Are the “godless Christians” on the road to deepening darkness?

Some day, in a stronger age than this rotting and introspective present, must he in sooth come to us, even the redeemer of great love and scorn, the creative spirit, rebounding by the impetus of his own force back again from every transcendent plane and dimension, he whose solitude is misunderstanded of the people, as though it were a flight from reality;—while actually, it is only his diving, burrowing and penetrating into reality, so that when he comes again to the light he can at once bring about by these means the redemption of this reality; its redemption from the curse which the old ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who in this wise will redeem us from the old ideal, as he will from that ideal’s necessary corollary of great nausea, will to nothingness, and Nihilism; this tocsin of noon and of the great verdict, which renders the will free again, who gives back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness—he must one day come.

These words from near the end of Nietzsche’s second essay in The Genealogy of Morals echo a mood now present again. Although the “death of God” theologians may not go the whole distance of Nietzsche, they surely share his repudiation of the supernatural, his rejection of objective truth and morality, and his plea for the free man. Whether Nietzsche’s consequent repudiation of Christ and his Church more consistently expresses the logical outcome of these assumptions than does the modern secularists’ sentimental association with Christian institutions is worthy of debate. But to all but the simplest minds it must be wholly evident that the “death of God” faddists are no more authentically Christian than was Nietzsche.

Nietzsche’s philosophy of the “death of God” implied a total rejection of both an atonement-theology and atonement-ethics. “The holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesus,” as he described the Christian view, was said to be simply the bait that makes people nibble at wrong (Judeo-Christian) values. Of the formula “God on the Cross” he had this to say: “Hitherto there had never and nowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised a transvaluation of all ancient values.” Nietzsche depfored the “sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for one’s neighbour, and all self-renunciation morality.” “The Christian faith … is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom …; it is at the same time … self-derision, and self-mutilation.” “It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance.…” “One should not go into the churches if one wishes to breathe pure air.”

The death-of-God theologians mistakenly think they can occupy some misty flatland between Nietzsche and Paul. They strain their beliefs through the sieve of empirical science, discarding the supernatural and transcendent. Then they superficially appeal to the distinctive agape-morality of Jesus, as if this could be retained by that same sieve. There is a reason why Nietzsche, and the Communists, and all hard-core naturalists, turn against the morality of Jesus, instead of appealing to it. That reason lies in the prior rejection of an objectively real supernatural world and of objective truth and goodness. Nietzsche linked the freedom of man’s will with “the emotion of supremacy” and boasted that the free spirit exudes a godlike desire to autonomy: it loves life (and hates other gods). Hence he Could rail against “the holiness of God, the judgment of God, the hangmanship of God.…”

Paul Tillich, who reduced all divine attributes to symbolic representations, likewise rejected a Deity who “deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all-powerful and all-knowing.… This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control” (The Courage to Be, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952, p. 185).

The night before his death, Tillich had engaged in a vigorous argument with Professor T. J. J. Altizer of Emory University. Altizer is spokesman for the “godless Christians” on a campus that is currently seeking $25 million as a Christian university. Tillich’s speculative-philosophy postulated the Unconditioned over against the God of the Bible but resisted godlessness. Yet because Tillich rejected the objectivity of the Unconditioned and reduced all ascriptions such as “personality” to symbolic significance, Altizer credited him with having fathered the American death-of-God trend.

Whither Theology?

There is nothing original in the assertion that God is dead. Nietzsche said it long ago. What is original is its repetition by official representatives of the Christian religion. Nietzsche placed this blasphemy in the mouth of a madman; today it is proclaimed by responsible teachers within the church.

Thomas J. J. Altizer, one of the most articulate death-of-God theologians, was a keynote speaker at a recent conference at Emory University on “America and the Future of Technology.” The occasion gave him a further opportunity for expounding what many radical thinkers believe to be the task of theology “within the context of the dislocation and uprootedness of American life.” “We are now living,” Altizer explained, “in a time when the whole inherited body of our theological language is disappearing into the past” and a “new history is dawning in our midst before which theology is increasingly becoming speechless.”

We may agree that we are living in a time of transition, and that theologians have the responsibility, as always, of making the faith meaningful by translation and interpretation. The faith needs to be expressed in the terms of today. But Altizer is not content to express the faith in contemporary thought-forms; he requires something far more radical: a fearless destruction of the old faith and the birth of a new. Not only the form but the substance of the faith needs to be changed. “Not until theology moves through a radical self-negation,” he says, “thereby undergoing a metamorphosis into a new form, will it be able to meet the challenge of our present.” “A Christian expression of apocalyptic faith must move into the future by negating the past, for apart from a total negation of the power of the past there can be no movement into an eschatological future.”

We may be grateful to Professor Altizer for stating clearly the implications of his philosophy. The Christian can no longer “find security in an absolutely sovereign God who exercises a beneficent and providential government over the world.” That God, he says, has disappeared from view. We can no longer truly know God in the present. The God who appears is “alien and lifeless,” “in no sense a source of redemption and life.”

What, then, is the task of theology? “Theology,” Altizer explains, “must resolutely confine the Christian name of God to the past, and wholly refrain from proclaiming his redemptive presence in our historical present.”

“Only the death of God,” the theologian continues, “can make possible the advent of a new humanity.” “Just as apocalyptic imagery centers upon the defeat of Satan or Antichrist, whose death alone ushers in the victory of the Kingdom of God, so con temporary thought and sensibility is rooted in an absolute negation of God, a negation which already promises to dissolve even the memory of God. We must take due note of the fact that [William] Blake, who dared to name God as Satan, identified the transcendent Lord as the ultimate source of alienation and repression.”

The bizarre philosophy of the new theology is only a recrudescence of the old humanism. It represents the untamed autonomous intellect asserting itself in defiance of the revealed truth of God.

The God of historical Christianity, Altizer affirms (quoting Blake), is “Satan” or “an abstract and impassive Nothing.” “The new humanity dawns only at the end of all that we have known as history, its triumph is inseparable from the disintegration of the cosmos created by historical man, and it calls for the reversal of all moral law and the collapse of all historical religion.” “All America is called to freely accept and will the death of God.” “To refuse the death of God and cling to his primordial image” is to have a bad faith; it is to negate life and history.

Only by the most remarkable legerdemain can this be described as anything but nihilism. It is emphatically not the Christian religion. “Once ecclesiastical or historical Christianity has itself been negated,” Altizer explains, “then the Incarnation will de cisively and historically become manifest as the death of God in Jesus.” The Christian religion, it need hardly be said, is not the death of God in Jesus; it is Jesus declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.

The radical proponents of the new theology have taken upon themselves an iconoclastic role. Old landmarks are being destroyed, old sanctities overthrown. What is the responsibility of those who believe in the validity of revealed religion? When Altizer invites us to reverse all moral law and to hasten the collapse of historical religion, what do we say? We reply in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them.”

Nietzsche saw the reason for the decline of Western theism. Medieval scholasticism and then modern philosophy obscured “the father” in God, and subsequently “the judge” and “rewarder.” And pantheism erased God’s “free will” (“he does not hear—and even if he did, he would not know how to help,” he taunts). But the sting of Nietzsche’s next comment should be felt by contemporary theologians whose speculative theories of revelation have concealed the Living God who speaks and acts definitively. In Beyond Good and Evil he writes: “The worst is that he [God] seems incapable of communicating himself clearly; is he uncertain?—This is what I have made out (by questioning and listening at a variety of conversations) to be the cause of the decline of European theism” (Sec. 53).

Never has the burden of presenting historic Christian theism fallen so heavily upon the shoulders of a vanguard of evangelical theologians. That the living, supernatural God has revealed himself; that he has made his ways known in objective historical acts and in objective truths about himself and his purposes; that the Bible is the authoritative norm of Christian faith and practice—these were elemental truths that the early Christians proclaimed to the pagan world. Today even some theologians, teaching in professedly Christian seminaries and universities, not only are in doubt about these truths, but even make their doubts the structure of a counterfeit confession.

Did Jesus Die On Calvary?

While some off-beat theologians have signed God’s death certificate, one California scientist states that Jesus may not even have died on the Cross. Michael J. Harner, assistant director of the University of California’s Lowie Museum of Anthropology, is quoted in a UPI report as saying that Jesus “may have been fed a drug that put him into a trance and fooled his Roman guards.”

A leading research anthropologist, Dr. Harner has been investigating the use of stupor-inducing drugs for eight years. Could the professor accidentally have sniffed a bit of the potent drink?

