Why Churches Decline

Some american visitors to Europe return home with sad accounts of gastric disturbances, while others seem to thrive on unfamiliar cuisine. But hardly a single Christian traveler on the Continent or in Great Britain comes home unshaken by the low church attendance in virtually all European countries. My wife and I were saddened by this phenomenon during our year in the great Reformation city of Strasbourg; as we participated in the ancient liturgy and were blessed by the Christocentric messages delivered at the Lutheran Eglise St. Thomas—whose history stretches back to the ninth century—we sometimes found ourselves among only fifty or seventy-five worshipers.

Why this pitiful stale of affairs? Recently a French sociologist has gone to work on the problem, and his far from tautological conclusions warrant careful consideration by the theological community. The sociologist is Professor François-G. Dreyfus of the Faculty of Letters and the Institute of Political Science at the University of Strasbourg, and his analysis of church decline is summarized in an article titled, “Secularization in Alsatian Protestantism Since the Nineteenth Century,” appearing in the latest issue of the Revue d’Histoire el de Philosophie Religieuses (Vol. 45, No. 2).

Dreyfus begins with a careful presentation of the church situation in the Alsace. In spite of general population increases from 1800 to the present, and in spite of the enlargement of Roman Catholic communicant membership, Alsatian Protestantism has shown no appreciable growth: there were 210,000 Protestants in 1820,247,000 in 1871 (when, as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, the Alsace was annexed to Germany), and only 242,000 in 1954.

These statistical phenomena pose a genuine interpretative challenge, and Dreyfus reaches solid ground by analyzing an invaluable survey of Alsatian church life carried out in 1851 by the Lutheran state church. The replies to the questionnaires are still preserved in the National Archives, and they give minute data on the condition of the parishes—data that frequently reveal far more than the pastors or laity of the time could have imagined.

Typical, for example, are the comments of the pastors at Colmar and at Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines: “With some honorable exceptions, the poor class is too demanding, not sufficiently grateful, crude, and for the most part drunk and lazy.” “The working class constitutes the majority of the Protestant parish, and on the whole it lacks industriousness. But, happily, we also have a solid bourgeoisie which is the pillar of the church.”

From such clear and striking comments as these, Dreyfus soundly concludes that one of the major reasons for the decline of Alsatian Protestantism in modern times has been the indifference of the Church to the industrial revolution and to the working classes that arose as part of that great social movement. Just as during the Old Regime the Roman church lost its influence over the great mass of French Catholics by identifying with the rank and privileges of the nobility, so during the urban-industrial revolution of the last century and a half, Protestant Christianity has made the equally tragic mistake of identifying with the status quo. Ignoring “the signs of the times,” it has pharisaically passed by on the other side when vast numbers of people have desperately needed its ministrations.

But important as was this social factor, another consideration had an even greater part in the decline of Alsatian Protestantism. States Dreyfus: “We must underscore the very great role played by Protestant thought itself,” specifically the impact of “rationalism,” “liberalism,” and “latitudinarianism of doctrine”—and “it seems clear that this considerable influence enjoyed by liberalism is not peculiar to Protestant Alsace; one encounters it in most of the Protestant regions of Europe.” Illustrating from questionnaire data and from other primary sources, Dreyfus shows that (in the words of a Pfaffenhoffen pastor), “from the middle of the eighteenth century, the Protestant church seems to have slept; it appears to have forgotten the confessional writings upon which its pastors took their ordination vows.”

By 1860, the majority of the professors on the Protestant Theological Faculty of the University of Strasbourg had become liberals, and (as is the invariable pattern) the decline then began in earnest. Typical of the church situation was Pastor Nied’s beginning-of-term address for the Protestant Seminary in 1868; his subject was “Preparation for the Holy Ministry,” and not once does the name of Jesus appear in it. Dreyfus notes that where German rationalistic theology had the most influence, the Alsatian church suffered most. Today, in the wake of two world wars, there is little unreconstructed liberalism left in the Alsace, and the Protestant Theological Faculty is again confessionally Lutheran; but the damage has been done, and the common man in the Alsace, hostile to religion without knowing why, is the chief victim.

Though Dreyfus’s study of church decline is limited to the Alsace, the wider significance of his investigation can hardly be missed. Observation of the Church in the modern era—whether on the European continent or in England or in the United States—would seem to elevate Dreyfus’s two causal explanations for Alsatian church decline to the level of ecclesiological laws: doctrinal liberalism and social conservatism are two best ways to insure the secularization of the Church.

In our own land, what has been the effect of our middle-class, white-only churches, striving to delay social progress and to ignore the existence of great masses of people? The result has been that social progress has come anyway, spearheaded by those who do not represent evangelical Christendom, and untold numbers in minority groups have been permanently alienated from the historic Gospel. The unregenerate man has an instinctive ability to identify bad trees by their bad fruit.

And what has been the result of the weakening of biblical and doctrinal authority in U. S. churches? Indifference on the part of the unbeliever to the Church’s appeals. It is not for nothing that the most theologically conservative Protestant bodies (e.g., the Southern Baptists and the Missouri Lutherans) have been the most energetic and have had the greatest growth rates—nor that Unitarian seminaries hobble along from year to year heavily endowed but virtually empty. Unregenerate man also knows instinctively that liberal religion is man-made and therefore incapable of rising from puerile good advice to transcendental Good News.

Want to arrest the secularization of the Church? Try an unqualified biblical message, directed to all those for whom the Lord of glory died.

- More from John Warwick Montgomery

What Scripture Says about Itself

Chapter One of the Westminster Confession

1. ALTHOUGH the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable.¹ yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of his will which is necessary unto salvation;² therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his Church;³ and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing:⁴ which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary,⁵ those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.⁶

2. Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testaments, which are these:

OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Genesis

Ecclesiastes

Exodus

The Song of Songs

Leviticus

Isaiah

Numbers

Jeremiah

Deuteronomy

Lamentations

Joshua

Ezekiel

Judges

Daniel

Ruth

Hosea

I Samuel

Joel

II Samuel

Amos

I Kings

Obadiah

II Kings

Jonah

I Chronicles

Micah

II Chronicles

Nahum

Ezra

Habakkuk

Nehemiah

Zephaniah

Esther

Haggai

Job

Zechariah

Psalms

Malachi

Proverbs

OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

The Gospels

According to

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

The Acts of the

Apostles

Paul’s Epistles:

Romans

I Corinthians

II Corinthians

Galatians

Ephesians

Philippians

Colossians

I Thessalonians

II Thessalonians

I Timothy

II Timothy

Titus

Philemon

The Epistle

to the Hebrews

The Epistle of James

The First and Second

Epistles of Peter

The First, Second,

and Third Epistles

of John

The Epistle of Jude

The Revelation

All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.⁷

3. The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture: and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.⁸

4. The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.⁹

5. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture;¹⁰ and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.¹¹

6. The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is cither expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men.¹² Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word;¹³ and there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.¹⁴

7. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor like clear unto all;¹⁵ yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other that not only the learned but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.¹⁶

8. The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical;¹⁷so as in all controversies of religion the Church is finally to appeal unto them.¹⁸ But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God who have right unto and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them,¹⁹ therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come,²⁰ that, the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner,²¹ and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope.²²

9. The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.²³

10. The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.²⁴

Cover Story

Presbyterians Rally to the Westminster Confession

What if the nation’s 3,300,000 United Presbyterians were suddenly asked to sign a statement equating the Bible directly with the Word of God?

An overwhelming majority, including many who are theologically inarticulate, would probably subscribe without mental reservation. But the dissident minority includes a literate bloc of clergymen who control denominational headquarters in Philadelphia’s venerable Witherspoon Building. And from that ecclesiastically strategic vantage point the biblical critics are plumping a Barthian yet pragmatically oriented “Confession of 1967.”

Fearing that the new document will supplant the principle of scriptural integrity championed by the time-honored Westminster Confession, evangelicals in United Presbyterian churches throughout the country are discreetly rallying their forces to do battle. The outcome is expected to have wide significance inasmuch as Presbyterian thinkers have traditionally been leaders of evangelical theology in North America (see editorial, page 30).

United Presbyterian conservatives arranged an impressive show of strength at a special two-day conference in Chicago last month. Staged by a new organization known as Presbyterians United for Biblical Confession, the conference sought to coordinate efforts of the thousands of evangelical clergymen seeking to preserve the heritage of the United Presbyterian Church. The group’s key effort to date has been an incisive editorial critique, A Conversation about “The Proposed Confession of 1967,” now widely distributed in two versions.

Another development last month was the unveiling of a blue-ribbon Presbyterian Lay Committee, Inc., dedicated to restoring respect for biblical authority in the official denominational framework. The group, according to President Roger Hull, aims to work with the National Council of United Presbyterian Women and the National Council of United Presbyterian Men in fulfilling five objectives.¹ It has been in the planning stage for many months and is part of a restive lay movement in several mainstream denominations. Its nineteen-member board includes Hull, prominent New York insurance executive, chairman J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil, former Governor Arthur B. Langlie of Washington, and TV personality Bud Collyer. Invitations are out for charter members.

Says Hull, “We are seeking dedicated lay men and women who are concerned about our church and who are willing to become involved at the presbytery, synod and General Assembly level in order to influence the church to exert her efforts to the mission of preaching the Gospel of redemption.”

The bid to involvement is especially important, for some observers feel that indifference and premature surrenders have aided church revisionists. Some evangelicals disappointed over the proposed new confession lament that two or three theological conservatives resigned from the drafting committee.

The pressures to conform often become intense, however, and here and there evangelicals throw in the towel. The latest is Dr. Stuart H. Merriam, a promising preacher whose dispute with New York Presbytery became a cause célèbre in 1962. Citing an assortment of relatively minor improprieties, the presbytery refused to allow him to retain his pulpit at Broadway Presbyterian Church. This fall, the 41-year-old Merriam severed all official ties with the denomination and announced he would return to New Guinea, where he has set up a small, independent missionary effort. Merriam will be accompanied by his bride of two months, the former Caroline Robinson, who served as his secretary at Broadway.

Many theological conservatives among United Presbyterians feel that time and truth are on their side as they stay put and press for their convictions. This was the rationale for the Chicago meeting, where conservatives probed a joint strategy focused on the confession. The main question at Chicago was whether the 4,200-word document was hopelessly heretical or could through amendments be shifted to a more biblical base. The key issue was the new confession’s viewing Scripture, not as the inspired Word of God, but as the mere “normative witness” to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

A broader problem faced by United Presbyterian evangelicals is what to do with those clergy and lay leaders who have made confessional vows in the past but do not now subscribe to them. Whatever else it may or may not be, the new confession is widely described as an effort to make honest men out of heretics. In short, it would legitimatize aberrations by relaxing long-held scriptural standards.

