Dear Theological Athletes:

Among the pleasant memories that remain from a somewhat misspent boyhood are those of the Saturday nights when we would station ourselves on the hill overlooking the Armory Auditorium in hopes of watching the wrestling matches without parting with a then valuable quarter. After a few minutes of the opening match the auditorium would become uncomfortably hot and some unknown benefactor would open the large window facing the hill, giving us a clear view of the arena.

Even then it seemed somewhat strange to me that the Swedish Angel could withstand the Masked Marvel jumping full weight on his stomach without apparent injury. Or that Indian Joe could batter Kid Curly’s head against the ring post without causing a concussion.

With the advent of television and its close-up of the ring action, my suspicions became confirmed. It’s all a fake. All the mayhem that appears to be happening is just sleight of foot. And only recently has the reason for the fakery become clear to me. Wrestling is not a hostile or destructive sport. In spite of all that wrestlers do to make it look vicious, it just isn’t.

Have you ever seen two small boys trying to establish rapport with each other? They wrestle. First there’s the playful nudge. Then comes the friendly counter push. And in a moment they’re on the ground puffing, giggling, and having a beautiful time. Wrestling is the original I-Thou relationship. (As proof of my point just recall Jacob’s famous match.)

It seems inescapable to me that the sport for today’s theolog is not the popular jogging but wrestling. In fact, I’d like to suggest that planners of theological curricula include wrestling in the seminary program, with credit, of course. Think of the mutual understanding that could result from theologically oriented wrestling matches. Deacons’ meetings could be opened with prayer and closed with wrestling.

As a final contribution I’d like to offer my services in arranging matches designed to further theological camaraderie. For instance: Billy Graham vs. Jitsuo Morikawa. Or perhaps a tag-team match with Pope Paul and Cardinal O’Boyle vs. Fathers Curran and Kavanaugh. As a final nostalgic touch we could have a mystery bill with Eutychus III as the Masked Marvel vs. Penultimate as the Hooded Hurricane.

Perspiringly yours, a guest of EUTYCHUS III

Reproduction Restudied

Thank you for the thorough articles on birth control and the Old and New Testaments, also “The Relation of the Soul to the Fetus,” and the good “A Christian View of Contraception” (Nov. 8 issue). Such a study was long overdue, and was amazingly thoroughly studied and presented. Really, it should be put into reprint form.

Pear City, Ill.

As one of the participants at the Symposium on the Control of Human Reproduction, I feel obligated to inform your readers that the exegetical argument of Professor Waltke (“The Old Testament and Birth Control”) on Exodus 21:22–25 is by no means apodictic. Waltke follows the interpretation of David Mace (Hebrew Marriage), over against virtually all serious exegetes, classical and modern, in claiming that the passage distinguishes between a pregnant mother (whose life has to be compensated for by another life if killed) and her fetus (unworthy of such compensation).…

The equality of mother and unborn child in Exodus 21 is upheld not only by a classic Old Testament scholar such as the nineteenth-century Protestant Delitzsch but also by such contemporary Jewish exegetes as Cassuto, whose Commentary on the Book of Exodus (trans. Abrahams [Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1967]) is a landmark. Here are the relevant portions of Cassuto’s explanatory rendering:

When men strive together and they hurt unintentionally a woman with child, and her children come forth but no mischief happens—that is, the woman and the children do not die—the one who hurt her shall surely be punished by a fine. But if any mischief happens, that is, if the woman dies or the children die, then you shall give life for life.

To interpret the passage in any other way is to strain the text intolerably.… The original text places a value on fetal life equal to adult life, and in doing so perfectly conjoins with the rest of Holy Writ (such as Ps. 51:5; Luke 1:41, 44).

Chairman

Division of Church History

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Ill.

I would like to commend you highly for calling attention to the issues of “Contraception and Abortion.” I would hope that Christian young adults might seriously consider limiting their families with the thought of giving what might have been spent for the extra children to some of the starving children of the world.…

I hope that you will very forcefully remind us of the pressing problems of world population and of starvation. You might do us the favor of publishing the names and addresses of missions … who are working in areas of pressing food needs. What is our affluent American society coming to when so much money and attention is spent on luxuries that we can do without, when half the world lacks even its “daily bread”.…

Over against 130 advertisements [in a recent issue of Time Magazine] calling attention to our American wants and needs—and how few are actually needs—there was … one advertisement that called attention to the dire need of the other half of the world.…

“If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?” (Jas. 2:15, 16).

History Department

Rutgers, The State University

New Brunswick, N.J.

Dr. Waltke’s argument that … the fetus cannot be considered on a par with a living person is rather incomplete. I don’t intend to teach the Bible to the good professor, but he should have cross-checked his reference with passages like Psalm 139:13–16; Jeremiah 1:5, and Galations 1:15 before coming out with such a drastic statement.

Artificial birth control and family planning, by all means, yes! However, we Christians should be extremely cautious on the matter of induced abortion, in a day when this evil is so thoroughly widespread and is reaping its harvest not only in the child but also in the mother through death or other repercussions.

Istanbul, Turkey

Are you all trying to compete with all the other bold-faced magazines on the newsstands? I was actually ashamed when this [cover] stared me in the face in our mail box and would appreciate it, if you have any more screamers like this one, please put ours in a jacket! And please don’t expect a renewal when our subscription expires.… Lots of your stuff reeks of double talk.

MRS. G. A. GARREN

Tallahassee, Fla.

Although “Therapeutic Abortion: Blessing or Murder?” (Sept 27) contains some excellent Christian insights, one might take issue with some views expressed. True, no federal law forbids abortion by name, but the Fifth Amendment guarantees due process of law before an American court can deprive one of life. A group with consultants deciding on abortion requests is not the jury that Article 3 of the Constitution requires. If an unborn child can be an heir, the law recognizes civil rights of the unborn.

Neither Catholics nor others regard a pope’s opinion on the animation of embryos as settling the issue. But they would expect the embryo to manifest definitely human acts at some future time. If the still fetus is really regarded as “an impression or figment of the imagination,” then there would be only an imaginary problem! If body, soul, and mind develop, it is reasonable to presume they are there continuously in the process.

It is the practice of many Christians to baptize a non-viable fetus, somewhat parallel to Hippocrates’ ideal that a doubtful or dying life is to be treated with the same care due to a certain and vigorous life.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dr. Visscher is no doubt well versed in his field. But it would seem that even an average student of Scripture and logic might find inconsistencies in his approach to this subject.

First, he uses the terms “non-viable” and “viable” to distinguish the fetus before and after the quickening point in pregnancy. The dictionary defines “viable” as “capable of living and developing normally.” Now, who is going to say that the fetus in its earlier stage is any less capable of living and developing normally than in its later stage?… He is using a term which, though it may be perfectly correct clinically and medically, is totally misleading in the present ethical view.

Secondly, his treatment of the sixth commandment is somewhat less than logical. Just as it cannot logically be stretched beyond its essential meaning of “murder” or forbid the taking of all life under any condition (as in war), so neither must it be narrowed to the point of permitting “killing in love”—or in his words with “no personal hostility”.… Many highway deaths result from situations involving no personal hostility, but we cannot escape the fact that an injustice is involved nonetheless.…

The question posed in the title still remains.

Fillmore, N. Y.

Saying The Unsaid

The problem with your editorial on the student left (Nov. 8) is not what you said but what you did not say. I fear that Christians will be thereby encouraged to continue to deplore, condemn, and explain away student agitation without themselves doing much either to criticize or improve our society and its educational institutions. The New Left’s way of doing something may not be much better than our way of doing nothing, but I wonder if it is really worse.

I can speak only for certain aspects of contemporary humanistic education (how many times has this been done before?), which is, even here, so unwieldy, impersonal, and hidebound that it is a wonder that more graduates do not develop a deep hatred for “the life of the mind.” We write papers for grades, read books for finals, take courses for credits, credits for degrees, degrees for jobs or more degrees, and these in turn for money. And in this we seem to be fulfilling admirably the expectations of most of our elders, but we are not fulfilled.…

You correctly criticize the New Left’s rationale, but your neglect to mention the real problems confronting sensitive collegians will allow Christians to rationalize away, as one of your letter-writers does, the whole of student dissent. If the spirit … of intolerance and of irrationality is not to triumph in the hands of administration, faculty, and students, then Christians will have to do more than criticize the critics. Your editorial will not help them to do this, insofar as it comforts them with the illusion that the radicals are only fighting straw men.

San Diego, Calif.

From Lutherans With Love

Just a few lines to congratulate you on your perceptive coverage of the American Lutheran Church’s recent biennial convention in Omaha. I enjoyed tremendously your views of both “Luththeran Love-In” and “ALC Man to Watch” (News, Nov 8).

You’ll probably hear from others on a small typo; the ALC’s college in Minneapolis is not Augustana (that’s at Sioux Falls) but Augsburg College. It was taken over from the Lutheran Free Church when the latter joined the ALC.

Division of Public Relations

Lutheran Council

New York, N. Y.

May I, a member of Missouri Synod, comment briefly on “Lutheran Love-In.” My comment: Great!

I have only recently returned from a tour of duty on Wake Island … where I experienced the joy of Christian loving friendship with an ALC pastor and his family.…

For too many reasons to list, I for one urge the Missouri Convention upcoming to approve altar and service fellowship with other Lutherans. Childish defenses of small plots of “reserved territory,” particularly insignificant in terms of salvation in Christ, are inexcusable and severely reprehensible.

McClellan AFB, Calif.

Briefly Speaking

Thanks to the new editor for the various changes occurring in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I was especially pleased with the editorials in the November 8 issue. Their brevity and wide-ranging topics make for a fresh interest.… To be relevant and evangelical simultaneously calls for mental alertness and spiritual depth.

Minneapolis, Minn.

A Reforming Fire

I just finished reading the article by C. George Fry entitled, “The Reformation as an Evangelistic Movement” (Oct. 25) and it was refreshing. I agree with Dr. Fry when he says, “We could observe an Evangelism Festival on Reformation Day, to beseech God to give us a revived church in our century.” America needs an evangelistic church burning with the same kind of fire that inspired the Reformers.

