Our lord made it plain that the privilege of entering upon the road to eternal life is as broad as the “whosoever” of God’s offer of salvation, but that the road itself is narrow. Our Lord, speaking of this way, added this solemn observation, “… those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:14, RSV).

All through the Bible the distinction between those who travel the narrow way and those who travel the broad one is made clear. The first Psalm describes this difference. One way is known and blessed by God; the other leads to destruction.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that the Christian is a new creature in Christ. He is a person with a new citizenship. Although he lives in this world, he is not a part of its dying order. His sights are lifted above and beyond the horizon of this life.

When the Christian compromises with the world, he finds himself in trouble on every hand. He cannot walk two roads. When he tries to live like the unregenerate, there is neither joy nor peace in his heart and no witness that can honor his Lord.

But if he tries to escape his obligations in and to the world, if he burns his spiritual draft card, he loses the chance to live for God’s glory. His “light” is hidden, his “salt” unavailable at the place where it is most needed.

Walking the tightrope of a Christian existence in an alien setting is an utter impossibility unless it is done in daily companionship with the One who has redeemed us, the One who has sent his Spirit to be our guide and our strength.

Still fresh in our memories is the huge power failure that involved much of north-eastern United States. For hours cities and towns were paralyzed because there was no electric current. A Christian is as dependent on the presence and power of the Holy Spirit as is modern civilization on electricity. Cut off the current and almost every form of productive activity ceases. The Christian who loses the power of the Holy Spirit in his life gropes about in spiritual weakness. This power of the Holy Spirit is available to all who will turn on the switches marked “faith” and “obedience.”

The narrow walk of the Christian demands self-discipline. By the Scriptures and by bitter experience we know those things that separate us from a close walk with our Lord. We know the compromises with conscience, the trimming of the sails of Christian ethics, and the worldly pleasures that leave a sense of uncleanness on our souls, and in our hearts we feel empty because the joy of salvation, of the living presence of Christ, has been lost as we wandered into the bypath of futility.

Being a Christian involves a kind of pride that is the ultimate in humility—a realization of whose we are and whom we serve. It involves a realization of the price of our redemption and of the One who paid that price. It involves a joyous sense of freedom, of being released from the powers of darkness and brought into the fullness of that One who is the Light of the world.

The Apostle Paul writes: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17)—not freedom to wander into the broad way whose end is destruction, but freedom from things that formerly allured us by their siren call.

This change in the Christian’s perspective Paul describes in this way: “All of us who are Christians have no veils on our faces, but reflect like mirrors the glory of the Lord. We are transformed in ever-increasing splendor into his own image, and the transformation comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18, Phillips).

The road our Lord described as the “narrow Way” is spoken of by Paul as a life lived in the Spirit, a life ruled by Christ instead of by self.

In Second Corinthians 4:1–6 Paul goes into detail about the source of the Christian’s life and the power of his witness, and then in verse 7 he makes this remarkable statement: “This priceless treasure we hold, so to speak, in a common earthenware jar—to show that the splendid power of it belongs to God and not to us.”

Therein lies the secret—the recognition of our own unworthiness and of the power of God whereby he makes it possible for us to live for his glory.

We need not search very deeply into the secrets of our hearts to realize that we often try to steal God’s glory and appropriate it for ourselves. We often wear the label of “Christian” and swagger down the broad road asking people to see how “good” we are.

But the comparison with the earthen vessel goes further. In the Middle and Far East an earthen jar is almost the cheapest thing one may buy. Archaeological diggings often reveal many layers of potsherds. In Sidon, for instance, the visitor may see mound after mound of broken earthenware jars discarded by the Phoenicians.

Paul was speaking to people who knew an “earthenware jar” as an almost worthless object. And he told them that the tremendous treasure of Christ and all he has to offer resides in us who are worthless, that all of the power and glory may be given to the One who has redeemed us.

In another place Paul tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and therefore must not be defiled. This recognition of whose we are and who we are should lead us to walk carefully on the narrow way—the way that the world cannot understand and therefore derides.

It is a hard road, often misunderstood, and walking it involves persecution: “Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). But we do not walk alone. Our Lord says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:12a).

On this narrow road there are many discouragements and distractions. Many a Christian has lost his effectiveness by succumbing to discouragement, forgetting that he does not travel the road alone and that God has not abdicated his sovereignty. And many a Christian has permitted secondary matters, like billboards along the way, to fritter away his time and energies.

Finally, the importance of the narrow road centers in its ultimate destination. If men would only realize that Christ did not come into the world to create a social utopia but to save sinners, and that in this way alone real social uplift can be accomplished, the whole emphasis of the Church would be changed. Men would sec clearly that the narrow way is the only way that leads to life eternal.

True, there are dangers, and there is evil to the right hand and to the left; but the road is paved with the promises of God. All around us the lights may go out in a world plunging deeper into sin, but on the narrow road is the light of the Creator of all light. That light shines more and more unto the perfect day, the eternal day into which the narrow gate gives entrance.

The war in Viet Nam may well overshadow everything else as news during the coming year. In Washington, rumors race through the halls of government that we shall send more men to Viet Nam than we sent to Korea; that the war may last ten to twenty years; that the cost of the war in 1966 may run to $10 billion. Such a diversion of the resources of the richest and most powerful nation on earth, for the next decade or two, is sad to contemplate.

The thirty-hour holiday truce plea was a hopeful turn. If this Christmas ceasefire effort can actually be extended into a sincere quest for a just solution, bringing a halt not only to human conflict and suffering but also to Communist aggression, the anxieties of 1966 will be greatly lightened. If not, a grim year may be ahead in Viet Nam.

In its bombing in both North and South Viet Nam, America attempts to spare concentrations of people naturally found in centers of industrialization. This may be the most measured destruction in the annals of warfare, but many such people will unavoidably be killed.

The Communist Viet Cong are also selective, in their way. They aim their terrorism with particular force at native officials loyal to Saigon who attempt to establish some order and consensus in that bewildered and undemocratic land. These loyalists have been decapitated, their skin peeled off, their wives’ bodies disemboweled and slung atop fence posts. The tactics of the South Vietnamese are often equally repulsive to Americans, who have no tradition of cruelty. Such Americans do not know that some of the savagery practiced in Viet Nam is based on religion. They simply do not understand the Vietnamese animist living in tribal territory who believes that he bolsters his courage by devouring the organs of an enemy and that mutilation of the enemy’s body sends his soul into eternal wanderings.

As the war spreads and its horrors come home more poignantly, it is natural that many Christians—and non-Christians too—cry out for an end to it all. Christ’s Church is on the side of peace on earth and good will toward men. But it does not take religious commitment to know that the effects of war have vastly worsened since 1945, when atomic power introduced apocalyptic overtones to international conflict. This awareness of horror is shared not only by those who frame and support American policy but also by young draft-dodgers who do not want an unpleasant war to interfere with their comfortable lives and by responsible adults who in good faith believe their government is wrong.

How can the war be ended? One small group that sees all sin on the American side is boosting Red resolve by supporting their party line—raising hopes that we might pull out—and sending aid to the Viet Cong and to the North Vietnamese. Another group desires to bring matters to a fast conclusion by extending our bombing raids to Hanoi and Haiphong, and perhaps even to Red China.

Both these suggested ways of terminating the conflict may be too simplistic in a complex and confusing war that is far different from any we have fought before. The latter group argues that, if a stand had been made against the aggressors in Manchuria, in Ethiopia, and in Hungary, then the currents of history in this century would be remarkably different. None can deny this. It is always easy to assess the evils of the day; it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to assess what might have been if past history had been other than it was. And it is still more difficult to say that the formal preservation of freedom—however much this is to be treasured above totalitarian compulsion—will assure man’s choice of the good and the true.

The decision to bomb North Viet Nam was a watershed in America’s Viet Nam policy. In 1964 our oft-stated policy was that we were advising Asians how to fight their own war. With something considerably less than government candor, the rules of the game gradually but quite drastically changed during 1965. It is now more an American war than a South Vietnamese war. We are now fighting an international enemy to world peace and human freedom in a small country, and doing it almost without any aid from friends. Our presence in Viet Nam is nonetheless in line with our long-held policy to contain world Communism. On this policy we acted in Berlin and in Korea. And it is this consideration, rather than our commitments to the government of South Viet Nam, that accounts for the fact that most Americans endorse our military presence in Viet Nam.

Here, it would seem, lies the crux of our difficulty. We are now following a policy of selective bombing of strategic targets in North Viet Nam. Those who find comfort in the fact that such bombing was urged earlier and rejected find their comfort considerably lessened by the fact that such selective bombing has as yet shown no noticeable effect of bringing Hanoi to the conference table. Rather, it has hardened the will of the North Vietnamese, and Americans are now realizing that it is one thing to bomb an industrial center of a highly industrialized country and another thing to bomb a non-industrialized nation. The North Vietnamese have responded to our bombings with a yet more steely determination, as did the British under much heavier punishment from German planes in 1941. Since the bombings began, infiltration of the South has been greatly stepped up. Three North Vietnamese divisions are said to be in the South now, with three times that many likely to be there during 1966. Even if all infiltration from the North were cut off, the Communists have untouched launching pads in Cambodia and Laos, which no one seems ready to bomb. We have no assurance therefore that a mere increase in bombing will bring the war to an end. Indeed, the fear cannot be discounted that it might bring on a nuclear third world war.

On the other hand, in resisting the aggressor we are becoming increasingly involved in a land war in Asia, the kind of war we have always determined to avoid since in terms of manpower we are hopelessly unable to compete.

Thus we are caught in a predicament. We are restrained by all good sense from unlimited bombing, although we possess enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world many times over. We are, on the other hand, against our traditional wisdom and determination, compelled to fight a land war against masses we cannot begin to match.

This predicament should be enough to make every God-fearing man cry, God help us. We seem to have no better alternative at present than to do a little more of what we have been doing. There doubtless must be an increase of both manpower and airpower, enough and no more than is necessary to drive the Viet Cong out of South Viet Nam and Hanoi to the conference table. There are times and places when “too little and too late” is fatal, but we need the wisdom and discernment to recognize that there are also times and places where “too much and too soon” can be equally fatal.

It may well be that there is no wholly good and right way to end the war in Viet Nam. It may be that we shall now be compelled to learn that the consequences of human greed, of lust of glory, and of the will to power can so beset men that there is no way of escape, except that God himself intervene in ways we cannot now even dimly conceive.

