Cover Story

Two Religions

Gordon H. Clark

A few years ago the Reformed Church in France adopted a new confession of faith. Today proposals for revising official doctrines are being prepared in America. There is some honesty in this procedure, and it relieves an awkward ecclesiastical predicament. Heretofore several large denominations have maintained biblical creeds. The candidate for ordination in one church had to answer the following two questions in the affirmative:

“Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice?

“Do you sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith of this Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures?”

But since alongside these standards many candidates were unbelievers, ordination became a service of solemn perjury.

There are two ways to remove perjury from the liberal churches. One is to alter the confession; the other is to alter the terms of subscription. The French church adopted a very orthodox confession, but the candidate had only to affirm that the confession expressed ideas which the church had held in the past. Belief in the doctrines was explicitly ruled out as a test of good standing in the denomination.

In the United States it is unlikely that any denomination will amend only the vows and leave its confession untouched. Rumblings against the doctrine of predestination have long been heard in the Calvinistic churches. Some sixty years ago two denominations made a very small alteration designed to weaken this doctrine; changes, if made in this decade, will be major ones.

Such changes will mirror a complete revolution in the theology of the churches in question. Predestination has been the heart and core of Presbyterianism. If the man on the street knows anything at all about the differences among churches, he will immediately identify predestination as the distinctive feature of the Reformed churches. If this is dropped, Presbyterian churches will not be Presbyterian.

Other doctrines may also be changed. The Virgin Birth has been under attack for years. Today the Resurrection is often reduced to an unknowable some-thing-or-other excluded from the domain of history. Original sin, the Atonement, and justification by faith are altered beyond recognition. Probably few doctrines would be retained in their biblical purity in a twentieth-century creed.

The Reconstruction Of Christianity

Something of equal importance is not so readily discernible. Not only are changes proposed in the individual doctrines, but a profound change results in the significance and function of doctrine as such. Or, to put it in more common terms, the revision of doctrines reflects a completely different idea of what Christianity really is.

In the March, 1963, issue of Perspective Dr. George H. Kehm wrote a revealing article, “The Bible, Orthodoxy and Karl Barth.” The main thrust of the conclusion was that the orthodox and the liberals have two very different notions of what Christianity is. The two groups do not differ merely on incidental, isolated points; they subscribe to completely antithetical concepts of religion.

The evangelical tradition, says Dr. Kehm, is rationalistic. For people in this tradition “the existential-personalistic way of thinking is a stumbling block.” Their “conception of personal knowledge is painfully barren.… The character of the revelatory word as an existential address is almost entirely overlooked in favor of the idea that the word provides true information about the redemptive event.”

This author has drawn the contrast with remarkable accuracy. Christianity from the beginning has held that the Word of God, the Bible, gives us true information. It does not merely record the death and resurrection of Christ; it tells us what these events mean. And what it tells us is true.

The existential form of religion is not interested in true information. In fact, men like Rudolf Bultmann and H. W. Bartsch hold that the Scripture docs not even inform us that Christ rose from the dead. All the Scripture contains—so they say—is the preaching of the early Church, and it is supposedly impossible to determine what Christ actually said or did. Existentialism is actually an anti-intellectualistic, uninformed religion. Orthodoxy is interested in truth.

Professor George S. Hendry is another pertinent American example in respect to the revision of doctrine and its role. He too rejects individual doctrines maintained by the Reformers. Not only must predestination go: he further declares the Reformed doctrine of the Atonement to be unbiblical. Naturally Luther’s and Calvin’s doctrine of justification cannot survive under the new theory of the Atonement.

Even more important is the new view of the significance of doctrine as such. In the introduction to The Westminster Confession for Today Dr. Hendry writes:

Doctrines are not faith; they are statements of faith in propositional form. Faith has often been compared to a journey or a pilgrimage. Doctrine may then be compared to a map. No one would suppose he had reached his destination merely because he had located it on the map, or traced the route that leads to it. Yet the map is an indispensable aid to any traveler in unfamiliar country. And just as the map is right when it enables the traveler to reach the end of his journey, so doctrine is right when it enables the pilgrim to reach ‘the end of his faith.’

One should note that this analogy applies to the Bible itself as well as to the creeds, for the Bible also is written in sentences—propositions. When therefore Dr. Hendry in the next sentence says that doctrines are never “infallible and irreformable,” his words apply as much to the Word of God as to the confession. On these premises the Bible must itself be amended, and not simply the creeds where and if they inadequately reflect the Bible.

The analogy is attractive, but like all analogies it is misleading. Obviously a doctrine or a set of doctrines is not our ultimate destination, heaven. But it does not follow that doctrine is merely a map. If an illustration is needed, let us say that doctrine is the road itself. If we change the doctrine, we change the road and head off in a wrong direction. Here we recall Luke’s words to the effect that doctrine (i.e., the propositions Luke wrote) is “a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us.” Let this be clearly understood.

In fact, this illustration of doctrine as a map is so inept that even when corrected so as to make doctrine the road, it remains misleading. After we arrive at a destination, we not only throw away the map; we also cease using the road. But in heaven we shall continue to believe these infallible and irreformable doctrines and learn many others too. They will remain our precious possessions forever.

Unprincipled Subjective Preferences

This new religion with its substitution of existential experiences for objective doctrinal information founders on its uncontrolled subjectivism. Along with their rejection of the Atonement and the Resurrection, the liberals develop a zeal for urban renewal or for admitting Red China to the United Nations. Whether the social aims of this new religion are for the moment good or evil is an important question; but one must note that such aims are only for the moment. Or, better expressed, these social aims, in distinction from opposite aims, cannot validly be deduced from existential principles.

Once real truth and information are abolished and the words are redefined as the passionate appropriation of subjectivity, there is no way to insist that one aim is moral and another immoral. When subjective decision is made all-important, the aim decided upon becomes unimportant. The will is no longer guided by truth but acts irrationally.

The end result should be clear: a church will have no intelligible, intellectual, rational doctrines but will be a political action group under the direction of men who can impose their personal existential preferences.

Cover Story

God Stands behind the Book

Emile Cailliet

The living God of our Hebrew-Christian tradition cannot possibly have been indifferent to the ways in which the biblical record took shape and became the Book we now have. Neither have there been degrees in his concern. He by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered knows and cares. He knew of the struggles of those whom he inspired to select and write. The work was theirs, but at every step he was guiding and controlling them. He had to, because they were mostly dealing with patterns of facts and assertions beyond their understanding. Surely one cannot think of the Almighty indulging in concessive pronouncements like our slovenly, “That’s good enough,” and, “That will do.” Ultimately, the work of these men was his work, with all the power and authority this implies.

The Bible is an act of God through rulers, scribes, fishermen, tax collectors, tent-makers—men belonging to every stratum of their society. God stands behind the Book and the canonical status of its parts. This accounts for its uniqueness, for its being the foundation on which a man must build or be lost. Only God can rightly speak of God and interpret the things that are God’s, even as his ways defy human speculation. In these days of disorientation of outlook, the time has come to exalt the divine factualness of the Bible.

But why this disorientation, this restlessness and loss of hope? Alas, not so much because the Bible is attacked as because it is no longer attacked. The Book has fallen into disuse in the measure it has been discredited in the minds of those who meant to take its measure.

