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Did you ever feel on the back of your neck the fixed gaze of a store-window model? I never did either, until I listened to Jean Shepard late one night during a hypnotic turnpike drive. Jean Shepard is a radio tragedian who keeps asking religious questions under a thin disguise of banter, nostalgia, and zany boisterousness. “I mean, what’s bugging us? What’s really bugging us? All of us?” he asks, and waits for an answer. Casual shock is one of his specialties, and this program meandered backwards to the point with the planned indirection of a circus clown about to sit on a tack.

Mr. Shepard, it seems, had read about department store dummies in The New York Times. Did you know that there are fashions in these models as well as on them? Each metropolitan store has its type, and the sophisticated restraint common to all Manhattan models contrasts with the exuberance of models in other cities. What is more, these ageless plastic figures go out of date after a few years. It won’t do to dress a 1948 model in 1961 clothing. The fit may be perfect, but the face still wears wide lapels.

Since window models are patterned on real people, presumably people go out of date too. What is your type? Late Renaissance? Mid-Victorian?

But the punch line was still to come. What do they do with out-dated figures? The signature music heralding midnight had begun when Mr. Shepard gave the answer from the Times. They sell them to the military for use in target practice. The show came to a raucous conclusion as Mr. Shephard shouted firing orders for the execution of the images.

Our image-conscious society feels the impact of those bullets. We may not worship images with pagan directness, but the cult is real. We make images in our likeness, and then make ourselves like them. Merchants find profit in taking our self-image seriously; Hollywood’s priestcraft knows the sensual rituals of its service. Yet our images are no better than the idols of old. They were lying vanities; our images are empty dummies.

When I reported this promising sermon illustration to Pastor Peterson he had the last word, as usual. The saddest case, he said, is the intellectual who finds noble tragedy in men’s shattered idols. Man’s quest for images begins in the ruins of God’s image, but it refuses Christ who is the image of the invisible God. “He is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:20b, 21).

EUTYCHUS

THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE

F. F. Bruce’s review of the New English Bible (Mar. 13 issue) was much appreciated. However, the realization that the basic aim of the translators was to present a “meaning-for-meaning” rather than a “word-for-word” rendering came as a considerable disappointment to me.… I confess some amazement that so little is being said today about the implications of these two views of translation. Ultimately they are profoundly antithetical and give rise to some important questions regarding the essential character and function of Scripture. Under the view that the words of the original autographs are, by the miracle of inspiration, the very words of God, every facet of their structure and relationships becomes a potential source of much enlightenment from God. The aim of translators who hold such a view must be to give to the readers in another language as nearly as possible the same opportunities to examine all these facets and turns of truth as those who read the originals have.

DONALD G. MOSTROM

The Cornerstone Baptist Church

Union City, N. J.

In my opinion, the NEB is the most gripping and forceful English translation available.… Those whose theology is based on the KJV, or who are otherwise hopelessly wedded to it, should just come out and say so, and not try to imagine that there is something sinister or heretical in each new translation that appears.… I thought Bruce’s appraisal was very objective and fair.

SIDNEY J. SPAIN

First Christian Church

Marshall, Tex.

The fact is that this New English New Testament is not a translation at all: it is nothing but a paraphrase—and a clearly satanic one at that.… Among other perversions in the New English New Testament is the monstrous, utterly inexcusable distortion of the Greek text of Matt. 16:18 (O, how deliriously happy Rome will be with this one!): The New English reading here is: “You are Peter, the Rock.…” What an outrageous interpolation! As every Greek scholar knows well, the words “the rock,” after “Peter,” do not appear in any Greek manuscript whatever.

MEYER MARCUS

Staten Island, N. Y.

Why is it that the NEB translators employ Shakespearean English in the prayers of the New Testament, but nowhere else? Is God especially pleased with the use of a special dialect in conversation with Himself?

JOSEPH L. GRABILL

Malone College

Canton, Ohio

A major objection to the NEB is its translation of Romans 3:30: “He will therefore justify both the circumcised in virtue of their faith, and the uncircumcised through their faith.” The Greek does not say “in virtue of their faith”; and surely that is not what the Apostle Paul meant, for he emphasizes throughout his writings that the basis of justification is not our faith but the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Faith is simply the instrument whereby we appropriate the justifying grace of God which has been secured by virtue of Christ’s active and passive obedience. Thus, Paul continually speaks of justification as through faith, by faith, or upon faith; but never on account of faith, because of faith, or (the NEB to the contrary notwithstanding) in virtue of faith. (Incidently the RSV is open to the same objection at Romans 3:30.)

ROBERT W. ECKARDT

Emmanuel Orthodox Presbyterian

Wilmington, Del.

I think it to be evident that no other source has a call to translate the Word of God but the Church of Jesus Christ.

It is therefore not now the time to present a new translation to the people because the Church of Christ is divided into many parts. The nice jar of the Church of the Reformation has been broken down into many pieces. Which piece is now to be held responsible for this mighty task? I should say: none and all! None, because one piece is not the whole jar; all, because all parts together form that one Church insofar as they wish to adhere to the Reformation standards. How can all those pieces together nominate a joint committee for Bible translation, when their theological convictions differ even on important doctrines? In such translations man will always taste the sediment of this theological discord.

… Translation always implies interpretation.… I really cannot see the urgency of a new version; not the least in this ecclesiastical chaos in which we live!… One can translate a portion of the Scriptures from a philological point of view alone, but give not a true translation of what is really meant by the writer. I am aware of the difficulties which here arise, but wish only to point out the absolute incompetence for Bible translation at present due to the lack of spiritual life in the true sense of the word. The spirit that speaks from the newer versions is quite another from that of the versions of the “golden age” in spiritual life in the Christian Church.…

To what a confusion leads the use of different versions under the Christians. The Lord has said from Israel: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6). Is that going to be repeated in the Christian Church today? Let us stay where we are and use the old versions. Let us hope that this will be a means for a united Christendom.

M. KUIPER

Vanderbijlpark, South Africa

THE NEW ISRAEL

When Dr. Aston argues (Mar. 13 issue) that the Servant passages refer to “Jesus Christ, and [him] … alone,” this reader wishes that he had tried to take into account Romans 9:6–8 and Romans 11, especially verse 5. No doubt the Servant passages refer to Christ principally, but yet as the head of his mystical body, the elect—and thus not to Christ “alone” in a nakedly individualistic sense. The true Israel, the mystical new Israel, also is the Servant, under Christ who is its head.…

ROY W. BATTENHOUSE

Indiana University

Bloomington, Ind.

THE ONLY CENSORSHIP

I am writing to correct a misimpression in your item “Eyeing Hollywood” (Feb. 27 issue). Referring to Mr. George Heimrich, Director of our West Coast Office, you say “some interpreted his remarks as suggestive of boycott or censorship, and criticism was heaped upon him even by members of the Commission. Dr. S. Franklin Mack, Executive Director of the NCC’s Broadcasting and Film Commission, dissociated himself from Heimrich’s position.”

I did not dissociate myself from his criticism of motion picture excesses. I have stated repeatedly that the only censorship which the National Council of Churches can espouse is the censorship exercised by the individual in his rejection and responsible choice of viewing fare.

As a constructive move, our Board of Managers voted to approve the selection of a certain number of films each year for church support at the box office.…

S. FRANKLIN MACK

Executive Director

Broadcasting and Film Commission

National Council of Churches

New York, N. Y.

KNOX AND JUSTIFICATION

Professor W. Stanford Reid states that in a book of mine on John Knox, The Thundering Scot, I “never once mention” justification by faith (Book Reviews, Jan. 30 issue). This is not true. It is mentioned on page 52 of the American edition and on page 43 of the British edition. Moreover, neither edition was published in 1959 as Professor Reid states; one was published in 1957 and the other in 1958. Finally, I am no longer of Bryn Mawr but of the University of Southern California. That all the Professor of History at McGill can find to say about my book consists of three separate factual errors does not diminish my suspicion that he is not very familiar with my writings.

GEDDES MACGREGOR

Dean

Graduate School of Religion Dean

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, Calif.

I would humbly confess to having (a) made a mistake by one year on the date of publication of the American edition of his book, a mistake which was perhaps understandable seeing that the Westminster Press did not place any date of publication on the title page, and (b) failed to discover that last year he left Bryn Mawr and went to the University of Southern California as Dean of the Graduate School of Religion. These are, however, but very minor points which do not affect my basic criticism of his book. In his letter he objects that I misrepresented him by stating that he had never mentioned the doctrine of justification by faith. In this he was formally right, but in reality and in truth I think my position is correct. The only mention of justification which he himself can point out … reads as follows: “… From another of his associates at St. Andrews, Henry Balnaves, Knox even received a treatise on the Lutheran doctrine of justification that Balnaves had composed in prison at Rouen, which Knox’s galley was then visiting. Knox not only read the treatise but wrote a brief commentary on it.”

The point of my comment was that in John Knox’s thinking, as shown by his writings, his preaching and all testimonies concerning him, the doctrine of justification by faith alone held a central position. It dominated his life and my feeling is that without an appreciation of this fact one does not understand Knox. To stress his political views as though they were of greater importance than his belief in Christ as his Saviour seems to me to misrepresent Knox and to place a wrong interpretation on both the man and his work.

Finally I do not see what this has to do with my familiarity with Dr. MacGregor’s writings.

W. STANFORD REID

McGill University

Montreal, Que.

CREDIT TO WHOM DUE

In compiling the statistics for articles in the missionary issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Aug. 1 issue), I neglected to give due credit to the Missionary Research Library.

While not holding the library or its capable director, Dr. Frank W. Price, responsible in any way for the figures, I would like to express my appreciation for the kind of co-operation we received at the hands of this excellent research institution in New York City.

S. E. WIRT

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Minneapolis, Minn.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENT

I read with great interest the excellent article in “A Layman and His Faith” (Feb. 27 issue). In my judgment this is the finest short article I have read on the subject of revival.… It is a real uplift to see others writing and promoting the most essential element in Christianity … genuine revival. This is without doubt the answer to present-day modernism.

HENRY C. JAMES

Manager

Asbury Seminary Bookstore

Wilmore, Ky.

Practically throughout the world the church of Christ is on the defensive. Her heyday seems to have passed and there is deep disquiet in almost every communion naming itself Christian. Yet rightly seen, as Latourette’s volumes have made many of us see, such a situation may well mark a fresh advance. Marshall Foch, in the First World War, in one of our darkest hours, said something like this: “My flanks have been driven back; my center has been driven in: we attack!”

THE MALAISE IN PHILOSOPHY

In my student days I noted in a widely-read volume (one of the celebrated Muirhead Library of Philosophy series) this close of the total argument: “We have therefore the right to hope,” and one felt it was so. In after thought, as the world seemed to totter, one recalled the pregnant picture of Hope as a blindfold female figure sitting across the world-sphere with a guitar in her hand, one string alone remaining, and she was playing on that one length of strung wire! Hope! But what if it snapped? There we have the present malaise in modern philosophy, or at least in large stretches of it.

The doyen of British philosophy, one assumes, is Bertrand Russell, whose brochure Why I Am Not a Christian seems incredible when one recalls his philolosophic acumen. A bare reading proclaims how far removed he is from Christian factuality and the faith based thereon. “Hope” seems to have snapped in his early university days. Later on, two excerpts reveal how drastically it had thus suffered: “At last there falls the pitiless dark.” In another passage, he urges the stoic-like quality of “an unyielding despair.”

As any serious student knows, skepticism is the perennial characteristic of philosophy revealing implicitly the need of a different discipline, faith, if one is to abide beyond “unyielding despair.” Take, as a starting point, Graecian philosophy. The great figures of the period move us by their incisive thought. Then, at last, there is a crashing, as over a precipice, into skepticism as into nihilism. Reason had shot its bolt, and the thrust for ultimacy met its nemesis. That fallen standard the early Church raised high in its greater faith grounded in revelation. At the Renaissance the two broke asunder, and philosophy moved out on a fresh gallant road, as its great exponents felt, only in Hume to crash again in an even deeper skepticism—deeper since there had been the light of Christ which the Graecians had not known. Kant and his successors gave philosophy a new-born day of reason.

Nevertheless, our own period of philosophy has witnessed to a skepticism passing all calculation—its outreach is beyond any vision of science or of philosophy. It is the skepticism inherent in the Principle of Relativity. There is a change of status, however, for now science is the major discipline, with philosophy its humble assistant. It proclaims a pessimism more shattering than historic man has known. For throughout the history of reason there has been a sort of nascent faith that God exists, and that there is some mode or other by which we may come to know him. That would be a measure of ultimacy not dependent on the worshiper for its reality, yielding true spirituality to him. Not so with Einstein’s “relativity.” Unless we can encounter one who stands within yet beyond world-phenomena, then ultimacy that out-matches unyielding despair is unattainable. For the doctrine of relativity is that every man is the percipient of his own world, to each man his own world and none other, for he can have one such center only.

Where then can one stress finality? Nowhere, if he is bound by this doctrine. The good man builds his ethicized world; the bad man his evil world; both are abstracting from a whole beyond their grasp. Both “worlds” are “splits” or cross-sections of reality standing in deeper dimensions larger than their vision. Any one may be as good as the other, binding only perhaps as caprice. Here is the malaise in the realm of philosophy. The quest for ultimacy is as far off as ever, and hope is beset by “unyielding despair.” Even the conception of God by so erudite a philosopher as A. N. Whitehead does not break loose from this malaise, since to him “the actuality of God must also be understood as a multiplicity of actual components in process of creation.” In answer, one of my former professors responded: “A God who is within the process is no God at all.” One recalls the profound parable of our Lord of the two men, one wise, the other foolish. What is clear amid this tangle of thought and counter thought is this: either we are committed to the Christian revelation of “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” or we have no more assurance on ultimate issues than the man who built on sand, and who went down in final disaster.

Final disaster? Yes. That is no mere touch of rhetoric, since the principle of relativity has dealt hard with modern ethics, and has left to every value only an ultimacy measured by individual vision. No common moral yardstick remains; all is according to the individual’s stance. Reason, therefore, is suspect; moral reason the same. A paralyzing pessimism, as every deep-seated pessimism is bound to be, is settling over us. All the world over where men seek ultimate standards by which to judge and act, there is no real assurance of final light or worth or validity. The fundamental issue, therefore, lies between the living God of Revelation and the Heraclitean “flux.”

THE PLIGHT OF EDUCATION

This sense of relativity has had profound effect upon many of our leaders in thought and education. In America, in spite of an apparently religiously determined public opinion, no religious faith permeates academic convictions.

Recently I have been reading a book which has been given this commendation: “A major contribution … by one of the most competent specialists working in the field of personality patterns”: The Individual and His Religion, by Gordon W. Allport, professor of psychology in Harvard University. In a book given to psychological interpretation one does not of course expect a theological treatise. But one is justified to expect in a book which sets out to deal with religion at university levels, some mention at least of the name and influence of those who, in the long years of man’s religious quest and life, have influenced the whole world. The author is content however with “subjective religion.” In his closing pages on “The Nature of Faith” he states his position: “How the individual justifies his faith is a variable matter, and the certitude he achieves is his alone.” This is an honest book, sincere in intention. But of the two authorities who, by every calculus of judgment, have shaped the thought of all our modern civilization, no mention is made. This book is only two-dimensional—it lacks depth and height: there is no mention of the great prophets of Israel, and the name of Jesus is left out! The inference is that in an individual’s quest for finality and self-completion, the Christian faith need not even be considered.

A BREATHING SPACE

To many the present moment is a kind of breathing space, itself sharpening the challenge to the world-wide Church of Christ. Over a thousand million now live under the dominance of atheistic communism. In Africa there is a terrific race on the part of Islam to win its emerging peoples to that faith. A growing paganism is operative on all sides. On all final issues the only light one can see is that cast by Christ in the minds of those who see how in his wounded hands he consummates all that man has sought to know of “the purpose, the will, the love and the wrath of the Eternal God,” all of which lights up much of the inevitable mystery of God. In Him reason is given its final crown; in him, as revealed in the Scriptures, in nature, in history, and in conscience, faith finds the deepest niche in which to kneel and worship, while Christ redeems that believing heart. The lights that had earlier partly illuminated man’s adventures are going out; not a few have already expired. But there is one “Light” which the darkness has never overwhelmed: the light which flames from the face of Jesus Christ.

