President Hudson T. Armerding of Wheaton (Illinois) College is proposing “a national university composed of cooperating regionally accredited Christian liberal arts colleges.” He unveiled his idea before fellow Christian educators last month in meetings in Denver concurrent with the annual national convention of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The Armerding plan is based on the need for a graduate program “of breadth and depth not now available at any one of the potential participating colleges.” He envisions it as functioning within the framework of presently qualified colleges whose facilities would be combined to implement the program. Said a Wheaton spokesman:

“Leased lines, coaxial cables, and other communications devices could expedite cooperative instruction. Library resources might be shared through the use of new data retrieval systems. Key faculty could, if necessary, commute by air from one campus to another.”

“The integration of the various campuses organizationally could be provided by a board of control responsible for policies affecting the national university as a whole. It would be expected that each campus would still retain its own board policies peculiar to that particular institution.”

Under the leadership of towering General Director Clyde Taylor, nearly 1,000 Denver delegates passed ten major resolutions on current affairs of interest to evangelicals at the main NAE sessions.

On world ecumenism, NAE reaffirmed “its conviction that Christian unity is primarily a spiritual relationship” and recognized “helpful diversity in structural relationship.” It said unity, “given by God and made real in us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, is manifested in love-inspired fellowship that promotes cooperative effort in our Christian witness without the necessity of ecclesiastical union or uniformity in practice.”

Taylor said evangelicals within major denominations face two problems: “compromising mergers, and serious theological defections.” He said such evangelicals “may be forced out of their denominations.”

The NAE represents forty small denominations and individual congregations with a membership of two million, and through affiliated agencies serves a constituency of eight million. It has set three objectives for next year’s twenty-fifth anniversary: 10,000 new member churches; 10,000 special gifts; and 10,000 attending a special anniversary dinner. The anniversary year might also feature the start of a national radio program and a national evangelism congress.

A resolution on “Christian atheism” said NAE “vehemently condemns the treachery of some clergy and religious leaders to the gospel they are appointed to defend.” In politics, NAE deplored “a new treason” in “the burning of draft cards, subversive movements and seditious utterances, and prevalent disloyalty to the United States of America.”

The first resolution charged the motion picture industry has broken its own “gentlemen’s agreement” or production code and is turning out increasingly licentious material. It urged Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to “form guidelines short of censorship in the interest of insuring ethical propriety” in movies and TV programs.

NAE maintained the “finality of the ethics of the Ten Commandments and of the New Testament” and condemned the “New Morality, or Amorality, both in national and private relations, and the representation thereof on stage, screen, radio, television, and in the press.” It saw “loose prevalent standards of morality everywhere manifest.”

Philip Gilliam, for thirty years a Denver juvenile court judge, said that “the big challenge in America today is making decency popular.… I am shocked at the downhill plunge in morality today. The good guys aren’t winning any more.”

A major resolution on “Law and Order” characterized an “unamerican mood which has invaded our society” as “godless, revolutionary, and disloyal to government.” It pledged itself to “obedience to the injunctions of Scripture to respect the authorities over us and pray for those in high office.”

Another resolution urged “increased effort for world relief,” not only in much-publicized India and Viet Nam but also in the Congo and Rhodesia.

Discrimination was raised during a morning Bible message by Dr. Mariano Di Gangi, pastor of Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church. He said he had received possible calls to pulpits but later was turned down because of his Italian name. “They thought I probably push a banana wagon, have garlic on my breath, and am a card-carrying member of the Mafia,” he commented.

Dr. Rufus Jones, general director of the Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society, was elected new NAE president. NAE honored its treasurer, Robert C. Van Kampen, as “Christian Layman of the Year.” He has retired from full-time business to work with several evangelical organizations but remains a director of fourteen corporations and two banks.

The Wheaton Declaration

More cooperation among evangelical missionaries is expected as an immediate effect of the historic Wheaton Declaration. The 5,900-word strategy document, adopted in unanimous votes, section by section, at last month’s Congress on the Church’s Worldwide Mission, seems already to be encouraging merger talks among missionary boards.

More than 900 influential missionaries and national leaders from seventy countries participated in the adoption of the declaration at the eight-day, precedent-setting congress (see April 29 issue, page 43) called by the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association. Plenary sessions were held in Pierce Chapel, on the campus of Wheaton (Illinois) College.

The declaration was drafted by a panel of specialists, extensively revised by study committees, and further amended in floor debate at plenary sessions. The final product represents a broad consensus on evangelical missions strategy for the years immediately ahead.

An important addition to the draft document was a stand for racial equality, human freedom, and social justice (see text below). The approved document also added “family disintegration” to a list of problems—racism, war, population explosion, poverty, social revolution, and Communism—to which evangelicals are said to have failed to apply scriptural principles. A key deletion, attributable to protests of Latin American delegates, was the preliminary draft’s acknowledgment that “not a few [Roman Catholics] are already in Christ; may their numbers increase.”

The Wheaton Declaration stresses the need for certainty, commitment, discernment, hope, confidence, confession, evangelism and consensus. Its appeal is to “the Bible, the inspired, the only authoritative, inerrant Word of God.”

Here are excerpts relating to crucial contemporary issues:

On syncretism: “We must first divest our presentation of those cultural accretions which are not pertinent to essential gospel truth.… We must bear our testimony with humility and dignity.”

On proselytism: “The proselytism that includes forced conversion or the use of unethical means (material and/or social) is contrary to the gospel of Christ.”

On “Neo-Romanism”: “We recognize the danger of regarding the Roman Catholic Church as ‘our great sister Church.’ ”

On church growth: “We should devote special attention to those people who are unusually responsive to the gospel and will reinforce those fields with many laborers.… We must pray earnestly that the Holy Spirit will bring the less responsive fields to early harvest. We will not leave them untended.”

On foreign missions: “The proper relationship between churches and missions can only be realized in a cooperative partnership.”

On evangelical unity: “We will encourage evangelical mission mergers when such will eliminate duplication of administration, produce more efficient stewardship of personnel and resources, and strengthen their ministries.… We caution evangelicals to avoid establishing new churches or organizations where existing groups of like precious faith satisfactorily fill the role.”

On evaluating methods: “While the social sciences afford considerable insights for missionary methods, yet these must be subjected to the corrective judgment of Scripture.”

On social concern: “Evangelical social action will include, wherever possible, a verbal witness to Jesus Christ.… We urge all evangelicals to stand openly and firmly for racial equality, human freedom, and all forms of social justice throughout the world.”

On “a hostile world”: “Our supreme loyalty is to Jesus Christ, and all of our racial, cultural, social, and national loyalties are to be in subjection to Him.”

Following adoption of the declaration, delegates recited this vow in unison:

“In the support of this declaration, we, the delegates here assembled in adoration of the Triune God, with full confidence in Holy Scripture, in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ, and looking for His coming again, do covenant together for God’s eternal glory, and in response to the Holy Spirit, with renewed dedication, and in our oneness in Christ as the people of God, to seek, under the leadership of our Head, with full assurance of His power and presence, the mobilization of the Church—its people, its prayers, and resources, for the evangelization of the world in this generation. So help us, God! Amen.”

‘The Linen Stays Dirty’

The crusading editor of the 18-month-old independent National Catholic Reporter, Robert G. Hoyt, landed timely blows last month on the institutional midsection of the church periodical trade. He told 150 editors of Associated Church Press in St. Louis that most of their periodicals are instruments of managed news.

Church leaders, he said, “have not been willing to grasp the lesson the secular press has to teach, that honest reporting and objective criticism of their own policies and programs will serve the Church better than the techniques of public relations.”

Hoyt made examples of usually responsible Roman Catholic diocesan papers in Boston and St. Louis which played down or omitted important local developments last month, presumably because the reports would have reflected adversely on the church. But editors, publishers, reporters, and readers must all assume part of the blame, he added.

Institutional pride, according to Hoyt, “means that we Catholics, or we Methodists, don’t want to wash our dirty linen where the Presbyterians, or the Quakers, or the secular humanists can observe the operation. The result is that the linen stays dirty, because for some reason the kind of stains we’re talking about don’t wash out very well in our private laundries.”

Hoyt repudiated the notion “that if we can just get a copy of our paper into the hands of an indifferent church member, somehow holiness will pour through his fingers into his heart. As a result a great many religious publications depend for their circulation not on their merits, not on the service they offer to readers, but on extra-journalistic methods and procedures which derive their effectiveness from the consent of the powers-that-be in the Church. And when this is the case, the injunction of St. Paul to speak the truth in season and out of season gives way to the non-scriptural but sound platitude that he who pays the piper will call the tune.”

During the three-day ACP convention, the Church’s lack of candor also came under attack in speeches by a local newspaper editor, a state senator, and two journalism professors from Syracuse University. They reflected growing uneasiness over the present role of the church press (see March 4 issue, p. 48). Appropriately enough, it was the ACP’s fiftieth anniversary, the theme being “Gateway to New Insights in Christian Journalism.” “Gateway” was an intentional allusion to the new 630-foot Gateway Arch, which is already to St. Louis what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.

Another highlight of the ACP convention was the presentation of awards, two of which went to motive, Methodism’s avant-garde monthly for students. One was for “excellence in physical appearance” and the other for “consistency in just good writing.”¹motive probably scored the coup of the year in religious journalism with its publication of a satirical, newspaper-style “obituary” on God by Anthony Towne, whose manuscript had been turned down by the New Yorker and the Christian Century, motive rarely pays contributors, and Towne got only acclaim.Christianity and Crisis got the third award for “relevance of content for intended readership.”

The ACP, founded in St. Louis on December 6, 1916, as a fellowship of editors of Protestant periodicals, takes on new dimensions this year with the acceptance of its first Roman Catholic publication (Continuum, a scholarly quarterly) and the establishment of a secretariat in Chicago. The Rev. Alfred P. Klausler, editor of the Missouri Synod Lutheran youth publication Arena, will switch from part-time to full-time executive secretary July 1.

Mass For The Married

On April 17, Father Anthony Girandola celebrated his first public “mass for lepers”—fellow Roman Catholic priests who have been excommunicated for getting married.

The service was held in a St. Petersburg, Florida, public school cafeteria rented for $19. In attendance were 200 persons, including a dozen Protestants and ten newsmen. Girandola hopes to build “Dismas House” in the city as a refuge for what he estimates are America’s 5,000 married Catholic priests.

A Communist In The Vatican

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko last month became the first Communist leader to call on a pope. World peace topped the agenda. Both sides underplayed the historic nature of the forty-five-minute talk, terming it a continuation of a chat during Pope Paul’s visit to the United Nations last October.

After the audience, the perpetually grim Gromyko said both men felt peace must be sought “independently of ideology or convictions.” The Red diplomat also proposed a meeting of all European leaders on national security problems.

Gromyko refused comment on chances for a papal visit to the Soviet Union in the near future. Paul had hoped to make his first visit behind the Iron Curtain for the current celebration of 1,000 years of Christianity in Poland. Months-long negotiations broke down in the complex church-state feud centering on strong-willed Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski.

The Communist and the Pope reportedly discussed Russia’s success in bringing a truce between India and Pakistan, and closer Vatican-Moscow contacts, through either the Soviet ambassador in Rome or an unofficial Vatican delegate in Moscow.

Contacts between Communism and Catholicism have been sparse. In 1922, the new Soviet regime refused Vatican appeals for guarantee of religious freedom and permission to aid starving Russians. In 1945. Josef Stalin reportedly rebuffed a bid from Pope Pius XII, sent through an American emissary, for a Vatican delegate in Moscow. Pope John XXIII renewed efforts toward a thaw in Moscow and in 1963 received Alexei Adzhubei, son-in-law of Soviet Premier Khrushchev and then editor of Izvestia.

The 40-year-old priest was automatically excommunicated under church law a year ago when he married his attractive wife Larraine, 28, before a board of priests in Bridgeport, Connecticut, had acted on his petition for release from celibacy vows. The couple were married by a priest friendly to Girandola. Though he accepts the excommunication as a lawful exercise of church authority, Girandola insists he is a Catholic and “a priest forever.”

The celibacy revolt was the only obvious digression from Catholic practice at the Mass (his wife and four-month-old son Anthony Jr. were in the congregation). Communion was offered to all who attended, but only twenty-three accepted the Eucharist from Girandola’s hand. He conducted the Mass in the new English form, facing the congregation.

Mrs. Girandola, raised in a Protestant fundamentalist home, was an airline stewardess and a nominal Christian who converted to Catholicism and became a nurse. She met the priest while he was a patient at Seton Psychiatric Institute in Baltimore. After their marriage, he worked for a Seventh-day Baptist newspaper in Westerly, Rhode Island, before moving to Florida.

Girandola said the vow of celibacy had been a major problem for him—he had “dated” both as a seminarian and as a priest. The celibacy requirement is currently undergoing great strain (see “The Rebel Priests,” March 18 issue, page 44).

Girandola plans to continue public Masses for persons outside the pale of the Catholic Church. He laughingly said that St. Petersburg is an “auspicious” base of operations because “Peter was the first priest commissioned by Christ, and Peter was married.”

Karl Barth At 80

Two operations and a long hospital stay should be enough to slow down any man. But to the many reporters and well-wishers dropping in on Basel theologian Karl Barth last month on the eve of his eightieth birthday, the genial octogenarian seemed much his former self. He looked thinner. His face was more drawn, his hands more gaunt. He was wearied by a series of filmed interviews for Swiss and German television. But to all who spoke with him, the man who had largely by himself effected a revolution in twentieth-century theology answered with the same old wit, the same good nature, and the same overpowering intellect.

From his second-floor study, lined with the books that he has made his life, Karl Barth looks out through a very wide window on the world. “I would like to see something serious in theology today,” he tells his visitors. “But I do not see it. I complain about a lack of seriousness.”

Barth regards the works of his contemporaries Niebuhr, Tillich, and Brunner as having stature, and reflects with respect on the giants of his youth—Harnack, Hermann, Troeltsch, and Kähler. “But the things I see in Europe and America today are only attempts. What I see is a paperback theology.”

A case in point is the “God is dead” theology, which Barth dismisses as a “bad joke” with a characteristic wave of his hand. He calls its proponents “theological playboys” who have studied “neither the Bible nor the history of theology.” To the author of the multi-volume Church Dogmatics, which students in Germany measure in centimeters as well as in volumes, such men represent a debasement of theology to journalism.

“Men like Ebeling, Käsemann, and Pannenberg are serious,” Barth tells visitors. “But the upcoming theologians in Germany and elsewhere are too specialized. I believe, for instance, that Pannenberg will have to revise a great deal of what he has said as he grows older. What is missing is a great outlook, a great world view, a great conception of the Scriptures.”