Few evangelicals are willing to crusade for a wholesale exodus of heretics, and most prefer an attempt to salvage their denomination over desertion. But short of a mass exodus, United Presbyterians will have to work out an alternative to assigning official sanction to intellectual dishonesty.

The “subscription” questions actually are an issue separate from the debate over confessions. The committee that drafted the proposed new confession also took the initiative in recommending far-reaching changes in the theological test given candidates for ordination and commissioning (see May 7, 1965, issue, page 53).

The fate of the confession and allied proposals is currently in the hands of a specially appointed revision committee, at least five of whose fifteen members are known as theological conservatives. The committee is open to suggestions until January 15 and is expected to present an amended version of the proposed confession to the United Presbyterian General Assembly in Boston in May.

If the confessional package is approved in Boston, it will be submitted to a vote of presbyteries. Then, if two-thirds of the presbyteries voice approval, formal adoption will be possible at the 1967 General Assembly in Portland, Oregon.

Westminster Confession

Caught in the middle of the current theological strife among United Presbyterians is the majestic Westminster Confession of Faith, which dates back to the 1640s and includes what is perhaps the most eloquent rationale for scriptural authority to be found in the annals of Christendom (see next page). The proposed Confession of 1967 does not explicitly unseat a prior claim for the Westminster Confession, for the latter is slated, with six others, to be preserved alongside the new creed. In at least several aspects, however, the new confession obviously supersedes Westminster, which while not considered flawless has nevertheless served as a standard for Presbyterian and Reformed groups everywhere.

The Westminster Confession was the most illustrious of several historic theological documents produced in the strife-torn Britain of the seventeenth century by the group now referred to as “the Westminster Divines.” They were the 151 members of a special advisory commission appointed by Parliament to determine what constituted the true church. Thirty of them were members of Parliament, and the rest were clergy men from England and Scotland. They conferred in Westminster Abbey, holding more than a thousand all-day meetings.

While most of the clergymen on the commission had been ordained by the Church of England, they had become nonconformists when King Charles I attempted to force upon them doctrines they considered alien. The doctrines of this group of nonconformists eventually became those of the Presbyterian communion.

Conversation Sampler

Here are significant excerpts from a revised version of A Conversation about “The Proposed Confession of 1967,” from Presbyterians United for Biblical Confession:

What are the merits of the proposed “Confession”?

It is a serious and needed effort to make the creed of our church speak to the need of our day in the language of our day. It endeavors to state the essence of our faith and practice so that it may be understood by United Presbyterians and by other churches in ecumenical conversations.

In what areas does the proposed “Confession” need to be revised to make it more truly Biblical, evangelical, and consistent with our Reformed faith?

I. The deity of Christ should be affirmed with no less clarity and emphasis than his humanity.

II. The inspiration of the Bible needs to be affirmed and a clearer statement of its authority presented.

III. Reconciliation between God and man needs stronger emphasis and the requirement of repentance and faith needs to be more clearly affirmed.

IV. The section “Reconciliation in Society” needs some revision and also extension to additional areas of social concern.

V. Under the questions for ordination, the subscription required regarding “the Scriptures” and “the confessions” needs to be changed and strengthened.

What is the central theme of the proposed “Confession”?

“God’s reconciling work in Jesus Christ and the mission of reconciliation to which He has called his Church …” (lines 34, 35).

How is God’s part in this work of reconciliation interpreted?

As a “reconciling act” seemingly fully accomplished.

How is man’s part interpreted?

Man is apparently represented as a beneficiary of God’s act of reconciliation regardless of personal response. The “Confession” states: “The risen Christ is the Savior of all men” (line 69), “In him man is victorious over sin and death” (lines 59, 60), “God’s reconciliation of the human race creates one universal family” (lines 298, 299).

But is man not required to repent and believe in order to be effectively reconciled?

So the Scriptures teach, and we feel this truth needs to be stated more clearly and emphatically than is done in the proposed “Confession.”

What about the key passage in 2 Cor. 5:20 to which the Committee refers in its “Introductory Comment and Analysis”?

This passage itself indicates that in the world some are and some are not reconciled. Very strangely, the concluding statement of 2 Cor. 5:20 is omitted: “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

American Baptists: COCU on Ice?

The Consultation on Church Union, which this year is drawing up a proposal for an American super-church, apparently has little appeal for the most ecumenically minded Baptist group, the American Baptist Convention.

At Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, last month, forty-six voting members of the ABC General Council discussed all sorts of relationships with other Christians, but the Consultation (or Blake-Pike proposal, as commonly labeled) had few champions and suffered two stunning defeats.

The first was the report of the Division on Cooperative Christianity, whose eight members include four former ABC presidents. It recommended on a five-to-three vote that the ABC shun formal COCU talks. Then General Secretary Edwin H. Tuller, ABC’s top administrator, eschewed a disinterested stance and came up with a surprising, hard-hitting statement against COCU involvement.

In February, the General Council will decide whether to follow the division’s and Tuller’s advice or to ask the annual convention to join the COCU negotiations, which now include six mainline denominations. The General Council, as between-conventions legislature for the ABC, has full power to enter into COCU without a convention vote, but this is unlikely.

The division’s study had been requested at the last annual convention by Dr. Robert G. Torbet. He and Dr. W. Hubert Porter have been the ABC’s observer-consultants to COCU for three years.

Southward Ho

If the American Baptist Convention joined the Consultation on Church Union (see story above), this would probably cripple efforts to get the ABC and other Baptist groups together.

The Rev. Howard R. Stewart, chairman of the Baptist Unity Movement, which hopes to merge the American and Southern Baptist Conventions, is thus opposed to COCU. “There is a strong feeling it might be better to put our Baptist house in order first,” the Dover, Delaware, pastor said.

Others in the ABC think they have more in common with non-Baptist groups than with the Southerners. A new chapter in relations between the ABC and the SBC began October 1, when J. C. Herrin set up shop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for what some call an ABC “invasion” of the South.

The big, fast-growing SBC has made major inroads in the North in recent years. Herrin’s answer to this is still fuzzy, but he seeks to sign up churches that have already left the SBC and to establish fellowship groups that would become new ABC churches in competition with the entrenched SBC. He also hopes for eventual merger with Negro Baptist churches and perhaps entire denominations, particularly the Progressive Baptist Convention.

There are now thirty-two ABC churches in the South. Their leaders will meet in Atlanta this month with Herrin to map future plans. The main speaker will be ABC’s controversial evangelism director, Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa. This choice of keynoter and Herrin’s appeal for ABC liberalism on the ecumenical issue indicate the shape this challenge to the SBC may take.

On the eve of the Valley Forge meeting, eighty ABC theology professors urged the General Council to approve COCU. But at the meeting, the COCU camp lacked leadership. Torbet, who is now ABC president, believes he must remain neutral on what may be the hottest and most divisive issue before the ABC in years. Neither he nor Porter will say publicly whether he thinks the ABC should enter the Consultation. The three members of the division who disagreed with its recommendation kept anonymous and silent.

The loyal-opposition mantle fell by default to Dr. Robert Middleton of Chicago, whose church is aligned with both the ABC and the United Church of Christ. In February, he will move to amend the report and get the ABC into COCU. The report now going out to ministers and other leaders will mention his plan. Grass-roots support may be mobilized one way or the other in the next three months, but mail to the denominational magazine Crusader currently is reported to be split 50–50 on the issue.

There is widespread feeling in the ABC that Baptists won’t be able to join the church resulting from COCU if it takes the shape that now seems likely. If this is so, the ABC must decide now whether it should become active in setting up someone else’s church.

Another problem: leaders are sure that if the ABC ever joined the super-church, a large number of local congregations would refuse to go along. The ABC has been hit with schism before and has little taste for another.

The division report carefully listed the pros and cons of COCU, but the majority concluded that most “Baptist distinctives” such as baptism of believers only and congregational polity would have to be compromised too deeply.

Though opposing COCU, the division suggested other ecumenical avenues: stronger ties with the National and World Councils of Churches, Baptist groups, and other “free churches.” It said local churches could join the COCU church and keep parallel affiliation with the ABC.

Tuller reported that talks with the pacifist Church of the Brethren would resume at Elgin, Illinois, December 4. There has been “a measure of progress” in getting together with the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, he said, but no future meetings are presently scheduled with the Christian Churches (Disciples), who are heavily involved in COCU.

Tuller’s statement on COCU questioned whether a universal Protestant church would be as healthy as a variety of churches existing side by side in an ecumenical spirit. He cited Denmark, where the official Lutheran Church claims 97 per cent of the population but only 1½ per cent of the people attend church. Where Protestants are a tiny minority, as in Southeast Asia, Tidier said, organic union is more beneficial.

Proponents say a big, unified church would wield more power in the social-political-economic sphere, Tuller said, but this also has dangers, as evidenced in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Another pressing ecumenical issue—cooperation and possible merger of Baptist seminaries with those of other denominations—received no attention at Valley Forge. Torbet said this is a matter between the ABC Board of Education and Publication, which advocates mergers, and the seminary boards. (See article, page 15.) The division report on COCU, however, mentioned the efficiencies of “a unified theological program under the aegis of a united church” as one of COCU’s advantages.

The General Council backed Torbet’s plan for the executive committee to prepare a position paper on the ecumenical issues facing the ABC for presentation at the next national convention. May 11–15 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Evangelism Around The World

Numerous evangelical leaders familiar with the Far East share a growing conviction that scarred and suffering Korea, once the “hermit kingdom,” is the base for the evangelization of Asia. Latest indication of Korea’s Christian potential came in a year-long national evangelistic campaign climaxed last month with a gigantic rally in Seoul. Some 40,000 attended the rally, singing hymns to the accompaniment of U. S. Army and Navy bands and chanting, “Christ Our Way of Life.”

Among special guests on hand for the grand finale were evangelist Leighton Ford and Irv Chambers, both associates of Billy Graham. Dr. Bob Pierce and Dr. Paul Rees of World Vision had taken part in the campaign earlier. United crusades were held in nearly forty key population centers throughout Korea during 1965, which marked the eightieth anniversary of Protestantism in Korea.

Aim of the Korea-wide effort was to confront every citizen with the claims of Christ, and indications are that by the end of the year most Koreans will have had the chance. An estimated one million have attended services, and perhaps as many as 10,000 converts have been counted. Nearly all church groups cooperated.

In Spain, according to European Baptist Press Service, more than 600 persons made professions of faith in three weeks. The evangelistic challenge was proclaimed in forty-six churches and mission stations of the Spanish Baptist Union. Guest preachers, assisting Spanish pastors and missionaries, came from Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia.