Maple Park Lutheran Church

Lynnwood, Wash.

Gordon’S History

The editorial announcement about the acceptance by Dr. Harold John Ockenga of the presidency of Gordon College and Gordon Divinity School (Oct. 25) was inexact at certain points, and we feel rather strongly that some of these matters should be brought to the attention of your reading public.

It is not accurate to say that Gordon College came into being as a Baptist attempt to counteract the blight of Unitarianism. Our school came into existence as the Boston Missionary Training Institute. It arose out of a movement stimulated by the work of David Livingstone in Africa to send the Gospel to the Congo. Soon after its organization, it began to train interested students for Christian work in churches in the United States as well as for missionary work. The fact that the evangelical stance of Gordon has been a counterbalance to the effects of Unitarianism in New England is one for which we are grateful. It was not, however, the aim of the founders of the school to establish the college for this purpose.

Gordon has not been exclusively Baptist for almost sixty years. Indeed, there are those who maintain that it never was exclusively Baptist. In 1912, when the Clarendon Street Baptist Church where the school was housed burned, the neighboring United Presbyterian Church opened its doors to both the Clarendon Street Church and the Gordon Bible School. There were already at Gordon teachers who were not Baptist and many students who were not Baptist.…

I am afraid that it is not true also that Gordon is to be headed for the first time by a non-Baptist. The immediate past president of Gordon, Dr. James Forrester, is a minister in the United Presbyterian Church and a member of the Presbytery of Boston.

The election of Dr. Harold John Ockenga as the president of Gordon College and Gordon Divinity School has been hailed by its faculty members with warm enthusiasm, and we look forward to a period of eminent usefulness in Christian service.

Dean

Gordon Divinity School

Wenham, Mass.

• According to Who’s Who in America for 1968–69, Dr. Forrester was ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1942.—ED.

Justice For C.E.F.

Permit a protest against one small news item (Politics, Oct. 25). Citizens for Educational Freedom is not “a largely Catholic lobby”.… Are you aware that both the president and the board chairman of Citizens for Educational Freedom are non-Catholic, articulate Protestants who strongly support parentally controlled Christian schools?… To seek justice in an arena in which the Catholic is by and large the greatest collective victim is no more to be identified with a Catholic lobby than to seek justice in the racial arena identifies one as a Negro lobby.

The purpose of Citizens for Educational Freedom is not “seeking aid for private schools.” The goal is to seek justice and freedom for parents. CEF speaks out on educational aid issues since they affect the primary interest of freedom of religious choice. Most of us in CEF work against aid for schools—we work for fair-share aid for parents who cannot in conscience support the secularism of public education.

Trinity Chapel

Broomall, Pa.

Fan Mail For Wallace

This is a fan letter.… “The Clergy and George Wallace” by Wallace Henley (News, Oct. 25) … was an objective view and a very incisive story. As a former newspaper man, I have a great admiration for fellow members of the craft who do an exceptional job.

Opelika, Ala.

Please cancel my subscription immediately.… I have been increasingly disenchanted with CHRISTIANITY TODAY as you seem to be slipping more and more to the liberal side. The [report on George Wallace] was the final straw.

I am not a rabid supporter of George Wallace, but when a publication that is purportedly a Christian publication waits until the last issue before Election Day to take a nasty sideswipe at a presidential candidate so he will have no chance at rebuttal before your readers go to the polls, I wonder with how much “Christian love” the content of the publication is determined.…

I used to place my used copies of this publication in hospital waiting rooms, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, and other public places, but I’m going to destroy every copy I have on hand to prevent them from falling into the hands of some innocent reader who may be misled by the liberal slanted articles.

Glenside, Pa.

The article indicates a bigotry unbecoming to a Christian periodical. First there is the title. Is it correct? It is not written by the clergy; it has taken no poll from the clergy. True, it quotes from the clergy; but the title is inaccurate. Second there is the caricature of Wallace. Is it true? No, here again is a juvenile position of standing off to make fun of something or somebody. George Wallace lacks love, the article says. Is your ridicule indicative of love?

In times past your periodical has said that the evangelicals are hurting the cause of Christ by being picayune. Beware lest you do the same. I am hurt and disappointed in you. There will be no Christmas gifts of CHRISTIANITY TODAY from our house this year.…

Your clay feet are sticking out!

Las Cruces, N. M.

This was a narrow biased group to base such a headline on.… You quote from men, who many feel are natural and not spiritual—professional religionists.… If you are spiritual or have been born again, only God knows this, then you should quote from men who are spiritual.

I was not a Wallace man—but this article … impressed my mind to vote for Wallace for I feel Henley is a sorry religious news editor as most are.

Atlanta, Ga.

Your main objection to Mr. Wallace seems to be that he is a poor example as a Christian. I agree with this, but frankly I had never thought of either of the three main contenders as being a very good example of true Christianity. If they were, I think their platforms would contain some plans and promises to do something about alcohol, Sabbath desecration etc. These are all lost causes.

Centralia, Ill.

Thanks for the “fan” mail. My humility has been affected, though I’m not sure which way.

Religion Editor

The Birmingham News

Birmingham, Ala.

The earth has been called “the visited planet” because it is one place (and who can tell if there are others?) in which the God of the Universe chose to appear. We for whose sake he showed himself can still visit the geographical spot on our planet that was the divine “bull’s-eye.” Bethlehem—elected, we are told by the prophet Micah, for the birth of Jesus Christ centuries before the event—is still a little town, a cluster of stone houses on a hillside surrounded by olive groves and vineyards; but one no longer has to ride a donkey or walk, as Mary and Joseph did, to get there. I took a taxi from the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

My guidebook told me that Bethlehem was the birthplace of King David, but did not mention Jesus Christ. As we approached the town I noticed a long line of Israeli school children wearing blue-and-white hats and singing “Jerusalem of Gold.” They were waiting to get into Rachel’s Tomb, one of the Jewish holy places opened to them by the victory of the Six-Day War.

In Manger Square there were tour buses, taxis, Israeli police cars, small boys selling postcards, and small girls selling olivewood beads. Teen-age boys clamored to show me the Church of the Nativity, an enormous, fortress-like structure that dominated the square. I didn’t want to be shown, nor to be told what I was supposed to think about what I saw—not this time. I wanted to go down into the cave alone. I had done some reading and learned that the church was built during the reign of Constantine over “a certain cave near the village,” according to Justin Martyr. Origen said it was “well known even by those who were not Christians,” as the scene of any event in the life of a small town is known by all. Surely a cave that had been used as a stable by the local inn would have been long remembered if there a baby had been born whom shepherds, bearing an astounding piece of information, had come in from the fields to see.

St. Jerome did not question that this was the very place, but he expressed regret that the mud cradle had been replaced by a silver one and that the whole thing—by the fourth century!—was much too commercialized. “There is nothing to see in Bethlehem,” he wrote.

Since his day there has been plenty to see at times. The church gleamed with silver, gold, silks, jewels, and candelabra before it was destroyed by the Samaritans. It now has a “new” (as of 1764) altar screen and many elaborate lamps. On the day I was there, the funeral of an Arab soldier, killed during the June War but found months later, was in progress. Black-veiled women followed the coffin, weeping softly. The fragrance of flowers mingled with the dusty odors of ancient stone and votive lamps.

When the tour groups had gone, I went down the staircase into the dim grotto. There the place of the birth of Jesus was marked by a silver star inscribed, HIC DE VIRGINE MARIA JESUS CHRISTUS NATUS EST.

This star is said to have been one of the causes of the Crimean War. The Roman Catholics had placed it, the Greeks removed it, and the Turks made the Greeks restore it. Today there are clear lines drawn in the church showing which area belongs to the Romans, which to the Greeks and Armenians. Bitter opposition meets any encroachment by one group into the territory of another.

Perhaps the unbelieving tourist can shuffle through the grotto with the crowd and come up again into the sunshine unchanged, hurriedly checking off another place “done.” But the visitor who believes the Latin words Christus natus est (even if he cannot accept the word hic, “here”) cannot be the same. In spite of destruction and bittnerness and commercialization and religious disputing and modern war, the overwhelming truth remains: The thing happened. It happened here, in Bethlehem. “The Expression of God became a human being and lived among us. We saw His splendor.… There is a grace in our lives because of His love.”

This is why the star is there.—ELISABETH ELLIOT, Franconia, New Hampshire.

New Look At New Theology

What’s New in Religion?, by Kenneth Hamilton (Eerdmans, 1968, 176 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Warren C. Young, professor of Christian theology and philosophy, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Oak Brook, Ill.

The subtitle of this book is a good statement of the scope of the volume: “A Critical Study of New Theology, New Morality and Secular Christianity.” One might well call it an evangelical look at recent trends in theology.

Professor Hamilton begins with a discussion of the use and misuse of “new.” Technological advance makes possible improvements, changes, and refinements that keep up with our constant demand for something “new.” Yet it does not follow that new political and social movements, new theological systems, new ethical theories, are necessarily improvements. To illustrate his point, the author cites Heidegger’s pro-Nazi address in 1933. As we all know, the “new order” of Hitler proved to be something other than Utopia.

Today we are being offered a “new” theology. The old or traditional theology is dead, we are told, and we need a theology geared to late twentieth-century man and culture. As Hamilton puts it, what man seems to be seeking is a religion that will “give him meaning, direction, and purpose in his attempt to cope with his total environment, and to achieve satisfaction from the struggle.”

But what man is seeking today is not necessarily a Christian faith. For many, apparently, the Christian outlook and promise have failed. Why? What is it in the Christianity of our century that has caused modern man to lose faith in the ability of the Christian faith to meet the needs of the hour? What has caused him to turn his interest into other channels? Has the Christian faith proved itself irrelevant after twenty centuries of trial and effort? If contemporary theology serves no other purpose, it ought at least to spur us to examine the past to see where we may have fallen short. To this end we need a careful reading of Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, Tillich, Robinson, and others.

