Much is being said these days about the need for a radical reappraisal of the attitude of the Christian and of the Church toward the world. The thrust of a great deal of this discussion is that the antithesis between Church and world should be resolved by an identification of the sacred and the secular, so that the Christian unreservedly accepts the world as the bearer of all that is significant in the “sacred.”

Those who have set themselves to the task of articulating the “New Worldliness” feel they must give their religio-cultural projections a sociological setting. They show indebtedness to the sociological theory of Émile Durkheim and to such schemes of cultural history as that of Auguste Comte. And they tend to regard the emerging megacity as the best milieu for elaboration of the desacralized culture.

The secularizing process, admittedly not new, is said to culminate in a world of “man come of age,” in which, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “men as they now are simply cannot be religious any more.” It is supposed that as mankind reaches its cultural and spiritual “majority,” God must systematically decrease. Redemption, in the Christian sense, simply becomes irrelevant, since it points to a supposedly absurd otherworldliness.

Man’s alleged attainment of adulthood coincides with the fantastic increase in human population. Thus the urbanization of the world seems a correlate of the coming-of-age of man. The megacity is accepted as the normative sociological and cultural form for the world of tomorrow. Much of the reading public today is aware of the essential theses of Harvey Cox’s The Secular City, in which the major structures of urban life are regarded as “very good” things for which the Christian is to be grateful.

Some of us are persuaded that the city is neither as evil as the incurable romantics contend nor as good as some of its protagonists believe. It is true that the megacity is determining the shape of many of the future structures of human life; yet one may question whether its normative and controlling role should be accepted so easily as a basis for the future thrust of Christianity.

The city is indisputably shaping man, even while man shapes it. What is important is the degree to which the Christian Church accepts the is of urban life and the degree to which it reserves the right, not only to sit in judgment upon it, but also to challenge the city and its mores in the name of the Lord. Theologies of “identification” that minimize the critical role of the Church in relation to urban life and maximize the Church’s conformity to this life are mushrooming today. Authors must, it seems, include such adjectives as “radical” or “worldly” in theological titles if their works are to sell. Evangelicals must come to grips with the trend toward world-acceptance as a category for the determining of theology.

To speak more specifically, theologies of acceptance seek to come to terms with the fragmented sense of morality that marks our society (perhaps more typically, urban society). Their advocates tend to depreciate standards of personal, especially sexual, morality. Approval seems to be placed upon the weakness of the stunted person who is incapable of establishing any meaningful relation to a person of the opposite sex. Hugh Hefner has moved one step further, making a multi-million-dollar business of cultifying masculine immaturity—and he finds little or no problem in engaging in genial dialogue with theologians, some of whom, at least, seem to find little here with which to disagree.

The avid endorsement some spokesmen in the National Council of Churches are giving to the findings of the government-sponsored Cooperative Commission on the Study of Alcoholism suggests the same spirit of world-acceptance. This commission’s report proposes widespread drinking of alcoholic beverages in the home and lowering the age at which liquor may be purchased. Progressive clergymen seem prepared to accept at face value the romantic theory that Europeans who learn to drink alcoholic beverages at the pre-teen level seldom become alcoholics. Those who have met the situation on the Continent with open eyes know that lands like France conduct vigorous campaigns against the drinking of intoxicants. They know, further, that where the tempo of European life is accelerated by industrialization, alcoholism is a serious problem.

Theologians who espouse the New Worldliness seem to want to revise our nation’s drinking standards to conform to what is done and what is wanted. This reflects, of course, a sentimental view of human nature, in which the distinction between the regenerate and the unregenerate is blurred to the vanishing point.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hailed by some as the messiah of a “religionless Christianity,” suggests in his Letters and Papers from Prison that “God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way in which he can be with us and help us.” What this seems to mean is that today’s worldly man demands a new symbol-system, since the categories offered by biblical revelation can no longer be controlling for him.

The newer secular ecumenist seems to have little doubt that belief in God, as this was understood by historic theism, is wholly irrelevant to the world of the megacity and its problems. He revives the time-worn claim of the religious humanists that to free man from concern with theological matters is to release him for more important sociological and humanitarian activities. Thus the worldly society, as typified by the city, is said to witness man’s responsibility to assume mastery over the world in order to praise God and to serve his fellow men.” This will occur, it is said, if we no longer speak of “man’s limitations, his guilt, his sin, and his pride.”

Seemingly overlooked in this line of thought is the fact that evangelical Christianity has something to say that the natural man does not especially wish to hear—a call to repentance and to vital faith in the Redeemer. The urban man needs to hear of the Living God with whom men have to do, not of God as “ground of being”; he needs to learn of Jesus Christ, who is not merely the “Man for others” but the crucified and risen Lord of life.

The inner city may need, not so much new research, new techniques, or new ministerial forms, but a new look at the Gospel. The times do not call for secularizing the Church; they demand a new affirmation of Christian supernaturalism.

Wilbur Shadley of Manchester, Michigan, was the first to die. He had paid $658 round-trip fare this fall to join a chartered planeload of 110 seriously ill North Americans who flew to the Philippines for “miraculous” knifeless surgery. Before his death from cancer at age 57, Shadley said faith healer Antonio Agpaoa had promised he would be cured in half a year.

The 110 arrived in Manila October 8 and drove straight to Baguio City, the summer resort base of “Doctor” Agpaoa, who reportedly claims credit for 30,000 operations with his bare hands. Medical authorities have called him a “fake,” and the Philippine Medical Association and federal tax agents are keeping a close watch.

The American pilgrims ranged in age from 7 to 63 and included a clergyman and his nephew. A spokesman for the group, who identified himself as James Osberg of Chicago, said nobody had a “negative attitude” toward physicians but that since they had done all they could, “where else can we turn but to God?” He said many came at the suggestion of their own doctors. The trip was organized by 47-year-old steelworker Joseph Ruffner, who says Agpaoa cured him of an eleven-year spinal infirmity last year.

After the pilgrimage, the Americans reportedly were disappointed. Wheelchair cases were still in wheelchairs. Of those on crutches, only two had shown signs of improvement.

Who is Agpaoa? The origin of his international fame is not clear. One story in the Philippines has it that the Agpaoa cult abroad started among California’s fringe groups, pushed by a chiropractor, a lady writer, and a millionaire who wanted a book written on Agpaoa. The fad faded when TV iconoclast Joe Pyne, after observing Agpaoa in action, broadcast an exposé demonstration of Agpaoa’s surgery. Pyne claimed Agpaoa shows his stuff on fat people so his fingers can push into the flesh and seem to be penetrating, while pressing a hidden sponge in his hand filled with blood.

When the Agpaoa cult died out on the West Coast, it immediately resurfaced elsewhere, leading to the suspicion in the Philippines that a strong spiritualist underground may be linking the world’s miracle men. Agpaoa has traveled not only to America but also to Japan and Puerto Rico to extend his clientele.

Fame shows in the way Agpaoa lives. He has just built a new two-story house on a large estate. The home has two kitchens, a private bar (though he’s mostly a beer man), and a round bed. A flock of household help attend his wife Lucy and their small son and daughter. He packs a wallet stuffed with fifty-peso bills.

Contact with Americans has improved his English. Those who have met him say he’s still unassuming and quite diffident about his powers. Short, plumpish, and pot-bellied, Agpaoa has the dark, ruddy coloring of a highlander, and his famous hands look so typically peasant—squat and stubby—that one is surprised to find them smooth and soft.

Even Agpaoa’s origins are disputed. He is supposed to be 28, but many believe he is older. Some claim he was born in northern or central Luzon, perhaps among the aboriginal Igorot tribe. Agpaoa himself says he was born in Pangasinan, a province north of Manila. This claim is significant, because in Spanish colonial times Pangasinan was famed for the miracle shrine of Manaoag. At the turn of the century the area was a hotbed of folk mysticism. Most faith healers centered in the Baguio City “School of Prophets” are from Pangasinan. Agpaoa was once part of the school but broke with it when he became famous.

What Agpaoa tells of his early years is important, whether factual or not, because it shows a mythic fund in his mind. He kept vanishing at night, he says, and his peasant parents would find him in the morning up a tree. At age seven he discovered the power in his hands.

He dropped out of school in the fourth grade and supposedly followed voices into the mountains for two years of hermit instruction from what he calls “my protector.” He then began his public life as a healer, wandering from town to town and living on donations.

From 1959, when Agpaoa was practicing in Manila, his story can be checked. He tied in with the famous sculptor Tolentino’s spiritualist group and had some trouble with a congressman patient. That year he was charged with illegal medical practice, pled guilty, and was fined. He then migrated to the Baguio school.

A group that included a Belgian priest recently told of watching from the foot of the bed while Agpaoa performed “open-hand surgery” on a thin, pale woman. After kneading her abdomen with his fingers, the observers said, Agpaoa appeared to clench his hands and wrench them apart to reveal a large wound. Then he removed a rough, reddish lump about the size of a potato and asked, “Can you see?”

His hands seemed to clutch the wound, then, and suddenly flew up. The woman’s skin showed no trace of a wound, they said. Later the healer explained, “Her magnetic currents were unbalanced. I had to balance the pituitary gland.… Also, she had a cyst in her uterus.”

The priest said Agpaoa was not breaking any religious law, since he did not ask the patients to perform any ritual or recite any prayer to which the church might object.

PERSONALIA

Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, 63, of Montreal, returned home from the Synod of Bishops to announce he will leave for Africa this month to be a missionary to lepers. During his regime, Quebec Catholics moved out of a near-medieval era.

United Church of Canada Observer Editor A. C. Forrest has been branded a near-anti-Semite by seminary Professor David Demson for his reports criticizing Israeli actions, particularly treatment of 170,000 war refugees.

The Rev. Paul B. Smith of People’s Church, Toronto, turned his Sunday-night evangelical pulpit over to a series of cultists. He says the series strengthened his parishioners’ faith, though a few complained.

Yale paleontologist Elwyn Simons dates an Egyptian ape skull at 28 million years ago, and says it is a “major connecting link” in primate evolution. And Red China claims to have unearthed remains of a new “Peking Man” half a million years old.

Aaron Gamede, son of a pioneer Bantu evangelist with The Evangelical Alliance Mission, has been named education minister of Swaziland.

The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, Yale Divinity graduate and local aide of Martin Luther King, Jr., was appointed vice-chairman of Washington, D. C.,’s new City Council and chairman of the area transit authority.

Professors Franz Hilderbrandt and Karlfried Froelich quit Drew University’s seminary to protest the January firing of their dean, Charles W. Ranson (see February 3 issue, page 43).

The Rev. Robert Miller, secretary and alumni director for New York’s Union Theological Seminary, was elected mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, ending fifty-six years of Republican control.

The Rev. James C. Suggs is quitting as top publicist of the Disciples of Christ because of its failure to unify overlapping communications offices.

The Rev. Frederick Morris, author of Bishop Pike: Ham, Heretic, or Hero, has withdrawn an invitation to Pike to return as a Lenten preacher in his New York City church because of the bishop’s spiritualist activities. Pike quipped that now, instead of believing too little, he believes too much.

The Rev. John Randolph Taylor, sparkplug of the pro-civil rights, pro-ecumenism lobby of Southern Presbyterian clergy, is moving from the “national” church in Washington, D.C., to Central Church in downtown Atlanta.

Negro Methodist pastor Allen Johnson of Laurel, Mississippi, his wife, and four children escaped injury when their home was bombed early on November 14. Johnson is a civil rights leader.

McPherson Eaton, 42, son of Soviet—sympathizing Cleveland industrialist Cyrus Eaton, was ordained to the Baptist ministry in Nova Scotia.

Mrs. I. Judson Levy of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, was elected president of the North American Baptist Women’s Union. She is the wife of the dean of the chapel at Acadia University.

INTERCHURCH CIRCUIT

Consultation on Church Union executives decided to seek a full-time staffer to handle communications, editing, and correspondence, and are thinking of preparing a new ecumenical hymnal.

The National Council of Churches and U. S. Roman Catholic bulletins on Christian unity are merging into Unity Trends, to be published by the Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor.

The Episcopal and Catholic bishops in Los Alamos, New Mexico, approved a church building to be used jointly by the two communions.

The United Church of Madagascar, with 800,000 members, has been formed from French and British mission unions and a Quaker group.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA

The 140 American Baptists from seventeen seminaries who attended a denominational assembly were reported to be pretty much “new breed,” but a move to pass a resolution against U. S. involvement in Viet Nam got little publicity after only fifty-nine supported it.

The Los Angeles Sports Arena, site of the Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy, drew its biggest crowd in history—more than 27,000—to mark the 450th anniversary of the Reformation. Most were from the city’s 478 Lutheran congregations.

