This article is based on reports from Prague by Maynard Shelly, editor of “The Mennonite”:

While Washington and Hanoi volleyed negotiation sites, the third Christian Peace Conference assembly, not satisfied with President Johnson’s peace moves, called for a “complete, final, and unconditional” bombing halt and withdrawal of all U. S. troops so “the admirable Vietnamese people can finally make its own decisions.”

The assembly seemed less opposed to the war itself than to U. S. involvement in it. Delegates took two collections, totaling $1,500, for the National Liberation Front, then noted “with sadness that many Christians remain silent in the face of a war of annihilation by a world power against a small nation—which one can almost call genocide.”

The hardly hawkish American delegation, which had been more hopeful about Johnson’s peace moves, objected to the word “genocide.” Delegation leader Charles G. West of Princeton Seminary doubted that even anti-war groups would consider the statement “the word of God” or “an effort of Christians to understand themselves as under the Word of God.”

Masahisa Suzuki, moderator of Japan’s United Church of Christ, said “there is not the same criticism of what the countries of the East are doing.” Indeed, Westerners who often opposed their governments were disappointed that many Easterners were not even mildly critical of theirs and—in fact—did not take criticism by others kindly. Because socialist groups predominated, their thoughts usually colored official statements.

The Christian Peace Conference was organized in East Europe in 1958 to talk about world peace back when that was all the Stalinist regimes let the churches do. Now, as satellite countries move toward openness, the CPC seems to lag in dialogue.

But in Geneva the week after the assembly, Czechoslovakian Marxist Milan Machovec hailed the CPC as a significant example of liberty in his country, where democratization was occurring without gunfire. Politics is not isolated, he said, but is influenced by non-political systems like Christianity that often are more liberal than hard-line Communism.

While Christians and Marxists talked at the WCC-sponsored Geneva dialogue, Roman Catholics in Czechoslovakia met with members of the new cabinet. Their talks yielded government promises to return three bishops to their sees after eighteen years and to lift admission requirements on seminary students. “I am convinced,” said Bishop Frantisek Toma-sek after the meeting, “the new communist leaders honestly seek to restore religious freedom. For our part we want nothing more than to be good citizens and free Catholics.” He spoke for about 75 per cent of the Czech population.

This is the way things are looking in other satellite countries:

POLAND: Revolution in Poland appeared first among the 40 per cent of the population under age 19. To curb student demonstrations, officials closed several departments of Warsaw University, suspended 1,300 students, and drafted more than 200 others into the army. When a Roman Catholic legislator criticized police use of force during the demonstrations, he was fired.

In all, more than fifty top officials suffered a similar fate in Poland’s most severe purge in recent decades. Ignoring party boss Wladyslaw Gomulka’s call for cessation of anti-Semitism, his hard-line opponents have used the unrest to oust moderates and to encourage criticism of Gomulka.

EAST GERMANY: No wind of revolution stirs East Europe’s last staunch Stalinist state. Indeed, with a new constitution, East Germany is settling even more firmly into the totalitarianism that isolates the country from its liberalizing neighbors. The new document omits provisions for human rights included in the previous constitution; but they were rarely observed anyway. One concession to Catholic and Lutheran bishops adds in the final version a statement guaranteeing each East German citizen “the same rights and duties regardless of his nationality, race, ideology, or religious profession and faith.” Many East German Protestants fear the new constitution will sever their ties with Western churches, the last major formal link between East and West Germany.

RUMANIA: Liberalization in Rumania occurs as the government strengthens diplomatic relations with the West, though internal changes come slowly. Churches reflect the growing external freedom. Last January Rumania’s prime minister met with Pope Paul at the Vatican. Earlier, Bishop Aaron Marton was released from the house arrest.

YUGOSLAVIA: Government permission to translate, publish, and distribute Bibles and other religious literature and to build churches is a hopeful sign for religious freedom in Yugoslavia. Although Communism requires commitment to atheism, a Belgrade newspaper called for more and better atheistic propaganda. The need became apparent when the paper’s survey indicated religious interest among 70 per cent of the people, including Army officers, who are supposed to show none.

Dialogue between churchmen and Marxists is hampered, according to one high-school political-science dean, not by the Church but by the Marxists, who know too little about either their own or Christian ideology.

BULGARIA: Political liberalism steadily breaking into Bulgaria has opened a cautious new freedom for intellectualism. A similar breakthrough is appearing in church-state relations, though tension has not evaporated entirely. Hardline Communists see “serious shortcomings” in atheistic education, describe growing hostility of clergymen to the regime, and complain about “activation and modernization of the work of clergymen.”

ALBANIA: For several months now Albania has had no laws dealing with church-state relations. But that does not mean churches have greater freedom. On the contrary, Albania in effect eliminated the organized church and became “the first atheist state in the world.” And laws are unnecessary to govern something that does not exist.

THOSE OTHER EDITORS

Associated Church Press editors met in Washington, D. C., the same week as the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where Nixon charmed and Rocky droned.

Both Johnson and Humphrey had pulled out of ACP engagements, and Kennedy, McCarthy, and Nixon rejected bids to address the editors, who speak to 23 million readers, mostly Protestant.

“Mostly,” because ACP has a couple of Eastern Orthodox members and this year took in its fourth and fifth Roman Catholic publications. Next year it will hold its first joint meeting with the Catholic Press Association. The year after that, its annual meeting will be part of a Religious Communications Congress that will also include CPA, the Religious Public Relations Council, Evangelical Press Association, and several similar groups. ACP this year opened up non-voting associate membership for Jewish editors.

Of all things, ACP will be led at the 1969 ecumenical get-together by its first Southern Baptist president, Dr. W. C. Fields. In his 1968 address, Fields took note of racial discord in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, then said:

“Racial discrimination in our country and in our churches should be abolished, not because of a constitutional clause or the Communist challenge, or even because a horrified world is watching. Race prejudice should be cleansed from our lives and from the lives of our people because it is a sin …”

As at ASNE, there was a good sampling of politics. Dean Rusk’s suave off-the-record briefing on Viet Nam de-fanged critical editors—at the meeting, at least. Navy chief chaplain James Kelly made the remarkable statements that not a single one of his chaplains in Viet Nam has any doubts about U. S. war policy, and that the religious press has given better and more objective coverage of the war than the secular press. Senator Walter Mondale, Humphrey’s stand-in, accused the Church of doing little to get the open-housing bill through and said history might judge religious leaders harshly. The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, vice-chairman of the D. C. City Council, said the “Gospel” the poor need to hear is that the United States will create millions of public jobs. Edward Lindaman, Apollo Program manager for North American Rockwell, rhapsodized over beneficial side-effects from the billions going into next year’s moonshot.

Senator Mark Hatfield said he’s grateful for Church social concern but cautioned that people also need inspiration and “the authority of Scripture, of God, of Christ in the lives of men. If the Church fails here, no other institution can fill that void.” Convention Co-chairman Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY said that to many of the speakers, “the hope of the world” was not Christ’s resurrection but the sort of thing ASNE was talking about. Is the “Christian press being subverted by the secular ideals of our time?” he wondered.

ACP judges gave five general Awards of Merit—based on content, visual appeal, and imagination—to denominational youth monthlies Arena One and Youth, the United Church [of Christ] Herald, the Roman Catholic quarterly Continuum, and motive, which won last year’s prize for content.

OBSCENITY UNDER 17

The United Supreme Court last month upheld, 6 to 3, New York’s law banning sale of girlie magazines to persons under age 17. Thirty-four other states have similar laws. The ruling sets up a dual standard; one of the magazines involved in the case was judged not obscene for adults by the Supreme Court last year. The court also ruled 8–1 that Dallas can’t classify a movie as unfit for children because current standards are too vague.

The court threw out Mississippi’s 1964 anti-picketing law and decided to rule on the constitutionality of the strict parade ordinance in Birmingham, Alabama.

On April 22, the court heard arguments on the New York law requiring public schools to lend textbooks to church and other private schools, but gave few clues on which way the decision will go.

MASONS: NOT YET

It was a sure thing, said the reports from Rome. The Vatican was ending its 1738 ban on Catholics’ joining Masonic lodges. Several days later the Vatican said the reports were “without foundation.” Sources explained that in some Scandinavian cases, converts to Catholicism have been permitted to retain lodge membership.

Whether or not the official stance changes eventually, a noticeable thaw has developed in some parts of the United States between Masonic groups and the Catholic men’s lodge, Knights of Columbus. At a K. of C.-Masonic “prayerathon of brotherly love” in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a year and a half ago, Masons attended a Mass and K. of C. official Lee Everts prematurely declared “the deathknell of prejudice against Masons in the Catholic Church.”

The historic anti-Catholic stance of Masonry is well known. The lodges have generally made great inroads among Protestants, often because of this anti-Catholicism. Ecumenism may be changing that.

Nonetheless, ties to the Protestant Establishment abound. The District of Columbia Grand Lodge has held a special service in the city’s Episcopal Cathedral. The Imperial Chaplain of the world’s 851,000 Shriners is the Rev. Timothy Reeves, an Illinois Methodist.

Most anti-Masonic sentiment among Protestants is in conservative groups such as Lutherans, Seventh-day Adventists, and Christian Reformed. After extended synod debate, one of South Africa’s Reformed denominations forbade church members to belong to the Masons, stating:

“Freemasonry is a religion, but a religion without Christ. Freemasons are heathens for they do not pray to the God of the Bible, but to their own god.

They do not recognize the writings of the Bible, but believe God’s word was brought to them through the books of the great heathen religions. They preach that Christ was not man’s only Saviour, but that man can save himself. Their ethical standards and moral codes are not in keeping with the Bible.…”

Besides theological and moral grounds of opposition, there may also be practical reasons. Masonic duties consume much time of the four million members in the various U. S. bodies, many of them church members. Then there’s money. Scottish Rite historian James Carter has claimed the Masonic groups have accumulated “more liquid assets than any corporation in the United States” except the top financial houses and insurance companies.

MORE GLOCK-STARK

Following up their best-selling book on anti-Semitism, Berkeley sociologists Charles Glock and Rodney Stark charge that the Bible and the doctrine of man’s free will are prime contributors to prejudice, and that active churchgoers are more bigoted than anybody else.

Stark, reporting on a five-year study financed by B’nai B’rith, told a recent California symposium, “A great many church people, because of their radical free-will image of man, think that Negroes are themselves mainly to blame for their present misery.” This blinds them to “forces outside the individual which may utterly dominate his circumstances. Instead, one is led to dismiss misery of the disadvantaged as due to their own individual shortcomings.” He wished aloud that the “freewill image of man” could be dropped from “contemporary Christian doctrine.” The prejudiced churchgoers, he said, embrace most church doctrines but are less apt to “accept Christian ethicalism.” For instance, they would deny civil liberties, public office-holding, or schoolteaching jobs to atheists.

Conferees hoping for enlightened rebuttal from a theologian were further jarred. San Francisco Theological Seminary’s Noel Freedman said such Christians were only being “faithful to the history of the Church,” since the theme of inequality permeates the Bible. They cling to their prejudices “because they feel it is an essential part of their religion.” The New Testament “is simply an anti-Semitic book,” he explained, and “every figure in the Old Testament has slaves.” Even the Israelites took their slaves on the Exodus. He concluded sardonically, “Here is this great crusade for freedom!”

Symposium keynoter Arthur Flemming, president of the National Council of Churches, said “we plead guilty to charges of racism” in the light of the President’s riot commission report.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

What may be the nation’s biggest Protestant denomination was born April 23 in the heart of Texas—a land fabled for bigness in everything. It was the union of the 10.3-million-member Methodist Church and the 750,000-member Evangelical United Brethren Church into the United Methodist Church.

