The Church’S Mission: Let The Laity Do It
Chosen and Sent: Calling the Church to Mission, by Theodore Eastman (Eerdmans, 1971, 143 pp., $2.95), and Laity Mobilized: Reflections on Church Growth in Japan and Other Lands, by Neil Braun (Eerdmans, 1971, 224 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by John E. Wagner, attorney, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Here are two books written from entirely different theological perspectives that yet say some very similar things about the plight of the institutional church and its mission in our time. And the two authors prescribe in broad outline similar remedies.
Theodore Eastman, a pastor and former executive secretary of the Episcopal Overseas Mission Society, analyses what he sees as the two paramount defects in the life and mission of the modern Church—inadequate motivation and insufficient flexibility. Although he uses the farewell discourses in John’s Gospel as the text for his critique, as in so much current preaching the Scripture appears to serve as a mere garnishment rather than an authoritative framework.
Evangelism, to Eastman, does not mean “rechurching lapsed or migrant Christians” or “gathering converts as an ardent hobbyist collects coins.” Rather, the Church’s call is to participate, through Jesus Christ, in God’s continuing action of making the creation whole. The manner of fulfilling this mission in our time is to be that of the foot-washing servant our Lord portrayed in John 13.
The Church as a community of slaves is intended to be an agent of revolution—the revolution of change for the better. This essential part of the continuation of creation is one in which God and man cooperate. To carry this out, man needs the co-efficient of love-obedience, and this is bestowed by the Holy Spirit.
In this partnership effort with God, man will incur opposition. To avoid escaping either through pietistic withdrawal or through total identification with the world is difficult, and Jesus himself offers no easy solution. Each citizen of the kingdom must search out the frontier of demarcation for himself, using whatever references “the Christian tradition provides.”
Eastman then reviews the historical ways in which the Church has sought to carry out the mission of its partnership with God in “creating and perfecting the world,” concluding that a new strategy is needed in our time. The modern notion of a paid clergy pastoring established congregations does not hold promise for future growth. The new style of mission must utilize the whole people of God.
Eastman opts for a secular style portrayed by the good Samaritan—a total commitment to human need. But he does not believe it is necessary to be overtly “religious.” Rather, one is called to an “evangelism” of Christian presence.
The “new Christian” will be one who comes to a fresh appreciation of the activity of God’s Spirit in the world and to a commitment to the central issues of the faith, which will vary from place to place and from culture to culture. He will be concerned more with communication than with conversion, and will search for more thorough theological education, as well as deeper appreciation of community. Eastman says little, if anything, of the Word and prayer, or the sacraments, as means of spiritual growth, and he ignores the evangelical lay-oriented ministries that have blossomed during the past decade.
Neil Braun’s Laity Mobilized speaks more directly to the matter of church growth per se—evangelism in the traditional biblical sense. As a missionary to Japan since 1952 and recently a student at Fuller’s School of World Mission, Braun persuasively argues for a new style of mission that will bring men to saving faith in Jesus Christ in diverse cultures and nations.
Braun’s impressive statistical and historical documentation of missionary evangelism—including that of the American frontier—takes off from a scriptural launching pad very much like Eastman’s. Both men tell us that the whole Bible speaks to the whole people of God in the matter of mission. But Braun’s understanding of the call is that of gospel proclamation as distinguished from Eastman’s vision of a socio-theological community immersed in worldly problems; social justice and Christian action are in Braun’s view an outgrowth of calling men to conversion through Jesus Christ. Although he recognizes the possibility of distortion that limits the vocation of the laity to prayer, Bible study, church work, and evangelism, an even greater danger, he says, is that the Church will so emphasize social action that it commits spiritual suicide.
Braun argues boldly for new modes of ministry and for a mission of the laos, rather than the “one-paid-pastor-per-church” system. Citing examples from a wide variety of groups in different parts of the world and drawing on the experience of great missionary leaders, he builds a solid case for unpaid preachers drawn from the laity—persons filled with the power of the Spirit and sustained by Word and prayer and committed fellowship, reaching out to ever-growing populations potentially responsive to the Gospel.
The sign of a good church, he says, is not a large attendance and budget but the ability to “establish viable new congregations in its vicinity.” Reproduction of believers is the prime business of mission, and from this will flow Christian love and social concern. This, it seems to me, is the answer to the current plight of the institutional church.
Braun, like Eastman, closes his book with the balanced vision of a church that mobilizes the believing layman in the total ministry, subject only to the oversight and light-handed counsel of fully ordained, theologically educated ministers. In contrast to Eastman, however, he emphasizes spiritual growth rather than theological education for the layman.
