News of a plane crash that killed two missionaries (see box below) was released last month. Ironically, at about the same time Church of the Nazarene journalist Elden Rawlings, on a trip to Central America, was writing this personal account of missionary aviation anecdotes:

“It is really the safest airline in the world.”

With this, the missionaries smirked and began to unfold stories that even the most imaginative of their listeners couldn’t top. Missionaries on furlough seldom mention flying in public. Maybe it’s because they think that people won’t be interested, or that the factuality of their stories will be questioned. But this was in private, and they were not on furlough.

After hearing their tales, I might have suggested they should travel by car—had I not been over some of the roads. The advantage had to lie with flying. Riding antiquated airplanes is occasionally a mite perilous. But the time during which you wonder whether you will reach your destination is gratifyingly shorter.

“These pilots are good,” piped one missionary. “They have to be.” He told of one who had become a special friend. Then his voice trailed off: “But he crashed recently. They never did know what happened.”

One of the older missionaries remembered his first flight twenty years ago: it ended prematurely in a cornfield. The bewildered passengers crawled out and hailed a bus (they are omnipresent in Latin America) to the next town. Legend says the plane, which was soon repaired and on its way again, is still in service.

A vast array of World War II-vintage planes still are hopping the mountains, enduring the violent weather of the tropics, and landing on abbreviated airstrips with a remarkable record of success.

The missionary spun another yarn about three passengers boarding an ancient DC-3 loaded with fourteen gasoline drums. The contents sloshed gently as fumes wafted through the fuselage. As soon as the plane was airborne, the copilot appeared, shaking his finger from side to side in the traditional Latin way of saying “no.”

“No smoking, please,” he said politely. The instruction was as necessary as telling the passengers not to jump out—which seemed, at the moment, a safer option.

A missionary nurse recalled waiting to board a plane when a jeep brushed the tail of the aircraft. The entire tail section quivered, then plopped unceremoniously on the runway. The ground crew rushed out, picked it up, and carted it away. After a short delay, another equally mature plane was rolled out to take her truncated sister’s place.

Milestone Mishap

The crash of a single-engine Cessna 180 in Venezuela last month was the first fatal accident in the twenty-three-year, fifteen-million-mile history of Missionary Aviation Fellowship.

The astounding record, established in the face of the extreme adversities of jungle flying, was broken with the death of Don Roberson, MAF pilot, and Curtis Findley, who served with the New Tribes Mission. Their plane went down October 6 near Puerto Ayacucho, apparently after a fire of undetermined origin broke out in the back of the cabin. The wreckage was found five days later, and the bodies were taken by helicopter to Puerto Ayacucho.

Roberson, a Navy jet pilot during the Korean war, is survived by his wife and three children. Findley is survived by his wife and a married son.

MAF, with headquarters in Fullerton, California, operates forty-one planes in fourteen countries. The accident follows by four months a fatal mishap in New Guinea experienced by MAF’s sister organization of Australia (after a sixteen-year fatality-free record).

Another missionary told of a flight with a half-dozen passengers and two tons of fish. The left motor of the twin-engine plane stopped four times during the brief flight. Each time, the co-pilot revived the stricken engine by handpumping fuel into the carburetor with a small pump. During the precarious seconds when the engine was dead the plane would tip, allowing the fish to slide gently across the fuselage. Then the engine would catch, and the craft would lumber on a few minutes more.

My brief experience with such airplanes failed to provide any hair-raising stories. During one flight, however, we crossed four mountain ranges with peaks from 10,000 to 12,000 feet and missed one jagged row of mountain tops by 200 feet, with the aid of a gentle updraft.

As we neared our destination, what the captain assured me was an airstrip appeared to be only a mountain trail. It matched descriptions I had heard from the missionaries. One had recalled a time when a pilot who was attempting to take off, brought his plane to a spinning halt while a pair of elderly Indians made their way across the strip, taking their wares to market.

I watched in amazement as the plane nestled onto the ground far more smoothly than had the jet in which I last had been a passenger. Barefoot Indians clambored aboard to cart away any luggage.

On the return trip, we simply taxied to the top of a hill and let gravity pull us to air speed, with assistance from the propellers. A final bump jolted us skyward and we skimmed the tops of trees, narrowly missing fleeing Indians who were using the runway as a road.

There was nothing to it. It really is the safest airline in the world.

PERSONALIA

Canon Gerald McAllister of San Antonio will perform the Episcopal wedding service next month for Lynda Bird Johnson and Charles Robb at the White House. McAllister has been a fill-in priest at a church in Fredericksburg, Texas, that the Johnsons sometimes attend while at the LBJ Ranch.

The Rev. Delmar Dennis, 27, a Southern Baptist who was an FBI informant during three years as a Ku Klux Klan member, testified at last month’s Meridian, Mississippi, conspiracy trial about Klan plans to murder a civil-rights worker. Seven defendants were convicted.

A storm of protest, mainly from students, followed the Rev. Malcolm Boyd’s swearing and loose talk to the University of New Mexico Newman Club.

Father Herbert McCabe, fired as editor of a Dominican journal for saying the Roman Catholic Church is “corrupt,” is joining the order’s study house at Oxford University.

Mary Cardell, 54, lost a libel suit against a London paper that said she participated in a 1961 witchcraft ritual. She must pay $14,000 in court costs.

James Kavanaugh, author of the bestselling A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church, has renounced the Catholic priesthood and plans to marry.

Catholic Archbishop William Cousins refused a mayoral appointment to Milwaukee’s community-relations commission.

Valparaiso University (Missouri Synod Lutheran) marked the Reformation anniversary by giving an honorary doctorate to Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh.

Priest John Mitchell was the first Roman Catholic to be elected an officer of Seattle’s council of churches.

The Evangelical Church in Germany named the Rev. Eugen Stegmann, 40, a roving chaplain to circus and show people.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA

Seventy-five evangelical pastors in West Berlin joined laymen to form the Evangelische Sammlung Berlin, an association committed to proclaiming biblical doctrines in the midst of the present theological situation in Germany.

The Salvation Army’s Joystrings musical group agreed to perform in the London Playboy Club. In return, club bunnies will take to the streets to sell bonds for the Salvationists, Reuters reports.

Methodists hope to raise $100,000 toward construction of a Protestant religious and social center in Katowice, Poland.

Individual congregations of the Italian Baptist Union will decide whether to join the new Evangelical Church Federation in Italy, which includes Waldensians, Methodists, and Lutherans.

Pledges to the United Presbyterian Church’s Fifty Million Fund for capital needs now total $64,427,659. During the last fiscal year, Methodist financial-crusade experts raised a record $50,443,000 for various construction projects.

The Southern Baptist Sunday School Board joined an equal-employment-opportunity council for Nashville businesses. The board will not lower job qualifications, however, and most professional slots must be filled by Southern Baptists.

The 63,000-member General Association of General Baptists voted to join the intra-Baptist Crusade of the Americas in 1969, and chose the Rev. Glen Lashley of Oakland City, Indiana, as moderator.

Marshall C. Dendy, 66, current moderator of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., will retire next year as top Christian education executive so his successor can follow through on “relationships to be established with other boards and denominations.”

MISCELLANY

United States Ambassador Chester Bowles criticized attacks on missionary welfare work in India. And Assam State reversed an earlier decision to deport Catholic Bishop Orestes Marengo.

Education Minister S. N. Eliufoo of Tanzania, a Lutheran, assures churches that the government has no plans to give in to demands for a ban on teaching religion in public schools and government take-over of Christian schools. Lutherans were active in a recent Tanzania crusade by the Revival Movement of East Africa. Festo Kivengere, a Uganda Anglican, spoke.

The Sudan will now admit missionaries from Africa approved by the All-Africa Conference of Churches.

Deaths

GORDON W. ALLPORT, 69, Episcopalian and Harvard University professor who was one of the pioneer psychologists promoting a positive view toward religion, as in The Individual and His Religion (1950); at Harvard, of lung cancer.

CLAUD D. NELSON, 78, Arkansas-born Methodist clergyman, YMCA leader, religious liberty director of the National Council of Churches, and consultant to the National Conference of Christians and Jews; of a heart attack in New York City.

FRIEDRICH GOGARTEN, 80, Göttingen professor whose demythologizing outdid Bultmann and whose historicized view of the creation doctrine bolstered those Germans who saw Nazism as a heavenly gift.

ARTHUR T. MORGAN, 66, general superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church; of a heart attack while presiding at the UPC national meeting in Tulsa.

Delegates from sixteen nations are expected to attend the West African Congress on Evangelism at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, next July. It is a follow-up to last year’s world congresses in Berlin and in Wheaton, Illinois.

The Greek military regime rescinded a requirement that evangelical publications be stamped “Protestant.” Now, after censorship, an “Evangelical” imprint will be used.

A chat between Christians and Marxists endorsed by top British church officials produced no conclusions or decisions.

Forty tons of electronic equipment flown to Quito, Ecuador, last month will enable Christian radio station HCJB to triple its power. The Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean will let Far East Broadcasting Company build transmitters there beamed at India and Pakistan.

All major religious bodies in Kingston, Jamaica, are uniting to raise $280,000 to build six basic schools, a training center, and a community center in the western slum area of the city.

Christian Business Men’s Committee International added members from Ireland and Australia to its board, previously all from the United States and Canada. Ted DeMoss of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is chairman. Last month’s convention in Winnipeg, Manitoba, drew about 1,500 persons. Alma College, Jesuit seminary for the West Coast, hopes to raise money to move to Berkeley, California, for closer ties with the Graduate Theological Union, which involves Jews, Unitarians, and four Protestant denominations.

Moody Bible Institute is scheduled for a free full-page ad in Time on its missionary-aviation program under the magazine’s offer to boost “unique” college offerings.

The ubiquitous James A. Pike represented Christianity at last month’s centennial of the Baha’i faith in Chicago. Followers of Baha’u’llah, who believe in the unity of religion and mankind, now meet in some 30,000 localities.

Planned Parenthood formed a council to raise $ 18 million and offer birth control to low-income couples.

The Roman Catholic weeklies in Chicago and St. Louis came out against the bombing of North Viet Nam. But the Anglican Synod of Sydney, Australia, gave U. S. policy strong support.

Because of the White House’s usual late proclamation of the National Day of Prayer, Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos could give his priests only six days’ advance notice.

As victory vibrations for the World Series-champion Cardinals died down in St. Louis, the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples) staged some celebrations of its own. Restructure and unity exponents rolled to a decisive (20 to 1) victory over conservative Disciples who vainly defended local autonomy against sweeping ecumenism.

For the first time the convention had elected delegates from congregations, regions, and agencies. Of the 9,575 persons registered at giant Kiel Auditorium last month, 4,085 were voting members.

Executive Secretary A. Dale Fiers called restructure approval “historic” and “the first step toward the Christian Churches’ becoming a denomination.” Delegates also sounded off on Viet Nam, narrowly rolled back a resolution supporting conscientious objection to a “particular” war, plunged anew into civil-rights and urban-renewal endorsements, and took a critical—but brief—look at ministerial racial discrimination.

Since the Christian Churches emerged out of nineteenth-century frontier America, the loosely federated congregations simultaneously have prized Christian unity and their own independence. The new “Provisional Design” could be adopted by the ICCC in Kansas City next September. Restructure will allow the local congregations to retain property, call pastors, and determine membership standards. But subsequently, the 1.9 million-member denomination would follow a centralized, representative government at regional and national levels.

Floor debate against restructure was mainly confined to a half-hour speech by the Rev. Tom Parish of Wichita, Kansas, speaking for the conservative Atlanta Declaration Committee. His contention that restructure was a “return to rigid sectarianism” was rebutted by Granville T. Walker of Fort Worth, chairman of the 130-member Restructure Committee. Said Walker: “The ancient and historic rights of congregations … are explicitly safeguarded.”

Alarmists immediately warned that one-third of the 8,000 congregations will bolt the “Brotherhood”; officials said no more than one-fifth.

Some delegates expressed fear that restructure will deliver the Disciples “holus-bolus” into the Consultation on Church Union. COCU advocates (by far a convention majority) admitted restructure “will be an aid to COCU,” but demurred about the merger matter. It won’t be decided right away, they said, so why worry about details now? Leaders of a unity workshop alluded to baptism, communion, bishops, and “mutual interchange of members” as major issues to be ironed out with the other nine COCU bodies.

Eugene Carson Blake, general secretary of the World Council of Churches and a native of St. Louis, spoke twice at the assembly. At a church-unity luncheon, 800 diners rose to applaud the gravel-voiced churchman. He said the ecumenical movement, far from being a failure, is “On the threshold of a new great development” with changes “no one would have dared predict.” Forecasting some unions within ten years, he urged Disciples to “press on patiently.”

Blake told newsmen, however, that he was impatient with those who say the Church should “stick to religious matters.… Life has changed; you’ve got to be political and economic.” Blake used a sunrise prayer service—preceded by a peace march of about 500 from downtown hotels to the Kiel Auditorium steps—to propose that the United States let a high-level conference of free Asian and Pacific governments decide whether American forces should pull out of Viet Nam. He also rapped U. S. policy there as “unilateral,” said the bombing of North Viet Nam should cease “unconditionally,” and urged government spending on poverty and race problems rather than war.

The convention took a tempered “dove” stance on Viet Nam during the final business session. A resolution that an opponent said “indicted our government as no good” (it included a critical statement by the National Council of Churches) was remanded to committee. But the final form was essentially just a rearrangement of the paragraphs. It carried easily after doves convincingly argued that the document requires the Brotherhood only to “study and discuss” the NCC material and “the basic justice of U. S. involvement.”

Chaplain E. T. Carroll, who recently returned from Viet Nam, was credited with persuading the ICCC to reverse last year’s stand and vote down support for conscientious objectors to “particular” wars. The resolution stirred explosive debate and a fairly close vote. Carroll asserted that bona fide objectors have an out under existing draft law.

Turning to urban problems, Disciples passed a resolution calling for solution to the crisis of American cities. A floor effort to join the Episcopal Church in its new $3 million-a-year urban program failed when it was pointed out the assembly couldn’t obligate agency or congregational money.

Continued existence of a separate Negro structure within the Brotherhood, the National Christian Missionary Convention, piqued some delegates of both races but didn’t stop election of NCMC officers. A resolution asked congregations to hire ministers without regard to race; a vociferous minority wanted a much stronger statement. Amiable convention President Forrest L. Richeson—no parliamentarian—finally gaveled down debate. Los Angeles layman Vance Martin, Jr., reminded delegates of the painful fact that last year’s lone Negro Disciple seminary graduate couldn’t find a church and finally became a Navy chaplain. Calling the Negro segment a “nineteenth-century cameo,” Martin declared Negro ministerial candidates will get the message.

