Mindszenty: Casualty Of Detente

Memoirs, by Józef Cardinal Mindszenty (Macmillan, 1974, 341 pp., $10), is reviewed by Blahoslav S. Hruby, editor, “Religion in Communist Dominated Areas.”

Cardinal Mindszenty’s Memoirs is a most timely reminder to the free world that Communism (of all types and shades), despite present propaganda about detente and peaceful coexistence, remains the most serious danger for a free society. It threatens religious and all other basic freedoms and human rights.

Mindszenty was a courageous man who always stood up for the freedom and rights of his church. Policies of accommodation and collaboration either with the Nazis or with the Communists were alien to him. The Communist authorities of Hungary finally arrested him early in 1949 on charges of treason, espionage, and black-marketeering. He was accused of trying to restore the Habsburg monarchy, of requesting the Western powers to interfere in international affairs of Hungary, of spying for the United States, of engaging in illegal currency transactions, and of other crimes against the state.

“Again and again I forcefully refused when they tried to persuade me to sign their prepared confession,” says Cardinal Mindszenty in describing the five weeks of his ordeal preceding the trial:

Again and again the major took over, dragged me back to the cell where I was stripped, thrown down, and beaten. Just as regularly the guard afterwards tried to intensify the effect of this torture by preventing me from sinking into a sleep of exhaustion.…

The tormentor … held the truncheon in one hand, a long sharp knife in the other. And then he drove me like a horse in training, forcing me to trot and gallop. The truncheon lashed down on my back repeatedly—for some time without a pause. Then we stood still and he brutally threatened: “I’ll kill you; by morning I’ll tear you to pieces and throw the remains of your corpse to the dogs or into canal. We are the masters here now.” Then he forced me to begin running again. Although I was gasping for breath and the splinters of the wooden floor stabbed painfully into my bare feet, I ran as fast as I could to escape his blows [pp. 110, 112].

When the trial of Cardinal Mindszenty and his codefendants began on February 3, 1949, a broken man faced the court. The Communist judges, practicing “social justice” and using the tortures learned from their Soviet and Nazi teachers, extracted a confession in the form they wanted. Mindszenty was condemned to life imprisonment, although the government asked for the death penalty.

During the short-lived Hungarian uprising in the fall of 1956, the cardinal returned from prison in a triumphant procession; but after Soviet tanks crushed the revolution (there was no help from the West!) he found a refuge in the U. S. Embassy in Budapest.

From the Memoirs we learn an interesting detail about the policy of detente as practiced by Nixon and Kissinger. It was not only the Vatican that pressed Cardinal Mindszenty to leave the American Embassy in Budapest for Rome so that the Vatican could arrive easier at some modus vivendi with the Communist government of Hungary. The White House too asked the cardinal to leave the embassy. Nixon and Kissinger apparently believed that the presence there of a refugee of high ecclesiastical status who was involved in the 1956 Hungarian uprising was a stumbling bloc in détente negotiations with the Hungarian and other Communist governments.

The chapter on the Vatican’s negotiations with the cardinal on his leaving the U. S. Embassy is of particular interest and poignancy. Pope Paul VI seemed to be very close to Cardinal Mindszenty and assured him on several occasions that he “will always remain Archbishop of Esztergom and primate of Hungary.” However, personal feelings and the Pope’s promises had to make room for the new Vatican’s Ostpolitik and its policy of détente with Communist governments. On February 5, 1974 (the twenty-fifth anniversary of the cardinal’s show trial!), the Vatican announced the cardinal’s removal from the see of Esztergom. The cardinal authorized his office to issue the following statement: “Cardinal Mindszenty has not abdicated his office as archbishop nor his dignity as primate of Hungary. The decision was taken by the Holy See alone.”

The concluding sentence of the Memoirs reveals the depth of Cardinal Mindszenty’s disillusionment after many years of struggle and suffering: “This is the path I traveled to the end, and this is how I arrived at complete and total exile.” It also underlines the extreme difficulty if not impossibility of finding a proper answer to the questions raised by those who went through the darkness of persecution and long experience of Communist attempts to infiltrate and manipulate the churches. They have, understandably, serious doubts about all attempts to accommodate the Communist regimes through détente and peaceful coexistence.

Cardinal Mindszenty’s Memoirs should be read by every person concerned about churches’ and peoples’ struggle for freedom in Communist countries. It is particularly imperative during the present political and moral climate in this country. President Ford and Secretary Kissinger are making important decisions that remind us of the Munich appeasement. President Ford’s initial refusal to invite Solzhenitsyn to visit him, done at the advice of Kissinger because it would irritate Brezhnev and weaken detente, is an outstanding example of this dangerous policy. Another is President Ford’s participation in the Helsinki Conference.

Pentecostalism, Satanism, Scientology, Etc.

Religious Movements in Contemporary America, edited by Irving I. Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone (Princeton, 1974, 837 pp., $25), is reviewed by Lewis Rambo, assistant professor of psychology, Trinity College, Deerfield, Illinois.

The recent explosion of popular piety in the United States has drawn varied responses. For religious people, the religious revival has pointed to deficiencies within traditional institutions. It has also confirmed their belief that even modern man is in need of spiritual guidance. For many social scientists, the resurgence of religiosity has generated some creative confusion, for it has required them to reexamine their rather rigidly held views on the evolution of society. Orthodox theory in the fields of anthropology, psychology, and sociology held that man was becoming more and more secular in his mode of life and thought; therefore the inevitable demise of religion was confidently predicted. Furthermore, the researcher generally viewed religion as the reflection or residue of the larger processes of culture, society, and personality.

Religious Movements in Contemporary America consists of twenty-seven essays that seek to sketch the contours of the current religious renaissance and to reformulate a theory of religion. The book is a major achievement on both counts. First, it gives extensive reports on field research conducted among such groups as the Hare Krishna movement, Scientology, Satanists, Pentecostals, Mormons, and many others. As participant observers, the authors offer us detailed, and empathetic accounts.

Theoretically, too, the book is important, for it levels major criticisms against the dominant views of religion: that it is (a) a reaction to some form of deprivation (whether social, psychological, or economic) or (b) a response to the general disorganization of the larger society in which it lives. In my opinion, the book’s only fault is that there are only tentative attempts to construct a new, more comprehensive theory of religion. Nevertheless, the criticism of the reigning theories and the explorations into new territory are extremely valuable.

Generally, one who reviews so large a book written by so many different people feels constrained to report that the contents vary greatly in quality. That statement is not necessary for this book. The reader’s own evaluation of each essay will be determined more by his interests—whether they lie in theory or data, the occult or the more traditional—than by the quality of writing (which is unusually high) or by the author’s theoretical bias. The only problem confronting the reviewer is selection. One cannot comment on all the articles. My choice of several reflects my psychological orientation, my concern for the integrative and innovative dimensions of religious experience, and my liking for theoretical questions.

“Ideological support for the Marginal Middle Class: Faith Healing and Glossolalia” by E. Mansell Pattison skillfully portrays the personality style of the ardent fundamentalist. Pattison says that fundamentalists tend to be riddled with conflicts—covertly hostile and overtly passive, acutely aware of their worthlessness and stubbornly arrogant—and oriented to the future. Pattison also clearly lays down a theory for the relation between personality characteristics and the cultural milieus that foster certain styles.

Virginia H. Hine in “The Deprivation and Disorganization Theories of Social Movements” astutely analyzes contemporary theories of religion. Her essay explicitly states what is implicit throughout the book, that current theories cannot provide a coherent understanding of religious phenomenon. E. Fuller Torrey’s “Spiritualists and Shamans as Psychotherapists” is a direct attack on the condescending attitude of many American social scientists toward the healers of different societies; they assume, by definition, that psychiatry and clinical psychology is superior because it is more “scientific.” Healing, according to Torrey, is a process that combines art and science, even for the successful therapist in the United States. Torrey’s colleagues who react only with dismay to what he says will probably miss some valuable insights.

One of the most surprising essays is Edward J. Moody’s “Magical Therapy: An Anthropological Investigation of Contemporary Satanism.” The article is rich in details of the inner workings of a California Satanist group. It is startling to discover that (at least in Moody’s perception of the situation) Satanism’s bizarre rituals and its violently anti-Christian stance do, in fact, “socialize” its adherents and make them more “normal.” Those drawn to Satanism are deficient in the skills necessary to lead successful lives in society. Their failure breeds anger toward society. However, through their association with Satanist groups, these people are taught to perceive social expectations more correctly. This helps them achieve personal success in business, family, and other areas. The carefully controlled (and secret) rituals of Satanism are useful to diffuse hostility and create an environment in which personal relations are structured and gradually transformed. Moody’s study is arresting and useful in that he disabuses us of stereotypes of Satanism; however, his analysis of the movement tends toward advocacy at times. Satanism is “therapeutic” for some; yet most people would probably feel that the cure is worse than the disease.

The editors of the book are to be praised for their excellent organization. Diverse subjects are given compelling coherence. The editor’s extensive introductions give invaluable orientation to the essays, and they point to salient issues and problems raised in various sections of the book. The fascinating details, the openness to the novel qualities of these groups, and the willingness to attempt new theoretical formulations make this book a refreshing harbinger of a new approach to religion among social scientists.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Keeping Your Cool in a World of Tension, by Richard LeTourneau (Zondervan, 142 pp., $4.95), Life Is So Great, I Really Don’t Want to Get Off, by Milo Arnold (Zondervan, 200 pp., $5.95), Living With Depression and Winning, by Sarah Fraser (Tyndale, 110 pp., $1.45 pb), Survival Kit For the Stranded, by William Self (Broadman, 142 pp., $4.95), and That Elusive Thing Called Joy, by Calvin Miller (Zondervan, 144 pp., $4.95). Five books by evangelicals that seek to help Christians deal with the tensions and problems of modern living. LeTourneau in outline format uses the concepts of dynamics and diligence to discuss the Christian life in general. Arnold’s theme is fulfillment. He uses a kind of Christian “positive thinking” approach. Fraser writes perceptively of her struggle with suicidal depression. Self’s book encompasses many mental-spiritual crises such as mental illness, grief, guilt, fear, despair, loneliness, and illness. Well written. Miller structures his book around a pattern he calls a “happiness construct.” This formula approach to life could be very dry, but Miller’s good ideas about human relationships add spice to the recipe.

God’s Party, by David Randolph (Abingdon, 144 pp., $3.50 pb), and A New Look For Sunday Morning, by William Abernathy (Abingdon, 176 pp., $4.50 pb). Two volumes that focus on changes from the more traditional forms of worship. Randolph explains why change is sometimes needed and offers some suggestions for innovative worship. Abernathy records the experiences of his Congregational church in Connecticut. Neither author is so extreme that evangelicals cannot benefit from what he relates.

