The Epistle to the Hebrews, by Hugh Montefiore (Harper and Row, 1964, 272 pp., $5), is reviewed by F. F. Bruce, professor of biblical criticism and exegesis, University of Manchester, Manchester, England.

This latest addition to a distinguished series of commentaries admirably maintains the high standard set by its predecessors. English biblical scholarship has made contributions of peculiar value to the exegesis of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but there is always something new to say about this fascinating book, which has now found another able commentator in Canon Hugh Montefiore, vicar of Great St. Mary’s, Cambridge, and canon theologian of Chichester.

No one knows who wrote Hebrews, and no one knows to whom it was written. That it was written in the apostolic age, before the fall of the Jerusalem temple in A.D. 70, is a reasonable inference from its contents. Canon Montefiore agrees and would date it rather early in the apostolic age, between A.D. 52 and 54, in fact. The arguments that its author was Apollos, while they “fall short of proof,” seem to him to be impressively strong. He suggests a life-setting for the letter which links up with Paul’s reference to Apollos in First Corinthians 16:12, “As for our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brethren, but it was not at all God’s will for him to go now.” So Apollos did not go to Corinth just then; instead, he sent the church there a letter (the Epistle to the Hebrews) that reached it before the full development of the situation addressed by Paul in First Corinthians. Canon Montefiore is not the first to suggest that Hebrews was sent to Corinth, but he has sustained this thesis more persuasively than any of his predecessors. The reviewer, who has preferred a rival thesis, is not convinced by Canon Montefiore’s arguments. But before the thesis is rejected, due account must be taken of the impressive list of undesigned coincidences between the situation of Apollos and the Corinthian church and the Epistle to the Hebrews which he marshals in support of his case. For example—and this is but a minor one—“they of Italy salute you” (Heb. 13:24). Who are “they of Italy”? If Apollos stayed in Ephesus instead of going to Corinth, were there any Italians in Ephesus who would send greetings to Corinth? Of course there were—Priscilla and Aquila, well known in Corinth, and the only people in the whole New Testament who are mentioned by name as having “come from Italy” (Acts 18:2)! Here is another: why “baptisms” in the plural in Hebrews 6:2? Because Apollos had had to do with two baptisms, the baptism of John and Christian baptism; and perhaps the reference in the same verse to the laying on of hands indicates that Apollos underwent such an experience as the other disciples in Ephesus in Acts 19:6. While the arguments in the epistle would be directed chiefly to the Jewish members of the Corinthian church, Canon Montefiore thinks that some of its injunctions (e.g., in Heb. 12:16; 13:4) would have been more relevant to former pagans.

But the straightforward exegesis of Hebrews is unusually independent of the exegete’s conclusions on such matters of introduction. Canon Montefiore agrees that “details of authorship, date, destination and structure commonly convince a writer more than his readers,” and so he has constructed the commentary proper “in the hope that it may be of use to those for whom there is as yet no convincing solution to the difficult problems which this Epistle poses.”

Let us then sample his handling of a few of the crucial passages in the epistle. What of the difficult reading “apart from God” in Hebrews 2:9? Mainly because it is the more difficult reading he accepts it in preference to “by the grace of God” and gives the rendering: “so that, separated from God, he might taste death on behalf of all men.” (The reviewer likewise accepts the more difficult reading but regards it as originally a marginal note interpreting Hebrews 2:8 in the light of First Corinthians 15:27.) And who are the fallers away of Hebrews 6:6 who cannot be renewed to repentance? Apostates. Is the “covenant” sense to be maintained, with Westcott and others, in Hebrews 9:16, 17? No; the word “inheritance” at the end of verse 15 suggests to the author the “testament” sense of Greek diatheke, and it is this sense that is uppermost in his mind in the next couple of verses. As for “we have an altar” in Hebrews 13:10, the author “is referring not to the altar itself but to the victim upon it.… Calvary is meant, not some heavenly altar of the true sanctuary.… Our author is simply not thinking of the Eucharist at all.”

As in the other volumes in this series, the commentator supplies his own translation direct from the Greek. Canon Montefiore bases his translation on the Greek text of the new diglot at present being prepared for the British and Foreign Bible Society. He does not clutter up his exposition with technicalities or with summaries and refutations of what other commentators have written. He acknowledges that he has confined himself to exegesis and not gone on to hermeneutics (the interpretation of the lessons of the book for the situation of its readers today); the remoteness of the sacrificial ritual with which Hebrews is so much concerned makes the hermeneutical task specially difficult in this epistle.

Yet Canon Montefiore is surely not the man to be deterred from a task because it is difficult; may we hope that one day he will address himself to the hermeneutics of Hebrews and put us further in his debt? There are few scholars who are better equipped for this task. Meanwhile, he has earned our great gratitude for this scholarly, helpful, and readable commentary.

The Pastor’S Life And Work

Parson to Parson, by Adolph Bedsole (Baker, 1964, 149 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by H. Franklin Paschall, pastor, First Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee.

Every pastor will be greatly blessed by this book. The author, a pastor of wide experience and long tenure, writes poignantly of the problems and privileges in the life of a modern minister. His insights and suggestions are helpful and inspiring.

Most writers today criticize the preacher for using worn-out clichés that have little meaning to the people of our day. Dr. Bedsole observes that many a minister has lost his audience by using the technical terms of the scholars and by revealing his own uncertainty on vital doctrines and issues. He admonishes the preacher to “march those scholarship stallions back to the stables,” “bridle the champions of academic freedom,” “corral the fillies of higher criticism.” He recognizes the value of true scholarship but believes that it should not be on parade and should not be thrust upon people who are not intellectually equipped to receive it. He deplores the despair and uncertainty of many contemporary religious leaders. The foundations of God stand sure.

The chief contribution of Dr. Bedsole concerns practical affairs in the pastor’s life and work. He deals with such subjects as “The Preacher’s Other Cheek,” “The Preacher and His Time,” “The Preacher’s Burdens,” “The Preacher and the Staff,” “When Halos Sprout Horns,” and “The Preacher on the Shelf.” His analyses and recommendations are based on a knowledge of the Scriptures and a rich experience of Christian living and pastoral ministry. He knows first-hand the problems, privileges, responsibilities, and possibilities of a minister of Jesus Christ. If a pastor wants to be more like Jesus in all things, this book will help him attain the goal.

H. FRANKLIN PASCHALL

The Cover’S The Thing

Protestantism in Suburban Life, by Frederick A. Shippey (Abingdon, 1964, 221 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Ivan J. Falls, associate professor of sociology. Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

When Harold Larrabee evaluated Vilfredo Pareto’s Mind and Society, he said: “Pareto disappoints all those who look for completeness; his wisdom is in insights and details” (Harold A. Larrabee, “Pareto and the Philosophers,” Journal of Philosophy, XXXII [Sept. 12, 1935], pp. 507, 508). Shippey may be summarized in much the same way.

Like a patchwork quilt done by a large number of chatty women, Protestantism in Suburban Life has a few pieces that are done extraordinarily well; other parts are of only passable workmanship, and still other patches are simply worthless. One cannot say categorically that it is a bad book without pointing to some paragraphs that approach belles lettres in quality—paragraphs that will be quoted from the pulpit and in popular magazines. Overall, however, the book is a string of miscellaneous items held together only by the covers of a book, with a facade of orderliness (1, 2, 3, 4 …), a mirage of documentation, and clever verbiage here and there. If his frame of reference were deliberately interdisciplinary, then one would be able to put his comments into some meaningful perspective. This is not possible with a book that appears accidentally eclectic.

In his attempt to provide the Protestant reader with a rationale for ministering in suburbia, Shippey comes off badly. An operational definition for “suburb” is not apparent, and he does not characterize Protestantism in a way that gives it uniqueness. In the first chapter he commits himself to the necessity for empirical data, the dangers of generalizing beyond one’s sample, and the mandate to make reliable information available to relevant persons with suburban church problems, and then he throws a scorching indictment against some who, he thinks, have fallen into errors in these matters. When any author opens his book with a volley like that, the reader takes a “wait and see” attitude and asks himself, Can this author do better? And, unfortunately, Shippey does not.

Despite his page-after-page insistence on the need for empirical proof and his intention to use primary sources, the author leans much too heavily upon quasi-sociologists and novelists who have written about suburbia. Many of his sources could be found on the book rack at a suburban drugstore. He promises to present new information, some of which he has personally researched; but it is not properly footnoted, and he displays a remarkable inability to distinguish between fact and opinion. A sociologist should know better.

It is not clear how he feels about the reality of spiritual phenomena. The reader will wonder if the social gospel is the same as the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if sin is indicated only by the crime rate, if membership growth is the same as population growth, and if “Satan” (with quotation marks, p. 108 and elsewhere) is really Satan. Shippey is perceptive when he says: “What needs to be held in mind is that a profound evangelistic motivation underlies the impulse to establish new congregations” (p. 163). He is on the way to a crucial point about those Spirit-directed urges that lead the Protestant Christian to establish the work of Jesus Christ in the suburbs—a point he embraces very vaguely.

Christians need guidance concerning God’s work in the suburbs and would be favorably disposed to accept a book that promises such. But when a book like this fulfills so little, they will have to wait for another try.

IVAN J. FAHS

Many Excellent Things

A Body of Divinity, by Thomas Watson (Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, 316 pp., 15s.), is reviewed by W. J. Cameron, professor of New Testament, Free Church of Scotland College, Edinburgh, Scotland.

“By popularizing ancient works, their readers are multiplied and their meaning may often be more readily apprehended.” In this belief the principal of Pastors’ College, London, carefully modernized the style and vocabulary of Thomas Watson’s seventeenth-century work, A Body of Divinity. for reprinting in 1890, at the request of C. H. Spurgeon. But such had been the demand for this posthumously published book that it already had been reissued several times since its original printing in 1692. Readers of successive generations evidently found themselves in agreement with William Lorimer, who remarked in his preface to the first edition that “there are many excellent things” in the sermons of which the book is composed. Not even the vast and varied output of religious literature in the second half of the twentieth century has served to extinguish interest in this Puritan classic.

Seven years ago the Banner of Truth Trust made its debut in the publication of older religious works of value with a reprint of Watson’s book, based on the 1890 edition. The book’s reception so commended the judgment of the Trust’s editors that this year, recognizing it as one of the best sellers in their considerable list of publications, they felt justified in issuing a revised edition in a more attractive format.

The author, who was no mean scholar, ministered to an appreciative London congregation until the Act of Uniformity imposed such conditions upon the clergy of the Church of England that he felt unable to retain his living. For a period he preached in secret as he had opportunity, but accepting the Indulgence in 1672, he began again to preach publicly in London, where Stephen Charnock became his colleague at Crosby Hall. Watson is regarded as the most readable of the Puritans, and competent judges esteem his published works very highly. A Body of Divinity, as originally published, consisted of 176 sermons on the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The present volume contains the earlier part of the original collection, which deals with the first thirty-eight questions. Its main divisions are God and His Creation, the Fall, the Covenant of Grace and Its Mediator, the Application of Redemption, Death and the Last Day.

At a time when the conflict of many opinions on matters of belief is productive of much confusion of thought, few things are more necessary for the establishing of personal Christian faith than judicious and balanced instruction in the teaching of Scripture. It is the great merit of this book that it faithfully expounds biblical doctrine in a clear, concise, and very practical manner.

W. J. CAMERON

A Preferred Freedom

Religion and the Constitution, by Paul G. Kauper (Louisiana State University, 1964, 137 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by William A. Mueller, professor of church history, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Professor Kauper of the University of Michigan, well-known author, lawyer, and expert on constitutional law, gave the lectures contained in this book at the University of Louisiana in March, 1964. After some introductory considerations he confronts the issue of religious liberty in chapter one. Is religious liberty but one aspect of a “broader freedom of expression” or does it denote “an independent substantive liberty of American citizens”? What, essentially, is religious liberty and how may it be properly defined within the First Amendment of our Constitution? Moreover, to what extent is religious liberty encompassed in the freedom of speech, press, and assembly? Surely, freedom from discrimination on religious grounds in, for instance, securing a government job is part of religious liberty. Likewise, a man’s religious beliefs are not subject to any governmental restraints or coercion or denial. Since government is not capable of determining ultimate truth, it is in our way of life forbidden to sanction or forbid religious practice or belief. This latter interpretation of government is traceable to the thinking of men like Thomas Jefferson whose ideas are rooted in the Enlightenment and its secular interpretation of limited government. Hence, religious liberty is a multi-dimensional issue, and our author credits the United States Supreme Court with having elevated religious liberty to a preferred freedom within the larger freedoms all citizens enjoy (pp. 43, 44).

Chapter three deals with interpretation of the First Amendment. Shall the Supreme Court interpret the establishment clause in terms of (1) a no-aid or strict separation theory, (2) the strict neutrality theory, or (3) the accommodation theory? Although the Supreme Court, according to Kauper’s measured judgment, has not yet fully committed itself to an overall rationale, the trend seems to be in the direction of the third alternative. “The problem we face cannot be solved by simple rules or absolute propositions. The accommodation theory recognizes the task of the judiciary in arriving at judgment by weighing a variety of considerations” (pp. vi, vii).

What of the present attitude of the churches toward this burning issue? How may they, in a pluralistic society, best approach the issue of religious liberty? It is far easier to recite ancient traditions than to solve concrete issues bearing on church-state relations. What of parochial schools wanting support from the government? Here we think primarily of demands made by our Roman Catholic friends. In the Southland, Southern Baptists have established, since 1954, their own elementary schools, primarily with the aim of evading the law calling for integrated public schools. As a people with a rich religious heritage we feel uneasy about a government that is outspokenly secular in character. Kauper, in his concluding chapter, wisely warns the churches against the perils of government assistance. Our author is convinced that “the American experiment in religious liberty, buttressed by the separation of church and state, has vindicated itself” (p. 118). May the churches continue to rely on their own spiritual vitality rather than on handouts from the government in order to perpetuate and enlarge their witness to the living God and their contribution to the common good.

