Ingmar Bergman: Through A Glass Darkly

Stendhal said that “a novel is a mirror carried along a roadway”; it reflects not only the passing scene but the one carrying the mirror. The same is true of films. Ingmar Bergman’s films may be about the validity of art, as in Hour of the Wolf, or the scourge of war, as in Shame; but they are more a reflection of himself. His early life was deeply influenced by his fear of and isolation from his father, a Swedish pastor; by the making of a cinematograph and the new world that this opened up for him; by the writings of Strindberg and Kafka; and, in his late teens, by his loss of Christian faith, of, soon after, his first love, and then of a close friend.

A little later Bergman flirted with what he calls “a sort of refined existentialism.” Although he reacted against the conventions of bourgeois society, he did not jettison moral categories. He finds no inconsistency between this attitude and “my basic view of things,” which is “not to have any basic view of things.” He is committed to existentialism in part because he sees Christianity as being “deeply branded by a very virulent humiliation motif.” For Bergman, the idea of God is that of “something destructive and fantastically dangerous, something filled with risk for the human being and bringing out in him dark, destructive forces instead of the opposite” (Bergman on Bergman, Seeker and Warburg, 1973).

Before directing films, Bergman spent many years in the theater. He has maintained what is essentially a film repertory company, one that is renowned for consistently superb acting and deeply imaginative and supple direction. Perhaps it was Smiles of a Summer Night that established him as a European rather than a Swedish director, a position consolidated in 1956 with The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.

The key to Bergman’s search and success may be found in his statement that he has “never been able to keep myself from believing that I’m in charge of so sensitive an instrument that it should be possible to use it to illuminate the human soul with an infinitely more penetrating light” (Cahiers du Cinéma) 1956, No. 61: Ingmar Bergman, “Qu’est-ce que ‘Faire des Films’?” The Seventh Seal portrays a man who searches for understanding through understanding alone and who in the process becomes impervious to his fellows. Loss of faith in God is apparent in the film; God is silent because he is not there. Also present in the film is the horror to be found in man’s putting to death the positive qualities by which he lives. (For an extended study of this and other films, see my Images of man: A Critique of Contemporary Cinema, Inter-Varsity, 1974.)

Similar themes may be observed in Wild Strawberries; the story of a doctor whose work was healing, yet who strangled, as it were, any life with which he came in contact. He walks through the arches of the years emotionally uneducated, insensitive to self-knowledge. Both the knight in The Seventh Seal and Dr. Berg in Wild Strawberries, as well as the pastors in Winter Light and Cries and Whispers, long for knowledge, by which they mean an explanation of the suffering and seeming pointlessness of life. Time and again Bergman’s characters ask for verbal confirmation that God is there and life has meaning. But there is only The Silence, and in Cries and Whispers “it’s all a tissue of lies.” The Touch, too, is concerned with the question of God’s existence. Despite the idea of God as destructive and dangerous, man’s nature revolts against the idea of there being no God. Yet it may be asked if in fact Bergman, along with many like-minded people, hates God not because he is not there but because he is there.

Bergman is much concerned with exploring human relationships. He views sincerity in personal relationships as the summum bonum of achievement for a fallen man. Love is often the cause and the effect, but it is frequently seen as tainted and sour; in Smiles of a Summer Night it is said that “sincere love is a juggler’s act” and “a detestable business.” “Love is another word,” says Jons in The Seventh Seal, “for lust plus lust plus lust and a damn lot of cheating, falseness, lies and all kinds of other fooling around.” The quarreling of the couple in Wild Strawberries, the adultery of the wife in The Touch, the corroding passion in A Passion, the disillusionment in Summer Interlude, the horror of the failure of communication of husband and wife and of sister and sister in Cries and Whispers—these are examples of gangrenous relationships. Occasionally this gloom is offset by truth and beauty, as illustrated in the married life of Jof and Mia in The Seventh Seal.

Bergman recognizes the instability of our sense of self, the insecurity and hurt that flow from a loss of identity and the absence of love. This is brilliantly evoked in Cries and Whispers, where, with the exception of Agnes, the characters cannot reach one another and therefore flail at one another in alienation and fear, in their “constant misery and torment.”

There seem to be firm traces of deep inferiority complexes and an almost sadistic intention for characters to humiliate one another in many of Bergman’s more recent films. Perhaps this is most observable in his latest, Scenes From a Marriage. Scenes is a remarkable, deeply moving and disturbing work that implies, as reviewer T. E. Kalem observed, that there is “something endemic in the institution of marriage itself that both curdles love and incubates hate” (Time, September 30, 1974). It would seem also that in the absence of God’s love (for there is no God), human love is the surrogate. Although erotic love persists after the couple have separated, an understanding of themselves as persons who need to go on working at a relationship is as far from them as ever.

Many of Bergman’s films seem to be collages of melancholy plummeting to despair. There is hope, however, even amid the many images of death and time to be found in the films—hope portrayed in, for example, the person of the child and strolling players in The Seventh Seal and the maid with her simple faith in Cries and Whispers. But perplexity and confusion continually surface. We can never know for sure whether we are watching the hopelessness and despair of dramatically “distanced” characters or Bergman’s own despair. Yet one gets the impression that both he and his characters are imprisoned within themselves. His world appears to be limited to despairing and perhaps desperate characters.

Why this attitude of despair? I think it is a symptom of galloping existentialism with the tensions and inconsistencies that this brings. The greatest of these tensions is that modern man does not know what to do with what he knows deep down he is; there is no objective framework into which to fit his uniqueness. Here grows the unassuaged despair. There is no hope because there is no absolute truth.

Bergman, like other brilliant and sensitive directors, reflects and promotes today’s thought-forms and life-styles, embossing his creativity on his view of the world, whether that view is illusory or real. With biblical insights, psychological perception, and inventive genius he refines and redefines the nature of man in himself and in his relationships, creating not only another film but a work of art. He reveals Man, unredeemed man. His films reflect the agony and the ecstasy of fallen man trapped in a universe where God is thought to be dead.

DONALD J. DREW¹Donald J. Drew is a college lecturer in English literature in Kent, England.

Dylan Thomas once said to Charles Williams, “Why, you come into the room and talk about Keats and Blake as if they were alive.” That’s how I want to talk of Charles Williams—novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist, critic, biographer, and theologian.

But who is he? Few people know him, little is written of him, and his books are hard to find. Yet he was a major influence on C. S. Lewis, who edited Essays Presented to Charles Williams. T. S. Eliot counted him as a friend, and wrote an introduction to one of his novels. Dorothy Sayers wrote of Williams in The Mind of the Maker.

As soon as we mention Lewis and Eliot and Sayers, we think we know Williams—his geography, his interests, his theology. We can label him an “Oxford Christian,” a member of the Inklings, a lover of literature and beauty and debate. All that is true to an extent. But to name his associates does not name Williams, for in nature and thought he was unlike any of them. There is something elemental and root-like about Williams; he saw into the heart of God’s things; he understood the deepest implications of some of Christ’s enlivening, yet solemn sermons. Williams tells great tales while he teaches us the nature of the Christian life. He does not need to take us to other planets or worlds to give us new insights and experiences, as does Lewis, for example. (The third member of Lewis’s trilogy, That Hideous Strength, which takes place on earth, is not as effective as the otherworldly two, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.)

His biography can be briefly summarized. He was born in London, September 20, 1886, and was educated at St. Albans Abbey School, St. Albans Grammar School, and University College, London. In 1943 Oxford University awarded him an honorory M.A. For four years he worked with a Methodist publishing house, though he was an Anglican all his life. In 1908 he went to work for Oxford University Press as an editor, and he remained there for the rest of his life. He married Florence Conway, whom he renamed Michal, in 1917, and a son, Michael, was born in 1922. During the war Oxford Press moved from London to Oxford, when Williams became a member of the Inklings and began lecturing at the university. He wrote about forty books and more than two hundred essays. On May 15, 1945, a few days after Germany’s capitulation, Charles Williams died.

Lewis describes the impression Williams made on people:

In appearance he was tall, slim, and straight as a boy, though grey-haired. His face we thought ugly: I am not sure that the word “monkey” has not been murmured in this context. But the moment he spoke it became, as was also said, like the face of an angel—not a feminine angel … but a masculine angel, a spirit burning with intelligence and charity.… No man whom I have known was at the same time less affected and more flamboyant in his manners: and also more playful. He was nothing if not a ritualist … [but was aware of ritual] as a glorious game, well worth the playing [Essays Presented to Charles Williams, Eerdmans, 1966, p. ix].

The power of Williams’s prose—though he often writes “purple but pleasing purple,” as one of his characters remarks about himself—would be evident to almost anyone. Eliot thought it was valid to stop with the story. If he were talking of Lewis or Tolkien I might agree, but what Williams says in his stories is too subtle to apprehend on the plot level. I do not mean that he uses plot to proselytize, but that his plots are the natural and effortless result of how he viewed the Christian life. As Eliot put it, “For him there was no frontier between the material and spiritual world.… To him the supernatural was perfectly natural, and the natural was also supernatural” (Introduction to All Hallow’s Eve). He saw both worlds simultaneously, not parallel but meeting and touching. He explains the phrase “in the world, but not of it” as existence in both at once; we are in this world but of another. As Williams says in He Came Down From Heaven, prepositions are vital. The importance of Williams for a Christian is just that ability. Although evangelicals tenaciously believe in the supernatural, it becomes suspect when acted out in someone’s life. Mysticism and miracles frighten us. Williams takes familiar Scripture passages—First John, John 15, Ephesians 4:25, for example—and not only builds novels around them but brings immediacy and practicality to their meaning. He impels us to examine how we have acted these ideas. I find in myself an intellectual assent without the physical and emotional incorporation that Williams so obviously had.

A unity, in this case between intellect, emotion, and body, is another way of stating what Williams called the doctrine of co-inherence. The Trinity, the New Testament concept of community, and Paul’s metaphor of the body are all examples of that doctrine. From Lewis’s description, Williams, too, was an image of it. His six novels (War in Heaven, Many Dimensions, Shadows of Ecstasy, The Place of the Lion, All Hallow’s Eve, The Greater Trumps, and Descent Into Hell), his mature poetry (Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars), his criticism (The Figure of Beatrice), and his theological writing (The Descent of the Dove and He Came Down From Heaven, the title of which is taken from the Nicene Creed) explain his ideas of images, co-inherence, and love. Without co-inherence love would be impossible, for we would have no way to reach another person. Yet without love co-inherence would be concept without act. The disparate members of the body co-inhere only when love motivates all toward the same act. Williams’s ideas of images and co-inherence provide a basis for his most important theological concept, substituted love, or bearing one another’s burdens.

Williams was a “romantic theologian.” Lewis in his preface to Essays Presented to Charles Williams explains that “romantic theologian” means, not one who is romantic about theology, but one who is theological about those experiences that are called romantic. Williams saw two opposing views of Christianity, the Way of Affirmation of Images and the Way of Rejection of Images, summed up in the statement, “This also is Thou; neither is this Thou.” The romantic believes that anything loved “romantically” is an image of God. Thus the Way of Affirmation, which Williams chose, is the first half of the statement, i.e., “This also is Thou.” A book, a person, a tree, if loved, point to the Fountain and Source of Love.

Dorothy Sayers says that the Affirmative Way is that of the artist and the poet. The Way of Rejection, with which most of us are more familiar because it is the way of Calvin and John Knox, says that, as Shideler explains it, “all images, even the holiest, conceal God, not because they are evil; but because they are finite” (The Theology of Romantic Love). It is the way of asceticism, or, if you will, the cry of young evangelicals for a bare-bones life-style. It says, “Neither is this Thou”; nothing can image God. A balance between “This also is Thou” and “Neither is this Thou” is healthy. The person who accepts the Way of Affirmation needs to realize that ultimately God is unimaged, while the one who chooses the Way of Rejection needs to realize that all nature awaits its perfection as an image of God’s perfection, as Paul says in Romans 8:22.

The doctrine of co-inherence keeps these antitheses unified. The Incarnation and Jesus’ life on earth provide us with the pattern. Christ was both God and man; he existed simultaneously in physical and spiritual words and exemplified the balanced tension between “This also is Thou; neither is this Thou”; he was both imagist and ascetic. He was called a winebibber, but yet was without any trappings of the world, including a place to live. The relation between Christ and Christian and between Christ and the Church also reflects co-inherence. In John 15:4 Christ says, “Abide in me, and I in you—that is, coinhere together. John 17:22 and 23 juxtaposes Christ’s relationship with individuals and individuals’ relationships with one another: “The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me.” Ephesians 4:25 amplifies the idea that as members of the individual church we reflect a co-inherent community: “for we are members one of another.”

