested in destroying our society than they are in the needs of Black America.” They went on to observe that “most of the violence … has not been perpetrated by black students. As pastors speaking for a sizable majority of black San Franciscans, we repudiate the tactical violence and disruption for the sake of disruption.” Reportedly, several of the ministers later received threats.

One of the petitioners was F. D. Haynes, pastor of the 5,000-member Third Baptist Church, who invited Hayakawa to read some poetry at a service. Afterward, Haynes and police had to rescue him from obscenity-shouting militants outside the church. (The Hayakawa family maid is Daisy Roseborough, a Bible institute graduate and a member of Third Baptist. She has organized a church group to pray that her employer, who has no religious affiliation, will be “led to Christ” and helped through the crisis at State.)

Hayakawa blamed the disruptions in part on “drugs and outsiders.” One outsider who was there until his flight from law officials was Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther leader. Cleaver and key strike leaders carried and quoted from little red books containing the philosophy of Mao Tse-tung, and on television they lauded Che Guevara as their hero-example. (Cleaver relates in his book Soul on Ice that because of discrimination at Protestant services in San Quentin prison he decided to be baptized into the Roman Catholic faith. Cleaver’s brother Henry—an employee of Fuller Theological Seminary—claims, however, that the entire Cleaver family became Catholics in the Midwest much earlier.)

Black physician Carlton Goodlett, publisher of the Sun-Reporter newspaper and a member of Third Baptist, was also arrested as a campus agitator. According to his former wife, Goodlett has made several Soviet-financed trips to Moscow, and his paper has editorially called for roof-top sniping and “guerilla warfare” in the streets.

Nesmith concedes that anarchists and revolutionists are “at work” but says they must be “robbed of their issues” by administration capitulation to “legitimate demands.”

Indeed, Hayakawa declared that implementation of some demands was “long overdue,” and he put corrective machinery in motion. But he pointed to a “limited budget,” and he refused to budge on other demands he termed “unreasonable.” State sociology professor Frederic Terrien said, “He is the first man in a decade on this campus to say ‘no’ to anyone about anything.” The ensuing tension and violence spilled over onto college and high-school campuses throughout the Bay Area.

A poster in Ecumenical House depicts a black couple aiming weapons, and its caption pronounces, “The only ultimate solution is black revolution.”

That poster, says Jones, is to be interpreted symbolically.

Miscellany

U. S. Representative John B. Anderson, 46, an Evangelical Free Church layman from Illinois, was elected conference chairman—third-ranking post among House Republicans.

The Churches of Christ “Herald of Truth” is the first non-Catholic religious broadcast permitted in Spain. Swiss churches dropped a ten-year project for an international Protestant station in their nation, feeling that Trans World Radio in Monte Carlo meets the need.

Greater Europe Mission will establish Scandinavian Bible Institute in Säffle, Sweden.

In a TV debate with an Episcopal and a Catholic clergyman, Publisher William Loeb of the Manchester (New Hampshire) Union-Leader said ministers are being used by Communists. Loeb’s debate partner was refugee pastor Richard Wurmbrand, who displayed chest scars from a Red prison.

Seminary Professor Alvaro Carino, 60, is the first Filipino president of the Lutheran Church in the Philippines. He was a leader in getting the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to enter the field in 1946.

Pope Paul VI is summoning an “extraordinary” Synod of Bishops to meet in Rome beginning October 11. Observers interpreted the move as the pontiff’s reply to criticism that the Vatican has not adequately put into application the principle of collegiality or joint consultation.

The 40-year-old dean of Bergen Cathedral in Norway was named the first bishop of a newly created diocese in the Lutheran state church of Norway. Dr. Per Lönning is the youngest bishop in Norway since the early 1800s. In the voting he defeated 55-year-old Rector Bjarne Odd Weider, who had been the favored candidate.

A study prepared for the Lutheran Church in America calls for radical changes in communion and confirmation practices. It recommends admission of children to communion at the fifth-grade level, but delays confirmation until the tenth grade.

The Orthodox Church in Greece has done away with passing the traditional collection plate. Archbishop Ieronymos, primate of the Greek church, said collections would be permitted for specific purposes only, following instructions from the hierarchy, but not during services.

Stock valued at nearly $700,000 was donated to Baylor University to help build a communications center to house the school’s departments of journalism and oral communications. The new building on the campus of the Baptist school in Waco, Texas, will be named in honor of the late Jack Castellaw, son of the donor, Mrs. Janie Castellaw of Denton, Texas. Young Castellaw was killed along with nine members of the Baylor basketball team in a bus accident in 1927.

A new Pentecostal Bible college has opened in temporary quarters in Brussels, Belgium, under sponsorship of the Assemblies of God. Negotiations are under way for the purchase of property upon which a new physical plant will be built. The school will be known as Continental Bible College and is expected to draw students from some 2,000 Pentecostal churches throughout Europe.

The American Friends Service Committee (Quaker) says it has sent the first consignment of a $25,000 shipment of procaine penicillin to civilian war sufferers in areas of South Viet Nam controlled by the Viet Cong. AFSC officials said it was the first time in the committee’s fifty-year history that the agency has made such a shipment without U. S. government approval.

Acting President Albert Huegli, 55, of Valparaiso University, an Indiana school related to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, was elected president. A political scientist, he was on the Oak Park, Illinois, city council while graduate dean at Concordia Teachers College.

The National Council of Churches made two top racial appointments: downtown Detroit Episcopal rector Robert Campbell Chapman as NCC director of racial justice, and Episcopal layman Owen Brooks as new head of the Delta Ministry in Mississippi, where Brooks has worked for four years.

Dr. Hollis F. Abbott was elected general director of the World Gospel Mission with headquarters in Marion, Indiana. He is a former missionary to India. Abbott succeeds Dr. George R. Warner, who held the post for thirty-three years.

American Lutherans have pulled out of a project to build a $10,000,000 beachfront campus in the Bahamas. The ALC’s Board of College Education withdrawal vote was attributed to legislation requiring government approval of educational institutions in the Bahamas. The legislation was enacted after the Lutherans had initiated a feasibility study. Some $4,730,000 accumulated in fund-raising projects will be returned to donors.

Attraction to marriage is the single most important deterrent keeping young people from becoming priests, nuns, and brothers, according to a survey of some 80,000 Roman Catholics in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

Lutheran World Federation officials are trying to head off Israel’s plan to build on land owned by the LWF in the Jerusalem sector formerly under Jordan’s control. Shots were “accidentally” fired in one confrontation with Israeli soldiers.

Israel’s cabinet rejected a court proposal to eliminate legal links between Jewish nationality and religious affiliation.

General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake of the World Council of Churches urged Israel to permit immediate return of refugees to their homes on the Jordan’s west bank.

The Lutheran Church of Australia was issued a license to sell beer on an aboriginal reserve to curb illegal liquor traffic.

The Canadian Council of Churches told the federal government it opposes legalized lotteries on moral, religious, economic, and social grounds.

San Francisco Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian) and the University of the Pacific were given a “substantial” cut of royalties from an Arabian offshore oil field.

Greek Primate Ieronymos reported the nation has 1,500 Orthodox parishes without priests.

Canadian Anglican Primate H. H. Clark promised he’ll consider the denominational paper’s urging of an end to closed bishops’ meetings, and limited terms for bishops.

A Virginia court appeal claims the state law against cross-burning is an unconstitutional restraint on free expression.

Just one week after The Evangelical Alliance Mission radio station switched to a new antenna on the Netherlands Antilles, the old antenna collapsed. “God’s timing,” remarked station manager Jim Pietsch.

Two Roman Catholic priests and one nun now work on the NCC staff, and the council’s news bulletin recently listed a wide variety of joint projects among its agencies, including Church Renewal, Church and Community, worship and art, Faith and Order, Town and Country, Religion and Race, and Social Welfare. And when the Catholics get their end organized, the Department of International Affairs will be added.

Presbyterians in Ghana, citing the United Nations rights declaration, opposed a government report urging secular control for all schools and colleges.

Despite growing needs for health care, missionary doctors are going out of business in some parts of the world. At most, 1,200 Protestant missionary doctors now work full time, with perhaps another 100 Roman Catholics. And not many of these dedicated healers are able to fill for suffering millions the traditional “White Father” role that existed for more than a century.

Strategy for this new era was discussed by 350 doctors, nurses, and other mission workers December 27–30 at the fifth International Convention on Missionary Medicine in Wheaton, Illinois. Sponsor was Medical Assistance Programs, which redistributes drugs and medical supplies to qualified physicians and agencies abroad.

Reasons for change in medical missions are not hard to find.

First is the advent of nationalism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. National governments placed restrictions and demands on medical practice. The foreigner from the United States or Europe must get along with the local leaders, and he must practice good medicine.

The missionary doctor is no longer the only source of modern medical help for under-developed countries. There are non-religious medical people, perhaps sent by foreign-assistance programs, as well as native men and women with the latest medical training. While governments are building new hospitals for the national health programs, missionary doctors are often making do with dilapidated buildings and obsolete equipment, or not enough equipment.

The missionary doctor is himself subject to professional obsolescence. Pressed by the heavy demands of work in a missionary hospital that is typically understaffed, and far away from medical training centers at home, the missionary doctor can easily fall behind on new techniques and treatments.

Missionary doctors are largely responsible for the changes that are now displacing them. They trained native physicians. They taught people to expect to live without leprosy and tuberculosis and malaria, and to have hospital care when they are sick.

Because of past successes, missionary doctors now seek a new role. Dr. Clifton Nelson, who serves under the Africa Inland Mission, compared the modern missionary doctor to the kernel of wheat that must fall into the ground dying. “The native people are going to play the center of the stage,” he said. “Our role is to man the wings—after all, it’s their country, their hospital, their church.”

The convention’s theological emphasis was conservative. Dr. Donald A. McGavran, church-growth expert from Fuller Seminary, said that to qualify as a missionary “every doctor should be telling others the way to salvation.” Missionary doctors should not spend their time on diffident or hostile people, according to McGavran, but should concentrate their efforts where chances are best for a payoff in church growth.

Dr. Paul Brand, a surgeon recognized for his pioneer work in India with reconstructive hand surgery, emphasized that “actual missionary work is always person to person.” Individual care has been one of the great contributions of missionary doctors; a stranger caring for a person at cost to himself strengthens to the missionary witness.

