Thy kingdom come (Matt. 6:10a; read 6:5–15).

Our Lord teaches us to pray that the Kingdom come, not that it be created. What does this mean to us who pray? The twofold reply concerns the Kingdom here and now.

I. The Extent of the Kingdom.

A. The material realm. Here the interpreter voices truth for our “atomic age.”

B. The mental realm. All the powers of thought under His control. All poetry and all other arts to be under His divine direction. What an ideal!

C. The moral realm. He alone to rule the world and us in matters of right and wrong, such as war.

D. The spiritual realm. Ideally, Ruler over all that concerns men’s souls, now and ever.

II. The Expression of the Kingdom. So far, the ideal; now, the facts.

A. Actual, though largely unseen, Christ rules now.

B. Active. He reigns in believing souls, among merchant princes, and in men of science, though not yet in all.

C. Acknowledged. By the Church through her spiritual leaders. Largely what the Church is for.

D. Accepted by the individual. What else does it mean to be a Christian?

“How far are we exhibiting to the world the Kingship of Christ, and so revealing the King Himself?… Let every man or woman at this hour by solemn affirmation and solemn oaths surrender to the King, saying: ‘Here, O King, is my life. Rule over it; be its Master. Realize Thy purpose therein. Take the territory and subdue it to Thy perfect will. Through it show my children … and all the people I meet what is the meaning of Thy great Kingdom.’ ”

The Westminster Pulpit, Revell, n.d. Vol. V, pp. 260–273.

We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20).

While waiting for the certain end of life, this Wesleyan divine assembled 17 sermons. This one deals with the privileges and the responsibilities of Christ’s ambassadors.

I. An Ambassador Represents His Country in an Alien Land. The ambassador serves as the personal representative of his ruler, and his embassy belongs to the country from which he comes. This is a high office. Are you really an ambassador of Jesus Christ? Is your home an embassy of heaven? Do his rules and customs and laws alone prevail within its walls?

II. An Ambassador Has Direct Access to His Ruler. The problem of the ambassador is ever to hold true to his prime allegiance. How can one keep from being “denationalized”? By being often in the sanctuary, and in the midweek fellowship of prayer. Also, by jealously guarding the periods for daily devotions.

III. An Ambassador Goes on a Special Mission. Do you know the craft of skill in personal evangelism? Can you without embarrassment tell the unbeliever: “I am from God. The King whom I represent wants a reconciliation with you. Whatever the barriers, they are all in you. If you want to be right with him, you can. Accept the Atonement of God’s only-begotten Son. He has pardon for you. Receive his pardon. Be reconciled to God.” Remember, too, that sooner or later—

IV. Every Ambassador is Relieved of His Post. He is called home. God does not intend that the Christian ambassador should dwell forever in an alien land. Some day the call will come. May it find us fulfilling our ambassadorial duties. Will it be like that with you? When he calls you home, can you say: “I have finished the work thou didst give me to do.”

Can I Know God? by W. E. Sangster. Copyright 1960 by Abingdon Press.

Sermons Abridged By Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood

W. E. SANGSTER,Ambassadors for Christ;G. CAMPBELL MORGAN,The Kingdom for Which We Pray; and two of Dr. Blackwood’s own sermons, The Apostle’s Creed for Today and When a Young Man Comes to Church.

What we admire we tend to absorb. We are not likely to emulate what we lightly esteem.

Let me here plead for that excellence in preaching which becomes evident only where preaching is highly assessed. If the rejoinder be heard that the higher the assessment the more impossible the achievement of satisfaction, then let it be so. Recall Browning’s lines in “A Grammarian’s Funeral”:

That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it:

This high man, with a great thing to pursue,

Dies ere he knows it.

In his Preaching In a Scientific Age A. C. Craig of Glasgow starts off by telling of a day when, as a ministerial neophyte, he was walking Princes Street in Edinburgh and met Principal Alexander Martin. “Well,” asked Martin, “how’s the preaching going?” When Craig answered that he was finding it “very difficult,” the principal exclaimed, “Preaching’s not difficult, man: it’s impossible!”

So be it! It is to this very impossibility that the kind, enabling God has called us. After all, as I once heard that towering Anglican evangelical, J. Stuart Holden, say, “Christianity lives by the supernatural to achieve the impossible.”

For one thing, let’s put greater store by the incomparables of preaching. Let demogogues harangue, and side-show barkers yawp, and lawyers argue, and lecturers instruct, and reformers moralize, but let preachers announce the matchless tidings that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” Incomparably great is the preacher’s theme: “what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5). Incomparably great is the preacher’s text: “Preach the word”.… “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (2 Tim. 4:2; Heb. 4:12). Incomparably great is the preacher’s objective: a faithful representation of “God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3, 4).

For another thing, let’s put greater store by the indispensables of preaching. For example, there is the sense of a commission. Can we dispense with that? Dr. G. Campbell Morgan is reported to have said to his sons, “Don’t preach if you can help it!” Did he intend the downgrading of the ministry? Quite the opposite. So regal and demanding is it that a man better not touch it unless he can be sure that he is under the King’s orders!

Or, there is the summons to holy disciplines. Can we dispense with that? “As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15). “Pray constantly” (1 Thess. 5:17). “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed” (2 Tim. 2:15). This is not reckless “proof-texting.” These are legitimate samplings from wealthy mineral lodes that fairly vein and seam the subsoil of the New Testament. Preaching is the business neither of worldlings and dilettantes nor of sanctimonious prigs and plaster saints. It is the calling and passion of redeemed sinners who, knowing themselves forever unworthy, are forever thankful that they are “in Christ” and under bonds of gratitude to let him show through them his luminous likeness.

For a third thing, let’s put more store by the indestructibles of preaching. To be sure, there are moods and tempers that characterize this age of that. The externalities of culture are a flux, not a fixture. Fashions in popular philosophy are no less observable than fashions in women’s hats. The sensitive and sensible preacher will not be numb to all of this. Tact is the biggest syllable in contact. Relevance is never to be neglected.

But saying this is saying much less than all. Forsythe warned us that men obsessed with speaking to the age are in danger of speaking the age. Where then is the ageless?

The preacher who is not in commerce with the imperishable has nothing with which to address the perishable—and the perishing. His true traffic, let him know, is in the indestructibilities. The Christ he proclaims is indestructible. The Bible he expounds is indestructible. The truth he handles is indestructible. The Church, in the midst of whose life and worship he stands, is indestructible.

To think meanly of preaching is a form of treason. No man deserves to be its agent who does not behold it in the frame of the magnificent. Then, and only then, will he make his own contribution, under God, to the development—so devoutly to be wished—of which H. H. Farmer speaks when he says, “If one were asked to indicate in the briefest possible way the most central and distinctive trend in contemporary theology, one would be tempted to answer ‘the rediscovery of the significance of preaching.’ ”

The Cleric Of Clericalism

The Cardinal Spellman Story, by Robert I. Gannon, S.J. (Doubleday, 1962, 477 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by John A. Mackay, President Emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

Few literary tasks are more difficult for a biographer than to write the life of a public figure who is still alive. Few experiences, moreover, can or should be more embarrassing for a man than to peruse pages regarding his own career for which he himself has provided the facts, and their interpretation. Let a person write his autobiography, if he feels it important to do so, accepting responsibility at the same time for what he says by way of self-interpretation. The rest let him leave to other pens after he has passed into history or oblivion.

The distinguished biographer of Cardinal Spellman could have done a finer job, both from a literary and historical point of view, had he been less dependent upon the material provided personally by the great Roman Catholic churchman whose life and significance he seeks to portray in this book. One has in mind the quite excessive proportion of very subjective diary material which he utilized. This, in the judgment of the reviewer, has made it difficult for the author to set the “Spellman Story” in due perspective, both as regards the relationship of this story to the events of American and world history, and to the growth of Roman Catholic significance and power in the United States.

There is no doubt, however, that although there is much to criticize in this biography as a literary achievement, we have here a book of genuine importance. The reader is confronted with the profile, activities and ideals of the man whose name will be associated forever with the emergence of Roman Catholic clericalism in the United States. Here is a man who in early life chose the priesthood as a profession, and who from the moment of his choice devoted himself, by every means in his power, to ascend the ecclesiastical ladder. The dedicated zeal and cherished ambition of the young priest, Francis Spellman, helped him to overcome early attacks made upon him for his alleged “arrogance” as well as endeavors to engage him in positions of minor responsibility.

But circumstances favored his ever soaring desire for position, the success complex by which his spirit was mastered. Three of these circumstances are dealt with at length in the volume under review. These were Spellman’s education in Rome, linked to the favorable impression he made on Vatican authorities; his long and intimate friendship with the churchman who became Papal Secretary of State and afterwards Pope Pius XII; his subsequent close association with President Franklin D. Roosevelt for whom Spellman became the chief link with the Vatican, as well as a special presidential emissary who was employed on mysterious missions in many lands.

The man who became successively Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, Archbishop of New York and a Cardinal of the Roman See, opened a new era in the prestige and status of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. To read reflectively, and in the perspective of American history, the chronicle of events and sentiments which “The Cardinal Spellman Story” provides, is to be confronted with the churchman who will belong to history as the abiding symbol of nascent Roman clericalism in the United States. Clericalism, which this reviewer has elsewhere defined as “the pursuit of power, especially political power, by a religious hierarchy, carried on by secular methods and for the purposes of social domination,” began to appear in this country in the thirties of the present century and became incarnate in the person and work of the subject of this biography.

We follow in these pages the steps of a sincere, able and ambitious man who lives to make his church the controlling force in national and international affairs. In one of the great crises of history, the close friend and confidante of Pope Pius XII, who, because of this relationship became a private emissary of President Roosevelt and traveled around the world in “an aura of mystery,” gave the church to which he belonged a fresh status in American history.

Following Roosevelt’s death, the Cardinal’s effort to secure state funds for Roman Catholic education brought him into constitutional conflict with the First Amendment. It subsequently led him into a dramatic conflict with America’s greatest woman, a widow called Eleanor Roosevelt. Most fascinating is the account of this episode, which is very fairly documented by our biographer. Here is a twentieth-century Canossa, but a Canossa in reverse, in which a Cardinal, chastened and under the pressure of public opinion, pays a visit to the woman he had accused of taking a position “unworthy of an American mother.”

The man who is soul and symbol of the new clericalism had lost this battle. Twelve years later, however, running counter to fresh, liberal breezes in his own church, and against the will of a Roman Catholic layman who is President of the United States, Cardinal Francis Spellman, because of his anti-constitutional attitude on Church-State relations is stymieing the possibility of Federal aid to American public schools.

JOHN A. MACKAY

Fear And Force

The History of Apartheid, by L. E. Neame (Barrie and Rockliffe, 1962, 194 pp., 22s. 6d.), is reviewed by Timothy E. C. Hoare, member of the Conservative Party, Bow Research Group, London.

Mr. Neame, formerly editor of the Rand Daily Mail and Cape Argus has written a full account of the racial history of South Africa. He dislikes the present policy of apartheid, but is realistic enough to allow some degree of racial separation. The problem is unique; in the words of Lord Balfour “a White nation has established itself in a Black continent, and that is something that has never before presented itself in the history of mankind.” Yet to read the ill-informed attacks from some opponents, we might imagine that we simply have a case of one race dominating another with Nazi-like lack of principle. Unfortunately many of these critics of apartheid wear a Christian label, but Mr. Neame’s balanced account of the facts will dispel their sentimental prejudice.

Though written as factual history and couched in a journalistic format, the author allows us to taste the emotions that have been let loose. In spite of the Dutch Reformed Church’s good defense of apartheid, it seems likely that a neurotic fear of “natives” will overpower Scriptural and rational arguments. This is Mr. Neame’s conclusion in his final chapter. Fear has driven the Europeans into a Laager mentality which allows no concessions. Their almost medieval crusading zeal is unlikely to be moved except by force, and force may one day he forthcoming. For despite the real material action the government is taking to improve the physical lot of the Bantu, Mr. Neame points out that material comfort, far from lessening discontent only increases it where spiritual values are concerned. “Many can bear adversity, few can bear contempt.”

TIMOTHY E. C. HOARE

A Great Gulf

The Maze of Mormonism, by Walter R. Martin (Zondervan, 1962, 186 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by John R. Richardson, Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia.

The Mormons have come to lay much stress upon public relations and are careful to make certain that they do not use language which might reveal the true nature of their theological deviations. Due to this fact, Dr. Martin shows how the Mormon religion utilizes biblical terms and phrases and even adopts Christian doctrines in order to claim allegiance to the Christian faith. Since many of the additions to the Mormon church come out of Protestant denominations, it is imperative that Protestants understand the nature and dangers of Mormonism.

This volume may be characterized as a concise handbook on Mormon history, and also as a theology for Christian workers who need an adequate knowledge of the historic Christian faith to meet the propaganda of Mormonism.

Dr. Martin offers us a thoroughly documented, historical, theological, and apologetic survey of the Mormon religion. There is every evidence that the author has endeavored to be accurate. The careful reader will observe the great gulf that exists between Christianity and the religion of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Reading for Perspective

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

* The Role of the Minister’s Wife, by Wallace Denton (Westminster, $3.50). One for the lady of the manse, the “little minister” without calling, portfolio, or salary, often lonely in her fish bowl existence.