(There is some question whether the Southern Baptist Convention is larger, because of wide variance in the way memberships are reported.)

Dr. Albert C. Outler, noted Methodist theologian, forecast that the merger, dramatically portrayed in color on national TV, is only the beginning of what eventually may become one all-encompassing Christian Church. “No part of our venture in unity is really finished as yet,” the 1,200 official delegates and 8,000 Dallas onlookers were told.

Both the Methodists and EUBs were among the ten denominations in the Consultation on Church Union, aimed at bringing a single Protestant church with 25.5 million members. Their merger was the first within the group. Some skeptical observers predicted it will also be the last within COCU.

Nevertheless, the leaders of the new United Methodist Church indicated they will push union with all the others, particularly the three Negro Methodist denominations in COCU. For some southern laymen in the Methodist Church, however, even full integration of Negro conferences from the old Methodist Church was a big enough task for the foreseeable future.

The creation of the new denomination was not without some birth pangs. One incident occurred the night before the union ritual when fifty-six churchmen—most of them Negroes—walked out of a joint communion service for the uniting denominations to express concern for the racial question in the new church.

“We do not believe that within the United Methodist Church we are truly in love and charity with each other—black and white,” according to a statement circulated by the Rev. A. Cecil Williams of San Francisco. “We are deeply concerned over the intentions, purposes, and structures of the new United Methodist Church. We find no indication that the uniting conference intends to take immediate steps to deal with racism in its structural life.”

A bitter condemnation of President Lyndon B. Johnson by a delegate from Malaysia on April 24 further pointed up the way the question of race was beginning to dominate this first UMC General Conference.

“Asians will not be used as cannon fodder for the white man any longer,” shouted Dr. Chee Khoon Tan, a member of the Malaysian Parliament. Bishop Paul C. Hardin, Jr., of South Carolina had to cut off the tirade because time had run out and the delegates refused to extend it.

Tan had been speaking on a proposal of the social-concerns committee to both commend the President for his peace efforts and remind him of his offer to go “anywhere, anytime,” to talk. After a motion to delete that critical portion, Tan rose to say that “we have commended the President who has brought death and destruction to Viet Nam, the man who is killing both the innocent and the guilty.” The matter was left hanging.

Race dominated most of the opening session, in the report from a commission trying to set up guidelines for the ending of Negro conferences within the church.

The militant Black Methodists for Church Renewal, with the backing of a more numerous white group, Methodists for Church Renewal, lost by a close vote an effort to get the matter referred to the social-concerns committee, where their greatest strength lies. Instead, the report went to the conference committee.

However, it was evident from the applause given such black Methodist speakers as the Rev. Roy Nichols of New York that delegates generally wanted quick integration of the Negro conferences into previously white conferences, with Negroes represented at leadership levels.

“This is not an effort for a power play for selfish reasons,” Nichols said of his proposals to spell out definite numbers of Negroes at policy-making levels and other provisions for Negroes. He reminded the delegates that “many things have happened since February when this report was made—the leader of moderation has been struck down,” an obvious reference to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The biggest test of the racial climate was to come with the presentation of the proposed quadrennial emphasis for the church. Two main points were the raising of a $20 million fund for use in meeting the city crisis—particularly in Negro ghettos—and the forming of United Methodist Voluntary Service, something like the Peace Corps, for young people to work in “reconciliation and reconstruction.”

The principle had general approval, but considerable opposition was building to the $20 million sum and to proposals that the money go directly to black-power groups for use as they see fit.

That much money seemed staggering to some delegates, who pointed out that other budget requests are up more than one-third and additional expenses are expected in bringing financial arrangements in Negro and EUB churches into line with those in the old Methodist Church.

One of the key men in the race question is the Rev. Woodie W. White, an urban missioner in Detroit. He is one of the first Negro delegates to a Methodist General Conference elected from a predominantly white district. Dedicated to the work in the Negro ghettos, the young churchman is one of the founders of the Black Methodists group, which published a race-conscious daily paper, Behold, at the conference.

He listed two concerns: how do black Methodists organize to address the Church on racism, and how do they speak as black Methodists to the black revolution?

Behold said the opening communion service which sparked the walkout had an all-white choir and a massive all-white usher corps. The paper added that the preacher of the evening, Georgia’s Bishop Nolan Harmon, was remembered by few of the thousands as one of the eight white critics to whom Dr. King had addressed his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Behold also criticized the episcopal address by Bishop Lloyd Wicke of New York because it made no mention of King’s cause or murder. Wicke, however, issued a strong attack on war in general—without mentioning Viet Nam—and gave firm backing to dissenters, even those who break the law. In the repressing of big-city riots, he said, “the employment of troops, however reluctant, may be the symbol of creeping totalitarianism.”

OTHER WESLEYAN ECUMENICS

With attention riveted on the grand alliance of 11 million Wesleyans formed in Dallas (previous page), little notice went to a significant stride toward cooperation among the nation’s 1.5 million conservative Wesleyans, at the Cleveland centennial convention of the National Holiness Association, April 16–19.

There was sparse reaction in Cleveland to the Methodist-Evangelical United Brethren merger, though a few private expressions of sympathy for the EUBs were voiced.

The conservatives have been talking about cooperation for a long time, but action has failed to match rhetoric. Almost everyone agreed that something should be done; no one seemed to know just what. As the economic and organizational value of cooperation became increasingly apparent, church leaders began meeting in earnest two years ago under the convenient NHA umbrella.

Out of these meetings grew a well-studied proposal that amounts to a step toward unity among the thirteen NHA denominations.¹NHA affiliates: the Brethren in Christ Church, Churches of Christ in Christian Union, Evangelical Methodist Church, Free Methodist Church of North America, Holiness Christian Church, Ohio Yearly meeting of Friends, Pacific Northwest Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, Pilgrim Holiness Church, Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting of the Friends, Salvation Army, Canadian Salvation Army, United Missionary Church, and Wesleyan Methodist Church of America. Auxiliary members: eightysix associations and camp meetings, three missionary societies, fourteen educational institutions. The 625 delegates at Cleveland approved “cooperative ministries” in publishing, missions, evangelism, higher education, and other areas as need arises. An executive director will work with those member denominations using the services.

All this came after frequent revisions by cautious leaders. The idea has had three names, each a substitute to soften ecumenical overtones: First, “federation,” later, “federated services,” and—just before the proposal was submitted—a shift to “cooperative ministries.” Regardless of name, delegates liked the intent and approved it without floor debate. Now each denomination will decide which ministries to cooperate with, and whether to support the expanded annual budget of around $30,000.

Technically, this is the first ecumenical move made by the NHA since its beginning at Vineland, New Jersey, in July, 1867. However, the organization has been handy in helping to bring about various holiness church mergers. The largest and most recent will be completed June 26, that of the Pilgrim Holiness and Wesleyan Methodist Churches.

The NHA started as an organization of annual camp meetings in the East and South, and later supported a missionary organization. But in the past twenty years, with leadership largely from denominations, it has dropped the missionary ties, though three independent missionary groups are still members.

The Cleveland action provides the historically individualistic churches a chance to find out, through a trial relationship, what real possibilities lie in further mergers. The test will come when leaders from denominations varying greatly in size join in a working relationship. The 450,000-member Church of the Nazarene is considering applying for NHA membership. It would be a sibling to half a dozen denominations with fewer than 10,000 members each. The NHA board has equal representation among denominations, but budget allocations will be based on denominational size. How all this will work out is still undecided.

These problems and others have already been faced to some extent by the ten-year-old Holiness Denominational Publishers Association, which will be part of the NHA’s cooperative ministries. Seven of the eleven denominations in the HDPA (including the Church of the Nazarene) are now planning a united curriculum. Although conflict over Sunday-school teaching methods has arisen frequently, nevertheless progress toward the new curriculum is apparent, according to Chairman A. F. Harper.

Centennial speakers emphasized again and again the immutables of Wesleyan theology, to the hearty chimes of delegate amens. The authority of the Scriptures, free grace to all men, God’s holiness, the sinfulness of unregenerate man, and two distinct works of grace—these were well covered. There was also a long look backward across the hundred years, aided at one point by a telephone conversation with past NHA officer John L. Brasher, who celebrated his personal centennial during the year.

A touch of contemporaneity came through the social action committee, which presented the most definitive statement on social issues in the 100 years. It upheld educational programs in human rights and family planning, and condemned drugs and homosexuality. “We call upon the NHA,” the statement also said, “to consider a program of coordinated and cooperative efforts to meet the physical needs of urban men, women and youth. Further, we ask that the NHA develop biblical concepts of life and death that may serve as guides for a position and for participation in the decisions on such moral issues as birth and genetic controls, abortion, and organ transplants.”

The statement expressed concern “about totalitarian force as an alternative to violence when the government acts illegally against the freedom and the privacy of the individual.”

On separation of church and state, the committee recognized “that the redemptive function of the church can only be carried out when the government assumes its protective function for the freedom of religion.” It also held that “the teaching of the Bible as literature is a legitimate function of the public schools.” It made allowance for “wars of defense,” and added that “while peace-making is a priority for Christians, we do not accept ‘peace at any cost.’ ”

Opposition to permissiveness in television programming and to divorce was restated, but the committee suggested that holiness churches should minister to a “growing number of divorced and remarried people and … forgive and accept them within God’s redemptive context.”

Dr. Paul S. Rees, member-at-large of the NHA board, chided holiness churches for lack of interest in social issues. “Evangelicals are social reactionaries,” he said. “We need not be. We can be theologically conservative and socially progressive.… You don’t know what it means to be a Negro in America if you are a white man.” Speaking to Wesleyan adherents, he added, “If we are going to follow Wesley, let’s follow him all the way. The final part of his admonition was ‘… and to reform a nation.’ ”

The Rev. Wingrove Taylor, a Pilgrim Holiness minister from Barbados, also touched on the racial problem. “You brought holiness to me,” he said, “but you did not take it next door.”

Succeeding Dr. Paul Kindschi as president of NHA is Bishop Myron F. Boyd, a Free Methodist.

The cooperation move, the social-action statement, and the spiritual and social sensitivity of the speakers added up to more than the sum of their parts. There is a force in the background somewhere pressing for needed change. How united that force becomes may well determine the future effectiveness of the holiness churches.

ELDEN E. RAWLINGS

MORE THAN CARPENTRY

“We not only have to say what we believe but show it,” the Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Moffett told 400 persons at a Pittsburgh conference of Presbyterians United for Biblical Confession. The Presbyterian seminary dean from Seoul, Korea, said Communists also stress good deeds. “We must not show only concern but also the reason we have it, which is Jesus Christ.”

Moffett said there is no evidence that Jesus’ “being a carpenter, simply being there, affected anyone significantly. Only after he started to preach did things begin to happen.”

PUBC, concerned with the loss of 39,000 members of the United Presbyterian Church in two years, held three regional conferences last month to “update evangelism,” including seminars on special types of ministry.

Cybernetic Religion

Toward an American Theology, by Herbert W. Richardson (Harper & Row, 1967, 170 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Gordon R. Lewis, professor of systematic theology and Christian philosophy, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

The death-of-God theology buries belief in a personal God but marks the beginning of a fresh American approach to theological thinking, according to Herbert W. Richardson, assistant professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School.

Our high regard for a God with a personal self-consciousness, Richardson says, is simply the projection of seventeenth-century philosophy into Scripture. However, atheistic rejections of God as an individual person are merely transitional. An atheistic culture is impossible in principle, for “an absolute denial of God finally negates its own negation.”

