The man in the pulpit is expected to set the pattern in refinement and good taste. A certain prospective pastor was invited to preach before a pastorless congregation. At the close of the morning service, the pulpit committee was enthusiastically ready to recommend that a call be extended. But in the evening service one ill-chosen illustration became the minister’s undoing. The illustration was relevant and clever, but it so offended good taste that the pulpit committee decided to look further for a pastor.

One breach of good taste may shake the confidence of a congregation; and when worshipers are made to blush, the preacher has lost something in the esteem of the audience that he cannot afford to lose. But even when biblical truth is presented in the utmost tact and good taste, there is danger of offending persons whose conduct is involved, or who are particularly sensitive to the discussion of certain themes.

There is nothing new about the problems of preachers who need to bring Scripture to bear upon imperfections and delinquencies of which they are aware. The miser may not appreciate a sermon on giving; the “cocktail Christian” may not relish a sermon on the text, “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink …” (Hab. 2:15); the pleasure-seeker may not wish to hear about the “separated life.” And so the minister must, by dedicated living, “adorn the doctrine of God” and, by tactful presentation, make the truth as palatable as possible. If he aims to declare “all the counsel of God,” he will not neglect truths that are difficult to express in good taste.

In dealing with difficult problems, the preacher needs to be ever mindful of the Golden Rule. The man in the pew may be willing to receive spiritual help, but he wants his feelings to be respected. Expository preaching (as distinguished from topical preaching) has the decisive advantage of providing the most natural and least offensive approach. The Scriptures abound in relevant material for any situation, and the hearer can see that his quarrel is not with the preacher but with the Word of God.

A major problem of our generation is immorality. Obviously, legislation is not the answer. Decency can not be legislated into the hearts of people. Neither does the widespread demand for sex education in the public schools provide the answer. Among the youth of our sex-ridden generation, there are those who clamor for adult privileges but have no comprehension of adult responsibilities. And among adults there are those whose concern is not for moral purity but for an escape from the consequences of immorality. No previous generation has had so much sex information or such low moral standards. And further instruction, without godly motivation, might accomplish nothing more than to stimulate curiosity and experimentation.

What can the church and the minister do about the problem? How can biblical standards of purity be established, with biblical motivations? The sex education most needed is the plain teaching of the Word of God: “Keep thyself pure” (1 Tim. 5:22). The Ten Commandments are quite unambiguous, and in the Scriptures there are more than one hundred additional pronouncements against immorality. It is plain that immorality does not spring from ignorance or the inability to distinguish between right and wrong. The child who is old enough to transgress is fully aware of the wrongness of what he is doing. And missionaries who have worked with the most primitive savages report that these aborigines have moral standards strongly suggestive of the Seventh Commandment. What is the needed message? “Thus saith the Lord!” This is the way to build convictions that will fortify the soul against the appalling immorality of our times.

Let pastors, teachers, and parents pray for wisdom and grace to deal with the problems that seem too delicate to mention. And let them remember that these matters need not be spelled out in such detail as to be offensive to refinement and good taste. Some things can safely be left to the imagination, and the intelligence of the audience must not be underestimated.

Sermons in Stones—and in Peanuts

The Gospel According to Peanuts by Robert L. Short (John Knox, 1965, 127 pp., $1.50), is reviewed by J.D. Douglas, British editorial director, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

In flagrant disregard of the national interest, this book has been sent for review across the Atlantic, where millions of Britons incredibly are living out their lives in invincible ignorance of Peanuts. Perhaps Charlie Brown is too much one of the American family to be regarded objectively; more likely, no American scholar would lightly undertake a review sure to be the subject of merciless scrutiny in the higher academic echelons.

The volume itself is an audacious project. Let no one imagine it will afford joy unalloyed, for there is a plot to trick the unsuspecting reader. The author has done us all a grave disservice by insinuating outrageous intellectual demands into the area of harmless diversion. With a tireless facility for seeing sermons in stones, Mr. Short (a Methodist minister) finds it veritable child’s play to contrive a biblical connection even for “Good grief!” (2 Cor. 7:10). Not surprisingly, the impression is sometimes received that he takes out of a cartoon something which its creator had not put in, and which no ordinary reader would comprehend without the sort of help Philip gave the Ethiopian eunuch. If periodically my belief is going to be “rudely clobbered” (I quote Linus), the clobbering might be efficacious; but every time I pick up Peanuts from now on I’ll be scrabbling around for theological profundity—and this is not what I read it for. Here, in fact, in most blatant form, is religion being “allowed to invade the sphere of private life.” It comes as a relief near the end to be assured that not every Peanuts cartoon is loaded with moral insight and spiritual uplift. Of one thing we can be sure: if such be present, Mr. Short will nail it.

Having betrayed both my appalling prejudice and my paucity of intellect, I confess to having come back to this little book again and again with the kind of respectful admiration one generally gives to a pioneer in his field. Short says rightly that art provides its own unique vocabulary. It can penetrate mental blocks, overcome prejudices, confront us with reality, suggest new questions, and offer a basis of conversation where a direct Christian approach couldn’t. Some people will resent having Peanuts explained, perhaps because of its “calculated trap for meditation” (p. 16), but most will see how pertinent it is to Paul’s “by all means” category. It fulfills Bishop Westcott’s condition that the place and office of art in religion must be ministerial, must point beyond the immediate effect. No one will dispute Mr. Schulz’s success in (I quote from Dr. Nathan Scott’s foreword) “turning a remarkably penetrating searchlight on the anxieties and evasions and duplicities that make up our common lot.” In his determination to illustrate this, Short here reproduces more than eighty cartoons. They are reinforced by J. D. Salinger, Irenaeus, Cardinal Newman, Luther, Kafka, and (of course) Beethoven, among the dozens of personalities conscripted into the service of this book, who help us toward that art of “reading between the lines” which so baffles the resourceful Lucy. The result is precisely what the publishers claim: a modern-day handbook of the Christian faith, illustrated with Peanuts.

Charles Schulz himself says that “all kinds of people in religious work have written to thank me for preaching my own way through the strips. That is one of the things that keep me going.” Not least is this book significant for showing what we owe to Schulz. Let’s keep him going!

J.D. DOUGLAS

Essay In Church Definition

Ecumenics: The Science of the Church Universal, by John A. Mackay (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 294 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Everett L. Cattell, president, Malone College, Canton, Ohio.

John A. Mackay has a distinguished record in many fields, but none has received more of the outpouring of his brilliant talents than the movement to unity among Christians. Dr. Mackay, former president of Princeton Theological Seminary, occupied the Chair of Ecumenics from 1937 to 1959. Because of this and because of the subtitle of the book, “The Science of the Church Universal,” one naturally expects this to be a textbook. Such an expectation is hardly borne out, however. The style of the book is more that of the spoken word and is therefore somewhat given to redundancy. Instead of a textbook, what we really have is the crystallized fruit of the “author’s struggle over four decades to grapple with the ecumenical concept and its significance.” It would not be amiss to say that this book is essentially an essay in church definition.

Dr. Mackay comes down squarely on the side of a spiritual apprehension of the Church as the community of Christ. “People in whom Christ is a living Presence and through whom He works, constitute the soul of the worldwide community of faith. These Christ-possessed men and women give true churchly reality to Christian congregations, denominations, and traditions as structured expressions of Christ’s Church Universal.” Not only must the community of Christ be thought of as worldwide; it must also be “missionary.” “The Church, to be ‘in very deed the Church,’ must be ‘missionary by conviction and commitment and must make abundantly clear that it is so by the policy and program it adopts.” Hence “the theme of this book: The Church Universal as a world missionary Community.”

The author gives a very helpful exposition of the biblical images of the church: The New Israel, the Flock of God, the Building, the Bride, and the Body. To these are added the biblical image of the Road and the Church as a Fellowship of the Road.

The principal bulk of the book is then given to a discussion of four major functions of the Church: worshiping, prophetic, redemptive, and unitive. Each is treated first with a positive and scriptural exposition, and then that position is set over against present realities. The worshiping function is set against a very enlightening exposition of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant forms of worship. The prophetic function is to give illumination to God’s way in the midst of the world’s darkness, e.g., in the face of Communism and secularism. The redemptive function is treated over against a critique of the effectiveness of the modern missionary movement as a mediator of redemption. In connection with evangelistic method there is an excellent discussion of two principles. One is the incarnational principle, which calls for the embodiment of truth. The other is called “the right to be heard,” a right gained by meeting men with excellence on their own secular ground and thus winning their attention to the Gospel. The unitive function of the Church is viewed against a survey of the spectrum of divergence among Christians and a survey of movements and means toward unity in our day.

The book closes with a chapter on the churches’ relations with the world.

It is difficult to evaluate this book. Ecumenism is an emotional subject today. Those who are caught up in the movement with enthusiasm and especially those who love this distinguished author (as we all do) will simply be thrilled. Those who oppose the movement will probably not even read it. Can anyone be truly objective in evaluating the book? To me it seems parts of the book are platitudinous. In the midst of this there are some excellent insights, a few of them fresh. I found some of the descriptions and criticisms of the Orthodox and Roman positions really instructive. My own bias will probably be shown by the fact that I missed any extended treatment of the vast block of conservative evangelicals who stand apart from the ecumenical movement, although Dr. Mackay does mention approvingly the work of Young Life, Billy Graham, and World Vision.

EVERETT L. CATTELL

Listening With One Ear

Proclaiming the Word, by Ronald E. Sleeth (Abingdon, 1964, 144 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Carl Kromminga, associate professor of practical theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This book challenges the Protestant minister to engage in biblical preaching. “Biblical preaching is the proclamation of the kerygma (either explicitly or implicitly) through the exposition of specific scriptural material directed to contemporary life” (p. 42). The author rightly insists that the usual sermon addressed to the congregation should have roots in a thorough exegesis of a specific portion of the Bible, recognize the larger biblical context of the passage, honor the theological meaning underlying the passage, clarify the relation between the passage and the kerygma, and demonstrate its present-day relevance.

The author makes a worthy attempt to unite the techniques of expository and life-situation preaching. In doing this, he gives us a refreshing chapter on the importance of doctrine in preaching. He uses sample outlines and quotations from published sermons to illustrate his theoretical statements. After he has stated and developed his main thesis, he discusses the proper way to preach in controversy and describes the values for preaching to be found in modern literature.

This stimulating discussion of biblical preaching is marred by the author’s rather uncritical acceptance of the “dynamic” view of the Word advanced by many Protestant theologians today. The Bible is not the Word of God; the Word is in the Bible. When we existentially confront the faith-words of the biblical writers, those words become God’s personal Word to us. This view of the Bible is said to recognize the Bible as the Word of God “in the highest sense possible.” At the same time, it allows us to welcome the higher critic’s investigation of the Bible.

The author does not tell us how we can accept those “findings” of higher criticism that contradict what the biblical writers claim to be historic fact and how we can at the same time interpret God’s saving action in history in a way that fully agrees with the biblical interpretation of that action. Biblical events and ideas cannot be separated in a way that allows us to keep the whole “idea” while we discard the event in the sense in which the biblical writers obviously understood “event.” Theology, in the strict sense of the term, is at stake here. The God who opened the sea for Israel to pass through is not the same God as the “God” who “somehow” in the dim and distant past led a motley band of Semites from Egypt to Palestine. Sleeth rightly insists on preaching that grows out of careful exegesis. It is also apparent that he really would reject much radical criticism of the Bible. But exegesis based on a hermeneutic that wants to hear God speak while it listens to a higher criticism that denies what God says can only furnish material for a sermon which cannot truly be called “proclamation of the Word of God.”

