End Of The Story: A Deepening Gloom

Religion in the Old Testament, by Robert H. Pfeiffer (Harper, 1961, 276 pp., $6.00), is reviewed by Oswald T. Allis, formerly Professor of Old Testament in Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.

With the death of Dr. Pfeiffer, critical biblical scholarship lost one of its ablest representatives. As archaeologist and especially as biblical critic, his pen had been exceedingly busy. The bibliography compiled by his widow covers nearly 24 pages and lists a truly amazing array of books, articles, and reviews. His magnum opus, the Introduction to the Old Testament, was first published in 1941; and the present work which may be regarded as in a sense its sequel or complement was two-thirds finished when he laid down his pen. It has been completed, so far as was possible, from his own papers by his friend and close associate C. C. Forman of the Harvard Divinity School.

As an Old Testament critic it may be said of Dr. Pfeiffer that in general he adhered more closely to the Wellhausen tradition than do many of the critical scholars of today. Like Wellhausen and Robertson Smith he sought the origins of biblical religion among the Bedouins of Arabia.

Of two possible ways in which the religion of the Bible can be presented, as “the record of man’s groping after God” or as “the record of God’s progressive revelation of himself to man,” Dr. Pfeiffer chose the former (p. 8). There are obviously quite serious difficulties involved in such a choice. If we take the Bible as it stands, it is quite plain that it is the divine side which is by far the more important. The Bible is the Word of God, because its great aim is to record the self-revealing words and deeds of God. To ignore this God-ward side completely would make the Bible, to say the least, a very impoverished book. Hence the tendency with those who adopt this line of approach is to treat the God-ward side as merely an aspect of the human side; to say with G. A. Barton, “From the divine standpoint God reveals truth; from the human, man discovers it” (The Religion of Israel, 1918, p. 1), which practically amounts to saying that revelation and discovery are merely two names for the same thing. The tendency is thus to substitute a pantheizing immanentism for the robust theism of the Bible.

The human account of the development of Israel’s religion as it is presented in this volume presupposes of course the acceptance of that rearranging and redating or down-dating of the documents of the Old Testament which is generally accepted in critical circles. That the account which results differs radically from the divine account which the Bible itself gives is too well known to require detailed statement.

The two sides of the picture do not synchronize or harmonize. For example, according to the divine side four of the five books of the Pentateuch record God’s dealings with Israel through Moses. According to the human side as presented here, “Only one verse, the song of Miriam (Exod. 15:21), may be regarded as a contemporary source for the life of Moses, no laws in the Pentateuch can be ascribed to him beyond a shadow of doubt” (p. 45). Deuteronomy is regarded as one of the greatest of the Old Testament books. But it is represented as the culmination or nearly that of a long process of development. We read of “the profound influence of the prophets on the Deuteronomic Code” (p. 163); and we are told (p. 171) that Deuteronomy 4, which is regarded as clearly monotheistic, is “a post-exilic addition based on the Second Isaiah (540 B.C.).” For those who accept Deuteronomy’s express claims to be Mosaic, this equating, theologically, of this early book, with the writings of one whom the critics regard as one of the last and greatest of the prophets is a remarkable justification of the words of Malachi: “Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.” What the critics put near the end of Israel’s history, the Bible places near the beginning!

Significant of this human treatment of the religion of Israel is of course the claim that “the prophet was not concerned with predicting the future” (p. 117). According to Pfeiffer, prediction is a characteristic of apocalyptic, which arose as a late and debased form “after prophecy was dead.”

The three latest books of the canon are held to be Daniel, Job and Ecclesiastes. Daniel is an apocalypse, which places it outside the prophetic succession. The writer of Job “found refuge in agnosticism” (p. 222). The author of Ecclesiastes “is not only the most radical but the most original thinker in the entire Old Testament.” “Contemporary Judaism produced no orthodox philosopher capable of attacking the theoretical premises of the skepticism and eudaemonism of Ecclesiastes.” All it could do was to add “annotations,” such as 12:13, 14, in order to give a proper ending, as we may call it, to the book (p. 223).

So the story ends in frustration and “a deepening gloom” (p. 224). Yet we are assured that “the history of Old Testament religion is the history of a spiritual triumph.” It is to be noted, therefore, that in order to give this assurance the writer is obliged to bring in the divine side, which he has not set out to depict. To the hopeful words, “the dayspring will one day break,” he is forced to add, “For the God of Israel forever reveals himself and offers salvation and healing to his people.” A striking confession that without the divine side the human side must end in failure and despair! How much better it would have been if Dr. Pfeiffer could have devoted his great talents to giving his readers a picture which included both sides, with special emphasis on that divine factor which is wholly responsible for the unique history of ancient Israel and for its glorious fruition in New Testament Christianity!

OSWALD T. ALLIS

A Puritan On Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer, by Thomas Watson (Banner of Truth, 1960, 241 pp., 8s.), is reviewed by F. K. Drayson of Cheshire, England.

This volume is the last of three volumes completing the reprinting of the author’s A Body of Divinity. Those who know Watson value his pithy comments which are full of sound doctrine and practical common sense. The book is in note form rather than running prose; but it is not difficult to read. The danger is that it may be read too quickly, for it contains much worthy of contemplation. And incidentally, the use of illustrations is masterly.

Prayer, says Watson, is a sine qua non for the Christian: “All that have got to heaven have crept thither upon their knees.” Answers to prayer are gifts of God’s grace: “We have not a bit of bread to put into our mouths unless God give it us.” Watson here expounds and applies the doctrine which underlies the six petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

He wrote in seventeenth century language, but only rarely does the book suffer from out-dated ideas and flashes of scholasticism. If only we had a twentieth-century Watson! He is of excellent value.

F. K. DRAYSON

World Mission

Let My Heart Be Broken, by Richard Gehman (McGraw-Hill, 1960, 245 pp., $4.90), is reviewed by Edward James Caldwell, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, North Hollywood, California.

Let My Heart Be Broken reads like a contemporary chapter in the Book of Acts. It is an objective report of the way God has used a dedicated man, Robert W. Pierce, and the organization which he founded, World Vision, Inc., throughout the Far East. But since World Vision is a mission organization that cooperates with many existing churches and agencies, this is in a larger sense a report of the World Mission of many parts of the Church of Christ. An example of the wider emphasis and cooperative nature of World Vision is found in the chapter on Taegu, Korea, where “Bob” Pierce is quoted as saying, “The Presbyterian Church built this hospital in 1899.… Presbyterians have done wonderful things here in Taegu. They’ve got a college, they’ve got a high school for boys and one for girls, and they’ve got this hospital. It’s got a hundred ten beds in the main building, and there are between forty and fifty in the children’s hospital we built a couple of years ago. We now contribute about thirteen hundred dollars a month for the care of kids. We also pay the salary of a full-time missionary nurse, Kathy Cowan. It’s one of the projects I mainly wanted you to see.”

This book is a story about people, modern saints who are doing the work of Christ convincingly—such as, Irene Webster Smith (Sensei) in Japan and Mrs. Lillian Dickson in Formosa. Since it is a report of many who are carrying the witness of Christ to the Far East, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Formosa, and India, the book breathes a freshness and an excitement. It reminds us that World Vision itself is a modern miracle which reflects the dynamic and consecrated ability of its unusual founder and president, Bob Pierce.

The book is written in the style of a journal, recording the impressions of its author on his 30,000 mile trip with a World Vision team where he saw the work supported in whole or in part by World Vision and attended a series of pastors’ conferences under their auspices. Having had the privilege of taking a similar trip, I can attest the accuracy of his reporting. Of special interest is the fact that the author did not claim to be a Christian when he began his trip, but says at the end—“Lord, I came to this cause of Christ as something of a skeptic as well as a stranger. Except for my small technical ability to interpret events for mass audiences, I was hardly qualified or worthy. But through the instrument of the ministry of Dr. Pierce, and through what I observed of the people I met, I sit here now not as an alien but as a friend and, more meaningful perhaps, a believer.” And again—“ ‘God bless you.’ It is the first time I have ever said this phrase with sincerity. And as I say it, I realize that these people’s belief in Christ has changed my life. Something has happened to me which, as yet, I am unable to define or evaluate. But it has happened. It is tangible—almost as tangible as the flight bag over my shoulder, the reporter’s burden. The word burden makes me think of my new friends, and what I have learned from them, and how they literally have led me. I want to do something that will tell them what has happened to me, and then I realize that that is unnecessary. They know. All along, they knew it would happen. Bob Pierce punches my shoulder, then waves his hand. He is off again.”

The book is enhanced by photographs by the well-known news photographer, Richard Reinhold.

EDWARD JAMES CALDWELL

Favoring The Nonrational

The Limits of Reason, by George Boas (Harper, 1961, 162 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University.

George Boas “is highly skeptical of the claims of logicians and scientists [and] more sympathetic to the nonrational modes of thinking” (p. 15). In the first half of the book he uses clever and interesting examples, of varying value, to show that nature is flux, concepts are artificial, and science is oversimplification. The meaning of reason changes, however. On one page reason is logic; on another “reason would tell us to make any sacrifice in order to avoid” World War III (p. 61). Now, this may be Communistic propaganda to demoralize the free nations, but it is not reason.

Then turning to linguistics the author teaches that all language is figurative because the basic terms are spatial. Creation ex nihilo is a myth. To condemn euthanasia and approve capital punishment is inconsistent. The astrophysicist has pushed back the entrance to heaven and the atomic physicist has opened the gates of hell. A literal statement, then, is a statement whose metaphorical character has been forgotten.

In conclusion, reason demands that everything be expressed in differential equations; that everything be linked together in a causal chain; and that everything be caught up in an invariant network of relations. Reason therefore excludes art and religion because the law of contradiction is inconsistent with change.

GORDON H. CLARK

To Conquer Rebellion

The Kingdom of Love and the Pride of Life, by Edward John Carnell (Eerdmans, 1960, 164 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by W. Robert Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Bethel College.

As a commentary on the contemporary mood of life and thought, as a defense of the Christian faith, and as a suggestive guide to practical everyday living, this book is excellent. The author writes out of a knowledge born of diligence and a wisdom born of a humble walk with our Saviour. His breadth of understanding of philosophy, psychology, and theology is everywhere apparent, yet he writes in such a lucid and simple style as to be perfectly understandable to the general reader.

Taking as a starting point the admonition of Christ that we must become like a little child the author develops the conviction of the heart—“love is always kind and truthful.” This insight of a child is manifested in everything from his hunger for acceptance to his delight in the fairy tales where evil is defeated and love and kindness triumph. The book is woven around the narrative of John 11 where Jesus lovingly deals with the yearning concern of Mary and Martha by finally raising Lazarus from the dead.

The hunger of every soul for love, and the blessed reality of the Kingdom of His redemptive love need to be learned by all, including modern parents, the proud sophisticate, and the repentant sinner whose heart condemns him overmuch.

It is an antidote to the pride of life and power with which we are all afflicted, not excepting denominations and their leaders. As an apologist, the author does battle with the dragon of scepticism that lives in the cave of intellectual detachment and like David slays it with the smooth stone of the childlike conviction of the heart, kindness and truthfulness. The chapters titled “The Limits of Philosophy” and “The Limits of Science” need pondering by the philosopher who is prone to reject anything that cannot be conceptualized and by the scientist overly enamoured with the cult of objectivity.

How refreshing to read a book that is throughout tangent to life; that not only unmasks the pride of sophistication by speaking to the intellect but warms the heart through the insights of love; that not only stimulates the mind but brings one closer to Jesus Christ. Summing it up, here is a brilliant treatise for these times for classroom, church study, and home.

W. ROBERT SMITH

Religion And Law

Law and Civilization, by Palmer D. Edmunds (Public Affairs Press, 1959, 528 pp., $6), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History at Catawba College.

The author, professor of law at the John Marshall Law School, writes with a clearly defined thesis, “that without law there cannot be civilization, and that civilization in its manifestations is geared to law” (p. 5). The author then develops his thesis by an appeal to history. Finding the origins of civilization in a synthesis between law and religion, he then examines the histories of Egypt, Babylon, ancient India, the development of Grecian culture, and points out the intimate relationship in each culture between law and religion. Rome developed the synthesis to new heights, and Edmunds places a great emphasis upon the contributions of Roman law to the development of Western civilization.

Of even greater importance is the role of Israel in the Old Testament, and the Church in the New Testament, in the growth of our modern conceptions of law. The author clearly recognizes the fact that religion gives to law and the whole legal structure a meaning and relation to justice which modern conceptions fail to achieve. But Edmunds makes little distinction between Christianity and the nonrevealed religions, and pays a higher tribute to Islam than is generally paid.

In a rather abrupt shift of emphasis the author then turns to the modern view that man is his own lawmaker, and that he no longer finds in religion the sanctions for his legal systems. The reviewer agrees that such a development has taken place, but the author makes a serious error in locating the origins of this contemporary conception of law in Hohenzollern Germany. He totally neglects the effects of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment on European and American legal theory, and he does not seem to realize that the belief that man is his own lawmaker lies at the very heart of the democratic philosophy. Edmunds is on much safer ground in his treatment of law in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Red China, and manages to bring to light a great deal of valuable insight on the legal systems of these countries. He is at his best in those chapters devoted to the common law in both England and the United States. However, in his chapter on constitutional evolution, the author comes dangerously close to a negation of his previous position in his seeming acceptance of a necessary relativism in contemporary jurisprudence in his defense of the position assumed by the Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education (1954).

The technical chapters are quite likely to overwhelm the average reader without giving him much insight into the relationship between law and civilization. Nevertheless, the book contains a wealth of information on ancient and modern legal systems that is not always available in one volume.

C. GREGG SINGER

God’S Covenant In Christ

God’s Unfolding Purpose, by Suzanne de Dietrich, translated by Robert McAfee Brown (Westminster, 1961, 287 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by William C. Robinson, Professor of Historical Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary.

Titled Le Lessein de Dieu, and first appearing in 1957, this book does for the French something of what Wilhelm Vischer has done for the German readers, namely, to interpret the Bible by its main message: the covenant of God in Christ Jesus. The author reads creation as the work of the Triune God and sees the restoration of Isaac to Abraham as a prefiguring of the Resurrection. “The Word of promise called him out of nothing into life, and only the Word which raises the dead sustains his life. The patriarch … still possesses his son only in faith.” In rapid review the story of the Bible is read as God’s dealing with the witnessing community.