A Father … A Son … And a Three-Mile Run, by Keith Leenhouts (Zondervan, 140 pp., $4.95). A poignant story of a special father-son relationship. The father/author brings his insights as a Christian and a judge to his observations of fatherhood.

Property and Riches in the Early Church, by Martin Hengel (Fortress, 96 pp., $2.95 pb). Examines the attitudes toward owning things expressed in the Old Testament, in the New Testament by Jesus and Paul, and in the early centuries of the Church. Not definitive, but a well researched, thoughtful exposition.

Jesus in Genesis, by Michael Esses (Logos, 270 pp., $2.95 pb), Judges and a Permissive Society, by John Hunter (Zondervan, 128 pp., n.p., pb), and Hosea and His Message, by Roy L. Honeycutt (Broadman, 96 pp., $1.50 pb). Somewhat unusual approaches to three Old Testament books. Esses attempts to relate Genesis directly to the teachings of Jesus; he writes in a light style that some will find hollow. Hunter studies Judges through the characters in the book. A help, especially for a beginning student of the Old Testament. Honeycutt expounds on a somewhat unfamiliar book chapter by chapter in a simple, readable style. He draws some good parallels with modern times.

The Transfiguration of Politics, by Paul Lehmann (Harper & Row, 366 pp., $12.95). A ponderous, self-assured tome by a leading ethicist. Advanced students of the relations between Christ and government and political change cannot ignore this book, though many will argue with it.

God and the Future, by Henry McKeating (Judson, 94 pp., $3.50), Jesus the King Is Coming, edited by Charles Feinberg (Moody, 200 pp., $4.95), The Approaching Advent of Christ, by Alexander Reese (Grand Rapids International [P.O. Box 2607, Grand Rapids, Mich. 49501], 328 pp., $5.95), What, Where, and When Is the Millennium?, by R. Bradley Jones (Baker, 144 pp., $2.95 pb), and The Dawn of the Apocalyptic, by Paul Hanson (Fortress, 428 pp., $14.95). Eschatology is the area of doctrine with the most books. McKeating writes on the whole biblical approach to the future, not just the end. Feinberg’s contributors include such notables as Hal Lindsey and John Walvoord. A good introduction to one widespread view. Price concentrates on prophetic fulfillment relating to restoration of Israel and Jewish expectations of the Messiah, especially as they affect the Christian. Reese’s volume, a reprint, is a polemical, often quoted defense of a post-tribulational view of the Second Coming. Jones contends that the millennium is now; his views will interest the prophecy buff. Hanson gives a scholarly treatment of the origins of apocalyptic writings, for the advanced student.

Believe!, by Richard DeVos (Revell, 128 pp., $4.95), and Success, Motivation and the Scriptures, by William Cook (Broadman, 172 pp., $3.95). What is the relation between “success” and the Christian faith? DeVos, president of Amway, seems to be saying that belief in God, America, and free enterprise is the key to a successful life. Some may question his thesis. Cook attempts to apply biblical principles to the subject and brings more depth to the understanding of motivation.

Scripture And Sciences: Concord, Not Conflict

The Clock Work Image, by Donald MacKay (InterVarsity, 1974, 112 pp., $2.25 pb), is reviewed by Michael Macdonald, associate professor of German and philosophy, Seattle Pacific College, Seattle, Washington.

Donald MacKay, a professor of communications and a specialist in brain physiology, is the author of Room For Freedom and Action in a Mechanistic Universe. He has debated B. F. Skinner on William Buckley’s TV show, “Firing Line.” As a scientist and a Christian, MacKay here examines the Christian view of the universe and its relation to scientific thought.

His theme is the essential, non-accidental harmony between biblical Christian faith and mechanistic science. MacKay emphasizes a philosophy of wholeness: the harmony and complementarity between Christian thought on the one hand and the spirit and practice of natural science on the other. God’s story is revealed in both Scripture and science, and MacKay thinks that the greatest educational need of our time is to restore wholeness to our view of life.

We tend to try to understand each situation by analogy with a machine. Much can be described and analyzed as a mechanism, but this does not mean that the only “real,” objective, worthwhile explanations are the explanations we get from machine analogies. We can know some aspects of reality only by becoming involved with them. MacKay argues that if you transfer scientific criteria, which are expressly developed for observing physical objects, into the sphere of religion, which deals with the personal knowledge of God, “you do not discover a conflict, you create one.” He maintains “that the religious and the scientific approaches are not rivals but are complementary, each appropriate to an aspect of experience largely ignored by the other.”

The scientist has no reason to deny that there is much knowledge of a different kind to be gained by personal involvement. In many situations one should become a participant and accept personal responsibility. The move is one from detachment to involvement. This extremely important distinction is reminiscent of Bergson, Buber, and more recently Tournier. Each in his own way stresses that there are two profoundly different ways of knowing—one by moving around the object, which depends on point of view, and another by entering into a personal relationship with it.

Provocative and sensitive, this book is written both for Christians who want to evaluate science in the light of their faith and for non-Christians who wish to discover what commitment to Christ would do to their intellectual integrity in this age of mechanistic science. The book is based largely on talks given over the past twenty years; some presupposed no religious commitment, while others were given at conferences of Christians. The slight unevenness in style is understandable and not bothersome.

But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul” (Deut. 4:29).

“Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the LORD; and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations.…” (Jer. 29:12–14).

“Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD” (Prov. 8:34, 35).

“Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near” (Isa. 55:6).

Generation after generation, century after century, there have been people who sought the Lord with sincere, honest seeking, and who found him—without ever seeing him face to face in the land of the living. These people found that he was near them, that he never left them nor forsook them, that he listened to them when they called upon him. They came one by one, through the Lamb, his appointed way—and they came with the motive of wanting to follow him as soon as they could find him. Honest seeking turns into honest following when he is found. The “following” is not just a nebulous religious act, a mystical ceremony; it is an open, frank, honest belief that there is a Person to follow, and that the Person is God, a personal God who responds.

This kind of specific, assured following brings with it a spontaneous telling of others. “One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messiah, which is being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus” (John 1:40–42). Remember old Anna, who had waited and watched for the Messiah for many years, praying daily in the Temple; she recognized the One for whom she was watching, even though he was a tiny baby. “And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).

Those who are convinced that the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, the long awaited Messiah, has indeed come, need no urging to tell others of this fact, so exciting and at the same time so deeply comforting. If people care about other people, the finding of that which has been sought, the “seeing” of what has been watched for, brings a burst of response, and then a rush of communication.

Come to the opposite of positive, sincere, honest seeking. “And they watched him, whether he would heal on the sabbath day, that they might accuse him” (Mark 3:2). The motive of these Pharisees, who were religious men, well trained and proud, was to find a flaw, so that they could “accuse him.” Verse six of this chapter shows how these men pounced on the “evidence” they felt they had found by their negative watching. “And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.” “Now we have him” was their feverish reaction to the healing of the man with the withered hand.

Face to face with the Son of God, the Messiah, these men heard his voice in their ears, looked into his eyes, watched him gently restore a man’s withered hand, but they did not find him. One can be close enough to the living God, as they were, to feel his breath upon one’s face, to have one’s ears ring with his voice—and yet not find him. The finding is something that, God tells us, depends upon a deep sincerity, described as “seeking with all thine heart.”

What a frightening picture of “hard hearts” and their effect on the senses! How ineffectual is clear proof to those who are watching with only a desire to disprove. And how staggering a picture we are given when we realize that the Pharisees, the religious rulers, are not confined to one moment of history. Other religious men, too, have watched him, looking for new and brilliant ways of accusing him of not being who he says he is so they might destroy him.

We are told to be aware of the rapid passing of time, and of the increasing “signs of his coming,” and we are to watch with assurance that he will keep his promises to come back again and restore that which has been spoiled. We are to watch with loving faith, not suspicion. We are to watch with awe and admiration, not scorn and superiority. “Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.… Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:42–44).

“Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them” (Luke 12:37). If we read the previous verses we will see that those who do this kind of watching are “seeking first the kingdom of God.” They have provided themselves “with bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth” (v. 33). There is a key given to how to watch with the right motives: “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (v. 34).

Jesus spoke sharply to the disciples about watching with him in the garden of Gethsemane. “What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:40, 41). Added to the “key” of putting our treasure in heaven is the command to pray with our watching, in order to ward off temptations. “Watch and pray”: Jesus gives us this combination command to follow actively, not simply to read as devotional words. Watch for his coming, but watch also that Satan’s subtle temptations don’t twist and turn us aside. And the watching must be accompanied by close communication with our Heavenly Father.

If the disciples needed to watch and pray at that time, how much more do we need to watch and pray day by day now. Not only is there danger of temptations that we recognize as “evil,” but Pharisees with other names can also tempt us. Satan uses whatever would be most likely to succeed.

Let us then “be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain” (Rev. 3:2).

Under The Spreading Umbrella

Historically speaking, most new schools of theology have been created by liberals, or at best by the neo-orthodox. Neo-orthodoxy itself began as a new kind of theology, called “theology of crisis” (krisis, a Greek word meaning judgment, had to be left untranslated; otherwise neo-orthodoxy would have begun by sounding like old orthodoxy, which wouldn’t have been the least bit innovative). Other names and trends springing up with the neo-movement were dialectical theology, theology of orders (Creation orders, not military ones), and theology of the Word. Earlier, the liberals had generated a “theology of the social gospel,” but they could not match the neo-orthodox in productivity.

Existentialism was more fertile: it first produced I-thou theology and then Theologie der Existenz. Recent trends—which may involve cross-fertilization by neo-orthodox, liberals, and even some social climbers among evangelicals—include theologies of hope, revolution, the future, play, and the city. Black theology is harder to classify, and women’s theology has not yet risen to epistemological and ontological maturity.

In the midst of all this, what have evangelicals done? Sadly, all too little. Finally, at long last, a school is arising that we can call our own: umbrella theology. The umbrella concept (known to German theologians as der Schirm-begriff—cf. Heinrich v. Schlunk, Der Schirmbegriff in den P-Fragmenten, Heidelberg, 1973—and subdivided into Regen– and Sonnenschirmbegriffe, a subtlety not yet grasped by Anglo-Saxon theologians) is not found explicitly in Scripture. But theologians think it is adumbrated in the gourd-passages in Jonah 4. Others see the umbrella concept prefigured in the veil of Genesis 34. In any event, although it is not possible to locate it precisely, its revolutionary importance should allow us to overlook this difficulty.