WILLIAM A. MUELLER

The Retarded

The Church’s Ministry in Mental Retardation, by Harold W. Stubblefield (Broadman, 1965, 147 pp., $4), is reviewed by Dorothy L. Hampton, publicity and scholarship committee chairman, Metropolitan Association for Retarded Children, Denver, Colorado, and member of the Colorado Governor’s Committee for the Employment of the Mentally and Physically Handicapped.

This volume is an extremely fine informational tool that should be required reading for every pastor and seminary student. There is a national upsurge of interest in our 5½ million retarded persons, and the Church must not be left behind in an area calling for authentic Christian concern. Stubblefield’s book will help clear away a great deal of confusion about the Church’s and the pastor’s role with the retarded and their families. Through up-to-date and relevant observations, many based on his experiences as a chaplain at a state institution for the retarded, the author makes telling points; yet he never resorts to material that is too technical or uninteresting.

This book has a challenge: the ministry for the retarded is a total ministry, not just a fragmented condescension to a group otherwise outside the Church’s fellowship. Most encouraging is Stubblefield’s constant reference to a retarded person as a “whole person,” as a human being whose need is to be understood relative to his developmental stage and social adjustment, as well as to his level of mental ability and degree of retardation. Pastors will find the sections dealing with a comprehensive ministry to the retarded very helpful. The author confronts such subjects as confirmation and baptism, church membership, and partaking of communion, as well as the retarded person’s understanding of death, need in bereavement, and problems of marriage and childbearing.

The chapters on the religious consciousness and Christian education for the retarded are excellent. The description of comprehension levels of theology and doctrines in the various I.Q. ranges will be very useful. Many ways for a total ministry are given, and many misconceptions about retardation are treated. The author shows the necessity for secular parent associations and for professional workers in the field as referral sources. He clarifies such points as the meaning of “trainable” and “educable” and the difference between mental retardation and mental illness. A good bibliography points to further reading on such subjects as the causes of mental retardation and the meaning of terms like I.Q., brain damage, and mongolism—terms used in this book but not fully explained.

Our responsibility to the retarded is clear. Challenged by this volume, many a church and pastor will be able to see the responsibility and act upon it sensibly, practically, and immediately.

DOROTHY L. HAMPTON

Essays For Protestants

Word and Revelation: Essays in Theology I, by Hans Urs von Balthasar (Herder and Herder, 1964, 191 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Franklin van Halsema, instructor in philosophy, Grand Valley College, Allendale, Michigan.

Although no Christian theology worth the name ever neglected to take Christology seriously, it has become a fashion of our time to demand of a theology that it be “Christological” before anything else. And although verbum caro has recently been made the persistent theme of theologies of diverse and even antipathetic types, it is an interesting coincidence that this first volume of Father von Balthasar’s essays shares the Vulgate phrase as a title with the journal of the Reformed community at Taizé. The fact supplies a perspective in which to take a measure of the new book’s importance. The book is based on a conception of what comprehensive and consistent Christological thinking means that comes closer to the conception basic to Taizé’s de-puritanizing of Reformed theology than to the conception basic to Barth’s de-scholasticizing of it. The novelty and importance of these essays, and to a degree of the movement at Taizé, can be compared with that which belongs to the Theologie Nouvelle as a whole. However full the information in the Church Dogmatics about the theological tradition, there is little (it can be said without disparagement) of that information by the tradition, notably biblico-patristic, which gives the Christological emphasis of the Theologie Nouvelle its distinctive character. Father von Balthasar is not a Protestant theologian, but the general method and resources of his theology, if not his stance as a churchman (most recently illustrated by his position in the Opus Dei controversy), show him to be a Protestant’s theologian; he is unlike the official Roman catechists in the way the theologians of Taizé are unlike the Presbyterian catechists of Westminster.

Neither Barth nor Taizé holds to the evangelical doctrine of revelation and Scripture. Among evangelical theologians inspiration is usually regarded as a completed act of God by which the biblical autographa were preserved from error; infallibility and inerrancy are generally used interchangeably; confident appeal is made to the historic Church in support of the claim that verbal inspiration is a classic, not a modern, conception; and the “true” meaning of Scripture is generally identified with the one discoverable by historical exegesis. The formidable array of questions that such features as these give rise to is seldom recognized. Is restricting inspiration to the biblical originals compatible with the conviction that our Bibles are infallible divine revelation? If the meaning of biblical infallibility is exhausted by the concept of inerrancy, which accounts for accuracy, by what complementary concept is the relevance of biblical truth accounted for? Does the classic theory of verbal inspiration retain any utility if it is divorced from the equally classic, closely related theory of the “spiritual senses” of Scripture? Historical exegesis can determine what Paul of Tarsus meant; but is it able to disclose what good preaching must disclose, namely, what Saint Paul means?

Here these questions have been introduced, not in order that they may be pressed, but in order that certain aspects of our author’s Christological approach to the subject may be set in relief. “Just as the word Christ spoke as man is inspired by the Holy Spirit, so also is the written word; its inspiration is not something past and concluded but a permanent, vital quality adhering in it at all times.” The principal effect of inspiration is not to be seen in the absence of error, which is only “a by-product” of it and cannot explain how Scripture is “food of the soul.” Inspiration means that “the Holy Spirit as auctor primarius is always behind the word,” and guarantees that “the primary content of scripture is always God himself.” If that is so, “the idea that one has understood a passage of scripture finally and completely, has drawn out all that God meant in it, is equivalent to denying that it is the word of God and inspired by him.” To affirm inspiration, then, is to affirm that the Bible has that fecundity of meaning classically referred to as the sensus plenior. But we must take care to affirm Scripture’s transliteral meaning with due regard to its content, which means, once more, a Christological affirmation. The problem of how to relate the literal and spiritual meanings is soluble if we grasp that they “are to each other what the two natures of Christ are to each other.” In so far as “the spiritual sense is never to be sought ‘behind’ the letter but within it,” the literal sense has a kind of priority; but just as “Christ’s divinity cannot be wholly comprehended through his humanity,” so cannot “the divine sense of scripture ever be fully plumbed through the letter.”

This sample conveys nothing of the variety or continuity of the thinking embodied in the book’s six essays. There is, for example, the extraordinary meditation on silence, or “the dialectic of word and superword,” which, as a Christological attempt to tread the via negativa, appropriately concludes the book. (Whoever knows the author’s first published work, now entitled Prometheus, should read this essay.) Another essay is a highly original and provocative contribution to theological aesthetics, which develops the theme that “Christ, God’s greatest work of art, is in the unity of God and man the expression both of God’s absolute divinity and sovereignty and of the perfect creature.” It is sensitivity to the “form” of Christ which accounts for the place of eros in catholic theology. “The loss of the erotic element of the Canticle and of the esthetic element of the dionysian writings has resulted in a dessication of theology. What it needs is to be steeped anew in the very heart of the love mystery of scripture, and to be remolded by the force it exerts.” But one’s way into such essays as these is a reward earned only by traversing the territory of the essays that precede them. These, on revelation, word, history, and tradition, are basic.

If it is true that Roman Catholic theologians are “rediscovering” the Bible, it is also true that Protestant theologians are rediscovering the catholic tradition, and along with it a less familiar side of the Reformers themselves. If Father von Balthasar’s volume of essays is a good specimen of the “new” Roman Catholic thought, it is also a good chance, from which evangelical Protestants are not the least prepared to profit, to learn some old, classic, catholic theology and its relevance to modern theological concerns. And one thing more. Whoever seeks a respite from the many mansions of the Church Dogmatics will find the charterhouse of these few, neat, compact essays a perfect place for retreat.

FRANKLIN VAN HALSEMA

Book Briefs

The New Testament in Modern English: Student Edition, by J. B. Phillips (Macmillan, 1965, 558 pp., $3). With verse numbers, index, and introductory notes.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: A College Textbook and a Study Guide, by Menaham Mansoor (Eerdmans, 1964, 210 pp., $4). An outline-style, fact-packed presentation.

The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, by Maurice Blondel, translated by Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 301 pp., $6.95). The first book of an influential twentieth-century Roman Catholic philosopher to be translated into English.

Jesus and Logotherapy: The Ministry of Jesus as Interpreted Through the Psychotherapy of Viktor Frankl,by Robert C. Leslie (Abingdon, 1965, 144 pp., $3).

Planning for Protestantism in Urban America, by Lyle E. Schaller (Abingdon, 1965, 224 pp., $4.50). How long-range urban planning and church planning interact.

Renewing Your Faith Day by Day: Based on the Christian Herald Daily Meditations with a Supplement for Special Days, by Robert W. Youngs (Doubleday, 1965, 198 pp., $3.95). Very brief but often very much to the point.

Constitution on Ecumenism, Constitution on the Church, and Constitution on the Oriental Churches, promulgated by Pope Paul VI (Daughters of St. Paul; 1965; 28, 85, and 14 pp.; $.25, $.40, and $.15).

So You Want a Mountain: 12 Evangelistic Sermons, by Ford Philpot, introduction by Bishop Nolan B. Harmon (Baker, 1964, 113 pp., $2.50).

The Shoemaker Who Gave India the Bible: The Story of William Carey, by James S. and Velma B. Keifer (Baker, 1964, 63 pp., $1.95). For children.

Shechem: The Biography of a Biblical City, by G. Ernest Wright (McGraw-Hill, 1964, 270 pp., $7.95). An account of the archaeological excavation of Shechem.

Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey, by Kenneth Ch’en (Princeton, 1964, 560 pp., $12.50).

The Epistles to the Corinthians, by Julian C. McPheeters, from the “Proclaiming the New Testament” series (Baker, 1964, 154 pp., $2.95). Homiletical applications with little exegetical interpretation.

The Pulpit Speaks on Race, edited by Alfred T. Davies (Abingdon, 1965, 191 pp. $3.95). Colorful sermons.

The Holy Spirit and You, by Donald M. Joy (Abingdon, 1965, 160 pp., $2.75). Practical discussions in a fireside style.

Father Coughlin and the New Deal, by Charles J. Tull (Syracuse University, 1965, 292 pp., $6.50). The story of the colorful, petulant Roman Catholic Michigan radio priest of the 1930s.

Preface to Bonhoeffer: The Man and Two of His Writings, by John D. Godsey (Fortress, 1965, 73 pp., $2). An excellent introduction to the life and significance of Bonhoeffer, plus two of his shorter writings as substantiating evidence.

Now and then we read Playboy—not often, confessedly, but when Hugh Hefner, its editor, occasionally sends a copy hoping CHRISTIANITY TODAY will debate his philosophy of sex and give him free promotion. There seems to be only one aspect of grammar that interests Mr. Hefner as an editor—gender, the feminine particularly, so exposed as to suggest a maternal attachment that Mr. Hefner hasn’t yet outgrown. Some of his magazine’s enthusiasts, ministers included, have the gall to commend Playboy for an interpretation of sex more authentically Christian than that given in the churches.

Today new currents of opinion are gaining force. This is not necessarily bad. Some man-made codes have too long been invested with divine status—for example, the Roman Catholic rule that sex is only for the procreation of children and that any other intention is wicked. The tardy revision of such misconceptions often raises doubts that would have been avoided had the authority of Scripture always been respected.

In the Republic, Plato asks whether one can accumulate all the benefits of being just by merely appearing to be just. If one could make himself invisible, would he hold up a bank or ravish a beautiful girl? Is the fear of being found out what really keeps us straight? This issue is raised in a new way by the scientists’ discovery of “the pill.” For the pill promises intercourse without physical consequences. What it does not promise is ideas without consequences.

The “new morality” asserts that love alone justifies intercourse and that, if two persons intend to marry, love is the only other precondition for sex relations. Christianity does not say “No” to sex; it says “Yes” on the basis of divine creation. But it says “No” to premarital sex on the basis of divine commandment. The Christian view is that sex relations are legitimate only within the marital institution.

As a protest against marriage without love (of which there is little deficiency in our time), or against marital intercourse without love, or, for that matter, against prostitution as a relationship in which both marriage and love are lacking, the plea for the centrality of love is wholesome and necessary. The Christian emphasis on personal love in the very nature of God and on Christ’s love for his bride carries an implicit protest against the discounting of agape in the sexual life of the modern world. Our confused generation has lost the profoundly Christian meaning both of monogamous marriage and of love. It needs the example and guidance a generation of evangelical young lovers and young married couples can bring it at this moment in history. Any generation that prizes intercourse above all other intimacies and thinks that through physical love alone, apart from any transcendent relationship, the sex act unlocks life’s deepest secrets and exhausts its mysteries, is doomed to deadly superficiality. What the world needs is couples capable of such a tremendous love that they want love as God gave it before Adam and Eve lost it, couples aware that in accepting the new morality one is in danger of falling, not into love, but into sin, and that love is something that one stands up for, reaching for the stars rather than the spirit of the age.

The proposition that intercourse is validated by love, not by marriage, is simply not true, Ideally, romantic love, monogamous marriage, and sexual intercourse are all bound together, and intercourse is last in order. No marriage is legal and binding until the conjugal act is performed; the courts will annul a marriage incapable of sexual consummation. Intercourse validates marriage but does not always reflect love. Outside marriage, intercourse always violates love, since it shatters the divine framework of sexual morality. Any person who loves self-indulgence more than obedience to God is ready neither for marriage nor for intercourse. Someone has aptly described mature love as “union under the conditions of preserving … integrity.” If love in the New Testament sense is present in the intention to marry, it will insist on marriage before the conjugal act.

To justify sexual indulgence before marriage by identifying modern engagement with biblical betrothal has three weaknesses. First, it obscures the fact that modern engagement is neither so formal nor so binding as biblical betrothal. Betrothal included payment of the dowry (Gen. 24:58 ff.) and hence involved parental consent. After the betrothal, the parties were legally in the position of a married couple, and unfaithfulness was adultery (Deut. 22:23, 24). Second, the identification of modern engagement with biblical betrothal lacks direct scriptural support; for its assumption that intercourse is permissible during betrothal depends upon the argument from silence. Finally, the comparison fails to stress the scriptural view that intercourse belongs to the divine institution of marriage.