Culturally, the era of the individual is rapidly being swallowed up in what Richardson calls the age of sociotechnics. Man now exercises technical control not only over nature but also over all the institutions that make up society: economics, education, science, and politics. Cybernetics is concerned with the control of probability systems whose terms are the manifold decisions of free individuals. Since America has created and promulgated social technology, it is fitting that America should produce the distinctive theology for the new age. With little reference to Scripture, but some guidance from the history of doctrine, Richardson seeks to chart the way.

The shift to a social conception of God is required, he thinks, by the sociotechnic age. Although Richardson continues to use personal pronouns of God, he says we can no longer think of God as a person explicated by a theological emphasis on the historical Jesus. Apparently we are to think of God as the general goals for a cybernetic system. These goals may be “conceptually imprecise, but symbolically precise.” The myth becomes the message. The new ethical principles will move away from independence and competitiveness to teamwork and conformity to the systems of society necessary for optimum organization of human life. God is “the unity of the encompassing system of social relations.”

A philosophical analysis of unity discloses (1) the unity of the individual, or individuality, (2) the unity of any two or more individuals when taken together, relationality, and (3) the unity of any or all possible relationalities taken together, wholeness. It must not be forgotten that these are three types of unity. The unity of the three is not: one of the three, a fourth hypostasis, nothing at all, or relatively the negation of some determinate being. The unity is the three themselves, that is, “the oneness is nothing other than the threeness of these three ones.” This unity is present in all things, but it also transcends them. We must affirm not only the reality of individuality, relationality, and wholeness, but also the reality of “the unity of unities.” Although Richardson does not wish to consider this a personal God, he asserts its identity with the “one Lord” of biblical experience (Deut. 6:4). He does not consider his henological argument an explanation of the Trinity, however useful it may be as an analogy.

Reading For Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

• The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, edited by Ronald H. Nash (Presbyterian and Reformed, $9.95). A fascinating, challenging Festschrift on the encyclopedic thought of the outstanding evangelical Protestant philosopher of our day.

• The Progress of the Protestant, by John Haverstick (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, $14.95). Haverstick presents highlights of Protestant history from Wycliffe to Barth through 500 illustrations and a limited but lively text.

• … And Thy Neighbor, by Sam Shoemaker, edited by Cecile Offill (Word, $3.50). A sampler of sermons and writings by the late Dr. Sam Shoemaker that stresses the revolutionary spiritual power in the New Testament message and calls men to a victorious life in Christ.

The strategic point of contact with the world for Christian apologetics is the possible transcending of every ideological conflict through this invisible power of reconciliation at work in all things. If the power of reconciliation is at work in everything, we wonder why Richardson singles out the United Nations, the Peace Corps, the worker priests, federal mediators, and ecumenism about which to say, “These are the institutions where God is working in the world today, but only the fides reconcilians will have the eyes to see.” If, as Richardson assumes, every individual act is ultimately socializable, what happens to individual decision and responsibility before God? Is not a very shallow view of sin implied in the anticipation of reconciling all conflicts among men with a single cybernetic system?

In developing his system further, Richardson would do well to consider the biblically revealed possibility that society might in fact be programmed not by the Christ but by antichrist! By what criteria can we distinguish the social unity that is of God from the unity that is demonic? As the cybernetic age dawns, persons must program society’s computers. It becomes more crucial than ever that they be regenerate persons bound by the authority of the crucified and risen Lord disclosed in inscripturated truth.

Why Do We Experience Guilt?

The Paradox of Guilt, by Malcomb France (United Church Press, 1967, 127 pp., $1.95), is reviewed by Willard F. Harley, Sr., professor of psychology and director of counseling, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Both pastor and psychotherapist must frequently deal with the problem of guilt and feelings of guilt. In The Paradox of Guilt Malcomb France brings together an array of assumptions that he weaves into some very creative propositions. He wants to provide a “Christian study of the relief of self-hatred,” upon which he ambitiously hopes that “a new theology of guilt might be constructed.” Those who subscribe to historical Christianity will be disinclined to accept his definitions of “Christian” and of “guilt,” however, and those who subscribe to mainstream psychological inquiry will be disinclined to accept his behavioral interpretations. France readily admits, “What I have written is a personal view and not presented as possessing any other authority.” Yet, as a piece of imaginative speculation on a difficult subject, the book makes interesting and provocative reading.

France begins by limiting his treatment of guilt “to those situations where recrimination and remorse are dominant, where guilt feelings are too strong to be constructive, and where the element of grief is either absent altogether or else swamped by self-attack.” This definition points to what is usually thought of as neurotic grief. France sees this guilt as originating in infancy. When the infant is left in his crib against his will, he feels abandoned and rejected by his mother. He responds by hating her and by hating himself for hating her. “Through her absence he is being given a bad identity; to be him is to be unwanted.” “… Since his mother is in the place of God, it seems to him that there must be a kind of rightness in what he has suffered. He has brought it all upon himself, by being himself.… By not coming she is making him bad and worthless.” He feels himself to be “horrible, repulsive, a creature unfit to be loved.” France asserts emphatically, “Beyond question this is the birthplace of self-hatred.”

All this is, of course, highly speculative. We are always on weak ground when we “anthropomorphize” the infant or attempt to read his thoughts. Numerous studies show that extreme neglect is indeed harmful to the psyche of the child. But the occasional frustrations of not being picked up and of waiting for meals are not likely to be so devastating as France supposes.

France sees the story of the Garden of Eden as describing “the memory of a real state in which for a time every human being has lived.” Just as Adam was at first innocent, so is the infant. Adam, in asserting himself, contrary to God’s command, became a person at the price of guilt. Likewise the infant, in asserting himself against his mother, becomes a person, but also at the price of guilt. Thus he leaves the innocence and nothingness of infancy in order to become a person through self-assertion.

But if our alienation from God is nothing more than the self-assertion by which we have become persons, we can scarcely repent of such a “sin”; with France, we may divest ourselves of guilt simply by concluding we were not guilty in the first place. In his view, it seems, salvation is derived through self-forgiveness, which we achieve by denying that we ever were really guilty.

The death of Christ points the way for us, France says, by showing us a person who, originally innocent, identified himself with our self-hatred by hating himself and feeling the same alienation from God that we felt from Mother. France proposes that we can love Christ only if we see him as guilty. “Good, compliant, respectable people are unattractive.… Seeing goodness or righteousness in others makes us lonely.” “An innocent Savior could not save.” It is Christ’s hating himself and joining “in man’s condemnation of God’s faithlessness” (for abandoning Christ in his moment of suffering) that makes him the kind of Saviour we can understand and accept, and in understanding and accepting him we understand and accept ourselves.

Nowhere does France consider the biblical concept of sin or the vicarious atonement. In his view, had Adam (man the individual) never disobeyed God, he would never have become a person. Not to be a person is nothingness. The Paradox of Guilt, then, is the inexorable need to escape the nothingness of innocence in order to become a person, albeit a guilty person. We are alienated from God, not because we have done wrong, but because we are persons. France seems to imply that the only guilt God has concerned himself about is a neurotic guilt that needs only self-forgiveness. The Bible, however, addresses itself to real guilt that needs real atonement and real forgiveness.

Although France does not refer to the biblical doctrine of grace, he clearly recognizes the futility of urging the guilt-ridden to work harder to be good. The overwrought conscience compulsively seeks expiation; it is too easy to incite to penitence those who cannot forgive themselves.

France has brought to light much that merits consideration by those who minister to people burdened by feelings of guilt. But his approach to guilt seems to have little in common either with mainstream psychology or with careful biblical exegesis.

When, How, And Where To Refer

Referral in Pastoral Counseling, by William B. Oglesby, Jr. (Prentice-Hall, 1968, 139 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Earl Jabay, chaplain, New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute, Princeton.

Those who come to a pastor for help sometimes have problems that exceed his competence. This book shows him how to refer such persons to the other professional people or service organizations that can best deal with their problems. The author, who is professor of pastoral counseling at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, adeptly draws on his considerable counseling experience in describing when, how, and where to make referrals.

There is a concrete, down-to-earth quality about Dr. Oglesby’s writing that makes this book a practical guide, especially for the young pastor. He offers numerous examples to explain not only the process of referral but also the ways of finding the right marriage counselor, adoption agency, welfare agency, psychologist or psychiatrist, and so on.

This helpful book stimulates one to reflect on some of the persistent questions involved in referral. Why is referral to medical people always a one way street? How can we help pastors resist the temptation to view the psychiatrist and psychologist as omnicompetent? How could pastors be better trained to deal with people?

It is time to take a hard look at referral. This volume is a constructive guide in that direction.

Does Ecumenism Bring Sterility?

The Ecumenical Mirage, by C. Stanley Lowell (Baker, 1967, 205 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Robert Boyd Munger, pastor, University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, Washington.

A good debate requires a good rebuttal. Hundreds of books have been written advancing ecumenism; C. Stanley Lowell’s The Ecumenical Mirage is one of the few to make a sharp, cogent attack upon the basic assumptions and observable effects of the current movement toward church union.

Lowell does not hedge about his position: “The naïve assumption that a Christian unity embodied in one great church represents the will of God will be challenged throughout this book. I believe, in fact, that those who so plead have catastrophically missed the will of God.” His conclusion: “[Ecumenism] is not an authentic manifestation of the Holy Spirit but merely the cultural drift among nominal Christians who are without real convictions. It is a sickness of our time, or a symptom of it.”

He supports his thesis in two sobering chapters, “Ecumenism and Sterility” and “Proliferation and Health.” Member of the mainline churches should take a hard look at the statistics of faltering church growth in denominations identified with the ecumenical movement, in contrast with figures of rapid growth in churches outside the movement. Lowell concludes that church merger leads to sterility because of the inevitable surrender of distinctives and loss of convictions. Whether the surrender of distinctives results from church union or is part of a deeper malady he does not make clear.

The author attempts to show that the proliferation of churches is a sign of spiritual vitality: “History teaches that reforms come about only under challenge and only when the challengers are firm to the point of proliferation away from the group to be reformed. This is why division has been good for the church. A church incapable of proliferation is dead.” His fear that Protestantism will ultimately be absorbed into a monolithic Roman Catholicism is an outgrowth of his experience as an accredited correspondent at the Second Vatican Council and as editor of Church and State magazine.

Since the book is intended as a rebuttal, its negativeness is understandable; still, one wishes Lowell had made some positive suggestions about the desperate need for Christian unity in a day of world community and massive social structures. At times, it seems to me, he lets his strong feeling carry him beyond an objective interpretation of the data and even to some unsubstantiated imputations of motive.

In dialogue each party must take the other seriously. For this reason I hope this book will be read by those who see in church union the solution to the problems of Christendom, even as I hope the authentic longings of God’s people that all might be one in Christ Jesus will not be brushed off, but will be heeded responsibly, by those outside the ecumenical movement.

A Clear Perception Of Reality

A Second Touch, by Keith Miller (Word, 1967, 156 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by C. Ralston Smith, director of development,CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Washington, D. C.

This stimulating and refreshing little volume is a relevant application of the miracle of Jesus Christ in which he twice touched a blind man to restore his sight completely. The obvious application is that some of us who name the name of Christ need the second touch; we are still in the first stage, where haziness prevails and persons are not seen in clear perspective. The author takes us along with him in his own experience of gaining a clearer perception of reality.

In three segments Miller outlines an autobiographical odyssey, applies newly discovered truths to everyday situations, and approaches the tangled skein of institutionalism with a view to unraveling it. A good summary statement is this:

I have found that the thing which has helped me most is that during these past few years I have begun to become conscious of what I think it actually does mean to live and grow as a Christian. I have begun to believe that the Christian life is a pilgrimage, not a program; a pilgrimage with people who want to be willing to love, live, and possibly die for Christ, each other, and the world. I have begun to experience what it is like to take the risk of revealing my true needs, and to love other Christians enough to let them help me when I really hurt—as well as trying to help them [p. 125].

