“Danger ahead” signs on the highways … “Danger” on bottles that contain poison … “Beware of the Propellers” at some airfields … “Thin Ice” on ponds and rivers in the winter … “Cross at Intersections” … “Beware of the Dog” … “Speed Limit …”—all of us live with warnings on every hand. We take them as a matter of course, and if we stop to think we are thankful for them. We know they are meant for our good.

Strange to say, however, many of us resent any word of warning about our spiritual welfare. The possibility of danger in regard to our eternal destiny is only too often hidden by a conspiracy of silence. Now that the reality of the devil and of hell are ridiculed, even by many who teach and preach, it has become passé to speak of sin and judgment and the world to come.

Men in many secular fields recognize their responsibility to warn of particular dangers. State and federal laws require that there be clear and adequate warnings against certain hazards. But many ministers of the Gospel are silent about the Bible’s warning of “the wrath to come”—a subject about which Jesus, John the Baptist, Matthew, Luke, and John speak clearly.

John, in the Revelation, describes a day when the wrath of the spurned Christ will be poured out: “Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong, and every one, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand before it?’ ” (6:15–17, RSV).

Why is there silence on this subject about which God so clearly warns us in the Bible?

Why do men ignore the whole matter of a coming judgment, mentioned more than 1,000 times in Scripture?

Why do many of those who should proclaim the truth of wrath, judgment, and future punishment remain mute, or soothe with platitudes that please even as they damn?

The reason is not hard to find. They preach a deformed doctrine of God, a doctrine in which his love and mercy are stressed while his holiness, justice, and judgment are slighted.

Certainly the Bible comforts us with the truth that “God is love”; yet it also warns us that “our God is a consuming fire.” The Bible that tells us that Christ is a foundation stone, a sure footing, the only foundation, also warns that “every one who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but when it falls on any one it will crush him” (Luke 20:18).

By and large churchgoers hear messages of comfort and hope based on wishful thinking. The nature of sin, an offense against a holy God, is denied or disregarded. The Cross is spoken of solely in terms of love without the element of propitiation. Only the physical agony of Christ on the cross is stressed; his role as sin-bearer and his vicarious death are overlooked.

I do not see how God can fail to judge those who preach or teach a gospel that is not the Gospel. The love, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ must be preached against the backdrop of the holiness and judgment of God, who offered his Son as a substitute and as the One to whom we may turn for salvation.

No nation has ever existed under more favorable circumstances than America. None has had greater privileges and opportunities. Yet like Israel of old, we have turned every man to his own way. And where there is no repentance, God’s judgment is there.

Where are those who should stand in the highways and byways to warn this sinning nation? We are being warned about man’s offenses against man, his inhumanity to his fellows—and we need this warning. But how few speak also of our offenses against a holy God! How few preach of things beyond the grave. How many stand up to preach about “justice” but fail to mention “self-control and future judgment” (Acts 24:25). How appallingly evident it is that the Church today is more concerned with man’s temporary material welfare than with the welfare of his eternal soul.

The Apostle Paul, preaching to the intellectuals in Athens, told them of God as Creator and Sustainer of life and of man’s vain attempts to worship him by man-made contrivances. Then he said, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30, 31).

Why so few sermons on “repentance”? Or on that coming “day”? Or on the certainty of coming judgment?

The only explanation is that many no longer admit or believe in the true nature of sin, so deadly in its effect that only the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God can save its victims. And because the biblical teaching about sin is rejected, the biblical teaching about judgment and redemption is rejected also.

The good news is what God has done at Calvary and continues to do for man. But salvation is not offered on man’s terms. It is offered on God’s terms, and it involves sin and judgment, love and redemption. No part is complete without the others. Too often a truncated gospel is preached that either denies or ignores the “day” about which our Lord warned, a day of finality and judgment toward which all are headed but from which all may escape by way of the Cross of Christ.

God’s infinite patience is seen by many today as indifference rather than forbearance, blindness rather than loving hope. The Apostle Peter tells us that God does not wish that “any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up” (2 Pet. 3:9, 10).

Figurative language? Don’t rest on a false hope! And why rest at all on anything less than Jesus and his atoning, forgiving, cleansing work?

But, you say, this introduces the element of fear, and fear is incompatible with our thoughts of a God of love. For the unrepentant sinner there is danger, and he should fear. The future is incredibly dark for the unbeliever. It is the part of honesty and love to warn where danger exists.

Paul says, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11a). And to Timothy he said, “Never lose your sense of urgency, in season or out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2a, Phillips).

There is danger ahead for the unbeliever. And there is perfect safety for all who believe.

Dear Demonstrative And Non-Demonstrative Peace-Lovers:

In my dedicated efforts to cover the religious offbeat, I recently found myself immersed in a sea of Vietnik demonstrators at the United Nations awaiting arousement from the ecclesiastical Dr. Martin Luther King and his secular side-kick, Stokely Carmichael. Talk about the huddled masses yearning to breathe free—I was packed so tightly in the surging confines of the barricade-breaking crowd that all I could do was gasp and roll with the tide. The tempest-tossed, slovenly dressed enthusiasts with long, matted hair almost made one wonder if the wretched refuse of our teeming shores had not all been brought to the door of the U.N. in the City of Miss Liberty for this great show of moral conviction.

After a morning spent admiring one another’s weird appearance, dancing to a beat played on old oil drums (napalm?), burning old draft cards and Old Glory (and maybe having a jolt or two of Old Grand Dad), the peace-marchers paraded from Central Park to U.N. Plaza. The watchful eye of New York’s Finest insured their right to demonstrate (a privilege not afforded in Hanoi). Daffodils in their lapels and slogan buttons on their bosoms, they carried erect the posters proclaiming their message. A poetic spirit inscribed: “I Don’t Give a Damn for Uncle Sam, I’m Not Goin’ to Viet Nam.” Another sign asserted the truism: “Children Are Not Born to Burn.” A more friendly persuader advised, “If All Else Fails, Try Love.” Apart from a few threatening jeers and ungentlemanly shoves, I witnessed only the tedium of non-violence during the long and noisy trek.

Craning my neck to behold the Rev. Dr. King at the U.N., I was foiled by the throngs surrounding him. His sonorous voice blaring from loudspeakers, however, reminded me that he was close by. His appeal for an emotional fusion of the peace and civil-rights movements revealed his desire to remain in the top post of protest leadership. And his arguments against U. S. policy in Viet Nam showed either a myopic vision of the true nature of Communist aggression or a yen to be a disruptive force in American society. The rally was an ocean of emotion but conveyed precious little realistic and genuinely humane common sense.

Despite the pressure of warm bodies and the appeals of hot heads, I somehow survived the whole happening. But I imagine the real Martin Luther must be spinning in his grave to see how his namesake is protesting in 1967.

Pacifically, EUTYCHUS III

Canada Does Exist!

Thank goodness an American magazine has really recognized the existence of Canada! Your March 31 issue was excellent.

E. ARTHUR P. ROWE

Anglican Church

Mortlach, Saskatchewan

The issue was marked by penetrating depth, scholarly insight, and evangelistic concern. However, one statement appearing in the editorial, “A Church Between the Centuries,” was grossly misleading. In speaking of the 1925 merger which formed The United Church it was stated that “Methodists regrouped, forming the Free Methodists.” The Free Methodist Church of Canada had its inception in 1874.… It may well be that the 1925 United Church merger caused some “old-fashioned Methodists” to join the Free Methodist Church, but the latter group was not an outgrowth of that merger.

ELTON O. SMITH, JR.

Canasawacta Valley Free Methodist

Norwich, N. Y.

An excellent survey of the Church in Canada.

WILLIAM S. SAILER

Associate Editor

Religious & Theological Abstracts

Myerstown, Pa.

I hasten to include my congratulations with many others on the Canadian Centennial issue. As usual, Mutchmor struck a strong, evangelistic note; Ian Rennie’s story was revealing, and Leslie Hunt’s missionary review excellent, as was E. Margaret Clarkson’s assessment of Margaret Avison’s poetry. Leighton Ford’s exceptional campaign in Calgary has enhanced his write-up on the Centennial crisis, and, altogether, Canada and Canadians are grateful that such a well-known magazine should honor us by so much space.

HERBERT P. WOOD

Toronto, Ont.

On the whole, it was a splendid issue.

Unfortunately, Dr. J. R. Mutchmor in his article for a moment slipped into his famous habit of putting his foot in his mouth. I refer to his statement that “Canadian churches will move further away from all forms of hierarchy.… The historic episcopate will become largely a thing of the past. Prelacy will be heavily discounted.” In those three sentences, he mixed up two ideas in such a way as to hide the truth.

