Atheism in Communism: How Stable?

The atheist ideology officially promoted in Communist countries is merely a “temporary phase of communism,” according to Professor Joseph L. Hromadka, dean of the Amos Comenius Theological Faculty in Prague.

At a meeting in Cologne, Germany, several weeks ago, Hromadka argued that “what the West often considers as a danger to the Church is in reality rather an opportunity, because in these countries atheists can be confronted with Christianity.”

Frequent target of Western churchmen because of what they call his continuing defense of the Czechoslovak Communist regime, Hromodka was one of several speakers at a three-day conference arranged by the so-called Prague Peace Conference, sponsors of the Communist-backed All-Christian World Peace Congress to be held at Prague in June.

Other speakers included Professor H. Bandt of Greiswald in the Soviet Zone of Germany; Dr. Heinz Kloppenburg, onetime leader of the Evangelical Church in Oldenburg; and Professor Heinrich Vogel, a member of the faculty of East Berlin’s Humbold University.

Bandt said he regretted that churchmen negotiating with the Soviet Zone authorities were often considered Communists by the West. He said that at first the Church regarded the Communist state as merely temporary and did not bother to pursue active contact, “but now we must reckon on having to finish our lives under socialism and the Church’s situation can only be improved through negotiations for which we need the confidence of Western Christians.”

Kloppenburg, one of the vice-presidents of the Prague Peace Conference, described Prague as a “place of dialogue between Christians separated by the Iron Curtain.” “The conference,” he said, “is no East bloc within the World Council of Churches, but a service to the whole of Christianity.”

Meanwhile, one of Hromadka’s assistants, Dr. Milan Opocensky, echoed the Czech theologian’s viewpoint in an address last month at the nineteenth Ecumenical Student Conference in Athens, Ohio:

“We didn’t choose the situation in which we live in these days. We believe that we have been put into this situation and that we are called upon to bring exactly under these circumstances the unique and special message which just God’s people can transmit into the life of individuals and of the whole society.”

Protestant Panorama

Presbyterian Church in the U. S. is postponing publication of children’s materials in its proposed new “Covenant Life Curriculum” until 1965. The delay is intended to “protect the integrity” of the curriculum, a spokesman said.

The number of Lutheran-produced broadcasts aired around the world each week has climbed from 2,000 to 2,700 during the last two years, according to estimates released last month by the Consultation of Lutheran Broadcasters. The estimates show a decline, however, in the number of telecasts per week during the same period—from 600 to 460.

A Baptist church was dedicated last month in the old Canaanite city of Acco, now the modern Israel city of Acre. The church has twelve charter members.

Methodist Television, Radio, and Film Commission will establish an office in New York “to become more fully involved” in the industry. Dr. Gene W. Carter will direct the new center.

A fifty-year-old Polish congregation in Brooklyn, New York, dedicated its first church building last month. The church borrowed $7,500 from the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, with which it is now affiliated, to purchase the building.

Deaths

DR. PHILIP E. HOWARD, JR., 65, former editor and president of The Sunday School Times; in Vero Beach, Florida.

DR. HUGO G. KLEINER, 66, chairman of the Board for Higher Education of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; in Buffalo, New York.

THE REV. R. LEE COLE, 84, former president of the Irish Methodist Conference and a noted historian; in Dublin.

Miscellany

First Baptist Church of Walterboro, South Carolina, was destroyed by fire last month with total loss estimated at $422,000. Baptist Press reported the building was covered by insurance up to 90 per cent of value.

British and Foreign Bible Society dedicated a new headquarters building in Madrid. The society first started work in Spain about 130 years ago, and resumed operations early in 1963 after being closed down for eight years because of government restrictions.

Hungarian churches have been advised that their 1964 state subsidies will continue at the same level. A 25 per cent cut was to have taken place under an agreement worked out in 1948 with Lutherans, Reformed, Roman Catholics, and Jews.

Personalia

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Negro Baptist minister who has become the world’s foremost integration leader, was named “Man of the Year” for 1963 by the editors of Time Magazine. He is the first Negro so chosen and the third religious figure (the other two: Mahatma Gandhi for 1932 and Pope John XXIII for 1962).

Dr. John Coleman Bennett elected president of Union Theological Seminary, New York.

The Rev. William F. Fore named executive director of the National Council of Churches’ Broadcasting and Film Commission.

The Rev. Carroll Simcox will become editor of The Living Church, independent Episcopal weekly.

The Rev. Norman H. Temme named director of public relations for the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

The Rev. Richard W. Cooke named acting administrator of the National Sunday School Association.

Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton is leaving his chair of theology at the Catholic University of America to take a pastorate at Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. The change is for reasons of health, church officials said, noting that the 57-year-old priest suffered a heart attack some time ago. Since 1944 Fenton has been editor of the conservative American Ecclesiastical Review.

Current Religious Thought: January 17, 1964

Addison H. Leitcr

In the October issue of the Princeton Seminary Bulletin there is an address by Dr. William Hamilton, professor of Christian theology and ethics, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School. The address, entitled “The Sense of Loss,” was given at the annual Summer Institute of Theology at Princeton last July. Professor Hamilton has some very remarkable things to say about the loss of the church, the loss of the body (a very new slant for me), the loss of the family, the loss of privacy, and the loss of the future. The spirit of the article is not polemical; the author sort of gets at you in spite of yourself.

In the December 6 issue of Time Magazine, the lead article of the religion section has to do again with the Vatican Council; its title is, “What Went Wrong?” The Vatican Council seems to have come to a kind of grinding halt, and about the only thing that is being said so far is that more of the Romish services will be in the vernacular. There will be other things around the edges, I am sure; but once again the Curia is apparently too strong for the personality of the Pope, assuming that Pope Paul VI is as enthusiastic for ecumenical matters as was the late Pope John XXIII.

Relevant to this slow-down at the Vatican Council are some words from Professor Hamilton on “the loss of the church.” He sees “the increasing alienation of the regular lay Christian from the denominational and ecumenical thinking of the day.” Let me quote at length: “… some of the most impressive and high powered thinking going on in Protestantism today is working on the problems of Faith and Order. The subject matter of these discussions is correct, profound, and utterly unable to touch the ordinary lives of men and women who are in the world today. Thus it is a theology that has lost its way, forgotten its business, busy, deep, and empty. The modern Protestant American may have read somewhere that the great new fact in our time is the ecumenical movement. But he doesn’t believe it, and he shouldn’t” (italics mine—the “he shouldn’t” is most surprising).

To look in another direction, there is a book under the editorship of Robert McAfee Brown and David H. Scott titled The Challenge to Reunion: The Blake Proposal Under Scrutiny. I have read two reviews of this book, one by Walter Wagner and one by Norman V. Hope, and they both sum up objections to reunion in the same words: bustle, bigness, bishops, and bureaucracy. This volume makes clear that there is some disenchantment about the ecumenical movement in general and about the Blake-Pike proposal in particular.

Another book, and a very good one, is Institutionalism and Church Unity, edited by Nils Ehrenstrom and Walter C. Muelder; it is reviewed by Henry P. Van Dusen in the November, 1963, issue of the Union Seminary Quarterly Review. This particular book was preparatory material for the Faith and Order Conference held last July in Montreal. In this study, according to the emphasis of Van Dusen’s review, there was one “notable document” under the title of “The Non-Theological Factors in the Making and Non-Making of Church Union.”

Reference is also made to a comment of Professor C. H. Dodd of Cambridge: a letter “concerning unavowed motives in ecumenical discussion.” To quote Dr. Van Dusen, “One recalls the catastrophic impact of Dr. Dodd’s forthright testimony that many years of participation in Faith and Order discussions had led him to the recommendation that, each time a crucial theological issue was resolved a new theological issue emerged to frustrate progress, and thus to the conclusion that the intractable issues were probably not theological at all but at a more fundamental and deeper [sic] than theological level.” If there are such things as non-theological matters, and if there is anything deeper than theology, we can go along with the idea that settling matters of Faith and Order, if they can be settled, will not necessarily lead to union. Other things seem to prevail. No one who is willing to talk about the matter can deny, for example, that the race issue was highly decisive in plans for uniting Northern and Southern Presbyterians in spite of everything else that was said on Faith and Order.

Getting back to that article in Time Magazine, I was thinking long and hard on the gesture toward church union genuinely made by John XXIII and responded to by Protestants with almost girlish glee. The more I thought of it the less I thought of it, and I went along with Time’s query, “What Went Wrong?”

Once when I was a boy a high school track coach told me how to win a race: “Just get in front and don’t let anybody pass you.” Volleyball and tennis are very simple games. You just knock the ball back one more time than your opponent. I was bowling last night, and all I needed to get a strike every time was to curve into the pocket between one and three. I am impressed by these simplicities, but somehow they don’t always work.

I am not being naïve when I suggest that the union of the churches is simple in the same sort of way. Everyone is proud of his objectivity, tolerance, and rational thinking; and yet, try as I do, every time I think the problem is perfectly simple, somebody turns it into nonsense.

For example, let us take up the simple problem of the position and power of the pope. This may or may not be a “non-theological factor” or an “unavowed motive,” but it will do for a start. We point out immediately that along with 217,000,000 Protestants in the world there are 137,000,000 Eastern Orthodox who do not believe in the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. Now these 350,000,000 people must have something that bothers them about this pope business. According to Rome, the pope’s spiritual titles are “Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, and Sovereign of the State of Vatican City.” So Rome and we divide. Now let’s get together.

We can begin very simply with an exegesis of “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church.” Now all we have to do is agree that Peter founded the church in Rome and was the first pope and had the right to pass the office on; and, just in passing, all we also have to do is to get used to the idea that Peter, of all the disciples, could have accepted the ring kissing, the kneeling, and all those parades.

This idea of the pope seems very basic to all the Roman Catholics and utter nonsense to 350,000,000 non-Catholics. So let us clear up this problem first, and then go on. It is as simple as that.

- More from Addison H. Leitcr

The Quickening Pulse of Christian Medicine

Harold Lindsell

The single-engine Piper, its white wings glistening under the tropical sun, swoops low over the British Guiana jungle. A streamer of gauze floats to earth, weighted by a sprig from a sandpaper tree. Tied to the branch is a note advising villagers that the plane, with an American doctor aboard, will land at a nearby airstrip later that day. The word spreads quickly, and soon there is a line of patients awaiting Missionary Aviation Fellowship’s flying clinic, latest product of the age-old liaison between Christianity and the healing arts.

The young doctor on the British Guiana run, Franklin B. Davis, was one of nearly 500 physicians and medical students who spent the last days of 1963 taking collective stock of their witness at the third International Convention on Missionary Medicine in Wheaton, Illinois.

“It’s not where you are, but what you are that makes you a missionary,” a surgeon told ICMM delegates in Wheaton College’s venerable Pierce Chapel.¹ But reports of medical staff shortages from Hong Kong, Lahore, and dozens of outposts in underdeveloped countries left many a doctor delegate uneasy about his comfortable stateside practice. Understandably, high-income physicians and their wives seldom jump at the chance to trade a fashionable split-level in the suburbs for a shabby but in a remote jungle compound.

In somewhat of a compromise measure, the 3,500-member, evangelically oriented Christian Medical Society, which sponsors the convention, is recruiting “short-term” missionary doctors. The short-termer usually pays his own way, and he may spend as little as two or three weeks abroad. Some, however, take along their families and are away for a year or more. Missionary boards by and large welcome short-termers.

Another avenue of service given considerable attention during the four-day convention was that of the “non-professional missionary.” The term is applied to Christian doctors and other lawyers who find overseas employment with non-religious organizations (e.g., the Peace Corps and other U. S. and foreign government agencies, the United Nations, oil companies). Doctors so employed are missionaries only to the extent that they can witness through their jobs and through religious activities pursued in off-duty time, if circumstances permit.

Although a few missionary boards have medical vacancies ready and waiting, the financial barrier stands in the way of any large-scale recruitment of salaried personnel. Christian medical efforts overseas, like most missionary enterprises, represent sacrifice from relatively few.

Davis’s wife told a convention panel of a low-income Christian family who have been living in a “shack” for years, saving pennies for a down-payment on something better. They decided instead to put the savings toward a new missionary plane and have now assumed full responsibility to pay it off.

In the whole world there are probably no more than 1,000 missionary doctors, according to J. Raymond Knighton, executive director of CMS. Bona fide mission hospitals are estimated between 300 and 400. Most acute medical needs are in Africa, where (not counting the more developed countries of Egypt and South Africa) there is only one doctor for every 20,000 persons. Current U. S. ratio is one to 750.

Protestant missionary doctors differ sharply whether the practice of medicine in needy areas is a spiritual ministry in itself or whether it is merely a legitimate method of winning a hearing for the Gospel. Knighton says that within the last decade opinion has shifted to a marked degree. More doctors, he declares, now consider their professional calling as service to God as well as to men, apart from whatever direct evangelistic confrontation their practice may make possible.

A number of missionary doctors at the convention reported that their medical efforts are sometimes hamstrung because of prevailing religious and cultural practices, particularly in underdeveloped countries. Millions of Muslim women, for instance, suffer needlessly because they regard it a violation of religious scruples to be treated by a male doctor. In Africa, the widespread practice of female circumcision is a major health problem, with adverse effects in subsequent childbirth and in resulting emotional attitudes. Illiteracy itself is an impediment to medical progress. So are the general suspicion of Western medicine and qualms about surgery and blood transfusions. Poor sanitation is perhaps the worst enemy of all.

Preceding the convention was a “Missionary Health Workshop,” the first ever held. It attracted representatives from thirty-eight mission boards, including those from Methodist, Southern Baptist, United Presbyterian, and Lutheran agencies. An evaluation committee proposed (1) continuing study of missionary health problems under auspices of CMS, and (2) “personality and emotional evaluation” of all missionaries and missionary candidates.

World Evangelism

The Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches convened in Mexico City, December 8–20. More than two hundred delegates, advisors, staff members, observers (including some Roman Catholics), and press correspondents from all over the world attended the conclave.

This was the first international missionary meeting since the Ghana Assembly in 1957, at which the International Missionary Council voted to become part of the World Council of Churches. The WCC’s CWME succeeds the old IMC.

W. A. Visser t Hooft, general secretary of the WCC, addressed the conference the first day and spoke against syncretism, arguing for the uniqueness of the Christian faith and stating that “tested missions defend nothing else than the right to bring the Gospel to all men,” and that “the Word of God still finds holes through which it can creep.”

The assembly received various reports and adopted a number of proposals:

1. The Theological Education Fund is to be continued for five more years, and four million dollars was voted to help improve the quality of the ministry in the younger churches.

2. The Christian Literature Fund was instituted for a five-year period, and it was agreed to seek three million dollars to support a program designed to increase indigenous writing and publication overseas.

3. The assembly committed itself to cooperation in intercontinental radio broadcasting with the Lutheran radio network, which is already in operation.

4. It endorsed and voted support to the World Student Christian Federation, which seeks to develop an adequate strategy for reaching the academic world with the Gospel.

5. It approved a report on the training of missionaries that endorsed the principle of ecumenically oriented missionaries who are less denominationally minded. Receiving as well as sending churches must decide who will serve and where, and sending churches must become receiving churches. Another committee report on education for mission stressed the need for education in local congregations. It was agreed that the World Council of Christian Education must be involved in this effort.