If the unmarried cannot wait, there remains only one way to please the Lord—that is, to marry. The apostle says of the unmarried: “If they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn” (1 Cor. 7:9). Nowhere does he approve marital privileges without marital obligations; he insists on the very opposite. It is to the husband that the wife is to give the conjugal due, not to the intended husband; it is to the wife that the husband is to give the conjugal due, not to the intended wife.

The woman who indulges in premarital intercourse because she intends to marry may not be a prostitute, but she is neither wife nor virgin (1 Cor. 7:34, 35). The man too is a fornicator (v. 1). Although a wife cannot claim her body as her own, the wife-to-be can and ought to do so. The single girl is to give her husband-to-be only what is due the husband-to-be, not what is due the husband. Paul differentiates “the wife and the virgin” (v. 34); nowhere does he refer normatively to premarital loss of virginity.

In the same context Paul clearly states that fornicators, adulterers, and sodomites, along with drunkards, thieves, and idolators, shall have no part in God’s kingdom (6:9–10), and that professing Christians must put such sinful works to death or fail to inherit that kingdom. Both fornication and adultery detach intercourse from the institution of marriage, whether the offenders intend to marry each other or not. Fornication is used figuratively in the Bible in the sense of idolatry—of “whoring after” false gods.

If intention to marry justifies sexual intercourse and the actual fulfillment of that intention (or marriage itself) is not immediately relevant, then how is such intention distinguishable from emotional passion only? Recently the writer spoke at the junior-senior banquet of a large Christian college in Oklahoma. Twenty couples publicly announced their engagements that evening. The class adviser, asked for a fair estimate across the years of how many would go through with it, said 25 per cent would not. On that basis, the percentage of engagements of evangelical college students that are broken is higher than the percentage of worldly marriages that end in divorce—quite apart from the issue of premarital intercourse. This estimate is based only on formally announced engagements, and these at the college level.

The notion that two persons are free to follow their desires as long as they love each other is an invitation to exploit passionate impulses irrespective of moral restraints. Love is not self-defining; in this twentieth century it has been equated with pacifism, with socialism, and now with sexual license. A few years ago, when a divinity student at Howard University killed a young Washington woman, he said he did it because he “loved her” so much. Love that spurns the commandments of God always destroys and kills. In the nature of God, love and righteousness are equally ultimate, and agape is self-defining; but in the nature of man—finite, fallen, not yet fully conformed to the divine image even in redemption—agape is not self-defining. If our love of God and our love of neighbor are sullied and need divine direction, why do we think that the ideal direction of sexual love is self-determinable? “If ye love me,” said Jesus, “keep my commandments.” And some of his most serious indictments bore upon the failure even of the religious leaders of his day to understand the depth of God’s claim in the area of sex. “Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her …”—how seriously do we take that? There is considerably more temptation to look and leer today than in the past, and the line between appreciation and lust is getting more difficult to draw.

Love is responsible to the commandments; it is responsible also to family, to society, and to the state. Its requirements are not exhausted by the private life of two persons. The lovers are to leave father and mother and cleave to each other, becoming one flesh. There is to be no cleaving before leaving. The family is the basic unit of society; young lovers who destroy the claim of the family are indirectly destroying themselves. Love does not overlook responsibility to parents, and those under eighteen or twenty-one are under the guardianship of their parents and should secure parental consent for marriage—or, if they prefer, for premarital intercourse! Moreover, the state is divinely willed to preserve order and justice in a sinful society, and marriage includes a responsibility to the community. Marriage is established by God and confirmed by the state; it is not dissolved by the absence of love (1 Cor. 7:10, 11) nor constituted solely by the presence of love (7:8–9). The bonding element between man and wife is not simply their private love and sexual privilege. (“Art thou bound to a wife?” asks Paul. “Seek not to be loosed” [7:27].) The couple are “bound by the law,” Paul says (7:39). Private intention is not the same as a public ceremony; the connection of sex with marriage attests its answerability to both love and justice. A liberal theology, which telescopes God’s wrath and God’s justice into his love, has produced a liberal ethics, which artifically narrows the moral claim to agape alone, and in so doing falsifies the content of agape.

Assume now that not marriage but preferential love justifies intercourse, and that marriage is built on this prior premise. What happens if—in some hard hour—love evaporates in the home, even for a season, and the wedding expectations turn for the “worse” rather than for the “better”? And if one of the partners then loves a third party (assuming that intercourse-approving love is love for one at a time)? If marriage is really binding, then intercourse with other than one’s wife is spiritually and legally excluded. But if love is the only bonding factor, the implications of this view will swiftly undermine the social order. If marriage binds in a way that preferential love does not, then the unmarried—for all their intentions—simply are not maritally bound. The revealed will of God sanctions monogamous marriage, but it nowhere sanctions extra-marital intercourse. The fact that such a relationship is pursued outside wedlock with one person at a time and continues over a long period with but one person does not sanctify it; what is wrong once is no less wrong through a process of multiplication or addition, even by the addition of the wedding ceremony.

Assume again that preferential love, not marriage, justifies intercourse—and that professors and students are free to act in this way, and unmarried ministers in their congregations. Assume that a Christian would be quite willing to tell his sister or daughter that she ought to let some young man possess her, even if the prospect of marriage is years off (remember, the intention is decisive), so long as they wave the banner of love and carry the pill. If, in fact, the connection of courtship and intercourse is permissible and proper, normative and ideal, then no lover ought to withhold this relationship from the loved one; in that case it is morally and spiritually due, so long as unmarried couples make it clear that they are courting each other, and for as long as they prefer courtship to marriage.

We can assure the Church that no doctrine it has ever propagated will be as welcome as this one. For in a single stroke what has been regarded as gross sexual immorality down through the Christian ages will be protected and promoted as an ideal fulfillment of a moral and spiritual imperative. The world will hail this late twentieth-century “insight,” and the Church may count upon an innumerable host of “converts” to this notion—in fact, many unregenerates were already “converted” to it before the church’s discovery, and almost every young couple in the churches will now want to follow suit.

But any such development will mark the day when the Church has gone out of the business of morality and defected from her role in the world. By maintaining the morality of sex, the Christian community fulfills a divinely given role in the world—not simply of proclaiming the standards by which God will judge the world, but of illustrating the blessings of obedience.

The new doctrine is simply a by-product of the existential spirit of our times, which has lost contact with objective norms and standards and, above all, with divinely revealed truths and precepts. In the name of agape it destroys agape, because it transgresses the Word of God. In the name of personal love it violates Christian personality, because it impairs the divine image in man by neglecting the will of God. In the name of sacramental love, it forfeits the sacredness of marriage in exchange for a few months of premature self-indulgence.

Since God is the opener of the womb and man may prevent life but only God can create it, the next step will be to honor children born outside wedlock as the fruit of agape. When that happens, little or nothing will be left for marriage to add. And, in the eyes of a Sodom and Gomorrah generation, marriage will appear as the enemy of love. But the devout believer will recognize this trend for what it is—a rationalization of human passions, which one man applies in the world of sex, another in the world of economics, and another in the world of international affairs, in an age whose heart is set against objective moral standards.

Exemplary Goals Of The Southern Baptists

At their national convention in Dallas last month, Southern Baptists not only voted to continue the present practice of allowing for a second presidential term but also re-elected without opposition their vigorous and able president, Dr. Wayne Dehoney, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jackson, Tennessee.

Dehoney told the press of his goal for Southern Baptists: “to face realistically the business of launching the greatest missionary thrust the world has ever known.” His presidential address gave a compelling push in that direction.

On the global level he urged: (1) Supporting Billy Graham’s crusades and next year’s World Congress on Evangelism, to be sponsored in Berlin by CHRISTIANITY TODAY; (2) uniting of North and South American Baptists in 1970 in a simultaneous hemispheric evangelistic crusade; (3) undergirding with prayer, money, and surrendered lives an accelerated program to bring the number of missionaries on the foreign field up to 5,000. At the local level, Dehoney set forth a plan for Southern Baptist penetration into urban centers.

The convention responded with appropriate resolutions and a record missions budget of $21.8 million. We salute the Southern Baptist Convention for exemplary goals worthy of the attention of all Christians.

When Psychology And Theology Meet

Many interesting dialogues occur today at points of contact between religion and psychology and between religion and psychiatry. In this twisted secular world, having one’s own psychiatrist has become a status symbol for many suburbanites, and the German theologian Helmut Thielicke even warns that in the cult of psychiatry America faces the snare of a new religion.

A much more constructive attitude is possible at these frontier points, of course, although the dangers are not to be denied. The panel discussion in this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a contribution toward better understanding in these areas.

Another helpful effort is the summary of an address by Dr. John Finch, a Tacoma, Washington, psychologist. Regrettably, however, a reading of an interview with Dr. Finch, entitled “Coping with the Stresses of Life” and published in the May issue of Christian Herald, raises more problems for evangelical faith than any psychologist can solve, and leaves us wondering how effectively evangelical Christian faith can operate in a climate of incompatible beliefs.

In this interview Dr. Finch tells us that “one must be very discreet in introducing new ideas … making the new so approximately like the old that he can accept it.” But one will find that the way the Apostles proclaimed the Gospel to the first-century Jews gives no precedent for such an approach, even though the modernist dilution of historic Christianity may. Dr. Finch tells us that “the more insecure” one is, “the more dogmatic” he is—a verdict that has strange and remarkable possibilities if applied not only to the systematic theologians but to the Apostles. In fact, Dr. Finch thinks evasion of one’s personal responsibility “is almost the reason for dogmatic systems: the system relieves us of our own experience.…” The manner in which a haphazard working of both sides of the street strengthens one’s personal responsibility is nowhere made clear, nor, we suspect, can it be. The contrast of “dogmatic affirmations as against the attitudes and experience and indications of real love” rests on an imaginary contradiction which does not exist in fact; Dr. Finch substitutes one set of arbitrary affirmations for the dogmatic affirmations of Scripture, in which love is not opposed to divine disclosure of objective truths.

One wonders how any reader of John 5:47 (“But if ye believe not his [Moses’] writings, how shall ye believe my words?”), or 8:58 (“Jesus said unto them … Before Abraham was, I am”), or Matthew 11:29 (“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls”), can square such verses with the dogmatic assumptions that “Jesus was … the first existentialist” and that Jesus’ “whole attitude was existential” (italics ours). Or how passages like Matthew 4:4 and Luke 16:29 (“Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them”) are to be reconciled with Dr. Finch’s emphasis on experience as “the basis of an understanding of truth.”

What happens to divine revelation and to reason, we ask, in the declaration that we must “display such an intimate acquaintance by our own experience with truth that [we are] persuaded by the facts of life, not by the logical arguments of life”? By the frank declaration that “truth is true only when it is true to you” and “otherwise … remains a theory,” the existence of every absolute truth is denied, and how anything can ever become true remains unclear.

The doctrinal content of the Christian religion is repeatedly divided and downgraded. Dr. Finch recalls Kierkegaard’s protest against the mechanical catechizing of children, and repeats SK’s question whether a parrot that passed the course should be baptized and confirmed. The evangelical reply is, of course, that Christianity expects children (but not the parrot) to understand and believe; it is not that scriptural doctrines may be abandoned or ignored whenever they are beyond one’s personal experience. It is true enough that, as Dr. Finch notes, Jesus did not say, “If you repeat the parables …,” but it is equally true that Paul said, “If you … believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead …” (Rom. 10:9, RSV).

Dr. Finch obliquely handles a question raised by one of the editors of Christian Herald that goes to the heart of the matter: What then happens to “absolute truth, something that is a fact whether I accept it or not”? The illustrations Dr. Finch gives of “greater [or later] truth” displacing earlier “truth” do not really focus on the question whether such earlier “truth” was really truth or whether truth in fact exists at all.

If, as Dr. Finch contends, “all we can really understand even of God is what we ourselves personally experience,” the logical conclusion would seem to be that God does not tell us anything outside our own experiences, and that the historic Christian view of an authoritative written Word from God containing statements and standards of what is to be believed and practiced must be discarded. Dr. Finch contends that Christians should sing hymns of the faith “only to the extent” that they “can experience” them. But a single trial run in a morning church service should serve well to dramatize evangelical Christianity’s great dependence on realities of another world revealed in Holy Scripture and the poverty of what an experience-based psychology proposes as a modern substitute. The creation of the world out of nothing, the virgin birth of Christ, the miraculous atonement, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the future judgment of all men, and much else would vanish; in fact, once personal experience is made the sole arbiter of truth, every tenet of evangelical Christianity is subject to moment-by-moment revision.

In the present intellectual turmoil, coordination of various disciplines of learning is imperative, the more so if evangelicals hope to show the way. Even mosquitoes emerge from a whirling lawnmower, humming the refrain “Let’s get together.” Evangelical theology and psychology ought to do no less, as Dr. Finch himself says in his essay elsewhere in this issue.

Any statement, true or not, that is repeated often enough will cometo be accepted by many as fact, or at least allowed to pass without protest because no alternative seems at hand.

From many church gatherings, particularly in the higher echelons of the ecumenical movement, we hear that “denominational differences are the greatest source of confusion and a constant obstacle to the effective witness of the Church in the world,” or that “denominations are a sin against Christ,” or that “the greatest scandal of Christendom is denominationalism.”

There may indeed be some who commit the error of placing loyalty to a denomination above loyalty to Christ, or of elevating a minor doctrine to a place of major importance. Yet generally speaking the statements quoted above are untrue.

The best answer to an untruth is the truth. The best way to correct error is to state how it differs from the facts.

The chief cause of confusion to the unbelieving world is, not denominational differences, but the uncertain notes heard from countless pulpits, the frank denials to be found in many classrooms, and the much publicized deviations from Christianity by some who call themselves Christians.

A few years ago there was confusion and alarm in the medical world because a certain preparation of a new vaccine was found to cause the disease, not cure it.

There is no question that there is confusion today about the Church. Nor is there any question that many outside the Church disdain her claims and go on their way churchless—and Christless.