For one thing, historians base their judgments on documents from the past, but Dr. Harner substitutes a vivid imagination for supportive historical testimony. Now that many anthropologists have rewritten Genesis to their fancy, the California scientist—despite an Episcopal upbringing—has apparently taken to rewriting the Gospels on his own assumptions.

If Jesus did not die on the Cross, where and when did he die? Surely these questions were of more than incidental concern to his followers. And how could an uncrucified-unrcsurrected Christ have inspired the martyr spirit of the apostles, and shaped the birth of the Christian movement and the mighty missionary thrust that transformed the pagan West? Had the apostles and their converts also inadvertently sniffed the drug? If so, modern civilization so desperately needs a moral and spiritual awakening that Dr. Harner might well patent a drug capable of producing such consequences.

Perhaps the kindest closing reminder is that anthropological speculations do not justify historical conclusions. Dr. Harner notes that the juice of the mandrake plant can effect deathlike states “during which the individual has visions.” Could be.

Confessional Confusion

A confession of faith is exactly what the term asserts: a confession of the Church’s faith. A creed constructed within these limits has every right to speak with authority and, hopefully, to speak timelessly. The injection of admonitions and urgings and of ethical rules and regulations into a confessional statement, however, is a confusion of faith with practice. Faith should indeed lead to practice. But to confuse faith with practice is—confusion.

Although the Westminster Confession based its views on divorce on biblical teaching, by including such ethical principles it nonetheless diverged from the true purpose of a creedal statement. But the proposed United Presbyterian Confession of 1967 errs even more broadly on this score. Dr. Charles C. West of Princeton Seminary, according to a Religious News Service release, said the proposed confession “urges Presbyterians to work for talks with.…” If so, the proposed confession is admonishing people to certain forms of activity; such admonitions and urgings belong in the pulpit, not in a confession of faith.

Why confess what Presbyterians are not doing? Is not such a confession a confession of sin rather than of faith? It is precisely the inclusion of strictly non-confessional elements that opens the door to Dr. West’s mistaken view that creeds have no “timeless status” but only validity at the time and place of their composition.

Giving: For The Wrong Reason

There are people who agree with Jesus that “it is better to give than to receive,” but they agree for the wrong reasons. They know what Lincoln Steffens meant when he asserted that gratitude is a damnable feeling. They find no position so uncomfortable as that which calls for gratitude. They would much rather give and let the other person be grateful.

The most affluent society in all history is in its most expensive Christmas. One of Washington’s exclusive department stores is attracting the Christmas giver with a dark mink coat for $5,000, a ring for $11,000, and a set of earrings for $1,200. Another store offers a handkerchief for $300 and a diamond necklace for $465,000.

For many people, the price they pay to buy a gift for another is of small matter. They happily bear extravagant costs. They would rather pay the price than receive the gift.

And largely lost in all this high-cost giving is the true Christmas Gift and the price that Another paid in giving it. Many would rather play God in their giving than accept that priceless Gift which God gives. Whoever accepts this Gift cannot help being eternally grateful.

Kicking Away The Ladder

A man would be foolish to let someone kick away the ladder on which he was standing. But America is being just that foolish.

Her greatness does not stem only from natural resources, geographical location, or innate inventiveness and willingness to work. It also derives from the spiritual heritage of those of our forefathers who rested on the Bible as God’s written rule of faith and practice. Woven into the fabric of our national life there has been a regard for the Holy Scriptures on the part of a great segment of our people. “In God We Trust” on our currency, “One Nation Under God” in our oath of allegiance to the flag, and the Bible in every courtroom, bear testimony to the “faith of our fathers.”

The concerted effort—without and within the Church—to destroy faith in the integrity and authority of the Bible is an effort that, if successful, will sooner or later weaken the nation. Erosion of faith lowers spiritual values, and this in turn leads to moral disintegration.

America has many enemies, and among them are those who would blithely kick from under us the ladder of obedient faith in the Word of God.

Ferment In Protestantism

In the current issue of Fortune magazine, the well-known writer Duncan Norton-Tayfor notes that “laymen are contributing more time and money than ever, but they aren’t always sure what they are underwriting.” Mr. Norton-Tayfor, Episcopal layman, entitles his essay “What on Earth Is Happening to Protestantism?” and in it mirrors both the vitality and the confusion of the Church today. As new forces producing unrest, he notes ecumenical pressures, dilutions of historic Christian theology, and ecclesiastical concentration on political affairs. The span of divergent voices now runs from theologians who think God is dead and churchmen who regard political action as evangelism, to laymen who think the Bible remains the divine rule of life and evangelists who honor the Great Commission above all else—while a multitude of others are much less certain about the Church’s message and mission.

In this panoramic diversity God continues to do his work—bringing conviction and blessing where the Bible is proclaimed, lifting sinners to salvation where the Gospel is preached, and bestowing peace and new life upon all who trust him. The evangelical witness was never more needed than now. The revisionist messages will soon give way to other fashions, but the Word of revelation abides.

Cutting The Amish Knot

A democracy functions best when its people are well-educated. This assumption has been challenged by the Amish for years, and recently a long-smoldering brush war erupted in Hazleton, Iowa, when the law moved in on twenty-eight Amish children and their two primitive one-room schools. The Amish, for religious reasons, are old-fashioned; they wear plain clothing and oppose modern innovations like the telephone and the automobile. They think an eighth-grade education is adequate for their children.

It was ludicrous for the authorities to seize the youngsters and to cart them off to public schools like truants. The Amish do not provide the level of education required by state law; but neither the parents nor their children have become a burden to society, nor is there evidence of criminal conduct among them. Constitutionally the principle of independent school education is firmly established. What is in question is whether inferior parochial education justifies involuntary enrollment of the students in public schools.

A temporary truce has been called in the battle; this is good. But what the state did was highly unfortunate. It is patently absurd to use a cannon to kill a fly. The Amish do not come off well either. They are obviously guilty of an infraction of the law and should be aware of their civic obligations. Peter says: “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Ford’s sake” (1 Pet. 2:13a). Amish conscientious objection to public schools is legitimate; the law provides for such objection, insisting only that a minimal level of parochial school education be provided. The Amish should obey this provision and do so promptly. This way they can keep God’s law and Caesar’s law, and also maintain their own way of life.

On The Frontier

If I were asked to find a seminary based upon a non-metaphysical world view and teaching the death of God, I would more than likely head into the scrub land of the old southwest. This would be an ideal spot for a sure-enough structureless seminary. There on a barren stretch of land I might happen across an old wooden pole once used for staking tomato vines, and nailed to it a sign announcing several of next semester’s courses.

Theology 101—An Introduction to Institutional Demolition and Post-Christian Ordinance.

Old Testament 103—The Puncturing Hypothesis: An Exegetical Approach to the Old Testament World View.

Old Testament 104—Ghost Writers in the Sky: A Study of the Prophets.

Church History 101—A Historical Survey of God’s Disappearance.

Theology 202—Genetic Problems of a Dead God’s Son in a Christocentric Context.

Ethics 208—The New Humanity in the Context of Grave Digging.

Practical Theology 100—Introduction to Metaphysical Flatness and Dynamics of a Non-God Forgiveness.

Theology 104—The City: A Theological Answering Service.

New Testament 128—The Trinitarian Emptiness in the Gospels.

Theology 149—Eschatological Movement and Non-Celestial Navigation.

Christian Philosophy 101—Optimism over the Non-Verification of God.

New Testament 206—Heidegger’s Influence on Jesus: A Study of Jesus’ Temple Visit.

—PAUL A. MICKEY in Viewpoint, Princeton

Theological Seminary student paper

The Christian faith does not need to be defended; it needs to be lived. True! But for each succeeding generation the basis of this faith needs to be stated and restated, so that all may know what they believe and why.

The Bible is precious because it reveals to us Jesus Christ, the Son of God, telling us who he is and what he has done. Without this written Word, we would know nothing of Christ’s person and work. Christians therefore have every right to reject all efforts to call into question the biblical record and thereby denigrate the Scriptures.

The battle for the complete integrity and authority of the Holy Scriptures has now reached an extent never before known, whether from without or from within the organized church. The harm being done is incalculable. Many today are exerting great effort to get rid of certain basic truths while offering nothing valid in exchange.

One contention that confronts ns is that faith in the infallibility of the Scriptures is no longer tenable in this scientific and scholarly age. The fact is, however, that not one discovery of science, not one newly acquired manuscript, has invalidated a single doctrine of the Christian faith as taught in the Scriptures.