6. The role of lay missionaries was acknowledged, and suggestions were made for helping laymen to fulfill such a role in world mission.

7. The committee report on “Joint Action for Mission” endorsed church union, saying, “Full unity must always be recognized as our goal.” The need for joint action was stressed despite theological and ecclesiological differences.

8. A section on the witness to men of other faiths was divided over the issue of universalism, but when its report was rendered it warned against religious relativism and syncretism, singling out the temptations to “mix” beliefs and practices, the loss of conviction as to the finality of Jesus Christ, and the “sophistication that likes to feel itself at home in every variety of belief.” The need for dialogue was expressed, and one or two curious statements appeared to the effect that “the effort to approach all men of other faiths under the single category of ‘non-Christian’ and to prescribe a single approach to them all, is an ineffective beginning,” and that the Christian must have “respect for sincerity wherever found.”

9. In the section dealing with witness to men in the secular world, the received report said that “secularization opens up possibilities of new freedom and new enslavement for men.” “Reconciliation of men to God and men must in our day include not only persons but institutions and national and international life.” Christians must concern themselves not only with individuals “but also with the Kingdom of God as the destiny of mankind as a whole.”

10. The section on the witness of the congregation in its neighborhood stated that “the evidence of changed lives is often found in other areas than in a recognized congregation.… God is at work also in secular agencies.… The restoration and reconciliation of human life is being achieved … through secular agencies.…” (There was disagreement about the latter statement.) The section encouraged joint action and responsible risk in witness.

11. The section on the witness of the Church across national and confessional barriers rejoiced in the “achievements of organic unity of churches of varying traditions in what were mission fields.…” It called for men to cross all frontiers and to engage in joint action, which is only “an interim step.” We must be led, they said, “beyond our continuing division into a sacramentally united fellowship, which will make visible that we are one family in Christ. We must strive and pray for the restoration of the wholeness of fellowship that can only [some took exception to the word “only”] be received in the Eucharistic feast instituted by our Lord and that wholeness of witness that must be transmitted to the world. A divided Church is not only a scandal; it can become responsible for the death of men’s souls.”

Theological pluralism was evident everywhere. The presence of the Orthodox groups made for theological concessions in that direction, and only time will tell what form the new ecumenical theology will finally take. The conference represented what might be called the post-Kraemer era, in which his radical discontinuity concept and a denial of true points of contact seemed to be archaic. The idea of “respect for sincerity wherever found” seemed a curious anomaly if one really is to respect the “sincere” non-Christian whose religion permits him to kill infants, practice cult prostitution, and abuse women.

Church union remains the ecumenical goal and ideal, despite the fact that its attainment in the WCC will still leave more missionaries outside the ecumenical orbit than in it, and thousands of non-WCC churches will still leave a divided Christendom.

Perhaps most challenging to Reformation consciences was the approved statement (pleasing to the Orthodox communions and Romanism too) that “this unchanging calling in the changing world is expressed in the Eucharist in which the redemption of the world in Jesus Christ is offered continually for [my italics] and to the world.”

The assembly was an interesting, informative, and enriching experience, marked, oddly enough, by the presence of Dr. Carl McIntire of the International Council of Christian Churches, who staged a competitive meeting in Mexico City to highlight his opposition to the WCC.

HAROLD LINDSELL

- More from Harold Lindsell

The Pope and the Patriarch

The meeting of the Roman Catholic pope and Eastern Orthodox patriarch.

The first weekend of 1964 contributed a pair of significant paragraphs to the annals of church history. It marked the first time in more than five centuries that a Roman Catholic pope and an Eastern Orthodox ecumenical patriarch have met face to face. It was also the first pilgrimage to the Holy Land ever made by a Roman pontiff.

Who is the bearded Patriarch from Istanbul whose meeting with Pope Paul VI created such a sensation?

Much is known about the Hamlet-like Roman Catholic pontiff, his childhood in a well-to-do Italian family, his rise to prestige in the Curia, and the “banishment” to Milan which for the liberally-minded prelate curiously proved to be the final stepping stone to the papacy. But what about His All-Holiness Athenagoras I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, to give his full official title?

The 77-year-old Patriarch, who spent 17 years in the United States, has shown a consistent interest in efforts to secure a rapprochement between Eastern Orthodox and the Vatican. His approach has been careful and considered, however, and sometimes very slow. He knows that he represents the estimated 200,000,000 Orthodox believers around the world only in a limited way, certainly not in the much broader sense that a pope represents Roman Catholics. The ecumenical patriarch is often referred to as “the first among equals,” the equals being the other Orthodox patriarchs.

The first outstanding sign of the Patriarch’s interest in rapprochement with the Vatican was in 1952, when he made a personal call on the late Archbishop Andrew Cassulo, then apostolic delegate in Turkey. Such a visit was unprecedented in the history of the patriarchate. The same year, he was represented by a three-man delegation in Istanbul marking the 13th anniversary of the coronation of Pope Pius XII.

Patriarch Athenagoras was born in 1886 at Epirus, then under Turkish rule, but since 1913 a part of northwestern Greece. His lay name was Aristocles Spirou. His father was a well-known physician.

The man who was to become ecumenical patriarch studied at the Theological School in Istanbul, and while still a student was appointed secretary to an archbishop. His duties took him to various parts of the Balkans where he came into contact with French, English, and American nationals during World War I. Later he was transferred to Greece, where he was secretary to the Archbishop of Athens for four years. On becoming a priest, he abandoned his original name of Aristocles and took Athenagoras, which means, literally, “a man speaking in Athens.”

After a seven-year stay in the Greek capital, Athenagoras was made Metropolitan of the Greek island of Corfu, and in 1931 was appointed to a post in New York. In the course of a busy life devoted to expanding the strength and resources of the archdiocese, he made many friends among Americans of all walks of life, two of them being former President Truman and Archbishop (now Cardinal) Richard Cushing of Boston.

His office in New York was the one now occupied by Archbishop Iakovos, that of the head of the Greek Archdiocese of North and South America. He served in the post for 17 years until he was made the 268th to occupy the ecumenical throne.

Archbishop Iakovos, interestingly enough, accompanied the patriarch to the Holy Land for his meeting with the Pope. It was in March, 1959, that Archbishop Iakovos had an audience with Pope John XXIII. To that audience he brought a letter from the Ecumenical Patriarch which, in effect, was the first effort toward establishing a Roman Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.

In his present role, Patriarch Athenagoras has given practical evidences of his interest in the ecumenical movement. Anxious to establish contacts with ecclesiastical leaders, he made a series of visits in 1960 to the Holy Land, and to the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Ecumenical Patriarchate had become affiliated with the World Council of Churches. In September, 1961, Patriarch Athenagoras convened the Pan-Orthodox Conference at Rhodes, Greece, which was attended not only by prelates from all the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Churches, but by Protestant and Catholic observers. At the conference, plans were formulated that may eventually lead to a full-scale Pan-Orthodox Council.

Last June, Patriarch Athenagoras attended celebrations marking the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of the famous monastic colony on Mt. Athos in northern Greece. From there he went on a tour throughout Greece, during which he had a meeting with the local Catholic bishop.

In his modest patriarchal offices in the Fener section of Istanbul, Athenagoras I daily receives a constant stream of visitors, many of them from the United States.

In supporting a quest for Christian unity, Patriarch Athenagoras has insisted that he is not speaking of theological unity but rather of a unity that would have two aims:

“In its negative sense,” he explained, “it would disarm hatred, distrust, and bad propaganda between church groups. In the positive sense, unity would promote contacts on the common principles of Christianity and how they should be propagated.”

January 4

At 5:14 a. m. the lights went on in the papal chambers overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. As dawn broke, Pope Paul VI emerged from the Consistorial Hall where he had bid farewell to cardinals and he climbed into a limousine for the 16-mile ride to Fiumicino Airport. Crowds cheered him along the way, and a group of dignitaries including Italian President Antonio Segni were on hand at the airport to give him a sendoff. It was almost nine o’clock before his specially-outfitted Alitalia jetliner could get off the ground.

The flight to Amman, Jordan, took three hours and twenty minutes. He was greeted there by King Hussein, the monarch of Jordan who is a Muslim, and a crowd estimated as high as 20,000. A 21-gun salute boomed across the field and a group of girls sent 15 white pigeons aloft. As the 66-year-old Pontiff started out in a motorcade to Jerusalem, Hussein, an aviation expert, got into a helicopter and flew cover. Earlier, the king had gone to the control tower and personally talked down the Pope’s pilot through a low ceiling and gusty winds.

The motorcade stopped at the Jordan River and the Pope walked to the bank near the point traditionally held as the place of Christ’s baptism. While there, the Pope dipped his hand in the muddy water.

A papal address had been scheduled at the Damascus Gate entrance into Old Jerusalem, the part of the Holy City in possession of Jordan. But crowds were so thick by this time that the Pope was unable to deliver his speech. He got out of his car, nevertheless, and made his way on foot along a traditional route of Christ’s journey to the Cross. He was jostled repeatedly on the Via Dolorosa (Street of Sorrow) and had to pass up some of the Stations of the Cross without prayer. A number of papal aides expressed concern for his safety.

(The following evening a papal aide reportedly disclosed that a 14-year-old girl had been killed in the melee.)

Another potential hazard awaited the Pope at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as he was saying mass. A fire broke out in two cables suspended on a scaffold. All the electric lights in the sanctuary went out, and the only illumination was from altar candles. A man climbed the scaffolding and a soldier handed up his red and white Bedouin head dress to smother the blaze. Then the cables were parted with a stick and the fire was extinguished. The mass was not disrupted.

The Pope ended the day with a prayerful evening visit to the Garden of Gethsemane, which was flood-lit for the occasion. The day’s events had reinforced Rome’s deepest traditions (e. g., Catholic visitors are offered 100 days off Purgatory if they say the “Our Father” in the garden). But perhaps the most offensive incident for Protestants was the waving and strewing of palm branches by the crowd—presumably a gesture reminiscent of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. The Pope had come “to encounter the Lord,” but he also assumed the role of Christ’s vice-regent. A radio commentator in Israel got carried away in alarming proportions, saying that the Pope “today occupies the place that Jesus occupied when he was on earth.”

January 5

Pope Paul traveled north from Jerusalem and crossed the border into Israel, where he was greeted by President Zalman Shazar. The two exchanged kind words, but Paul avoided specific mention of the state of Israel, which is not recognized by the Vatican.

The Pontiff then traveled to Nazareth and celebrated another mass. He ended an address with a series of expressions, “Blessed are we, if …” Although he mentioned service to the poor, he failed to respond to a request from a Franciscan priest that he mingle among the poor of the area. The priest, Pere Gauthier, is in charge of a mission to the poor and is outspoken in his view that Roman Catholic funds used to erect the Church of the Annunciation should have been diverted to hungry communicants.

The Pope then drove to the Sea of Galilee and again wet his hands along the shore. Subsequent stops were at Mount Tabor, Mount Zion, Cana of Galilee, and Capernaum. NBC correspondent Irving R. Levine noted a new interest in the Scriptures as a result of the Pope’s visit. “Obviously the best handbook for this tour is the Bible,” he said.

A Message From The President

U. S. Peace Corps Director R. Sargent Shriver met Pope Paul VI at Nazareth and delivered a letter from President Johnson. It was one of a series of stops by the late President Kennedy’s brother-in-law in which he is delivering messages to heads of state.

The letter to the Pope included a handwritten postscript in which Johnson expressed a desire to meet with the Pontiff. Johnson also was reported to have asked prayer for his own work and that of the United States government in behalf of peace.

Shriver said at a news conference that the Pope responded warmly to the suggestion of a meeting. If there was any talk about possible time and place, this was not immediately disclosed.

En route back to Jerusalem, Paul detoured to Hadera along the Mediterranean Sea. He returned to the Jordanian sector of the Holy City via the famous Mandelbaum Gate. In his last few minutes on Israeli soil he delivered a brief speech defending the late Pope Pius XII against “unjust accusations” that he did not do all in his power to prevent the massacre of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. It was an obvious reference to the controversial play by the German Rolf Hochhuth.

Meanwhile, Patriarch Athenagoras had arrived in Jerusalem, Jordan for the historic meeting there with the Pope. The dramatic confrontation took place in a simply-furnished ground floor room in the residence of the Roman Apostolic Delegation, where the Pope was spending the night. The two met in a sentimental embrace which the Pope called a symbolic “kiss of peace.” It was the first face-to-face encounter of a Roman pope and an Orthodox ecumenical patriarch since 1439, when Pope Eugene IV and Patriarch Joseph II met at the Council of Florence. The initial meeting between Pope Paul and Patriarch Athenagoras lasted 29 minutes.

January 6

The Pope rose before dawn on his last day in the Holy Land. Last major stop on his pilgrimage was at Bethlehem, where he once again asked for peace and unity among Christians. Jordan Radio said he sent pleas for peace to 224 world leaders.

During the morning he held a second meeting with Patriarch Athenagoras, this time at the villa of the Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Like the initial encounter, it last about half an hour.

Then it was back to the airport at Amman for the jet flight to Rome. In a departing admonition, the Pope quoted the Apostle Paul from Acts 20:32, the King James Version of which is:

“I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”

Sidelights

First sign that the papal-patriarchal confrontation would set off a new chain of ecumenical activity came from Metropolitan Athenagoras of Thyateira. Late in December, as representative of Patriarch Athenagoras, the metropolitan had an audience with Pope Paul VI in which he delivered a formal address calling for a “pan-Christian conference.” Its purpose, he said, would be “to discuss in love and conviction how to combat sin, how to protect the Church and the peace and freedom of the world threatened by a common enemy, atheism and tyranny.” …

During a stop at the Rhodes airport en route to Jerusalem, Patriarch Athenagoras said, “The idea of a meeting originally came from the Pope.” This word surprised many observers, for the Patriarch was the first to make public any specific proposal for a meeting. In view of the Patriarch’s revelation, it seems legitimate to assume that the Pope already had the meeting in mind when he announced plans for his pilgrimage to the Holy Land at the close of the second session of the Vatican Council. Immediately thereafter Patriarch Athenagoras issued his appeal for a Christian summit.…

The Patriarch also made these comments while in Greece en route to Jerusalem: “The ice is broken. Soon a new era will begin in the history of Christendom. New shapes and forms will emanate, as well as new methods of Christian church contributions to world peace.” “I am engaged in a great endeavor which should not be judged from only one result.” …

Liberty magazine of the Seventh-day Adventists recently attributed to Patriarch Athenagoras the following statement: “Humanity has had two periods of youthful vigor. One at creation, one at the advent of Christ. Soon will begin the third for both humanity and Christendom through the union of Christians.” …

Vatican sources said the Pope would call a consistory to tell cardinals about his pilgrimage and to impart to them his “divine inspiration” from praying at sacred shrines.

