Paul’S Most Personal Letter

A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, by C. K. Barrett (Harper & Row, 1973, 354 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Philip E. Hughes, visiting professor of New Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Of the several volumes of Harper’s (Black’s in Britain) New Testament commentaries that have appeared so far, C. K. Barrett has written three—Romans, First Corinthians, and now Second Corinthians. These were preceded by the publication (in 1955) of his large commentary on John’s Gospel. This harvest of his submission to what he calls “the discipline of exegesis” has not only enhanced his high reputation as a scholar but also eased the way for many less well equipped students of the sacred text. This new volume; like its predecessors, is founded on an, impressive knowledge of contemporary literature and research and is distinguished by clarity of perception and economy of language.

Second Corinthians has suffered more than any of the other New Testament epistles at the hand of modern scholars. Some have cut it into pieces and then have rearranged the pieces. It is pleasing to find Barrett taking his stand with those who maintain the unity and integrity of the epistle—or nearly so, for he does suggest that there was a slight interval between the writing of the first nine and the last four chapters.

Barrett observes that Paul never wrote a more personal or more theological letter. His reconstruction of the situation that called forth the writing of this letter follows a pattern that is widely accepted today: Paul had paid an intermediate visit to Corinth, had been grossly insulted by a particular person without the intervention of the believers there, had departed without taking disciplinary action, had abandoned his intention of paying Corinth a second visit on this journey, and had subsequently written an intermediate severe letter (“intermediate” means here intermediate between the writing of our two canonical epistles to the Corinthians).

Far simpler and fully satisfactory is the solid tradition of the Church until comparatively recent times, in accordance with which Second Corinthians is explained in terms of the epistle of First Corinthians.

The purpose of Second Corinthians is to affirm the authenticity of Paul’s apostleship over against the claims of the “false apostles” who have invaded the Corinthian church—not for his own sake but for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which he preached there, and the authenticity of which is undermined if his own trustworthiness is discredited. “The apostle’s legitimacy,” Barrett writes, “appears not in the power of his personality, not in his spiritual experiences, not in his commissioning by the right ecclesiastical authorities, but only in the extent to which his life and preaching represent the crucified Christ.”

It is important to appreciate, as Barrett points out, that “no denial of a valid doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture is involved in the recognition that Paul’s theology evolved in concrete situations under the stimulus of events and especially of controversy.” Unconvinced though we are by Barrett’s hypothesis concerning the occasion of Second Corinthians, it should not be thought that he overlooks the importance of First Corinthians as evidence contributing to our overall understanding of the Corinthian situation; for he perceptively affirms that “it is Christology that binds together the two epistles and gives unity to their very miscellaneous contents,” and, moreover, that “Paul’s apostolic behaviour is a reflection of his Christology.”

In connection with the contrast between “letter” and “Spirit” in 3:6, Barrett rightly explains that “it was certainly not Paul’s intention to suggest that the Old Testament law was merely a human instrument; it was, on the contrary, spiritual, inspired by the Spirit of God (Rom. 7:14).” The context makes this perfectly plain; yet this continues to be one of the most misunderstood and perversely misinterpreted texts in the New Testament.

Paul’s distinction between the “outward man” and the “inward man” in 4:6 does not imply that he was under the influence of Greek dualistic philosophy. Barrett comments:

That Paul is using language that would be familiar in his non-Christian, and non-Jewish, environment is certain, but he supplies it with his own, Christian, meaning, which can only be ascertained if the whole range of expressions (not only outward and inward man but also old and new man—note renewed in this verse) is taken into account.… Inward and outward man are not the elements of a psychological dualism … but refer to the man of this age and the man of the age to come [p. 146].

Similarly, with Paul’s use of the term “naked” in 5:3, “though he uses in this context a quantity of Hellenistic language, he does not use it in its normal Hellenistic sense.” Unlike Philo, who “shared the Greek view of the nakedness of the soul as a desirable thing,” in Paul’s view “nakedness”—that is, a state (in the context, between death and the Lord’s coming) in which the soul is deprived of the body—“was to be abhorred and if possible avoided”; and it is “precisely bodilessness that makes this period of waiting undesirable in Paul’s eyes.” But how can Barrett suggest that “we must probably conclude that Paul had not yet fully integrated his eschatological program with his conviction that God was Lord over life and death alike and that those who were in Christ could not be separated from him,” when in verse 8 of this same passage Paul asserts that to be “away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord”?

The menace to the Gospel and to the practice of authentic Christianity posed by false apostles is attested not only here and elsewhere in the New Testament and also in the annals of the post-apostolic Church, for, as Barrett insists,” that “the theologia gloriae they represent is a permanent threat to Christianity is written on every page of church history and is in itself a sufficient reason for the continued study of Second Corinthians.” Sage counsel indeed: let us act upon it!

Required Reading

The Clash Between Christianity and Cultures, by Donald McGavran (Canon, 1975, 84 pp., $1.75 pb), is reviewed by Raymond B. Buker, professor emeritus of missions, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

Fifteen years on a mission field where I was exposed to at least five major cultures and four other religions prepared me for this book. As I studied anthropology in its cross-cultural aspects and religions historically and existentially, I increasingly felt the need of a definitive statement on the uniqueness of Christ and the superiority of his way to all others in all situations. Despite the short length of McGavran’s latest book, it quite adequately fills that need.

Chapter one sets the problem: “Is it many ways or ‘one way’?” Cultures are many and rich, each with its values. We must approach them with neutrality, yet recognize the differences between learning, education, knowledge, and cultural mores. Humanism accepts the relative values of religion as equal in substance to the conclusion that all religions are equal. Cultural imperialism leading to religious imperialism is not to be accepted. When general revelation is rejected and the dictates of conscience are violated, then the only sure knowledge of God is his Word. The Word “asserts that God set forth the one way of salvation, the one path for men to walk in, the one pattern of righteousness pleasing to the eternal God, the one church, the one faith, the one baptism, the one sure knowledge about God.” The externals in the various cultures are unalike, but the essentials—the morals—are alike.

McGavran poses such questions as, Does Christianity change cultures? When Christianity and culture clash, which one gives way? The next four chapters are given to answering these questions.

Chapter two shows how attempts at a truce between cultures are valid to a certain extent but never to the modification of Christianity as revealed in God’s Word.

Chapter three clarifies the issues by dividing Christianity into four aspects. The first relates to its beliefs and is unchangeable from its biblical base. The other three aspects—the values or ethics, the customs of church ways, and the local habitat—are adjustable.

In his last two chapters McGavran deals with three proposals for resolving the clash between Christianity and culture. The first proposal assumes the necessity of a high view of Scripture and its inspiration. The low view of Scripture resolves nothing; it only compounds the clash. The high view alone guarantees the correct evaluation of culture. The last two proposals hold for a high view of cultures with latitude for differences of opinion but always with the guiding principle of God’s Word as the ultimate truth and guide.

This book is a brief presentation of a very important subject. From a background of twenty-two years in missionary administration and teaching, I heartily recommend that every missionary and missionary candidate read it.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Perfect Love and War, edited by Paul Hostetler (Evangel Press, 170 pp., $2.50 pb). Papers and responses to them presented by leaders who are in the Holiness movement and/or historic Peace Churches. A very helpful addition to the growing body of evangelical literature on social concerns.

The Practice of Death, by Eike-Henner Kluge (Yale, 250 pp., $10), Living With Dying, by Glen Davidson (Augsburg, 111 pp., $2.95 pb), A Boy Thirteen: Reflections on Death, by Jerry Irish (Westminster, 62 pp., $3.95), Helping a Child Understand Death, by Linda Vogel (Fortress, 86 pp., $2.95 pb), Fear Not: A Christian View of Death, by Manford Gutzke (Baker, 96 pp., $1.25 pb), God, Grass, and Grace: A Theology of Death, by Ronald Starenko (Concordia, 80 pp., $2.50 pb), and Preaching About Death, edited by Alton Motter (Fortress, 86 pp., $2.95 pb). Death has become in recent years one of the more popular topics to write about. Kluge, presenting a non-Christian philosophical approach, should interest many believers because his conclusions stress a return to “morality.” Davidson’s convictions on the morality of taking life are supposedly religious (he begins each chapter with Scripture), but his evaluations of terminal patients’ responses to death are more in line with a secular position. Irish, a religious-studies professor at Stanford, wrestles with the fact of his son’s death and attempts to find some meaning in it. Vogel grapples admirably with the various stages and approaches children take in learning of death; she offers some good suggestions for helping them learn. The last three books are theological examinations of death. Gutzke presents a study of various biblical doctrines concerning the sinfulness of man and Christ’s atonement as a prelude to a Christian view of death. Starenko presents death as a personal encounter with God, tracing this through history and philosophy. Motter offers eighteen sermons from Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox pulpits, each stressing the hope of the resurrection.

Freedom Under Siege, by Madalyn Murray O’Hair (Tarcher, 278 pp., $8.95). See for yourself what America’s best-known atheist has to say. She ranges far and wide, with scarcely a kind word for her foe, and especially denounces tax privileges that religious bodies have (as do many other kinds of organizations, including her own). Most religious leaders probably wish they were in fact as influential as Ms. O’Hair alleges!

Discovering the Biblical World, by Harry T. Frank (Harper & Row, 288 pp., $16.95). Archaeological findings in the Holy Land, presented with colorful photos and maps, make more vivid the history of God’s chosen people from Abraham to the destruction of Jerusalem. A basically conservative, very readable narrative accompanies the visual aids.

A Complete Guide to the Christian’s Budget, by Michael Speer (Broadman, 170 pp., np., pb). A balanced and practical guide that combines biblical teaching with good management sense. Emphasizes Christ’s Lordship over all areas of life. Highly recommended.

The Foolishness of God, by John Baker (John Knox, 409 pp., $9.95). So much dross is mixed with some helpful insights that we cannot recommend this popularly written overview of doctrine.

The Lunn Log, compiled by the M. Lunn family (Beacon Hill, 303 pp., $2.95 pb). More than 1,500 pithy quotes in scores of categories from “abiding” to “zeal.”

Process and Permanence in Ethics: Max Scheler’s Moral Philosophy, by Alfrons Deekens (Paulist, 282 pp., $5.95 pb). For the philosophy student. Includes extensive bibliography.

Theology and Christian Ethics, by James M. Gustafson (Pilgrim, 315 pp., $8.95). Gustafson applies his theological ethics to social and moral life and to scientific fields. Technical in spots.

A Return to Christian Culture, by Richard Taylor (Bethany Fellowship, 95 pp., $1.25 pb). The author contends that Christians need to become more aesthetically and intellectually aware. “How” is less discussed than “why.” Curiously, his style often violates his own standards.

