Evangelicals: A Vital Force

The New Evangelical Theology, by Millard Erickson (Revell, 1968, 250 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Richard N. Longenecker, associate professor of New Testament history and theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Writing in the popular idiom, Millard Erickson, chairman of the Department of Bible and Philosophy at Wheaton College (Illinois), has done for “new evangelicalism” what William Hordern, his doctoral mentor, did for the various forms of neo-liberalism and neo-orthodoxy in A Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology. And like Hordern’s book, The New Evangelical Theology ought to be on the required reading list of every Christian layman and beginning theological student who wants to understand the theological lines and issues as they are drawn today.

After broadly describing the threat to orthodoxy that has arisen during the past two centuries in the natural sciences, philosophy, and biblical criticism, Dr. Erickson focuses his attention upon five men who have been in large measure the spokesmen of new evangelicalism since 1946: Harold J. Ockenga, Carl F. H. Henry, Edward J. Carnell, Bernard Ramm, and Billy Graham. A few others are identified, but only in passing. Taking these five as the forefront of a distinguishable movement, Erickson describes their motivating concerns, their commitment to Scripture as formal authority, their doctrinal system, the type of apologetic they employ, and their efforts to develop a Christian ethic. He concludes by speaking of trends within the movement, reactions from the right and left, strengths and weaknesses, and the future.

His thesis is that new evangelicalism is a vital factor on the American scene today; that it is carrying on both the content and the spirit of vital orthodoxy of an earlier day; and that it continues to emphasize scholarship and a positive statement of its position, and accepts a certain latitude within its ranks—while, at the same time, it deals with some problems that continue to cling to it and also with certain issues it has not yet adequately faced—then its future should be one of continuing strength and growth. Erickson develops his thesis fairly and well.

One point that I found somewhat disturbing was his use of “evangelical.” Now certainly this word has a diversity of meaning in the world of theology. But in America it seems to be (or, at least, should be) used with two somewhat varying ideas in mind: (1) a set of concerns and attitudes related to the needs of the present day, in continuity with vital orthodoxy of the past, and generally distinguishable from later fundamentalism, coupled with an orthodox Christology and an orthodox view of the Scriptures; and (2) a somewhat loosely fitted system of conservative theology, probably “a Calvinism [more] of mood than of system,” to be distinguished in part from such other systems as Reformed, Lutheran, Wesleyan, dispensational, or Pentecostal. Erickson uses ‘evangelical’ to mean both, ostensibly because the men who he is presenting are evangelical by both definitions (as he himself probably is also). But these definitions, though certainly not mutually exclusive, cannot be assumed to be automatically identical. Is it not somewhat misleading to speak of new evangelicalism primarily along the lines of the second definition, as do chapters 3 (“Doctrinal Content”) and 4 (“Apologetic Orientation”)? New evangelicalism has greater doctrinal diversity within it than is here represented. Although I myself follow Erickson in his doctrinal explication (though not his apologetic), I wonder what a new evangelical (as in definition one) who is also Reformed, for example, will make of that third chapter. Would it not be better to define new evangelicalism along the lines of the first definition, and recognize the second as a sub-category within the movement? I propose that Erickson really has two topics going: (1) new evangelicalism, definition one, which he treats in chapters 1, 2, and 6, and (2) evangelical theology, definition two, which he considers in chapters 3, 4, and 5.

I also have a question about the breadth of selection in the work. Without doubt, the five men presented must appear at the head of any listing of prominent new evangelicals. Certainly they are among the most vocal, and all who espouse like concerns stand heavily in their debt. But what of their predecessors? What of their colleagues? And what of the stimulation from certain like-minded scholars in Britain and on the continent? Personally, I would have appreciated a fuller treatment along. these lines; though perhaps it is up to each of us to complete the record—as to both details of the past and the future task.

Finally by way of criticism, there seems to be some problem in the presentation of an evangelical position on the inspiration of the Bible, for in certain statements Erickson appears to be both more rigid and more flexible than any of the five he seeks to represent. To define verbal inspiration as “God so controlled the Scripture writer that each word he chose was precisely that which God would have him write, and no other” (p. 63, italics mine) is to relegate Ramm’s insistence on the “dynamic or flexible” relation between thoughts and words to the category of “one possible variant” (p. 65) and to verge extremely close to a theory of dictation. On the other hand, to say repeatedly that plenary inspiration means that even incidental statements bearing on science are true, and then, without further interaction, to identify as a possibility within evangelical thought the view that inerrancy relates to matters pertaining only to salvation, and no more, is to insert some ambiguity.

With these few qualifications—and some are relatively minor in comparison with the work’s general excellence—this volume is highly commended. Not all readers will agree with the doctrinal and apologetic explications of chapters 3 and 4, but all with profit immensely from Erickson’s description and evaluation of new evangelicalism. It will be most helpful to its intended audience: the general Christian public and neophyte theological students.

Theology In Fiction

Adversity and Grace, edited by Nathan A. Scott, Jr., (University of Chicago, 1968, 269 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Ann Paton, associate professor of English, Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.

Adversity and Grace is aptly titled: the reader here encounters adversity and needs grace. These eight critical essays on contemporary fiction viewed from a theological perspective were each written by a different hand and hence exhibit a variety of styles—pungent and pedestrian, lucid and merely loose. And the title implies a unity that just isn’t there.

I can’t see why Nathan Scott, Jr., the editor, devotes so much of his introduction to defending what needs no defense: the theologian’s scrutiny of literature. After all, does not Christianity take all life as its province? Scott develops two main ideas: (1) that interest in humanistic studies is an outgrowth of modern theology; (2) that theology can learn something about itself from literature. Taking Bonhoeffer as “the great weathervane of contemporary theology,” he states Bonhoeffer’s position that the time of “religion” is gone and God must be spoken of in “non-religious” ways. So Christ is witnessed to in all apprehensions of truth, wherever they may arise, in whatever intellectual or cultural form. Fine. But can Scott really think that this conclusion, so tortuously arrived at, is the exclusive possession of the new theologies?

He then goes on to say that while the arts reflect the times, they do more than that. Fiction is the experimental arm of theoretical theology. The novelist, the dramatist, the poet show how a particular faith looks under the stress of experience. Again, to teachers of literature, this is nothing new.

Still, it is very useful to have these ideas set down systematically. Scott can write incisively and lucidly. About literature, he does so. But when he explains theology, his vocabulary floats out of sight, trailing his tangled syntax behind.

Two of the essays deal specifically with grace. Implicitly, grace is Saul Bellow’s theme. Scott convincingly shows that, though Bellow is not indebted to any dogmatic tradition, his deepest engagement is with a fundamentally religious posture: that there is a dimension of human experience where striving and strain are of no avail, and that “in returning and rest we shall be saved.” Grace is explicitly Salinger’s concern. James T. Livingston identifies religious tensions in Salinger’s work, his treatment of the sacred, the nature of his religious vision, and the perversions of Christian faith in Franny and Zooey.

Of the essays not particularly tied to either adversity or grace, two are brilliant. Norman Mailer commands attention because he is a conspicuous novelist and now also claims to be a philosopher. Mailer may think he is a Moses, but he looks more like Goliath here when David Hesla lays him flat with the hard truth: as a novelist, Mailer stands tall; as a thinker, he flops. Preston Browning’s analysis of Flannery O’Connor shows her crusading against shallow secularism in modern Christianity. Her tactic: to unleash in story after story twisted, God-haunted criminals who, being without veneer, lay bare ingrained evil.

Other essays deal with writers Heller, Pynchon, Powers, and Styron. Henry Rago’s end-piece on the theory of poetry gets lost in clouds of sign, symbol, and metaphor until finally three of his own poems do what he could not adequately describe.

All the scholars who contribute to this volume are well versed in both theology and literature. May their tribe increase, so that eventually pulpit and classroom alike can awaken the educated public to awareness of the vital relation of faith to literary works.

High View Of The Bible

The Bible—The Living Word of Revelation, edited by Merrill C. Tenney (Zondervan, 1968, 288 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by J. Murray Marshall, pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Flushing, New York.