From theology the author moves to ethics. He quite correctly concludes that if theology changes, then morality is bound to change. If God is dead, then his “thou shalt nots” have lost all meaning. This explains the rise of “situation” ethics to replace the ethic of eternal laws. Now we are told that love is supreme—as if love could have meaning without some rules. Hamilton does well in showing the inconsistency of situation ethics.

Anyone who wants a good survey of trends in religion today should by all means get this volume. I do not know of another that does the job so well in so short a space.

Surprisingly Conservative

Who Is This Jesus?, by D. T. Niles (Abingdon, 1968, 160 pp., $3), and The Pre-Existence of Christ, by Fred B. Craddock (Abingdon, 1968, 192 pp., $4.50) are reviewed by Ralph Earle, professor of New Testament, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri.

Two new books shed important light on Jesus’ life. They come from D. T. Niles, well known as an outstanding Asiatic spokesman in the ecumenical movement, and Fred B. Craddock, professor of New Testament and preaching at the Graduate Seminary of Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma.

Although Niles is sometimes quoted for statements that seem a bit over in left field, he is surprisingly conservative in this book. He comes out flatly for the deity of Jesus and u reality of his bodily resurrection, and also for atonement only through Christ.

Unlike many scholars of today, Niles finds it possible to harmonize the gospel accounts into a continuous story of Jesus’ life. Yet as he rightly says, the intention of the gospel writers is neither to write a chronicle nor to compose a biography. What they do is to present a drama.

Niles follows the Johannine chronology (four passover feasts) in outlining the life of Christ. He highlights the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders, and shows it is similar to the opposition of entrenched ecclesiasticism of our day to the way of Christ. He devotes one of his six chapters to the Christian approach to Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Communism. In discussing the last he says, “Pilate had power to crucify Jesus, but he had no power to stop the resurrection”; so the Church though crushed, will rise again.

Niles’s ecumenical interest comes out prominently in the last chapter, on “The Mysteries of the Kingdom.”

Dr. Craddock’s book shows evidence of wide reading in the New Testament field. Here he investigates in depth one phase of Christology. His incisiveness and originality are welcome.

The introduction offers a keen analysis and critique of the work done in Christology by such scholars as Oscar Cullmann, W. D. Davies, and W. L. Knox. The author points out the limitations in the methods of each of these. His own approach he describes as “definition by function,” that is, “what each writer in each situation is intending to say by using the category of pre-existence.”

In the first chapter, “Affirmations of Pre-existence in New Testament Background Materials,” Craddock describes the Sophia of Wisdom Literature, the Logos of Philo, the Son of Man of First Enoch, the Torah of the rabbis, the Logos of the Stoics, and the myths of the Gnostics. Each of these had its own theory of pre-existence. He shows that this doctrine was emphasized most by those who felt alienated from the world.

In the chapter on “New Testament Affirmations of the Pre-existence of Christ,” Craddock devotes the largest space to the Epistles of Paul (the area in which he wrote his dissertation). Here one discovers many helpful analyses of important passages. Pastors will find much material for a sermon on “The Pre-existent Christ.”

This investigation of the New Testament closes with an emphasis on the historical basis of Christianity. “The language of pre-existence is not left to sail in ethereal realms as metaphysical poetry; the New Testament inserts the prose of crib and cross.”

A Closer Look At Suicide

The Social Meanings of Suicide, by Jack D. Douglas (Princeton, 1967, 398 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by David O. Moberg, professor of sociology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

How many suicides are “pseudocides” of persons who meant to do no more than evoke attention or sympathy? Where do the rights of the individual (as in taking his own life) properly give way to the rights of society or of God? Is suicide an act of free will or the result of some inexorable determinism? These are among the many significant questions discussed in this work on the social psychology of suicide.

In presenting a most helpful summary and evaluation of the sociological theories of suicide, Douglas concentrates on the classical theory of Durkheim. He does not uncritically accept Durkheim’s deterministic conclusions but points out hidden assumptions, methodological inconsistencies, and other flaws in the great sociologist’s work on suicide. He shows how Durkheim’s theory “has the great fault of being adjustable in such a way as to be irrefutable”; yet he acknowledges that his Suicide, first published in France in 1897, remains the best sociological work on the subject because of its high standard of scientific investigation and its break with the positivistic tradition of research on the subject.

Douglas moves from his thorough critique of the various theories into an excellent analysis of suicidal actions as socially meaningful acts. His theoretical approach emphasizes the subjective meaning of activities to the actor (the person who is performing them) and draws a contrast between situated meanings, those that concretely involve the communicator and are related to other meanings in a specific context of time and place, and abstract meanings, those that are imputed by an interpreter who is independent of the concrete situations he analyzes. Behavioral scientists have too often taken only the abstract perspective, failing to consider suicide from the viewpoint of its victims.

Through case studies and other evidence, Douglas shows that suicidal actions are “meaningful.” They show that something is fundamentally wrong with the situation of the actor, and convey basic information about the actor himself. Common patterns of meaning that Douglas identifies include the belief that death will transport the soul from this world to the other world, that the “substantial self” may be transformed through suicide in this world or the next, that some form of “fellow-feeling,” pity, or sympathy will be aroused through the suicidal actions, and that suicide is a means of getting revenge. Religious factors in suicide, though not well covered in the index, receive considerable attention in this work, and Douglas’s concept of “soul” is not alien to that of Christian theology.

This is not a book for the connoisseur of suicide notes, lurid cases, or popular tales. Neither is it for the counselor who wants direct and easy answers to suicide-related problems. However, those who would like to know how suicide is interpreted in one of the most important current schools of social psychology, or who seek underlying causes in the mentalities of persons who threaten or commit the act, will find The Social Meanings of Suicide a gold mine. And, the thoughtful reader will gain insights and perspectives that will help him understand himself.

Polemical Blitzkrieg

Der Ruf der Freiheit, by Ernst Käsemann (J.C.B. Mohr, 1968, 170 pp., DM 6.80), is reviewed by Harold O. J. Brown, theological secretary, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Lausanne, Switzerland.

This little work, “The Call of Freedom,” is the answer of the well-known Tübingen professor of New Testament studies to the rallying of conservatives in German Protestantism, the “No Other Gospel!” movement. Käsemann, whose tenacious and bellicose character stood him in good stead in his courageous resistance to the Nazi infiltration of German Protestantism in the Hitler years, now brings all his rhetoric to bear on the mixed multitude of conservatively inclined German Protestants who are trying in different ways to save something of historic Christianity out of the doctrinal chaos currently reigning in Germany’s theological faculties.

One of the most striking things about “The Call of Freedom” is its tone of offended innocence, a posture that would be more convincing if Herr Käsemann did not himself indulge in rhetoric and innuendo to discredit his opponents. He points with justifiable pride to his anti-Nazi record and disparages the timidity toward the Nazis of some of those who now take the field against him. It is effective rhetoric but does not contribute much to our understanding of the doctrinal and theological issues at stake in the present controversy.

For Käsemann, “The ruling element of Christian life today is anxiety about the freedom of the Christian man.” He thinks Christendom has turned from proclaiming the Gospel to proclaiming the institutional church as a guardian of order and inhibitor of change.

In chapter 1, “Was Jesus Liberal?” Käsemann opposes “pious” to “liberal.” His criterion for Jesus’ liberality is that he interpreted everything from the perspective of love.

But Käsemann does not appear to consider his own conflict with the “No Other Gospel!” movement from the perspective of love; in fact, his sarcasm has lost him some of the sympathy he gained as the victim of its attacks.

Käsemann attacks the “Theology of the Resurrection” of his opponents, particularly of Professor Walter Künneth of Erlangen. For Käsemann, emphasis on the glorious, risen, and ruling Lord produces an unstable and self-righteous enthusiasm; the Risen Lord must remain the Crucified Sufferer. The polemical note rings out again and again, especially in a supercilious attacks on “Professor Künneth’s unknown assistant Wolfram Klopfermann.”

He refers to Jesus’ “royal freedom” to redefine the Law in the Sermon on the Mount, preferring in the subsequent discussion to see this as an evidence of Jesus’ freedom rather than of his kingship. For Käsemann, Jesus, by interpreting everything from the perspective of love, really understood the will of God, while the scribes obscured its meaning with their convoluted interpretations. The “scribes” of today are the orthodox, the pietists. Surely a closer parallel would be to the modern theologians who warn us that the Word of God cannot be understood without the very special training and point of view that they alone can effectively impart.

Herr Käsemann’s little book reveals much more of the passion and power of Käsemann than of Jesus’ message of freedom, which shines only dimly through the smoke of the polemical artillery. The unprejudiced reader will readily concede that Käsemann has some reason to be dissatisfied both with the record of Germany’s conservative Protestants under Hitler and with their courtesy and respect in theological discussion today. He cannot but observe that in attacking Käsemann, “No Other Gospel!” has tackled a tiger, emotionally as well as theologically. But if the conservatives’ most odious allegation, in his eyes, is that “Ernst Käsemann can no longer be held to be a teacher of the church,” this book, ample in invective and meager in coherent teaching, is not a good refutation. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Explorations By A Secularist

Theological Explorations, by Paul M. van Buren (Macmillan, 1968, 181 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by L. D. MCoy, chairman, Department of Biblical Literature, Texas Technological College, Lubbock, Texas.

Paul van Buren has assembled eight of his essays that question the old base camp and equipment of theology and seek to find a role for theology in the plurality and relativism of our culture. “Not one of these essays represents my ‘position,’ past or present,” he says, “except in the way that one frame of a moving picture film represents the ‘position’ of the dancer it portrays.” The concern that is central to him is “what religion has done for men and what it might do for men today.” He cannot accept a theology based on the “faith of our fathers” but seeks one influenced by today’s culture.

Van Buren assumes that speaking in terms of the absolute is now dead because it has been neglected. Theologians are no longer understood by the common people, he says, because they are using outdated terminology. A great point is made of theologians’ use of the term “reality,” but van Buren himself later uses the same frame of reference when he talks about what is “real” to us. He shows great disdain toward dogmatism and extremism and extols a live-and-let-live attitude. One wonders how this can be reconciled with the dogmatism and imperatives of the New Testament, such as, “Except you repent, you will all perish.”