The poignancy lies just here: the Church has gone out in modern days to evangelize the masses, but she has left undone the evangelization of our foremost teachers and professors. Where at university levels, as was the case with Bertrand Russell, eager young men and women come for ultimate thought, they encounter skepticism. On a day of fierce wind and storm, with a bitter sleet adding to personal discomfort, I witnessed a mass of green sward, only known perhaps in these green islands, slowly blotted out by the feet of hundreds as they came from football galleries at the challenge of Billy Graham to embrace the finality of Christ. Among the first 12 persons was a man whose name was then world-wide as among the foremost adventurous spirits of the day, and with him came his wife. But that is not normal—for the foremost spirits of our day do not come to missions, and how he came I do not know. These men are hand-picked, as one picks rare fruit with careful hand.

At a conference where scholars on Old Testament work in history and language met for a session or two, I heard a lecture on Jewish law by an outstanding Jewish scholar. It happened that he and I sat together at the luncheon that followed. In the course of an easy chat I put forth, with some trepidation, a question that had been on my mind all the morning: “In your judgment, will the time come, near or remote, when the Jew will become a Christian?” His face sharpened at once. “I might answer you fiercely,” was his first word, “but I will not.… Rather in the spirit of the sincerity in which you have voiced your question.” Then, slowly, “the Jew will become Christian, when the Christian becomes Christian.” I was stilled to the core, and I recalled how much of anti-Semitism the Church had caused in the centuries since Christ. Further, he went on, “in this university town I know your churches, and their relative emptiness, and I have not been impressed by what I have seen or heard.”

There I heard the modern challenge; what is more, I felt it. The higher seats of our learning must be won for Christ, and the Church must see it as our major battle field. Its cost? “Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to thy Cross I cling.” The heart of Paul, than whom Christ has not won a greater: “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Paul won his earlier day for Christ, for the simple reason that Christ held all there was in Paul, and shone His deathless light through him. That same principle of faith, of life, and of light wins today wherever it may be. Where is it?” That is the challenge today. Our finest must leap to its call!

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.

Christendom is facing a new crisis over foreign missions because missionary statesmen differ tellingly both over the definition of the Gospel and over the Christian approach to the pagan world religions.

This momentous crisis in Protestant Christianity has organizational as well as theological implications. Is the foreign missions enterprise to be totally and permanently integrated into the ecclesiastical framework and control of the World Council of Churches? Many churchmen expect a major move in this direction will occur November 17 to December 6, 1961, with the integration of WCC and the International Missionary Council at the New Delhi Assembly.

Underlying most of the dissatisfaction over ecumenical mergers is a theological protest. From the outset theological inclusivism has haunted the ecumenical venture. It has sheltered not only evangelical but liberal (and more latterly neo-orthodox) and for a season even humanist views with equal welcome.

Twice in the twentieth century the Christian missionary movement around the world has been shaken by theological controversies. First, echoes of W. E. Hocking’s Re-Thinking Missions (1932) resounded from the Alaskan wastes to the African jungles. Then Hendrik Kraemer’s The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (1938) framed the issues in a new albeit controversial setting.

This month an ecumenical symposium on The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed., McGraw-Hill, $5.95) may rock the Christian world missionary venture afresh. Although the new volume is not an official ecumenical document, it has had private encouragement and commendation from highly placed ecumenical leaders in missions. As a supplement to Dr. Anderson’s doctoral dissertation at Boston University on The Theology of Missions, 1928–1958, the volume sets in perspective, in somewhat loosely-related essays, the views of influential ecumenical spokesmen. Statements on the meaning of Christianity and its relation to the non-Christian religions by distinguished scholars (Barth, Bouquet, Cullmann, DeWolf, Kraemer, and Tillich among them) are likely to constitute this volume a center of debate for some time. Kraemer, former director of the Ecumenical Institute, who at first declined to participate in the symposium, wrote a short and sharp essay of indignation over current ecumenical missions trends.

Searching Questions Facing The Ecumenical Witness

A symposium like The Theology of the Christian Mission inevitably raises searching questions for the Protestant ecumenical movement:

Do these thinkers truly express the governing missionary philosophy of denominations identified with the World Council of Churches?

Will their views be determinative or influential in the International Missionary Council?

If not, why does ecumenical theology confer prestige upon these viewpoints and not upon others?

Will missionary executives in the major denominations explicitly reject non-evangelical points of view and instead affirm a biblical theology of missions? What of the theological outlook of the missionary task force and of missionary candidates?

Will the WCC-IMC merger be compromised from the outset by an inclusivistic theology or by an evasive silence that holds costly implications for the world-wide missionary venture?

Or will the New Delhi Assembly come down unequivocally on the side of a biblical philosophy of missions, and specifically reject humanistic, liberal, and dialectical speculations?

Answers to such questions will determine the vitality and harmony of Protestant missionary effort around the globe.

—ED.

Although this controversial work includes essays that are theologically disappointing, some even biblically objectionable, it contains also some first-rate biblical theology. The title ambitiously promises a statement of the theology of the Christian mission. Failure of movements like Evangelical Foreign Missions Association and Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association to produce evangelical statements of similar scope will elevate this volume into required reading and study material even for fundamentalist critics of an inclusive theology. (More than half the world missionary task force remains outside the WCC-IMC framework [the volume concedes that “one third of the total Protestant missionary endeavor is administered by agencies that … do not cooperate”].) The symposium’s ecumenical perspective criticizes missionary effort by American independent and nondenominational agencies (said to be mainly concentrated on neglected fields) as operating outside the churches. While the volume does incorporate the conservative exposition of Christian missions by Harold Lindsell of Fuller Theological Seminary, taken as a whole its statement of the biblical and historical basis of missionary theology is from the ecumenical perspective. As a noteworthy ecumenical thrust on the eve of the WCC-IMC merger, the book could significantly influence reformulation of missions 1. by its tenuous connection of the missionary task to a nebulous trinitarian theology (sometimes called “radical trinitarian theocentrism”); 2. by relating the ideal completion of mission to the WCC-IMC-identified Church; and 3. by viewing Christianity as the fulfillment (rather than antithesis) of pagan religions.

Hendrik Kraemer’S Complaint

Dr. Kraemer declares that while the ecumenical process reads and registers all views as particular opinions, missionary thinking and strategy actually continue unchanged, without new decisions and actions: “The ‘responsible agencies’ to which I appealed in 1938 for … practical measures to combat syncretism have not responded even to this day.… What I do hope and pray for is the awakening of the ‘responsible agencies’ to the fundamental necessities.”

WHAT OF NON-CHRISTIAH RELIGIONS?

Since the first Christian era, the critical question on the mission fronts of the world has been: Of what import is the Christian message to followers of the non-Christian religions? What of Hinduism and Buddhism? Of Mohammedanism? Of Judaism? Of Communism? The most distressing feature of the ecumenical symposium under review is its ambiguous, often disappointing, and sometimes apostate verdict on this important issue. Missions is the cutting edge of the Church; to dull the blade of evangelism is to doom Christianity.

In the background of essays relevant to this question stands the twentieth century clash over missions philosophy. This is recalled also as the conflict between the liberal theology of immanence (represented by Hocking) and the dialectical theology of transcendence (represented by Kraemer). The former view asserts the direct continuity of all religions (based on a supposed common religious essence), while the latter, at least in Barthian form, asserts the absolute discontinuity of Christianity from the non-Christian religions. The dialectical view, however, is not to be equated with the historic Christian view of the antithesis between Christianity and paganism; to do so would be a hasty misidentification, as we shall see.

Both Roman Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation asserted the fact of an antithesis. But Romanism stressed “Logos theology” (natural theology), while historic Protestantism emphasized the broken imago Dei and the priority of scriptural revelation.

In noting their emphasis on the inadequacy of non-Christian religions, even Lindsell’s exposition may give Kraemer and the 1938 Madras Conference too much credit. In common with dialectical thinkers, Kraemer considers apostolic Christianity to be under divine judgment no less than the non-Christian religions: “All historic religions in their concrete manifestations are syncretistic in different respects. This includes the three great religions which are basically antisyncretistic, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.” While Kraemer affirms the Christian revelation to be “absolute, incomparable and sui generis,” he nonetheless calls for “appreciation of the high values” in non-Christian religions. On the other hand, Lindsell (while not hesitating elsewhere to concede impurity and even apostasy in the historic development of the Church) insists on infallible apostolic writings, and declares that “at best … all non-Christian religions are counterfeits of the one true faith.” The inadequacy of the non-Christian religions lies, for Lindsell, in the circumstance that they, unlike revealed religion, are under the judgment of God and cannot provide salvation; their devotees are improperly related to God. Christianity alone leads to everlasting life. For a conservative philosophy of missions, as Lindsell puts it, “eclecticism has no part … and the exclusiveness of Christianity is assumed.”

Most of the essayists claim to support the absoluteness of the Christian religion. Tillich, one of the exceptions, is happier to assert “universality” rather than “absoluteness.” Even here, he states, there is no theoretical proof of the universal validity of Christianity, nor of the claim that Jesus is the Christ. It would be interesting indeed, in view of this, to know the Harvard theologian’s private reflections on a New Testament declaration such as 1 John 2:22, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?” (RSV). For Tillich the only “proof” is pragmatic, that is, the verdict of faith. But Floyd H. Ross waves aside Tillich’s attempt to salvage Christ’s universality rather than his absoluteness. Understanding the essential relativism of Tillich’s position, Ross bluntly declares his approval of Tillich’s and Berdyaev’s view that Christianity is neither final nor universal.

As a dominant trend the symposium essayists see Christianity as the fulfillment rather than the contradiction of the heathen religions, and emphasize “the good in all religions.” This mood sometimes includes regard even for atheistic communism as a constructive preparation for Christianity, or, on the other hand, abrogates the need, so clearly stressed in the New Testament, for evangelizing the Jews.

Although the fulfillment thesis is supported zealously by A. C. Bouquet, L. Harold DeWolf, Ernest Benz, Tillich, and Ross, their expositions lead along somewhat divergent roadways. Even F. N. Davey, whose essay on “The Gospel According to St. John and the Christian Mission” incorporates a generous measure of biblical theology, declares that “some men may find true discernment in a particular religion, however primitive, however crude.”

The neo-orthodox emphasis of Barth and Kraemer on “discontinuity” is quite swiftly set aside by most of the writers. Bouquet stresses that neither Nathan Söderblom nor William Temple held so dim a view of the non-Christian religions, and that B. F. Westcott regarded Christianity as bringing into balance the emphases that other religions exaggerate. DeWolf declares that “few missionaries today, except some from the extreme Fundamentalist sects,” now ask (as did most earlier Protestant missionaries) for “total rejection” and “radical displacement” of the pagan religions. He assails Kraemer’s assertion of the absoluteness of “the Christian revelation” (itself a compromise of the historic evangelical proclamation of the Christian religion). Asks DeWolf: Does not Kraemer’s interpretation of this revelation and its claim “constitute a part of religion …? On what ground,” he asks, “does Kraemer’s understanding of the Word escape the relativism of all religion?” This is sound internal criticism, since Kraemer brings all religious experience under divine judgment. But DeWolf follows the observation to lower rather than to higher ground.

For Bouquet and DeWolf the alternative to “discontinuity” is “fulfillment.” This DeWolf contrasts with “relativistic syncretism,” or a regard for all religions as paths to the same Reality. Both these scholars believe that devotees of the non-Christian religions are prepared thereby for the Gospel. Whether these thinkers successfully escape religious relativism (except in terms of semantic legerdemain) is best judged by a closer look at their views.

Bouquet’s View. The “fulfillment” thesis Bouquet spells out in his essay, “Revelation and the Divine Logos.” In respect to the Divine Logos, he argues, the author of the Fourth Gospel “certainly employed” the language-and-thought form of the Hellenistic Jewish and Gentile world, where the idea of the Self-Expression of Ultimate Divinity was familiar. Such (presumed) “indorsement” of this idea was either “a fundamental mistake” or “a sign of growing into truth under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” The latter option (which Bouquet supports) vindicates adoption of this pattern today in dealing with all non-Christian religious movements. John’s Prologue was “perhaps the first serious attempt” to relate “the Christian God-story to the religious beliefs of the Gentile world.” Bouquet therefore lightly waves aside the historic Protestant insistence that a Jewish rather than Gentile use stands behind the Logos passage. He even thinks it “not unreasonable” to find in this Prologue (in the second century A.D.!) an echo of the ancient teaching of Heraclitus. “The point to be emphasized is that some sort of incarnation of the Cosmic Logos, albeit usually a mythical one, was a familiar idea to many educated Gentiles at the time when the Johannine writings came to be composed.…” Bouquet, moreover, regards the Logos-insights of Gentile philosophers as “part of that growing into truth” which the Johannine Christ promises his disciples (cf. John 14:25, but note also 15:26). This universal Logos-approach Bouquet then applies also to Zarathustra, Buddha, and other pagan religious figures.

As a result of the finiteness and rebelliousness of human nature, Bouquet grants, “a good deal of philosophy … is not obedient to the Universal Logos, and … may therefore contradict the Concrete Logos.” But he holds that such disobedience characterizes Christianity too (presumably even within the so-called biblical norm). Bouquet’s criterion for judging whether a Christian sage or prophet “strives after” the truth and lives in tune with the Logos is “the same criterion” used by the first Christians, that is (according to Bouquet), “the unique and overwhelming personality of the historical Jesus, and … the spectacle of good and earnest teachers who were not Christians.” The complex, confusing, and highly subjective nature of Bouquet’s criterion seems obvious, and his exposition quickly destroys what special relevance he hopes to preserve for Christ. Although Bouquet insists Jesus was an historical figure of momentous importance (whose earthly career is “a supreme event in the life of the Eternal Deity, and an event in the spatiotemporal order by which something decisive for the human race was achieved”), he soon dissolves the scandal of the God-man. Philosophers are living according to the Logos, we are told, insofar as they strive after and believe that the universe is truly interpreted as the embodiment of a single spiritual and moral formula, “whether they accept Christ or not.”

The Logos doctrine, Bouquet contends, allows non-Christian sages to supply a theological background for converts to Christianity. It is not impossible, he thinks, to speak of “Christian Buddhists, Christian Moslems, Christian Vedantists, and Christian Confucians.” The names of these great sages, he adds, might be “preserved and revered, yet without the essence of Christian doctrine being contaminated.”

Bouquet’s emphasis on universally accessible facets of one Divine Truth permeating all religions comes in the last analysis to overwhelm his corollary emphasis on the supremacy of Jesus. He writes: “It would surely be foolish not to use … the witness of Svetasvatara Upanishad in the matter of theism, or the witness of an inspired teacher like Shinran to the doctrine of sola fide, even though the trust in merits of Amida is in itself only trust in a myth.” The least that one must say about Bouquet’s proposal is that it conceals the apostolic reliance on “the foolishness of preaching” a specially revealed God, and that, moreover, it would have required the apostles instead to have buttressed the case for theism by a reliance on those pagan Graeco-Roman philosophies and religions which they shunned like the black plague.

DeWolf’s View. In his essay “The Interpretation of Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions,” DeWolf notes that most Christian scholars regard their faith as a fulfillment rather than a radical displacement of Judaism. But what of its relation to other religions?

