Ecumenical winds are blowing across the Bible belt. Breezes first generated by elements of the National and World Councils of Churches are now being accelerated by stirrings within Roman Catholicism. A conscious movement is in the air for some measure of rapprochement with those Christians rapidly becoming known from the outside as “conservative evangelicals.”¹Dialogues between Roman Catholics and ecumenically oriented Protestant churchmen, meanwhile, are in full swing. Representatives of top-level Episcopal and Roman Catholic commissions held an all-day conference in Washington last month. Lutheran-Catholic theological talks were scheduled in Baltimore this month (see also Missouri Synod action, page 33).

Indeed, an informal evangelical-Roman Catholic dialogue may already be under way, representing an advance beyond attendance of observers at the Vatican Council.

Augustin Cardinal Bea, head of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, is reported to have conferred recently with a conservative Protestant theologian known for years as an outspoken critic of Romish error. The theologian recalls that “we talked shop on the problem of inspiration. He even found for me one of his old books, De Inspiratione Scripturae Sacre, which is out of print.”

Bea is said to be less than elated over the progress of talks between the Vatican and the World Council, which seems beset with tension with the world confessional bodies. Bea reportedly laments the lack of representative voices among those carrying on the Protestant side of the dialogue: “Wherever I come, I find a bishop or a professor who has his private opinions, but cannot speak for a church.” Bea also was quoted on a theological note: “These people have learned nothing. It is the old liberalism.”

In North America, meanwhile, an overture for dialogue with evangelicals came from the influential pen of Father John B. Sheerin, editor of the Catholic World, who has served as chairman of the press panel established at the Vatican Council.

Father Sheerin, a priest of the Paulist order, wrote in the June issue of the Catholic World that “the new evangelicals deserve our admiration and emulation for their reverence for the Word of God.” He reserved special praise for evangelist Billy Graham and enumerated reasons for closer contacts based on common convictions.

Sheerin noted the efforts to woo evangelicals by Dr. Eugene L. Smith, U. S. secretary for the WCC, adding: “What he says by way of advice to Protestant ecumenists can be applied to Catholics as well.” Here are excerpts from the Catholic World article:

“We have neglected conservative evangelicals and it is time that we made a sincere effort to cultivate better relations with them. We have much in common with them and there is every reason why we should be friendly. Catholic mission preachers have often remarked that Billy Graham’s sermons are very similar in content to Catholic mission sermons. We tend to underestimate the number of conservatives as against Liberals and neo-Orthodox Protestants in America.”

“We must acknowledge that the new evangelical is right in focusing a strong light on the need of personal responsibility and individual initiative in God’s service and in detecting the pitfalls in a gospel that removes suffering as an element in the Christian life.”

“They put us to shame with their missionary zeal.”

“To understand their situation we have to realize that any evangelical who engages in dialogue with a Roman Catholic will probably have to do so at the price of sharp criticism from his confreres.”

Complicating factors in the proposed dialogue include the long history of repression of evangelical efforts in Catholic lands and the tendency at best to tolerate Protestant missions.

Sheerin seems to follow evangelical activity closely, and his article’s only serious theological blunder is in attributing to the new evangelicals a belief in baptismal regeneration.

Sheerin’s article quotes CHRISTIANITY TODAY and thus adds to this magazine’s laurels from Roman Catholic sources. Even more generous was the praise of a well-known Roman Catholic lay columnist, Dale Francis, in the May 23 issue of the Operation Understanding Edition of Our Sunday Visitor. Francis, asked to name the one publication that most reliably reflected the views of American Protestants, designated CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He tempered the tribute by adding that he thought the Christianity Century and Christianity and Crisis more influential.

The dialogue seems to have begun.

Miscellany

The Bible, a three-hour Italian film said to be based on that portion of the book of Genesis from Creation through the story of Abraham, is scheduled to be premiered in New York on September 17, 1966. Total investment thus far has been put at $18,000,000, making the film one of the costliest in history. The screenplay is by Christopher Fry, English dramatist.

Wake Forest College (Southern Baptist) announced last month the receipt of gifts totaling $3,500,000 from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation. Assets to be transferred to the college include an office building with 206,000 square feet of floor space.

Washington Cathedral is embarking on a $20,000,000 building program aimed at completion of construction by 1985. The edifice has been under a step-by-step construction plan for more than fifty years.

A new quarterly journal sponsored by a group of liberal Southern churchmen made its debut last month. The publication bears the Greek name Katallagete, which means “be reconciled.”

Church World Service arranged for an emergency airlift of medicines last month to East Pakistan, where some seven million persons were reported homeless as the result of a devastating cyclone and tidal bore. Some $228,900 worth of drugs donated by Wyeth Laboratories was included in the first shipment. The toll in East Pakistan was said to be an estimated 13,000 dead and 20,000,000 suffering crop losses or house damage.

A 41-year-old Roman Catholic priest in Ceylon sought unsuccessfully last month to obtain a papal dispensation to marry a local beauty queen. The priest, Father Noel Crusz, is well known in Ceylon for a series of radio broadcasts. He had already announced plans to marry Miss Manel de Silva, a 28-year-old school teacher who was “Miss Ceylon” of 1963.

Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim leaders participated in a “Convocation of Religion for World Peace” marking the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. United Nations Secretary General U Thant told a crowd of about 10,000 that he felt “very strongly that the moral and spiritual advance today has not kept pace with the material progress.”

A Florida clergyman publicly protested the serving of beer at a White House function for young people last month. Dr. Malcolm B. Knight, moderator of the Jacksonville Baptist Association, called on the First Family to “set a high moral example which can be followed by all.” The beer-drinking occasion was a dance sponsored by Luci Johnson for 250 sons and daughters of the Washington diplomatic corps.

The Revised Standard Version of the New Testament is now available, with slight adaptations, in a Roman Catholic edition. It was published in Great Britain in June and is scheduled for publication in America this month. Thomas Nelson and Sons is publishing the Testament in both countries.

Delegates of the Methodist Central Jurisdiction (Negro) voted down a “resolution of invitation” that would have removed the denomination’s top-level racial barriers in eight states: Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri. The proposal had already been approved by delegates of the white South Central Jurisdiction.

Producer John Krimsky plans to make a Broadway comedy out of Dr. Charles Merrill Smith’s best-selling spoof, How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious.

Personalia

Dr. Conwell A. Anderson was named first president of Maryland Baptist College, which is due to open classes in the fall of 1967.

The Rev. Alex Thomas Forester, pastor of the Fresno (California) Presbyterian Church, was elected moderator of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Dr. Donald McGavran was named dean of the new School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. The Institute of Church Growth, founded at Northwest Christian College and directed by McGavran, will be moved to the Fuller campus and become part of the school program.

Dr. Norman K. Gottwald was appointed professor of Old Testament at Berkeley Baptist Divinity School.

Dr. Hugh F. Sensibaugh, minister of Lockland Christian Church in Cincinnati, was elected president for 1966 of the North American Christian Convention.

The Rev. Harry L. Evans was elected president of Trinity College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

E. Harold Fisher was named president of Blue Mountain College (Southern Baptist), succeeding the late Wilfred C. Tyler.

Dr. Henry Zwaanstra was elected to the chair of church history at Calvin Seminary.

Jo-Ann Price, former religion writer for the New York Herald Tribune, won the 1965 James O. Supple Award of the Religious Newswriters Association.

They Say

“Two interesting effects are observable in the new ‘openness’ achieved within the Roman Catholic Church by the Second Vatican Council. For one thing, the inhibitions of evangelical Roman Catholics have been released so that new and rewarding contacts are taking place all over the world between Gospel and Bible believing priests and ministers. But at the same time the inhibitions of Rome’s humanists have also been released so that new and open rejection of both Roman and evangelical doctrine are heard from Roman sources.”—Editorial in The Presbyterian Journal.

The essay beginning on the opposite page is an authoritative analysis of Christian activity in Communist China. It will continue in the next issue (July 30), which will be devoted to a comprehensive survey of Christianity in Asia. The author, George N. Patterson, who lives in Hong Kong, is a distinguished Scottish journalist and contributor to internationally known newspapers and magazines.

Much Protestant theology, and perhaps an increasing amount of Roman Catholic theology, rests on the presuppositions of form criticism. Dr. Pinnock (page 12) aims to expose weaknesses in the form critical argument and offers an alternative methodology.

The news section features reports from denominational conventions.

After a week of preliminary committee meetings, nearly 900 voting and 700 advisory delegates participated in the forty-sixth regular convention of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod¹Only about 150,000 of the church’s 2,750,000 members live in Missouri. A search for a new name will soon be under way. at Detroit’s Cobo Hall. In his opening address Dr. Oliver R. Harms proposed a “foundation on which we can stand, a platform from which we can move.” Included were maintaining “trust in God’s infallible Word,” striving “to preserve the unity of faith and the bonds of peace with every brother in our synodical fellowship,” and seeking “to establish and to manifest the unity we have in Christ Jesus with every other brother of God’s household.”

Harms noted that during his three-year first term as president the synod had added 180,000 members, and that 3,000 new pastors, teachers, and other workers had joined the church’s full-time force. He noted also that the church had given over 70 million dollars for world mission work in that period.

Traditionally a bulwark of confessional Lutheranism, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has for several years experienced considerable unrest over relations with other churches, the doctrine of Scripture, and problems of hermeneutics. The opinion of veteran observers that the Detroit convention would mark a turning point in this traditionally conservative church body was only in part fulfilled. Theologically the church remained in its historic position, but in relation to other churches it took an extremely progressive and outgoing position. As Harms put it, “The walls have crumbled.”

The synod showed an atttude of willingness to carry on conversations and dialogues with all groups and took a much more relaxed attitude toward the conduct of its foreign missionaries. The synod agreed to support mission churches that may be cooperating with neighboring churches in foreign lands even though the synod at home does not cooperate with the parent churches of such groups. Thus greater autonomy and self-determination was given to the mission churches.

The willingness to talk was also shown by the church body’s vote, without dissent, to carry on dialogues with Roman Catholics (three years ago the convention debated strongly a dialogue with Presbyterians and adopted the suggestion rather narrowly). In the same spirit the synod voted overwhelmingly to join the proposed Lutheran Council in the U. S. A. This will bring the synod into formal working relationship with the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America, contrary to the century-long history of the Missouri Synod. While the move does not imply pulpit or altar fellowship, nor necessarily imply a step toward Lutheran union, it means that serious theological discussions will get under way with other members of the Lutheran Council. The synod approved, in addition, a proposal to prepare a joint hymnal with the two other big Lutheran bodies.