Barth’s concern for a great world view has never led to a neglect of people. Many students will testify to Barth’s almost missionary fervor to have them wrestle with the problems with which he wrestled. “You must provide better answers. You, you must do it better,” he would say. Old age has brought its sorrows, however. His illness has terminated his preaching at the Basel jail. But he still pays weekly visits to Fräulein Kirchbaum, his accomplished secretary and life-long friend, now unable to assist him because of illness.

Barth’s mind also carries him into the political arena, where he speaks out forcefully against the American role in Viet Nam. “America should get out of Viet Nam,” he says. “Communism cannot be defeated with guns. It must be defeated with a better example of a better humanity. Freedom can only be victorious by showing itself real freedom. America must clean its own house, including its Negro problem, before it can act as a missionary in the world.”

Does Barth believe that the example he seeks is being provided elsewhere? In Europe, for instance? Not really. But the question is itself irrelevant. “It is America which has assumed world leadership, and America must give the example to the world.”

Last month Barth’s grandson, Peter, son of Markus Barth, participated in a protest march on Viet Nam before the honorary American Consulate in Basel. But this is not Barth’s idea of a better example. He emphasizes that Peter’s decisions are made without consultation with his grandfather.

How does Barth feel about his own work as his eightieth birthday draws closer? Most of all, he is thankful for a long and a productive life. “Now I look back with more or less satisfaction on my work, as old men do,” Barth confides to friends. But he will not comment greatly on the prospects of the “Barthian theology.” Only the future will show the effects of his work, Barth feels.

Whatever the long-range prospects of his theology, there can be little doubt that Barth has made a great impression on his friends and colleagues. On May 8, two days before his birthday, Barth was to attend a concert of Mozart pieces to be given in Basel in his honor. On May 9 he was to be present at an exclusive faculty evening to be attended by delegations from the intellectual communities of Europe.

The birthday itself was to be spent with the family, in accordance with Swiss tradition, in the quiet home on Bruder-holzallee, not far from the restaurant where many attended his widely praised colloquiums. This month a Festschrift will be published in his honor.

JAMES M. BOICE

Nobody thought it had a chance this year.

Participation in the Consultation on Church Union by the Presbyterian Church in the United States was thought to be possible only many years from now, if ever.

But when the Presbyterian General Assembly adjourned less than a week before the beginning of COCU’s scheduled Dallas sessions, the Southern denomination’s highest court had voted to become a full participant.

No presbytery or other official body had asked consideration of COCU this year; such bids had been rejected in other years. So six individual commissioners (delegates) put COCU before the assembly in a resolution. The four ministers signing the resolution were among original members of “A Fellowship of Concern,” an unofficial group within the denomination seeking more social action and broader ecumenical connections. One of the ministers is chairman of a denomination committee studying the church’s structural shape; another is the second-ranking executive Of the Board of Christian Education. The others were young pastors from border synods of Virginia and Missouri.

The two lay signers were the first woman ever to serve as a standing committee chairman and a man from the Central Texas Presbytery, which is asking permission to merge with a local presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Their resolution was given little chance when it was referred to a standing committee on opening night. A few minutes later, when the result of the moderator election was announced, the proposal was taken more seriously. The Rev. Frank H. Caldwell’s victory over two other nominees for the denomination’s highest office put a different light on all proposals to alter interchurch relations. He got 307 of the 458 votes cast on the first ballot. Long known as an advocate of church union, he was one of the leaders of the unsuccessful attempt at merger with the then Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. twelve years ago.

Before becoming executive director of the Presbyterian Foundation in Charlotte, North Carolina, two years ago, Caldwell was for twenty-eight years president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, jointly owned by the Southern and United Presbyterian churches.

The new moderator told the press he did not see “the live possibility” of union with United Presbyterians in the “near future.” Asked about COCU, he said only that he thought Southern Presbyterians “ought to be close” to the Blake-Pike talks. The “wise course,” said Caldwell, is to emphasize the denomination’s relationship to the Reformed Church in America. A plan of union for these two denominations is now being drawn up by a negotiating committee.

Examples of other Caldwell views: “The ‘death-of-God’ boys are dealing with a real problem but are dealing with it wrongly” and “the spirituality of the Church” is an out-of-date tenet.

The assembly’s Inter-Church Relations Committee entered marathon sessions while the assembly received a variety of other reports. After twenty-one hours of deliberations, it brought in recommendations late on the fifth day. Meanwhile, the special panel on conversations with the Reformed Church got a vote of confidence and authority to continue (with only a few audible nays).

The interchurch committee’s recommendations seemed contradictory: (1) continuing talks with the Reformed Church; (2) setting up a special group to begin talking with United Presbyterians; and (3) joining COCU as a full participant instead of an observer.

Both the Southern Presbyterian General Assembly and the Reformed Church General Synod in earlier years had rejected joining with United Presbyterians and/or the Blake-Pike talks while their own courtship was in progress. Some manifestations of Southern Presbyterian interest in United Presbyterians have threatened support of the talks within the Reformed Church.

Those seeking an end to Reformed talks did not like the committee’s recommendation for continuation, but they saved their energies to work for United Presbyterian and COCU affiliations.

The proposal on United Presbyterians, which included possible union plans, drew heavy fire. Veteran church leaders who were pro-union twelve years ago opposed the recommendation, calling it a danger to ecumenical progress. In a two-to-one vote they got through a substitute calling for an existing agency to continue transactions with United Presbyterians (instead of a special one to discuss union).

COCU was next. A substitute motion was quickly on the floor, suggesting that instead of becoming a full participant, the denomination should increase the number of observers at COCU meetings. The issue was left hanging at the 11 P.M. adjournment.

Commissioners came back the next morning, prepared with speeches and motions. Caldwell was asked to rule the recommendation on COCU out of order on grounds that the denomination’s Book of Church Order authorizes union only with bodies “whose organization is conformed to the doctrine and order of this Church.” The moderator ruled that the proposal was constitutional, and by a voice vote the house sustained his ruling.

A commissioner argued that the authorization being sought was only to “talk,” not to unite. Another claimed the Book of Church Order did not limit mergers to Reformed bodies. Another said the world would not wait “while we mend our fences seriatim.”

The substitute motion calling for observer status only lost on a standing vote. Full participation was then approved on a standing vote with about a two-thirds majority.

After the votes on union, a perennial discussion of membership in the National Council of Churches hit the floor. The assembly, although faced with probably the largest number of overtures ever sent to it against NCC, reaffirmed membership.

Another hard-fought issue was a proposal to establish a Council on Church and Society. Veteran “moderate” leaders successfully removed a provision that would have allowed the new group to speak to the church and society at any time on critical issues. As finally approved, the council will have the power only to propose pronouncements to the assembly. A predecessor body also had this authority. The new unit will have an enlarged staff and will be chosen by boards of the church, rather than the assembly. The assembly rejected a South Carolina presbytery’s request that the Division of Christian Action be censured for providing a conference platform for the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., last year at Montreat, North Carolina, where this year’s assembly was also held.

The church’s long-standing refusal to condemn capital punishment also became a thing of the past. Appeals of a Georgia state trooper, an Alabama judge, and an Arkansas lawyer fell on deaf ears; the assembly condemned the death sentence.

The body also endorsed for the first time an entire policy statement of the National Council of Churches. Last December’s NCC board pronouncement critical of U. S. policy in Viet Nam was endorsed, with the assembly adding that this was not its final and only comment on the subject.

The assembly took another unprecedented step in authorizing a “pastoral” committee to inquire into “apparent unrest and disorder” in the Synod of Mississippi. The move was termed an untimely and unnecessary one by signers of a minority report, but a voice vote approved the commendation. A related resolution asked for an agency of the assembly to check into the propriety of Southern Presbyterian ministers’ serving in the new Reformed Theological Seminary in Mississippi, which is not related to any of the church’s judicatories. Such a study was authorized.

The New ‘New Confession’

Amendments to make the so-called “Confession of 1967” more biblical will be recommended to the United Presbyterian General Assembly next week by an official study committee.

In the confession, given preliminary approval by last year’s assembly, the Bible is referred to as “the normative witness” to Christ. If the special fifteen-member committee’s changes are adopted, the confession will call the Bible as the “unique and authoritative” witness to Christ and candidates for ordination will need to subscribe to this view.

A declaration that “the one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ” has been retained. The Scriptures are said to be “the words of men,” but also now “given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit” and “received and obeyed as the word of God written.”

Other amendments seek to make more explicit the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the necessity of belief.

A 210-word discussion of sex has been added. It may raise some controversy in that it is noncommittal on the morality of premarital intercourse, homosexuality, and birth control, except to say that “anarchy in sexual relationships is a symptom of man’s alienation from God, his neighbor, and himself.”

The committee has been studying the confession for a year. It considered some 1,100 written suggestions (some running as long as twenty pages) and listened to twenty-two ministers and ruling elders in a special hearing.

Methodists: 200 Twice

One good bicentennial deserves another. So at the close of the 200th anniversary celebration of American Methodism in Baltimore last month, Charles C. Parlin suggested a second one be held in 1984 in the same city. He said the next one should be held jointly with Roman Catholics, who date their American origins to the same city and same decade.

1766 was the start of Methodist preaching in the New World; the church was not founded until 1784. Like most anniversary celebrations, the 1966 program was a potpourri of hoopla, nostalgia mixed with future glances, and such drawing cards as Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lawrence Cardinal Shehan.

The cardinal, a leading ecumenist, said Catholics had been very suspicious of Protestants, feeling for instance that they held “a view of Christ inconsistent with his full divinity.” But today’s emphasis is on common belief. In addition, he said, Catholics are moving closer to a Protestant view of the Bible, while many Protestants have changed their attitude toward Mary.

But intra-Protestant ecumenism is a more pressing issue for Methodists. This November’s special conference will decide on a merger with the Evangelical United Brethren that would make the new denomination America’s largest. It might also have to make an in-or-out decision on the Consultation on Church Union.

In hints and open assertions, others expressed reservations. Bishop F. Gerald Ensley, ecumenical commission chairman, said Methodists need not “uncritically go along with what some so-called ecumenists proclaim to be the true church. The study of the New Testament has not brought to light a universal pattern.” And EUB Bishop Reuben Mueller, president of the National Council of Churches, said ecumenism need not mean “one great over-all super-Church. There is something more important than the uniting of churches of like faiths—and that is unity of the Spirit.”

Moral Rights And Human Rights

Mormons were told about racial tolerance at their semi-annual general conference in Salt Lake City this month, but there is no change in basic racial doctrines, which are both offensive to Negroes and potentially troublesome for Mormon Presidential possibility George Romney, governor of Michigan.

Hugh B. Brown, first counselor to aged Prophet-President David O. McKay, told the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that there is “a real unity in the human race.… All men have a right to equal consideration as human beings regardless of their race.”

As human beings, perhaps, but not as Mormons. Negroes can join but are barred from the Melchizedek Priesthood, lowest rung in the ladder of church life. The church believes this line is drawn by God, who judges men for spiritual valor in an unremembered pre-existence.

A political fuss formed a backdrop for the conference when the John Birch Society scheduled a major dinner during it. Birch buddy Ezra Taft Benson, one of the church’s Twelve Apostles and agriculture secretary under President Eisenhower, was on the program to welcome the organization’s leader, Robert Welch, who said that Mormondom is “a very good recruiting ground.” The Mormon First Presidency put a front-page notice in its daily paper disclaiming any connection with the Birch Society, and Benson didn’t turn up at the dinner.

The conference reported there are now 2,395,932 Mormons, including 18,165 active missionaries.

The Methodists pulled one of the most bizarre and apt publicity gimmicks of the year by having a dozen ministers portray circuit riders. Wearing an assortment of beards, wigs, and colonial costumes, they spent weeks traveling to the Baltimore meeting on horseback and preaching along the way. Upon arrival they were laden with anecdotes. Another stunt was the predictable time capsule, whose contents include a postage stamp honoring Ulysses S. Grant, a President noted for traits other than his Methodism.

Other parts of the past got rougher treatment. In a lecture on art, Roger Ortmayer, former editor of motive, termed the famous Sallman painting “a woman with whiskers called Christ.” Professor J. Edward Moyer said the denomination’s greatest hymn-writer of the past century, Fanny Crosby, had “much emotion, but little theological substance.… We have grown to a more profound understanding of the faith.”

One of the circuit riders reported that “people along the road desperately want gospel preaching and altar calls,” and asserted, “This is our future.” Baltimore Mayor Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin told dramatically of the difference in his home after his father’s conversion during a Methodist revival service. But he later said “less emphasis on personal salvation” is needed.

McKeldin tied his political programs directly to Christianity, and that night President Johnson did similar proof-texting for the Great Society, using in particular the Methodist Social Creed of 1940. Hours before, Columbia University Professor Seymour Melman had issued a scathing attack on the Johnson administration for pouring untold billions of America’s limited resources into war and space programs, while basic human needs were left unmet.

Martin Luther King, Jr., said that when Rip Van Winkle went up to the hills, a sign in the village carried the picture of King George, and that after his long sleep he found a picture of George Washington there. He said the church is similarly in danger of “sleeping through a revolution which will change the face of the world.”

The civil rights leader urged Christians to state repeatedly the essential sin and immorality of racial segregation, to mobilize educational resources to erase the idea that there are superior and inferior races, and to attack poverty vigorously. He said Dives did not go to hell because he was rich, for it is not a sin to be rich, but because “he was a conscientious objector in the war on poverty.”

King admitted that “Negro community standards lag,” but he said that “criminal responses are environmental, not racial,” and that many use “the tragic results of segregation as a justification for continuing it”

He said the emphasis on education rather than legislation to improve civil rights is a “half-truth.” He admits that “We can change hearts only through education and religion. I am a preacher and I’m in the heart-changing business. I preach regeneration, conversion, and the new birth day after day, week after week. “You can’t change hearts by law, but you can restrain the heartless. You can’t make somebody love me, but you can restrain him from lynching me.” He asked Methodists to back Johnson’s new proposal for a national fair-housing law.

Britain: Ecumenical ‘Scrabble’

At the biyearly meeting of the British Council of Churches last month, the Archbishop of Canterbury, its chairman, expressed his simple ecumenical formula: push any doors that are pushable. His BCC colleagues gave the impression of slightly apprehensive pleasure that things are moving along so fast. The Rev. John Weller, acting general secretary, warned of the dangers in freeing “a sort of Gadarene rush of ecumania”; the Bishop of Bristol, Dr. Oliver Tomkins, saw the present ecumenical possibilities as an unfinished game of Scrabble, with incomplete words tapering off in all directions (the metaphor caught the imagination of some delegates, who built further on it).