With the main drive of the book we are in hearty accord. Questions arise concerning details. The statement on Jesus’ dealing with the Sabbath is better on page 173 than on page 170. Critical positions are largely relegated to the notes—a wise procedure. Such positions are generally those of the higher critical school. For a bird’s-eye view of the book, note the following on the Resurrection:

“The risen Lord appears to the incredulous disciples. He gives them his peace, and he commands them to evangelize the world. The assurance of the resurrection is the foundation of the Church. And the Church proclaims to all the world that by Jesus and in Jesus ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30). Everything that needed to be done has been done—that means everything for which Abraham and Moses were guided to the Promised Land; everything for which God had created a people for himself and entered into covenant relationship with them; everything for which the throne and the Temple had been built on Mt. Zion; everything that the prophets had believed and proclaimed; everything that the psalmists had believed and sung about; everything that God had prepared from the beginning of the world.… This assurance of fulfillment is the message of every page of the New Testament. All is fulfilled. The tomb is empty.”

WILLIAM C. ROBINSON

Irenic Survey

Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, The Nineteenth Century Outside Europe, vol. III, by Kenneth Scott Latourette (Harper, 1961, 527 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, Professor of Missions, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Time has not dulled the pen of Dr. Latourette who brings his usual historical acumen to bear in this carefully documented survey of the Christian faith in the nineteenth century. About one half of the volume is devoted to the United States, and into this section of the book the author has woven many details of significance which cannot be found in other surveys of the same period. His writing is characterized by a warm evangelical spirit, and above all he is irenic in temperament.

For those who wish to have a fair treatment of movements and trends as widely different as Unitarianism and fundamentalism, they will find this book rewarding reading. Dr. Latourette has fairly appraised the Scofield Bible, Dwight L. Moody, Henry Clay Trumbull, George Muller, and J. Hudson Taylor. His treatment of the movement of liberalism is equally irenic. His excellent generalizations keep the reader from hanging in mid-air after the facts or the “stuff” of history have been recounted. There is a wealth of information contained in the pages of the volume, and minister and layman alike would profit by perusing it—a possible choice for one of the key books of 1961.

HAROLD LINDSELL

From the stately pulpit of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington last month came a public rebuke aimed at a new crop of Protestant cynics.

Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, who for eight years of the Eisenhower administration was “the President’s pastor,” scored the recently publicized “cynicism of some American religious spokesmen about religion, about the state of the church, and about American life and culture.”

In a sermon to an overflow congregation at the famous Connecticut Avenue church, Elson explained that he was applying the term “cynic” in the modern conventional sense, in the dictionary meaning of “a sarcastic, pessimistic person” or “one who sneeringly professes disbelief in sincerely good motives and altruistic conduct.”

He used the term to describe contemporary critics in American Protestantism who repeatedly decry the current wave of religious renewal as “unreal or even dangerous.”

“It is the mission of the church,” he declared, “to provide for confession of real sins, to admit and exteriorize genuine defects, to accurately evaluate and assess the quality of personal piety, personal conduct and social morality. All of this we must do to find forgiveness and new life, to know the deeper meaning of salvation and the amendment of life where we are feeble and ineffective.

“But to be chronically critical, to be constantly censorious, to perennially peddle disdain, to assert only negatives can lead to very serious sickness of the soul and eventually to the destruction of the whole fibre of our common life. If we become saturated with cynicism, we begin to wither away into impotency.”

Elson asserted that the Church must stand in the center of life and make its gospel and its fellowship relevant to all of life.

“Nor must the clergy be mere chaplains—the status quo,” he added. “They must be prophets who know in the depths of their being that they speak for God the word that is based upon his Word.

“But a vindictive disdain, a latent envy, a cynical slur is not prophecy. If everyone conforms to the processed pronouncements and ‘packaged prophecy’ so readily available, we may well blunt the creative insights and prophetic judgments which ought to be forthcoming from all of God’s prophets.”

What is the precise nature of the religious awakening of recent years?

Elson said it has come “primarily in the parish church through hard-working pastors and dedicated self-sacrificing laymen. Religious renewal comes by the work of the Holy Spirit and must be assessed in broader terms than individual leaders.”

How Cynicism Pervades Protestantism

Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, minister of National Presbyterian Church, describes the cynical thought pattern in U. S. Protestantism as follows:

“Much has been said in recent years about the revival of interest in religion. There can be no doubt such has taken place. The evidence is all about us in the lengthening of church rolls, the church building boom, the rise of dynamic laymen’s movements, the earnest searching of youth, the sale of religious literature, the new translations of the Bible, the improved quality of the clergy, the revitalized Christian education curriculum, and the reappearance of effective mass evangelism.

“But there are those who say all this is unreal or even dangerous. A veritable torrent of cynicism has been poured out in the sadistic columns of some religious observers. To listen to some spokesmen you would conclude that American Protesantism is anemic if not completely impotent, that American laymen are spiritually destitute, that their faith is flabby and their morals inferior. The laymen, we are told, have become slaves to the evils of the ‘organization man,’ manipulated by the mob, directed by the climate and mores of suburbia, possessed only of a ‘religion-in-general,’ a do-gooder sentiment without do-good philosophy!”

He avers that the United States has experienced religious renewal despite a moral sag and cultural deterioration, and he rejects the contention that one cancels the other.

“In a nation of 170,000,000 people it is possible to have both negative and positive influences at the same time,” he said. “The truth is that we have had both—the moral sag and deterioration of culture have been real in a nation where at the same time religious activity has been real and for many persons very vital.

“By exaggerated attention to negatives,” he charged, “we accelerate a weakening process.”

Elson, who witnessed first-hand the transition of a traditionally Protestant White House to its occupancy by the first Roman Catholic president in history, voiced fears over the effects of “a torrent of chronic negativism.”

“It is a well-known law of the soul that if you become excessively morbid, if you dig up old sins or symptoms, petting or fondling defects and failures, you can produce illness.… The public self-flagellation to which some tend to submit us can produce only a crowd of national penetentes slashing at the veins where the blood of American life flows.”

The noted Presbyterian minister chose as a text Hebrews 11:1:

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

“How do you regain confidence in our spiritual heritage?” Elson asked. “Not by cynicism! Not by self-lampooning, not by self-flagellation, not by self-berating, not by self-denunciation. We cannot be anything great and strong on negatives.”

“Only by a robust and rugged religious faith can we stand up to the demands of this age. And the kind of faith America needs now is best mediated in and through the churches.”

Elson said that “in our society religious life is not an option; it is an imperative. For we cannot have our culture except as we have a central core of worshiping, witnessing, praying, serving, and sacrificing religious men and women. Is not the man who omits praying, neglects church-going, excludes God from his home and personal life until he is a religious ignoramus, though perhaps a pleasing pagan, a definite drag on our life? He derives from our society the richness it has produced without his contributing to its renewal. And is not the man who maintains a religious home, who says his prayers, studies his Bible, and gives to sustain the witness, is not that man, however imperfectly and humbly seeking to know God and do his will, contributing to the strength of America?”

The Controversial Bishop

Bishop James A. Pike seemingly is intent on going down in Protestant Episcopal history as one of the church’s most controversial personalities. A convert from Roman Catholicism and a member of the bar, Pike now is regarded as a foremost figure in the Protestant ecumenical movement. Unlike most key churchmen, he is well known at U.S. grass roots, primarily as a result of (1) a TV series and (2) his flair for the striking statement. The head of the California Episcopal diocese will readily ‘speak out” on most any subject, and his remarks usually are articulate and arresting. To newsmen, therefore, he is “good copy,” which makes for wide publicity. Recently he has challenged basic Christian doctrines, and the result has been still more publicity, but at this point ecclesiastical concern has developed over whether he has perhaps gone too far.

Until he voiced doctrinal criticisms, Pike’s fellow churchmen tended to dismiss his multiplicity of utterances with a shrug. It is now clear, however, that his stock has taken a plunge in the eyes of a number of high-ranking Episcopal officials. A number have chided him publicly for attacking scriptural precepts of his church. Still others are believed to be seriously perturbed, though they have not indicated it publicly. Last month Pike got an indirect rebuke from the Episcopal Bishop of Long Island in a pastoral letter ordered to be read in all 210 churches and missions of the diocese.

Bishop James P. De Wolfe declared that no bishop “has the authority to revise the faith of this church, either by adding to it or subtracting from it.”

Although the letter did not mention the California bishop by name, De Wolfe later commented that it “obviously” referred to Pike.

The letter declared that the definition of the church’s faith “is the responsibility of the church operating under the guidance of God the Holy Ghost. Up to the present time, the church has never interpreted the definition so as to negate the doctrine of the Trinity, the birth of incarnate God, the Son of a woman who was a virgin, the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, or the essential dependence of the structure and operation of the church upon bishops and the apostolic ministry. Despite misleading headlines and press notices in many newspapers and magazines, the faith declared by the church in the creeds is not in question by the church.”

Meanwhile in California, an Episcopal clergyman who opposed Pike’s election as diocesan bishop in 1958 found himself out of a job. The Rev. Robert Sherwood Morse, fired as Episcopal chaplain for the University of California at Berkeley, charged that Pike is now “smashing the opposition.”

A diocesan spokesman gave this explanation: “There was a fundamental disagreement between Father Morse and the board for which he works—the Division of College Work of the Department of Education of the Diocese.

“There are two general philosophies about church work in colleges. One is that the church become a part of college life. The second is that it should draw students out of college life to the church.

The Vatican’S Desanctification Decree

Desanctification of one Philomena by the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation of Rites prompted recollection that another “holy person” of the same name existed prior to 500 A. D.

In Washington, the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s Bureau of Information issued a statement of explanation by the Rev. Francis J. Connell of Holy Redeemer College, a leading Catholic theologian.

“There really was a holy person named Philomena and her feast day in the Roman Martyrology is July 5,” the statement said, adding that “the ‘St. Philomena’ ordered stricken from the roll of saints … was a young girl of unknown identity whose remains were found in 1802 under circumstances that misled many persons into believing they had found the relics of an early martyr.”

The Philomena of Roman Martyrology is even more obscure, however, than her nineteenth-century namesake, and the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites apparently rules out veneration of her as well.

The Vatican ruling was dated February 14. A Bureau of Information spokesman said he was unable to explain why it did not receive public notice until last month.

Connell reassured Roman Catholics of the usefulness of prayers and devotions during the last 150 years in honor of Philomena: “These countless prayers and novena devotions were directed to God, albeit through a nonexistent saint.”

“The church’s official position is the former and Father Morse’s position seemed to be the latter.

“The board, composed of laymen and clergymen, recommended the dismissal, and the bishop accepted the recommendation.”

Morse agreed with the explanation—as far as it went philosophically.

“I think the Episcopal faith is a democratic church that traditionally has encouraged differing philosophies and attitudes,” he said.

Morse added that he “felt the need of UC students for their own chapel. Because I have done this, he fired me.”

Pike contends that Americans ought to be allowed latitude in their views without having to invite smears. He told a Minneapolis audience last month that “the real issue is freedom versus totalitarianism. These people who call themselves patriots [a reference to the John Birch Society] want to destroy freedom of speech, of opinion, of association and of conscience.” Dismissal of Morse, on the other hand, gave some observers the impression that Pike regards freedom as a one-way street.

Sex and the Oscars

Hollywood’s preoccupation with the sordid side of sex reached a new high last month with the announcement of Oscar winners:

—Elizabeth Taylor was named best actress of 1960 for her role as the nymphomaniac model in “Butterfield 8.”

—“The Apartment,” a comedy-drama about extra-marital affairs in a West Side flat, was chosen as the best American picture of the year.

—Billy Wilder was cited for the best job of direction in connection with the film, “The Apartment.”

—“The Virgin Spring,” sex-studded production directed by Ingmar Bergman, was selected best foreign-language film.

—Shirley Jones was named best supporting actress for her portrayal of a prostitute in “Elmer Gantry.”

—“Never on Sunday,” another film featuring prostitution, was honored for producing the best original song.

The film industry’s vilification of the clergy was also acclaimed with the “best actor” award going to Burt Lancaster, the immoral evangelist in “Elmer Gantry.”

This sort of vilification gets a new twist in a film now playing across the country, “The Sins of Rachel Cade.” This time the errant heroine is a young missionary woman.

To an Unknown God

An interreligious center featuring a revolving “all-faiths altar” will be built on the campus of George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

Chairman of the center will be Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo, noted churchman who has been director of the university’s religious education program for the past 10 years.

The new center, of imposing modern design, will occupy almost an entire city block. The chapel will seat more than 700 worshipers and will include a revolving altar with three sides for use in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish services, and a fourth side when programs are sponsored by those of other faiths.

Originally founded by Baptists as Columbia College, George Washington University is now a private non-sectarian institution with an enrollment of more than 10,000.

Holy Land Campus

Its campus situated atop the Mount of Olives, a new, Christian-oriented school of archaeological and biblical studies will open next spring in Jerusalem, Jordan.

A building already acquired is actually located on the Mount of Olives, just above the Garden of Gethsemane, providing a commanding view of the temple area and the walled city of Jerusalem.

Sponsored by the Near East Archaeological Society, the school will be open to college and seminary students, ministers, teachers, as well as laymen.

Students will have their choice of three terms: spring, summer, and fall-winter, with classes in biblical archaeology, biblical history, geography, and related subjects.

After visits to Pompeii, Italy, and Egypt, the students will be led on a two-week survey trip through the Near East by Dr. Joseph Free, executive director of archaeological studies at Wheaton College.

Opening of the spring term will begin with a week’s field trip to several Holy Land sites. Additional such trips will ensue on a weekly basis.

Students also will get a chance to witness an archaeological excavation process at Dothan, 60 miles north of Jerusalem.

Seminary Strategy

Officials of Chicago’s Northern Baptist Theological Seminary are understood to have turned aside a proposal for merger with Central Baptist Theological Seminary which would entail relocation at the latter’s Kansas City campus.