The Art of Christian Promotion, by Paul Moore (Revell, 127 pp., $4.95). Christians should apply certain “Madison Avenue” techniques in presenting the Gospel, according to this Nazarene pastor. Some forty fairly obvious principles (such as “go where the people are”) are fleshed out with his and others’ experiences. Worth dipping into.

Gods of Goodness, by Bruce Blackie (Westminster, 170 pp., $5.95). The pastor of First Presbyterian, Akron, reveals numerous subtle idolatries of the mainline denominations, such as prestige and power. Concludes with a brief appeal to return to the Bible. Evangelicals are not immune to many of these temptations.

Philosophical Essays, by Hans Jonas (Prentice Hall, 348 pp., n.p.). Eighteen previously published essays, mostly on Jewish or Christian thinkers such as Spinoza, Origen, Paul, the Gnostics.

The Wonders of Creation, by Alfred Rehwinkel (Bethany Fellowship, 288 pp., $3.95 pb). Staunch defense of the view that the world was created in six twenty-four hour days a few thousand years ago.

Confusion and Hope: Clergy, Laity and the Church in Transition, edited by Glenn Richard Bucher and Patricia Ruth Hill (Fortress, 128 pp., $3.50 pb). Eight essays by various authors on American Christianity from an ecumenical perspective.

Speaking of God Today, edited by Paul Opsahl and Marc Tanenbaum (Fortress, 187 pp., $6.95). A dozen essays by scholars from various branches of Judaism and American Lutheranism on law, grace, election, the state, and pluralism.

Journey With David Brainerd, by Richard Hasler (InterVarsity, 120 pp., $2.50 pb). Excerpts from the diary of the young eighteenth-century missionary to the American Indians stressing the importance of a committed devotional life. The full-length diary had great influence. This book can whet the appetite.

How to Manipulate Your Mate, by John W. Drakeford (Nelson, 166 pp., $2.95 pb). A psychology professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary writes a book on personal change that is much better than its title.

The Love Formula, by Richard Andersen (Concordia, 163 pp., $2.50 pb). Philosophy and application of forgiveness of others and of yourself. Practical and simply phrased.

The Apostles, by Donald Guthrie (Zondervan, 422 pp., $8.95). A companion to his earlier book, Jesus the Messiah, this should be especially helpful to beginning Bible students. Traces the lives of Jesus’ followers correlating Acts with the epistles. Paul naturally has the leading role.

The Bible and Civilization, by Gabriel Sivan (Quadrangle, 524 pp., $15). The impact of what Christians call the Old Testament on moral, social, and artistic development is examined in this latest contribution to the “Library of Jewish Knowledge.” Insightful.

Once a Carpenter, by Bill Counts (Harvest House, 254 pp., n.p., pb). A Bible believer makes full use of his imagination to expand on the settings and to speculate on the feelings, attitudes, and the like of people involved in numerous encounters with our Lord throughout his earthly ministry.

A Light Unto My Path, edited by Howard Bream, Ralph Heim, and Carey Moore (Temple University, 529 pp., $15). Thirty-three scholarly essays on various Old Testament topics (e.g., ecology, Second Samuel 7, the life of Joel) in honor of Jacob Myers of Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary.

Powell: In Pursuit Of Paradox

No Easy Answers, by Enoch Powell (Seabury, 1974, 135 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, editor-at-large, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Enoch Powell is an erstwhile brigadier general, professor of Greek, and British minister of health. He fell out with the Conservative establishment because he opposed its immigration policies and (later) its plans to enter the European Economic Community. As a latter-day Ulster Unionist he now represents a constituency in that troubled province.

As a young man, Powell tells us, he was convinced that textual criticism, history, and the psychology of religion had made “a clean sweep” of the gospel narratives. Twenty years and a world war were to pass before he perceived that “the assertions which the Church was making were not vulnerable to the weapons with which I had thought them demolished.” Not mystical experience, then, but that intellectual analysis so characteristic of the man made him embark on “the endless journey of exploration of the meaning and content of the Mass” as found in the higher reaches of Anglicanism.

These chapters, taken from public utterances on diverse occasions, are about his private beliefs, his public life, and how the two are connected. His biblical references are prominently listed as an appendix: five from the Old Testament, sixty-six from the New. His out-look is highly individualistic and totally bewildering. With original sin, the resurrecton of the body, and the eternal lostness of the unbelieving he has no difficulty. The “hard sayings” of Jesus he finds fascinating and on the whole acceptable.

Let no one be misled by this. Powell is uneasy about the Good Samaritan story; the identity of his neighbor is not all that simple. And Abraham was “only partially right” in his handling of the Dives and Lazarus affair. Moreover, the appearance of the word stauros, “cross,” in Matthew 16:24 Powell bluntly dismisses as “grotesque”; it should have been rhabdos, “staff” (cf. Mark 6:8). So much for our translations ancient and modern.

There are lively chapters on dialogues with Malcolm Muggeridge and, a more formidable adversary, antiapartheid champion Trevor Huddleston. Driven finally to defining his terms on racial equality, Powell denies the superiority of one race over another but seems to approve of “separation,” and affirms also that “in many contexts … one person is inferior in quality to another.”

Two impressions remain from a reading of Powell. First, controversy and publicity are meat and drink to him. He invites us to dislike him, and would crumble under compliments. He loves predicaments and would compass a continent in pursuit of a paradox.

Second, here is a man who sees no neat distinction between religious and civic duty, a position for which a good case could be made. The danger comes when such a man speaks with all the authority of a professional politician words that come from an amateur theologian. To decide what precisely pertains to Caesar and what to God is not easy for the Christian politician who is further inhibited by partisan loyalties, but there is at least an obligation to give Caesar no more than his due—and to subdue personal prejudices. The reader who pays more than a nickel a page for this book might wish that the questions to which Mr. Powell has no easy answers had been raised in a less disagreeable way.

Pascal Intriguing But Incomplete

Blaise Pascal: The Genius of His Thought, by Roger Hazelton (Westminster, 1974, 217 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Charles MacKenzie, president Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.

The presence of genius in a human life always intrigues and astonishes us.” With these words Roger Hazelton, the distinguished Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Theological School, begins what he hopes will be “a useful, reliable introduction to what may be called the genius of Pascal’s thought.” In six well written and interesting chapters he discusses Pascal the individual, the scientist, the humanist, the believer, the artist, and the philosopher. His thesis is that the theme of “man in relation to the infinite” unifies Pascal’s thought. The relation between infinity and humanity, he states, is the subject of the book.

Hazelton has for years studied Pascal and the vast literature about him, and he gives brief but excellent descriptions of Pascal’s key concepts. The three orders—the heart, faith, and reasons—are skillfully elaborated. Hazelton’s rich understanding of the history of ideas enables him to relate the thinking of Pascal to their historical stream of thought. For example, he compares Pascal as a creative social thinker to Plato, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Aquinas.

He does not hesitate to criticize. For example, he finds Pascal’s thought about human society “lacking in profundity. His categories are too few and narrow to probe the depths of social experience and his mind seems to be made up in advance on many of the most important issues.” Yet he appreciates the genius of Pascal and views him as a universal man, relevant to all ages.

His first chapter is a fine sketch of Pascal’s life. The chapter might have been strengthened had Hazelton recognized, at least in footnotes, some of the lingering historical questions (i.e., Pascal’s relationship with Charlotte Roannez, and his purported death-bed renunciation of Jansenism). Throughout the volume Hazelton seems either to avoid a number of these historical questions or to take a position without sufficient explanation.

My major criticism, however, is that he does not do full justice to his announced subject: Pascal’s understanding of man’s relation to the infinite. In his chapter on Pascal as scientist, Hazelton shows great discernment when he says, “One might wish, indeed, that he himself had explored more thoroughly the points of connection he intuited between the problem of mathematical infinity and the theological dimension of transcendence.” Hazelton, quite properly, sees “the Wager” as an attempt by Pascal to express an intrinsic connection between the two. Yet, having touched on this important note, Hazelton does not develop and interpret it. Pascal’s mathematical awareness of the infinite encouraged him to view the universe in its unity and wholeness. It whetted his appetite for the transcendent. The point merits fuller development than Hazelton gives it.

In his chapter on Pascal the humanist, Hazelton deals with Pascal’s words, “For what is man in nature? A nothing, compared with the Infinite; an all compared with the nothing.” Here he aptly elaborates on Pascal’s understanding of man suspended between the infinitely great and the infinitely small. For Pascal, the universe mirrored man’s contradictions and brought him to the realization that “man is not made but for infinity.”

As Hazelton probes Pascal’s understanding of man, he describes man’s predicament not only as he faces the physical universe but also as he is confronted by the moral plane of existence. Imagination, custom, and self-love deceive man. At this point, Hazelton does not follow Pascal in tracing man’s misery and blindness to their source in man’s sin. To Pascal, the sin of man, his distorted self-love, his proclivity to play god, are barriers separating man from the infinite. Yet Hazelton, strangely enough, does not relate the miseries of man to the sin that has alienated him from the infinite.

When Hazelton deals with Pascal as a believer, again he neglects Pascal’s consciousness of sin. In dealing with Pascal’s treatment of “the hidden God,” he has the chance to elaborate on Pascal’s thought that man’s sin, self-love, and pretensions to be God blind him to the truth of God. But he lets it pass with the observation that “God’s hiddenness … is also secondarily due to man’s contrary mindedness.” Hazelton mentions Pascal’s view of sin when he discusses grace, but even then he does not acknowledge Pascal’s teaching on the nature of sin, the effects of sin on the thought processes of man, or sin as a barrier between man and the infinite.

Another deficiency in an otherwise creditable chapter on Pascal as a believer is Hazelton’s neglect of Pascal’s view of the Bible and the Church. Pascal drew much strength, wisdom, and inspiration from the Bible, which he accepted as the unique, inspired, authoritative Word of the infinite God. Yet Hazelton gives little hint of this. Pascal also had deep convictions about the Church. Hazelton mentions those Gallican tendencies that led Pascal to see the authority of church councils as superior to the authority of the pope. But he shows little awareness that Pascal found fulfillment for his essential selfhood in the Body of Christ. Hazelton says, “One wishes that Pascal had distinguished sick self-love or amour propre from the healthy amour de soi … but he did not.” But he did! Pascal saw the Body of Christ as that fellowship which purifies one’s self-love and transforms amour propre into a healthy amour de soi: “By loving the body it loves itself because it has no being except through and for the sake of the body.… We love ourselves because we are members of Jesus Christ” (Pensée 688).

In dealing with Pascal the artist, Hazelton skillfully analyzes both Pascal’s art of persuading and the artistry he displayed in the “Provincial Letters” and the “Pensées.” When he deals with Pascal’s sources and models, he has an opportunity to analyze Pascal’s estimate of the Bible as a revelation of the infinite to man. But he does not do so. And so this chapter, though well done and informative, contributes little to Hazelton’s chosen thesis—man’s relation to the infinite.

