THE WORLD SINCE 1945—The world has been in global conflict—using the term to include political, economic, psychological and military strife—ever since 1945, and there have been about 30 limited or small shooting affrays since World War II. Some of the present ones—notably in Vietnam and on the Indian-Chinese frontier—are sizable campaigns.… The current crisis could add other shooting episodes to this list. There are already points of extreme tension, unsolved political problems, divided countries all over the world. There are any number of scenarios that could be imagined that might raise the curtain on battle of one sort or another.—HANSON W. BALDWIN, The New York Times.

RECENT HEADLINES—“Soviets Rush Cuba Bases; U.S. Warns of War”—The Detroit Free Press. “Soviet Ships With Missiles; K’s Choice—War or Peace”—New York Herald Tribune. “Chinese Batter India in ‘Undeclared War’ ”—The Boston Herald. “The Congo: Again the Bombs Fall”—New York Herald Tribune. “India: The Undeclared War Becomes Hotter”—Los Angeles Times.

REPORT FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA—The grim, “unofficial” war in Viet Nam is opening up and will soon become more like a full scale military operation. Both sides will be wheeling heavier weapons into the area. American soldiers will be getting more and more involved in the actual fighting.—PETER ANDREWS, Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

NO PEACE PRIZE—There will be no Nobel Peace Prize for 1962. In making this announcement, the Norwegian parliamentary committee in charge of the award has refrained from offering any explanation, but none is really necessary. After all, one has only to take a quick look around the world to find reason in abundance for the committee’s decision to wait for a more propitious time to bestow the honor on a person worthy of it. Certainly, as far as 1962 is concerned, wars and rumors of wars, big and little, actual and potential, continue to abound throughout the globe.—The Sunday Star (Washington, D.C.).

STATISTICS ON VETERANS—The United States has about 22½ million veterans, of which 15.2 million served in World War II.—Topeka Sunday Capital-Journal. About 40 per cent of the population is made up of veterans’ families.… Since World War II, one out of every five Americans 18 years or older has served in the armed forces.—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

THE END OF WAR—Once upon a time it was called Armistice Day.… And then the word “Armistice” became a mockery.… The holiday became Veterans Day, as if we had finally gotten around to believing something Plato wrote three centuries before the birth of Christ: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”—Columnist BOB CONSIDINE.

AN INDISTINCT LINE—The line between war and peace grows somewhat confused in these times. Technically we remain at peace. But what is the meaning of peace to more than 30 Americans killed by Communist gunfire in Southeast Asia, or to a U-2 pilot shot down over Cuba, or to a rifleman on duty at the Berlin Wall?—Boston Traveler.

FADING MEMORIES—Veterans’ Day, its deep meaning long since lost in the continuity of wars, will be generally “business as usual”.… This trend away from the necessary solemn observance of a day of tribute to the nation’s heroic war dead is regrettable.—The Idaho Sunday Statesman.

HEROES AND HORSES—Some have asked whether the Armistice of November 11, 1918, that was to end wars, is still a valid occasion for a holiday. Others have questioned the advisability of another holiday in November. But no one could quarrel with yesterday … a three-day, post-seasonal vacation. Summer came back.… What’s more [it] was the occasion of the eleventh running of the Washington D.C. International at Laurel.… The band played that stirring national anthem, the Marseillaise, and the crowd which had lost its money on the three American horses came through with a resounding cheer.—Columnist GEORGE KENNEDY, The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.).

POSSIBILITY AMIDST PERIL—These are, as recent events have again reminded us, perilous times—more perilous, perhaps, than any since the Black Death of the Middle Ages.… In such peril there is also hope. The agony of the A-bomb menace is that it comes at a time when it is technologically possible for humanity to build a world of security, plenty and justice. It is such a world that wise and well-governed states must seek; and this is the central task of the United Nations.—The New York Times.

AN IMPERFECT WORLD—In the past 17 years, with varying degrees of success, the U.N. moral and physical presence has achieved at least five other important separations among the powers that might well have meant general war.… We would like to live unafraid and give our children a chance. But it is a risky thing even to be born these days and the prognosis is dangerous. We live in an imperfect world perfectly equipped for self-destruction, and the U.N. is an imperfect instrument in protecting us from this.—HENRY J. TAYLOR, New York World-Telegram.

THE ROAD AHEAD—Now we have got in front of us a long time of great danger. The removal of missiles from Cuba is a tactical victory, but only a tactical victory—perhaps even a strategic defeat.… We are almost certainly heading for a series of international crises, any one of which can be worse than the one before it. We must school our nerves and hearts for whatever is to come. We must prepare ourselves to live with deep trouble, and to live with frustration, and to live with despair. If we do that well enough, we cannot be defeated finally.—NICK B. WILLIAMS, Editor, Los Angeles Times.

ANY MOMENT POSSIBILITY—Nuclear war may start “at any moment by accident, miscalculation, or madness.”—President JOHN F. KENNEDY to United Nations in 1961.

The Power Of God In The Church Today

Begin now to make ready for as many people in church the 11 weeks after Easter as the 11 weeks before. To that end prepare to preach from “the most exciting book in the New Testament.” Meantime live with the Acts of the Holy Spirit. On points of difficulty consult such a commentary as R. B. Rackham’s, but let the main stress fall on study of the Bible book, by paragraphs, with prayer for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

On the Lord’s Day after Easter introduce the book. “The Holy Spirit as Power in This Church” (1:8). Power—Personal—Practical—Through Prayer. Near the end lead the hearer to resolve that following a listing in the bulletin he will read a few chapters every week, including the passage for the coming sermon. Topic given; passage not known. Later topics; no text in advance.

“The Christian Secret of Courage” (4:13a). In the most perilous city on earth, courage by a former coward! “The Forgiveness of Deadly Wrongs” (7:60), like “the sins that crucified Jesus,” and unconfessed. “He prayed for them that did the wrong; who follows in his train?”

“The Spirit’s Guidance in Personal Work” (8:29). The Spirit Chooses the Soul-Winner—Singles Out the Man to Be Won—Brings Them Together—Guides the Conversation—Leads to Acceptance of Christ. “The Conversion of Public Enemy Number One” (9:31).

“The Christian Remedy for Race Prejudice” (10:34). In Bible days race prejudice ran riot. I. The Spirit Takes Race Prejudice out of a Roman Army Captain. II. Out of a Jewish Christian Minister. III. Out of Their Social Relations. IV. Out of Their Public Worship. V. And Leads to a Second Pentecost.

“An Unexpected Case of Answered Prayer” (12:16). I. An Exciting Case of Need for Prayer. II. A Hearty Response to a Call for Prayer. III. A Blessed Answer to United Prayer. IV. Amazing Incredulity about Answered Prayer.

“The Conversion of a Hardened Sinner” (16:31). A man of middle age, strong and capable, transformed between dusk and dawn. How? Through a tremendous, crashing experience. I. This Conversion Begins with a Desire to Be Saved. II. Comes Through Personal Acceptance of Christ. III. Leads to Acts of Mercy. IV. Issues in Baptism and Church Membership. With the converted business woman and jailer as the first members, the congregation grows in grace.

“The Deepening of Christian Experience” (19:2). I. Christian Experience Begins with Being Born Again. II. Persons Born Again Need to Grow in Grace. Like those early believers, through no fault of their own, many church members lack power, joy, and radiance. III. They Need Personal, Transforming Experience of the Holy Spirit. Like Paul, guide them to the Spirit as God’s way to deeper experience.

“How to Have a Clean Conscience” (24:16). Everyone has a conscience. Everyone here longs to keep it clean. How? Many a well-educated man has used the case method in college, but never has found in the Acts the inspired collection of cases in the meaning of a Christian life here today.

I. The Apostle Has a Clean Conscience. This God-given power shows the right from the wrong. Impels, but does not compel, a man to do the right. Approves when he does the right; rebukes when he does the wrong. II. The Politician Felix Shows What It Means to Have an Unclean Conscience. Like an unclean watch, or automobile motor, an unclean conscience cannot do what God made it to do. Is there any hope for a person with an unclean conscience?

III. The Gospel Shows How to Get a Clean Conscience. Paul serves as a living example of what the blood of Christ does with a conscience befouled by sin. IV. Better still, the Apostle Shows How to Keep Your Conscience Clean. At the Cross through Bible-reading and prayer keep your conscience clean. Like Paul, exercise it every day. Otherwise it may suffer from fatty degeneration.

James Stalker well says that a man who can not preach to the conscience can not preach. If any Christian would learn how to preach, as well as what, and why, let him live with this Bible book, in prayer. Now for a few inferences, each of them from the Acts, and obvious.

1. This Bible book affords inexhaustible materials for a course of practical, inspiring sermons after Easter. 2. Any paragraph, or little cluster of paragraphs, provides more than enough biblical materials for a sermon. Why complicate the message by looking elsewhere? 3. If the minister keeps to his passage he can weekly show a layman how to read the Bible at home, prayerfully. 4. Such a hearer continues to grow in knowledge of God and in His grace. 5. So does the minister who keeps close to the Book and to the people, because he wishes to keep close to God. Man of God, are you growing? (See the author’s book, The Growing Minister, Abingdon Press, 1960.)

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him (Acts 12:5).

The introduction has to do with persecution, nothing new in a local church. This our Lord has led believers to expect. The sermon deals with a case of persecution, where a foremost minister suffers and the home church prays. The first of four main ideas: In a time of persecution,

I. The Home Church Prays. Note here the contrast. Peter in prison asleep, not on a Beautyrest mattress, but on a stone floor in a sleeping bag, while chained with two soldiers. He has prayed. He knows that his times are in God’s hands and that “he giveth his beloved sleep.” Now look at the home church the same night, on bended knees before God, praying for Peter.

II. The Home Church Believes. Not in prayer, but in God! These church folk know that King Herod has killed James, and that Peter may come next. But still they trust God, for what we do not know. Doubtless they leave all that in the hands of God, who loves both Peter and the local church at prayer.

III. The Home Church Prevails. While they are on their knees praying for Peter, to their amazement they hear him knocking at the gate. We know little about those prayers, but we learn anew that God delights to answer collective prayer, especially in a time of persecution.

IV. The Home Church Prospers, with “soul prosperity.” Because of persecution? No! Because of united prayer! In times of intense persecution the Church has her largest growth, but only if she prays. When the Church is the pawn of a welfare state, the Church grows weak. This does not mean that we should become self-appointed martyrs, but that in America the Church may have to drink the bitter cup of persecution, so as to lay hold of God’s untold power, released through united prayer.

Near the end of the sermon comes the sole illustration. It has to do with what the minister recently beheld in Korea. At 5:00 A.M. in winter, and 4:30 in summer, a thousand believers come together in a church to sing and pray, quite informally but with no disorder. Five times the city has been overrun in battle. Now the church is stronger than ever before. Why? Because that church prays, most of all in a time of persecution.

The conclusion has to do with how God blesses a home church that prays.—Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City.

… He is a chosen vessel unto me (Acts 9:15b).

In the Apostle, God shows how He calls and equips a church leader. In every case the Lord works differently. Even so, his way with Paul teaches much today.

I. God’s Choice of Paul. A. A unique background: a Jew by birth and rearing; a Roman by citizenship and custom; a Greek by environment and culture. “All things to all men.”

B. A unique equipment: an unimposing body; a strong intellect; even stronger emotions; a keen conscience; a mighty will, for self or God, for bad or good.

C. A unique experience: God-defying; God-transformed; Christ-centered. “For me to live is Christ.”

II. Lessons from God’s Choice. A. For leadership He chooses only a prepared vessel. His ways are not our ways. He alone knows the heart. For what are you preparing yourself?

B. God crowns his choice with his grace. He waits to do wonders with an earthen vessel he has cleansed. An earthen vessel means one with flaws, but in his hands, ready for service.

C. God uses a leader where the Kingdom needs him most. For Paul that meant peril, toil, and pain, even martyrdom. God alone should determine your lot, and your life from day to day.

Do you believe that in the little and in the large your life should be a plan of God? Paul never dreamed that his place would be so vast as we now know it to have been. Leave all such things in the hands of God. When he honors you by a call, delight to do his holy will. Herein lies the Christian secret of being a good leader, or a good follower, “in Christ.”—From The Evangel of the Strait Gate, 1916, pp. 224–34.

Dedicated to assisting the clergy in the preparation of sermons, the feature titled The Minister’s Workshop appears in the first issue of each month. The section’s introductory essay is contributed alternately by Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood and Dr. Paul S. Rees. The feature includes, also, Dr. Blackwood’s abridgments of expository-topical sermons, outlines of significant messages by great preachers of the past, and outlines or abridgments of messages presented by expository preachers of our own time.—ED.

They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and in the fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and the prayers (Acts 2:42).

Under God, the hope for still better days in our beloved church depends largely on our ideals. Here as a congregation we can learn much from the Book of Acts. In Jerusalem the home church rose to wondrous heights, largely because of her ideals, which came from God. The list here is incomplete.

I. The Pulpit Teaching. After persons become believers they need instruction from the pulpit. It comes best as a vital part of worship, and centers in Christ, not least in his cross.

II. The Happy Family. As members of God’s redeemed family, believers enjoy each other because of all they have in common. Their fellowship centers in Christ. Him they gladly serve, and by mingling with each other they continue to grow more and more like Him.

III. The Holy Communion. Such believers look on the Lord’s Supper as earth’s nearest approach to heaven. Here they enjoy the real presence of their Lord. In him they hold loving fellowship with the saints assembled, with other believers around the world, and with the redeemed in glory, What a mystery! Ah, yes, but “a mystery of light”!