* Question 7, by Robert E. A. Lee (Eerdmans, $2.95). An exciting novel of conflict and cruelty in Communist East Germany; adapted and illustrated from the powerful, award-winning motion picture Question 7.

* Christ and Crisis, by Charles Malik (Eerdmans, $3). Seven addresses by the former president of the United Nations, a Greek Orthodox layman whose insights into the culture crisis merit a hearing.

Conscience And War

Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, edited by John C. Bennett (Scribner’s, 1962, 191 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, Professor of The Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

There are three attitudes which are usually taken in our day toward the question of a war which would involve the use of thermonuclear devices. Two extreme attitudes are, respectively, that of the pragmatist who will suggest that the same general principles govern war in 1962 as governed it a century ago, and that of the nuclear pacifist. In between is the attitude that the possibility of nuclear conflict poses problems of the most difficult nature for the conscience, so that some definite and rugged thinking is needed during a time of nonconflict, particularly at the point of the just war.

This volume seeks to cultivate the area which is marked out by the third attitude. The doctrine of a “just war,” coming down from the time of Thomas Aquinas, contains two provisos: war must be fought for a just cause, and it must be fought by permissable means. This panel of writers includes the editor and contributor of one chapter, Professor John C. Bennett. Other writers include a former employee of OSS and our State Department, a former scientist of Los Alamos, and a professor of religion at Princeton University. They seek to explore the moral implications of the possession of, the threatened use of, and an international policy based upon the existence of a supply of weapons which are basically genocidal.

The writers have few illusions concerning the attitude toward a possible nuclear conflict which the policy makers of the U.S.S.R. now take, and would take in the event they decide to launch an all-out war. Nor do they have any illusions concerning the degree to which moral scruples and considerations for truth would deter the men of the Kremlin if they felt they could win such a war.

Resumption of atmospheric tests of bombs up to 60 megatons of capability after the most solemn pledges that they would never be the first to do so has ended optimism concerning the idealism of the Red masters.

This volume does not profess to have final answers for our consciences. It does, however, raise questions which every sensitive Christian should ponder. The realism with which the capabilities of modern warfare should be regarded is spelled out in rugged detail. The work of this group of men deserves the most serious consideration of those who would try to think their way through the dilemma with which mankind’s new technological achievements confront it.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Rebel Against Reason?

Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther, by B. A. Gerrish (Oxford University Press, 1962, 188 pp., $6.75 or 30s.), is reviewed by Paul M. Bretscher, Professor of New Testament, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Mr. Gerrish investigates the charge often leveled against Luther, that he was given to “irrationalism” and championed a revolt against reason. On the strength of much evidence from Luther’s writings, the author concludes that to understand Luther’s attitude toward reason one must bear in mind that Luther distinguishes between “1. natural reason ruling within its own proper domain in worldly matters (a ‘practical reason’ approaching at times the notion of ‘common sense’); 2. natural reason illegitimately carrying over into the domain of spiritual matters certain presuppositions derived from ‘the world’; 3. regenerate reason working legitimately within the domain of spiritual matters by humbly adopting presuppositions derived solely from ‘the Word’ ” (p. 170). The author also reminds us that Luther’s profound appreciation of the sola gratia compelled him to expose and reject every form of opinio legis (within and outside the church) which sought status before God alongside of gratia.

The author states his findings with persuasive forthrightness and cautious restraint. As a result of his magnificent achievement there is now available in the English tongue a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the meaning of ratio in Luther’s theology. The author’s study ought also to prove an exemplary guide for the investigation of other problems in Luther’s thought. We encourage the reader: Tolle et lege, and do not shy away from the copious but always exciting footnotes.

PAUL M. BRETSCHER

Entertaining Diversion

Hear the Word! A Novel about Elijah and Elisha, by Heinrich Zador, translated by Robert W. Fenn (S.C.M., 1962, 286 pp., 21s.; McGraw-Hill, $4.95), is reviewed by Calvin D. Linton, Professor of English Literature and Dean of Columbian College, George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

It is astonishingly difficult, seemingly, to write a really good novel on biblical subjects. Heinrich Zador has come commendably close, and in the process has written an interesting narrative, filled with three-dimensional characters and set in a land Mr. Zador knows at first hand (he has been a resident of Israel since 1939). But there is still the palpable difference (at least to one familiar with the Bible itself) between the matchless compression and dramatic power of the Old Testament stories in the King James Version, and the very best expanded, fictional account in modern English. Mr. Zador, indeed, suffers from a double handicap, since his novel was written in German (Die Erfüllung), and one cannot tell whether the translator has communicated the original quality.

To deal properly with titans like Elijah and Elisha obviously takes something close to epic style. They cannot be made familiar without being reduced in stature. Further to divest them of their miracles is to leave them looking like rather impressive but not awesome leaders of a modern California religious cult. As to the miracles, Mr. Zador is quite clear: “Gradually fantasy, desire and wish fulfillment crept into the stories … until the eventual form of the story was accepted as true, for that is how it ought to have happened.” Stature is lost, too, by such dialogue as that spoken when Elijah puts his robe on Elisha: “No! Do not make fun of me!” says Elisha. “I am not making fun,” replies Elijah. One yearns for the KJV.

The best part of the book ignores the prophets and concentrates on kings and princes, battles and alarms, court color and intrigue. Indeed, it might have been better to write a piece of historical fiction quite independently of the biblical narratives. Thus at least the awkwardness of the invented romance between Elisha and the Shunammite woman could have been avoided.

Despite these strictures, the novel is an entertaining diversion. It has pace, descriptive power, and unity. But it does not tell much about the real Elijah and Elisha.

CALVIN D. LINTON

Barth, Dooyeweerd, Runia

Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture, by Klaas Runia (Eerdmans, 1962, 225 pp., $4), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.

This well-documented study with its valuable footnotes handles both exposition and criticism with easy clarity.

After explaining Barth’s view that the Bible is a witness to revelation but is not to be identified with revelation, the author goes to some length in showing that Barth accepts New Testament support for half his view but furnishes no New Testament evidence for the other half. In particular Dr. Runia points out that the biblical term witness and the Barthian term witness do not mean the same thing.

Again, in analyzing the concept saga, Dr. Runia uncovers the inconsistency between Barth’s expressed reliance on Scripture and his actual use of preconceived notions of what revelation must be. As before, the author shows that Barth pays no attention to what the Bible says about itself.

With respect to the charge that the Bible teaches ancient and outmoded world views, a charge for which Bultmann is better known than Barth, the author rejects the solution of Aalders and Grosheide that the Old Testament writers merely used everyday language to describe what they saw, and substitutes Dooyeweerd’s theory of law-spheres. Inasmuch as Dooyeweerd agrees with Barth in denying the inerrancy of Scripture, the precise intent of this substitution is hard to discern; and the later preference for plenary rather than verbalinspiration, as well as the apparent approval of John Mackay’s distinction between intellectual truth and “personal truth,” detract from the otherwise firm defense of biblical authority.

For a conclusion, and in opposition to those who say that Barth has changed his views, the author with adequate documentation shows that Barth has not changed in any important way with reference to revelation and the Scripture. And the recent lectures in Chicago confirm Dr. Runia’s conclusion.

GORDON H. CLARK

Grey Flannel For You

Telling the Good News: A Public Relations Handbook for Churches, by various authors (Concordia Publishing House, 1962, 202 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Bruce A. Brough, Editorial Assistant, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Here is a collection of useful information in the vital (and neglected) field of church public relations. Although the term “public relations” conjures up mental images of a smooth, sophisticated pitchman in the proverbial grey flannel suit, this little handbook brings things back into perspective.

How about such things as the condition of the church lawn? On the local level, such a “minor” point may have more effect on the public’s impression of your church than a well-designed church advertisement or a clever news release.

These items as well as the pastor’s personal public relations, hints on meeting misfortune, presenting the Gospel via radio, television and other media, and many other important points are thoroughly yet briefly covered. The writers are individuals well qualified in their respective fields of communication.

Difficult technical points are adequately discussed in each chapter, giving the pastor a working knowledge of any media he chooses to engage as he and his church seek to communicate, with utmost effectiveness, the best news of all time.

BRUCE A. BROUGH

Vatican Agenda

The Second Vatican Council, by Henri Daniel-Rops, translated by Alastair Guinan (Hawthorn Books, 1962, 160 pp., $3.50) is reviewed by W. Stanford Reid, Professor of History, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

In this relatively short work Mr. Daniel-Rops, who has made a considerable name for himself as a lay historian and apologist for the Roman Catholic Church, endeavors to give something of the background of Pope John XXIII’s forthcoming ecumenical council. The first part of the work discusses the history of (Roman Catholic) ecumenical councils down to the present day. The second part endeavors to analyze and define the nature and operation of an ecumenical council, and the third part deals specifically with that called by the present pope.

The author points out that, although most of the interest in the council outside the Church of Rome has arisen from the Pope’s ecumenical emphasis, much more is involved. There will be discussions on the whole problem of the Roman church’s life and work. While the tone of the book is very irenical, as one reads one soon becomes aware that Roman Catholic claims still remain the same, and that any church union will be an absorption into the Roman ecclesiastical organization.

W. STANFORD REID

Book Briefs

God in Modern Philosophy, by James Collins (Henry Regnery Company, 1959, 476 pp., $6.50). A Thomistic philosopher’s analysis and evaluation of agreements and disagreements among modern thinkers (from Nicholas of Cues through Heidegger and Whitehead) about the nature of God.

Neo-evangelicalism, by Robert Lightner (Dunham, 1962, 170 pp., $2). An evaluation of so-called neo-evangelicalism by the extreme right with conclusions that are valid upon its own premises.

Alcoholism and Society, by Morris E. Chafetz, M.D., and Harold W. Demone, Jr. (Oxford, 1962, 319 pp., $6.95). Authors reject all single factor explanations of the cause of alcoholism. They deny that morality has anything to do with it, and suggest that cause stems from a complex of psycho-physiological and socio-cultural disturbances.

The Audacity of Preaching, by Gene E. Bartlett (Harper, 1962, 159 pp., $3). An animated discussion of the task of preaching which is pleasant to read. Perceptive in what it treats; rendered superficial by what it omits. The Lyman Beecher lectures.

Guilt and Grace, by Paul Tournier (Harper, 1962, 224 pp., $3.75). A competent treatment by a physician who bores into the phenomena of guilt in the light of God’s grace.

The Silence of God, by Helmut Thielicke (Eerdmans, 1962, 92 pp., $2.50). Sermonettes with an existential slant; solid and somber, throwing light on the dark places of the agonies of our age.

The Glories of the Cross, by A. C. Dixon (Eerdmans, 1962, 253 pp., $3). Distillations of the riches of the Gospel by an outstanding preacher of the early twentieth century.

The Sole Sufficiency of Jesus Christ, by Herbert W. Cragg (Revell, 1961, 110 pp., $2.50; Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 10s. 6d.). Brief to sketchy comments on the Epistle to the Colossians.

Christ in You, by Herschel H. Hobbs (Baker, 1961, 128 pp., $2.50). Popular exposition of Colossians; first fruit of Evangelical Pulpit Library.

Holding Fast to Grace, by Roy L. Aldrich (Dunham, 1962, 94 pp., $2). A book about Law under a title about Grace.

In the Beginning: A Journey Through Genesis, by Jack Finegan (Harper, 1962, 159 pp., $3.50). Conversational, scholarly, informative.

Aristotle Dictionary, ed. by Thomas P. Kiernan (Philosophical Library, 1962, 524 pp., $7.50). Definitions of Aristotle’s basic terms as distilled from his writings; with a 155-page introduction to his writings.

The Epistles of John, by Neil Alexander (SCM, 1962, 173 pp., 12s. 6d). A simple commentary, generally along traditional lines of interpretation, useful for the nonspecialist. The author is a lecturer at Aberdeen University, and believes the New Testament is not artistic in purpose, but evangelical and hortatory.

The Royal Psalms, by Keith R. Crim (John Knox, 1962, 127 pp., $2.75). Introduces Americans to the German and Scandinavian research on the Messianic Psalms. Preceded by a discussion of the kingship idea in Israel. A valuable study.

Paperbacks

The World He Loves, by Douglas W. Thompson (Edinburgh House Press, 1962, 112 pp., 5s.). This is a presentation of the challenge of the World Missionary situation by a much traveled Methodist missionary statesman.

Tillich, by David H. Freeman (Baker, 1962, 42 pp., $1.25). Author concludes that Tillich’s thought is generally “unintelligible,” a “theological square-circle,” and “nonsense.”

The Shape of Faith, by G. Hugh Wamble (Broadman, 1962, 88 pp., $1). Brief historical sketches of the shape the Christian faith has taken in seven denominations: Presbyterian, strict authority; Baptist, Christian fellowship; Lutheran, pure doctrine; Episcopal, formal worship, and so on.

Call To a Divided City, by Otto Dibelius (Kreuz Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany, 1961, 66 pp., $.75). Addresses delivered by the bishop of Berlin to his severed diocese immediately after the erection of the Berlin wall.

Collectivism Challenges Christianity, by Verne Paul Kaub (Light and Life, 1961, 249 pp., $1). A cry for freedom against the encroachments of collectivism. First published in 1946.