The 14,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, which tries to have something for everyone, is adding a Japanese department to its special ministries to Negro, Spanish, and Chinese members.

The Canadian Churchman says things are changing so radically that next year’s world Anglican bishops’ meeting at Lambeth “may well be the last one.”

Deaths

J. WHITCOMB BROUGHER, SR., 97, one of the founders of the American Baptist Convention; in Portland, Oregon.

HARVEY W. STEIFF, 55, lay moderator of the Evangelical Free Church; in Minneapolis, of a heart attack.

GUNNAR WESTIN, 76, noted Swedish Baptist church historian, and first free churchman appointed to a state university; in Uppsala, of a heart ailment.

S. HARRINGTON LITTELL, 94, missionary to China during the Boxer Rebellion and Episcopal bishop of Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; in New York City.

C. H. BECKER, 69, president emeritus of Wartburg College (American Lutheran); in Waverly, Iowa, of a heart attack.

The Diocese of Coventry, England, noted for its modern cathedral, will mark next year’s golden jubilee with what it hopes will be one of the biggest evangelistic campaigns in modern Anglicanism.

The university arm of the Evangelical Church in Germany split into two organizations—East and West.

MISCELLANY

United States population officially passed 200 million last month, and the United Nations now puts world population at 3,366,000,000. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says the United States is already too crowded and predicts unavoidable widespread starvation in the world by 1975. But a Catholic welfare group in Argentina plans to promote large families, and India has shelved a controversial proposal to sterilize parents with more than three children.

The Orthodox Church in Greece has abolished fees traditionally paid to priests for saying Masses, praying for the dead, kissing the cross, anointing with oil, and conducting weddings, funerals, and christenings. The government approved a 60 per cent increase in pensions for priests. Archbishop Ieronymos is also calling for a study of possible church-state separation.

Because of U. S. bombing in North Viet Nam, the Quaker ship “Phoenix” delivered its medical supplies to South Viet Nam instead of the northern port of Haiphong.

The first year of a national evangelism drive in the western Congo produced more than 2,000 Christian commitments. A record 161 new members were baptized into the Baptist church in the capital city, Kinshasa.

Youth for Christ International next month will begin using Minnesota’s Bethel College as the training center for rally directors. Training will be combined with the regular B.A. curriculum.

Valparaiso Univerity (Missouri Synod Lutheran) got a gift of nearly a million dollars from anonymous donors to build an experimental honors college.

California psychiatrist Max Hayman says the category of “social drinker” is a “myth,” since they drink for the same psychological reasons as alcoholics and expose themselves to the same high disease and death rates. He also attacks the claims that alcohol stimulates appetite and heart functioning or relieves depression.

“Come back Guy Fawkes.¹On November 5, 1605, Fawkes led a band that tried to blow up King James and Parliament to avenge persecution of Roman Catholics. Your country needs you.” This placarded plea in London last month symbolized the displeasure of Britons over the law-making of their elected representatives. The protest was aimed at the “breathalyser” alcohol tests for drivers, but it aptly expressed the feelings of much of Britain about Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s latest move—devaluation of the pound.

The monetary shake-up is bound to affect adversely Christian and charitable work initiated in the country. An Overseas Missionary Fellowship spokesman outlined two major consequences: (1) Because of the higher cost of living, Christians will find it harder to give money at all. (2) What money they can give for work abroad will be worth nearly 15 per cent less when it reaches its destination.

Canon T. L. Livelvore, rector of one of greater London’s largest parishes, was sure that people would find the extra money to enable missionaries to receive the same relative support as before. But as a result, he thought, home churches will suffer. “Cut the local cloth to maintain the work overseas,” he put it.

Oxfam, which has £1.2 million promised in grants and future commitments, intends to meet these in local currency at the promised value. Therefore the relief agency must find an extra £180,000 to cover itself; but it is fairly confident, since income has been rising steadily.

Bishop A. W. Goodwin Hudson, chairman of Billy Graham’s British operation, condemned the government action strongly: “Those of us who represent Christian work in countries that have not devalued their currency are amongst the ‘distressed persons.’ For example, all Anglican chaplains on the continent of Europe, already underpaid, suffered a cut of 14.3 per cent—a cut societies will be hard put to it to make up.”

The Rev. Gilbert Kirby, principal of London Bible College, predicted devaluation “would hit the missionary societies at a time of financial difficulty.” The Regions Beyond Missionary Union alone, he said, would need an extra £4,000, and this is typical of all the societies.

“The situation is very grim,” he said.

BAPTIST COLLEGE SQUEEZE

The squeeze is on dozens of Southern Baptist colleges. Inflationary pressures seriously threaten their financial foundations, and support from rank-and-file churchgoers continues to be meager. The federal government stands ready with a wide assortment of grants and loans, but religious-liberty-conscious Baptists shun them out of respect for church-state separation. What’s more, a legal cloud hangs over government support of religious higher education, since the U. S. Supreme Court has yet to rule on the issue. These matters preoccupied Southern Baptists during their state conventions last month.

One Baptist college was flattened before it got around to admitting students. The Maryland Baptist Convention voted to recommend that the proposed Maryland Baptist College be dissolved “with the greatest expediency.” The decision leaves in limbo a 140-acre campus site at Walkersville, Maryland, on which a $200,000 chapel and several smaller buildings have already been erected.

The college trustees had earlier requested that the convention relinquish the school to establish a private liberal-arts college “eternally committed to the principles and beliefs of evangelical Christianity.” College President C. Eugene Kratz said five benefactors (two Baptists, two Methodists, and a Lutheran) had been enlisted to assume financial obligations under such an arrangement. The convention rejected the proposal.

In the Kentucky convention, the showdown followed an announcement on the eve of the annual session that Kentucky Southern College had merged with the University of Louisville. Last March KSC got the convention executive board to free the school from convention affiliation so it could accept federal funds. In parting company, the six-year-old school was promised $500,000 “severance pay” and five annual payments of $77,010 each. Its newfound freedom and funds failed to bail out the school, so trustees secretly negotiated the merger with Louisville to avoid bankruptcy. The convention reacted to the merger decision by voting to freeze the annual payments pending a study.

Mars Hill College in North Carolina won approval of its parent Baptist convention for federal funds to upgrade its faculty. The move entails a contract with the University of Georgia, where ten Mars Hill professors will go to work on doctoral degrees.

GOD AT THE U.N.

The United Nations argued for weeks about a convention against religious intolerance, then decided last month to shelve the whole business until next year. The debate became a vehicle for a wide-open display of political intolerance, Religious News Service reported.

A committee of the General Assembly did pass a first article for the statement that includes atheism and non-atheism under “religion” and rules out the idea that state churches amount to intolerance.

Most of the controversy swirled around the preamble. On the final vote on a draft, the United States, Britain, Italy, Israel, Canada, France, and most Latin American countries abstained, charging the document had been distorted by a series of Arab-Communist amendments. The assertion that religion serves as “an instrument of foreign interference in the internal affairs of other states and peoples” got unanimous Red and Arab support. But the Communists failed to get rid of a statement that religion is “one of the fundamental elements” in the life of a religious person.

Perhaps the biggest victory for the Soviet Union was the adoption, with wide Afro-Asian support, of the statement that freedom of religion “should not be used as to impede any measures aimed at the elimination of colonialism and racialism.” This controversial linking of phenomena passed 57 to 42, with the U. S. and other nations with large Christian populations opposed.

When it came to specifying “anti-Semitism” as a form of religious prejudice, only the United States supported Israel. The delegate from Jordan said the Israelis had developed into “neo-Nazis.”

Generally speaking, atheism made out pretty well. The Soviets rejected any limits on anti-religious propaganda, because this “right” is a “cornerstone of the Soviet constitution.” During the debates, Albania announced officially through a state magazine that it is the world’s “first atheist state.” Something of a lonely voice, post-Sukarno Indonesia said the U. N. should “recognize the belief in God Almighty as the basis for every state” and “a cornerstone in nation and character building.”

A British spokesman called the adopted preamble “a non-believers’ charter,” and a Canadian delegate, relieved the matter was tabled, said the emerging document would have been something only Communists could sign “in good conscience.”

MAOISTS ON MACAO

On the tiny island of Macao, where Portuguese authorities are puppets of Chinese Communists, the Roman Catholic Church has found itself at serious odds with the situation.

Vatican-appointed clerics had to swallow particularly hard when the local government suspended publication of two Catholic periodicals, one for ten days and the other for twenty. At issue was a statement made by the Catholic Bishop of Macao, Dom Paulo Jose Tavares. The offense charged by the government was “failure to submit the statement first to the censor.”

Ever since Red Guard riots and violence humiliated the Portuguese authorities early this year, Communist pressure has been building up on the six-square-mile enclave situated forty-five miles across the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong. Until recently, the Communists’ main religious target was St. Joseph’s College, where a series of demonstrations forced many students to leave. The current enrollment of 350 students (there were 800 last year), is a measure of Communist success in its drive either to eliminate Catholic schools altogether or to impose Marxist teaching upon them.

Catholic schools on Macao still claim the most students: a total of 50,000. Communist schools have about 16,000 and Protestant schools 7,000.

Tavares, after a long silence, spelled out the church’s stand against leftist demands, and the ax immediately fell upon the two publications that ran the statement.

The turmoil on Macao discouraged tourists last summer, with a consequent loss of dollars needed to prop up the island’s sagging economy. Ho Yin, the leading Communist fat-cat on Macao, in order to get back some tourist trade, is seeking to curb the more extreme elements of his Red Guard mobs and is cooperating with the local visitors’ bureau on gimmicks to lure travelers.

The latest come-on is a troupe of bare-breasted Japanese dancers performing in a waterfront casino. So successful have they been in drawing decadent capitalists from Hong Kong that topless teams are being recruited from France, and a mixed-nationality girlie group—to include “dark-skinned African girls”—was promised for Christmas.

Significantly, no protest has been raised against these goings-on by the Catholics, the traditional guardians of Macao public morality. The silence is a sign of the rapid waning of Roman authority.

MICHAEL BROWNE

HOFFA LOSES—AGAIN

Former union mogul James Hoffa, languishing in the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, penitentiary, has been denied a visit from his personal pastor, Monsignor W. Joyce Russell of St. Catherine Labourne Church, Wheaton, Maryland.

The priest declined comment except to say that Hoffa had wanted to discuss “spiritual matters.” The prison director said rules allowed no outside clergymen and plenty of local priests were available.

DEATH WISH

When a despondent, alcoholic, minority-race person commits suicide, it’s a statistic. But when a successful, white, conservative Protestant psychiatrist plans to take his life, that’s an enigma.

For both, it may well be isolation that leads them to suicide, the ninth highest cause of death among American men.

A panel of psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, and educators in San Francisco, the city with the dubious distinction of having the highest national rate of suicide and of alcoholism, concluded: The principal cause of suicide or the use of “suicide equivalents” is the inability of millions to live in a world of violence, bribery, and moral corruption—a life opposed to their early teachings.

San Francisco psychologist Joel Fort said American society has a destructive element that causes millions to seek “suicide equivalents” which—perhaps subconsciously—bring about the death wish. These include the “drop-out life styles” of alcoholics, deviates, drug addicts, and even cigarette smokers, he said.

Michael Peck of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center hit alienation as a leading cause of suicide, especially among teen-agers. A preferred adolescent technique is to “shoot yourself with your father’s revolver while at home with one or both parents,” he said. Peck concluded: “A gross lack of communication existed between [these] parents and their children.”

But what about that psychiatrist who apparently has everything to live for? Writing anonymously in the Christian Medical Society Journal, he claims support for his suicide plan in the Bible. And pastors who must face distraught parishioners may well ponder his charge:

“Christianity holds out the promise of closeness with God, but it is here it often fails miserably.”

‘PROJECT EQUALITY’ CASE STUDY

Project Equality, a national religious campaign to press equal job opportunity for all races, has not been accepted equally or with equanimity in Minnesota. Some congregations have quietly shelved the project without bringing it to a decision, some have voted against it, and some are still debating whether to join.

The debate involves Protestants and Jews, whose congregations are deciding for themselves, individually, what to do. All Roman Catholic parishes have been committed to the program by their bishops.

A Project Equality coordinator for one major denomination said the most resistance comes from churches already involved in building-fund campaigns. They fear they will lose contributions if they join the program. This strikes at the heart of the idea, since construction is the area where churches can carry the most weight, by dealing only with businesses that hire persons from minority groups.

The project office, opened in April by the Minnesota Council on Religion and Race, says 1,172 out of 2,512 congregations and religious organizations have signed up. (The figures do not include Missouri Synod Lutherans, who joined recently.)