IV. The Daily Prayers. Like oppressed Christians in Korea today, those first-century believers showed their loyalty to the Redeemer by their daily prayers. In the house of worship, at the family altar, and in private devotions they learned to know him better, to love him more, and to become more like him. Then they went forth to do the Redeemer’s holy and perfect will, gladly and well, for his dear sake.—From The Way Everlasting, 1911, pp. 101–12.

Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God (Acts 27:25a; read vv. 23–25).

Here is the world’s most famous description of a storm at sea. Also, one of the most striking chapters in the Bible, strangely neglected in sermons. The chapter shows how by faith a landsman leads a shipload of storm-tossed sailors and soldiers to escape from a watery grave.

I. Trust Amid a Storm. In mid-winter a storm at sea causes strong men either to fear or have faith. Practical faith means trust in the Living Christ: as One who is here—One who knows—One who cares—One who is able. Able to do what? To deliver from death, and from fear. What else does our old earth need now?

II. Night After Night. Fourteen days and nights! With no way of lighting the old wooden tub in which those men sailed! Every hour the terror mounted. But not with Paul. He alone prayed. When the storm broke and while it raged, he prayed to God, who alone could hear. When the storm subsided he prayed so that all on board would look to God for deliverance.

III. Prayer for Others. “Lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee.” Prayer for others too terror-stricken to pray for themselves, even if they had known how to pray at all. For a later example, read the life of Alexander Duff, brilliant missionary to India. On his first voyage, during a storm the ship went down. On the shore he gathered together the survivors, read a part of Psalm 107, and led in a service of thanksgiving for deliverance from death.

IV. When the Ship Goes Down. When the Titantic went down (Apr. 14, 1912), many on board were lost. But because of the apostle’s faith in the Living Christ, all those men long ago were spared. Some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, they all escaped safe to land.

Once in Washington, D. C., T. De Witt Talmage used these closing words in a message about being saved in time of storm. Fifty years later a dying widow told me how that sermon had blessed her and her husband through all their years, when more than one ship had gone down with all their worldly goods.

However faulty the interpretation, thank God for a message that for 50 years served a home as a guiding star through all sorts of storms! Better still, while the sun is shining and the south wind is purring, put your own trust in the hands that once were pierced. Even while the storm rages, with Paul look up to the Living Christ and pray for others.

Through The Skull Of A Wild Pig

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (Capricorn Books, 1959, 256 pp., paper, $1.25), is reviewed by William H. Anderson, Jr., Minister, United Presbyterian Church of the Redeemer, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Just about everyone missed this book when it was first published in England in 1954 as a first novel by an unknown writer. Now Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye has been succeeded as collegiate reading by this novel by William Golding. Golding has since had several other novels published, but as yet nothing that measures up to Lord of the Flies has appeared.

This novel has much to say to Christians, but it is not religious fiction. The imaginative story tells of the fate of a group of young boys, ranging in age from five to twelve, cast loose on an uninhabited island as a consequence of World War III. The chief characters are Ralph, the civilized leader; Piggy, the intellectual; Simon, the mystic; Jack, the savage leader; and Roger, Jack’s right-hand man. For the most part the rest of the boys are merely the mass of people. The narrative is an account of the change in the group from a civilized reasonable society to a savage tribe. In the course of this change, the intellectual Piggy and the mystic Simon are cruelly killed by the boys under the brutal leadership of Jack. The title comes from a mystical experience of Simon’s where the Lord of the Flies (the Hebrew Ba’alzevuv, Lord of Insects, the devil) speaks through the skull of a wild pig.

The concealed basic wildness which emerges whenever human nature is faced by a threat to itself is the theme of the book. Although there is no overtly sexual passage, yet the picture of human nature presented here is far more terrible and bestial than that in any other modern writing. The sales-provoking sexual passages of most modern novels seem like innocent boys-will-be-boys alongside the cruelty depicted in this fable.

Golding derives his view of human nature from the modern disciplines of sociology, anthropology, and psychology. His purpose in the story is to present man as man. The Christian faith presents man as savage in full revolt against God. Golding’s viewpoint is not based on the Christian viewpoint, but it does help the Christian to understand the depth of human depravity.

Lord of the Flies has value for the Christian leader in several ways. First, it points out the current pessimistic view of human nature. Second, the fact that it appeals to college students has something to say about the students themselves. Third, the reading of this short, well-written novel is an emotional experience.

The average reader may find it profitable to lead the seven-page comment by E. L. Epstein in the back of the Capricorn edition of the novel before he reads the story. The symbolism and philosophy of the novel are to some extent explained.

WILLIAM H. ANDERSON, JR.

With A Master Touch

The Spreading Flame, by F. F. Bruce (Eerdmans, 1961, 432 pp., $5), is reviewed by John H. Kromminga, President and Professor of Historical Theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This excellent work, covering the history of the Christian church to the seventh century, is already familiar to many readers through an earlier edition. The new edition is improved in format, but unchanged in content. Occasional bits of humor enliven the narrative; but the charm of the book does not depend on this. It results rather from the happy combination of a thorough mastery of the subject with excellent English style. Anyone but the most unlettered—who couldn’t care less—will be able to read this book with profit. And anyone but a rarely learned scholar has something to learn from it.

With a true scholar’s sensitivity for significant detail, Dr. Bruce writes a story which moves surely toward understanding of the history of the Church. Someone might judge that he is most at home in the early period of his subject, and another might wonder whether the space devoted to the spread of Christianity in the British Isles is not a bit out of proportion to the rest of the narrative. But these are hardly criticisms. If anything, they serve to underscore the fine contributions made by the book as a whole.

The author shows a ready familiarity with the original sources as well as the principal scholarly controversies. When controversial questions are touched upon, Dr. Bruce consistently adopts positions in keeping with the convictions of conservative theology. But he defends these with learned and cogent argument, rather than bombast. If there is ever any justification for the left-handed compliment “scholarly though conservative,” it is not in connection with this book. Scholarly it is and conservative too, but on such a solid foundation and in such an admirable spirit as to warm the heart and enlighten the mind of any lover of the church of Jesus Christ.

JOHN H. KROMMINGA

Analysis Of Method

Pastoral Evangelism, by Samuel Southard (Broadman, 1962, 198 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by H. Cornell Goerner, Secretary for Africa, Europe, and the Near East, Foreign Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention.

In a hard-hitting, thoroughly practical study of ways of winning individuals to Christian commitment, Professor Southard of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary gets right down to cases. The heart of his book is an analysis of reports of 200 actual interviews held by pastors with prospects for conversion. The author analyzes these interviews and points out what is wrong and what right in the evangelist’s method.

Southard exposes the shallowness of the method of outlining “the plan of salvation” and seeking mere verbal assent to a simple theological proposition. He reveals the personal dynamics involved in genuine conversion and gives valuable guidance in the variety of methods by which a pastor (or layman) who is genuinely concerned about the person with whom he is dealing may lead him to an attitude in which the Holy Spirit can do the work of conversion.

Southard contrasts “instant conversion” with “personal conversion.” He is critical of revivalism, but does not reject revivals as a valid technique when properly handled. Included is a sympathetic yet penetrating critique of Billy Graham.

The book is sound in theology, warm in evangelistic fervor, and keen in psychological insight. It points the way toward sane and effective evangelism, which should result in a higher percentage of truly transformed lives than did much of the evangelism of the past half century.

H. CORNELL GOERNER

The Church’S Give And Take

The Church as a Social Institution, by David O. Moberg (Prentice-Hall, 1962, 569 pp., $10), is reviewed by T. Minnema, Assistant Professor of Bible, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Church stands in a twofold relation to society. On the one hand it participates in society and in consequence is shaped by it. Social forces play a significant role in giving form to the Church. On the other hand, the Church is more than a social product. Pentecost, the inauguration of the New Testament Church, was not a consequence of social development. It was an event produced by the Spirit of God, whose presence means that the Church is not only an institution formed by social forces, but itself a force able to transform society.

The author of this book is well aware of the Church’s twofold relation to society. He is committed to the faith that the Church is able to transform society through the power of God, and also he rightly emphasizes that to transform society the Church must have “an understanding of the kind of world in which man lives, the changes occurring in that world, and the limitations imposed by the institutional organization, activities, norms, facilities, and personnel of the Church. It must appreciate its unique role in the midst of a highly complex civilization” (p. 518).

The book begins with the Church as it is found in the “highly complex civilization” of our day. This means no one particular church, but the Church as a universal institution which includes “all of organized religion, its values, patterns of relationship between persons and groups, and accomplishments in society” (p. 22). In brief, the author has taken upon himself the huge task of analyzing a very complex social institution, all of organized religion, within the complex context of modern civilization.

What at the outset seems so nebulously confusing, the author reduces to a well-ordered approach. After a clarifying introduction, a compilation of statistics on religion is presented and interpreted. With these statistics significant trends in the composition of the Church are indicated according to population movements. The dimension of social values in American religion is given special treatment by way of noting similarities and differences in value systems within American religion. A separate section analyzes the individuality of religious bodies through the use of typological classifications. Here Troeltsch’s church-sect typology is used with modifications. A large part of the book is devoted to the social functions of the Church. This includes a study of both the favorable and unfavorable social consequences derived from organized religion, and of how organized religion relates itself to such other social institutions as the family and government. The final subjects singled out for special attention are social psychology as it manifests itself in organized religion and the professional religious leadership of today.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

★ The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, edited by Charles F. Pfeiffer and Everett F. Harrison (Moody, $11.95). Entirely new, one-volume, phrase-by-phrase exposition of the entire Bible by 49 American conservative scholars.

★ The Literature of Communism in America, by Robert F. Delaney (Catholic University of America Press, $6.50). A selected bibliography of pro- and anti-Communist literature, chiefly from American authors. Over 1,700 entries.

★ Christianity and Barthianism, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, $6.95). The author deplores Barthian theology as “man-centered Protestantism” or “higher humanism” that springs from fatal compromise with modern immanentistic philosophy.

This book offers much to anyone who is seriously interested in a better understanding of the concrete social situation of American religion. In certain instances one may very well challenge the author’s interpretation of data. For example, the following conclusion seems rather hastily drawn: presbyterian church polity “can be traced back to aristocratic tendencies in the history of presbyterian bodies and to an emphasis upon theological doctrines of the sacred character and educationally developed talents of the clergy” (p. 62).

But here is a work that contributes much to a better understanding of the society which the Church must convict of sin, and call to repentance. To convict our present society of its significant sins and to call it to a significant repentance require much knowledge of modern life. This book helps to provide such knowledge.

T. MINNEMA

The Impact Went Where?

The Impact of American Religious Liberalism, by Kenneth Cauthen (Harper & Row, 1962, 290 pp., $6), is reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Theological orthodoxy (chiefly Calvinistic) was dominant in America for 150 years, and in 1875 was still dominant in almost every Protestant theological center. Fifteen years later, says Cauthen, it had all but disappeared because of its failure to seek reconciliation between Christ and culture. Liberalism displaced it and flourished, for it realized that the theological enterprise in every generation moves between Christ and culture. It set about to retain the Christian faith by adjusting it to the new knowledge netted by the natural and historical sciences, so that a man could be Christian and yet intellectually honest in the modern world.

Cauthen, particularly in the theologies of eight representatives of American liberalism, uncovers three motifs demanded by modern knowledge and accepted by liberalism for the reshaping of the Christian faith. First, God is continuous with, and thus immanent in, the world; second, man is autonomous in the sense that not the Bible but he himself through critical reflection on experience determines what is authentic knowledge of God; and third, all nature and history are of an evolutionary character. Liberalism came in a variety of types, but all, asserts Cauthen, were shaped by these motifs which led them to the common tenet that divine revelation must be construed within the terms of a world that is a closed but expanding system.

It is precisely at this point that Cauthen detects a line of continuity between liberalism and post-liberal theology, namely, neoorthodoxy. Although the latter regards God as transcendent and regards revelation as an inbreak into the world, it nonetheless, says Cauthen, retains the world as a closed system and revelation as something historically conditioned, for it defines revelation as Geschichte, not Historie, that is, as tangential to, but not as identical with, history. From this stems the neoorthodox contention that nothing in history is the revelation or Word of God, and the consideration that the Bible is subject to historical criticism while the revelation itself is untouched by it. This, asserts Cauthen, is the legacy bequeathed by liberalism and inherited by neoorthodoxy.

To my knowledge this is the best book yet written on the history of theological liberalism in America. Although Cauthen no longer accepts his boyhood teaching that “liberal” is a “bad word,” he is critical as well as sympathetic in his presentation of liberalism. Not a little of the value of his book derives from its raising the question of a line of continuity between liberalism and neoorthodoxy, particularly on the matter of the historical character of revelation.

It is in his evaluation that Cauthen’s liberal sympathies triumph over his objectivity. There doubtless is a strain of similarity running from liberalism through neoorthodoxy. The latter is definitely post-liberal, not only in point of time but in its understanding of the current central theological issue. Barth’s theology, for example, is indeed a theology of Revelation. But is not the similarity so largely formal (particularly in view of neoorthodoxy’s transcendence of God) and the differences and discontinuities between liberalism and neoorthodoxy so great (in such matters as the radical character of man’s sin, his absolute need of grace, and the unique deity of Jesus Christ) that one could with as much validity argue that neoorthodoxy is in the tradition of orthodoxy as in that of liberalism? Neoorthodoxy has been affected both positively and negatively by liberalism, but too facile attempts to place neoorthodoxy in the special lineage of liberalism appear as not very objective attempts to salvage some glory for a liberalism which at this date has but little.

