Three years ago i had an assignment that took me entirely around the world—first to Japan, then Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, on to Europe, and finally to New York and home. During this trip I did my best to carry out my task effectively. But in the back of my mind there was always a lurking longing for home and for loved ones and friends. I was anxious to get back to the place where I belong, where there is always a loving welcome, where I am comfortable and at peace.

Has the Church lost its sense of home, so to speak—of man’s ultimate destiny? Have Christians forfeited their rightful anticipation of heaven? Are we so concerned about making this world a “better place to live in” that we forget the Bible’s admonition, “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come” (Heb. 13:14)? Do we think that the Son of God came into this world primarily to reconcile man to man, rather than to redeem man from his sins and make him fit for heaven?

The activities of many suggest that our world is permanent, and that man’s tenancy is permanent. But that is not so. We live in a world dominated by sin and dying of it, and the Christian’s witness is not primarily about what is seen and temporary but about what is not seen and eternal.

“Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly use,” we’ve heard. Perhaps so. But there certainly are many others who are so anxious to be where the action is that they overlook the place where the greatest “action” of history took place—the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Why shouldn’t the Christian think of and look forward to heaven? The earth and our bodies are temporary; heaven is home. Christ makes it plain that his primary objective in coming into this world was to “save” and to give “eternal life.” It is one of the strange vagaries of our day that talk about salvation, heaven, and eternal life is, generally speaking, passé. Could it be that Satan has blinded the eyes of the world to the transcience of this present life and to the fact of a life after death to be lived somewhere, eternally?

Jesus said his Father is in heaven. He said that no man can come to the Father but by faith in him. He repeatedly spoke of eternal life and the necessity of being prepared for it. He made it plain that sin separates us from God, now and for eternity. He affirmed that the transition from a perishing state to the possession of everlasting life takes place when men believe in him as the Son of God and Saviour from sin.

Why, or why, is so little said about this from our pulpits today?

I have had the pleasure of visiting many places in this world. There are some to which I would love to return—Palestine, for instance. But there is no place in this world comparable to the heaven described in the Bible—“things beyond our seeing, things beyond our hearing, things beyond our imagining, all prepared by God for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9, NEB).

This is not “pie in the sky,” as some derisively say. It is a glorious hope, the hope and destiny of every Christian. Why are we so often silent about such a future?

Jesus tells us that there are many “mansions,” “rooms,” “dwelling places,” in heaven. No matter how one interprets the word, the fact is that our Lord is even now preparing a dwelling place for those who are his own, and that it will be our permanent address.

In an editorial republished in the March 18 issue of U. S. News and World Report, Editor David Lawrence emphasizes “The Illusion of Permanence”: “The North Atlantic Treaty is temporary. The United Nations is temporary. Peace itself is temporary.… Basically, there is only one permanence we can all accept. It is the permanence of a God-governed world. For the power of God is alone permanent. Obedience to his laws is the road to a lasting solution of man’s problems.”

Down through the centuries the hope of heaven has rightly been the stay of believing Christians. The Apostle Paul speaks of the bleakness of any faith in Christ confined to this life.

And the Apostle John gives us a vision of what heaven will be like. Obviously, no words can adequately describe it. The new heaven and new earth will be perfect. Sorrow, death, crying, sickness, death, mourning, pain—all these will be gone, and the joy of the Lord will be in every heart.

God—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—will be there, and because of his presence there will be no need of the sun. Nor will there be any night. There will be nothing unclean or false, for we will be in the presence of the holiness of God himself.

This is no plea that Christians sink back into a meaningless life of mere anticipation. Our knowledge of such a glorious future should be reflected in the lives we live right now.

Jesus came into the world to make this glorious future possible, and he is coming again to make it a reality. “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command [reminiscent of, ‘Lazarus, come forth’], with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:16–18).

Surely we should give this hope the emphasis due it. This does not blind us to the necessity of caring for the material needs of the unfortunate; rather, it gives meaning to all acts of Christian compassion, for it looks beyond the temporal to the eternal implications of the Christian faith.

Christians should be in the vanguard of those who are working to alleviate suffering and sorrow; but theirs is a double ministry—to the body and to the soul. They should make it clear that their service is done in the name of Christ and for his glory.

All honor is due those who are personally engaged in human relief. It is the duty of every Christian to recognize such work as both legitimate and essential in the total witness of the Church. But let us be sure that it is recognized as a means to an end and not as the end in itself. The ultimate goal of the Christian lies beyond the horizon of human experience.

I have known some who had everything this world has to offer but who still were utterly miserable. They had no joy in the present, no hope for the future. I have also known many, here and abroad, who had only the barest necessities of life but who nevertheless had joy in the present and complete confidence for the future.

The Church must emphasize this future joy as man’s ultimate destiny, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Dear Mystical Seekers of Happiness:

A new flap in religion in America these days is Sokagakkai. This irrational, existential Nichiren Buddhist sect, famed for its phenomenal growth in post-war Japan, now claims a membership of 30,000 families in all fifty states, with California leading the way. Its appeal to thoroughly modern but incurably religious Americans is its promise of immediate spiritual and material happiness. All one has to do is say a four-word prayer, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, preferably 3,000 times a day, advises international president Daisaku Ikeda.

I attended a Sokagakkai meeting—a kind of Buddhist “sock-it-to-me-time”—in a home about two thousand samurai-sword lengths from the U. S. Capitol. There thirty people—yellow, black, and white—knelt before the Gohonzon to recite their daimoku (the four-word prayer). The Gohonzon, an envelope-sized paper scroll inscribed with the Chinese characters for Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and enshrined in a fancy cabinet, is their object of worship. Recital of the prayer assures one of enlightenment, financial success, physical healing, protection from violence (even in traffic accidents), eventual unity with the spirit of the universe, and, for now, joy, joy, joy!

Most of the evening was devoted to Shakubuku, the proselytizing session. First we had a time of happy songs led by a Nisei woman who used a fan for a baton. To the tune of “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad,” the faithful sang, “I’ve Been Goin’ to Shakubuku.” Then the articulate leader called upon members to explain the movement’s history and practices. (“Don’t worry about understanding. Begin saying the prayer and see how faith in the Gohonzon affects your life.”) Next came testimonies of personal blessing (happiness in a new job, reconciliation with an errant brother, disappearance of cancer). Finally, people were invited to ask questions. I humbly asked about the sect’s view of the afterlife and about the basis for its religious assertions. There followed thirty minutes of courteous but spirited give-and-take in which I set forth Christian claims against Sokagakkai mysticism. At dismissal time, the leader said, “This has been a most unusual meeting,” and he urged all to return.

I haven’t. Nor have I invested in a $4 Gohonzon, despite its power to attune me to the vibrations of the universe. I’m even having trouble remembering Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. The fact is, there’s no real sock in Sokagakkai.

EUTYCHUS III

Sayonara,

KING ASSASSINATION RIPPLES

The assassination of Martin Luther King was, without any doubt whatsoever, a vile and tragic thing. Men of good will, everywhere, cannot help but mourn this event and view the future darkly. Dr. King died simply because someone hated him enough to kill him.… I have said these things so that no misunderstanding will follow what I say next.… The rioting in the American cities, the gathering of “black-power” groups in front of the American consulate here in Toronto, all with their cries of “Kill whitey, burn, loot …,” are as rotten as the hate that killed Dr. King.

FLOYD LORD

Bayview Church of Christ

Toronto, Ont.

He led marches which many times became riots. His disobedience to law was unforgivable. I feel that sin reaps its reward.

FRANK P. STELLING

Oakland, Calif.

I should not be disappointed with your special report on “The Life and Death of Martin Luther King” (April 26), but the hoped-for analysis was not there. As a Negro and minister of the Gospel, I did not always agree with Dr. King. I recognize that his theology was very liberal, but I cannot help but believe that he was nevertheless a prophet.…

[I am] disheartened that my fellow white brothers in Christ were content with the status quo to the extent that they could not see their sin in the acceptance and perpetuation of this society’s iniquities on the basis of race. We are in fact a racist society. What the Negro, saved or unsaved, has sought, is no more and no less than the affluence and right to its acquisition as equally as his white counterpart, now!

HAROLD L. TURNER

Assoc. Pastor

Second Community Church

Columbus, Ohio

Your lead editorial on “Johnson, King, and Ho Chi Minh” (April 26) as usual held to cogent and contributory expressions on the subject.

However, I am increasingly disturbed to find such expressions as: “The American Negro … would still be discriminated against in public places … simply because of his pigment.” …

I am most tired of this oversimplification. It may be that some find the pigment to be the sole problem. I have noted more—the immorality of the Negro, so crass that his apologists now plaintively moan that the matriarchial society of his home is the excuse for all such departure from Christian morality. How many Negroes really do know their paternal parentage?…

And how about that Negress legislator from very Harlem who herself said her people drank too much; and the article in the Reader’s Digest when Philadelphia Negress Judge Stout wrote, “Are We Legalizing Illegitimacy?” When the best of the race concede many insufficiencies, how can you simplify that all the hesitancy in admission to white society is based upon “pigment”?

L. I. SNYDER

Washington, Pa.

While condemning those who look for a solely social solution to racism, let us be aware that we who claim to have a God-given solution have not made ours work either.

RONALD J. COOK

Assistant Pastor

Elm-LaSalle Bible Church

Chicago, Ill.

“Men must respect and obey law.” Agreed wholeheartedly. But let that include also the many Christian individuals who find ways of circumventing the laws when it comes to hiring or housing Negroes. We in the comfortable upper status quo fear to have the boat rocked. Had we eagerly gone to the rescue sooner, the threat of our boat capsizing now might not be so imminent.

GERALDINE HESS

Seattle Pacific College

Seattle, Wash.

Local, state, and national leaders of government called upon the people to toss the Christ of Palm Sunday on the trash heap, and instead, to use the day to deify a fellow mortal.…

Christ has not forsaken the people, but the 1968 crop of Pharisees has rejected the Christ, every whit as much as did the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day. And “all we like sheep have gone astray.” Well, not quite all. One pastor and his flock refused to be stampeded, refused to bow the knee to Baal. They kept Palm Sunday in Christian fellowship and worship, giving full allegiance to Christ their Redeemer.

F. W. HOFMANN

Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church

Verona, Pa.

NOTHING TO ADD

I am writing to express my great approval of Dr. Bell’s article … on civil disobedience (A Layman and His Faith, April 26).… Nothing can be added to what Dr. Bell says.

PAUL R. MARRS

Henderson, Ky.

I was saddened rather than angered when I read L. Nelson Bell’s article on civil disobedience. I am sorry that you saw fit to print anything like that.…

[He] never uses the word “conscience,” which is the base of civil disobedience as it has traditionally been defined. In light of this, the implications of his comments are slanderous to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he mentions at the outset, for Dr. King was pre-eminently a man of conscience. Furthermore, by this omission, he seems to tell Christians that their first loyalty should be to the law and not, as Christianity has traditionally taught, to God (who informs the Christian’s conscience).…

Civil disorder, while understandable, is nonetheless deplorable, but its roots are not, as Mr. Bell says, in “calculated civil disobedience.” The two must not be confused, and the latter cannot be condemned.

ROBERT D. NEWELL

Cambridge, Mass.

ELOQUENT AND ENLIGHTENING

I have never read a more eloquent message than “The Lord Came Preaching” by Manuel L. Scott (April 26). It is not only eloquent but most significant and enlightening, revealing the absolute fact that our Lord’s preaching was truly Christocentric and preachers of our day cannot hope to succeed in winning souls by any other method. The marvelous success of Billy Graham’s ministry is due to the fact that he preaches Christ and him crucified, the simplicity of the Gospel!