This is a poignant, personal book. It will get to the reader if he has any feeling of failure in the past, frustration in the present, or futility about the future. There is nothing pharisaical about this honest-to-God recital of life in the home of a Christian couple. No classroom theories are found here; rather, Miller deals with the events that make up the dawn-to-dusk life of most of us. The suggested vitalizing diet is not the ambrosia of the gods but the meat and potatoes of daily sustaining grace.

It is easy for me to be enthusiastic, and even a bit prejudiced, toward anything that comes from Keith Miller. I knew him a few years ago in Oklahoma City when he was determining how best he could serve God. In my study and at his office with his two Christian fellow workers, I benefited from his winsome and genuine searching and from his unpretentious honesty. Here’s hoping he keeps growing, and telling us about it in this fresh, invigorating way.

True To The Fathers Of Methodism

The Wesleyan Bible Commentary, Volume 1, Part I and Part II, edited by-Charles W. Carter (Eerdmans, 1967, 550 pp. and 497 pp., $8.95 each), is reviewed by Ludwig R. M. Dewitz, associate professor of Old Testament language, literature, and exegesis, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

The Wesleyan Bible Commentary is intended “to maintain the faith of the Fathers of Methodism” while at the same time taking full advantage “of the latest and best information available to present-day Bible scholars.” Volume I consists of two complete books, one dealing with the Pentateuch, the other with all the rest of the historical books, Joshua to Esther. There are a general introduction to the Pentateuch and particular introductions to each of the other books.

The documentary theory is seen as a villain: “On the whole, the results of this type of study have been destructive,” the “level of an authoritative revelation” having been reduced “to a fallible record of the religious evolution of finite men groping after eternal truth.” Yet while JEPD is dismissed, a complete Mosaic authorship for the Pentateuch is not claimed. Mr. Haines, who deals with Genesis and Exodus, takes the position that the Pentateuch consists of “large portions written by Moses using preexisting sources, substantial editing by a later editor or editors with the slight possibility that they also used some pre-Mosaic sources either not available or not used by Moses himself.”

Although introductory questions of authorship and historical setting are not central to a commentary of this sort, it is regrettable that the introduction to Deuteronomy is overly short. Moreover, comment on the chapters dealing with the centralization of the cult and the restriction on the Kingship should have some reference to the historical-critical perspective.

Generally, the comments are clear and interesting. They underline quite rightly that, whatever the various records may have meant to the original writers and listeners, they do have additional meaning to a Christian. For example, the account of the Passover rightly includes a view from the New Testament perspective. It may not be obvious to all, however, that use of the plural form of Elohim for God has reference to the doctrine of the Trinity.

The bibliographies given at the end of each book include both conservative and liberal writing.

A real deficiency is the lack of maps and other illustrative material. One always can get this elsewhere, of course, but in the discussion of the tabernacle or the ark, for instance, a drawing or two would have been of real help.

The commentary is meant to aid those who teach the Bible in Sunday school and Bible classes and all others who wish to study the Bible more systematically. For this it is well suited and should find wide use.

Theological Brinkmanship?

The Dimensions of the Church: A Post-conciliar Reflection, by Avery Dulles (Newman, 1967, 118 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Carl S. Meyer, director of graduate studies, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Avery Dulles of the Society of Jesus looks at the Roman Catholic Church in its relations with other churches, the unevangelized, and secular institutions in the light of the pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council. However, he does not do justice to the council’s concept of the Church as the people of God as it is brought out in Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church. Instead he goes to a broad definition of the Church that smacks of universalism.

Lumen gentium does indeed contain a prayer that the entire world might become the “people of God.” It also teaches: “Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God, and moved by His grace, strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.” In this, what is Christ’s role? Is his universal dominion, in which all his enemies are subjected to him, the inclusion of all in everlasting bliss? Is his universal atonement the same as eternal life for all, as if rejecting him were tantamount to accepting him? “We have, as it were, a secret presence of the Church even where the spoken or written word of the Gospel has not yet permeated,” says Dulles. He does not, however, accept the view of Eugene Hillman that the presence of the Church in a given ethnic-cultural group is operative for the eternal life of all past and future members of that group.

But how can Dulles or Lumen gentium postulate that the Gospel is not necessary for salvation? The Church must proclaim the Name, the only way of salvation for man. All those who believe on that name will be saved; those who do not will be damned. This is the message of Christianity; it cannot be diluted. And it is the reason for missions, whether at home or abroad. Christianity is an exclusive religion. That is not the same as saying that there is salvation only in the Roman Catholic Church, nor is it limiting the power of God. But to his followers the Redeemer has given orders: Go, preach the Gospel, baptize, teach.

Book Briefs

Born to Climb, by Dick Hillis (Word, 1967, 157 pp., $3.50). Illuminating biographical sketches of twenty contemporary evangelical missionaries by the founder and director of Overseas Crusades.

Luther’s Works: Lectures on Genesis, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, translated by George V. Schick and Paul D. Pahl (Concordia, 1968, 412 pp., $6). The German reformer deals mainly with Jacob’s experiences in this new translation of lectures on Genesis, chapters 26–30.

The Thought of Teilhard de Chardin, by Emile Rideau (Harper & Row, 1968, 672 pp., $12.50). An analysis of the Roman Catholic paleontologist-theologian’s erroneous view that the universe and man are progressively evolving toward an ultimate state of redemption in the Cosmic Christ.

The Westminster Pulpit, The Preaching of G. Campbell Morgan (Revell, 1968, Volumes I-X in five books, $29.95). Masterpieces of expository preaching by the minister who addressed thousands weekly for four decades in London’s Westminster Chapel.

David Brainerd: His Life and Diary, edited by Jonathan Edwards (Moody, 1949, 384 pp., $4.95). Re-issue of the classic biography of an early American missionary to the Indians whose short life had great spiritual impact; written by one of the greatest theologian-preachers in the nation’s history.

The World of the Bible, by Anton Jirku, translated by Ann E. Keep (World, 1967, 167 pp., $10). Geographical, historical, and cultural studies of the ancient Pales-tine-Syrian region based on documents and letters, biblical texts, and recent archaeological findings.

The Old Testament for Everyman, edited by Frank Dell’Isola (Meredith, 1968, 427 pp., $8.95). A condensation and chronological rearrangement of the Old Testament based on the RSV and Confraternity of Christian Doctrine edition.

Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, by Robert M. Kingdon (University of Wisconsin, 1967, 241 pp., $8). A scholarly study for church-history buffs.

Language, Persons and Belief, by Dallas M. High (Oxford, 1967, 216 pp., $4.75). High analyzes Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and challenges the assumption that faith and reason are altogether separate processes.

Changed into His Likeness, by Watchman Nee (Christian Literature Crusade, 1967, 123 pp., $3). Spiritual lessons for today gained from God’s dealings with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Church and State in Confrontation, by Herbert Stroup (Seabury, 1967, 246 pp., $6.95). A sociologist considers church-state relations from biblical times to the present.

Paperbacks

The Evolving World and Theology, edited by Johannes Metz (Paulist, 1967, 184 pp., $4.50). Catholic and Protestant scholars, mainly European, who accept the evolutionary hypothesis grapple with its ramifications in the formulation of theology.

The Preacher and His Models, by James Stalker, and The Glory of the Ministry, by A. T. Robertson (Baker, 1967, 284 and 244 pp., $2.95 each). These reissues in Baker’s “Notable Books on Preaching” have what it takes to spark a minister’s mind and spirit.

The Treasury of C. H. Spurgeon, by C. H. Spurgeon (Baker, 1967, 256 pp., $1.95). Sermons by the nineteenth-century “Prince of Preachers” that still ring true in 1968.

The New Testament in the Contemporary World, by Warren W. Jackson (Seabury, 1968, 154 pp., $2.50). A highly readable exposition of the dominant attitudes toward God, the universe, the Bible, and Jesus Christ found in many of our seminaries today. An antisupernatural stance, evolutionary constructions, and low view of Scripture are passed off as factual conclusions. Written for secondary students, this work offers a distorted view of the biblical picture of God, man, and the world.

Jerusalem Through the Ages, by Charles F. Pfeiffer (Baker, 1967, 94 pp., $1.95). A brief but fascinating profile of the great city from its first biblical mention in Genesis 14 to the present day.

The Second Vatican Council, edited by Bernard C. Pawley (Oxford, 1967, 262 pp., $3.75). Eight Anglican Vatican II observers give their reactions to the council’s deliberations on divine revelation, the church, religious liberty, ecumenism, and other topics.

A few months ago a boy examining the stones in an abandoned mine found a ruby worth about $7,000. This gem had been overlooked by thousands who had searched there for something of value.

Man, engaged in his unending “search for truth,” continually passes by truth and picks up baubles instead.

Truth has to do with ultimate questions and answers, rather than merely with knowledge and information. Advances in knowledge stagger the imagination. It is estimated that man is prepared to make use of only 10 per cent of the information available to him. Truth has to do with the nature of man—who he is, why he exists, what his destiny is. Truth has to do with God, with good and evil, with sin and redemption, with time and eternity.

And all the while, as men blindly search, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, stands ready to reveal himself as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” only to be rejected in favor of substitutes that at best leave emptiness in the soul.

Perhaps some of us have been fighting the battle for truth on the wrong front. We are concerned because of the world’s confusion, reflected in every area of life and highlighted by the revolt of young people. Because of our assurance that Christ is the answer for all these problems, we are inclined to wage the battle at the level of doctrines that have to do with his person and work, and with the record of these truths in the inspired and authoritative Scriptures.

But while our own faith and hope rest squarely on Christ, as revealed in the Scriptures, we find that the questions many are asking today delve behind the revelation of God in Jesus Christ to the very existence of God himself.

We are confronted with a generation characterized by ignorance of the Scriptures and the Christ they reveal. It is a generation largely devoid of Bible-based moral and spiritual values, one that has been brought up on a syncretistic philosophical conglomeration where “religion” is, at best, a questionable option.

This spiritually starved generation is to be pitied, because we, of a former generation, have so poorly taught and lived the faith we have professed. In a sense they are like children who are being taught calculus and trigonometry without knowing the multiplication table.

How can Christians help others to find truth? Pious phrases, platitudes, and clichés are meaningless. In these times of spiritual ignorance it is the Spirit who teaches through the Word of God, which is still the Sword of the Spirit, and through lives filled with his presence.

Deep down in the human heart—yes, even in the hearts of a cynical and disillusioned generation—there is a longing for God that can never be satisfied until he is found in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Although men do not “reason” themselves to God and at some time must take the unreasonable step of faith, still we know that God has not left himself without a witness in this world.

As I write I can look out and see all around evidences of his hand in creation. I see the sky with clouds scudding across the blue of infinite space; I see trees and flowers and grass; and I, as one who is aware of and believes in the divine revelation, remember that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” I sense the wonder in the words: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.” And I go further, for I know that it was through Jesus Christ that all this was brought into existence: “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”

For anyone to think that things just “happen,” or that natural objects have within themselves the forces that explain the marvelously intricate operations of the universe, he must exercise a credulity far more difficult than faith.

A scientist searches for facts wherever they may be. He projects hypotheses into the unknown, experiments, gains evidence from multiplied sources or even by accident. But along the way are the evidences of God’s handiwork, whether he recognizes them or not. There can be no real and lasting conflict between the facts of science and those of revealed Christianity.

The philosopher, too, if objective in his search, will find in the books of Job and Romans (to mention but two places in the Bible) a depth of philosophical truth that, when illuminated by the Holy Spirit, will transcend anything to be found in the writings of the greatest secular thinkers.