Furthermore, Cauthen’s admission that World War II and its aftermath have shown that liberalism was too optimistic about man’s moral goodness and perfectibility, and too optimistic about the world’s movement toward perfection—is this not a confession that ill conceals its reluctance? Do we need a yet more horrible display of the demonic in human life and history to bring us to the frank admission that liberalism was on some crucial doctrines not merely “too optimistic” but dead wrong?

One final observation about Cauthen’s evaluation. Cauthen divides liberalism into Evangelical Liberalism, which, he says, sought to retain the historic Christian faith by adjusting it to the demands of modern culture, and Modernistic Liberalism, which, he says, was secular and humanistic and rejected revelation, while seeking to retain certain desirable teachings of Christianity. Since each type is classified as liberalism, and each is said to be informed by the above-mentioned three motifs, is there not greater evidence of a continuous line of theological tradition running from what he calls Evangelical Liberalism to Modernistic Liberalism, than there is for such a line between liberalism and neoorthodoxy?

Although I cannot break forth into high praise for the author’s evaluation, I can do so for the book for, among other things, it challenges the reader—whether liberal, orthodox, or neoorthodox—by putting its finger on the central theological issue of our time: the historical character of revelation.

JAMES DAANE

Toynbee’S Vision

America and the World Revolution and Other Lectures, by Arnold J. Toynbee (Oxford, 1962, 231 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by Lee M. Nash, Professor of History and Dean, Cascade College, Portland, Oregon.

When Arnold Toynbee comments on current world affairs, his reputation as a brilliant, controversial historian and prophet never fails to win him an interested hearing. Here he offers his most complete analysis yet of our present discontents, together with solutions of sorts and muted prophecies.

Though in 1776 America sparked a continuing world movement for human rights, says Toynbee, her recent preoccupation with wealth has made her a counter-revolutionary power. Americans dramatized this transformation by their hostility to the Bolshevik Revolution and its sequels, solely because Communism threatened their pocketbooks. Now the more idealistic Soviet Union has stepped nobly into the gap and provides the inspiration for social justice crusades around the world. There is hope for America to “rejoin” her own revolution only if her people will eschew materialism and ally themselves again with the angels and the justice-seekers.

All of this by turn pricks the conscience and tries the patience. The conscience, because of the small compassion shown by us affluent Christians toward those of the world who have not. The patience, because one dislikes being told that ruthless, opportunistic exponents of a doctrinaire dialectical materialism are today’s true spiritual prophets of human dignity. Only naïveté, however sophisticated, could assert this, and could imply further that the ideological conflict over Communism is meaningless. Then when Toynbee soberly labels Judaism and Christianity “Communism’s parent religions,” one’s hands fly up in historical horror—until he begins to suspect that he has been baited all the while.

Atomic genocide, Toynbee concludes, is the ultimate danger, and not even the Soviets, nor America, nor certainly intolerant Christianity, can save us from it. Our last best hope lies in a new world-state such as those that rescued past civilizations, and we should all join the search for its architect. This new Augustus or Liu P’ang will likely be a Hindu or Buddhist from a neutral Asiatic country, and we should submit to his dictates, however distasteful, when he appears.

Thus it is evident that Toynbee’s attitude toward the future role of the United States has altered fundamentally since 1954. Then, as revealed clearly in volume ten of his Study of History, it was America that he hoped would usher in the universal state.

LEE M. NASH

Anglicanism And The Mass

Eucharistic Sacrifice, the addresses given at the Oxford Conference of Evangelical Churchmen in 1961 (Church Book Room Press, London, 1962, 157 pp., 8s. 6d.), is reviewed by Roger T. Beckwith, Chaplain, Tyndale Hall, Bristol, England.

Since the mid-seventeenth century there have been those in the Church of England who have been dissatisfied with the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice expressed in the Anglican formularies. This doctrine is the common Protestant and New Testament doctrine that in the Holy Communion the same sacrifice is offered as in all other Christian services, viz., the sacrifice of thanksgiving. With the Oxford Movement there was a further development, and Anglo-Catholic teaching has closely approximated to the Roman doctrine of the mass, though it has often compromised the atonement even more seriously. Through the overseas branches of the Anglican communion, Anglo-Catholics have carried this teaching all over the world, and by discarding the Thirty-nine Articles and revising the Book of Common Prayer have made it in many of these branches the standard belief. Now, under the influence of the ecumenical movement, it is spreading far outside the Anglican communion. In this context, seven well-known clergymen of the Church of England, including a bishop, a university professor, and several theological-college tutors, have endeavored by this volume to call a halt. It is undoubtedly an important work. Its defects are mainly due to the circumstances of its origin. Some ground is covered twice, other ground hardly at all. The contributions are of unequal value: those by J. I. Packer and R. J. Coates are masterly, and others contain important matter, while one hardly deserves the permanence of print. Moreover, the book is more successful in stating what the relationship between Christ’s sacrifice and the Holy Communion is not, than in stating what it is. But the fact remains that this is one of the first scholarly works of modern times (and the most important to date) in which evangelical Anglicans have attempted to show that the Anglo-Catholic doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice is un-Anglican and un-Christian, and to put something better in its place.

ROGER T. BECKWITH

He Tasted Grace

The Early Life of Howell Harris, by Richard Bennett, translated by Gomer M. Roberts (Banner of Truth Trust, 1962, 190 pp., 10s. 6d.), is reviewed by Murdo A. MacLeod, Minister, Free Church of Scotland, Tarbert, Argyll, Scotland.

The subject of this book is perhaps unknown to most Christians, yet in his own day his name was bracketed with such giants as George Whitefield and Daniel Rowlands; an eminent authority on eighteenth-century Wales wrote of him: “It is difficult to believe that Howell Harris was not the greatest Welshman of his century.” In the opinion of another, “very few men have so deeply and so permanently influenced the religious life of the Principality [of Wales] as Howell Harris.” From a historical viewpoint, therefore, this book deserves attention, but it is as a spiritual autobiography that it enthralls. The author makes his own comments few and lets Harris speak for himself as in diaries and letters he unfolds his spiritual pilgrimage from unbelief through Arminianism to Calvinism. After he had experienced the grace of God for himself, it became his burning passion to lead others into the same experience. The accounts of his itineraries as he preached up and down Wales leave one wondering how his physical frame endured the strain he imposed upon it. Undoubtedly Harris was of an ecstatic and mercurial temperament, and his experience must not be taken as normative. Nevertheless, in his devotion to his Saviour, enjoyment of His presence, and usefulness in His service, we can only long to be like him.

MURDO A. MACLEOD

Source Number One

Armageddon Around the Corner, A Report on Jehovah’s Witnesses, by William J. Whalen (John Day, 1962, 249 pp., illustrated, $4.75), is reviewed by John H. Gerstner, Professor of Church History, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The author is a Roman Catholic layman who is also an assistant professor-editor at Purdue University. As such, he combines the scholar’s flair for facts, especially statistical in this case, and the editor’s nose for human interest. It is not surprising that he has produced a book for the religious best-seller lists.

We believe that book review critics have an obligation to evaluate a book according to its own genre and intended purpose. If we forgot that, we could observe that there are certain over-simplifications and jumps to conclusions, some lack of theological penetration, and the like. But if this book is judged, as it ought to be, according to its own type, it is an excellent volume. It is one of the most interesting books we have ever read on any of the sects. For ministers who are preparing a sermon, in distinction from writing a research paper, Armageddon Around the Corner will be source number one.

We might add that one incidental achievement of the book is Mr. Whalen’s keeping his temper under severe provocation. The Witnesses are opposed to nothing more than organized Christianity and no form of organized Christianity more than Roman Catholicism. Many a scathing denunciation of Rome is included here without the author’s batting an eye.

JOHN H. GERSTNER

Book Briefs

The Ghetto Game: Racial Conflicts in the City, by Dennis Clark (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 245 pp., $4). Author argues that there are no such homogeneous creatures as New Yorkers or Angelenos. Every city is said to be a patchwork of ghettos, and the author presents the rules according to which they function.

Don’t Park Here, by Paul Erb (Herald Press, Scottsdale, Pa., 1962, 182 pp., $3). A collection of essays on the Christian life, originally published as editorials in the Gospel Herald, the denominational periodical of the Mennonite Church.

The Future Is Upon Us, by Roy L. Smith (Abingdon, 1962, 252 pp., $3.50). Circling around the subject of Communism the author arouses Americans to their peculiar times and critical problems.

Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, edited by Matthew Black and H. H. Rowley (Thomas Nelson, 1962, 1200 pp., $15). Revised and reset, this critical commentary of 40 years ago has taken on more conservative features while its understanding of the Bible’s inspiration remains unsure.

The Oxford Concise Concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible, compiled by Bruce M. Metzger and Isobel M. Metzger (Oxford, 1962, 158 pp., $2). Well done; specifically for use with RSV.

John’s Wonderful Gospel, by Ivor Powell (Zondervan. 1962, 446 pp., $6.95). Light, but sprightly devotional, sermonic comment.

Theology and Church, by Karl Barth, translated by Louise Pettibone Smith (Harper & Row, 1962, 358 pp., $6). The shorter writings of Barth from the year 1920 to 1928. With a fine introduction by T. F. Torrance.

The Methods and Experience of Psychoanalysis, by Albert Görres (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 300 pp., $4.50). A discussion of psychoanalysis by an author who agrees with Freud that he (Freud) discovered neither a fortune nor a farthing, but a lump of ore containing some precious metal.

Vatican Impressions, edited by Francis Sweeney, S.J. (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 266 pp., $5.95). Vignettes of the Vatican through the years; gathered from the writings of Henry James, Longfellow, Graham Greene, Hugh Walpole, Eric Sevareid, Goethe, and many others.

Paperbacks

The Story of America’s Religions, by Hartzell Spence (Abingdon, 1962, 258 pp., $1.50). Story of 14 religious faiths in America by the author of One Foot In Heaven; articles first appeared in Look magazine.

Christianity and Communism Today, by John C. Bennett (Association, 1962, 188 pp., $1.50). Author rejects Communism both as a faith and as a political-sociological ideology but holds to the possibility that Communism in a given state may be so modified as to make coexistence possible. A somewhat altered and revised version of its first 1948 printing.

A Study of History, Volumes IV, V, and VI, by Arnold J. Toynbee (Oxford; 1962; 672, 720, and 640 pp., $2.65, $2.75, and $2.45). In Volume IV the famous historian discusses the breakdown of civilizations; in Volumes V and VI, the disintegrations of civilizations.

OFFENSE OF THE CROSS—U. S. postal officials acknowledge they rejected a proposed design for the special Christmas stamp on grounds that it suggested a cross. One of five designs said to have been considered but turned down, it showed a candle burning in a window framed by a wreath. The window panes resembled a cross. Said a Religious News Service report: “Rejection of the design emphasized the fact that no religious symbol, or apparent religious symbol, will be permitted on the Christmas stamps which the department expects to issue each year to encourage use of first class mail for Christmas greetings.” The design chosen for 1962 shows a simple holly wreath and two tapers.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—Ground was broken for multi-million-dollar Protestant Center at New York World’s Fair grounds. When completed in 1964, the center will include a memorial court for Protestant pioneers, a theater for showing gospel films on wide screen, and a children’s center—as well as exhibit space for a number of denominational and independent religious organizations.

A national cooperative agency for Lutheran archivists, librarians, and historians was formed in Chicago last month with about 100 charter members from various Lutheran synods.

An eight-part series on the history of spiritual awakenings will be featured by NBC Radio on its “Faith in Action” program beginning January 6. The new series was prepared in cooperation with the National Association of Evangelicals.

Christian Outreach, Inc., two-year-old evangelical organization, plans “specialized ministry to those churches interested in experimenting in a ‘depth’ program and in the training of a core of lay leadership.”

A new Lutheran cathedral is being built in Skalholt, Iceland, and is scheduled to be consecrated next summer. Skalholt was the seat of the first bishop of Iceland from A.D. 1050 to 1080. Some 166,000 Icelanders—about 90 per cent of the national population—are Lutherans.

Average church attendance in Finland “is no higher than three per cent,” according to a report appearing in The Northern Ecumenical Institute’s Church News. The report said a comprehensive statistical investigation showed church attendance falling below one per cent in some areas.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION—A proposal to merge the Gettysburg and Philadelphia seminaries of the Lutheran Church in America has apparently been stalled. Negotiations between the schools were broken off after participants were unable to reach agreement.

Baylor University, largest Southern Baptist school, may soon be desegregated. Trustees named a committee to study the race question, and faculty members adopted a resolution favoring integration.

American Baptist Theological Seminary, whose Nashville campus is operated jointly by the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., and the Southern Baptist Convention, was granted associate membership in the Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges. The seminary educates Negro Baptist ministers and church workers.

A $225,000 classroom and administration building was dedicated at Talbot Theological Seminary, La Mirada, California. The seminary is affiliated with the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.

MISCELLANY—Members of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies will press for a governmental census of all religious groups in 1966. A government representative declared at the ASARB’s annual convention last month that such a census will be taken if religious groups reflect enough desire. A complete census of all American religious bodies has not been made since 1936. A survey was taken in 1946, but results were never published.

A pre-dawn blast at the famed 70-year-old Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City shattered a door and 11 windows. Police said they found a pencil-scrawled inscription on a temple wall, “Viva Castro,” but were not sure that this had any connection with the explosion.