The conclusion of John 17:23 leads us to the reason for co-inherence: “so that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.” We become one through God’s love in Christ first, and then by loving one another. We cannot experience coinherence with God unless we love our brothers: “if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).

How do we love one another? Here Williams becomes his most practical and, paradoxically, his most mystical. He has contributed something fresh and far-reaching for the Christian’s practice of what Williams calls substituted love.

Just as the Incarnation is the image on earth of coinherence, so the Atonement is the image of substituted love. Christ in love bore our sins and pain and guilt, and as his followers we too ought to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2). First John 3:16 makes the connection explicitly: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” From the beginning of Scripture, with Cain’s sinful question to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?,” to Paul’s statement on the body of believers, the idea of substituted love is presupposed. Christ’s parable of the good Samaritan and his question regarding neighborhood indicate that substituted love ought to be common practice. Evangelicals tend to think that “bearing one another’s burdens” means sympathy or intercessory prayer, and certainly that is part of it. But we stop short of the kind of physical burden-bearing that Williams advocates.

Self or independence or the denial of co-inherence often interferes with our attempts to allow our burdens to be born. Selfishness often comes with our unwillingness not to bear another’s burdens but to give up our burdens to someone else. Here, Williams says, is a place where it definitely is more blessed to give than to receive, simply because it is harder to do so. But aren’t we to let Christ bear our burdens? Williams beautifully answers that:

We are supposed to be content to “cast our burdens on the Lord.” The Lord indicated that the best way to do so was to hand these over to someone else to cast, or even to cast them on him in someone else. There will still be work enough for the self, carrying the burdens of others, and becoming the point at which those burdens are taken over [He Came Down From Heaven, Faber and Faber, 1950, p. 88],

Williams goes on to outline the way of substituted love: “to know the burden, to give up the burden, to take up the burden. Burdens are not to be taken recklessly. We must consider exactly how far any burden, accepted to the full, is likely to conflict with other duties” (p. 89). In short, he says, there is the “necessity of intelligence.” And then:

The one who gives has to remember that he has parted with his burden, that it is being carried by another, that his part is to believe that and be at peace … The one who takes has to set himself—mind and emotion and sensation—to the burden, to know it, imagine it, receive it and sometimes not to be taken aback by the swiftness of the divine grace and the lightness of the burden [p. 89].

When we practice substituted love we “fulfill the law of Christ,” which is the last half of Galatians 6:2.

Williams shows the practice of substituted love principally in Descent Into Hell, The Region of the Summer Stars, and All Hallow’s Eve. The most explicit and complete use of substituted love is found in Descent, where he makes the idea a central theme of the story. Pauline, the main character, sees an exact image of herself, which the Germans call a doppellgänger, and the fear of it paralyzes her. According to the doppelgänger myth, if Pauline should meet her exact double, she will die. Her fear is the burden to be carried by someone else. Out of desperation Pauline tells Peter Stanhope, a poet, about her dopppoet, about her. In the chapter “The Doctrine of Substituted Love” he tries to explain the idea to her. At first she reacts strongly against the idea: “How can anyone else carry my fear? How can anyone else see it and have to meet it?” In denying the possibility of substituted love she also commits the sin of self-centeredness. The poet’s reply is significant:

If you want to disobey and refuse the laws that are common to us all, if you want to live in pride and division and anger, you can. But if you will be part of the best of us, and live and laugh and be ashamed with us, then you must be content to be helped. You must give your burden up to someone else, and you must carry someone else’s burden [Descent Into Hell, Eerdmans, 1965, p. 99].

God intends that we live in community with one another, and a result of our refusal to commune with him is that we cannot commune with one another.

Peter will not allow Pauline to accept a less-than-rich interpretation of Galatians 6:2. By understanding some Scripture passages too narrowly we sometimes cut ourselves off from the deepest life God intends for us. Peter explains, “He means something much more like carrying a parcel instead of someone else. To bear a burden is precisely to carry it instead of. If you’re still carrying yours, I’m not carrying it for you—however sympathetic I may be” (p. 98). The experiment works; Peter carries her fear in his flesh; Pauline enters the community of Christ. Substituted love cannot be separated from community, which is an image of co-inherence. Without community we cannot fulfill Christ’s law to love one another as he loved us. At the same time, without substituted love—Christ’s for us, ours for one another—we have no community.

The Region of the Summer Stars is one of two cycles of lyric poetry about King Arthur and the Round Table, and in one poem, “The Founding of the Company,” Williams succinctly explains the relation between community and love:

The Company’s second mode bore farther

the labour and fruition; it exchanged the proper self

and wherever need was drew breath daily

in another’s place, according to the grace of the Spirit

‘dying each other’s life, living each other’s death’.

Terrible and lovely is the general substitution of Souls

the Flesh-taking ordained for its mortal images

in its first creation, and now in Its sublime self

shows, since It deigned to be dead in the stead of each man [Eerdmans, 1974, p. 56].

I do not pretend to understand all that Williams says here. Lewis’s commentary on the poem helps, but he, too, confesses ignorance at certain points. For our purposes, the important words are exchange, substitution, and “dying each other’s life, living each other’s death.” Williams intends the company to be an image of the Christian community. We find contemplatives and actives, celibates and married people. We begin with Genesis, the “first creation.” We were created co-inherent; woman came from man and from then on man from woman. In that way we were made in the image of God, the three-in-one. This description of the company expresses God’s ideal for the Christian community. In these poems, as in our daily experiences, the ideal, if realized at all, soon fades in sin. But at the least Williams teaches us something of what the Christian community ought to be.

Community begins when we acknowledge our need for Christ and in turn our need for one another. Two people, bearing and being born, form the core of community. That is what happens in All Hallow’s Eve when the main character, Lester, exchanges herself for another character, Betty. The plot structure is complicated and foreign to everyday experience. Lester is killed during an air raid but exists throughout the story in a limbo-like London. (Remember that Williams saw natural and supernatural worlds simultaneously.) A man called “the Clerk” is an anti-Christ figure. Hoping to rule the world, he sends Betty, his daughter, into the supernatural London where Lester exists in death to gain information about the future. Eventually he wants to send Betty permanently into that dead world as a liaison for himself between life and death. Through her he hopes to rule both worlds.

The night the Clerk tries to send Betty permanently into that other world, Lester substitutes herself to save Betty’s life. As Betty sleeps, happily for the first time in many years, Lester takes all Betty’s pain into herself: “She had not at all died till now.… Better the vague unliving City than this.” In a symbolic sense Lester finally dies to self by sacrificing herself wholly for another. And such a death is more tormenting to the self than physically dying. To really co-inhere with Christ, we must first die in this way. Anything less will not do. Just as Lester’s self slips from her she is saved:

She was leaning back on something, some frame which from her buttocks to her head supported her; indeed she could have believed, but she was not sure, that her arms, flung out on each side held on to a part of the frame, as along a beam of wood. In her fighting and sinking consciousness, she deemed to be almost lying along it.… Between standing and lying, she held and was held.… She pressed herself against that sole support. So those greater than he [the Clerk] had come—saints, martyrs, confessors.… Neither her mind nor her morals had prepared her for this discovery [All Hallow’s Eve, Avon, 1969, p. 147].

Williams makes clear that her support is the cross, symbol of the Atonement, the first and last image of substituted love. With Christ come the “glorious company of all faithful people” to welcome her joyously into their fellowship. In that salvation Betty speaks: “ ‘Lester!’ As the word left her lips it was changed. It became—hardly the Name, but at least a tender mortal approximation to the Name. And when it had left her lips, it hung in the air, singing itself, prolonging and repeating itself.” The Name of Christ defeats the anti-Christ.

Few of us will see the universe as Williams saw it. Yet each of us can and is commanded to perform acts of love. These, Williams stresses, are to be the form and evidence of our Christian lives. In an essay entitled “The Way of Affirmation,” he says, “The rediscovery of such a high power as normal to the operative Christian is far enough away at present,” but we are not, he adds, to strive to make it normal. Our job is to adhere to the faith. “The Holy Ghost will then do what He will, and it seems possible that we may humbly believe that at the right hour He shall teach us ‘what we shall speak’—when to make offers and when to receive offers.”

Making and receiving offers of substitution depends, ultimately, on our Lord’s offer of himself for us:

The activity of the Christian Church may have to recover, more than is commonly supposed, our substitution, one for another. The most important thing is to get our minds accustomed to the idea of that activity: attention without fever, speed without haste. The Atonement of our Lord restored this power to man; the Holy Ghost now, as originally, confirms, nourishes, and directs it.… Adam and Eve were, originally, one being. It is a profound symbol. Justice, charity, union; these are the three degrees of the Way of Affirmation of Images, and all of us are to be the images affirmed [The Image of the City and Other Essays, Oxford, 1958, p. 158].

If Williams helps us understand these truths a little better, he has done a great deal.

God’s greatest spokesman in Old Testament times was Moses, and what was communicated to and through Moses is summarized in the book of Deuteronomy. This book can be considered the heart of the Old Testament. Jesus and the religious leaders of his day agreed that the Old Testament could be summarized in two short sentences:

1. Love God with all your heart.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

These statements of the essence of man’s responsibility to God and man appear in Deuteronomy, spoken by Moses on behalf of God.

Old Testament scholars seem to agree that Deuteronomy, along with the rest of the Pentateuch, was in its present literary form by about 400 B.C. However, for the dating of its original composition there are two options to consider.

The view that Deuteronomy was written by Moses, who lived in 1,400/1,300 B.C., is expressed in the New Testament by Jesus and the apostles. In written form Deuteronomy was regarded as authoritative for the Israelites from the time of Moses and for the Jews of Jesus’ day.

The other view, one widely popular in Old Testament scholarship, is that Deuteronomy was written in the time of Josiah, king in Jerusalem about 600 years before Christ. Whatever in it can be attributed to Moses was transmitted orally during the course of at least six centuries and then written in what is known as the D document. Through creative editorial efforts the book of Deuteronomy achieved its present written form when the Pentateuch was completed, by about 400 B.C.

Considering Deuteronomy as a religious communication, let us examine these two options. First we shall consider Deuteronomy as a seventh or sixth-century document written during the days of Josiah.

Deuteronomy has been a focal point of scholarly interest for nearly two centuries. The D document identified with Deuteronomy as early as 1800 by the noted German scholar De Wette. By the end of the nineteenth century the D document was firmly fixed in the theory of Old Testament literary criticism as a component part of the Pentateuch along with documents J,E, and P. In an intellectual climate in which Hegelian dialecticism and Darwinian evolution dominated scholarship, Julius Wellhausen launched the interpretation of the Old Testament commonly known as the Graf-Wellhausen theory in 1878. He confidently asserted that the D document of the book of Deuteronomy was not by Moses but was compiled by an author in the seventh century. This then dated Deuteronomy in the time of Josiah and identified the historical context for the writing of the D document more concretely than that of any of the other documents. Wellhausen’s theory of the origin of the Pentateuch—that it came into being as a literary composition after the time of Solomon—became the ruling theory for Old Testament interpretation.

The Graf-Wellhausen theory was based on two premises: (1) that literary analysis of the Pentateuch revealed four basic documents; (2) that Israel’s religion evolved from animism into monotheism. According to this theory, Israel’s history was divided into three periods that reflected religious progress from the simple to the complex: (1) the early preprophetic period; (2) the prophetic period, beginning with Amos about 760 B.C. and ending with the exile in 586 B.C.; (3) the priestly period. According to this analysis, the law came after the prophets; but this idea has been untenable since the discovery of the code of Hammurabi in 1901.

The vast resources of archaeology made available since the turn of the century have revolutionized the attitude of many biblical scholars and have led to a questioning of the two basic tenets of the Wellhausen theory. The outstanding linguist and archaeologist William F. Albright has had an extraordinary influence on Old Testament studies. His stimulating scholarship in classroom and public lectures and in publications has done much to bring Old Testament criticism into a state of flux so that it had to make room for new insights.