Orthodox Jews asked the Ministry of Education in Israel how to explain all the tumult to children, who ordinarily hear virtually nothing about Christianity.… A crash program of improvement at sacred sites took place in the weeks prior to the Pope’s arrival.…

The Protestant Reformation flatly denied the importance of pilgrimages and sacred sites and discouraged visits to holy places, for which Rome claimed thaumaturgical powers on the ground that the incarnate God sanctified certain places, to which something of divinity became attached, so that a partial absolution of sins was assured by the Roman Church to pilgrims to sacred sites. Protestants held that the glory of God is equally present in all places. In recent years, due to archaeological and historical interest, and a tourist interest made possible by modern transportation, Protestant attitudes have changed somewhat. But strictly speaking they do not make pilgrimages and while they show historical reverence at the sites they do not regard them as sacred in the Roman Catholic sense.…

The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem was reportedly disturbed because Patriarch Athenagoras had not consulted him about a meeting with the Pope in the Holy Land.… The proposal is believed to have been made because Patriarch Athenagoras sensed an opportunity for meeting the Pope on “neutral” ground. It is highly improbable that the Pope would ever have traveled to Istanbul or the Patriarch to Rome for such a meeting.… The understanding in Orthodox ranks that the ecumenical patriarch consults with other patriarchs on major decisions is believed responsible for the fact that the prelate from Istanbul has not had a representative at the Vatican Council. Consent for such representation apparently was lacking from some Orthodox bodies.…

Some observers voiced the hope that the Pope’s pilgrimage might bring a measure of reconciliation among Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land.…

The Pope crossed the border from Jordan to Israel near Megiddo, one of King Solomon’s fortified cities and site of many ancient battles.… Megiddo is in the valley of Armageddon, where the Book of Revelation locates the last great battle of the world.…

Chief object of the Council of Florence (1438–45) was reunion with the Greek Church. Commissions consisting of Latins and Greeks in equal numbers centered negotiations on the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of unleavened bread in Communion, the doctrine of purgatory, and the primacy of the pope. Latin views ultimately prevailed, and the Greeks even accepted papal supremacy, though in vaguer terms than originally proposed. A complicating factor was that the Greeks sought support from the West against the Turks, who were advancing on Constantinople. A decree of union was signed on July 5, 1439, but Orthodox synods refused to ratify it.…

As press correspondents poured into the Holy Land from all over the world, the available accommodations became more austere. But there were no reports of anyone sleeping in a stable.

Cautious Comments

Protestant leaders queried by Christianity Today on events in the Holy Land were generally cautious.

Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffman, regular speaker on the International Lutheran Hour, declared: “Unfortunately the deep doctrinal divisions of Christianity will not be solved or overcome by the resolution of personal differences or by demonstrations of personal friendship between leaders of the church. We pray that the time will come when genuine differences in doctrine can be discussed by Christians fully and frankly with each other in an atmosphere of genuine Christian love and warmth.”

Dr. Paul S. Rees, vice-president of World Vision, said: “Unquestionably, we are witnessing the opening of new windows of outlook on the part of the Roman and the Eastern branches of Christianity. Those of us who are in neither tradition may well entertain serious doubts as to how fruitful these conversations may be, but the fact that leaders of these groups, notably Roman Catholic leaders, are taking a fresh look at Holy Scripture should prevent our being completely negative or pessimistic.”

Dr. Robert A. Cook, president of the National Association of Evangelicals: “One is not surprised.… It fits into the pattern of ecumenical outreach within the power structure of the Roman Catholic Church.” Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., who earlier made a we-would-come-if-invited statement, expressed no surprise that Protestants had not been invited, indicating that lengthy preparations would have to precede such a meeting. As to talks between Pope and the Patriarch, Blake commented simply, “I think that meetings of Christians are good.”

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, secretary of public affairs of the NAB, said that “apart from enhancing the new public image of the Vatican” the main purpose of the conference was probably “the promoting of friendlier relations and the procuring of more cooperation between the Orthodox church and the Vatican.”

In London, Dr. Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, had predicted that during the Pope’s visit to the Holy Land “Christians everywhere will pray for unity in truth.” In a Yuletide message, Ramsey said the Anglican church “desires the friendship” with the Catholic church that “lies in the brotherhood of one baptism.” “We believe that an important practical step will be to discuss together those matters concerning baptism and mixed marriages where there is injury and trouble.”

For some evangelical leaders the remarkable phenomenon of a Muslim state and a Hebrew state, which both evade the claim of Jesus Christ, paying tumultuous homage to the Pope, called to mind John 5:43: “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

Violence In Cyprus

Two Greek Orthodox monks and a boy novice were killed and three other monks were wounded on New Year’s Day at the Galaktrofousa monastery south of Nicosia in an outburst of fighting between Greek and Turkish Cypriot factions.

A raid on the monastery by shotgunarmed Turkish Cypriots broke a tenuous calm that had followed a cease-fire and temporary end to violence in Cyprus.

Worldwide expressions of concern over the troubled Cyprus situation—an eruption of long distrust between Greek and Turkish communities stimulated by Turkish Cypriot fears that proposed constitutional amendments would jeopardize their rights—included issuance of a communique by the Council of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul.

Turkish radio said the council met under the chairmanship of Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, supreme leader of Eastern Orthodoxy. The communique lamented the “deplorable events which took place in Cyprus and which caused so much innocent bloodshed and death.”

The communique expressed “indignation … profound sorrow and hope that peace and tranquility will be restored as soon as possible.”

Serving both as spiritual and political leader of Cyprus is Greek Orthodox Archbishop Makarious III, ethnarch and president of the island republic.

The outbreak of violence followed the archbishop’s proposal to amend the constitution to remove what he considered obstacles to the functioning of the government.

The proposals were seen by the Turkish community, which numbers some 120,000 compared to about 425,000 Greek Cypriots, as a threat to their influence.

Archbishop Makarious became the first president of Cyprus when the island achieved independence in 1960. Before that, he led the struggle for sovereignty, bitterly opposing British rule.

Born Michael Christedoulos Mouskos, the son of a peasant in the Cypriot village of Ano Panayia, the 50-year-old archbishop became a novice monk at the age of thirteen and later studied law and theology at Athens University.

He studied theology for two years at Boston University under a World Council of Churches’ fellowship and then was elected Metropolitan of Kition in Cyprus. In 1950 he was elected archbishop and ethnarch of Cyprus.

Scripture With A Schedule

Two days before his inauguration last month, President Chung-Hee Park of the Republic of Korea attended a special Sunday morning Christian service arranged by Christian members of his cabinet. The event stirred up a flurry of rumors that he might become a Christian.

At the time he assumed power two years ago after a coup d’etat, Park had stated, “My father and mother were Buddhist, but I am nothing.” There is little real evidence to indicate that he has changed his mind.

However, one of his close co-workers is the Minister of Defense, Sung-Eun Kim, a devout Presbyterian layman, who persuaded Park to ask for the special preinauguration service at an ROK army chapel. It was attended by high army, navy, and air force officers, government officials, and Christian leaders from virtually all denominations.

An ROK army chaplain preached forcefully to the President-elect on “The Invisible Foundation,” and an army officer, in the name of Korea’s more than one million Christians, presented him with a Bible, urging the newly elected president to read it “ten minutes every morning upon rising, and ten minutes every evening as you go to bed.”

SAMUEL H. MOFFETT

Civil Marriages In Maryland

With the new year Maryland became the last of the fifty states to authorize civil marriages by circuit court clerks.

Legislation passed last year by the state legislature replaced a Colonial law which held that only clergymen could perform marriages.

Supporters of the measure, including Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish leaders, felt it would end the hypocrisy involved when non-believers were forced to go through a wedding ceremony performed by a clergyman.

The new law allows divorced persons unable to remarry in a religious ceremony to be united by a designated civil servant for a $10 fee.

Gunplay

Four persons died last month in an attempted robbery of the rectory of a small Roman Catholic church in Ottawa.

Two youths—brothers—were surprised in the rectory by a housekeeper. Her screams brought men running from the adjoining church, where mass was being celebrated. The youths opened fire and soon the rectory was surrounded by police armed with rifles, riot guns, and tear gas.

Detectives entering the house found the bodies of another housekeeper, a woman who resided in the rectory, a man who had been attending the mass, and one of the gunmen. Police said the youth, twenty-one, shot himself in the head after being trapped in the rectory. His seventeen-year-old brother was captured and jailed.

A seventeen-year-old girl from Frederick, Maryland, was fatally wounded when her uncle accidentally shot her with a muzzle-loaded musket as they rehearsed a church play. The play scheduled to be presented by the Baptist Bible Church concerned hardships endured by a pioneer family traveling west at Christmas. A state trooper said a paper cap apparently ignited an old powder charge that had been left in the weapon.

Olympic Opportunities

Missionary organizations in Japan hope to set a record of their own at this year’s Tokyo Olympics: plans now call for the distribution of over 20 million tracts and Bible portions. American evangelist Kenny Joseph of The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), in a report prepared for the Japan Times, said the planners are “taking their cue from St. Paul, the converted Christ-hater turned missionary who often used athletic terms to make his point.”

The Olympic Christian Testimony Committee, which is coordinating activities, will seek to capitalize on an unprecedented upsurge in the use of English in Japan.

In a year-end news roundup, Joseph made these points:

—New “religions” or sects are making a big impact on postwar religious life. One militant sect, called Soka Gakkai, claims three million members and has placed fifteen men in the Japanese Diet. The report states that the sect aims “to become a third world force and ‘capture’ Japan in ten years.”

—Over 100 million gospel tracts have been distributed in Japan since World War II. The Japan Bible Society sold over 31 million Bibles, Bible portions, and tracts during this period and estimates that one out of five Japanese have read parts of the Bible. The Pocket Testament League has distributed 13 million Gospels of John since the war, and the Gideons have placed a million New Testaments in hotels, schools, and hospitals.

—Plans have been announced for a “new evangelical revision of the entire Bible patterned after the American Standard Version.”

—The Lutheran Hour enrolled the 400,000th member in its Japanese correspondence course, and the Lutherans hope this year to produce ten telecasts for Japan.

Books

Book Briefs: January 17, 1964

Religion In America

The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America, by Sidney E. Mead (Harper & Row, 1963, 220 pp., $4), is reviewed by Robert M. Sutton, professor of history and associate dean of the graduate college, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois.

The Lively Experiment, a series of nine thoughtful and well-integrated essays by Dr. Sidney Mead, is itself a lively treatise on the shaping and “institutionalizing” of Christianity (i.e., Protestantism) in this country. In the author’s own words, these essays (all but one of which have appeared previously in print) were intended as “interim reports … by one devoted to the exploration of the complex terrain of American church history” and were “originally designed to stand alone, but into each is woven the same central motifs.”

The author’s canvas is a broad one stretching all the way from the colonial foundings in the seventeenth century to the recent past (c. 1930). The study opens with an examination of the early American, be he immigrant or emigrant, and his time-space relationship on the new continent. The existence of almost unlimited space (and the fact of distance that is associated with it) was perhaps the most significant ingredient in shaping the character of American religion throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. The vast lands to the west beckoned the various churches and denominations to work out their own destiny on the heels of (and sometimes in advance of) the ever moving frontier.

In this connection, the discussion of the establishment of religious freedom is particularly appropriate. Certain points stand out. One, the favored or “established” churches in particular colonies or areas simply were not strong enough to dominate the religious scene, i.e., to be the established churches. Second, since religious freedom was a practical and legal matter, and not theological, most of the existing and competing churches in eighteenth-century America could unite behind this principle without conflict. Finally, it was the strength of a group of rationalist intellectuals who gave form and substance to this position with the result that, to this day, the Church has not developed a theological defense for religious freedom.

As seems almost inevitable in American historical writing where deep spiritual and philosophical meanings are being sought, the person and message of Abraham Lincoln occupies a central position in this series of essays. Lincoln, then, becomes the personification of this “new” American whose devotion to democracy rests on four fundamental beliefs: belief in God, belief in “the people,” the conviction that the voice of the people is the surest clue to the voice of God, and the belief that truth emerges out of the conflict of opinions. The American dream of destiny and democracy has perhaps never been better expressed than it was by Lincoln in the closing words of his message to Congress on December 1, 1862, when he said: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.” There are no guarantees of success!

Lincoln saw the opportunity to begin all over again in the new land as a gift of God, whose will was to be felt and known in the events of the nation’s unfolding history. Thus these Americans, in the words of Lincoln, came to look upon themselves as the “almost chosen people” set apart by God to serve a peculiar purpose in the history of mankind. This destiny, to be known, must be lived and worked out.

The last chapter, in the opinion of this reviewer, is in some respects the least satisfactory of the nine, perhaps because of the relative recency of the events and the consequent necessity for general and tentative judgments about them. Still, one could wish for a more exhaustive treatment of the antagonisms that in the early twentieth century characterized the interaction of liberalism, the social-gospel movement, and fundamentalism. Nevertheless, the chapter is full of challenging questions. Would exponents of the social-gospel movement agree that in the broad sweep of the pendulum the movement tended to substitute “social concerns for individual Christian experience”? Was it guilty “of identifying the gospel with current schemes for reconstructing society; of judging the work of the church on the basis of its effectiveness in furthering social reform; of substituting sociology for theology” (pp. 182, 183)?

Few, I believe, will quarrel with one of the author’s final conclusions: “On the positive side, the fundamentalists insisted that if Christianity was to survive, it must maintain an identity in keeping with the historical character; while the liberals insisted that if Christianity was to survive it must come to terms with the main currents of modern thought and the social revolutions of the twentieth century. Insofar, both were essentially right. Both were wrong when they failed to recognize the validity and necessity of the other’s point” (pp. 186, 187).

Dr. Mead has long been recognized as one of the leading scholars in the field of American church history. The volume under review can only add to his stature in this field.

ROBERT M. SUTTON

Systematic Trouble

The System and the Gospel: A Critique of Paul Tillich, by Kenneth Hamilton (Macmillan, 1963, 247 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Stuart C. Hackett, associate professor of philosophy, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Professor Hamilton (of United College, Winnipeg, Canada) might, with equal propriety, have entitled his work The System OR the Gospel. For while he expounds the major aspects of Tillich’s theological system, his principal objective is to show that this particular system of theology, or any system similarly construed, is incompatible with the Gospel. According to the author, Tillich attempts to apply a preconceived philosophical idea of theology, as a coherent system of concepts, to the Kerygma of the Christian message. Since the method by which he does this is itself implied in his formal idea of a system, ultimate authority resides in this idea of theology as a universal ideal, which then embodies itself in various sub-types of which Christian theology, adequately construed, is the most adequate theological expression. The system itself Hamilton regards as a version of absolute idealism in the tradition of Hegel. Tillich borrows existentialist vocabulary, but the idealistic stand becomes patently obvious in the view that thought and being are identical, and in the view that the divine and the human meet in the universal logos, which discerns God non-symbolically as being-itself.

Hamilton illustrates his general thesis by reference to specific concepts in Tillich’s system: particular religions, for example, are symbolic versions of the ultimate metaphysical truth, though the revelation of God in these symbolic forms is essential to man because his state of existence is imperfect and lacking in the wholeness that characterizes God as being-itself. Again, man is a sinner in the sense that in his finite existence he is superficially estranged from God as the Ground of being, and faith is the state of ultimate concern which expresses itself as an eros-love which is the desire to overcome this separation or estrangement; the forgiveness of sins is actually the New Being in which the objective of faith so defined is essentially realized. And finally, Jesus as the Christ is the historical symbol of the New Being as expressing essential God-manhood, while the man Jesus remains a problem of history and is, as such, not essential to the “picture” of a personality that is expressed in the Christ symbol. The Christian revelation of the universal truth is thus not essentially different from other symbolic expressions of that truth, but it is better because it takes a human life as its medium and thus joins together the absolutely concrete and the absolutely universal. In all of this Hamilton sees the reaffirmation of an idealistic, pantheistic monism that denies the reality of existing particulars—of finite persons as true individuals, and leaves no room for a personal God.