The historical episcopate is not on the way out.… Churches whose form of order is the historical episcopate have risen from representing 59.8 per cent of the population in 1941 to 61.2 per cent in 1961.… But he was accurate in saying that “prelacy will be heavily discounted.” For this we should say “Thanks be to God!” A bishop is not a ruler as he has been over much of the past 1,000 years of Christian history. A bishop is the servant of the church.…

A. J. PELL

Toronto, Ont.

Let’S Have A Consultation

Hurrah for my friend Carl Glasow in “Dangers of a Giant Church” (April 14). We do need a consultation against church union. Clear thinking and simple statement!

MARVIN S. KINCHELOE

Superintendent

Tazewell District Methodist Church

Tazewell, Va.

He has presented incisive arguments as to why organizational merger cannot replace love for God as an agent for Christian unity.

KENNETH C. HARPER

Upland, Ind.

I endorse every word of the article. The only criticism: it’s not strong enough! More power to you. Keep up showing the warning signals. Let us continue in harmony and fellowship, not monolithic regimentation or super-business bureaucracy.

R. B. GRIBBON

Easton, Md.

His article is literally an answer to prayer! How anyone can ignore the lesson of history in the weakness of leaders in their lust for power is incomprehensible—unless he wants to ignore it.

HELEN W. JENKINS

Baltimore, Md.

May I express dismay over the article.… It would be certain folly to minimize the “dangers of a giant church,” and even greater madness to abandon all critical judgment with regard to such a grandiose and awe-inspiring scheme as that proposed by COCU. Further, I should grant that, under certain circumstances, a “consultation against church union” might be called for. However, I find aspects of Pastor Glasow’s argument to be appallingly un-scriptural.

J. H. PAIN

Dept, of Religion

Drew University

Madison, N. J.

The article is conspicuously lacking in facts, biblical-theological reflection, and valid inferences. I was particularly scandalized by his emphasis on “creative competition in Protestantism.” Petty competition causes more confusion, “ecclesiastical rigidity,” superficial evangelism, and lack of integrity in church membership than any single problem of which I am aware.

ARDEN L. SNYDER

Director of Christian Education

Calvary Presbyterian

South Pasadena, Calif.

Fatima Revisited

Your comments on Luther’s views of the Virgin Mary (“Fatima’s Fiftieth,” News, Mar. 31) are grossly misleading, if not manifestly false. Though as a monk and priest, he prayed to her and other saints and also accepted her immaculate conception, he repudiated this later in life when he came to believe that a man is justified solely because of Christ, her son. He specifically condemned praying to her as idolatry. While Lutherans hold that as the Mother of God, she is praise worthy, they in no way teach that she is in any way the source of our Saviour’s deity. Mary’s remaining a virgin all of her life was for Luther at most a pious opinion and never a doctrine, divinely revealed, demanding faith and acceptance.

DAVID P. SCAER

Asst. Prof. of Systematic Theology

Concordia Theological Seminary

Springfield, Ill.

It is true that as a monk Luther prayed to Mary. But he did not continue to pray to Mary all his life.… Luther later regretted his prayers to Mary said as a monk. He wrote, “The truth is that the most pious monk is the worst rogue, because he denies Christ, the Mediator and High Priest, and makes a judge of Him.… I prayed especially to the Virgin, who mercifully appeased her Son through her motherly heart. Ah, if the article of justification had not fallen, brotherhood, pilgrimages, Masses, the invocation of saints, and such things would never have found any place in the church” (W-T 4, No. 4422). But this was Luther the monk. After he had been enlightened by his study of Holy Scripture Luther rejected prayers to Mary and all saints.

NORMAN V. ABBOTT

Hope Lutheran

Maryville, Mo.

Baptism And The Bible

Mr. Scaer and Mr. Ward in “The Conflict Over Baptism” (April 14) have taken the typical stand on baptism. Why shouldn’t they, since church tradition and ecclesiastical authority had dictated to them what they must believe. This too was my approach on the issue of baptism until I studied the Scriptures.…

I simply want to be a Christian only and therefore have as my authority the Scriptures. If anyone can prove from the Scriptures (Latin, Greek, Russian, German, English, etc.) that the design of baptism is not for the remission of sin, that the subjects are not believers, and that the form is not a burial, I will teach it. But may I honestly say that the scholarly, theological articles by Mr. Scaer and Mr. Ward have not presented the issue in keeping with the Scriptures.

JAMES F. LANDRUM

The Church at Bryant

Scottsbluff, Neb.

I eagerly began reading what would surely be a treatment of the subject of baptism worthy of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Ho-hum … Just another denominational tract. (A long one, but just a tract.) Permit me to suggest the obvious:

1. Typical of most treatments of the subject of baptism, the clear Scriptures concerning the ordinance are carefully omitted. In their place we have philosophy.…

2. Of course the isolated act of immersing one under water does not insure salvation, but this fact does not erase the fact that the Scriptures clearly require baptism for salvation.

3. Labeling a doctrine “Campbellite” does not mean that it, therefore, cannot be biblical. (I suspect that if Peter came preaching today he would be so labeled.)

ROGER CHAMBERS

West Side Church of Christ

Hamilton, Ohio

Dr. Ward clearly states the Baptist position when he says, “… baptism is the sign of Christian beginning. It would be emptied of its meaning if it did not stand at the threshold of the journey with Christ.”

However, most Baptist congregations require a person coming into its membership from a non-immersionist communion to be immersed, even though he may have been a confessing Christian for years. Do we not thus destroy the meaning of baptism, which according to Dr. Ward cannot be separated from its form, by removing it from the threshold of the Christian journey? If we are baptized into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13), then we say to a seasoned Christian when we immerse him, “You have never really been in that body until now.” Do we not end up in the same boat with the J. R. Graves Landmarkers and say that only Baptist churches are true churches?

ROBERT H. DEPP

Upper Seneca Baptist

Germantown, Md.

It is unfortunate that David Scaer based his defense of infant baptism on what is probably the worst possible argument in favor of the Church’s traditional practice. The whole concept of “infant faith” is unconvincing, speculative to the extreme, and, in fact, introduces a peculiarly Anabaptist apologetic.… Let us drop the feeble and unnecessary argument from “infant faith.” It confuses at the same time as it seriously undercuts the doctrine of grace.

LEIGH D. JORDAHL

Lutheran Theological Seminary

Gettysburg, Pa.

It would be interesting to know Mr. Ward’s view of one who holds that anything which is admittedly “an act of Christian obedience and confession of Christ” is therefore essential to the appropriation of God’s grace which offers salvation to the obedient.…

It would seem to be a basic Christian tenet held by all believers that one who deliberately and continuously refuses to obey a known command of God, or treats it as a non-essential, or causes others to do so, cannot expect to obtain salvation.

NAN H. VICKERY

Montgomery, Ala.

If Baptists do not practice “sacramental (or saving)” baptism, how can Ward insist that it is “the sign of Christian beginning” and “the way … public declaration of belief …” is made? Can one be a Christian without having a beginning or without having made public declaration of belief? Baptists teach that baptism does not save but practice as though it did, exactly as the “Campbellites” do. Actions speak louder than words.

E. FRANKLIN GAIGE

Elder

First Christian

Plesant Hill, Calif.

When Mr. Scaer suggests that “believers’ baptism of infants” is adequate justification for infant baptism, he comes up with a very tidy solution for what must be a knotty problem—but it’s a solution that is hardly justifiable from the New Testament.

COY D. ROPER

Tahlequah Church of Christ

Tahlequah, Okla.

Good Briefings

I was ever so pleased to see the item on “Keeping Tabs on Red Religion” (News, Mar. 31). In my public and private encounters abroad with the emissaries of both Moscow and Peking, I’d have been lost without my briefings from the pages of Religion in Communist Dominated Areas. And back home my understanding of current events gains light and perspective from it.

If the NCC drops it, the loss will be great. I should hope they’d work hard on reducing its deficit and increasing its circulation.

L. HUMPHREY WALZ

Minister of Public Relations

Synod of New York

United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

New York, N. Y.

The A.C.C.C.: Earnest Contenders

In your editorial “Evangelicals and Ecumenical Crisis” (Mar. 31) you write: “Neither the American Council of Christian Churches nor the National Association of Evangelicals as a movement has rallied to the evangelistic priorities of the Church.” Perhaps you should be reminded that it is not the purpose of the ACCC to evangelize.… The purpose of the ACCC is to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” so that the awful tide of apostasy may be held back so that lost men can be reached according to New Testament principles.

GARRISON E. RICE

Secretary, ACCC of Ohio

Bible Baptist

Bedford, Ohio

The inquisitive passenger, on the rear platform of the long train snaking its way along the French Board River, was puzzled by occasional round white signs with black figures. They were not mileposts, because they were always the same series—100, 125, 150—and not speed-limit signs, because on that line no engineer could make 100 miles an hour and live.

