After five days of whooping at the thirteenth annual German Protestant “Church Day,” I made a solemn vow over my Wienerschnilzel: never would I attend another ecumenical clambake (to change the gastronomic figure). Naturally this was a precipitous vow, and as the effect of the Kirchentag wears off in a few months, I shall doubtless find myself panting at a registration booth for the next extravaganza.

For the time being, however, the Kirchentag has given me more than I can take. During the multitudinous sessions in Hannover from June 21 to 25 (for news coverage, see the July 21 issue), I kept recalling Alice’s experience with the Cheshire cat who gave her advice and then faded away except for a smile. “I have often seen a cat without a grin,” mused Alice, “but a grin without a cat! That’s surely the strangest thing I’ve ever seen!” The Kirchentag was precisely such a phenomenon, and it well represented the German theological scene: a reassuring smile of piety and churchiness without any substantive biblical or theological foundations.

My negative response was not based on externals, though these certainly helped. Participants were engulfed by an appalling circus-like atmosphere in which venders hawked badges, buttons, souvenirs, books by the speakers, and food. Everywhere there were banners, flags, and uniforms (members of youth organizations directed the human traffic—some 30,000 people in attendance each day), uncomfortably suggesting the mass rallies of the National Socialist era and the classic line in the film version of Is Paris Burning?: “Les allemands aiment beaucoup les uniformes.” And there was the lack of foresight that put Friday evening’s boring “Social World Peace” session (with Niemöller and Visser’t Hooft) into much too large an auditorium, while numerous eager people were turned away from simultaneous musical sessions (Negro spirituals, gospel songs) and Helmut Thielicke’s preaching.

All this I could tolerate. What I could not take was the ideological atmosphere—the heart-rending contrast between spiritually hungry laymen (many brought up in centers of dynamic evangelical piety) and Olympian theologians (whose mini-beliefs leave the German church without any substantial biblical or confessional underpinnings).

It was precisely this ideological tone that led to the (unsuccessful) boycotting of this year’s Kirchentag by the two major conservative “protest” movements in Germany: the broadly evangelical “No Other Gospel” group and the more distinctively Lutheran Kirchliche Sammlung. For pastors and laymen in these loosely organized movements, participation in the union activities of the Kirchentag, which included ecumenical communion services, was tacit admission that the liberal and radical theologians offer a legitimate option in German church life.

Perhaps the protest movements were at fault for not actively defending historic Christianity at the Kirchentag. But they were right in predicting the character of the Church Day. True, there were some stellar speakers, such as distinguished physicist C. F. von Weizsacker (author of History of Nature) and U. N. leader Ralph Bunche. But the strictly theological presentations were at best mediating and at worst out-and-out heretical. It was quite significant that the most orthodox systematician on the program, Wolfhart Pannenberg of Mainz (see Time, July 14), who, in spite of his critical approach to the Bible, holds to a fully historical resurrection of Christ and has struck decisive blows at Bultmannian and post-Bultmannian existentializing of the Gospel, was scheduled late in the afternoon and drew weak and sporadic clapping from a relatively small audience.

In sharp contrast, the prime-time morning lecture by Ernest Käsemann pulled in a gigantic crowd, including many young people (over half the fulltime Kirchentag registrants were 17-to 35-year-olds) whose frenetic clapping demonstrated that, even if they didn’t understand Kasemann, they regarded him as a hero-radical. Käsemann, who in Kirchentag discussions categorically refused to commit himself on the question whether the empty tomb was in fact empty, is one of Bultmann’s most prominent disciples. Although he wishes to go beyond Bultmann’s minimal “thatness” of the historical Jesus, he accepts Bultmann’s enmeshing of biblical event with the interpreter’s situation (the “hermeneutical circle”), castigates the fundamental tenet of confessional orthodoxy that the Gospel is nothing less than objective truth, and encourages Christians to “test the spirits even within Scripture itself” (Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, I2 [1960], 232 f.; see my just published Crisis in Lutheran Theology, Vol. I).

Morning Bible studies, led for example by post-Bultmannian popularizer Heinz Zahrnt (Es begann mit Jesus von Nazareth), were largely a farce—and drew minuscule attendance in comparison with the “Politics” sessions (significantly, the only sessions with simultaneous translation into French and English). The study I attended was incredible. We began by singing “We Shall Overcome.” The text—Ephesians 1, with its stress on remission of sins through Christ’s blood (v. 7), appropriation of this by faith in him (v. 15), and his glorious resurrection and ascension (v. 20)—became nothing but a pretext for asking the question: In our time, what are the liberating events for which we give thanks, and the liberating tasks which we face? Not a single participant mentioned the proclamation of the Gospel or its effects (e.g., on the Aucas); we were treated to such examples as black power, potential reconciliation with Red China (leading a wild-eyed Canadian to rant about the “murdering” of North Vietnamese by the United States), and (I kid you not) the increased use of fertilizer by uncivilized peoples who previously resisted its introduction!

The final Kirchentag assembly, attended by 75,000, featured WCC General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake. In a simplistic message translated sentence by sentence into German, Blake well summed up the entire week. He obliquely slapped the confessional movements (“it is a scandal that in Germany one confession is so uncharitable to another”)—drawing applause for it—and reiterated ad nauseam his theme: “You cannot hear the Word of God without your brother.” True, said he, the Word and belief in it are at the heart of the Church; but you cannot even understand the Word unless you are in ecumenical relationship with other Christians. The proof-text given for this ghastly inversion of biblical teaching (the community has priority over the Word) was “where two or three are gathered, I am in the midst”!

The sign of the Kirchentag was the Crusader’s cross, representing the spread of the Gospel to the four corners of the earth. Speakers frequently appealed to Luther’s name and to the grand tradition of the Reformation. The hymnody of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, used in juxtaposition with tasteful and striking contemporary musical settings, provided a stirring reminder of the theological resources of the historic Christian faith. What a pity that all this lay on the surface. What a tragedy to see the smile without the cat.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Several new Christian schools open their doors for the first time this month. Plans are moving ahead for still others. A summary of developments follows:

Richmond College

The following interpretative report was written forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. William Fitch, minister of Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto:

Evangelicals in Toronto are on the horns of a dilemma, and the cause is Richmond College, an evangelical liberal-arts college scheduled to open this month.

It is fair to say that the problem was not of Toronto’s choosing but was thrust upon it. A disciplined, single-minded team descended from the west with crusading zeal, affirming that “Canada’s foremost institutional need today is for the founding of a strictly Conservative-Evangelical liberal arts college.” In tones reminiscent of an aroused John Knox, the visitors warned that “our Canadian churches are going to suffer irreparable damage from the beleaguering and sinister forces of atheism and that our beloved land could well fall prey to a godless totalitarianism which at this moment is planning the overthrow of our freedoms” if we did not immediately take steps to establish a college in which all teaching would be in accordance with the tenets of orthodox Christianity.

Our friends from the prairies proved to be not only disciplined but also close-knit—and that in a special way. The central triumvirate consists of two brothers in the flesh and a brother-in-law. That their plans are well advanced became apparent when we learned that one was to be a chancellor, another president, and the third dean of faculty. What is more, since one of them is an honorable member of the Billy Graham evangelistic team, many assume that the mighty organization of our twentieth century’s greatest prophet will in some way be behind the dream.

At the time of their advent in Ontario, the team had no charter from the Ontario Provincial Government. Previously, however, the Manitoba government had granted them a charter authorizing establishment of an evangelical group for higher education with power to grant degrees; and through extra-provincial license registered under Ontario law, the group secured the right to continue in Ontario under the Manitoba charter. The stage was accordingly set for the establishing of a college where all subjects, whether biology or economics, philosophy or English literature, would be taught “from a strictly conservative-evangelical point of view.” At this statement, one of the less reverent of our news columnists splurted the headline: “Evangelical Physics!—God Forbid!”

It has been made very clear that the proposed college will not become a school for proselytization: “Students must be able to come to us without fear that they will be de-Calvinized or de-Arminianized, de-Episcopalianized or de-Pentecostalized, or say re-baptized.” Clear also is the edict that “the campus atmosphere and conduct will be that of the separated Christian life, in keeping with those standards subscribed to by most Canadian evangelicals.” This has subsequently been spelled out as meaning no smoking, no drinking, no dancing, and so on. Censorship of conduct will, it seems, be complete, investigative, uncompromising.

Inevitably, there has been much discussion, some of it restrained, some acrimonious. The Graduates Fellowship of the IVCF analyzed the foundations of the college in a thirty-two-page journal and gave it something like a C-minus rating. Peoples Church, on the other hand, responded with a special edition of the church newspaper, hailing the new center of learning as an answer to many prayers and an answer also to the evangelical brain-drain to the United States. All of this was very confusing, to say the least, to the humble evangelical worshiper occupying his usual pew in the sanctuary on Sunday.

An initial fund-raising campaign had a target of $100,000 Canadian. The first 1,000 persons to contribute $100 were to become charter members of the school. After several months of special pleading, about one-third of the goal had been attained.

Despite the lack of general evangelical support, Richmond College plans to open with night classes September 18 in this Canadian centennial year on property leased from the government. Some thirty full-time students, all freshmen, are expected, along with thirty or more part-timers. Five courses are to be taught initially by a part-time faculty said to include three Ph.D’s.

Whether Richmond represents the dauntlessness of faith or the blindness of folly remains to be seen.

Eisenhower College

Initially scheduled to admit its first students this month, Eisenhower College in Seneca Falls, New York, has postponed its opening until July of 1968. The school, tenuously related to the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., is being built on a 265-acre site in the resort-famous Finger Lakes region of central New York state. Construction delays forced a delay in the widely publicized opening, a spokesman said.

The school, named after former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, got its initial financial impetus through a pledge of $100,000 from the First Presbyterian Church of Seneca Falls. Since then the college has been “approved” by the United Presbyterian Synod of New York, and $500,000 is being earmarked for construction of a chapel. A prospectus states, however, that “no special set of convictions may be imposed” upon the college. It is designed to be “Christian in attitude.” The only clergyman among the charter trustees is Dr. W. Eugene Houston, minister of a Presbyterian church in Harlem.

Some $6,660,000 reportedly has been invested thus far in buildings alone. Three hundred students will be accepted at first, with an ultimate enrollment of 1,500 envisioned. The school is the outgrowth of an idea of a Seneca Falls physician, Dr. Scott W. Skinner, a Presbyterian layman.

Luther Rice College

Opening day for Luther Rice College, which was organized by a group of Baptist pastors and laymen, will be September 5. One hundred full-time day students will attend classes at Franconia Baptist Church, Alexandria, Virginia, just outside Washington, D. C. A thirty-two-acre site adjacent to the church grounds is being purchased for the campus, with initial construction scheduled to begin in a year.

Dr. John S. Nichols, dean, says the plan is to make Luther Rice a fully accredited four-year liberal-arts college as soon as possible. Nichols, who holds a doctorate in education from the University of Virginia, says the idea of the college grew out of the idea of an “international Baptist university” spearheaded by a U. S. foreign-service officer several years ago.

So far, Luther Rice College has had no recognition from any Baptist convention. Southern and American Baptist publications also have been giving it the silent treatment. Nichols, undismayed, predicts they will eventually come around.

The school has a seventeen-member board of directors, five of whom are Southern Baptist pastors. Its philosophy is distinctly Christian, and a course in Bible will be required of all freshmen. Daily chapel attendance will be mandatory. Courses will be offered in art, biology, chemistry, French, Spanish, history, math, music, and physical education. There are no denominational or racial bars to enrollment; a number of non-Baptist and non-white students have already been accepted.

Personalia

The leading spokesman for the National Association for Pastoral Renewal, an organization of Roman Catholic priests that opposes the celibacy requirement, was married in June, the St. Louis Review reports. He is the Rev. Robert T. Francoeur, who teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University. The Review said Francoeur plans to attend this month’s NAPR conference on celibacy at Notre Dame.