His definition of faith as a way of seeing and understanding the world disregards the God who is beyond metaphysics. Van Buren admits he has formulated an “atheistic interpretation of the language of faith.” In myths, stories, and parables Christians must find analogies for the object of faith; with the death of the Absolute, faith must live by faith alone.

The chapter “On Doing Theology” is mainly involved in taking apart the language of Heinrich Ott. In criticizing Ott, van Buren says that “a faith which claims to be grounded in historical events is actually not interested in historical investigation” and uses for example the Corinthian letters. What Paul meant or what the Corinthians took Paul to mean, van Buren concludes, is unimportant. The importance of the epistles lies solely in the meanings that believers today might want to discuss.

In a chapter dealing with Bonhoeffer, van Buren points out that at times the believer is forced to say, “But this is how things are.” When that happens, van Buren says, he has spoken of God. On the basis of one statement written by Bonhoeffer in 1944, van Buren concludes that Bonhoeffer was using language that had lost its meaning. Another chapter is devoted to the philosophy of William James, which our author likes.

In the last chapter, which contains his comments on a discussion of God by Gordon Kaufman, van Buren struggles with the problem of translating God into secular terms. Men who have “trembled in the presence of the gods” are not typical of any age or society, he says, and Jesus added very little except a sense of urgency. However, he states very well the message of Jesus that “to be ready for the kingdom means to start living now.” He concludes that theologians need not try to formulate another doctrine of God until they have had an experience of trembling before God when language cannot adequately communicate their feeling.

These sometimes difficult explorations are thought-provoking. Yet there seem to be no answers to the questions raised. One is left to wonder what part contemporary culture plays in shaping contemporary theology.

Book Briefs

Hang Tough, by John Bonner (Bethany, 1968, 122 pp., $2.95). A brief examination of the criminal mind and the problem of penology by a man who has spent eight years as a teacher inside San Quentin.

Beyond Combat, by James M. Hutchens (Moody, 1968, 128 pp., $3.95). A stirring account of the experiences of an outstanding combat chaplain in Viet Nam. Filled with heart-warming stories that show the power of the Gospel even in the hell of war.

To God with Love, by Jean Reynolds Davis (Harper & Row, 1968, 147 pp., $3.95), This collection of “letters to God from a busy housewife and mother” vividly reminds us that our God cares about even the most insignificant areas of our lives.

The Mirages of Marriage, by William J. Lederer and Don D. Jackson (Norton, 1968, 473 pp., $7.95). A provocative examination of marriage in America exposes marriage as many people experience it. Offers many helpful insights, though it virtually overlooks the spiritual aspect of marriage.

The Inside Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses, by W. C. Stevenson (Hart, 1968, 211 pp., $5.95). A penetrating analysis of the fastest-growing religion in the world by a man who was a member of this dedicated sect for fourteen years.

Sex and the New Morality, by Frederic C. Wood, Jr. (Association, 1968, 157 pp., $4.95). A college chaplain presents guidelines for applying “situation ethics” in the area of sexual morality.

Psychotherapy and Religion, by Josef Rudin (University of Notre Dame, 1968, 244 pp., $5.95). A Roman Catholic scholar offers a helpful analysis of the purpose and methods of depth psychology and seeks to bridge the gap between theology and clinical psychology.

My Family: How Shall I Live with It?, by George and Nikki Koehler (Rand McNally, 1968, 126 pp., $3.95). Father and daughter team up to offer helpful suggestions for a full and happy family life.

This Is My Story, This Is My Song, by Jerome Hines (Revell, 1968, 160 pp., $3.95). Testimony and autobiography of the famous Metropolitan Opera basso. On a popular level, and likely to be most convincing to the already committed.

On the Inspiration of Scripture, by John Henry Newman (Corpus, 1968, 153 pp., $4.95). Newman’s 1894 apologetic essays present the human and the divine elements in the Catholic doctrine of inspiration.

In Heavenly Places, by Charles H. Welch (Berean, 1968, 432 pp., $4.50). This competent analysis of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians—“the high water mark of God’s Scriptural revelation”—deals with the will of the Father, the work of the Son, and the witness of the Spirit as they relate to man.

The Liberty of Obedience, by Elisabeth Elliot (Word, 1968, 63 pp., $2.95). Warns against over-simplifying the Christian life in terms of rigid adherence to man-made custom and points the way to the achievement of maturity in the freedom of the Christian man to commit himself totally to God.

Paperbacks

Almost Twelve, by Kenneth N. Taylor (Tyndale House, 1968, 59 pp., $1). The facts of life from a Christian perspective presented tastefully, forthrightly, and in language that a twelve-year-old can understand. A great help to parents and children alike.

A Book of Protestant Saints, by Ernest Gordon (Prairie Press, 1968, 376 pp., $1.25). Reprint of a 1946 volume presenting sketches of the lives of some little-known Protestant saints.

Oswald Chambers: An Unbribed Soul, by D. W. Lambert (Oliphants, 1968, 95 pp., $.95). Sketchy biography of a man whose life and writings have spoken profoundly to the hearts of many Christians.

Discovery in Song, edited by Robert Heyer, S. J. (Paulist and Association, 1968, 138 pp., $1.95). One of a series, which also includes Discovery in Word, in which the editors seek to provide a tool through which young people can study the Christian faith in the light of current writers and popular music.

The Gospel of Baptism, by Richard Jungkuntz (Concordia, 1968, 137 pp., $2.50). A fresh treatment of the doctrine of baptism from the pen of a Missouri Synod Lutheran.

Death and Contemporary Man: The Crisis of Terminal Illness, by Carl G. Carlozzi (Eerdmans, 1968, 79 pp., $1.45). A former chaplain at a metropolitan hospital offers a helpful examination of the attitudes and behavior of patient, family, doctor, and pastor in the crisis of terminal illness.

The Christian and Politics, by Daniel R. Grant (Broadman, 1968, 127 pp., $1.95). This provocative study of the Christian’s role in the realm of practical politics calls him to use political power to show compassion for human needs.

She Shall Be Called Woman, by Frances Vander Velde (Kregel, 1968, 258 pp., $2.45). Revised edition of a series of character studies of Bible women, written by a mother of eight children.

Climbing Up the Mountain, Children, by H. S. Vigeveno (Regal, 1968, 184 pp., $.95). A lively, fresh interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Don’t let that title throw you.

This is being written in a Western city, but it could be written anywhere, for the background is two large daily papers and three weekly news magazines that I have read in the last few hours.

What about the news and what it tells us of the world in which we live? On every hand unrest, disorder, crime, violence, poverty; everywhere tensions between man and man, race and race, nation and nation.

As I reflected upon this panorama of one day’s events and one week’s news, there came to mind the words of Jehovah to the Prophet Isaiah: “But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot rest, and its waters toss up mire and dirt. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked” (Isa. 57:20, 21).

That the unregenerate world is acutely aware of the dangers of the existing turmoil is clearly shown by the fact that its leaders work so feverishly to reform and regulate society. There are those in the Church who see in this turmoil only evidence that “God is working out his purposes, often by revolutionary processes,” while other Christians attribute it all to Satan’s destructive hand at work across the world and feel they should redouble their own efforts to witness to the saving and transforming power of Christ as man’s only hope.

Can men reform the world? The answer is no!

Should God be blamed for the world’s wickedness? The answer again is no! True, he does work out his holy purposes despite the sinfulness of men; he even causes the wrath of man to praise him; but that does not alter the fact that the evil about us is the work of Satan in the hearts and lives of men. The Apostle John makes plain the vast distinction between Christians and the rest of the world: “We know that we are the children of God and that all the rest of the world around us is under Satan’s power and control” (1 John 5:19, The Living New Testament).

That the plight of the world is not hopeless is the reason for calling the Gospel the “Good News.” God has given man the solution to his fearful predicament and has committed to the Church the task of telling this Good News.

Strange that we find ourselves living in a time when the Church itself is stressing reform above redemption and is often found teaming up with the world in an effort to work out “solutions” for the world’s ills—without reference to Christ and his Cross.

Among the present-day theologians and teachers there are some, I feel, to whom God would say as he did through the Prophet Jeremiah, “Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets … who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets … who use their tongues and say, ‘Says the Lord.’ Behold I am against those who prophesy lying dreams … and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them; so they do not profit this people at all …” (Jer. 23:30, 31.)

Unquestionably one of the most serious of all problems is man’s insensitivity to sin, his unwillingness to admit that the virus of evil is working all through his actions and reactions, his thoughts and desires, and that its ultimate end is death. This resisting and rejecting of God is common to the human race. Nothing less than the miracle of God’s grace can enable us to see ourselves as we really are.

Not infrequently, perhaps, we Christians play a part in maintaining the general state of unrest by substituting activity for a quiet waiting on God. We forget the admonition: “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.’ And you would not …” (Isa. 30:15). We forget that God is not dependent on human activity or organization. Useful as these may be, they are worth little unless subordinated to the leading and power of the Holy Spirit.

Living as we do in days of tremendous change, we as individual Christians and the Church as a whole must remember that God has laid a Foundation that never changes, established a Cross that is ageless and a hope that never fades. Let us think upon God’s warning through Jeremiah: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.’ But they said, ‘We will not walk in it’ ” (Jer. 6:16).

In our frantic efforts to reach young people through new “forms” or “methods,” let us be sure that we do not try to change the message—that we are all sinners and that we need, and have, a Saviour!

Jerusalem was a city of turmoil in our Lord’s day. It was under the domination of Rome, and the prevailing political cliques and religious hypocrisy, together with the ever present sickness and poverty, contributed to fear and unrest. Over that city our Lord wept, for he knew that they were rejecting their Redeemer: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt. 23:37).

We can well imagine our Lord’s weeping in our own day over the world he created and came back to redeem, as he sees the conditions brought about by man’s refusal to accede to God’s way of redemption!

And how we Christians need to be reminded again and again of the peril of an empty profession. “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).

Profession, yes, but more is needed—there must be obedience in action!