On A False Battlefront

Generally, evangelicals have failed to detect this shift in viewpoint. They continue to take their stand on a false front, ready to repulse the attacks of an enemy who is no longer there. Even the name of “enemy” is ill-taken in this particular case. No scholar worth his salt is likely to have a malicious purpose in regard to the Scriptures. It is just that at the apex of his carefully documented, rationalizing thrust, an honest seeker after truth echoes Luther: “God help me, I cannot do otherwise.” And it is at this point that evangelicals may step forward and submit the issue to a deeper probing.

Whenever historical criticism is applied to the documents of Scripture nowadays, the methods used to test the factualness of biblical assertions are those currently accepted by secular historians. Moreover, the very first condition laid down by these methods is to leave out of consideration all presuppositions of faith. This condition applies to source material, the composition of the Gospels, the problem of their inter-relations and of their documentary value. The facts of history are accordingly considered apart from the Christian understanding of their significance. Nay, according to the proponents of historical criticism, it is the Christian way of understanding history that is the essence of faith. Faith itself, as they see it, can never be a way of learning history. No wonder a scholar like Bultmann has been led to sum up what can be known of the life and personality of Jesus “as simply nothing.” What we have here is a striking example of the conclusion’s being implied in the method.

Far be it from me to castigate the scholar as a person, or to deny the merits of a highly developed historical method. The point is rather to ascertain whether a purely secular method is fully applicable for historical criticism of the biblical documents. For surely a basic principle of research is that every field of knowledge, if not each problem, is to be approached according to the most appropriate method. Once a problem has been formulated, the next task is to devise the strategy most likely to solve it. At this point, new features in the object of study call for innovations in methodology.

Suppose a man whose knowledge was restricted to the field of heat engines were confronted by the mechanisms of a dynamo. He might at the outset derive some satisfaction from realizing that the newly discovered wires wound in coils were made up of the same copper he had observed in kettles. But he would soon find out that furnace and steam play no part in the functioning of the new machine. This man would have to learn that the mechanisms of a dynamo cannot be accounted for by one who leaves electricity out of consideration. Or imagine a physicist at grips with the apparently unaccountable fact that living organisms function with the admirable orderliness of pure mechanisms in the midst of decay and death. While the laws that rule the physical universe apply also to the organic world, the biological realm at the same time testifies to the rule of new laws. These, let it be understood, need not be alien to physics. An order-from-order principle comes to light in their combined play, which pertains to nothing short of a transfiguration of the purely physical. These laws account for the physical order. The physical order cannot fully account for them. Truly there must be a “cheater” somewhere, as Eddington might have said. This much is sure: the classical physicist can no longer carry on business as usual, if he is to do justice to the structure of living matter. He must be prepared to look for a new type of law, for a new principle, possibly in the realm of quantum physics.

As we proceed from these necessarily imperfect analogies to the kind of historical criticism currently applied to the Bible, we are led to wonder whether a method preoccupied with sheer historicity may not overlook the more-than-historical dimension which faith in the Living God found in the events and assertions under consideration. The plain fact is that it was in virtue of this faith that these events and assertions were held to be unique and truly decisive. Indeed, they were remembered at the historical level only because they were believed to be of such a nature that, while no less genuinely historical than the events emphasized by secular history, they were different from all other historical events and assertions.

A Critical Reversal

Surely it makes a big difference whether or not the historical critic approaches the biblical documents with an awareness of the more-than-historical dimension of the data they attest. If one is going to apply a critical method to the Bible scientifically, he must first try to find out what the Bible is about and then investigate the ways in which it is about this. The fault of much criticism is that it reverses the order. Thus a secularly minded methodology dares condition God and the things that are God’s. No wonder its naturalistically inspired ways stick in the throat of evangelicals! Indeed, the conclusions reached by means of such a methodology have all along been implied in its procedure.

The next device invited in the secularized quest for “truth” is likely to be some mechanical contrivance. Indeed, a Church of Scotland minister used computers to show that out of fourteen New Testament epistles currently attributed to Paul, five were by a single author and the rest the work of five different authors. Whereupon a conference on computers and the humanities held at Yale University was told that by applying the minister’s very method, one could prove that James Joyce’s Ulysses was the work of five authors and that none of these wrote Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. All in all, six authors could be assigned to the two novels. Concluded Dr. Sidney M. Lamb, associate professor of linguistics at Yale, a computer is merely “an instruction-following machine” that does only what it is told, or programmed, to do.

Let us hope that the historical criticism of Bible documents will not further invite the suggestion that it is on occasion reducible to a similar status. The crying need of our day in this matter is for a reversal from a naturalistically inspired course of study to one proceeding from the more-than historical dimension of the facts and events attested in Holy Writ.

The Book is what it is because God stands behind it. Hence its genuine meaning and authority. Scholars who ignore this elementary fact in the historical method they propound may well be likened to those geometricians who were exposed by Pascal as being nothing but geometricians. Their trouble is that they fail to see what is in front of them. Only in the present case the failure may prove costly.

Cover Story

In Defense of the Resurrection

C. H. Pinnock

Absurdity compounded into blasphemy” is the way Paul Tillich describes the traditional Christian belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is not alone in his provocative and radical sentiment. A distressingly wide range of theological opinion today, centering in the Bultmannian camp, would agree that taking the Resurrection as a fact of history is more of an offense to faith than a support for it. Obviously this kind of assault on biblical Christianity deserves careful and decisive rebuttal. And it is well to realize the precise nature of the modern objection. For this skepticism goes far beyond mere doubt in the cogency of the evidences for the Resurrection into unbelief of a more subtle variety. If the Resurrection were, for the sake of argument, an actual occurrence, then what could it mean? It is the problem of meaning, hanging over the question of objectivity, that gives modern man a fright.

Paul was so certain that the Resurrection, like all other events, took place on the stage of world history that he confidently adduced proofs of its historicity (1 Cor. 15:3–11). Indeed, he boldly affirmed, “If Christ be not raised, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (15:14). The person who is prepared to expose the Resurrection to the test of impartial public examination like this is manifestly convinced of its occurrence. The German theologian Rudolf Bultmann is less sure but feels Paul’s argument at this point to be fatal. He is alarmed at the prospect of seeing the Resurrection rendered uncertain by critical investigation. Therefore, he seeks to immunize the event from the secular historian in the interests of faith. He does so by severing the resurrection event from the space-time line of world history, and by relocating it on the shadowy level of “theological history.” What he has done becomes clear immediately. By banishing the Resurrection from real history, Bultmann has also robbed it of its saving power. For its value to faith consisted precisely in this, that it occurred in genuine history.

Contrary to much modern theology, it is in fact no weakness to rest our faith on God’s activity in history. Biblical revelation and history go hand in hand. The Resurrection is an event that actually occurred in secular history, whether or not the non-Christian cares to admit it. The Gospel is universally valid for all nations, because its foundation articles are objectively true. Man is faced by a decision he cannot ultimately evade, because the Gospel confronts him in his world.