So the passenger asked the flagman: “What are those figures?” “Car-lengths,” the flagman said. “That means so many car-lengths to the switch. If it’s a long train the engineer can’t see all of it at once, around these corners. But he knows how many cars he’s got in his train and them signs tell him whether the last car is out of the siding or not. The engineer’s got to know where his hind end is.”

“Oh,” said the inquiring passenger, and fell to thinking.

The engineer does have to know where his hind end is, sure enough. If he doesn’t, he will think the train is all out on the main line when some of it is still on the sidetrack. He will think the train is ready to roll when it isn’t. The engineer not only has to keep a lookout forward; he has to think backward too, all the way to the caboose. Where is the train? is a question that can’t be answered by looking out of the Diesel window sideways; it has to be answered by thinking back all the way to the last car. If that one isn’t past the siding, the train isn’t past the siding.

Parents, statesmen, leaders of men, all “human engineers,” need to know where their hind end is. They can’t afford to leave it behind, and it is dangerous to assume that it is farther along than it is.

The teacher, for example, must know where the hind end of the class is. The front-row boys and girls (intellectually speaking) may be picking up speed, clicking right along behind the streamlined Idea; but where are the boys and girls in the mental caboose? The teacher had better go easy on the throttle, or he’ll split a switch.

It’s a wise teacher who knows where his class’s hind end is. He may be so far ahead of them that they can’t even see him, but somehow he must know where they are. Otherwise he will only be pulling them into trouble.

The minister must know where his congregation’s hind end is. The saints are right up there in the front of the gospel train, handsome refrigerator cars, some of them, beautifully lined cars for the furniture trade, built for red-ball freight trains. But away back are some cars the minister can’t always see, bumping along still in the siding. They haven’t made the switch, and they won’t make it if the preacher pulls too fast.

Be careful, you up there in the cab! The track looks clear, the light is green, all the cars you can see are lined up behind you. But around the bend is the rest of the train. Better be sure you know where your hind end is before you put on too much speed.

You can go roaring down the theological track, tooting for the Existential and the Historically Unconditioned, but your boxcars back in the rear end may still be in the sidetrack of a high school education where they don’t use such language.

Or you may be blowing for the crossing at Eschatology before some of your cars have got over the switch of Regeneration. On the Ethical Line, also, you may be a long way ahead of the rear cars. You may be preaching away at Social Issues when your rear end hasn’t faced Personal Issues yet. You may have your preaching-eye on the higher subtleties of saintliness, while the brakeman on the rear end hasn’t caught up with the simplicities of ordinary right and wrong. You may be discussing the temptations of sheltered specialists like yourself, while away back there, out of your sight, your businessmen and young people are in the midst of temptations you consider too gross to mention.

Remember, the gospel train has a rear end, and you are supposed to pull that and the head end, too.

Reading ecumenical literature, the kind of thing written by Internationally Known Churchmen, one wonders if these ecclesiastical engineers know where their hind end is. Their big green Diesels are up there on the clear track of Ecumenicity. They have pulled out so far from Grassroots Gulch that they’ve almost forgotten there is such a place, but some of the train is back there, on the old sidetrack of Village Denominationalism. The engineer speaks of the Worldwide Mission and the Worldwide Witness of the Church, and he is so far up in the front that he sees these things quite clearly; but he must not forget that around the bend, out of his sight, the hind end is scraping along in the way station. It hasn’t even pulled up to the switch of Local Witness or Local Mission.

It is a temptation to cut loose. The hind end slows up the train. But the engineer is just as responsible for one end as the other. It’s all part of his train. And if, in a hurry to get on down the track, he cuts his train in two, he is leaving behind the makings of a first-class wreck.

Does radical subjectivity lead to freedom or imprisonment?

Although it is difficult to interpret precisely expressions of enthusiasm for certain ideas or to measure and record the motions of opinion felt in an intellectual community, no one familiar with the secular college campus today can deny that forms of existentialism have enormous appeal for students and younger faculty. This was dramatized recently on the campus where I teach by the enthusiastic response given to a featured lecturer who advanced the existential doctrine that life is absurd, and who curiously rested his case on an intemperate attack against Christianity. The sympathetic reception of this lecture clearly suggested that the speaker and the audience shared a common ground.

Existential absurdity is a dynamic rather than static idea-complex. Nevertheless, the essential proposition is simple: on the testimony and evidence of existence, life is patently chaotic, incoherent, meaningless, and hence absurd; consequently, the only responsible and honest intellectual and emotional response is to turn to the imperatives of the human spirit, to assert the freedom and autonomy of the self in order to impose meaningful form on the chaotic flux of existence. The widespread acceptance of such postulates, even by people who do not consciously use existential terms with reference to themselves, seems to be a characteristic of our age, related no doubt to the fin-de-siècle state of mind we are experiencing as we approach the year 2000.

Anyone who tries to trace these ideas to their origins will discover that existential and nihilistic tendencies are ingrained in our cultural consciousness. For example, three major nineteenth-century writers—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—dramatized in different ways the repudiation of any absolutes external to the sovereignty of the self. Emerson proclaimed the deity of the self and declared, “The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.” In God-defiant Ahab, Melville pictures the ennobling yet destructive consequences of a self-imprisoned solipsism; and Twain’s Huck Finn relies on self-divined moral impulses at the crucial moment to triumph over his deformed conscience. Twain later recognized the incipient nihilism of his moral universe, however, and Theodor, protagonist of The Mysterious Stranger, is tutored by Satan to confront the absurdity of existence by insisting that life is only a dream, an illusion having no substance apart from the subjective structures of consciousness. All three authors couched their existential postures in a framework of anti-Christianity.

Among the forces that have accelerated the trend toward sovereignty of the self are the impact of philosophical naturalism, the widespread influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, the popularization of Freudian doctrine in the form of psychological primitivism, and the transformation of Einstein’s quantum physics into an ethical dogma that declares there are no absolutes except those of expediency. It is not hard to explain why such forceful ideas become assimilated into the cultural texture of moral and ethical beliefs.

Only in the last decade or so has “existentialism” become part of our everyday vocabulary. It was inevitable, of course, that it should become faddish, now that it has the apparent support of intellectual authority. Many people probably play the popular game of “imaginary authors” when the topic of existentialism is broached: that is, not everybody who talks about Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard and Sartre and Kafka and Camus and Jaspers and so on has read them. The point is not that if they read them they would change their minds about the ultimate validity of existentialism; the point is that existentialism in its varied expressions is in. In fact, it has been in so long that it is respectable—even academically respectable, which, to a genuine existentialist, is the kiss of death. That most of the talked-about exponents of this view of life are European lends considerable glamour to it. It has a world-weary, Continental air about it; it is certainly opposed to everything provincial and insular.

At this point it would be well to clarify “classic” existentialism, whose formulations have become so loose that they are applied with equanimity both to Christianity and to its antitheses. Walter Kaufmann has noted in his Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre that existentialism is not a philosophical system as such; it is an attitude, a state of mind. All the different exponents of this ism agree on these points: they refuse to belong to any school of thought, they repudiate the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and they distrust any traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life. The essential characteristics are the strained protest, the total commitment to principle, and the obsession with the self. It can be called the drama of the mind that is sufficient unto itself. At the same time, the mind, even as it declares its total self-sufficiency and autonomy, cannot shake itself loose from an anxious self-pity and sense of cosmic outcastness. Existentialism is, in short, a symptom of acute spiritual exhaustion. The doctrine of absurdity is only one of the most recent expressions of this exhaustion.

One must admit, however, that a number of forces operative in our culture and in the present world situation would make the existential doctrine of absurdity seem relevant if not rational. To cite a Quaker expression, “it speaks to our condition.” Many labels have been given to our age, but perhaps W. H. Auden’s “The Age of Anxiety” comes closest to defining it. The crass materialism of a pragmatic society whose religions have been secularized has helped form a modern America with a number of obvious deficiencies. Pressures seem to conspire against the development of self-identity. The social mask of accommodation never comes off, and it becomes increasingly difficult to be honest with oneself and with others. Forms of hypocrisy are the inevitable outcome; it becomes more difficult to spot the phony because we’re never quite sure we might not be one ourselves.

If this portrait seems too harsh, I can only say that it is the portrait of modern man appearing in much contemporary literature. It is the portrait of Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye: Holden’s loneliness and disillusionment in a world of phonies is an expression of a cultural state of mind. Somehow anonymity is safer than exposing one’s essential self to misunderstanding. T. S. Eliot intuitively realized this in his portrait of J. Alfred Prufrock—inhibited, indecisive, uncommitted, afraid of exposing his inner self to ridicule, but most of all, emotionally sterile. The shock of recognition comes when we realize that Prufrock’s emotional sterility is really a verbal equivalent for the spiritual sterility of our times. Eliot’s metaphor of modern society as a wasteland of hollow men has not lost its power to compel belief.