But it was an English Presbyterian who voiced the cautious surprise in BCC circles that union by 1980 might after all be more than wishful thinking. This Dr. Whitehorn did by applying the words of a Cambridge don of yesteryear about another radical project: “I’ve always been in favour of the admission of women to the university, but I never thought it would come in my time.” The council was asking member churches to make detailed proposals to their own assemblies in 1968 about the 1980 unity goal.

The council meeting generally reflected the hopeful traveling that is being done in Britain. There were the usual frequent and respectful allusions to Vatican Council II: fulsome greetings to the Roman Catholic observers present; and tributes to Dr. Visser ’t Hooft on his retirement from the World Council of Churches. The prevailing euphoria permitted even a somewhat vague official admission of “the need to maintain and strengthen effective dialogue between evangelicals and ecumenicals”—an area in which there has been some BCC feet-dragging in marked contrast to WCC overtures to evangelicals.

The BCC, which has stuck out its neck on South Africa and Rhodesia, agreed on a ten-point resolution on Viet Nam for transmission to the British government. This advocates, among other things, the stopping of military action on both sides, a phased withdrawal of American troops, negotiations in which the Viet Cong participate, and the bringing of Red China into the world community of nations.

After hearing the report of the working party on “World Poverty and British Responsibility” (a splendid piece of work to be published shortly), the council declared that “for as long as a part of the human family lives in misery, no part of the universal Church ought to remain undisturbed, least of all in a country which is increasing in affluence.” On this also the council proposes to make various requests to the government. When this report was mentioned the previous day at a press conference, a BCC official had called it “heresy” to suppose that we ought first to concern ourselves with poverty at home. While most Christians would agree, at least one listener reflected on how rarely we hear the word “heresy” on ecumenical occasions!

Greetings were sent by the council to the Right Rev. C. Kenneth Sansbury, Bishop of Singapore and Malaya, who returns to England in early summer to become the BCC’s general secretary.

J. D. DOUGLAS

The Toils Of Greece

It looks as though Greece’s six-month-old ecclesiastical conflict is being resolved. The government appears ready to accept an illegal maneuver carried out by a majority of the Greek Orthodox hierarchy—the unconstitutional election of fifteen new bishops to fill long-vacant sees, and the transfer of two other prelates to more lucrative positions (see December 17, 1965, issue, page 36).

The decision was challenged in the Supreme State Council by the leader of the minority of churchmen who oppose such unlawful maneuverings. He sought an official public ruling that the elections were invalid. At the last moment, the government postponed the hearing until November 25. Ostensibly this was to allow further time for settlement, but authoritative church sources in Athens see it as another sign that the state is prepared to legalize the church majority’s fail accompli.

The crisis was responsible for a snub to King Constantine and Queen Anne Marie when they went to Mesolonghi for celebrations marking an incident in the Greek war of independence. Local people would not participate in a church service because of the ban on the local metropolitan, one of the unrecognized bishops. At the traditional blessing of the waters at Piraeus, the port of Athens, the king was not present because the celebrant was Metropolitan Chrysostomos, leader of the rebel bishops (later given a suspended sentence for “illegally usurping” authority).

The conflicts have produced suggestions that church and state should be separated in Greece. Protestant leaders would welcome such a move, but they realize that tight links between the two make a change impracticable.

G. Z. CONSTANTINIDIS

Of all the institutions of human society, the Christian Church is surely the most amazing. Standing like a rock amid the shifting currents and cultures of the ages, it has occupied a unique place in man’s life for almost 2,000 years. While other institutions have come and gone, political and economic systems waxed and waned, the Church, alone among them all, has endured.

I have no worry that it will not continue to endure. I do worry, however, when leaders of the Church show signs of jeopardizing its power and influence by taking it away from its main mission. To be specific: As an active churchman for more than forty years, I am concerned that many of the Church’s top leaders today—especially in what are called the “mainstream” denominations—are sorely failing its members in two ways: (1) by succumbing to a creeping tendency to downgrade the Bible as the infallible Word of God, and (2) by efforts to shift the Church’s main thrust from the spiritual to the secular. The two, I believe, are related.…

In my own denomination (Presbyterian) recently, a special committee was charged with writing a “brief contemporary statement of faith.” The committee’s draft of a proposed “Confession of 1967” replaced the ancient Westminster Confession’s strong assertion of the Bible’s “infallible truth and divine authority” with a description of the Bible as a “witness” to Christ as the incarnate Word—and a fallible one at that, since its “thought forms reflect view’s which were then current” and therefore require “literary and historical scholarship” as well as future “scientific developments” to separate the true from the false. This attempt to demote the Bible from final authority to a fallible witness has stirred a storm of protest in church circles.…

Another thing I’ve noted during long years on denominational and interdenominational boards and commissions is this: Whenever any official church body relegates the Bible and its teachings to a lesser place in its program, it almost always turns to activity in non-church fields to fill the vacuum. Thus we see church leadership everywhere expending vast time and energy to push the Church into fields far outside its God-ordained jurisdiction.

Evangelism, traditionally interpreted as the means used to bring men and women to Christ and the Church, has been given a completely new definition.… The Church’s new-type evangelists, without any notable competence in either statecraft or economics, are leaping headlong into such fundamentally secular concerns as federal aid to education, civil rights, urban renewal, and the nation’s foreign policy, and plugging for such controversial issues as the admission of Red China to the United Nations, disarmament, higher minimum wages, and forcible union membership.…

No one would seriously deny that the individual Christian must relate his conscience to the problems of the secular society of which he is a part. It is plainly his duty as a citizen to express his Christian convictions in economic, social, and political affairs. Likewise, no one would deny the pulpit’s right to speak out on civil issues where moral and spiritual principles are clearly involved.…

To commit the Church as a corporate body, to controversial positions on which its members differ sharply is to divide the Church into warring camps, stirring dissensions in the one place where spiritual unity should prevail.

When any individual church or church council, largely dominated by clergymen, issues statements on complex economic and political matters, giving the public the impression that it is speaking for the whole membership, the result is justifiable indignation on the part of the laity. “When I joined the church,” writes one layman from Park Ridge, Illinois, “I stated my faith in Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour. I was not asked to subscribe to any special political, economic, or social view. Is that now about to be changed?”—J. HOWARD PEW, in the Reader’s Digest, May, 1966.

Mainstream Theology

The Work of Christ, by G. C. Berkouwer, translated by Cornelius Lambregtse (Eerdmans, 1965, 358 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Anthony A. Hoekema, professor of systematic theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Reading a Berkouwer book is like attending a symposium in which a number of contemporary theologians heatedly discuss vital aspects of theological thought. Occasionally, to add variety, tape recordings are played of theologians now dead, some ancient, some more recent. The genial chairman gives each speaker a fair chance to be heard, asks penetrating questions of the most argumentative disputants, and sums up the discussion of each topic in such a way as to show what we have learned from each man and what is, in the chairman’s opinion, the soundest and most scriptural solution to the problems raised.

This book is no exception. While reading it, one feels that he has been plunged into the midst of contemporary theological debate. Yet there is constant reference to the great theologians, creeds, and decisions of the past. Dr. Berkouwer has a unique genius for combining the best of the past with the most relevant insights of the present, while sifting both past and present through his own discerning, erudite mind.

Trying to cover “the work of Christ” in one volume is like trying to condense the Encyclopaedia Britannica into one issue of the Reader’s Digest. Berkouwer admits that one can never summarize the many-sided work of Christ in terms of a single theme. But he grapples with the main problems in each area in his usual stimulating and competent manner.

It is, of course, impossible to list all the insights and conclusions reached in this meaty volume. Here are a few highlights: It is mere human speculation to argue, as some do, that the Incarnation would have occurred anyway, even if there had been no fall into sin; the Bible always connects the Incarnation with sin and redemption. The confession of the two states of Christ’s life (humiliation and exaltation)—a confession rejected by many today—is necessary to express the unbreakable tie between faith and history. Practically all theological questions—including those of contemporary thought—are centered around the doctrine of Christ’s triple office. The confession of the virgin birth of Christ is necessary, not primarily to guarantee Christ’s sinlessness, but to safeguard his full deity; Berkouwer agrees with Bavinck that the Virgin Birth was the only way in which he who already existed as a person could also enter into the flesh and still remain the Son of God (p. 119).

The important point to remember about the suffering of Christ is that behind the action of men in crucifying the Lord of Glory we must see the action of God. While admitting that the expression “he descended into hell” was probably not in the original version of the Apostles’ Creed, Berkouwer believes that Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism were accurate in teaching that Christ suffered the torments of hell in Gethsemane and on the Cross. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was not a projection of the mind or a noetic verification of the Cross but a historical event in which Christ revealed his victory over death. The ascension meant, not separation between Christ and his people, but a new type of presence. Discussing the difference between Calvinists and Lutherans on the ascension and session of Christ, Berkouwer states that the Reformed insisted that Christ is both really present and also absent in the Lord’s Supper (p. 238). In a brief chapter on “Christ and the Future,” the author discusses a theme he develops more fully in his two-volume Wederkomst Van Christus (not yet translated into English): The Church must not be caught in the dilemma of either an exclusive this-worldliness or a complete other-worldliness; it must live in the present with an eye to the future.

The last chapter, the longest in the book, discusses the work of Christ under four aspects: reconciliation, sacrifice, obedience, and victory. Vigorously rejecting views that suggest God’s hatred had to be changed into love by the work of Christ, Berkouwer insists that both God’s love and God’s justice are revealed in the work of reconciliation. He maintains that one may not use a text like “God is love” to prove a priority of God’s love over his other attributes, and that it is unbiblical to eliminate from our thinking the concept of the wrath of God. Sharply critical of the universalistic tendencies found in Barth’s theology, Berkouwer says that to suggest that all men are already reconciled to God and need only be informed of this prior fact is to rob preaching of its urgency.

Berkouwer insists on the importance of the concept of sacrifice in describing the work of Christ, holding that substitution is at the very heart of the Saviour’s mediatorial work. While granting that the distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ can be used in an erroneous way, he nevertheless pleads for its retention, pointing out the dangers of denying either of these two essential aspects of the work of Christ. In discussing the victory of Christ, Berkouwer sets forth with appreciation Aulén’s exposition of the so-called classical view of reconciliation, stressing Christ’s victory over demonic powers; he warns, however, that an exclusively “classical” view of the Atonement does not take guilt seriously enough.

Throughout the discussion, there is frequent reference to the Bible. One is constantly amazed at Berkouwer’s skillful use of Scripture not only in refuting opponents but also in grounding doctrinal teachings. Indexes of subjects, persons, and Scripture texts add to the usefulness of the volume.

As a solid, relevant, stimulating treatment of the work of Christ, this book measures up to the excellence we have come to expect from the learned and gifted author. Though the meaning is usually clear, one could wish that the translation had been done in more concise, readable, and idiomatic English.

ANTHONY A. HOEKEMA

Luther’S Catholicism

Obedient Rebels: Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle in Luther’s Reformation, by Jaroslav Pelikan (Harper and Row, 1964, 212 pp., $5), is reviewed by James Leo Garrett, professor of Christian theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

Professor Pelikan of Yale has derived his motif for Obedient Rebels—“Catholic substance and Protestant principle”—from Paul Tillich, to whom he acknowledges no little indebtedness. It is somewhat ironical, therefore, in view of the nature of Tillich’s Systematic Theology, to read Pelikan’s own verdict: “It is a basic Protestant principle that theology must be exegetical or it is not theology” (p. 182). Pelikan applies the motif principally in a study of “Catholic substance and Protestant principle” in “Luther’s Reformation.”

Obedient Rebels consists of three major parts. The first is a consideration of Luther’s “ecumenicity in time,” i.e., his understanding of church history, of tradition, of church councils, of liturgy.

Secondly, Pelikan treats in detail an important aspect of Luther’s “ecumenicity in space” that is only vaguely understood by most American Christians, namely, Luther’s relation to Bohemian Christians. The author interprets Luther’s understanding of his own relation to John Hus and his dealings with the Utraquists and, more significantly, with the Unity of Bohemian Brethren. Of particular significance is Pelikan’s presentation of the first English translation of the Consensus of Sandomierz, an agreement made in 1570 by representatives of Calvinism, Lutheranism, and the Unity of Bohemian Brethren in Poland.

The third part of Obedient Rebels deals with the contemporary problems of “Catholic substance and Protestant principle.” Pelikan calls upon American Roman Catholics to broaden their catholicity and commends Protestants for a growing recognition that tradition is “inevitable,” “primordial,” and basically exegetical, if also “relative.” The Missouri Synod theologian concludes by defining the contemporary theological task as “confessional,” conservational, universal, “critical,” and “correlating” in nature.

Two criticisms and three commendations suggest themselves. First, in striving for catholicity (“identity plus universality”) Pelikan has not always succeeded in rightly interpreting those who stand in other confessional heritages. Especially is this true of sixteenth-century Anabaptists, whom, despite his citations of George H. Williams’s works, he confuses with sixteenth-century Spiritualizers and whose ecclesiology he identifies with “a Platonic republic.” Was Dietrich Philips in his The Church of God “Platonic” in his somewhat Augustinian view of the Church? If Anabaptists were so lacking in catholicity, why did Peter Rideman’s Account of Our Religion, Doctrine and Faith follow so closely the structure of the Apostles’ Creed? Secondly, Pelikan seems to exalt liturgy as part of Catholic substance to the neglect of ethics and eschatology as representative of Protestant principle. At least his fellow Lutheran, Walther von Loewenich, hardly agrees: “The Christian Church can look back on a rich liturgical development. But in doing so it must never forget that Jesus’ religion was never centered on the cultus” (Modern Catholicism, p. 187).

On the positive side, Pelikan’s very readable volume serves to clarify the catholicity of Luther the Protestant. It is an important contribution to ecumenical dialogue, especially in making clear the role of theologians. It provides not only a clear beckoning to come out of the sloughs of parochialism and provincialism but also some timely guidance in avoiding the quicksands of present-day “theological fads.”

JAMES LEO GARRETT

What Did It?

The American Revolution: Two Centuries of Interpretation, edited by Edmund S. Morgan (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 184 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, professor of history, Catawba College. Salisbury, North Carolina.

The rather widely held assumption that each generation rewrites history receives fresh support in Professor Morgan’s survey of the widely different interpretations historians have given to the American Revolution. The secession of the American colonies from the British Empire and the ensuing war have been no less productive of disagreement among professional historians than was the secession movement of 1861–1865, or America’s involvement in the two world wars of the twentieth century. Beginning with the earliest view of the American Revolution as found in David Ramsay’s History of the American Revolution, Morgan traces the development of subsequent interpretations which gave rise to various schools of historical thought.