The concept of the umbrella is particularly significant in Christian family theology, where it is seen as properly held by the man in the traditional family. Among the epoch-making developers of umbrella theology we may mention Gothard and Morgan; its chief opponents have been Nietzsche and Friedan. Some of the dignity that umbrella-theology gives to husbands is offset by the insistence of wives that, if they hold the umbrella, they also wear their galoshes. This seems foreign to the spirit of the umbrella, but the exegetical work supporting the conviction has not yet been done.

Perhaps umbrella theology seems like a small thing in comparison with theologies of revolution, hope, and the future, but it is at least a beginning. Evangelicals, unlike liberals, are traditionally forced to stay closer to Scripture, and this somewhat limits their creativity. In this light, umbrella theology must be seen as an encouraging departure.

Another Option

I was very much interested in the article by René de Visme Williamson on “The Theology of Liberation” (Aug. 8). As I read the article I found myself uttering hearty amens to everything the liberationists were saying until I came to the sections on “violence” and “secularization.” At that point I was forced to part company with them, and in doing so it occurred to me that I had found a major critique of Williamson’s article.… [He] implies that an emphasis on social and political liberation, the church as a “counter-culture” and the radical participation of a redeeming God in the agonies of the oppressed and exploited necessarily lead to “violence and secularization.” This is simply not the case. There are, in this country at least, a growing number of Christians who know Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who are committed body and soul to His Kingdom, who are deeply theistic, and who reject the use of violence as wholly unChristian, and yet who refuse to accept the homegrown American civil religion that baptizes the whole social structure and makes God the champion of the standing order. Such people, and I am one of them, share much with the South American liberationists without accepting their free approval of violence or their secularizing tendencies. To fail to distinguish between non-violent and biblical Christian radicals, and violent, secularized radicals is a sign of simplistic ignorance far beneath a magazine of your stature. It was the same mistake made by Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli who murdered hundreds of anabaptist pacifists.

The point is not merely academic—for there is another option besides being either a fire-bombing Marxist on one hand and a Bible-thumping law and order fundamentalist on the other. And that option is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and live a life of radical love and unconditional commitment, a pilgrim life which witnesses to the sins of both men and culture not with bombs and guns, but with love and genuine community. I would suggest that Williamson read Menno Simons before rejecting liberation theology in toto.

Findley, Ohio

Looking Forward

I have been intending for some time to write you expressing my appreciation for the general quality of your magazine. Your inclusion of the Larry Christenson article, “Late to Bed, Early to Rise, Makes a Man Saintly …?” and Harold Kuhn on “The Liberal Charade” (Aug. 29) has motivated me to finally tell you how much I look forward to receiving each issue. The articles I agree with are always appreciated. The ones with which I take exception do not insult me. And your news section itself is worth the price of the magazine.

Lititz, Penna.

The Long Or The Short

“Painful Preaching” (Eutychus and His Kin, Aug. 29) was particularly clever. Let me add that we often are called on to preach to people with low boredom thresholds. Sometimes pains should be taken to shorten a message without reducing its content. A sermon that is clear, cogent, and concise will have more effect than its long and lazy cousin.

Bridgeport, Tex.

There’S More To Freud

Thank you for the fine article by Gary Collins in the August 29 issue (“The Pulpit and the Couch”). I am a product of the CPE movement. Collins is correct when he says “the CPE movement tends to borrow uncritically from humanistic secular psychology.” However, I did not find as he describes that “people in the CPE movement appear to have little tolerance for conservative theological positions.” I was told by a supervisor, “Share with us more of your theological position. We are all searching for solutions to the problems of people.”

A second observation is that I never cease to be amazed that conservative writers can dismiss Sigmund Freud in one sentence by quoting his famous “Religion is an illusion, a universal obsessional neurosis.” Freud’s basic understanding of man’s motivation is biblical. Man has the sex drive and is aggressive. That is Genesis 1:28. Let’s take what is good and leave the rest rather than total rejection.

Two omissions in the list of people involved in a psychological approach to biblical understanding of man are John A. Sanford and Cecil Osborne.

West County Assembly of God

Chesterfield, Mo.

Special Thanks

It is almost always a pleasure—and enlightening—to read Cheryl Forbes. Her brilliant article on “Substituted Love” as discussed in the work of Charles Williams, however, calls for special thanks. If, as Ms. Forbes comments, Williams has done a great deal in helping us to understand a little better the truths implicit in making and receiving offers of substitution—which, as she notes, depends, ultimately, on our Lord’s offer of himself for us—Cheryl Forbes has done a great deal in calling Charles Williams to our attention and helping us to understand him a little better. It is, in fact, hard to resist quoting him in regard to this essay—that if we do our job of adhering to the faith, “… it seems possible that we may humbly believe that at the right hour [the Holy Ghost] shall teach us ‘what we shall speak …’ ”!

Annapolis, Md.

Just the smallest note to say brava for Cheryl Forbes’s article on Williams. Very nicely done. She covers a lot of the waterfront, and that ain’t easy to do in one piece. I met his sister this summer in England with Clyde Kilby. Marvelous, very infirm old lady, almost entirely unaware of any interest in her brother’s stuff. She was touchingly grateful to learn that there are people who profit by it.

Associate Professor of English

Gordon College

Wenham, Mass.

Prominent Argument

Thank you very much for the (June 20) articles by Paul Jewett and Elisabeth Elliott on the ordination of women. I thought Dr. Jewett did an excellent work in his interpreting of the Scriptures regarding ordination.… Elisabeth Elliot is the biggest, most prominent argument against her thesis. She does all the things she says women should not do!

Associate Secretary

Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention

Atlanta, Ga.

John Bennett: At The Zoo And At Sea

Some poets spend fifty-one per cent of their time at public relations, courting influential older poets, editors, the media, and hoping to be discovered with a flourish of trumpets. Others, a rarer breed, quietly write their poems day after day, year after year, and spend little time trying to promote the worldly success of their imaginative offspring. In the latter group is John Bennett, now in his mid-fifties and professor of English at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin.

The other thing that sets Bennett apart is that he is an unabashed Christian (a communicant of the Episcopal Church) and that this basic commitment colors and gives form to his poetry. He is, I am convinced, one of the half dozen most powerful Christian poets now writing in America, though one hates to put him into a special category. Say, better, that he is a very fine poet who is also a man converted to the Christian faith in all aspects of his being.

I have known Bennett and his poetry for a long time. Twelve years ago, when he was teaching at Rockford College, I became acquainted with the poems he was writing, and set myself the task of needling him into sending them out to magazines and publishing houses. This was a major chore, since he preferred to write a new poem rather than to put an old one into an envelope and address it, but my persistence gradually bore fruit. The acceptances from magazines began coming in; eventually four books by him saw print. He is still not as well known as his ability merits, but his reputation has steadily risen, especially since—in competition with 300 other book manuscripts—he won the Devins Memorial Award with his volume of verse based on Melville’s Moby Dick.

Bennett grew up in New Hampshire, served in the Office of Strategic Services as liaison officer with the Free French Underground, received his A.B. from Oberlin and his Ph.D. (for a study of Melville) from Wisconsin. He is a big and burly man with a beard suggesting Papa Hemingway, and is fond of dogs, hunting, and well-targeted guns. In him the intellectual and the strenuous outdoor man are combined at top strength.

His first book, The Zoo Manuscript (Sydon Press, 1968), is a modern bestiary in which God’s creation is seen with delight and frequently with humor. The poet views himself as a kind of Adam, giving names to God’s creatures:

Old Adam, father, poet, priest, you stood

in human splendor once in Eden wood

And dreamed the holy names; your dreaming spoke the beasts alive with that first poetry.

So now, Old Father, stranger to an age

when poems are thin knives or bitter smoke,

stand softly at the center of my skull

and chant your early metaphors of love

and set their joy against the bent world’s rage.

After this invocation, Bennett describes his little daughter, Jennifer, in her innocent delight:

Caught up in joy and April and surprise,

sweet Jennifer becomes a magic where:

surrounded by small creatures of her Lord,

she brings the sun to glory in her hair,

and the blue Celtic distance lights her eyes.

The zoo that Jennifer explores with reverent gaiety reveals also the playfulness of God, His sense of humor, implied in the description of the fantastic hippopotamus: “Broader than boats, deeper than trout brooks are, / the hippo turns submersible at will, / or then bobs up like fatly muscled cork / that heaves his cloudy pond to overspill.”

The next volume, Griefs and Exultations (St. Norbert Press, 1970), is a miscellaneous collection of poems with a very high level of achievement. Bennett has a way of turning a passing experience into an eternal moment. In the poem, “On an Old Photograph of Young Men and Women at a Picnic,” he describes three courting couples caught in a photograph—

But I watch them within the photograph

and my heart moves back toward theirs

in their flaming changeless summer.

They are becoming what they have become:

pure actual occasions both doomed and immortal.

Thus three couples “at the edge of eden-meadow” live forever in their photograph and the poet’s response to it.

In “Episode Father and Small Son,” Bennett lovingly describes a childhood incident when he and his Irish father went for a walk, and the father picked up a grass-snake and showed it to him. The father’s gentle way with the snake is a kind of communication to the son—“He put the snake down softly on the grass; / it flowed into its anonymity, / and we walked homeward through the shining air, / our love emphatic as the snake was green.”

The book also contains an exceptionally moving elegy, written for his mother-in-law, Anne Jones, who died after a long illness. The poet mourns and rejoices at the same time—“Ah, Anne! Anne! Again in a turning year, / beyond clear windows, swift on April’s lawn, / your daughter’s children bruit the themes of joy. / Blessed by the year’s renewal and green leaves, / they race and tumble through the spheres of day, / singing the song your singing made for them.”

In many ways the most remarkable and powerful of Bennett’s books is his prize-winning The Struck Leviathan (University of Missouri Press, 1970), a series of meditations inspired by Melville’s Moby Dick. It has an enormous change of pace. We hear Bulkingmusing at the tiller during the midnight watch:

Sharks, whales, and men! all bearers of the Word:

and the Word endlessly falling through starlight and spindrift

or endlessly rising through waveshock and tiller

and the Word in the Beginning which is now the Infinite Now

and I myself, mortal, however It comes,

bearing the Word and affirming myself in the Word!

Dreaming my death, I become authentic Man.

Learning my death, I enter the dream of God.

Darker insights also move through the book, and reveal that though Bennet can find traces of Eden everywhere in the fallen world, he does not deny the existence of spiritual darkness. Here is Captain Ahab as he contemplates the great sea squid:

Deep down and dark where mudbones gird the world,

by arm and sucking arm and sucking arm,

a polyp blob creeps through the heavy depths

where Satan, homeless, might establish home.