The Minnesota experiment is significant because of the state’s small percentage of Negroes and its freedom from major racial disturbances. The controversy centers on whether churches should use their economic clout through boycotts to back the principles they espouse.

The pastor of a large downtown Minneapolis church that has tabled the issue explains, “I feel a good deal can be said on either side.” In other cases ministers have exerted pressure to get their churches involved.

Opponents—not confined to businessmen or to any one denomination—think churches would be more effective with job training, low-income housing, or direct poverty aid. Others say the project is outdated because business already provides equal opportunity through voluntary action or mandatory federal requirements.

Proponents say the project should be but one part of church involvement. Without positive action, they argue, the $80 billion in church assets exerts a negative influence nationally (see September 29 issue, page 24).

Project Equality plans to intensify its efforts and, by next summer, to review the compliance of businesses and list them in a buyer’s guide. The churches will be expected to follow the guide. When these judgments are made and things get specific, the now-placid debate may well intensify.

JOHN NOVOTNEY

BLACK CHRIST

Negroes are beginning to rally to the idea that Jesus was black and that black power is strongly rooted in the Old Testament, Detroit clergyman and civil-rights leader Albert C. Cleage believes.

“Since we put a Black Madonna picture in the church, we’ve doubled everything,” he said during the U. S. Conference on Church and Society in October. His Central United Church of Christ, the only known black nationalist Christian church in the nation, worships a black Messiah.

Membership in the church has climbed steadily since last July’s violence erupted a few blocks away.

Cleage—who earnestly maintains that Christ was a black man—doesn’t mince words: “There is no escape for you,” he tells his congregation. “When white people try to tell you that good niggers can get through this golden door of integration, don’t believe it. We don’t even want that door, because that’s destroying us.”

Nor is Cleage a voice in the wilderness. In a tense confrontation scene filmed in Chicago and televised on the Public Broadcasting Laboratory’s premiere show November 5, Negro militant Russ Meek wilted a white woman who wanted to discuss the redeeming quality of Christian love. “We don’t want you to love us. We don’t love you,” he shouted.

Cleage’s “black theology” extends to the Bible. The original Jews, he contends, were black, and Abraham “was a deep tan to start with.”

Meanwhile, former heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay told 200 Negro students at the University of Pennsylvania during a Black Muslim recruiting session that the “only hope” for Negroes is to unite and separate from white people. White students were barred from the meeting.

An experiment in “black ecumenism”—reportedly designed to cooperate with white-dominated denominations—took shape last month with the election of North Carolina Bishop Herbert L. Shaw of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church as president of the National Committee of Negro Churchmen. A spokesman said the group, now representing twelve denominations, hopes to extend to almost every American Negro church.

The Rev. Edler Hawkins, former moderator of the United Presbyterian Church, was named treasurer, and the National Council of Churches’ Charles Spivey was part of the constituting session in Dallas.

When the American Bible Society was founded just over 150 years ago, the prospect of Protestant-Catholic cooperation for the printing and distribution of Scripture was rejected—by the Roman Catholic Church. In the early years four successive popes denounced the Bible societies, and numerous problems arose to bar participation.

Now times are changing. As an outgrowth of Vatican II, which encouraged Bible reading in the vernacular by laymen, Catholics now seek participation in Bible society activities and increasingly probe the possibility of efforts toward common Bibles—in Dutch, French, Japanese, and other languages.

Last month cooperation passed another milestone. At the meeting of the ABS Advisory Council in New York City, delegates raised hands to “recommend formulation of plans to include service to Roman Catholics and encouragement of Roman Catholic support of the existing Bible societies.” Their action approved Catholic participation in translation committees and paved the way for a wider pooling of resources for the printing and distribution of the Word.

Last year the united Bible societies distributed nearly 90 million copies of the Scriptures, with the ABS’s share amounting to seventy-one per cent. The strikingly successful common language New Testament Good News for Modern Man (first published in September, 1966) has already sold more than seven million copies. In the same year the ABS registered the largest single shipment of Bibles in its history—520,250 Bibles and 45,500 New Testaments to Ghana for use in government schools.

The constitution of the Bible societies specifies that the Scriptures shall be distributed without notes or comments, and translations of the Old and New Testaments have always been based upon the Greek and Hebrew texts. Apparently both principles are now acceptable to Roman Catholic scholars. Many Catholics no longer insist on officially approved notes explaining points of Catholic doctrine. Nor do they insist upon acceptance of the Latin Vulgate or inclusion of the Apocrypha in all Bibles. The Apocrypha would still be used in most Catholic Bibles.

Catholic interest has been spearheaded in Rome by the unity secretariat of Cardinal Bea and in America by Jesuit Father Walter M. Abbott. Eugene A. Nida, ABS translations executive, reported that an unpublicized, unofficial group of Protestant and Catholic translators met last fall in Switzerland to work out basic principles of Bible translation.

In practice, the fracture of old attitudes goes deeper. Spurred by the difficulty of catching up in Bible translation work (Catholics have placed the Scriptures in about 100 languages in contrast to the united Bible societies’ 800), many local priests and bishops have already joined Protestant efforts. A priest holds the post of vice-president of the Nigerian Bible Society. Cooperation has been established for work on three major languages in India. Roman Catholics have already accepted the Bible Society’s Old Testament text in Thai. And in Africa Roman Catholics are asking for cooperation in scores of languages, about twenty in the Congo alone. In Kenya, Catholics have even received official Vatican approval for use of the ABS text instead of a Roman Catholic text with notes and Apocrypha. Reason: the Protestant text is cheaper.

New Theology For New Zealand

A major split in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand seems imminent following last month’s dismissal of heresy charges against its key educator, Lloyd George Geering.

The case has many similarities to the American theological storm over Bishop James A. Pike. Geering was put on the spot for repudiating the authority of biblical revelation, especially the Resurrection account. He has also denied that Christ had any miraculous or supernatural powers.

Despite Geering’s own public statements on his doctrinal deviations and a thorough hearing on the issues, New Zealand’s Presbyterian General Assembly by a wide majority adopted a resolution saying: “that the assembly judges that no doctrinal error has been established, dismisses the charges, and declares the case closed.”

Geering, 49, is principal of Knox Theological Hall in Dunedin, New Zealand, the nation’s only Presbyterian seminary. The charges against him were brought by R. J. Wardlaw, president of the Presbyterian Laymen’s Association, which had said before the assembly that “rather than a professor of theology, the entire Church, which embraces ourselves, is on trial before our Lord and Master.” Wardlaw, following the verdict in the assembly at Christchurch, resigned from the church and predicted many a like-minded Presbyterian would also “be required by conscience to separate.”

The controversy over Geering, who earned a master’s degree in math before undertaking theology, has been raging for more than a year and a half. “Though I recognize that in some places there have been some church people genuinely distressed, this fact has, I think, been more than balanced by the quite unexpected interest that has been shown from outside the organized Church,” Geering said.

Outside interest has not yet been reflected in church statistics, however. The church lost more communicants than it gained during the past year, despite the fact that the population of New Zealand has been climbing steadily. Presbyterians are the second largest denomination there (after the Anglicans), but though more than 500,000 persons out of a population of nearly 2,750,000 count themselves Presbyterians, only 91,682 are actual communicants. Total offerings for the past year amounted to $606,348. In Geering’s school there are seventy students, and applications are dropping off; recruitment is a major problem.

Because of the unusual opportunities in Africa, the ABS announced a new program for printing and translation there, involving more than $1.6 million over a five-year period. The sum will be in addition to the $7.7 million budget projected for 1968.

No one at the New York meeting wanted to minimize the difficulties of joint work, but the difficulties apparently are not as great as they have seemed. In fact, said Nida, “the real differences are not so much between Roman Catholics and Protestants as between conservatives and progressives within both camps.” With caution, the Bible societies will now move ahead, not for the sake of mere ecumenism, but for the goal of evangelism through Bible reading.

CATHOLICS LAUD ‘DR. GRAHAM’

Roman Catholic Belmont Abbey College, a few miles away from Billy Graham’s birthplace, gave him its Doctor of Humane Letters degree November 21, making sure that the prophet is not without honor in his own country.

In his address the North Carolina evangelist spoke of the “shaking” now going on in religion around the world and particularly of the discord within Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. One thing good has come out of it though, he told his audience of nearly 1,500: “We can talk to one another as Christian brothers.”

He reminded the men of Belmont Abbey and the women of nearby companion Sacred Heart College that in the midst of all the changes, some things do not change. Among these he listed the nature of God, the Word of God, human nature, the moral law, and the way of salvation.

Although there was no invitation during his address at the academic convocation, the evangelist told his audience that he had no doubts about his salvation and said that anyone who trusts in the finished work of Christ on the Cross can have peace and assurance.

Discussing some of the turmoil in the nation today and citing it as one of the “shakings” of this generation, he revealed he had been doing “all I could to help Sargent Shriver” get the appropriations to keep the federal anti-poverty program in business. In a later press conference he defended the effort and said he had called about ten congressmen enlisting their aid.

Belmont Abbey’s citation classed Graham with Picasso, Einstein, Schweitzer, Churchill, and Pope John XXIII as one of the “relatively few men whose individual minds and wills have significantly shaped for good” world events.

Fundamentalists have never forgiven Graham for his first visit to Belmont Abbey four years ago, even though he preached his usual gospel message. But as far back as 1950, Cardinal Cushing’s diocesan paper published an editorial called “Bravo Billy” when the evangelist preached in Boston.

In 1964 Graham and Cushing finally got together, and the cardinal said, “I only wish we had a half-dozen men of his character to go forth and preach Christ crucified as he does.” The search for a “Catholic Billy Graham” has stepped up this year. The evangelist’s emphasis on basic Christian doctrine won praise from Patrick Scanlon, managing editor of Brooklyn’s Tablet, one of the best conservative diocesan papers. A St. Paul, Minnesota, columnist said Catholics have a “lesson to learn” from Graham. And Father John Sheerin of Catholic World told a Columbus, Ohio, audience that Catholics need men with a Graham-like charisma—but to promote ecumenism.

The latest is a Graham-inspired California group that claims to have conducted the “world’s first Protestant-Catholic evangelistic service,” in a Methodist church. If the scheduled soloist and pianist had been there along with the large choir, it would have been pretty close to a Graham meeting. More than 100 clergymen and laymen in Redlands, California, were invited to the service, but only two dozen came.

Roman Catholic Richard Spurney’s message was a salvation sermon no fundamentalist could object to. Afterwards, those who heard it were asked whether they disliked it. None did, though Catholics found the service form uncomfortable. Most attenders were elderly saints who thought it was a good move.

Spurney, who started the movement with Methodist minister Samuel Sallie, is full of praise for Graham and will go all-out for the evangelist if and when he includes Romans in an ecumenical effort. Spurney and Sallie both teach philosophy at Mount San Antonio College.

Spurney thinks Graham has changed a lot since his younger days—he is now less dogmatic, emphasizes less that the Second Coming is right around the corner, is not hostile to Catholics. Spurney has even written the evangelist at his North Carolina home, and has gotten standard, appreciative replies.

Spurney, who admits he once hated Protestantism as a “device of the devil,” thinks converts of Protestant-Catholic evangelism must “be led to read the Bible,” since both sides agree it is “the unerring Word of God” and common versions now exist.

ACCREDIT DISUNION

The Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges is “struggling to be recognized,” says Executive Director Frank Dickey of the National Commission on Accrediting, clearing house for all U.S. accrediting agencies. To gain national stature, he explains, most of the AABC’s forty-seven member schools would have to win regional accreditation—a distant prospect.

As the AABC drew a record 325 persons to its Chicago meetings last month, a possible challenger went without mention. Last June, a group of fundamentalist educators met at Bob Jones University and started a new accrediting agency. The chief organizer, BJU Bible Professor Marshall Neal, said two categories will be included: (1) seminaries, (2) colleges and Bible schools. But he says the new group is not competing with the AABC, since it’s mainly interested in non-accredited liberal-arts colleges. About twenty schools have shown interest, and about ten were expected to join after last month’s organizational meeting at Tennessee Temple Schools.

Executive Director John Mostert of the AABC is reluctant to mention the new organization in the same breath with his own. To him, it appears to be an attempt to compete with already established agencies, and he predicts that accrediting experts will consider the operation “fraudulent.”

Dickey hasn’t heard a thing about the fundamentalist effort, but explained that his group recognizes “only one agency in any field of work,” and that it is friendly with the AABC. Dickey admits that until a couple of years ago it would have been difficult to get Bible colleges accredited in the Midwest or South. But today, he says, quality is the only factor in recognition, based on the “stated objectives of the institution.”