An Ecumenical World Center for Liturgical Studies will be built on a 20-acre site at Boca Raton, Florida, sponsored by the school foundation of the Episcopal Diocese of South Florida and by the International Ecumenical Committee for Promoting Liturgical Research and Renewal. Some $1,000,000 will he spent for buildings and $7,000,000 for an endowment fund.

Ontario’s Roman Catholic bishops are asking the provincial legislature to enable them to operate a tax-supported high-school system and to receive more tax aid for other types of parochial schools. The United Church of Canada issued a protest, declaring that the request “cannot be justified in law or public interest.”

Another Roman Catholic bishop and three priests—all French-born—were deported from Haiti last month. A pillaging charge against the bishop apparently referred to the destruction of a voodoo temple and voodoo charms. All were accused of disrespect toward government officials. In all, three bishops and nine priests have been forced out of Haiti since 1959.

Dr. Richard R. Roseveare, Anglican bishop of Accra, arrived back in Ghana exactly three months after he was expelled from the country for criticizing the government-sponsored Young Pioneers movement. He was recently given permission by President Kwame Nkrumah to return to his diocese.

PERSONALIA—Dr. Louis F. Gough inaugurated third president of Warner Pacific College, Portland, Oregon. The college is sponsored by the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana).

The Rev. Raymond J. Davis named general director of Sudan Interior Mission, world’s largest interdenominational missionary society with nearly 1,300 missionaries serving in ten African nations. Davis succeeds the Rev. Albert D. Helser, who retired last July on reaching the SIM’s 65-year age limit for executive officers.

Dr. Harold H. Etling elected president of National Sunday School Association.

The Rev. Walter L. King of Finleyville, Pennsylvania, was acquitted of a criminal libel charge resulting from the printing and circulating of a bogus Knights of Columbus oath. King, minister of the Nazarene Bible Church (not affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene), was ordered to pay costs of his prosecution.

WORTH QUOTING—“We have too soon taken for granted the idea that communism is something we must live with indefinitely.”—Dr. Douglas E. Jackson, professor at Perkins School of Theology, at a Methodist seminar in Indianapolis.

“It has long been my conviction that there is nothing that outsiders find more annoying and repellent in our papers than the refusal to concede any Catholic wrong-doing.”—Msgr. John Tracy Ellis.

“Could it be that the most awesome military might ever assembled would in the end become the most tremendous missionary force the Christian church ever had?”—Richard R. Potter, in a Link article citing the spiritual potential of 1,398,000 American service people abroad.

Deaths

DR. NED B. STONEHOUSE, 60, faculty dean of Westminster Theological Seminary, biographer of the late J. Gresham Machen, and editor of a nine-volume New Testament commentary; at his Glenside, Pennsylvania, home. He was a Contributing Editor to CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

DR. PHILIP A. SWARTZ, 73, onetime secretary of the Federal Council of Churches; in New Fairfield, Connecticut.

DR. WILLIAM MCMASTER, 87, president emeritus of Mount Union College (Methodist); in Coral Gables, Florida.

DR. D. M. NELSON, 82, president emeritus of Mississippi College (Baptist); in Clinton, Mississippi.

WALTER A. RYAN, 57, unfrocked Catholic priest whose wife filed a $2,375,000 civil suit against the Roman Catholic Church charging that he had been “forcibly removed to monasteries”; in San Francisco.

BILL CARLE, 57, noted Gospel singer, following a heart attack; in St. Louis.

Pittsburgh, says John Gunther, “is indeed steel’s own citadel; civilization based on industrial aggrandizement reaches here its blackest and most brilliant flower.” A fitting site, then, for the wide-ranging and provocative Fourth National Study Conference on the Church and Economic Life, convened in November by the National Council of Churches through its Department of the Church and Economic Life. Long before its post-World War II renaissance, the city heard itself described by Charles Dickens as “hell with the lid lifted.” While manfully striving to keep such lids firmly clamped down, the NCC conference reflected a borrowed glow from Hell’s Kitchen itself, onetime scene of social gospel prophet Walter Rauschenbusch’s ministrations.

It was not that the four-day conference shared Rauschenbusch’s zeal for socialism, nor did it even speak often of the “Kingdom.” And if it lacked to a degree the prophet’s optimism regarding the Christianization of the social order, it did seem to share his pervasive concern for social processes, his relaxation of emphasis upon individual salvation, and to an extent his deep-rooted conviction that society was evolving, that it was in fact process and in its measureless plasticity awaited the choice and decision of the will.

Conference theme was “Ethical Implications of Rapid Economic Change in the U.S.A.” and the conference mood reflected priority of emphasis to explosive locomotion rather than to divinely appointed destinations. President William Howard Taft’s son Charles was in the chair most of the time, but there was a Bull Moose cry in the air: “faster, faster!” Theologian Roger Shinn harked back to an Old Testament time when God preferred to live in tent rather than temple “for he was a God on the move.” With an eye on automation, Methodist minister J. Edward Carothers, secretary of the Department of the Church and Economic Life, announced, “We’re in a revolution.” The Christian ethic “is not a final ethic” but a “growing ethic.” Albert Whitehouse, a United Steel Workers district director, prophesied a day when virtually all man’s work would be done for him by machines. Responded Dr. Carothers: “Maybe we will have to tax the machines to care for people displaced by them.” Looking to new machines, he asked if the Church could “excite the American people to be experimentally minded.” The least it could do “is to tell the truth” about the revolution, and the most it could do is to “become a stabilizing factor in it.”

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

WIDE-RANGING REPORT TO THE CHURCHES

Salient points of general report adopted at National Study Conference on the Church and Economic Life:

• In view of the population explosion, “attention must be given to education for population control,” and “extraordinary efforts must be made to minimize waste” of natural resources.

• “Automation is a conduit to filling life with goods and maybe even goodness” but also threatens “the emptiness of free time.” Christians should be concerned and “address themselves to the problems of how to expand employment opportunities—then new satisfactions are before the many and society is headed for a new splendor.”

• The churches must assist in finding how the mobile part of our population “can develop a portable responsibility that will set them quickly beside more settled citizens in the important affairs of the communities in which they successively reside.”

• Change is “coming too slowly” in some sectors of life. Job opportunities are not growing rapidly enough. “Governmental institutions and methods are inadequate for new needs.” “But Christians who know whose world this is and who their Lord is can get some things going, encourage others already going, and get in the way of what ought not to be going.”

• “Christians must do everything in their power to promote the creation and the use of the institutions of peace.” Nation and citizens “must share our knowledge, experience and treasure in an adequate and sustained program of economic and technical assistance to the people of the emerging nations. Where practicable this should be done through agencies of the United Nations, or in concert with others of the more economically advanced countries. The safety of democratic institutions and the extension of freedom with justice … depend in large part upon our continuing economic strength. To bolster that strength we have responsibility to work for a system of trade among nations based on mutual benefit and progressive reduction of trade barriers with due consideration for the special economic problems of newly developing countries.”

• Family patterns are changing, and the churches are charged to find new ways to deal with the “puzzling contemporary family.”

• The church’s ministry to the individual (demonstrating “by word and action the infinite worth in God’s sight of every person”) continues, but it “must in this age be supplemented by her work to preserve, develop and encourage the growth of every institution and every experience which can restore the sense of dignity and significance to people who have lost it and equip others against the danger of losing it. This enterprise is almost limitless in its … opportunity.”

The 490 delegates and observers from the NCC’s 31 member denominations had in effect been called as spiritual attendants during the birth pains of the new era of automation. Two-thirds of the 432 church-appointed voting delegates were lay leaders of industry, labor, government, and education, thus considerably outnumbering clergy. Ever since its notorious Fifth World Order Study Conference in Cleveland four years ago (which called for U.S. recognition and U.N. admission of Red China), the NCC has been extremely careful to point out that such conferences speak only for themselves and not in behalf of either the NCC or its member churches. However, conference reports are voted “received and commended to the churches for study and appropriate action.” (In an unguarded moment an observer may catch himself musing on how many such conferences would be called if most of them came out with reports opposed to the prevailing views of NCC leadership.) Roughly a week’s time was taken after the Pittsburgh conference for final editing of reports, which indicated to some the caution used in handling what was regarded as a delicate subject.

The general conference report was adopted overwhelmingly with only two dissenters. Economic change was declared to be a paramount challenge to the Church, second only to annihilating war. The report noted specifically four problem areas: the population explosion, automation, population mobility, and centrifugal developments in the family. Church responsibility in these areas assumed broad proportions (see box). Church concern extended, for example, to preservation of “values related to the owner-operated farm.” There were also six “topic group reports” voicing other concerns.

By way of historic contrast, the Westminster Confession reads strangely indeed: “Synods and councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or by way of advice for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.”

One matter not introduced at the conference as a lively concern was church-state separation. The general drift seemed to be toward bigger government to accomplish church-inspired programs. One NCC official remarked upon the revolution which will have to take place in theological seminaries to prepare men for the type of training now envisaged to confront the technological crisis. Theological undergirding for ethical pronouncements was minimal or absent. The same official looked forward to the time when there could be joint pronouncements by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews. Some delegates introduced theological remarks on occasion but often apologetically, as if they were an intrusion. The dread label “pietistic” was feared.

The NCC declares that its constitution forbids it “to determine theological matters, which are the sole concern of its member Churches.” But NCC lack of reticence about issuing ethical pronouncements would seem to propel it back to the liberal fallacy of earlier decades of divorcing theology and ethics or reducing theology to the status of servant to ethics.

The concern of the delegates for the great technological problems which confront mankind was laudable. Whether such church conferences are to be a large part of the solution to these problems, the nation and the churches have yet to decide. A great effort is to be made to promulgate Pittsburgh pronouncements throughout NCC churches for study in a continuing program in 1963 and 1964.

Evangelical misgivings might have been lessened had the conference stressed the necessity of internal spiritual regeneration as requisite for a degree of success at living the Christian ethic. But the emphasis rather fell upon an external pressing down of the ethic upon society through education. Technological revolution, family revitalization, neighborhood renewal and redevelopment—these were all concerns. Individual regeneration—it was missing … inaction.

A Pre-Cuba State?

Oppressed masses are losing faith in political leaders and may resort to violence. This was Dr. Richard Shaull’s warning to NCC’s fall study conference on Latin America. The Princeton Seminary professor described Brazil, where he formerly served, as already in a “pre-Cuba state.”

Talking Things Over

A daring, four-day verbal clash between 120 ranking religious partisans in Washington last month successfully launched a comprehensive, long-term drive for interfaith amity.

So potentially explosive was the program of the 34th annual meeting of the National Conference of Christians and Jews that one leading religion reporter, perhaps half serious, asked officials whether closed-door workshops had provoked any fist fights.

They had not, but this year’s NCCJ meeting drew special attention because it featured the First National Institute of the organization’s four-year, $325,000 Religious Freedom and Public Affairs Project made possible by a Ford Foundation grant.

It was unique in that it marked the first time such a representative gathering had frankly discussed the conflicts resulting from religious pluralism in America. A wide spectrum of theological opinion was represented and discussion included a multitude of topics.

Said Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and a conference participant:

“Evangelical Protestants have tended to shy away from NCCJ because they dislike an interfaith smorgasbord that dulls sectarian loyalties, and the free expression of competitive traditions in this dialogue will encourage and reassure them.”

The conference demonstrated that even though religious ignorance is waning, controversy and conflicts are getting worse. If serious ill will and violence is to be avoided, candid inter-faith conversations are indispensable.

Also made clear was the fact that interfaith conversations need not promote a generalized religion. Indeed, the liberal Protestant tendency to sacrifice sectarian distinctives for a vague humanistic consensus was in full retreat.

Among participants in the November institute, in addition to such religious figures as Dr. Glenn Archer, Dr. John Cogley, the Rev. Paul Empie, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, Dr. George L. Ford, Dr. Roger L. Shinn, and Dr. Joseph B. Sizoo, were social science professors, politicians, educators, lawyers, and pollsters.

Subsequent NCCJ institutes in connection with the Religious Freedom and Public Affairs Project will focus on substantive matters nationally as well as locally. Specialized programs are being arranged for clergymen, politicians, lawyers, and journalists.

What might be considered the most provocative remarks at the first conclave came from Dr. Franklin H. Littell, professor of church history at Chicago Theological Seminary. Littell said that the “good old days” of a “Christian America” were a myth, that early colonial society was “nominally Christian and in fact heathen” and that the religious liberty sought by the predominantly Protestant settlers was “their own not that of others.”

The theme of the institute, “Responsibilities of Religious Freedom,” was highlighted by four workshops which analyzed current religious conflicts in the public order.

The conference was held in the Mayflower Hotel—some sessions in the same room in which a widely-publicized “religious issue” meeting was held in 1960 with Norman Vincent Peale as a leader.

Little was said, strangely enough, about President Kennedy as the first Roman Catholic ever to occupy the White House. One workshop was devoted to the examination of the religious vote as a whole. There seemed to be some agreement that Kennedy’s religion cost more votes than it produced, but that it won the election because it got him votes in the strategic areas.

Dr. Gerhard Lenski, associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, said it “was essentially a victory of the Catholic community rather than the Catholic Church.”

During the election campaign and afterwards, the sociologist remarked, Kennedy “has taken pains to disassociate himself from the special political interests of his church,” while still striving to maintain the public image of himself as a member of the Catholic community.

Judging from opinion polls, Lenski said, “this seems to be a highly successful formula satisfying the great majority of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.”

Rabbi Robert Gordis of Jewish Theological Seminary took note of numerous criticisms of church-state separation and asked whether the principle is in danger of being abandoned just when it is needed most.