Thus understood, Tillich’s system, it is urged, is clearly seen to be incompatible with the Gospel. In consequence, Hamilton concludes: (1) that no apologetic theology can stand which reinterprets traditional doctrine by demanding its conformity to an externally imposed system of assumptions—our criterion must arise out of the Kerygma itself as a witness to the revelatory events; (2) more particularly, that no apologetic can succeed in the tradition of that nineteenth-century liberalism which aligns itself with idealistic philosophy; and (3) that the apologetic task, though always pertinent, must be carried out in dependence on the Kerygma through which the Divine Word confronts us, yet in such a way that authority lies not in the Bible of a rigid orthodoxy, nor in the historic creeds, nor in an ecclesiastical hierarchy, but rather in the saving events to which all of these, rightly understood, bear witness. Perhaps the best approach would be either to adopt a philosophy whose points of contact with the Kerygma make it a suitable framework for the exposition and defense of the Gospel (e.g., Thomism) or to build a philosophy de novo by working out the philosophical implications of the Gospel taken as a starting point. But in the final analysis, Hamilton casts his lot with those who, like Kierkegaard, regard any apologetic system both as impossible in principle and as invariably competing with the Gospel itself, unless it is limited to the task of showing that the Christian message is ultimately an absolute paradox for human reason.

An adequate criticism of Hamilton’s interpretation is impossible, but this reviewer feels impelled to make certain critical observations. First, Hamilton seems to me to be correct in viewing Tillich’s theology as essentially both idealistic in the Hegelian sense and incompatible with the Christian Gospel; second, his extended critique embodies an admirably clear exposition of the main concepts of Tillich’s thought. On the other hand, it is perhaps the case, as Hamilton himself indicates, that the excessive preoccupation with a negative polemic obscures the full impact of Tillich’s viewpoint; furthermore, Tillich’s failure to present a genuinely Christian apologetic in the context of Hegelian idealism does not imply that Kierkegaard is right in regarding an apologetic system or philosophically oriented theology as impossible because of man’s involvement in finite existence. Any interpretative approach to the Gospel involves some philosophical framework as its presupposition; failure to recognize this only blinds the interpreter to the “system” involved in his own approach. The real issue, therefore, is not that of system versus no system; it is rather that of attempting to find a method of justifying the principles of one system as over against those of alternative systems in such a way as to approach an objective viewpoint. Confronted with this issue, I am by no means constrained to discard systematic coherence in favor of absolute rational paradox (even here there is a “system” in disguise); instead, like Tillich, I feel compelled to try again!

STUART C. HACKETT

Real Bridges?

The Phenomenology of Religion, by Edward J. Jurji (Westminster, 1963, 308 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, professor of missions, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Because of the nature of its material, this is a difficult book to read and digest. One needs considerable background to understand the subject it discusses. The author has done major research and has brought to his subject much learning and considerable appreciation of the major issues involved. He has labored earnestly to produce an excellent descriptive work and has fairly represented viewpoints with which he disagrees.

The dust jacket states that the author presents an “objective descriptive analysis of the religious essence as it displays itself on the world stage.” He “defines the scope and relevancy of this approach, the phenomenology of religion.” He later examines the role of religion in the world and discusses the factors that have enabled religions to perpetuate themselves on the stage of history. He examines the idea of God as delineated in some of the major religions and indicates how the idea manifests itself via law, doctrine, metamorphosis, and ethics. There are excellent sections devoted to modern developments in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Jurji states that the idea of God is “identical with the truth.… Else there could have been no lamp unto man’s feet as he trudged on a slow and trying evolutionary trail.… The Idea of God is here to stay” (p. 71). But “all ideas about the Idea of God at best can be merely tentative.… Doomed in advance is any attempt to reduce the Eternal to so-called propositional categories of truth, useful and rational as these well may be” (p. 83).

He clearly delineates the views of Kraemer and Barth, both of whom regard Christianity as completely antithetical to all other religions. Kraemer holds that “there is really no way through from the non-Christian religions to the Christian faith.… It is just at this central point that many Christian scholars [including Jurji] take exception to the position that Kraemer maintains” (p. 87). Indeed, Jurji states that Kraemer’s thesis “leaves scarcely any room for interfaith dialogue, let alone meeting of minds” (p. 86). He further asserts that both Kraemer and Barth, who claim abandonment of verbal inspiration, actually are involved in a dichotomy that “suggests reversion to what cannot be too different” (p. 86).

Tillich’s critical existentialism is more appealing to Jurji. This emphasis, he says, proves “congenial to a genuinely ecumenical realism. Incidentally, his [Tillich’s] concept of theonomy provides a concrete base for fruitful Protestant-Roman Catholic dialogue” (pp. 94, 95).

Jurji does a commendable job in calling attention to five competitors of the world religions: scientism and humanism; nationalism and collective powers; secularism and atheism; historicism (in which religion is dead); and Communism.

Some of the author’s concluding remarks will not be wholly acceptable to those in the orthodox theological camp. He says, for example, that a sociology that approaches religion as a whole “undoubtedly elicits suspicion. In certain quarters, distressed supernaturalists, disturbed clergy, and highly imaginative individuals might register a vote of no confidence” (p. 293). Who these “distressed,” “disturbed,” and “highly imaginative” people are he nowhere states. Again, “… any definition must prove inadequate that condemns the religions of mankind right out of hand. Any theology is deficient at the core that regards these religions as man’s wasted effort and lets the matter drop at that. To fail in discovering any truth whatever outside Christianity is a theological blind spot that cries out for a remedy” (p. 293). Evidently Jurji favors continuity over against discontinuity, which has been the traditional view. Unfortunately for his case, the witness of the Bible favors the view that all other gods and all other religions are, in point of fact, idolatrous and unable to bring salvation to men. So-called similarities (for example, the ideas of God, sin, and salvation) are not at all real similarities and do not constitute true bridges between Christianity and the non-Christian religions. Despite these observations, however, this book is worth reading.

There is one odd footnote reference which stands out like a sore thumb. Jurji quotes from his colleague, Bruce Metzger (in The Oxford Annotated Bible, RSV), to support the following statements: “The birth and growth of the early church is reflected in the New Testament. Church history was initiated in the Acts of the Apostles, an account of the spread of Christianity during the first thirty years or so after the earthly life of Jesus” (pp. 196, 197). Why such obvious historical facts, known to all, require documentation is a mystery to the reviewer.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Not By Quackery

The Recovery of the Person, by Carlyle Marney (Abingdon, 1963, 176 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Samuel J. Mikolaski, professor of theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisiana.

Dr. Marney, the minister of Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina, if a controversial figure, is a preacher, writer, and lecturer of considerable stature in the South. This book will unnerve some of his critics and startle many of his friends. It is curious that in their blurb on the jacket, Abingdon forgot to add “Southern” to “Baptist Theological Seminary” when describing the author’s education.

This book is on the theological basis and structure of ethics, so one must not demand a complete theological argument when evaluating it. The issue is clearly put: We are split men living in a world of split men. Can the fragments be healed? How can we find the whole (p. 14)? Dr. Marney’s answer is straightforward: Not by any kind of religious or philosophical quackery, as when real problems are afforded only verbal solutions, whether these are of the fundamentalist, neoorthodox, or liberal perversions. The answer lies in real history, in a real Incarnation, by a real Atonement, with real persons in real relations, in a real Church that is the real Kingdom of God come in history.

To me the stress on real history is a refreshing breeze, for surely “events” cannot be events unless they happen. This is largely what Dr. Marney means by humanism—it is to turn from claims to knowledge we are not equipped to handle, to where we are and to what we are (p. 38). He charges that Ritschl’s Christ rides with the odor of docetic gnosticism in the Trojan horse led by Dr. Bultmann. To evade the historicity of the Gospel “requires a whole cavalcade of once-dead docetics to animate the three-story history they project” (p. 17). One cannot by metaphysics get rid of history. The Incarnation means simply that the matter cannot be settled apart from history (p. 97). “Can we have faith apart from history? No more than we can breathe apart from history. Is not Christianity the only faith depending entirely on the historical?” (p. 99). The great danger in recent theology, he says, is not widespread unbelief but the decline of the rational as the real core of our humanity (p. 134). God comes into, is present in, and uses the elements of, history. “Not even God can speak to man without a grammar” (p. 62).

Second, we must opt for persons in interpersonal relations, “in the beginning is relation” (p. 20). God is no abstraction, but Person (p. 91). He says, “Barth’s ‘wholly other’ appeal (s) to me as little as it did when I first encountered it in Plotinus’ incomprehensibility” (p. 33). Barth hesitantly calls God person, then cancels it out by making God the only person there is (pp. 34, 82). Nobody who guards against making God human in the way that Barth does it, he adds, can know 1,500 pages about God, even in German (p. 53). This is particularly true of the love of God, which the transcendentalists, especially Barth and Tillich, tend to undercut by undue stress on the divine impassibility. “Who can know an absolute?” (p. 91).

Further, personal life involves relations that are moral (p. 64). No distortions of doctrine, whether they be classical forms of determinism or perversions of election, justification, or faith, can empty human life of moral responsibility. There never has been a conflict between law and grace (p. 167), and a revitalized doctrine of grace must recover the moral realities of freedom and responsibility (p. 169). In one of his most forceful indictments, Dr. Marney harnesses Schleiermacher, Freud, and Barth in a troika that “denies us our competent existence” (p. 165).

Everything about man hinges upon his individual and solidaric guilt and upon the redemptive act of Christ to redeem and make us whole. Dr. Marney’s stress on human life as interdependent (which reminds me of Denney and Forsyth) is heartening: “Jesus did see that we are involved with the sins of the past, and therefore the guilt of the past” (p. 75). The redemptive act and justifying work is God’s. The Son died—and only he could—the death of us all. “This dying for us is in a class of dying all by itself. There is not atonement in other deaths, there is no atonement in our death, otherwise redemption would be by suicide” (p. 98). Passages that urge this reality of the divine act in history to redeem us are deeply moving (cf. p. 103).

The author argues an “Incarnational realism in ethics resting on a theology of identification.” This means Christ’s identification with us, our deification by him (no absorption in impersonal monism), our involvement in one another’s lives by grace for the re-creation of life, and the fashioning of lives to full personhood. Written at a time when the matrix of spiritual life seems thought by some to be the institutional church, club, or community effort, one is gratified to read here that the Church is the womb within which persons happen and recognize one another.

One does not have to agree with all that a writer says to appreciate his major thrust of thought. Dr. Marney is hard on some, whether they be pietists or philosophers; but surely his plea for a vital, Incarnational, Spirit-filled Christianity should be heard.

The book is organized around an important biblical concept articulated by Irenaeus: “What He was, that He also appeared to be; what He did appear, that He also was” (p. 95). I add one observation: Why not carry Irenaeus’s splendid argument forward to its logical issue trinitarianly, as he did? Irenaeus is one of the few theologians of history that have taken John 17 seriously in a theological way. Trinity is not a logical conundrum but a life we share in Christ. We are called into the Trinitarian life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This alone makes God as Person intelligible as well as experienceable—an intelligibility and experience that need to range more freely across Christian life in general and Southern Baptist life in particular.

SAMUEL J. MIKOLASKI

Clever, At Best

The Church in a Society of Abundance, edited by Arthur E. Walmsley (Seabury, 1963, 178 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by E. Merrill Root, author and lecturer, Thompson, Connecticut.

This book is part of the surrender by church “intellectuals” to secularism, sociology, and fashionable clichés of “change” and “welfare.” It surrenders eternity to time; the Kingdom that is not of this world to the bread and circuses of Caesar; the pearl of great price to the world offered as man’s oyster.

It is interesting, sometimes brilliant, and clever in sociological observations. It might be written by contemporary sociologists outside the Church: but is it religion?

Quotations will show the drift. “Our sense of immortality, however false, has been threatened” (p. 45). “He knows that the quickened pace of living and the over-stimulation of the senses have robbed life of many of its pleasures, ‘The things I used to enjoy when I was young.’ Small wonder then that he asks himself in the dark of night, ‘Why bother?’ ” (p. 46). “Otherwise, we may in our concern to prove the continuity and validity of the age-old doctrines of our faith—that men are sinful, finite, dependent on the grace of God—ignore the unique expressions of God’s work in the world and the new values …” (p. 47).

They speak of Supreme Court decisions as “barring trivial religious exercises …” (p. 61). They speak of “the pious religiosity which is a vestige of our attachment to a defunct Christendom” (p. 72). They liken the actions of the Soviets—forced labor camps, liquidation of the Kulaks, planned starvation of millions—to the grim early excesses of accumulating capital in our own industrial revolution (p. 83). (Only lack of intellectual subtlety can explain so gross a confusion—unless it is deliberate.) They parrot Veblenesque clichés (p. 85) like “conspicuous consumption.” They see the mortal war of Communism with freedom as only “technical differences in the methods of economic control” (p. 94). They ridicule “rigidly maintaining old forms of words and acts” (p. 155)—and, of course, are all for novelty. They speak of loss of “status” (p. 159) as the real cause of “divorce, insanity, suicide, delinquency.” Where is the religious sense of our loss of a realization of eternity, our “embezzled Heaven,” our art and philosophy of the hour that stress denial, negation, nihilism?

This book is, at best, clever secular sociology, not religion. No wonder most contemporary pulpits revolt us: as Milton said, “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.” The “Church” that speaks here has lost its continuity with Christ. This book is a slick, synthetic, devitalized product—never the bread of life—wrapped in cellophane and presented (like modern soaps on TV commercials) as “new” and “improved.” It lacks the vitamins of genuine religion.

E. MERRILL ROOT

Science And The Reformation

Science, God, and You, by Enno Wolthuis (Baker, 1963, 121 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Russell L. Mixter, professor of zoology, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Combining his knowledge of history, philosophy, and theology with a wealth of scientific information, Professor Wolthuis of Calvin College has given us a competent statement of the relations among these disciplines. This is needed, because schools may give only a confused picture of the significance of science and religion. Although God is placed second in the title, he comes out first in the discussion.

Christians have a right and a duty to engage in scientific pursuits, and the Reformers, particularly Calvin, advocated this sphere of activity. They would oppose the current notion that “all men must accept that which is scientifically demonstrated, and for the rest it is every man for himself. If he wishes to believe in a deity that is his privilege.” Because of sin, man finds it easy to accept the hard facts of science and to “relegate the other-worldly claims of religion to the realm of speculation instead of fact.”

The author combats such views as that scientific knowledge is nature’s dictation of facts, rather than “quite a subjective body of information”; that science is “based on facts alone” while religion is “entirely a matter of faith”; and that science can handle questions of morals and goals and emotions. He insists that God has spoken both in the universe and in the divine Word and develops this in his chapter “Nature and Scripture.” One typographical error on page 74 should be noted. In a discussion of attitudes toward nature and Scripture, the text says, “the one which denies Scripture and defies nature”—instead of “deifies” nature.