MRS. IDA GRAHAM

Hutchinson, Kan.

THE IMPORTANT NINTH

In the editorial, “Recovering the Church’s Lost Mission” (April 26), paragraph nine is the most important; however, the whole editorial is of the utmost pertinence. The situation in the mainline churches is such that how can true Christians help from crying, “How long, O Lord, how long?”

HENRY FRANKLIN HILL

San Antonio, Tex.

SIMPLIFIED THANKS

I just had to sit down and write you how much I appreciated Addison H. Leitch’s “So Far and So Fast” (Current Religious Thought, April 26).

I am sure that the so-called theologians of today will say those famous words, “He oversimplifies.” Thank God for a man who can make such a mass of philosophy, theology—the writings of people who thought that they were experts—simplified.…

His concluding words, “It is about time now to talk about the truth,” are certainly prophetic. So long we have heard the words of men. Now, let us return to hearing the One who said, “I am the truth.

JOHN C. HANSE

Bentheim Reformed Church

Hamilton, Mich.

TROUBLED WATERS

I greatly regret that, in your report (News, Personalia, April 26) of recent faculty appointments to the Conwell School of Theology in Philadelphia, you should describe the school as “long stagnant.” This phrase is not only unkind; it is untrue. The school was only founded in 1960 (as the successor to the Temple School of Theology), and what has been achieved over these years is not a matter for gratuitous denigration but for just acknowledgment. Others have labored, and we have entered into their labors.

STUART BARTON BABBAGE

President

Conwell School of Theology

Philadelphia, Pa.

SALES AND SCRIPTURES

I have generally found CHRISTIANITY TODAY stimulating and informative. But I was particularly offended by the advertisement by the Religious Book Discount House (back cover, April 26). The insensitive quoting of Holy Scripture, used out of context and for the purpose of selling a commercial product, seems to me to be in especially poor taste.

RICHARD LOCKE

Clayton, Mo.

SUPPORT FOR ORAL ROBERTS

Pentecostals can be thankful that we live in a country where one can exercise his right to join whatever church he chooses (“Oral Roberts Joins the Methodists,” April 12, and “More on Roberts,” April 26).

However, it need not seem strange that some Pentecostals feel Robert’s action was unethical in view of the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars were siphoned off from Pentecostal churches and individuals through the twenty or more years they loyally supported his evangelistic campaigns and his television and radio programs, and helped in a great measure toward building his multi-million-dollar headquarters building and university. He walks out on them to join a church that neither sponsored, endorsed, nor particularly encouraged his program through the years he climbed to where he is now.

T. F. MCNABB

Ft. Dix, N. J.

Because I feel so bad [about] the horrible cartoon of Oral Roberts (April 12), I am writing to ask why you didn’t put in a good picture. I showed it to a friend [who] said, “I guess they don’t like him.” I hoped CHRISTIANITY TODAY was going to help us be more Christ-like.

AGNES W. HARRISON

Holden, Mass.

MAKING AN IMPACT

Kenneth W. Linsley’s article, “Confusion in the Churches” (April 12), was most interesting and informative. I share his conviction that the successful churches today are those in which the membership does not necessarily need a great deal of theology, but they know Jesus.

What a different impact the Church would have in our world if this was the central message preached from all of our pulpits, and then that this message was lived by our clergy and laymen.

DAVID LARSON

Lakewood, Calif.

Thank God for laymen and clergy who realize the present condition of the Church and are willing to search the Scriptures, as well as the heart, to find out what can be done.…

Is it not about time for laymen and clergy to reconsider the nature, character, and mission of the Church in the light of his Word? Too long have many traditional concepts served as excess baggage which have impeded mobility and progress of the Church. To recapture the biblical concept of the Church and the power of the Holy Spirit is the answer to the need today.

JOHN T. DALE

Director

The Mexican

Indian Mission, Inc.

Tamazunchale, S.L.P., Mexico

RESURRECTION HELP

I found both the Harvard discussion program and the related article by Dr. Pinnock to be very informative and helpful (“The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” March 29, and “A Dialogue on Christ’s Resurrection,” April 12).

DAVID P. REJMER

Houghton, N. Y.

The Easter issue this year (March 29) is a much-needed appeal to the intellectual who has feared acceptance of Christianity as tying one’s life to a myth.

GLADYS MONTGOMERY

Rockford, Ill.

ENJOYMENT AND PROFIT

I sure did enjoy—and I hope I have profited by reading—the article “Leadership for the Hour,” by Charles Habib Malik (March 29). I have read and reread it and believe that every preacher and Christian worker should read it.

T. E. VANEVERY

Buchanan, Mich.

EDITORIAL MISTAKE?

I am very pleased with the fundamental tone and loyalty of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.… I must reveal my dismay, however, at the valid status you gave to the Kerner report (“Why Did they Riot?,” March 29). Certainly the Christian community would agree that spiritual poverty is the root cause of problems and tensions in our society today and that a full life does not depend on an abundance of things. It is most surprising that commendation be given to such a secular and materialistic evaluation of riot causes and solutions.…

Please assure me the entire editorial was included by mistake and even evaded proofreading.

EVELYN BRANDT

Grand Rapids, Mich.

BACK TO THE BIBLE

I do not know whose liberal ax Marquita Moss (“Abilene: Shifting to Neutral,” News, March 15) may be trying to grind, but her quote of J. D. Thomas is significant. Indeed, this year’s ACC lectureship was popular because it went back to the Bible, for the most part, instead of pawning off on us the air and nothingness of theological jargon which has characterized so much of the lectureships of the past year or two.

ROBERT L. GREGG

Church of Christ

Houston, Tex.

‘SUMMARY’ INDIGNATION

I am writing in indignation over “Haiti’s Ills Prod Evangelical Activist” (March 15).… The article is a mass of misrepresentation, distortion, and falsehood. It was compiled from biased persons’ ideas, people outside Haiti, who have been hurt by history, misquotes out of context, “stacked” for effect. I would like to ring the other side of the bell.

For centuries, Rome ruled Haiti.… Only 2 per cent of Haiti’s population were formed in Rome’s pattern, a literate ruling class. The rapid spread of the Gospel changed that. Every little Protestant meeting place, whether a leaf arbor or a church, has literacy classes for children and often also for adults. Not only Christians now are learning; the whole nation wants their children to have more opportunity than their parents. For twenty-one years, I have led in pushing Christian education.

Naturally, a nation delivered from the slavery of ignorance and a growing number delivered from superstition create a social revolution. People held down for generations in ignorance do not have a finesse in coming into power. Naturally, individuals on both sides get violent, and innocent people are hurt by profiteers.…

The hundreds of foreign missionaries and national ministers who have continued to preach the Gospel and to lend their neighbors a helping hand are not seeking escape from social problems. We are following the example of our Lord, who did not abolish crucifixion or gladiatorial combat but taught by example the way to show his love and salvation from sin. One who is plotting to kill cannot preach this message. As several who have seen your article have commented, our old friend Raymond Joseph is proving himself out of fellowship with his Lord by his erroneous conduct.

One of the worst of the misstatements is that Rev. Bonhomme is producing a Creole New Testament in competition to that which Joseph completed for the American Bible Society. A member of the Haitian Coalition, campaigning for Rome’s candidate led a mob which sacked Bonhomme’s national group’s press, scattering the New Testaments and plates of the first and only edition over the streets ten years ago.

WALLACE TURNBULL

The Conservative Baptist Haiti Mission Society, Inc.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

One and a half billion young people are increasingly alienated from the Gospel. Can the churches reach them?

The gap dividing youth from their predecessors is now wider than ever before. Different, dominant, and sometimes depraved, today’s youth reject the life of their progenitors for an intimate and materialistic society of their own. More often than not, that society is found in the vast metropolises of the world—Tokyo, Singapore, Kinshasa, Buenos Aires—where the rules are relative.

Many young people feel that the doctrinal beliefs and cultural patterns of the churches have little to commend them. If the Church is spiritually alert and evangelistically zealous, it tends to appear irrelevant to the materialistic world of youth. If it is in spiritual decline, without a message and syncretistic in outlook, then youth see no reason to unite with it.

Can the Church relate to this vast generation? Many argue correctly that it can. But it must adhere to certain principles if it is to narrow the gap between itself and the “Now Generation.”

Recovering the Basics

1. It is the sovereign spirit of God who convicts and brings new birth.

Too often we are guilty of feeling that just one more literature organization or one more youth committee or one more radio station will make the difference between evangelism and non-evangelism. A little more publicity, a few more newspaper write-ups, a dozen more spot announcements over the air and we can turn the trick. Given enough money and enough promotion, the project must succeed. We need to be reminded that we can do nothing apart from Christ.

Several years ago in Saigon a teen-age soldier who had lost a leg in action was handed a tract as he lay in the hospital. The contact was brief, but God spoke to the young man as he read the tract. Soon he became a believer in Christ. Today he is a printer in a church’s literature department.

A young Buddhist typesetter was proofreading some New Testament commentaries when God brought conviction upon him as he began to think about his life and his soul. Suddenly the Word illuminated his darkened mind. Today he is a church deacon and devotes his full time and energy to producing attractive gospel literature.

What could be more casual than a tract passed out in a hospital ward or a printing assignment given to a Buddhist typesetter? But the sovereign God used these casual contacts to bring about conversion.

We labor together with God, but it is God’s building. We need to remember this. One can only wonder what major changes might occur in this world if some of the energy spent in ineffective Christian activity could be directed into prayer and a true waiting upon God. The great revivals of the past that swept thousands into the Kingdom cannot be explained as the result of human effort alone. The only possible conclusion: God was at work, usually—if not always—in answer to prevailing prayer.

2. The Church must relate to its community on a person-to-person basis, not on an organizational basis.

People do not respond to organizations; they respond to people. You can be fully aware that the Red Cross needs money to carry on its work and still give nothing; but when your neighbor comes to your door to ask for a contribution to the Red Cross, you reach for your wallet.

Young people and adults who are outside the Church tend to look upon it as something distant, irrelevant, and a trifle frightening—until it is personified by an individual. Hendrick Kraemer, writing about the importance of the individual missionary, finds no point of contact between Christianity and non-Christian religious systems except the missionary himself:

The one point of contact is the disposition and attitude of the missionary. It seems rather upsetting to make the missionary the point of contact. Nevertheless it is true, as practice teaches. The strategic and dominant point in this whole important problem, when it has to be discussed in general terms, is the missionary worker himself [The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, p. 140].

What is Dr. Kraemer saying? Simply this: that people understand and respond to people. His magazine reported on the Good Will Caravans sponsored by Evangelism-in-Depth:

In Bolivia, during the recent nationwide Evangelism-in-Depth effort, scores of Good Will Caravans were sent out from the cities into the surrounding countryside. Each caravan carried a doctor, nurse, dentist, audiovisual man, and one or more evangelists. As it spent a day or more in each town, the people would flock around for medical examinations or tooth extractions. None left without a personal word of testimony from the evangelists and an invitation to return in the evening. In response, unprecedented crowds gathered in the plazas of the towns to see the films and hear a gospel message in the evenings, and hundreds of decisions for Christ were recorded.… The value of this type of ministry has now been tried and proven [His, March, 1966, p. 20].

It was a personal contact that made evangelical Christianity meaningful to the rural people of Bolivia.