Turning to Pascal as a philosopher, Hazelton aptly distinguishes Pascal from Descartes. He summarizes what he believes to be Pascal’s epistemology. And he accurately describes the dialectical and existential nature of Pascal’s thought. With great insight he speaks of Pascal’s “pensée de derriére la tête,” a type of presupposition underlying all Pascal’s thinking. The closest, however, that Hazelton comes to defining that “pensée de derriére” is an “idea of the whole.” He does not recognize that the infinite, the God of biblical revelation, is the basic presupposition of Pascal’s mature thought.

Consequently Hazelton makes the very unpascalian statement that faith for Pascal “remains an uncertain certitude.” He says, “If we miss in Pascal the decisive flourish, the conclusive word regarding truth, it may at least be argued that this lack represents an openness to truth on his part which cannot be found in those philosophies which claim to have defined it.” Such statements may have been true of the early Pascal but certainly are not characteristic of the mature man. Again, when Hazelton declares that “Pascal was not among those Christian thinkers who claim that Christianity is inherently superior to all other religions” he shortchanges Pascal, who was certain that Christ was the ultimate and absolute revelation of the infinite even though He cannot be completely identified with or separated from Christianity in general and the Church in particular.

Roger Hazelton’s book is an intriguing interpretation of one of the great geniuses of history. It contains a host of valuable insights, and as an “introduction to … the genius of Pascal’s thought” it is eminently useful. It could have become a high-water mark in Pascalian research if the author had really described the fullness of Pascal’s mature thought on man’s relation to the infinite.

However, this stated theme tends to get lost in the book. Much that Pascal said on the subject is neglected or is passed over lightly. The author fails to deal with Pascal’s understanding of the infinite in the finite, a presence that confronted Pascal in the contradictions of philosophy and the silent mysteries of science. He fails above all to describe the fullness of the revelation of the infinite, a revelation made throughout thousands of years of Jewish-Christian history, supremely given in the historical Jesus, and continuously offered to mankind through the Bible and the Church. Helpful and valuable as this book is, it gives us only a partial view of Pascal and of his understanding of man’s relation to the infinite.

Think of Amy Carmichael: a slim, brown-eyed, beautiful Scotch-Irish girl going off to India as a pioneer. Darkening her face, wearing a sari and sandals, slipping in and out of dangerous market places to rescue babies that were to be sold to become temple prostitutes. Imagine her bucking this evil custom of Hinduism with the weight of men and demons behind it! That small human being all on her own, with no money, and with only an Indian helper and herself to make a home for the first baby. Praying for the babies to be rescued, and for the money to care for them, and for protection from all the forces that would be against her—including some established missions at that time.

A rebel against all precedent? No. Simply one of “the just” living “by faith.” Her determination to live by faith set in motion an effort that brought more than a thousand girls and boys out of the system into which they would have been sold to the temples for evil purposes. It can be said of her, as Paul said of the believers in Rome, “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world” (Rom. 1:8).

We are clearly told in Romans 1:17, “the just shall live by faith”—not “the missionary, the Christian worker, the pastor, the theological student, the enthusiastic new Christian” but “the just” are to live by their faith. Not “the poor, the downtrodden, the persecuted, the people wiped out by war or depression, those in the midst of earthquake or plague” but “the just” shall live by faith. Not “spiritual Christians, people with special gifts to live by faith, people with a special calling” but “the just” shall live by faith. Only one category is given—“the just.”

Who are “the just”? “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” Romans 3:28 reminds us that we are first justified by faith. ‘The just” already have faith which they have demonstrated in actually believing in the Second Person of the Trinity, who died so that they could be justified, who in taking the punishment himself made possible the one way in which sins could be forgiven. A “just” person is one who has real faith in Christ Jesus, who came to be born, and live, and die in history about two thousand years ago, in the geographic spot that today is the scene of great turmoil. A person who has really accepted Christ as his or her Saviour is one of “the just.”

In Romans 1 “the just shall live by faith” follows the statement about not being “ashamed of the gospel of Christ.” I feel that not being ashamed of the Gospel includes an active demonstration in day-by-day life of doing what the Gospel is meant to prepare us to do: to live by faith. Every Christian is meant to live by faith in really practical areas of life. But some feel ashamed or embarrassed to speak of praying about very down-to-earth things; they feel this would seem childish or fanatical. Some people keep watertight compartments for their “prayer life,” for their Christian activities, for their vocation, for their choices of where to live, how to use their money, where to go for a vacation, how to live as a family. There is little mingling of “faith” with “practical life,” which is unfortunate.”

But this is a serious command that each of us needs to consider and reconsider over and over again. Our lives are shifting and changing. No two periods are alike. The areas in which we were sure we were given the opportunity to “pray” may be removed, and we are in danger of saying, “Yes, I used to live by faith when I was a struggling student, or when we had to pray literally for bread during days of depression, but now—now it is different.” It is never meant to be different. There is no softening of the command with the passage of time; it is not “the just shall live by faith for a little while.…”

But how? True, if you have no job, your house is being taken from you because you cannot make the payments, there is danger of invasion, the stocks are all gone in the drop of the market, or a flood has ruined your crops; if you are in the place of Habakkuk 3:17, 18, where he speaks of the loss of everything; then you can “live by faith” simply by continuing to love the Lord, and to pray for the immediate day’s little loaf of bread. But how if you have everything you need?

The first consideration in being able to do anything the Lord asks us to do is found in what Jesus said to the disciples after he left the rich young ruler, that it was harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to go through a needle’s eye. Utter dismay was the reaction of the disciples, “Who then can be saved?” was the question. Does it depend on being destitute? Can no one else have saving faith?

Jesus’ reply was, “The things which are impossible with men, are possible with God.” Yes, it is possible for a rich man to be saved (although it is a difficult thing to contemplate), says Jesus, because with God all things are possible. A rich man can also come as a child, believing that he has nothing with which to pay for his salvation, and that he needs what Christ has paid on his behalf. Then the rich “just” can also live by faith.

Must there be a danger or a change on the horizon to push us into feeling the necessity of carrying out the practical reality of “living by faith”? Is there something needed to make us feel that faith is not just something to sing about in church, to thrill about as the choir sings, to feel with some emotion as the pastor preaches?

It seems to me that Hebrews 10:36–38 is incentive enough for each one who qualifies as one of “the just”: “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”

Habakkuk 2:3 had already spoken of the time of the end, which is to be waited for and will surely come. The connection was already there in Habakkuk, but now in Hebrews it is written in flaming words: The just are to live by faith until Jesus returns. The time may not be long, even though it seems to be long. If we “draw back” and stop living by faith in some day-by-day practical way, then, God has said, we spoil his pleasure in us.

It is so easy for us to outline a set of circumstances in which it would be “practical” to live by faith. We can look back with nostalgia to another period of life and say, “Back then it was real.…” Or we can look at other people’s lives and think what a great opportunity they have to live by faith (“If I had been Amy Carmichael.…”). But none of us can wiggle out of the category; if we are Christians, we are the just. We need to struggle in prayer to be willing for whatever living by faith might mean in today’s circumstances. When we trip and fall and smash our ribs, we must recognize this as the circumstance in which to say, “May nothing be wasted of what you, God, want to bring out of this.”

When the extremes of success come and there seems no material need, the day-by-day thing of saying, “I’m willing, O God, to give half away, or to do whatever you want with it. Make me real today in whatever way in which this combination of circumstances presents me the possibility of living by faith.” It is your today and my today that count in practical living by faith. “Drawing back” is a thing we can easily do, but we will sorely regret it when we discover what “my soul shall have no pleasure in him” actually means. May we hasten to stop wasting the time we have to bring him pleasure in today’s opportunity.

Can a Christian salvage anything out of the rubble of the Viet Nam experience (an experience that was, we must always remind ourselves, enormously more devastating for the Vietnamese than it was for us)?

The answer is yes. Once Americans get over the trauma of having been on the losing side of a war for the first time, Viet Nam may not look like quite the debacle it is currently made out to be. After all, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and Russia, as well as our own southern states, all lost wars and recovered. Granted, the price paid for the lessons learned is decidedly inflationary. But it could have been much higher. It could have been the price of nuclear warfare.

Americans should remember that the Viet Nam conflict brought the issue of war and peace to the fore as nothing else has in American history. Although the nation still has little agreement on what constitutes a just war and on when to intervene militarily in the affairs of other countries, vast numbers of people have become more sensitive to the immediate factors that bear on those great moral decisions. Wars for causes that do not involve any direct threat to important national interests will now be a lot harder to sell to the citizenry. The danger now is that politicians may be too cautious and fail to act even if national survival might be at stake.

Perhaps the biggest lesson is one of humility, and there should be plenty to go around. Even the most powerful nations cannot act as if their power were unlimited. Pride indeed goeth before a fall. Virtually all Americans must share blame for the Viet Nam war. Ulterior motives were to be found among both hawks and doves. In accord with President Ford’s appeal to avoid recriminations, no more specifics need be mentioned. Suffice it to say that the deception that drew America into the war got its come-uppance when shortly after noon on April 30 the flag of the Provisional Revolutionary Government was raised over the presidential palace in Saigon. And let those who saw the fall of Saigon as a “victory” be reminded that what was left of a free press there ceased that same day. There is no more dissent from left or right in Viet Nam.

To what extent should Americans feel guilty about having pulled out? Surely at least in a sense the nation went back on a promise. From another perspective, however, it is doubtful that any nation ever helped another to the extent that the United States aided South Viet Nam: more than 56,000 Americans killed and another 303,000 wounded, plus a financial investment of about $150 billion. No reasonable person really would define a political commitment in everlasting terms. America agreed to help those South Vietnamese who wished to resist the Communists, not to fight the whole war for them. America’s allies realize that, whether or not it is expedient now to say so publicly. In the end, it appears that South Viet Nam could have been “saved” only if the United States had acted as if it were defending Hawaii rather than a sovereign ally.

Christians are still left with some hard questions as to how Communism can be contained and whether the use of force is proper. Certainly justice must always be demanded, and one of the immediate imperatives is for the Church to call forcefully for the release of American missionaries imprisoned in Viet Nam. Also desperately needed is wider proclamation of the basic spiritual values that lie at the heart of the American republic but that get little foreign visibility in comparison to the materialism we export. If American Christians had invested in the evangelization of Viet Nam just 1 per cent of what the Pentagon spent in fighting the war there, the conflict might never have occurred. Fortunately, some significant missionary work did take place, and the hundreds of evangelical churches in Viet Nam deserve, now even more than before, the prayers of God’s people everywhere.

Again in the wake of Viet Nam, American Christians have the opportunity to seize the cultural initiative in a new way. They can begin by extending love to the comparatively few thousands of refugees, and then following through with a fresh implementation of biblical mandates. The Viet Nam experience, despite the adversities, provides an unparalleled spiritual opportunity. If American Christians avail themselves of this opportunity, the blood will not have been shed in vain.

