Novelty and change, not moral wisdom and eternal verities, are its consuming passions

It has become common sport in the “post-modern” world to berate other civilizations for their resistance to change. Most post-moderns—apart from a few who are presumed to be romantics, reactionaries, and die-hards—see the domination of traditionalistic elements as the fatal flaw in previous eras: the nineteenth century, the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and others. The authentic man of today is portrayed as having broken the shackles of provincialism and emerged from the prison-house of conservatism into the full light of honesty, objectivity, and freedom. He imagines himself to be creating, if not a Great Society, at least a brave new world.

This in itself is not a novel theme. It is the perennial cry of adolescence and justification of revolution. Certainly Renaissance man, Enlightenment man, and Utopian man of the late Victorian period have all had their part in the formation of the post-modern attitude. What is new is the extent to which this view has come to pervade our self-understanding. It has evolved from a consciously articulated ideology into an unconscious philosophy of life. It is now more a common prejudice than a credo.

Despite the tragic disillusionments of the twentieth century, despite the message of the preachers of alienation and the prophets of despair, the basic presupposition of our culture seems firmly entrenched: the newest is the truest and the latest is the best. Change has become practically synonymous with progress, and age signifies obsolescence. For anything to remain essentially unaltered over long periods of time does not suggest, as it once did, intimations of immortality; it suggests sterility and death. As a symbol of eternity post-modern man would choose not the circle but the fossil.

If other ears and cultures accepted too uncritically traditional and seemingly time-tested values, post-modernity rejects values precisely because they are traditional and therefore “dated.” Avant-gardism is the new creed, whether in art, literature, drama, music, philosophy, politics, or religion. The desirability of novelty and change has become the working hypothesis of our culture.

The New as Locus of Authority

We have therefore created a religious situation without parallel in the history of man. In primitive societies the focal point of authority was located in the past, and truth was practically synonymous with age. The wisdom that was to be learned by generation after generation was the wisdom of the past, indeed of the primordial past. Out of the time of the beginnings came the archetypes by which all subsequent existence was defined; the mythical illud tempus provided the definitive pattern for every significant venture. Education was a matter of learning what had always been known, or rediscovering what had been forgotten.

In antiquity, though new and more sophisticated formulations of knowledge emerged, the concern still existed to authenticate these through an appeal to the past, through a demonstration that the new perceptions and articulations were present, at least germinally, in the old. This is apparent in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Even the Greek Sophists, for all their skepticism and iconoclasm, were anxious to show the continuity of their teaching with the wisdom of previous generations.

Ancient man assumed that the oldest repositories of knowledge were the most authoritative. But post-modern man adopts the opposite assumption the older the source, the less its authority. The new is the locus of authority.

This is more than adolescent rebellion and a demand for freedom and autonomy; the problems of adolescence are, in fact, exaggerated by it. And it is more than the result of the increasing predominance of those under twenty-five in the population—though this undoubtedly lends support to the post-modern credo. The principal reason for the phenomenon is the rapid rise of science and technology, and of the knowledge this has brought. In science it is fairly safe to assume that the newest is the truest and the latest is the best; there is good reason to equate change with progress. But what has happened is that this assumption that is reasonable in science and technology has unjustifiably been extended to other fields, including religion and ethics.

The A-historical Mood

The ironic result of all this is that, at the very time when man has achieved the greatest knowledge of and perspective on history, he seems to have become a-historical. Post-modern man is involved in an annulment of history, not through a continuous repetition of mythical archetypes, nor through a mystical transcendence of time, but through an ignoring of history, a repudiation of prior forms, a denial of the present relevance of the past. Today, to preface a plea with a reference to “our forefathers” is disastrous. Even if we accept the greatness of past persons or eras, we question their relevance. With an attitude whose egoism is exceeded only by its parochialism, we elevate the present to a position of uniqueness and enlightenment that requires its own autonomous creations of meaning and value.

Relevance, furthermore, is often immediate relevance, and post-modern man tends to ignore the future also. He defines and determines relevance by the moment, rather than locating the moment within an overall perspective that defines and determines relevance. It is no coincidence that the post-modern era is the era of the “happening.” The happening just happens—without past or future, without precedent or structure, without plan or rule, without meaning or purpose.

The term “avant-garde,” with its suggestion of being on the frontier, in touch with the latest advances, provides the certification of novelty and change that postmodern man so desperately needs. He must surround himself with the newest artifacts of his civilization, whether the more tangible creations—the latest inventions, designs, styles—or the intangible ones—the latest ideas, values, or aesthetic forms. If ancient man had an ontological thirst for Being, post-modern man seems to have developed an ontological thirst for Becoming. The restlessness that seeks the eternal (Augustine) has been channeled into a search for unending change. No one asks seriously whether the new is an improvement over the old; that is easily taken for granted. The labeling of an idea or movement “avant-garde”—that is, “fore-guard,” ahead of the “old guard” and the “rear guard”—in itself implies an advance. We are carried halfway by the terminology alone. We see ourselves standing heroically on the new frontier of man, the threshold of the future.

Related to this is the near total absence in contemporary culture of a body of practical moral wisdom. Other generations had a large oral tradition that presented a guide to everyday life in the form of pithy, easily remembered maxims. Often part of it was from the Bible. But today proverbial wisdom has fallen into disuse and disrepute. Maxims are quoted only rarely—and then often in jest.

The problem all this poses for a scripturally oriented Christianity is obvious. What happens to the Bible? How does it speak with challenge and authority to the man who is conditioned by his culture to reject anything that antedates the immediate era? How does one speak of the relevance of ancient Israel or of a first-century Nazarene when the relevance of the past is precisely what is in question?

What happens to the Church? Where does all this place an institution that speaks of someone born not sixty-seven years ago but 1,967 years ago; that talks about an ancient heritage and preserves traditions; that performs long-established rituals and rites; that sings of the “faith of our fathers”? The suggestion seems inevitable that the Church is the caretaker of the past, the perpetuator of archaic forms, an organization with vested interests in the established order—indeed, the institutional embodiment of grey hair.

The philosophy of post-modern man is the Sartrian dictum that “existence precedes essence.” A free and genuine existence is not one that looks to pre-existent norms for a determination of its essence; it is one in which each man creates his own essence. The relation of the individual to prior forms must, in effect, be one of creation ex nihilo; the past must be treated as the nothingness out of which each man is to structure his own identity. Authenticity is achieved only if one creates his own values, ideals, morals, and relationships—through which he creates himself and his world. To rely upon past judgments and actions is to evade responsibility. To permit the past to define one’s humanity is to forfeit personal freedom.

The Biblical Perspective

The post-modern appreciation of the new and insistence upon change certainly contains truth. In fact, it stems ultimately from the biblical faith. The biblical writers, though they valued history, were not attached to the old. In Scripture God is seen as the Lord of history, who calls to change and who is the author of change, who is not a static but a living God. The Bible talks about the new things God has done, is doing, and will do. The temporal plane is seen as a series of divine epiphanies, none of which is a mere repetition of the former, and none of which can be anticipated. In the words of Isaiah, “From this time forth I make you hear new things, hidden things which you have not known. They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them” (Isa. 48:6b, 7).

Novelty and change are not only made possible in the biblical view; they are valued. As a result, the biblical outlook turns not only to the past but also to the present and the future in exhortation, warning, and urgency, in faith, striving, and expectancy. There is the element of anticipation and destiny, the vision of movement and special fulfillment in history. Its orientation is not in the primordial, nor in mythical archetypes, but in the present moment of divine revelation and activity, set in a historical context of such moments in the past and looking ahead to such moments yet to come.

The prophets in particular were those who called the people to new things, who challenged existing practices, who were the recipients of new moral and spiritual visions. In a sense they were avant-garde of God in Israel. They were hardly defenders of the status quo; they spoke out courageously and relentlessly against “the establishment” and the injustice and immorality of the day.

On the other hand, in the Bible the new never annuls the old. It arises out of the past; it presupposes a certain continuity with the past; it brings prior beliefs and structures to fulfillment. The new has nothing to do with a rebellion against the past, or the rejection of prior authority, or an attempt to achieve individual freedom and autonomy. Its motivation is not the anxious desire to be avant-garde and to display a dynamic image, or the fiction that existence precedes essence. Jesus makes this outlook plain:

Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:17–20).

Similarly Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (Matt. 23:23).

In the Bible the ultimate concern is neither with the old nor with the new, neither with the past nor with the present, but with the Word of God, which “abides for ever” (1 Pet. 1:25). The question of truth and goodness is wholly bound up with the Will of God. Man achieves true freedom, responsibility, and reality only when his being rests in the Being of God. Authentic existence is not something man creates for himself; it is created and re-created without him. The newness and change needed in every age is the New Birth, the New Creation. The essential novelty is that of the New Spirit and the New Man. Just as the new revelation and redemption that the prophet heralds is not something he gives but the divine act and promise to which he gives himself, so any moral and spiritual progress, any amelioration of evil and injustice, is not something man presents to himself, posits for himself, determines by himself; it is granted by God—“lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:9).

The New Heavens and the New Earth are not the invention of avant-gardism, or the creation of a Sartrian “authenticity.” They are the work of Him who is eternally the same, the Alpha and the Omega of all things.

The Pendulum

He was a man of great extremes.

The pendulum of his days swung from the quietness of Zarephath to the tumult of Mount Carmel. From life for the widow’s son to death for the prophets of Baal.

From feeling greatly impressed by his own worthiness:

“I have been very jealous for the Lord God …

I, even I only, am left” …

To feeling equally depressed by his own unworthiness:

“It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life.

For I am not better than my fathers!”

Who was he? Elijah was his name. But who was he?

“A human being with a nature such as we have. With feelings, affections and constitution as ourselves” (Jas. 5:17, Amplified).

He was a man “subject to like passions as we are.”

.… Only more so!

Not all of us cut as wide a swath as Elijah, either in our service for God or in our emotions. Most of us are not called to so dramatic a ministry, nor do we experience such great stress.

But to one degree or another, we all tend to swing toward self-exaltation or self-abasement. According to our individual temperament, each of us is inclined to magnify or minimize his true self.

Since this is so, under great pressure we are apt to swing to extremes. We may view ourselves as absolutely indispensable to the work of the Lord …

Or totally useless!

Being very human, we may also complicate matters further by comparing ourselves with other servants of God. When we do this, our pendulum naturally jerks violently …

And, like Elijah, we suffer an emotional whiplash!

Now, about these “like passions” …

What are we to do with them?

What shall we do with these very human traits that tend to cripple our effectiveness as servants of the Lord?

Shall we deny that they exist? Hide them under a cloak of false humility? Allow them to bring us to a crashing halt?

No! None of these things.

We need only apply the principle of the pendulum:

For just as the pendulum moves back toward center without losing momentum because it is hung from a fixed point …

We will come back into fellowship with God as we find our worth in the fixed point of all Christian ministry:

“I am thy servant!”

—VIRGINIA CORFIELD, West Covina, California.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Is the twentieth century facing the possibility of final doom? Are we now face to face with a last chance for the survival of civilization? Discussing these questions in the film series “God and Man in the Twentieth Century,” produced by Educational Communication Association, are: Albert Hedrich, assistant director of research, Page Communications, and former chief of the Communications Research Branch of Goddard Space Flight Center; Frank E. Gaebelein, headmaster emeritus of The Stony Brook School and former chairman of the board of the Council for Religion in Independent Schools; and Richard Millett, assistant professor of history at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Illinois. The panel is moderated by the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Henry: Gentlemen, is there any reason for optimism over modern history, or ought we to leap at once to prophecies of doom?

Millett: History shows us that mankind is remarkably resilient—that though individual civilizations may fall or change radically, civilization as a whole has always been able to continue and move forward.

Hedrich: I think that if man were able to control and understand himself to the extent that he has been able to control his environment, there would be hope from that viewpoint. There doesn’t seem at this point to be much evidence of that coming about, however.

Gaebelein: The only reason, and the real reason, for optimism lies in God. Man is a sinner needing rescue.

Millett: History seems to confirm at least a good part of that. We know that civilization after civilization has fallen, has passed away, because of its inability to solve the same basic problems that have plagued each generation—men’s inability to live at peace with their fellow men, their inability to find satisfaction, their constant search for power. These problems are rising again in our generation, and perhaps today the consequences are more far-reaching. The potential for civilization to harm itself radically is probably greater now than ever before. But the basic problems are the same.

Henry: Didn’t Toynbee say that some twenty-one great civilizations of the past have all ended in ruin and decay?

Hedrich: Those civilizations in the past, though, were relatively restricted in geographical area. The situation with which we’re faced now is somewhat different. In view of the advances in communications made in the last few years, anything that happens in one part of the world is now going to affect the rest of it. More specifically, anything that happens to the Christian testimony, to the Christian Church, for instance, in the United States or in the Western hemisphere, is going to have an impact over the entire world. We have to take an overall world view of anything that happens; this is something unique about the situation now as compared to past civilizations.

Gaebelein: You spoke of a world view, Mr. Hedrich. Christianity has a very definite world view, and it seems difficult for modern man to grasp the significance of this world view. Some years ago Bertrand Russell published an article on the future of mankind in which he said that unless something unforeseeable happens before the turn of the century, one of three things will happen: the cessation of all human life, possibly of all life on the planet; the catastrophic diminution of the population of the globe; or the unification of the world under a single government. But notice that Bertrand Russell spoke of the unforeseeable. What to him and to the modern mind is unforeseeable is made very clear in the Christian world view.

Hedrich: Yes, I agree. However, one thing that is somewhat alarming to me—and your mention of Bertrand Russell brings it to mind—is that a few rather outspoken scientists have spoken outside their field. I’m not saying necessarily that Bertrand Russell spoke outside his field, nor am I saying that sociological and religious problems are necessarily outside the field of the scientist. But I am afraid, that the general public, because of some remarks made by well-known scientists, has come to the point where it is too willing to entrust everything to the scientist. Not long ago on a trip around the country I saw something that I thought no longer existed: a technocrat headquarters. This was an organization formed in the early 1930s; one of its aims was to turn over the running of the country economically—all the sociological problems, everything—to the scientist and the engineer. The technocrats felt that we were at the point where this could be done. I disagree. I don’t believe that the scientist is either equipped or willing to do this sort of thing. And I don’t think he welcomes that kind of responsibility. I’m not wise enough to say what underlies this apparent willingness of the people to give the scientist such responsibility, but I think that it could be catastrophic if he were given it.

Gaebelein: But man has an innate desire for the answers. We ought to remember that in the Bible there are the only sure answers for the three great basic problems: The problem of origins—where did it all come from? This is answered in the Bible at the very beginning: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The problem of identity—what is man? The Bible clearly tells us that man is a creature made in the image of God, that through rebellion this image has been marred, but that it may be restored through Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” And the problem of destiny—where is man going? The Bible clearly talks about the end. This is one of the great Christian doctrines, the doctrine of the last things. In his great chapter on the resurrection Paul says, “Then cometh the end, when he [referring to Jesus Christ] shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father.”

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Henry: Dr. Millett, from a historian’s standpoint, how would you assess the present trend of history in relation to the prospects for Christianity in the immediate future?

Millett: One trend that has been quite definite in recent years has been an increasing divorce between Christian thought—that is, traditional Christian positions—and our modern society. I remember that Dr. Carl Bridenbaugh, in his presidential address to the American Historical Association a few years past, said that the present generation of young people will perhaps be the last one to know anything significant about theology—and they don’t know very much. He described them as a group that seem to think of God as a quaint idea that came in with the Eisenhower administration.

Henry: Are you suggesting that the Church is doomed and that we’re now moving into an era in history when for the generations to come the Christian religion will have no objective significance, no validity?

Millett: No, I’m not suggesting that at all. It may have less impact upon society as a whole, but the essential reality of Christianity, of course, has always been with individuals. Christianity isn’t dependent upon the support of any human institution. It’s founded upon a historical fact, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and its success depends upon this, not upon any institutional support.