In a chapter in The Bible and the Ancient Near East (1959), edited by George E. Wright, John Bright of Union Seminary in Richmond says that thirty-five years ago no one would have thought that the results of higher criticism would ever be subjected to question. In appraising the attitude in Old Testament studies in the late fifties, Bright asserts that “few are left today who would find a melioristic [i.e., toward the better] evolution a sufficient explanation of Human history—and, by the same token of Israel’s history. Deprived of its philosophical rationale, the critical structure was left vulnerable.” Consequently he abandoned the second basic tenet of the Wellhausen theory, namely, that the religion of Israel evolved. He did, however, retain the first tenet, the theory of literary partition of the Pentateuch. In the same year H. H. Rowley asserted that in common with the majority of scholars he still accepted Wellhausen’s view of the origin of the Pentateuch.

Even though the evidence and arguments for the Wellhausen theory have been called into question, the documentary hypothesis—in its modified and improved form—advocating a late composition of the Pentateuch and dating Deuteronomy in the time of Josiah is still used as a basic perspective for Old Testament interpretation. What J. Kaufmann observed in 1960 seems still applicable in part:

Biblical scholarship, while submitting that the grounds have crumbled away, nevertheless continues to adhere to the conclusions.… Equally unable to accept the theory in its classical formulation and to return to the practical views of tradition, biblical scholarship has entered upon a period of search for new foundations [The Religion of Israel, University of Chicago Press, p. 7].

In a recent book J. K. Kunz asserts:

The Graf-Wellhausen documentary hypothesis is still with us. On occasion its doom has been proclaimed, just as the end of the world has been foretold. It seems however that in both instances we have a mistaken prophecy on our hands in which some rejoice and others lament [The People of Ancient Israel, Harper & Row, 1974, p. 52].

Now let us turn to the other option, that the book of Deuteronomy originated in written form in the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C. Important here is the study by George E. Mendenhall entited Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East. He points out that striking parallels exist between the covenant at Mt. Sinai (Exod. 20) and the international suzerainty treaties of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C.

Meredith Kline finds the five parts of ancient suzerainty treaties—preamble, historical prologue, stipulation, treaty ratification, and succession arrangements—in the literary structure of Deuteronomy (Treaty of the Great King [1963] and The Structure of Biblical Authority [1972]). Suzerainty treaties of the seventh and sixth centuries do not parallel the literary structure of Deuteronomy.

Considered inductively, the book of Deuteronomy is a renewal of the Sinai covenant forty years later under Moses with the new generation of Israelites. As was done in treaties of his time, Moses identifies the parties involved in the covenant in the preamble (1:1–5). In the historical prologue (1:6–4:49) he reviews the relation between God and Israel since the covenant was made at Sinai. He lays down the stipulations for Israel in chapters 5–26. Covenant ratification by this new generation and the implications of curses and blessings are plainly set forth in chapters 27–30. Moses then arranges for succession by the appointment of Joshua to insure continuity of the covenant. Other scholars who concur in identifying Deuteronomy with fourteenth-to-thirteenth century suzerainty treaties are K. A. Kitchen and R. K. Harrison.

Could Moses have written Deuteronomy when he summarized the communication that had come from God to Israel? The Wellhausen dictum that Moses could not possibly have written Deuteronomy was based on the widely held theory that before the time of David, writing was uncommon and limited to specialists. But contrary to this view writing was in extensive, almost universal use in the ancient Near East. This is now evident from the mass of cuneiform tablets, ostraca, and papyri uncovered by archaeologists. At least five scripts—Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sinaitic pictographs, Byblian alphabet, Akkadian cuneiform, and the Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform—were in use in the biblical world of the patriarchs and Israel, extending throughout the fertile crescent from the Persian Gulf through Palestine down into Egypt.

How important was written material in the ancient Near East? What was the relation between written material and oral tradition? How was material that would be valuable to coming generaions passed on to them? Kenneth A. Kitchen makes the following observations:

For transmission of anything important to posterity, the Ancient Orient insistently resorted to written rather than oral transmission. This is sufficiently illustrated by the hundreds of thousands of clay tablets from Mesopotamia and the acres of hieroglyphic texts and scenes from Egypt covering all aspects of life. The pompous annals of energetic kings and the cuneiform litigation or humble hieroglyphic stelae of citizens of very modest means alike show that neither national traditions nor the repute of individuals was left to the care of campfire bards in the ancient Near East [Ancient Orient and Old Testament, InterVarsity, 1966, p. 136].

Oral transmission was commonly used to spread information from the written copy to the populace, since there was no way of producing written materials for mass distribution. But to see oral tradition as the means of transmitting important material from generation to generation seems unwarranted.

The finding in recent decades that treaty communications between suzerain and vassal were carefully committed to writing in the fourteenth to thirteenth century B.C. provides a basis for considering Deuteronomy inductively in its historical, cultural setting. Since Deuteronomy presents a God-to-man communication, it seems all the more probable that Moses provided a written copy so that future generations would have an accurate and authoritative account. The priests were responsible for depositing the written copy of the law with the ark of the covenant. Through oral communication—reading the law publicly every seven years—the priests reminded each generation of its responsibility to live in accordance with God’s agreement with Israel (Deut. 31:9, 10).

The book of Deuteronomy is an outstanding religious communication for all times. We have good reason to believe that the original communique from God to man has been faithfully transmitted to us today.

Imagine yourself getting up some morning at 5:00 and working straight through until 11:00 that night. You drag yourself through the door with just enough strength left to pat yourself on the back for the work you plowed through in eighteen hours. Then one of your inlaws, who has been tagging along with you all day, wags a finger in front of your bloodshot eyes and says, “What you are doing is not good.”

“Not good! What do you mean, ‘not good?’ Man, didn’t you see the work I turned out today?”

He shakes his head, unimpressed. “It’s not right. You’re going to wear yourself out.”

“Oh?” Pause. A moment’s deflation. Then a surge of well-earned pride. Why, you might be in line for a respectable nervous breakdown! After all, to work yourself to death is, well, practically like being a saint, isn’t it?

The Bible warns us about the sin of laziness, but it also has some words to say about work that is unnecessarily exhausting. “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” (Ps. 127:2).

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden,” said Jesus, “and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30). Jesus saw no virtue in working under an unnecessarily heavy burden. He offered to teach us how to change heavy burdens into light ones.

Many of us who work today in the name of Christ have not learned this lesson. Instead of showing the world the rest to be found in Christ, we scurry and worry, sweating beneath a heavy burden. Instead of offering an alternative to the world’s rat-race, we duplicate it in our own sphere.

There is a way out—a simple way, a beautiful way, a God-ordained way. There is a way to lighten the burden, yet accomplish more—far more.

Two Passages, One Message

The method is given in two passages of Scripture, one in the Old Testament and the other in the New.

Shortly after the people of Israel have been delivered from Egyptian slavery, they are getting formed into a covenant community under the leadership of Moses. Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, comes to visit Moses:

On the morrow Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood about Moses from morning till evening. When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone, and all the people stand about you from morning till evening?”

And Moses said to his father-in-law, “Because the people come to me to inquire of God; when they have a dispute, they come to me and I decide between a man and his neighbor, and I make them know the statutes of God and his decisions.”

Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you; you are not able to perform it alone. Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God, and bring their cases to God; and you shall teach them the statutes and the decisions, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. Moreover choose able men from all the people, such as fear God, men who are trustworthy and who hate a bribe; and place such men over the people as rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And let them judge the people at all times; every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves; so it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. If you do this, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go their place in peace.”

So Moses gave heed to the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said. Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And they judged the people at all times. Hard cases they brought to Moses, but any small matter they decided themselves [Exod. 18:13–26].

Here was a dedicated, zealous man of God. But God, speaking through Jethro, said, “What you are doing is not good.” The Living Bible paraphrases Jethro’s words: “It’s not right. You’re going to wear yourself out.”

God was not interested simply in dedication and zeal. He wanted results, better results than Moses was getting. So he outlined a simple three-step program for Moses:

1. Represent the people to God. This meant to pray for them.

2. Teach them the statutes of God. This meant to instruct them in the basic principles of God’s Word, so they could begin to deal with their own problems.

3. Appoint helpers. Moses had to delegate some of the responsibility to other qualified people.

The result: Moses’ heavy burden was changed into a light one, and much more got done.

Turning to the New Testament we find a similar passage. The Church has just barely gotten started. Like Israel, the believers were just getting formed into a covenant community. It’s only a matter of weeks or months since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And they were laboring under a heavy burden.

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the body of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

And what they said pleased the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands upon them.

And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith [Acts 6:1–7].

The apostles did not refer to the precedent set by Moses, but they came up with the same three steps:

1. We must devote ourselves to prayer.

2. We must preach the Word.

3. Therefore, let us appoint helpers.

What would happen in the Christian Church today if this plan were put into action? Nothing less than a spiritual revolution!

It looks simple on paper. But consider what it means. Consider the reordering of priorities it would mean for pastors, pulpit committees, church councils and vestries, denominational officials, congregations. It would mean a new conception of the Church—and especially of the pastoral ministry. And because it is a fundamental scriptural principle, it would mean a revitalization of the Church in all its members.

Here, then, is God’s three-step program to accomplish more by lightening the burden.

First Priority: Pray

A spiritual leader’s first call is to “represent the people before God,” to “devote himself to prayer.”

When Jesus had spent an exhausting day ministering to the crowds in teaching, healing, and exorcism, “a great while before day, he rose up and went to a lonely place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). What would happen if all across the country God’s servants began to count prayer their first responsibility? What would happen if telephones were taken off the hook, committee meetings were canceled or rearranged, youth meetings and pancake breakfasts and counseling appointments were bumped off the schedule while the pastor and elders took time to talk with God?

No time is harder to keep than one’s quiet time with God, yet no time is more profitable. We fall into the trap of thinking that prayer time is “being by myself” (and there are so many people out there who need me!). Yet when we really devote ourselves to prayer, again and again the truth is borne home to us that we have been with God.

The man who installed me as the pastor of a Lutheran church in 1960 spoke these words to the congregation: “When you are in need—deep need—you won’t want a pastor who is a ‘hail fellow well met’ … and ‘good with the young people.’ You’ll want a man who has been with God.” A pastor who gives of himself gives too little. He must give of God. And to do that, he must take time—must be given time—to draw upon God’s resources.

The congregation that safeguards the prayer life of its pastor has taken the first step toward insuring a continual flow of divine power into its life and worship.

Second Priority: Teach The Word

A spiritual leader’s second responsibility is to “teach … the statutes,” to “devote himself to the ministry of the word.”

Jesus spent some time teaching the multitudes. But he spent a far greater proportion of his time teaching the disciples, especially the twelve. For three years he poured his life into this small band of men. When he was through, they carried on his ministry.

A pastor is called to teach not only in the formal sense of giving sermons and Bible studies but also in the sense of discipling. He must train those who in turn can teach others. “What you have heard … entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Tim. 2:2).

The writer to the Hebrews faults those who “by this time ought to be teachers” but are still spiritual babes (Heb. 5:12). The Church is weak today because spiritual leaders have failed to train a body of believers to do the same kind of work they do. Or because believers have failed to recognize and accept such a ministry.

Such things as teaching in Sunday school are not enough. We have always accepted that as a lay function, because it was carried while the pastor was busy with something else, and he couldn’t be in two places at once. But precious little discipling goes on among most Sunday-school staffs. The kind of teaching Jesus did, the kind to which spiritual leaders are called, is more intensive, and is aimed toward a more specific objective. He does not teach simply to give his people a smattering of biblical knowledge. He teaches with a view to multiplying his ministry. He trains those who in turn will train others. He commits himself to a smaller group, in order (through them) to be able to reach a larger group.

The congregation that contents itself with seeing less of its pastor—so he can see more of those he is training—will see more of God’s power flowing in its midst, will see a greater variety of gifts and ministries springing up, as Christ manifests himself in a many-membered Body.

Third Priority: Appoint Helpers

This is the acid test. Will the Israelite be content to have ben Reuben, who lives three tents down and has been given oversight of ten families, sit in judgment on the case of stealing that took place last night? Or will he feel cheated that Moses doesn’t step in and handle the matter personally?

Can the leader let go of the reins? And will the people accept the “substitute”?

How could Jesus turn over his ministry to a doubter like Thomas, a coward like Peter, selfish and ambitious men like James and John? Jesus knew a basic truth about ministry that we often overlook: The effectiveness of ministry depends more on the one who receives than on the one who ministers. We focus on this person’s gift or that person’s ministry, thinking that if only our pastor were like that, things would really start happening. But the greatest ministry in the world can be turned off by the tiniest “no.”