The Rev. Joseph W. Drew, one of the four priests in charge of Catholic student work at Southern Methodist University who were ordered to leave the Dallas diocese, received the top community award from the Southwest Region of B’nai B’rith. Drew was selected for the honor before the bishop ousted him.

The Rev. J. Paschall Davis, chairman of Nashville’s anti-poverty agency, changed his previous testimony for a U. S. Senate investigation and admitted some agency money had gone to a “liberation school” that allegedly stirred up racial hatred among Negroes. Later, the Episcopal diocese ordered the school to vacate church property.

Lois Fiedler, 30, a Dallas divorcee, has been approved as the first woman ministerial candidate among Texas Presbyterians. She says the divorce is a “left-handed asset” that will give her greater understanding in counseling. She will get some church aid for seminary study.

President Johnson nominated Brigadier General Francis L. Sampson, 55, a Roman Catholic with a distinguished combat record, to be chief of Army chaplains, replacing Methodist Major General Charles E. Brown, Jr.

Colonel Roy M. Terry, a Methodist and a law-school graduate, has been named Protestant chaplain at the Air Force Academy.

The Rev. Timothy Reeves of First Methodist Church, Evergreen Park, Illinois, was appointed imperial chaplain of the world’s 851,000 Shriners.

Former Army Chaplain and Job Corps religious coordinator Herman J. Kregel has been named the first religious coordinator of California’s state division of alcoholism. He is a clergyman of the Reformed Church in America.

The Rev. William H. Vastine, Methodist chief executive of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Council of Churches, is on leave to be rural coordinator for the Economic Opportunity Commission in three Pennsylvania counties.

The Rev. Joseph C. Grandlienard, formerly of the New York State Council of Churches, will direct the Church Plan Commission sponsored by ten denominations and state and local councils in the New York City area.

The Rev. David W. Preus, a Lutheran, was elected president of the Minneapolis School Board.

The Rev. Ben Haden. speaker on the network radio “Bible Study Hour,” moves from a Presbyterian pulpit in Key Biscayne, Florida, to the First Church of Chattanooga, which leads Southern Presbyterian churches in missions giving.

David R. Enlow, publications director of the Christian Business Men’s Committee for fifteen years, will become associate editor of the Alliance Witness, Christian and Missionary Alliance magazine.

The Rev. Peter Pascoe, United Presbyterian pastor from Kenmore, New York, was named pastor at Taylor University, Upland, Indiana.

The Rev. Elisa Mushendwa, 33, headmaster of a Lutheran secondary school, was named Tanzania’s secretary for political education.

The Rev. Walter Kloetzli, former urban-church planner for the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A., was named a social-services director with the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Oscar Cullmann, the renowned professor of New Testament and early church history, will be rector of the University of Basel, Switzerland, for 1968.

Miscellany

Voters in Bavaria, West Germany, may vote next spring on a plan to replace state-supported religious schools with non-sectarian schools that include segregated religion classes, the Washington Post reports. At present, nine out of ten children attend “confessional schools,” a hangover from the concordat between Hitler and the Vatican.

The U. S. Agency for International Development gave $450,000 for construction of a hospital wing at Ludhiana Christian Medical College in northern India, which is sponsored by twenty-three mission boards.

Ninety-nine physicians, dentists, and medical assistants spent two weeks at their own expense in Nuevo Leon state, Mexico, providing free health care for 5,279 patients. The project was organized by the Christian Medical Society.

The Pentecostalist “Teen Challenge” centers founded by David Wilkerson (The Cross and the Switchblade) are now operating in twelve cities. Latest to open are in Denver, Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Bayamon, Puerto Rico.

Seventy-nine Southern Baptist churches in the Dayton, Ohio, area sponsored an evangelistic drive, with central services in Welcome Stadium. More than 2,000 decisions for Christ were reported.

Washington Watch

The U. S. House passed a bill similar to one from the Senate to organize a commission on law to control pornographic literature. The search for a new legal definition of obscenity is a reaction to recent Supreme Court rulings.

An advisory committee on alcoholism made its first report to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, with an estimate that alcoholism affects between 16 and 20 million family members. The committee asked stepped-up rehabilitation services, with federal aid.

Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon has introduced a bill that would ban radio-TV advertising for alcoholic beverages between 3 P.M. and 10 P.M.

Meanwhile, the National Highway Safety Agency reports that excessive drinking is a factor in nearly half the 53,000 highway deaths in the United States each year. And the Federal Aviation Agency, after post-mortem examinations of 900 of the 2,084 pilots killed in private airplane crashes between 1963 and 1966, said one-third of them had been drinking.

Hawaii’s Board of Education voted transportation subsidies for certain students whether they attend public or parochial schools. At a hearing opposite sides were taken by the American Civil Liberties Union and Honolulu Catholics.

Faced with dwindling student enrollment, Catholics in Oklahoma City opened the modern facilities of the former St. Francis de Sales Seminary as a “Center for Christian Renewal” for rent to any church group.

With the next issue, the National Council of Churches’ quarterly Christian Scholar ceases publication. The interdisciplinary intellectual journal has had financial problems, and circulation dipped to 2,000. A new quarterly with a less explicitly Christian orientation, Colloquy, will be started next year by the Society for Religion in Higher Education. The editor will be Mrs. Sallie M. TeSelle, who teaches Christianity in contemporary culture at Yale Divinity School.

Ministers’ median annual salary (excluding parsonage allowance) has risen from $5,029 to $5,914 since 1962, according to a survey of 1,800 clergymen by Ministers Life and Casualty Union.

The newly merged Lutheran Church in Australia has proposed pulpit and altar fellowship to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, most conservative Lutheran group in the U.S. At last month’s convention, Wisconsin voted for a link with the small Evangelical Lutheran Synod and re-elected the Rev. Oscar J. Naumann of Milwaukee to his eighth two-year term as president.

Denominational leaders who belong to the troubled Swarthmore (Pennsylvania) Presbyterian Church arranged a compromise to win the resignation of the Rev. Dr. D. Evor Roberts: affluent members are giving him $20,000 for a sabbatical year. Roberts had claimed publicly that he was being forced out for civil rights activities; members said they were just dissatisfied with his work as a minister.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, “black power” civil rights group once aided by many Jews, sides with Arabs against Jews in its current newsletter. Besides statements akin to Arab and Soviet policy, the publication carries old photos of alleged Zionist atrocities similar to those in Ku KIux Klan literature.

The Food and Drug Administration ordered long-range animal tests of all contraceptive pills as a precautionary measure after tissue abnormalities developed in some monkeys being tested.

It wasn’t planned that way, but Expo 67 mirrors surprisingly well the state of today’s Christian Church, its big theological cleavage, and its relation to the world.

Dozens of pavilions boast of man’s achievements with scarcely a reference to spiritual forces. Not even the dominant U. S. Pavilion finds a place for religion’s role in its national life. The pedestrian Soviet and glamorous Czech pavilions, however, manage to preserve a little corner to reflect their countries’ Christian heritage.

Somewhat off the beaten path on Notre Dame Island is the $1,300,000 Christian Pavilion, a valiant effort of major Canadian church bureaucracies to present a solid front. Its message, projected via a glorified photo exhibit, wallows in the sea of subjectivity. As an experiment in indirect communication it emphasizes questions and minimizes answers.

Much more in the mainstream of Expo traffic is the Sermons from Science Pavilion featuring the well-known Moody evangelistic films based on natural wonders. Although it is an independent effort, it draws significantly from Canada’s old established churches for support. It doesn’t raise many questions, but it zealously promotes the Answer to man’s most basic problem.

The pavilions of Israel and Judaism unashamedly exhibit their spiritual histories. The pride of the white stucco Pavilion of Judaism is a 440-square-foot model of the Temple of Jerusalem built by Herod. The building also contains the only chapel on the fairgrounds; Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform congregations take turns conducting services nightly.

The Expo visitor might well interpret the fair’s religious flavor as strikingly similar to what he finds in the world: an uncertain church leadership that champions relevance but seldom achieves it, an aggressive movement from evangelical sectors of the grass roots, and a reclaiming of its past by Jewry. Conspicuously underplayed in this microcosm, as it is in the world, is Christian confrontation on the intellectual, ideological, and cultural levels.

“Perhaps it is time that Church planners and executives came to terms with the Church’s greatest problem,” says the Canadian Churchman, the national Anglican paper of Canada. “It does not lie in the area of techniques—but in the area of content.”

Churchman editors say the Christian Pavilion reminds them of a war-time chaplain who had ten minutes to speak to his troops and chose to talk of sin and redemption: “He got so enthusiastic as he warmed up about sin that the ten minutes were gone and he never did get around to redemption.”

The reaction is typical. Easily the most common criticism leveled at the pavilion is that it depicts human alienation (see April 28 issue) but pretty much leaves the viewer to find the way out himself. A spokesman for the pavilion says the implicit hope is that the questioning visitor will seek a clergyman for further details. Staff members are prohibited from answering theological questions posed by visitors. Observers have noted that more Christianity is depicted in the Pavilion of Judaism than in the Christian.

A Popular Photography reviewer asserts that photographic exhibits at Expo “have suffered in the hands of clever designers who have no respect whatever for the medium as such,” and calls the Christian Pavilion “the worst offender.” “You will hunt far and wide for a more unchristian presentation,” the critic says. “Photographs of the most sordid and unpleasant scenes are forced into the cubes of a pipe construction that would be more appropriate as a jungle gymn in a playground than in an exhibit of announced inspirational nature.”

In defense of the Christian Pavilion, some observers have wisely noted that the negative impression is a corrective influence for the exaltation throughout the rest of the fair of what a great job man is doing with the world. Severe criticism leveled at the Christian Pavilion at the outset of the fair has tapered off considerably, and long lines of people await admission each day. Soon the pavilion will have counted 1,000,000 visitors.

The Sermons from Science Pavilion, with a smaller capacity, is also handling capacity crowds. About 500,000 persons have been through the building to see a film or witness a science demonstration with spiritual applications. As of mid-August, approximately 2,500 commitments to Christ had been recorded. These are being followed up through coast-to-coast contacts. Sermons from Science teams have trained about 6,000 counselors throughout Canada and the northeastern United States, and the names of inquirers in these regions are forwarded to counselors living near their homes. Elsewhere in North America and abroad, the names are given to Moody Bible Institute to follow up through Christian training correspondence courses.

A big problem in the Sermons from Science Pavilion is finding enough French-speaking counselors. Two-thirds of the persons counseled are French Canadians.

The Sermons from Science message is simple and direct and uses the four-spiritual-laws approach popularized by Campus Crusade. It is geared to the common man, pre-set to average conditions. Everyone going through the pavilion gets the American Tract Society’s leaflet, “The Prior Claim.”

The crowds aren’t as great at the Pavilion of Judaism, but the model of the temple is nonetheless the most interesting religious exhibit at Expo 67. The model is the work of Lazare and Suzette Halberthal, a Rumanian couple who came to Canada in 1952. It took them an estimated 15,000 hours to build it.

Visitors to the pavilion are forbidden to take pictures of the model, but they can purchase photographs there at nominal cost. Admission to the pavilion—and to all others—is free, once an Expo “passport” is purchased.

Missions Exodus

Mission leaders and the U. S. State Department are watching closely developments in Assam State, India, where three American missionary couples and missionaries from Canada and the Netherlands were expelled recently on charges that they helped rebel uprisings.

Religious News Service says that nearly eighty missionaries have been informed that their residence permits will not be renewed when they expire—some within a few weeks—and that many other persons apparently have been ordered out.