Hedrich: I agree. But I don’t believe that mankind, the general public, agrees with this. Men are continually searching for some way to circumvent Christianity, to circumvent Christ, to circumvent the cross. And now, in the past few decades, they have reached a point where they’re almost attempting to deify the scientists. If you look back through history at the various civilizations that have fallen, man’s attempts to bring himself up have always faced the same problems, and men have made the same mistakes over and over again. If you look at the progress of science, I don’t think anyone can argue with the fact that we’re now further ahead, that there has been a continual increase in scientific knowledge over the ages. And I think that people are at the point now where they’ve starting to hope that maybe this is the answer. It’s another way of circumventing the cross, of circumventing Christ. But I think they’re leaning on a broken stick when they lean on the scientist for this.

Henry: A generation ago one of the ruling tenets in American life, and in the Western world, was the inevitability of progress. Science, by the laboratory method of experiment, was going to bring in an earthly millennium. Now, do you sense today alongside the despair over history an opposite exaggerated confidence over the ability of the scientist? Do you detect a new emphasis on the inevitability of progress in a nuclear age and in the age of space investigation and communications research? Is the inevitability of progress sneaking in by the back door as a leading modern theme? What are the scientists saying about it?

Hedrich: Well, Dr. Henry, I think this is probably evidenced pretty well by a remark made not too long ago by Dr. Edward Teller in a lecture at the George Washington University. He said that the person or the society that is unwilling to change to meet the new conditions with which it is faced is going to perish. He approached the problem from the viewpoint of our nuclear age. Should we, for instance, stop all scientific progress because man is going to destroy himself if he continues down the present road? And Dr. Teller made what seemed to be a very good case for stopping all scientific progress! Then he turned around and said, “Now, isn’t that ridiculous!” Of course no one is going to suggest that we stop our scientific progress, he said, but we all have to be willing to change and accommodate ourselves to this progress. The scientist has to be willing to change, to apply his knowledge for the good of mankind. But there is no real plan for doing it. I very much got the impression that he as a scientist didn’t know how to do it, that no one had really suggested a good way to do it.

Henry: You feel that if there is going to be happiness and hope in our generation, it is not going to come out of the scientific laboratory.

Hedrich: I don’t believe that the scientist has been successful in making people happy.

Henry: Do you think that twentieth-century man could be equally happy or even more happy in the absence of television and the airplane and automobiles?

Hedrich: I don’t think that television, radio, the automobile, and the airplane have anything to do with his happiness. They just give him some more things to explore to try to find happiness. But he is being unsuccessful in finding it.

Gaebelein: I think, Mr. Hedrich, in relation to this matter of happiness, we ought to go deeper than things. The hopeless man is the unhappy man. And man seems somehow to have lost hope. I remember a book written by Dr. David Starr Jordan, who was the first president of Leland Stanford University. It’s called The Call of the Twentieth Century, and it was written about the turn of the century. In it Dr. Jordan, a great scientist and educator, said that the twentieth century would be the era when all reforms would be realized—the time of perfect peace and righteousness, social justice, and all that kind of thing. Now, as a prophet he couldn’t have been more wrong. The biblical world view we referred to earlier is ultimately a hopeful world view. It’s very realistic. Of course, the old idea of progress has collapsed under the impact of two world wars and what has followed. But the biblical world view looks into the future and tells us that after a time of judgment there will actually be a brave, new world under Jesus Christ. This may seem utopian, but because it is related to him it is a very real thing. St. Paul, in talking about this great future event of the coming of Christ, says, “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again [referring to the very centrality of the Christian faith], even so them also who sleep in Jesus [the Christian dead] will God bring with him.” You see, a man may be related to the very great Christian hope here and now through his relation to Jesus Christ and the centrality of faith in him.

Henry: So that from the Christian point of view—and I suppose I ought to address the historian here—there is to be a climax of history. It will not be in the nature of one world or the perfection of the whole of society, however, but rather a windup of all things in relation to Jesus Christ. Now, I’m wondering whether the Christian is related to hope, in view of Christ as the King and Lord of history, exclusively in terms of His judgment of the historical order at the end of things, or whether somehow this bears upon his relation to the present order of things. How does the Christian hope bear on history in our own times?

Millett: I think it has a very important bearing. For instance, the current uncertainty in the world about the future coupled with the Christian’s certainty that in an ultimate sense the course of human history is in God’s hands gives us a tremendous opening for reaching people in this day and age. I think also that for the Christian today one thing to bear in mind is that our faith, our Christian experience, does not depend upon any particular civilization, and that no matter what happens to this civilization, Christianity will continue.

Hedrich: Dr. Millett, could you give us an example?

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Millett: One that comes readily to mind would be the time of the fall of Rome. Many Christians had identified Rome with the Christian Church. They felt that if Rome fell it would mean either that the world would come to an end very shortly or that Christianity was somehow wrong. St. Augustine wrote a book to disprove this, a very famous book called The City of God, in which he pointed out that though the city of man may undergo violent transformation, the world as we know it, the city of God—God’s eternal working out of his purposes in human life—continues forever.

Henry: When we speak of the relation of the Christian hope to man in modern society, it seems important to emphasize that there is a relation between the Incarnation and God’s plan for human history. That is, the historical Jesus mirrors what God had in mind in the creation of man in the beginning, and actually holds before us what the image of God in the lives of the people of God will be in eternity, so that there is this strand that runs through the whole—though the Christian hope is, of course, broader than this.

Millett: Yes, I think that again this experience with Jesus Christ offers us the only chance to avoid simply repeating the mistakes of past generations, facing the same problems, and experiencing the same inability to solve them.

Gaebelein: But, Dr. Millett, coming back to this unforeseeable happening (to use Bertrand Russell’s words), should we not remember that this is an actual reality? Somewhere in his writings John Donne asks the question, What if this present were the world’s last night? In the biblical revelation it is clearly stated that one day the curtain will come down on human history. There will be the end. And our Lord tells us we should watch and be ready for this event.

Hedrich: If I can interrupt here for just a moment: there are quite a few people who say today that we are perilously close to that point, in view of man’s present ability—or apparent ability—to destroy himself. I personally don’t become particularly alarmed over this. I think man has the ability to destroy himself. But I think that the final say in this is going to be God’s. He has it in his hand. What means he will use to bring the end about, what it will be in detail, I wouldn’t presume to say. However, I am not worried about man’s destroying himself without God’s permission, so to speak. It is in God’s hands.

Gaebelein: It certainly is, Mr. Hedrich.

Henry: Do Bible students, Dr. Gaebelein, as they search the ancient prophecies, find any sure signs of the nearness of the “end-time”—to use the biblical wording?

Gaebelein: The New Testament is very specific about certain signs of the end. We might mention some that seem evident today: Growing unbelief throughout the world, and in the Church; multiplication of wars; national calamities; and, very significant indeed, the happenings in Israel—the restoration of the Jews to their own land, and the State of Israel. This is one of the prime prophetic signs. Now, the Bible student sees this time as significant in that the signs are converging. They have been present before, with the exception of the one concerning Israel.

Hedrich: Dr. Gaebelein, I’d like to ask you about one point; possibly we haven’t defined it well enough. What is this “end” that we’re talking about, and what is the relation of the Christian to this “end”?

Gaebelein: Well, “the end” according to the Bible is a series of events. Judgment is comprehended in this. The Apostles’ Creed says that Christ is coming again to judge the quick and the dead. The answer to the petition of the Lord’s Prayer “Thy kingdom come” will be realized at “the end.” “The end” will comprehend a new heaven and a new earth—a brave, new world, to use Aldous Huxley’s term. Now, the Christian’s relation to all this is his relation to Jesus Christ, who is the center of it all.

Hedrich: This then is the hope that we offer, when we talk about the ability of man to weather this “end,” to come through it, and about all the things he has tried that have failed, and the things that he is going to try in the future. What we’re saying, as I understand it, is that the only hope is the hope of Jesus Christ.

Millett: Correct. It would have to be, from the perspective of history, because history offers no other hope. It offers no hope that some civilization will really be able to overcome all its own problems through the efforts of men themselves.

Henry: Suppose you had an opportunity to influence the American commitment in this present critical time. What one word of counsel would you give?

Hedrich: You’ve given us an extremely difficult task. I would say this, though: Let us be sure that we do not put our hope for the future on anything that has come out of man outside God—and this includes all our scientific advances. Let’s put our hope on Christ.

Millett: Keep in mind that our God is the God of history; that no matter how upsetting current events may appear, he is ultimately in control of the course of human events.

Gaebelein: We must remember that God has a plan not only for history but for every single human life. The great option before man is his personal relation with Jesus Christ, who is himself the center of history.

Henry: You men have reminded me of the indebtedness we have to the Bible for this very conception of history—the idea that the universal sequence of events has not only a beginning but a midpoint and an endpoint, a plot, if you will—in fact, a dual plot, bearing on the destiny of the world and the destiny of the people of God.

Man has come of age, we are told. Today the classic past, and even the New Testament era, are often belittled as “the pre-scientific age.” In an academic environment this supercilious attitude—displayed, as it often is, by scholars in a field that has long since ceased to be regarded as the queen of the sciences—seems singularly inappropriate. It hardly does justice to the significance of past achievements of the human mind.

To the so-called pre-scientific age belong Homer, Callicrates and Ictinus (the architects of the Parthenon), Dante, Michaelangelo, Bach, Shakespeare. What name or names can today’s “come of age” men add to this list? Already in the third century B.C. Eratosthenes of Alexandria, having learned that at noon on a midsummer’s day the sun shone directly down the shaft of a well at Aswan 5,000 stadia from Alexandria, was able to calculate the circumference of the earth to be 24,600 miles. By any standards this was no mean achievement. Some three hundred years before, Pythagoras had described the solar system fairly accurately and was well aware that the earth was not the central planet. Copernicus openly acknowledged his debt to him.

Such knowledge would certainly have penetrated the Hellenized culture of Palestine; it is quite improbable, therefore, that any thinking Palestinian would have believed the earth to be flat. There is certainly no evidence that our Lord did. In fact, that he did not believe it was flat is implied by his description of certain activities that will all be occurring simultaneously at his return, activities that in Palestine normally took place at different times of the day. Grinding at the mill (Luke 17:35) was a morning occupation; working in the fields (Matt. 24:40) was a daytime chore; and the reference to two sleeping in one bed (Luke 17:34) points to the night.

We greatly need to remind ourselves that men of New Testament times were not cavemen and barbarians. They lived in an era that followed an age unmatched for intellectual productivity. That the content of human thought has changed spectacularly since then cannot be denied, but surely in artistry and mode of thought the ancient masters remain unsurpassed. In sheer intellectual output, our own age, despite its technical advantages, falls far short even of more recent “pre-scientific” times. Writing with a whittled quill by the light of a tallow candle, Shakespeare produced lines that will be read and spoken until the end of time. In our day it is easy to provide substitutes for personalities we do not possess. The millionaire has his art collection, the third-rate scholar his grandiose title, the cleric his ornate vestments, the theologian his idiosyncratic terminology; all stem from a primitive mental attitude in which appearance means more than reality. It ill becomes those who have had no active share in the achievements of this scientific age to usurp a luster they have not attained. A little unfeigned humility is long overdue in some quarters.

Perhaps there is a link between this absence of humility and the modern attempt to pry God out of his place, or to find a successor for him. Men engaged in the high enterprise of deicide should not, one would think, be expected to concern themselves much with the minutiae of linguistic expression. Yet it is exactly here where they find much of their offensive material for attacking the traditional interpretation of the Bible.

Anyone with a knowledge of linguistics can quickly see the irrelevance of much of the theorizing based on linguistic forms. The assumption seems widespread that linguistic devices are restricted largely to metaphor and analogy. But this is far from the case. Equally common and no less important is transference. By a process of extension, one uses terminology from one dimension to describe conditions in an essentially different dimension. No assumption of likeness is involved, and so this is not analogy—certainly not if we accept Kant’s definition of analogy, “perfect similarity between two totally dissimilar things.” Nor is it metaphor, for metaphor, despite its etymology, is only a species of simile, and a germane relation exists between the vehicle and the tenor of a metaphor. In transference we use terms descriptive of a material situation, for example, to describe some aspect of experience. Often there is nothing to suggest that the choice of terms is other than arbitrary.

An example of transference is the linguistic expression of time. Here many of the words are taken from the description of objects in space. Thus we speak of the length or the shortness of time, or of a space of time. For the lapse of time, we say time “goes,” or “comes,” or “flies.” In doing this we adopt a linear view of time without at all needing to associate it with spatial linearity. Although Greek uses terms that seem to suggest a quantitative view of time, there, too, verbs denoting the motion of bodies in space are used of time-lapse. Certain theologians might have saved themselves a great deal of folly if they had first undertaken an exercise in the “despatialization” of the terminology of time. To create a non-derivative substitute terminology to describe a phenomenon which is not accessible to the five senses and not subject to scientific observation and experiment, but to the existence of which all human experience would attest—this could well prove to be beyond the bounds of linguistic possibility.

Not only for the description of time do we look to our experience of space to provide terms; from the same field we transfer many of our terms to describe rank. When we say, for instance, “The man has risen to the top of his profession,” we think neither of motion nor of altitude. Members of a royal family, whatever their stature, will always be “Your Royal Highness,” and it would be ludicrous to seek analogical associations with the primary use of the term. In many languages, too, it seems quite normal to speak of going up to a capital or other place of importance, though often a descent may be involved. Only a pedant devoid of all linguistic sense would be troubled by such discrepancies between literal and transferred senses.

Biblical writers made full use of transference. The opening section of John 13, for instance, with its dramatic present tenses, its ascription of motion to time, and its subtle changes of prepositions in the compound verbs denoting motion, is explicable only with an understanding of transference.

In the biblical references to God, transference in the use of terms is clearly imperative. Here anthropomorphic terms are not used analogically or metaphorically, as they are when used to describe inanimate objects. Without transference, such passages as the Second Commandment and Deuteronomy 4:12 would be incomprehensible.

Atheism can make no claim to modernity, for the psalmist knew of such a view and understood the character of its advocates. When he labeled them “fools,” he used the word in the Hebrew sense of one who is morally—not intellectually—deficient. The counterpart today is the extravaganza of theology without theos. God is equated with a subjective relationship in which the divine pole is absent. Apparently, what we had mistakenly thought to be God turns out to be merely a “human phenomenon.” That this is a travesty of the biblical proclamation can easily be seen. Take almost any verse that refers to God and replace “God” with the words “human phenomenon.” Romans 1:25, for example, would read: “who changed the truth about the human phenomenon into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator.” No one is likely to be foolhardy enough to claim that any benefits, ethical or intellectual, have come to us through this new approach. To many, the whole activity is rather like plowing desert sand first made inaccessible to living water. Trafficking in subtle paradoxes that have no semantic content is surely not the business of serious scholarship.

Natural man wants a God accessible to his senses. If such a “model” is not available, he will make one. Idolatry had its roots in this primitive desire that reflects a kindergarten type of mentality. Even today, apparently, there are still those who associate some kind of tangible “whereness” with the presence of God. It must have come as a surprise to many people to learn on episcopal authority that there were Anglicans who believed in a God “out there.” Presumably, English Anglicans with such views would expect their Australian brethren to perform a U-turn in space! A thoughtful reading of Psalm 139 could have saved them from such naïveté.

In this connection one might ask about the significance of the form of the Ascension. There is here, as in all divine mysteries, something beyond our understanding. If one could consider the matter from a purely mundane point of view, it would seem impossible to conceive of any appropriate alternative, of any other way human eyewitnesses could have received their proper qualifications.

The Bible is concerned not with the “whereness” of God but with the “whereness” of man. In the parable of the lost sheep, the problem was not the Shepherd’s “whereness”—he was not lost—but rather the potential danger of the sheep’s own “whereness.” Even the very first question in the Bible concerns the “whereness” of man. God asked the question not for his own information but to bring home to man the now tragic implications of his “whereness” in the light of his former relationship with God.

Two views are current in theological circles today. For one, the decisive factor is man’s view of God; for the other, God’s view of man. These two views are mutually exclusive. The latter implies a belief in the existence of an objective revelation.

If we were solely or mainly concerned with what distinguishes these views from each other, we would confuse our priorities. The all-important thing is not so much that belief in a divine revelation distinguishes evangelical Christians from those of different views, but that such a belief identifies them with the people of the New Testament.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Genesis 12–50, one of the most familiar parts of the Old Testament, is also one of the least understood. These chapters center on the lives of Abraham and two of his descendants, Jacob and Joseph. Isaac appears also, though only briefly. But what are these narratives all about? Here there is confusion, for often we read them without a clear awareness of the kind of information we ought to be discovering.