3. The thirty-year-olds are in a good position to mediate between youth and the Church.

It is axiomatic that young people tend to be skeptical of the preceding generation. Mark Twain discovered that while he himself was progressing from age seventeen to age twenty-five his father had learned quite a bit; but the present generation retains its skepticism of its elders at twenty-five. Time magazine, in its 1967 Man-of-the Year issue on the men and women under twenty-five, observes that “the young seem curiously unappreciative of the society that supports them. ‘Don’t trust anyone over 30,’ is one of the rallying cries” (Time, Jan. 6, 1967, p. 19). The article quotes Harvard’s David Riesman as saying, “The generational gap is wider than I’ve ever seen it in my lifetime.”

This “generation gap” is too broad for some older people to span. Many who compose the Church are, in the eyes of youth, part of the discredited, has-been generation. And too many, frustrated in their attempts to bridge the gap, are content to retreat into their own immediate world and let the young people go their own way.

Historically, there has been a group of mediators between the organized church and the youthful community—the thirty-year-olds, who are still close to that bracket we label “youth” and have not yet taken on the set attitudes of middle-age.

Francis of Assisi was twenty-five when he founded the Franciscan order. Xavier was twenty-eight when he teamed up with Ignatius Loyola to organize the Jesuits. Luther was thirty-three when he nailed his theses to the door at Wittenberg. Calvin was twenty-seven when he completed the first edition of his Institutes. Whitefield was a successful evangelist at twenty-five. Wesley began his real life’s work at thirty-five. Spurgeon was twenty-seven when his congregation built for him the great Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. Billy Sunday left home plate for the pulpit at thirty-three. Billy Graham was thirty-one at the time of his now-famous Los Angeles crusade.

Down through history there have been the “between men” to bridge the gap between the organized church and the community of youth. They are not appointed by the church or elected by the young people. They are men upon whom God has set his seal. They are innovators, organizers, action men. And we need them now more than ever before.

Youthful spontaneity has characterized God’s appointment in a number of overseas developments. In the southern Philippines there is an indigenous youth movement, with a periodical geared to youth and rallies at which scores and probably hundreds have found Christ. In India a group of Christian students formed the Inter-Collegiate Evangelical Union, which sponsors weekly on-campus Bible studies, vacation youth retreats, and periodic youth rallies. In Hong Kong an indigenous “Operation Mobilization,” sponsored by students at the Alliance Bible Seminary, has sent five young men across the channel for a profitable vacation ministry in Taiwan. Behind the Bamboo Curtain surrounding mainland China three young men, converted through reading a gospel tract, won ten other young men before all thirteen of them escaped to Hong Kong and freedom. In Saigon there is the Student Christian Fellowship, presenting the Gospel to Chinese students in the Cholon area of the city.

In What Deeps Of Earth?

In what deeps of earth

Dare a poet grope

For a relevant witness

Of hope, of hope

Whose lineage is heaven’s?

Not secret wings spun

Of chrysalis-yearning

To fly toward the sun;

Nor winter-stilled gardens

Where beauty sleeps, furled

Million-petaled

To break on spring’s world;

Not even where rainbows

Span darkening skies.…

But—lifting the heart up

Past all surmise—

See on man’s lone pathway

(O no more alone!)

His light, Who comes seeking,

Seeking His own.

M. WHITCOMB HESS

Some of these movements have been abetted by foreign missionaries, but many are purely indigenous. The genius of all lies in their youthful and indigenous leadership.

4. Our approach must be pragmatic.

Time magazine, in the article mentioned earlier, says this of what it calls the “Now Generation”: “Theirs is an immediate philosophy, tailored to the immediacy of their lives.” Buell Gallagher, president of the City College of New York, exclaims, “This generation has no utopia. Its idea is the Happening. Let it be concrete, let it be vivid, let it be personal. Let it be now!”

Even a cursory reading of the Acts of the Apostles reveals that the early Church was a highly practical instrument for immediate action. Was the problem the overwhelming guilt that gripped many of the Jews gathered at Jerusalem as they discovered that they had crucified the Lord of glory? Thousands found the joy of immediate forgiveness as they heeded Peter’s words on the Day of Pentecost. Was it discrimination in the distribution of the daily subsidy, with the accompanying racial and cultural overtones? The Holy Spirit helped them to an immediate solution: the appointment of seven deacons to oversee the food dole. Was it the imprisonment of their illustrious spokesman, Peter? An angel delivered him from the inner cell and put him in flesh-and-blood reality on the doorstep of the house where the disciples were praying for his release. Was it impending shipwreck on a small Mediterranean isle? That great emissary of the Church, Paul of Tarsus, found practical deliverance as he sought God by prayer and fasting.

If today’s Church seems unimaginative and uninteresting to today’s youth, we have only ourselves to blame. Drugged by materialism, we move a bit unsteadily in an aura of indifference, while the next generation races toward its doom. Nothing short of a heaven-sent awakening will stir us from our self-made lethargy. Fortunately, there are signs of such a renewal.

5. To be heard by today’s youth we must be absolutely honest.

The do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do kind of doubletalk is fatal to any dialogue between the Chinch and youth. Young people have always had the ability to detect sham and double standards. And now they react more quickly than before, and with greater finality.

Some of our problem lies in the fact that Christianity has been around for a long time in America, and most of us are second- and third-generation Christians. Few of us have experienced the cataclysmic, daylight-from-darkness transformation that delivered a John Bunyan or a Billy Sunday from the jaws of hell. There was no doubt about their conversions. But the experience is different for most of us. Raised in a rather strict Christian culture, we have been churchgoers as long as we can remember. For many of us, conversion was no traumatic experience. A weak experience of grace has run concurrent with a strong catechism of Bible doctrine. The result has been an emphasis on theory and a de-emphasis on experience.

Today’s young people, impatiently seeking the workable, want the kind of testimony that says, “Salvation works—look what it has done for me.” Unfortunately, too many second-generation Christians can only point lamely to what the Gospel did for John Bunyan and Billy Sunday. And the third generation probably doesn’t even know who Bunyan and Sunday were.

If we are going to communicate with the “Now Generation,” we must do what is necessary to get back to reality ourselves. And in this case, reality means spiritual revival.

Their Time Is Now

Meanwhile, the Now Generation is with us, in unprecedented numerical strength. Convinced that we have failed, certain that the Church has nothing very important to offer them, they are out to tackle the world’s social ills in their own time and way. Their time is now, and their way will not be God’s way.

We can smile knowingly and predict their failure. We can tolerantly philosophize that their enthusiasm is that of youth, that within a few years they’ll settle down and discover their place. We can do that if we want to. But if we do, the Now Generation will be lost.

If the Church of Jesus Christ is to mount a successful attack on this imposing problem, the battle must begin with the basics: prayer and a dependence upon God’s sovereign Holy Spirit. We must demount from our organizational steeds and prepare to fight it out in hand-to-hand combat. Some of us must be willing to step aside and let the in-betweeners carry the sword, content to give more able warriors the moral support they need. We must come out from behind the fortifications of deception and pretense and dare to be transparent and utterly honest. We don’t necessarily need new methods and new techniques; we just need to use to the full the methods and techniques that have been effective in other generations.

The Now Generation stands in the valley of decision, a billion and a half strong. As here at home, so overseas, it is concentrated in the great urban centers: Tokyo, Manila, Djakarta, Hong Kong, Singapore, Saigon, Bangkok, Calcutta, Bombay, Karachi, Kinshasa, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Lima. The Church of Jesus Christ hesitates, a bit uncertain, considerably undecided. What will we do? May God give us the courage to move forward boldly in full dependence upon him.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

A Message to the World Congress on Evangelism by a chaplain to the Queen of England

Last in a Series

Luke’s account of the Great Commission (24:44–49) differs from those of John and Matthew by appearing to be a general summary of the teaching rather than a particular utterance by Christ. John records what the risen Lord said during his first appearance to the Twelve on Easter Day itself. Matthew records his words on a later occasion when he met his disciples on a Galilean mountainside. That Luke summarizes what Jesus said on the overall subject is apparent; these six verses represent the sum of Christ’s teaching between the day of his resurrection (24:36–43) and the day of his ascension (vv. 50–53). If we had only Luke’s Gospel, we might get the impression that Luke thought the ascension followed the resurrection almost at once. But since he says in Acts 1:3 that forty days elapsed between the two events, we must conclude that he deliberately gives only a brief digest of the Risen Lord’s teaching about the Church’s worldwide mission.

In the account in Luke’s Gospel, the verb in verse 47 points to the nature of the Great Commission. This verb, translated “preached” in most versions, is in fact the Greek word kēruchthēnai, “to be heralded.” It stands first in the Greek sentence, and so receives the chief emphasis. Christ’s will and purpose are “that there should be preached” a certain message throughout the world. He made his Church the herald of his Gospel, to publish it abroad to the ends of the earth.

The commission of the Church, therefore, is not to reform society but to preach the Gospel. Certainly, Christ’s disciples who have embraced the Gospel and are being transformed by it are intended to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matt. 5:13, 14). That is, they are to influence the society in which they live and work, helping to arrest its corruption and illumine its darkness. They are to love and serve their generation, and play their part in the community as responsible Christian citizens. But the primary task of the members of Christ’s Church is to be gospel heralds, not social reformers.

Again, the commission of the Church is not to heal the sick but to preach the Gospel. Of course I am not suggesting that doctors or nurses give up their professions. Their caring for the sick accords with the principle of neighbor-love so beautifully illustrated in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I am simply saying that the miraculous healing ministry exercised by Jesus and to some extent by his apostles (that is, instantaneous and complete healing without the use of means) is not part of Christ’s commission to the Church. I do not doubt or deny that God can, and sometimes does, miraculously heal the sick. But the Church today has no authority to exercise a regular ministry of miraculous healing.

Supernatural healing was plainly part of Christ’s charge to the Twelve and to the Seventy during his early ministry; both these charges Luke recorded earlier in his Gospel (9:1 ff; 10:1 ff.). On these occasions the disciples were commanded not only to preach the Gospel but also to heal the sick and, according to Matthew 10:8, even to raise the dead. The Church cannot automatically assume, however, that these commands apply to it today, unless it is ready to obey as well all the other commands of the mission charge to the Twelve and to the Seventy. Are Christ’s twentieth-century disciples prepared, for example, to take with them on their evangelistic campaigns neither food nor money nor spare clothing? Are they prepared to forgo the use of public transportation and to walk barefoot, and indeed, to go only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6)? No. These commands, including the command to heal the sick and raise the dead, belong to Christ’s charge to those disciples who shared in his own healing ministry during the days of his flesh. Significantly, they were not repeated in the Great Commission of the Risen Lord. According to this commission, which is still addressed to us today, the Church’s primary duty is to be neither a reformer of society nor a healer of the sick but rather a preacher of the Gospel.

Having sought to establish that the Great Commission to the Church is to be Christ’s herald in the proclamation of the Gospel, we can consider the details of the proclamation. Five aspects are given:

1 It is a proclamation of the forgiveness of sins. Literally the commission reads, “that there should be preached … forgiveness of sins.…” This Gospel of Christ is good news of salvation for sinners, and the foremost meaning of salvation is the forgiveness of sins. This is confirmed by John’s version of the commission, in which Jesus declared, “Whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted.”

Many today deny that the Gospel is essentially an offer of forgiveness. Some even dare to assert that “man come of age” is no longer so conscious of his sins as were his guilt-laden forebears, and that the Church must grow out of its agelong obsession with sin. But biblical Christians cannot even begin to agree with this modern tendency to softpedal sin. Jesus Christ has sent them to all nations to be heralds of the forgiveness of sins. This means that all men of all nations are guilty sinners under the judgment of God and stand in need of forgiveness.