Merrill C. Tenney, dean of the Graduate School of Wheaton College, has enlisted a top-flight team of evangelical scholars to grapple with what is probably the most basic theological issue of the century. On the team, along with Tenney himself, are Packer of Oxford, Kantzer and Montgomery of Trinity (Deerfield, Illinois), Harris of Covenant, Young of Westminster, Woudstra of Calvin, Pinnock of New Orleans, Gerstner of Pittsburgh, and Walvoord of Dallas. Their subject: the inspiration and authority of the Bible.

For a majority of theologians this issue has long been deemed settled—but not in favor of the high view of Scripture associated with orthodox Christianity. Contemporary theology usually accords the Bible a place of esteem but denies that it is a communicated disclosure from God valuable as objective in and of itself and therefore worthy of the implicit confidence of man. Because it has thus discredited the authority of Scripture, modern theology is susceptible to such excesses as the “death of God” expressions and to tragic confusion in faith and morals.

Yet a remnant of scholars argue vigorously and cogently that the Bible is God’s Word written, thoroughly trustworthy and binding in authority. The complexity of their task is evident in the wide variety of approaches used in this symposium. These include examining what the Bible says about itself, spelling out the philosophical concept of revelation, tracing the relation of revelation to theology as a whole, evaluating the forms of current thought on revelation and authority, and dealing with questions (such as inerrancy) that arise within the framework of the general evangelical position.

When ten men work independently on the same general subject, some repetitiveness and unevenness in style are bound to occur. On the whole, however, Tenney has pulled the team together well, producing not just a succession of stabs at the problem but an over-all impact that raises the issue to the place of prominence it must have. Evangelical scholars must not let liberal scholars get away with their devaluation of scriptural authority.

Tenney and his confreres have shown us that the case can be argued, but this book by its very character as a symposium shows us that more must be done. Pinnock puts it this way: “The moment is right for a careful restatement of the evangelical position on the inspiration of the New Testament, true to the deepest currents of Biblical teaching.” It is to be hoped that from among this group of evangelical theologians or others of their kind one will arise who will state the case for the evangelical view of the Bible comprehensively and convincingly for our times.

Montgomery feels not only that the time is right but also that there might be a receptive mood. He cites the conclusions of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a twentieth-century philosopher who said “the sense of the world must lie outside the world.” Montgomery’s words are important: “Today, as never before, philosophical thought manifests a passion for objective, empirical truth, and the ordinary-language philosophers, whose work stems from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, are stressing the importance of verbal expression in conveying truth. Evangelicals of the second half of the twentieth century have an unparalleled opportunity to affirm the philosophical relevance of their high view of Scripture.”

One hopes that these essays will get a wide reading, not just among evangelicals but also among others who are compelled to see the poverty of any theological system that denies a revealed theology. And one hopes also that some evangelical scholar will pick up the challenge laid down by Pinnock and Montgomery. Meanwhile, “the Word of the Lord endureth forever.”

‘Fair And Honorable’ Apartheid?

A Plea For Understanding: A Reply to the Reformed Church in America, by W. A. Landman (Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, 1968, 144 pp., $1.50), is reviewed by Howard G. Hageman, minister, The North Church, Newark, New Jersey.

In 1967 the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America sent a communication to its sister church in South Africa expressing concern over the racial policies of that country and their apparent support by the church. Dr. Landman, director of the information bureau of the Dutch Reformed Church, wrote a reply that, together with a number of appendices, has been published as a booklet.

This exchange is a good illustration of how many discussions of the South African question miss the central point. The American letter was written in ignorance of many of the facts of the situation and made its case largely on the reports of witnesses whose impartiality and creditibility can often be called into question. In his reply Landman has no difficulty in challenging the misconceptions and exaggerations that characterize the American appeal, in impugning its witnesses, and in ending his case with a flourish by asking what the Reformed Church in America was doing about racism between 1937 and 1954.

If it were just a matter of keeping score, there would be no question that the South African has won on points. Unfortunately, however, the main question remains to be asked and answered. Not that there are not other minor questions one would like to ask. If, for example, one accepts the South African thesis that “separate development” is dictated purely by cultural and linguistic differences, then what accounts for the systematic divorce of the Cape Colored (who have nothing but the pigmentation of their skin to distinguish them from the white) from white society? What does Landman’s church say about this?

But here is the real question. The Dutch Reformed Church has officially declared that it approves the official policy of the government “provided that it is applied in a fair and honorable way, without affecting or injuring the dignity of the person.” Then will Dr. Landman please tell what share the Bantu has had in planning his own destiny in his own country, what share the representatives of the new Bantustans will have in determining the policies of South Africa? How many representatives from Trans-Kei, the much advertised Bantustan, sit in the parliament in Cape Town, for example? What has his church had to say about questions like these, which surely involve “the dignity of the person” at its most sensitive point?

Instead of concentrating on the weaknesses of the American appeal, one wishes that Landman had fully exegeted his own text in the light of the actual situation. When the Liberal Party must disband because racially mixed meetings are impossible, when people are detained under a polite form of house arrest without so much as a trial, one still has to ask what the Dutch Reformed Church understands by “a fair and honorable way” that does not affect or injure “the dignity of the person.”

Hope For Political Conservatism

The Future of Conservatism by M. Stanton Evans (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968, 304 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, chairman, Department of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

This latest contribution by Stanton Evans, the very able editor of the Indianapolis News, to the growing bulk of conservative literature is timely and valuable. Evans’s basic thesis is that conservatism must be a powerful force in the future of the nation. But he does not stop there. He advances to the next logical argument, that it not only must be a patent factor in American political life but also can be. He then launches into a study of how conservatism can make itself felt in the 1968 election. This involves him in a long discussion of the relation between conservatism in general and the Republican party in particular from the election of 1940 through the election of 1964. This historical approach to the problems involved in this year’s conventions and election leads Evans to arrive at some very interesting conclusions and to offer some unusual suggestions for conservatives both inside and outside the Republican party.

The basic argument of this book is fairly simple: The Republican party is the true home of conservatism, and its future is closely tied to the conservative cause. Evans admits that there is a tension between the party’s legislative leadership and its recent presidential candidates. The one exception to this was Barry Goldwater. Evans offers some interesting insights into the 1964 campaign and indicts the American press and TV for flagrant misrepresentation of the conservative cause and the candidacy of Barry Goldwater. In this campaign the battle between the liberal and conservative forces within the Republican party came to a head, according to Evans, and this battle is important because it reflects the battle that is taking place within the country as a whole today. Thus what happens within the Republican party is of great importance for the future of American freedom under the Constitution.

On the basis of his quite thorough analyses of the 1964 and 1966 elections, Evans concludes that in 1968 (1) only a conservative can truly unite the Republican party, and (2), a conservative Republican nominee can successfully attract the large number of conservatives in the country. The argument is quite convincing. This book will give conservatives in all the parties a new feeling of solidarity and a realization that they do not stand alone. Evans would replace the feeling of defeatism with the conviction that victory is within the conservative grasp if only the right strategy is used in 1968.

Book Briefs

From the Rock to the Gates of Hell, by Andrew W. Blackwood, Jr., (Baker, 1968, 127 pp., $3.95). Blackwood examines the Church—a divine society and a human organization—in the light of Scripture and with the assistance of Bonhoeffer, Calvin, George MacLeod, and Gregor Siefer.

Stir What You’ve Got!, by Raymond E. Balcomb (Abingdon, 1968, 160 pp., $3.50). Well-written sermons on stewardship.

From Boxcar to Pulpit, by Robert Sandidge Weldon (Exposition, 1968, 146 pp., $5). A penetrating autobiographical account of a man’s journey from the hopeless valleys of alcoholism to the meaningful summits of Christian ministry.

The New People, by Charles E. Winick, (Pegasus, 1968, 384 pp., $7.50). A professor of anthropology and sociology offers a popular appraisal of the desexualization trend in America in which many masculine and feminine differences are being blurred.