As we see where the denials are originating and being promulgated and as we see the lengths to which some who deny the Word will go, we can speculate about the ultimate end.

The latest fad in extreme liberalism is found among some who continue as professors in good standing in theological institutions while saying that God is dead and that we must develop a “Christianity” without God. These men have the freedom to be atheists if they wish; but it seems almost unbelievable that they should continue their wild claims under the aegis of the Church and in places where men are supposedly being trained to preach the Gospel.

But obviously the day of ecclesiastical discipline, certainly for liberals, has passed. Those who have made theological compromises themselves find it embarrassing to insist that others not do so. The result? Every man does that which is right in his own eyes—a chaotic outlook.

Where does this start? How do these denials of Christianity develop? What is the point from which such deviations begin?

The answer is a solemn warning to all Christians, particularly those who have the sacred responsibility of teaching. Deviations that lead ultimately to denials of Christianity begin when we reject the clear affirmations of the Bible in favor of the opinions of men. For years some men respected in the ministry have denied such things as the biblical account of the manner of the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth; the full implications of the Atonement, including our Ford’s vicarious sacrifice on Calvary; and the fact that he arose from the dead in bodily form and is coming again in power and great glory.

The inevitable result of such denials, long continued, is a further set of denials that constitute a repudiation of the Christian faith. These denials depend on the wildest speculations, all rooted in a rejection of the clearly stated record.

In thinking about these matters, let us not lose a proper perspective. The Bible is not a book we can defend while at the same time we ignore its teachings and warnings for our own lives. If the Scriptures are real to us, then the Christ of the Scriptures must also be real. Many will say, “We worship Christ, not a book.” Of course this is so. But we do respect and rejoice in the Book without which we would not know about the One who came from eternity into time and who continues to inhabit all eternity.

Why get excited? Why not leave those who deny the Word of God—or who are, as Paul describes them, “men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith”—to the judgment that is ultimately theirs? My answer is this: I do not like to have my pocket picked, nor do I want others to find themselves robbed of their precious possessions.

The Bible is, first of all, the primary source of our knowledge of God and his Christ. It is also the chart and compass for daily living.

Antiquated? It is more revealing than tomorrow morning’s newspaper, because it explains so many things to be found in that newspaper.

Unscientific? When the curtain of history is pulled down and we see time in the light of eternity, we will be amazed at how accurately science fits in with the teachings of the Bible.

Irrelevant? The Bible is relevant for all men in all times because it is, as Dr. Emile Cailliet has said, “the book that understands me.” It is relevant for every day we live, because it speaks to the innermost recesses of our souls. It cuts like a scalpel, down to the place where truth is separated from error, hypocrisy from faith, and honesty from deception. It speaks to the sex-obsessed of our generation and shows the sordidness of their existence in the light of God’s purity.

The Bible contains promises more valuable than anything the world has to offer. It brings hope in the midst of heartache and distress. It gives us glimpses into eternity while we are living in time. It gives stability in the midst of chaos, and certainty where otherwise there would be nothing but doubts.

The Apostle Paul warned against substituting the vain speculations of men for the eternal verities: “O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, for by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith” (1 Tim. 6:20, 21, RSV). He tells of a time when there will be men “holding the form of religion but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:5); and, after cataloguing the danger signals of a generation that rejects the divine revelation, he concludes with these words: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:14–17).

The Word of God will continue to stand while its detractors marshall their forces against it—of this we can be certain. But we need to be deeply concerned about those who have been or are being robbed of a faith in the integrity of the Scriptures.

The enduring realities are anchored in the God revealed in Christ

The poet Edmund Spenser speaks of “the ever-whirling wheele of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway.” And down the years, peaceful or war-tormented, change has indeed been the order of time. Watching history, we are tempted to say with Shelley: “Naught may endure but mutability.”

The mainspring of movement is in all things; nothing stands still. Seemingly immobile matter is but energy in prescribed patterns of motion. Sun and sand, oceans and blood-rills, star-swarms and morning glories—something is happening to all of them, always. “Get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them,” said Marcus Aurelius.

Yet paradoxically change has ever been disturbing to mankind. Many a person might say with the character in Browning’s Paracelsus: “I detest all change, and most a change in aught I loved long since.” Men like ruts. They cry, as did the man in Jesus’ parable who tasted the new wine: “The old is better!”

Change often disconcerts Christians; yet from time to time transitions must be made. “The old order changeth” and the new invades our lives. Theology and philosophy are affected; doctrines may need reinterpretation; translations of truth may crowd in upon us. Sometimes we are shocked, sometimes amused. We sweat in agony of spirit when some scientist threatens to mar that awful opening sentence of the Bible—“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” But we wag our heads and grin when in place of the King James Version’s, “Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss,” we find the paraphrase, “Give a handshake all round.”

In dead seriousness evangelicals face such innovations as the rise of the “new morality”; or the stand of a chaplain in an allgirl school who in a campus chapel says, “Sex is fun.… There are no laws attached to sex. I repeat: absolutely no laws. There is nothing you ought to do or ought not to do. There are no rules to the game, so to speak.” This is practically a reversal of the Bible-minded man’s philosophy of sex.

Mores, manners, laws, behavior may change; but what changes shall the evangelical make ethically? Is the kind of sexual activity forbidden in the Scriptures allowable to a disciple of Jesus in 1965? The Word of God orders men always to speak the truth; can a Christian side with the businessman who argues that to do this is to go bankrupt?

The Bible reveals the necessity of change. We see Israel changing, politically and religiously, in the Old Testament. We observe the transition from the Old to the New Testament among Christians. “The priesthood being changed,” wrote a scribe of the primitive Church, “there is made of necessity a change also of the law” (Heb. 7:12). To be sure, the writer was speaking of a change in a priestly system rather than in the moral order; nevertheless the change is genuine.

Turning from religious institutions to the individual, we discover that one must be changed to become a Christian. From this initial transformation the process continues—“We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Ford” (2 Cor. 3:18).

Beyond this time and place the transfiguration is to continue. “… we shall be changed,” said the Apostle (1 Cor. 15:52). “We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body …” (Phil. 3:20b, 21).

What further transformations God has planned for men in an age and order beyond our own we are not told. “Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change!” cried Tennyson in Locksley Hall. But we come to impenetrable mystery at this point and must await further revelation.

In the meantime, we make changes that promise spiritual fulfillment while avoiding others that might involve the risk of eternal ruin. Paul speaks of those who change the glory of the immortal God into an image of mortal men and the truth of God into a lie (Rom. 1:23–25), and Jeremiah lamented: “My people have changed their Glory for a useless thing!” (Jer. 2:11, Moffat).

Knowing what changes to make and what ones not to make is a great asset for the Christian. However, the changes must always be in something or someone other than God. Christ needs no changing; nor does the Spirit with whom we communicate; nor do the Scriptures, which “cannot be broken”; nor does Christian ethics. Our manners, methods, and customs, our activities and attitudes, may need alteration; but the Gospel of grace and the Word of God are unchanging.

They err disastrously who imagine that because the world changes, God also must be subject to change. The “growingup” God of the “process” theologians is a stranger to the Scriptures, as well as a poor risk for man’s future. The God revealed in Christ is our last best hope. He is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

Change is often needed. But God does not change. “The heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall pass away.… They shall be changed like any garment. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end” (Heb. 1:10–12, NEB). God remains; with him is “no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”—

Hastings, Michigan.

Each year divorce tears apart the homes of 750,000 children

Four thousand times a day a man and woman stand before a clergyman or magistrate to be united in matrimony. At that point they are at the door of heaven or at the gates of hell; they are beginning a life either of marital happiness or of what someone has called “conjugal infelicity.”

Many a romance has collapsed under the strain that comes when two people try to make a life together. That pretty girl who was always well groomed now spends half the day in a housecoat with her hair in curlers. That young athlete is beginning to put on weight around the middle. Before they were married, she admired him for his strength as he made end runs and touchdowns. Now when she asks him to put up the screens or mow the lawn, his strength seems to vanish. Somehow Hollywood does not tell us the whole story when it shows the hero and heroine riding off into the sunset. The real test of love lies ahead, as two people who before have lived separately now live together and attempt to adjust to each other’s faults and idiosyncrasies.