To begin with, DeWolf affirms “the unrivaled originality of Israel’s tradition.” But he also stresses the continuity of biblical with non-biblical religion in terms that seem still to reflect the now widely-discredited Wellhausen criticism of the nineteenth century: “Few Old Testament scholars would defend the doctrine that no other religions contributed to the religion of the ancient Hebrews.… Various scholars believe that they can find evidences in the ancient Old Testament religion of contributions from the Egyptians, Midianites, Canaanites, and Babylonians.” “The Christian teachings in the New Testament include contributions from other religions in addition to … Judaism,” such as Hellenistic philosophy, mystery religions, and Persian influence. As DeWolf sees it, “much in paganism” is similar to Christian doctrine and worship.

DeWolf appeals to four considerations in support of his thesis of the continuity of all religions and of their serviceability as a preparation for the Gospel. The first, curiously, is to “biblical testimony.” Even if we were to grant his disputable interpretation of the verses he cites (John 1:9; Acts 14:17), which we refuse, we must note that by his “biblical appeal” DeWolf, like so many liberal theologians, is hoisted by his own petard. These men appeal to the Bible when they think it suits their purpose, but they disallow evangelicals the same decisive appeal over against liberal speculations. In addition, DeWolf sketchily refers, in support of the dogma of the universal continuity of religions, to the Logos doctrine in patristic church history; the missionary’s “inevitable” use of meanings communicated by rival religions; and the doctrine of “the Trinity” (DeWolf downgrades Christological revelation and defers to the universal activity of the Holy Spirit).

Tillich’s View. Tillich contributes the essay “Missions and History.” Stated in religious-mythological language, Tillich tells us, the conflict of world history is a conflict between divine and demonic forces. As is well known, Tillich’s Systematic Theology denies the existence of an objectively real personal God.

In a profoundly unbiblical presentation which fails to grasp the crucial difference between the Church and the world, he affirms that the Church is “latently present” in paganism, humanism, and Judaism. “People are not outside of God; they are grasped by God on the level in which they can be grasped—in their experience of the Divine, in the realm of holiness in which they are living … even though the symbols in which the Holy is expressed may seem extremely primitive and idolatrous.” Christian mission aims, we are told, to transform this latency into existential reality. The Christian Church is the historical representative of the kingdom of God which, for Tillich, becomes a symbol for the unity of history in and above history.

Tillich boldly sets aside the finality of Jesus of Nazareth. The goal of history, he tells us, is “never actualized in history.” The “moment” in which the meaning of history becomes fully manifest, or the center of history, is “the New Being in Jesus as the Christ.” This center is not A.D. 1–30, but is existential: “Many people, even today, are living before the event of Jesus as the Christ.” The reader must not, therefore, confuse “the power of the New Being which is in the Christ” with Jesus of Nazareth. Although Tillich stresses only that his “New Being in Christ” (or Christ-abstraction, shall we say) judges Christianity as critically as non-Christian religions, he does not trouble to stress the fact that, in his speculative gnosis, this abstraction judges Jesus of Nazareth also.

It should surprise nobody that Tillich’s view eliminates the need for evangelizing the Jews. While Christians should be open to individual Jews wanting to become Christians, Tillich holds that “one should not try to convert them.” Rather, Christians should subject themselves to the criticism of Hebrew prophetic tradition. Here, again, Tillich misses the significance of special historical revelation objectively climaxed in Jesus Christ, and dilutes the essence of redemptive religion to a speculative idealism in which the scandal of the Cross is gone. Any reconstruction of Christianity which loses the New Testament compulsion to address “the Jew first,” by so much the more seems to us consistently foredoomed to surrender its redemptive concern for “the Gentiles also.”

Ross’ View. In his essay “The Christian Revelation in Larger Dimension,” Floyd H. Ross follows the “comparative religions” approach down the highway of religious relativism. He writes: “The Christian mission today involves bearing witness to a profound search for living truth which can never be confined within any language, theological or non-theological, Christian or non-Christian.” “God is known in relative ways only, even in those traditions that claim special revelation.…” “The Gospel is not … delivered from the relativities of history.…” It should be obvious that, given Ross’ assumptions, whatever he may say about “the Christian revelation” must involve his surrender of a faith “once for all delivered to the saints.” The once-for-all divine incarnation of God in Christ is also dissolved.

Since both religions affirm that “the ultimate invades history,” Ross asserts that “what is intended by the Hindu teaching of recurring incarnation is not as far removed from the Christian doctrine of incarnation as is sometimes claimed.”

Misguided Zeal?

The Christian must accept the possibility (we are told) that the early Christians “may have been overzealous” in affirming “there is no other name given under heaven” for the salvation of men. That the Christian finds God’s decisive act in the person and work of Jesus Christ “does not rule out entertaining the possibility that this decisive act may point to that which has been experienced as reality in other modes and under other names.”—Floyd H. Ross, in The Theology of the Christian Mission, p. 219.

One is tempted to range Paul’s declaration that the Gentiles are “haters of God” (Rom. 1:30) alongside Ross’ regard for “the human thirst for ultimate meaning … as universal,” and to set Jesus’ claim that “no man cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6) alongside Ross’ assertion that “I do not think evidence can be adduced to support the claim that only in Christianity can this thirst be satisfied.” Subjectivism so permeates the contributor’s viewpoint that one is struck by the implication of the universal validity of his own opinions. He writes: “A confession of faith always testifies to what has happened in my or our history, not in history as such.… The ‘language’ of religion is the language of myth and poetry.…”

We are informed that the early Christian claims for Jesus the Christ were “in the mythic dimension” and that all of these themes are … paralleled over and over again in the religions of mankind.”

The Dimension Of Myth?

“All of the early Christians’ affirmations about Jesus the Christ were in the mythic dimension. They believed that Christ was in some sense the ‘Messiah,’ or the ‘Son of Man,’ or the ‘Son of God.’ Some believed that he had a ‘virgin birth.’ All of these themes are ancient mythic themes, paralleled over and over again in the religions of mankind. That God ‘chose’ one race to be ‘his people,’ that Jesus was a preexistent ‘divine being’ whose coming marks the end of the ‘present age,’ that God let ‘His Son’ die on a cross in order that the ‘Son’s’ death might obtain ‘atonement for the sins of man,’ that through Christ’s ‘resurrection’ the demonic powers of the world have been robbed of their dominion, that Christ will return on the clouds in his glory to finish his work of destroying sin, suffering, and death, that ‘there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved’—all of this is mythic.”—Floyd H. Ross, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.), pp. 221 ff.

Those outside the circle of faith are needlessly confused when this mythic-confessional language is treated literally or historically, we are told. “When the mythic has been denied or repressed, Christians have taken refuge in sterile liberalisms, legalisms, fundamentalisms and brittle dogmatisms.” “In ordinary history it can be said that every event is unique or once-for-all; but in ‘sacred history’ once-for-allness refers to a dimension of meaning that is felt to be time-transcending and time-transforming.” “To identify faith with a particular expression of faith is to fall into idolatry.” “Christian myth is ‘truer’ than Christian history for those who believe, for myth has its vitality prior to either the proof or disproof of any specific event or series of events.” The mythic dimension invites man to live ever more deeply “by faith, not by fact.”

Ross’ non-historical mythic emphasis seems to dissolve belief both in an end-time of history and in the second coming of Christ; these concepts are attributed to mistaken historical expectations of the early Church. “The nonfulfillment of that literal expectation did not kill off the Church, very probably because that belief, like others, was rooted in the mythic depths of their lives and was not tied to historical ‘fact.’ ”

Benz’s View. Propounding “Ideas for a Theology of the History of Religion,” Ernest Benz rejects both dialectical theology’s assertion of absolute discontinuity between Christianity and non-Christian religions and Roman Catholicism’s affirmation of their continuity on the basis of “Logos theology.” This dual rejection is a good beginning, but Benz then moves, not toward an evangelical assessment, but rather toward a heightened emphasis on continuity. His dissatisfaction with the neo-orthodox and Romanist views springs specially from their limitation of salvation history before Christ to the Old Testament-related events, and from their closing of the history of religion with the appearance of Jesus Christ. Evangelical Christianity also requires this limitation. Against this, Benz pleads the case of the extra-biblical and the post-Christian religions. He proposes a reconstruction of the history of religion that relates other religions affirmatively to Christianity, rather than as heretical or as demonic independent movements.

The universal cosmic revelation of God, Benz asserts, not only opposes the thesis of absolute discontinuity, but it also disputes any declaration of absoluteness for Christianity alone. Benz assures us, however, that “an exclusive claim to absoluteness … is not the only self-evident and determinative attitude to be found in the New Testament.” The apostles of first century Christianity would have been shocked at this misunderstanding, for both the martyr spirit of Christian missions and the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth center in the question of the absoluteness of Christianity.

A Strange Gospel

“Jesus promises that even those who have never heard of him, heathen and non-Christians, who to their own surprise turn out to be Christians because they have fulfilled the command of love, will be received into the Kingdom of God and will sit at table there with him.… The criterion which determines the consignment of men to the Kingdom of God or to outer darkness is not a definite doctrine about Christ, not a recognition of the Christian claim to absoluteness, nor is it even a knowledge of the historical figure of Jesus.…”—Ernest Benz, in The Theology of The Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).

Benz points to those who have changed their faith to Christianity from non-Christian religions as vindicating a role for all religions within the context of “a universal and exclusive idea of religion.” He thinks Kagawa avoided relativizing religions—even though he surrendered “the traditional formulation of the Christian claim to absoluteness in its exclusive form.” Benz’s ambiguous closing verdict is that even though Christ alone leads to the summit, yet religions nonetheless differ from each other only in degree. We note how difficult it is to reconcile this position with Jesus’ own teaching (“I am the door.… All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers,” John 10:7 f.). Benz implies that no New Testament guidance exists for understanding extra-biblical and non-Christian religions. But does not the apostle Paul relate both the prehistoric past and the post-New Testament present to the Christian understanding of salvation history? Paul did not, of course, share these subjective philosophical assumptions which drive Benz to find a “mythological picture of history” in the Bible, and therefore to attack the assurance that in Christ the history of religion has “already found its fulfillment, its suspension and historical conclusion.” Indeed, for Paul the fact that Christ alone leads to the summit distinguishes Christianity in kind, not merely in degree, from the non-Christian religions.

Doi’s View. In his chapter on “The Nature of Encounter between Christianity and Other Religions as Witnessed on the Japanese Scene,” Masatoshi Doi treats Christianity merely as dialectical-existential encounter. He rejects the universal Logos as the criterion of truth, and scorns doctrinal Christianity. He insists nonetheless on truth in other religions.

Doi characterizes Christianity as a “distorted response” to divine revelation which “stands under judgment of God just as do all other religions.” Like other religions, Christianity for him is a synthesis of different cultural and religious elements, and therefore continuous with other religions.

Reporting on a survey of 52 “converts” to Christianity, Doi observes that 48 per cent viewed Christianity as “fulfillment” and 37 per cent as “total negation” of their former religion. Doi disparages the fundamentalist tendency to speak of “total negation,” dismissing it on the ground that its followers are “strongly indoctrinated with absolutist tenets.” But he commends those who speak in terms of “fulfillment” as “theological unbiased”!

Doi disparages Christianity as a unique religion of historical revelation and divinely revealed truths. Instead of a revelational center in Jesus of Nazareth, he postulates an existential center for spiritual life. Doi says “the central core of the religious experience, which is involved in the encounter between Christianity and other religions, is the existential commitment of a person, who has been brought up in a definite religious tradition, to God who revealed Himself in an historical event as the ultimately meaningful reality.… No historical event can be ultimately meaningful unless there is an experiencing subject who accepts it as ultimately meaningful.…”

Versus Pure Doctrine

“Faith is not bound by any particular system of dogmas or ideas.… As man’s free response to the divine act it has the freedom to choose between various doctrines, ideas and cultural patterns so that it may be able to create a new system of doctrines and ideas … in accord with the historical situation in which the believer stands.… If too much emphasis is laid upon criticism for the sake of purity of doctrine, Christianity tends to become abstract and to remain aloof from the religious and cultural situation in which it stands.”—Masatoshi Doi, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).

Devanandan’s View. In “The Resurgence of Non-Christian Religions” Paul D. Devanandan writes on modern man’s quest for understanding the real nature and significance of religion … underlying religions,” that is, on “the trend to discover a common formula of belief.” While religions have their doctrinal differences, he declares that “the dynamic of faith” undergirding these concepts, and the concern for man, is not peculiar to any one religion. He approves the existential notion that the line between unredeemed and redeemed runs not “between heathen and Christian”; rather, “the unredeemed ‘old man’ of the New Testament is to be found in me, a Christian … in exactly the same terms as … in the non-Christian.” “Christians should seriously heed” the invitation to “interreligious cooperation.” Christian evangelists should join with non-Christians against the secularists who disapprove of a resurgence of religions. Certain Christian truths, once borrowed, are now woven into the fabric of non-Christian religions, he contends. He doubts that the preaching of the Gospel is “directed to the total annihilation of all other religions than of Christianity.” The end-result of Devanandan’s approach, it would seem, is the surrender of any decisive Christian message to the non-Christian religions, and particularly the loss of the conviction that only they are saved who confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that he is risen from the dead (Rom. 10:9; cf. 10:12).

THE LONG SWEEP OF HISTORY

It would be manifestly unfair to imply that the views of most contributors to The Theology of the Christian Mission are objectionable. Some essays are mainly historical, others reflect points of view outside mainstream Protestant ecumenism, some chapters sparkle with sound biblical theology.

Alexander Schmemann writes of “The Missionary Imperative in the Orthodox Tradition,” and struggles against the charge that the Eastern Orthodox Church is nonmissionary, or that its missionary activity is a mere epiphenomenon of its sacramental, liturgical, mystical ethos. Andrew V. Seumois, tracing “The Evolution of Mission Theology Among Roman Catholics,” concedes that his communion has neglected the theology of mission, and that Romish works on the subject in the twentieth century have borrowed Protestant ideas. He calls for a systematic missiology based upon revelation and “the light of early tradition” and reports that Rome is already justifying lay missionaries by a theological framework. William Richey Hogg, surveying “The Rise of Protestant Missionary Concern, 1517–1914,” shows that Romanism’s traditional unconcern for missions sprang from its practice of Christian conquest en masse by the emperor’s forced rule and religion. But the Protestant Reformation, too, he notes, shaped no theology of missions, and had no concern for overseas non-Christians. Luther thought the Great Commission had been fulfilled by the apostles, and, in Post-Reformation Scholasticism, extreme Calvinism throttled missionary concern. Meanwhile the Anabaptists made the Great Commission binding on every believer. Protestant rationalism dissolved missionary passion by viewing Christianity as a development of universally immanent religion. Pietism kept alive the missionary burden. Mr. Hogg implies a link between the transformation of outlook in our century (by 1900 it was recognized that all churches and all believers have a missionary debt) and the emergence of the modern ecumenical movement. But it is surely clear, we think, that the preponderance of the missionary task force, even to this day, gains its inspiration and outlook more from biblical than from modern sources.

A ‘Post-Christian’ Age

“The impossibility of any longer assuming that missions proceed from a Christian West and take the Gospel and benefits of ‘Christian civilization’ to the non-Western, non-Christian world is a major key to the crisis of the Christian mission in the mid-twentieth century.”—William Richey Hogg, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).

In “The Free Church View of Missions,” Franklin H. Littell asserts that the real epoch of Christian universalism began with Pietism on the Continent and the Evangelical Awakening in Britain. With an eye on the broken identification of the Western civilization with the Christian religion, Littell traces to Hitler’s control of the old centers of Christian civilization the shift of missionary support and of manpower sources to the free churches in Britain and especially America. The younger churches of America, once provinces of European Christendom, have now become the source of missionary strength.

A Setting Of Hostility

“The ‘younger churches’ find themselves today in a period of Church history remarkably like that of the early Church. Mystery religions abound; Montanist and Gnostic sects are everywhere apparent; persecution of the Biblical faith is more widespread than ever before.… The political powers which so long served to suppress the opposition and support the Christian religion are either unfriendly or neutral. The ‘Constantian era’ is at an end.” Franklin H. Littell, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).