In this task the Church seeks not only to obey the forthright command of Christ but also to follow the example of his apostles. They were faithful to their commission. In the first Christian sermon ever preached, the Apostle Peter cried to a conscience-smitten crowd, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins!” (Acts 2:38). “Let it be known to you, therefore, brethren,” said the Apostle Paul in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, “that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you” (Acts 13:38).

2 It is a proclamation of the forgiveness of sins in the name of Christ. Literally the passage reads, “that there should be preached upon his Name … forgiveness of sins.” The preposition means not “in” his Name but “on” his Name, epi. This indicates that the Name of Christ is to be the ground or basis upon which the offer of forgiveness is made.

What this means is explained in the preceding three verses. “Then he said to them, ‘These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead’ ” (Luke 24:44–46).

The Christ upon whose Name forgiveness of sins is to be heralded is the Christ who once suffered for sins and then rose from the dead. He died to bear men’s sin and curse in his own body. He was raised to show that his death had been satisfactory for the removal of sin and to apply its benefits to future generations of sinners. Thus Jesus Christ is to be presented by the Church to the world as the crucified and risen Saviour of sinners. The Church has no authority to stray from these two central events in the saving career of Jesus. Nor can it presume to offer men forgiveness on any other ground than that of the Name of the Christ who suffered and rose. “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The Church’s message was, still is, and ever will be that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures …, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures …” (1 Cor. 15:3, 4).

Moreover, this message that the risen Lord entrusted to the Church is consistent, he says, with his earthly teaching, with the teaching of the Old Testament, and with the future teaching of the apostles. He states that his post-resurrection instruction is identical with “my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you.” Further, this was “that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” What the Old Testament writers said, the earthly Jesus endorsed; and what the earthly Jesus endorsed, the risen Christ further confirmed. After the resurrection, he had no need to contradict or even to modify what he had taught in the days of his flesh.

Furthermore, the apostles would bear testimony to him because they were “witnesses of these things” (v. 48). They had a unique competence, for they had been eyewitnesses of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. They could bear witness to Christ (Acts 1:8) in a way no one else would be able to. This their witness is preserved in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. We have, therefore, the risen Lord’s own authority for believing in the unity and consistency of the Bible. The fundamental message of the Old Testament and of the New Testament—of the law, the prophets, and the other Old Testament writings and of the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and the Revelation in the New Testament—is the same. It is the offer of forgiveness to sinful men and women on the ground of the Name of the crucified and risen Christ. There is no other message but the offer of forgiveness, no other ground but the name of Christ. This is the good news the Church is commissioned to herald. It is the Gospel according to the Scriptures, and it will never change.

How To Help A Man Making ‘A Touch’

Many ministers and church workers, especially in downtown churches, have experienced the difficulty of turning down a person asking for money. Always there lurks the fear that the asker might really deserve help.

One church has found a way of solving this problem. When an obviously poor man comes into the church and asks to talk to a minister, he is introduced to a staff member. The man says: “I wonder if you could help me out with some money for something to eat. I haven’t had any food today and I’m in pretty bad shape.” The staff member sincerely desires to help a worthy person. But he is unwilling to be taken in by a professional panhandler, and so he proceeds in this way:

“Are you looking for work or for a handout?” (The word “handout” is used deliberately. It has a bad connotation and will probably draw out a reaction.)

The man answers: “Oh, I’d like to get work, but there just aren’t any jobs. I’ve looked all over.” (Observe: he has admitted willingness to work, but another step must be taken.)

“Maybe you aren’t physically up to working, so it wouldn’t do much good to get a job.”

The man usually answers: “Oh, I’m okay. I can work, but I just can’t find any.”

“Maybe you’re too fussy and want only a white-collar job.”

Usually the man says again that he’d take any job. He may add that he hates to be asking for help.

The church worker says, “Let’s see, You say you would work if you could find work. You say you are physically able, if only you could find work. You would take almost any kind of job, if only you could find one. Well, come back in about an hour. Meanwhile I’ll see if I can find a job for you, to help you through the day. We can usually find cleaning jobs, some floors to scrub or wax. I want to help you. So come back in an hour and maybe I’ll have some work for you.” Before the man leaves, the worker mentions the love of God and has a brief prayer, in case his visitor does not return.

Observe: the worker has not turned the man down; he has offered help. He has given him a way of escape, thus making it unnecessary for him to lie to get away. He has also stopped the common argument—“not able to work.” And, what is most important, he has given the man a chance to prove whether he is sincere about needing help.

You might ask, “What if the man does come back, and the church worker doesn’t have a job for him?”

The worker should have sincerely inquired into a job possibility. And if the man comes back, the vital question of his sincerity has been established. Then it is time for the worker to offer a meal, help meet the other needs of the moment, and also, if possible, provide a job or other aid.

Through this method of elimination, if the “handout” seeker does return, a very wholesome relation is set up. It is conducive to more permanent help than “bread and butter.”—NELS STJERNSTROM, LeTourneau College, Longview, Texas.

3 This proclamation of the forgiveness of sins is grounded upon the Name of Christ and made on condition of repentance. Literally, the passage reads, “that there should be heralded upon his Name repentance and remission of sins.” The Gospel offered is not unconditional. It does not benefit its hearers willy nilly, “whether they hear or refuse to hear” (Ezek. 2:5). It is clear that sinners cannot be forgiven if they persist in clinging to their sins. If they want God to turn from their sins in remission, they themselves must turn from them in repentance. The Church is charged, therefore, to proclaim the condition as well as the promise of forgiveness. Remission is the gospel offer; repentance is the gospel demand.

Some modern evangelists shrink from this part of the Great Commission. They distinguish between the acceptance of Christ as Saviour and submission to Christ as Lord, and insist that the former does not include the latter. Submission is something that comes only later, they say. Although the best advocates of this view at least argue from a good premise, their deduction, I believe, is incorrect. With their premise that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone I wholeheartedly agree. They argue, however, that to add repentance or submission is to introduce works by the back door. So, determined at all costs (and rightly) to repudiate any contribution by works to salvation, they assert that only faith is necessary, and not repentance and submission to Christ as Lord.

Let me say again that I fully accept the reason for their concern, namely, the principles of sola gratia and sola fides. But I cannot accept their logic. The object of faith is Jesus Christ crucified and risen, crucified Saviour and risen Lord. One cannot cut Christ into pieces and believe in one part of him but not in the other. There is but one Christ, whole and entire, God and man, Saviour and Lord. And it is because Christ is one that faith is one. Faith can no more be divided into its constituent elements than Christ can be divided into his constituent elements. In other words, saving faith is an unreserved commitment, a total yielding to a total Christ. Paul called this response “the obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5, 16, 26), for he recognized that saving faith includes an element of repentant submission. Indeed, it is inconceivable that a sinner should trust in Christ for salvation and at the same time withhold a part of himself from Christ. Salvation is indeed by faith alone, but saving faith includes repentance.

This is clear also from the apostolic example. The apostles were faithful in their demands for repentance and continually linked it with remission. Notice Peter’s first two sermons: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins,” he said. Again, “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 2:38; 3:19). Truly, as Paul said to the Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill, “God commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). This is an authentic note of gospel preaching that the Church urgently needs to recover today.

4 The Church is charged with a proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, on the Name of Christ on condition of repentance, to all nations. The charge is now no longer to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” but “unto all the Gentiles” (a legitimate translation of the words). This aspect of the Commission receives the greatest emphasis. The Church has been sent, according to the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel, “into all the world” to preach the Gospel to “all the creation” (16:15). This ministry would quite naturally begin in the city of Jerusalem and in the province of Judaea, but would then move on to Samaria and finally “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). All this implies a recognition that Jesus of Nazareth was no mere Jewish teacher who founded a Jewish sect, but rather the Saviour of the world who summons all nations of the world to his allegiance.

The Church, in other words, is fundamentally a missionary society, commissioned and committed to proclaim the Gospel of salvation to the whole world. As long as any inhabitants of the globe have not heard the Gospel, the Church should have a heavy conscience. Christ has sent it to herald forgiveness to all the nations. But it has not done so. It has failed to fulfill his final command. It has been disobedient to its Lord.

There is still time to make amends, however. As the world population explodes, the Church’s task might seem to be getting harder and the goal of world evangelization more remote. But as the means of mass communication increase, and as the Church humbly seeks fresh spiritual power, the task once again appears possible.

5 The Church is to proclaim the forgiveness of sins on the ground of Christ’s Name and on condition of repentance to all the nations in the power of the Holy Spirit. Verse 49 reads: “And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.”

It is essential to see this promise of the Spirit’s coming, and this command to stay in the city until the Spirit had come, in their historical context. Jesus was referring to the Day of Pentecost, for it was then that he sent the promised gift from heaven (Acts 2:33). But because this day of Pentecost had not yet come, the disciples were told to tarry. Christians living today, however, have no need to tarry. The Christ who on that Pentecost day sent the promise of the Father to the Church gives the same promised Spirit to every believer today. The gift of the Spirit is one of the major blessings of the New Covenant in fulfillment of God’s word to Abraham: “that in Christ Jesus … we … receive the promise of the Spirit by faith” (Gal. 3:14).

Yet this sure truth of the gift of the Spirit to every believer needs two qualifications. First, the Church, for its life and its evangelistic task, needs an ever fresh experience of the power of the same Spirit. Second, in days past and perhaps still today, the sovereign Spirit has come in exceptional measure upon certain evangelists, mastering them, clothing them, anointing them, and empowering them for the proclamation of the Gospel.

Without the work of the Spirit, whether in his general operation or in his special ministries, the Church’s work and witness are bound to be ineffective. While the Church may be faithful in preaching to all nations remission and repentance in the Name of Christ, it is only the Holy Spirit who gives power to the preaching. It is he who convicts sinners of their sin and guilt, opens their eyes to see Christ, draws them to him, enables them to repent and believe, and implants life in their dead souls. Before Christ sent the Church into the world, he sent the Spirit to the Church. The same order must be observed today. Here, then, are the five aspects of the Great Commission as summarized by Luke. The Church is called to proclaim the forgiveness of sins, on the basis of Christ’s saving Name, on condition of repentance, to all the nations, in the power of the Spirit. Confronted by these terms of its commission, the Church must readily confess that at each point it has been guilty of some failure. At times it has distorted the message of forgiveness, or forgotten the Name of Christ, or muted the summons to repentance, or enjoyed its comfortable privileges while ignoring the cries of the unevangelized nations. And at times it has had a sinful self-confidence and neglected the spiritual equipment promised by its Lord. Those who are sent to call others to repentance need to repent themselves.

In summary, then, the Risen Lord’s commission to the Church as recorded by Matthew, Luke, and John tells us that:

Our mandate is the command of Christ to go forth as his heralds; our warrant is the lordship of the Christ who bids us go;

Our Gospel is the forgiveness of Christ, who died for sinners and rose again; our demand is repentant faith in Christ our Saviour and our Lord;

Our authority is the Name of Christ in which we preach; our assurance is the peace of Christ that garrisons our hearts and minds;

Our method is the example of Christ, who sends us into the world as he himself was sent; our equipment is the Spirit of Christ, breathed upon us and clothing us with power;

Our task is to be witnesses to Christ to the ends of the earth; our reward is the presence of Christ to the end of time.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

A Protestant theologian writes on “conversion,” a major theme facing the World Council of Churches’ Uppsala Assembly in July

Conversion is again becoming a live issue in theology. The new interest in the Christian life and the sacraments has focused attention upon the meaning of the decision of faith. The growing ecumenical dialogue has also served to awaken interest in the doctrine of conversion, inasmuch as soteriology has been the principal area of conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism in the past.