Nowhere is there greater optimism than at the marriage altar. Many young people stumble into marriage convinced that love conquers all. And yet one out of every four new marriages ends in divorce. (Among teenagers the rate is three times as high.) Each year 750,000 children have their homes torn apart by divorce. All this indicates that our ideas about love and marriage need re-examination.

What has gone wrong with American marriage? As a Navy chaplain, I have done a lot of marriage counseling. During one year I talked to many young people whose marriages were disintegrating; the longest any of them had been married was five months. One couple who had been married six weeks and another who had been married five weeks were both ready to give up.

What does the Bible say about marriage? What does God expect of married people? As the people asked the Old Testament prophet, “Is there any word from the Lord?” In this day of promiscuity and divorce, we have heard from Hollywood and Ernest Hemingway and Dr. Kinsey. The Christian Church now needs to return to the Bible to find the theology of marriage. Let us give our attention, then, to three ingredients not just of marriage but of holy matrimony.

Love is the basic ingredient. Yet so many unfortunate couples suffer through a loveless marriage because no one ever told them what love is. Their life together is one of frustration rather than fulfillment, because their philosophy of love is based on the idealism of a Hollywood musical, the perversion of a character in Tennessee Williams, the escapades of an Elizabeth Taylor, or the sob-stories of True Romance magazine.

One of the tragedies of American life is that love is being defined for us by those who have never experienced it. We are hearing about marriage from those whose own marriages—one or two or more—have failed. We have listened to the pied pipers of sex-obsessed movies and literature. Now we are reaping the consequences—the young man who wants his girlfriend or fiancée to prove her love by compromising her purity, though he is not willing to prove his love by waiting; or the young married couple (or not-so-young couple) who tell the marriage counselor that they just do not love each other any longer. The fact is that in the true sense they never did love each other. What they consider love is sadly like the degraded concept of it in “adults only” movies or in books that talk about “love in the raw,” or “free love,” or “love for sale.” The cruel hoax undermining our society is the notion that love is only physical. Capitalizing on this error, Madison Avenue tries to persuade us that to be loved we must use the right kind of toothpaste, bath soap, and hand lotion, and that domestic tranquillity depends upon keeping Anacin in the medicine chest and Billy’s bike out of the driveway.

Although we are all fairly well read on the subject of love, most of us have been reading the wrong books. We need to ponder what Paul wrote in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians: “Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.” We need to listen also to Shakespeare’s words: “… Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds,/ … Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/But bears it out even to the edge of doom.” We need to hear Solomon as he says: “Love is stronger than death.”

The trouble began when we stopped listening to Solomon and St. Paul and began listening to Sigmund Freud and Hugh Hefner; when we stopped listening to Shakespeare and Robert Browning and started listening to Bertrand Russell and Henry Miller; when we stopped listening to God and began listening to unregenerate man. That was when we began confusing love with lust, and when marriage started leading to the gates of hell instead of to the door of heaven. It used to be that a person with a shameful past moved away to a place where no one would know what he had done. Now he writes a book about it, Hollywood makes the book into a movie, and we call it sophistication, art, realism.

Conjugal love has its God-ordained physical expression. Suppose someone tells you that there is a fire in your house. Whether this is good or bad depends on where the fire is. If it is in the furnace, the stove, or the fireplace, it is good. If it is in the roof or the walls, it is bad. In the right place, fire provides warmth and comfort; in the wrong place, it destroys what is good. Lust is destructive not only of human relationships but of the human personality as well. It is impurity at the deepest level of the spirit, and quick boredom follows. But the physical expression of love within marriage is an endless road of profound satisfaction and ever-deepening union.

God made us the way we are and told us how to live. We are free to violate his laws, but we are not free from the effects of our transgressions. Married love has both a physical and a spiritual side. When we try to have one without the other, we are going against the plan God has made for our completion and happiness. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. If we want to live life to its fullest we must do things his way, a way clearly outlined in the Bible.

The Bible most certainly condemns both adultery and fornication and says that they who commit these things will have no part in the kingdom of heaven. When God says “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not,” there is no room for rationalization. Today public opinion is more permissive of illicit unions and even of perversion than it has been since pagan times. Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. Yet the Christian rule is either marriage with complete faithfulness or total abstinence. Marriage is ordained of God and is thus a sacred institution of the Church. Therefore, a violation of the marriage vows is an enormous sin.

The greatest example of love the world has seen is our Lord Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us and who wants for each of his children a holy love that honors God and enriches man. I had a couple in my church years ago—and they are representative of many others everywhere—who, having just celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary, told me they were more in love then than ever before. This is what God wants for us all.

The second ingredient of a true marriage is maturity. This means keeping one’s eyes wide open before marriage and half shut afterward. In marriage counseling, problems fall into fairly well-established patterns. One familiar pattern is the marriage in which two people who are deeply in love cannot stand each other. They lack the maturity to live together in a relationship any more congenial than that of a cobra and a mongoose. They fight over every picayune detail; one gets angry and the other gets hurt. They cannot stand being together and they cannot stand being apart. He shows her that he is the boss by trying to smack a little sense into her, and she, to show him he cannot treat her that way, goes home to mother—and we know whose side her mother is going to take. It is the old story of each trying to teach the other a lesson.

After two sessions in which I talked to a young man and his wife separately, I brought them together in my office and had them retell their respective sides of the story. The problem was obvious, and since they wanted me to tell them what it was, I did. I told the husband, “You need to grow up and stop acting like a child every time you don’t get your own way.” To his wife I said, “My dear girl, you talk too much.” And she did. There was no big problem, just little things they lacked maturity to cope with. Physically they were adults; emotionally they were children, married four months but not ready for marriage. Man and wife are two people united in matrimony but with different goals and divergent viewpoints.

A divorce lawyer once said he was absolutely convinced that any two people who had made the wrong marriage could be reasonably happy if they had enough maturity really to try. That may be far from the ideal marriage; but when a man and woman stand before God and solemnly vow that they will take each other for better or for worse, may God help them if they do not mean it. What God has joined together, man by judicial decree cannot put asunder. The state may legalize divorce, but God says that marriage is for life, and it is he who will ultimately judge us.

Jesus permitted divorce and remarriage for only one reason—unfaithfulness—and even that is not always sufficient grounds. By the laws of many states, marriage is easily contracted and easily dissolved. Yet in the sight of Almighty God it is a lifetime contract that can be broken only by death or by unfaithfulness. The marriage vows are sacred, binding, irrevocable. This is the divine order, and we cannot change it without serious consequences.

Success in marriage comes not just from finding the “right person” but also from being the right person. Booth Tarkington has said that an ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband. The degree of success in marriage reflects the degree of maturity brought to it. “Incompatibility” and “mental cruelty” are usually just pseudonyms for immaturity.

Many young people rush into an ill-advised marriage for no other reason than that it seems to be the answer to their problem of insecurity or of unhappiness at home. This is why most ministers read in their introduction to the ceremony that matrimony is holy and is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, and in the fear of God. Where in heaven’s name did we get the idea that marriage is a refuge from an unhappy home life, a haven of security, or a bower of moonlight and roses?

Genuine love and personal maturity, then, are ingredients for a happy marriage. But for those who want to go beyond a happy marriage to a perfect marriage, there is a third ingredient. This is a person, Jesus Christ.

St. Augustine said: “Love God and then do whatever you wish,” because he who loves God will never do anything to hurt love. It is true that some marriages are made in heaven. Human love has reached its peak when it says: “I love you because God made you mine.”

The perfect marriage is a uniting of three: a man, a woman, and Christ. This is what makes matrimony holy. When a husband and wife pledge their lives each to the other and build their relationship solidly on spiritual principles, they create the greatest assurance of success and happiness possible. In 95 per cent of all divorces cases, either one or both partners did not attend church regularly. In regular church families, only one marriage in fifty-seven fails. And in families that worship God publicly in church and privately in the home, only one marriage in five hundred breaks up. It may be trite but it is nevertheless true that families who pray together stay together.

Those who look to Christ for guidance in choosing their marriage partner and who make Christ the head of their home will be blessed. Those who leave him out of their life and out of their marriage will be left to ways of their own choosing. One of the consistencies of human nature is that we are always wrong when we are not right with God. “Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.” Jesus said, “Without me ye can do nothing.” He is the pilot who knows what is ahead—the narrow channels, the rocks and reefs where many lives have been wrecked. And he says; “If you will trust me, I will direct your life.”