In substituting philosophical presuppositions for revealed truth and rejecting the supernatural and the miraculous as did the Sadducees of old, the theological world and many within the Church are limiting the power of God and need to be reminded of our Lord’s words: “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29).

The turmoil of the world today is the result of spiritual darkness. Man continues to choose darkness rather than light in preferring man—his thoughts, opinions and works—to God.

But out of the turmoil there can come rest; out of chaos, peace; out of darkness, light; and out of sickness of soul and spirit the marvelous health of redeeming love. That is the message of the Gospel, which is man’s only hope now and for eternity.

L. NELSON BELL

The modern Christian is confronted by an ancient problem—how to live as a Christian in a non-Christian world. Through the centuries, people calling themselves Christians have devised a number of strategies for doing this. One of these is isolation, retreat from the world’s compelling and insidious allure. This has been the policy of monasticism, in which the religious live separated from the world. Various non-monastic groups throughout history have adopted a strategy of psychological isolation in an effort to maintain their identity within a hostile, contaminating world. Purity is sought through isolation.

A second strategy is accommodation. Out of a concern for relevance grows the idea that the world’s values and attitudes may not be so pagan after all, and that one can accommodate one’s faith to them. Some contemporary theologians have tried to secularize the faith in order to make it “relevant” to modern man. On another level, church members who know and care little about theology have attempted to cope with the challenge of modern life by accommodating their standards of behavior to those of the world. And so the norms of Christianity are gradually modified until in effect they are given up, and the Christian and non-Christian become indistinguishable. Relevance is sought by accommodation.

Another way of dealing with the world is belligerence. On the thesis that the best defense is a good offense, the world and its people are regarded by some with hostility and suspicion, and are considered fair targets for attack. The Christian who is not constantly outspoken in his criticism of the world and of non-Christian people not only may be regarded as in danger of being assimilated by it but also as a lukewarm compromiser. Reputation is maintained through belligerence.

The logical extension of this approach is the fourth strategy: Christianity’s conquest of the world. By whatever means possible—from the exercise of personal persuasion through political pressure and even military power when this is available—the Church is to extend itself over the earth and impose its will upon the nations. The social order is to be reconstructed, the ills and inequities of life eliminated, and a new order built through the imposition of Christian values and the enforcement of the Church’s decrees. The world is to be Christianized by conquest.

Quite different is the strategy of compartmentalization. The Christian copes with the conflict between the world in which he lives and the world into which his faith has admitted him by separating them. He lives in one on Sunday and in the other throughout the week and sees to it that never the twain shall meet. Inner peace is obtained through compartmentalization.

Although each of these approaches has a certain plausibility, none is a genuinely Christian way of dealing with the world. None follows the example and the teaching of Christ, whose strategy may be called “involvement.”

Jesus was involved with people in need; he met them where they lived. He ate and talked and mingled with them in their homes and shops and on the streets and in the countryside. Jesus neither physically nor psychologically isolated himself from the world. Yet he maintained his purity.

Today’s Christian neither can nor should live in isolation. His task is to relate to the unbelievers of this day as Jesus related to the pagans of his day. People need to know the Christian as a human being—who he is, how he feels, what he thinks about. Christians are too often seen by others as queer specimens of cultic isolation, rather than as fellow human beings with common thoughts and feelings.

The Christian, like Christ, must be careful to maintain his purity. This is no easy task in a permissive society where anything goes and one is constantly bombarded by multi-media sensual stimulation. It is far easier to withdraw behind a Pharisaical robe of piety, thank God that one is not like other men, and isolate oneself spiritually and psychologically from the rest of mankind. But this defeats the Christian’s mission in the world. He is to be Christlike in attitude and behavior, which means maintaining personal integrity while at the same time engaging in relationships with all kinds of people, so that in time of need the Christian can put the non-Christian in touch with the Christ who still goes about doing good.

In the second place, involvement as Jesus practiced it means being concerned enough to interact with the world on issues of current interest in an intelligent and responsive way, without accommodating one’s views to the point of compromise on basic issues. In all the conversations Jesus had, he dealt with issues with which people were concerned, matters that were a part of their experience. But always, rather than lowering his own standards or compromising his convictions, he sought to raise the sights of those he talked with, to cause them to face the issues of life in the light of eternal values.

One problem the modern Christian faces is that of differentiating between conviction and prejudice—between those matters that are essential parts of Christian faith and life and those aspects of thought and conduct that are culturally conditioned. Too often the Christian spins his wheels making major issues out of matters that are really inconsequential to anyone but himself and his narrowly inbred circle.

Jesus refused to become involved in peripheral issues. He would not arbitrate a quarrel over an earthly inheritance, but he told people how to inherit eternal life. He did not waste his time setting up straw men, or dealing with questions nobody was asking. He related the interests of everyday life to the basic problems of living and dying that are the ultimate concerns of people today as they were then. These are what the Gospel is all about. The Christian need not compromise to be relevant.

Jesus’ attitude was one of compassion and understanding, rather than of suspicion and belligerence. True, he spoke bluntly and acted vigorously. And he was not deceived by the conformity of Judas, the craftiness of Herod, or the latent virulence of the mob. But when he looked at people, he saw them “as sheep not having a shepherd.” And when he talked with individuals, including a rich and self-sufficient leader of the power structure who refused Jesus’ claims on his life, he loved them.

This attitude of acceptance does not mean that Jesus approved of wrongdoing or condoned sin. He had the marvelous faculty of loving sinners while hating the sin that bound them, and the still more marvelous ability to communicate these feelings. How else could he have won the promiscuous woman at the well, the notorious Mary Magdalene, or Zacchaeus, the dishonest tax-collector?

When the Christian today faces his non-Christian acquaintance, what attitude does he communicate? Too often, it seems to be one of mistrust or suspicion. People want and need to be accepted as people—for themselves, for what they are with all their faults and failures. Only when we accept them this way will they be able to realize that Christ also will accept them just as they are, and transform them into what they are capable of being and what in their hearts they want to be. How many hungry hearts, how many inquiring minds, how many anxious spirits have looked for acceptance by a Christian acquaintance, only to be greeted by a barrier of misunderstanding and unspoken condemnation? Involvement means looking at the non-Christian world with compassion and love, not hostility and belligerence.

And then, involvement surely means something other than conquest. The idea of victory over enemies has always appealed to the natural man. The disciples of Jesus’ day shared the widespread Jewish expectation that Messiah would lead an insurrection against the Romans and re-establish the Jewish state. But Jesus did not operate this way. He came not as a conqueror but as a Redeemer. He sought not to impose his will on men but to transform them from within so they would choose his way. His modus operandi went contrary to the current of his times (and ours). He chose the path of peaceful witness rather than violent revolution. To attempt to reconstruct him in the image of a revolutionary intent upon remaking society, by force if necessary, is to read history through the spectacles of contemporary bias.

The harvest, and the burning of the tares—the revolution that will usher in the golden age about which men have always dreamed—will be accomplished by the angels of God when God’s time comes to bring this era to a close. Until then, the wheat and the tares grow together, and the wheat has no mandate to choke out the tares. The mandate, to change the metaphor, is to infiltrate the enemy forces with the transforming dynamic of the Gospel, so that some who now follow the prince of this world will defect to the Prince of Peace.

Finally, involvement cannot be effective so long as the Christian compartmentalizes his life and thought. Jesus has provided us with an example of a thoroughly integrated rather than fragmented personality. He did not behave one way in the synagogue and another on the street. He did not follow one set of rules on the Sabbath and a different one the rest of the week. He was surely the most consistent person who ever lived.

It may be that compartmentalization is one of the major defects of contemporary Christendom. Christian people seem to have a way of segmenting themselves, so that what they hear and say in church has little relation to the rest of their lives. His faith teaches the Christian to be honest; but he neglects to report some extra income when making out Form 1040. His faith tells him to practice sexual morality, in attitude as well as in act. But in front of his television set he laughs at the double entendres and leers at the girls.

His faith commands him to love God with all his being and to love his neighbor as himself. But too often he treats that neighbor, particularly if he happens to be of a different race, as if he were a “lesser breed without the law,” or a “thing” to be exploited for his own benefit. He conveniently forgets that Jesus’ own illustration of the neighbor went across racial lines as he spoke of the Samaritan who came to the aid of a Jew.

In short, Christianity too often has become a Sunday sabbatical, an escape from reality, rather than an integral, all pervasive part of daily life. No wonder the modern pagan sees the institutional church as irrelevant and many of its adherents as hypocrites.

The best way the Christian has of coping with the non-Christian world in which he lives is to be involved as Jesus was involved: not isolated, but in contact; not compromising, but concerned; not belligerent, but compassionate; not conquering, but transforming; not compartmentalized, but integrated. This is no easy task. It requires qualities of character, and understanding above the ordinary, and may well bring antagonism and persecution from an anti-Christian, revolutionary age.

But the divine call cannot be gainsaid. Endowed with the mind and heart which God has given, fortified by continuous communication with God through his Word, prayer, and the Holy Spirit, strengthened by the companionship of others of like precious faith, and invigorated by the joyful expectancy of his return, the Christian can engage in this kind of effective Christian living, even in today’s aggressively non-Christian world. In this way he will fulfill the desire Christ expressed in his prayer for his followers:

“I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth. As thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

There is an intimate relation between body and soul, between the spiritual and the physical, and the Church must concern itself with helping the whole man for whom Christ died. Here it had better not follow the suggestions of secular man, nor even of those within the Church who find their answers outside Holy Scripture. To fulfill its God-given mission the Church will have to remember the basic premises set down by the Saviour of the Church.

1. The Word is the means. Although Harvey Cox asserts that it will no longer do to say with the Lutheran and Reformed confessions that the marks of the Church are the teaching of the pure Word and the administration of the sacraments (The Secular City, 1965, p. 145), this is precisely what creates and maintains the Church. Article VII of the Augsburg Confession says:

The church comes into being and is maintained in no other way than through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. Because the Gospel in Word and sacrament effectively creates and preserves faith, the church will be found wherever the Gospel is preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.