THE MOTIVATION OF MISSION

The crucial test of missionary philosophy is its view of the significance of Jesus Christ both for the Christian and for the non-Christian religions. The motivations that scholars adduce for the Christian mission in the world quickly reveal what significance is attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.

In a forceful essay Oscar Cullman recognizes that the Christian eschatological hope spurred (rather than paralyzed) the Church’s missionary impulse. Karl Barth’s warm exegetical study of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16–20) stresses the significance of Christ’s resurrection.

In his essay “Pauline Motives for the Christian Mission,” Donald G. Miller lists some of the moving forces for the Christian world-witness: the self-revelation of God; the nature of the Gospel as revealed world-news; the nature of the Church; and the predicament of man. In delineating the predicament of mankind, Miller’s emphasis falls on man’s self-separation from God; noticeably missing from his exposition is the Pauline stress on God’s final wrath and man’s utter condemnation in sin.

In general, the essayists hesitate to justify the missionary enterprise as the rescue of men otherwise doomed to hell and eternal punishment (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “The Theology of Evangelism,” August 3, 1959).

No ‘Absolute Message’?

“As Christians, we should go forth seeking converse with men of other faiths, not offering an absolute message.… He who feels he already ‘has’ the truth does not enter fully into dialogue.… As we learn to live more profoundly in faith, we talk less and less about ‘the only way’ even though we may nourish the hope that we may be ‘in the way.’ ”—Floyd H. Ross, “The Christian Mission in Larger Dimension,” in The Theology of the Christian Mission.

Paul Tillich most explicitly formulates the revolt against this biblical position: “One should not misunderstand missions as an attempt to save from eternal damnation as many individuals as possible among the nations of the world.” Such a view, thinks Tillich, is based on a theology “unworthy of the glory and of the love of God and must be rejected in the name of the true relationship of God to his world.” Only because Tillich substitutes his own arbitrary conceptions of the nature of deity for the New Testament revelation does he ignore the difficulties posed by such verses as Matthew 7:23; 18:18; 25:41, 46; John 3:36; 14:6; Acts 4:12; 2 Corinthians 5:11; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 2 Thessalonians 1:7; and Hebrews 10:31. Missions is not, Tillich thinks, “the attempt to save individual souls.… Rather, it is the attempt to transform the latent Church—which is present in the world religions, in paganism, Judaism, and humanism [italics ours]—into … the New Reality in Jesus and Christ.”

Max Warren, moreover, emphasizes “identification with” others; the Christian is urged to enter into the will of God for non-Christians by loving service in their problem-complex. Warren’s exposition of missionary-motive, as an extension of the incarnation-principle, taking manhood up into the Godhead, seems to this reviewer, to soften the scandal of the doctrine of the Cross.

In the main the symposium essayists avoid any grounding of missionary motivation in the authority of Scripture. In “The Rise of Protestant Missionary Concern, 1517–1914,” William Richey Hogg views the Reformation “emphasis on the Bible” as severely limiting the concern for unity and mission. On the other hand, Hogg admits that the Westminster Confession’s identification of the Bible with the Word of God (rather than merely with “the vehicle of the Word”) lifted the Great Commission to relevance, and he grants also that conservative forces paced Germany’s nineteenth century missionary outreach.

Although Lindsell’s essay on “Fundamentals for a Philosophy of the Christian Mission” does not clash head-on with blatant weaknesses of some essayists (none of the contributors read the others’ manuscripts), his survey of the premises undergirding conservative missionary endeavor is simple and direct, and proceeds from the historic evangelical emphasis on Scripture. As motivations he lists: 1. The Bible as the infallible Word of God, conveying propositional truths on the basis of divine disclosure. 2. The revealed Gospel, centering in Christ’s expiatory satisfaction for sin and bodily resurrection, which demands repentance and forgiveness. 3. Although original sin has not wholly destroyed the divine image, in sin man is lost, corrupt, guilty, and exposed to divine penalties, including permanent separation from God. 4. The non-Christian religions cannot provide salvation. 5. The Church is a redemptive fellowship which is not to identify itself with the world and the spirit of evil, but rather is to identify itself with lost mankind for the purpose of evangelization.

The motivation of “social action” emerges only incidentally in the symposium. When it does, its covering theme is usually “identification” with the world. Yet Lindsell sees the goal of identification (with sinners in distinction from the world) as evangelization. Medical missions and educational work gain approval not simply as social service (the level on which Hocking justified them) but as means to evangelistic ends. The conservative outlook distinguishes evangelization (which does not expect world transformation) from Christianization. It looks for Christ’s second advent as a necessary prerequisite to the ultimate triumph of God. An Eastern Orthodox contributor, Alexander Schmemann, stresses that his tradition does not regard evangelism as individualistic, but seeks through man to save and redeem the world; state, society, culture, and nature itself are the objects of mission. R. Pierce Beavan, writing for Protestantism on the “apostolic character” of the contemporary Church in its “ministry of reconciliation,” opposes restrictions of mission; for him witnessing includes also the transformation of social life, although this thesis remains undeveloped. Despite its broad focus on “Christian mission” rather than on missions in the traditional sense, the volume does not really clarify the nature of the Church’s social task. On the tenuous threshold of WCC-IMC merger, debate is thereby avoided over growing implications that ecumenism (or rather, some ecumenical leadership) serves as Christ’s earthly agent of political and socio-economic reconciliation. Extremists have been charged with dignifying their private social and political activities by appealing to the Holy Spirit.

THE TRINITY AND MISSION

The trinitarian theme, it should be noted, comes spectacularly into the ecumenical foreground through two recent developments. The New Delhi Assembly is scheduled both to assimilate IMC, whose leaders now propound a trinitarian basis of mission, and to act also on a committee recommendation that WCC adopt a trinitarian basis of faith. A soundly biblical trinitarian development in the ecumenical movement would hearten evangelicals. Such a move would clearly put Unitarians outside the Church of Christ (a step long overdue especially in America); it would reinstate neglected aspects of biblical theology in the Church’s life and mission; and it might recover for the missionary enterprise the undergirding dynamic of spiritual obedience. Accurate appraisal of any “trinitarian development” is therefore essential.

Wilhelm Andersen sets mission in the trinitarian context of the ecumenical perspective in his essay “Further Toward a Theology of Mission.” This essay supplements his 1955 study for IMC “Towards a Theology of Mission.” In preliminary theses Andersen summarizes four turning points of the 1952 international missionary conference in Willingen, Germany:

1. “Mission is the work of the triune God” who sent his Son to reconcile, and who continues to move toward man. Hence mission-theory must be God-centered rather than Church-centered.

2. The decisive act of God in fulfilling his missionary will is the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross therefore stands necessarily at the center of a theology of missions. (Willingen emphasized more than previous international missions conclaves the centrality of the death and resurrection of Christ, although interpretation was unfortunately colored more by modern dynamic than traditional theological categories.) God “has intervened in history through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to change the fate of the world.… Through the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has created realities in the course of this world which are immovable.”

3. After sending his Son and his Holy Spirit, God founded his Church, and began the task of missions. The Church is called and sent forth as God’s instrument. In summary, mission has its trinitarian source, its Christological realization, and its pneumatic fulfillment.

4. The final goal of the missio Dei is not the Church but the establishment of God’s kingdom. Preoccupation with organization and institution threatens this primary task. (Andersen urges recognition by the proposed IMC-WCC amalgam of this God-centered rather than “Church-centered” basis of mission.)

In his chapter “The Holy Spirit in the Christian Mission,” F. W. Dillistone stresses the Holy Spirit’s work of motivating missionary service in the world, and not simply the believer’s inner sanctification. Dillistone’s stimulating exposition is more fully indebted to biblical ideas than one might expect from his disappointing treatment of the Spirit in connection with Scripture. Trinitarian expositions of mission are coming from many ecumenical thinkers today but such theologizing is confused because they disown an authoritative Bible. Andersen, for example, assuredly tells us that “a theology of mission lives from studying the Bible” and thereby proves itself authentic. Moreover, he boldly declares that “the decisive missionary Kerygma to the world begins … with the report: ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3).” The reader must not mistake such statements for pious orthodoxy, for Andersen also asserts that “we cannot expect any theoretical instruction from the Holy Scriptures.” We are told that the salvation history to which the Scriptures “witness” is perceived only “when its vicarious character comes to our view.” This, we are told, does not allow us to develop “a theory of a special action of God in creation.” We must therefore conclude from Andersen’s remarks that, for him, the meaning of Scripture is located in something other than in its literal sense. Andersen continues: “The greatest task for a theology of mission is indeed not to communicate knowledge.… The theology of mission … at its goal … becomes adoration of the Triune God.” We must agree, of course, that service to God is ideally also worship of God. But agreement on this point hardly requires the anti-intellectualistic view of divine revelation that undergirds so much of today’s ecumenical speculation. The normative role of revealed truths or doctrines is thereby undermined; theology loses rational or intellectual status and becomes voluntaristic and pragmatic. This functional theology centers the Christian revelation, not in the mainstream of biblical truths and events, but rather in contemporary confrontation or encounter.

Sent Son And Sent Disciples

“At the Willingen Conference in 1952 the theological pre-suppositions of the whole missionary movement were clearly and forcefully expressed. This movement, it was affirmed, has its source in the Triune God Himself. He has sent forth one Saviour to seek and save all the lost, one Redeemer who by his death, resurrection, and ascension has accomplished a full and perfect atonement and created in himself one new humanity, the Body of which Christ is the exalted Head. This is followed by a fine statement … ‘There is no participation in Christ without participation in His mission to the world. That by which the Church receives its existence is that by which it is also given its world mission. “As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” ’ (‘A Statement on the Missionary Calling of the Church,’ in Missions Under the Cross, Norman Goodall, ed. [London: Edinburgh House Press, 1953], pp. 189–90. This statement arose out of the report of Group I on ‘The Missionary Obligation of the Church’ at Willingen).”—F. W. Dillistone, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).

In this context the “trinitarian” emphasis, renewed by contemporary theology, becomes either a case of special pleading or a disappointing revival of modal trinitarianism. The historic Christian faith is that three divine persons co-exist eternally in the one divine essence. This orthodox view rests not merely on an inference made by the early Christians from their spiritual experience, profound and important as it was, but is drawn also from the authoritative teaching of Jesus and the apostles. Contemporary theologians who rebel against the premise of scripturally revealed truths are left to discriminate spiritual realities only as an inference from their religious experience. But can even regenerate men and women, on the basis of experience alone, distinguish the persons of the trinity? And can one distill simply from a present religious encounter (from God-in-relation-to-me) any sure conclusion about the timeless nature of God (God-in-himself)? Any theology mired in doubts over the permanent nature of ultimate religious reality, and able to issue pronouncements only on a medical bulletin basis, rests on insecure foundations. Does the widening emphasis on a trinitarian manifestation of the Godhead in subjective experience really carry ecumenical theology beyond the metaphysical skepticism of Schleiermacher and the modernists who shied from the discussion of God-in-himself, but emphasized that of God-in-relation-to-man? The basic issue in the Christian doctrine of God is not simply whether there is a plurality of manifestations or modes of the one God, but whether in the one Godhead there eternally exist three divine persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. Any missionary theology which evades this question is only superficially trinitarian.

CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM

The attitude of this symposium toward communism is especially important, since communism is no mere scheme of social revolution, but makes absolute claims, just as religion, and proclaims the sovereignty of the State.

Frank W. Price, in his chapter “Christian Presuppositions for the Encounter with Communism,” makes some pointed observations and criticisms. The twentieth century, he writes, is “the century of Communist power.” Not from other ancient faiths, but from communism, which challenges all living religions, Christianity today “finds its most militant opposition.” In a sense communism is, in fact, a call to repentance: “We must move … to a deeper appreciation of those neglected truths and forgotten emphases of our Judeo-Christian heritage to which Communism is impelling us.”

Three emphases in Price’s essay, however, call for critical scrutiny: 1. He welcomes “long-awaited social reforms” (without either particularizing these, or distinguishing them from revolutionary social patterns) brought about by communism. 2. He affirms that “God works through Communism” to bring about such changes. He seems untroubled by a direct divine use of atheism to implement the will of God. Despite violence and evils, Price tells us, these developments may be a necessary display of God’s creative power.) 3. He appeals to Christian love in the interest of reconciling Christianity and communism (without requiring Communists to place themselves under the same judgment as Christians). “We must free ourselves from the hard stance of our governments.…” “Perhaps in a few decades, or centuries, Christianity and Communism will face one another … different faiths and yet not intent each upon the destruction of the other.” Beneath these premises, soft toward communism, the evangelical reader will detect a sentimental theory of the love of God (“The cross reveals his infinite love …”) which deprives the Christian witness of any virile denunciation of atheism and state absolutism.

The idea of the divine inspiration of Karl Marx is explicitly found in Bouquet’s essay, as a direct consequence of asserting that the Logos energizes men universally. Astonishing as it seems, Bouquet applies Jesus’ promise, that the Spirit would lead his disciples into all truth, not simply to Zarathustra and Buddha, but to “the self-styled atheist Karl Marx himself, so like an Amos redivivas.” (Marx is said to come “very close to our Lord” in his tenderness for children, whereas his bitter hatred of opponents is ascribed to his “frequent affliction with carbuncles”! Job’s carbuncles, we must confess, seem to have been of another variety.)

BY WAY OF APPRAISAL

What may be said of the overall influence of this symposium on the strategic subject of the theology of the Christian mission?

First of all, it relates the Protestant missionary witness normatively to the coming WCC-IMC merger and to the continued dignity of vastly divergent theologies within ecumenical ranks. Despite the asserted rediscovery of a trinitarian theology of mission, this claim is vulnerably developed along experiential lines; in several influential essays it shades into contradiction on even such fundamental points as the centrality or even the relevance of Jesus of Nazareth.

Too, the symposium lessons the antithesis between Christianity and non-Christian religions. It minimizes also the loss of the Early Church’s either-or-message to the Jew; shrugs at the modern Church’s indecision if not softness in the face of communism. Absence of emphases on the sinner’s guilt and exposure to penal evils, and (inevitably alongside this) an inadequate message of atonement and salvation and an arbitrary view of divine love that erases the traditional doctrines of hell and final punishment further weaken the volume.

The serious student will surely sense the confused state of contemporary Protestant theology that developed from what, a generation ago, seemed a hopeful re-emphasis on divine confrontation. Characteristic of this so-called “theology of the Word of God” was its refusal to apply the term “Word of God” to Scripture. To reserve the phrase exclusively for Jesus Christ expressly inverted the example of the apostle Paul, who used “Word of God” for Scripture and for the gospel proclamation but not for Christ (cf. Rom. 9:6; 10:7; 1 Cor. 14:36; 2 Cor. 2:17; 4:2; Eph. 6:17; Col. 1:25; 1 Thess. 2:13; 1 Tim. 4:5; 2 Tim. 2:9; Titus 2:5). This is the precedent also of Luke-Acts (cf. Luke 3:2; 4:4; 5:1; 8:11, 21; Acts 4:31; 6:2, 7; 8:14; 11:1; 13:7, 44; 19:20). Although both Barth and Brunner disallowed natural theology, and Barth identified the in-breaking “Word of God” only with special revelation, their refusal to identify the Scriptures (in whole or part) with special revelation has now run its costly course. The emphasis of these symposium essays in the main is that the divine-human encounter is not authentically illuminated only by Semitic or biblical categories of interpretation. In simple words, confidence in the Hebrew-Christian religion as the one true and saving religion is being shattered; Christianity and the other world religions are viewed (through a renaissance of liberalism) as different in degree rather than in kind. From this development, if from nothing else, it should be apparent that the loss of the Bible as the inspired Word of God is the prelude also to the loss of Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnate Word of God.

Dreams And Symbols!