What marriage is may be summed up in these lines from a wedding ceremony used by Peter Marshall:

“Dearly beloved, the marriage relation when rightly understood and properly appreciated is the most delightful as well as the most sacred and solemn of human relations. It is the clasping of hands, the blending of lives, and the union of hearts, that two may walk together up the hill of life to meet the dawn—together bearing life’s burdens, discharging its duties, sharing its joys and sorrows.

“Marriage is more than moonlight and roses, much more than the singing of love songs and the whispering of vows of undying affection. In our day it is by many lightly regarded, and by many as lightly discarded. But marriage will ever remain in the sight of God an eternal union, made possible only by the gift of love which God alone can bestow.”

The Wrong Corpse

With their fraternity mates, the beatniks, the confirmed secularists in the “God is dead” cult have plunged into the, depths of existential despair, romped about in the dark in their subsurface play-pens, and emerged to announce that “God is dead. He died in our time, in our history, in our existence.”

Who assassinated God? One is moved to ask whether they were sufficiently well acquainted with the Person pronounced dead to be able to identify the deceased.

What kind of “good news” is this? And what hope? Am I now to tell my son that the whole business is a fraud—that all these years I have been working for a “corpse” when I believed that the Jesus of history emerged from the tomb on Easter Day to become the living Christ of the Ages—and that in this vindicating and authenticating act of God there is “good news” for the race? The ages assure us that God doesn’t die by pronouncement, denial, or assassination—and already the “God is dead” cult is passé while it is aborning.—DR. EDWARD L. R. ELSON, in a sermon in the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C.

Disinterest in personal redemption and in private morality go hand in hand

The Gospel of Jesus Christ in its entirety, including the full spectrum of Christian morality, is the only hope for the world. But this is not what some clergymen are preaching. In many church circles morality is being ignored or fragmented, and social service is replacing the Gospel. Some churchmen are presenting as alternatives things between which there really is no choice. They distinguish between public and private morality, emphasizing the former while considering private morality unimportant and even superfluous. Others go further and demand no choice where a moral choice is imperative. The Master of St. Peter’s College, Oxford, had such persons in mind when he condemned the attitude of men who not only note that immorality is prevalent but also say that it is right.

The false alternatives of public and private morality are evident in a statement issued by Dr. John C. Bennett and other distinguished church leaders during the last Presidential election campaign. It is true that the primary purpose of the document was political. But now that its political implications have been swept away, the statement leaves us heir to some strange ethical conclusions. Dr. Bennett and his colleagues complained that during the campaign emphasis was placed on “a few episodes involving personal morality,” and that this emphasis was obscuring “the fateful moral issues related to public life” (the italics are mine). It is clear from the campaign issues that by “episodes involving personal morality” the churchmen meant the Billy Sol Estes and Bobby Baker cases and the moral tragedy of homosexuality in the life of an important official. And by “the fateful moral issues related to public life” they meant civil rights, poverty, and nuclear war.

According to the statement, private morality in this context is a “distortion of morality”; but public morality is “fateful” and has great “implications.” Thus, public and private morality are considered to be separate; indeed, the implication seems to be that the two are at war. What the statement seems to say is: The public moral attitudes of private persons toward race, poverty, and war are important; but the private morality of public figures is not important—or at least none of our business.

The alternatives presented in this way are utterly false. The truth is that the fateful issues of the day will never be resolved by men of careless personal morality. Morality offers no choices marked “private” and “public.” It is not a question of either/or; it is vitally a question of both/and.

The confusion is compounded by the Reverend Howard Moody, whose article, “Toward a New Definition of Obscenity,” gains significance from its publication in Christianity and Crisis, a journal edited by Reinhold Niebuhr and John C. Bennett. Mr. Moody says: “For Christians the truly obscene ought not to be slick-paper nudity, nor the vulgarities of dirty old or young literati, nor even ‘wierdo’ films showing transvestite orgies or male genitalia. What is obscene is that material, whether sexual or not, that has as its basic motivation and purpose the … dehumanizing of persons. The dirtiest word in the English language is … the word ‘NIGGER’ from the sneering lips of a Bull Connor.… A picture is notc dirty that shows a man and woman in … intercourse.… The dirty or obscene is the one that shows the police dogs being unleashed on the Negro demonstrators in Birmingham” (Christianity and Crisis, January 25, 1965, p. 286). From these premises Mr. Moody goes on to attack those who attempt to bring obscenity under control.

Quite apart from the questionable semantics that allows Moody to define the brutalities of racial prejudice as obscenity, it is clear that for him obscenity as such is unimportant and that to fight it somehow detracts from the effort to right the terrible injustices suffered by American Negroes. Perhaps it was this fragmented sense of morality that led to the presentation in his church of a dance program in which, according to the New York Times, a nude man and woman moved across the platform.

We should like to applaud Mr. Moody’s passion for social justice. But how can we, when he leads us into false alternatives that are wholly unacceptable? A social revolution that does not accept the full spectrum of Christian morality will only lead from one confusion to another. It offers no sure path to the promised land but takes us instead in the opposite direction.

Protest is a powerful weapon of change. But it is a negative weapon. The Church’s main task is to create new life, not just to protest the old. Exponents of the “new morality” doubly ignore this when they attempt to combine legitimate social protests with a contradictory tolerance of pre-marital sex and of pornography on stage and screen and in literature.

In 1941 the British statesman Lord Salisbury said: “More than death, wounds and destruction I dread the moral desert that lies ahead.… This war is going to destroy the moral sense of nations. Values that it has taken generations to establish will be smashed. I do not mean the political and economic changes that are bound to come. They may be good for us all. I cannot say. But the smashing of absolute standards of morality that you and I believe in, the denial of truths of the spirit, the elevation of man’s mind and body in place of God—these are things out of which nothing but darkness and decay can come, and these are the things that I see before us” (quoted in Britain and the Beast, by Peter Howard).

It may be helpful to speculate on what lies behind the tendency of some in the Church to depreciate standards of personal morality. May it not mean that the Church is infected by the skepticism of our age? May not the difficulties of attaining personal moral standards breed doubt about the efficacy of grace? This is particularly true in relation to sex. If I will not live purely, I am led to rationalize impurity and to use my brain to kill my conscience. Finally, as a frustrated idealist, I turn from the proposition that I can live by grace to a program of social service that does not need grace. Instead of bringing the full power of the Gospel of Christ to bear upon the problems of society, I indulge in some more “up-to-date” expression of self-effort.

Thus, the real danger in the separation of private and public morality is that we may lose sight of a vital purpose of the Church. For the Church must create a new type of society emerging from a new type of man. This does not mean that the problems of race, color, poverty, and war must not be tackled vigorously and head on. It does mean, however, that such effort must never become a substitute for bringing men to that rebirth which puzzled Nicodemus and every pragmatist who followed him. This world needs what St. Paul spoke of, “If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation.” This new creation inevitably includes the fulfillment of personal morality. If we do not comprehend this, there is a very real possibility that the Church will become nothing more than a glorified social service agency.

Without some character-creating power at work in men, society may well become prey to a pervading legalism backed by physical force. For example, racial integration depends for its true success on men’s freely choosing to associate with one another. Without the creation of new motivation in individuals, it will be left to the state to originate and enforce each social development.

This is evident in President Johnson’s Great Society program. The Civil Rights Law of 1964 had been in effect less than a year when Congress had to enact new legislation to enforce the right of Negroes to vote. No one can complain if the state, in the absence of an unselfish spirit of responsibility and a virile sense of social justice on the part of its citizens, adopts laws that reflect Christian principles. To do so is its right and duty. But this does not alter the fact that the state is thus compelled to intrude into what should be areas of free and private choice. It is never a healthy thing when the state has to enforce what should be a Christian action springing from personal attitudes of brotherhood and responsibility. At bottom, integration is a matter, not of color, but of character, and character is a concern of the Church. Yet intervention by the state becomes almost inevitable if the Church fails in its unique work of creating under God the distinctive type of man who is called a Christian.

We have a threefold choice in this matter: a chaotic conflict between black and white, a pervading legalism enforced by the state, or the creation of a new type of man whose inner qualities cause him to do what he should. We are reminded of William Penn’s statement: “Men must choose to be governed by God or they condemn themselves to be ruled by tyrants.”

These are the areas in which the Church incurs the risk of running not only into theological and ethical inconsistencies but also into ideological ones. A basic tenet of Marxism is that human nature is incorrigible but by force can be made to conform to a new environment. Such a philosophy inevitably accompanies atheism, because apart from God human nature is indeed incorrigible, as Scripture so plainly teaches. And atheism makes materialism inevitable.