Individual healing and the doctrine of salvation are the essence of traditional missionary medicine. But they aren’t giving the modern doctor all the help he needs to deal with his situation. Individualism even contributes to his problems. Christian efforts to bring healing around the world are fragmented. Approximately 180 agencies are responsible for sending the 1,200 doctors. The results are duplication, conflict, and lack of comprehensive planning.

The problems facing missionary medicine are related to the “go-it-alone” attitude, an attitude sanctified by “the leading of the Lord.” Such motivation has served the purpose of healing, but it also gets in the way.

Doctor-preachers are notoriously poor administrators. They may be quite happy to “do their thing” while the hospital goes bankrupt.

Poor administration aggravates the money problem, too. Rising medical standards require sophisticated technology, and medical machinery is expensive. At the same time, local workers are demanding adequate pay. Shoestring mission boards may keep people on the field under such conditions, but the amount of good they can do is questionable.

A young Christian doctor, no matter how dedicated, hesitates before entering a professional role where the odds are against practising good medicine. General practitioners are still needed abroad, but the loudest call is now likely to be for specialists. Specialty work means more years of expensive training. The potential missionary must ask himself, Is it worth it?

Another problem brought into focus by the maturing of medicine overseas is racism. The missionary doctor has long operated in a position of racial superiority. Even when he was living like the natives, he yet owned a superior technology and venerated skill. He was a god-like figure, and he often had no professional colleagues around to check the way he practiced.

The days of superiority are over, and most missionaries are glad they are. Yet a question remains. If the missionary doctor has worked himself out of his traditional job, what job is left for him to do? Dr. Arden Almquist, director of missions for the Evangelical Covenant Church and predecessor to Dr. Paul Carlson in the Congo, believes that “the nationals are not asking us to reverse roles but to assume brotherhood. In the new social situation on the mission field, each of us contributes the skill he has.”

One of the new methods for applying medical knowledge and skill on mission fields is the short-term project. The Christian Medical Society, for example, has sent groups of its members into Mexico and the Dominican Republic for a week or two. Short-termers also go abroad singly, to teach.

Dr. Kenneth Scott, director of Ludhiana Christian Medical College in India, underlined the importance of yet another role: teaching. “As a medical teaching center, our primary purpose is to exalt Jesus Christ by training Asian doctors and nurses in the Christian context, and by motivating them to serve their own people responsibly and with devotion.”

Church Attendance Trends

Church attendance in the United States continued a slow decline during 1968, according to the Gallup Poll.

The report, based on seven national counts taken during the year, says that 50 million persons, or 43 per cent of all Americans, attended church on Sundays. This represents a drop of 2 per cent from 1967.

Gallup figures that church attendance reached a peak of 49 per cent back in 1958. It had been down around 37 per cent in 1940.

In 1968, the percentage for Catholic attendance was 65, and for Protestant 38. The decline in church attendance among Catholics over the past ten years has been 9 per cent while that of Protestants has been 5 per cent.

To no one’s surprise, Gallup attributes the decline in both Catholic and Protestant camps to non-attendance by young adults. In the 21–29 age bracket the 1968 church attendance was figured at 34 per cent; in the 30–49 group it was 46 per cent.

Gallup said the higher the education of the adult, the greater the probability he will attend church on Sundays.

Americans attend church more faithfully than adults in other countries, even those with high Catholic populations. The figure for the Netherlands is 42 per cent, for Austria 38, Switzerland 30, Greece 28, West Germany 27, France 25, Uruguay 24, Norway 14, Sweden 9, and Finland 5.

Differences among the four regions in the United States were slight except that in the West only 32 per cent church attendance was recorded.

Secret Ecumenism

A public-relations expert has come to the aid of American Catholic bishops amid reports that they want ecumenical talks to be more secretive.

Named to a new post of communications czar for the hierarchy was Warren W. Schwed, who founded and operated a New York public-relations firm. His job includes jurisdiction over a news service operated by the United States Catholic Conference, a publicity bureau, and offices for films, radio, and television.

Robert M. Donihi, top publicist for the bishops for the past year, subsequently announced he was resigning his post. A successor was not immediately appointed. Donihi is a lawyer who formerly worked for the government.

The publicity bureau has been something of a hot spot since a priest resigned as director just before the opening of Vatican II. He said he quit because the outflow of information from the council would be too restricted.

Now the National Catholic Reporter has published a story saying that American Catholic bishops want sharp curtailment of news from all their ecumenical discussions. NCR said the bishop’s ecumenical committee suggested in a memorandum issued in September that news releases after ecumenical talks should state only that a meeting took place, who was there, and what the general topic was—not what the participants agreed or differed on.

The memorandum was reportedly sent to seven subcommissions that have been holding theological talks between Roman Catholics and non-Catholic denominations. Three groups—those involving the Episcopalians, Lutherans, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)—were said to have rejected the secrecy bid. The Catholic-Methodist subcommission reportedly accepted it, and the reaction of the groups involving Presbyterians, Orthodox, and American Baptists was not immediately learned.

Schwed said he had not read the NCR story, was not aware of the memorandum, and therefore could not comment on it. He said, however, that he believed in being “forthright.”

“Catholic Church communications problems are not significantly different from those of other big organizations,” he said. He feels that top churchmen who think that candor breeds misunderstanding need to learn that today’s citizenry is more sophisticated and more able to comprehend news without distortion. “They need to be taught both the requirements and the opportunities of today’s media,” he added.

Schwed holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Columbia University and worked with Newsweek, McGraw-Hill, and United Press International before starting his public-relations firm.

Canada: What Is Criminal?

The Canadian Parliament is considering a bill advocating significant amendments to the present Criminal Code. The measure is similar to one introduced a year ago by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, then Justice Minister and now Prime Minister.

A clause on abortion that appeared in the original bill is unchanged. It drew protests from Catholics and others because it provides for therapeutic abortion by decision of a local hospital committee when the life or the health of the mother is endangered. Generally, abortions now are legal only when the life of the mother is imperiled.

Another clause in the bill would eliminate from the Criminal Code homosexual acts between two consenting adults in private. This is in keeping with an earlier statement by Trudeau that the state has no business “in the bedrooms of the nation.”

A Tune For Chaplains

British army chaplains now have their own marching tune, but how often they will go “on parade” to its strains is problematical.

The tune is an arrangement of the “Trumpet Voluntary,” composed as a slow march by Lieutenant Colonel Basil Brown of the Military School of Music. He composed it in honor of chaplains at the request of Anglican Archdeacon John Youens, the Chaplain-General, who said that in the past bandmasters had resorted to such melodies as “Get Me to the Church on Time,” “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and a jazzed-up version of “Fight the Good Fight.”

These tunes proved embarrassing when military bands played in honor of the Royal Army Chaplains Department, which has representatives of several religions.

Of the new arrangement Archdeacon Youens said, “It is a splendid slow march, though, mind you, I should hate to see us chaplains marching to it.”

An army spokesman added, “The presence of the chaplains’ own march will solve problems for bandmasters who have to play some tunes in their honor at such functions as regimental dinners. It is very rare that the padres have to march, but I suppose the tune could come in useful at church processions and similar functions.”

The Nixon-Eisenhower Vows

Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower used a revised marriage ceremony of the Reformed Church in America for their wedding service at New York’s Marble Collegiate Church December 22. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, minister of the church, officiated.

Peale used a new edition of the service book put out in 1968 by the Reformed Church in America. He made some changes to suit the couple.

The most obvious changes were omission of any suggestion that the bride should obey her husband, and the changing of the word “you” in the service to “thee” and “thou.” Julie explained she wanted the latter changed in keeping with her Quaker beliefs.

The new Reformed Church liturgy differs from an earlier edition in that it excludes the bride’s promise to “obey” her husband. But the new edition does include a section asking the couple to “hear what the Apostle Paul says: ‘Wives, be subject to your husband as to the Lord, as the Church is subject to Christ.…” That section was deleted from the Nixon-Eisenhower ceremony.

Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, said he has never used the word “obey” in weddings he has performed. He tells couples that they should be “a team,” he says, and that “neither one is a boss. They are equals and should work together, supporting each other’s weaknesses and strengths.”

Peale began the service with a reading of Psalm 100 from King James Version of the Bible. He substituted Psalm 121 for two New Testament readings suggested by the liturgy (1 Cor. 13:4–7 and 1 John 4:7–9).

Pike’S Honeymoon Blues

Minutes after an unorthodox wedding ceremony, resigned Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike told reporters that his controversial marriage to writer-collaborator Diane Kennedy (see January 3 issue, page 35) had indeed been officially approved by his successor, C. Kilmer Myers.

Not so, retorted an obviously angry Myers in a mimeographed letter to his California diocesan clergymen. In it Myers requested that the clerics bar Pike from “any sacerdotal function” (including preaching) in their churches “until further notice from me.”

Myers revealed that he had earlier rejected Pike’s application for permission to remarry, and that he had told him the reasons for the denial. Pike then asked for clarification of his marital status. Myers answered that Pike’s marriage of twenty-five years to Esther—who divorced him last year—was “spiritually dead.”

That response, argued Pike, constituted “a favorable judgment on my marital status in the eyes of the church … which completely cleared the past and, under canon law, left me free to be married by any minister of our church.…”

But, declared Myers in the letter, this was a false interpretation; the divorce comment “had no relation to his proposed marriage and was not intended to be an approval or blessing of that marriage in any way.”

Pike, from his honeymoon hotel near San Francisco, expressed “sorrow” at Myers’s action, then complained to newsmen: “Bishop Myers put an unnecessary and unfair burden on the clergy of this diocese … to choose between the opinions of the fifth and sixth bishops of California … as to whether the marriage of Jim and Diane is a good thing.”

As for the pulpit ban, Pike—considered an expert on canon law—claimed that Myers “has absolutely no canonical authority to suspend me from functioning in our diocese.” As if to prove his point, he interrupted his honeymoon to preach and to serve communion at a Christmas Eve service at St. Aiden’s church in San Francisco. St. Aiden’s rector, Robert W. Cromey, is an avid Pike admirer and is himself a storm center of controversial views on prostitution, homosexuality, and marijuana.

Because Cromey had invited Pike a week before the pulpit ban, Myers said he would “not engage in any recriminations.”

Myers, who conceivably has a case for Pike’s excommunication, declined to speculate on future enforcement of the boycott against his predecessor.

Pike was somewhat optimistic. He offered: “From the response of clergy thus far, both personally and by telegram, we have no reason to doubt that I will continue to be as busy in this diocese as my schedule allows.”