Can it be that many in the Church have missed the message of the Church? Can it be that many have looked on the Church primarily as an organization whose purpose is to change the social order rather than to bring men and women into a right relation with God through faith in his Son?

Denominational differences are minor in their implications compared with those differences of belief that center in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that are to be found in almost every major denomination. Denominational differences are insignificant when compared with those views that are a part of and come from a rejection of the full integrity and authority of the Holy Scriptures—differences expressed by frank denials of truths clearly affirmed in the Scriptures.

Denominational differences are expressed in variations of articles of faith, church polity, and liturgical expression (or lack of it), but such differences are as nothing compared with the deviations of those religionists whose prime source of reference is the latest theories of scholars rather than the revelation to be found in the written Word and the One it reveals.

Denominations represent differences of opinion regarding what are essentially secondary points—the mode of baptism, to cite one, or the degree of attainable sanctification, or organizational matters, or liturgical emphasis. But all major denominations have been united in their convictions about the essential content of the Christian faith. For this reason there has been and continues to be a spiritual unity within evangelical Protestantism that has no reference to outward organization.

These differences are no real obstacle to the propagation of the Christian faith, for the power of the Gospel depends, not on interpretations of truth, but on truth itself. Central to the gospel message is the need of lost men, the answer to that need to be found in Christ, and the building up of the believer in the faith.

The writer worked for twenty-five years as a Presbyterian missionary in a locality in China where there was also an English Baptist mission. There was no confusion worthy of note. The Chinese Christians enjoyed the freest and fullest fellowship, and unbelievers looked on all of us as Christians. In other places where there was “confusion,” it often seemed to have been generated by some overly zealous ecumenicists from abroad.

That confusion exists today is true. From too many sources there comes an uncertain note, not about minor issues, but about the person and work of Jesus Christ. The truths about Christ revealed in the Scriptures are often questioned or denied. No good purpose is served by blaming denominations for this confusion. Those who “trouble Israel” are those who no longer believe, preach, and teach the faith officially affirmed by their denominations in the past and clearly stated in the Word of God.

Proof that the existence of various denominations is not the barrier to cooperation some claim it to be is found in many organizations in America and on the mission fields of the world. In them, backgrounds and affiliations are of little importance if there is faith in a common Lord. But those who feel this way also reject without apology any alignment that holds in question what they feel to be the very heart and life of the Christian faith.

Who would consider a package more important that the food it contains? What physician is more concerned about the vial in which a vaccine comes than in the vaccine itself?

Why is there clamor for the downgrading or elimination of denominations and the setting up of a unified organization, when the ecclesiastical manifestations of the Church are secondary? Why is there an apparent unwillingness to strive for spiritual unity on the basis of a common faith? Organic union of major denominations will not solve our problems, nor will it lessen the confusion of the world at large. Confusion will be eliminated and spiritual power restored when the content of the Christian faith as revealed in the Scriptures is given top priority by teaching and applying Christian truth in daily lives.

The word of the Lord to Zerubbabel is true for the Church today: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).

To look for an answer to the world’s confusion in any place or way other than in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit is but to invite further confusion.

To lay any foundation other than Jesus Christ as revealed in Scriptures is to insure the wasting away of that foundation.

To accept as basic truth any source other than the divine revelation in Holy Writ and the teachings based thereon is to drift to and fro on the tides of human opinion.

To look for salvation, in this life and in the life to come, in any other than in the Christ of Calvary is to make a mockery of the meaning of the Cross.

It is true that we are living in a confused world, a desperately sick world. To the Church has been entrusted the one word of hope, the sure cure, the way of reconciliation. Let her be faithful in her message, and the power of the Spirit of the living God will do what is impossible with man—dispel doubt, convict of sin, and bring into being new creatures in Christ.

But should the Church concentrate her energies on outward organization and continue to give top priority to secondary matters, she will fail in her task, and others will, under God, be called to fulfill his purposes.

The Deity of Christ

The center of Christianity is Christ; the conception we form of Christianity, therefore, depends on the estimate we form of Christ. “What think ye of Christ?” (Matt. 22:42). Who is he? Jesus spoke of John the Baptist as a prophet: “Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet” (Matt. 11:9). But John himself declared of Jesus: “He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear” (Matt. 3:11). And in the fourth Gospel: “He that cometh after me is become before me; for he was before me” (John 1:15).

Who, then, is this Greater One? The new historical-critical school will regard Jesus only as a peasant-prophet of Galilee. His religious greatness is not challenged. He is still the grandest, the most inspired, the most wonderful, of human teachers. “Never man spake like this man” (John 8:46) on the things of the soul. But he was only man—erring, fallible in many respects, and a guide to us only as his intuitions of truth repeat themselves, and are verified in our own experience. The world has moved away from much in his message. We must think and judge of things in terms of that larger view of the world—scientific and historical—which Christ did not possess.

Christ’s message, on this showing, is distinguished from his Person. He is, like Socrates, or Plato, or Confucius, the medium in part of truths which abide the same though his connection with them should cease.

Very different from this is the estimate put on Jesus Christ in all ages by his Church. The Te Deum sings: “Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.” The Nicene Creed reads: “Who, for us men and our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” Is this metaphysics? It is also the witness of the apostolic writings. It may be taken for granted as a result of impartial exegesis that Paul, John, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the author of the Book of Revelation, believed in the pre-existence, the divine dignity, the voluntary humiliation, the real entrance through human birth into our humanity of the Son of God. John scales the divinest heights in his affirmation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 3, 14). But Paul’s note is not lower: “Who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:6–8). Compare the numerous other statements with which the New Testament Epistles are inlaid, as Colossians 1:15–17, Hebrews 1:1–3; 2:14; 1 Peter 1:20; 1 John 1:1–3; Revelation 1:17, 18. It is not man-made creeds only that are assailed when the incarnation of the Son of God is denied, but the faith and testimony of those “prophets and apostles” on whose witness the Church from the first was built (Eph. 2:20; 3:5).

But did the Apostles—did Paul and John in particular—really represent the mind of Christ himself on this great subject? Does their picture correspond with what we find in the simpler narratives of the first three Gospels (the Synoptics)? This is a question now most keenly agitated. The doctrine of the Epistles is the inevitable development of the history in the Gospels, provided the totality of the facts in the Gospels is accepted, and the picture given there is not trimmed down and dissipated by critical violence till its most distinctive features disappear. The apostolic doctrine, indeed, which could only have come from such a life and claims as are depicted in the Gospels, is itself the best guarantee for the truth of the presentation of the latter. For the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels is not a non-miraculous being—one who does not transcend the limits of humanity. Not in origin, for in two of the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) he is supernaturally born. Not in character, for he, alone of the sons of men, is without sin. Not in claims, for these are of the most exalted kind. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire” (Matt. 3:11; cf. John 1:33). “All things have been delivered unto me of my Father” (Matt. 11:27; in 28:18: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”). He shall judge the world (Matt. 25:31 ff.). Not in works, for divine powers continually show themselves forth in him in miracles of mercy. Not in the end of his history, for, if crucified, he rises again in divine might, and is exalted to the right hand of God.

It is on the faith of this apostolic testimony about Jesus in the Gospels and Epistles, in conjunction with the like pervading testimony to the divinity and personal workings of the Holy Spirit, that the Church proceeded in the early days in constructing its doctrine of the Trinity. A divine Father, a divine Son, a divine Spirit—these three are implied in the whole work of the Christian redemption. They are named as Principals in the work of human salvation. Each is adored as divine. Yet the unity of the Godhead is held fast. There are not, and cannot be, three Gods. The distinction is one within the eternal divine nature. It is one name, yet threefold, into which we are baptized (Matt. 28:19). Ineffable mystery, doubtless, yet surpassing discovery of the inmost nature of God!—JAMES ORR

TRY THIS FOR SIZE

It doesn’t take much to make some people happy, and that goes for me. A few years ago a good friend took me to see an indoor track meet in Chicago in which eight of the performers had been Olympic winners. I watched especially the best of them all, Harrison Dillard, who that night won the sixty-yard sprint and the sixty-yard high hurdles. He had just received his twenty-third and twenty-fourth gold watches. His total performance lasted about thirteen seconds, but what impressed me more than the performance was his preparation. He spent over an hour “warming up” for his events. It has always been reported, and is verily believed by me, that this great hurdler could pick a fifty-cent piece off a hurdle with his back foot. When he cleared the hurdle, he was immaculate, honed down almost to perfection. He also gave the impression of being a very happy fellow.

At the close of the war I was teaching in a college when the servicemen came back by the hundreds. They set the scholastic pace for the whole school. Sometimes they studied too hard, if such a thing is possible, or at least too continuously. They needed the breaks that the social life of the college was offering, but apparently they had no taste nor time for such frivolities. Their marvelous self-discipline, I believe, had grown under the pressure of discipline. They had survived an experience in which, if things didn’t suit them, they had no one to cry to. They had had to dig into the deeps of their own integrity.

Just last week in Tulsa I watched and heard a marvelous high school choir. They were sharply disciplined in eye, gesture, and voice, and they were a happy group. When will we learn that self-discipline is a product of discipline? Furthermore (and this could be a shock to modern educators) they had actually memorized great portions of the world’s best music.

FORM AND CONTENT

A brief comment on the pleasant readability of B. E. Junkins’s article, “The Highest Calling,” in the June 4 issue. Aside from the pertinent spiritual message, he writes with an unhampered style, which laymen can understand.… Pineville, La. NELLIE GRACE FALKNER

ORIGINS

If the Reverend Mr. L. Verduin’s exegesis (May 21 issue) of Genesis 1–2 was intended to correspond to the tenets of an evolutionary monogenesis of man, his anthropology is passé. But, on the other hand—his position is not exactly clear—if he meant a synthesis with the doctrine of polygenesis and pre-sapiens raciation, currently the vogue in the scientific establishment, then there is not only much more poetry in Genesis than he suspects, but all the claims of Holy Scripture are stranded in mid-air.…

Kellogg, Iowa

In Genesis 2:18 ff. God concerns himself with man’s need for a helpmate. In the context the animal kingdom is reviewed, but no helper is found (v. 20). To be sure, a miracle had to be performed in order to provide a suitable mate for Adam. Adam himself was the product of a miracle, and it very well could be that God performed this on a proto-man selected from an earlier review of the animal kingdom, similar to the review in search of a wife for Adam.

To consider such a possibility does not in the least remove the necessity of divine intervention, nor does it remove the mystery of man. In The Immense Journey, Loren Eiseley has captured this in such paragraphs as the following:

If one attempts to read the complexities of the story, one is not surprised that man is alone on the planet. Rather, one is amazed and humbled that man was achieved at all. For four things had to happen, and if they had not happened simultaneously, or at least kept pace with each other, the bones of man would lie abortive and forgotten in the sandstones of the past:

1. His brain had almost to treble in size.

2. This had to be effected, not in the womb, but rapidly, after birth.

3. Childhood had to be lengthened to allow this brain, divested of most of its precise instinctive responses, to receive, store, and learn to utilize what it received from others.

4. The family bonds had to survive seasonal mating and become permanent, if this odd new creature was to be prepared for his adult role.

Each one of these major points demanded a multitude of minor biological adjustments, yet all of this—change of growth rate, lengthened age, increased blood supply to the head, moved apparently with rapidity. It is a dizzying spectacle with which we have nothing to compare. The event is complex, it is many-sided, and what touched it off is hidden under the leaf mold of forgotten centuries [pp. 88, 89].

Montclair Community Church

(Reformed Church in America)

Denver, Colo.

If there is no doubt as to the biological similarity of man to the Mammalia class of animals, why then should the next step be avoided? Does man have an animal (Mammalia) ancestry? Obviously he does. The confusion here is between the classification of man and the process of a creature becoming man. There is nothing unique about the “animalness” of man.…

Professor of Anthropology

Eastern Nazarene College.

Quincy, Mass.

Mr. Verduin’s essay does violence to the plain teaching of the Word of God, as well as to the secondary standards of the Christian Church including the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Stockton, Calif.

It annoys me when I make my very best cake and someone remarks, “This is delicious! What kind of mix is it?” I suppose, in his infinite patience, God feels only a slight annoyance over the argument of what kind of mix man is made from. Why has it not occurred to anyone to say, “Well, and the common ancestor of man and animal, who was that? The fish?” If you keep going eventually you will get back to a handful of dust. You might even find out what kind of dust, what elements.

Rochester, N. Y.

“How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?” Who knows the answer, and why should I care?

McPherson, Kan.

BOTH THEN AND NOW

Your editorial comments under “Supercity” (May 7 issue) are disturbing to me, not so much as to what you say, but as to what you fail to say.

Actually, there seems to be a note of pride in your being able to look into the future, far beyond the ability of the author of The Secular City. You point to virtues and potentialities of that which is to come.

What can you say as to the redemptive, atoning work of Christ in the present needs of everyman in every situation? Does the atoning work of Christ on the cross have relevance only to the future the redeemed ones will have with him? Or can I hope that the very power that brought again Jesus Christ from the dead is in me, and in you, and in our common needs at every level of life, manifesting redemptive potentials that can bring creative change to every man in the secular city?…

Seems to me, your editor should have read “Current Religious Thought” in the same issue before making editorial comment on The. Secular City.

Frontiers

Valley Forge, Pa.

Editor

• Confidence in the second advent of Christ does not imply pride; the returning Lord will humble a proud and unrepenting generation. Not only Dr. Kuhn’s “Current Religious Thought” (May 7 issue), to which Mr. Nelson refers, but our editorial pages attest CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s constant concern about social problems in a scriptural rather than narrowly political context.—ED.

PROHIBITION AND CIVIL RIGHTS

In spite of the likelihood that John Calvin and other progenitors of our Reformed tradition accepted alcohol as a gift of God, Dr. Stimson’s inclusion of voluntary abstinence as a part of our Presbyterian heritage presently being threatened is not impertinent (Eutychus, May 7 issue).