The Rites of Christian Initiation, by C. E. Pocknee (Mowbrays, 1962, 46 pp., 6s.). A tendentious High Episcopalian case exalting confirmation at the expense of baptism; originally lectures at Seabury Seminary.

The Speeches of Peter in the Acts of the Apostles, by H. N. Ridderbos (Tyndale, 1962, 31 pp., 1s. 6d.). Originally the 1961 Tyndale New Testament lecture by a learned Dutch scholar.

Cities and Churches, ed. by Robert Lee (Westminster, 1962, 366 pp., $3.50). A comprehensive study of the multiple problems of the inner-city church created by the mass movement to suburbia.

The Atonement, by John Murray (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962, 31 pp., $.75). Competent explication of the Atonement as a substitutionary act.

Election and Reprobation, by James Henly Thornwell (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961, 97 pp., $1.50). Monograph on election and reprobation according to the Westminster Confession; first published in 1840 and republished on the occasion of the Centennial of Presbyterian Church, U.S.

Limited Inspiration, by Benjamin B. Warfield (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962, 54 pp., $1.25). Originally published in 1894 under title Professor Henry Preserved Smith, on Inspiration.

Thoughts on the Prayer Book, by J. C. Ryle (Church Book Room Press, 1962, 15 pp., 9d.). Another paperback reprint by a nineteenth-century evangelical bishop.

The Narratives of the Passion, by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Mowbrays, 1962, 26 pp., 3s.). A lecture delivered to the International New Testament Congress at Oxford in 1961 stressing the different aspects of the Passion in each Gospel.

Barth’s Christology, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962, 29 pp., $.75). Author argues to conclusion that Barth’s Christ is a “meaningless mirage” and his theology a philosophy of “egress and regress.…”

Baptism Not For Infants, by T. E. Watson (obtainable from author: Ribchester, Lancashire, England; 1962, 108 pp., 3s. 6d.). A strict Baptist attack on Paedobaptism, but without reference to most modern works.

German-English Theological Word List, Revised Edition, by Carl Bangs (Carl Bangs, 5110 Cherry, Kansas City 10, Mo.; 1962, 16 pp., $1). Good for German reader who needs help with theological and philosophical terminology.

A fortnightly report of developments in religion

The long-awaited Second Vatican Council, which opens in Rome October 11, has already produced some marked effects upon thought and action throughout Christendom.

Speculation over what the council may do is only part of the picture. There is a new air of independency in some Roman Catholic circles which finds expression in many ways. The overall strategy still seems to be geared to creating a climate whereby the “separated brethren” might more easily return to the Church of Rome (see editorial, page 27). But some evangelical leaders feel that current trends are to be welcomed nonetheless.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, public affairs secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals, says Pope John XXIII’s call for the council is having a “beneficial” effect on Protestant-Catholic relations. He credited the present pontiff with having done much to bring about such an effect.

Taylor made the remarks to newsmen in Detroit last month where he delivered an address at the annual meeting of the Conservative Baptist Association of America.

He said that in the eyes of Protestants, “Pope Pius (XII) was a pugilist, but Pope John is a jolly, good-natured fellow.”

“Pressure has gone off of Protestants in Colombia and conditions changed remarkably,” Taylor added. “And things have even softened a little in Spain, and mild opposition (to Protestant missionaries) has been withdrawn in other countries.”

He said that a number of NAE pastors have asked the organization to send observers to the council, but that NAE officials turned down the idea.

As for Spain, there may be pressures from within Roman Catholicism for more tolerance toward Protestants.

The Danish Roman Catholic paper Katolsk Ugeblad, in a sharp criticism of the Spanish government policy, has said that “arguments intended to prove the freedom of the Protestants in Spain rebound upon the person advancing them. Compared with Danish conditions, they do not testify to tolerance, but rather to the contrary.”

Even Martin Luther seems to be gaining respect in the new climate. Catholic scholars no longer regard him as the villain they once did, according to a Jesuit professor of church history, the Rev. Edward D. McShane of Alma College, Los Gatos, California.

Vatican View Of Marilyn Monroe

Osservatore Romano, the Vatican City newspaper, asserted last month that American film producers passed the “last boundary” in directing actress Marilyn Monroe to appear nude in a motion picture scene.

The actress was subsequently discharged from the picture, “Something’s Got to Give,” for failure to appear for work. She claimed she was suffering from colds.

Osservatore noted that the film director had reproached Miss Monroe for catching cold while wearing a “five-ounce dress” during her appearance at a birthday celebration for President Kennedy in New York.

Said the newspaper: “The unbelievable part is that neither the directors nor the producers had the slightest suspicion that the sequence of colds may have been caused by the bath without even that five-ounce dress.”

In Boston, the archdiocesan newsweekly The Pilot also chided a public figure, but for different reasons. The target was former President Eisenhower, who, in defending a cabinet official said:

“They can kill me on a cross and drive the nails into my hands and the spear into my side if …”

The Pilot said that “the unconscious remark” contained “nearly blasphemous implications.”

“He appears more as a seeker for religious conviction who became in turn a catalytic agent for real reform within the church,” McShane said in an address to the American Society of Church History last month.

Another important development in American Catholicism has been the emergence of a more powerfully influential laity. This move has been taking definite shape and substance during the first six months of 1962, according to Religious News Service.

Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, prominent priest-historian at the Catholic University of America, believes that the trend is already so marked as to have created a theology of the lay movement. Theologians in recent years, he said in a commencement address at Carroll College, Helena, Montana, have refined this concept in a way which “suggests the revival of the part once played in the early Church by the deacon” in spreading Christian truths.

Ellis predicted that if the laity is going to assume a bigger role, care must be taken that the layman not overstep his bounds into realms which properly belong to the clergy, while at the same time the clergy must relax some of its accustomed control over the laity. He spoke of “symptoms that suggest an anticlerical sentiment hitherto unknown to American Catholics” and warned that this “virus” would spread unless clergymen ease some of their traditional control over the laity.

Another prominent Catholic professor, the Rev. John Walsh of Weston (Massachusetts) College has gone so far as to suggest a popularly-elected hierarchy for the church.

Perhaps the greatest stumbling block to better Protestant-Catholic relations in the United States is represented by church-state issues. Continued insistence upon public funds for parochial schools is a constant source of tension. Although they are rarely heard from, some leading Catholics do not want government aid, for they fear that such subsidy invites outside control or at least conformity.

Leading Catholic churchmen realize they must desegregate their schools, for instance, if they are ever to get federal funds. But the process is nevertheless slow. Desegregation has been ordered in New Orleans and Atlanta, although large parts of the South still have segregated parochial schools including the entire states of Alabama and Mississippi, the cities of Memphis and Chattanooga, Tennessee, and St. Augustine, Florida, and four of the seven dioceses in Texas.

How do current trends affect efforts to evangelize Roman Catholics?

Alert evangelicals feel that a more friendly climate will be advantageous to such efforts. Said one key evangelical observer a few days ago: “Good will is on our side.”

Reconsidering Taiwan

Church World Service has scrapped its plans for a gradual phaseout of its mass distribution program for U. S. surplus foods on Taiwan. Instead, the National Council of Churches overseas relief arm will continue the program until June 30, 1963, at which time a new system “that can be administered with integrity” is expected to go into effect. Disclosure of the change of plans came last month during a meeting of the policy-making NCC General Board.

CWS Director Hugh D. Farley said the decision to continue the mass feeding program had stemmed from previous commitments and the feeling that the program could not be reduced now in view of the need for food on the island. Lutheran World Relief, which cooperates with CWS on Taiwan, also announced that it would continue its part of the shipments.

On May 8 CWS and LWF announced they would discontinue mass food distribution and it was reported at that time that inequities and black market operations were factors in the decision (see “Problems with Food” on page 27 of the May 25 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY). The latest CWS statement said that “subsequently there was an unauthorized leakage to the press of some of the information that had led to this decision, with a consequent public misrepresentation that CWS was taking a hasty and unilateral action.”

Farley also made public during the General Board meeting in New York a telegram to legislators in Washington protesting the proposed termination of aid to Poland and Yugoslavia.

Among other business which came before the board was a proposed pronouncement on mass communication media. The board recommended that NCC President J. Irwin Miller appoint a special commission to redraft the proposed pronouncement. The commission will represent the NCC Divisions of Christian Education and Christian Life and Work as well as the Broadcasting and Film Commission.

The board also authorized a first-time national study conference on church-state relations to be held in February, 1964, in Chicago. The conference, made up of representatives from NCC-member bodies as well as non-member churches, will deal with a broad range of church-state questions, including federal aid to parochial schools, religious practices in public schools, and tax exemption for church property. The conference was proposed by the NCC’s Department of Religious Liberty and the Division of Christian Life and Work.

The board noted with “gratification increasing evidences of warmer relations with the Roman Catholic Church in many parts of the world.” The note was in a resolution passed unanimously without discussion.

A wide range of moral and ethical problems were considered at the board meeting, but no pronouncements were issued. A staff committee was reported to be developing a “position paper” which would “explore in thorough manner the philosophical and ethical issues involved in the confrontation of Christianity and communism.”

Wcc And The ‘New Society’

Five more Soviet bloc churches are applying for membership in the World Council of Churches, among them the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists of the U.S.S.R. This denomination, which purports to embrace virtually all Protestants in Russia, claims a constituency of 545,000 members and upwards of 5000 pastors.

Other churches to apply are the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia and the Georgian Orthodox Church. Three of these denominations, whose combined membership totals almost six million, were visited by Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, when he was in Russia in 1959.

Almost simultaneous with the WCC announcement a twelve-man delegation of the World Council arrived in Geneva after a two-week tour of the Soviet Union, remarking that the “spiritual strength of the (Russian) people was particularly impressive.” They had been invited to visit Russia as guests of the Russian Orthodox Church, itself accepted into WCC membership at last year’s New Delhi assembly.

“A number of points of historical, cultural and national interest were visited,” the churchmen reported, “and the delegation was impressed with the strenuous efforts of the Russian people to build a new society.” The statement also noted that theological questions and world peace had been discussed with Russian leaders.

On another front, the Communist-sponsored Christian Peace Conference noted “with joy and attention” a report about negotiations between representatives of the CPC and the World Council that took place in Geneva this March.

Pampering The Church

Methodist Bishop John Wesley Lord of Washington warns that the church must voluntarily assume a fair share of the tax burden if it is to avoid a growing wave of anti-clericalism and regain its stature in the American scene.

“How often the church accepts the dubious role of the pampered darling of a sinsick society,” the bishop noted in an address at the 178th annual meeting of the Baltimore Methodist Conference. “Far from seeking favors from the state, already overburdened with the need for a new and higher taxation, the church must recognize that it has a corresponding obligation to the state. It must cooperate with the forces of good government to provide the good life for all the citizens.”

Lord challenged the delegates to righteous action. “If the churches as institutions in our land will seek no favors, accept no tax exemptions on other than property used for worship, they may once again in this dark hour which is passing over our nation, exert a power which is not of man but of God, for righteousness and peace throughout the nation.”

In a seeming demonstration of the sub-tilties of church-state problems, however, the following week witnessed the dedication of the Methodists’ new Sibley Hospital in Washington, where Lord paid tribute to House Speaker John W. McCormack, a Roman Catholic, for his sponsorship of some key enabling legislation. Congress gave the Methodists a section of public park land on which to erect the $9,000,000, 340-bed hospital and a nursing school, in return for which the hospital turned over to the government its old building and other church-owned land.

A church tax controversy cropped up. meanwhile, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where the Upper Merion Township Board of Education announced its intention to seek an annual tax of $174,000 on the newly-constructed headquarters of the American Baptist Convention which has been assessed at $3,000,000. The board contends that the convention’s Judson Press has been publishing books and periodicals for profit, and that the building, or a portion of it, is therefore taxable.

“The important thing to us in this case,” observed Dr. Edwin H. Tuller, ABC general secretary, “is the principle that religious organizations, under the law, are tax exempt for those properties and activities that are necessary to the function of the church.”

Tuller denied that the convention’s printing operations placed the Judson Press within a profit making category. “Certainly we sell books that are printed by our presses, but they are not sold for profit. We just meet expenses and needs.”

While hoping to settle the disagreement without litigation, Tuller nevertheless expressed a willingness to go to court if necessary.

Tensions In Spain

Serious tensions were developing this month between the Franco regime and Roman Catholic leaders in Spain. The tensions are a result of hierarchy support of mass strikes in Spain in recent weeks.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco charged that the wave of strikes had been fomented by Communists and liberals and that “lay organizations of the Church” had encouraged them.

At the same time, he insisted that “relations between Church and State are in perfect harmony because both know who their common foe is.”

He accused foreign propaganda of having “set against our regime the excess of some Basque separatist priests or the clerical errors of some other exalted priests, none of which means anything in the framework of the great spiritual renaissance of our nation.”

The tension was nonetheless apparent, Franco’s remarks notwithstanding. Use of Spain’s national radio network to broadcast masses from Roman Catholic churches was forbidden by the Spanish Ministry of Information, reportedly because of a broadcast sermon delivered by a Jesuit priest from a Barcelona church. The exact nature of the sermon was not disclosed, but it was understood to have dealt with “social problems” and controversial problems centering on labor-management relations as pointed up by striking mining and industrial workers in the northern part of the country.