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Zurich Recalls Zwingli

The 450th anniversary of the beginning of Ulrich Zwingli’s ministry in Zürich will be celebrated there January 20–22. The commemoration will include addresses on the Swiss reformer’s importance as a theologian and politician, visits to his birthplace at Wilhous, and special gatherings for guests and official representatives.

Although Zwingli’s career was relatively short, it was historic. He stands as one of the founding fathers of the Reformed wing of Protestantism.

Zwingli was a Roman Catholic priest before he was named people’s priest in Zürich in late 1518. He had served parishes in two towns of German-speaking Switzerland after graduating from the University of Basel.

The 450th anniversary is significant because the young pastor began a series of sermons on New Testament books at the start of 1519 and out of this preaching and study he emerged in the early 1520s to challenge practices and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.

By 1525, Zürich could be considered a Protestant city. Zwingli was familiar with the activities of Martin Luther in Germany, where the Reformation is dated from 1517. However, the Swiss leader always insisted that Luther did not directly influence his development.

Zwingli and Luther met in a theological colloquy in 1529 and disagreed stoutly over interpretations of the sacrament of Holy Communion. Zwingli insisted on a more symbolic view of the communion elements than did Luther.

The Zürich reformer died in 1531 on the battlefield at Cappel in a military clash between the Protestant and Catholic cantons of Switzerland.

A Climax In Colombia

Thirty thousand Colombian Protestants paraded through downtown Bogotá on December 15 as the climax of a year-long, nationwide Evangelism-in-Depth program.

The parade was preceded by a two-week campaign in the capital with evangelist Paul Finkenbinder, better known as Hermano Pablo (Brother Paul), Assembly of God missionary.

In the Plaza Bolívar, where four months before Pope Paul VI had blessed the crowds, evangelical leaders laid a wreath at the statue of the South American liberator, pledged their allegiance to their country and government, and gave testimony of their faith. Presbyterian Aristabulo Porras, president of the Evangelism-in-Depth executive committee, called for the abolition of Colombia’s Concordat and Mission Territories Agreement with the Vatican, saying, “They make us second-class citizens in our own country.”

The parade, held with government permission and full cooperation from police, dramatized the increasing religious freedom and the growing strength of the evangelical church in Colombia. Except for a two-month hold-up of visas for Latin America Mission advisory personnel at the beginning of the year and some scattered local incidents, 1968 was marked by freedom and receptiveness undreamed of a few years ago.

Incomplete reports showed nearly 20,000 decisions for Christ during the year-long effort in house-to-house visitation, local and regional evangelistic campaigns, and other forms of witness. More than 6,000 prayer cells were organized. On the first official day of visitation alone, June 2, an estimated 17,500 members of the 600 participating churches visited 100,000 homes, found interest in 25 per cent of them, and recorded 5,000 conversions.

Leaders of the campaign, the ninth such effort in Latin America since Evangelism-in-Depth began in Nicaragua in 1960, credited the purifying effect of past persecution and an unusual spirit of unity among local leaders with contributing to the success of the program.

STEPHEN SYWULKA

Brother John’S ‘Love’ Thing

Can a Lutheran minister from a small city in the West find peace and commercial gain in the competitive halls of the ABC Radio Network? The Rev. John Rydgren is working long hours to insure an affirmative answer to that question. Rydgren, former director of radio and TV for the American Lutheran Church, has taken a year’s leave of absence to work for the ABC FM stations as the voice and writer for a new format in FM stereo called “Love Programming.”

The golden-tonsiled pastor, while at ALC headquarters in Minneapolis, initiated the “Silhouette” radio series, which combines “top-forty” rock music with commentary on God’s involvement in the teen-age world. The success of this program prompted ABC to hire “Brother John” (as he will be known on the air) to do a similar show for their financially lagging owned-and-operated FM stations. Instead of centering around God, ABC says, the content of “Love” will “suggest brotherhood and care for others.” Love Programming will originate in New York, broadcasting the “socially oriented” progressive rock music that sells well in the college and young-adult market.

“Brother John” sees “Love” as a natural extension of his work in “Silhouette.” The ALC program was his “electronic pulpit,” and he will continue to write and perform on it. With the completion of the ALC’s new children’s cartoon series “Great Bible Stories” last summer, future production work at ALC was light, and Rydgren took the opportunity to join ABC because the Love Programming “purposes and techniques share much common ground with Silhouette.”

Rydgren says his ABC co-workers already speak of him as their resident chaplain. But his main function at ABC is “Love.” “It may sound quite altruistic, but I think the project has real potential for social and national good,” says Rydgren. “It’s really like a love affair with humanity, you know, totally involved with them, their music, and their concerns.”

The new program begins this month, and ABC will watch it and its financial fortunes closely.

Kenneth Scott Latourette

Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette, the dean of church historians, was fatally injured last month when struck by a car in Oregon City, Oregon. The accident occurred on the evening of December 26 in front of a home he owned. Latourette, 84, died in a hospital shortly afterward.

His many books are classical standards in the Christian history field. Best known is the seven-volume History of the Expansion of Christianity.

Latourette was born in Oregon City and in his later years came back to visit about twice a year. The major part of his life was spent at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, where he taught missions and Oriental history for many years. He also headed Yale’s department of religion and was named professor emeritus after retirement.

Latourette was an ordained minister and was elected president of the American Baptist Convention in 1951. His autobiography, Beyond the Ranges, was published in 1967 (see also editorial on page 27).

Missions Mishap

Two men lost their lives when a small plane owned and operated by Missionary Aviation Fellowship crashed last month on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. It was only the second fatal accident in the twenty-four-year history of MAF, based in Fullerton, California.

Those killed were the pilot, George Raney, and a passenger, Merle Buckingham, who worked under the Association of Baptists for World Evangelization, Philadelphia. Each is survived by his wife and three children.

The accident occurred while the plane was making an air drop of mail and supplies near the isolated mission outpost of Tabon. Witnesses said that the engine of the Cessna 185 failed and that Raney was attempting a crash landing when the craft snagged a cocoanut palm, which flipped it over.

A Missionary Set Free

The Cuban government gave Southern Baptist missionary James David Fite an unconditional pardon last month after he had served forty-two months of a six-year prison sentence. He had been convicted in 1965 of illegal currency exchange.

The 36-year-old Fite was reported to be making arrangements to return to the United States with his family, who had stayed in Havana during his imprisonment.

Word of the release came in a telephone call from Fite in Havana to his father, a pastor in Waynesboro, Georgia.

Fite’s father-in-law, the Rev. Herbert Caudill, 65, had also been imprisoned. He was released more than a year ago because of failing eyesight and placed under house arrest.

At the time of their arrests, Fite was a teacher and pastor in Havana and Caudill was superintendent of Baptist work in Cuba under sponsorship of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board in Atlanta. Forty Cuban pastors and thirteen laymen, including four women, also were arrested. A number of these have been released or paroled, but U. S. officials have no definite word on how many remain in prison.

Contraception Again

As debate continued about effect of the U. S. Catholic bishops’ letter on birth control (December 6 issue, page 39), there were these further developments on contraception:

• The Vatican remained silent on statements by various national hierarchies, some of which allow civil disobedience to the papal stand. But Religious News Service said a note in the Vatican daily “suggests that, as far as the Holy See is concerned, the [liberal French] bishops have accepted the encyclical, regardless of qualifications and applications of a pastoral nature.”

• Metropolitan Nikodim, external-affairs director of the Russian Orthodox Church, said all forms of birth control are “undesirable because they are linked with sin and dull the conscience.” He added that “the population explosion cannot be regarded as a bad thing,” and could be balanced by more help to underdeveloped countries. The Soviet Union has repeatedly opposed familyplanning efforts in the United Nations.

• The U. N. social committee voted to accept an article on social development that states, “Parents have the exclusive right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.” Next year the body will discuss objectives and methods of development.

• Worldwide Planned Parenthood—for the first time in its fifty-two years—recognized voluntary sterilization and abortion as “proper” back-up techniques when contraception doesn’t work, but not for routine birth control.

A Call For Prayer

A public call for prayer was issued last month for the United States Congress on Evangelism, scheduled for Minneapolis September 8–13. The call was initiated by evangelist Billy Graham, honorary chairman of the congress, and Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, chairman of its fifty-two-man national committee. The congress will bring together some American churchmen in the interests of spiritual renewal. Here is the text of the call to prayer:

“Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13).

The urgency and need for a mighty moving of the Spirit of God in our nation and across the world is impressed upon us in every newscast. Our daily papers compel us to realize that we are at a crossroad, and that our choice is either Christ or chaos.

To meet this emergency and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a U. S. Congress on Evangelism is called for September 8–13, 1969, to meet in Minneapolis. It is anticipated that 8,000 participants from more than 100 denominations will gather to pray and study. One-third will be lay men and women, one-third parish pastors, and one-third evangelists, educators, theological students, executives, etc.

What assistance can be given to the American home? How can the local church be mobilized to reach the community for Christ? What is the scriptural answer to the cultural, social, and moral upheaval of our day? How can the needy individual be convinced that Jesus Christ is the answer? We must have answers in our generation.

In the early church it is recorded that “When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled” (Acts 4:31). Second Chronicles 7:14 states, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Church leaders from all across America are urgently requesting that you pray during these months ahead with an overwhelming faith that there shall be a spiritual awakening in our time.

On the first Christmas three wise men looked skyward and began following a star to Bethlehem. This year three men looked earthward and followed a man-made course around the moon.

—EDWARD B. FISKE

When reporter Fiske of the New York Times wrote the above lead for a Christmas 1968 review of religion, he meant it to depict the contrast of problems confronting Christians. The journey of the “modern magi” to the moon did not rate a listing among the top ten religious news stories of the year as seen by leading analysts. But particularly after the Apollo 8 astronauts read to their earthbound listeners the first ten verses of Genesis (see story following), the event took on considerable religious significance.

“This is an age when men are increasingly coming to view the universe not with the awe of the worshipper but with the curiosity of the scientist,” Fiske said. As it turned out, however, it was an act of worship and not a scientific discovery that was the most arresting feature of the spacemen’s communication back to earth.

The idea of reading the story of Creation was believed to have originated with Air Force Colonel Frank Borman, the Apollo 8 commander, who is an Episcopal lay reader. His wife said later, “It’s just what this small world was waiting for.” The astronauts reportedly received a number of requests before the flight proposing that they include some kind of religious expression in their radio-television transmissions to earth.* Radio preacher Carl McIntire, head of the International Council of Christian Churches, had asked that astronauts give credit to the living God and received a sympathetic acknowledgment from Air Force Major William Anders, the Roman Catholic crew member.