However, Proclaiming the Word has value as a corrective for preachers who think that only topical preaching can be relevant. It can also serve to remind preachers committed to the expository method that true preaching is preaching consciously designed to meet genuine human needs.

CARL KROMMINGA

As Seen From The End

Jesus and the Kingdom: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism, by George Eldon Ladd (Harper and Row, 1964, 367 pp., $3), is reviewed by Herman C. Waetjen, assistant professor of New Testament, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, California.

The purpose of this book is to establish the thesis “that before the eschatological appearing of God’s Kingdom at the end of the age, God’s Kingdom has become dynamically active among men in Jesus’ person and mission.” This is acknowledged to be “the heart of his [Jesus’] proclamation and the key to his entire mission” (p. 135). For Professor Ladd it is the grand theme that not only unites the various aspects of Jesus’ teaching but also provides the vital link between that teaching and the beginnings of the Christian Church.

Here is an important and exhaustive study that exhibits both intensive and sweeping scholarship. It is a synthesis that pulls together many diverse and opposed strands of biblical investigation of eschatology. At the same time, as the subtitle indicates, it is also a biblical theology that presents the possibility of unifying all theological thought in the New Testament around and in a single motif. Thus the book ranks with Alan Richardson’s An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament and Floyd V. Filson’s Jesus Christ the Risen Lord. For Professor Ladd this single motif is the eschatological teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.

The introduction, entitled “The Promise,” sketches the continuing debate on eschatology from Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer down to the present time. This is followed by a survey of the Old Testament prophets and inter-testamental apocalyptic in order to supply the necessary background for Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom. The major part of the book is devoted to the theme of “Fulfillment.” John the Baptizer announces the imminence of the Kingdom. Jesus follows to proclaim “fulfillment without consummation.” The Kingdom that Jesus preaches and brings is defined as both a rule and a realm, but primarily a rule. As such it is a present as well as a future reality. In both the words and the deeds of Jesus, God’s rule is dynamically at work in the world. This is validated by Jesus’ pronouncements of forgiveness, his miracles of exorcism, and his parables.

In this connection it is strange that so little is said of Jesus’ works of healing and restoration. It is even stranger that nothing is said of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This appears to have no place in the eschatological teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God despite the fact that the Synoptic Gospels present Jesus’ threefold prediction of his death and resurrection in direct relation to Peter’s messianic confession and the transfiguration. The reader is left to ponder unresolved questions: How are Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom, his death and resurrection, and the beginnings of the Church connected? Is the New Testament’s presentation of Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom the complete and fully developed eschatology of biblical realism? Is Professor Ladd opting for the Jesus of history rather than the Christ of faith? The book, of course, is not intended to deal with that problem. But Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom is nevertheless abstracted from his death and resurrection. And, according to the New Testament, his death and resurrection are just the eschatological event that inaugurated “the fulfillment without consummation.” When the Church and its origins are considered, as they are here, the central event of the New Testament cannot be excluded.

The last two chapters of the book deal with “Consummation.” “The Consummation of the Kingdom” presents Jesus’ teaching on the future aspects of God’s rule, and “The Abiding Values for Theology” comments on the manner in which this Kingdom of God theology can be translated for the present day and age.

The author has read, selected, abridged, and prepared an enormous amount of material for this book. As a result, there are many helpful summaries of various scholars’ positions. Sometimes, however, the reduction is too drastic, and confusion easily arises. And at least once a scholar is inaccurately quoted. Professor Ladd asserts on page 53 that “Frost is convinced that Amos does not announce a day rising out of history but an eschatology involving a cataclysmic irruption into history which will bring history to its end” (pp. 53 f.). Actually Frost says that the “simple hope of an improvement in the national fortunes was reversed by the message of coming judgment.…” But “both the Better Age hope and the prophetic Doom oracles are concerned with an event arising out of the ordinary processes of history and are not strictly eschatological; they envisaged an End, but not the End, an event not the eschaton” (p. 237).

There are also places where a little more qualification could prevent needless misunderstanding or where more precision might strengthen the author’s conclusions. For example, Isaiah 65:17 speaks of a new universe to be created that will replace the old. Professor Ladd comments, “This is no new thought but is the summation of a whole aspect of prophetic theology” (p. 56). Does this mean that all of the prophets—pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic—held to essentially the same eschatological conceptions? And when Hosea (4:3) declares that “the land mourns and all who dwell in it languish …,” he is speaking not of the world, as Professor Ladd interprets (p. 56), but merely of the territory of Israel.

Nevertheless, this is a book which every minister, theological student, and interested layman concerned about biblical theology should own. Its treatment is comprehensive, its bibliography extensive, and its price low. Most important, it presents the message of the New Testament writers, perhaps best summarized by the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians 15:25, 26: “For he [Jesus] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

HERMAN C. WAETJEN

Clear And Uncluttered

Christianity in the United States, by Earle E. Cairns (Moody, 1964, 192 pp., $.75, is reviewed by William Nigel Kerr, professor of church history, Gordon Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts.

Here is a book that successfully meets the need for which it was designed. Much work has been done in American church history; yet only recently is a genuine sense of religious heritage beginning to pervade our thinking. Often attempts to give historic authority to doctrine and polity have led to the assumption, especially in conservative groups, that there has been no alteration in religious forms. This volume will disabuse the reader of such ideas for, although written from the perspective of a “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints,” it sees the Church ever changing in an ever-changing world.

American Christianity is divided into three main periods: “American Religion in the Colonial Era” (1607–1775), “The Rise and Decline of Ecclesiastical Nationalism” (1776–1876), and “From Schism and Idealism to Absolutism and Ecumenicalisin” (1877 to the present). In each division Dr. Cairns is true to his purpose, “to link information and interpretation in an organization that puts the American Church in its secular setting so that students may have a brief, accurate account of the origins and development of American Christianity.” He avoids the twin extremes of extricating the Church from society as though it existed on an elevated platform and viewing the Church as merely a phase of natural societal development with nothing supernatural in its character.

This book, though a survey or handbook, has considerable scope. It is by no means merely an “evangelical” history of Puritanism, revivalism, and separationism. The author takes into account and weighs with fairness the effects of political and social phenomena. He shows the Church changing as a result of a tumultuous Civil War, reshaped by immigration and mass migration, alerted, alarmed, and sometimes disarmed by the rapid alteration of the intellectual climate. The reader sees the richly varied life of the churches and the creativity of religious leaders both within and outside the European strands that form the main structure. Some special treatment is given to cults peculiarly American.

Upon completing the book, one is surprised first at the extent of material covered and secondly at the unclutteredness and clarity of the volume. The book is compact, yet avoids sketchiness. It stimulates the reader’s desire for more knowledge: this is abetted by a two-page annotated and sectionalized bibliography of significant reference works, collections of source materials, and historical interpretations. At the close of each chapter useful bibliographies appear with special references to applicable pages in C. E. Olmstead’s History of Religion in the United States (1960) and W. W. Sweet’s The Story of Religion in America (1950).

Dr. Cairns has given us an excellent study book for church and school. For the novice it is a superior “first book” in American Christianity. For both pastor and people it provides an orientation to the conditions of American Christianity that can help to give a new relevance to the witness of the Gospel.

WILLIAM NIGEL KERR

Prophecy’S Changing Face

The Interpretation of Prophecy, by Patrick Fairbairn (Banner of Truth Trust, 1964, 532 pp., 23s.), is reviewed by Stephen S. Short, evangelist, Weston-super-Mare, England.

Of the three classical prophetical viewpoints, the one least in vogue today is postmillennialism. During the nineteenth century, however, it was held by some eminent evangelical scholars, among whom was Patrick Fairbairn. After his secession from the Church of Scotland at the Disruption of 1843, Fairbairn became professor of theology in the Free Church College at Aberdeen. then principal at the Free Church College at Glasgow, moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, and a member of the panel entrusted with the production of the Old Testament of the Revised Version of the Bible.

This book was first published in 1856 and was revised in 1865; and now, a century later, it has been reprinted, prefaced by a biographical sketch of Fairbairn by Charles Walker. The prophetical position presented in this volume is not that which Fairbairn held originally. In 1840, in a thesis he wrote under the title, “The Future Prospect of the Jews,” he had contended for a literal interpretation of the “Israel prophecies” of the Old Testament; that he later abandoned this view is shown by the chapter in the present book entitled, “The Prophetical Future of the Jews.”

Although certain of Fairbairn’s conclusions will not carry conviction with all (e.g., “the first resurrection” denoting “the mighty revival and spread of living godliness destined to characterize the latter days”), nobody could read this book without being immensely benefited. Its general plan is to elucidate, in the first 200 pages, the principles of prophetical interpretation, and then to apply those principles to the biblical prophecies, particularly those in Daniel and Revelation.

STEPHEN S. SHORT

Book Briefs

Pascal’s Recovery of Man’s Wholeness, by Albert N. Wells (John Knox, 1965, 176 pp., $4.25). Pascal saw human existence as a series of three ascending levels which rightly related make for a “whole man.”

Handbook of Effective Church Letters, by Stewart Harral (Abingdon, 1965, 208 pp., $3.50). For ministers who want to write not only acceptable but effective letters.

Dante’s Inferno: As Told for Young People, by Joseph Tusiani (Ivan Obolensky, 1965, 90 pp., $4). A narrative that makes the Inferno intelligible to high school students.

The Other Side of the Coin: An American Perspective on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Alfred M. Lilienthal (Devin-Adair, 1965, 420 pp., $6.50). A critique of the “Israel First” approach of the United States government in its Near East affairs.

Freedom and Faith: New Approaches to Christian Education, by J. Gordon Chamberlin (Westminster, 1965, 156 pp., $3.95).

Why Wait Till Marriage?, by Evelyn Millis Duvall (Association, 1965, 128 pp., $2.95). Hard-headed and reasoned arguments for maintaining the mystery of our sexual beings until the time for its proper revelation. An unusually good book.

A Still Small Voice, by E. F. Engelbert (Eerdmans, 1964, 216 pp„ $3.50). Don’t let the title, the name of the church, or the theology of the jacket fool you. The pastor of the Martini Lutheran Church of Baltimore presents medium-size sermons that are long on evangelical biblical content.

The Church Tomorrow, by George H. Tavard (Herder and Herder, 1965, 190 pp., $3.95). A series of essays on various aspects of the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church; they indicate that the word “reform” should also become an accepted and much used word in Catholicism.

German Existentialism, by Martin Heidegger (Philosophical Library, 1965, 58 pp., $2.75). A small collection of speeches in a slender volume that shows how Heidegger made his philosophy play footsie with Nazism. Grossly overpriced.

Ceremony and Celebration, by Paul H. D. Lang (Concordia, 1965, 191 pp., $4.25). An evangelical guide for Christian practice in corporate worship.

The Maryknoll Catholic Dictionary, edited by Albert J. Nevins, M.M. (Grossett and Dunlap, 1965, 710 pp., $9.95). Explanations rather than definitions of more than 10,000 Catholic words and terms.

The Pill and Birth Regulation, edited by Leo Pyle (Helicon, 1964, 225 pp., $3.95). The Catholic debate, including statements, articles, and letters from the Pope, bishops, priests, and married and unmarried laity.

The Seventh Solitude: Man’s Isolation in Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche, by Ralph Harper (Johns Hopkins, 1965, 154 pp., $4.50).

A Christian Natural Theology, by John B. Cobb, Jr. (Westminster, 1965, 288 pp., $6.50). Against secular cosmology erosive of Christian faith, the associate professor of systematic theology at Southern California School of Theology projects a natural theology built on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.