These decisions probably mark the final burial of relations with the Wisconsin and Evangelical Lutheran Synods, with whom Missouri had been aligned for more than ninety years in the Synodical Conference. The conference continues to exist on paper, now consisting only of Missouri and the tiny Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (Slovak). The Missouri Synod has proposed that the Slovak churches join it.

A proposal to study the possibility of joining the Lutheran World Federation was adopted, as was a plan to contribute money to an LWF subsidiary ecumenical agency in which Lutherans and Roman Catholics are cooperating.

The Missouri Synod also showed considerable interest in social action, and even passed resolutions regarding fair employment and housing.

The synod demonstrated its usual historic conservatism in the area of theology. In answer to specific memorials, it declared belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, in Isaiah as author of the Book of Isaiah, in the historicity of the Jonah account, and in the fact that Old Testament prophecies find fulfillment in Jesus Christ. In answer to an overture made as a result of an article in the youth magazine Arena, the synod resoundingly and without debate reaffirmed that Christ is the only way of salvation. Both in its theological resolutions and in the type of men it chose for office, the synod showed little patience with the left-wing element that has been becoming more vociferous.

Harms, who has a reputation for being quite conservative, was re-elected decisively on the second ballot. Dr. Roland P. Wie-deraenders, against whom left-wing effort was reportedly under way, was re-elected first vice-president. It was generally felt that the new presidium will be even more conservative than the old.

The synod resoundingly rejected a proposed inter-synodical revised translation of Luther’s Small Catechism, which was attacked as theologically inadequate and untrue to the original text of Luther by the Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations. Despite efforts of both the Synodical Board for Parish Education and a floor committee, the catechism went down to defeat. The synod earlier reaffirmed its quia subscription to the Lutheran Confessions (because they are a proper exposition of the Word of God).

A rather surprising turn came when it was proposed, mainly by lay delegates, that the Board for Parish Education and the Board for Higher Education accept federal aid. After a strenuous floor fight, the synod by a very narrow vote agreed to accept federal aid for its parochial school children at the elementary level, but continued to reject such aid on higher levels. The question of federal loans for college dormitories apparently was not involved.

One of the most exciting and perhaps most fruitless episodes concerned a report of the Synodical Board for Young People’s Work. Delegates were exercised over the invitation extended to Pete Seeger, a folk singer of alleged Communistic tendencies, to entertain young people at the convention of the International Walther League at Squaw Valley, California. The bid precipitated many overtures and created a serious floor fight. While the synod did not require the board to eliminate Seeger from the program, it did show its ire by expressing itself as “not giving blanket endorsement” to all activities of the board and by electing a new slate of board officers.

Nearing A Moment Of Truth

Oklahoma history records that while 170,000 people awaited the sound of the gun signaling the famous “Run” into the Cherokee Strip for staking new homesite claims, a Disciples of Christ minister, J. M. Monroe, held a revival among the crowds and baptized some 400 converts. But last month fast-growing Tulsa provided a suitable setting for the fast-growing North American Christian Convention, whose vitality and evangelistic fervor are reminiscent of the Monroe revival.

Convention President Russell L. Martin, pastor of First Christian Church of Miami, Oklahoma, listed some of the recent gains and offered his explanation for them: “How account for the current phenomenal momentum of the Restoration Movement? How account for the unprecedented gains of these ‛Independent Cooperators’ in Bible college students, in missionaries (more than 800 at home and abroad tonight), in new churches being planted (twenty-three in St. Louis in nine years—eight in Oklahoma City—ten in Tulsa—eight in Memphis—eleven in Wichita in recent years, and on and on to Michigan, Florida, California, Illinois, Colorado, Ohio, and states north, south, east, and west)? While some folks are despondent over dry baptistries and a shortage of preachers, the undenominational Christian Churches are rejoicing over wet baptistries and training an all-time record number of nearly 5,000 specialized Christian workers at the Bible colleges! What is behind it all? A grass-roots longing to be free in Christ! A longing to be Christians only!”

By way of contrast, Martin scored those who “would have all sell their birthright of freedom in Christ for a mess of compromise and a glass of liberalism; a smorgasbord of doctrines, rules, and regulations of which Jesus never heard—claiming to bring folks together in a so-called union, bound by some general belief in God.… Whatever is distorted by the would-be managers of merger, one thing is crystal clear—it is not a grass-roots surge! The disciples of restructure and denominational union are not the evangelistic pastors in towns, cities, and hamlets—not the elders and deacons who came to Christ believing hell is hell and heaven is heaven and that the word of God is yea and amen for all people of all ages—not the thousands of Sunday school teachers and leaders who walked down the aisles in great revival crusades, overjoyed to find the plea: ‘Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.’ The pushers for denominational status and an overlording form of church government are at the top levels of organizations who long since have gone independent of the New Testament Church and the Restoration Movement. The only common ground suggested is bureaucratic and super-organizational, rather than theological. No efforts have yet been announced for all to sit down around the Word of God and solve all doctrinal differences, according to one divine blueprint!”

Martin’s words highlighted the fact that one of America’s largest church groupings has probably passed the point of no return on a road leading to ecclesiastical realignment and massive rupture. Church mergers nearly always leave continuing splinter groups in their wake. But in this case the “splinter” promises to be larger than the merging body. Ironically in our ecumenical era, the growing division is attributable in large measure to divergent views of ecumenism.

The Christian Churches or Disciples of Christ movement, founded on the nineteenth-century American frontier by Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, was an early ecumenical effort to unite the various denominations through “a Restoration of the New Testament order” in which denominational loyalties would melt away in a pristine congregationalism. The NACC has remained loyal to this ecumenical ideal, while the Disciples who follow the lead of the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) have generally despaired of any effectual realization of the early dream and have thrown in their lot with the current ecumenical movement. The more theologically liberal ICCC (which represents perhaps one million members) is now in process of “restructuring the brotherhood” away from its congregational autonomy to clear the way for the possibility of merger with the United Church of Christ or with the other five denominations participating in the Blake merger proposal. Thus not only are these churches pulling further away than ever from the Churches of Christ (some 2,200,000 members), who divided early in the century partly over Disciple introduction of instrumental music in the church services; they are also moving away from the churches (representing nearly 1,300,000 members) that participate in the NACC. This convention was organized in 1927 to give voice to conservatives uneasy about modernistic inroads into the Disciple leadership. The strict autonomous polity of NACC churches presents a wholesale departure from the ICCC at this stage, but the lines are continually being more clearly drawn as consummation of restructure approaches. This will be the moment of truth for comparative strength of the ICCC and NACC philosophies, with some informed observers predicting that the ICCC will be able to carry with it into its restructure form a maximum of 800,000 members. Thus the NACC stands to gain even greater strength through defections from the older body.

Echoes of the controversy were heard in the four-day meeting held in Tulsa’s handsome new Assembly Center. Primarily a preaching and Christian education convention, the NACC divides into many special-interest sections, with particular attention given to programs suitable for all age groups. (So in a sense this is a family convention.) One “preachers’ session” was sparked by a clash of opinions evoked by the presence of an ICCC leader, Dr. Ronald E. Osborn, dean of the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. Osborn advocated the changing of church structure in order to serve a changing world: “The questions then to ask in church organization are not, Is this how our fathers did it? or even, Is this how the apostles did it? But rather, Is this the best way that we can find in our present historic circumstances to carry out the mission and to make known the gospel? And, Is this in harmony with the gospel?” He said that restructure involves “the clear conviction that our regional and national, as well as our congregational, structure should be and rightly is a manifestation of the church.”

In a responding address, Dr. Wilford F. Lown, president of Manhattan (Kansas) Bible College, spoke of a common fear of those opposed to restructure: “The continuing cry that the Bible was merely the product of the Church, and therefore that it cannot be viewed as normative in matters pertaining to the life of the Church, is making inroads into the confidence Christian people have in Scripture. If this policy is continued, and it is likely to be, Christian people will be left at the mercy of the ecclesiastics in matters of Christian faith and practice.”

Evident in any NACC gathering is the burning conviction that Congregationalism is the polity set forth in the New Testament. At present a study of the NACC is being carried on by a special committee. While recognition is given to the fact that a certain amount of authority is required to stage a convention, great care is being taken, as manifest in a strong statute of limitations, to safeguard the voluntary character of the NACC. The convention is composed of individual Christians rather than churches or congregations and is official spokesman for no group.

Historians described the Disciples as among the hardest hit by modernism of any American church body. After the early battles, conservative Disciples tended to retreat into an isolation buttressed by their congregational polity and to present a defensive posture of reaction. But now their leaders point gratefully to a new positive stance born of a confidence possessed by a large and vigorous movement—some 10,000 attended the Tulsa convention. They also cite their advancing educational standards and confess a thirst among their brotherhood for greater fellowship with other evangelicals. And they hope for a new dialogue to ride the crest of the current ecumenical wave with an effectual and far-reaching plea for that early brand of ecumenism preached by their fathers.

FRANK FARRELL

Delicacies For The Delegates

Meeting outside Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the first time in thirty-seven years, the synodical assembly of the Christian Reformed Church was remarkably free of tensions that sometimes mark the gathering of this theologically conservative and doctrinally sensitive church. It seemed almost as if the peace and quiet of the rich farmland community of Sioux Center, Iowa (pop. 2,500), where divorce is almost unknown and the crime rate lowest in the Midwest, wrought its tranquil grace on the church’s seventieth annual session. The area was once the homeland of the Sioux Indians but is now inhabited by those of Dutch descent.

On one of the fairest of June evenings, Mayor Maurice A. TePasche of Sioux Center summoned the delegates for a steak barbeque, and none seemed concerned that a civil authority had assembled an ecclesiastical gathering. TePasche, a member of the Reformed Church in America, had Dr. Ralph Danhof, stated clerk of the Christian Reformed Church, as his house guest. As any gracious stated clerk would, Danhof attended Sunday evening services in the local Reformed Church with his host. (The Christian Reformed Church separated from the Reformed Church in America 108 years ago, and the two denominations have not always regarded each other as friendly rivals.)