The Bible must be approached as we would approach any book, that is, with respect for what it intends to do. Scripture is not a magical document unrelated to all other literature. As God’s revelation took on human form in Christ, so in Scripture it has been clothed in human speech and writing. Therefore we must investigate the Old Testament by the literary methods we would use for any other piece of literature. Foundational to these methods is the determination of the intent or purpose. What are the patriarchal narratives intended to communicate to us?

Scholarship has shown us, by a mass of corroborating details, that Genesis 12–50 has at least a twofold purpose. First, it shares in the general intent of Scripture: to show you and me how to find full life. The Apostle Paul writes: “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). This says that the primary purpose of the Bible is to make whole men and women out of us by showing us the basic divine ingredients of wholeness and leading us to encounter the living God who brings this kind of existence. And so, knowing the Bible’s self-confessed concern to lead us to life with God, we know from the start that patriarchal history will not be simply a record of events of the past but will have a predominantly theological meaning. This does not mean that we will not be able to learn about such matters as topography or chronology, but only that these are always secondary to the main concern. The author wants to communicate theological ideas, and he uses his material to accomplish this. Our task in reading the patriarchal accounts is to ask the theological question: What do these narratives say to me about God and about my rebellion to him and to my world?

God’s Promises

Second, Genesis 12–50 is part of a large historical block with one main message: History is in the charge of a loving God who has a good purpose for mankind. Or, to put it another way, all the narratives in Genesis 12–50 are intended to show, by numerous examples and from many perspectives, that despite what men do, God lovingly controls this world and fulfills his promises, so that men can become what God created them to be: whole persons. That is why one discovers as he reads the patriarchal narratives that each is basically a tale about two main protagonists—God and man. God is seen as the sovereign ruler of the world with a loving purpose to fulfill. Man either believes that promise and thus finds the rewards of obedience to God or else disbelieves it and reaps the heartache and troubles of disobedience. Either way, whether man works toward or against the fulfillment of promise, the point is that he cannot ultimately thwart it.

There are certainly other facts to learn from these narratives, for the Bible is profound and many-layered. But the note that is meant to sound in our ears through each story is: History is in the charge of a loving God who has a good purpose for mankind. Let us turn to the patriarchal narratives and see what this means.

1. The patriarchal promise. The first clue to the meaning is found in the beginning verses. Genesis 12 starts with a tremendous promise by God to Abram that his descendants will be numerous, will become a great nation, and will be a vehicle of worldwide blessing. This promise is the link between Genesis 1–11 and the succeeding chapters of the Bible. Genesis 1–11 had shown us the problem of the world—that man is a rebel and runaway from God and because of this has reaped murder, hate, immorality, disunity, strife. Now God steps in and chooses one people, Abram’s seed, through whom all nations might be brought back to him. In response to this call, Abram leaves his home and his country to begin fulfillment of the promise in a land about which he knows nothing. As he wanders here and there, as his descendants take up the account and have the promise repeated to them (26:4; 28:14), we see the point constantly being made: God promised something, and nothing is going to prevent his fulfilling that promise. He is in charge of the world.

Sealing Ceremony

2. The patriarchal covenant. The second clue to the meaning of these accounts is found in an odd occurrence described in Genesis 15:7–21. God, having reiterated the promise to Abram, seals it by a strange ceremony that shows us again that it is he, and not the patriarchs, who is playing the leading role. Apparently one method by which men confirmed an agreement in those days was to cut the bodies of certain animals in pieces, lay them in two rows, and then pass together through the parts. The implication was that they were calling upon themselves a similar fate if they failed to keep their word (cf. Jer. 34:18). But here something important takes place: God alone passes through the pieces (symbolized by the “smoking fire pot” and “flaming torch,” 15:17). Abram takes the animals, splits the carcasses, and lays them in a row, and then God puts him in a deep sleep and performs the rite himself. By this we are told simply that God alone is able to bring the promise to fulfillment. Man is to have his part—faithful obedience—but God alone is the covenant-fulfiller.

We see this again in Genesis 17:1–27, when the covenant is expanded by addition of the rite of circumcision. Here as before the emphasis is almost completely on God. Again repeating the promise to Abram (now Abraham), God commands him to circumcise every male as a “sign” of the covenant (17:11). Nothing has changed in the divine initiative; it is still God alone who gives the promise. But now through a means in keeping with ancient culture men can show outwardly that they have accepted by faith the promise of God. “It is not often enough seen that no obligations are imposed upon Abraham. Circumcision is not originally an obligation, but a sign of the covenant.… It serves to identify the recipient(s) of the covenant, as well as to give a concrete indication that a covenant exists” (G. Mendenhall, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East, The Biblical Colloquium, 1955, p. 36).

How Lives Are Shaped

3. The patriarchal responses. Given these clues to the dominant theme of the narratives, we can see how this theme shapes the lives of the patriarchs. For as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph respond or fail to respond to God’s gracious promise, God acts to ensure its fulfillment.

We see this almost immediately after the initial promise. Abram has gone to Egypt because of a famine in the Negeb (12:10–20). As he is about to enter the land, he persuades his beautiful wife Sarah to say she is his sister, lest the Egyptians kill him in order to take her. As a result Abram is spared, but Sarah is taken into the Pharaoh’s harem. Then all of a sudden the Lord steps in and rescues Sarah by afflicting the Pharaoh’s house with plagues (12:17). Discovering the cause, the Egyptian king sternly reprimands Abram and sends Sarah and him out of the country under military escort.

What are we supposed to learn from this account? A bit of historical information? No, for notice the dominant theological point: God is in charge of men and events and fulfills what he promises. That is why the narrative concludes so abruptly after verse 17. All sorts of questions pop up. What were Abram’s feelings in all this? How did the Pharaoh connect the plagues with Sarah? Did the plagues go away after Sarah left? But the narrative gives no answer to questions like these, because they are unimportant to the main point. God intervenes in the affairs of men to ensure fulfillment of his promise; although man has freedom, he cannot ultimately thwart God’s purposes. This is what the author is trying to get us to see. No sooner has the grand promise of worldwide blessing through Abram’s “seed” been given than the fulfillment is placed in jeopardy by Abram himself. “The bearer of promise himself is the greatest enemy of the promise; for its greatest threat comes from him” (G. von Rad, Genesis, Westminster, 1961, p. 164). Sarah seems lost—once in the harem, always in the harem. But the Lord will not allow his work of bringing worldwide blessing to men to go astray because the recipient of the promise has failed.

What We Must Do

The author is clearly driving home a theological message. God’s word is always to be believed, because he is Lord of history. No matter what happens, this is what we can cling to. And thus we are shown what we must do to gain full life through the knowledge of God’s sovereign, loving, purposive rule of this world. We are simply to have faith. But what is faith? It is first the knowledge of what God has promised, then the assurance that he will do what he has promised, and then trustful obedience in every situation in light of this. Later Abram was to demonstrate this kind of faith many times; but here, at the start, he had to learn it.

HIDING PLACE

Sleet in my face, merciless, biting and blinding,

Wind battering, tearing, all but knocking me over,

Body bowed to the storm’s teeth, cutting and savage,

Thin ice under swirling snow, treacherous in its drifting,

Footsteps more and more insecure, fumbling, faltering, falling—

Sudden, a shelter, a refuge, and life-giving warmth and refreshment:

Numbly I stumble in, dumb, overwhelmed with thanksgiving.

Pitiless sun in a brazen sky, beating relentless down on me,

My blistered back naked, my head dizzy and throbbing,

Burning sands underfoot, my feet unshod to their searing,

My lungs gasping, bursting, scorched by the breath of the desert,

Blinded my aching eyes by glare of sand and sunlight—

Sudden, a shadow, a rock, a cavern of coolness and dimness:

Grateful, I sink to its floor, dumb, overwhelmed with thanksgiving.

“A refuge from the storm,

A shadow from the heat,

A Man shall be A hiding place from the wind,

A covert from the tempest,

As rivers of water in a dry place,

As the shadow of a great rock In a weary land.”

E. MARGARET CLARKSON

This same note, God’s loving care for his promise as the foundation upon which man may build their lives, pervades the rest of the patriarchal accounts. It is seen vividly in the problem of childlessness faced by Sarah (Gen. 16–18) and Rebekah (Gen. 25). Each has been barren for a long time, and thus the promise seems blocked; then God graciously intervenes and opens their wombs. It is emphasized in Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22). Believing that God wants him to sacrifice his son, Abraham is at the point of plunging in the knife, and thus apparently ending the means of the fulfillment of promise. Then God dramatically steps in and provides a substitute sacrifice.

The same theme courses through the life of Jacob. Forced to leave home because he cheated Esau out of his birthright and primary blessing (Gen. 26–28), Jacob seems to have thrown away all chance of being the bearer of promise. But once again God breaks in. Through the dream of a ladder to heaven, he shows the wayward scoundrel that despite his sin, the way to service is still open. And to make it absolutely plain, God renews for Jacob the promise he made to Abraham and Isaac (notice also the divine concern in 31:5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 24, 48, 49), and Jacob responds with a vow of faithful obedience (28:20, 21). So here it is again—God is in charge of this world and has a purpose for it. He will not let men’s weakness and failure cause him to fail; he will work through even a rogue like Jacob. A lot of details are missing from the account, because we are intended to learn one dominant thing: God will provide salvation in the way he has appointed.

Finally, the same theological theme controls the life of Joseph (Gen. 37–50). Constantly we see evidence of God at work. Joseph acknowledged this in his last words to his brothers: “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good …” (Gen. 50:20). This fact is made clear in each episode in Joseph’s life. Thrown into a pit by his brothers, doomed to die a slow death, Joseph is miraculously rescued by some passing traders. Sold into slavery in Egypt, he is purchased by a man who is willing to allow him to develop his abilities, and this begins a chain of events that eventually leads Joseph to a position of national leadership. The chance encounter with the king’s butler in prison, the severe famine in Egypt, the shrewd stockpiling of grain, the reunion with his brothers—all these bear the marks of God’s protection of his promise. As Joseph tells his brothers: “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God …” (Gen. 45:7, 8). The promise has been preserved, the Abrahamic line continued, and the worldwide blessing assured.

That is what the patriarchal narratives meant to those who heard them in Israel, and what they mean to us today. There is only one power in our world with which we have to reckon—God. He has a purpose for mankind, for you and for me, and he graciously, persistently, sovereignly keeps working so that this purpose will be fulfilled. He has promised us; nothing will stand in his way. With this kind of God, what faith we can have, what obedient trust! And when we do, the patriarchal accounts, tell us, we will find that fullness of life for which we long.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Dear Ecumenical Humorists:

The holiday season makes us especially appreciate all men of good will, so today I as a Protestant want to call attention to a delightful new book of Catholic humor by a Jewish writer. The book is Cracks in the Steeple (World, 1967, $3.50) by Gerry Blumenfeld. Its four-sentence foreword has been contributed by that political funnyman, Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Here are some of the shorter cracks discovered by Blumenfeld:

• Asked how many people worked in the Vatican, Pope John XXIII answered good—naturedly, “About half.”

• A little Italian priest sat in Yankee Stadium when Pope Paul VI addressed the vast assembly. The priest said to his friend, “Isn’t it wonderful, at last, to have an Italian at second base!”

• After TV star Garry Moore received an award, he paid tribute to his writers. When Bishop Fulton Sheen next came forward to accept his award, he announced, “I also want to pay tribute to my four writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

• When little Margaret returned from church school she asked her father when their new baby would talk. He told her not for two years, since little babies don’t talk. Said Margaret, “Oh, yes they do. Even in the Bible they did.” “Who did?” asked the father. She replied, “Sister read the Bible to us this morning, and I heard with my own ears when she said Job cursed the day he was born.”

• Ten-year-old Peter was very interested in Bible studies. He asked his parents: “Which virgin was Christ’s mother—the Virgin Mary or the King James virgin?”

• A man advertised in the local paper to sell the Venetian blind that covered his picture window but neglected to tell his wife. The next day the doorbell rang and a woman announced, “I’ve come for the Venetian blind.” “Can you come back next week,” suggested the wife, “because we’ve just given to Catholic Charities.”

How about contributing to the Eutychus III charities by telling me about the farcical happenings in your part of the religious world? If men of diverse religious viewpoints can chuckle together over follies common to the religious species, maybe there’s hope that more of us can come together on the basis of the joyous truth of the Gospel.

EUTYCHUS III

Jocularly,

DETROIT REVISITED

I think you are hitting the right target when you go after the NCC and its revolutionary strategy (“NCC Hosts the Radicals,” News, Nov. 10, and “Too Bad About Detroit,” Editorial, Nov. 24). They are to be commended for their frankness, and what we see is the logical outcome of years of preparation. The utter bankruptcy of their cause and lack of spiritual dynamic is apparent for all to see. They employ situational ethics—that the end justifies the means—and forget that nowhere did the Lord Jesus use force or encourage force. They violate the concept of voluntarism. Even Paul, when he rebuked churches, did not use his apostolic office to force them. He used moral persuasion.… The glory of the early Church was its victory over Caesar by sacrifice, martyrdom—but never by force.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Professor of Bible

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

I have looked in the New Testament for the Christ who made no economic pronouncements, did not disrupt public life, never challenged practices used by governments nor engaged in civil disobedience. Perhaps if I look long enough I shall find him.…

In denouncing the Detroit conference, kindly refrain from placing guns in the hands of all “liberals” and NCC affiliates. We will try to avoid lumping you together with the most radical and unsavory of the self-styled “evangelicals.”

ALAN KIEFFABER

Franklin Grove, Ill.

Perhaps there is blessing in disguise. A few more such unchristian meetings sponsored by such unchristian people in the name of the National Council of Christian Churches should awaken the sleeping majority to what the irresponsible minority is trying to do.

Too bad that the conciliar church has become a sounding board for those who are opposed to what Christianity is all about. Too bad there isn’t a two-party system in the NCC, because it is high time that the conservative element should be in the saddle. Maybe Detroit will help?

NORMAN B. JEROME

Director, Literature Department

American Sunday-School Union

Philadelphia, Pa.

Is there a rather definite parallel between the total of the race conflicts and the total of the American Revolution? Was not the “Boston Tea Party” a rather definite economic upset against English business at the time? And did not the English government call out the “federal troops” to quell the riot? And had they been successful would not America still be considered a dependent race, a minority group, etc.? Following this line, would not a good solution to the problem be to avoid a split by welding the Negro into the white as an equal where he has equal ability and qualifications?

J. MORLEY NUTTING

Upper Sandusky, Ohio.

A QUESTION OF WHERE AND WHEN

CHRISTIANITY TODAY rightly points to an emergent anomaly in Detroit (Church and Society Conference) (“The Violent New Breed,” Editorial, Nov. 24): force viewed as deplorable in Viet Nam, violence somehow justifiable at home. By what measuring stick does one arrive at such judgments? For the objection apparently is not to violence as such, but only to violence at certain times or at certain places.

But there is the old stone-throwing problem for people in glass houses. Isn’t CHRISTIANITY TODAY caught in the same anomaly, only in reverse form—violence is justifiable in Viet Nam but deplorable at home? And again, what is the measuring stick? If “fallen man’s lot” means grin and bear it domestically, why not internationally? Conversely, if human depravity compels us to accept or resort to violence internationally, can’t the same case be made in domestic injustice?

I do not speak from a “plague-on-both-your-houses” stance. God only knows the depth and complexity of all these problems, and the puniness of all our proposals. Actually few people at Detroit were prepared to take the extreme position. Yet there is consistency, even in such a position. After all, “liberal” Protestants assume that norms must emerge historically with a somehow oblique relationship to Holy Writ. Nothing in the formula prevents a conclusion (which might be mistaken, nonetheless, on historical, tactical, etc., grounds) that violence in Viet Nam is wrong but right in the ghetto. “Evangelicals,” on the other hand, postulate a straight line from Scripture, and it remains an enigma as to how one gets from Jesus (assuming an evangelical Christology) to napalm in the jungles of Viet Nam. If the nature of the problem makes the difference, then how does one distinguish evangelicals from liberals?