The Political Ideas of Pierre Viret, by Robert Dean Linder (Librairie Droz [Geneva, Switzerland], 1964, 218 pp., 7f.). The value of Viret’s political ideas derives from the fact he was one of Calvin’s closest associates.

The Encyclopedia of the Bible, edited by P. A. Marijnen (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 250 pp., $5.50). Compiled by a team of Protestant and Roman Catholic Dutch theologians in the conservative tradition. The material is well translated into clear, tight English. The coverage is limited and appears to follow no pattern (“Tübingen School” included, but not “election” or “predestination”). Original date of publication not given.

Hymn of the Universe, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Harper and Row, 1965, 158 pp., $3). Chiefly mystical psalm-like writings.

The Structure of Luke and Acts, by A. Q. Morton and G. H. C. MacGregor (Harper and Row, 1964, 155 pp., $3.50). Morton used a computer to prove that a number of Pauline letters were not written by Paul. Someone else took a writing of Morton and by the same method proved it was not written by Morton. Now we get a book which contends that the structure and content of Luke and Acts were in part determined by the size of the papyrus rolls on which they were written. One wonders what the Bible would have been like if the biblical writers could only have rolled paper the way we can.

Paperbacks

Memoirs: A Story of Renewal in the Denmark of Kierkegaard and Grundtvig, by Vilhelm Beck (Fortress, 1965, 192 pp., $2.25). The memoirs of a younger contemporary of N. F. S. Grundtvig and Sören Kierkegaard throw light on these men and the conflicts that raged between them. For the student of the melancholy, great Dane.

Christ’s Church: Evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed, by Bela Vassady (Eerdmans, 1965, 173 pp., $1.95). One of the few theological discussions and evaluations of the so-called Blake proposal; the author is a Reformed, Hungarian-trained theologian who is sympathetic to the ecumenical movement but not to the point of losing all critical powers. A valuable contribution in an important but almost deserted field.

The Mind of Kierkegaard, by James Collins (Regnery, 1965, 308 pp., $1.45). First published in 1953.

Music Activities for Retarded Children: A Handbook for Teachers and Parents, by David R. Ginglend and Winifred E. Stiles (Abingdon, 1965, 140 pp., $3.50).

Babylon by Choice, by Martin E. Marty (Friendship, 1965, 64 pp., $.75). Marty describes the urbane, secularistic, explosively changing city to which the Church must bring its mission. Good reading.

Fraternal Appeal to the American Churches, by Samuel Simon Schmucker (Fortress, 1965, 229 pp., $2.25). Although the author died in 1873, his book reveals a rare concern for both doctrinal orthodoxy and the unity of the Church. It is a book for those few who today share that concern. The chapter on the nature of the primitive Church’s union is particularly valuable.

The Crying Heart, by Clara Bernice Miller (Moody, 1965, 351 pp., $1.29). A warm story reflecting Amish life.

New Theology No. 2, edited by Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman (Macmillan, 1965, 316 pp., $1.95). Lively debate, new research, analytical reportage, and hard thinking characterize these eighteen recent articles.

The Lord from Heaven, by Leon Morris (Eerdmans, 1964, 112 pp., $1.45). A study of the New Testament teaching on the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ.

The Law and the Elements of the World, by A. J. Bandstra (Eerdmans, 1965, 209 pp., $4). A distinguished doctoral dissertation supporting the thesis that the Pauline phrase “the elements of the world” refers to the powers of the law and the flesh as operative before, and outside of, Christ.

Christianity in a Divided Europe, by Hanns Lilje (Fortress, 1965, 41 pp., $.75). An informative essay that reveals the pains of the author’s heart.

Maker of Heaven and Earth, by Langdon Gilkey (Doubleday, 1965, 381 pp., $1.45). A clear presentation of the mythical understanding of creation, in which the concepts of analogy, revelation, and paradox are combined into one mode of speech about God. But the presentation is dark at the crucial point where creation is a divine historical act through which God speaks to man. First published in 1959.

It is easy to acknowledge corporate sins and ask for their forgiveness because such acknowledgment often involves no more than judging our brothers. Acknowledging personal sins is a different matter. Repentance no longer seems a major concern of preaching or of the Church. In fact, repentance, in the biblical sense, is almost a lost word, even though it was central in the message of the early Church.

Repentance is a change of mind that has many aspects.

It is a recognition of self in the light of God’s revelation. Job had this experience and out of it cried: “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5, 6, RSV). The Bible repeatedly tells us that God hates pride, for it stems from man’s failure to evaluate himself rightfully by God’s standards.

Repentance is an admission of sins in the light of God’s righteousness, a righteousness revealed in the written Word and in the person of God’s sinless Son. Like the lepers of old we should cry, “Unclean, unclean,” as we sense something of the holiness of God.

Repentance is an admission of offense against God’s holy laws. All men stand guilty before the courts of heaven, for none has failed to break the laws of the Kingdom and of the King. Such admission of guilt is the first step to cleansing and forgiveness. Repentance is in truth a recognition of our sinful state.

It is more, though, than an admission of guilt—it is sorrow for having come short of God’s glory and for wallowing in the mire of sin.

Repentance is an acknowledgment of the vast chasm between the holy God and one’s sinful self. Until this difference is recognized and admitted, there can be no ground for reconciliation, for the One who reconciles never forces himself on the unrepentant and self-righteous.

Repentance is that stirring of mind and heart to the point where we admit the need of outside help. It is an attitude of admitted weakness combined with faith in the power of Christ’s redemptive work.

Repentance is the fruit of godly sorrow. The Apostle Paul makes clear the distinction between godly sorrow and that of the world: “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10). What a difference! One results in salvation, the other in death.

Repentance causes us to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. It is an acknowledgment that without him we are lost and undone, that we deserve the punishment of separation which sin entails. In other words, repentance is an admission that our condition would be hopeless were it not for the love and mercy of the One who has the power to cleanse and forgive. It is the sinner’s plea for pardon.

Repentance involves man’s eternal destiny. It looks to Jesus, the door through which man passes from darkness to light, from death to life, from sorrow to joy, from separation to fellowship, from guilt to forgiveness.

Repentance is the great leveler. Pointing his finger at the hypocritical chief priests and elders, our Lord said: “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him; and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe” (Matt. 21:31c, 32). The all-important thing about these social outcasts of whom Jesus spoke was their response to John’s demand for repentance and faith. The same is true for men today. There must be a sense of need because of conviction of sin, a repentance, a turning toward the One against whom we have sinned, and the faith that he can and will cleanse and forgive. The high and the low, the great and the small—all stand on level ground at the foot of the Cross.

Repentance requires humility, one of man’s most difficult experiences. We are born with varying degrees of conceit, self-assurance, and confidence in our ability to overcome problems. It is not easy to admit that we are helpless or that we have been wrong. Nor is it easy to renounce pride in our ability to work things out. “God be merciful to me, a sinner” does not come easily from our lips until in some measure we see ourselves as God sees us.

In repentance there is an element of godly fear, not because God is a tyant but because he is omniscient and holy. Speaking to the church in Thyatira, the risen Lord said: “… all the churches shall know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve” (Rev. 2:23). The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says: “Before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13). Such exposure should cause a godly fear that begets a willingness to admit our offenses against a holy God.

Repentance has its opposite—the unrepentant heart. An unwillingness to repent is an offense against God that insures disaster. Writing to the Christians in Rome, Paul says: “Or do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Rom. 2:4, 5). The Scriptures are indeed explicit about the fate of unrepentant sinners: “They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess. 1:9).

It is not unreasonable that patients seeking admission to a hospital do so through the admitting office. Nor is it unreasonable that men should enter the state of salvation through the way of repentance. The unrepentant heart is an insuperable barrier to God’s grace and mercy. Two thieves hung on crosses on either side of our Lord. One repented and that very day entered into paradise. The other refused to repent and went out into the darkness of eternal night.

Lack of repentance is more than a state of mind; it is resistance to revealed truth, to the love and mercy of God, and a rejection of the warning so clearly given. In the Book of the Revelation we read: “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols …, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their immorality or their thefts” (Rev. 9:20, 21).

At the Cross we see God’s estimate of sin. There we find offered full atonement to all who will repent and believe. Because of the vital importance of repentance as a chain in the link leading men into a new life in Christ, there should be a renewed emphasis on it throughout the Church.

One work of the Holy Spirit that insures man’s acceptance is “repentance to God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Therein lies our hope.

Did Jesus mean to found a Church, or visible society of believers, in the world; and, if he did, what was his purpose in founding it? By some it is contended that Jesus did not contemplate any such separate society of his disciples. He expected an immediate end of the world, and aimed only at individual conversions. This, however, is at variance with the whole tenor of the Gospels. Apart from direct mention of a “Church” (ecclesia, Matt. 16:18; 18:17—passages which the objectors would expunge), it seems plain that Jesus did regard it as part of his vocation to found a “Kingdom” in this world (Matt. 13—parables of sower, tares, and so on; John 18:36, 37), anticipated its growth and enlargement (Mark 4:26–32) and the gathering of men of all nations into it (Matt. 8:11, 21:43; John 12:32), predicted for it troubles and persecutions, with mingling of good and evil, and apostasies (Matt. 10:13; 24:4–14, etc.)—the dispensation to be ended by his “Parousia,” or return in glory (Matt. 24:25, etc.).

In consonance with this conception, Jesus is found choosing and training twelve apostles (Matt. 10:13; 12:41, 42, etc.), giving them directions and rules for discipline (Matt. 18:15–20), appointing sacraments (Matt. 26:26–29, etc., the Lord’s Supper; 28:19, Baptism: cf. 1 Cor. 11:23 ff.), promising the Spirit to his waiting disciples (Luke 24:49; John 15:7–15; cf. Acts 2), giving commission to evangelize the world (Matt. 28:19, 20; cf. 24:14; Mark 16:15), promising to be with his people to the end (Matt. 18:20; 28:20). He is a householder who will leave stewards in charge in his absence (Matt. 24:42–51, etc.). How, indeed, could the work of Christ be saved from losing itself in the world except by some form of society in which his adherents were bound together for fellowship, testimony, and labor for his cause?

The function which the Church is to discharge in the world is already implied in what has been said of Christ’s object in creating it. “Church” and “Kingdom” are not precisely the same, for the “Kingdom” is a name for God’s rule in all departments of human life (family, society, business, state, and so on). But the Church is still the one society which visibly represents God’s Kingdom in the world, and it exists for the ends of this Kingdom.

The Church, founded by Christ, and launched into the world, after consecration by the Spirit, through the preaching of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, had a wonderful history of suffering and success. From the Jews, who as a people shut their hearts against its message, its spread, at first mainly through Paul’s labors among the Gentiles, and by the close of the Apostolic Age had established itself in most of the great centers of Greek and Roman civilization. Persecutions, terrible in cruelty, had overtaken it (cf. Rev. 2:10–13; 7:13, 14); but this baptism of blood had only purified its ranks and aided its increase.

It was a difficult situation in which the Church found itself when bereft of the teaching and guidance of Christ’s apostles. The Church had spread widely and had struck its roots deeply into society. But it was helpless and unprotected—a flock of sheep in the midst of wolves (Matt. 10:16; Acts 10:29). The voices of a Paul, a Peter, a James, had long been silent; the Apostle John alone lingered on till near the end of the first century. Its new leaders—many of them, as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, noble, devoted men—were far inferior to the apostles in gifts and spiritual power. Heresies had developed, as the Epistles show (cf. 1 Cor. 15:12; Col. 2:8, 18; 1 Tim. 1:19, 20; 6:3, 4; 2 Tim. 2:16–18; 3:6–8; 4:3, 4; 1 John 2:18; 4:1–3). Manifold corruptions had found their way into the churches (2 Tim. 3:1–5; 2 Pet. 2; Jude; Rev. 2:20, etc.).