Five Spanish Roman Catholic bishops subsequently denied reports appearing in the foreign press that they supported the strikes, according to information disclosed in New York City by Spain’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

Following release of this information originally in Madrid, similar announcements were made by Spanish overseas offices to offset a growing impression that the church—particularly some members of the hierarchy—and the Franco regime are split on the strikes.

In Madrid, six priests were suspended for supporting the strikers. At the same time, however, a leading Roman Catholic paper urged Spaniards to follow church principles in labor matters.

Miracle In The Congo

Tribes which have been at war since 1959 came together in a miraculous reunion at the spring synod meeting of the Presbyterian Church of Congo, meeting at Bulape, deep in the Kasai Province.

Here is one missionary’s description of the delegates’ journey to the meeting as reported by Ecumenical Press Service: “Members of opposing tribes, who had not spoken to each other for two years, found themselves sitting side by side in the car for several hours of travel over rugged roads. The silence was awkward; everyone in the car was quiet, for they didn’t have much to say to each other.” Difficult problems faced the delegates. Many small tribes wanted their own presbyteries. One large tribe wanted its own synod. Political problems and mission-church relationships added to the meeting’s complexity.

At Bulape, “as the meeting progressed, there were tense moments and heated tempers at times. Yet far-reaching decisions were made for better administrative organization of the church, a committee was set up to consider the establishment of a General Assembly, and many other matters were discussed.”

The climax came one afternoon. “After the minutes had been read and approved, Congolese pastors and elders got up, one after the other, and confessed the collective sins of their tribe and some personal sins. You could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. This was a truly great religious experience for all who were there. What we had been trying to do for months, the Holy Spirit did within a few minutes. To close the meeting we had a communion service with a Lulua, a Mukete, and a Muluba leading.

“After the meeting I couldn’t tell a Muluba from a Muena Lulua or a Mukete, they all seemed to be so happy to be together again.”

When the delegates left, their reconciliation was spread in local villages. A missionary wrote later, “it was a thrill to see the way the people of the different tribes greeted each other … Last April, a year ago, they were fighting each other and burning the villages and killing each other. Now they are together in one presbytery … Since I have been at Luebo, a miracle has taken place.”

‘Osagyefo’ The Provider

Methodist, Presbyterian, and Anglican leaders in Ghana sent a carefully-worded memorandum to the Ministry of Education last month. They outlined in no uncertain terms their reasons for disallowing “Young Pioneer” groups to be formed in their church schools.

The memo was in response to the ruling Convention People’s Party decree that the Marxist youth movement must be represented in every school.

The Protestant leaders’ anxiety over such a development is apparent in view of the Young; Pioneer catechism, which has passages such as these:

“Who gives us our daily bread?”

“Answer—Osagyefo Dr. Nkrumah.”

“Who gives us our clothes?”

“Answer—Osagyefo Dr. Nkrumah. Osagyefo will never die.”

“Osagyefo” is a traditional title meaning “redeemer, messiah, saviour.”

“Dr. Nkrumah” is Ghana President Kwame Nkrumah.

Obstacle To Unity

Ecumencial Press Service reports that proposals for church mergers in North India, Pakistan, and Ceylon have been rejected by the Calcutta Diocesan Council of the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon. The council is a diocese of one of the bodies involved in the plan. Its action is considered significant because the Bishop of Calcutta is also the metropolitan of the Anglican body. The entire church is expected to act on the proposals at its General Council in 1963.

The mergers would result in the formation of the United Churches of North India and Pakistan and the United Church of Lanka (Ceylon).

The North India and Pakistan plan would be a union of the Anglican body, Methodist Southern Asia Central Conference, British and Australian Methodist Conferences, Church of the Brethren, Disciples of Christ, Council of Baptist Churches, and the present United Church of Northern India. In Ceylon the Lanka Church would combine Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists.

Convention Circuit

Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania—The oldest continuous denomination in America may soon lose its individual identity. The Reformed Church in America, convened last month for the 156th meeting of its General Synod, was confronted by 18 overtures pressing for merger with other churches. Thirteen came from the denomination’s classes and three from particular synods. Eight of the overtures sought possible union with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), eight others with the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., one with the United Church of Christ, and one with the Christian Reformed Church.

The feeling of urgency for church union was apparent not only from the high number of overtures, but also in their edgy language. The overture from Classis Metropolitan Jersey declared, “If it be the policy of General Synod to continue aloof … the General Synod should clearly state that policy, enabling constituent congregations, ministers and members to plan accordingly.” The Classis of Ulster was even more plain-spoken: “If … a majority … prevent us again from merging in strength … why then should not (1) Synods …, (2) Classes … (3) Churches unite individually?”

The Standing Committee on Overtures reported that it had “grave doubts whether the ecumenical urge can again be thwarted with impunity.” The synod adopted a committee recommendation “to take steps looking toward merger” with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. Earlier the Synod had adopted by a unanimous, standing vote a “Joint Resolution” that the two denominations explore 14 areas of common concern. The “Joint Resolution” had been drawn up by committees of the two churches, and had earlier been adopted by a unanimous, standing vote by the Southern Presbyterian General Assembly in May.

The synod also decided “to hold other union possibilities in abeyance.” It was felt that fruitful discussion could not be held at this time with United Presbyterians and the United Church of Christ since both are engaged in ecumenical discussion with three other churches.

Synod debates also had a historic flavor. Echoes of the 334-year-old denomination’s origin were heard as delegates spoke of King George I and the royal charter he had granted to the Collegiate Reformed Church of New York. Collegiate Church is part of the Reformed denomination but still operates under the British royal charter. Discussion centered on the charter’s provisions for the obtaining of ruling elders which conflict with the method prescribed by the denomination’s constitution as amended in 1960. Decision on this highly technical church-state issue was deferred for further study.

An overture from Classis of South Grand Rapids to withdraw from the World Council of Churches was rejected. The classis asserted that the theological position of the Orthodox churches was contrary to the faith of the World Council itself and to that of the Reformed Church, and that the Russian Orthodox Church admitted last year at New Delhi was “completely subservient” to Russian communism. The overtures committee countered that a completely subservient church would not still have its seminaries and churches closed and its bishops imprisoned, and that the admitted divergence of theological position was not such as to exclude such fellowship as obtains within the World Council of Churches.

The Rev. Herman J. Ridder presented a moving report on the denomination’s Preaching-Teaching-Reaching Mission. He declared, “Any evangelism that is not convicted of the fact that men are lost apart from Jesus Christ will die from lack of motivation.” Ridder informed the delegates that many ministers confessed that the impact of the church’s new PTR Mission had changed their view of their own ministry.

The General Synod urged “constant scrutiny” of right-to-work laws and affirmed “the necessity of preserving just collective bargaining.” It also voted “to stubbornly resist all attempts to deprive our children of the religious symbols of Bible reading and prayer in our public educational systems.”

In other action the synod declared that “adultery and desertion may be illustrative rather than definitive patterns through which the ‘one-flesh’ relationship is destroyed.” It urged study to discover whether modern life presents other such “involuntary breache(s) of the marriage ties.”

J.D.

Union Seminary And Accreditation

An emotional floor battle enlivened the twenty-third biennial meeting of the American Association of Theological Schools in Toronto last month.

The debate centered on 150-year-old Bangor (Maine) Theological Seminary, which has been unable to win complete accreditation because some 65 per cent of its students have no undergraduate degree.

An AATS Committee of Review sustained the decision of the Commission on Accrediting not to accredit the seminary.

Bangor President Frederick W. Whittaker appealed to the assembly for a reversal of the decision. The problem came into focus when it became apparent that proposed changes in the AATS constitution and standards of accreditation would make Bangor’s plight permanent.

Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, fought vigorously for underdog Bangor. He declared on the floor that if the association adopted the provisions he dissented from he would ask the Union faculty to surrender its own accreditation in favor of an associate ATTS membership. He averred that he was in dead earnest.

Reactions to Van Dusen’s threat were mixed, but the adoption in principle of the proposed changes leaves a question as to whether he will make it good.

It was also announced at the AATS meeting that Meadville Seminary (Unitarian) has been placed on probation for two years following breakup of the Federal Faculty of the University of Chicago.

Toronto—A decision on whether to open formal conversations with the United Church of Canada was postponed for another year by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

The proposal from the Presbytery of Victoria for talks to “create better mutual understanding” between the two denominations was referred to a committee on inter-church relations which will report to next year’s assembly.

Both the United and Presbyterian churches in Canada are conducting exploratory conversations with Anglican theologians but not with each other.

Total giving for all purposes to the denomination last year amounted to a record $1,735,000, an increase of seven per cent over 1960. The denomination embraces about 200,000 members.

The assembly raised the basic minimum salary for some 400 ministers by $800 a year to $3, 900. This is in addition to a free manse and a small travel allowance.

In other action, the assembly referred a report on nuclear weapons for Canada to the Board of Evangelism and Social Concerns for study and presentation at next year’s meeting. The report said no nation has a right to resort to nuclear weapons.

Minneapolis—Delegates to the 66th annual conference of the Lutheran Free Church accepted terms of a proposed merger with the American Lutheran Church by a vote of 530 to 112.

The action climaxed several years of deliberation by the 90,250-member LFC on whether it should join the 2,365,000-member ALC, third largest unit of U. S. Lutheranism. It followed two hours of orderly debate in which 24 speakers were heard, 18 for the merger and six against. The opposition cited concern about administrative control over congregations in the ALC and charged modernist and neoorthodox inroads at the larger body’s Luther Seminary at St. Paul, Minnesota.

Augsburg College and Seminary of the LFC will be separated when the merger takes effect. The future of the seminary has not yet been determined.

The LFC originally took part in the planning and discussion that resulted in the formation of the ALC but withdrew from union negotiations after a congregational referendum in 1955 failed by 35 votes to gain a required three-fourths majority favoring the merger. A second referendum in 1957 lost by 15 votes. Approval of the merger finally came last fall when a third referendum resulted in a 32-vote surplus over a required two-thirds majority.

The LFC’s application for membership in the ALC will be presented to its general convention in Milwaukee in the fall. LFC President John Stensvaag said the certification of membership to the ALC will include all congregations, omitting only those that have taken definite action to sever their LFC connection.

Dr. Paul C. Empie, executive director of the National Lutheran Council, predicted that the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod eventually will come into a new Lutheran cooperative association.

Hendersonville, North Carolina—A report condemning corruption in government and degeneration of private moral standards was adopted at the 158th meeting of the General Synod of the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church.

A request for a study program on physical healing through prayer was referred to a committee for consideration. The committee is expected to report to next year’s synod.

The denomination has some 28,000 members in 147 churches.

Belfast—The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland reaffirmed its membership in the World Council of Churches, although an amendment critical of the basis and policies of the WCC drew considerable support, particularly from younger ministers.

The assembly also reaffirmed a resolution passed last year which emphasizes the refusal to accept episcopal reordination in the interests of negotiations on union with other churches.

Dr. Austin A. Fulton, foreign mission convener, reported that the church has more missionary candidates for its work in India and Nyasaland than it has had in many years. A plentiful supply of ministerial students also was reported.

For the first time an official representative of the Irish Congregational Union was present at the sessions. Informal talks on church union between the Presbyterians and Congregationalists have been going on for some time. Other representatives at the assembly included top officials of the Church of Scotland, United Church of Canada, United Church of Northern India and the Presbyterian Churches in England and Wales.

At a foreign missions session the assembly received a report from the World Presbyterian Alliance urging that Presbyterian and Reformed churches “must undertake, or develop, discussions with the Roman Catholic Church.”

“The calling of the Second Vatican Council is an event which the Reformed churches cannot ignore,” the report declared. “Sympathetic and discerning theological study of the meaning of all these developments for Reformed churches, and for the ecumencial movement as a whole, is a responsibility which the Reformed churches must take seriously.”

Observing that ecumencial discussions are not limited to those churches within the movement, the report said:

“They should be pursued, in addition to the Roman Catholic Church, with those numerous groups, often very slightly organized in an ecclesiastical sense, which had undertaken an enormous amount of missionary work, and were extremely powerful in the countries where the younger churches were established.”

Recruiting Drive

The Church of England is lining up a full-time recruiting officer in a drive to enlist more men for the ministry. The Bishop of Guildford, Dr. George Reindorp, says local clergymen will be urged to preach on the need and that recruiting posters will be sent to every boys’ secondary school in the country.

The Faithful On File

The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is checking up on its 3,500,000 baptized members. A census conducted by the Newman Demographic Survey (officially recognized by the hierarchy) aims to cover every parish, and to get such details as educational standard, occupation, size of family and reading habits. Some 26 questions are asked in each interview. “Our inquiry is 100 per cent thorough,” said A. E. Spencer, director of the survey and a former Inland Revenue officer. “Every single household, whether it is known to be Catholic or not, is visited in the parish area. We even cover such places as lodging houses, hotels, and hospitals to be sure we miss no one.” There is a special five-question card for children.

When all the cards are completed for a parish they are sent to London for processing; then a copy is returned to the parish priest, who will pay anything from $200 to $550 for the data.

J. D. D.

An Invitation Declined

Some bellringers find the practice of their ancient art is thirsty work and take steps to remedy this—a fact which has been worrying the Anglican Bishop of Dunwich, the Right Rev. Thomas Cash-more.