An “evangelism in depth” campaign continues in the Dominican Republic, with 6,000 conversions already reported. The campaign there began the same week in April that the political uprising started. Both sides in the political struggle are said to be supporting the work. The campaign is scheduled to end with a preaching crusade from January through March.

Rx For The Masses

An awesome spiritual hunger among North Americans is reflected in the unprecedented demand for Billy Graham’s new book, World Aflame. In one week alone, 29,542 copies were shipped from the Doubleday publishing firm to bookstores from coast to coast.

“In our opinion,” said a Doubleday spokesman, “this is a weekly record sale for any book ever.”

In the first eight weeks the book was on the market, it sold 263,430 copies and skyrocketed to the nation’s best seller list.

The book is basically an evangelistic appeal, highly readable and provocative. Its thoroughly biblical content ranges from the origin of sin and the predicament of modern man to the Christian believer’s social responsibility and his perspective for the end time.

I, Zondervan, Take Thee, Harper …

Harper & Row of New York, one of America’s top book publishers, is selling most of its Bible department to Zondervan, the evangelical firm in Grand Rapids. On January 1, Zondervan will assume rights to the King James and Revised Standard Versions, the Harper Study Bible, and Bagster’s New Testament.

Harper salesmen will represent Zondervan to secular buyers, while Zondervan’s staff concentrates on religious bookstores. The sale (price not made public) gives Zondervan a New York foothold and strategic distribution, and complements its effort to upgrade its catalogue.

Harper plans to expand its general religious offerings and will continue to publish the Moffatt Bible translation and the forthcoming New Testament translation by William Barclay. Harper said it left the Bible field, in part, to avoid the complex, specialized production problems it entails.

New Design For Church Education

Bethany Press is publishing an 848-page book for Christian educators to use as a basic reference tool in church curriculum planning. The five-pound tome is entitled The Church’s Educational Ministry: A Curriculum Plan. It retails for $18.95.

Publication of the book culminates a five-year joint undertaking by sixteen denominations through the National Council of Churches’ Division of Christian Education. Eight NCC member denominations cooperated in the endeavor, known as the Cooperative Curriculum Project. However, no Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Lutheran groups were included. Neither were United Presbyterians.

Shuttlesworth Shake-Up

When Cincinnati’s Revelation Baptist Church voted 284 to 276 to keep the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth as pastor November 4, it seemed he had squeezed out a final victory.

But dissident members carried on their campaign (see News. October 22, page 45). A motion filed in Common Pleas Court five days after the church meeting claimed that unauthorized members voted and that the moderator misapplied terms under which the meeting was held.

Shuttlesworth, civil rights aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, called the vote “a great victory” and stressed “love and forgiveness.” He said the main issue was his firing of a woman Sunday school superintendent who disagreed with him. A later charge was that he bought a new church site without consulting church members. The dissidents’ lawyer, Smith Tyler, Jr., chairman of the local Barry Goldwater campaign last year, calls Shuttlesworth’s claims of a right-wing cabal against him a “smoke screen.”

JAMES L. ADAMS

Matching Gift

Gordon Divinity School is being offered a challenge grant of $175, 000 to erect a new library building on its suburban Boston campus. Following a pattern now used by numerous big donors, the school will be expected to raise an equal amount on its own to be eligible for the grant. A Gordon spokesman said the donor prefers anonymity.

A $25,000,000 Ruckus

Dr. Thomas J. J. Altizer, one of the “God is dead” movement’s outspoken pallbearers, is creating an acid test for academic freedom at Methodist-owned Emory University.

National publicity of Altizer’s startling theology spotted the start of Emory’s $25 million fund-raising drive, biggest ever in the Atlanta area. A display ad in the Atlanta Journal advised: “If this disturbs you like it does me and a few other Emory alumni, write the office of president of Emory and tell them why you, like me, are not donating.…”

The chairman of the fund drive is William R. Bowdoin, a banker and Emory trustee. He fears the effects of Altizer’s views, called the 38-year-old professor “irresponsible,” and rumbled, “I wish he’d leave and leave promptly.”

Emory’s board chairman, Henry L. Bowden, said a teacher at a Christian university who expounds anti-Christian principles “is fouling his own nets.” Nobody would expect to get away with it at a Roman Catholic school, he added.

Among those pressing for dismissal is the retired bishop of Atlanta, Arthur J. Moore, also of the Emory board. He stated, “I do not think there is a place … for a man who denies the basic tenets” of Christianity.

Altizer admitted to the New York Times: “If I were fired I’d have a hell of a time getting a job.” But Altizer has tenure, and university President Sanford S. Atwood supports his right to stay on and say what he wants.

The most acute embarrassment occurred at Emory’s Candler School of Theology, one of the Methodist Church’s twelve official seminaries. Its dean, Dr. William R. Cannon, favors academic freedom but is aware that the principle is “a lot more saleable on the campus than it is off.”

Cannon issued a 1,400-word statement pointing out that Altizer teaches religion in the liberal arts college, not the theology school; is a layman; and is not a Methodist.

As to Altizer’s ideas, Cannon said the “God is dead” slogan has some truth in it if it means many people are indifferent to Him today. But Altizer means much more than that. He claims God’s death is a historical event of our time. He recently told students at a lecture sponsored by Duke University’s Methodist Divinity School that the quest for “total redemption … demands the death of the Christian God, the God who is … the almighty Creator.”

Introduction To American Theology

Britain’s Princess Margaret and her husband, Lord Snowdon, got a lesson in theological problems during their visit to the United States last month. While in Tucson, Arizona, they attended an Episcopal church where the Rev. George Ferguson preached on the current rash of theological opinion asserting that “God is dead.” Ferguson said he had “no doubt of the excellence of God’s health, but I am sure he is irritated with the children he has created.”

Edinburgh: A Jurisdictional Dispute

In the eyes of Samuel Johnson “contradicting a bishop” was an appalling prospect, but even the resourceful doctor would have been speechless before last month’s Scottish controversy wherein bishop contradicted bishop. It all began when the Rev. John Tirrell, a California Episcopalian currently pursuing doctoral studies at New College, Edinburgh, arranged to assist Dr. Harry Whitley, minister of the High Kirk of St. Giles, John Knox’s old pulpit.

In entering this Presbyterian area Tirrell incurred the displeasure of Dr. Kenneth Carey, Episcopal Bishop of Edinburgh, who inhibited him from officiating in any of the diocese’s churches, because the bishop holds that no minister can operate in two denominations simultaneously. But Tirrell’s home bishop, the Right Rev. James Pike, made it clear from his temporary base at Cambridge University that Tirrell was still subject to his jurisdiction and had his approval for the ecumenical gesture.

Protesting that he had not been consulted, Carey demanded an apology from Tirrell and Whitley, and a guarantee that Tirrell’s work at St. Giles would not be “a sacramental ministry.” A further condition imposed was that Tirrell be subject ultimately to Carey’s jurisdiction. This elicited from Pike a “godly admonition” forbidding Tirrell to apologize. Tirrell holds that having been ordained to the priesthood in the Church of God, and to be a faithful dispenser of the Word and sacraments, he could not in conscience accept Carey’s conditions.

The resultant publicity spotlighted a subject on which Scottish churchmen tend to be nervous: relations between the national church (1,270,000 communicants) and its little episcopal sister (55,000). It seems clear that Dr. Carey is applying the rules of his church correctly, but Bishop Pike is not noticeably inhibited by the letter of someone else’s law, and Dr. Whitley (the only Scot of the quartet) has inherited some of Knox’s relish for controversy in a worthy cause.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Dutchmen Differ

The Free University of Amsterdam came under fire from Dutch Reformed churchmen in South Africa last month for granting an honorary doctorate to Dr. Martin Luther King (see November 19, 1965 issue, page 47). At its synod in Capetown, the Dutch Reformed Church of the Cape Province adopted a resolution charging King with Communist sympathies. It said that his “political views could not be regarded as Christian in character.”

Rhodesian Regime Under Fire

“Now therefore we, the Government of Rhodesia, in humble submission to Almighty God, who controls the destiny of nations, conscious that the people of Rhodesia have always shown unswerving loyalty and devotion to Her Majesty the Queen and earnestly praying that we the people of Rhodesia will not be hindered in our determination to continue exercising our undoubted right to demonstrate the same loyalty and devotion in seeking to promote the common good so that the dignity and freedom of all men may be assured, do by this proclamation adopt, enact and give to the people of Rhodesia the Constitution annexed hereto. God save the Queen!”

In these pious terms Prime Minister Ian D. Smith issued a long-threatened unilateral declaration of independence for Rhodesia, and promptly provoked the wrath of churchmen around the world who stood ready to denounce his giving the nation’s 220,000 whites an autonomous upper hand over its 4,000,000 blacks.

“This action of the Rhodesian government is a very serious and mistaken policy which we can only deeply deplore,” said Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches. “Tragic” and “totally irresponsible” was the way a Methodist Board of Missions official put it. “We stand with the world in horror,” said United Presbyterian leaders.

Little support was given the Archbishop of Canterbury’s endorsement of force against Rhodesia, but the United Christian Missionary Society (Disciples of Christ) voiced approval of economic sanctions.

In the Rhodesian capital of Salisbury, Smith became the target of criticism from the nation’s leading Anglican clergyman. Bishop Cecil Alderson, citing “laws designed to subvert the spirit of the displaced (1961) constitution,” added that “submission under protest will not be enough.… There is a Christian right and maybe a Christian duty to disobey.”

Viet Nam Circuit Riders

Conflict or not, South Viet Nam’s churchmen have a job to do, one which continually takes them into enemy areas and brushes with the Viet Cong.

The area along “Route 19” is typical. This key road is the only supply link between Quinhon, on the coast, and the central highlands, including the Second Corps headquarters at Pleiku. Some 15,000 refugees have huddled in the foothills along the route.

A native pastor recently tried to visit a sick Christian in a village north of Quinhon and stumbled into a Viet Cong nerve center where a major attack was in the making. He was arrested, and soon United States forces began bombardment. The minister found himself thrown into underground shelters with VC troops. Eventually a rebel vouched for him and he was freed. Under unrelenting crossfire, he dodged his way across paddies, woods, and muck to safety.

The Tin Lanh (“Good News”) Church’s district superintendent in this area must cover Quang Nam province, in which only a few coastal towns are “secure.” Last month he was stopped twice and almost shot while bicycling toward the church at Phuoc Tien, a village tucked up against the jungle mountain range. After hot questioning, in which he admitted getting a lift in a U.S. helicopter, he finally got through to Tam Ky on the coast in time to preach Sunday morning.

Buildings survive as well as men. Reports are that Marines spared a village marked for devastation south of Chu Lai when they saw a tiny church atop a small rise. The VC now control the village, but the church still stands.