Behind convention main events there was a ripple of discontent and impatience. Restless young liberals agonized over the seeming inability of the church to reach thinking, sensitive people on the fringe. Two hundred activists seeking “renewal” responded warmly to the waspish words of Albert Pennybacker, pastor of a church in wealthy Shaker Heights, Ohio. He warned that “in the shadow of hypocrisy,” restructure may be “enormously dull” and may be met with a “mighty ho-hum.” Then he challenged the renewal group (which formed officially on the spot with $50 annual memberships) to “get going on the serious social problems of race, war, and poverty.”

Pennybacker and other backers started zeroing in on the Great Society with action-program proposals. Some topics: world hunger, automation, guaranteed annual income, and controversial justice ministeries in Milwaukee and in Delano, California.

A Sunday-morning ecumenical youth service in the civic hall also pointed to where many younger Disciples think the action is: modern liturgy in contemporary argot, highly charged symbolism, and fervor for political action. Human Rights Director Ian McCrae of the United Christian Missionary Society gave a rambling sermon out of a newspaper. He told 700 teen-agers that the U. S. Department of Defense is more blatantly pornographic than the worst smut slicks. Then he mapped a political gospel: “The young Christian not in politics in 1967 isn’t working with God.… Decide where God is working in the political scene, then join in ‘Making Whoopee’ for God.”

If there was a hang-up among ICCC delegates, it was over the crisis of authority. Many, worried now about structuring and delegating power, will be still more queasy under the impact of their avant-garde theologians. A sample: The Rev. Robert A. Thomas of Seattle’s University Christian Church told a late-night discussion session that there are no longer any absolutes. This includes the Bible, which gives “no authoritative plan of salvation.”

The ICCC also:

• Heard the president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, San Francisco Bishop Donald Harvey Tippett, praise “new patterns of ministry” such as the Glide Foundation (which this month adopted a policy boycotting firms that discriminate against jobless homosexuals.)

• Heard a “State of the Church” message by Executive Secretary Fiers in which he said 4,823 participating congregations have only 3,157 pastors, and seminary graduates are too few “just to hold our own.”

• Appointed seven new missionaries and commissioned one.

• Named Myron C. Cole, Hollywood pastor, president-elect.

SYNOD STORM ON MIXED MARRIAGE

Europe was hit by a powerful 100-mile-an-hour gale October 16, but a storm raged even harder in the corridors at the Vatican Synod of Bishops. It reminded observers of the black week in November, 1963, during Vatican II.

Dutch labor reporter Richard Auwerda was the first to discover the mess of intrigues that surrounded drafting of the report on mixed marriage. Before the bishops came to Rome they had received a document drafted by Cardinal Ottaviani’s Congregation of the Faith. The men of Cardinal Bea’s Secretariat for Christian Unity didn’t know whether to be more upset by the paper’s conservative tone or by the fact that they had been bypassed, even though they had discussed the subject for months with leaders of the World Council of Churches (see “Mixed Marriage Rules: An Ecumenical Flaw,” April 14 issue, page 50).

Those unaware of the power struggles within the Roman Curia would have expected the secretariat to write the report. But Ottaviani came out on top and did his conservative best to propose as few changes as he dared. Bea’s men weren’t easily defeated, however, and threatened to send the bishops a minority report.

The Pope came up with a very Pauline solution. He ordered a mixed group of Ottaviani and Bea men to work out a compromise. Then came the question of who would introduce the compromise report, and some saw Paul’s hand in the choice of Cardinal Marella, head of the Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions, who had nothing to do with either the old or the new draft.

The report tries to combine the same two views present in discussion of canon law: defense of abstract faith (Ottaviani), and defense of the rights of men, who have the responsibility to decide whether to be Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, theists, or nothing (Bea).

The ire of some bishops was caused not by the report but by the way Marella introduced it. Not only did he tell the bishops what questions they had to discuss, but also supplied the right answers. And his speech was full of quotes from the original, rejected draft. His argument against change drew extensively from Old Testament bans on intermarriage between Jews and pagans. Informants said Marella made no distinction at all between marriage of Roman Catholics to Christians from other churches and to non-Christians. Protestants who had hoped the turmoil would result in a good discussion and an acceptable solution were extremely disappointed. Mixed marriages are a growing problem, particularly in Europe. In Germany, 40 per cent of marriages cross the Protestant-Catholic line.

The speakers were organized so that the first came from countries where mixed marriages are rare. Most of these wanted to continue the rule that a marriage is valid only if instituted by a Catholic priest.

Evidently there was no agreement on the related issue of requiring the non-Catholic partner to promise that children will be reared as Catholics. Only the Vatican can give dispensations, but the Dutch bishops have found a loophole somewhere that lets them decide, if the number of requests gets sufficiently large. So six of the seven jurisdictions don’t bother to ask Rome anymore, requiring only an “evangelical”—that is Christian—education for the children.

Dutch Cardinal Alfrink raised another point. He asked recognition of civil marriages, which involve the question of validity. The permissibility of marriage is a separate question of faith, he said.

Discussion of a less noticed synod topic, seminaries, showed uncertainty about the function of priests and orders and about the value of educational methods of the past. Suggestions included deemphasis on the cloister ideal, specialized training, and great freedom for bishops to work out programs needed in their own areas. A few bishops touched on celibacy, even though the Pope hadn’t put this on the agenda.

Meanwhile, a twelve-man body was at work rewriting the synod’s first document, on doctrine. The men chosen were quite progressive, and there were no professional theologians or Curia members among them. The Pope reportedly has accepted the bishops’ line of thinking—that dangers to the faith should be approached from a pastoral rather than a judicial view.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

OTHER ROME DOINGS

Various side events in Rome stole some attention from the Synod of Bishops. First, the Italian parliament voted a compromise motion seeking talks with the Vatican on revising the concordat between Pius XI and Mussolini. The main irritation is the treaty’s absolute ban on divorce, but it also makes Catholicism the state religion and gives it special privileges.

Then a communications symposium in Rome sponsored by the World Council of Churches and the Catholic International Documentation Center attacked the strict secrecy policies of the synod: Since the Church is “a public community … secretiveness within the Church is a denial of its very nature.”

Then 2,500 delegates to the third world meeting of Catholic laymen heard Pope Paul warn against lay attempts to “act without the hierarchy or against it.” The advice seemed forgotten when the final resolution said laymen want “a clear stand by the teaching authority of the Church which would concentrate on fundamental moral and spiritual values while leaving the choice of the scientific or technical means of realizing responsible parenthood to the parents, acting in conformity with their Christian faith and on the basis of trained medical and scientific advice.” The Vatican press later interpreted the statement as being no more than a repetition of what Pope Paul and Vatican II had said on the matter of birth control.

NO ‘SI’ ON SIGNING

The conflict between Spain’s 31,000 Protestants and the Franco government is fast coming to a head. By December 31, non-Catholic churches must register under the new “religious freedom” law or be illegal. But last month the Federation of Spanish Evangelical Churches, which represents the nation’s Protestants, opposed the registration requirement. Most churches are now expected to refuse to sign up.

Previously, the Spanish Baptist Union had recommended that member churches not register. Outgoing President Juan Luis Rodrigo said, “We must be prepared to pay the price that will have to be paid. Some churches will suffer more than others because some areas are more liberal than others. We need to be united and firm in our loyalty to the Lord.”

But disunity between Protestants and Seventh-day Adventists increased when the latter decided to seek recognition in Spain. Ironically, government officials privately expected mainstream Protestants to accept the law while the sects would refuse and could then be outlawed.

Jose Cardona Gregori, a Baptist who directs the interdenominational Spanish Evangelical Defense Committee, is optimistic. He predicts the Protestants’ conscientious objection will force the government to extend the deadline. The pessimists point out that Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, now next in line to Franco, is the strongest foe of religious liberty in the government. There is some hope that negative world opinion might soften the strict rules in the new law, which requires churches to hand in membership lists and financial records to the government. The European Evangelical Alliance issued a statement opposing the law, pointing out it contravenes the decrees of Vatican II.

Meanwhile, Father Carlos Giner de Grado, editor of a progressive Catholic monthly, was acquitted on charges of damaging the reputation of police in Barcelona. His paper had criticized tactics in putting down a student protest march.

LAYMEN DEFEAT RACE RESOLUTIONS

Thanks, said South Africa’s Prime Minister John Vorster when lay delegates to last month’s Anglican Synod squelched an anti-apartheid resolution. You have “the real interests of the country at heart.” Vorster admitted some of the worst foes of the government’s racial separation policies are Anglican clergymen.

The laymen defeated three motions on apartheid from the House of Clergy. The action followed a strong condemnation of apartheid on opening day from the Archbishop of Capetown, Robert S. Taylor. He said it is impossible to estimate the amount of suffering the racial laws cause, and charged that the promised “equality with separation” has not occurred.

Taylor said the recent deportation of Bishop Clarence E. Crowther was similar to the treatment of Old Testament prophets. But Vorster said clergymen “have been kicked out of South Africa, leaving the country better for it.”

The canned music had just switched from “Pale Hands I Loved” to a thoughtful rendering of “Mexicali Rose” as the plane taxied to a halt at Tokyo’s airport terminal. A tall, fair-haired figure appeared on the gangway and waved up at the spectators’ balcony, where many colored flags were being waved. The Salvation Army band launched into “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

“Is it Billy Sunday?” asked an American matron on whom the insidious diet of treacly ballads had done its work. But it was Billy surnamed Graham, being met by Dr. David Tsutada and others who had planned the evangelist’s October crusade in the Japanese capital.

Here was a place where mention of Billy Graham had generally meant nothing. Twiggy they knew, and British pop singer Cliff Richard (both were also in town). But the Graham name automatically opened no doors. “What is he, a fighter or a miler?” asked the custodian of one hall in this sports-geared nation.

During his eighteen-month preparatory stint, Crusade Director Dan Piatt had talked about a “city of unlimited impossibilities.” For this is not Kansas City or London or Copenhagen. The difficulty is not just a matter of the wily Oriental and the utter folly of trying to hustle the East. The East often gets things done just as quickly and effectively, albeit in its distinctive way. (Norman Vincent Peale is said to have found it hard to think positively in a Tokyo taxi.) And this great civilization that is 99.5 per cent outside Jesus Christ has a morality and a courtesy from which the Christian West could learn much. Moreover, there are no street beggars and little unemployment.

Graham’s hotel room came equipped with The Teaching of Buddha as well as a bilingual Gideons New Testament. This underlined one of the greatest obstacles to an evangelistic crusade: religions in Japan are not mutually exclusive. One can be both Buddhist and Shintoist. A pre-crusade anxiety was that unless the uniqueness of Jesus Christ were carefully explained, the innate politness of the Japanese might move them to go forward at the invitation, regarding Christ as one more deity to be taken into their system.

A further difficulty is the reserve of the Japanese. They hesitate to confront others on too personal a level, and this naturally affects their attitude toward personal evangelism. Nonetheless, crusade workers visited a staggering total of 3,500,000 homes prior to the crusade to leave literature and an invitation to the meetings. Even before opening night 15,000 cards were returned requesting further information about Christianity.

Another breakthrough by local Christians is financing. Previous mass evangelism in Japan has been subsidized from overseas. “We decided to change all that,” said Tsutada. “God has enabled us to raise the necessary money [$140,000].” Those who have worked here for many years regard this achievement as miraculous. Tsutada hopes it will be a “pacesetter” for future policy in other lands.

Team members engaged in a wide variety of pre-crusade activities and unanimously reported an awakening interest in Christianity, not least among high-school and college students. Graham addressed a banquet for 150 tycoons (“their names read like a chunk of Japan’s Who’s Who,” marveled one observer). They listened with rapt attention and appeared to have genuinely valued an address that dealt with the essentials for true peace and the necessity of a John 3 type of rebirth.

Opposition was slow in making itself felt. A crowded press conference docilely accepted Graham’s refusal to be drawn in on the Viet Nam controversy, though a major demonstration against the war had taken place at the airport the previous week. One team member recalled that when he participated in Tokyo meetings five years ago Communists secretly ordered large blocks of tickets and greatly reduced the attendance by staying away. Moreover, they got press space to advise the Japanese first to go to the cinema to see “Elmer Gantry” and find out for themselves what a “Christian crusade” was really like.

This was the background when Graham began giving his invitation the first night. Before he had finished a young student with books under his arm walked briskly to stand in front of the platform. Graham finished, and for ten seconds there was no response. Then hundreds suddenly rose as one from all over Budokan Hall, and before long 677 of the 14,000 persons present were down front.

Attendance at the first four meetings—including an afternoon youth rally with Cliff Richard and Bobby Richardson—totaled 62,500. Inquirers at the three regular meetings totaled 2,744, and there were 2,867 more at the youth rally, where filling out of cards replaced coming forward.

Local Christians were amazed at the response. One left-wing newspaper compared Graham’s visit with General Booth’s sixty years ago and said both spoke with “an imperative Christian voice.”

LATE RETURNS

As Billy Graham faced Japan’s challenge, words came of after-effects from his first visit to a Communist nation, Yugoslavia. At two baptismal services last month forty-six persons—more than half young people—were baptized into church membership. Both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox press have carried favorable commentaries on Graham’s visit. In America, the lovelorn column “Dear Abby” carried a letter from a mother of four who wanted a divorce but hung on. She was glad she did, she said, because her husband’s life changed after he accepted Christ while watching Graham on TV.

LEIGHTON, MYRON

Canadian evangelist Leighton Ford held the last of his national centennial crusades last month in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with repeated overflow crowds, total attendance of 73,800, and nearly 1,000 commitments to Christ. Even live radio and TV broadcasts of the services did little to cut attendance.

The day Ford’s effort closed, President Myron Augsburger of Eastern Mennonite College in Virginia filled the famous Shakespearean Festival Theater in Stratford, Ontario, on the opening night of the first evangelistic series ever held there. The elegant 2,258-seat theater, built ten years ago, has become a major Canadian culture center. The week-long Augsburger crusade was sponsored by local and district councils of churches in an area where many Mennonites live.

EXPO REINCARNATED?

As Expo 67 closed in Montreal October 29, city planners scurried to save many of the buildings for a permanent fair. The city approached the ecumenical Christian Pavilion and the evangelical Sermons from Science about keeping the buildings up, which will save the churchmen thousands in demolition costs. And “Sermons” could even do a rerun of its shows next summer.

Christian Pavilion leader H. E. Bartsch, a Missouri Synod clergyman, said 1.3 million persons visited the presentation of man’s plight by Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox. The budget of $1.3 million is in the black, in contrast to the Protestant-Orthodox effort at the New York World’s Fair.

Besides that, Bartsch maintains that the controversial pavilion was “just what we wanted”—something people would “go home and talk over.” He said many unchurched people, stimulated by the pavilion, have sought out pastors for counseling and are now in church membership classes. The presentation got one of three awards from Photography Today because it used photos for great impact in showing an “imperfect world” and “man in need of help.”