Rededicating the bells at a service in Eye parish church, Suffolk, the bishop said: “In some churches bellringers enter the tower to ring the bells calling people to worship and then we see them leaving the church after proclaiming something of the Gospel through the bells. They slink off to the nearest pub to refresh themselves after their energetic action.”

The bishop felt this was like a clergyman who challenged people to come to church, but didn’t appear himself.

Suffolk bellringers, describing the remarks as “not true, uncharitable, unjust, and in rather bad taste,” added curiously: “A real attempt by the incumbent to reform these alcoholics or, alternatively, deny them the use of the bell, would at least indicate that some welcome interest was being taken in their activities.”

J. D. D.

Like A Mighty Army

The crowd at right is one of the largest ever assembled to hear the Gospel. It is a picture of Christendom united around the proclamation of the Word of God. The scene is Soldier Field, Chicago, on Sunday afternoon, June 17, at the final service of evangelist Billy Graham’s 19-day Greater Chicago Crusade. Stadium officials estimated the turnout at 116,000.

Under a cloudless sky the thermometer climbed to 95 at the gigantic stadium along Lake Michigan. The heat was tempered only by a 12-mile-an-hour breeze out of the southwest. Thousands sat under umbrellas, donned straw coolie hats or improvised newspaper headcovers.

Graham spoke twice during the two-hour service, first challenging church people to follow-up Chicago’s new spiritual opportunities, then evangelizing the multitudes. His sermon was based on King Agrippa’s poignant utterance to the Apostle Paul:

“Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” (Acts 26:28 KJV).

High over the north end of the stadium hung a scriptural inscription, traditional decor at Graham meetings. It blew in the breeze as the evangelist spoke. Ten-foot letters suspended between two poles some 80 yards apart spelled out the Christian definition:

“JESUS SAID: I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE.John 14:6.”

Graham drew a parallel between factors responsible for the downfall of the Roman Empire and conditions currently prevailing in America such as the sex binge, deficit government spending, lust for pleasure, reliance upon armaments, and the decay of religion into mere form.

The evangelist, described as “very tired” from having spoken as many as five times a day, recovered to exhibit a closing-day vigor which was unusual even for him. It was Father’s Day, but Graham, whose sermons ordinarily make a point of special occasions, ignored it in deference to the urgency of the hour.

Crowds began to arrive at 9 a.m. for the 3 p.m. service. Like a mighty army they filed into Soldier Field. They included sizeable delegations from as far away as Denver and Toronto. Halfway through the service stadium officials told the Rev. Walter H. Smyth, crusade director, that about 85,000 were then seated in the stands. Up to 5,000 were on the field. Other thousands, especially latecomers, chose to go under the stands instead of venturing into the end zone bleachers behind the platform where the only vacant seats were located. Some who set out for Soldier Field never got there because of traffic jams and lack of parking space.

Several hundred persons in the stands were overcome as a result of the heat. Only two, however, were hospitalized.

The audience at Soldier Field was the largest Graham has ever had in the Western Hemisphere. It eclipsed even his 1957 Yankee Stadium crowd which was estimated at 100,000. Only in England and Australia has he drawn attendances larger than the Chicago turnout (120,000 in London, 143,750 in Melbourne, and 150,000 in Sydney).

Graham’s crusade in Chicago produced an average attendance of 37,000 per service—another record—and an aggregate of 703,000.

The numerical success of the crusade was attributed to four major factors: “Operation Andrew,” a program under which persons interested in the crusade bring friends and neighbors (a spokesman estimated some 1,000,000 visitations in all); unprecedented press coverage; the facilities of McCormick Place, a strategically-located exposition hall the size of six football fields where all meetings but the last were held; and a great emphasis on prayer.

Of infinite more importance in crusade statistics are those who indicated a new commitment to Christ by walking to the platform at the close of a service. In Chicago there were 16,451 of these, including 1,729 who stepped forward at Soldier Field. They represented 2.34 per cent of the audience, compared with the 3.16 per cent average established in 260 weeks of crusades around the world.

The Chicago campaign was shorter than most conducted by Graham in major cities. It seems certain, nonetheless, that never before has a crusade had such an impact upon a metropolitan area. Virtually all sociological strata were penetrated. Teen-age gang members, for instance, attended by the score. The lone segment of the citizenry not significantly touched was the high-rise apartment dwellers, who are often sealed off from visitation efforts.

Among the converts were leading North Shore socialites, a beauty queen, and a youth gang leader. A divorced couple, neither having known the other was there, responded to the invitation at the same service. They plan to be remarried.

The teen-age son of a team member came forward to rededicate his life.

The converted gang leader, in acknowledging his new-found faith, handed over to his counselor a pistol, a knife, and a razor.

One boy met his probation officer in the counselling room.

Decisions were also being made outside the framework of crusade but as a direct result of it. The minister of a large Chicago church came to Graham with a confession that for years he had been preaching beyond his experience. He said he had been convicted of his shortcomings during the course of the crusade and that the Holy Spirit had made him “miserable.” Upon making a commitment he said he would face his congregation the following Sunday as a new man.

At a meeting with 1,400 ministers Graham had urged them to make it a point to preach evangelistically on the morning of the last day of the crusade and to extend an invitation at the close of the service. Some churches reportedly experienced their first such public invitation. At one church that morning a known gangster stepped to the altar and fell to his knees in repentance.

With its reputation as a capital of vice and graveyard of evangelism, Chicago’s spiritual heritage is meager. Little has been done in evangelism since Billy Sunday held his largest crusade there in 1918. The last attempt at a city-wide crusade was made in 1946 with a “Life Begins” campaign with Dr. Paul Rood, Dr. John R. Rice, and Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. The meetings attracted an average of 2,500 per night, with 9,000 present for the final service.

Theologically Chicago has been a center of liberal thought, whereas the city’s evangelical forces have been fragmented. Because of these and other factors, including the mass exodus to the suburbs and the changing population complex in recent years, some observers had been skeptical of a Graham crusade in the city proper.

There were other factors, however, which provided favorable conditions for the crusade. Moody Bible Institute and its radio station, WMBI, have long been champions of the evangelical cause in Chicago. Several other evangelical colleges and conservative seminaries also have been influential. Many evangelical leaders make their home in the Chicago area.

Opposition to Graham’s Chicago crusade came from right and left, although it was not so pronounced as during some crusades. Ministers of the General Association of Regular Baptists were the most aggressive in their opposition, sowing virulent attacks against the evangelist. Some Plymouth Brethren groups underscored a distaste for mass evangelism in general. Other evangelicals, dubious of contacts with liberals, were said to be “swallowing hard.”

In a few cases there was disagreement between laity and clergy over posture toward the crusade. One congregation reportedly demanded the resignation of its minister after he spoke against Graham.

The most outspoken liberal seminary professor was Dr. Gibson Winter of the University of Chicago Divinity School, who said the crusade had set back the church 50 years. Graham countered by saying that Winter had grossly understated Graham’s intentions, which were to carry modern theology back 19 centuries to that of Jesus and the Apostles.

A few liberal Baptist ministers seemed to be the only other vocal opponents although several denominational church groups had voted to stay aloof. Many ministers belonging to these groups cooperated with the crusade wholeheartedly.

The Church Federation of Greater Chicago, which had voted not to endorse the crusade, subsequently opened its offices to serve the effort.

Graham, often advised by physicians to adopt a lighter schedule, finds it hard to limit his speaking engagements to the nightly mass meetings of a crusade. He has more invitations than he can handle, but he is reluctant to turn them down because they frequently represent opportunities not normally available for the proclamation of the Gospel. The evangelist’s friends also make great demands on his time (“His friends,” says a source close to Graham, “are often his worst enemies”). In Chicago Graham appeared on college campuses, in prison compounds, at military installations, and before a variety of civic clubs and community centers. At times these activities are more productive of new spiritual awareness than the mass meetings. Two weeks after Graham spoke at the Chicago House of Correction, the chaplain was quoted as saying that 197 inmates and 7 wardens had come to him for counselling, while chapel attendance increased more than 25 per cent.

Perhaps the greatest impact of the Greater Chicago Crusade is yet to come. More than 167 television stations from coast to coast scheduled a series of five hour-long telecasts made at McCormick Place and Soldier Field. Each program closes with a plea by Graham for viewers to make decisions for Christ.

The scope of the Graham effort made a great impression on officials of the Church Federation of Greater Chicago. The Rev. Charles M. Crowe, a leading Methodist minister, hailed the crusade as having magnified the Protestant faith. He said Christ had been honored and the sordidness of sin held up in the clear light of the Word of God. He credited the Graham team with having demonstrated the meaning of genuine ecumenicity.

“Some of us of the ecumenical crowd,” said Crowe, “have been ecumenical to our own group only.”

Also enthusiastic was Dr. Edgar H. S. Chandler, executive vice president of the federation who as a consultant to the U. S. Information Agency is top religious affairs advisor in the Federal government.

Chandler said he had seen positive results of the Graham crusade around the world and that he had expected great things when the evangelist came to Chicago.

However, he said, the crusade had accomplished “even greater things than I had anticipated.”

It is up to the Chicago area churches to follow-up the personal commitments made during the crusade, he added.

Chandler cited the fact that Graham had “dealt so honestly and definitely with some of the basic social problems of our city and generation.”

He declared that he knew of a number of ministers who previously had been antagonistic or lukewarm toward Graham who had developed more positive attitudes after witnessing the crusade.

Chandler said flatly that if another Graham crusade were scheduled in Chicago he would urge the federation to endorse it officially.

Such an opportunity may indeed come. Herbert J. Taylor, general chairman of the crusade, said the executive committee and crusade supporters in some 1,200 churches will work and pray for a return of Graham and his team—perhaps in 1965.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. Russell J. Humbert, 57, president of DePauw University; at Traverse City, Michigan … Archbishop Teodors Grunbergs, 92, of the Latvian Church in Exile; at Essingen, Germany … Dr. William Edgar Gilroy, 86, former newspaper columnist and Congregationalist editor; at Newton Centre, Massachusetts … Dr. Frederick Ponsonby Wood, 77, cofounder of the National Young Life Campaign of Britain; in London.

Retirements: As minister-at-large for United Presbyterian Board of National Missions, Dr. Louis H. Evans, Sr.… as pastor of Delmar Baptist Church, St. Louis, Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, former president of the National Council of Churches … as president of the American Bible Society, Dr. Daniel Burke.

Elections: As president of the American Association of Theological Schools, Principal G. Johnston of Montreal United Theological Callege … as executive bishop of the General Church of the New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian), the Rt. Rev. Willard D. Pendleton … as moderator of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Robert L. Atwell … as general secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Dr. Andrew J. Gailey … as president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Rev. James Wisheart.

Appointments: As American counsul-general to the Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, Dr. Paul F. Green, noted Southern Baptist educator … as general director of United Church Men, Dr. Don L. Calame … as executive secretary of the Board of Higher Education of the United Lutheran Church in America, Dr. E. Theodore Bachmann … as executive director of the Church Federation of Los Angeles, the Rev. Harry A. McKnight.

George Burnham

George Ralph Burnham, 43, first news editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, died last month in a Chattanooga, Tennessee, hospital. Burnham, who suffered from ulcers, had undergone intestinal surgery and was expected to recover when complications set in.

Burnham left CHRISTIANITY TODAY at the end of 1957 to work with World Vision. He subsequently returned to the Chattanooga News-Free Press, where he had been a reporter for many years.

Burnham was author of two books on overseas evangelism, Billy Graham: Mission Accomplished and To the Far Corners. He also wrote Prison Is My Parish, a biography of Chaplain Park Tucker of the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

It is necessary to preserve intact the revelation of the Bible which lays hold of so many layers of human existence, and not to lose sight of God’s way among men and in Israel. Man is related to God as creature to Creator, as object of God’s grace and judgment, and in his responsibility for his fellowmen. We should be aware in the present situation of these basic principles of God’s dealing with men because our world has fallen into disorder, and it doubts and even rejects so much of His word and commandment pertaining to our lives.

Schleiermacher, by defining religion as feeling and contemplation of the universe, thought in aesthetic categories, and thus missed the earnestness of the fundamental relation which the Bible sets forth between God and man. In the present age, when religion as such is threatened by secularization, we cannot be satisfied with a placid and aesthetic concept of it. We must discern what it is as prophecy and witness.

The reason that Christianity to a large extent has become so weak is because it has wasted its vitality on rationalistic theories and useless controversies. As a result the absoluteness of the biblical message and imperative has been lost to many areas of life. That has endangered its respect also among other religions and faiths. Whoever speaks of revelation must live with a sense of obligation, and not in denial of limits and enamored of Christian liberty. Even concentrating Christian faith on sole allegiance to Jesus Christ can become dangerous for it, when thereby the organic relation between the Old and New Testaments is disrupted. We must, therefore, raise the question, how far the contemporary theological schools enable us: 1. to expound the interrelation of the Old and New Testaments; 2. to take the text of the Bible seriously as God’s living message and instruction; and 3. to integrate the separate historical witness of each book into a total understanding. Thereby an important test is whether we preserve the revelation of God in a way which allows us to engage in fruitful dialogue with Israel as the older people of God.