PAUL PEACHEY

Assoc. Prof. of Sociology

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D. C.

• While the Bible nowhere authorizes use of power for unlimited destruction, it does approve the state’s use of force to restrain injustice. It does not approve the Church’s use of force for political objectives. There is a wide difference between the use of force where solution by persuasion and law is deliberately repudiated, and the use of violence where reliance on persuasion and jurisprudence remains a live option.—ED.

The cartoon on the cover, showing a gleeful man in clerical collar with a newly-arrived Tommy gun in hand, throws an underhanded, unchristian blow at the social-action movement in our churches.… Your cartoonist would do well to reread the ninth commandment.

ARCHIBALD W. MCMILLAN

Kettering, Ohio

Why not let CHRISTIANITY TODAY become a real place for dialogue among evangelicals for a more constructive advance of the faith? For example, you give only small reference to the EFMA report that “the evangelical mind-set … has inhibited constructive thought and action” (“Evangelicals Inhibited,” News, Nov. 24). That is what should have been headlined on your cover instead of that dubious cartoon cover of “New Breed violence”! This dialogue could be a positive contribution to a recovery of sanity and intellectual integrity within the evangelical camp, instead of this sick “I hate the liberals” campaign which seems to be so prevalent in many evangelical journals!

DENTON LOTZ

Hamburg, Germany

ACCURATE BUT UNCRITICAL

Dr. D. Elton Trueblood’s thesis (i.e., denominational loyalties are now irrelevant and outmoded) (“Post-Denominational Christianity,” Nov. 24) may be an accurate observation on the times, but to approve such a situation almost uncritically is, to my thinking, inexcusable. Had major denominational differences been resolved or reduced through careful scriptural study and struggle, the resulting rapprochement would be a victory for truth. But current evangelical “couldn’t-care-less” attitudes toward major issues that divided the churches are spiritual decline rather than advance.

J. PAUL MCCRACKEN

Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America

Cambridge, Mass.

Sorry to report that I was not charmed by Dr. Trueblood’s statement that “when people move from one neighborhood to another, they now change their denominational affiliation with ease and with no agony of decision.” This utterance did however rejuvenate my memory about the gentleman who was in the habit of rotating from one church group to another. One day he asked his present pastor what he thought about his joining another church. “I think it’s all right in your case,” he advised. “You see, it never hurts to change the label on an empty bottle.”

ROGER K. MOORE

Colorado Springs, Colo.

I enjoy Dr. Elton Trueblood’s articles appearing in CHRISTIANITY TODAY from time to time.

RALPH L. BRAMBLE

Warrensburg, N. Y.

WRITERS THEN AND NOW

I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of the editorial, (“300 Years After ‘Paradise Lost’ ” Nov. 24)—the references to the greatness of Milton and his work, C. S. Lewis, and other “strongly Christian” writers. I envied their competence, their success, and lamented their passing.

The conservative Christian (Protestant) is handicapped as a writer. It has become a major achievement to secure either publisher or reader, virtually an impossibility, in fact.…

Have you noted the pattern of degeneration in all of man’s creative endeavours? Formlessness, rootlessness, purposelessness are snowballing in all areas of thought. This seems very plain during the past several hundred years; and in our time I find it frightening.… Thank you so much for your last sentence about “… conveying a sense of timeless values and a glimpse of God’s compassion and benevolent intervention in time for man’s salvation.”

PAULINE F. STACY

Meade, Kan.

FUEL FOR THE FIRE

It is good to know that the Holy Spirit did not retire or go on an extended vacation (“Fanning the Charismatic Fire,” News, Nov. 24).…

The statement … by David du Plessis is not factual. We have taught and preached that the “fruits of the Holy Spirit” listed in Galatians 5:22, 23 are the real proof-producers of a Spirit-filled life … First Corinthians 13 particularly emphasizes the great foundation principle upon which a Spirit-filled Christian’s life must be governed and based. We don’t think we have “arrived” because we speak in tongues.… There is a good deal of heart-searching going on in our constituency. We find that there is a great desire to have as the result of all our efforts for Christ, “that in all things he might have the pre-eminence.”

JAMES D. GAST

The Assemblies of God Church

Eagle Bend, Minn.

What was the context of David J. du Plessis’s statement? “Arrived” at the ultimate of Christian experience, or “arrived” at the threshold of a glorious New Testament experience of the life in the Spirit? If it’s the latter, I think he was quoted rightly. If the former alone, I think his statement was used to impugn the marvel of the glorious Pentecostal baptism which makes spiritual life truly meaningful.…

If you are going to quote one linguist on the nature of speaking in tongues as “nonsense” … wouldn’t it be fair to quote other authorities who roundly disagree with his conclusion? Don’t try to “laugh us out of court” just because you can’t explain us away. Pentecostals have been here … since the Day of Pentecost, and please God, we’ll be here until Jesus comes.

LEONARD PALMER

First Assembly of God

Taft, Calif.

The report … states: “Campus Crusade for Christ forbids its 1,100 staffers to speak in tongues, even in private devotions.” In First Corinthians 14:39b the Apostle Paul writes: “Forbid not to speak with tongues.”

It is apparent that there were two excesses in the early Church regarding tongues. There was the excess of the wrong or inappropriate use of this genuine gift. In First Corinthians 14, Paul seeks to correct this—but not to eradicate tongues, one of nine gifts that are “inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.”

The other excess was to forbid the use of this gift. But Paul goes so far as to say, “I would that you all spoke with tongues …”

The Lord Jesus once reproved the scribes by asking, “Why do you by your tradition make the word of God of none effect?” Both fire and electricity are dangerous. We do not escape the danger by banning them, but by using them lawfully. Let us not quench the Holy Spirit. Let us not put his fire out.

JOHN MCCANDLISH PHILLIPS

New York, N. Y.

A TOP FLIGHT AIRLINE

Having had a few such experiences myself, I enjoyed your news summary, “Most Missionary Tales Have a Happy Landing” (Nov. 10). However … I am afraid that others who do not know the Missionary Aviation Fellowship operation will be misled into thinking that they are the ones Elden Rawlings referred to. The reference to “World War II-vintage” DC-3 planes clearly leaves out missionary operation, especially MAF, and demonstrates that it is referring to small, local, commercial airlines.

The reference to the first MAF crash at the head of the article is, I believe, the misleading factor, in spite of your praise of them in your article. I am sure that you will want to make sure that no false impressions are created concerning MAF. They are a real top-notch outfit in every way.

KENNETH D. BASSETT

Coco Solo, Canal Zone

• Agreed.—ED.

AM I RUNNING FROM YOU, JESUS?

Lord, I told them things they wanted to hear,

Safe things to say to college students:

That Birchites and fundamentalists are bad;

That sex is good;

The Establishment is the cause of everyone’s trouble;

The answer to the “root causes” of the world’s problems

Is to overthrow institutions;

And all it takes for people to do the good

Is for them to know they should.

Lord, I didn’t tell them what they didn’t want to hear:

That the trouble with the world isn’t simply

With oppressive structures and citizens of status quo;

The trouble with life is us;

That somehow although we know we shouldn’t be the way we are,

We still are,

And without your help we don’t really have the strength

To be any different;

That Jesus Christ was something more

Than a social revolutionary;

Somehow his life, death, and resurrection speaks

Directly to our plight of fear, weakness, and selfishness.

Lord, I told them what they wanted to hear,

And not what they needed to hear,

Because 1 wanted them—

I needed them—

To “dig” me.

Am I running from you, Jesus?

WARREN KISCH

Baptist Campus Minister

West Virginia University

Morgantown, W. Wa.

What is the “state of the union”—as God sees it?

A few weeks from now a state-of-the-union message will be presented to Congress and to the American people. It will deal with domestic and foreign problems, war and peace, the economic structure of the country, the abounding social ills.

Political values and implications will probably be stressed, and outlines of legislation needed to accomplish changes and reforms will be presented. Material and secular problems and suggested solutions will dominate the message. All this is a part of the administration of a great democracy.

However, Christians must consider the state of the union, not from the human standpoint alone, but from God’s. His evaluation, the standards of which are revealed in Scripture, will take into account all those things in which we have sinned and come short of his glory.

The Old Testament prophets, inspired by the Holy Spirit, looked beneath the surface of national life to find the things that mar and destroy a nation. In their messages we see God’s diagnosis of sin, his hatred of it, and the certainty of judgment, all coupled with his yearning love for a wayward people and appeals to return to him and live.

The state of politics always seems confused. The tendency to “give the people what they want” is ever present, regardless of fiscal stability or moral rightness. In fact—and we must face it—some of the great projects now envisoned entail the spending of our grandchildren’s money, and are perhaps designed to win votes more than anything else. This form of bribery, or buying of votes, proves a temptation to politicians of every party, as well as to the people.

One of the greatest menaces of national stability is the fostering of the idea that the government owes everyone a living. Unquestionably the government owes every citizen freedom of opportunity, and this entails freedom from every form of discrimination. But in addition, individual initiative must be protected and promoted if our people are to be truly blessed.

The state of the union is affected by the soundness of our economy. Many citizens are rightly concerned about a tendency to appropriate and spend staggering sums without compensating income. This inevitably leads to inflation, which affects everyone, particularly those who are dependent on the savings of the past.

Primary considerations in any assessment of the state of the union are the growing tensions within the social order and the feeling of some that the social structure can be improved without change in the hearts of those who make up society. Many in the Church have been beguiled into believing this fallacy and are thus adding to the confusion of an already confused generation.

The state of the union is also in jeopardy because the basic concept of law and order has been undermined by willful activists who try to settle social problems in the streets. Their “peaceful” demonstrations too easily become violent and riot-like.

Those responsible for maintaining law and order have become targets of vilification and abuse. And often the law-breakers they apprehend either are released or are “punished” only by having to pay a piddling fine. A generation has grown up without knowing the wholesome discipline of the Bible—“Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov. 22:15). Now, when confronted with restraint by those responsible for law enforcement, many cry out, “Police brutality!,” and many social “do-gooders” join them in their protests. What amazes me is the police restraint exercised in the face of violence and open face defiance.

The serious state of the union is reflected in the failure of the courts to enforce existing laws and the devious means used to thwart justice. There is a verse in the Bible that describes the situation perfectly: “Because sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the sons of men is fully set to do evil” (Eccl. 8:11). By a strange philosophy on the part of some sworn to maintain justice, the criminal is now given every advantage while the victim is often twice a victim—once at the hands of the criminal and again at the hands of the courts.

The state of the union is woefully evident in the growth and exploitation of lust under the guise of art and literature. Books, plays, and movies portray and often make attractive the vilest acts of which man is capable. No nation can long exist if such evil goes unrestrained.

Above all else, the state of the nation is reflected in the nation’s spiritual life, or lack of it. We have received the blessings of a godly ancestry, but the momentum of this is largely spent. The open immorality that flourishes on every side belies the widespread existence of spiritual convictions, on which alone the nation or the individual is secure.

On every hand men speak of the deceased influence of the Church. Some attribute this to lack of “involvement” in the social order. Others feel that the message of the Church has been watered down so that the secular needs of society are given priority over men’s need of Christ as Saviour from sin.

Within the Church there are deep cleavages—loveless pharisaism and hard orthodoxy on the one side, and sophisticated sadduceeism with rank unbelief on the other. In too many cases the battle has been waged in the strength of the flesh, without compassion and reliance on the power of prayer and the Holy Spirit, by which alone such problems can be resolved. The Church too often tries to solve spiritual problems by secular means.

This brings us to the source of hope, the way by which God can restore sinning men and nations. It is no platitude to assert that God has the answer. He has the only answer. Man is both stupid and blind if he fails to realize that for God there are no insoluble problems; he is hindered only by man’s perverse unwillingness to turn problems over to him.

The Bible states the nature of good and evil, of right and wrong. It lays down the principles by which men and nations are to live, and clearly states the immediate and ultimate penalties of those who go their own way, rather than God’s.

But the Bible does more than this. It reveals the One who came to make all things right through redemption and regeneration. It reveals the simplicity of God’s plan for making new men out of old, changing them into the image of his Son. It states in the clearest way possible what a man’s duty to God and his fellow man is, and reveals the source of power by which men and nations can obey and please him.

The state of the union is not good. But God can change the lives of countless individuals and through them bring glory to himself in the land.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ—preached, believed, and obeyed—can change the state of the union. It is our only hope.

Window On The World

The World Book Encyclopedia (Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1967, 20 volumes, $182.30, deluxe binding), is reviewed by David E. Kucharsky, associate editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

An encyclopedia can break a budget, pad a library, illustrate a sermon, settle an argument, help make up for a scanty education, or prove you’re not an obscurantist. The World Book Encyclopedia can also add prestige to a home or a pastor’s study, though not as much as Britannica. But the reason for owning an encyclopedia is that regular referral cultivates the mind. And no encyclopedia invites continued use more than World Book.

World Book is currently the world’s best-selling and most widely used encyclopedia. It is a family encylopedia that is comprehensive and scholarly without being stuffy, and it is a delight to read. It costs less than a color TV or a good set of china or wall-to-wall carpeting, and it rates financial priority over all these.

But there is the theological problem. Can the evangelical trust World Book for balanced treatment of key issues in Christian thought and experience? Perhaps no better test could be applied than the question, “What think ye of Jesus?” Judge for yourself:

“Jesus Christ was the founder of the Christian religion. Christians believe that He is the Son of God who was sent to earth to save mankind. Even many persons who are not Christians believe that He was a great and wise teacher. He has probably influenced humanity more than anyone else who ever lived.…”

It is a succinct handling, though attributive in describing the most significant aspect of Christ’s person. The following passage from World Book’s article on the Reformation has a much surer construction:

“In Germany, the Reformation began in the heart of an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther. Luther based his thinking on the Epistles of St. Paul. They led him to conclude that only faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, rather than priests, sacraments, or good works, could ensure salvation. He also concluded that only the Bible, not the pope, was infallible, or free from error.”

It is gratifying to report that World Book editors have the help of some competent evangelical scholars. Among the 2,700 authorities who shape the content are Bruce M. Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary, Earle E. Cairns of Wheaton College, Gleason L. Archer of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Merrill F. Unger of Dallas Theological Seminary, all of whom are in the conservative Protestant tradition.

Jewish scholars Cyrus H. Gordon and Nelson Glueck are among the consultants and contributors. Top editorial rank among religion specialists belongs to William A. Clebsch, associate professor of religion at Stanford.

Assessing current ideologies, World Book takes a hard line against Communism:

“We call Communism totalitarian because it is total in two ways. (1) It controls and dominates all human thoughts and actions. (2) It uses any means to achieve its goals. Communism tries to regulate every part of a person’s daily life. It has no respect for family life or for religion.”

The article on evolution is a fairly typical modern secular treatment, but it is supplemented with a column headed “Unsolved Problems of Evolution.” A three-point indictment of the theory of evolution on religious grounds includes the assertion that “if man is in the process of evolving from a lower state, sin tends to become mere imperfection, and the Gospel of redemption from the guilt of sin tends to lose all meaning.” Objections to evolution on scientific grounds are noted also.

World Book is largely non-committal on the historicity of the Bible, except to cite the consensus of scholars. For example, the article on Isaiah says, “Scholars have agreed that it was written by a number of persons.” The repeated indication that current scholarly opinion is the final word is a weakness of World Book.

The big theological cleavages of our day have not yet found their way into this encyclopedia. The article on Karl Barth, however, does include an analysis of his thought, and runs a marked contrast to the article on Paul Tillich, which is mere biography.

A most rewarding aspect of World Book is its attempt to simplify the complex and to show rather than tell. Some may be repelled by what they consider oversimplification, but one can well argue that this extreme is preferable to incomprehensibility (an option more common than one might think).

World Book offers good Canadian coverage. It digs into obscure topics as well as offering fresh insights into the familiar. It includes review questions and helpful bibliographies, and is self-indexed. The current set is lavishly illustrated—25,000 illustrations with 7,300 of them in color and 1,900 maps. An exclusive feature is that its content is based on exhaustive research of school curriculums and informational needs in libraries and homes. It is also up to date and is continually being revised, going to press two or three times each year. And the World Book annuals help to keep the set current.