Ministry is effective to the degree that it is received. “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me. He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward, and he who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward” (Matt. 10:40, 41).

Tremendous spiritual rewards await the congregation that begins to open itself up to ministry from those of its own members who have been taught and trained. But it must go beyond a mere acceptance. The acceptance must be accompanied by a faith-filled expectation of divine power flowing through that ministry. One must see Christ coming to him through the ministry of that brother or sister.

God’s greatest problem with the people of Israel was their refusal to receive his messengers. It culminated in their refusal to receive his Son. At his second coming, those who receive him will be those who have first received his messengers.

The ordained clergy are not God’s only messengers. He speaks also through those “set over hundreds, fifties, and tens,” those whom God raises up to lighten the burden and accomplish the work.

Are you ready to be such a one? Are you ready to receive such a one?

When people had personal problems, only 28 per cent went to professional counselors or clinics; 29 per cent consulted their family physician, and 42 per cent sought help from a clergyman. These were some of the findings of a survey made in the late fifties by the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health. Although the figures are now out of date, it still is accurate to conclude that pastors are called upon to do much of the counseling that is done in this country. A second conclusion follows from this: the theological seminary has the duty of equipping pastors for this important part of their ministry.

In one sense, pastoral counseling has been with us for centuries. The Old Testament is filled with accounts of godly men and women who were used by the Holy Spirit to encourage, guide, support, confront, advise, and in other ways help those in need. Jesus was described as a “Wonderful Counselor,” and his followers were appointed not only to preach but to deal with the people’s spiritual and psychological needs (Matt. 10:7, 8). Later, the New Testament epistles gave great insight into the counseling techniques of their inspired writers. Throughout the Christian era church leaders have engaged in what have been called the four pastoral functions: healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling.

What we now know as the pastoral counseling movement, however, was begun by some pastors and physicians about fifty years ago. Perhaps the best known of the founding fathers was Anton T. Boisen, a minister and writer who during the first sixty years of his long life experienced a number of psychotic breakdowns, three of which led to confinement in mental institutions. Boisen became convinced of the need to train seminary students for work with the mentally ill. Beginning with only a few students, he began a loosely organized training program for seminarians at Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts.

From this simple beginning, “Clinical Pastoral Education” (CPE) has developed into a highly organized movement. Much of its work has been admirable: providing standards for the training of pastoral counselors; convincing hospital personnel of the importance of involving pastors in treatment of the physically and mentally ill; investigating ways in which theology and the psychological sciences can be related; showing the importance of training in counseling for seminarians; demonstrating that the personal and spiritual development of the seminarian is at least as important as his intellectual training for the ministry.

In the thirties and forties, when many seminaries were adding clinical pastoral training to their curricula, theologically conservative schools were skeptical. CPE appeared to be a theologically liberal movement, and this, coupled with a general distrust of psychology, undoubtedly caused evangelicals to stay apart.

While in no way endorsing CPE theology, Christian psychologists Clyde Narramore and Henry Brandt showed that a biblical approach to counseling was possible, and some evangelicals began to see the relevance of psychology to theological education. Now most conservative seminaries and Bible schools have courses in pastoral counseling, and some even have highly developed departments of pastoral psychology and counseling. Evangelical contact with the CPE movement remains minimal, however, and evangelicals have no clearly delineated or widely accepted biblical approaches to the counseling process.

Pastoral psychology and counseling can be divided into five overlapping categories that might be labeled the mainstream, the evangelical pastoral counselors, the Christian professionals, the theoretician-researchers, and the popularizers.

1. The mainstream. Most of the current training takes place within the guidelines of the CPE movement. Numerous hospitals have CPE training programs with carefully planned curricula and certified instructors. Many seminaries make one quarter of CPE training a requirement for graduation. People in the field follow with interest CPE-oriented publications, such as the Journal of Pastoral Care. Supervised counselor training and exposure to hospital settings can be a valuable experience, which CPE clearly provides, but the training raises several problems for theologically conservative people. First, following the leadership of Princeton’s Seward Hiltner, CPE tends to consider personal experience rather than Scripture the foundation of training. Thomas Oden describes the method this way:

The overwhelming weight of authority for theological knowledge is given to experience, and in this sense the American pastoral care movement belongs essentially to the tradition of a liberalizing, pragmatizing pietism. One first does certain things and experiences certain relationships, like shepherding the flock, and only then draws valid theological conclusions [Contemporary Theology and Psychotherapy, Westminster, 1967, p. 89],

Oden, who makes no claim to be an evangelical, makes this perceptive comment:

Although we hardly wish to challenge the validity of interview analysis in pastoral care, we seriously question whether this alone is adequate as a vantage point for drawing theological conclusions without the theological equilibrium that comes from the sustained study of Scripture and tradition and the struggle for rational and systematic self-consistency [p. 90].

A second problem is that the CPE movement tends to borrow uncritically from humanistic secular psychology. In a book on the clinical training of ministers Hiltner says:

In terms of basic attitude, approach, and method pastoral counseling does not differ from effective counseling by other types of counselors. It differs in terms of the setting in which counseling is done, the religious resources which are drawn upon, and the dimension at which the pastor must view all human growth and human problems [The Counselor in Counseling, Abingdon, 1950, p. 11].

The “religious resources” and “dimension” about which Hiltner speaks are not very well defined, but one gets the impression in another of his books, Pastoral Counseling, that prayer, Bible reading, and references to Christian doctrine are merely a part of the pastoral counselor’s collection of techniques.

Third, people in the CPE movement appear to have little tolerance for conservative theological positions. Certainly in the past and perhaps in the present, evangelicals have tended to be directive, authoritarian counselors, insensitive to the needs and feelings of counselees. CPE leaders have resisted this approach and have been quick to notice the rigidities and insecurities that are often found among conservative Christians. Evangelicals also present a biblically based theology that to many critics appears to be narrow-minded and inflexible. As a result of these observations and the failure of evangelicals to show that a theologically conservative approach to counseling is more effective than the work done by CPE-trained counselors, theologically liberal counselors have tended to develop an inflexibility of their own in which they fail to take conservatives seriously.

Of course, pastoral counselors, like theologians, cover a broad theological spectrum. Some of the most familiar persons in the mainstream movement—William Hulme, Wayne Oates, John Drakeford, Carroll Wise, and John Sutherland Bonnell, for example—while probably not evangelicals, nevertheless take a more sympathetic view of conservative theology than would others like Seward Hiltner, Ernest Bruder, Edward Thornton, Russell Dicks, and, perhaps, Howard Clinebell.

2. Evangelical pastoral counselors. Currently the most outspoken and lucid opponent of the CPE mainstream is Jay E. Adams, professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary. In several controversial but widely influential volumes, Adams ruthlessly criticizes counseling that is not based on Scripture and proposes a directive approach that he calls “nouthetic counseling.”

Adams is clearly familiar with the contemporary psychological literature. Many of his criticisms of the mainstream are well founded, and more than anyone else he has attempted to develop an approach to counseling that is consistent with the truths of Scripture. Regrettably, however, Adams’s lack of formal training in psychology leads him to oversimplify and reject too quickly the arguments of his opposition. His confrontational approach to counseling is clearly based on Scripture, but he appears to overlook other Bible passages that show the equal importance of supportive, referral, and insight counseling. Adams also has a tendency to attack psychological writers—Christian and non-Christian alike—in an unkind, name-calling manner. This undermines some of his arguments; what he says might be taken more seriously if it were presented more graciously.

Less influential than Adams are several other evangelical pastors-turned-counselors. William E. Crane, Maurice Wagner, and Paul D. Morris, for example, have written books on pastoral counseling from an evangelical perspective. In addition to pastoral training each of these men has had formal training in psychology. Their writing does not have the abrasive character of Adams’s writing, but as yet none has published an approach as well developed as nouthetic counseling.

3. The Christian professionals. As might be expected, evangelicals who have formal training in psychology, psychiatry, and related areas have done most of the biblically oriented writing in pastoral psychology and counseling. Some of these professionals, like Donald Tweedie, James Dobson, Bruce Narramore, Quentin Hyder, James Mallory, and Anthony Florio, have directed their writings primarily to lay readers, but others, such as Clyde Narramore and I, have in addition written books and papers that deal with counseling from a pastoral perspective.

The quality and theological sophistication of these various works varies, of course. Most of the writers in the area risk ostracism from their professional colleagues for even daring to take religion seriously. It is not surprising that they proceed somewhat cautiously in their criticisms of psychology and in their attempts to combine psychology and theology. More than the others, however, these people understand the professional literature and the intricacies of the counseling process. It is from them, and others like them, that the most creative work in this field must come.

Observations at professional meetings suggest that many unknown evangelicals are working in counseling. Most of them do not write and hence are not widely known, but in their day-to-day work they are attempting to integrate biblical teachings with counseling techniques and concepts. The recently founded Journal of Psychology and Theology has given many of these counselors a forum for expressing their ideas.

4. The theoretician-researchers. One involved in a pastoral counseling ministry might easily conclude that research and theory are of minor importance. On the contrary, these areas are crucial. First, they add professional and intellectual support to the conclusions of Christian counselors, and second, they provide an apologetic for facing the anti-Christian challenges constantly being raised in university psychology classes.

Many years ago Freud dismissed religion as an illusion, a “universal obsessional neurosis” that by serving as a narcotic helps potentially troubled people maintain their stability. B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism, Ellis’s rational-emotive therapy, Rogers’s humanistic approach to counseling, Maslow’s third-force psychology—all attack the very basis of Christianity and present the Church with what may be one of its greatest current intellectual challenges.

Evangelicals for the most part have avoided this battleground, and psychology has cut the theological moorings of numerous students and psychologists in training. Vernon Grounds wrote a series of articles in this area published in His in 1963, and Bruce Narramore outlined some of the problems in an article in the Journal of Psychology and Theology (January, 1973). Among the writers who have attempted to discuss psychology and religion from a biblical perspective are Paul Tournier, R. O. Ferm, P.F. Barkman, H. W. Darling, and, in a joint work, Bruce Narramore and B. Counts. Perhaps the two most widely consulted volumes are What, Then, Is Man? by Meehl and his Lutheran colleagues and my own Search For Reality. Regrettably, the first is very difficult to read and the second is probably too elementary.

5. The evangelical popularizers. This survey would be incomplete without some reference to the popular speakers who criss-cross the country dispensing practical advice on daily living. The best known of these is Bill Gothard with his “Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts.” Others are Keith Miller, Bruce Larson, Tim LaHaye, Howard Hendricks, Norman Wright, and the men who work for Family Life Seminars. Some, like Bill Gothard, are best known as speakers; others, like Paul Tournier, Keith Miller, Charlie Shedd, and Marabel Morgan, are best known through their books; and Tim LaHaye and others are known as both lecturers and writers.

Professional psychologists and social observers view these people with amazement. They seem to have come on the scene suddenly, they attract large followings, and in most cases they have little or no training in psychology. They appear to have several characteristics in common. All deal with down-to-earth subjects, give simple explanations for problems, provide workable formulas for success and problem-solving, communicate effectively without psychological jargon, have attractive personalities, are at least somewhat biblically oriented, and say something that is in some way unique. In an age of economic and political instability, declining morals, and increasing crime, these popularizers proclaim a measure of hope, stability, and the promise of success. People follow them like sheep looking for a shepherd.

Professional counselors complain that the popularizers are overly simplistic and might do harm by their “self-help” formulas for psychological stability and principles for spiritual growth. Yet without doubt many people are helped by these popular Christian psychologies. Perhaps this shows again the truth of Paul’s words in First Corinthians 1:27–29: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”

Compared with the less conservative segments of the Church, evangelicals have been slow to enter pastoral psychology and counseling. There are still pockets of mistrust of psychology and acceptance of the naïve view that commitment to Christ automatically eliminates all problems.

But progress is evident, Christian graduate schools of psychology at Fuller, Rosemead, and Georgia State; advanced degree programs in pastoral psychology and counseling at Trinity, Conservative Baptist, and Fuller; commendable undergraduate psychology programs at colleges like Gordon and Bethel; the emergence of Christian counseling centers in Atlanta, Grand Rapids, southern California, and other places; the sudden expansion of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (6850 Division Avenue South, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49508); the appearance of the evangelically oriented Journal of Psychology and Theology (1409 North Walnut Grove Avenue, Rosemead, California 91770); the influence of the popularizers; the willingness of evangelical mission boards to have psychologists help them select and counsel missionaries; the psychological research on religious experience conducted by William Wilson and his evangelical colleagues at Duke University—developments like these signify an explosion of interest. There is no one geographical or academic center for this activity, and as yet there are few established leaders, though several are emerging.