The English word “conversion” is associated with the Hebrew word shuv, which means to turn back or return, and the Greek words epistrepho and metanoeo, both of which indicate to turn towards God. The key term in the New Testament is the latter, together with its noun form metanoia. This term signifies not simply a change of mind (as in classical Greek) but a change of heart. Metanoia can also be translated as “repentance.” John Wesley was certainly true to the basic witness of Scripture when he defined conversion in his dictionary as “a thorough change of heart and life from sin to holiness, a turning.” Although conversion is basically a change in one’s relationship to God, this spiritual change entails a transformation in social attitudes as well. Conversion is primarily a spiritual event, but it has profound implications in the secular or public sphere of man’s life. It points man toward a spiritual goal, but he is called to pursue this spiritual goal in the midst of the grime and agony of this world.

This is not to imply that social righteousness is an automatic consequence of individual regeneration. It is simply not true, as popular piety sometimes expresses it, that when everyone becomes a Christian, we shall then have a Christian society. This would be the case if conversion entailed perfection, but the newly converted Christian is far from perfect. Indeed, because sin persists within the Christian even unto his death, he needs to be disciplined and restrained by law just as the non-Christian. A significant difference is that the genuinely converted believer recognizes his frailty and deficiency and therefore is able to resist the temptation to idolatry. It must also be said that the Christian is able to bring the spirit of Agape love into the political arena and can therefore be much more sensitive than the nonbeliever to the dire needs of humanity. The temptation of those who stand in the tradition of evangelicalism is to claim too much for conversion. But the peril in the circles of neoliberalism and neo-orthodoxy is to fail to recognize that conversion entails an ontological change, that the converted man is now a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).

We cannot subscribe to the belief rampant among the devotees of the older Lutheran orthodoxy that the Christian lives in two separate spheres, the spiritual and the secular. The truth in this position is that the spiritual and the secular do signify two different dimensions, but they must not be separated. When Jesus said that we should give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s (Matt. 22:21), he was not implying that life is divided between Caesar’s rule and God’s but that all of life belongs to God; the little that belongs to Caesar by God’s permission can be returned to Caesar. In the view of Jesus, even Pilate derives his authority and power from God (John 19:11). The secular state is not a kingdom that can demand absolute allegiance but rather a political society brought into being for the purpose of maintaining law and order. Moreover, it is in such a society that we are called to work out our vocation to Christian sainthood.

The Bible does, however, speak of an invisible spiritual kingdom that is opposed to the rule of God and has entered into the world corrupting the loyalties of men and nations. It is this kingdom, the kingdom of darkness, that we are called to battle in the name of Christ. But this battle takes place on every level of man’s life, the political and economic spheres as well as the spiritual. When the state becomes enslaved to the powers of darkness, when it demands for itself unconditional loyalty, then the Christian must protest, and he must make this protest known in every area of life. When the state pretends to be a kingdom that encompasses all of life, a self-sustaining political order, a power unto itself, then the Christian must be prepared to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).

The converted sinner will be primarily concerned about the spiritual lostness of man, but he will also agonize over the injustices that the lost condition of man engenders. The Church as a Church should generally beware of getting involved in partisan politics because its mission is fundamentally spiritual. It is called to herald a Gospel concerning a kingdom that is not of this world. It is commissioned to prepare men for membership in a heavenly, not a secular, city. At the same time, when political issues become moral issues, then the Church must speak to the political situation. When the life and work of our fellow men are placed in jeopardy, the Church dare not remain silent. But what it speaks must be the Word of God and not a political or sociological opinion.

We must be careful not to identify the Gospel with a social crusade or a program for social reform. This does not mean that we as Christians should not take part in movements that seek to bring about social reform, such as the civil-rights movement. On the contrary, wherever men are seeking a just social order we should lend them our earnest support. Indeed, Christians should be in the vanguard of those who seek to correct the inequities and injustices within society. Yet we must always remember that social reform does not of itself prepare the way for the kingdom of God. Nor is a relatively just society in this world ever to be equated with the holy city of the saints prophesied in the New Testament (cf. Heb. 11:10, 16; 13:14; Rev. 21:2, 10). We must also bear in mind that evangelizing is not the same thing as humanizing or civilizing, as Bishop Robinson has contended. (On Being the Church in the World, p. 19.) Nor is evangelism to be equated with social action, as in the writing of Harvey Cox and Colin Williams.

It is becoming commonplace to affirm that Christianity has destroyed the demarcation between sacred and secular. The danger of this is that it leads one to view the mission of the Church solely as social service and conversion as a purely psychological change that facilitates integration with one’s social environment. But conversion signifies in the first instance not a new social attitude nor a richer personal life nor a new self-understanding but rather a spiritual rebirth, a new existence, which is a gift of the Spirit of God. This new birth will have repercussions in every area of man’s life and may very well lead to social concern and psychological integration. But the trouble today is that we are putting the cart before the horse and seeking to change the environment without changing the man. Kierkegaard had some wise words for us on this point: “Oh, let us never forget this, let us not reduce the spiritual to the worldly. Even though we may earnestly think of the spiritual and the worldly together, let us forever distinguish them” (Purity of Heart, p. 181).

The truth in the position of those who uphold a secular theology is that man needs bread as well as the Bread of Life. He has need of freedom and equality of opportunity as well as the freedom of the Spirit. He rightly yearns for freedom from oppression and slavery as well as for freedom from sin. Yet we must forever hold on to the biblical truth that man does not live by bread alone (Luke 4:4). The one thing needful is the hearing of the Word of God (Luke 10:42). That which is indispensable for the abundant life that Christ came to give us is conversion by the power of his spirit.

God’s grace must be appropriated by man if it is to be effectual for his salvation. The salvation procured by Jesus Christ must become a concrete reality in the lives of men. And this means that repentance or conversion is also decisive for man’s salvation. Calvin acknowledges that Christ “exposed himself to death, that he might redeem us from the sentence of death … but it is not enough for us unless we now receive him, that thus the efficacy and fruit of his death may reach us” (Tracts and Treatises on the Doctrine and Worship of the Church, II, 89). The victory that overcomes the world is not only the cross of Christ but also the faith of the believer (1 John 5:4).

In the older Reformed theology, regeneration signifies the work of God in the heart of man, whereas conversion or repentance represents man’s role in the drama of salvation. What is important to understand is that these two realities are not parallel processes but rather two ways of explaining the paradox of salvation. To affirm, as some revivalists have done, that we must give our hearts to Christ and then his Spirit will regenerate us, is to fall into a kind of semi-Pelagianism or synergism. The very fact that we do surrender our lives to Christ is a sign that regeneration by his Spirit is already taking place.

Conversion has been rightly associated with regeneration, since it entails not only a turning towards God but also an inward cleansing. It is well to bear in mind that sins are taken away in repentance and faith as well as forgiven. Christ saves us not only from the guilt and penalty of sin but also from its power. We are saved by Christ working within us through his Spirit as well as by Christ dying for us on the cross of Calvary.

Yet it is important to recognize that our regeneration, although beginning in a particular time, has still to be completed. This indeed is the position of the Protestant Reformers, Calvin and Luther. The work of renewal and purification is not accomplished all at once, but it must continue throughout the life of the Christian. Our carnal nature is crucified in baptism and faith but not yet eradicated. The new birth means that our life-orientation has been changed, not that our hearts have been completely purified. The Christian is still a sinner, even though he is no longer in sin because he is now united with Christ at the very core of his being. Yet vestiges of sin remain within him even though he is now rooted in the holiness of Christ. This is why our Reformed fathers spoke of the justification of the ungodly, which means that believers despite their sin are justified. At the same time we need also to speak of the justification of the converted, since it is only those who believe that are declared to be righteous in Christ.

Regeneration like conversion can be regarded as both an event and a process in that the Holy Spirit seeks to consummate what he has begun. We err both by viewing the initiatory stage of regeneration as the climax of the Spirit’s work and by treating regeneration as a general life process that entails no decisive break with the past. Regeneration in the broad sense involves the whole work of cleansing and renovation, but in a narrower sense it can be regarded as the act or acts by which one is received into communion with Christ. Even in this more limited sense, regeneration can be held to occur in a series of stages beginning with the seeking for Christ by the prompting of his spirit and ending in commitment to Christ in the power of his Spirit.

Regeneration is closely associated with sanctification and may be said even to include it. Both terms refer to different aspects of the same process, but it is possible to make a formal distinction between them. Regeneration can be understood as participation in Christ, being engrafted into Christ, while sanctification connotes obedience and conformity to Christ in life and work. Whereas regeneration means entering upon a new existence, sanctification is concerned with the development of a holy personality. Regeneration signifies the washing away of sin and inward spiritual renewal; sanctification means being set apart from the world for consecrated service (cf. Eph. 5:26, 27). We must not only receive the Spirit in faith but also be directed by the Spirit in love to follow the path of our Master. Our participation in the revivifying power of Jesus Christ begins in the crisis of repentance and faith; we are turned in an altogether new direction, but we are not yet made whole. The cleansing and renewing work of the Spirit must continue until we are wholly conformed to his image. Consequently we are not fully regenerate until we are entirely sanctified. It can be said that sanctification has its commencement in regeneration and that regeneration finds its fulfillment in sanctification.

Justification is our acceptance by God and is indeed the ground of our regeneration and sanctification. Justification occurs simultaneously with regeneration in that we receive God’s grace only by participation in Christ through faith. Yet in contradistinction to both the dominant strand of Roman Catholic theology and Schleiermacher, we affirm that the cause of justification is not our inner renewal but rather the free grace or mercy of God.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Relativism, based on the word “relation,” has much to commend it in theology as in all else. It recognizes that things have to be set in relation, whether to other things or to the observer or speaker. Without it, historical judgment would be impossible. And without it we should be set in the hopeless conflict of warring absolutes.

A certain degree of relativism is necessary for a proper understanding of the Bible. The words of Scripture have to be seen in relation to their linguistic history and usage. In different passages they can have varying senses or nuances that can be determined only by study of the “relations.” Doctrines, too, must be viewed with a degree of relativism. One must study the development of Christology, for example, in its various inner and outer relations if he is to gain a comprehensive and accurate picture. Similarly, the biblical happenings are in a real sense relative to the general historical background against which they take place.

Relativism will also play a proper part in the presentation of the Gospel by theologians and especially by preachers. This is partly a matter of communication, the finding of intelligible words for today; often these are not the words of Scripture itself. It is also a matter of apprehension. If Paul saw in a glass darkly, so do all other writers and speakers. Not enjoying, as the biblical authors did, a special inspiration of God, they can present truth only to the best of their understanding and ability. At this level, then, the exposition will be relative to the expositor. The Reformation insistence that subsidiary standards are reformable rests on this.

The value of the principle of relativism is excellently illustrated in the modern renewal movement in Roman Catholicism. Rome with its infallible dogmas seems to offer an extreme of misguided absolutism. Nevertheless, a little historical relativism, not unjustly applied in this area, can quickly redress the situation. Thus the Tridentine decree on justification might be seen as a corrective to antinomianism, or as an isolated segment that will appear somewhat different in its full context, or as a partial statement to which qualifying additions must be made, or, not as the doctrine itself, but as a sixteenth-century expression of the doctrine that will perhaps demand different expression in a different age. Along these lines relativism offers welcome liberation to many who would otherwise find intolerable the acceptance of formulations they have no means of negating without disruption.