The author pays particular attention to George Bancroft, who is generally regarded as the first proponent of the “Whig” interpretation of the events of 1776–83. In his History of the United States, Bancroft laid the foundation for the “patriotic” view of the American cause, which regards the Revolution as a struggle for human freedom and popular government against the tyranny of the British monarchy under George III. This view was widely held from about 1850 until the close of the nineteenth century, when a fresh generation of American historians began to take a closer look at Bancroft’s thesis and found it wanting. Morgan includes in his selection the criticisms of Charles Kendall Adams, J. Franklin Jameson, and Daniel J. Borstin, all three of whom subjected Bancroft’s “patriotic” view to a careful scrutiny that left it in jeopardy. Although Morgan includes the revision of the traditional view of the Revolution set forth by J. Franklin Jameson, he fails to include the brilliant insights of Carl Becker in his Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers and the Declaration of Independence. Becker gave added strength to Jameson’s position that there were radical overtones to the American Revolution that had their origins in the Enlightenment, and that gave it a certain kinship to the more violent French Revolution. If Morgan had included portions of Becker, Daniel Borstin’s refutation of this thesis and his insistence on the conservative character of the movement would have taken on more meaning.

A more novel approach to the true meaning of the War for Independence is found in the monumental study of Lawrence Gipson in The British Empire Before the American Revolution, in which the author approaches the events of 1776 in the light of the political situation in Great Britain. Following such previous historians as H. L. Osgood, George L. Beer, and Charles M. Andrews, Gipson goes a long way toward refuting the Bancroft “Whig” interpretation and assumes a very sympathetic attitude toward George III and the problems confronting him after 1763.

Perhaps the best chapter in this collection of essays is the last, in which Morgan calls for a revision of all revisionist approaches and suggests that George Bancroft may well have been closer to the truth than his critics have realized.

This book is in no sense evangelical, but it is an excellent introduction to the problems that confront historians who seek the meaning of history within the historical process rather than in Christian theism.

C. GREGG SINGER

Updated

Introduction to the New Testament, by Werner Georg Kümmel, founded by Paul Feine and Johannes Behm (Abingdon, 1966, 444 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by James M. Boice, graduate student, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

When Werner Georg Kümmel undertook the arduous revision of the standard Paul Feine-Johannes Behm handbook of New Testament introduction for the twelfth edition of 1963, he did so with the intention of bringing the much used German work abreast of present-day scholarship and of incorporating into the volume the sizable and recent contributions of French, British, and American research. As a result, the well-known professor of theology at the University of Marburg has produced a work which is both current and comprehensive, the international significance of which will now be more fully realized through the appearance of A. J. Mattill’s lucid English translation of the latest German edition, the fourteenth.

In this one-volume introduction to New Testament study, Kümmel regards his subject as a purely historical discipline, dealing with questions of authorship, sources, date, place of composition, and the literary and theological character of the writings, and presents as fully as he can a history of scholarly opinion on the major problems of New Testament research. Brief surveys of the origin of the New Testament canon and the history of the transmission of the Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic texts conclude the volume.

By American standards Kümmel, who is already known to English readers through his monographs Promise and Fulfillment (“Studies in Biblical Theology,” 1957) and Man in the New Testament (1962), is far from conservative. He is even less conservative than his forerunners, Feine and Behm, who regarded the pastoral letters as Pauline, the epistles of Jude and James to have been written by brothers of the Lord, and all five of the Johannine books to have been composed by John, the son of Zebedee. But by German standards Kümmel is far from radical. He retains the traditional authorship of the Gospel of Mark together with that of seven of the Pauline epistles (I Thessalonians, Galatians, I and II Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon) and proposes no authorship alternatives for the remaining nineteen writings. The authors of these works, according to Kümmel, are unknown and unknowable. On questions of integrity, the former president of the Society of New Testament Scholars generally decides for the original character of the transmitted text (notably in reference to I and 11 Corinthians, Romans, and Colossians), and he is close to Feine and Behm on the Synoptic problem, for which he adopts the strict two-document hypothesis.

The real value of this volume, however, does not lie in its critical stances. It lies, first, in its careful attention to all shades of scholarly opinion, even to those the author regards as “audacious propositions,” and, secondly, in its extensive bibliographical selections. The introduction to the text begins with five pages of works that the author considers most important for general study of the New Testament. Discussion of each book is prefaced by an extensive list of major works and articles on the areas to be considered (Acts, for instance, has nearly eighty entries; John has over one hundred and thirty notations, exclusive of reviews), and a listing of the major commentaries on each of the books of the New Testament is given separately. This bibliographical data, complete through 1963, is now supplemented for the fourteenth edition by nine pages of entries that carry the material through January, 1965, including the earliest of the Anchor Bible commentaries. Forty-four pages of indices further enhance the value and facilitate use of the volume.

JAMES M. BOICE

Better Than Intended

The Early Church, by W. H. C. Frend (Lippincott, 1966, 288 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Bruce Shelley, professor of church history, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

“History,” Thomas Carlyle once said, “is the essence of innumerable biographies.” While W. H. C. Frend casts a skillful eye at the social currents of history, especially politics, he does not overlook the power of personality. He has, in fact, a gift for tracing a man’s shadow by a few fit phrases. Under Frend’s pen the image of some traditional heroes is slightly ink-stained.

He says, for example, that the years following 306 made Constantine’s character clear, “a lust for power, a strong element of cruelty, a capacity for quick thinking and acting, and a religious sense which allowed him to attribute his success to the intervention of higher powers” (p. 133).

Athanasius in particular takes some lumps. His gifts, says Frend, were those of a politician. “He was wily, brutal and unscrupulous, and he was harsh and unforgiving to his opponents. He could see little beyond the righteousness of his own immediate cause” (p. 157). This expose reminded me of Lord Acton’s apt word that practically all great men are bad men and that hardly any public reputation survives the exposure of private archives.

We may blame Frend for roughing up the hero of the Arian crisis, but his treatment of Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria is almost masterly. He shows how we can detect at that early date (c. 200) the roots of later Catholic-Orthodox differences. “By 200,” he concludes, “two theologies based on different eschatologies, different understandings of the Trinity, and even different ethics were characterizing East and West respectively” (p. 96). We could add “different anthropologies.”

In addition to his knack of biographical summation, Frend reveals special competence in the history of persecution and in archaeology. He treats early Christian persecutions guardedly, as they should be. We simply do not have enough evidence to delineate details of Roman policy from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. Rather than postulate a specific Roman law against the Christian religion, he accepts the collegium (association) theory, that is, that Christians were regarded as members of some illegal Jewish association that was perverting worship of the gods in the provinces (pp. 56, 57). I agree.

Frend’s experience in archaeology enhances the value of the volume. While he deals occasionally with early Christian sites excavated (p. 108), he brings the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls to bear upon early Christianity most effectively. The Qumran community and the early Church, Frend argues, show similar ecclesiastical organizations. Both communities were called edah, and the three Christian “pillars of the church” (Gal. 2:9) and twelve apostles have their counterparts in Qumran’s three priests and twelve laymen—“men of special holiness”—who administered the affairs of the covenanters (p. 36). Frend clearly points out the striking relationship of early Christian organization to Jewish groups and the similar apocalyptic beliefs of Christian and Jew.

Only those who have attempted to study the early Church in some depth can appreciate Professor Frend’s contribution. Unfortunately I cannot agree with the editor of this “Knowing Christianity Series” when he offers the volume to thinking laymen as a solid but non-technical presentation of ancient Christianity. It is not easy reading. I have found few “thinking laymen” who would either understand or appreciate The Early Church. It is not an introductory work; it is a well-organized, careful study of early Christianity.

BRUCE SHELLEY

Book Briefs

All Things to All Men, edited by Joseph F. X. Cevetello (Joseph F. Wagner, 1965, 438 pp., $5.95). Help for ministers in difficult fields. Special attention is given to special cases, such as the blind, the deaf, the drug addict, the alcoholic, gambler, and homosexual.

Jesus of Nazareth, by Norman Vincent Peale (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 38 pp., $3.95). The story of Jesus as reflected in the story of a contemporary named Joshua, as told by Norman Vincent Peale. Over-priced.

Time of Testing, by Jon R. Littlejohn (Concordia, 1965, 224 pp., $3.95). A novel about an American Lutheran clergyman in England; somewhat slick, somewhat stereotyped and superficial, but competent, and better-than-average entertainment.

Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, by Donald Pizer (Southern Illinois University, 1966, 176 pp., $4.50). A tight scholarly study, disappointing in its failure to explore the spiritual implications of its subject.

If Ye Continue, by Guy Duty (Bethany Fellowship, 1966, 186 pp., $2.95). A defense of the position that salvation depends on the human fulfillment of certain conditions.

Plain Papers on the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, by C. I. Scofield (Revell, 1965, 80 pp., $1.50). By the Scofield. Good reading. First published in 1899.

Living with Sex: The Students’ Dilemma, by Richard F. Hettlinger (Seabury, 1966, 185 pp., $4.50). Another good study in a well-harrowed field.

Cities of the New Testament, by E. M. Blaiklock (Revell, 1965, 128 pp., $3.95). A study of where Christianity first went.

S. R. O.: Overpopulation and You, by Marjory L. Bracher (Fortress, 1966, 216 pp., $3.50). A clergyman’s wife took a trip and returned with an ache of heart and a desire to write about what she saw. She saw and wrote perceptively.

The Human Church, by William H. DuBay (Doubleday, 1966, 192 pp., $4.50). The Watts priest who asked the Pope to remove Cardinal McIntyre as archbishop is an angry young man. In this book he reveals his idea of Christianity and the Church. Calling for a secular Christianity, he declares that the greatest contribution of the Hebrews was their elimination of religion and that “Yahweh was the first atheist, the great iconoclast and demythologizer.” DuBay dedicates his book to John XXIII, “a pope who led.”

Saints and Sanctity, by Walter J. Burghardt, S. J. (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 239 pp., $5.50). A study of saints in terms of the meaning of sainthood in the modern secularized world.

The World of David and Solomon, by Eugene H. Maly (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 182 pp., $5.95). An excellent study that lays all recent research under tribute and makes it pay off.

Papyrus Bodmer: Esaïe XLVII, 1–LXVI, 24, edited by Rodolphe Kasser (Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 1965, 206 pp., Fr. 98.—).

How to Deal with Controversial Issues, by William M. Pinson, Jr. (Broadman, 1966, 128 pp., $1.50). How to face controversy creatively. Worth reading.

The Priest: Celibate or Married, by Pierre Hermand (Helicon, 1965, 144 pp., $3.75). The author argues that Latin rite priests should, as do Eastern rite priests, have the choice to marry or not.

The Social Novel at the End of an Era, by Warren French (Southern Illinois University, 1966, 212 pp., $4.50). An analysis of the social novel, whose day ended with the years 1939–40. Attention is fixed on Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Hemingway.

Letters to Karen: On Keeping Love in Marriage, by Charlie W. Shedd (Abingdon, 1965. 160 pp., $3). A father writes letters to his engaged daughter, warm, intimate, and very human.

The Forgiving Community, by William Klassen (Westminster, 1966, 253 pp., $6). An extensive study of the theology and psychology of biblical forgiveness and the need of the Church to be a forgiving community.

Paperbacks

Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine, by Roland Mushat Frye (Princeton, 1965, 314 pp., $2.95). First published in 1963.

A Private and Public Faith, by William Stringfellow (Eerdmans, 1965, 99 pp., $1.45). With a new foreword. First published in 1962.

Sunday’s Fun Day, Charlie Brown, by Charles M. Schulz (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 124 pp., $1). First published in the Sunday papers, comic section.

A Short Life of Kierkegaard, by Walter Lowrie (Princeton, 1965, 271 pp., $2.95). A kind of classic.

Inasmuch: Christian Social Responsibility in Twentieth Century America, by David O. Moberg (Eerdmans, 1965, 216 pp., $2.45). A passionate evangelical plea for Christian social action and involvement. For thoughtful evangelicals, this is must reading.

Pilgrims and Pioneers in the Congregational Christian Traditon, by John Leslie Lobingier (United Church Press, 1965, 191 pp., $2.95). Biographies of fifteen Congregational Christians, written chiefly for the Evangelical and Reformed sectors of the United Church of Christ. Good reading.

Reprints

The Suffering Saviour: Meditations on the Last Days of Christ, by F. W. Krummacher (Moody, 1966. 444 pp., $4.95). Abridged; first published in 1854.

Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord, by F. Bente (Concordia, 1965, 266 pp., $3). First published in 1921.

In their debate over Viet Nam, are churchmen ignoring the most crucial concern?

Seldom has the Church been confronted with such wide demands on so many important fronts as it is today: civil rights, hard-core poverty, the growing needs of the inner city, the rise of a new class of highly intelligent, questioning young “unreachables,” the development of a “new theology” to meet the needs of a modern scientific world—and a war in Southeast Asia.

Viet Nam has posed a number of urgent problems. Churchmen have wrestled with the moral implications of our involvement in what some prefer to call a civil war and have debated the ethical questions inherent in all war, the dangers of possible extension of the war, and the threat of a nuclear confrontation between the world’s great powers.

Amid the clamoring social issues in our society and the general debate over the morality of our position in Asia, one segment of our church populace is in danger of being forgotten and neglected at a most critical time. This is the young men between eighteen and twenty-five. The Church must seriously concern itself with the stark realities confronting those who are called to fight in the rice paddies and jungles of Viet Nam.

Most men called into military service drift off one by one, hardly noticed by a prosperous society, leaving few discernible vacancies in the local church programs, and missed only by their families and close friends. Yet the number of those entering military service in one year is more than half a million. And the Church dare not forget the total of more than 3,000,000 now in uniform who, together with their families, compose a sizable minority in our nation.

Some who are drafted have no opinions about the morality of our position in Viet Nam; they go because they must. A growing number, however, come to feel that they are contributing to human welfare by helping to contain a militant Communism. This feeling is often intensified by what they witness in the villages attacked by the Viet Cong, where women and children are among the victims.

Yet regardless of their attitudes, all young church members facing military service are entitled to some specific help. Critical moral decisions, the questioning of religious convictions, the need to find meaning for a life that may end before the twentieth birthday—these are the personal crises that may face them in Viet Nam. The Church sends chaplains to minister in the battle areas. But the chaplains cannot begin to provide all young men with all the spiritual guidance they need in the midst of war.