Another small church (23 feet wide and 46 feet long) was dedicated October 31 in primitive Khe Sanh, which is in the northern jungle hugging the 17th parallel. Missionaries flying in are used to facing VC gunfire. All roads to town have long since been cut by the VC, but resourceful, dedicated natives, with help from Special Forces men and planes, managed to build and furnish the church. It took a year. A fierce battle raged the week before the dedication, but the church was not attacked. The VC can hit Khe Sanh any time they please. But for now, the believers don’t have to brave the elements and the tigers to worship. One member told a missionary, “From the beginning of creation we tribesmen have never had anything so great. This truly is a place where we meet the Great God of the Skies and he meets us.”

DALE HERENDEEN

Deaths

HENDRIK KRAEMER, 71, noted Dutch Reformed churchman who served from 1947 to 1955 as director of the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Institute; in Driebergen, Netherlands.

W. VERNON MIDDLETON, 62, Methodist bishop for western Pennsylvania, of a heart attack; in Pittsburgh.

CARL MICHALSON, 50, professor of systematic theology at Drew University, killed in the crash of a commercial airliner near Cincinnati, where he was to have given an address the next day on “Life and Its Setting: The Meaning and Experience of Existence.”

EVERETT F. SWANSON, 51, Baptist minister who resigned his Chicago church to embark on a worldwide evangelistic tour out of which grew Compassion, Inc., largest orphanage work in Korea; in Chicago.

The Cambodian Twist

Cambodia finally got rid of its last Christian and Missionary Alliance missionaries from North America by refusing to extend residence permits. Subsequently, four leading Cambodian pastors were arrested because it was illegal for them to preach or hold services once their sponsoring mission had dissolved. Missionary News Service reports the Alliance in France hopes to take over administration of the Cambodian churches so they can regain legal status.

Book Briefs: December 3, 1965

William J. Samarin

Are All Men Lost?

Christ in Modern Athens: The Confrontation of Christianity with Modern Culture and the Non-Christian Religions, by C. J. Bleeker (E. J. Brill [Leiden, Holland], 1965, 152 pp., 12 guilders), is reviewed by William J. Samarin, associate professor of linguistics, Hartford Seminary Foundation, Hartford, Connecticut.

The Millennium, according to this book, will be brought into the world by dialogue. The prophecy comes in the final sentence of the last chapter: “… all true believers will be able to understand and appreciate each other’s values, without having to relinquish the particular faith that is so dear to them.” By “believers” the author does not mean Christians only but all sincerely religious people.

One must not get the impression, however, that this is a tract for the Universalist Church or any other system of its type. The author makes very clear claims for the unique contribution of Christianity to the discovery of truth. He places himself unequivocally in the Christian fold. At times he is disarmingly evangelical: for example, “… there is no hope of sanctification of human life and of the world-order, unless we place our trust in the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit which emanates from God and of which Jesus Christ is the bearer” (p. 146).

How this profession is squared with Bleeker’s other views about non-Christian religions is the most interesting feature of this book. It is very clear that it is Christianity of a very special type that can harmoniously co-exist with them. (a) Christ is distinct because of his power to inspire man; “His essence is a secret which we sense, but can never wholly express in words” (p. 145). (b) As for God, we are reminded again and again that he is transcendental; but he is also “neither personal nor impersonal, but supra-personal” (p. 118), as seen in Hinduism and Christianity, whose views are “of equal value.”

It would be reprehensible, however, to give the impression that Bleeker has unburdened himself of the embarrassing claims of historic Christianity simply to make room for other faiths. Here is a man who has been grappling with the terribly knotty question of the relation between Christianity, to which he would like to remain faithful, and the other religions he has examined as professor of the history and phenomenology of religions (University of Amsterdam). This is an honest attempt to try to answer that question.

Bleeker believes that the answer must be biblically justified (p. xii), but one will find it neither in the life and ministry of Christ nor in the Pauline epistles (pp. 11–16). Rather, it is to be found in Paul’s “sermon” at Athens, for it was here that Paul had to change his missionary strategy; here was the first encounter between the Gospel and autonomous Greek culture (p. 17). For example, by his acknowledgment that “in everything that concerns religion you are uncommonly scrupulous” (Bleeker’s translation), Paul acknowledged the value of their form of religion.

There is something patently odd about this exegesis. Unfortunately, it is never fully used in the development of a thesis. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the book is that it is poorly organized. One learns a great deal about the subject in general, but he is left with too many loose ends. Time and time again Bleeker takes up what seems to be a major point in the argument only to dispatch it in one paragraph. Again and again he tells the reader that a detailed exposition is beyond the scope of his book.

The author makes at least two other curious statements, neither of which inspires confidence in his critical use of source data. One is that “the leap forward from the primitive to the ancient stage of religion came about almost simultaneously in the fourth millennium B.C.…” (p. 137). It seems to me that there is precious little information about prehistoric “primitive religion,” but that the study of contemporary “primitive” societies reveals religious beliefs of great sophistication. The other statement is that General MacArthur resigned his commission after President Truman refused him permission to cross the Yalu River because an electronic computer had ruled that China would declare war on the United States if this step were taken!

Nonetheless, I will not demean this book. In fact, I recommend it for every library. It has something to say to students of comparative religion, Christian apologists, and everyone concerned with the mission of the Church. It can serve as an introduction to the views currently being advocated in some Protestant circles, such as those of Max Warren, John V. Taylor, Kenneth Cragg, and others, in the “Christian Presence Series” (SCM Press). Unfortunately, Bleeker makes few comparisons between his own views and those of other writers, the notable exceptions being Karl Barth and Hendrik Kraemer. The works cited are mostly in German or Dutch (with quotations from the former untranslated).

Christ in Modern Athens reminds us that there are many terrible problems to wrestle with. “Are all men lost?” is one of them. It is a profound question that deserves better answers than it gets from the average missionary. The sympathetic and serious “Paul of the twentieth century” very often discovers that he never really had answers to begin with. When confronted with the competitive alternatives of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, many have “gone to pieces,” as one missionary to India reported to me. Or if they maintain their equilibrium after having honestly tried to understand the non-Christian religions, it is because they have relinquished all judgment to God: “We work in the light we have; God must decide who are His.” When compared with Bleeker’s solution to the problem, this one is no answer at all. He would insist that Christianity makes a unique contribution, one that complements the truth in other religions: i.e., God is love.

WILLIAM J. SAMARIN

Family Renewal

The Church Looks at Family Life, by Evelyn Millis Duvall, David R. Mace, and Paul Popenoe (Broadman, 1964, 167 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Gerald P. Hubers, pastor, Riverside Christian Reformed Church, Riverside, California.

The twelve chapters of this very helpful and timely book were delivered as lectures at a recent Southern Baptist conference on family life. In a time when the dissolution of the American home is becoming altogether too common, it is very appropriate that the Church take a searching look at its role in confronting this blight on our society.

The lectures were presented by three nationally recognized authorities on family life, and two characteristics are especially striking in the work of all three. The first is the excellent documentation in sociological studies; the authors are not content with hearsay. The second is the concern that Christianity must permeate all our relationships, and especially that most personal and intimate one, marriage. In their concern, the authors do not fear to rest on the authority of the Word of God, which has something to say to our contemporary problems.

The burden of the book is that the Church has a vital duty in the area of family life. Popenoe points out that this has always been a function of the Church but that during the last generation intruders have sought to push the ministry of the Church away from this concern.

The authors are helpful in stimulating one’s thought on the proper role of the Church in family life. The book is not exhaustive, and is not intended to be so; but it is an excellent survey, in readily readable form, that should serve to alert the Church of the problems and point toward solutions.

GERALD P. HUBERS

Job Still Suffers

The Anchor Bible, Volume 15: Job, translation and notes by Marvin H. Pope (Doubleday, 1965, 295 pp., $6), is reviewed by Carl E. DeVries, research associate, The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Luxor, United Arab Republic.

This is another volume of the Anchor Bible, a new Bible translation complete with introduction and notes. Widely advertised as “ecumenical,” the Anchor Bible is in effect a sort of conglomerate, for the various volumes are done by scholars of diverse theological positions.

Those who appreciate a philological commentary will enjoy this book. The author’s far-ranging knowledge and thorough acquaintance with the sources make his work an excellent tool for getting at the meaning of the Hebrew text. This reviewer found reading the commentary notes to be a stimulating, almost exciting experience, though he did not always agree with the commentator.

The introduction is the least happy section of Professor Pope’s volume, though it contains useful material, including a bibliography. The author’s views on biblical criticism reflect an essentially liberal position, but he aims at a middle ground on textual problems. The text of Job is admittedly difficult; many scholars are reluctant to come to grips with it. Though Pope concludes that the date of the book is unknown, he leans toward the seventh century, while suggesting that certain parts may be much older.

Pope’s summary of the content of Job and his approach to various related difficulties are based on an artificial interpretation not sustained by the text; as one result, the literary integrity of Job suffers. He has overplayed the theological differences between Job and his comforters; he does not acknowledge that an essential agreement of their views runs through the book. The main difference between Job and his friends was not one of belief but one of judgment of Job’s personal experience: to Job, his testing was an enigma; to his friends, it became a stumbling block.

The translation of Job is generally excellent, though not, of course, above criticism. It is fairly literal, avoiding the often loose paraphrastic turn currently popular. Often the translator’s knowledge of Ugaritic and related materials has enabled him to recognize the correct meaning of a word whose rare use in Hebrew had left it incorrectly understood.

Specialized learning has its limitations for the interpreter; Professor Pope’s familiarity with the mythologies of the Near East, particularly of Ugarit, has led him to see many mythological allusions in the text (though he does reject more extreme mythological references suggested by other commentators). His interpretation of Behemoth and Leviathan is especially unconvincing.

Numerous details invite extensive discussion. One can but summarize by stating that Pope has given us a challenging and helpful work on the age-old questions of Job, though he, like most of his predecessors, does not probe deeply the central theme of suffering and the divine will.

CARL E. DEVRIES

One-Way Dialogue

Belief and Unbelief: A Philosophy of Self-Knowledge, by Michael Novak (Macmillan, 1965, 223 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

While this book at times provides interesting reading, it is on the whole an airing of doubts that reaches no secure faith. Novak, assistant professor in humanities at Stanford, concludes that belief and unbelief are “rival conceptualizations of human intentionality,” but that nonbeliever and believer share a spiritual unity at a deeper than conceptual level.

The author pictures the modern intellectual world as largely unbelieving and the world of believers as largely unreflective. The contrast is overdrawn. Yet he is surely on firm ground in noting that the bias of the universities is against faith in the supernatural. He roots the case for faith in “intelligent subjectivity,” a refinement of existential encounter that he distinguishes—in theory at least—from subjectivism. Belief and unbelief offer alternative affirmations of one’s own identity.