God has promised wisdom to those who truly seek it, and a wave of prayer and of spiritual concern on the part of Christian believers could exert an incalculable influence upon the Asian war. The blunt question must be asked whether Christians are praying daily and importunately for the best solution of the Viet Nam problem. Prayer is nothing if not personal. With a humble sense of their own shortcomings, the editors ask every reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY whether he is really praying for peace and for the guidance of the President and his aides—yes, and for the enemy too. The Vietnamese believers, and the chaplains who labor among the troops, link their hearts with ours in this cry for help. While we are convinced that Communist aggression is not benevolent, and that American resistance is a matter both of national and of international interest, let us be wholly aware that no nation dare play the role of Deity in history. We are sinners on our own account, with a sad record of having repeatedly lost the peace after winning a war.

It may be that the strongest, finest nation on the face of the earth will be taught in a small and weak country in the underbelly of Asia that it is not by might, nor by power, but by God’s Spirit that kings reign and nations prosper.

The Academic Sacred Cow

Many responsible Christians are expressing dismay at the “death of God” fad in certain American theological institutions. They are protesting the brashness of Young Turks who proclaim a so-called Christianity that first would stab to death the God without whom Christianity vanishes.

The time has come to say as loudly as possible, even at the risk of misunderstanding, that the sacred cow popularly known as academic freedom is the source of much of this difficulty. In its name many sins are being committed. Rightly understood and practiced, this freedom is essential. But its perversion can have disastrous results.

Academic freedom does not give professors in theological and church-related institutions the right to undermine and subvert the purposes for which churches and their institutions exist. It does not provide a shelter for heresy. Nor is it an ambush from which trigger-happy theorists can shoot at historic Christianity at pleasure.

No one should be so naïve as to suppose that the present crisis in the theological seminaries is a development that has just come upon us, for it has roots that go back many years. It began with denials of the full authority and inspiration of Scripture. It went on through disbelief in basic Christian doctrines such as the virgin birth, the vicarious atonement, and the physical resurrection of Jesus. It continues today in a neo-universalism based on a distorted doctrine of reconciliation. If all men are saved and need only to be informed of this fact, the most blatant forms of unbelief, even the “death of God” views, need not be opposed. Those who proclaim them are all going to “heaven” anyway—indeed, they may already be there!

If academic license is to prevail, no valid reason can be adduced for denying to the nihilists who would destroy God the same freedom their predecessors had to demolish faith in the virgin birth, the vicarious atonement, and the physical resurrection.

Some years ago the American Association of Theological Schools established guidelines for the practice of academic freedom. Their statement says that “Christian freedom exists within the confession of the Christian faith. Theological schools may acknowledge specific confessional adherence as laid down in the charters and constitutions of the schools. A concept of freedom appropriate to theological schools will respect this confessional loyalty, both in the institutions and their individual members.… So long as the teacher remains within the accepted constitutional and confessional basis of his school he should be free to teach, carry on research, and to publish.…”

This excellent statement was worked out by able, farsighted scholars and churchmen deeply interested in academic freedom. We deplore the nullification of its principles in some Christian institutions.

Since some seminary professors have turned freedom into license, have broken faith by such non-ethical practices, and refuse to remove themselves from these places of sacred trust, one must look to other ways to protect and preserve the inner integrity of the Church of Jesus Christ. The solution is obvious. Church bodies, boards of trustees, seminary administrators, and the laity must fulfill their obligations. Only their concerted action can rectify the situation. The time to act is now. Professors should fulfill their institutional obligations or be dismissed.

No one ought to be denied the right to disbelieve. But let unbelief be propagated outside the Church and her educational institutions.

Law Observance Sunday

Many churches in the nation’s capital recently marked Law Observance Day. Suggested by clergymen, it enlisted enthusiastic support from the police and the District Commissioners. Police Chief John B. Layton, a Baptist deacon, spoke at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, where Dr. Clarence Cranford is minister. He urged listeners to accept their civic responsibilities, to understand the true meaning of authority, and to obey the law.

“Obedience and respect for the law,” said Layton, “must begin in the home.” He commended the old-fashioned woodshed treatment for disobedience and said that punishment should be “fair, swift, and sure.”

Layton labeled as dangerous the philosophy that “because we don’t agree with a law we don’t have to obey it.” In concluding remarks he said: “The Gospel and the law, working together, offer the best hope for passing on to our children the freedom our forefathers gave to us.” We wholly agree, and would add that the neglect of either is a sure way to erode that freedom.

Salute To Dan Poling

At eighty-one Daniel A. Poling has announced his retirement as editor of the Christian Herald, having given forty years’ service. During these years the magazine reflected the greatness of an editor to whom tribute is due. His life has been filled with good works.

Dr. Poling’s interests have been manifold: clergyman, chaplain, war correspondent, president of the World’s Christian Endeavor Union, author of twenty-six books, president of the Greater New York Federation of Churches, and Prohibition candidate for the Ohio governorship in 1912. Ohio State, Syracuse, Bucknell, Temple, Hope, Albright, and Bates, among others, conferred honorary degrees in recognition of his many accomplishments.

Dr. Poling has known fame, but he has also known tragedy. His son, Clark, was one of four chaplains who drowned in World War If when they gave their life belts to save others. Dr. Poling became chaplain of the inter-faith shrine erected in 1948 in memory of those four brave men.

Forthrightness in his approach to contemporary life has been one of his characteristics. Dr. Poling supports American policy in Viet Nam. “If we pull out and lose there,” he said, “then we’ll lose all of free Asia.” His creed as a Christian is unmistakably clear: “I believe the Gospel is first personal and always social. The place of the Church is not to change society but to change men and women, who will then do the changing of society.”

A man of God and a man among men, wise in the ways of life—this man we salute as he concludes this aspect of a rich and full career that has brought blessing to multitudes.

Ford Stewart, who succeeds him, will wear the mantle of a great journalist. To him we extend our hearty congratulations and our best wishes for a long and distinguished editorship of a highly readable and enjoyable magazine.

Needed: More Mature Stewardship

Few forms of Christian work require longer patience than Christian education. This is an endeavor in which results may not be discernible for many years. In contrast with evangelistic campaigns, the results of which often bring immediate joy not only to the angels in heaven but to God’s children on earth, education is a day-by-day enterprise that continues in rain or shine, on the heights and in the valleys. Although some of its results are soon apparent, these are not necessarily its ultimate fruit.

It requires a considerable degree of spiritual maturity for Christians to support God-centered education. Unfortunately some Christians do not back Christian schools and colleges financially because of their passion for immediacy. For them it is more satisfying to give to enterprises whose results are readily apparent or even spectacular. Such enterprises are indeed essential. But support of Christian education ought not to lag because other kinds of work produce quicker or more exciting results.

A leading criterion of maturity is the ability to postpone immediate satisfactions. Small children cannot wait; when they want something, they want it now. As they grow, they learn that fulfillment of desires must often be deferred. There are whole areas of stewardship—Christian education among them—in which those who give need to learn how to exercise patience. In the support of Christian education, the passion for immediacy must be resolutely put aside in the expectation that God in his own time will bring forth the fruit he has planned.

During my ministry to my first two churches, I floundered. For ten years I searched for a way to make my sermons meaningful. I used both topical and exegetical preaching, but something was lacking. A very basic question had not been answered: What was my prime responsibility as a preacher?

Then it dawned upon me that I was essentially a communicator of God’s written Word, the Bible. This introduced a complete change in my approach to preaching. I was determined that when I left a church, the members would have a deposit of the Scriptures in their minds and an application of these sacred truths to their living. Somehow I would communicate an extensive and an intensive knowledge of the Bible. And this would have to be done at the 11 o’clock service on Sunday morning, when the most biblical illiterates were present.

So, based upon the American propensity for joining, “The Book of the Week” Club was formed. The membership card indicated that the joiner would attend the midweek service and the morning worship service for a certain span of time.

Next I preyed upon the guilt complex of the average Baptist who prides himself on being a part of “the people of the Book” but has never read it very much, certainly never all the way through.

The herd instinct is basic to our Western culture, so I appealed to the members to join and read the Bible through from Genesis to Revelation—a lifelong ambition of many. “Let’s do it together. Everybody is doing it.”

On the Wednesday night at the beginning of this program, I gave an introductory lecture on Genesis. Each one present received a mimeographed statement giving the key word, key verse, author, date, geography, and an outline summary of the book. The lecture took about forty minutes. On the following Sunday, the morning sermon related the message of Genesis to the Space Age. With the exception of Christmas and Easter, this program was followed—one book each week. It was extensive. It did skim. But there are many values of this bird’s-eye approach, which takes about sixty-five weeks.

Now that this first challenge had been met and the discipline accepted, the congregation and I were ready for the next step, an intensive popular expository treatment of one book of the Bible. After announcing a series on First Corinthians, I took orders for paperback copies of William Barclay’s volume The Letters to the Corinthians and secured several hundred copies from Scotland.

On the starting day of this new series, always preached in the morning services, complimentary copies of First Corinthians (American Bible Society edition) were distributed to all worshipers with the admonition that they were always to have it with them, to read, underline, and memorize it. This series lasted eighteen months. The object was to make the message of a brief passage become alive, understandable, and applicable to contemporary life.

At present, we are completing a two-year series on the Book of Romans, and I am already working on the Gospel of John. In five years, then, we have surveyed the entire Bible and expounded First Corinthians and Romans, all in sermons delivered at the Sunday morning services.

The strengths of such a preaching program are obvious:

1. The Holy Spirit has promised to bless God’s Word—not man’s. Therefore, we must be communicators of the Scriptures in our pulpit ministry.

2. The audience knows that the preacher knows where he is going. Thus there is continuity.

3. In both phases of this program there is audience involvement.

4. After the preacher has moved on, the Word remains and continues to work.

Such a procedure, I have found, demanding as it is of discipline, intensive study, and wide reading, brings meaning, relevance, and authority to the pulpit.—THE REV. J. LESTER HARNISH, senior minister, First Baptist Church, Portland, Oregon; and former president, American Baptist Convention.

A top U.S. general who signed the Korean truce gives his views on a controversial question

Is the United States right in bombing North Viet Nam? In the following discussion of this current controversy, no mention will be made of the pros and cons of pacifism, since the discussion would be irrelevant if pacifism were the norm. Neither will an opinion be expressed of the propriety of American military intervention in the conflict. Suffice it to say that successive presidents of the United States, both Democratic and Republican, have decided that, for the security of the United States and of the so-called free world, resisting the Communists’ military effort to take over South Viet Nam is necessary. And it is evident that the American public as a whole supports this policy.