Beyond The Evidence

The real enemy of the Resurrection is the philosopher, not the historian. The Greeks offended by Paul’s preaching on the Areopagus were upset, not by the misuse of historical evidence, but by the idea of a resurrected body. They might have been content with Paul’s message had he employed the Resurrection as a helpful parable or existential symbol. But the one thing they could not tolerate was a resurrection inside history. The implications of such a claim were just too revolutionary to be contemplated. An affirmation of grandeur concerning the prophet Jesus, yes; but nothing more tangible than that! It so happens, however, that the New Testament will not permit the loss of the factualness of this event.

Most modern unbelievers are not interested in the evidence for or against the Resurrection. In actual fact, such evidence is quite compelling. It is at least conceivable that, faced with the available historical data for the Resurrection, some non-Christian might admit its probability. But every investigator interprets his facts within a philosophical framework. For most secular historians this means that only those events have significance which fit in with the empirical universe, excluding God and the supernatural. Therefore, even if probable, the Resurrection would be such an odd, inexplicable occurrence that it would be absurd to the secular historian. It would remain an offensive surd until it shattered the naturalism that rejected it.

Modern man believes the Resurrection is absurd, then, not because the evidence for it is weak—he seldom pauses to examine that—but because it cannot fit in with his world-view. He is a confirmed naturalist. There is but one level of reality, Nature is all there is, the whole show. The Resurrection implies an inadmissible thought, that a higher level of being exists, outside the range of his senses, to which the glorified body of Jesus belongs. Until he will admit the possibility of a theistic world, no amount of evidence will convince modern man that the Resurrection is not absurd, it is an evangelical responsibility to clarify that understanding of reality, the biblical world-view, in which this event makes sense and indeed proclaims victory.

Though it seems a little odd, the radical Christians at Corinth did not actually deny the resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor. 15:12). Instead, they rejected the coming resurrection of all men, an awkward concept they doubtless considered crude. It is extraordinary that Paul was able to convince them of the empty tomb. His evidence must have struck them with some weight, for their belief in this went against their normal disbelief in the idea of resurrection. The man who does not believe in ghosts, for example, requires very compelling evidence from the person claiming to have seen one! These Corinthians probably spiritualized the notion of resurrection and continued to think of life after death in terms of the immortality of the soul. For had they not already “risen” with Christ, being in possession of all that really mattered (Rom. 6:4; 1 Cor. 4:8)? Resurrection was a thing of the past (2 Tim. 2:18).

The relevance of all this is clear. Jesus’ resurrection must have appeared to them as a freak event. They believed it, but it defied explanation in their worldview. And because a freak event is meaningless, it was but a very short step to denying the event itself. Unless this resurrection in the past has a meaning for us which only its literal eventness can convey, it is silly to insist on its objectivity. In point of fact, this is so. The rationale of the bodily resurrection lies deep in the nature of redemption. It was the first stage in the redemptive chain reaction that has our bodies in view.

Redemption Is Physical

The Bible describes the new creation in a far more concrete way than many realize. When the average man thinks of life after death, he sees a grey mist. He thinks of the beyond as timeless and spaceless, a world in which particulars are undifferentiated, dissolved into the ocean of generality. His conception is constructed out of negatives. Beside this the biblical picture is most specific, crammed with solid description of city and land, avenues and persons. The language may be profoundly metaphorical, but the analogy between this world and the next is nonetheless real. If C. S. Lewis was right, we may expect the new creation to be more real than the old! By contrasting the modern and biblical ideas of the world to come, we come into contact with the true problem of resurrection. There is no place in the modern conception for a resurrected body; this belief demands a radically different worldview.

It is time that evangelicals made this point very clear. Too often, reasons adduced for the bodily resurrection are trivial and inconsequential. The well-known hymn announces: “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.” A warm sentiment, but a weak reply to doubt. This mystical nearness of Jesus is mediated by the Holy Spirit (John 14:26). But his glorified body is not present in this world. The risen Christ dwells with the Father, interceding for us at his right hand (Rom. 8:34). Actually, the hymn requires only that the “spirit” of Jesus somehow survived his death, an idea very far from belief in resurrection. It is even insufficient, if not misleading, to speak of the Resurrection only as God’s seal on Christ’s atoning work. For this explanation makes the event simply a useful corroboration of something else; it does not establish its intrinsic value and indispensability. Other possibilities were then open to indicate his approval. But the Resurrection cannot be optional to Christianity. Its factual character is essential and is constitutive of Christian faith.

Modern man is preoccupied with death. Philosophy has never found it possible to absorb this brute fact of life. Existentialism accepts death and the bitter nihilism that goes with it. Death allows man no peace of mind. It cancels his hopes and dreams. Nowhere does human life seem more absurd than in the shadow of death.

But the Resurrection can change all that. A new chapter in world history was suddenly opened. For the first time, the curse of sin was lifted from the creation. Death could not hold Jesus (Acts 2:24); he emerged triumphant from the grave. As risen Man, he stands at the head of a new humanity. Creation is poised on the rim of renewal. His glorified existence holds the promise of our own. Death has been overcome.

But this sounds strange to modern ears. Man forgets that his world is really God’s creation, that when God made a physical body, he meant it. Flesh is not repugnant to God. It is a worthy vehicle of existence and is capable of resurrection by God’s power. In Christ, God has begun to redeem the whole man, body and soul, whom he created in his image. In reality, therefore, the bodily resurrection is only “blasphemy” to Zeus, the Greek god of dualism. It is not so to Jehovah, the Lord of Creation.

Ultimately, rejection of the bodily resurrection boils down to rejection of the doctrine of creation. Modern man does not accept his nature as embodied creature. He seeks, not salvation by resurrection, but escape by deification. It is not intellectual integrity that forbids belief in this event! It is a deliberate philosophical refusal to face the world as God created it. God would save the whole man; the unbeliever wants no part of this. And apart from repentance and faith, he shall have none.

The universe has heard the word of triumph and longs for deliverance from corruption and decay (Rom. 8:19–22). But it has this hope solely because a Man was raised in glory from among its children. The Resurrection announces that new day when sin and death will be banished and God alone will be King in the midst of his new people (Rev. 21:1–22:5). Hallelujah! “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken.”

Cover Story

Christ the Victor

Harold Lindsell

More than three thousand years ago, Job asked the question: “If a man die, shall he live again?” This question is still on the lips of every man. It has been asked by every generation, and some kind of answer has been given by every religion. But no religion save Christianity has ever found a satisfactory and compelling answer to it. With the single exception of Christ, all the great religious leaders are dead. Zoroaster is dead; Confucius is dead; Laotze is dead; Buddha is dead; Mohammed is dead. None of them arose from the grave.

With eyes closed to Christian truth, hearts and minds locked in darkness, many cry out that man is mortal and nothing more. “Life’s circle ends with death,” they say, “and resurrection’s morning is the phantasy of deluded men whose tombs will never release their captives and whose pious hopes of resurrection partake of no reality save death itself. Man goes into the grave to rise no more.” Corliss Lamont, the well-known opponent of immortality, has written: “I have come to the conclusion that the life which human beings know on this earth is the only one they will ever have.… And in this case the probabilities against the human personality surviving in any worthwhile way the event called death seem to me so overwhelming that we are justified in regarding immortality as an illusion” (The Illusion of Immortality, Corliss Lamont, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950, p. xi).