God, who sacrificed his Son for man’s salvation and decreed that man is saved by faith in his Son, graciously decided to lead man to Christ by means of his Word. The Apostle Paul put it this way: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:19).

This does not minimize the importance of the Christian life. Paul wrote the Christians of Corinth: “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men” (2 Cor. 3:2). Yet our Christian life in itself never converts anyone. Arthur M. Vincent in The Christian Witness calls it “pre-witness.” The World Congress on Evangelism (1966) rightly spoke of Christian love as a fruit of the Gospel but insisted that without the verbalized Gospel there can be no evangelism. Paul speaks of the Word as dynamite (Rom. 1:16), and the Prophet Isaiah assures us that God’s Word will accomplish his purposes (Isa. 55:11).

2. The Gospel is the focus. There is general agreement in the churches on the importance of the Gospel. Differences arise, however, over the definition of the Gospel.

To some, proclaiming the Gospel is telling people what they should do, how they ought to live. Others feel that every social activity by Christians automatically becomes the Gospel. Still others equate a discussion of moral and ethical questions (international affairs, campus morals, crime) with the proclamation of the Gospel.

According to Scripture, the Gospel is the “Good News” of all God has done for man in Christ.

As soon as Adam and Eve had sinned, God in his grace promised them a Saviour through the woman’s seed (Gen. 3:15). Salvation through this seed was promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants (Gen. 12:3; 22:18; 28:14; cf. Gal. 3:16). Isaiah and other prophets elaborated on what this Messiah would mean to God’s people (Isa. 53 f.). In the fullness of time God sent this promised Seed of the woman, put under the law to redeem those under the law (Gal. 4:4, 5).

Redemption includes deliverance from the devil (Heb. 2:14, 15), and the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13), and death (2 Tim. 1:10). It means living under forgiveness as God’s children (Gal. 3:26) and enjoying God’s care, guidance, and protection (Rom. 8:28; 1 Pet. 5:7). It includes heirship (Gal. 4:7), an inheritance reserved in heaven (1 Pet. 1:4), and a final transfer from this world of sin to the glories of heaven, which will be enjoyed forever.

The apostles assure us that redemption is for all men (1 John 2:2), all classes and races (Rom. 10:12), and that all these blessings of Christ’s redemption may be appropriated by faith (Rom. 3:28; John 3:16; Eph. 2:8).

3. The spiritual must have priority. Mrs. Madelyn Murray, well-known for her role in leading the courts to declare against formal prayer in the public schools, remarked: “An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church.” The Christian believes that both hospitals and churches should be built, but that churches are more important. The spiritual must have priority. But where the spiritual is given true priority, there the material needs of man will be met also.

The conviction that everything in this world is transitory (2 Pet. 3:10) and that heaven is eternal (Rev. 21) underlay the apostles’ great concern for the spiritual. At the same time, their love for the whole man also came to expression in a concern for the poor, the suffering, and outcasts.

4. The clergy have a particular task. Involving the laity in witness evangelism and other church functions is not an option for the Church. The clergy can never begin to do the job alone, nor is this the will of God (1 Pet. 2:9). Christ showed the way by enlisting the seventy, training them, sending them out, and having them report back (Luke 10).

Determined to abide by their assigned task, the apostles insisted, “We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the Word” (Acts 6:4). The next sentence adds, “And the saying pleased the whole multitude.” The chapter indicates that it also pleased the Lord.

Would it perhaps please God and the people if the clergy of today would carry out this divinely assigned task, trusting God to work through his people for man’s spiritual and physical needs?

The question Jesus asked the Jews about John the Baptist’s authority can well be asked about another matter, speaking in tongues: Is it from heaven or from men? Is it a manifestation of divine power through the Holy Spirit, or is it merely the result of human emotion and religious ecstasy?

According to those who defend speaking in tongues as a legitimate charismatic gift bestowed by the Holy Spirit, it is also a distinctive sign given to God’s Church as a fulfillment of divine promises (Joel 2:28, 29). To them it is a renewal of the Pentecostal experience, described in Acts 2, and is in agreement with the practice of the church in Corinth as recorded by Paul in First Corinthians 14. The attempt to arrive at an answer to this delicate and increasingly controversial question requires, first, a comparison of these two texts on which believers base their claims.

The Key Passages

Glossolalia is a Greek compound noun: glossa, tongue, and lalia, talk or speech, hence speaking in or with tongues. We read that on the day of Pentecost, the disciples “began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). That these heterais glossais (other tongues) were foreign but known languages is evident; they did not have to be translated in order to be understood by the multitude. Three times the record says that the people heard the preaching by the disciples “in their own languages,” for which the words dialectos and glossais are interchangeably used. Clearly the “tongues” at Pentecost were intelligible speech in a variety of languages, and there was no need of either translation or interpretation.

As we turn to First Corinthians 14, the predominant word is glossa, talk. However, this usage is clearly distinct from the usage in Acts 2, referring to an entirely different type of speech. The King James Version consistently inserts before “tongues” the word “unknown,” but this is not found in the Greek text (1 Cor 14:4, 13, 14, 19, 27). That the most fitting translation of glossa here is that of the New English Bible—“language of ecstasy” (v. 2) or ecstatic “utterance”—will be shown later.

The reason for this distinction is rather simple. Paul goes to great lengths to hold before the church of Corinth the fact that their “tongues” are not intelligible speech, only ecstatic babbling. Consequently, the difference between the two kinds of speaking in tongues is twofold: the foreign tongues of Acts 2 were intelligible speech and could be understood directly by the congregation. The ecstatic utterance could not be understood by the people, and thus required an interpreter. “Interpretation of tongues” was a separate spiritual gift. The speaking in foreign tongues in Acts 2 represents one gift only, but the “tongues” in First Corinthians 14 required two distinct gifts: speaking in tongues or ecstatic utterance, and the “interpretation of tongues” (1 Cor 12:10). It is also noteworthy that Peter quotes Joel 2:28 ff. as being fulfilled at Pentecost (Acts 2:17), but Paul does not use that text in support of tongues-speaking at Corinth.

Understanding The Terms

One reason for the present confusion about tongues is an inaccuracy in expression found in most of the older versions of Scripture, and even in some modern ones. The word “interpreter” is often used instead of the correct word, “translator.” A translator is one who translates from one language into another, while an interpreter is one who explains or expounds either law or religion, not necessarily in connection with a foreign language. Although both the Hebrew and Aramaic as well as the Greek language in the Bible make a clear distinction between these terms, many Bible translators have failed to preserve that distinction.

A good example in the Old Testament is the meeting in Egypt of Joseph and his brethren. As they reasoned among themselves in their mother tongue, Hebrew, “they did not know that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them” (Gen 42:23, KJV, RSV). This ambiguous rendering is incorrect, for that official was obviously not an interpreter but a translator whose job it was to translate from Hebrew into Egyptian and vice versa. Thus the text correctly translated should read: “for there was a translator between them.” This agrees with the Hebrew liṣ, which means to translate, not to interpret.

How specific the Hebrew—and for that matter the Aramaic—terminology of the Old Testament is can be shown from a number of other passages. While in prison Joseph was asked to make known the meaning of his fellow prisoners’ dreams. Here the text uses, not liṣ, to translate, but pāthar, to interpret, to expound, to explain the meaning of (Gen. 40:8, 16, 22; 41:8, 12, 13). The Septuagint uses the corresponding Greek term, sunkrisis, to interpret. The same distinction is made in the Aramaic section of the Book of Daniel, where the Aramaic pešar is used thirty-one times, for the prophet did not translate from one language into another but interpreted dreams and the handwriting on the wall (Dan 2:4–7:28).

In the New Testament the distinction between translate and interpret is continued through the use of different Greek verbs. However, in the older English versions these distinctions are not always so obvious as they should be. In Matthew 1:23; Mark 1:41; 15:22, 34; John 1:41, and Acts 4:36, there appear several Hebrew and/or Aramaic names and their equivalents in English. However, the King James Version consistently mistranslates: “which is interpreted.” A personal name could eventually have its meaning “interpreted,” but since these are actual translations from one language into another the texts should read: “which is translated.”

The principal verbs for translate and interpret to be distinguished in New Testament usage are methremēneuō and hermēneuō. The Greek noun hermēneuō appears in our English hermeneutics, the science of interpretation. And the verb meaning to interpret is what is used in First Corinthians 12:10; 14:13, 26, and 28, a clear sign that the speaking in tongues at Corinth was not the natural talent or the charismatic gift of speaking foreign languages, for which no translation was required. The tongues-speaking in Corinth was ecstatic utterance or babbling. To be understood by others it had to be interpreted, but not translated.

This fundamental distinction between translation and interpretation as observed in both Testaments should be a strong enough argument to dismiss “tongues” in the sense of First Corinthians 14 as intelligible speech or as “foreign languages.”

Paul’S Appraisal Of Tongues

The Apostle Paul found himself in a delicate position. He could not discriminate against one of the charismatic gifts in which he himself shared abundantly (1 Cor. 14:18); neither could he approve of the way it was used in the church at Corinth nor the importance placed upon it. Therefore he proceeded carefully, tactfully, and diplomatically in a balanced appraisal of the gift. He did this in a masterful way by comparing “tongues” with “prophecy,” which resulted in a downgrading of speaking in tongues.

To say that Paul limited himself to arguments about the kind, of speech in the church at Corinth is a serious mistake. That question became almost secondary. For Paul the issues are much larger: What benefits, if any, does the Church derive from this gift? Do tongues advance spiritual fellowship? Do they result in a deeper understanding of Christ, truth, and doctrine? What about active moral and intellectual participation in worship by the person who is exercising the gift? What communication between the Church and the world is created through tongues? Are tongues as they were used at Corinth a sign of Christian maturity, or do they indicate spiritual immaturity? Only as we study the problem of tongues in this larger spiritual context will we be able to understand Paul’s position and conclusions.

Unfortunately, instead of engaging in a step-by-step discussion we have to be satisfied with a skeleton list of points of comparison and contrast, primarily with the other and greater gift, prophecy.