If there is a justifiable relativism, however, there is also a great need to discern the limits of its application. By setting a thing in a different relation, it is easy, not merely to understand it better, but also to change it so that its emphasis differs, or it no longer means what it did. Thus one enthusiastic Roman Catholic has suggested that papal infallibility is simply a historical way of expressing the infallibility of the Holy Spirit. With a little ingenuity almost any statement can be made to mean almost anything. The ultimate relation here is not to specific objects or circumstances but to the thinker himself, who is subject to no very obvious verifiable controls.

Even in historical documents or doctrines, relativism can thus play a harmful role. And when applied to Holy Scripture, an injudicious and unrestrained relativism can be quite devastating. The reason is that Holy Scripture is uniquely normative. Historically normative as the firsthand account of the things relating to Christian faith and life, it is also absolutely normative as a work that, written by men, is inspired of God. Relativism, improperly understood and applied, erodes not only the historical authority but also the divine authority, which confers on Scripture a distinctive absoluteness.

It brings about this erosion in various ways. Instead of functioning as a true historical relativism, which can be a great help to interpretation, it may try to assess biblical events and teachings only against the contemporary background. Again, it may attempt to distinguish between various strata of the Old or New Testament tradition in such a way as to set the data at apparent odds with themselves. Furthermore, it may play the game of sifting a kernel of content from the husk of expression, or timeless truth from contingent fact, or an existential substance from mythological accidents, assuming that the kernel or truth or substance may then be presented either in pure form or with a new external wrapping. Finally, it may regard even the ethical content as only a historical interpretation, one that may have been good enough for its day but has to be replaced by better—or at least more relevant—interpretations in each age.

A distressing feature is that many who protest forcefully against this type of relativizing can be just as guilty of it—“the times have changed”—when they find something difficult or uncongenial. The thin edge of the relativistic wedge can easily pry open the whole door.

Relativism may thus have a devastating effect upon attitudes toward the Bible and its authority. It is finally disastrous, however, when applied to the author of Scripture, who is also Scripture’s true theme and content. God is absolute. If there is relativism in regard to him, it is because we are relativized by God, not because he can be relativized by us. God does indeed meet us in the changing circumstances and experiences of life, so that we can see new facets of him and correct our imperfect ideas. He himself, however, does not change. When the relation between God and man is at issue, only one of the factors is mutable and relative. There can be no greater mistake than to attempt to bring God himself under a principle of relativism.

Yet this is precisely the mistake so much modern theology makes, because it is so intensely subjective and anthropocentric. It treats man himself as the ultimate point of reference. Thus it ceases to be real theology and becomes religious anthropology. Ideas of God are the theme, rather than God in his own objective reality. It is easy to relativize ideas of God. One has only to say: That is your idea and this is mine, or, That is the Babylonian idea and this is the Greek, or, That is the second-century idea and this is the twentieth-century idea, or, That used to be my idea and now this is—and relativism rules. If man is the subject and his ideas are the theme, then the attempt to relativize God can hardly be avoided unless each man absolutizes himself and his own idea, which is precisely what many of us do.

Now ideas of God do, of course, enter into theology. This is why there is a legitimate relativism. What Christians think about God is variable and open to correction. It may indeed be influenced by shifting historical factors. Nevertheless, God himself is not variable or imperfect or shifting simply because the Christian’s idea of him is relative rather than absolute. God is not to be equated with the idea about him. God does not exist merely in the believer’s (or unbeliever’s) mind. God is true and objective in himself. In this objectivity he is absolute. He is the absolute norm of all thought about him.

This means that the Christian’s task is to adjust his understanding of God, not to the better thought of the age, not to the superior ideas of others, not to his own development in thought or experience, not to any form of speculation, but to God as he really is, to God as he has shown himself to be in his saving word and work. The Christian’s task is to bring his relative thinking into relation to reality, into conformity with God himself as he truly is. Just as a scientist’s description of the world, if it is to be scientific, must be based on the world as it is, so the theologian’s concept of God, if it is to be theological, must be based on God as he is. There is here an absoluteness of the object.

In this work, God, who is person as well as object, does not leave believers to their own efforts. In Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit God is both a known reality and a reality who makes himself known. He makes himself known through his word, through his work, through Holy Scripture, through the present ministry of the Holy Spirit. Hence even ideas of God, subject though they are to historical factors, may be brought into conformity with the truth. Such ideas are not all relatively right and relatively wrong. They are absolutely right in so far as they conform to the reality as it may be known from Scripture; and they are absolutely wrong in so far as they do not. The reason for the relative aspect is not that God himself is relative (or unknown). To treat God as relative (or unknown) is simply to show that subjective opinion has been substituted for objective reality. This is not just bad theology; it is not theology at all.

Relativism, then, has a proper place in theology as an aid to understanding God’s word and work and also as an aid to self-understanding. In its restricted place, it has a salutary function. But if it is allowed unlimited entry into spheres where it does not belong, it destroys both knowledge and faith, though it may seem to offer dazzling rewards. Relativism is not to be absolutized; it is itself to be relativized by the absolute.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Among the changes taking place in Christendom in recent decades, none is more radical, or more controversial, or fraught with more serious consequences, than the Church’s understanding of its role in society.

Traditionally the Christian Church has devoted its major resources to the evangelization of individuals. But recently a number of church leaders, both ministers and laymen, have embarked upon a campaign to persuade the churches to use their resources to bring about a social revolution. Sometimes this movement is described as the evangelizing of social institutions, in contrast to the old plan of evangelizing the people who operate these institutions. At other times its proponents say it is designed to change social structures rather than to change human hearts.

The movement seems to be gathering more force than its most zealous leaders could have dared to hope. At recent national and international gatherings, some churchmen have enthusiastically proposed that social revolution become the primary task of the Church in our times. In the National Council of Churches’ Conference on Church and Society last year, a main topic for discussion was, “The Role of Violence in Social Change.”

A leader of one large denomination has been pleading with his fellow churchmen to accept the new idea that power in the hands of the Church is a legitimate instrument of social change. He calls for a “willingness to use power in the secular sphere with varying degrees of sophistication to influence political, social and economic decisions in the community and the nation.” It is not uncommon these days to hear the phrase, “the power-wielding role of the Church.”

Those who speak of this are not hesitant to specify what kind of power they have in mind. For one thing, they mean “economic” or “money” power. They urge that the churches’ invested funds be deposited in banks that use the money in ways that promote the social changes they advocate, and withdrawn from those that do not. They also propose boycotting the products of large corporations whose labor policies do not agree with theirs. That is, these churchmen are openly using money as an external force to achieve what they consider to be the Church’s goals.

They are also thinking of political power. Some theological seminaries now teach their students how to analyze bills introduced in legislative bodies and how to lobby for the passage of particular bills. Nearly every mainline denomination now maintains lobbyists in the national capital and in some state capitals. Most denominations now issue numerous materials on a vast array of social problems; these materials, known as “policy priorities” or “guides to legislation,” instruct ministers and members in “the dynamics of planned social change.” This enterprise is fast becoming the primary work of the Church, consuming or threatening to consume the largest portion of its time, money, and other resources.

Often it is suggested, not only that churches work to change the traditions and structures of the present systems of power, but that they develop a “theology” or “ethic” of revolution—or as one person calls it, “A Gospel of Revolution”—and teach church members how to proclaim and promote it. In some quarters this gospel has practically superseded the New Testament Gospel of redemption.

This new gospel strongly appeals to young theological students—at least, some of the most enthusiastic support of it may be found in the seminaries. In one seminary this new point of view has so interested the students that they are clamoring for courses on “politics and political crises in our country” and on “rudimentary economics and fundamental economic dynamics,” so they may be prepared for their role as leaders in radical social change. In a publication at this seminary a student recently wrote: “Everyone knows that power not ideologies run this world.… The church must learn to manipulate power or perish.”

An advocate of church union in Canada in the early 1920s was quoted as saying, “By the creation of this United Church we shall establish a religio-political body to which no other social institution, not even the national and state governments, will dare to say ‘No.’ ” That, or something like that, seems to be what the “revolutionists” are trying to do with the Church in our day. In other words, the churches are using power as a weapon.

There are signs that this new movement is causing a considerable amount of disruption in many local parishes. The religious press continually tells of disturbances that are seemingly due to the activities of the Christian revolutionists. We read of churches that are losing members, split into warring factions, unable to raise enough money to meet their operating budgets, unable to find ministers; of pastors forced to resign, or losing confidence and interest in preaching; of widespread complaints that the New Testament Gospel is no longer proclaimed from pulpits.

Some of the new leaders offer a quick, stock explanation for these disturbances: ultra-conservatives, they say, are still objecting to the old “social gospel,” or to any application of Christian ideals to social problems. But that explanation does not fit the facts. Practically all our leading colleges and universities were established by churches to combat ignorance and illiteracy. Most denominations have established hospitals to fight sickness and disease and neighborhood centers in cities to minister to the victims of social ills and injustice. The foreign-missionary enterprise has used not only evangelists but also teachers, doctors and nurses, agricultural experts, and a variety of other professionals to minister to the needs of the whole man and of the total community.

No, these Christians are not opposed to the application of the Gospel to social problems. They are opposed to the manifest misinterpretation of the New Testament Gospel and its displacement with a totally different gospel.

A denominational official in charge of university work reported that when he had finished speaking to some students about applying the Gospel to social problems, one of them remarked, “I wish you would first tell us what the Gospel is we are supposed to apply.” That student raised one of the most important questions before the Christian Church today. Precisely what is the Gospel? Evangelical Christians have what they believe to be valid biblical answers. The simplest is that the Gospel is composed of what Jesus said and what he did as this is recorded in the New Testament. But that requires elaboration.

Jesus was a prophet, the last and greatest of his line of Jewish prophets. He proclaimed the principles of the ideal society, which he called the Kingdom of God. These principles have social implications, some of them radical. In fact, many of his followers were Jewish Zealots who to the very end expected him to declare himself their Messiah-King and help them gain political independence from Rome. But the records make it plain that he chose not to lead either a social or a political revolution and not to organize an institution for revolutionary purposes.

Furthermore, during his temptation in the wilderness, when he was trying to decide upon the nature of his messianic ministry, he rejected the use of force as an instrument. Later he warned the people about men of violence, some of whom he identified as followers of John the Baptist, who were trying to take the Kingdom of God by force (cf. Matt. 11:11 f.). In the light of all the information in the New Testament about his ministry, it is difficult to see how his followers could conclude that they should use coercion, threats, or violence to build the Kingdom of God.

It was in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that the purpose of his messianic mission was fully seen. When on the cross he cried “It is finished” and gave up his life, his redemptive purpose was accomplished. His death as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world completed his perfect life. He had tried several times unsuccessfully to warn his followers that his death was inevitable and had divine significance. But only after his resurrection, when they saw their risen Lord, were the disciples able to understand the meaning of Jesus’ life.