Churches would do well to seize the service opportunity offered by the fact that World Book is available in Braille and large-type editions. The Braille edition, a praiseworthy sign of the leadership of World Book publishers, is the largest project ever accomplished in Braille.

That the evangelical is taking an increasingly important part in the cross fire of intellectual conflict is evident in World Book. To be sure, the encyclopedia does not have anything resembling the Christian world view undergirding its treatment of the various disciplines. But here and there encouraging recognition is given to evangelical thinking. The entry on the ecumenical movement, for example, refers the reader to an article on the Evangelical Alliance as well as to one on the World Council of Churches. As evangelicals continue to make gains in the realm of ideas, recognition by the secular media will increase.

Christ Or Buddha?

Buddhism and the Claims of Christ, by D. T. Niles (John Knox, 1967, 96 pp., paper $1.75), is reviewed by Lit-sen Chang, lecturer in missions, Gordon Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts.

In the West there are increasing signs of a revolt against the uniqueness of Christianity, and a chase after exotic religions. There is an attempt to set aside the finality of Jesus Christ and to reduce Christianity to an ethnic basis in harmony with non-Christian religions. In the wave of humanistic syncretism and the advance of the philosophy of meaninglessness, this book, first published in Ceylon in 1946 for catechumens with Buddhist background, has become timely for the West, where Buddhism has been gaining converts.

Dr. D. T. Niles, author of many books on Christian missions and Oriental religions, is Ceylonese by birth, but he received his higher education in the West and has traveled extensively throughout the world. Out of this background that combines Eastern religious experiences with Western academic training, he is able to present Christianity in fresh thought forms as it encounters the essential tenets of Buddhism. By becoming a Buddhist to the Buddhists, he strives to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in language familiar to and significant for Buddhists, with an understanding and friendly spirit, yet without compromise.

In the strategy of missions today, there are two extreme approaches. The “eclectic” approach overemphasizes general revelation at the expense of special revelation, and stresses the similarities of all religions, overlooking their striking differences. This approach inevitably leads to syncretism and creates the erroneous view that all religions are simply different paths to the same God and that the Church is “latently present” (as Paul Tillich puts it) in paganism. Thus it sets aside the uniqueness of Christianity. The “exclusive” or “expulsive” approach denies the value of general revelation and its relation to special revelation, and thus weakens the basis for meaningful discussion with non-Christians. This approach tends to suspend Christianity in the air and makes it appear irrelevant to the life of the world.

Niles’s approach is neither wholly “eclectic” nor wholly “exclusive.” Without attempting syncretism, he uses the cardinal concepts and idioms of Buddhism to convey the Christian message to Buddhists so as to help them “enter into a personal relationship with God in Christ Jesus.” Without completely denying the truth in Buddhism, Niles points out that it is the truth as man sees it from his predicament as man. It is only a protest, and no protest, however profound, can be turned into a true religion or can give hope to this perishing world.

Reading For Perspective

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

• The Wycliffe Historical Geography of Bible Lands, by Charles F. Pfeiffer and Howard F. Vos (Moody, $8.95). An informative text, excellent photographs, and useful maps highlight this reference work on ten Bible lands.

• Run While the Sun Is Hot, by W. Harold Fuller (Sudan Interior Mission, $3.95). Fuller’s challenging incidents and stories, gleaned from his travels to SIM fields in Africa, will create greater appreciation for the work of missions.

• Set Forth Your Case, by Clark H. Pinnock (Craig, $1.50). These studies in Christian apologetics offer solid evidence for the integrity of the historic biblical Gospel and show it to be rationally compelling and vastly superior to existential aberrations in contemporary theology.

Starting without a God and from a false perspective on life, Buddhism denies the relevance of the divine side of life. Once God is ruled out, death becomes the boundary of life. So Buddha, who claimed to be the “Enlightened One,” had never really been enlightened, for he knew only the law of death and not the Way of Life. The basic difference between Christianity and Buddhism, according to Niles, is this: Buddha saw that life was meaningless and set out to rescue men from this meaninglessness; Jesus, on the other hand, saw that life could become meaningful in God and set out to call men to share this meaning. “I am come,” he said, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

Although this book offers a valuable refutation of Buddhism, it is not without weakness and distortion. As Niles strives to use the cardinal Buddhist terms to convey the Christian message, readers should always be aware of the risk of identifying Buddhism with Christianity. For instance, the author says: “For a Buddhist, taking ‘Pansil’ seems to have the same emotive value as the taking of Holy Communion for a Christian”; but actually the two rites have nothing in common.

In the latter part of the book, Niles says: “God forgives when I repent—that is Old Testament teaching; God has forgiven, before I repent—that is New Testament teaching (Romans 5:8).” This view dismembers the organism of Scripture. For God has a unified approach in his redemptive plan for mankind. Both in the Old Testament and in the New, God’s grace always precedes man’s action; nevertheless he also demands man’s repentance. When Niles speaks of redemption, reconciliation, justification, and propitiation, he emphasizes in each case that “it has been done.” Although he uses such terms as “conversion” and “evangelism,” he gives them special connotations. So to illustrate conversion he uses not the case of the prodigal son but rather that of the leper who had already been healed and simply “came back and gave God thanks.” This implies universalism, the dangerous notion that all men have already been saved—a great distortion of the Gospel.

Subjectivism Run Riot!

The Church Unbound, by Norman K. Gottwald (Lippincott, 1967, 188 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Edward J. Young, professor of Old Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

What is the proper relation between Church and culture? By carefully examining the relation between Israel and the nations “in biblical terms,” Professor Gottwald has produced an interesting and thought-provoking discussion of the question. On the basis of a study of certain passages from the Old Testament, he considers the Church as distinguished from culture, culture as attracted to the Church, the Church incorporating culture, and culture approximating the Church. This historical study is then made the basis for a consideration of Church and culture in our day.

That the study is grounded upon acceptance of the dominant school of prophetic study is bound to affect the author’s conclusions and his application of prophetic teaching to the present day. I myself am unable to accept any view of the prophets that does not regard them as spokesmen, who not only thought they were messengers (Bote) of the Lord, but had in actual fact received special revelation from the one living and true God. Therefore I cannot agree with the basic understanding of the prophets found in this work. I cannot accept the view that there was an “Isaiah of the exile,” for the whole denial of Isaianic authorship of the prophecy is based on a misunderstanding of the teaching of the book as well as on a flat repudiation of what the New Testament says about the book’s authorship. Nor can I accept what appears to be a false universalism. “If the covenant circle includes me in spite of my limitations and rebellion, in principle and intent it includes everyone.”

Gottwald’s view of the Church is not that of the New Testament. The Church, he says, is not limited to an institution or to Christians; “the church’s invisibility also refers to the activity of men in culture at large, which is in the character of the church but which is not consciously identified with the historic church.” Thus “the civil rights revolution may be church. Community organization of the poor may be church. Centers for dope addicts and alcoholics may be church. Student activities to gain constitutional rights on campus and to acquire a significant share in educational policy-making may be church.” But enough! “In each case the criterion for judging participation in causes must be the activity of God as best the committed church can discern it.” This is subjectivism run riot.

Strangely enough, the “activity of God” seems to be limited to causes that are presently dear to the hearts of political liberals. Would the “activity of God” ever be seen, for example, in an effort to protect the rights of property owners or to protect hard-working taxpayers from being compelled to support wasteful “welfare” projects that seem principally to benefit the shiftless, the irresponsible, and the indifferent? I have my doubts.

Far more serious, however, is the fact that this work does not recognize that man is a fallen creature who loves darkness rather than light. No human church or humanitarian effort can ever meet the deep-seated need of fallen man. “Cease ye from man,” said the Holy Spirit through Isaiah, “whose breath is in his nostrils.” From the easygoing humanism of Gottwald’s work we turn to the words of the late J. Gresham Machen: “Human goodness will avail nothing for lost souls; ye must be born again.”

Once Over Lightly

Highlights of Christian Missions, by Harold R. Cook (Moody, 1967, 256 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, professor of Bible, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

This book has a special purpose: to give Moody Bible Institute students a quick survey of missionary endeavor from the days of the apostles. Within the limits the author sets, he fulfills his purpose.

The volume is divided into three sections. One treats the expansion of Christianity historically—in ninety pages. The treatment is consistent with the purpose: it is panoramic and thus sketchy. The second section deals with home missions and is oriented primarily to the American scene. It is quite general and is descriptive rather than analytical. Some basic problems are mentioned, but not much by way of solution is offered. The third part of the volume sketches the geography and missionary work of the Church in Africa, Asia, and so on. A short bibliography is appended.

The author hopes his book will be used in local congregations and has written in non-technical language. It is a good book for the lay reader who wants a quick, easily read overview of missionary endeavor. It is not useful to the informed reader or the specialist.

The publisher has done the author a disservice by overstating the usefulness of the volume on the jacket. It is hardly a “valuable resource volume,” and to call it “a comprehensive view of missionary endeavor which includes little-known men and events as well as those more widely reported” is to embarrass the author, whose own preface says something quite different. The blurb writer might have spent his energy more profitably in editing the book itself.

Conviction, Compassion, And Style

A Varied Harvest: Out of a Teacher’s Life and Thought, by Frank E. Gaebelein (Eerdmans, 1967, 198 pp, $4.95; also in paper, $2.45), is reviewed by Emile Cailliet, Stuart Professor Emeritus of Christian Philosophy, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

The browser who grazes among the shining leaves and twigs of our day’s inflationary output of printed matter is likely to ignore this title, possibly with the thought that here is another bundle of essays and addresses gathered together by one of those emeriti who cannot bear to think that any of their productions might be lost to posterity. Very well, then! Let prejudice have its way. We judge books. By certain books we are judged. Frank E. Gaebelein’s A Varied Harvest is a book for discriminating readers.

It has rightly been said that “the style is the man.” A personality comes to expression in these pages—one of the strongest, most persuasive leaders of evangelical Christianity in our day. From his early childhood his nurture has been Holy Writ. For forty years he was headmaster of the Stony Brook School, and during these years he came to grips with the problems raised by Christian education and youth, and coped with the intricacies of public affairs and social concern, of culture and taste. When he retired from academic life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY invited him to serve as co-editor, which he did from 1963 to 1966. He has occupied many pulpits in churches, colleges, and universities. Throughout this rich career he has been led to achieve a most impressive integration of evangelical thought in action, and it is this that comes to expression in A Varied Harvest.

No wonder the book is so strongly articulated. The sturdy, impelling ways in which paragraphs and chapters press forward the case for a working faith well bespeak the character of the fully surrendered soul who tells the story. We see him plotting a strategy for Christian education, taking full advantage of the educating power of the Bible, rallying men of good will with the outcry, “What are we doing to our youth?,” pleading for Christian compassion, exalting the Christian’s intellectual life, pleading for a recovery of taste, enthusiastically magnifying the Church and its ministry at work and, above all, the truth of God’s Word and the majesty of Jesus Christ.

Well might the reader get out of breath keeping pace with the man on his way, illustrating as he does Kierkegaard’s description, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” Happily he gives the reader an opportunity to go with him on a vacation, and the section on mountain climbing makes for pure delight. But even then, the evangelical teacher allows his companions no rest from Christian instruction. The memory of a treacherous ascent of the East Ridge of the Grand Teton, alternating between difficult rock and precipitous snow as a storm howls along the sky, invites the “lesson” that “sometimes God puts us in places of severe testing.” There is no harm in this to be sure, except that one wishes at times through these particular pages that happenings might be allowed to speak for themselves. A point is reached where lecturing carries its stumbling block within itself. But then, to quote Kierkegaard again: “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”

Jaspers’ Wistful Dialogue

Philosophical Faith and Revelation, by Karl Jaspers (Harper & Row, 1967, 394 pp., $15), is reviewed by Stanley Obitts, assistant professor of philosophy, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Karl Jaspers’ Philosophical Faith and Revelation, translated by E. B. Ashton, is the eighteenth volume in Harper & Row’s prestigious “Religious Perspectives” series. The purpose of the series is to “present the numinous reality within the experience of man.” This work, described by Hannah Arendt as “the only authentic philosophy of religion written in the twentieth century,” is the final and systematic form of the octogenarian Jaspers’ almost wistful dialogue within himself between the siren call of the Christian believer’s cognitive revelation of God and the unescapable but philosophically limiting method of modern science.

Jaspers decides that the true philosopher seeking the whole of Being will neither ignore the two sides of the dialogue nor relinquish to either one his freedom of intellectual struggle. The withdrawnness of “transcendence” requires a “philosophical faith” in which the choice of what a man “will live by and for is his to dare and to destine,” declares this German existentialist. As anyone familiar with Jaspers knows, the notion of a “philosophical faith” is designed to avoid, on one hand, the irrationalism of Kierkegaard’s religious faith, with its “leap,” and, on the other hand, Heidegger’s curtailment of metaphysical speculation about the Being of the things-that-are to transcendental horizons projected by the self.

The more rational and optimistic Jaspers sees the self’s reading of its “general situation-limits” as directing its attention away from the “Encompassing” that it is and toward the other “Encompassing” that is Being itself, of which the self is a part. This latter, the Transcendent, is, as Heidegger would agree, not man’s object; but neither is it, contrary to Heidegger, just man’s creation or “interpretation.”

The person rightly beginning his quest for truth with the facts of empirical existence handled so well by the sciences soon discovers these to be only appearances of a Being continually eluding his grasp. The signs of the Transcendent’s manifestations must be read as “ciphers.” At this point the unwary may be deluded by the pretense of a historically factual revelation, the truth of which is authenticated by the witness of the Holy Spirit. But being unable to predict or comprehend revelation, reason cannot sit in judgment on it. God’s revelation, if it came, could never be enmeshed by the general concepts employed in philosophy. Hence, philosophy’s faith springs neither from the factual source and exact procedures of the sciences nor from the faith in revelation of theology. It is its own source; it is “philosophical faith”; and as faith in reason, it is affected by its opposite, faith in revelation. The two faiths must forever be willing to learn from each other, counsels Jaspers, even though neither one will be fully scrutable to the other.

He eloquently portrays the nihilistic bondage of man resulting from the scientific superstition and technological dominance of our day. But how free is a man, really, who is told that God is beyond all objects, “ciphers,” and categories of thought? If, as Jaspers claims, Being speaks in the ensuing silence as Transcendence “reconstitutes itself for Existence” and reaches those who have a “readiness for existential action in the world” within and without, philosophy being a “liberating force in its negations,” then what keeps Jaspers’ “philosophical faith” from becoming either a kind of epistemological voluntarism or else an incipient mysticism? If twentieth-century philosophy of religion in the Occident is as beholden to the post-Kantian tradition as Jaspers appears to think, then it is little wonder that the “honest” generation is giving Eastern religious thought such a serious look. But perhaps Augustine’s use of the Christian revelation as a basic source for philosophy, binding together philosophy and faith in revelation, is still a viable alternative.

The Cullmann Slant

Oikonomia: Heilsgeschichte als Thema der Theologie, edited by Felix Christ (Herbert Reich Evang. Verlag, Hamburg, 1967, 412 pp., DM 40), is reviewed by Ralph P. Martin, lecturer in New Testament studies, University of Manchester, England.

The name of Oscar Cullmann is internationally known among students of Christian theology. It is a further tribute to his fame and scholarship that after the publication of an important Festschrift to honor his sixtieth birthday there appears this volume to mark his sixty-fifth year. The earlier volume was entitled Neotestamentica et Patristica and was written by a representative group of international scholars. This new book covers a wider field, from Old Testament to dogmatics, from ecumenical studies to practical theology. And most of the writers are, it seems, scholars who have come under Cullmann’s direct influence. Indeed, most of them write from a distinctive Cull-mannian slant, expressed by the conviction that the magic word to solve the mysteries of the Bible and theology—and even some thorny matters such as the veneration of Mary—is Heilsgeschichte (salvation history).

Of the thirty-six essays (written in English, French, and German) that make up this tribute, we may select the following as representative, though not necessarily the most important. The opening contribution (in German) surveys the three motifs of Old Testament theology and history in the light of Heilsgeschichte, and finds that the ideas of creation, election, and exhortation in the Law were capable of perversion by exposure to the clangers of paganizing, ritualizing and legalizing. A discussion of the Temple-theology by Lloyd Gaston throws light on a central issue in Jesus’ ministry and early Christianity, while Robert Meye’s treatment of the messianic secret in Mark attempts to take the matter beyond where Wrede left it. Other studies in biblical theology are competent and full of insight. There are treatments of the wedding in John 2 and of the imagery of the vine in John 15, as well as of Paul’s apostolic awareness and teaching.