Many people think that the purpose of bombing cities is to terrorize the civilians, causing them to surrender. This is not so. Experience shows instead that bombings infuriate the people and increase their will to fight. Neither are bombs intended to overcome ideological Communism; ideas cannot be destroyed militarily.

What then is the purpose of bombing? It is part of the total effort to defeat decisively the military aggression of the Communists in South Viet Nam. Once an aggressor has committed himself to conquering by armed warfare, he has abandoned intentions of negotiating a settlement, at least until his military effort has proved a failure. Under these circumstances, for the other side to seek to negotiate will be futile; indeed, taken as a sign of unwillingness to fight, it will only encourage the aggressor to strive harder for military victory. That the constantly expressed desire of the United States to negotiate is answered with immediate scorn by the Communists is clear evidence of this.

Having accepted the challenge, the United States is faced with the alternatives of defeating the aggressor by military effort or of failing to do so. The latter would entail national humiliation, loss of prestige and influence in the world, and desertion of the South Vietnamese, who have every right to expect our full support and will be lost without it. It is probable that all of Southeast Asia would then fall to Communist military control. The worst effect, however, would very likely be the effect on the American people. This weakening of the moral fiber would bode ill for the future.

Wars are fought by men with weapons that can destroy life and property. Victory comes when one side destroys the other’s weapons and men faster than it loses its own, thus assuring the ultimate total destruction of its enemy’s forces if the conflict is continued. The greater the applied superiority, the quicker and cheaper the victory. A major factor in superiority is numerical strength, both initially and in the replacement of losses. Another is the ability to employ the forces when and where desired. It follows that proper targets for attack include not only the men and weapons in actual combat but also anything necessary to their number, movement, and employment, such as raw materials, factories, power plants, hydroelectric dams, railroads, highways, bridges, harbors, storage facilities, communications, command posts, and government installations. The amount of damage to such targets reduces by that much the physical capability of the related combat forces to fight effectively, and might therefore determine victory or defeat. A government that fails to attack such targets not only reduces its chance of victory but also greatly increases loss of life and suffering among its own men.

Can bombing really be effective in North Viet Nam, an agricultural country with few industries? Some argue that the farmers harvest their crops, travel at night, and either repair the roads and bridges or use ferries or boat bridges. Life goes on, though hindered and inconvenienced, it is said, and hatred of the Americans increases. Such an argument overlooks the fact that the purpose of the bombing is not to destroy the people or their farms or even their cities, but to cause the greatest handicap possible to their ability to maintain an effective fighting army in South Viet Nam. The fewer the significant targets in North Viet Nam, the easier it is to knock them out temporarily or permanently. All destruction causes some reduction of the war effort.

The Korean War affords a good example of this. Bombing of the Communists in North Korea prevented them from maintaining enough of a resupply of munitions to take advantage of their numerical superiority in manpower, and made possible their repulse. Had bombing been permitted in Manchuria, the Chinese would, in the opinion of this writer, have been driven out of Korea and the country unified under democratic procedures.

Unfortunately, many non-military writers and speakers seem to have a serious misconception of the purpose of bombing. Assuming the incorrect purpose, they assess the results accordingly: they decide that the attacks are futile and result only in useless loss of life and property, adding to the horrors of war and making the achievement of peace more difficult. With or without bombing, war is horrible; but an aggressor must either be fought or allowed to wreak his wrath on his victim. If he is fought, there is no substitute for victory. The maximum war effort against him should be undertaken from the beginning in order to make victory certain, and that most quickly and cheaply for all.

Since the immediate bombing of North Vietnamese military targets is a military necessity, the decision to avoid it would have to be based on overriding moral or political considerations. If such reasons exist, it follows logically that it might be better not to continue any military intervention at all, because the chance of success is lessened and the cost in American lives and resources will be greatly increased.

The strictly military targets and industrial and other facilities must be located near the labor market—that is, near population centers, as is evident in cities everywhere. Where the worker lives, there his family is also. Around them are all the stores, utilities, and other services that make up any civilian community. Certainly there is no need to attack these areas; they are not producing munitions or firing weapons. Unfortunately, however, under the conditions that prevail in bombing raids the destructive effect of blast and fire spreads far beyond the actual targets. And the more powerful the bomb, the greater and more widespread will be the damage. No one has been able to find a way to hit the targets without causing serious harm to non-combatants in the general locality. Now the basic reason such persons are endangered is that their government, in precipitating the tear, actually exposes them to its destructive effect. It and they accept this risk. Were one side to refrain from bombing in order to avoid hitting non-combatants, the other might win the war by crowding the women and children in and around the military targets.

The preceding paragraph states that the people accept the risk of being bombed when their country goes to war. Some may challenge this on the grounds that it is the government, not the people, that makes the decision. Yet the mass of the people must share the responsibility for engaging in war and risking the consequences. The chief of state does make the decision, but that decision could have no meaning without the active or passive support of the population. As the international situation grows more dangerous, a reversal of policy tends to appear as a public surrender, a step that reinforces the general public in support of its government. Once war begins, public support increases. Whether or not a government deceives its people about policies and war, the people almost always support it.

The nation, not merely the armed forces, goes to war. As for responsibility, there is no way to separate the population from the ruler. Government is essential, but government implies obedience. It is a historical fact that the people can overthrow their government. It follows that the nation as a whole supports the war its government initiates. Accordingly, all alike share the responsibility and in so doing expose themselves and their children to enemy bombs.

Much of the opposition to bombing North Vietnamese military targets appears to arise from the fear of Communist China’s intervention, as in Korea. If this did occur, it would expose China to bombing and destruction against which it could neither defend itself nor effectively retaliate. Bombing of North Viet Nam is a warning to the Communist Chinese of action that would be very dangerous to them, and therefore is a deterrent rather than an incitement to intervention. The Chinese might intervene in order to prevent an American victory in Viet Nam, as happened in Korea, whether or not North Viet Nam were bombed. When the United States committed itself to seek victory, it accepted this risk; it can hardly back down now.

The whole problem of the war in Viet Nam is complicated by the sincere but erroneous idea that mankind can in some way bring peace to the world. Men who are willing to resort to military aggression and crime to gain their ends are for peace only on their own terms or when under external compulsion. No one has found a way to prevent such men from becoming heads of states. Their victims, having no alternatives but to fight or to surrender, usually fight, if victory seems reasonably probable. This is the age-old course of history.

What men overlook is that there can be no peace until the Prince of Peace comes at the Second Advent. As a revelation of his wrath over human rebellion against himself, God has given men up to those moral evils that cause war and the other troubles of society (Rom. 1:18–32). Apart from God’s intervention there can be no lasting peace. Wars will continue until man’s rebellion runs its full course, terminating in the wars of the great tribulation at the end of this age. Only the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, as so often foretold in the Bible, will end the rebellion and bring an age of peace and prosperity (Matt. 24; Isa. 2:1–5).

In the meantime, Christians who do not subscribe to pacifism can only look to God in faith for guidance and wisdom for their government and for themselves, that they may follow a path of integrity and justice, seeking-peace but not afraid to fight if necessary, and withal not hating their enemies.

A new year (’66)—with the new confession (’67)

Ho And Hum

Well, I have just been reading a few more things about new theology and new morality and the recent death of God, and for some reason a statement came to mind that I read many years ago in a book by Warwick Deeping called Old Pybus. “There is nothing so damning as being just damned clever.” If the devil is half as intelligent as Blake makes him look and Milton describes him to be, he must be having a boring time these days. Such an easy job. It’s not much fun pushing people down when they fall down from their own inner weakness.

One of the slickest plays in football is the draw play. By faking the defense out of position with a threatened pass, you open up a hole for one of the backs to gallop through. The defense out-maneuvers itself. We used to make a lot out of the mousetrap, too, which was a pretty nice way to handle an aggressive tackle; you let him run full speed through your line and then help him along his way while the play runs through the hole he left. The Church has had a hard enough time for a good many centuries trying to beat the devil around the bush; I don’t know what he is going to do if we start running with him instead of against him.

Oh, yes, and a sign of the times: The Beatles were knighted. All I can say is, every man to his taste. But the reason for their being knighted shakes me up a bit. They were knighted because they helped the British balance the trade, which means in simple language that they cleared a few million dollars out of our country and took them over to their country. Let them be knighted, I say; but what kind of a day is it when four men like that can make a balance of trade for Great Britain?

EUTYCHUS II

Chirpings And Mutterings

In his critique of the United Presbyterians’ proposed “Confession of 1967” (Dec. 3 issue). Professor Gerstner shows how it is remarkable for its turgidity and lack of clarity, not to say intellectual dishonesty.…

At the beginning of their onslaught, the humanists ridiculed Christian beliefs as being obscurantist. Today it is becoming clearer and clearer that it is humanism, whether it manifests itself through the “Confession of 1967” or simply by chronic doubting, which is obscurantist.

STEPHEN B. MILES

American Council on Correct Use of

English in Politics

Falls City, Neb.

Professor Gerstner is to be commended on his clear and forthright article.… We need more of this kind of plain talk. The framers of the new confession have sought too much unto the modern familiar spirits that chirp and mutter, and have spoken too little according to the law and the testimony (Isa. 8:19, 20).

J. TUININCA

Philadelphia, Pa.

Thank you for the informative discussion concerning the proposed “Confession of 1967.” The tragedy, however, is that the proposal of this confession, whether the authors so intend or not, constitutes a denial that there is final, ultimate, eternal truth.

To assert that, in order more accurately and clearly to express the truth of Scripture, the language of the Westminster Confession should be modernized (although actually the language is modern and scriptural and such a proposition is wholly unnecessary) is one thing. To relegate the Westminster Confession to a book of confessions and to seek to derive one’s message from “… principles drawn from living theology,” as is stated in the section of the report, “Confessions of the Church: Types and Functions,” by Edward A. Dowey, Jr., is simply to deny ultimate truth.

This is the real tragedy. If this proposed confession is adopted there will be no essential difference between the United Presbyterian Church and the world. It will be one of the saddest days in the history of Christendom.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Professor of Old Testament

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

The author of this article urges Presbyterians to resist aggiornamento. What a pity!… A “Protestant” who would hold back this aggiornamento will have to run to catch up with the twentieth century. Wake up! This is the atomic era. The world lies “stripped,” “beaten,” and “half-dead” on the side of the road. Priests and Levites spend their days arguing about the supremacy of some sacrosanct creedal statement.

RICHARD H. PETERSEN

Chaplain

Pfeiffer College

Misenheimer, N. C.