As we move into the last quarter of this century it seems to me that our efforts should focus on five major areas:

1. Christian counseling. Is it simply a Rogerian, Freudian, or behavioristic approach with occasional prayer and references to the Bible, or is counseling based on biblical assumptions in some way unique? Counseling techniques depend largely on the personality of the counselor and the nature of the counselee’s problems. We are unlikely to arrive at one biblical approach to counseling, any more than we have discovered one biblical approach to missions, evangelism, or preaching. Still, we should try to uncover the various techniques and approaches that arise out of or are clearly consistent with the teachings of Scripture. Then we should try out these techniques, testing their effectiveness not by subjective feelings about whether or not we are “really helping people” but by carefully controlled assessment techniques.

2. Training and education. How do we train people to be effective counselors? This problem has concerned secular psychologists and mainstream pastoral counselors for several years. Only now are researchers learning how to select sensitive people and mold them into perceptive counselors. Much of this work can be applied to training Christian counselors, but in addition we must be alert to the spiritual qualifications for counselors that are mentioned in Galatians 6:1 and elsewhere.

The training of Christian counselors must take place on three fronts. The first is the training of professionals. This usually occurs in graduate schools of psychology and in counseling centers where students get practical experience. Second, evangelicals must give special attention to training pastors and other church leaders to counsel. This is the major responsibility of the seminaries; their task is not only to train students but to give continuing education to missionaries, ministers, and other Christian workers.

A third area of training is sure to be of increasing importance in the coming decade: the training of laymen for “peer counseling.” Nobody knows how many people turn to relatives, neighbors, friends, or fellow church members when they are in psychological and spiritual need, but it may be that this is where most counseling takes place. Some creative work in this area is being done at the Link-Care Foundation in Fresno, California. Other training centers must join in considering such questions as how we select and train lay counselors, how they should be supervised, what kinds of problems they can handle best, how they can be trained to make referrals and to whom, and even whether such people should be doing counseling at all. It is possible that a little counseling knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but no knowledge might be worse.

3. Preventive psychology. The well-known proverb that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure has only recently been applied to the field of counseling. In the secular world, Caplan’s Principles of Preventive Psychiatry, published in 1964, did much to alert counselors to the importance of helping people avoid problems or stop existing ones from getting worse. Two books by Clinebell and one by Glenn Whitlock have pointed to the need for preventive pastoral psychology, but these books take no real biblical stance. Premarital counseling is a form of prevention that has been widely used by Christians and non-Christians alike, and the books and speeches by the popularizers help many people to avoid problems; but apart from these two areas very little has been done in preventive psychology. It is a wide open field for those who believe that being committed to Christ can influence how one copes with life’s problems.

4. Theory and psychological apologetics. This area presents two overlapping concerns for evangelicals. First, we must help Christian students and psychologists see that despite the analyses of Freud, Skinner, and others, Christianity and psychology need not be antithetical. Christians in psychology are in a unique position to study matters like the meaning of life, the effect of belief on psychological functioning, and the ways in which psychological science and Christian faith can be integrated to bring a fuller understanding of human behavior. They must not abandon the field of personality theory, philosophy of science, or the psychology of religion. In these fields evangelicals can make a special contribution, and young Christians in psychology must be helped to see this. They must also be helped to see that psychological analyses of faith healing, conversion, Christian behavior, persuasion techniques, beliefs, attitudes, and religious experience need not undercut the Christian’s belief system. There are good answers and counter-arguments to the challenges that come to Christianity from psychology.

Closely related to this should be a clear, concise outreach to non-believers within the psychological disciplines and to laymen who are sophisticated psychologically. The non-Christian may, while criticizing and rejecting the concept of religious presuppositions, uncritically and religiously accept a whole group of philosophical assumptions as a basis for his own psychological conclusions. This inconsistency should be pointed out. In addition, the relevance and intellectual bases of Christianity need to be presented to people who are discovering that psychology, while powerful, does not have all the answers to human problems. Like the young student, the professional who offers anti-Christian psychological analyses needs to be shown his errors and faulty conclusions.

This theoretical and apologetical emphasis is one of the most difficult. Psychologists are remarkably resistant to anything philosophical or theological, and their students are easily swayed by psychological analyses. To do work in this area one must be thoroughly familiar with both theology and psychology, skilled in communicating, and astute in observing the changing psychological scene.

5. Research. Good research is hard, sometimes frustrating, costly in time and often in money. Christian professors are often too busy with course work to engage in extensive research. The universities do not encourage research into religious experience, and money for such projects is difficult to raise. Furthermore, variables such as Christian maturity, faith in God, or counseling effectiveness are very hard to investigate empirically. Perhaps these obstacles have dissuaded many from entering the psychological research, but this work must be done if we are to counsel, train, prevent, and theorize efficiently.

Psychology and counseling present the evangelical with an exciting and potentially rewarding challenge. It is a relatively new field and needs creative thinkers who are willing to be pioneers. But creativity and interest are not enough; the pioneers must be products of solid psychological and theological training, and they must be deeply committed to the authority of Scripture, to the importance of natural revelation, and to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

One of our readers wrote expressing hearty disapproval of a recent editorial in which I said that it might teach the nation a lesson if New York City went bankrupt—the lesson that you cannot forever give out more than you take in. He wondered how this applied to a magazine like CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

It applies too well. No magazine can spend more than it receives in subscriptions and advertising and continue to survive—except by bridging the gap with gift income. We think that CHRISTIANITY TODAY should be self-supporting, that it should pay its own way and not have to beg for gifts; and so we are raising our subscription rates so that readers will bear their fair share of the cost. Even at the new price you will get the magazine for little more than a penny a page. Twenty-five issues will cost you less than dinner for two at a good restaurant. Or two unwanted novels you got by forgetting to send in book-club reply forms. Or two good seats at a pro football game.

Few would deny that the evangelical Christianity of the Ozark “Bible belt,” with its hillbilly gospel singers, is identifiably different from the Boston evangelicalism classically described in John P. Marquand’s The Late George Apley. It is my thesis that the metropolitan area of Washington, D. C., has its distinctive evangelical theology as well, and that this theology leaves much to be desired. Readers from this area will doubtless be appalled at what follows, discounting it as the product of too brief contact with Washington-area complexities, but let them remember De Tocqueville, whose to-the-mark portrait of the American character was in large part the result of observation from a foreign perspective.

In baldest terms, Washington Christianity is superficial, non-doctrinal, and experientialistic. It lacks theological substance. Like the church at Thyatira (Rev. 2:18 ff.), it is activistic, displaying “service and works,” exhibits some genuinely spiritual personality characteristics (“charity,” “patience”), but is relatively unconcerned with issues of sound doctrine versus false teaching, and is in consequence easily seduced by misdirected spirituality. To employ St. Paul’s “milk and meat” analogy (1 Cor. 3:2), Washington is a dairy farm, not a cattle ranch, and the milk is dilute at that.

Hard words! But the evidence is not difficult to come by. Can one, for example, read Wesley Pippert’s journalistic Faith at the Top (David C. Cook, 1973) without becoming aware of just how superficial Washington evangelicalism is? Discounting Mark Hatfield, whose sound theology manages to transcend even the turgid reportorial treatment of him, the portraits are of Washington Christian “heroes”—a former assistant director of the Secret Service, a player for the Redskins, etc.—most of whom once led appropriately gross pagan lives (smoking, drinking, and swearing), went through an interminable series of “personal encounters” with warm Christian personalities, suffered backslidings and conversions, and now are successful, radiant, beautiful Christians themselves.

I have attended some of the “prayer breakfasts” and “professional luncheons” organized by these Christians-at-the-top: the praying is minimal, often of doubtful biblical substance, and childishly stereotyped (“Lord, just make us more loving when we just fellowship together here and just help us just to …”). There is almost never deep and penetrating study of scriptural teaching. One gets the unshakable impression that those who attend do so not so much to grow as to identify with others at their own experience level. The same can be said of most of the prestigious evangelical churches. Where are the Spurgeons in Washington? And if they were here, how long would they survive?

One of the classic essays in contemporary religious sociology is Robert Bellah’s “Civil Religion in America” (Daedalus, Winter, 1967). Bellah correctly observed that in our national life we have created a generalized religion (“In God we trust”) that is more deistic than Christian and that attempts to link our country’s aspirations with eternal values. Washington evangelicals are by no means deists, but they have been infected by the amorphous, undefined character of civil religion.

Washington evangelicals dislike doctrine (what a cold word!). At the Law School where I taught this year, the trustees—all Washington Christians—finally managed, after three years of operation, to introduce a single “doctrinal” reference into faculty contracts. The reference? Faculty must pledge not to disparage the “Judeo-Christian” heritage for which the school stands. My children, on the basis of their Lutheran confirmation instruction, know more theology and are deeper into God’s Word than those guiding and directing an institution that was supposed to reintroduce the great profession of the Law to its revelational origins and biblical justification.

The real center of Washington religion is “personal experience.” One local pastor has dignified the phenomenon with the expression “relational theology.” Here I do not refer primarily to the Pentecostal, second-blessing, deeper-life movements that are strong in Washington as they are elsewhere in the seventies; the problem is more fundamental even than that. In general, one’s own style of spirituality or that of one’s group is made the norm to which others must conform to be a “beautiful Christian.” Scripture is subordinated to an allegedly normative Christian experience, instead of being allowed to set the standards itself.

To use another personal example: the young acting dean at our Law School seems to have a fixation about humility and meekness; he can spot “spiritual frauds” among his faculty by such tests as whether one refuses to paint one’s own office. Meanwhile, no systematic recruitment of Christian students goes on, so the 90 per cent non-Christian student body has virtually no objective witness presented to it. Biblical teaching goes by the board, while an extra-biblical standard of piety is pharisaically and sanctimoniously elevated to authoritative status.

Why has Washington Christianity become this way? Here are some reasons:

1. The Washington area has a transitory life-style, with politicians and the military constantly moving in and out; such an atmosphere is not conducive to depth in any area.

2. The government and the armed forces dominate Washington, and their bureaucracies are concerned with pragmatic success. Therefore little emphasis is placed on serious study of what is foundational—whether the Bible or anything else. Add to this a Virginia anti-intellectualism that goes back to antebellum days (maxim: “What Virginia needs is less Ph.D.’s and more F.F.V.’s [First Families of Virginia]”—see Marshall Fishwick’s The Virginia Tradition [1956]) and you have an atmosphere of facades, not substance.

3. The predominant “influential” churches in the area are Presbyterian and Episcopal, and these denominations have never recovered from their disastrous fall into liberalism. Therefore even when individual congregations have come under evangelical influence, there is no established tradition of sound doctrinal teaching, and Barthian-subjective attitudes are rife. Many lay leaders—“at the top” and otherwise—were converted late in life and still operate with essentially non-Christian value systems and attitudes.

Is there an answer to this sad state of things? There is indeed, and some valiant, scripturally oriented pastors of the Washington area are putting it daily into practice (one thinks immediately of Dick Halverson of Fourth Presbyterian). The answer is to teach the Bible’s doctrinal content, so that both secular social patterns and personal religious experience will continually be tested against that fundament. Even at the top, faith comes only by hearing the Word of God.

Three correspondents covered last month’s Baptist World Alliance congress in Stockholm. Roger Palms reported on the central proceedings and color of the congress, Bill Thomas digested major speeches and scouted the Billy Graham rally, and Robert Linder kept an eye on people and events related to eastern Europe. Their coverage was edited into the following single account by News Editor Edward E. Plowman:

Baptists have a worldwide constituency of about 43 million souls. These include around 33.7 million baptized members in churches in 113 countries and twenty-eight offshore dependencies. Last month, 9,600 of them from eighty-four nations got together in high-cost Stockholm for the thirteenth congress of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). The six-day congress, an event held every five years, turned out to be the largest gathering in the history of the BWA. It was also the largest meeting of its kind in Stockholm’s history. Delegates filled most of the city’s hotels and spilled over into many Swedish homes.