The delegates were also entertained at a dinner by the Chamber of Commerce of nearby Orange City. The “Dutch Dozen,” dressed in wooden shoes and native costumes, entertained the ecclesiastical body with nostalgic Dutch songs and a “cloppen dance.” Many left with the feeling that with the loss of the folk dance something of value had vanished from their rich tradition.

During the nine-day session, strong opposition was expressed to the United States Senate Bill 1211, which would make National Election Day fall on the first Sunday in November. The 128 assembly delegates urged the church’s U. S. members “to express sincere disapproval to their respective government representatives and urge the defeat of the … bill.” The bill, it was urged, would impose upon millions of Christian Americans a “serious conflict in fulfilling their civic and religious duties.”

Few communities could have afforded such a decision in a more congenial and sympathetic environment. Sunday in Sioux Center, home of the fast-growing Dordt College, is a day of rest, with every store, service station, and restaurant closed. If you hunger on Sunday, the friendly local people will feed you free in their own homes—if they become aware of your plight.

An overture from Classis Central California requested that the synod reconsider its earlier decision to cooperate with a corps of evangelical scholars to produce a new Bible translation. The classis contended that there is no need for a new translation. The synod decided to reconsider the matter after the convening of the evangelically sponsored Bible Translation Conference.

In another action the synod approved the spending of 5½ million dollars for the expansion of Calvin College on its new Knollcrest campus in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Unlike Dordt College and Chicago’s Trinity College, which are sponsored by free societies within the Christian Reformed community, Calvin College is denominationally owned, financed, and controlled.

With 25 per cent of its churches located in Canada, the Christian Reformed Church is an international church. Such churches are, as the Rev. Tenis C. Van Kooten of Holland, Michigan, said, “rare animals.” To meet the peculiar problems confronting a church that crosses an international border, the synod, under its president, the Rev. William Haverkamp of Kalamazoo, Michigan, appointed a committee to study ways to achieve a practical unity within a church that is characterized by deep religious and theological unity.

After fourteen years of study and discussion, the church adopted a revision of its Church Order. The revision eliminates the theological professorial chair as an ecclesiastical office along with deacon, elder, and minister. In its opening article the new Church Order declares that the Christian Reformed Church is governed by “the Word of God and the Reformed Creeds.” Further specification of which Reformed creeds and how many was deliberately withheld, according to Professor Martin Monsma of Calvin Seminary, who headed the study, so that none would be excluded. Just how the government of the church can be subject to a large number of Reformed creeds while the theology of the church is subject only to the three to which the church officially subscribes was not made plain.

The synod honored the request of a small group of churches in Florida to form a Florida classis. The total number of families in these churches is less than that in some of the denomination’s single congregations. Since representation on the denominational level is a classical matter, some observers predicted that this action would result in a multiplication of classes through the division of existing ones, and that this in turn would pave the way for the formation of particular synods within the denominational organization. Until now requests for particular synods have been rejected.

JAMES DAANE

The Convention Circuit

Do church conventions tend to be dull? Perhaps. But even the most routine assemblies have some light moments. In Belfast, for example, the new moderator of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church showed up with a black eye. “Unique even for an Irishman elevated to this office,” commented a local observer. “He was in a car accident a week before and there was some doubt as to whether he might be fit in time.”

In San Francisco, an Oriental flavor was given the 135th annual General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Sessions were held in the First Chinese Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The moderator’s Sunday sermon was translated into Chinese.

Chief item of business for the 90,000-member predominantly Southern church was a plan to reunite with the 20,000-member Second (Negro) Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The Negro separation dates back to 1869. The reunion proposal will be put to a vote in local presbyteries.

In London, Ontario, theological conservatives scored a decisive victory when delegates to the seventy-seventh annual assembly of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec voted to sever a cooperative curriculum program with the United Church of Canada. The vote was interpreted as a repudiation of the highly controversial, theologically liberal Sunday school curriculum developed recently by the United Church of Canada. The convention will now promote Sunday school materials of the American and Southern Baptist Conventions.

In suburban Toronto, delegates to the ninety-first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada witnessed the groundbreaking for a new headquarters building.

In Flat Rock, North Carolina, the General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church asked trustees of the denomination’s Erskine College to reconsider their decision not to cooperate with the Civil Rights Act. The synod action, by a vote of 102 to 80, reversed the position taken by last year’s synod, which held it “neither wise nor expedient” to endorse integration in churches or church institutions.

A documentary film on the life of the late Dr. Paul Carlson, medical missionary killed by rebels in the Congo last fall, was premiered at the annual meetings of the Evangelical Covenant Church and the Evangelical Free Church. The two denominations cooperate in Congo mission work.

Other developments: In suburban Minneapolis, the headquarters-seminary building of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations was dedicated at the closing session of the group’s third annual conference.… In Des Moines, Iowa, delegates to the thirty-fourth annual conference of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches expressed “biblical indignation” over the appearance of Russian Baptists on the program of the Baptist World Congress.… In Memphis, the American Baptist Association reaffirmed its segregationist stand and began an advertising campaign to eliminate confusion between it and the American Baptist Convention. The ABA is a fellowship of congregations, mostly in the South, claiming a total membership of 655,200.

Text: When they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right-hand, and the other on the left (Luke 23:33).

Behold a hill with three crosses! Usually we fix our attention on only one, but we ought to remember that there were three crosses. In our own recollection, as in the history of the world, the central Cross stands out alone. But a passerby would have carried away a different picture of the crucifixion scene. After walking by the Place of the Skull on that never-to-be-forgotten day, a visitor to Jerusalem would have reported, “Today I witnessed the crucifixion of three men.”

“Three lonely crosses on a lonely hill!” What a sight to stir the hearts of men! In the center the Lord Jesus died because he was the Son of God. On either hand died a man because he was a thief. In some respects they all seemed much alike: three men with agonized bodies sagging on pierced hands; three men with raging thirst tormenting them amid heat and dust; three men as a naked spectacle for “scorn to point her slow, unmoving finger at.” Those three wooden crosses were much the same, and so were the methods of torture. Ah, but what a difference among the persons on those three crosses!

A hill with three crosses! On the central Cross hung the body of the Lord Jesus. He died lonely, but not alone. According to F. W. Robertson, “There are two kinds of solitude: the first consisting of isolation in space, the other in isolation of spirit.” Close beside him hung the two thieves, neither of whom yet shared his fellowship with the Father, or his vision of a world redeemed. Both of them could share the anguish of the Lord’s body, but only one dying thief was ever to know “the joy that was set before him.”

“Three crosses on a lonely hill!” On each a man was dying. Each of them has its own distinctive lesson for us to learn today. On the central Cross the Son of God died for sin. On the one hand an impenitent thief died in sin. On the other hand a repentant thief died to sin. Here is the Gospel in personal pronouns.

The Redeemer Dying For Sin

First look at the central Cross, on which the Saviour died for sin. This was the Cross of redemption, or as Robertson says, in “the dying hour of devotedness.” When we gaze at the central Cross we feel almost ashamed that we belong to the human race, for we had a share in nailing him to the Cross. In a sense we too spat in his face and thrust a crown of thorns on his brow. By our sins we also led him to Calvary and left him there to die.

When we gaze on the central Cross we should look beyond it and up to God. On Calvary we behold so much of his self-revelation that we can receive only a portion of its meaning. As for its total message, that lies far beyond the mental capacity of man:

For the love of God is broader

Than the measure of man’s mind.

Nevertheless, we ought to live beneath the shadow of the Cross, and thus enter more and more into its meaning.

Why else did the Apostle write the following words to the Christians of his day? “… I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … that he would grant you … that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge …” (Eph. 3:14–19)? Here at the central Cross we behold divine “love in four dimensions.” In its light from above we see that what took place on that central Cross availed not only for the penitent thief but for everyone who repents. My friend, let it avail for you.

Someone may ask, rightly, “How could Christ die for me fifty-seven generations before I was born?” To such a wistful question there can be no final answer. How can we on earth enter into the deepest mysteries of God? But this much we know on the human level: Any one of us today can reap benefits from the deeds of others who died before he was born. For example, have you ever thought about the use of anesthetics in a major operation? Can you imagine what such an ordeal would be like without the use of anesthesia? Then remember that the change to anesthetics came only a little more than a hundred years ago.

Even to read about oldtime amputations and carvings of human flesh causes one to shudder. But today when the physician advises you to undergo surgery you can reply, “Well, at least I’ll not feel it.” Have you ever thanked God for anesthetics? Remember that they were discovered before you were born, and that they were discovered for you. When at length you face up to your sin as the deadly disease of your soul you will come to see at least a portion of what Christ Jesus did for you on the Cross. Then you will love to sing “Rock of Ages”:

Be of sin the double cure;

Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

On the central Cross God showed once for all that he takes our sins seriously. As Paul says, even though Christ was himself without sin, God “made him to be sin for us … that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Without such a strong view of sin, the Atonement would be emptied of nearly all its meaning. When Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them,” by his death he was making possible the way by which that prayer could be answered. If Christ Jesus had not died on that central Cross, all the penitence in the world could not have brought that sinner to paradise. Our redemption consists in reconciliation with God, not merely in renunciation of the world. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” To believe in forgiveness of sins without reference to the Cross would mean thinking God does not take sin seriously.

On that hill of crucifixion everything had to do with that central Cross. So it ought to be in your heart and life. In that central Cross you can find power to shake your life to its very roots, and then to bring repentance. Here you can find God, not angry or hurt so much as grieved because of your separation from him. Remember too that Christ died, not that God might begin loving you, but because he has always loved you. Behold in that Cross the act of divine love to overcome the sin on every side. Remember, too, that atonement for sin requires perfect holiness and perfect obedience. Therefore, in that central Cross you can find your only hope for time and eternity.

The Thief Dying In Sin

In the second place let us consider the cross on which a man died in sin. This was the cross of impenitence and rebellion. As a thief he had lived, and as a thief he would die. He had spent his life in taking for himself what others had earned by their toil. At death he would end his days still in rebellion against the laws of God and men.

We may wonder by what pathway this man had come to his cross. Did he grow up in a pious home where his mother prayed that he would become good and useful? Perchance did evil companions lead him astray? Or did he come from a vile hovel and learn to steal almost as soon as he could toddle? About such things we cannot tell, though we know that a vile home today tends to produce sinners. The sacred record has to do with his sin and impenitence, not with his heredity and environment. Hence we know that he was steeped in sin, coarsened by crime, and hardened by hatred, so that he persisted in rebellion against God.