The stress on abstinence from alcohol, as a Christian virtue, is implicit in Calvin as it is in the Bible, in the same sense as is anti-slavery sentiment or the concern for Negro civil rights. Calvin knew little about physiology. Body chemistry was as foreign to him as Selma, Alabama. As a child of his age he considered alcohol to be a stimulant, rather than a narcotic drug. Subsequent science has clarified this point, and evangelical theology in due time began to sense the implications of the new knowledge. It is practically pointless today to adduce some sixteenth-century saint’s opinion on the use of wine in defense of social drinking.

Post-colonial America provided an en vironment in which a free church could begin to make sociological-theological connections without feeling threatened by the economic power structure of Europe. There the Lutheran and Anglican establishments were and still are heavily subsidized by the tax “contributions” of breweries and distilleries. Rome’s debt to alcohol profits is also well known. There have been notable exceptions, but generally churches with this sort of financial rootage have been silent on the subject in question, if not actually defenders of drinking practices. In this country, again with happy exceptions, the Lutheran, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox church leaders have been little disposed to challenge their own inherited attitudes on alcohol.

The powerful pressure of economically sensitive groups, including alcohol-advertising news media, helped to destroy Prohibition, and constantly minimized its drastic reduction of alcoholism. This pressure was experienced by the churches in the vilification of American Protestantism’s bent for moral reform. Our clergy were caricatured as pious and naïve, if not hypocritical, dogooders. Presbyterians did not escape. We ended up literally demoralized and almost painfully apologetic for our recent efforts to legislate morality. (The analogy between today’s Civil rights movement and the temperance agitation of the preceding century is remarkably close, even to the non-violent [and sometimes not so passive] demonstrations and marchings. It is intriguing these days to listen to sophisticated interpreters of the race-relations crusade who argue for the necessity of social legislation—i.e., the “prohibition” of discrimination, as a necessary statement of the enlightened community consensus and as a goal toward which to drag the more reluctant citizen!)

So it is not strange, in the light of recent history, that denominational leadership has been tempted to remain largely silent for the three decades since Repeal, even though alcoholism has continued to intensify and has become the nation’s number three (some say number two) public health problem. Our generation has been conditioned to be timid about this subject and suspicious of those who want to discuss it. We are as decorously mild in challenging the alcohol “way of life” in the drinking culture of our day as is the Southern Protestant about his regional “way of life.” Again, the analogy is close, and our rationalizations are similar. Presbyterians mingle readily in upper social strata, and we don’t like to offend.

The likelihood of annoying Episcopalians, with whom we are exploring church union, is another reason for forgetting certain Puritanical fruits of our Presbyterian family tree—even though they make historical, scientific, and theological sense.

Meanwhile, at the local level, some of us work hard with A.A. chapters, with community counseling centers and clinics for alcoholics, with state associations which almost singlehandedly stand against the enormous political power of the “wets,” and with innumerable desperate men and women who trust us to understand and aid them in their battle with the bottle. They have little doubt as to who in the churches really care. They have scant time for theological sophistries concerning what the Church Fathers wrote about alcohol. They have been made painfully aware of the profound spiritual implications in alcohol addiction, and by a kind of elemental common sense they infer that there are antecedent theological, moral, and spiritual questions raised by the sort of social drink ing customs which got them started. Often they wonder aloud why so few doctors or ministers bother to be concerned and involved.

This “wonders” me too. There are encouraging signs that the medical profession is stirring, in spite of the heady whirl in which so many doctors are caught. There is a basic honesty here, as was evidenced when the cigarette-cancer issue was aired despite the prevalence of smoking among physicians. As for the Church, perhaps we will climb on the bandwagon again, once it gets rolling! Or maybe Ed Stimson is right and we are indeed ready to be serious about our moral heritage if our leadership will listen.

From a Los Angeles news correspondent this week: “Governor Edmund G. Brown has just reported to the State Legislature that the price California is paying for bad effects from alcohol has become ‘incredibly high.’ He declared ‘with the lives of thousands of Californians and a billion dollars a year in losses at stake, we can do no less than pledge a new assault on this social and economic evil.’ ”

Governor Brown happens to be a Roman Catholic and can hardly be accused of nineteenth-century Protestant moralism!

First Presbyterian

Yakima, Wash.

EVIDENTIARY SUPPORT

The editorial “Picking Flowers on Golgotha” (May 21 issue) was a cogent statement of what, in time, may prove to be the greatest national crisis America has to date been called upon to face. The frightening rise in crime, the increase of chronic alcoholism and mental illness, and the pervading preoccupation with sex in its manifold forms can be cited as additional evidentiary support for the present existence of a national moral problem of profound proportions.…

Kansas City, Mo.

WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE?

Today there are hundreds of people that have left churches of their fathers because of the easy “Christianity” that has replaced the old-time religion. In its place is monotone liturgy or high-church liturgy that one has to be an opera star to sing; Sunday schools are taught by people who do not know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, let alone witness for him anywhere.…

In the midwestern states there are many older people in their late sixties and seventies that are traveling 300 miles round trip to little country churches that still have old preachers and prayer and testimony meetings. Our hearts cry out for men consecrated to God as Paul was and for preachers to once again toe the mark and preach Christ and not just about him. What is it going to take, bloodshed to purge the Church of its lethargy? Woe unto us when all men speak well of us.

Villa Park, Ill.

HOW FAR DOWN THE ROAD?

A legal fraternity called Phi Delta Phi publishes a house organ, in the November, 1964, issue of which its editor made this observation: “Speaking of the decisions of high tribunals (and who, apparently, is not?), it might be suggested, based on a juxtaposition of cases, that a fairly workable way to obtain protection for public prayer is for somebody to compose an obscene one.”

After reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY for April 23 (“Sexual Dialogue,” News), I think this may soon be accomplished—if it has not been done already.

Peoria, Ill.

CONCERNING APOSTOLICITY

Re “Ministry in Mission” (Apr. 23 issue): The emphasis on biblical authority in CHRISTIANITY TODAY is really refreshing. It is for that reason that I have this magazine sent to me all the way to Germany.

Being mindful of the authority of the Scriptures, I must challenge Mr. Moore’s statement: “… the senior elder (was) consecrated at first by the apostles to serve as the bishop or presiding elder of the congregation.” Now, where does the inspired record say that the apostles did just that? In my New Testament the bishops appear as identical with the presbyters (Acts 20:17, 18; Titus 1:5, 7).

Shouldn’t we be more careful in distinguishing between what the apostles really did (what the Bible really reports of their actions and teaching) and the traditional developments of post-apostolic times? That would simplify matters a whole lot, at least among those who truly want to follow the Scriptures. I am aware that such clear-cut distinction would destroy the foundation of the hallowed “episcopal way of life.” But it would also make room again for real apostolic Christianity.…

Gemeinde Christi

Hamburg, Germany

I thank you so much for all the articles during this year which had the aim to inform about the development of modern theology. I find your reports on the modern German theologians very helpful, very precise, and adequate, and the review as a whole can be of much help. I try to write for myself a kind of an extract of those articles and to give them as a small contribution to the editors of the Methodist weekly periodical in Switzerland who are friends of mine.

Zürich, Switzerland

OVERLOADED SUNDAY SCHOOL

I am quite in sympathy with William H. Fisher (“Wanted: Protestant Schools,” May 7 issue) when he says it is time for Protestants to look into parochial education. He mentions practical considerations and how they can be overcome. More important than these are, I feel, the basic wishes of parents to raise their children Christian. Since the faith demands knowledge of the Bible and church history and teachings, and since the Sunday school cannot and never was intended to carry the full teaching load, we simply have no alternative but to open schools where Christianity can be taught. Of course we must support the public school system, but we must also provide our own children with Christian education. Episcopalians, Friends, and Lutherans are making strides in this direction now.

Associate Director

Council for Religion in Independent Schools

New York, N. Y.

BROAD CONCEPT

I can’t understand why Eutychus II (Apr. 9 issue) and other writers in CHRISTIANITY TODAY insist upon calling Roman Catholics “Romanists.”

My dictionaries classify this term as one used “chiefly in disparagement.” Like the term “Nigger” it is now associated with the K.K.K. and Know-Nothing mentality.

Maysville Presbyterian

Buckingham, Va.

• The terms “Romanist” and “Romanism” are by no means used only in a derogatory sense but are ecclesiastical shorthand for Roman Catholic and Roman Catholicism. The term “Catholic,” which many Roman churchmen now prefer, is confusing. Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, and Anglo-Catholicism likewise profess to be Catholic, and Protestants confessing the Apostles’ Creed speak of “one holy catholic church,” a reference to the Church’s universality.—ED.

AMBASSADORS OF LIGHT

A Soviet clergyman, frustrated by the appalling shortage of Bibles in the U.S.S.R., challenged me: “Why do not the visitors who come to our country each bring in and leave a Russian Bible?”

From this challenge evolved the offer of a free portion of the Russian Scriptures to those planning to visit the U.S.S.R. A number have found the experience successful, meaningful, and most satisfying. Among the participants were businessmen, doctors, scientists, ministers, teachers, students, and housewives.

For the readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY who plan to visit the Soviet Union this year, each may receive a free Russian-English copy of the Sermon on the Mount by writing to the address below.

Russian Bible

Box 350

Cooper Union Station

New York, N. Y. 10003

Part II

The discussion among Protestant churches themselves is a matter wholly different from the discussion between the Protestant churches and Rome. All the Protestant churches trace their origin back to the Reformation. Some do this directly, because they came into existence at the time of the Reformation. Others owe their origin to secessions from Reformation churches in later centuries. What caused the division of these Reformation churches is a very complicated matter. Hardly ever was the cause purely doctrinal; so-called non-theological factors nearly always played a decisive part.

More important is the fact that today there is a strong desire for unity in nearly all Protestant churches. This desire has found its most conspicuous form in the World Council of Churches, established at Amsterdam in 1948. At that time the only participants were Protestant churches from Western Europe, America, and South Africa, and some of the younger churches from Africa and Asia. At the Second Assembly at Evanston, Illinois (1954), more churches participated, including some of the smaller Eastern Orthodox churches. And in 1961 at the Third Assembly (held at New Delhi), the Russian Orthodox Church was admitted to full membership.

The admission of the Eastern Orthodox churches clearly shows that the WCC is not a “Reformation” council. Indeed, the Reformation-principle is permanently under pressure, for the Orthodox churches do not recognize it as necessary. Never having gone through the historical Reformation, these churches regard it as an essentially “Western” affair. John Meyendorff, an Orthodox theologian, writes in an article entitled “The Significance of the Reformation in the History of Christendom”: “The historical impermeability of the Orthodox world to the great movement of the Reformation simply illustrates the fact that the theological formulation of Protestantism—at least when it is seen in the light of Eastern Patristic tradition—is fundamentally dependent upon Western Augustinian problematics” (The Ecumenical Review, January, 1964, p. 172). The Eastern Orthodox tradition claims that it does not need such a reformation, for it never fell into the Augustinian heresy of “created grace,” against which Luther and Calvin rightly reacted. The doctrine of “Ecclesia reformata et semper reformanda,” essential to the Reformation, is only partly acceptable to the Eastern church.

It is obvious that in this situation the WCC cannot possibly take the Reformation, in both its historical and its spiritual nature, as its starting point. This does not mean that the Reformation is not taken seriously at all. Already in 1948, at Amsterdam, the report on “The Universal Church in God’s Design” stated as the great difference the difference between Catholic and Protestant. We also know that in the discussions within the WCC, the real questions and problems are not avoided. The different views of the ministry and the sacraments come to the fore again and again. And yet we cannot help wondering whether in these discussions between the Protestant and the Eastern Orthodox churches, the real nature of the Reformation is fully honored. What are we to think of the description given of the Catholic and Protestant views in the report of 1948, referred to above? Of the emphasis usually called “Catholic,” the report says that it “contains a primary insistence upon the visible continuity of the Church in the apostolic succession of the episcopate.” The “Protestant” emphasis, it is said, “primarily emphasizes the initiative of the word of God and the response of faith, focused in the doctrine of justification sola fide.” It is very significant that the Protestant view is called an “emphasis”! Here the existential, all-embracing, and all-penetrating character of the Reformation as the rediscovery of the Gospel of free grace is relegated to the position of one view alongside another view. Within such a context the Reformation-principle is paralyzed and virtually ignored.

This is even more apparent in the WCC’s refusal to take a stand on present-day liberalism. If there ever was a denial of the Reformation-principle, it is in liberalism. This is true both of the older type of liberalism, which actually regarded Jesus only as the teacher of a new morality, and of the neo-liberalism of our day, as manifest in the theology of Bultmann and Tillich. Admittedly, for the new liberals Jesus is more than a teacher; in the man Jesus we find our “authentic existence” (Bultmann) or the “new being” (Tillich). One can even notice, in their emphasis on faith as “justifying” faith, that these scholars are from Lutheran stock! And yet, in spite of some reminders of their Reformation background, there is nothing left of the Gospel rediscovered by the Reformers. The whole history of salvation, upon which our redemption is built, has evaporated into existential categories. The Incarnation itself, the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension—all, we are told, must be demythologized and deliteralized if we are to find their real, existential meaning.

The Given Unity

Just as Eastern Orthodoxy, this liberalism—in all its variations—has a legitimate place within the WCC. From a certain point of view this is understandable. Does it not have the same legitimate place within many of the participating churches? Personally, we should even be willing to accept this situation, if the WCC were only a platform for discussion among the churches. We should always be willing to enter into discussion with others, even with those who deny the Gospel. But the WCC claims to be much more than a platform for discussion. It claims to be the manifestation of a community of faith. The 1948 report on “The Universal Church in God’s Design” opened with the following paragraph; “God has given to His people in Jesus Christ a unity which is His creation and not our achievement. We praise and thank Him for a mighty work of His Holy Spirit, by which we have been drawn together to discover that, notwithstanding our divisions, we are one in Jesus Christ.” This thesis was reiterated at Evanston and at New Delhi. This “given” unity is the premise of the modern ecumenical movement. Now, we should be the last to deny that there is such a given unity among all true believers and all true churches of Jesus Christ, transcending all denominational divisions. But may one claim this unity as starting point for a council consisting of churches that not only tolerate modernism but sometimes even honor and promote it? Is this the given unity of which Christ spoke in his high-priestly prayer in John 17? Was not that a unity-in-the-word of Christ himself and of his apostles (cf. John 17:6, 8, 14, 17, 20)? The WCC, although it has included a reference to Scripture in its basis, does not uncompromisingly insist on adherence and obedience to this Scripture.