Sessions in St. Erik’s Massan Center were marked by robust singing, high-spirited camaraderie, and an emphasis on Baptist programs and styles that contrasted starkly with pronouncements about ecumenical activity. Speeches, Bible studies, panel discussions, and other platform doings were translated into seven languages and broadcast through earphones. The theme, “New People For a New World Through Jesus Christ,” based on second Corinthians 5:7 (“Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature”), reflected a contemporary awareness of womanhood—thanks to some women who last year succeeded in getting “new men” changed to “new people.”

Major speakers included outgoing BWA president V. Carney Hargroves of Philadelphia and black pastors Edward V. Hill and Thomas Kilgore of Los Angeles, along with leaders from Japan, Zaire, and Switzerland.

At the end of a presentation by the Baptist World Relief Committee, committee chairman Chester Jump, American Baptist Churches mission executive, announced an offering. Any currency would be acceptable, he said. The delegates responded with $12,500 in twenty-two currencies. (A BWA relief goal of more than $1 million for 1975 and 1976 was approved, subject to availability. The amount is in addition to the BWA’s general budget needs of $237,400 this year and $500,000 over the next two years.)

Spiritual high points included an afternoon visit to Stockholm-area Baptist churches for Communion. For many of the delegates it was the first experience of partaking from a common cup.

Music contributed much to the spirit and success of the congress. Groups included a Swedish choir that rehearsed for a year before the congress, performers from the Soviet Union, Hong Kong, East Germany, and Nagaland, India, American university choirs, choirs from South Africa and Hungary, and an international congress choir of 800 voices under the direction of American Don Hustad.

Outreach was emphasized in the congress program. On three evenings there were open-air meetings in two parts of the city; Swedish and international speakers and singers took part. After the congress adjourned, a number of the delegates joined people from all over Sweden and other parts of Scandinavia in Stockholm’s Skansen Park for a two-hour rally featuring evangelist Billy Graham. Swedish television covered his address live. Hundreds raised their hands in response to Graham’s invitation to receive Christ. Estimates of the crowd size ranged from 25,000 to 35,000. “It was the spiritual breakthrough we have long prayed for,” commented Swedish Baptist executive David Lagergren.

Highly controversial in Sweden, Graham had visited Stockholm on June 23 to face a two-hour press conference that he said was one of the most difficult he had ever faced. “The reporters never laid a glove on him,” observed one columnist. (A wide range of churches have invited him to return to Stockholm for a full-fledged crusade in 1977.)

Delegates voted to make some constitutional and structural changes in the BWA, the first since its birth in 1905. A new division of evangelism and education was established. It will probably be headed by C. Ronald Goulding, associate secretary for Europe in the BWA’s London office since 1965, who will move to the main headquarters in Washington, D. C., early in 1976. The positions of General Secretary Robert S. Denny (who was reelected) and associate secretaries C. E. Bryant and Carl W. Tiller, all Americans in the Washington office, were left unchanged.

David Y. K. Wong, a Hong Kong architect educated in the United States, was elected BWA president for the next five years. Wong, 65, is chairman of the Asian Baptist Fellowship. He is the first layman and the first Asian ever to hold the BWA office.

Speeches, even provocative ones by Kilgore and by clergyman Nlandu Mukoko Mpanzu of Zaire, evoked little corridor controversy.

Mpanzu paid tribute to the work of early missionaries in his country, but he lamented that nationals were excluded from decision-making and from developing their own identity as a Third World church. He defended recent Africanization moves on the part of his country’s government. And he explained seemingly restrictive measures involving the Church of Christ in Zaire—a government-mandated ecumenical umbrella organization—as attempts “to achieve greater unity among God’s children.”

An omnibus resolution was passed calling for: full religious liberty for all; a recognition of human rights that allow for development of personal potential, that promote self-determination and economic and social justice, that help maintain cultural identity, and that permit dissent; a commitment to peace by the world’s governments; and “a worldwide thrust for public morality.” The morality portion decried commercial exploitation of human sexuality, abandonment of Christian views on marriage and the family, secularization of the Lord’s Day, the growth of gambling, and the like.

Only a few ripples troubled the waters of fraternal serenity at the congress. One that threatened to become a wave was the issue of religious freedom in the eastern European countries, particularly the Soviet Union.

More than 130 Baptists from seven Communist-run nations attended. Hungary’s delegation of sixty-eight, which included sixty members of the well-received Hungarian Central Baptist Choir, was the largest. Poland had twenty-four delegates and the U.S.S.R. twenty.

The presence however, of twenty-one emigrés identified with the so-called underground or unregistered Baptist churches in the U.S.S.R. created tension at the congress and produced an undercurrent of discontent in some BWA circles because of the manner in which they were treated by BWA officialdom. The twenty-one, part of a larger group of more than 6,000 Baptists who have emigrated from the U.S.S.R. to West Germany since 1972 under a policy of detente between the two countries, said they were affiliated with the unofficial Council of Churches of the Evangelical Christians-Bantists (CCECB) in the U.S.S.R. The CCECB separated from the registered and officially recognized All Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists in 1961 over several issues, including that of unrestricted freedom to evangelize. Since 1961, even though they share a common biblically based theology, relations between these two large bodies of Soviet Baptists have been strained further (see December 20, 1974, issue, page 26, and February 28 issue, page 41).

The twenty-one attended the congress as guests and not as official delegates since their Baptist body is not a member of the BWA. After having been refused a place on the official program because of their observer status, they launched a campaign of personal contact with as many people at the meeting as possible. Their efforts were hindered by their inability to speak English, the most common and frequently used language at the gathering. They also appeared at the meeting of the BWA Study Commission on Religious Liberty and Human Rights and asked to state their case. After some hesitation and a great deal of tension and awkwardness, commission chairman Gardner Taylor of New York scheduled the group to be heard at an informal session following the meeting.

Pastor David Klassen, spokesperson for the dissidents, described with considerable detail and passion his ten years in Soviet prisons for preaching without government sanction. Speaking in German and through an interpreter, he appealed for prayer for believers in the U.S.S.R. suffering persecution daily for the cause of Christ.

Alexei Bichkov, general secretary of the officially sanctioned Soviet Baptists and a regional vice-president of the BWA, addressed the commission meeting immediately before Klassen. He emphasized that progress in religious freedom is being made in the U.S.S.R. He cautioned against unwarranted criticism of the Soviet government that might jeopardize this progress and cause further restrictions to be placed on the activities of all U.S.S.R. Baptists. He also told the audience that he believed that Christians “must obey the laws that exist in all countries.”

The war for recognition, sympathy, and support was waged on several other fronts as well. Mimeographed “open letters” and “press releases,” some of them anonymous, circulated among delegates. These included pleas on behalf of CCECB leader Georgi Vins in a Siberian prison camp and a government-ousted Baptist pastor in Latvia with a wife and ten children.

Another battleground was the congress book tables. The official Soviet Baptist delegation brought along for free distribution at the tables a booklet containing the complete text of Secretary Bichkov’s address to the forty-first congress of the government-recognized Baptists in Moscow last December. Among other issues, Bichkov dealt with the problem of Baptist unity in the U.S.S.R. He reported that the CCECB “does not manifest sufficient Christian desire to eliminate division.”

There was indication that some pressure was exerted on the Westerbergs Publishing House, which ran the congress book tables, to exercise caution in displaying controversial works about Christianity in Eastern Europe. Several were available, however, including the scholarly Discretion and Valour by Trevor Beeson and Faith on Trial in Russia by Michael Bordeaux.

The BWA omnibus resolution called for Baptists of all nations to recommit themselves “to pray, advocate, and work for effectual religious freedom for all human beings knowing that many of our brothers and sisters have lost their freedoms and in some cases their lives while resisting government restrictions.” However, no specific governments were mentioned in any part of the resolution, which was passed without debate.

At a reception hosted for BWA and Hungarian Baptist leaders by Janos Nagy, the Hungarian ambassador to Sweden, major consideration was given to freedom of religion and conscience in Hungary. The exchange of ideas was termed “mutually profitable” by a source who was present. The ambassador and the Baptist leaders, said the source, discussed the possibility of an international Baptist meeting in Budapest next year, possibly even featuring an evangelistic effort by Billy Graham.

In a sidelight development, a number of Baptists from America who traveled with tour groups had to scuttle plans for a trip to the Soviet Union because their applications for visas were rejected. No clear pattern was discernible in the Soviet response to visa applications, but apparently those groups with large numbers of ministers had the most trouble. The title “reverend” or, more often, the name of the minister’s employer on the visa application was the clue that many of the prospective tourists were Baptists.

The Soviet authorities have been sensitive for some time to Baptist tourists from the West who come to the U.S.S.R. with Russian Bibles in their luggage. Despite recent official protestations to the contrary, say observers, the Soviet government wants to stem the flow of tourist Bibles. In addition, there appears to be an effort to regulate somewhat the number of Baptist tourists who visit their religious compatriots as they travel in the U.S.S.R.

One Baptist leader had organized a BWA-related tour for alumni of his college. Their visa applications were rejected one week after BWA officials in Washington, D. C., publicly expressed concern over the sentencing of Georgi Vins to a long prison term. Tour groups from Michigan and Virginia likewise were turned down, as was a 200-member Canadian Baptist delegation. Numerous smaller groups reported similar response.

On the other hand, a group of eighty Baptist ministers and laypeople from southeastern states spent six days in Leningrad and Moscow prior to the BWA meeting. The tour organizer warned against taking Bibles and asking politically or religiously embarrassing questions of Soviet guides. Another group, turned down in the United States, applied for visas through a large Swedish travel firm. Everyone was accepted except for a few seminary and denominational officials. Elsewhere, several travel agents resubmitted visa applications but without clergy and church references—and got them accepted. A West German group of 230 chartered the Soviet-owned vessel Estonia, visited Polish and Soviet cities (stopping at a Baptist church in Leningrad), and used the ship as their hotel during the BWA congress.

After comparing notes in Stockho’m, many BWA delegates agreed that even tourism these days seems to have political significance. Baptists wishing to travel to the Soviet Union in the future, they concluded, will do better if they plan to go with more heterogeneous groups.

The Solemn Assemblies

The Church of the Brethren will be represented by a sister at the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches. Wanda Will Button of Conrad, Iowa, was named delegate at the annual conference of the 180,000-member denomination, held in June in Dayton, Ohio.

The church has considered changing its name as part of a move against sexist language, but a special task force of three women and two men advised against it: “It is our judgment that to suggest a major change in the name of our denomination at a time when awareness is just beginning to emerge seems ill-advised.”

Equality for women was a leading issue in many church conventions this year. In Minneapolis, the United Church of Christ General Synod adopted a nineteen-point program aimed at increasing the employment of women and minorities. The program calls for an office to monitor efforts to eliminate sexism in the denomination.

In another key vote, the synod of the 1.8 million-member denomination adopted a pronouncement calling for legislation supporting civil rights for homosexuals at the federal, state, and local levels. Among those testifying at a hearing before the vote were two UCC ministers who are avowed homosexuals.

Celebration of its centennial was what the Presbyterian Church in Canada General Assembly was all about this year. The assembly met in Montreal but moved by bus to Quebec City, 180 miles away, for a special tribute to clergyman John Cook, the first moderator. Cook’s portrait appears on a current Canadian postage stamp. When they got back down to business the commissioners then set in motion a procedure to revise the 180,000-member denomination’s Book of Common Order. The process will include presbytery study of a number of major doctrinal concerns, including introduction of a diaconate that will include both men and women.

Women’s ordination was condemned in a resolution unanimously approved by some 2,000 messengers to the annual meeting of the American Baptist Association in St. Louis. The group, which also expressed opposition to the charismatic movement and which has a constituency estimated at 950,000, is not to be confused with the American Baptist Churches, which held their biennial meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Charles Z. Smith, a black professor at the University of Washington law school, was elected president of the 1.4 million-member ABC.

Another Baptist group that came out against the ordination of women was the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, which met in its forty-fourth annual conference at Winona Lake, Indiana. Twenty-six more churches were received into the association, pushing the total over 1,500 with a membership of some 215,000.

In Elmhurst, Illinois, the Reformed Church in America General Synod voted by secret ballot, 158 to 97, against revoking the ordination of its only female minister. The synod also sent to the church classes (districts) a recommendation that the Book of Order be changed to permit the ordination of women. During the past year a majority of the classes voted in favor of the change, but the vote did not reach the two-thirds necessary for approval. Mrs. Joyce Stedge, 49-year-old mother of six, was ordained by a classis in New York in 1973. She is pastor of the Rochester Reformed Church in Accord, New York.