No matter how earnestly a man may search, he is rewarded only when he is willing to accept truth as truth. Honest search will find honest answers, and honesty demands humility, a humility that discards presuppositions in favor of facts.

The greatest single deterrent to man’s discovery of truth is the tendency to give precedence to presuppositions that rule out the supernatural and the miraculous. Many “thinkers” today have stumbled over their own doubts to the place where they are blind to God’s truth.

Looking for truth, one can look at the universe and be convinced that some rational, powerful, wise, and good Being must have brought it into existence. Logic demands that we reject the idea that it is “self-contained,” “self-con-trolled,” or “self-developing.” The order and wisdom to be found in the universe demands that we accept the fact of a Creator-God.

Let the honest searcher for truth continue his search and he comes face to face with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Apostle Paul urges: “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:8,9).

Searching for truth is not enough. One must recognize it when it is found.

And there is a tragic alternative. One may reject the truth in favor of a lie. Satan is the master counterfeiter, and nowhere is he more active than in the minds of men.

The Apostle Paul describes the evidences God has given of himself in his creation (Rom. 1:19, 20) and then goes on to describe the folly of those who willfully reject this evidence: “Claiming to be wise, they become fools” (v. 22).

And what of the final state of those who reject God’s truth? “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” (vv. 24, 25).

In man’s search for truth, his greatest folly is to reject or discard Jesus Christ, the Creator and Redeemer, the Pioneer and Perfecter of faith, the One who is Truth itself.

Dear Hippie-Watchers:

The ubiquitous presence and lively activities of the hippies indicate that they have no intention of folding up their pads, cutting their hair, and quietly stealing back into “middle-class respectability.” Many drop-out hippies have dropped back into the social brouhaha now as militant yippies. (“A yippie,” said one, “is what happens to a hippie when a cop hits him over the head.”) And they’re out to change the world by involvement in man’s three major causes: sex, politics, and religion.

Their revolt against sexual mores may be observed in the Sexual Freedom League’s libidinous parties, the recent spring “nude-in” by a flock of fifty nudeniks in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the abundance of sex come-on ads in “underground” newspapers, and, lest we forget, the one-man crusade of “Naked Adam” Feldman. Adam apparently views disrobing in public for the cause of freedom as his life mission. After an appearance at the recent “neo-naked nude-in” protest at the Oakland Induction Center (“Nudity, not napalm”; “Go naked, not army”), he strolled among the cars in a freeway traffic jam, smiling and waving in his birthday suit. It was his free way of showing what it means to be truly human!

The yippies’ political activism is set to explode at the upcoming Democratic Convention in Chicago. They hope to involve 200,000 young pilgrims in their “guerrilla theater” antics. They proclaim: “Come to Chicago to do your thing; be the Festival of Light confronting the Convention of Death; and spread the word.” Since President Johnson has bowed out of the race, we can’t be sure which candidate will experience the wrath of the yippies’ “politics of ecstasy.”

In the religious realm, they’re trying to revive the psychedelic Neo-American Church. “Rev.” Jefferson F. Poland, ex-leader of the Sexual Freedom League, has been appointed “Primate of California” by Chief Boo Hoo Arthur Kleps of New York. He now seeks a storefront in San Francisco for public evangelism. A year’s free growth of hair entitles Boo Hoos to absolution for “five sins of self-pity or one sin of lack of compassion.” They have special meetings when the moon is full.

Call them hippies, yippies, or Boo Hoos, they’ll be around to bug the straights, fuzz, and narks for some time to come. Maybe we all should become longhairs and freak out.

EUTYCHUS III

Feelin’ groovy,

AND EVANGELICALS WHISPERED

During the crucial hours and days following the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., people in grief and despair, uncertainty and dread grappled with the issues of life.… Because the consequences of the catastrophe were national, the need really was for an evangelical voice to be heard nationally.…

Dr. Joel Nederhood of … the Christian Reformed Church on very short notice prepared a special broadcast of the “Back to God Hour,” from which NBC Radio News excerpted a segment for its Sunday afternoon memorial tribute to Dr. King (“How the Church Reacted,” News, April 26).…

One voice, eloquently and effectively raised to the nation in the time of desperate need—but only one! Why no others? Was this the way evangelicals demonstrated that they had well earned and truly deserved their reputation for lack of social awareness, compassion and concern, for irrelevance, for “playing church”?…

The crisis of a century; the nation listened; but from those who had the only adequate answer, there was but a whisper.

DANIEL G. ZIEGLER

Bible Fellowship Church

Staten Island, N. Y.

I am a Christian; I am also black, and being black causes me to take a different view of things than do most evangelical Christians who happen to be white and middle class. For two decades I have had the opportunity to observe evangelical Christianity (American version) at rather close quarters.… and [I] feel I know evangelicals quite well. They have many virtues and many faults. I trust you will forgive me if, on this occasion, I do not mention their virtues, but take a rather hard look at some of their faults.…

The Lord said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (the second greatest commandment). If this means anything at all, it means that I want my neighbor to be treated the same way I myself would want to be treated in any given circumstance. It means for the Christian that he be absolutely color blind, absolutely without racial or religious favoritism in dealing with his fellow man.… It is hard for Negro Christians to believe that most white conservative Christians have even begun to fulfill this commandment.…

I realize, though, that most evangelicals do not hate Negroes—they simply do not love them.

Racism, however subtle, on the part of evangelicals is especially burdensome to those of us who are black evangelicals and who sometimes find ourselves in the embarrassing position of having to explain to our black brothers how we can believe the same Gospel as “those conservatives who care nothing for us.”

It is sad that those who pride themselves in biblical orthodoxy can evidence so little Christian love.… While conservative Christians busy themselves with their little dos and don’ts, the greater moral issues of love, justice, and mercy are being wrestled with and acted upon principally by those outside the evangelical community. If evangelical Christians do not awaken to what is happening in the world of the 1960s and begin to show a little Christian love and concern, they may find that in the world of the 1970s no one will be interested in hearing their message.

JOSEPH L. FIELDS

New York, N.Y.

EASTER EXCITEMENT

I found the dialogue on the resurrection (April 12) very exciting and feel more forums of this type are well in order. It was very encouraging to see a top respected theologian of the stature of Pannenberg, trained in a Bultmannian atmosphere, declare the importance of the resurrection. Conservative theology is something to be reasoned with and can no longer be dismissed with the non-thinking wish-theology or liberalism which characterized much of twentieth-century theology.

DANIEL JUSTER

Wheaton, Ill.

FACING THE LOSS

The editorial “The Loss of Personal Religion” (March 29) raises questions that far too many Methodist ministers and laymen are just frankly afraid to face. The spirit and accuracy of the editorial are alike unassailable. As a concerned Methodist evangelical, I commend the editorial.

HARRIS C. JONES

Mount Vernon Methodist Church

Mount Vernon, Ala.

It would be impossible for me to disagree more with “The Loss of Personal Religion.”

Suffice it to say that, whereas your criticism of the new Methodist literature … is that such materials reflect “the loss of personal religion,” it has been my experience to note that these materials are both applauded and denounced for one reason, namely: because they jerk religion out of the abstract and plant it squarely in the midst of our personal worlds, where we live and move and make our living.…

RICHARD H. PETERSEN

Chaplain

Pfeiffer College

Misenheimer, N. C.

Your title for an article dealing with the particular unit in question would be titled more accurately “The Loss of Traditional Language in Religion.” As I see it, this unit uses the language and experiences of the modern world to make men aware of the emptiness of life apart from God.

CLAUDE JOHNSON

St. Andrew’s Methodist Church

Amory, Miss.

JAZZ REVIEW

I was very interested in the report (March 29) about Dave Brubeck.…

You would be interested to know that the Mennonite Brethren Church is compiling a new hymnal and … planning to include folk hymns with guitar notation. We sincerely believe that the hymnal of the 1970’s must include this type of hymn. I don’t know of any other denominational hymnal which does.

This letter is written because of a deep concern for the spreading of the Gospel and the giving of a true witness of Jesus Christ to a lost world through the medium of music. The Christian college must take leadership in training young people for Christian service as well as help them in defining their own Christian faith. In music we now have a job of evaluating the use of jazz as a useful technique. My sensitivity to this area of concern is being sharpened because most of our young people are conversant with jazz without the prejudice that most of us have had against it.

PAUL W. WOHLGEMUTH

Chairman, Dept. of Music

Tabor College

Hillsboro, Kan.

Your article on Dave Brubeck’s oratorio on Jesus was fascinating. I would like my teen-age children (and myself) to hear this hour-long concert.

RUSH W. DOZIER

Madisonville, Ky.

CONSIDERING CREPE

I want to express special appreciation for the editorial, “Crepe-Hangers in the Church” (March 29).

I wonder if the primary reason students shy away from the parish ministry, ministers leave it and lambast it, is that they do not understand the real nature of the ministry.…

The ministry is less wielding political power or pressure on public officials than a person-to-person encounter.… Instead of healing the demoniac, our Lord might have lobbied for better mental-health care before the Roman government. Instead of saving the soul of Mary Magdalene, he might have pressured the police to raid the brothels.… Since Scripture says that our Lord had nowhere to lay his head, he definitely should have worked to improve the housing situation.

DONALD B. TAYLOR

Bethany Christian Church

Evansville, Ind.

The crepe-hanging editorial made its point. Now, let me make mine.…

At the age of sixteen, I was converted in and became a member of a Baptist church. I was immediately taught to believe that Baptist church structure was patterned after the New Testament example of a Christian church. [Since then] … I noticed certain things about New Testament churches which are not being taught in Baptist churches.…

I am still a Baptist, but I no longer believe everything I hear in Baptist churches; sometimes, I believe things which I do not hear.…

You see, Timothy was also specifically warned about false teaching and was told that correction (at the obvious cost of being called a crepe-hanger) would result in salvation (1 Tim. 4:1–16).

F. E. GARMAN

Hammond, Ind.

WORD FROM DOWN UNDER

Craig Skinner has reported in your journal that a congregation has separated from the Presbyterian Church of Australia (News, March 1). As the minister of this congregation may I correct the description of myself as a “hyper-Calvinist”?…

We are aware, as Dr. Skinner states, that the more “moderate” evangelicals consider these moves “immature.” The commendable maturity of the moderate evangelical is in no way doubted, and has been nowhere better demonstrated than in New Zealand. It was this magnificent maturity which kept evangelical ministers paralysed with fear while the immature elder Robert Wardlaw carried on the fight against Geering, single-handed, and then immaturely separated, while the clergy so maturely stayed in a church twice apostate, plucked up by the roots, foaming out its shame with wretched double-talk in two consecutive assemblies.

A. GRAHAME KERR

Presbyterian Reformed Church

Cronulla, N.S.W., Australia

As founder of the New Zealand Presbyterian Laymen’s Association … and as national chairman of that association until after the visit to this country of the Australian pastor you described in your columns as a “hyper-Calvinist,” I want to assure you that the association was not, in fact, connected … with the sponsoring of this visit. Further, while the independent group in separation here does not seek to criticise by repudiation, it has no relationship … with the ICCC or any other [such] group.

Your correspondent’s statement … infers [unfairly] an extremist attitude and immaturity of outlook. Some of the mud slung in ill-informed inferences such as this can stick and do untold damage to a truly faithful and thoroughly moderate witness such as we believe ours to be.

R. J. WARDLAW

Auckland, New Zealand

STRONGER THAN U.S.

I have considered your comments on the South West African terrorist trial (News, March 1) and feel challenged to express the view that it was very unfortunate that you mentioned: “That the case was a travesty of justice seemed quite clear”.…

These terrorists were inspired and trained by Communists with the sole purpose of inciting hatred and violence and … murder. South Africa seems to be a stronger bastion against Communism than is America.