I hope these few samples of Bennett’s work will give some idea of a remarkable sensibility and a very high order of poetic gift. He never imposes his Christian faith in a didactic way, but the faith comes through more powerfully in consequence. It is the pair of eyes through which the poet perceives everything from a dying relative to an old photograph to strange shapes moving in the depth of the sea. He writes with a baptized imagination. Such poetry is not fashionable at this moment in literary history, but it has great staying power.

To this point I have discussed mostly the poet’s themes and angle of vision, and have said little about his mastery of the poet’s craft. But the poems can speak for themselves. They are the achievements of a poet who works as carefully as any good sculptor applying chisel to marble. In a letter that Bennett once wrote, he said: “I deeply loathe the mass of so-called poetry which is really chopped-up prose (bad prose!) arrogantly hiding its inadequacies of thought, language, image and feeling under the barbaric yell ‘It’s my thing!’ Hogwash—and worse.”

Bennett has a versatile command of the tools of his trade. He can handle blank verse, free verse, a dazzling variety of stanza forms, intricate rhyme schemes. But technique is never an end in itself. He has something to say, growing out of the kind of awareness that can see in a little girl’s visit to the zoo a revelation of Eden and God’s loving creativity. He stands apart from most contemporary poets, even apart from those who are Christian but have little vision of what Eden might be like. The human spirit finds in his lines a new affirmation of a world that God created and will not forsake. It is a thoroughly sacramental vision of a universe in which the acts of nature “praise / a God who swims through all evolving worlds / as He creates them out of death and night. / The Paraclete sustains the otter dance / and all the dances in the spheres of light.”

CHAD WALSH¹Chad Walsh is professor of English and writer-in-residence, Beloit College.

From the very first, the Church testified that Jesus Christ belonged to the realm of divine reality as truly as he belonged to the human. But by confronting the world with the news that in the God-man Jesus Christ holy God and sinful man are reconciled, the Church found itself compelled to think through what it meant in saying this. Just who is this Christ, this one through whom man encounters God? If it was to present this Christ to a philosophical, critical, and unbelieving world, the Church had to uncover the deep meaning of its faith in him. And it had to find words to express this meaning.

The need to formulate a doctrine that would take full account of the person of Christ as at once human and divine was all the more pressing because some within the Church itself were confused. They were undervaluing either his divine or the human side, or both. The attempts of the Church to state with ever greater precision what it believed about Christ culminated in A.D. 451 in the council of Chalcedon.

This gathering of church leaders produced an elaborate statement, the Creed of Chaleedon. The creed is widely known, but it is couched in highly technical and metaphysical terms such as “homoousion,” “physis,” and “hypostasis.” Just what did Chalcedon achieve? Did it preserve the essential meaning of the Gospel, or did it lose it in a maze of philosophical abstractions? Did it merely focus attention upon the ultimate mystery of Christ’s person without trying to explain that mystery? Do its high-sounding phrases simply show that metaphysical terms are inadequate to express the doctrine of Christ? These questions may be funneled into a larger one: What is the significance of Chalcedon for us today?

For some, perhaps for many, Chalcedon says everything for all time. This is, according to H. E. W. Turner, the “classical theory,” the theory that the Creed of Chalcedon preserves “unsullied and undefiled” the whole of the Christian doctrine of Christ. W. H. Relton strongly criticizes those who would dismiss the “enormous labours and the acute thoughts of those many minds of the early church” who at Chalcedon sought to make explicit the Church’s faith in Christ. For him, Chalcedon is the grand climax of Christological thinking and the touchstone for all later statements.

At the opposite end of the scale are those who contend that Chalcedon says nothing for any time. The result of this radical view, much in favor today, is that “modern Christologies” tend to reduce Christ to something much less than what Chalcedon held him to be. They take their point of departure from below and never get beyond that. Bultmann took objection to the confession of the World Council of Churches that Christ is “God and Saviour.” The formula “Christ is God” is, he declared, false in every sense. Tillich was equally emphatic in saying that a Christology based on the term homoousion (“of the same essence” [with the Father]) is a “Christology of absurdities.”

Professor Maurice Wiles thinks that traditional Christology rests on a mistake. “It arose,” he contends, “because it was not unnaturally yet nonetheless mistakenly, felt that the full character of redemption in Christ could only be maintained if the person and act of the redeemer were understood to be divine in a direct and special sense.” In his view, Chalcedon gave Christ a status far from the thought and need of the apostolic church.

Between these two opposing positions—that Chalcedon says everything and says nothing—are more moderate views. For example, some say that Chalcedon did say something to its own time. It did try to put into contemporary language what the Church from the beginning thought about Christ, and for this the Fathers of the 451 creed are to be commended. But the mind of the fifth century differs so greatly from that of the twentieth that we are no longer able to build a meaningful Christology using Chalcedon’s outmoded terms.

Two attitudes follow from this understanding of the Chalcedonian formula. On the one hand are those who think that Chalcedon can say something to our time. Barth, for example, says that Chalcedon’s declaration of two natures in the one person of Christ does not explain his person but rather underlines its mystery. It was the best the church fathers could do, given the prevailing static view of the concept “person.” But now that the idea of person is understood dynamically, it is better, in Barth’s judgment, to substitute for the doctrine of two natures that of two states. This better describes the twofold movement of God to man and man to God, uniting in the God-man. Norman Pittenger contends that no Christology can be finally acceptable if it is not faithful to the “intentions and objectives” of the ancient symbols. Wolfhart Pannenberg states his unhappiness with the Chalcedonian formula “truly God, truly man” because he cannot see how two complete beings can be supposed to come together to form a single whole. He therefore opts for the idea of “selfconsciousness to replace that of person.” Karl Rahner thinks that we must view Chalcedon “as end and as beginning.”

But others assert that Chalcedon has nothing to say to the present time. In a totally secular age in which the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, the spiritual and the profane, no longer holds, there is no context for a Christology. The myth of transcendence has been outgrown. The God-concept is no longer a necessary metaphysical glue for holding the universe together. Therefore Christ can no longer be related to any transcendental, divine realm. God is in fact dead; all that remains is Christ as the “man for others” and the pattern of universal and revolutionary “love.” Christ must be understood as part of the only reality known to exist, the natural and the secular.

My own view of Chalcedon is that the ancient creed does have much to say to all time. Not everything, of course. Chalcedon does not gather into its definition all that the New Testament says about Christ. It worked from only a handful of biblical texts. We may even say that it failed to express adequately either the human reality of Christ or his cosmic significance.

At the same time, Chalcedon did seek to get down to basics. Neither the view that Christ merely demonstrated godlike deeds in the largest measure nor the view that he merely showed human qualities of the purest kind reaches what Christ really is. There is something else to consider, and Chalcedon did so.

What Chalcedon sought to express is that in the one person of Jesus Christ two conditions overlap: Godhood and manhood. And in seeking to say that, Chalcedon is saying no more than what the New Testament says about Christ. Long before Chalcedon, Christians lived in the faith that Christ was, and must be, essentially related to God and man. Chalcedon did not depart from the Gospel, nor did it add to it. What was stated technically at Chalcedon in A.D. 451 was known implicitly at Corinth in A.D. 51.

The Church cannot merely repeat a string of words that carry with them the mystique of tradition and the mustiness of age. It always has the duty of communicating its Gospel in terms that its contemporaries find understandable and meaningful. But it is healthful and necessary for the Church to keep an eye on past formulations of doctrines in order to secure an anchorage in history. The great creeds of the Church arose out of a living awareness of God’s revelation in Christ. They are the Church’s confession of its discovery of, and faith in, God in Christ.

Despite the positive value of the ancient creed, the findings of Chalcedon are in a sense negative. Its statements may be likened to buoys on the river; they prevent the boatman from losing the necessary depth of water and becoming grounded on either bank. Chalcedon did not solve the ultimate Christological problem: how the two separate natures can be said to coincide in the one person of Christ. In a sense all subsequent views of Christ that profess to adhere to what the Bible says can be said to be attempts to solve this problem.

We can say more about Christ than Chalcedon says, but we dare not say less.

The Definition of Chalcedon

THEREFORE, FOLLOWING THE HOLY FATHERS, WE ALL WITH ONE ACCORD TEACH MEN TO ACKNOWLEDGE ONE AND THE SAME SON, OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, AT ONCE COMPLETE IN GODHEAD AND COMPLETE IN MANHOOD, TRULY GOD AND TRULY MAN, CONSISTING ALSO OF A REASONABLE SOUL AND BODY; OF ONE SUBSTANCE WITH THE FATHER AS REGARDS HIS GODHEAD, AND AT THE SAME TIME OF ONE SUBSTANCE WITH US AS REGARDS HIS MANHOOD; LIKE US IN ALL RESPECTS, APART FROM SIN; AS REGARDS HIS GODHEAD, BEGOTTEN OF THE FATHER BEFORE THE AGES, BUT YET AS REGARDS HIS MANHOOD BEGOTTEN, FOR US MEN AND FOR OUR SALVATION, OF MARY THE VIRGIN, THE GOD-BEARER; ONE AND THE SAME CHRIST, SON, LORD, ONLY-BEGOTTEN, RECOGNIZED IN TWO NATURES, WITHOUT CONFUSION, WITHOUT CHANGE, WITHOUT DIVISION, WITHOUT SEPARATION; THE DISTINCTION OF NATURES BEING IN NO WAY ANNULLED BY THE UNION, BUT RATHER THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH NATURE BEING PRESERVED AND COMING TOGETHER TO FORM ONE PERSON AND SUBSISTENCE, NOT AS PARTED OR SEPARATED INTO TWO PERSONS, BUT ONE AND THE SAME SON AND ONLY-BEGOTTEN GOD THE WORD, LORD JESUS CHRIST; EVEN AS THE PROPHETS FROM EARLIEST TIMES SPOKE OF HIM, AND OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF TAUGHT US, AND THE CREED OF THE FATHERS HAS HANDED DOWN TO US.

Ascetics view it as the essence of sin; playboys think it is the heart of the good life. Pleasure: good or evil? Is Christianity for it or against it? The ancient Epicurean philosophers said, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Pleasure is essence of good, pain the heart of evil. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham translated this into a hedonistic formula: the good of any human action is determined by the quantity of the pleasure over pain it brings to the greatest number of people. An action is good if it maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain for most people. Intellectual pleasures are better than physical pleasures, Bentham argued. Cultured pleasures are preferable to uncultured ones. Because of this, he contended, it would be better to be an unhappy man than a happy pig. The right action, then, is the one that brings the highest quality of pleasure to the greatest number of persons.