Dear Humans With Hang-Ups:

On a jagged outcropping of California’s breath-taking Big Sur coastline, the Esalen Institute offers experimental workshops to help free its well-heeled patrons of their hang-ups. Named after an Indian tribe that formerly roamed its 110-acre site, Esalen explores “trends in the behavioral sciences, religion, and philosophy which emphasize the potentialities and values of human existence.” A main objective: to break down people’s inhibitions and replace them with joy.

When I strode upon the institute’s grassy knoll, I saw three men and a woman huddled in one gigantic embrace with eyes closed and hands caressing one another’s heads and bodies. Nearby, a bearded man gently led a closed-eyed girl down a rocky path to the hot spring mineral baths. All were involved in new types of human encounter and sensitivity training. Such activities are a part of Esalen’s emphasis on touching and cuddling, exposure of one’s deepest secrets and dreams, psychodrama, sharpening of the senses, and exploration of the sexual, communicative, and mystical realms.

The seminars held in Big Sur and San Francisco draw heavily upon the meditative principles of Eastern religions and the interaction emphasis of Gestalt psychology. Most five-day workshops including lodging and meals cost $165; two-day, $65. The fall line-up of over 100 courses includes some dandies. “Psychological Karate” will increase one’s tolerance for conflict, anxiety, and frustration (a chop to the super-ego, a lunge at the id?). “Couples and Lovers’ Marathon” will involve participants in a 24-hour day-night group session. “The Scientific Study of Reincarnation” will study fifty reincarnation cases and disembodied consciousness. “The Hang-ups and Hopes of Emergent Global Man” conducted by United Church of Christ executive Willis Elliott will focus on a new global life-style.

Esalen’s efforts to unmask hypocrisy, establish authentic human relations, and bring joy to life are admirable. But the irrational road of humanistic mysticism leads to a dead end. The only real way to overcome life’s hang-ups is through Him who is the way, the truth, and the life.

Your Emerging Global Man,

EUTYCHUS III

Probing Soft Spots

Your September 13 issue was superb from cover to cover!… Dr. Kuhn’s article on Marshall McLuhan presented some thoughtful probings that reveal the soft spots in a highly lauded, but unproved, theory.

Associate Pastor

Memorial

Methodist Church

Austin, Tex.

Ringing The Bell

Carl Henry has “socked it to us.” Man, his article on “Demythologizing the Evangelicals” (Sept. 13) was great. We evangelicals have too long been on defense, all gathered behind our correct doctrines and creeds, while, out yonder, the world of non-Christians goes miserably on its way to damnation. Man, we need to generate some offense!… Hooray for Henry, the bell-ringer!

St. Elmo Presbyterian Church

Chattanooga, Tenn.

It was like a breath of fresh air in this day of theological negatives and defensiveness.

Midwest Bible Church

Chicago, Ill.

In a time when so many people seem to be asking the questions that just beg for the Gospel as the answer, I would submit with Dr. Henry that our best defense is an offense. Now is the time to infuse our evangelism with the strategy of joy.

Princeton, N. J.

Such an excellent and affirmative statement buoys my spirit.

The Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church

Tampa, Fla.

Shake On That

Of all the editorials since I have been a subscriber of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “The Kings Are Coming” (Sept. 13) is the masterpiece, and I would like so much to shake the hand of whoever wrote it and to say “thank you.”

Chaplain

International Order of St. Luke the Physician

Cortez, Fla.

Gratifying Progress

I’m glad CHRISTIANITY TODAY was generous to insert a favorable article of the International Council of Christian Churches (“Fundamentalists on the Beach,” News, Sept. 13) … It is gratifying to learn of the progress of this conservative fundamentalist movement … The Rev. Dr. Carl McIntire is labeled as a “happy warrior” … There should be a definite union between the ICCC and the National Association of Evangelicals. “The things that are impossible with men are possible with God.”

First Covenant Church

Los Angeles, Calif.

Chicago And Charlie Brown

I think the evaluation of the demonstrations in Chicago (“Chicago as Armed Camp,” News, Sept. 13) is, although brief, a fair assessment. I was not personally involved in any of the confrontations … but was in attendance at meetings where “recruitment” was made.… It was stressed that only those persons who could be counted on to be respectful and orderly were to participate in these physical manifestations that would reflect desired change in the present political process.

I do not think the majority of the participants were either intentionally mean, criminal in motive, or stupid in belief. Neither were they trained in any kind of tactics to violently disrupt the convention. Those with whom I am familiar were no more terrorists then Charlie Brown. They represented students who had spent the summer working in Neighborhood Houses, camps for disadvantaged children, and the like.…

Some of those in the large gatherings that numbered in the thousands were no doubt of another stripe.… If these commit foul deeds they are to be justifiably held responsible. But to judge the many by a few is unwarranted.

Director, Wesley Foundation

St. Cloud State College Campus

St. Cloud, Minn.

On Witnessing

Thank you for publishing the excellent and thought-provoking article by Howard E. Butt on witnessing (Aug. 30). I pray that pastors, lay ministers, and people everywhere will give the essay careful attention. The cause of Christ will be edified when all Christians decide to become witnesses through the power of God, and stop this nonsense of playing church and judge.

Highland Crest Baptist Church

Green Bay, Wis.

Out Of The Book

Your news article on “Disciples Turn Corner” (Aug. 30) was effective. There is no doubt but what the yearbook has lost at least 1,500 church listings and will lose many more as soon as the people realize that they are losing their freedom of conscience in the connectional relationship of restructure.

Director-Evangelist

National Association of Free Christians Center, Tex.

It is difficult to “lose” something that has not been possessed. By and large this article is very true and interesting. However, the implication is that the 1,124 churches which have already withdrawn their names from the Disciples of Christ Year Book actually belonged to the Disciples of Christ. For most of the churches involved this is not true. Most were listed, not out of choice, or membership, but because at some time they had contributed to an organization (such as a school or home) currently associated with the Disciples of Christ. Most of these institutions were begun, not by the organization, but by cooperative efforts of individual churches.…

The allusion to a listing by the North American Christian Convention is misleading to say the least. The North American Christian Convention has no official relationship to any of the churches cooperating in its yearly assembly … [It] was begun as a “preaching convention” and has remained that.

Christian Church

Athens, Ill.

I have no idea where you obtained your information, but your deductions are inaccurate and misleading … The provisional design of the Christian Church to be voted on at Kansas City in September does not deny local church autonomy … The statement that all churches appearing in the present year book would be recognized as a part of the new denomination is false, and misleading. First, the denomination is not “new.” What is really happening is that what has been done for years is being put on paper. Each church will determine its own relationship to the Christian Church.…

You say that the provisional design will have its authority in a general assembly dominated by clergy and professional churches. The design calls for all ministers to be delegates, but it calls for two delegates from each church and an extra delegate for each 500 members over the first 500 … The laymen will outnumber the ministers about 2 to 1, unless they just do not attend and participate.

I cannot speak for the Disciples, of course, so what I have said here is my own interpretation of the facts.

Bethany Christian Church

Evansville, Ind.

No Sunday Disappointment

You would rightly expect some reaction from your large and loyal group of Seventh-day Adventist readers to Dr. Armerding’s excellent article on the Lord’s Day (Aug. 16), and I wouldn’t want to disappoint you. The point that neither the day nor the commandment is “passé” is well made, but how tragic for the human finger to write “one day in seven” where the finger of God wrote “the seventh day.”

Glendale, Calif.

Hargis’S Heartache

Imagine my surprise and heartache when I read in the review of The American Far Right (Aug. 16) that my Christian anti-Communist organization … “is not actually Christian and … may be as dangerous to the country as … Communism.” Every Communist publication in the world has attacked me and Christian Crusade. The National Council of Churches has done a good job attacking me because of my opposition to their theological liberalism and Marxist-inclined political internationalism.…

The writer of this anti-Hargis and anti-anti-Communist vicious diatribe is guilty of everything that he would accuse me of name-calling, character assassination, guilt by association.… I have always stood in defense of the faith.… I believe that America is God’s greatest nation under the Living Son.… I am so opposed to Communism that I feel led of God to expose it. In twenty-one years, I have never been sued for libel. No one has questioned the veracity of my remarks. Not even the most vicious liberal publications in the country that have run articles against me and Christian Crusade have dared suggest that my minisery is as bad as Communism. Have the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY sold out to the Communists? Does this [book review] truly represent the philosophies of the editors and owners of CHRISTIANITY TODAY? Do the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY sincerely believe that they share no blame for this vicious, satanic article which likens Christian Crusade to godless, anti-Christ communism?