We must therefore conclude that in the present structure of the WCC the Reformation-principle does not play a decisive part. On all sides it is thwarted and paralyzed. The existing structure simply does not permit the Gospel, rediscovered by the Reformers and confessed in the great Reformation confessions, to be the determinative starting point. And this is the reason why we believe that the WCC, as it now functions, will never lead to a truly scriptural unity.

The same is true of the many negotiations for church union being carried on in our day. They are all patterned after the unity-approach of the WCC. Consider, for example, the present negotiations among the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists in Australia. The first report, submitted by the joint commission under the title “The Faith of the Church,” contains many valuable insights. But again the great antithesis between liberalism and orthodoxy is glossed over. The formulations of the new confession are such that all parties in the existing churches can subscribe to them, for they leave room for various interpretations. There is no frank statement of the Reformation Gospel. Although many good things are said about the Bible, the whole doctrine of Scripture is conceived in a Barthian sense, and “the truly ecumenical doctrine that the Bible is the Word of God,” to quote Hermann Sasse, is abolished.

Perhaps we could state our view in this way: The tragic situation of the modern ecumenical movement, in all its phases, is that it aims at union without preceding reformation, i.e., without the rediscovery of and the return to the Gospel of the Reformation, the Gospel of the sola gratia. We do not wish to be misunderstood. We do not desire a mere repristination or restoration. One cannot set the clock back and repeat history. No doubt, there are certain matters that today would be formulated differently than they were in the Reformation confessions. But whatever may change in our formulations, the Gospel, as rediscovered by the Reformers, is and remains the only true Gospel.

Visible And Invisible

What then is our task as children of the Reformation in our peculiar situation? It is twofold. First of all, we must work persistently for a reformation of our own churches. We should not try to escape into the doctrine of the “invisible” Church. No doubt the distinction between a visible and an invisible aspect of the Church is truly Reformed. But we should never forget that for the Reformers these two aspects always belonged together. As J. T. McNeill has said, “The visible and invisible are not for Luther separate entities. They interpenetrate one another, and, in part, his aim as a Reformer was to give visibility to the spiritual Church of God” (A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948, ed. by R. Rouse and S. C. Neill, p. 31). Likewise Calvin always keeps the two concepts together. Although the Church is essentially an object of faith and as such invisible (“Credo ecclesiam”), Calvin nonetheless states emphatically that “this article of the Creed relates in some measure to the external Church” (Institutes IV, I, 3). And immediately after that he writes his famous words about the visible Church as “the mother of believers”: “There is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels.” It is obvious that the Reformers would never allow us to escape from our responsibilities towards the visible Church by fleeing into the invisible Church. Nor would they allow us to seek our spiritual comfort and fellowship in interdenominational organizations, such as missionary societies and the like. We are members of the Church, which is the body of Christ. If our own church has deviated from the true Gospel, it is our duty to call it back to this Gospel. We should never weary of this task but, living by this Gospel in true faith, should discharge our task of witnessing to this Gospel with humble faithfulness. And we should do this on all levels, not only on the local but also on the supra-local level. We should realize that we may suffer the same fate as the Reformers, who were condemned by their own church because of their unwavering allegiance to the Gospel of free grace. But is not suffering for the Gospel a part of being a Christian?

A Time To Say No

But, to turn to the second part of our task, what if our church refuses to listen to this call? What if it persists in misunderstanding and deviating from the true Gospel? Although we loathe the very thought of it, yet we believe that there will come a time when we have to say No to our own church. It should be clear at the outset that we may do this only when we are convinced that God demands it of us. We may never seek it as an easy way out. Separation as a principle is contrary to the Reformation. The Reformers never sought separation; it was forced upon them by the unrepentant attitude of their own church, which refused to obey the Gospel. Calvin, for example, has written sharp words against all capricious separation. But at the same time he refuses to maintain the unity of the Church at all costs. He strongly defends separation from the church of Rome, because the Word “has been destroyed from among them.” Here separation is a duty toward God, for in the Church Jesus Christ must reign supreme through his Word and Spirit.

It must be admitted, of course, that in the days of the Reformation the issue was much clearer than it is in our day. Many of our churches are more a mixture of truth and error than the Roman Catholic Church of that day. Yet surely neither Luther nor Calvin nor any other Reformer would have tolerated liberalism or neo-liberalism in his church—not to speak of the Catholicizing tendencies in many Protestant churches today.

Separation, however, never means isolation, in the sense of remaining alone, separate from the communion of the saints. It is our divine calling to seek visible unity with all those who call upon the Name of the Lord from a pure heart (2 Tim. 2:22). It is our God-given duty to worship and serve God in the fellowship of all who accept the Gospel. Perhaps such a fellowship at first means tensions and even frictions. There may be many obstacles of a historical, sociological, traditional, or even national nature. But all such obstacles are not essential and may never keep God’s children apart.

Such was the view of the Church held by the Reformers. As Franz Hildebrandt has written, they “never broke away from the church to found their own sects or parties.… These men knew no plurality of churches, and they cared nothing for what Wesley would have called ‘singularities’; they knew only one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, by which they meant the congregation of faithful men where the Word is preached in purity and the sacraments are administered according to our Lord’s ordinance.… This to them was not a matter of new viewpoints versus old but a grim battle of truth against error; Luther, at the end of his life, insisted that ‘we are the true old Church’ of prophets and apostles, known by the seven authentic marks of Word, Baptism, Holy Communion, Ministry, Absolution [i.e., the word of forgiveness], Prayer, and Cross (meaning the suffering Church)” (“Reunion and Reformation, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 19, 1964, pp. 3, 4).

Just as there will always be tension between the visible and the invisible aspect of the Church, so there will ever be tension between the aspect of unity and the aspect of truth in the life of the Church. In faith they belong together: “Credo unam sanctam apostolicam Ecclesiam.” For the New Testament apostles, the Church was unthinkable without this oneness and this apostolicity. In utter amazement the Apostle Paul asks the Corinthians: “Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1:13). And with the full weight of his apostolic authority he declares: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4–6, RSV). But it is equally clear that in the New Testament the oneness does not qualify the apostolicity but, conversely, the apostolicity qualifies the oneness. There is only oneness in the common adherence to the apostolic Gospel. Wherever and whenever this Gospel is adulterated the New Testament sounds its anathema, and the oneness, though not broken, is denied (Gal. 1:8, 9; Titus 3:10, 11; 2 John 10, 11).

What happened in the Reformation will happen again and again, when children of God accept the Gospel of the Reformation and show themselves willing to face all the consequences of this acceptance. Indeed, the Reformation is still of the greatest importance for the discussion between the churches. Only the Reformation knows the truly ecumenical nature of the Church, as this is so clearly expressed in Article VII of the Augsburg Confession: “Also they teach that one holy Church is to continue forever. This Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught [purely preached] and the Sacraments rightly administered [according to the Gospel]. And unto the true unity of the Church, it is sufficient to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”

The Protestant church has too lightly abdicated its full responsibility in healing men’s souls and too readily allowed itself to hide behind the seeming conflict between psychotherapy and Christianity. It has almost forgotten that Christianity has been engaged for centuries in the endeavor to save, mature, and sanctify people—to make them whole in undivided selfhood. It has almost allowed psychologists to forget that ambivalence is at least as old as Paul, who in Romans 7 described the struggle of the two selves, the carnal and the spiritual. Paul’s resolution of this conflict is to bring all things into a unity in Christ. The objective of Christian psychology is none other than to remove the conscious and unconscious blocks that frustrate such a resolution.

To have a Christian-oriented clinic adjacent to a seminary may be a new procedure, but it expresses time-honored truth. Establishing a school of psychology in the heart of a theological institution speaks eloquently of the essential relation between the two disciplines. No psychology can afford to be without the perspectives and motivations of theology. Nor must theology be allowed to become so abstract as to lose present relevance. In a famous picture, Theologia is represented as a female figure standing with her feet on the earth and her head above the clouds. Consider some points at which the disciplines of theology and psychology converge.

First, a deep sense of need is a basis from which persons turn either to Christianity or to psychotherapy. In each direction there are dangers. In psychotherapy there is the danger of remaining passive and expecting the therapist to provide all the answers. There is also the danger of an earthbound transference through deifying the therapist. The defense against these is the open, direct confrontation of the patient by the therapist who can anticipate the dangers and handle them appropriately.

In the Christian Church, passive conformity has too often been a criterion of good churchmanship. A great many emotionally disturbed persons come into the church expecting God to take care of everything and thus relieve them of their responsibility. But God nowhere promises to do it all. In attempting to escape reality by “passing the buck” to God, one can delude himself into thinking that he can avoid the responsibilities of real life. The church can be a shelter only for a limited time. Then one of two things must happen. Either one gets soundly converted, or else he becomes thoroughly smug, thus adding to the dead wood within the church.

When one feels the sense of need driving him to the church, there is the danger of merging with the church, belonging to the theologically sound group as a substitute for carrying out one’s responsibility to grow up into the fullness of the stature of the manhood of Christ. The Scripture says, “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12). It is extremely important that he who enters the church remember that it is a door, and that even within the church’s framework he must carry his own burden and must mature to the point of lifting the other person’s burden, so fulfilling the law of Christ. One cannot substitute a sense of belonging for a sense of growing up, because one can really belong only as he really grows up. One is truly a member of the Body of Christ only as he begins to operate as a member, and as the Head who is Christ begins to motivate, direct, and use him.

A second point at which Christianity and psychotherapy converge is that both locate man’s problem in the heart, which means the deepest recesses of man’s being. Scripture says: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matt. 15:19). And when the Psalmist tells us, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God” (Ps. 14:1), he points to the ultimate folly. For when man’s unconscious anger is so intense that he has to usurp the position of Ultimate Reality and declare all other reality null and void, this is nothing less than impious foolishness.

Psychology locates man’s trouble in the unconscious—the place where the fantasies, the secret imaginations of the heart, dwell. Fenichel once pointed out that the difference between mental health and illness lies in our fantasies. Fantasy as a preparation for action characterizes mental health; fantasy as a substitute for action characterizes mental illness. When fantasy is used to distort reality, and then these distortions are deviously embellished through rationalization until fantasy replaces reality, a major therapeutic problem results. Flours, months, and sometimes even years are then required for the person to rediscover the truth and be helped back to a realistic relation to himself, to his relatives, to his neighbors, to society, and to God.

The Demand For Involvement

Let us turn to a third point of convergence. Both Christianity and psychotherapy demand involvement. Christianity demands involvement with God through Jesus Christ, his way becoming our way as we attempt by his grace to identify ourselves with the attitudes in the Gospel so beautifully and completely demonstrated on the Cross.

Here again in the therapist God bears witness. His lovingkindness and tender mercies need be no less evident in the therapist than in the preacher. There is great power in the public proclamation of gospel truth, but even Jesus used the one-to-one approach—in Jerusalem by night, by a well in distant Samaria, with the woman taken in adultery. Love can be mediated only through incarnation. At this point, even the Church may have something to learn about the nature of love and the meaning of acceptance. There is no question about the need for a moral order and ethical practices, but the Church has a tendency to superimpose doctrines and coerce morality and Christian behavior—somewhat like Saul’s attempt to impose his armor on David—rather than lovingly to foster individual spiritual insight. This quality of love must be incarnate in the therapist, as he leads his patient step by painful step from the darkness of his fear, past his defenses, into the light.

Here the problem arises of the therapist’s becoming God to his patient—and therapists have sometimes been accused of allowing this. But is it not true that the preacher also faces this problem? In view of the confidentiality and extended time that therapy may involve, it is not difficult to understand the patient’s tendency to deify the therapist. Patients have been known to move from near-hysteria to childlike calm just from hearing their therapist on the telephone.

The answer to the problem, in practicing therapy as in preaching the Word, is Christian humility. We are merely signposts directing men and women to him who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” We know him who is the touchstone of reality. Involved as we are in the task of healing men’s spirits, we realize deep within our own beings the meaning of being rooted and grounded in God. The corrective to transference and human deification is a humble, living, and responsible relationship with Christ himself.

Involvement on the human plane as the medium for involvement on the divine plane is clearly expressed in First John 4:20. How can a man love God, whom he has not seen, if he cannot love his fellow man, whom he has seen? Or, in the words of our Lord, “First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matt. 5:24). In the context of the therapist’s loving acceptance, the patient learns to accept and love himself. This, then, leads him to loving his neighbor.

A fourth point of convergence between Christianity and psychotherapy is that both can progress in utmost honesty only as they are integrated in a single adequate objective. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (Jas. 1:8). It is ironical that the art of self-examination and self-knowledge should have been restored by someone so far outside the pale of religious and Christian truth as Sigmund Freud. Or was Freud, despite his presuppositions, witnessing to the God of truth? Be that as it may, few have known more intimately the deceitfulness of the human heart than Freud, and few have devised a more searching way of discovering “truth in the inward parts.” When Isaiah describes the condition of Judah and Jerusalem as “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint” (Isa. 1:5), and then goes on to portray the deceitfulness and hypocrisy causing the condition, we are witnessing a clinical analysis of dishonesty and the disintegration it causes. O. Hobart Mowrer has drawn attention to this in The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, in which he maintains that emotional illness is not only a break with reality; it is first of all a break with sincerity. When one is dishonest with himself, he runs counter to his very being. Ontologically, honesty is the best policy.

Reality At A Makeshift Level

Moreover, both Christianity and psychotherapy recognize that the “sickness” Isaiah spoke of results from a gradual process of deterioration involving rationalization, projection, and a host of other attempts to manipulate reality and adjust to it at a makeshift level. Three significant words in the New Testament portray this deterioration. In Acts 7:51 there is a warning about resisting the Spirit; in Ephesians 4:30 the warning is intensified to become grieving the Spirit; and finally, in First Thessalonians 5:19 the end result is seen: quenching the Spirit.

