Ever since he wrote his famous book on The Structures of the Church, the well-known Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng has been preoccupied with the problem of the Church. Now his new study of The Church has appeared, a book of about 600 pages that signals the birth of a new ecclesiology. All the questions focusing on the Church are here laid bare anew—its unity, catholicity, apostolicity, and holiness. But his comments on the service (diakonia) of the Church make the work of special importance. For he interprets the offices of the Church in terms of service, and does it so radically that he touches the heart of the Catholic ecclesiastical structure.

We could say that his book is structured by what Paul says in Second Corinthians 1:24: “Not that we lord it over your faith; we work with you for your joy.…” This work has its eye, not on some ideal church, a kind of Platonic idea, remote and invisible, but on the actual, existing Church, the one that has to ask itself over and over whether it in fact is the real Church.

Küng wants the Church to stop idealizing itself, as if everything in it were automatically in good shape. So he points the way by talking with utter candor about the Church’s mistakes and sins of the past—as, for example, its posture toward the Jew that found its awful climax in the anti-Semitic statements of the Lateran Council of 1215, its role in the Inquisition, and its frequent display of sheer power. Küng is suspicious of the kind of apologetic that plays down the Church’s faults. The Church must be honest, must confess fault wherever fault is present, and must above all be free from fear lest admission of error will reduce its authority. For the opposite is true.

The Church must be led by the Gospel; it must thereby guard against the temptation to suppose that human action will keep the institution strong. “The criterion for the renewal of the Church,” Küng writes, “must always be the original gospel of Jesus Christ.” The concrete normative image of the Church must be only the apostolic Church. Küng speaks repeatedly of the credibility of the Church in this regard. The Church lives by the grace of God; it is never self-evident in its sufficiency. It must live by grace in humility and prayer, each day anew.

Is there, then, no real continuity in the apostolic succession that guarantees the credibility of the Church? There is continuity, he says, but in the sense of service and mandate; there is no simple repetition and progress within that continuity. Only the original witness of the apostles can function as a norm for the existence and message of the Church. Apostolicity is not a static attribute of the Church; it is actual only as the Church is obedient in service.

All this has implications for the doctrine of papal primacy. For every self-evidence is taken away; now every office, including the Pope’s own, stands under the measure of the Gospel. This measure is: the actuality of service. No one ever thought of asking John XXIII about his place in the “succession.” People were only glad for the renewed fellowship and new perspectives that he created for the strengthening of the communion. Is it not history’s tragedy, writes Küng, that the obedient service of Peter became twisted into a pretentious notion of the power of Peter? Küng recalls the absurd falsification of history that was used to aid this transformation—the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, for example.

Now the Church must return to the role of servant. To make this concrete, it must call a halt to the unbiblical honorific titles it accepts for some of its offices: His Holiness, Pontifex Maximus, Vicar of Christ, and others. Let the Pope have the one title that signals his true office: servant of the servants of God.

Such thoughts are sprinkled on every page of Küng’s book. He hopes that by a self-imposed resignation from pretentions of power, the Church can be the true Church, credible as the Church of Jesus, who came, not to be served, but to serve. Mark 10:45 is a key verse for Küng.

No one who reads this book will be able to claim that nothing can change in Rome. A spirituality rises from its pages that is very remarkable. It cannot fail to remind the reader of the very basic motives of the Reformation. I am not saying that Hans Küng is a crypto-Protestant. But he does reveal a concentration on gospel motifs that were sometimes lost in the traditions of Rome and are again seeking entrance into that church. The influence this book may have is unpredictable. Traditionalists are bound to have problems with it. But it does not betray the spirit of rebellion. Rather, it comes with the mind of the Gospel and reviews the structure of the Church according to the basic structure of the New Testament.

All this is done with an admirable candor and liberty seldom seen in the Church. The implications of the service theme are, according to Küng, unforeseeable. His book is a challenge; it must be, because from beginning to end it calls the Church to the Gospel and asks it to see that this is where its true roots lie.

This does not mean that Küng finds a simple solution there for all the exegetical, historical, and dogmatic problems of the day. But he does open up new possibilities for discussion and reflection by pointing to the Word of God as the point of departure and the guideline. One is inclined to ask whether this is not the avenue of reformation. The Church is and can remain a true Church only as it lives under the Word.

Two days after Israel and the Arab lands went to war this month, Jews won control of the entire city of Jerusalem for the first time since A.D. 70. They vowed never again to leave it. Military takeover of the “old” city from Jordan raised immediate hope that the Jews, after so many centuries, could rebuild the Temple on its original site.

Also on that site is the Dome of the Rock or Mosque of Omar, oldest existing Muslim monument, which marks the site where Mohammed is believed to have ascended into heaven. The ancient city once again symbolized the intersection of world religious and political empires in a Middle East rent by ancient animosities. Both Jews and Arabs attached a “holy war” dimension to the new conflict.

The re-entry of the “Holy City” by the Jews was a great moment in world religious history, regardless of the eventual outcome of the war. A rabbi who is a military chaplain to the Israeli army exclaimed, “we are entering the messianic era.”

Jerusalem also contains many Christian shrines, and Pope Paul asked the armies to spare all holy places. His appeal to make Jerusalem “an open and inviolable city” during the war was joined by United Nations Secretary General U Thant.

Except for Lebanon, the warring nations have only tiny Christian minorities; these could do little to affect the religious and ethnic hatreds between Muslims and Jews, who both trace their origins to Abraham. Those Christians whose reactions were reported lined up behind their nations. Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Kyrillos VI of Egypt said he backed “all measures of Arab leaders which might lead to the regaining of the Holy Land from those who killed Christ.” The Anglican Diocese of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon supported Jordan’s policies of opposition to Israel and prayed for “a victory of justice over wrong.”

In Israel, where nearly all Christians are Arabs, leaders vowed loyalty to their nation. Roman Catholic Archbishop George Hakin urged the faithful to shun “propaganda from without which is not in the best interest of Arabs.” Israel and the Vatican do not have diplomatic relations, but the crisis produced an unprecedented visit by the Pope’s apostolic delegate, Archbishop Augustine Sepinski, to Israel Premier Levi Eshkol. Sepinski’s offices are in the Jordan sector of Jerusalem, and he is also the Pope’s representative in Jordan.

Reports from Jerusalem during the first two days of fighting said foreign missionaries in Israel were remaining at their posts, though some wives and children were evacuated. The position of missionaries in Arab nations was more dangerous. Concern was expressed at the Southern Baptist Convention for the denomination’s sixty-one missionaries in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Israel—one of the largest contingents in the Middle East. Staffers at Baptist Hospital in the perilous Gaza Strip of Egypt cabled to the United States May 30 that they intended to keep on working. The war has canceled several Holy Land tours and archaeological digs.

With the Arab nations’ strategic oil reserves and Egypt’s control of the Suez Canal, the self-interest of the United States and Britain lay almost exclusively on that side of the conflict. But overshadowing this was the emotional and religious tie with Israel.

While many Christians uttered only their hopes for peace in general, many others expressed explicit support for Israel’s sovereignty and full access to international shipping through the Gulf of Aqaba, which had been blocked by Egypt.

The National Council of Chuyches General Board suggested “establishment of national and international rights” in the gulf. When war broke out, World Council of Churches spokesman O. Frederick Nolde wrote a letter to Thant urging the U. N. Security Council to call “an immediate cease fire.” The United States backed such a move, and Soviet opposition faded along with Arab military fortunes.

Among the most ardent Israeli supporters was Roman Catholic Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan of Atlanta: “We sacrificed Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary against their will when we could have joined with France, England, and the other great powers to save them. I hope that at this hour every force of the civilized world, every means of negotiation, every source of peace will be mustered by the United States to protect the statehood of Israel and the freedom of the open seas and waterways.” Monsignor George Higgins of the U. S. Catholic Conference wired President Johnson that the United States should “remain faithful” to its commitments to Israel.

Another appeal for support of commitments came from such Protestants as Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, John Bennett, and Robert McAfee Brown, all “doves” on the Viet Nam question. In fact, the new war threw the peace alliance of recent months into some disarray. SANE, a moderate anti-war group, postponed Washington demonstrations that were scheduled for the same day as a major pro-Israel rally sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews and major Jewish organizations. The latter stepped up drives to raise millions of dollars to help Israel.

But the voices of Judaism were not in unison. The famous Jewish psychiatrist Erich Fromm, at the Pacem in Terris convocation in Geneva, noted that Israel had refused to permit U.N. troops on her soil. (Egypt’s decision against letting U.N. troops stay on her soil had helped spark the new crisis.) Fromm also said Israel has a moral obligation to compensate Egypt for seizing the property of some 800,000 Arabs who have fled Israel.

Hong Kong: How Long?

The “cultural revolution” that has been convulsing Red China for nine months and has spilled over into the neighboring Portuguese province of Macao has now reached Hong Kong. For the second time in little more than a year, Hong Kong’s teeming, colorful streets have erupted into sudden violence, shattering the deceptive calm of its political life and threatening the long-range future of Christian missions.

Both the 1966 and the 1967 riots were sparked by economic issues that quickly faded as inhabitants of crowded areas in the Kowloon section, particularly the youths, gave vent to pent-up social frustrations.

But there is also a clear difference between the two outbreaks. The first was largely sociological, while last month’s had a more specific economic issue at stake and was initially governed by ideology.

The industrial origins of the trouble were quickly obscured by youthful hooligans and the ugliest kind of blind racial hatred. Right-wing gangs probably took advantage of the prevailing confusion to wreak even greater havoc. By the third day of rioting there was hardly a Mao badge to be seen; the slogan-shouting had become a mere cry of hatred against all police, all Europeans, and all manifestations of law and order.

Hong Kong authorities and the police, who rightly avoided involvement in earlier disputes, unfortunately allowed this situation to grow.

Oddly, there were some indications that Red China wanted calm and order to prevail in Hong Kong. But was the chain of command (or guidance) in China itself still functioning? Despite strong language from Peking, authorities there may have been forced to support their compatriots in Hong Kong.

The usefulness of Hong Kong to Red China is well-documented and includes a flow of 700 million U. S. dollars to Peking every year. After past ultimatums, the Chinese have shown flexibility. Perhaps all that is needed is for Hong Kong authorities to come to terms with the presence of the often-neglected left wing in all strata of the colony’s society.

The general public now has a tremendous revulsion against left-wing organizations, demonstrators, and trade unions, and against those who identify with leftists. There is also a tremendous upsurge of support for the government; supporters include 500 organizations from grass-roots groups to high-level commercial associations. Various churches have also denounced the violent manner in which leftists have made their complaints. They qualified this, however, with the statement that the government should give more consideration to the problems of labor in this rapidly expanding colony, with all its evidence of quick fortunes and maldistribution of riches.