“Northern’s location in the strateoic Chicago area is not negotiable,” say seminary trustees.

The merger-relocation plan originated with the Board of Education and Publication of the American Baptist Convention, under whose aegis both seminaries operate. The board reportedly felt that nine seminaries are too many for the size of the convention.

The seminary’s own $2,000,000 relocation program, which will take the campus to a 50-acre site in suburban Lombard, Illinois, is moving along at an encouraging pace, according to Dr. Benjamin P. Browne, executive officer who will begin a two-year term as president September 1. He estimates that classes on the new campus will begin by September, 1963.

The seminary was founded in 1914 on Chicago’s West Side to counter the liberal theology then prevalent at the University of Chicago Divinity School, still affiliated with the American Baptist Convention also.

During the presidency of Dr. Charles W. Kohler, Northern attracted at one time the largest student body of the convention’s eight (now nine) seminaries in a theological college as well as a graduate divinity school.

There had been some support among Northern officials for a merger with Central with a consolidated campus at Lombard, but they decided against issuing a formal invitation.

Northern’s present campus is located in a neighborhood which has been deteriorating in recent years.

A New Start

Ground was broken last month for a new campus for Louisville (Kentucky) Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

First stage of construction will cost some $3,975,000, of which $2,500,000 has already been raised.

The move to the new campus is set for the fall of 1962.

Evangelical Students

Nearly 100 delegates from 22 U. S. Christian colleges assembled on the campus of Evangel College, Springfield, Missouri, last month for the third annual convention of the American Association of Evangelical Students.

The assemblage represented a task force of evangelical student leaders dedicated to social and political awareness alongside their personal spiritual commitment.

Dr. J. Robert Ashcroft, president of Evangel College, told the students that the evangelical distinctive must be vital, not merely verbal.

“We must come to grips with human need,” he said. “Jesus touched mankind at its sorest points.”

Ashcroft said that in trying to dissociate themselves from the social gospel, the fundamentalist movement lost also a social consciousness and awareness.

The association represents more than 10,000 students across America. It was formed in 1956, and its first national conference was held at Wheaton College in 1959. The second took place last year on the campus of Houghton (New York) College.

The ‘Good’ Work

Russian Orthodox theological schools in Stavropol, Kiev, and Sarato have been closed “for lack of students,” Moscow Radio reported last month with undisguised satisfaction.

It said meanwhile that the number of students enrolling at seminaries in Moscow and Leningrad had dropped sharply as a result of the “good work” done by the antireligious Komsomol, Communist youth group.

The Moscow Radio broadcast included statements by a former student at the Leningrad seminary who claimed that he had been induced to “give up religion” because of the “immoral life” of the teaching staff.

The Miami Ruling

Two years ago an atheist, Harlow Chamberlin, filed a law suit in Miami asking that Dade County public schools be prevented from requiring or permitting recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, saying of grace, and classroom observances of Christmas and Chanukah.

A few weeks later three Jewish parents and a Unitarian, with the aid of the Florida Civil Liberties Union, followed suit with a demand that the daily reading of the Bible in the schools—required by state law—be discontinued. They also asked an end to baccalaureate services and other school practices with a trace of religion in them.

The issue grew into a bitter community battle which saw animosity expressed between the Greater Miami Council of Churches and the Greater Miami Rabbinical Association. It was the highlight of last November’s school board election in which a liberal Jew, related to one of the litigants, barely won a seat over a retired businessman backed by leaders in the Council of Churches. It attracted Dr. Leo Pfeffer, constitutional authority of the American Jewish Congress, as one of the attorneys in a tumultuous trial which monopolized local newspaper headlines for weeks.

Finally, last month, Circuit Judge J. Fritz Gordon issued his ruling. His decision did not completely satisfy anyone involved, but the reading of the Bible was given his hesitant approval.

In an 18-page opinion which at least one of the plaintiff attorneys has declared will be appealed all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court and school board attorneys have indicated they, too, may appeal, Judge Gordon held that daily Bible reading in the public schools does not violate either the federal or state constitutions.

The judge, a deacon in a Christian (Disciples of Christ) church, emphasized that the law was not unconstitutional because as applied in the schools students are excused from the Bible readings upon request. He hinted, however, that perhaps it would be well that students not be told that what they are hearing is from the Bible.

Judge Gordon decided that after-hours Bible courses conducted in the schools by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, religious holiday observances depicting the birth or crucifixion of Christ, and movies which “depict various religious happenings” are taboo.

But he upheld such other religious practices as baccalaureate programs, display of religious symbols, and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.

The whole list of religious issues was included in the combined suits in a deliberate effort eventually to get a U. S. Supreme Court ruling covering the whole field of religion in the public schools instead of the existing hodgepodge of single—and somewhat conflicting-decisions on such issues as released-time programs of religious education for public school children.

A. T.

Cancer and Religion

Evidence that death rates from various types of cancer differ remarkably among the three major religious faiths in the United States is shown in a study published last month by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Statistics are based on 84,431 cancer fatalities in New York City hospitals over a five-year period and represent the preliminary findings of Dr. Vaun A. Newill of the department of epidemiclogy of Harvard University’s School of Public Health. The Journal is published by the National Institutes of Health and the U. S. Public Health Service with funds voted by Congress to promote research.

Initial purpose of the study was to gather evidence of a phenomenon long observed by cancer research—that cancer of the cervex (neck of the womb), a common cause of death among women, is found much less often among Jewish women than those of other faiths. The study strongly confirmed this, showing the death rate for that cause among Jewish women to be only 9 per 100,000, compared with 22 for Catholic women and 24.8 for Protestant women.

Newill and other scientists believe this may have some connection with the Jewish custom of circumcision, for the study also showed that while cancer of the genital organs is rare among males, it is only half as common among Jewish men (0.5 per 100,000) as Catholics (1.1) and Protestants (1.3).

On the other hand, Jews were found more subsceptible to some of the other forms of cancer to the extent that their over-all cancer death rate is estimated at 543.5 per 100,000, compared with 533.9 for Protestants and 504.4 for Catholics.

By sexes the over-all cancer rates of all forms were put at: women—Jewish 516, Protestants 450, Catholic 430; men—Protestants 623, Catholic 578, Jewish 572.

Meanwhile, other medical studies are being made among religious groups. Preliminary reports of a study among Seventh-day Adventists, a vegetarian group that eschews smoking, show that lung cancer and stomach cancer are very rare. A survey among Trappist monks, however, shows surprisingly that they are prone to sudden heart attacks despite their tranquil life and austere diet. A study of Mormons, who reject tea and coffee as well as tobacco, indicates they suffer less from high blood pressure than other groups.

A Kennedy Choice

James W. Wine was nominated last month to be United States Ambassador to Luxembourg. He was formerly associate general secretary for interpretation of the National Council of Churches, having resigned the post last year to join the Democratic campaign staff as assistant to the chairman of the party’s national committee for community relations. His particular assignment was to answer questions on Church-State issues. Wine is a Presbyterian layman.

Mackay’s First Love

Having recently returned home from a lecture tour around the world which included ten countries in Asia, Dr. John A. Mackay, president emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary, has assurances for the Christian community-at-large that he is by no means “retiring”—not really.

Forthcoming visits to several Latin American countries reflect Dr. Mackay’s intention of devoting his remaining years to his “first love,” Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America.

Currently delivering a series of lectures on “Christianity in the Hispanic World” at American University, Washington, D. C., which has elected him Adjunct-Professor of Hispanic Thought, Dr. Mackay challenges the contention that Protestantism never appealed to the Spanish mind. He seeks a rediscovery for the Christian world of the lost evangelical tradition of sixteenth-century Spain. This tradition embraced Catholic mystics who remained within the church and Spanish Reformers who broke away from it. Spain was “on the point of becoming Protestant,” asserts Dr. Mackay, but the political situation was most unfavorable. Ecclesiastical force was brought to bear upon the Crown in the form of the notorious Inquisition, and among other things a great evangelical literature, much of it produced in prison, was lost for 300 years.

Dr. Mackay has been accumulating certain of these little known sixteenth-century works, which he describes as “evangelical and Christocentric.” He notes, moreover, that “thoughtful Roman Catholics in France and the United States have become very critical of their church’s tradition in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.” They affirm that the Spanish form of Catholicism lacked an incarnational quality. It has failed to relate itself to life.

Roman Catholicism has made no creative impact upon Latin American reality. Its detachment of religion from life issued, for example, in a violent reaction against the church in Mexico and in religious cynicism in Uruguay—where “God” is often spelled without a capital letter (dios). Latin American Catholicism has never challenged the intellectual life, nor has it developed a worthy religious literature. Its emphasis has been upon ritual and upon authoritarian institutionalism. It has manifested no transforming spiritual power, declares Dr. Mackay, but rather has shown more interest in maintaining earthly grandeur and prestige. Thus it loses ground. It now discovers, for example, that Brazil’s native-born clergy includes more Protestant ministers than Roman Catholic priests.

It is to this total situation that Presbyterian Mackay addresses himself, through traveling, writing, and lecturing, to “enlarge evangelical horizons in the Hispanic world.”

F.F.

Pat on the Back

Protestantism gets a pat on the back in an article in Fidel Castro’s Revolution which appeared prior to last month’s abortive invasion.

The article contrasts Roman Catholic approaches with the Protestant “sense of community” and cites fruits of conversion.

“It is a well-known fact,” the writer declares, “that a Roman Catholic who drinks too much stops drinking when he becomes a Protestant. This spectacular conversion impresses his wife and family, and they all adopt the new faith.”

The article continues: “But the change can be noticed in other matters as well. He is a more punctual and better workman, and more honest and clean in his business dealings.”

Observers raised some eyebrows upon reading the article, for the writer apparently is an unbeliever.

Enter the Hierarchy

Roman Catholic intervention is blamed for the Costa Rican government’s decision to revoke a permit for a parade which was to have climaxed the Latin America Mission’s eight-month “Evangelism-in-Depth” program April 16 in San Jose.

The government explained that it had feared a parade would create disorder inasmuch as this is an election year.

Protestant missionaries countered that the parade was to be a purely pacific gesture in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the evangelical church in Costa Rica. They pointed out that Roman Catholic Holy Week processions were held as usual this year, as were patriotic parades and demonstrations.

The parade was to have been staged in connection with the windup of an evangelistic series in an 8,000-seat auditorium in San Jose.

A Dominican friar in a published protest called the meetings “a serious insult to the Catholic religion and an outrage against our political constitution.” He also accused the Roman hierarchy of “pusilanimity” for not combating the evangelistic rallies more vigorously.

The Manchester Story

It began as a Manchester crusade, designed to reach the laboring class in the city that is the heart of Great Britain’s industrial region.

As interest mounted it became the North of England Crusade, drawing support from churches in Sheffield, Preston, Liverpool, Stoke, and Leeds.

By the spring of 1961 it had become the All-Britain Crusade, and when Billy Graham steps to the platform in Manchester’s Maine Road stadium on Monday evening, May 29, the most far-reaching evangelistic effort in the thousand-year history of the British Isles will be launched.

The largest number of counselors and personal workers ever assembled for a Graham crusade—over 10,000—are being trained by Dan Piatt.

So vast and intricate is the system of land-line relays that has been set up for all over Britain and Eire for the meetings, that it is expected that more people will be hearing the crusade services through the “relays” than will be in Maine Road stadium. Yet the stadium was expected to be packed throughout the four weeks of the crusade. Some 30,000 seats are under overhead protection, and there is space for 20,000 more persons.

Film Milestone

The film arm of Billy Graham’s evangelistic ministry is marking its tenth anniversary with release of “Decade of Decision,” which traces his crusades in the United States and abroad. The film ministry, currently operating under the name of World Wide Pictures, has thus far completed 155 productions.

Total attendance at film showings in the United States is estimated at more than 20 million for the 10-year period. Additional hundreds of thousands have seen the films overseas.

Production offices are located in Hollywood, and are under the direction of Dick Ross. Distribution offices are located in Minneapolis and in England, Australia, and Canada.

Graham will speak by radio to the entire British nation on Sunday, June 4, over the BBC home service. The following Sunday he will be seen on a nationwide BBC telecast. A similar nationwide telecast during the Glasgow Crusade of 1955 was watched by Queen Elizabeth II, and resulted in Mr. Graham being invited to Windsor Castle subsequently to preach to the royal family.

On Sunday, June 18, Graham has been invited to participate in the annual civic service in Birmingham, England. After a procession led by the lord mayor, the evangelist will preach at St. Martin’s-in-the-Bullring, where Canon Bryan Green, internationally-known Anglican preacher, is rector. The service will be relayed to the public market and a nearby theater.

At least 300 relay centers have been set up, each serving four or five separate meetings. At one point in the crusade, it is estimated that there may be some 2,500 relay meetings tuned in simultaneously.

The All-Britain Crusade officially opens May 23 with a ministers’ meeting in the late W. E. Sangster’s church, Central Hall, Westminster, London.

In Wales 40,000 ticket applications were reported for tickets to a rally at Swansea, May 24. It is expected to be the largest evangelistic rally in the history of the country known for its 1904 revival.

The current British evangelistic series will close in Scotland with a public rally on June 24 in Glasgow’s Ibrox stadium, and another in Belfast June 26.

Linguistics Links

Accra, capital of Ghana and scene of many a rowdy nationalist conference affecting the course of current history in Africa, was the venue this spring of a linguistics conference that will help missionaries to press forward with the Gospel message.

Eighty-five delegates from West African countries, the United States, and Europe, took part in the West African Linguistics Congress sponsored by Columbia University, New York, and the Ford Foundation.

Professor S. Greenberg of Columbia, chairman of the congress, paid tribute to the work of missionaries who have done the bulk of linguistic work in West Africa. Forty per cent of the delegates were missionaries.

Main interest of delegates representing educational institutions was to fill in the gaps of man’s history by relating language patterns. Some looked upon the findings as support for the theory of evolution, but missionaries was the evidence in a different light.

“If I weren’t already a convinced evangelical, what I’ve seen of language patterns would convince me more of the Bible’s historical accuracy,” declared veteran missionary R. T. Dibble, who has been engaged in linguistic work with a Brethren group in Nigeria since 1921. He has just completed translation of the Bible into the Igala language, spoken by 400,000 people.