The synthesis of Wolthuis’s views is found in the concluding chapters: “The Reformation Influence,” “On the Creation of All Things,” “Man, the Crown of Creation,” “Science, a Christian Duly,” and “Victory Through Faith.” He believes that “it was the Protestant Reformation which first objectively challenged the authority of the Scholastic tradition” and thereby provided an atmosphere in which science could grow. Faith in an orderly nature can be had only by a faith in a God of creation.

RUSSELL L. MIXTER

Book Briefs

The Holy Merriment, by Arnold Kenseth (University of North Carolina, 1963, 70 pp., $4). Religiously oriented poems, carefully crafted and refreshing in their nuances of thought and emotion.

Woman and Man: Their Nature and Mission, by F. X. Arnold (Herder and Herder, 1963, 151 pp., $3.95). A provocative discussion of the mystery of man and woman, within a Roman Catholic perspective.

Faust Revisited: Some Thoughts on Satan, by Marshall W. Fishwick (Seabury, 1963, 182 pp., $3.95). The author probes sharply into the realities of life to uncover evil and the devil. His words are edged and his sentences a sword thrust. Some questionable theology, but very worthwhile reading.

Men Twice Born, compiled and edited by David R. Enlow (Zondervan, 1963, 147 pp., $2.95). Twenty-six men from all walks of life tell how they became Christians. These true and reassuring stories make good reading for those who doubt the power of the Gospel and of Christian witness.

Of the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis (Revell, 1963, 63 pp., $1). Selections from a Christian classic; devotional reading in pocket size.

Geographical Companion to the Bible, by Denis Baly (McGraw-Hill, 1963, 196 pp., $5.95). A high-grade achievement of an experienced geographer tells of the land and its formation, the climate, vegetation, and trade routes of Bible times. A very helpful companion for intelligent Bible reading.

Natural Childbirth and the Christian Family, by Helen S. Wessel (Harper & Row, 1963, 287 pp., $4.95). An unusual blending of the Christian faith and the principles of medicine, throwing light on this neglected area.

East Bay and Eden: Contemporary Sermons, by Browne Barr (Abingdon, 1963, 160 pp., $3). Readable, well-composed sermons which for the most part circle around but rarely get to the center of the Christian faith.

Premarital Guidance, by Russell L. Dicks (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 141 pp., $2.95). Author believes that the marriage-choice is more important than either the career or religion-choice; he has a doubtful definition of marriage and divorce, but within such strictures he has good advice—three bags full—for Christians no less than for others.

Paul Tillich: An Appraisal, by J. Heywood Thomas (Westminster, 1963, 224 pp., $4.50). A Welshman presents a basic critique of Tillich’s attempt to wed theology and philosophy. Embellished with an introductory essay on the life and development of the man himself. An appendix presents Roman Catholic criticisms of Tillich.

Teaching and Morality, by Francis C. Wade (Loyola University Press, 1963, 269 pp., $4). A Roman Catholic urges that colleges should teach students to be good as well as to know, and then faces the problem that virtue, unlike knowledge, cannot be taught.

Living Springs: New Religious Movements in Western Europe, by Olive Wyon (Westminster, 1963, 128 pp., $2.50). The stories of new Protestant and Roman Catholic religious communities, such as Taizé in Burgundy, St. Julian’s and Lee Abbey in Great Britain, and many more. A good report on a religious phenomenon of especial interest to Protestants.

Christianity in Africa, by Cecil Northcott (Westminster, 1963, 128 pp., $2.95). A clearly drawn picture of the face of Africa showing its strength and weaknesses, and its possibilities of tomorrow; by a competent author.

The Pastor and His Work, by Homer A. Kent, Sr. (Moody, 1963, 301 pp., $4.50). Much sound advice on just about everything about the pastor and his work. The treatment is sometimes inadequate, but it is always practical.

The Ministers Manual 1964, compiled and edited by M. K. W. Heicher (Harper & Row, 1963, 363 pp., $3.95). A treasury of suggestions for nearly every kind of service (worship, funeral, and the like) a minister must perform. Prayers, poems, and International Sunday School Lessons. Valuable if rightly used.

The Multiple Staff in the Local Church, by Herman J. Sweet (Westminster, 1963, 122 pp., $2.75). A discussion of the roles, functions, needs, and problems in the church that has a staff of workers and not simply one minister attempting to do everything.

Pitirim A. Sorokin in Review, edited by Philip A. Allen (Duke University, 1963, 527 pp., $10). An analysis and assessment of the controversial sociologist who was founder and long-time head of Harvard’s sociological department. Part I presents Sorokin’s autobiography; Part II, estimates of him by such men as A. Toynbee and R. K. Merton; and Part III, Sorokin’s reflections on his work in the light of his critics’ analyses.

The United States and Africa, edited by Walter Goldschmidt (Frederick A. Praeger, 1963, 298 pp., $6). An edition revised to bring up to date the significant and exciting things that have happened in Africa since 1958.

An Autobiography of the Supreme Court, edited by Alan F. Westin (Macmillan, 1963, 475 pp., $7.50). An informal account of the growth and development of America’s unique institution, provided by the justices themselves in their speeches, letters, and memoirs, from 1790 to 1961.

Adventures in the Holy Land, by Norman Vincent Peale (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 176 pp., $5.95). With word and picture Peale shares the experiences and impressions gained on his trip to the Holy Land. The script is good, the photography excellent.

Get Off the Fence!: Morals for Moderns, by Thomas A. Fry, Jr. (Revell, 1963, 127 pp., $2.50). A clear call to basic social and personal morality within the context of today’s problems, hopes, and fears. Good reading.

Patriarchs and Prophets, by Stanley Brice Frost (McGill University, 1963, 232 pp., $4.50). A very liberal interpretation of the biblical patriarchs and prophets.

Truth for Today, edited by John F. Walvoord (Moody, 1963, 255 pp., $2.95). Twenty-three evangelical theologians contribute as many articles to celebrate thirty years of publication of Bibliotheca Sacra by Dallas Theological Seminary.

Paperbacks

Planning a Year’s Pulpit Work, by Andrew W. Blackwood (Abingdon, 1963, 240 pp., $1.25). A valuable discussion about preaching which provides considerable practical wisdom for the man who could use some help in making sermons. First published in 1942.

Piety and Politics: American Protestantism in the World Arena, by Alan Geyer (John Knox, 1963, 173 pp., $2.25). A freewheeling but useful discussion of the role and influence of American religion, for good and ill, in recent events of world politics.

Karl Barth’s Table Talk, edited by John D. Godsey (John Knox, 1963, 101 pp., $1.75). For many years Barth had special sessions with English-speaking students to informally discuss aspects of his thought. Here are the questions asked by the students and Barth’s informal answers.

The Silent Struggle for Mid-America, edited by E. W. Mueller and Giles C. Ekola (Augsburg, 1963, 180 pp„ $3.50). The lectures and findings of a conference interested in finding out what is happening to the church and the small communities in Mid-America.

I Believe in God …, by Klaas Runia (Inter-Varsity, 1963, 77 pp., $1.50). A good Reformed scholar writes plainly about the creeds and their relevance for today. Trenchant criticism is directed especially against Bultmann.

Missionary Opportunity Today, edited by Leslie Lyall (Inter-Varsity, 1963, 160 pp., $1.50). An up-to-date survey which brings the reader into touch with the most recent developments in the worldwide mission of the Church. A valuable study.

Christian Beliefs: A Brief Introduction, by I. Howard Marshall (Inter-Varsity, 1963, 96 pp., $1.25). A solid, evangelical exposition of basic Christian doctrines that wastes no words. Excellent for students.

Peter and the Church: An Examination of Cullmann’s Thesis, by Otto Karrer (Herder and Herder, 1963, 142 pp., $2.25). Father Karrer presents his response to Oscar Cullmann’s Peter, in which he contended that Peter was only the primus of the early Church and at an early date yielded his primacy to James the Less. Top-level Protestant-Roman Catholic dialogue.

The Church in the City, by Paul Peachey (Faith and Life, 1963, 115 pp., $1.95). From an initial consideration of the difficulties that cultural differences and big-city life present to the extension of the Mennonite faith, the author, a Mennonite, discusses how these same difficulties confront every Christian group.

The Reformed Pastor, by Richard Baxter (John Knox, 1963, 126 pp., $1.50). By “reformed,” this eminent seventeenth-century Puritan meant “recalled to faithful service.” His perceptive and instructive book has been helping pastors toward this end for more than 300 years.

The Quiet Men: The Secret to Personal Success and Effectiveness by Men Who Practice It, by Richard C. Halverson (Cowman, 1963, 133 pp., $1.95). Quiet men tell the secret of their personal success and effectiveness. The secret is the Christian faith; and the men, twenty-three of them, include Governor Mark Hatfield, General M. H. Silverthorn, Judge Boyd Leedom, and W. C. Jones. Interesting stories and proof of the power of the Gospel.

Ideas

Evangelicals and Public Affairs

The Editors

The Christian’s responsibility to care about injustices.

In a time of ethical relativism, when social and moral problems beset us on every hand, evangelicals need to give careful thought to their position respecting public affairs. Committed to the Word of God and to a Lord who is the greatest of ethical teachers as well as the only Saviour from sin, they are spiritually among those to whom much has been given. Yet they have no occasion for pride, because humility is at the heart of the Gospel. If evangelicals rejoice in personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, their rejoicing must ever be mingled with honest realization that apart from any merit of theirs, the divine Son of God who came to seek and to save the lost has sought and found them. Motivated not by fear of rejection by God but rather by love for him who has given them life everlasting—and love is always a stronger motive than fear—they are obligated to serve their Lord through serving their fellow men. Christ’s saying, “Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required …” (Luke 12:48b, RSV), applies with irresistible logic to them because of the riches of their spiritual heritage.

This being the case, there rests upon evangelical Christians a mandatory responsibility for unflagging interest in public affairs and for informed participation in them. That this is not nowadays a responsibility consistently discharged is a reproach to the evangelical cause and a denial of an important part of its heritage.

History bears voluminous witness to evangelical participation in public affairs. Reformation leaders, such as Luther, Calvin, and Knox, were concerned for the material as well as spiritual welfare of their fellow citizens and also for just government. In fact, Calvinism must be reckoned along with the French Enlightenment as a prime influence upon the development of American democracy. According to Bancroft, “The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster.” And Horace Walpole, on hearing of the beginning of the Revolution, said in Parliament, “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson.” The parson was John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Moreover, as J. Wesley Bready has shown in This Freedom, Whence? (American Tract Society, 1942), in early nineteenth-century England moral and social advances, such as the abolition of the slave trade, the restriction of child labor, and the mitigation of an inhumanly harsh penal code, came out of the Wesleyan revival through such evangelical leaders as Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, and Howard. As for nineteenth-century America, Timothy Smith has demonstrated in Revivalism and Social Reform (Abingdon Press, 1957) the same intimate relationship between evangelicalism and the amelioration of social abuses.

Although twentieth-century evangelicals in America have not always been so socially concerned as their predecessors, the accusation that they are almost devoid of such outreach is superficial. Aside from the foreign-missions movement, in which evangelicalism has been and still is the single most active force, the rescue missions dotting the nation’s cities and offering physical as well as spiritual rehabilitation to human derelicts almost unreachable by other agencies are largely the product of evangelical initiative. Similarly, in the extremely difficult field of juvenile gangs, the most effective work, like that of Jim Vaus in Manhattan, is the direct result of evangelicalism. Despite their refusal to equate the social gospel with the Gospel of salvation through the work of Christ, evangelicals have always maintained some continuance of social concern.

Nevertheless, as Carl F. H. Henry showed in The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Eerdmans, 1947), they have lagged behind what is required of those to whom so much spiritual and doctrinal wealth has been committed. Today, seventeen years after Dr. Henry’s book was written, their conscience is still uneasy, mostly because of sins of omission. That theirs is not the only uneasy conscience—for who in this day of multitudinous problems can claim a conscience completely unburdened—is beside the present discussion. Sufficient to say, evangelicals need to accept a greater share of responsibility for public affairs.

This they can do within the framework of their basic convictions and in a way wholly compatible with the clear teaching of the Bible. It is a principle held by many evangelicals that the Church should not enter into politics because the mission of the Church is the spiritual one of preaching the Gospel. Evangelicals believe with the Apostle Paul that there is only one Gospel—the Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ who “died for our sins according to the scriptures … was buried, and … rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3, 4). It is no unfounded fear that preoccupation with other matters, such as prohibition in the early decades of this century and now racial desegregation (important as it is), can almost usurp the primacy that belongs only to the Gospel. Nevertheless, the pendulum can swing too far in the other direction. And that this swing has occurred in the case of some evangelicals must be admitted.

According to much evangelical conviction, it is not fitting for the Church to inject itself into politics by taking sides in political campaigns, by telling members how to vote, or by lobbying in Congress and in state legislatures. But this does not mean that ministers and laymen must keep silent about the injustices that cry for remedy and the evils that infest our society, or that they must look with callous unconcern upon human suffering and remain indifferent to crucial national and international problems. To do so is to repudiate an integral part of Christian responsibility and to run the risk of severing two vital aspects of the Christian life that God has joined together.

Says the Apostle Paul in one of the greatest of New Testament passages, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8–10). Therefore, to deny or repudiate Christian social concern and participation in public affairs is not only to sever what God has indissolubly united but also to thwart the divinely willed purpose of our regeneration as children of God. It is significant that such great New Testament epistles as Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Hebrews begin with saving doctrine and end with the obligation to practice it.

Acceptance of civic responsibility; loyal participation in government (including the duty of speaking out against policies that seem wrong); personal and self-sacrificial action in behalf of the oppressed and underprivileged, the sick and helpless, regardless of color, nationality, or creed—these, while not the Gospel, are the inescapable outcome of the Gospel and thus part of the Christian vocation binding upon clergy and laity alike. As the beloved disciple said, “But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17, RSV). Or, in the incomparable words of Christ, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40).

The principle that the Church may not enter into politics does not mean that either the individual churches or their ministers and members may remain comfortably aloof from injustice and remote from human oppression and suffering. The calling of the Church is indeed spiritual. Its primary obligation is to proclaim the great Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ. It must be utterly convinced that the ultimate solution to the problem of humanity is regeneration by the Holy Spirit.

For evangelicals these things are not debatable. Yet they are accompanied by some corollaries. Chief among these is the principle that not all proclamation of the Gospel is verbal. Deeds of compassion done in Christ’s name also make him known and open the door for him to do his saving work.

It may well be that some evangelicals need to learn that social work is not necessarily sub-Christian; that, for a believer, public service and politics may be a God-given vocation; that civil rights is a moral problem; that Christian youth may be called to the Peace Corps; that teaching retarded children may be as Christ-like a calling as leading a class in child evangelism. Witnessing is not a disembodied activity. When clothed with deeds of mercy, it may become fully as effective as when dressed in the attire of the pulpit.

The Old Testament prophets were deeply involved in public affairs. In burning words they spoke out against the injustices of their day. Yet they were not remiss in pointing to the coming Messiah, who would save his people from their sins. The God who inspired them guarded their ministry against imbalance. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost and to give his life a ransom for many. Yet his daily teaching and activity were also directed toward human need. The apostles preached the Gospel and also ministered to individuals, as have God’s servants in every age. And if this is a time for evangelicals to reconsider their responsibility for social concern and public affairs, let them do so according to the biblical pattern.