The chief lesson for the churches is that probabaly only a short time remains for the spread of the Christian Gospel both in the colony itself and in Red China through efforts based in Hong Kong. The time remaining may be as little as ten years, is probably about twenty, and might even extend to the full thirty-eight years left in the present lease with the Peking regime. But until now the Christian churches in Hong Kong have studiously avoided contemplating any of these deadlines.

If the riots of 1966 and 1967 do nothing more than convince the foreign missions that their departure is inevitable and that they must begin to consider alternatives, they will have been useful, at least to the Christian Church.

GEORGE N. PATTERSON

Miscellany

Theology Dean R. O. Corvin of Tulsa’s Oral Roberts University told Chilean Pentecostalists intent on founding a university for all of Latin America that they should think in terms of 10,000 students and a development cost of $150 million over twenty to twenty-five years. Corvin denied reports that ORU has any financial commitment to the project.

Christian Times, a Sunday school take-home, last month had announced plans to absorb the Sunday Times (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 9 issue, page 36). But at the last minute the dying weekly was bought by the Union Gospel Press of Cleveland, which will merge the Times’s name and lesson materials with its own semi-monthly and quarterly publications. The Sunday Times Foundation will continue without Chairman John Bolten, who resigned.

Philadelphia College of Bible became the sixth U. S. Bible college to win regional accreditation. Three regional associations (Southern, North Central, Northwest) have yet to accredit a Bible college.

The 1967 U. S. Post Office Christmas stamp will use the same Hans Memling Madonna as last year, only double the size. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the move, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State plans a lawsuit as part of an all-out attack on religious symbols in stamps.

The National Committee of Negro Churches plans a national campaign to raise millions for “economic development of the Negro community.” It finds current programs of government, business, labor, and churches inadequate.

Red faces abounded in Ottawa when a press release said the new national medal, the Order of Canada, would be inscribed with Hebrews 12:16. Actually, it uses Hebrews 11:16.

Plans for a Roman Catholic-supported hospital with Red Cross cooperation in North Viet Nam reportedly are under discussion in the Vatican. The international Catholic charity Caritas recently sent $1 million in medical supplies to North Viet Nam.

Protestant Panorama

Staffers from the three major U. S. Lutheran bodies (Lutheran Church, in America, American Lutheran Church, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) met to promote “a united ministry to young adults,” with initial emphasis on cities. A consultation on the plan will be held next February.

The United Church of Canada reports it lost 2,000 members between 1965 and 1966, the first drop since it was formed in 1925. The denomination’s Observer magazine said “the revival is over.… We may be in for a difficult time of retrenchment.”

The education board of the United Church of Canada voted unanimously to propose formation of five large ecumenical training centers for church workers in the next decade to sweep away “dead denominationalism.” Planners want Roman Catholics and Protestants to study in the same seminaries.

English Presbyterians approved the proposed merger with Congregational churches. The proposed Reformed Church would organize in 1970 with 260,000 members.

After Judson College, a Baptist women’s school, gave Alabama Governor Lurleen Wallace an honorary doctorate, the Baptist weekly Veckoposten in Sweden said, “This shows … how little the trustees of a Christian school allow themselves to ponder the consequences of a Christian confession.”

German affiliates of U. S. Methodists and Evangelical United Brethren met in Stuttgart to discuss joint operations when the U. S. bodies merge next year.

President E. A. Dahunsi of Nigeria’s Baptist Convention told 1,500 delegates to a Lagos meeting that “if Nigeria breaks up now, it is difficult to see how we can ever come together again, except perhaps through a general war—an Armageddon.”

Personalia

William (God is dead) Hamilton will resign from the faculty of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, an American Baptist seminary, to teach religion and Bible at New College in Sarasota, Florida, an independent school founded in 1964 and associated with the United Church of Christ.

Headmistress M. Judy Brown and the other seven staffers at the two-year-old Stony Brook Girls’ School, an independent Long Island evangelical academy, have resigned because of “personal misgivings” about the “structure and competence” of the charismatic-leaning board headed by President W. Arthur Johnson, who assumed full-time school supervision in December.

James McHugh, a Roman Catholic attending Princeton Seminary, will preach and otherwise assist at a Presbyterian church in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Although his Princeton study has no church status, McHugh hopes to become a Catholic priest.

New York Theological Seminary has recruited Henry O. Thompson, Old Testament teacher at Syracuse University; Ronald Soderquist, counseling pastor at St. Olaf College (American Lutheran) in Minnesota; Robert W. Northup, New Testament teacher at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina; and recent Columbia University graduate William J. Schmidt, who will teach church history. NYTS Bible professor Donald M. Stine will move to head the Bible and Christian education department at Tennessee’s Maryville College (United Presbyterian).

C. Shelby Rooks, a United Church of Christ minister, was promoted to executive director of the Fund for Theological Education, succeeding Walter D. Wagoner, new associate dean of California’s Graduate Theological Union. The fund administers three national scholarship competitions for Protestant seminary students.

The Rev. John Logan-Vencta, 68, Scottish-born minister of St. Giles’ Church, Ottawa, was elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Among the twenty-seven new cardinals to be elevated June 26 are three U. S. Roman Catholic prelates: Archbishops John Cody of Chicago, Patrick O’Boyle of Washington, D. C., and John Krol of Philadelphia. The 120 members of the College of Cardinals will now include thirty-seven Italians and nine Americans.

A Roman Catholic priest, Robert Garcia, was named director of New Mexico’s war-on-poverty agency.

The student affairs dean at St. Louis University, Jesuit Thomas McQueeny, barred “black power” spokesman Stokely Carmichael and Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike from next year’s student speaker series. He criticized Carmichael’s “demagoguery” and questioned Pike’s qualifications to discuss theology.

Villagers in Santa Marta, Mexico, jailed visiting Baptist pastor Alejandro Zamora, Southern Baptist missionary Charles Gilbert, and eleven Mexican Baptists, believing that all evangelicals are Communists. The Baptists were released twenty-six hours later and fined a total of $4.

Ian Reid, minister of Old Kirk in Edinburgh, was elected the second leader of the famed Iona Community, a group of clergy and laity who live on an island in northwest Scotland.

Just five years after her husband and two other Americans were captured by the Viet Cong, Mrs. Betty Mitchell has decided to begin another term as a missionary in Banmethuot, South Viet Nam, still hoping for the release of her husband Archie, E. Ardel Vietti, and Dan Gerber. There have been rumors that the men are alive and being used as a medical team by the Communists.

Deaths

PHILIPPE MAURY, 50, member of the Reformed Church of France who directed the World Council of Churches information department after administering the World Student Christian Federation; in Lyon, France, after spleen surgery.

ROCKWELL H. POTTER, 92, dean emeritus of Hartford Theological Seminary and former president of the Congregational Christian mission board; in Hartford.

LEON ROSENBERG, 92, convert from Judaism who spent nineteen years as a missionary to Russia; sentenced to death during the early Bolshevik years but escaped; founder of the American European Bethel Mission; in Los Angeles.

From Atlantic to Pacific came sounds this month of a sometime-forgotten refrain: return to Rome.

Episcopal Bishop C. Kilmer Myers of California went so far as to set conditions under which the pope could be regarded as “chief” of Christendom. Myers seemed thus to echo a campaign now under way for Protestant-Catholic-Orthodox unity talks by the American Church Union, of which he is a member.

In Boston, the National Council of Churches’ General Board was treated to a thirty-nine page report on Christian relations that saw things going just that way.

Myers, successor to Bishop James A. Pike, called on Protestants to acknowledge the pope as the head of Christianity, thus making a move “far more important” than efforts for unity merely among non-Catholics. “We Anglicans and Protestant Christians ought to reexamine our relationship to the Holy See as the chief spokesman for the Christian community in the world,” he said.

Pope Paul VI was urged to implement more convincingly the ideas and actions of the late John XXIII and show himself “the chief pastor of men.” Paul VI ought to visit North and South Viet Nam, Myers said, and “stretch out his arms in a loving gesture to all men.”

Given such a “Christian amplification,” Myers added, “we should, I for one believe, acknowledge him as the chief pastor of the Christian family and we should joyfully acclaim him as the Holy Father in God of the Universal Church.”

The high-church Episcopal paper American Church News published a “solemn declaration” drafted by Dr. J. V. Langmead Casserley of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary urging the Consultation on Church Union to invite Roman Catholics and Orthodox to enter the negotiations “on terms acceptable to themselves.” The Roman church and Orthodox groups currently send “observer-consultants” to the meetings.

“We would not wish to continue with any kind of reunion scheme so much smaller in scale as envisioned by the COCU negotiations, unless it is clearly understood and enthusiastically agreed that nothing can be resolved or done as a result of the COCU negotiations to which those who will represent the church of Rome, the Orthodox churches and the (so-called) Wider Episcopal Fellowship, in future negotiations could conceivably object or regard as a barrier to our closer relationship with them.” The plea asserts that “the reunion of Christendom is impossible without the Papacy.”

Four Episcopal bishops have signed the statement, and at least three others were expected to sign even before this month’s publicity drive began.

The NCC report, product of a year-long study, was a candid appraisal that shook one side of the ecclesiastical spectrum by suggesting that reunion is just around the corner. “It is my conviction,” said Dr. John E. McCaw, professor of church history at Drake University, “that we are approaching, if not actually in, the time of the American church, and the very center of that church could well be the Roman Catholic Church.”

McCaw’s survey, commissioned by the NCC and conducted on a fellowship from the American Association of Theological Schools, shook another segment of the church world by displaying a degree of refreshing candor and objectivity not commonly found in interfaith reports. He enumerated a number of “dangers” implicit in the notion of an “American church” and urged, interestingly enough, “a return to the philosophy that the individual is the key unit in society.” McCaw, a minister of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), included a generous defense of the evangelical cause, in which he said he was raised.

Reprieve For Rcda?

Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, a semi-monthly report threatened with extinction, won a vote of confidence from the National Council of Churches’ General Board this month. A resolution introduced on the floor expressed “deep interest in continuing the publication” and a referral committee added the stipulation that support come from designated funds. Some NCC liberals have been trying to deemphasize RCDA or put it out of business altogether (see April 28 issue, page 24).

The NCC General Board at its spring meeting in Boston, voiced its strongest plea to date for a halting of the bombing of North Viet Nam. It also lamented what it considered the disparity in Congress’s treatment of Adam Clayton Powell and of Thomas Dodd.