The Contemporary Movements

The scientific situation of today is characterized by a remarkable state of transition which is quite typical for the general crisis of mankind. Nowhere in the field of science or in spiritual life do we find anything complete and definite which is able to determine the future. We can merely recognize beginnings, experiments, and critical comparisons and contrasts with previous scientific results. Existential interpretation which, in the area of Protestant theology, is especially connected with the name of Rudolf Bultmann, goes hand in hand with this condition of scientific and spiritual life. In view of the general crisis of mankind we are obliged to take this scientific method of hermeneutics very seriously. It remains to be seen how far it will yield something certain and lasting for future generations. That has been a subject of lively debate for some years, and is still going on.

Besides Bultmann and his followers, who lay stress on hermeneutics and existential exegesis, there are representatives also in German Protestant theology of the dialectic-dogmatic method. For Karl Barth and H. Diem the Word of God is basic, and they seek to uphold dogmatic certainty of interpretation over against the existential hermeneutics of Bultmann.

Last, but not least, we should mention the representatives of historical exegesis. They strive to understand the text out of the process of history and from the meaning inherent in it. As scholars of historical realism I would name in the field of Old Testament: A. Alt and M. Noth; in the field of New Testament: G. Dalman, A. Schlatter, J. Jeremias, and myself. We are not concerned with a romantic or heilsgeschichtliche line of interpretation, but try to grasp anew the objective truth which lies embedded in the process of life and of human existence. It should be clearly recognized that the path of theology, which has been so markedly influenced by the Enlightenment, by the new scientific understanding, by psychology, and by the development of human philosophy, cannot be allowed to forget a former period of scientific understanding. We must learn from the past as we face the tasks which are given in the present situation.

Deficiencies of Existentialism

Although existential interpretation should in principle be receptive to the requirements and criteria adduced above, it is held back by a certain attitude. It considers that its own consequent interpretation of the text is more to be desired than the full variety of biblical themes. Not the biblical word, but the kerygma distilled from it, is taken as decisive. The fact is, however, that the Old Testament proclaims a characteristic message of its own over against the New, that various parts of the New Testament do not entirely coincide with the main Pauline themes. What, then, does existential interpretation do? It proceeds critically to call these passages in question, to subordinate their importance, or to interpret them otherwise than the text intended.

Our understanding of history in the Bible becomes difficult if one uses Formgeschichte, so often connected with existential interpretation, in a radical way. Such is the case when it is assumed that the sayings of Jesus belong to an earlier stage of the tradition, to which later the narrative material was attached. That leads to a skeptical attitude toward the life of Jesus. Must we, however, give up a realistic picture of Jesus for the sake of the kerygma? If the historical elements, which the Evangelists used, prove to be unreliable, then the message to be proclaimed, the kerygma, would lose its power. The primitive Christian proclamation did more than offer us the grace of God and summon us to a new understanding of ourselves. It showed how the grace of God, offered through Jesus, was accepted, exhibited, and fulfilled in his life. The truth which he lived out was decisive for the offer and summons of the kerygma. There came into being a definite history which was integral to revelation, and cannot be detached from it. This history could pass through stages, be interrupted and concealed, undergo transformation and renewal, but it retained the character of valid and final truth. All the biblical traditions are directed toward the future goal of God. Their history partakes so essentially of it, that none of them can give it up. To be sure the present ever requires decision, but a decision always with reference to the future which includes and transcends it. As biblical history went on, it issued in traditions which became normative for subsequent times, even though subject to continual question and opposition. But they made their way despite invidious effort from within and without to discredit and to invalidate them. Man was never capable of grasping and holding the mystery of God. The entrance of God’s revelation into history always met with forces which sought to suppress it. From that we know that we must ever hear again and understand anew the history of God’s revelation, and upon the basis of our study and understanding be ready at any time to make a fresh start. But we do not thereby put an end to the past. Its traditions help us to distinguish more clearly between truth and error, light and darkness.

Since each biblical tradition converges upon an ultimate goal, we should hesitate to set one over against another, as the Synoptic against the Johannine, or the Jerusalemic against the Hellenistic. Each performs its service as a strand of history mingling with others to reach a single end. It should not be unraveled and exposed to each person’s existential judgment. The radical existential criticism in Germany today, which puts Paul in opposition to James and to Luke, is in the last analysis unhistorical; for it disguises the inner logic of history whose character as revelation is given us in the Old Testament, and is an important heritage of the Christian faith.

Our present crisis in exegesis recalls the controversy of Apostolic preaching with Gnosis. The Gnostics interpreted the message of the Gospel in the light of the hic et nunc, adapted it to the existence of the believer, to his intention and feelings. That thrust out of the picture the historical setting of the Gospel, the objective continuity of revelation in history, and displaced it with anthropological criteria.

So also existential interpretation discounts the understanding of revelation in history which the Old Testament, itself bound up with that history, began to disclose. It disputes the Messianic self-consciousness of Jesus which linked his life with the hope of Israel. It slights the apocalyptic heritage received from Jewish tradition. All that produces a shrinkage in the substance of the kerygma which cannot be made good by recasting it in the mold of existentialism.

The Inroads of Philosophy

Existential interpretation is drawn from Formgeschichte, from the philosophy of Heidegger, and from the theology of the Reformation. The combination of these various elements lends considerable strength to its method, but therein lies also its weakness. What happens if this combination breaks up? The weakest element within it is that of philosophy. In field of faith and theology it is the element least able to bear its weight. While it offers considerations and reflections which are akin to the Christian faith, they must not be confused with it. The concern of Christian faith is to take God seriously, and to conform experience to his Word, not to interpret philosophically the essence of human existence. It is at this point that Bultmann is the most vulnerable. Existential philosophy imbues the believer with a new sense of self-understanding, whereas the believer should recognize the necessity to be cautious and to admit fallibility of judgment. In the midst of the dangers of history the believer must look beyond himself into a future that is more than his present. In his existence before God the believer can only draw partial conclusions as to the true nature of man from the Bible. It is not likely that at the beginning the kerygma had an anthropology. Certainly the chief aim of theology should not be to develop one, so that it can argue anthropologically.

The theology of the Reformation recovered and interpreted anew the truth of the Bible. It did not make place of itself for radical biblical criticism, of the kind that broke out later in the period of the Enlightenment. When we persist in the same sort of criticism, old struggles within the Christian church are kept alive. Basically the question is whether the faith of which E. Fuchs, G. Ebeling, and others speak today comes from the Bible, or rather from a philosophical position which feels itself constrained to establish a connection with the Bible. Further, can the program of “demythologizing,” which may be meaningful as a philosophical method to obtain theoretical understanding, be carried out in the field of religion? What is most important is not to make faith intelligible to our way of thinking, to our philosophical ideas, but rather to let the process of revelation in history speak for itself. The philosophical approach to faith has given rise to a “religion of the intellectual,” far remote from the faith of ordinary members of the church. For years there has been open, sometimes concealed, controversy between them. The “intellectual” side, with its group of theologians, contends that theology requires a new language for the modern mind, and to this end submits the categories of existential thinking. But these ideas meet with resistance on the part of biblical data and concepts which simply do not fit in with them. Here is objective ground which refuses to give way to varied forms of attack, and sets a limit to the introduction of existential categories. For this reason it has not been possible to break down resistance within the Christian church.

Still it is significant that all the problems concerning the “historical Jesus” have become acute again, although one was inclined to suppose from the side of neoorthodoxy that the case was closed. There is good reason, therefore, to keep before us the basic biblical position of A. Schlatter and M. Kähler, coupled with steadfastness, faithfulness, and patience, those primary attributes which go along with biblical faith. We are not thereby acting out of longing for human security, or with lack of courage to face the modern age. We know the way ahead is full of peril. That is a necessary consequence of decisions which have shaped our world in recent years. But we did not get our faith from subjective experience or hermeneutics. It is grounded on the all-embracing, objective order of creation, history, and church.

OTTO MICHEL

Director

Institute of Judaic Studies

University of Tübingen

Two ritual observances, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, are maintained by members of the Church of Christ irrespective of their denomination or of their personal spiritual maturity. Whether these observances are regarded as possessing only symbolic value, or whether they are sacraments which confer spiritual grace directly, they are central to the worship of all groups. In them the heart of Christian doctrine is enacted in visible form.

Baptism. This is the rite by which a professed believer was inducted into the fellowship of the New Testament church. By submitting to immersion in water, pouring, or sprinkling, he confessed publicly his need of cleansing from sin and his faith in Christ. Peter instructed his audience on the day of Pentecost to “Repent, and be baptized … in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38), and each subsequent stage of the church’s growth was marked by baptism of the believers (Acts 8:12, 38; 9:10; 10:47, 48; 16:33; 18:8).

The concept of baptism is rooted in the Old Testament law which prescribed certain washings for the cleansing of diseased persons (Lev. 14:8). Proselytes entering Judaism were expected to strip themselves of their former clothing, submit to circumcision, and bathe themselves completely, after which they were reckoned members of the Jewish community. The rite was acknowledgment of defilement and of the acceptance of the law as a purifying agent. The baptism of John must have been founded upon current usage, for his hearers were not surprised when he proclaimed it, and the Scriptures take the significance for granted (Mark 1:4, 5). John the Baptist, however, realized that his ministry of baptism was only preparatory, for he expected the advent of another who would baptize “in the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:8).

Jesus’ personal acceptance of John’s baptism was a public avowal of his consecration to God and of his mission to men. By taking his stand with sinners, although he was sinless, he provided a link between the symbol of repentance and the fuller significance implied in the final commission to his followers. He enjoined them to “… make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). By this command he related baptism to the total work of the Trinity in salvation, and prescribed it as the universal practice of the church.

The key passage on baptism is connected with Paul’s argument for holiness in Romans 6:4–6 (ARV): “We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.”

Assuming that the Roman Christians were familiar with the ceremony, he explained it in terms of death and resurrection. Since the claims of retributive justice cannot be executed upon a dead person, the union of the Christian with Christ in His death frees him from condemnation, and through the Resurrection he shares in a new life. By the rite of baptism he enacts this experience symbolically and accepts its reality by faith, though his full realization of the truth may develop gradually.

Parallel with the baptism by water is the baptism of the Holy Spirit which insures this progressive experience of union, and which constitutes the Christian an active member of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). The same term, “baptism,” is used both of the external rite and the internal reality, as if to indicate that they are interdependent and equally necessary. The internal experience necessitates outward confession; the external confession must be supported by inward reality.

The efficacy of baptism lies in the relation of the individual to God rather than in any property of the water. The only passage in the New Testament that connects salvation directly with baptism is 1 Peter 3:20, 21 (ARV): “… wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water: which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God.…” Although the translation seemingly conveys the idea that baptism saves men, a careful study of the context reveals that “saved through” does not mean “saved by,” but “preserved through.” The baptismal water does not provide the means of our salvation, but is rather representative of the peril through which we are brought into a new life as Noah passed through the waters of the flood to safety. Obviously water cannot save any man; salvation is by the grace of God.

The long dispute over the proper mode of baptism will probably never be settled satisfactorily to all concerned. The Greek verb baptizo, which has been transliterated rather than translated, means fundamentally to dip, plunge, immerse. After making allowance for certain occasional exceptions, such as passages where washing is implied, the etymological meaning indicates that baptism was originally by immersion. Historically this mode has been perpetuated by the Eastern Church, and it prevailed in the West until the Middle Ages. Pouring, or affusion, according to the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a second-century document, was permissible if water were scarce, and sprinkling was a later substitution developed in the Middle Ages.

Of greater importance than the mode of baptism is the question of the proper candidates. Where the New Testament speaks clearly, it emphasizes the personal belief of those concerned. Faith must precede commitment; the external act of water baptism will not transform an unbeliever into a Christian. Can infants, incapable of an individual act of faith, rightfully receive baptism? On this question the Scriptures make no direct pronouncement. The mention of the Philippian jailor’s household (Acts 16:33, 34) does not necessarily imply that infants were included, nor is there any other passage that affords an obvious answer. The varying views on baptism are the logical consequences of attempts to interpret the implications of the Scriptures.

At the moment of baptism the Christian makes an irrevocable commitment to Christ, whose death is the means of his redemption and whose life will be the continuing dynamic of his career. He takes a step in spiritual experience which he cannot retrace, and need not, if he is sincere. He enters a new relationship with God and with other members of the redeemed community who constitute the church.

Having accepted baptism and having agreed to all that it means, the Christian is henceforth destined for a life of progress in holiness. He cannot logically revert to the old sins which he has abandoned, but he must rather devote himself to holiness and to conscious spiritual growth. The teaching of Paul in Colossians 2:12, 13, 20–3:2 indicates that the baptized believer is obligated to put away his former loose thinking and conduct, and to adopt the standards of the new fellowship of the regenerate into which he has been inducted. Such a life is not negative aceticism, but is rather the spontaneous response of a renewed conscience to the ethical revelation of God. Baptism, according to the New Testament, is not merely a religious ceremony, but it is also a moral and spiritual pledge of devotion to holiness.