Dollars For Disobedience

The American Lutheran Church has the dubious distinction, apparently, of being the first denomination officially to make a cash grant to a “gay” caucus within its ranks. Lutherans Concerned for Gay People, headquartered in Salt Lake City, proudly announced in its February–March newsletter that last December it had been approved for a grant of $2,000 by the board of the ALC’s Division for Service and Mission in America. The group, which includes both gay and non-gay members from the three largest Lutheran bodies, had its budget for 1975 increased by more than one-third by the grant. The money is to be used to expand distribution of the newsletter, to advertise in periodicals, and “to assist in providing a visible gay presence at major church conventions.” The media representative of the American Lutheran Church confirmed the essential accuracy of the newsletter’s report.

Other denominations, such as the United Methodist Church and the Unitarian Universalist Association, have previously given grants to gay organizations, but not to gay caucuses working within their own denominations.

Doubtless gay Lutherans will invoke Martin Luther’s stance for conscience and against Rome. A minority battling for public recognition in the face of strong and widespread opposition naturally tugs on the heartstrings of many Christians. However, Luther’s appeal was not to himself but to the authority of God as revealed through his Word. Because the Scriptures speak strongly and repeatedly against the practice of homosexuality, most Christians are nonplused by the presence of gay activism within the churches.

Lutherans and other Christians should indeed be concerned for gay people. Jesus Christ died for all persons regardless of their sexual orientation. The practice of homosexuality, like the practice of heterosexuality outside marriage, can indeed be forgiven by God, and therefore by his people. But forgiveness requires acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Undeniably the Church has been wrong to the extent that it has failed to distinguish between God’s love for homosexual persons and his condemnation of homosexual practices. But we cannot correct that wrong by contradicting God’s verdict on the practice.

Lutherans Concerned for Gay People recognizes that there are “gays who are celibate.” We submit, on the basis of Scripture, that this is the only morally defensible sexual pattern for gays who cannot or will not have a sexual relationship through marriage to someone of the other sex. It is, for that matter, the only scripturally sanctioned pattern for the millions of heterosexuals who are not married or whose spouses are ill, injured, or absent.

One wonders how long it will be before similarly outlandish church caucuses are formed to advocate public acceptance of promiscuity before marriage, adultery, incest, pederasty, and bestiality. We suppose a proviso would be that such behavior be voluntary on the part of those involved. Otherwise we cannot imagine how the gay Lutheran call for “a greater understanding of human sexuality in all its manifestations” can stop with the crusade “to remove discrimination against gay women and men wherever it exists.”

For a major board of one of the country’s major denominations to identify through its budget with an organization promoting blatant transgression of the revealed word of God is a sign of a sinking back to the level of official immorality that prevailed when Christianity emerged. Concerned members of the American Lutheran Church will know how to express their outrage at what their denominational officialdom has done without any prompting from us. Members of other denominations should beware of similar moves to gain official endorsement of immorality.

Gifts For Graduates

From Muncie, Indiana, comes word that thanks to the initiative of local churches, every graduating senior at a local high school is being offered a gift of religious literature. The graduates get to choose from among six Bible and New Testament versions, or if they don’t want any of those they can pick a book appropriate to their own personal faith. It’s a beautiful idea!

Dear Brothers,

Pastoral associates are really hurting. Of course, there are many exceptions to this generalization—but are you sure your associates are among the exceptions?

Do you know them personally? Do you know them well enough to perceive where they are in their relationships to Christ, to their spouses, to their children? Is your relationship with them more than merely professional or administrative? Do you care whether or not they are hurting? Are you concerned for their spiritual maturation or their family situation?

Do you spend time with them? Do you see them more often than during worship or in a formal meeting? As a matter of fact, do you have staff meetings? And if so, is there time for ministering to personal needs, or is it just an impersonal business meeting? Do you know what they are thinking—their problems, their aspirations, their goals?

Do you know whether they are yearning for a deeper relationship with you?

Do you keep them boxed into their job descriptions, or are you interested in their ideas for the total work of the church? Do you listen to them and learn from them?

Would they be taking too great a risk to make constructive suggestions about your personal situation and ministry or the general situation in the church? Are they afraid to approach you with ideas that bum in their hearts? Do you intimidate them? Does your intimidation betray your own sense of being threatened by them?

These are not questions generated in a time of isolated reflection; they are expressions of very real concerns stated by members of church multiple staffs at a recent National Youth Workers Convention. An associate and I were asked to conduct two seminars on staff relationships that were attended by approximately 125 conferees. After brief introductory remarks, the seminar was opened for an hour of comments, questions, and discussion.

There were no senior pastors present. Eight or ten were alone in their pastorates. The great majority were associates, assistants, directors of Christian education or youth directors.

Tragically, few spoke of a satisfying relationship with the senior pastor. Most were very explicit in expressing disappointment and frustration. Some were deeply disillusioned. A few were angry. One young man never sees his pastor except on Sunday morning. In more than a year there has been no staff meeting. Two or three times he has had a momentary contact when they were coming or going during the week.

Several said they were not allowed to show real interest in or make suggestions about anything in the church except their own jobs. And even in that area, few senior pastors showed anything more than cursory interest in what the associate was thinking. Written reports were all that was required. One said the only way he could see his pastor was to watch his TV program.

In conversations after the seminars, several spoke of their respect and love for their pastors but said there was no way they could express this because of a wall that prohibited any personal relationship. I suggested (from experience) that the invisible wall might mean deep loneliness on the part of the pastor, and I urged them to attempt a breakthrough. Their reaction was that this would entail great personal risk.

Some were almost totally alienated from the senior pastor and felt helpless to make any overtures toward reconciliation. The experience strongly confirmed a quotation with which we had opened the seminars:

The multiple staff ministry—two or more ordained ministers in a particular congregation—is a fragile arrangement filled with dangerous pitfalls and laden with conflicting emotions, yet it offers rewarding opportunities. As many clergy have been involved in this kind of ministry, they should not be shocked by Kenneth Mitchell’s statement that “relationships within the multiple staff ministry seem to be relatively unstable: there is a rapid turnover in assistant ministers; there are constant reports of clashes between ministers; assistant pastors are reported to form into cliques wherever ministers gather” [from Psychological and Theological Relationships in the Multiple Staff Ministry, by Kenneth Mitchell, Westminster, 1966; quoted by Richard N. Dearing in “Toward Understanding Staff Ministries,” The Church Administrator, July, 1974].

In each of the seminars, the associates asked, “Are senior pastors aware of this problem? Do they talk about it? Does it make any difference to them?” Unable to speak for others, I was able only to repeat what my associates and I are committed to among ourselves, the others on the staff, the officers of the church and the people: we give priority to persons, not programs. We have an explicit commitment, first to Christ, then to spouse and family, then to one another, and to the officers and people of the church, in that order. We take our relationships seriously and practice fellowship on the basis of the formula found in Matthew 18:15–35. We treat alienation as intolerable, seek reconciliation as soon as possible when a breach occurs, and strive to maintain a loving, caring, affirming, supportive community.

Personal relations take precedence over the work in staff meetings as well as in official board meetings. We meet with the entire staff weekly, and always our primary concern is personal or family interests. When needs are expressed we unite in prayer and take any other action possible to respond to the need. The associates set aside one full day monthly to be together in worship, fellowship, sharing, and planning. Occasionally we take an overnight trip together, including our spouses.

We encourage and support one another in taking a day off weekly and in giving priority to spouse and family. We take every opportunity to be together in twos or more, such as at lunch, driving somewhere together, and dropping in on one another at the office. We are explicit in expressing our love for one another and doing whatever we can to demonstrate that love. We are free to criticize one another. Each takes a genuine interest in what the others are doing, and we all are involved in thinking and planning for the total life of the congregation.

We have learned to expect struggles in these relationships and have discovered that through these struggles love is matured and intimacies deepened. We are simply committed to dealing with alienation when it occurs rather than neglect it because we are too busy, thereby risking erosion and deterioration of the relationships.

“Why don’t you talk to senior pastors about this?” several associates urged in each seminar. This open letter is one response to that request.

Sincerely,

RICHARD C. HALVERSON

Minister

Fourth Presbyterian Church

Washington, D. C.

Fanning The Fame

“How,” asked St. Paul, “shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14). In Paul’s day, the visit of a half-way decent traveling preacher or teacher to a new community was always of sufficient interest that an audience would gather. Therefore it may never have occurred to Paul to ask, “How shall they hear if they won’t come and listen?” But it occurs to us. There are plenty of people who have a good message, but to whom few listen. And there are others who have the same message, and who do not appear to have one hundred or one thousand times the oratorical skill, but who attract one hundred or one thousand times more eager listeners. What is the difference?

Certainly one factor is fame, which in our day is tied up with the mass media. Fame gets attention: attention means that people will listen to you. Having people listen to you means that you have a greater opportunity to minister to them. Hence, what promotes one’s fame also promotes one’s ministry (and sometimes one’s income, which may be an indication of a growing ministry). If one is devoted to one’s ministry, it is prudent to protect one’s fame, which is after all a prerequisite to an ever-wider ministry. From this we derive what may be called Eutychus’s Second Law, the Law of Prudent Protection: if one has a successful ministry, it is not prudent to say or do anything that might antagonize those who might otherwise be one’s audience (or customers).

Eutychus’s Second Law, though newly formulated, is already being widely practiced by many religious leaders who recognize instinctively that their celebrity and the good will they enjoy are valuable assets. Some people have an instinct for this sort of thing. Let one example stand for many. A newly famous and successful evangelical was recently asked to make a statement about a vital moral issue on which that person was known to have strong convictions. But prudence prevailed. After all, one has to think of the work. Not passing the request to the celebrity, a spokesman fielded it like this: “We support you, but we cannot afford to have our name associated with anything controversial, as it might damage our ministry. People have written to us saying, ‘I used to support you, until I learned your views on———.’ Our books are best-sellers. The Lord has given us this ministry, and we cannot do anything to endanger it.” This is not exactly the same as what Pope Leo X is supposed to have said (“The Lord has given us the papacy; let us therefore enjoy it”), but somehow it isn’t much more satisfying.

The only trouble with Eutychus’s Second Law is that those who prudently follow it overlook one troublesome possibility: what if the Lord has allowed one to become famous not just to sell one’s evangelical product but so that one’s witness in some other area will be heard? If this should turn out to be the case, it can be added as a footnote to the Second Law. In the meantime, those evangelicals who follow the law in its original form can be assured of earning their places in the forthcoming Dow-Jones handbook of religious successes, Profiles in Prudence.