It would be tragically ironic if the Church, because of an unrecognized atheistic skepticism about God’s power to bring about full personal morality by transforming human nature and creating a new man, were to fall into the same ideological error as Communism and attempt to transform man by altering his environment.

If anyone is tempted to think the Communist way is best, let him ponder the decades of Communist experimentation in Russia. After nearly half a century of cataclysmic changing of the environment, the Soviet authorities are having to shoot robbers and rapists; their plans are frustrated by corruption, and they do not know how to control their youth. Admittedly, the West has much the same problems; but this does not make less significant the fact that Khrushchev, before his decline from power, was reported to be wondering how to produce a new type of man that could make his revolution succeed. And it is at least arguable that Communism may be reaching the end of a cycle and may be ripe for the Christian truth of personal redemption rejected at the beginning of the Marxist revolution.

If this is so, the Church may have its one chance to work for the conversion of Peking and Moscow. It would be tragic indeed if all we had to offer were the outmoded materialism that the Communist leaders may now be discarding as wrong and inadequate.

The obituary column is hardly the place where the newspaper reader expects to find the name of God. Yet a group of thinkers whose views have lately been reported by the press are spreading the news that “God is dead.” Now, God can take care of himself without our help. He will survive this attack as he has survived all others. Yet many people are concerned about this death-of-God view, and it would be well to consider its implications.

The denial of God is not at all new. In April, 1822, the French philosopher Auguste Comte presented a paper in which he outlined three stages through which all knowledge has to pass: (1) the theological or fictitious stage; (2) the metaphysical or abstract stage; and (3) the scientific or positive stage. As man moves from the theological level to the scientific stage, he puts away childish and superficial beliefs and comes to a true scientific understanding. Applying this thinking to the history of man’s ideas, Comte even sought to develop a kind of positivistic religion. On April 22, 1851, he predicted, “I am convinced that before the year 1860 I shall be preaching positivism in Notre Dame as the only real and complete religion.” He did not quite make it to the cathedral, but his spiritual descendants are teaching and preaching it in other high places.

Comtian positivism has seeped into the thinking of modern man. Many people now say that belief in God and the Church gradually abates, belief in man and his powers increases, and humanity written large takes the place of Christianity. Many who have such ideas do not understand the source of the attitude toward life to which they subscribe.

Karl Marx was another who sought to deny God. In saying that “religion is the opiate of the people,” he had much in common with Comte. Religion, he said, belongs to the realm of the mythological and the superstitious. It is an evil that stands in the way of change for the better. Thoroughgoing Communism is committed to the destruction of the Christian faith and the spread of atheism.

Sigmund Freud also attacked the idea of God and the Christian faith. In a little book called “The Future of an Illusion,” he wrote that religion is a kind of self-perpetuating group illusion for the maintaining of certain values and certain customs. When freed of religion and the inhibitions it imposes, a man has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.

Among others who try to deny God are the atheistic existentialists. There are two kinds of existentialists, one of them atheistic. Among those in this group are Camus, Sartre, and Heidegger. Camus, in “The Myth of Sisyphus,” describes the condition of man caught up in a meaningless struggle with no choice but to keep struggling. Sisyphus, you remember, was doomed to roll the rock laboriously up the hill; just when it gets to the top it rolls down and he has to start all over again. The only solution is to fall in love with his rock. As for Sartre and Heidegger, both brilliant writers, they are both atheistic.

Even the expression “God is dead” is not new; it was first used by Nietzsche, in the nineteenth century. Yet now we are seeing something else. We are seeing the spectacle of men who want to hold on to the word “Christian” but who are proclaiming baldly the death of God.

Thomas Hardy once wrote a poem called “The Funeral of God”:

I saw a slowly stepping train

Lines on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar,

Following in files across a twilit plain;

A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

O man-projected figure, of late

Imaged as we, thy knell who shall arrive?

Whence came it we were tempted to create

One whom we can no longer keep alive?

How sweet it was in the years far hied

To start the, wheels of day with trustful prayer!

To lie down liegely at the eventide

And feel a blest assurance He was there.

Hardy considers God to be dead, but he is wistful and sad about it. The modern thinkers about whom we have been hearing proclaim boldly and even gladly that God is dead. They do not mean that God is unreal to people, or that the word “God” has lost its meaning; they mean that God is actually dead. This assertion is coupled with a lack of faith in the Church. One of the leaders of the movement has said, “God is dead, and the Church is his tombstone.”

Now, over against the point of view of these thinkers, let us examine Matthew 16:13–18, which has to do with an incident in the life of Christ. When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” They answered, “Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” Then Jesus said, “But whom say ye that I am?” In reply Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus then said, “Blessed art thou, Simon, Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Three main ideas from this passage may be set over against the death-of-God thought. First, let us note these words of Christ to Peter: “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” Revelation is the basis of our faith. We believe, not what finite man has been able to find out about an infinite God, but what an infinite God in his mercy and love has revealed to us of himself in the “Word” that he has spoken unto us.

The Word of God is the authority to which we turn, the objective criterion standing over us. If our faith were merely a matter of what you believe or what I believe, then the whole matter would be subjective and would have no norm. But it is not. Faith is not something aimed at God as a sort of dimension of our own experience; it is something elicited in us by the Word of God.

Why is the Bible at the center of our churches? Why do we study it in our various church groups? Because in it we find the Word by which we are continually judged, and through which we find life by the Spirit.

Secondly, let us note these words of our Lord. “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The Church is certainly not above criticism. How could it be when it is made up of people like you and me? Indeed, it is one of the easiest institutions to criticize. But through the years the Church has been able to absorb criticism and learn from it, and to move out in new ways.

At the same time, let us remember something else. The Church has been called into existence by God himself through Jesus Christ. As the Scripture reminds us, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” We say in our ritual, “The Church is of God and will be preserved until the end of time.” The Church has tremendous survival power. It is here to stay.

Thirdly, let us notice the words Peter addressed to Jesus, words which Jesus approved: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” They tie Jesus and God together. The “God is dead” people want to get rid of God while retaining Jesus. This is not only religiously wrong but also theologically dishonest. It tries to bypass a problem with an aphorism. It is impossible to hold on to the historical Jesus without God, because “Jesus without Jesus’ heavenly Father is not Jesus.” Peter’s confession is, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Let us consider their appeal for the historical Jesus. Joachim Jeremias, in his book The Central Message of the New Testament, deals with the word “Abba.” He contends that Jesus, in applying the word to God, introduced something new into the world. Here, he says, we have gone behind the kerygma to the historical Jesus himself. And what do we find? We find the Son in constant and living dependence upon the Father.

Jesus and the living God go together. There is no such thing as a Jesus-gospel. The Gospel is the news of the redemptive working of God in Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul puts it, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.”

Pascal, in his struggle for religious reality, finally came to a point when his life was changed and a new dimension of reality came alive for him. He later wrote a description of his experience that he wore next to his body. In this description were the words: “Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars.…” That experience had become the great focal point of his life.

Above all else is the living God, whose loving heart is seen in his Son Jesus Christ, in whom and through whom there is life eternal.

The chaplain’s congregation is a cross section of American life

Many a new military chaplain expecting a special welcome at a gathering of his fellow clergymen faces disappointment. For, although he has found the chaplaincy to be one of the finest ministries available, one that affords wonderful opportunities to reach men for Christ, he soon learns that many civilian pastors do not view it this way. Unfortunately, we chaplains are often viewed as eccentrics who abandon the ministerial brotherhood and denominational duties to roam the world on a kind of quasi-religious business. Some see us as irresponsible and devil-may-care, supported by taxes and church offerings but not doing enough to deserve either. Instead of spending our time jumping out of airplanes, camping out, sailing around the world at government expense, and flying in helicopters, they say, why not settle down to the serious business of parish work!

Chaplains should not blame their civilian brethren for their feelings, however; they simply do not understand. The common attitude was summed up by a district superintendent who said to me the first time I returned for an annual conference, “Paul, I know you’ve wanted to become a chaplain ever since you first started preaching, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why!” Well, for fellow ministers who might like to join the chaplains’ ranks and also for those who view chaplains as a ministerial version of the “beat generation,” some explanation is in order.