We Christians do not accept this futile view of life. We place our loved ones in coffins knowing that we shall see them again. We bury them in the earth confident that it will not consume them eternally. Though we weep at the open grave, we see beyond it the dawn of a brighter day for Christians who have died. Therefore we proclaim for all men to hear that there is a resurrection day. Tombs shall be opened and coffins emptied. The earth shall release its captives, and even the sea shall give up the bodies committed to its restless waves. Neither fire nor famine, pestilence nor bomb, shall slay forever. In that resurrection day the dead in Christ shall rise, and rising they shall live eternally in bodies that have been redeemed from corruption, delivered from the effects and marks of sin, and fashioned into incorruptible bodies after the likeness of Jesus Christ to the praise of our God.

Men ask: “How can you say this, and on what basis do you make such a staggering claim?” There is an answer for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. That answer rests on facts. We shall live again because Jesus Christ is alive. Our bodies shall be raised incorruptible because his body was raised incorruptible. The Apostle Peter testified to the great truth of Christ’s resurrection. Standing before multitudes of unbelieving Jews he cried out: “He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.” When Paul stood before King Agrippa he said to him, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?”

In 1855 Louis Napoleon, then a refugee in the United States, received a letter from his mother, who was in Switzerland. He carried this letter next to his heart throughout the rest of his life, in the days of the Third Empire and amid the reverses of Sedan down to the hour of his death in England. His mother wrote that she was facing an operation which she had no hope of surviving, and that therefore she would never see him again in this life. She finished her message to her son with these imperishable words: “Have faith that we shall meet again. It is too necessary not to be true.” Somehow this woman had grasped the truth that has eluded atheists and agnostics alike. Somehow the idea of the resurrection from the dead made sense to her.

We celebrate Easter because we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. All around the world men and women gather together to bear testimony to this great fact of history. The stone has been rolled away from the tomb. The angel voice has been heard: “He is not here; he is risen as he said.” Thomas, the doubting apostle, to whom Jesus said, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless but believing,” has cried out: “My Lord and my God.” Peter, the dispirited and frightened denier of Jesus, has received the Holy Spirit and has gone forth to witness to the Resurrection with a new power. Paul, the persecutor of the Church, has been granted a vision of the risen Christ and has left all to follow the living Galilean and to preach his Gospel. Yes, Christ has risen from the dead. But what does this mean? What truth does it teach us? What difference does it make?

First, the Resurrection means that God has triumphed in history. We know that the end of the world has not yet come. We know that principalities and powers still exist. Satan still is the prince of the powers of darkness and the ostensible ruler of this world. Jesus himself spoke in John’s Gospel of Satan as in possession of this present evil world. When Satan tempted Jesus at the beginning of our Lord’s ministry, he claimed power over the world and offered to share that power with the Son of God if he would bow down and worship him. Jesus did not deny Satan’s power at that time. But later he proclaimed final victory over him, saying, “He shall be cast out.” He shall be cast “clean out” is the better rendering of these words of Scripture. Later Jesus said that Satan stands condemned. The seed of the woman whose heel was bruised has indeed crushed the head of the serpent. Jesus Christ, having been lifted up on the Cross and raised from the dead, has won the victory over Satan, sin, and death. Satan has been judged. While his frightful dominion continues for a season, his ultimate hold has been broken. God’s kingdom has come, and Satan will at last be banished from earth, from heaven, and from our lives forever.

Free Men In God’s World

We Christians face life with all its complexities, all its trials, and all its temptations. Amid them all we can say with conviction: Christ is victor, because Satan has been defeated. We do not grovel in the dust as slaves who have been bound in Satan’s prison. We lift our hearts and our eyes to the heavens. We breathe the air as free men. We stand among the redeemed because God has triumphed. At Eastertime we can say for all to hear that this is God’s world because he has redeemed it. He did not leave it in its degradation nor permit it to be consumed in its sin. He has recalled it to himself and has promised that the day will come when it too shall be released from its bondage; when night, tears, sickness, and sorrow shall be banished from his kingdom forever. Truly God has entered into history in Jesus Christ and has triumphed in his cross and resurrection.

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun

Does his successive journeys run.

His kingdom stretch from shore to shore

Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

Second, Easter means that there is the forgiveness of sins. The world is out of joint. Something is desperately wrong with men. Selfishness, greed, depravity, and lust abound. Men know more than ever before. In place of ignorance has come knowledge. But it has not kept men from sinning. The word of Scripture lays bare the ugly fact of their separation from God because of sin. Paul proclaims that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” “There is none righteous, no, not one.” All flesh stands guilty before God. All men have been cut off from his kingdom and from his presence. All men are without hope, for they are without God. But what do the Scriptures say? God has taken the initiative. He has done something to restore men to his fellowship, to let them enter into his kingdom, to permit them to eat at his table, to allow them to be called the sons of God and to be transformed into his likeness. What has he done?

Forgiveness Made Possible

Before Easter there was the darkness of Friday. Before the Resurrection there was the Cross on which the Son of Man was lifted up. The Devil and his demons did their worst, and sinful men helped them crucify the Lord of glory. But unknown to men the very deed they performed was the divine method that made possible the forgiveness of sins. The very cutting off of the Redeemer was the act that made redemption a reality. The Cross that was a symbol of defeat became God’s symbol of victory. Jesus Christ died, but not because men had the power to take his life from him. “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” He died of himself that he might bear the sins of all of us, for we are all responsible for crucifying him. And he rose again in demonstration of the power of God and as a witness that his sacrifice was acceptable and accepted, that his atoning work was finished, that his redemption is a reality. In his life there is forgiveness. The vile, corrupted, and dissolute come to find mercy in him. They hear him proclaim those victorious words: “Because I live ye shall live also.”

See how the Apostle Paul preached this great truth of the forgiveness of sins through Jesus’ risen life. In a sermon at the Jewish synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia, he said: “He, whom God raised again, saw no corruption. Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.” How beautifully Paul blends together the two thoughts of justification and forgiveness! God declares that the sinner is accepted as righteous by faith in Jesus Christ through the power of his resurrection. In the courts of heaven the slate is wiped clean; the debtor is discharged from every bit of his indebtedness; his name is placed in the Lamb’s Book of Life from which it shall never be erased. He has been granted the right to live. As God justifies in heaven everyone who believes, so to everyone who believes he makes known here on earth the forgiveness of his sins. The guilt, the burden, and the power of sin are gone. The soul stands free and untrammeled. So great is God’s mercy that he not only forgives; he also forgets. How sweet the words sound: “Buried in the deepest part of the deepest sea; cast behind his back; remembered against us no more.” We whose lives were in bondage and whose hearts were darkened have been delivered. Truly Easter means for us the forgiveness of our sins.

Yet there is a third great meaning of Easter and Christ’s resurrection. They mean that there is hope in this world. Now there are two kinds of hope of which we must speak. There is the hope that comes to those who are the children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. This hope provides optimism of heart and buoyancy of spirit. It says that however dark the night, a new day will dawn. It proclaims that Christians have a divine destiny. Death and the grave are not life’s weary end. Christians do not say with Robert Ingersoll, the agnostic: “We do not know which is better, life or death.… Every cradle asks us whence; every coffin asks us whither. The poor barbarian, weeping over his dead, can answer the question as satisfactorily as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful ignorance of one is just as consoling as the learned and unmeaningful words of the other.” On the contrary we know that, while we must die, should the Lord tarry, we cannot remain dead, because Christ is alive forevermore. No hymn-writer has captured this truth better than Christian Gellert:

Jesus lives, and so shall I.