On a wooden cross this man was suffering the penalty for his crimes. He was dying in sin. To the very end he remained impenitent and bitter. The impenitent thief could see the Lord Jesus on the central Cross and hear his prayer of pardon for those who had hounded him to death. The poor wretch could look on the women who were weeping and hear the mournful cry of the bereaved mother. Still he could mouth the foulest aspersions. Even in the hour of death his heart knew no softening.

Among the objects of his scorn, the chief one was Jesus himself. “One of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us” (Luke 23:39). Evidently he knew something about Jesus, but at two points he was mistaken. First, he addressed Jesus with an “if.” “If thou be Christ.” To approach Christ with an “if” means not to come in faith. With an “if” Satan had tempted our Lord three times early in his ministry. With an “if” the impenitent thief was joining in the chorus of enemies who had led Christ to the Cross: “If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself” (Luke 23:37).

The second mistake of the impenitent thief was in trying to dictate terms of salvation. “Save thyself and us.” He had vague ideas about the sort of salvation he wanted, and about the way it should be attained. He wanted to be saved from death so that he could go back to his thieving. Such a mistaken attitude is common today. Often the best of us forget that Christ has not promised to save us from our crosses. Through the Cross, by his Cross, but not from our crosses! “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

Many today live in rebellion against God. W. E. Sangster tells of a mother who has lost her only child, a girl of six. This woman accuses God and declares war against heaven. In desperation she goes to the cabinet where the little girl kept her toys. Throwing open the door, the mother allows the toys to spill out over the floor. Waving her hands over them she sobs, again and again. This woman lives with an open wound that only God can heal, and she will not look up to him. In her heart there will always be a scar, but there need not be a festering sore. Her burden is one of rebellion.

The Thief Dying To Sin

On the third cross a man died to sin. This was the cross of repentance. He too had been a thief, and he knew that he was punished justly. But even at the dying hour he looked on the Lord Jesus, and his heart was “strangely warmed.” Perhaps for the first time in all his life he began to see things in their true light.

First of all, in the presence of the dying Redeemer this other thief admitted the justice of his sufferings and death. Speaking to the other thief, this one asked, “Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss” (Luke 23:40, 41). How difficult it is for a stubborn heart to acknowledge its own sin!

This dying thief called on Jesus, but he made no demands. However, he did humbly request a gift of mercy. “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” This man dying to sin must have seen in the Lord Jesus something not of this world. He had watched Jesus being nailed to the Cross, and as he heard the strokes of the hammer he had seen the blood stream forth. But from those lips the dying thief did not hear any such curses as were customary on Calvary. Rather did he hear a prayer for pardon, a prayer that “shivered the sky and thrust itself into his soul,” as nothing had ever done through all his years. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

In response to his own humble cry of faith the penitent thief received a promise infinitely precious. “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” He found that in Christ there was hope for any man, no matter what he had done, if only he truly repented. He discovered that while Roman power had done all it could do, having nailed him to the cross, there was another throne, higher by far than that of Caesar. That higher throne was the Throne of Grace. Through the Christ of the Cross the penitent thief found access to the Heavenly Father who would extend mercy to the weakest and worst of men. On the “day of the Cross” he beheld the fountain that has been opened “for sin and for un-cleanness” (Zech. 13:1).

The dying thief rejoiced to see

That fountain in his day;

And there may I, as vile as he,

Wash all my sins away.

“There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” And there was joy in the heart of the dying Redeemer. Have you ever paused to consider what the conversion of the penitent thief meant to Christ on the Cross? Forsaken by the disciples and serving as the butt of mockery by rulers, cast out by leaders of the church and spat upon by jeering mobs, the sinless Son of Cod hung there on the Cross, surrounded by howling mobs. Then suddenly there came this shaft of light, this flash of glory, when the dying sinner beheld His redeeming Kingship and flung himself upon divine mercy. Once Christ had said, “I, if 1 be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32). Now at last he was lifted up, and the first of countless sinners looked to him for pardon, cleansing, and peace.

Oh, the joy of the dying Redeemer, joy in the midst of his anguish on the Cross! Here is a lesson for each of us. Part of a man’s work on earth he may do with strength and vigor, but much of it he may accomplish only “through peril, toil, and pain.” As long as God has anything more for him to suffer, a man’s work on earth is not yet complete. Through eyes full of agony the penitent thief first beheld the face of his Redeemer. Through suffering, accepted by faith and borne with patience, there are lessons that we can learn in no other way. If we would let him do so, doubtless God would teach in those other ways; but all too often the stubborn heart refuses and resists. So God lets us suffer.

The Person Who Suffers Today

On the Cross the righteous will of God had to be revealed through the sufferings of Christ, and also through the sufferings of the penitent thief. The same principle holds true today. For instance, consider the sufferings that come through war. God tells us that war is unspeakably terrible, and that it is against his holy will. But the mass of people, with minds set on selfish gain and pleasure, treat lightly all his warnings against the sinfulness of war. They refuse to believe God and to repent. It may be that blasted cities and mangled bodies will force into our minds the fearful truth about this form of sin.

And yet suffering never proves to be in vain if it leads to sincere repentance. Often it is the consciousness of defeat and frustration, of sin and suffering, that makes us aware how much we need God. When our self-sufficiency is fatally wounded, our pride is humbled, and our defenses are down. Then through the breach of our humiliation God leads us to repentance. The cross of penitence is for you; and if repentance comes through suffering, then rejoice in that suffering.

Repentance during the last moments of life is by no means probable. But blessed be God, such dying repentance is never impossible! “There has been one Bible case of ‘death-bed repentance’ that no one may despair, and only one, that no person may presume.” In the hour of greatest need the Saviour hears the cry of the worst sinner in the world. He is waiting to hear you now. Wherever you stand in the stream of life, whatever your surroundings and your sins, if in penitence and obedience you call upon Christ, he has promised to hear and to forgive. As an example you have the dying thief to whom the Blessed Lord said, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

You can look to Christ with complete confidence. You can rest secure that he will meet every need, because his sacrifice for sin is complete. Once forgiven and cleansed, you need only surrender to him, and live to do his will. Do not be led astray by those who tell you that after death you will need the cleansing of purgatorial fires in order to complete the work of Christ on the Cross. By faith he is all you need. “Ye are complete in Christ.” If by faith you arc in Christ, there remains no more condemnation for sins. Behold he stands before you now, your Friend and your Helper, your Saviour and your Lord. All this you learn anew beneath the shadow of that central Cross.—From Evangelical Sermons of Our Day, edited by Andrew W. Blackwood (New York: Harper and Row; © 1959, Andrew W. Blackwood). Used by permission.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

DECLARE IT, PREACHER, DECLARE IT!

An evil day has dawned on the pulpit: too many preachers are purveyors of doubts and nibblers at problems when they should be trumpeters of informed convictions.

For the heat and intensity of the sentences that follow I decline to offer apology. If nothing is to be gained by speaking vehemently, more is to be lost by acquiescing silently.

The declarative note, resounding confidently, is what makes preaching preaching. “We declare unto you glad tidings,” said St. Paul to the people of Antioch. “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you,” said the same St. Paul to the men of Athens.

Take the affirmations that are enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed. They are of the very warp and woof of the New Testament. They are neither platitudinous nor peripheral. They are specific and central. Taken as a whole, they speak the mind of the historic Church. They represent a continuum of living, declaratory faith by which the generations of God’s witnessing people on earth have been held together in a fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

A preacher is free to believe or disbelieve these definitive affirmations. If, however, he chooses to disbelieve them, he should have the decency to probe himself with the question: By what right do I hold my credentials as a minister of Christ and of the Church of Christ when I have elected to dissociate myself from the very faith that brought the Church into being?

And if I say, “But I am interpreting these phrases so that they are agreeable to the contemporary mind; I am giving them an up-to-dateness which in their ancient uncouthness they lack,” then am I candid enough to say that that is not interpretation which is in fact repudiation? Altering the ribbon on the jewel box may be applaudable artistry, but mutilating the treasure within, far from being artistry, is treachery.

Preacher, you are free, but you are not independent. You stand in community. You are a representative of the historic Church. You are a servant of the Word of God. You are an ambassador of Jesus Christ, who by his birth has split history in two, by his death has made sun-clear the way to God’s forgiveness, and by his resurrection has spoiled the empire of death.

Declare it! Unashamedly and unceasingly declare it! Declare it not as shrieking dogmatism but as enlightened conviction, shared and confirmed by a million times a million souls along the track of centuries.

Declare that God is Creator, Redeemer, and Judge. Declare God’s unalterable hatred of sin—sin that has estranged men from himself, the very source of their being, sin that defiles and disorganizes men in their persons and degrades and disintegrates men in their societies. Declare therefore the reality of hell—hell now, since men arc punished by their sins, and hell tomorrow, since men will be punished for their sins.

Declare the matchless, enduring love of God for men. Love that is of grace, undeserved, undiminished! Love that, having put God on a cross—the cross of man’s sin—proposes to put man on a throne where he reigns as a grateful and obedient servant.

Declare it! Declare it as God’s good news in Jesus Christ. Declare it as the Gospel of power by which the bored can be made purposeful, the bound can be freed, the drunken can be made sober, the fear-ridden emancipated, the guilty forgiven, and the disintegrated made whole.

Declare it, brother preacher, declare it! Your silence is not golden, it is craven. Your evasion is your devastation. From your ambiguity only one thing can come—your futility. Either get out or get in!

Then declare it—this “whole counsel of God.” In Christ’s name, declare it!

Beyond Bultmann And Rome

Heil als Geschichte, by Oscar Cullmann (J. C. B. Mohr [Tübingen, Germany], 1965, 313 pp., DM. 31; an English translation is to be published in the United States by Harper and Row and in Britain by SCM Press), is reviewed by James M. Boice, graduate student. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

With the decline of the Bultmannian influence upon European theology, debate between exponents of historical and existential revelation has attained a significance for New Testament studies and for dogmatics that was impossible in Europe a dozen years ago. When Oscar Cullmann’s early sketch of his heilsgeschichtliche theology, Christ and Time, appeared in German bookstores in 1946, one critical review by Bultmann in the well-read Theologische Literaturzeitung was sufficient to cause many scholars to pass it by. Today Bultmann is no longer king. There is therefore no reason why Cullmann’s latest and most mature work, Heil als Geschichte (“Salvation as History”), should not capture a commanding position in the New Testament field in Germany and abroad.