Allegations

A $430,500 lawsuit has been filed in southern California against evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman by Paul J. Bartholomew, a former Presbyterian minister who served as Miss Kuhlman’s personal administrator and television booking agent until his services were recently terminated. In an interview last month with religion writer Russell Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, Bartholomew alleged that Miss Kuhlman broke a contract with him, that her agents removed personal records from his office, that irregularities exist in the handling of her funds, and that she indulges in a life style of luxury and strong drink that is inconsistent with her public ministry.

Miss Kuhlman declined comment to reporters on some allegations, denied irregularities in financial dealings, and maintained she had a right to terminate Bartholomew’s contract. “My life is an open book,” she declared.

Several news organizations were investigating the charges and countercharges late last month.

The Law And Ted Patrick

Having helped hundreds of parents to “rescue” offspring from unconventional religious groups, “deprogrammer” Ted Patrick, 45, of San Diego now is in need of some help himself. Patrick has won some key legal battles since embarking on such rescue missions in 1972 (see April 27, 1973, issue, page 35 and August 31, 1973, issue, page 40). Lately, however, he has been losing.

Last year a Denver judge gave him a suspended sentence and placed him on probation for involvement in a case there. Patrick appealed the Colorado conviction and went on with his deprogramming activities in other states and Canada. In May he was convicted of false imprisonment charges in an Orange County, California, case involving a 19-year-old girl in the Krishna Consciousness sect. He was given a one-year jail sentence, all but sixty days of it suspended. Claiming his trial was unfair, Patrick lodged an appeal.

The Denver judge, on learning of the California conviction, sentenced Patrick to one year in jail for violating probation. The decision was handed down one day before the conclusion of the probation period. Patrick spent fifteen days in jail in Denver, then was released last month on $25,000 bail pending the outcome of his appeal. Two Colorado families put up property as security for the bond.

One of Patrick’s targets is Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. A church spokesman says about two dozen members have been abducted in deprogramming incidents, with only half returning to the group. The church is pressing charges against Patrick in several states. Patrick insists that the Moon group and other sects brainwash their adherents into submission and away from normal family and faith ties.

Patrick, on the road for weeks at a time, denies that he is getting rich from deprogramming, as some critics have alleged. Some families can’t even reimburse him for travel expenses, he says, and bills for legal services are piling up.

Religion In Transit

A forty-five-member congregation was chartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, as Vietnamese Alliance Church, the first officially organized Vietnamese church in the United States. Affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, its members are refugees, most of them sponsored by families in neighboring Rosemont Alliance Church. A pastor was en route last month.

Twice in six months, despite intense lobbying, the Council of Churches of the City of New York has denied membership to Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. Directors and denominational executives cited the sect’s theology (Jesus failed in his mission, but a Korean messiah will save mankind) and pressure on young converts to leave their families. It’s the first time the council has rejected an application.

Two years ago, after months of bitter debate, the California Board of Education arrived at a compromise agreement calling for inclusion of the creation theory in social science textbooks rather than in science textbooks, where creationist advocates had wanted it placed on equal footing with evolution. Last month the board adopted new science and social science texts. All omit the creation theory.

Well-known Anglican clergyman and author John R. W. Stott has resigned as rector of All Souls Church in London to devote more time to writing and itinerant evangelism. Stott, highly respected among young evangelical intellectuals, has been succeeded by Michael Baughen of the church staff, a popular broadcaster.

Bishop Per Loenning, one of the ten bishops of the state Church of Norway (Lutheran), resigned in protest against a liberalized abortion law passed by the Norwegian Parliament. The action is expected to accelerate demands of church independence from the state.

Will the 2.8-million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) be torn apart by schism?

Yes, say leaders of the so-called moderate side in the five-year-long battle in the LCMS over the doctrine of Scripture and how much doctrinal conformity the denomination can require of its churches and members. Actions taken at last month’s biennial convention in Anaheim, they claim, were a series of “eviction notices” that will force them out. These moves, they say, soon will lead to a direct confrontation between the conservative-led denomination and some of its districts and local churches. For the first time, they state, many members at the local level will become informed and take a stand. The result will be a new Lutheran denomination or transitional fellowship (pending merger with another Lutheran body) having an initial membership of 250,000 or so, says a moderate spokesman.

Conservative leaders, however, say they expect fewer than 100 congregations to bolt. And LCMS president Jacob “Jack” A. O. Preus implies he will do all he can to avert an explosive showdown with dissident district bodies.

The battle lines were drawn in 1969 when John H. Tietjen moved from a pan-Lutheran public relations job to the presidency of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, then the world’s largest Lutheran seminary, and when Preus moved from the presidency of Concordia Seminary in Springfield, Illinois, to the presidency of LCMS. Preus, riding the wave of conservative concern over creeping theological liberalism in the LCMS, pledged that no synodical school would be permitted to teach that the Bible contains errors.

In 1970 Preus appointed a fact-finding committee to investigate teaching at Concordia, St. Louis, an action protested by moderates. The haggling continued through 1971. Conservatives failed at that year’s convention to land a majority on Concordia’s board of control.

In 1972 Preus issued “A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles,” a set of theological guidelines upholding the inerrancy of Scripture. The majority of Concordia’s forty-plus teachers rejected it as a standard for judging their theological stance. They were supported by the board of control. Things heated up when instructor Arlis Ehlen, under criticism for allegedly teaching that some Old Testament events were not factual, was dismissed by the LCMS board for higher education. The American Association of Theological Schools placed Concordia on academic probation, citing outside interference in the school’s internal affairs. Preus released a report critical of the school, a report labeled in a public rebuttal by Tietjen as “unfair, untrue, sub-biblical, and un-Lutheran.”

In 1973 Concordia’s faculty majority issued a 200-page statement, asserting their faithfulness to the Word of God and the church. The LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations, headed by Ralph Bohlmann, found the statement unsatisfactory and asked the teachers to reject the liberal-oriented historical-critical method of biblical interpretation.

At the 1973 convention in New Orleans, Preus was reelected. Conservatives swept into power on virtually all commissions and boards, including Concordia’s. They also passed a series of resolutions that gave official status to Preus’s confessional statement, declared false doctrine was being taught at Concordia, and referred charges against Tietjen to the board of control.

In reaction, a group of moderates formed Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM) to lobby for change and to support dissidents.

After months of haggling, Tietjen was suspended as Concordia’s president in January, 1974. Most of the seminary’s students, faculty, and staff declared a moratorium on classes to protest the suspension. When the faculty and staff majority refused to go back to work they were fired. The student majority joined them to organize Concordia Seminary in Exile, nicknamed Seminex. Backed by ELIM and headquartered in borrowed space at a Jesuit school, Seminex students continued their education under their old teachers.

That spring the 100-plus Seminex graduates began seeking ordination and placement, most of them shunning special denominational procedures aimed at granting them official endorsement. Sympathetic district presidents accommodated them—against the wishes of Preus.

Meanwhile, a row broke out in the LCMS foreign missions division, mostly over policies and personalities rather than theology. The dispute disrupted overseas work, which was already affected adversely by the doctrinal conflict. Several staffers resigned, including executive secretary William H. Kohn. Kohn became head of Partners in Mission, the de facto mission wing of ELIM.

The Concordia board finally fired Tietjen officially in October, 1974, charging him with false doctrine and administrative shortcomings, among other things. Formal doctrinal charges were lodged against him by two pastors. In January he was elected president of Seminex (Bohlmann was elected president of Concordia in May). A few days before the Anaheim convention convened, the charges of false doctrine against Tietjen were dismissed by Oscar A. Gerken, Missouri district vice-president, who had been assigned to investigate. The pastors say they will appeal, meaning that the case eventually may land on Preus’s desk for a decision. In Anaheim, Preus said he wanted time to study the Gerken decision before commenting on it. Bohlmann insisted that Tietjen is guilty.

Preus, five LCMS vice-presidents, and the presidents of thirty-eight North American LCMS districts (plus two in South America) meet periodically as the Council of Presidents. For the most part, the district presidents seem to be pastoral types who simply want the boat-rocking in the Missouri Synod to stop. But over the past year the council itself has been the scene of conflict, mostly over Seminex.

In May the council adopted a resolution that in effect asked the upcoming convention to settle the issue of how to certify Seminex graduates for the LCMS ministry. (Some presidents were ordaining them outright; others were requiring them to complete the special program set up by Concordia.) The resolution ended with a pledge:

We solemnly assure the church that we shall abide by the decisions of the convention on these matters and that we shall perform our duties in accordance with our oath of office.

Eight presidents, however, declined to sign. They argued that congregations, in an issue of conscience, have the constitutional right to ordain a pastor even if the church at large rejects him. Seminex is a valid LCMS school, they implied, and its graduates are fit ministerial candidates. In their statement of dissent they blamed the key New Orleans resolutions for “a major role in the Synod’s problems.”

The eight: Herman R. Frincke, Eastern District; Harold L. Hecht, English; Paul E. Jacobs, California-Nevada; Emil G. Jaech, Northwest; Waldemar E. Meyer, Colorado; Herman F. Neunaber, Southern Illinois; Rudolph P. F. Ressmeyer, Atlantic; and Robert J. Riedel, New England. They represent a total of nearly 600,000 baptized members in 1,300 congregations.

To Preus, the stand of the eight presidents amounted to anarchy—and the continuation of Seminex. In his keynote presidential address at Anaheim he emphasized that Seminex, ELIM, and dissenting district presidents had to be dealt with in a “fair and loving” but “firm” way. No church body, he stated, can long support two theologies which are in conflict nor long endure such divisiveness as that caused by ELIM. As for the district presidents, said he:

The convention must finally decide who understands the constitution correctly. It must finally insist that those who serve as officers of the Synod, whether at the synodical or district level, give assurance to the Synod that they will carry out their duties in keeping with the Synod’s understanding of its constitution and bylaws.

At the Anaheim Convention Center were 1,120 voting delegates (560 pastoral, 560 lay), 500 advisory delegates, and a visitors’ gallery of 1,500. On crucial votes, the conservatives registered roughly a 60–40 majority, enabling Preus to get the anti-Seminex package he wanted. Amid prolonged and emotional debate, the delegates:

• Called on those associated with Seminex to close it; if not, it will be regarded as any other non-LCMS theological school.

• Confirmed that Seminex graduates must be properly certified to be eligible for the LCMS ministry and urged them to take corrective steps.

• Authorized action to make Seminex stop using “Concordia Seminary” as part of its name.

• Stipulated that Seminex professors can be retained on the LCMS clergy roster only as candidates on a renewable annual basis.

• Labeled the 14,000-member ELIM as schismatic and set up procedures to discipline those in it if it continues its schismatic ways (“support of a competing seminary [and] a competing mission program, its encouraging congregations to withhold financial support from the Synod and to call uncertified men as pastors”).

• Decided to merge Concordia Senior College of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, the main LCMS pre-ministerial school, with the LCMS junior college at Ann Arbor, Michigan, making that school a four-year institution; and to move Concordia Seminary, Springfield, to the Fort Wayne campus (the Fort Wayne college was a major source of Seminex support).

• Decreed by a 626–466 vote that a district president must ordain or authorize the ordination of properly certified candidates only and asked that he resign if he cannot uphold this constitutional requirement (if he does not resign and if he persists, he can be subjected to discipline that can lead to his office being declared vacant).

The action concerning the district presidents was wrought with emotion. Each of the eight was given time to state his position during pre-vote debate. “We are not anarchists,” declared Frinke, “We are deeply committed to the Lord Jesus Christ as well as to the Synod.” Loyalty to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions sometimes must have precedence over church laws, suggested Ressmeyer.

Preus, his deep feelings showing, offered to forget the past and to sponsor a last-minute move to withdraw the measure if the eight presidents would promise to abide by policy in the future. “Will you walk with us?” he cried. There were a few catcalls, but these were drowned out almost immediately in a standing ovation for Preus. The eight principals sat stone-faced among their colleagues nearby.

An Eastern district delegate told the assembly that 5,000 had signed a petition instructing Frincke to refuse suspension or dismissal from office by any body other than the district. The petition also served notice that any action taken against Frincke is “an action taken against each of us,” and it implied that the district would ignore any order vacating Frincke’s office.

As the delegates stood to have their votes counted, the eight studied the crowd. “This is terrible,” muttered Hecht. “Some of my key men, my close personal friends, broke with me.” After the vote was announced, family members exchanged embraces with the eight and wept. Preus, also in tears, left the platform.