In brief, then, the two books are amazingly similar in their diagnosis of present institutional church problems, as well as in their call for a flexible new style of ministry involving the mobilization of lay people. Both recognize the necessity of the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish these new styles of mission. But Eastman’s answer—the so-called evangelism of Christian presence—is in sharp contrast to Braun’s focus on proclamation, persuasion, and teaching in order to bring men into a personal relationship with Christ. Eastman’s neglect of gospel proclamation and person conversion is a common malady afflicting current secularized theology and the mode of mission it projects. Perhaps Eastman’s new style of mission needs Braun’s as its predicate and Braun’s vision needs some of Eastman’s insights for its amplification in the life of the believing community.
Idyllic Relations?
The Trial and Death of Jesus, by Haim Cohn (Harper & Row, 1971, 419 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
Haim Cohn, a justice of the Israeli supreme court, has expanded a provocative article published in 1967 into a sizable book. His is but the latest of a series of books on the trial of Jesus (see the reviewer’s article, “Historical Notes on the Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, April 9, 1971, pp. 6–11).
Like S. G. F. Brandon and Paul Winter, the distinguished jurist starts out with the premise that the Gospels were theological and apologetic rather than historical in character, and that the Evangelists retrojected the fully developed hostility that existed between Christians and Jews in the late first century back to the time of Jesus. “It should be remembered,” he warns, “that the author of John was an implacable and uncompromising blackener of Jews and whitewasher of Romans.…”
Cohn’s novel theory is that the Sanhedrin met at night, not to prosecute or even to examine Jesus, but to save him from the Romans. To establish this interpretation, Cohn seeks to demonstrate that “neither Pharisees nor Sadducees, neither priests nor elders, neither scribes nor any Jews, had any reasonable cause to seek the death of Jesus or his removal.”
Jesus’ cleansing of the temple could, according to Cohn, have caused no offense to the temple authorities at all. The fact that Jesus acted without formal jurisdiction “would scarcely have irked the authorities.” On the contrary, the Jewish leaders are depicted as being concerned, if only for their own sakes, to protect “a Jew who enjoyed the love and affection of the people.” Therefore when the Sanhedrin met at night they sought, not to find false witnesses, as the Gospels would have us believe, but to prove that the witnesses against Jesus were false.
Jesus’ claim that he was the Messiah or even the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven could not have been offensive. All the passages, particularly in John’s Gospel, that emphasize the divinity of Jesus and the attempts to stone him for such a blasphemous claim Cohn dismisses as late constructions. The rending of the high priest’s garment at Jesus’ confession was a sign of grief at his inability to save Jesus rather than a reaction against blasphemy.
Unfortunately for Cohn’s picture of “sweetness and light” in the relations between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, such an idyllic situation is completely contradicted by the Gospels and by our own perception of human nature. That the Pharisees and Sadducees in power, who were rebuked and threatened by Jesus’ preaching, should have actively sought to save him is indeed a noble conception, but one that is unhappily contradicted by human nature. And how shall we explain away the rage and fury of the sincere Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, against the early Christians if the teachings of Jesus were as inoffensive as the author claims?
Cohn concedes that the “most compelling argument” against his thesis is the total lack of any support for his theory from the Talmudic sources. On the contrary, the Talmud contains traditions in which the Jews take full responsibility for the judgment of Jesus. Cohn seeks to argue, quite unconvincingly, that some of these traditions were originally references not to Jesus of Nazareth but to some other Jesus.
The attempt to free Jews from any liability for the crucifixion is largely a modern undertaking, motivated by the justifiable revulsion against centuries of anti-Semitism and especially by the horrors of the Nazi holocaust. The Talmudic sources and the Jewish Toledoth Jeshu of medieval times viewed the execution of Jesus as a justly deserved punishment and the condemnation of Jesus as a Jewish and not a Roman responsibility. According to William Horbury, “many passages from Jewish texts would, if found in Christian sources, certainly be ascribed to anti-Jewish sentiment.”
Whatever differences of interpretation we may have with Justice Cohn over the intent of the gospel passages, we must wholeheartedly agree when he writes: “Jesus himself had asked God to forgive them that had crucified him, and it would seem axiomatic that his followers should join in his prayer and, where called upon, practice the same forgiveness themselves.” And with him we must be sadly indignant that so many professed Christians have failed to follow Christ’s example.
Persecution In Cuba Justified
Religion in Cuba Today, edited by Alice L. Hageman and Philip E. Wheaton (Association, 1971, $7.95), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial representative, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
In his foreword Harvey Cox says that “thanks to the dogged determination of the editors of this book, we can at last read and think for ourselves” about the Cuban churches. Dogged determination had nothing to do with it: anyone set on producing this kind of book would be warmly welcomed in Cuba.