It is in the context of such cultural forces as these that young people, filled with a vague sense of self-estrangement and non-commitment, find the existential road to “freedom” so attractive. Hemingway’s cynical assertion that whatever feels good is moral and whatever feels bad is immoral suddenly makes sense to a generation looking for an “authentic” norm to preserve them from the clichés of tradition or the false rhetoric of convention. Although modern existentialism has become modish, still much of its appeal derives from an intuitive need to rescue the individual and the meaning of personal experience from the depersonalizing and dehumanizing forces that conspire against them. The existentialist protests these forces and affirms the need for total commitment to principle. Thus existentialism, even as expressed in the radical doctrine of absurdity, cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. Unfortunately, existentialists, who have correctly assessed some of the major problems of our times, are handicapped in their search for real authority to provide a basis for total commitment by their fear of any authority that might circumscribe the autonomy of their being, the all-sufficiency of the self.

A tragedy of our times is that the search for ultimate meaning has been complicated by the failure of the institutional church. Existentialists—or those who conceal their confusions under that panoply—are right when they accuse institutional Christianity of failing to solve their problems. Frankly, the repudiation of institutionalized Christianity is a serious indictment of churchdom’s “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:5).

The blind have become leaders of the blind and, as in one of the parables Jesus gave, all have fallen into the ditch. One huge segment of institutional Christianity has entrenched itself in the traditions of men and the pontifical authority of the ecclesiologists. Fear and superstition still stalk the heels of those fiercely religious communicants who adhere to the precepts of men but who cannot distinguish the voice of the Spirit. Another huge segment of institutionalized Christianity has demythologized the supernatural and has thereby reduced the revelation of Jesus Christ and his Church to nothing but an existential “encounter” with a folklore God. The voice of this organization is appealing because it has come to use the existentialists’ terms; but it is a spiritually lifeless voice. Still another large segment of institutionalized Christianity stubbornly clings to orthodox forms but fails to translate doctrines into spiritual realities.

The remoteness and detachment of institutionalized Christianity—qualities against which existentialists rightfully react—have caused it to reach an impasse, as one part of Christendom nervously fingers its beads in the dark, a second part tries to out-existential the existentialists, and the third part mindlessly recites its creeds, being careful not to choke on dry communion crackers or to attract undue notice by demonstrating spiritual enthusiasm. The fact that all segments are now chatting amiably over the backyard fence has been no cause to rejoice, for snatches of their conversation suggest that the best to be expected from this turn of events is an amalgamation of institutionalism.

No wonder, then, that confusion exists. But God is not the author of confusion. If life with its apparent ambiguities and spiritual voids seems meaningless and absurd, the chief reason is that man has willed it to be so. An Eastern sage made a point in his maxim, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Yet something in man prefers darkness to light, and he often wills to remain there. It has always been true; the Apostle John described this predisposition in human nature when he recorded the response of man to the revelation of Jesus Christ: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:4, 5). The present darkness is one of choice, but it is a choice that issues in condemnation: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

Much of what man sees and accomplishes in this world is confessedly absurd. This has been so because man in his natural state, preferring the autonomy of the self, is condemned to all the confusions inherent in that condition. The inner spiritual disorder of unregenerate man is inevitably reflected in his social structures, for society is the macrocosm of the individual, and the inner darkness of individual man is directly communicated to collective man. But the tendency of the existentialist—particularly the devotee of the absurd—is to transfer his own confusion and meaninglessness to the order of the universe. The absurdity of inner chaos is externalized and attributed to that which is outside the boundaries of the self; but the entrenched existentialist, like the Pharisee of old, cannot admit his need for help outside himself.

There is, however, an alternative to the confusion and despair voiced so plaintively by modern man, though the increasing lawlessness of human hearts makes this alternative unattractive. It is the direct, transforming, and experiential relationship man can have with God by faith in the efficacious sacrifice and atonement of Jesus Christ. The condition of partaking of divine nature requires the surrender of the self by personal faith in the redemptive efficacy of the blood of Jesus Christ. Only through this means can fragmented human nature be made spiritually whole again in reconciliation with God (Col. 1:20–23).

One who has entered into this dynamic saving relationship with the Source of all authority, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, will no longer be able to find the existential doctrine of absurdity tenable. Of course, this redemptive plan—authenticated by fulfilled prophecy, historical confirmation, and the personal, experiential revelation of the Holy Spirit—will strike many as foolish and arbitrary, itself an example of absurdity. But no man who has “tasted of the good things” of God can deny the transforming power of the Spirit of Christ. A man with a direct personal relationship with Jesus Christ is never at the mercy of a man who argues that life is absurd. It is a spiritual experience, and as Paul declared, “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

The modern existentialist temper has at least shown that many recognize the hopelessness of the human condition in its present state. The existentialists have brought home the fact that in a thousand ineluctable and obscure ways, modem man is enslaved and entrapped—even by the very institutions to which he looks for aid. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ will probably not be found appealing by those who have brewed and tasted the heady wine of the total sovereignty of the self. Genuine repentance, a condition of entering into the possession of eternal life, is difficult for one who has devoted his best energies to asserting the primacy of the self as the absolute authority. Like Emerson, many have made a commitment to this vision, even if it means being in a perversely courageous way a “child of the Devil.”

The pyrite of dynamic fictions has always been more glittering than the gold of truth, and it is not strange that modern man has come to the impasse of spiritual sterility. Indeed, those in the academic world who are dedicated to the quests of the mind are as likely as any to be blinded to the truth. The Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who graciously gave Paul an audience in his famous discourse on Mars Hill were religiously devoted to intellectual novelty, and although a few believed the Gospel of the resurrection, the majority dismissed it as an absurd notion worthy only of scorn (Acts 17:18–21). In his letter to Timothy, Paul later described the characteristics of men who will repudiate the word of Christ; prominent on the list is their being “lovers of self,” who are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:1–9).

It is a sad commentary on human intelligence when a seeker after the truth finds his quest for meaning in a “meaningless” universe more exciting than the discovery of truth itself. Enticed by the ancient delusion of freedom that the sovereignty of the self seems to promise, those who partake of the existential temper are oblivious to the fact that the greatest prison of all is the charnel house of the self. The way out of self-bondage is the Christ who said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). Essentially, this release from self-enclosure begins when one is willing to receive that which is his by faith. There is no more exciting revelation of the meaning of existence than to become a partaker of the divine nature, to be “born, not of blood … nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12, 13). As simple as this promise is, few will claim it. The reason is not hard to discover. Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). Many will find the cost absurd!

It considers religion outmoded, yet cannot make sense of human life

“Religion ceased to be a significant factor … between the First and Second World Wars.” Humanism raises this self-confident shout of victory in “Religions of the Future,” an essay by Tolbert H. McCarroll, editor of the Humanist (Nov./Dec., 1966, p. 190).

As an organized philosophical movement, humanism functions in the International Humanist and Ethical Union, the American Humanist Association, and other regional bodies. C. H. Schonk says that “humanism is … to a rather high extent the concern of the intelligentizia” (sic) (International Humanism, April, 1966, p. 27), and he hopes that the view will spread among ordinary men. Evangelical Christians can assure him that it has already done so, for in unorganized form humanism now permeates labor unions, political parties, and even large Protestant denominations where some say God is dead.

What Is Humanism?

If religion lost its significance between the two world wars, the precise date may have been 1933. In that year thirty or more distinguished ministers and professors (E. Burdette Backus, Harry Elmer Barnes, A. J. Carlson, John Dewey, John Herman Randall, Roy Wood Sellars, and others) published A Humanist Manifesto. On July 13, 1963, the American Humanist Association cautiously disavowed the economic pronouncement of Article XIV but by silence apparently approved the remainder.

This distinguished company of humanists said in 1933, “First, religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.” That is to say, humanism is atheism. And later in the manifesto: “Fifth, humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.” Or, in other words, neither God, whose existence is excluded, nor the universe cares about man.

To this day, these ideas and the import of the other articles of the manifesto continue to be repeated in the Humanist with pietistic insipidity. For example: “Essential to our survival is the ability to distinguish those who search their condition in joyous affirmation from those who would forsake and annul life.… The enforcement of conscientious life is humanism.… The major task for humanism is persuading people to join the human race” (The Humanist, Mar./Apr., 1966, p. 46).

The number of vague generalities in the humanist publications is astounding. Some humanists themselves recognize the meaninglessness of their hazy formulas: “If one merely put down what all humanists hold in common, the result would not be very inspiring” (International Humanism, April, 1966, p. 1). Is it not pedantic as well as uninspiring to say that “the humanist makes a judicial reassessment of human beliefs and practices in the light of modern knowledge and discards whatever is found groundless”? Is there not a tinge of self-contradiction in the next sentence: “He accepts reasoned findings but keeps his mind open” (ibid., p. 12). In the matter of definiteness and clarity, the contrast between humanist generalities and the precisely formulated supernaturalism of the Westminster Confession is amazing.