The reading of the passage (from the King James Version) was shared by Borman, Anders, and Navy Captain James S. Lovell, Jr. Time described Lovell as one “whom Borman converted to the Episcopal faith.”

The Apollo 8 flight, though so impressively historic, did not elicit much comment from religious leaders either before or after. Most American denominational leaders usually issue statements on events of overriding significance, but this time they did not so much as call for prayer in the astronauts’ behalf. One exception was Presiding Bishop John E. Hines of the Episcopal Church, who led in intercessory petition for the men’s safety.

Pope Paul VI also uttered prayer for “the three courageous astronauts,” whose mission he called a “millennial event.”

There was world-wide reaction to the Scripture reading from Apollo 8. Evangelist Billy Graham hailed it as “a tremendous thing, showing to the world that man is more than a product of technology [and] is a spiritual being.” The New York Board of Rabbis sent an enthusiastic telegram:

“The New York Board of Rabbis, world’s largest representative rabbinic body, congratulates you on great scientific feat. We commend you even more for your profound spiritual quality. Your reading from Genesis evoked responsive chord in hearts of all spiritually attuned people throughout this good earth, even as it indicated depth of your own religious feeling and humility in presence of God’s majesty and his wondrous creation. In midst of magnificent technological accomplishment your message from the moon has redirected man’s focus to God.…”

Soviet Radio didn’t know quite what to think: “It would be interesting to know what this means. Is it a joke or a space attempt to strengthen the authority of religion which has been shaken by the flight itself?”

Madalyn Murray O’Hair, professed atheist whose litigation prompted the U. S. Supreme Court to outlaw public-school devotional exercises, made a predictable complaint about the astronauts’ Scripture reading.

Borman’s pastor, the Rev. James C. Buchner of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in League City, Texas, said that originally an attempt was to be made to have the astronaut take part in the congregation’s Christmas Eve service via radio and television. This “live” participation plan proved unfeasible, so Borman offered a prayer that was taped and replayed in the church. The text of the prayer:

“Give us, O God, the vision which can see thy love in the world in spite of human failure. Give us the faith, the trust, the goodness, in spite of our ignorance and weakness. Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts, and show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace. Amen.”

Borman addressed the prayer to “people at St. Christopher’s—actually to people everywhere.” The other lay readers had been jesting with Borman earlier last month, saying that he was “going out of town” just to avoid taking a turn at the services.

All three astronauts obviously take their religion seriously. Naturally, their reading of the creation account raised the question of how literally they believe it, and the answer is not likely to be made public.

On the Sunday before blastoff, Borman and Lovell attended services at an Episcopal church in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Anders attended a private mass offered in a Roman Catholic church in the same community. A newsman stopped Anders and came away with perhaps the most apt quote of all: “The more I see of God’s universe, the deeper will be my belief in God.”

Message From The Moon

At the close of one of the television transmissions from Apollo 8, there was a brief pause in the audio, then the voice of Anders:

“We are now approaching a lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message they would like to send to you:

“ ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.’ ”

Lovell picked up the reading:

“ ‘And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.’ ”

Borman concluded the message:

“ ‘And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.’

“And from the crew of Apollo 8 we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good earth.”

New Synod Plan Rapped

With deadline this week for reactions to a proposed “Design for Mission” restructure for the United Presbyterian Church, the two biggest presbyteries in the denomination have registered opposition.

The biggest, the Presbytery of Pittsburgh, unanimously passed a declaration last month that committee proposals, if adopted, “will in reality destroy the Presbyterian Church as we know it.”

To Pittsburgh, the presbytery is the “fountainhead” of Presbyterian government, and the proposal to put more power in the regional synods, which encompass several presbyteries, would “greatly impair” presbytery programs. The statement concludes that those who want to lead the UPC “should occasionally look behind them to make sure that those they would lead are following.…”

Days earlier, the Presbytery of Philadelphia, whose environs include denominational headquarters, approved 163–42 a more moderate, but definitely critical, response.

Philadelphia, like several other presbyteries, sent an overture to the May General Assembly, which will act on the committee’s redrafted version of the synod proposal. It proposes that the committee and staff be dismissed, a new committee be set up to continue the study of national agencies originally voted in 1966, and all synods and presbyteries review their operations to see if they can be improved under existing procedures.

The Philadelphia statement says the committee claims to “clarify” structure but in fact “redefines” it. It says the denominational committee advocates “the transfer of powers for the determination of mission strategy, program, development and allocation of resources, and the employment and assignment of administrative staff from presbyteries to synods.” This “transfer of powers” is called the “heart of the matter.”

No Executions In 1968

With the King and Kennedy murders and rising crime rates, violent death was a major factor in the year just ended. One exception: the government didn’t execute anybody. It was the first year on record (i.e., since 1930) without a single execution for major crime.

At the start of 1968, some 435 convicts waited in “death rows.” Legal challenges and appeals largely account for the fact that none were executed. American Civil Liberties Union staffer Melvin Wulf comments, “You might say that capital punishment has been de facto abolished—by court stays.”

Since 1930, a total of 3,859 Americans have been executed. The high point was 1935, with 199 executions; the total had dropped to two by 1967.

TROOPS RESPOND TO GRAHAM’S MESSAGES

Evangelist Billy Graham spent five and a half days ministering to troops in Viet Nam during the Christmas holidays. He preached twenty-six times and for the first time in his life lost his voice. “It was not a case of laryngitis, but simply exhaustion,” Graham said.

He nevertheless called it “a most rewarding experience.” At the close of each meeting he asked that those who wanted to make a commitment to Christ raise their hands. “From one-third to one-half of every group raised their hands,” he said.

Graham traveled as far north as Hue. He spent a night in Danang during which the Viet Cong shelled the city. From a helicopter a mile away he watched American and Viet Cong negotiators discuss prisoner release on a battleground fifty miles northwest of Saigon, near the Cambodian border. He visited the aircraft carrier “Ranger” and a hospital ship. He spoke to troops from Australia and New Zealand as well as those from the United States.

Graham’s largest service was a “congregation” of about 7,000. On Christmas Eve he and Roman Catholic Archbishop Terence Cooke were honored at a dinner in Saigon given by General Creighton W. Abrams, who had invited the two churchmen to Viet Nam. There was also a reception for Graham by evangelical pastors, missionaries, and chaplains.

The evangelist said the American forces are encouraged over the military progress in the last six months. He said he felt that it was an important factor in the presence of Hanoi in the peace talks in Paris.

Accompanying Graham were associate evangelist T. W. Wilson and musicians Tedd Smith and Jimmy McDonald. The group also spent five days ministering to American troops in Japan.

Putting Arkansas In Its Place

When Mr. Nixon last month announced the names of his Cabinet there was one singular omission. Years ago the person in question had publicly offered his services to Washington as a dollar-a-year man. The scheme fell through, perhaps because he stipulated salary in advance, but he did put on record (MGM K30-333-B) his surefire formula for putting the country back on its feet. The essential thesis of James Durante, shorn of characteristic embellishment, is based on one hitherto overlooked fact: The State of Arkansas is in the wrong place. Therein, affirms J.D., lies the root of America’s malaise. Don’t you feel the thudding impact of its utter simplicity?

Dear demonstrative students, when one of your current grievances is put right—when wars shall be no more or the earth is finally pronounced flat—fill the void with this Worthy Cause. It coincides in part with your yen to hasten away the former things, preferably by revolutionary process, and to create a valiant new world (the Genesis version having been, of course, a none-too-successful dry run).

Professors of sundry disciplines such as philosophy, political science, and English literature (remember Birnam Wood and Dunsinane?), here is your opportunity. This is a topic warranted to revive the somnolent who have dropped into class for a rest between campus outcries. Each of your subjects is embraced in Durante’s stirring challenge—which, incidentally, would make a superb exam question. “ ‘You can have a better nation just by changing the location of the State of Arkansas’—Discuss.” Keep in mind the possibility of bonus marks for those embryonic engineers who sneer Phoenix-wards with a telling allusion to London Bridge.

As for you pastors, this is a natural. The more piously inclined can thunder on “Dealing with the Arkansaws in your life.” Others can strafe their congregations (and take a sideswipe at the Administration) with a spell-binder entitled, “If you can’t move a Little Rock, what chance have you with mountains?

Proudly I tried that one for size on an unsuspecting friend. A bleak riposte was my portion; jealousy will out. “A man who could make so vile a pun,” he sniffed, “would not scruple to pick a pocket.” Alas for him, he left out the quotes, and I know my John Dennis. I’d rather be a punner than a plagiarizer.

Political considerations reluctantly forced me to leave out the vilest pun of all (no prizes for spotting it). President Nixon might just have a minor post still vacant, but my expectations are not great from one who spurns a giant like Durante.

The Reach For The Moon

Mr. Kucharsky’s “letter to the astronauts” (Dec. 20) placed me in a position I don’t particularly care to be in; namely, as one who is opposed in principle to space travel.

I see nothing wrong with landings on the moon, although I am unhappy at the thought of using the moon as a base from which to fight our enemies on earth. The adventure of the moon shot itself is certainly exciting and calls for much courage, and I wish them all success.

Interplanetary space travel is something else; and interstellar space travel is ridiculous to contemplate. According to some rough calculations we made in our office, it would take the astronauts one and two-thirds years (based on the time the Mariner took to reach Mars in 1965) to get to the planet Saturn, and seven years to get to Pluto, both in our solar sytem.

Our bodies cannot even travel around the earth in a jetliner without the “human clock” being thrown out of kilter. Just think of physical and psychological problems involved in a fourteen year space flight! God gave us a beautiful planet. Instead of trying to be what we were never intended to be, let’s be good stewards of the earth and seek the fulfillment that God did intend for us, the abundant life he offers in Jesus Christ.

Decision

Minneapolis, Minn.

Editor

In the rush of preparations for the Apollo 8 launch, I took time out to read Mr. Kucharsky’s very thoughtful and perceptive letter in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

We thank you for it, and I am sending it to the Apollo 8 astronauts.… I am sure they will enjoy reading it before they lift off for Apollo 8.

Ass’t Administrator for Public Affairs National Aeronautics and Space

Administration

Washington, D. C.