The God of redemptive revelation nowhere speaks for himself in this dialogue; it is remarkable that Jesus Christ can be considered as irrelevant to the case for theism as he is in this volume. One is not surprised, therefore, that in this confused search the author seeks to understand God by understanding himself—and fails for that very reason.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Land And Religious Freedom

Public Regulation of the Religious Use of Land, by James E. Curry (The Michie Company, 1964, 429 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Thomas S. Bunn, lawyer, La Canada, California.

This book will intrigue those who believe there is an effective movement to interfere with Protestant church expansion through municipal regulations called “zone variances.” The author redefines the relative rights of churches and municipalities in this matter. He speaks of the possible abuses of regulatory power and our obligation to be alert to such dangers; but he shows that urbanization requires restraints against the former almost complete freedom of religious groups to build churches and schools where they pleased. He further shows that our courts are generally fair to all religious groups that are themselves fair to others.

Included is an exhaustive case history of the judicial development of the principles on which zone variances are granted or denied. The author makes clear the necessity and absolute fairness of abandoning the old rule in the light of modern traffic patterns, parking problems, and the present “big business” of church construction. In granting or denying permits for the location and use of property for religious purposes, municipalities should, says Curry, give full consideration to the general welfare of the areas affected as well as to freedom of religion and worship. He shows that much of the publicity given decisions adverse to church applications was deceptive in that rulings actually based on proper municipal requirements for variances were misinterpreted as denials of religious rights.

The book is excellently organized and indexed. Its greatest value lies in what lawyers would call its comprehensive “brief” on the title subject; each major judicial decision is appropriately treated. Every person whose duty it is to counsel or decide on matters in this area should have a copy of this book at his elbow.

THOMAS S. BUNN

Contemporary

Contemporary Theatre and the Christian Faith, by Kay M. Baxter (Abingdon, 1965, 112 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Calvin D. Linton, professor of English literature and dean of arts and sciences, George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

Western literature has had no broadly adequate frame of reference since the disintegration in public belief of that great scheme of divine order usefully called, in the Renaissance, “Christian humanism,” a fusion of Judeo-Christian and Platonic traditions. It is possible to say with some reason that Milton’s are the last major works in English to express a self-consciously complete cosmic orderliness. Surely from the early nineteenth-century Romantics on, modern literature has increasingly reflected the gradual fragmentation of philosophical patterns and the “dissociation of sensibility” of which Eliot speaks. No modern frame of reference has begun to replace the old in scope, in artistic relevance, or in validity—not Freudianism, Jungianism, Communism, Statism, scientism, behaviorism, or whatever the current fad may be. As Stephen Spender has pointed out, no modern writer is “modern” for more than a decade. One may almost go further: if he’s published, he’s obsolete.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find much modern literature reflecting—often unconsciously, usually brokenly, unbelievingly, and sometimes grudgingly—fragments of the old patterns of the Christian world view and its interpretation of man. Sometimes, since it is impossible to create (in the really primary sense) a totally different kind of reality from the one our heritage gives us, originality consists chiefly of inverting the old one—as Joyce does in his later works. A kind of Mass said backwards.

It is possible, therefore, if one views certain modern literary works from far enough away, to see, as one in an airplane sees the dim outlines on the earth of ancient roads or cities, the faint patterns of ancient and abandoned beliefs and creeds. It is dangerous, of course, to assume that every cryptic or obscure passage in modern drama is a hidden foundation stone laid by the Judeo-Christian tradition; but it is foolish to neglect the fairly obvious outlines of old beliefs when they appear, even when they are deliberately obscured and perverted.

Mrs. Baxter, former head of the Religious Drama Society of Great Britain and presently a Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, examines in this volume ten dramas by ten modern authors, including. Samuel Beckett, Graham Greene, Albert Camus, John Osborne, Christopher Fry, Tennessee Williams, and others. Her stated purpose is “to see points at which the ‘new’ theatre illuminates problems Christians face in understanding and communicating their faith.”

One of the most useful things she does is to remind our forgetful or careless age of some of the basic themes and types of the Christian belief itself. She quite validly, for example, sees Beckett as showing forth the Suffering Servant role of Messiah in the character of Lucky in Waiting for Godot, and in doing so not only illuminates a particular play but perhaps introduces many readers to this aspect of prophetic literature. On the other hand, she helpfully reminds the reader who is theologically learned but not familiar with contemporary modes in the arts that it is as futile to interpret Christian pockets of meaning in Camus, Anouilh, or Osborne in terms of traditional creeds as it is to interpret Dante or Spenser existentially or in terms of Freud. (And the latter tendency, I think, is more destructive to critical sense in our day than the former.) In the modern drama she treats of, the great quests are for identity and communication. The search may be almost invisible beneath the surface sensationalism of a Williams, for example, or in the chalk-screeching self-psychoanalysis of Osborne’s soliloquies; but to the careful ear the notes of plainsong may be occasionally detected, just as the eye, viewing a heap of rubble, may see a few foundation stones of what once was a cathedral.

Mrs. Baxter’s knowledge, sensitivity, insight, and prose style all combine to make this book greatly useful to anyone interested in contemporary drama.

CALVIN D. LINTON

Theology Before Need

The Church Reclaims the City, by Paul Moore, Jr. (Seabury, 1964, 241 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Melvin D. Hugen, pastor, Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Truman Douglas has said, “In almost direct proportion to the increasing importance of the city in American culture has been the withdrawal—both physical and spiritual—of the Protestant Church. If Protestantism gives up the city, it virtually gives up America. Yet that is precisely what it has been doing” (quoted on p. 27).

Many books analyze the problems of an urban ministry, but few suggest solutions. Analysis is not absent from this book, but the author goes beyond it to proposals. Paul Moore, a bishop in the Episcopal Church, has written a practical handbook for laymen and clergy. He concentrates on the historic parish church and what it can do in its community, whether downtown, in the inner-city slum, or in a transitional, blighted area. He begins from the thesis that the parish is still a viable institution even though it has many specific weaknesses (pp. 84–91).

The major part of this book is devoted to specific suggestions for the parish church in beginning and expanding an urban ministry. Moore avoids methodism. He gives suggestions, alternatives, and possible answers to specific problems without rigidity.

One strength of this book is that it approaches the evangelistic ministry of the church, not as another program added to the educational work and the worship services, but as an aspect of each part of the total ministry.

Although the emphasis is on how the urban church can minister to its community, Moore clearly sees that the “failure of the Church in the city has been a failure, not of technique, but of theology” (p. 43). The usual approach to a theology of urban work has been an “attempt to discover the seeming needs of the people of the city” and apply “the appropriate theological poultice.” Moore begins his theological basis for urban work with the premise, “man’s needs cannot determine theological principle” (pp. 44, 45).

As one who ministers in a parish in a transitional area, I found his description of the spiritual trauma experienced by the established congregation beginning an urban ministry to have hairline accuracy (pp. 131–34), and his insights and proposals to have immediate value.

MELVIN D. HUGEN

Book Briefs

The World’s Christmas: Stories from Many Lands, by Olive Wyon (Fortress, 1965, 184 pp., $2.95). Christmas stories more for adults than children, and for such recommended.

The True Wilderness, by H. A. Williams (Lippincott, 1965, 168 pp., $2.95). The title could be a symbol of the author’s theology.

Understanding Your Teen-Agers, by Ray F. Koonce (Broadman, 1965, 141 pp., $2.95). A book parents and ministers will read with profit.

Descent into Darkness: The Destruction of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia, 1917–1923, by James J. Zatko (University of Notre Dame, 1965, 232 pp., $6.95).

Bible Key Words, Volume V: Hope, Life and Death, by Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Heinrich Rengstorf (Harper and Row, 1965, 125 pp., $4.50). The concepts “hope” and “life and death” as treated chiefly by R. Bultmann in Kittel’s theological wordbook of the New Testament.

Himalayan Heartbeat, by Ken Anderson (Word Books, 1965, 198 pp., $3.75). The story of a doctor practicing first-century Christianity in twentieth-century dimensions.

Secrets, by Paul Tournier, translated by Joe Embry (John Knox, 1965, 63 pp., $2). Tournier discusses the religious and psychological aspects of the right to have secrets.

Billy Sunday, by D. Bruce Lockerbie (Word Books, 1965, 64 pp., $3.50). The spectacular story of his life, two of his colorful sermons word for word, plus more than 100 photographs of the man and his ministry.

Bed and Board: Plain Talk about Marriage, by Robert Farrar Capon (Simon and Schuster, 1965, 173 pp., $3.95). A bread-and-butter talk about marriage and family living, with just the right combinations of yeast and salt.

Counseling with Teen-Agers, by Robert A. Bless and the staff of First Community Church, Columbus, Ohio (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 144 pp., $2.95). The product of a team of seven ministers who worked together in one church.

The New Testament, Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition (Nelson, 1965, 250 pp., $3.50). The Protestant Revised Standard Version as edited by Roman Catholics for Roman Catholics. An appendix lists all changes made in text and notes. The list is short.

Christ on Campus: Meditations for College Life, by Donald L. Deffner (Concordia, 1965, 156 pp., $2.75). This book of devotions may drive some college students back to God.

Westminster Study Bible, Revised Standard Version (William Collins, 1965, 1,775 pp., $8.95). The Westminster Study Bible, this time based on the Revised Standard Version; hence all footnotes, the introduction, and other articles have been revised accordingly.

The Prophets for Today: Devotional Meditations, by Thomas Coates (Concordia, 1965,115 pp., $2). A very good book of brief devotionals.

Paperbacks

Christmas: An American Annual of Christmas Literature and Art, edited by Randolph E. Haugan (Augsburg, 1965, 68 pp., $1.50). The thirty-fifth anniversary edition reflects the joy and reverence of Christmas in art, literature, stamps, poetry, and music.

The Comfortable Pew, by Pierre Berton (J. B. Lippincott, 1965, 137 pp., $1.95). A critical tract that is not, says the author, for Roman Catholics, or for hard-core fundamentalist and evangelical churches. The author, a one-time Anglican, now attends no church at all but writes nonetheless about the comfortable pew.

Minimal Religion, by Frederick Nymeyer (Libertarian Press, 1964, 384 pp., $3). The author comes out strongly against Marxistic and socialistic economic interpretations in the name of his own economic interpretation of Christianity: Adam was created ignorant of the complexities of social life and with only a potentiality for true “knowledge, righteousness, and holiness”; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the symbol of private property; original sin is theft; the “cause” of sin lies in the limited character of creation, i.e., the amount of material things is limited (“if there were no welfare shortage there would be no motivation to sin”). On such a basis he proceeds to the minimal essence of Christianity and its meaning for socio-economic life.