His strongest words were directed against persons who minimize personal piety. “A true prophet is a holy man, not a purveyor of four-letter words.” He declared that “today’s anti-evangelism, anti-conversion, and anti-personal-holiness mood is separating church institutional staffs from the parishioner, whose innate desire is for total commitment, for leadership to higher planes, and for programmed discipline resulting in achievement.”

Along with the McCaw report, the NCC board got a briefing on talks between the Vatican and the World Council of Churches. The fifth and most recent meeting of the “Joint Working Group” was held last month near Rome. Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, general secretary of the NCC and a member of the joint group, said the five-day meeting ended with a private audience with Pope Paul.

Toward Unity On Communion

When is a mass not a mass? An ecumenical non-mass was held in Milwaukee last month. The communion elements were present but not the “intent,” explained Lutheran R. W. Anderson, who joined in celebrating the experimental mass with Episcopalian John P. Talmage and Bernard J. Cooke, head of Marquette University’s theology department. As a guitarist played, a loaf of rye bread was broken and goblets of wine passed to seventy-five nuns, priests, and laymen.

Days before, the Vatican had issued liberalized rules on sacraments, the first of several installments of ecumenical regulations. Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians may now partake of Roman Catholic communion and other sacraments in “emergency situations,” if they declare a sacramental belief “in harmony” with that of Catholicism. Catholics may receive Orthodox communion if their bishops approve, but not Protestant communion.

These ecumenical rules were followed by a 12,000-word list of eucharistic regulations from Pope Paul that puts the brakes on ecumenical experiments such as living-room agape feasts between Catholics and Protestants. The Pope said no priest or layman is permitted, on his own, to tamper with the liturgy.

The ecumenical guidelines permit Protestants to participate in confession and extreme unction (anointing of persons close to death). The document takes a strong stand against rebaptizing a convert who has been baptized under “the norms of his own community or church.” Conditional rebaptisms such as the controversial one given Luci Johnson in 1965 are prohibited “unless there is prudent doubt of the fact, or of the validity, of a baptism already administered.”

The requirement of sacramental “harmony” presumably would still prohibit many, if not most, Protestants from taking Roman Catholic communion. The most likely to be affected are Anglicans. The same week the rules were issued, teams of Roman Catholic and Episcopal negotiators met in Milwaukee and reached general agreement on “the Eucharist as sacrifice.” Participants said the Catholics saw that the Anglicans really do regard communion as a sacrifice, while Anglicans found that Catholics do not believe each mass is a new sacrifice and death of Christ. The agreement was stated jointly as follows:

“In the Lord’s Supper we participate at the same time in Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.… Christian people participating in Christ’s priesthood through baptism and confirmation are meant to be a living sacrifice to God. That sacrifice finds its fullest expression in the eucharistic offering of the priesthood of the people of God.… The sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist is not just the sacrifice of the cross but the sacrifice of Christ’s whole life of obedience to the Father which culminated in his death on the cross and his glorious resurrection.…”

Wycliffe On The Move

Lured by an offer of a free 100-acre site or money to buy a comparable plot of land, Wycliffe Bible Translators decided to move its offices from Santa Ana, California, to Dallas by a year from September.

A committee of thirty Dallas business and civic leaders campaigned to land the interdenominational group, which develops written forms of the languages of remote tribes and then translates the Bible into them.

Representatives of WBT’s 2,000 staffers met at the new field headquarters near Mexico City this month to ponder “organizational readjustments” in light of the organization’s “rapid growth.” WBT also reports a record enrollment of 281 for its Summer Institute of Linguistics courses at the Universities of North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Washington.

A definite thrust toward social concern was generated by the Southern Baptist Convention in its annual meeting of 15,000 messengers over the Memorial Day weekend in Miami Beach. It was unclear immediately whether the thrust would be enough to overcome some forces of reaction and maintain a course that would put the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in a new orbit.

“The name of the game is ‘involvement,’ and it is played not just on Sunday but on every day of the week,” declared the Rev. James L. Pleitz, the Pensacola, Florida, pastor who was elected chairman of the SBC Executive Committee. The extent of that involvement must be worldwide, the unusually quiet messengers were told by Senator Mark O. Hatfield. And that involvement must be in concert with other Christians, particularly other evangelicals, insisted the Rev. J. D. Grey.

Ignition of the theme took place in the pre-convention meetings of the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference and the Women’s Missionary Union. Nearly every speaker dwelt on the need for social concern. The hardest-hitting was the Rev. Buckner Fanning of San Antonio, Texas, who said:

“Unless our churches become places of worship where people of all races and classes meet together in Christ through through worship and fellowship; unless we become great streams of new life flowing out from our sanctuaries into the hot, parched prairies of human needs; unless we Baptists experience a change of attitude and a change of direction, then we too will pass into the graveyard of denominations.”

In his own church, Fanning reported, the tradiational “study and do nothing” organizations have been dumped in favor of groups actively involved in ministering to the needs of people in such places as classrooms to tutor dropouts, clinics for the indigent ill, foster homes, a food-and-clothing center, a job-placement office, and a home for unwed mothers.

“Nowhere did Christ ever tell the world to come to the church, but repeatedly he told us as his body and his Church to go into all the world with his Gospel,” said Fanning.

Despite a few sputterings, that theme seemed to lift the Southern Baptists from their traditional stand-offishness and emphasis on a preaching-only ministry once the convention itself got under way. The thrust was most powerful as Hatfield warned that “hunger will shape the destiny of nations more than any other force in the world today.” Rebuking the Christian Church for failing to carry out its mandate to alleviate human suffering and needs, the Conservative Baptist layman said the consequence has been that government has had to move in with attempts to feed and heal the bodies of men without being able to feed and heal their souls.

The failure of affluent, self-centered American Christians to be concerned with the starving millions in the world played a part in bringing about the costly conflict in Viet Nam, said Hatfield, former Republican governor of Oregon, who recalled seeing people dead of starvation in Hanoi when he visited there as a sailor in World War II. He added that Christians “have an obligation to use our creative forces to find alternatives to war.”

That also was the gist of a report of the Christian Life Commission that created the only real controversy during the placid convention. It called poverty, the population explosion, race, religion, power-hungry leaders, and totalitarianism all contributors to the threat of war.

The controversy arose over the mildly “dovish” views on Viet Nam expressed in the report as it was made by Foy Valentine, executive secretary of the commission. He called upon “all the churches not to be blinded by distorted appeals to false patriotism so that they lose sight of the personal tragedy, the great sorrow, and the fantastic cost attached to the present conflict.” He added that “a spirit of solemn penitence is in order.”

Urging public debate on the issues and criticizing those “who doubt the patriotism of anyone who questions our government’s present official position,” the report encouraged government leaders to “continue to pursue patiently every course that might lead to a peaceful settlement of international problems in general and of the Viet Nam conflict in particular.”

Despite the fact that a Sunday School Board survey made at the convention showed that two-thirds of the messengers could be considered “hawks” on Viet Nam and favored escalation of the fighting there, the messengers overwhelmingly turned down attempts by the Rev. Rufus Spraberry of Texas and the Rev. Ray O. Jones of Tennessee to get them to declare open support of American policy in Viet Nam or to demand an end to what was called a “no-win” policy in the war. However, at the suggestion of Harold Coble of California, the report was amended to make it clear that Southern Baptists were not calling for the withdrawal of U. S. forces from Viet Nam “apart from a just and honorable peace.”

The Rev. James Duke of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, moved that the Christian Life Commission be dissolved, partly because its stand against racial discrimination was creating “general distrust of Southern Baptist literature.” The motion was defeated soundly. The CLC announced that its communications director for the past six years, Ross Coggins, would become Southeast administrator of the federal VISTA program this month.

The messengers apparently were reluctant to take clear-cut stands on any social issue. They had been warned—by speakers at the evangelists’ conference, in the opening sermon by Dr. Lindrum P. Leavell of Wichita Falls, Texas, and in a major address by Dr. W. A. Criswell, well-known pastor of the 10,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas—that the main business of the Church is to reconcile man to God through the preaching of the Word. So resolutions adopted on birth control and church-state relations were carefully worded to be innocuous.

Nevertheless the air of change permeated the crowd, which included two preachers for every layman, and there was little doubt that many Southern Baptist messengers would go home with new determination to work with other Christians in seeking solutions to social problems as a demonstration of the love of God they will continue to preach from their pupils.

Social Action Through Evangelism

Evangelist Leighton Ford incorporated a social-action program into his three-week crusade last month in Seattle. Featured speakers were four Washingtonians whose Christian faith propelled them into social service. Richard J. Simmons said Billy Graham’s 1951 crusade gave him the impetus to start “Job Therapy,” an employment program for ex-convicts. United Press International reporter Orv Boyington told about a young prisoner he sponsors; Donna Haldane spoke of the Neighborhood House Tutorial Program, aimed at low-income families; and John Dawson described his decision to become a missionary surgeon in Korea.

In his closing sermon Ford said, “You cannot be a private Christian. The Christian must show allegiance to Christ in his personal, church, and social life.”

Some 1,500 of the 75,000 who attended the crusade responded to Ford’s customary appeal for commitment to Christ. But a new appeal was made also at the “Christian Action” night. A form was distributed listing ten fields of service that needed volunteers, and people were asked to fill out the form and hand it in if they could help. A special offering was taken for rehabilitation of prisoners and for two war-on-poverty efforts.

On the side, Ford, a 35-year-old Southern Presbyterian clergyman, spent considerable time conferring with civil-rights and poverty workers.

Ford’s mentor and brother-in-law Billy Graham followed a similar theme in a press conference with War on Poverty chief Sargent Shriver last month. “I hope the Congress gives him more money next year than they did last year,” Graham said.

Graham then moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, for his first major Canadian crusade since 1955. On closing day, June 4, he drew an overflow crowd of 25,000 persons, the largest in the history of Winnipeg Stadium. The attendance total for the eight-day crusade was 126,000, and 3,500 persons responded to the invitations. On June 15, Graham was to fly to London for a Britain-wide effort that includes extensive use of closed-circuit TV.

Evangelicals Eye New Links

Top Baptist churchmen came out strongly this month for new dimensions of evangelical cooperation. As a result, the Southern Baptist Executive Committee is undertaking a year-long study and will probably make recommendations in 1968.

The move came following an editorial plea in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (June 9 issue, p. 24) and a speech by Florida pastor Jess Moody proposing mutual action by conservative Protestants across denominational lines. The proposals won wide publicity.

H. Franklin Paschall, re-elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, voiced support of more cooperation with other Christians in a “oneness of spirit.”

American Baptist Convention President L. Doward MacBain told a press conference: “I think it is not only possible, but it is absolutely essential for evangelicals to cooperate.”