No one is more aware of the marked breakup of fixed theological positions in Europe than Cullmann himself, who writes in Heil als Geschichte with deliberate attention to the rising theological banners. Cullmann regards the reaction of the Pannenburg scholars to Bultmann as a healthy one, although their renewed emphasis upon historical revelation (Offenbarung als Geschichte, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1961) does not sufficiently delineate the relationship between revelation, sin, and salvation within general history. Similarly, according to Cullmann, the “new quest for the historical Jesus” (Käsemann, Fuchs, Bornkamm, Conzelmann, J. M. Robinson) shows promise in its interest in the question of history; but without a firm textual base this quest will succeed only in creating an existential Jesus, just as the nineteenth-century quest produced a rational one.

In order to influence such positions and to refute others, Cullmann has now presented a statement of Heilsgeschichte (“salvation-history”) that develops his principles vis-à-vis the criticism of the last twenty years and that seeks to establish beyond doubt the presence of Heilsgeschichte in all the major books of the New Testament.

In addition to his basic definition of Heilsgeschichte as a connected series of divine events, with equal emphasis being placed upon the event itself and its divinely revealed interpretation, Cullmann now places great stress upon the principles of contingency and continuity. To deny the first, a denial of the new as a basis for a reinterpretation of the past, is the error of the Judaizers. To deny the second is the error of Marcion, in whose footsteps Cullmann sees Bultmann to be walking. The significance of Heilsgeschichte for our time, affirms Cullmann in a repetition of his earlier thesis, is that the decisive event of all history has already come in Jesus Christ and that Christians now live in state of tension—between the “already” (characterized by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit within the Church) and the “not yet” (by which Cullmann speaks of an anticipated consummation of all things in terms of a temporal eschatology). In a new departure, the final section of the work seeks to develop a heilsgeschichtliche approach to the theological problems of Scripture and tradition, the doctrine of the Church, worship, preaching and exegesis, and Christian ethics. In these pages, from his chair of New Testament at the University of Basel, Cullmann glances as much south over the Alps to Rome as he does northward to the Bultmannian strongholds in Germany.

For New Testament scholars, the most significant section of Cullmann’s work will be his detailed analysis of the New Testament (involving 100 of the book’s 300 pages). In these studies Cullmann demonstrates the presence of a heilsgeschichtliche perspective, not only within the Lukan sources (as Bultmann readily admits) but also in John, from which Bultmann draws most heavily in establishing his existential, “standing-always-in-a-state-of-decision” theology, in Paul, and more significantly in the historical teaching of Jesus himself. In reviewing the Synoptic Gospels, Cullmann does no less than establish a methodology for dealing with Christ’s sayings in the light of contemporary criticism and skeptical exegesis: by affirming Christ’s messianic self-consciousness as a nearly historical certainty—based upon Christ’s consciousness of being able to forgive sins, the teaching that in his person the Kingdom of God has already come, his conscious submission to a divinely ordained plan of life (“My hour is not yet come,” and so on)—and by arguing from this point to the general authenticity of the Synoptic account of his words and works.

In a number of interesting forays in the beginning section of the book, Cullmann further assures his position by a general castigation of the entire Bultmannian approach and exegesis. Such an approach is impossible because event and interpretation are too closely mixed in the New Testament to permit the Bultmannian applications of form criticism, illusory because the dominant ideas of the New Testament are based upon Christ’s own teaching rather than the experience of the early Church, inaccurate because it is the revelation of the event and its meaning that clarifies human existence and not an understanding of existence that clarifies the event, and unnecessary because the opportunity for existential decision so gained is already provided in the “between times” that characterizes the heilsgeschichtliche present.

Unfortunately, Cullmann’s latest work appears at a time when a number of new criticisms of Heilsgeschichte are beginning to emerge within America, where until now “salvation-history” has found its most congenial soil. The least destructive criticism of Cullmann’s system fastens upon his curious ambiguity concerning myth as applied to events beyond the salvation line in pre-history (the Fall of Adam) and in eschatology (see, for instance, the editorial “Salvation-History and Its Meaning,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 26, 1965). According to Cullmann, these events must be understood as “happenings,” even though they are enough removed from the line of historical events that it is permissible to speak of the biblical writers’ “demythologizing” them when they fail to distinguish between such myth and history.

Far more detrimental to Heilsgeschichte is the question whether salvation-history as a description of the divine revelation, even when presented in terms of event and interpretation, really does justice to the revelation found within the Old and New Testaments. Does the Bible not present something more than the God who acts? Does not God also speak? And when God also speaks does he not reveal information about his person (ontological propositions?) which go beyond the mere interpretation of his actions? From an Old Testament perspective, for instance, Princeton’s James Barr has asked whether revelation in history is even adequate to explain an event so basic to the heilsgeschichtliche perspective as the Exodus (not to mention the wisdom literature), in which, according to the Old Testament, the revelation of God’s person to Moses (“I am that I am”) clearly precedes and is indeed presupposed by the mighty act of Israel’s deliverance (New Theology No. 1, Macmillan, 1964). For Cullmann this problem becomes most acute in the theological approach to Christian ethics, in which God’s revelation of agape in Christ is taken as a foundation principle (Cullmann calls on others to produce the as yet unwritten heilsgeschichtliche ethics), but in which far too little heed is paid to the propositional imperatives of the New Testament sources.

JAMES M. BOICE

We Stand To Lose

The Strange Tactics of Extremism, by Harry and Bonaro Overstreet (W. W. Norton, 1964, 315 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by John J. Kiwiet, associate professor of church history, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Oakbrook, Illinois.

“The first fact to pin down with respect to the John Birch Society is that while its professed reason for existing is opposition to Communism, it is built on the pattern of the Communist party” (p. 36). This can be considered to represent the authors’ position on the methods of political extremism. On the basis of a careful analysis, the Overstreets mention as methods comparable to those of the Communist party: the worship of authoritative personal leadership, the elimination of difference of opinion, and the controlling power of front organizations.

This study of extremism evokes amazement at how strange the tactics of the extreme right are. They exploit the ignorance, fear, and confusion of many Americans. The four major targets for attack are the public school system, the PTA, the mental health movement, and the public libraries. According to the authors, these attacks are a product, not of any consistent theory, but “of anger and a will to be on top of some heap” (p. 268).

For the various extreme movements, the authors attempt to describe their origin and development, and their arguments and the refutation of these arguments. This they do on the basis of the movements’ own publications and of personal contact with them. Included are the John Birch Society, the Dan Smoot Report, the ICCC of Carl McIntire, the Circuit Riders of Myers C. Lowman, the Church League of America of Edgar C. Bundy, and the Christian Crusade of Billy James Hargis. The final chapter suggests methods of combating extremism based on the general principle that the liberal-conservative center must be strengthened if we are to be able to afford the presence of extremists in our midst.

The authors conclude: “This study has convinced us that unless we Americans get down to the task of appraising what extreme methods, of the Left or of the Right, lead to in the way of human sorrow and an erosion of the moral sense, we stand to lose the best that centuries have given us.”

JOHN J. KIWIET

Jesus’ Own Words

The Central Message of the New Testament, by Joachim Jeremias (Scribners, 1965, 95 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Everett F. Harrison, professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

The author of this volume ranks among the foremost New Testament scholars in the world today, with books on a variety of subjects, including the parables and the eucharistic sayings of Jesus. In 1963 he visited the United States for a lecture tour, at which time the materials in the present volume were presented. They consist of four studies entitled “Abba,” “The Sacrificial Death,” “Justification by Faith,” and “The Revealing Word.”

In the study on Abba, which gathers up his research over many years, Professor Jeremias cites the fact that Jewish prayers fail to disclose any examples of Abba (father) as an address to God. What was so intimate as to be regarded irreverent to the Jewish mind was daringly taken by Jesus to express his own special relation to God. It was not only the ground of his communion with God but also the means of declaring his own capacity as Son to reveal the Father. Jesus, in extending to the disciples the right to use Abba, was admitting them to a unique fellowship with God. All this has a bearing on gospel criticism, especially the type that is skeptical about the trustworthiness of sayings attributed to Jesus. Here we can say with confidence that we have “an authentic and original utterance of Jesus.”

The second lecture traces the various lines of New Testament teaching dealing with the presentation of Jesus’ death, including the sayings that emanate from our Lord. The latter are of special interest, since the wide variety in form and the Semitic character of some of them clearly preclude any attempt to assign them to the Hellenistic church, and in substance, at least, go back to Jesus himself.

In the final lecture the reader is treated to a fascinating explanation of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, which is regarded as basically a hymn in which the Logos is celebrated as the Revealer of God and then is openly confessed by the Church in verse 14. In conclusion, revelation through the Logos is contrasted with revelation through the Law (v. 17) and also with “the whole human quest for God” (v. 18).

It is the portion on justification that provokes a measure of disagreement. Here Professor Jeremias detects a shift in the meaning of the word from its forensic sense to the equivalent of forgiveness. This may be allowable in part (Acts 13:39); but since forgiveness must of necessity be repeated, whereas justification is once-for-all, it is well to avoid confusion of the terms. The author consents to the dictum that the prominence given to justification by Paul was due to the necessity of combatting the Judaizing position. This can be pressed too far, since Romans lacks the polemical thrust of Galatians and nevertheless gives great prominence to this theme. Too much emphasis should not be laid on the thought that justification is simply an illustration of salvation derived from the law-court, for it is linked with the truth that God is the supreme Judge, and this is no mere illustration.

EVERETT F. HARRISON

The Capacity Of Reason

Religious Philosophies of the West, by George F. Thomas (Scribners, 1965, 454 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The professor of religion at Princeton University evaluates the influence of fifteen thinkers—from Plato to Tillich—upon Western religious philosophy. The twentieth-century names are Feuerbach and Dewey (naturalistic humanism), Whitehead (process philosophy), and Tillich (philosophical theology); they are preceded by Kierkegaard (Christian existentialism). The book is a valuable contribution to the study of thinkers influential in molding representative Western religious philosophies.