It is pointless to denounce the creed committee for rejection of the Bible’s “historical and scientific statements,” because the Bible is a theological statement and deals with neither history nor science in the finitude of human academic pursuit. It is much more priceless and eternal as the record of the revealed salvation of man, not the revealed record of the salvation of man. As such it is without bondage to traditionalism, creedalism, inspirationalism, or any other rational “ism-idolatry.” If the toes of the body must continually scratch at one another to the depreciation of the will of the Head, let us err not on the side of creedal conglomeration but rather on something stupidly simple, such as the creed of the first disciples: “Jesus is Lord!”

ALAN KIEFFABER

Church of the Brethren

Franklin Grove, Ill.

What an incredible hodge-podge of half-truths, insinuations, and misinformation! One hardly knows where to start in unraveling the errors in this thoroughly bad piece of work.…

DEANE F. LAVENDER

First Presbyterian

Monroe, N.Y.

Westminster On Scripture

The idea of reprinting the original Westminster Confession’s chapter on Scripture in large characters (Dec. 3 issue) was great. May it remain written large in our hearts and churches.…

ROGER NICOLE

Gordon Divinity School

Wenham, Mass.

Big Bang And Steady State

It is quite true, as you imply in the last paragraph of “Demise of the Steady-State Theory” (Dec. 3 issue), that some people accepted the steady-state cosmology because they believed that it removed at last the final vestige of the idea of God from the universe.

But to say that the big bang is “more congenial” to the Christian world view is to make an equally serious error. Science does not have the wherewithal to determine a zero-point in time. Both the big-bang and steady-state universes are infinitely old, as far as any cosmologist can tell. This is not because a creation by God is logically impossible, but because it could never be detected by scientific means. Surely it is physically meaningless to say that “the universe began at a discrete point in time and space.” God cannot be “ruled out” of cosmology. Neither, however, can he be “ruled into” it.

A steady-state universe does not have to be “completely at variance” with a Christian view. God could create a steady-state universe just as easily as a primordial atom for a big bang. “In the beginning” the steady-state world would be just as formless and full of void as anyone might please. God’s sustenance of the world-system would consist in part in the continual creation of new hydrogen. Such an idea may be unusual, but it is hardly unchristian.

As well as beating a dead horse that never should have lived by your talk of Genesis-cosmology “resolutions,” you demonstrate an ignorance of contemporary cosmology and a misunderstanding of the scientific process. Matter, in Hoyle’s cosmology, was not produced “out of energy” (or anything else), although some steady-state cosmologists held that view. There is no “oldest” matter any more than there is a largest integer, in a steady-state world, that is. Hoyle’s new cosmology is equally as “self-contained” and “self-perpetuating” as his former one. And any contention that a steady-state universe must be “doing violence to physical law” is simply not in accord with the nature of the scientific enterprise. If the steady-state universe had been found to be true, then it would not be said that it had done violence to a physical law, but that the laws previously held to be true were, in fact, false. Besides, some steady-state cosmologies do not conflict with any known laws, even though they include continual creation.

ALLEN HARDER

Bloomington, Ind.

• Our effort was not “to rule [God] into cosmology” but to point to the reduction of tension that should result from Hoyle’s abandoning a theory that effectively ruled Him out of it.—ED.

The Second Cause?

John Warwick Montgomery’s article on “Why Churches Decline” (Current Religious Thought. Dec. 3 issue) was very interesting. You gave much space in this issue to the first cause, namely, the presence of liberal theology. Why not work up an issue on the second cause—namely, “social conservatism”—for the decline of Protestant churches.… Or is it fate that we use doctrinal conservatism to defend social conservatism?

HUBERT BROM

Saint Andrew United Presbyterian

Iowa City, Iowa

Protestant Poetry

I’d like to congratulate CHRISTIANITY TODAY on the letter by E. Margaret Clarkson in the November 5 issue, and to second her remarks—with reservations. One reservation, obviously, must be an absence of objectivity on my part, since CHRISTIANITY TODAY has been gracious enough to use some of my own poetry. Beyond that. I would go further than she in not always liking what you do use, I fear. But I, too, would certainly wish to congratulate the magazine for its emphasis on freshness, vitality, and avoidance of the stereotype.

Recently I have gone through piles of religious magazines, in connection with my teaching of creative writing, and I am appalled at the triteness, sentimentality, and banality which dominate the poetry in the Protestant press. Roman Catholic magazines seem to be much more aware of twentieth-century literary currents.…

ELVA MCALLASTER

Greenville College

Greenville, Ill.

Stopping Short

You use part of the last sentence of the excerpt from Olov Hartman’s Holy Masquerade as a title for the piece (Dec. 3 issue), thereby apparently endorsing its sentiment: “Oh, to live in a time with clear colors when the ministers believed.…” Presumably you also endorse the conclusion of that sentence: “… in angels and devils and atheists were burned at the stake just as if they had been martyrs of the faith.” In the terms in which belief is understood by Pastor Svensson’s wife and CHRISTIANITY TODAY, the two parts of that sentence are inseparable.…

RALPH W. JEFFS

Episcopal Chaplain

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, Calif.

• The phrase used as a title was intended to stimulate reader interest. But we do not endorse the unquoted portion of the sentence. We would not advocate burning heretics at the stake.—ED.

Among dozens of publications that come to my desk, CHRISTIANITY TODAY is one of the best by far.…

The summary from Holy Masquerade spoke to my heart.… It gives me, an evangelical, renewed faith in Jesus Christ. May her prayer be mine: “Oh, to live in a time with clear colors when the ministers believed.…”

STANLEY R. LEWIS

Hadley Methodist

Hutchinson. Kan.

Tillich’S Treatment

I must commend you on your objective and kind editorial of November 19 regarding the passing away of Paul Tillich. I only wish now that the leading liberal religious magazine in the nation would be as kind toward evangelicals as you have been toward those individuals of the liberal persuasion.

ROBERT GEORGE WICKENS

Berea, Ohio

The World Of Cheats

Congratulations on your willingness to publish “I Hate Cheating Because …,” by Nancy M. Tischler (Nov. 5 issue). It places in relief an obvious and disturbing factor of American academic life. The lack of proper proctoring of examinations and the allowance of plagiarism in essays nullifies the plea of the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.” Moreover, professors are as guilty as students when many of them present material in a “bookish” fashion that is dearly not their own. Hence the result is shallowness in scholarship and the encouragement to declining moral standards by the future leadership of our country.

ERNEST V. LIDDLE

Librarian

Undergraduate Library

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pa.

They Do Not Undersell

Re “Quiet Revolt in Gospel Music,” news section (Nov. 5 issue): While it seems that there will always be an area in which the denominational publishing house and the independent firm both feel that the other has the greater advantage, it simply is not true that our choral music is priced below that of our competitors, whether they be independent or denominationally owned. Furthermore, the Nazarene Publishing House is not subsidized but rather channels all of its profits directly into the worldwide program of The Church of the Nazarene.…

R. W. STRINGFIELD

Manager

Music Department

Nazarene Publishing House

Kansas City, Mo.

Buildup In Bombay

What a blessing it is to receive … CHRISTIANITY TODAY. You are making a very vital contribution to the building up of our Indian Christian leadership.

Only this week I attended the monthly pastors’ meeting where twenty to thirty pastors met. Oh, you would have been thrilled to have seen them gathering up the magazines. Their faces truly reflected their gratitude for this help.…

ROY BAKER

President

Asian Screen

Bombay, India

A View Of News

I think CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S news coverage is about the best you can find.…

STEPHEN C. ROSE

Renewal

Chicago City Missionary Society Editor

Chicago, Ill.

Lunchtime Companion

Often this publication has been my companion during the few minutes at the noon-hour lunch period, and many times I have found much spiritual comfort and guidance in my quest for truth.…

MRS. GEORGE H. COCKRUM

East St. Louis, Ill.

Why Not?

With everyone so all-fired anxious to get one-man-one-vote for Rhodesia, I wonder why there isn’t an equal amount of agitation to get something like that for, say, Hungary.

JACK IMMELL

Buffalo. Okla.

Anabaptists And Liberty

In re “Our Protestant Heritage” (Oct. 22 issue): The Anabaptists were the pioneers of religious liberty, out of which eventually grew the idea of democratic liberty, and they paid for the privilege with their lifeblood. The Reformers established only state churches, not free churches, and whoever dissented in any Protestant state was a heretic and had to be dealt with.…

SHEM PEACHEY

Quarryville, Pa.

The Bodily Resurrection

May I call to your attention a most interesting article that many have overlooked.… The article is a restudy of First Corinthians 15:50 by J. Jeremias in New Testament Studies (II, 151–59).

Developing an interpretation earlier stated by A. Schlatter, Professor Jeremias … says, “It is wrong to assume that the sentence ‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ is speaking of the resurrection. It speaks rather of the change of the living at the Parousia (Second Coming), and only by analogy is anything to be inferred from it for the Pauline conception of the resurrection”.… “Look at the transfiguration of the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, then you will have the answer to the question how we shall imagine the event of the resurrection.”

In 1896 a discussion of Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection and the judgment by E. Teichmann misinterpreted this significant terse as teaching that the body of the resurrection will not be flesh or blood. On this error Teichmann assumed two tremendous mutations in Pauline eschatology, according to which in First Thessalonians he taught the Jewish conception of the rising of believers in their earthly bodies; then in First Corinthians set forth a complete annihilation of all that was connected with the flesh, so that only the spirit remained to receive an entirely new body at the resurrection; and thirdly in Second Corinthians five expected the new body from heaven at the moment of death. The resurrection was thus spiritualized into Hellenism. Indeed, some translations, such as Goodspeed and the Revised Standard, were led to support this misinterpretation of First Corinthians 15:50 by inaccurately rendering Paul’s adjective psychical as physical in First Corinthians 15:44. This also led to radical results in reinterpreting the testimonies of the Gospels and Acts as to the resurrection body of Jesus. The disastrous role of this misinterpretation of First Corinthians 15:50 in New Testament thought has been evident these seventy years since Teichmann.

In opposition to this established “liberal” interpretation, Jeremias shows that flesh and blood refers to living persons, not to dead ones, and points to the Parousia rather than to the resurrection of the dead. Flesh and blood is rightly read in Nestle as singular, and this single conception, as parallels in Matthew 16:17, Galatians 1:16, Ephesians 6:2, and Hebrews 2:14 show, refers to natural man as a frail creature in opposition to the mighty God (cf. also Isa. 31:3). It does not state a distinction between the physical and the spiritual aspects of man. Since both flesh” and “blood” exclude an application of the word-pair to the dead, this phrase refers only to living persons.