Joseph H. Jackson, president of the big National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., said “there is no obstacle between Christians committed to the same Christ.”

The Rev. Alastair C. Walker asked SBC messengers to set up a special committee to explore evangelical unity. A substitute motion prevailed, however, which entrusted the task to the group that handles Southern Baptist business between annual meetings.

At Colorado Springs, executives of more than a dozen major independent missionary agencies agreed to establish a joint research center. They also issued a statement asserting that “a manifestation of … unity is essential to the hastening of world evangelization.”

Interchurch Stir In Edinburgh

Nothing stirs the interest and raises the temperature of the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly more than the debate on interchurch relations. Last month’s annual assembly in Edinburgh was no exception, particularly when it discussed the continuing negotiations with Anglicans.

That these talks continue to arouse deep suspicion in the Kirk could be seen from a counter-motion by Dr. Harry Whitley, John Knox’s successor at St. Giles’ and no friend of episcopacy. What he asked was deceptively mild: a message from the assembly to the people of Scotland that we “still believe Presbyterian government is agreeable to God now, and not at a later date to be arranged when we will all be given ecclesiastical passports to show we are legitimized.” Whitley wanted unity (he said), but only if it was consistent with all the basic articles of the Church of Scotland. His move to safeguard this position was defeated, but the closeness of the vote could not have escaped the notice of the interchurch committee, the most controversial in the Kirk.

More successful was a motion by the Rev. Andrew Herron, clerk of Glasgow Presbytery, who disliked the committee’s complaint that its task was “made even less easy by deliberate opposition both by certain outside influences and by some members of our own Church, both ministers and members.” Herron, a law graduate, succeeded in adding a section about respecting “the position of those ministers and members who … cannot wholeheartedly concur in the objective of One Church as this has so far been defined.”

The convenor, Dr. Nevile Davidson, had earlier denied that there were pressure groups within the Anglican-Pres-byterian conversations and that ecumenical talks distracted the church from its primary call to mission. His committee successfully resisted an attempt to appoint a special body to examine the Anglican “doctrine of the Historic Apostolic Succession,” and another that would have incorporated in the interchurch relations committee “a few watchdogs” to ensure that the Anglicans did not do what they said they were not going to do.

The possibility of women ministers moved a significant step forward when the assembly by a 397–268 vote agreed to send down to presbyteries an overture proposing that women be ordained to the ministry on the same terms as men. The matter will thereafter come before the 1968 assembly for decision. The Panel on Doctrine set up to consider the whole question had contented itself with a report outlining two separate views of the subject for the assembly’s consideration. This was the first meeting of the supreme court since women became eligible for eldership in the Kirk, and three were in attendance. Such a novelty was this that one was at first refused admission by the doorkeepers; John Knox’s views on the “Monstrous Regiment” may still have their devotees.

The proposal to have the matter of the ordination of women sent to presbyteries came from the Rev. W. Grahame Bailey. “The arguments … brought against the ordination of women,” he told the fathers and brethren, “are of the same kind as were used by the Roman Catholics to oppose Galileo; the Protestant evangelicals to refute Darwin; by other Christians to oppose abolition of slavery; to refuse chloroform to women in childbirth; to prevent in our own church the employment of women as missionaries; and still, by our fellow Presbyterians, to uphold another form of discrimination—racial discrimination. All these arguments, remember, were based on the Bible.”

In the sort of forceful and eloquent speech the assembly knows so well, Lord (formerly Sir George) MacLeod of Fuinary seconded a counter-motion urging the government to dissociate itself from American policy in Viet Nam. “What would you think,” he demanded of a packed house, “if there were 500,000 Chinese troops in South Mexico bombing North Mexico, saying they were doing it lest capitalism sweep into South Mexico, saying they are prepared to wait there until there are free elections, provided these free elections result in Communism being elected?”

This typical speech got its typical reaction: applause for the oratory, defeat for the motion. Carried was the committee’s recommendation that the government be urged “to continue its efforts to persuade all parties in Viet Nam to reduce the scale of the conflict as a practical step to transferring it from the battlefield to the conference table.” MacLeod later led an anti-war vigil.

The General Assembly also, inter alia, elected Dr. Roy Sanderson as moderator … sent down to presbyteries a proposed basis and plan of union with the 30,000-strong Congregational Union of Scotland … learned that there were 359 fewer ministers now than eighteen years ago, when the population was smaller by 150,000 … heard that its communicants, numbering 1,233,808, showed a 60,000 decrease since 1961 … listened for the first time to an Orthodox churchman (Metropolitan Emilianos) … narrowly defeated a motion to press for “single public schools for all the children of Scotland, irrespective of denomination” … and warmly applauded the moderator when he expressed congratulations to the Glasgow Celtic soccer team, which had just won the European cup.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Scots On Sex

When the Wolfenden Report was published in 1958, its proposal to legalize homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private was accepted by all the major churches in the United Kingdom except the Church of Scotland. This year, however, the Kirk’s Moral Welfare Committee suggested that the existence of a seldom invoked law was “an undoubted obstacle to the redemption and rehabilitation of these unhappy people” who must be assured that “the Gospel of Christ is for them too” and that the Church “will not regard them as outcasts but will meet them with understanding and help.” Although the committee made it clear it was not condoning homosexual practices, the motion met with strong opposition. The Rev. R. S. MacNicol pointed out that such behavior produced character deterioration, that all church members should be reminded of Colossians 3:1–6, and that homosexuals need to be reminded that there is salvation and freedom for them in Jesus Christ. It was this view that eventually won the day by a majority vote.

Another section of the committee’s report to come under fire was the suggestion that the assembly welcome the British Council of Churches’ Sex and Morality report as a “contribution towards the presentation to all sections of the community of a reasoned and positive statement of Christian insights into personal relationships.” When this report was originally presented to the BCC (see Current Religious Thought, Nov. 25, 1966), it was hotly opposed by the Kirk representatives on that body. Two of them were in the assembly and left their listeners in no doubt that they had not changed their minds. Flourishing a copy of the offending booklet, the Rev. John R. Gray of Dunblane Cathedral exclaimed with characteristic vigor that he knew “of no worse pamphlet than this wretched thing.” For the committee, the Rev. John Peat said the report was trying to do something like justice to the real nature of human relationships and to show understanding and compassion.

Not only was all reference to the BCC report deleted by the assembly, however, but a section was added “unequivocably and unambiguously” stating that sex should be confined within marriage, and that the strong help and grace of God was available for those who tried to keep this standard.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Love: Not A Four-Letter Word

Clergy witnesses were at odds on love, sex, and four-letter words during a five-week obscenity trial that ended May 27 in San Francisco with the conviction of three booksellers. At issue was “The Love Book,” an 825-word poem with an explicit first-person account of a woman’s sexual experience replete with four-letter words. It was written by Miss Lenore Kandel, attractive 35-year-old disciple of the city’s Satan-worship cult.

Jesuit priest Robert Brophy, who teaches English at the University of San Francisco, defended the poem as “an integrated presentation of theology along with the celebration of love.” Jewish and Unitarian witnesses agreed. But another Jesuit, former President Herman Hauck of the University of Santa Clara, described the work as “sinful,” “nauseating,” and “orgiastic.”

In a bitter exchange with American Civil Liberties Union defense attorneys, the Rev. Carl Howie of San Francisco’s Calvary Presbyterian Church questioned whether Kandel witness J. M. Stubblebine is qualified to be chief of the city’s mental-health services.

The jury foreman, bus driver Edward Johnston, said “none of us felt ‘The Love Book’ had any social importance.” ACLU plans to appeal the convictions, which carry punishment of up to six months in jail and a $500 fine.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

South African Purge

The Netherlands Reformed Church (NHK) of South Africa voted last month to throw out any members who belong to the Christian Institute, an ecumenical organization that believes the Bible teaches against racial segregation.

The Johannesburg Sunday Times said, as paraphrased by Ecumenical Press Service, that Afrikaans theologians consider this “one of the most far-reaching and authoritarian decisions taken by a Protestant body, and a drastic intervention in the personal religious life of individual Christians.”

NHK members are even prohibited from reading the institute’s monthly Pro Veritate. The synod meeting also defrocked two of its best-known theologians, J. A. Stoop and B. J. van der Merwe, for being “sympathetic” to the institute and for criticizing Article 3 of the church constitution, which limits membership to whites. The Reformed factions are also embroiled in a libel suit due for a ruling shortly.

In response to anti-institute moves in the NHK and the other major Reformed group, the Johannesburg congregation attended by institute Director C. F. Beyers Naude is questioning church authority. Elsewhere, a clergyman quit in protest over whites-only Christianity, and a congregation voted to pull out of the denomination because its minister was suspended. Meanwhile, seventy pastors at a conference for southern Africa Lutherans said separate racial development (apartheid) is unscriptural.

The Imprint Of Tillich

Perspectives on 19th & 20th Century Protestant Theology, by Paul Tillich, edited by Carl E. Braaten (Harper & Row, 1967, 252 pp., $5.95); The Vision of Paul Tillich, by Carl J. Armbruster, S.J. (Sheed and Ward, 1967, 328 pp., $6.95), and The Fabric of Paul Tillich’s Theology, by David H. Kelsey (Yale University Press, 1967, 202 pp., $6), are reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.

The first of these three books was posthumously printed from tape recordings of the 1963 lectures at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Despite Tillich’s reputation for profundity or unintelligibility, these impressionistic remarks on two dozen philosophers (often too short for scholarly accuracy: two pages for Strauss and Baur, only two pages for Feuerbach) are easier reading than Karl Barth’s work on nineteenth-century theologians.

As a summary of impressionistic evaluation, the book contains caricature, distortion, and highly stimulating insights. Tillich makes clear the affinity between rationalism and mysticism; he partly explains the course of theology in America by the absence of Romanticism; he enthusiastically over-rates Schelling (in my impressionistic judgment), yet pages 141–152 are possibly the finest in the book.

Although there is none of his systematic theology here, one quickly sees that his view of faith and of the very nature of religion is far removed from Protestant orthodoxy. This latter he lampoons. He is guilty of falsification when he writes that American conservatives identify the King James Version with the true Word of God. Similarly he must plead ignorance or intellectual dishonesty, forty years after the publication of B. B. Warfield’s works and after other public disclaimers, when he attacks “the view of a mechanically dictated and inspired Word of God, as if God were dictating to a stenographer at a typewriter.” This is a standard procedure with the liberals, who do not wish to face the arguments of historic Protestantism. But with respect to the non-Christian philosophers, the book is interesting and suggestive.