Although a number of divergent views were expressed on the First Amendment, most participants said they could not effectively rewrite it without inserting unwelcome restrictions on religious freedom. Thus the First Amendment’s very ambiguity seemed in retrospect to be in its favor.

Msgr. Francis J. Lally, editor of the Boston Pilot, said America needs to discover a “moral consensus,” but added that he did not know how it could be done.

Baring Religious Ties

Involvement of religious institutions in the U. S. foreign aid program was spelled out for the first time last month in a report made public by the Agency for International Development of the State Department.

In a letter dated November 9—three days after the election—retiring AID Director Fowler Hamilton disclosed that 17 educational projects in 12 countries commit U. S. funds to institutions with religious links.

Hamilton’s letter, addressed to Senator Clinton P. Anderson, explained that “where religious-affiliated institutions have been relied upon it has been solely by reason of special skills, experience or technical qualifications that have nothing to do with religious affiliation.”

He stressed that in no case “are United States assistance funds going into the advancement of any sectarian religious purpose.” He also emphasized that the program requires guarantees “that there will be absolutely no discrimination on religious grounds in the matter of who will benefit.”

Hamilton added: “Because the opposite impression was evidently created by AID Policy Determination Number 10, ‘Religious Organizations and the United States Aid Program,’ adopted July 16, it was withdrawn August 21.”

His reference to the policy determination recalled the controversy it aroused last summer. Key Protestant churchmen charged that it violated the principle of separation of church and state.

Hamilton subsequently ordered a review of relations between U. S. foreign aid programs and religious-affiliated institutions.

His findings showed that voluntary agencies with some degree of religious affiliation currently handle about 70 per cent of surplus American food distribution abroad.

Also disclosed was the fact that AID has contracts with at least 44 U. S. church-related educational institutions in connection with its technical assistance training program.

The most costly religious tie, however, is with educational institutions abroad. Ironically enough, the biggest share goes to Colombia, where some 200 Protestant schools were closed by authorities in recent years. The other countries with religious involvement in U. S. educational aid funds are Iran, Turkey, Uganda, Kenya, Afghanistan, Chile, Congo, Ecuador, Korea, Liberia, and the Philippines. Of specific religious schools listed ten are Roman Catholic and six are Protestant.

Largest single project: the 3.77 million dollars earmarked for developing Colombia’s Roman Catholic-oriented public school system. None of the money is to be used in the so-called “mission territories.”

Tax-Free Housing

The U. S. Internal Revenue Service says ministers employed in religious schools are entitled to tax-free housing allowances.

Revenue Ruling 62–171 applies even if the ministers teach secular subjects, but to qualify they must show that they also perform certain pastoral functions.

In its present wording, however, the ruling raises a question whether ministers in all types of religious schools are eligible. The provision refers to teachers and administrators in “parochial schools, colleges, or universities which are integral agencies of religious organizations.” Some observers wonder if the phrase embraces independent religious schools.

Trials On The Gridiron

The following report was prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Herman Weiskopf of Sports Illustrated magazine:

“I try to remove from my life all that is not beautiful to Christ.”

These are the words of Paul Dietzel, Army’s young, talented, and controversial football coach, who outlines his strategy for Christian living as carefully as for last week’s Army-Navy game.

“Several years ago I became convinced that I could no longer talk to young men about being ȧ Christian and then get myself involved in worldly affairs,” Dietzel remarked. His back to the imaginary goal line, Dietzel rededicated his life to Christ.

It was not always so. Dietzel gave his life to Christ at an early age, but then his parents were divorced while he was yet in grade school. He worked nights in a bowling alley, later lied about his age so he could get a job in a meat market. His spare time was spent in a pool hall. No longer did he defend his Christian goal line.

Then, as a junior in high school, he met Anne Wilson, a young girl who was to turn his life back to Christ and her name to Dietzel. She told him that if he wished to date her, he would have to get out of the pool hall and back to church.

That was in Mansfield, Ohio, where Dietzel and his future wife began to worship together at the First English Lutheran Church. Dietzel was born in Fremont, Ohio, and lived in several towns in the same state during his early years. Most of his religious ties have been with Methodist churches.

“During the war a chaplain told me that no one influenced a young man’s life more than his coach,” Dietzel said. “There have been a few games, I suppose, where my team might have done better if I had allowed some questionable tactics to be used. It might have brought me some added honor. In the long run you lose anyway, though. You try to teach by the example you set.”

The chaplain was Pat Murphy, and it turned out that Dietzel subsequently attended his church while coaching at the University of Cincinnati. Dietzel said Murphy has had a great influence upon his life.

Dietzel’s move to Army this year was accompanied by much criticism. Some felt it unethical for him to leave Louisiana State University, where his coaching contract still had several years to run and where he had won almost every conceivable honor in college football.

“I was tried and convicted by the press without a chance to defend myself,” Dietzel recalled. “What was lost in the shuffle was the fact that the same thing happened in reverse only a few years before. It was in 1955 that I had just signed a two-year contract as line-coach at Army, when LSU asked me to come down and be head coach. After I agreed, LSU asked Army to release me from my contract. There was no fuss. Then when Army asked LSU this year to release me from my contract so I could be head coach at West Point, it was a different story; turnabout wasn’t fair play all of a sudden. I never broke a contract, but I was torn to shreds by the press.”

Dietzel was even excoriated recently on the manners of the cadets. It seems that when the Army team huddles, the cadets in the stands issue a long sh-h-h-h-h. As the huddles break the cadets’ sound effects suddenly change to that of an exploding bomb and a cry of “go Army.” This is supposed to simulate a sizzling fuse and subsequent explosion, or what is known as the “time-bomb huddle.”

According to Dietzel, a number of people, however, felt the sh-h-h-h was not a fuse, but a plea for silence. They berated Dietzel, saying it was unfair to ask for silence when Army huddled without granting similar courtesy to opponents.

“And they also complained that opposing quarterbacks had a hard time with signals because of the noise made by the cadets,” Dietzel said. “I can appreciate this, but I notice that whenever a quarterback held up his hands to request silence, he got it almost immediately. Sometimes the noise would be back later, but what I can’t figure out is why the quarterback simply didn’t raise his hand again for silence.

Dietzel, at 38, is already one of the finest coaches in the nation. His very success, though, has made him subject to scrutiny from all angles. He has been accused, among other things, of being too cordial, too handsome, too enthusiastic. These are difficult accusations for anyone to answer.

“I have removed many things from my life in an effort to be a better Christian,” said Dietzel, who currently serves as vice president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. “Still, I have certain human desires and I pray that I can eliminate those that are not pleasing. I am only a coach, not a preacher.”

An Organization Spared

A move to dissolve the 90-year-old Lutheran Synodical Conference was defeated by a 177–53 vote at its 47th regular convention in Chicago last month.

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, having a majority of the delegates, outvoted the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod. The latter two had sought dissolution of the conference, which embraces nearly 3,000,000 Lutherans. The split was underscored as delegates set up separate Communion and prayer services.

The Wisconsin Synod and the ELS suspended fellowship with the Missouri Synod a year ago last summer on grounds that it condoned theological liberalism.

Delegates to a special Wisconsin Synod convention held just a few days before that of the synodical conference were primarily concerned with educational matters. But they did vote to memorialize the conference to take steps toward “an orderly dissolution.”

Defeat of the dissolution move leaves the conference intact, but the Wisconsin Synod’s next convention could well take action to withdraw its membership. Hoping to avert such a development, synodical conference delegates adopted a series of “suggestions” aimed at better communication and discipline.

The Missouri Synod, the American Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Church in America currently are exploring the possibility of forming a new cooperative agency to succeed the National Lutheran Council. The Wisconsin Synod frowns on cooperation with bodies with which it does not have doctrinal agreement, but the word was discreetly dropped last month that it was participating with the other three denominations in an urban church planning study in Milwaukee. District officials of the Wisconsin Synod urged congregations to take part, stating that “none of the fellowship principles which the Wisconsin Synod has upheld are in jeopardy.”

Moving Backward

Fall enrollment at seminaries accredited by the American Association of Theological Schools shows a 1.1 per cent increase over 1961. Total number of students was 20,696, slightly higher than the last two years and representing a return to the enrollment recorded in 1956 and 1958.

Totals have fluctuated so closely to the 20,000 mark during recent years that the 1962 figure cannot be interpreted as a trend.

“There is no basis for complacency,” said Dr. Jesse H. Ziegler, associate director of AATS.

He declared that since 1956 “the general population, population reaching age 21, number receiving bachelors’ or first professional degree, Protestant church membership, and numbers of Protestant churches have been steadily advancing. To maintain the same absolute numbers means relatively to move backward.”

El Paso Evangelism

Today’s wickedness compares with pre-Flood times, Billy Graham declared during his eight-day crusade in El Paso, Texas, last month. At a youth rally he challenged young people to dedicate their lives to Christ with the same fervor Communist youths follow Marxism.

Graham described the campaign as one of his most successful, the total of 3,771 inquirers representing 4.4 per cent of the estimated total attendance (86,000). This compares with an average of 3.16 per cent for his 115 previous crusades around the world.

Sympathy For India

Support for India and its Christians in their conflict with Red China came from the World Council of Churches three weeks after heavy fighting erupted.

Central Committee chairman Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, vice-chairman Dr. Ernest A. Payne, and general secretary Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft issued the following statement:

“At this critical hour for the life and spirit of India, involved in a struggle to defend its national security, the officers of the World Council of Churches desire to assure the Churches and Christians of India of their profound sympathy and express the hope that just and peaceful settlement can be reached.”

Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, director of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs and Sir Kenneth Grubb, chairman, also issued a statement:

“In order that justice may be served and enlarged conflict avoided we … urge widest possible support by world public opinion and by governments for the withdrawal of Chinese forces to positions held prior to the recent intensified military action and the prompt initiation of negotiations or acceptance of impartial arbitration for the peaceful settlement of the border dispute. The pursuit of territorial claims by aggressive military action rather than by methods of peaceful settlement must be condemned.”

Nicest Of All

Eucharistic vestments have no doctrinal significance but they do “look nice,” said a woman speaker at last month’s meeting of the House of Laity at Westminster. Another disagreed: she preferred clean white surplices to vestments that were dirty. Resisting the lure of such bewitching byways, the Church of England’s lay representatives debated the real issues behind a proposal to approve the wearing of vestments. (The House of Bishops and Clergy had already given its consent at the “general approval” stage.)

Introducing the measure, Mr. H. Montgomery-Campbell of London said that he recognized the strong feelings and sincerity of the evangelical wing, but urged acceptance on the ground that because many clergy wore vestments, legislation had to be made for the existing position. Various members supported him: it was suggested that vestments asserted continuity with the pre-Reformation Church; that some Anglicans were driven to Rome because they were refused vestments; that Lutherans wore them; that it was merely a question of clergy preferences at the tailor’s; that there should be a principle of “live-and-let-live.” Another supporter put in some adroit work by asserting that even some evangelicals disagreed with the last-century court decisions which pronounced vestments illegal. He did not find it necessary to mention that such disagreement stemmed from the evangelicals’ view that the decision ought to have been reached on other historical grounds. (Mystifying to non-Anglicans, the whole matter evidently turns at present on the incredible argument that since perhaps one-quarter of the English clergy flaunt the law by wearing vestments, the law ought to be changed.)

In reply to supporters of the measure, other members strongly objected to the attempt thus to “write off” the doctrinal significance which the wearers placed on vestments. Every detail of the Communion service, they claimed, should reflect that this was the corporate act of the whole church—you did not do that by having one man ornately garbed in the distance at one end of the church, with the congregation at the other. Why ape Rome? Why vestments for only one service and for only one man? If beauty was wanted, why not dress up the verger and the church-wardens also? Mr. George Goyder of Oxford urged that old quarrels be buried and argument forsaken, and that they get back to the Bible, to the task of evangelization, and to the simplicity of Christ which had nothing to do with vestments.

When the motion for general approval was put to the vote, the chairman, Sir Kenneth Grubb, found it necessary to order a count before it was established that the measure was approved 86–56.

In view of the fact that evangelicals are very much in the minority in the House of Laity, it is noteworthy and almost without precedent to find such a sizable proportion of the House voting against a measure at the general-approval stage.

The approved measure has yet to go through various revision stages before being presented to Parliament for final ratification.

J. D. D.

The Deserted Vicar

“This village is the most ungodly I have ever known,” said the Rev. Paul Smythe, 57, Vicar of Horningsea in England’s Fen district. He had just come from his sixteenth-century church where not a single member of his congregation had turned up for morning worship. The vicar, who has been there 18 years, said that he had unsuccessfully applied to the Bishop of Ely for a transfer, and added: “Each time I try to climb out of the Fenland mud someone kicks me back in again.” He complained that he was the most unpopular person in the village (population about 400). His parishioners retort that Mr. Smythe shows little interest in them, has so far raised only $280 toward a $25,000 repair bill, and spends all his time in the university library of nearby Cambridge. “What else can I do?” asks the vicar.

J. D. D.

Rome And Revelation

The first session of the Second Vatican Council draws to a close this week after two months of deliberation. The council’s ten working commissions will continue to meet following adjournment of the first session December 8. The second session is scheduled to convene May 12 and continue through June 29.

It took five weeks for the Roman Catholic hierarchy to arrive at its first substantive action—a 2,162–46 vote approving in principle a long draft decree on liturgy. The decree was said to reflect a measure of reform toward making public worship more understandable.

Meanwhile, Pope John XXIII did some legislating of his own by inserting St. Joseph in the Canon of the Mass.