Consider this excerpt from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress:

Now, said Christian, let me go hence. Nay stay, said the Interpreter, till I have showed thee a little more.… So he took him by the hand again, and led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage. (For us today, may not Bunyan’s symbolism of the “very dark room” mean the unconscious, and “the iron cage” mean the way we “get ourselves in a bind”?)

Now the man, to look on, seemed very sad: he sat with his eyes looking down to the ground, his hands folded together, and he sighed as if he would break his heart. (No psychologist could paint a truer picture of a depressive.)

Then said Christian to the man, What art thou? The man answered, I am what I was not once. (Both the question and the answer suggest that the man had lost his identity.)

CHRISTIAN: What wast thou once?

MAN: The man said, I was once a fair and flourishing professor, both in mine own eyes and also in the eyes of others. I was once, as I thought, fair for the Celestial City, and had even joy at the thoughts that I should get thither.… (This seems to show that the man’s true self has not come through. Instead, he identifies himself with a rational image of himself, a form of godliness devoid of power. The burden of his emptiness is too great, so he collapses and takes a leap into irresponsibility in which he promises himself freedom.)

CHRISTIAN: Well, but what art thou now?

MAN: I am now a man of despair, and am shut up in it, as in this iron cage. I cannot get out; oh, now I cannot! (The leap finds him identified with the demonic—a complete swing from the rational to the irrational, where he experiences what Kierkegaard calls “shut-up-ness.”)

CHRISTIAN: But how camest thou into this condition?

MAN: I left off to watch and be sober; I laid the reins upon the neck of my lusts; I sinned against the light of the Word and the goodness of God. I have grieved the Spirit, and He is gone; I tempted the devil, and he is come to me. I have so hardened my heart, that I cannot repent.… (Notice the degree of responsibility he assumes for getting himself into this plight. He seems to recognize that his break with sincerity has disoriented his relation to reality.)

CHRISTIAN: Then said Christian, Is there no hope, but you must be kept in the iron cage of despair?

MAN: No, none at all.

CHRISTIAN: Why, the Son of the Blessed is very pitiful.

MAN: I have crucified him to myself afresh. I have despised his person; I have despised his righteousness; I have counted his blood an unholy thing; I have done despite to the Spirit of Grace.… Therefore, I have shut myself out of all the promises, and there now remains to me nothing but threatenings, dreadful threatenings, fearful threatenings of certain judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour me as an adversary. (He is overwhelmed by his responsibility in contributing to his condition. This could have been the way up and out. Instead, he found himself confronted by nothingness, thrust inward upon his own nudity, his history confronted by nullity. The question of his own significance is now balanced between life and death. [See S. R. Hopper, “The Crisis of Faith,” p. 43.])

CHRISTIAN: For what did you bring yourself into this condition?

MAN: For the lusts, pleasures, and profits of this world; in the enjoyment of which I did then promise myself much delight; but now every one of those things also bite me, and gnaw me like a burning worm. (Here is an illustration of the inner dialogue frequently preceding strategy formation. He committed himself to an inadequate strategy and “promised”—or rationalized himself into believing—that it was adequate. Further, it was the recognition of his responsibility in this choice that gnawed in him.)

CHRISTIAN: But canst thou not now repent and turn?

MAN: God hath denied me repentance. His word gives me no encouragement to believe; yea, he himself hath shut me up in this iron cage; nor can all men in the world let me out. O eternity! Eternity! How shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with in eternity? (He finds the burning and the gnawing too much to endure. So, like the paranoic who hates himself, he allows himself the dubious comfort of feeling hated by everyone—in his case, Reality. God was not being good to him on his terms. Since he would not change the laws of cause and effect, God was responsible for his condition; God was bad.)

INTERPRETER: Then said the interpreter to Christian, Let this man’s misery be remembered by thee, and be an everlasting caution to thee.

In this passage Bunyan has drawn a lucid picture of psychotic agony. This condition is brought about by a person’s desire to hold to an outworn strategy of life, using variations of the same theme to keep it alive. When he finds it won’t work, then he makes himself more sick to force reality to comply. When this isn’t heeded, he can use psychosomatic illness as a coercive measure. And if this won’t work, he can turn to depression or withdrawal, or even withdraw into psychosis. Emotional illness is not just a break with reality; it is a break with sincerity—with truth in the inward parts.

A fifth point is that the disciplines of theology and psychotherapy agree in assuming the condition of sickness to be curable if one wants to be cured. Jesus said: “According to your faith, be it done unto you” (Matt. 9:29). Psychology anchored in humanism has too readily led to despair and an air of finality based on its diagnostic categories. But Christian psychology maintains that man is more than his category. We must cease identifying persons by their symptoms. We do not say, “A man is a cold”; we say, “He has a cold.” Similarly, a man may have or use a depressive, schizophrenic, paranoid, or hysterical strategy to cope with reality. But he is still a man for all that, and this very ability to transcend the symptom and see himself using that strategy implies his freedom to do something about it.

Herein lies a basic difference between humanistic psychology and Christian psychology. Humanistic psychology holds that man is a reactive mechanism; Christian psychology holds that man created in the image of God is a spirit. Let those who believe in the living God hesitate to pronounce any man incurable.

In psychotherapy just as in Christianity, personal faith is indispensable. “He could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief” (Mark 6:5, 6). Healing must be sought; it cannot be imposed.

But is Christ the answer, or does everyone have to resort to psychotherapy? To set forth these alternatives is unnecessary. We cannot limit the way God chooses to work. Whether he chooses visible or invisible means, whether we understand his means or not, God is sovereign. His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are our ways his ways. History nevertheless witnesses to God’s use of human agents to fulfill his purposes.

In every instance of psychological healing, the grace of God and the working of his Holy Spirit effect the transformation. Thus, if the duty of the preacher is to scatter the seed, the function of the therapist is to assist in preparing the soil. If the work of the Holy Spirit through the preacher is blessed and ordained of God, does it seem strange or presumptuous to believe God may use the therapist to till the soil of the human heart, so as to prepare for the Spirit’s further work? If the skills of surgery are sometimes God’s instruments to do his healing miracles, can there be any real problem with accepting the skills of the psychotherapist as also subject to the direction of the Holy Spirit? God may speak through the trumpet tones of the preacher or through the quiet responses of the therapist who skillfully recognizes and breaks through the hardened defenses of a desperately sick soul. Otherwise—and too frequently—the good seed, falling on the hard encrustations of the human heart, can become mere doctrine and knowledge, a positive menace. Those to whom this happens are described as “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof … ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:5, 7).

The process of healing involves moving from ego-centeredness to a discovery of the true self in relation to what a Jungian would call a “non-personal factor of supreme value.” Where egocentricity is not overcome by a discovery of ultimate truth, even dreams may send up warning signals. To respond to the challenge of ultimate truth is to emerge into real selfhood in a vital relation to Ultimate Reality or God. To resist the challenge and rationalize an escape leads to mental collapse.

Moving on to a sixth area, both Christianity and psychology evaluate growth and maturity in terms of a reality-relation. Jesus said: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” James wrote: “Faith without works is dead.” A word of caution is needed. Too often in Christian circles the “fruit test” has been passed merely by doing the right things. This had led to the development of a kind of Pharisaism—a dogmatism hardly different from the old psychology that needs to be transcended. The aliveness of the Christian faith is too closely linked to existence to be contained in such old wineskins. Although psychology, with its concentration on motivations and dynamics and with its focus on the unconscious, can be of immense corrective help, it is still vulnerable through its inadequate view of man—a view that has led it to be satisfied with construing Reality with a small r or as a “non-personal factor of supreme value.” This truncated view of man probably accounts in large measure for the pessimism and despair so apparent in Freud’s psychology. Man’s hunger for communication with Being on an ultimate level—if we may put it abstractly—is no less ontologically real and no less in need of nurture than the ontological reality of human relations.

There are numerous other areas in which the disciplines of theology and psychology converge and an alliance could be effected. For example, could sin and emotional ill health be brought closer together if viewed in terms of alienation from Ultimate Reality? Would prayer be more vital if one saw himself reflected to himself in the mirror of God as Truth? Can we benefit from the recognition that guilt and responsibility are facts of our very being, that we are so created that not to be responsibly and fully ourselves evokes anxiety and guilt? The concepts of love and acceptance are in common usage in psychology. But would the exchange between theology and psychology be more significant if this love could have the full connotation of Christ’s example and of the New Testament agape?

The title of this essay, “Christianity as Insight,” points to the common ground between Christianity and a psychology based on a Christian view of man. Further exploration of this ground needs to be made. The Christian psychologist must frankly and gladly acknowledge his indebtedness to humanistic psychology and its descriptive analyses of our frail human condition. But a Christian psychology offers all that humanistic psychology can give and significantly more—a Person whom to know aright is life eternal. There is ample clinical evidence to support the claim that a psychologically intelligent and informed religious experience is still the greatest and quickest resolver of the conflicts that in this modern age press upon the soul of man.

When the American Psychiatric Association met last month in New York City, evangelical psychiatrists found an opportunity to discuss the moving frontiers relating Christianity and psychotherapy. Assistant Editor Frank Farrell conducted a panel discussion with the following three psychiatrists: Dr. Truman G. Esau, director of the Covenant Counseling Center of the Swedish Covenant Hospital, Chicago, Illinois; Dr. E. Mansell Pattison, senior psychiatrist, National Institute of Mental Health, Clinical Neuropharmacology Research Center, Washington, D. C.; Dr. Orville S. Walters, professor of health science, lecturer in psychiatry, and director of health services, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois. On the following pages is an abridgment of the discussion.—ED.

DR. FARRELL: If there is one thing modern man should know by now, it is that he is living in an age of crisis. This is pointed out to him on every hand, and if he is not benumbed by the constant repetition of the “news,” he is staggered by the terrible toll of the crisis in mental hospital statistics alone. Men seem often to be living on their fears, but they are obviously not thriving on them. In the providence of God, the rising tide of tension and personal disintegration is now being countered to some degree by advances in psychology, and Christian ministers are more and more equipping themselves with the tools of knowledge and experience in this field. The need of a person in distress generally is not confined to a single category but may extend to the fields of religion and ethics as well as to psychology, medicine, physiology, and sociology. What do you men consider to be the role of religious values in psychology? How should Christian values be utilized professionally in psychotherapy?

DR. PATTISON: Religious values play a very important role in almost everybody’s life, whether he says so explicitly or not. These values affect people’s behavior in virtually every sector of living. Therefore people’s religious values, whatever they may be, are an important consideration in any sort of psychotherapy and cannot be ignored; they must be reckoned with no matter who is doing the therapy or who the patient is, and regardless of the religious values of the patient or the therapist.

DR. ESAU: I think you can amplify that by saying that it is incumbent on the psychotherapist to inquire in this area. This is not traditionally taught in psychiatric residencies. But if religious values are an important part of the patient’s life, the therapist is well advised to know how important they are to the person, and then what role they play, whether it be a healthy role or detrimental to his mental health.

DR. WALTERS: Freud took the position that his patient’s values and ethics were none of his concern, but this viewpoint is passing in psychiatry. An important factor in the change of climate is Report Number 48 produced by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. This report stated that the patient’s values are important to the therapist; that the therapist’s values become known to the patient; that it is quite impossible for the therapist to remain neutral; that in the practice of his profession he is constantly making value judgments and moral decisions. This is a most significant admission by a very influential group in psychiatry.

DR. PATTISON: It is no longer naively held that values can be kept out of therapy or that there is no influence of patient on therapist or therapist on patient. We recognize that each influences the other during the course of therapy. The important question is not how to eliminate all influence on the patient but how to control and regulate and define the sorts of influence you are going to have on the patient. The whole point of therapy is that you do influence the patient. How you influence him and what sort of standards and morals determine your goals are the important things that have yet to be thoroughly discussed by professionals.

DR. ESAU: There must be mutual respect for the value attitudes that each brings to the psychotherapeutic situation. I think that we would be opposed to an evangelistic kind of approach in which the therapist seeks to alter the value structure of the individual in the guise of psychotherapy. This doesn’t mean, however, that there can’t be an honest expression of what values the two persons hold.

DR. WALTERS: I wouldn’t consider the influence of the patient’s values on the psychiatrist very significant. Rather, the patient himself is hyper-susceptible to suggestion in a therapeutic situation by the very nature of the physician-patient relationship. I think it is quite impossible for the therapist not to influence the values of his patient, whether he does this overtly or not. If he is not a Christian, his influence is being exerted upon the patient whether he says anything to that effect or not. If he is a Christian, his influence is similarly being exerted, so that when you say the therapist should not take an evangelistic attitude toward his patient, this is a relative matter. If he is a Christian, there is a Christian influence—if you will, an evangelistic influence—being exerted. I think it is unrealistic to rule this out of the relationship.

DR. ESAU: I partially agree with you, and yet you wouldn’t say that the psychiatrist would make an attempt to bring specific religious dogma into the psychotherapeutic situation. This is what I meant by evangelistic. I don’t think it’s my right as a psychotherapist to make a direct effort at the conversion of my patient while he is in psychotherapy. Now obviously, the patient may in the course of psychotherapy, due to a variety of influences, come to some realization of his relationship to God, or lack of it, and I wouldn’t want to withdraw from that. On the other hand, I wouldn’t maintain that one of my principal purposes is to bring specific religious content into psychotherapy and hope to make a Baptist out of him or a Presbyterian or what have you.

DR. PATTISON: There is now a significant amount of professional literature demonstrating that changes in religious values do occur during the course of therapy, or as a result of therapy, and that sometimes the religious experience of patients deepens and they become more effective in their religious behavior. On the other hand, there are times when patients will give up their religious profession as a result of therapy. This leads to misunderstandings, because people conclude that therapy is aimed at getting rid of their religion, which is a misinterpretation. My own experience and reports I have seen indicate that most patients who give up their religion had a very neurotic form of religion in the first place, and that what they give up is not something very vital and central at all. I think it’s important to differentiate between the consequences and the goal of therapy. The goal of therapy is not to change people’s religious convictions, but as a consequence of therapy people may deepen these convictions or give them up.