Many other philosophers take exception to the idea of calculating the good of life by the pleasures it brings. The Prussian thinker Immanuel Kant contended that the good is not always the pleasurable thing to do. One is under the categorical (absolute, unconditional) imperative to do what is right whether it makes him happy or not. Duty should be done for duty’s sake and not for the sake of pleasure. A masochist receives pleasure from abusing his own body; a sadist may take delight in tormenting children. But neither of these pleasures is right or good. The good life is not the life of pleasure but the life of duty.

Other philosophers ask: Does not even Kant obtain a deep sense of satisfaction from doing his duty? Is not this a kind or moral pleasure available only to those who do what is morally right?

Such questions led to the somewhat different discussion of what is called the summum bonum (Latin for “greatest good”). All philosophies of life, including the moralist’s, are in quest of the greatest good. Whether it is called pleasure, happiness, or satisfaction is not important. The fact of the matter is that there is a yearning in every human heart for a sense of fulfillment, for peace and joy.

As Aristotle pointed out, all persons act for an end or goal. This goal is their good, and their ultimate goal is their greatest good. No one acts simply for the evil he sees in something. Even suicide is deemed a “good” by the one who commits it; it is a solution, a way of resolving an intolerable predicament. Of course, not everything that a person thinks is the best for him really is. “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12).

If all persons naturally seek satisfaction, or happiness, or pleasure, then why does the Bible seem to warn against pleasure? Proverbs says, “He who loves pleasure will be a poor man” (21:17). Jesus warned about being “choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). Paul admonished his readers not to be “slaves to various passions and pleasures” (Titus 3:3) and not be “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:4). Loving pleasure, it would seem, is a taboo for the Christian.

But the Scriptures also speak of pleasure as good. God is said to be at work in every believer “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). There are things in which God “takes pleasure” (Ps. 147:11). “In God’s presence there is fullness of joy, in his right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11). We can add to this what the Bible says about “joy.” Jesus’ desire for his disciples was this: “That my joy be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11; cf. John 10:10). Paul prayed for the Roman Christians, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace” (15:13). John spoke of “complete” joy (1 John 1:4).

If the Bible both warns against pleasure and holds it out as a great and even eternal good, then there must be different kinds of pleasure. Apparently some pleasures are good and some are evil. The former should be enjoyed and the latter should be avoided. So far, so good. The danger is in the next step. Christians sometimes oversimplify and draw the conclusion that the good pleasures are the “spiritual” ones and the evil pleasures are the “physical” ones. This pious asceticism has been the source of much harm in the Christian Church.

In contrast to this Christian kill-joyism, the Bible teaches that physical pleasures are God-given. Often throughout the Old Testament, eating, drinking, and merriment are said to be from God. The Solomonic kingdom blessed by God is described as one where the people “ate and drank and were happy” (1 Kings 4:20). After the dedication of the temple the Israelites engaged in a week of feasting from which they were “sent … away to their homes, joyful and glad of heart for the goodness that the LORD had shown to David and to Solomon and to Israel his people” (2 Chron. 7:10). Solomon himself wrote, “I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; also that it is God’s gift to man that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil” (Eccles. 3:12, 13).

God is not a celestial Scrooge who hates to see his children enjoy themselves. Rather, he is the kind of Father who is ready to say, “Let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (Luke 15:24).

What the Bible teaches is that God is the author of every good thing in life. “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above …” (Jas. 1:17). Sexual pleasure, for instance, was created by God (Gen. 1:27) and is to be enjoyed as a gift from God to those whom he joins in loving marriage (Matt. 19:5).

Nothing is evil in itself

A point seldom fully appreciated by Christians is that everything in God’s creation is good. It is, in fact, “very good”; we have the Creator’s word for it (Gen. 1:31). The apostle said, “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself” (Rom. 14:14). Again, “Everything created by God is good …” (1 Tim 4:4). “To the pure all things are pure …” (Titus 1:15). The external world and all of the pleasures that are a part of it are not evils to be shunned; they are goods created by God for man’s enjoyment.

If everything in creation is good, then what is evil? Why are Christians told that those who are friends of the “world” are enemies of God? (James 4:4). Why are we exhorted, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15)?

The answer is in the next verse. The “world” referred to here is not the external world. Rather it is the “world” of lust and pride within the human heart. “For all that is in the world,” continued John, “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world” (v. 16). The evil world from which a Christian is to separate himself is not “out there” but within his own heart. “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man” (Matt 15:11). And it is because of this that a man misuses the external world.

The key to true pleasure

Real pleasure is not found by separating certain external acts and spheres from others and labeling them good or evil. It is found only as one receives everything, the physical world included, as a gift from God. The enjoyments of life are all gifts of God to be received, not evils to be avoided. But one cannot be happy by clinging to the gift and neglecting the giver. Things are not an end in themselves; they are a means to the end. Satisfaction is found in God alone. As Jesus said, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).

One cannot truly enjoy the good things in life unless they are subordinated to God. “Seek first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness,” said Jesus, “and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matt. 6:33). Those who worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator cannot be blessed of God (Rom. 1:25). Solomon wrote, “Every man also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them … this is the gift of God” (Eccles. 5:19). True pleasure is found not in things as such but in things as gifts from God. Without the recognition that temporal pleasures are from God and that eternal pleasure is found only in God, there is no true satisfaction.

The hedonist’s problem is that he seeks to find eternal happiness in a temporal world rather than through it and from God. He vainly attempts to fill an infinite capacity for satisfaction with finite things. As St. Augustine noted long ago, “The heart is restless until it finds its rest in God.”

Solomon’s great experiments

Perhaps no one has ever experimented more widely with the various means of satisfaction to be found in this world than did Solomon. He searched out everything under heaven for satisfaction.

Solomon said to himself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself” (Eccles. 2:1). First, he tried to find happiness in intellectual pursuits. He said to himself, “I have acquired great wisdom … and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I applied my mind to know wisdom …” However, he continued. “I perceive that this also is but a striving after wind, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (1:16–18).

From wisdom Solomon turned to wit as a source of satisfaction. It too was vain. “I said of laughter, ‘It is mad,’ and of pleasure, ‘What use is it’ ” (2:2).

From the hollow sound of laughter, Solomon turned to the delights of drink. “I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine … and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven during the few days of their life” (2:3). At the end he found only frustration, not satisfaction, in this alcoholic path of pleasure. For as he noted elsewhere, “wine is a mocker, strong drink raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Prov. 20:1).

From the follies of over-indulgence in wine he turned to more constructive activities. “I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools …” (2:4–6). But the joy of building faded as soon as the projects were completed.

When the projects paled, Solomon turned to wealth. “I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any one who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces” (2:7, 8). But with all his wealth he found no happiness. Later he observed, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth, with gain; this also is vanity” (5:10).

From silver, Solomon turned to sex. Women were high on Solomon’s pleasure list. “I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, man’s delight” (2:8). But a thousand wives and concubines (1 Kings 11:3) could not satisfy Solomon. In fact, they led him astray. “For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods” (1 Kings 11:4).

But sensual satisfaction did not truly satisfy. So the sage sought worldly recognition, “So I became great,” he wrote, “and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem” (2:9). The Queen of Sheba had heard of Solomon’s fame and came from the end of the earth to declare, “The half was not told me.” But here too there was no permanent happiness.

From fleeting fame Solomon’s heart turned to worldly pleasure. “Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure …” (2:10). But in all of this he saw that “all was vanity and striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (2:11).

The sum of the whole matter

When Solomon comes to “the end of the matter,” when “all has been heard,” he ends with God, apart from whom there is no lasting satisfaction. God gives us our goal: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ” (Phil. 3:14). Christ alone is the eternally satisfying bread and water of life. He alone could say, “I come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). The physical pleasures of sound and sight and smell and taste and touch, the spiritual pleasures, the mental pleasures—all are good gifts of God, who “richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17). And each is given to be enjoyed not ultimately in itself or for its own sake but as a gift from God, who alone is to be enjoyed in himself and for his own sake.

Christian eyes have turned often to Africa in recent years. The growth of the Church on the African continent is one reason. Another is the much discussed search for theological identity there. A third is the great material need in many African countries. Institutional Christianity will focus its interest on Africa later this year when the World Council of Churches holds its fifth General Assembly in Nairobi.

To briefCHRISTIANITY TODAYreaders on opportunities and problems in Africa today, the Editors recently interviewed Dr. Byang H. Kato, general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar. Dr. Kato is a citizen of Nigeria. He attended schools of the Sudan Interior Mission, went on to London Bible College (England), and earned the Th.D. in the United States from Dallas Seminary. Before assuming his present post he served as general secretary of the 1,400 churches associated with the Sudan Interior Mission in Nigeria.

Here is the edited distillation of the interview with Dr. Kato:

Question. Dr. Kato, is it true that, as some experts have predicted, Africa will be a Christian continent by the year 2,000?

Answer. Christian growth in Africa has been phenomenal. In many areas the Christian population is doubling every four or five years. In my home town in central Nigeria there was not a single Christian seventy-five years ago. Even when I was a boy a very insignificant percentage called themselves Christians. Today you will find about 65 per cent of the townspeople attending places of worship each week. But sometimes the growth figures are exaggerated, and other aspects and dangers are not taken into consideration.

Q. What do you mean?

A. I mean, for example, that there is a lot of nominal Christianity in Africa along with the real thing.

Q. The statisticians get a little carried away?

A. Well, you just have to understand that in Africa many people put up their hands and want to become Christians and are automatically counted as Christians. If you go to the market place and preach and then ask how many want to receive Jesus, many listeners would put up their hands. It doesn’t mean much in the heart, but it is indicative of the desire.

Q. And what are the dangers to which you refer?

A. Look at the independent church movements. Admittedly there are probably some born again Christians in their midst who have got the teaching, but many of them don’t know the meaning of the new birth and the doctrine that leads on to conversion.

Q. How about Christian accommodation to African religions?

A. There is an emphasis on cultural revolution. Today it is a live issue. Many Christians do not think it wrong to take on many of the pagan practices, like dancing to the pagan gods, and offering libations to ancestors. You also have some liberal theology coming into the continent through some intellectuals who have been trained in liberal schools in North America and Europe. So there are forces at work that cause us concern. We need to work really hard so that the quality of true Christianity may be seen.

Q. What are the theological issues in Africa?

A. I would say the primary thing in Africa today is a search for identity. The African has been exploited and oppressed over the years, and he is asking to be recognized. He wants to assert himself as a first-class human being, but unfortunately in the effort to assert people are going beyond what the Bible teaches. Even Christians are comprising in order to assert their identity in Africa. One thing that is gaining ground is black theology. It originated in the United States and now has gained prominence in Africa.