On the other hand, the next clause, that “corruption cannot inherit incorruption,” does refer to the dead. The parallelism is not synonymous but synthetic; that is, corruption refers to corpses in decomposition. The verse means that neither the living nor the dead are to take part in the Kingdom of God as they are but that both are to be changed at the Parousia.

In the following verse the Apostle reverses the order of his thought, as he does several times in this chapter, according to the logical figure known as chiasmus. In verse 53 he mentions first the dead, stating that this corruption must put on incorruption; then, returning to the living, the living men of flesh and blood, he says that the mortal must put on immortality. That is, the dead will experience what happened to our Lord at his resurrection, while those who are living at the coming of the Lord in his glory, the men who are still flesh and blood, will experience what happened to him at his transfiguration.

We cannot too highly commend this significant reinterpretation of this much misunderstood verse and bespeak it the careful study of our ministers, that thereby the truth of the actual bodily resurrection of our Lord and the Christian hope of our resurrection may be restored to Christian thinking and proclamation.

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON

Columbia Theological Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

What is worldliness? Churches seem to disagree in their conceptions of it. A certain Mennonite pastor is worldly in the eyes of some of his people because he wears a necktie. One pastor’s wife was called worldly because she wore high-heeled shoes. I once saw a girl refuse a string of synthetic pearls offered as a birthday gift; she considered them too worldly. A high school boy, responding to the invitation at a city-wide evangelistic meeting, asked his counselor if he would have to give up football; his parents thought it worldly. Some have taught that drinking soda pop from a bottle is worldly. (It’s all right from a glass!) Others judge whether a woman is worldly by her hairstyle or makeup. Then, of course, there are the perennial questions about movies, dancing, and cards.

Complicating the issue is the sometimes questionable use of Scripture to condemn these practices. The young lady who refused the pearls—and wounded a weak believer in the process—believed she had Scripture on her side: “… women [should] adorn themselves in modest apparel … not with … pearls” (1 Tim. 2:9).

Two observations are in order here. First, it is true that matters of dress and appearance are subjects of scriptural concern. Both this passage and First Peter 3 contain admonitions along this line. However, it is plainly the intent of these Scriptures that women should be modest in appearance, which may permit quite different apparel now than it did in Bible times, and that, most important, they should be concerned primarily with the beauty of the inner person (1 Pet. 3:4). A plain appearance does not guarantee inner beauty, though a preoccupation with outward appearance admittedly works against spirituality.

Despite the verse in First Timothy, a woman may surely wear pearls now without overstepping limits of modesty or frugality. If someone objects that this violates a plain command, I answer, “The letter of the law may be violated so that the spirit of it may be obeyed.”

Are we, then, not always to take the Bible literally? Are we to seek the spirit of the Word in preference to its letter? Ought we to determine to live by what it means instead of by what it says, and realize that there sometimes is such a distinction? I dare to answer, Yes!

The Word itself tells us that our ministry is “not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor. 3:5, 6). Furthermore, Jesus told those who were twisting his meaning by too literal an interpretation of his words, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). This principle needs enunciation today.

Furthermore, the idea that worldliness consists just of certain things or certain pleasures is directly contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture. “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus,” said Paul, “that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean” (Rom. 14:14).

“God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31a). Since all that God has created is good, and since Satan creates nothing, there are no things evil in themselves. There are only good things that may be misused or used to, excess. Alcohol is valuable in industry and medicine; tobacco contains a useful agricultural insecticide; drugs bring relief from severe pain. Material things are morally indifferent in themselves.

At this point a distressingly common misuse of First John 2:15, 16 must be considered. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,” the beloved disciple writes. “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.”

The common application of these words to certain practices is completely arbitrary. This passage has no more to do with attending motion pictures, for example, than with growing flowers! The passage does not say, as many interpret it, that we are not to love the bad or questionable things in the world. Rather it forbids loving any of the things in the world even though they may be legitimate. “Lust” as used here does not necessarily have the bad connotation it carries in modern English. It can be rendered simply “desire.”

In other words, the emphasis is upon not loving the world. “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” The world and its things are for our use but not for our deepest love and devotion. Here God alone must come first. This is the crux of the whole matter of worldliness. The passage reveals that worldliness is a matter, not of things, but of our attitude toward them.

These verses need to be considered in the light of verse 17. “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” A worldly person (one who gives his first love to something on earth) dooms himself to heartache, for sooner or later he must inevitably face the loss of the thing beloved. It is passing, transitory. Therefore, it is in mercy as well as jealousy that God forbids such destructive devotion.

Let me speak plainly. I hold no brief for such things as dirtier-than-ever movies. They are evil and demoralizing. But let us oppose them on the legitimate basis of verses like Philippians 4:8 (“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things”), not on the misuse of First John 2:15, 16.

Another false and tragic idea is that worldliness is friendship with sinners. To support this notion, some quote James 4:4: “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” And they point to Paul’s injunction: “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord …” (2 Cor. 6:17). So we come out; we separate. Then we wonder why our churches have no outreach, why people feel that we think we are better than they. Humbly (?) we announce that we are only sinners saved by grace; yet we let our fellow sinners feel we want no more to do with them. Thus we become Pharisees, gathering our robes about us and staying unstained—and unfruitful.

Whatever the commands to be separate mean, they cannot mean this isolationism, this Protestant monasticism that is so evident in many evangelical churches today. Such an interpretation violates the spirit of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:15. “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Furthermore, Jesus was “a friend of publicans and sinners.” James says to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God. Was Jesus then an enemy of God? No, a “friend of sinners” and a “friend of the world” must be two different things.

A study of the context of James 4:4 reveals that it, like First John 2:15–17, is speaking about the object of one’s affections. The picture in the preceding verse is that of a self-centered or things-centered person. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” This “friendship” for, or devotion to, the world is enmity with God. It reverses Jesus’ order, “If any man come to me, and hate not … his own life … he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). The worldling “hates” God for the sake of his love of the world.

Similarly, the question raised by the command to “be separate” may also be resolved by a study of the context. In Second Corinthians 6, this separation is seen to apply to alliances or partnerships: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (v. 14a). While the rest of the New Testament teaches association with sinners, this portion shows the limits of that association by warning against union with them. That it is possible to associate rather freely with sinners and yet not compromise or be partakers of their evil deeds is conclusively proved by Jesus’ own example. He could be called both the “friend of sinners” and “separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26). Too many evangelicals manage the latter much better than the former.

In this connection, it is interesting to note that the Bible prefers our association with sinners to a like association with disobedient brethren! “I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolators; for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat” (1 Cor. 5:9–11).

Worldliness essentially consists, then, of putting something other than the Lord in the first place in the heart. The spiritual person keeps “things” in their proper, subordinate place. If need be, he will sacrifice them on the altar of his devotion to God.

Conversely, the worldly person daily sacrifices God upon the altar of his lusts. That “lust,” for a suburban housewife, may be her flower garden. For the high school boy, it may be his car; for a girl, her personal appearance. The businessman’s lust may be his business. And for the minister it could even be his church. It is distinctly possible for a minister to be more interested in his church than in the Lord, and to promote the church at the expense of the Lord’s best interests.

With this concept in mind, we can readily see that worldliness is by no means uncommon in evangelical churches. Because our members observe a few taboos, we think we have no worldliness. How blind we are!

Wherever a life is centered on something other than God, there is worldliness. Wherever there is a worldliness, God is grieved. Our preference for things instead of him insults his grace. It also identifies us with the transistory rather than with the eternal. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

Despite tensions within and pressures from without, the church in Taiwan is growing and the people are prospering

The most frequent greeting on the lips of Chinese Christians is “Ping-an!,” the word for peace. “Ping-an!” is usually spoken with a lilt to the voice, a nod of the head, and, above all, a smile of welcome. This is the peace, not of the grave, but of genuine, warm-hearted fellowship.

The current testimony of the Chinese church in the one free province of Taiwan, off the China mainland, is that it has largely maintained peace among the brethren despite tensions within and pressures from without. Looking at the fragmented churches in South Korea, the multiplied church councils and missionary associations in Japan, and the division between some of the older and younger church groups in the Philippines, the churches of Taiwan sometimes wonder whether they can continue their mutual toleration and cooperative activity. So far, the basis for fellowship has been a conservative theological consensus, common participation in evangelism, and strictly informal interchurch relations. Certain sharp exceptions can no doubt be made, but the basic pattern is harmonious. A major factor is the absence of restrictive church councils, for these latter-day oligarchies cultivate a party spirit. If they were to develop in Taiwan, they would be a decidedly disruptive force.

One of the tensions the churches have survived is that between the Chinese who are native to the island and the refugees who fled to Taiwan from the mainland. Any who remember the wartime friction between the Szechuanese in west China and the loyalists who followed the Nationalist government to its temporary capital in Chungking have not been surprised at the difficulties that developed when the Taiwanese were subjected to a similar influx a few years later. What is remarkable is the modus vivendi the old inhabitants and the newcomers have achieved, even to the extent of partnership in Taiwan’s business prosperity and some intermarriage. In church circles it has gone beyond mere accommodation to a unified stand on issues affecting the welfare of all Christians.

A newer tension is that between the older and younger generations of Taiwanese, the former trained in the days of the Japanese occupation, the latter now the product of almost twenty years of Chinese schooling. The elders tend to meet the problem with humility and grace despite their increasing isolation, while the rising generations respond without too much impatience or belligerence.

The arrival of many new denominations in a field largely occupied for eighty years by Presbyterians could have given rise to ugly recriminations. Yet the Presbyterian Church has wisely busied itself with church extension instead of futile controversy. As a result, it has doubled its numbers and remains the largest church body on the island. Some of the new groups are cooperating with the Presbyterians at several levels.

Another significant movement among ten of the smaller denominations will, if successful, combine six of the existing Bible schools and seminaries into one strong, fully accredited biblical seminary, similar to Yeotmal Seminary in India.

An example of outside pressure is the criticism of the supposedly disproportionate number of Protestant missionaries engaged in Chinese work. Nothing much is said about the larger missionary staff which the Roman Catholic missions employ. Some of those who view with alarm the proliferation of small, evangelical churches have been silent about the inroads Catholics have made in certain former Protestant preserves, such as the tribal areas. Without question, the Catholic Church is giving high priority to its missions in Free China.

It is a disadvantage to labor under a continual lack of understanding on the part of older churches in the West. Take such a relatively small matter as the use of Taiwan’s old European name, Formosa. This should be as obsolete as the name Siam for Thailand, or Persia for Iran. Its use indicates either ignorance or insensitivity among those who should be aware of the strategic value of Christian work in this seat of the Republic of China.