Fresh And Inviting

Congratulations on CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S facelift! It is most attractive and readable. The headlines are clear, sharp, and the whole book has a fresh, inviting look to it.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is the one religious publication I feel I cannot be without—although, with many others, I cannot always agree with the posture on some of the issues.

Executive Vice President

World Vision International

Monrovia, Calif.

Another Maxim

My sincere thanks to Eutychus VI for his scintillating analysis of Bishop Creighton’s recent pronouncement about not ordaining any males until such time as the Episcopal Church permits the ordination of females to the sacred priesthood (“A Modest Proposal,” April 25). I do hope that the bishop reads CHRISTIANITY TODAY and comes to see the dishonesty of the position he has taken.

In the examination prior to his consecration as a bishop … he was asked: “Will you be faithful in ordaining, sending, or laying hands upon others?” His answer on May 1, 1959, was: “I will so be, by the help of God.” This was his pledge and promise to God on that day, but now, because he believes that God’s Holy Catholic Church is not obedient to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he rejects and denies this promise to God. Let’s not mince words: he is being dishonest and should resign his see forthwith!… I loved Eutychus’s closing new maxim: “Eat your cake now and bake it later.” It quite properly leads into an even older maxim frequently heard on the streets: “Put up or shut up.”

St. John’s Episcopal Church

Kansas City, Mo.

Taking A Stand

The editorial on “Waste as a Wrong” (April 11) was rightly directed toward examples of resourcefulness in the Bible. Similarly, there are many proofs of God’s abundance toward men in this book. Remember the widow’s vessels which Elisha filled with oil, and the disciples’ nets which, when cast on the right side, were filled with fishes.

God is continually demonstrating his care for us in supplying our every need when we turn to him in prayer. It is our obligation to him to make the most of the moments, opportunities, and energy he abundantly gives to us. This is taking an active stand against waste.

Elsah, Ill.

Another Bird

In listing clerical birds of the mid-seventies (“New Clerical Types, April 11), I am surprised that Eutychus VI left out clericus daemonigpaegnans furiouso, characterized by seeing Satanic activity in every untoward happening, and exorcising everyone in sight, with a maximum of showmanship and a minimum of exposition of Scripture for the spiritual stability of the exorcised. Chicago, Ill.

Clarifying Facts

Thank you for publishing the news story, “Released Time” (April 11). However, I feel some clarification needs to be made. The Bonneville Bible Academy is not sponsored by the Conservative Baptist Association as reported, but by the Washington Heights Baptist Church of Ogden, Utah. However, the academy is under the direct control and guidance of an interdenominational board of directors, and classes are for students of all denominations. The largest single denomination represented in the Bonneville Academy is Mormon. The article stated that the Bonneville Academy is headed by clergyman Henry Green. The name is the Reverend George Green and he is the teacher of the classes, and is doing an excellent job.

The Bonneville board is developing another academy at a new Weber County High School. A building has been constructed, and the classes will begin next year. The Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society is planning to furnish a teacher for the Weber Academy, but it is operated as an interdenominational program.

The Reverend ROBERT VANCE

Chairman

Board of Directors for Bonneville and Weber Academies

Ogden, Utah

The Old Straw Man

After reading Belden Menkus’s review of my book Hebrew Christianity: Its Theology, History, and Philosophy (Books in Review, March 28), I was left in a daze.…

One statement of his reads, “Fruchtenbaum concludes that a Jew who does not maintain his or her Jewish identity after becoming a Christian has not been truly redeemed.” Did I really say that in the book? As I looked through it again I found no such statement. On top of that I am a Calvinist who believes that redemption is solely based on one’s faith. I wish Belden Menkus had put in the page number where he arrived at that conclusion.… The reviewer totally confuses a distinction maintained by a separate Hebrew Christian church, with the maintaining of a Jewish culture within the local church. Is the Gentile Christian wedding ceremony any more “Christian” than a Jewish Christian ceremony? This is the real question that the reviewer has totally failed to wrestle with. When the Gospel is proclaimed to blacks, are the blacks required to give up their black culture and adopt the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture so prevalent in American Christianity? I assume that Belden Menkus would say that the answer is no, the black need not give up his black culture but simply conform his culture to the teachings of the New Testament, and certainly not everything in the WASP culture is Christian. Cannot Belden Menkus extend the same courtesy to Jewish culture? If maintaining black culture does not require a separate black church, why does the reviewer feel that maintaining a Jewish culture can only lead to a separate Jewish church?

Furthermore, he states that I conclude that “the Hebrew Christian is obligated to observe at least the six major annual festivals of Judaism.” Did I really say that? As I reread the book I wrote, especially pages 106 through 110, the point I made is that freedom from the Law meant the freedom not to observe anything demanded by the Law or the freedom to observe those parts of the Law that one may wish to observe on a voluntary basis. This hardly warrants Menkus’s strong word “obligated.” Would Belden Menkus say that since Christians are free to worship on Sunday or Wednesday they are therefore obligated to worship Sunday or Wednesday? When I said that the Hebrew Christians are free to observe and not to observe, that hardly means they are “obligated” to.

I do not demand that people agree with the things that I write. But I certainly demand that a reviewer know what I wrote and to portray what I wrote correctly. He is then free to criticize after presenting my correct views. This the reviewer failed to do, tragically. It is the old “straw man” technique. Apparently he simply states what he wished I believed and then proceeded to knock it down.

Editor and Director of Publications

American Board of Missions to the Jews

Englewood Cliffs, N. J.

To See It Work

As an evangelical who serves as a state senate chaplain, I concur with your March 14 editorial deploring California’s appointment of a chaplain outside the Judeo-Christian heritage (“When the Buddhist Prays”). However, I couldn’t let pass the innuendo of your suspicion that “the senate chambers, if they are like others, are pretty empty when the chaplain prays anyway.” Though I cannot answer for the other forty-nine states, here in Colorado better than 90 per cent of the senators are in their places when I pray. One day last week, when a significant minority were dawdling, the majority leader issued a quorum call prior to the invocation!

Incidentally, when I was first appointed, a cynical friend told me that “if you like baloney and love the law, you should never go see either one made.” To the contrary, I’ve spent enough time observing to be encouraged that integrity, hard work, and genuine public service still exist in these United States.

Chaplain, Senate of the State of Colorado

Lakewood, Colo.

Poetry And Contemplation: The Inner War Of Thomas Merton

Most modern Christian poets spend large portions of their creative lives engaged in an internal conflict that often rises to the level of civil war. That part of their personalities which seeks God often finds it difficult to lie down with that part which makes art. Probably no recent poet endured this conflict longer or suffered greater agonies from it than the Trappist monk Thomas Merton.

Something of a bohemian before, Merton after his conversion associated writing poems with the personal ambitions and worldliness from which he sought to be free. Consequently, when in December, 1941, he entered Our Lady of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, he assumed that along with his name he would leave his poetry behind. For a time he did. But in 1943 Robert Lax, an old friend from his undergraduate days at Columbia, visited him. When he left he took with him the manuscript of Thirty Poems, which New Directions issued in late 1944.

Merton responded with indifference; as far as he was concerned more poems were out of the question. Lax returned for a Christmas visit, urging him to write. Merton records his reaction to Lax’s enthusiasm in The Seven Storey Mountain and links it to an incident shortly after:

I did not argue about it. But in my own heart I did not think it was God’s will. And Dom Vital, my confessor, did not think so either.

Then one day—the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, 1945—I went to Father Abbot for direction, and without my ever thinking of the subject or mentioning it, he suddenly said to me:

“I want you to go on writing poems” [Harcourt, Brace, 1948, p. 402].

To adequately comprehend the force of this direction, which struck Merton almost like a blow, one must understand the import of the Cistercian life (the Trappists are a branch of the Cistercian order).

The Cistercians had their beginning in the eleventh century, in the monastic reforms that culminated in the founding of the abbey at Cîteaux in 1098. It remains a strict, contemplative order, one that allows an individual monk little interaction with the world. His day, beginning at 2 A.M., is spent in physical labor, meditation, and prayer. His goal is to lose his personal identity in the contemplation of God. His life is rooted in what the early church called the via negativa or the Way of Rejection. “It consists,” wrote Charles Williams in The Figure of Beatrice, “in the renunciation of all images except the final one of God himself.…”

Committed as he was, both by his personal inclination and by his vows, to the Way of Rejection, the order to continue writing poems meant to Merton the postponement of his deepest desire. In the essay “Poetry and Contemplation” he described that desire as “the voiding and emptying of the soul, cleansing it of all images, all likenesses of and attachments to created things so that it may be clean and pure to receive the obscure light of God’s own Presence.” Nevertheless Merton accepted the direction and continued to write poems. His vow of obedience left him no other choice. Unfortunately, while it ensured the production of poems, the vow could not resolve the tension Merton felt between his religious and poetic selves. He revealed the seriousness of the tension in The Seven Storey Mountain:

There was this shadow, this double, this writer who followed me into the cloister.

He is still on my track. He rides on my shoulders, sometimes like the old man of the sea. I cannot lose him. He still wears the name of Thomas Merton. Is it the name of an enemy?

He is supposed to be dead.

But he stands and meets me in the doorway of all my prayers, and follows me into church. He kneels with me behind the pillar, the Judas, and talks to me all the time in my ear.

And the worst of it is, he has my superiors on his side. They won’t kick him out. I can’t get rid of him.

Maybe in the end he will kill me, he will drink my blood.

Nobody seems to understand that one of us has to die [p. 400].

Merton’s conviction that writing would destroy his spiritual life, however, was a conviction that he eventually revised and then in practice rejected. How he came to recognize the opposition of the two as fundamentally false is directly related to his gradual grasp and appreciation of the via affirmativa or the Way of Affirmation.

The Way of Affirmation, like the Way of Negation, has as its end the loss of the believer in God. The means of achieving that end, however, involves looking closely at and then through the world, which, as the Psalms tell us, reveals the glory of God. While the methodology is essentially poetic, the Way is firmly established and made plain in the Incarnation. Writing of the Athanasian creed in Descent of the Dove, Charles Williams explains:

Thence it proceeds to the Incarnation: “it is necessary that he believe rightly.” It is in this connection that it produces a phrase which is the very maxim of the Affirmative Way: “Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh but by taking of the manhood into God.” And not only of the particular religious Way, but of all progress of all affirmations: it is the actual manhood which is to be carried on and not the height which is to be brought down. All images are, in their degree, to be carried on; mind is never to put off matter; all experience is to be gathered in [Eerdmans, 1972, p. 59].

For most Christians the Way of Affirmation is the dominant Way. It is the way of marriage, the way of art, the way of politics, the way of economics. It is, in short, the way of doing all to the glory of God. It is also a dangerous way, for the things of this world can be interesting in themselves, and the wise Christian usually tempers his affirmation with selected rejections. The normal Christian way, then, can be viewed as a balancing of the two mystical ways.