Two important questions for the Church are provoked by the somewhat casual remark of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians. The Church is the Body of Christ, he says (1:24). This means that the Church is the instrument through which Christ carries on the work he began during his brief earthly ministry. Immediately the question arises: What is the Church supposed to do to carry out this divine role in the world? The answer as commonly given by the great majority of Christians may be stated briefly as follows:

1. Christ established the Church to preach and teach the Gospel to the people of the whole world. His last word to the disciples just before he vanished from their sight was, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19, 20). The purpose of their preaching and teaching was to persuade people to believe in Christ, to accept him personally as their Master, Lord, and Redeemer, and to be his faithful follower for life. This basic work of the Church, called evangelism or evangelizing, is carried on continuously, or should be, by the ministers, officers, teachers, and all other members of the church in the hope that all who listen will decide to become Christians.

Some church leaders today seem to like to turn words upside down, or to give them new meanings. For example, take the expression “evangelizing the structures of society.” “Evangelize,” according to the dictionary, means “to preach the Gospel to.” Can we preach the Gospel to “the structures of society”? To the people who create and operate social structures, yes; but not to the impersonal structures themselves.

2. Christ established the Church to persuade people to use all their abilities to put the Gospel to work in theareas where they live and labor. He said to the multitudes who followed him, “Seek first his [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness …” (Matt. 6:33). One of the most disheartening things in the Church today is that so many Christians seem to have no feeling of obligation to serve God in their daily occupations. Somehow they do not see any connection between their religion and their work. I once heard the editor of a large newspaper say to a group of Boy Scout executives, “I make my living as the editor of the paper, and I serve God by working in the Boy Scout movement”—as if he couldn’t or shouldn’t be expected to do both at the same time.

The laymen’s movement is often said to be one of the most significant religious movements in our century. Its main purpose is to enlist laymen to involve themselves in the affairs and welfare of the Church. One important thing emphasized by this movement is that all Christians are ministers of Christ. But some laymen apparently have taken that too literally. They are trying to become ministers in the technical sense, doing things that ordinarily are regarded as the responsibility or professional ministers, such as conducting public worship and preaching. The most important contribution a layman can make to the work of the Church takes place not within the walls of the church building but out in society, where he engages in his daily work. That is primarily where he should put his special talents to work for God. There he becomes the Church extended into the world. There he proves himself to be “the salt of the earth,” “the light of the world,” the “leaven” for Christ that permeates the social structure.

Dr. John A. Mackay once reported that the minister of finance in the French government, who was a noted Protestant leader, said to him, “It is not the function of the Church to create a new civilization but to create the creators of a new civilization.” The major role of the Church is to infuse the Spirit of Christ into all organizations of society through the Christians who have influence in those organizations. The Church must not only teach these things continuously but also provide ways for Christians to study the social implications of the Gospel and how they can put these to work in their various callings.

3. Christ established the Church to help Christians discover the spiritual resources for living. These are found primarily in what we call experiential religion, or the mystical communion for God and man. The New Testament is filled with this mysticism. Our Lord prayed. Apparently he set aside regular periods for communion with God. He regularly attended public worship in the synagogues. He taught his disciples to pray, to go into private “closets” for prayer and meditation, and he took it for granted that they would attend public worship as he did.

While he was still active in his ministry he promised to be spiritually present with his disciples wherever they gathered together: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). After his resurrection, as his last statement before he vanished from their sight, he said, “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

Those promises came to be the most precious possession of the early Christians. They believed not only that the Master was with them when they met together but also that this spiritual fellowship was the source of their inner strength. The Apostle Paul even went so far as to say that he himself lived only because Christ lived in him.

One of the central beliefs held by the early Christians was that because of Christ’s redemptive work they had experienced a second birth, had died to sin and risen as new men in Christ (cf. Rom. 6 and Col. 3). They asserted positively and pointedly that “if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Paul exhorted the new Christians to put off the old nature and “put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God …” (Eph. 4:24).

This emphasis in the New Testament on experiential religion, or mystical communion between God and man, is missing in far too many churches. And in some seminaries it is openly rejected, regarded as outmoded. Recently a professor in an Eastern seminary not only urged divinity schools to remedy this situation but even went so far as to recommend that students not be allowed to graduate without showing competence in this area of religion.

In a recent appraisal of our American civilization (Life, Dec. 8, 1967), the English historian Arnold Toynbee said that one of our American weaknesses is that we have lost the “art of contemplation,” or “the inward spiritual form of religion.” Partly because of our churches’ neglect of this aspect of Christianity, American young people have turned to drugs to find what they call a significant religious experience. But now many seem to be forsaking drugs and turning back to some of the contemplative ancient religions of the Far East. Let us hope that before long they will discover the authentic mysticism at the heart of the Christian faith.

Many persons are predicting radical changes that will turn our social order even more topsy-turvy. I claim no ability to tell what is sure to come. But I am willing to offer some predictions of things that are sure not to come.

Modern social engineers are not going to devise a better social order without making better, more responsible men. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and educators are not going to make better men without the spiritual motivations, disciplines, and resources of religion. Religion of the right quality, of the socially effective kind, is not going to be generated without the unique work of the Church.

Earlier in this century Lord Eustace Percy made a statement that ought to be broadcast throughout our land: “To think of changing the world by changing the people in it may be an act of great faith: to talk of changing the world without changing the people in it is an act of lunacy.”

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

I have never had a propensity for flag-waving. But a revival of patriotism would be a happy antidote to both anarchy and nationalism. Webster’s competent “unabridged” ghost writer defines patriotism as devotion to the welfare of one’s country—not simply to national interests. But multitudes today are devoted to self-interest above all else and think of national welfare mostly in terms of larger government subsidies. John F. Kennedy’s ghost-writer struck more durable pay dirt when he wrote those classic lines: “Ask not what America will do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

Seldom do I feel more like flag-waving than after a trip to other lands. Except for customs line-up and pile-up, American re-entry is always an exhilarating adventure. It would have been too bad had thousands of citizens been discouraged by heavy travel impositions from discovering for themselves what a privilege and blessing it is to live in these United States.

For all the mass-media propaganda about our deteriorating image abroad—and who can gainsay a troubling decline?—friends I’ve made in Africa and Europe and the Middle East would gladly trade a great deal for the opportunity of beginning again in the U. S. A.

Many died to bring this nation to birth, and many die still to preserve its integrity. It would be an inestimable betrayal if those of us who enjoy this land of privilege were to subvert this heritage by selfish pursuits and ambitions rather than to practice devotion to the national good. Welfare, or well-being, ought not to be equated merely with food stamps.

In the latest Our Man Flint film dubiously honored as an American cultural export by voice-dubbing into French, the bad guys (in this case gals—an international political conspiracy of women) try to freeze the good guys, rendering them harmless for now but subject to potential usefulness years (or centuries) later. Observing the products of this biological cold storage, our hero remarks: “It’s not exactly the classic idea of immortality.”

But it is a limited kind of immortality—and far from being merely a science-fiction stunt or a gimmick to absorb footage in a B-grade film, cryonics (the technical name of the field) is a reality. Important publications dealing with the topic are appearing (the most comprehensive in English is R. C. W. Ettinger’s Prospect of Immortality), some non-profit organizations have affiliated to form the Cryonics Societies of America (a national conference took place at the New York Academy of Sciences in March); some funeral homes have installed cryogenic equipment; cryonic “ambulance” units are in the offing; and already several people are in storage.

The basic principle of cryogenic interment is simplicity itself. On the basis of successful experimental freezing and reanimation of lower animals such as rotifera and organs of higher animals such as chicken hearts, cryonics advocates propose the cooling of a human body to liquid nitrogen temperature (—321 F)—or later, when more sophisticated permanent installations become feasible, to liquid helium temperature (—449 F)—thereby storing the person at the time of “death” or at a terminal stage of illness so as to permit his resuscitation later, when medical knowledge has learned how to cope with his disease and to restoring the damage his body has suffered.

As a consequence of increasingly extensive transplant operations today, organ culture and regeneration in the foreseeable future, and the definite possibility of rejuvenation techniques and of artificial genetic improvement through control of gene patterns (affecting both body and mind), there is every chance that physicians of the future will be in a position not only to revive the clinically dead or near-dead person of today but even to improve his life over what it was at its highest point during his original earthly existence.

From such possibilities, flights of fancy readily take off; think, for example, what a relatively modest estate would be worth three centuries from now (at compound interest) when recovered by its newly awakened owner!

Bankers can be left to worry about the juicy financial aspects of cryonic suspension, and the scientists have their work cut out for them. What about the theological question? Is cryogenic storage legitimate, and if legitimate is it in fact desirable for the Christian?

Some “orthodox” objections to cryonics can be hypothesized—and readily answered:

1. “Cryogenic interment is not even mentioned, much less advocated, in the Bible.” But though everything the Bible teaches or touches is veraciously revelatory, one cannot conclude that the Bible contains all truth! The Bible is not a cosmic Encyclopaedia Britannica; cryonics would be objectionable only if it violated biblical teaching.

2. “Cryonics is against the will of God; if he had meant us to live longer he would have given us the natural power to do so.” But the same argument could be applied to the airplane: “If the Lord had wanted us to fly, he would have put wings on our backs.”

3. “Cryonics would presumptively alter man’s basic character through gene manipulation and surgical rejuvenation.” But in biblical revelation man is defined in his relationship to God, not in terms of his physical or mental characteristics; thus Dr. Blaiberg, with Clive Haupt’s heart, is no less a person, responsible before God, than he was before his “alteration.”

4. “Cryonics is anthropocentric—glorifying mortal man as a Faust rather than the eternal God, ‘who only hath immortality.’ ” Although this argument has superficial cogency—and is aided and abetted by admittedly non-Christian cryonics writers in the religious domain (e.g., R. C. W. Ettinger, in the Christian Century, Oct. 4, 1967)—the fact is that cryonics, like all other technical scientific accomplishments from automobiles to atomic power, can be used either to man’s glory (and thus his destruction) or to God’s glory.

5. “We should want to get to heaven fast, not remain on a sinful earth.” But note carefully the Apostle’s words (they should become the sedes doctrinae for orthodox Christian cryonics): “I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you” (Phil. 1:23, 24). Here Paul opts for earth, not because it is better than heaven (far from it!) but because the preaching of the Gospel is so desperately needed here. This, needless to say, is justification enough for extending one’s time of earthly service to Christ.

In point of fact, orthodox believers have not responded negatively to the cryonics program. Quite the opposite, as illustrated by the impressive sermon on the subject delivered by Lutheran pastor Kay Glaesner in 1965. Said he: “Christianity and the church have always been interested in the extension of human life.… The church of Christ does not retard science (The Christian Century, Oct. 27, 1965).

Rather, it has been mainline theologians of mediating neo-orthodox and existentialist leanings who have excoriated the idea. Joseph Sittler of Chicago, for example, has called the concept an “exalted form of madness,” owing to its “radically nonhistorical concept of what a human life is”: to extract man, a “profoundly historical being,” from his existential setting is to destroy him (Time, Sept. 30, 1966). Here is an excellent example of the genuinely reactionary nature of existentially grounded theology: man is defined by categories (“historicity”) that arbitrarily prohibit his legitimate activity. (One is reminded of Denis de Rougemont’s wholly appropriate blast, in his Meanings of Europe, at Sartre’s comparable political pessimism.) Contemporary theology, no longer subjecting itself to revelational perspective, is perpetually subject to a non-revelational “hardening of categories” of the most reactionary kind.

Just as it was orthodox believer C. S. Lewis who took space travel seriously and faced in depth the theological question of human contact with other intelligent creatures, while liberals were engaged in obscurantist documentary criticism and political demonstrations, so it will be (I’ll wager) the truly progressive evangelical theologians who develop serious theologies of cryonics. And they have the most to gain. Personally, I would gladly have chipped in to defray the costs of eventually resuscitating Warfield, Machen, Pieper, or Lewis, had cryogenic interment been around at the time of their clinical deaths. I shudder to think what they—or the Fathers or the Reformers—would say when faced with today’s secular theology.