Let us take a closer look at present-day Taiwan. The frenetic taxicabs, the sedate, black limousines of business tycoons, and even the more modest cars and vans of missionaries bear license plates beginning with the number 15. This is the designation which the Communications Ministry has given this island province. It is Province No. 15 of China.

When pioneer missionaries James Maxwell in the south and George Mackay in the north began preaching among the Taiwanese, they classified themselves as missionaries to China. Some visitors from overseas to the 1965 centennial of Protestant work on Taiwan were not quite so sure where they were. They had the mistaken notion that the Chinese and the Taiwanese are separate peoples.

I once picked up an old book in the library of the Tainan Theological Seminary. On the flyleaf I noticed the inscription, “Tainan, Taiwan, China, 1885.” This book had been placed in the library long before the Japanese era at a time when Taiwan was politically an integral part of the Chinese empire.

The people of Taiwan are almost entirely Chinese in speech, culture, and descent. Nevertheless, confusion still exists over their identity, and this confusion is compounded by carelessness. This year, for instance, a mission board that has had work in Free China for over a decade published a brochure describing the population as made up of 2,000,000 Chinese and the rest mostly Taiwanese. The first is the name of a nationality, but the second is derived only from the name of a province.

It makes a considerable difference to our estimate of the potential of Christian work in Taiwan whether the Chinese are a small, foreign element or the bulk of the population. As Province No. 15, Taiwan looms large in importance as an open door for witness among the world’s most numerous single people. Although only one province is free for the propagation of religious faith, our opportunity is significant in terms of the vast numbers of Chinese. Altogether, on both sides of the Bamboo Curtain, they are one-third of the world’s non-Christians and therefore one-third of the total missionary task of the Church.

The Christians in Taiwan are aware of their opportunity. Looking into a new century, they have high hopes; but they are also under pressure from rapid social change. The burgeoning population and economic progress of the last few years have drastically changed the sleepy, post-war cities. Local people who at first blamed the mainland arrivals for any disorder or inefficiency never had it so good as they do in the new business whirl. They may well ask themselves what they might have missed if the national government had not moved their way. Certainly the increased industrialization, the foreign-aid programs, the cosmopolitan touch of foreign embassies, and the tourist trade would not have come so fast under Japanese suzerainty.

Visitors are hardly aware of the new look, for they are busy taking snapshots of the quaint and the bizarre. But the people themselves are greatly impressed by the changes. They see squatters moved, streets paved, rising skylines, faster trains, more air-conditioning, new factories, television aerials, and attractive consumer goods.

What has this to do with Christian work? Much. The people are better educated and more materialistic; they could become sophisticated. They are flowing into the cities, so that at present one-fifth of the people are in the five largest cities. Right in the city of Taipei there are colonies of tribal people numbering in the thousands. This makes the teeming inner city and the growing suburban areas an acute concern.

Within the churches, the higher standard of living is reflected in more financial self-sufficiency. Some of them, of course, have been completely self-supporting from the start; others are laboring to get off subsidy. New civic pride has its counterpart in the self-assurance of the national Christian leadership. This creates highly predictable problems where missionaries are paternalistic, or when responsibility falls into the hands of unstable young Christians. In this respect the Presbyterian Church has an advantage because of its reservoir of second-, third-, and fourth-generation Christians who often have outstanding ability to conduct the inner and outer ministries of the church.

The pressure of being a minority community in the nation has helped keep the various denominational groups together. This is not to say that tempests do not build up over doctrinal and political issues. Church leaders are sometimes autocratic and fail to consult their constituencies. The tendency has been, however, for policies and programs to be modified whenever it is plain that they will endanger Christian unity. A case in point is the invitation tentatively issued to a high-ranking Catholic prelate to be a guest speaker at the centennial. When evangelicals opposed this action, the invitation was quietly canceled.

Again, when a liberal Sunday school curriculum was produced in Hong Kong with the consent and participation of several Taiwan churches, it was greeted with great disfavor at the grass-roots level in Taiwan. The church officials concerned hastened to urge revision of the material and dropped plans to push it for local use.

This year the question of the World Council of Churches’ position on Red China has plagued those churches with WCC relations. Some of their leaders were unwise enough to try to defend the council in a “white paper” distributed widely among the churches. As long as the Church of Christ in China in Red China is listed as a member organization of the WCC, it is virtually impossible for the WCC to be acceptable in Free China. I was at a luncheon for some of the foreign delegates to the centennial celebrations when one of them mentioned the World Council of Churches. “Hush!” another cautioned in mock dismay. “Don’t you know that that is a forbidden name here in Taiwan?”

What is of great interest is that conservative church groups that have no connection with the WCC have not exploited this explosive situation in order to embarrass the churches that are related to the council. They may not be sympathetic; in fact, they may even deplore the ecumenical movement. Nevertheless, they combined with these other churches in an area where they are of one mind, a Christian anti-Communist conference on October 8 and 9, just before the Chinese national holiday, the Double Tenth.

This conference emphasized the spiritual offensive Chinese Christians are waging against atheistic Communism. First of all, churches all over the island prepared with a week of prayer for mainland Christians. Then in the conference key delegates gave reports on aid to refugees in Hong Kong, Christian radio broadcasts to the mainland, chaplaincy service in the armed forces, Christian literature on Communism, and the biblical answer to Communist theories. Although the skeptic might think that this conference was engineered for political purposes, it was really a sincere effort to encounter the impression that any in the Christian community in Taiwan are soft on Communism.

This willingness to pull together wherever possible is further illustrated by Bible-translation projects, relief programs, joint preparation of Sunday school literature, city-wide evangelistic campaigns, Christian education conferences, audio-visual supply centers, pastors’ prayer conferences, radio and literature workshops, and work among leprosy patients. The two weekly Christian newspapers help communications between denominations by covering much of the church news. The picture would not be complete without reference to certain groups that are constitutionally unable to have fellowship with others. There is some of this vertical stratification in the Chinese church, but the majority are in fellowship with one another. They have liked this, and they have even made personal sacrifices to keep the peace.

Indeed, some would even go so far as to say that this harmony of spirit is a prelude to revival, a revival of God’s people in Taiwan that could bring many more of China’s millions to the feet of Jesus Christ.

Evangelicals dispute the liberal thesis that the Church’s evangelistic task is to change the structures of society, not to proclaim a message of personal salvation

Evangelical foreign missions have traditionally been concerned almost exclusively with evangelism. As William Gillam of the Oriental Missionary Society observes, “In the drive of evangelism, too often we have rushed by the hungry ones to get to the lost ones.”

There are good historical reasons for this evangelical aversion to church social action. At the turn of the century, the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch and others who advocated the social gospel set forth salvation through the utopian hope of ushering in the Kingdom of God by man’s efforts. This radical departure from biblical truth caused a very strong reaction among conservatives, a reaction that largely remained for many years, even after the decline of the social gospel in the 1930s.

The reasons, however, do not constitute an excuse. The Bible has always spoken up clearly against social injustice. Passages such as Ezekiel 22:23–31, Amos 8:4–14, and James 2:1–20 leave no question as to God’s concern that his children be involved in social problems. Yet it is only within the last decade or so that many evangelicals have been restudying the passages that bear on social ethics, and repenting for their shortsightedness. The lag has put us at a distinct disadvantage in the crucial area of social service, especially in the underdeveloped countries.

On mission fields such as Latin America, where people are deeply involved in one of the most explosive and widespread social revolutions in history, the relation of the Church to society is a top-priority issue. There is no pulling back. Christians, like everyone else in Latin America, are caught in a whirlpool of rapid social change, and they demand to know what the Bible has to say to them in this situation.

While evangelicals grope for a sound social ethic relevant to underdeveloped countries, the liberals have attempted to fill the gap with their well-settled formulations. They are now disseminating their convictions with astonishing rapidity and zeal. Focal point of this new torrent of propaganda in Latin America is the River Plate area, with headquarters of Iglesia y Sociedad (Church and Society) in Montevideo and the Union Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires. Iglesia y Sociedad is an aggressive branch of the World Council of Churches, although some sort of autonomy is professed by the River Plate group.

For several years leaders of Iglesia y Sociedad, such as Luis Odell and Hiber Conteris, with the support of men like Richard Schaull, José Miguez-Bonino, and Emilio Castro, have been crystallizing their position on Latin American society, economics, and politics. Their radical proposals for solutions to social ills have often leaned so far toward the left that they have been accused by responsible people as being Marxists in Christian clothing. They themselves admit their agreement with much of Marxist revolutionary doctrine, although they would not hold to Marx’s atheistic and totally materialistic point of view.

Since many Latin Americans already leaned to the left in politics, the River Plate social ethic did not attract much attention. But when the group recently began the attempt to formulate a theology on which to base their already established ethics, the rub began. A recent book, Responsabilidad Social del Cristiano (The Christian’s Social Responsibility), is the first systematic effort in search of this theological position. Because this symposium was written by Latin Americans themselves, it carries the added danger of commanding acceptance because of its appeal to nationalism rather than because of sound theological principles.

The controversial point pressed by this book and other related material is: The changing of the structures of society, and not the proclamation of a message geared to win converts, should be the true evangelistic burden of today’s Church.

This is not a regression to the social gospel, although it is just as dangerous to biblical evangelism. Whereas the social gospel was optimistic and held a high view of man, the new theology is more realistic in its evaluation of man as a sinner in a sinful society. However, the practical outworking of both is quite similar: the Church best fulfills its mission in this world by engaging in social action rather than by preaching a traditional evangelistic message to the unsaved. Here are some objectionable emphases of the new approach:

1. In its evangelistic program the Church should avoid proselytism. “We are constantly tempted to think of evangelism in terms of proselytism,” protests Brazilian Rubem Alves. “To evangelize is rather to announce the present and operative power of God, transforming the confusion of history according to his loving purposes” (Responsabilidad Social del Cristiano, p. 60). Argentine Pastor Carlos Valle states: “To evangelize is not to convert, it is not to bring souls to Christ, it is not to make church members.”

This use of the term “proselytism” is infelicitous, since the word usually carries negative overtones. But in the literal sense of the word, the Apostle Paul himself was a proselyte, and according to the Book of Acts he spent his life proselyting others. It is difficult to see how an objection to winning souls to Christ as the primary objective of evangelism can be sustained, unless one accepts the next presupposition:

2. The Gospel should be addressed not to individuals, but rather to the community or the society. This was perhaps the principal point of contention in a high-level debate carried on by the late R. Kenneth Strachan of the Latin America Mission and Victor E. W. Hayward of the World Council of Churches in the pages of the International Review of Missions (April, 1964; October, 1964: April, 1965). Is the Christian message to be coordinated with the expectation of world rescue? Hayward says, “I submit that careful biblical exegesis reveals that conversion, though individually experienced, is nevertheless essentially a community matter” (April, 1965, p. 190).