In the area of historical theology I. J. Hesselink offers a new understanding of Calvin, whose notion of “suspended grace” provides the clue to his view of the Old Testament as a preparation for Christ. The points of contact between second-century gnosticism and Bultmann’s theology (alleged by Cullmann) are examined (in German) by W. Rordorf. (A translation of this important study is in New Testament Studies, 13). T. F. Torrance has a long, erudite article on Clement of Alexandria’s knowledge of God. A critical inspection of Cullmann’s functional Christology is made by David Wallace from the standpoint of the Chalcedonian formula, though his discovery of “Hebrew metaphysical affirmations about God” sounds strange.

Two studies on the Virgin Mary make for unusual reading, and the attempt to find her a place in the heilsgeschichtlich program is not overly convincing. On the level of practical theology there are contributions on preaching as storytelling (in German), the place of the sacraments, and even the Passion music of Bach.

In all, this is an interesting compilation in honor of a prominent theologian, even if no single essay can be judged world-shaking.

Book Briefs

Dictionary of Christian Ethics, edited by John McQuarrie (Westminster 1967, 366 pp., $7.50). A useful book mostly by non-evangelical contributors, on ethical terms, concepts, and viewpoints; bibliography references reflect few conservative works.

Count It All Joy, by William Stringfellow (Eerdmans, 1967, 101 pp., $3). Against the backdrop of the Book of James, the author-attorney offers somewhat unsatisfying observations on wisdom, doubt, and temptation. Along the way he takes potshots at sectarianism as secularization, evangelistic crusades, pietism.

The Ongoing Purpose of God, by William H. Clark (California Lantern Press, 1967, 147 pp., $3.95). Strong sermons that bristle with faith and conviction from a respected Presbyterian missionary and pastor.

Hostage in Djakarta, by Harold Lovestrand (Moody, 1967, 215 pp., $3.95). A TEAM missionary vividly describes his imprisonment in an Indonesian jail. An inspiring story of a man’s faith and God’s faithfulness.

Alcohol Problems: A Report to the Nation, prepared by Thomas F. A. Plaut (Oxford, 1967, 200 pp., $4.75). That controversial report!

Peloubet’s Select Notes, 1968, by Wilbur M. Smith (W. A. Wilde, 1967, 432 pp., $3.25).

Christian Worship: Its Theology and Practice, by Franklin M. Segler (Broadman, 1967, 245 pp., $4.95). A sensible and practical book on worship: its biblical foundations, its theology and psychology, its forms and order.

The Apostolic Fathers, Volume V, by William R. Schoedel (Nelson, 1967, 130 pp., $5). A new translation with commentary of Polycarp to the Philippians, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Fragments of Papias.

In Defense of the Faith, by W. A. Criswell (Zondervan, 1967, 88 pp., $2.50). In five lucid sermons the pastor of one of the world’s largest churches confronts atheist, liberal, Communist, materialist, and sinner with the Gospel. Preached during the 1967 Easter season.

Paperbacks

Outside the Gate, by Carl McIntire (Christian Beacon Press, 1967, 351 pp., $1). A distorted and unreliable attack on the World Congress on Evangelism and particularly on its leaders, set to Carl McIntire’s theme song, “Only the ACCC is left” (or right)!

For God’s Sake Faugh!, by Nelvin Vos (John Knox, 1967, 75 pp., $1.50). From a Christian perspective, Vos examines the vital role of laughter in life. He views human laughter as a means of self-discovery and a balm of healing because God really has the last laugh. Incisive, stimulating, and entertaining.

A Comparison of World Religion, by Henry J. Heydt (Christian Literature Crusade, 1967, 112 pp., $1.75). An oversimplified survey of the history and literature of eleven world religions that compares their teaching on important topics and shows Christianity’s distinctives.

A Reader in Contemporary Theology, edited by John Bowden and James Richmond (Westminster, 1967, 190 pp., $1.95). A sampler of selections by Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians (Barth, Bultmann, Rahner, Van Peursen, Buber, and others) that consider biblical interpretation and the doctrine of God.

The Church: Design for Survival, by E. Glenn Hinson (Broadman, 1967, 128 pp., $1.95). A well-balanced book that rejects the current emphasis on secularization of the Church and points up the need for an adaptable and flexible Church that views its present mission in the lights of its biblical and historical backgrounds.

For All the World: The Christian Mission in the Modern Age, by John V. Taylor (Westminster, 1966, 92 pp., $1.45). A call for involvement by the whole Church in God’s mission to the world through proclamation, witness, and service.

Barth’s Soteriology, Bultmann’s Demythologized Kerygma, and Brunner’s Dialectical Encounter, by Robert L. Reymond (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967, 41 pp., 30 pp., 29 pp., $.75 each). A scholar committed to the authority of an infallible Bible offers three penetrating critiques of crucial aspects of the views of Europe’s three most influential twentieth-century theologians. Recommended.

The Reluctant Worker Priest, by Eugene P. Heideman (Eerdmans, 1967, 106 pp., $1.45). Experiences of a Protestant pastor who takes an industrial job and finds it an avenue to Christian ministry.

This is the first Christmas with Bethlehem under Jewish political control, and Christians are making the most of it. Some 50,000 tourists, reportedly the largest number ever, were expected to flock into the little town to mark the birth of the Saviour at the place where it happened. To help control the crush, Israeli authorities planned to prohibit non-Christian visitors from entering Bethlehem during the holidays.

The big event is a midnight mass at the Church of the Nativity. This year it will be televised around the world via Telestar satellite, according to Religious News Service. Only 700 people can squeeze into the church, but in the adjacent square about 10,000 can watch the mass on a big TV screen.¹In years past Protestants have been barred from the church. In case of bad weather the Greek Orthodox group has invited them in.

For Protestants, the big events are in the Shepherds’ Fields adjoining Bethlehem. Part of the land is owned by the YMCA, and Christmas eve services are held in the same large caves where shepherds took refuge nearly two thousand years ago. The Christmas eve services include times of fellowship and partaking of bread together.

For the first time since Israel became a state in 1948, a considerable number of Christian Arabs who are Israeli citizens will be able to go to Bethlehem for Christmas. While Bethlehem was under the rule of Jordan, only a limited number of these Arab Christians were allowed entrance. Bethlehem came under Jewish control last June during the brief war in which Israeli troops swept eastward to the Jordan River, but its fate is extremely uncertain. Although the U. N. Security Council has agreed on delicately balanced guidelines for an indirect Arab-Israeli dialogue on the Middle East crisis, U. N. diplomats generally concede that things may worsen before they get better.

People from all over the world go to Bethlehem for Christmas. Evangelicals in recent years have shown a special bent for travel to the Holy Land, and the June war enhanced their interest not only in the geography of Palestine but in its history and, even more, its eschatology.

Curiosity has been centered on the question whether the Temple will be rebuilt. Israeli officials from Foreign Minister Abba Eban on down flatly deny any such plans. But rumors persist. A few years ago reports were widely circulated that a prefabricated temple destined for Jerusalem was seen at a port somewhere in Florida. More recently, just before the outbreak of the June war, an advertisement in the Washington Post invited correspondence from people interested in helping to rebuild the Temple. (A CHRISTIANITY TODAY inquiry went unanswered, and the Post refuses to identify the advertiser.)

In August, a Hong Kong missionary, Michael Browne, reported in The Christian and Christianity Today that “Israel government representatives have ordered 60,000 tons of finest Bedford stone from Bedford, Indiana, to be used in the erection of the Jerusalem Temple.” The report got major display treatment in the weekly evangelical newspaper, which is the British sister publication of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Key industry sources in Indiana disclaimed any knowledge of the deal. But Dr. J. D. Douglas, editor of the London-based publication, stood behind the report and said a follow-up article is in the making.

Browne wrote that “five hundred rail-car loads of stone from Bedford, considered to be among the finest building stone in the world, are being freighted pre-cut to exact specifications, and one consignment has already been dispatched to Israel. Shipments are being handled by Pier 26 in New York.”

He cited a report from “authoritative sources in Sellersburg, Indiana,” adding: “Cornerstones for the third Jersualem Temple are already in Israel. Materials for this Temple have been secretly in preparation for seven years,” the report went on, “and it is believed American Jews are mainly responsible for financially undergirding the whole project. Strong rumors from other usually reliable circles say the two freestanding pillars for the new Temple have already been cast in bronze.”

Such reports are of unusual interest to dispensationalists, the eschatalogical monitors among evangelicals, who insist that Old Testament covenants with the nation Israel are yet to be literally fulfilled. A few dispensationalists regard the current state of Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, but most key thinkers of this school argue that the Jews there are still at the political mercy of the Gentile nations. The consensus is that the “times of the Gentiles” will not be concluded until the second coming of Christ, following seven years of tribulation after the rapture of the Church.

The brightest new exponent of this view, Dean Charles Caldwell Ryrie of Dallas Theological Seminary, discussed some of his convictions at a prophetic conference in Washington, D. C., last month. Like another speaker who said he was pre-everything (“I don’t even eat Post Toasties anymore”), Ryrie believes that rapture of the Church and seven years of tribulation will precede the end of “the times of the Gentiles.”

A Phi Beta Kappa from Haverford College with a Ph.D. from Edinburgh, the 42-year-old Ryrie typifies a moderating trend within dispensationalism. The swing away from the traditional seven distinct dispensations is underscored in the New Scofield Reference Bible (the first Scofield was the literary focus of dispensationalism for two generations). Ryrie defines a dispensation merely as “a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s purpose.” Unlike most dispensationalists of the past, he does not consider specific blocks of time as part of the system.

A 1965 book, Dispensationalism Today, lifted Ryrie to the role of scholarly spokesman of moderate dispensationalism. The tall, blond, quiet-spoken son of an Illinois banker was reared in an American Baptist church and now belongs to the First Baptist Church of Dallas, largest in the Southern Baptist Convention.

WHITEST CHRISTMAS

Christmas couldn’t be any whiter than it is in Labrador, that far-north tract of Canada which this year marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the start of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell’s remarkable work. Today he is honored in many parts of the world as “the Good Samaritan of Labrador,” or even, without exaggeration, as “the creator of a new Labrador.”

The Grenfell saga began when he entered a huge tent-like building in London in 1883 and saw “an aged man … praying on a platform before an immense audience. The length of his prayer!” Then a vivacious person jumped up and shouted, “Let us sing a hymn while our brother finishes his prayer!” Since unconventionality, common sense, or humor in anything religious was new to Grenfell, he stayed to hear the speaker.

The vivacious man was D. L. Moody, accompanied by Ira Sankey, and that night Grenfell heard and responded to Christ’s call for a life of dedicated service. Although his father was a clergyman, Grenfell’s spiritual impressions lay dormant until Moody showed him that being a Christian meant “loyalty to a living Leader” who demanded “knightly service in the humblest life as the expression of it,” as Grenfell later wrote. He was “prejudiced for an adventurous world,” and after graduation from medical school and several years as a medical missionary to British fishermen, he heard of the plight of Labrador.

When Grenfell arrived in Labrador in 1892 he was charmed by icebergs flashing all the colors of the rainbow and by birds both familiar and strange hovering over dense shoals of rippling fish. But he soon realized that Labrador was a rugged paradise. Unlike the British Isles, it had no Gulf Stream to warm its coastline. Instead it was swept by currents from the North Pole, hidden often by fogs, and battered by icebergs. Its interior was little more than a vast rocky tableland covered with stunted spruce trees—a region of terror as well as wonder.

The climate notwithstanding, Labrador was, and is, a land of riches, though at that time its hard-working, poverty-stricken, shamefully exploited fishing folk seemed unable to enjoy them.

The year-round residents of the 1,100-mile coast were 5,000 Indians, Eskimos, and whites, but each spring 25,000 arrived in a fishing fleet from Newfoundland. With no doctors or hospitals, this large community was plagued by scurvy, tuberculosis, and rickets. A third of the infants died within their first year, and the mortality rate of adults was among the highest anywhere. Malnutrition and sickness earned for Labrador the nickname “Starvation Coast.”

For the next half-century, Grenfell and Labrador were identified. He started with a hospital, a small group of nurses, and a steam launch that he learned to steer masterfully among the treacherous currents and icebergs. The full story of his adventures would fill a volume.

Grenfell early started a campaign to prevent the fishermen from being exploited by unscrupulous traders. He established schools and two orphanages, cottage industries, and centers for castoff clothing. Today there are four hospitals with up-to-date equipment, fourteen nursing stations, and homes for the crippled and blind. Altogether the Grenfell Associations have a staff of 400, aided also by college volunteers. Grenfell Scholarships have enabled many Labrador young people to study abroad and return home as teachers, nurses, and clergymen.

Grenfell’s story is a notable example of the social impact of the Gospel through one man. Although he operated as a healer, not an orator, the lasting result of his work in Labrador is splendid service with a muted witness to the Leader who inspired it.

TROUBLES IN BURMA, INDIA

Fragmentary reports from Burma indicate that the country’s 230,000 Baptists—the world’s fifth-largest Baptist population—have been increasingly restricted by the Socialist regime, which banned all missionaries last year.

The Baptist World reports that a cooperative mission project between the Burmese and Indian Baptists in the Naga Hill area apparently has ended. The government reportedly recalled the missionaries for “security reasons.”

The Burma Baptist Convention—transferred from missionary to national leaders in 1958—may no longer be able to hold annual meetings; food supplies are short at Zomi Baptist Theological School at Falam (the school that trains pastors for 45,000 Baptists in the Chin Hills), and a village pastor in the Shan State was robbed and killed by bandits in an unexplained raid on his home.

Baptist work in Burma began in 1814 with the arrival of pioneer American Baptist missionaries Ann and Adoniram Judson. It has been one of the most rapidly growing Baptist fields in recent years.

Foreign missionaries in “sensitive areas” of India also are facing government restrictions, according to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She told the Parliament that no new missionaries are allowed to enter the China-Burma border area because many of the Mizo and Naga tribesmen there are Christians and the missionaries’ influence is being blamed—in Indian public opinion—for tribal revolutionary acitvity.

Tribesmen along the border have been carrying on an armed revolt against the central government, demanding either an autonomous state or independence. The missionary controversy has been building for some time as certain political figures in sensitive states have called for deportation of foreign missionaries and their replacement with natives.

INSTANT MONEY HALTS MERGER

A “Save our School” movement—backed by $1.2 million of student-raised pledges—convinced the trustees of Kentucky Southern College in Louisville to withdraw from a merger agreement with the University of Louisville.

Last March the debt-ridden, formerly Southern Baptist college renounced its convention affiliation so that it could accept federal funds. The merger plan was announced November 1 to stave off impending bankruptcy (see News, Dec. 8, 1967, page 47).

Proclaiming the fund drive a student victory, backers of the small liberal-arts college said the financial support would ensure its existence as an independent Christian institution. Board chairman LeRoy Highbaugh, Jr., personally pledged $800,000 of the $1.2 million, and another drive was immediately launched to raise $6 million over the next five years.

JOHN F. NELSON

REMEMBER ADAM CLAYTON POWELL?

What ever happened to Adam Clayton Powell? He’s still in the Bahamas, by Bimini. But his woes are piling up like Christmas mail during a postal strike.

South Carolina Insurance Commissioner Charles Gambrell has charged that the longtime Harlem congressman’s Nassau-based insurance firm is illegally soliciting business through Negro churches.

The Inter-American Life and Casualty Company, which lists Powell as a director, is pushing a mail sales campaign that asks Negro church secretaries to serve as agents at $1 a month per family, according to Gambrell. An extra carrot is that the church is promised $200 if the policyholder dies. The beneficiary gets $300. Gambrell said he didn’t know what Powell might get.

Meanwhile, back in Miami, the unseated Democrat’s estranged wife won a default judgment in a separate-maintenance suit. Some Harlem Negro clergymen think it’s time to elect a new congressman, and Negro-rights celebrity James Meredith, who aborted an earlier campaign, announced he would again run for Powell’s seat.