Chaplains are not trying to escape administrative responsibilities. They have their paper work, too. They are certainly not gaining autonomy by wriggling out from under denominational boards or bishops. Chaplains are part of the military structure of rank. At least civilian clergy don’t have to salute when they report to the bishop! Nor are chaplains seeking to avoid such pastoral duties as weddings, baptisms, funerals, or hospital calls; nearly every chaplain is called upon to perform all these. Even the responsibility for church growth is not lacking. On Easter Sunday, 1964, for instance, three Methodist chaplains at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, baptized twenty-two and took thirty-seven into the church.

No, one does not become a chaplain to avoid pastoral duties, for wherever he is and whatever unit he serves, he is first, last, and always a pastor. He may make his pastoral calls on a group of soldiers on maneuvers sitting in muddy foxholes, or he may serve communion to three hundred people in a beautiful base chapel. He may visit men in the stockade or brig or in the hospital, or call on proud parents in their home as they prepare to have their baby baptized. He may find himself working on a large post with a dozen or more other chaplains of all denominations, or he may be all alone—perhaps in a helicopter, hopping from radar site to radar site across northern Canada, perhaps at sea on an aircraft carrier. Wherever he is, he will see men, be involved with men and their problems—ill-fitting clothes, pregnant girlfriends, lack of money, homesickness, sunstroke, “hate-the-service-itis,” unfaithful wives, ill-tempered first sergeants, drunkenness, traffic tickets. He will be shown letters beginning: “Dear Tommy, I hate to tell you this, but you see, there is this boy …”; or “Dear Chaplain, My son hasn’t written me for six months …”; or “Dear Sir: I’ve changed my mind and want my Billy back home now.…” He may be asked questions about sociology, psychology, zoology, pathology, mythology, Christology, eschatology, Catholicism, Judaism, Lutheranism, Communism, politics, the theater, art, or sex.

To sum up, the business of chaplains is people. Their congregations are cross sections of life in America. In them are big-league ball players, concert musicians, and peanut vendors, from privates to generals. Among them are saints and sinners, and they all need Christ.

A large percentage of those to whom chaplains minister are in that eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old group where the Church is losing out. By the time young people reach the end of high school, they are asking a lot of questions. Many, feeling that the Church does not give answers that satisfy them, leave its fellowship, or at least its influence. For an average period of six years they wander, search, and experiment with life. And when they feel that they have found the answers, they settle down. Often they begin to understand the values of the Church and Christian fellowship, and they return. Sometimes they do not. Whatever the outcome, young men are very likely to spend some part of these searching years in the armed services. And there are a multitude of forces in and around the military community that seek to lead them further away from Christ and his Church. If there were no chaplains to help to counteract these influences, far fewer young men would return to the Church than now do.

Chaplains do have an important job, not only in ministering to the physical, mental, social, and spiritual problems of their men, but also in preparing them for their return to civilian life and their home churches. For this reason chaplains feel it vital to work as closely as possible with their fellow clergymen at home. Those in the home church have to understand the problems of a lonely G.I. in order to realize how much a church letter, a Sunday bulletin, or even just a card at Christmas means to him. Congregations must see that, although the man in the service has his chaplain, he still needs the care and concern of the shepherd at home. Churches must not abandon their servicemen. They must show them concern. And when they do so, they find their servicemen coming back to the fellowship of the Church.

“The ministers of recent fiction are the groping, fallible, doubting men …”

During the twentieth century the image of the clergyman in fiction has changed. Once seen as a crusader, he has now become a doubter. Once a comforter, he is now an accommodator. His problems have changed from external ones involving society at large to internal conflicts of values and belief.

In his wide-ranging study entitled The Failure of Theology in Modern Literature, John Killinger observes that the clergy, “far from standing like lonely figures in the ship’s prow, have tended to be found in far greater abundance on the poop deck.” And perhaps to a certain extent—in The Mackerel Plaza, for example, or earlier on an even more crass level in Elmer Gantry—his caricature has been valid. Further, such debunking extends to Casey in The Grapes of Wrath and to Brush in Wilder’s Heaven’s My Destination.

Several recent works have broadened this view. While they have not attempted to restore the minister to the prow supposedly commanded by his Victorian grandfather—that would be artistically dishonest—at least they portray him as a fighting man. Yet it is an inner anguish rather than an outside secular force that drives him so hard. He suffers everything from doubt and self-delusion to constipation and spinal decay, and he is never sure enough of his own position to be able to lead anyone else to glory along the paths of righteousness. Tension, not triumph, is his hallmark.

Struggling, yet also soiled, neurotic, and ultimately ineffective—this is the way modern authors tend to portray the man of the cloth. There are exceptions, of course, such as formula stories like The Stained Glass Jungle, sentimental novels like In His Steps, and the products of Roman Catholic novelists like Graham Greene and Flannery O’Connor. But the following four books—three novels and a play—may be considered representative of the trend of dozens of portraits of the clerical character.

Holy Masquerade portrays a pastor who is obviously contemporary. His problems are set in the world that surrounds us all. The Spire reveals a cathedral dean whose conflicts are current though his disguise is medieval. Symbolized in his struggle is the unending battle within man’s own nature. Luther interprets a real historical character through the psychological point of view of the twentieth century. The distance between the monk of Reformation history and the man of the Broadway play is a good gauge of how far the clergyman has come in the fiction of the last several generations. And The Last Temptation of Christ gives us “the ultimate clergyman” in the person of Jesus himself, again as viewed through the screen of a modern consciousness that cannot endorse orthodoxy as the answer to the problem of belief. In all four cases the “minister” is shaped out of the clay of daily life and revealed as a man like other men.

The center of their common problem lies in the question that Klara Svenson, wife of a Swedish pastor, presses on her indecisive husband in the moving but little-known Holy Masquerade (for an excerpt from this book, see the December 3 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY). “Would you be different,” she asks, “if you were not a Christian?” Instead of answering, he argues that this is “not relevant” to their theological argument (“but his face got red and he spilled ashes on the floor”), and he counterattacks by charging her with having the sort of romantic nature that refuses to confront the moral ambiguities of modern life. We soon learn, though, that even with all the jargon-studded intellectual skirmishes he stumbles through, his own brand of Christianity never approaches the power and excitement of the New Testament Church, and that in its failure to be relevant to his own experience it has thrown him into the organizational whirlpool whose end is spiritual and moral annihilation.

Olov Hartman’s indictment here follows a trail that was blazed many years ago and is now well worn. Earlier writers have often portrayed the clergy as “businessmen with apostolic credentials” like Albert, who is more devoted to preparing records for “the Central Statistical Bureau” than to praying with a dying woman afraid to face the prospects of hell. And the guilt of pulpit politics that makes our ministers “veer in the opposite direction” when they “feel heat” has similarly become an all-too-familiar tale.

As we read the jottings of Klara’s Lenten diary, we feel a fresh anguish with one yearning to see the Word made flesh, asking the Church to give her something “to believe in or doubt in”—but at least something definite. But the only answer the compromising Albert can show her is his own hypocrisy as an “ordinary” man having “to live and teach like a spiritually minded person.” He hasn’t even the vigorous honesty of Eccles, the minister in John Updike’s Rabbit Run, who with all of his doubts is still on a valid search and “wants to be told … that he’s not lying to all those people every Sunday.”

Mirrored in the deterioration of the Svensons’ marriage as well as in Klara’s mind is what she calls the schizophrenia of the Church—its holy masquerade. Neither cold nor hot, its nominal sort of Christianity is an odd mixture of sacred trappings over a secular base. And it offers no one any assurance, since “first there must be clarity; otherwise comfort is of no avail.”

In the “theological fog” that obscures Pastor Svenson’s life and spreads to envelop his entire rural parish, Christianity is ineffective because it is hollow. Doubt has replaced faith in the minister’s study and cold form has replaced holy fire in the sanctuary. It is ironic that the only time the church becomes “fired up,” the entire empty structure is reduced to ashes.

Less modern in its setting but more inclusive in the force of its theme is William Golding’s The Spire. None of his five novels has drawn a specific portrait of our times; yet like each one before it, this latest work reveals unavoidable moral implications for its characters. In it Golding turns to a cathedral in medieval England (the town is historically Salisbury) whose dean, an intricately developed character named Jocelin, has seen a vision: he must erect a four-hundred foot spire atop his church as a visible monument to God, “since the children of men require a thing to look at.”

In spite of the uncertain footing below, little by little the spire climbs. Yet not all is being done to the glory of God. On the contrary, the rising tower destroys immeasurably more than it creates. From the very beginning the services of the church are disrupted by dust and dirt and the profanity of the workmen, until finally they are discontinued entirely. In place of worship comes chaos: the disintegration of an old friendship between Jocelin and his confessor, the horrors of violent death, the profaning of the cathedral halls into a house of adultery. “Only the alehouses prospered.”