MONTGOMERY VERSUS PIKE

Verbal duels between evangelical theologian John Warwick Montgomery and Bishop James A. Pike highlighted a “Teach-In” on religion last month at Ontario’s once-Baptist McMaster University.

With zealous enthusiasm, Montgomery read a thirty-page, footnoted manuscript ranging over 150 years of theological thought and then turned to Pike, who was seated nearby. He chronicled the Episcopal bishop’s “theological devolution,” leading to “utter arbitrariness in accepting and rejecting biblical materials in accord with his personal religious preferences.” He suggested that Pike’s personal metaphysics, “doubtless his personal drive toward wish-fulfillment as well, … creates the ‘survival’ interpretation he places on psychic data,” and referred to Pike’s new book and participation in séances.

Pike ducked out after the address but returned to demand equal time against what he considered an unfair personal insult, unprecedented in his seventy-five previous campus appearances. Reference to wish-fulfillment was “quite presumptuous,” he said, adding that he has undergone thorough Jungian psychoanalysis. Audience applause greeted his comment that “it helps one to be less judgmental.”

Pike’s own lecture was highly entertaining. But Montgomery called it “a terribly rambling and garrulous presentation” and drew applause by saying the students deserved better. Pike again reacted strongly, but members of the student sponsoring committee said later that except for the exchanges he provoked, Pike was a disappointing bargain for a $2,000 fee plus $500 expenses.

The audience, neutral at the beginning of the weekend, obviously was turned off by Montgomery’s handling of the confrontation and tended to support Pike despite his lack of substantial material.

The opening address on “Nature and Supernature” by Episcopal physicist-priest William G. Pollard included technical references difficult for the 500 listeners to follow. Their attention quickened noticeably in the question period, when Montgomery accused Father Gregory Baum of dualism on the Resurrection.

Baum, the lone Canadian among the four headliners, was a Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism while a McMaster student. He is now a rising Roman theologian and a member of the Vatican Christian unity secretariat. His address on “Good News for a Secular Age” drew the students’ best applause. Students liked not only his gracious personality and perceptive comments but his existential orientation, which was closely related to their feelings about their own condition.

WILBER SUTHERLAND

PRIEST PRODS PRESIDENT

“It is not often that a little person like myself has a chance to tell the President what he thinks. So I thought I should say something, whether it would be popular or constructive or not.”

Reasoning thus, the Rev. Cotesworth Pinckney Lewis plunged into the November 12 sermon at his Williamsburg, Virginia, Episcopal church, which George Washington used to attend. He told the congregation, which included Lyndon Baines Johnson—fresh from a crosscountry tour defending U. S. policy in Viet Nam—that he wonders why the United States is there, why civilian casualties are three times greater than military ones, and whether “some logical, straightforward explanation” isn’t due.

The President shook Lewis’s hand after the service and Lady Bird said the choir was “wonderful.” Fireworks came later. United States Senators Harry Byrd, Jr., and William Spong, and Virginia Governor Mills Godwin, Episcopalians all, expressed embarrassment at the rector’s cheek. The Democratic leader and whip in the U. S. House of Representatives expressed dismay. During the week Lewis got 3,500 letters, 200 telegrams, and a phone call from Australia. Most, like Barry Goldwater, supported his right to dissent. Lewis’s bishop agreed, but the vestry of the church sent the President a wire apologizing for their priest’s “discourtesy.”

Lewis, who changed sermons when he learned the President would attend, used Isaiah 9:2 as his text. He said he “asked for God’s guidance” before preaching. He is a descendant of one of Virginia’s first families and of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and was formerly dean of the Little Rock, Arkansas, cathedral.

The next week, when a reporter asked the President for a delineation of U. S. policy, he quipped, “I thought all the preachers in the country knew that by now.”

The next Sunday, Lewis returned to his usual non-controversial sermon. And Johnson went to St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in downtown Washington. He arrived too late to hear the sermon, though, so Cardinal O’Boyle added personal well-wishing from the pulpit later.

BISHOPS: FREEDOM—WITHIN LIMITS

Growth, openness, trust … new respect for a pluralistic society … a new style to operate the church, apart from directives and fiats.… The press panel of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, which met in Washington, D. C., last month, used these words to describe the “new mood” of the U. S. Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Yet after the 211 bishops and six cardinals issued a sharply worded statement reaffirming clerical celibacy, Bishop Alexander Zaleski of Lansing, Michigan, explained: “It isn’t up to us to stop questioning … but if you are a Catholic, you recognize the Holy Father’s word is authoritative.”

The statement rebuked priests burning to marry who thought they might find official encouragement. Pope Paul VI last summer quashed such hopes, but new discussion apparently was necessary after a survey by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal showed that nearly half of the American diocesan priests wanted to altar their marital status.

Bishop Zaleski’s comment may explain why NCCB action was a curious mixture of refreshing liberation and long-standing tradition.

For the first time, the NCCB approved a collective pastoral letter on the nature of the Church. The 20,000-word document, to be published early next year, was not seen by newsmen. Prepared by a committee headed by Pittsburgh Bishop John J. Wright, the letter comments on current doctrinal trends and emphasizes the “organic living Church” as opposed to the “institution as such.”

NCCB President John F. Dearden, Archbishop of Detroit, guardedly identified the letter as a signal achievement “beyond what many might suspect.” He did not elaborate. The letter is expected to be used widely to “persuade” Catholics, rather than as an edict.

For the first time, the bishops revealed the U. S. Catholic Conference budget. Tentative 1968 figures include $8,140,000 for overseas relief and $1,478,000 for domestic purposes.¹Comparable figures for the National Council of Churches are $11,641,210 for overseas work and $7,690,620 for domestic.

Even the meeting place was significant. The conference—founded when Vatican II authorized the establishment of national episcopal conferences—met last year at Washington, D. C.’s Catholic University. This time the bishops descended upon a mid-city hotel for five days.

Alfrink’S Dutch Treat

Some 3,700 Dutch students whooped it up during an uproarious Mass in front of Holland’s Bernard Cardinal Alfrink in a huge livestock market hall. Festivities included dialogue prayers, rhythmic handclapping, the waving of opened umbrellas, folk dancing, snake chains, repeated cheers, and thunderous applause.

Most communicants received the Host in their hands, now a common Dutch practice. After the Mass, singing, dancing, and stamping students joined nuns and priests in an hour-long free-wheeling celebration as a brass band struck up “Happy Days Are Here Again.” No wonder when it was all over the youth blocked off the city square and, dancing around the cardinal’s limousine, sang, “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

But even though the bishops moved out of cloistered halls into the teeming downtown, the papal father-figure’s shadow still hovered over the gathering. Closely following the pattern of the Synod of Bishops in Rome the previous month, officials kept tight reins on the press. Newsmen saw no original statements and were barred from all sessions. Daily press briefings were held with selected bishops.

The opening day, the bishops indicated they would authorize extensive experimentation with liturgical forms. Auxiliary Bishop Gerald McDevitt of Philadelphia said the prelates will seek permission from Rome to establish liturgical study centers at three or four Catholic universities. One probably would be at Notre Dame. The following day, however, Bishop McDevitt admitted the bishops had “spoken out of turn.” Rome had requested silence, he said. Surmised Bishop Clarence Issenmann of Cleveland: Publicity “might stir up hopes which are not granted” among the laity. The carefully regulated experimentation would counteract the unauthorized liturgy now used in the underground church.

The NCCB hand-delivered a resolution to the House of Representatives supporting the administration’s war on poverty and urging no cuts in the pending $2.06 billion bill. (The House approved $1.6 billion the next day.)

Noting that the “moral responsibility of the nation has increased,” the prelates adopted a peace resolution that concluded: “We wish it understood we are not pleading for peace at any price.…” Although the statement was adopted unanimously, it was obvious that the bishops were divided on the Viet Nam issue.

The conference, which came on the heels of a week-long Washington, D. C., meeting of the National Catholic Education Association, affirmed the value of parochial schools and the dignity of Catholic teachers. But though they pledged support for church-related institutions, the bishops offered no solution for the schools’ spiraling costs and shrinking incomes.

The bishops also refused unanimously to authorize the English translation of the controversial Dutch Catechism—which lacks an imprimatur—for religious instruction, and opposed efforts to loosen abortion laws.

The bishops were not without visible critics. Two days before the conference, forty members of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement staged a demonstration outside the hotel. One picket carried a sign that read: “With shepherds like these, who needs wolves?”

Summarizing the health of the Roman church, Auxiliary Bishop John Dougherty of Newark, New Jersey, said it suffers from “a kind of underlying malaise.” But he added: “The present catharsis could very well contribute to its over-all health.”

RUSSELL CHANDLER

History And The Resurrection

Interpreting the Resurrection, by Neville Clark (Westminster, 1967, 128 pp., $2.75), No Idle Tale, by John Frederick Jansen (John Knox, 1967, 106 pp., $3.50), and Jesus in the Gospels, by Ernest W. Saunders (Prentice-Hall, 1967, 324 pp., $7.50) are reviewed by Daniel P. Fuller, dean of the faculty and associate professor of hermeneutics, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

These authors unite in affirming that although historical reasoning in itself can never compel faith in the risen Jesus, still the results of historical research are very important for faith. Clark, a former professor at Colgate Rochester Divinity School who is now a pastor in England, makes history important for faith by asserting that if the results of historical investigation were “totally incompatible with the Resurrection faith … then indeed the axe would be laid to the root of the tree.” For Jansen, a professor at Austin Seminary, historical reasoning can confirm an already existing faith by providing it with certain pointers (but not proofs!). Saunders, dean at Garrett Theological Seminary, declares: “Historical inquiry … can only correct or corroborate.… Historical inquiry alone cannot give the certainty of faith, but it can prepare the way for it.”

This is the common conclusion, even though each of these writers has mapped out distinctive areas for investigation. Jansen gives a stimulating exposition of Luke 24 and the first few verses of Acts. Clark makes an excellent summary of the whole theme of resurrection in the Old Testament, the intertestamental period, and the New Testament. And Saunders, in line with the renewal of interest in the historical Jesus brought on by the “new hermeneutic,” has written what could be termed a “life of Jesus.” His book deserves particular mention; although it is styled for use in the college classroom, its extensive footnoting refers the seminarian and minister to a vast amount of recent literature on all the important themes concerning Jesus and the Gospels. All in all, it makes for very informative and enjoyable reading.

To read these books is to be impressed by the complete control historical reasoning has over the authors’ arguments and conclusions. Their caveats to the contrary, some of the historical conclusions they achieve do seem capable of leading any reasonable man to faith. Jansen concludes that critical scholarship has been unable to show that the accounts of the empty tomb were simply late legends produced for the apologetic motive of affirming the corporeality of Jesus’ resurrection. Jansen argues that from the first a genuine Christian faith has affirmed the empty tomb, because to do otherwise would be to deny that the Lord of faith entered history. Likewise Clark, viewing on the one hand the complete disillusionment of the disciples after Good Friday and, on the other hand, the complete boldness with which they preached Jesus as risen from Pentecost onward, concludes that “between these two facts lies some reality which seems … to demand explanation.” And concerning the same phenomenon, the shift from despair to boldness, Saunders says: “Every psychologizing reconstruction of the Easter event founders on the fact that the cult of Jesus had its origin, not in the inspiration of souvenirs of a former companionship, but in the present experience of interpersonal encounters.”

Historical reasoning leads Saunders to other conclusions about Jesus that, if valid, would help to produce faith. He concludes that Jesus regarded himself as the Servant of Jehovah (spoken of in Isaiah), whose death must somehow benefit the whole of mankind, and that it is “in [Jesus’] extraordinary consciousness of serving as the meeting place between the Father and his children that the real clue to his self-understanding is given.”

This dedication to the historical method and the conclusions achieved seem to belie the insistence that, ultimately, faith stands without dependence on the results of historical investigation. Perhaps these writers mark only a station along the road from the complete separation of faith and history in Barth and Bultmann to the place where faith stands or falls simply on the verdict of history.

Reading For Perspective

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

• Run While the Sun Is Hot, by W. Harold Fuller (Sudan Interior Mission, $3.95). Fuller’s challenging incidents and stories, gleaned from his travels to SIM fields in Africa, will create greater appreciation for the work of missions.

• Parents on Trial, by David R. Wilkerson with Claire Cox (Hawthorn, $4.95). The founder of Teen Challenge relates stirring experiences from his inner-city youth ministry and calls for responsible parenthood to help curb delinquency.

• Beyond the Ranges, by Kenneth Scott Latourette (Eerdmans, $3.95). With gratitude that “God sent his whisper to me,” this Yale University professor emeritus, America’s foremost church historian, humbly and intimately describes his life as scholar and servant of the Church.