“Early Christians said such things as ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” and “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.’ These confessions of faith, evoked by a man who had a place in history and who had an incomparable faith in God, were drawn from the same deep recesses of the human spirit as the ancient Chinese symbolism of the Yin-Yang, the Shiva-Shakti symbolism of Hinduism, the Yah-Yum symbolism of Tibet. All these seem to root in the human dream of a reconciliation, of a return to the source of all. Symbols and their local interpretation may periodically fade away, but the mythic theme goes on being reborn anew in seers and poets and sages.”—Floyd H. Ross, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.), p. 227.

The mediating neo-orthodox theology of Barth and Brunner is now in retreat, and speculative philosophies like those of Bultmann and Tillich have come to the fore in interpreting the significance of the Christian religion. Already these cast their dark shadow over the entire Christian missionary enterprise. This threat is the more awesome in the twentieth century through two developments: the emergence of a world ecumenical community which intimately links almost half the missionary task force, and the emergence of literature which promotes theological nonconformity and gives world influence to an inclusive tolerance of theological deviations.

In the 1960s, the Christian religion is on the defensive almost everywhere throughout the world. Mission boards have the right and the duty to define the theology of their outreach in the world. Furthermore Christian believers sacrificially investing in the cause of missions have the right and the duty to know if the message they support shares or does not share the New Testament view of the finality, absoluteness, and uniqueness of Jesus Christ, over against the hopelessness of the pagan religions. If the new symposium clarifies these issues much will be gained. (See editorial, “Missions at Delhi,” p. 24).

This is being written in India. Not long ago a New Delhi newspaper stated that every time the sun rises on this land there are more than 14,000 more mouths to feed than there were the morning before. Deaths? Yes, there are thousands of them. But this is the number of births in excess of all the deaths.

“Population explosion” is the phrase that has been minted to describe this phenomenon of our times. The vigor, not to say the violence, of the expression may raise the question whether or not it is justified. What are the facts?

1. The size of the human family did not reach one billion until approximately 1800.

2. From 1800 to 1850 the increase was 22 per cent; from 1850 to 1900, it was 45 per cent; and from 1900 to 1950, 56 per cent.

3. Since 1950 the rate of increase has been mounting so fast that at the end of the decade 85 persons a minute, or about 45 million a year, were being added to the world total.

4. Latest figures from the United Nations place the present population total at more than 2 billion 900 million persons. (All of “B.C.” and the first 1800 years of “A.D.” are a long time to wait for the first billion; 160 years are relatively a short time to wait for that figure to be trebled.)

What of the near future, the remainder, let us say, of this century. Quotable experts say that the increase will be 150 per cent. If so, we shall have an end-of-the-century population of between 7 and 8 billion.

This is the “population explosion!”

To what theological, sociological, and ethical reflections is such a phenomenon giving rise? Dr. Richard Fagley has perhaps exceeded any other researcher in locating and collating the pronouncements of many Christian bodies—Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant—on what might be called the theology of the family and its bearing on the issues raised by the world’s fantastically increasing population. What may be deduced from this compendium is not the amount of contradiction and confusion that one might be led to expect, but rather, as Bishop Stephen Bayne, Jr., puts it, the astonishing “degree of concensus there is.” Bishop Bayne, who is executive officer of the World Anglican Communion, put this opinion forward in a paper read recently before an international group of churchmen.

What are the areas of general agreement?

1. The theology of the family, while pointed up by the “population explosion,” does not grow out of it nor is it necessarily linked with it. If there were no issue of “overpopulation” (itself an unfortunate phrase, if only because no one knows precisely what it means) the duty of bringing life into the world and responsibly nourishing it would be inescapably there.

2. There is a gratifying measure of agreement that the times are driving Christians to a more fundamental theological understanding of the family itself. In the frightening light of the ravaged family system of China under the Communists and the equally alarming light of the defiled and denigrated family life of sexually undisciplined masses in the United States, serious Christians are obliged to return to the roots of their thinking about sex, marriage, and the home. Even Roman Catholics are not “all of one piece” in holding to the traditional pattern of what is “natural” and what is “against nature.” To appeal to the tradition is not enough. How solidly based is the tradition itself? This becomes the deeper question.

3. There is a substantial concensus with respect to the God-given purposes of marriage and their relationship to each. To a surprising point, theologians of varying communions settle upon three functions or blessings of marriage: (1) the producing of children and their nurture, (2) the fulfillment and enrichment of each spouse by the other in the communion of marriage, and (3) the creation of a stable Christian unit called the family within the church and society. Differences of thought or conviction prevail with respect to the order in which these aims are to be seen and pursued, but there is little disagreement with this combination of purposes.

4. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, there is a significant concensus that family planning in some form may be brought within the scope of Christian duty for parents. One uses the word “may” advisedly. The Greek Orthodox church, for example, says, “Recognizing child birth in Christian marriage as one of the actual problems of life, the Orthodox church sees the possibility of solving it only through personal accountability to God of each separate soul.” Much bolder is the statement published by the Lambeth Conference in 1958 to the effect that “the responsibility for deciding upon the number and frequency of children has been laid by God on the conscience of parents everywhere.”

What now awaits firmer and more specific Christian treatment is the question of the means to be employed in family planning and the motives that are to be made explicit in the employment of those means. Often overlooked is the fact that the birth rate is not the only factor in population increase. It is the declining death rate—death control, if you will—that has much to do with it. Is it a moral noninterference with “nature” to employ intelligence and science to keep people alive, that is to say, to regulate (within limits) the working of death, and an immoral interference with nature to employ with Christian conscience a technological intelligence in regulating the working of birth?

The review is prepared in sequence by Professor G. C. Berkouwer of Free University, Amsterdam; Dr. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Editor of The Churchman (England); Professor Addison H. Leitch of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania; and Dr. Paul S. Rees, Vice President of World Vision.—ED.

The Doctrine Of Christian Holiness

Christian Holiness, by Stephen Neill (Harper, 1960, 130 pp., $3), is reviewed by Paul S. Rees, Vice-President at large, World Vision, Inc.

The mood of this book is right. The author’s conclusions here and there may be open to question by one or another among us, but the spirit in which everything is written is that of a man deeply concerned because of the vast neglect from which the subject of holiness suffers in contemporary Christianity. Aware that “any doctrine of Christian holiness which tries to do justice to all aspects of the problem is bound to be marked by paradox and antithesis” (p. 9), our Anglican author makes no attempt to employ ridicule or caricature in dealing with viewpoints that are at variance with his own. He himself would learn—and has indeed learned—from those who would be called his dissenters.

The holiness of God is the root of all. It is indeed the mysterium tremendum. But even the Old Testament, stressing as it does the character of God as self-revealing, has little place for a holiness that is not ethical righteousness. In Jesus we see both the disclosure of this religious-ethical holiness and the offer of a relationship between sinful men and Himself in which, through total self-commitment on their part, they are taken up into His likeness.

At this point two principal errors are to be observed and, of course, avoided. The one is called “perfectionist,” the other “conformist.” Most of the perfectionist perversions or deviations singled out for objection would be as readily rejected by, let us say, such a perfectionist as John Wesley as they are by Bishop Neill. The defect in Wesley’s teaching, Neill feels, lies in its faulty concept of sin: “that sin is a thing which has to be taken out of a man like a cancer or a rotten tooth.” (The quotation is taken approvingly from British Methodist Sugden.) One doubts, however, if Mr. Wesley intended any such wooden or materialistic mode of thought. Does not St. Paul lay himself open to the same criticism when he uses such language as, “It is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within in me” (Rom. 7:17)?

It is interesting to note that with equal firmness the Bishop faults the “two nature” theory, which is stoutly maintained by many evangelical thinkers who are quick to disavow perfectionism. In this view the “old nature,” which is altogether bad, and the “new nature,” which is altogether good, co-exist in the Christian until death breaks the bond within which they have been held in opposition to each other.

Bishop Neill, in this reviewer’s judgment, would have rendered a distinguished service if he had given us a treatment of the “perfectionist elements in the New Testament” which he says are in fact found there, in the light of all those insights which have come to us through “depth psychology.” We are so committed to “schools” of sanctificationist thought that we are failing to grapple seriously with the paradox of perfection and imperfection, total surrender and unrecognized un-Christlikeness, astonishing victory and penitent abasement, as we find it in the New Testament. Our author’s criticisms are not pointless, but they lack an adequate counterpart and correction.

The other error discussed is “the conformist.” It is described as “the making of minimum demands which are out of relation to the real exigencies of the Gospel, and so of eliminating that dimension of ultimate demand and ultimate self-commitment which is the realm in which Christian holiness moves” (p. 44). “State religion” and “state churches” are particularly open to this danger. A kind of holiness is here produced which consists of “outward conformity” and which rests, therefore, on a basis of regulation and of law. In this scheme it is not too difficult to bring in multitudes of unconverted, uncommitted people and simply train them in “good churchmanship.” Thus by-passed is that grace which is forever God’s gift to the bankrupt and is forever bearing fruit in that genuine Christlikeness which is the opposite of self-righteousness.

The link between holiness and love is recognized in a chapter called “The Place of Holiness.” “Never a fugitive and cloistered virtue,” New Testament holiness must be experienced and expressed within the fellowship of the Church and, through that fellowship, within the alien context of the world. Penetration into the world, not withdrawal from it, is the order of grace under the Lordship of Christ. And to this end the Holy Spirit, who has been given to the Church, must be allowed in fact to govern the Church—again, of course, under Christ’s Lordship.

Timely and trenchant are Neill’s remarks in a concluding chapter titled, “What, Then, Do We Preach?” If we tell Christians, as we do in a well-known Catechism, that they “sin daily in words and deeds, by commission and omission,” what is to prevent their coming to adopt a defeatist attitude toward Christian living? Rightly, our author deplores this: “The idea of justification by faith is brought into the center of the Christian picture, sometimes almost to the exclusion of any doctrine of the living Christ and of the work of the Holy Spirit” (p. 114).

What then is the positive word the Church should proclaim? Christ as Lord—he must be given no lesser place. What else? The role of discipline, as the counterbalance and the confirmation of all spontaneity and immediacy in Christian experience. What else? The rejection, for good and all, of “the unbiblical division of life between the sacred and the secular; if we do not meet God in the most ordinary and banal of daily occupations we shall not meet Him anywhere.”

Criticisms by the reviewer are inescapable here and there. Although he is no authority on Bultmann, the latter’s radically defective view of the relation between revelation and history aborts any fruitful effort to link his name with an understanding of the Holy Spirit’s place in the Christian concept of time. Surely Bultmann is by no means unique in his insistence, along with Kierkegaard, that Jesus Christ is in some profound sense “our contemporary.”

And clearly there is little helpfulness in the statement that “Of course we are all bad,” with the “we” so employed as to apply indiscriminately to St. Francis and Al Capone, unless we bring such an observation into juxtaposition with the New Testament declaration that Barnabas, for example, “was a good man.” Admittedly, his estimate of himself would not have been cast in those terms, but this, more importantly, is God’s estimate of him as a man who was “full of the Holy Spirit.”

Let nothing adversely said detract from the fact that Stephen Neill has made, in firm yet irenic fashion, a probing contribution to the literature of Christian sanctity.

PAUL S. REES

Expository Preaching

Follow Me: Discipleship According to Saint Matthew, by Martin H. Franzmann (Concordia, 1961, 216 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Faris Daniel Whitesell, Professor of Practical Theology, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Here’s a splendid example of the type of expository preaching needed in our churches. Around the general theme of discipleship, the author opens up the whole book of Matthew in seven chapters, with material in each chapter for about four expository sermons. In dealing with everything in the Gospel of Matthew, he naturally has to pass over some sections lightly, but when he strikes an idea of major significance, he stops long enough to explain it and gather together all the other biblical material bearing on it, for example, Spirit, repentance, baptism of John, ransom, and so forth.

The exposition is loose and synthetic rather than close and exegetical, but the reader or hearer receives a graphic overall impression of where Matthew is taking him. Here and there are keen insights. “The disciples preserved the record of Jesus’ words and deeds, of course. But they do not appear in history as expositors of Jesus’ words; it is remarkable how rarely Jesus’ words are cited in the apostolic writings. They are His witnesses, witnesses to his Person and his history, his words and works in indissoluble unity.”

The book lacks illustrations from modern life, but the material is so suggestive that adequate illustrations will occur to the average expositor.

FARIS DANIEL WHITESELL

Toward Church Education

Church Education for Tomorrow, by Wesner Fallaw (Westminster, 1960, 219 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Cornelius Jaarsma, Professor of Education, Calvin College.

That the church has a teaching function is generally accepted, and clearly taught in Scripture. What the nature of the teaching function of the church should be and how it is to be carried out is nebulous and ill-defined in the minds of many church leaders, not to speak of the church membership in general. The author of this book addresses himself to this problem with clarity and purpose.

What should the church teach and how should she organize her instructional program to meet the needs of the youth of the church in our time? How can the church recruit competent personnel and educate them to assume the responsibility of teaching in the church school with effectiveness? Why is the Sunday school unequal to the responsibility? Why is the released-time program inadequate? These are the questions that this book tries to answer.

The church school must take the place of the Sunday school. It must be staffed with personnel under the leadership of a teacher-pastor, professionally educated as a teacher and theologically educated as a preacher. The preaching, teaching, and pastoral function should be brought into working relationship. A curriculum and methodology should be organized and made operative that meets readiness levels of learning in the development of youth.

Many fine things can be said about this timely volume. It is psychologically and sociologically oriented. Its theological message is Bible-centered and evangelical. The religious education ideas and ideals of theological liberalism are discarded on theological grounds while much of the educational theory of this movement soundly rooted in experimental education is retained. This is a book for today to prepare leaders for tomorrow.

There are some weaknesses in the book that a critical reader discovers. The discussion of person and personality is more in line with the doctrine of man implied in secular psychologies than in keeping with the teaching of Scripture. The author dismisses too easily the parochial and Christian day school solution to the educational problem. Here, as elsewhere, he gives evidence of a dualism of religion and culture rather than recognizing the Lordship of Christ for all of life.

Every pastor and seminary professor should read this work. The author has many pertinent suggestions on counseling, curriculum revision in church education, seminary curricula, and the like.

CORNELIUS JAARSMA

Source Book

Basic Writings in Christian Education, edited by Kindig Brubaker Cully (Westminster, 1960, 350 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold C. Mason, Professor of Christian Education, Asbury Theological Seminary.

This anthology makes a handy and unique source book for use in courses in Christian education. It consists of 31 writings dating from the time of Clement of Alexandria about A.D. 200 to that of Luther, Calvin, Milton, Locke, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart, Coe, and Dewey. One may read of baptismal regeneration, the age of accountability, discipline, rapport, memorization, authority and sources, revelation, individual differences, methods, nature of man, content and experience centered curricula.

The editor sees in all the writings a “continuity of Christian concern,” and in his introduction he seems to espouse “neo-supernaturalism” and “a newer biblical theology.”

HAROLD C. MASON

Changed Lives

They Have Found the Secret, by V. Raymond Edman (Zondervan, 1960, 159 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Alan Redpath, Pastor, Moody Church, Chicago.

There is a mark of reality about the experiences of these saints which is sadly lacking in Christian circles today. I verily believe that if Christian people could grasp the secret which they have discovered, there would be a mighty revival in the land.

The emphasis of this book upon the experience of the indwelling life of Christ transforming the child of God is one which is widely needed. It drives home the truth that an unholy life is simply the evidence of an unchanged heart, and an unchanged heart is a clear indication of an unsaved soul. The grace of God which does not make men different from what they were before they received Christ is a worthless counterfeit of reality. I was profoundly impressed by the message of this book. It should have a very wide circulation and bring blessing to thousands of lives.

ALAN REDPATH

Linguistic Analysis

Language, Logic and God, by Frederick Ferré (Harper, 1961, 184 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by William Young, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Rhode Island.