It added to the difficulty that at this stage the Church was destitute of most of the aids it afterwards possessed for coping with opposition and error. Its organization was as yet comparatively simple. There was no formal creed, no recognized canon of Scripture, no council to which appeal could be made. In this condition it had to encounter the brunt of fierce pagan persecutions and, what was even more formidable, the inrush of Gnostic heresy, which threatened to sweep away the whole historic faith in a flood of allegorizings and Oriental speculations.

One of the most interesting things in the study of early Christianity is to observe how the Church met the difficulties which thus gathered thickly around it. Assailed, persecuted, defamed, one thing it had to do was to create an apology—defense; and here learned men who had been drawn into its ranks put skillful pens at its service in refuting calumny and exposing the irrationalities of paganism. A yet nobler apology was written in the tears and blood of the Christians themselves, and in the examples of beautiful and holy lives they set before the eyes of the heathen. The new spirit of self-denying love which Christianity breathed into the world awoke wonder from its very strangeness in that ancient society.—JAMES ORR

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE

It doesn’t take long for a new word to get old. Indeed, the effort toward novelty can get very old just in itself. Take the word “dialogue.” Every time I make a false move, it seems that somebody wants to get me involved in a “dialogue.” The better word, “dialectic,” which is at least as old as Socrates, has served very well for a good many centuries. There is nothing new at stake, I suppose, except that there has been a kind of turn in the word “dialogue.” People who want a dialogue with me soon make it clear that we are not out to discover the truth but that they are out to override me. True dialectic and true dialogue are supposed to be good talk on both sides of an issue, with search being made for a higher synthesis.

Church dialogues too often have not sounded like this. Too many people have too many axes to grind, and they would just as soon grind one another as the axes. There is the delightful story of the old Scotch session member who was called upon to pray in an effort to resolve a church fight. On the way home afterward he said to his friend, “I hadn’t prayed two minutes until they knew which side I was on.”

If you want to test out a few church dialogues, see if anyone is interested in listening to the other side of the integration-segregation subject, or the fundamentalist-liberal subject, or the conservative-liberal subject. Have you had a chance recently to hear a “dialogue” between a Democrat and a Republican?

Some of the brethren are urging us for love’s sake to enter into dialogues with all kinds of people. Do they really mean what they say? A Christian love is supposed to love the unlovely or the unlovable, which is love in spite of and not on account of. This is hard. It takes considerably more than the natural man has, especially to do it without condescension.

THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST

Hail to Samuel Turner, Jr., for his article, “Promoters of Doubt or Builders of Faith?” (May 7 issue). When will the Christian Church wake up and see the bankruptcy of liberalism in its stark nakedness?… Jesus spoke with authority, as only the incarnate Word could do; thus his apostles were bold to speak with like conviction in a “thus saith the Lord” manner. Present-day example: Agree or disagree with Billy Graham, the man or his methods, people all over the world are drawn to him like a magnet. Why? Because he speaks as one having authority, in a “thus saith the Lord,” “the Bible says,” affirmative way.… How can a minister who is supposed to be the shepherd of his flock engender faith within his people when he himself is suffering from spiritual anemia? If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare for the battle?

Glendora, Calif.

The article … is timely and very much needed. Thank you for it.…

Word Publishers

Kaufman, Tex.

Director

I grew up in a conservative home. I was taught to idolize the Bible.… Then I went to school and was challenged to take my Bible down from its pedestal.… I stopped taking the Bible literally and began to take it seriously, and in the process the Christian faith became relevant.…

Fourth Methodist

Bridgeton, N.J.

Mr. Turner may do well to understand that the “promoters of doubt and disbelief” are often the better teachers, when compared to the so-called “builders of faith.” When one begins to doubt some of the syrupy, sweet-Jesus, be-goodists liberals of yesterday, then his faith may begin genuine growth.…

The Methodist Church

St. Joseph, La.

FREEDOM THROUGH COMMITMENT

In your editorial entitled “Academic Freedom and Doctrinal Commitment” (April 9 issue), you stress the duty of divinity school professors to resign when they cannot uphold the doctrinal position of the school. You also stress the duty of the school to relieve such teachers of their positions if they will not voluntarily resign. “Academic freedom,” you say, “does not include the right to subvert an institution by changing its theological position.”

You have made some regrettable errors. First, you have assumed that a theologically deviant teacher can “subvert an institution by changing its theological position.” Do you know an institution so delicately balanced that a shove from a single professor can overturn its doctrinal stance? I doubt it. What you mean to say is that the ferment among theologians today has such an appeal among thoughtful Christians that as soon as someone voices unorthodox thoughts, a host of followers spring up around him. These often include both faculty and students in seminaries. This is very threatening to the establishment (administration, trustees, and alumni). Orthodoxy is then preserved as the establishment draws its pursestrings tightly about the neck of unorthodoxy.

Theological schools are not threatened so much by academic freedom as they are by the inherent instability of the compromise between institutional needs for stability on the one hand and the urge to reinterpret ancient formulations on the other. Orthodoxy is much too eager to attribute the former to God’s gracious plan and the latter to human pride. Actually, both institutional and personal-intellectual needs are quite human, and both are frequently occasions of both God’s grace and man’s sin. The second error in the editorial is thus to suppose that the right of Christian dissent exists only where it doesn’t threaten the institution’s calm repose in traditional patterns.

The third error follows naturally: the editorial assumes that ethically both professor and school should act to remove the professor whenever he deeply disagrees with the school’s doctrinal position. Is it then agreed that the best atmosphere for a divinity school is one where job, income, and career must be bought by suppressing doubts about confessional statements? Is it agreed that the seminary should be a hothouse protecting tender clergy-sprouts until fully grown? Is it agreed that confessional conformity is the only good soil for growing new ministers? And is it agreed that the only ethical course for a teacher who loves his work, his church, and his Lord but is troubled by seventeenth-century formulations—that his only ethical course is to leave his teaching so as not to threaten the establishment’s firm control on student and faculty thinking? I hope not.

Finally, the editorial errs in espousing an administrative solution for a problem of mind and conscience. I do not pretend that school administrators have an easy way out, but I feel that a lack of congruence between the church’s confession and a teacher’s viewpoint is badly handled by administrative fiat. Theological ferment will not die so easily, and the establishment, by shoving it outside the camp, makes the same error as have all institutionalisms since the dawn of prophecy.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY misleads its readers by these errors: that a deviant teacher is the real problem; that dissent is allowable only as long as the teacher does not chew his leash; that the only ethical solution for teacher-school doctrinal conflict is amputation of the teacher; and that the current dissatisfaction with confessional forms is amenable to administrative solutions. Newtonville, Mass.

The editorial is right to the point. It is one thing to formulate a list of ways in which a seminary will prosper, and it is quite a different thing—I dare say, a critically different thing—to sit in an administrator’s office and work out a program which will insure the success of a seminary as well as insure the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

If a seminary is to defend and delineate Christian truth, it is necessary that both faculty members and the board of trustees cheerfully and without mental reservation enter into a spiritual contract—a contract which spiritually unites the faculty and the board to the theological encyclopedia which the seminary was founded to preserve.

If a particular member of the faculty rejects the doctrinal position of the seminary, as a man of honor he must choose one of two courses of action. First, he can hand in his resignation. In this way he will dissociate from the company of scholars which forms the distinctive personality of the seminary. Second, he can try to convince both the faculty and the board that his viewpoint is closer to biblical truth than that which is expressed in the seminary’s creed. If he succeeds in defending his viewpoint, the seminary, by at least a two-thirds affirmative vote, should make an appropriate change in the creed. But if he fails in this defense, he should resign from the seminary, for he is no longer a member of the doctrinal fellowship.

If he refuses to resign, however, and makes a practice of pretending that he submits to the standards of the seminary, he has disgraced his holy calling and is no longer fit to teach and preach the sacred Gospel of Jesus Christ. If other faculty members and trustees should engage in the same sort of spiritual deception, the seminary will soon exchange the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the wisdom of this world.

If the administration pays no attention to such spiritual deception, it is guilty of a flagrant dereliction of duty, for it is consciously doing away with the seminary’s sacred calling to preserve the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture. Indifference to one faculty member who no longer adheres to the creed without mental reservation will, if consistency runs its course, sooner or later result in an indifference to the spiritual and doctrinal state of the whole faculty. In any event, the seminary will become more excited about so-called contemporary issues than it will about the specific teaching of Scripture.

It should be made emphatically clear, however, that the creed of a seminary, unlike the Bible, is not the result of divine inspiration. This must be stressed, lest some overlook our forthright assertion that a seminary creed can be changed—assuming, of course, that the right conditions are met. The issue must be kept in perspective; and, by way of review, we suggest the following three points as ingredients of this proper perspective: (a) as long as the creed of a seminary takes a certain form, both faculty members and the board of trustees have a moral obligation to uphold the creed in this form; (b) academic liberty to investigate all points of view is granted—for example, the professor of theology has complete freedom (or better, he is academically required) to offer a course in the major religions of the world, even though the major doctrines of other religions do not harmonize with the creed of the seminary; (c) if a member of the faculty or trustees is unable to support the creed of the seminary in its existing form, he should either put forth an effort to convince his colleagues that a specific change in the creed will bring the creed into closer conformity with the infallible truths of the Bible, or he ought to have sufficient character and integrity to resign from the seminary.

All too often it is assumed that if a seminary takes its statement of faith seriously, the right to conduct research into new ideas, let alone the privilege of dealing with exegetical and theological problems in the classroom, will be endangered. The exact opposite is the case—providing, however, that we are dealing with conditions that exist (or should exist) in a mature seminary, and not with the conditions that exist in a seminary which has degenerated into a cult. It can be safely observed that whenever an entire family of faculty and trustees freely commits itself to what it believes is an accurate, creedal summary of the Gospel, all suspicion of individuals within the seminary instantly vanishes. Although complete freedom to think and to write exists, the defense and delineation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ continue to serve as the true rallying points.

Most of the above material should be self-evident, for if it is true that God has entrusted the Church with a propositional account of his will for sinful humanity (the source of this account being the Holy Bible), how could a seminary fulfill its calling unless the personnel who formed the seminary—faculty and trustees alike—were dedicated to each and every truth contained in revelation?

Prof. of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

THE SELMA STORY

So many accounts [of the march to Montgomery] have been totally one-sided and have tended to lump everybody in Alabama into the one category of “violent extremist” that it has been hard on the people here to keep from being angered by them. I think our national understanding of any given local area and our mutual spirit of fellowship and oneness greatly suffer under this kind of journalism.

As I know you realize, despite all of our shortcomings in this area and especially despite the … deplorable incidents which have occurred, there is another side to the story.

Let me thank you for your endeavor to present elements of both sides of the Selma story (News, Apr. 9 issue) accurately and to be thoroughly fair in your appraisal.

Howard College

Birmingham, Ala.

Dean of Religion

Surely it is not too much to ask that our dedicated Northern brother ministers leave judgment and condemnation to the Father of us all. Surely we are not over-stepping our bounds by asking that the cup of bitterness not be pressed on us by those whose prayers we most need. The bitterest pain of all is that inflicted by dedicated, good, but uninformed men in the same service of the same Lord and Master of all.…

Notasulga. Ala.