The writer quotes Gordon H. Clark as having said: “God’s first command to Adam contained the injunction to subdue nature. Shooting at the moon, therefore, is a divinely appointed task.” I presume this is referring to Genesis 1:28, where God said: “Replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over … every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Here man is definitely limited to earth. Psalm 115:16 supports this: “The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’S; but the earth hath he given to the children of men”.…

Man need not go to other planets for the necessities of the natural life, for the Bible says: “The earth is full of thy riches”.… God certainly makes it plain … that our needs will be supplied if we live in his will.

Treasurer

Haug Foreign Mission Inc.

Clarion, Iowa

Redemptive Relevance

Your editorial entitled “Preaching: The Folly of God” (Dec. 20) appeared to be more of an apology to hide behind than a mandate to proclaim the Good News. I concur that the Good News must be preached. But it is altogether too easy a temptation to conclude that we have preached the Good News once we have uttered some of our time-worn and overworked shibboleths. Some of our classic clichés can be (not necessarily “will be”) as devoid of meaning as some of the most avant-garde approaches. Authentic preaching will be redemptive in its result irrespective of its form. And I have an idea that redemptive preaching is terribly relevant in any age.

Princeton, N. J.

The Preacher As Teacher

Every paragraph of R. E. O. White’s article (“Pastor’s Predicament: When to Study?,” Dec. 6) was pertinent.

The poverty of ideas in the evangelical Church belies its insistence on the riches of God’s revelation, and is in itself spiritual deficiency. The dichotomy between the “intellectual life” and the “spiritual life” must not be any longer perpetuated. The truly spiritual man is the man of sound judgment (1 Cor. 2:15). The truly holy man is transformed by the renewal of his mind (Rom. 12:2). The Church is gathered and built up by instruction (see the five columns in Moulton-Geden under didasko and related words). A basic qualification for the minister is that he be skillful in teaching (1 Tim. 3:2; 2 Tim. 2:24).

Dept. of Systematic Theology

Covenant Theological Seminary

St. Louis, Mo.

“Pastor’s Predicament” was a thought-provoking article, and I especially enjoyed the picture on the cover! I would be willing to lend out some hammers! Bellevue, Wash.

MRS. JACK OVERMAN

The Dividing Line

A news item on page 46 of your issue for December 6 reports Episcopal Bishop Harvey Butterfield as saying he was ashamed of the action taken by the Vermont Council of Churches.… I must say that I, as an Episcopalian, am ashamed of Bishop Butterfield.

Is there any conceivable reason why a group of Christians presumably organized to carry on Christian work and activities should not want to have non-Christians associated with them in their work? The Unitarians are certainly as non-Christian as Jews and/or Muslims in that they deny, as an article of their faith, the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that, according to the First Epistle of John, classifies them as anti-Christian.

Tyler, Tex.

Of Tongues And Confusion

I have just finished reading “The Confusion About Tongues” (Dec. 6), and it was refreshing. This is a most timely article and much needed in this time of confusion about glossolalia. It will help clear up some of this confusion. Mobile, Ala.

After the author so completely belittles a gift of God and those who practice such ecstatic utterence, would it not be unsafe to accept the authority of one who says, “I would that ye all spake with tongues,” or “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all”? If Paul is still so immature or emotionally out of balance as to encourage speaking and praying and singing in tongues, perhaps this is not such a bad condition to live in. Paul seems to be such a trusted authority in any other area of divine revelation.

Church of Emmanuel

Foxboro, Mass.

The “Confusion About Tongues” has hardly been corrected.… Full scriptural consideration has not been given. It is apparent the author was trying to prove his point.… The statement that the speaker in tongues “makes his emotions the basis of his belief and religious experience” is simply not true. The experience is a spiritual one, not an emotional one.

Chadron, Nebr.

We Pentecostalists do not spend as much time talking in tongues as denominationals do talking about tongues. If the writer’s intention was to reduce the confusion, he has miserably failed, in my estimation.

No matter how you slice it, the fact remains that the apostle Paul, the man God used most in writing the New Testament and shaping the Church for all time, “spake with tongues more than they all”.… If the zeal of this learned man of God for high spiritual principle demanded speaking in tongues, that’s good enough for me.

Hill City, Kan.

That article, especially the section on “Paul’s Appraisal of Tongues,” couldn’t be supported against a breath of fresh air.

Brooklyn Park Alliance Church

Osseo, Minn.

He is quite correct that tongues benefit mainly the individual (unless interpreted) and that tongues involve the more emotional areas of a person’s personality in prayer instead of the conscious rational faculties as in praying in one’s own language. That is to say that tongue-speaking is mainly for personal devotional use and to be heard in public only when it can be interpreted. Most mature Pentecostal people have been saying this since Azuza street!!

The important error in Dr. Tuland’s article which further confused the question is when he tries to distinguish the tongues of Acts 2 and First Corinthians as “intelligible speech” and “ecstatic babbling” respectively. It seems clear that the reason the tongues of Acts 2 required no interpreter (or translator, whichever he prefers) is that the visitors to Jerusalem who heard them and understood them used the languages they heard—they were not foreign to them. In the Corinthian congregation, however, one speaking in the language of “Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia” et al. (Acts 2:9 f.) would not be understood; hence, an interpreter (translator) would be needed. In other words the need of a second gift was not the nature of the tongue but the constituency of the hearers.

Associate Pastor

First Assembly of God

Akron, Ohio

An excellent article; one of the best ever written on the subject. So fair to all parties who may differ about glossolalia. The superb feature is the treatment of the Greek verbs. Such Scriptural exposition clears away the “confusion.”

Warren Park

Christian Reformed Church

Cicero, Ill.

As to the author’s distinction between “translator” and “interpreter,” he is doubtless correct. He may be interested to know that some people feel that the gift of speaking in tongues (when it is intended for public use and is to be followed by “interpretation”) is just as much a prayer as is the devotional use of tongues in private. The “interpretation” which follows is the response of God to the prayer of the Spirit (Rom. 8:26, 27). Understood thusly perhaps it would fit into the author’s conception of true “interpretation”.…

The author struggles valiantly with the text trying to answer other problems that come to his mind. On this he is to be commended. I have found from experience that most of these questions dissolve into the atmosphere when one takes the leap of faith into this new dimension of the Spirit. I highly recommend this way of life to him.

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Natchez, Miss.

I regret that author Tuland did not study his lesson better before reciting!… If he had taken the trouble to candidly expose himself to the wealth of excellent literature that has been published since 1960 about the charismatic movement, he should have discovered that the question is not so much “increasingly controversial” as it is that there remain many who are adamantly critical of the phenomenon in spite of the evidence.

Let it be said at once that I am not a tongues-speaker myself, lest my reply is quickly dismissed as the defensiveness of a practitioner of this spiritual gift.…

As happens so often when so much of the weight of proof for a theological viewpoint is placed upon fine points of linguistics and exegesis, the Sovereign Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) in Christian experience supersedes and confounds our airtight opinions by giving gifts “as he wills” in ways we sometimes wish he wouldn’t.…

The judgment that tongues-speaking “seems to be highly overrated as a means of making known salvation as a transforming experience” betrays ignorance of the remarkable record that the charismatic movement has in the basic evangelistic task of the Church. Granted that the Christian message must be balanced and that “over-accentuation of any doctrine is a distortion of the Gospel,” I only wish evangelical Christendom would manifest a greater ability on several scores than it does now to preach and to practice the whole counsel of God!

Mennonite Church of Scottdale

Scottdale, Pa.

While I am in fundamental agreement with Dr. Tuland’s thesis that glossolalia is overrated in many groups, I feel that he fails to articulate fully St. Paul’s handling of this difficult question.…

The main issue here is Paul’s approach to the problem of disruptive glossolalia in the Church: it was not suppression and deprecation of the Corinthians’ zeal for the charismata—especially glossolalia, but rather he stressed redirection of that enthusiasm toward more constructive channels, e.g., prophecy and the “higher gifts” (1 Cor. 12:31; 14:1, 39).…

I suspect that the reason this debate becomes so emotionally explosive is because of the hidden (and utterly false) premise that the ability to speak in tongues raises one’s “spirituality rating”.… I gather that the Apostle was not interested in “ratings,” but in mutual love and upbuilding in the Christian faith.…

Rather than making blanket denials of the modern charismata from theological presuppositions, or insisting that a certain spiritual gift is the only entrance into the full Christian life, let each side of this unfortunate debate seek to understand the other in love and compassion, and to judge all acts and attitudes as to how they increase love in the Church and exalt Jesus Christ.

Lincoln, Neb.

He reminds me of Nicodemus in his naïveté of the experience. Millions can refute his conclusions in a number of experiential ways.…

Next time you might ask a Pentecostal devotee to demythologize the confusion which your Ph.D. contributor has created.

Secretary-Editor

Charismatic Communion of

Presbyterian Ministers

El Reno, Okla.

I am ready to concede some excesses, and it seems that Luther was also. There are few if any responsible “Pentecostal” organizations who have failed to maintain a clearly intelligible ministry. If this were not true, they would long ago have floundered. If Dr. Tuland wants an experience without emotional involvement, he will have to base it on some text other than the Bible. The argument is not that “tongues” indicate spiritual maturity, but that they signify spiritual, mental, and emotional commitment to the will of God—that is to say, an immersion in the Spirit of God.

Church of God

Waynesboro, Va.

It might well be said of the author as a new radio commercial says of a deodorant, “Don’t knock-knock it unless you have tried-tried it.”

First Assembly of God

Winston-Salem, N. C.

I regretfully “take pen in hand” to protest against the article on “tongues.” The Pentecostal—otherwise known as charismatic—movement has been by many hailed as the third great force in Christianity, and to dismiss it in the cavalier manner of that article is deplorable and unworthy of the high standards of your magazine.

Actually, rather than a “third force” (which would imply, perhaps, that it was as opposed to Catholicism and Protestantism as these have been to each other), it is a penetrating force, vivifying both Catholicism and at least the “old line” denominations.

Monument Valley, Utah

With great eagerness I read “The Confusion About Tongues,” hoping to get some relief from the confusion, but it was the same old wearisome reasoning entirely from one side of the fence.

However, it doesn’t seem to make too much difference to God how many reasons scholars discover to downgrade this particular gift. He goes right on blessing and using the charismatic movement to bring new life into churches of all denominations. The spirit of love that flows through this movement across all religious barriers is one of the great ecumenical phenomena of our time.