The Jesuit book is mainly expository and concerns the relation between Christianity and culture. After a short but informative biographical sketch, the author develops Tillich’s views on “ultimate concern.” Something is said of idolatrous faith, the clean holy and the unclean holy, and the demonic. There is a little criticism in the last chapter but not enough to clarify the important issues.

Kelsey has produced a small gem of scholarship. The problem is this: If the historical accuracy and literal meaning of the Bible are unimportant, if the Gospels give only an aesthetic picture of Jesus, if the apostles preach merely their own experience, how can theology be biblical today?

Tillich claims to get his interpretation of the Bible from three norms: the relation of the symbols to one another; the relation of the symbols to that to which they point; and an aesthetic criticism that distinguishes between adequate and inadequate symbols so that symbolism is not reduced to non-symbolic statements. Kelsey proceeds to examine whether Tillich was able to carry through his program.

A meticulous but far from dull analysis of Tillich’s texts convinces Kelsey that emphasis on existential religious experience makes Tillich a second Feuerbach. Theology has become anthropology.

To disguise this atheism, Tillich uses equivocal and misleading expressions. When he defines reason as “the structure of the mind,” he never defines structure; and his description of the “depth of reason” is even more mystifying. Again, when Tillich asserts that the existence of Jesus could be disconfirmed by historical research, and yet that “the fact-claim made about the foundation of Christian faith is not open to criticism,” his argument is “misleading.” For a third example, Tillich tries to argue that Jesus must have been something like the distorted picture in the Gospels, for mediation requires this. Says Kelsey, “This is an astonishing argument for Tillich.… On his own grounds it can have no theological significance.… It is also a bad argument.” Kelsey, though not subscribing to Protestant orthodoxy, also notes that there is no evidence that the Synoptics distort. In conclusion, Tillich depends on ambiguity in the term “meaning,” on two incompatible views of aesthetics, and on an ambiguous use of the term “God.”

Tillich began by attempting to interpret the picture of Jesus. But the outcome in the form of preaching is a sermon that needs no mention of Jesus—merely attitudes towards life of a general sort possible for any religion. Art gives attitudes, not truth. The New Testament, on the contrary, makes truth-claims.

Depravity That Is Total

Reformed Dogmatics, by Herman Hoeksema (Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1966, 917 pp., $14.95), is reviewed by M. Eugene Osterhaven, professor of systematic theology, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

Herman Hoeksema was undoubtedly one of the most unusual men in the American church. A highly gifted pulpit orator and theologian of the Dutch Reformed tradition, he left the Christian Reformed Church in the mid-twenties over the doctrine of common grace. He describes that doctrine in this way:

There is a grace, an operation of the Holy Spirit, whereby sin was restrained in man’s heart and mind, as well as in the community, and in the power of which the natural man could accomplish all these good things. Of himself man could certainly do no good; he was totally depraved. But all men receive a certain grace; and through this grace man is not regenerated: his heart remains always evil. But the evil operation of his heart was restrained. Yes, what is more, he is somewhat changed to the good, so that in temporal, natural, and civil things he could do good before God.

Hoeksema would have none of this weakening of the doctrine of sin, as he saw it, and held for a doctrine of total depravity that was understood vertically (that the natural man is only evil, with no good at all in him) as well as horizontally (that man is depraved in every part of his being). Although this was Hoeksema’s lifelong battle, he states his position in this text only where he feels he must do so, in the discussions of the image of God—which, incidentally, he denies in the broad sense—and of Adam’s sin.

Only a careful study of Hoeksema’s writings will bring out the manner in which he builds everything on the antithesis between elect and reprobate (he is a thoroughgoing supralapsarian), declaring that reprobation is equally ultimate with election, that God wills both, that God’s attitude toward the reprobate has never been anything other than hatred, and that whatever he brings into the life of the reprobate is brought there for the damnation of that person. This involved concatenation of ideas is not the only evidence of speculation in Hoeksema’s thinking; one finds considerable amounts of it here and there. This is, of course, inevitable in any work of theological depth. The question concerns the kind of speculation and its limits.

Having pointed out what I see to be the weakness in Hoeksema’s system, I will go on to say that there is a great deal of solid theology, and good theology, in this book. The other authors he leans upon are almost entirely a few select persons within the Dutch Reformed tradition. Why should a man of his ability quote Anselm via Kuyper, except possibly because of the pressure of time? Hoeksema believes in a “system of truth” that is to be elaborated; rejects the proofs for God along with the idea of the immortality of the soul, the covenant of works, and certain traditional ways of handling topics in Reformed dogmatics; and always argues his own position with ability.

The extensive use of untranslated Latin and Dutch is lamentable, unless the volume is intended for a narrow range of readers. The considerable use of the biblical languages is commendable. Those who knew the author are aware of his linguistic facility, theological acumen, and capacity for work. This work, more than his dozen volumes on the Heidelberg Catechism, represents his system of theology. He wrote it during the thirty years that he taught in his own seminary while also serving as minister of a large congregation.

Roll Call Of The Valiant And True

Valiant for the Truth: A Treasury of Evangelical Writings, compiled and edited by David Otis Fuller, introduction by Henry W. Coray (Lippincott, 1967, 460 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by John H. Gerstner, professor of church history, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

God blesses us only through Christ, who is the Truth. Specifically, he does this, as our volume demonstrates, through witness to the Truth. One thinks of Phillips Brooks’s famous definition of preaching: it is truth through personality. This book is ample illustration of that, though it is not restricted to sermons but contains some readable yet profound theological treatises as well.

These are dead witnesses who still speak through the living Christ, displaying the ecumenical evangel of the ages from Paul to Machen. Athanasius is here, along with Wesley and Anselm. But no one is included merely because he was valiant; he must have been valiant for the truth. Thus the liberal Schleiermacher is not here, nor is “The Peril of Worshiping Jesus.”

Nevertheless, some are missing who ought not to be. John of Damascus was valiant for truth in the East, and surely some Oriental greats, such as Kanamori, should be here to show the global character of the Gospel. William Carey is appropriate, but will one foreign missionary suffice? If there is a weakness in the book, it is the tendency to major in Anglo-Saxon males. The selection is good but could have been more representative.

Dr. Fuller is to be commended for his editing. Also, we must not overlook Henry Coray’s introductions. In about two pages each, he deftly gives us the quintessence of his heroes’ greatness. Citing the best and most interesting biographies and biographers, he weaves it all together on his own loom of restrained praise. These vignettes are so interesting that they could well be enlarged and published separately by this American Boreham.

Reading for Perspective

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

• The New Testament and Criticism, by George Eldon Ladd (Eerdmans, $3.95). Introduces evangelicals to a positive, creative use of biblical criticism—textual, linguistic, literary, form, historical, and comparative religion.

• Know Why You Believe, by Paul E. Little (Scripture Press, $1.25, paperback). The Inter-Varsity Director of Evangelism compellingly presents Christian evidences that will help believers give reasons for the hope within them.

• Nothing But the Gospel, by Peter H. Eldersveld (Eerdmans, $3.50). A collection of biblical, literate sermons by the late minister who served as the voice of the Christian Reformed Church on the “Back to God Hour.”

Adam Keeps The Faith

Keep the Faith, Baby!, by Adam Clayton Powell (Trident, 1967, 293 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by William C. Brownson, assistant professor of preaching, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

Here are some forty sermons by the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. Although only a few of them are assigned exact dates, some appear to be at least as old as the early days of the cold war, while others are as recent as the catchphrase “black power.”

The sermons show remarkable variety. Many are brief meditations—scarcely more than two pages; a few run to several times that length. Some abound in affirmations of the historic Christian faith; others (e.g. “What We Must Do About Africa”) have no discernible biblical content. Most of the sermons speak to specific historical situations, but a few are neither “addressed” nor “dated” and could have been preached two hundred years ago as well as yesterday (e.g., “In the End … As It Began to Dawn”). Some pursue a single theme, while others seem to join together dissimilar ideas like so many beads on a string.

The style, on the other hand, is fairly uniform. Short paragraphs, parallel constructions, generalizations and personal references characterize the book.

More than one reviewer has called attention to “fascinating parallels” between this volume—particularly the sermons “Are You the Right Size?” and “The Temptation to Modernity”—and other published materials. Except for biblical references, Powell nowhere indicates the exact source of his quotations or of other materials he may have used. Some quotations are incorrect. John Wesley, for example, who wrote in his journal, “I felt my heart strangely warmed,” is quoted as making the general observation that “the human heart is being strangely warmed.”

These sermons contain little that is profound or original; yet they are not without merit and force. The light of the kerygma is here, though at times it shines through a wispy idealism. The preacher speaks frankly and directly to the key issues of our time. And, for the most part, he does so in the spirit of the Gospel. The Powell mirrored here is no racist. Although the voice of the demagogue may be heard occasionally, more often the voice is that of the herald of good news. Sprinkled here and there can be found wiser counsel, both for black and for white, than that which is often followed in our time. One cannot help wishing somewhat wistfully that the message of the minister were more clearly reflected in the career of the congressman.

The Reformers Speak For Themselves

Theology of the English Reformers, by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (Eerdmans, 1966, 283 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Clair Davis, assistant professor of church history, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Philip Hughes, visiting professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, provides here “a compendious statement” of the faith of men such as Jewel, Latimer, Cranmer, Hooker, and Tyndale. Permitting the Reformers to speak for themselves lets their vigor and commitment come to eloquent expression; and the brief but valuable commentaries, coupled with the excellent subject index and footnotes, make for maximum usability.

Above all, it is good to be reminded of the truly basic significance that the finished work of Christ had for the Reformers, and should have for us: here is the reason for the great vigor with which medieval innovations of “grace” are rejected. Coupled with the exclusiveness of grace in Christ was the exclusive authority of his Word. Along with Reu’s study of Luther and Kantzer’s of Calvin, the chapter on the use of Scripture should do much to give the lie to the neo-orthodox contention that there is a sharp cleavage between the existential use of the Bible by the Reformers and the “mechanicalness” of later orthodoxy: these Reformers find the Bible so practical and useful precisely because of its complete authority!

The great English contribution to Protestant theology, appreciation of the biblical emphasis upon sanctification, is seen to have been present right from the beginning; the Puritans had quite a foundation upon which to build. Particularly stirring are the accounts of the Reformers’ awaiting death during the Marian persecutions—willingness to face death for the Gospel’s sake is not an Anabaptist monopoly. The stress on the necessity of preaching is especially applicable to the present day. The minister who does not teach the Scripture to his people, whatever else he may be doing, is simply not doing his job. Continual feeding of the people with meat is what is necessary, not an occasional snack of strawberries!