Death! thy sting is gone forever!

He who deigned for me to die,

Lives, the bands of death to sever.

He shall raise me from the dust:

Jesus is my Hope and Trust.

Jesus lives and death is now

But my entrance into glory.

Courage, then, my soul for thou

Hast a crown of life before thee;

Thou shalt find thy hopes were just;

Jesus is the Christian’s Trust.

Moreover, the Scriptures gloriously teach that Christianity is not only a faith for the future life. We do have a deathless hope of the life beyond the grave. We do proclaim that the dead in Christ shall rise again. We do preach that heaven lies before us with death only as a doorway to that land that is fairer than day. Yet the Resurrection has something for us here and now. Eternal life does not beckon only after we die. It begins when first we know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Therefore, in reality, however incomplete and imperfect, we enter now into our inheritance in Jesus Christ in this life. We have a new quality of life; we have a new power over sin; we have a new perspective and outlook. Life takes on a new dimension. There is a glow in our hearts and a light on our countenances. We are “a peculiar people,”—that is, to say, a “beyond ordinary” people, a people for his own possession. As such we are to reflect Christ’s light and his glory. We may have little of this world’s goods; we may enjoy no great fame; we may occupy no high offices; yet we have untold riches and are members of the royal family of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Reflection And Action

The Christian is the light of the world; he is the salt of the earth. He lives now to reflect the beauty of Jesus and to do the work of God in his life. He is buttressed by hundreds of promises from the Word of God, indwelt by His Holy Spirit, and granted His quickening power. He knows that if the world is to hear of the Redeemer, it must hear through him. He is not only saved for heaven; he is also saved to serve and to witness here and now. Christian, arise in the strength of what you are and what you have! Go forth conquering and to conquer!

There is a final word that must be spoken. It is directed, not to those who name the name of Christ, but to those who are strangers to him. The Resurrection speaks both to Christians and to non-Christians. To the latter it says: Life may have dealt you some hard blows. All of your efforts may have come to nought. For you there may seem to be neither rhyme nor reason to life itself. You ask: What’s it all about? and, Is life worthwhile? Yet for you there is hope. However dark and difficult the road, there is a way out. The living Jesus stands before you in your darkness. His nail-scarred hands are outstretched, and he beckons to you. His invitation is the same one that has satisfied the longings of men through the ages: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “He that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.”

John the apostle of love declared that as many as received Jesus, “to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” Thus Cod is saying that there is hope for sinners. Christ can come into the sinner’s heart this morning just as he came into the hearts of people long ago. Easter is not only for the fortunate few who know him now. It is also for the multitudes who do not know him. He is here, always here, and with arms outstretched, waiting, waiting, waiting for you to come. The decision you make today will determine whether he waits in vain or whether Easter will dawn and the sun rise in your heart.

World Council: Survival and Significance

W. Stanley Mooneyham

Controversy that resulted in delaying the appointment of a new general secretary of the World Council of Churches was an “instructive” incident for the international organization, according to a leading official of the United Church of Canada.

Dr. Ernest E. Long, secretary of his church’s General Council, addressing a symposium for workers at the Interchurch Center in New York, reviewed this year’s meeting of the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee at Enugu, Nigeria.

The churchman, a member of the WCC policy-making unit, stated that during closed sessions “sharp differences of opinion were expressed” over the nomination of the Rev. Patrick C. Rodger, Scottish Episcopal clergyman, as successor to Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft in the WCC’s top executive post.

“That the Central Committee survived this ordeal without serious permanent cleavage in its ranks,” he said, “is a fact of considerable significance.…”

At the Enugu meeting, rather than act on the nomination of Rodger the committee appointed a new nominating committee to consider additional candidates.

This action, Long stressed, as reported by Religious News Service, “was not a reflection” either on the Executive Committee, which made the initial nomination, “or on Mr. Rodger, who within his own field is held in high esteem.”

The 43-year-old Scottish clergyman is director of the World Council’s Department of Faith and Order.

Concerning a successor to Visser ’t Hooft, one of the world’s leading ecumenists and WCC general secretary since the organization was formally organized in 1948, Long said the next secretary “must be one in whom the churches have confidence, and also the staff in Geneva, which is made up of highly intelligent and dedicated people, and whose morale is an important factor in the work of the Council.”

“It seemed to us to become clear in the discussion,” he continued, “that the fundamental concept of the World Council of Churches has changed, and the new general secretary, as did Dr. Visser ’t Hooft, must reflect that change.

“The World Council is more than the sum total of its parts. It is not a superchurch, but it does possess an ecclesiological significance far beyond that envisaged in 1950.

“The office of general secretary has come, therefore, to stand in a new relationship to the churches and to the total church. He must be more than an administrator or a theologian. He must be the embodiment of the new ecclesiological concept of the church.…”

As the Central Committee delayed action on the secretaryship, Visser ’t Hooft was requested to remain in the post through a “critical moment in church relations.” He indicated he would continue until the committee meets in February, 1966, instead of retiring as initially planned next September, on his sixty-fifth birthday.

The committee expressed a desire for the Dutch Reformed clergyman’s continued service through the fourth and last session of the Vatican Council, next fall, and because of “tensions in church relations between East and West.…”

In his review of the Central Committee’s sessions, Long called attention to the approval of a joint working group with the Roman Catholic Church and the general improvement of WCC-Catholic relations.

“It is astonishing to see the almost unbelievable development in this relationship,” he said.

“At Rhodes in 1959 the possibility of a closer relationship with the Roman Catholic Church was looked upon with suspicion and misgiving.”

Sanctuary For The Scrolls

Israel’s prized Dead Sea Scrolls will soon have a fancy home of their own as part of a national museum complex on the western edge of Jerusalem. The museum, scheduled to open in May, will incorporate the Bezalel Art Museum, the Samuel Bronfman Biblical and Archaeological Museum, the Billy Rose Garden of Sculpture, and the Shrine of the Book. Israelis predict it will be “the largest museum between Rome and Tokyo.”

It is the shrine that will become the sanctuary of the scrolls. A white dome rises from a square basin studded with fountains which will send jets of water cascading down the dome.

The Jewishness Of Rina Eitani

Israel’s League for the Prevention of Religious Coercion points to a politically inspired “witch hunt” in the Jewish sector of Nazareth as a blatant example of the evils of union of state and religion. League leaders have challenged the National Religious Party for its attack upon Mrs. Rina Eitani, Mapai (Labor) Party’s city councilor, following the NRP’s discovery that she is a “Gentile” who never formally converted to Judaism. According to religious law, a Jew is one who has a Jewish mother or has undergone ritual conversion.

Religious party leaders branded Mrs. Eitani an imposter and set out to achieve their political objectives by destroying her hard-earned position as a leading citizen of Upper Nazareth.

Mrs. Eitani suffered under the Nazis in Poland as a Jewess, endured imprisonment in Cyprus as an illegal immigrant to Palestine under the British, and worked in a border settlement during the early days of the state. She married in a Jewish ceremony and is raising her children as Jews in every respect. She is a competent civil servant and a specialist in immigrant absorption.