HYMNALS ARE NOT YET TILLICHIAN

Milton Hunnex, who is a member of this congregation, has raised a significant point for the ongoing Honest to God exchanges when he points out that Bishop John Robinson makes little room for “the notion of God’s initiative” (Mar. 26 issue). Professor Hunnex contends that the bishop’s use of Tillich’s definition of God as “ground of being” has introduced a concept which has its origin outside the Christian community at large. He also asserts that it does not coincide with the God to whom the body of Christian believers respond in joy and thanksgiving.

My question is this: Has not Professor Hunnex himself illustrated the very problem with which Tillich and Robinson are concerned—how the Gospel is to be communicated? Let me illustrate my question by pointing out that the word initiative, for which Professor Hunnex contends, is certainly not a New Testament term. Nor is it the normal word used by the Christian community to describe God’s action for man. That word is grace.

Doubtless, as a professor of philosophy, Dr. Hunnex finds the concept of “initiative” congenial to his own thought patterns. I will not deny him the privilege and right to use the word. But to insist that Robinson has turned theology into anthropology because the bishop’s statements are “about the quality of human life” rather than about “the mighty act of God” is certainly to ignore the valid use of analogical thought patterns in both homiletical and theological endeavors.

How do the words—New Testament or otherwise—in which the Gospel is expressed become meaningful to the ones to whom they are addressed? Professor Hunnex, for all his implicit exposition of the common language point of view, has not yet answered that! Rather, he has illustrated that there is a language that is common to certain theologians and philosophers.

Indeed, the closing sentence of his article raises the whole difficulty in a most acute form. There Professor Hunnex approvingly quotes the words of Luther that God is “an abyss of eternal love.” But the word abyss has been derived from the Greek of the LXX where it translates the Hebrew tehom, the primeval waters of creation (Gen. 1:2, “deep” in AV and RSV). Is not the “deep” much closer to what Tillich calls groundthan to what Hunnex means by initiative?

Jason Lee Memorial Methodist Church

Salem, Ore.

The New Testament concept of grace most assuredly does include the idea of initiative, and it was for this very reason that I made so much of it. Robinson’s exegesis so reconstructed it that I was left wondering whether he does in fact include it or, for that matter, could include it in his doctrine of grace.

That the God who speaks in Christ and to whom the Christian responds and who is the agent of his salvation is also a ground of being or any several possible philosophical descriptions is not denied. What is denied is the saving relevance of this communication. Saving communication has to do with the God who is in Christ—not philosophical animadversions. (Cf. Russell’s knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.)

I am quite familiar with philosophical descriptions of God in most of their important historical forms but like the great Catholic philosopher St. Thomas find them to be of no saving significance.

It is precisely because the idea of God who is other than Person is not meaningful to the worshiping and witnessing community of historic Christianity that an ordinary language analytical philosopher would find the personal language game the almost exclusive language game of Christians. Virtually the entire biblical tradition as well as historic greats like Irenaeus, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and John Wesley together with the bulk of the Christian community have spoken of and responded to God as Person. To speak of a reality that is personal yet not person is like speaking of the smile of the Cheshire cat that doesn’t exist. To speak of a “quality of human life” rather than an objective God is not to speak analogously, as the Rev. Mr. Hall wants to say. It is to speak idolatrously.

Hall asks: How do words become meaningful? What he wants to ask I believe is: What makes language ordinary? I assume that it is not the psychological question that concerns him, since that is not the issue here. The answer is simply “use.” Personal language still characterizes the language of the worshiping and witnessing Christian community as it always has in the past. If Tillichian language gets into use, then Hall will have his point. But he can’t claim as evidence that which has not yet occurred, i.e., a believing, worshiping, praising, etc., Christian community using Tillichian language. Not even his revised hymnal is remotely Tillichian.

Hall’s concluding etymology of the word “abyss” is quite beside the point for the reason that what I said was that God is “a Person who is … [also] ‘an abyss of eternal love,’ ” i.e., “a Person whose love is limitless.” This is what Luther meant at any rate.

Salem, Ore.

THE ORIGINAL UNSWITCHABLES

When I suggested to our ushers the advice of Mr. Koopman (“Our Madison Avenue Church,” Apr. 23 issue): “It’s what’s up front that counts,” they told me that our people would “rather fight than switch.”

Holland, Mich.

Is the chaplain in the modern hospital an anachronism? Can a clergyman, confining himself to his own field, have anything to offer today’s secular man when he becomes sick? Must the parish pastor or staff chaplain at a hospital limit his services to church people?

Much of America pretends that modern man has no needs apart from those of the mind, body, and emotions. This new and provincial idea is held only in post-Christian nations where super-sophistication has produced a new benightedness. Nevertheless, when today’s people fall ill, they can’t help contemplating the ultimate triumph of illness. Such thoughts suggest a need for more than medical treatment, for something beyond nature. That is when the chaplain begins to take on a more useful look.

Mr. A arrived at the hospital with bleeding ulcers, a closed mind, and an ugly word for everyone. “He’s impossible” was the diagnosis among the nurses. When the chaplain appeared, the word he got on the patient was “You can have him.”

The chaplain greeted the surly sufferer and sat down to listen. After an hour he left to think and pray about the soul ills that this man’s physical pain had brought out into the open. After this first visit, the nurses asked, “What did you do with him? He’s a new man!” But the chaplain knew there was much more to do, and that no real change had yet occurred. He had yet to confront the man with both himself and his Maker, and thereafter with his Redeemer and Sanctifier.

We of the cloth must admit that clergymen have not always excelled in the art of listening to a sick person’s troubles, real or imagined. As an example take the case of Mr. B, who was admitted to a hospital with mysterious ailments defying diagnosis. His illness had thrown his status at work into doubt, created confusion in his personal relations, and left him literally worried sick. When his pastor came by, Mr. B began telling his troubles. The pastor listened briefly, brusquely told the man to get his mind off his problems, and changed the subject. Needless to say, the illness worsened.

The chaplain or trained pastor of today knows that listening to the patient’s troubles is very important. His ministry to the sick reflects this new awareness.

A hospital stay can be fun part of the time. But there are also the times of fright, the gnawing of uncertainty, the belated assertions of conscience, the face-to-death encounters. Must one endure these alone?

Not altogether. The chaplain can be worth his weight in gold in these trying moments. He can enter into the agony with the patient, and put his hand firmly into the hand of God.

Mrs. C, an elderly widow, entered the hospital for surgery. The operating room was not new to her, and in the past impending surgery had not troubled her much. But this time it did. Why? Certain “evil omens” had been brought to her attention, and she was sure no good could come of this hospitalization. Her doctors realized that this fear could become a serious complication.

The chaplain listened to her fears and superstitions sympathetically. Then he showed her that the unfounded superstitions were hiding the sure mercies of God, making complete surrender to his healing impossible. Thus Mrs. C’s preparation for surgery included more than controlled diet and injections. The superstition had to be removed.

Many times medical help becomes irrelevant, and the chaplain’s services are all the hospital has to offer. One day after school, little Bobby played where he shouldn’t have played, fell off a viaduct, and arrived at the hospital in a coma. During the night he died. In the intervening hours, the chaplain was as busy and as important as the doctors. While guiding the distraught parents in God-pleasing pleas for the boy’s recovery, he also had to prepare them for the probable parting.

You think your job is difficult or delicate? Probably not like this one. When a family has Christian foundations, the chaplain has something to work with. But with others he must start from scratch, and often he fails completely.

The many confrontations with the unthinkable that arise from sickness put the recent divorce between religion and healing in perspective. In times past the connection between man and God was taken for granted. However, institutionalized religion gradually drifted into untenable positions. These tended to block the unfolding knowledge of nature, and the healing sciences had to carve out a path for themselves. Science developed a disregard for ecclesiastical pronouncements because it had to—but then it went off on its own aberrations, trying to confine reality to material existence.

Within the last two decades we have seen a new willingness on the part of both medicine and religion to respect the role of the other. Consequently, we may in some places again have the advantage of integrated attention to the entire spectrum of human troubles. Those patients are fortunate whose doctors and pastors are ready to take into account the complex interrelation among the irregularities of body, mind, emotions, will, and soul. That is the stuff illness is made of, and the reason why the chaplain is as relevant as the doctor.

Opportunity In Adversity

An article in the Reader’s Digest (December, 1963) advised, “Turn your sickness into an asset.” The chaplain or pastor can do much for a sick person in this connection.

Mr. D, a hard-driving, hard-hearted executive, had a coronary, as his doctors had warned. During the long convalescence he found himself thinking and suddenly aware that previously he had not been thinking at all. Wife, home, children, and other people began to take on a new shape—the shape of real people. Redemption, salvation, repentance, those zero quantities church people talk about, gradually assumed meaning. And Mr. D. returned home a new man.

Sometimes, especially when no hospital chaplain or pastor is available, Christian friends unwittingly help in turning the ashes of illness into gold.

Mr. E was hospitalized with an illness that ended his professional career, shattered his family’s position in the community, and left him with chaos and weakness and only a fair chance for survival. A visiting friend happened to ask, “Does the Lord’s Prayer help you any?” “Not that I could notice,” was Mr. E’s reply.

A few days later, after a more or less thoughtless run through the Lord’s Prayer, the words of the doxology seemed to linger in his mind. “Thine is the kingdom.” “Thine … the kingdom.” All night these words worked in him, like a strong time-release drug. By morning something new yet old was clear: only his own “kingdom” had been shattered; the real kingdom remained untouched.

The modern chaplain becomes indispensable to modern man when today’s cheap religion fails to deal with spiritual reality.

Mr. F had the beginnings of a serious condition, formerly always fatal, now sometimes curable. This smart and practical executive had been loud about his system of priorities: money and profits first; business obligations second; family affairs next; church every Sunday morning and no more. Now, if he were going to live, he decided, he would maintain his system of priorities; otherwise he would give religion top place.

A Christian friend asked him some hard questions: “Do you expect to receive the grace of God without being transformed by it? Are you going to be loyal to God if you get worse, and not loyal if you improve? Aren’t you using God for a fool?” The friend was sent out with an explosion of profanity. But the hospital chaplain moved into the void to work on the conversion of a long-time faithful church member.

Among Christian people, the operation of the Holy Spirit in the time of sickness is a more important consideration than the illness itself or its treatment.

A middle-aged woman entered the hospital with an assortment of troubles. After the lab crew had completed its first visit, the chaplain came. Almost immediately she blurted out her real worries. Day after day she talked, and the chaplain listened and posed questions that led her into deep consideration of Scripture, the ways of God, and the role of a redeemed person in the world. By the time she went to surgery, she professed a peace never known to her before. This woman went home with a new lease on life, both physical and spiritual.

What To Pray About

One of the big questions in the time of illness concerns prayer. What does one say to God? What not? Are we out of place in asking God for a quick recovery? Shall we be insistent about what we want most? Are we over-reaching ourselves and tampering with what belongs to the Lord of life when we ask for a life to be spared?

Christians ought to remember the case of King Hezekiah, who was devout and God-fearing when fatally ill but who became proud and vain after his life was extended. We should therefore pray in the awareness that our all-wise Father knows better than we.

The secularistic view of all things has blinded most of us to an elementary aspect of all medical services: essentially, they are an outgrowth of the healing ministry of Jesus. He, and only he, showed the way to religious concern for physical ills. In doing so, however, Jesus set concern for sickness within the larger needs of the entire person. “Take up your bed and walk” is forever linked with “Your sins are forgiven.”