Attention is given to misunderstandings of Anglican distinctives. “Priest” was not intended to have sacerdotal implications, even though it was held that other words might be better. That the king is head of the church was not intended to imply his competition with Jesus Christ. The king has no ecclesiastical function—he does not preach or administer the sacraments so his headship is only legal and secular; and it is not over the whole Church but only of the one in England. Hughes shows that this formulation was “misunderstood” not only by the Puritans but also by the Roman Catholics. Does such a general misunderstanding suggest an unworkable theory?

The concluding pages, covering Cranmer’s plans for a Reformed ecumenical assembly, are most intriguing. Perhaps there could have been theological agreement among Calvin, Bullinger, Laski, Melanchthon, and the English; and then what united action and advance might have been possible. At least, common understanding of Scripture was to be recognized as prerequisite to a program of action.

Guidelines For Ethics

Moral Law in Christian Social Ethics, by Walter G. Muelder (John Knox, 1966, 189 pp., $5), and Elements for a Social Ethic, by Gibson Winter (Macmillan, 1966, 304 pp., $7.95), are reviewed by George I. Mavrodes, associate professor of philosophy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Both these books would seem from their titles to be concerned with the special ethical problems of social entities and relations. Muelder’s, however, though to my mind the more interesting, offers little specifically on this topic. Most of the book is devoted to an explanation and defense of the view that while ethics should not be “prescriptive” (apparently this means it should not consist of detailed rules that prescribe or proscribe particular actions), it cannot survive without moral laws.

Muelder proposes fifteen of these laws, based on earlier attempts by E. S. Brightman and L. Harold DeWolf. All are quite general; for example, “All persons ought to choose values which are self-consistent, harmonious, and coherent,” “All persons ought to will the best possible values in every situation,” and “All persons ought so far as possible to cooperate with other persons in the production and enjoyment of shared values.” The set ends with the “metaphysical” law: “All persons ought to know the source and significance of the harmony and universality of these moral laws …, of the coherence of the moral order.”

These laws cannot, of course, be expected to determine, by themselves, a course of action for any particular circumstance. But Muelder apparently believes that if one is loyal to these laws and open to the love and power of Christ, he can discern and do the will of God. This lack of specificity will appear to some to be the major defect of Muelder’s work. But remedying it is not easy. The moral life is lived in concrete situations of almost infinite complexity and variety. At one extreme stands the project of providing humanity with a set of laws that specifies in detail, and correctly, what response (if any) is morally required for each possible situation. The other extreme is that of requiring each person to determine what is morally required in each particular situation without reference to any general principles. (Both these extremes, incidentally, seem compatible with the view that morality is absolute, objective, and theologically based.)

Most attempts at normative ethics, like Muelder’s, fall between these extremes. They propose some general laws but leave out some of the detail of their application and of the circumstances that may require exception or modification. These decisions must then be made in some other way, e.g., through revelation, moral insight, or existential decision. It is probably not possible to achieve the first extreme in a code expressed in a manageable number of words, perhaps not in any finite code. And it is probably advisable to avoid the second extreme and to provide some general rules, at least as starting points for reflection and decision.

But to specify the best intermediate position is not easy. Muelder’s laws appear generally plausible, if we allow for a few exceptions and for the resolution of possible conflicts between them. But there is little argument to establish that this is the optimum set, the one that achieves the best possible balance of generality and specificity. Quite possibly there are other sets, striking the balance in a different way, that will also enable us to discern the will of God in the concrete circumstances of our lives.

Winter’s book is an attempt to explore the contribution that the social sciences can make to social ethics. If reflection upon social ethics requires and uses information about the structure and nature of society, and if the social sciences uncover information of this sort, then I suppose there must be a contribution. Perhaps Winter’s own most valuable contribution is that of reminding us of the abstracting nature of science, which concentrates on restricted aspects of the richer “everyday” world, and of describing for us the different “styles” currently employed in the social sciences. These styles (behavioristic, functional, dynamic, and so on) lead to different abstractions and consequently to different pictures of what the social reality is. Thus their results can properly be used by ethical theorists only after they have been criticized and perhaps supplemented.

Unfortunately, Winter’s writing is unnecessarily loaded with jargon, and much of his analysis is extremely difficult to follow. I doubt that his book will serve very widely as what he intends it to be, an introduction to this field.

Why Baptists Stay Out Of The Wcc

Baptists and Christian Unity, by William R. Estep (Broadman, 1966, 200 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Thomas B. Mc-Dormand, president, Eastern Baptist College and Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In the first half of this volume, Dr. Estep gives the Christian world a well-written, concise, carefully documented account of the rise of the modern ecumenical movement. From prophetic beginnings among the Anabaptists, through William Carey and the modern missionary movement, the momentous ecumenical gatherings at Madras (1900), Edinburgh (1910), Geneva (1920), and Oxford (1937), and other events in this stirring succession, the author traces the development of the spirit of unity and cooperation among Protestant churches to our own day. More than that, he deals most engagingly with the four sessions of Vatican Council II. The book shows the logic and the inevitability of a growing sense of interdependence and mutual respect among the branches of the Church.

The author’s task becomes more complex, however, as he attempts to deal with the confused subject of Baptist relationships to the ecumenical movement—in particular, to the World Council of Churches. Some two-thirds of world Baptists are unwilling to seek membership in the WCC. Only three of twenty-three national Baptist groups in Europe, for example, are members. British Baptists, the American Baptist Convention, and the three large Negro Baptist conventions of America are the major Baptist bodies in the WCC.

Estep devotes much attention to the doctrinal, ecclesiological, and practical reasons for the aloofness from the World Council of many Baptist groups, notably the Southern Baptist Convention, within which he serves. He specifies these reasons: (1) A Baptist convention is not a “church” and cannot commit autonomous local churches associated freely with it to membership in a council of “churches”; (2) the authority of Scripture for Baptists, and their insistence on freedom to obey and proclaim it, makes them wary of submission to doctrinal formularies created to satisfy all and sundry; (3) Baptists look askance at any semblance of a super-church; (4) ecumenism has greatly reduced rather than increased missionary effort (research in this matter by Dr. Harold Lindsell of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is used with much effect here); (5) Baptists regard denominationalism, not as inherently an evil, but rather as a dynamic aspect of the Church’s life.

These arguments cast a kindlier light upon “non-concurring” Baptists than some might concede possible!

Sermonizing From Ezekiel

The Other Son of Man: Ezekiel/Jesus, by Andrew W. Blackwood, Jr. (Baker, 1966, 165 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Larry L. Walker, assistant professor of Semitic languages, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Fort Worth, Texas.

This book gives us twelve sermons on passages from Ezekiel. The Prophet Ezekiel is designated “Son of Man” eighty-seven times; this title is rare in the rest of the Old Testament. Blackwood is disturbed that scholars who have studied this title of Jesus have not investigated more thoroughly its use in connection with Ezekiel. In the foreword to his book, he briefly discusses this title and the polarity of meaning found in its use in the Gospels.

Probably few Christians turn to Ezekiel for devotional reading or for practical help, but the author (a pastor and the son of the late well-known preacher-teacher-author Andrew Blackwood) has gleaned many helpful points from this puzzling book. The theme of Ezekiel is hope, and Blackwood develops the various facets of this topic, noting the parallels between Ezekiel’s time and our own.

The following examples illustrate his approach. The river of Ezekiel 47 symbolizes “the river of divine love, flowing through human life, bringing beauty, usefulness, and health.” The last eight chapters of Ezekiel, describing the temple, “are packed with rich, meaningful symbolism, telling that worship is man’s central business in life.” In discussing chapter one, Blackwood reminds the reader that such symbolism should not be approached “the way we try to understand the diagram of a gas-turbine engine in Popular Mechanics.” Rather, the fundamental lesson is that God “moves straight forward toward His goal.” “The briers and thorns and scorpions [Ezek. 2:6] represent the unpleasantness, discouragement, and sometimes physical danger of living and teaching a Gospel that others reject.”

Useful illustrations and practical truths abound in this book. Ministers who read it will probably be encouraged to study the Book of Ezekiel for its preaching values. And all readers will be helped to see the relevance of Ezekiel for today.

Book Briefs

Letters and Papers from Prison (revised edition), by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by Eberhard Bethge (Macmillan, 1967, 240 pp., $4.95). A revised, hard-cover edition of the widely read collection by Bonhoeffer, with a foreword by Eberhard Bethge.

Deuteronomy: A Commentary, by Gerhard von Rad (Westminster, 1966, 211 pp., $5). This volume, with its arbitrary assumptions, may have value for the student who approaches the Bible from a critical viewpoint. But for the scholar who considers the Bible in a traditional sense, it will have little worth.

Christianity and Politics, by Reginald Stackhouse (English Universities Press, 1966, 134 pp., 7s. 6d). A plea for Christian involvement in politics wherein power is interpreted and utilized in submission to the Gospel.

The New Dialogue Between Philosophy and Theology, by James A. Martin, Jr. (Seabury, 1966, 211 pp., $5.95). Martin claims that a new concern for metaphysics by both philosophers and theologians makes possible a more constructive conversation between them.

Felipe Alou … My Life and Baseball, by Felipe Alou with Herm Weiskopf (Word, 1967, 154 pp., $3.95). The Atlanta Braves baseball star from the Dominican Republic tells of his personal faith in Jesus Christ and his rapid rise in the major leagues.

Acquaintances, by Arnold J. Toynbee (Oxford, 1967, 312 pp., $7.50). The noted historian presents personal recollections of twenty-four impressive people, including Nehru, Hitler, the Webbs, T. E. Lawrence, and Jan Smuts.

Paperbacks

The Preaching of Chrysostom, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan (Fortress, 1967, 230 pp., $3.25). The rhetorical theory and preaching practices of Chrysostom (354–407) have much to teach today’s preachers; this volume includes ten homilies on the Sermon on the Mount.

New Theology No. 4, edited by Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman (Macmillan, 1967, 253 pp., $1.95). Two Christian Century editors have scoured the theological journals and collected a mixed but stimulating bag of articles “beyond the secular.”

Vital Words of the Bible, by J. M. Furness (Eerdmans, 1966, 128 pp., $2.25). Helpful, brief biblical studies that trace a word’s background and meaning in pagan writings, the Old Testament, and the New Testament.

The Holy Trinity: Experience and Interpretation, by George Hedley (Fortress, 1967, 148 pp., $2). A brief recounting of the historical development of this basic Christian doctrine.

Faith in a Secular Age, by Colin Williams (Harper & Row, 1966, 128 pp., $1.25). Williams claims that the current debate in evangelism centers on one’s understanding of what God is doing in our history and how he is calling men to join Christ in his action in the world. He presents his rationale for the “new evangelism,” in which saving secular society takes precedence over saving individual men.

