New Dispute Looms over ‘Errors’ in Scripture

The rumblings are louder. They are echoing across such unlikely places as Grand Rapids, Winona Lake, Wheaton, Colorado Springs, Pasadena, and Santa Barbara. This month, as if to exploit such reverberations over the nature of biblical inspiration, came a 223-page amplifying commentary from Westminster Press.

The Inspiration of Scripture by the sometime evangelical scholar Dewey M. Beegle might not rate a second look under other circumstances. Its fuchsia-and-brown jacket cloaks basic tenets that amount to a rehash of old arguments. A carefully conceived appeal, however, overtly invites evangelicals to forsake their conviction that divinely inspired original manuscripts of the Bible were free from error, and assails the verbal-inspiration view.

In support of his position, Beegle makes clever use of quotations from trusted evangelical sources, without reflecting important differences. That is one reason some observers predict the book will stir wide controversy.

Another reason is the book’s timely appearance. It coincides with discussions and tensions over the authority of the Bible at numerous evangelical institutions scattered across the land. Also, informal discussions between independent evangelical leaders and leaders in the ecumenical movement have now begun to move toward a discussion of the doctrine of Scripture.

A book from evangelical sources arguing against the Bible’s inerrancy could pit conservative against conservative in theological battle. Some ecumenical spokesmen are increasingly disposed to focus upon inerrancy as the vulnerable spot in the evangelical armory. If emphasis on biblical authority can be detached from biblical inerrancy, they feel, the climate will be more amenable to ecumenical discussion, which flourishes in an atmosphere of theological openness and inclusivism.

The problem is not new. Evangelical Protestant ministers themselves divide on the issue of inerrancy. A poll taken by CHRISTIANITY TODAY as far back as 1957 indicated that 74 per cent of Protestant clergymen chose to be called conservative or fundamental rather than liberal or neoorthodox. The poll distinguished fundamental and conservative in that, apart from doubts about biblical inerrancy, the latter believed all evangelical doctrines. The survey indicated that 48 per cent of all evangelical ministers affirm, while 52 per cent are unsure of or reject, the doctrine of inerrancy. Those who champion inerrancy stress that an authoritative Bible is the watershed of theological fidelity.

The book by Beegle, 44-year-old associate professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at the Biblical Seminary in New York, is a key indication that the debate over inerrancy not only embraces conservatives in the old-line denominations but is now moving into independent evangelical groups. Some see the drift as a counterpart of recent disputes over Scripture in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and in the Southern Baptist Convention, both traditionally conservative bodies.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

A BEEGLE SAMPLER

“It is not the purpose of this book to unsettle the faith of any Christian, but the risk must be taken in order to remove the ‘needless barrier’ which has kept many more from exercising faith in Christ.”

“As a result of a running battle with science during the last fifty or sixty years, many conservative groups within Protestantism have made the doctrine of verbal-plenary inspiration their primary apologetic. This view, which usually lays stress on inerrant autographs, is not in accord with either the Biblical or the non-Biblical facts. I wrote the book in the hope that it would help this segment of Christianity come to a fearless faith which can honestly investigate any new data. On the other hand, some liberal segments of Protestantism have tended to take a dim view of the essential trustworthiness and relevance of Scripture, a view that enervates the gospel and the sense of commission. I wrote with these Christians also in mind.”

“With the aid of the Holy Spirit the Scriptures have always been able to communicate sufficient truth to meet the needs of the sincere, inquiring reader. On the other hand, since language is incapable of absolute communication, we are hardly warranted in describing Scripture in terms of inerrancy.”

“Although facts confirm the Biblical record in many instances, they also disprove it in other cases.”

“Some of the great hymns are practically on a par with the psalms, and one can be sure that if Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, Augustus Toplady, and Reginald Heber had lived in the time of David and Solomon and been no more inspired than they were in their own day, some of their hymns of praise to God would have found their way into the Hebrew canon.” (Italics are Beegle’s.)

“If the facts account for anything, they show that God rejects the inference that translations cannot be inspired because they have some errors.”

“Yes, the great issues of our day demand even more than the ‘formula’ of inerrant autographs. If we can get through this ‘sound barrier,’ as it were, without shattering too many theological windows, we will be ready to challenge the tremendous moral and spiritual problems that confront us …”

Beegle attempts to demolish the doctrine of inerrancy by a curious procedure. He is outspoken in his direct intent to win evangelical converts to his position. Yet he largely addresses the fundamentalist clergy from without. His medium is the United Presbyterian publishing house, which is not known for evangelical best-sellers. Beegle is an elder in the Free Methodist Church (with “one foot out, and one in,” he says). But he graduated from the Free Methodists’ Seattle Pacific College in 1938, went on to Asbury Theological Seminary, then earned a Ph.D. under Dr. William F. Albright at Johns Hopkins University. He has taught at the Biblical Seminary since 1951.

He is also a graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, and served as a line officer during World War II.

A sincere and friendly individual, Beegle regards his role as that of enlightener to those to the right of him theologically. At Biblical, he is known for a rapport with students which he goes out of his way to win, including in his schedule regular workouts on the basketball court.

Beegle’s wife is also a Free Methodist, the daughter of a minister.

Although his church is affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals, Beegle has never taken an active role in NAE. He has also shied away from the Evangelical Theological Society, explaining that he cannot sign the group’s clause affirming belief in inerrancy of the biblical autographs.

There is a new searching of the problem of inspiration in evangelical schools and movements today. No scholar denies the profundity of the problem. But many evangelicals insist that problems are not automatically resolved by discarding the doctrine of inerrancy. They are prone to regard the concession of an errant Bible as an apologetic convenience ventured hopefully—but unfruitfully—in order to proceed at once to theological debate on other doctrinal concerns.

Beegle’s book is disappointing because of its lack of positive structure and its mainly negative emphasis. He implies that many more persons would put their faith in Christ if the “needless barrier” of inerrancy were removed—an essentially pragmatic argument. But not even the most extreme fundamentalists have preached “Believe on inerrancy and the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved!” Nor have the opponents of inerrancy made converts by preaching “Believe in the errancy of the Bible and in Jesus Christ and be saved!” If converts are won, it is through the proclamation of the Christ of the Bible.

Drawing The Line

The editor of the Baylor Line, a bimonthly magazine published by the Baylor University Ex-Students Association, resigned this month in a dispute over how to report incidents resulting from the cancellation at Baylor last December of the play Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The editor, Mrs. Frances Provence, charged association executives with censorship. They denied it.

The Baptist school’s officials had objected to profanity in the play.

Southern Baptist Crisis—Climax Awaited

“The history of war does not know of any undertaking so broad in concept and so grandiose in its scale and masterful in its execution.” So said Joseph Stalin of the Allied invasion of Normandy. However, Old Joe never spoke in terms of spiritual warfare, and though a Georgian, had never attended a Southern Baptist Convention. Of all American church conventions, none other has the size, the color, the organization, the sweeping momentum reminiscent of a mighty, driving thrust to establish a beachhead of righteousness on some Satanic shore.

The drama of salvation is soon to be enacted once again at the annual Southern Baptist Convention, to be held in Kansas City’s mammoth auditorium, where some 15,000 “messengers” will seek inspiration from music, sermonic oratory, and pageantry, will hear reports of denominational progress, will conduct convention business and pass resolutions which will not be formally binding on the component autonomous churches.

But lately, the bugle sounding the attack has been emitting unmistakable sounds of discord. Phenomenal Southern Baptist growth has slowed somewhat, and while the front has not broken, reconnoiterers have called for regrouping of forces and reexamination and perhaps reaffirmation of old battle plans. They seek to avert a sundering of their own army along a tearing edge provided approximately by the mighty Mississippi.

There are some who will tell you that last year’s convention clash in San Francisco was simply a skirmish, prelude to what could become civil strife in Kansas City. Others say the controversy can be safely contained, given wise handling of the administrative controls. Many point fearfully to the specter of a wrong battle fought in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Southern Baptists are familiarly known as “people of the Book.” The internal struggle now disturbing the denomination swirls around the issue of how the Book shall be believed, whether it is indeed infallible as historically held by Southern Baptists—a claim now challenged in a day of epistemological innovation. San Francisco did not settle the issue, ramifications of which have been mushrooming ever since.

Interest in the controversy is by no means limited to the South. For one thing, Southern Baptists are no longer simply Southern but press all borders as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. And for another, the theological and academic implications press to the borders of Christendom. Liberals in other churches may watch, fascinated, expecting to see the history of their own denominations cycled among Southern Baptists. Conservatives in the same churches may watch fearfully, sensing possible eventual loss of the greatest remaining denominational bastion of Protestant orthodoxy. And Protestant seminaries look on as a sister seminary struggles with the age-old problem of harmonizing academic freedom and responsibility.

The seminary, as everyone knows, is Midwestern in Kansas City, which will help to host the coming convention, and in so doing will doubtless receive many a quizzical stare. For the key name of the controversy is that of a former professor there, Ralph H. Elliott, whose book The Message of Genesis (published by the denomination’s Sunday School Board) drew repeated attacks at last year’s convention for what conservatives called its destructively critical approach to the Scriptures. Among objectionable features cited were these: stories of the first eleven chapters of Genesis are described as parables which are profoundly symbolical but not literally true; Melchizedek is designated as a worshiper of Baal though the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews both exalts Christ and refers to him as “an high priest after the order of Melchizedec,” and refers to the latter as a “priest of the most high God” (5:10; 7:1).

Elliott was subsequently dismissed from Midwestern, and there are those who feel the whole story of this action has never been told. Apparently the final breakdown in relations between Elliott and the Midwestern trustees came from his refusal to withdraw his book from publication voluntarily, that is, without being asked to do so by the trustees.

Some conservatives feel the trustees evaded the real theological issues of the case and looked for other ground on which to dismiss the controversial Elliott, who is said to be more conservative than others on the same faculty who have adopted more radical critical views but have not put them in print. The same is said of some professors at Southern and Southeastern seminaries, the New Testament department of the latter having been charged in some quarters as being strongly Bultmannian. In any case, Elliott’s “liberalism” is not to be equated with the “modernism” found in some northern denominations.

The theological situation at Midwestern in connection with the Elliott case has presented some confusing aspects. A dissenting trustee wrote: “The trustees approved the historical-critical method [of Bible study] but took action to put a prohibitive fear in the mind of any competent professor who might desire to write a manuscript by that method in the future. The trustees were informed that the president of the seminary and other members of the faculty had identified themselves with Dr. Elliott in his use of the historical-critical method; yet the trustees dismissed Professor Elliott but took no action against his associates. The trustees evaded the content of the resolution approved by the Southern Baptist Convention at San Francisco, but sought an appeasement by using Professor Elliott as a symbol of escape.” (The San Francisco resolution, overwhelmingly adopted, reads: “That we express our abiding and unchanging objection to the dissemination of theological views in any of our seminaries which would undermine such faith in the historical accuracy and doctrinal integrity of the Bible, and that we courteously request the trustees and administrative officers of our institutions and other agencies to take such steps as shall he necessary to remedy at once those situations where such views now threaten our historic position.”)

Editorial opinion in Baptist state convention papers has been sharply divided on the merits of the Elliott dismissal as it relates to academic freedom, and rumblings of dissent have been heard in Southern Baptist colleges particularly. Last December, 37 professors of Bible and religion from eight Southern Baptist colleges in southeastern states released a statement charging that the Southern Baptist Convention and its agencies and boards are acting under an “authority … which is in opposition to the authority of Scripture.” It spoke of the “crisis” resulting from Elliott’s dismissal and the raising anew of the issue of the “limited, relative, human” nature of authority in the Convention. Action of the Midwestern trustees was termed a “flagrant abuse of this derived authority because it clearly gave priority to such unscriptural criteria as unity and peace within the Convention which clearly contradict the witness of Christ and prophets.”

In February an organization calling itself Baptists for Freedom came into being with publication of a newsletter. Centered in the Kansas City area and headed by an 11-man steering committee of pastors, laymen, and seminary students, the group claimed a mailing list of 5,000 Southern Baptists in 27 states. It described its raison d’être in terms of a threat to “our traditional liberties … by the rise of authoritarianism in our Convention.”

Conservatives have not been silent. The Rev. K. Owen White, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Houston, said that Elliott’s dismissal was only “the first step in a movement to slow the trend to liberalism in our denomination.” “We were asleep,” says the Rev. Ralph Powell of Beaumont Baptist Church in Independence, Missouri. “This was just like Pearl Harbor. They almost got us. I understand 90 per cent of the students who graduate accept this kind of teaching. Why, in three or four years they would have multiplied like rabbits.”

Liberals tend to read the current crisis in Southern Baptist theological education partly in cultural terms of the old segregationist South holding out against modern scholarship and against its proponents who are unwilling to “commit intellectual suicide in order to uphold an infallible Bible.” Conservatives respond that the present large extension of Southern Baptist work in the North shows that the conservative element (which is credited with the lion’s share of evangelistic expansion) adapts itself very well to other ways of life in the interests of the Gospel. They point not to culture but to theology as the basic issue—the veracity of God’s Word—and attribute phenomenal Southern Baptist gains to forthright, unapologetic preaching of the Bible as the infallible Word of God.

Again, liberals tend to see the current denominational debate on theology in terms of an attempt of a fundamentalist action group to take over the denomination, success of which would sound a death knell for honest intellectual pursuits. Conservatives respond that the liberal wing is a closely-knit power bloc, intent on winning the denomination gradually by means of the seminary classroom. They point to a large body of young, intellectually alert Christians who are growing distrustful of “academicians who talk in riddles” and seem to be “promoting religion for sociology’s sake and experience for psychology’s sake.” Conservatives say further that they need not resort to bloc action, for they tend to dominate the recognized channels of denominational activity—conventions, pastors’ conferences (which precede the general convention and weigh heavily in setting the convention tone)—by sheer weight of numbers.

Ninety per cent of the Convention leadership is estimated to be theologically conservative. Liberalism is said to exist primarily in certain pulpits especially in the East (north of Georgia) and to be widespread in the eastern colleges.

There are indications that Southern Baptists are no longer primarily a rural people. Convention leadership, including the key heads of the boards, has been described as “well-educated, informed, and conservative.”

Completing a second term as Convention president is able conservative Herschel H. Hobbs, pastor of Oklahoma City’s First Baptist Church, author, and radio preacher on The Baptist Hour, which reaches 50 million listeners weekly. In his presidential address at last year’s convention he noted that Southern Baptists were scarcely touched in the modernist-fundamentalist controversy but rather chose the occasion to reaffirm, under the leadership of famed theologian E. Y. Mullins, the “fundamentals” and “supernatural” characteristics of Christianity. The later rise of neoorthodoxy, said Hobbs, “received scant notice from Southern Baptists. But in recent years a few of their theologians have recognized the contribution which it seeks to make to the theological scene. There have been some efforts to adjust Southern Baptist faith to its position.” But neoorthodoxy represents only a “half-way” return from extreme liberalism toward “a Bible-centered theology.” He said Southern Baptists had a “right to be concerned” about their educational institutions inasmuch as they “have seen the departure of many denominations from their historic faith begin in their colleges and seminaries.” Hobbs went on to defend the majority of seminary professors.

National significance of the Southern Baptist theological situation is reflected in the astounding fact that some 30 per cent of all students in all accredited (by the American Association of Theological Schools) theological schools are in the six Southern Baptist seminaries. Indications are that the more conservative of these seminaries are enjoying the greatest public acceptance. The general theological situation is mixed, but a northern theologian who has had close and extensive contact with Southern Baptist seminaries and their professors drew the following picture of certain weaknesses: “There is a noticeable reticence on the part of some in the academic community to speak and write as conservative theologians. Many will admit to being conservatives in theology when pressed, but it is not the public, driving thrust of their utterances. This is due in part to the notion that it is unpopular to admit a ‘position’ or that it is unsophisticated. Much of this is due, I think, to the fact that Southern Baptists just have not had an articulate theology for over a generation.

“Professors have not been productive during this period. Too much writing of articles and some books is done out of reaction, not out of faith. There is a spirit of destructive criticism abroad in educational circles, and this has created its own reaction of which the educators are now fearful.

“As for Elliott’s book, though it is being reprinted by Bethany Press [publishing house of the Christian Churches] its director has noted it is ‘not a major scholarly work.’ I would go further and say that it is poorly written and poorly argued. He begins with conjectures that emerge from certain critical approaches and indicates that such conclusions are tentative, then he proceeds to build interpretation on these conclusions as factual and binding. It’s a sort of second-hand scholarship.

“A common tendency amongst academicians in filling the thought vacuum is to import the theological problems from Germany and Switzerland especially, wrenched out of theological, sociological and political context, and then to superimpose them upon the Southern Baptist scene.

“Some professors at heart are resenting the current focus of attention upon them and seem to have the idea that their profession should give them an automatic immunity from any criticism or attack. At the same time, suspicious persons on the fringe of the Convention make capital of the many crises. It is an open possibility that the theologically illiterate and temperamentally obdurate fringe element may divide the Convention and destroy the wonderful effectiveness of the Cooperative Program in home and foreign missions, education, etc.

“Southern Baptists are a wonderful people, vibrant, generous, and loyal to their work. They have a passionate desire to establish New Testament churches. They tithe and give financially in fantastic ways. They have been unusually effective as soul winners. I pray God may preserve this great denomination and make it a power for the evangelical cause, both in this country and throughout the world.”

The great need for expository preaching from Southern Baptist pulpits has been noted by many, including President Hobbs. Yet the foregoing criticisms must be tempered by the reminder that Southern Baptists (followed by Missouri Synod Lutherans) constitute the largest theologically-conservative force in America. Judged by the same norms, other major U. S. Protestant denominations would fare poorly indeed.

But what of Kansas City and thereafter? Is the Southern Baptist Convention to split under its own massive weight, to which have been added mounting theological disputes? Some well-informed sources think not. They draw the following picture: (1) Only 10 per cent of the Convention, described as militant conservatives, favor a split now, taking “what few institutions” are still wholly conservative: “The longer we wait, the more we’ll lose.” (2) Some 10 per cent are estimated to be liberal and neoorthodox, these favoring avoidance of a split as long as possible. Then if it must come, say in six or eight years, “we’ll carry the key institutions.” (3) About 80 per cent say, “Avoid a fight and keep the peace. Southern Baptists are generally conservative and moderate. We must keep our institutions, rather than leave the convention without them, and very few of them would now go out.” Some have commented that the cooperation on which the Convention is built is not theological but evangelistic and missionary. “ ‘Conservative’ means to conserve this spirit. As long as professors conduct revivals and win souls, they meet this requirement.”

As the convention draws near, leaders point to the harmonizing effect upon various factions being wrought by the recently released “Statement of Baptist Faith and Message” (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Mar. 29 issue). However, conservatives have noted two additions to the basic 1925 statement on the Bible which lend themselves, they say, to neoorthodox interpretation: (1) “The Holy Bible … is the record of God’s revelation of Himself to man” (the Bible is not itself called revelation); (2) “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.”

Past Southern Baptist controversies are recalled by words like Landmarkism, Norrisite fundamentalism, and evolution. But President Herschel Hobbs, whose considerable peacemaking talents could be sorely tested in Kansas City, points to problems as a sign of life. His address at last year’s convention concluded: “Yes, this is an age of crisis. But Southern Baptists are not afraid of crises. They were born in crisis. Their history reveals that they have passed through seven major crises. And Southern Baptists emerged from each stronger and more resolute than ever before. They have always turned a crisis into a conquest. God grant that they shall do so now!”

F.F.

Cardinal Bea Goes To Harvard

Augustin Cardinal Bea bluntly told a rapt Cambridge audience that the “fundamental teaching of Roman Catholicism will not be changed. There is no possibility of this.” “There is no likelihood,” he specified, “that the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope will be revised,” and he warned that “unity based on a least common denominator would not be a blessing but a curse.” “Loyalty to truth,” he said, “is loyalty to Christ.” But, breathing good will from every pore, he asserted that the “Church’s hands are not tied” in the pursuit of unity with Protestants.

Cardinal Bea, president of the Vatican’s permanent Secretariat for Promoting the Unity of Christians, met last month with about 150 Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars at the invitation of Harvard Divinity School. The invitation came from an appropriate source: Harvard is the first Protestant seminary in the United States to establish a chair of Roman Catholic studies. The purpose of the colloquium, according to its chairman Professor G. Ernest Wright, was “exploration in areas of common interest and concern, not with any ulterior purpose in mind other than mutual understanding. It is for this reason that only scholars have been invited to attend seminars and to participate in the discussions.”

The 81-year-old, German-born cardinal, a competent biblical scholar and a bit of a pixie, gave three public addresses in Harvard’s Sanders Theater before closed-circuit TV cameras to full-house audiences. Admission, through police-guarded gates, was by ticket only.

Bea told his audience that joint scholarly probings by Christians of different persuasions would “doubtless produce good results,” by eliminating much misunderstanding and creating new awareness of what Roman Catholics and Protestants have in common. He warned, however, that the interests of unity will not be furthered by compromise of doctrine and that “authentic love for truth demands that our differences are not glossed over.”

Bea discussed the significance of the more important happenings of the Second Vatican Council, expressing particular happiness for the presence of the Protestant observers in Rome and for the felicitous effects it had upon them and upon the council itself. He emphasized the sudden, near-miraculous change in Protestant-Roman Catholic relations. Two years ago, he said, none would have even dreamed of the possibility of such an interfaith meeting at Harvard.

He attributed the surprising change in the Roman Catholic-Protestant climate as a work of the Spirit of God, and he reminded his audience that the Holy Office Instruction of 1949 regarding the Protestant ecumenical movement “did not hesitate to declare that these efforts are sign that the Holy Spirit is moving among our non-Catholic Christian brethren, a sign that Christ is acting in them and through them.”

In the lectures and public meetings it was evident that an attempt will be made by scholars of both sides to resolve the seemingly irresolvable differences regarding Scripture and tradition. Roman Catholics, on their side, urged that infallibility adheres to the substance of tradition and not to its form of literary expression. They also pointed out that there are many things in the Church’s life and practice which have not been definitely defined in either Scripture or tradition. Cardinal Bea pointed to the situational character of the Church’s confessions, and also urged that the partial character of the confessions does not mean that what is not said is therefore error.

Protestant scholars with special sensitivity for the relative character of the historical and a special penchant for historical research saw some hope that Roman Catholic recognition of the relativism that adheres to the historical could lead to a softening of the absolute, authoritative character of the church’s tradition.

James M. Robinson, of the Southern California School of Theology at Claremont, in his lecture titled “Interpretation of Scripture in Biblical Studies Today,” expressed hope that Rome would reinterpret its understanding of that “literal sense” of Scripture whose application resulted in the excommunication of Alfred Loisy. He baited Rome to do so by confessing that Protestants today no longer absolutize the validity of the historical criticism of the Scripture, and are more concerned now about the truth content of Scripture, He reminded his audience that at least one Roman Catholic scholar can be cited for the position that some biblical stories are not true but do tell the truth. It was not difficult to sense that there were deep differences at Harvard in the very area where there would seem to be the greatest possibility of rapprochement. It was also evident that on the matter of Scripture, Rome has far more in common with that conservative evangelical scholarship which was largely absent at Harvard. The Harvard colloquium was another instance of the truism: where differences are greatest, the movement of rapprochement is easiest.

In a lightly attended, scintillating lecture spiced with good humor, Father Gregory Baum, O.S.A., of St. Michael’s College, spoke out of a similar respect for the historical. He pointed out that there are two schools of thought in Romanism on Scripture and tradition, one of which does not regard the latter as a second, independent source of revelation. He too urged the need of interpreting the teachings of the Church in reference to their historical context. He reminded his audience that Pope John has said that “one thing is doctrine, and formulation of doctrine is another.” “No other Pope,” he urged, “ever said this.” Moreover, he added, it is a distinction that has been especially suspect during the last fifty years because of theological modernism.

The invited theological experts met three mornings in four tightly closed seminars, discussing: (1) Biblical Studies: Record and Interpretation, (2) Symbol and Sacrament, (3) “Reformatio,” and (4) Conscience in a Pluralistic Society: Theological and Sociological Issues.

The last and least touchy of the four topics was selected for a public panel which concluded the four-day efforts and was publicized as a reflection of the closed seminars. Professor Krister Stendahl gave an interesting paper on the “westernized” conscience, and Dr. Paul L. Lehmann, with such shortened time as he had, made some telling thrusts. For the rest the panel was both dull and disappointing. It remained as far from a genuine confrontation of Protestant and Roman Catholic thought as Harvard Square is from St. Peter’s Square. If the panel reflected the thinking of the closed seminars, the guarding of admittance was an expendable procedure. Sheer boredom would have amply protected the experts from the public.

The panel did perhaps reflect the seminars. One invited delegate said of the latter, “Most discussions could have taken place between Protestant and Protestant, or between Roman Catholic and Roman Catholic. They were afraid to come to grips.”

The conference added to the growing feeling of good will. This is all to the good, after a four-century wall of silence. Harvard’s interfaith gathering again pointed up that a certain liberalizing movement is occurring within Roman Catholicism. There will be a thaw, it seems, on such things as the language and rites of public worship, use of the Bible and the vernacular—possibly on mixed marriages, and perhaps in a combined Roman Catholic-Protestant effort to relieve the sufferings of mankind. But it will be more akin to the liberation associated with the Reformation than to a later theological liberalism. What will happen as an essentially conservative Roman church and a more liberal Protestant church achieve greater rapport is something, to quote an early church father, “God only knows.”

In a special convocation April 5 the Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C., honored Cardinal Bea with the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology honoris causa. In conferring the degree Patrick Aloysius O’Boyle, archbishop of Washington and chancellor of the university, hailed Bea as a “champion of Christian unity.” Earlier this year Fathers Gustave Weigel and Hans Küng, leading advocates of rapprochement between Roman Catholics and Protestants, were denied the right to speak at the university, known for its conservatism. The rousing applause given Bea by the students of the university was perhaps a happy sign of our times.

J.D.

A Private Mission?

Augustin Cardinal Bea dismissed as “mere invention” a press report that his trip to Washington this month had diplomatic or political overtones.

In a statement issued at the Catholic University of America, Cardinal Bea replied to a news story carried in the April 5 issue of Time magazine.

The article stated that Cardinal Bea “comes with a private diplomatic mission from Pope John. In Washington, through unofficial intermediaries, Bea will let the Wffiite House know the reasoning behind Pope John’s surprising new willingness to negotiate with Communism, perhaps explain what further diplomatic moves are afoot.”

Cardinal Bea’s statement also dismissed as “invention” the article’s report that in speaking with “a friend in Rome before his trip,” he had said: “The U. S. is angry now. I’m afraid they will soon be angrier.”

The prelate said he was “on no diplomatic mission whatsoever.”

The visit to the United States by Cardinal Bea included lectures in the Boston area, New York, Baltimore, and Washington. As for as is known he did not visit the White House before returning to Rome.

Catholic Committal?

White House press aide Andrew T. Hatcher, appearing at the annual meeting of the Associated Church Press in Nashville, was asked if Democrats had not now committed themselves to nominating Roman Catholic presidential candidates exclusively.

In replying to the question posed by Editor Sherwood E. Wirt of Decision, Hatcher said he recognized the pressures of big-city politics.

“But I can’t see why they would adopt a policy like that,” he added. “I think we have many Protestants who are capable of running for the presidency.”

Hatcher, a Baptist, cited Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, a Presbyterian, as possible presidential timber.

Hatcher’s speech to the editors described how the Kennedy administration has broadened news accessibility at the White House. He did not venture an opinion on the ethical propriety of issuing false information to deceive an enemy, and none of the editors thought to ask him about it.

Five publications were honored at the ACP’s awards dinner. Motive, a controversial magazine of the Methodist Student Movement, was applauded for its graphic appeal. “Editorial courage” awards went to Presbyterian Survey, official magazine of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), and One, published by the American Lutheran Church. Cited for “notable improvement” were the United Church Observer, published by the United Church of Canada, and Church and State, published by Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Man’S Specialties

In the United States on his annual visit, noted British anthropologist Louis S. B. Leakey suggests that man is overspecialized in his hands and brains. As a result man has created the tools of his own self-destruction. But Leakey sees a ray of hope in that man may save himself if he properly uses his overspecialized brain.

At a news conference in Washington last month, Leakey averred that his continued fossil findings in East Africa present “no major conflict” with the Scriptures. He has written, nonetheless, that “the stock which eventually gave rise to man separated from that of the great apes and the gibbons, at least in Lower Miocene times, perhaps 25,000,000 years ago (The Progress and Evolution of Man in Africa, 1961, p. 37).

Leakey, son of Anglican missionaries, also has said that the African continent was “the main evolutionary center” for the higher primates and the birthplace of man himself, because there is “far more evidence concerning apes and ‘nearmen’ ” from that continent than any other area (Adam’s Ancestors, 1953, p. 185).

Leakey and his wife, who now work under the auspices of the National Geographic Society, are widely regarded as the world’s foremost prehistorians.

Meanwhile, in New York, the National Council of Churches issued a press release which concludes that “in most people’s minds there is no longer any conflict between the teachings of the Bible and those of Charles Darwin on man’s origin.”

The release cited weekly NCC telecasts “which accept and explain the theory of evolution.” It said that heavy mail from viewers shows that “scarcely one in 1,000 still finds any conflict between the Darwinian theory and the Book of Genesis.”

A Kind Of Cheating

Exciting new variations on reactionary old hymns are currently heard in England as a result of the paperback Honest to God by John Robinson, Anglican bishop of Woolwich. “O Mathematics, our help in ages past” suggests the full-throated opening praise when Cambridge’s radical theologians meet together to plan their next bombshell. Future missionaries will be sent off to the tender strains of “Ultimate Reality be with you till we meet again.” Some of Robinson’s fellow bishops have ventured mild protests, but most of them have followed the lead of Oscar Wilde’s famous character who “knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.”

The philosophers and scientists have not been so uninhibited. Dr. Robinson is surely right in concentrating on the problem of God, states Sir Julian Huxley, “for God is central to Christianity. But he seems to me wrong in stating that ‘God is ultimate reality.’ “

“This is just semantic cheating,” continued the 75-year-old biologist, “and so vague as to be effectively meaningless.”

Said noted philosopher Antony Flew: “Does Dr. Robinson appreciate that (one section of his book) must make Tillich’s theology, in all but Tillich’s own peculiar sense, atheist?” A correspondent in The Observer suggests that the bishop should demonstrate the courage of his convictions by ceasing “to accept a secure living from the Church whose main traditional doctrines he now repudiates, and cast his bread upon the waters of this secular world, which, in his opinion, is so mature as to be able to dispense with a ‘Father-God’ and to look after itself.”

Dr. Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury, declared that he thinks it is “utterly wrong” for the bishop “to denounce the imagery of God held by Christian men, women and children: imagery that they have got from Jesus himself, the image of God the Father in Heaven.”

One minister wondered how the bishop celebrated Easter Day. The possibilities are boundless.

J.D.D.

‘Pacem In Terris’

The Vatican displayed its political initiative openly this month with the issuance of a 20,000-word papal encyclical suggesting creation of a global authority to guard the peace.

Some observers are convinced that Pope John XXIII is now making a forthright bid to interact more creatively on the world scene. His friendlier posture toward the Communists seems to confirm such speculation, and many Catholics are reported to be disturbed over this turn.

A measure of Protestant anxiety also appears evident. The Federal Council of Protestant Churches in Italy issued a statement of concern following the meeting between the Pope and Khrushchev’s son-in-law. The council attributes to Roman Catholicism “a widespreading and farlooking policy that aims at reconstructing the mediaeval and theocratic union between Throne and Altar … Catholicism is conscious of the growing opportuneness of post-war conditions for its universalist ambitions … and now is expanding its relationship with secular powers ready to take up again the reins of spiritual direction for humanity.”

Here are significant excerpts from the papal encyclical, Pacem in Terris:

Today the universal common good poses problems of worldwide dimensions, which cannot be adequately tackled or solved except by the efforts of public authorities endowed with a wideness of powers, structure and means of the same proportions: that is, of public authorities which are in a position to operate in an effective manner on a worldwide basis. The moral order itself, therefore, demands that such a form of public authority be established.

A public authority, having worldwide power and endowed with the proper means for the efficacious pursuit of its objective, which is the universal common good in concrete form, must be set up by common accord and not imposed by force. The reason is that such an authority must be in a position to operate effectively yet, at the same time, its action must be inspired by sincere and real impartiality: in other words, it must be an action aimed at satisfying the objective requirements of the universal common good.

The encyclical did not say what kind of relationship the Vatican might want with such an authority.

Back In The Pulpit

Evangelist Billy Graham returned to the U. S. mainland this month after two months of convalescence in Hawaii. He plans to resume preaching on Sunday, May 12, at the opening of a week-long crusade in Paris. Prior to that Graham and his wife will attend the wedding of their oldest daughter in Switzerland.

The evangelist has been recovering from an intestinal ailment which forced him to cancel a Far Eastern tour. Local committees in 14 cities agreed to proceed with scheduled crusades, using other evangelists on Graham’s team. Akbar Haqq, an evangelist from India who is one of Graham’s associates, was a speaker during the first phase of the Japan Baptist New Life Movement in Tokyo. At the closing Tokyo rally, 10,000 Japanese heard a sermon by Baker James Cauthen, Southern Baptist missions official.

Evangelist Grady Wilson’s crusade in Manila saw 20,000 turn out for the closing service. A similar number heard evangelist Roy Gustafson in Hong Kong. Crowds of up to 8,000 heard evangelist Joseph Blinco in Taipei. Some 3,000 U. S. servicemen and dependents assembled for a service in Okinawa and heard Cliff Barrows preach.

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