“We find extremely backward, primitive tribes with distinctive, perfect tonal patterns, which convinces me that man has degenerated, not evolved.”

Two new journals were proposed at the congress, one to aid linguistic workers through publication of reports of their work, the other to give technical help by providing findings in tonal patterns, orthography, and related matters.

Delegates saw the Vernacular Illustrated Publications project developed by the Sudan Interior Mission as one immediate answer to the need for suitable materials for new literates. “VIPs” are Christian leaflets written simply and highly illustrated. Advantage for missions working in small language groups is that costs can be cut by translating a basic edition into other vernaculars, keeping the same layout and illustrations throughout.

W. H. F.

Bold Venture

The month-long Tokyo Christian Crusade which was scheduled to begin May 6 promises to emerge as one of the boldest evangelistic ventures ever undertaken in a non-Christian country.

Nightly rallies at the 10,000-seat Meiji Auditorium are expected to attract throngs from all over Japan to hear Evangelist Bob Pierce, president of World Vision, Inc., crusade sponsor.

The rallies are putting a high premium on quality music. Included in the program are a 1,000-voice choir, an 85-piece orchestra, and top U. S. gospel musicians.

Christian leaders who will be on hand to aid in the crusade include Dr. Wilbur Smith, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker, Dr. Carlton Booth, Dr. Paul Rees, Dr. Richard C. Halverson, Dr. Dwight Ferguson, Dr. Ralph Byron, Armin Gesswein, and Bill Bright.

Crusade leaders report cooperation unparalleled in Japanese Christendom, but some protests have persisted. Leftist groups have attributed political motives to the crusade, while a few independent church groups have objected to the cooperation of clergy known to have favored preservation of Shinto shrines as national symbols.

A sentence must never be interpreted out of context, as any scholar knows. It is pointless, furthermore, to suggest that separate sentences are true out of a context of linguistic and nonlinguistic experience. Recently, however, some theologians have claimed that no separate sentence can be wholly true even in context.

I refer specifically to William Hordern’s The Case for a New Reformation Theology (Westminster Press, 1959). Hordern takes two approaches to make his point. The first starts from affirmations concerning the social function of language. The second deals with the presence of areas of meaning—of ambiguity—represented by the words of a language.

Information, Understanding, and Truth

As for the first, Hordern adopts the point of view that a “proposition is a tool; it has a task to perform, and to perform its task it must be spoken and it must be received” (p. 58). Language, as a tool, must therefore—he implies—do its job of affecting someone exactly. Inerrant propositions must “come into the understanding of the hearer, meaning precisely what the speaker meant by them” (p. 59). This linkage from speaker to hearer must be so tight that “to express infallibly what the speaker wants to say, we must also say that it is impossible to hear it otherwise than the speaker intended it to be heard” (p. 59). He would conclude that “An objective revelation is not inerrant unless it is inerrantly received,” since the “subjective receiver of revelation is an indispensible link in the chain,” and, following Kierkegaard, Hordern maintains that “there is no truth unless there is truth to me” (p. 59, italics added). Thus “If there is to be inerrant revelation of propositions, the hearer would have to be as inerrant as the speaker” (p. 59).

If we ask for the reason lying behind the adoption of this view of language we find in his book that it developed as a challenge to what he considers the “basic premise” of “fundamentalism or conservatism”—“that what God reveals is information” (p. 57). He maintains with “modern theologians” that “what God reveals is not propositions nor information—what God reveals is God” (pp. 61–62; see also pp. 55–57, 68). Hordern rejects the fundamentalist view that information has been revealed to us by God since—he tells us—if he accepts information as being revealed this implies “with stunning logic” (p. 57) that the Bible and the interpreting church must both be considered infallible—which he considers impossible. He then replaces this informational concept of revelation with that of revelation as being composed of the knowledge of God directly.

We have no objection to treating the contact of man with God in Christ as being part of—or one kind of—revelation. We object rather to the elimination of information from the total amount or kinds of revelation available to us.

Furthermore, we do not deny that language has social relevance and purpose, or that language is designed to communicate with and affect other people. What we deny is that language has only the one function of linkage from one person to another. We claim that it includes also the purposes of man talking with himself; of formulating ideas for himself; of storing ideas in sayings, legends, or libraries; the presentation of information or truth in such a way that it is available for others who then or later are or will be prepared to receive it. It is the pair of concepts of availability on the one hand and preparedness for reception on the other hand which seem to me to have been overlooked (or perhaps rejected?) by Hordern.

These omissions may lead to ultimate skepticism if pushed to their logical conclusion. Let us assume, for example, that a teacher of very great scientific competence gives a lecture today to an audience of young graduate students. A tape recording is made of the lecture. Members of the class are asked to comment on or to repeat the day’s lecture. Let us suppose that none of them understood the lecture. From the point of view of Hordern this would not be mere failure to understand truth—it would be evidence that the lecture was not inerrant, specifically, and by implication would also be evidence that the lecture is not wholly true.

Three years after, when these same students have had further training, they listen to the old tape again. They now understand it. The material, which formerly was not truth, by Hordern’s treatment would now become truth because it would have done what propositions are meant to do.

In order to avoid this conclusion, I would claim, on the contrary, that the initial lecture was in fact true, and was in principle available. It needed, however, prepared receivers for its adequate reception.

Availability would imply that in order for material revealed to be at least in principle understandable to adequate receivers, it could not be phrased in a heavenly language which was permanently opaque to all human beings. It might, on the other hand, be interpreted as being available only to persons with the proper experience. One component of such experience is available to people, on a natural level, if they can read easily.

Preparedness may involve a delay while further data is being made available through succeeding events. Understanding—but not the presence versus the absence of truth—would then be retroactive.

Understanding is not in the same dimension with truth. Jesus had some things to tell to his disciples which they were not prepared to receive fully at the moment, and which they would understand only in retrospect, but which I consider to have been fully true even before the disciples were able to understand these teachings. He stated that the Son of Man was to be killed, and was to rise the third day. The disciples did not understand this (Mark 9:31–32; Luke 9:44–45; 18:31–34), even though we now do. The written Scriptures were also at times understood in retrospect—as concerning the triumphal entry (John 12:16), or prophecies of Christ’s coming (Luke 24:45). Similarly, lack of belief does not invalidate the truth of an utterance—as when Christ warned Peter about denial before the cock crew (John 13:38), or when the Jews did not “understand” because they did not “hear” (John 8:43). Nor does teaching in parables, partly hidden (cf. John 16:25), make an item false.

Christ, furthermore, claimed that truth came through human language. Even though “they understood not,” He insisted that “he that sent me is true” and “I speak … those things which I have heard of him” (John 8:26–28). And “they have kept thy word.… For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee.… I have given them thy word.… Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth” (John 17:6, 8, 14, 17).

Language, Ambiguity, and Truth

Hordern’s second objection to considering revelation as containing true information lies in the fact that sentences can be ambiguous.

Specifically, he suggests that the sentence “God is love” (1 John 4:8) is such that “we cannot consider it infallible” since “To many a hearer it will convey the wrong impression, because the word ‘love’ today has many connotations that cannot be applied to God” (p. 64); to get the desired specific meaning of love from this context many other acts of God in the background history of the situation must be pointed out. Similarly, in reference to the sentence “Thou art the Christ” (Matt. 16:16–23) he states that “Far from being an infallible statement, even to the man who spoke it, the statement had an ambiguous meaning” (p. 69), since Peter was rebuked for his further statements that seemed to have grown out of the immediate situation. Thus, for Hordern, ambiguity in a statement implies error in the statement itself.

If this were to be granted, it would follow inevitably that no statement is ever true. Every word has several different meanings—or, in technical terms, it covers an area of meaning—even though the differences be small. Each context in which the word occurs forces a slightly different meaning to that word—even if it be by an infinitesimal amount—in a way that the nonprofessional observer would not suspect. With a bit of thought, however, he can see that the exact physical activity implied by the word “drive” differs sharply in the phrases “to drive a car,” “to drive a horse,” “to drive a nail,” and “to drive a point home.” The ability of various contexts to force such changes of meaning is vital to the function of language itself. Without it, no learning could take place, no translation could ever be made, and communication would cease.

Since scientific statements, as well as statements of the man in the street, are all subject to analysis of the words contained in them as having a breadth of meaning, it would follow clearly that Hordern has in fact rejected the possibility of any wholly true science. The turn of the wheel is curiously complete. Having, along with the liberals, rejected fundamentalism because it “seemed to require intellectual hari-kari” (cf. p. 108) in its relationships to science, etc. (cf. also pp. 53, 60, 86, 92, 113), Hordern has in fact adopted a position which, in my view, in turn breeds intellectual hari-kari through denying full truth value to any of the statements or summaries or propositions of science.

Dimension of Truth versus Error

We now ask: How can we avoid Hordern’s conclusion that ambiguity implies error? We can do so if we view statements as containing dimensions—as we hinted in the first section of this article.

The first of these dimensions of statement has truth at one pole and error at the other. We have in mind the ordinary meaning of the words true and false: Truth in a statement is based upon information which can be relied upon. Error and falsehood are reports of observation, information, or judgment which cannot be relied upon.

In this view a true statement about weather reflects the measurable facts of humidity, temperature, and so on. A person who operates on the basis of such a report will find himself acting adequately. As Edward J. Carnell says: “The true is the quality of that judgment or proposition which, when followed out into the total witness of facts in our experience, does not disappoint our expectation” (An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 1956, p. 45).

The Dimension of Magnification

A second dimension of statements differs sharply from the first: We do not wish to apply directly to this characteristic of statements either the term truth or the term error. The contrast referred to is rather a difference which may be called high magnification versus low magnification, using the optical term metaphorically. If we look at a fly under a low-powered magnifying glass we may be able to see the whole fly with considerable detail involved. If we wish to see much more detail about the structure of the fly, we must use a higher-powered microscope. The price we pay for this fine detail, however, is very great—the fly as a whole cannot be seen all at once. The pattern of the fly as a whole has disappeared from view. As others have said, one cannot find a face with a microscope. Similarly, as regards language, if one writes for a beginner an extremely intricate textbook on the laws of physics, including elaborate details, illustrations, reservations, implications, and the like, the beginner cannot adequately get information from the book.

Neither the detailed treatment nor one showing the over-all pattern should be called true as such, and neither should be called false as such. Truth and error may both be found at each pole of this kind of contrast. A detailed statement may be true or it may be false. Degree of detail in a statement is not of itself either true or false.

Language is adequate to accomplish the aim of communicating information at any level of magnification. One must not, however, demand that simultaneously both exhaustive detail and general pattern must always be presented. It is only God who is able to grasp simultaneously ultimate pattern and infinite detail.

The Bible, in general, chooses to have a low amplification in order to have a high concentration of meaningful pattern present.

No scientific statement, on the other hand, can ever reach an ultimate degree of magnification. If one wishes to claim that a true statement must have the highest magnification, then no scientific statement can ever be true—there is always more detail possible. To equate truth with magnification is to abandon scientific discourse.

The Dimension of Relevance

Degrees of relevance lead to a third dimension of statement.

Contextual resolution of ambiguity can be viewed in this light. Contexts cause changes in the meanings of words, as we indicated above, but they also force the hearer’s selection of those specific meanings which are relevant to the intention of the writer. In the phrase “to drive a nail” one cannot rationally assume that the writer means “to control the direction of movement of a nail by moving it with reins.” Context provided by a sentence, therefore, can—and often does—eliminate the irrelevant ambiguity inherent in an isolated word. Context provided by a paragraph—or a whole book—can also eliminate ambiguities inherent in isolated sentences. The sentence “God is love,” interpreted in the context of the Bible, is narrowed in the possible range of its meanings. Language, by context, is adequate to portray truth by using words each of which by itself would be ambiguous.

The technique by which language carries out its business of selecting specific, relevant, components out of multiple-available components has reference to the way in which words in context influence one another. The process is extremely powerful. Without it, no language could ultimately function, even though the process is not yet too well understood. (Compare Robert E. Long-acre, “Items in Context: Their Bearing on Translation Theory,” in Language, 34.482–91, 1958.)

Sharpness of focus on some one relevant part of the meaning of a word (or sentence) can always be increased if one chooses. Sharpness is often achieved at the cost of more words, by a longer explanation. Yet, relevance is not magnification. Technical formulas, such as those of symbolic logic, have a kind of precision achieved by brevity, not amplification, since irrelevant words are pruned away. An artistically sharp-cut verbal sketch of a situation may make clear more effectively those parts of a person’s character relevant to the author’s interest than can a rambling ten-year diary.

We must keep truth tied to the power of language to reveal relevant pattern rather than tying truth to an unattainable infinity of irrelevant detail. One might assume that a story could be told with all details made explicit. This is impossible. The hare could then never catch the tortoise. Billions of molecular details would have to be specified, the story would stop, communication would cease, and truth could not exist in any way known to us now. Problems of round numbers, summaries of sermons, the use of “son” in the sense of “descendant,” and so on, take place in a perspective of the nature of language as adequate for truly communicating relevant information—relevant on different levels of magnification.

Can any statement then be true? According to Hordern, as the logic of his position would seem to me to lead him on, the answer must be “No.” According to my view of the nature of language, the answer must be “Yes.”

I end, not with proof, but with a statement of one component of my personal faith: Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements. Man must, sometimes, act as if he believed it—or die.

Professor of Linguistics

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Among the basic affirmations of the Christian faith is that “God the Father Almighty” is “Maker of heaven and earth.” This affirmation answers to a deep requirement and a deep questioning upon the part of the human mind. The doctrine has a profound significance for the entire structure of Christian thought, and specifically for our understanding concerning his freedom, his self-sufficiency, and his uniqueness as an eternal Existent. As F. R. Tennant points out, the existence of a “general order of Nature” forces upon the human mind the conviction that the universe is the outcome of intelligent design. It will not do to dismiss this as a lingering echo of eighteenth-century rationalism. This generalization is as well established and as widely recognized as any generalization of science (Philosophical Theology, Vol. II, pp. 79 f.).