Contemporary English philosophy, influenced by Wittgenstein’s methods of linguistic analysis, approaches theism and Christianity by employing subtle logical techniques, at first sight trivial, but productive of far-reaching consequences. At last a book has appeared summarizing and evaluating the philosophy of religion that has been developed during the last decade at Oxford and by analytical philosophers elsewhere. The author distinguishes carefully between the verificational analysis of the logical positivists and the less restricted functional analysis in vogue at the present time. Cogent criticism of accounts of theological language in terms of analogy, obedience, and encounter is followed by discussions of “improper,” familiar, and unique functions of theological discourse and by a concluding chapter on the manifold logic of theism. The author’s theological position is unequivocally theistic, though it betrays influences of Scottish “neo-orthodoxy.” While critical of the linguistic nonsense uttered by Barthians, which he aptly brands as “logical docetism” (p. 89), Ferré infelicitously calls Calvin “a fountainhead of the logic of obedience” (p. 82), that is, the Word of God as espoused by Barth, Torrance, and Hendry.

More detailed replies to the arguments of Findlay (pp. 30–32, 48–50), of Wisdom (pp. 131–135), but most of all of Flew on Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom (pp. 116–120) are needed if the complexity of the issues discussed and the delicacy of the anlysis involved are to receive due justice. Flew has launched a devastating attack on the “free-will defence,” while Ferré ignores the Pelagian errors consequent on the denial that a free human action may be determined by God.

WILLIAM YOUNG

When a tanned but tired Billy Graham looked out over the broad Atlantic expanse from his temporary oceanfront home in Vero Beach, Florida, this week, his posture was symbolic. Behind him stretched the Sunshine State peninsula, where he had just experienced one of the stiffest challenges in his evangelistic career. Across the sea lay the British Isles, where in a few weeks he would begin another crusade. This time his objective would be the city of Manchester, focal point of a 50-mile area with a population higher than London.

Reflecting on his three-month Florida crusade, Graham again had reason for optimism. Particularly gratifying were the climactic three weeks of meetings in the cavernous, green-walled Miami Beach Convention Hall, said to be the largest in the South. An aggregate of some 250,000 persons attended, and 7,962 of these recorded decisions.

The makeup of the Miami area does not readily lend itself to a successful evangelistic crusade. It is Florida’s so-called Gold Coast, which claims to be the most truly tropical area on the U. S. mainland and America’s most popular winter resort. An estimated 5,000,000 Americans flock in each year, some willing to pay as high as $250 a day for a swank hotel room. They come to bask in the sun, bathe in the surf, and bet in the shade (viz. jai alai and racing).

Resort activity seems to breed spiritual indifference, even among permanent residents, about 25 per cent of whom are retired. According to a survey made last fall, 39 per cent of Greater Miami’s 917,000 inhabitants have no relationship of any kind with any church or synagogue. Another 24 per cent, says the survey, still retain church or synagogue membership “back home.” Thus 63 per cent of the population have no local church affiliation, a figure which is the exact opposite of the national average, wherein 63 per cent claim membership.

While Miami Beach Convention Hall provided a spacious, comfortably air-conditioned meeting place, it was “out-of-the-way” for a large majority of area residents. The city of Miami Beach has a total population of only 63,000, 50 per cent of whom are Jewish, and even adjacent Miami has fewer than 300,000 residents. Some Graham team members blamed this geographic factor for the failure of the crowds to build up during the crusade, as is usually the case. Had the attendance increased, a climactic service probably would have been held in the Orange Bowl.

How Jews Responded To Evangelism

“We are very encouraged at the response of Jews,” said a Billy Graham team member at the close of the evangelist’s Miami Beach crusade.

Confronting the Jew with the Gospel was one of the special aspects of the crusade because of the high concentration of Jewish inhabitants in south Florida. The city of Miami Beach is 50 per cent Jewish. In all, some 100,000 Jews are said to live in the Miami metropolitan area.

Accurate figures as to the number of Jews who made decisions for Christ during the crusade was difficult to determine because of their tendency to conceal their identity. But crusade workers were pleased at what they said was a high percentage. A special counselling department for Jews was in operation for the entire duration of the crusade.

Graham efforts in Miami even got an official public endorsement from Rabbi Irving Lehrman of Temple Emanu-El.

Rabbi Lehrman attended one of the crusade meetings in Convention Hall and stepped to the rostrum to encourage the evangelist.

“May God crown your efforts with success,” said the rabbi. “May God bless you, and we thank you.”

He added that the Jewish community of Miami Beach was “grateful to Dr. Graham and those who have come with him to lift our thoughts to nobler things.”

Notwithstanding, team members were heartened with the extent of church participation and the enthusiasm of the Floridian Christians to support the crusade with time, talent, and tithe. An initial call for counsellors gave crusade officials some 4,700 names, the highest such figure for any city campaign, excepting only New York and San Francisco. Another 6,000 volunteers were counted for tasks relating to prayer, music, ushering, and youth counselling. Every major denominational group gave official sanction to the crusade except the Episcopal (many Episcopal churches participated nevertheless).

Much of the crusade impact is attributable to the untiring efforts of the crusade’s local leaders headed by Dr. J. Calvin Rose, pastor of Miami Shores Presbyterian Church, who served as chairman of the executive committee. Fund-raising was under direction of noted realtor Kenneth S. Keyes, who was to be named this week as “Evangelical Layman of the Year” by the National Association of Evangelicals, which he has aided in a similar role.

Despite other obstacles, team members were encouraged at the very outset of the crusade when some 6,000 University of Miami students turned out to hear Graham at a campus rally.

The crusade itself drew an average of 12,400 per service to Convention Hall.

Graham spoke nightly and on Sunday afternoons from a platform adorned with yellow and bronze chrysanthemums. The only breaks were a pair of Monday evenings, one of which was turned over to boxing promoters for the heavyweight championship bout between Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson. Patterson, incidentally, attended one of the crusade meetings.

As are all Graham crusades, this one was integrated. However, never more than 200 or 300 Negroes were to be found at a service.

A much larger response came from Jews (see box) and those of Spanish descent, including Cuban refugees. Graham held a special meeting for Spanish-speaking people, preaching through an interpreter. Still another rally was scheduled at Clewiston, Florida, primarily for Seminole Indians, but was rained out.

Graham team members pointed out that despite the preponderance of senior citizens in south Florida, unusual interest was evident among young people. There appeared to be larger inquirer response in the 20-to-30 age bracket, compared with previous crusades. Youth services drew the largest week-night crowds and the highest number of decisions, most of them by teen-agers. Those who made commitments to Christ included several members of a teen-age narcotics ring, one of whom subsequently led his father and mother to make decisions.

Perhaps the most remarkable conversion made in connection with the crusade came two months before the Miami meetings began. A former state trooper who is now a professional investigator made a public confession of faith following a showing of “Souls in Conflict” and the testimony from Joan Winmill, who stars in the evangelistic film. The trooper then brought some 40 people to Convention Hall, including his wife and several in-laws. One of the inquirers with whom he counselled was a man he had arrested as a murder suspect several years ago!

Team members reported many decision cards with Northern addresses, indicating a strong impact among tourists.

Additional national influence was provided by the crusade with the showing by 163 television stations of a film taken at one of the Sunday services during which Graham spoke on “The Conflict between Christianity and Communism.” It may have been the most widely-viewed religious program in television history. Cost: $110,000.

The closing service of the Miami crusade, held on Palm Sunday afternoon, drew an overflow crowd of 18,500. Among platform guests was U. S. Senator George Smathers, Democrat of Florida, who had just flown in from the Key West conference between President Kennedy and Prime Minister MacMillan.

Smathers told the crowd that when he advised Kennedy of his intention to be at Graham’s meeting that afternoon, the President replied:

“Tell Billy to pray for us.”

At the final service, 711 persons made decisions for Christ.

From Miami Graham travelled to the vicinity of Cape Canaveral for a day of meetings (a public service at Patrick Air Force Base drew 9,000), then on to West Palm Beach, where a crowd of 15,000 was on hand. He finished out the week with a rally at Vero Beach.

Easter Sunday found Graham preaching at a sunrise service in Peace River Park in Bartow. In the afternoon he spoke at the dedication of a new 2,500-seat auditorium at the Boca Raton Bible Conference Grounds.

The evangelist hopes to take a few weeks rest before going on to England for the Manchester crusade, scheduled to begin in a 40,000-seat football stadium May 27, continuing through June. Graham says planning for the Manchester meetings has been the most extensive of any crusade he has ever conducted.

Protestant Panorama

• A move to change the name of the Southern Baptist Convention is picking up steam. Initiated by Editor Erwin L. McDonald of the Arkansas Baptist, who prefers “Baptist Convention, U.S.A.,” the proposed name change now is expected to come before next month’s convention sessions in St. Louis, according to SBC President Ramsey Pollard.

• Churches in the Cape Canaveral area plan to conduct continuous worship services when the first astronaut goes into space. The Rev. Joseph E. Boatwright, president of the North Brevard County Ministerial Association, says constituent churches will hold services from launching time until the man sent into space returns or is officially given up for lost.

• Seven Amish families who reside near Canton, Ohio, are reported ready to move to Canada because of high priced land and conflict with state school laws, social security, and draft requirements. The families want to join an Amish settlement of 19 families at Owen Sound, Ontario.

• “How Great Thou Art” was the favored hymn in a church-wide religious song survey conducted recently in the Church of the Nazarene. “The Old Rugged Cross” was second, and “Amazing Grace,” third.

• A 16-page monthly published by the Israel Baptist Convention is the country’s first official Christian church journal in the Hebrew language. Named Hayahad (Togetherness), the paper complained in one of its first editorials that governmental “red tape” is delaying construction of Baptist buildings in Israel.

• Churchmen, seamen, and officials in English ports throughout the world are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Charles Hopkins, an Anglican priest who founded the Friendly Society of the Order of St. Paul to aid British seamen.

• The Church of the Nazarene is building a new religious center in Nazareth, Israel. The building will house a chapel, offices, classrooms, and living quarters.

• The National Methodist Theological Seminary, which began classes in Kansas City in 1959, plans to relocate because it has already outgrown present quarters. New facilities have been rented adjacent to the University of Kansas City in the same general area that a permanent campus is eventually planned.

• The African Methodist Episcopal Church is establishing a $70,000 fund to guarantee minimum salaries of assigned ministers.

• Historic People’s Church in Toronto is up for sale. The congregation plans to build a new church in a suburban area.

• A trio of publishing houses in Scandinavian countries are conducting a competition for the best novel which, “based on a Christian outlook on life, combines a high standard of art and contents with a vivid description of environment and period.”

• A 59-year-old grandmother will have the distinction of becoming Norway’s first woman pastor. Mrs. Ingrid Bjerkas won government permission to be ordained as a substitute pastor in the state Lutheran church’s diocese of Hamar after she had been passed over in nominations for five other vacancies there. Although Norwegian law has permitted women to enter the ministry for several years, Mrs. Bjerkas’ application for ordination was the first. A widow, she graduated from a theological seminary in Oslo several years ago.

• The Episcopalian announced on its first anniversary last month that it has the largest circulation of any publication in Protestant Episcopal Church history. Circulation has jumped almost 150 per cent to a total of 99,000 in the magazine’s 12 months, says Editor H. L. McCorkle.

• Protestant churches in New Mexico are sponsoring establishment of the state’s first Protestant child placement organization.

• Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary plans to establish a microfilm research center for evangelism.

Presbyterian Realignment

A realignment of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern) to form two new churches—one ecumenical and the other evangelical—is proposed by The Presbyterian Journal in its April 5 issue.

The plan is suggested by the conservative Southern Presbyterian weekly in an editorial as an alternative to the four-way church union urged by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, United Presbyterian Stated Clerk.

Implementation of the Blake proposal, the paper said, “would cause Presbyterianism to vanish from America in favor of an ecumenical Church where doctrinal integrity would be subordinated to organizational bigness.”

Under the alternative plan, the Journal said, one Presbyterian church would be committed to the historic Reformed faith while the other would be openly receptive to a merger such as the one suggested by Blake.

Last December Blake proposed a union of the United Presbyterian Church, The Methodist Church, and United Church of Christ as a first step toward eventual unification of all Christians. He said the name of the new church body could be the Reformed and Catholic Church in the U.S.A.

The Presbyterian Journal said its realignment proposal was being made “in the interest of the unimpeded fulfillment of the Blake plan for those who want it, on one hand; and, on the other hand, in the interest of a union of all evangelical Presbyterians who prefer to abide by the historic Reformed faith.”

“We do not propose,” the editorial stated, “to surrender the Presbyterian and Reformed faith to the one-world Church. This proposal is intended to recover and preserve the Presbyterian and Reformed faith from the one-world Church.

“It is a plan which we believe will allow those within Presbyterian denominations who desire the wider fellowship of an ecumenical Church to have their wish. And it is a plan which will permit those who pray for a Presbyterian Church of increased vigor and purer testimony also to have their wish.”

The weekly said that under its proposal Southern Presbyterian congregations desiring the “larger fellowship” of the United Presbyterian group would be allowed to change their affiliation, while United Presbyterian churches of more “conservative bent” would be free to join the Southern denomination. Congregations would be permitted to keep their property when transferring.

“Those of us joining in this proposal,” the editorial concluded, “believe that the proportion of Presbyterians preferring an Ecumenical Church to a Presbyterian Church is relatively small.”

Ecumenical(?) Council

Religious News Service is dispatching to Rome Dr. Claud D. Nelson as a special correspondent to report on the much-publicized Second Vatican Council from the viewpoint of Protestant leaders. Prior to his going, he conducted a preliminary survey, results of which were incorporated into a copyright RNS article.

Nelson is a consultant on interreligious relations to the National Conference of Christians and Jews and former executive director of the Department of Religious Liberty of the National Council of Churches.

Here are excerpts from his report:

“Will the Second Vatican Council sustain the evident hopes and dramatic efforts of Pope John XXIII to forward the cause of Christian unity? That question gives tone and direction to a large majority of the responses to an inquiry which this reporter addressed to a hundred friends, Protestant and Catholic, as to what they desire or expect from this Council, the 21st in the long series beginning with Nicaea.…

“From 70 or more replies received—by letter and telephone and from face to face conversations—three things stand out as worthy of note in the phrasing of the question above.

“First, this is not a continuation of the First Vatican Council of 1870. Second it is not now called ‘ecumenical’ in the publicity being given to it. The Council is, of course, officially a General or Ecumenical Council. But use of the word ‘ecumenical’ might be regarded by non-Catholics as presumptuous, since it means universal and since only Roman Catholics will deliberate in the forthcoming assembly.

To Moscow Via Tv

Film taken during a service at the First Baptist Church in Moscow will be shown on network television by the National Broadcasting Company and affiliate stations on Sunday, April 30.

The film will be featured as part of NBC’s weekly religious series, “Frontiers of Faith.”

Long delayed, partly because of Soviet “red tape,” the film was taken by special arrangement with Russian officials. It was a cooperative effort of the Southern Baptist Convention and NBC.

“Thirdly, the term ‘unity’ has replaced ‘union.’ This is to be noted especially in the title of the Secretariat for Christian Unity headed by Augustin Cardinal Bea, for liaison with non-Catholics. This body is distinct from the preparatory commissions set up for the Council.…

“The place of the Bible in the Council’s agenda is of interest to a number of responders [to the survey]. Versions or translations acceptable to all Christians would be welcomed. Even more, Protestants would welcome indications that the Bible takes precedence over tradition—but they are not optimistic when it comes to such matters as Papal infallibility and the theological and liturgical status of the Virgin Mary. These two causes of division are cited several times as insurmountable barriers that the Council is not likely to remove. It remains true however that many would consider them a less formidable barrier to unity than to union.

“If, therefore, the shift of emphasis which a few think they detect in recent years from ‘separated brethren’ to ‘separated brethren’ should be continued or encouraged by the Council, it would encourage those non-Catholics whose proximate hope, rather than the organic reunion of the churches, is their coming together in an inclusive ecumenical council (perhaps informal at an early and tentative stage).”