Religious party leaders shattered Rina Eitani’s life with such calloused indifference that a wave of revulsion and shock swept the nation. First, a ministry of interior official demanded her passport. Then the NRP issued pamphlets decrying her racial impurity and challenging her fitness to serve her city and her state. Schoolmates of the Eitani children taunted them with cries of “Goy” (Gentile) and sent them home in tears.

Davar, a Hebrew language daily, defined the campaign as a “new and ugly phase in the NRP’s struggle in Upper Nazareth against Mapai, which has handled the affairs of this Jewish city since its erection eight years ago.” One Israeli correspondent wrote that the NRP apparently “regards all means as justified” in order to achieve more representation on the local council.

As the smoke cleared and Mrs. Eitani began putting together her shattered world, Israelis recalled the 1961 court decision in the case of Brother Daniel, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, who wished to become an Israeli citizen. He applied for citizenship on the basis of his Jewish birth. The court ruled, however, that he was not entitled to citizenship on those grounds, because public opinion withheld Jewish status from a person who had converted to another faith. Clearly it was a secular decision, not based on religious law. Now, argues the League Against Religious Coercion, it may also be said in light of the loud outcry in the Eitani case that public opinion regards as Jewish a woman who was born to a Jewish father and who has led a Jewish life.

Consistency, if not decency, urges, the league demands, that the cloud over Rina Eitani’s Jewishness be removed. Some observers fear that the situation will become even more confused in the days ahead if religion and state remain united. More cases, they say, can be expected to plague the personal and family lives of Israelis. But the demand is swelling in Israel for the government to make greater efforts in the field of human rights and religious liberty.

DWIGHT L. BAKER

Reacting Healthily

Last autumn Archbishop Martti Simojoki of Helsinki said some hard words about the abuse of free thought shown in a new novel entitled Juhannustanssit by the Finnish author Hannu Salama, in which blasphemous words about Christ are placed in the mouth of a drunken man. Later in the autumn the book was reported to the Public Prosecutor, and the Minister of Justice has now decided to prosecute the author for blasphemy. The archbishop has clearly stated in interviews that he finds it strange that a court of law should pronounce judgment on questions to which free public opinion should react in a healthy manner. He has not called for censorship or prosecution but has said some hard things about the actual book and the sick culture that brings forth literature of this kind.

This led the church newspaper Församlingsbladet to point out that it is only Protestant countries that have effectively safeguarded freedom of the press. In countries in which modern paganism in one form or another dominates or has dominated public life, there is not sufficient room for human rights, including freedom of the press. The article concludes: “We Christians must not be the first to call for censorship or prosecution. On the other hand, we may well be the first to point out the state of ill-health into which the individual and the nation fall when law, truth and love are set aside and self-assumed standards and other manifestations of human selfishness and uncharitableness are put in their place.”

Obscenity and atheism are appearing more frequently in books published in Finland, according to a group of about twenty Conservative members of the Finnish House of Representatives, who have addressed a question on the matter to the Speaker.

J. D. DOUGLAS

A South African View

Four South African clergymen, three European and one African, began a tour of Scotland last month on the invitation of the Inter-Church Relations Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

The Dutch Reformed Church, said Professor W. J. van der Merwe of Stellenbosch University, is the oldest church in South Africa and has 2,700,000 adherents of whom 1,400,000 are non-white. Like other churches in South Africa it has followed a policy of organizing congregations according to racial and cultural backgrounds, though it has never been opposed to joint worship among the races. Asked about the statement contained in the British Council of Churches’ report, The Future of South Africa, that apartheid is “a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” Professor van der Merwe said these words were going to call forth very strong reactions in South Africa and might make dialogue very difficult for the churches in England and the churches in Africa.

“I am convinced that many of those who support apartheid are convinced Christians,” he stated. “You may disagree with their point of view but I do not think you can say they are entirely un-Christian and that would be the implication of the statement.” He also did not think that it could be said that apartheid is absolutely and intrinsically an evil policy that indicates willful disobedience to Christian principles.

J. D. DOUGLAS

The Society In Which They Live

For some time religious bodies and individuals in Britain have protested against undesirable plays on BBC television. Says the official report of the state-owned corporation, which monopolizes radio and runs two of the country’s three TV channels: “Criticism will not make the B.B.C. abandon its policy of presenting established plays by established playwrights about the problems of sex and violence in human relations … nor will it change the B.B.C.’s belief that serious writers of today must be allowed to say freely what they feel about the society in which they live.”

In the House of Commons a motion was tabled which calls for the resignation of the BBC’s director-general, Sir Hugh Greene. The motion was occasioned by a satirical sketch on birth control in a program emceed by David Frost, but the motion spoke also of Sir Hugh’s “inability to control his programme managers.”

Said a seventeen-year-old English boy, “We have a middle-age problem more acute than the teen-age problem. If they had set a better example things might be different for us. Sex is thrown at us through films, TV, and newspapers—we can’t get away from it.”

Twenty-one members of the Oxford University humanist group, claiming to represent “a substantial body of opinion,” have complained to a government commission about college discipline. Deploring the expulsion of several students for having members of the opposite sex in their rooms after official hours, they recommend that Oxford cease to have “any official attachment to any code or system of belief.”

The youthful tendency to pass the buck was demonstrated most vividly in the recent paperback Generation X, in which youngsters talk frankly about themselves. “My name is Sheila Cooper and I am nineteen years old,” says one striking quotation. “If I see a great mushroom cloud hanging overhead, I shall say: ‘What do you think of it now, you pseuds, you great warriors, you diplomats and politicians? You had your chance to bring love into the world but now it’s gone for good.… You’ve lowered the curtains on yourselves and there’ll be no encore. But has it got to be this way?”

J. D. DOUGLAS

Confidential Directives

A controversy was brewing this month over directives purportedly originating in the Vatican, one of which would curtail Roman Catholic participation in ecumenical ceremonies.

The directives, labeled confidential, were attributed to “the Holy See” and were said to have been transmitted via the church’s Apostolic Delegate to the United States and the chairman of the National Catholic Welfare Conference Adminstrative Board.

One cited concern “about some excesses which are taking place in religious services wherein Catholics and non-Catholics participate.” It said that “the Holy See wishes the Bishops to understand that, until the Conciliar Commission has established specific and definitive norms regarding ‘communicatio in sacris,’ participation in such ceremonies should be avoided.”

The other directive criticized the priests who receive communion at a public mass instead of celebrating purely private masses.

The American Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenism held its first meeting this month in Washington. Discussion reportedly centered on guidelines for prayer and common worship with non-Catholics.

A report is to be drawn up and presented to the entire body of U. S. Catholic bishops for approval. A broader framework for common worship is to be prepared by a Vatican commission headed by Augustin Cardinal Bea. The American directives presumably will conform to the Vatican precedent.

There has been a degree of confusion regarding the extent and forms of common worship since Pope Paul VI promulgated the decree on ecumenism adopted by the Second Vatican Council. In the meantime, some American bishops have established their own rules.

The bishops’ meeting in Washington named a number of liaison committees to foster dialogue with non-Catholic denominations.