G. O. RUTTER

Cape Town, South Africa

Second in a series

At the time of the Great Commission as Matthew records it (28:16–20), more than a week—we do not know just how much time—had passed since the first Easter Day. The disciples of Jesus had returned north to Galilee, and there on a mountain, by appointment, Jesus met them again. This was probably the occasion Paul meant when he said that Jesus appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time (1 Cor. 15:6).

When they saw him (evidently from a distance, at first), their reactions ranged from adoration to unbelief. Some “worshiped him” (NEB, “they fell prostrate before him”), but “some doubted.” Jesus then came and spoke to them. He made an announcement (Matt. 28:18), issued a command (19, 20a), and then gave them a promise (20b).

1. The announcement he made: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (v. 19, RSV).

That this affirmation preceded the commission to go forth to the nations is of vital importance. Indeed, without this announcement of his authority, the Great Commission would have lacked justification as well as impetus. Not until one is convinced of the full authority of Jesus Christ is he in a position to hear and to obey Christ’s commission to go.

a. What was this authority he claimed? “All authority in heaven and on earth.” Here Christ used different prepositions, as if to distinguish the two spheres over which his authority extended—the earthly and the heavenly.

Take earth first. Since he has all authority on earth, he has authority over his servants; this is doubtless a part of his meaning. He is like a commanding officer, who can deploy his forces as he chooses and send them wherever he likes. He has authority to say to anyone, “Go!” He has said it to the Church, but as a whole, the Church has dared to disobey its sovereign Lord.

Since his authority takes in all the earth, it extends beyond those whom he sends to all the nations to which they are sent. Although Satan, the “prince of this world,” had usurped this authority, it now has been given to Christ.

This fact asserts unequivocally that the religion of Jesus was not Palestinian or Jewish, Semitic or Asiatic, let alone “Western,” but a world religion—indeed the world religion, intended to embrace all the nations then in existence and those that might yet be. It was to transcend all barriers of language and culture, nationality and color, race and rank.

But Christ declared that he had been given all authority in heaven as well. No doubt this means, in part, that the authority he claimed on earth was recognized in heaven, and that the disciples won on earth would be acknowledged and accepted in heaven.

But it involves more than that. It signifies that Jesus Christ has supreme authority in those “heavenly places” (as Paul called them in his Ephesian letter) in which evil “principalities and powers” still operate and wage war (cf. Eph. 6:12). Having raised Jesus Christ from the dead, God has “made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; and he has put all things under his feet …” (Eph. 1:20–22). The authority of Jesus Christ extends over all creatures, whether human or superhuman; over the Church; over the nations; over the devil and all his works.

b. When was this authority given to Christ? He claimed it on that Galilean mountain as an accomplished fact (aorist edothē, “was given”). Probably it was given to him by the Father by virtue of the Cross and in anticipation of the Ascension. Certainly this statement is confirmed by the rest of the New Testament. It was at the Cross that he “disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it” (Col. 2:15 m., RSV). It was by his blood that he ransomed men for God from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Rev. 5:9). And it was at his Ascension that God “highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9–11).

The fundamental basis of all Christian missionary enterprise is the universal authority of Jesus Christ, “in heaven and on earth.” If the authority of Jesus were circumscribed on earth, if he were but one of many religious teachers, one of many Jewish prophets, one of many divine incarnations, Christians would have no mandate to present him to the nations as the Lord and Saviour of the world. If the authority of Jesus were limited in heaven, if he had not decisively overthrown the principalities and powers, believers might still proclaim him to the nations but they would never be able to “turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18).

Only because all authority on earth belongs to Christ dare the Church go to all nations. And only because all authority in heaven as well is his has it any hope of success. It must have seemed ridiculous to send that tiny nucleus of Palestinian peasants to win the world for Christ. For Christ’s Church today, so hopelessly outnumbered by hundreds of millions who neither know nor acknowledge him, the task is equally gigantic. It is the unique universal authority of Jesus Christ that gives Christians both the right and the confidence to seek to make disciples of all the nations.

2. The command he issued: “Go ye therefore” (v. 19).

This imperative, “Go ye,” immediately followed the indicative statement, “All authority has been given to me”; the announcement of Christ’s universal authority was an essential preliminary to the Great Commission.

Believers “go” because they are themselves under authority. They go to “all the nations” because the nations are under authority also. The commission is no longer to seek “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6); it is to make disciples of “all the Gentiles” (that is what the word “nations” means). So ends the most Jewish, the most particularistic, of the four Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew begins with the coming of Gentile strangers to worship the infant Christ; it concludes with the sending out of believers to win the Gentile world.

As they go, they have precise instructions to fulfill. Christ used three verbs: “make disciples,” “baptize,” and “teach.” Some scholars interpret this as a single command to “go and make disciples”; “baptizing them” and “teaching them” they consider the explanation of how disciples are made. I prefer to take the three verbs separately as descriptions of three distinct parts or stages of the one Great Commission of Christ to “go.”

a. “Make disciples of all nations.” The New English Bible rightly renders this, “Make all nations my disciples.” The addition of the possessive “my” brings out the sense. One cannot “make disciples” in the abstract, for there can be no disciples without a teacher.

How to do this is made plain in the other versions of the Great Commission. It is done by preaching the Gospel. For preaching the Gospel means preaching Christ so that men are converted to him and become his disciples. There is no getting away from this elementary truth: evangelism is preaching Jesus Christ and making disciples of Jesus Christ. The central objective of all Christian evangelism is to secure the allegiance of men and women, not to a church, nor to a system of thought or behavior, but to the person of Jesus Christ. Discipleship comes first; the church membership, the theology, the ethical conduct follow.

In summoning people to discipleship, we will do well not to forget the solemn conditions laid down by Christ the Master. Unless one “hates” his family, takes up his cross, and renounces all that he has (putting Christ, that is, before his relatives, ambitions, and possessions), one cannot be his disciple, he said.

b. “Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The theological implications of this are far-reaching. It means that discipleship to Jesus Christ involves ipso facto relationship to the Father and to the Holy Spirit as well; it means, too, that although the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinct persons, they possess but one Name into which disciples are baptized.

The Greek word translated “in” here might better be translated “into.” Christian baptism is not just in the Name but into the Name of the Trinity; it signifies union with God, the God who has revealed himself by this threefold “Name” as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Further, whatever the precise significance of baptism may be (and convictions on this vary), baptism is essentially a public act. People may become the disciples of Jesus secretly, but they must be baptized publicly. At the very least, baptism is the public confession and public acknowledgment of those who claim to be Christ’s disciples, and it thus admits them into the visible church.

So, in advancing from discipleship to baptism, Jesus moves from the private to the public, from the personal to the corporate, from conversion to church membership.

c. “Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.” The purpose of Christ in the Great Commission is not fully met, however, when people are discipled and baptized; they must also be taught. A lifetime of learning and obeying follows conversion, until disciples are conformed to the image of their Lord.

What they are to be taught is “all that I have commanded you”—not what they may want to hear, nor what the teacher may want to say, but what Christ himself has taught. This is what they are to “observe,” that is, to believe and to obey.

Where is all the teaching of Jesus Christ to be found? The correct answer is not “in his discourses in the Gospels” but “in the whole Bible.” Properly understood, the teaching of Jesus Christ includes the Old Testament (for he sets his seal upon its truth and its authority), the Gospels (in which his own words are recorded), and the rest of the New Testament (which contains the teaching of the apostles through whom he continued to speak, in order to complete his self-revelation).

This, then, is the Lord’s own command: to instruct converts with biblical teaching. And it is important that from the very beginning they understand that the Bible’s teaching is Christ’s teaching. Those who have become disciples of Christ and have been baptized into Christ are to be taught what Christ commanded. They must learn to submit their minds to all, not just to some, of the teaching of Christ, if their conversion is to include their intellect. The disciples of Jesus may not select from his teaching what they like and reject what they dislike. Jesus is their Teacher and Lord, and they are under his authority and his instruction. “You call me Teacher and Lord,” he says to them, “and you are right, for so I am” (John 13:13). This lays upon the evangelist the solemn responsibility of being a good disciple himself, for how can he teach converts all that Christ has commanded if he does not himself submit to this expectation?

This is the Risen Lord’s conception of evangelism—a conception considerably more balanced and comprehensive than the usual view today. To be loyal to his commission, the evangelist must have three major concerns: first, conversion to Christ; second, the church membership of converts; and third, their instruction in all the teaching of Christ.

While it is no doubt legitimate to concentrate on the first concern in sporadic evangelistic missions and crusades, at the same time adequate provision must be made for admitting converts to church membership and for instructing them.

3. The promise he uttered: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Thus the promise in the first chapter of Matthew regarding “Emmanuel, God with us” (Matt. 1:23) is confirmed and further fulfilled in the last.

The Great Commission should never be isolated from its context. Here in Matthew it is preceded by the announcement of Christ’s authority and followed by the promise of Christ’s presence. Without these, no one could obey Christ’s commission. How could anyone go forth to make disciples for Christ, to baptize them, and to teach them if he had no assurance of Christ’s authority behind him and no assurance of Christ’s presence beside him?

This was not the first time Christ had promised his disciples his risen presence. Earlier in this Gospel (18:20) he had said he would be in their midst when only two or three disciples were gathered. Now, as he repeats the promise of his presence, he attaches it rather to their witness than to their worship. It is not only when the Church meets in his Name but when it goes in his Name that he promises to be with it. The emphatic “I” who pledges his presence is the One who has universal authority and who sends forth his people. It remains questionable, then, whether a stay-at-home church—disobedient to the Great Commission, and indifferent to the need of the nations—is in any position to claim or inherit the fullness of Christ’s promised presence.

But to those who go, who go into the world as Christ came into the world, who sacrifice their ease and comfort and independence, who hazard their lives in search of disciples—to them the presence of the living Christ is promised. In sending them out, he yet accompanies them. “Go,” he says, and “Lo! I am with you”—with you in the person of the Holy Spirit to restrain you and direct you, to encourage and empower you (cf. Acts 14:27). “I am with you always”—in days of safety and of peril, days of failure and of success, days of freedom to preach and days of restriction and persecution, days of peace and of conflict and war—“to the close of the age.” The promise of Christ spans the whole gospel age. Although the Christ who is speaking here has only recently died and been raised from death, he even now looks ahead to his return in glory. He who has just inaugurated the new age promises to be with his people from its beginning to its end, from its inauguration to its consummation.

The great sweep of this best-known version of the Great Commission is striking:

1. Christ claimed to have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.

2. Therefore he sends the Church to make disciples of all the nations.

3. He bids those he sends to transmit to these disciples all his teaching.

4. He promises to be with his people all the days, even “to the end of time” (NEB).

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.”

An institutional funeral too often becomes a service for the burial of human secrets. A few years ago I held services for a mentally retarded patient with severe brain damage who had suffered through one day of pain after another until, at the age of twenty-one, his body had screamed “enough!” Only the father joined me in this service; the mother had more important things to do. On the way to the cemetery, I asked the father whether this boy had been his only child. Proudly he showed me pictures of his other two sons, both in college. I asked, “And how do they feel about the loss of their brother?” In a matter-of-fact voice he answered, “Oh, they don’t know they had a mentally retarded brother in an institution. We never told them.” I wish I could say this was an extraordinary attitude, but it is all too common.

A secret, according to the dictionary, is something that is “put apart, separate, hidden from others, revealed to none or few.” This is how many mentally retarded persons are treated throughout their lives. Every age has its special way of handling those who are “different.” In medieval times the retarded were objects of ridicule; many were drafted into the cruel position of court jester. More recently, many of us can remember the “village idiot” or moron and how we helped play cruel hoaxes on him. In this age of enlightenment we no longer play jokes on the mentally retarded; we simply hide them from view. They become a secret. How often we read the tragic account of a mental retardate locked in a room by parents who zealously guarded their secret. Sometimes after a retardate has been institutionalized, the family move, so they can make a new start and pretend the absent member does not exist. A hospital is sometimes instructed to send all letters to the family in plain envelopes.