I shall take steps to broadcast the unfairness of this article to the American people via our radio stations and our publications. I will do the best that I can to answer these unfair attacks in your publication by the use of mass communications afforded us.… I can only say, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”

Tulsa, Okla.

That Czech Freedom

I am one of those who attended the All Christian Peace Assembly last spring in Prague. I was overjoyed to see the evidences of new freedom and the atmosphere of hope contrasted with the police-state atmosphere seen in a visit in 1963 and attending the assembly in ’64.…

I believe your editorial, “The Czech Caterpillar Keeps Stirring” (Aug. 16), is correct in stating that the liberalization moves more slowly in the churches than elsewhere—but it does move. The Methodist Church, for instance, refused to confirm a government-nominated leader this year and waited until it could elect its own.

It is a shattering experience to stand by and watch the use of military force to destroy freedom. We can pray and work toward further peaceful developments of freedom there and in other places and keep our own policy clean so that in future developments our moral bankruptcy, such as Viet Nam, will not prevent us from bringing to bear the moral influence which should be ours.

St. John’s Methodist Church

Seaford, Del.

Sown In Atlanta

The forty ministers who met at Atlanta (are you sure they were of the Church of Christ?) could not have spoken for anyone but themselves (Church Panorama, News, Aug. 16). Whoever they were, they could have saved their breath for their own congregations, instead of sowing to the wind. I pray these were not of the Lord’s church!

Church of Christ

Ore City, Tex.

What’S In A Name

A slight correction should be made in my review of The Situation Ethics Debate (July 19). “John C. Bennett (Baptist)” should read “Henlee H. Barnette (Baptist).” The correction is relatively minor unless one’s name is Bennett or Barnette.

Guelph, Ont.

Cover Challenge

I would like to comment upon the excellence of most of your cover designs. It seems that in our days, the idea of Christian editors in general is to make their cover designs as unattractive and old-fashioned as possible. Your magazine can be counted among the few which make an effort, at least most of the time, to present to the eye a challenge together with a build-up of expectations. Your artist knows how to use space well, has fresh ideas and approaches, is contemporary and even daring. Allow me to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation for your attitude of caring and concern with the modern mind that is demonstrated already in the cover designs of your magazine.

Bethany Baptist Church

Vancouver, B. C.

Prime Rhyme

I have been impressed by the general quality of poetry in Christianity Today. The level seems to me generally to surpass that of most other religious periodicals, not only in poetic skill and ability, but also in theological insight.

Greenville, Ill.

I have enjoyed reading … the magazine … Many articles are certainly most timely, even for us in the Eastern Orthodox world, which is, in a cultural sense at least, quite removed from the general tone of American Protestantism.

Eastern Orthodox pastor

New Fairfield, Conn.

Exponents of the Christian world view, stressing God’s intervention in the lives of sinful men through Jesus Christ’s mediating presence and atoning death, often do little more than define humanity’s miasmatic condition.

For all who by taking thought would seek truth, the persisting puzzle of this world arises from the traces of order amid seemingly illogical chaos. But because Christianity has not always given a clear explanation of this order, and this chaos, it has often faced formidable challenges from competing secular attempts to explain reality.

For centuries the outstanding challenger was humanism. Here Christianity reacted not so much by articulating an alternative view as by rejecting both the challenge itself and (by implication) the world. John Bunyan’s pilgrim portrays this response; Christian makes his perilous way through sloughs, past obstacles, around temptations. Along with the King James Version, this flight from the world has been the stock in trade of practical and practicing conservatives ever since humanism threw off its medieval chains in reviving antiquity’s love of understanding man as he is.

Today scientism is thought by many to have replaced humanism as the major competitor of the Gospel. Orthodox Christianity has always had an intellectual element that sought the right to understand the mechanics of the universe, God’s morally neutral handiwork. Many non-believers, however, viewed physics as a way of speaking of purpose, and the legitimate study of the universe as a showplace for God’s glory became in secular life an attempt to express the meaning of reality, apart from God and from theological concepts derived from Scripture.

A series of trials made their changes and took their toll. Christians who could withstand the Scopes case found it increasingly difficult to withstand the combined invasion of television and the Great Society. And Christians today are unable to cope with a scientism founded, freed, and fostered by that very Christian world view that raised the initial inquiry into God’s material handiwork.

There are many reasons why scientism has edged out humanism as the major threat to the Christian faith. One is to be found in science itself. For the traditional classification, analysis, and description of examples of phenomena, science is rapidly (if only partially) substituting computerized quantitative analysis of all phenomena. This involves physical and chemical analysis, mathematical models, simulation, and above all the projection of predictability, based upon at least a partial understanding of physical processes and why they operate as they do. These changes have left science not only more capable of developing by design instead of discovering by accident, but also in a position to distribute its analytical techniques, particularly in quantitative studies, to many if not all other areas of intellectual inquiry. Moreover, the automated ability to consider and collate all instances of a phenomenological series has tended to set the pace for sophisticated analysis even in the traditionally humanistic fields.

The result of these developments has been to leave man with a sense of control over his environment far beyond what he was able to have in the past. A heady brew, this, for those who seek mechanisms in all phenomena, even though it occurs in the face of acute awareness that progress in human relations has not kept pace with scientific progress.

Unlike humanism, however, science has not actually produced a world view to challenge that of Christianity. While progress in science may produce scientism, science itself has not really done any more than raise the inquiry into God’s handiwork—for those who see it thus—to the next higher plateau of research. True, it has explored the physical universe. But the ultimate physical truth seems as recessive behind two hundred or so subatomic particles as God himself has been recessive behind the façades of human religious institutions.

The world is still a place of mystery, little relieved by the prospect of having visits to the Moon and Mars added to its enigmas. The mind of man is still a jungle in which the sudden drives of perversity lurk, to be triggered as always by the threat of forces from without. Volition and motivation, always unhappy hunting grounds for the academician, remain unpredictable—as one suspects they might have to be if free will is to be kept inviolate. If this is so, there is again opportunity to develop a new Christian world view, consistent with the abiding mystery of the universe and man and with the contemporary changes in man’s hesitantly arrogant power to control.

What ought such a view to be? If the world is still the place of darkness referred to by the Apostles John and Paul, a realm in which physical science races ahead of human nature, then a Christian world view adequate to the times must not merely explain the world to the world but also show Christians that existence in the world is necessary and palatable. In the process, the “hope that is within” us may become relevant to non-Christians, too.

This notion, however, requires sharpening. The attempt to define faith in terms of reason shares the difficulty of adding oranges to apples. Faith holds that God has distinct and, to some extent, knowable policies and intentions in relation to man, and holds also definite views regarding sin, righteousness, and judgment. Even when faith asserts only that God exists, is personal, and is the Creator of an unlimited and perhaps infinite universe, it lays claim on infinity. If it avers that ultimate reality is now obscured as though seen through a clouded mirror, but will someday be revealed to those who spend eternity with God, faith purports to apprehend in part what reason could never acquire short of attaining omniscience.

In this sense, Christian faith shares something with its alternatives, such as belief in other religions, in progress, in dialectic materialism, or in human perfect-ability, or absorption in a whole spectrum of emotional crises arising from triumph, trauma, or perhaps LSD. Christian faith and each of its substitutes supply an order to varying degrees of chaos whose significances are only subjectively defined and measured.