Non-Christian Systems. These have tended to view “creation” in one of the following ways: they have regarded the universe as being the result of self-origination; they have imagined it to be some sort of unfolding or emanation of a divine being; they have posited some form of eternally existing chaos, which an intermediate “creator” fashioned into a cosmos; or they have regarded the visible universe as an illusion. These find a common denominator of sorts in the belief in the eternity of matter or of “pre-matter.” Ancient paganism could rise no higher than this. Its systems proved to be unstable, particularly in their attempt to defend the belief that the universe contained two eternals, two absolutes, two infinites. Slowly the human mind came to perceive the metaphysical impossibility of such a position.

Historically, the Christian assertion of an absolute creation by a transcendent God was not only a scandal of the pagan mind (for example, the Graeco-Roman mind), but it represented as well a threat to the entire thought-world of ancient civilization. As Galen, of the second century after Christ, says: “Moses’ opinion greatly differs from our own and from that of Plato and all the others who among the Greeks have rightly handled the investigation into nature. To Moses, it seems enough that God willed to create a cosmos, and presently it was created; for he believes that for God everything is possible.… We however do not hold such an opinion; for we maintain, on the contrary, that certain things are impossible by nature, and these God would not even attempt to do …” (De Usu Partium Corporis Humani, XII, p. 14).

This we quote to point out that opposition to the biblical account of an absolute origination of the universe by God is by no means contemporary. True, some contemporary alternatives are based upon slightly other grounds. At the same time, opposition has been in the name of a form or type of world view which seemed to be threatened by the Christian teaching at this point.

The Christian Affirmation. With reference to the origination of the universe, the basic Christian affirmation is that God is the author of the whole cosmos. This is found in the Old Testament and in the Judaism which emerged from Old Testament times. It is continued in the Christian system. The basic elements of the Christian teaching concerning creation are the following: that the universe has its beginning and end in God’s spontaneous will; that the universe is in no sense independent of him, but that its maintenance represents a continuing exertion of his creative power and ability; and that God made the universe, not out of some type of pre-existent “stuff” but out of nothing. This assumes that prior to the “moment” of creation, God existed in self-sufficient and majestic aloneness. It is just here that the Christian understanding of God differs profoundly from that of classical paganism, which assumed, at best, the co-existence of God and the material universe (or its proto-elements): or from radical forms of moral dualism which assumed that evil (or the factors which make for it) were co-eternal with God.

The Christian understanding of God involves the conviction that while God is One, he is not for that reason one thing. Within the fundamental unity of his Godhead there exists a Trinity of Persons; he contains within himself three centers of personal activity, each capable of being denoted by personal pronouns. This means that there is an incomprehensible richness in the inner life of God, and that creation is one of the expressions of this inner richness of self-determination. Karl Barth summarily suggests that the doctrine of creation assumes the tri-unity of God’s being (Christian Dogmatics, III/1, pp. 46 ff.). In any case, God’s eternal self-existence and self-sufficiency do not imply a precreation life of motionlessness upon his part. It does assert that God is in no sense dependent upon his world, and in no sense under compulsion to create except as a spontaneous manifestation of his love.

The Christian understanding of creation implies, we repeat, that prior to the “moment” of creation, God existed in sovereign self-sufficiency. It suggests also that there came a “point” in the divine life in which he determined to project into being that which was not himself and yet which was dependent upon him for its continuing being and existence. This projection represents an absolute origination: that is, it implies a beginning and bringing out of nothing (ex nihilo), and not any mere fashioning of some pre-existent matter or pre-matter. The accent falls here upon his freedom, upon his sovereign intelligence. The consequent universe is real; it is no illusion. Its reality is a conferred reality, which is always relative to his upholding Word. The universe is distinct from God; it is not, properly speaking, continuous with him. That is, in creation God set over against himself in the realm of being that which was not himself.

At this point it must be noted that the biblical account of creation has two aspects: there is the aspect of absolute origination in the initial creation, indicated by the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This denotes the calling into being, in the dateless past, of the basic “finite” which is our universe. Then there is the second and detailed aspect, sketched in the first two chapters of Genesis in terms of six successive creative days (Gen. 1), and specialized in the account of human origins (Gen. 2).

Objections. It should be noted here that the Christian affirmation has been challenged upon several grounds: some have felt that it represents a too-narrow monotheism. We have given brief attention to this objection earlier in this study. Others suggest that the “Let it be” or fiat of creation is too simple, that it describes in a few words what was in reality most complex. It must be recalled in this connection that the account of Genesis is designedly simple. The New Testament does, however, show an increased awareness of the issues for human thought which the teaching concerning creation implies and involves. Others object to what they consider to be the “childishness” of the Old Testament account, which divides creation, or rather, creative activity, into six successive days. This objection loses much of its force in the light of two things. First, the creative sequence indicates progress in the formation of the world—progress which upon closer study may not be, after all, illogical. Second, it is recognized in nearly all evangelical circles that in Hebrew the term “day” is used to denote more than one quantity of time. In some contexts, the term “day” denotes an era or an epoch. This may be illuminated by the words, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth” in Genesis 2:4. Reverent scholars allow for the possibility that the “days” of Genesis 1 may be generic periods.

There have been objections to the Christian doctrine of creation upon more directly philosophical grounds. Some have asserted in more “modern” form the view of Greek paganism, to the effect that prior to and behind the cosmos existed some primordial “world-stuff,” variously understood as Prime Matter, or as “the receptacle”—a formless precondition of all reality. Jakob Boehme (1575–1624), regarded as the first writing philosopher in the German language, has offered a Germanic version of the general view of ancient Greek thought (that is, Platonic thought) at this point. He suggests: “We understand that without [outside of] nature there is an eternal stillness and rest, viz., the Nothing, and then we understand that an eternal will arises in the nothing, to introduce the nothing into something, that the will might find, feel, and behold itself” (Signatura Rerum, p. 14).

This quotation is significant in that it is a prototype of more modern views raised in objection to the historic Christian view of creation. These more modern opinions are, in general, directed at the objective of absolving God from responsibility for the existence of evil in the world. Now no one will pretend that the existence of evil in the universe is something to be shrugged off. No division of the question (as for example, into terms of “natural” and “moral” evil) will eliminate the problem. But the Christian can scarcely content himself with such an explanation as is advanced by Nicholas Berdyaev who, in the general tone of Boehme, suggests that prior to and outside of God there existed a primal Ungrund which accounts for the irrational “freedom” which in turn accounts for evil, and which exists in God as a “tragic conflict” within his nature (The Destiny of Man, p. 177). Nor can the Christian content himself with the view, advanced in our country by Edgar S. Brightman, that within the being of God there exists a “Given” which is irrational and disorderly, and which is an ever-present internal obstacle to the realization of his purposes.

The Christian understanding of God cannot divorce freedom from God, nor can it locate evil with God’s being. The doctrine of creation presupposes God’s sovereign self-determination. Any proper solution to the “problem of evil” must be found elsewhere than in a limitation of God’s sovereignty. In the last analysis, any light cast upon this tragic problem must be found in the self-giving of the divine Son upon the Cross.

God’s Free Will. In reality, the heart of the Christian world view is revealed in this aspect of the Christian understanding of creation. The biblical record is clear at the point of ascribing to God the ultimate and sole will in the matter of creation. Creation reflects and represents his own freedom in action.

It needs to be noted that modern objections to the Christian understanding of creation have been raised at the point of the relation of creation to time. If we reject the classic pagan view of the eternity of matter, we must yet consider the question of whether creation was, after all, eternal. If we reply that the biblical doctrine implies an origination, a beginning of the universe, we answer this question in the negative. The question then arises, did creation occur in time? Christian thought has, in general, suggested that we know too little of the matter of sequence in the career of God to offer a final answer at this point. Some early thinkers (Origen, for example) felt that God’s self-determination to create must have been eternal. Others held that creation was an act which did not fall within the categories of time and space as we understand them. Augustine held that the universe was not created in time, but that time was created along with the universe. This means that time (as we know it) was something which became manifest at the point at which the universe was projected. Perhaps this is the best available answer.

Conclusion. We have noted seriatim some of the alternatives which have been proposed to the Christian affirmation of creation, the basic content of the Christian teaching, some of the objections raised to it, and something of the larger bearings of the doctrine. We need to note, finally, that the doctrine creates no new mysteries. The mysteries are already present and confront the thoughtful with a perennial challenge. Nor does the Christian doctrine suggest that the concept of absolute creation is an easy one. It is ultimately an article of faith, based upon the acceptance of divine revelation. However, as the reverent mind ponders the alternatives, it finds nothing comparably satisfying to the answer given by the Christian faith.

The Christian Scriptures do not attempt to describe the “how” of creation. They do assure us that the entire Trinity, was active in the production of the universe. While it is God the Father who is, in the broad sense, Creator of heaven and earth, it was through the agency of the Word, the eternal Son, that all things were made. During the creative process it was the Holy Spirit who moved upon “the face of the waters,” bringing order out of the formless and empty chaos.

At the core of the doctrine of creation stands the mighty assertion that the universe is the product of the release of creative energies of an infinitely free and completely holy God, utterly self-sufficient in his being and infinite in his ability to perform that which his heart of love dictates. And in the person of the eternal Son, the activities of creation and redemption meet and conjoin.

Bibliography: J. Lindsay, “Creation,” “Creator,” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, James Orr, ed., Vol. II; O. Zöckler, “Creation and Preservation of the World,” The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, S. M. Jackson, ed., Vol. III; R. S. Foster, Creation; K. Heim, Christian Theology and Natural Science; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. II; L. H. Keyser, The Problem of Origins; A. H. Strong, Outlines of Systematic Theology; F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, Vol. II.

Professor of Philosophy of Religion

Asbury Theological Seminary

Wilmore, Kentucky

MAN’S DESPERATE NEED

Extreme words need to be justified. “Desperate” is such a word. That man is in desperate need all of the time can be established for anyone willing to sift and evaluate the facts.

First, man needs desperately to be reconciled to God. The natural man, steeped in the things of this world, a sinner by practice, needs the cleansing, redemption, and empowering which are available through faith in Christ.

In other words, man’s primary need is salvation and this is the most desperate of all needs.

But I wish to write about needs that have mainly to do with Christians—those who have already come to know Christ as Saviour and Lord. For such there continue to exist needs—yes, desperate needs—because unless they are met the Christian will wander through the world in a state of frustration, with an ineffective witness little distinguishable from that of the pagans surrounding him.

Our needs cannot be listed in chronological order of importance because they exist concurrently; nevertheless it can safely be said that Christians need love more than any other one thing. First of all, there is need of an overwhelming sense of God’s love for us, that he has loved us with an everlasting love, and that his love is flooding through our hearts through the Holy Spirit’s presence. As this love becomes a reality, love for others also fills our hearts for it is the first fruit of the indwelling Spirit.

Such love is desperately needed—to sense God’s love for us and in turn to love others. Love for others, especially for fellow Christians, is not optional but obligatory:

Love is a gift to be accepted and a grace to be practiced. Without it life is empty and one’s profession of Christ a mockery.

But Christians need other things along with love. They live in a world of perplexing problems, ever-present temptations, depressing realities, and the “devices” of Satan which are always calculated to catch us off balance and at the point of greatest weakness. For these reasons they need desperately to appropriate the blessings God is so anxious to give to those who ask.

Thus Christians desperately need faith. God will honor the tiny spark of faith that is no larger than the proverbial mustard seed; but what we need is a deep and abiding faith which looks beyond the perplexing, trying, overwhelming vicissitudes of life to the One who never makes a mistake. Often we need just to know that what He has permitted is for our good and his glory. This kind of faith runs counter to human nature and, according to the world, seems utterly unreasonable; but in such faith there is great peace of heart.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”: faith means trusting God to the limit. When faith is of this quality, it is a movable shield causing Satan’s clever, burning darts to fall harmlessly to the ground.

It is a reliance upon the faithfulness and sovereignty of God which enables us to walk with confidence, even though we cannot see the road ahead.

It is assurance enabling us to recognize and receive the grace of God—His pardon and redemption, totally undeserved on our part.

Another desperate need of the Christian is divine guidance in the daily routine and in the unexpected emergency. The reality of such guidance is one of the most precious of all God’s abundant blessings. “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” is not just a saying but a glorious reality. God does just that. Many people will rise to give testimony to the thrilling experience of divine guidance. For them the promise, “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left,” has been fulfilled again and again.

The Christian also desperately needs wisdom, the wisdom which is from God and which is the capacity for spiritual insight and for rightly meeting the problems of daily living. Such blessing comes from a reverential trust in God and a willingness to do his revealed will.

How often we come face to face with problems which demand right decisions. J. B. Phillips translates James 1:5, I think, in a most satisfactory way: “And if, in the process, any of you does not know how to meet a particular problem he has only to ask God—Who gives generously to all men without making them feel foolish or guilty—and he may be sure that the necessary wisdom will be given him.” Can we ask more?

Furthermore, a Christian is desperately in need of strength, for he finds himself pitted against a cunning, clever, and relentless foe. Paul tells us that we are “up against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Phillips). This would be utterly frightening were it not for the knowledge that God is greater.

How then can we appropriate God-given strength? Strange to say it does not come from action but from waiting: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,” the Holy Spirit tells us through the prophet Isaiah. The art of waiting for strength from God is a grace every Christian needs to learn.

Coupled with it is the grace of patience. How often the Christian makes a spectacle of himself before the world by exhibiting impatience. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, people who mark our every movement and reaction. When they see us running with patience the race of daily living, they see a tremendous witness for our Lord.

There are many other things the Christian desperately needs as, for instance, the hope and comfort of the Scriptures. It is as we appropriate to ourselves the unlimited resources of God that we have peace in our own hearts and honor our profession before others.

Our desperate needs can be met by our appropriation of that which God has provided, and the avenues of divine blessing are to be found in prayer and Bible study.

Prayer, a two-way communication with God, is vital and rewarding beyond our wildest imagination. We speak to God and he speaks to us, and this fellowship melts the most stubborn of hearts and enlightens the most rebellious of minds.

Bible study becomes a precious privilege and a priceless source of all of God’s help as we turn to the Scriptures with humbled minds and obedient hearts. In the pages of this precious Book, God brings light, wisdom, and hope to the groping soul.