Q. How do you conceive black theology?

A. My understanding is this: They say that white theology has exploited the black man. White people came to us about a God who is up there and about a life to come. Many black people do not differentiate truly born again whites and the pagan whites. The white man says, “Don’t be concerned about what happens in this world. Such things as money, cars, and good food are of this world. Just enjoy poverty because it is a virtue and someday God will give you wealth.” When the white man told the black man that, the black man said, “Okay, I accept that theology” and began looking up to heaven and to the future, and while he was doing this the white man took hold of all that belongs to this life. Black theology wants to turn the tables. It calls for black economy, black power, and so on. It thus ideologically aligns itself with the Black Muslim movement, which is gaining some prominence among intellectuals in Africa.

Q. What is your response?

A. We must sympathize with some of these yearnings. It is true that many whites have abused Christianity and cheated the black man. Even in slave trade some white American slave dealers would quote Scripture to support this evil practice. We are now reaping what we have sown. The Bible and God remain true even though people are unfaithful. The vertical relationship must have priority even though the horizontal relationship was abused. While black theology raises the right questions, it lacks the terms of reference. It is not a black Christ or black God we need, but the same eternal God of the Bible speaking to the black man in his need. Christians should put to practice what they learn in the Bible.

Q. Is African theology the same as black theology.

A. It is not quite the same. It does not emphasize blackness as such. It argues that Africa has been Christianized, so now it is time to Africanize Christianity. African traditional religions are being revived on the theory that the worship they represent is of God, and only the means of worship is different. The gods being worshiped are even said to have been instituted by God. The idea is to pick out some elements of African religions and include them in Christianity. Syncretism is a real danger. My position is that I do see the point of expressing biblical Christianity in the context of every people. Biblical Christianity should be expressed in Africa in such a way that the African can feel at home in the Church of Jesus Christ. But we must realize that “forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven” (Ps. 119:89).

Q. How strong is Christianity in Africa right now?

A. There are said to be about 91 million Christians in Africa. That is out of a total population of about 350 million.

Q. To what extent are evangelicals a part of the Christian surge in Africa?

A. They are in the forefront. The organization of which I am a part has as its main purpose to establish the evangelicals’ identity and have fellowship and have them presented as a voice of Bible-believing Christians in Africa. This organization, the Association of Evangelicals in Africa and Madagascar (AEAM), is the outgrowth of the biblical message taking hold. The fundamental-evangelical missions opened an office in 1966 for fellowship. As they gathered African churchmen in meetings, the demand grew for a permanent fellowship, and now we have it. We seek to defend and propagate the faith. We promote sound biblical teaching. That’s why we have two commissions, one on theology and the other on Christian education.

Q. Would you regard the AEAM as competitive with the World Council of Churches?

A. It’s certainly different from that, but it runs as a parallel organization to the WCC presence in Africa, which is manifested in the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC).

Q. Are the concerns different in the two organizations?

A. Well, the primary objectives are different. While we appreciate the emphasis on social concern and political liberation today, we of the AEAM do not view that as our primary occupation. Rather, our emphasis is on evangelism and church development basically in the spiritual realm.

Q. How many evangelicals do you represent?

A. Put it this way: there is an evangelical cooperation in about twenty-seven out of the forty-seven countries in Africa. Our direct membership is about three million, but in the total evangelical constituency, there should be about ten million.

Q. Could you elaborate a bit on the AEAM purpose?

A. Well, as you know, we contend that the content of biblical theology remains the same wherever it goes; the change is made only in the expression of that content, translating it into the context of the people so that they can understand. This differs sharply with the presuppositions of regional theologies like the theology of liberation, which has its roots in Latin America but is being advocated for Africa. Its advocates see the fundamental problem of man as being class struggle, so they align with Marxism. AEAM does not only defend the faith, but through our Christian education we promote the teaching of that faith.

Q. How has the theology of liberation affected the African scene?

A. Some of our people in Africa such as Canon Burgess Carr, general secretary of the AACC, have reflected it. It may be behind his thinking when he advocates a theology of violence. He said at the AACC conference in 1974 at Lusaka, Zambia, that “in accepting the violence of the Cross, God, in Jesus Christ, sanctified violence into a redemptive instrument for bringing into being a fuller human life.” He called for the church to support the so-called liberation movements. He says he looks forward to the time when the church in Africa will be recognized as a major liberation movement. To me that is a violent distortion of the purpose of the death of Jesus Christ. He died to strike a final blow to sin, which is the source of violence.

Q. How do African evangelicals feel about the fact that the WCC has channeled money into the liberation movements?

A. You should be aware that even some people in the ecumenical movement would tell you that this money is being given not to buy guns but to buy food and medicine for refugees. And from the evangelical point of view, we are of course concerned for the needs of people who have been displaced for political reasons or whatever. Unfortunately, there is no clear evidence that the money is not used for arms. The primary concern of the liberation movements is not relief but war of liberation through use of force.

Now regarding political liberation, I feel that Christians as individuals should be involved in their nations as citizens because we are citizens of both heaven and our respective countries. We should perform the duty we are called upon to do. I think individual conscience should be a guide to Christians’ response to the powers that be in their different countries. But for the Church, I don’t think it is the responsibility of the Church as such to be in the forefront of political liberation. And the main reason is that the Church has the primary task of bringing about reconciliation in the world, reconciliation first of all between man and God, and secondly between man and man. Both the oppressed and the oppressor are in need of the Gospel of reconciliation, the Gospel of peace. If the Church identifies itself with one sector or the other, then it is jeopardizing its right to conciliate the two parties, both of whom need the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so I am not in favor of an ecumenical movement giving money to liberation movements unless there is sufficient evidence that the money given will be used for peaceful purposes. I would encourage the Organization of African Unity, the United Nations, the respective countries, and other secular movements to do what they can in this area. Justice must be done. As Christians, our primarily responsibility is the moral aspect, and of course we should preach justice and help through peaceful means. To clarify my position, I am also opposed to the Church as such aligning with an oppressive regime. In doing so, it forfeits its right to speak to the oppressed. But I don’t think that this is the number-one responsibility of the Church.

Q. You were an observer at the Lusaka conference, where there were demands for a moratorium on missionaries. What are the ideas behind that?

A. The main argument is that all missionaries and all resources, financial and otherwise, that are invested and used in the Third World should be suspended for four or five years. This is supposed to give the churches time to discover themselves. And after five years if the Third World churches feel they now need the money and the workers from the West, they will say so. Perhaps the best-known proponent of the moratorium argument is the Reverend John Gatu of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa. He is its general secretary, and currently also the chairman of the Central Committee of the AACC.

Q. How do you feel about moratorium?

A. I really sympathize with the basic motive behind it. From what they have told us, it is a desire for the selfhood of the Church. They want Christians in Africa to be self-reliant, and I agree with that. I think Christians should learn to depend on what they can do and what the Lord is able to do through them, rather than be begging help from others outside. I think it is good stewardship. However, I feel also that the call for withdrawing resources and personnel is not necessary and unscriptural.

Q. Why?

A. It is unnecessary because I feel that while it is true that foreign aid could cripple initiative, it does not necessarily do so. Our situation in Nigeria has shown this. Today we have in one church denomination, ECWA, the church of the SIM, between 1,200 and 1,500 pastors and evangelists, and almost all of these are paid by the local churches in Nigeria. We also have a missionary society. We support about 120 families who are working in Nigeria and beyond, including the countries of Niger, Dahomey, and Chad. We have undertaken many other projects, too, and we have not had to call for missions to stop supplying resources before we could assume this initiative.

Q. Why do you say a moratorium is unbiblical?

A. Because of the universal nature of the Church. It is the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, and it is the Lord of the harvest who has the final say in sending people into his field. If it pleases the Lord to send Americans to work in Nigeria, or to send Indians to work in England, we just say “Praise the Lord!” and advise those workers not to have a superior attitude but just to see themselves as servants of God who are working together with the nationals to uplift the cause of Christ. Since the Church is one, we should not say, “No more personnel from this side.” In fact, we have missionaries from Kenya who are working in the United States today, two or three families. The churches in Africa sent them with the support of some mission organizations that come from North America.

Q. What are they doing?

A. They are involved in evangelism and helping people to understand the way of salvation. One family is working in the New Jersey area, mainly among black Americans. I think this give-and-take approach should be encouraged, and therefore I see no scriptural basis for moratorium. But I appreciate the motive behind it, and I think we should work hard to encourage self-reliance in our churches. Unfortunately, a superior attitude does perhaps come through in some missionaries. The call for moratorium also serves notice that we Africans have come of age; we want people to realize that we want colleagues, not masters.

Q. How do you look upon the forthcoming Fifth Assembly of the WCC in Nairobi?

A. It certainly is going to have a great impact, along with the second World Festival of Black African Arts and Cultures, which is going to take place in November and December in Lagos, Nigeria. When the WCC meets, I think there will be much emphasis on Africanizing Christianity. The cultural revival will be a vital issue. This involves bringing in some worthwhile elements, but it also runs the risk of a syncretistic Christianity. This would include dialogue with people of other faiths, and this is a major issue in ecumenism today. I wish that the idea of this dialogue was just to understand what others are saying. But many are seeking dialogue on an equal-to-equal basis: I have something to contribute, the pagan has something to contribute, and so we come and meet to contribute to each other. This stifles evangelism, because under this arrangement we would be offending the person from the other faith if we were to say that Jesus Christ is unique and that ours is the only way of salvation. The call for the uniqueness of Christianity must be played down because you want to give respect to other religions that are operative in Africa. And then there is the whole issue of unity.

Q. What do you mean?

A. You know, the theme for the WCC assembly is, “Jesus Christ Liberates and Unites.” They are going to push for the unity of Christianity in each country, and I think they will probably try to give impetus to governments that would choose to deal with Christians, all Christians, as one entity.

Q. Do you feel that the leaders of the conciliar movement are promoting this development?

A. Some are beginning to suggest that each country have a ministry of religious affairs, and that all churches unite and be treated as one by this ministry.

Q. What do you think about such a thing?

A. I would be for this approach if the unity were to be based on the Word of God. That is why I am working for the AEAM. I feel there are some divisions that are unnecessary within the body of Christ. But the most unfortunate thing is that the call for unity in ecumenical circles overlooks doctrinal differences. Their slogan is, “Where doctrine divides, services unite.” The feeling is, Let’s forget about theology but get on to practical service where we can work together.