Bartsch said Christians in Japan had asked for beams from the pavilion’s ceiling for their 1970 Osaka fair effort, but the city’s plans have changed that.

“Sermons” attendance was nearly 840,000 with more than 250,000 persons staying for an evangelistic “after-show.” Some 4,200 persons expressed commitment to Christ. Of the $700,000 expenses, met mostly by Canadians, about $100,000 was unpaid as the fair closed, a little better showing than in New York. Fund-raising luncheons in Boston and Chicago this month, plus Thanksgiving offerings, are planned.

COMMUNISTS HARDENING

Czechoslovakia, which is applying pressures on intellectuals, is preparing a new ideological drive against the Church, the New York Times reports. A secret document whose authenticity is denied by the Czech embassy says Roman Catholics have quietly evangelized professionals, including Communist Party officials. The document also notes “some negative movements” among other Christians. The Vatican has carried on long negotiations with Czechoslovakia over appointment of bishops and other disputed points.

“New Breed” churchmen, given the upper hand at a major strategy conference in Detroit last month, proposed a general 24-hour strike as a means of protesting future U.S. escalation of the war in Viet Nam.¹The same week, 107 eminent Americans led by former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower announced support of U.S. policy. Included were Negro Baptist leader Joseph H. Jackson, who heads NCC’s second-biggest denomination; exlogical Seminary, New York; Edito-in-Chief Thurston Davis of America (Jesuit); and President Abraham Hecht of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. They also spoke approvingly of a domestic revolution in which open violence is deemed justifiable.

The National Council of Churches, which sponsored the five-day U.S. Conference on Church and Society, is now asked to “announce to the churches and to the nation escalation measures where the line must be drawn, such as: 1. the use of nuclear weapons, 2. the land invasion of North Viet Nam, 3. intentional direct military offensive action against China, 4, the bombing of the major Red River dikes in North Viet Nam.”

Should any of these occur, religious leaders are asked to “call upon the people of faith … to close their businesses and industries, their transportation facilities and schools for one full day, calling on all sympathetic citizens to join in this action.”

Eleven pages of recommendations came from a twenty-five-member work group on Viet Nam which was obviously dominated by social-activist radicals. The suggestions are in no way binding upon the NCC, but they provide wide visibility for the New Breed under the tutelage of Harvard Divinity School’s Harvey Cox (see story, next page) and give fresh respectability for its revolutionary motif.

A work group on “the role of violence in social change” released a paper asserting: “One criterion for judging violence is whether or not the violence seeks to preserve privilege based on injustice or to redress wrongs. The former is unjustified violence. The latter can be justified.”

The paper adds that violence, “to be effective in social change needs: objectives, strategy, disciplined effort, action-troops, people willing to sacrifice life, and a high degree of secrecy.”

The espousal of violence follows a drift of thought which surfaced at the 1966 Geneva Conference of the World Council of Churches. At that meeting, Princeton’s Richard Shaull said that “there may be … some situations in which only the threat or use of violence can set the process of change in motion,” and a report developed at Geneva saw Christians involved in violence as an “ultimate recourse.” Shaull was on the planning committee for the Detroit conference.

The Detroit meeting included some 700 clergy and lay participants, including a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, several Roman Catholics, and a number of Protestant clergymen from denominations not members of NCC. Dr. Foy Valentine, head of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, was a member of the planning committee.

Conference concerns covered a wide range of subjects from politics to economics, and included consideration of a number of sticky ethical issues brought about by advances in technology, medicine, and urbanization.

As conferees met, Israeli and Egyptian troops exchanged fire in the Holy Land, which placed an added burden of responsibility upon a work group devoted to Middle East problems. The work group came up with a series of general recommendations which Cox called “disappointing.”

The Viet Nam paper includes a long list of “action proposals.” Local churches are asked to set aside time in each Sunday service to give “current ecumenical views on Viet Nam information and historical background” and to make buildings available as sanctuaries for draft resisters. News media are urged to “stop ‘Red-white’ oversimplification of the war, specifically the identification of the NLF and Viet Cong as ‘Communist.’ ” The NCC, it is suggested, should set up a “free pulpit fund” for pastors and others threatened with financial handicap for speaking out on Viet Nam. Denominations are called upon “to examine the propriety of clergymen being in the employ of military forces.”

The work groups—there were twenty-nine in all at the Detroit meeting—made public their papers even though the opinions expressed therein did not represent even a consensus of their respective groups. Included in the Viet Nam group was a State Department representative who disagreed sharply with the mimeographed findings. No plenary action was taken on the papers, and it was not immediately clear what would be done with them.

It is doubtful that there are more than 1,000 hard core activist clergymen of the New Breed variety identified with Cox. The Harvard professor boasts, however, that in the past decade social-activist clergymen have “moved into key positions in churches, seminaries, and city-mission structures.” They draw pay from mainline denominations, but he rightly notes that few are parish ministers.

Cox says the New Breed includes “a sizeable minority of ministers graduated from the main interdenominational seminaries and some of the denominational ones in the past ten years.” The New Breed is also said to include some “educated laymen” who have been influenced in the years since World War II “by college pastors and professors of religion.”

A SPICY PROLOGUE

A film show with several segments in questionable taste accompanied the keynote address by Harvey Cox at the opening of the U. S. Conference on Church and Society.

One sequence showed an animated black-and-white profile of a couple engaged in sexual intercourse. Another, in color, a buxom stripper removing the last of her undergarments. Still another, the gyrations of a topless dancer.

More than a dozen conference participants walked out on the hour-long Sunday-evening show. It was unclear, however, whether they acted in protest or merely got bored.

The films followed a brief speech in which Cox warned that the “mixed-media presentation” might jolt the audience. A total of eighteen films were shown on a wide screen. At times there were four running simultaneously. A TV set also played throughout, accompanied by weird sound effects.

Most of the films took as their theme some aspect of the contemporary social milieu, but the net effect, probably by design, was confusion. A mixed audience of more than 700 viewed the film presentation, which was arranged by Paul Abels, a “director for the arts” of the NCC.

Cox, somewhat in contrast to the films’ mood of confusion, warned against fatalistic attitudes. “Although we seem to be in a power dive toward disaster,” he said, “we can still pull out.”

His critique focused upon economic realities: “Famine chokes off millions of lives while we employ our scientific wisdom to produce low-calorie vanilla fudge ice cream.… If the way we spend our money expresses what we value, then we think booze is more important than the education of the kids in our cities, and lipsticks and deodorants are more important than their bodily health.”

COX: PROMISE EXCEEDS PERIL

A visibly annoyed Harvey Cox held up a Detroit newspaper headlining him as a “top theologian.” “What will my peers think of this?” he asked.

Indeed, the 38-year-old Cox is not even a theologian in the precise theological sense.²Cox studied theology at Yale and has taught it at Andover-Newton and Harvard. But his Ph.D. is in the history and philosophy of religion, and he is now “associate professor of church and society” at Harvard. But insofar as the activist clergy of the Sixties have a theological undergirding, Cox holds the reputation for having provided it. Though at times ambiguous, he is unquestionably the leading theoretician of the movement and an appropriate choice to be de facto chairman of a Conference on Church and Society to devise strategy for social change.

“Although the present battle within the churches has profound theological significance,” he says, “it is not debated in overtly theological terms. Rather, the debate turns on questions of church strategy and policy.”

Harvey Gallagher Cox, Jr., grew up in Malvern, Pennsylvania, at the western tip of Philadelphia’s Main Line. In high school he was president of the student body and the senior class. At the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in history, Cox made the marching band—he plays a number of musical instruments. He saw a more raw side of humanity during his teens when he worked on cattle and relief ships to Poland and Germany. He is married to a drama major from Oberlin, and they have three children.

National prominence came to Cox with the 1965 publication of a 276-page paperback, The Secular City. The book, a surprise best-seller—more than a quarter of a million copies sold to date—attempts to tie together a lot of loose ends about modern man. It focuses upon secularization and urbanization as “the two main hallmarks of our era” and sees an emerging “Technopolis” wherein Christians are called to serve in new dimensions.

In secularization, Cox says, “the promise exceeds the peril,” though he concedes that perhaps it is in the realm of values and ethics that the nurture of secularization becomes most ambiguous and problematical. Cox rejects ethical and moral absolutes, arguing, for example, that it is hypocritical to expect premarital chastity when Christians have helped to create a set of cultural conditions that makes sexual responsibility difficult.

As a youth, Cox attended an American Baptist church where the pastor was a college roommate of evangelist Billy Graham. Cox retains little in common, however, with the evangelical tradition. He draws selectively upon scriptural themes and emphases but ignores considerations of the Atonement and afterlife. The big problem today, as he sees it, is that “we are trying to live in a period of revolution without a theology of revolution. The development of such a theology should be the first item on the theological agenda today.”

Cox calls the activist clergymen “the New Breed.” He tries to put them into theological and historical perspective in an essay that is part of his latest book, On Not Leaving It to the Snake. He sees the current movement as a “reclamation of the main stream of theology in America,” drawing from the spirit of the old social gospel but having some differences. World War I saw the fading of the social gospel with its view of the gradual social incarnation of God. It was displaced by the neo-orthodox ethic of Reinhold Niebuhr, who perpetuated many elements of the social gospel but, as Cox puts it, “was often critical of what he took to be its naïveté about power.”

Cox declares that with the New Breed, “the Kingdom of God, which in the neo-orthodox period had become an ‘impossible possibility,’ has become once again something for which to work.” Still, there are differences: “The views of the New Breed tend to be more provisional. They do not believe that one push will bring in the Kingdom. They tend less to identify particular utopian schemes, such as socialism or pacifism, with the gospel. They are more appreciative of secular allies and see the church more as a supporter and strengthener of movements already underway than as a vanguard. They rely less on preaching and are more willing to lead the institutional church directly into the struggle for power for the poor.” Cox affirms “a deeper realization of the intransigence of evil and a more realistic idea of power and how it functions.”

Cox is not as vocal as some activist churchmen in condemning so-called American power structures. Neither is he overly enthusiastic about the socialist-Communist rationale, in which he finds the messianic element objectionable. But he does see a massive task for activist Christians in reforming society.

“God has taken the mad risk of putting himself and his cosmos at man’s disposal,” Cox told the Detroit conference. “He has identified himself unreservedly with the chancey experiment called man, and the results are not yet in.”

MARCHING TO THE PENTAGON

Seminarians and clergymen were liberally sprinkled among the estimated 50,000 persons who rallied at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C., last month and then marched on the Pentagon in the largest anti-war demonstration in U. S. history.

One of the most prominent was Yale University Chaplain William S. Coffin, Jr., who spoke at the Memorial, urged young men to turn in their draft cards, and helped arrest a Nazi counter-demonstrator, but did not join the surly throng that assaulted the Pentagon. The protest was engineered over several months by an organization known as the Washington Mobilization Committee to End the War in Viet Nam.

The University Christian Movement—which includes campus-ministry groups from all major National Council of Churches denominations except the Negro Baptists and Methodists—supported the confrontation, during which 647 persons were arrested.

Similar anti-war demonstrations were held elsewhere in the nation. In New York City, twenty-eight Union Theological Seminary students surrendered draft cards, and faculty members Robert I. Miller, Tom F. Driver, and Paul Lehmann joined others in a “complicity statement.”

As the Pentagon protest plans took on “direct action” overtones and a hardening militancy, several church-related groups backed out at the last minute. Some said they were not pleased with the apparent take-over by the new left. L. Doward McBain, president of the American Baptist Convention and a critic of U. S. war policy, issued a strong rebuke of the “violent trend” in the anti-war movement, which he called “ridiculous and damaging to the cause of peace.”

ACTIVISTS OUT AND IN

Militant civil-rights action by two white Episcopal clergymen in St. Louis is cited as the cause of their dismissal last month. Bishop George L. Cadigan said he took action because of “procedural misunderstandings” but indicated privately that the pair had persisted in abrasive, bizarre tactics despite repeated pleas for moderation. About twenty members of the Christian Churches, in town for the national convention (see story, page 54), picketed Cadigan’s office.

The fired priests are Walter Witte, Jr., rector of predominantly Negro St. Stephen’s Church, and its curate, the Rev. William Matheus, a man who grunts earthy expletives. Shortly before the dismissal Matheus tangled with the Veiled Prophet Ball, an annual St. Louis social event he considers symbolic of “social bigotry and economic discrimination.” The stocky cleric has a record of arrests dating to 1960, when he pleaded guilty to employing a minor to sell liquor at his beatnik bar, the Holy Barbarian. Witte was arrested “crashing” the ball with Negro companions.

Taxes And Textbooks

The church-state controversy—at least as old as Caesar and Christ—may have moved one short, but important, step toward solution. The U. S. Supreme Court has decided to decide whether taxpayers can challenge federal grants to church-related institutions. The court last month tersely granted the appeal of seven New Yorkers who advanced a test case challenging the use of public money for instructional materials in parochial schools, on the ground that it violates the separation of church and state.

If the court rules in favor of the taxpayers, it will open the door to testing of a wide range of related government spending programs involving church-related organizations. A decision on the school-aid case is expected next spring. The court turned down a plea that it rule on the right of the Amish in Kansas to refuse to send their children to high school.

Pearl Birch Bests Baptists

Five California Baptist charities, including California Baptist seminary at Covina, lost a multi-million-dollar money grab in Dallas, Texas, last month when the court awarded the estate of the late A. Otis Birch to his widow, an exconvict. The church groups—which promised to contest the case—maintain that Birch left his fortune to them in an earlier will and was mentally incompetent when he wrote a second will May 14, 1966.

Pearl Choate Birch, a 200-pound nurse who once served twelve years in a Texas prison for slaying a former husband, married Birch last year less than a month after his first wife died. Birch died at 96 last March.

Mrs. Birch, who now lives in California, is free under $10,000 bond, posted on an assault charge for firing a rifle at a tenant in her Compton apartment house.

MARQUITA MOSS

But one clergyman won his battle. Channing Phillips, United Church of Christ activist in Washington, D. C., won cheers and congregational support after emotional dissidents asked for his resignation. Dissatisfaction with the Negro minister was heightened by a church appearance of revolutionist Stokely Carmichael at Phillips’s invitation last May.

‘SOULED’ OUT

A soul-searching look for evidence of the existence of the soul ended last month in Phoenix, Arizona. Harried Superior Court Judge Robert Myers, after seeking “divine guidance,” chose the city’s Barrow Neurological Institute from a field of 139 claimants as sole heir to James Kidd’s $230,000 estate.

The frugal copper miner—who disappeared mysteriously in mountain country east of Phoenix in 1949—left a handwritten will bequeathing his money to anyone who could scientifically prove or would research proofs for the human soul.