- More from William J. Samarin

Parable of the Baker

Howard A. Snyder

Long ago in a certain village there lived a man who was a baker. The village was small, and the baker was able to supply all the bread the people needed.

As time went on, the baker became prosperous. He began devoting less and less time to making bread and before long was spending only about half his time at it. Soon a bread shortage developed in the town, but the baker didn’t seem to notice it.

Gradually a change began to take place in the baker’s attitude toward his trade. His bread was almost never eaten in his own home, since there was such an abundance of rich foods from other lands, and the baker began to lose interest in bread as a food. Yet because it was still his business he was very much concerned about bow it was made, for the more efficiently he produced it, the larger his profit would be.

So it was that the baker became more interested in bread-making than in the bread itself. In fact, he began to draw up theories of baking during his spare time. This became almost an obsession, and soon he closed his bakery in order to devote all his time to studying the theory of baking.

Alone in his study, the baker began to shape his new theory of bread. He had discovered, he said, “a new world within the oven.” His new theory of baking attracted much attention within the industry, and soon the baker was making the rounds of bakers’ conferences, wheat growers’ associations, and schools of nutrition. His new theory was exciting; he called it “neo-baking.” Many leading bakers were interested in it, and neo-baking soon caught on throughout the country.

Meanwhile, the people back in the home town were bewildered. They tried to be charitable with the baker, but most of them had to admit that they simply couldn’t understand all this neo-baking stuff. They said things like, “I don’t care what he calls it, but I surely wish he’d start baking again,” and, “When are we ever going to get some of this neo-baked bread?,” and, “I’m hungry!”

But the baker was far away from these needs, lecturing on neo-baking and writing books about how badly the new theory of baking was needed. He said it wasn’t really bread in an objective sense that was required; men needed to discover the truth of the inner reality of the baking principle. The rest of the baker’s life was spent propounding his theory.

In time, a young man back in the home town found an answer to the bread shortage. He discovered that the hunger of the townspeople could be met by a substance made by baking ground-up kernels of wheat. This he called “bread.”

“Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”

—HOWARD A. SNYDER, Wilmore, Kentucky.

- More from Howard A. Snyder

Swinging the Sword of the Spirit

Robert S. Lutz

Suppose you suddenly learn that the President will be in your congregation …

“Perch Danny on the edge of the typewriter!” Years ago I started the practice of imagining my son right there on the edge of the typewriter and talking to him as I wrote my sermon. If I could make the Bible clear to him, if I could bring the message of Christ to him with understanding, conviction, persuasion, explanation, and the power of the Holy Spirit, then I could hope it would come with similar power to others.

To swing the sword of the Spirit as skillfully as possible, preparation of the sermon means to me a schedule: Tuesday—get topic; Thursday—outline; Friday—write; Saturday—make notes for preaching; early Sunday morning—memorize, fill mind and heart with the message.

This schedule presupposes a notebook of sermon ideas kept constantly through the years, previous weeks of thinking on scripturally suggested ideas, and consideration of seasons, variety, needs of people, teaching-coverage of biblical truth.

When I begin my sermon outline, at the top of the first page I write (in addition to topic and text) the purpose for this sermon, stated in one succinct sentence. Unless I can get this purpose stated clearly and simply, I waste endless time in sermon preparation. I have to get it stated and then keep aiming at it, usually with five points. If I use three points, people remember the three points. If I use five points, they tend to remember the main sermon thrust rather than the five points.

After the outlining and writing, and before early Sunday morning, come the “questions.” Christ asked the disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” I have to ask myself: Who does this sermon say Christ is? What are people going to think of the Saviour because of this sermon? Does the sermon give main biblical truth about this subject, or am I off on a tangent? Are the big and important things of the Gospel there, or have I been piddling with the picayune? Does the sermon reflect something of the splendor of God and the exaltation of living in the heavenlies with Christ? Is it dull? Is the main thesis really worth preaching?

Early Sunday morning brings praying and memorizing. I talk the sermon over with the Lord point by point one last time. I try to memorize, not just words, but ideas, and order of truth, and the general material I have used to get this truth to people. If I cannot memorize the ideas, if they are not that valuable and orderly and clear, nobody else will remember them.

As I deliver the sermon, I must be free to let the Lord use me. I must not be tied to manuscript or notes. It may seem important to some to read their sermons in order to get well-turned phrases and striking metaphors over to the congregation. But Christianity today shows the effect—a beautiful anemia, and a lack of the vigorous vitality of biblical conviction! The sermon must always be the very truth of God come to life through the person of the man of God. It must glow through his thought and understanding, through his spirit of love for God, through the voicing of the message of the sermon. Into the lives of the people must come those blessings God offers—hope, glory, transformation, forgiveness, salvation.

When I begin to deliver the sermon, I may get scared. Maybe those in the congregation do not look lovable. If not, they probably are reflecting me; I may not look lovable either. I must love them first, and awaken in them, if need be, love for God. It helps to start talking to some one person in the congregation who evidently (a glance will tell) has beat me to this loving business. That moment of rapport gives me courage and freedom to face and try to reach every person in the congregation.

In delivering the sermon, I must suit my attitude to the content of the message. I must be interested in it myself. I cannot be like the postman, who, after he has delivered the package at the door, could not care less what happens to it. Interest and attitude both are involved. To give a message of the love of Christ as if I am angry at the people for not loving—this is like a dog’s trying to get the mailman to pet him by barking violently and rushing madly at him. If I am going to preach on sin, it should not be too sweetly preached, as if I did not want to part with my sin or get the people too upset about parting with theirs.

That sermon is important. I must realize that. I must remember the little dark corridor of the apartment where I visited yesterday, and the dim room, and the despairing soul with whom I prayed. The sermon itself may not be great; but the Saviour whom I present is great, and he is going to make a tremendous difference in the life and soul of that person through the sermon. I must think of that, and think of the tragedies and joys of person after person in the congregation as I bring to them this truth from God’s Word.

Often my sermon does not seem big and important the way I want it to be. But the Lord taught me a lesson about “little sermons.” It was a week when my sermon was to be on “national missions.” It should have been big, important. The topic was worthy of that. I prayed, thought, studied, read. It just did not come out the “size” I would have liked. To cap it all, on Saturday night people began phoning to ask whether I knew that President Eisenhower would be in our church the next morning. Me with my weak little sermon! And after all my effort, nothing had changed by sermon time Sunday morning. I committed the message to the Lord and preached it because I knew it was true and I was doing it for his sake.

That day I was glad it was not my turn to stand at the main door to greet people. Maybe I would not have to face the President. At the little side door a few people came and greeted me, and I them. Suddenly there was the President standing in front of me and shaking hands. He said simply: “We need that.” When he had gone I found in my hand a fifty-dollar bill he had put in it. Then I understood what he had said as he moved away: “Put that to the work!” The sermon still was little. But the President had listened to the bigness of Christ’s truth, not to the smallness of my sermon. It was a big subject, and a big God, and a big Saviour, and a big need among people.

Many of our sermons are likely to belittle, but we can be confident that God wants to get his big saving truth of Christ into the hearts and lives of people. And that changes the size of things!

—THE REV. ROBERT S. LUTZ,

minister, Corona Presbyterian Church, Denver, Colorado.

- More from Robert S. Lutz

The Overriding Ecumenists and the Restless Laity

The Editors

A tide of concern rises as laymen seek to preserve their churches

One of the significant developments in American Protestantism this year is the emergence of groups of evangelical laymen seeking to preserve the historic standards of their denominations and to renew the evangelistic vitality of their churches.

In many mainline denominations, lay indignation over institutional involvement in political affairs has been running at high tide. Uneasiness over politically oriented ecumenism, theological looseness, and evangelistic neglect has sharpened criticism of the National Council of Churches. Denominational leaders who serve on interlocking commissions and share in that body’s objectionable pronouncements are also under fire. Some lay leaders openly complain that in some extremist positions taken by its commissions—such as urging a welcome for Red China in the U. N.—the NCC has gone so far afield and is so much involved in secular affairs that the Los Angeles Dodgers might be regarded as a less offensive symbol of Christian unity.

But the emergence of lay movements now marks a further step in the expressed discontent of many church members. Groups like the Presbyterian Lay Committee specifically look to laymen—in distinction from the clergy—as the brightest hope, if not the last remaining hope, of preserving some historic denominations from corrupting inroads. They are distressed over theological vagabondage, moral confusion, and ecclesiastical preoccupation with secular concerns. Such movements have not been founded on an anti-clerical bias. But they take full note of the fact that some denominational seminaries are rapidly becoming training centers for a new generation of ecumenical partisans. Many seminary graduates, moreover, now lack a solid grounding in evangelical perspectives, since their teachers encourage alteration of traditional church standards. Meanwhile, clergymen are often under direct or indirect pressures for conformity, since vigorous criticism of top-level policy is likely to invite penalties in placement and other opportunities.

What a growing number of laymen are watching is the attitude of the clergy toward efforts now under way to modify and moderate the doctrinal standards of their denominations. Once the historic standards are modified, these laymen conclude, it will be too late to rescue the denominations from modern revisionist tendencies. Hence laymen are now mobilizing by the thousands, no longer content with a “wait and see” attitude as denominational leaders press for confessional alteration. Such laymen are openly declaring their commitment to their churches in terms of the historic standards, and they indicate that the reconstruction of those belief will meet staunch resistance. They have been loyal to their denominations because they considered them loyal to the truth of God; denominational disloyalty to the truth of God will dissolve their loyalty to their denominations.

In many respects the present controversy in the United Presbyterian Church assumes an importance far beyond the bounds of that one great denomination. For Presbyterianism in the United States has exercised a theological influence outside its own ecclesiastical borders. One thinks, for example, of the influence of Calvinistic doctrine on the Northern Baptist theologian A. H. Strong, and of the influence of Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen not only upon evangelical scholars in other mainstream denominations but in independent fundamentalist circles. Conservative Presbyterian scholarship supplied transdenominational bulwarks for evangelical thought, and the defection of Presbyterian theologians from historic church standards cannot but have a corrupting effect upon Christian doctrine in many circles.

Presbyterian laymen have watched with growing distress the progressive transformation of Princeton Theological Seminary into an ecumenical polyglot. While the seminary viewed its invitation to Emil Brunner to occupy the Charles Hodge chair of systematic theology as an effort to import to America some of the vitality of European neo-orthodoxy, critics on the conservative side saw it as a deplorable concession that could lead only to further confessional compromise. When merger of the old United Presbyterian Church with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. was first projected, one argument that had wide appeal among church members was the pervasive influence for more conservative theology and for greater evangelistic zeal that United Presbyterians could exercise through the merger. Many lay leaders now realize that the actual outcome has quickly made a mockery of such merger hopes. United Presbyterians lost their strongly conservative seminary, evangelistic momentum has slowed, and church energies are now expended in debate over confessional revision and political involvement.