Next the council took up a discussion of divine revelation and promptly found itself in the middle of a verbal hassle. A draft decree introduced by ultra-conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani was roundly criticized. Ottaviani took on an image of intransigence. Objections to the decree “produced an electric shock through the whole council,” according to the Rev. Robert A. Graham, a Jesuit who is serving as Religious News Service correspondent.

“This is the first open clash between two concepts at the council,” said Graham. “Some here hold that doctrine is the most important issue facing the council; others, however, say that pastoral concerns are the most urgent considerations today.”

The specific issue involved was the extent to which Scripture and tradition are to be regarded as separate entities.

The Second Vatican Council, recessed by Pope John XXIII for resumption on May 12, has already been acclaimed “the greatest ecclesiastical event of the twentieth century.” Certainly it will be remembered as the most-publicized religious spectacle in a century engrossed in scientific research and social revolution. What effect its debates, decrees, and declarations will have upon the unresolved tensions of our fear-ridden nuclear age is, at this stage, unpredictable. Though answers will understandably vary, we may ask which of the council’s actions seem most significant, and why.

In the fourth General Congregation, October 22, the Secretary General called the council fathers’ attention to the following information:

“The Secretariate for the Promotion of Christian Union has been granted a position of complete equality with the conciliar commissions in the work of the Council. This means: first, the Secretariate itself will present its schemata in the Council assembly; second, the schemata will be discussed, emendated, and edited in an equal manner with those presented by the other commissions; third, in mixed matters the Secretariate will be invited to cooperate with the other commissions in matters related to its competence.”

New Strategy for Unity

Prior to this announcement the secretariate functioned solely as a public relations office serving non-Catholics desirous of following the work of the council. It now has been given full commission status within the council itself plus the authority to speak in the sessions of all other commissions whenever their deliberations bear upon the delicate and complex question of reunion. The action has the double effect of making the cause of unity central in all council discussions and of putting the secretariate’s president, Cardinal Bea, in a position to influence every draught resolution or decree prepared by the other commissions for final adoption (thereby protecting whatever gains his unity efforts have achieved for the church).

The direction in which the new Commission on Unity will move to achieve its ultimate goals remains to be seen, but its present strategy seems to be in sharp contrast to that followed by the sixteenth-century Jesuits under St. Ignatius Loyola. Dominating the Council of Trent, they persuaded the church fathers to denounce Protestant heresies and to damn all who embraced their heretical doctrines.

Dogma and Dialogue

In his opening address at the present council, however, Pope John XXIII made special mention of the change of posture assumed by the church toward theological errors and those who hold them. “At the outset of Vatican Council II,” he declared, “it is evident as always that the truth of the Lord will remain forever. We see, in fact, as one age succeeds the other, that the opinions of men follow one another and exclude each other and errors often vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun.

“Ever has the Church opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays, however, the spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations.

“That being so, the Catholic Church, raising the torch of religious truth by means of this Ecumenical Council, desires to show herself to be the loving mother of all, benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness toward the children separated from her.”

Today, then, men are urged to engage in polite dialogue with their “separated brethren,” for though there are serious doctrinal differences at the root of all ecclesiastical divisions, the theological disagreements are but the tragic result of sixteenth-century mistakes, misunderstanding, and misinformation about the Roman Catholic Church. Let theology be recast in the friendly atmosphere of Christian dialogue, and the disgrace of a divided Christendom will be replaced by the reunion of all Christians in the one Church founded by Christ. For we are living, the argument runs, “in a modern renaissance, an age of inquiry, of science, of new concepts. Almost every day brings some new discovery about or for our existence.

“So in this climate, theologians of all Christian groups are inspired to re-examine those things which separate Christians.

“To do so, they must reach out to each other, look at each other’s doctrines and in so doing begin the process of rediscovery. This the Council will encourage in a variety of ways.

“Rather than look backward too long into why and how Christians became separated, the Council will look forward to the ways they may be reunited.”

Questions That Remain

Despite his enthusiasm for the dialogue, Cardinal Bea is not blind to its limitations for achieving ecumenical goals. Discussions can lead to an impasse at which men must abandon all further debates until new procedural methods can be devised for continuing their consultations. If such a situation does develop, will the new commission then apply dialectical methods to the problems of unity? Will separated brothers seek to achieve a practical synthesis of their opposing theologies and emerge from their confrontations confessing but one faith and pledged to but one sovereign Head, the Lord Jesus Christ? And can such a practical synthesis of theological viewpoints ever produce what Pope John describes as a “visible unity in truth”?

Absolution

Someone betrayed Him with a kiss

Today, in this metropolis

Of paint encrusted clammy lips

And odious undulating hips

And deep eye shadow of disguise

The shallows of lackluster eyes.

Someone denounced Him in the courts

Of lush and infamous resorts

Where corpulent affluence meets

The filthy flotsam of the streets

And both condemned Him in a breath

To suffer ignominious death.

Someone denied Him with an oath

Of broken vows or plighted troth

And crucified Him with a curse

Of infidelity and worse.

Yet, of His worst tormentors, He

Forgiveth even thee and me!

PETER E. LONG

The answers that might be given to these questions would be as speculative as they are profitless at this point. The question of unity is not primarily a reconciliation of brother to brother but the rediscovery of the Father’s purpose to embrace all his prodigal sons and have them share together the full bounty of his love and grace. Quarreling over their respective rights to the Father’s favor or the relative merits of their service under his roof will only serve to spread discord in the household of faith. The secret of unity is discovered in the purpose of God which is simply: “Christ in you! Yes, Christ in you bringing with Him the hope of all the glorious things to come” (Col. 1:27).

But tensions may arise from another source and serve a purpose unappreciated by quarreling brothers. Oscar Cullmann, professor of New Testament and early history in the University of Basel, calls attention to this when he writes: “The Church will fulfill its assignment if it remains faithful to the fundamental eschatological attitude of the New Testament.” That eschatological attitude is discovered in the conviction of the early Christians that the prophetic purpose is “already fulfilled” and “not yet completed.” The eschatological hope of the early Church was “not merely a waiting for the future,” but “neither was it merely faith in the present” as already fulfilling the prophetic program. For the individual Christian it means that “now are we the sons of God” and “it does not yet appear what we shall be.” The tensions encountered in our pursuit of personal holiness arise from this chronological dualism, between “what we are” and “what we are to become.”

The Church likewise, in the collectivity of all its members, shares the same eschatological tensions. “I will build my Church,” says Christ, but he looked forward to that prophetic hour when he will “present it [the Church] to himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27).

STUART P. GARVER

Executive Director

Christ’s Mission

New York City

The evening shadows lengthen into night as a group of neighborhood children play together on the lawn. Bushes here and there make perfect hiding places, and the shrill voices of boys and girls give evidence of carefree childhood, unaffected by responsibilities and unaware of a restless world about them.

An old man walks by and stops to watch the children at play. A little boy hides behind some shrubbery close by the fence, and to him the old man says, “Sonny, my car broke down and I had to leave it at the garage down the street. Can you tell me where there is a place where I can spend the night?”

The boy turns and looks at the shadowy figure outside and replies, “Naw, I can’t. Run along. I’m busy.”

A crowd of teen-agers were out together. First a movie, then a stop for a Coke where a jukebox supplied raucous tunes as they twisted in the latest variation of the dance. What fun to be together without a care in the world!

Crowding into their cars to continue the party in the basement rumpus room of Dick’s home, they hurried by a boy walking manfully down the street with the aid of leg braces and two crutches. They all knew him, but his handicap kept him from joining in their fun. Only in his studies did he excel all the rest of them.

After the cars had started one boy remarked, “We should have asked Mark to ride. It must be pretty tough carrying yourself down the street with nothing much but your shoulder muscles.” “Aw, he’s all right. He’s used to it, and besides we haven’t got room in the car,” was the reply.

Across the town students in the state university were busy preparing for upcoming exams. They represented a good cross section of American youth today—affluent by the standards of the rest of the world, many content with just getting by, all of them enmeshed in the grind to cram enough information to graduate, in the hope of getting a good job one day.

Many courses were intensely interesting, opening up new vistas of knowledge entirely unimagined by the past generation. In some courses God and the Bible were openly scorned, for, the students were told, man has passed far beyond any need of them.

There came a knock at the door of a room where two boys were slouched deep in chairs reading, and together they cried out, “Come in.” The door opened, and a quiet fellow neither knew very well, although they knew some of the fellows spoke of him as a “holy Joe,” walked in. “I just wanted to invite you fellows to come over to the ‘Y’ tomorrow night to hear Dr. Ivan Cushman. You know he is one of the world’s leading archaeologists, and he takes the Bible and makes it come alive in his lectures.”

“Who wants to hear an old gravedigger anyway?” said Jim, with little politeness to their visitor. “And who wants to hear anybody stupid enough to believe the Bible?” Chuck chimed in. “And besides,” they both added, “we’ve got a test on astrophysics day after tomorrow, and that’s all that counts. Toddle on and get some weak minds to go with you. We just haven’t time.”

A beautiful woman, wife of a prosperous executive, was arranging the flowers in her home for guests who were coming for dinner—one couple particularly important because his influence could mean a large government contract for her husband’s firm.

The maid announced the guests, and in a few minutes gay laughter filled the air as cocktails were served and men and women mingled in the relaxed anticipation of good food and exciting companionship.

Dinner went beautifully, deftly served by well-trained servants.

A maid came to the hostess, leaned low, and whispered something in her ear. A shadow of annoyance crossed her face as she replied, “Tell them to ask someone else. This is no time to interrupt me. They should know that we have guests for dinner.”

The evening passed with laughter (some jokes few would have repeated in a mixed group a few years before), and with a friendly hand of bridge followed by final drinks before the friends left—some driving their own sleek cars, others in limousines with chauffeurs.

As they were preparing to retire, the executive asked, “Jane, what did the maid want? What was she whispering to you about during dinner?” To which his wife replied petulantly, “Oh, those Smiths down the road had a sick baby they wanted to rush to the hospital. It was too far for a taxi, and the buses only run every hour. They asked if someone here could drive them in one of our cars. They should have seen that we were entertaining guests.”

A week passed. The midnight broadcast was about to begin, and across the city radios were turned on. Into homes and bars, cars and nightclubs, mansions and slums, there came these words of the first Advent: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”

A little boy in a troubled sleep thought of an old man he had rudely told to “run along” because he was busy playing.

Some teen-agers, who only a few minutes before had been listening to jive and shouting as they danced, suddenly remembered Mark shuffling down the street on his crutches and wished they had made room for him in their cars.

Two university students home for Christmas vacation paused to wonder whether they should have been too busy even to listen to a famous man who believed God and the Bible.

The executive looked at his wife, and she returned the uneasy stare. Had their guests been so important that they could not have spared a moment to help some poor neighbors, desperate because of an ill child?

“No room in the inn.” These haunting words carried their meaning to many people in many places.

No room for Christ? No time for him! No concern for things of the spirit! No love and compassion for needy people right at their side!

The broadcast concluded with these words: “How like the people of Bethlehem are many of us tonight! No room for the Christ child! But he is no longer a child. He grew to manhood and died on a cross for the sins of the world, and he arose from the dead—and he is coming again. He speaks to us: ‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.’ ”

In the dim recesses of many minds there came back these words: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

Wired Stars

In the quick darkness of a winter afternoon, the glow of Christmas lights makes cheerful the city. Crowded strangers, in groups measured by traffic lights, are warmed and patterned and painted by the strings of lights at corners. Shoppers, passing windows of daylight, are framed as though they belonged together.

In that nave of the cathedral of merchandise, the grand aisle on the main floor, metropolitans pause to look up at a winking firmament of incandescent stars. One even points a child’s eyes upward—perhaps to glimpse in them the dancing reflection of the sparkling lights of Christmas.

What would the season be without electricians? I studied the store’s canopy of wired stars. What happened, I wondered, when a star blew out? Did it carry a string of stars with it? Would it be replaced after closing hours by a union man on some towering “cherry-picker” crane? Or would it hang like a dead star in a galaxy until the end of the season?

My reverie on circuitry was switched off as the great organ began to play a selection from Handel’s Messiah. “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.…”

The Light of Christmas is not the composite glow of men’s lamps, nor the vast glitter of fleeing galaxies. It shines above that fiat of cosmic illumination from which all suns rise, “Let there be light!” It is the Alpha Light of the first, uncreated Word, the Omega Light of glory in the new creation. Shepherds, blinded by the radiance of angelic glory, peered into the darkness of a manger to see the greater Light. He is the true Light, who came into the world.

Yet the judgment is that Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the Light. God has set his glory above the heavens; the Lamp of God’s house shines on every man: “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

But squinting electricians wire Christmas lights across the sunrise, or rig circuits to trigger another dawn—of doom.

Revised Slandered Version

It happened that I was reading my Bible just before I read … “What Are the Pacifists Doing?” (Oct. 26 issue).… Therefore, to make the New Testament coincide with your point of view, may I suggest the following revisions:

“Blessed are the bellicose and the bomb-throwers, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5).

“Blessed are the war-makers (American!), for they shall be called the children of God” (Matt. 5:9).

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, … Slay a man for wounding you, and a young man for bruising you, and be avenged seventy and sevenfold” (Matt. 5:43 and Gen. 4:23, 24).

“If thine enemy hunger, starve him; if he thirst, rejoice and be exceeding glad” (Rom. 12:20).

“And now abideth distrust, despair, and hate, these three; but the greatest of these is hate” (1 Cor. 13:13).