Today’s illnesses, as then, are of both body and soul. To treat either by itself is to play ostrich, burying one’s head in the sand as far as the other part of the person is concerned. This Jesus did not do.

The modern hospital chaplain therefore has a basic function in the ministry of healing. He complements the practice of medicine by extending the arts of healing to the whole person. With his aid, one can go to the hospital in the full expectation that the healing ministry of Jesus is being continued there.

Sixty or seventy years ago one who visited a number of Protestant church services might have observed that most sermons were of the expository type. But a similar visit today would very likely reveal a meager amount of this kind of preaching. The never-ending deluge of sermon books and the popular sermon periodicals seldom carry an expository sermon. By and large, the preaching in Protestantism today is of the topical or “life-situation” variety. One cannot help wondering whether something has been discovered that makes expository preaching, the favorite method in the past, invalid today.

Greater concern arises when we observe among conservatives, never questioned for their love of the Book, a paucity of expository preaching. In many large denominational gatherings the topical sermon is used far more frequently than the expository. And conversation with many conservative “colleagues of the cloth” reveals that the topical and life-situation approach predominates in their week-by-week preaching.

Alas, it would also prove embarrassing for me to examine the sermons I have preached in the past few years. Even in my own file the expository sermon is in the minority. Yes, I am the chief of sinners! Such conviction and observation has led to the question: What is wrong with expository preaching?

It may just be that we should re-examine some of our attitudes toward expository preaching. Perhaps we have judged it ineffective because we have failed to understand its true nature.

What Is It?

There are many definitions of the expository sermon. Not least among them is that of John Broadus:

An expository discourse may be defined as one which is occupied mainly, or at any rate very largely, with the exposition of Scripture. It by no means excludes argument and exhortation as to the doctrines or lessons which this exposition develops [On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, Harper, 1944, p. 144].

The word “exposition” is, of course, the clue to this method. The word means a setting forth of the meaning or purpose of a writing. Thus in preaching it means laying open for inspection and understanding a certain passage of the Holy Scriptures. And it may be that this somewhat limited understanding of expository preaching has caused it to become sterile and irrelevant. The idea expository preaching frequently brings to mind is that of a rather heavy pedantic presentation of the historical, geographical, and grammatical context of a few verses. If that is expository preaching, little wonder that it has disappeared.

While it is true that in expository preaching the understanding of what the biblical writer was saying is paramount, in no sense does the sermon stop at this point. Pure exposition without application becomes stifling. An enlarged definition, more in the contemporary spirit, captures this emphasis:

Expository preaching seeks to find the basic, contextual-grammatical-historical meaning of a passage of Scripture, and then applies this meaning, by accepted rhetorical processes, to the hearts and lives of the hearers. Expository preaching finds more than a theme in a passage, more than a few suggestions, more than a few platitudes—it finds the abiding message, the timeless truths, the universal values of the passage, and brings them over in direct, powerful, impinging practical applications to modern life situations [Lloyd M. Perry and Faris D. Whitesell, Variety in Your Preaching, Revell, 1954, p. 35].

Perhaps the great downfall of this once exalted method has been at this point. For many it has been considered little more than a glorified Sunday school lesson with little challenge or inspiration, at best informative on a few biblical facts. Halford Luccock, in his book In the Minister’s Workshop, sharply criticizes this shortcoming in much expository preaching: “It is the absence of the engaged ‘clutch’ of the present-day parallel which meshes in with the machinery of the mind and heart that has made so much alleged expository preaching irrelevant and obsolete.”

Expository preaching, in its best form, is the exposing of a certain passage of Scripture around which the sermon is woven and which serves as the basis for the contemporary application.

What Does It Accomplish?

Beyond understanding what expository preaching is, there is a need to recall some of its values. By faithfully practicing the expository approach, we shall save ourselves from some dangerous pitfalls.

First, expository preaching will save us from ourselves. The minister who depends from week to week and year to year upon his own ability to decide what subject he shall preach on and how that subject should be developed will sooner or later discover he is inflicting his own prejudices upon his people. Expository preaching will save us from that. The great temptation facing every preacher is that of making his own word final instead of God’s Word. We develop our sermon and then proceed to put God’s stamp of approval on it by finding a biblical text that will confirm what we have declared to be the Truth.

Secondly, expository preaching will save us from “proof-texting.” One wonders whether the numerous topical indexes of the Bible are a bane or a blessing to the minister. Ready-made sermons almost jump out from their pages. We can too easily find a topic with three separate texts, each providing a point for the sermon. All that remains is to clothe each text with an illustration or two and abracadabra presto chango—we have a sermon without having given any serious study to the Scriptures used. Although this practice may not be “proof-texting,” it is not far from it; and the minister who engages in it habitually may leave himself open to the worst of indictments—mishandling the Word of God.

Thirdly, expository sermons will save us from making the Bible a “springboard for discussion.” I have been guilty, as have many others, of building a beautiful sermon only to realize at completion that there was no text. But that was little reason for despair. With the help of a good topical index I found a text that conveniently fitted the beginning of the sermon. Although the text did not add a great deal to the sermon, neither did it do much harm. And it made a nice starting point. But in all honesty this practice can only be described as a departure from preaching God’s Word.

Fourthly, expository preaching will save us from making the Bible merely an anthology of religious quotes and illustrations. As we journey through our sermon quoting from the poets, the philosophers, and the theologians, it seems good to throw in an occasional quotation from one of the biblical writers. And it also seems good to recite occasionally a biblical story that illustrates the point being made. Let me say that such a practice is not necessarily wrong; indeed, it can be very commendable. But the question is whether this represents the way we generally handle the Bible. Do we expound biblical truth, or do we use the Bible to expound our particular slant on the truth?

Finally, expository preaching will save the minister from sterility in his sermons. More than once I have heard a minister say: “I guess I’ll have to get another sermon book; my well has run dry!” Would it not be good to recommend the greatest book of sermons ever written? Is it mere piousness to believe that the minister who pores over a passage of Scripture for weeks before the sermon is to be delivered will be given a vibrant message from above? I do not think so! No one is left empty-handed when a text from God’s Word has been thoroughly explored and studied.

While expository preaching will save us from these dangers, it will, on the positive side, bring to our preaching certain assets. Primarily and most important, it will let God speak through our sermons. This after all is the only purpose of preaching. Foremost in the minister’s thought as he goes into the study to prepare next Sunday’s sermon ought to be his responsibility to make sure that what he says will be God’s Word as spoken through him. One of the classical definitions of preaching is by Bernard Manning: “Preaching is a manifestation of the Incarnate Word, from the written Word, by the spoken word.” If this is the nature of preaching, then the minister who sticks closely to the written Word, finds the divisions for his sermon within the text, uncovers the thought of the biblical writer, and then makes this thought relevant to present needs, can never be far from speaking God’s Word. This is the guarantee of expository preaching.

Again, such preaching will help the Bible come alive in the minds and hearts of those who hear. Some congregations make a big point of bringing Bibles to the church. At every service the minister asks that each Bible be lifted high; anyone who does not have one is so embarrassed that he is sure to bring one to the next service. These Bibles may not be opened during the whole service, but at least they are there. While every Christian ought to have his Bible in church, such coaxing and chiding seems superficial. Having a Bible in hand and open to the passage being discussed should be a natural practice for each Christian. The expository sermon, more than any other, will arouse interest in the Bible. I have found myself removing my Bible from its hidden pocket and following the Scriptures avidly when a minister digs deeply into a text and uncovers divine truth. This is the natural reaction to expository preaching.

What Is Wrong With It?

Let us ask again, “What is wrong with expository preaching?” It is obvious that for the minister who believes the Bible to be a book of myths there is little value in expository preaching. But for those who maintain that the Bible is actually God’s Word, expository preaching, while it may not be the only method, must certainly be the supreme method.

We can well imagine that the disappearance of this method from many pulpits is partly due to the intrusion of liberalism. What we cannot explain is why those who still hold to the credibility of the Bible have abandoned expository preaching. Could it be a case of conformity with prevailing religious practices?

It might be that the real rub is the discipline expository preaching involves. The minister who would preach an expository sermon must be willing to spend the necessary time in his study using all possible resources to let the light of the text break forth. Not only study but prayer is an essential before and during sermon preparation. And beyond this is the difficult task of applying these timeless truths to everyday life situations. It might be that other methods are more attractive because they are less exacting.

No, there is nothing wrong with expository preaching. Everything is right about it. As in the first century, so in the twentieth, the preacher must stand forth and expose “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” And there is no better way for him to do this than through expository preaching.

What is the vital center of evangelical Christianity?

In spite of our efforts at lay evangelism, Christian education, prayer cells, and class meetings, the pulpit is still the sensitive center that reflects both the viability and the vulnerability of our witness. Attempts to bypass the pulpit are vain, because ultimately the fruits of our outreach and the products of our nurture will depend upon the quality of our pulpits. After all, the “foolishness of preaching” is still God’s method for communicating the Gospel.

The importance of the pulpit ministry, therefore, cannot be ignored. While we test a variety of techniques with which to reach the modern mind, the pulpit must keep pace. Frequently, however, because we know that the content of the Gospel is always the same, we also assume that the means for communicating the Word never change. The result can be a static pulpit in a jet-propelled world. But the facts are that changes in the field of communication have revolutionized the world. The spread of the Gospel began by word of mouth. Then we moved into the “Gutenberg galaxy,” which sped the message through movable type and the printed page until men could read the Word for themselves. The whole process then went through another revolution in the “Marconi galaxy,” when the radio message could be transmitted from voice to ear without the obstacle of the printed page. Even more recently, we have again multiplied the effectiveness of communications as we have moved into an “Electronic galaxy,” which sends the message from sight to soul without stopping at either the mind or ear. While the message may be the same, the speed and the impact of the delivery have been drastically improved.

If this analogy is applied to the evangelical pulpit today, it means that we must constantly be searching for the means to improve our effectiveness in getting the message through. For the preacher, this means a thorough understanding of the modern mind, a willingness to respond to changing needs, and an unflagging desire to “preach the Word.” In other words, when it comes to communicating the Gospel in a jet-propelled age, we must have a jet-propelled pulpit—one that is first century in content and twentieth century in communication.

American Directions

The jet-propelled pulpit is necessary because of three basic facts in American life that are determining the direction and character of our future. These facts are summed up in an article by Peter Drucker in the February issue of Harper’s magazine. Although he uses these facts to forecast the direction of American politics, Drucker clearly indicates that the ultimate issue is the quality of life in America. Therefore, these facts are of concern to the preacher as well as the politician.

The first fact of the future is that 85 per cent of our population will be living in fewer than 200 metropolitan centers scattered across the country. Most of these people will be huddling together in the crowded strip cities from Boston to Norfolk, from Milwaukee to Cleveland, and from San Francisco to San Diego. The long-predicted shift from the farm to the city will have come true. We will be an urban people in a sprawling megalopolis.

The second fact is equally undramatic until you consider what it means for the future. One-third of all Americans will be full-time students in a school of some kind or another. Then, we will be just a few years away from the time when one-half of our young men will be educated and affluent citizens at the managerial level. As surely as we will have an Urban State, we will also have a Knowledge State with education opportunities that begin in the nursery school and end only in death.

To those of us who are over thirty years of age, the third determining fact in American life is quite disagreeable. Believe it or not, by 1980 more than 25 per cent of our population will be between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. This shift to the youthful population is occurring so rapidly that the average age has dropped one full year for each year since 1960. When John F. Kennedy was elected to the Presidency in 1960, the average age of an American was thirty-three years. But by 1968 the average American will be under twenty-five years of age. To the Urban State and the Knowledge State, we must add the hopeful fact that America is also the Youth State.