Handbook of Secret Organizations, by William J. Whalen (Bruce, 1966, 169 pp., $2.95). Ever wondered what goes on in pseudo-religious secret societies? Whalen gives the low down on forty-five major lodges. Very interesting.

The real problem is not the preparation of a sermon but rather the preparation of the preacher. Only if the man is so full that he overflows will his words serve effectively to instruct, guide, comfort, and inspire the people entrusted to his pastoral care. Although this preparation is not limited to broad and careful scholarship, for the pastor as preacher (in contrast to the pastor as believer) this is essential.

As a preacher whose church stands within the liturgical tradition, I do not have to seek out a text. The church year, with its historic lessons from the Old Testament, the Epistles, and the Gospels, antecedes my search. There is freedom, to be sure, since I can choose between various annual pericopes (such as Old Church, Eisenach, and Thomasius) or, if it seems wise, choose a “free text” appropriate to the theme of that day. For example, I might well preach on Hebrews 4:2 in association with Matthew 13:3–9 or Romans 12:20, 21 with Matthew 18:23–35. The ecclesiastical year is, to me, not a straight jacket but a welcome aid.

A reading of the lessons poses the question, “What does God want me to say to my congregation this day?” To ensure a balanced diet from the pulpit I generally make an advance study of forthcoming pericopes and select my sermon themes for some three months at a time. Obviously, this schedule is subject to review and change in the light of events in the congregation and the world; but it is important that a preacher have an overview of the objectives of his sermons (the object of our preaching is far more important than the subject of the sermon) to avoid imbalance in the spiritual diet he sets before his people.

This sermon objective I now consider on the basis of my continuing study. This rests on the premise that “nothing human is alien to me.” Work in my study will therefore include intensive work in the Scriptures, with invaluable light cast upon it by commentaries, scholarly studies, archaeology, theological dictionaries, and other works. It must also include the study of historical and systematic theology, modern and classic. And if I am to address the minds of the listeners, I must know secular thought, novels, and the newspaper. All of this forms the raw stuff of preaching, from which a half-hour sermon is overflow and crystallization. The listener should be able to sense that, if time and opportunity permitted, the minister could easily discuss the subject at far greater length. His brevity should be an act of mercy, not of necessity!

Against this background of general scholarship, I give attention to the next week’s text. There is little tendency to isolate the words of the text from its context, since I constantly try to pay attention to the wholeness of the Evangel. Whether the text is long or short is not really significant, for in either case I must determine whether I can make my point more effectively through the method M. Rue in his Homiletics distinguished as “synthetic” or through the method he called “analytical.” In synthetic work the message of the text becomes the theme, which is then outlined logically and comprehensively. In analytical, the specific emphasis of the text is preserved and the outline follows the thought-pattern of the text itself, even at the cost of comprehensiveness. Either way the biblical word must be recognized as authoritive and definitive. “It is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy” (1 Cor. 4:2, RSV), not clever.

The outline, whichever form it may take, should be alive, having progression toward its objective. Illustrations, poetry, and apt quotations can then be selected carefully from one’s files. Here discrimination and pruning ability are essential. Nothing, not even an adjective, dare be included if it does not contribute directly to the sermon’s forward march. After all this, and not before, can the preacher turn his attention to the introduction. This part of the sermon is matched in importance only by the conclusion, for a potential listener may turn off his mind after the first sentence unless that sentence grips his immediate attention by indicating the relevance of what is to follow.

Of course, it is possible to lose one’s listeners later on; but that danger is minimized if one bears constantly in mind the truth I heard so often from Frans Rendtorff, a teacher of mine at the University of Leipzig: “You aren’t preaching until you say ‘You.’ ” Everything else, he insisted, is merely introduction, as Nathan’s parable of the lamb was preparatory to his “You are the man!” (2 Sam. 12).

Finally, on Sunday the preacher must deliver the message to the minds of his people. How this can be done depends upon the God-given ability of each man. The method that fits me most comfortably may not suit another at all.

I never write out my sermons before delivering them. I attempt to make both general and specific preparation as thorough as possible. The outline I prepare holds together I trust, logically and organically. My notes contain only the major divisions of the sermon, together with whatever material I desire to quote accurately. I take this outline into the pulpit as a reminder to me of the wholeness of the message I feel called upon to share and as a caution not to be derailed into some attractive siding, where the train will remain instead of proceeding to its destination.

The verbal form that this message assumes is as much the result of immediate inspiration as a conversation with another person would be. I think of the sermon as somewhat like an animated conversation on a Christian theme. Possibly “animated” should be emphasized, for a genuine sermon deals with a matter of vital importance and cannot be delivered casually. Yet many of us will stand with Halford E. Luccock who, when he read that Eugene Ormandy dislocated his shoulder while leading the Philadelphia Orchestra, reflected, “I do not know what they were playing. Certainly not Mozart. Perhaps Stravinsky. But at any rate he was giving all of himself to it. And I have asked myself sadly, ‘Did I ever dislocate anything, even a necktie?’ ”

The great merit of extemporaneous preaching is that the congregation sense that their pastor is thinking along with them, instead of repeating to them what he had been thinking about in his study. Facing real faces he may indeed speak more relevantly than if he has merely confronted creatures of his imagination while sitting at his desk. He can more easily recognize the active part that his listeners play. Watching their faces he may discover that a truth needs further elaboration or illustration. He may even sense that an idea has already been grasped and he need spend no more time on it. Illustrations and arguments that may flash into his mind from earlier reading may prove more effective than those he had planned to use.

Another advantage is that his style will be that of verbal communication. After all, the sermon is spoken, not read. Verbal style is normally more wordy but far less flowery than literary style. That is why one can enjoy the brilliant turns of expression cited in the Reader’s Digest and yet find to his dismay that they are unusable in a sermon.

No one should undertake extemporaneous preaching with the hope that it will reduce the labor of preparation. As George Whitefield once said to critics at Harvard, “Indeed, gentlemen, I love to study and delight to meditate. Preaching without notes costs as much if not more close and solitary thought, as well as confidence in God, than with notes.” To consider only the matter of style, no man can preach with logical clarity and acceptable language unless he disciplines himself rigorously. In my judgment, no man should attempt to speak extemporaneously unless he is willing to write a good deal. And that writing should be done with a view to submitting it to an editor for publication. The actual publication is not of primary importance, but the self-discipline is.

Sermon preparation and delivery are hard work. Yet I would be untrue to thirty-five years’ experience in the pulpit were I not to conclude with words I once spoke to a clergyman friend who was suffering from “blue Mondayism”: “I think preaching is fun!” For can there be any greater delight than in telling one’s fellow men the best news the world has ever heard?—Dr. JOHN SCHMIDT, St. John Lutheran Church, Williamsville, New York.

“The fear of theLORDis the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Prov. 9:10, RSV).

According to this description, many of the world’s “wise” ones have never come out of kindergarten and into the realities of life.

If true wisdom is the orientation of self and the affairs of this world to the Creator-Redeemer, how many of us possess it? Only the fool says God does not exist (Ps. 14:1). The wise man gives God his rightful place in every realm—creation, history, and destiny—and recognizes him as sovereign over individuals and over nations.

Such wisdom, coming as it does from a reverential fear of and trust in God, produces peace, joy, and hope, independent of outward circumstances. It is the preventative for the situation our Lord described as “men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world …” (Luke 21:26).

Even for believers it is usually true that their God is too small. Like the timid souls of every generation, we tend to conceive of God as being bound by our own limitations. Thus we view life with a sense of futility.

To combat this we should pray for and foster in our own hearts and minds a concept of God that reaches back into eternity, outward into infinity, and forward to a joyous and unending life with him. The eternal sovereignty of God, once it is grasped, lifts our hearts and enlightens our minds; and when with this we envision something of the awesome reality of his love, glory, and power, we are on the way to being wise—as God counts wisdom.

When we are able to say with the Psalmist, “For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the LORD pleases he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Ps. 135:5, 6), we find that life comes into clear focus. Doubts vanish when we realize that “the LORD [who] by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding … established the heavens” (Prov. 3:19) is the same Lord who came to redeem us from our sins.

Christians lose much joy in life by failing to recognize that the God of creation is also the God of history. As such he is sovereign also in love and in judgment. We have nothing to fear, for the wrath of a holy God against sin has been borne in the person of his Son.

On one hand there is redeeming love. On the other there is consuming judgment. The Prophet Isaiah speaks of the latter: “I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant, and lay low the haughtiness of the ruthless. I will make men more rare than fine gold, and mankind than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the LORD of hosts in the day of his fierce anger” (Isa. 13:11–13).

The Prophet Jeremiah too had a vision of the God of history. He wrote, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: … It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the men and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomever it seems right to me” (Jer. 27:4b, 5).

Writing of Israel’s apostasy and sinfulness, the Apostle Paul says, “Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor. 10:11).

The wisdom God gives to those who fear him puts him on the throne in every area of his universe—in creation, in history, and also in destiny. He who brought the world into existence will surely control the course of events to the end. Today we see the rage and tumult of men and nations. Has God been dethroned? Has he abdicated? Has he lost control of events? Far from it. No circumstances of our individual lives, no courses of nations, are completed until God has finished his own work in and through them.

Man’s greatest folly is to lift himself, the creature, above the Creator. That many deny or ignore God only adds to their guilt. Materialism in every age has been concerned with the tangible. Only by the wisdom God gives can men see beyond the horizon and on into eternity. Then and only then can time and eternity come into proper perspective.

The wisdom of this world enables man to discover the facts of the universe, but only the wisdom that is from above can bring us to know the eternal Source of all things. And to know Him is life eternal.

It is by faith that we become wise, for faith, the basis of godly wisdom, rests on intangibles (by worldly standards) that are real only to those who believe. The love of a mother may be called an intangible, but it is wonderfully real. So the wisdom God imparts to those who believe in him brings reality out of unreality and gives substance to things the world can never see.

The fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, is God’s gift to the humble. A childlike attitude of mind is the gateway to God’s grace. It is not a mere lazy acquiescence but a rational acknowledgment of God as Creator and Lord.

The humble heart knows its need. It comes to see itself in the light of God’s holiness and to admit with the Prophet Jeremiah, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt …” (Jer. 17:9). Such humility recognizes that “before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13).

The inescapable link between true wisdom and genuine humility rests in the perspective this wisdom gives. When we see ourselves in the light of God’s holiness, we are inclined to cry out with Job, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5, 6). Thomas showed true wisdom and humility when he cried, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

Only the Spirit of God can enable us to see the vast gulf between wisdom and knowledge. The Apostle Paul aptly says that “knowledge puffs up.” Wisdom enables man to use knowledge for God’s glory. That secular knowledge is exalted above wisdom is one aspect of the spiritual blindness of unregenerate man. There can be no true wisdom apart from God.