1. Whom do the two gifts benefit, and how?

The man who speaks with tongues speaks the language of ecstasy (1 Cor. 14:2, 4, NEB); he does not speak to men; nobody understands him; he speaks in the Spirit, consoles himself.

The man who prophesies preaches the word of God; he speaks to men; he builds up others; he encourages and consoles others (1 Cor. 14:35, NEB).

Paul’s conclusion is: Speaking with tongues benefits only the individual, and is of no use to the congregation.

2. What spiritual benefits do the gifts offer?

While prophesying brings some revelation of truth, some knowledge in spiritual things, some message from God, or some teaching about the Christian life (14:6, Phillips), tongues do not supply any of these spiritual needs of the congregation, nor of the world.

3. Are the manifestations comprehensible?

If spoken sound has no precise meaning, it is spoken “into the air” (14:6–9). Since tongues cannot be understood without interpretation, the Apostle indicates that this gift is inferior to that of prophecy.

4. Do “tongues” advance spiritual fellowship?

Paul states: “But if the sounds of the speaker’s voice mean nothing to me, I am a foreigner to him, and he is a foreigner to me” (14:11, Phillips). The simple conclusion that tongues do not produce communication with others even in the church is of serious consequence for the believers.

5. Do tongues promote conscious religious life?

With this point begin Paul’s most damaging arguments against the Corinthian use of tongues. Even praying in tongues becomes a subconscious act, to the exclusion of conscious moral participation of man’s mental faculties. “If I use such language in my prayer, the spirit in me prays, but my intellect lies fallow” (14:14, NEB). It means that man makes his emotions the basis of his belief and religious experience. This relationship is inferior to the conscious relationship of the Spirit-filled mind with God, truth, and man.

6. Are tongues of benefit to the world?

Having shown that praying in tongues was not even understandable to the believers, Paul now shows that likewise it does no good to those outside the Church. The “outsider” can’t even add his amen to it. At this juncture Paul draws a conclusion that, though figurative, indicates the value he placed on praying in tongues in public: rather five intelligible words than 10,000 in the language of ecstasy. It proves the Apostle’s conviction that purely emotional worship has little value when compared with conscious, well-balanced, fruitful worship.

7. Do tongues signify Christian maturity?

Are ecstatic utterance really a sign of a deep religious experience, of mature spiritual life and a morally responsible church? Paul’s answer is no. “Do not be childish, my friends! Be as innocent of evil as babes, but at least be grown-up in your thinking” (14:20, NEB). A truly stern rebuke for a church that considered itself privileged on account of this gift: “We are counted as being childish and immature!”

We arrive, then, at these conclusions:

1. The phenomenon in Acts 2 is different from that in First Corinthians 14; the first was intelligible speech in actual foreign languages, the second ecstatic utterance or babbling.

2. The distinction is obvious through Hebrew and Greek terminology. The languages at Pentecost could be understood without translation; ecstatic utterance made no sense unless interpreted, which required a second gift.

3. Paul’s presentation in First Corinthians 14 hardly leaves anything in favor of tongues. Speaking in tongues in public is lowered to the level of almost complete uselessness, for it does not promote spiritual fellowship, is a sign of spiritual immaturity rather than of completeness in Christ, and substitutes subconscious emotional religion for conscious moral experience.

Laudable as any sincere effort may be to promote true Christian belief in a decadent world, speaking with tongues seems to be highly overrated as a means of making known salvation as a transforming experience, involving the whole man, including his mind. Paul’s concern for the apostolic Church has also a definite message for the Christian Church as a whole in our days. Any doctrine, any teaching of the Church, though right in itself, can be wrongly elevated to a position it does not deserve. Points of secondary importance can become so prominent in the opinion of certain groups that they are presented as if they were the most essential parts of the Gospel, and the divine credentials of those particular groups. There must be a balanced message, and its center is man’s salvation through Jesus Christ. Over-accentuation of any doctrine is a distortion of the Gospel. This is what Paul tried to counteract when he discussed speaking in tongues.

Slow Advent and Christmas: TIME

In silver candy seeds

worked into shortbread

a manger and

pentangle star,

precedent

for grit-sweet dread

in my known danger now, in war.

The all-enabling Infant “lulled”

in romance stanzas

is set amidst stagehands’

hay and incense;

yet (my heart sings)

there is a breath of

animal realness and

richesse.

Stitched in wool

on kindergarten paper and

in electrical dangles, glow

the emblems (to the doomed

young, the strange,

visitors, and shoppers).

All try and fail.

And my whole

being swells to cry out; I too

must desecrate

the holy hush to trumpet

joy. A newborn

new Being-in

my keeping? so

far, His

coming. so

tiny to all

my anticipating sense of

majesty. yet

through the long patience, slowly the

marvel, the

indomitable coming:

a steel-bright-faced

ready-for-gallows One

on. on. into glory. and His

place of my being to be

His as will every

place.

—MARGARET AVISON

After the fanciful reconstructions of the life of Jesus by Strauss, Renan, and other nineteenth-century writers, Martin Kähler proposed a new theory of history and faith. This theory has been adopted in the main by Barth, Bultmann, and many contemporaries, and therefore demands attention.

The motivation of this new theory of history was the preservation of the Christian faith despite the inescapable conclusion that the Bible was untrustworthy. Kähler first showed that reconstructing a Life of Jesus is impossible because the Synoptics recount neither his boyhood nor more than a fraction of his ministry. Conceded. But Kähler went further and also denied that the gospel accounts or any part of them could furnish, as one writer has put it, even “a minimum of historically certified facts … to support Christian faith, to give it authority, and to provide faith with its invulnerable basis and content” (Carl E. Braaten, The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ).

Kähler’s defense of this radical exclusion of history from faith is that historical verification of any account of Jesus automatically substitutes positivistic historicism for dogmatics.

Although Kähler, Barth, Bultmann, and all other members of this school of theology place great emphasis on the notion of “scientific” history, we cannot here go into the immense subject of historiography. Let it be noted, however, that their argument is fallacious because it assumes that positivistic historicism is the only acceptable form of historiography. No note is taken of those professional historiographers, such as Croce and Collingwood, who defend the autonomy of history against its positivistic reduction to natural science. This is not to say that R. G. Collingwood has satisfactorily solved the problem of New Testament faith; but so long as there are several theories of historical methodology, it is fallacious to argue that historical verification must be positivistic historicism.

Under the compulsion to avoid positivism these theologians have constructed a type of faith that not only does not need historical support but is actually damaged by historical support. Note how Hans Conzelmann is disturbed when the results of archaeology lead the common people to conclude that “the Bible is right after all.” He does not want people to have this kind of corroboration. The motive alleged in this theological line is that faith cannot, simply cannot, depend on the fluctuating and problematic results of historical research. As Braaten again says, “neither the basis nor the content of faith can be secured” in this manner.

These theologians claim that the doctrine of justification by faith requires this rejection of history. We are justified by faith alone completely apart from the works of exacting historical investigation. Not only historical investigation: the same argument implies that faith cannot depend on the scholarly works of dogmatics, which we must prevent history from replacing. Otherwise the learned historian or theologian would be in a better spiritual position than a simple Christian. Reliance on any such works would make the authority of the Gospel contingent upon the authority of scholarship. Faith, says Kähler, has no extrinsic authority—neither a verbally inspired Bible, the Church and its creeds, subjective experience, nor scientific history.

This point of view, so widespread today, can be shown, I believe, to be based on a confusion, a confusion that is basically a misunderstanding of faith. Under the spell of Kierkegaard and later existentialism, the dialectical theologians reduce faith to the purely subjective operations of the mind and neglect the objective content. What our contemporaries talk about is essentially different from the sola fide of Luther, Calvin, and, may I add, Turretin. The Reformers knew what they believed. The modern faith has neither “what” nor knowledge.

These new theologians’ appeal to justification by faith alone is thus seen to be irrelevant. Justification is a judicial pronouncement by God. Of course, scholarly activity is neither the cause, the basis, the content, nor the authority for this judicial sentence. But this divine action has nothing to do with the matter at hand. To talk about justification is to wander from the subject. The subject is not justification but the nature of faith. “Justification by X” demands an explanation of the “X.” Does “X” depend on history? If it does, this “X” is still the means of justification.

Now, despite the assertions of mysticism and existentialism, faith cannot be an empty belief in a vacuous nothing. So-called encounter is simply not faith. It is not Islamic faith, it is not Christian faith, it is not any kind of faith. It is simply an uninterpreted experience, like a pain or other uncognitive emotion. Mere encounter is not a belief at all.

Undoubtedly Christianity requires a subjective, psychological act of believing; but the faith is what is believed. Unless a person believes something, he does not believe. He has no faith. The fundamental difficulty with much modern preaching is that it allows faith no object or content.

Bultmann asserts, “Faith does not at all arise from the acceptance, of historical facts.” Taken at face value this would mean that the passive and active obedience of Jesus Christ is of no importance. It is not necessary to know even that Jesus died. Jesus’ death itself is a historical fact, or at least an alleged fact.

Yet even Bultmann seems to allow that the historical fact of Jesus’ death plays some role in Christianity. But if so, the principle of excluding history is breached, in this one particular. And in many others with it. For if Jesus died, he must have lived. Can one learn that a man lived without some kind of historical evidence? Furthermore, since Pilate and the Pharisees died, too, the death of Jesus, if it is to be of any importance, must in some way have been different from theirs. Where can one discover this difference? One can learn something of this difference from what Jesus himself said about his death. An orthodox Christian may indeed rely on what Paul said; but since Bultmann reduces New Testament theology to the ungrounded imaginations of the early Christians, he, far more than the orthodox, must discover the actual words of the Jesus of history—unless he is willing to put his faith in Pilate or a Pharisee. Historical research is therefore indispensable to the Christian faith.

Does this mean that the learned historian is in a better position than the simple Christian? Well, it certainly does, if we add the phrase, “other things being equal.” Naturally, learned historians may not be Christians at all. But other things being equal, the more one knows about Christ, the better off he is. Christ’s final command was to teach all things whatsoever I have commanded you. He did not put ignorance and knowledge on a par. He never commended little faith in comparison with extensive faith.