The Church—more particularly, every parish clergyman—is obligated to speak of the problems involved in military service in Viet Nam. A minister’s doubts about the validity of our country’s position will be of no spiritual help to the young man with a letter from his draft board. The minister dare not let his personal beliefs keep him from his ministry.

These men want to hear about how “Thou shalt not kill” can be reconciled with what they will be asked to do in Viet Nam. They want to know whether it is immoral for a man to shoot at someone who intends to kill him. And if what some within the Church say about our participation in Viet Nam is true, these young men need to know whether they are compromising Christianity by not choosing prison as an alternative to military service.

Men who will face the possibility of death on any day of their stay in Viet-Nam—sudden death, perhaps, from ambush, a land mine, or a grenade thrown by a seemingly innocent child or woman—want also to be able to find meaning for a life that may end very prematurely. They will not have had time to make much of a contribution to society beyond faithful service to their country. They want to know whether the Church regards this service as worthwhile. If the Church fails to tell them that it does, and if all these young men hear is condemnation of America’s role in Viet Nam, they will feel that the Church considers them a failure.

Intertwined with this concern for the meaning of life and for their role as loyal members of the armed forces is a concern for the continuity of life itself in an eternity with a loving God. For these young men, such matters are exceedingly personal. They are very personal also to the family members who watch their loved ones go off to war, not knowing whether they will return. And if they do not return, the Church must have a message of comfort about an eternity where personality survives.

A final concern of these young men in uniform is whether God will be with them in Southeast Asia. They do not want to try to use God as a magic amulet, but they do want to know about him as a vital presence in their own lives. If the Church must speak out on the revealed principles of social justice, it must also retain the message of a personal God who never forsakes those who believe in him.

The Church is rightly concerned about retaining the highly intelligent, socially conscious young generation of the mid-sixties. But to be wholly faithful, it must reach those who will face ultimate reality in a lonely confrontation with God and eternity in battle. These men want to know the God they may face because of the war in Viet Nam.

The average American has shown little concern for those who are fighting this most difficult war. The Church dare never be guilty of this indifference. If it is, those who go off to fight will stand in judgment on it. Churchmen may hold differing opinions on Viet Nam and on war itself. But personal opinions must not affect the spiritual ministry of the Church to those who face hardship and peril in Viet Nam.

New Use For The Bomb?

Last year the Rev. Kenneth Slack resigned after ten years’ service as general secretary of the British Council of Churches to become minister of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Cheam. Last month his church was host to the biannual meeting of the BCC, and he distributed copies of the congregation’s magazine to his distinguished guests. On the front page began an editorial entitled “The Inconvenience of Moral Issues,” written by the editor in a semi-facetious vein. Near the end, he mentions the problem confronting the church of whether its tennis club should allow Sunday play.

The editorial continues by attributing to the paper’s tennis correspondent “an idle thought about Sundays.” Suppose, it says, “suppose that—well, you know who—were to receive, at 10.55 one morning, a note saying that at 11 on the dot a large bomb would despatch the Lord’s Day Observance Society to their reward.…” Whatever the St. Andrew’s congregation thought about this, it seems incredible that that kind of jibe should have been thought suitable for sharing on an ecumenical occasion.

The Church In Politics

In discussing theological guidelines for the churches’ involvement in international affairs, Bishop James K. Mathews of the Boston Area of The Methodist Church told the United States Committee of the World Council of Churches that “evangelical obedience” requires direct political involvement because (1) religion is the guardian of human values, (2) the doctrine of creation implies the unity of the human race, and (3) the Church’s duty to the world includes criticism of the social order.

But why do these theological premises require the institutional church to be in the vanguard of legislative activity or to commit itself to specific political measures or military tactics, as in Viet Nam? Beyond preaching the Gospel, the Church should make its great contribution to international affairs by intensively studying what social justice is in the light of the scriptural criteria and then haunting the consciences of churchgoers until they cannot live either with lovelessness for neighbor or with social injustice. A church in which a few professionals try to do it all—either through evangelism or through legislation—will surely be deluged by unregeneracy or secularism.

In interpreting international events, moreover, why do the ecumenists so little reflect the views of experienced statesmen and churchmen like Dr. Charles Malik, former President Dwight Eisenhower, or, for that matter, Secretary of State Dean Rusk or Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara? In past years some of us shared the faulty fundamentalist notion that men in public life necessarily become spiritually insensitive. But are men like Rusk and McNamara to be distrusted as Christians? And if such specialists do not possess information that even distinguished churchmen lack in reaching their judgments, ought they not to be turned out of office?

Bishop Mathews contends that those who would have the Church remain silent on controversial issues “forget this is exactly what is imposed upon her under totalitarian regimes, so detested by these same persons.” But where is the Church today directly confronting and challenging totalitarian dictators? While there may indeed be emergency situations in which the Church must confront the inhumanity of tyrannical forces that place themselves above law (as did the Nazis in their slaughter of six million Jews), the possibility of this kind of emergency confrontation hardly justifies the corporate church’s day-by-day political involvement, for which it lacks a biblical mandate, divine authority, and technical competence.

Love That Driver

As a class, clergymen are notoriously poor drivers. On lists that rank different groups of automobile drivers by their safety records, clergymen are far from the top.

One clergyman recently called upon the nation to halt the staggering and shameful loss of human life on our highways. In a radio broadcast from Greenville, South Carolina, Billy Graham devoted an entire sermon to this tragic social problem. He contended that the deepest cause of automobile accidents is moral and spiritual. Drunkenness, carelessness, the desire to show off, and selfishness contribute heavily to death and injury, the evangelist said, and this irresponsible behavior reflects the driver’s underlying attitudes toward Cod and toward his neighbor. Graham urged that we are “our brother’s keeper,” and that “the Bible says that no man lives unto himself and that we are all members one of another.”

Christian people—including clergymen—should surely be responsible drivers, sensitive to the high value of human life. Many lives could be spared, and many people saved from lifelong injury, if every Christian driver in America would love that moving neighbor in the next car—or even show him a measure of common courtesy.

Some Social Consequences Of Evangelism

Programs of social action do not always succeed. Worthy objectives are blunted and the best intentions of high-minded men frustrated. Sometimes the plight of the people worsens despite the most progressive social action. Not infrequently one of the primary causes for worsening conditions lies in false religions that bind men oppressively until they are delivered from their superstitions.

India is a case in point. Starvation hangs over millions of its people, while millions of sacred cows roam the streets of cities and villages and forage in the fields. Religious restrictions forbid killing or eating these animals, who themselves must eat to live. And the Jains, though a small minority of the population, add to the already burdensome problem. Their religion forbids the taking of any life including that of rats, which cause the loss of untold quantities of food human beings could have consumed.

In Muslim Pakistan, the president, fearing the population explosion, has decreed that a man can have only one wife, despite Islamic approval of polygamy. But many Muslims defy the decree.

Religion is inescapably related to economic and social life. Christianity delivers men from bondage, and this freedom is genuinely helpful in the solution of economic and social problems. Evangelism has vast social consequences. The best way to improve world conditions is to bring men to Christ and deliver them from the bondage of false religions.

“What is the difference between spiritual and secular, if any?”

This question recently came to me from a minister to students in one of our state universities. From information from a number of other sources, I have come to realize that the blurring of the distinction between things spiritual and things secular is widespread among activistic ministers, men who seemingly feel that their primary calling is to bring about social change.

No one can exist without engaging in secular activities, and there is nothing inherently evil either in secular pursuits or in many of the material things that are a part of our life on this earth. But if we fail to understand the importance of the spiritual as compared with the secular, we can in that failure lose the meaning and values of Christianity.

The difference between secular and spiritual is the difference between time and eternity, between body and soul, between earth and heaven, between sight and faith. Our Lord brings this difference into clear perspective when he asks, “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26a).

The Apostle Paul states the difference in words no one should misunderstand: “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

Probably all of us have heard the cliché about the person who is “so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly use,” and there may be some people to whom it applies. But the statements and activities of many today show them to be so earthly minded that they fail to realize that after death there is an eternity to be spent, either in God’s presence or separated from him. God entered human history in the person of his Son not only to proclaim the concept of eternal life for man but also to provide the way whereby the transition from spiritual death to spiritual life could take place.

The welfare of the body is largely a matter of secular and material advantages. The welfare of the soul is a matter of man’s relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ

It is only through the Holy Spirit that man comes to a knowledge of and surrender to God. Unless the Spirit draws him, he does not come to God. Unless the Spirit instructs and enlightens him, he remains in ignorance. “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 distance between secular and spiritual is so vast that only God could span it. And this he has done. The secular is the realm of the body and its surroundings; the spiritual reaches beyond the horizon of this earth and on into the boundless vista of eternity.

The secular is apprehended by the senses, the spiritual by faith. The secular ends with death; the spiritual enters into its greatest glory after death.

The dominion of the secular is only temporary. The triumph of the spiritual brings an eternal weight of glory.

The primary concern of the secular is material welfare and comforts. The primary concern of the spiritual is redemption and obedience to God’s revealed will. And the Christian’s primary desire is that all men shall hear the message of redemption.

There is constant tension between the secular and the spiritual for they are of two worlds. Christ makes this very plain: “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world … therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19).

What a man wears and eats and the condition of his external surroundings are all part of his secular existence. What a man is inside determines his spiritual state, and this needs transformation by the Spirit of God.

The Gospel is the message of God’s offer to transform a person from a secular man into a spiritual one. This means, not that he will no longer be concerned about secular affairs, but that he will regard them in the perspective of eternity.

The aged Apostle John makes the distinction very clear: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John 2:15–17).

The secular is man’s natural condition; the spiritual is his redeemed condition. This means not that all man’s natural condition is evil but that there is a state available to man that is beyond anything this world can offer.

For the secular mind, the Cross of Christ is utter foolishness. For the spiritual mind, it is the power of God unto salvation to all who accept its message.

The Christian must exercise certain secular concerns. He must have love and compassion that issues in help for those in need. Our Lord set an example when he healed the sick and fed the hungry. But the healing and the feeding were not ends in themselves, for Christ taught that man does not live by bread alone and that his highest need is met only when he becomes a new person in Christ.

To ignore human need is to deny some of our Lord’s most clearly taught lessons. But to ignore man’s spiritual need is to deny the reason for his coming into the world.

The Church is in the world to bear a spiritual witness to the eternal verities. If she conforms to worldly standards and values, she loses her influence. She must stand as a spiritual light in a secular setting.

The Apostle Paul voices a truth and a warning as relevant today as it was for the people of Corinth nearly twenty centuries ago: “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Cor. 4:3, 4).

Secularism, as such, is a grave danger, and never has it been more so than today. Paul speaks of this danger, as seen in those “who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Rom. 1:25).

Primary concern with the secular not only dims a sensitivity to spiritual values but also shifts the emphasis of the Gospel away from the Cross and to things that perish with the using. On the other hand, the individual Christian and the Church that keep the secular and spiritual in their proper perspective will be “salt” and “light” in the midst of decay and darkness.

Standing by God or by ourselves?

How Dogmatic Can You Get?

For Holiday magazine Clifton Fadiman once gathered up a delightful collection of puns. The one I liked best was, “Any stigma will do to beat a dogma.” Of course, if you don’t know the original, you won’t really appreciate this brilliant turn.

Nothing seems to scare people more today than for someone to accuse them of being dogmatic. The accusers forget, of course, that to say, “You are too dogmatic” is to make a very dogmatic statement.

These and like thoughts came to mind as I was reading Leslie Weatherhead’s The Christian Agnostic. Some of the claims on the dust jacket are interesting. “He does not pull any punches.… He sincerely believes that the theological demands of Christianity are a barrier to an honest participation by many [that word “honest” right there is interesting—whose honesty?].… He insists that many of the dogmas which modern adults observe are not valid in themselves [and I take it that such insistence is dogmatic].… He believes that many agnostics are much closer to belief in the true God [shall we examine the term “true” God?] than many conventional churchgoers.” On the whole, I get the impression that this is pretty dogmatic—and, interestingly, pretty loose—reasoning.

To quote Weatherhead himself, “The certainties of the Christian faith are very precious to me. They are what I call the essentials, and they are very few. To add to them and then demand belief in what has been added as well as in the fundamentals seems to me a criminal activity” [italics mine].

The word “criminal” is a pretty clear one, but just what does Weatherhead mean by “certainties” and “essentials” and “fundamentals”? And who is he to say we have no right to “add to” what he believes are the essentials? In the name of tolerance, he sounds—if you will pardon the expression—pretty dogmatic. Most critics of the fundamentalist position do.

EUTYCHUS II

A Good Critique

Re “Your Theology Is Too Small,” by Harold O. J. Brown (Apr. 15 issue): The article reminds me of a parable Jesus told in Luke 18:9–14.… Mr. Brown appears to be standing and praying thus “with himself”: “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, such as Robinson, Bonhoeffer, and Tillich, but that I am among those of us who hold the Word of God, who are the legitimate heirs of the prophets, apostles, and martyrs.” …

JIM RUDD

Assoc. Minister

First Christian Church

Abilene, Tex.

The article is one of the very finest things that I ever read.…

C. STANLEY LOWELL

Assoc. Dir.

Protestants and Other

Americans United

Washington. D. C.

The author has … come up with an original and intellectually respectable critique of the “death of God” people. Bethlehem Lutheran

DAVID R. YOUNG

Lakewood, Colo.

I admire very greatly the article.…

D. ELTON TRUEBLOOD

Earlham College

Richmond, Ind.

Splendid Unmasking

Thank you for the splendid article, “Let’s Unmask John Barleycorn,” by Horace E. Chandler (Apr. 15 issue). Intoxicating drink is a sin against God and a crime against humanity. What a tragedy that some churches serve liquor at church functions, and even some “ministers of God” feel justified to encourage the drinking of alcohol by their own example.… I would like to see those men who feel a great concern for the social ills of society … alert the public to the devilish results of alcohol.…

RICHARD H. WATSON

Presbyterian Church of our Saviour

Chicago Heights, Ill.

Reprints should be made available to all pastors throughout the country to remind them of their responsibility to preach against social drinking and the evils that are the result of the free liquor traffic. I am sure that almost every family of our nation has been affected directly or indirectly by this degrading alcoholic problem.…

AL MALACHUK

Vienna, Va.

Unclouding Cloudy Judgment

How much more proof is needed that “God is dead” than a full-page editorial (“Clouded Judgment,” Apr. 15 issue), which tries to prove that James J. Reeb was not a martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ? How unchristian can you get?… Is a man to be judged by what he says he believes or by the way he lives his life?…

The James Reebs, the Pope Johns, and the Bishop Pikes are (and/or were) the only leaders of organized religion who seem to be in contact with reality today. At least, they appear to have some contact with the reality that I know.