Realism By The Reel

There is a growing concern over the influence of current movies upon the morality of the American people, especially upon that of its youth. Even the advocates of a “new moral code for the twentieth century” are shocked by the delinquency and lawlessness that attends the breakdown of the nation’s traditional moral standards. The frightening increase in crime of all kinds is a matter of statistics, and statistics seem like something more than mere numbers since the assassination of President Kennedy. No less frightening is the decline of that ordinary honesty and integrity on which the conduct of life’s everyday affairs depends.

It would be folly to place most of the blame at the door of the movie industry. Many factors contribute to our collapsing moral situation, not least the rejection of those Christian truths upon which the morality of the Western world is based. But while no one can gauge with precision to what degree today’s movies reflect rather than create our moral predicament, they do make a sizable contribution.

Hollywood and its counterparts across the world have never been candidates for Oscars of moral achievement. The incentive of the industry has come more from the desire to give the public what it is willing to pay to see than from the demands of either art or morality. Hard hit by television and by the human inclination to see movies from the ease of the armchair at home, the industry has met the challenge by making films on new, daring themes and with a degree of realism never before equaled. A bold treatment of racism, rape, violence, homosexuality, murder, alcoholism, and narcotic addiction, and an open exposure of the psychotic personality and of the futility and nothingness of life, are presented today as “the adult film.”

Attempting to meet the challenge of television by representing the kind of movie that cannot be seen at home, the industry has produced many commendable films. But many of the “adult films” are created by a realism that is nothing but an unrelieved preoccupation with naked evil, violence, and sexuality in its normal and abnormal forms.

Constant exposure to such movies, especially when they are viewed as entertainment, is bound to affect the moral fiber and spirit of a nation. Although threatened by television, movie attendance the world over is now nineteen billion a year. Movies are shown on land, at sea, and in the air, and are still the most popular form of entertainment on earth. People who love their country and their youth do well to consider what it is that entertains them. Christians know that “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” They know, too, that if there are wholesome consequences to Paul’s admonition to think on things that are true, virtuous, lovely, and of good report, the opposite is no less true. No people can feed on violence and immorality without being adversely affected.

The Christian answer is not a rejection of realism. Nor is it an insistence on mere “good taste,” for this itself requires a moral standard by which to be judged. A realistic treatment of evil should possess what Aristotle called “catharsis,” a cleansing, corrective influence. The Bible itself at times is realistic enough. Yet in the biblical treatment of evil, realism is tempered by the reality and aims of redemption. Nothing exposed human evil more realistically than the biblical law; yet in the biblical realism there is no law without Gospel, no exposure that does not point to correction. The playwrights of many current realistic movies are prophets of human doom; like the law, they expose evil, but having no Gospel, they can lead only to despair, to a narcissistic fixation and perverted fascination with raw evil, which is a sickness unto death.

Adult, realistic movies that present unrelieved evil are evil enough. But worse, such films often justify the evil they present, making immorality, homosexuality, violence, drunkenness, and prostitution an acceptable and normal way of life. They often show life as ultimately meaningless and irrational, and within that perspective, moral rebellion is presented as an excusable and justifiable response to universal, cosmic irrationality. This is the end of the road for moral disintegration; immorality can go no further in evil than its self-justification. When the most popular form of entertainment on earth makes evil acceptable and justifies sin, it bears a heavy responsibility for the inevitable consequences upon the moral life of a nation.

If the realistic treatment of life’s evils continues, modern movies (and modern literature as well) will soon have no place to go. When evil is portrayed with a stark unrelieved realism, without the dimensions of correction and redemption and in a form that suggests its acceptability and justification, evil has run its course. It is only when realism is tempered by redemption that it possesses those infinite dimensions of variety where it can still be both entertaining and wholesome to the human spirit and to human society. For what is most real in human life is not evil, but the redemption in Jesus Christ that has overcome evil.

Freedom And Morality

Will Durant has looked up from the eighteenth century, the current subject of his amazing historiographic labors, long enough to level a steady gaze at the twentieth from the perspective of one whose familiarity with all the centuries has given us the monumental panorama of The Story of Civilization. Philosopher-historian Durant, in an article for the Associated Press, considers the perennial problem of freedom, which has through the ages plagued politician, statesman, moralist, philosopher, and theologian alike. Probing the elusive boundary between liberty and license, Durant asks searching questions concerning the limits of freedom. He writes as one who approved the post-1850 revolt against authority—of child against parent, of pupil against teacher, of man against the state—and now wonders “whether the battle I fought was not too completely won”:

Have we so long ridiculed authority in the family, discipline in education, rules in art, decency in conduct, and law in the state that our liberation has brought us close to chaos in the family and the school, in morals, arts, ideas, and Government? We forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves free.

Should we be free to commit murder and escape punishment on the ground of “temporary insanity”? Have our parole boards been too gentle, humane, and approachable? Should we be free to sell, to any minor who has the price, the most obscene—the most deliberately and mercenarily obscene—book of the 18th century, while we deplore the spread of crime, unwed motherhood, and venereal disease among our youth?

Should divorce be so easy that marriage loses its function of promoting sexual order and family discipline?…

These are difficult questions … and I have no dogmatic answers.… I know that severity of punishment does not always prevent crime—though I believe that surety of punishment would deter it. I know how hard it is to say who should judge what is right or wrong, obscene or decent, and where censorship should stop once it has begun.…

But with all these excuses and doubts, public opinion has been guilty of criminal and cowardly silence in the face of growing crime, moral disorder, and deteriorating taste. We have been afraid to speak out lest we be considered old fashioned.… We make idols of screen celebrities who deliberately break up home after home. We give not only money but honors to writers who peddle sexual stimulation. We pass in wonder by some of the modern art exhibited in our museums, and we dare not speak out against it as turning our stomachs with the odor of decay. Our ears are deafened and insulted by cacophonous music, but we fearfully recall that Beethoven was condemned by traditionalists, and without protest we go to be deafened and insulted again. We hear the wits laugh at the old copybook maxims, and we haven’t the nerve to say that those maxims are still true.

… Let us say, humbly but publicly, that we resent corruption in politics, dishonesty in business, faithlessness in marriage, pornography in literature, coarseness in language, chaos in music, meaninglessness in art.

It is time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, whose name is civilization.

As Durant well knows, every civilization has faced the problem of balancing liberty and law, freedom and restriction. To have a highly ethical society, one must have high individual morality or be faced with the necessity of passing so many laws that the legal structure eventually collapses under its own weight, and the society with it. Herein lies the relevance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to culture. While the Gospel does not set out with the goal of saving civilization, its effect upon society through the remaking of men has tremendous effect upon the moral level of civilization and the degree of freedom that may be maintained within it. Were the Church to be removed today, the scene would be bleak indeed. Were the restraining grace of God to be withdrawn, what desolation would soon greet the eye!

For the key to the noblest culture is Christ. Let not the Church or her ministers heed the charge that preaching Christ is irrelevant to the great moral crisis of the day. It is no less true today than in Augustine’s day that true freedom is found in and bounded by servitude to God. Regenerate men need fewer human laws and thus have greater freedom to express their personal wills to the glory of God, “whose service is perfect freedom.” The Church must shout from the housetops and echo and re-echo words once spoken by our Lord in the quiet of the night to a ruler of the Jews: “Ye must be born again.” It is in this context that we must understand his words, “The truth shall make you free,” which he further expounds: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

Ecumenism’s Neo-Colonial Compromises

Ideally the ecumenical movement is a unifying force binding the fragmented Christian enterprise into a single spiritual thrust. In practical outworking, however, ecumenism deteriorates at times into a variety of ecclesiastical propaganda and politics that undermines the possibility of translating ecumenical ideals into reality.

In Africa some spokesmen for the World Council of Churches are now venturing to promote ecumenical inclusivism by attacking long-established evangelical patterns that initiated and nourished many of the most virile mission efforts on that continent. The propaganda line runs something like this: “European” or “American” evangelical opinion is keeping African nationals from the blessing of the ecumenical movement; the “foreign” missionaries who retard this ecumenical commitment are “neo-colonial” agents of “foreign” mission boards who wish to perpetuate a sort of ecclesiastical isolationism that sunders the world church. This kind of propaganda takes hold readily where an anti-colonial temper is apparent. But for all its effectiveness, its use by ecumenical spokesmen for the Geneva office of the World Council of Churches amounts to the sowing of discord when they oversimplify the ecumenical debate into the bald thesis that Western missionaries are trying to keep Africans out of “the main stream of Christianity.”

Inevitably evangelicals who find ecclesiastical liberalism repugnant have reacted to this kind of propaganda and are probing alternative alignments uncommitted to theological inclusivism. Regrettable as such developments may be, one can understand why evangelicals should meet the ecumenical pressures with pressures of their own. Some evangelical leaders abroad—both “foreign” missionaries and nationals—are now depicting the ecumenical movement as an ecclesiastical United Nations with endless foreign resources that are administered with the proviso that their educational and ecclesiastical use conform to the promotion of ecumenically inclusive objectives.

The irony of this debate is that the World Council of Churches, rather than the unaligned evangelicals, thus takes on the character of an ecclesiastical version of the colonial era through its neo-colonial methods of purchasing ecumenical cooperation. This complaint is not confined to African sectors like Kenya, Southern Rhodesia, and Congo-Leopoldville. It may be detected in the Middle East as well.

In Beirut, Lebanon, for example, the Near East School of Theology has been exposed to a series of ecclesiastical pressures that, from any ideal standpoint, can only be regarded as highly unecumenical. The Theological Education Fund offered $99,000 to assist in relocating the Near East School of Theology institution nearer the campus of the American University of Beirut on the two following conditions: first, that $100,000 matching grants be assured by the United Church of Christ and by the Theological Commission of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.; second, that the school’s president (a national) be succeeded by a non-national. The United Church of Christ and the United Presbyterian Church (through leadership that overlapped representation on the Theological Education Fund) in turn pledged the grants in fulfillment of the first requirement, but on the condition that the second proviso also be met.

The displacement of a national by a non-national, at a time when ecumenical leaders elsewhere were loudly deploring the supposed neo-colonialism of “foreign” evangelical voices, is an indefensible goal. Pulling the leadership of a theological institution in the Middle East out of the hands of the local church could hardly be defended as ecumenical. But even less defensible is the subsurface tying of ecumenical foreign aid to theological objectives that further the inclusive goals of the World Council of Churches while the apparently evangelical aims of this movement are propagandized to the church at large for spiritual ends.

Poverty Amidst Plenty

In its presentation of some sobering end-of-the-year statistics, the Saturday Evening Post states that almost one-third of all American families have an annual income of less than $4,000; 22 per cent earn less than $3,000; 13 per cent earn less than $2,000; and, incredible fact, 5 per cent of families earn less than $1,000. “We are the richest nation on earth,” comments the Post, “yet one American in five is without adequate food or shelter or medicine, and nobody seems to care.” Shortly before his assassination President Kennedy said, “Poverty in the midst of plenty is a paradox that must not go unchallenged.” At a press conference held during his first month in office President Johnson pledged his administration to an early consideration of “poverty legislation for the lowest income group.”

In their 1963 Christmas messages, Pope Paul, Queen Elizabeth, and the Archbishop of Canterbury all made a point of underlining the well-nourished West’s responsibility toward the world’s needy. Poverty knows no frontiers of nationality, race, or religion, but it goes without saying that the circumstances of the 36 million under-privileged Americans referred to above are seen from a very different angle when compared with the utter destitution and misery so commonly found in China and India. The plight of these unfortunates, incidentally, might help us to understand why democracy appears to such people, as Professor Ritchie Calder points out, “a word which grumbles meaninglessly in empty bellies.”

It is not true to suggest that nobody even seems to care. People do care, and there is a growing awareness that they do not care enough. Some who have been long inactive, resigned to having the poor always with them, are showing signs of having awakened to the other part of the Markan verse: “… and whenever you will, you can do good to them.” Many Christians, however, still need stirring up to the fact that here is a work of mercy very dear to the heart of the Gospel. They think in terms of spectacular activity and still regard Abana and Pharphar as having the edge on Jordan, forgetting that concern for the poor is an integral part of “true religion and undefiled.”

Long ago a wise Jewish injunction realized the frailty of human nature and decreed that none should live in a city where there was no alms-box. In Britain the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, which by discerning and imaginative methods of presentation keeps the problem always before the public eye, receives more than one million dollars a year in pledged subscriptions alone. Before its present World Freedom from Hunger Campaign ends in 1965, Oxfam is already assured of considerably more than five million dollars for its various projects—three times the target set in 1961. It is a creditable achievement; yet what is even that among so many?

Other religious systems have traditionally shown solicitude toward the poor; Jesus stands alone by insisting on the necessity for right motive, “in My name.” During these opening weeks of 1964 many Christians will be reconsidering the whole question of stewardship of money, time, and talents. Dr. Norman Macleod of the famous Barony Church in Glasgow was always suspicious of those churchgoers who took great care that no one should know what they gave, and who covered a niggardly spirit by declaring that the left hand ought not to know what the right hand does. Commented the veteran preacher; “I believe that if the fact were communicated, the left hand would not be much better for the information!” Most people apportion their giving according to their earnings. If the process were reversed and the Giver of All were to apportion our earnings according to our giving, some of us would be poor indeed.

Rome, Constantinople, And Jerusalem

Until the mid-eleventh century Eastern and Western sections of Christendom maintained the appearance of one united church. That this involved an uneasy alliance could be seen in Constantinople’s charges against Rome; the Roman church fasted on the Jewish Sabbath; allowed milk and cheese in the first week of Lent; forbade clerical marriage; held that none but bishops could anoint or baptize; and adulterated the Constantinopolitan Creed by suggesting that the Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father. The union was now to end. As the culmination of his wranglings with the Patriarch Michael Cerularius, Pope Leo IX excommunicated his adversary. Moreover, the manner in which he did so was calculated to give the maximum offense: on a June day in 1054 the papal emissaries entered the Patriarch’s own cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople and audaciously laid the letter of excommunication on the high altar. The Patriarch responded by excommunicating the Pope. One church became two, and the situation has remained so to this day, apart from a brief reconciliation in the fifteenth century. Now, 910 years later, Pope Paul VI has set foot in Jerusalem. He has disclaimed any political significance for his visit to what has been truly described as the divided capital of a partitioned country, but the potential impact must not be underestimated. It has already been felt in the assurance now given by King Hussein of Jordan that his people and the Arab world generally will preserve the holy places and ensure the rights of pilgrimage to all—denial of which was a major reason for Pope Urban VI’s proclamation in 1095 of that Holy War which sent the West crusading. If there is, in addition, any possibility of healing that medieval breach in Christendom, what better place to begin than at Jerusalem!

- More from The Editors

Theology

Two Worlds

L. Nelson Bell

Living a “already but not yet” life in Christ.

Christians may confuse the various meanings of “world” as used in the Bible and thereby fail to understand the warnings and the blessings that are involved.

In early days men had a very hazy idea of the size and nature of the earth. As far as the biblical record is concerned, the “world” for its early inhabitants consisted of Mesopotamia, Arabia, Canaan, and parts of Egypt. This concept gradually extended farther east into parts of Asia and along the northern coast of Africa. Few knew more than rumors regarding Italy and Greece.