The writer of the Book of Proverbs admonishes, “Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight” (Prov. 4:7). Is not the lack of such insight the cause of much of the chaotic thinking and living today?

The frustration, uncertainty, and fear we see on every hand can be exchanged for peace, certainty, and perfect assurance if we appropriate the wisdom God yearns to give. This is the Christian’s privilege and at the same time his opportunity. All about us are people who are educated, perhaps, but who lack true wisdom because there is no fear of God in their hearts.

My Fair Ladies And Gentlemen:

As an avid booster of the U.S.A. I hesitate to admit it, but Canada’s Expo 67 makes the recent New York and Seattle World’s Fairs seem like child’s play. On its refreshing St. Lawrence River site, the Montreal extravaganza offers scores of imaginatively designed pavilions filled with fascinating creations that make the mind reel at the genius of man.

The most impressive exhibits are Czechoslovakia’s almost poetic blend of national treasures, technological advancements, and intricate crafts; the Telephone Pavilion’s 360-degree film, “Canada 67”; and the Labyrinth, a unique combination of film, sound, and architecture that summons man “to slay the beast within himself.” The most disappointing: the U.S.A.’s collection of hokey memorabilia (old movie excerpts and props, guitars, branding irons, hats, pop art), the Soviet Union’s hard sell of its material achievements, and, alas, the Christian Pavilion.

The ecumenical Christian Pavilion attempts to present the Christian message in modern idiom. Visitors hear the sound of a thumping heart as they traverse three levels: (1) the everyday world of man’s life, (2) the broken world he has made, and (3) the new world of hope in the making. Level one accurately depicts life through many superb photographs: a crowd on Fifth Avenue, a child on a merry-go-round, a pianist performing under a conductor’s baton, a stripper displaying her wares. Level two movingly shows the horror of man’s sin in filmed records of war killings and bombings, emaciated corpses from concentration camps, book burnings, Ruby’s murder of Oswald, a self-immolation, and the destructive power of an A-bomb. Unfortunately, level three falls flat as it ambiguously combines scriptural fragments and contemporary scenes to present the Gospel. Designed to leave the visitor with more questions than he had when he entered, it accomplishes this. But it unfortunately does not call non-Christians to commit themselves to Jesus Christ. Once again “relevant” churchmen fail to communicate clearly the Bible’s message and thereby show their irrelevance. Christians can be thankful, however, that a filmed message by Leighton Ford at the “Sermons from Science” pavilion is reaching record-breaking numbers of people.

Fare-thee-well, EUTYCHUS III

Men, Monkeys, And Darwin

Many thanks for obtaining and printing the superb article, “Darwinism and Contemporary Thought,” by A. E. Wilder Smith (May 26). We need a continual flow of these technical truths stated in layman’s language to counter the contrary flood.

ROGER D. CONGDON

Professor of Bible and Theology

Multnomah School of the Bible

Portland, Ore.

While many of his comments were thought-provoking, others appear to be misleading. In particular, thermodynamic laws do not rule out the possibility of a spontaneous origin of life, contrary to the implication found at several points in the article. It is true that a closed system tends toward a net increase in disorder (entropy). But there is nothing to prevent part of a system from becoming more ordered if, simultaneously, another part becomes disordered. And the earth—with the sun a source of energy and empty space a heat sink—is not a closed system in the thermodynamic sense; herein lies the fallacy in the author’s argument.

I think Dr. Smith has made some cogent criticisms of the “spontaneous origin” position. These criticisms are not, however, strengthened by an improper attempt to ground them on the laws of physics. He criticizes certain scientists for stating their speculations as observed facts. I agree, but the rule should apply to the creationist as well as the Darwinist!

ROBERT B. GRIFFITHS

Assistant Professor of Physics

Carnegie Institute of Technology

Pittsburgh, Pa.

As a student in engineering, I especially appreciated the article. Thermodynamics may be beyond the grasp of some, but it speaks to me. I have a high regard for your magazine.

ALLEN HATCH

Columbia, S. C.

We find Dr. Wilder Smith’s article more provoking than provocative. While we share his concern that current biological principles not be misused in an attempt to disprove the existence of God, we feel that his argument is based upon a misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics.…

We hope that we shall not be construed as anti-theistic. Our concern is rather that, when a Christian bases his theism on what turns out to be an erroneous interpretation of physical principles, he tends to alienate rather than to evangelize the knowledgeable scientific community. We do agree with Dr. Wilder Smith to the extent that we firmly believe that God did create the world we scientists now seek to know, and above all we heartily concur in his joy that such a divine Intelligence should invite us “to know and love him by making himself understandable to us in God incarnate.”

DONALD H. STEVENS

JAMES H. VELLENGA

Cambridge, Mass.

Enjoyed particularly the article “Darwinism and Contemporary Thought.” Bravo!

I wrote a sixteen-page paper on “T. H. Huxley and Darwinism,” because I found that one of the chief factors in the rapid victory of Darwinism in England was Huxley’s persuasive tongue. The humanist motif of nature and freedom is extremely clear in his writings; on the one hand he believed nature’s mechanical character and on the other hand was religious “without theology.” Thus the ascent of nature—“progress”—needed “laws” governing its direction. This is precisely what natural selection did. Nature “herself” (he used the pronoun) guided life, onward and upwards, like the Alps, out of molten rock to glorious Man.

JOHN M. BATTEAU

Cambridge, Mass.

Darwinists are continually pointing out the several rough spots in a “Creation-idea,” some of which, I must admit, are somewhat valid. They, though, must be constantly reminded of the many gaping holes in an organic evolution proposal. One of these greatest inconsistencies was pointed out in your fine article. Anyone who falls hook, line, and sinker for organic evolution has to have as much “faith” (in something) as someone supporting Creation. You pay your money and take your choice.

JAMES R. NICHOLS

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Of Seminaries And Students

While Dr. Harold Lindsell’s article “Tensions in the Seminaries” (May 12) undoubtedly reflects a disturbing trend in seminaries across the country, I cannot help but feel that there is another side of the story which he left untold. There are theological schools (and Western Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, on whose staff I serve, is by no means the only one) that are enjoying steady growth in enrollment, facilities, faculty competence, and curriculum development and are uncompromisingly committed to the integrity and authority of the Holy Scriptures as the deposit of God’s truth for the Church in every age.… God’s hand of blessing is so evident among us we do not have time for discouragement over “image identity” or “brain drain.” It is all we can do to keep up with the incomparably exciting challenge of training committed young people for the ministry of the Gospel of our living Lord.

W. ROBERT COOK

Dean of Student Affairs

Western Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary

Portland, Ore.

The major thrust of “Tensions in the Seminaries,” at the point where the seminaries were mentioned, appears to be that the university relationships have contributed to the confusion and seminaries are “in trouble and in transition.”

“Transition” they are in. But rather than disparage the conscience of the seminary students, as the writer appears to do, I find the students honest, creative, and willing to engage in sacrificial ministries and creative ministries in ways that go far beyond previous student generations.…

We are all re-forming theological education. The present dynamic situation presents an unparalleled opportunity for the seminaries. In this process I hope to see consolidation of facilities and programs within and across denominational lines (e.g., the Interdenominational Theological Center at Atlanta and the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley); more attention to spiritual formation of students; greater stress on learning in involvement (action-reflection) and utilization of educational resources of major universities.

American Baptists on the West Coast have made decisions, in the month of May, as the result of several years of study and planning, to develop a single board of control and a single administrative unit for the Berkeley Baptist Divinity School and California Baptist Theological Seminary.

LYNN LEAVENWORTH

Director, Department of Theological Education

American Baptist Board of Education and Publication

Valley Forge, Pa.

Are the six Southern Baptist Seminaries in this country, who enrolled 5,034 students in the 1965–66 year, so far [removed] from the theological scene that they do not even merit one jot or tittle of consideration either in your article or in your editorial?

L. ARTHUR NUNN

Coloma Way Baptist Church

Roseville, Calif.

[You say] that “the University of Southern California eliminated its seminary and started a graduate school of religion.” This is correct as far as it goes. But now one has to add that in 1966 USC also eliminated its graduate school of religion.…

What now exists under the name “school of religion” is neither a seminary nor a graduate school. It is headed by the university chaplain and seems to be preoccupied with such things as urban ecology.

ROBERT P. SCHARLEMANN

Associate Professor

School of Religion

The University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa

Theological Theatrics

Your editorial comment on the mockery of the Episcopal Theological School students (“Down, Jesus, Down,” May 26) was most appropriate and needful.… Many of us Episcopal priests, graduates of other seminaries, have often referred to ETS as the “Episcopal Theatrical School”; our facetious appelation has now been justified and vindicated beyond all expectation!

Although I am firmly opposed to COCU as set forth in “Principles of Unity,” it is indeed on much different grounds than those of the pusillanimous actors of ETS. I would like to forward a vicarious apology to the delegates of COCU in behalf of the Episcopal Church.

GERALD L. CLAUDIUS

St. John’s Episcopal Church

Kansas City, Mo.

Let us hope that the dean of the school had the grace to apologize for such irreverent behavior to the delegates and also, I should think, to God, who I am sure is offended by the action of those who claim to be called by him to shepherd the flock.

Such students will someday, undoubtedly, be turned loose to ravage the Church, but let us hope that the faithful laity will refuse to put up with such childish, blasphemous, and disrespectful behavior.

WILLIAM D. WHITE

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church

Wickenburg, Ariz.

From New England With Thanks

For some time I have been receiving CHRISTIANITY TODAY from a friend. This has bothered me, and after picking up a free copy at the Park Street Missionary Conference (with application) I could wait no longer.

For many years I was a run-of-the-mill New England Congregationalist wallowing in the liberalism which has so nearly engulfed the churches of the Pilgrim heritage. All this changed when I started reading your journal. I cannot praise it enough! It is pure joy to read each issue and rejoice in your forthright stand for biblically based historic Protestantism.

RICHARD H. MAC KAY

Watertown, Mass.

Displaced Town

Although I really enjoyed David Coomes’s news item (“From Oberammergau to Britain,” May 26), I think it should be pointed out that Oberammergau is not in Austria but is in Germany, or rather in Bavaria, as many people would prefer to say.… So far as I know, it has always been here, nestled in the beautiful foothills of the Bavarian Alps. Mr. Coomes came close, as just a few kilometers to the south and over the high ridges lies Austria and the breathtaking snow-capped peaks of the Austrian Alps.

JOHN A. CLARK

Chairman, Department of

Mechanical Engineering

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Mich.