A child need not have a normal I.Q. to realize that he has been kept a secret by his parents. I well remember Gloria, a teen-age patient whose mother died suddenly. I went to her and told her of the death as gently as I could. Instead of tears, her face formed hard lines; in place of a quiver in her voice there was a sarcasm I hadn’t heard before as she said, “Why should I cry? I didn’t even know my mother!”

Nineteen per cent of the population falls under the minimum normal I.Q. of 90. Roughly speaking, then, one out of every five persons is mentally retarded, either by brain damage (which can be helped but not cured) or by cultural deprivation (which can be solved through education).

In the past, the Church has treated the mentally retarded as strangers. It has often disturbed me to realize that the Church can discover an unknown pagan tribe in the heart of New Guinea and yet seem completely unaware of the mentally retarded in the very shadow of its steeples. Surely the soul of a retarded child is of equal worth with the soul of a jungle pagan. The difference is, I suppose, the element of glamour.

For the past ten years, I have been greeted in one of my ward services, by a young man who keeps telling me he is soon to have a visit from his family’s pastor. So far this pastor hasn’t visited him; if he did, however, he would probably bring more joy than he could bring to a dozen Sunday-morning congregations.

In fairness to the Church, we should say it is a sleeping giant that is slowly awakening to its responsibilities in many areas of life. Mental retardation is more and more coming to its attention.

Three years ago, in an attempt to learn just what the churches were doing in this matter, I surveyed eighteen Protestant denominations, both conservative and liberal. The results of my little survey (sixteen of the eighteen replied) were quite revealing. Several denominations may well take pride in their accomplishments. Others have a long way to go. Still others have yet to make a start. I will not mention any denominations by name; the name matters little. What is being done, or left undone, is the important thing.

One official gave me the idea that his denomination, one of the larger ones, would like to do more but that interest was lacking at the local-church level. He said: “It has fallen to me to invite correspondence from parishes desiring to institute a class for the retarded. I haven’t heard from anywhere near 100 parishes.… If we have [mentally retarded], their presence is the best-kept secret in the church.” The only thing this large denomination was doing was to send a representative to the National Council of Churches’ Committee for the Christian Education of Exceptional Persons, which was working on a curriculum for the mentally retarded.

I would be the last to discourage united effort in curriculum development, but perhaps we should take inventory. Perhaps we are spending too much time and effort developing a specialized curriculum that very few of the mentally retarded can understand, let alone read.

Nearly all the denominations had one or more clergymen working as full-or part-time chaplains in institutions for the mentally retarded. But what support were these chaplains receiving from their denominations? A typical comment was: “State institutions should receive more than local support. We received a request from the————school, where the Protestant chaplain happens to be a member of our denomination, and discovered to our chagrin that none of our activities had budgets that could be stretched to cover this request.”

I was appalled at a brisk statement from a representative of a major denomination that is making remarkable strides in human relations. In regard to mental retardation, he said: “Denominationally, we are doing nothing.” He went on to say that the church was working with the NCC on curriculum development.

But several denominations had shifted into high gear and become leaders in work with the mentally retarded. Two had developed their own curricula and were using them with good results. One of these had also produced a filmstrip on how to start special classes for the mentally retarded. At least two other denominations were developing their own curricula for church-school classes. In one large denomination, 300 churches were working with mentally retarded. At least two denominations had a seminar for ministers and a workshop for teachers. Another was holding special religious-education classes and day-care programs for retarded children.

A very high percentage of the denominations were cooperating in projects with the National Council of Churches and with local councils. Among the cooperative projects were these: the Connecticut Council of Churches had prepared some material for institutionalized retarded teen-agers; the Minnesota Council of Churches had held a number of two-week laboratory schools for teachers of retarded persons; the Greater Philadelphia Council of Churches had a pilot Sunday school for mentally retarded children.

The denominations that were assuming leadership in the field owned and operated several homes for the mentally retarded. Perhaps this was the key to their success. They dared open doors to those who found no welcome elsewhere.

The survival of the Church depends upon its interpretation of the word others! The Church cannot include the retired and exclude the retarded; it cannot include the lawyer and exclude the delinquent; it cannot include the doctor and exclude the mentally ill. The Church must be all-inclusive—not only in name, but in action.

One well-known preacher tells of watching a group of refugee children at a registration desk. His attention was attracted by a little girl with uncombed hair and tattered clothes. When the man at the desk asked her, “What’s your name, little girl?,” through her tears she replied, “I’m nobody’s nothing, I’m nobody’s nothing!”

The mentally retarded want to be remembered by a church that has too long forgotten. They have a longing to belong. And they do not deserve to be considered “nobody’s nothing.”

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.”

Since Harvard’s birth in 1636, American colleges and universities have exerted a spiritual influence on the country. Harvard was patterned after Emmanuel College, Cambridge, which has been described as the most Puritan of the Cambridge colleges. Yale was patterned after Harvard, Princeton was a duplicate of Yale founded by Yale graduates, and Yale and Princeton were models for practically all the early Midwestern colleges. Even the early state-supported institutions had a concern for the perpetuation of what might be termed religious culture.

After the Revolutionary War, deism permeated the campuses. Lyman Beecher, a student at Yale in 1795, described the religious conditions in the college:

The college was in a most ungodly state. The college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were skeptical, and rowdies were plenty. Wine and liquors were kept in many rooms, intemperance, profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were common.

In 1801, only four or five students were members of the college church. At Princeton, noted for its evangelistic fervor a generation before, only two students professed themselves Christians in 1782. The spiritual impact of the American campus was practically nil.

The Revival of 1800 reached to the college campuses. Yale President Timothy Dwight’s sermon, “You Must Take Your Side,” stirred his college community. By 1802, over half of the student body (which then numbered 160) had united with the church.

The same spirit spread to other campuses. The foreign missionary movement received its earliest inspiration at Williams College when five undergraduates decided to dedicate their lives to winning the heathen for Christ. They were later influential in creating the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the mission agency of the Congregational churches.

By the 1830s, the Christian title was running strong in America. There was a concerted effort to win the frontier for Christ, and denominational colleges were destined to play a significant role.

The reasons given for the founding of frontier colleges reflect this spiritual enthusiasm. Again and again one finds such phrases as: “for the education of young men for the ministry”; “to prepare men who should feed the flock of God”; “a missionary establishment for planting the Gospel on a new field.”

But toward the end of the nineteenth century, theological liberalism swept from Europe to America. Darwinism and historical criticism had their way on the campuses of this country, and state institutions began to emphasize what might be called “secular culture.” By the beginning of the twentieth century, these secularized state institutions more and more set the educational pattern for the nation. Christian foundations weakened, and the spiritual impact of the American campuses was threatened.

But though the trend in educational circles was away from Christianity, many voluntary student Christian movements sprang up. These included the YMCA, the YWCA, and, perhaps most significantly, the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions that originated at a student Christian conference under Dwight L. Moody.

Bible institutes and Bible colleges also began in the United States during this period. They have, of course, played a great part in the evangelical Christian movement.

As scientism flourished after World War I, the impact of Christianity on the campuses lessened. The longing for security came to the fore. The great depression rocked man, but his survival led him to commitment to a humanly directed universe. The post-World War II generation was an “uncertain” one, and the spiritual tone of the campuses registered this uncertainty.

The number of college students has risen meteorically—from 200,000 in 1900 to 4,000,000 in 1963; the estimate for 1970 is 10,000,000. In 1900, one in twenty-five high school graduates sought a college degree; today nearly one-third do.

With all this growth, there are many new problems for the Christian community on the modern university campus.

Students are confronted on campus by divergent convictions and codes that seem to have the same validity as their own. Many come to the university attempting to find answers to life but become disillusioned, concluding that they are getting more questions than answers. Many quit; some join hippie colonies; others become “loners” and seek the meaning of life elsewhere.

The university gives the appearance of being a close community of people who share the search for truth, a place of learning where everyone reads books and talks about worthwhile things. This appearance of unity is deceptive, however; the university is really a broken, fragmented community. Its members talk of ideas but their talk lacks a common language. Faculty members really are not in touch with one another. They see the part as the whole. No wonder the student, caught up daily in this fragmentation of truth, is bewildered.

Nathan M. Pusey, president of Harvard, tells what the student is seeking:

What every young person seeks in college from liberal education—whether or not he has articulated this—is self-discovery.… What such a person wants—what we all want—is a meaning that becomes a motivating force in our lives. And when we ask this question, whether we are conscious of it or not, we have begun to think religiously, and have begun to ask of God [“Religion’s Role in Liberal Education,” Religion and Freedom of Thought, 1954].

But students are not achieving this self-discovery they seek. In the last editorial of the Yale Daily News in 1962, a student speaks for himself:

Most of us graduate unsure of life’s calling. Yet Yale, which has determined the kind of life we seek, has imposed substantial barriers in the way of that life’s accomplishment. The university has demonstrated how the daily existence of most Americans can be criticized, even ridiculed, without prescribing the formula for a useful, rewarding life—and without showing how one can reconcile himself to a ridiculous world.

The spiritual force of the campus in recent days has been spent largely in revolt. Irving Kristol says it is, “above all, an existentialist revolt”: “the students are in rebellion, not so much because things are bad for them or for others, but because things are what they are for them and for others” (“What’s Bugging the Students,” The Atlantic, November, 1965).

There is an alarming increase of drug-taking on the campuses today. Jeremy Larner, writing in the Atlantic (Nov., 1965), quotes a student in an Eastern college who claimed he had not known of a college party anywhere in the past two years where at least one-third of the kids had not been “turned on.” The use of drugs indicates the seeking nature of the student, and also points to the failure of the church on the campus.

Larner says that one of the most common, popular, and easily induced drug delusions is the fantasy of rebirth. The great American dream, he writes, is to find an absolute truth. This is illustrated by the politician’s resort to the idea that the United States is to play a divinely ordained role in directing the progress of the world. Larner quotes D. H. Lawrence, who said of Americans: “Some [insist] on the plumbing, and some on saving the world; these being the two great American specialties.” The LSD missionaries attempt to do both at once—“to save the world by tinkering with the internal plumbing.” The idea is that happiness and fulfillment can be found through the “ingestion of a synthesized additive.”

If Larner’s description is true, it points to a tragic lack of spiritual power in the churches today. The Christian message to all men, on campus and off, is the message of both the necessity and the possibility of a new birth. It is the message of happiness and fulfillment found not through the ingestion of a synthesized additive but through the indwelling of a glorious Person. How can the Church have failed so miserably to give this message to the student of today?

The American campus was a positive spiritual force; it is a lesser spiritual force today; but its spiritual potential is staggering. The present student generation, perhaps more than any other, recognizes injustice, and wants to do something about it. It is encouraging that many students today recognize the problems of human relations, realize their personal lack for these needs, and are seeking an adequate source of solution. For this reason the potential of the American campus for a positive spiritual force is greater now than ever before. How can this potential be realized, both in church-related institutions and in those with no church ties?

About one-third of all degree-granting and two-year colleges in the United States are in some way related to a church body. These relationships vary greatly, and the colleges themselves vary greatly, also, both in philosophy and in quality. There is no real meeting of the minds among them as to their basic purposes and functions.