“I am come that they might have death, and might have it sooner” (John 10:10).

“And he took a sword and girded Himself.… Then said Jesus unto him, put up again thy towel into its place: for all they that take the towel shall perish by the towel—and it shall serve them right!”

As you note, the translation is far from complete, but certainly this ought to be sufficient to make the process plain.

The Potsdam Church of the Brethren

Potsdam, Ohio

• We don’t care for the Potsdam Revised Version. We merely want a Bible that doesn’t excise Romans 13 and the scriptural emphasis that God authorizes the state’s use of power to preserve justice and restrain iniquity. Any neglect of this will inevitably lead to a good many reductions.—ED.

Pacifism is not based on Communist ideals but on New Testament teachings. It is more than refusal to participate in organized murder which is war, but teaches Christian love as a motive.

It is not passivism. Gandhi taught his Indian followers to resist evil, but not in the spirit of hatred or with weapons of war.…

Winthrop, Me.

I noticed you rightly distinguished between pacifists and the historic peace churches. Pacifism has no scriptural support but nonresistance does.…

Meyerstown, Pa.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to be commended for giving serious attention to pacifists.… You note that “the Christian Gospel not only challenged the military virtues of the pagan world but also replaced them with virtues like peace and compassion,” and aptly called for “spiritual rebirth into a new race of redeemed men.” This I understand to mean that Christian ethics are for Christians—we can’t extract Christian behavior from non-Christians,—but then they are for Christians. This affirmation, of course, does not guarantee peace, nor does it provide a national policy. But then it does not claim to do so. It merely asserts that in military questions as in any other it is our task to follow Christ.…

The Church Peace Mission

Washington, D. C.

You are so right about what is being spooned to a generation that bypasses and ignores history, replacing Almighty God by such Babel towers as the U.N., a world court, a world bank, global police and Santa Claus, militarism’s dictates, entanglements and schemes of men such as squandering billions of dollars in the attempt to conquer outer space, outsputnik Russia, etc. Peace can only be realized when men come to their senses enough to return to God’s Way, Truth, and Life as demonstrated by our Lord.…

Monmouth, Ill.

I do appreciate the warning not to allow our good intentions to be misjudged and misinterpreted.… I just resent my beloved denomination (Church of the Brethren) being classified with radical pacifists of all classes and colors and banner carriers. I am a bit sorry that on June 25 some Brethren did carry banners—as individuals—while three-quarters of the whole group were either in a prayer group or visiting congressmen.…

Williamson Road Church of the Brethren

Roanoke, Va.

I want to commend you for using almost five pages … to discuss an urgent ethical problem which has received too little attention from the Christian church. I was surprised, however, that for a journal that consistently attempts to place both the questions and the answers of biblical theology over against current problems, you approach the problem mainly from the standpoint of political analysis. While the Soviet use of pacifist activity and the degree of influence of pacifism on United States policy (and here I feel you are much too complimentary of pacifist influence) are interesting questions, they hardly represent the kind of biblical and theological perceptiveness I would have expected.

Mennonite Central Committee

Akron, Pa.

Your article … is superb!

Oakland, Calif.

Ecumenical Posture

An extremely interesting editorial is “Recasting the Ecumenical Posture” (Oct. 26 issue). Thanks.

Colgate Rochester Divinity School

Rochester, N. Y.

May I express hearty approval of your editorial.… It seems to me that you have presented a good approach to our problem of division.…

I am interested to read what response your suggestion will draw from the various bodies.

LaBelle View Church of Christ

Steubenville, Ohio

Hope

I was happy to see the fine sermon by the Rev. James L. Monroe on “The White Man’s Dilemma” (Oct. 26 issue). I shall hope that he expresses the sentiments of the majority of white Christians in the South.…

Berlin Bible Church

Narrowsburg, N. Y.

In reference to “The White Man’s Dilemma,” … relish it or not, the depraved nature and actions of Ham set him apart from his brethren, and to say the least, called down no blessing on him or his posterity.

Hineston, La.

The sermon … was characterized by a reasoned approach and a spirit of humble obedience to God’s will, … characteristics we would all do well to emulate, particularly when discussing the race problem. This sermon found its origin in the much maligned South. However, I cannot recall ever having seen in print a comparable statement from the ranks of Northern conservatives, whose posture in respect to this problem is revealed by the following remark from one of their number now studying at the Free University: “I’ve never been able to get too excited about race relations.” This, I’m quite certain, is the typical attitude of Northern conservatives regarding the subject.…

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

I would like to express … my appreciation for the article.… What we need above all is an integration of our own souls, so that what we say with our lips is one with what we witness with our lives.…

First Congregational Church

Madison, Wisc.

Shaking Of The Lamp

If your readers will lay Professor Reid’s interpretation of Calvin [“… The sovereignty of God’s Grace in Christ Jesus dominates Calvin’s whole point of view”] beside my interpretation of him (Book Reviews, Oct. 26 issue), and then read Calvin to decide for themselves, the exercise will prove profitable to them and the light of truth will shine the brighter for this shaking of the lamp.

Prof. of Historical Theology

Columbia Theological Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

Against The Sunday Laws

The article “Never on Sunday,” by Samuel A. Jeanes (Oct. 26 issue) needs to be answered.…

Sunday-keeping Christians who advocate Sunday laws are decidedly in the minority in the United States. Witness the statement by Mr. Jeanes that “merchants have said that if church people would refrain from making Sunday purchases their places of business could remain closed.” This certainly indicates that a very large number of Sunday-keeping Christians are not interested in restricting sales on Sunday. Why should the minority seek by state legislation to enforce their point of view upon the whole population?…

Religious Liberty Association

Washington, D. C.

Today’s Sunday laws do not require anyone to rest for health; they do require some trades to cease operating on that day. They except businesses that sell tobacco, gasoline, newspapers, and those that furnish transportation, et cetera.… Is the purveyor of cigarettes or gasoline less in need of one day’s rest in seven than one who sells rocking chairs or lamb chops?…

The most powerful force today promoting Sunday legislation is the Roman Catholic Church. There can hardly be any doubt that the motivations of the Catholic Church and the Lord’s Day Alliance are religious, and nothing but religious.…

Sunday laws will send men to jail for acts performed on Sunday, right and harmless on other days of the week, and in no sense criminal.…

Seventh-day Adventist Church

Rhinelander, Wisc.

Mr. Jeanes says, “A law that regulates secular activity on Sunday may make the practice of some religions more expensive.” Then he cites analogies that are quite unanalogous: Roman Catholics supporting parochial schools and Protestants tithing! Mr. Jeanes seems oblivious to the one vital ingredient here: free will. Religion, whenever fit to pass under that name, has been a matter of free will, a completely voluntary observance.…

Berrien Springs, Mich.

If the church seeks the support of the state to facilitate an observance of the Sabbath, does this constitute a legalistic approach to the practice of Christianity?… Does the author really believe “the cost of the practice of religion is determined by the dedication and conviction of the adherent”? If so, then doesn’t the convenience of an enforced Sunday law tend to make religion cheap?

Religious Liberty Secretary

Columbia Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Washington, D. C.

On Universalism

Re “Review of Current Religious Thought” by Harold B. Kuhn (Oct. 12 issue): … In his next to the last paragraph Mr. Kuhn lists what he considers the defects of Dr. Nels F. S. Ferré’s The Christian Understanding of God. He writes: “This view has several defects: First, it has no foundation in Scripture. Second, it may be questioned whether in any future state moral performance would be significantly different or decisively better than in this life. Third, it neglects a number of clear scriptural statements, such as the solemn reminders of the place ‘where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched’ (Mark 9:44) and our Lord’s own account of the rich man and Lazarus.”

At least these comments may be made: (1) In the minds of many of the early Fathers there was more Scripture to support the more lenient view of future punishment than there was for the so-called orthodox view.… (2) Is one in error to believe that when the Lord “makes all things new” there may be an improvement in moral performance? (3) In regard to “clear scriptural statements” Mr. Kuhn refers to one metaphorical statement and one parable. Some of us believe that metaphors must have a metaphorical interpretation, and that parables must be treated as parables.…

Adams Center, N. Y.

Kuhn says, “… (Liberals usually pass with a discreet silence the equally massive and heinous genocidal crime of the murder of six million Kulaks in the Soviet Union …).”

Note that liberals might use the murder of six million Kulaks as further argument for universalism on the reason that we do not think God is any more like Russian Commissar than Nazi Fuehrer.

My … point in answer to the parenthetical innuendo is simply an understanding of how a universalist might argue, although I personally disagree with that position. I believe universalism is contrary to the teaching of scripture.…

First United Presbyterian Church

Athens, Pa.

South Of Cuba

This time in history could be the sunset for Christian missions here, or it could be the beginning of a bright new day. Religious interests are being stirred as some of the people are becoming aware of the responsibilities of independence, especially under the present leadership. Muslims and Hindus are rising up from complacency in what seems to be a greater zeal than that which I have observed among the Christians. Pray for us.

British Guiana Baptist Mission

Georgetown, British Guiana

Perspicuity, Perspicacity

In the article “Scholars Cite Obstacles to Christian Advance” (News, Oct. 12 issue), not one gentleman said, “My failure to speak and write about the Lord and his Church in such a way that all peoples clearly understand”.…

Baltimore, Md.

I am quite sure that each one of your experts has placed a sensitive diagnostic finger perceptively upon the paralysis which, to a critical degree, hinders the visible church in its efforts to fulfill its divinely appointed role in the world.

What perturbs me, however, is the failure to identify what may be the most damaging virus in the church’s blood stream—the Christian education program. Inadequacy here represents not merely a vitamin deficiency, but may indeed be a virulent fount of poison. Malcolm Boyd in his book, If I Go Down to Hell, … indicates something of what I am trying to say in these probing words: “In our churches the Bible stories are parroted by children herded into the very Sunday Schools which may later prove to have been a major force in driving them permanently from the church!”

Director, Christian Education Service

David C. Cook Publishing Co.

Elgin, Ill.

Both Stimulant And Shock

I was shocked. Your “stimulating venture,” as you call it, to provide $1,000 [in] cash prizes for the best sermon refuting universalism may be stimulating but it is hardly Christian.…

Perhaps if you pay out enough gold you can change the trend which is “sweeping Protestantism”! God forbid!…

Tri-City Presbyterian Church

Myrtle Creek, Ore.

I had the pleasure of sitting at the feet of Dr. Henry C. Sheldon, recognized in Methodism as our chief theologian and Bible scholar.… Your call to concern over the distorted “gospel” seems perfectly in line with his polemic on deism, rationalism, humanism, etc. I hope I will be able to join those who make genuine contributions.…

Waukegan, Ill.

Copy Editor’S Vacation

I am a nefew of Uticus, one of his favert kinfolks. How cum you don’t ever revue any kids books and write a articul on how a ejucated preacher can make his mind littler to help us kids see threw his sermons?

The preacher in our church has a lot of big books he calls the logicul tombs, and he is always berried in one.

Sugar Creek Book Room

Cascade, Colo.

• We are tinking aboue deez maters. U tink maybee revu of kid stuf like thurd grayd speler help? We allso reed more logicul tombs four big anser to make mind littler.—EDD.

Fourteenth Amendment

Mr. Gates misleads his readers (Eutychus, Sept. 28 issue).… It is true that the opening words of the First Amendment to the Constitution, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” do not, in Mr. Gates’ words, “in the least debar individual states from doing it.” However, he ignores the Fourteenth Amendment, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Supreme Court decisions have consistently made applicable to the states the restraints that the First Amendment provisions impose upon the federal government (e.g., Everson v. Board of Education, Niemotko v. Maryland).…

Mr. Gates may object to our laws, but when he attempts to answer his own question, “What saith the law?,” he should at least be accurate.

Social Science Div.

Kendall College

Evanston, Ill.

Sterilize Or Agonize?

You are wrong in opposing sterilization as you do in your editorial of September 28.… Please show me the “virtue” of bringing unwanted children into the world; of bearing children who are unloved because they are a mere by-product of animal passion, and so destined to a life of poverty, ignorance, squalor and crime. Is this an expression of morality? My experience with migrants and in the underprivileged areas of Charlotte convinced me that sterilization would be a blessing to many people, and a benefit to society.… My experience confirms the idea that in many cases sterilization is the moral action, not the opposite. (Incidentally, I believe every adult who becomes a public charge via the Department of Public Welfare should be sterilized.) …

Charlotte, N. C.

Only One Sin?

Re Basic Christian Doctrines #43, “The Final State: Heaven and Hell” (Sept. 28 issue): this is a subject very much debated, and the position of orthodox Christianity is, to this writer—as to many others past and present—plainly unscriptural.…

It does violence to the concept of God’s justice to hold and teach that he will punish with never-ending torment those who may have lived in sin even for the permitted three score years and ten, let alone those who have indulged only one sin.… The reward of the wicked is eternal punishment, not eternal punishing—eternal in its effects.…

The immortality of the soul doctrine is the product of Satan’s first lie in the Garden of Eden, “… ye shall not surely die … ye shall be as gods.…”

Prosser, Wash.

Printed Over Down Under

Your August 31 issue has just reached my desk—yes, surface mails are rather slow … when it comes to periodicals.…

I want to say how impressed I was with … “A Layman and His Faith” (“Sinning and Sinned Against”). In fact, I was so impressed that I am making … this request for permission to reprint this article in toto in the next issue of the church magazine which it is my responsibility to edit …, the Australian Signs of the Times.…

Might I just say how much CHRISTIANITY TODAY has continued to improve since its first publication, until today it occupies a vital place in the field of evangelical Christianity.