An important virtue of the Christian world view has always been that its logical consistency was generally of a higher order than that found in its alternatives. A greater virtue is that it has been able to produce stability in human social order when allowed to operate free of human, over-institutionalized interference. Congolese rebellions, Chinese intransigence, the Soviets’ ambivalent consideration for individual rights can, as did their earlier counterparts, encourage any Christian to match results with the apostles of atheism. But the greatest virtue of all has been the ability of Christianity to provide answers to the unpredictability of the human heart through the love and grace of God revealed in Scripture—an escape available, very importantly, for its claimants while they are still in this world.

Could we begin again to devise a world view consistent with Scripture and also relevant to new turns taken by the modern, assiduously intellectual world?

As important as are confrontations with scientific triumph, massive research and development, and high social crisis, faith is not faith, but only reason, if it does not stand above and beyond these things. Biblical faith is in this position, but all other kinds of faith share this property.

Given, to this extent, a common problem between faith and reason, all theology faces conceptual difficulties. A theology that is founded solely upon the notion that God exists but that is divorced from its right of discovering revelation by personal contact, from Scripture, and from enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, comes very close to being what mathematics calls a null set. Such theology seems to have compassed the circle back to a kind of sophisticated, jargonized neo-Platonism. Where but in pantheism, submergence, or no-theism can one historically find a depersonalized, demythologized, deactivated God? The “death of God” theorists have indeed with a neat turn of phrase performed a service in putting such a god out of his misery.

Could we, then, begin again to devise a world view consistent with Scripture and also relevant to these new turns taken by the modern, assiduously intellectual world? Our Lord spoke of Christians as the salt of the earth. They were to be an active and pervasive principle, and indeed they have been in many periods of history. In our day Christians can articulate a world view by giving meaning to the unpredictable in man in the context of divine grace, and by providing a basis for morality consistent with new challenges and drives, but soundly based upon equity, consideration for others, and preservation of the individual’s option for choosing the good.

In a world where logic and intellectual honesty are the stock in trade of research and development but operate much less in international relations and in attitudes toward inequities and personal problems, a Christian world view may not be able to chart the proper course and persuade all participants. But it has a great deal more to say, and much to do by way of charity, than it has said and done in the past. Grace and unearned love always startle the world. They have always been the major selling-point for the Gospel because they always mark their practitioners, earn regard from the uninterested, and attract those who recognize their own need of the Physician. They can be made to operate in the intellectual community as well as anywhere else.

Under the impact of the Enlightenment, Professor E. W. Hengstenberg of Bonn became a decided rationalist; in fact, he formulated the principles of rationalism for his university. He was a brilliant scholar and had calls to chairs in several institutions, and in time he left Bonn for a post in Berlin.

But God touched his heart in a Moravian service, and through a simple study of the Bible he became a firm believer in the Gospel. Accordingly, in his first lecture as professor of Oriental languages at Berlin he declared: “It matters not whether we make a god out of stone, or out of our own understanding, it is still a false god; there is but one living God, the God of the Bible.” Years later, at the end of a fruitful life, Hengstenberg’s last audible words were, “That is the nothingness of rationalism: the fundamental thing is Christ.…”

The Source Of The Doctrine Of Inspiration

In tracing the doctrine of inspiration, we go first to teachers whom we know are trustworthy.

Jesus and His Apostles. When our Lord was living visibly among men, he took his seat humbly at the feet of the Old Testament Scriptures. He assured us that not one jot or one tittle of the law will pass until all be fulfilled. He answered every thrust of the Tempter with, “It is written.…” He told the Sadducees that they erred because they knew not the Scriptures or the power of God. He rebuked the disciples for being foolish and slow to believe all that the Old Testament writers had said of the Messiah—that he must suffer and enter into his resurrection glory, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations. He bade men search the Scriptures, for they testified of him. Jesus and his apostles do not hesitate to use the words “God says” or “he says” in citing various scriptural passages that do not specifically name God as speaker; conversely, references to passages where the Old Testament expressly calls God the speaker are often introduced by “Scripture says.”

The Reformers and Confessions. With Erasmus there came a turn in Renaissance scholarship from good literature to sacred literature. Zwingli acted on this turn. As a young disciple of Erasmus he devoted himself to classical studies and philosophy, but like his teacher he turned to the Scriptures. At first he came to the Bible somewhat as a dilettante, thinking of Christianity as perhaps the best of many religions. But as he read, studied, and preached the Word, the living God spoke to him, particularly through a time of desperate sickness. He writes, “I came to the point where, led by the Spirit of God, I saw the need to set aside such things [as human teaching] and to learn the doctrine of God from his own Word.” Accordingly, the Theses of Bern begin, “The Holy Church of God, of which Christ is the only Head, is born of the Word of God, abides in it, and hears not the voice of strangers.”

Luther tells us that the Holy Spirit opened the meaning of Romans 1:16–18 to him in the Black Tower at Wittenberg. After that he plunged ever deeper into the Word. The number of scriptural citations in his writings is almost astronomical, and he gave a tremendous amount of time to putting the Bible into the language of the people.

By his Word, God suddenly subdued Calvin until the Genius of Geneva devoted himself to the exposition of Holy Scripture. Calvin lifted the old banner of God’s Word to regather his scattered followers into “a new catholicism solely founded on the Word of God.” A similar account could be given of the British Reformers, such as Knox and Cranmer. In the light that leaped from the proclamation of his Word, God carried forward the Reformation.

The Reformers received the Word as “the mouth of God”; in the words of Luther: “God the Creator of heaven and earth, speaks with thee through his preachers, baptizes, catechizes, absolves thee through the ministry of his own sacraments. These are not the words of Plato or Aristotle: it is God himself who speaks.”

“The Word” is used in three senses. In the Westminster Confession, as in the Confession of 1967, the Bible is spoken of as “the Word of God written.” In the Second Helvetic Confession, the faithful exposition of Scriptures in the Church by lawful ministers is described as “the very Word of God preached.” And, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ is recognized as the eternal Word who became incarnate for us and for our salvation (John 1:1–18). Thus, it is under Christ’s wing that we can best enter the Holy Scriptures. He is made unto us wisdom from God. As his disciples, we should take his attitude toward the Scriptures, to fulfill our desire to receive their witness to him. Our banner carries these insignia: The Bible’s Christ and Christ’s Bible. Or as R. Lennox put it, “it is God who is the Author of his written word, Christ who is its message, and the Holy Spirit who is its final interpreter to our hearts” (Inaugural Address, Presbyterian College in Montreal).

The Holy Spirit Inspires And Applies Scripture

The Holy Spirit works in at least three ways: in inspiring the prophets and apostles in writing the Word, in illuminating the preachers so that the exposition of the Word became the chief means of God’s grace shown to men, and in opening the hearts of the hearers so that they accept the personal authority of Christ speaking by his Spirit in his Word.

Production. First, then, we confess the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring the prophets and apostles in the production of Holy Scripture. No prophecy ever originated in the human will. Borne along by the Holy Spirit, men spoke from God, so that every Scripture is “breathed out” by God. The essence of Calvinism is the effort to see every doctrine from the viewpoint of God, to start our formulations with God rather than man. Thus the Reformed faith teaches the divine authorship of Scriptures by means of human authorship. That is, God in his sovereignty so superintended and supervised and contributed to his chosen instruments that they wrote as responsible persons but wrote better than they fully knew. The New Testament writers and the Reformers do not conceive of the Scriptures as primarily a human product, more or less inspired by the divine Spirit, but as a divine product that has proceeded from the mouth of the Lord by the ministries of men. For them, the prophets have not simply spoken their own minds but have declared what they received from above. “These words were spoken by the mouth of God,” asserted Luther.

Proclamation. The New Testament and the Reformation present the Bible primarily as the tool that the Holy Spirit uses to give us grace. It is the fundamental means of grace and is to be construed primarily as a means of grace. As John Albert Bengel put it, “Scripture was divinely inspired not merely while it was being written, God breathing through the writers, but also while it is being read (and expounded), God breathing through the Scripture.” According to the Reformed faith, “when this Word of God is now preached in the Church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is preached, and received by the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be feigned, nor to be expected from heaven” (Second Helvetic Confession).