Dr. Thomas notes prevalent skepticism since World War I over the capacity of reason to arrive at a constructive religious philosophy. While neo-Thomism in Catholic circles defends traditional theism, Protestant circles have more widely reflected the departure evident in philosophical theology (which amends traditional theism), process philosophy (which reinterprets theism), and humanism (which replaces theism). But outside Protestant and Catholic institutions, the skeptical mood distrustful of metaphysics is more apparent in analytic philosophy, religious existentialism, and atheistic humanism.

Despite modern skepticism “concerning the capacity of reason to prove the Transcendent,” concludes Dr. Thomas, men are seeking “a new transcendental faith.”

CARL F. H. HENRY

With Competence

Colossians and Philemon, by William Hendriksen (Baker, 1964, 243 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Robert H. Mounce, chairman, Department of Biblical Literature, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Those who have appreciated and benefited from the exegetical competence of Dr. William Hendriksen will be pleased with this latest volume of his New Testament commentary. Its pages reveal a careful investigation of the Greek text, a considerable mastery of the relevant material, and a scholar’s delight in fresh presentation of biblical truth.

Hendriksen has furnished us with a new translation that grows out of his work with the text. Each larger unit of the commentary is preceded by an outline and followed by a summary. The two appendices treat the subjects of tactfulness and slavery. The work concludes with a select and general bibliography. Hendriksen holds that the Colossian heresy was a “weird mixture of Jewish and pagan elements”—a sort of Jewish Gnosticism. He rejects the interpretation of Knox that Onesimus was a onetime slave who became the bishop of Ephesus. The Pauline authorship of both letters is maintained.

One dominant feature of the commentary is the amount of argument and counter-argument that is carefully detailed on every debatable point. For example, on the identity of the “letter from Laodicea,” six differing views are discussed (pp. 194–97). Hendriksen concludes that the final choice must be made between its being the canonical Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians or a genuine letter of Paul addressed to the Laodiceans but now lost. (Cf. also the extended note on stoicheia, pp. 135–37, and the note on Philemon 6, pp. 214, 215.)

The minister who is about to preach or teach his way through Colossians or Philemon will find this sane and thorough treatment a dependable source of information and a stimulus to exposition that is genuinely biblical.

ROBERT H. MOUNCE

The Church Of Christ

The Mirror of a Movement, by William S. Banowsky (Christian Publishing, 1965, 444 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by James DeForest Murch, minister, author, and editor, Chevy Chase, Maryland.

The Church of Christ is an American communion two million and a quarter strong about which the mainstream of Protestantism knows very little. This lack of knowledge stems largely from the fact that the Churches of Christ have isolated themselves from other evangelical Christians. They became a separate body in 1906 when they withdrew from the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Both communions are part of the movement to “restore the New Testament Church its doctrine, ordinances and life,” a movement that in America began on the Allegheny frontier in the early years of the nineteenth century. Together these bodies have four to five million communicants and are “the largest religious movement of peculiarly American origins.”

By an immense amount of painstaking research, Dr. Banowsky has produced the first scholarly and somewhat objective survey of the beliefs and practices of the Church of Christ. It is based upon lectures, addresses, and sermons delivered in the Abilene Christian College Annual Lectureship, which since 1913 has drawn thousands of Church of Christ ministers and leaders to the campus of this prestigious Texas institution. Since this fellowship of Christians has no written or uniformly accepted systematic theology, and no national church conventions or recognized extra-congregational authority of any sort, Abilene has become the sounding board for Church of Christ thought.

The author and compiler has studied all the 753 lectures delivered by 394 representative church leaders since the inception of the lectureship and has faithfully recorded the views expressed on such themes as the Holy Scriptures, the Godhead, Christ, salvation, the New Testament Church, the edification of the Church, the mission of the Church, evangelism, cooperation, benevolence, education, and “the Christ-centered life.” These views are presented against the background of an erudite and very revealing survey of Protestant theology and ecclesiology as it was developing during the same period. Dr. Banowsky has thus used the only feasible method of determining what the labyrinthine free Church of Christ stands for.

His study reveals this large and rapidly growing body of Christians as fully committed to the authority of the revealed Word of God and to the basic and essential doctrines of the evangelical Christian faith. They reject all human creeds, taking the Bible alone as their definitive rule of faith and practice. The study also reveals commitment to certain reactionary traditions and practices based on the opinions of men that set the Churches of Christ apart from the mainstream of evangelical Protestantism. There is, however, evidence of the abandonment of some extremist positions and of the adoption of more progressive modes of action that give promise of a day when a modicum of fellowship may be established with that great evangelical community in Protestantism of which the Church of Christ is really a part.

We are deeply indebted to Dr. Banowsky for this thesis in Christian understanding. It is a profound contribution to contemporary Protestant church history.

JAMES DEFOREST MURCH

Book Briefs

Prelude to the Cross and Other Sermons, by Paul P. Fryhling (Baker, 1965, 149 pp., $2.50). Orthodox but lightweight sermons.

Luther and Aquinas on Salvation, by Stephen Pfürtner, O. P. (Sheed and Ward, 1965, 160 pp., $3.50). Author traces the forgotten continuity between Aquinas and Luther and thus makes a contribution to ecumenical theology.

St. Augustine: The Trinity, edited by Charles Dollen, translated by Stephen McKenna (Daughters of St. Paul, 1965, 305 pp., $4). A condensed version of Augustine’s great work.

A Theology of Christian Experience, by Delbert R. Rose (Bethany Fellowship, 1965, 314 pp., $4.95). A very chatty and biographical presentation of theology.

The Wisdom of JFK, selected and edited by T. S. Settel (E. P. Dutton, 1965, 128 pp., $3). Just what the title says; with a chapter on religion.

A Layman’s Introduction to Religious Existentialism, by Eugene B. Borowitz (Westminster, 1965, 236 pp., $5). A needed, informative book that an intelligent layman can understand.

Understanding the New Testament, by Howard Clark kee, Franklin W. Young, and Karlfried Froehlich (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 490 pp., $11.35). By men who would have written the Bible differently.

Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), by Aloys Grillmeier, S. J. (Sheed and Ward, 1965, 528 pp., $8.50). A Roman Catholic treatment grounded in the conviction that if we are to understand the mystery of Christ in our time, we must understand what the Early Fathers understood of the mystery of Christ in their times.

Church and State in Social Welfare, by Bernard J. Coughlin (Columbia University, 1965, 189 pp., $6.95). An explorative study of church-state relations in many areas of social action, as, for example, in the acceptance of government funds by church-related welfare agencies. A valuable study.

Paperbacks

Hanserd Knollys: Seventeenth-Century Baptist, by Pope A. Duncan (Broadman, 1965, 61 pp., $.95). A study of Knollys and his writings, showing the relation between Baptists of his time and other religious groups.

The Hermeneutics of Philo and Hebrews, by Sidney G. Sowers (John Knox, 1965, 154 pp., $2.75). A comparison of the interpretation of the Old Testament in Philo Judaeus and the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The Social Creed of the Methodist Church (Revised Edition), by A. Dudley Ward (Abingdon, 1965, 160 pp., $1.75). A very readable account of where the Methodist Church stands on a host of social problems.

The Ecumenical Movement in Bibliographical Outline, by Paul A. Crow, Jr. (National Council of Churches, 1965, 80 pp., $2).

God’s Light on Man’s Destiny, by R. A. Finlayson (Knox [Edinburgh], 1965, 79 pp., 4s. 6d.). Job’s famous question on immortality discussed in the light of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.

The faith in the incarnation has a sound historical and scriptural basis. Nevertheless, as is well known, by much of our modern thought this whole view of God, and of the incarnation of the pre-existent Son, is treated as so much irrational metaphysics or positive mythology; and, by those who would retain the name Christian, some other view of Christ is sought which may be substituted for it. Hence the recasting in various forms of the doctrine of the incarnation.

One view—that which really may be called metaphysical—rests on an idealistic view of the unity, or rather the identity, of God and man. Humanity is divine in essence, and Christ came to the consciousness of this identity with God. The incarnation is really in mankind. God realizes himself in his universe, and supremely in man; among men supremely and typically in Jesus Christ. This is the “incarnation” of the so-called new theology. Orthodoxy, R. J. Campbell tells us, “would restrict the description ‘God manifest in the flesh’ to Jesus alone; the New Theology would extend it in a lesser degree to all humanity, and would maintain that in the end it will be as true of every individual soul as ever it was of Jesus” (New Theology, p. 83).

A modification of this view, which identifies incarnation with “immanence,” is connected with the idea of evolution. God is immanent in all things. In the evolutionary process, higher and ever higher potencies of the divine nature come to light. God incarnated himself in higher and higher modes. The natural development culminates in man, and humanity again reaches its noblest manifestation in Christ. In Christ, God finds an organ for his fullest self-revelation. The divine is in him identified with goodness, truth, and love. This view is thought to bring the incarnation into line with God’s whole revelation in nature and history. It is still, however, a question of degree only between Christ and other men. The real incarnation is, first, in the universe, then in humanity. Christ is but the topmost twig of the tree.

The contrast between these modern views and the gospel incarnation is profound. In all of them man is already God, or grows to be God. It is but a discovery of his real essence that is needed. The incarnation these writers speak of is man ascending to be God, not God, in infinite grace, condescending to become man. There is no real transcending of the limits of humanity. To say “God becomes man,” and explain it to mean “everything human is divine,” or with the limitation, “all goodness is divine,” is simply to equate God and man, and carries us no further than man himself. The incarnation of the Gospel means infinitely more.

It is not by proof-texts that this question is to be settled, but by the whole genius of the Christian religion.—by the facts of the Gospels, the meaning of Christ’s self-revelation, the connection with redemption, the worship Christ receives. The test of a doctrine is that it truly explains the facts. It is impossible to put the facts even of the Synoptic Gospels into a purely humanitarian frame. “The Son of man,” but not less “the Son of God”; Founder of the Kingdom of God, and at the same time King and Lord over it; Baptizer with the Holy Ghost; the Holy One who is the Saviour of sinners and Ransom for their sins; the Judge of mankind: who will say that such claims accord with a rank lower than divine? If John’s Gospel be accepted, no doubt of Christ’s superhuman dignity, and of real incarnation, can remain. To judge fully of Christ’s claim, his resurrection and exaltation have further to be taken into account.