Boon To New Testament Studies

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume IV, edited by Gerhard Kittel (Eerdmans, 1967, 1,126 pp., $22.50), is reviewed by Ralph P. Martin, lecturer in New Testament studies, University of Manchester, England.

“No single work is perhaps more influential in the study of the New Testament today than Kittel’s Theological Dictionary.” This tribute of James Barr in 1961 was, of course, paid to the German original and was not intended to close the issue of Kittel’s great worth. Quite the opposite. For readers of Barr’s The Semantics of Biblical Language will recall the scathing attacks launched on some of the principles that he thought underlay the dictionary, ending with the allegation of “great and sweeping linguistic misconceptions which have become more widespread through its influence.” Interestingly, some of Barr’s most telling criticisms were directed against the contents of the fourth volume, in particular the articles on logos and mythos.

Whether Barr’s critique is well founded or not is not to be settled in this review. The issue is mentioned because now for the first time, thanks to the prodigious labors of Geoffrey W. Bromiley, who is translating Kittel with amazing efficiency, the reader of Barr’s book can test his criticisms by examining the word-studies themselves in English.

As Barr observed, some of the most important New Testament words have as initial letter either l, m, or n; they are therefore treated in this fourth volume. Here are such key terms as lambano (to receive, with its many cognate verbs), lego (“to say,” with its highly significant noun form logos), logizomai (“to reckon,” used in soteriological contexts of the non-imputation of sin because of Christ’s obedience), luo (“to set free”; the treatment includes a full discussion of such noun forms as “ransom,” and “redemption”), martys (“witness”), mimeomai (“to imitate”), monogenes (“only-begotten,” which like the next word listed has important Christological connections), morphe (how shall we render it—“form” or, as many modern scholars, guided by the Kittel article, now prefer, “glory,” thus linking Philippians 2:6 with John 17:5), mythos (myth), and nomos (law, in its many biblical connotations). This is just a selection of the pivotal terms treated in this volume, a sample of the good things in store for the diligent Bible student who is prepared to bury his head in a lexicon and awake in the presence of God, as E. C. Hoskyns once memorably put it.

Every work chosen for inclusion is treated according to its etymology and New Testament theological significance; but the key terms are given extended attention by being set in their Old Testament, classical and Hellenistic Greek, and Rabbinic backgrounds. Several words are treated in essays of monograph proportions, particularly the two words given pride of place: logos and mythos. The rich setting of Logos as title for the pre-existent Christ in John’s Gospel is explored, and a satisfying treatment of the Word as authoritative Scripture is given. The discussion of “myth” comes to the conclusion—with a side-glance at Bultmann—that the term is a pejorative one in the New Testament and should be dropped, because of its misleading associations, from the current debate. This was written in 1942, when the demythologizing proposals had just been ventilated.

To list all the admirable aspects of this work is impossible. A random reading revealed the following helpful insights. The article on laos (“people”) shows the centrality of the People of God in both Testaments. Ekloge (“choice”) contributes much to the vexed question of election. Rengstorf writes on lestes (“bandit”) and prepares for the recent debate on the place of Zealots in the gospel tradition. The articles on “ransom” are not afraid of substitutionary atonement, and Büchsel has provided the data for any worthwhile doctrine of the Atonement. Maranatha is explained as “Our Lord, come,” and the writer places it in a Eucharistic context without denying its eschatological overtones. The contribution on mimeomai (“to mimic”) comes to the novel conclusion that imitation in the biblical sense means not the repetition of a model but the expression of obedience. “The call for an imitation of Christ finds no support in the statements of Paul.” Bornkamm on mysterion (“mystery”) finds no evidence for a relation of the New Testament to the mystery cults of the ancient world. There is a brilliant article by Jeremias on “Moses.” who is placed in his Old Testament and Rabbinic setting and seen to be part of the Messianic hope in the first century. The writers on nomos have a long tale to tell. Of special merit is their handling of the complex relation between Jesus and the Law of Moses.

In all there is little ground for complaint. Jeremias on lithos (“stone”) repeats his (unlikely) interpretation of Ephesians 2:20, on which E. Percy has written convincingly in defense of the traditional view. “Middle wall of hostility” in the same chapter seems to be an allusion to the Temple balustrade in spite of Schneider’s curt denial. The discussion of anamnesis (“remembrance”) cries out for fuller consideration, in the light of the Eucharistic misconceptions of “This do in remembrance of me.” But these are spots on the sun.

Volume IV takes its place on the shelf as an indispensable reference work and, if I may venture a personal opinion, the most important volume of this dictionary to date.

The First Ten Years

A Christianity Today Reader, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein (Meredith Press, 1967, 271 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Melvin E. Lorentzen, visiting lecturer in the Writing Seminars, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, on leave of absence from the English Department, Wheaton (Illinois) College.

The trouble with magazines, especially the better ones, is that they accumulate so! What a boon, then, for a reader who is swamped by stacks of old copies and clippings, when a periodical compresses ten years of publication into a single volume. And if the anthologist has the catholic taste and discerning sense of the significance that Dr. Frank Gaebelein shows in this book, the blessing is compounded.

In these pages, regular readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will find a gratifying assortment of popular features, memorable articles, provocative editorials, book reviews, news reports, ministerial aids, and even a taste of “sugar and spice” in poems and cartoons.

Being what it is, the book brings the magazine more than itself under judgment. Has this periodical, which set forth such unequivocal goals for itself in the inaugural editorial on October 15, 1956, managed to deliver the goods? The answer to that question requires a clear understanding of the avowed purpose: “… to express historical Christianity to the present generation … in terms of reverent scholarship and of practical application.” Prime concerns included “the biblical concept of inspiration,” “true ecumenicity,” “impact of evangelism,” “the contemporary social crisis.” The classified table of contents reveals at once both a comprehensive scope and an intense earnestness in editorial coverage that imply attainment of the objective.

By far the most important aspect of the Reader, however, is the concentrated exposure it gives to evangelical thought today. Are these numerous writers, who represent generally an enlightened conservative tradition, intellectually respectable, culturally relevant, and spiritually vital? Although readers must form their own opinions, a sampling of quotations gives an indication of the quality of the book.

We stand at one of the most important crossroads in modern times for the evangelical witness. Evangelical patriarchs are prone to exaggerate our gains, while evangelical youth are prone to exaggerate our losses. Both mistakes are costly.

Worship is not a sort of general spraying in all directions of reverence and awe, to be soaked up by whatever deity exists. It must, rather, be based on communion between two self-conscious beings who know each other.

There must be a conceptual or a propositional element in revelation or otherwise revelation is no more the Word of God as truth.

The Christian campus does not need a devil on its faculty; a devil’s advocate will do.

The Church often prays for awakening, but when God actually sends it in a form which the organized Church finds uncongenial, it is repudiated.

An up-to-date strategy for the evangelical cause must be based upon the principle of infiltration.… It is time for firm evangelicals to seize their opportunity to minister in and influence modernist groups.

History has its own sifting process. Therefore evangelicals must not isolate themselves from those of evangelical conviction within the Roman Catholic Church.

It is because of who and what God is, it is because of the beauty and truth manifest in his Son, it is because of the perfection of his redeeming work, that evangelicals can never be content with the mediocre in aesthetics.

These statements are not vapid generalizations; they are key ideas in carefully reasoned and often lengthy arguments. In reading this collection, one cannot escape the evident spirit of devotion to orthodoxy combined with an awareness of what is going on in the world and a concern to do things about it.

Since the Reader purports to sample the “best” (in Dr. Gaebelein’s excellent judgment as former co-editor of the magazine) of the material in more than 250 issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, it would be presumptuous to say which is “best” of these selections. Some of the materials, such as certain news reports and editorials, are of relatively dated value, though they may have merit among chronicles of the decade. Fortunately, the bulk of the contents offers insight and discussion of timeless worth, simply because “historical Christianity” is the constant subject.

The Reader shows that CHRISTIANITY TODAY is in touch with our times, and that the “faith once delivered,” perennially relevant, has never needed to be proclaimed more urgently than it does in our day.

The Puritans And The Queen

The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, by Patrick Collinson (University of California Press, 1967, 528 pp., $10), is reviewed by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, visiting professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

So many books have been written on the Elizabethan period that one might be tempted to wonder whether there is anything new to be said. But the historian’s task is never done, and Dr. Collinson’s impressive volume will be heartily welcomed by those who have been awaiting a definitive study of the Puritan movement during the latter part of the sixteenth century. His masterly work of profound and perceptive scholarship is essential reading for those who wish to understand the complex fortunes of the Church under Elizabeth and also the prelude to the development of the more robust Puritanism of the following century.

The Puritans were for the most part moderates who had no quarrel with the doctrines of the Prayer Book and Articles of the Church of England. Their wish was to have freedom to concentrate on a ministry of biblical preaching and teaching at a time when there was a serious dearth of competent ministers of the Word, and they had the support and encouragement of the majority of the diocesan bishops.

Regrettably, however, the Queen seemed incapable of appreciating the importance of preaching; indeed, she would have been well content to authorize nothing further than readings from the two official books of homilies at public worship. Moreover, she could not overcome a disposition to regard the Puritans as a potentially subversive element in her realm because they were not happy with the status quo. Their desire to see the introduction of a modified, non-prelatical form of episcopacy and to be exempted from observing a number of ceremonial details and from wearing the prescribed vestments—surplice, tippet, and cap—was not unreasonable. (Incidentally, Collinson shares in the common misunderstanding of the Ornaments Rubric, that it was intended to enforce the wearing of the Roman mass vestments. Evidence to support this interpretation is lacking, and, not surprisingly, he adduces none—a blind spot in an otherwise admirably reasoned and documented volume.) How different, and less tragic, history would be if conformity were never demanded in matters commonly admitted to be indifferent!

The appointment of John Whitgift as Archbishop of Canterbury signified a determination to take a tough line with the Puritans. Whitgift’s predecessor, the gentle Edmund Grindal, had risked and lost (in effect) his high office through his courageous action in pleading with Elizabeth the cause of the “godly preachers” and their “exercises.” Whitgift became the dedicated and overbearing hunter of nonconforming Puritans. His zealous intolerance was carried forward by his successor, Richard Bancroft, and reached its fiercest expression in the intransigence of William Laud.

The final and disrupting tragedy was the “great ejection” effected by the Act of Uniformity in 1662, when some two thousand of the most worthy clergy felt in conscience bound to depart from the church of their fathers. How different, again, history might have been had the terms of the Millenary Petition—presented by the Puritans to the new sovereign, James I, in 1603 and discussed at the Hampton Court Conference at the beginning of the next year—been approved. Extremists on both sides have much to answer for.

Collinson rightly observes that “there was no suggestion in these formal demands that any radical change was looked for in the organization or government of the Church, or in its public worship,” and he complains that “all too many … have indulged in the unwarranted assumption that full-blooded Presbyterianism was implied and even openly advocated in the presentation of the Puritan case.”

We are greatly indebted to this author for a work of scholarship that gives evidence of exceptional authority and distinction.

The Implications Of Auschwitz

A Theology of Auschwitz, by Ulrich E. Simon (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1967, 160 pp., 25 s.), is reviewed by Jacob Jocz, professor of systematic theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

Professor Emil L. Fackenheim of Toronto University asked the disturbing question with regard to Auschwitz: “Can we confront the Holocaust and yet not despair?” (Judaism, Summer, 1967, p. 272). Unfortunately, Gentiles are less worried by what happened in Europe some twenty years ago. This lack of concern reveals that in our brutalized society where violence is the daily fare we have become hardened to cruelty.

But the grim facts of Auschwitz are so challenging that they cannot be bypassed or assigned to oblivion. Jewish intellectuals, gradually recovering from the stunning effects, are in search of a perspective through which to assess the meaning of Auschwitz and all it stands for (see the symposium in Judaism, Summer, 1967). The Church too is pressed to interpret the holocaust, though so far only a few voices have been heard. Christians cannot assign Auschwitz to oblivion: we are too implicated in the tragedy by acts of commission and omission. We must therefore be grateful to Dr. Simon for having the courage to face Auschwitz, with all its implications for humanity at large, from a Christian perspective.

Like Professor Fackenheim, Dr. Simon refuses to despair, but for quite different reasons. As a Christian believer he is able to place the grim facts of Auschwitz against the background of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in this new light lift the gruesome tragedy of our age to a higher level.