Finally, Christianity is not only faith in the person and work of the Son of God, but a life to be lived, and we desperately need to show to the unbelieving world that Christianity works.

L. NELSON BELL

YOGA

Dear Eutychus:

At last I am on the verge of something vast. Really. Here in Paris I came across the most breath-taking little group. They gather on weekends in a secluded villa to practice Christian yoga. Their guru, or teacher, is a yogi barely my age, but a great adept. He is a Hindu, but the group regards him as a resource person; their purpose is to adapt this age-old technique for our ecumenical life. When I first saw him, he was meditating in the lotus posture, enigmatic and withdrawn. I could feel the mind of the East.

Of course I am the merest beginner. The yogi indicated I was not yet ready for the breath-control exercise they are working on. It is just as well; I have a head cold, and couldn’t manage the long exhalation through one nostril.

In my own room I have been practicing concentration, however. I fix my eyes on my forehead, hold my breath, and think the syllable OM. I know I’ll break through into the supra-conscious state soon. I heard bells on my third attempt. And to think my trip will take me to India!

In Integral Oneness, I Am,

Albert Ivy

Dear Eutychus:

You needn’t have sent that nasty book. I don’t need second sight to discern your motives. Much you care about “assisting me toward total liberation.” You simply wanted to appeal to my Western prejudices by exposing me all at once to yoga hygiene. The Paris group did not inhale strings or swallow wash cloths, not to speak of those other rituals of cleansing.

I don’t know how you guessed that most of the group were Americans. Why should that be hard on the guru? “How many can your yogi bear?” you ask. Well, as a matter of fact, he did leave. But for different reasons. Actually, he eloped with a charming New Haven debutante with whom he had developed the most sympathetic mental emanations. It seems he was from Brooklyn himself. In India I hope to pursue my researches on a new level.

Yours truly,

Albert

FOR THE DARK HOURS

“And Preach as You Go,” by Floyd Doud Shafer (March 27 issue) was superb. Every seminary should incorporate these demands into the essentials of the curriculum. Every pulpit committee should anticipate finding these qualities and every board of deacons should demand them in their pastor. Then would the world once again be able to turn to the church and hear the voice of God in its darkest hours.

EDWARD T. BARRAM

Conservative Baptist

Foreign Mission Society

Woburn, Mass.

Ouch—but Amen!

LESTER E. PIPKIN

Appalachian Bible Institute

Bradley, W. Va.

I get a little weary at being told what a terrible job I’m doing as a minister; what a dullard I am; how little I know of the Word of God; how irrelevant I am to real life and what a worm I am in the eyes of the Great Big Sophisticated World! This is the theme that every religious magazine and most books on the ministry seem to harp on.

We, as a group of clergymen, criticize ourselves to pieces, yet we know that most of us do the best job we know bow to do—with the limited tools of intellect, wisdom and dedication which are ours. What to author Shafer is “insipid morality” may well be a most sincere attempt to follow the Saviour; what he calls “supine intelligence” will turn out to be, most likely, the results of what he calls for in the early part of his article: 40 hours alone with typewriter, books and Bible; and what he labels as “broadmindedness which is only flat-headedness” could easily be an attempt to reconcile theology with the overwhelming life situation that we all live in.…

I may be burned at the stake for such irreverent views, but I’m not perfect.

H. BRAYTON GIFFORD, JR.

The Glen-Croft Baptist Church

Glenolden, Pa.

This wonderful article fortified some of my own beliefs and tore down some misconceptions. A copy of it should be in the hand of every evangelical minister in the world.

WAYNE E. VARNER

Haymarket Baptist Church

Haymarket, Va.

It was an article that got down where most of us live and challenged us to say, with Paul, “For me to live is Christ.”

Now, if he would just write another article suggesting as caustically as his challenge to preachers, that seminary professors and the writers of the leading articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY learn the English language as it is spoken and understood by the majority of us.… What does the word “kerygma” mean? First Baptist Church

H. H. SAVAGE

Pontiac, Mich.

Slam-bang, excellent article.… How exhilarating … to read such a hearty, personal exhortation.

NIELS NIELSEN

St. John’s Lutheran Church

Fresno, Calif.

Excellent—excellent—excellent!

FRANK P. STELLINC

Oakland, Calif.

A GROWING THREAT

Your editorial, “ ‘Push Button’ Riots Now Promote Communist Goal,” (Mar. 13 issue), is both timely and factual. It is refreshing to note that we have at least one religious publication aware of a growing threat to the breakdown of law and order as was evident in San Francisco last May. The communist agitators work best in such an atmosphere of mob hysteria.

WILLIAM H. MOSS

National Hdqrs.

National Chaplain

The American Legion

Indianapolis, Ind.

At present the weight of evidence here makes significant Communist sponsorship of the riot appear dubious, at best. “Operation Abolition,” the Committee’s propaganda piece, is circulating widely and turning millions of uncritical viewers into nothing less than dupes of the Committee. To those who have considered a reasonable amount of information bearing on the riot, there appear to be ten or more well-substantiated errors or distortions in the piecing together of the film, rather than the three the Committee itself recognizes.

ROBERT B. SMITH

Berkeley, Calif.

You seem to imply that “Operation Abolition” was filmed in heaven, produced by St. Peter, and narrated by the Archangel Michael, even though it carries no credit lines. The tremendous furor over its authenticity—raised by many reputable and responsible people—would seem to be sufficient evidence to alert all morally-minded people at least to question, if not denounce, it.

LEE C. MOOREHEAD

Indianola Methodist Church

Columbus, Ohio

Last evening … Dr. F. Schwarz spoke in San Francisco. He is executive secretary of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. After a showing of the film, “Operation Abolition,” he defended the accuracy and the thesis of the film. It is our belief that his defence of the film was sound and convincing.

JACK STULP

Moorpark Christian Reformed Church

San Jose, Calif.

DOUGLAS L. NEFF

Bible Chapel

San Jose, Calif.

JAMES L. AUSTIN

Bethany Baptist

Cupertino, Calif.

HENRY W. CORAY

First Sunnyvale Orthodox Presbyterian

Menlo Park, Calif.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

Your February 27 issue on religious education does a distinct service in pointing out the tremendous danger of secularized education. I am quite in agreement with T. Robert Ingram when he writes that “teaching cannot be separated from religion.” But as a member of a denomination (Christian Reformed) which has by conviction operated Christian day schools for over fifty years, I am acutely aware of the fact that in our plea for Christian day school education we must not sell ourselves short by simplistically and categorically stating that this is “the key to the whole matter.” In our enthusiasm for a return to religion in teaching we must not defeat our own cause by overlooking the fact that in order to be truly Christian it must also be the very best teaching possible.

… Simply because one is a fine Christian does not prove that he will be a good educator.… Then too, the fact that there are many “best educated” and “most intelligent people” willing to become teachers does not prove that they will be “very capable teachers.”

… It will not do to reject all modern methodology as “Deweyism” in the name of a truly Christian Education. In fact, unless one is prepared to deny completely the scientific status of educational methodology, it must be argued that Christian Education cannot be completely Christian unless it makes use of the valid data of modern educational methodology.… The adjective “Christian” will not be true if there are inexcusable deficiencies in its noun “Education.”

DENNIS HOEKSTRA

Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Education Department of Calvin College passed a motion at a recent meeting of the Department commending CHRISTIANITY TODAY and … [its] editor for your very fine Christian education edition.… The leadership of your very fine periodical will do much to clarify the issue before Protestant Christianity today.

I want to take occasion personally to tell you of my great appreciation for your courageous and capable interpretation of the problems before us as Protestants today. The articles are well selected, clearly written, and relevant.…

CORNELIUS JAARSMA

Chairman, Department of Education

Calvin College

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Christian day schools are as becoming to many of us Missourians as an air tank to a skin diver. We maintain a nine grade school in our little congregation of 300 communicants. And yet, having we did not have and seeing we did not see. It remained for Episcopalian Ingram to say superbly what we should and would like to have said. To fix, revise, disguise, adjust, accommodate, or qualify Christ’s command to feed his lambs … teaching them, because they are few in number, or because the state has “taken over” education, or because of cost, or the lack of an all-purpose room, etc., is sheer disobedience.

FRED H. WEBER

Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church

Missouri Synod

Wisconsin Dells, Wisc.

I have recently taken the requisite courses to qualify me to teach in our public schools. I took work both in a denominational (Presbyterian) college and a State University. Dewey doesn’t cut much of a figure any longer, and I found nothing in the “modern methodology” that ran counter to Christian values or which pretended to be a substitute for them. As for “Church people, who should be far more concerned to have Christians for teachers than experts in Deweyism and modern methodology,” they ought to become better acquainted with the people in our public schools who are teaching. To presume them to be anything but people guided by the finest Christian ethics and beliefs, is to deceive oneself.

RICHARD HULBERT

Minneapolis, Minn.

Especially do I underline the historical note on the rise of tax-supported, public schools at about the same time the United States government first levied a tax on a person’s income.… The solution to the present muddle of trying to separate religion and education lies in awakening America to its original practice. As a Missouri Synod Lutheran I rejoice, even allowing for confessional differences, in the rapid growth of church schools among the Reformed churches. When I entered the ministry about 90 per cent of the Protestant schools were Lutheran. Today only about 51 per cent are Lutheran. The decrease is in percentage only.…

KARL L. BREEHNE

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church

Greenville, Ill.

Early Christians in the days of the Roman Empire were persecuted for a number of items, one of which was a refusal to patronize the Roman school system which was unmistakably pagan.

Christian parents today find themselves in something of a parallel situation. Fortunately the opportunity is ours to own and operate Christian schools. The public school in America has been an anomaly from the beginning, based upon the proposition that the prime responsibility for educating the children rests with the state.

GORDON OOSTERMAN

Pantego, N. C.

Psychology is the rage, we know, and Sigmund Freud was its oracle. But surely it is not necessary to attribute to him, as was done by Graham R. Hodges, the age-old insight of Horace. If Freud ever really said, “Throw nature out with a pitchfork and she’ll come right back every time,” he was merely translating the poet’s words: “Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.” There is still validity to the pre-Freudian but scholarly injunction: “Verify your references.”

W. EDWIN COLLIER

Philadelphia, Pa.

I greatly appreciate the reading suggestions in the “Christian Education Library.” I was, however, disappointed in not finding in this list … a recommendation of a collection of speeches by H. Van Riessen (the Netherlands), A. L. Farris (Toronto) and H. E. Runner (Grand Rapids) in Christian Perspectives: 1960 (Pella Publishing Co.). This little volume packs many powerful ideas on a Christian philosophy of science and education within a brief compass.

BERNARD ZYLSTRA

Law School, ’61

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Mich.

I was sorry to see that … you omitted a very significant volume—Audio-Visuals in the Church, by Gene A. Getz, Moody Press, 1959, 255 pages. Since this is about the only significant work on the subject of audio-visuals by an evangelical author, I feel it should have had a place in your listing.

WAYNE BUCHANAN Supervisor

Audio-Visual Dept.

Moody Bible Institute

Chicago, Ill.

The article in the February 27 issue states that the Bible institute has come of age. I think perhaps it has become feeble, but I don’t believe age is so much a factor as compromise and conformity to the world, particularly the academic world. I attended [a] … Bible institute for a year and a half, from January, 1958, to June, 1959. To me, all this academic self-consciousness meant that a formal knowledge about God was achieved at the sacrifice of knowing him personally. It takes more than saying prayers before classes or even studying the Bible to make education truly Christian. It takes a deliberate cultivation of the Spirit of God, a vital acquaintance with Deity. Yet the increasingly burdensome academic load left less and less time for the prayerful, meditative assimilation of the tremendous truths that were taught.…

This is an age in which the church of Jesus Christ ought to stand up and denounce the feverish pace of a society which no longer knows how to meditate and reflect; which is concerned about education for its utilitarian value; and which, for all its learning, has forgotten how to think.… Is it so important that we have credentials that the world will approve? If so it is an advantage that the early church didn’t have and evidently didn’t need.… I don’t think I am an obscurantist, nor am I anti-intellectual, any more than I would be anti-cow, for instance, if I refused to enter my cow in a horse race.

ROBERT W. MEARS

Chicago, Ill.

Only a score of years ago the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod began as a “late comer” to give serious attention to the nation’s campuses as major spheres of church activity. Even this late start was further retarded by World War II, which drained colleges and universities of their male students. By this time other denominations, more in America’s mainstream, had become strongly entrenched on campus borders with impressive churches and adjoining student centers. Their formula called for normal parishes in the immediate environs of the university, with additional facilities and staff workers to serve students.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod did not to any appreciable extent partake of this phase of the campus-community ministry. What congregations it had in university cities were usually located on “the other end of town.” Lutheran constituents on campus were of insufficient strength to draw congregations toward campus.

In the awakening period not a few complainants were heard to say: “We have missed the bus.” Relating as it did to the status quo, the complaint failed to take into account the possibility of fresh, new approaches. Indeed, although one bus was missed, other, perhaps better, modes of transportation soon appeared.

A NEW STRATEGY

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is now persuaded that it has more than made up for lost time by introducing a daring plan of outreach to students. From outside observers this venture elicits everything from predictions of failure to undisguised admiration. Confident of success, Missouri Synod claims no patent on its campus program. It invites other communions to assay the ingredients of a plan that is moving students from the periphery to the center of a Christ-centered gospel ministry. With campus enrollments reaching an all-time high of 3,160,000 and still mounting, new frontiers of faith must be found within our college-bred generation.

The Missouri Synod plan centers in student congregations housed in campus-side chapels. These are unfolding under the dynamic leadership of a man who now is the “patron saint” of college work to 600 Lutheran campus pastors. He is Dr. Reuben W. Hahn, Executive Secretary of the Synod’s Commission on College and University Work. “Reuben” to his brethren in the campus ministry and to religious coordinators at state universities, Hahn was induced in 1940 to leave his University of Alabama post to become “general student pastor” on a church-wide basis. He became the first full-time executive head of the then minor $5,000-a-year-budget Student Welfare Committee. Missouri Synod has since given him a Chicago office staff of five and an agency budget nearly 20 times its original figure. The 30-some geographical districts of the Synod provide the hard cash to build chapels and to salary the campus pastors.