The church-related colleges do not have the spiritual impact they should in our day. Many have tried to pattern themselves after the larger secular universities, and, to quote Myron F. Wicke’s words, “have become pale imitations.… The result has been a bloated curriculum, an inefficiency in use of resources and personnel, and a confused educational goal” (The Church-Related College, 1964). Yet the Church has in its colleges the best place for dialogue between biblical theology and other academic disciplines. Church-related colleges should not have to do the evangelistic work of the churches; they should train committed young people to face the secular world.

In the early colleges there was a real sense of mission, of the Christian’s obligation to make Christ known. Revivals on college campuses were not unusual. The enthusiasm of the early colleges to share Christ with others must be recaptured—not through “revival meetings” as such, but through the recovery of an unashamed devotion to Christ and an aggressive witness for him.

It seems to me, also, that church-related colleges must become unapologetically Christian. They must take a firm stand on the Word of God. Unfortunately, church-related colleges house many of those students who go to college to discover answers to life’s problems but find they get more questions than answers.

Church-related colleges have not had the spiritual impact they could and should have because many of them are lacking in academic quality. They need faculty members of outstanding ability, firm Christian conviction, and warm hearts who can attract exciting students and have an influence on their lives.

But most of our five to six million college students are in non-church-related schools. What kind of training are they getting? In the secular universities we have the greatest opportunity ever to make a genuine spiritual impact on the world. Most students feel that Christianity is irrelevant, a relic of the past, and that the Church is behind the times. One professor suggested that his history students become acquainted with a local Inter-Varsity group because its members were the only persons he knew who indulged in the medieval practice of an all-pervading God-consciousness. The Church must show the relevance of the Gospel to the student’s present and future way of life.

I am convinced that the secular university can best be penetrated by faculty members and students in various academic disciplines who are genuinely Christian, who are faithful in their university tasks, and who have an understanding of the current movements among college students. The person who is lax or slipshod in his own work has very little witness to the person who does his work well.

One area of concern is that Christian professors are often reluctant to teach from their religious perspective, even though it seems imperative that they do so. Their colleagues who believe in scientific humanism, for example, are certainly not bashful about teaching from their perspective. I believe the university student should hear the Christian view as a live option. The failure of the Christian professor to present it seems to say to the student that though Christianity may have some value in practical life, it is really irrelevant to intellectual life.

However, it is not enough for the Christian professor to teach from his Christian perspective; he also must have a personal relationship with his students. The friendship of a Christian professor who excels in his field with a brilliant young student who does not know Christ could have an earth-shaking effect.

The local churches also must be involved. In this day of travel, more and more students commute. There is hardly a church that does not have at least one member enrolled in a college. Pastors must prepare to minister to these students, and to help train them for service to Christ. They must take the university more seriously and try to understand and love it. They must keep up with the theological and social issues of the day and must speak to them.

Something must happen on the campus before anything will happen through the campus. I believe with all my heart that the American campus holds the greatest potential for positive spiritual force in the world, and I also believe that today that force can be released. Here on the campuses of America are tomorrow’s leaders in government, industry, science, medicine, and home life. Here are tomorrow’s university professors. Here also are many thousands of foreign students who, almost without exception, are the cream of the crop in their homeland. Here are the leaders for the nations of the world. What a tremendous impact for Christ across the world if they could be won!

Here on our campuses are the missionaries, the evangelists who can evangelize the world. They must be led to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ in their lives, and then, wherever they go in their varied vocations, they will be evangelists. The campus must be reached with the Gospel, inspired by the challenge, motivated to service, if its great potential is to be realized.

In the past the American campus has seen times of the waxing and waning of spiritual force. Today the positive spiritual force of the campus is not being exerted. But I believe we stand near the beginning of a change, the coming of a new day. A group of Prostestant monks in France has this motto: “Do not be afraid to precede the dawn.” Let the Church claim that phrase for itself.

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.”

In this final third of the twentieth century, man faces chaos in knowledge. Acquisition of information has accelerated at such a rate over the past two decades that man has not yet caught up with and assimilated all he has discovered. Even computers have not enabled him to break the log-jam. Perhaps he will eventually “catch up with himself,” but even if he does, he will still be unable to integrate his thinking unless his whole outlook changes radically.

Modern man’s real trouble is that his thought lacks an over-arching unifying principle. His scientific studies point to a coherent universe governed by laws and principles that apply not only to this planet but also to the moon, Mars, Venus, and the farthest galaxies. Nevertheless he generally views this universe, indeed all reality, as the product of completely random forces. He therefore has no philosophy that gives both an adequate, or even possible, explanation of the universe and a means of unifying knowledge. Neither chance nor mystery provides a principle of integration.

Early in the sixteenth century man was on the way to reaching much the same position, and for the same reasons. Technical knowledge was increasing rapidly, and philosophical skepticism, the result of medieval attempts to synthesize a “sacramentalized” Christianity with pagan Greek thought, tended to destroy the idea of a unified structure of thought. At that point the Reformation exercised a powerful restraint upon the centrifugal tendency. Both Luther and Melancthon had an important influence, but Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, with its stress on the sovereignty of God and the redeeming kingship of Christ, probably did even more to stem the upsurge of irrationalism in European thought.

Today, more than four centuries later, man has come full circle, and Christians again must assert their belief that only in Christ can men find unity of knowledge.

When they do this, they simply echo Christ’s own words. More than once he insisted that he is the Truth, which in the deepest sense means that the true meaning of anything is vitally related to him. When the Apostle Paul declared that all the riches of wisdom and learning are bound up with Christ, he meant that man sees the universe—including himself and his fellow men—truly and in a unified manner only when he sees it in Christ’s light. This was also the view of the New Testament Church, and it was forcefully expressed by Augustine of Hippo, particularly in his City of God.

Most evangelicals today agree that in Christ alone one may find a true understanding of the universe and therefore true unity of knowledge, and that in Christ alone scientific pursuits and accomplishments are possible. Yet often they fail to show how Christ is the key to full human understanding. One reason may be the fear that acknowledging Christ’s lordship will endanger their independence or “freedom.” As one Christian professor put it, “we cannot so exalt God that man becomes a cipher; man has to have some freedom.”

Other Christians, though they accept Christ’s absolute lordship over all spheres of human endeavor, simply have not bothered to think deeply about the unity of truth in Christ. As a result, the concept remains vague for them, and they cannot explain it to anyone else. It is important, then, to consider some of the principal aspects of Christ’s unifying function.

A proper perspective on this subject must stem from Christianity’s basic monotheism and its two corollaries. The first corollary is that there is one God, and he is absolutely sovereign (Isa. 45:5 ff.; Deut. 4:35, 39; Eph. 1:11). This doctrine runs through the whole of biblical teaching. Behind all that is or happens is the coherence and unity of the one personal God. Although man cannot grasp the complexity or completeness of this unity, still the unity exists. Thus for Christianity the unity of all things derives not from a “general principle” of philosophy, mathematics, or some other discipline but from the eternal uniqueness of the sovereign God.

The second corollary is that within the godhead are three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Of these three, the Son, the “Word,” is specifically the revealer of God. There is no other means by which man can know the one God (Matt. 11:27; Col. 1:15) and the unity in that sovereign God of all things, including knowledge. The Christian believes Christ has expressed this unity both in the very nature of reality and by direct statement to man.

Christ has brought all things into existence out of nothing (John 1:3; Col. 1:16, 17). He has created both the “object” and the “subject” of knowledge, both the knower and the known. In his creative wisdom and power he has formed all the structures of the universe along with their complex interrelations, and thus has manifested the divine glory and wisdom spoken of in Psalm 19. This revelation by creation provides the unity man requires in his artistic and scientific pursuits; without it he would have no assurance that any one fact, including himself, was related to any other fact. The sovereign divine plan and purpose behind creation integrates the whole of temporal reality. Whether man studies the distant stars, the sub-atomic structure of matter, or the actions of man or beast, a basic oneness underlies all phenomena because they are all the product of divine wisdom, purpose, and action.

Creation, however, has not ended the divine self-revelation, for the Son is also the sustainer and upholder of all things. As Calvin pointed out, God sustains and governs all things by the secret operation of his Spirit (Institutes I,6,1; cf. also his comments on Ps. 19:1; Isa. 40:22; Acts 17:18). All things—from the smallest particle of energy to the mightiest heavenly galaxy—continue to exist and act according to the laws of their particular structures because God so wills, sustains, and governs them (Ps. 104; 107; Matt. 6:26–34; Col. 1:17). Everything depends on him. There is a basic unity to the universe, for it reveals the one God who not only originally created all things but also keeps them in existence and motion, from moment to moment.

This brings us to an important question, one on which Christians disagree. Some, seeking to protect man’s “freedom,” say that man has the unique ability to break that divine unity in the universe. At least in the intellectual sphere, they say, man must be truly independent of God in order to be truly man. But Scripture does not support this idea, for it constantly asserts God’s sovereignty over all human actions (Isa. 45; Rom. 9 and 10; Eph. 1:11). True, it never attempts to explain the relation between God’s sovereign rule and man’s responsibility; it simply insists that God is sovereign and man is responsible (cf. Acts 2:23). These two teachings the Christian must accept on faith.

The real trouble with man is that he has lost this biblical view of God’s sovereignty and so of the unity of all creation. Originally he recognized God as his lord and thus realized the unity of all knowledge in him, though he did not understand the actual relation of the various parts. The essence of man’s fall was his denial that God was sovereign, and particularly that all knowledge centered in God. Man came to believe he could obtain valid knowledge and give a correct interpretation of the universe without reference to God. Scripture describes what happened: “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” the tempter promised (Gen. 3:5), and “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1:22). When man turned his back upon God, he lost all capacity to obtain any unity of knowledge and came to view reality as the product of disparate forces, whether of demons, of impersonal nature, or of chance. He still seeks a logical and coherent explanation for the chaos. To find the answer, however, he invariably frames some immanent, man-made “law” or “principle” of intellectual unity that ultimately disintegrates before the facts of the universe.

This human search for unity in itself seems to indicate that an ultimate unity does exist. If the universe were merely the product of an absolute chance, it would be hard to understand why man seeks unity of knowledge. To the Christian, even unbelieving man’s desire for ultimate coherence is the work of the Son, who restrains man’s sinful tendency to irrationalism. Man, despite his denials, still has a God-given sense of the unity of all things and is therefore able to gain some insight into created reality, through the concepts of law, of gravity, and of relativity, to name a few.

But when man does acquire such knowledge, he always misuses it for selfish ends. He cannot see any relation between his scientific knowledge and his ethical action, for to see this he needs more than a general impression of the unity of the physical universe; he must have a special divine revelation to give him a true understanding of the unity of all things in Christ.

Therefore God did not leave man with only an indirect knowledge of himself. Not only does he speak indirectly (Acts 17:24ff.) through creation and providence; he also speaks directly through his inspired prophets. In the Scriptures the Son constantly reveals to Israel and to all men that God remains lord despite their disobedience, that they can be delivered from sin only by returning to him in repentance and faith (Ps. 19; Isa. 45:20 ff.), and that, returning, they can find true understanding—that is, true unity of knowledge. This became crystal clear when the Son of God, the Word himself coming to man as Redeemer, enabled man once again to know the sovereign God as his Lord, and therefore as the focal point of all his knowledge of reality. For in Christ “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). Those who know the Son know God, the source of all there is to know.

This means that Christ becomes to the Christian the integrating principle of all knowledge because he created, sustains, and redeems both the knower and the object of his knowledge (Rom. 8:23 ff.). The redeemed man now sees light in Christ’s light. True, he does not claim to know how all things are related to one another and to the divine central point. But he does believe that all knowledge is so bound together that it is part of one great system, founded, not upon some abstract logical or mathematical principle, but upon the person of the living, risen Lord, who by his Spirit leads his people into all truth.

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.”