True, the growing spire seems for a time to be achieving some good. If nothing else, it is a visible signpost whose presence changes the wagon routes men have taken across the hills for generations in their trips to town. Yet it never really penetrates deeply enough to straighten the paths of any of their lives, and at best its benefits are superficial. It is simply “Jocelin’s folly.”

Ever upward, meanwhile, climbs the needle of the spire until finally it reaches its peak. It sways in the winds of the storms and makes the pillars supporting it bend and “sing” with its weight—but it stands. Yet by the end of the novel even Jocelin, by this time physically broken and mentally delirious, expects it to crash down at any moment to destroy the church and all that lies in its shadow. With difficulty he asks, “Fallen?” and the answer comes back quietly, “Not yet.”

It might have seemed better if the spire had fallen, for then at least there would have been the finality of a fruitless vision. Hartman, for example, gives us a church in ruins as poetic justice for its pastor’s failings. But Golding leaves us instead with a monument to destruction—a destruction all the more poignant because we have participated in its development. We have climbed the tower ladders with the hod-carriers and wiped the dust from our eyes and faces. We have doubted with the builders and hoped with Jocelin. But ultimately we have seen our faith dried up. We have seen that the dean himself—even more than his church—was without any real supporting foundation. Observing the human ruin that accompanies his grand vision, we question the divinity of his inspiration and agree ruefully as he confesses, “I injure everyone I touch, particularly those I love.”

Man is depraved; this has been Golding’s recurring thesis ever since Lord of the Flies. But where does such a person turn? The Church has all the evils of men, including in its clergy an inordinately huge measure of pride. (One is reminded, too, that those who fall into savagery in his earliest novel are choirboys.) “Say what you like; he’s proud,” remarks one of the deacons about Jocelin. “And ignorant,” adds another. But “he thinks he is a saint!” This is his predicament and the theme of the novel. The corrosive pride of a man who begins by thinking he is doing God’s work culminates in the ruin of himself and those about him. Early in the book he says, “I am about my Father’s business,” and Golding writes that in the closing moment “the final tremor of his lips … might be interpreted as a cry of God! God! God!” But there is no record in the text that he ever receives any reply of assurance before he dies, a broken spirit.

Still more provocative, and more compelling as a literary work, is John Osborne’s brilliant drama Luther. There is no fable here; the man on the stage is real, his agonizing unmistakable. But the Luther of the play is far removed from the Dr. Luther who influenced more people across Europe than any other modern man except perhaps Karl Marx.

Without apology, history has been distorted. Yet Osborne’s Luther is not an ideal to be worshiped by Protestants, not an abstract to be studied by Catholics, not just a name to be remembered by historians. Instead he is a genius who is never sure of himself, a man tormented and tortured, often wracked with physical pain, more than slightly neurotic, and always bothered by extreme constipation. True, he is courageous and brilliant, but he reveals neither nobility nor grace. Nor certainty.

Acts I and II move from the noisy showmanship of Tetzel’s sale of indulgences (“I can even pardon you for sins you haven’t committed, but which, however, you intend to commit!”) to Luther’s savage ridicule of fake relics (“empty things for empty men”). And there is the strong scene at the Diet of Worms where Luther makes his famous speech: “I cannot and will not recant.… Here I stand; God help me; I can do no more. Amen.”

But the concluding and disquieting focus of the play shifts away from the fiery Luther in his pulpit to the tender and domestic Luther in his home. He is no longer the man who defied kings and popes. The first clash of the Reformation is over and a new Germany has been created. But inside him there is no change; nothing has been resolved. Luther is still uncertain, and in a scene where an old friend asks him, “Were you sure?” he answers, weakly, “No.”

In the final lines he is talking of heaven to his young son and reading the promises of the New Testament. Yet the best he can say—and on this note the curtain falls—is, “Let’s just hope so.…” There is hope, but even for Martin Luther, the great catalyst of reformation, there is no final certainty. Nor was there any for Jocelin, dean of an English cathedral, or for Albert, pastor of a Swedish church.

Listen to the music the orchestra has been playing. “Ein’ feste Burg.…” How false the words sound after seeing the doubts of their actor-author. “God’s truth abideth still.…” Perhaps for the hymnwriter in 1529, but not for the contemporary Luther on a New York stage. “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.…” Almost an epitaph for Jocelin. “And He must win the battle.…” Well, maybe in sixteenth-century Germany, but not today.

In three works we have seen torment unresolved and Christianity ineffective. Each clergyman, unable to sink the taproot of his own faith, is unable to meet the needs of others. Svenson destroys a marriage and ignores a congregation. Jocelin defiles a church to build his dreams in discord and distress. And Luther cannot offer even his small child more than an uncertain hope. Supernaturalism is gone, and in its place is an earthbound tragic struggle for God.

It is against such a background that we now see Jesus, the man of Nazareth. Far from the description of the Scriptures and even farther from the pious image that he has sometimes been given, Kazantzakis’s Jesus knows the fires of lust and the chokings of doubt. “I am wrestling,” the youthful carpenter cries out. He is compelled by temptations—to be a man like other men, to withdraw into spiritual isolation, “to settle down to a life of happiness with his beloved Mary Magdalene,” to abandon his struggle with God. There is grandeur in his battle between flesh and spirit, and his representation of the human predicament is vivid and intense. But it is not so easy to say he is sacred or a part of the Godhead.

Such a portrait is, clearly enough, a heresy to the orthodox, who have opposed it as “blasphemous” and “a mass of monstrous distortions.” Yet the Jesus of The Last Temptation of Christ is at least in part the victor where each of the men considered before has been a failure. The reasons are simple and direct: Jesus took the long road all the way to the Cross; the others stopped short. Jesus conquered his doubts; the others yielded to theirs, or were consumed by them, or were blocked by them.

Kazantzakis explains that he wrote this book “because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles. I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation, or death—because all three can be conquered; all three have been conquered.” Yet these very same words help to explain why such a Jesus has not satisfied the struggle of those clergymen whom we have already seen. As the novelist himself points out, this Jesus is “a model who blazes our trail,” not the saving Christ. He cannot offer the promise of abundant life to any who would call themselves Christian, since in his final act he loses his own life. For though he dies on the Cross “because he loves the whole world,” we come to the end of the last page before the Resurrection is reached. We are left viewing a dead man instead of a risen Lord.

“Behold, old things have passed away and all things are become new,” says the New Testament text. And so it is with the fictional ministers of the Church. The old faith in a supernatural and redemptive Saviour is gone, and with it the dogmatic certainty and the old victory. In place of the affirmation of the past, however, is a struggle to find a new validity and a contemporary relevance in the example of the man who said, “I am the way.… Follow me.”

The ministers of recent fiction are the groping, fallible, doubting men of the twentieth century—men in the midst of the modern predicament. Their problems are those of an age of secularism and science that seeks a new Reformation on its own terms. Thus far, however, their search has not been very successful. They continue on as divines in doubt.

Three items clamor for mention in this privileged precinct, and no one is more aware than I of their lack of logical connection. But then, after all, this brief foreword is no homiletical exercise.

First, congratulations to our British editorial director, Dr. J. D. Douglas, who adds to his duties the editorship of the century-old evangelical news magazine The Christian. Illness, which resulted in death, prevented Tom Allan from filling that responsible role. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is glad to share Dr. Douglas’s penetrating mind and gifted pen for this new assignment.

Next, a word about Christmas cards. At this moment of writing, it seems that those on our expansive list of personal friends are unlikely to receive the customary Yuletide greeting. Some weeks ago the cards were bought and stored out of sight for Thanksgiving addressing. But four or five basement-to-bedroom searches have uncovered no trace of them. One card per friend I defend as an indispensable remembrance, but two—never. Let friendship take the will for the deed rather than commercialism strain the budget for a counterpart. If the cards emerge (suggestions will be welcome) before the Fourth of July, we’ll add a “here it is” postscript in bright red ink. Meanwhile, a joyous Christmas to our readers, one and all.

Finally, about the next issue. To hold to our annual quota of twenty-five issues, the next copies of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will be printed three weeks hence and dated January 7, 1966 (rather than December 31, 1965). If the postman shows up earlier than that, you will know he’s carrying a counterfeit copy. Insist on the real thing.