Among those whom Nelson polled for comments was Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, who submitted the following statement:

“The Protestant Reformers viewed the papacy as the height of human pretension. Against Roman Catholicism they championed the authority of supernatural knowledge (the inspired Scriptures) and the reality of supernatural salvation (justification by faith in Christ’s mediation alone). In the twentieth century, Protestant ecumenism has made unity its prime interest, while Roman Catholicism emphasizes creeds and the authority of church tradition. Protestant liberalism meanwhile has blurred both scriptural authority and the doctrine of justification. Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council may be expected to express the desirability of Christian unity and the role of the creeds and church tradition, while avoiding the question that troubled the Protestant Reformers.”

Methodists versus Teamsters

A year-long effort by two unions to organize employees of the Methodist Publishing House in San Francisco was defeated last month. The employees voted 42 to 16 against representation by either the Teamsters Union or the Office and Professional Workers Union.

Law of the Land

Religious classes conducted by the Rural Bible Mission in public schools of 31 Michigan counties was ruled unconstitutional last month.

The Rev. Elmer Deal, mission director, had described the monthly classes held at lunch hour or during regular school periods as “chapel services” and emphasized that they were conducted only at the invitation of, or with the approval of, local school boards. Twenty-three mission teachers were engaged in the program involving more than 60,000 public school pupils.

Paul L. Adams, attorney general of Michigan, said he “strongly believed that religion and morality must forever be encouraged” but that his concern was with the legality of the mission’s activities in public schools.

“A program of this nature does not conform to the law of the land,” said Adams. “Local school boards should take immediate steps to end such programs within their jurisdiction.”

A controversy had been touched off when parents of two elementary school pupils objected to the religious classes and said their children were “a captive audience.” They took their complaint to the attorney general and were joined in the protest by spokesmen for the Society of Friends in East Lansing, the Universalist-Unitarian church in Lansing, and the Congregation Shaarey Zedek, a Lansing synagogue.

Religion and Education

Wide concern over proposed federal aid to education is prompting intensive study by U. S. religious leaders, particularly those in Protestant groups which heretofore have never had well-defined official positions. The chart below summarizes latest conclusions of those closest to the current controversy. (See also editorial on page 20.—ED.)

Meanwhile in Washington, House and Senate committees wound up hearings on proposed aid-to-education legislation and public debate tapered off. But the first big waves of mailing were pouring into Congressmen’s offices. Lawmakers also got many an earful from constituents when they went home for the Easter recess. Citizens were being urged anew to spell out their views, and opponents of federal aid to education were particularly eager to stimulate mail reaction, believing that there is little grass roots enthusiasm for such school subsidies.

SUMMARY OF POSITIONS ON FEDERAL AID TO NONPUBLIC SCHOOLS

Some observers felt that no further action would be taken on the proposed legislation until very late in the session. This would result in a hurried move, or no action at all this year.

Late in March, Welfare Secretary Abraham Ribicoff declared that his department believed long-term, low-interest loans to parochial schools would be unconstitutional. Ribicoff submitted a 63-page memorandum on the subject to Senator Wayne Morse, Democrat of Oregon, who had requested that a study be made of legal precedents. The memorandum says that across-the-board tax grants to sectarian schools cannot be made and that a program of tuition grants would be invalid “since they accomplish by indirection what grants do directly.” The study was prepared in consultation with Justice Department attorneys.

Trial of Strength

As a preface to general elections scheduled for April 16, a trial of strength developed in Poland between the Roman Catholic church and the Communist government, according to Religious News Service.

Top protagonists are Wladyslaw Gomulka, first secretary of the United Workers (Communist) Party, who wants a big turnout of voters, and Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, Primate of Poland, whose attitude toward the elections was a matter of serious concern to the government.

The Cardinal reacted to Gomulka’s opening campaign speech, which scored the Vatican, by openly defying the Red regime. He denounced the Communist rulers as “Caesars.”

In the 1957 elections, the Polish episcopate advised Roman Catholics to vote in great numbers, in the hope that the then good relations with the Gomulka government would continue.

In the present campaign, however, the hierarchy—concerned over the gradual worsening of church-state relations, especially during the past few years—delayed making its stand clear. This has been interpreted as a sign of hostility by government circles who are worried over the possibility of a low percentage of voters at the polls.

Polish emigre circles in London said they had received reports that the bishops had issued secret instructions to advise parishioners to ignore the elections. In cases where this would be too risky, Roman Catholics were told they should go to the polls but cross out all the names on the official and only list of candidates.

According to reports, the government learned of the alleged instructions and decided to recruit groups of so-called patriotic priests to persuade the church people against boycotting the elections.

The same reports stated, however, that Cardinal Wyszynski countered by warning leaders of patriotic priests, mostly members of Caritas, a social welfare organization, that any collaboration with the Communists would result in their being suspended from their priestly functions.

It was learned, meanwhile, that about 300 priests belonging to Caritas had voted to disband the organization.

Faced with this development, the government was reported to have offered the priests “protection” and even to have suggested that they break away from the church altogether.

NEB New Testament

Cambridge and Oxford University presses plan to print a million additional copies of The New English Bible New Testament.

The New Testament was a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic. Some 940,000 copies were reported to have been sold on the publication date.

Only incident to mar publication of the new Scripture portion is a dispute involving Eyre and Spottiswoode, the Queen’s official publisher, which claims it has the right of royal charter to print Bibles and should share in the publication of the new volume with the university presses. The latter have rejected this claim, but a spokesman for Eyre and Spottiswoode said it is hoped to set up a meeting shortly at which the matter will be settled amicably.

Total initial printing was 1,275,000 copies. It is on sale throughout all English-speaking countries in the world.

Vicar’s Ouster

An Anglican Consistory Court removed the Rev. William Bryn Thomas, 62, from his suburban London parish last month after convicting him of repeated adultery. Thomas denied the allegations, claiming the charges merely constituted a plot by his curate to dislodge him and succeed him as vicar.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. Nathan R. Wood, 86, president emeritus of Gordon College and Divinity School; in Portland, Oregon … Dr. G. Ch. Aalders, 79, professor emeritus of Old Testament at Free University of Amsterdam … Dr. George Johnston Jeffrey, 79, former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland … the Rev. George Thomas Manley, 88, evangelical student leader in Great Britain and editor-in-chief of the New Bible Commentary … Mikhail Orlov, 74, Russian Baptist church leader; in Moscow … Dr. Alexis G. Maltzeff, 64, former professor at the Russian Orthodox Theological Seminary of New York City; in West Hartford, Connecticut … Julie Olin Chanler, 78, leader of the reform Bahai movement; in New York … Robert D. Higley, 65, retired manager of the Higley religious publishing house; in Butler, Indiana.… Ayatollah Boroujerdi, 89, world Shiites (Muslim) leader.

Resignation: As president of Eastern Pilgrim College, Dr. R. D. Gunsalus (for successor, see “Appointments”).

Retirement: As director of the Missionary Research Library, Dr. Frank Price.

Appointments: As dean of Hamma Divinity School, Dr. Bernhard H. P. Hillila … as president of Maryville (Tennessee) College, Dr. Joseph J. Copeland … as president of Eastern Pilgrim College, the Rev. Melvin Dieter … as president of the Evangelical Teacher Training Association, Dr. Paul E. Loth … as director of the Missionary Research Library, Dr. Herbert C. Jackson … as director of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, New York, Dr. Robert S. Baker … as executive secretary of the World Council of Churches Department on Evangelism, Dr. Hans Jochen Margull.

Personal Liaison

A personal liaison is being established between Anglicans and Roman Catholics during preparations for the Vatican’s forthcoming Ecumenical Council.

Canon Bernard Clinton Pawley, treasurer of Ely Cathedral and a proctor in the Convocation of Canterbury, has been appointed as personal liaison for the archbishops of Canterbury and York. He will serve as a link between the Church of England’s Council on Inter-Church Relations and the Roman Catholic Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity headed by Augustin Cardinal Bea.

Canon Pawley, one of the few clergymen in the Church of England who can speak Italian fluently, spent time as a prisoner-of-war in Italy while serving as chaplain in the Fifth India Division of the British Eighth Army in World War II.

He was scheduled to leave England for the Vatican following the Easter season for his first conversations with Cardinal Bea.

The ‘Iliat’ Cult

A new religious cult whose followers must swear to help kill all Australians, Europeans, and Chinese in New Guinea has sprung up in the Australian island of New Britain, according to Radio Australia.

Cult members reportedly venerate Americans but are fanatically bent on assassinating Queen Elizabeth of England in reprisal for the ill treatment they claim to have received from Australian administrators.

The Australian station’s report on the cult, known as “Iliat,” was based on information given by a Roman Catholic missionary stationed in northern New Britain.

WCC Withdrawal

The Federal Council of Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa is urging two of its constituent churches to withdraw from the World Council of Churches because of the Council’s stand against apartheid.

A resolution adopted in Capetown was addressed to the Dutch Reformed Churches of the Cape Province and of the Transvaal. The Dutch Reformed Church of Africa, a third smaller body, has already terminated its WCC membership, declaring it could not do its duty among nonwhites as a WCC member because of the World Council’s “interference” in South Africa’s racial matters.

Sons of Abraham

Parkchester Baptist Church of New York City now claims to have at least 16 Hebrew Christians worshiping regularly. Latest addition to the congregation’s Hebrew Christian family is a young rabbi, recently converted and baptized after eight years of prayer and counsel by the Rev. Samuel Needleman, Hebrew Christian missionary.

The Christian witness to the Jews, always a difficult endeavor, has been undergoing a re-evaluation in view of sweeping changes in the economic and social life of Jews in America.

In recent years the Jews have been far more thoroughly integrated into American life, according to Martin Rosen of the Los Angeles branch of the American Board of Missions to the Jews. Consequently, the modern Jew’s theology has undergone a change.

“He has become secularized,” says Rosen, “and is more tolerant toward all religions. He no longer has a superstitious fear of reading the New Testament, nor does he regard churches as temples of idolatry. He will at least listen to the claims of the Nazarene.”

Rosen declares that Jewish orthodoxy was earlier adapted to the ghetto type of community, and the modern American Jew has deserted the ghetto.

How does this affect the approach of the missionary to the Jews?

“ ‘For ye have the poor always with you,’ and an important part of our work will always be in the cities,” says Rosen. “But we are no longer ministering to an oppressed and impoverished people and we must adapt ourselves accordingly.

“Today most Jews are not acquainted with the Old Testament, and proof texts from the prophets mean little to them.”

Is Jewish mission work any easier?

“It is easier in that there is little hostility. But now we meet with indifference which in a sense is harder.”

Among missionary approaches now being used effectively, Rosen lists home fellowship meetings, especially those sponsored by churches. Other methods include discussion groups or seminars, telephone evangelism, and “inter-faith Sunday schools.”

Press and Sex

Early this year a discussion on newspaper handling of sex stories appeared concurrently in CHRISTIANITY TODAY and in The Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. A sequel to the discussion, which originally featured four CHRISTIANITY TODAY editors, was published in The Bulletin last month. The sequel consisted of a series of comments from newspaper editors. Here are some highlights:

Rebecca Gross, editor of the Lock Haven Express: “Some of the newspapers which still play up the sex angle out of proportion, are among the largest in the nation. They dominate the newsstands in some big cities. They do not represent the entire American press, however.… The newspapers should report life as it is, and not as the editor or some critic of the press would prefer it to be.… Newspapers which ignore the sex side of the news are distorting it just as much as those which try to spread the patina of sex over all the news.”

Richard Clarke, executive editor of The News of New York: “After reading the panel discussion of the press and sex morality in the February Bulletin, I had a little checkup made on our paper.… During the months of November, 1960, and January, 1961, the nearest thing to a sexy front page line was ‘MM and Miller Call It Quits’ … I wonder what newspapers the panelists have been reading.”

James O. Powell, editorial page editor of The Arkansas Gazette: “Congratulations are due The Bulletin for last issue’s symposium on Sex Morality and The Role of the Press.… The panel discussion by the CHRISTIANITY TODAY editors presented a rather brilliant interplay of views on how the newspapers are performing in treating sex stories.… The most practicable single suggestion may lie in the point made by Panelist Kucharsky that each newspaper should have its own full set of rules, reached not casually but purposefully and deliberately.”

Milburn P. Akers, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times: “I chance to agree with some of that which Dr. Farrell had to say. But I object to his generalization as to tabloids as unfounded, unmerited, and as being about 98 per cent in error.”

“As I read Dr. Farrell’s remarks I thought of the preachers I know. The same as editors, some speak out, some don’t. The faults he labors in the newspaper profession are likewise the faults of the ministry. Perhaps preachers, the same as editors, are human and, as humans, they make errors. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were ministers. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that I am an editor, and the editor of a tabloid newspaper, at that.”

John D. Pennekamp, associate editor of The Miami Herald: “If we are all going to the dogs for want of guidance, certainly [the moralists] head the list of those responsible.… The obligation to report their failures to restrain—or even to destroy—sex rests with us as does the duty to report their successes in meeting their challenge when and if they go into action.”

Leslie Moore, Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegram and Gazette: “Man for man, the press in this country is just as concerned for the public welfare as is the clergy. But it is not going to run all its news through a laundromat, nor will it undertake a homiletic crusade, to abolish sex.”

Hal Nelson, Rockford (Illinois) Morning Star: “Most of us happen to be pretty moral guys … even though we don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying a picture of a pretty girl.”

Murch Resigns

Dr. James DeForest Murch has resigned as Managing Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He will devote his time to writing, lecturing, and preaching. His comprehensive history of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, Christians Only, will soon be published by the Standard Publishing Company. A volume on Christian Education is in preparation. Dr. Murch’s first speaking engagement is with the Appalachian Preaching Mission, sponsored by the Protestant churches of Bristol, Tennessee area, April 16–23. He will continue to reside in Washington.

It seemed to many that Dr. Billy Graham’s crusades in 1954 and 1955 would lift Britain to spiritual awakening, but these hopes did not materialize. God greatly blessed the ministry of his servant; many still stand firm who professed faith in Jesus Christ in the crusades. Indeed, a number are now in the ministry, and others on the mission field.

But the nation as a whole remains indifferent to spiritual things. Nearly 99 per cent of London’s teen-agers and more than 90 per cent of all British people do not regularly attend any place of worship. In many areas there is virtually no effective evangelical witness. It is not uncommon to see places of worship shut or used for other purposes. One can enter churches with a seating capacity of 1,000 and find a dozen in attendance.

During the past few years there have been a number of large-scale evangelistic campaigns. A year or so ago Tom Rees conducted his “Mission to Britain” in which he held an evangelistic rally in every county in the British Isles. Eric Hutchings has had a number of citywide campaigns, culminating in the Midlands Crusade last summer. While considerable blessing has attended such evangelistic enterprises, the non-churchgoer remains virtually untouched. In many churches a spirit of apathy accompanies the work of the Gospel, while in others worldliness cripples their spiritual impact. One is conscious of growing disregard of the Lord’s Day. Excursions and special outings more and more commonly are arranged on Sunday, and parents tend to motor their families to the coast week after week during the summer. To meet this situation many churches have transferred Sunday schools from afternoon to morning hours.

There are points on the other side. Probably the most encouraging feature of the post-war era has been the growth of Christian youth movements in various churches. The number of young people who spend their summer holidays in camps and houseparties where they receive not only physical and mental relaxation but real spiritual blessing is phenomenal. Christian Unions at the major universities have grown numerically in the post-war years. Furthermore, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of Christian Unions attached to factories and offices, and in schools.

The Unreached Labor Movement

Probably, however, the most tragic factor of all is that the churches of Britain have lost touch for the most part with the industrial classes. Those who do go to church are largely drawn from the professional classes. There is a noticeable preponderance of womenfolk in most churches. It is not difficult to find packed congregations here and there, but almost invariably these are in better-class residential neighborhoods. Churches in the industrial areas are for the most part virtually empty. Probably the only religious group really in touch with the working classes, apart from the Roman Catholics, is the Pentecostal movement. Even the Salvation Army is drawing adherents from a different constituency than that which was previously associated with the Army.