This impressive piece of propaganda makes good mileage out of the darker side of the Batista regime. It cites some favorable economic statistics for 1970; plays the Bay of Pigs incident for all it’s worth and then some; and goes through all the predictable hoops about Yanqui neocolonialism.
The twelve contributors will get into no trouble in Havana for their treatment of the more religious subjects: the great adversary is not the devil or sin, but counter-revolutionary thinking. The Christian’s commitment is to the revolution. Those who could not come to terms with the revolution were “unable to separate their commitment to the Church of Christ from their loyalty to the United States.” Evangelism is proselytism. Any hint of world-rejecting is to be condemned: “this seal of ethical negativism and social quietism has left its mark and even today is hard to eradicate.”
There are contrived interviews, and what purports to be a tape-recorded account of a discussion with “a dozen Protestant leaders, enthusiastic revolutionaries” who had volunteered for work in the canefields.
All the Cuban authors are male and white, and all accept “the beautiful words and intentions of Fidel Castro.” There is no real treatment of what happens when Marxist policies clash headlong with the Christian Gospel, but rather a tendency to identify the latter with the American social ethic, to be rejected as inappropriate for transplanting. In its place is put something that squares more with “our history, idiosyncrasy, and the character of our people.”
The game is given away when one Fidelista churchman discusses some dissidents who judged the revolution “with a simplicity bordering on idiocy” but who stayed in the country and are termed “spiritual exiles.” Adds the writer: “They were exiles from the moment they became Christians.” No one is in the slightest danger of putting this book in any other category than that suggested by the fact that Fidel Castro is one of the contributors.
Newly Published
Man Without God, by John Reid (Westminster, 306 pp., $9.95). An excellent, comprehensive survey of the widespread phenomenon of atheism, intending to open the way toward dialogue between believers and unbelievers. With a profound understanding and respect for the unbeliever, the author, a Catholic theologian and philosopher, examines the historical and philosophical roots of unbelief, its forms and manifestations, and its contemporary humanistic thrust. Secularization is placed in Christian perspective and direction is given for a distinctly Christian humanism. Although written for the believer this book will command the attention of the atheist as well.
Invitation to Joy: A Personal Story, by Eleanor Searle Whitney (Harper & Row, 195 pp., $5.95). A girl from the midwest marries into one of the richest, oldest, most influential families in America and begins a life of excitement, glamor, and emptiness. Not until her conversion to Christ did Mrs. Whitney’s existence “come alive.”
Neither Black nor White, by David O. Shipley (Word, 164 pp., $4.95). A black evangelical, who directs an experimental church ministry, outlines a dynamic program to serve the individual of any color in his total development. Both practical and autobiographical, this book offers detailed suggestions for carrying out a worthwhile ministry and also gives insights into the black situation.
The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, edited by Charles M. Layman (Abingdon, 1,386 pp., $14.95 until Dec. 31 [then, $17.50]). For discerning users, a helpful compendium of mainstream biblical scholarship. If you own the doctrinally more reliable New Bible Commentary: Revised, this can supplement it.
The Albigensian Crusades, by Joseph R. Strayer (Dial, 201 pp., $7.95). A Princeton professor brings cruel and significant persecution of medieval dissenters to life for the ordinary reader.
The Search for Meaning, by Alfred Stern (Memphis State, 367 pp., $12.50). A collection of diverse, insight-filled essays by a non-Christian philosopher. Rejecting complete relativism, the author asserts that man is the creator of his own meaning through projects—artistic, religious, scientific—that go beyond and survive himself.
Theology and Contemporary Art Forms, by John P. Newport (Word, 131 pp., $3.95). Intends to promote understanding of the artist and the theological possibilities of his work. However, it fails to live up to its promise; it discusses too wide a variety in too brief a compass, bewildering the reader.
Basics for Communication in the Church, by Irene S. Caldwell, Richard Hatch, and Beverly Welton (Warner, 224 pp., paperback, $2.95). An interesting and practical study guide on teaching for group or individual use.
Adam Among the Television Trees, edited by Virginia R. Mollenkott (Word, 215 pp., $4.95). This collection is to what’s often called “Christian poetry” what a chewy chunk of whole-grain bread is to the fluffy, flat, supermarket stuff. Mrs. Mollenkott says, “No amount of piety will sanctify shoddy workmanship.” Defining a Christian poem as a poem written by a Christian, she selects forty-one Christian poets and from them gets 201 poems. Some are difficult, many are not, all are worth reading.