The claimants ran the gamut from the American Society of Psychical Research, headed by Gardner Murphy of the Menninger Institute in Kansas, to a frumpy New York waitress who said she was Kidd’s widow. The court ruled he had been a bachelor.

The thirteen-week marathon hearing included eerie tales of life beyond the grave, stories of persons transported to earth from other planets, and claims of the mistress of a dead “clairvoyant” Boston terrior that supposedly had “frequent contact with the dead.”

The Barrow Institute, research arm of Catholic St. Joseph’s Hospital, works in medical science, psychology, and psychiatry.

POLITICIANS ROAST ‘RELIGION’

Thousands of young people dramatically left a session of last month’s University of Toronto “Teach-In on Religion and International Affairs” to march in protest against the Viet Nam war. Unlike the Washington, D. C., protest the same weekend their march involved no violence, but tempers became heated and some shoving occurred.

The young adults who attended the teach-in, many of them high-school students, were respectably dressed, and hippies were noticeably absent. Over three days, they listened intently to more than ten hours of speeches, none of which had much to say about Christianity.

Violence and intolerance—inevitably linked with much of religion from the beginning of time—were not separated in Toronto either. The experts on religion included political has-beens with strange credentials.

V. K. Krishna Menon, former defense minister of India, was one of many speakers attacking America over Viet Nam. He charged that the United States is a power-mad nation perpetrating serious war crimes there and that it is also an imperialist figure in the Middle East. Yet in regard to India’s seizure of Goa from Portugal, Menon had declared, “We have not abjured violence in regard to any country who violates our interest.” When Menon was fired from the government, the New York Times breathed an editorial sigh of relief “in view of his record of official incompetence and his pro-Communist views.…”

The religious sparring between Menon’s nation and Pakistan gave Alex Quaison-Sackey a chance to point the finger. Speaking gently but firmly, he said partition of the two nations was the most glaring modern example of religion’s divisive power. Quaison-Sackey was foreign minister of Ghana during the regime of Communist-leaning dictator Kwame Nkrumah.

Poetry-writing Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who now lives in Paris, was expected to bring a gentle message. But he startled teach-in officials by laying blame for the continuation of the war almost solely on the United States.

In a special film for the teach-in, United Nations Secretary General U Thant testified that his Buddhist religion “offers absolute truth.” He said “It is through the ignorance of the law of Karma [good and bad qualities carried on in reincarnation] that men do evil to one another, and thus to themselves” and that the Dhamma (absolute truth) is the only hope for finding “a solution to the problems that beset us.”

Rhodesia’s former moderate prime minister Garfield Todd, a Disciples clergyman, and Bishop Trevor Huddleston, who was ejected from South Africa for his opposition to racial separation there, talked with restrained anger of white supremacy. The Church was also represented by Canon Lewis John Collins of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, who issued another call for some form of world authority to prevent war. He is chairman of Bertrand Russell’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Looking toward the future, Professor Richard Shaull of Princeton Theological Seminary urged young people to link themselves with the New Left and get more involved in basic issues. But from all evidence at the teach-in, the young people did not need his urging.

CANADIANS ELECT CLERGYMEN

In Ontario, where a government committee has proposed taxation of church property, voters last month elected three clergymen to legislative seats. In an upset, the Rev. William Ferrier, 34, of the United Church of Canada defeated Progressive Conservative cabinet minister J. Wilfrid Spooner. It was the first run for Ferrier, a Socialist (New Democrat).

Other seats were won by A. W. Downer, Anglican priest and former legislative speaker, who was re-elected for the Conservatives, and Fred Young, another United Churchman and a Socialist. Three other clerics lost, including Reginald Stackhouse, theology professor at Wycliffe College (Anglican).

LOSING AFTER THE WAR

Inter-religious affairs remain jumbled in the wake of last June’s Arab-Israeli war. To wit:

• Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a rule against Jewish children living in Christian orphanages, forcing probable closing of Beth-El Children’s Home in Haifa.

• Syria’s Education Minister Sulayman al-Khush boasted, “The era of missionary work in Syria has ended for good,” and the government confiscated all Christian schools.

• Vartan Sahagian, executive secretary of Jordan’s Bible Society, who was out of the country during the war, said he has been refused readmission to Jerusalem.

• Beirut Radio said Christians and Muslims plan to meet in Lebanon to plot a “rescue” of Jerusalem from Israeli occupation.

• Jews, able to visit Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall at Rosh Hashana for the first time since 1949, thronged plaza space where Israel had bulldozed sixty Arab homes. On the holiday Egypt’s President Nasser reportedly sent greetings to his country’s Jews.

• The American Jewish Committee issued a plaintive mimeographed rundown on the status of Jews in eight Arab nations and said strangely, “It is not to be released to the press, or the mass media, at this time.”

Catholic Theology Today

Theological Investigations, Volume IV: More Recent Writings, by Karl Rahner, S. J., translated by Kevin Smyth (Helicon, 1967, 421 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Donald Bloesch, professor of theology, Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa.

This volume introduces the reader to some controversial themes in contemporary theology as viewed by one of the avant-garde theologians of the Roman Catholic Church. Karl Rahner is regarded in many circles as the greatest philosophical theologian produced by the Catholic Church in this century.

Rahner, unlike some of the older scholastic theologians, views revelation as event as well as truth, with the emphasis on event. He acknowledges that God reveals himself through words and concepts, but he maintains that the revelatory meaning of these words is not disclosed until the Spirit of God acts upon the minds of the hearers. Like Karl Barth, he locates revelation in the conjunction of the historical word of Scripture and the present action of the living Christ. At the same time he speaks much more of “revealed dogma” than of a divine message or Gospel. When he affirms that this dogma can be “handed on” by the Church from one generation to the next, he seems to return to a static theory of revelation. Evangelical theology maintains that the Church is the servant of dogma, that it can witness to the truth of revelation but that such truth can never be its possession.

Rahner shows himself basically sympathetic with Küng’s treatment of justification, and yet he also has some criticisms. In line with traditional Catholic theology, he holds that justification in its subjective mode and sanctification are the same. He views the justifying and saving act in terms of man’s inner renewal and purification rather than as a forensic declaration of pardon that must be received by faith alone. In contrast to Küng, Rahner avers that we are justified by love as well as by faith, though he differentiates love from the good works that follow it. He reminds us of the truth that the goal of justification is man’s sanctification. But as evangelicals we must continue to affirm that the believer is fully justified even though he is only partially sanctified, and that sanctification is the consequence and evidence of the divine act of justification.

Rahner follows the thought of much contemporary existentialist philosophy in maintaining that God cannot be objectified, that he transcends the subject-object cleavage. For Rahner, the knowledge of God is shrouded in mystery; the “substance” of God is completely beyond the rational powers of man. “The supreme knowledge which man has of God is to know that he does not know God.” Rahner’s affinities with the tradition of Christian mysticism are especially evident here. The evangelical theologian must ask, however: Does not God objectify himself so that we can have real, objective knowledge of him? We also maintain that in Jesus Christ God reveals himself fully, even his very essence, which is reconciling love. The Christian by faith does not know simply the effects of God upon the world; he knows the very being of God. Rahner’s theology verges towards monism (though it does not actually become monism), particularly when he asserts that the grace of God and Christ are in everything. Here he is close to Tillich, who sees God as the ground of all being.

Reading For Perspective

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

• A Varied Harvest, by Frank E. Gaebelein (Eerdmans; cloth, $4.95; paper, $2.45). Out of his life as headmaster, editor, and writer, Gaebelein offers choice essays on Christianity, education, public affairs, and mountain climbing.

• The Ecumenical Mirage, by C. Stanley Lowell (Baker, $4.95). This timely and provocative analysis claims the ecumenical movement is not an authentic manifestation of the Holy Spirit but a symptom of the sickness of our time.

• The Christian Life New Testament with the Psalms, notes by Porter Barrington (Royal Publishers, $4.95; $1.75). A functional King James Version with outlines and notes on great doctrines that will stabilize young Christians and assist all believers in their spiritual growth.

Like most other Catholic theologians both past and present, Rahner believes that the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist should be central in Christian devotion. It is well to note that he views the sacramental sign as being not the material elements but rather the participation of the people in the Eucharistic meal. He points to the basic area of difference from evangelical theology when he contends that transubstantiation means the miraculous transformation of the elements. Yet he insists that what is changed is not the “being” of the bread but rather its “substance,” its signification.

The note in Rahner’s theology that is particularly disturbing to evangelicals is his doctrine of universal prevenient grace, which practically amounts to a universal salvation. According to Rahner, the saving grace of God is operative everywhere in the world, and the main difference between Christians and non-Christians is that Christians are cognizant of this grace. “Even when he does not ‘know’ it and does not believe it … man always lives consciously in the presence of the triune God of eternal life.” The universal saving work of God is concretized in the historical Christ, but it is not limited to this event. Rahner contends that it is not just that the world can be saved if it wills; the world is already saved through the reconciling grace of God revealed and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He speaks of an anonymous Christianity, a way of life characterized by self-giving love even though conscious faith in Jesus Christ is absent. In his view, whenever man accept their own humanity they have accepted the Son of Man.

Rahner believes that the natural man has the potentiality for obedience, a capacity to respond to and recognize God’s grace. The grace of God fulfills man’s natural possibilities and thereby builds upon rather than negates man’s nature. The evangelical will ask whether grace does not in fact bring to man a new nature. Did not Paul say that the man in Christ is “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17)? Does not grace entail man’s crucifixion and resurrection rather than his self-fulfillment or self-realization? Rahner also maintains that we can by the light of our reason arrive at a true but not complete understanding of the nature of man, although the answer to man’s quest lies in revelation.

What is lacking in Rahner’s theology is that biblical dualism which envisages man as being in opposition to God and enslaved to the demonic powers of darkness. The fall of man is not given serious enough attention in this theology, for the fall certainly means that man’s reason is darkened and that his will is irrevocably bound to forces beyond his control. Rahner recalls us to the truth that the world has been reclaimed by Christ, but he does not do justice to the biblical witness that the world is presently in the grip of the demonic adversary of God (1 John 5:19).

On the other hand, evangelicals will rejoice that here is a modern theologian who accepts the deity of Christ, salvation by divine grace, the full inspiration of Scripture, and revelation as both the saving action of God and divine truth. We can learn from Rahner that Christianity also has a mystical dimension, that faith involves not only personal confidence but also mystical participation in Christ. This book is recommended for all evangelical Christians who seek a deeper understanding and appreciation of contemporary Roman Catholic theology.

Updating Old Theories

Creation Versus Chaos, by Bernhard W. Anderson (Association, 1967, 192 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by R. K. Harrison, professor of Old Testament, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, Canada.

At first glance I thought this book would be a careful examination of the Genesis creation narratives in the light of modern scientific discoveries. Further examination showed, however, that it actually pursues the twin themes of creation and chaos through the Old Testament, in the process formulating a theology of historical conflict.

Anderson admits that his inspiration came from Hermann Gunkel’s Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit(“Creation and Chaos in Beginningtime and End-time”), written in 1895, whose observations he attempts to update. Into this rather artificial mold he has poured a good deal of old-fashioned biblical liberalism. JEDP, second and third Isaiah, and an annual New Year enthronement festival in Israel are all accepted without criticism. Although he is vaguely aware that “myth” is an unsuitable term for the early Genesis material, he manages to use a disarming definition from another liberal scholar in favor of retaining the word. He has a low view of the inspiration of Scripture and gives the impression that the Israelites experienced God in history more than in revelation.

In his zeal the author overstates his case by apparently regarding almost all occurrences of the word “sea” in the Old Testament as direct or overt references to the primordial water-chaos of Babylonian mythology. Like some other liberals, he is not above amending the Hebrew text when he thinks it will strengthen his case. He clearly has no understanding of the way in which the early Genesis material (“myth,” in his terms) is amenable to a scientific interpretation. And he is apparently unaware that the relation between the Babylonian creation stories and their Genesis counterparts is once again an entirely open question. In his view that Israel used the Babylonian chaos myth rather than divine revelation to probe the meaning of history, he shows himself insufficiently aware that the very few Old Testament allusions to pagan mythology are themselves thoroughly demythologized.

Even more serious, perhaps, is Anderson’s misunderstanding of the first word of the Hebrew Genesis, which he says points to an absolute temporal beginning. Again, had he recognized that “good and evil” often are used merely as antonyms, he would have had less difficulty in asserting the sovereignty of God. But he fails to notice that evil is less a part of a dualistic entity than a parasitic one.

Anderson’s arguments are not always clear, and I found that the most penetrating insights of the book were the contributions of Will Herberg, to whom the work was dedicated.

Turnpike In The Sky

The Symbolism of Evil, by Paul Ricoeur (Harper & Row, 1967, 357 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Cornelius Van Til, professor of apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This is the second in the author’s series of three volumes entitled “Finitude and Guilt.” In the first and second volumes we have a keen, modern, phenomenological analysis of what Scripture speaks of as sin and pollution. In the third Ricoeur proposes to set this analysis in relation to general philosophical reflection.

We are then to have an empirically founded and critically responsible totality view of what was traditionally spoken of as creation, fall, and redemption.

Ricoeur is deeply conscious of the difficulty he faces. He knows that “it is always in the midst of contingency that rational sequences must be detected.” Therefore “the hiatus between pure reflection on ‘fallibility’ and the confession of ‘sins’ is patent. Pure reflection makes no appeal to any myth or symbol; in this sense it is a direct exercise of rationality. But comprehension of evil is a sealed book for it; the reflection is pure, but it leaves everyday reality outside insofar as every-man’s everyday reality is ‘enslavement to the passions.’ ”

Here then is Ricoeur’s problem. Philosophy is pure reflection. It “must comprehend everything, even religion.” On the other hand, symbols deal with pure facts. The symbol “does not conceal any hidden teaching that only needs to be unmasked for the images in which it is clothed to become useless.”

We cannot understand a thing unless we understand everything to which it is contingent. Obviously we cannot understand everything. Can we then understand anything? Yet we must insist that “the symbol gives rise to thought.” This sentence, says Ricoeur, “enchants me.” Well it may. It can, on his view, never do more. He can only assert that symbol “gives occasion to thought”; his methodology, as he virtually admits, excludes such a possibility. His principle of reflection is like a turnpike in the sky. His symbols are like grains of sand in an infinitely extended desert.

The enterprise of “a creative interpenetration of meaning,” Ricoeur claims, “would be a hopeless one if symbols were radically alien to philosophical discourse.” But he himself has asserted that an absolute alienation exists between fact and reflection on fact.

All he can do is repeat to himself, “I wager that I shall have a better understanding of man and of the bond between the being of man and the being of all beings if I follow the indication of symbolic thought.”

Thus Ricoeur says he is “betting on the significance of the symbolic world.” Seeking for “rational sequences … in the midst of contingency,” he sees traditional Christian believers as those who “would seek nothing, not being motivated by concern about any question.” Nobody knows, but you are wrong and I am right. Thus indirectly does Ricoeur exhibit the truth that if man does not accept the Christian answer, he can find no coherence whatsoever in the facts of his experience.

A Fresh Point Of View

Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion, by Frederick Ferré (Scribner’s, 1967, 465 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Herman J. Ridder, president, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

Frederick Ferré, chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Dickinson College and the son of Nels F. S. Ferré, has written a lively, challenging book that, though understandable to the beginner in the field, will nonetheless engage the interest of the veteran also.

“Basic” in the title means “available,” says Ferré—the book can be understood by the thoughtful reader without technical prerequisites. It is “modern” in that he goes no further back than Descartes. And it is a “philosophy of religion” in that it is an attempt at “helping to rejoin the island of philosophy of religion to the general philosophic continent from which, I fear, it has sometimes been cut off by the rip tides of party spirit or by the gentle marshes of suffocating naïveté.” Therefore, his primary aim is to provide a fresh point of view on issues of central importance to a critical and comprehensive understanding of religion, which Ferré defines as “one’s way of valuing comprehensively and intensively.”

The author’s method is very satisfying. He skillfully combines illustrative material with various instructional approaches (in one chapter a theologian and a skeptic, assisted by a friend who “starts the apples of philosophical discord rolling,” demonstrate through dialogue what Ferré calls “scientific stalemate”). The result is an interesting and useful educational tool that Ferré tested in two classrooms before committing it to type.

Tracing the history of philosophy in the modern era, Ferré notes that in the seventeenth century the issues of religious belief were defined theistically and theoretically. Descartes and Paley illustrate the optimistic belief that purely speculative means could be used to establish religiously significant truths. This is “the rising action” in the drama. David Hume brings in the element of conflict with his radical questioning of the assumption that religious believing is a speculative enterprise. Under the influence of Immanuel Kant, the question marks become “full stops,” and practical reason is suggested as a means more suitable to the nature of religious belief. After this climax comes the “falling action” of the nineteenth century, when the discussion centers on whether or not there is such a thing as practical reason. Here Kierkegaard and Nietzsche agree in completely rejecting an academic, detached discussion of religious matters that deal with life-and-death issues.

Ferré reminds us that we of the twentieth century are the inheritors of this philosophical history. For that reason he seeks to define religion in terms of its “practical” role while at the same time avoiding the mistake of completely sealing off practical matters from questions of truth. He hopes that the linguistic key provided by the philosophy of language in which forms of speech are reunited with forms of life can be of considerable help in reworking the traditional conflicts in the religious drama so that there can be some hope of progress.

In the meantime, we shall have to live in a time “between models.” Traditional imagery employed by the Scriptures and theology can serve at best to provide partial meanings as “broken myths.” Does this mean that the person who chooses to live so must live a life “parched and shallow, without the heights of worship, the depths of prayer, the breadth of fellowship”? Ferré doesn’t think so. But the alternatives he gives are, in my opinion, hardly adequate. “Standing in a picket line” may be a noble act, but it is not nearly as much an “exalting act of worship as kneeling in a cathedral.” The author suggests “Thy will be done” as the model petitionary prayer. In this era between the models, the prayer becomes, “May the values that I acknowledge as really sacred, beyond the petty and inconstant willfulness of my momentary desires, find genuine fulfillment”!

But don’t let that deter you from reading a very worthwhile book. After all, long ago (in chapter 1) he warned us that a philosophy of religion is not to be understood as an apologetic for the faith. If you’ve been spending a lot of time on issues that don’t really matter or with parishioners or others who lack the interest or ability to wrestle with basic problems confronting the faith today, I suggest you take on Ferré!

As Cardinal Bea Sees It

The Way to Unity after the Council, by Augustin Cardinal Bea (Herder and Herder, 1967, 256 pp., $4.95) is reviewed by Ernest Gordon, dean, University Chapel, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.

A question I have often heard concerned Christians ask is: “Did the Second Vatican Council succeed in loosening the strong controls imposed on the Roman church by the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council?” The question is important, for the attitudes existing between Roman Catholics and Protestants have been determined, in large part, by these councils.

This book helps to answer the question. In an irenic manner Augustin Cardinal Bea explains the significance of the deliberations and conclusions of Vatican II. The main concern behind John XXIII’s convening of the council was clearly ecumenical. This concern was expressed plainly in the Decree on Ecumenism: “The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council.” Cardinal Bea, president of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, is obviously in a good position to speak for his communion to those outside it. As he sees it, the two directing principles of the ecumenical approach are: love of truth and charity of judgment. Along with these principles goes the recognition that authentically ecumenical action must begin in the church’s own renewal.

The concern of Vatican II extended to the non-Christian world. The doctrine of creation formed the mode of approach. Although all men participate in the Fall, they are still left with their innate dignity as God’s creatures. The sons of the church have, therefore, the duty of recognizing and promoting the spiritual values they encounter in other religions. This is a far cry from the philosophy of the Inquisition, which was created as a branch of the Counter-Reformation.

The council’s declaration on the attitude of the church toward non-Christian religions was hailed as “a milestone in the relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people.” Here again it represented a more open and charitable view. The declaration pointed out that the people of the New Covenant have a spiritual bond with the descendants of Abraham: “All who believe in Christ—Abraham’s sons according to faith—are included in the same patriarch’s call.” Having established mutual bonds, the declaration recommended that profitable areas of understanding be worked out and that biblical and theological studies be the guide in a brotherly dialogue. The burden of guilt for our Lord’s death was recognized as one too heavy for the Jews to bear; they “should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God.”

The hope of Christian unity that inspired John XXIII was reinforced by the council’s evaluation of the common ties that bind all Christians:

1. Baptism: “All who have been justified by faith in baptism are members of Christ’s Body, and have a right to be called Christian.”

2. The centrality of Christ: “We rejoice to see that our separated brethren look to Christ as the source and center of Church unity.”

3. The inspiration of Scripture: “Sacred scripture provides for the work of dialogue as an instrument of the highest value in the mighty hand of God.”

4. The fellowship of the sacraments, although we separated brethren lack the sacrament of orders.

5. The moral teaching of the Gospel.

6. Solidarity in sin.

The cooperation we may look forward to, however, is mostly in the field of social action—all of us are one “in acknowledging the dignity of the human person in the social implications of the Gospel, in working for peace, and alleviating the calamities of our time, such as hunger and disasters, illiteracy, poverty, the inequitable distribution of wealth, etc.” Cardinal Bea points out that although religious problems are not specifically mentioned here, nevertheless cooperation in the social field is “a way of furthering the Creator’s will.”

Most readers will agree that Vatican II opened the way for further study, action, and dialogue, but that “the complex realities of the Church herself” remain. How much of a synthesis may be achieved between the Roman communion and those outside, according to the principles of truth and love, has yet to be worked out. If “truth” includes the sacrament of orders and the apostolic college, how far may the separated brethren go in recognizing it without weakening their faith in Him who is the way, and the truth, and the life?

If the council restored mutual love, as the Pope has said it did, then surely the “separated brethren” may gratefully accept and respond to this fact. In any case, none who owe allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord can remain indifferent to the world’s hatred of God and its need of the one Saviour.

Myths, Late Dates, And Assumptions

Theology of the Old Testament, Volume II, by Walter Eichrodt (Westminster, 1967, 573 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by R. Laird Harris, dean and professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Eichrodt’s Theologie des Alten Testaments was originally published in the thirties. This second volume from the fifth German edition (1964) is an important addition to Old Testament study. Eichrodt’s massive and original work is perhaps the most basic of the several Old Testament theologies that have lately come to us from Europe.

His different approach is refreshing. On the basis of recent discovery he criticizes the older Wellhausen view: “Once again, therefore, the beautifully constructed developmental theory comes to pieces in one’s hands.” He includes much exegetical material that is also often the product of a novel point of view.

Eichrodt arranges his material topically. But he passes up the usual topics of systematic theology in favor of topics derived, he feels, directly from the material: God and the People (Vol. I), God and the World, God and Man (Vol. II). One may doubt, however, whether the treatment is purely objective. At least, Eichrodt reaches the familiar neo-orthodox conclusions in all his study. God is the hidden One, the totally other. Meaning in life is attained by a God-Man encounter. The suffering of righteous people offers as much atonement as is necessary. Creation and the Fall and eschatology also are myths—spiritually real, but not historically true.

Although he rejects Wellhausen’s development of Israel’s religion, his whole work is built on acceptance of the late date of the documents. He traces many lines of doctrine from their origin in the monarchy (the prophets and the J document) to the exilic period (Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel), the post-exilic period (P document and most of the Psalms), then late Judaism (other Psalms, trito Isaiah, Daniel, and non-canonical literature). Even much current critical study would question some of his very late datings—as, for instance, that of the Psalms.

This highly technical work has its value, but its conclusions are largely determined by its initial assumptions.

Luther Vs. Heresy

We Condemn: How Luther and Sixteenth Century Lutheranism Condemned False Doctrine, by Hans-Werner Gensichen, translated by Herbert J. A. Bouman (Concordia, 1967, 213 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, chairman, Department of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

This is a scholarly treatment of a technical but very important aspect of the Lutheran Reformation. The problem of the Damnamus, the Condemnation, was a serious one for Luther and his successors in Germany as they worked for the reformation of the German church, and the history of this controversy offers the key to understanding the doctrinal controversies that at times threatened to engulf Lutheranism after 1550.

Dr. Gensichen declares that his purpose is to foster understanding among the churches through investigation of a highly controversial historical question. But he also says that in this strictly historical study he has no intention of prejudging the dogmatic questions. On the whole, he manages to maintain a high degree of impartiality until the final pages of the work. Then his neo-orthodox leanings begin to be evident in his rather subtle attempt to associate Luther with a Barthian view of revelation, and in his suggestion that the Barmen Declaration of 1934 points to the possible answer to the vexing question of the proper use of the Condemnation. Yet high scholarship marks every page of this work.

The author begins with the assumption that the rejection of false doctrines is one of the major points at which the Reformation maintained some continuity with the pre-Reformation Church. But he also seeks to locate the Lutheran use of the Condemnation in the practices of the primitive Church rather than in the legal formalism of the Church of the Middle Ages. He insists that the fight against false doctrines in the Middle Ages was closely associated with the increasing objectifying of doctrine and institutionalizing of the Church. Thus the use of the Condemnation departed from the New Testament ideal of maintaining the purity of the life of the Church; it came to be a punitive measure in the hands of the clerical hierarchy. Although in general I agree with this thesis, I think that this section is perhaps the least satisfactory part of the book. I also question the assumption that the use of the Condemnation came to its own under Gregory IX. But these are minor criticisms.

The basic chapter is the one that deals with Luther’s own position. Here the author asserts that Luther sought to return to the practice of the early Church in his view of the Condemnation and sought to use it to protect the doctrine of the Cross and justification by faith alone. Gensichen seems to think that Luther’s own position here was the best and that the rise of a legalistic view of the excommunication in Lutheran thought after 1530 is regrettable because it became a source of discord. I cannot accept this view, in that the author seems to minimize the doctrinal controversies that arose and to overlook the loyalty of the Flacians to what they felt was the truly orthodox Lutheran position.

The great value of this work is that it reminds us that the churches of the Reformation did have a great zeal for a biblical orthodoxy and were willing to take a stand for the truth, even if it meant administering ecclesiastical discipline to those who departed from it. That is the real message of this book for our day.

A Man Used By God

Another Hand on Mine, by William J. Petersen (McGraw-Hill, 1967, 228 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Delbert A. Kuehl, executive assistant director, The Evangelical Alliance Mission, Wheaton, Illinois.

“If you help me to get my medical education and help me to become a doctor, I will give you everything.… Yes, Lord, everything.” This was the critical hour that set the compass for the life of the young Carl Becker, a life to be marked by amazing accomplishments as a missionary doctor. Petersen so vividly portrays the life of Dr. Becker—his burdens and doubts, his deep love, his humble spirit, his practical faith, his able leadership—that one feels he is living the experiences of this amazing missionary along with him.

In the midst of a prosperous and expanding medical practice in Pennsylvania, the inner call of God persisted until, despite their doubts and hesitations, the Beckers turned toward the Congo to begin pioneer medical work in the great Ituri forest. There were no facilities, no medical assistants, and, strange as it may seem, scarcely any patients. Gripped by superstition, the Africans still turned to the witch doctor. With a living allowance of $60 per month and meager funds with which to start the simplest medical work, faith to Dr. Becker was not an option but a necessity. From this small beginning rose a medical work that was to touch tens of thousands of sufferers and attract worldwide attention.

The sad plight of the great number of lepers pressed hard upon Dr. Becker. He was not satisfied with the medicines available, and he began experimenting with other ways to attack this dreaded disease. The leprosy work grew to be the largest in Africa and second largest in the world. Its success drew prominent doctors from all over the world to Oicha hospital in the Ituri forest.

Dr. Becker had great compassion for the Africans’ physical suffering but was stirred even more by their spiritual need. With deep devotion and keen insight—with another hand on his—he led large numbers to Christ.

In a day when the “Missionary, go home” theme is often presented, it is refreshing indeed to read how in the midst of the pressures and tragedies of the Congo the Africans pleaded with the Beckers and their fellow workers not to leave them. Those closely involved in worldwide missions realize that this is the general picture and “Missionary, go home” the exception.

William Petersen has done a remarkable job in unfolding to us the accomplishments of the amazing Carl Becker and the Africa Inland Mission, a man and a mission greatly used by God.

Book Briefs

Christianity in the Non-Western World, edited by Charles W. Forman (Prentice-Hall, 1967, 146 pp., $4.95). Readings about Christianity’s confrontation with various non-Westem cultures that remind us that the Christian message is not a Western phenomenon but God’s truth for the whole world.

Prophets of Salvation, by Eugene H. Maly (Herder and Herder, 1967, 191 pp., $4.50). A Catholic biblical scholar describes the major Old Testament prophets and their involvement in the events of their day. He includes a helpful discussion of the Hebrew concept of dabar, the word.

Strasbourg and the Reform, by Miriam Usher Chrisman (Yale, 1967, 351 pp., $8.75). Students of church history will welcome this interesting analysis of the Reformation’s effect on a single city, Strasbourg, 1520–1548.

They Stood Boldly, by William P. Barker (Revell, 1967, 188 pp., $3.95). The thrilling story of the early Church recorded in the Book of Acts is told with fresh insights and dramatic verve by a Presbyterian minister.

From Primitives to Zen, compiled and edited by Mircea Eliade (Harper & Row, 1967, 645 pp., $8). An anthology of documents from major religious traditions (other than Judaism and Christianity) that sheds light on their beliefs, conceptions, rituals, and institutions; compiled by the University of Chicago Divinity School’s expert on history of religions.

Please Pray for the Cabbages, by Helen W. Kooiman (Revell, 1967, 123 pp., $2.95). Pint-sized parables for grown-ups from the mouths of babes, delightfully told by a Christian homemaker.

Spiritual Leadership, by J. Oswald Sanders (Moody, 1967, 160 pp., $2.95). A lively, practical discussion of characteristics and practices vital to Christian leadership. Even if you do not consider yourself leadership material, read it.

The Modern Tongues Movement, by Robert G. Gromacki (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967, 165 pp., $4.50). A well-written survey of tongues-speaking, past and present, and an analysis of references to it in Mark, Acts, and First Corinthians. Gromacki argues that the modern movement’s use of unknown tongues without any language basis is contrary to the scriptural standard and cannot be of God. Quoting Paul in First Corinthians 13:8, “Tongues shall cease,” he concludes, “They have.” A book bound to promote controversy in many circles.

Living in Kingdom Come, by Vance Havner (Revell, 1967, 128 pp., $2.95). More than a Scripture-saturated devotional book by a traveling evangelist, this is a message to Christians to shake their apathy and live as subjects of a heavenly kingdom.

The Making of the Christian West, by Georges Duby (World, 1967, 214 pp., $21.50). An exquisite volume that tells the story of sacred art, A.D. 980–1140. The influence of the feudal system and monastic Christianity is seen in the 111 high-quality pictures included with the readable text.

114 Ways to the Mission Field, by Mel Larson (Free Church Publications, 1967, 256 pp., $3.95). Heart-warming and encouraging stories of the conversations, the call, and the commitment that led 114 people into missionary service.

The Wit and Wisdom of Billy Graham, edited and compiled by Bill Adler (Random House, 1967, 165 pp., $3.95). The stirring message and vibrant personality of Graham shine through in this collection of excerpts from his sermons.

The Epistles of St. John, by B. F. Westcott (Eerdmans, 1966, 245 pp., $6.50). A classic commentary first published in 1883 is now reprinted, with the addition of a survey by F. F. Bruce of Johannine studies since then. This commentary is not for those who have no Greek. Even the Latin quotations in the author’s notes are left to the imagination of the modern reader!

Paperbacks

A Religion Against Itself, by Robert W. Jenson (John Knox, 1967, 127 pp., $1.95). The author’s earlier critique of Karl Barth raised hopes for this book that are unfulfilled. What he offers here are scattered thoughts on an assortment of topics that cluster around “religionless Christianity” but lead nowhere.

Take My Life, by Michael Griffiths (Inter-Varsity, 1967, 189 pp., $1.25). A plea for dynamic Christian living characterized not by the modern virtues of toleration and moderation but by an all-out response to God. A practical and uplifting book.

The Significance of South India, by Michael Hollis (John Knox, 1966, 82 pp., $1.95). The South India scheme for church unity is a phrase to conjure with today, especially since it is advocated as a pilot venture for the British Anglicans and Methodists to embrace. The author’s enthusiasm for the scheme raises hope that this may be the solution in other areas where church union is under negotiation.

The Early Christian Church, by J. G. Davies (Doubleday, 1967, 414 pp., $1.75). A handy sourcebook of scholarly data on the first five centuries of Christianity. Well organized, clearly written. First published in hardcover in 1965.

The Ministry of the Church in the World, by John A. Bailey (Oxford, 1967, 125 pp., $1.55). A low-key introduction to what the Bible’s message is all about; even “ministry” is explained. The author’s earlier missionary work explains the elementary nature of this book, which raises almost as many questions as it answers.

Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church, by W. H. C. Frend (Doubleday, 1967, 577 pp., $1.95). This significant historical work considers the Judaistic tradition of martyrdom inherited by Christians and discusses the controversies and sufferings involving Christians from New Testament times to the fourth century.

Counseling and Theology, by William E. Hulme (Fortress, 1967, 250 pp., $1.95). Hulme considers the needs of counselees, the theological foundations of counseling, and the Christian basis for personal acceptance, growth, and assurance. Includes chapters on the use of Scripture and the Lord’s Supper in counseling. New paperback edition.

“You do realize, of course, that most people today consider sermons obsolete.” We were in the cafeteria outside the main hall where an Anglican synod was in assembly. My newly met acquaintance drew meditative puffs on his pipe and oracle-like continued to expound the eclipse of preaching. “People today won’t stand for it. They want action and less talk. The preachers have had it.”

“But if that is so,” I countered, “shouldn’t the Church be honest enough to admit it has parted company with the New Testament?”

He didn’t think so. “Social action is the thing for today. Political action is this century’s best medium of Christian communication. The pulpit’s days are gone.”

This may well be a dominant view. The preaching of the Gospel is no longer regarded as our chief weapon against the establishment of the world. Harvey Cox says that most people consider preachers cultural antiques and have the same fondness for them that they have for deuxième empire furniture, especially when they dress up and strut about in their vivid ecclesiastical regalia.

The 179th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church was told by its avant-garde Standing Committee on Church and Society through committee chairman Robert McAfee Brown that the “Confession of 1967” had thrust a type of divine pressure on the Church that would and could only be expressed by vigorous and world-wide politico-social action. According to this view, the ministry of the Word of God through Spirit-filled preachers will no longer be regarded as the sine qua non of the Church’s evangel. Protest marches, increased aid to underdeveloped nations, pressure through groups organized for social renewal—these will become the main thrust of evangelism. We must concern ourselves with devising worldwide institutions to civilize the vast forces of change—and to challenge and overcome the three great disproportions of power, wealth, and ideology.

In a world being driven onward at apocalyptic speed by technology and science, it is easy to assume that political and economic policies should become the electives of the Christian Church. But we must mark clearly the point where we part company with the Christian mind. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal,” says St. Paul, “but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” Preaching is such a weapon. “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” When our Lord began his ministry, he came “preaching the gospel of the kingdom.”

In the noble words of the Book of Common Prayer, the Christian minister “receives authority to read the Gospel in the Church of God and to preach the same.” This is the right order: he reads and preaches. That is, he opens the Bible and expounds what he reads. To expound is to unfold, unravel, reveal, interpret, make clear. In himself, he has no authority; the Word before him is his authority, and as he reads and expounds and preaches the Word, the Holy Spirit anoints and empowers the declaration so that Christ himself is offered and made evident to the hearer by faith.

It is interesting to note the Apostle Peter’s method of preaching on the Day of Pentecost. He has no soothing, flattering speech, no outbursts of educated eloquence. He quotes Scripture and reasons from it. Yet, as he preaches, something happens in that mighty throng. The murmur gradually subsides; the mob becomes a congregation; the voice of the fisherman sweeps from one end of the crowd to the other, uninterrupted. He is preaching. And in his exposition of the Scripture there is heard the summons of God to every heart.

We must restore preaching to its rightful place. We must go back to the Bible and reverently search for the God-given message for our people. The New Testament pattern, so clearly set forth for every preacher to see, must become again our standard and our goal. Jesus Christ in all his glory must be central as he ever was in the witness of the apostles. “Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth.…” Wherever the preachers of the early Church started, they made straight for the Christ. “We preach not ourselves,” declares Paul, “but Jesus Christ.”

Jesus himself used this pattern even after his resurrection: “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” God has but one Word for this world, and that Word is Jesus Christ. Our exposition of the biblical records will be wide of the mark if we fail to see our Saviour there. “Search the scriptures,” he said, “for … they … testify of me.” We present Christ to men truly and fully only when we present him in the context of all Scripture.

Expository preaching will also follow the apostolic example in tracing the divine program in human history. In his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Peter pointedly stresses the sovereignty of God and shows from the writings of the prophets how closely entwined are the histories of redemption and sin. He interprets what is happening by recalling the words of the prophet Joel centuries before.

As he preaches, Peter sweeps across all history and sees God at work in it. He notes that God has been planning man’s redemption from the beginning of time. He sees the Cross at the heart of history and the resurrection as the mightiest act of God. He looks onward to the climax of history to what he calls the “restitution of all things” and emphasizes that this has been declared by “all the holy prophets since the world began.” His theme is that God is at work in history; that God has permitted sin and evil to enter and infect history; yet has provided both answer and antidote in Jesus Christ. His Word is therefore relevant to every situation, and the proclamation of his Word is the supreme need of every generation.

In the New Testament pattern of expository preaching, God’s way of salvation is made very plain. Through the words of this humble fisherman, a sword begins to pierce the hearts of the hearers. Presently the multitude finds itself asking almost with one voice the most crucial question of all: “What shall we do?” To this question, the apostle gives immediate answer: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Nothing could be more direct than that.

The expository preacher need not presume to explain all that God has said in Jesus Christ, but he must make it plain. We must not becloud our hearers’ minds with muddy verbiage or thinking. Our message must be crystal clear to ourselves, and out of a burning heart we must declare the wonder of the saving truth of Christ our Lord. Like Paul in Corinth, we must make it our “secret determination to concentrate entirely on Jesus Christ himself and the fact of his death upon the cross” (the Phillips translation of Second Corinthians 2:2).

—The Rev. WILLIAM FITCH, Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto, Ontario.

Millions inside and outside the Church are spiritually ignorant, emotionally insecure, frustrated, and unhappy. But their lives can be completely transformed. Spiritual understanding can replace ignorance. A sense of security can come, bringing emotional stability. Peace can take the place of frustration. And an inner joy can settle in that the world cannot take away.

How can a person experience such a change? By reading the Bible, taking it at its word, and receiving the Christ it reveals.

I have written on this subject before and will probably do so again, because I am convinced that people—Christians above all others—are missing a blessing beyond anything they have ever known by failing to make the Bible a daily companion.

Oh, I know all about the tired old charge that we “worship” the Bible. It is hardly worthy of reply. The surgeon does not worship his knife and diagnostic equipment—but he trusts and uses them. The artist does not worship his brushes and oils, but he relies on them to produce the effects he desires.

Studying the Bible with a simple faith in its integrity and authority brings a reward achieved in no other way—the assurance that God is speaking to one’s heart and life.

Why not give the Bible a chance to speak? All other books, even the best of them, are men’s books and the expression of men’s wisdom. The Bible is God’s book, the expression of God’s wisdom. In it one can find the answers to the questions and uncertainties of life. Its message provides assurance that will banish fear from the heart and mind.

One of the most amazing things about the Bible is its relevance. It is more up to date than tomorrow’s newspaper, for it accurately tells of the future. It is wholly relevant in the moral realm, also, because since the beginning of time man’s basic problems have been the same. His sins have always been the same. The Bible is God’s word to man, and God never changes. He always stands ready to meet every need.

American business is based on proving the worth of one’s product. Advertising, samples, testimonials all have their place. I am simply asking that you give the Bible a chance to prove that it can bring a new dimension into your life.

Of primary importance is the Christ revealed in both the Old and the New Testament. In the Bible we learn of his person and his work—that he is the Son of God, and that, for the believer, he is Saviour and Lord.

The earnest seeker will find within the pages of this book a philosophy for living and also for dying. The Bible is a book by a Friend that tells us about a Friend. God speaks through all its pages. In the Old Testament we find history and the whys and wherefores of matters that have perplexed the wisest. We also find poetry, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that puts into words the deepest feelings and longings of the human heart. And we find prophecy, which tells of the coming of the Christ as suffering servant and his return as triumphant King and Judge.

Many have lost all sense of awe and reverence for Scripture because they have come to view it as a “human document” that can be understood only by those who can analyze its origins and history. Some are like the curious child who picks apart a rose to find out where the beauty and fragrance come from and in so doing destroys the rose.

I have known too many people whose joy and confidence in the Bible has been undermined by those who dissect it with a critical and unbelieving heart or who accept scholarly “findings” that, in their eyes, discredit its integrity and authority.

For many of us this book is the Holy Bible; but, sad to say, for many others it is only exceptionally good literature, subject to the frailties of the human mind and limited by the ignorance of the writers.

There seems to be a strange fascination in the minds of some, a determination to “interpret” the Bible on the sole basis of human scholarship. This scholarship starts with the presupposition that one is dealing with a human document, not a supernatural one. As a result its “interpretations” frankly deny the clear statements of Scripture. This is not “interpretation” but utter presumption.

Much is said against the practice of “literalism” in interpreting the Bible, but more needs to be said about denials of the unequivocal statements of Scripture in the name of “scholarship” and “recently discovered manuscripts.” The fact remains that not one manuscript has ever been discovered that in any way invalidates the basic doctrines of Christianity. We must be wary of a pseudo-scholarship that seems willing, even glad, to deny the honest interpretation of the Word of God.

Let those who are confused because of the limitations and interpretations of men turn to the Bible. Let it speak for itself! It will speak to your heart, appeal to your mind, command your will.

I am convinced of the reality and astuteness of Satan. And I am equally convinced that in no area is he more active today than in turning men away from the Bible. The question in the Garden, “Yes, hath God said?,” is still heard in many places. The “If you are …” statements of Satan in the wilderness continue to plague men. We need to utter the words of affirmation: “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24, RSV). “Let God be true though every man be false …” (Rom. 3:4); “All scripture is inspired by God …” (2 Tim. 3:16); “No prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21).

Give the Bible a chance. Let it speak to you, knowing that it is God who speaks in words the hungry and believing heart can understand. Let no man stand between you and God’s Word. Give the Bible a chance to speak for itself, and the Holy Spirit who moved the hearts of men to speak for God will interpret its meaning to you and bring a faith, comfort, and hope that nothing and no one can dispel.

Use several translations or versions if you prefer. A few years ago a prominent American had become interested in studying the Bible, but about that time a furor arose over the Revised Standard Version, and in disgust he gave up his study. No translation is perfect (the King James Version certainly is not); yet in any translation and any language there breathes forth the fact that this is not a human document but God’s Word. If God has spoken, how important it is that we find out what he has to say!

Let us not rest on what men say; let God speak for himself. Give the Bible a chance in your heart, and God will do the rest.

Dear Heresy Hunters:

Another mention of this headline-grabber may nauseate certain readers, but I can’t resist one more verbal peek at Bishop Pike. Any cleric who wears a button at his church convention stating, “I Believe in Life After Birth,” and fends off some of Carl McIntire’s practitioners of religious picketry by extending a handful of purloined posies deserves the publicity he seeks.

The censured bishop emerged from the latest Episcopal convention fragrant as a rose. Fearing the stir of a heresy hearing, the paper-tiger House of Bishops not only appeased Pike by changing the procedure in censure cases but also made it nearly impossible to hold a heresy trial. Fortunately for him, however, they did not entirely eliminate the “anachronistic” charge of heresy. Had they done so, Pike’s new book, If This Be Heresy, would have been passé. Now its sale is assured.