The Lord’s Supper. The second ordinance is the memorial feast instituted by Jesus on the eve of his death. As he celebrated the passover with his disciples, he gave them bread and wine, saying, “… this is my body,” and “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many” (Mark 14:22, 24). The Pauline record (1 Cor. 11:23–26) shows that the Lord’s Supper had become the focal point of worship in the early church (c. A.D. 50), and that it was observed regularly. Justin Martyr states in his First Apology that Christians met on the first day of the week to worship and to break bread. With few exceptions the sacred meal has been perpetuated in all denominations to the present day.

The primary significance of the Lord’s Supper is its representation of Christ’s death as the seal of the New Covenant between God and man. The breaking of Christ’s body and the shedding of his blood made the sacrifice by which atonement for sin was accomplished, thereby reconciling man to God. As the bread and wine are assimilated into the physical body to contribute to its well-being, so the person of Christ enters spiritually into the life of the communicant. By this impartation the saying power of Christ is constantly appropriated, and his strength becomes the source of the believer’s life.

Although the Lord’s Supper is not a sacrifice offered by a priest, since the death of Christ occurred once for all, its origin implies that it is more than a social meal. The bread and wine were part of the passover feast which was itself symbolic of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and of the beginning of new life as a redeemed nation. By analogy, “… our passover … hath been sacrificed, even Christ” (1 Cor. 5:7), so that the elements of which we partake imply union in a body of individually redeemed men who are bound together into the church of God.

The bread and wine cannot be fragments of the literal body and blood of Christ, for when he said, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” he was reclining at the table with his disciples. They would have understood that the bread and wine were only representative of his physical being, as a picture represents the person whose likeness it reproduces. This figure of speech was discussed by Jesus in his discourse on the bread of life, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves” (John 6:53). His language created consternation among his hearers, who took it with absolute literality. Jesus provided the initial clue to its meaning by adding: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me” (6:57). The relation between the Father and himself was so close that the same relationship, expressed by the figure of “eating,” should obtain between him and his disciples. When they grumbled at the obscure expression he replied. “It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing” (John 6:63). The eating of the material emblems is both a reminder and a pattern of this appropriation of the spiritual essence of Christ.

Jesus also intended by the observance to keep alive his memory and the obligation of his disciples to serve him until he should return. “… ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come” was his final word. Although he did not reveal the details of his purpose at that time, Jesus contemplated a program extending beyond his death and resurrection to the establishment of his kingdom. Knowing that his departure would remove him from visible companionship with his disciples, he gave them this stimulus to hope that they might not become discouraged nor forget the true objective of their calling.

The table of the Lord establishes also a new basis of fellowship. Those who partake of it cannot consistently maintain evil associations; complete severance from all defilement is required. Paul, in reproving the Corinthians for idolatry, says. “… ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons” (1 Cor. 10:21). Furthermore, it creates a bond of union between believers, for hatreds, jealousies, and divisions are incompatible with the principle of love which was the very motive for Christ’s sacrifice. Negatively and positively, Christians are bound into one fellowship around the center of his living person.

Participation in the Lord’s Supper was therefore limited to believers who receive the elements in a spirit of thankfulness and honesty. Absolute sinlessness was not a prerequisite, else there would be none to partake; but careless indifference or willful impenitence unfits the spirit for joining others who assemble in humility and sincerity to celebrate the feast. Flagrant sin was adequate cause for exclusion from the Lord’s table—the last and most drastic step in the discipline of the Church.

By these means of grace the life of the believer was initiated and sustained. His public declaration of faith in deliverance from sin and possession of a new life is manifested in baptism; his public avowal of dependence upon Christ and association with others of like faith is maintained in communion.

Dr. G. W. Bromiley, in his work on Sacramental Teaching and Practice in the Reformation Churches (p. 106), has well summarized the value of these rites:

“To know their meaning and purpose is to be helped to their true enjoyment.… But properly to use them … is to do so with a readiness to see Christ Himself and His saying work, and therefore with prayer to the Holy Spirit that He may dispose of the means which He Himself has chosen and of which He Himself is the Lord.”

Bibliography: “Baptism,” Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology, J. H. Blunt, ed.; K. Barth, The Teaching of the Church Regarding Baptism; A. Carson, Baptism in its Modes and Subjects; O. Cullmann, Baptism in the New Testament, trans. by J. K. S. Reid; W. Flemington, The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism; G. H. W. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit; J. G. Lawson, Did Jesus Command Immersion? (rev. ed.); J. Warns, Baptism, trans. by G. H. Lang; A. J. B. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament; J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus; C. L. Wallis, The Table of the Lord.

Dean of the Graduate School

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Illinois

There are some words we may permit to lose their significance and implications, but only to our great loss.

In a day of cynicism, disillusionment and existential jargon we do well to remember that truth, honesty, love, faith and faithfulness (to mention but a few) are words with deep abiding meaning.

In the realm of the Christian faith there are also words which still have deep relevance to man and his relationship with God.

We are perfectly aware of the fact that many of these words are no longer popular, having been supplanted by others intelligible only to some who devised them, and only too often devoid of any true spiritual significance.

One wonders why words like conversion, repentance, confession, salvation and faith (again to mention but a few) are no longer popular in certain theological circles. Can it be that their significance has been discarded for new concepts, the fruit of human imagination rather than of divine revelation?

One of the most articulate proponents of this new concept has said: “The Biblical revelation of God shows us a God who acts, who reveals himself in events, rather in the imparting of information about Himself. And so neoorthodoxy (rightly, I believe), has misgivings about ‘plenary verbal inspiration,’ since it always runs the danger of leading us to believe statements about God, rather than in God Himself.”

No one questions that the Bible reveals to us a God who acts. Nor does anyone question that, as the God of all history, God reveals himself in events. But we believe that God has also revealed himself in words and that these words have eternal implications for all men.

There are many interpretations of the phrase, “plenary verbal inspiration,” and those who use it should never do so carelessly. But, believing in the complete integrity and authority of the Bible we have frequently noticed that those who inveigh against the emphasis on words are those most prone to deny doctrines conveyed by words.

Some years ago Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, a man of unquestionable scholarship, affirmed with deep conviction that no new discoveries had invalidated one single doctrine of the Christian faith.

Only a few weeks ago Dr. William F. Albright, one of today’s outstanding scholars, said in speaking of recent discoveries: “Nothing has been found to disturb reasonable faith, and nothing discovered which can disprove a single theological doctrine.”

If doctrines are to have ultimate meaning they must, of course, be translated through faith into action. But this in no way invalidates the fact that truth is expressed in words—and it is to some of the words which have great relevance in the Christian faith that we now write.

Conversion speaks of a spiritual transformation. Not only is it a good word but it describes a transition our Lord declared to be a “must”: “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

Conversion is a good word because it speaks of passing from death to life, from self to Christ, from time to eternity. It is a good word because it means that the center of gravity of one’s life is changed, the objective for living transformed, the motive of thought and action to know and do God’s will.

Another good word, a part of the conversion experience, is repentance. Not much is said about repentance today but this silence does not mean this change of mind and heart is not a necessity—it just means that some men think they know a better way.

Repentance involves a recognition of sin for what it is and an admission that we too have sinned and come short of God’s glory. Repentance means that we come to grips with the enormity of sin, its offence to a holy God and that we are sorry for our sinful nature and acts.

An equally good word is confession, for confession of sin is an integral part of repentence and conversion.

Confession involves first of all a recognition and statement of our unworthiness before God. It means coming clean with the God we have offended. It means a recognition of our own helplessness to solve our problem.

Confession is also a positive affirmation of our faith in Christ as the Son of God, an acceptance of his as Saviour and a desire that he should become the Lord of our lives.

The Bible emphasizes the significance, the meaning and the importance of these and other words having to do with God’s saying grace in Christ:

Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch telling of the conversion of the Gentiles through the preaching of Christ.

David, in Psalm 57, tells of the chain reaction of conversion—repentance and confession followed by forgiveness, and by spiritual power to go out to others: “Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee” (vs. 13).

Has not God indicated to us here the sequence of events? We become effective witnesses for our Lord only when we have experienced the conversion about which we preach to others.

In Luke 22:32 our Lord speaks to Peter of the conversion experience he was to have (involving a sense of sin, remorse, repentance and confession) after which he would become a spiritual power.

This same Peter, in Acts 3:19, preaching in the power of the Spirit, said to the people: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.”

The Apostle James declares: “Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (James 5:20).

The Apostle Paul affirms: “… if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. 10:9, 10).

Repentance—the three words, repentance, confession and conversion, cannot be put into separate and unrelated categories—means a complete reversal of direction. In this, as in all phases of man’s conversion, the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit is essential. Where man’s free agency and God’s sovereign grace merge God alone knows. But man’s responsibility before God is a fact, as well as God’s offer of redemption in Christ.

It therefore becomes a matter of the utmost importance, that God requires of men repentance and confession and offers as their reward conversion—a new life in Christ.

Can we exchange these words of such vital import for something else, something which evades the truths they convey?

God forbid!

Pilgrim’S Analysis

Now I saw in my dream that Christian entered again through a door with a brass plate on which was the name, Sigmund Schlaf, M.D.

Christian: Sir, my anguish of spirit has much abated since leaving the dungeon of the Giant Despair.…

Dr. Schlaf: So you feel you have responded to analysis. Are you able to take a balanced view of your earlier hallucinations?

Chr.: Whether the Giant Despair was but the creature of my sick soul I know not, but the blows of his cudgel were very real.

Dr.: And the Celestial City?

Chr.: I have come to bid you farewell. I must now resume my journey to the City of the Great King.

Dr.: I see. You don’t question the existence of this City?

Chr.: No longer, sir. There was a time in the dungeon when the City seemed a dream, but now I know it stands foursquare about the throne.

Dr.: I should like to refer you to a specialist friend at the Peacehaven Sanatorium. Peacehaven has the facilities for the therapy you should have at this time. If you sign this committal form …

Chr.: You still think me a madman.

Dr.: Not at all. At least not what that term implies. At first I thought you had the common symptoms of the normal modern neurosis, but the persistence of certain delusions.…

Chr.: What malady is this normal neurosis of which you speak?

Dr.: I was referring to existential vacuum. Nearly everyone has it. With the loss of instinctual behavior and the fading of social tradition, life has become aimless and meaningless for modern man.

Chr.: So it was in the City of Destruction. But do you point your patients to the Way of Life that leads from the little wicket gate to the garden of the Prince?

Dr.: Unfortunately mythology no longer serves the interest of adjustment to the real world. Retreat into delusion is the way of mental illness.

Chr.: Sir, think you that the Prince, too, is a phantom?

Dr.: I am a doctor, not a theologian. If you wish further treatment, I recommend Peacehaven. Goodbye, Mr. Christian.

Now I saw in my dream that Christian went forth upon the King’s Highway, singing this lament:

Destruction’s citizens do find

An empty vertigo of mind;

The doctor’s diagnosis

Is vacuum neurosis;

His learned perspicuity

Discerns complete vacuity;

He causes blinded minds to see

The darkness of reality.

O Great Physician, grant him sight,

And speak again, “Let there be light!”

EUTYCHUS

Torquemada’S Reaction

Your editorial in the May 25 issue entitled “Uncle Sam or Big Brother?” has been sent to me by my father. I want to commend you for some clear thinking.…

M. O. ALEXANDER, M.D.

Rockford Memorial Hospital

Rockford, Ill.

Your editorial expresses precisely the same viewpoint of Caiaphas. Just as Calvin put the torch to Servetus, he must have said, “Love, mercy, kindness and goodness are superfluous pieces of sentimentality in government.” I think Torquemada from his front seat in hell must have rejoiced in your Big Brother bit.…

O. CARROLL ARNOLD

First Baptist

Boulder, Colo.

The Legs Seem Flexed

The men who write of the “Free Church” in relation to ecumenism (May 25 issue) appear to be taking a longing look at the “Coming Great Church.” They’re not ready to jump on the bandwagon until certain assurances are made, but all the same, they seem as those whose legs are already flexed to make the hop.

Why? Their analysis of the ecumenical fever of our day is on a purely rational plane. Humanistically speaking, what could better meet the exigencies of the global situation than a “framework of collective influence”? But spiritually speaking, what could more flagrantly contradict the whole tenor of our faith than a man-made organizational unity never even hinted at in the Bible, except as an apostate end-time entity to be judged during the tribulation?

When our Free Church friends conceive of ecumenism in its biblical perspective as nothing more nor less than the existing spiritual oneness of the redeemed, they’ll quit worrying … about the feasibility of getting “Catholic and Reformed and Free Church Christians” on the shaky bandwagon of the “Coming Great Church.”

H. EDWARD ROWE

Church of the Open Door

Los Angeles, Calif.

Anxieties For The Church

“Calvin’s Influence in Church Affairs” by J. Howard Pew (May 11 issue) … expresses the fears and anxieties for our church and state of many laymen. From my observation, the church has lost much of its power because of its failure to believe the Bible to be the Word of God. I have been present in small prayer meetings and seen a young minister completely confused, and having to resort to vague and unsatisfactory answers when questioned by sharp young people present, all because he had no foundation Word of God from which to draw his answers.…

MRS. HARRY B. GAUSS

Washington, D. C.

Does Mr. Pew mean that the Church, including the clergy, must now cease its criticism of the United Nations? Should it be quiet about the Chinese government on Formosa? Can it no longer exalt the virtues of “free enterprise”? Must it be silent about the abuses of the Supreme Court?…

If Mr. Pew means this he is going to put a large number of conservative preachers out of business! These men are meddling with social, economic and political questions as has rarely been seen in the history of the church.