The Berrigans, edited by William Van Etten Casey and Philip Nobile (Praeger, 253 pp., $6.95). Essays biased in the Berrigans’ favor, reading like mere propaganda. The excellence of objectivity is missing.
Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, by T. H. L. Parker (Eerdmans, 208 pp., $7.95) and Calvin’s Commentaries: The Gospels, by John Calvin (Associated Publishers and Authors, 936 pp., $15.95). Parker, who has contributed to the in-progress Torrance translation of Calvin’s commentaries, has written about the work of one of the greatest of all commentators. Associated Publishers and Authors has begun to issue an eight-volume edition of the century-old Pringle translation. (One more volume will complete the New Testament). One need not be a calvinist to profit from the master exegete’s work.
The Purple Pulpit, by Richard L. Keach (Judson, 128 pp., paperback, $2.95). A changed pulpit, communion table, and lectern—from white to purple—symbolized the new thrust in the ministry of the Central Baptist Church, Wayne, Pennsylvania. Mortgaging church property in the amount of $100,000 and using the money to help Philadelphia’s urban crisis put this church and its belief in the full Gospel—preaching salvation plus social action—in the front lines of society’s war on ghetto problems.
The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 241 pp., paperback, $4.50). Intended to help pastors help “students face the challenge to their faith presented in their classes on science, philosophy, and religion,” but it is basically a critique of Aquinas, Kant, Tillich, and a few others. Look elsewhere for help in facing our foes in the forms in which they currently appear.
What the Religious Revolutionaries Are Saying, edited by Elwyn A. Smith (Fortress, 154 pp., paperback, $2.95). Not on the “Jesus Revolution” but rather mostly Episcopal-Presbyterian types talking on blacks, drugs, cities, police, and the like.
Christian Social Teachings, by George W. Forell (Augsburg, 492 pp., paperback, $3.95). Selections for the general reader from some fifty theologians from Paul through Augustine to Barth. An excellent panorama, but regrettably no evangelical made it after Jonathan Edwards. First published by Doubleday five years ago at half the price!
The American Shakers: From Neo-Christianity to Presocialism, by Henri Desroche (Massachusetts, 357 pp., $9.50), Torches Together: The Beginning and Early Years of Bruderhof Commentaries, by Emmy Arnold (Plough, 231 pp., $3.50), and The Cotton Patch Evidence (Harper & Row, 240 pp., $5.95). Religious communes seem to be “in” again. Their adherents as well as others should welcome the appearance of these authoritative studies of some long-lived exceptions to generally short-lived experiments. The Shakers, who believe Ann Lee was the feminine equivalent of Jesus, date from colonial times and are not yet extinct. The Society of Brothers began in Germany in 1910 but are now living in three communes in America. The wife of the founder tells their story up to 1937 when they had to flee their homeland. Koinonia Farm was founded by the late Clarence Jordan in Georgia in 1942. He is best known elsewhere for his “Cotton Patch” paraphrase of the New Testament into southern idiom and issues.
Social Responsibility and Investments, by Charles W. Powers (Abingdon, 224 pp., paperback, $3.50). A wide-ranging,’ informative work aimed at stimulating discussion on what it means to be the investing church in contemporary America.
Kierkegaard and Consciousness, by Adi Shmueli (Princeton, 202 pp., $8.50). Provocative study by an Israeli scholar who seeks to demonstrate the coherence of Kierkegaard’s thought through the latter’s own delineation of the structure and behavior of human consciousness.
Rebels in the Church, edited by Ben Campbell Johnson (Word, 131 pp., $3.95). Personal experiences of eight ministers who admit their unwitting dedication to the institutionalized church rather than to Christ. They discover that honesty with self is vital for effective ministry to others and that the church must be daring in order to carry the Gospel to everyone. Encouraging reading.
Basic Patterns in Old Testament Religion, by John D. W. Watts (Vantage, 162 pp., $4.50). A Southern Baptist seminary professor presents a scholarly description of the three distinguishable forms of Israel’s worship associated with Abraham, Moses, and David.
The End of Religion, by Dom Aelred Graham (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 292 pp., $7.95). Benedictine monk hails the end of distinctive ecclesiastical structures and, partly through dialogue with Hindu and Buddhist thinkers, attempts to answer the question of the end or “abiding goal” of religion itself. He sees this goal as the “existential self-understanding” arising through one’s response to the word of God, proclaimed by Jesus, and to other religions.
An Exposition of the Gospel According to John, by George Hutcheson (Sovereign Grace, 439 pp., $5.95). A classic Puritan commentary.