The controversy prompted publication of two Pikean analyses prior to the convention. William Stringfellow and Anthony Towne in The Bishop Pike Affair contend that opposition to the bishop is an ultra-right-wing plot. They scream that growing conservative power in church councils “makes a rightist, racist, anti-ecumenical, traditionalist coup d’église a realistic, and imminent, possibility.” Maybe the leftists’ “galloping paranoia” has subsided since Pike tamed the tigers.

New York Bishop Horace W. B. Donegan poses the Great Question of Our Day in his booklet, Bishop Pike: Ham, Heretic, or Hero? He concludes that Pike is a fascinating combination of the three and has rendered a service in calling us to rethink the Faith. My view is that Pike’s theological bill of fare is something like a hero sandwich of ham on wry stuffed with pickled heresy. The heroic element lies in the underpup’s boldness in declaring his convictions and facing down his peers. The ham on wry is in quips like his tale about the disadvantage of preaching trinitarian doctrine in polygamous societies: It’s a matter of offering three gods and one wife against three wives and one god. The pickled heresy is that Pike’s errant ideas about the Trinity, Christ, and the Resurrection are all adaptations of old heresies argued more impressively and as futilely centuries ago.

Now Pike’s spiritualistic séances are arousing more controversy. Did medium Arthur Ford really put him in contact with his deceased son? I can prophesy one thing for Episcopal bishops: their House will continue to be haunted by Pike for many years to come.

Clairvoyantly,

EUTYCHUS III

WATCHING THE TREND

After reading the editorial “The Urgency of Personal Conversion” (Oct. 13), I am constrained to give my personal endorsement. I fully concur in every word of it.

I have watched this tendency [away from emphasis on personal conversion] gradually grow in practice in the churches of which I have been a member since my own conversion in 1888. While it has not been so pronounced in my own denomination as in some others, I can but feel that some of our own pastors have been somewhat affected.…

I am a layman myself and hesitate to be critical, but I think this to be a grave departure from New Testament doctrine.

D. P. CARTER

Brownfield, Tex.

ACCREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE

“Two for Philadelphia” (News, Oct. 13) states that the Philadelphia area has three conservative seminaries that are non-accredited. Westminster Seminary is mentioned as one of these. You are right about our conservative position but wrong about our lack of accreditation. Westminster Theological Seminary is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools and has been since 1954. We have never sought accreditation by the American Association of Theological Schools, for reasons related to our conservative theological position.

EDMUND P. CLOWNEY

President

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

ANSWERING HIS QUESTION

Milton D. Hunnex, in his article, “Have the Secularists Ambushed God?” (Oct. 13), answers his own question very emphatically. Dr. Hunnex is surely a great Christian philosopher. Men like him … will make for stemming of the tide of atheism.

EPHRAIM D. CONWAY

Jacksonville, Fla.

PIQUED FOR PIKE

We are particularly “turned off” by your very biased attitude toward the person of James Pike. We feel it is not your duty to judge men or to ridicule their integrity. Needless to say, we found such a “Christian magazine” a little short of Christian brotherhood and love.

We would appreciate it if such shallow reflections as the ones concerning James Pike published in your October 13 issue (“The Pike Side Show”) would stop laughing at and start caring for [him], as the unconditional Father-of-us-all would have it. Then we would be as full of praise for your magazine as I’m sure James Pike himself would be.

MR. AND MRS. JACK BRADFORD

Fort Worth, Tex.

I will be the first to voice the opinion that, to me, Bishop Pike has done irreparable damage to his church, and that furthermore he is the world’s number-one heretic today. Yet, in spite of this fact, I do not feel it in good taste to hold him up to ridicule in magazine cartoons (Eutychus and His Kin, Oct. 13). He is still a human being, entitled to his individual dignity. Even though he seems hell-bent upon destroying his own dignity, dare we, as professing Christians, go so far as to dangle his failings and foibles before the reading public?

K. G. HENDRIX

Sunman Evangelical Parish

Sunman, Ind.

WORD FOR THE DAY

Thank you for L. Nelson Bell’s article, “That Day” (Oct. 13).… There is very little preaching left in which men and women are presented with the challenge to put their trust in him who by his death and resurrection in history saves them from the wrath to come.

May Christ have mercy on his people and on a sin-cursed world.

CORNELIUS VAN TIL

Professor of Apologetics

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

SAILING, SAILING

We especially appreciated your latest [Eutychus] production as it related to a proposed Bible conference cruise (Oct. 13). Good for you, Ancient Mariner! Keep those lower lights burning.

JAMES A. NELSON

Trinity Baptist Church

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Eutychus’s comments on the Christian Herald revival cruise were surprising, to say the least. Is he suffering from an advanced case of sour grapes or just deadline strain? As a totally impartial observer (by virtue of ignorance of the subject), I was more puzzled than entertained.

DIANE BRADLEY

Pasadena, Calif.

FIRST WORDS OF DIALOGUE

There was one note which I found missing from the extraordinary, and I am sure undeserved, coverage you gave to my book Who Speaks for the Church? (“A Challenge to Ecumenical Politicians” and “An Ecumenical Bombshell,” Sept. 15). This was my endorsement of a suggestion made at the Geneva Conference by the Quaker economist Kenneth Boulding, that we in the United States need to open a serious dialogue between the liberal church opinion represented in the NCC and those who call themselves conservative evangelicals. The ritual of Billy Graham’s appearance at the Miami Beach meeting of the NCC is not what Boulding meant.

If I may draw this to the attention of your readers, I said:

… In the United States conservative and liberal religious opinion is the same thing as conservative and liberal secular opinion—with a sharper edge. In short, the polarization of public debate on most issues is simply aided and abetted by the polarization of the religious forces. There is little “other-ing” yet reconciling dialogue. Our particular points are too important for that. Few would really want a major effort to be put forward to see whether there are not better ways to be or try to be the church speaking. That might threaten some cherished particular policy we most urgently want to be sure is spoken to the church and to the world. So we say that these others have “dropped out of the dialogue.”

With this goal and task before us, I imagine you can understand my belief that neo-Protestant ecumenism may be as capable of reform as evangelicals are likely to discharge the proper role you describe for them, namely, enunciating theological and moral principles that bear upon public life and saying to the world a proper and relevant word about social justice.

What each of us stands most in need of is colleagues. Since I was only proposing a program for bringing into being a truly ecumenical Christian social ethics, it is no wonder you found my sketch of the possible results somewhat obscure and disappointing. The lively word will continue to escape us, so long as one party speaks of asserted concepts of social justice and not in the same breath of scriptural truth and another party speaks of that truth but not in the same breath of norms of justice.

True, I do not believe that a proper Christian ethics will be “confined” simply to the truth of Scripture. But I do not want to “go beyond” this—certainly not beyond “Scripture and sound reason.” We do need to search out together every entailment of this truth for the world of today, and to prolong this into our lives.

PAUL RAMSEY

Professor of Christian Ethics

Princeton University

Princeton, N. J.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY editorialized that Dr. Ramsey’s dismissal of evangelical social ethics as simply a secular counterview to secular liberal ethics was too sweeping and unjustified. But his beginning of a response to the possibilities of fruitful dialogue is welcome. The American religious scene would have been vastly different had not the Federal Council and National Council, despite large evangelical constituencies, committed themselves officially to non-evangelical positions, as has the WCC, both in conferences and in pronouncements. The ecumenical pattern in recent years has been one of increasing private dialogue with evangelical leaders (particularly with unaffiliated evangelicals) and of increasing public suppression of evangelical positions. This has given evangelical Christians a feeling that ecumenical dialogue tends to exhaust their time and is futile. But ecumenical structures apart, Dr. Ramsey’s plea for discussion is worthy, and his appeal to Scripture and sound reason is formally the place to begin.—ED.

Dr. Ramsey’s polemic was long overdue. It is, in a sense, unfortunate that the very basic theology which causes many of us to disagree with almost all of the pronouncements of ecumenical politicians also causes us to abhor the very act of making pronouncements on socio-political issues. Therefore, we cannot, in good conscience, retaliate.…

I, for one, have long resented the fact that when an ecumenical VIP or council speaks “as from Sinai,” the world around me, not knowing any better, considers that voice to speak for all—including me. To speak so, within the Protestant context, displays irresponsible churchmanship and colossal conceit. I’m glad someone is putting this word out.

STACY L. ROBERTS, JR.

Chaplain, U. S. Navy

Gulf of Tonkin, Viet Nam

CALL THE GREAT PHYSICIAN

The editorial “We Are Sick” (Sept. 29) is an eloquent and forceful analysis which deserves wide attention.

I hope that this statement will summon many of our citizens, and in particular our political leaders, to a reappraisal of our current social crisis. I hope also that evangelicals will respond to the challenge by making an even more effective penetration of the inner city in order that the saving and healing power of the Great Physician may be made available to those who so desperately need his touch upon their lives.

HUDSON T. ARMERDING

President

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

It’s easy to get sick over what killed the patient, especially when it might have been prevented.…

I’m sick of the loud, wounded, indignant voice of the Church about wrongs that could have been prevented by a bold, decisive Church taking the leadership to nip the problem in the first place.… Don’t you think “judgment begins at the house of God”? How about a line or two … about the Church’s responsibility in all this? And then maybe some solid points on what the Church ought to do now? The horse is out of the barn—got any suggestions about corralling him?

JIM JOHNSON

Wheaton, Ill.

A great big “thank you” and a hearty “thank God” for your editorial. It makes me sick, too, to realize that there are apparently so few of our American people who are “sick” of the prevailing conditions in our nation and in our churches.

S. G. POSEY

Executive Secretary Emeritus

Southern Baptist General Convention of California

San Diego, Calif.

‘EWE’-NITING THE FLOCK

I found “Canada’s Fragmented Evangelicals” (Current Religious Thought, Oct. 13), another most interesting ‘interpretive report” from Dr. Fitch on the Canadian scene.… It seems to us that Canada’s evangelicals are fragmented in many instances in a most positive way: like the bread in the hands of the Master. The Lord in fact has his witness permeating our fragmented national society. Probably not more than 3–4 per cent of our population are living disciplined Christian lives, but that witness, co-ordinated by God’s “idea man,” the Holy Spirit, is making a most impressive mark in our society.

The witness of that 3–4 per cent may not have much lobbying power, but maybe that’s not in the Spirit’s scheme of things. After all, our commission is “as sheep among wolves.” The very idea of seeking to “ram” our views down the unwilling jaws of the wolf-pack makes some of us feel a bit more “sheepish” than usual.

KENNETH CAMPBELL

President

Campbell-Reese Evangelistic Assn., Inc.

Milton, Ont.

Dr. Fitch’s observations are tragically inaccurate. He begins by saying, “You travel far in Canada before you find any evangelicals making a good effort to cooperate with their fellows. The bitterness of evangelical unity above the forty-ninth parallel is tragic and inglorious.” This is simply not the case!…

1. Within the past month a great National Sunday School Convention was held in Toronto. More than 3,000 delegates were registered from practically every Protestant denomination.…

2. A ministerial fellowship encompassing almost all of the evangelical pastors of Greater Winnepeg has been functioning for close to twenty years. These men have a wonderful record of cooperation in evangelical crusades, Sunday school conventions, and other such ventures, with much blessing and success. This is being duplicated in Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and many other Canadian cities.

3. One of the most glorious triumphs of the Gospel in our history has recently been written in the success of the “Sermons from Science Pavilion” at Expo ’67. Close to three-quarters of a million dollars was raised for this effort; hundreds have professed faith in Christ. The editor of the liberal United Church Observer exhorted his readers to have nothing to do with this “divisive” exhibition either by contribution or attendance. In a wonderful display of united faith and effort, the evangelicals of our country rose to the occasion and today give God the glory.

4. Our land has been greatly blessed by the Bible-college movement; there are fifty-four across the dominion. The heads of these schools have organized into the “Christian Educators Conference” and in a very fine Christian spirit meet regularly to discuss matters of common concern. The same spirit of unity prevails amongst the leaders of the faith missions. Consequently, the number of young people being thrust out into missionary service per capita can scarcely be equaled by any other country in the world.

Our churches and leaders who are remaining true to the Word of God are not without fault. However, the generalizations of your correspondent … should be documented or retracted.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada holds great promise as an agency to speak unitedly for the evangelicals of our land. The movement is in the infancy stages. Many of us had hoped that its development would be more rapid. Premature criticism however is of no constructive value.

God has been good to this land. The united efforts of evangelicals have been far-reaching and will continue into the future. Your correspondent states, “One of the greatest barriers to an organizational form of cooperation is the reluctance of evangelicals to become involved in anything other than the preaching of the Word and the saving of souls.” This is meant no doubt as a criticism; I think it should rather be accepted as a commendation. Our liberal churches have become involved in Viet Nam, birth control, the United Nations, and have forgotten to a great extent the great commission to “preach the Gospel to every creature.” On the other hand, the above statement is only part of the truth. Evangelicals are building Christian schools and colleges, they are prominent in the political life of our country. They are involved and becoming increasingly so in many areas of the social life of our nation.

It would indeed be refreshing in the future if in the interests of fair play and objectivity you would print some comments from the many outstanding evangelical leaders across our nation.

ELMER S. MCVETY

Editor

The Evangelical Christian

Willowdale, Ont.

GOOD NEWS ON THE STANDS

“Memo to Missionaries” (Sept. 15) made two significant points. The first was in the first paragraph, where you dealt with the lamentable lack of evangelical material on the nation’s news stands. There are probably two thoughts which come immediately to mind: first, that the quality just isn’t there to merit sale on the stands; and second, that the Billy Graham paperbacks become truly outstanding by comparison. The challenge, of course, is to produce more volumes with the appeal and quality of the Graham books—or even to produce a quality periodical.…

The second point is one very near and dear to my heart. I have tried to persuade pastors of the very thing you were talking about to the missionaries. I wasn’t very successful, and perhaps you won’t be either. But don’t give up!

JERRY BEAVAN

Palos Verdes, Calif.

It should be appalling to the clergy—certainly it is to me, a lay journalist—that there is not one single evangelical magazine on the newsstands and, furthermore, that there is no liaison between foreign missionaries and foreign correspondents. In a free country such as ours, the clergy and the laymen can blame only themselves.

Such a gap between truly religious people and the secular press seems incredible in an age that is supposedly one of advanced techniques in communication.

I … would like to suggest that religious people “go ye forth” into their own “jungles” to see if they cannot interest the media in broader news coverage. After all, editors are supposed to be fairly, objectively, tolerantly interested in covering news activities in all walks of life, and it would seem to me that a little good news along the way would balance some of the bad.