Thirty-five Missouri Synod Lutherans have been evacuated from eastern Nigeria, which is in revolt against the central government. Federal troops reportedly have been warned against desecrating churches in the east.

In the Philippines, new interest in foreign missions is evident in a new gospel team that made its first trip abroad last month. The group, led by the Rev. Max D. Atienza, was invited by Christians in Indonesia. Now under the new evangelism division of Far East Broadcasting Company, the team wants full support from Filipinos.

Learning In Splitting

Church splits, long considered a scourge, may actually strengthen young Christian communities. Cambridge-educated J. B. A. Kessler concludes from an exhaustive study of Protestantism in Peru and Chile that Christians there have learned from their mistakes. Though they have experienced some sixty-six divisions, the church has been growing phenomenally. Lessons have been learned, especially in cases in which there have been organizational weaknesses.

Kessler, missionary to Peru, documents his arguments in a dissertation for the University of Utrecht, Holland. Professors praised the work as a model for histories of young churches and awarded Kessler a doctorate cum laude. His thick tome has been printed in English.

Among the points he makes is that Christians in Chile have learned more from their own mistakes in churches which have no missionary connection than in those which retain a link with foreigners. Kessler also contends that young churches in which missionaries didn’t want to share in the exercise of authority themselves often experienced the most internal problems.

Missionaries should give nationals great freedom to experiment and find their own ways, he adds. But strong growth is seen partly as the result of authoritarian forms of church government, which may have been dangerous, but which were better understood by the nationals than the democratic processes most Protestant missions were trying to introduce.

Kessler studied physical sciences at Cambridge, and while there came into contact with Inter-Varsity Fellowship and committed his life to Christ. Subsequently he volunteered for missionary service and was accepted by the British faith mission, Evangelical Union of South America.

Kessler is the son of a millionaire former president of the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company. His decision to become a missionary greatly distressed his father, and relations were strained for years. More recently the father committed his life to Christ.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

When To Pull The Plug

It was bound to happen in this day of medicine’s miracle machines. Somebody asked, “When is the patient dead?”

The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation decided that a panel of doctors and clergymen could surely provide the answer. But at last month’s AAMI convention in San Francisco, no definitive answer came forth.

Catholic Chaplain John Ring of the University of California Medical Center cautioned doctors against emphasizing “mere length of life at the expense of transcendent values.” The center’s Episcopal chaplain, Charles Carrol, spoke of a woman who, though in a coma since January, recently gave birth to a healthy daughter. He suggested she was more an organic test tube for scientists than “a mother in the human sense.”

Medical philosopher Otto E. Guttentag offered, “Death has come to humans when there is irreversible loss of spontaneity—freedom to choose and move according to choice.” But psychiatrist Michael Khlentzos scolded fellow panelists for being less than Freudian in equating life with consciousness. He argued that the “vegetable” in the resuscitator who gives no electric signs to the EEG machine and whose dilated, staring eyes bespeak a dead brain may nevertheless be living on the unconscious level. Since unconscious factors underlie all conscious behavior, the Freudian asks, “Who is dead?”

As for the difficult moral decision of when to pull out the electric plug on the machine, Guttentag proposed that each person have a “guardian ad mortem”—a friend or relative with express legal power to say, “Stop everything; let him die in peace.”

Generally, the clergymen favored pulling it sooner than the doctors.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Spain: Protestants Say No

The Evangelical Defense Commission, which represents all Protestant churches in Spain, has sent a letter to the Department of Justice announcing that Protestants will not apply for legal recognition under the nation’s new religious-liberty law.

Under the law, the churches must register like secular organizations and report on membership and finances. The letter, sent in July, says this violates statements on religious freedom by the United Nations and Vatican II. Last month the Southern Baptist mission near Bilbao was closed by police for refusal to register. A meeting of most of the nation’s 500 Protestant clergymen next month will act further on the situation.

N.Y. Aid Ban Fades

Forces opposing state aid to religious schools—led by New York City Unitarian minister Donald Harrington, who is Liberal Party chairman—lost a major battle on August 16. New York’s Constitutional Convention voted 132 to 49 against retaining the flat aid ban that has been in force for seventy-three years.

It appeared likely some aid would be allowed, but the specifics were unclear at mid-month. One plan was simply to repeat the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. But the vote might mean many Jews and Protestants will now oppose the final state constitution.

More Sisters Secularize

The swinging Glenmary Sisters, one of America’s youngest orders, early established a reputation as a “can-do” group who often worked with sleeves rolled up at their training-center farm. Now sixty-five of the eighty-five sisters have asked Cincinnati Archbishop Karl Alter for a dispensation from their vows by this week so they can form a church-affiliated lay organization.

Sister Mary Catherine Rumschlag, superior of the society and supporter of the change, said the new organization will focus on “religious and social needs,” primarily among the poor of Appalachia.

The order got national attention a year ago when National Catholic Reporter revealed that Alter had put the sisters under restrictions concerning books they read, hours they kept, and their conduct with the opposite sex. The trouble reportedly started when five sisters complained that the order was too liberal in interpreting the role of nuns in the post-Council era.

JAMES L. ADAMS

No sooner was Bishop Pike’s If This Be Heresy off the presses than the emergency theological committee of fellow Episcopalians announced that the concept of heresy is out of date. James A. Pike’s latest flinging down of the theological gauntlet, and the report from the blue-ribbon committee asked to decide how much Pike and others may disbelieve, converge on the verge of this month’s Episcopal General Convention, which meets every three years.

The convention will be asked to approve the committee’s conclusion that “the word ‘heresy’ should be abandoned” except in relation to the losers in the great theological debates of the early centuries.

In this key recommendation, the committee quotes a discussion of history by J. V. Langmead Casserley of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, one of four experts (Pike was another) who testified before the committee in April.

But Casserley disagrees with the committee’s conclusion. He is willing to keep things flexible for men struggling with “new theological questions.” But he objects “very violently to reformulation of ancient heresies and pretending that this is a new contribution.” To him, the Pike affair is not as much a case of heresy as “gross incompetence.” “If we are to have a serious theological debate, it can only be with real theological knowledge.” Thus, he opposes a heresy trial for Pike, which would also be “widely misunderstood by the public.” “The real heretics were great men,” he says, and Pike doesn’t deserve the compliment.

When the committee was formed in January, Pike tabled his move to force an investigation of his views to “clear my name.” He sought this study after the House of Bishops gave him a knuckles-rap last year. In his new book, Pike says he’ll have to wait and see what the committee and the General Convention do before he decides whether to force the investigation. One committee member believed that “nothing the committee said would have satisfied” Pike, and predicted that a publicity-garnering investigation was inevitable. But Pike said later he will call off the investigation if the General Convention accepts the committee recommendations.

Besides fears about dissension and damage and an Episcopal urge to keep things cool, another reason for the effort to avoid a trial may be the fact that other church leaders share some of Pike’s ideas. For instance, Pike says “a leading American bishop” urged him not to put his controversial views in print, saying, in effect, “We know these things, Jim, but don’t let ‘the little people’ know.”

The study committee was chaired by Bishop Stephen F. Bayne, Jr.,¹Other members were Bishops Everett H. Jones of West Texas and George W. Barrett of Rochester (who this year Organized a service in honor of Algernon S. Crapsey, removed from the priesthood for heresy sixty years ago); Professors John Macquarrie of Union Theological Seminary, Albert T. Mollegen of Virginia Theological Seminary, George A. Shipman of the public-affairs school at the University of Washington, and Paul S. Minear of Yale Divinity School (a member of the United Church of Christ); parish clergymen Theodore P. Ferris of Boston and Charles P. Price of Harvard University; Editor David L. Sills of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences; and Louis Cassels, religion editor of United Press International. former executive officer of the Anglican Communion, now chairman of the church Overseas Department, and a leading figure in the Consultation on Church Union. Bayne, relatively conservative in theology, was on last year’s Dun Committee, which proposed the censure of Pike. Bayne says his committee was “representative” of the denomination and unanimous in its report.

The trouble with the word heresy, the committee says, is that “it too often conjures up a picture of a static fortress of propositional theology that requires to be, and can be, defended by appeal to the letter of a theological statement.” The word implies inappropriate “theological pre-judgment” and “a set of theological categories unconditioned by their historical and cultural period.”

While concerned with encouraging theological experimentation, the committee recognizes that there are limits. The Church should do everything it can to hold its errant sons, but if they persist, “dis-association” of the Church from particular views is the way to handle it. Thus, they propose making it even harder to get a heresy action off the ground than it is now. “Heresy trials are anachronistic,” the committee decided.

The question arises, of course, who should be in the Church and who shouldn’t. The committee says “as much as humanly possible, the decision to maintain or sever the relationship” should be made by the individual critic of church beliefs. As for the Episcopal Church, membership does not involve “thinking alike,” but “doing the Christian things, including the liturgical acts.” So the normal test of membership proposed is “the willingness of a person to share in the worship of the Prayer Book with a consenting mind.”

The twenty-page committee report says the Church “first of all” has an obligation “to be related to, in constant communication with, the world.” It “also has an obligation to its Creator.” “The controlling motive in theological debate” is said to be “obedience to the Church’s mission.…”

The procedure of beginning with the horizontal rather than the vertical is even more explicit in If This Be Heresy, in which Pike struggles to say as much as he can about a personal God and life after death from an anthropomorphic base, rather than a revelational one. He is able to affirm both God and life after death from empirical data, though the stress on God’s becoming rather than his being, in the mode of certain Continental theologians, obscures whether God in fact existed in the past and raises the possibility that man created God.

The latest from Pike’s pen is by and large rather bland compared to some of his previous utterances.

Point by point, Pike attacks the authorities Episcopalians have traditionally used for doctrine: the Bible, the early church councils, the ecumenical creeds, liturgies, confessions of faith, and consensus. On the last point, he marshals opinion polls to justify his “sense of responsibility and pastoral sensitivity” to the “majority of Church members” who face a “growing sense of hypocrisy as the credibility gap is fast widening between unqualified Prayer Book statements and what seems to them plausible.” His main source of data is the Glock-Stark survey on anti-Semitism, but some polls are poles apart. Last month, Gallup reported that 83 per cent of Americans over 18 years of age believe in the Trinity.

In a sweeping generalization, Pike contends that “except for the very active and devoted members of the Fundamentalist sects, Christians as a whole read or hear very little more of the Bible than is read on Sundays in church.”

As a companion to the Pike book, Harper and Row is issuing The Bishop Pike Affair by “lay theologian” and lawyer William Stringfellow and poet Anthony Towne. The book, likely to ruffle some feathers within the House of Bishops, seems a tip-off to the approach Pike may take if the investigation proceeds. It discusses the development of dogma and authority, due process in the Church, and the history of charges against Pike. (The first one, according to Pike’s book, was sparked by a 1961 editorial in CHRISTIANITY TODAY criticizing views Pike had expressed in a Christian Century article.)

The most important new defense put forth by Stringfellow and Towne is that the Pike case is intricately bound up with his liberal socio-political views, and is an episode in the attempt of a “rightist, racist, anti-ecumenical, traditionalist” faction to take over the Episcopal Church. The authors consider such a takeover “a realistic, and imminent, possibility.” Similar alarums were sent abroad in the Nation earlier this year by the Rev. Lester Kinsolving, at that time a full-time diocesan lobbyist seeking to liberalize California’s abortion law. The Right is gaining fast in the Executive Council and the General Convention, the book contends. Thus:

“In such a context it becomes quite secondary whether James A. Pike is, in any rational reference, a heretic or not.”

Synod Speculation

He will. He will. He will. He won’t. That’s what “informed sources” said respectively to Newsweek, United Press International, St. Louis Review, and Religious News Service about whether Pope Paul would issue that birth-control encyclical in conjunction with this month’s Synod of Bishops in Rome.

Rumors were running that the Pope would moderately reaffirm current bans on artificial methods, but Newsweek said some fine theological distinctions would be made to permit some leeway.

Synod speculation centers even more on theological controversy in the Netherlands. There Father Robert Adolfs, an Augustinian prior, has unleashed an attack on the church’s aspirations to worldly power and pomp. Without reform, the church will dig her grave, he contends, and with it The Grave of God. Publication of his book with that title continues, despite a ban by the order’s superior.

Conservatives are also upset about the new catechism approved by the entire Dutch hierarchy (see November 11, 1966, issue, page 56). Some rephrasing was made after a special meeting with Vatican theologians. Now the reports are that new theology will be the first and major topic of the synod, where such matters as the celibacy requirement and social issues have been ruled out. Three weeks ago the Pope issued another of his warnings against post-conciliar types who “question fundamental doctrines.”

In other Catholic events:

• The Pope made his first important step toward reforming the Italian-dominated Curia (Vatican administration) by directing that each of the twelve major offices add seven bishops chosen from throughout the world.

• Father Patrick O’Connor reports for National Catholic News Service that Communists are “strangling” religion in North Viet Nam, particularly in towns and villages. Even in Hanoi, where churches are still open, church schools have been taken over by the regime and the seminary has been closed.

• A new catechism used in Chicago Catholic schools is under attack from a group called “Concerned Parents,” because it praises Martin Luther King.

• The “acting” top public relations man for the U.S. hierarchy since June, layman Jerry Renner, left in a huff and criticized the “mystique of secrecy” and antagonism toward the press among bishops. He was then named chief publicist for the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

John Courtney Murray

John Courtney Murray, 63, leading American Jesuit theologian, died in New York August 16. Murray played a major role in the Vatican Council II, through his work on its religious liberty decree. He was a professor at Woodstock College and director of the La-Farge Institute, a religious dialogue center in Manhattan.

“Dialogue is a contemporary way of presenting the Gospel,” Murray contended. He was a friend of many Protestant churchmen and well known for his efforts to reconcile traditional Roman Catholic views with American culture.

Free Church Ecumenism

The Baptist Unity Movement conference may have fizzled, but even so this was quite a summer for free-church ecumenism. It began with the Conference on the Concept of the Believers’ Church in Louisville, called “one of the most significant” meetings in the history of the free-church movement by Baptist Press veteran W. Barry Garrett.

It closed last month with a significant session of the Executive Committee of the Baptist World Alliance and a concurrent Baptist World Convocation. These meetings took place in Nashville, a city where various breeds of Baptists tend to run various offices in parallel isolation. Despite racial violence earlier this summer, the major rally featuring William R. Tolbert, BWA president and vice-president of Liberia, drew 6,000 persons in the city’s first major convergence of Negro and white Baptists.

Tolbert said Christians must replace “black” and “white” power with the power of love and seek “the salvation of the world.” “Then selfishness, intolerance, impatience, bigotries, prejudices, and hate and violence will disappear,” he said.

Participating in the one-day convention were the Southern Baptist Convention, biggest Baptist body in the world; the two separated National Baptist Conventions, which employ many Nashville Negroes in publishing operations and rarely get together; and the Nashville-based Free Will Baptists, a mostly white body not in the BWA that rarely gets together with anyone else.

Leaders of the four bodies issued a call for the convocation in the wake of rioting in a host of U. S. cities. They said, “In the face of racial disorders that are among the worst the nation has seen since the Civil War, we call upon our people for a demonstration of the power of Christ to change our prejudices.”

During the BWA meeting of subsequent days, the Rev. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the larger National Convention, said, “There is no way we can solve the nation’s racial problems by turning from law and order, and by burning, looting, and killing.… The Negro must return to the principles upon which this land was founded.”

Although all Americans share some blame for the riots because of limits on freedom and justice for Negroes, said Jackson, he also blamed Stokely Carmichael and other agitators, the press that builds such men up, public officials who wait too long before taking action, and churches that shun discussion in favor of picketing and “use of force to change society.” He said that “the Church must risk now its budgets, its fine buildings, and its power for the cause of racial justice.”

But the Rev. S. B. Kyles of Memphis said Negroes have made gains they wouldn’t have made if they had not resorted to violence: “For ten years we’ve been saying violence won’t work, and the Negro people finally got tired of waiting. When they tried it, it did work.”

Foy Valentine of the SBC Christian Life Commission said violence and anarchy are “tragic reflections of white racism tracing back for hundreds of years. Black-power racism has fed on discrimination, prejudice, unemployment, poor housing, poverty, deprivation, and all kinds of social disadvantages to create an explosive situation.”

At the end of the meeting, the executives issued an appeal to Baptists of all nations to work for world peace, racial justice, relief of suffering, and freedom for preaching the Gospel. After considerable discussion, the conferees decided to open up next year’s meeting for more consideration of current issues.

The Louisville conference was an unofficial assemblage of scholars from various denominational families in the free-church tradition, including members of eight Baptist groups, Pentecostalists, Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ, Quakers and Mennonites, Church of God (Indiana), Church of the Brethren, and Brethren in Christ.

Chairman James Leo Garrett, professor at the host Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the meeting was not “ecumenical” in the formal sense of having official representation and discussing merger possibilities. The approach to unity of his colleague Dale Moody, like that of several other speakers, was less rigidity on the matter of baptism and communion and more emphasis on the authority of the Scriptures. “The teachings of Scripture need to be put above all denominational traditions. Scripture is our one authority,” he said.

The Old Country Has Changed

The Mennonites of the world returned home to Holland this summer to visit their birthplace, but it was hardly a return to the past. The old Dutch mother church is by far the most liberal of all the daughters of Menno Simons, even though in recent years Karl Barth again drew its attention to the Word of God.

Nearly 4,500 guests from thirty-two countries gathered at the eighth Mennonite World Conference. They listened to eighty speeches and made a sentimental journey to Witmarsum, the hamlet in the Frisian dairy country where Menno was born.

The conferees formed a diversified group of conservatives and liberals, of separatists and conformists. Dutch Mennonites were amazed to see that many American women still cover their heads, but their own mini-skirted daughters must have shocked others. Yet the Amish Mennonites didn’t turn up, and the extreme Dutch liberals hardly spoke.

One Dutch newspaper labeled the conference a mini-ecumenical gathering. Much was said about the place of Mennonites in the world, little about their place among fellow brethren. Only two of the represented groups were members of the World Council of Churches, and there was little interest in ecumenical questions.

Responsibility in the world was the real theme. Speakers called for a stronger witness and stronger service. Reuben Short, secretary of the Congo Inland Mission, asked conference guests to evangelize. The same day, Elmer Neufeld called for service and personal sacrifices for “a world in need.” Little was done to combine these two calls; each stood on its own. The days are past, however, when Mennonites could be labeled as other-worldly separatists.

The most extreme voice was that of Negro leader Vincent Harding, an associate of Martin Luther King. He wanted a new conference, not somewhere in the West, but where the revolutionaries are, to study the problems of the Viet Cong, the Negroes, and other freedom fighters in the world who have lost their faith in peaceful resistance. But he spoke too late. The conference itself already had closed with a quiet message asking the governments of the world to give freedom and righteousness to their people in a peaceful way.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

Quakers: One Peace

The 200,000 Friends (called Quakers by just about everyone) held their first world conference in fifteen years this summer in Greensboro, North Carolina. To no one’s surprise, pleas for peace were in the air.

By far the most publicized was from United Nations Secretary General U Thant, who rarely makes public appearances, much less speeches to religious gatherings. Thant presented one of his harshest critiques of U. S. policy in Viet Nam and urged a halt in bombing the North as a needed first step toward peace. Later, the delegates quietly reached a similar “consensus.”

The Greensboro meeting favored all efforts to get medical aid to all of Viet Nam, a policy that has created conflict between some Quakers and the U. S. Treasury Department. Soon after the meeting, Royal Canadian mounties seized some Hanoi-bound aid packages at the border. American Quakers have been sending aid to North Viet Nam by way of Canada. They earlier had been refused U. S. export permits at the border. Treasury is still talking about prosecuting a crew that sailed a shipload of aid to Hanoi earlier this year. Two of the crewmen participated in a protest vigil at the Pentagon in August. The Philadelphia group plans a return visit.

Retired federal Judge John Biggs, Jr., 71, of Wilmington, Delaware, quit as presiding clerk of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting because aid-Hanoi activities were taken officially rather than by individual action.

Meanwhile, Quaker refugee-aid worker David Stickney, returning from eighteen months in South Viet Nam. charged that civilian casualties are three to eight times more than military-casualties there.

The Pulpit Comes Alive

The Pattern of Christ, by David H. C. Read (Scribners, 1967, 94 pp., $2.95), and The Parables, by Gerald Kennedy (Harper & Row, 1967, 213 pp., $1.60, paperback), are reviewed by Donald Macleod, professor of homiletics, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

These two books of sermons, each by a preacher of unusual reputation in his own denomination, are representative of the output of men who believe in the efficacy and integrity of the Christian pulpit. Here the similarity ends, for in their source materials and interpretative methods these two homileticians are of very different genres.

In an age in which the integrity of preaching is questioned (especially by those who have never experienced it) and the aim of being a great preacher is suspect (particularly among those who cannot do it), David H. C. Read continues to accept the claim and discipline of what seems to him to be eminently worthwhile. His first book, Prisoner’s Quest (Macmillan, 1945), introduced him to America, and the promise this volume showed has been realized in the five titles that have followed. A recent questionnaire circulated among discriminating sermon-tasters placed Dr. Read consistently at the head of the list of highly effective preachers in the United Presbyterian Church.

In this latest book, Dr. Read, who for ten years has been senior minister of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City, deals with six beatitudes from the sermon on the Mount and one from John 20:29. He interprets the significance of these great sayings for the twentieth century in sermons that show the fruits of a classical education, exegetical know-how, and reading in depth in good literature. He discloses nuances of thought and interpretation that not only give freshness to his message but also accent the disturbing character of the beatitudes. This preacher never fails to be interesting as he explores the unseen dimensions of these sayings and makes germane to our day the transcendent character of Matthew 5–7.

Read is right in saying that the beatitudes “cannot be understood without the framework of the total Gospel in which they are set.” If a criticism may be made, however, of an otherwise excellent book, it should be directed against the handling of this point. There is need for either an initial chapter or a fuller preliminary discussion. Long ago Percy Ainsworth, in his Blessed Life, developed this idea fully under a chapter on “Blessed …” before he launched into the beatitudes. The traditional peril to the beatitudes has been the tendency among the biblically illiterate, the politicians, and the pseudo-statesmen to handle them as pious slogans or as maxims for ethical action. In reality they are proclamations. As John Dow put it so well: “Grace is always in the field ahead of Christian endeavor.… The beatitudes do not frame a command to be lowly, meek, peace-loving: they describe the fact that those upon whom the Spirit of God has come with benediction are and shall be lowly and meek and peace-loving” (This Is Our Faith, p. 201).

Gerald Kennedy, bishop of The Methodist Church, Los Angeles Area, is one of America’s most popular preachers and the author of an ever-increasing list of books and articles. Moreover, he is an omnivorous reader and a careful collector of illustrations and things worth saying from an amazing range of sources. If interest and exciting ideas were the only criteria for judging preaching, Bishop Kennedy would claim distinction with ease.

Here in fifteen engaging chapters the bishop deals with fifteen parables, which he calls “stories Jesus told.” Books on the parables are legion, and most of them are either exegetically dull or prettily superficial. Kennedy’s effort is midway. Few American preachers are so intensely human, so charged with immediacy, and so enthusiastically Christian as he, and he has no equal in making wide and varied reading tributary to his sermons.