D. T. Niles of Ceylon has had a strong influence on the River Plate theologians because he, like they, represents an underdeveloped area of the world in the throes of rapid social change. Niles has written: “The heart of Christianity is not concern for the soul but concern for the world.… The end-event of the Christian life is not simply salvation of the person but a new heaven and a new earth, each person’s salvation being his share in this new creation” (Upon the Earth, p. 52). To this way of thinking, there is no final separation of sheep from goats; rather, all men and women share the same ultimate fate.

The New Testament, on the other hand, makes it quite clear that salvation is an individual matter; spiritual birth, like natural birth, is a one-by-one process (John 1:12, 13). Therefore, while the society in which persons live might affect the type of homiletics used to proclaim the message to them, it does not change the fact that the eternal destiny of each person in the society depends on whether he accepts or rejects the message. Strachan, in his reply to Hayward, correctly observes that “the point of contact must always be an individual one” (IRM, April, 1964, p. 213).

3. Redemption is an accomplished fact on a worldwide scale. Taking a cue front Bonhoeffer, the River Plate theologians work from the assumption that in Christ God has redeemed not only the Church but also the world, and that whether they know it or not, all men are in Christ. They say that “Bonhoeffer begins his study on the activity [of Christians in an ‘adult world’] on the basis that God has redeemed in Christ all those who have separated themselves from Him in sin” (Responsabilidad Social del Cristiano, p. 36). And, “The redemptive purpose of God in Jesus Christ is universal, as universal as the creation, as universal as the person of Christ” (ibid., p. 27). These ideas come very close to universalism, although all these writers consistently deny that they are universalists. It is most confusing to read Hayward’s statement, “I am not preaching universalism,” on one page, and then on the next, “St. Paul sees Christ as the head of a new redeemed humanity, more than retrieving all that had been lost through Adam’s fall.… Election means not God’s choosing of privileged favorites for salvation, but his selective purpose in calling men to be the instruments of His plan of redemption for all mankind” (IRM, April, 1964, pp. 202–205). Then D. T. Niles claims that “the New Testament does not allow us to say either Yes or No to the question: ‘Will all men be saved?’ ” (Upon the Earth, p. 96).

Whether this be called universalism or not, it surely represents a deficient understanding of the New Testament teaching that all humanity is divided sharply into two spiritual races, those “in Adam” and those “in Christ,” and that the former are doomed to hell if they do not repent, while the latter have become citizens of the Kingdom of God. Redemption relates to those “in Adam” in the sense of being available to all who will repent; but if hell exists, it can hardly be said of those suffering there that Christ has redeemed them.

4. The mission of the Church is not to bring outsiders in but rather to move out into the world. This feeling, which is now the basic thought behind the slogan, “The Church is mission,” is so strong among the River Plate theologians that they say, “The social ministry of the local church has a sacramental character” (Responsabilidad Social del Cristiano, p. 60). Hayward states this position with a rhetorical question: “Is the correlate of the Gospel the world or the Church?” (IRM, April, 1964, p. 201).

Strachan skillfully answers this by stating that the question assumes a false dichotomy. He goes on to point out that “regardless of failures in its attitude or conduct, the Church of the present age is in the world, and that the Gospel has been entrusted to it for the world. So that the Gospel is not a correlate of either the Church or the world, but rather relates through the Church to the world. There is therefore no real choice” (IRM, April, 1964, p. 210). Scripturally, we remember, we have a clear command to go into the world, make disciples, and baptize them. Does this not imply bringing new members into our churches? The sacrament called for in the Great Commission is not social service but baptism.

It is a good thing that evangelicals in Latin America and elsewhere are becoming more and more concerned for social action, but it is important that we never allow social action to replace evangelism. Christian social action is a witness of love and concern for mankind in general by those who have already, through evangelism, become members of the Body of Christ. Donald McGavran sums the matter up well when he writes, in World Vision Magazine (June, 1965, p. 26): “It is time to recognize that calling all kinds of good actions evangelism simply confuses the issue. Evangelism and social action are distinct and should be used under suitable circumstances. Evangelism creates new churches, new centers of life, new parts of Christ’s Body, which in turn plant other churches.… Social action does not create new centers of life; it is what parts of the existing body do.”

Emotion

So much is said about the emotionally disturbed these days that “emotion” is likely to become a disturbing word. Should one feel deeply about anything, be may fear he has symptoms of physical difficulty. This is especially true about one’s religion; there, We seem to be warned, lies the deadliest emotional quagmire of all.

This obviously is nonsense. Emotion is no more dangerous in religious people than in others. Emotionalism, to be sure, can be destructive for any person, religious or irreligious. But between emotion and emotionalism there is a great gulf fixed. Heaven help us when this is not so, or when we cannot tell the difference between the two!

A person without emotion would be an animated clod, or a monster. Emotion is as much a part of man as his nervous system. The hometown team won’t want you if you are emotionless. Think of trying to run a business, head a government, preach the Gospel, or teach school without feeling!

A mother gazes into her baby’s face with a timeless ecstasy shouting in her look; will you warn her of the emotional trap? Will you admonish the music-lover listening to a stirring symphony to quench any signs of sentiment? Try telling two warm-eyed lovers to eschew all inward ebullition!

Minus emotion, we should put all artists out of business. We are creatures capable of joy and sorrow; we possess a sense of wonder; we are moved by beauty or by ugliness; we respond to pleasure or to pain. To these faculties in us the artist appeals.

And in religion? It has been said that the man who could contact God without emotion would be abnormal.

“Emotion” is not a biblical term. Yet who could go through the Book with unfeelingness? One feels the force of the prophets and poets, the singers and story-tellers. Even the factual report of the primitive Church, the Acts of the Apostles, is journalism on fire.

Who is not moved when the hopeless find hope at Jesus’ touch, or when He whispers from a crosstop, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”? Can we come upon Paul’s mighty poem in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians and have no tiny trumpet sound in us? Can a man be spiritually alive and never feel the wonder and the glory of his God?

Can we confront the Cross, watching the Saviour with outflung arms inviting a worthless world to himself, and not be stirred beyond telling? Who approaches God personally, reaching the great breakthrough into Life, experiencing the knowledge of sins forgiven, and hears no “hallelujahs” in his soul?

T. S. Eliot talked of “hollow men.” Perhaps Paul had such men in mind when he wrote of those who had grown emotionally dead toward God, men “past feeling” who, “having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God,” plunged into sensuality and corruption (Eph. 4:19). Dangerous though emotion may be, insensibility to God’s Spirit is the way to hell.

Said a college professor: “Small wonder the Bible is losing ground in an enlightened age. What an emotionally disturbed lot were the men who wrote it!” And he “proved” his argument by pointing out certain passages in the Book. There was David, watering his couch with his tears (Ps. 6:6). Jeremiah wished his eyes were a tearful fountain (Jer. 9:1). And what a weeper was the man from Tarsus (Acts 20:19; 2 Cor. 2:4)!

We can scarcely keep from wondering how that college professor might have stood up if he were thrust under the same pressure as Paul. He might have remained emotionless; but could he have written the Book of Romans? Dry-eyed, he might have been hard put to manage his life better than “weeping” Jeremiah. After all, is there any scientific proof that a good cry ever hurt anybody—even a college professor? We shiver to think what the Bible might be, had it been written by men without feeling. Christian stoics may exist; but none is ever mentioned in the Scriptures.

“There is,” said an academic mind in long-ago Jerusalem, “a lime to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones.” But the old scholar was well-rounded, so he also said, “There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh … a time to love, and a time to hate” (Eccles. 3). One might pick up stones or toss them away and not feel deeply about it. But weeping, laughing, loving, hating—these are emotional.

Christianity is not emotionalism. It is often concerned with stone-gathering, or with getting rid of stones. It is not preoccupied with men’s feelings; yet neither does it disregard or reject them. The Church that is directed to do everything in decency and in order is also commanded to be fervent in spirit. Through the miracle of grace and the dynamic of the Spirit, emotion is set into redemptive motion in that Kingdom where human sensibilities are never ignored. Jesus wept. He also went to Calvary.—LON WOODRUM, Hastings, Michigan.

Among the current theological fads is that of “religionless” Christianity. The “religionless” Christian takes his cue from Barth’s significant utterance that “in religion man bolts and bars himself against revelation by providing a substitute, by taking away in advance the very thing which has to be given by God” (Church Dogmatics, I, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Pt. 2, Edinburgh, 1956, p. 303). He then concludes with Bonhoeffer that religion is incompatible with true Christianity and that “he must therefore plunge himself into the life of a godless world, without attempting to gloss over its ungodliness with a veneer of religion or trying to transfigure it” (from Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers From Prison, Macmillan, 1953, p. 222).

Now Christianity, however understood or misunderstood, has indeed posed obstacles to God’s will for man, and orthodoxy should be reminded of its need to repent of its idolatries and of its distortions of the Gospel. No sincere Christian is justified in believing that he or his church is free from fault. On the contrary, he should stand ready to be chastened by Barth or Bonhoeffer or anyone else for having allowed the love of God that was in Christ to go out of his life and the life of his church. Indeed he ought to realize that the church itself is sometimes its-own worst enemy. He should admit that the truth is open to misrepresentation and abuse by its proponents.

But the “religionless” Christian does not just remind the evangelical of this. He lays claim to a new revelation, a revelation that nowhere says exactly what Christianity would mean, or could mean, or how a church or belief open to the new revelation could properly be called Christian at all. How could we know, asks Leon Morris, “whether this is in line with the mind of Christ, or whether it is another form of man’s perennial self-sufficiency” (The Abolition of Religion, Inter-Varsity Press, 1964, p. 29). One could hardly call upon the Holy Spirit to bear witness on behalf of the new religionless revelation, for the idea of the Spirit’s witness seems to have no part of religionless Christianity.

Christians are not orthodox and evangelical simply because they are stubborn. They are orthodox and evangelical because that is what being Christians means to them. It is one thing for the new “religionless” Christian to remind the old “evangelical” Christian of his moral and spiritual shortcomings, such as his failure to make his convictions relevant to the world or his reluctance to be open to new understanding of God’s will. Indeed, the evangelical Christian is painfully aware of his failures. But to urge upon him the notion that Christianity is really religionless is simply to engage in a loaded use of words that changes the cognitive meaning of “being Christian” but seeks to keep for its own purpose the emotive force of the term “Christian.”