Why doesn’t CHRISTIANITY TODAY spearhead a project to make up “press kits” for foreign missionaries?… If missionaries know what kind of stories interest editors, they are better able to furnish these stories and act as their own foreign correspondents. They should actually be a veritable storehouse of good stories—after all, the story of Stanley and Livingstone was a great missionary story before it was anything else—and it was made into a movie.

MIDGE SHERWOOD

San Marino, Calif.

FRONT-LINE NOTES

I am translating the Scriptures for a small tribe of Indians in the Amazon Basin. I want you to know that your magazine is my favorite reading material.…

What do I do when I wonder if it is worthwhile to learn such a different language from Indo-European languages in order to give God’s word to two thousand Indians who run around in rags and survive on manioc and game, who don’t know the days of the week, much less that men are going to the moon soon, who think that Karusakaybü created the world and that he and his son have accomplished just as wonderful feats as anything we tell them about God and Jesus Christ? I read CHRISTIANITY TODAY … and am reminded that God is bringing people in similar circumstances to his Son in a thousand spots around the globe.

MARJORIE CROFTS

Manus, Amazonas, Brazil

For many, many years now I have had to observe the West from the perspective of the East: my missionary work demands this. I fear that whilst the East is imbibing Western customs the West is imbibing Eastern concepts. Our decline of the West is because it is being philosophically devoured by the East. Much in modern theology is more Oriental than biblical in its outlook.…

If the Gospel is to advance, theology must rethink itself; it must apply the famous Ockham razor to the peripherals and get back to the heart of theology: God was in and is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. If you can, please give us more meat.

C. VICTOR BARNARD

Immanuel House

Uttar Pradesh, India

BARNUM AND BABEL

Here it is folks, the greatest show on earth since Babel! The church come of age! The church is putting on the greatest side-show since Barnum to cover up the well-known fact that professional “religion” did not work in biblical times, is not “working” now and never will “work” for the church magicians.… Laymen are told that God does not “exist” because existence is the property of mortals.… The next step was obvious: the church could run the whole show if it could get rid of God! But with the proclamation of God’s demise, God’s grave has proved to be the church’s Pandora’s box. Since the disputed funeral the “religious” world has been going to hell! The mediums chirp and the wizards mutter but God is not consulted. Maybe God’s job was bigger than the church bargained for! Maybe in the process of self-election the church accepted too many commissions! Without God the church doesn’t have much of an act going for it. Be still, O churches, and let God put the show on the road!

JOHN TRAVERSO

Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd

Indianapolis, Ind.

BABY FOOD FOR LAYMEN

We enjoy reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It is useful in our work. However, it is often necessary to strain it like baby food for the layman’s digestive tract.

LLOYD T. HAYES

Wire Editor

Daily Express

Newport, Vt.

Protestant theology in the 1960s is characterized above all by the God-is-dead phenomenon. Although this movement, as represented particularly by Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton, has inherent instabilities that will doubtless shorten its ideological life, one must not underestimate its importance. The death-of-God phenomenon reflects the increasing secularization of our time, which will certainly go on whether or not the theothanatologists retain their popularity.

Even more significantly, the God-is-dead movement demonstrates the consequences of the weak view of Holy Scripture that has prevailed in Protestant theology since the advent of rationalistic biblical criticism. By noting the connections between God-is-dead thinking and destructive criticism of Holy Writ, we can see quite plainly how evangelical Christianity’s belief in a totally authoritative Word has maximum relevance in a time of general theological collapse.

Christ and the Bible

In an unpublished paper delivered at a program on radical theology sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Office of Religious Affairs (October 28, 1966), William Hamilton unwittingly provided a laboratory example of how the demise of one’s bibliology results in the demise of one’s God. In answering the question, “Can you really maintain a loyalty to Jesus without a loyalty to God?,” he said:

Professor Altizer solves the problem more readily than I by his apocalyptic definition of Jesus, more Blakean than biblical, as the one who is born out of God’s death. I am not yet ready to give up sola scriptura (!), and thus my answer must be more complex and tentative.… Early in the nineteenth century, we had to face, under the early impact of historical criticism, both that Jesus was firmly committed to demon-possession as the meaning of mental and physical illness, and that we were not so committed and needn’t be. But obedience to Jesus was not destroyed. Later, at the time of Darwinian controversy we had to face another instance of Jesus’ full participation in the thought forms of his day—the three-story, primitive cosmology. But we do not go to the Bible for science, we were rightly told, and obedience to Jesus was not hurt. At the close of the century we had to face an even more disturbing fact—the fact brought before us by Weiss and Schweitzer that Jesus was completely committed to the apocalyptic views of the Judaism of his day.… If Jesus’ demonology and cosmology and-eschatology were taken as first-century views, appropriate then, not so now, needing reinterpretation and understanding but not literal assent, what is inherently different about Jesus’ theology?

The significance of this argument for the current theological situation cannot be overestimated, for it explicitly maps the progressive demise of Christology through the consistent application of rationalistic biblical criticism. For over a century, orthodox Christians have vainly reminded their liberal confreres of the Reformers’ conviction that the “material principle” (the Gospel of Christ) cannot possibly survive apart from the “formal principle” (divinely inspired Scripture). “Fiddlesticks!” has been the reply: “Of course we can distinguish the true theological core of Scripture and the central message of Jesus from the biblical thought-forms of the ancient Near East.” But in point of fact, as Hamilton well shows, stripping the cultural thought-forms from the “true” teaching of Scripture is like peeling an onion: when finished, you have no teaching at all, only tears (unless you happen to be a constitutional optimist like Hamilton, who finds mankind a satisfactory God-substitute).

Either Jesus’ total teachings (including his full trust in Scripture as divine revelation) are taken as God’s word or, as Luther well put it, “everyone makes a hole in it wherever it pleases him to poke his snout, and follows his own opinions, interpreting and twisting Scripture any way he pleases.” The Bible has become, to use Spurgeon’s phrase, a “nose of wax,” so that even a death-of-God theologian claims to follow sola scriptura. This is the inevitable outcome of rationalistic biblical criticism that refuses to distinguish between straightforward grammatical-historical explication of the biblical message and pre-suppositional judgment upon it. Has the time perhaps come for the Church to recognize that aprioristic biblical criticism has brought theology to the bier of Deity?

The way back is the doctrine of total biblical authority as taught by Christ himself, at once the Lord of Scripture and its central figure. Kenneth Kantzer gives us weighty testimony in this regard from the critics themselves:

H. J. Cadbury, Harvard professor and one of the more extreme New Testament critics of the last generation, once declared that he was far more sure as a mere historical fact that Jesus held to the common Jewish view of an infallible Bible than that Jesus believed in his own messiahship. Adolf Harnack, greatest church historian of modern times, insists that Christ was one with his apostles, the Jews, and the entire early church in complete commitment to the infallible authority of the Bible. John Knox, author of what is perhaps the most highly regarded recent life of Christ, states that there can be no question that this view of the Bible was taught by our Lord himself. The liberal critic, F. C. Grant, concludes that in the New Testament, “it is everywhere taken for granted that Scripture is trustworthy, infallible, and inerrant.” Rudolf Bultmann, a radical anti-supernaturalist, but acknowledged by many to be the greatest New Testament scholar of modern times, asserts that Jesus accepted completely the common view of his day regarding the full inspiration and authority of Scripture.

If Christ did in fact “show himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs” (Acts 1:3), thereby validating his claims to Deity as he had predicted he would (Matt. 12:38–42; John 2:18–22), how can the Christian possibly rationalize a view of Scripture inconsistent with that of the Lord Christ? It will not do to argue in terms of modern “kenotic theory” that Jesus was limited or limited himself to the thought-forms of his day, for (as Hamilton has well demonstrated) such hypothetical limitations have no boundaries and are logically capable of reducing everything Jesus said to meaninglessness; moreover, as Eugene R. Fairweather concludes, after examining the whole kenotic question in detail: “It can hardly be claimed that Kenoticism is explicitly contained in the New Testament picture of Christ; rather, it depends on a complicated deduction, involving highly debatable presuppositions.… The Kenotic theory does not in fact vindicate the religious meaning of the Christian Gospel. On the contrary, in the severe words of Pius XII, it ‘turns the integral mystery of the Incarnation and of redemption into bloodless and empty spectres’ ” (see Fairweather’s appendix to F. W. Beare’s Philippians).

Nor does one accomplish anything by trying to maintain that Jesus stamped with approval only the “substance” or “message” of the Bible, not its “form” or “medium” (the former being absolute while the latter is culturally conditioned and therefore lacking in normative character). As contemporary communications specialist Marshall McLuhan has shown in his epochal works (The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media), “the medium is the message”: it is impossible to separate a message from its medium, since the medium makes an integral contribution to the very nature of the message. Orthodox Christianity has always recognized this in respect to Scripture: no “detail” of the Bible is unimportant; the literary form must itself be inspired in order for it not to detract from the message conveyed; every word of Scripture—every “jot and tittle” of the text—has an impact, however slight, on the totality of the Bible, and this impact must, if Christ spoke truly, be for good.

Relevance in a Disenchanted Era

The stir produced by the death-of-God movement is a genuine reflection of the loss of God by vast numbers of people in the twentieth century. In Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, the leading characters are typical of modern man, waiting in darkness and addressing himself to the unknown god who never appears. At one point Vladimir says:

We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let’s get to work! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.

Elsewhere in the play, Estragon remarks:

Yes, now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That’s been going on now half a century.

Chancel Music

Whether whistle, bell, or chime

from marble campanile,

I do not know,

but I shall recognize its signal.

In a lightning-splintered moment

sounds of earth gone … gone…

I shall leap! sing! soar!

trading fleshly inhibition

for eternity’s vast space.

Through the stained-glass eyes of love

draw me softly, chancel Dove.

WILMA W. BURTON

How has such a cultural malaise come about in our time? Someone has sagely noted that in the eighteenth century the Bible died, in the nineteenth century God died, and in the twentieth century mankind has died. This sequence is not accidental. The rationalistic criticism of Scripture during the eighteenth-century deistic “Enlightenment” removed the most solid foundation for belief in God; and after Nietzsche and other nineteenth-century thinkers had proclaimed God’s demise, it was no longer possible to substantiate man’s individual worth. No longer a creature of God, man could only regard himself as a clever, evolving animal, and the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century are the inevitable result of stronger animals’ subjugating the weaker to their own ends. Without an eternal value system, available only in a veracious revelation from God, man is at the mercy of his fellows. Might makes right; to use Lord Acton’s well-known aphorism: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Orwell’s 1984 takes on nightmarish reality.

Among the “secular theologians,” however, an optimistic note is presently being sounded. We are informed that the “secular city” offers revelatory possibilities for acquiring a “new name” for God (see Harvey Cox’s The Secular City and also The Secular City Debate, edited by Daniel Callahan); and one writer (Gibson Winter) goes so far as to speak of “the New Creation as Metropolis.” An axiom of the day, expressed by Cox and Altizer, is that “God is where the action is”: in the dynamic social movements of our day, in the struggles for racial justice and human freedom. We are told that the “fully hidden Jesus” is now to be experienced in such movements, and that “a whole new era in theology” is opening up through stress on the Spirit—“the God of the present” (so wrote President James McCord of Princeton Seminary in Time, August 5, 1966).

But what is the actual situation? The urbanization of life is, as the greatest living phenomenologist of religion, Mircea Eliade, points out, desacralizing life by separating it from the cyclical, God-given patterns of nature. In the city we create our own environment and are therefore easily led not to God but to ourselves. We become convinced that we are the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul, and we quickly reach the point where we try to justify any “action” that we create. Much of the social action of our day is indeed God-honoring, for all races are “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28) and “there is no respect of persons with God” (Rom. 2:11); but apart from a revelatory, absolute ethic (as we saw earlier), supra-cultural standards of justice cannot be established. This means that without an authoritative Scripture the “secular theologian” can as easily find himself embroiled in the demonic, racistic, fascist activism of a Third Reich as in the contemporary freedom marches in behalf of minorities. Only a firm Word of God, coming from outside the flux of contemporary action, can serve as a map to an honorable and just future. And as the Reformers properly observed, talk about “Christ” or the “Spirit” apart from an objective Word is a waste of breath; for without a stable criterion, each man can build a demonic Christ—an Antichrist—in his own image, and deceive many. The spirits, most definitely including the spirits of the age, must be tested (1 John 4:1); and the only touchstone remains the inscripturated Word.

Sham

Reluctantly, perversely braced,

I raised my cross with great distaste;

Beneath it let my spirits sag,

And petulantly felt it drag.

But I exhibited that cross,

Talked much of it, and thought my loss

Was rather gain for Christendom;

Sidling eyes askance at some

Who seemed unseemly light. How blind

And foolish, I, to be resigned

To humbug, when reality

Is borne by Christ, and not by me.

HELEN S. CLARKSON

The instability of current “action” philosophies and theologies is becoming evident as our contemporaries, à la Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary, simultaneously seek answers in Eastern mysticism and reality-avoiding psychedelic drugs (see my article, “The Gospel According to LSD,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, July 8, 1966). Unconsciously, modern man recognizes that, whether in the metropolis or in the wilderness, whether in action or in silence, his heart—to recall Augustine’s great truth—is restless till it rests in God. But to rest there, it must know who God is and what he has done for sinful man, and that can be learned only in the pages of Holy Writ.

Like the little lost creatures in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, we long, each one of us, for “the piper at the Gates of Dawn.” How desperately we need to hear the clear piping of eternity as century twenty-one approaches! Well did a great theologian over a hundred years ago (William Henry Green, The Pentateuch, 1863) point disenchanted modern man to that clear voice of God recorded in the most relevant Book of all:

Who can tell us whether this awful and mysterious silence, in which the Infinite One has wrapped himself, portends mercy or wrath? Who can say to the troubled conscience, whether He, whose laws in nature are inflexible and remorseless, will pardon sin? Who can answer the anxious inquiry whether the dying live on or whether they cease to be? Is there a future state? And if so, what is the nature of that untried condition of being? If there be immortal happiness, how can I attain it? If there be an everlasting woe, how can it be escaped? Let the reader close his Bible and ask himself seriously what he knows upon these momentous questions apart from its teachings. What solid foundation has he to rest upon in regard to matters, which so absolutely transcend all earthly experience, and are so entirely out of the reach of our unassisted faculties? A man of facile faith may perhaps delude himself into the belief of what he wishes to believe. He may thus take upon trust God’s unlimited mercy, his ready forgiveness of transgressors, and eternal happiness after death. But this is all a dream. He knows nothing, he can know nothing about it, except by direct revelation from heaven.

The question, therefore, is one of life or death. We will not, we can not give up our faith in the Bible. To do so is to surrender ourselves to blank despair. It is to blot out the sun from the heavens and extinguish at once the very source of light and life and holiness. “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away; but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.”

He who has ears to hear the piping, let him hear!

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.”