His error in this book is that of not remaining at his own métier. He is a topical preacher par excellence; he should not presume to be an expositor. These sermons on the parables have no interpretative method. The parables in the Gospels cannot be interpreted properly unless one takes careful account of the context in which each occurs and the eschatological framework and tone of Jesus’ whole preaching and witnessing ministry. Otherwise, the parables, apart from who said them and when and why, are merely human-interest stories, of which Aesop was equally a master.

On the positive side, let it be said again that few preachers can afford to overlook the techniques and principles of rhetoric that make Bishop Kennedy a pulpit and platform speaker of such unusual competence.

Reading for Perspective

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

• Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics, by Paul Ramsey (Scribners, $5.95). A Princeton theologian offers trenchant criticism of the “new morality” and insists on some form of “rule-agapism” for a viable Christian social ethic.

• Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume IV, edited by Gerhard Kittel (Eerdmans, $22.50). The fourth installment of a monumental eight-volume work provides invaluable research on key New Testament words.

• Crisis in Lutheran Theology, by John Warwick Montgomery (Baker, $1.50). An analysis of new emphases within Lutheran theology seen in the light of historic doctrinal foundations. All Lutherans should read this.

Freedom Through Surrender

Freedom in Modern Theology, by Robert T. Osborn (Westminster, 1967, 273 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Frederic R. Howe, dean, Graduate School, and associate professor of theology, Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, Portland, Oregon.

This work, written by the associate professor of religion at Duke University, is a critical appraisal and comparison of one major aspect of the theological approaches of Bultmann, Tillich, Barth, and Berdyaev. Osborn uses the control factor or touchstone issue of theological freedom to evaluate the specific theologies of each of these major voices that he has chosen as representative of central options for shaping an ecumenical theology. His analytical ability is keen.

The study is of necessity limited to the freedom of the Christian man and the depth of meaning in the biblical concepts dealing with the “freedom for which Christ has set us free”—to the freedom of the self in its vital relation to Christ. Osborn begins by defining two areas in this kind of freedom, the Hellenistic and the Christian. In the Hellenistic view, freedom is a condition resulting from salvation or liberation. To the Hellenist, freedom, as this resultant condition, meant a true return to one’s self, a regaining of self-control. But the New Testament attacks the problem of man on a different basis. On Biblical ground, says Osborn, we find that the self is seen as fallen, unfree, and thus in need of commitment or surrender to a redemptive and creative force.

The author analyzes in great detail the four major theological positions he has selected and concludes essentially that a combination of Barthian concepts of freedom with added insights from Berdyaev should be basic for building an adequate theology of freedom.

The evangelical reader will appreciate the scope and depth of this study but will be concerned about the basic approach. Osborn rejects the idea of building a system of theology, and thus abandons what vital orthodoxy believes is the imperative task of theological studies—uncovering the depth and true versatility of a biblical system. To Osborn, theology, seemingly, is only an approach. To the evangelical, it is surely more. Osborn’s orientation apparently fails to balance biblical mysticism with biblical realism. He says:

Faith is also mystical, inasmuch as it knows its object in a manner for which it can give no good account, except in its own terms. It knows, as does one in personal relationships, that in its true existence and depth the reality of its object transcends the experienced meaning, the consequent life, or the acknowledged facts. There is no a priori critique of reason that establishes its epistemological possibility. It is, in this sense, mystical.

Osborn feels that a theology of freedom will incorporate these principles or ideas: First, it will be nonsystematic; second, it will be Christological; third, it will be uncommitted philosophically.

I appreciate the depth of Osborn’s study but would seek for a systematic trinitarianism and its dynamic balance of all the biblical factors leading to an exposition of the freedom of the believer in Christ.

The Two Cannot Be Separated

The Christian Life and Salvation, by Donald G. Bloesch (Eerdmans, 1967, 164 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Walter Mueller, rector, St. Mark’s Reformed Episcopal Church, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.

Ever since the Church held its first council in Jerusalem, theologians have debated the relation of faith to works in man’s experience of salvation. Unlike the many theological issues that die with time, this one will always be very much alive. The Christian Life and Salvation is a mid-twentieth-century contribution to the ongoing debate.

Bloesch’s approach to the problem may be stated as a question: “In order to come into the experience of salvation, must a man submit to Christ as Lord as well as trust him as Saviour?” He answers, “Yes!,” implying that though we should distinguish between Christ’s offices as Lord and Saviour, the two cannot be separated. A struggle with words follows. On the one hand, Bloesch seeks to maintain the Reformation principles of sola gratia and sola fide while avoiding the heresies of monergism and antinomianism. On the other hand, he tries to emphasize the unbreakable connection between salvation and a life of submission to Christ without falling into the errors of synergism and legalism.

To accomplish his purpose, Bloesch introduces the Kierkegaardian concept of “paradox.” The paradox of salvation is that “there is a sense in which God does all. Yet in another sense man is active too, … but only through the power of God’s Spirit.” In a day when “cheap grace” is all too prevalent, Bloesch’s emphasis on submission and obedience to Christ as Lord is welcome. There are, however, dangers in this emphasis. Bloesch recognizes these and tries to guard against them with such statements as, “Our position is that only the merits of Christ have intrinsic worth, and only these merits can be regarded as the basis for God’s acceptance of our works.”

Evangelicals will appreciate Bloesch’s position on the person of Christ, the centrality of the Cross (“The foundation of the Christian life is not an existential decision nor a mystical experience but the decisive, irrevocable work of God in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ”), and the nature of Christ’s death (substitutionary, sacrificial, propitious, and so on). They will not feel, however, that his definition of sin as ignorance, bondage, and estrangement adequately expresses the scriptural teaching on this subject. Most disappointing is his flirtation with universalism and his acceptance of the doctrine of a second chance.

One comes from reading this book newly impressed that though the way of salvation may be understood by the simple, it is not simple to understand.

New Commentaries On Acts

Anchor Bible, Volume 31: The Acts of the Apostles, translated with introduction and notes by Johannes Munck (Doubleday, 1967, 318 pp., $6), and The New Clarendon Bible: The Acts, introduction and commentary by R. P. C. Hanson (Oxford, 1967, 262 pp., $5), are reviewed by David W. McIlvaine, Subject Cataloging Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

The posthumously published volume by Johannes Munck shows the work of an able scholar. In an introduction of ninety pages, Munck defends the Lukan authorship and the historicity of the book. “The historical events related may be influenced by the author’s purpose in writing his work; but on the whole they bear the stamp of reality which is the property of history, rather than of the historical novel.” He dates the work in the first half of the sixties. Munck’s main interest is to reconstruct the historical situation of the primitive Church.

The biblical text is an original English translation from a Danish text prepared by Munck. The translators have done a good job; the text is free-flowing and readable. For each section of the text there are notes on specific points and also a section called “Comment.” Usually this comment is merely a summary of the biblical text. Most of the meat is in the notes. There is no map and no general index.

The appendix contains articles on (1) Luke’s ethnic background, (2) “eyewitnesses” in Luke, (3) Pentecost in Acts (in the commentary Munck takes a traditional position, but C. S. Mann, the writer of this appendix article, takes a different view and says only that something “paranormal” happened), (4) the organization and institutions of the Jerusalem church in Acts, (5) Stephen’s Samaritan background, (6) “Hellenists” and “Hebrews” in Acts 6:1, (7) Simon Magus as “The Great Power of God,” (8) Paul’s education, and (9) the customary languages of the Jews. These articles, written by W. F. Albright, C. S. Mann, and Abram Spiro, are in many ways the most valuable part of the book.

The “Clarendon Bible” Acts follows the text of the RSV and has notes below the text in smaller print. Hanson gives many more references to the primary sources than Munck does, but even these are sparse. The book contains also an introduction of fifty-six pages, a map, and an adequate index.

Hanson’s volume suffers from an unstated presupposition—that miracles cannot happen. He consistently attempts to dispose of miracles through contrived explanations. His explanation of Acts 16: 16 is worthless: “No doubt this girl was trained to tell fortuntes by means of ventriloquism practiced in a pretended trance.” Just how would a rebuke by Paul cause her to lose this acting ability? And why would her owners not find another actress who could play the part convincingly? In other places Hanson just skips over a miracle in the biblical text without comment.

Both Munck and Hanson feel that much in Acts is pure fiction. In the matter of Gamaliel’s speech, they both accuse Luke of historical blunders. Neither offers the least suggestion that Josephus could be wrong and Luke right.

The reader who wishes to buy only one of these two new commentaries should choose Munck’s.

The Eloquence Of The Cathedral

The Heritage of the Cathedral, by Sarted Prentice (William Morrow, 1966, 307 pp., $6), is reviewed by Carl H. Droppers, associate professor of architecture, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.

Sartell Prentice slashes through the pages of history and permits an inanimate object, the cathedral, to speak as it once did. The cathedral speaks eloquently of Roman, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance times, as well as the periods between, but only a skillful historian like Prentice can interpret its language. He has a clear understanding of the environment that molded the people and, in turn, the cathedral. In fact, this book might be considered a kind of first book on environment and its effect on the people and the civilization it creates.

The author traces the means of communicating the Word. In time the cathedrals became so vast that the voice could no longer be heard; only the actions of the priest had meaning. He tells of the need to instruct hundreds of new converts with the picture language of the mosaic, the painting, and later the beautiful stained-glass windows; to tell an entire Bible incident in one piece of sculpture; to illustrate a whole book with a few carefully chosen figures and their actions.

He records the influence of transportation on environment, from the castles on the rivers that controlled the movement of ships to market, to the Roman roads that made possible rapid movement of troops, to the seas and overland routes that brought in new ideas from distant countries.

We see the influence of taxation on environment. Heavy taxes made the land sought in the Hundred Years’ War an almost worthless prize. We feel with the peasants the futility of tilling land that was sure to be taxed or plundered. We understand why they moved from the coastal areas, where they had no protection from plunder and could never meet the taxes imposed.

We discover how the philosophies of kings and popes fashioned the environment, and how in turn the wars, crusades, invasions, and counter-invasions shaped the people, their trades, their towns, their communities, and the buildings in which they lived and worshiped. We see how their beliefs and fears were recorded in the stones of their cathedrals. We see their triumphs and defeats carved in stone for others to “read.” We are stirred by a people who as a team willed great cathedrals into being—and as we tour the cathedrals we are still amazed at the unlettered men, men of spirit, who built them. They were men of vision, for they lived in what we would call slums but went forth and built to the honor and glory of God.

Sartell Prentice leaves us with an unwritten question: If we can see these influences on environment in past generations, why not look at our own? Might we not shape our environment rather than let it shape us?

An Illicit Love Affair

A Christian Critique of American Culture: An Essay in Practical Theology, by Julian H. Hartt (Harper, 1967, 425 pp. $8.50), is reviewed by Melvin G. Williams, assistant professor of English, American International College, Spring-field, Massachusetts.

It is regrettable that most readers will put down Julian Hartt’s A Christian Critique of American Culture after reading only the first few chapters. For in spite of his annoying reliance on the abstract jargon of the philosopher, he has a message of interest for more than simply “persons of philosophical-theological speculation.”

“Once it had become clear that the apocalyptic appearance of the Kingdom of God was not imminent,” Hartt begins “the people of the church had at least to modify their concrete relations with the ‘world’ if not their feelings and opinions about it.” Today, too, Christians must continue to evaluate the culture within which they live. But in doing so, Hartt says, the Church will have to disengage itself from its “fitful and illicit love affair with the world.”

With this awareness, however, come two major hazards for the Christian critic of culture: self-justification and irrelevance. The Church runs the risk of trying to establish its own empire above the heads of the tarnished world, or of becoming sophisticated beyond the reach of “everyday.” Liberal Christians whose passion for relevance obscures the divine foundation of their faith come under fire here. But so do the revivalists, whose message, Hartt asserts, “invariably reinforces anxiety even if it reduces guilt momentarily.”