What, then, is involved in a true doctrine of the incarnation? Surely, it must be said, such truths as these:

1. Christ in the root of his personality is divine. In him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9). His relation to the Father is one that transcends time—is pre-temporal, eternal (John 1:1; 17:5; Phil. 2:6; Col. 1:17, etc.). He “came forth” from God.

2. By voluntary act the Son of God “emptied” himself—“became flesh” (John 1:14)—took upon him a true human nature (Phil. 2:7, 8; Heb. 2:14, etc.). John’s contention against all Gnostic errors is that Jesus, the Son of God, truly “came in the flesh” (I John, passim). This implies limitation (kenosis), surrender, as respects the earthly condition, of divine glory and prerogatives. It involves growth and limitation in knowledge.

3. In this superhuman Person, in consequence, perfect humanity is united with full divinity. The divine is manifested in and through the human, yet without impairing the integrity of the latter. Humanity is recipient of the Godhead; yet the divine in union with the human loses none of its essential attributes, nor, in a cosmical relation, ceases to exercise them (John 3:13; Col. 1:16, 17; Heb. 1:3). It is the personal Son who becomes man.

4. The end of the incarnation is redemption. For this cause he was manifested, to take away sin, to effect reconciliation, to destroy the works of the devil (Matt. 20:28; John 3:16; 2 Cor. 5:18, 21; Gal. 4:4; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:5, etc.).—JAMES ORR

Do thou, O Lord, protect us, guard us ever from this generation. On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the sons of men (Ps. 12:7, 8, RSV).

It has been said that a frog placed in tepid water will not move if warmer water is added—until finally it succumbs in the heat. Similarly, Christians can become so accustomed to evil around them that, but for the grace of God, they succumb to that evil.

Vileness is being exalted today to the point of being accepted as the normal way of life. More and more we are in danger of finding ourselves comfortable in vile surroundings.

There are at least two reasons for this dangerous situation. First, the righteous foundations of moral and spiritual values to be found in the Word of God have been rejected or neglected. Secondly, wickedness in every form is paraded before our eyes through such means as magazines, books, and the screen, so that more and more it seems the acceptable way to live.

Because of blatant wickedness, America stands in dire danger. The words of the Prophet Jeremiah should ring in our ears: “ ‘Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore [note that “therefore”] they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,’ says the Lord” (Jer. 6:15).

Speaking to the scoffing Pharisees, our Lord said: “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

Is there any reason to think that sin’s abomination before a holy God is any less today than it was in the time of Jeremiah or when our Lord walked this earth? Is there any reason to think that the wages of sin are less now than when sin made necessary the sacrifice of the Son of God on Calvary?

A study of the word “abomination” as it is found in the Bible can have a very sobering effect, for it concerns evil as God sees it. Because sin is an abomination in God’s sight, man would stand naked and lost were it not for the redeeming and cleansing power of the blood of Calvary.

At the national level, “righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach [an abomination] to any people” (Prov. 14:34).

At the personal level, “the way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord”; even his “sacrifice” is an abomination to a holy God (Prov. 15:8, 9).

Christians need to pray with the psalmist, “Do thou, O Lord, protect us, guard us from this generation. On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the sons of men” (Ps. 12:7, 8).

And the Church needs to guard against the insidious abomination of disregarding evil and its consequences.

It is no light thing to disobey the clear teachings of Holy Scripture. Paul describes the danger in these words: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). The Prophet Jeremiah warns of the danger of shifting from the truth of God revealed to man: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13).

We are told that even the “thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 15:26a). Little wonder that the Apostle Paul demands of Christians that they reject conformity to this world through the renewal of the mind.

This disobedience to God, this rejection of the holiness he offers through faith in his Son, has a devastating effect. “If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination” (Prov. 28:9); and lest one think this is unwarranted “legalism” the writer continues: “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (v. 13).

Basic to the entire problem is our failure to sense or react to the holiness of God. It is the holiness of God that necessitated the Cross and that makes him unapproachable in any way other than through the redemption offered in that Cross.

How easy it is for us to overlook the all pervasive eye of this holy God! In many places the Bible speaks of this: “A man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he watches all his paths” (Prov. 5:21). The psalmist repeats the thought: “The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish” (Ps. 1:6).

The abomination of sin, beginning with disobedience to God’s loving commands, stands as a barrier between God and man that only the work of the Lord Jesus Christ can overcome.

When either men or nations set themselves against God, “he who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision” (Ps. 2:4). We live in such a time today.

The chaos of this world is the direct result of rejecting God: “The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble” (Prov. 4:19). Little wonder that the writer continues: “My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to him who finds them, and healing to all his flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you” (Prov. 4:20–24).

Our danger lies in accepting the world’s standards for our own, in following the “wisdom” of this world which is foolishness with God, in failing to recognize that sin is truly an abomination to the Lord and that it must be judged, either in the person of his Son, or in those who reject him as their loving substitute.

Once we accept the world’s standards rather than God’s, the floodgates of disaster have been opened. And today, probably more than at any time in history, we are confronted with a saturation of evil standards paraded before our eyes and found wherever the unregenerate gather.

This is not prudishness. Nor is it an attempt to escape the consequences of living in a world gone mad after the lusts of the flesh. Rather, it is an appeal that we who are Christians should live in but not of this world, shining as lights in a dark place, giving all honor and glory to the One who has redeemed us and who keeps us from this evil world.

There are those who feel that Puritanism went too far, and it probably did. But we need today a return to spiritual and moral standards that will enable us to live above the things about us which are an abomination to God.

God has provided the Way and the power to live such lives in our times. They are ours for the taking, and they are the only way to survive—for eternity.

POVERTY, CHASTITY, AND OBEDIENCE

If you drive north in western Iowa, the likelihood is that you will pass Sioux City, and the stockyards, and what must surely be the largest dunghill in the world (Ps. 113:7, KJV). This I did, and then headed east to a small town to make a commencement address. When I stopped at a service station to get my bearings, I asked the location of the high school. The boy said, “Catholic or public?” Thus spoken we have the only two divisions in the public thinking of American religion. During the last war a man could specify for his dog tag Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant; if he was nothing, he was given a Protestant dog tag because he was neither Catholic nor Jewish.

At the restaurant later I found out that the boy waiting on me was going to be in the graduating class, and he assured me that in their town you went either to St. Mary’s or to the public school. “And what kind of a Christian are you?” I asked. “I’m a Lutheran, I guess,” he said. Iowa has some good Lutheran colleges, so I asked him what college he planned to attend. He told me, “Guess I’ll go to Iowa State,” so apparently he was more public than Lutheran. I should have liked to have had time to look into the plans of the boys of St. Mary’s to see how the church colleges of Rome are making out in the State of Iowa.

Things won’t be so bad after the ecumenical movement gets us all together. We won’t have to worry about St. Mary’s and public because maybe the public will become St. Mary’s.

There may be a few bumps on the road ahead, however. Most of our “Protestant” seminaries are pushing hard now for “the new morality.” Meanwhile Time magazine (May 21, 1965) gives us the startling news that there are 8,600 Jesuits active in the United States. Just how are the ecumenical-minded seminaries getting ready to unite their new morality graduates with 8,600 men who have taken the vows of chastity?

CONFESSION 1967

May I congratulate your anonymous editorial writer responsible for “Presbyterians Find a New Vocabulary” (June 18 issue). Doubtless it will raise the wrath of many Presbyterians.…

Stick with us, friends. Pray for us. For who knows but what God may see fit to bless even errant Presbyterians.

Central Park Presbyterian

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

What is there about a group of honest, concerned United Presbyterians seeking, among other things, to give contemporary expression to their faith that bugs you so?…

May we suggest that you relax a bit; listen more; understand better; and then take pen in hand to address reasonable men, even though to disagree with them.

Faith United Presbyterian Church

Medford, N. J.

With genuine pleasure I read that an Omaha minister had nerve enough to say (News, June 18 issue) he … would have to walk out of the present U. P. denomination if some of the ideas presented at the General Assembly at Columbus went through, which they did.…

Atlantic, Pa.

I was surprised and disappointed at your slanderous skirmish with the poor United Presbyterians.…

If your job ever becomes available, don’t call me and I wouldn’t call you because I would not want to be in your position.… Sand Lake Baptist

Averill Park, N. Y.

That the new confession proposed “confirms the widening impression that many churchmen no longer have an authoritative divine Word for men in all ages and places” is a statement one could not make if he really understood what the new confession is trying to say.…

Presbyterian Church

Alexandria, Neb.

It is gratifying to know that the United Presbyterians are moving out of the narrow confines of sectarianism in the direction of the Catholic fullness of worship in Word and sacrament.…

South Gate, Calif.

I have the distinct impression that you would have liked to carry Carl McIntire’s picket, saying, “I told you so in 1933”.…

Okmulgee, Okla.

TAKE YOUR PICK

The June 18 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is exceptionally filled with a wide variety of interests of vital importance. I enjoyed reading every page of that issue.

The article by Dr. Lindsell on “Who Are the Evangelicals?” is a sparkling jewel of that issue. I like especially these two sentences: “If a man is an evangelical, he is theologically conservative. If he is theologically liberal, then he is not an evangelical.” First Covenant Church

Los Angeles, Calif.

One of the stupidest things that I have ever read in a Protestant publication is the [article] by Harold Lindsell in the June 18 issue.

“If he is theologically liberal, then he is not an evangelical.”

I do not think Mr. Lindsell stands to that degree in the wisdom of God to make any such statement.…

I imagine that it is rather difficult to get faggots in Washington. So we use CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Campbell, N.Y.

BY WAY OF SUGGESTION

In re “Great Evangelistic Events Through the Centuries” (June 18 issue): I seriously question the evangelical concern of a few groups or individuals mentioned by the compilers.…

Long Beach, Calif.

Even allowing for space limitations in your list … I am absolutely astounded to note that you did not include the tremendous ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon!

First Baptist

Pine Mountain, Ga.

• Somehow his name fell out of the list.—ED.

THE PULPIT

I must take this opportunity to express … my deepest gratitude and appreciation especially for your recent issues and particularly for the June 4 issue.

Hats off to David L. McKenna for his most insightful, stimulating article, “The Jet-Propelled Pulpit.” It’s about time someone reminds us that we are preaching to meet needs.…

Three cheers too for N. Gene Carlson’s challenge to “save us” by a return in the pulpits of our land to expository preaching. How in the world are we ever going to get this point across to so many preachers who have obviously long ago run dry? Isn’t it a pity that so many men preach their own message and then try to justify it by “proof-texting”?