MAJOR EMPHASIS ON WORSHIP

What is the primary component in the Missouri Synod concept of campus work? It is the primacy of worship, in congregations or assemblies established for and by students. The visible symbols of this philosophy are the chain of new University Lutheran Chapels—from the University of California to the University of Connecticut—built in the wake of World War II. Is the emphasis on corporate worship right? One observer recently said of college students: “There is increasing danger in our day that Christians are too much with other Christians and too little with Christ.” If this is so, how better can we bring students into communion with Jesus Christ than by worship?

Chapels, as both symbols and properly-appointed locales of worship, loom far above social fellowship halls or student centers euphemistically termed “homes away from home” as starting points for spiritual campus programs. They put communion tables ahead of ping-pong tables. Worship lifts the program, in Richard Celeste’s words above a “punch and cookies affair.”

INTEGRATING STUDENT CHURCH LIFE

The student congregation, served by a full-time campus pastor, spares the Lutheran collegian of a kind of ecclesiastical schizophrenia. Instead, he is provided with Sunday worship, week-day Bible study, Christian service opportunities, campus evangelism, fellowship, and pastoral counseling all in one package. Whatever the student’s church-related activity, from the high faith experience of partaking of Holy Communion on Sunday morning to a Thursday afternoon student center discussion with coffee and doughnuts, it is under the umbrella of the same campus church.

Other patterns of campus work, however meritorious, tend to split the student down the middle. Sunday morning he goes to the town-gown church and listens to the sermon of the parish pastor. Sunday evening and during the week he goes to the student center to be spiritually counseled by another person—the center’s director. If he manages to bring an unchurched or dechurched fellow student with him to the student center program and introduces him to the director, he will have to do the same thing over again when he takes him to church and presents him to the minister there. This requires double orientation, and between the two there is often a break-down. In the Lutheran plan, Sunday worship and student center activities are merged into one spiritual program. The student deals with one minister, who is to him all things: a full priest administering the sacraments, performing confirmations and weddings, and a student center director and counselor.

Anyone who has done campus work knows that a serious offender, next to the student who doesn’t go to church at all, is the four-year “church tramp” or perennial visitor. Students know they must follow an orderly curriculum in their academic studies. They don’t all realize that a well-ordered spiritual course is just as necessary. So, many of them sample all churches in the community but grow roots in none. The Missouri Synod plan reduces the penchant for churchly roaming to a minimum, for it puts the campus church squarely into the laps of the students themselves. Students are the members and from their ranks the chapel council is drawn. Very rarely is “membership” in the chapel effected through a formal transfer from the home church. Commitment to the student parish is accomplished through some other procedure, be it granting associate membership, having students sign the chapel constitution, or issuing Communion cards.

NOT A ‘PLAY CHURCH’

Critics of chapel congregations point to the instability, immaturity, and high mobility of students as factors making the plan unfeasible. They call it “playing church,” the way children play in doll-houses. The Missouri Synod is not minded to underestimate student capacity for responsibilit By its definition the local church comes into being when Christians are gathered about the Word and the sacraments and intend to further Christ’s kingdom by word and deed. Lutheran campus pastors find their parishioners, sprinkled with faculty members and heavily interlarded with married students, entirely capable of being about their Father’s business.

The student congregation overcomes artificiality by structuring itself as much as possible after the normal pattern. It creates out of itself Gamma Delta as its arm for campus action, as well as the suborganisms familiar to the freshman from his past church life: choir, chapel guild, couples’ club, nursery, tots’ Sunday school, pastor’s membership classes, and the various assortment of parish committees, including the stewardship committee. It carries its load of missions and benevolence contributions. University Lutheran Chapel at the University of Minnesota, for example, adopted a current budget of nearly $30,000 for local and church-wide expenses. Of this figure approximately $12,000 is a subsidy of the supporting Minnesota District of the Synod, while the students contribute the remaining $18,000. By involving themselves in the financial program of the chapel, students learn to shoulder responsibilities and, through participation, acquire the skills of lay churchmanship. They will not have to rediscover the functioning church after graduation, for they have remained active in it during college years.

Sophisticated Pilgrimage

We lift our praying hands

In thanks for life

And mutter chanted, meaningless refrains.

In chipped and splintered monotones

We paraphrase our boredom, and self-pleased,

Think God has listened and has heard

Our platitudes and hollow canticles

Droned forth in voices sharp as porcelain.

Stupored we weave disaster through the highway’s arms,

Oblivious to pain, and death, and time.

We wink at murder and condone deceit,

Racing for power and the greatest bomb,

The truest danger, and the fullest harm.

Over the scars and rubble of our latest crimes

We lift our praying hands

In thanks for life.

CHARLES WAUGAMAN

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Hereafter April 12 will appear on our calendars in large red letters! On that date, there was dancing in the streets of Moscow; and in the corridors of Washington’s Pentagon there were grim and bothersome questions.

In a span of one hour and 30 minutes, man opened a new frontier. It all began at 9:07 with a five-ton vehicle soaring off a launching pad somewhere in Soviet Russia. For 89 minutes that vehicle whipped along at a speed of 17,000 miles an hour, in a path of travel, 188 miles beyond the earth. This “beyond-the-earth sphere” in which the object moved was one which from the dawn of time until that special 89 minute segment of April 12, had been “without a traveller.”

Aboard this earth-orbiting vehicle was a 27 year-old Soviet peasant who, after riding 89 minutes with history, put down on a predetermined piece of soil, and stepped from his “sky scooter” with the light of distant stars in his eyes … the first man to travel in space!

It was this event that brought the dancers to the streets of Moscow, that works a color change to our calendar and pales the glory that was Columbus and the grandeur that was Lindbergh. A man in space!

Mr. Khrushchev has said of his cosmonaut that he had achieved immortality. Obviously this top Communist and atheist did not mean that this first space man is now unliable to death, that 89 minutes in space performed for him what union with Christ performs for the Christian. He simply meant he had captured an enduring fame. His is one of the names born not to die.

We will have to go along with that judgment. Like any “first” for man which is frought with extreme hazard to life, this feat excites all of us to salute the heroism, courage, and gallantry of this young space man. His daring and dedication has earned him a big page in the future history books. He has inched every one of us to the edge of tomorrow. Even now I wonder: how long will it take man, with this space breakthrough, to get around to all the planets and stars and stand astride the most distant galaxy one day crying “Alas, there are no more worlds to conquer?” No question, Mr. Gagarin has achieved enduring fame. But this is more than the achievement of one hardy and brave man. This is an accomplishment of many people’s dedication. Back of those Wednesday headlines that a man had been successfully launched into space and returned are miles of chalked figures on miles of blackboards, small armies of people perfecting the science of aerodynamics, cybernetics, and electronics; men with jaws determinedly set and far away horizons in their dreams. These men have travailed until now in their laboratories and out of their travail they have brought triumph in a great enterprise. And because these are of another nation is not sufficient reason to withhold our gratulations. A deserved salute then to the young Soviet cosmonaut and his scientific colleagues!

CHRIST’S ASCENSION INTO HEAVEN

While we are all agog with the event of this past April morning, we should remember an event of another morning long ago. This is not the first time there has been a man in space.

It happended on a bit of soil outside the ancient walls of old Jerusalem when without booster rockets, launching pads, or gadget-equipped vehicle, without algebraic equations or armies of men in laboratories, without one piece of electronic equipment, without headlines or dancing in the streets, without space suits and helmets—with just one ordinary cloud—suddenly, there was a Man in space!

“And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:9–11).

Two men in space! Asks a friend of mine, “What is wrong with us that we latch our destiny so much to this modern man in space, and ignore this other Man in space, at whose return “every eye shall see Him”?

Two men in space! And what is the essential difference between them?

For one thing “this other Man in space” did achieve a real immortality, an undyingness, not a mere unperishing fame. Victim of a wicked plot that terminated in death on a cross, He stormed back, by the mighty “thrust” of God from the cold, stagnant regions of death and hell into vibrant eternity which he had possessed with the Father before the foundation of space. His “going up” beyond the earth was to “sit on his throne,” at the right hand of God.

While the modern space man’s success is measured by the fact that he accomplished his mission by remaining alive, this “other Man in space” accomplished His mission by becoming “obedient unto death”; by dying “He abolished death and brought life and immortality to light.”

The accomplishment of last week by Russia’s space man has definite overtones of war and destruction in it. Many have observed the military possibilities of “manned space platforms” from which atomic missiles could be launched, thus speeding up time from launching to target. Are we too far amiss to predict that “he (Gagarin) hath abolished life and brought death and mortality to light”? If this breakthrough follows precedent, it will make war a little more hellish.

Two men in space! Through one the purposes of a sovereign state attained; through the other the purposes of a Sovereign Lord fulfilled. One man’s feat threatening annihilation; the other promising eternal life. One ending up the “man of the hour”; the other the Lord of history!

TWO DIMENSIONS OF POWER

Another essential difference in these two space men is the power involved. I know very little about propellants, booster rockets, energy, thrust. I do know that to hurl five tons of material loose from the fingers of gravity takes a staggering amount of power. Having admitted that the power called for in putting a man in space is fantastic, I must not overlook those other much, much larger objects, and so far away that I must speak of them in terms of light years, orbiting in space. I know Somebody had access to power that makes Russia’s look puny. We are not getting out special editions of our newspapers to herald the accomplishment we see every night above our heads. But well we might, for there is power; if it were not so familiar to us, it would awe us to our knees. And this awesome power is the power of that other Man in space!

Those objects blinking off the starboard of your ship Mr. Gagarin, His fingers launched them! And on your port, that mighty galaxy, He telleth their number and calleth them all by name. Down below, through the blue haze is hail and storm and vapor; down there is mountain and hill, cattle and creeping things; down there are kings and princes and peasants like yourself … “all these things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.” Even now from his place at the right hand of God he holds all things you see from this vantage point, and much more you can’t see, together. Great is our Lord in space, and of great power!

So, while we are extolling the power that launched a man in space, we must not miss the power that has launched a universe and season after season keeps it all on course. Mr. Khrushchev, Mr. Gagarin, and anybody else throwing a hat in the air to celebrate an exhibition of your power, we must remind you that the weakness of our Christ is stronger than anything you can wheel out to your launching pads and hurl into space. And your wisdom for all of its concerning equations’ computers, and propellents—why, the foolishness of God has more sagacity in it!

THE LORD OF SPACE

Two men in space! Another essential difference between them is that of sphere. Russia’s man in space is now, and was in those historic 89 minutes, spacially bound, still dependent on the resources of this world, still exposed to the mercies and providences and judgments of God.

Not so the other Space Man. He has, according to the record, “ascended into heaven.” The ascent of the modern space man placed him, for a brief span, in a segment of space, and only a tiny portion of it. But the ascent of the other Space Man placed Him in the sphere of the spirit. He is neither 188 miles or 188 light years from the earth. The sphere of the spirit surrounds, sustains, and penetrates the sphere of space and time. Thus Jesus ascending did not remove him galaxies away, but put him “closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet.” “Lo, I am with you always,” he assures us.

The heaven to which Jesus ascended is at our elbows, and if only we were not so time-bound, so materialistic we might catch glimpses of the hem of his garment, or gleams of the world he rules as Lord over all. In him heaven walks into our living room, touches down at our desk in the office, rides the 8:10 commuter. So close does this realm of the spirit impinge on the physical world since that Man went “up into heaven,” that some have been able to declare most convincingly, “Christ liveth in me!”

“It is expedient for you that I go away,” he told his disciples. It was his going away “into heaven” that made possible his coming into every heart. His ascent loosed him from spacial bounds. No longer spatially bound he is closer to us as we eat our bread than when the five thousand ate with him on a Galilean hillside. He is with us more intimately than he was with them because he “ascended into heaven.”

Two men in space! There is one last but tremendous difference between these two men in space. This difference is at the point of re-entry of the earth. When Russia’s space man unstrapped his gear and walked again on his home soil, he was the same person; his country and world unchanged. The same tears and heartache prevailed. The same pain and death reigned everywhere. The same delinquency and crime, the same nightmare of human history with war and rumors of war; the same character, the same sins!

THE DAY OF RE-ENTRY

Not so when the other Space Man makes his re-entry of the earth. One day He too shall return to this earth. That curtain which holds back the realm of this spirit from our eyes shall be torn open and eternity shall come pouring through the rent into time. This breakthrough will be led by Jesus Christ and when it is accomplished the structures of history will be shattered, a new earth and a new heaven will arise wherein dwelleth righteousness. The travail of history will be over and the kingdoms of history shall become the kingdoms of our Lord.

At his re-entry the conflicts will be resolved, the imperfections ended, pain and sorrow, sin and death swept into discard, disobedience and defection and indifference challenged and dealt with. With his return “everybody will be brought on stage for the grand finale,” everybody to receive the verdict of life or death.

When this other Man in space re-enters it will be with the materials of a solemn examination; which materials he now gathers out of our doing from day to day.

Dr. Thomas Chalmers, the great preacher of the Free Church of Scotland, closes one of his sermons this way: “And along the whole of this perspective, there seems no event, the contemplation of which is more fitted to still the spirit into seriousness, or bring it up to high resolves than the coming advent of the Saviour—an event on one side of which lie all the recollections of time, and on the other side all the retributions of eternity. Meanwhile, and ere he take the decisive movement from the mercy seat which he now fills in heaven, to the judgment seat which he then will occupy on earth, he bids you all flee from the coming wrath—he holds out even to the guiltiest of you all the scepter of an offered reconciliation—he plies you alike with the overtures of pardon and calls of repentance; a pardon sealed by the blood of a satisfying atonement, in which he invites you to trust.… O kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and while he is in the way—for blessed only shall they be who have put their trust in him.”

Yes, why do we latch our destiny on to the modern man in space and ignore this other Man in space? Does not the apostle Paul have the only plausible answer? “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). Two men in space! Lest we be enamoured of the modern space man, and ignore the other man, let us be sure we have the Spirit of God.—A sermon preached by Dr. LEE SHANE, pastor of National Baptist Memorial Church, Washington, D. C.