Christians, themselves, however, are not the ultimate focus of Professor Hartt’s study. For though he points out that “Christian criticism of … culture must begin with the life of the church itself,” the most interesting part of the book is the third section, the practical applications—to the arts, to politics, and to mass culture. On politics he counsels his readers to seek out the truths that are so often hidden behind the blurred “syllabus of illusions” of Jonathan Wesley Sunday III, his imaginary representative of “everyday.”

How unfortunate that Hartt’s penetrating insights so often get buried under heaps of turgid sentences like these:

The structures [of being] have no inherent powers of existence; and so far as they are incorporated into actuality they wholly depend on God the Spirit. A generic ontological principle is exemplified in this assertion: structures are everywhere dependent upon the power of actual agents. This perhaps amounts to saying that existence precedes essence, but only if precedes means ontological rather than chronological priority, that is, in the order of being as such.

Any questions?

Resuscitating An Old-Style Liberal

The Reality of Christianity: A Study of Adolf von Harnack as Historian and Theologian, by G. Wayne Glick (Harper & Row, 1967, 359 pp., $7.50) is reviewed by Robert H. Gundry, associate professor of biblical studies, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Adolf von Harnack was the embodiment of old-style liberal theology. This study of him is third in the series “Makers of Modern Theology,” edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. Despite a repetitious and sometimes turgid style, the book provides valuable information about both Harnack himself and the history of Continental theology during his career.

Glick portrays Harnack in a variety of poses—theologian of Kantian ethics; historical researcher of amazing erudition; conservative critic against the history-of-religions school and the radical form critics; pious apologist for Christianity to cultured materialists; Ritschlian rebel against unprogressive Lutheran orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism; Marcionite rejector of the canonicity of the Old Testament—but never as a heretic, despite his denials of Jesus’ physical resurrection and of other major features of biblical and historic Christian faith. In fact, Glick finds it odd that a conference in Mecklenburg entertained a formal proposal to place Harnack under the anathema of Galatians 1:7–9.

The title, The Reality of Christianity, is a translation of the title of Harnack’s most famous book, Das Wesen des Christentums, and refers to the heart of Jesus’ message. For Harnack, this was (1) the (uneschatological) kingdom of God and its coming, (2) the fatherhood of God and the infinite value of the human soul, and (3) high ethics, with special emphasis on love. Thus Harnack denatured the New Testament kerygma by removing its eschatological and Christologically redemptive features and provided a base for the social gospel in Jesus’ ethical teaching.

Glick traces Harnack’s pilgrimage from a slightly pietistic orthodoxy to liberal theology via Ritschl, with influences from Engelhardt, Baur, Hegel, and Goethe. Then come summaries and critiques of Harnack’s major works. The author faults Harnack for reducing the Gospel excessively and for failing to see that his own theology was determined by factors other than open-minded historical investigation. But the orthodox reader will wonder whether the proof of Harnack’s unself-conscious subjectivism really helps matters; so long as a high view of Scripture is considered hopelessly out of date (so Glick), the theologian is adrift whether or not he is aware of his subjectivism.

The tone of the critiques is theological throughout. The author makes no attempt to evaluate the many contributions of Harnack to textual, higher critical, and historical studies apart from their theological implications—except for laudatory remarks about the breadth and depth of his scholarship and the prolificness of his writings. One also feels that Harnack’s antisupernaturalism, which predetermined the direction of his historical and theological pursuits, should have received more critical attention, especially in view of Pannenberg’s recent attempt to show that acceptance of the possibility of the supernatural does not foreclose valid historiography. Leaning the other way, Glick draws the moral that modern theology must learn from Harnack ever to be assiduous in rigorous historical research and to be subject to the strictures of historical criticism.

Toward A Responsible State

Protestant Faith and Religious Liberty, by Philip Wogaman (Abingdon, 1967, 254 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by Graham L. Hales, pastor, University Baptist Church, Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

This book is a lucid and valuable contribution to the debate on religious liberty. Large government programs in education and the War on Poverty, along with recent Supreme Court decisions, have caused deep confusion. The inevitable complexities of our highly inter-related society make strict separation of church and state no longer possible.

Wogaman is looking for a solid foundation from which Christians can advocate religious liberty as public policy. Although he admits value in each of five major positions now supported in Protestant and Roman Catholic circles, he considers none adequate in itself.

In his own position, built on the basic Protestant principles of critique of idolatry and openness to truth, he seeks a mediating point beyond skepticism and relativism. But his argument only partially succeeds. One cannot help feeling that too much of Christian certainty is compromised. A sounder basis for religious liberty can be found in the earthly ministry of our Lord, who, while he made absolute claims, granted aboslute freedom of rejection. God’s choice of the cross prohibits coercion to faith by external authority, either of church or of state.

After building his case, the author discusses the applications and limitations of a public policy of religious liberty. The Christian desires a “responsible state,” he says, and should seek to bring this into being, individually and through political pressure from church blocs.

Wogaman’s position, when applied in specific areas of public concern—e.g., public and religious educational systems, political action, and religious establishment—will seem radical to those who object to any Christian social action in the public sphere. Moderates would draw the limits tighter than he does. Nevertheless, his conclusions are well reasoned and help to clarify the main elements of the problem of religious liberty.

Wogaman concludes with a call for Protestants to engage in open dialogue with all Christian groups, with Marxists, and with secular humanism. He sees this as the best way to gain supporters for the principle and practice of a universal policy of religious liberty.

Read this book. The issues raised are The issues. And the answers given will prod you to develop your own.

Book Briefs

Call to Adventure: The Retreat as Religious Experience, edited by Raymond J. Magee (Abingdon, 1967, 160 pp., $2.25). Twelve enlightening essays on how the Christian retreat can advance people spiritually.

Recent Homiletical Thought, A Bibliography, 1935–1965, edited by William Too-hey and William D. Thompson (Abingdon, 1967, 303 pp., $4.75). Scholars will greet enthusiastically this excellent annotated bibliography on preaching.

Yearbook of American Churches, 1967 Edition, edited by Constant H. Jacquet, Jr. (National Council of Churches, 1967, 258 pp., $7.50). Authoritative, indispensable data on all religious organizations.

The Century Bible: Leviticus and Numbers, edited by N. H. Snaith (Nelson, 1967, 352 pp., 50s.). Uses the documentary hypothesis to dissect the third and fourth books of the Pentateuch.

Salute to Sandy, by Dale Evans Rogers (Revell, 1967, 117 pp., $2.95). Dale’s touching description of the life of son Sandy, the third child in the Roy Rogers family to die, conveys the power and greatness of God’s love in the lives of those who trust him.

To Understand Each Other, by Paul Tournier (John Knox, 1967, 63 pp., $2). Understanding—particularly between marriage partners—requires openness, courage, love, realization of differences, and primarily mutual submission to Jesus Christ. Helpful advice, says this Swiss physician, is incomplete without spiritual renewal.

At the Lord’s Table, by Ralph G. Turnbull (Baker, 1967, 141 pp., $2). Sermon-meditations from a Presbyterian minister on twenty-one aspects of the Lord’s Supper.

Herod: Profile of a Tyrant by Samuel Sandmel (Lippincott, 1967, 282 pp., $5.95). A detailed history by a Jewish scholar of Herod the Great, the ambitious and cruel despot best known for his slaughter of the innocents at the time of Christ’s birth.

Augsburg Historical Atlas of Christianity in the Middle Ages and the Reformation, by Charles S. Anderson (Augsburg, 1967, 68 pp., $7.50). Colorful maps and helpful explanations that trace a millennium of Christianity from Pope Gregory through the Thirty Years’ War.

Paperbacks

Are You Going to Church More But Enjoying It Less?, by Gary Freeman (R. B. Sweet, 1967, 260 pp., $2.95). Many of these concise, clever essays get right to the point of Christianity in contemporary life.

Christ’s Ambassadors: The Priority of Preaching, by Frank Colquhoun (Westminster, 1967, 93 pp., $1.45). The case for clear, biblical preaching incorporating both kerygma and didache is presented convincingly in this new addition to the “Christian Foundation Series.”

The Altizer-Montgomery Dialogue (Inter-Varsity Press, 1967, 96 pp., $.95). A complete transcript of the “death-of-God” debate between Thomas J. J. Altizer and John Warwick Montgomery at the University of Chicago, February 24, 1967.

Team Teaching in Christian Education by Frances M. Anderson (Evangelical Covenant Church of America, 1967, 92 pp., $1.25). The author says that team teaching—which requires greater effort from the teachers—stimulates pupil interest and participation and actually extends from koinonia (Christian fellowship).

From time to time the call comes: the Christian preacher should “get back to the Bible.” A major reason for the triviality of much of today’s preaching, it is said, is the modern preacher’s failure to take the Bible seriously.

The preaching ministry must be the heart of the minister’s work. Although he cannot use his focus on preaching as an excuse for neglecting to counsel his people, to visit them in their homes, and to carry on the administrative duties of the church, still preaching remains his central function.

Protestants stand in the heritage of the Bible. This is indisputable. The problem comes in what follows. Perhaps my position leads me to be overly sensitive to anything that smacks of modern Marcionism, but the absence of the Old Testament in the thinking, talking, and writing of some Christians always astonishes me. Obviously, the New Testament is crucial to our faith. If Christian clergy were to catch the spirit of the New Testament emphasis on preaching and apply it to our own day, all Christendom would be enriched. But this is not the whole story. The Bible is more than the New Testament. How impoverished Christianity would have been all these centuries without the spiritual depths of the Psalter or the practical virtues of the Wisdom Literature. Let us turn now, however, to the Old Testament prophets, who were preachers par excellence.

P. H. Menoud, writing on “Preaching” in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, contrasts (for the most part) the prophets with the New Testament. He feels that the prophets were not bringing news but rather were calling for a stricter obedience to the given law. In my opinion, this is a gross misrepresentation of their activity. It might possibly come from the account of the call of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi to build the temple and give God decent sacrifices; but the essence of their message was the honor the people were refusing to give to God. This failure to honor God is certainly repeated in our situation today. It recalls Menoud’s earlier statement that the prophets’ commission to exhort the elect to remain faithful to God might be compared with the charge of the Christian preacher today.

A recent article on Christian preaching said that “the most important moments of our era occur when God’s Word is proclaimed.” Surely it is significant that the prophets so frequently begin, “Thus saith the Lord,” that Jeremiah said God’s Word was like a fire in his bones, and that John describes Jesus Christ as the Word of God. God encounters mankind through his Word, or, to put it more correctly, mankind encounters God through his Word. Dr. L. E. Toombs, in The Old Testament in Christian Preaching, notes that the prophet began his thought with God rather than man. He began with what he knew about God and moved to the needs and conditions of his hearers.

What the pulpit lacks today is the prophetic power of this divine-human encounter that begins with God, the announcement of his presence and of his will. The Christian preacher is called to preach the Gospel. But far too much “preaching the Gospel” today is trivial and irrelevant. One reason is that “preaching the Gospel” has become an excuse for ignoring the problems of today—the problems of crime and war, our youth, race relations, the poverty of a third of our citizens, the shady practices that go on everywhere, from the halls of Congress and business and labor to our schools and even our churches. Too much “preaching the Gospel” consists of soft words about gentle Jesus meek and mild, Instead of a firm proclamation of the prophetic Christ who scathingly denounced the hypocrisy of his day. The prophetic “Thus saith the Lord,” with its pronouncement of God’s judgment upon the sins of the people and nations, must be a part of our preaching.

The content of the message, the nature of the Word, cannot be overlooked. The average Christian congregation today is far more similar to the religious community in the Old Testament than to the community of believers in the New. Even a casual reading of prophetic literature will spotlight the outward maintenance of institutional religion but large indifference to the Almighty in the rest of life.