Editor

Signs Publishing Company

Warburton, Victoria, Australia

We publish within our Presbyterian Church of New Zealand a magazine called the Evangelical Presbyterian and I find that it is necessary to receive CHRISTIANITY TODAY to keep us in touch with the pulse of the world church.…

Papakura, New Zealand

Choice Of An Object

“The Craftsman’s Character” (Minister’s Workshop, Sept. 14 issue) blessed my soul. I heartily agree with Paul S. Rees that “authentic pulpit proclamation is more than the preparation and delivery of a sermon: it is the preparation and delivery of a preacher.” I wish that every seminary and every school that has anything to do with the training of preachers would put this concept of preaching into the hearts and lives of the young men they are training.…

Calvary Baptist Church

Covington, Ky.

Lost In A Crowd

As one who is extremely concerned about the trend … toward expanding government control and the ever-increasing effect of socialism that is accompanying the same, I cannot help but feel that conservative evangelical thought has somehow missed the primary danger which is involved.

Great stress has been laid on the … gradual loss of individualism as well as the tendency toward conformity.… In this country, among the teenagers and college students, there is an alarmingly great desire to conform not only in dress, but in social habits and desires as well. With the advent of the labor union, the individual merit of the worker’s contribution is no longer recognized as it once was. Instead there is a blanket wage increase in many industries following labor-management negotiations.…

The worst result of all of this is the effect that it is having on the individual and his relationship with God. If the individual equates himself more and more with groups, unions and masses in general, he is losing sight of the absolute importance of his individual relationship with God. The Lord Jesus Christ was always concerned with the individual. In the Scriptures he says, “Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Again and again in the Gospel of John, chapter 3, the emphasis is laid on “a man” and his relationship with God.…

Hempstead, N. Y.

Word To Theologians

Congratulations on your fine stand for Christianity without all the weird interpretations. I wish theologians would quit turning themselves inside out to “accommodate” Christianity to each shift in scientific thinking. If they were actually scientists they would have a clearer picture of how little unanimity of opinion we have re many issues.…

Horticultural Research Division

Germain’s, Inc.

Livermore, Calif.

THE PREACHER:

James Philip has been since 1957 minister of Holyrood Abbey, Church of Scotland, Edinburgh. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, he went to Aberdeen University where he graduated in Arts and went on to study Divinity at Christ’s College. He was ordained in 1948. Before going to Edinburgh he was minister at Gardenstown in northeast Scotland. Mr. Philip, who is very interested in the work of Inter-Varsity Fellowship, is well known in Britain for his conference addresses.

THE TEXT:

Galatians 5:1

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage (KJV). Christ set us free, to be free men. Stand firm, then, and refuse to be tied to the yoke of slavery again (NEB).

THE SERIES:

During the past twelve months CHRISTIANITY TODAY has presented messages from notable preachers of God’s Word in the United Kingdom and the continent of Europe. This sermon concludes the series, which has included ministers from seven countries and nine denominational traditions. Sermons in the 1963 series will be by Asian Christians.

The point at which this great exhortation comes in Galatians is very significant. It follows a comprehensive doctrinal statement in which the Apostle Paul expounds the facts of the Christian position relating to the liberty that is ours in Christ. This is an order which he generally adopts in his epistles, and it is one which it is of the first importance to understand, if we are to appreciate the force and validity of the challenge he makes in our text.

First, then, he proclaims the great affirmations of the faith, unfolding the unsearchable riches of Christ, and after this, and on the basis of this, he gives the exhortation to consecration and holiness of life. First the indicatives, and then the imperatives, or, if you like, first the facts, then the challenge based on these facts. It is when we know what is ours in Christ that the challenge to consecration takes meaning in our lives. “This is where you are,” he cries, “this is where God has placed you in Christ, in a position of liberty. Therefore stand fast, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” Such is Paul’s understanding of the message of grace, and we now examine it in detail.

What, then, is the nature of this liberty of which he speaks? What is Christian liberty? You will have noticed in Galatians that Paul uses the word “redemption” and the verb “to redeem” in connection with Christ’s work (3:13 and 4:4, 5). Now the word “redemption” with its verb “to redeem” is one of the most important words in the New Testament. Its root meaning is “to release or set free by the payment of a price.” It is a picture from the slave market. The slave is bought by a new owner, and thus set free from his slavery. Three thoughts are associated with the word: (1) the state of sin out of which we are to be bought, and that it is intervention by an outside power who pays the price to release us; (2) the price that is paid: the purchase price of our redemption is the blood of the Redeemer; (3) the resultant state of the freed one: it means both the glorious liberty of the children of God, and, paradoxically, a new enslavement, enslavement to Christ, which is perfect freedom.

Justification

Now the first component part of this redemption, we may say, is justification, in the appropriation of which we are set free from the guilt of sin, and this Paul has made reference to in Galatians 2:16. Justification, the Shorter Catechism tells us, is “an act of God’s free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.”

That is definition in the grand manner; that is precise terminology, and we could not leave out any word without damaging the structure of what it seeks to convey. What does it mean? It means that in the Gospel, God makes a pronouncement upon the sinner, in which he receives a new status in His sight. Justification does not refer to our condition, in the sense that we are made righteous, but to our status, in the sense that we are accounted righteous in God’s sight. In Christ we are given a new position in which there is no longer any condemnation for us because of our sin. How can this be? The answer is: through the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us and received by faith alone. How are we to understand these words? Look at them this way. The Bible presents us with two pictures. The first is of man as he is by nature, lacking in righteousness, having fallen short of the glory of God, and therefore guilty in His sight and under condemnation, and as such, totally unacceptable. The second picture is of another man, the Man Christ Jesus, of whom it is twice recorded that God said: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” and who is all that we are not, who lived without sin, and was wholly acceptable to God. If all that he was could only be “made over” to us! But this is precisely what the Gospel is about. His “performance” was for us. All that ever he did, in life and in death, he did for our sakes. We are accepted in God’s sight, not for any righteousness of our own, but because of Christ’s righteousness.

A debtor to mercy alone,

Of covenant mercy I sing:

Nor fear, with Thy righteousness on,

My person and offering to bring.

The terrors of law and of God

With me can have nothing to do:

My Saviour’s obedience and blood

Hide all my trangressions from view.

This is the language of a justified man, a man who has been given a new status by God, a new position through grace. Not only so; it is the language of one who is standing fast in the position God has given him in Christ, as is the opening passage of Romans 5 as it exults in the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Such is the first aspect of the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. “I have placed you,” says God, “on a solid rock; stand fast therefore and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”

Do you see the pattern?—first of all the unfolding of what God has done, then the exhortation to rise to it and meet it by faith.

A Double Freedom

But now there is a second component, so to speak, to Christian liberty. There is a double freedom in Christ. There is not only freedom from the guilt of sin, but also freedom from the power of sin. I am not very sure whether we may separate these two, as we sometimes do in our hymns:

Be of sin the double cure,

Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

I am not at all satisfied that Paul makes that distinction. Even in the Epistle to the Romans there are some passages where he might well be referring to both aspects. However, for our purpose of definition we need to think of the other aspect, liberty from the tyranny of sin. To be a sinner means not only to be guilty, but also to be in bondage. “He that committeth sin is a slave of sin,” and there is freedom from this also in the death of Jesus Christ.

We cannot have Christ as our substitute without entering into an identification with him in his death and resurrection. That is why, in the second chapter of Galatians, we find Paul merging justification and identification together. He speaks of justification apart from the works of the law; then in the next moment, and in almost the next verse, he says, “I have been crucified with Christ.” That is, the faith which appropriates the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ also brings us into a relationship with him in his death. And so, paradoxically—this is the fascinating thing about Galatians—in order to experience the full liberty of the Spirit, there must be a crucifixion. As Paul puts it succinctly in Romans 6:7, “he that is dead is freed from sin.” In other words, the faith that justifies is a faith that crucifies.

What does this mean? It means that a man who puts his trust in Christ is brought into a new relationship with him. He is “in Christ,” he is united to him in his death and resurrection. It is in the Epistle to the Romans that this is developed most fully. Thus in Romans 6 Paul says that we are baptized into His death (v. 3), buried with him by baptism into death (v. 4), planted together in the likeness of his death (v. 5), that our old man is crucified with him (v. 6), that we are dead with Christ (v. 8). Five times, in a few verses, Paul stresses our position in Christ, asking repeatedly, “Know ye not …?” It is as if he were saying, “Don’t you realize that if you have put your trust in Christ at all, this is where you are, this is where God had placed you?”

This brings us to the point where we must consider what has been called “the representative nature” of Christ’s death. Christ died, not only as our substitute, but also as our representative. When he died, we died in him. This idea of representation is prominent in the Apostle Paul’s teaching about Christ, finding perhaps its fullest expression in Romans 5:12–21, where Adam and Christ both alike stand, not as private individuals but as public or “representative” figures. Just as what Adam did involved all who are “in Adam,’ so what Christ has done involves all who are “in Christ.” When He died, we died in him; when he rose from the dead, we rose in him. It is this principle that underlies all Paul’s teaching here. To be a believer means to have died to sin and risen to live unto God. Now this Paul speaks of as an accomplished fact; it is not something we have to do, but something that has been done. It is a truth of fact first before it becomes a truth in our experience, as with justification. It is when we reckon upon this truth and recognize it to be truth, that it becomes a glorious power and dynamic in our experience.

Such then is Paul’s doctrinal teaching in Galatians: we are justified freely by his grace, and have a new status; we are crucified with Christ and have a new life, lived by the faith of the Son of God. That is our position; that is where God has placed us.

Then he says: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free,” that is to say: live as a justified man, live as a crucified man, live as one who has died and is raised again to newness of life. That is the life of faith. This is the “reckoning of faith” of which he speaks in Romans 6:11. How then does it work and what does it involve? Let me give you these words in Romans 6:17, 18. “God be thanked,” he says, “you used to be servants of sin, but now have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”

“Ye obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine.” In other words, you received that doctrine, you listened to it, it dawned upon your soul, it gripped you, it mastered you, it commanded obedience from you, and in that act of obedience, liberty became a conscious experience in your life. You were made free from sin, and you became servants of righteousness.

Do you see how it works? Faith is not an intellectual acceptance of the Gospel, although, of course, intellectual acceptance of the truth of the Gospel is involved in any living faith. It is a moral capitulation to the truth of the Gospel; it is to dare to believe where God has placed us. But the whole trouble with us is we do not believe where God has placed us.

Here is a man who says, “I try my hardest, but I cannot do it; it is no use.” God says, “You can do it.” He also says: “You must do it. I have placed you in a position of victory.” He says, “Now, be victorious,” and we must dare to believe God’s Word with the obedience of faith—particularly and especially the obedience of faith, for this is not a magic formula, but a moral challenge. Given a man who is prepared to obey God, with all that that means in costly surrender of his own self to Him, that man will be filled with the glorious liberty of the children of God. Let a man revise very carefully and systematically the doctrinal truths that God states about his position—“there I am, there I stand, there he has placed me”—and look at them steadfastly and say, “Is that where I am? Then I demand to see the fruit of it in my life.” This is how a person is to enter into liberty.

Well, where are you? Where has God placed you? What is the truth about your position in Christ? “He hath made us kings and priests unto God”—not he will make us, but he hath made us. I am on entirely new ground, and Christ says to me: “I have adopted you into my family; go out and live royally because you are a son of mine.”

That is the challenge of faith—to go out and live like free men and act the part. Some people think that this is hypocrisy, but this is a measure of their misunderstanding of the mighty truth of God. We can go out and act the part because God has made the part real in the death and resurrection of his Son. He comes to prisoners and says: “You are free; go out and be free.” You are free! That is what God says to us in the Gospel, and there is no reason for any of us to live in the bondage of sin. We are God’s free men and women if we are Christ’s. Go out and live like free men and women. “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free.”

The Great Test

Now this is the great test of faith. Think of the situations we know we will meet tomorrow morning and of the fierce temptations that will assail us. Well, now, face them as the man you are in Christ, not as the man you are by nature. They come and touch these weak spots in your life, and straightway you feel they are drawing you away. Pull yourself up and say, “I am no longer that man by nature; I am no longer the man I am; I am the man God has made me, and I can resist this lawless thing and dismiss it.” This is something with which the moods and emotions of life have nothing to do. They are irrelevant to them. This is a stand that is as firm as the Eternal Rock itself. When God has inserted us into the death and resurrection of Christ he has passed the sentence of death on the old nature in us. “I have been crucified with Christ; that temptation cannot appeal to me for I am dead. That to which it made its appeal has died, has been crucified with Christ.”

You know, the torment and bondage that many believers experience, under the mistaken assumption that it is a sign of grace to be so wrestling and so overburdened, is far, far removed from the biblical position of sanctification. That is a sub-biblical position. We have no right to be groaning and in bondage if we are in Christ. Ours is the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Take my soul thy full salvation,

Rise o’er sin and fear and care.

Rise to the position God has given you. Be the man God has made you in Christ. Live like a son of the King.

We ought not to allow ourselves to be pushed around and imposed upon by the world, the flesh, or the devil. We must take our stand. That is what Paul means.

Are you there? Are you Christ’s? If you are, then I put it to you: if you are going to be honest and realistic, you must go out and demand from God that you will see the fruits of Christ’s passion in your life in terms of liberty from the bondage that has crippled you for so long. Go out and demand it—“O, God, you say that I am Christ’s, that I am set free; now let it work.” Go out and be free, and God bless you.

END