What does it matter whether there was or was not a virgin birth? If Jesus Christ was or was not the Son of God? If the Bible was divinely inspired? If these beliefs are important to some people, if it helps them lead a better and more meaningful life, fine. I certainly would not want to destroy these or any other beliefs which somehow bring some order and purpose to their lives. But neither would I judge them to be good or evil, Christian or unchristian by the beliefs they subscribe to.

What is important, at least to me, is the fact that Christ did live. He was not a phony or a hypocrite.…

RICHARD GAIKOWSKI

The Knickerbocker News

Albany, N. Y.

• And he claimed to be the divine Son of God and conditioned eternal salvation upon belief in him as the divine Redeemer.—ED.

Refurbish And Return!

Re “Pentecostals Refurbish the Upper Room” (Apr. 1 issue): It is with deep sorrow that I agree with most that was said, and this “refurbishing” is a shame on the Pentecostal movement rather than a credit … a backsliding rather than an evolution.

Having been born and raised in an Assembly of God pastor’s home, and having been ordained myself for the past sixteen years, my heart’s desire is that Pentecostal people “return” to the upper room rather than try to “refurbish” it.

FRED O. RICE

Hulman Street Assembly of God

Terre Haute, Ind.

He Dared To Pray

As an alumnus of Bob Jones University, I want to commend you for the forthright article about Bob Jones University (“Graham in Greenville,” Apr. 1 issue).

When the Billy Graham crusade was going on in New York City, Dr. Jones Sr. forbade the student body to pray for it. A student did dare to pray for the crusade and was reported … and expelled in a matter of hours.

What kind of conscience is it that would motivate a fundamentalist to speak (blasphemously) as Dr. Jones Jr. did and pray the mock prayer?

I used to call myself a “fundamentalist”; I prefer the term “evangelical.” Some fundamentalists have “too much fun,” and “too much damn,” and “too little mentality.”

DONALD E. MCCLINTOCK

Oglesby Union Church

Oglesby, Ill.

You did an excellent job of reporting the situation as it really is, which is a difficult job, to say the least. In addition to the issue at hand, I was glad to see that you also mentioned some things about the university itself. I found the catalogue misleading, and I am sure many others have, too. I hope that prospective students … will consider carefully before entering a college in which they are quite likely to be disappointed.…

LINDA WITTHUN

Nashua, N. H.

It gave a very good explanation of the case and an evaluation of both sides that the Christian world ought to know.…

M. HORN

Brethren Church Schools

Paramount, Calif.

I believe that your reporting was slanted and a smear.…

RONALD C. PURKEY, SR.

Assoc. Pastor

Temple Baptist

Albuquerque, N. M.

Thank the Lord there is still a school such as this that dares to stand for what is right and refuses to play footsie with apostasy.…

MARION E. FAST

Bible Baptist Church

New Buffalo, Mich.

I take strong issue with your news report. You lament the antagonistic attack of Bob Jones University against the Billy Graham ministry. Then you manifest your “Christian brotherhood” by taking the edge off Bob Jones University and the South Carolina Baptist Fellowship by inferring with the use of an asterisk reference that Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Seventh-day Adventists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are of the same opinion because they are not actively sponsoring the Graham crusade. As a minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I know that the aggressive attack of and boycott by the Bob Jones University against the Graham crusade is not the attitude of our church. Nor do I appreciate being aligned with this “regrettable spectacle.” …

I too, rejoice with the decisions for Christ made in Greenville!

DUANE RICHARD PETERSON

Seventh-day Adventist Church

Hinsdale, Ill.

Big, Fat High Horse

Please take me off of your mailing list!…

Don’t you think it’s high time you got off your big, fat high horse and gave some attention to sincere men that are trying to make Christianity more meaningful today? They aren’t poor, miserable sinners like you are. They believe that as a man thinketh, so is he.…

I’ll tell you something. God’s ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts, and there is plenty of evidence today that the Church has been fulfilled and must change in form. The power structure must disappear, and each man must face himself and come to the cross himself. Each man must stand alone and be a Christ, which means to mature and stop being a child.

ROBERT A. CRAIN

Denver, Colo.

Win A Prize

The annual competition for anthems for average church choirs is announced by Chapel Choir Conductors’ Guild of Capital University, Columbus, Ohio 43209. A prize of $100.00 is offered. Contest ends September 1, 1966. Rules may be obtained on request.

EVERETT W. MEHRLEY

Chapel Choir Conductors’ Guild

Capital University

Columbus, Ohio

A Pleasant Surprise

I want to commend the article by Dr. John W. Duddington entitled “The Crisis of Impending Judgment” (Apr. 15 issue). I am pleasantly surprised that a minister of the Episcopal Church should take a stand on the question of the judgment and the return of the Lord. I am in full agreement with Dr. Duddington’s article and enjoyed it very much.

ROBERT A. GORSLINE

Librarian

Dawson County Public Library

Lamesa, Tex.

Thrust Of Cod

“Ghosts in the Pulpit” (Apr. 15 issue) is indeed a thrust of God into the heart of each preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Every minister should read and reread these paragraphs each week as he prays for, receives, and prepares the message to be delivered from God to the people.

ERNEST S. OWENS, JR.

Cherokee Baptist Church

Memphis, Tenn.

Poetry Plaudit

I was really challenged by what the poem “Remorse,” by Sue Fife (Apr. 1 issue), has to say. The challenge and inspiration of that poem was certainly worthy of your high-quality magazine.

PAUL BENSON

Greenville, Ill.

A Reader’S Rebuttal

Surely you know you can’t print a letter like that from George L. Tappan (Eutychus, Apr. 1 issue) without receiving at least one letter like this from a (Roman) Catholic asking for the chance to rebut. For the benefit of Mr. Tappan and anyone else who cares to read this, I would like to point out that:

1. The government of Spain is not the “Roman Catholic system of government.” It is the Spanish system of government.

2. Children who attend a Catholic parochial school are taught exactly the same “principles of government” that their public school contemporaries learn.

3. We do not want your tax money; we only want part of our tax money. Or is reader Tappan under the impression that Catholics pay no taxes?

JAMES K. GALLAGHER

Exeter, N. H.

Readers Say …

To charge you with “keeping Christianity out of the twentieth century” (Eutychus, “Readers Say …,” Apr. 15 issue) is an obituary to the truth of the Bible. Here is a Methodist that stands behind you (but not too far behind!) in the blessing you bring to the ministry.

NICKY BLACKFORD

Ochelata Methodist Church

Ochelata, Okla.

After reading in the current issue (April 15), I said to myself as I have so often, “Thank God for CHRISTIANITY TODAY!” Your faithfulness to the Word of God is most appreciated and heartwarming.

DONALD E. DEMARAY

Dean

School of Religion

Seattle Pacific College

Seattle, Wash.

Your magazine … was truly appreciated during my years in seminary. Your articles always dealt with so many of the problems with which I found myself struggling.…

MURRAY GRAHAM

St. Luke’s Presbyterian

Bathurst, New Brunswick

I read each issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY in detail and I am most impressed with the wonderful piece of work that God is enabling you to do.…

DAVE BREESE

President

Christian Destiny, Inc.

Wheaton, Ill.

I want to tell you that I personally look forward eagerly to each issue. There has been such a need for a work of your caliber and theological stance. I think you are giving “heart” to many who might have begun to think that to earnestly contend for the faith was a rather futile and intellectually suicidal operation. If the God of the Bible is true, and if our beloved Lord Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the fullness of the Godhead, and if in him are indeed hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and if our God has set at nought all the humanistic, rationalistic speculations of “natural” men—then CHRISTIANITY TODAY had to come into being by sheer demand of truth. Again, thank you.…

CHARLES E. LENKER

Lancaster Brethren in Christ Church

Lancaster, Pa.

“A great gulf separates the scriptural picture of the Church’s spiritual mission and the social, economic and political aims proposed by the ‘Confession of 1967’ ”

Abraham Lincoln, that master story-teller, once told of a farmer who was trying to teach his son how to plow a straight furrow. After the horse had been hitched up and everything was ready, he directed the boy to keep his eye upon some object at the other end of the field and plow straight toward it. “Over there is an ox,” he said. “That will do.” The boy started plowing and the father went about his chores. When he returned a little later to see what progress had been made, he was shocked to find, instead of a straight line, something that looked more like a question mark. The boy had obeyed his instructions; the trouble was that the ox had moved!

We can make this kind of mistake in writing creeds and confessions. Instead of keeping our eyes centered upon the unchanging and incorruptible Word of God, which, as the Apostle Peter says, “liveth and abideth forever,” we can set our eyes on the word of psychologists, philosophers, and theologians, all of whom are but fallible, changing, sinful human beings. Unwittingly we may end up following a moving ox.

What, after all, is our criterion of truth? The Shorter Catechism tells us plainly: “The Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him” (Q. 2). The Bible alone is timeless and changeless, a foundation that cannot be shaken, the inspired and infallible Word of God.

Just how far the proposed “Confession of 1967” of the United Presbyterian Church departs from this divine standard becomes evident when we examine what it says about the Church of Jesus Christ. Let us first see what the confession has to say about the mission of the Church, and then see what the Scriptures say.

The confession finds the pattern for the Church’s mission in the “life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ”:

“His life as man involves the church in the common life of men. His service to men commits the church to work for every form of human welfare. His suffering makes the church sensitive to all the sufferings of mankind so that it sees the face of Christ in the faces of the poor, sick, and oppressed. His crucifixion discloses to the church God’s judgment on man’s inhumanity to man and the awful consequences of its own complicity in injustice. In the power of the risen Christ and the hope of his coming the church sees the promise of God’s forgiveness for all wrong and the renewal of society in all aspects of its life” (11. 214–24).

This theme of social renewal is dominant in the confession’s description of the mission of the Church. “So to live and serve,” the section concludes after the paragraph quoted above, “is to confess Christ as Lord.”

The confession calls attention to three “particular problems and crises which call the church to act” at the present time. The first is discrimination: “God’s reconciliation of the human race creates one universal family and breaks down every form of discrimination based on alleged racial or ethnic difference” (11. 298–300, italics added). This means that we ought “to bring all men to accept one another as persons and to share life on every level, in work and play, in courtship, marriage, and family, in church and state” (11. 301–3).

Secondly, there is the problem of “conflict among nations”: “The church is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies in its own life and to commend to the nation as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace” (11. 310–13).

The third problem presently calling the Church to action is “enslaving poverty” (1. 320), whether caused by “unjust social structures, exploitation of the defenseless, lack of national resources, absence of technological understanding, or rapid expansion of population” (11. 324–27). Poverty “in a world of abundance is an intolerable violation of God’s good creation” (11. 320, 321).

This, then, is what the “Confession of 1967” has to say about the mission of the Church. The ministry of reconciliation of Christ and the Church lies wholly within the social, economic, and political spheres. Let us now turn to the Word of God to see how it describes the mission of the Lord’s redeemed.

The Greek word for “Church” is ekklesia, from ek and kaleo, meaning literally “to call out from.” We are a chosen generation whom God “called … out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). But we were not called into this royal priesthood because of any personal merit. We were “called with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (1 Tim. 1:9). This puts great honor and dignity upon being a follower of Jesus Christ. The question now before us is this: What purpose does God have for those who have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ?

In order to answer this question according to the Scriptures, I made a careful study of the Greek verb meaning “to call,” kaleo, together with its gerund, klesis, and the participle, kletos. These Greek words occur 167 times in the New Testament. I examined each occurrence in order to find out why it was that God called us into his Church. This was a most enriching study, and I am able here only to touch on its salient features. In the great majority of instances, the verb kaleo is used in the Gospels as a simple declarative, such as, “and he called his name Jesus” (Matthew 1:25b). But in those places—mostly in the Epistles—where kaleo is used to denote God’s calling out his Church, the majority of its usages fall into two general categories. God calls men into his Church (1) to bring souls to Christ and (2) to build believers up in Christ.

The first of these purposes, then, is evangelism, or the spreading of the Gospel. Paul, for example, was “called to be an apostle” (Rom. 1:1), and he designates himself in this way seventeen times in his epistles. An apostle, Greek apostolos, is literally “one sent from” one person to another with a specific message. Paul considered himself “the apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13). What this gospel message was he tells us in the letter to the Galatians. God, he said, “separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen …” (Gal. 1:15, 16). This is why he was called, to bring Christ to the unsaved.

This is our first and foremost mission as members of the body of Christ. Our Lord defines this as his own mission to earth: “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matt. 9:13b). It is now our duty to extend that call to all the unsaved. In Second Thessalonians 2:13, 14 Paul declares this to be the eternal purpose of God in Jesus Christ: “… God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It was through the preaching of the Apostle Paul that God extended this call that was in his mind before the world was.

This has always been the essential mission of the Church, to spread the Gospel to all nations, in order to call out a people for His name’s sake. We are not asked to bring the world to Christ: we are asked to bring Christ to the world. The early disciples were not sent out to organize freedom marches or to form picket lines protesting the power of Rome. “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins …” was their message (Acts 2:38). This is the Church’s foremost mission: to preach Christ’s redeeming love and saving power.

The second mission of the Church is to build up believers in Christ, preparing them to be fit members of his body at his coming. This purpose of Christ’s ekklesia is also made clear from the use of kaleo. In Romans 8:30 we read that “whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” God’s holy purpose for members of the Church is not only their salvation: it is their spiritual growth and development until final glorification. It was for this reason that Christ “loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church … that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25–27).

And it is for this reason that the Church exists. Just as it is the highest function of parents to bring up their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), so it is the divine purpose of our heavenly Father, “who hath called us unto his eternal glory,” to “make [us] perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle [us]” (1 Pet. 5:10). Under every condition of trial or suffering or persecution, we are to remember that God is using these means to perfect our growth in grace and in Christ-likeness, “for even hereunto were [we] called” (1 Pet. 2:21a). After sinners have been converted, a lifetime challenge confronts them of growing “up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ” (Eph. 4:15). As imitators of Christ, we are called “to peace” (1 Cor. 7:15), “unto liberty” in Christ (Gal. 5:13), to “let the peace of God rule” in our hearts (Col. 3:15), “unto holiness” (1 Thess. 4:7), to be “holy in all manner of conversation” (1 Pet. 1:15). All these are but fragments of the divine image which we are to develop as part of the Bride of Christ. This, then, is the twofold function of the Church according to divine revelation: to bring the unsaved to find Christ as their Saviour, and then to help believers to grow spiritually in Christ, their Lord and Master.