Granted, there are still many heathen around, both here and abroad, who have not heard the Good News. The command to go forth into all the world is still with us, along with the hymn about the heathen at our door. But most of the people listening to the preacher today are not waiting for the Messiah to come, and so the announcement of the Good News that he has come passes over them like water off a duck’s back. They have heard it all before, “so what else is new?” The proclamation of what God did in Palestine 1,900 years ago is not nearly so interesting as what is going on here right now. One might better stay home and catch the latest news on TV! But as the Old Testament points out again and again, God is constantly concerned with the current events among men and nations. He speaks through his prophets to declare his presence and his will, his purpose for his people and for his world.

Although it is theoretically possible to separate this prophetic preaching from the Gospel, the two are inextricably intertwined. Jesus himself was recognized as a prophet, and prophets were second only to apostles in the New Testament Church. But if we restrict our prophetic concern to the New Testament, we have missed a whole dimension of our religion. We have missed the vast riches of the divine-human encounter in the Old Testament, the whole of which is touched by, influenced by, written by, the prophetic concern. Prophetism, says B. D. Napier, is that “understanding of history which accepts meaning only in terms of divine concern, divine purpose, divine participation.” The Christian Church dare not do without this if it is to remain a vital, creative element in our society. If it is to be significant, Christian preaching must not ignore this dimension of our faith.

Perhaps we could put it this way: The proclamation of the Gospel in 1967 must be a prophetic proclamation. It must be the announcement, not simply that God, incarnate in the flesh of Jesus Christ, has sought man, but also that God, incarnate in these the least of our brethren—those who have been sold for a pair of shoes and the rental of a slum flat—continues to seek man. It must be the proclamation that Jesus Christ came into the world, not to be ministered unto but to minister, as servant, as a light to the nations. Both Old and New Testaments reflect the divine concern for comforting the afflicted; in the average church today, however, the preacher’s greater task is thought to be the prophetic affliction of the comfortable. We can hope that such prophetic preaching “will convict us in our lethargy, and will challenge us to action.”—HENRY O. THOMPSON, associate professor of Old Testament, New York Theological Seminary.

Controversy is always unpleasant, and most people shrink from the prospect of becoming involved in it. Disagreements and disputes bring anguish of mind. In the Church, controversy has caused unhappiness and divisions, so much so that many say they will have no part in anything controversial.

Nevertheless, error that is propagated in the name of truth must be resisted.

Pain and inflamation are nature’s warning of infection in the body. So it is with the Church. Where error is presented as truth, evil as good, man as sovereign above God, there must be a reaction, and this reaction means controversy. Only by such reactions is it possible for the Church to maintain purity of doctrine and life.

When a body no longer reacts to harmful stimuli, it is either desperately sick or dead. The same is true of the Church.

Unfortunately, there have always been disagreements over secondary matters. Some have been the result of personality clashes in which bruised human egos triumphed over what should have been Christian humility.

But where there are deviations from basic Christian truths, there must be reactions for the truth. Such reactions are good and right and are a blessing to the Church as a whole.

Obviously there must be a source of reference, a norm on which to base convictions. This is found in the Holy Scriptures.

The New Testament gives abundant proof that our Lord and the founders of the early Church harked back to the Old Testament as the basis of their authority. They accepted at face value statements that some today would say were “taken out of context” but that were really messages of the Holy Spirit received by those whose minds and hearts were open to his teaching.

In subsequent church history, the early fathers went to the Word of God for guidance and authority. Later years brought the Westminster Confession of Faith, produced by a group of about 150 men who were noted for their deep and reverent scholarship and who worked five days a week for over five years. This monumental work, which has never been excelled as a statement of the Christian faith and the reasons for it, says this about the Scriptures: “The authority of the Holy Scriptures, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the word of God” (chap. 1:IV).

Section V continues: “We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to a high and reverent esteem for the Holy Scripture; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth evidence itself to be the word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.”

Somewhat quaintly worded, yes; I have no unyielding attachment to this particular wording. But I know of no finer statement of the complete integrity and authority of the Holy Scriptures.

The most important thing to remember in dealing with the matter of Christian controversy is that it is not what men think or say but what the Scriptures say that is of ultimate significance.

In the early Church, Judaizers went up to Antioch and troubled the Gentile Christians by telling them that circumcision was necessary for salvation. The future of the Church was at stake. Was salvation a work of God’s free grace to be received by faith alone, or were there other requirements? Was the Christian under the bondage of the Law, or was he freed from that bondage by Christ?

If one reads Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians in conjunction with Luke’s account of the meeting in Jerusalem, one realizes that Paul attended the meeting, not to receive instructions, but to tell of God’s work of grace among the Gentiles and of his own clear, direct revelation from Jesus Christ. Paul entered into this controversy with convictions nothing could shake. He knew that a deadly heresy was being injected into the life of the Church, and he would not tolerate it.

Matters brought to court must be resolved by reference to applicable laws. To act in defiance of the clear meaning of the law brings chaos and anarchy.

In differences within the Church, the final decisions must be made in accordance with the clear teachings of the Scriptures. Like the Bereans who, when they heard the Apostle Paul, searched the Scriptures to see whether his preaching was true, the Church must take the Bible as the final authority. If it does not, the way is opened for any heresy.

When controversy takes place in a spirit of Christian love, all can benefit. It is lack of love that brings discredit. Paul warns those who find it necessary to oppose a disobedient person not to “look on him as an enemy but to warn him as a brother” (2 Thess. 3:15). But for those who would preach “another gospel,” Paul has only the severest condemnation (Gal. 1:8,9).

Controversy demands not only love but also humility, a humility that is willing to take rebuffs, unjust criticism, and misunderstanding, all for the glory and honor of God. Once we let personalities prevail, the battle is lost and our witness for good vanishes.

Let us also beware of gloating over the sin of others and broadcasting it to the world. There is no surer way to lose one’s testimony for the right.

Controversy is necessary when the truth is perverted or assailed. But we must beware lest our contending for the faith become contentiousness, accompanied by bitterness, lovelessness, and harshness of judgment.

The whole question of truth has to do with God and his revelation to man. It has to do with the person and work of Jesus Christ and the record we have of him in both the Old and the New Testament. It has to do with doctrines and their application to our own lives.

To speak out in defense of the Christian faith is serious business, and it is difficult to do with grace and humility; but it is not sinful. To remain silent when the faith is perverted or denied is sinful. If there is danger of disturbing the peace of the Church by speaking, there is far more danger when the purity of the Church is threatened and no one speaks.

Controversy there must be, when the purity of the Church is in danger; but it should be carried on in an atmosphere of prayer, Christian love, and dependence upon the help of the Holy Spirit.

L. NELSON BELL

Dear Keepers Of The Flame:

“Burn, baby, bum!” shrieked the Watts rioter in August, 1965, as he hurled a Molotov cocktail through a plate-glass window and yet another furniture store became a flaming symbol of the results of liberal social protest. Little did I realize then that this inflammatory cry was a proclamation of the “Word of God.” Enlightenment has come from the Southern Presbyterians’ Council on Church and Society, which told the church’s 1967 General Assembly that “we must listen to the cries ‘Yankee, go home,’ ‘Bum, baby, burn,’ ‘America will be crushed.’ Our quest must be for the Word of God that comes to us in, through, and beyond these words of men.”

I never cease to be amazed at the uncanny ability of theologically liberal social-ethics “experts” to recognize the divine pronouncements in revolutionary battle cries. And I also marvel at their penchant for determining exactly where God is or is not “at work in society.” By a rare coincidence, however, they invariably find God’s hand in radical and liberal causes but seldom see it in moderate, time-tested measures. They are deaf to the Bible’s emphasis that the Church’s primary task is evangelistic, not political. But they clearly hear God speaking to us as a bearded, khaki-clad Castroite shouts “Yankee, go home!,” a power-hungry Communist declares “America will be crushed!,” or a wild-eyed hoodlum screams “Burn, baby, burn!” I wonder what new message from God they have heard from the lips of rioters in Detroit and Newark.

God spoke to Moses from a burning bush, but so help me I surely can’t hear him speaking from those blazing furniture stores. As for the burning convictions of many of our ecclesiastical social prophets, I do not doubt that they come from a hot source. But methinks that perhaps it’s that fiery place below.

Your matchless torch-bearer, EUTYCHUS III

Of Love And Law

Congratulations are in order for your July 21 panel discussion, “The Bible and the New Morality,” and for your outstanding editorial, “The Debilitating Revolt.” Especially good in the latter was your keen analysis of what the law of God really is.…

If the onslaught of the “new morality” will cause us all to obtain a newer and broader view of what law means, then, ironically, it will perform a valuable service despite itself.

FREDERICK DIAZ

Latin-American Seventh-Day Adventist

Church

San Francisco, Calif.

Regardless of the motive behind the argument of Bishop Robinson and other advocates of the new morality, it boils down to a seeking for a license to commit the same old immorality which has been condemned by all sense of decency (even apart from the Scriptures) since the giving of the Ten Commandments.

DENZIL R. DANIEL

Faith Methodist Church

Alexandria, Va.

The panel members made no attempt to give a clear definition of what is meant by the new morality. Instead they criticized what, for the most part, are perversions of the new morality.…

The new morality is hardly simplistic. Indeed, it is complex and does demand very much of people—it demands that they think responsibly about the situation and about the persons involved in that situation, both directly and secondarily. The New Testament demands of love that Jesus taught are much harder to keep than are the Ten Commandments, because they are based on radical love, even for enemies; this is much harder to do than observing the letter of the law of the Ten Commandments. It was through radical love that Jesus “fulfilled” the law, rather than destroying it … and showed how incomplete was the letter-of-the-law legalism of the Pharisees.

KEITH E. WATSON

Tomahawk Methodist Church

Tomahawk, Wis.

The question of sin aside, let the adherents of the new morality dare to counter the historic Christian assertion that man from his origin has stood incomplete without divine direction. The cultured voices of faith rise up to tell us that morality, or for that matter existence itself, has meaning only in revelation.

JOHN M. TAYLOR

Ventnor City, N. J.

This is one of the shallowest treatments I have ever seen in print.… Why not have a situationalist on your “new morality” panel? Surely truth would be better served.

JOSEPH D. SMALL 3RD

Towson Presbyterian Church

Towson, Md.

Thank you for your positive stand against the “new morality.”

JOHN C. WINSTON, SR.

Brussels, Belgium

It is neither new, nor is it moral. You should have branded it as shameful immoral conduct which is as old as the world.

PETER L. VAN DYKEN

Ripon, Calif.

Whether or not the new morality is a valid Christian ethic—and I don’t believe it is—you do modern man a disservice by stating and implying that there is a single, clear, biblical ethic which he needs only discover and follow.

LEROY DAY

Sioux Falls, S. Dak.

I read with deep interest the panel presentation.… I underscored approval of your final comments—“But we have emphasized that love gains its direction from the commandments of God. The Ten Commandments are still the divine standard by which the world will be judged.” In fact the whole presentation merits a strong “Amen”!

But … I could not help recalling a statement which says, “For whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all.” You have made a strong point on the seventh commandment, and in the day of judgment the new moralists will be found guilty of its violation; but what about the fourth commandment, which states just as clearly, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God”?

WM. H. GROTHEER

Bible Department

Madison College

Madison, Tenn.

One weakness of the new morality is its lack of authoritative definition. Love must be defined. What better authority exists than the Bible interpreted by the Holy Spirit?.… “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8). Jesus is as contemporary as today’s newspaper or next week’s periodical. To those who know him, he speaks with authority through the power of the Holy Spirit.

DIGHTON BURDICK

Alfred, N. Y.