Milford Congregational Church

Milford, Kan.

His question should be, “Are tongues for today?” …

No, according to God’s word they have ceased. We should go on to completeness found in God’s word, revealed to Paul, as the Holy Spirit told him to write in Romans 16:25.

Phoenix, Ariz.

Christmas Gift

Your Christmas issue was to me a gift as pleasing as some useful item given me by a loved one and wrapped in the most beautiful package. Outstanding in this issue was David T. Evans’s “Christmas Anew!,” which found this reader another “Avery” who found the frustrations of the ministry tempting him several times lately to leave.… Since reading Avery’s experience of perplexity and the renewal, his prayer has been prayed much by this “Avery,” who looks forward to “Christmas Anew!” The editorials of this issue were exceptionally good.

The United Methodist Church

Rector, Pa.

Where The Need Is Greatest

I am really disappointed in your editorial “The Chicago Riot Report” (Dec. 20) for it points up a lack of sensitivity to the great need of the Christian Church today—namely, to practice what it preaches. The Church will never win over a highly secular and materialistic society by simply stating that “man’s first need is the Gospel of Christ” and then leaving it there.…

Christ himself would be found today where the need is the greatest, where the hungry, thirsty, friendless, ill-clothed, sick of mind and body, in prison, are. The average churchgoer is no more concerned about these unfortunates than is any other part of our society—maybe even less.

Faith without works is dead. Preaching the Gospel without action connoting a “born-again” experience and a “works” vitality is a sham.

Colton, Calif.

At The Convention

Your comment on “Balancing Church Power” (Editorial, Dec. 20) is of much concern to me.… I have been a delegate to four state conventions of the Congregational Church—United Church of Christ. You gave a good description of their procedure.… We were handed a stack of mimeographed matter about which we knew little or nothing. We voted on them, after a short discussion. My home church knew nothing about them, so I had to vote without any hint as to how they felt.… Such material should be forwarded to the local churches in time for study and discussion.

Norfolk, Neb.

Nothing reflects confusion more than a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Beset by barking dogs, frustrated by one another and by the natural obstacles around them, leaderless sheep will mill about in a frenzy of indecision, unable to cope with the problems that confront them.

That the world of men is in a like state of confusion is seen in even the most casual reading of any newspaper. The problems are economic, racial, political, and social. They are also educational, emotional, and—above all—spiritual.

Each geographical area has its own problems, with resulting alignments and counter-alignments that jeopardize local and world peace.

For the world’s confusion, as for each man’s confusion, there has been committed to the church and to individual Christians a simple and direct answer. This answer, which can be either accepted or rejected, forms the very watershed of life now and for all eternity.

Jesus was constantly confronted by religious leaders who rejected his claims and disputed his words. On one occasion he made a series of statements about man’s deepest needs. He said, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). He went on to say that there will be a “last day” when those who believe in him and therefore have eternal life will be raised up to be with him.

Christ’s claim to have come down from heaven was challenged, and he countered by asserting the centrality of his mission—to draw men to his Father. This he followed with the astounding affirmation that his own flesh was the bread from heaven: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:53, 54).

Throughout this discourse Christ spoke as God’s supreme gift to man and man’s only hope. The condition for man was to “believe”; the rest was an unfolding of God’s love, grace, and mercy.

The result? Many of those who had been following him said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” Jesus replied, ‘Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

This was too much. “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.”

This same state of affairs prevails in the world today. Men have rejected the divine revelation in God’s creative power and wisdom. They have rejected his revelation in the person of his Son. They have rejected the revelation given in his Written Word. The results: confusion and chaos.

At this point in the story our Lord turned to the twelve he had chosen as apostles: “Will you also go away?” he asked. Simon Peter—bless his impulsive heart!—replied: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

Confronted as we are by a world in chaos and confusion; daily encountering people who, bruised by the world and living in spiritual darkness, are as sheep without a shepherd, what shall we do?

So often we, as individual Christians and as a corporate Church, fail in our obligations to others. Our failure is a tragic reminder of our need for constant renewal in Christ.

Jesus repeatedly healed the sick. On occasion he fed the hungry. There was never any question about his love and compassion. But as one reads the total record, this stands out: he came into the world not so much to preach the Gospel but so that there might be a Gospel to preach.

These deep truths he uttered about the bread and drink of life had to do with eternal life. He was speaking of the spiritual implications of his death and resurrection, and the majority of his hearers rejected his message and went their own way.

Men are no wiser today. Even in the circles of religion,” many reject the clear affirmation of Jesus Christ in favor of doctrines more acceptable to human reason and philosophical presuppositions. And because they offer a lost and desperately confused world the stones of worldly wisdom and human speculation, the confusion is increased.

The Pharisees were “blind leaders of the blind” in their day, and they have their counterparts today in those whose wooden interpretations reject the spirit of Christ’s message, and in those who reject the deep spiritual truths of man’s lost condition and his need of redemption.

Our Lord’s attitude to the Pharisees was one of ruthless denunciation for their legalism and hypocrisy. With equal forcefulness he showed the folly of the Sadducees: “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29).

Called to bear clear witness to a confused and lost world, we only too often add to the confusion by interposing our own opinions rather than the simple Gospel of redemption in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Little wonder that the world has turned from the Church! Little wonder the Church has lost its influence! Little wonder that we individual Christians find ourselves powerless!

Too many of us know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. We are compromising our witness by living inconsistent lives. We are rendering our teaching and preaching void by “interpreting” away the true meaning of the Holy Scriptures, by substituting for “Thus saith the Lord” the opinions and denials of “scholars” who depend more on their “findings” and those of others like them than on what God would say to us in his Word.

Little wonder that the world is confused! Too many trumpets give an uncertain sound. Some Christians lack love and compassion, some magnify the creature more than the Creator, some are more concerned with what man thinks than with what God has clearly said.

These are stirring days, days of great opportunity and challenge. But we must remember this: the needs of the world, and of individuals, are fully met in that which Jesus Christ has done once for all. Beneath the veneer of a sophisticated and affluent man of the sixties lie the same sins of the flesh and spirit that have beset men of every generation. And it was to forgive men and cleanse them from these sins that Christ came, died, and rose again. That is the Gospel in its stark simplicity.

Why complicate what God has made so simple? Why seek for solutions that are no solutions? Why not give God a chance in our own lives and in our witness to others—the chance to prove that faith in what he has done is the power of God for salvation to all who will believe.

With Jesus Christ one stands on an unshakable foundation. Without him there can only be confusion.

L. NELSON BELL

I Believe: The Christian’s Creed, by Helmut Thielicke (Fortress, 1968, 256 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Wayne E. Ward, professor of theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

The reading public has come to expect something very special in a book by the great German preacher-theologian, Professor Helmut Thielicke of Hamburg. From the evangelical appeal of the “waiting Father” in the parable of the prodigal son to the profound interpretation of the doctrine of creation, this man’s writings combine popular expression with technical excellence.

At last we have his exciting interpretation of that epitome of historic Christian doctrine, the Apostles’ Creed. In a series of doctrinal sermons, delivered with all the illustrative power and vital interaction of the preaching situation, he unfolds the meaning of these central affirmations of the Christian faith. He does so with a keen sense of the questioning, even negative, response of many in his modern congregation. In fact, he joins the doubters at many points and shows the necessity of passionate doubt in coming to a serious understanding of the meaning of the faith.

The translation was begun by Thielicke’s friend John W. Doberstein, professor of pastoral theology at the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. As early as 1961, Thielicke had mentioned in his Christmas letter to friends that he had found a translator of “remarkable creative power.” The same letter announced the beginning of Thielicke’s work on the Apostles’ Creed, and these sermons were preached in Hamburg during the following years. In 1965 they were published in Germany under the title Ich Glaube (“I Believe”), and Doberstein began his translation almost immediately. At the time of his death later that year, he had just completed the chapter entitled “I Believe in God the Father.” A former student of his, H. George Anderson, completed the translation.

Each affirmation of the creed is expounded with the thoroughness and skill that mark all Thielicke’s work. Usually a key passage of Scripture is presented as the exegetical foundation, and a fresh interpretation of the doctrine in modern language, with abundant illustrations from classical writers and his own experience, forms the body of each chapter.

In addition, several of the phrases of the creed are expanded by a consideration of “additional questions.” Under the topic “God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth,” Thielicke deals with the persistent questions, “Do miracles really happen?” and “What is the point of miracles?” These studies of miracles are theological gems, absolutely brilliant in their insight and honesty.

Thielicke deals also with the question, “Where are the dead?” He mentions that he noted a remarkable increase in attendance for those sermons that discuss the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. Out of a life that has known the sorrow and crisis of World War II Germany, he is able to speak to the deep longings of the heart with profound understanding.

The highest value of these sermons is not to be found, however, in the comfort they offer to the troubled, the suffering, or the doubter. Great as this may be, their greatest value is surely in their apologetic power. Surely there are few who have Thielicke’s skill in challenging the shallow thinking of the carping critic, the self-styled “atheist,” or the complacent religionist. On their own terms, these messages meet the doubter and the cynic and engage them in passionate struggle for a truth to live by. This is an apologetic work of tremendous power; it will find its place among those Christian writings that have sought, not to overwhelm intellectual opponents, but to lead earnest doubters to Christ.

Philosophy Of Process

Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox, edited by W. R. Farmer, C. F. D. Moule, and R. R. Niebuhr (Cambridge, 1967, 428 pp., $9.50), is reviewed by Norman Shepherd, associate professor of systematic theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This collection of studies honors a New Testament scholar who for over twenty years was associated with Union Theological Seminary (New York) and who now teaches at Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest. The list of eighteen distinguished contributors insures a volume of the highest academic quality.

The chapters, though diverse in character, are brought together under two general themes: questions of history and faith focused on Jesus of Nazareth, and the mind of Paul and problems of Pauline interpretation. The essays reflect the main areas of Knox’s own interest and to a greater or lesser degree show indebtedness to him.

Most of the chapters are detailed and technical and defy evaluation in a brief review. In the opening essay, however, Norman Pittenger has sought to elicit “some implications, philosophical and theological, in John Knox’s writing,” recognizing that Knox himself has not felt the need to give a theoretical accounting for his philosophical and theological presuppositions. Pittenger sees Knox as dependent upon contemporary American process-thought in contrast to philosophies of substance, where, presumably (but wrongly), we are to expect to find orthodox Christian theology.