Religion can be made objectionable by definition. This is what Bonhoeffer does when he defines it as that activity which is isolated from everyday life, morbidly persona]—a belief in a God who runs to our aid at our beck and call. Few evangelicals ever really saw it in just that way. And because some people are mistaken about their Christian religion, it does not follow that what they are mistaken about is itself an objectionable thing or an obstacle to truth, even though their mistaken beliefs and behavior most certainly are both.

The problem, we are told, is that men have distinguished religion from everyday life in a way that has distorted and impoverished that life. The answer, however, is not to abandon necessary distinctions like “religious” or “secular.” It is to acknowledge this idolatrous tendency and to try sincerely to cope with it.

The evangelical does not seek to escape from the common life as the “religionless” Christian accuses him of doing. He seeks rather to transform it. It is the “religionless” Christian who is seeking escape from the religious part of life. He wants to find God in all of life by not finding him in the religious part of it. But abandonment of the Church, of personal piety, and even of personal salvation happens to be the abandonment of the very substance of the beliefs and practices of most Christians past and present. We must ask: Is their religion so defiled that nothing short of seeking God in the streets and slums will do? “Religionless” Christianity unhappily identifies openness to the Holy Spirit with abandonment of that very Spirit. It identifies acceptance of the world with acquiescence to it. “God is teaching us,” Bonhoeffer says, “that we must live as men who can get along very well without him” (Letters, p. 219).

Rather strangely, “religionless” Christianity argues that it is not the secular man who has come of age who obstructs God’s new revelation but the pietistic patron of traditional personal religion. How is it that biblical doctrine should be so interpreted that the man who openly denies his need of God turns out to be God’s special instrument of revelation, while the man who acknowledges God as the author of that which God is supposed to be doing through the nonbeliever turns out to be the chief obstacle? The Bible clearly shows that God uses those who are not his obedient servants. But surely the biblical idea is that any or all men may be used by God for his purposes. Perhaps the evangelical needs to be reminded of his pride and waywardness, though of all people he is most likely to be aware of this. Indeed, his critics find him to be not only aware but neurotically aware of it. They find him clinging to the God of his fathers, a God who in Bonhoeffer’s words needs to be “edged out of the world,” so that men can “live a ‘worldly’ life and so participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world” (Letters, pp. 219, 222).

“Religionless” Christianity holds, not only that evangelical Christianity is no longer relevant, but also that evangelical Christianity can no longer be relevant. But even if it were true that evangelical Christianity is irrelevant, it would by no means follow that this is necessarily so. From the fact that some evangelicals may no longer be the instruments of God’s will, it cannot be concluded that evangelical Christianity as a whole is not or could not be the instrument of God’s will. Historically, evangelical Christians have led the way in most of the great movements of the Spirit of God, including social reforms, and it is by no means true that the new breed of Christian holds a monopoly of social concern. Indeed, his theological confusion lessens his effectiveness, and his political involvement may seriously reduce his overall influence.

One suspects that the non-evangelical would like to shed old-fashioned evangelical responsibility for personal evangelism but preserve the appearance of as much biblical justification for his position as he can marshal. Bonhoeffer makes this clear when he asks: “Is it not true to say that individualistic concern for personal salvation has almost completely left us all?” He then goes on to ask reassuringly: “Is [this] not, at bottom, even biblical? Is there any concern in the Old Testament about saving one’s soul at all? Is not righteousness and the kingdom of God on earth the focus of everything, and is not Romans 3:14 ff., too, the culmination of the view that in God alone is righteousness, and not in an individualistic doctrine of salvation?” (Letters, p. 168). But on the very next page he makes the revealing statement that he is “thinking over the problem at present how we may reinterpret in the manner ‘of the world’—in the sense of the Old Testament and of John 1:14—the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, sanctification and so on” (ibid., p. 169, italics mine). Of course, all this is just one theologian’s position. Yet what Bonhoeffer wrote under the understandable stresses of life in a Nazi prison has become the rallying cry for a wholesale defection from New Testament fundamentals in ecclesiastical high places where the interest has become not so much the interpretation of the Gospel as its reinterpretation. And one of the most characteristic reinterpretations has been this very effort to abolish religion in virtually all its most familiar expressions—the Church, personal piety, holy living, evangelism, and substantive Bible beliefs.

One of the weapons in the arsenal of the “new” Christianity is the assertion that evangelical Christianity is both fragmented in its witness and demented in its otherworldliness. This weapon turns out to be a Freudian-like projection, because those who believe that “religionless” Christianity is a unified witness or that its ideas are firmly attached to this world are victims of their own wishful thinking. Bishop Robinson takes the liberty of lumping Bonhoeffer and Tillich together in the same paragraph for strategic reasons, but these two are poles apart in their understanding of “religion” and its desirability. For Tillich, contemporary man is very much the homo religiosus who has not come of age and who desperately needs God. Bonhoeffer, however, says that “the Christian is not a homo religiosus” (Letters, p. 225). “Tillich,” he says, “set out to interpret the evolution of the world … in a religious sense … but it felt entirely misunderstood, and rejected the interpretation” (ibid., p. 198). Is Bonhoeffer with Bultmann? Hardly. Bultmann, he says, “goes off into a typical liberal reduction process” (p. 199). Nor is there agreement between Bultmann and Tillich, for whom “demythologizing” is only a “remythologizing.”

Any careful observer of the current theological scene will note the incredible incompatibility with historic Christianity of what is supposed to be a new revelation. It is singularly lacking in any regard for what ordinary believers experience, or believe, or find in their Bibles. One is tempted to observe that it hardly seems possible that a God who really cared for his people would confront them with a Gospel couched in such tormented thought and language.

The theology of “religionless” Christianity makes persuasive use of language by capitalizing on the current fad of dislike for religion of any kind and particularly of certain sectarian and obscurantist kinds. It does this by saying that the new view is not a religious one. The process is verbal rather than substantive. It does not even allow religion in some new sense to replace religion in some old sense, unless, of course, “religionless” Christianity is religion in this new sense—in which case it turns out to be religion after all.

The situation is something like this. If being religious, and particularly being Christian, is culturally approved, then it will be appropriate for good people to be religious, and religious in a Christian way. If it is Christianity that is out of vogue but being religious that is not, then it will be the thing to be religious in an “open-minded,” non-Christian, sort of way, recognizing the great truth that after all it is being religious that really counts and not being Christian, since all religion is at bottom the expression of the same virtue. But if all religion is viewed as bad or out of date or irrelevant, then any form of religion, including Christianity, is likely to be viewed as undesirable.

The current mood among non-believers, erstwhile believers, and would-be-but-can’t-be believers is that this is so. It is the “new” truth that Christianity was never intended to be religious, at least not when it came of age. To be Christian is really to be secular, in the best sense of the word. This, we are told, is what people really wanted all along—that is, to be unfettered by otherworldly religion, salvation myths, or even moral law. And this is what God has wanted for us all along, too, so far as it is possible for a “ground of being,” so called, to “want” anything at all. This comforting but frankly sentimental apotheosis of the ideals of freedom of love is the Gospel, we are told. The hosts of Christian saints past and present were and are mistaken. Now we can relax and really enjoy life in the assurance that our former yearning for righteousness and all that Christians have desired of a religious nature was a childish and immature effort to avoid the sufferings of the common life of the world.

Of course, it may be argued that all a man like Bonhoeffer meant was that we must learn to live so as not to expect God to intervene on our behalf whenever we want him to. Yet if Bonhoeffer has anything to say that has not already been said by historical orthodox Christianity, it is that God in the old sense has no part of life in the new sense. Indeed, that is the way we must understand Bonhoeffer when he says: “Now that it has come of age, the world is more godless, and perhaps it is for that very reason nearer to God than ever before” (Letters, p. 124). But we find ourselves asking questions like these: Why should the term “Christian” be kept at all? Is there in it some desirable emotive force that these “new” Christians want to retain?

Moreover, how does one learn to use a term like “Christian”? Are we not referred to clear-cut examples of Christians that both non-Christians and Christians—including Bonhoeffer—would accept as paradigms of the use of the term? And where are these to be found? They are to be found in the lives and deaths of the loyal followers of Christ. Every informed person knows, or ought to know, who they are. They are what the contemporary philosopher would call the paradigm cases of “being Christian.” And if these will not do, surely the lives and teachings of the apostles themselves will.

“Religionless” Christianity is not, I believe, greatly different in spirit from the Gnostic reinterpretations of the first few centuries. With arguments remarkably similar to those advanced today, the early Gnostics tried to make the Christian Gospel more intelligible and intellectually satisfying to those who sought philosophical props for their faith. It was not that Christian writers did not also try to do many of these same things. It is simply that their primary concern was the Gospel per se and not accommodation or reinterpretation. In an informative book entitled The Language of Faith (Abingdon, 1962), Samuel Laeuchli calls attention to the fact that the term (Father) occurs over four hundred times in the New Testament. He stresses that language about “God the Father” is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Christian as contrasted with Gnostic language (p. 33). But Gnosticism, as he clearly shows, finds it necessary to reinterpret the ideas of God by lifting it above fatherhood. “Father” satisfies the Gnostic no more than it does the “new” Christian today as “the ultimate designation for the Christian God; he is in reality a deity above fatherhood … the God beyond” (p. 34).

So it also is with “religionless” Christianity. It wants to put God beyond the relations of individual persons and their God and then bring him back by speaking, as does Bonhoeffer, of the “beyond in our midst.” What it winds up saying is that God is in all of life but not in the religious part of it. It speaks of “depths,” “beyonds,” “grounds,” as if these were persons who do what persons do. But the Christian’s God is not just a “ground of being,” a “beyond in our midst,” or even a “depth of relationships”—whatever that means. He is the Divine Person, the New Testament God the Father, who speaks to those who have receptive hearts—to use the biblical insight. What the evangelical says is that God in this sense should be in all of life, including the religious part of it. If God is to transform all of life, he must also transform the religious part of it. But this is something quite different from the elimination of the religious part of life.

The problem is not one of liquidating the religiousness of men who cannot quite come of age but of getting God into that very religiousness and transforming it so that it is no longer all the things that make the “religionless” Christian want so badly to get rid of it. And here is where the evangelical can concur with Tillich’s biblical belief that man’s desperate need is to overcome his estrangement from God and his fellow man.