We Quote:

BOGUS HISTORY—You cannot take Jesus Christ and his influence out of our culture. So very rarely do you hear Christian people make this point in argument with non-Christians, and make it securely. The influence of Christ is deep and real in spite of all the failures of the Christian Church. Jesus Christ did, in fact, bring certain new ideas into the world, and history cannot be as if Christ had never been.

We complain about the Communists twisting history. I am opposed to the falsification of historic proof because it’s a very serious matter. This twisting of history happens in democracy too.

The thing I constantly have to do in your universities and in England (but very much so over here, because so many of you seem to me to have little historical sense) is to make them understand that these ideas of Jesus were new. This is an objective fact in history. We’re so used to these ideas now that we divorce them from their source. We’re living on borrowed capital and are not knowledgeable enough to acknowledge our debts. In fact, one of the books for required reading in Stanford University, and I think in many other universities, is a certain book on Western civilization. It’s for first year students, and many of my friends tell me that this book is utterly unfair because it leaves out the influence of Christianity on our Western civilization. In other words, it’s a bogus history. Some of your students are having bogus history forced on them.—Canon BRYAN GREEN of Birmingham Cathedral, in an address at the Layman’s Leadership Institute.

Background Comments

The Preacher:

The Reverend Roland G. Riechmann is Pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Jacksonville, Florida, where he has ministered since 1954. Ordained in 1935 by the Illinois Synod of the United Lutheran Church in America, he formerly served churches in Missouri and Illinois. In Decatur, Illinois. he was elected “Father of the Year.” He holds the B.A. degree from Carthage Lutheran College and the B.D. from Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary. An avid bowler and golfer, he is also President of the Jacksonville Ministerial Alliance and a member of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary’s governing board.

The Sermon:

The sermon on “The Christian Ministry” differs from others in CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S Select Sermon Series in that it is a commencement address. No theme could be more appropriate for seminarians ready to move to their new frontiers.

Professor Richard Carl Hoefler, who nominated the sermon, makes his evaluative overcomments elsewhere in this issue. The sermon was preached last May at the commencement exercises of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary held in Ebenezer Lutheran Church of Columbia, South Carolina. This month a new contingent of reserves will move from Protestant seminaries to churches scattered across the land. Numerically they are inadequate to fill the need for workers. Pastor Riechmann’s great concern is their spiritual preparedness for a task that will require divine undergirding.

Twenty-five years ago, I sat as you are sitting, awaiting graduation and the reception of a B.D. degree that would permit me to be ordained a few days later. Then I could begin the ministry to which I had been called: a tiny mission church of 35 members, meeting over a tavern in what had been a lodge hall, and at the astronomical salary of $1,040 per year. From the depths of my heart I congratulate you today not only upon your graduation but most especially upon your entrance into the Christian ministry, for I have found it to be a glorious calling: a holy, rewarding, and most exacting calling. To this I would direct your attention.

A GLORIOUS CALLING

The Christian ministry is a glorious calling—glorious because we serve and are led by the King of kings and Lord of lords. He has no superior. He is glorious in his own Person, as well as through his great might and power. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims.… And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:1–2). That glory surrounds us in our ministry, if we will it, if we permit it.

On Easter Sunday morning I arose before six o’clock to watch the local sunrise Easter Service on television. As I watched, I thought of the many similar services being conducted around the world. It seemed suddenly as though Jesus himself were confronting me. I noted his tears and asked him, “Why are you weeping? All over the world men are singing glad hosannas for this is your day of Resurrection. There is joy, not sadness in the world today.” He said nothing, but his piercing glance conveyed to my mind the words of William How, “I died for you, my children, and will you treat me so?”

Two hours later, as the choirs of the church lined up before the service was to begin, my heart was still heavy. The organ soared into a triumphant prelude and I wondered how I could lift my voice in joy as we entered the church. Then the hand of Kay, a charming 10-year-old, tugged at the sleeve of my robe. “Pastor, I have brought some money I want to give to some special project of the church. Where should I give it? During Lent I did without desserts at school and saved the money for the church.” She opened her purse and showed me the pennies, nickels, and dimes. I named two or three projects and after a moment of consideration she made her choice. She placed the money in an envelope, the choirs moved forward, and we lifted our voices together in worship and praise. The risen Christ was in the heart and life of a 10-year-old, and I realized that he was rejoicing with me because once again a little child had led the way and had revealed him.

A HOLY CALLING

The Christian ministry is a holy calling. “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, or come to Him,” said Martin Luther, “but the Holy Ghost has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me by his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith.” “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you,” says Christ.

God has called us, as he called Moses and Aaron, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea, Abraham and Jacob, Luther and Wesley. We march where saints have trod. We preach the same message that rang from the lips of the apostles. A glorious and a holy company of witnesses surrounds us in Christian ministry.

When I entered the ministry I had few fears. I felt I was doing the Lord’s work where the Lord had called me, at a price the Lord was willing to pay. You would call me naïve today. We no longer seem to believe that the Lord calls us. “Presidents of synods are the fellows to know; congregations are the ones to be influenced!” Thus are our futures assured and secured. Well, there will always be some politics, even in the Lord’s work, but I continue to be naïve enough to be led by his Spirit. Christ will gain his way despite the interferences placed before him, if the cause is his Church and his ministry.

The knowing of God’s will, as opposed to our own desires, or the will of others: of synodical presidents and officials, of parents, friends, family, professors, or even of congregations, will be one of the difficult and necessary questions facing us as long as we live. The ability to distinguish requires a lifetime of prayer and presence before the living Lord. A secret to the solution is perhaps best found in a story illustrating aptly what we are to do. A southern janitor who was working for a landlady known for her meanness was asked, “How do you get along with her?” “I puts my mind in neutral and lets her shove me around,” he said. Put your mind in neutral and say, “Here I am, Lord, use me. Put me where you want me, where my talents and abilities will be best used.” God in his divine wisdom and all-powerful might will do the rest.

A REWARDING CALLING

The Christian ministry is a most rewarding calling. You know already I am not talking about financial returns, although they have improved. Twenty dollars a week was not much 25 years ago. One of my members said one day that he became angry every time he saw my salary figure, and that he had to debate whether to send his check to me or the church.

Working with God and for God is the reward. Will power does not change men. Christ does! Time does not change men. Christ does! How then to get Christ into the everyday lives of our people? It is really very simple: Get him to dwell in your life! If men see Christ in you they will be moved to want him for themselves.

If you try to offer Christ to others when you do not possess him, or more rightly put, “are not possessed by him,” you sound like clanging cymbals and sounding brass to your hearers, not like a prophet of Christ. Luther exhorted his people to be “little Christs” to their fellow man. The pastor, of all men, must be a “little Christ” to all men, or he is both faithless to his God and to his calling.

“Be an example” we are commanded: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus …” (Phil. 2:5). Be possessed of Christ and by Christ. Let Christ glow from your eyes, shine from your face, flow from your lips, heal from your hands, lift with your heart interest. Moses had to cover his face after being in the presence of God. What a boon and a blessing we can be to self and others when we return from the presence of God. Spend hours in prayer, meditation, devotion, Bible reading, study. You are not going to overcome the world. Christ will! Get close to him.

AN EXACTING CALLING

The Christian ministry is an exacting calling. We serve God through Christ: not an ideal, but the ideal. Every prayer, every sermon, every address should show signs of work, toil, prayer; each one a bit better than the previous. During college and seminary days I marveled that my home pastor could preach Sunday after Sunday, and never in some eight years did we hear a poor sermon. My pastor never served a large parish, he spent most of his ministry as a “mission developer”; but his sermons were always models of good preaching. Would that the same could be said of yours and mine. Phillips translates 1 Corinthians 3:10 following: “Let the builder be careful how he builds. The foundation is laid already, and no one can lay another, for it is Jesus Christ, himself. But any man who builds on the foundation … must know that each man’s work will one day be shown for what it is.” This is directed at you and me!

The ministry calls from us with unceasing demand, love. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.” “God is love.” “God so loved that he gave.” How then can we, as ambassadors of the Almighty, the God of love, be loveless? And yet often we are just that.

There are so many conditions in the ministry that tend to make us loveless: stubbornness, obstinate church councils; alcoholics, neurotics, bosses in the church, pettiness, lack of cooperation (the capable refuse, the inept volunteer), choirs. “No rest or relief from daily tasks set free.”

In spite of our “ministerial afflictions” we are to love as Christ first loved us and never cease loving. “Where love is, God is, and where God is, we must be. Lavish it on the poor, upon the rich, who often need it most; upon our equals, where it is most difficult, and where we are most apt to love the least. Give pleasure, lose no opportunity of giving pleasure for that is the ceaseless triumph of a loving spirit. It is better not to live than not to love,” says Henry Drummond (The Greatest Thing In The World).

One of the wonderful rewards of living in the south as a minister of the Gospel is the love showered on you by your congregation.

Today we in the ministry face some real battles, some problems so perplexing that the most saintly among us do not know even a part of the answer, much less the complete solution. How shall I, as a minister of Jesus Christ, stand on the race question? In the south your people will want you to take one stand; if you serve in the north, the opposite position. There is only one answer for a servant of Jesus Christ. “I shall stand where Christ stands.” “Where does he stand?” “Where love is found.”

The servant of Christ is against all hatred, bitterness, selfishness, evil intention, unrighteousness, injustice. We too must be against them in fact and in act. And when we are not sure how Christ would act—don’t move until he makes his way clear. If we temper all we feel and do with love, then we shall not be far from the road Christ is traveling. His way will prevail, will conquer. Stop unseemly strife! It is not his way, of this we can be certain.

Comment On The Sermon

The sermon “The Christian Ministry” was nominated forCHRISTIANITY TODAY’SSelect Sermon Series by Dr. Richard Carl Hoefler, Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics in Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. Dr. Hoefler’s overcomment follows:

The sermon was chosen for this series not because it is the greatest sermon I have ever heard but because it contains the basic elements that a sermon should possess if it is to be called “great preaching.”

To begin with, such a sermon must come freely from the sincere conviction of the preacher. This conviction is not just what he believes intellectually about a certain passage of Holy Scripture but it is a conviction that reflects a struggle—a struggle of the total man who has been confronted by God’s Holy Word in the midst of an active participation with life. If a man is to write and preach a great sermon, he must be first a pastor. He must enter his study to prepare the sermon concerned not only with the Word of God but also with the World of Dying Men. Each sermon thereby becomes a focal point where God and the World of Men meet. In the quiet of the study the preacher must struggle at this meeting place of Word and world, as Jacob did with the angel. He must wrestle until he is blessed—blessed by divine guidance and insight. For then, and only then, can he leave his study and go to the pulpit as a man who has seen a vision that must be shared, and has received a message that must be told.

Secondly, a sermon that is to be called “great” must be directed to where men are. The Word of God was never spoken in a vacuum. It was always a word spoken to particular people—at a particular time—in a particular place. Therefore, the sermon must be relevant, personal, and direct. But this requirement must be fulfilled in the complete realization that people are not where they should be. The sermon begins where man is, but immediately lifts and directs him to where he should be and can be by God’s grace and power.

This demands that the preacher have courage and humility, but above all an attitude of expectancy. He must enter the pulpit believing that when God’s Word is proclaimed something is going to happen. And this will happen not because of his own talents, or clever ideas, not because he forces or compels the people to a certain action by his logical line of argumentation, but because he is a witness to what God has done, is doing, and will do.

The third element of the sermon that is to be called “great” is clarity. Clarity begins in the mind of the preacher. My practice is to require each student to establish a theme before he writes or presents a sermon. This theme is a single statement which spells out, in his own words, what he believes God intends for him to say. Secondly I demand that every sermon have an outline—not hidden under clever verbiage, but brittle and sharp like the edge of a razor so that even the attention of the most careless listener cannot escape being cut at least once during the development of the sermon.

Great preaching comes in the process of attempting the impossible. To speak God’s Word is impossible for man. God and God alone must do it, but as we strive humbly and earnestly to do that which we know is impossible for us to do, God does it in us.

The sermon fulfills the challenge of greatness, not necessarily as you will read it and analyze its structure but as its effect continues to work in the lives of 30 young pastors who began their ministry with its words on their hearts.

R.C.H.

A startling comment one Sunday by a stranger as he left church set us thinking about successful ministries and unsuccessful ones. “I like to hear your sermons, you believe what you preach.” It never occurred to me that any man could or would stand in the pulpit of our Lord Jesus Christ and utter what he himself did not fully believe. But men do! And Christ’s body is crucified again—the church of Jesus Christ and his great cause of salvation for all men is hurt or restricted!

As I rode one day with the pastor of a great church, we talked of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity. He said to me, “I would give anything if I could believe what you believe and as you believe.” “Thus saith the Lord” must be your authority. “Rooted and grounded in the Scriptures,” not in the philosophies of men, nor simply in the principles of science, but in the word of the Lord—both Christ and his holy Word.

Science and philosophy will be valuable to you in your ministry, but you preach Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, and let the “isms” preach human ethics and philosophies.

H. Grady Davis in his fine book, Design for Preaching (Muhlenberg Press, 1958), reports that Christian leaders in Europe had to learn anew how to read, preach, and hear the Word as God’s Word. Preaching had become only a religious discourse, a “sacred oratory.” One such leader confessed, “We found that we had only been presenting considerations about the Gospel. We had not been presenting the Gospel itself as God’s message.”

Dr. Davis added, “We must proclaim whatever the King gives us to proclaim. A man does not merely ‘preach.’ He preaches the Kings’ message. A man preaches ‘The Gospel of God,’ ‘The Gospel of Christ’ for the purpose of reaching and reclaiming the lost.”

In The Sermon and the Propers (Concordia, 1958), Dr. Fred H. Lindemann has written, “We have the sign of the cross on our forehead and breast from holy baptism; how far have we driven it into our daily life, into our business and profession, into our school life? How far have we carried it into our community? How deeply have we impressed it on our environment? These questions we, the ministers of God, must daily answer!” Would to God that none of us fail Christ, his Church, his cause!

It is a glorious ministry that you are entering. It is a holy calling with an unusual compensation, for you walk with Christ. With the rewards come unusual demands, that you are to love others as Christ loved you. Your entrance into Christ’s ministry signifies your willingness to fulfill the demands. God grant you the faith, the courage, and the steadfastness so to do.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.