But the life of Thomas Merton was not that of an ordinary Christian. Both his monastic vows and his priestly orders ruled out the simple balancing-act solution of the layman. And the common depreciation of the affirmative way delayed his recognition of the only possible resolution of his dilemma. Dorothy Sayers set forth the nature of this depreciation in her essay “The Beatrician Vision”:

From the fifteenth century on, Western mysticism has tended to conform itself to the Eastern pattern, which, rejecting all messages conveyed by the senses and all images derived from the outer world, contemplates in darkness, under the “cloud of unknowing,” the dweller in the innermost—the immanent God who is the ground of the soul. The other pattern, which affirms all the images and contemplates the immanence of God in the visible things of creation, is very generally assumed to be not mystical in any exact sense.… [The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement, Gollancz, 1963, p. 51].

Although this attitude contributed to Merton’s difficulty, he did not fully succumb to it. Speaking of the great contemplatives of the past in his early devotional work Seeds of Contemplation (1949), he wrote, “Do you think that their love of God was compatible with a hatred for things that reflected Him and spoke of Him on every side?… The saint knows that the world and everything made by God is good.…” We may conclude that intellectually Merton was not susceptible to this error. But where his emotions are concerned it is another matter.

The Seven Storey Mountain, as well as the numerous recollections published by his friends since his death, shows Merton to have been incapable of doing anything halfway. Edward Rice in The Man in the Sycamore Tree described him as “full of energy … unchanged from day to day, cracking jokes, denouncing the Fascists, squares, being violently active, writing, drawing, involved in everything.” Before his conversion this vigorous involvement included indulgence in many activities and substances not mentioned in the heavily censored autobiography. They were, however, sufficiently questionable to cause the Franciscans to turn down his application to enter a novitiate in 1940.

After his conversion, Merton channeled his enthusiasm in more profitable directions, but it remained a factor in everything he did and must be considered as an influence in his decision to enter a religious life. For at the same time he was considering joining the Trappists at Gethsemani, he was considering a position as a staff worker at Friendship House, a kind of mission in Harlem. His final reasoning, at least as it is recorded in the last entry of The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton, is curious and enlightening:

Going to live in Harlem does not seem to me to be anything special. It is a good and reasonable way to follow Christ. But going to the Trappists is exciting, it fills me with awe and desire. I return to the idea again and again: “give up everything, give up everythingl” [Dell, 1960, p. 222].

An appealing romanticism is involved. There was an excitement in going the whole route that his personality couldn’t resist. He saw the Way of Negation as a challenge worthy of his whole life.

But another factor entered his decision, one that is not nearly so attractive. In turning his back on his worldliness he contemptuously turned his back on the world. Even the Way of Negation does not allow this, for contempt, in the words of an ancient canon, “blasphemously inveighs against the creation.” The strongest expression of Merton’s contempt was the novel The Journal of My Escape From the Nazis, which, while written in 1940, was not published until after his death, when it appeared as My Argument With the Gestapo. His seclusion in the monastery apparently tempered his hatred, but it reappeared sporadically as late as 1948 in The Seven Storey Mountain and was the cause for his eventual repudiation of that work as unloving and narrow.

The romanticism and the improper rejection reached into nearly all of his early poetry, coloring not only what he wrote but also his attitude towards writing in general. To Figures For an Apocalypse, the collection of poetry written over the same time period as The Seven Storey Mountain, he appended the essay “Poetry and Contemplation.” In it he concluded:

That poetry can, indeed, help us rapidly through that part of the journey to contemplation that is called active: but when we are entering the realm of true contemplation, where eternal happiness begins, it may turn around and bar our way.

In such an event, there is only one course for the poet to take, for his own individual sanctification: the ruthless and complete sacrifice of his art [New Directions, 1948, p. 109].

Merton’s published journals covering these years (1946–52) are filled with references to giving up writing, and it is clear that, had his circumstances not been altered, Merton probably would have sacrificed his art. In 1948, however, Dom Frederic Dunne, his abbot, died, and Dom Gabriel Sortais, the Cistercian vicar general, traveled to Gethsemani for the funeral. He remained to oversee the election of a new abbot. During his stay, Merton was appointed to serve as his interpreter and secretary. Consequently, when Dom Gabriel was called to Louisville, Merton accompanied him, leaving the monastery for the first time in seven years. He recounts it in The Sign of Jonas:

We drove into town with Senator Dawson, a neighbor of the monastery, and all the while I wondered how I would react at meeting once again, face to face, the wicked world. I met the world and I found it no longer so wicked after all. Perhaps the things I had resented about the world when I left it were defects of my own that I had projected upon it. Now, on the contrary, I found that everything stirred me with a deep and mute sense of compassion. Perhaps some of the people we saw going about the streets were hard and tough … but I did not stop to observe it because I seemed to have lost an eye for the merely exterior detail and to have discovered, instead, a deep sense of respect and love and pity for the souls that such details never fully reveal. I went through the city, realizing for the first time in my life how good are all the people in the world and how much value they have in the sight of God [Harcourt, Brace, 1953, pp. 97, 98].

In the course of six hours, Merton’s life had been turned around. He had left the monastery committed to rejecting all images except the final one of God himself. He returned affirming, for the first time, the image called Man and seeing through that image the presence and grace of the Creator of all images. The possibility of a dual calling to poetry and to contemplation opened to him. He responded by going forward. A year later he wrote:

And yet it seems to me that writing, far from being an obstacle to spiritual perfection in my own life, has become one of the conditions on which my perfection will depend. If I am to be a saint—and there is nothing else that I can think of desiring to be—it seems that I must get there by writing books in a Trappist monastery. If I am to be a saint, I have not only to be a monk, which is what all monks must do to become saints, but I must also put down on paper what I have become. It may sound simple, but it is not an easy vocation [The Sign of Jonas, p. 228].

Merton’s evaluation of the difficulty of his vocation proved correct. He had, indeed, turned around, but the full acceptance of the new direction was not automatic. The conflict that had tormented him for seven years could not be laid to rest in one dramatic affirmation. His doubts recurred, but he continued to write, by choice. Finally he realized that his writing earned him what privacy and solitude he had.

He had other lessons to learn as well. Because of his increasing fame he was forced to answer voluminous piles of mail. And as he responded, sometimes with personal notes, sometimes with printed cards, he proved in his life that the purpose of solitude and contemplation was not a final withdrawal but an eventual return to the world, filled with the love and compassion of Christ. On March 3, 1953, he wrote in his journal:

Coming to the monastery has been for me exactly the right kind of withdrawal. It has given me perspective. It has taught me how to live. And now I owe everyone else in the world a share in that life. My first duty is to start, for the first time, to live as a member of a human race which is no more (and no less) ridiculous than I am myself. And my first human act is the recognition of how much I owe everybody else [The Sign of Jonas, p. 312].

For Thomas Merton, writing poems and writing books became a way of returning to the world he could not actually reenter. And as he gave up his largely selfish desire to be totally absorbed in the contemplation of God, as he willed instead God’s will, he found that the inner war of his religious and poetic vocations quieted. But he found that it was not because he had reconciled the two in theory. He found that just as God had willed them reconciled in practice for St. John of the Cross, God had willed them reconciled in practice for Thomas Merton.

John Leax is assistant professor of English at Houghton College, New York.

Almost every day newspapers tell of another war or revolution somewhere in the world. It is painfully clear that something is wrong with the human race. Why, with all our progress in education, science, technology, and philosophy, do violent conflicts remain? Why can’t we solve the human predicament?

We are living in what is called a new world—a world of revolutionary outlook and of dynamic change. But as the Bible puts it “there is no new thing under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9), and man can no more change his nature than the leopard can change his spots (Jer. 13:23).

The noted historian Arnold Toynbee once said that as long as original sin remains an element in human nature, Caesar will always have work to do. Toynbee believes there is no reason to expect any change in unredeemed human nature. There has been no perceptible variation in the average sample of human nature in the past, and so there is no ground, in the evidence of history, to expect any great variation in the future. All 6,000 years of recorded history, according to Toynbee’s study, reveal one truth: that man cannot save himself.

Pitirim A. Sorokin, a renowned sociologist and a former Russian revolutionary leader, searched exhaustively but found no cure for human ills in any human systems or schemes, whether political, economic, educational, or scientific. He said:

The shortest, the most efficient and the only practical way of really alleviating and shortening the crisis is by reintegrating its religious, moral, scientific, philosophical, and other values … primarily in the values of moral duty and the kingdom of God.… Without the Kingdom of God, we are doomed to a weary and torturing pilgrimage from calamity to calamity, from crisis to crisis, with only brief moments of transitory improvement for regaining our breath [see Sorokin’s The Reconstruction of Humanity, chaps. 1–3; Social and Cultural Dynamic; The Crisis of Our Age, chap. 9; Man and Society in Calamity, chap. 18].

Revolutionary Nature Of The Gospel

This biblical, historical, and sociological evidence offers good reason to rethink the revolutionary nature of the Gospel and to assume our solemn responsibility to preach the true Gospel. We need to give a reason for our hope to the people of the world who are being deceived by false doctrines and bewildered by false lights. First of all, we must tell the world that the Gospel is by its nature revolutionary. Christian world missions is a divine revolution. In the spiritual sense, Jesus Christ is the only true revolutionary leader. Christian revolution is timeless and spiritual, and the most powerful and dynamic in its implications for human lives. Compared with Jesus, all other revolutionary leaders are mere frauds; compared with Christianity, all other revolutionary doctrines are vain deceit. For only Jesus Christ can make a complete change in human nature and a fundamental transformation of the human value system.

Man spends too much time trying to change the world instead of trying to change the people who make the world what it is. World problems are an extension of individual problems. When man looks at the world, he sees himself, with all his fear, meaninglessness, hatred, and self-centeredness. The world cannot be changed so long as human nature remains unchanged.

Jesus Christ, the greatest revolutionary of all time, talked about change not in government but in the human heart. Most revolutions are accomplished by violence and by dramatic events, but not so with the spiritual revolution that Christ brings. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. This is the revolution we need, and this is the intrinsic nature of the Gospel.

Revolutionary Power Of The Gospel

But in this activist generation, the power of the Gospel has been greatly underestimated or has been restated in terms of “social action” (“social activism” is a more accurate term, for reasons that I will state later). While some activists are certainly sincere in their efforts, few if any fully understand the true nature of the revolutionary power of the Gospel. Lacking this understanding, they mistakenly regard evangelism and social action as mutually exclusive. But the regenerating result of the preaching of the Gospel is not merely a “religious” matter; it affects the whole of a person’s life. The Christian is to place all his activities under the Lordship of Christ.