… AND I AM HIS

Today I found a critter on my range

As fat and sleek as any calf I own.

But this fat calf was slick, unbranded, strange;

The burning iron this calf has never known.

O lucky calf, you’ve never known the fright

Of lariat that snatches you in flight.

You’ve never known that hopeless, helpless plight

When strong, unyielding hands have held you tight

And that fierce iron has burned upon your hip

An everlasting mark of ownership.

I pass you by, to ride among my own;

To see with joy how much my calves have grown;

To care for any sickness, any need;

To put my cattle on the finest feed.

My cows, it seems, quite gladly wear my brand.

It seems somehow they almost understand

That they are mine and I will give them care;

And what they are is but the brand they wear.

I wonder, is that calf, unbranded still,

That feeds alone upon that lonely hill

As lucky as I thought he was at first?

No rancher cares if he should die of thirst.

And if at roundup time that calf is lost

No one will search and never count the cost

Of making sure he’s safely back at home

Before the howling wolves of winter come.

It seems I read once in a sacred book,

That sheep is blest that knows the shepherd’s crook.

And someday surely I will understand

How blest is one who wears his Master’s brand.

DON IAN SMITH

By this time it must have become quite evident that a great gulf separates this scriptural picture of the Church’s spiritual mission and the social, economic, and political aims proposed by the “Confession of 1967.” It is to be noted first that this twofold purpose of the Church of Christ is not even recognized in the confession. But that is not all: it is also apparent that nowhere in the scriptural calling out of the Church is there a command to build the world into a place of greater social or political or economic security!

Does this mean, then, that to be “sensitive to all the sufferings of mankind,” to be concerned about “man’s inhumanity to man,” to work for “the renewal of society in all aspects of its life,” as the confession puts it, has no sanction in the Word of God? By no means. These are worthy motives, all of them, and encouraged by Scripture; and they surely have a place in the life of the Church. And yet, having said this, we must make an important distinction.

Such acts of love and mercy, important as they are, are not God’s primary reason for calling the Church into being. They are not the root of the Church’s strength. They are rather the fruits of the indwelling Spirit (Gal. 5:22). The real root of the Church’s mission and strength is the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in a redeemed and sanctified heart. This must remain the primary function of the Church—to keep nourishing these roots; for if the roots wither, the fruit will soon disappear. And if the roots are kept healthy, the fruits will follow as naturally as harvest follows the planting.

Desirable as are these works of social and economic uplift, they can never replace God’s program of salvation and edification of lost souls as the primary function of the Church. As soon as the Church of Jesus Christ substitutes outward political or social or economic activity for inner spiritual life, it loses its force as a spiritual power. At that moment both the Church and the society it is trying to save suffer an irreparable loss.

Nor does this mean that the Church is a body of people interested only in their own salvation. By no means. In my long experience in the ministry I have discovered, as every minister of the Gospel discovers, that it is just those people who have given themselves completely to Jesus Christ and are dominated by the Spirit of God who do most to relieve the poor and needy, visit the sick, and give themselves in unselfish community service. But they do it for a particular purpose. That purpose is not to renew society but to renew the individual in society in his personal relationship to Jesus Christ. This makes all the difference in the world. It is the difference between healing a diseased body or merely giving a sedative for the temporary relief of pain.

But there is more to this issue: the person and work of the Holy Spirit are involved. In the scriptural passages that define the purpose of the Spirit’s coming and his work in the world, I challenge anyone to find a passage that promises his power for the social renewal of pagan society or promises to guide the world to a better secular future. Like the mission of the Church, the Spirit’s present work is related to two general areas, regeneration and sanctification of the believer. Our Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q.35) defines sanctification as “the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man alter the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness.”

That this is the present mission of the Holy Spirit is made abundantly dear in Scripture (see such verses as 2 Thess. 2:13, Rom. 15:16, and 1 Pet. 1:2). There is not a word here about the renewal of society or even the adjustment of social or political wrongs. How can the Church expect to go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit unless it stays within those spheres in which the Spirit’s power is specifically promised? And if the Church does not expect to go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit or to carry out his divine mission in this world, then it has no right to call itself the Church of Jesus Christ.

Nor is even this all there is of the matter. To claim that the mission of the Church is the social and economic and political renewal of mankind is to betray a tragic misunderstanding of the nature of the world itself. Mr. World is a very sick old man. Long ago, the Scriptures tell us, he rebelled against God Almighty. Even the thought of God became obnoxious to him. But that was not the end of the story, for God is not through with man when man is through with him. The result was that God gave him “over to a reprobate mind” (Rom. 1:28), that is, a mind “abandoned to sin.” God as much as said, “All right, Mr. World, you think you know better how to run your affairs. Follow your course and let us see what you can make of it.”

Mr. World accepted the challenge. By now he was a thorough hater of God, and he was determined to prove that through cultural and scientific measures he could improve himself independently of God. In spite of his best efforts, however, the symptoms of a strange disease slowly began to break out all over his body. There were wars, racial hatreds, lawlessness, crime, sex perversions, delinquency.

Mr. World became concerned about this disease and sent for his best doctors, who began treating the symptoms. What was needed, they said, was more social justice, a more equitable distribution of society’s wealth, more equality of opportunity among races. Mr. World tried all these; but instead of getting better, he slowly got worse. Today his condition is so serious that it alarms every thoughtful person.

And now, amid mounting crime, spreading wars, increasing drug addiction, racial hatred, and moral delinquency, Dr. New Confession has come forth with his remedy. It is the same old aspirin of social and economic and political uplift prescribed by the other doctors. The only difference is that this time it has an ecclesiastical coating.

Blind leaders of the blind! Can we not see by this time that there is something drastically wrong with this poor, wretched old man that cannot be cured with pain-relievers? These “remedies” at best are temporary. They may provide a psychological lift, but that is all.

Is there then no cure? Yes, there is. But Mr. World will have to come to the Great Physician, who alone can heal. His disease is sin, and for that there is only one cure. He must come in true sorrow and repentance to the Lord Jesus Christ, accept his atoning work on Calvary’s cross to cover his sin, and then by the mighty regenerating work of the Holy Spirit be born again to a new life in Christ. Long ago God revealed this secret to Solomon. “If my people,” he said, “which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Citron. 7:14). First in the divine order for renewal is removal of sin. Then, and only then, comes healing of the land.

It begins to look as though the scriptural mission of the Church has more sound common sense in it than we may have given it credit for. The ills of society will he solved only as one by one men repent and believe the Gospel. When the sin problem is solved, society’s problem will also be solved. All other proposed remedies touch only the symptoms.

This is not the first time the Church has been troubled with those who would corrupt her doctrinal purity. In the days of Jude, the brother of James, “certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). How did Jude meet the problem? He told the believers that they should “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (v. 3). He urged them to build themselves up in the “most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,” and to keep themselves “in the love of God” (vv. 20, 21).

Nor was this experience of the early Church the last of its kind. The Apostle Paul was deeply concerned about this in his epistles to Timothy. He expressly warns that the Lord’s personal, victorious return will be preceded by days of great peril and ungodliness (2 Tim. 3:1), and that the best preparation for such days is to be thoroughly grounded in the Scriptures, God’s inspired and infallible Word (2 Tim. 3:14–17). Among perils of the last days is apostasy: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” (2 Tim. 4:3).

Never was the need greater than now, not only for the United Presbyterian Church but for every church of Jesus Christ, to face the issue squarely, to build ourselves up in the most holy faith, to pray much, to keep ourselves holy before the Lord. Paul expresses it for us in his charge to Timothy. Let us change one word, so that it reads, “O Church, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called; which some professing have erred concerning the faith” (1 Tim. 6:20, 21).

We have a noble heritage to maintain. Let us be strong and of good courage, remembering that when the Church of Jesus Christ departs from its true spiritual and ecclesiastical mission and enters into power politics, then America is on the road to ruin.

From time to time sensational claims that the Teacher of Righteousness of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran anticipated the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have received much notice in the press. Some of the men who make these claims are not only competent but distinguished scholars in their field. Yet most of their colleagues, equally competent and distinguished, would take issue with the forced interpretations necessary to buttress such claims. Their more sober views do not, of course, receive publicity. It might therefore be profitable to consider critically the evidence for the allegation that “the Galilean Master, as He is presented to us in the writings of the New Testament, appears in many respects as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness” (A. Dupont-Sommer, The Dead Sea Scrolls [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952], p. 99).

The Allegations

The first scrolls were discovered in 1947 in the area known as Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Subsequent discoveries have yielded thousands of fragments, which include manuscripts of all the Old Testament books except Esther. The monastic community at Qumran is identified by most scholars with the Essenes, a strict, Jewish sect known from the writings of Josephus and of Philo. Some of the sectarian writings—the Damascus Document, the Habakkuk Commentary, and the Commentary on Psalm 37—refer to an anonymous Teacher of Righteousness.

On May 26, 1950, Professor André Dupont-Sommer of the Sorbonne provoked a controversy in Europe by a lecture in which he claimed that the Teacher of Righteousness had probably been crucified, had been raised from the dead, and had appeared in judgment against the city of Jerusalem at the time of the Roman general Pompey’s entrance in 63 B.C. Since the initial lecture, Dupont-Sommer has repeated this claim—albeit with modifications—in various articles and books. Because of the language barrier, the controversy did not receive the same attention in the United States.

Then in the May 14, 1955, issue of the New Yorker, the journalist Edmund Wilson described the exciting story of the scrolls. By his best-seller, The Scrolls from the Dead Sea (New York: Oxford, 1955), Wilson helped to attract national attention to the scrolls. Unfortunately, he also distorted some of the implications of these documents. He suggested that Jesus may have spent some of his childhood years with the Essenes and alleged that New Testament scholars were avoiding the study of the scrolls.

Soon thereafter views similar to Dupont-Sommer’s were aired in broadcasts in Britain by Professor John Marco Allegro of the University of Manchester. These views were published in his book, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Baltimore: Penguin, 1956; reprinted with revisions in 1958, 1959; second edition, 1964. It should be noted that Allegro modified the expression of his views considerably in the second edition). The allegations of Allegro and of Dupont-Sommer have often been disseminated by popularizing writers in articles and books without a careful presentation of their evidence.

The Evidence

What texts are used by these scholars? Three passages in particular are worthy of note. They will be cited here from A. Dupont-Sommer’s translation, The Essene Writings from Qumran (Cleveland: World, 1962).

1. The Nahum Commentary II.13b: “The explanation of this concerns the furious Young Lion [who … took ven]geance on those who seek smooth things—he who hanged living men [on wood … which was not] formerly [done] in Israel; but he who hanged alive upon [the] wood.…” (Note: the parts in brackets are restorations of gaps.)

Allegro interprets the “Young Lion” as the Wicked High Priest, Alexander Jannaeus. The references to “hanging” probably refer to crucifixion. We know from Josephus that Jannaeus crucified eight hundred rebels. Although the Teacher of Righteousness is not explicitly mentioned, as the enemy of the Wicked High Priest, he was one of those who were crucified. The text, as may be seen, is in a very fragmentary state. In any case, Allegro’s interpretation seems to be highly unlikely, inasmuch as in the text those who were persecuted are “those who seek smooth things,” i.e. the Pharisees, who were considered corrupt by the Essenes, and not the Essenes themselves.

2. The Habakkuk Commentary XI.4–8: “The explanation of this concerns the Wicked Priest who persecuted the Teacher of Righteousness, swallowing him up in the anger of his fury in his place of exile. But at the time of the feast of rest of the Day of Atonement he appeared before them to swallow them up to cause them to stumble on the Day of Fasting, their Sabbath of rest” (italics ours).

This is the celebrated passage that formed the basis of Dupont-Sommer’s initial formulation. Originally he took the word rendered “exile,” glwtw, to mean “to strip” and associated this with crucifixion. Other scholars such as Burrows, Kuhn, and Allegro favored the meaning “exile,” which he adopted in his 1962 translation cited here. The crux of the passage is in the word hwpyc, rendered “he appeared.” Dupont-Sommer believes that this refers to the Teacher of Righteousness. Many other scholars believe that this refers to the Wicked Priest, with the second sentence as parallel to the first.

The verb ypc means “to shine; to reveal oneself; and to appear.” At first Dupont-Sommer maintained that the word bore supernatural connotations, “thus the Teacher of Righteousness, shining with a divine light.” In other words, he believed that this referred to the resurrection of the Teacher of Righteousness, appearing in judgment upon Jerusalem at the time of Pompey’s entrance in 63 B.C. He now concedes that “the Hebrew verb used here may also be translated ‘He revealed himself to them,’ with no supernatural implication” (Dupont-Sommer, op. cit., p. 266, n. 4).

An alternative view is set forth by Lou H. Silberman in “Unriddling the Riddle: A Study in the Structure and Language of the Habakkuk Pesher” (Revue de Qumran, III (1961), 358, 359). Recognizing that eight of the fourteen occurrences of the verb in question in the Qumran documents have God as the subject, Silberman proposes that the phrase “he appeared” refers here to God.

3. The Damascus Document VI.7–11: “And the rod (the Lawgiver) is the Seeker of the Law; … and the nobles of the people are they that come to dig the well with the help of the Lawgiver’s precepts, that they may walk in them during all the time of wickedness and without which they shall not succeed until the coming of the Teacher of Righteousness at the end of days.”

Both Allegro and Dupont-Sommer believe that this passage refers to the resurrection of the Teacher of Righteousness. This depends upon the identification of the rod with the Teacher of Righteousness. Frank Moore Cross, in The Ancient Library of Qumran (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961, pp. 227 ff.), would identify the rod with a forerunner of the Teacher of Righteousness. In this case the phrase “the end of days” would simply refer to the period after the forerunner and not to the resurrection of the Teacher (cf. Helmer Ringgren, The Faith of Qumran [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963], pp. 184, 185).

In review we may note the following: (1) It is certain that the Teacher of Righteousness was persecuted by the High Priest. (2) It is possible that he may have been crucified, although the texts do not indicate this. Crucifixion was, after all, a common form of execution. (3) The allusions to a resurrection and return of the Teacher of Righteousness are quite doubtful. F. F. Bruce, in The Teacher of Righteousness (London: Tyndale, 1956, pp. 34, 35), concedes their possibility.

On the whole, however, the reactions of most scholars have been negative, as may be seen by the following citations:

“The passages in the Habakkuk Commentary which Dupont-Sommer interprets as referring to the return of the Teacher must certainly be interpreted in some other way and they do not allude at all to any returning messiah” (Ringgren, op. cit., p. 185).