DR. WALTERS: I don’t agree with Dr. Esau that Christian faith should be kept out of psychotherapy. He speaks of Baptist, Presbyterian, and so forth. This is not exactly the Christian faith; this is denominationalism, and that far I would agree with him. But the Christian faith is more basic than that. There is a core of Christian belief and doctrine on which most Christian denominations agree. This deals with the basic verities of existence, of human personality, and out of these depths grow most neurotic conflicts.

DR. ESAU: Would you expand that?

DR. WALTERS: I think that value conflicts are at the root of much neurosis, and that the moral conflicts in which men find themselves frequently result in neurotic conflict. Moreover, Christian people often entangle neurosis with their religious faith. One finds the fabric of personality interwoven between wholesome religious activity and neurosis, until the two may need disentangling, separation and reweaving, so to speak, into a proper pattern of life. Here I think it is important that a Christian help to do this disentangling, because the secular therapist, far from being able to help in disentangling, may not even be able to differentiate wholesome and unwholesome religious observance and activities.

DR. FARRELL: Along that line let me ask you this: How would you men sum up the distinctives of a Christian psychotherapy? What psychotherapeutic theory best reflects in practice a Christian concern for people?

DR. ESAU: Your use of the phrase “Christian psychotherapy” is, I think, premature. I don’t think there has been enough dialogue in depth on these things for us to speak of this with any authority. We all have some elements that are right and some elements that are wrong.

DR. WALTERS: I wouldn’t agree. I would say the time has come—with pastoral counseling having taken aboard almost more psychiatry than it can hold—for psychotherapy to establish some kind of combination with Christian theology. I think that the Christian psychiatrist has some obligation to deal with the value conflicts of his patients, and I think that as a Christian he is bound to find that the answer to many of these conflicts is a Christian answer. I think that Christian psychotherapy has its roots in Christian theology. Our doctrine of God, our doctrine of creation, our doctrine of man—these are all parts of Christian theology. If you are a Christian, even if you make no overt effort to involve Christian theology in your psychotherapy, the fact that you are a Christian still tacitly brings theology into the relationship. I believe that it is appropriate to call this Christian psychotherapy.

DR. ESAU: Well, I think you are over-reading what I have said. I agree completely on the need of bringing together psychotherapy and theology. I’m just saying it hasn’t been done yet.

DR. WALTERS: God as Creator, man as creature, man as having an evil inclination and needing divine grace, the regeneration of man occurring through the operation of the Holy Spirit—these constitute a solid theological base for psychotherapy. It is this contribution that Christian theology can make to psychotherapy that constitutes, in my viewpoint, a Christian psychotherapy. You use any techniques you want to, but basically you are grounded and rooted in Christian theology.

DR. ESAU: I don’t think there is any question about the need of a philosophic premise rooted in Christian theology. But let me caricature what you said a little bit in order to try to bring it out in the open. Taking your statement about Christian theology, I don’t see why a person couldn’t then say: “Well, we understand theology and we understand the Bible; we have the Bible, we have pastors; why have psychiatry?” Because I don’t think there is anything you’ve said yet that speaks distinctively for the psychotherapy side of this phrase “Christian psychotherapy.” You have defined it as a philosophic premise, but what is there on the psychotherapeutic side that even justifies psychotherapy? Why not just have the pastor do all this?

DR. WALTERS: All right, this is no caricature; it’s a straight question. The answer is that not everybody needs the psychiatrist. Many people who are seeing a psychiatrist, as some of my patients have told me, would twenty years ago have seen a clergyman. Hence the psychiatrist frequently finds himself dealing with people with moral conflicts who need a clergyman, people a clergyman could handle if they were amenable to his ministration. In this scientific age people want a psychiatrist.

DR. ESAU: You are saying, then, that the Christian psychiatrist is performing the function the clergyman performed twenty years ago and is not bringing anything new on the scene?

DR. WALTERS: I’m saying that some people are amenable to the ministration of a psychiatrist who would not submit to the ministration of a clergyman.

DR. ESAU: But the psychiatrist then is performing or should perform the function of a clergyman because the clergyman is not now seen by the person as meaningfully related to his problem?

DR. WALTERS: If the psychiatrist is a Christian, if he recognizes that his patient is neurotic basically because of moral conflict in his life, can he do anything other than disclose this to the patient in an appropriate way, and can he suggest any other solution to the moral conflict than the Christian?

DR. PATTISON: I think we are getting now to a real core problem. In a paper presented at the meeting of the Christian Association of Psychological Studies this spring, I tried to develop the point that there has been a cultural evolution of the psychotherapy role which is such an issue in current religion-and-psychiatry dialogue. The pastoral function of the Church historically has been not only preaching the Gospel but also what we might call shepherding or guiding the people. Hence the pastor traditionally has been, if you will, a psychotherapist. Many neurotic conflicts, if not resolved, were at least ameliorated under the guidance of the minister. Now I think that in this sense the psychiatrist has become a secular pastor for many people who have no church affiliation. I think this is quite different, though, from what has taken place within the last half century of psychotherapy, that is, the development of specific technical skills to reorganize or resolve basic neurotic conflicts in the personality structure of the individual. I think this sort of therapy is unique to the psychiatrist—or rather, not to the psychiatrist necessarily but to the skilled psychotherapist, regardless of his professional discipline. He might be a trained social worker, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or a clinically trained pastoral counselor. This task, then, is not a pastoral task of resolving conflict of moral values but a psychotherapeutic task of resolving structural conflict within the personality. It cannot be done by the pastor or by the untrained counselor because it requires very specific technical skills. I think, then, that psychotherapy involves two levels: One is, you might say, a common level of psychotherapy that pastors have performed throughout history and that I think we psychiatrists might like to be able to give up; the other is the highly technical psychotherapy task that is often a very long, tedious, and complicated procedure of reconstructing the personality.

DR. WALTERS: I think this is an artificial dichotomy. I don’t think there is any such highly technical skill in psychotherapy as you suggest. If you are talking about psychoanalysis, this is an esoteric and rather specialized and complicated form of psychotherapy. But you have just said that social workers, psychologists, and other people learn the techniques of psychotherapy, as indeed they do. So do clergymen. Studies of psychotherapy emphasize that it not a particular technique that is effective, but that one technique is essentially just as effective as any other. It is the relationship with the therapist that counts—not the way he conducts his investigation or the particular technical skill he uses. Granted that you have to be able to understand people and use a certain finesse in dealing with them. But the various psychotherapeutic orientations are roughly equally effective in bringing about relief in neurotic people.

DR. PATTISON: I have seen therapists with such overwhelming religious concern that they behave in a damaging manner while trying to conduct therapy. On the other hand, I know some therapists who make no religious avowal but who have been able to help Christian people grow tremendously in their Christian lives, although fundamentally they were at quite opposite poles in terms of a basic system of values.

DR. ESAU: I wonder if the latter therapists haven’t accepted something of Christian values at a kind of pre-theological level that they unconsciously communicate to persons who are coming for therapy—for example, the meaning and value of the individual, the meaning and experience of love and grace in the therapeutic relationship. Although the therapist may not give specific allegiance to a given theological structure, yet implicitly he has picked up real values that historically are an outgrowth of the Judeo-Christian heritage.

DR. PATTISON: I like what C. S. Lewis says, that our contemporary culture is still living basically within the Christian frame of reference, and that we still use Christian assumptions in our relationships. I think that most psychotherapy is still based upon Christian assumptions, even though this isn’t recognized or accepted verbally. I think this is the way therapists operate when you talk to them—at least it’s so in my personal relationships with my friends.

DR. WALTERS: What do you mean by that?

DR. PATTISON: I think that there is a general humanistic frame of reference in which love is an essential ingredient, along with the worth of the individual, the importance of trust, the respect for the dignity of the human person, and honesty, which is a very high value in most therapeutic relations. I think these are generally Christian, although not specifically Christian.

DR. ESAU: I think that our culture owes the emphasis on these things to its Christian heritage.

DR. WALTERS: All right. I’ll accept that. But I don’t think there is anything distinctively Christian about most psychotherapy. I wouldn’t agree to that at all.

DR. FARRELL: How important is dialogue between psychotherapists and theologians?

DR. PATTISON: I think it is very important, because I find that a theology always reflects the psychology of the times. If we read, say, the classical theologians of medieval times, we find that their theology reflects their medieval psychology. So it seems to me that our psychology is going to influence our theology—not necessarily change it but perhaps deepen and clarify our knowledge of it. As I tried to point out in a paper on forgiveness, I think our knowledge of the psychology of human relationships gives much greater depth to our theological understanding of forgiveness. Or to take guilt, an understanding of the mechanisms of guilt should give us a much broader and deeper understanding of theological concepts of guilt.

DR. WALTERS: There is a cacophony of voices in psychology today; you can’t possibly reconcile them. I submit that Christian theology has more to say to psychotherapy than the multiplicity of psychologies that we have, because each of these psychologies has a modicum of empirical findings that has been inflated into a theoretical system, and each one has its own technique of psychotherapy based on this modest groundwork. We have a Whole host of these psychologies, with a psychotherapy based on almost every one of them. How can you talk about modifying theology in harmony with these theoretical systems, none of which has very much empirical to offer?

DR. ESAU: One thing that the theological and the psychological spheres share is a multitude of voices! There are certain principles, however, that are absolute which underlie both these fields. These absolutes need to interpenetrate. It isn’t a question of one influencing the other primarily. Rather, it’s leaving a door open both ways.

DR. PATTISON: Wouldn’t you say that theology should influence psychology and psychology should influence theology? So it’s a mutual modification, hopefully, with a mutual synthetic growth out of this.

DR. ESAU: But it doesn’t mean to give up your absolutes in the process. If we were to say that theology encompasses and has encompassed all psychological understanding, this would be a very gross overstatement of what theology has attempted. It is correct, however, to say that theology can benefit from psychological insight.

DR. FARRELL: At one time theology was known as the queen of the sciences. This day has passed. You spoke, Dr. Pattison, of a mutual modification. When you say mutual, are you putting them pretty much on the same level? Or should theology ideally affect psychology more than psychology affects theology?

DR. PATTISON: I’m not trying to make any qualitative equation here at all. I’m saying that here are two spheres or sectors of life and knowledge.

DR. FARRELL: Is one more basic than the other?

DR. ESAU: I would say yes.

DR. WALTERS: Well, I don’t think you are going to find much cooperation between these two, because psychology has for fifty years been trying to get rid of its philosophical origins and is trying to be an exact science.

DR. PATTISON: I can’t agree with you on that, Dr. Walters. I think there is a very significant new impetus within American psychology toward personality theory that is trying to get away from the physical science model. A number of personality theorists are trying to conceptualize man at a level that is not a physical science approach to psychology but is a holistic approach. The other important thrust is the existentialist influence, which is now becoming more important here in America. I think that existentialist psychology and therapy are having an important effect, and that we are going to see more of that.

DR. WALTERS: The emphasis on unconscious motivation has, I think, been greatly overdone. With the pre-eminence of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic influence in so many areas of modern life, we have come to think of motivation by the unconscious almost to the exclusion of conscious activity. James J. Putnam in 1915, fifty years ago, struggled with Freud, labored with him, trying to get him to take a different approach, to involve psychoanalysis more in philosophical questions and not to subordinate the conscious to the unconscious. But Freud contended for the old iceberg theory, that there is more underneath the surface than above it and that the real psyche is down below. This has gradually been outgrown, I think, although it’s still the essence of psychoanalysis. But I see psychoanalysis as having passed the peak of its influence in this country, and I think two factors are concerned here: one is the prevailing influence of existential analysis in various forms and the other is the progress of some other theoretical orientations. In fact, psychoanalysis itself has made a 180 degree turn on some of the Freudian positions in its ego psychology. The emphasis now even within psychoanalysis has moved from the unconscious to the ego, which is said to have an autonomy of its own and not to be only the middleman between the id and the superego. So I think we need to tone down our concept of the influence of the unconscious and of unconscious motivation and give greater attention to the conscious. Many patients are looking for a psychiatric out; they want to be told that the way their mothers treated them is responsible for the way they are.

DR. ESAU: Yes, but you wouldn’t deny that the way mother treated them was one of the external relationship factors to which they reacted in personality formation?

DR. WALTERS: No, but this did not deprive the individual of all of his freedom.

DR. PATTISON: I like Freud’s statement: “I have been able to show that we are not only less responsible for how we became the way we are, but that we are also more responsible for doing with ourselves what we should.” I think it’s very important to note that we are more determined than we thought we were, but that we have more responsibility and freedom than we want to accept for ourselves.

DR. ESAU: I think that Freud was misused by his early followers in their attempt to do this very thing; that is, to excuse man from all responsibility.

DR. PATTISON: I think this gets back to the idea of sin. The distinction between responsibility for sin and culpability or punishability for sin is very important. In a sense we can’t escape the responsibility of our sinful behavior. But then comes the important thing: How much punishment is due us, if some is due us? There is the whole question of what one does with one’s sinful condition or state, with what he is.

DR. FARRELL: How do you tie this in with the fact that Christ bore the guilt for our sins?

DR. ESAU: Christ didn’t die just to remove the guilt of sins. He died because man was in a separated condition. He died to restore us to relationship.

DR. FARRELL: And when Paul says to the Corinthians, “Christ died for our sins”?

DR. ESAU: Both are true.

DR. PATTISON: Christ’s death had to do, it seems to me, with our basic nature, which then reflects upon our behavior.

DR. ESAU: Yes, this is why he had to give us a new nature.

DR. FARRELL: That’s a good note to end on—a note of grace and of divine, regenerating power. It’s a radical note that must serve as the basis for profound Christian healing. It involves more than a reshuffling of conscious and unconscious motives—it is the creation of a new life in Christ.