Because God himself is in the camp of slavery through the presence of Jesus Christ, Auschwitz, despite its mad irrationality, can acquire a positive value both for us who have survived and for the victims who perished. The author’s underlying premise is the Christian conviction that all suffering relates to the suffering of the Son of God and therefore is never wasted. Although the crime itself is so staggering as to be utterly incomprehensible, the millions immolated could not have died in vain. To accept the opposite view would be an unbearable burden to the believer. It is only when we are able to see “the misery of Auschwitz as a reflection of an eternal reality” that we can still believe in a loving God. Because God’s answer to the Cross is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is a word of hope beyond the tragedy of Auschwitz.

But Auschwitz is not only a challenge to the believer; it is a challenge to the world at large. Simon insists that “Auschwitz disposes of evil and suffering as a kind of private issue.” It reveals the fact of the cohesion of the human race and common responsibility: the nations are somehow implicated in the crimes perpetrated in German concentration camps. We cannot point to the Germans without at the same time accusing ourselves. Modern man with his moral relativisim has created the atmosphere that made Auschwitz possible. Simon has some hard words to say to theologians who espouse an antinomian attitude in their flirtation with the world. The false humanism that accepts evil as a natural phenomenon is guilty of paving the way to the gas ovens of Auschwitz. The only positive thing we can say about the tragedy is that it discloses our true human condition “as something incomprehensible and insoluble in merely human terms.” Auschwitz therefore brings to an end the pernicious doctrine of the divine superman. It also reveals the facile nature of humanism, which “lacks the categories of judgment by which it can repudiate evil on a transcendental scale.” In the present impasse of moral dissolution and ideological despair, all we can do is cry to God: Libera nos, Domine …! God’s answer is the Kingdom of his Son.

This is a great book both in depth of faith and in breadth of vision. Only a man of Dr. Simon’s background could have written it: He is German by upbringing, Jewish by descent, and Christian by conviction. Characteristically enough, the book is dedicated to the memory of two great humanitarians: Dr. Bell, the late bishop of Chichester, and Victor Gollancz, one of the most remarkable Jews of our century.

I Remember Mama

Christy, by Catherine Marshall, (McGraw-Hill, 1967, 469 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Nancy M. Tischler, associate professor of English and humanities, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

In Christy, Catherine Marshall has written another book clearly destined to be a favorite among Christian readers. Christy tells of the hardy Scotch Presbyterians who settled in the Smoky Mountains, a people fiercely proud of their heritage who clung to their old ballads, their taste for Latin and liquor, their independence, their marriage and burial customs, their pride, their stern religion, and their violent feuds. The picture of these austere and colorful people, set against the magnificent scenery of the great mountains, is vivid and detailed. By showing how their suspicions and their loyalties developed from their cruel lives, the author produces a sensitive analysis of their natures.

Christy is the fictionalized story of Catherine Marshall’s mother, who at nineteen hears a speaker at Montreat tell of the terrible need for a teacher at an interdenominational mission among the hill people. She responds, feeling that it is God’s will for her to leave her comfortable home in Asheville and become a teacher, nurse, and friend to the people of Cutter Gap. She discovers that her journey is a trip backward in time, to a life almost unchanged since the eighteenth century. But she is no romantic, basking in the quaint habits of backwoods people. She sees filfth, disease, deformity, cruelty, hatred, brutality, drunkenness, and death. In her first year she is forced to accept the reality of evil in a universe created for love. In the face of death, she must consider honestly the reality of the afterlife. When she meets success, she must try to separate pride from philanthropy. When she meets failure, she must seek some good to salvage from the evil. This is, in short, the story of a young girl maturing in her Christian faith, as she discovers the immediacy of God, the nature of his response to prayer, her own weaknesses, and her need to love, to feel joy, and to experience all of life.

It is a good book, full of fascinating insights into hill life, permeated with the reality of God’s presence and with sensitivity to beauty, to joy, to love. Mrs. Marshall (LeSourd) is a clever enough story-teller to use wisely the elements of humor, suspense, character development, mystery, and romantic love to keep the reader involved in the story. Her tale is simply told but contains an impressive depth of meaning. She hints at the weakness of a ministry built on self-esteem, outside coercion, or weak social altruism. She quarrels with pat solutions and easy platitudes. She doubts that one can love another human being fully without first loving God. She clearly calls on the reader to inspect his own selfish motives for doing good, his own relationship with God, and his own faith.

For the picture it paints, the adventure it chronicles, the atmosphere it creates, the questions it raises, the beauty it reveals, and the joy in Christian living it communicates, Christy is a book worth reading.

Book Briefs

Christ and Israel: An Interpretation of Romans 9–11, by Johannes Munck (Fortress, 1967, 143 pp., $4.25). First English translation of an early study by the former professor of New Testament at Aarhus, Denmark. Munck interprets Romans 9–11 on the basis of the Pauline conviction, born of his experience as a missionary, that the Gentiles must first be saved, then Israel, not Israel and then the Gentiles, as the Jews believed the Old Testament to teach.

Commentary on the Holy Bible, by Adam Clarke, edited and abridged by Ralph Earle (Baker and Beacon Hill, 1967, 1,356 pp., $11.95). An abridgment of a well-known six-volume, nineteenth-century commentary in one massive volume.

Enthusiasm Makes the Difference, by Norman Vincent Peale (Prentice-Hall, 1967. 244 pp., $4.95). Another offspring of Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. While we can’t get enthusiastic over it, our thinking about this potpourri of aphorisms and anecdotes is by no means negative.

The Negro Almanac, edited by Harry A. Ploski and Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. (Bellwether, 1967, 1,023 pp., $22). A unique, fairly good reference work on U. S. Negro history, biography, and statistics, with inadequate, spotty coverage of religion.

The Greatest Song, by Calvin Seerveld (Trinity Pennyasheet Press, 1967, 104 pp., $5). An unusual, creative work that presents a fresh translation of the Song of Solomon, set to music for oratorio presentation. A commentary on the Song is included. Ministers of music especially should take note of this.

Preaching from the Whole Bible, by Bo Giertz (Augsburg, 1967, 141 pp., $3.95). Short, sound meditations on major biblical themes following texts appropriate for the church year. By a Lutheran bishop of Gothenburg, Sweden.

The Positive Use of the Minister’s Role, by David C. Jacobsen (Westminster, 1967, 111 pp., $3.25). Fuzzy theology but some good suggestions to help pastors minister more effectively to people with various types of problems.

American Participation in the Second Vatican Council, edited by Vincent A. Yzermans (Sheed and Ward, 1967, 684 pp., $16.50). This massive volume sets forth the contributions of the American Catholic hierarchy in the spirited debates of Vatican II. Important for all who seek to understand this historic council.

The Divided Kingdom, by Charles F. Pfeiffer (Baker, 1967, 117 pp., $2.95). In this the fifth volume of Pfeiffer’s series on Old Testament history, he studies Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and Judah (the Southern Kingdom) from the death of Solomon to the Babylonian captivity. Succinct, simple and sound.

Tarbell’s Teacher’s Guide, 1968, edited by Frank S. Mead (Revell, 1967, 383 pp., $3.25). A boon for teachers of the “International Sunday School Lessons.”

Paperbacks

Men Who Dared, by Barbara Jurgensen (Tyndale House, 1967, 133 pp., $1.95). The lives and messages of the minor prophets wryly retold in modern language by the wife of a Lutheran campus pastor. Great for young people.

The Way of Holiness, by Kenneth F. W. Prior (Inter-Varsity, 1967, 128 pp., $1.50). A clear exposition of biblical sanctification, the gradual process by which the Holy Spirit transforms the believer into the “image of Christ.”

The Man Jesus (Regal Books and Tyndale House, 1967, 273 pp., $1.45). The life of Jesus is narrated in modern language with quotations from Living Gospels. Read it and distribute it.

The Magnificat: Luther’s Commentary, translated by A. T. W. Steinhaeuser (Augsburg, 1967, 77 pp., $1). Like a Bach fugue, Luther’s treatise of Mary’s hymn of praise still thrills the soul hundreds of years after its composition.

The Acts of the Apostles, by Charles Caldwell Ryrie; First and Second Peter, by George H. Cramer; First Corinthians, by G. Coleman Luck; First Timothy, by D. Edmond Hiebert; Isaiah: The Salvation of Jehovah, by Alfred Martin; John: The Gospel of Faith, by Everett F. Harrison (Moody, 1967; each volume 127 pp., $.95) Paperback reprints in the evangelical and practical “Everyman’s Bible Commentary.”

The Nag Hammadi Gnostic Text and the Bible, by Andrew K. Helmbold (Baker, 1967, 106 pp., $1.50). An excellent discussion of important knowledge gained from second- and third-century Gnostic texts discovered in 1945. They shed light not only on Gnosticism’s spirit-and-matter dualism but also on problems encountered in New Testament criticism.

The New Legality, by Hebden Taylor (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967, 55 pp., $1). An excellent critique of the new humanistic legality that makes the state, and not God, sovereign.

Stranger in the Land, by Robert Lee (Friendship, 1967, 216 pp., $2.95). A sociologist-theologian scrutinizes the Christian Church in Japan and finds it similar to the American church in its tendency to have five types of churches: inner-city, workingman’s, downtown, uptown, and suburban. Although Christianity has made progress as a force in the Japanese culture, Lee claims it yet remains for the most part a foreign faith.

Holy Church or Holy Writ? by Hermann Sasse (Inter-Varsity Graduates Fellowship, 1967, 24 pp., $.45). Assessing new developments in Roman Catholicism, this Lutheran theologian insists that the Bible and not the Church must be the source of authority in ecumenical undertakings.

Ministry for Tomorrow, Report of the Special Committee on Theological Education, Nathan M. Pusey, chairman, and Charles L. Taylor, director of the study (Seabury, 1967, 147 pp., $2.50). A committee chaired by Harvard’s president recommends a board to oversee the training of Episcopal ministers for a changing church in a changing world.

Moody, by John Pollock (Zondervan, 1967, 336 pp., $1.95). A warm and well-rounded biography of the pacesetter in modern mass evangelism. This new paperback edition should induce more ministers and laymen to read this skilled biographer’s work.

Clarence E. Macartney is rightfully regarded as one of the great preachers of the twentieth century. During forty-eight years of ministry following his graduation from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1905, he held three pastorates in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Paterson, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. His sermons—biblical, person-oriented, and preached without notes—were marked by meaty illustrations from literature and history, and especially stories of the Civil War, on which he was an expert. His outstanding ability as a homiletician is evident in his many published sermons.

Dr. Macartney’s keen interest in young ministers and their preaching led him to write “Suggestions to Students in the Field of Homiletics.” These suggestions, recently brought to light by Professor Harry E. Farra of Geneva College, are worthy of consideration by all for whom preaching is both a profession and a passion.

1. Methods of Work

Early in my ministry I adopted the plan of keeping forenoons for study and reading. This I have adhered to throughout my ministry.

General reading in history, biography, and literature has been a great help in building a background for preaching. It has been my custom to make notes in the margins of my books and then note the reference in a reference file. Through the years I have built up in this way a wealth of references for suggestive reading or illustration of almost any subject. In my first years in the ministry I went carefully through most of the English poets and their biographies.

The minister ought to read regularly one of the best newspapers. The New York Times is the one I read.

There are several steps in composing a sermon. First, turning the theme over in one’s mind. Then longhand notes, sometimes several drafts. Then on Friday or Saturday the sermon is dictated. Because my sermons are put in pamphlet form and distributed, they are always fully written. Dictating the sermon impresses it upon the mind of the preacher.

2. Sources of Subject

a. Regular reading of the Bible is the chief source of subjects and themes. The great need of the pulpit today is to get back to the Bible, and not only back to the Bible, but back to the evangelical and redemptive message of the Bible.

b. Sermons from life are suggested by pastoral experience and personal interviews. For examples of this kind of preaching, see my books, Sermons From Life (Cokesbury Press, 1933) and More Sermons from Life (Cokesbury, 1939).

c. Every minister ought to go carefully through the great doctrines of Christianity, from the doctrine of God to that of the hereafter. I have found that a series of sermons on the great doctrines will arouse as much general interest as sermons on any other subject. For examples of such sermons, see my book, Things Most Surely Believed (Cokesbury, 1931).

d. Biography is the most popular subject of reading today. The preacher does well to take advantage of that fact. The Bible is incomparable for studies in biography. Examples of what I have tried to do in this field are in my book, Sermons on Old Testament Heroes (Cokesbury, 1935).

e. I have used my travels, especially in the Mediterranean world, for a historical sermon series, “Sermons for the Times Found on Ancient Highways.” In the last four or five years I have been traveling in the footsteps of St. Paul and visiting sites of the Seven Churches of Asia.

f. The Wednesday-evening service can be used by the minister not only to teach the truth and build it up but also to break ground in Bible study. During a winter I have gone through the life of Peter. The events in his life are unsurpassed for homiletic purposes—for example, his walking on the sea, his denial of Christ, his penitence, his recall, his deliverance from Herod. I once preached a sermon made up of an imaginery conversation between Peter and Paul.

g. One of the most popular series I have preached was entitled Christianity and Common Sense: A Dialogue of Faith (John C. Winston, 1927). This was made up of a series of conversations between a Christian believer and a doubter who meet on the sacred spots of Christian history.

h. The advantage of preaching a series of sermons is: First, the preacher always has an objective and does not waste time shifting from one subject to another; and second, most people like to follow a series and know what comes next. I suppose it is the same thing that makes people like to follow a serial story.