The term, as generally used in the Bible, has three distinct meanings: (1) the cosmos or created world—the cosmic order; (2) the inhabited world, taking man in his generic sense; and (3) mortal existence in contrast to spiritual life.

While the cosmic order and all the inhabitants of the earth are in the purview of Scripture, the basic concern of the Christian faith has to do with spiritual life in contrast to mortal existence, with transition from one to the other. We are solemnly warned: “Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

For the Christian of our day there is a recognition of the collective world order of which we are a part, of the inhabited world as the object of evangelistic concern, and of the world dominated by Satan, often referred to as “the world, the flesh, and the Devil.” Unless we distinguish these areas, as does the Bible, confusion, even heresy, can result.

Early in John’s Gospel we read of Christ, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not” (John 1:10). Here we see two worlds, one within another—those who accept Christ and those who reject him. Here the physical and spiritual, earth-bound and eternal, stand in clear distinction.

The world of the flesh cannot grasp the things of the Spirit. Our Lord promised the sending of His Spirit, “even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you” (John 14:17). Neither the reality of his person nor the concept of his being can be grasped by the unregenerate world.

In our Lord’s prayer, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John, we read the startling statement about his disciples: “I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me, for they are thine” (v. 9).

This distinction appears again in the fourteenth verse: “I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

The blindness of the world order is reflected in Paul’s words: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).

Failure to recognize the great chasm existing between these two worlds of the flesh and the Spirit can lead to serious deviations in doctrine. But for this chasm Calvary would not have been necessary. But for this there would be no impelling motive for preaching the Gospel in our time.

The blindness of the unregenerate world stems from faculties impervious to spiritual truth: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.… The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:12, 14).

The transition of citizenship, release from the fetters of the perishing world order, takes place at the Cross. Paul writes: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). The Cross is central to the Gospel. In man’s conversion, both citizenship and destiny are determined by what man does about the death of the Son of God.

Why then this lingering desire for the dying world order? Primarily because this side of eternity there always exists something of the pull of the “old man and his deeds.” Sanctification begins when redemption takes place, but unlike the once-for-all reality of the New Birth, sanctification is a process that operates until we are perfected in the presence and likeness of Christ.

Few seem willing to admit the deadly fact that Satan is the prince of this world. Joyfully singing, “This is my Father’s world,” we lose sight of the fact that the world—His by creation—has for the time being been seized by the Enemy, so that John tells us: “The whole world lies in [is under the power of] the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

Little wonder that the aged John, seeing the love for the world even then creeping into the Church, wrote: “Do not love the world or the things in the world.… For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever” (1 John 2:15–17).

Out of a realization that the cosmic world order stands under the coming judgment of God, the Christian must live by God-ordained principles. He is to enjoy the blessings afforded by a loving God: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:4). This applies to all the necessities of life and to the beautiful things God has created for our enjoyment.

Where people are concerned, the Christian must not separate himself from “sinner contacts.” The Apostle Paul writes: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral men; not at all meaning the immoral of this world … since then you would need go out of the world” (1 Cor. 5:9). For such Christ died, and to such we have a responsibility.

The heart of the matter, so far as the Christian is concerned, is whether he serves as “light” and “salt” in a dark and festering world order or conforms to the world about him. Paul warns: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2a).

Demas loved the present world and left Paul. The risen Lord speaks to us: “… I will keep you from the hour of trial which is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell upon the earth” (Rev. 3:10).

There are two worlds now, and eternity consists of two distinct places. The one is a glorious city prepared by God himself, the other that place of separation “prepared for the devil and his angels.”

A Christian is already a citizen of a new world. Let him act like it in this one—now!

- More from L. Nelson Bell

Eutychus and His Kin: January 17, 1964

Simple, Sexy, and Sad

A correspondent on the West Coast took issue with me recently over my admission that in my leisure time I am “inclined to visit movie theaters.” I must confess that I am so inclined, and that I try to use the same kind of judgment he does when he watches television programs, or looks at the pictures in the newspapers, or chooses the ads in his magazines. He goes on to ask whether I have a sympathetic attitude toward “other modern relaxations” (which he does not name).

One of my other “modern relaxations” is to listen to music, sometimes catch-as-catch-can on the radio while I am driving and sometimes by careful choice on a record player. Thus I have come across the name of Rosemary Clooney and have listened to her sing. Sometimes she does better than she does at other times, and then again sometimes her choice of material is better than at other times.

When Time Magazine (another one of my modern relaxations) had Rosemary Clooney on the cover, they quoted her as saying, “Keep it simple, keep it sexy, keep it sad.” She thought this was the clue to her success.

I am not particularly concerned about Rosemary’s success, but I think there is something desperately true about those words in that order. If we keep life too simple—no big thinking or no big thoughts, no big reading in any big books, no big discussions on any big issues—that very simple-mindedness will push us toward the satisfactions of the senses. I think the sex emphasis of our day is probably response to the simple-mindedness of our general culture.

And it follows as the night the day that any life or any culture (take the Roman if you like) that falls over into sex will end up sad. Just for an exercise in analysis, watch this descent to disintegration. More times than you have noticed it will be simple, then sexy, then sad. “Sin when it is full-grown bringeth forth death.”

EUTYCHUS II

The Assassination

Your editorial entitled, “The Assassination of the President” (Dec. 6 issue), is generally commendable except for one glaring omission. You exhort Christians to pray for virtually all involved except those who probably need it most, namely, the accused assassin and his murderer, their families, and all those whose propagation of hate and violence provides the environment which makes such tragedies possible.

JOHN C. MODSCHIEDLER

Kirchliche Hochschule

Berlin, West Germany

• We regret the omission, but the editorial was written under a “stop the presses” situation immediately after the news came. The whole matter of the identity of the assassin was then obscure.—ED.

May I congratulate you upon the excellence of the editorial that appeared immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy?

MERRILL C. TENNEY

Dean, The Graduate Division

Wheaton College Wheaton, Ill.

Excellent editorial.…

HAROLD LINDSELL

Vice-President, Fuller Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

Your editorial interests me greatly. I think it is well done and expresses my own feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the stricken family and earnest prayer that the heavenly, loving Father of us all will comfort and sustain as he alone can.

With your appraisal of President Kennedy I differ widely. His assassination has given a halo to his head and a glow to his person that has provided grounds for almost hero worship for many. When this halo and glow diminishes, as it will, and history can tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” my guess is that he, as a president, will take his place along with Franklin Pierce. John F. Kennedy was an attractive personality, a clever politician, a skilled rhetorician, with some fame as an author, but as a president, he was long on promises and short on performance. He made some serious mistakes, [the Bay of Pigs], an example.

JOHN R. MCFADDEN

La Jolla Methodist, La Jolla, Calif.

Pungent and Poignant

Frequently I have felt inclined to convey my appreciation and sense of gratitude to the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY for your outstanding ministry in communicating via the printed page the great concepts of the Christian message. However, after reading the pungent, poignant, and provocative essay by Professor David H. Wallace entitled, “The Mystery of the Incarnation” (Dec. 6 issue), I was motivated to write and express my appreciation, not only for this penetrating article, but a myriad of others which have stimulated my thinking.

DONALD D. BARNES

Kankakee Reformed Church, Kankakee, Ill.

With Professor Wallace, I agree that the Virgin Birth and Incarnation of Christ are basic in Christian doctrine. Yet, at the same time I can also agree with Luther scholar Roland Bainton who says of the Reformer, “The Virgin birth appeared to him a trivial miracle compared with the Virgin’s faith” (The Martin Luther Christmas Book, p. 12).

Much argumentation will continue to swirl about the various miracles surrounding the Christ. But to me, the greatest will always be the miracle of God working faith in me and in other believers.…

TED STEENBLOCK

St. Paul Lutheran, Mason, Tex.

Memorable Journey

I have never written a letter to an editor. Now I cannot refrain. My CHRISTIANITY TODAY came half an hour ago, and I have read and reread with pencil in hand “My Pilgrimage from Liberalism to Orthodoxy,” by Rachel H. King (Dec. 6 issue).

Her thought that the elemental issue is that “we are forced … to gamble … on the belief that Ultimate Reality is intrinsically righteous, or the denial of this” and the logic that stems from it to me is a most satisfying statement of the case.

What she said about liberal leaders’ being dishonest with their students and congregations as to where they really stand also has been in need of saying by a reputable scholar in a reputable publication.

LEROY DAVIS

First Baptist Church, Troy, Kan.

While very much interested in her journey to orthodoxy, I found myself amazed at her journey to omniscience. That she must have made such a journey seems illustrated by this statement: “I made some nice calculations and decided that if I fought against God I could hold out only two or three years, after which he would force a nervous breakdown without any sentimental hesitation.”

… How does she know she could “hold out only two or three years”? How does she know that God would “force a nervous breakdown”?… Am I to assume that God gets his way by forcing nervous breakdowns?

… She appears to know the “whats” and “whens” pretty well as regards God’s actions. I fear that it is this attitude that makes it difficult for some of us to make such a trip as hers, should we be so inclined.

J. HOLLAND VERNON

The Methodist Church, Laurel, Mont.

In so many ways this parallels my own pilgrimage although my academic background is the University of Denver and then two graduate degrees at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. Your publishing Dr. King’s superbly systematic statement of recovering her Christian faith is a great credit to your magazine. For this and for many other fine contributions to our life in Christ, I want to send my thanks.

VERN L. KLINGMAN

First Methodist, Billings, Mont.

Rachel H. King could have saved much time and space simply by writing only one of the sentences contained in her article: “I rightly began looking, not for scientific proofs of Christianity, but for a means of limiting science’s sphere of intellectual authority, in favor of that of the Bible.” Precisely! She found exactly what she hunted, since she went into her search just where she intended to come out. Or as Mark Twain once observed: “I have never known an honest seeker after truth; sooner or later everyone engaged in that quest finds what he is looking for and gives up the search”.…

This letter is prompted, however, by my complete agreement with one position stated by Miss King. She calls herself “orthodox,” and I identify myself as a liberal, as unreconstructed as John Dewey ever was. So, if I identify them correctly, do the vast majority of my fellow ministers within the liberal Protestant denominations consciously share the legacy of liberalism. At least most of them reject the crude, undisciplined literalism of an earlier day, and they are at least familiar with biblical criticism and other disciplines encountered in the theological seminaries. As a result, nearly all of them have to some extent accepted liberal conclusions.

They have not, however, except for a very few of them, clearly enunciated what they believe and what they deny. Many of them are guilty of what Walter Kaufman labeled “double speak,” by which he means that many of them go through the process of rethinking the meaning of the traditional words and phrases of historic Christian faith, often radically reconstituting them with meaning which negates Christian faith in its historic sense, but they do not bother to let this be known to their congregations. They use the phrases without indicating that they do not mean by them what the typical parishioner thinks they mean. This, of course, is blatant intellectual dishonesty. The crime is compounded, furthermore, because it is committed most often by those who speak most strongly in favor of intellectual honesty.…

One is continually amazed to hear ministers publicly avow what they deny privately. And if they offer the tired, shopworn excuse that the typical parishioner has not been exposed to the process of learning involved, then the reply is that it is high time that some ministers began the task of bringing their parishioners up to date with what is going on in the liberal Protestant seminaries, and in their own minds.…

One is also appalled to learn, repeatedly, that when I tell those who resent my liberalism that I represent, for good or ill, the overwhelming majority of Protestant ministers, most of them refuse to believe me. They haven’t the slightest idea what is currently being taught in the seminaries they support “for Jesus’ sake”.…

This dilemma of current liberal Protestantism is compounded, unfortunately, when one considers that many of the ministers who fall within the category I have briefly characterized here, simply do not realize that they have already rejected basic, historic Christianity.… When you point out to them that any good humanist would agree with them in their sermonizing, they do not comprehend what this assertion means. For humanism has been equated with Christian faith for so long that only relatively few persons in Protestant churches, and in the liberal Protestant ministry, can distinguish between the two.…

With all these necessary qualifications, however, one cannot escape the feeling that sometimes moral cowardice, and sometimes conscious intellectual dishonesty keeps many liberal Protestant ministers silent. This feeling can be stated more plainly and more strongly: Should the majority of liberal Protestant ministers ever decide to be intellectually honest with their congregations, the Lutheran Reformation would seem altogether mild by comparison. Protestant parishioners would, I am convinced, leave their churches wholesale.

Where, however, would these Protestants turn? The evangelicals are in no more attractive—or honest—position than the liberals. They, too, resort to phrases, clichés, and words which do not communicate, but only generate and confirm emotionalism.…

… Unless the liberal Protestant ministers begin the attempt to bring their parishioners up to date theologically, they will become so disillusioned with their ministers’ deliberate silence and conscious dishonesty they will turn from the churches. This turning, of course, already grown to large proportions in Great Britain and on the Continent, has already begun here, and will increase unless the churches can find something to offer besides the spiritual pap and humanism they have so long presented as Christian faith.…

No doubt much of what is said here constitutes a betrayal of the liberals—or would be so construed. Yet, whether one is correct or not, one cannot avoid the profound feeling that when we begin to demythologize, however necessary this process may be; that when we use the phrase “the resurrection of the body of Christ,” and mean by it the formation and development of the Church (and I still believe that, regardless of later interpretations, the early Christians meant this phrase literally); that when we reduce, or attempt to reduce, Christian faith to consist of some wholly subjective “kerygma”; and that, when we “spiritualize” the Second Coming of Christ, and perform many of the other intellectual contortions so multifarious in liberal Protestantism, we have abandoned Christian faith and substituted something radically different. And we ought to have both the intelligence to see what we have done and the courage to say so, unambiguously.

One experiences a wistfulness about all this, to be sure. There was a time, in one’s cumulative educational experience, when one felt that it was not only possible, but also necessary, radically to reshape what was meant by Christian faith. But one comes, reluctantly but logically, to see that Christian faith cannot be reshaped: it must either be accepted in its historic form or it must be rejected. And if, after taking what were once exciting and highly stimulating, and hopefully, incisive looks at liberalism, at neoorthodoxy, at Bultmannianism, at so-called “biblical theology,” it is impossible to accept any of these in place of the fundamentalism which itself has been rejected, then a wistfulness takes over; for one is lost in the most profound existentialist sense of that word.

Not many of us have either the time or the inclination to gerrymander a religious faith de novo. Paradoxically, many of us may soon be forced to resort to what we preach and proclaim, that is, faith in God instead of faith in our own particular brand of faith.…

JESSE J. ROBERSON

First Methodist, El Centro, Calif.

To Err Is Human …

In your Nov. 22 issue on page 7 you quote the Psalmist as saying in the King James Version, “I prevented the dawning of the morning,” in Psalm 119:11. It does not say so there but in the 147th verse of Psalm 119.

AMOS STOLL,

Everton, Ark.

To Forgive Devine

No doubt someone has discovered that the James 5:5 reference in Mr. Buerger’s testimony (p. 3, Nov. 22 issue) should be James 1:5.

I find many articles in your magazine helpful in my own Christian life and in dealing with students at a public institution.

CLARENCE RADIUS

Head of Electronic Engineering Dept.

California State Polytechnic College. San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Togetherness Better Financed

To your [editorial], “ ‘American Women’—The Federal Report” (Nov. 22 issue), I say—Phooey. How about an article on “non-working mothers who neglect their families by being in so many activities and on so many committees that they are practically never home.” I’m home when my children are—I know a lot of women who can’t say that.