The unifying principle so conspicuously absent from humanism’s platitudinous affirmation is provided, however, by its thoroughly definite negations. Humanists know what they are against. They hate God. They “take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:2, 3).

What Humanism Is Not

Despite humanism’s inability to agree on any definite affirmations, one should not be blind to its negative force. Nor to its unorganized prevalence. When people neglect Bible reading, they are advancing humanism. When they no longer “say grace” at meals, when golf or fishing is their Sunday occupation and civil rights their sacrament, they are practicing atheists.

So victorious has been the humanist advance that McCarroll can even tar Eugene Carson Blake with defeatism (“Dr. Blake has good reason to fear”—The Humanist, Nov./Dec., 1966) when Blake asserts that “humanism … is nonetheless the greatest threat to man’s morality or even to his survival or salvation.”

It is somewhat amusing, of course, that Blake should thus express his fear of humanism. While under his control a large denomination was directed away from the Bible to the so-called Confession of 1967 and to new ordination vows that commit the clergy to a very small fraction of what the present standards require. As far back as 1924 those who shortly gained control of that denomination had denied the infallibility of the Scripture and, in the Auburn Affirmation, had denied that the Virgin Birth, the Atonement, and the Resurrection are essential to Christianity. Since that date supernaturalism has steadily evaporated in Dr. Blake’s organization.

Humanistic Ethics

Humanism is not all platitude and propaganda. Nor is it all completely negative. The more competent representatives offer some positive views on ethics. Their ethics, of course, is not Christian.

Thomas S. Szasz argues for abortion. “Such an operation should be available in the same way as, say, an operation for the beautification of a nose: the only requirement should be the woman’s desire to have the operation” (The Humanist, Sept./Oct., 1966, p. 148; cf. ibid., Nov./Dec., 1966, p. 206, col. 3). This proposal is neither negative nor vague.

In general, humanism advocates promiscuity in sex. Says Gerald A. Ehrenreich, “Nor … is sexual behavior immoral in itself—in or out of marriage, with oneself or with someone else.… Judging sexual behavior in moralistic terms … results in laws which arbitrarily impose the moral views of one group on others. This is unfortunate” (ibid., Sept./Oct., 1966, pp. 153 f.).

Also sufficiently definite, but not commanding complete agreement, are the socialistic proposals advanced by various humanists. Although they frequently criticize the Communists for doctrinaire fanaticism, their social and economic views hardly coincide with those of Barry Goldwater.

These ethical pronouncements help to rescue humanism from total vacuity. At the same time, however, they raise the philosophical problem of the identification or justification of alleged values. It is not enough to advocate freer sex and abortion; one must explain why these are good, right, or obligatory. Very few humanists attempt to justify their ethical principles.

Two notable exceptions deserve mention. Erich Fromm (ibid., July/Aug., 1966, p. 121) employs a subtitle, The Validity of Human Values. Having rejected divine revelation as the ground of moral distinctions, he relies on “an examination of the conditions of the existence of man, an analysis of the intrinsic contradictions in human existence, and an analysis of how they can be solved.” Some lines later he adds that “humanism must have a strict hierarchy of values.” Unfortunately this does not take us very far. It merely repeats the problem. Although Fromm has some kind words for Zen Buddhism, Spinoza, Goethe, and Marx, the question he so courageously faced remains unanswered.

Herbert Feigl, a man of no mean ability, also faces this question (International Humanism, April, 1966, p. 11). But like many others, he does not direct his ability in this direction. He merely says, “Does life have meaning without a transcendent creed? Of course it does.” And that is actually where he leaves the matter.

A Christian Question

The Bible teaches that man was created for God’s glory. It was God who gave man a purpose, and therefore man’s good is to fulfill that purpose. But if nature is indifferent to man’s desires, comfort, or well-being, as atheistic naturalism teaches, can man have any purpose at all? Men may have purposes, but logical positivism cannot maintain a teleological unity of the human race. This philosophy repudiates every objective system of morals or values to which all men are answerable.

Yet the unity of the human race is a pet theme of the humanists. They urge us to join the human race. Their goal is to become human. A Christian, with the doctrine of creation, has an adequate base for biological and teleological unity; and with the doctrine of the fall he has an adequate reason to deny the spiritual unity of mankind. But the humanists assert spiritual unity without reason, contradict generic purpose both by their positivism and by their atheism, and by evolution cast doubt even on the biological unity of the races.

If, now, neither a purposing God nor an indifferent nature imposes a purpose on all men, if “humanists believe that mankind has only itself to rely upon” (Living with Uncertainty, promotional folder of the American Humanist Association), and if, further, morality is relative and constantly changing, then it is hard to see what obligation anyone has to accept humanistic ideals. Each person must select his own purpose. One man will choose the life of a playboy; another will desire to be a miserly recluse; and, to put the question most pointedly, how can a humanist insist that anyone should choose to live rather than to commit suicide?

The question of suicide must be insisted upon, no matter how distasteful it is to humanists. An exponent of ethical culture once engaged in public debate with a Calvinist. The Calvinist was asked: If you were persuaded that theism was false, how would you live? Perhaps the humanist expected a sheepish avowal of orgiastic desires. More probably he expected a respectable choice based on common notions of prudence. On this second possibility the ethical culturist would have claimed victory, for if rules of prudence allow choices of action, then theism is unnecessary for ethics.

But the actual answer given was, “I would shoot myself and save a lot of trouble.” At this the humanist threw up his hands in despair, as well he might, because he could not justify the value of life itself. Obviously, if life is not worth living, discussion of the relative merits of a playboy versus a hermit is irrelevant.

When, in answer to the question, “Does life have meaning without a transcendent creed?,” Feigl merely asseverates, “Of course it does,” we cannot accept his optimism without verification. Indeed, verification is one of the main points in Feigl’s naturalism. Not only is the (temporarily) true distinguished from the (temporarily) false by verification, but the identification of meaningful statements as opposed to sentences that hold no meaning depends on verifiability. With his strong insistence on scientific procedure, verification becomes a matter of sensory observation. “If and only if assertion and denial of a sentence imply a difference capable of observational (experiential, operational, or experimental) test, does the sentence have factual meaning” (“Logical Empiricism,” reprinted in Living Schools of Philosophy, ed. by Dagobert D. Runes, p. 334).

Among factually meaningless sentences Feigl classes all expressions of “praise or blame, appeals, suggestions, requests and commands” (ibid., p. 334). He would therefore be compelled to agree that the suggestion to join the human race is meaningless. So also with every moral command. Such sentences cannot be tested by observation or empirical validation. “An ethical imperative like the Golden Rule … having its accent in the emotive appeal, could not possibly be deduced from a knowledge of facts only; it is neither true nor false.… The question raised (and sometimes answered negatively) by metaphysicians, ‘Is the satisfying of human interests morally valuable?’ is therefore not a factual question at all.… The term ‘valuable’ (in the non-instrumental sense) is used purely as an emotive device.”

Now, Feigl, as well as other humanists, does not refrain from emotional devices. He writes, “A completely grown-up mankind … will acknowledge no other procedure than the experimental and no other standards than those prescribed by human nature” (ibid., pp. 354 ff.). Not only is this sentence with its context emotional and pejorative, but even if we choose to live rather than commit suicide, there is no experimental procedure that verifies the superiority of a “scientific” or positivistic life. Nor can the ideals of Jesus, St. Francis, Newton, or Einstein be considered superior to or more practical than those of Stalin. Certainly Stalin meets every empirical test of success.

A Christian Conclusion

In view of the logical flaw at the basis of logical empiricism, in view of the relativity of humanistic moral standards, and in view of the insipid pietism of its emotional exhortations, the best thing for the Christian churches to do is to recover their full-fledged supernaturalism. The God who by creation imposed purpose on the human race has infallibly revealed to the prophets that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

Excerpts from President Nathan M. Pusey’s comments at the September 28, 1966, convocation of Harvard Divinity School

It was decided one hundred fifty years ago at Harvard that preparation for the professional ministry demanded something more than undergraduate liberal learning followed by some desultory reading under the guidance of an active clergyman. But what was this to be? A study of the sources and history of the Christian faith more intensive and specialized than a general undergraduate education could provide? This of course. But somehow it had to be more. The spirit of that age, which prompted the founding of schools of mechanic arts, together with manifest human need, demanded that it had also to be useful learning—a kind of learning, not wholly gained from books, that a man could take with him into the world to help him in the care and cure of souls. The notion was hard to refute, but with its acceptance, trouble began. Granted the reasonableness of the claim, just what kind of learning, precisely, should this be? There has been tension over this issue in the School since its beginning.