Chinese Penetration

Dean R. Kirkwood (“Investment in Christian Missions: Waste or Witness?,” July 21) makes the statement: “I know of no denomination preparing people either for future service in China or for scholarly research in advance of the day of new opportunity.” Mr. Kirkwood should be most encouraged to know that the Far East Broadcasting Company (home office—Whittier, California), in addition to ministering to the spiritual needs of China via radio, has now approved the establishment of a mass-communications research center to be located in Hong Kong. Initially, the team of men involved in this center will consist of: a journalist, anthropologist, political scientist, sociologist, and linguist. These Christian men will use their academic abilities as tools in researching the many perplexing problems of China today. Mr. Kirkwood asks, “Will we be prepared to help in the evangelization of China when another opportunity comes?” Those of us involved in this new and exciting adventure can echo a resounding “Yes!”

ROBERT LARSON

South San Francisco, Calif.

For The New Institute

Tremendous! I couldn’t wait five minutes more to say how wonderful it is to have the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies incorporated (“Dramatic Development for Evangelical Scholarship,” July 21). The enclosed $10 check speaks for my own interest and that of some of my poorer evangelical college friends. Keep us posted. And we will keep praying.

BARBARA J. HOPWOOD

Mt. Ranier, Md.

I enclose my “dollar”—actually $1.25 to cover the “depreciation” of our dollar.…

JOHN B. CRAIG M

Calvary Baptist Church

idland, Ont.

Enclosed is my cheque.… May God inspire the giving of the other $39,999, 168!

R. D. HOGG

Winnipeg, Man.

While education is not a panacea for all the ills of mankind, when combined with evangelical zeal … it has time and again proved to be an effective force for good.… My wife and I enclosed one dollar each.…

ALAN C. WARES

Instituto Linguistico de Verano

Mexico City, Mexico

• The dollar gifts of interested readers have now set the Institute cause ahead by $864.—ED.

Sermon Aid

I have just completed typing the sermon for this Lord’s Day, “Let’s Get Down to Business,” and right now I must tell you how much I appreciate CHRISTIANITY TODAY as an invaluable source for information—yes, even inspiration—to aid in sermon preparation.

As an example, I found Dr. Billy Graham’s article in the July 21 issue (“God’s Revolutionary Demand”) certainly apropos to my topic. “If every Christian in the world suddenly began proclaiming the Gospel and winning others to an encounter with Jesus Christ,” this would be “getting down to business”!

GEORGE L. VAN LEUVEN

Mt. Pleasant and First United

Presbyterian Churches

Darlington, Pa.

A Fine Assessment

“Assessing Jehovah’s Witnesses” (July 21) is one of the finest critical articles on this sect that I have read. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to be complimented on its theological position and commitment to the Word of God.

JAMES L. KNIGHT, JR.

First Baptist

Lake Alfred, Fla.

The Doctor’S Order

As each issue of your magazine arrives, the first thing I turn to is Dr. Bell’s column: “A Layman and His Faith.” It is like a fortnightly shot of spiritual adrenalin to an always hurried, sometimes harried, pastor. L. Nelson Bell consistently has something of value to add to my ministry and to my life.

ROBERT W. HENDERSON

The Third Congregational Church

Middletown, Conn.

Reading For Balance

As a liberal-conservative, I have been reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY for many years as a counter-balance against the Christian Century. However, I have discovered that the way-out left is completely intolerant to any viewpoint other than that which is in current vogue. Strange, isn’t it?

THOMAS O. DEKLE

Kendall Baptist Church

Washington, D. C.

Let me thank you for your magazine. It’s the only survivor of all the religious periodicals I’ve ever subscribed to. You manage to combine news of topical interest with wisdom and Christian dedication in a near perfect blend.…

JOSEPHINE L. LANCASTER

Browns Mills, N. J.

You … are doing such an excellent and needed work as to give me a feeling of doing something worthwhile and important in being a subscriber.…

WILLIAM J. PALMER

Oakland, Calif.

Renaming Your Church

The way things are going theologically and ecumenically, most of our church names will be out of date in a few years.… “Grace Episcopal” and “Fourth Presbyterian” will have to go. “Emmanuel Lutheran” will bite the dust, “Emmanuel” because God is apparently no longer with us and “Lutheran” because such a crass reminder of that dissident fellow may be an effrontery to the separated brethren.

A practical problem arises: What shall we rename our churches? What titles will be appropriate to the ecclesiastical bodies of the syncretistic seventies? Even in a super-church, individual congregations can hardly be expected to be exuberant about being called “One Hundred Seventy-eighth United Church of Cleveland,” or “Church 4,798, District Q.”

I suggest the following list as a starter for ministers who would like their churches to be pioneers in the new name rush:

Church of the Ground of Being

Second Tillichian Church

The Renewed Church of America

Assembly of the Involved

Bonhoeffer Memorial Church

Altizerian Assembly

Congregation of the Concerned

Third Church of Relevance

Ecumenical Brethren

Church of the Four-Square Civil-Rights Gospel

Of course, even the most starry-eyed optimists about the “new look” in the ecclesia do not suppose that everybody will go along with it. Are there any takers for “The United Church of Dissident Sects” and “The Federation of Auti-Ecumenical Bodies”?

LEROY KOOPMAN

Morrison, Ill.

Few words in the vocabulary of Western man today are more revered than “tolerance.” This word suggests the disposition to be patient and understanding toward people of differing opinions or practices. It suggests freedom from severity or bigotry in judging the conduct of others. One of the Bible’s great chapters speaks of it in this way: “Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (1 Cor. 13:4–7).

The word “tolerance” derives from the Latin tolerare, meaning “to endure.” The thing to be endured is always some person, idea, attitude, or action that one believes to be wrong. It follows from the definition, then, that tolerance involves one’s attitude toward error, or at least toward what one believes to be error.

This is a tall order, of course, and it indicates that a tension must always exist between tolerance and truth. Tolerance demands that one treat charitably persons or groups espousing convictions contrary to one’s own understanding of truth, graciously granting to them the right to contradict, to believe differently, to speak their minds. On the one hand is commitment to truth, on the other an obligation to be generous-hearted toward those opposed to that truth. Unable to resolve this dilemma, some men have traditionally sought to escape it by embracing one extreme and forsaking the other.

Some have chosen to pursue truth zealously and despise toleration as softness. Ardor for truth has forever been the assassin of tolerance, a cloak for the most evil and revolting human passions. Wars have been waged for the glory of God; bloody Crusades and merciless Inquisitions have been staged; atrocities unspeakable have been committed in the name of truth. Like Saul of Tarsus, convicted zealots today continue to make havoc of the hopes of Christ’s Church in the name of Christ. Although the weapons of intolerance have been sophisticated, the spirit of the thumbscrew and the rack is still with us.

But there are two sides to every story. If some have tried to resolve the conflict by professing their devotion to absolute truth and dismissing tolerance as compromise, others have honored tolerance at the high cost of a low concern for truth. Along the path of this second solution, that of an easy tolerance, one may detect five fallacies.

First, many have adopted relativism as a cheap way out of the predicament. Jacques Maritain, the well-known Thomistic philosopher, has observed that “it is not unusual to meet people who think that not to believe in any truth is a primary condition required of democratic citizens in order to be tolerant of one another.” If zeal for truth produces intolerance, the line of logic runs, then the democratic society must diminish passion for absolute truth.

But a society that has a low estimate of truth need not talk of tolerance. For tolerance is a quality reserved for men who have something at stake. Edmund Burke wrote these timely words in 1790:

We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of benevolence, which arises from contempt, is not true charity.

A second fallacy of pseudo-tolerance is that it eventually becomes the license for every evil. Forbearance that thrives on a lack of interest in what is right and what is wrong comes ultimately to embrace the wrong itself. Pope’s Essay on Man has the unforgettable quatrain:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen:

Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Why do we so casually put up with things that repelled previous generations? Have we matured? Have we grown sophisticated? Or have we lost heart in the search for truth, lost touch with objective standards, and brought chaos upon ourselves?

If the mistakes of inflexible absolutists are obvious, the mistakes of indulgent relativists are strikingly similar. The absolutist fails to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. He allows his feelings of righteous indignation to transpose from the object to the subject and concludes that since sin has no right to exist, neither does the man in sin. The relativist does the reverse. He allows his feelings of permissiveness to shift from the human subject, who must be tolerated even if in error, to the error itself. Charity toward the sinner ends up condoning the sin.

The third fallacy grows out of the ease with which the virtue of tolerance can be tainted with the vice of superciliousness.

In 1689 William and Mary signed the famous Act of Toleration. It now stands as a breakthrough in the long fight for individual religious freedom, but its immediate effect was hardly so laudable. The Church of England condescendingly granted the right of private conscience, not in a spirit of genuine tolerance, but with an air of superiority. London took pride in contrasting its newfound generosity with the unbending bigotry of Rome. Attention was not focused upon the dignity of personal freedom; it was focused upon the spiritual maturity that enabled the Anglican church to endure other points of view. Freedom had been written into books of law, but tolerance had not yet been realized in the hearts of men. While it should have been confessing its centuries of bigotry, the church chose to call attention to the special favors it was piously granting to disgruntled minorities.

John Stuart Mill observed:

Those who first broke the yoke of what was called the Universal Church were in general as little willing to permit differences of religious opinion as that church itself.… Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scales.

The fourth fallacy confronting an erring tolerance is the very dogmatism it seeks to correct. The acid test of real tolerance is one’s attitude toward the intolerant, for an open-minded man may be incapable of viewing open-mindedly a position dogmatically taken by another. Unless he is alert, he will react so sharply that he himself will manifest toward the intolerant the pride, hypercriticism, authoritarianism, and cynicism he so much dislikes in them. And he will end up by dogmatizing against dogmatism.

The final fallacy is that under certain circumstances cries for tolerance can arise from a bitter spirit of reaction. Everyone talking about tolerance is not actually practicing it. It is conceivable that some talk much of love and forbearance toward others only as a stratagem for attacking their own communion at the point of its greatest vulnerability. The question is not whether the sermons on love and forbearance are needed. The question concerns the motives that underlie the sermons.

In an article entitled “The Tolerant Personality” in the American Sociological Review, researchers James G. Martin and Frank R. Westie present the results of their studies on the dominant causes of racial prejudice. After listing several with psychological overtones, they name environment as a chief cause.

We find in our midst many Happy Bigots whose prejudices are born, not so much of personal psychological difficulty, but rather of the fact that their community expects and approves their prejudices. In such situations, the tolerant person may well be the deviant and a legitimate subject for analysis in terms of abnormal psychology. He may be tolerant because tolerance is deviation and deviation may be a functionally very important retaliatory mechanism in his personality organization.

This does not imply that all opponents of racial or religious bigotry are motivated by psychological problems, but it does suggest that some crusaders may be. Some who make a hobby of crying out excessively against their bigoted brethren may have a psychological need to cry out about something.

To be at once deeply committed yet genuinely tolerant is no small task, for it is, in fact, to have the mind of Christ. How can it be done? The secret lies in remembering that the end toward which tolerance points is always the right treatment of persons. Since my tolerance is always tested by my treatment of persons, tolerance and truth need not be mutually exclusive. I may remain unqualifiedly intolerant of erroneous ideas and actions while being truly tolerant toward persons I believe to be in error. I may pursue truth with unflagging zeal while never abusing persons with my ardor.

The key of genuine respect for persons also insures against the opposite temptation toward an easy tolerance. It is sentimental piety to talk of respecting a person without earnestly seeking to understand his point of view. To talk of tolerance while practicing moral relativism, smug superiority, dogmatism, and bitter reaction fools no one. Tolerance lies in grasping what the other person understands as truth and in judging him by his own standards, however misguided they may be.

Is the demand too high? No, not for one Man. Not for him whose commitment could not be shaken by a cross but who, all the while, could pray for the ones who nailed him there, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”