W. WESLEY SHRADER

First Baptist Church

Lewisburg, Pa.

• Mr. Pew’s essay registered no veiled plea for ecclesiastical meddling in behalf of conservative causes. His appeal to Calvin is unqualified: “… the Church should not become involved in outside affairs.… the Church has no scriptural authority to speak outside of the ecclesiastical field.… Meddling in politics is divisive and inimical to the success of the church.”—ED.

Howard Pew does beautifully! He shows the cause and power of the Reformation—in Geneva. And it was not a question of theology.

As it was power-organization then, so it is now. And so it is ever. Organization needs correcting balances. And when the balances fail, and the organization expands in power-application, then the Spirit is crushed. Luther was asked only one thing: “Will you obey the Church?” Right or wrong; creeds, orthodoxy, historical truth, had no part in the thinking and proceeding of the Church against him.

JOHN F. C. GREEN

Evangelical Congregational Church

McKeesport, Pa.

May I humbly suggest that the only error the church has shown … is that its efforts of witness in the social, economic, and political realms have been so weak, short-sighted, and without a Christ-centered aim that they have been far too little and too late, rather than as Mr. Pew suggests (without backing of any figures) an increasingly great involvement.…

RALPH F. HUDSON

Eau Claire, Wise.

Interpreting Genesis

The bulk of Dr. Klotz’s argument (“Evolutionary Theory: Some Theological Implications,” May 11 issue) … is a series of rationalistic conclusions from certain premises. It seems to me that theologically the single issue is this: What is the correct interpretation of the first 11 chapters of Genesis? In my opinion—and many of the professors of the seminary of which Dr. Klotz is a graduate share this view—the answer to this question has nothing to do with the arguments about the inspiration of Scripture. If the first 11 chapters of Genesis constitute a form of literature in Scripture that need not be taken as a straight historical account then there is no difficulty, theologically speaking, in accepting the teachings of science regarding the sequence in which various living forms appeared over long periods of time. To Dr. Klotz the fact that St. Paul refers to Adam and Eve proves that the Genesis account has to be taken as a historical one. It would seem to me that this is an assumption on his part which does not follow directly from Scripture itself.…

It is also stated that the doctrine of evolution is mechanistic and materialistic. There is one form of materialism which is to be condemned: this is the view that only material things are real. Since evolution deals with material things it has to be materialistic, in the same way that the study of the brain in terms of neurophysiology is materialistic. This, however, does not mean that those who study neurophysiology must reject the Christian doctrine of the soul. To reproach biology for being materialistic is just as meaningless as to reproach the astronomers for being materialistic.…

In this day and age when all Christians, and particularly young people, are assailed from all sides by materialism and unbelief it would be a pity to confuse them further by insinuating that their acceptance of certain scientific statements would put them outside the pale of Christianity. We live in a world of dualism—in that by faith we see God’s actions, but through the eyes of science we see connections between created material events. We had better face this because there are many apparent conflicts similar to the one about evolution. Viewed with the eyes of a scientist many events are determined by purely materialistic causes, whereas to a Christian they would appear as expressions of God’s will. It seems to me that if we cannot develop a world view that can embrace both our faith and the findings of science, which in my view are also gifts of God, we are doomed to failure in our communication to twentieth-century people.…

M. GERGELY

Retina Foundation

Boston, Mass.

Thank you for printing “Some Theological Implications” by Professor John W. Klotz. There are still some of us around who do not believe that we are “naive literalists” or “fighting fundies,” but we do believe that science needs to be checked and trimmed by Scripture, and not Scripture by science. We will not “interpret” the Bible to fit the world’s demands.

PAUL H. SEELY

San Francisco, Calif.

Gift Worthy Of The Magi

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

From this challenge evolved the offer of one free Russian Bible to each tourist who plans to visit the U.S.S.R.

Last year, many found this experience of participation meaningful and satisfying. Among them were businessmen, housewives, ministers, scientists, doctors, teachers and students.

If any of your readers plan to visit the U.S.S.R. this summer, each may receive one free Russian Bible by writing to: Box 3456, Grand Central Station, New York 17, N. Y.

STEVE DURASOFF

New York, N. Y.

Anti-Semitism

It was encouraging to read “The Theology of Anti-Semitism” (Apr. 27 issue), since this is a subject too long neglected by the Christian churches.…

One paragraph to which I take special exception, however, is the one that appeals to the sufferings and plight of the Jews as a continuing “object lesson” on the consequences of disobedience. While … we cannot rule out the element of divine judgment in Israel’s history, … God has made clear that he stands in universal judgment on all groups.… For Christians it is more fitting, and more true to the biblical spirit, to perceive the divine judgment that has fallen upon our own groups and institutions in the history of the churches and in present-day events. In a sense, Dr. Stephens comes almost to the point of saying this.… In an oblique way, for example, he seems to be stating a fundamental truth, namely, that sinful men are eager and content to discern judgment on the Jew …, while at the same time blindly resisting any application of the same biblical insights to themselves. The hostile reaction of any man to the Jews, therefore, is a self-blinding to the scriptural message, a running away from God and his demands for love, mercy and justice, and a refusal to confess and repent.… In short, the anti-Semite (devout Christian though he may profess to be), whether he knows it or not, in his rejection of the Jew is denying the validity and efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.…

Christians today, especially in view of the tragic events in Germany, should thus reappraise what it is that God is trying to say to the Church … in preserving the Jews despite the many past attempts of Christians to get rid of them.

BERNHARD E. OLSON

New York, N.Y.

Do you agree that the Christian world owes the Jewish people an eternal apology for persecuting, tormenting and killing them during the last 2,000 years, because of a myth?

LOUIS BERGER

Santa Monica, Calif.

Pacifist Riposte

In the April 27 issue, an article appears entitled “Better Red than Dead?” … The article in question amazes me almost beyond description by saying: “The reasoning that love is the answer is next to preposterous … (Love) is not the whole of Christian morality”! And this in the light of Galatians 5:14 and related passages: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” We must understand that the heart of our Lord’s teaching on this subject is admittedly the “non-resistance” and “love-your-enemy” sections in Matthew 5:38–48 and Luke 6:27–36.…

DONALD K. BLACKIE

Calvary Reformed Church

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Certainly the issue presented by the question, “Why wasn’t this pamphlet given widespread coverage when Russia engaged in its recent testing program?” is [irrelevant]. I submit that the only reason for such a question is the highly unethical one of subtly suggesting Communist influence. Actually it is a silly question for the author to ask. If Russia is as thoroughly evil as he suggests, certainly arguments invoking the Christian gospel are not going to change her mind. On the other hand, we still have a certain amount of respect for Christian ideals in the United States, and there might be a little glimmer of hope that we could get our government to act in accord with those principles.

JAMES T. HENDERSON

The Methodist Church

Jeromesville, Ohio

Mr. Scutt asks: “Why wasn’t this pamphlet given widespread coverage when Russia engaged in its recent testing program …?”

The pamphlet was published and distributed toward the end of 1960! Not only was [it] distributed …, but in February, 1961, the journal Worldview, reproduced the pamphlet in full.…

I agree with Mr. Scutt that the … authors have not come to terms with the necessity of force in international affairs, but as between their position and Mr. Scutt’s rather casual dismissal of the suffering and destruction involved in a nuclear war, I would prefer the former.

HERMAN F. REISSIG

Council for Christian Social Action

United Church of Christ

New York, N. Y.

Critic’S Notebook

One violates a taboo among contemporary theologians and social prophets by raising the question whether, when a minister smokes, he is setting a very good example.

The current ideology in connection with this question is well known and well pondered. We are saved by grace, not good works. Legalism should have no place in our Christian admonitions. Will anyone call Spurgeon a second-class Christian, or deny to Jowett or Campbell Morgan the evangelical label? (Fundamentalism, too, is vulnerable here, especially in the South. It can hardly point the scornful finger at tobacco as the handmaiden of theological apostasy!) And time would fail us to tell of Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, J. B. Phillips and C. S. Lewis who, pipe in mouth, have put to flight armies of aliens, et cetera.

Others, less famous but no less worthy of the praise of their colleagues for perspicacity and piety have reminded us that tobacco helps soothe nerves and aids in weight control, and that it is better to smoke here than hereafter; in other words (to paraphrase a bit loosely the apostolic dictum) that it is better to smolder than to explode. I expect to see many of these good men of moderation-in-all-things-carnal in heaven where, on good evangelical grounds, I can even conceive of myself (beam exchanged for gleam) as passing muster and gaining entrance at the Last Day.

But frankly I wonder often about this whole matter of smoking in its relation to the minister’s self-image and so make timorously bold, behind this veil of anonymity, to voice a few questions. For instance:

1. Why does one almost never come across a minister who has quit smoking? or, as a wholesome preliminary, who confesses humbly that he wishes he had the will power to do so? There are multitudes of laymen who are ready to testify to their deliverance from this admittedly bad habit. “It was tough,” say they with a bit of the martyr glow, “but I did it. Now I can taste food again!” Or if, as yet, the flesh still wavers and retreats from the awful prospect of life without nicotine, one hears the honest layman croak a warning to young men not yet trapped.

My first question, then, is why laymen who smoke do quit it, or advise young people not to start, while in my experience, which is fairly lengthy, I have never known a fellow minister to stop smoking and have never heard one who was a smoker advise young people to avoid beginning. Why this odd aversion to being candid, and calling a bad habit just that? For what lurking fear are we “over-compensating?”

2. Or take the stewardship implications of the question. Some of us eschew the ownership of a Cadillac or a Mercedes-Benz not because we can’t afford to drive a “fine car” but because we suspect that any symbolic lack of frugality would compromise our witness in a world where half the population goes hungry most of the time. And yet the sheer waste of money represented by the annual tobacco bonfire bill must make very strange incense to the nostrils of Jehovah. I recall a church men’s meeting which was being addressed on the subject of the Overseas Mission of the Church by an outstanding Christian layman, executive head of one of our largest merchandising corporations. The room was blue with smoke, and his audience puffed away without blinking while he pointedly talked about the relative amounts we spend in America on tobacco and on foreign missions. One does not need to insist on smoking as a “moral” question to recognize certain spiritual considerations in its use.

3. As for the health factor, this is a rather weak lever on most of us ministers who abuse our bodies with overwork and under-rest and by snatched nourishment at luncheon committee meetings! Yet one wonders whether we ought to be forever bringing up the rear when it comes to living the disciplined life and keeping the temple of the Spirit in good order. A recent AP news clipping informs us that the British government has launched a hard-hitting poster campaign against cigarette smoking.

“The government is using three different posters. Across the top of each is the word ‘Danger!’ ‘The more cigarettes you smoke the greater the risk of death from lung cancer, bronchitis or heart disease,’ one poster continues. The second version: ‘Heavy cigarette smokers are 30 times more likely to die of lung cancer than non-smokers.’ The third: ‘Deaths from lung cancer are nearly five times more than 20 years ago and they are still rising. The more cigarettes you smoke, the greater the risk’.… The director of a big London hospital called on the British Armed Forces to stop supplying troops with cigarettes.”

The fact that we limit our smoking to a pipe or occasional cigars may tend to increase our life expectancy over that of a fellow pastor who must have his pack or two of cigarettes a day. But this distinction is a bit too subtle for youngsters who are encouraged on every hand to discount what the American Cancer Society is trying to tell them in school health classes. “After all, our minister smokes … and our doctor smokes.” What more could a teenager ask who is looking for rationalizations wherever he can find them?

A syndicated newspaper column not long ago deplored the mounting tide of teen and sub-teen smoking. The author, an M.D., concluded with these words:

“For all this, I don’t want to appear as an apologist for these youngsters. But I must say you can hardly blame them when they see their parents, teachers, clergymen [italics mine], favorite actresses, actors and athletes smoking and endorsing cigarettes. And when they hear those of us who oppose smoking being attacked as killjoys, alarmists, fuddy-duddies and the like.”

4. Question four has to do with our sense of courtesy. There are plenty who are allergic to tobacco smoke, and many more, one suspects, who greatly dislike the smell. These “second-hand smokers” usually try to grin and bear it when subjected to third-degree suffocation. Some ministers consciously avoid subjecting others to their atmospheric tastes. Many do not seem to realize that anyone could possibly fail to enjoy their redolent self-advertising. Most smokers, religious or otherwise, settle euphemistically for a “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” If the victim were to say “Yes, I do!” I suppose we would put him in our little book as “maladjusted.”

I have an idea that preacher-smokers fall into three main categories:

1. Those who smoke in order to project a cherished self-image.

2. Those who without so intending have developed an addiction which is riding them whether they will it or not.

3. Those who smoke for pure pleasure, without particularly considering the allergies or scruples of others.

Before we all crowd into category three which is likely to look a little more ethical than the other two, let us briefly recall again that there are a lot of our less guarded parishioners who frankly admit being in category two. Like one of my members who has circulatory trouble and has already lost a couple of toes rather than give up smoking.

As for category one, who would admit such a thing! But I’d like at least to sow some seeds of dark suspicion. Are we a bit adolescent at this point? Are we perhaps trying to prove something which could be better proved some other way?

A PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER