Page 6283 – Christianity Today (2024)

So if anyone is in union with Christ, he is a new being; the old state of things has passed away; there is a new state of things (2 Cor. 5:17, Goodspeed).

In this message, worthy of note for simplicity and charm, a life situation leads up to a practical discussion of what it means today to be “in Christ,” in union with Christ. The object lessons come from life, with one person at a time.

I. A new Relationship to God. Where Christ’s atoning death writes the message of God’s forgiving, healing love in letters of holy blood, the rebel becomes a citizen, the slave is free, and earth’s wanderer sets out for the celestial city, all through reconciliation, “in Christ.”

II. A New Regard for Others. “From henceforth we appraise no man by human standards.” If you look at human beings through the eyes of sinful, selfish men, you get one view. If you look at them through the eyes of Jesus, you get a Christian view. The most important thing about people is that they are people for whom Christ died. That gives them, one and all, a claim to distinction, “in Christ.”

III. A New Reason for Living. “The very spring of our actions is the love of Christ.” Almost anyone can tell you his reason for making a livelihood, but few can tell you their reason for living. The Christian has an answer to that basic question. The greatest Christian of the centuries has expressed it in these priceless words: “The love of Christ controls us.” To be the channel through which the love of Christ flows is the supreme reasons for living, “in Christ.”

IV. A New Restfulness about the Life Beyond. The man who has been spiritually reborn by being united to Christ through faith does not try to prove immortality. He experiences it. He knows that what he has in Christ, this new life that possesses and controls him, gives him the “feel” of eternity. “We know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” These are some of the revolutionary novelties that one finds “out where the new begins.” Have you found it so? If not, there is a new life waiting for you now. You will find it, not in a sermon, a church, nor a book, but “in Christ.” Take him. Open your being to him. Trust him. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.”

Notable Sermons from Protestant Pulpits, ed. by Charles L. Wallis. Copyright 1958 by Abingdon Press.

SERMONS ABRIDGED BY DR. ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

PAUL S. REES,Out Where the New Begins, W. E. SANGSTER,How To Be Saved, and abridgments of two of Dr. Blackwood’s own sermons, The Communion of Saints, and A Bible Picture of a Good Mother.

“He was full of bankrupt enthusiasms,” said Carlyle of Thomas De Quincy.

The disparagement of the sermon—what it does or what it can do—has brought the contemporary Protestant pulpit to so low an estate that preaching might almost be called one of its “bankrupt enthusiasms.” Conrad Massa, writing in The Pulpit, says grimly: “In the history of the church preaching has been neglected, ignored, debased, even almost totally forgotten, but never has its place been as seriously questioned by those who are genuinely concerned with the vitality of the church’s witness as has been done repeatedly in this century.”

Not single but multiple are the reasons for this unhappy state. Let us here fix on only one: the quality of preaching always declines when the conception of preaching is removed from primacy to some stage—be it second or twenty-second—of inferiority. If the ordained man places the crown of primacy on any other head in the cabinet of his interests—visitation, group therapy, counseling, liturgy, administration, or whatever—it will be reflected in what he does in his study, with his Bible, on his knees, and in his pulpit.

Strong and effective preachers, though they differ widely in mold and manner, have this in common: they believe greatly in preaching.

Take the late W. E. Sangster, of London, as a case in point. True, the criteria we use for establishing pulpit greatness will vary from person to person. Yet I doubt if there is one knowledgeable judge of the homiletical arena who would be willing to omit Sangster’s name from any list of the twelve most distinguished preachers of the English-speaking world in the 1950’s.

With what sort of eyes, we may ask, did “Sangster of Westminster” look upon the excellence of his calling and the exactions of his craft? Those who have read his Power In Preaching will remember the lean, Anglo-Saxon pithiness with which he lays out the chapter titles: “Believe In It” … “Work At It” … “Make It Plain” … “Glow Over It,” and so on.

Not accidental, we may be sure, is the caption he writes over the first chapter: “Believe In It.” “You believe in preaching?” he asks, and immediately follows with, “How much do you believe in it?”

This query is sharpened and shaped by one chisel-stroke after another:

“No pulpit has power if it lacks deep faith in the message itself and in preaching as God’s supreme method in making his message known” (italics mine).

… “The termites of unbelief may be working at our faith in the gospel or at our faith in preaching. A bit of faith in both may survive in a man who goes on with a certain dutifulness in his work—yet only a bit. Haunted by the memory of the man who put his hand to the plow and looked back, he keeps in the furrow though he plows neither deep nor straight … An awful impoverishment falls upon the whole Church if the preachers … lose faith in preaching.”

These well-muscled Sangsterian sentences came vigorously from the heart of a man whose faith in preaching, as a never effete ordination of God, held him and thrilled him to the day of his lamented death. A “moratorium on preaching,” as seriously proposed by some capitulating clergy of recent times! Sangster would have replied, “You might as well call for a moratorium on the grace of God! For, after all, “it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).

The vices of too many sermons heard today—shallowness, frivolousness, dullness, biblically unanchored topicality and theologically unhinged moralism—will never be overcome, cast aside, except we rise to worthier views of the nature and function of preaching.

Preaching is neither “essaying” nor “rhetoricizing.” While it makes use of the rules and principles of homiletical discourse, and is therefore in a sense a craft, it is incomparably more.

Preaching is more than heralding an action of God, even though the action announced is the Incarnation, the saving Cross, the Resurrection. Preaching is action—God’s action in his called man for the sake of his Son, the Church which he has redeemed, and the world over which he yearns.

Preaching is not a performance. Preaching is an event. It is that event in which the preacher, armed with the authority of Scripture, enabled by the Holy Spirit, upheld by the believing community, brings God and man face to face.

Protestant Theory Of A University

Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought. The Biblical Experience of the Desert in the History of Christianity and the Paradise Theme in the Theological Idea of the University, by George H. Williams (Harper, 1962, 245 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Paul Woolley, Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

A more delightful introduction to the corpus of Western culture could hardly be found than this stimulating and charming volume by George Williams, the erudite yet vivacious occupant of the Winn professorship of ecclesiastical history in the Harvard Divinity School.

The book has two parts. Its larger section pursues the appearance of the wilderness theme in the Scriptures and in the history of the Church. This concept is constantly brought into relationship with the somewhat less frequently used figure of the paradise, the enclosed garden of God’s people. A task of this type can only be successfully accomplished by one who possesses the most comprehensive learning, as George Williams eminently does. He skillfully takes his reader on an entrancing excursion through the Bible and through what Western culture has done with the biblical theme. His knowledge of the early Fathers, of the medieval scholars, of the Reformers, both radical and classical, and of Puritan Protestantism stands out on every page. But this is not a compilation of items from the past. It is a living story of the way in which Christ’s followers have interpreted their status and their path in this world in these particular biblical themes and figures.

The second section of the book is even more exciting, since it is an interpretation of the modern problem of the relation of culture to Christianity in terms of the history of three great institutions, the state, the university, and the church. The work of Protestantism, and of Calvin in particular, in bringing the university out from under the aegis of the church to place it under the care of the state is appreciated. Then Williams proceeds to use Harvard as an example to show how the American university, at least, has happily won its freedom from the state. It would have been desirable at this point to raise the question of the relationship of the university to the divinely established institution, of the family, an institution coordinate in many ways, in the biblical perspective, with the state and the church. Here is the real seed of the “distinctively Protestant theory of the university,” for the family is the ultimate Republic of Letters and the university is its projection. Williams’ necessary emphasis on the importance of secondary education in this age of greater sophistication among youth fits precisely into this pattern.

Even though his view of the Fall and the Atonement is unsatisfactory, there is a basically sound presentation of the community of technique between Christian and non-Christian scholars in the search for truth. When it is realized that the university is an extension of the family, it is clear that in so far as truth is adequately taught by the senior members it will be properly developed by the junior members. Even when it is not, the juniors are not utterly disowned, but rather their redemption is sought.

PAUL WOOLLEY

Knox’S Good Name

The Faith of John Knox, by James S. McEwen (John Knox, 1961, 116 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Andrew K. Rule, Professor of Church History and Apologetics, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

This book by the professor of church history at Aberdeen is the latest of a number that have appeared since Percy’s in 1937, the impact of which is to tell the truth about Knox and, by correcting the gross popular misrepresentation of him, restore his good name. It represents the Croall Lectures, delivered in 1960 at the New College, Edinburgh, not far from a very striking statue of Knox. The book retains the lecture style, and a few typical Briticisms such as “batting on a bad wicket” will not detract from the clarity and force of its appeal to American readers. The intimacy of the lecture situation also made possible a certain forthrightness of expression which might otherwise have been avoided, but which the reviewer finds attractive. For example, “some Scottish literary writers whose itch to pontify on theology seems scarcely to be warranted by the apparent sketchiness of their acquaintance with the subject” (p. 66); and a certain misrepresentation of Calvin is “grotesque” (p. 92).

The book begins with a brief review of the life of Knox and of the situation in Scotland in order to show why “in 1559 it was Knox, or nothing.” Then Knox’s teaching is discussed with regard to “The Bible and the Holy Spirit,” “The Sacraments,” “Predestination,” and “Providence,” and a final chapter considers Knox’s “Faith of the Heart.” The author claims that in dealing with these subjects, “I have dug into theological ground just about as far as it is safe for a historian to go.”

The careful reader may judge that occasionally McEwen has gone somewhat further than that. When, for example, he concedes that the Reformers, apparently including Knox, allowed the conception of God’s “arbitrary Will” to influence them (p. 76), and then denies this (p. 78) as far as Knox is concerned, it would seem that he needs to think a little farther or should not have gone so far. Again, if, in confronting the difficulties created for the doctrine of Providence by “that vast mass of suffering that appears to have no human origin,” he sides, against Knox, with the modern theologians who regard “the material universe as a semi-autonomous system, running machine-like under the control of natural laws laid down for it at the hour of its creation,” it might well be suggested that he think again. It seems, too, that he has exaggerated the differences between Calvin and Knox with regard to the Lord’s Supper, not, indeed, by misrepresenting Knox but by failing to do justice to Calvin.

For all that, Dr. McEwen shows himself to be a very good theologian, with a gift for the clear expression of theological issues and doctrines; and this is a very good book.

ANDREW K. RULE

Sanctity In The News

The Christian as a Journalist, by Richard T. Baker (Association, 1961, 119 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by David E. Kucharsky, News Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Baker tests the compatibility of contemporary journalism with Christianity, and many will disagree with his strained defense of the profession as a sacred calling in and of itself. They will contend that journalism, like any other profession, is only as sacred as one makes it.

The real value of the book, however, lies in its examination of the ethical problems of the press, radio, and television. These problems are paraded across its pages provocatively enough to demand the attention of clergymen, publishers, editors, and reporters alike. The beginner in journalism, for whom the book was originally intended, may be left somewhat bewildered, but he will be thankful to have been oriented early in the game.

Baker is one of those rare individuals who have formal training in theology as well as in journalism. A former associate editor of World Outlook (Methodist), he is now a professor of journalism at Columbia University. This, his latest book, is one of the Haddam House series on Christian vocation.

Aside from a few theological presuppositions which the evangelical will reject, the content deserves high commendation. It could go a long way toward correcting misconceptions about the press which are quite widespread, even among ministers. Baker’s handling is intelligent and his style highly readable.

My chief disappointment is that Baker virtually ignores religious news per se, the frontier upon which the Church meets the journalistic profession most pointedly.

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

Liturgical Revision

The Durham Book, edited and introduced by G. J. Cuming (Oxford, 1961, 299 pp., $10.10; 63s.), is reviewed by G. E. Duffield, London Manager. CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Mr. Cuming, formerly Vice Principal of St. John’s College, Durham, has produced a line edition of a complex but important seventeenth-century liturgical text. The original manuscript was the product of several Laudian hands, chiefly those of bishops Wren and Cosin with the future archbishop, Sancroft, latterly as their scribe. These annotations on the Prayer Book reflect High Church reaction to the Puritan dislike of the national liturgy, and a return to the semi-reformed 1549 English and 1637 Scottish Episcopal liturgies. The most radical were rejected in the definitive 1662 revision, but have been substantially accepted by Episcopalians in America and South Africa. The main changes are in the Communion service, and go some way towards undermining Reformed doctrine. One can only hope that once again in the present Prayer Book revision the Church of England will follow Archbishop Cranmer’s genius, and reject attempts to restore unreformed and unbiblical teaching about the Lord’s Supper.

G. E. DUFFIELD

Sharing Christ’S Concern

The Minister and the Care of Souls, by Daniel Day Williams (Harper, 1961, 157 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Charles W. Koller, President-emeritus, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.

Reading for Perspective

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

* The New Testament Octapla, ed. by Luther A. Weigle (Thomas Nelson, $20). For the first time, eight English versions of the New Testament in the Tyndale-King James tradition, all on facing pages for easy comparison and study. A major publishing event.

* Communism and Christian Faith, by Lester DeKoster (Eerdmans, $3.50). Communism defined, analyzed, sharply contrasted with Christianity, and accompanied by a clear call to Christian social action.

* The Church and the Older Person, by Robert M. Gray and David O. Moberg (Eerdmans, $3.50). A timely exploration of how the Church can help older people to adjust to the peculiar problems of their later years.

The substance of this book was given in a series of special lectures at the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. The author writes as a theologian and minister, but with considerable insight in the areas of psychology and counseling. While emphasizing the spiritual needs of those to be helped, the author points out that Christ in his salvation was concerned for the sick bodies and minds of men as well as their souls. The minister must share this concern of the Great Physician.

In the Scriptures, the language of salvation and the language of healing are interwoven. Man is incredibly complex. “Every part of his being and his experience is linked actually or potentially with every other part. There is no happening in the history of the body or mind which may not involve the whole person at the spiritual center of his existence.” There is deliverance from disease, demon possession, and estrangement from God. “We encounter our neighbor, as God has encountered us, not in the innocence of development towards perfection, but in the distortion and suffering of estrangement.” To be saved means “to have one’s life in all its good and evil, its hope and its brokenness, restored to participation in the love of God.”

The author recognizes the inadequacies of much well-intentioned pastoral work, which may overlook psychological considerations while dealing with “the deepest mystery of all, the life of the soul before God.” He recognizes also the danger of substituting “a sectarian gospel of psychological healing” for the Christian message of salvation through the grace of God. He exalts Christ and accords due reverence to the Scriptures. His frequent and easy references to some authors who are not generally acceptable to conservatives reflect his familiarity with a field in which unfortunately not enough has been written from a biblically conservative point of view.

It is gratifying to note the author’s emphasis on the scriptural concept of sin as personal estrangement, and the value he places upon the vocabulary of Scripture, for which there is no substitute but which is so often set aside for terms that inadequately convey the biblical meanings. At the same time it is pointed out that the minister must be able to make himself understood in terms that are intelligible to others, whatever vocabulary this may demand.

To the person being counseled, the minister represents an Authority higher than himself, and a world with which the person must come to terms. But the minister’s attitude must not be that of condescension, but of sympathetic identification with the needs and weaknesses of the counselee. The therapy of confession requires an atmosphere which does not threaten the person with rejection, no matter what he may disclose. He must be assured of love and acceptance no matter what happens. Only on this basis can counselor and counselee deal successfully with the distorted self-image which may have been built up.

The minister will find this book stimulating and helpful. The average reader may wish that there were a further chapter giving more detailed help as to counseling procedures in the care of souls.

CHARLES W. KOLLER

Worth Waiting For

The Epistle to the Philippians, by Karl Barth (John Knox, 1962, 128 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Everett F. Harrison, Professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Though it has awaited translation 35 years, and been overshadowed by Barth’s earlier work on Romans, this modest volume will be cordially received. It proceeds in a different atmosphere than the Romans commentary, since there is an avoidance of philosophical categories of thought. Barth has examined many of the leading German commentaries on the epistle, and occasionally quotes from several, but for the most part has sought to make Paul’s thought his own by patient, sympathetic study of the epistle itself.

There is no discussion of introductory matters. There is some unevenness of treatment for example, 40 pages devoted to chapter one, 11 to chapter four.

Of special interest is the author’s handling of chapter three. In his estimation Paul is talking throughout against the background of Judaizing Christians and the menace which they constitute to the Church.

In this commentary one senses an original mind at work, frequently giving a fresh turn to a familiar phrase or sentence. This feature alone makes the reading profitable.

EVERETT F. HARRISON

A Free Sample

The Parables He Told, by David A. Redding (Revell, 1962, 177 pp., $3), is reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Sometimes a magazine lavishly praises its authors to enhance its own content. But when Life magazine wrote that Redding is “one of the most eloquent younger voices in the U.S. pulpit today” it was not simply trying to sell magazines.

This reviewer has not come across greater eloquence among ministers “today,” nor during a long time prior. Here is literary expression as modern as today, as current as a jumping toothache.

Here we have eloquence that is not sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, but a conveyor of the old, old story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by a preacher who does not deny the Gospel’s biblical background: the reality of sin and hell.

The best way to convey an uncommonly eloquent expression of the Gospel is to provide a free sample. The book begins thus: “Lost: One planet with some people still on it. Man overboard in a sea of space and the man is Everyman. Lost: The Faith of Our Fathers—in a bottomless pit of cold suspicion and very scholarly research. Lost: Late last night, I’m afraid, up the tortuous streets of science, in the relativity of the times, … Lost: Last seen somewhere east of Eden, a man whose name is Adam. Lost: His God, His Garden, His Way.” Elegant literary expression of the Gospel is sometimes less than theologically precise, just as theologically precise language is rarely eloquent. Since the parables themselves are cast into the form of literary excellence, they are sometimes hard to interpret with precision.

This difficulty is, however, no real handicap if one understands what a parable really is. And the author does. He asserts “a parable is a story true to this house of earth, but with a window open to heaven. One can get lost in the details, but the aim is to find the ‘big idea’ and as Chrysostom said, ‘Be not overbusy about the rest.’ Jesus recipe: A favorite story on a familiar subject and a flash of heavenly light.”

Here is eloquence biblically compounded: eloquence and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

JAMES DAANE

Strange Conjunction

Capital Punishment, by James Avery Joyce (Thomas Nelson, 1961, 288 pp., $5), is reviewed by Mariano Di Gangi, Minister, Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia.

Here is a vigorous protest against capital punishment and national defense. Based on a wide survey, this book abounds in statistics and quotations. But it is also filled with questionable conclusions and emotional expressions.

Reference is made, for example, to the “infamous lynching” of Caryl Chessman, “the hero of death row,” a victim offered up on the altar of “California’s public abbattoir” (pp. 30, 35, 54). The author also draws a contrast between the nations which use both capital punishment and nuclear deterrents, and the Communist regime of Mao—which is supposed by him to advocate persuasion rather than liquidation of the disloyal!

For all his sincerity the author shows insufficient appreciation of the grim reality of militant evil; of the need of retribution no less than reformation; of the State as the divinely appointed instrument of temporal justice against local criminals and international aggressors.

MARIANO DI GANGI

Devotional Theology

The Nature of Faith, by Gerhard Ebeling, tr. by Ronald Gregor Smith (Muhlenberg, 1961, 191 pp., $3), is reviewed by Samuel J. Mikolaski, Professor of Theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Dr. Ebeling, of the theological faculty at Zürich, gives us 15 lectures on the nature of faith delivered originally to the students of all the faculties in the university during the winter of 1958–59. There is a useful appendix where he probes the relations of the Word of God to language. Ronald Gregor Smith deserves commendation for doing so well the difficult task of translating the German text into English.

It is not easy to state either an appreciation or criticism of the book. As a series of addresses to students it makes the appeal of a Christian man witnessing to his faith in God. Its air of devotion and its values of piety, especially of the Reformed evangelical tradition, reach out to the reader frequently. The theological questions the author raises are, conversely, deeply disturbing and probing. Questions should probe, yet when the analysis has been followed through painstakingly, one wonders whether the simplicity and the unity of faith are preserved and whether finality of what God has both said and done in Jesus Christ shines through. Probably I have difficulty with this book because I see here, what is not uncommon in German theology, an uneasy tension between transcendence and revelation, history and faith; between what is given and known, and what is felt.

Inevitably much of the question turns upon the devotional and theological use to which the Bible is put. Dr. Ebeling makes the usual criticisms of what some call biblicism. In particular he seems to agree to the charge that the Protestant use of the Bible can be turned against orthodoxy because the Reformers and post-Reformation theologians especially failed to see that the witness of Scripture is the witness of tradition and, therefore, that the argument, so far as claims to the final authority of Scripture are concerned, turns full circle in favor of Rome (p. 36). Dr. Ebeling is right in saying that the New Testament canon was not closed by an infallible and irrevocable decision (presumably he means conciliar), nevertheless there is more to the use of that slippery term tradition, than that alongside Scripture it has both an interpretive and complementary character (p. 35). Tradition in the early Fathers meant something other than the late Medieval and post-Reformation Roman Catholicism claimed. The Fathers always put themselves below the apostles so that a significant triad of authority emerges in their writings: the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Apostles. They were biblical theologians even where, as amongst the Alexandrians, forms of philosophy were used in the structuring of theology. The uniqueness of Scripture to, say, Clement and Origen lay in this—that nothing in Scripture can be accidental, irrelevant, unworthy of God, trivial, or absurd.

Tradition meant that the Gospel is public; that in nature it is neither like the secrets of esoteric (e.g., Gnostic) sects, nor like the tradition later claimed by Rome where there occur authoritative accretions to the Gospel on the ground of the privately known and hidden meanings of sacraments, texts, visions, or events. Christians said, “we do not comprise a secret society with hidden knowledge gained by mystic rites. Our minds, hearts, and hands are open. The events of our faith are public. We proclaim the saving acts of God in Christ for all men in all times and places.” Here Scripture and Tradition, the written and the living word join. The early Fathers could as well say about any heretical doctrine “This is not the faith of the church” as “This is not the teaching of Scripture.” The Holy Spirit and the Word inscripturated are inseparable. This is the norm of religious truth and the validation of faith. I admire faith but Christian faith is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God and our Saviour known by the Holy Spirit through the Holy Scriptures.

In ingenious ways other points of view are put forward that prompt searching questions. If we are to distinguish the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith, how does faith in the latter arise? It is assumed here that the one Lord Jesus Christ cannot be the object of faith in the sense in which Christians have commonly confessed him. How did Jesus the witness of faith become the basis of faith? (p. 58). By the Resurrection, the author answers. But how are we to understand the Resurrection? “How can we simply swallow all this literally?” he asks of the evidence (p. 61). The Resurrection, he says, occurs only to believers in the event; the point of the post-Resurrection appearances of our Lord is this, “one must say that they occurred only to those who became believers in this event” (p. 68). For this theologian it appears that foul balls, balls, and strikes are foul balls, balls, and strikes only when he calls them. After what is a rather useful survey of the evidence for the Resurrection appearances and the Empty Tomb, the conclusion Dr. Ebeling comes to about them and the historical rising from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth, seems possible only by some sort of remarkable legerdemain.

SAMUEL J. MIKOLASKI

Is Christ The Church?

What is the Church? by André De Bovis (Hawthorn Books, 1961, 160 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by John Murray, Professor of Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.

This is a Roman Catholic work, endorsed with the official Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, translated from the French by R. F. Trevett.

No topic concerned with the Church is more in the forefront of interest and discussion at the present time than the meaning of the Church as the body of Christ. De Bovis, rightly in this reviewer’s judgment, rejects the view that it denotes merely a supra-personal collective in the sense “of a group of men forming a ‘corporate body’” (p. 77). Neither will he allow that the union of the Church with Christ is hypostatic nor that the expression “body of Christ” is metaphorical. When he propounds an “accurate formula,” he says: “the union between Christ and the Church is a ‘mystical’ union. This term signifies that the identification between Christ and the Church is a unique reality, that it has no equivalent in the rest of our experience” (p. 89). This is a definition that any Protestant can, or at least should, accept, and perhaps, in a few words, we cannot go further.

But De Bovis, interpreting or applying this “formula,” imposes a conception that exceeds all warrant of the biblical sources. “The ‘Body of Christ’,” he affirms, “is Christ himself in person” and he claims that Paul “asserts that the Church, the assembly of the faithful and a visible organism, whose ministers form a hierarchy, is identical with the Christ of history now risen and in glory” (p. 77), “that the Church as a whole is Christ” (p. 88). One wonders by what exegesis this inference is drawn. It must be by the kind of leap, illustrated on page 97, by which Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20 are supposed to yield the datum that “the first community of the faithful” is called the Word of God or when Augustine is alleged to support the dictum of the encyclical Mystici Corporis (p. 92).

Protestants will be more than mystified by the equivocations in chapter IV on the subject of infallibility.

JOHN MURRAY

Samaritan From Germany

The Good Samaritan: The Life Story of ‘Father’ Bodelschwingh, by Margaret Bradfield (Marshalls, 1961, 224 pp., 15s), is reviewed by Dr. Arthur H. Casson, physician, Bristol, England.

Here is a nineteenth-century saint from Germany who should be known. He saw where need existed and had faith and energy to meet it out of love for his Saviour and his fellowmen.

He founded the first German hospital for epileptics, where gradually the sufferers became a community of hopeful, repentant, believing, loving and working people. Despite grievous bereavement and hostile attack he saw illness itself to be medicine sent by God as a means of spiritual recovery. Having established foundations where deaconesses and brothers were trained and directed, he started homes for vagrants and workers’ settlements, a home for the cure of drunkards, a training school, and a theological college. He staffed mission work in East Africa and began settlements for liberated slaves and for mental defectives. The proclamation of God’s Word and the bringing of Christ’s deliverance was the prime purpose of all his activity through practical kindness and genuine love.

ARTHUR H. CASSON

Balanced Production

The Gospel According to St. Matthew, by R. V. G. Tasker (Eerdmans, 1961, 285 pp., $3), is reviewed by Wick Broomall, Minister, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia.

As in his three other contributions to the Tyndale Bible Commentaries, of which he is general editor, Dr. Tasker, in the present volume, again maintains an adequate balance between the devotional and the critical—sufficient to satisfy the scholar and the general reader. Designedly conservative in approach, this volume does not ignore relevant critical problems.

An appendix enthusiastically affirms that the New English Bible “will prove itself to be an instrument of the greatest value for understanding … the entire New Testament” (p. 285).

WICK BROOMALL

The Majors

Great Religions of Modern Man, ed. by Richard A. Gard: Buddhism, by Richard A. Gard; Catholicism, by George Brantl; Hinduism, by Louis Renou; Islam, by John Alden Williams; Judaism, by Arthur Hertzberg; Protestantism, by J. Leslie Dunstan (George Braziller, Inc., 1961, 255 pp. each, $4 each), is reviewed by Francis R. Steele, Home Secretary, North Africa Mission.

Glimpses into six major religious systems are provided by these attractive books averaging 243 pages of text. There is a remarkably comprehensive treatment for such brief space with two further commendable features: abundant documentation from original sources, and for the most part a thoroughly readable style.

In general, the six volumes represent two main streams of religious development; Hinduism-Buddhism from Central Asia and Judaeo-Christianity with its eccentric offshoot, Islam, from the Near East. Each religion is treated, in a sense, from an academic standpoint. Therefore, understandably, the positive or ideal side is portrayed. No mention is made, for example, of the more unsavory amoral aspects of Hinduism in India or the grosser practices of Romanism in Central and South America. There is something to be said for this method of treatment, but it has one serious drawback. In our dealings with people we meet them as they are not necessarily as their theologians say they ought to be. But for all of that, these volumes will repay a careful reading, since the authors are qualified experts. One wonders, however, why in the case of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, a practitioner of the religion was not chosen to speak.

Judaism: With refreshing frankness, Dr. Hertzberg states flatly in his introduction that it is essential to the Jewish faith that God is and that he chose Israel as his peculiar people. Judaism is a God-made religion. The core of it is the Torah and the Covenant. Woven through the whole of Jewish history are the twin themes of suffering and serving. Copious citations from all periods illustrate the author’s thesis that “Jewish faith … by its nature permits variation in belief” (p. 177). By and large, the concepts of revelation and the Covenant have continued through Jewish history but various interpretations have been given by Orthodox, Conservative and Rationalists. Hertzberg’s presentation makes allowance for all schools of thought but presents as central a fairly conservative viewpoint. Shorn of the sacrifices of the past, ritualism today is largely symbolic and man is charged with his own salvation (pp. 178, 195).

The Messianic ideal and return to the Land are interrelated, according to Hertzberg, but in contemporary expression have been blended with other factors which have made of Zionism, more of a Jewish nationalism and escape from persecution than the realization of fulfilled prophecy (p. 172).

Hinduism and Buddhism: These two religions can be considered together. As probably less well known to the audience for whom this set of books was intended than the other four religions—with the possible exception of Islam—the extensive 57-page general introduction to each, helps the reader to approach the subsequent chapters on the religious literature with greater confidence. Yet even here, due to the complexity of the situation, there is a bewildering array of strange terminology, often without readily discoverable definition. For example, there is no definition of “bhakti” until its fifth citation.

Strangely enough, neither volume mentions the historic relation between Hinduism and Buddhism, though this would explain the elements they have in common. Both books, however, do relate the tendencies to adapt ancient Eastern religions to the modern world and the tensions this has created. This is of great interest (and concern) to the Christian missionary. The authors point out that such philosophical metamorphosis is limited to a relatively small portion of the population at the top level and has virtually no effect on the bulk of the people who continue in their old practices and superstitions. This is likewise true of Islam.

Catholicism: Dr. Brand has done a commendable job of stating his case simply and lucidly with the confidence of a man who knows he is right. As a presentation of a major branch of professing Christendom, this book has one distinct advantage over the volume on Protestantism. There is no indication of internal dissent or division. The facts are stated flatly and convincingly with no note of apology and no place for argument. It is assumed that the Roman church is the church and no reference is made to separations or schisms of any kind. No explicit statement regarding the basis of authority is made. Practices and doctrines are supported by quotes from the Bible, the Apocrypha, the Fathers, papal encyclicals, etc., as all of equal weight. A superficial comparison of the two volumes gives the impression that Protestants are confused and divided—as indeed they are—but that there is a perfect coherency and unity in the Roman Catholic Church—which is not so. Closer inspection will reveal specious logic and substantiation of peculiarly Roman ideas from extra biblical authorities. One could wish that for the sake of accuracy, the title had read “Roman Catholicism,” or even “North American Roman Catholicism” for that would have been nearer the mark.

Protestantism: The author of this volume was confronted with a very real problem. Which of the several faces of present-day Protestantism represents the real thing? Inherent in the nature of Protestantism is the spirit which has produced so many divisions.

The basic concept of the author that “God deals directly with (each individual) man,” (p. 9) rather than that the Bible is a common source of authority for all is opposed to the facts as seen in the history of the Reformation. His further assumption that “because of its essential nature,” Protestantism must constantly change “as it adjusts to its world” (p. 10), is only partly true and applies to its approach to the world, not its doctrine. Dunstan rejects both liberalism and fundamentalism as “conservative” in that they cling to old-fashioned ideas (p. 200). He presents as the main stream, the true spirit of Protestantism, a theological position which appears to be largely Barthian neoorthodoxy of ten years or more ago. Nothing is said of the more recent European exodus from Barth to Bultmann. Two-thirds of the citations in chapter VI, “Protestantism and the Twentieth Century” are 20 years old and the latest dates to 1955.

The author apparently builds his case on the assumption that this branch of theology by its flexibility has retained the core of historic Christianity while extricating itself from the shackles of “conservatism” and adapting itself to the modern world.

But evangelicals insist that Protestantism must be understood in a double sense; a protest against degeneracy in the Catholic church, to be sure, but also, and chiefly, a “declaration” of the historic Christian faith going all the way back to its beginnings and founded on the authority of Divine Revelation, first through the prophets, now in Scripture. This is the true main stream. All else is in some degree or other a departure from it. In this perspective alone, can the other religions be examined and judged accurately.

Islam: Here is a generally frank, if somewhat apologetic, statement of the world’s most aggressive, modern, non-Christian religion. Fully two-thirds of the text are quotes from translations of original sources. These selections afford helpful insight into the character and spirit of Islam from several points of view through the words of the companions of the prophets, lawyers and learned men, poets and mystics and, of course, Muhammad himself.

Dr. Williams builds his thesis, chapter by chapter, successively on: the Kur’ān (the recitations of Muhammad), the hadíth (traditions concerning the words and acts of Muhammad not recorded in the Kur’ān), the law, the mystics and the theologians with a closing chapter on “the dissidents of the Community.” It is surprising that no mention is made of the Ahmadiya sect (and its partner Kādiāni). To be sure, they are considered heretics by orthodox Muslims, yet they bear the name Muslim and are the most vocal and active of all today.

Apparently the author deliberately abandoned the standard presentation of Islam on the basis of imān (faith) and din (practice) for his own scheme. It is unfortunate the two were not combined for the sake of balance and clarity. One also misses any reference to the struggle of adjustment to the modern world through which Islam is now passing—especially in a volume in the series “Great Religions of Modern Man.” Again, I would recommend a lengthy, general introduction—even if at the expense of some citations—for the benefit of the non-expert reader.

In conclusion, may I offer a few suggestions. When so many technical terms are included, more extensive indexes are required, especially in the case of lesser known religions. There is also an omission of almost all historic data and popular information, perhaps on the assumption that this data is already well known. To remedy this, dare I suggest that the prospective reader glance first at an encyclopedia before tackling the current volume on the subject? Otherwise he will find rather heavy going in what by its size and style is obviously intended as a “popular” study.

FRANCIS R. STEELE

Book Briefs

Works of Love, by Sören Kierkegaard, tr. by Howard and Edna Hong (Harper, 1962, 383 pp., $6). A major and devotional book of Kierkegaard in which he discusses the nature of love, both in its inward intensity and outward expressions.

Revelation, by Luther Poellot (Concordia, 1962, 314 pp., $5). An evangelical commentary on the last book of the Bible by an author who does not try to say more than he knows.

The Light of the World, by Jaroslav Pelikan (Harper, 1962, 128 pp., $3). “Light” as a biblical symbol of God is scrutinized particularly as it appears in the thought of Athanasius, in order to make it a bearer of God’s Word in our present culture.

Counseling: A Modern Emphasis in Religion, by Leslie E. Moser (Prentice-Hall, 1962, 354 pp., $6.50). A wide range of counseling aid for pastors and church-related clinics by a professor of psychology at Baylor University.

The Pastoral Care of Families, by William E. Hulme (Abingdon, 1962, 208 pp., $3.50). How to render pastoral care at all stages of the life cycle of the family: parent-child, youth, the about-to-marry, midlife, old-age. Useful to both pastors and laymen.

Philosophical Fragments, by Sören Kierkegaard (Princeton, 1962, 260 pp., $6.50). This is one of Kierkegaard’s important and most readable books. A revised translation, with introduction and commentary.

Paperbacks

A Chosen Vessel, by C. F. D. Moule (Association, 1961, 79 pp., $1). A living portrait of Paul constructed from the pages of the New Testament.

Law and Gospel, by W. Andersen (Association, 1961, 80 pp., $1). A discussion of the function of law in a Gospel proclaiming freedom in Christ.

The Pursuit of God, by A. W. Tozer (Christian Publications, Harrisburg, Pa., 1961, 128 pp., $1.50). Here is a perceptive study (first published in 1958) of the heart thirsting after God in which “deep answers to deep.”

Preaching from the Bible, by Andrew W. Blackwood (Abingdon, 1961, 247 pp., $1.25). A rich source of insights and suggestions for the man of the pulpit from rich experience of Princeton’s long-time professor of practical theology. Reprint.

The Incomparable Book, by Wilbur M. Smith (Beacon Publications, Minneapolis, Minn., 1961, 64 pp., $.75). Whatever one may think of the Bible, he cannot escape the fact that it is the most remarkable volume ever written. The author has written a guide to help us as we read through it.

Seasons and Symbols, by Robert Wetzler and Helen Huntington (Augsburg, 1962, 108 pp., $1.95). Rich, descriptive detail of the church year.

The Acts of the Apostles, by Charles Caldwell Ryrie (Moody, 1961, 127 pp., $.39). A story-commentary of the chief source book for the facts concerning Christianity in the first century after Christ.

Reprints

Paul the Man, by Clarence Edward Macartney (Revell, 1962, 221 pp., $2.95). A refreshing interpretation of Paul’s life, his message, and his ministry by one of America’s great preachers.

Casebook in Pastoral Counseling, ed. by Newman S. Cryer, Jr., and John Monroe Vayhinger (Abingdon, 1962, 320 pp., $4.95). Fifty-six cases involving major aspects of counseling.

The Universe: Plan or Accident?, by Robert E. D. Clark (Muhlenberg, 1961, 240 pp., $3.50; Paternoster, 16s.). A revised, enlarged edition, which considers the religious implications of modern science.

Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, by F. F. Bruce (Eerdmans, 1961, 160 pp., $3; Paternoster, 1961, 160 pp., 12s. 6d.). A revision and enlargement of the 1956 edition. The author’s judgment on main issues is unchanged except on some details.

The Abiding Presence, by Hugh Martin (John Knox, Edinburgh, 1962, 256 pp., 13s. 6d.). A rich and glowing presentation of the presence of Christ as actualized in the days of his flesh, and later in the person of the Holy Spirit. First published in 1860 under the title Christ’s Presence in the Gospel History.

Campus Gods on Trial, by Chad Walsh (Macmillan, 1962, 154 pp., $3). Walsh who knows the modern college explodes the myth that it is godless. He helps students to see the host of pseudogods which reign on campus.

A fortnightly report of developments in religion

The following is a report on the lectures delivered by Professor Karl Barth at the University of Chicago, April 23–27. Barth spoke to overflow audiences of more than 2,000 at each of seven sessions held in Rockefeller Chapel. This report has been prepared expressly forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy at Butler University.

To judge Barth fairly one must ask: What is this distinguished theologian trying to do? During the panel discussion, in answering a question from Professor Schubert M. Ogden of Southern Methodist University, Barth said: “In no sense is theology dependent on philosophy; one of my primary intentions has always been to declare the independence of theology from philosophy, including religion.”

As in his Church Dogmatics Barth reiterated his opposition to a nonhistorical religion of general principles, principles discovered by ordinary human capacity as exemplified in anthropology, sociology, politics, or any other science. Theology is sui generis. The reason is that God is not some Hegelian Absolute to be discovered and manipulated by man. God is the living and free person who has acted and spoken in history. Therefore the place and starting point of theology is the Word of God. “The Word of God spoke, speaks, and will speak again.”

Theology is a response to the Word of God. If it should try to justify itself, if it should try to reserve for itself a place among the sciences, if it should explain or excuse itself, it would destroy its whole significance. Before a man can respond, he must be summoned by the creative Word. Otherwise there is no evangelical theology at all.

These sentiments give content to Barth’s aim to free theology from all science and philosophy. For this reason it seems most just to evaluate Barth’s performance as an attempt to oppose the liberalism and modernism of the last hundred years. He is speaking against Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Harnack, Herrmann, and perhaps also against Bultmann.

Thus can be understood the special place Barth assigns to the history of Israel. It is there, and not in China or elsewhere that God has spoken. When Professor Edward J. Carnell of Fuller Theological Seminary asked if God could be encountered in reading Confucius, as some Chinese might claim, or in Mozart, whom Barth loves, Barth replied in effect that whatever might be encountered in other sacred writings, it is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Barth thus stresses the history of Israel as no modernist ever can. Salvation is of the Jews, and the culmination of their history is Jesus Christ and the empty tomb. In opposition to the liberals Barth insists that the apostles did not preach “the historical Jesus” (of Renan or Harnack) nor did they preach “the divine Christ” (Bultmann), but rather the one concrete Jesus Christ our Lord.

In our preaching today we are dependent on the apostles. Theology knows the Word only second hand; it is not on the same level with the apostles. We today may know more science than they knew, but we know less about the Word of God than they knew. The modern theologian must not sit over them and correct their notes as a schoolmaster corrects the essays of his students. No! The apostles must look over our shoulders and correct our essays!

Obviously this is all in opposition to the History-of-Religion school, and it ill accords with proposals to merge all religions into one world-religion. This latter is based on religious experience, on philosophy, on human capacities. Barth wishes to respond to the Word of God.

The next question is whether Barth can press home his attack on modernism. Can he make good in constructive theological detail?

Father Bernard Cooke, S.J., of Marquette University, asked Barth if knowledge of God arrived at in faith could be integrated with knowledge about God attained in natural theology. Barth, of course, allows no place for natural theology; but his answer to this question was given in the form of a dilemma. If these two knowledges are not identical, they cannot be integrated; but, continued Barth, if they are identical, then the Bible is wrong when it says that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of philosophy. “The God of philosophy is always an idol,” and then in the manner of Billy Graham, Barth added, “The Bible says so!”

But difficulties arise, the more specific the questions become. Ogden, Jakob J. Petuchowski, Hebrew Union College, and Carnell agreed essentially on one question. The Jewish rabbi put it in a slightly different form. He wished to know why one might not select and interpret parts of the Old Testament, and even parts of the New Testament, without being forced to a central Christology. From a Christian point of view, and especially from an evangelical point of view, Carnell’s formulation is more familiar. “How does Dr. Barth,” asks Carnell, “harmonize his appeal to Scripture as the objective Word of God with his admission that Scripture is sullied by errors, theological as well as historical or factual.”

Carnell confessed parenthetically that “this is a problem for me, too.”

This seems to be a most important question. Can a theology claim to be a biblical theology and reject parts of the Bible as theological and historical errors? Can Barth insist on the independence of theology and then in some way or other select one verse and reject another? Does not such selection require a principle or criterion different from the Bible? Must not a theologian who denies verbal inspiration and Biblical inerrancy use of necessity some philosophic or scientific test of how much and what part of the Bible he will accept?

Barth’s answer does not seem to meet the question. He asserted that the Bible is a fitting instrument to point men to God, who alone is infallible. The Bible is a human document and not sinless as Christ was. Then a large part of the overflow audience—possibly 500 were standing in the aisles or sitting on the stone floor—applauded Barth’s assertion that there are “contradictions and errors” in the Bible. After and possibly because of this expression of hostility, Carnell professed to be satisfied and did not press the matter of a nonbiblical criterion by which to judge what is a theological error in the Bible.

In answer to Rabbi Petuchowski’s question concerning the state of Israel, Barth said that modern Israel is a new sign of the electing grace and faithfulness of God. Especially after the horrors of Hitler, the reappearance of Zion as a state is a miracle. He further observed that the Jews have always owed their existence to God alone, not to their own power. Now today, wedged among the Arab nations and caught in an East-West struggle, God alone will preserve Israel.

A less pertinent note was introduced into the panel discussion by lawyer Frank W. Stringfellow. He requested Barth to comment on his view that “in the United States the many and divided churches live in a society which constitutionally professes the freedom of public worship … It increasingly appears, however, that the use of that freedom—the only use that is socially approved, at least—is confined to either the mere formalities of religious observance … or to the use of religion to rationalize or serve the national self-interest …”

In explaining his written question, Stringfellow referred to the National Council of Churches’ report on Red China a few years ago. Using the dodge that this was a “study” and not a “official position” of the National Council, Stringfellow seemed to believe that the widespread reaction against this pro-Red document on the part of many individual Christians throughout the nation was an infringement on the church’s liberty. In the United States, he claimed, the church is “stifled.” He went on to say that the large loss of income that resulted from the publicity on the Red China issue has made the National Council very careful in making any statements since that time.

Continuing further with Stringfellow’s concern in politics, Barth remarked that Romans 13 is a “disturbing chapter” and played a great role in the submission of the German church to the political leaders. Mere submission, however, is not enough. The verses tell us to place ourselves in a political order; we are commanded to pray for our rulers; this means we are responsible for them. Therefore the Christian must take part in politics and not retire to the position of a spectator.

Nonetheless, in identifying the evil principalities and powers which bedevil the Christian, Barth put anti-communism in the same class with communism. He also spoke of the evil power of sport, fashion, tradition of all kinds, religion, the unconscious, and reason as well. Sinful man, separated from God, makes these things his rulers; he becomes their servant. Needed is a new heaven and a new earth with a bodily resurrection at Christ’s second coming.

On his last day in Chicago, there was a university convocation where Professor Barth was awarded an honorary degree. Barth again declared in his final lecture, delivered at the convocation, that evangelical theology is without presuppositions. Its statements “could not be derived from any points outside of the sphere of reality and truth which they themselves signify. They had no premises in any results of a general science … and they likewise had no background in any philosophical foundations.”

Most of the last lecture, however, dealt with the Spirit. In various ways Barth insisted that the Spirit blows where he wills; that this is a matter of free grace; and that the Spirit gives himself “undeservedly and incalculably.”

It is somewhat of a milestone in the history of American theology that the University of Chicago, so thoroughly liberal in the early part of the century, should now in the sixties award a degree to a man with this much of a biblical message. Doubtless the impact of Barth’s visit will be evident here for the next decade at least.

Barth’S Itinerary

Following his Chicago lectures, Professor Karl Barth was scheduled to proceed to the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary and render what essentially amounted to a repeat performance.

The Princeton series was slated to be part of the seminary’s sesquicentennial celebration.

San Francisco Theological Seminary at San Anselmo, California, announced that “after being importuned” by President Theodore A. Gill, Barth consented to speak to the theological community there on May 16.

Other scheduled stops on the cross-country circuit included the Gettysburg battlefields (Barth is an amateur expert on the Civil War) and Washington, where a private dinner meeting was being arranged in his honor.

This is the first time that the 75-year-old Barth has ever visited the United States. It comes upon his retirement from a professorship at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Barth’s 46-year-old son Markus is a New Testament scholar at the University of Chicago. Another son, Christoph, 44, teaches Old Testament at the University of Djakarta.

Rome And Racism

In one of the most celebrated cases of excommunication in modern times, three Roman Catholic segregationists lost rights to participate in their church’s divine offices last month. Monsignor Charles J. Plauche, chancellor of the New Orleans archdiocese, announced the excommunication order at a press conference. The order read:

“Despite the paternal admonition of his excellency, the Most Rev. Joseph Francis Rummel, Archbishop of New Orleans, cautioning certain members of the Church against any further attempt through word or deed to hinder his orders or provoke the devoted people of this venerable archdiocese to disobedience, or rebellion, in the matter of opening our schools to all Catholic children, the following subjects of the Archdiocese, by flagrant disregard of his fatherly counsel have incurred the spiritual penalty of excommunication of which he warned them in his ‘personal and confidential’ letter of March 31, 1962.”

The names of the excommunicates were then listed with the notation that “this spiritual penalty may be remitted only by the ordinary [archbishop] or by his delegates.”

The “personal and confidential” letter had previously been made public by the most vociferous of the excommunicates, Mrs. B. J. Gaillot, Jr., Bible-quoting leader of a small segregationist group, Save Our Nation, which picketed the archbishop’s residence when he ordered parochial schools desegregated by next fall. Mrs. Gaillot released the text after trying in vain to gain a personal audience with the 85-year-old Rummel. He finally consented to see her, then cancelled the scheduled audience because he “became convinced that Mrs. Gaillot obviously intends to use this interview to gain further widespread publicity for her personal interpretation of Holy Scripture.”

The latter reference was to Mrs. Gaillot’s practice of quoting Old Testament passages to support her segregationist views. She contends that Hagar and the son she bore to Abraham were the equivalent of Negroes.

A few days after the excommunication, Mrs. Gaillot appeared at the archbishop’s residence with a group of women who were on a Holy Week pilgrimage. As Rummel stood on the lawn, she rushed up and dropped to her knees before him. There were conflicting reports of what she actually said to the archbishop. Apparently she pleaded that he accept segregation as a divine injunction. Rummel said nothing.

Excommunicated along with Mrs. Gaillot were Leander H. Perez, Sr., Louisiana political boss and White Citizens Council figure, and Jackson G. Ricau, executive secretary of the Citizens Council of South Louisiana.

Meanwhile, a Roman Catholic lay organization was being organized in New Orleans in an effort to muster public support for Rummel’s integration policy.

A public statement issued by the group declared:

“Not one Catholic lay group—Knights of Columbus, Holy Name Society, Catholic Daughters and others—had courage to step forward and denounce publicly the erroneous opinions of [church critics]. Neither did any lay group in numbers let our archbishop know they were proud of his leadership in such a delicate matter.”

Never before has a Roman Catholic excommunication case involving laity been so widely publicized. The situation does recall, however, the 1953 excommunication of the Rev. Leonard J. Feeney, a Boston Jesuit who insists that there is no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church.

Protestant Panorama

• Ministers’ salaries, victims of inflation, are well below the national average, according to a report released last month by the National Council of Churches. The report, available in booklet form, cities statistics from a two-year study made by NCC and financed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It was prepared on behalf of denominations cooperating in a drive to educate local congregations to their ministers’ financial needs. The drive was said to represent the first concerted, interdenominational effort in Protestant history to raise ministers’ salaries.

• The Methodist Church’s temperance agency released a half-hour color film last month designed as a tool to fight gambling. “Where Fortune Smiles” is the story of a girl whose “fun” at slot machines leads to deeper involvement in gambling.

• The Philadelphia Presbytery voted 152 to 100 last month not to endorse its moderator, Dr. Ellsworth E. Jackson, as a candidate for moderator of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. The action was regarded as without precedent in the oldest and one of the largest of the denomination’s 214 presbyteries.

• The American Lutheran Church plans to increase its foreign missionary force with the addition of 53 more pastors and laymen this summer. The increase will give the church a total of 620 active missionaries.

• A new nationwide boys’ organization similar to the Boy Scouts of America will be launched September I by the Assemblies of God Men’s Fellowship Department. The group, to be known as “Royal Rangers,” will supplement the work of the Assemblies’ present youth organization.

• Ground was broken last month for a $450,000 library building on the Philadelphia campus of Westminster Theological Seminary.

• The 50th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titantic was observed last month with a memorial service at Seamen’s Church Institute in New York City. Seven survivors were on hand as special guests.

• Members of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) are being urged to contribute funds to the United Nations. The drive is sponsored by the Disciples Peace Fellowship, an organization of 300 ministers and laymen of the Christian Churches.

• Leaders of U. S. Methodism’s Central (Negro) Jurisdiction say they will ask the 1964 General Conference of the church to declare unequivocally that the entire church should be desegregated. A statement which came out of a spring study conference of the jurisdiction reiterated that abolition of the Central Jurisdiction is inevitable, but added that this structure “is only one of a number of unmistakable manifestations of racialism” within Methodism.

The Bureau of Information of the National Catholic Welfare Conference says the excommunicate “is deprived of the right to participate in divine offices: the Mass, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, funerals and processions. Public recitation of the rosary and the stations of the cross are not considered divine offices.” Excommunicates may not receive the sacraments, except penance in which they will confess and be absolved from the offense for which they incurred excommunication. They are deprived of church burial unless they repent.

The Louisiana excommunicates may pray privately in church, hear sermons, and even attend services provided they take no active part.

Mrs. Gaillot emphasized that she will “appeal to Rome.” Most sources doubted that she had much chance to win a reversal, however. If she has any case at all, it would probably be on the premise that like many others Roman Catholics have always condoned segregation. On the other hand, the Vatican will likely view the excommunication on the basis of disobedience to the hierarchy rather than on segregation per se.

Rummel has been archbishop of New Orleans since 1935. He praised the Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation in public schools, and he has referred to segregation as “morally wrong and sinful.” His decision to desegregate the parochial schools in his archdiocese came more than a year after New Orleans public schools adopted token integration.

Many Roman Catholic leaders apparently are intent on vigorous implementation of principles of racial equality. Even while the New Orleans hubbub was at its peak, the Vatican announced that on May 6 Pope John XXIII would canonize Blessed Martin dePorres, seventeenth-century Dominican lay brother. Blessed Martin thus becomes the first person of mixed Negro and white blood ever accorded such recognition. He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a Peruvian Negro woman.

Only recently the Pope had this to say to the mother of a newly-ordained Negro priest: “There is no color bar in the Catholic Church. Today we have a Negro cardinal, many Negro bishops, and very many Negro priests.”

Tea And Tarts

Venturing their first evangelistic conference, 170 Baptist ministers of the Atlantic Provinces drew larger attendances than annual denominational conventions and projected simultaneous crusades in the Maritimes for the fall of 1963 and spring of 1964.

Addressing the sessions in United Baptist Bible Training School, Moncton, New Brunswick, were Dr. Donald Thomas of the American Baptist Division of Evangelism, Dr. Leonard Sanderson, former director of the Southern Baptist Division of Evangelism, and Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Despite significant growth (the 300 Baptist clergy are the largest Protestant force), they have not kept pace with the population increase. Speaking of the lack of followup in the Maritimes, Baptist Convention Evangelism Secretary L. R. Atkinson put it this way:

The tumult and the shouting die,

The evangelist in haste departs,

The pastor and the people sigh,

And settle down to tea and tarts.

Dedicating themselves with new vigor, Maritimes ministers took a hard look at their scanty French Protestant witness due to their failure to learn the language. In Moncton alone hundreds of converted French Catholics have united with English-speaking churches.

C.F.H.H.

Violence And Prayer

In San Francisco, an incident of violence prompted a spontaneous outdoor prayer service in Golden Gate Park by members of four denominations.

About 150 persons gathered to pray in the park after a 22-year-old woman was brutally slashed by a purse-snatcher. The prayer session was led by four ministers and attended by eight other clergymen.

The Rev. E. W. J. Schmitt, pastor of Mission Methodist Church, said he and three other ministers who held the service were motivated by concern over increasing violence on city streets.

Clergy Problems

A survey among American Protestant ministers shows that “demands of time” represent the major problem affecting their work.

“The financial problem” or “insufficient salary and/or expense allowance” were the runners-up among concerns listed by clergymen responding to a Ministers Life and Casualty Union poll.

Only a slight improvement in financial matters was noted in comparing the survey with a similar one conducted four years ago.

Also cited as a problem in the 1962 survey was lack of parishioner interest in Bible study and religious fundamentals.

Half the ministers cited lack of time, a third listed financial difficulties, and a fifth noted parishioner apathy toward study.

Other leaders of the service were the Rev. L. Roy Bennet, pastor of A. M. E. Zion Church; the Rev. William R. Grace of Howard Presbyterian Church; and the Rev. Thomas Dietrich, an Episcopal clergyman.

Grace told the group assembled in the park that they were gathered to pray for deliverance from “violence on our streets, our beaches and in our parks.”

Schmitt said the churches wanted to make “a meaningful protest against this terrible thing.”

The young woman, who lost an eye in the knife attack, was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Religious Experience

Would you say that you have ever had a “religious or mystic experience”—that is, a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening?

The Gallup Poll, which put the above question to “a nationwide cross-section of adults,” reported last month that one in five persons answered “yes.”

“It should be pointed out,” said a report on the poll, “that the above question is on religious experiences of a sudden, or dramatic, nature. The figure of 20 per cent would undoubtedly be much larger if the question had been designed to include religious experiences of a general nature as well.”

The Gallup report said that in general the types of religious experience take the form of (1) the “mystic experience”—a hard-to-describe, “other-worldly” feeling of union with a Divine Being, usually unrelated to any specific faith or doctrine; (2) basically this same experience, but carrying with it the conviction of the forgiveness of sins and salvation; (3) answers to prayers—often of a “miraculous” nature; (4) a turning to God—or a reassurance of his power and love—in moments of crisis; and (5) visions, dreams or voices.

“Education—or lack of it—has little to do with such experiences,” the report said.

Mother’S Day Shrine

A drive is under way to make an International Mother’s Day Shrine of the Andrews Methodist Church, in Grafton, West Virginia, where the first Mother’s Day service was held on May 10, 1908.

Led by the Grafton Kiwanis Club, the movement has been endorsed by West Virginia Governor W. W. Barron.

The shrine organization hopes to raise $180,000 to restore the old church and to landscape the surrounding area to create a permanent memorial to “all mothers everywhere.”

Financial cooperation is expected from the city’s Urban Renewal Authority, with federal funds, for the shrine will be at the center of an area to be redeveloped.

The church would be called “The Mother Church of Mother’s Day.”

The first Mother’s Day service was organized by the late Miss Anna Jarvis as a tribute to her own mother, Mrs. Anna Reeves Jarvis.

During the post Civil War period, Mrs. Jarvis, the daughter of a Methodist minister, held a Mother’s Friendship Day to reunite neighbors who had fought on opposite sides in the war.

In 1907, two years after her mother had died, Miss Jarvis invited several friends to her home in Philadelphia on the second Sunday in May to commemorate the anniversary of her death.

She also announced plans for a national observance of Mother’s Day. Miss Jarvis wrote to officials in the Andrews Methodist Church to suggest that they hold a Mother’s Day service, and the next year on May 10 the first formal service took place.

In 1910 Governor William E. Glassco*ck of West Virginia issued the first Mother’s Day proclamation. This was followed in 1914 by Congressional legislation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Miss Jarvis lived to see her idea grow into an international institution. She died in 1948 at the age of 84.

Historic Home

Youth for Christ International plans to convert the boyhood home of George Washington into a rehabilitation and training center for wayward juveniles.

A 101-acre tract on the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia, was purchased from a foundation that had begun to restore the plantation’s original buildings and develop an already existing museum of Washington mementos. There are six buildings on the tract, including an authentic restoration of the first president’s surveyor shack and ice house.

It was on this plantation that Washington lived from the age of 6 to 22 and where, according to tradition, he chopped down the cherry tree and threw the dollar across the Rappahannock.

Youth for Christ intends to develop the property for camps, conferences, and leadership schools, in addition to a home for potentially delinquent boys.

New Footing For Biblical Scholarship?

Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon, a leading Orthodox Jewish scholar, reported last month that he has found conclusive linguistic evidence of a culture parent to both Hebrew and Greek civilizations. Gordon told a meeting of the American Oriental Society in Boston that his finds will put study of the Bible on a new footing.

The discoveries, he said, explode the widely-held view that Greek culture developed independently of the Hebrew.

“They run counter to many firmly-entrenched views concerning Scripture, classics, and history,” he declared.

Gordon is chairman of the department of Mediterranean studies at Brandeis University. He is a veteran archeologist who has participated in excavations in Egypt, Sinai, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.

Last January, Gordon said, he broke through the language of the people of ancient Crete and found it to be Phoenician—a tongue of the West Semitic family. This accomplishment climaxed a series of effort begun back in the 1940s, when he tentatively advanced the theory of a common Hebrew-Greek heritage. Subsequently Gordon declared that this heritage spanned the entire East Mediterranean from Greece to Palestine in Minoan times—so named after the legendary King Minos of Crete.

In 1957 he announced that he had identified some ancient writings found on Crete. He said the writings, which have become known as Minoan Linear A, were Phoenician.

The latest evidence lies with the decipherment of the pre-Greek Cretan language as Eteocretan (pure Crete). Although it is written with the Greek alphabet, he says that it too is Phoenician.

Linear B, a script used by the Greeks who invaded Crete during the thousand years following 1450 B. C., was deciphered by Michael Ventris, an Englishman, in 1952, who identified it as Greek.

Minoan Linear A was used on Crete from 1750 to 1450 B. C., Eteocretan from 600 to 300 B. C.

Gordon’s efforts were enhanced by a new edition of the Minoan texts, written by W. C. Brice and published in England, which appeared in 1961.

The Brandeis professor maintains that his discovery is “more important to historians than the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Canadian Gain

Communicant membership in the United Church of Canada showed a net increase of 20,868 in 1961, bringing the total to 1,037,747. Total giving amounted to $60,279,743, up about $2,200,000, according to the Rev. Ernest E. Long, secretary of the United Church General Council.

Ireland To Iona

To mark the 1400th anniversary of St. Columba’s historic landing on the Scottish island of Iona, 13 men will set out from Ireland next year in an attempt to relive the feat authentically.

Their vessel will be a replica of Columba’s sixth-century coracle—a small boat made of a wicker frame covered by hide.

The venture is being sponsored by the Iona Community and underwritten by a Scottish industrialist in Ireland. Said the Rev. T. Ralph Morton, the community’s deputy leader: “Some of the 12 oarsmen may be members of the community. I hope there will be at least one minister or theology student among them.”

Columba and his 12 companions established a monastery on the island which influenced religious thought in the British Isles for centuries.

The Iona Community is a movement whose members live under something like monastic discipline and who have spent summers rebuilding an abbey on the island.

Preview Of Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council probably will be split into three sessions extending over a period of 10 months, according to the Rev. Gustave Weigel, a leading Jesuit theologian.

Weigel, a professor at Woodstock (Maryland) College, offered the forecast at a Northwestern University lecture last month. He is helping to prepare for the council, which is scheduled to open in Rome October 11.

The way plans are shaping up now, Weigel said, the council may follow a schedule according to these approximate dates:

First session—October 11-December 8.

Second session—February 2, 1963 to shortly before Holy Week (Easter falls on April 14 next year).

Third session—Pentecost (June 2) to sometime in July.

He stressed that the Second Vatican Council—so named because it follows the First Vatican Council held in Rome nearly a century ago—will not be a “reunion council.”

Purpose of the forthcoming council, he said, has been widely misinterpreted, especially in the first reaction to Pope John XXIII’s announcement that he intended to call an ecumenical council. Many persons concluded that the work of the council would be to consider reunion of the Roman Catholic Church with other bodies in Christendom. This is not the case, Weigel declared, although Christian unity will be one of the topics considered by the council.

The ecumenical council will be primarily concerned with “internal relationships of the Roman Catholic Church,” he added.

He listed the following as among the probable items on the council agenda:

—Redefinition of the “meaning and power of a bishop.” The First Vatican Council, held in 1870–71, dealt with the papacy (infallibility of the Pope was defined then) but not with the episcopacy (the bishops).

—Position of laymen in the church and relationship of the laity and religious to the bishops.

—Relationship of the “secular and sacral” (church-state).

—Liturgical problems, such as the use of Latin or the vernacular.

—Questions on how much liberty should be granted to the “newer churches” in Africa and Asia.

—One of the most contested issues, and perhaps the most important one facing the church, is that of centralization of power.

Highly conservative Catholics will be striving for strong centralization in the Vatican, Weigel said. This would obviously diminish the power of the bishops elsewhere in the world.

The outcome of the debate depends on the “guts of the bishops,” he observed. “No one can stop them.”

Council decisions will be made by the members of the hierarchy—cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and abbots—attending the council from all over the world. The Pope, through a legate, will preside and hold veto power.

Wall Of Shame

In a northern section of Berlin lies a Protestant church whose front yard now straddles the Communist wall. Its ironic name: the Church of the Reconciliation.

A Presbyterian minister who visited the barricaded churchyard a few weeks ago aptly remarked that it is “symbolic of the nature of sin.”

“Sin is a divider,” said Dr. Cary N. Weisiger III, minister of Menlo Park (California) Presbyterian Church and member of the United Presbyterian General Council. “Sin is opposed to the Gospel. God seeks to reconcile all men to himself through Christ. Sin seeks to thwart and destroy the Christian ministry of reconciliation.”

Weisiger was in Germany to address a dozen spring rallies of Protestant Men of the Chapel, an organization of U. S. servicemen. He quoted Dr. J. W. Winterhager, secretary to Bishop Otto Dibelius, as having referred to the Communist seal-off measure as “a wall of shame.” Winterhager was a guest at a PMOC rally held in Berlin.

Weisiger said the Church of the Reconciliation appears to have been abandoned. The building itself, with a statue of Christ at the entrance, is in East Berlin, while the front sidewalk is in the West. A 10-foot brick wall stands between.

A Messianic U. N.?

“Whether Messiah is a person or an assembly is of minor importance,” said Chief Rabbi Marcus Melchoir of Denmark. “I believe Messianic times would come if the United Nations were made Messiah.”

Melchoir was addressing a student group in Oslo. His remarks were reported by “Church News” of the Northern Ecumenical Institute.

He said that Hebrew theology never speaks about the Messiah as a person as much as about “the very conception” of a messiah. Melchior added that he hoped to experience the Messianic age in his own lifetime.

Ecclesiastical Luxury

The Soviet government has turned over a new and luxurious mansion to the “foreign affairs section” of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Religious News Service reported last month. The residence is said to contain some of the most beautiful icons of the seventeenth century as well as many expensive antique pieces among among its furnishings.

Missionary Impact

The impact of Christian missions on African political life was reviewed on the floor of the U. S. Senate last month. Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, recently returned from a trip to Africa, said “the Western world owes a great debt to Christian missionaries” there.

“Without them,” he declared, “the nations of Africa would have been much more poorly equipped to join the family of nations, and conditions would be far less stable in Africa than they are.”

Of the 23 heads of independent African nations, 16 received at least part of their education in Christian mission schools, Pell reported.

Of the 16, he said, 12 had training in Catholic mission schools and four in schools operated by Protestant missionary groups. One, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, had training in both Catholic and Protestant institutions.

Three African political leaders were listed as once having begun training to become clergymen.

The Rhode Island senator stated that there are an estimated 23,000 Christian missionaries of all nationalities in Africa, of whom about 10,000 are Americans. The number of Americans working with African church groups exceeds many times the number of personnel who are at work there for the government or in Point Four Programs, he added.

Among mission-educated African leaders listed by Pell were the following:

Protestant

Chad: President Francois Tombalbaye, born to Protestant parents in a Moslem area and received some Protestant mission schooling. Ghana: President Kwame Nkrumah, prepared for the Presbyterian ministry but turned to law instead. Nigeria: Governor-General Nnamdi Azikiwe, Protestant mission schools. Sierra Leone: President Sir Milton Margai, Protestant (Evangelical United Brethren) mission schools followed by medical education in England. Liberia: President William V. S. Tubman, educated in Methodist schools.

Other leaders of emerging African nations who received Protestant mission education include Holden Roberto, leader of one faction of the government-in-exile of Angola; John Kenyatta, who will become president of an independent Kenya and who was educated in a mission school of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian); and Dr. Hastings Banda, a Presbyterian who is regarded as the strongest African leader in Northern Rhodesia.

Roman Catholic

Central African Republic: President David Dacko, Catholic school in the Congo. Congo Republic (Brazzaville): President Fulbert Youlou, educated for the priesthood although now suspended from Holy Orders. Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville): President Joseph Kasavubu, educated in Catholic mission schools and a one-time seminarian (Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula also was educated by Catholic missionaries). Ethiopia: Emperor Haile Selassie, although head of the Coptic Christian Church, received part of his early training in a Catholic mission school. Dahomey: President Hubert Maga. Gabon: President Leon M’Ba. Ghana: President Kwame Nkrumah. Ivory Coast: President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, elementary Catholic mission school followed by education in France. Malagasy (Madagascar): President Philibert Tsiranana, Catholic elementary training. Senegal: President Leopold Senghor. Togo: President Sylvanus Olympio. Upper Volta: President Maurice Yameogo.

Pell also noted that former Prime Minister Jules Nyerere of Tankanyika, recently resigned but still a potent political leader in that country, was educated in a Catholic mission school. So were Benedicto Kiwanuka, chief minister of the provisional government of Uganda, due soon to receive independence, and Tom Mboya, prominent political leader in Kenya. Mario de Andrade, a leader in the revolt in Angola, also was educated in Catholic mission schools.

Congo Incident

Far up in the Congo bush country last month, a native road crew was hacking away at the jungle with machetes when they inadvertently stirred up a swarm of wasps. One of the crewmen instinctively dropped his machete with a scream and jumped into the road, right into the path of a truck carrying two Americans from the Disciples of Christ Congo mission. The worker was killed.

Dr. Clifford Weare, a medical doctor, jumped from the truck to the aid of the victim. The other workers, running and shouting like a mob, descended on the driver, Ronald E. Anderson. They pulled him from the cab and pounced on him. A quick-thinking crew foreman, however, threw himself on top of Anderson and saved him from further blows.

A few minutes later Weare was hit in the face by the workers and again the foreman came to the rescue. The foreman locked both missionaries in his home for protection.

A subsequent inquest at Boende absolved the missionaries of blame in the accident. The workmen were severely reprimanded. The victim’s family protested so vehemently in the courtroom that the judge had them jailed for contempt.

The two American missionaries involved were sent to the Congo in 1958 in behalf of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) by the United Christian Missionary Society. A report on the incident was released by Dr. Robert G. Nelson, executive secretary of the Africa department of UCMS.

Second Expulsion

An American Methodist missionary was ordered out of Southern Rhodesia last month. The Rev. Wendell Golden of Rockford, Illinois, had been engaged in rural education work since last fall when he and three other American Methodist missionaries were expelled from Angola and held in Portugal on charges that they had cooperated or assisted “terrorist elements” in Angola.

The 39-year-old Golden was denied permanent residency in Southern Rhodesia after charges were made against him by the Portuguese Consul General J. Pereira Bastos, who claimed that Golden had been engaged in activities in Angola that in some countries would have brought the “death penalty.”

Methodist Bishop Ralph E. Dodge of Lourenço Marques, an American, defended Golden against the attack by Bastos. He requested a hearing and more specific charges, adding: “We do not like to have allegations made that cannot be substantiated.”

The three missionaries expelled from Angola with Golden did not request residency in the Rhodesian Federation, but returned to the United States and are now on speaking tours.

Judaism’S Third Force

Israel’s first Reform (Liberal) Jewish synagogue was dedicated last month in Jerusalem.

Up to now Reform congregations have held services in rented halls in Israel, where Jewish religious life is dominated by Orthodox Judaism.

The Reform synagogue, formerly a dwelling, is built of stone and has a sloping red roof. It is located in a walled garden.

During the dedication, a message of greetings was received from Professor Martin Buber, noted Jewish philosopher who resides in Jerusalem. Buber said there was need for a “third force” to restore vigor in Judaism. “Perhaps,” he added, “the future of the people of Israel depends more on the creation of this third force than it does on any external factors.”

Hope For Eichmann?

Adolf Eichmann, who is under sentence of death for his part in the extermination of some six million Jews, was reported last month to be receiving spiritual counsel from a Canadian-born Protestant minister in Jerusalem.

The Rev. William L. Hull of Winnipeg, pastor of the Zion Christian Mission in Jerusalem, said Eichmann had consented to accept visits from him.

“He is a human being,” Hull said. “He has a soul. Jesus Christ died for him as well as for me.”

During his long trial Eichmann, leading executioner for the Nezi regime, refused to see clergymen or swear on the Bible as he gave testimony.

Hull said that “we have not advanced very far yet,” but added that under his instruction, Eichmann was reading a German-language Bible.

Hull has been in Jerusalem since 1935. He described his church as independent and evangelical.

Schools In Ceylon

A government commission in Ceylon is calling for immediate “takeover” or nationalization of all remaining private schools—most of which are church-sponsored.

The schools have been assailed as “pockets of religious separatism” by a subcommittee of the state’s national education commission.

Unless brought under the control of the state, the subcommittee said, these schools “will prove a canker in the life of the nation.”

The recommendation was seen as another move against Christian institutions in a predominantly Buddhist country. Virtually all Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Hindu schools were taken over by the government—without compensation-in December, 1960.

Until the 1960 takeover, some 750,000 children were taught in Catholic schools and about 250,000 in Protestant-sponsored schools.

Of the 750 Roman Catholic schools operating in Ceylon in 1960, only 42 are now being maintained as private parochial schools.

Religious Conclaves

Here are reports from an assortment of religious conferences and conventions around the United States:

Salt Lake City, Utah—Ezra Taft Benson, former U. S. Secretary of Agriculture and member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, said at the 132nd annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) that America runs the risk of getting soft economically and morally.

“This is the first step toward collapse in the old Greek style,” he warned. Specifically, Benson charged that students are being brainwashed and made easy prey for government tyranny.

He said indoctrination of students “is often perpetuated behind the front of so-called academic freedom.” When the education is finished, he added, what is left are faithless, socialistically oriented students.

“The best authorities are confident that Soviets will not provoke a major war,” Benson declared. “Their economy would not support it.”

He said communism seeks to spread its philosophy throughout the world. “We must never forget that nations usually sow the seeds of their own destruction while enjoying unprecedented prosperity.”

Independence, Missouri—An extensive modernization of a code on marriage and divorce for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was adopted by delegates to the church’s world conference.

The church’s new code replaces one adopted in 1866 and revised in 1884 and again in 1896.

In an introductory statement Maurice L. Draper, one of the counselors to the church’s president, said the old code had become difficult to interpret and almost impossible to administer. The major change involved conditions under which divorced persons may remarry.

The new code says that the “remarriage of an innocent party in a divorce action is permissible when a divorce has been secured for any of the following reasons: adultery, repeated sexual perversion, desertion, such aggravated conditions within the home as render married life unbearable for the party petitioning or for the children.…”

Under the old code, the only justifiable reasons for separation were adultery and “abandonment without cause.”

In another section, the new code says that even though civil courts grant divorce for “lesser indignities,” the church should grant permission for remarriage “only when the conditions complained of were of such an extreme nature as to place the other members of the family in serious and continuing jeopardy.”

“Persons who have been divorced,” the code continues, “even though innocent of wrongdoing, should pay special attention to the admonition not to marry hastily or without due consideration.”

Washington—Dr. Robert E. Van Deusen, Washington secretary of the National Lutheran Council’s Division of Public Relations, advised delegates to the 33rd annual convention of the National Religious Publicity Council against becoming preoccupied with the mechanics of their tasks.

In the concluding session of the convention, which drew 145 delegates (one-fourth of the total membership), Van Deusen commented on the convention theme of milieu, message, and methods. He said that sometimes interpreters of religion get so involved in tinkering with the machinery of immediate jobs that they forget the overriding importance of remaining sensitive to the milieu, relevant in message and effective in method.

“Subtly,” he said, “we lose sight of the fact that the work we are doing is God’s work more than it is our own. We begin to feel without realizing it that society will be redeemed and the message of the church be made relevant only through our efforts, the improvement of our skills, the effectiveness of our communication.” Van Deusen went on to say:

“The big temptation in our profession is to let the potent secularism in the milieu creep into the standards by which we measure our message and methods.”

“The most competent craftsman among us needs to come humbly and sincerely to Him, seeking guidance as to the how, as well as the what, when, where, and why,” he concluded.

Philadelphia—A report submitted to the 282nd Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends charged that American foreign policy is dominated by a “military-industrial complex” which makes a peaceful solution to the cold war seem impossible.

“This complex,” the report said, “has achieved such vast political influence in our entire society that huge appropriations for armaments are approved with hardly any debate, while adequate support is denied to our services for health, education, and welfare.”

The report, prepared by the Social Order Committee, declared that the “sensationalism of much of our press and television, moving from one crisis to another, seeking increased sales and profits, has materially enlarged support for military appropriations.”

“We have become so absorbed with fear and the illusion of military security that we have much too often lost sight of what should be our purpose—to help bring peace, health, freedom, and justice to all mankind.”

The report urged support of the United Nations and “patient negotiation to resolve the issues of the Cold War.…”

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. J. J. Stolz, 83, for 28 years the president general of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia; in Adelaide … Dr. Henry B. Washburn, 92, dean emeritus of Episcopal Theological School; in Cambridge, Massachusetts … Dr. Henry Kauffman, 70, Presbyterian minister and educator; in Oradell, New Jersey … Elder George O. Morris, 88, a member of the Council of Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; in Salt Lake City.

Elections: As moderator of the General Assembly of the United Church of Northern India, Dr. William Stewart … as president of the National Religious Publicity Council, Miss Ella F. Harllee … as president of the Christian College Teachers Conference, R. Calvin Whorton … as chairman of the Irish Congregational Union, for 1963–64, the Rev. R. J. Pentland.

Appointments: As professor of philosophical theology at the University of Chicago, Dr. Paul J. Tillich. The 75-year-old Tillich, one of the world’s leading Protestant theologians, is expected to be on the campus of Chicago’s Divinity School two quarters a year. He has been ill, however, and no date has been set for his coming. Tillich currently teaches at Harvard Divinity School … as president of Augustana College, Dr. Clarence W. Sorensen.

Is the “teaching machine” an ugly ogre? Does it promise new blessing or new burden for the Church’s task in the world?

Whichever your answer, the arrival of the teaching machine for auto-instruction carries in its wake a widespread wash of devices and programming. Already 45 different kinds of commercial teaching machines are available. At least 104 companies are presently in various stages of producing programs or machines or both. Several publishing houses are working with manufacturers in producing efforts. Encyclopaedia Britannica Films reports programming sales amounting to $190,000 during the last three and one half months of 1961. Predicted sales are at least $3 million this year, $5 million in 1963, $6.5 million in 1964. This, for a movement initiated in 1958.

Use of the new learning technique in education show’s a corresponding gain. According to the National Education Association, procedures for 296 automated courses were prepared for general use last year, with 334 more scheduled this year. Programmed courses in mathematics, science, electronics and engineering, foreign languages and social studies are appearing, along with others. Even so, a shortage exists in materials and personnel for programming.

Even churches with huge education plants, or denominations urging effective use of audio-visual aids will not compete with the spiraling use of auto-instruction devices in industry. What significance have these commercial programs for church-related classes? The answer to that question lies in the nature of the device itself. What is it? Why is it effective? What are its possibilities and limitations for Christian education?

Auto-instruction devices have two aspects—programming and machines. In programming a goal is set and procedures planned to direct the learner toward that goal. The machines make possible the procedure. They are used generally to give information to the pupil and to record his response to testing.

Technologically, the machines differ. On some the pupil marks his answers on a card by punching a key. Or a series of pupil machines may be controlled by a teacher’s console on which lights appear to show pupil responses. A filmstrip projector shows the learning content, the pupil uses an attached typewriter keyboard for test answering: when he answers correctly the filmstrip moves ahead. Machines use a variety of accessories: multiple choice sheets with answers masked; paper chemically treated to change color when written upon, for cheating control; pencils; punches; tabs; replaceable paper rolls; discs with separate answer wheels; flashing lights; card selection; films and records; magnetic tape; and microfilm.

An especially prepared textbook presents the method in simplest form. The text upon casual examination appears to be in confusion, but programming gives the key. As Johnny and Tom use it, they both read page one. Then each selects an answer from a list of alternative questions given to test their understanding. A page number follows each question. This shows the page to read next. John’s answer is wrong. The page number listed for his next reading will clarify the point missed. Tom’s correct answer will direct him to a new topic. When answers differ, subsequent pages differ. This programming continues throughout the book.

Program and machine are combination units. Machine has value in its relation to programming, but only as a technical aid. An effective teaching device, according to a report for the National Education Association by James D. Finn and Donald G. Perrin, should meet a criterion of not less than five of the seven desiderata: 1. used for individual instruction; 2. contains and presents program content in steps; 3. provides means whereby the student may respond to the program; 4. provides the student with immediate information concerning his response; 5. presents the frames of the program individually; 6. presents the program in a pre-determined sequence; 7. is cheatproof (Occasional Paper No. 3, Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning, 1962, p. 18). Eight supplementary criteria are also listed as being optional.

The teaching device has an effective approach because it is based upon sound educational method. It permits the learner to proceed at his own pace; subject matter is presented by short, simple, graphic ideas. The student knows when his answer is right; mistakes are located and remedied at once; theory-to-practice sequence is apparent; a modified law of effect is present; complex learning is focused upon a specific problem; the Socratic tried-and-true method of testing is utilized.

Far from being eliminated, the effective teacher can use the machine to reinforce learning. The teacher sometimes does the programming.

Innovation in education arises to meet cultural need. A perennial problem in all education, whether Christian or secular, lies in the difficulty of presenting new concepts to groups with widely disparate backgrounds and abilities. In a hom*ogeneous culture this difficulty is lessened: in a heterogeneous culture—as in an American city—it is increased. Complexity of culture results in increased pupil differences. Socrates with his ambulatory school in Athens was better able to discern the ideas of his students and to relate them to his teaching, than can a teacher in an ethically and socially mixed class in Harlem. In many ways, the chasm which Socrates bridged was smaller than the pupil-teacher chasm which the modern Christian teacher faces with a group of teenagers. We are cautioned that the present cultural trend toward conformity tends to mask rather than to reveal such differences. The machine, focusing upon a specific, detailed area of learning can vividly reveal the skills mastered, or show where the pupil is confused and groping. Only as his basic learning has reached a desired level, does he proceed to new learning—at his own pace, fast or slow.

Where are the possibilities in all this for Christian education? In any church, large or small, the difficulties will inevitably be more complex than those confronting the teacher in the secular school. Teaching time is more limited; the leader is more often handicapped by inadequate training; pupil contacts are usually more circ*mscribed. Confronted with this challenge, the wise teacher will be eager to seize every opportunity for needed, available help.

To be sure, the difficulties in the new method for the church are readily apparent. With the church confronting a crucial need for missions, and plant overhead rising like a rocket, is the additional expense required for more effective teaching aids justifiable? With the shortage of trained leaders can personnel be located for the necessary programming? If pupils are not trained by the use of the devices in the public schools, can the church spare the time required to train them for such use? While the machines will increase learning values for the individual, will they seriously impair group life? Will not their use arouse criticism among the inadequately informed members of the church?

Some answers to these questions must be found in the local setting, others will be determind by experimentation. The decision to proceed in this area lies with the producer of church school curricula, as well as with leaders in the local church. Some have already embarked upon a production course. For cost reasons, textbooks and visual aids in Christian education, rather than the more elaborate hardware, will probably center the stage.

The innovation of the teaching device is merely an extension of the program approach to curriculum which is widely established both in secular and Christian education. Activity sheets or other techniques for revealing the learner’s development in knowledge, attitudes and skills have long been employed in many church schools. Curricula are planned to meet pupil needs. Since programming is done by the leader who has a theory of subject matter, a theory of the nature of learning, of programming, and of educational objectives, basic evaluation must be concerned with the programming, rather than merely with the use of the machine as the device which exists to manipulate the program.

In significant areas, the new approach shows strong promise of worthwhile results. The following examples illustrate: by helping the church education committee toward a growing understanding of its responsibilities and opportunities, the tone of the entire church education program can be sharpened; teaching aids for free-time individual use by teachers and officers can prove invaluable for developing a strong corps of leaders; accurate testing-correction procedures for biblical knowledge at every age-level can help to counteract the lamentable ignorance of high school and college youth. Within the broader church program, where skills are as important a part of training as they are in industry, the approach might well revolutionize certain forms of education. For example, a program geared to train in soul-winning method could be of permanent value for use by many age groups. Some course content, as Christian apologetics, also appears to be happily adapted to such an approach.

Undoubtedly the church, the Christian school—elementary, high school, and college—will find increasing opportunities for effectively using the teaching machines.

While this innovation may play a significant role in Christian education, the spotlight must always focus upon human leadership. Christian education uses a unique book to bring knowledge of a personal God. The Christian life is concerned with a new relationship to God, through Jesus Christ, his Son. This relationship brings a new life in Christ, knowledge and glad obedience to the Lord of Glory. Training for it is basically person-centered.

Jesus trained twelve men by living with them, walking with them, knowing them. He lived before them and they learned of him. The most effective Christian teaching is yet that of a Christian life lived before the pupil. It is the Holy Spirit of God who kindles the truth imprinted upon heart and mind, that the will of God may be done. The God-given methods which he uses make person-related education central. No machine can produce the faith, grace, prayer and love by which the Christian teacher follows the Spirit’s guidance in winning the pupil to his Lord. Let no Christian teacher say, “I am to be replaced by a machine.” No machine can reproduce the truth taught and caught from the Spirit-filled life of Christian pastor, parent teacher or layman. Only in contact with the life of the individual Christian appears that consummation of Christian teaching which makes most effective an understanding of the Word of God.

Yet in the learning situation where training for out-comes in specific Christian knowledge and attitudes is taking place, the teaching machine may give invaluable aid. Why should not the church seize upon this contribution from that very industrialization which makes its task so difficult?

The number of companies in the field and results to date strongly suggest that mechanical helps will prove of increasing importance in the field of religious instruction. What Dale Wolf of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has called “the first major technological innovation in education since the development of printing (Science, February 16, 1962, p. 503)—may well be the first, hesitant, exploratory step in a twentieth century explosion in teaching techniques to be used by the church to the glory of God.

Christian University Not A Lost Cause

Scarcely a week passes but that someone from somewhere posts us a note in behalf of a Christian university, and urges American evangelicals of all denominations to move along with the project. Recently, moreover, a professor at one of the largest Eastern universities confided: “Our means are modest, but my wife and I have renegotiated our will to leave them and my library to the Christian university if it is operating at the time the will becomes effective. CHRISTIANITY TODAY must not allow the vision of such a university to die.” Interest in a Christian university seems to be widening; believers will do well to give it a permanent place and high priority in their prayers.

Pleasure? Americans Can’T Take It Except With The Pain Of Guilt

Do Americans live for pleasure? No, says Walter Kerr in his fascinating book The Decline of Pleasure. We are not a joyous, singing people; we have lost the capacity for enjoyment. When we do something just for fun, contemplate beauty for the sheer joy of it, we are nagged by a sense of wrong-doing. We take our pleasures with pain, the pain of guilt. We can no longer morally afford a vacant evening, a true vacation.

The cause of our inability to take pleasure? Americans are driven by the morality of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian ethic which rules with immodest absoluteness that such conduct alone is moral as produces an after-the-event residue of concrete benefit. Conduct which is disinterested in gain and utility is immoral. This ethic is making us work-mad, not pleasure-mad. As a result, we are edgy, restless, guilty. By this ethic John Stuart Mill was reared; it kept his youth unsullied by pleasure, sent him at 3 to mathematics, at 13 to Aristotle, and at 21 to a breakdown. Let Americans take thought!

Kerr’s analysis is perceptive but superficial. On a deeper level his secularized version of our malaise would read: Americans are guilty before God, work like mad to be justified by works rather than faith, know not the non-utilitarian agape of God and, blind to God’s sabbath, know not wherein to take their rest. The answer to our loss of pleasure is that man was created to know God and enjoy him forever.

Hollywood Seduces A Teen-Age Idol … And The Kids Love It

Once upon a time, Pat Boone refreshed many hearts because of his strong stand for decency. He wrote three books for teen-agers in which he espoused high Christian ideals. He pursued church activities faithfully and gained the reputation of a model husband. In his first movie, “April Love,” Boone refused to do more than hold the hand of the heroine.

With this in mind, one views his latest film, “State Fair,” with indignation and then with profound sorrow. Here is a sordid Hollywood product, and Boone is the leading participant.

There is a sideshow girl who dances with seductive abandon, capturing Boone in the process. With Boone stripped to the waist, the pair engage in as torrid and violent love-making as is possible to depict on a screen. Suggestive dialogue is interspersed throughout. The payoff is when Boone comes home drunk.

Some of the picture is meant to be funny, but it is hard to laugh. Instead, we weep for Boone because Hollywood has seduced him. There is also heartbreak in that the film was shown in Washington during the height of the high-school tourist season, and the theater was packed with shrieking teen-agers. They yelled the loudest when Boone came home drunk.

A fallen idol and revelling worshippers. It is to weep.

Red China’S Great Leap Forward Falters In Its Quest For Security

The recent acknowledgment by Red China that the failure of its Great Leap Forward program has plunged the Chinese government into a serious economic crisis should appear to many as a lucid refutation of its belief in the inevitable character of its economic progress. It should be evident that there is nothing sacrosanct about economic determinism, nothing divine about the political theories of Marx or Engels. Rather, like all human efforts to build security without God, the activities of these men falter on the realities of droughts, famine and the hundreds of other ills which men face daily.

The student of the Word of God does not need such instances to teach him that all human attempts to find security in this life are fordoomed to failure. “Without me,” says Christ, “ye can do nothing.” And again, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Man’s security does not rest in economic determinism, nor even in the blessings of a free and open economy. It rests solely on the free activity of God’s Word in the hearts of men. And this is personal. It is beyond the power of man to effect. And it is eternal.

The battle cry of the Reformation was justification by faith. The issues at stake demanded that this doctrine be made focal. The gospel of grace is polluted at its fountain when justification of free grace and by faith alone occupies other than a central place. Rome had its doctrine of justification. But it was stated to consist in sanctification and renovation and was construed also as a process out-wrought in the works which are the fruit of faith.

It has ever been the objection that justification complete, perfect, and irrevocable by faith alone is inimical to the interests of holy living. Does not such a doctrine remove the need for and the incentive to good works and the sanctified life evidenced thereby? Paul had to meet this challenge and the Reformers encountered the same allegation.

In a nutshell the answer to the charge is the doctrine of sanctification. Justification and sanctification are inseparable and a faith divorced from good works is not the faith that justifies. Justification is concerned with righteous standing in the sight of God, sanctification with holiness of heart and life. Faith itself is faith in Christ for salvation from sin and acceptance with God. Implicit in the faith by which we are justified is hatred of sin and commitment to God whose glory is holiness.

Definitive Sanctification. To speak of sanctification as definitive might appear to deny its progressive nature and open the door to the fallacy by which the doctrine has so frequently been distorted. But biblical teaching is not to be suppressed or toned down because of an objection that springs from too restricted an understanding of the biblical witness nor by fear of the distortions to which the doctrine has been subjected.

When Paul addressed the believers at Corinth as the church of God “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Cor. 1:2) and later reminded them that they were washed, sanctified, and justified (1 Cor. 6:11), it is obvious that he coordinated sanctification with effectual calling, with their identity as saints, with regeneration, and with justification (cf. Acts 20:32; 26:18; 2 Tim. 2:21; 1 Thess. 4:7; Heb. 10:10, 29; 13:12). It would be a deflection from biblical patterns of thought to think of sanctification exclusively in terms of a progressive work. What is this definitive sanctification?

There are various ways in which it can be characterized. The specific and distinguishing action of each person of the Godhead at the inception of the state of salvation contributes to the decisive change which this sanctification denotes, and not only contributes but insures the decisive nature of the change itself. But perhaps the most significant aspect of New Testament teaching and the aspect requiring particular emphasis is that a believer is one called by the Father into the fellowship of his Son (1 Cor. 1:9). Union with Christ is the pivot on which the doctrine turns, specifically union with him in the meaning of his death and the power of his resurrection. When Christ died he died to sin once for all (Rom. 6:10). And the believer, called into union with Christ, dies with Christ to sin. “We died to sin” (Rom. 6:2) is the answer to all licentious abuse of the doctrine of grace. If we died with Christ we must also live with him, “that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, even so should we walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). No datum is of more basic importance than the definitive breach with sin and commitment to holiness secured by identification with Christ in his death and resurrection. And this relation of the believer to Christ’s death and resurrection is introduced by the apostle not in reference to justification but to deliverance from the power, defilement, and love of sin. The breach with sin and the newness of life are as definitive as were the death and resurrection of Christ. Christ in his death and resurrection broke the power of sin, triumphed over the prince of darkness, executed judgment upon this world, and by this victory delivered all those who are united to him. Believers are partakers with him in these triumphal achievements. The virtue accruing from the death and resurrection of Christ affects no phase of salvation more directly than that of insuring definitive sanctification. If we do not reckon on and with this relationship we miss one of the most cardinal features of redemptive provision (cf. 2 Cor. 5:14, 15; Eph. 2:1–6; Col. 3:3, 4; 1 Pet. 4:1, 2; 1 John 3:6, 9). Believers have the fruit unto holiness.

Progressive Sanctification. It might appear that the emphasis placed upon definitive sanctification leaves no place for what is progressive. Any such inference would contradict an equally important aspect of biblical teaching. No New Testament writers accent the definitive more than Paul and John. Yet John in the same epistle in which he says that every one born of God does not commit sin and cannot sin (1 John 3:9; cf. 3:6) says also, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8), and he sets before the believer the consolation that “if any one sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). For John there is likewise the self-purifying aspect of the believer’s life: “Every one that has this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure” (l John 3:3).

When we take account of the sin that resides in the believer and of the fact that he has not yet attained to the goal of conformity to the image of God’s Son (cf. Rom. 8:29), his condition in this life can never be conceived of as static. It must be one of progression, a progression both negative and positive, consisting thus in both mortification and sanctification.

Paul’s references to mortification are striking because of the contexts in which they occur. In the contexts the once-for-all death to sin and the translation thereby to the realm of new life in Christ are in the forefront. No place might appear to be left for mortification of sin. It is not so. “But if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13; cf. Col. 3:5). We are to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit” (2 Cor. 7:1).

Sanctification involves more than cleansing from sin. It is eloquent of something more positive that Paul should have added “perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” The most expressive term used in the New Testament to indicate the progression that terminates in conformity to the image of Christ is that of transformation. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). “But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). No text defines for us the fact and mode of progressive sanctification more specifically than the latter. Whether the precise thought is that we reflect the glory of the Lord Christ or that we behold his glory, the outcome is the same. If we behold his glory we also reflect it, and if we reflect it, it is because we first of all behold it (cf. John 1:14). It is a law of our psychology that we become like that in which our interests and ambitions are absorbed. That law is not suspended in this case. But the apostle reminds us that natural factors are not the secret of this transformation; it is from the Spirit of the Lord that the transformation proceeds.

The progression which must characterize sanctification has respect not only to the individual but also to the Church in its unity and fellowship as the body of Christ. Believers may never be regarded as independent units. In the eternal counsel they were chosen in Christ; in the accomplishment of redemption they were in Christ; in the application it is into the fellowship of Christ they are ushered. And sanctification moves to a consummation which will not be realized for the individual in his own particularity until the whole body of Christ is complete and presented in its totality faultless and without blemish. The practical implications of this corporate relationship for responsibility, privilege, and opportunity become immediately apparent (cf. Eph. 4:11–16).

No concept is of more significance, as sanctification is viewed in this perspective, than that of “the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13; cf. 1:23). The stature of Christ’s fullness unto which believers are to attain, not as discrete individuals but in the unity and fellowship of the Church, is the stature of being filled with the grace and virtue, truth and wisdom, righteousness and holiness which have their abode in Christ as the firstborn from the dead.

The process which sanctification involves is, therefore, nothing less than conformity to the image of God’s Son, a conformity realized not through external imitative assimilation but through an impartation of the fullness that is in Christ (cf. John 1:16), an impartation which flows through a life organism that subsists and operates on an immensely higher plane than any form of organic or animate life with which we are acquainted in our phenomenal earthly experience. Christ and the church are complementary: there is no need of ours, no exigency arising from the high calling of God, no demand flowing from membership in Christ’s body, and no office which we are called upon to discharge that is not supplied out of the fullness that resides in Christ as the head of the Church.

The Agency in Sanctification. In definitive sanctification the pivotal consideration is that believers died with Christ and rose with him to newness of life. From whatever perspective this relationship is viewed we are compelled to recognize our passivity. From the perspective of the past and finished historical, it is apparent that our activity was not enlisted in the death and resurrection of Christ. On the other hand, when these events are viewed as taking effect actually and practically in the persons concerned, we are not permitted to think of human agency as enlisted in the decisive breach with sin and commitment to holiness. Even faith may not be construed as the agency in death to sin and life to righteousness. The language used is clearly to this effect (cf. Rom. 6:3, 4, 6, 17, 18; 7:4; Eph. 2:4, 5). Furthermore, the bond that makes effective in us the efficacy of Jesus’ death and resurrection is union with him. It is by the call of the Father that this union is established. And this call may never be defined in terms of human agency. Again, the operative principle by which we are freed from the law of sin and death is the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:2). Thus the agency of all three persons is brought to bear upon this decisive change.

What is the agency in progressive sanctification? It is to God the Father Jesus addressed the intercession: “Sanctify them in the truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). And it is of the Father he speaks when he says: “Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit” (John 15:2). Paul points to the same truth that the Father sanctifies (1 Thess. 5:23). By way of eminence, however, the Holy Spirit is the agent. The Holy Spirit is brought into relation to the transforming process by which believers come to reflect the glory of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). It is the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ (Eph. 1:17). It is by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body (Rom. 8:13). The virtues which are both the marks and fruits of sanctification are the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). It is by the Holy Spirit that the igniting flame of God’s love to us is shed abroad in our hearts (Rom. 5:5). It is the distinctive prerogative of the Holy Spirit to abide in believers, to work effectually in their whole personality to the end that they might be filled unto all the fullness of God and attain to the goal appointed for them. Sanctification progresses not by some law of renewed psychology but by the indwelling and constantly renewing activity of the Holy Spirit.

We are always liable to distorted emphases. Out of deference to all the stress that falls upon God’s agency in sanctification we must not fall into the error of quietism and fail to take account of the activity of the believer himself. The imperatives directed to the believer imply nothing less (cf. Rom. 6:13, 19; 8:13; 2 Cor. 7:1; Gal. 5:16, 25). Perhaps the most instructive text is Philippians 2:12, 13, a text frequently misapplied. The salvation spoken of is not initial salvation but that to be attained at the revelation of Jesus Christ (cf. Rom. 13:11; 1 Thess. 5:9; Heb. 1:14; 9:28; 1 Pet. 1:5; 2:2). It is salvation as completed and consummated that we are to work out. And this means that our agency and activity are to be exercised to the fullest extent in the promotion of this salvation. Hence the implications. Our working is not dispensed with or made superfluous because God works. God’s working is not suspended because we work. There is the correlation and conjunction of both. The fact that God works in us is the encouragement and incentive to our working. Indeed, God’s working is the energizing cause of our working both in willing and doing. Our working is the index to God’s working; if we do not work the working of God is absent. Presumptuous self-confidence is excluded; fear and trembling in us are the reflection of our helplessness. Yet the more assured we are that God works in us, the more diligent and persistent we are in our working. Our whole personality is not only drawn within the scope of, but also enlisted in all its functions in, that process that moves to the goal of being conformed to the image of God’s Son.

Bibliography: G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification; J. C. Ryle, Holiness: its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots; A. Köberle, The Quest for Holiness; A. W. Pink, The Doctrine of Sanctification; W. Marshall, The Gospel-Mystery of Sanctification; J. Fraser, A Treatise on Sanctification.

Professor of Systematic Theology

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

Many of the problems of the individual Christian, and of the Church, are brought about by failure to understand our position in the world.

Soon to be separated from his disciples our Lord prayed for them. In that prayer are some significant statements, only too often overlooked.

In John 17:9 we read, “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.”

In verse 14 we read, “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

Again, in verse 16 we read, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

Arc we not foolish when we try to blur a distinction our Lord affirms, a distinction the validity of which is necessary if Christianity is to have real meaning?

Christ is unique and distinctive.

In like manner the distinctive status of the Christian makes him unique, and in a spiritual sense, apart from the world. As a new creature in Christ he is different from the unregenerate world in perspective, life and destination.

Then too, the Church as a spiritual organism is unique and distinctive. Composed of redeemed men and women it is entrusted with the message of salvation to those whom the Bible calls lost.

A God-revealed realism demands that these distinctions not only be recognized but maintained at all costs, for it was to this end that our Lord came. “Should not perish, but have everlasting life” depicts both the redeeming love of God in Christ and man’s lost condition without him.

When unregenerate and regenerate men are equated isn’t violence done to the redemptive work of our Lord? The new birth means nothing if it does not mean a supernatural change, newness of life in Christ.

This very difference is a witness in itself. Living in the world a Christian is a citizen of heaven and as such he is to exert a heavenly influence on his earthly environment. Our Lord said that salt is to be tasted and light seen. God forbid that we should lose our savor, or hide the light of the Spirit’s presence.

Paul wrote urgently about this. He warns against blurring the Christian distinctives by conforming to the world.

Some would confuse the place of the Christian and the mission of the Church in the world. We are here to witness, not to conquer, to give consistent and continuing evidence of the transforming power of Christ.

Nowhere in the Bible are we led to believe that all will accept Christ’s universal offer of salvation. The distinction between the two roads, the two gates, the regenerate and the unregenerate, between heaven and hell are never blurred. The “great gulf” is fixed but to all men everywhere Christ says, “Come.” The reality of “outer darkness” and the “joy of our Lord” are determined by man.

Nor can we bypass the individual element in our witness. One church leader has recently expressed the hope that the church should “adopt the principle of aiming at the conversion of whole societies, in contradiction to the traditional Protestant view of aiming only at individuals.” How this is to be accomplished without conversion of the individual is not explained. Christ came to seek and save lost individuals for it is they who make up society.

We may not like the concept that some are God’s children (through faith in his Son), while others are children of the Devil (through disobedience and unbelief), but such is the plain teaching of the Scriptures. Shall we deny the clear affirmations of the Bible because they do not fit our own ideas?

This very distinction makes it imperative that individual Christians and the Church itself shall maintain a clear and unimpaired testimony. The evidence of God’s operative grace should be there for all to see. To continue hampered by the impedimenta of the world spells personal and corporate defeat on the one hand and a lost witness on the other.

When we are inclined to bemoan the powerlessness of the Church in the world we would do well to examine the cause, not compound it. Power comes, not from worldliness in any form but from the Spirit of the living God.

Our Lord’s affirmation that Christians are not of the world, even as he is not of the world, precludes popularity either for the Church or for individual Christians. Ours is often a lonely road. Not for naught does John remind us, “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you” (1 John 3:13). And then he speaks of the “false prophets” to be found in the world, “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them” (1 John 4:5).

The distinction between the redeemed and the lost is as real as that between life and death, between light and darkness. Maintain this distinction and the Christian witness stands as a lighthouse for all to see, as salt with its saltness intact. Merge Christianity into the pattern of world conformity and instead of life there is the pallor of death.

Confronted by proposed compromises with idolatory Paul wrote the Corinthian Christians in no uncertain terms: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils” (1 Cor. 10:21).

The reality of our surroundings is highlighted by the Apostle John, “We know that we are God’s family, while the whole godless world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19, NEB).

How then can we witness effectively in a corrupt and dying world? In a spirit of self-righteousness or condemnation of others? God forbid! We are to witness to man’s lost condition with love in our hearts and praise on our lips. Wise as serpents and harmless as doves we grieve over the death-dues of sin while we magnify the gift of God which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Nowhere is the winsomeness of Christian love needed more than right here. There should be a brokenheartedness in our approach, an urgency in our appeal, backed by the unassailable evidence of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our own personal lives.

Our warfare is not of the flesh but of the Spirit. It is he alone who gives the victory, for we oppose forces against which no man can stand alone. For the Church and for the individual Christian the whole armour of God is a necessity. We are engaged in combat with the “unseen power that controls this dark world, the spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Eph. 6:12, Phillips).

Fight in God’s way, and with his weapons and the victory is sure. Compromise with evil, take up the weapons of this world, and the battle is lost.

Just over 100 years ago the British Association for the Advancement of Science met at Oxford, England. Chief topic of discussion was the idea that all living things had developed over a long period of time from simpler organisms, an idea which had been suggested in a book published toward the end of 1859. Present to defend the book and its author was a young biologist, Thomas Huxley. Opposition to the new theory was spearheaded by a bishop of the Anglican church, Samuel Wilberforce by name. The debate droned on until finally the good bishop turned to Huxley and sarcastically asked whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed descent from a “venerable ape.” Huxley is reported to have replied, “If I am asked whether I would choose to be descended from the poor animal of low intelligence and stooping gait, who grins and chatters as we pass, or from a man, endowed with great ability and a splendid position, who should use these gifts to discredit and crush humble seekers after truth, I hesitate what answer to make.”

The conflict dragged on; there were divisions on both sides. Some scientists and clergymen supported, others opposed the new theory.

The controversy over evolution has continued. Almost all scientists today, however, have come to accept the theory, and a great many churchmen also. What is to be our position? Can evangelical Christians endorse the idea that all living organisms have developed from simple beginnings? Is it true that this is a scientific problem and not a theological problem? Are we being obscurantists in opposing this theory?

God’s Creation Is Not Static

We begin by defining terms. Some scholars hold that evolution is synonymous with change, and they ask whether we would insist on a static universe. Change occurs, unquestionably. Scripture nowhere speaks of a static creation. Indeed, Scripture refers repeatedly to changes that take place in the world in which we live and contrasts these with the changelessness of God. Evidences of change are found all about us. The landscape changes from erosion and deposition before our very eyes. Living things, too, change. We would deny the testimony of our senses as well as the clear statements of Scripture were we to insist on a static creation. The idea of a static creation comes from the Greeks, particularly from Aristotle, and not from Scripture.

This means that we must expect changes also in the living world. Specifically, we cannot accept the idea of fixity of species, a concept developed by Linnaeus. There is no question but that new species develop. The extent of such possible changes cannot be defined exactly. We do not know the exact taxonomic significance of the phrase “after its kind” which occurs in Genesis. The Bible does teach, however, that extent of change is limited. There are fixed bounds. Changes may take place within the kinds but there can be no change from kind to kind. The Bible also teaches very clearly that life existed from the beginning in a wide variety of forms, some relatively simple, others already highly complex. While there have been changes within these kinds, we have not had a development from the very simple to the highly complex.

The Role of the Creator

Most evolutionists today would also insist that life has developed from inorganic materials. They believe that, by some fortuitous combination of circ*mstances, nonliving material acquires that property which we call life, and that from this very simple beginning all things that are now alive have developed.

Now what has this to do with theology? Is this not strictly a scientific problem? Should we not seek the answers to these questions in the laboratory rather than in the Bible?

We ought first to recognize that the Bible itself speaks repeatedly of creation and always ascribes it to God. There are over 65 passages in Scripture which refer to creation. (These include: Gen. 1:1–31; Exod. 20:11; 1 Sam. 2:8; Neh. 9:6; Job 12:8, 9, 26:7, 13, 28:24–26, 37:16, 18, 38:4, 7–10; Pss. 8:3, 19:1, 2, 33:6–9, 65:6, 74:16, 17, 78:69, 89:11, 12, 90:2, 95:4, 5,102:25, 103:22, 104:2–6, 119:90, 124:8, 136:5–9, 148:5; Prov. 3:19, 8:26–29, 30:4; Eccl. 3:11, 11:5; Isa. 40:26, 28, 42:5, 44:24, 45:7–12, 18, 48:13, 51:13, 66:2; Jer. 5:22, 10:12, 27:5, 31:35, 32:17, 33:2, 51:15, 16; Amos 4:13, 5:8, 9:6; Jonah 1:9; Zech. 12:1; Mal. 2:10; John 1:3, 10; Acts 14:15, 17:24; Rom. 4:17, 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; 2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:16, 17; 1 Tim. 6:13; Heb. 1:2, 10, 2:10, 3:4, 11:3; Rev. 4:11, 10:6, 14:7.) It is not true that creation is referred to only in the book of Genesis, nor is it true that the doctrine of creation is an obscure biblical doctrine. It is very clearly set forth in Scripture. Throughout the Bible, man’s obligation to God is made dependent upon the fact that God is his Creator.

Mechanistic and Materialistic

Moreover, evolution (except as it incorporates broken fragments of the biblical view) is mechanistic and materialistic, and this cannot be fitted into the Christian framework.

Theistic evolutionists ought to recall the theological consequences of Newtonian mechanics. Newton himself was a sincere and devout Christian. He not only acknowledged the existence of God but he accepted Christ Jesus as his Saviour. He believed that the majesty of God showed itself in the laws which he had established and through which he governed the universe. Yet the logical consequences of his own theories caused Newton great concern, because they seemed to make God unnecessary once the universe had been created and its laws established. The Bible speaks of God as both immanent and transcendent. While Newton believed that the laws of nature testify to God’s glory and to his majesty, his followers applied Occam’s principle of parsimony to eliminate God completely. Evolution at least denied divine immanence, applying the clockwork universe of Newton to the biological world. The universe became completely mechanistic; causal determinism became the watchword. The world of living things is ruled solely, it was said, by cause and effect, and the answer to the question of origins is to be found in natural law. While theistic evolutionists professed to see the hand of God behind natural law and behind cause and effect relationships, many evolutionists eliminated God completely.

Being mechanistic, evolution not only denies miracles, but the very possibility of miracles. It explains these away either as instances of faulty observation and reporting, or as instances where we are still ignorant of cause and effect relationships. Yet it is a fact that our Christian faith rests on miracle. Its foundationstone is the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This miracle was proclaimed by the apostles beginning on Pentecost. This miracle they preached to the ends of the earth. And this miracle is still the basis of our evangelical faith today. It is interesting to note that the clockwork universe of Newton no longer rules the world of physics today. Instead, we have the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg, and while this principle applies only on the sub-atomic level it casts serious doubt on the general principle of causal determinism.

Evolution also denies the reality of sin in the scriptural sense. A strictly evolutionary scheme denies man’s responsibility for sin and thus denies the need for a Saviour. Sin becomes not the consequence of a fall from the state of perfection, but the heritage of man’s supposed animal ancestry. Man acts contrary to God’s law not because he has deliberately chosen to defy God but because, coming up from the lower organisms, he assertedly has brought with him some of the moral standards of the jungle and barnyard. We ought not so much to criticize man for what Christians call sin, as to congratulate him for the progress he has made in overcoming his animal heritage.

Evolution is essentially fatalistic. We have noted that its basis is causal determinism. Even the God of the theistic evolutionist, sketched in conformity with this theory, was withdrawn completely from the world presumably created through natural processes. He neither works nor can he work miracles, since natural law assertedly governs this universe. Man is the hopeless and helpless victim of his environment. Except as an emotional catharsis, prayer is useless.

What about those evangelicals who say they are neither fiat creationists nor theistic evolutionists? Is there an alternative such as progressive creationism or scientific creationism?

Some reject fiat creationism because they believe it demands acceptance of the idea of fixity of species. They say they must accept horizontal radiation though they reject the vertical radiation of theistic evolution. But Scripture does not teach fixity of species or a static universe, and there is reason to believe we have had horizontal radiation—the development of new species within the “kinds” of creation.

Yet some of the concepts developed by those who call themselves progressive or scientific creationists do not really answer the difficulties they are supposed to answer. In an attempt to reconcile the geological record with the Genesis account and to solve the problem of time, many scientific creationists have accepted “day-epoch” or “day-revelation” interpretations of Genesis 1. Even if such interpretations did not go counter to principles of sound hermeneutics and exegesis, it should be noted that to regard the “days” of Genesis as long periods of time does not solve the problem of reconciling the Genesis sequence with the sequence of the geological record. It supplies an easy step to the mythological interpretation of Genesis and to theistic evolution.

What of Theistic Evolution?

What about theistic evolution? Can this be fitted into the scheme of our conservative Christian heritage? Some scholars assert that all who reject the Aristotelian concept of a static universe are theistic evolutionists, and they wonder why we shy away from this classification when we recognize the fact of change. Theistic evolution, however, is more than change. It is the acceptance of the Darwinian concept that all living things developed from relatively simple organisms. Those who hold to this idea believe that evolution was God’s way of effecting creation. They ask whether it would not be possible for God to create in this way, and they ask further whether using evolution as a means of creation would really detract from his glory. We must answer, of course, that God could have used evolution, and that we recognize in the operations of natural law a testimony of God’s glory. Yet it is not a question of what God could do; it is a question of what God does and of what he tells us he has done. Moreover, if God used evolution as a means of “creation,” then he owes us “redemption,” since he would then have created us imperfect and sinners.

Many theistic evolutionists, even in evangelical circles, have accepted a liberal or neoorthodox approach to the creation account. They tend to view the language of Genesis 1 through 11 as allegorical or mythological. They tell us that it is not to be regarded as a literal historical account, but rather as a story teaching “the great truth” that God was behind the process of creation. It is true, of course, that Scripture in places uses phenomenal language rather than exact scientific language. It speaks of the sun rising and setting, and we ought not to regard this as a testimony to the correctness of the Ptolemaic system. The fact of the matter is that we ourselves use such phenomenal language in everyday speech. Although we accept the Copernican theory, we speak daily of the sun rising and setting, rather than of the movements of the earth. Yet the extent and detail of the creation account, and the repeated scriptural references to it, certainly indicate that it is meant to be regarded as an historical account.

The Origin of Man

Theistic evolution necessarily denies the historicity of Adam and Eve. In any scheme of evolution it would be inconceivable to have a single man and woman as the first examples of hom*o sapiens. Rather than individuals, Adam and Eve must represent an evolutionary population, the group of organisms which had achieved the status of hom*o sapiens. Yet Christ refers to Adam and Eve as our first parents and indicates that he is speaking of two individuals. The Apostle Paul refers to Adam by name (Rom. 5:14; 1 Cor. 15:22, 45; 1 Tim. 2:13 f.). The last passage is particularly interesting because Paul says that Adam was formed first and then Eve. It is inconceivable that we should have had a population solely of males for a period of time before females were formed. It is also interesting to note that Paul here speaks of Eve being formed out of Adam, a clear reference to the creation account in Genesis 2:20–22. Paul makes Christ the second Adam. He compares him with the father of us all. If Adam is to represent an evolutionary population, then Christ also must represent a group.

Logically, any system of evolution leads finally to evolutionary humanism as a substitute for Christianity. It was this of which Julian Huxley, the grandson of Thomas Huxley, made so much at the recently-convened Darwin centennial festival. It is this which G. G. Simpson stressed at the December meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science in Chicago, where he referred to orthodox Christianity as “the higher superstitution.” It is true that there is a fortunate inconsistency in many evolutionists who also are sincere Christians. They do not carry out the theory to its logical conclusions. They still accept Christ Jesus as their Saviour from sin. Yet logically, “euglena to man” evolution can only lead to strict mechanism and materialism which certainly have no place in Christian theology.

JOHN W. KLOTZ

Chairman, Natural Science Division

Concordia Senior College

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Automatic Ecclesian

Our research associates report a positive outcome to experimental procedures designed to determine the feasibility and desirability of programmed instruction utilizing free operant, controlled operant, or classical conditioning for the development of verbal skills in Ecclesian. Made it through that first sentence, did you? Welcome to our little group. You are either a speaker of Ecclesian and a member of five or six committees or you have aptitude that you should report at once to denominational headquarters.

I know that you will be interested in our teaching machines for instruction in Ecclesian. Actually, our researchers worked with pigeons, but they assure me that the stimulus-response patterns they tested should work equally well with churchmen of average intelligence. To be machine-teachable, one needs only the ability to emit responses. (It helps if the subject can read and write, but this is not necessary, since we can start him on the pre-primer program.)

Our Ecclesian “teaching machine” has no moving parts. It is a programmed textbook. More elaborate machines are equipped with hardware to keep the student from cheating, but we assume that Ecclesianists will not peek.

Test yourself on the programmed material below. After filling in each blank, turn the column upside down and read the correct answer. If your answer was right you experience reinforcement—no answer is ever wrong in Ecclesian.

Ecumenical encounter may contribute significantly to the broadening of the perspective of the conversants.

Q: How may ecumenical encounter contribute to the broadening of the perspective of the conversants?

A: Significantly.

Q: Describe the broadening of conversants to which ecumenical encounter may contribute significantly. Broadening of the

A: Perhaps’ but we meant perspective.

Q: Would an ecumenical conversation signify a contribution to the perspective of broadening encounter?

Certainly; just as an ecumenical perspective may encounter the broad significance of contributions.

EUTYCHUS

The Great Commission

“Ecumenical Merger and Mission” by Harold Lindsell (Mar. 30 issue) was a real eye-opener. However, no mention was made of the Assemblies of God with our 800 foreign missionaries besides the ones to Alaska and the American Indians. The Assemblies of God is not a merger either, and our missionary force is constantly expanding as we realize the message of the Great Commission.

A. REUBEN HARTWICK

First Pentecostal Church

Coraopolis, Pa.

Is “the foreign witness of the church” only dependent on the number of missionaries they have on the field? Is not at times a reduction … a sign of wisdom? There are some boards which feel that missionary offerings can best be used to help national churches attain selfhood, undergird their own programs and grant adequate scholarships to train nationals rather than to send an army of North American missionaries overseas.

The premise of a numerical comparison at this point is by no means conclusive. Neither is a great increase in the total missionary giving of a church a sure index because at times these funds are being used in a way which sets the missionary cause back rather than advances the national church.…

It may be best for Latin American evangelical Christianity that some “Yankees go home” and some … offerings be invested for the present in the U.S.A. to evangelize North America rather than create problems for the national churches in Latin America.

JOHN H. SINCLAIR

Latin America Commission on Secy.

Ecumenical Mission and Relations

The United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.

New York, N.Y.

May I voice my objection to Dr. Lindsell’s attempt to unite the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches with the American Baptist Convention.

Instead of trying to increase the ABC missionary force with outside figures, Dr. Lindsell would have done better to point out the combined total of 701 missionaries, for Mid Missions and Association of Baptists for World Evangelism far exceeds the total for the ABC. Add to this figure the missionaries serving with Evangelical Baptist Missions, Fellowship of Baptists for Home Missions, and Hiawatha Land Independent Baptist Mission (all GARBC approved agencies), and one can readily see that the GARBC has an impressive force on the mission fields of the world.

The whole tenor of Dr. Lindsell’s article seems to lend credence to the belief that the loss of evangelical orientation in missionary endeavor is accompanied with a proportionate loss of missionary vision and activity.

JACK BELLAIRS

Grand Rapids, Mich.

I am one who voted for the union (of 1925), and later entered the ministry of the United Church of Canada. The greater part of my 27 years as an ordained minister … has been spent in the Maritime Provinces.…

While having a reduced staff overseas, in our mission fields, we are extending our cooperation with other church groups in these far places. An example of this is seen in our United Church work in Japan. Here we cooperate with the Nippon Kirisuto, or the United Church of Japan.…

As a Maritimer, I am totally unfamiliar with what Dr. Lindsell calls “wounds yet unhealed” which he says were caused by the union of 1925. The church where I worshipped, and my father and grandfather before me, came into the union as simply and painlessly as though we were to have a summer amalgamation for the holidays. I was not aware of any upheaval. One day we were Methodists, and the next we were members of the United Church of Canada, and found ourselves working with a larger group of fellow Christians.…

ARTHUR H. LONG

Westfield Charge

Westfield, New Brunswick

I cannot see how reunion in itself is to blame for lack of power for missions as exhibited in reunited churches.… The basis for reunion is the culprit. Those who say, “We are only going, by different roads, to the same place,” are indeed saying that Christianity is some vague thing and of no real import in the world today. The complete watering down of the faith is the destroyer. Many proponents of reunion are ready to ignore Christ in order to come together. The … only basis for reunion lies in Christ and the Church he founded. Missionary zeal comes from commitment to Christ.

The Church is God’s, and he can do his work with or without denominations. When the denominations begin to see God in his Church, then there will be a real return to the Catholic Faith once and for all delivered to the saints. There are too many people working for the devil on both sides of the ecumenical movement. Those who are opposed to any idea of reunion must need to consider self in relation to the Church of Christ. To be closed to the disgrace of separation is indeed as large a sin as being ready to give all to man’s super-church of pan-protestantism.

CARL C. RICHMONDS

St. Luke’s Church on the Island

Wheeling, W. Va.

The issue on missions was a gem. It has certainly justified my own observations and limited experience, even though this truth is very saddening. But there is an answer on how to evangelize the world, and that is through a missionary conference and faith-promise plan of missionary giving.…

In our own church, it has doubled attendance, increased missionary giving from $800 to over $7,000, raised candidates for full-time service, and led to the conversion of many in less than two years. We did more for world evangelization last year than we did the previous ten. His plan is still best, and still works.

ORVILLE WOLFF

Grace Evangelical United Brethren

Yankton, S.D.

Dr. Kermit Eby’s “New Delhi Doesn’t Excite Me” (Mar. 30 issue) struck a responsive note in my soul. I can’t get excited about “bigness” especially when it is moving so fast toward a monolithic union misnamed unity. I don’t trust big Protestantism any more than big Romanism, for power corrupts men.

Out of 25 years in pastorate, seven years in foreign mission fields, fellowship with men and women of both the Council churches and the independent movements, I am convinced that mere bigness is no surety of spiritual power, but that every time men slice off the edge of conviction to be able to “unite” with some other group, they lose the vitality of faith and often submerge the Holy Spirit leadership under the paraphernalia of bureaucracy.

Let us review Harold Lindsell’s “proposals for action” in his article … humbly and prayerfully.

P. E. WILLIAMS

First Church of God

Chicago, Ill.

Expository Preaching

Professor Lloyd M. Perry reviewed a volume (Mar. 30 issue) that I have compiled and edited, Special-Day Sermons for Evangelicals (Channel Press, 1961). In the first part of the review, he called attention to features in accord with what I strove to do.… In the latter part, he expressed a preference for a larger degree of “direct exposition of the Word of God.” With this feeling I am heartily in accord. Anyone who reads my books knows that I have long advocated expository preaching worthy of the name. But as a compiler of two volumes of contemporary sermons, I have had to select from the messages that I received, and among them I found few that seemed to me expository. For these printed sermons I make no apology. More than a few able pulpit masters, such as Spurgeon and Macartney, almost never preached expository messages, and yet God honored their way of dealing with his inspired Word.

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

Philadelphia, Pa.

We’Ll Only Tell Kinfolk

“For depth analysis I prefer a blotter to a couch because.…”

I am participating in your survey (Eutychus, Mar. 30 issue) lest, by sheer failure to do so, I should be labeled a “non-cooperative” in this ecumenical, organizational and program-minded world.

Please forgive my use of blue rather than black ink. I merely seek to retain one shred of individuality. Yet, herein lies the trait that may well nullify my good intent in participating. Please don’t tell on me!

ROBERT E. MANN

First Baptist Church

Mt. Carmel, Ill.

As a daily newspaper editor of many years, this one has learned that most scrawls are not worth the trouble it takes to convert them into English, whether it be done on couch or blotter.…

Every scrawler scrawls in three different forms: (a) on newsprint with soft pencil; (b) on unglazed paper with ball point; (c) on highly glazed paper with expensive gift fountain pen. Specimens of each must be studied to analyze the real character of the scrawler. And it can’t be done lying down.

C. M. STANLEY

Editor

The Alabama journal

Montgomery, Ala.

Book Of Common Prayer

The account by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (Current Religious Thought, Mar. 16 issue) of the 1662 Common Prayer Book is a poignant instance of how a particular stress affects the whole story. In substance, the Fifth Common Prayer Book was no different from the Fourth which appeared in 1604. As a historical fact, the Fifth which the British Parliament agreed upon in 1662 was not so much a reaffirmation of the Reformation but rather a reaction of the Restoration under Charles II to the Puritan changes in the form of worship during the Commonwealth. A continuous acceptance of many of those changes, as proposed by Richard Baxter at a conference held at Savoy in 1661 between the progressives and the reactionaries, was rejected by Parliament the following year. The story of 1662 is not complete unless we also admit that one out of every three clergymen refused to follow the Fifth Prayer Book as a means of worship as their predecessors had done in 1559 under Elizabeth. The Non-Conformists of England and Wales, this year, will have every reason to celebrate the gallant stand of the 2,000 clergymen who lost their livings and suffered imprisonment like Bunyan because they believed that the British Parliament should not interfere in such matters as freedom of conscience and religious liberty.

R. R. WILLIAMS

Llandudno, Wales

The Book of Common Prayer is all that writer Hughes claims for it, but let us not deprive of its heritage a book that has for its origin an antiquity of 413 years—also from a Book (of 1549) which in some respects is superior to any subsequent revision, and to which all revisions seem to tend to revert.

HORTON I. FRENCH

Trinity Episcopal Church

Excelsior, Minn.

Our Heritage

The year 1620 marked the first colony in northern Virginia, established “for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith,” according to the Mayflower Compact. Some years later the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut made a confederation to maintain and preserve the “liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” In 1643 a number of colonies joined and stated their end and aim in coming to this country thus: “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the gospel in purity and peace”—this is the New England Confederacy. God greatly honored their faith and their stand and made of that small beginning a mighty and prosperous nation. Does he not say in his Word, “… for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed”?

Now we read in our newspapers of the efforts of some to ban all Bible reading from the public schools. The Massachusetts School Law of 1647 established the first system of public education for the express purpose of teaching our children to read the Scriptures.

In the past the United States has been called a Christian nation and has been a land where the Bible was revered and the Gospel preached to the world. Now it becomes necessary to define these terms. A Christian is one who is in Christ and Christ in him because he has believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and has been saved from his sins.…

In 1959, I visited a country in Southeast Asia. It was grievous to see that the people knew all about the United States except the God who had made her great. They had been introduced to our movies, television, electric appliances, engineering feats, fashions and customs, but the Lord who gave all this prosperity had been ignored. I was invited with other new arrivals to a reception at the home of the ambassador. He made a very good speech and then presented a film made by the United States Information Service. It should chill the blood of any Christian. The film showed scenes of the places and people of Thailand and some of the Buddhist religious customs, and summed it up by saying that Buddhism has contributed much to the peace and happiness of the world. The United States Information Service also published a book on Buddhism. The inscription in the front says, “This volume dealing pictorially and descriptively with the life of Buddha has been published by the United States Information Service and is presented to the people of Thailand by the people of the United States on the occasion of the observance of the year 2500 Buddhist Era”.… Edmund Burke said all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Religious freedom has deteriorated into promotion of idolatry. Christianity is an exclusive religion. Our God states that all others are idols and that he is a jealous God.

When former President Eisenhower made his trip to many countries, I hoped that he would give glory to God, but I listened in vain for any mention of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The results of that trip are well known.

In the United States we have Moslem mosques, Hindu temples, and hundreds of religious organizations that are not Christian. In the light of the stated purposes of the early documents of America, is this what the founding fathers mean by religious liberty? The amalgamation now prevailing will result in controlling heathenism and we can expect the judgment of God to come down upon it. We put “In God We Trust” on our coins and extol Buddha. Jonah warned Nineveh to repent and the city heeded the warning and was spared. Will America have that much sense? Our only remedy is to turn to God—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. In our present state we cannot sing “God Bless America.” We should be crying “God save America.”

ELIZABETH S. LANDON

Arlington, Va.

Into The Dialogue

Some editor did an uncommonly perceptive and compassionate job on “The Hunger of the Masses” (Mar. 16 issue). I intend to give it some currency in the evangelism-social action dialogue within the United Church of Christ.…

WILLIS E. ELLIOTT

Literature Secy.

Office of Evangelism

The United Church of Christ

Cleveland, Ohio.

Book Of The Month Plan

“Book of the Month” clubs are quite popular in America today. Sharing this popularity is a renewed interest in Bible reading. With the publication of the revised editions of the Bible, people are again manifesting a renewed interest in the reading of the Scriptures. As preachers, we should capitalize on these interests. To do this, one might suggest the use of what may be referred to as the “Book of the Month” plan of biblical preaching.

This plan of biblical preaching puts the emphasis upon one particular book of the Bible.… It is a concentrated effort to learn the nature and structure of a book of the Bible with a view to making its truths alive in the experience of the hearer today.

You might introduce this type of preaching to your people by using the Bible as the first “Book of the Month.” An introductory sermon might be entitled, “How We Got Our Bible.” Here, you could present the facts as to (1) how we got this “most beloved book,” dealing with the development of the canon; and (2) how we know it to be the Word of God. For the remaining three Sundays of the month, you might preach on such subjects as: (1) “How to Read Your Bible;” (2) “How to Study Your Bible;” and (3) “How to Understand Your Bible.” Having introduced this type of preaching, you might proceed some time later by using the same approach with your favorite book of the Bible.…

Instead of choosing sermons at random …, you might choose to preach on a book of the Bible where you could use the basic outline of the book as the plan for the sermons. The Epistle of James affords a good example. You might use as the title of the introductory sermon “God’s True or False Examination.” In this sermon you could use the five major divisions of the book as the outline for your message. This sermon would thus call for a brief treatment of the following subjects: (1) “The Truth about Testing;” (2) “The Test of Attitudes;” (3) “The Test of Faith;” (4) “The Test of Wisdom;” (5) “The Test of Conduct.” In such a presentation, you should always exercise caution so as to present the truth as it is found in the particular book from which you are preaching. You should stress the truth as it is found in the book and not use the occasion as a springboard “to go everywhere preaching the gospel.”

You could fill out the remaining Sundays of the month by preaching on one of the divisions of the book of James. You might use as the titles for these sermons: “God’s Word for Those in Difficult Places” (Chaps. 1 and 5:7–20); “God’s Answer to the Integration Problem” (Chap. 2:1–13); “God’s Evaluation of Your Faith” (Chap. 2:14–26); and “God’s Judgment of Your Speech” (Chap. 3 to 4:13). In these sermons, you would deal more specifically with the passage and devote more time to the practical application of the truth than you did in your introductory sermon.

Using these two general methods of approach, one can utilize any book of the Bible as the “Book of the Month.” He can suggest to his people that they read the “Book of the Month” in preparation for the sermon series.

G. WILLIS MARQUETTE

The Methodist Church

Spring City, Pa.

No doubt it seems presumptuous to speak of the failure of science in a scientifically saturated age. Nevertheless, there is a failure aspect to science which ought to be recognized and exploited by evangelical Christians today. For this failure represents a unique opportunity for the proclamation of the Gospel with renewed effectiveness.

Faith in a New Savior

There was a time when science was hailed as the new savior. It was the modern wonder drug for the age-old ills of mankind, both collectively and individually. August Comte’s hierarchy of intellectual disciplines perfectly illustrates this idea. He claimed that the development of human society patterned the development of man’s intelligence. This occurs in three stages, the first, or earliest, of which is the theological. This is a primitive approach and will be outmoded and cast off in a progressive society, which passes through the next stage, the metaphysical, and culminates in the scientific, or positive stage.

Comte believed that man guided society into this stage by utilizing scientific principles. Darwin’s evolution gave impetus to another viewpoint, which is especially associated with Herbert Spencer. Spencer maintained that the forces that cause progress are not man-made, but part of natural evolution. But however the method, the idea of progress was in full flower, and the optimism it generated continued unabated until it was shattered by the First and Second World Wars. The intellectual world was shocked and disillusioned, and the hope of inevitable progress and belief in man’s “natural goodness” was discredited.

This whole attitude of faith in science, however, is by no means dead. There are a few scientists who still cling to their test tube faith, although they are outnumbered by those who recognize the limitations of their discipline. But it is at the grass-roots level that, consciously or unconsciously, “science” remains a magic word. For many people, to say that something is “scientific” is automatically to verify it.

One need only follow the methods of Madison Avenue, observe the content of advertising, to perceive the effect that “science” has on the average person. Television announcers counsel us to watch their “scientific comparisons,” “scientific demonstrations,” and “scientific proof.” We are constantly made aware of the results of research. This is not to disparge such research, but to point out that the use of such appeal by ad men testifies to the effect on the grass roots of anything “scientific.”

It is time to get the situation in perspective. For such an attitude is not inherent in science itself. The early scientists were not led to worship their discipline by the discoveries which they made. Such men as Kepler, Galileo, and Newton looked upon their findings as validating their faith rather than leading to its rejection. Science of itself does not beckon us to idolatry; to the contrary, it can be used to intensify the wonder and majesty of our God. Dr. Howard Kelly was both a world-famous gynecologist, and a devout Christian. His scientific training did not preclude an evangelical faith. In fact, he arrived at his faith by “treating the Bible as I would any branch of science.… I reached, then, this point, ‘I will see carefully just what the Bible says of itself, and will accept its own dictum as my working hypothesis in studying it’” (A Scientific Man And The Bible, The Sunday School Times Co., pp. 43–44). As a result of his study he was able to affirm “that the Bible is the Word of God, with an assurance greater than all other convictions directing my course in this brief earthly pilgrimage” (ibid., p. 41).

Thus it is not science per se but, science wrenched from its natural moorings that leads to its distorted image as savior. If science is contained within its objective boundaries, it becomes a real factor in the enrichment of human life. But unfortunately scientists themselves have abandoned the scientific method and ventured arrogantly into philosophy, metaphysics, and theology. Hugh Elliot, for example, declares that there is no such thing as “spirit” or “purpose” in the universe. Why? Because there is no room for such concepts in the subject matter of astronomers and physicists! “No sign of purpose can be detected in any part of the vast universe disclosed by our most powerful telescopes” (quoted in Harold H. Titus, Living Issues In Philosophy, American Book Co., p. 110). One can expect Khrushchev to point out that the Soviet space probes fail to see anything of God, but one hardly expects such nonsense from a man supposedly committed to scientific method.

In other words, the failure of which I speak is not the failure of science as such, but the failure of the attempt to thrust science into the role of savior. It is the failure of scientism, the idolatrous enthronement of science as the final judge of all truth, the sure guide for every decision, and the ultimate hope for the redemption of mankind. Science fails at this task for the same reason that theology would fail at the task of formulating laws of planetary motion. The only difference is that no theologian, we trust, would be so foolish as to make the attempt.

Many scientists today, as we have noted, do realize the limitations of their discipline. Herbert Butterfield, for example, in speaking of academic history wisely observes:

“… those are gravely wrong who regard it as the queen of the sciences, or think of it as a substitute for religion, a complete education in itself. Those who promoted its study in former times seemed to value it rather as an additional equipment for people who were presumed to have had their real education elsewhere, their real training in values (and in the meaning of life) in other fields. Those who complain that technical history does not provide people with the meaning of life are asking from an academic science more than it can give …” (Christianity and History, Fontana Books, pp. 34–35).

Such perspective will bring science down from its idol’s stand, and make it a tool of man, as it should be.

The failure of science, or, more properly, of “scientism,” can be illustrated in a number of ways. One is the widespread agreement that ours is the “Age of Anxiety.” And this in the face of the flourishing science of psychology! Psychology, and its sister psychiatry, were expected to take care of the psychic, marital, and social ills of man. But psychic, marital, and social problems have shown marked increase rather than diminishing. And there is growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of psychotherapy. At least it must be admitted that this science has not been able to fulfill its expected role as the psychic savior of man.

Again, we want to emphasize that this is no disdain of the science as such; psychological studies have much to contribute to our understanding of man. But the idolatrous enthronement of the psychic scientists will only result in disillusionment. To understand the pervading anxiety of the age one must not only observe the psychic stresses, the social and political uncertainties, and the rapid changes occurring in every facet of life, but also the crumbling of man’s spiritual foundations. Man, created by God, cannot thrive in a godless life.

A second illustration of the failure of “scientism” is seen in the rise of despair, which is reflected in modern man’s art, literature, philosophy, and even some theology. The most scientific of any age is also one of the most despairing of ages. The reign of reason has given birth to irrational despondency over the meaning of life. Thus we have witnessed the rise of the “beat generation” and the “angry young men,” who plunge to the depths of their hell to pick up handfuls of foul invectives and hurl them at the society they detest.

And we see the atheistic existentialists, forlornly drifting on their vast, meaningless, inpersonal sea. Jean Paul Sartre writes a novel and entitles it Nausea. The newest fiction to come out of France is the alitérature, which reduces man to an atom, bounced around by impersonal scientific laws. In the theater a new movement is called “the theater of the absurd,” which portrays life as disordered, distorted, and thoroughly repulsive.

Every facet of modern art and thought is, to some extent, tainted by this despair, whether it is the philosopher W. T. Stace who speaks of the “disease of existence,” or the painter, George Grosz, who paints a hole to symbolize the “nothingness of our time.”

A third, and penetrating, illustration of the failure is seen in what Cherbonnier has called “sophisticated nonsense,” the absurdities to which science leads those who blindly worship it. He quotes Lin Yutang who has dug up some doctoral dissertations which are sheer nonsense. One is on ice cream, which concludes that the sugar used in its manufacture has the primary function of sweetening it! Another studies the bacterial content in cotton undershirts, and discovers that this content tends to increase with the length of time such garments are worn.

Pitirim A. Sorokin levels his guns at the same sort of thing in the results of small group researchers. He says:

“‘The term (of group) cohesiveness refers to phenomena which come into existence if, and only if, the group exists.’ (How wonderful!) Or ‘The members of a group who are … friends … are likely to be more interested in one another as persons, perhaps more supportive of each other, more cordial in interpersonal relationships.’ (What a revelation again!…) Reading these revelations I am inclined to borrow G. Saintsbury’s expressions: ‘O cliches! O Tickets! O fudge!’” “Physicalist and Mechanistic School,” in Joseph S. Roucek, ed., Contemporary Sociology, Philosophical Library, pp. 1168–69).

As Cherbonnier observes, “… the irrationalities of an Age of Reason are due, not simply to a residue of ‘prescientific thought-ways,’ but to a direct consequence of the dictatorship of science itself” (E. La B. Cherbonnier, Hardness of Heart, Doubleday & Co., Inc., p. 155). Such irrationalities lend credence to Anatole France’s skeptical remark: “The Sciences are beneficent. They prevent man from thinking.”

Opportunity and Obligation

This failure has significance for the Christian church. It presents us with both the opportunity and the obligation to proclaim with renewed vigor and intensity the biblical message: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:22). When men become aware that, concerning their idol, “… one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble” (Isaiah 46:7), then it is the imperative of the people of God to capture the imagination of men with the true God, the living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the situation today. Karl Heim said that secularism goes through two stages of development. In the first stage, man is infatuated with his own ability to create; he is awed by his own technological progress, and thinks that through it he shall become lord of all. In this stage, God is irrelevant. The second stage finds man with a wealth of technological inventions, but a poverty of spirit. He has not become lord; he is an empty slave. In this stage, says Heim, man is able to ask questions concerning God, his own existence, etc. in a way impossible to him in the first stage. Further, said Heim, to a great extent Europe and America has passed into this second stage. (“Christian Faith and the Growing Power of Secularism,” in Walter Leibrecht, ed., Religion and Culture, Harper and Bros., p. 188).

Thus, man’s idolatrous enthronement of science has clearly failed. This failure needs to be recognized at the grassroots level, as has been increasingly done among the intelligentsia. And along with this awareness, the call of God is to a renewal of forceful proclamation of the Gospel of Christ, of the God who “will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

ROBERT H. LAUER

Pastor

Salem Baptist Church

Florrisant, Missouri