I think this is disastrous. Biblical theology must have the prominence. If I come upon someone who is not born again and I will say, “Well, I mustn’t talk about the uniqueness of Christ but just talk from the fact that we are both Africans and that we are both black and let’s work together on this,” then I am not being fair to him because I am neglecting his basic need, which is new life in Christ. He may die without Christ, and I will be accountable before God.

A year ago the vast majority in the dissident “moderate” movement in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) said they would stay in the Synod “till death do us part,” recalled President Sam Roth of Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM). But last month some 2,500 ELIM members met at a hotel at Chicago’s O’Hare airport and voted unanimously to approve divorce.

The ELIM resolution stated flatly that the moderate movement “cannot afford to maintain a political battle.” It pledged support both to those who decide to leave the conservative-controlled 2.8-million-member LCMS and to those who decide to stay, whether in or out of ELIM and “in spite of the eviction notice served on ELIM” at the LCMS convention in Anaheim, California, in July (see August 8 issue, page 31).

After a “fruitless and frustrating” struggle, said Roth, the opponents of recent LCMS theological and procedural actions “have turned the corner.” Around the corner may be short-term organizational proliferation, confusion, and overlap. Eventually, however, Roth and others hope institutional unity will result for most of the nine million U. S. Lutherans.

The assembly urged those seeking a new alignment to form “clusters of congregations” for mutual support. Plans call for a meeting of representatives of these groups to meet in February to map future steps.

Delegates endorsed as a “promising alternative” a proposed “interim church body,” the Lutheran Church in Mission (LCM), which was formed as a standby organization earlier this year. ELIM executive C. Thomas Spitz, who heads LCM, announced that the organization will seek congregational memberships this fall arid will try to hold its first meeting of member churches in January. Whether the LCM becomes a separate denomination or a transitional holding body (pending merger, say, with another Lutheran denomination) remains to be seen.

At the Anaheim convention eight of the forty LCMS district presidents announced that for conscience reasons they could not abide by a resolution aimed at curbing Seminex, the rebel seminary backed by ELIM. The resolution forbade district presidents—on pain of discipline, including possible ouster from office—to ordain or place uncertified graduates of Seminex. In a statement at the ELIM meeting, the eight offered their “leadership in developing alternative forms of fellowship consistent with our Lutheran principles … if [our mission and ministry] cannot be achieved within the fellowship of the Synod.”

Six of the eight offered in a press conference few specifics or timetables for a proposed “parallel structure” to be created “within the Synod.” They declared that division is not their choice. It will come “when the harsh, arbitrary, and oppressive decisions of Anaheim” are implemented, they asserted. Action against one president would be “the handwriting on the wall” for the others, said President Harold Hecht of the non-geographic English District, a bastion of ELIM support. They made it clear that proceedings instituted against one would be construed as action against all. Roth estimated that 15 per cent of the 6,000 LCMS congregations will bolt if the disciplinary measures are carried out. As matters now stand, many of ELIM’s members are in churches still loyal to the denomination.

In the month after the Anaheim convention there were three ordinations or installations in violation of LCMS rules, and others were scheduled. (Several other planned ordinations or installations were postponed amid controversy by congregations in response to direct requests from LCMS president J. A. O. Preus.)

All eight districts, which together have about one-fifth of the LCMS membership, will hold special conventions or convocations this fall.

The Anaheim convention labeled ELIM’s activities as schismatic and instructed that they be ended. The ELIM delegates, however, unanimously recommitted themselves to those same activities and added a few others for good measure. The assembly:

• Declared full “pulpit and altar fellowship” with all Lutherans (the LCMS does not have such fellowship with the three-million-member Lutheran Church in America nor with other groups it disagrees with theologically).

• Pledged $860,000 of the projected $1.3 million cost of Seminex for the coming school year, up $300,000.

• Established a task force to develop alternative programs for the education of church workers.

• Told congregations they have a right to call and ordain as ministers “whomever they determine to be qualified”—including Seminex graduates. (Next year’s graduating class includes a woman who intends to seek ordination; the LCMS does not permit the ordination of women.)

• Reaffirmed that the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions are the only standards of faith and practice for Lutherans (a muted rejection of recent decisions requiring adherence to certain views of Scripture as a test of faith).

RENOVATING HEAVEN AND BRIGHTENING HELL

A church in southern England recently unearthed an ancient bill for repairs to its wall paintings, according to a Reuters news service story. The itemization:

“[For] renovating heaven and adjusting the stars; washing servant of the high priest and putting carmine on his cheeks; and brightening up the flames of hell, putting on new tail on the devil and doing odd jobs for the damned, and correcting the Ten Commandments.”

All for $23.

Post-Anaheim Problems

“Post-Anaheim casualties begin to mount,” blared a headline in Missouri in Perspective, a publication of the dissident ELIM movement in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (see preceding story). The tabloid contained stories of turmoil in several churches in the after-math of the recent LCMS convention, from the ouster of pastors to schism and heresy hunts.

Showdowns are expected on some campuses this fall. President Harvey Stegemoeller, 46, of Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota, reaffirmed his pro-ELIM views in a letter to pastors and hinted he may resign now that the majority of his board members are pro-Preus conservatives.

Another casualty is the already strained LCMS treasury. Some churches now are withholding contributions from the LCMS in protest against the recent convention actions and are sending the money to ELIM instead.

Still another casualty is the Lutheran unity cause. President Robert J. Marshall of the Lutheran Church in America and President David Preus of the American Lutheran Church both chided the LCMS in speeches at the Anaheim convention. They suggested that too much emphasis was being placed on the doctrine of Scripture at the expense of Christian life and work, and they indicated that the main concerns of the LCMS do not coincide with the ones of their denominations.

Jacob Preus insists that the heart of the LCMS problem is theological and that inerrancy of Scripture must be upheld if the LCMS is to be preserved from liberalism. The eight district presidents (preceding story) have differing views of Scripture. Emil Jaech affirms that “the whole Bible is the word of God, even in the areas we don’t understand.” Harold Hecht believes that “God is inerrant,” but that “when it comes to the printed page, there are problems.”

Gutenberg Rediscovered

German librarians have confirmed that a book discovered in a pastor’s attic in 1958 is the first half of a two-volume Bible printed by Johann Gutenberg. The six-inch-thick leather-bound volume of 317 pages is the forty-eighth original Gutenberg Bible to be authenticated. It was first found when a former pastor of the Immenhausen church was moving out of a home, but appraisers who were consulted at the time failed to establish its importance.

Friedrich-Karl Baas, a school teacher who moved to the community in 1962 and later became a church officer, found the book on a church office shelf. He studied it carefully and found clues leading him to believe it was an original Gutenberg. One was an inscription at the end of the book of Ezra referring to a sermon preached in the church in 1523. It was not until this summer that he got experts to look at it. The fifteenth-century printer, who made his own paper and movable type, is thought to have produced no more than 200 Bibles between 1452 and 1456.

The well-preserved Immenhausen copy is thought to be worth over $1.25 million. However, the congregation in the medieval village of 6,600 people does not plan to sell it. It will be loaned temporarily to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. After proper facilities are provided at the Morhardsche Library in Kassel, it will be on permanent loan there.

Objectionable Clause

A reconciliation meeting between Christian and non-Christian Nishis from the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India broke down because of an anti-Christian clause in a proposed agreement. The 500 Christians at the meeting refused to sign because of an addition committing them to renounce Christianity. The meeting ended in an uproar, many were hurt, and the Christians fled once more into the jungles where they’ve been taking refuge from increasing persecution.

At a recent meeting of the North-East India Christian Council an appeal was issued calling for a government inquiry into repressive acts against the Christian minorities in Arunachal. In another action the council dismissed an allegation that foreign missionaries were conspiring to form a Christian state in eastern India.

ROGER DAY

Religion In Transit

A federal appeals judge and the Tennesee Supreme Court both ruled unconstitutional a 1973 Tennessee law requiring textbooks to present the biblical account of creation on an equal footing with evolutionary theories.

Jesuit priest John J. McLaughlin, 48, who served as a speech writer for former President Richard Nixon, was married in a civil ceremony in Washington, D. C., to divorcee Anne Dore. McLaughlin was absolved of his religious vows by Pope Paul, say friends, and the couple will be wed in a Catholic ceremony after the bride’s previous marriage “is annulled.”

Franciscan priest John J. Tirella, 55, received a suspended five-year prison sentence for helping seven major narcotics dealers escape from a federal jail in New York City last year. Tirella, a volunteer chaplain who delivered styrofoam impressions of jail keys to others, at first insisted to a grand jury that he was innocent, then in July pleaded guilty.

Episcopal bishop Robert P. Varley of Nebraska, 53, says he will resign. His announcement came two months after an Omaha World-Herald interview in which he described his recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction during a six-week stay in a Minnesota treatment center. He acknowledged that disagreements about his handling of finances and his leadership style have persisted among the sixty-five parishes and missions of his 18,000-member diocese.

United Church of Canada cleric Floyd Honey, 59, resigned after serving seven years as general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches. A money crunch and staff cutbacks were blamed. Honey has over the years attracted the ire of many in the Council’s eleven member-denominations for his outspokenness and involvement in controversial political and social issues. This, say critics, is the reaon for the lack of support for the Council.

The first national meeting of Integrity, an organization of Episcopal homosexuals, was held at the Episcopal Church Center in Chicago. Spokesmen say the group, formed less than a year ago, has twenty-two local and regional chapters with 373 members. Speakers included clergyman Robert Herrick, a staff member with the National Gay Task Force in Washington, D. C., and Norman Pittenger, a former Episcopal seminary teacher now at Cambridge, England. “For the gay person it is best to be gay,” asserted Pittenger.

A task force to mobilize Protestant women “in defense of life” was announced by Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Evangelist Billy Graham, and two other women, Baptist Judy Fink, and Missouri Synod Lutheran Jean Garton. They were among twenty-five Protestants who met near Mrs. Graham’s North Carolina home to devise strategy to counter the nation’s pro-abortion forces and climate. Also on hand: surgeon C. Everett Koop, a United Presbyterian; Southern Baptist minister Bob Holbrook of Baptists for Life; and evangelical theologian Harold O. J. Brown, acting chairman of the recently formed anti-abortion Christian Action Council.

The ordination of women as deacons, priests, and bishops was called for in a resolution at the annual convention of the 3,500-member National Assembly of Women Religious, attended by 780 Catholic nuns. There was even talk about a woman pope someday.

Current regulations of the Federal Communications Commission exempts broadcasting stations with fewer than five employees from fair-employment reporting requirements. The FCC would like to change that to “fifteen or fewer,” a proposal denounced as “racist and sexist” by communications head Everett C. Parker of the United Church of Christ. Claiming the change would allow 78 per cent of all licensees to practice discrimination, he vows to lead a fight against it.