What are the implications of these three facts for communicating the Gospel? It is not the numbers that concern us now; it is the kind of people that these changes produce. Urbanites do not have the same attitudes as villagers; college graduates do not have the same expectations as high school graduates; and young adults do not have the same actions as middle-agers. Therefore, these changes in attitudes, expectations, and actions have a direct bearing upon the effectiveness of the modern pulpit. For the sake of description, I will characterize the urbanite as the Diffident Man, the student as the Discerning Man, and the young adult as the Detached Man.

The Diffident Man

The urban man has been adequately described as a faceless creature in a grey flannel suit who commutes from the suburbs with an attaché case. Professionally, he is a well-oiled cog in the corporation machine. Socially, he uses the status of the crowd to hide his loneliness. Personally, he covers his anxiety with the sophistication of charm. Spiritually, he uses the church as a vehicle for acceptability but couldn’t care less about its message. In brief, the urbanite is a thoroughgoing and unapologetic secularist.

As a contrast to the outright sinner who declares his hostility toward the Gospel, the urban man is grandly indifferent to the vital purpose of the Church. You can glamorize your program, step up your advertising, bring in high-powered talent, enlist a calling group, organize a week of prayer, hold a series of meetings, and sit back to watch your efforts fail. You are dealing with the “diffident”—a man who is dazzled every day by the spectacular and a man to whom the Christian creed is only one among many.

Our pulpits are simply not geared for a ministry to the diffident. We assume that people are naturally interested in the Gospel and that our words will quicken a dormant hunger deep within the soul. But this hope arises out of our own experience, not out of the “live and let live” religious attitude of the diffident. The modern man in the urban world is better characterized as a spiritual pagan who lacks the essential elements for understanding, accepting, and responding to the Christian message.

He lacks, first of all, the background for understanding the evangelical message. Review the content of the last sermon that you heard and then put yourself in the place of a stranger who dropped out of Sunday school in the eighth grade, who has heard the Bible read only at formal occasions, and who has reserved religion for old wives and new widows. Without a background, the language would probably confuse him, the theology would confound him, and the point of the message would probably bypass him.

Secondly, the urban man is indifferent because he lacks the social pressure to accept the message. Although religious belief is not just a result of group dynamics, we cannot deny that social pressure plays an important part in that belief. In the urban world of today and tomorrow, the steam has been let out of the pressure cooker to be a Christian. Men lack the personal ties that make conformity at this level a survival factor; they are not caught in the trap of “conform or else.” They can move at any time—and do.

The third factor in the making of the diffident man is his inability to define his personal need for spiritual response. In the simplest terms, the urban man acts indifferent to the Gospel because he does not know how to respond. Although he might admit that he is lonely, anxious, and insecure, he would not admit that religion would necessarily make the difference. He would first try to cure his loneliness by joining another club, his anxiety by a Southern vacation, and his insecurity by a boost in his life insurance. He doesn’t reject the Gospel so much as he ignores it. Without the natural interest in the message, he neither argues nor understands, disbelieves nor believes, rejects nor responds—he is the diffident product of a diffident culture.

The Discerning Man

Education has become the new hope for American life. It is the nation’s biggest and most serious business. The daily newspapers carry story after story dealing with its growth, its struggles, and its potential. But the stress is upon the means in education today—huge budgets, new buildings, faculty increases, student boom, and experimental teaching techniques. Tomorrow, however, we will be dealing with the end product of this educational thrust—the college graduate, the retrained worker, and the lifetime student in adult education. Usually we envision education as a means to the end of a better job, more money, and a step up in social class. It is this, but we cannot ignore its intellectual results either. An educated man is assumed to be a discerning man. He can raise questions, analyze problems, and draw his own conclusions.

How effective will your message be when a majority of your congregation have college experience? As we tend to assume that everyone is naturally interested in the Gospel, we also assume that our hearers will accept the authority of our message without question. For the discerning man it is just not that easy. Even though he may have the need to believe, he will first test the source of your authority and then make a decision. If, however, your authority is weak, your logic faulty, or your sources inadequate, then you can expect him to withhold his decision until he has further proof. To this discerning man, the overloaded emotional pull and the awesome fear response will simply not work.

The reasons are clear. First of all, the man who is the product of our educational system today is a man without a supernatural orientation. He is the product of an empirical age when discoveries in truth are subjected to the rigors of a scientific method. This approach to truth is not limited to the sciences but pervades every field, from the science of behavior in sociology to the science of symbols in philosophy. Because the supernatural does not lend itself to this frame of reference, the man steeped in the scientific method may demand either empirical proof or pragmatic evidence that our religion works.

Secondly, the discerning man has no taboos against asking questions. In fact, the very essence of his education has been the stimulation of inquiry. Modern learning stresses dialogues, seminars, independent study, and tutorial sessions. These are no-holds-barred learning situations from which no area of life is exempt. To the contrary, we assume that questions are useful tools in many phases of life but not in religion. The nagging “Why?” of our children is met with the impatient statement, “Because God said it,” or “Because the Church believes it.” If you accept the authority of God and the Church, you can get away with this. But how do you respond to the man whose questions include the authority of the Word and the Church?

Thirdly, the product of modern education is without sanctions on his belief. The rewards of heaven and the fear of hell have been important ingredients in holding people to their beliefs. But in a secular age, neither of these sanctions on belief or behavior carries the same weight it once did. Furthermore, the educational environment has a built-in tendency to have a man fighting out his destiny in the present world. Existentialism, which is so popular on the college campus, is a religion without future sanctions. There is the will to believe, the reality of guilt, the hopelessness of man’s self-struggle, and the despair of a frustrated existence. Yet Christianity does not get through to these people because it hasn’t gotten over the shock of being jilted. The educated man who is discerning in his values as well as in his ideas is both our challenge and our enigma for the future.

The Detached Man

The youthful generation of Americans who will take over the responsibility for the quality of our life also disturbs us. According to those who know our youth best, they are a “detached” generation without political, social, economic, or spiritual commitments. Yet it is clear that they are searching for loyalties and meaning in their life. The best evidence for this search is in the mass response to the opportunities of the Peace Corps and the newly formed Job Corps. A recent radio announcement called for volunteers for the Job Corps. The announcer said, “Wanted: volunteers for hard work with low pay. You will work in slum conditions, live in poor housing, and have no job security. The pay is $50 a month plus living expenses. Join the Job Corps.” We know what the response will be. Youth will flock to the opportunity to become attached to a cause. This has already been proved in the Peace Corps program. A follow-up of the first volunteers who came home after a two-year term overseas shows them to be dissatisfied with the comfort climate of America. They would rather be back in the squalor of an African village where they can have the satisfaction of service than drift with the unattached in a culture that indulges their every need.

In our ministry, however, we assume that everyone has some kind of prior commitment to the Gospel. But we forget that prior commitments in youth arise out of an allegiance to models—a hero worship—that creates aspirations for the future. Friedenberg, in his book The Vanishing Adolescent, tells us that youth today are moving through the teen years without the models against which they can sharpen their own image and prepare for their own commitments. This is why the Hechingers in their book Teen-age Tyranny say that we give our youth an “invitation to drift” when they need an “invitation to decision.” If the Church intends to reach outside its ranks into the vast army of youth who will set the directions for our future, it will have to abandon its assumption that everyone has a prior commitment to Christianity. In place of this assumption we will have to realize that our ministry is to be shared with those who have no emotional ties to religion, no loyalty to the Church as an institution, and no Christian models against which they can judge their own life.

Updating The Pulpit

In the discussion of the diffident, the discerning, and the detached men who will set the direction for American life, we may be at the point for diagnosing the frustrations that plague the modern minister. If you assume that when you step into the pulpit, the people who listen have a natural interest in the content of your message, an unquestioning belief in your authority, and a prior commitment to respond, you will probably sense a threat to your status and a limitation to your success. If so, your choices for the future begin to narrow down.

You may choose to decrease the scope of your ministry to the smaller circle of people who are interested, who do believe, and who will respond. If you do, you need to know that you will be the object of the criticism that evangelicals spend most of their time “talking to themselves.”

Or you may choose to remain suspended in your dilemma of desiring to make your ministry relevant to changing needs but being unable to make a change without losing the vitality of your message. This, in itself, may be a major factor in the nervous fatigue and emotional disorders that plague the ministerial ranks.

On the other hand, you may choose to change your assumptions and test the power of the Gospel with indifferent, questioning, and uncommitted men. Whether we like it or not, these are the men who will determine the direction and the character, not only of the political, social, and economic life of America, but also of evangelical Christianity. Let me warn you, however, that if you choose to gear your ministry to those new power centers of our society, you will need a jet-propelled pulpit. Because I see no alternative to a daring move in this new direction, let me describe some of the characteristics of the jet-propelled pulpit.

First, the jet-propelled pulpit is centered in the claims of Jesus Christ. How do you preach to the diffident? According to a survey that Bishop Pike reports in his book A Time for Christian Candor, 85 per cent of all sermons are centered, not on the creed, but on the code of Christianity. If one were to venture a guess for the reason for this imbalance, it would be that we are more sure of our code than we are of our creed. Students in the Christian college who come from Christian homes also reflect this weakness. They are thoroughly versed in the “What?” of their faith but woefully weak in the “Why?” To the indifferent man in the impersonal city, our only claim for attention is the “new reality” of life in Jesus Christ.

Secondly, the jet-propelled pulpit speaks with the authority of the Word of God. When we shift our preaching from the code to the creed, we find that this is where our authority lies. One cannot but recall the first sermon of Jesus when he stood up in the synagogue, took the Word, and began to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. The response of the congregation was, “This man speaks with authority,” and the implication was that other preachers did not. That is one side of the problem. The other side is the idea that the authority which God gives us to preach generalizes to authority on any subject. This is where both the diffident and the discerning fall out with the preacher. A minister is a specialist in the authority of the Word, and his primary task is to give contemporary meaning to the revealed truth about the nature of God, the need of man, and the provision for redemption. Even the diffident will hear this ring of authority.

Thirdly, the jet-propelled pulpit will communicate the message in modern terms. Once we have a re-established basis for our authority to preach the Word of God, we need to take some lessons in communications. I can never forget the description that an outsider gave of one preacher who stepped into the pulpit: he shifted from his normal voice into a “sonorous, funereal monotone that was punctuated by a guttural clearing of the throat and high-pitched ‘ohs’ for emphasis. Then he proceeded to build his sermon out of archaic pictures and mysterious cliches.” This is an indication that if the diffident and the discerning are not blocked out by our lack of authority, they surely will be by our jargon.

I once preached a sermon on the Spirit-filled life from which I purposely eliminated the words “sanctification,” “holiness,” and “second work of grace.” Afterwards, a minister came up to me and said, “You know, when you started this morning, I thought that you were going to preach a sermon on sanctification.” If we are that obligated to the use of standard words and phrases to convey the meaning of our faith to insiders, how confusing our language must be to a newcomer. The suggestion was made the other day that we hold a conference on communicating the Gospel in terms that men will understand. At times it seems as if everyone is getting through to the modern mind except educators and preachers. The obstacle in both cases may be an esoteric language that only the initiated can understand. What a tragedy it is if men have to battle through a complexity of words in order to find the simplicity of the Gospel.