The Canadian Evangelicals

Evangelicals in Canada are laying the groundwork for united witness through the establishment of their first broadly representative, interdenominational organization. At a meeting in Toronto last month, officers were elected and a brief statement of faith was adopted. Although a coterie of key evangelical churchmen has been holding regular meetings for a number of months, no public announcement was made until after the February meeting.

Observers say that the new organization, to be known as the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, will be a virtual Canadian counterpart to the National Association of Evangelicals in the United States. There are said to be about one million Canadian evangelicals in denominations not represented in the Canadian Council of Churches. Many other evangelicals belong to churches within the council.

Membership is open to individuals willing to subscribe to the statement of faith who are in sympathy with the work of the fellowship. In the future, affiliation will be provided for local churches, schools, mission boards, and denominations.

Representation in the fellowship has thus far been largely limited to Ontario, but a Canada-wide “council of reference” is now being established. A spokesman said the fellowship plans to conduct a public convention and business meeting within a year and that a constitution will be proposed at that time.

Dr. Oswald J. Smith of People’s Church, Toronto, was elected president of the new fellowship. Dr. J. Harry Faught of Danforth Gospel Temple (Pentecostal), Toronto, was chosen as executive chairman.

Here is the text of the statement of faith:

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada believes:

1. The Holy Scriptures as originally given by God, divinely inspired, infallible, entirely trustworthy, and the supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.

2. One God eternally existent in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

3. Our Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, his virgin birth, his sinless human life, his divine miracles, his vicarious and atoning death, his bodily resurrection, his ascension, his mediatorial work, his personal return in power and glory.

4. The salvation of lost and sinful men through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ by faith apart from works, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit.

5. The Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the believer is enabled to live a holy life to witness and work for the Lord Jesus Christ.

6. The unity of the spirit of all true believers, the church, the body of Christ.

7. The resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life, and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.

Hawaii Crusade: Phase Two

The second phase of the Billy Graham crusade in Hawaii was in some respects even more dramatic than the first. The first phase extended over a period of about two weeks and centered in the city of Honolulu. It included a number of public appearances by the evangelist in addition to his eight services in the Honolulu International Center.

The first phase made a remarkable impact. Inquirers totaled 2,907. The crusade was the topic of conversation all over the island of Oahu. Churches reported a resurgence of interest.

But when the crusade moved to the neighbor islands of Maui, Hawaii, and Kauai during the week of February 21–28, the Graham team saw the greatest fruits of evangelism—percentage-wise—that they have seen anywhere in the world.

On the island of Maui, for instance, which has a population of 29,000, nearly 10 per cent of the population came to hear Graham at the close of a short crusade led by associate evangelist Grady Wilson. Those responding to the invitation numbered 383, or an unprecedented 13.7 per cent of the audience. The figure is all the more astounding when compared with the estimated total of 1,800 Protestants on the island. The statistics also indicated that 70 per cent of those making decisions came for salvation.

The picture was almost duplicated on the “Big Island” of Hawaii. Following a brief crusade led by the Rev. Joe Blinco. Graham preached to nearly 2,700 persons with 353 making decisions for Christ. Here the first-time decisions ran to 72 per cent.

The island of Kauai told a scaled-down version of the same story. Here Graham followed another of his associates, Dr. Akbar Haqq.

During the second week, Graham and Haqq went back to Honolulu for an appearance at the University of Hawaii to close a student-sponsored series of lectures on “Religion and Modern Man.” Top religionists representing Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism had preceded the Graham team.

Newspapers reported that attendance at the earlier lectures had ranged from six to eight hundred, but 5,000 students jammed an amphitheater to hear Graham. He gave them a gospel sermon pitched on the intellectual level. A question-and-answer session held after the lecture was packed out. It was from a professor in the university’s department of religion that Graham had received the strongest criticism of his crusade and his theology (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 12, 1965).

Four of the Honolulu meetings were video-taped and will be shown on more than 250 television stations across the North American mainland early in June.

During the final days of the crusade. Graham was taken ill and failed to respond to treatment. He was admitted to a hospital in Honolulu on March 10 suffering from what was described as “an acute bronchial infection.”

W. STANLEY MOONEYHAM

The Cloud over NCC

Arthur H. Matthews

When Dr. Arthur S. Flemming was a member of the Eisenhower cabinet his title was secretary of health, education and welfare. Now he is president of the University of Oregon, and also first vice-president of the National Council of Churches.

Portland, Oregon, was the scene of the council’s first General Board meeting under its new constitution.

Health, education, and welfare were high on the agenda of the meeting in Dr. Flemming’s state. So was the problem of “interpreting” the NCC’s actions in these fields.

While the weather was clear and spring-like for the first three days of the gathering, the board met under a cloud. It showed that it was conscious of—but not responsive to—increasing criticism of its actions.

Board members heard that NCC headquarters got some 10,000 critical letters last year—with only a few described as “hate” mail. They spent the first morning hearing how the staff is answering this correspondence and how those responsible are “interpreting” the work.

On the fourth day of the board sessions the rains came—outside literally, and figuratively inside as well. Methodist Bishop John Wesley Lord, chairman of the General Constituent Membership Committee, reported that for the first time in its fifteen-year history the NCC was faced with the withdrawal of one of its member denominations.

Although the 6,000-member Unity of the Brethren took the action some ten months ago, its decision was reported to the board for the first time at Portland. Bishop Lord said “responsible leaders” of the Texas-based church were disappointed with the decision, for which “vocal laymen” were responsible. Unity of the Brethren President John Baletka explained in a letter which was partially included in the committee report that the denomination withdrew “because of some of the trends indicated in some of the actions of the National Council of Churches and because it feels that this decision to withdraw is in the best interests of this denomination at this time.”

Evangelical United Brethren Bishop Reuben H. Mueller, NCC president, told the board that loss of the member had cost him one of his principal talking points. He said he had been telling audiences around the nation that the council has never lost a member. He had made the point in a speech to a group of leaders from the Northwest only the night before.

Despite one plea for postponement, the board accepted “with regret” the Unity of the Brethren decision and expressed the hope that the separation would be brief.

The cloud of criticism did not keep NCC policy-makers from concentrating on health, education, and welfare at the meeting, however. Nor did it keep them from passing resolutions urging negotiation in Viet Nam and a new U. S. immigration policy.

One “policy statement” (the new name for “pronouncement”) came out of the Portland sessions, and it combined interests in health, welfare, and possibly education. Entitled “Drug Abuse,” the document asks treatment of narcotics addicts as sick people rather than as criminals. It urges increased public rehabilitative services; legislation permitting courts more discretion in handling drug-law violators; and transfer of regulatory and investigatory powers from the federal Treasury Department to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and to the Justice Department.

Of the 250 board members, 96 voted for the policy statement. No negative votes and no abstentions were recorded. It was the only counted vote of the meeting. At times fewer than 100 members attended the sessions.

Vice-president Flemming, a Methodist layman, was in the limelight as the board discussed a resolution favoring federal aid to education. He had earlier testified before congressional committees as an NCC spokesman. In that testimony he backed the “shared-time” provisions of the administration’s school bill.

The resolution approved at the February board meeting underscored the board’s approval, last June, of shared time (or “dual school enrollment”) and added a warning that certain safeguards should be included to assure that children, and not parochial schools which they attend, get the benefits.