With Macartney’s advice on homileticsCHRISTIANITY TODAYconcludes this Minister’s Workshop series. To offer further practical help to ministers and lay leaders, we begin next month a new Workshop series, on counseling.

The great menace to Christian preaching today is the tendency to dwell only on the things of this world. It looks as if in many places the Gospel would be pushed out of the pulpit by the so-called application of Christianity to social problems. The true preacher must preach not only to the times but to the eternities. When he preaches to the eternities he is preaching to the times.

In my judgment, the reason many preachers fail to make an impression, secure results, and fulfill their own high ambitions is their lack of ability to concentrate. Deep concentration means that one must be willing to be much alone.

We always experience a vicarious thrill when we read of a difficult and successful rescue operation—of men in an open boat at sea, of miners trapped deep underground, of a mountain climber dangling by a rope, or a child in a well. How much greater the thrill and thanksgiving on the part of the rescued ones themselves, those who had felt the nearness of death.

The greatest rescue operation of the ages began on the first Christmas so long ago. Its real significance has been obscured by man-made interpretations and by the secularization and commercialization of a world ignorant of or indifferent to the event.

The first advent must be seen in terms of God’s love and man’s predicament. This was not a gesture of sentiment. It was not a demonstration of humanitarian concern. It was an actual rescue, God’s intervention in human history to save a sinning and lost humanity.

This intervention must be seen in its totality. True, at Christmas we celebrate the human birthday of the Son of God; but this was only one phase of the amazing act of divine love. As Jesus grew to manhood, he demonstrated his complete humanity, and at the same time his miraculous and supernatural powers testified of his deity. Later came his atoning death on the cross and his resurrection, followed by his ascension and his promise to return. All these aspects should be recognized in our celebration of Christmas.

God’s loving provision for the redemption of man is like a many-faceted gem. We find that Christmas means much more to us as we consider it in all its amazing detail.

First, we might say that there is involved an act of interposition. God, in the person of his Son, interposed himself between the penitent sinner and judgment. I have a friend who, while traveling the Burma Road in World War II, was next to a buddy who inadvertently dropped a hand grenade from his pack. As it hit the ground, the pin was knocked out. All around, men leaped away from the danger. But the one from whose pack it had fallen threw himself over the grenade, giving his life to save the lives of his buddies. Christ’s act of coming between our souls and certain judgment is expressed in a well-known hymn: “He to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood.”

The divine rescue operation also involves reclamation. Most of us have seen the results of projects in which land is brought back into profitable use, or in which derelicts whose usefulness seemed over are reclaimed and restored. Jesus did just that for people, reclaiming them, restoring them to the place for which they were created, before sin had its devastating effect.

At the very heart of our Lord’s invasion of time is his work of redemption. Sold out to sin and dominated by Satan, man in trying to reform himself at best falls far short of the mark. Only God’s Son himself could truly redeem him. The price of our redemption was Christ’s own shed blood. No, the “blood atonement” is not the only facet of the atonement; but without it there is no redemption.

Then there is the strangely glorious facet of imputation. The Apostle Paul states this truth repeatedly in the fourth chapter of Romans. Even as Abraham’s faith in God was imputed to him as righteousness, so through our faith in God’s Son his righteousness is imputed to us. He no longer sees us as sinners; we are wearing the cloak of Christ’s righteousness. The Chinese character for “righteousness” is the character that means “lamb” set above the character for the personal pronoun “me”—a marvelous illustration of the fact that when God looks upon a person who believes in his Son he sees, not sin, but the righteousness of Christ!

There is also the facet of sacrifice. The Old Testament sacrifices were symbolic of the coming Saviour. The Prophet Isaiah uses this concept of our Lord’s sacrifice: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not-his mouth” (Isa. 53:7). John the Baptist exclaimed when he saw Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”! (John 1:29). Some twenty-seven times in the Book of the Revelation the figure of the Christ triumphant is that of the Lamb.

Permeating every aspect of our Lord’s intervention in time and human history is love—God’s love for the world, so great that it caused him to give his Son; Christ’s love, which made him a willing sacrifice.

The Christmas story leads to the idea of resuscitation. Those who work with victims of drowning, electric shock, or other accidents that cause breathing to cease and the heart to stop beating sometimes come to the point when they know that further efforts are futile, that the victim is dead. Christ came into the world to resuscitate those who are spiritually dead—dead and separated from God by sin. Paul speaks of “the God in whom [Abraham] believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17). “Yield yourselves to God,” he writes, “as men who have been brought from death to life …” (6:13b); and again, “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ …” (Eph. 2:4, 5). Life from death! Little wonder that the angels said, “Glory to God in the highest!”

Finally, this work of grace on man’s behalf includes illumination, in which the eyes of the spiritually blind are opened and they turn from darkness to light; freedom, release from the power of Satan; forgiveness for our sins, the things that have offended and grieved God; and cancellation, so that in God’s sight it is as though we had never sinned.

Christmas brought to us a revelation of God as he really is. We read of Christ: “He is the image of the invisible God.… For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.… In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 1:15, 19; 2:9).

Christmas is the start of the most thrilling rescue story of all time. And for all who accept God’s gracious offer of rescue, “there is therefore now no condemnation.… For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do …” (Rom. 8:1, 3).

This is the reason for a truly “Merry Christmas”!

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentle Readers:

The bells of Christmas are ringing as Salvation Army lassies again appear on downtown sidewalks. But for many of them the traditional red noses and frostbitten toes are a thing of Christmas past. Instead of shivering in the cold as they jingle bells beside their kettles, many lassies now sit in heated cubicles and serve as Chrismas disc jockeys, playing the Top Ten carols for weary shoppers.

This affluent holiday scene reminds me that I should inform you of my annual gift list for religious friends. Once again my liberality is boundless.

William Sloane Coffin, Jr.—An “Uncle Sam Wants You” poster and a personal letter of greeting from Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey.

Father James Kavanaugh—The new book, The Celibate Condition and Sex, to burn in the fireplace of his honeymoon bungalow.

King/Bishop Homer Tomlinson—Another world to conquer.

Ethel Waters—A contract to give singing lessons to that self-conscious sparrow in her favorite song.

Carl McIntire—A ham radio set for dispensing the baloney he includes in attacks on non-conciliar (i.e., non-ACCC) Christians.

Joe Pyne—A pinch of salt for the biggest bag of religious nuts ever fed to the public.

Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay)—A commission as Muslim chaplain to our Black Muslim fighting men wherever they are stationed in the inner city.

Roger Garaudy—The chair of Christian-Marxist theology at a union seminary.

Father James Groppi—A tube of Tanfastic to help make him a more acceptable protest leader of black-power mongers.

Arthur Ford—A spirited trip to the nether regions with Jayne Mansfield rather than “Fletcher” as his guide.

Harvey Cox—A case of napalm for use in securing “violence-justified” goals.

From a heart overflowing with Christmas cheer, may I, in this year of hip, express the wish that your yule will be cool and that your only hangup will be your Christmas stocking.

See you Christmas belles under the mistletoe,

EUTYCHUS III

THE BIBLE ISSUE

Thanks for the article by John Warwick Montgomery on inerrancy (“The Relevance of Scripture for Current Theology,” Nov. 10). I know many evangelicals want to discard this word because of all the controversy which surrounds it and because of many misunderstandings. But I am convinced it would be a mistake. The Roman Catholic Church with all of its new developments still uses the term regularly in order to bring out the absolute truthfulness and reliability of Scripture. The same concern was expressed by our church, the Missouri Synod, just recently when on two occasions in its last convention it reaffirmed its belief in Scripture’s inerrancy. This reaffirmation was made unanimously and resoundingly. We as a church really meant it.

ROBERT PREUS

Professor of Systematic Theology

Concordia Seminary

St. Louis, Mo.

I read the article with abhorrence.…

I do not entertain the anti-super-naturalistic view that either the demonology or eschatology (both being “faith and morals” questions) of Jesus was mistaken. Nor do I insist that his own view of cosmology was mistaken; but I do insist that both the Bible and Jesus make use of a cosmology that is an accommodation to the pre-scientific minds of the people of that time.

All of the fundamentalist attempts (though I once made them myself) to show the Bible as inerrant in matters of science are both unfounded scripturally and contradicted de facto. I personally am sick of the deceit of fundamentalist leaders with regard to this issue. For the shepherds (I exempt the sheep) it is not just a question of scholarship, but of sin.

PAUL H. SEELY

Philadelphia, Pa.

The articles on the fundamentalists defense of the Bible (Nov. 10) posed under the pretense of weighty scholarship. The actual problems of the authenticity and relevance of the Bible are not considered or discussed at all.…

When will any of the evangelical writers … begin to discuss the real problems in the use and acceptance and relevancy of the Bible to the contemporary problems of life? Those problems are ancient enough to have destroyed previous civilizations, although they may seem to be the latest of new problems never faced before. And the revealed truth of God has long been given to mankind, even though it has frequently needed much obscurantism removed from it. The Bible is a good standard by which to discover that truth, but the seeker for truth must submit himself to the Spirit of God if he expects to find the truth and to understand the truth and to apply the truth to his life.

THOMAS D. HERSEY

The Methodist Churches

Fairview, Wesley Chapel, and Moravia, Iowa

The articles of David P. Scaer (“Christ or the Bible?”) and Don Neiswender (“Scripture and Culture in the Early Church”) (Nov. 10) most significantly complemented one another. The emphasis of Neiswender that “the Church … was unwilling to receive truth from outside” the Scriptures even though it recognized the fact that S“Christian dogma … must be proclaimed in a way that is relevant to the existing philosophical climate if it is to get a hearing” needs greater emphasis in the Church today. While many critics of the Bible are busy dividing the Christ of faith from the Jesus of history or the Lord of the Scriptures (as Scaer points out), the unbelievers of this world are busy using Christian “modes of expression and thought” to win many of the world’s theological students for non-Christian beliefs. The praise of the Scriptures by those who proclaim its fallibility is a most deceptive reverse of early Christian theology and methodology. It is true that modern criticism meets unbelief on the latter’s own ground. However, it most frequently goes without its God-given battle array, namely, the Christ of Scripture, the material principle, and the Scriptures of Christ, the formal principle. The oversubjectivity of modern theological thought has only succeeded in convincing many sons of the Church to replace the armor of God with man’s true costume of total depravity. Even though Neiswender’s call “for many an Origen to reply” to today’s world may justifiably make one feel uneasy (since Origen’s theology can hardly be considered Christian in the sense of true Protestantism), the plea for Christians to meet modern man on his own ground, yet with the message of “special revelation,” cannot be stated too often.

PHILLIP B. GIESSLER

Ambler, Pa.

OF DRINK AND DOPE

Thank you for your editorials on alcohol and marijuana (Nov. 10). The title of John Wesley’s pamphlet on antinomianism [is appropriate]: “A Blow at the Root, or Christ Stabb’d in the House of His Friends.”

RICHARD NOBLE

First Methodist Church

Marinette, Wis.

I’m sure those who work in narcotics education would like to see “A Misleading Statement on Marijuana” printed or given equal time in the national news media, as much damage has been done by Mr. Goddard.

JAMES F. LANDRUM

Scottsbluff County Youth Advisory Committee,

Juvenile Court

Scottsbluff, Neb.

I object to your criticism of Alcohol Problems: A Report to the Nation (“A Wet ‘Solution’ to the Alcohol Problem”).

The problem of alcoholism in America is caused by the fact that people drink to get drunk, disregarding any taste of wine, etc.…

My son, born and raised in the United States, drinking wine at home with meals, was shocked in college to find other boys drinking anything just to get drunk. In the service as “Officer of the Day” (Navy), he wrote that he was “getting sick of playing nursemaid to the drunks” (fellow cadets). And he told me that they all had never before had access to alcohol at home.

“Legal restrictions” are of no help. No law ever prevented its transgression. Neither the Ten nor any civil or international one!

HORST RINNE

Hartville, Mo.