Moody Bible Institute

Chicago, Ill.

Your plain and practical issue, concerning preaching and the preacher, was a refreshing breeze upon the academic deserts of our day. We must continually remember our “high calling.” We must go back to the Bible.…

North Syracuse Baptist

Church North Syracuse, N.Y.

While there is much in the editorial (“Crisis in the Pulpit,” June 4 issue) with which I can agree, I find that CHRISTIANITY TODAY does not stand where it suggests we stand—in the “world of human sin and need,” and “in the dusty commonplaces of life”.…

The world is full of sin and need; maybe the preacher is mindful of his own. Life is dusty; but “Crisis in the Pulpit” is like smiting the dust “that it may become lice throughout the land.…”

First Baptist Church

Meredith, N. H.

“The Best Way to Preach” by N. Gene Carlson is definitely one of the best articles I have read on the subject of expository preaching. It should encourage many clergymen to back away from their often dry-as-dust topical sermons and to move ahead with messages enriched with the clarity and the authority of God’s precious Word.

The Guidance Press

Scarborough, Ont.

Editor and Manager

There is no question of the supreme value of expository preaching; but I realized some months ago that there is an even greater question the preacher must face at his homiletical work table. It is this: What is the main message I must spell out for my people this Sunday, and (after that is determined) what is my best way to present it?

I simply cannot believe that expository preaching alone is the one best way to preach the Gospel. Such preaching has brought many blessings to my people; but I preach an equal number of topical sermons, and I find it hard to believe that God does not bless that method fully as much as the other.…

Some topics which I feel must be put across in the pulpit do not readily lend themselves to the textual and expository approach.…

St. Peter’s Lutheran Church

Hay Springs, Neb.

CONFESSIONS OF A NEW PH.D.

I suppose that Frank E. Gaebelein’s article, “The Aesthetic Problem: Some Evangelical Answers” (Feb. 26 issue), more than anything else, gives me the courage to express my ideas publicly. If the area of aesthetics is, as Gaebelein maintains, a comparatively new field for evangelical Christianity, then perhaps my thoughts, added to those of others, may afford a sort of beginning. Perhaps they can furnish some preliminary material upon which others may labor, modifying, correcting, and systematizing as the case may be.

While the experience of writing my dissertation on “The Significance of the Variants of 1578 in the Evolution of Ronsard’s Poetic Technique” is still fresh in my mind, I should like to share it. Since my topic seemed to me to be about as far removed as it could possibly be from what a Calvinistic Christian would normally choose, I was constantly haunted by certain perplexing questions and misgivings. The more I enjoyed my project the more I wondered if what I was doing could really glorify God. I enjoyed it, for my subject was almost purely analytical and creative. Almost every day the light dawned. And yet despite my conviction that all truth is God’s truth and that one way to glorify God and to enjoy him forever is through the discovery and contemplation of truths, it did seem that the area of particular truths upon which I seemed to have been led to concentrate were rather far down in God’s scale of values.

The questions which kept recurring had to do with the poet, with the poetic object, and with the time factor. Strangely enough, so long as I concentrated upon the poetic technique, I had no problem. Concerning the poet, I would ask myself whether it was right for a Christian—particularly a Calvinist—to make a sympathetic study of one who championed the persecutors of the Huguenots. Would it not have been wiser to have left to a non-Christian the task of finding out what was good in the works of one who did not—in my estimation, at least—seek to glorify God? When it came to the poetic object, I wondered whether an artistic portrayal of an ignoble thought or emotion could be beautiful and certainly whether it could be worthwhile. What was the relationship between beauty and goodness or between beauty and truth? Was it my duty as a Christian to append to my aesthetic evaluation of the various representative poems and their modified versions an ethical evaluation as well? Probably what worried me most of all was the time factor. Was it right in my case to embark upon a project which would take many hours from other activities, activities which from the average Christian’s point of view would surely seem much more worthwhile? Each time these questions came to mind I almost always concluded in the same manner. Did I not know that I was where I was supposed to be for that day? I would have to trust my Lord and Saviour to show me the next step. In the meantime, I would continue with my immediate goal.

The task I had set for myself was to attempt to understand what the poet was seeking to accomplish and then to judge his efforts from the aesthetic point of view only. In other words, by means of a formal analysis, I sought to discover the poem’s inner workings. I evaluated the complete poem on the basis of its integration and unity of effect. The harder I tried to put myself in the poet’s place, the better I understood why he did what he did and the more I marveled at his genius. I felt less and less inclined to criticize him even from the aesthetic point of view. His solutions for his structural problems aroused nothing but the most humble admiration for his genius, perseverance, and ability to learn from his past mistakes. Through this study I began to understand and, in a measure, to share the humanist’s humility before genius and particularly before the great creative thinkers of the past. Frankly I see nothing unchristian in this experience. I do not see how we detract from God’s glory, if we admit that he has given great gifts to unbelievers as well as believers. The more perfectly we understand what these gifts involve, the more we magnify the God who can dispense such talents. As for concentrating on someone who hated Calvinism, if I was able to be objective, does this not prove that Christianity and scholarship are not opposed as some seem to think?

I now feel that my time has been well repaid in learning to use a method which is going to prove very useful. It is a technique I never could have begun to master, had I not been able to forget momentarily all thought of judging the poet or the poem from an ethical standpoint. Of course, after one has completed a formal analysis, there is nothing to prevent making ethical judgments. Whether or not the Christian critic ought to append an ethical evaluation to a poetic analysis would depend, I should think, on the circumstances. In any case he would surely want to view everything in the light of God’s Word, for himself if for no one else. However, if I have learned anything at all in writing my dissertation, it is the danger of making one’s ethical evaluation too soon. It is important to be certain that one has discovered the total intrinsic form. If one has missed the irony and sarcasm, for example, that sometimes show that the poet himself disapproves of the ignoble thought or emotion that is being portrayed, then there is no conflict between the poetic truth and the ethical truth. One only makes himself and the Christian position in general look ridiculous if he finds something that is not there. One task for the Christian critic or teacher, therefore, is to be sure that the work is understood before it is submitted to this kind of test.

I am still trying to think through the relationship between aesthetics and the Christian world view. Dorothy Sayers may be right in finding no contradiction between poetic truth and theological truth (The Man Born to be King, p. 19). In the meantime, my experience may encourage other beginning Christian scholars to persevere and to trust that an all-wise God has his reasons for placing them where they are, reasons he will divulge in due time, provided they have in the first place sought his preceptive will.

Valparaiso, Ind.

FOR SHUFFLING THE LINEUP

Your article, “The Hospital Chaplain” (June 4 issue), was of real concern to me. I am chairman of the Counseling Services Committee of the local county Council of Churches. We are developing our services at the present time, and one of the major innovations we are presenting is that on the therapy team a clergyman is to be included.…

Our position (mine particularly) is that on the road back to health from illness there are several items to be considered: the functioning of the physiological organism, the central nervous system (mental, conscious and unconscious), the will, attitudes, wishes, and desires along with aspirations and value systems; that is, the body, mind, soul, and spirit are integrated in the well person. Surely in dealing with shame and guilt, with pseudo-guilt and with real guilt, the clergyman ought to be included on all therapy teams.

Kingsburg, Calif.

ONE LAD TO ANOTHER

I appreciated the penetrating review of my recent book, Jesus and the Kingdom, by Professor Waetjen (June 4 issue). He raises several points which indeed call for clarification. May I, however, be permitted to point out that several of his questions are already answered in the book. (1) “It is strange that so little is said of Jesus’ works of healing and restoration.” In fact, quite a bit is said; pp. 145–54 discuss Jesus’ victory over Satan, which is the spiritual reality behind the demon exorcisms; pp. 154–60 have as their background the messianic acts of healing and restoration mentioned in Matthew 11:2–6; and pp. 207 ff. expound the miracles of healing as an anticipation of the messianic salvation. (2) “It is even stranger that nothing is said about the death and resurrection of Jesus. This appears to have no place in the eschatological teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.…” As a matter of fact, the significance of Jesus’ death is discussed on pp. 320 ff. (3) An “unresolved question” is the connection between “Jesus teaching on the Kingdom, his death and resurrection, and the beginnings of the Church.…” The neglect of such a basic question would indeed be a serious oversight, for it involves the all-important contemporary question of the continuity between Jesus’ teaching and the primitive kerygma. This very problem is recognized and discussed, and a positive solution suggested on pp. 266–69. Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom is not, therefore, “abstracted from his death and resurrection.”

I do not think I misquote Frost, as the review suggests. What is called a quotation is in fact my summary interpretation of what I understand Frost to mean, and this summary is based on an exact quotation cited on p. 52. The problem here is that Frost’s language is extremely technical and must be interpreted within its own particular content.

Heidelberg, Germany

DISCUSSION CONTINUED

Mr. Stuber’s response (Eutychus, June 18 issue) to the March 26 editorial about John R. Mott, in relation to the surrender of spiritual principles which John R. Mott promoted, is of great concern to me.

Mr. Stuber stated: “In fact, the YMCA is now in one of the best positions of any organization to be the Christian demonstration center for the application of the kind of Christianity advocated by Dr. Mott”.…

Mr. Lansdale, late general secretary of the National Council YMCA, has referred to the YMCA as a “sleeping giant.” If this is true and the YMCA is in a position to become a Christian demonstration center to follow Mott’s advocation, then those of us who are YMCA secretaries will have to find Mott’s Saviour in today’s world; or in other words, “the giant” must awaken and be counted.…

The unfortunate truth is that “Christian” for many YMCA secretaries means anyone, regardless of his religious beliefs or in spite of the fact that he hasn’t trusted in the finished work of Christ for the remission of his sins, who is sincere in what he believes in spite of God’s Word.

I am persuaded that Mr. Stuber is correct about the YMCA being in a unique position as a demonstration center for the basic Christianity Dr. Mott believed in, if fellow secretaries will: (1) Call upon Christ for regeneration ourselves by the Holy Spirit and (2) those who have experienced this new birth, call upon Christ for a new demonstration of his power to change lives spiritually and physically, in the context of today’s world.…

Extension Work Secretary

Young Men’s Christian Association

Washington, D. C.