Fourthly, the jet-propelled pulpit emphasizes the consistency between our creed and our code. Milton Rokeach, who has been doing major research in the area of religion, describes the paradox of religious belief. While our creed proclaims the concern for all men and the freedom from anxiety, studies show that believers have more religious prejudice and greater anxiety than unbelievers. The question then rises, “Is the creed unrealistic?” Further study tends to show that the creed is not at fault; it is the paradox between our creed and our code, between what is taught and how it is taught. The what of the creed is for the dissemination of the Gospel to all men, but the how of the code is to defend the Church from outside attack. Therefore, there is a contradiction between the what and the how. This contradiction becomes particularly acute when the code takes on the authority of an absolute. Then, deeply committed people show anti-religious feelings toward “outside” ethnic and religious groups. They also show the high anxiety of a defensive and protective religion.

Here is an area where the discerning man can be kept outside the circle of faith because he has to be honest with himself as well as with God. He will be concerned about the consistency between what we believe and how we teach it. He will not close his eyes to those portions of Scripture where we are selectively literal and to those areas of life where we are selectively moral. If we are literal in our interpretation of Scripture to protect a tradition, the discerning man will see right through it. If we are rigidly moral in one phase of life while unethical in another, the discriminating man who is new to the faith will dare to raise the question.

My purpose is not to propose that we adopt the code of the new morality, which makes the individual and the situation the final standard for ethical decisions. Discipline and method are too much a part of a sound Christian life. Neither can we forget that a discerning man is a disciplined man or that an uncommitted youth will readily respond to a difficult challenge. Our code, however, must distinguish between moral expectations and traditional expectations. An issue with a moral base rooted in the Word of God must be firmly held. An issue that protects the identity of the group may be held for what it is, but not for the exclusion of the man who doesn’t understand it.

Fifthly, the jet-propelled pulpit responds positively to new spiritual opportunities. The cult of Christianity is the organizational structure of the Church. As a social institution, the cult has all the elements of formal machinery—titles, committees, lines of authority, chains of command, and units of power. That change in this structure comes slowly sometimes deters the Gospel from reaching a critical area at the opportune time.

Our pulpits, however, must not be encumbered with the bureaucracy of official action or the protectiveness of a minister’s status symbol. The jet-propelled pulpit should be ready to respond to spiritual need when and where it arises. Although we all agree with this premise in principle, our practice sometimes belies our theory. A newsnote and an article from CHRISTIANITY TODAY bear witness to the problem.

First, a group of ministers met last summer to evaluate the effectiveness of Billy Graham’s ministry in mass evangelism. The particular point of concern was the long-range results of the new converts’ moving into local churches as active Christians. When the discussions were finished, Billy Graham and his methods were highly praised for bringing men to an initial encounter with Christ. The failure, however, was placed at the doorstep of the local churches that could not make the adjustment in their programs to assimilate new converts. They did not have a ministry geared to the needs of people who did not come up through their pattern.

A second example is the letter that you have probably read from Dr. John Alexander to his pastor, published in the January 15 issue of this magazine. As a professor who has caught the “harvest view” of the mission field in the state university, he pleads for the jet-propelled pulpit. When the local church does not attract the university crowd and the foundation house is only partially successful, another strategy is to adopt the campus as a mission field and send some church people into the harvest. The important question seems to be whether or not the pastor has an enlarged concept of the jet-propelled pulpit by which he can release these hometown missionaries from local church duties without insisting that they also leave the fellowship of the church. This is an important question that bears heavily upon the future, because the jet-propelled pulpit cannot be confined to the people who attend church.

This in a sense sums up my whole purpose in calling for a jet-propelled pulpit—a pulpit as up-to-date as the Word of God in its authority, as modern as the latest system of communications, and as contemporary as the newest opportunities for spiritual response.

In the beginning we said that educated youth who live in the city will determine the direction and character of American life. Having the abundance of an affluent society behind them, they will turn their attention to the quality of life in our society. In their search, the diffident urbanite will discover an interest, the discerning student will come to a belief, and the detached youth will make a commitment. If we ride a jet-propelled pulpit into the midst of the groups that are vying for the loyalties of these people, the claims of Christ will still be heard. If not, we will be listening to the hollow echo of our own voices condemning the world for not coming to church.

Two years ago I stood on the church steps in a small town in Illinois and watched uncertainly as the big yellow moving van pulled away from the curb. Inside, the movers had stowed my books, my files, and most of the other belongings I had accumulated in twenty years of preaching, the last ten in this sleepy little country town of 7,000 souls. Now, largely on my doctor’s advice, I was not moving to another congregation but actually “leaving the ministry.” It was the same old story played to the same tune that every minister knows by heart: an inherited problem, a tremendous growth rate, a new building, a couple of men with personal ambitions, and resulting factionalism. The stresses of removing the spiritual cancer took their toll, and after two trips to the hospital I heard the doctor’s recommendation.

He had suggested a temporary change of occupation. But as I walked back into that empty office and heard the echo of my footsteps mocking me from the gaping tiers of vacant bookshelves, it might as well have been the end of the world. I sat down in the quarter-oak chair, leaned back, and looked around. The office, though small, had been adequate during those early, hectic years. As attendance and program grew, a larger office was planned for the new building.

As I looked at the office, I thought of those who had crossed its threshold. Most of them had been honest, sincere people who had come for help, for strength, and for advice. They had looked to their minister for an explanation of the things that perplexed them, for an answer to questions they could not answer, for a solution to problems they could not solve. Arising from my chair, I walked past the bare-topped desk and out through the door. To whom do ex-ministers go at times like these?

Less than six months later I sat in my study in the beautiful home that we were able to afford on a more ample secular salary and agreed to return to the preaching ministry. It meant a considerable salary cut. It meant turning in the keys of the expensive company car I was permitted to drive as my own. It meant relinquishing an almost unlimited expense account. It meant giving up a promised promotion that would have brought prestige and financial security in my new profession. It meant returning to a schedule of work every night and every weekend.

Why did I do it? Why did I return to the ministry? Some have guessed that the ministry is easier than other vocations, but they are wrong. Some have supposed that the surroundings in a secular job might be unpleasant or distasteful, but mine were not. Others have tried to assign this and that motive to my decision. But here is my own evaluation of it. Behind all the sentimental drive and the thin veneer of superstition that have been associated with the decision to enter the Christian ministry, there lies a pulsing sense of urgency. It is that inner compulsion that keeps you working long hours and doing a job that might make you a first-class executive in the business world. It is that constant appeal that whispers just above the call of family, friends, country, and even life. You knew its call when the telephone’s shrill voice demanded that you stumble into your clothes and hurry to the hospital to be with a family facing the imminent death of a loved one. How many times have you heard it in your office, as you sat between the halves of what was once a marriage of love? You beheld the beckoning finger of this motivation each time you stood before a man and woman glowing with hope and declared them one in the Master’s name and service. You knew it each time you looked across a casket into the eyes of those who were clinging to your every syllable for some hint of hope.

We all know the neurotics and the hypocrites who cluster around the church—the frightened, the blustering, the insecure and cunning, the unloved and rejected. These are among the sick that Jesus came to heal. No more unlovely human being lives than the ambitious neurotic who mistakes your kindness for weakness, your patience for indecision, and your love for groveling. How easy to forget that he feels inferior, rejected, and threatened by his world and searches you out as a vulnerable target for his hostility, certain that you will not retaliate. And what joy you know as you turn the other cheek, praying that he will find in Christ the emotional balance you enjoy in your Lord. These frustrated misfits think of the world outside the church as filled with cold-eyed, dangerous predators. Although they may be emotionally treacherous and even consider you “the enemy,” they know that you will not prey on them but will pray for them. And you find your reward in loving the unlovely, in returning good for evil.

The alcoholic—despised by society, forsaken by his friends, misunderstood by his family, avoided by the moral and upright—comes to you as a last resort. He knows he can trust you. You may not understand, but he sees in you a little of the love of God that will not condemn him. He recognizes in you the meaning of the word “friend” as Jesus used it. And, though you may hide a natural revulsion mixed with pity behind your patience and kindness, you stand a little taller where God does the measuring when you try to lead the human derelict to safety from himself.

Or a frightened girl is led into your office by a tearful mother and an indignant father. No one has to tell you that she is another statistic on the illegitimacy tables. She has come to confide in you. You are the only man on earth, besides her doctor, who will hear her fears, answer her questions, and help her through her Gethsemane without prying, accusing, or lecturing. She instinctively knows that you will offer her the healing love of him who stood before another of her kind one day and said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” No one ever knows—that is, no one but you—the minor chord of fulfillment that sounds in your heart as she returns home from her ordeal to thank God through you for reaching out to her and helping her find solid ground in the security of faith.

The consuming fire of the ministry warms you again as you stand before a congregation waiting to be fed the realities of life. They come, wandering through a modern wilderness, often alone, eager and hungry for the bread of life that satisfies the inner man. And they come to you. You feel a deep, solid satisfaction when you reach far into the Word of life and know that your sermonic creation is meeting a vital congregational need. It fulfills your destiny to see the light of new understanding break over listening faces, to see taut muscles relax, to watch the spark of eager hope kindle into a warm flame of faith, and to behold lives that have been jarred awake by your impassioned plea.

These, then, are some of the signs along your road that tell you yours is a high calling. It is a road that not only struggles through low and sordid places but also soars atop windswept peaks of inspiration. Again and again you rise from the shadows and tears to walk with God in the cool of the evening in Eden’s new relationship.

As you follow your high calling, you find a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers who love you, weep over your sorrows and disappointments, and rejoice in your victories and your growth. You find a hundred brothers and sisters whose loyalty often exceeds that of your own flesh and blood. Thus your high calling comes to fruition.

Surely these must be some of the things the inspired writer had in mind when he declared: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him.” Your high calling is the very call of love. It is the motivation of the good Samaritan, the evangelist, the counselor, the pastor who goes about doing good. It is the catalyst that breaks down a hostile, anger-charged situation, finds the motive, makes forgiveness an ennobling experience that you would not miss. It is the touchstone of your relationship with Deity, the common ground from which, with God, you can view your bruises with objectivity and understanding. This is what enables you to understand the Saviour’s intercessory plea for his tormentors: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

We make such a fetish of proclaiming our humanity as ministers that we often obscure the larger fact that we have been with Jesus. We have walked with him and imbibed his spirit. We have talked with him and plumbed his mind. We have suffered with him, rejoiced with him, and worked with him to share his grace. Though we may not ask for his respect of our persons, he will not deny us our heritage as men who have loved him with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. If it is true that heaven is to be enjoyed in direct proportion to the depth of our relationship with our Saviour here on earth, then the slings and arrows of our calling will find their greatest recompense in our having walked with him through Gethsemane, through the valley of the shadow of death, and to Calvary if need be—and it must needs be. If it is true that the greatest among the children of God is the one serving the most unselfishly, then greatness is selfless humility—received as if undeserved, worn as if it did not exist, and lost when vainly displayed. Like happiness, this greatness is only the by-product of our participation in a cause higher than ourselves without thought of personal gain.

Yes, I returned to the ministry. I have wept a few bitter tears for the slow and hard of heart, and I have lost sleep in prayer for the selfish, the indifferent, and the neurotic. But I am home again—facing the problems and wounds of a sure and certain battle with our oldest enemy, but not facing them alone. The simple declaration of Jesus, “Lo, I am with you always,” is like the promise spoken by the prophet for the Lord: “Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Love your calling as a ministry sent to you by the Lord himself. It is the highest calling on earth. It is an invitation and challenge to walk with God where God walked when he visited our planet as our loving, serving, suffering Saviour.