Reception. As the Word is the instrument forged by the Spirit through centuries of God’s gracious dealings with his people, so it is the means the Holy Spirit effectually uses in calling us to Jesus Christ. As for Luther “God’s Word is an instrument and a tool through which the Holy Spirit works,” so for Calvin “Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit.” Since it is primarily God who is at work, Christ does not need to be preached with a furious tempest of words. The power of the Gospel is not in the lungs of a man but in the might of the Spirit.

Only as the Holy Spirit opens the Scripture is it understood. He both opens the heart to receive the Word and is effectually present by and with the proclamation of the Word. In creating faith, the Spirit works along with the Word and not apart from it, as Calvin’s definition of faith and the statement of regeneration in the Scots’ Confession indicate: “Regeneration is wrought by the power of the Holy Ghost, working in the hearts of the elect of God an assured faith in the promise of God revealed to us in His Word, by which faith we apprehend Jesus Christ.”

This means that the Spirit directs us primarily to Christ, Christ clothed with his Gospel. Although Calvin began with the Word, it did not lead him to bibliolatry; rather, he writes, “The channel which conveys to us such a copious stream to satisfy our thirst must not deprive the fountainhead of the honor which belongs to it.” For Calvin, the object of saving faith is none other than the Mediator, and invariably in the garments of sacred Scripture. Or as Regin Prenter has more recently phrased it in Spiritus Creator, “In this Word the risen Christ is present as God’s gift to us and thereby directs the motion of faith [away] from all self-righteousness to Christ as our alien righteousness.”

The Dogma Of Inspiration

“The authority of the Scripture is not a matter to be defended, so much as to be asserted.… ‘There is no need for you to defend a lion when he is being attacked, all you need to do is to open the gate and let him out’ (Spurgeon). We need to remind ourselves frequently that it is the preaching and exposition of the Bible that really establishes its truth and authority.” So writes D. M. Lloyd-Jones (Authority, p. 24).

In different places the Westminster Standards say that the Bible contains, that it is, and that it becomes the Word of God. With the Shorter Catechism we recognize that the Scriptures contain the special revelation that God has made of himself, particularly in Jesus Christ. Second, we understand Christ and his apostles to teach that it is the inspired record of this revelation, so that in the ordination vow we confess it to be the Word of God written, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. Third, we recognize that our firm persuasion of its infallible truth and divine authority comes from the divine work of God, the Holy Spirit; that is, by his personal action it becomes the saving Word of God to us. God authenticates his own Word.

As the Reformers formulated the dogma of inspiration from the revelation God made of himself to them by means of his Word, the Spirit led them to three great affirmations: the authority, the clarity, and the sufficiency of the Word.

Authority of the Word. Under their preaching of the Word, men knew a more comforting authority than that of the church of Rome. Faith became not merely intellectual assent but trust in the gracious Father, founded on the Word of promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Now, faith does not feed on itself. Indeed, it is a self-alienating principle. Faith stands leaning on his Word. For Calvin, take away the Word and there is no faith left. So close is the connection between the two that the Word may be used metanymically for faith. In The Liberty of a Christian Man, Luther shows that faith receives the blessing promised as it accepts the promise, that by means of the promises it receives and rests upon Jesus Christ with all his blessings. For all the promises are Yea and Amen in Christ. Thus it honors the gracious God of the promises by receiving his Word as worthy of all trust.

As the authority of Holy Scripture means that it is truthworthy for faith in the living God, so it also means that this Word is to be obeyed in life and in church worship and government.

Instead of misusing Augustine’s precept “Love and do what you will” to relativize the Ten Commandments, as some advocates of situational ethics are doing, Calvin taught that “the chief good consists in the practice of righteousness, in obedience to the commands of God; and the ultimate end of a happy life is to be beloved of Him.” Temptations to sexual sins are best answered with the words of Joseph, “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” For the believer, they are the will of our loving heavenly Father for his children. “This God and the Bible, his commanding and its commanding, are not to be separated,” said Barth, and the Decalogue “is the foundation statute of the Divine covenant of grace and valid for all ages” and for “all the situations of our lives” (Church Dogmatics, II/2).

The authority of the Word means that it belongs to Christ’s majesty from his throne of grace to govern his body the Church through his Word and Spirit by the ministry of men. Here we have, not a democracy in which the ultimate power is in the hands of the people, but a Christocracy with authority where God has placed it, in the hands of Christ. Barth has well said, “The Church is no longer the Church where it does not know a higher authority than its own, or an obedience other than that of self-government” (Church Dogmatics, I/2).

Thus the doctrine of the Word finds its relevance in the recognition that it is trustworthy for faith and authoritative for obedience. On the truth of God’s gracious acts in Christ we trust our souls; to the obedience of his precepts faith bows our stubborn wills. And this authoritative instruction is not abstract legality but personal obedience to him who still loves us, who redeemed us from our sins with his blood (Rev. 1:5). The risen Christ is himself the Head and King and Lord of his body the Church, governing her through his Spirit and Word by the ministry of men.

Clarity of the Word. Luther insisted that the Scripture is most open, interpreting itself. One of Zwingli’s early sermons is On the Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God. Certain scholars are putting this Reformation doctrine in jeopardy today by assuming that God has revealed himself only in acts, deeds, and events and that he left the writers of Scripture to supply their own words, unaided by divine inspiration.

The “new hermeneutic” stresses “the word-event,” “the language-event,” as it proclaims faith’s doctrine of language. Faith depends on Word, God’s word, his saving word of love in Jesus. Yet for Ernst Fuchs, “God’s revelation consisted simply in letting men state God’s own problems in their language, in grace and judgment.” His close friend Manfred Mezger avers that John 20:6 f. “is translatable today only in radically contrary formulation to that of the text” (Robinson and Cobb, editors, The New Hermeneutic, 1964, pp. 55, 241, 135, 59). The following sentence from Rolf Rendtorff may be typical of the Pannenberg discussion on history and theology: “The Word has here an essential share in the occurrence of revelation” (Robinson-Cobb, Theology as History, 1967, p. 58). On his visit here, Eduard Schweizer agreed with the emphasis of advocates of the new hermeneutics on the currents acts of God in giving faith and forgiveness, and concurred with the Pannenberg school in magnifying the mighty historical acts of God in Christ; he added that we need a greater recognition of the necessity of Scripture in interpreting to us the meaning of the acts of the Almighty for us and for our salvation.

In Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics, Professor Claus Westerman of Heidelberg shows that one can speak meaningfully about God’s intervention in history only if his acts are connected with the Word, that is, if God’s words of promise are fulfilled in the hour of distress by a gracious deliverance. “The only basis for a creed is that a factum is recognized as a dictum.” The deliverance at the Red Sea began with a word to Moses that God had seen and heard and was come to deliver. Thus the history of God with his people comes to pass in that overarching continuity that binds the word of promise to the promised deliverance. For Professor G. E. Wright, “biblical theology is first and foremost a theology of recital.” Thus there is promise—deliverance—recital.

Professor James Barr and Professor T. H. Vriezen have stressed “direct verbal communication between God and particular men on particular occasions,” or on “this revealing word” or statement, as a means of revelation.

Likewise, for Birger Gerhardsson, the God of the Bible not only acts but speaks, and the comprehensive term “revelation” is an announcement that communicates facts and an interpretation of the essential content of these facts.

Kenneth S. Kantzer, writing about “The Christ-Revelation as Act and Interpretation,” cites such scholars as Emil Brunner, C. H. Dodd, Vincent Taylor, and Oscar Cullmann to the effect that revelation consists in both the event as such and its interpretation. And, conversely, not only the interpretation but also the event is regarded as revelation.

God has revealed his own gracious character and has made the way of salvation and the duty of man clear in the Holy Scriptures, which record his acts and his words, his deeds and their meaning. It is the speech of God accompanying the event that clarifies its meaning.

The particular passages of the Word become clearer as we keep in mind the situation for which or to which the message is primarily addressed. As Galatians was specifically needed by the churches to which Paul wrote, so was the Epistle of James directed to another particular need.

Robert W. Funk recognizes New Testament Greek “as a special phenomenon,” “the language of the community of faith” (Robinson-Cobb, The New Hermeneutic, pp. 82, 83).