When the dialectical theologians decry historical material as furnishing a basis for faith, or as giving faith its authority, or as providing faith with a support, they confuse the issue; at least they confuse the issue if these phrases denote something different from the content of faith. Faith, as said above, must have content; and Christian faith has as part of its content the words and deeds of Jesus. These words and deeds, including his death, are learned and believed only through historical reports, that is, the Gospels. Christianity, unlike Buddhism, is a religion to which actual historical events are essential. Dispose of the history and one disposes of Christianity with it. Kähler therefore has invented a pseudo-problem and solves it by eliminating faith.

watching snow

just like this the manna fell

not in loaves but broken broken

honey-sweet into a wildness

slowly slowly from some flour-cloud

for the faithful early early

kneeling for that first communion

LOIS HOADLEY DICK

There is something impertinent about writing for fellow ministers on “the importance of keeping spiritually renewed and refreshed in mind as well as in spirit.” The need is undeniable. But who feels qualified to exhort busy men to still more effort?

Let us then take refuge immediately behind a row of books—four well-known and rewarding volumes that most men of fifty will have within reach.

E. F. Scott’s The Fourth Gospel was a seed-book, and still after sixty years it is stimulating, provoking, delightful to read, sending one back to John if only to refute Scott!

James Moffatt’s Introduction to the New Testament was monumental, summarizing a hundred books, and citing (surely) a thousand, setting all New Testament study on higher ground. It is a weird collection of the radical, the fantastic, the illuminating, all possible and impossible theories, and brilliant suggestions, and it provided the groundwork for the New Testament’s first great breakthrough into modern speech. It is superseded now, except as a history of New Testament studies, but no one will ever measure what modern Bible-lovers owe to James Moffatt.

R. W. Dale’s Atonement was a teething ring for many evangelicals, a fairly stiff introduction to theological ways, enlightening as a scriptural survey and philosophical enough to persuade more than one earnest young man that the “old, old Gospel” was intellectually respectable. Though dated now, in its day it was a magnificent protest against subjective theories of the Cross.

J. S. Stewart’s A Man in Christ was a brook by the traveler’s way: rich, refreshing, modern, scholarly, heart-warming. Taken up for study, it served for devotion, most of all perhaps by keeping Paul close to the life he really lived, in all its depth, struggle, and achievement, instead of making him a theological academic.

These four great books, to which (whether we have read them or not) we are all indebted, through our teachers or through other books, have one thing in common: each was written in the pastorate.

They were all manse-produced—thought out on the parish streets, jotted down on doorsteps, researched in the manse study or the living room with the children calling outside the window and the doorbell ringing. E. F. Scott down at quiet Prestwick beside the western sea; R. W. Dale in the midst of an English metropolis teeming with problems and politics; Moffatt along the silvery Tay outside developing Dundee; James Stewart in haughty, demanding Edinburgh.

These four books made three important points: (1) It is possible to study in the pastorate. (2) One strong stimulus to study is writing. It is a craft to wrestle with, but a ministry too, and one without parish boundaries. A word with a local editor about topical matters seen by alert Christian eyes; a magazine article tailored to the intended readership; a paper thoroughly prepared for the local fraternal organization—these may provide the spur to read and think in ways the sermon never demands. (3) One remarkable feature of these four books is the way they relate theology to the living Church, to living, breathing Christians. Stewart declared it an advantage to be writing of Paul amid the pressures of a busy city pastorate. Scott mediated to Britain the radical conclusions of Continental theology, but transmuted into positive, illuminating thought, because he knew the pressing needs of a worshiping church. Dale saw that the doctrine of the Cross must be tested on the consciences of ordinary Christians, and insisted that to be apostolic it must be preachable. Moffatt determined to give his people the Word of God in their own tongue—Scottish accent and all! We would be spared a lot of theological nonsense if every textbook were tested in a living congregation. It is in the pulpit, and the minister’s study, not in the college lecture room, that Christian doctrine comes alive.

Four manse-produced books of such scholarship and power may perhaps pitch the key a little too high for ordinary mortal ministers like ourselves. Let us instead ask what inhibits diligent study in the ministry, and answer: pride, fear, or contempt.

Some might add, lack of time. But what we call lack of time for study is merely a different scale of priorities; if we think study important enough, we leave out something else.

Pride inhibits study whenever, by some astonishing inversion of real education, men come out of seminary thinking they know everything. On the one hand, they have reached assured conclusions on all important questions; they know the right reference books, where to find authoritative, “sound” answers—and that is enough. On the other hand, a few years in an average church convince them they are already so far ahead of their people intellectually that they need stretch no further. Such an attitude of mind is the best possible proof, not of too much education, but of the incompleteness of education. Years spent in school may teach a man the questions to ask, the techniques for finding answers, a few examples of how it is done, and a mental discipline; then it takes the rest of life to fill the gaps, and to digest the results into an order one can communicate. All the while thought and faith move forward. Only the half-educated imagine themselves too well taught to need more.

Fear inhibits study: fear of being disturbed, fear of new ideas, new questions, and especially new denials. We call it fear of wasting time on this shallow modern stuff, but it is not really that at all. We read enough modern stuff if we already agree with it—looking for new and “with-it” ways of saying what we have long been accustomed to think. But to wrestle with something we do not like, to grapple with questions and approaches and theories and the intolerable new jargon we temperamentally react against—this needs intellectual courage. To think out once again what you thought you had got clear once and for all demands an honesty of mind that gets increasingly rare within the Church. Yet not to be sure enough of your convictions to give a fair hearing to the opposite point of view is weakness indeed; and to evade that point of view because it disturbs, upsets, or frightens is just cowardice. And it reveals a lack of faith in truth’s wonderful capacity to defend itself.

Contempt inhibits study when we think meanly of our hearers. Sometines one wonders what sort of people the television networks think viewers are. Often one wonders what sort of people some politicians think we are. And sometimes, sitting in the pew, one wonders what sort of people the preacher thinks we are. Does he seriously imagine that we did not know, and could not see for ourselves, what he has labored for twenty minutes to make plainer to himself? Does he think the school teacher behind me, the engineer in the back pew, the minister’s widow across the aisle, even the bright sixth-grader up in the balcony, cannot see the weakness of that argument, the enormousness of those assumptions, the unfairness of that special pleading, the other, very different point of view that ought to have been mentioned?

Often one has to admit that earnestness is not enough!

Carlyle speaks of theologies, rubrics, surplices, and “this enormous and repeated thrashing of the straw.” Does not sermon preparation sometimes descend to mere imposition of a new pattern on the same limited assortment of ideas? The arrangement, the headings, the text are new, but the content is a reshuffling of familiar themes, so that after ten minutes the congregation has caught up and passed, and can see just where the preacher will end! It is no answer to say that this is what our people want—the simple and familiar. That may be true. Sometimes it is also why they stop coming.

Surely we have now gone far enough in meeting the supposed demand for simplicity and brevity, and are reaping the result in stunted minds and shallow spiritual experience. If the pulpit fare is thin gruel, however attractively served, it is just not worth the trouble (and the expense, these days) to attend service. The old principles still hold: Every sermon must have a clearly defined purpose; plus information, or illumination, or both; and some part, at least six inches over the hearers’ heads, to make them grow. That means digging new veins all the time, reading ahead of our best people.

Three practical steps will aid perseverance:

1. Form a small, intensive seminar group within the church, prepared for discussion, instruction, argument, investigation, on any serious subject—and then keep up with them!

2. Choose one Scripture book; assemble a dozen or so major tools; and spend a whole winter’s private study wrestling with its problems, translating, comparing, absorbing its meaning. (One of my most rewarding experiences was a winter so spent on First John. An almost unknown book slowly came alive as an “Open letter to evangelicals” if ever there was one—relevant, searching, forceful, exceptionally modern. The same thing has happened with Acts, with Romans and Galatians, and with Ephesians.) Later, perhaps a man might preach through the chosen book, or work through it with his study-circle: but not at the time, because that diverts attention and imposes a time schedule. At first, absorb, wrestle, surrender, and let overflow what will.

3. A man should have his own special line—a particular doctrine, biblical theme, period of history, area of Christian concern—on which he reads everything he can lay his hands on. He will become in his immediate circle the expert on that subject. He may become a bore, but for himself, and for what he contributes, it will be worth it.

Behind all we have urged lies theological truth. We of the reformed tradition believe in justification by faith. We believe, that is, in the communication of Christian life—not just socially, in the living fellowship of the church; nor just sacramentally, in the performance of holy rituals; nor just miraculously and mystically within the soul; but in all these ways, conditioned first by faith in a message, a truth, a testimony—a Gospel preached and understood, accepted and believed. Whether we like it or not, this gives a certain intellectual cast to evangelicalism. It demands that we be as clear and comprehensible, as lucid and logical, as eloquent and effective, as well informed and well prepared, as we can possibly be to mediate the saving truth to the minds of men in words and ideas they can respect and understand. For by belief in the things preached they are to be saved.

Several gospel passages have to do with barrenness—that fatal blight upon ministers and churches alike. Some of them suggest that the cure for barrenness may be to abide more closely in Christ the Vine, to pray more earnestly, to obey more carefully, to confess the sin that robs our work of power. But one parable insists that the cure for the barren tree is—simply and bluntly—to “dung it about.” The cause of barrenness may sometimes be not carelessness, or prayerlessness, or some unspecified and undiscoverable sin, or even laziness, but just plain emptiness, spiritual starvation in the preacher. Sermons can for a long time be constructed like mass-produced chairs, out of pieces shaped by other men—and how grateful we all are for such help. But great preaching is the controlled and directed overflow of a full, rich mind, kindled by truth and impelled to share what it has found. When the mind is empty, the tap drips pathetically.

We are, after all, scribes of the kingdom, who bring forth from our treasure things new and old. We owe it to our call to continue training to the end; we owe it to our people to offer the best that they can take; we owe it to ourselves not to stand still intellectually while the years pass; we owe it to our Lord, who is the living Truth, made unto us wisdom, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.