Powell, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, has not budged from Bimini since the House of Representatives charged him with misuse of funds and court defiance. Contempt charges would be pressed if he returned to New York.

BY FAITH, NOT SIGHT

Even though he can’t see, the Rev. Russell Reinert is a man of vision. He is the first blind man ever accepted for missionary service by Wycliffe Bible Translators, and one of only a handful of blind missionaries in the world.

Mr. and Mrs. Reinert are to be house-parents and teachers for children of Wycliffe missionaries on assignment in the Central American jungles. They were recruited for two-year service in Mexico City by the Christian Service Corps, a Washington, D. C.-based agency that provides skilled Christian workers for short-term missionary assignments—a “peace corps of the Church.”

Reinert, 26, has never been immobilized by his visual handicap. He attended college and seminary on a government scholarship, graduating summa cum laude from Gordon Divinity School, and has been pastor of the Gonic Baptist Church in Rochester, New Hampshire, for the past three years.

“I really don’t mind being blind,” he says, “for I’m able to help others ‘see’ spiritually.”

Reinert’s missionary enthusiam dates from his high-school days, shortly after his conversion: “It always has bothered me that maybe we have too many churches [in America] while some areas of the world have no witness at all.”

Although he had some eyesight during childhood, Reinert was blind by the time he was 17. His wife has normal vision, and their 17-month-old son has no handicaps. But Reinert had a rough time finding a mission board that would look at him.

“In a sense, I’m a pioneer,” he says. His performance will be a proving ground for himself and a test case for boards reluctant to consider the handicapped.

Reinert’s purebred golden retriever, “E-Z,” may be the first missionary seeing-eye dog.

Because of Wycliffe’s urgent need, Reinert bypassed the corps’s usual two-to three-month training program in Washington, D. C. In its first two years the corps has trained and placed eleven persons in ten countries and has another in training now.

Director Robert Meyers, a genial Presbyterian minister who proposed the organization in a 1964 CHRISTIANITY TODAY essay, emphasizes that skilled lay personnel are recruited and channeled “within the existing missionary structure of the Church.” Thus candidates are commissioned in ceremonies in congregations of their various denominations. The corps recently mailed an information sheet to more than 200 mission boards.

Similar interest in temporary missions work is seen in the 200 applications received by Short Terms Abroad since it was founded. Most were placed, but the Wheaton, Illinois, offices still report more than 600 openings.

This year the Southern Baptist Convention assigned two dozen new volunteers, including two newlywed couples, under its “US-2” program. US-2 is designed to help out career missionaries in the United States and provide two years of useful experiences for Baptists in their twenties. Baptist Press reports that seventeen of eighteen persons in the first US-2 class decided to enter seminary or graduate school.

Since 1948, the Methodists have recruited nearly 1,000 persons for special three-year terms overseas. Its US-2 program in home missions, begun in 1951, has involved more than 400 single men and women and married couples without children.

NO MORE LIFERS

The United Presbyterian Church will now appoint foreign missionaries for limited terms—some less than two years—rather than for life. The 1,000 persons already serving are not affected. Because of a salary increase, the mission board cut 1968 appointments from seventy to thirty-five. The agency, which pulled all its missionaries out of Egypt during the June war with Israel, has severed ties with the Coptic Evangelical Church to avoid “embarrassment” for the Egyptians.

CHURCH-STATE DEVELOPMENTS

The continuing American quest for answers on church-state separation took these directions in recent weeks:

• For the second time in 1967, the U. S. Senate passed (71 to 0) a measure to permit court tests of the constitutionality of public aid to church institutions. But House approval is questionable.

• The National Council of Churches filed a brief asking the U. S. Supreme Court to recognize taxpayers’ right to challenge such aid. The court will rule this term on the right to sue.

• The Supreme Court agreed to rule on the constitutionality of the Federal Communications Commission’s “fairness doctrine” on personal attacks on the air. The doctrine is generally opposed by broadcasters, including right-wing religious speakers.

• Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court upheld a law prohibiting most food stores from selling on Sunday, and Governor Shafer signed a bill prohibiting bias in all housing sales.

From N.C.C. To The Pentagon?

Newspaper reports this month listed J. Irwin Miller, former president of the National Council of Churches, as one of the men being considered to succeed Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense.

The irony in that possibility was that Miller, 58-year-old Indiana industrialist, has been associated with NCC opposition to military escalation in Viet Nam.

Miller is board chairman of Cummins Engine Company, whose business includes a small number of defense contracts. He has long been active in the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) and has also served as an NCC General Board member. A recent issue of Esquire put his picture on the cover and cited him as Republican presidential timber.

FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN

The death of Francis Cardinal Spellman this month marked the end of an era in American Catholicism. The 78-year-old spiritual leader of two million Roman Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York was undoubtedly the nation’s most influential and famous Catholic clergyman.

His colorful career welded two disparate attitudes: utter modernity in things material and practical, and conservatism in things ecclesiastical and political. A militant anti-Communist, Spellman urged a role for the United States in Viet Nam back in the 1950s. As Roman vicar of U. S. armed services, for the past fifteen years the cardinal had cheered overseas troops with his annual Christmas visits.

Spellman was ordained in 1916. He went to Rome as a translator in 1925 and impressed the Vatican with American publicity techniques. Here he also became fast friends with the late Pope Pius XII, then Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, who in 1932 consecrated the cherubic Spellman a bishop in St. Peter’s Cathedral. He was named archbishop of New York in 1939 and became a cardinal in 1946.

As dean of America’s cardinals, Spellman did much to shape the attitudes of his church and his country. Critics considered him somewhat anachronistic as the ecumenical movement gained strength.

He forbade Catholics to see movies he thought were immoral, opposed public aid for birth control, and urged federal aid for parochial schools. He once charged Eleanor Roosevelt with “discrimination unworthy of an American mother” for her opposition to state aid to Catholic schools. Although his church supported it, New York State voters this year rejected a new constitution that would have allowed such aid.

The prelate earned a reputation as a master builder. His promotion campaigns raised well over $500 million for ecclesiastical schools, churches, and institutions.

Two days before the Requiem Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, attended by President Johnson, Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Church offered a requiem there, saying it was the first for a Catholic prelate by an Eastern Church official since 1054.

Archbishop John J. Maguire, coadjutor and vicar general of the archdiocese, was named administrator until Spellman’s successor is named by the Pope.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

PROGRESSIVE BISHOP QUASHED

Argentine Bishop Jeronimo Jose Podesta, 47, outspoken critic of the nation’s military regime, resigned this month upon the demand of the papal nuncio to the nation. The bishop, in revealing this pressure, said he had hoped for an audience with Pope Paul VI. But the Vatican merely announced his resignation without comment.

In his work with 900,000 Catholics in a suburban Buenos Aires diocese, Podesta had a reputation as a social reformer who often quoted Paul’s 1967 encyclical on economic justice. Critics of his political involvements linked him with exiled ex-dictator Juan Peron.

KING’S CAPITAL-CRIPPLING CAMPAIGN

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., plans to lead a massive civil-disobedience drive in the nation’s capital next spring to dislocate the government and city functions “until America responds” to the needs of the Negro and white poor.

King, who announced specific tie-up strategy this month at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference meeting, said some 3,000 demonstrators will be trained in non-violent disruption techniques. He admitted the campaign may be risky because of the “angry and bitter” feelings among some Negroes, but he said the program—also mapped for several other Northern cities—is a “last desperate demand” and the only alternative to the “worst chaos, hatred and violence any nation has ever encountered.”

EVANGELICAL HAWKS AND DOVES

“The college young people that I have to face every week are not worrying about the abstract questions we are discussing here, such as the doctrine of separation of church and state. What they throw at us are such immediate, concrete, urgent questions as, ‘What about this war in Viet Nam? Are we right in fighting there? Why is our country so divided on it? What stand shall I take?’ ”

Despite this pressing campus mood—described by sociologist Ivan Fahs of Minnesota’s Bethel College—theoretical discussion of war by forty evangelicals this month had its value. Host Myron Augsburger, president of Eastern Mennonite College, summoned the “peace seminar” partly because he is tired of Mennonites talking just with theologically liberal pacifists. So the seminar participants—half Mennonite and half from other traditions, hawks as well as doves—shared a common evangelical theology.

Many admitted they learned something from the other side. For instance, those outside the “peace churches” do not always recognize the distinction between two forms of opposition to all wars: “non-resistance” and “pacifism.” Mennonite theologian John C. Wenger said “pacifism as a movement does not always reckon as seriously as it should with the depths of sin and the human heart, and consequently is overly optimistic about the possible abolition of war.” While many pacifists labor humanistically for abolition of war and make international peace their major goal, “the New Testament non-resistant is concerned primarily to bring men and women to the experience of ‘peace with God’ through the Gospel of Christ in repentance and faith.”

Perhaps the sharpest cleavage during the probingly courteous three-day meeting came when “non-resistants” were told that the logic of non-participation in war requires non-participation in society and monastic withdrawal from life. The rebuttal was that it is difficult, if not impossible, to defend as righteous the promiscuously destructive character of war. The counter-rebuttal was that though war is never “righteous,” some unrighteous wars are justifiable.

The polarity (not explicit) was between the antinomianism of “just war” defenders and the perfectionism of the non-resistants. Willing involvement in unrighteous war seemed too complacent to the one side; the assumption that non-resistants can avoid all involvement seemed too optimistic to the other.

316 Million Protestants

The 1968 edition of the World Christian Handbook will show that since the 1962 compilation, world population has grown by half a billion, while Protestants and Anglicans now number 316,286,081, a gain of more than 52 million. The new Roman Catholic total is 581 million, with Muslims estimated at 465 million.

The handbook, released by London’s Lutterworth Press, may in the future be produced by a new church documentation center in the Netherlands, with both Roman Catholic and World Council of Churches backing.

The new fifth edition of the handbook reports country by country, with a breakdown of membership by denomination and mission societies.

Some “doves” were surprised that the most articulate defender of justifiable wars was free to concede that all wars are unrighteous. Some “hawks” were surprised that non-resistants did not attribute guilt to those who, in Christian conscience, participate in war.

Conservative Baptist Seminary President Vernon Grounds painted with some bold strokes on a big canvas in his talk on social responsibility: “Political action is a legitimate expression of Christian love, and is a self-justifying expression of that love. It is not merely a circuitous method of proselytizing, a technique for obtaining some sort of commitment.… At the risk of misunderstanding, we can affirm that social action as an expression of love is an autonomous activity which does not demand any end beyond itself.”

Baylor University historian James Wood discussed nationalism in Hans Kohn’s sense—“a state of mind in which the supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be due to the nation-state.” Wood said nationalism, including American, “ultimately judges or tolerates all religion on the basis of whether or not it is useful to the state. So long as religion serves the national interests and programs of the nation-state it may be tolerated, even warmly embraced.”

In the discussion it was pointed out that Americanism easily leads unwary citizens into uncritical approval of whatever the government does—for example, Viet Nam.

In summary, Augsburger said substantial consensus was reached on these points:

1. The need for clearer recognition of the human meaning of the Old Testament and the humanity of the incarnate Christ, and of their implications for church ministry.

2. The universal character of the Church as it seeks to fulfill its mandate and follow, above all, Christ’s authority.

3. The urgent need that the Church express itself more clearly on the evils of social injustice and work against the causes of these evils.

4. The Church’s value in exposing the evils of idolatrous nationalism and in calling the nation to refine and restrict the claims it makes for itself.

5. War as a judgment of God upon sin; all war as a form of sin; a sense of penitence about the Viet Nam war; prayer and evangelical action as a deterrent to war through Christian redemptive influence.

Likely topics for an expected followup seminar are the doctrine of the state, what the Sermon on the Mount says about church and state, and the practicability of total Christian disengagement from war in modern democracies.

PAUL S. REES

Indonesians are turning to Christianity on a scale unprecedented in modern times anywhere in the world. The Indonesian Bible Society counts 400,000 converts since 1965. It’s a “revival that seems to add another Asian chapter to the Acts of the Apostles,” said W. Stanley Mooneyham after a tour of the archipelago.

The conversions are particularly significant in view of Indonesia’s pagan past and its current place as the world’s fifth largest in population. Islam has been the dominant religious influence for centuries. There are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other country.

Recently, Muslims have taken serious note of the Christian surge. One Muslim leader addressed an open letter to the Indonesian president, General Suharto, threatening “holy war” if the mass movement to Christianity in Central and East Java continues. On October 1, anti-Christian riots in East Indonesia resulted in the sacking of at least twenty-five Christian churches in and around the city of Makassar, Sulawesi. Smaller incidents had occurred a few weeks earlier in North Sumatra and even in Djakarta, the capital.

But Suharto has rejected demands of Muslims that Indonesian Christians be cut off from foreign help. For at least the time being, Indonesia will keep its doors open to missionaries. “Every faith is universal,” said Suharto, “and should be able to have international contacts.” He conceded a major point to the Muslims, however, in asking that the major faiths not proselyte from each other but instead turn their attention to the conversion of the heathen tribes.

Suharto spoke to Muslim, Hindu, Roman Catholic, and Protestant leaders who had been called together November 30 to discuss how growing tensions might be relieved. He said he came to the meeting himself because he fears a national disaster (for earlier reports, see story following).

On the huge island of Borneo there was violence of a different sort. Rampaging Dyak tribesmen descended upon resident Chinese, some of whom were Communists and Communist sympathizers, and drove about 40,000 from their homes. There has been an anti-Chinese campaign in Indonesia ever since 1965, when a Communist coup was averted at the last minute. The Chinese are often accused of economic exploitation. And dedicated Muslims resent their fondness for pork.

Despite the turbulence, the conversions to Christianity continue, with no material or social gain attached. The Indonesian constitution refers to “belief in One Supreme God” and the “freedom to every resident to adhere to his respective religion and to perform his religious duties in conformity with that religion and faith.” A Muslim daily said the storming of the churches was provoked by a Christian teacher who said Muhammad was an adulterer.

Mooneyham, an associate of evangelist Billy Graham, writes in the December issue of Decision that the revival “has reached flood-tide proportions.” He says the Indonesian Bible Society traces the start of it to a little boy who in 1964 returned from school for the holidays with a New Testament.

“Religious faith seemed moribund in his Communist village,” Mooneyham said, “but every evening the boy would read the stories about Jesus to his brothers and sisters. Soon some adults joined the group. Friends and neighbors dropped in.”

A preacher was brought from another town, and people were baptized. Before long twelve adjacent villages were asking for a preacher, and many more people were turning to Christianity.

Then came the failure of the Communist plot, which created an ideological vacuum that Christianity began to fill. Bible shortages developed. Churchmen trying to compile statistics could not keep pace with developments.

Evangelicals in other countries have watched the revival closely, but so far there have been no major crash programs to capitalize fully on the fresh Christian interest. Dutch Christians increased their missionary giving by 20 per cent, but Indonesian churches said more was needed. A 1968 drive will seek to double the budget to $5.5 million.

Billy Graham is weighing an invitation to travel to Indonesia between meetings of his projected Australia-New Zealand crusade to address an Easter Sunday rally.

As a direct effect of the revival, the Indonesian Missionary Fellowship has been formed, and before very long the country may be sending out its first Christian missionaries. Observers note that missionaries from Indonesia might have much greater success in other Muslim lands than white missionaries. Another possibility is Communist China, which is said to be taking in scores of Chinese from Indonesia every week. If Indonesia’s Chinese Christians volunteer, the Gospel may gain a major means of access.

THE MUSLIM BACKLASH

A Muslim backlash is sweeping across Indonesia after a wave of conversions to Christianity in that land of 160,000,000 people.

Contrary to the hopes of some, no relief of tension accompanied approval of plans by General Suharto, acting president, for the Indonesian Council of Churches to hold its triennial conference in Makassar October 29-November 7. Prior to that, Muslims had damaged a number of church buildings and schools in the Makassar area. Bibles, hymnals, and other Christian literature were burned.

The council meeting at Makassar drew 250 representatives from thirty-eight denominations, who agreed efforts must be redoubled to accommodate the needs of new converts and the requests of many others who wish to join churches. The former youth secretary of the East Asia Christian Conference, 34-year-old Soritua Nababan, was elected new general secretary of the national council. He is a member of Sumatra’s Huris Kristeen Batak denomination, and has studied theology in Germany.