History shows that the preaching of the Gospel has been not only a highly effective form of social action but also a mighty revolutionary power. The job of preaching is to inject a leaven into the social and political order and infuse a new spiritual life into secular culture and civilization. The early disciples did that, and that handful of unlearned and ignorant and despised people was enabled by the Holy Spirit to turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6).

In the early history of the Christian Church, the Christian revolution swept all the way from Jerusalem across Asia Minor, Greece, and Macedonia to the gates of Rome. This has been described by the church fathers. They did not seek to set up new social, economic, or political systems. Their prime objective was winning men and women to Jesus Christ. From this, they felt, all other good results would flow. Historian W. Stanford Reid has written:

The impact of Christianity on the society of the Roman Empire was powerful for the elevation of the status of women, the care of the poor, the abolition of slavery. The Reformation may be said to have had an even greater political, economic, and social influence. Many ideas that are being talked about today, such as the equality of all persons, the rights of the individual, and the responsibility of people to “do their own thing,” are secularized versions of the teaching of Luther, Calvin, and their followers. Many of the social and political reforms of the nineteenth century likewise sprang directly out of the Evangelical Revival, leading to social and political action to protect exploited workers, to free Negro slaves, and to help the poor and downtrodden [“Preaching Is Social Action,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 4, 1971, page 11].

Even a secular historian, William E. H. Lecky, has recognized that the Evangelical Revival spared England from the throes and calamity of a revolution like the French.

These historical facts reveal the truth that Christianity is not a mere “religion” but an ever-renewing and revolutionary power. They encourage us to revitalize evangelistic efforts and to revive a revolutionary spirit to challenge the social activists.

Revolutionary Spirit Of The Gospel

Since the weapons of the Christian’s warfare are not carnal, his strategy of revolution cannot be in the form of frontal assault upon the world or its governments, nor can it employ violence, as the “new breed” clergymen advocate. Christian revolution should be primarily a revolution in the “inner man” (Eph. 3:15) “by the renewing of the mind” (Rom. 12:2). Real social uplift and enduring national renovation can be achieved only through the regeneration of individuals. The social radicals put the cart before the horse by stressing solely the salvation of social structures and by erroneously translating the biblical truths of “sin” as “exploitation” and “salvation” as “liberation” or “social revolution.” They are keenly interested in attacking the corruption of government, but they overlook the alarming corruption of man—such common matters as organized crime, adultery, fornication, murder, looting, kidnapping, pornographic literature, and unwholesome films and television programs.

Evangelicals must put on the whole armor of God, challenge the radical social activists, and pray that they may be rescued from the snare of the devil, who is trying to deceive the world, even God’s elect, with his new strategy—the new social gospel (social activism).

1. First of all, evangelicals must make it clear that while a Christian must never lose his deep sense of concern about the vital problems of mankind, nonetheless, as a true revolutionary, he must carefully discern the difference between what the late L. Nelson Bell called “ ‘involvement’ in the world for Christ’s sake” and “ ‘entanglement’ in the ways of the world by Satan’s power.” Moreover, in order to be involved he must first thoroughly study the problems and know how to be involved; otherwise, he is likely to get entangled in the horizontal perplexities and fall deeper and deeper into the snares of the devil.

2. Evangelicals must make clear the difference between “social activism” and “social action.” Social activism is “love in word and in speech, but not in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). The actions yielded by “social activism” are such things as wild street demonstrations and violent looting and burning, actions that are motivated not by love but by hate. Those who engage in social action go to war-torn and poverty-ridden countries with the Gospel, food, medicine, doctors and nurses, and relief funds, at the risk of their own safety and lives; the social activists stay behind, preaching in air-conditioned churches or shouting slogans on the street for “peace, peace when there is no peace.”

The social radicals are not aware of the tragic fact that under the Communist regime there is only a worse form of capitalism: its boss is the Party, which has no concern for the individual or social concern whatsoever. The Communists use “poverty” as a political weapon, but do not really care for the poor. The exploitation and oppression are more cruel under the “reign of terror” of Communist regimes than under any form of colonialism, feudalism, or despotism!

3. Evangelicals must make it clear that while the true revolutionaries maintain a sense of social concern, they never follow the god of the social radicals, who demands change in social structures, not in individuals.

4. Evangelicals must show that the true revolutionaries are different from the frauds who deal only with surface phenomena, who offer only aspirin to a society suffering from a tumor. What the world needs is not something that merely dulls the pain but something that cuts deep enough to change the basic unit of society: man. Social action without a vertical and transcendental relation with God only creates horizontal anxieties and perplexities!

Furthermore, social radicals are actually ignorant of the social issues; they are rarely experts in the social sciences. They demand immediate change or destruction of social structures, but provide no plan for a new society. They can be likened to the fool in a Chinese story who tried to help a plant grow faster by pulling it higher. Of course, his “action” only caused the plant to wither and die.

5. Evangelicals must challenge social radicals to distinguish between true repentance and “social repentance.” The Bible says, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret; but worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10). This was the bitter experience of many former Russian Marxists, who after their conversion to Christ came to understand that they had only a sort of “social repentance”—a sense of guilt before the peasant and the proletariat but not before God. They confessed that, in the words of Nicolas Zernov, “a Russian [Marxist] intellectual as an individual is often a mild and loving creature, but his creed [Marxism] constrains him to hate.”

6. Lastly, above all, evangelicals must challenge social radicals to be aware of the danger of the new strategy of the old serpent. Satan is very subtle. He is familiar with the trends of theology and knows that evangelicals have refuted the old social gospel. Now he is preaching a new social gospel (social activism) in using “social concern” and “social justice” as pretenses and has raised a group within the New Left to be his preachers, penetrating to all walks of life, especially to the young intellectuals. On the other hand, the international Communists are using a more devilish form of brain washing to change the mentality of the free world. Among those who advance their cause are well-meaning but naïve theologians and preachers who “refused to love the truth,” and instead “believe a lie”!

Evangelical Christians have sometimes advocated the death penalty with an ardor approaching glee. Such enthusiasm is shameful. With our compassionate Father we should declare, “As I live, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezek. 33:11; this and subsequent quotations are from the New American Standard Bible).

The death penalty is a horror. It is this not, as the humanists say, because it destroys the sanctity of human life, but because it testifies to the failure of human society to live up to the potential for justice and righteousness that comes from having been created in the image of God. The very existence of death is a perpetual penalty for mankind’s original sin. Death is our enemy. The command to “put away sin from among you” by the proper administration of the death penalty contains the promise of societal benefits; yet this same necessity to cast out evil required the death penalty for Jesus so that we could be freed from our own sentences of death. We all deserve the penalty of death.

To be Christian in personal behavior as well as social policy, advocates of the death penalty should present their case in a subdued manner. Exuberance for them is as inappropriate as the raucous clamor now heard on behalf of abortion.

Another factor ought to modify the advocacy of the death penalty: Old Testament judicial procedure. Though often presumed to be primitive, the legal processes in the Mosaic law are in many ways equivalent to those of the American system, and in some aspects superior. Evangelical Christians who favor the death penalty ought to be aware of the judicial safeguards God provided to prevent the miscarriage of justice and protect the rights of the accused.

Five aspects of the judicial procedure under the Mosaic code bear significantly on the appropriate use of the death penalty:

1. The standard of proof required for conviction amounted to certainty. Unlike the American system, which requires proof “beyond reasonable doubt” in criminal cases, the Mosaic law provides that “you shall inquire thoroughly. And behold, if it is true and the thing certain that this detestable thing has been done in Israel,” then the judicial sanctions may be invoked, including the death penalty (Deut. 17:4).

2. Conviction required the testimony of more than one witness. Under the American system, circumstantial evidence alone or combined with the testimony of a single witness may be sufficient for a criminal conviction, but under the Mosaic law two or more witnesses are essential. “On the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed” (Deut. 19:15; also Deut. 17:6, Num. 35:30). Circumstantial evidence apparently would never be enough.

The text, however, does not indicate precisely what these witnesses must testify to. That is, must they be eyewitnesses to the crime or merely corroborators of the physical evidence? The internal logic of the passages implies to me that eyewitnesses were intended. First, it is difficult to think that circumstantial evidence, even if fully corroborated, could often amount to certainty. Second, the administration of the death penalty by stoning was to be begun by having the witnesses cast the first stones (Deut. 17:7); this would be an excellent form of psychological testing to pressure a lying eyewitness to reveal himself at the last moment, before the irreparable act had been accomplished, but would seem unlikely to influence greatly the behavior of merely corroborative witnesses. Third, the definitions of some crimes require information that only an eyewitness could supply. For example, Numbers 35:16–24 makes a distinction between murder and manslaughter partially on the basis of whether the victim was killed by an object held in the suspect’s hand or by an object thrown or dropped. Other than an eyewitness, who could tell?

3. Under the Mosaic law the penalty for perjury in a capital case was execution. “If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing … then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother” (Deut. 19:16, 19). Such a system would effectively discourage “framing” someone for a crime, and would put even the most honest witnesses under compulsion to limit their testimony to actual observations and avoid inferences or assumptions (especially concerning the identification of suspects) lest their errors be mistaken for intentional perjury and put them in jeopardy of their lives.

4. In difficult cases the verdict was deferred to judicial experts. Deuteronomy 17:8, 9 directs:

If any case is too difficult for you to decide, between one kind of homicide or another, between one kind of lawsuit or another, and between one kind of assault or another, being cases of dispute in your courts, then you shall arise and go up to the place which the LORD your God chooses. So you shall come to the Levitical priest or the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall inquire of them, and they will declare to you the verdict in the case.

One of the weaknesses of the American jury system is that after making decisions concerning the facts, jurors sometimes do not understand the law well enough to apply the law to the facts at hand. Also, if a trial results in a hung jury, a completely new jury trial is necessitated, or else the charges are dropped. Under the Mosaic procedures, confusing or borderline cases were to be decided not by the local officials but by special priests or judges who were experts in the law and who fully understood, for example, the legal distinctions between the various kinds of homicide, assault, and lawsuits. Under the American system of judicial review the jury must reach a decision first, and even then the appellate courts can review only the judicial procedures employed in the trial. They do not ordinarily re-examine the evidence. Under the Mosaic code, on the other hand, the local “jury” was prohibited from attempting to decide cases beyond its capacities, and the “appellate” court was required to study and re-evaluate the evidence.

In addition, the Mosaic code provided that the presentation of the evidence before the judge or priest was to take place in a different location from the original trial. This provision, like our modern procedures for change of venue, no doubt reduced the effects of local prejudice for or against the defendant, a very significant safeguard against injustice.

5. Finally, once the verdict was returned, under the Mosaic system the death penalty was mandatory. The judge would have no discretion in sentencing. “No proscribed person who may have been set apart among men shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death” (Lev. 27:29; also Num. 35:31). One of the chief arguments against the death penalty when it was invalidated by the United States Supreme Court in 1972 was that it was “unusual” punishment, meaning that statistics proved it had been invoked discriminatorily. A far lower percentage of whites were being executed than minority-group convicts for equivalent crimes. Discrimination would not have been possible under the mandatory sentencing provisions of the Mosaic law.