Despite the School’s earnest efforts to provide a more professional training, the day before the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary an intemperate critic told a Boston audience that the faculty of this School “feed their students morning, noon, and night on nothing but theology”; and he went on to charge that the members of the faculty of that time were not at all interested in “imbuing men with the pastoral spirit.”

Other episodes were to follow in the long controversy between those at the School who, especially sensitive to the pull of the University, were content, if not actually determined, to expend their full effort on scholarship; and those others, Hebraists as well as Greeks, who felt a more pressing immediate obligation to Church and World. At one time some who thought the Harvard Divinity School was too much a creation of the Academy established a short-lived rival institution, the Boston School for the Ministry, to provide an education more concerned for the practical needs of ministers. On another occasion one of the compelling arguments offered for joining the Andover Theological School to the Divinity School at Harvard was that the former was closer to the churches and less captivated by purely scholarly pursuits. But the claim that the Harvard Divinity School was more interested in scholarship than in what God was doing in the world would not die. Apropos of this charge, which has been leveled at the Divinity School again and again throughout its history, I find a certain wry humor in Professor Ahlstrom’s characterization of the School’s “middle Period” as a time of comparative stagnation when “only the Library grew.”

Not only have differences of opinion about educational aim and emphasis marred the School’s history throughout its hundred fifty years of separate existence; even more troublesome have been differences over doctrine. These have been many and various.…

The recent history of the Divinity School starts with the sketch for a revitalized program which was drawn by a committee of experts appointed by President Conant in 1946 to consider the future of the School. Their report insisted: that the School could not be abandoned; that a first-rate school of religious learning was needed at Harvard (the old, and honored and indispensable emphasis on graduate education once more); that toward this end money would have to be raised to make possible an enlarged faculty; and, among several other more specific recommendations, that increased attention be given to Practical Theology. It appeared almost that we were back at the beginning once more. And so we approach the present day.

During the twenty years succeeding the committee’s report, most of its limited objectives have been attained. For this we can be grateful. But is it too much to say that the old divided interests and controversies, in new form, about educational emphasis, and more especially about faith and mission, remain? And is it not equally true that the larger goals, to the attainment of which a revitalized school of religious studies at Harvard was expected to contribute, continue to elude us? Has the place of religion here and in other universities, and, in a much more ambitious frame of reference, within American culture, been notably improved or clarified? Has a countervailing force to the materialistic power of our culture even gained a beachhead during these years, let alone begun to have fanned out from such a base? Perhaps this kind of achievement was and is too much to ask. But something of the kind was hoped for—early and late—has always been hoped for throughout the history of this School; and small as the School is—and unimpressive as is the assemblage of such schools in the totality of our culture with its massive secular educational enterprise—the goal, though still elusive, nevertheless remains urgently desirable.

Uncertainty and doubt remain inside and outside the School, inside and outside the University. Men continue to scorn older formulations of belief—and rightly so, now as in the past; but now belief itself—professedly—is consciously eschewed. We have all become doubting Thomases. But not quite all of us, everywhere. Certainly the great majority of men and women want to believe, want to believe in something worthy of belief—and need to—though of these, many simply cannot or will not find this something in Christianity. I expect a careful review of the history of the Harvard Divinity School would show that this is no new problem, not even among its faculty and students. But would a careful scrutiny of the School’s present situation reveal that doubts concerning its enterprise exist now, inside and out, with increased poignancy, in new and awful forms? I have no right to say. I hope not. But from what I hear and read I suspect it might.

A new kind of humanism seems to be engulfing even recently updated formulations of the faith. To many no creedal formulation now seems possible because, it is insisted, there can be no supernatural reference to undergird such a creed. And if creeds go, what then becomes of the Church? I do not find many clear statements on this.…

The item in the heritage of the Divinity School to which I have wished especially to call attention today is its recurring sense that to fulfill its task this School has to be both an excellent place of study, and, at the same time and above all, a place of immediate and continuing service to the Church, which Church, we need repeatedly to recall, was put into the world that men may believe.

What could be a more urgent or more important task in this time than this, when the faith that has sustained so much of what man has attempted in the world in recent generations, and which has obviously led to many magnificent, we would say, indispensable achievements—the belief that he must and can make his way on his own—is losing its power to enthrall? Disenchantment begins to show itself everywhere. It is not only the young who are asking, what is contemporary culture doing to me, and to my neighbor? and what should it be doing? Many are beginning to have doubts. Being less impressed by our culture’s accomplishments, or rather more impressed by its oversights and its debilitating by-products, they are developing an indifferent, even a cynical attitude toward it. Would it not be supremely ironical at such a time, when our culture is almost fatally in need of saving grace, if theology, victimized by a new humanism, should choose to run off in pursuit of another man-made delusion?

Theological seminary education is in trouble and in transition. The predicament is summed up neatly by Dean George Peck of Andover Newton Theological School: “The man who isn’t confused about today’s developments in religious education and its many implications just doesn’t know what he’s talking about.… You’re not in the swim just now unless you’re way out of your depth.”

Seminaries face a formidable array of problems. They are confronted with a crisis of “image identity,” a faculty “brain drain,” increasing tension with new undergraduate and graduate programs of religion in the colleges and universities, recruitment and enrollment nightmares, and above all secularized Christianity and theological vagary. And, in addition, many pre-seminary and seminary students, adrift in a world of change, are searching for a firm anchor of certitude. (See editorial on page 28.)

Although the “identity” crisis is an old and recurring one, it has reached an acute stage in recent years. The seminaries are on a seesaw that has at one end the professional-school concept and at the other the graduate-school idea, and they teeter with the pressures of the hour. In an address to Harvard Divinity School last year, President Nathan M. Pusey said:

It is a truism that a professional school that is not a graduate school is always in danger of being little more than a trade school or a school for technicians. On the other hand, a professional school that is a graduate school is always tempted into pursuit of scholarship to the neglect of the practical needs of the profession it was established to serve.

It is virtually impossible for any institution to maintain perfect balance on this seesaw; one side or the other almost inevitably ascends while the other declines. In contemporary society the graduate-school idea is higher, although the seminaries are reluctant to admit this.

Perhaps the American Association of Theological Schools has unwittingly supported this notion. In setting down its accrediting requirements for schools offering the Th.D. the AATS says that “it is desirable that a school that gives a doctoral degree in theology should have an active working relationship with a university where its standards will be subject to objective scrutiny by representatives of other graduate departments.…” Since university graduate schools would not deign to subject their scholarship to the scrutiny of seminaries, the AATS’s statement seems to denigrate the seminaries and enhance the universities.

Many changes have taken place in this time of fluidity. The University of Southern California eliminated its seminary and started a graduate school of religion. Oberlin closed its divinity school. At present there is great friction between the divinity school and the university at Drew. One Jesuit seminary, Woodstock, is reaching out, according to reports, to relocate itself in some kind of university complex in the New York area.

But Gary Gerlach, writing in the National Observer, forecasts the wave of the future in this struggle: “By the end of the century, experts say, 100 of the nation’s 150 major seminaries and dozens of smaller ones could be eliminated—partly because of the action on the [university] campuses.” Seminaries are engaged in a battle with undergraduate and graduate schools of religion in private and state universities. Despite the polite, scholarly dialogue between the contestants, unpunctuated with overtones of jealousy, the competition is a real one.

The universities have a number of impressive advantages over the seminaries. The first is financial, though this factor in itself may not be determinative. Universities are able to pay their faculty members half again or twice as much as the seminaries. A report from the American Association of Theological Schools shows that the average salary for a full professor in a divinity school is $10,800. The American Association of University Professors lists the average salary of a university professor as $18,720.

The faculty “brain drain” from seminary to university is increasing. When the universities have developed full-scale religion departments, one can look for a substantial exodus of men from the divinity schools. Already Robert McAfee Brown has gone from Union of New York to Stanford, Sidney Mead from Claremont to Iowa, Elwyn Smith from Pittsburgh Seminary to Temple, Nels Ferré from Andover Newton to Parsons, and Charles Pfeiffer from Gordon Divinity School to Central Michigan University.

A second attraction of the university over the seminary is the absence of creedal tests. Although most seminaries do not enforce creedal standards rigidly, they do have them. The university atmosphere is better suited to the ethical standards, if not also to the theological views, of one who wishes to avoid tongue-in-cheek adherence to doctrinal statements.

Moreover, the university allows untrammeled academic freedom, which is more difficult for a theological seminary tied to dogma (though even the death-of-God school has had seminary spokesmen). The university can employ agnostics, atheists, Hindus, and pantheists as readily as Protestants, Jews, and Catholics. It is interested in pure scholarship, not in religious commitment—and the wide diversity of theological views tends to make modern theologians academically suspect. The seminaries must look to men who are at least purportedly Christian and who maintain some semblance of theological conviction—even if, like William Hamilton of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, they abandon certain cardinal tenets of the Christian faith.