“There are no references to his [the Teacher’s] crucifixion, to his resurrection, or to any atoning efficacy in his death” (William H. Brownlee, The Meaning of the Qumran Scrolls for the Bible [New York: Oxford, 1964], p. 128).

“There are no references to a resurrection of the Righteous Teacher in the Qumran literature …” (Cross, op. cit., p. 223, n. 54).

“There is nowhere any suggestion of the miraculous in the death of the Teacher of Righteousness” (Menahem Mansoor, The Dead Sea Scrolls [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964], p. 156).

Conclusion

In actuality, the differences between the Teacher from Qumran and the Teacher from Nazareth are far more striking than any superficial similarities. Professor Brownlee (op. cit., pp. 143–51) lists ten such differences:

1. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness was a confessed sinner who gratefully acknowledged his dependence upon the forgiveness of God.” This point and the following ones are based on the ascription of certain of the Thanksgiving Hymns from Qumran to the Teacher of Righteousness.

2. “Unlike Jesus, he must suffer in order to be purified from sin.”

3. Unlike Jesus, the Essene Master founded a community vowing hatred toward its enemies.” The injunction “to hate all the sons of darkness” has led scholars to believe that Jesus may have had the Essenes in mind when he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’ ” (Matt. 5:43). This was true of the Essenes, but not of the Pharisees.

4. “Both teachers founded a church—but only Jesus built a church which the powers of death could not overcome.” After the destruction of their community by the Romans in A.D. 68, we hear no more about the members of the Qumran community.

5. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher called his followers out of the world, but Christ on the contrary sent His followers into the world.” The sectarians were admonished to keep separate from nonbelievers and to conceal their doctrines from them. “And let him not rebuke the man of the Pit nor dispute with them; let him conceal the maxims of the Law from the midst of the men of perversity …” (Manual of Discipline, IX. 16 f.).

6. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness does not appear to have been ‘a friend of publicans and sinners.’ ”

7. “Unlike Jesus, the Essene Master performed no works of healing, nor in other ways did he engage in acts of compassion among the needy.” Indeed, in contrast to the ministry of Jesus who welcomed the sick and deformed, the community excluded anyone with a physical defect: “… every (person) smitten in his flesh, paralyzed in his feet or hands, lame or blind or deaf, or dumb or smitten in his flesh with a blemish visible to the eye, or any aged person that totters and is unable to stand firm in the midst of the Congregation: let these persons not en[ter] …” (Manual of Discipline, the Rule Annexe II.5–8).

8. “Unlike Jesus, he was at most a prophet, not a redeemer.”

9. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness was simply preparing the way for one far greater than himself.” The sectarians awaited the coming of two Messiahs, a kingly one and a priestly one. The Teacher was not himself considered to be the Messiah.

10. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness founded a community enmeshed in legalism.” The Essenes were so fanatical in their observance of ritual law that they considered the Pharisees lax. Since this was so, Ethelbert Stauffer says, “I contend: had Jesus fallen into the hands of the Wilderness sectarians, they would have murdered him as ruthlessly as did the Pharisees” (Jesus and the Wilderness Community at Qumran [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964], p. 21). Stauffer gives eight differences between Jesus and Qumran, somewhat similar to those listed by Brownlee. (See also Bruce, op. cit., pp. 28 ff.; and Jean Carmignac, Christ and the Teacher of Righteousness [Baltimore: Helicon, 1962].)

Oscar Cullmann, in an essay entitled “The Significance of the Qumran Scrolls for Research into the Beginnings of Christianity” (The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. by Krister Stendahl [New York: Harper, 1957], pp. 31, 32), asks: “Is it not significant that Josephus and Philo can both describe the Essenes in detail without once mentioning the Teacher of Righteousness? Without the Damascus Manuscript and the Qumran texts, we would know nothing at all of such an Essene Teacher. Would it be possible to describe primitive Christianity without naming Christ? To ask the question is to have answered it.”

‘Abba, Father’ is in the first sentence from the fresh lips of the twelve-year-old, even as ‘Abba, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit’ are the last words from the parched voice of the Crucified.…

Popular writers are referring to our generation as one that has “come of age.” What will today’s sophisticated highbrows do with Jesus’ word that the Father-Lord was pleased to reveal himself to the babes rather than to the learned intellectuals of his day? Indeed, the Gospels invite us to take a further step. They indicate that at an early age the child Jesus began to speak of God as Abba, “Father.” This thesis is an endeavor to carry somewhat further than he has yet done the conclusions of Joachim Jeremias on Jesus’ use of Abba, “Father.” From the first lectures of Professor Jeremias’s The Central Message of the New Testament, we derive four points.

First, Jesus was unique in speaking of and praying to God as “my Father,” the Father of the individual. The Gospels record a score of prayers of Jesus, all but one of which are addressed to God as “Father,” and they record the word “Father” on his lips 170 times. Incidentally, this indicates the God-centered nature of Jesus’ life. The Sermon on the Mount is the most theistic message ever proclaimed. It focuses the eye of the heavenly Father upon every aspect of life.

Secondly, Jesus used for God his Father the familiar Aramaic word that the little child used for his earthly parent, abba, “daddy.” According to the Talmud, when a child experiences the taste of wheat—that is, when he is weaned—he learns to say “abba,” “dada,” and “imma,” “mama” (Babylonian Talmud, cited by Jeremias in The Central Message of the New Testament p. 20). When Mark 14:36 is placed beside Matthew 26:39, 42, it is seen that Abba underlies the Greek rendering pater mou here and presumably elsewhere. That Jesus used the same word abba in his other prayers is shown by the different forms of address “father” takes in Greek. In addition to the correct vocative forms pater mou and pater, there is the nominative ho pater used as a vocative that is not correct Greek usage; and this oscillation sometimes occurs in the same saying (Matt. 11:25–27; Luke 10:21, 22). The only explanation is that abba underlies each form and that it was used in first-century Palestinian Aramaic both as a form of address and as “the father.” Again, the cry of the primitive Christian communities, “Abba, ho pater” (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), echoes Jesus’ own praying and indicates the word he used.

Thirdly, according to Matthew 11:25 ff. and Luke 10:21, 22, Jesus received this knowledge of God as his Abba in a unique revelation and proclaimed it on his own unique authority. Here Jesus speaks five times of God as Father and united the intimacy of Abba with the majesty of the Lord of Hosts in typically Hebrew phraseology: “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”

Fourthly, Jesus gave his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, beginning “Abba, our Father, who art in heaven,” to be used by them as a sign that they were his disciples (Luke 11:1–4). “Abba when spoken by the disciples,” says Professor Jeremias, “is a sharing in the revelation, it is actualized eschatology.” And as the Spirit of his Son bears witness with our spirits so that we cry, Abba, “Father,” we are really praying in the Name of Christ. He has been pleased to bind us up in the covenant of grace and the bundle of life with himself.

Now we maintain that these conclusions and a further consideration of the gospel data support the thesis that this revelation came to Jesus, at least in part, at an early age.

On the face of it, abba is the child’s word. There is a first-century B.C. story from the Talmud to the effect that school children came to a noted rabbi in a time of drought and, grasping the hem of his coat, implored him, “Abba, Abba, Daddy, Daddy, give us rain.” The rabbi prayed, “Master of the world, grant the rain for the sake of those who are not yet able to distinguish between an abba who has the power to give rain and an abba who has not.” Here the children do and the rabbi does not address God in prayer as Abba (cited by Jeremias, op. cit., p. 19).

Matthew 18 and 19 record several cases in which Jesus holds up the faith and the attitudes of little children for emulation. Putting a little one in the midst of the disciples he averred, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3; cf. John 3:3, 5). Again there is the warning not to cast a stumbling block before one of the least of the little ones, for “their angels do always behold the face of my Abba which is in heaven” (Matt. 18:10). As he takes them into his arms to bless them, Jesus says, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). Later, after the elders had rejected Jesus, the little children in the Temple were still crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David” (Matt. 21:15 f.), which Jesus defended as God’s perfecting praise from children and infants. Moreover, the Aramaic term abba breaks through in the Markan Gethsemane account; it is in a moment of extreme tension that one is most likely to lapse into the language of his earliest childhood.

Two cases bear more specifically on our thesis. One is the account of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:41 ff.). Here he corrected Mary’s reference to Joseph as his abba by describing God as his Abba. Thus Abba, “Father,” occurs among the first recorded words on his lips.

The other incident is the Jubilation Passage recorded in Luke 10:21, 22 and in Matthew 11:25–27. In these two verses in Luke, God is spoken of as Abba five times, the intimacy of the term being balanced by the description of the Father as Lord of heaven and earth and by the uniqueness of the Son as both recipient and giver of this revelation. That Luke and Matthew reproduce the same passage assures this unit a place in Q, and that it is a rejoicing in the Holy Spirit and a thanksgiving (Hodayoth) vindicates its Israelitish historicity (see James M. Robinson in Bernhard W. Anderson, ed., The Old Testament and Christian Faith, pp. 143, 144). The father-son comparison is familiar in Palestinian apocalyptic (Jeremias, op. cit., p. 25). Now the declaration that the heavenly Abba hides these things from the wise and prudent and reveals them unto babes, together with the unique function of the Son in receiving and giving the revelation of the Father, seem to carry an autobiographical overtone. It is as if the rejection of Jesus’ message by the learned and intelligent in the great cities and its reception by the little ones there brought to Jesus’ mind earlier experiences of his own. Could there not have been some sad and humiliating experience in childhood into which came the revelation that the LORD of Israel was Jesus’ own Abba—a revelation in which the joy of the Holy Spirit filled the Child’s soul with thankfulness? Could it also reflect a lad’s conviction that God was his Abba, even when that testimony was frowned upon by the sagacious and sophisticated rabbis in Jerusalem? At least that is the direction toward which these passages point.

Furthermore, Jesus draws his most effective illustrations for the encouragement of prayer from little children in family situations that seem to have come from his own childhood home. When brother James asked for bread, Mary did not give him a stone, nor when brother Simon asked for a fish did Joseph give him a serpent. If earthly parents being evil know how to give good gifts to their bairns, how much more shall the heavenly Abba give good things to those who ask in prayer (Matt. 7:7–11)? Or consider the man whose unexpected guests knocked at midnight (Luke 11:5–9). May we not hear the gruff voice of Joseph the Carpenter first refusing: “My children are now with me in bed; I cannot upset the household in this cold darkness and give you food.” But to hush the visitor’s shameless begging, even sleepy Joseph gets up and gives him as many loaves as he needs. And the widow who cries to the magistrate for justice until he finally gives it to hush her (Luke 18:1–5) could well have been a neighbor in Nazareth—or somewhat later, even Mary after the death of Joseph.

As we think of the younger brothers—James, Joses, Juda, and Simon—and sisters (Mark 6:3), we can imagine Jesus as the baby-sitter, even before he became the apprentice and later the successor to Joseph the Carpenter. And one wonders whether at least one of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer may not have been present in embryonic form in the Nazareth home as Jesus led the children to pray, “Abba, give us our daily bread.”

Now, of course there are various occasions on which this revelation may have come to Jesus. It is our duty, however, to consider what God has been pleased to give us in his Word and to offer solutions that cling as closely to that Word as possible. In this Word there is a revelation concerning Jesus’ Abba given to Mary and recorded in Luke 1 and 2 and one given to Joseph and recorded in Matthew 1. Moreover, scholars are now recognizing that the paternity of Joseph was challenged in Jesus’ lifetime by his critics (see E. Stauffer, Jesus and His Story, pp. 15–18, 213). According to Mark 6:3, Jesus was described as “the carpenter, the son of Mary.” The accusation of being “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:34), probably carries the same evil connotation as does the charge in John 8:48 of being a Samaritan and having a demon. In the same context, there seems to be an insinuation in John 8:41. But if Joseph’s paternity were questioned, may not the questioning have sifted down to the children and some playmate have objected when Jesus spoke of Joseph as his abba, as did the younger children in the Carpenter’s home? Then did a weeping child receive from Mary in the nursery the story which we have in Luke, and from Joseph the account we have in Matthew? And with these revealing words did the Abba confront and comfort this Child with his Holy Spirit from heaven (Luke 11:13), banishing his sadness with joy over his heavenly origin and his earthly mission? As he was later to witness with the spirits of Jesus’ disciples (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), so the Holy Spirit bore witness with Jesus’ heart that God was his own Abba (see my article, “A Re-Study of the Virgin Birth of Christ,” in The Evangelical Quarterly, December, 1965). Accordingly, Jesus said “Abba” no longer to Joseph but to God (Luke 2:48, 49; Matt. 23:9).

In the temple episode recorded in Luke 2:41–52, both the fact that it is Mary rather than Joseph who admonishes Jesus even though he is “a son of the law,” and the interplay in which her “your father” (meaning Joseph) is revised by Jesus to “my Father” (meaning God), indicate that the mystery of his birth had been revealed to Jesus and was shared by him with Mary and Joseph. At her first appearance in the Fourth Gospel (John 2), Mary’s acts and words indicate that she knows the secret of her Son and accordingly calls on Jesus’ power to work miracles, signs of his glory and vindications of her honor. And indeed, the signs he did convinced at least one ruler of the Jews that Jesus was a teacher come from God (John 3).

Jesus’ best-known parable is the story of the gracious father who loved both his sons. Here the Prodigal represents the lost sheep of the house of Israel, who apart from Christ would have to flee from God. Jesus justifies his conduct in receiving sinners and celebrating with them the eschatological meal by proclaiming the joy of heaven over everyone who repents. That is, Jesus dares to act in God’s stead, revealing the Father as the God of the poor and needy, of the despairing and those who have no merit (Luke 15). Thus, also over the Synoptic Jesus one may write his Johannine word, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” For in the ministry of Jesus Christ, God has graciously given the only Son of his bosom to stand as the representative even of the Prodigal and so to do and to bear for sinful man that the whole relationship between the Holy One of Israel and his guilty creature is altered. The Lord, who apart from Christ is the Judge, has become Abba, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of all who are in him.

“Abba, Father” is in the first sentence from the fresh lips of the twelve-year-old, even as “Abba, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit” are the last words from the parched voice of the Crucified. The Risen One ascends to make his Abba to be our Abba, his God to be our God (John 20:17). Thus, according to our reading of the New Testament, from the conception by the Spirit and the birth to the virgin, from Jesus’ childhood home and his teachings about children and about prayer, from his baptism and his transfiguration, from Gethsemane and Calvary, as well as from the revelation of the Risen Lord to Mary Magdalene and later to Paul, comes the Christian Name for God, which is: “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”