Christian leaders are confident that the goal of the Muslim zealots, namely an Islamic state, will not be realized, but they do fear that a comity system might be forced upon Christians. This might mean that in certain areas no more Christian churches could be started.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Protestants are eager to evangelize while doors remain open and the Holy Spirit leads men to salvation as never before in the history of the country. Evangelist John Haggai of Atlanta returned this month from a two-week fact-finding mission to Indonesia, encouraged to conduct campaigns there in 1968. All the pastors, missionaries, and church officials he contacted urged him to come.

Muslim power is nowhere near its reported numerical strength (90 per cent of the population, according to the Rev. Alex Rotti of the Djakarta Regional Council of Churches). “They say that Christians number maybe ten million and the rest are Muslims, but this is not true,” said Rotti, who is also a leader in the Dutch Reformed Church. “Fifty per cent of the people of Timor, for example, are animists.”

A Christian government official said, “The Muslim group is now afraid because they see the tremendous increase of Christianity. They are looking for things that will put Christians in a bad light. For example, they are accusing the Christians of using all the gifts from Christians abroad to Christianize the country according to a set plan, a certain strategy made by the Christians.”

“Now they are trying to accuse us that we are on the side of Israel,” he added. “Since our country has no diplomatic relations with Israel, this would put public opinion against the Christians.”

The government official acknowledged that the greatest danger is that the Muslims might stop Christian evangelism entirely. He said, however, that “we have those on our side who are in the Nationalist Party, and they are fighting to keep our five basic principles, the first of which is belief in God. The definite act of President Suharto in stating that the council meeting had to proceed—the Muslims wanted it postponed or canceled—causes Muslims to feel that they lost.”

Now that Muslims know the attitude of the government, the official continued, they are looking for a way around it. They are suggesting that an assembly be established in which all religious groups will come together to discuss the situation. “We are guessing,” he said, “that in that body they will make a demarcation line to point out what areas are Muslim and which are Christian.”

GAINER BRYAN, JR.

ROUGH DRAFT

“You are here to do a solemn thing—to assert the claim of conscience above the claim of government, the claim of justice over the claim of order. In asserting these priorities you are in harmony with the biblical tradition.”

With these words, the Rev. Richard J. Neuhaus, pastor of a Missouri Synod Lutheran church in Brooklyn, New York, opened an interfaith draft-resistance service. Eighty-six men marched up the center aisle to deposit their draft cards in a brass alms basin.

Other “peace services” were held this month in churches throughout the nation. But simultaneous rumblings of a shift in war criticism were heard from churchmen in the nation’s capital and in San Francisco.

A service scheduled for St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Washington, D. C.—which was to have included draft-card surrenders—was banned after official church pressure. Five men later turned in their cards at a religious service at Georgetown University’s Hall of Nations after six other churches turned down the anti-draft group, The Resistance.

And in San Francisco, Episcopal Bishop Kilmer Myers refused the use of Grace Cathedral for a “turn in or burn in” draft card service. The sponsoring Northern California Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Viet Nam later held the service on the steps of the Federal Building (in violation of the attorney general’s orders) as fifty-six clergymen stood by. Eighty-nine men plunked their cards into an offering plate belonging to the Howard Presbyterian Church and a chalice made by Vietnamese out of an army shell case.

Said Father Peter Riga of St. Mary’s College regarding the resisters: “They stand afoul of the law, but we appeal to a higher law.…”

Stanford’s Robert McAfee Brown said the cards were “symbols of coercion and force, suffering and killing … but in here [the chalice] the card becomes a message of peace.”

Other “services of conscience” were held in Los Angeles, where military opponents dropped their draft cards into a chalice of human blood on the altar of the First Unitarian Church, and in New Haven, Connecticut, where 1,000 demonstrators marched from Yale’s Battell Chapel to the courthouse to surrender draft documents.

Eleven young men left their cards in a collection plate at the Germantown Community United Presbyterian Church after giving anti-war speeches.

Conservatives regarded Myers’s refusal as a concession to heavy contributors who have been inflamed over recurring controversies. Grace Cathedral reportedly is $100,000 in debt.

In a curious twist, Neuhaus, speaking at a two-day symposium on “Who Speaks for the church?” in Washington, D. C.—not at the peace service in his church—said religious opposition to the war is frequently self-defeating because it focuses on policy decisions rather than moral principles.

And at the same meeting, Paul Ramsey, who recently slapped the World Council of Churches for venturing beyond its competence on social issues, declared church endorsement of specific policies was wrong both in strategy and in principle.

Some observers think remarks by Neuhaus at the symposium, and the barring of services in San Francisco and Washington that would have espoused breaking the law, are a sign that responsible liberals are now shifting from a particularist stance on policy decisions to a middle way.

Myers, explaining his position, said the Church, as an institution, should not lend itself to a polarization of extremes of the right and left. It should instead encourage a “rhetoric of the center,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Coordinating Council of the Methodist Church set February 1, 1968, as the suspension date for Concern, a denominational social-action magazine. The Board of Christian Social Concerns contends the controversial organ is devoted to a “secular mission” rather than promotion, as originally intended.

In another clergy-draft conflict, the National Council of Churches and the American Civil Liberties Union are seeking a court test of the re-classification of Cornell University chaplains Father David Connor and the Rev. Paul Gibbons and of University Christian Movement field director Henry Bucher. All three were reclassified from 4-D to 1-A delinquent after they turned in their draft cards.

An ACLU official said it entered the scene because of the “intimidating nature” of General Lewis Hershey’s draft-review directive. Hershey, incidentally, said nearly three-fourths of recently surrendered draft cards actually were business calling cards, drivers’ licenses or membership cards. “Many are protesters,” noted the draft director, “until it comes to the moment of truth.”

RUSSELL CHANDLER

KEY BRIDGE II

Twelve churchmen¹George A. Fallon, Leighton Ford, John F. Havlik, Carl F. H. Henry, Rufus Jones, David E. Kucharsky, Harold Lindsey, John A. Mackay, T. A. Raedeke, J. Sherrard Rice, Edward H. Rockey, Carl W. Tiller. met December 2 and 3 to carry forward the “Key Bridge” dialogue on possibilities of more tangible evangelical witness and unity in American life. They agreed on the general feasibility of a multi-faceted continental evangelistic drive cresting in 1973, subject to favorable conditions.

The meeting, following up a September session that was a first for cooperative-minded evangelicals, was again held at a motel adjacent to Key Bridge in Arlington, Virginia.

The latest conference produced the concept of a non-organizational “evangelical Christian coalition” to advance cooperative efforts. It also will seek to present a full understanding of what it means to be evangelical and relevant in the contemporary situation.

No decisions were arrived at, but significant progress was reported in discussions, and an enlarged meeting was projected for March 9 and 10. No significant differences were encountered in the discussions.

Participants, clergy and lay, came from nine major denominations, but as individuals and not as official representatives of their communions. They constituted a transdenominational dialogue that reached far beyond existing patterns of cooperation.

OUTLER OUTSPOKEN

Albert C. Outler, internationally respected Methodist theologian of Dallas, Texas, surprised Methodist Christian—education specialists last month when he declared that Methodism is in a state of malaise.

Although he is noted for his exhortations for Christian unity, Outler revealed at a Dallas education meeting that the pending merger with the Evangelical United Brethren to form the United Methodist Church upset him.

The outspoken theologian, who has been personally acquainted with ecumenical meetings since Edinburgh in 1937, told the group that only Eastern Orthodox churches are less inclined toward basic reforms than Methodists.

“Meanwhile, there is in the Methodist Church visible disaffection and mutiny swelling to epidemic proportions, a crisis in vocational identity and professional commitment that has already shattered the esprit de corps of our once proud itinerant system,” he said.

In part, the illness is due to the “peculiar and cherished Methodist constitution and policy—a policy which used to work so well but that now is no longer working as advertised,” he maintained. “There is a self-stultifying sullenness among the clergy, generated by the feeling that being ‘pastor in charge’ no longer means being ‘in Charge’ but rather being a high-class flunky of the hierarchy on the one hand and the official board on the other—a sort of residential chaplain.”

Outler charged that the Methodist system of appointment of pastors degrades pastors to a status of employes and robs them of initiative.

MARQUITA MOSS

SHOOTING DOWN .006

America’s 330,000 churches currently show a facility-utilization rate of about .006, and the figure is declining. This means the average church makes full use of its property and equipment about one hour for every 168 in the week. No other architectural structure is used so sparingly.

Evangelicals are responding to the fact of this waste by trying to make church buildings more functional, and liberals by seeking to reduce their number. The fewer-buildings bloc, which is also ecumenically inclined, finds its Exhibit A in the planned city of Columbia, Maryland, now under construction in the rolling countryside midway between Baltimore and Washington, D. C.

“We seem to agree that by investing less in bricks and mortar we will be able to spend more time and energy on mission and ministry,” says the Rev. Clarence Sinclair, who heads the Columbia Cooperative Ministry.

With the help of the National and Maryland Councils of Churches, Sinclair’s group is working out plans for sharing ministers and facilities. Thirteen denominations have thus far entered into a “covenant” to work together in Columbia rather than establishing competing churches. The first church building won’t be ready before Easter, 1970, but a congregation has been meeting in a town hall since September.

The Lutheran Church in America, Methodists, and United Presbyterians will share responsibility for ministerial leadership in the first village church. Village two will be American Baptist, Episcopal, and United Church of Christ; and village three, Church of the Brethren, Missouri Synod Lutheran, and Presbyterian, U. S. Roman Catholics will join the venture soon.

The cooperative venture was initiated by developer James Rouse, an elder in Brown Memorial United Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, who has more recently been attending the innovative ecumenical Church of the Savior in Washington. Rouse asked the National Council to arrange for the planning. Spokesmen for Rouse say he will also provide for churches that do not subscribe to the ecumenical compact.

GERMANY: THESES AND PROTESTS

“Jesus Christ ordered his Church to proclaim the great acts of God without fear of men. It is a mistake to think that the task of the Church is to turn the local congregations into experimental laboratories for conflicting theological ideas.” With these words the German Confessional (“No Other Gospel”) Movement closed a new protest against the “false teachings of a theology governed by the spirit of the present age.”

This protest document was released at a mass meeting of 8,000 persons late last month in Düsseldorf, where the movement was christened nearly two years ago at a meeting attended by 20,000.

In seven theses, the movement draws attention to biblical truths that it says are being impaired. The basis of evangelical teaching is being undermined, asserts the document prepared by forty theologians, pastors, and laymen, including Professor Walter Künneth of Erlangen University.

These men acknowledge faith in the work of the Holy Spirit through the testimony of the Bible, the deity of Christ, his substitutionary and atoning death, his bodily resurrection, his return to become universal Head and Judge, forgiveness of sins with the enabling gift of the Holy Spirit to obey God’s commandments, and the Church’s task of saving lost men by fearlessly testifying to God’s great acts.

The theses also dispute: that scientific study alone enables men to understand the Bible as God’s word, without the grace of the Holy Spirit; that the New Testament apostles dressed up their message in mythical language; that praying to Christ is wrong; and that following the Crucified One is possible without a tie to the Resurrected One.

The last protest reads: “Ecclesiastical preaching becomes unbelieving when the leading organs of the Church allow pastors to be ordained who haven’t accepted the Gospel in the sense of acknowledged confession, and who will say the Credo with the congregation but have at the same time inner reservations against it.”

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

PHILIPPINES: COMMON BIBLE

Leaders of the Philippine Bible Society and the Roman Catholic Commission on Christian Unity are planning a common Bible translation. Joint efforts are now under way for a Bible in the Ilocano dialect, the language of the northern region of Luzon—largest Philippine island. Next May, a Bible translation institute will be held at the country’s summer capital of Baguio to prepare a Protestant-Catholic Bible for residents of the Tagalog area in central Luzon. A joint Scripture—distribution program through the PBS is also in the works.

THE CONGRESS THAT ALMOST WAS

The Third Evangelical Congress of Latin America, until recently slated to convene in São Paulo, Brazil, this month, has become “the congress that almost was.” It has been again postponed, now ostensibly for another year, while the ecumenically oriented workshops that were to precede it were scheduled for December 11–17 in Uruguay.

From the beginning, the congress has been beset with problems. At the second congress (Lima, Peru, 1961) the conservative domination was overwhelming, and ecumenical organizers decided the time was not ripe for realizing a dream of long standing—the unification of the various national church councils and federations in a single Latin American Evangelical Confederation. So this objective was postponed until the next continental assembly.

Responsibility for coordination and for promotion of unity, meanwhile, was assigned successively each year to a different national council. In 1966, convening the third continent-wide congress was to be the responsibility of the Evangelical Confederation of Brazil. But this plan for passing on the torch never got off the ground.

At the same time that the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America (CCLA) was dissolved in favor of the Latin American Department of the U. S. National Council of Churches, ecumenical leaders brought into existence several specialized agencies. They were ISAL (church and society), CELADEC (Christian education), and finally UNELAM (“Provisional Committee for Evangelical Unity in Latin America”). Chaired by leaders of weight and vision, these agencies (along with the older ones for university and youth work) have become the focal point of the ecumenical thrust in Latin America. UNELAM and its director, Dr. Emilio Castro, have been particularly active in the effort to promote the third congress.

But this became, for some Latin Americans, precisely the problem. Hardline conservatives began to fear an “ecumenical” takeover, and the anticipated São Paulo congress was at first treated with great distrust. Then it was discovered that the Brazilian confederation had no intention of being manipulated by ecumenists, and in the congress planning committee the Brazilians teamed up with conservatives from other parts of South America to write the program and call the shots in terms satisfactory to any evangelical.

The counter move was to schedule a series of consultations just prior to the congress under the sponsorship of UNELAM, ISAL, ULAJE, and CELADEC. There was good precedent for this—the program had been similarly structured six years ago in Peru. But because the alphabet of organizations now is longer and more impressive, the consultations may have seemed too risky for the conservatives to tolerate.

Deaths

CHARLES J. WATTERS, 40, Roman Catholic chaplin on a voluntary six-month extension of Viet Nam duty; hit by a bomb as he prayed with wounded men at Dak To.

J. KENNETH PFOHL, 93, veteran leader of the Southern Province, Moravian Church in America; in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

KARL GRAESSER, 64, president of the northeast district of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; in Bronxville, New York.

DALTON F. MCCLELLAND, 77, YMCA representative at the United Nations and a longtime worker in India; while attending a meeting in New York’s Interchurch Center.

Consequently, the congress was postponed once again. The ecumenically oriented groups then withdrew their financial backing, which reportedly came from the NCC, and scheduled this month’s Uruguay workshops on such topics as church and society, social action, social service, community organization and development, migrant problems, youth strategy, and the role of women in church and society.

On the other side of the fence, the hard-line conservatives met October 25 at Rancagua, Chile, to issue a declaration to Latin American evangelicals everywhere, deploring the fact that “many groups supported by diverse agencies which are not identified with the church … are trying to lead the people of God,” and stating that “we do not agree with their actions or their political-religious publications.” They called for the formation of a committee with “firm evangelical convictions” to study the possible structure of a “South American Evangelical Confederation.”

What will come from the Rancagua manifesto remains to be seen. The suggestion was a planning committee meeting in March, 1968, followed by a South American Evangelical Conference in June of the same year. Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean were considered to be outside the pale of the self-appointed committee’s responsibility. The declaration was signed by eight conservative church leaders, several of them foreign missionaries.

Writes Castro, “If we take advantage of [the postponement] to study the preparatory documents, the delegations can approach the dialogue better informed, and we shall demonstrate to our surprise that our positions are not so different the one from the other. I am convinced of what our Latin American Evangelical Church needs is direct communication—personal conversations, common Bible studies. We must not grow weary in our common calling to testify to the people of Latin America concerning the integral salvation which Christ offers and the unity which he creates among those who accept him as Lord and Saviour.”

No one can be sure what will happen next as dedicated and sincere Christian men on both sides of the organizational fence seek to impose their own designs upon the Latin American evangelical community. And it is anybody’s guess as to when evangelicals may again meet in a continental congress.

W. DAYTON ROBERTS