As for working mothers being a national problem by creating unhappy homes and in turn juvenile delinquents—come now. Since when is the working mother a criterion for juvenile delinquency? Can’t you find anyone else to blame? The mothers I know who are working do so with a purpose and plan in mind. If wanting to help your child become a better citizen and have a higher education contributes to juvenile delinquency, then count me in.…

Oh yes, I do have an outside activity—my church. And I was active in PTA, scouts, Brownies and Cubs, clubs, etc., but that was pre-job. I like it better this way. I’m enjoying my family, and besides that, we have more money to do things together. Eighty-Four, Pa.

GRACE WILSON

Chronology Confused

“ ‘Do’ or ‘Done’!” still resounds in my ears (A Layman and his Faith, Nov. 22 issue). I have read and reread it. I have memorized the thoughts.

What a thrill to read … something like that when we are so constantly bombarded by the bombastics of humanism.

I labor in an area where the idea is constantly furthered that a man receives the grace of God after he does something good.…

HERBERT J. TESKE, JR.

Ascension Lutheran Church, Madison, Tenn.

Thanks very much.… Very well done!

BERNARD BOYD

Chairman of Department of Religion

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N. C.

Communist Behind Every Quote

The fifty-fifth page of your November 8 issue covered excerpts from several sources on the war in Vietnam. The impression created by these excerpts, most of which were highly colored or untrue, directly served the Communist cause, implementing their propaganda.

J. E. ARMSTRONG

Bakersfield, Calif.

Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.

I was shocked to read the statements by Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. (News, Nov. 8 issue) regarding the ministry of Billy Graham.

Allow me to say that I have traveled from coast to coast; from … Canada to the Gulf of Mexico in the ministry, and for three years very recently was in the Greenville (S. C.) area, and learned much from the area residents concerning Bob Jones.

I also have followed very closely the ministry of Billy Graham ever since his first Los Angeles crusade, in all of the reports of the various papers and journals; have read the commendations and the many criticisms. He is doing something that no other minister has been able to do since the days of Moody. Also allow me to say, that I have attended his crusades, and am personally acquainted with him and some of his co-workers. It appears that Billy Graham possesses a humility and consecration to God that few, yea very few ministers today possess.

The statements as printed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, as made by Dr. Bob Jones, indicate that he is not manifesting the characteristic of what he professes to be: a Christian gentleman. For his statements are neither Christian nor [those] of a gentleman. I am reminded of the severe rebuke that Jesus gave to his apostles when they told the “man over on the other side of the mountain to stop casting out devils, because he was not one of our group.” Had Billy Graham … graduated from Dr. Jones’s university without doubt he [Dr. Jones] would have been one of Billy’s most ardent admirers. This has been said over and again in the Greenville area. In reading all of the criticisms against Billy Graham and analyzing them, they reveal that these men, for the most part, have been outstanding evangelists and have “lost their crowd,” and their criticisms reveal their jealousies of Dr. Graham! But how any man, claiming to be a Christian, let alone a minister of the Gospel of love, can make such statements as made by Dr. Jones and still face a congregation and preach the love of God … well, little wonder Christians and ministers are making such little impact on the world.… “By this,” said Jesus, “shall the world know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

S. ELLSWORTH NOTHSTINE

Pauma Valley Community Church, Pauma Valley, Calif.

You … say that [Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.] has “few kind words” for Dr. Billy Graham. I believe that “kind words” for a Christian include rebuke for sin.…

JAMES WEBER

Ceiba, Puerto Rico

Research In-Depth

Mr. Orlo Strunk, Jr., states (“The Letter of Recommendation: Reliable or Not?,” Nov. 8 issue) that Philemon is the shortest book in the New Testament.

I find the following to be true:

ODIE GREGG

Hackleburg, Ala.

• Thanks to Reader Gregg for one of the most energetic corrections we have ever received. Inasmuch as the count was not decisive in determining the shortest book, we resorted to Nestle’s Greek Testament. The final verdict declares III John the winner, with 219 words as against 245 for II John.—ED.

I was interested in the article by Orlo Strunk, Jr.… The reason more ministers do not write anything but a vague letter is that colleges do not hold sacrosanct letters of this kind. Too many students have access to the files, in other words, and this information generally filters back “to whom it may concern.”

RICHARD D. ELDRIDGE

The Oak Grove Christian Church, Monticello, Ind.

Preacher, What’s Your Style?

James Lewis Lowe

Learn to develop your preaching voice.

Members of pulpit committees often share with me their findings as they travel from one church to another in search of a new minister. I am constantly amazed, and frequently amused, at the comments about minister and sermon. Laymen seem to have a sixth sense about preaching that we ministers do not have. The sensitive member of the pulpit committee can put his finger on the heartbeat of a sermon and determine almost instantly its effectiveness or lack of it. One such person said recently: “That was a helpful sermon! I can’t analyze the reason for it, but it did something to me that never happened before.” The result was that the young minister was asked for an interview.

A critical need of our day is effective communication from pulpit to pew. Ideas tend to be meaningless symbols until they have been charged with personal experience, with reality. The preacher must face his task objectively as he develops his ability to speak as man to men on behalf of God. In preacher’s language, the minister must develop his own style through which he can project his thoughts and emotions to his listeners.

Every would-be preacher must go through a period of imitation. He emerges from seminary classes with notebooks full of sermons, outlines, illustrations, and biographies of great preachers, past and present. Somehow he can identify with many of them. Others leave him cold. Carefully he attempts to build his thought around those persons and ideas that speak most effectively to him. This seems to be natural in the process of developing a preaching style.

But the day must come in the life of the budding preacher when he blooms into preaching maturity. This will not come about until he has found himself in terms of his own personality and purpose in the ministry.

Our sermons should meet a felt need in the lives of those who hear. Life for many a parishioner has become humdrum, meaningless, and even frightening. As preachers of the Good News, we must command the best and highest from our own lives and from God’s Word in order to create meaningful dialogue between our hearer and his God. This good news must become relevant to the lives and problems of those who hear.

How are we to do this? Not every sermon we preach will be a masterpiece. But every sermon must be creative and alive. Ability to think of new ideas will increase as we broaden our intellectual, social, and emotional horizons. We can heighten our creative insights through perpetual study of the arts, especially music and literature, and through travel and associations with people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Much of our homiletical creativity will take place, however, during hours of study and preparation as we reflect on problems and people in the light of God’s Word.

We may feel at home with one type of preaching and lost in the woods with another. A popular type of preaching in our day has been the “spiral” sermon. The preacher starts at the bottom of the spiral, speak in narrow terms, then slowly and unostentaciously lengthens the radius of his turn, until at last he reaches his conclusion and climax. The traditional sermon form, on the other hand, has been that of outline-structure, which presents a series of logical statements progressively geared to bring the hearer to a climax.

Much of our preaching falls on deaf ears because the preacher has not been Spirit-charged and has made little attempt to charge the hour with authentic ideas that will elicit rapport and response.

We cannot substitute flowery expressions and ornate adjectives for clarity and vividness. Let’s forget the multisyllabic words in preaching. Let’s cut those high-sounding theological phrases to everyday speech. Let’s crop those long sentences into two or more shorter ones that will stick to the gummy side of the hearer’s memory.

If we want to avoid insult from well-meaning parishioners, we had better invest in a copy of Rudolf Flesch’s How To Be Brief—even if we have to pawn our golf clubs to buy it!

Our style of preaching will become our own as we say precisely what we have in mind through the fullness of our own personality. We must attempt to recreate the same emotion that we feel deeply within, that many of our parishioners have felt but are inarticulate about.

Then we shall become preachers with a style of our own. Even more, we shall be following the Apostle Paul’s advice to young Timothy: “… stir up the gift of God which is in you” (2 Tim. 1:6).

James Lewis Lowe, pastor of the Third Baptist Church of Philadelphia, is a graduate of Tennessee Temple College (A.B.) and Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D.).

- More from James Lewis Lowe

A Contemporary Protestant Dilemma

W. Stanford Reid

What is the relation of the Bible to tradition? Some four hundred years ago Protestants thought that they had settled this matter by insisting upon the authority of the Scriptures alone (sola Scriptura), while the Roman Catholics at the Council of Trent insisted upon Scripture and tradition (Scriptura et Traditio). Today, however, both sides seem to have put their motors into reverse: the writings of many Protestants, especially those of the Bultmann school, reveal that tradition seems to have become accepted as the final authority, while some Roman Catholic circles are laying increasing emphasis upon the Scriptures, as one may see in the biblical encyclical of Pope Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu (1943), and in the works of Roman Catholic scholars such as Henri Holstein (La Tradition dans l’Eglise), Yves Congar (La Tradition et les traditions), and Georges Tavard (Holy Church and Holy Writ), all of whom spend much time expounding the authority of the Scriptures in and over the Church. This situation made itself very clear at the World Faith and Order Conference held in Montreal last July. In the light of these new developments, one who stands in the historic Protestant tradition cannot but ask whether the Bible itself has an answer to this important question.

The discussions in the section on “Scripture, Tradition and Traditions” of the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Conference set forth the problem very clearly. One group, strongly influenced by Rudolph Bultmann, held that Christ alone is The Tradition, because he was delivered (tradita est) by the Father for our sins and thus he alone reveals the Father by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension (the “Christ-event”). Traditions are the reports of the witnesses of this Christ-event coupled with their interpretations of it. Since, however, the reports come from fallible human beings, they possess no absolute authority; they are subject to error.

The Bible, particularly the New Testament, consists of these traditions or at least the records of them—namely, those of the four evangelists, and those of Paul, James, and Peter. The Christian, then, must seek to go back behind the traditions to dig out from the stories which grew up in the Church subsequent to Christ’s ascension the true facts concerning his life and his teachings. The shell of myths must be removed in order that one may get the kernel of truth.

How can this take place? One may well ask this question, because, according to this school of thought, not only have early pre-New Testament traditions tended to interpret the “Christ-event,” but subsequent ecclesiastical and cultural traditions have also formed a structure of interpretation and understanding that tends to cover the original Tradition—the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The answer, therefore, would seem to be that one must go back to a critical analysis of his own traditions as well as to a careful exegetical study of the New Testament in order to distill therefrom the Tradition common to all traditions. Some would add, however, that this is impossible unless and until the Holy Spirit himself opens one’s eyes to see Christ in his contemporaneity as the risen, living Lord. Even then, since the Bible possesses no divine authority apart from its witness to a divine event, one cannot know Christ in a historical sense; one can know him only in a sort of mystical, personal, existential experience that makes Christ and Christianity primarily an individual’s reaction to what he himself believes Christ to be.

What reply can evangelicals make to this interpretation of the Bible? It would seem that they cannot accept such a position, one which denies the ultimate authority of the Scriptures for Christian faith and life. The evangelical response, therefore, usually is flatly negative, denying the truth of the modern existential position.

One cannot, however, let the matter rest there. One has to face the fact of tradition, even the tradition that formed the foundations of the Scriptures as mentioned in the opening of the Lucan writings, or in the Apostle Paul’s account of the origins of his own message in Galatians 1 and 2. Thus a Christian must look closely into the question of tradition in relation to the Bible.

An Accurate Portrayal

To begin with, the Christian must recognize that the New Testament came from the hands of the human authors of the books. But he also has the confidence that what they wrote accurately portrays Christ and records his teachings. This belief has recently received striking support from the work of a Swedish scholar, Birger Gerhardson, who in his work Memory and Manuscripts points out that the Jewish transmission of religious tradition in Christ’s days was extremely accurate and careful, and that it was in this context that Luke and the others wrote their Gospels. A good many years ago B. B. Warfield also pointed out that the early Church, whose members had known Christ personally, quickly recognized the accuracy of the Gospels and of the apostolic interpretation as found in the writings of Paul and others. Thus the writers of the New Testament would seem to have provided material of great historical accuracy.

Yet the Christian does not finally base his trust upon the discussions of scholars or upon historical arguments about human truthfulness. As he turns to the Scriptures he finds that the apostles, claiming to be the fountainhead of Christian tradition, assert that ultimately the accuracy of their information and interpretations results from divine inspiration and indeed in some cases originates in direct propositional divine revelation. For example, Peter on the Day of Pentecost claimed to set forth the message of Christ’s work by the Holy Spirit, while Paul, writing later to the Galatians and to the Corinthians, asserted that he had received the Gospel by divine revelation, the Gospel that in all aspects agreed with the message preached by “the pillars of the Church” in Jerusalem (1 Cor. 11:23; 15:8; Gal. 1 and 2). The tradition of Christ, therefore, was regarded by the apostles not as originating in man’s brain but as coming from the revelation and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

For this reason the New Testament gradually took shape as the Church recognized those works that spoke not out of human tradition but by divine authority. Since the end of the second century, the Church has accepted the Bible as the Word of God written, in which we meet the Lord Jesus Christ, seeing him as he was on earth and as he is today, the risen, living Lord. Furthermore, only through the Spirit’s speaking to men in and through the Scriptures or through the message of the Scriptures do they encounter the Lord Jesus Christ in living faith and obedience. Thus the tradition contained in the Scriptures possesses authority, but only because it is the tradition that was given by the sovereign God.

The Roman Catholic Church would carry the idea of tradition beyond this, for, while it accepts the inspired character of the Scriptures, it insists that the tradition of the living Church also possesses divine authority. During the last five hundred years of its history, however, differences concerning even this tradition have arisen. While the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century apparently established the view that Scripture and tradition provided two equally valid sources of the knowledge of the truth in Christ, more recent Roman Catholic interpreters have stressed the place of tradition as the authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures. Thus, while the living tradition of the Church is important, it remains fundamentally subordinate to the Scriptures. On the other hand, the promulgation on purely traditional grounds of doctrines such as the Assumption of Mary seems to exalt tradition above Scripture. It is, therefore, not surprising that the present Vatican Council is so concerned to give this whole question of Scripture and tradition the most serious consideration.

Tradition And Authority

That the Christian Church has produced many different traditions during the past two millennia none may deny; but whether any tradition has final authority poses an important problem. A tradition may consist of a certain biblical interpretation, or it may have arisen from the Church’s adoption of ideas that have come from non-biblical sources. But in neither case may one cite a tradition as the final word for faith or life.

The ultimate test for all ecclesiastical traditions is the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Christ himself used this standard repeatedly in the Sermon on the Mount, while Paul and the other apostles used the same measuring rod when dealing with problems of tradition within the early Church (Col. 2). This means that the Church must continually refer its traditions back to the Bible, and this not infrequently has demanded radical church reform. The best example is seen in the sixteenth-century Reformation, although the principle still holds good even of the “Reformed tradition.”

But what of Christ as The Tradition? It would seem that to term Christ The Tradition because he was delivered (tradita est) for our sins is a rather poor Teutonic pun. Rather, he is the Lord of traditions. For it was he who spoke through the prophets and writers of the Old Testament as well as through the apostles in the New Testament. The Bible, then, is Christ’s tradition, which by the power of the Holy Spirit speaks to men with divine authority and which in Christ judges all their traditions.

W. Stanford Reid is associate professor of history at McGill University. He holds the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His published writings include Problems in Western Intellectual History Since 1950.

- More from W. Stanford Reid

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