The restless laity are therefore mobilizing to revitalize interest in biblical concerns. They propose a massive effort to prevent the sacrifice of historic church standards by theological revisionists whose ecumenical interests seem to lie in the direction of the ecumenical merger of all churches in a monolithic power structure. As the laity see it, many denominational leaders are now working not for the growth of their churches but for their replacement. Not a few Presbyterian laymen consider the Blake-Pike plan for the merger of American denominations, for example, as a proposal one-sidedly engineered by already powerful churchmen who seek further control over the decisions and activities of the churches. This grasp for power such laymen link to the established tendency of denominational leaders to use their positions to exert pressure upon the government in the interest of political legislation. From his denominational office, in the name of his denomination, a pacifist can seek to alter political policy in the Viet Nam struggle or a socialist can promote the government’s expanding welfare activity, although his denomination is historically committed to the principle that such decisions are not properly ecclesiastical. In recent weeks, hundreds of Methodist laymen wrote letters declaring that the NCC Faith and Order Conference in urging the acceptance of Red China into the U.N. was not accurately reflecting their point of view.

In the last analysis, the strength of any laymen’s movement will turn on the dedication of individuals who courageously register their points of view, rather than on organized protest. The weakness of ecclesiastical propagandists is that they often wield power and influence not truly reflective of their constituencies. Any lay protest, once organized, is regarded as schismatic and illegitimate, with a hurried appeal to the very church polity that ecumenists are undoing. But nonetheless it is moral force and individual conviction that must carry the day.

Actually, the clergy should be gratified at the lively interest of thoughtful laity in matters of theology and the churches. And there are forward-looking denominational and theological leaders who applaud this revival of lay concern for church affairs. Surely one of the causes of the present predicament of the Church was the indifference of laymen in the past to what their denominational leaders and ministers have been saying and doing. It must never be forgotten that no one group possesses the Church. Ministers are but under-shepherds, and the laity are a vital part of the priesthood of believers. Out of the present struggle within the Church there may well come ultimate good through the emergence of a really informed and responsible laity.

Because ecumenical leaders persist in promoting politico-economic positions, often (to compound the error) on a naïve assumption that revolutionary forces are invariably benevolent, they have raised widening distrust. This concern by American laymen over ecclesiastical pronouncements contrasts with the situation in Europe, particularly on the Continent, where a woefully small number of church members attend services and where most laymen couldn’t care less about what the hierarchy does or the church says. But American laymen are active in their churches, and the independent and provocative course charted by ecumenists seems to many to pose a threat to the very nature of Christ’s Church.

That threat, as the laymen see it, is both theological and political. Ecumenical interest in union with Rome seems to imply sympathy for the medieval outlook whereby churchmen viewed the Church as infallible in all areas of human decision and the Church exercised control over all of life. The Protestant Reformers once freed men’s consciences from this interference of the Church in the area of personal liberty; now post-Protestant ecumenists are once again widening the Church’s encroachment. The trend encourages the suspicion of more and more laymen who privately wonder whether some denominational leaders are coveting a return to the power of the Roman Catholic Church, whose hierarchical pronouncements speak for its members.

Presbyterian concern focuses on two main features of the proposed Confession of 1967, which would reduce the Westminster Confession to a remarkable doctrine of past relevance and subordinate it to a confusing contemporary compromise. For one thing, the proposed new confession adopts a speculative theory of revelation and abandons the doctrine of biblical inspiration, thus undermining confidence in the Scriptures as the authoritative rule of faith and practice (see “What Scripture Says About Itself,” pp. 50 ff.). In the next place, the proposed confession inverts the position of the Westminster Confession on ecclesiastical involvement in secular affairs. The historic Presbyterian position is explicit: “Synods and councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth unless by way of bumble petition in cases extraordinary; or by way of advice for satisfaction of conscience if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate” (Ch. XXXIII, 4). With both the Bible as the rule of faith and practice and the Westminster Confession as the basic confessional standard of their church, the propounders of the Confession of 1967 are clearly at odds. In this displacement many Presbyterian laymen see the ultimate destruction and loss of their church. We think they are right.

Beware That Smile

Having recently visited Hungary, the wife of a theological seminary professor who fled that country two decades ago says, “The ruthless Communists have been replaced by the smiling Communists and they are more dangerous.” This is especially true in connection with religious activities.

Our informants report that the Communist regime makes certain that the leadership of Christian organizations comprises only those persons who are preferred by the government and who will reflect the party line and carry out state objectives. Whenever a minister exhibits undue enthusiasm for evangelism, or otherwise makes himself persona non grata with the state, he is subject to discipline and censure at the hands of those whose appointment to ecclesiastical office ensures their being agents of the state.

Popular ministers of large churches in cities like Budapest have been “reassigned” to out-of-the-way country parishes where their influence is negligible. If they refuse to accept reassignment, they are forbidden to preach. All of this takes place under the new face of smiling Communists who welcome visitors with friendly handshakes. The new congeniality masks a continued implacable opposition to Jesus Christ and his Church. Communism still regards Christianity as its greatest enemy.

Nothing Can Hold It Back

If Martin Luther were alive today would he remain within the Roman Catholic Church? Lutheran Otto Dibelius, Evangelical Bishop of Berlin, recently asserted he would. It is futile to argue whether such a judgment is correct, but Dibelius’s observation does point up how much the religious climate of the Roman church has changed for the better.

The new attention given the Bible in both the studies and the worship of Roman Catholics has without doubt contributed much to this improvement. This holds promise for the future, for the Word of God is able to break through the greatest human error and the oldest congealed traditions of men. The Word that calls men from the dead, and that will one day remake the whole heaven and earth, is able to do exceedingly more within the churches than we usually dare to imagine. And this is true of any church, for the Word of God is always stronger than any traditions of men. After all, Luther himself was once a Roman Catholic, and he became what he did through the Word. And did not the first Christmas occur and the Word become flesh at the lowest point of Israel’s history—when she was in her worst estate and spirtiually bankrupt?

Demise Of The ‘Steady State’ Theory

One of the most serious differences between current scientific theory and Genesis came closer to resolution last month when Professor Fred Hoyle, Britain’s foremost astronomer, acknowledged that he had probably been wrong for twenty years about the nature of the universe and publicly abandoned his “steady state” theory.

Cosmogonists for a generation have been split into two camps. Hoyle and his followers have held that new matter is being produced continuously out of energy and that this newly produced matter migrates from that already existing in such a fashion that the universe has always been expanding. The oldest matter, being farthest from the center of the universe, lies beyond man’s observation. Newer matter is constantly rushing through space and passing over the horizon of our most powerful instruments. This theory with its implicit materialism has been completely at variance with the Genesis account of creation, because it postulates an eternally constant universe—one that never had a beginning.

More congenial to the Christian world view has been the “superdense state” or “big bang” theory of Hoyle’s antagonists, who argue that the universe began at a discrete point in time and space with a single cataclysmically explosive event. This alternative is attractive to Christians, because of essential elements of the Genesis record—an “earth … without form and void” followed by transcendent creative events. It is also attractive to scientists because of the way it explains the expanding universe without doing violence to physical law.

Evidence from newly discovered quasi-stellar radio sources and other data indicating that the universe was once more dense than now have been overwhelmingly against “steady state.” But Hoyle, writing in the prestigious British scientific journal Nature, does not accept the “superdense state” theory either. He now believes that the universe is in a state of flux, alternately expanding and contracting in cycles that span billions of years.

Perhaps the word “believes” should be emphasized, for the new theory is far from firmly established. The “oscillating universe” theory of cosmogony will be as difficult to substantiate scientifically as purely mechanistic organic evolution and will likely lead to a similar philosophical stand-off.

Those who ruled God out of cosmogony found more comfort in “steady state” than either “big bang” or “oscillating universe” affords. That comfort is now denied them. No longer can they hold a theory that postulates a self-contained, self-perpetuating universe. “The heavens [still] declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”

Equal Protection Under The Law

Law Enforcement, the report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, issued in November, raises thought-provoking questions. With its basic premise that the law must be enforced with the constitutional rights of all citizens guaranteed, Americans must agree. The report documents the failure of local law enforcement officials in some Southern communities to adhere to their oath of office to support the federal Constitution and their consequent failure to prevent or punish acts of racial violence against Negroes and some of their white supporters.

The remedies proposed by the commission are far-reaching and raise constitutional questions of states’ rights and federal interference with such rights. The report recognizes that “in some southern communities, where local citizens have insisted upon fair and effective law enforcement, violence has been averted and the integrity of the process of law maintained” and that “the number of these communities has increased as public officials and leading citizens have recognized the dangers that unchecked violence and corruption in the administration of justice pose to the community as a whole.” Nevertheless, the commission presses for extension of federal criminal remedies, civil remedies, and executive action that will ensure equal protection of all citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights.

It should be noted that the United States Commission on Civil Rights has advisory committees in all fifty states. This is as it should be. Denial of civil rights is not confined to the South, and there are certainly situations in the North that also demand attention.

The abuses documented in the commission’s report necessitate some kind of remedy, if respect for law is to be maintained. Beyond the question of what is to be done about the commission’s recommendations lies the more basic consideration of personal accountability to the God who calls men to love their neighbors and to “be subject unto the higher powers.”

Let’S Not Write Off The Professors

Evangelicals are not above falling into careless generalizations. Sometimes we hear them say, “University professors are a collection of atheists and agnostics.” The statement is not only untrue; it is also unjust.

As every committed Christian professor on a secular campus knows, practically all universities have their remnants who are holding fast to the historic Christian faith. They include persons distinguished in the sciences, in the humanities, in the professional schools, and in administration.

The thoughts teachers think and the philosophies they reflect have a profound influence upon students who in turn will influence society. Whoever wants to reach a nation must reach its students. Many a Christian student has indeed lost his faith on a secular campus because of the destructive teaching of non-Christian faculty (and, if the truth be told, others have become spiritual casualties through the teaching of unbelieving professors at some denominational colleges).

But the coin has another side. Many students have come to Christ because of the influence of believing professors on secular campuses. With this in mind, Dr. John Alexander, general director of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and former chairman of the geography department at the University of Wisconsin, has said, “I am disturbed by the vast number of Christians—both clergy and laymen—who condemn university professors but never pray for them.” And very pertinently he asks why many in the body of Christ seem to have “written off as hopeless this most strategic segment of our society.” One layman in Seattle admitted, “I’ve lived all these years in Seattle and never once prayed for the faculty at the University of Washington.”