Knox’s world in process is found to be marked by growing concretions of good, though things may temporarily be “out of hand.” The reason for this optimism is the fact that loving action focused in the “complex occasion” called Jesus Christ is giving rise to other focal centers of love. There is a purpose of love at work bringing all things back to their intended character as instruments of the divine Charity.

Pittenger shares Knox’s commitment to a philosophy of process and, while recognizing that this can be expressed in traditional language, nevertheless appeals for a new statement “made in the patterns of thought appropriate to such a processive world as Professor Knox sees our world to be.” We can only applaud and encourage this proposal “to reconceive the Christian faith not only ‘in other words’ but also in a quite different perspective and with quite different presuppositions.” It will serve to make plain how thorough is the divergence from the historic Christian faith, and how irreconcilable is this faith with what is offered as a substitute.

For the servant of Jesus Christ it is not a matter of choosing between a philosophy of metaphysical essences and a philosophy of process. Rather, he must develop a distinctively Christian life-and-world view that begins in the sufficiency and clarity of God’s written word of revelation.

New Light On Galatians

Galatians, by William Hendriksen (Baker, 1968, 260 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by David W. McIlvaine, subject cataloger, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

This volume, the eighth in Dr. Hendriksen’s continuing commentary on the New Testament, will be very useful to the pastor or Bible teacher. An advanced scholar might find it less useful because in the main Hendriksen concentrates on the text, without detailed interaction with the opinions of other scholars. However, he is aware of the work of others and is not hesitant to voice disagreement. For example, he identifies the trip by Paul to Jerusalem (described in Galatians 2) with Acts 15. In one footnote he tells us that Berkhof, Erdman, Findlay, Greijdanus, Grosheide, Lightfoot, Rendall, and Robertson also take this position, and in another that Bruce, Calvin, Duncan, Ellis, Emmet, Hoeber, and Knox disagree. Such information makes this commentary particularly useful, for it enables the reader to see that good evangelical scholars are divided in their opinion. Not only conservative scholars are consulted, however, as the four-page bibliography shows.

By itself this volume is not exhaustive; it is meant to take its place on the shelves along with the author’s other volumes on the New Testament. When commenting on the Greek word for “to tell the truth,” for instance, he refers us, in a footnote, to a footnote in his commentary on Ephesians. This is somewhat annoying for a reader who doesn’t have his volume on Ephesians!

But this work is superb in both content and format and may well convince the newcomer to Hendriksen to investigate his other volumes as well.

Help In Sex Education

A Guide for Christian Sex Education of Youth, by Thomas Edwards Brown (Association Press, 1968, 368 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Leslie R. Beach, professor of psychology, Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

Sex has to be the subject in which we are most guilty of giving young people answers to questions they are not asking. It also has to be a subject on which we do one of our poorest jobs of communicating what answers we do give. Here is help for making sex education less painful for the educator and more relevant for the student—all within a “for real” Christian framework that speaks to today’s teen-ager.

Writing out of extensive experience with young people, Thomas Edwards Brown presents guidelines and materials for sex-education programs for grades 7–12 and for parents. He sees teenagers as already fully sexual beings who need real answers to real questions—and the real questions do not deal with biology, the human reproductive systems, moonlight and roses, or the horrors of unwanted pregnancy and venereal disease. Rather, these fiercely persistent questions have to do with the goodness or badness of sex, coming to terms with one’s sexuality, how to get started in relationships, how far to go in relationships, and becoming fully functioning, wholesome, mature sexual persons. The “traditional” subjects are not omitted, however; they are treated with openness and candor.

Brown gives his reader the materials and techniques, constantly under revision, that he has used successfully with teen-agers and their parents. His inclusion of typical questions asked at various ages helps prepare the uninitiated for the kind of question (and language) he may encounter. Helpful case examples are included also.

To Christian sex education Brown brings a positive outlook on sex and personhood, relevant materials and techniques, and sound Christian dogma. All youth workers who read his book will feel indebted to him.

Analyzing Our Dreams

Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language, by John A. Sanford (Lippincott, 1968, 223 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by E. Mansell Pattison, assistant professor of psychiatry, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle.

John Sanford’s theme is that human nature is paradoxical, and the understanding of it comes through the analysis of our dreams. And this is indeed a paradoxical book from title to index. The author begins by disavowing the notion that dreams are the vehicle by which a supernatural God speaks to men, but ends by asserting that the universal symbols and revelations of our dreams suggests the existence of God. He claims to draw on modern psychologists for the foundations of his work, yet uses only pre-1940 Jung, misinterprets Freud, and ignores the revolutionary breakthroughs that have occurred in the experimental study of dreams in the past fifteen years.

Sanford is an Episcopal clergyman who studied at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich after seminary training. There he became convinced of the correctness of Jung’s theories and concluded that dreams were a neglected but highly important theological issue. He sees dreams as the royal road not only to the unconscious but also to the restoration of psychological and spiritual healthiness. “Dreams and their interpretation can heal the sick soul.”

The first half of the book contains case histories drawn from Sanford’s pastoral counseling. He shows how his clients’ emotional conflicts were revealed in their dreams and how he helped them to emotional health through dream interpretation. He fairly accurately summarized the psychodynamic functions of dreams and sketches out the paradoxes of the conscious and unconscious aspects of the personality. None of this is at all new, but it is well done.

The second half of the book shifts to speculation. Here Sanford attempts to use dream analysis to develop a theological view of the nature of man and his relationship to God. It will satisfy neither scientist nor theologian.

I also want to make it quite clear that by referring to dreams as God’s forgotten language I do not have in mind the “theological God” possessing a whole string of metaphysical attributes. By saying that our dreams are from God I mean that they are, from the point of view of the ego, purposively directed, and seem to revolve around a central authority in the psyche. There is always a creative element in dreams, and it is this creativity which is divine.

The two halves of the book present a familiar paradox. Writing as a clinician, the author shows a warm, empathic understanding of human nature. This part will warrant reading by the layman. The clinical relevance of dreams is well shown. But when the clinician tries his hand at being a theoretician, he runs afoul of the danger of using personal clinical success to validate a speculative theory. Contemporary research simply invalidates much of his Jungian extrapolation. Thus his scientific and theological theory fares no better than the metaphysics he so vehemently decries.

Objective Look At Mid-East

The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, by Fred J. Khouri (Syracuse University Press, 1968, 436 pp., $10), is reviewed by Arnold T. Olson, president, Evangelical Free Church of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

An objective treatment of the complex issues of the Middle East is hard to find. The emotion the situation has generated among the people directly involved seems contagious; one is either pro-Arab or pro-Israeli.

Mr. Khouri’s book is refreshing and revealing as it deals objectively with the events of the past twenty years. As a historian he reports the events as they happened. As a political scientist he seeks to interpret those events. Time and again he summarizes the pros and cons of a situation. His analyses seem quite impartial, and he does not hesitate to point out errors on either side. While he exposes what he considers the failures of the United Nations and the great powers in their attempts to solve the problems, he also notes praiseworthy endeavors. And he believes that with the United Nations rests the ultimate solution to the problem.

Sources are well documented in more than five hundred footnotes, some containing as many as a score of references. The bibliography includes 212 documents and official publications, arranged according to where they can be found, as well as a thorough listing of books. An appendix contains documents such as the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, several U. N. General Assembly resolutions, and armistice agreements, as well as tables on Palestine population, immigration, and refugees, and other material.

Khouri, writing a secular history, begins with the period leading up to the partition of Palestine. He states, “It was the rise of extreme forms of Arab and Jewish nationalisms, mostly in the twentieth century, which precipitated the serious breach between the two Semitic peoples. Thus their hostility is of fairly recent origin and not based on some ancient animus.” But as any student of the Scriptures knows, the animosity goes back through many centuries. The book does not look back far enough, and, since it deals only with secular history, it cannot look far enough ahead.

One is left with many questions. Why is the United Nations, which was responsible for the birth of the State of Israel and which has spent more time on the Middle East crisis than on any other issue, so helpless? None of its resolutions have been fully adopted; most have been ignored or defied. Why have the great powers been so inept and almost naïve in dealing with this crisis? It seems clear that another world war could develop out of it; yet the situation is permitted to deteriorate.

Khouri summarizes the problem clearly:

So long as deep Arab-Israeli distrust, hostility, and conflicting national interests persisted, so long as internal political instabilities and rivalries continued to exist within Israel and the Arab world, and so long as the two super powers remained seriously divided, neither the United Nations nor any of its agents would be able to bridge the wide psychological and political gaps which continued to separate the Arabs and Israelis and to bring about a peace settlement despite U Thant’s clear warning that “if … no progress is made towards resolving the root causes of conflict, within a few years at the most there will be ineluctably a new eruption of war.”

This will take more than the efforts of the United Nations. It will take a miracle. And such a miracle will call for divine intervention.

A Discussion Of Death

Death and Its Mysteries, by Ignace Lepp (Macmillan, 1968, 194 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by R. K. Harrison, professor of Old Testament, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

The uncertainties of the atomic age and the nihilism of most existentialist thinkers, it is said, have made death a matter for discussion in some intellectual circles. Dr. Lepp, a French Roman Catholic priest and a psychotherapist who practiced in Paris until his death in 1966, has taken his cue from writers such as Camus and Sartre and has expounded his general theme along the lines of Bergsonian “creative evolution” and the rather elusive theology of Teilhard de Chardin.

Lepp makes several penetrating criticisms of Freudian theory. He views death both as a normal procedure (for old people) and as an “intolerable scandal” (for young people). The book contains interesting and penetrating sections on suicide and spiritism, and helpful comments on communicating the fact of death to children.

Perhaps I move in the wrong circles these days, but I felt that the book drew too heavily upon nineteenth-century Roman Catholic traditions in Europe and was therefore rather dated in its approach. The author exhibits a certain old-world romanticism in discussing how men supposedly dread death and try to give some meaning to it. He maintains that North Americans, more than any others, are terrified by the onset of death, and that this is reflected in their funeral practices. As a European, I have observed that most North Americans live as though they believed themselves indestructible, and seldom think about their own death. As for the funerals, there is a business interest connected with the undertaking that need not be discussed here.

The doctrinal standpoint of the book is that of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, tempered by the speculations of Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin. The title led me to expect that Lepp would discuss the phenomenon of death more than he did. Still, I found the book stimulating.