Another vexing problem for theological educators is the desire of the clergy to be “doctored.” Walter Wagoner, of The Fund for Theological Education, Ernest C. Colwell, of the School of Theology at Claremont, and Jerald Brauer, of the University of Chicago Divinity School, are among leaders of a movement to make theological education more attractive by granting four-year professional doctorates for those who expect to enter the pastoral ministry but are not interested in an academic doctorate. Claremont and Chicago have instituted professional doctoral programs. So have other schools, such as Fuller Seminary. The theory behind this move is that pastors, like physicians and dentists, should be granted the doctorate after four years of professional training.

The larger and better-financed institutions can handle the new assignment, but the smaller ones with limited faculty, minuscule libraries, and little money cannot. They fear that prospective students will be attracted to institutions where, for one more year of work, they may wear the golden tassle. Since the small seminaries cannot compete with the more affluent ones and since a move toward a professional doctorate without adequate faculty, library facilities, and financial support would jeopardize their accreditation, their plight is indeed unenviable.

All seminaries share another disadvantage in the recruitment battle. At a time when students are deciding whether they will enter the ministry and when they must choose a seminary, they are under the influence of the college or university religion department, which can turn them from the pastoral ministry into secular channels or toward the university graduate programs of religion that are not church-related. Men like Brown at Stanford attract hundreds of undergraduates to their courses. Last year at Western Michigan University, eight faculty members in the department of religion offered more than forty religion courses and taught more than 1,200 students out of a student body of 16,000.

The seminary recruitment enigma comes at a time when critics inside and outside the institutional church seek to bypass the church and call for new forms and structures as yet undevised. Religion students quickly fall in line and decide to work in secular rather than church structures. This fits neatly into the university outlook. The Iowa catalogue states: “The School of Religion is not a theological seminary. It does not prepare students for ordination as clergymen.… It is designed to help students gain an understanding of the history and literature of religion and insight into its nature and meaning.” Thus acculturated, students either take no work beyond that offered in the undergraduate programs or pursue the Ph.D. without even enrolling in a theological seminary. If they take the Ph.D., they can join a university faculty and, unordained and serving outside the institutional church, help to repeat the pattern in the students they themselves teach. In this manner religion becomes secularized and divorced from the church.

The predicament of some of the small seminaries can be seen in the experience of four in the American Baptist Convention. In 1956, Berkeley, Central, California, and Crozer seminaries—all accredited—enrolled 497 students. In 1965 this had dropped to 288. Four small schools duplicated faculty members, libraries, and buildings and offered similar courses. According to the latest catalogues, the four schools support sixty-one full-time faculty members. In comparison, Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1965 enrolled 641 students and had a full-time faculty of thirty-eight. There was no duplication of courses, or faculty, library and plant, and degrees were offered through the doctorate.

While it would be premature to hold university religion programs chiefly responsible, no one can overlook the fact that seminary enrollments either are remaining stable or are dropping. They certainly have not kept pace with the population increase. The 1966 enrollment report of the American Association of Theological Schools states the case plainly: (1) from 1958 to 1964 there was a decline; (2) since 1965 there has been a slight turn upward, but the enrollment increase in 1966 compared with 1965 was only eight-tenths of 1 per cent; (3) “there has been a noticeable decline in the number and percentages of students in the B.D. (or equivalent) program”; (4) “there is growing interest in teaching ministries and most of the 1,425 students in doctoral programs in religion look forward to serving in the expanding faculties of colleges and universities.” One can only conclude that these seminary graduates who man teaching posts in colleges and universities will help diminish the influence of the seminaries in the days ahead.

The supreme problem of the seminaries is theological vagabondage. Few institutions have remained wholly true to their original creedal commitment. Many of them are an unartistic blend of incompatible viewpoints that negate one another and leave the student bewildered and distressed. President Pusey caught this note in his address to his own seminary:

A new kind of humanism seems to be engulfing even recently updated formulations of the faith. To many no creedal formulation now seems possible because, it is insisted, there can be no supernatural reference to undergird such a creed. And if creeds go, what then becomes of the Church?

This is not the opinion of an anti-intellectual exponent of theological ignorance. It is the measured and perceptive view of a mature churchman.

President Pusey identified the condition that is at the heart of the seminary problem: doubt and unbelief.

Uncertainty and doubt remain inside and outside the School, inside and outside the University. Men continue to scorn the older formulations of belief—and rightly so, now as in the past; but now belief itself—professedly—is consciously eschewed. We have all become doubting Thomases.

Wistfully he asked:

Can we not now … undertake to be a little less luminous in our doubts, to be a little more ready to receive than to resist?… Can we who have erred in spirit not come to understanding? Can we who have murmured not learn doctrine?

Dean Walter Muelder of Boston University School of Theology presents another side of the coin. In an address to the American Association of Theological Schools in 1962, he exclaimed: “Theological school faculties are so engrossed in their specialties that each faculty member assumes the other is presenting the Gospel.” What he might have said is that faculty specialists are so busy trying to decipher what is written over the Cross that they fail to see or heed the Man hanging on the Cross.

Titillated by every “wind of doctrine,” trying desperately to be “relevant” and to spark new ideas, faculty members appear greatly confused. Walter Wagoner wrote in Bachelor of Divinity (Association Press, 1963):

Add to this confusion in critical matters of biblical interpretation the related critique of linguistic analysis with its distrust of theological language; add to this also the fact that the theological situation in seminaries today is, at the best, wide open and, at the worst, characterized by a lack of precision. In contrast to the days or to the places in which Barthianism or fundamentalism or liberalism was dominant and well defined, there are now no sharply delineated and all-compelling theological traditions.

Satirically Wagoner pointed to the effect this has had on the seminarians who look to their theological mentors for guidance:

That the seminarian scarcely knows which direction to look for a favoring wind is equally obvious. As in Beckett’s plays, the seminarians often resemble those anonymous characters who pop their heads out of garbage cans to see who or Who is coming next.

The tragedy of much seminary training today is the tendency to emphasize the transitory and neglect the eternal. Too many students are familiar only with the “gospel” according to Tillich, Fletcher, Bonhoeffer, or Robinson. The theology of Matthew, Paul, and Jesus they do not know. The sure word of prophecy has too often been replaced by “the ground of being,” a “demythologized Jesus,” the “secular city,” the “situation ethic,” and the “creedless church.” Some have gone far beyond doubt to a new certainty—the certainty that the faith of our fathers is old hat. In doing so they have lost sight of what their forebears thought the purpose and the function of the ministry to be. Unitarian Sidney Mead in his chapter in The Ministry in Historical Perspective (edited by H. Richard Niebuhr and Daniel D. Williams, Harper, 1956), quoted the nineteenth-century clergyman Albert Barnes as saying that the chief end of the ministry is “the conversion of souls—to save souls and to labour for revival of religion.” He quoted from Baird’s Religion in America that most nineteenth-century Americans “have been taught from childhood that the preaching of the Gospel is the great instrumentality, appointed by God for the salvation of men” and “hence, even though not church members, they quite generally respected the church and the clergy.”

Caught in the vortex of vexing and perplexing problems, the seminaries are in trouble. There is no doubt that the shape of things to come will be different. How long the struggle will continue before relative peace descends again no one can prophesy. What new forms will be devised and new approaches developed only time will tell. It is no easy task, however, for the institutions that supply the Church with its ministers to stay alive and vigorous. They will survive; that is sure. But how and under what conditions we do not know yet.

The most exciting development in education today is the rise of the Protestant church school. A rarity three decades ago, Protestant schools are now being organized at the rate of 225 per year. If the enthusiasm does not wane, they will soon take a place of equal importance alongside the public schools and the Roman Catholic parochial schools. The First Baptist Church School of Charleston, South Carolina, is an example of this new force in elementary and secondary education. In 1949, First Baptist offered kindergarten and first grade. Then each year it added a grade, until now there are 670 students in kindergarten through twelfth grade.

In 1937 there were about 2,000 Protestant schools in the United States, most of them Lutheran, Episcopal, or Seventh-day Adventist. The next fifteen years brought about 1,000 more. Then between 1952 and 1959 there arrived 1,800 new schools, and total enrollment doubled. In the next three years, 900 new schools were started. Since 1962 the growth rate has leveled off at 4 per cent per year.

There are now more than 5,700 Protestant schools with a total enrollment of half a million. By comparison, there are more than 10,000 Roman Catholic schools with 5,570,000 pupils. However, enrollment in Catholic schools dropped 58,000 in 1966, while Protestant schools continued their 4 per cent growth rate. If these trends continue, Protestant schools will match Roman Catholic schools in ten years.