I wish to compliment you on the strong stand you took in favor of true temperance.…

It is most heartening to discover present-day spiritual leaders who still call drunkenness “sin,” instead of “sickness,” and believe that “the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only sure cure for alcoholism and every other sin.”

Would to God that more of today’s spiritual leaders pointed slaves of debasing habits to Christ for deliverance, instead of to man-conceived schemes of rehabilitation that are proving so woefully inadequate to heal the sin-sick soul.

NATHANIEL KRUM

Takoma Park, Md.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The editorial, “The Specter of World Hunger” (Nov. 10), well brings out—in a low pressure way—the shortcomings of the liberals, of the conservatives, and of the rest of us.

HENRY FRANKLIN HILL

San Antonio, Tex.

SWIFT’S KICK

Congratulations to Professor Miller for a thought-provoking article on Swift’s vision of man (“The Comic-Tragic Vision of Jonathan Swift,” Nov. 10). The great satirist of Gulliver’s Travels and Tale of a Tub has long called for analysis from a Christian perspective.

For the sake of completeness, however, it would have been wise to discuss the aspect of Swift’s writing which is most difficult to reconcile with his role as a sincere Christian clergyman. I refer to his obvious desire to shock and disgust the reader with crude allusions to certain biological functions. I find it difficult to reconcile what has been referred to by some as “Swift’s excremental vision” with the noble comic-tragic vision described in Professor Miller’s article.

CALVIN L. MYRBO

Professor of English

Wisconsin State University

Platteville, Wis.

UNRIVALED PREACHING

Re: “A Plea for Expository Preaching” (The Minister’s Workshop, Nov. 10).… It has pleased God through the thing preached to sanctify those that love him, to conform them to the image of his Son.… What a lamentation, then, if, along with possible clerical fluency, the sermon is simply a spread of trashy and starvation stuff, instead of a diet of real nutriment! As to the luckless flocks, Milton struck it when he wrote in “Lycidas,” “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”

In general, preaching is not composed of certain pious commonplaces wrapped in a pleasing or catchy form. It is not merely telling an audience what they already know. If it were that, there is perhaps no office or function that would require less strain of intellect, less labor of preparation. But it is sometimes nobler. The sermon is meant to be arrestive, illuminative. It is meant to instruct men, to lead them into ever-enlarging views of truth that evoke richer life, truths that enclose the Gospel in its magnitude and majesty. It is meant to transform by the renewing of the mind.…

Here is where the expository sermon takes its imperial place, a sermon that exacts penetrative study, a sermon that burrows into the Holy Oracles for hidden treasure. For genuine worth it has no rival.

JOHN F. PALM

Port Charlotte, Fla.

For the past forty years I have been puzzled by one characteristic of the usual sermon.… We enter the church building for our religious service. The sanctuary is adorned … to put us in the proper frame of mind for worship. Religious symbols meet our eyes. Music is being played to evoke an emotional response. We sing a hymn. There is prayer, Scripture reading, and often special choir music.

Then, when we have carefully been brought to a peak and are ready to respond to a discourse concerning the Deity—the preacher arises and makes a crack about baseball. Or it might be about football, motoring or television, but it is guaranteed to put us back to where we were on Saturday night.…

The opening sentence follows the pattern of the commercial that comes in the middle of a baseball or football game. But let us be logical. The situation is different. During the break for the commercial, the audience tunes out mentally and heads for the refrigerator. Their minds must be caught and held.… The preacher’s congregation is not in front of the refrigerator with their mouths full of fried chicken. They are seated in pews where they can’t get away without violating the mores of two thousand years. Instead of being let down for the commercial, they have been built up for the sermon.

So please, preacher, spare us the letdown. If you’ve just gotta make that crack about baseball, save it for when the congregation is getting restless. Or, better still, forget it, and when the congregation is getting restless, announce the closing hymn.

JEAN M. JACKSON

Croswell, Mich.

BORDER’S LEGAL LINES

I object to the Israel tourism advertisement (Nov. 10). That an ad of this sort should appear in the New York Times is quite understandable, given their Zionist sympathies. But I am vexed and disappointed that it should appear in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

There should be hesitation to run such an ad if for no other reason than that the information given is factually incorrect and misleading. Jericho, Bethlehem, and old Jerusalem are not in Israel. They are in the part of Jordan now under military occupation by the Israelis. And that is quite a different thing. The status of these cities has not been legally settled by the parties concerned, to say the least.

RICHARD P. AULIE

New Haven, Conn.

CLEVER, BUT …

Russell Chandler’s handling of “A Medium-Sized Faith” (Oct. 27) shows him to exhibit a very “medium-sized faith” himself. I must say the use of the word “medium” is very clever, but very self-righteous.…

Your magazine thus joins the lukewarm “liberals” in watering down the very best message of the New Testament, which is the fact that the soul lives—you reject some of the best evidence being found and proven. The message of eternal life in the New Testament has more relevance now than ever.…

As for faith healing, your handling of this great truth of the New Testament is equally unchristian. Just because a few bungle the idea or attempt to misuse it does not undercut the great fact and truth of its working. Some of the grandest discoveries made in our time show the power of spiritual healing, not only of souls but also of bodies. When you find persons healed through prayer in your own congregation, you know it works!

If the “conservatives” and “liberals” both throw out all reference to healing and the faith in prayer—for both are psychic—then what do you have left in your New Testament? Just the margins of the pages?

ROBERT VINSON GILDNER

Immanuel Methodist Church

Des Moines, Iowa

The flippant style of the report leaves one with the impression that this is a little disconcerting but rather harmless matter. Anyone who would “ridicule” spiritism and spiritualism and would leave an utterance like “The demonic is always very close” unchallenged, has no idea of the background of spiritism. The tremendous world-wide increase in occultism and superstition is based, in part, on its religious aspect, offering man an ersatz for genuine Christian discipleship. At the same time it is a fog-screen and a maneuver of diversion used by the enemy of God. In any case he is the winner, succeeding in his masterful disappearing act, or, if discovered, displaying himself as a harmless, impotent, and ridiculous Popanz—until credulous man discovers the crushing grip from which there is no escape. Isn’t it the Christian’s duty to tear the mask off his face, instead of laughing merrily at his masquerade?

YOLANDA N. ENTZ

Koblenz, Germany

AVERTING AMBIGUITY

Your very brief news report (“Protestant Panorama,” Oct. 27) about Professor Harold Dekker and the Christian Reformed Church … could be interpreted to suggest: (1) that Dekker denies that only some people are saved and, further, that he denies that those who are saved are the objects of divine election and special effectual grace; (2) that the Christian Reformed Church and its synod, by being “mild,” are about to scuttle the biblical and classical Reformed teaching on those two matters. In both cases, the opposite is true.

No doubt, the synod’s reprimand was “mild” precisely because, adhering to the classical Reformed position in these matters, it was impressed to a considerable extent with Dekker’s judgment that “the doctrine of limited atonement as commonly understood and observed in the Christian Reformed Church impairs the principle of the universal love of God.” (I have underlined a significant part of his position omitted in your quotation.) That is to say, the synod apparently recognized that more needs to be said than what has been “commonly understood” in the church on these matters, and believed also that discussions of the crucial and difficult matters raised by Dekker ought to go on—provided such discussions are not left “abstract and ambiguous.”

N. H. BEVERSLUIS

Ada, Mich.

GUESS AGAIN!

I have greatly enjoyed your column, Eutychus III, and have smiled and winced as he exposed us in a little bit of the truth. If it is not too early to venture a guess, I would suggest that his name is Thomas Howard.

CARL E. ABRAHAMSEN, JR.

Millington Baptist Church

Millington, N. J.

“Eutychus I” was a delight.

“Eutychus II” was so-so.

“Eutychus III” is crude, vulgar, and cruel.

VINCENT REES BROWNE

Rector

Grace Church, Episcopal

Ridgway, Pa.

The fallen spirits bone up on contemporary theological trends.

The Devil was perched on a hot crag reading a book, with smoke curling gently about his face as if he were in Marlborough Country. Nearby sat Spitfire, one of his underlings.

“You have found a good—pardon me, sir!—a bad book?” asked Spitfire.

Satan lowered the volume and looked thoughtfully off into the smoky distance. “Little brother,” he said, “there’s something going on in the earth today. God, they are saying, is meaningless to the modern mind. You can’t talk sense about him in these times of advanced psychology and physics. Those who hold with Dietrich Bonhoeffer have decided that the traditional God has expired; he has gone the way of Nebo and Bel. The Bultmannians try to define God existentially, through much demythologizing of the Word. Harvey Cox of Harvard insists man must forget the very Name of God and try to break through to him in modern secularization.”

Satan lifted the book he had been reading. “We also have ‘process theology,’ as expressed here in A Christian Natural Theology, by the late Alfred North Whitehead. Here we have a different slant on Deity. God has not grown up yet! He’s still attending school. He hasn’t matured.” Satan chuckled. “Why worry over whether mankind will ever attain maturity, when the Creator has the same problem?”

“Ha!” said Spitfire. “Har!”

Satan shrugged. “The Creator of Christian truth who transcends all and by divine fiat ordered life out of nothingness; who ruled the cosmos outside creation; who bears such attributes as Omnipotent, Omniscient, Almighty, and Eternal—he has had his funeral. He rests among the once lively gods who frolicked on Mount Olympus.”

“That,” said Spitfire, grinning a twisted grin, “should make it clear to people why you haven’t been done in! It should clear up the mystery of sin. They won’t have to worry now over why an all-powerful God couldn’t get rid of evil—it simply was just too much for him!”

Satan nodded. “To be sure, he is valiantly trying to overcome evil. Perhaps we can presume that countless eons hence he will have achieved his purpose—if that man, who is helping him toward victory, doesn’t come over on my side in too big a way!”

“So God is growing!” cried Spitfire.

“God is ‘becoming’ something, little brother. We may take it for granted he will eventually grow up. Which, of course, provokes a question in my mind. When he reaches maturity, will he become unchanging, like the God of classical Christian theology? But that, I suppose, the process theologians will hold as a future problem; meanwhile God is progressing nicely, getting more and more capable of handling the universal situation he has got himself into. What will happen when God comes to perfection? That’s a far-off problem. One mustn’t be too inquisitive, you know, else he will find himself right back where his fathers were who couldn’t explain why an all-powerful God couldn’t get rid of evil!”

“Ha!” shouted Spitfire. “Har!”

“They have the satisfaction of feeling, when they flunk at some point, that the Almighty—I beg your pardon!—the Creator is also going by trial and error. This should be quite comforting, especially to those whose pride has made it so difficult for them to submit to a sovereign Being. God is less awesome as a big struggling Brother than as an omnipotent Father. They won’t feel so much like humbling themselves in the Presence, nor feel so wicked when they fail to measure up to the old standards taught by the old-timers. The fact is, man can be pretty irreverent and not feel very guilt-stricken; and he can rid himself of old judgment fears. Since God is having his own trouble with things, surely he wouldn’t want to judge men who have missed the mark. A God wouldn’t want to invent a judgment that he might have to face!”

“Hmmm,” said Spitfire. “Growing up with God. Nobody’s perfect—they’ve been saying that since Adam. How meaningful that is in this process theology! Not even the Lord can measure up!”

“Consider, little brother, what this does for me! The old idea that I was foredoomed to destruction is out. I still have a chance! Spit, what if I should grow faster than God? As of now, I have perhaps more people on my side than he has; if I can help them on to sinful perfection, perhaps my old dream of taking over creation might be realized!”

“Heil!” cried Spit. “Hooray!”

Satan smiled a crooked smile and spat on a hot rock, and the spittle sizzled weirdly. “Maybe the believers better hope nothing happens to stunt God’s development—or they that hold with him will have had it! Wonder how they’d like seeing me take over, sending the bad ones to heaven and the good ones to hell?”

Spit almost collapsed with glee. The Devil said, “But man is funny. The Buddhists smile en route to Nirvana and the existentialists smile en route to nihilism. The process theologians will carry their heads high, even if the Maker finds the going rough. Should he slip somewhere and lose the war—well, it will have been a magnificent try!”

“However things turn out,” Satan continued, “even if neither God nor the believers ever reach perfection, it will have been nice suffering for his cause. They will get to bear the cross and deny themselves, to walk the narrow way, to resist evil, and perhaps to die for their Maker. That should mean something. Shouldn’t it?”

“Shouldn’t it?” screamed Spit, quaking with laughter.

Satan sat with his crooked smile on his face, with smoke curling gently about it as if he were in Marlborough Country. Then he went back to his book, still grinning his crooked grin.—THE REV. LON WOODRUM, Hastings, Michigan.