We have seen that in the areas of evidence, judgment, and sentencing the Mosaic law code functions more restrictedly than the American judicial system. Fewer people would be convicted under the Mosaic code than under the penal codes of any of our fifty states. Those who are lobbying to restore the death penalty for biblical reasons ought also to consider lobbying for imposition of the procedural safeguards under which God directed that the death penalty be implemented.

There may be yet another reason why evangelicals should qualify or mitigate their enthusiastic endorsement of the death penalty. Suggested new death-penalty statutes apply the sanction not only against various (though not all) kinds of murder but also against other acts, such as treason and lewd acts committed against children under age fourteen. Evangelical supporters need to determine for what crimes the death penalty should be considered appropriate according to the biblical norms.

The Mosaic code prescribes the death penalty for eighteen crimes: (1) Murders—Exod. 21:12–14, 20; 22:2, 3; Lev. 20:2; 24:17, 21; Num. 35:11–21, 30; Deut. 19:11–13. (2) Accidentally causing the death of a pregnant woman or her baby (?) if injured in the course of a fight—Exod. 21:22–25. (3) Killing of a person by a dangerous animal that had killed before, yet was not kept caged (both the animal and the owner to be killed)—Exod. 21:28–30. (4) Kidnapping—Exod. 21:16; Deut. 24:7. (5) Rape of a married woman (but not rape of a virgin)—Deut. 22:25–29. (6) Fornication—Deut. 22:13–21; Lev. 21:9; exception, Lev. 19:20–22. (7) Adultery—Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22–24; Num. 5:12–30. (8) Incest—Lev. 20:11–12, 14. (9) Homosexuality—Lev. 20:13. (10) Sexual intercourse with an animal—Lev. 20:15, 16; Exod. 22:19. (11) Striking a parent—Exod. 21:15. (2) Cursing a parent—Exod. 21:17; Lev. 20:9. (13) Rebelling against parents—Deut. 21:18–21. (14) Sorcery, witchcraft—Exod. 22:18; Lev. 20:27. (15) Cursing God—Lev. 24:10–16. (16) Attempting to lead people to worship other gods—Deut. 13:1–16; 18:20; cf. Exod. 22:20. (17) Avenging a death despite acquittal by the law—Deut. 17:12. (18) Intentionally testifying falsely against someone in jeopardy of the death penalty—Deut. 19:16–19.

For which, if any, of these crimes should the United States or the fifty states re-establish the death penalty? If not for all of them, why not? Believers should be able to explain to unbelievers at least why they have selected certain crimes for the reinstatement of the death penalty, and they should be able to explain to other believers why their selection represents a consistent mode of biblical interpretation and demonstrates obedience to the sovereign authority of God.

One response could be that the Mosaic law code was intended only for Israel and no longer applies to us, especially in view of the teachings of Jesus. If that appraisal is accepted, the death penalty remains only for murder, because it alone pre-dates the legislation from Sinai. In Genesis 9:5, 6 God instructed Noah:

And surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.

Whoever sheds man’s blood,

By man his blood shall be shed,

For in the image of God

He made man.

What, then, about treason? Although not even explicitly on the Mosaic list, perhaps the death penalty for treason could be condoned by analogy. Since God was the head of the ancient government of Israel, to curse or defy God might be interpretable as analogous to treason against the supreme authority of the state. But even so, to accept that reasoning requires acceptance of the continuing validity of the Mosaic list. What then about blasphemy, sorcery, and witchcraft? What about private sexual acts between consenting adults?

If the notion of such broad application of the death penalty is distressing, notice at least that the crimes involved are all crimes against persons or against God. Property damage under the Mosaic law never brought the death penalty, though it did under the Code of Hammurabi and under the laws of European nations as recently as the eighteenth century. The Mosaic laws are carefully written to protect the recognizability of the image of God in men and women and to enforce basic human rights. The remaining laws defend the social structure itself by reinforcing the authority of the family unit and by accepting the sovereignty of God. The laws reflect rational principles and should not be dismissed as simply unreasonable or arbitrary.

The Mosaic law code cannot be treated as merely optional. Even though we believe that the enforcement of all of these penalties resides entirely with the government and not with the church, nevertheless to the extent that Christians attempt to influence the government they are not free to express personal preferences as though these fully disclosed the pronouncements of God. Perhaps we can say nothing to the government at all about crime and punishment, though to say nothing would be to leave the state to function on unbiblical, and therefore potentially inaccurate, ideas of good and evil. If we do choose to speak the truth, however, surely we must speak the whole truth.

The decision on whether to support the whole range of uses for the death penalty under the Mosaic law should not depend on their acceptability to our sensibilities. Properly considered, advocacy of the death penalty for all or none or just for murder should result from an independent decision about the applicability of the whole Old Testament revelation to New Testament Christianity. Such a decision should be a prerequisite to advocacy of the death penalty in any form.

Capital punishment is one of the life-and-death issues (along with war, abortion, and euthanasia) on which concerned Christians cannot divorce themselves from the actions of their government. When you speak out concerning the death penalty, however, speak soberly, for you are dealing with people’s lives and their final destiny; speak very precisely, for you are discussing a concept about which God has spoken precisely and in detail; and speak honestly and fully, for you are conveying a message for God, and his revelation should be forthrightly declared, no more and yet no less.

Many Christians take offense at any suggestion of dishonesty in Christian circles. They insist that Christians are above all honest. Is it true? In many ways, yes. We would, for instance, return the extra dollar in our change to the store clerk. But on the other hand we may give the impression that God’s presence keeps us always on “cloud nine,” when we know we also have times of depression. Our testimony may suggest that we live a victorious Christian life of exalted mood and no defeat, when we know very well that life is not always like that. We make it seem as if our “peak” experience is an ever-present reality. Isn’t this a form of dishonesty?

I lead what most people would consider an interesting and rewarding life. I teach stimulating university students about fascinating subjects, knowing that I am opening new doors for many. I direct a foundation aimed at helping missionaries and other Christian workers who have emotional problems; I work personally with those whose problems are severe enough to interfere with their ability to adjust, and can see the positive changes made in their lives as a result. I have opportunities to speak to receptive audiences in many places in the world. I have been personally involved in the lives of hundreds through their sharing and my helping in psychotherapy. I have stimulating business interests that add a wholly different dimension to my life. I get great satisfaction from using talents in writing, singing, painting, and construction.

Yet at times I am caught up in feelings of hopelessness, defeat, and horrible despair. Sometimes nothing goes right. Mistakes accumulate in rapid succession, and I feel ready to give up. Life seems not to be worth the herculean effort I am making to keep things going.

But in time there comes again the realization that “underneath are the everlasting arms.” This was the verse my father gave me as I left for a war that was to try my soul and body in new and devilish ways. Because God was faithful then, I have a glimmer of hope that he will be faithful now, and so I plod on, realizing that this too—this horrible mood—shall pass.

Sometimes help comes unexpectedly, as in an appreciative letter from a former client or student who, perhaps unknowingly, had been helped years ago. Then the thought comes that perhaps there is more going on right now than I realize. This spurs me to get out of my morbid preoccupation with failure, obstruction, or the seeming callousness of God’s people toward the needs of mankind.

If I made the mistake of comparing my state at these low points to the exaltation I hear described in testimonies as if it were the Christian’s continual state, I would be tempted all the more to give up on everything. But I know better than to make this error. I know that many of those people have had the same kinds of problems that I am experiencing, because I have helped them when they have honestly faced their low points in my office.

Most Christians, however, don’t have the opportunity I have to see both sides of the coin. The result is sometimes deep, lonely despair that may lead to neurosis, psychosis, or even suicide—and often it is related to other Christians’ emotional dishonesty.

James admonishes us to confess our faults to one another and pray for healing (5:2). Bearing one another’s burdens, as Paul instructed us in Galatians 6:2, is a significant step in bearing one’s own burden (Gal. 6:5), which we all eventually have to do. It helps the bearer as well as the sharer.

Each time we are emotionally dishonest and try to convey a false picture of a victorious Christian experience, we are depriving others of the opportunity to know us better and to grow spiritually and personally in the process. I am suggesting not that we continually cry on other persons’ shoulders but that we need to develop more honesty about the state we are in. Knowing that others have conflicts too and are coping with them gives hope to Christians who are in the midst of depression.

The bubbling fountain of life that we all want to experience all the time is in reality a waxing and waning of many experiences. The victorious life is one that rises above the failure and continues even though the emotional experience of that failure or loss seems to preclude any movement. And sometimes it is necessary to have someone work through those failures with us, until our perspective returns again. A trained counselor working in the church support center may be what is needed to help us learn the necessary truth about our inner life; or it may require the help of a dedicated professional, who can be the instrument of the Holy Spirit.

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way. The way we learn those lessons is not to deny the feelings but to find the meaning underlying them. In this manner we grow to become more like the persons God wants us to be. The “refiner’s fire” may well be the mood problems we experience. If we deny that these feelings exist, we deny that God can use them to help us. We refuse to profit from them, to learn from them how to grow in our emotional and spiritual life. And our emotional dishonesty may be creating problems for others.

In the new “wave” of treatment of persons with severe emotional disturbances, many authorities suggest that tranquilizers or mood elevators not be used, so that the person who is undergoing the mood changes can discover the significance of the problem underlying the emotional upset. The implication is that chemically changing the mood deprives the person of the opportunity to find reasons why the upset occurred. An effect similar to the chemical mood change can be produced if one denies the reality of the mood itself, which is what some Christians are trying to do. One can fool himself by this sort of emotional dishonesty some of the time, and one can fool others much of the time by a vibrant testimony to what is a partial reality in his life. However, we eventually have to deal with this misrepresentation in other ways, such as, possibly, a conversion to a physical disorder that seems to appear mysteriously.

How can we learn the lessons we need to learn unless we face our problems and do something about them? Emotional honesty is necessary for one’s own spiritual and emotional growth, and it also helps others to get the right perspective on their own experience. This is what Paul speaks of in Galatians 6, the “bearing through sharing” that helps us to carry our own burden.

A PRINCE AT PENIEL

When No and No and No can in one day

become as life unborn, unthought of, a

refusal without form or reason, play

on weary words which falter in their way,

then what has seemed a fortress can dissolve

into a fragrant mist from heathered hills,

a home for one reborn to deep resolve,

to unsheathed heart, and tendered mind that wills

to walk with words that build not fortresses

of sculptured stone but altars simply set

to speak of one unalterable Yes

to living sacrifice lest we forget

and build again our fortresses to mar

our garden moor with fear of what we are.

CAROLE SANDERSON STREETER