In a joint response on behalf of the others, Jaech said they would not “throw in the towel and leave” but would “continue our practice as presidents of our districts, unless our districts replace us.” In a press conference afterward, Riedel said he had no intention of leading any churches out of the Synod “unless action is taken against me.”

Preus hopes to avoid getting involved in any such action, even though a number of “illegal” ordinations are scheduled over the next weeks. (Neunaber would have been the first to defy the Synod’s ruling with an ordination on July 20 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Ana, Illinois. A controversy developed in the church over the issue, however, and the congregation postponed the event indefinitely.) Seminex is at the heart of the LCMS troubles, says Preus. If it can be persuaded—or forced—to close, the problem involving district presidents will be resolved, thus keeping defections at a minimum.

ELIM is scheduled to meet in Chicago this month to plan its response and strategy.

Other actions at Anaheim:

• In a surprise vote, the delegates voted against dismantling the non-geographic English district (a bastion of ELIM backers).

• All but one of the 131 candidates endorsed by the conservative publication Affirm were elected, leading to protests by moderates. (The loser was conservative Waldo J. Werning, missions board chairman; many felt he was partly to blame for the overseas problems.)

Apologetics Made Appetizing

Christianity on Trial, by Colin Chapman (Tyndale, 1975, 594 pp., $7.95 pb), is reviewed by Clark Pinnock, associate professor of theology, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada.

Most Christian workers are convinced of the need for apologetics, for evangelism, and for nurture, and are on the lookout for a text to give disciples or interested persons, a book that clearly sets out the reasons for faith and provides a ready reference to the many subjects grouped around this theme. Colin Chapman’s handsomely prepared and printed book should meet this need for many.

This substantial volume is divided into three main parts: (1) “How can we know if Christianity is true?” (2) “Questions of God, Man, and the Universe.” (3) “Questions about Jesus Christ.” It is subdivided into seven basic questions, and the format is consistent in each subsection, eminently teachable. The author begins by giving the answer of biblical Christianity, then turns to the major alternatives to it, and finally returns to the biblical answer, clearing it of all objections that have arisen from the investigation. One particularly valuable feature of the volume is the paragraph-length citations culled from famous and influential writers of every opinion and fully documented at the back of the book. These are very apt and usable in connection with various apologetic issues.

The book starts out sharply and boldly. God has revealed truth about himself, and the truth is open to verification. Intellectual convictions about Christianity are of course inadequate in themselves, but they do supply a threshold for personal trust. In the first part, Chapman promises that Christian truth is verifiable factually, philosophically, and experimentally. After discussing options such as authoritarianism, agnosticism, and existentialism, he returns to his thesis and responds to the major questions that it raises. He does not advocate a cold rationalism, but believes that the Gospel has a broad appeal to the whole of man’s being, including his thinking. The first part prepares us for a rich feast of apologetic argument and evidence.

There is more than a slight letdown, however, in the second part. Although the basic question “Does God exist?” is raised in questions two and four, it is answered with the help of only the weakest kind of evidences. The reason is that Chapman, like so many others today, does not find the traditional arguments for God’s existence convincing. While they may carry some weight with those who are already Christians, he does not think they make any impression on the unbeliever. The result, however, is a large vacuum in the center of the handbook. There is no cosmological or teleological or moral argumentation, not even an appeal to religious experience to justify theistic belief. All we find is the sort of apologetic reasoning that tells us what it is like to view the world if you do believe. If the quite solid arguments of traditional apologetics have no effect on the unbeliever (an enormous generalization), one shudders to think what effect the absence of solid reasoning will have on them.

The strongest section in the book is perhaps question three, “What is man?” It is a statement of the experimental test for Christian truth. What good sense for the living of life does faith in Jesus make! In the section we are treated to some splendid quotations from Russell, Blackham, Huxley, and others that illustrate vividly the metaphysical darkness from which God has rescued us and cause us to be grateful to our Saviour for his goodness to us. But this substitution of an experimental, anthropological argument for the older theistic proofs, while it fits the spirit of our age and doubtless has a wide appeal, should, I suspect, be viewed rather as a complement to them than as a replacement. The practical evidence that proves Christianity relevant unfortunately does not prove it true, and the truth question about theism cannot be indefinitely shelved.

The third part is devoted to historical and theological apologetics concerning the person and work of Jesus, including his death and resurrection. The material here can only be called elementary. There is, for instance, no in-depth defense of the authenticity of the New Testament documents, and no detailed resurrection apologetic such as a toughminded person would require.

In conclusion, Christianity on Trial is a handbook of Christian apologetics suitable for the beginner or seeker in late high school or early college. It begins strongly, and raises expectations of a university-level treatise, but does not carry through with it. The book is excellent in format, and it could be used in the classroom together with supplementary readings.

The Gold Is There

Noah’s Three Sons: Human History in Three Dimensions, by Arthur Custance (Zondervan, 1975, 368 pp., $8.95), reviewed by Robert Brow, associate rector, Little Trinity Anglican Church, Toronto, Canada.

The “Doorway Papers” were written over many years, beginning in 1957 after Custance wrote a doctoral thesis in anthropology at Ottawa University in Canada. Here we have five of the sixty papers strung together in a spotty, repetitive fashion, but the gold is worth digging for.

Custance’s wide-ranging generalizations are admittedly too big and too skinny. Noah had three sons. From them came three races, the Semites, Hamites, and Japhethites. It is easy to identify the Japhethites as Indo-Europeans, and clearly Hindus, Greeks, and Europeans have been the world’s philosophers. The Semites contributed the great religions of the spirit: Judaism, Christian, and Islam. The Hamites, who include all the non-white races, were the originators of technology in the great civilizations of Sumer, Egypt, Babylonia, and Africa. Japhethite philosophy applied to Hamitic technology, and Semitic religion had a glorious flowering in our Western civilization. All three contributions are designed by God for the good of humanity, and we neglect one or the other at our peril.

What is important is Custance’s attempt to ground a truly biblical and interdisciplinary view of history in the Table of Nations. The Greek and Latin classicists and the Near Eastern archaeologists and linguists have sufficiently pursued their unrelated minutiae. Our author effectively argues for the very early date of Genesis 10 (confirmed from another point of view in R. K. Harrison’s Introduction to the Old Testament). Custance argues well that early races looked back to individuals as founding fathers, that these persons can be related genealogically, and that Genesis 10 gives us the correct framework.

The book is at its strongest in collecting references to the wide-ranging Japhethite Indo-European races. I was fascinated by the derivation of Saxons, German Sachsen, and Scandinavians from Ashkenaz, and the Gauls, Celts, and Galatians from Gomer.

Custance follows the assumption adopted by the first Semitic scholars that Abraham’s race and language were the same. The Table of Nations actually suggests that Abraham was Shemitic by race, but adopted the dominant Babylonian and Canaanite language (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, October 26, 1973, “The Curse of Ham”). It is as if an African Muslim learned French at school and teaches philosophy at the Sorbonne: is his work Hamitic, Semitic, or Indo-European? Having taken it for granted that the Babylonians were Semites because they spoke a language similar to Hebrew, Custance is then in constant trouble. He admits the difficulty of finding Canaanites and Philistines Hamitic by genealogy and yet speakers of what scholars call a Semitic language. If we want to take the Table of Nations seriously, we have to call Babylonians, Canaanites, Egyptians, Minoans, and so on, Hamites. We then have to look for a race of true Shemites, who, like Abraham, originally spoke a completely different type of language.

Interestingly enough, Custance has dug up the information needed to link the Etruscans and Proto-Lydians with the agglutinative group of languages including Finnic, Altaic, Basque, and Sumerian. These are much more likely to be the representatives of the original Shemites, together with the Elamites. According to Genesis 10:21–23, the original language of the Assyrians and Arameans, before they were swamped by Akkadian language and culture, would also belong to this group.

Even if the author is wrong in the details I have suggested, much can still be retrieved from his work. He reminds us that pure science and philosophy have been produced by Japhethites. In a history of philosophy, what could one include apart from Hindu, Greek, Latin, German, French, English, and American contributions? (He disposes of the minor objection from China by arguing that Confucianism is not a philosophy.) Quoting Benjamin Whorf and other works in linguistic philosophy Custance offers the fascinating suggestion that perhaps philosophy, as we understand it, is possible only in the logic and thought forms of the Indo-European languages.

Much else in the book can whet the appetite, such as the chapter on “The Inventive Genius of Ham,” which apparently impressed the Canadian government in its immigration policy. There is an interesting section on racial migrations with the suggestion that degenerate forms such as Neanderthal man tend to be found at the margins of habitation, and yet can occur in otherwise healthy families. If you are looking for scholarly precision in a narrow field you will not survive the first few sections, but if you find imaginative synthesis worthwhile, this book will do much to stimulate your thinking. There is no index or bibliography but over 700 footnotes.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Christians interested in the arts should welcome the new thrust of the Fellowship of Christians in the Arts, Media, and Entertainment. To inquire about membership and the revived Newsletter write: Box 9323, Seattle, Washington 98109. Also, Genesis made its first appearance in April, with a sixty-four-page issue. It is the journal of the fine arts-oriented Society of Christians in the Arts. The journal should be in theological and art libraries and costs $5/three issues. For information on subscriptions and membership write: Box 1194, Greenwich, Connecticut 06830.

Providence Lost: A Critique of Darwinism, by Richard Spilsbury (Oxford, 133 pp., $11.25). A secular approach to the questions of man’s origins in a challenging, broadly philosophical manner. Criticizes reliance upon purely materialistic explanations.

Psalms For Worship Today, by Dwight Vogel (Concordia, 176 pp., $6 pb). A new arrangement and organization of the Psalms for use in the worship service. This spiral-bound kivar volume is more for antiphonal than responsive reading.

Church Planning and Management, by B. Otto Wheeley (Dorrance, 218 pp., $8.95). A guidebook, complete with examples of budgets, salaries, and pastor’s job descriptions.

There’s a Snake in My Garden, by Jill Briscoe (Zondervan, 143 pp., $4.95), It’s Good to Know, by Randy Bullock (Mott Media [Box 236, Milford, Mich. 48042], 233 pp., $5.95, $2.95 pb), Tell It to the Mafia, by Joe Donato (Logos, 154 pp., $2.95), The Dino Story, by Dino Kartsonakis (Revell, 128 pp., $4.95), Move Over Mountain, by Nancy Life (Bethany, 139 pp., $2.45 pb), and A Rebel From Riches, by Bebe Reynolds (Alba, 150 pp., $1.65 pb). The first five are autobiographical accounts of how five persons came to Christ: in the order listed, an evangelist’s wife, an actor, an ex-criminal, a pianist, and a formerly frustrated housewife. The sixth autobiography, reminding us of the variety of conversions, is by a self-made millionaire who became a Benedictine monk.

Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching, by G. N. Stanton (Cambridge, 207 pp., $16.50). A technical, important study of the life and character of Jesus in Luke-Acts by a younger British evangelical.

The Gospel According to the Wall Street Journal, by Carnegie Samuel Calian (John Knox, 120 pp., $3.95), Notes Toward a Christian Critique of Secular Economic Theory, by A. B. Cramp (Institute for Christian Studies [229 College St., Toronto, Canada M5T 1R4], 80 pp., $1.50 pb), and Illusions of Success, by John Raines (Judson, 128 pp., $5.95). Three critiques of modern Western economic value systems. Calian uses the Wall Street Journal to illuminate economic values, presenting his view of a Christian response throughout. Cramp’s more technical book examines theories of economics and presents his conservative Christian analysis. Raines’s treatment attempts to illumine the true, exploited condition of the American middle class. Some mention is made of religious influences in economic values.

Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick (Basic Books, 367 pp., $12.95). An important addition to the field of political philosophy. Nozick seeks to show that anything more than a very limited government will violate individual rights and is not justified. The author is a full professor at Harvard, and the book won the latest annual National Book Award in philosophy and religion.

Which Way to Education?, by Philip May (Moody, 159 pp., $2.95 pb). Addressing Christian parents and teachers, the author, rather philosophically, points out their responsibilities in a child’s education. A rather abstract presentation of some biblical principles, but with a helpful perspective.

Man Without Tears, by Christopher Mooney (Harper & Row, 148 pp., $7.95), and The Mystery of Man, by Owen Sharkey (Franklin, 189 pp., $10.95). Mooney, follower of Teilhard de Chardin, calls his book “soundings for a Christian anthropology.” Sharkey’s study is also anthropological and is more clearly biblically based.