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY represent a powerful reservoir of prayer-potential. They may well pray for the faculties of the universities in their states and for the campus witness of such agencies as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.

- More from The Editors

Ideas

Where God Moved In

The Editors

“At Bethlehem men may recover the lost sense of where they are”

A new book tells the story of Bill Bradley, Princeton’s basketball star and the greatest player in the history of the Ivy League. The title of the new book (A Sense of Where You Are) is anything but bouncy. Yet no one who has seen Bill Bradley play doubts that on the basketball court he knew where he was. Happily, Bill is also a serious-minded Presbyterian, and in the courts of religion he knows equally well where he is.

A person who does not know where he is, by that very fact is surrounded by meaninglessness. Without a relationship to reality, all meaning is lost, and the person himself is a lost person. Not knowing where he is, he does not know how he got there or where he is going. This loss of the sense of where one is characterizes millions of confused men in our time. And this sense of lostness has been immeasurably increased by the modern invasion of outer space. The further man reaches out into the boundless skies, the less he has of what Bill Bradley’s book calls “a sense of where you are.”

Christmas 1965 is a good time to rediscover where we are. And Bethlehem is the right place. For it was there, and not on some distant star or yet unvisited planet, that God broke through the limits of creation and became a man among men. Where are we? We are where God moved in, where the Eternal became temporal; we are where the Creator became a creature and the Almighty God a baby, while yet remaining God. Modern man lives in the world that cradled a baby who was God—a baby who, had he not been fed by his mother and protected by swaddling clothes, would have died. We live where this thing was done. We are where God came to help and to redeem us. This is where we are!

Twentieth-century man does not know his own origin and is therefore confused about himself. Uncertain of who he is, he searches for identity. The atheistic existentialist tells man that he was simply catapulted into existence, and that there is just no more to be said. The balder forms of evolution teach that man evolved from animal life. If so, he cannot “turn again home,” for the realm of animality can never be the home of the human spirit. But at the place in our world called Bethlehem, modern man can regain that sense of where he is and from whence he came, because at Bethlehem he sees the Creature who is his Creator; he meets the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and also his own Father and Creator. Here also he meets his Lord, who is the Way and the Determiner of man’s destiny. And with this knowledge of where he came from and where he is going, he is no longer lost; he knows where he is, and why.

What man will find one day when he lands on the moon and on far-flung planets, no one knows. But he who like the shepherds travels to the land of Palestine to see the things that happened there knows that nothing comparable will ever be found in all of space. For there in the birth and life, the death and resurrection of God in Christ, God did something that can never be matched, surpassed, superseded, or repeated. On our planet, God moved in to help, to become our Friend and Neighbor, our Saviour and Salvation. Here where we live God became our very present help in trouble. The sinner whose life is adrift, the confused man who moves without direction and whose days are spent without meaning, may here, and only here, in this world where he lives, find him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. At Bethlehem men may recover the sense of where they are.

Our world is restless and troubled, a place of human turbulence and suffering. Yet the Christian does not cry, “Stop the world—I want to get off,” for it is here and nowhere else that God has come in Jesus Christ to be his eternal help and comfort, his everlasting Redeemer from every human sorrow and pain. Mankind lives where this occurred, and those who believe in the true meaning of Christmas have this profound and comforting awareness of where they are. They are where God came to help; they are where Immanuel came to be God with us, and thus God for us.

Bethlehem was troubled when God broke into humanity to become man, while yet remaining God. This was bound to be disturbing, for God became man to change man, to redeem him from sin and death and hell, and even from himself. Small wonder, then, that Mary was troubled, unable to give an account of herself that others would not regard as a “likely story”; small wonder that Joseph was grieved to think of putting away the woman he loved, that Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him, that the mothers of Bethlehem wept with their dead children in their arms and “would not be comforted,” that the shepherds were filled with fear! God entered this planet, and the earth shook. The old time and history ended when God entered the world. A quake and a shudder went through humanity. What else could be expected? For here on the planet where we live, all things, in all the universe, are dying and becoming old—and also becoming new! But in and through this shaking of the planet on which we live, the redemption of mankind and the reconciliation of all things, visible and invisible, in heaven and on earth, is taking place.

Who would want to be and who would want to live anywhere else? Sing that carol, ring that bell, light that colored light, trim that tree, and deck those halls with holly! All men, every creature and all nations, must truly know where they are, in the most turbulent place in all the universe—in the place, and the only place, where God moved in to help man!

Even in this space age, we must look, not to the science of space and to the planets it hopes to bring near, but to Bethlehem, where God became our neighbor. We must look neither to the heights to bring the Christ down nor to the depths to bring Christ up. For neither in the heights nor in the depths but on this planet where we live, God moved in and came near to all.

When The Power Failed

Thousands of ministers used the Eastern “blackout” to fortify Sunday sermons and give them added flair. Among them was Martin Luther King, who preached in New York City on “what to do when the lights go out.” He likened the power failure to the blackout in morality and in international and race relations.

Some illuminating insights emerged from the darkness. One wag exclaimed: “There’s more to this than meets the eye.” The New Yorkers who sought refuge in St. Patrick’s discovered that the cathedral had candles but no rest rooms. Washington newspapers picked up the story of Jeane Dixon, local seeress, who two years ago predicted the blackout and related it to Communist activity. One man left a barber shop with his left side trimmed, his right shaggy. A young reporter assigned to write a “mood piece” as he watched the city lights come on fell asleep on a narrow ledge of his fourteenth-story watchtower and missed it all. His editor said “he will not be court-martialed.”

Certainly it would be foolish to assign eschatological and apocalyptic significance to the blackout. But one fact should not be overlooked. Millions of people kept their heads. There was no panic; aside from one or two minor incidents, Americans and Canadians demonstrated maturity and good sense.

We had blithely assumed that no power failure could happen in the United States. We had taken for granted the notion that electrical power would flow forever. Do we not also presume on God’s providence? The survival of a nation depends not only on its physical resources but also on the mercy and the common grace of God.

- More from The Editors

A Glimpse of Eternity

L. Nelson Bell

The christmas story began in eternity, happened in time, and has everlasting significance. Only those whose minds and hearts are enlightened by the Holy Spirit can understand its meaning. Here and there in the Scriptures we catch a glimpse of this tremendous truth. Like a look at the earth through a rift in the clouds from an airborne plane, or a fleeting sight of a star in a cloudy sky, God shows us the eternal nature of the Christ of Christmas.

“Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made” (John 17:5, RSV) is such a glimpse of the Christ of eternity.

The verse in the Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (1:8), places Christmas in its proper perspective, for the Incarnation was a historical event, part of an eternal sequence.

The birth took place at a time when Caesar Augustus ruled in Rome. Christ came when, according to God’s timetable, “the time had fully come” (Gal. 4:4). The determining factors were the conditions that existed in Rome and the nature of Greek culture, and God’s use of these particular circumstances in human history for his own purposes. The historicity of the event is attested by incontrovertible evidence, including the daily witness of our calendars.

The meaning of Christmas is so obscured by the accretions of folklore and the commercialization of the season that only by the Holy Spirit can we understand that we are commemorating a supernatural event that occurred in a natural setting.

The Son of God was born in a town in Judea that still exists. “And Joseph also went up … to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem … to be enrolled with Mary.… And she gave birth to her first-born son …” (Luke 2:4–7). What more natural setting could there be? But supernaturalness was evident, too, for there were the star, the angelic host, and the revelation of divine truth given to simple shepherds who said, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us” (Luke 2:15b). The setting was earthly, but the event was a supernatural revelation.

Not only was the first Christmas a supernatural event in a natural setting; it was also a supernatural event with supernatural manifestations. Any attempt to reduce the Christian faith to terms acceptable, or even understandable, to the unregenerate mind is doomed to failure. We are dealing with spiritual truth that can be understood only through the Spirit of God. The Christmas story contains much that is supernatural.

The Incarnation is a divine mystery. It is not an abstract theological doctrine but a fact to be accepted by faith on the testimony of the Scriptures. The writer of the book of Hebrews spoke in terms his readers could understand when he said, “Therefore, brethren, … we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (10:19, 20). This access to God through the person of his Son is a fact to be accepted by faith alone, and the mystery is bound up in the Christmas story.

Surely it is not irrational to believe that God became incarnate in Jesus through a supernatural conception. It would be strange if it had happened otherwise. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Matthew puts it even more bluntly: Mary “was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit”; “… that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:18, 20). The Virgin Birth is as integral a part of Christianity as the Resurrection.

The supernatural manifestations of that first Christmas continue on through the one born that night in Bethlehem—his perfection, miraculous power, authoritative teaching and preaching, atoning death, and victory over the grave. The manger must be seen in the light of the Cross of Calvary, the birth of the Son of God in the light of the empty tomb, the annunciation of the angels in the light of his return in the clouds with power and great glory.

To ignore or deny the supernatural manifestations of Christmas is to strip it of its eternal significance. The implications of the Christmas story are profound for a world pushing pell mell to destruction, for in it supernatural redemption is offered.

Here there is hope, urgency, and finality: hope in the promise, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21b); urgency in the words, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12); and finality in our Lord’s own affirmation, “No man comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6b).

When the implications of Christmas are reduced to merely secular, social, and material matters, there is a tragic substitution of things that vanish with the using for those that last for eternity.

No one can exhaust the implications of that first Christmas night. No philosopher or theologian can fathom the depths of that event. But a little child can sense the wonder of it all, and the One born in that Judean town can also be born in the hearts of any who will receive him.

The Christmas story is about a supernatural event with supernatural effect. Even then it divided men. As Jesus grew into manhood, lived, died, arose from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and promised to come again, he brought not peace but a sword, not unity but separation, not universal salvation but division.

The supernatural effect of the Christ of Christmas is seen in changed lives—in sinners made into saints, in hatred turned into love, in a fellowship that transcends all racial, cultural, and national boundaries.

Inherent in the Christmas story is the truth that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. We live in the time of ultimate blasphemy, when some theologians are saying that God is dead and on this premise are presuming to formulate a new “Christianity”; this should challenge all Christians to search their own hearts to see whether the Christ of Christmas, the Christ of the Bible, is their God, their Saviour, and the Lord of their lives.

Christmas should be a time of rejoicing for all believers. It should also be a time for pondering the Holy Scriptures, for heart-searching, and for earnestly looking to the Holy Spirit to teach anew the historical facts with their supernatural manifestations, and the effects on all who believe.

Only as we accept the supernatural person and work of the one born nearly 2,000 years ago and understand our own relationship to him today can we enter into the real meaning of Christmas.

- More from L. Nelson Bell

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