Brevard Childs of Yale insists on a biblical interpretation within “the framework of faith which is the Bible as the Word of God” and as “a living vehicle for a divine action which lays claim upon its reader” (Interpretation, XVIII, No. 4). With Paul Minear one remembers that this Sitz im Glauben is often more important that the Sitz im Leben for the true understanding and proclamation of the biblical passage. For example, the Gospels are written from faith to faith. The failure to realize this has, in my opinion, marred a number of translations that treat the Gospels too much as secular histories.

In still other cases there is a Sitz im Loben, or a writing in a milieu of praise or worship. Thus the Lukan birth narratives are set in the context of Elizabeth’s Benedicta, Mary’s Magnificat, Zacharias’s Benedictus, Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis, and the angels’ Gloria in Excelsis; and through the generations they have been so used in the Church.

Sufficiency of the Word. Finally, the Reformers insisted upon the sufficiency or completeness of Scripture, particularly for the purposes for which God ordained it, namely, the revelation of his way of salvation for men, the obedience of faith to which he calls his people, and their life and worship together in his Church. The Reformers affirmed sola scriptura against the Romanist view of Scripture plus church tradition, the humanist view of Scripture plus reason, and the enthusiast view of Scripture plus private revelation.

According to Luther, “God wills that we should exclusively direct ourselves to hold fast upon the Word. He wills that we should select the core and not the shell and esteem the housefather more than the house. In Peter and Paul, he wills that we should not admire or adore the apostolic office but Christ who speaks in them, and God’s own Word which proceeds from their mouth.”

In the words of the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism, “We reject all theology and criticism that refuses to bring itself under the divine authority of Holy Scriptures, and all traditionalism which weakens that authority by adding to the Word of God.”

God has expressed his saving truth into the human words of the Good Book, making the Bible a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our pathway. We trust in, we entrust ourselves to, the God of grace; but we do so by the instrumentality of the revelation that he spreads before us in his Word and that by his Spirit he illumines our hearts to receive. We take refuge primarily in God our Saviour, God in Christ, and then in the precious promises and the great acts of his intervention for us and for our salvation.

The number of student uprisings shows the scope and intensity of young people’s discontent with established cultural patterns. One need not sympathize with the hippies’ taste for drugs or with the “confrontation” strategy pursued during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to recognize that the youthful sub-culture may well be the harbinger of an international revolution, for society and for the Church.

Dr. G. W. Bromiley of Fuller Theological Seminary suggests that perhaps the much talked about gap between generations is “an even more stubborn and persistent problem for the Church than that between classes or races.” The sight of students storming a cathedral may not be altogether remote. On the brighter side, Billy Graham holds out the hope that a student movement will be used of God to usher in a sweeping spiritual renewal. “I’ve given up on the older generation,” Graham says.

The problem, however, is not one of repudiating the convictions of those with a heritage of experience. Each generation has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the challenge for today’s Church is to exploit the best that God has entrusted to the coming generation. So far, evangelicals and the Church as a whole have not tried hard enough to confront alienated youth, to understand them, to meet them on their own ground. Much more attention has been given to their misdeeds, and elders sometimes tend to over-react. Church people are tempted to dismiss the whole youth movement as a product of youthful passion.

To grant worthy motives to at least a measure of the new concerns raised by young people today is neither to condone immorality nor to accommodate error. The world owes them more than a chance to tell it like it is—like they think it is—and to tell it loud and clear.

The phenomenon of modern youth shows up clearly in the current presidential campaign. This will be the first presidential election in which America’s big postwar baby crop will be voting. If nothing else, the sheer enormousness of the new youth bloc demands notice. Since 1964 some 12,415,000 persons have been added to the list of Americans eligible to vote. Most of these are young people who have just reached voting age, and there is little doubt that they will turn out at the polls in much higher percentage than their more politically indifferent elders.

The youth movement’s impact upon the ecclesiastical scene, though harder to gauge, is also considerable. True, most hippies and yippies make no religious profession. But the tide of rebellion among the young people of today has spilled over onto Christian and even decidedly evangelical campuses. Dr. T. W. Harpur of Wycliffe College, Toronto, states, “The generation gap is nowhere wider than where religion and young people are concerned.”

Many complaints from the young concern questionable patterns of conduct fostered by the churches. Young people are, in short, disgusted with the status quo. As one of the “flower children” put it, “The Church and the status quo are so tied up together that to throw out one is automatically to throw out the other as well.”

This hippie told Dr. Harpur, who is a professor of New Testament, “When you stop talking about Christianity and talk instead about Jesus Christ I begin to understand—it’s at that point that I can turn on.”

There is hope in that statement. Evangelicals must come to see the real hang-up: that our young people do not see the core of the faith for all the institutional trappings. But evangelicals also have a growing responsibility to communicate the great gains made by the Church down through the centuries, gains often obscured by widely publicized problems and perversions. Dialogue with the youthful subculture, says the Rev. Louis H. Evans, Jr., Presbyterian pastor in California, should be protected from “a stone-age mentality that operates as if nothing had been discovered in several thousand years of religious experience that was worth passing on.”

The characteristics of the new generation have been thoroughly catalogued: more frankness and impatience, less dogmatism, little capacity for shock. Today’s youth seem preoccupied with the here and now. They tend to be more experimental in conduct, to abhor legalism, and ostensibly to accept others as they are. Particularly noteworthy is their revolt against hypocrisy and all kinds of dishonesty, as well as against conceit and arrogance. They are often repelled by authoritarian methods. They challenge the validity of traditional divisions and separations and tend to think in global rather than national or regional terms. They react against clinging to tradition for tradition’s sake, sometimes by trying to be different just to be different. Says Dr. Peter H. Monsma of Grove City College, “Students generally, including those from a more traditional background, are deeply impressed by the supposed fact of change and relativity in all spheres.”

Also noteworthy is the deep-rooted feeling among young people of the need for social action, evidenced by the rise of such agencies as the Peace Corps and Vista. But they tend to consider matters of religious belief as private affairs. Their attitudes in general are more visceral than reasonable.

Some of these characteristics can be traced back to, if not blamed on, attitudes of the older generation. This is true even within the evangelical framework. Dr. Bromiley contends that older evangelicals have already “made great concessions to the general ethical mood, justifying it by a specious biblical relativism, and the students, if they tend to carry the principle further, are here part of their age rather than in revolt against it.”

Dr. Robert A. Cook, president of The King’s College, offers an observation that should prod many an evangelical to nod in shameful assent:

There is the bitter discovery that many an adult hides great areas of defeat behind his confident proclamation of a delivering Gospel. This discovery begins when the young person learns that his own parents are failing to experience the virtues they say are all-important. The young person learns to comply with this split system of life, becoming instantly religious on signal, and instantly secular when the scene changes. This gives rise to a spiritual schizophrenia which can be guaranteed to produce an explosion in the young life sooner or later.

The young also are feeling the effects of unbiblical theology. Mainstream churches have all too often surrendered to the anti-rationalistic movements of the day, and the effects are being seen on the campus. In contemporary theology, God’s action in behalf of men, rather than his moral and religious requirements, is stressed, and this trend likewise is having far-reaching influence.

Communication between generations is generally agreed to be crumbling. The two groups tend to read events differently. They use the same words with different meanings and interpretations. “As a result,” says Dr. Wilbur Sutherland, head of Canada’s Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, “conversations can go on between older people and evangelical students which ostensibly are on the same topic but in fact are two conversations going past each other.”

The error of attributing evil motives to all that the younger generation does must not be replaced by the error of thinking that ethical purity governs its conduct. Modern students succumb to temptations and pressures that their parents never imagined. Not long ago a professor at a leading evangelical college asked on a final examination if the students had done the required reading. When response was compared with library checkout cards, a wide discrepancy was noted. The gist of the Apostle Paul’s admonition to Timothy, “Let no man despise thy youth,” was that a young man ought to live in a way that would leave no cause for criticism from his elders.