What explains this rapid increase in Protestant church schools? To find out, we asked those who are now operating them this question: “Why did you start a church school?” The answers revealed concern for three things:

1. a superior academic environment,

2. a strong Christian influence,

3. a Bible-centered curriculum.

Many of the pastors also expressed a fourth, practical consideration: growth of the church through the operation of the school.

To consider these concerns as sharply separate would be artificial. They are intertwined, and they all are a part of the Church’s struggle with the secular order. The Protestant school exists in the interest of the Christian witness in the world; the school is an instrument for subjecting the secular world to the reign of Christ.

Many may be surprised to find academic excellence at the top of the list, and its place may reflect some rationalization on the part of the church-school administrators. But it is there. T. Frank Matthews, head of St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Selma, Alabama, states his purpose: “To provide a superior academic education in the context of Christian faith and worship.” He comments further that “it is very essential that small children realize that God is very much concerned with their academic education and ‘participates’ in their acquisition of it.” A. E. Holt, principal of the Lakeview Baptist School, San Antonio, Texas, links the three concerns together and places the initiative with the parents: “A … school was started at our church so that Christian parents could … see their children receive a strong academic education in a controlled moral atmosphere where God and the Bible were honored by teachers and the curriculum.” Holt concluded that “Christian parents can’t compete with the devil in educating children without Christian schools.”

Concern for a strong Christian influence is tied to the desire for academic excellence by Vincent X. Zanca, principal of mid-city Baptist High School in New Orleans. Zanca says his school, which offers kindergarten through twelfth grade, was started “to provide an excellent academic education to children in a Christian environment.” D. B. Spaulding, head of a Seventh-day Adventist school in Fullerton, California, says, “Children need a Christian education, and public schools have not been established for this purpose.” His church started a school to “establish our children in the Christian faith and stem the tide of influence of evolution and other non-Christian principles being taught in the public school system.” Another Seventh-day Adventist, H. Roger Bothwell of Waterloo, Iowa, advocates the education of the “whole” being and says his school was started “to provide our children with an education that does not require correction when they come to worship. Example: creation vs. evolution.”

The Amish, making no claims to academic excellence, have dramatized the struggle to maintain the peaceful pursuit of a simple religious way of life. They refuse to send their children to public schools and claim that the eight-grade Amish schools can teach their children what they need to know to live happily in the Amish community. The public school, they say, with its secular orientation, would damage the religious basis on which the Amish community is built.

Church-school advocates frankly affirm that their purpose is to teach the Bible. Speaking for the Westside Baptist School of Shreveport, Louisiana, the Rev. Bill McCormick says, “Our school teaches the four ‘R’s’: reading,’riting,’rithmetic, and religion.” The Second Baptist Church School of Houston opened in 1947 with Bible teaching listed as its primary purpose. Three years ago the Curtis Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, concerned over removal of prayer and Bible reading from the public schools, opened its own school and now has over 400 pupils.

Protestant reaction to Supreme Court decisions on prayer and Bible reading in the public schools has been sharply divided. Most churchmen agree that the state should not prescribe or require prayer. Many feel, however, that the court’s definition of religious neutrality encourages secularism and relegates the Bible to the limbo of inconsequence for public-school pupils. Dr. Duke K. McCall, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, argues that the court has deliberately left open one avenue: teaching about religion as one of the phenomena of life. Although he affirms that he is still an advocate of the public schools, Dr. McCall says that if they are officially delivered to a secular, godless philosophy, he will have to abandon support of them and advocate a Baptist parochial-school system.

Whatever may be the outcome of the court’s decisions, the men who start church schools are not teaching about religion; they are teaching religion. They are not teaching the Bible as literature; they are teaching it as the authoritative word of God. (It is our guess, of course, that in a Seventh-day Adventist School, it is taught with an SDA bias and in a Baptist school with a Baptist bias.)

Grow or diminish! Teach or die! This is the issue with many churches. Lee Thomas, head of the South Hills Academy in California, says, “We must be totally involved in the Christian day-school movement or run the risk of becoming a diminishing denomination.” A Florida pastor says, “My church has grown more from the school than from any other thing we have done.” Protestant churchmen are learning a lesson from Rome: The parochial school strengthens the church; it focuses parental concern and interest in the church; it keeps the children related to the church; and it supplies and trains the future leaders and workers for the church. Evidently, if a Sunday school is good for a church, a day school is five times better.

To achieve a strong, effective confrontation of the secular order, the Church must get its message across to children. As Vivian H. Andrews, principal of the high school of the First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina, has said: “There is a need for the total Christian message, presented in the educational situation, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until the growing child understands the magnitude and the challenge of the Christian life. The growing secularism of our world is making it imperative that today’s church take an active part in education.”

What is the future of the Protestant church schools in this country? Will they be able to support themselves, find and keep adequate teaching staffs, meet the constant need for housing, and grow into a significant force in the total educational picture?

Our research shows that the existing schools have enthusiastic support. They are adequately staffed with qualified teachers. Existing church buildings house them comfortably. Their supporters are evangelistic about the formation of new schools. The National Association of Christian Schools and the Christian School Service, Inc., are helping to organize, encourage, and unify the schools. There is no indication that the movement will be short-lived or inconsequential. On the contrary, we see it as a growing movement. However, it is destined to undergo some radical changes as it adjusts itself to an expanded operation and to government pressures in education.

Two recent developments in the educational realm will inevitably influence the Protestant school movement. By congressional acceptance of the “child-benefit theory” of educational support and by community endorsement of the dual-enrollment principle, the doors have been opened to an unlimited expansion of church schools, both Catholic and Protestant. At the same time, the financial aid being offered to the church schools through “child benefit” and “dual enrollment” will tend either to secularize the schools or to bring about a sharp cleavage along the traditional conservative-liberal lines.

Most of the Protestant school men who responded to our inquiries have spurned all government support. But these men represent mainly the conservative and evangelical churches. Besides, until recently, no aid was available. Now that federal funds are available, we expect two things to happen. First, there will be a movement into the church-school field by those churches now stressing “involvement” in the government’s social-welfare programs. Second, the bait will become more tempting each year to schools that have been holding the line against government aid. If this seems far-fetched, remember that four years ago there was no sign that Southern Baptists would consider breaching the wall between church and state to obtain support for their colleges. But now that the money is available, every state Southern Baptist convention is engaged in a bitter struggle between the “separationists,” who oppose federal grants and loans, and the “cooperationists,” who say that the very life of the Baptist colleges depends on taking the government money.

In our opinion, the “child-benefit theory,” which provides direct aid to the child attending a non-public school, is a circumvention of the wall separating church and state. It is, in effect, state subsidy of the church school. If accepted by Protestant schools, as it is being accepted by Catholic schools, it will reintroduce the secularizing element of government in the form of a benevolent paternalism that may work against faith in God’s providence.

“Dual enrollment” is different. Every child has the right to both the values of his religious tradition and the advantages of public education. If he wishes to enroll in two schools in order to get both, he does violence to neither the church nor the state. But “dual enrollment” fractures the basic tenet of the church school, that education should be a completely integrated operation permeated throughout with religious values.

A rapid and significant expansion of the Protestant school movement is now inevitable, because with one hand we have removed religion from the public schools and with the other we are offering public funds for the education of pupils in church schools. The American people will now have to decide whether education is complete apart from the values that underlie our way of life and the ideals that inspire us as a people. Obviously, we shall lose our way if the educational process studiously omits any reference to the means by which man has traditionally apprehended those values and ideals. Protestant schools will become a powerful force in the American educational picture because millions of Americans are unwilling to sacrifice their Christian values and ideals upon the altar of a secular society.

Flowers are among the few things about which I’m somewhat sentimental. It was not always so. When I became a Christian, however, even wild flowers that I’d seldom noticed—May pinks, lady’s slippers, lupines—came to new life as reminders of the Creator.

During Chicago seminary days it was hard enough to raise a budget, let alone flowers. But Pasadena, California, pampered us with roses all but two months of the year. Daughter Carol—now a piano grad student at Indiana U.—wants to insure her hands whenever she recalls the Saturday I inveigled her into helping me plant 500 King Alfred daffodil bulbs.

Our present location, Arlington, Virginia, is an international dormitory for everything from American aphids to Japanese beetles that assault my roses. Last year poison ivy had me itching even in unscratchable places.

I’ve promised my wife that this year’s plantings (to date 150 glads, 150 tulips, and 20 rose bushes) will blossom for her Memorial Day birthday. I’ve saved the picture labels that tempted me to acquire Charlotte Armstrong, Blaze (improved, at that), Crimson Glory, Peace, and all the rest. If worst comes to worst, and the rose bushes go the way of all compost, I’ll arrange a bouquet of the colorful ads; if they still charm me as they did when I yielded to their sales appeal, next year I’ll save myself many a rugged Saturday, not to mention the liniment. When spring comes I’ll just plant the garden catalogues.