Some 300 delegates at last month’s eighteenth annual meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Anniston, Alabama, honored the memory of SCLC founder Martin Luther King, Jr., and passed a number of resolutions dealing mostly with improving the lot of the poor. There were calls to “get it back together again,” but the SCLC has been all but crippled by lagging finances and an exodus of key leaders.

Southern Baptist students on more than 300 campuses are cooperating with the American Bible Society in distributing Bibles to the estimated 227,000 internationals studying in America. So far, 51,000 have been given Bibles in their own languages, say officials.

Child Evangelism Fellowship will move its 100-person staff and headquarters from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Warrenton, Missouri, where it has purchased for about $2 million a Catholic seminary on a 660-acre tract. Plans call for the facility to be used for training hundreds of adult leaders each year.

No takers. Thus Trinity Parish in New York City took off the market ten commercial properties in lower Manhattan it offered for sale late last year for $14.6 million. The properties were assessed at $7.8 million.

The proposed merger between two seminaries of the United Methodist Church—United Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, and Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio—has been called off. Reasons: high moving costs, the minimal savings to be achieved under joint operation, and ruffled feelings. The plan was to close United, a former Evangelical United Brethren school, but former EUB members in the UMC pointed out that their seminary in Naperville, Illinois, had already been merged with the UMC’s Garrett seminary in Evanston. This time, they reasoned, the former UMC school in Delaware should be closed, and United should be allowed to continue.

Some 3,000 persons are expected to attend the evangelical-oriented Continental Congress on the Family in October in St. Louis, say organizers.

Church-state separationists are fighting the state of Pennsylvania’s latest effort to provide aid to private schools, a $31 million program providing “loaned” textbooks, other instructional materials, counseling, and speech and hearing therapy. The package, together with the free bus transportation provided parochial students, amounts to about $95 annually per pupil, says a state official. Public school districts get about $480 per pupil from the state, he adds.

The 1.2-million-member Knights of Columbus will pick up the tab for worldwide coverage via satellites of three major papal events annually (Christmas midnight mass, Good Friday activities, and an Easter sermon). The four satellites of the Intelsat system will be used at a cost of about $25,000 for each of the three ninety-minute live telecasts. Networks and stations must negotiate with Italian television, which operates a Vatican TV pool, for the right to pick up satellite feeds.

Attorney Reynell Andreychuck of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, was elected the first woman president of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Canada.

World Scene

The village leaders of Oberammergau, Germany, have decided to use a different script for the next performances (in 1980) of the celebrated eight-hour Passion Play. Written in 1750, the replacement—unlike the current text—blames the death of Jesus on Lucifier and makes little mention of the Jews. The switch came after pressure by Jews and Catholic leaders who alleged that the play contains anti-semitic references.

Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists won separate Greek court cases that accorded them status as “well-known” religious groups, a category enjoying a greater degree of religious freedom than otherwise under the constitution. One court established the legality of Witnesses’ marriages and baptisms. Another granted Adventist clergy exemption from military service. Some 16,000 Witnesses met recently in Athens for an annual conference.

The Christian Council of Lesotho, a kingdom of two million population surrounded by South Africa, appealed to the nation’s political leaders to govern responsibly. Political troubles have caused “the slaughter of many of its citizens, heavy property losses, the flight of hundreds of people into exile, and produced a reign of fear.” The Council includes the Lesotho Evangelical, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Assemblies of God, and African Methodist Episcopal churches.

The 100-student Belgium Bible Institute, the largest of the ten Bible schools operated by Greater Europe Mission, has purchased for nearly $1 million a Jesuit seminary in a Brussels suburb. The new facility can house 500 students, say spokesmen.

More than half of Sydney’s high school students have experimented with “the occult and Satanism,” according to a study commissioned by Anglican archbishop Marcus Loane. A number of students in other major Australian cities likewise were involved in “witchcraft and Black Masses,” said the commission.

Recently elected to the Hungarian parliament were a number of churchmen, including Bishop Tibor Bartha of the Reformed Church and Bishop D. Zoltán Kaldy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, according to Hungarian church press sources.

A seventy-five-day strike at the Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore, India, is over but the costs are still being counted: about $300,000 so far. The strike, marked by violence and involving 600 of 2,400 workers, occurred after several employees were fired for accepting bribes and falsifying admission records. The state and national governments took opposite sides in the dispute.

DEATHS

CORNELIUS P. HAGGARD, 63, in his thirty-sixth year as president of 1,200-student Azusa Pacific College, a Wesleyan-Holiness school, and a noted evangelical leader associated with the Evangelical Methodist Church; in Arcadia, California, following neural surgery.

E. LANI HANCHETT, 55, Episcopal bishop of Hawaii; in Honolulu, of cancer.

CLEMENT D. ROCKEY, 85, retired Methodist bishop who served in India, Burma, and Pakistan; in Eugene, Oregon.

Jesus Christ liberates and unites.” This theme will be brought to Nairobi, Kenya, when the World Council of Churches gathers there in November for its fifth General Assembly. The theme will be studied in six sections: (1) Confessing Christ Today, (2) Unity of the Church, (3) Search for Community (i.e., among persons of different religions, cultures, and so on), (4) Education for Liberation and Community, (5) Structures of Injustice and the Fight for Liberation, (6) Human Development (problems of technology and the quality of life).

This will be the first General Assembly with no section on mission and evangelization. There will be, however, a new section on dialogue with other religions—instead?

One might think that proclaiming the Gospel would now come under Section I, “Confessing Christ Today.” The collection of preparatory materials for this section describes the burning problems and different situations of confessing Christ today, but the situation of straight witness is not among them.

This packet of materials may show the main theological motives now steering the WCC. The basic principle is the idea that God is to be found at work in the world, in the “context” of the Church today. He is to be found, for example in other religions and in the political movements of our time, inasmuch as they aim at the “humanization” of man. The task of the Church is to discover and support Him in these “signs of the time.” The Church can recognize the voice of God in what men most long for.

This idea, popular in the WCC during the last decade, is supplemented by the more recent concept of “experience.” In dialogue with other religions, “experience” will be more useful than rigid doctrinal statements.

To these basic principles the two assembly theme words correspond: liberation, almost everywhere used in the political sense, and unity, of late used with the much wider meaning of the “vision” of unity of mankind.

The preparatory material shows, though, some elements of refreshing variation from typical ecumenical themes. An example is a remarkable report on a conference of orthodox theologians in Bucharest in 1974. These elements could serve as opportunities for some necessary corrections of ecumenical steering. So could the articles of the Lausanne Covenant, which has been accepted by the WCC to be used as conference study material at Nairobi.

Senior church leaders in Germany today harbor grave doubts whether after Nairobi it will be possible to keep ecumenical unity on a truly biblical basis. That these fears are not unfounded is shown by a 500-page documentary volume edited by W. Künneth and P. Beyerhaus. This new book ought to be translated into English immediately.

Nairobi may, of course, like Uppsala, provide by itself a critique of the WCC course. Nairobi will be different from Bangkok. It will be a plenary assembly of the WCC legislative body, which controls and directs the executive. Members of the assembly are not participants, as in Bangkok, but delegates and representatives of their churches. Their individual experiences at Nairobi will be secondary to their commission to represent the creed and confession of their denominations. They are not there as private persons, and the WCC is not a church.

Lending a hand to correct the WCC course will require clearsightedness and readiness to fight for the truth. To my mind these three major changes, among others, are needed:

1. The time has come to put the edge of sharp theological analysis to the religious poetry produced at Geneva and related places. What kind of liberation? What sort of unit? Precisely what experience?

Experience is a good word. Pietists will feel especially at home with it, as pietism began with the demand to combine doctrinal orthodoxy with personal experience and piety. Experience was to follow doctrine and was identified by it. Not every kind of religious experience would be acceptable—otherwise we would have to admit not only the experience of other religions but also the experience of the demonic as valid.

It is nonsense if those who drew up the preparatory materials for Section I think that some Christians hold to doctrine without experience and others hang to experience without doctrine. Doctrine must authorize experience, and experience must realize and give evidence to doctrine. Otherwise the road is open to all sorts of religious subjectivism. The Section I materials themselves show this well enough when they propose that the messenger is more important than the message. Think of what kind of unity this will produce!

Whoever refuses to allow his religious experience to be analyzed for the purpose of seeing whether it accords with Scripture comes under suspicion that he is out to push an unbiblical concept of his own.

2. The authority of Scripture must come to prevail again. Although mentioned in the WCC creed, it has had little prominence in recent years. Every concept has to be proved by the Bible. Liberation, for example, is a good term with biblical content if we understand it to mean release of the suppressed as shown in Isaiah 58, but not if it means violent self-emancipation as a Christian commission. Unity, too, is a proper Christian concept meaning the unity of those who have become disciples of Christ (as seen in John 17); but it is unbiblical if it means the “unity” of mankind without conversion and discipleship to Christ.

New concepts, new ways of expression, are always welcome, as long as they are authorized by the Bible. Under the authority of Scripture we will be delivered from that perilous slogan which sends us to seek God in any religious experience or political movement.

3. We need to come back to our primary theme: God. We have had enough of horizontal theology that interprets every biblical concept in a this-worldly way. For example, according to the Section I material, the death of the guerrillero is similar in character to the sacrifice of Christ’s flesh and blood and has to be remembered at the Eucharist. No! Make theology go back to its true and proper content: God, and God in Christ. Theology’s task is to inculcate the Great Commandment: to love God, and to love your neighbor. All attempts to reduce it to its second half alone must cease. Let us do away with the secret or openly admitted assumption that the theme of God must rest for a while in a time of social crises like ours.

The WCC’s reintroduction of religious experience signifies no improvement. Experience not clearly distinquished might be only this-worldly religiosity, the Kingdom of Man extended into religion. Nothing less than the reality and authority of God himself according to the Bible must become again the number-one theme of the World Council of Churches.

News editor Edward E. Plowman co-authored Washington: Christians in the Corridors of Power, together with James Hefley. Believe it or not, God is at work in Washington. There are true believers in government and there is a dynamic witness in the world’s most powerful city. We need more Christians in government and more evangelism among Washington’s unconverted, plus prayer by God’s people everywhere for a nation in crisis. The publisher is Tyndale House; price $3.95.

Our lead editorial deals with the World Council’s Nairobi Assembly. My friend Donald McGavran in the July Church Growth Bulletin (can be secured at 3033 Scott Blvd., Santa Clara, CA 95050) has packed in it information about Nairobi that every Christian should read. A year’s subscription (6 issues) costs only $2.00.