But specific judgments should be issued sparingly, for the whole phenomenon is very complex. The Rev. Walter D. Wagoner, executive director of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for Theological Education, says:

Today’s student lives in a world of pluralism, instant internationalism, secularism, the knowledge explosion, and the communications revolution. It is a generation which in its mature moments sits around strumming “eve of destruction” and in its more adolescent moments retreats to James Bond and Playboy. It’s a generation of religious ambivalence between a wistful interest in theology and a profound disenchantment with anything that is remotely religious.

The challenge and opportunity among the younger generation is staggeringly obvious, and for the clergyman it may mean moving to the brink of despair in quest of rapport. The new generation is up for grabs. Which ideology will win it?

It is somewhat comforting to realize that every age has had its generation gap. An earlier writer expressed the problem this way:

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words.… When I was a boy, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.

This was said by the Greek poet Hesiod in the eighth century B.C.

Another source of encouragement is a 666-page report based on a six-year study of students at Stanford and Berkeley. Noted journalist Julius Duscha, reporting on the study in the National Observer, said it was perhaps the most comprehensive effort yet made to find out whether the present college generation differs significantly from its predecessors. The study, conducted by Stanford phychologist Joseph Katz, concluded that no more than 10 percent of students were involved in such activities as the New Left, the efforts to reform universities through vehicles like the 1964 Free Speech movement at Berkeley, or even civil-rights demonstrations. The study was also reported to have found that “sexual promiscuity was not widespread and most students still approached sexual matters from a strictly moral point of view.” Perhaps things are not quite so bad as they seem.

Moreover, there is evidence among today’s youth of increasing concern at the metaphysical level, a decided improvement over the materialistically oriented outlook that has long held sway amid Western affluence. Dr. J. Robert Ashcroft, president of Evangel College, says he sees all of civilization “going through the pangs of birth, moving out of a society dominated by materialism to a new awareness of the things of the spirit.”

Hippies represent basically a reaction to great affluence and opportunity. “Almost all hippies are white and this is significant,” says the 1968 Britannica Book of the Year. “They are the children of the ‘haves’ who are rejecting the values and rewards of the society—the same values and rewards that Negroes are struggling to obtain.”

Today’s young people may find it difficult to accept the supernatural for lack of exposure to it, even when they espouse evangelical principles. “Often they have seen so little occur in their background which they could clearly identify as a work of God,” says Dr. Sutherland, “that they have unconsciously accepted a closed-universe approach to events while still consciously professing supernaturalism.” Their thinking is further confused when Christian students see some of the best things being done today by non-Christians, and when moral issues are first raised by the unchurched. Commitment is supposed to be the product of the churches; yet the kind of commitment that involves real risk is all too rare among Christians. In the words of Dr. Harpur, young people know “that the average churchgoer blends into the background of suburban conformist society as neatly as a snowshoe rabbit in a drift in January.”

In issuing challenges, churches should probably pass up gimmicks entirely. Some clergymen who have tried to be swingers have lived to regret it. One Anglican rector in a small English town brought into his church a black-jacketed motorcycle gang for a special service. It was to be for “the blessing of the motorcycles,” and a number of the bikes were brought to the chancel and into the space in front of the pews. The service turned out to be a lively event, but that was all. The gang never came back. The verger remarked wryly, “All we did was get a lot of grease on the carpet.”

Gimmicks aside, the task seems to be clear if not simple. As Dr. Harpur stated it in a recent article for the Toronto Daily Star:

The challenge then for Christians is that of clarifying the message so that young people are confronted not with religious reasons for being good citizens or for bolstering up things as they are, but with the Person and claims of Jesus Himself. This will be a disturbing experience both for those in the church who have a congenital dislike for boat-rockers and also for those outside who really couldn’t care less about religion but nevertheless look to the churches to sprinkle holy water on the values and goals they have already decided to live by.

The primary and ultimate program of the Church for the young should be directed toward their spiritual regeneration and subsequent growth. But given the complexity of the present situation and the misunderstanding of the Church and Scripture that exists today, some pre-evangelism is often necessary. Various evangelical observers have expressed the educational tasks in these ways: “Students must be shown rather than told. They take little for granted.” “Most have been acculturated in non-Christian school situations and harbor non-evangelical notions of life, not because they are in revolt but because they are uninstructed.” “They have been taught much in one or two areas of doctrinal emphasis but not given an overall systematic grasp of Christian understanding. They desperately need a real and continuing expression of relevant Bible exposition.” “They often feel let down because they are not able to handle adequately some of the intellectual challenges to faith that they encounter on large campuses.”

Drastic changes may be necessary if the root of the educational problem is to be reached. Dr. Harold W. Boon, president of Nyack Missionary College, says:

We are reaping the consequence of a materialistic, secularistic philosophy of education in our public schools. In a desire for the separation of church and state our young people have received a paganistic philosophy of education. They have grown up in two worlds. They have been exposed to a very aggressive, secularistic philosophy in public schools. They have found very little in the Church that relates to their high-school education or answers the many questions they have in their minds.

Dr. Boon adds that “too often the Christian education program in the local church is preoccupied with entertaining the young people of the church, perhaps following the theory that they cannot be in two places at the same time, and if they can be sheltered, they won’t get into difficulty.”

Dr. Charles Hummel, president of Barrington College, is equally critical: “Church programs cater to young people, seek to entertain them often, and seem to show fear of their dissatisfaction. Actually these young people need to be prodded, stimulated, challenged to get off the sofa and into some kind of action for others.”

Dr. Hummel also favors giving young people a greater voice in their schools and churches. And Dr. Orville S. Walters of the University of Illinois feels that evangelical students sometimes feel with resentment that they have had authoritarian viewpoints and positions imposed upon them and have not had the chance to think for themselves. “These are sometimes justifiable occasions for protest,” says Dr. Walters.

Giving young people more authority and responsibility will probably be the hardest part of the effort to win rapport. The principle of seniority has a tight grip upon our society. Age more than any other one factor is thought to result in good judgment. This is standard policy in labor unions, in politics, and in the Church. Young Americans can die in battle when they are eighteen but cannot run for the presidency until they are nearly twice that old (Christ himself could not have been a candidate). The Church perpetuates this tradition, and the pattern cuts across all theological and ecclesiastical lines. Average age of delegates to the Uppsala assembly of the World Council of Churches was fifty-seven; the youngest member of the six-man WCC presidium is sixty.

The pattern of failing to recognize competence in young people is in a sense a disavowal of history. Michelangelo carved his first Pieta when he was twenty-three. The English poet Keats died at twenty-five. Calvin’s Institutes were published when he was twenty-seven. Mendelssohn wrote his masterful violin concerto at twenty-nine. Napoleon was a national hero and had seized power in France by the time he was thirty. In our own time, Billy Graham is an example of a young man who made church history.

Surely the Church ought to lower traditional age barriers and try to bring young blood into its offices and organizations. Young people will not feel they are being taken seriously until they win a new measure of authority in areas of their competence. The mood of today’s evangelical young people distresses their pious elders, and conflicts will arise, just as they did when Jesus confronted his parents and friends and the religious and political authorities. But such conflicts can make for a stronger Church of the future. And unless the Church yields at this point, it stands to lose much of a generation. Biblical integrity need not be compromised an iota in order to bring young people into the mainstream of church life.

Today’s Christian student has a decidedly more humanistic approach to the world. Often he seeks to interact with the world primarily through a Christian dimension in his vocation. Committing one’s life to the mission field is no longer regarded as the ultimate Christian sacrifice. The number of candidates for general missionary service is declining while the number interested in specific jobs such as missionary teacher or doctor increases. And many a young person would now rather be a missionary by avocation—he’ll join the U. S. Foreign Service and do his “missionary work” during off-hours. With governments closing doors to professional missionaries, this may be a desirable trend.

Many young people today are looking for a cause to uphold, a flag to wave, a purpose to champion. Christianity, if it is anything, is the best alternative that can be offered them. The older generation needs to be sensitive to the leading of the Spirit of God as it seeks to present its faith to the young. And it needs to invite young people to find new ways of using their energy and talent in the greatest of all endeavors, the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.