Surveying Denominational Strength

Now, what of the various denominations? Let us consider first the Church of England. Church leaders often boast of the comprehensive nature of the Anglican church, and this communion certainly shelters great contrasts. In recent years both the extreme Anglo-Catholics and the conservative evangelicals have gained in strength. It would be true to say that the evangelical witness in England is very largely found within the national church. Scholarly evangelicals as well as some of the most effective evangelists are in the Church of England. Men are coming forward for the Anglican ministry from half a dozen theological colleges which are committed to the evangelical point of view. Several Church of England missionary societies are solidly evangelical in outlook. Moreover, home missionary societies, such as the Church Pastoral Aid Society and the Church Society, hold the right of appointment to a number of influential parishes in the Church of England. One of the largest congregations in London is found in an evangelical Anglican church, All Souls, Langham Place, whose Rector is the Reverend J. R. W. Stott.

At the annual Keswick Convention, Anglican speakers are much to the fore. In many Christian youth movements Anglican influence is extremely strong. From evangelical Anglicanism a growing number of scholars have risen vigorously to defend the evangelical position. A research center at Oxford has been set up recently to further this objective.

Generally speaking, the more colorless churches of the Anglican communion are the least attended. Many Anglo-Catholic churches have extremely large congregations, as have a number of the evangelical churches. While the old liberalism has largely disappeared in many areas, it has been widely replaced by extreme sacerdotalism.

Now what of the Free Churches? Let us consider first the recognized Free Churches linked in the Free Church Federal Council. The general picture here is far from encouraging. For the most part, Free Church leaders reserve their greatest enthusiasm for the ecumenical movement, and continue to incline towards theological liberalism. By and large, conservative evangelicals in the Free Churches are somewhat frowned upon. At annual congresses and assemblies, lip-service is paid to evangelism but much more time is devoted to discussing the social implications of the Gospel. Even on the social question, the Free Churches find it difficult to speak with one voice. Free Churches on the whole tell of decreasing memberships. The nonconformist conscience, so potent an influence in national life in the nineteenth century, now rarely exerts itself. Almost all the nonconformist colleges are affected in greater or lesser degree by theological liberalism, there being no counterpart among the Free Churches to the conservative evangelical Anglican theological colleges. Despite considerable discussion over the years on the issue of Free Church Union, no real progress has been made, although there is general agreement not to multiply Free Churches on new housing estates.

One encouraging feature in the post-war years has been the emergence of “revival fellowships” in the Baptist, Congregational, and Methodist denominations. Both ministers and laymen in these groups represent not only the solid core of conservative evangelicals within the different denominations, but are pledged to pray regularly for spiritual revival. Recently a similar group has been formed within the Church of England. The different groups unite from time to time for prayer and witness.

A comparatively modern phenomenon is the emergence of the Independent Evangelical Churches, many of which are now linked together in the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. These are consistently evangelical in outlook, although many of them are numerically weak. The situation is improving somewhat, as a more highly trained ministry finds its way into their ranks. A number of men now serving such churches have had training at the London Bible College. Many of these Free Churches have displaced the “mission halls” of an earlier generation. One might say that the mission hall mentality has largely disappeared in the face of a growing “church consciousness.”

One of the most interesting features of recent years has been the growth of the Pentecostal movement. While still very largely an unknown quantity, it is gradually establishing itself in the country at large. Evangelicals as a whole have been chary of extending the hand of fellowship to Pentecostals, but this situation is now rapidly changing. The largest regular congregation in the Manchester area is a Pentecostal assembly. In some cases, Pentecostalists have reopened Free Churches discarded by the major denominations. The two main groups are known as Elim and Assemblies of God, the difference between them being largely in church government. These two groups with others are linked together in the British Pentecostal Fellowship.

The Society of Friends, popularly known as Quakers, is a very small body these days, and concerns itself almost exclusively with social questions in relation to the Gospel.

It is almost impossible to assess the strength of the Christian (Plymouth) Brethren as no facts and figures are obtainable. But without doubt, upwards of 80,000 people are to be found in Brethren assemblies. All such groups are fundamentalist in doctrine but there are two main divisions, usually termed “open” and “exclusives.” The “open” Brethren are usually very cooperative in local evangelistic efforts, but the “exclusives” maintain a position of isolation. Among the “exclusives” there have been several different “parties,” differing on certain doctrinal matters.

A controversy which is currently the talking point among many evangelical leaders is the Arminian-Calvinist debate. In the last six years or so there has been a definite swing to Calvinism and an increasing interest in the writings of the Puritans. Some leaders who supported Dr. Graham’s campaigns in 1954–1955 now seem reluctant to pledge their support. It is doubtful as to how far this discussion has percolated through to the man in the pew, and the general feeling is that when Dr. Graham comes to Manchester, the weight of evangelicals will be solidly behind him. Many who look askance at the “little Billy Grahams” who have come to the fore in recent years, nevertheless recognize that Dr. Graham is “a man sent from God” who enjoys the divine blessing upon his ministry to a unique extent in these days. Britain desperately needs a spiritual revival. There are encouragements here and there, even if the overall picture is far from rosy. The only really encouraging feature is that evangelicals as a whole have long since lost confidence in methods and techniques and have come to see that such a revival is the only real answer to Britain’s need.

GILBERT W. KIRBY

General Secretary

The Evangelical Alliance

London, England

In definition of the decree or decrees of God, the Westminster Confession (1647) maintains that “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of secondary causes taken away, but rather established” (chap. III).

The decree of God is thus equivalent to the effective resolve or purpose, grounded in his free wisdom, by which God eternally controls his creation. It refers not merely to predestination to salvation or perdition, but to all God’s action in creation and direction of the world. As the Shorter Catechism puts it, “the decrees of God are his eternal purpose according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass” (ques. 7).

Important details are to be noted. First, the decrees are eternal, and are not therefore subject to temporal conditions nor variable in the light of changing situations. Second, they accord with God’s wisdom, and cannot therefore be dismissed as the capricious decisions of naked sovereignty. Third, they allow for secondary wills and causes, so that they are not a mere fate, nor deterministic nexus, nor Islamic will. Fourth, they serve God’s good pleasure, and therefore are neither meaningless nor discordant with the righteous love which characterizes God and redounds to his glory.

The reference of the decrees is specifically to creation, providence, and election. “God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence” (Shorter Catechism, ques. 8). “By the decree of God some angels and men are predestinated unto eternal life, and others foreordained to everlasting death” (Confession, III, 3). In this respect, Westminster follows Calvin’s Institutes, which speak both of the general decrees of God (I, 17–18) and then of his special decree of election (III, 22–24). Within the same understanding, the order of the decrees formed the subject of the great infralapsarian-supralapsarian debate of the seventeenth century, the one party ranging the decree of election after the decrees of creation and the fall (within God’s providential ordering), the other ascribing priority to the decree of predestination. From the order of treatment, both Calvin and Westminster tend to the infralapsarian view, which implies a logical succession of decrees rather than a primary decree subserved by others. This emerges more clearly in the Catechism.

At the same time, there is an obvious hesitation to use the plural even at Westminster. Strictly, indeed, the Confession speaks only of the decree of God, and the real theme of Chapter VI is quickly seen to be predestination. This is more consonant with the earlier Reformation tradition, as may be seen from statements such as the Belgic Confession (1561, Art. XVI), the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563, Art. XVII), and even Dort (1619) with its reference to the one decree of election and reprobation grounded in the divine good pleasure. Obviously this does not mean a negating of the sovereignty of God in creation and providence. It does not imply that the decree of God cannot be multiple and varied in operation. It suggests, however, that there is a higher right in supralapsarianism so long as it is not artificially entangled in temporal conceptions. The purpose or decree of God is ultimately one, namely, the establishment of gracious covenant and fellowship with a chosen people as fulfilled in the saving work of Christ. Necessarily the basic decree carries with it other general or detailed decrees, just as the unity of God includes a wealth of perfections. In itself, however, it is one and supreme. Hence it is perhaps better to keep to the singular of Westminster and the earlier confessions, not ranging creation, providence, and so forth, under a wider genus “decree,” but interpreting them in relation to the “eternal and immutable decree from which all our salvation springs and depends” (Scots Confession, 1560, Art. VII).

But is it right even to use the term “decree” in this context? As in the opening definition, it obviously has to be carefully safeguarded to prevent misunderstanding. In the Bible it is used for the most part of the arbitrary, inflexible, and often vexatious orders of despotic rulers rather than the resolve of God. Perhaps this underlies the sparing use, often in verb form, in the earlier confessions. It is hardly conceivable that, for example, the Helvetic or Gallican Confessions, or the Heidelberg Catechism, should devote a special section to the divine decree or decrees. On the other hand, the term seems in practice to be unavoidable. It turns up in almost every document. Even the Remonstrants refer to God’s “eternal and immutable decree” in their first Article (1610), and more blatantly Arminian statements only limit the range of the divine decree, for example, that “God does not decree all events which he knows will occur” (Free Will Baptist Confession, 1834). Similarly, the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1576) distinguishes between foreknowledge and foreordination (Art. XI, 1), but in relation to predestination or election it states that God “in his eternal counsel has decreed …” (XI, 12). There thus seems to be good reason for the judgment of Karl Barth, no enthusiast for the word, that it “describes something which cannot be denied,” and is not therefore to be erased or abandoned (Church Dogmatics, II, 2, p. 182).

The dangers of the term are easy to see. Even in Scripture it has associations with the arbitrarily rather than the righteously and meaningfully sovereign. In itself it emphasizes sheer power instead of holy, wise, and loving power. It suggests harsh enforcement rather than beneficent overruling. It implies that which is fixed and static, so that man is an automaton and God himself, having made his decree, is unemployed and uninterested, that is, the God of deism who simply leaves things to take their decreed course. Perhaps it is not insignificant that the heaviest casualties to Unitarian deism seemed to be suffered in churches which emphasized the decrees. Perhaps it is not for nothing that Lutherans detected a Turkish or Islamic impulse in Reformed teaching. Perhaps it is with reason that some Reformed apologists are still ill-advised enough to find support in scientific or Mohammedan determinism. There are, in fact, real dangers in the term and its use.

Nevertheless, no single word is so well adapted to express the true sovereignty, constancy, and infallibility of the divine counsel, purpose, and resolve; and therefore biblical and evangelical expositors have little option but to use it. Safeguards are no doubt required. It does not, perhaps, form a genuinely suitable heading as at Westminster. It is best handled in the text where there can be proper qualification. Yet that which God wills and purposes is in a true sense decreed by him. His wise and omnipotent resolve constitutes his free, sovereign, and incontestable decree.

Most of the difficulties derive, perhaps, from a failure to remember that the decree is genuinely eternal, and cannot therefore be a lifeless, deistic fiat. No doubt much of the wonder of eternity is that it is pre-temporal. To this extent an eternal decree is rightly seen to be prior to its fulfillment, belonging to the past before the beginning of all things. But eternal does not mean only pre-temporal. It also means co-temporal and post-temporal. The decree of God is thus present and future as well as past. It is with and after the fulfillment as well as before it. Deistic conceptions can arise only out of an ill-balanced and unhealthy over-concentration on the one aspect of eternity, which is also what gives such unreality to the famous infralapsarian-supralapsarian discussion. The truly eternal decree is just as alive and relevant today and tomorrow as it was yesterday. Made in eternity, it has been made, but is still being made and still to be made. The decree accompanies and follows as well as precedes its fulfillment. It cannot, then, be regarded merely as a lifeless foreordination. It is really the decree of God and therefore an eternal decree in the full and proper sense.

Even if the deistic threat is averted, however, the difficulty of apparent arbitrariness remains. It is, in fact, heightened by some of the confessions with their references to the inscrutability of the decree. Thus the Westminster Confession speaks of the “secret counsel” of God in election, and his “unsearchable counsel” in reprobation (III, 5, 7). Dort warns against inquisitive prying into “the secret and deep things of God” (I, 12). The Gallican Confession (VIII) and the Thirty-Nine Articles (XVII) both refer to secrets or secret counsels, and the Belgic uses the term “incomprehensible” (XIII). Now it is true that according to Scripture the ways of God in nature and history take an astonishing course, so that the detailed decrees of God might well be called unsearchable or inscrutable. It is also true that sinners cannot perceive the things of God, so that even the primary decree which the others serve and express may aptly be termed a mystery. Yet the question arises whether this mystery is not revealed in Jesus Christ. Are not believing eyes opened, in part at least, to the ways of God by the Holy Spirit? Can we really say that the basic decree of God, for all the strangeness of its outworkings, is inscrutable, secret, or incomprehensible in the primary and ultimate sense?

The question is pertinent, for it forces us to ask what we really mean by this decree. In the earlier confessions this seems to be clear. It is God’s “eternal and unchangeable counsel, of mere goodness” to elect certain men to salvation in Jesus Christ (Belgic Confession, XVI). It is his “everlasting purpose … to deliver … those whom he hath chosen in Christ” (Thirty-Nine Articles, XVII). This aspect naturally remains in later statements, as we may see from the Canons of Dort, I, 7 and the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 20. But a new element tends to emerge. The decree of God comes to be identified specifically with the pre-temporal discrimination between the elect and the reprobate which we cannot forsee, which is not based on any good works or foreknown response, and which is therefore necessarily inscrutable and apparently arbitrary. This profound, merciful but just acceptance or rejection of men equally involved in ruin is the real decree of God at the beginning or end of his ways, which we can only accept since we have neither the means to understand nor the right to challenge it.

The question arises whether this is a justifiable equation. Will not a “special prudence and care” (Westminster Confession, III, 8), lead us, not to this sorting of individuals, but to Jesus Christ, in whom God’s grace and wrath are manifested? If Jesus Christ is really the mirror of election, as also, we might add, of reprobation, are we not to seek the basic decree in him, whom to see is to see the Father? When we ask concerning the ultimate decree, surely we are still to concentrate on him in whom the fulness of Godhead dwells rather than looking abroad to other mysteries.

In other words, the decree of God must be strictly related to Jesus Christ. The Formula of Concord puts this well: “This predestination of God is not to be searched out in the hidden counsel of God, but is to be sought in the Word of God … but the Word of God leads us to Christ.… In Christ, therefore, is the eternal election of God to be sought” (XI, 5–12). The Remonstrant Articles also display a fine judgment in their initial definition that “God, by an eternal, unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ his Son … hath determined … to save in Christ for Christ’s sake, and through Christ, those who, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, shall believe on this his Son Jesus.”

These statements are vitiated, however, by their tendency to make salvation dependent in the last resort on the human decision of faith and their virtual ignoring of the element of reprobation inseparable from the divine decree. We may thus refer again to the fine passage in the Institutes in which Calvin teaches us to seek our election in Christ as the Eternal Wisdom, the Immutable Truth, the Determinate Counsel of the Father (III, 24, 5). And we may close the whole discussion with some noble sentences from the widely adopted Second Helvetic Confession penned in 1576 by the aging Bullinger of Zürich: “We therefore condemn those who seek other-where than in Christ whether they be chosen from all eternity, and what God has decreed of them before all beginning.… Let Christ, therefore, be our looking-glass, in whom we may behold our predestination. We shall have a most evident and sure testimony that we are written in the Book of Life if we communicate with Christ, and he be ours, and we be his, by a true faith. Let this comfort us in the temptation touching predestination, than which there is none more dangerous: that the promises of God are general to the faithful” (X). For the ultimate reality of the decree of God is “that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, was from all eternity predestinated and foreordained of the Father to be the Saviour of the world” (XI). In sum, Jesus Christ himself is the purpose and decree of God. In him we see God’s righteousness both to condemn and to save. Incorporated into him by faith, we have the assurance that the basic decree to which all others are subject, while it carries with it the condemnation and judgment of sin, is as such a decree of grace and life, of fellowship and glory.

Bibliography: K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2; III/3. Calvin, Institutes, I, 16–17; III, 21–24; H. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 137 ff.; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Part I, Chapter 9; P. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. III; W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology.

Professor of Church History

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, California