I’m for cryonics: the future could well gain from those in the present who have come experientially to acknowledge the absolute Lordship of the Christ of Scripture.

If Billy Graham ever wins official appointment as ambassador-at-large, he will have earned it. Few Americans have built as much good will abroad as the 49-year-old North Carolinian. For more than two decades now he has been traveling the globe, preaching the Gospel. For his country, the happy byproduct has been the building of friendships and a balancing corrective to the stream of ugly American images peddled by Hollywood.

The month of April found Graham and his team greeting old friends and making new ones from among the twelve million people of Australia. The heart of the month-long Australia evangelistic effort was a nine-day crusade in Sydney, commercial hub of all Southeast Asia.

And Sydney responded warmly. There was an opening night crowd of 38,000, followed by a Sunday afternoon turnout of 60,000. These two services drew a total of 4,232 spiritual inquirers. The aggregate attendance for the first six services was about 200,000, with nearly 10,000 recorded decisions.

Three of the nine services were geared to youth. And on the first youth night, more than 10 per cent of the audience responded to the invitation.

Graham made humanity look very bad. “It seems our whole world is gone insane,” he said. “We are a dying human race because of sin.” But the evangelist held out the Cross as the sure hope and the only lasting solution to the problems of war and race. And in Christ, he said, lies the answer to the need for personal fulfillment.

Another Martin

The day Martin Luther King was buried, many San Francisco bus drivers didn’t want to work. An overtime replacement on the Hunters Point run, white driver Martin Whitted, 28, was robbed and shot to death by four Negro youths.

Amid rising public outbursts of rage with inflammatory racial overtones, his widow, Dixie, mother of three, went on TV to ask that memorial gifts be sent to their church, St. Mark’s Lutheran, for Hunters Point youth programs so “something for them” would come from his death. More than $5,000 poured in, and her Christian witness was widely heralded for defusing racial tensions. The Chronicle called it “an act of hope for the city.” gelist held out the Cross as the sure hope and the only lasting solution to the problems of war and race. And in Christ, he said, lies the answer to the need for personal fulfillment.

The message—clear and simple—was essentially unchanged from the sermons Graham preached during his 1959 Australia crusade. Yet it found a flood of new response, especially among youth.

Ideal weather conditions helped get the outdoor meetings off to a good start. The Sunday afternoon service was held under cloudless skies with a temperature in the high 70s. The breeze off the blue Pacific tempered the effects of the bright sun. But by Monday night the weather had turned into what residents called “winter wind,” and the great profusion of miniskirted teen-agers wrapped themselves in blankets. It is currently autumn down under. Like Florida, the eastern Australia coast rarely hits the freezing point. Taking advantage of one of the better days, Graham shot his best round of golf at the Royal Sydney Course: a one over par thirty-seven for nine holes.

The crusade was held at the Sydney Showground, a stadium that makes up in size what it lacks in beauty. Larger than major-league ball parks, it is part of a fairgrounds type of complex that hosts the annual ten-day Royal Easter Show, an agricultural exhibition that this year drew a million and a half people. Graham spoke from a canopied platform ringed by tropical plants.

In addition to the mass meetings, the Graham organization conducted a School of Evangelism in Sydney as part of the crusade, plus daily noon Bible exposition by Graham associate Roy Gustafson. The effects of the mass meetings were augmented by relays to 131 outlying points. A film of the opening service was shown on local television and subsequently in Melbourne, Australia’s number-two city. The audience included American servicemen on rest and rehabilitation from Viet Nam.

Antagonism to the crusade was minimal. Eighteen posters with Graham’s picture were defaced, including one in front of the Anglican cathedral in which Graham was made to look like Hitler. Police investigated, but there were no clues.

One Methodist clergyman publicly attacked Graham for “primitive emphasis on blood.” By contrast, Roman Catholic Cardinal Norman Gilroy invited Graham to a friendly tea. One Catholic church lent its bus to a Protestant congregation to transport people to the crusade.

The Sydney crusade, conducted with a budget of $200,000, was said to have the support of more local churches than any other crusade Graham has held in the British Commonwealth. This is partly because Sydney is an evangelical stronghold. Anglicans, who dominate the city’s religious spectrum, are led by Archbishop Marcus Loane, outspokenly biblical and president of the crusade executive committee (see April 12 issue, page 42).

But the whole Australian posture of friendship toward the United States may also play a part. Australia and America have been holding hands across the Pacific for a long time. In recent years they have become even friendlier. As Britain pulls out of Asia, Australia more and more comes under obvious American cultural influence. Australia assembles cars reflecting more of Detroit than of Europe. Two years ago she switched her money from the pound to the dollar decimal system. Coffee is strongly challenging tea.

Australia’s new Prime Minister John Grey Gorton is a strong anti-Communist and a great friend of the United States. His wife was born in Maine. He was understandably annoyed, however, when he was not consulted before the announced de-escalation in Viet Nam.

Although America and Australia are separated by half a world, they do have the Pacific Ocean in common. And no country has shown more interest in Australian security than the United States.

For his part, Graham has done Australia the good turn of reminding their citizens dramatically of their need of spiritual security. Australian Christians—busy, prosperous, and pleasure-bent—face a great opportunity. Ringing their northern borders is the neediest and most populated portion of the earth: a billion and a half people, many poor, illiterate, and without the Gospel.

PERSONALIA

Diesel millionaire J. Irwin Miller, former president of the National Council of Churches, was on the road last month as chairman of a committee to develop enough support—fast—to draw Nelson Rockefeller into the presidential race. Meanwhile Editor B. J. Stiles of the University Christian Movement magazine motive, who endorsed Robert F. Kennedy in the February issue, went on leave to join RFK’s campaign staff.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy said he took communion at a Washington, D.C., Negro Baptist church recently as a “gesture of fellowship,” not as a sacrament. The Vatican last year said Catholics may attend Protestant services but may not receive the Eucharist.

The Rev. William Starr, Episcopal chaplain at Columbia University, testified against expulsion of Barnard junior Linda LeClair, who has been cohabiting with another student, Peter Behr. Of housing rules, Starr said, “If they are an impediment, they are ridiculous.”

Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore, Jr., of Washington, D. C., has gone on leave to be director of Operation Connection, which seeks $10 million to build political and economic power for the poor. The Rev. Albert Cleage, militant black nationalist, is a leader of the campaign.

Asbury College’s board confirmed by 18–9 the ouster of President Karl K. Wilson at a controversial previous meeting, but praised Wilson’s integrity and character. The statement noted “unfortunate disunity” among faculty, students, and alumni during the furor.

Former Southern Baptist pastor Dupree Jordan, Jr., has been named by the war on poverty to enlist religious activity. Canada’s foreign-affairs ministry appointed Catholic priest Harold Oxley to develop liaison with churches and private agencies working in developing nations.

The Rev. M. L. Wilson, head of the National Committee of Negro Churchmen, was elected board chairman of the Protestant Council in New York City, succeeding labor leader A. Philip Randolph.

Joseph L. Bernardin, 40, auxiliary bishop to the late Paul Hallinan of Atlanta for two years, was approved as a chief executive of the U. S. Catholic Conference by the Vatican.

William R. MacKaye, 33, of the Washington Post, won this year’s award from the Religious Newswriters’ Association. The Post’s other religion specialist, Kenneth Dole, won the 1956 award. RNA chose Jack Hume of the Cleveland Press as its new president.

CHURCH PANORAMA

The 1968 Catholic Directory reports a baptized membership of 47,468,333, an increase of 603,423.

Because of possible future riots, Baptists have been denied a permit for a public march and rally at their October Continental Congress on Evangelism in Washington, D. C.

The Episcopal Church plans to hold the second special convention in its history next year at Notre Dame University.

Episcopalians are planning a liberal-arts campus as a satellite of Baptist-related Stetson University in DeLand, Florida.

Often reticent, members from fifty of Italy’s eighty Baptist churches took to the town piazzas for one-week crusades in five regions, resulting in many decisions for Christ and new evangelistic zeal.

MISCELLANY

Memphis garbagemen won most of their demands in a strike settlement two weeks after the murder there of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was aiding strikers.

The top leaders of the National Council of Churches, U. S. Catholic Conference, Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops, and Synagogue Council of America joined in an unprecedented Easter Sunday appeal for a $10 to $12 billion program to aid the poor. “Only through massive contributions,” they said, can the nation “duly honor the life-offering of Martin Luther King, Jr.”

An extensive Citizens Crusade Against Poverty study, which had Episcopal and United Presbyterian aid, charged that at least ten million Americans are going hungry, and urged reform of federal food-distribution programs.

At a Yankee Stadium ceremony, former star Bobby Richardson was presented the ten millionth copy of the American Bible Society’s Good News for Modern Man translation.

Dean Elmer Usher of the Episcopal cathedral in Phoenix is suing the Arizona Republic for $600,000 over a news article that said he pushed a camera into the face of a photographer at a court hearing.

At a Princeton theological meeting, British Bishop John A. T. Robinson suggested that in a “religionless age,” bishops should be recruited, through advertising, from “prophetically minded” secular executives.

A Harris poll shows 55 per cent of U. S. whites and 32 per cent of U. S. Negroes have guns in their homes.

A Negro Baptist church near Meridian, Mississippi, that had previously been hit twice by arsonists burned to the ground early Easter Sunday.

Religious contributions made up 46.9 per cent of the nation’s $14.5 billion in giving last year, reports the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel.

Pravda called for abolition of the Soviet Union’s traditional Easter and praised an “atheist missionary ship” that cruises rivers in a province north of Moscow.

The Roman Catholic weekly in Camden, New Jersey, proposed Vatican City as the site for peace talks between the United States and North Viet Nam.

The 1968 U. S. Post Office Christmas stamp will be a five-color reproduction of “The Annunciation” by Jan Van Eyck.

Argentina has denied long-term visas to 200 U. S. Mormon missionaries, though none had been expelled as of mid-April. Some Protestants fear an eventual ban on all new missionaries.

India’s policy of nationalizing Christian missions will mean expulsion of foreigners whose presence “is considered prejudicial to national interests,” the home minister said. Those with special training may stay unless Indians can fill their jobs.

After years of hostility, the Sudan is open to Roman Catholic missionaries from Tanzania and has permitted a Catholic periodical to reopen. For the first time, Sudanese Christian and Muslim leaders conferred recently.

THEY SAY

“Faithless people are as old as the family of man. This is not a day of death. This is a day of triumph. This is Easter morning, and one of these days all of God’s children are going to get up. We’re not serving a dead God. I’m not serving a dead God. You tell me about a dead God after all I’ve gone through this past week. He’s got me standing up here. Then don’t tell me God is asleep.”—The Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., in his Easter sermon.

Deaths

NORMAN J. BAUGHER, 50, fourth-generation minister in the Church of the Brethren and its top administrator since 1952; in Elgin, Illinois, of a heart attack.

GUY EMERY SHIPLER, 86, editor of the Churchman, unofficial Episcopal monthly, for forty-five years; champion of liberal causes and critic of Catholicism; in Arcadia, California, of a stroke.

ENRIQUE PEREZ SERANTES, 85, Cuban archbishop who once saved Fidel Castro’s life but later became an arch-foe of his regime; in Santiago, Cuba.