Survey Of Jewish Thought

A New Jewish Theology in the Making, by Eugene B. Borowitz (Westminster, 1968, 220 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Victor Buksbazen, editor, The Spearhead Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The author of this excellent survey of contemporary Jewish religious thought and philosophy is a liberal rabbi and a philosopher of religion. In discussing the difficulties of writing a systematic theology of Judaism acceptable to the contemporary thinking Jew, he takes us on a grand tour of philosophical and religious ideas of the most prominent Jewish thinkers of the last hundred years. And with great skill and insight, he analyzes the lasting contributions made by such pillars of contemporary Judaism as Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Mordechai Kaplan, Leo Baeck, Abraham Heschel, and Joseph Soloveitchick.

Borowitz believes that a theology of Judaism is urgently needed if the modern Jew is to understand the faith by which he seeks to live, and avoid the pitfalls of a too individualistic and subjective religion. However, Judaism is intrinsically inhospitable to theology, because it is basically a religion of deed rather than creed.

There is an even greater obstacle to the formulation of a contemporary theology of Judaism. In the past, the Bible and rabbinical tradition were the supreme authority for right conduct and right belief. Today, this authority is either completely rejected or seriously questioned by the vast majority of a secularized Jewry:

For just as history no longer shows a single progressive march of Jewish faith, so contemporary philosophy does not provide a single standard of truth, so widely acceptable that it might become the foundation of a theology of Judaism.

Consequently all that remains to the Jewish religious thinker is to formulate significant questions in the hope that a rising generation will perhaps find answers.

The lack of a sure foundation and authority upon which to base faith is the real predicament of contemporary man, whether he be a liberal Jew or Christian. He must sail very stormy seas without either a guiding star or a dependable compass.

Paperbacks

The Bitter Road, by John H. Baumgaertner (Concordia, 1969, 104 pp., $1.95). A series of Lenten messages beginning at Bethlehem and ending triumphantly at an empty tomb.

Cameos, Women Fashioned by God, by Helen Kooiman (Tyndale House, 1968, 163 pp., $1.95). Stories of fifteen women whose lives have been deeply affected by their personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Ecumenism and the Reformed Church, by Herman Harmelink III (Eerdmans, 1968, 112 pp., $2.45). Examines the reasons for the repeated refusal of the Reformed Church in America to enter into unions with various other groups.

Is It the Same Church?, by F. J. Sheed (Pflaum, 1968, 224 pp., $1.75). A thoughtful consideration of change in the church by one who has been deeply involved in one of the most rapidly changing periods in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Living Dangerously, by D. Stuart Briscoe (Zondervan, 1968, 132 pp., $1.95). Confronts Christians with the shocking fact that they may be living as those who are spiritually dead and challenges them to lead daring and dynamic lives of vigorous commitment to Christ.

Man Alive!, by Michael Green (Inter-Varsity Press, 1968, 96 pp., $.95). An examination of the cardinal tenet of the Christian faith—that Jesus rose from the tomb and is alive today.

Martin Luther and the Birth of Protestantism by James Atkinson (Pelican, 1968, 352 pp., $1.95). Investigates the social basis for Luther’s dissent and tries to determine what issues of faith and morals really divided him from the Church.

The Message of Galatians, by John R. W. Stott (Inter-Varsity Press, 1968, 191 pp., $1.95). Twenty sermons on Galatians by the outstanding rector of All Souls Church, London. Shows how Galatians speaks to our day.

Psalms in Modern Speech, translated by Richard S. Hanson (Fortress, 1968, 80, 103, and 124 pp., $1.95 each). A refreshing new translation of the Psalms in three volumes.

Rebel with a Cause (Tyndale, 1968, 80 pp., $.75). The Gospel of Mark from Kenneth N. Taylor’s The Living New Testament presented in a format attractive to young people. In the same series: Tune In (John).

This Morning with God, edited by Carol Adeney (Inter-Varsity, 1968, 121 pp., $1.50). First of a series of daily devotional guides that lead the reader into firsthand study of the Bible. The series is planned to cover the whole Bible in five years.

A Woman in Her Home, by Ella May Miller (Moody, 1968, 128 pp., $.50). Practical suggestions pointing busy wives and mothers to a more satisfying home and family life.

The Pattern of God’s Truth, by Frank E. Gaebelein (Moody, 1968, 126 pp., $1.25). Paperback edition of a widely acknowledged treatment of Christian education. States that the master principle of all education, Christian or secular, is that all truth is of God.

Can I Trust the Bible? edited by Howard F. Vos (Moody, 1968, 190 pp., $.60). Paperback edition of an earlier work in which eight evangelical scholars whose fields of learning vary considerably present solid reasons for believing the truth of the Bible.

A Treasury of Sermon Illustrations, edited by Charles L. Wallis (Abingdon, 1968, 319 pp., $1.95). More than 2,400 stories, poems, and anecdotes; comprehensive indexes make this volume particularly helpful.

Structures of the Church, by Hans Küng (University of Notre Dame, 1968, 370 pp., $3.45). Paperback edition of a bold and penetrating study of the nature of the Church by an outstanding Roman Catholic scholar.

Our forefathers sang joyous songs about freedom ringing from every mountainside and wrote words about freedom’s holy light. Poets, statesmen, even philosophers assumed that godly faith was the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims (Tocqueville). And a connection between freedom and law was commonly assumed, as in the words of one writer, “If liberty with law is fire in the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor.”

Today our countrymen are generally the inheritors of these freedoms gloriously spoken of—liberties of choice about ways of learning, working, speaking, worshiping, and so on. Yet our land is also confronted with an increasing tumult about lack of freedoms. This growing protest, with its sharpening profile of disillusionment and bitterness, hardly reflects a spirit of thanksgiving for freedoms inherited and possessed.

One way or another, the word freedom assumes preeminence in the modern vocabulary. Many of our countrymen are still singing psalms of thanksgiving for their freedoms while at the same time they are haunted by freedom’s cry for deliverance uttered by the alienated and dispossessed. The freedom theme may generate a feeling of exhilaration or of sadness and pity. There is also another kind of freedom shout that arouses a sense of foreboding and dismay, for it is a raucous and militant demand that radical changes must take place “now!” This revolutionary emphasis on “now-freedom” usually has utopian and perfectionist overtones. Strangely enough, it may arise from the soil of affluence and academic privilege. This impatient and aggressive stance is often heralded as a necessary prelude to substantial breakthroughs for a revised social order of one sort or another. I wish to suggest, however, that this peculiar kind of freedom-cry may be less a high moral protest and more a symbol of inner contradiction and spiritual insecurity.

Perhaps it was in this context that D. H. Lawrence wrote about a shout of freedom that is the rattle of chains. When the freedom-cry is overpitched and overanimated, it may reflect more the agony of spiritual desperation, the rattle of inner chains, than the vision of true liberty. Dostoevsky is credited with similar insight in his portrayal of a man driven to murder out of his own weakness, desperately trying to prove to himself that he is not a slave to that weakness. Friedrich Nietzsche is a tragic example of a man so obsessed with the dream of power and freedom that he even tried to destroy God, and eventually succumbed to madness in a frenzy to achieve his goal.

It is not hard to see how a downtrodden person who is powerless to do anything about his predicament might become obsessed about freedom. It is less easy, however, to explain an obsession of this sort in those who have acquired some amount of freedom and power. Yet it often seems that freedom whets the appetite for more freedom, power for more power, money for more money.

Freedom, it appears, is a seductive elixir when mixed with the wine of power and tasted by the man who is intrigued with the vision of a perfect setting (especially when this prospect is pursued overtly or covertly in the name of man). However, this potent combination may also become an opiate that dulls the sensitivity of the human spirit. This was perceptively illustrated by Nathaniel Hawthorne a century ago in his “Birthmark,” a commentary on the ebullient secularist demeanor of the new sciences of his day, fascinated as they were with the ideal of human perfectibility, the concept of knowledge as power, and the prospect of complete autonomy of the human spirit. Hawthorne, with the discerning eye of a New England Puritan (surely no defender of the concept of human perfectibility), tells about Alymer, scientist of world renown, whose wife’s beauty was marred only by a birthmark on her cheek. Even though Alymer stands at the pinnacle of his scientific career, flushed with honors and successes, he gradually allows these honors to be overshadowed by an obsession about the birthmark, symbol of imperfection. Finally Alymer gives way to this obsession and, with a godlike assurance of his own powers and a zeal to blot out the imperfect “now,” performs a scientifically perfect operation and removes the blemish. He seems to be eminently successful in this ultimate venture—only to discover that his wife has suddenly stopped breathing. Alymer loses her, but in the end seems to be more grieved over the failure of his supreme effort than the loss of his wife.

The enigma here is that men, whether deprived or privileged, ignorant or learned, tend to become obsessed by the desire for freedom and power as the antidote to some kind of bondage that stifles them; with no release forthcoming, they are confronted with a real danger of the transforming of humanity into inhumanity.

There is yet another dramatic narrative to be reckoned with, an account that may well be considered the alpha and omega of all commentaries on freedom, power, and perfection. This is the Adam and Eve story, the Genesis synopsis of the creation of man, who was endowed with unique freedom among all the creatures of earth and with power to subdue the world, and who lived without sin in a utopian garden.

The crucial difference between secular attitudes toward freedom and this biblical version has to do with the issue of independence. The Genesis version of freedom is framed within a context of man’s dependence on, and answerability to, his Creator. In the secular view, freedom seems to be the first word; in the biblical view, freedom actually stands in subservience to obedience. The first word about man is that he is dependent, not that he is autonomous. The Creator endowed man with the glorious capacity of being free to answer yes or no, even to God himself, but man was in no sense endowed with the capacity of being non-answerable to his Maker. Man must answer yes or no to God, and his freedom is contingent on his answer. To say no to God is to forfeit the very groundwork of human freedom, and to slip into the precipitous realm of the unfree, from which, humanly speaking, there is no recourse, just as when the eye is destroyed there is no recourse from physical blindness.

The secular confusion about what really is the ground of freedom, and the disconcerting paradox involved in seeming to lose one’s freedom in the act of pursuing it with great vigor, are counterbalanced with striking simplicity in the words of ancient Joshua: Choose (freedom) this day whom he will serve (the other side of the freedom coin, from the biblical perspective). Freedom’s cry for freedom in the name of man leads to an obsession about freedom, not to mention an eventual bondage. Freedom received within the context of obedience to the Eternal Word is true freedom; as it is written, If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. All of which is to say: Choose to be a slave in the right way and be free, or choose to be free in the wrong way and be a slave.