Board members heard that these safeguards, which are already written into the House bill, are known to Capitol Hill staffers as “the Flemming amendments” because of the NCC vice-president’s testimony. The shared-time approach, including the “child-benefit” theory, was hailed as a formula that has broken the “logjam” of Roman Catholic opposition to federal elementary and secondary school assistance. Quiet work by NCC leaders for a number of years was credited with getting Catholic backing for the current administration bill.

Welfare came into the meeting in the form of a report on NCC anti-poverty projects. The board elected a United Church of Christ minister, the Rev. Shirley E. Green, as associate director of its Commission on the Church and Economic Life, to coordinate the council’s anti-poverty work. Dr. Cameron P. Hall, director of the Commission on the Church and Economic Life, described the administration’s school-aid bill as “of primary importance to the elimination of poverty.”

On another legislative front, the board went on record as being in general agreement with major provisions of President Johnson’s proposed immigration legislation. In addition, the resolution calls for a program of refugee admission; provision of “more equitable and just methods in deportation proceedings”; and “provision for naturalized citizens to receive equal treatment in every respect with natural-born citizens.”

Local politics will be an increasing interest of the Commission on Religion and Race, that unit reported. Its director, Dr. Robert Spike, said more work is planned in Northern cities, with emphasis on preparing Negroes for political activity there. He invited students, “who have made such a heroic witness in the South,” to sign up for work in the North.

Foreign policy did not escape the board’s notice, either. The NCC leaders, in a resolution, urged the U. S. government to negotiate a Viet Nam ceasefire; to utilize United Nations assistance in settling the dispute there; and to lead in an “international development program for the Mekong Region.”

Bringing the Oregon meeting to a close and looking forward to the council’s future was a symposium that included representatives of each major NCC division. They reviewed points made in speeches earlier in the week by Germany’s Dr. Martin Niemöller (on the World Council of Churches); by NCC staffer Colin Williams (on evangelism); and by Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy (on ecumenicity). And they suggested that more stormy weather may be ahead as the council seeks to “cooperate with Christ” in a variety of secular ventures.

Protestant Panorama

A procession of about 1,000 elders, clergymen, and choir members from 29 congregations marked an inter-Presbyterian vesper service in New York last month. Officials of the two largest Presbyterian denominations and the Reformed Church in America participated in the service. It was sponsored by the Presbytery of New York City.

The demand for Christian education directors runs ahead of employment applications by a five to one ratio in the placement information service of the Methodist Board of Education. A spokesman for the board in Nashville says the ratio remains rather constant despite a considerable increase in the number of persons who are training to become Christian education directors.

The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod is asking the U. S. Defense Department for permission to minister to members at military installations through its own pastors at synod expense. WELS President Oscar J. Naumann says the present chaplaincy program is not in accord with the constitutional guarantee for “a healthy separation of church and state.”

Miscellany

Police in Belfast quelled disturbances that followed a protest march by Free Presbyterians against recent meetings of the Irish prime ministers. The marchers expressed fears that the talks might culminate in a reunification of the predominantly Roman Catholic Republic of Ireland and smaller, strongly Protestant Northern Ireland.

The U. S. Supreme Court ruled this month that any person whose beliefs cause him to oppose war can qualify as a conscientious objector. The court thus struck down a law which limited qualification to those who profess belief in a Supreme Being.

Republican Congressman Joel T. Broyhill of Virginia is circulating a discharge petition among members of the House to force a floor vote on a bill that would permit prayer and Bible reading in public schools. A similar petition circulated last year by Congressman Frank Becker, now retired, fell 50 signatures short of the required 218.

Abilene (Texas) Christian College is launching a long-range $25.7 million expansion and endowment program. The college, associated with the Churches of Christ, hopes to raise at least $10.4 million of the amount within the next three years.

A $100,000 gift of stock to Conwell School of Theology will be used to erect or purchase a new building to honor Dr. Russell H. Conwell. The gift, advanced by Miss Blanche G. Whitecar, Philadelphia philanthropist, represents the first major contribution to the seminary, which was incorporated in 1960 as the successor to the Temple University School of Theology.

Personalia

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was elected president of the Protestant Council of the City of New York after a flurry of controversy over his nomination. Peale offered to withdraw his name when he learned that a petition was being circulated which charged that he had been silent in the racial crisis.

Cliff Barrows, director of music for Billy Graham, was named president of World Wide Pictures, the firm which produces and distributes the evangelist’s films. Barrows succeeds Dick Ross, who resigned to become an independent producer.

Dr. Vance H. Webster, pastor of First Baptist Church, Eugene, Oregon, was elected acting president of Western Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary of Portland, Oregon.

The Rt. Rev. Louis Nagy of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, was elected to a three-year term as bishop of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America.

Review of Current Religious Thought: March 26, 1956

G. C. Berkouwer

An Impressive Body of Literature has risen out of the dialogue between Roman and non-Roman Catholic churches. The very productiveness of this interest warns us not to make a fad of dialogue. Fads in the world of religion are never helpful to anyone. Perhaps the only way to resist the fad tendency is to keep on reflecting about the basic meaning of the dialogue. Merely to keep conversations alive is no guarantee of genuine communication. Personal contact between two people in dispute can provide a moment of real communication; whether it docs or not depends on the kind of contact they have. With what attitude and in what temper is contact made? Is it a conversation with someone from the lofty pedestal of superior knowledge? Is it only a continuation of the strife, a reciprocal judgment of each other, the only difference being that judgment is hurled face to face? Or is there a genuine openness to the possibility of learning something from the other? Is contact made with the understanding that the “other” can possibly correct us? As long as the parties are convinced that they have nothing to learn, nothing to be corrected, and nothing to discover, the dialogue is doomed.

The possibility of the latter kind of dialogue is always present in ecumenical contacts. This fact has significance in the contact between Rome and the Reformation churches during the recent past. The present Vatican Council and all that figures in it as far as the Roman church is concerned makes the nature of the dialogue between Rome and the others of great importance. The word “dialogue” was used a great deal by the Pope in his encyclical Suam Ecclesiam, and with it he demonstrated without doubt a readiness for contact and conversation.

But this is far from decisive for the nature of the dialogue. Contact and conversation are important. They reveal a better condition than that in which several monologues go on at the same time. But the question is, What is the background of the readiness to make contacts? There are many ways of talking. Superficial and trivial talk follow along in the train of conversations in depth that thrust through to the existential questions of life. The dialogue that Pope Paul seems to want embraces a broad field of subjects, and these of quite varied nature. Within this wide framework, there must be room for a dialogue between the church of Rome and others. So the Pope seems to reason.

Hereby comes the complication. For the dialogue has far more relevance than a conversation in which the parties are personally open and friendly toward each other. As important as the personal bearing is, the deeper issue is one of the Gospel, of its testing us even while it is being threatened and overshadowed by our opinions. The Gospel is what underscores the seriousness of the dialogue. For the dialogue between churches is a dialogue about the Gospel and its claims upon the churches. This is the reason that many people are still wary of dialogues. They fear that the power and the truth of the Gospel will somehow come out on the short end of a hearty and friendly conversation. A dialogue between people eager to make the conversation a success can lead to a relativizing of the absolute claims of the Gospel.

Is it possible to maintain a strong conviction about the uncompromising nature of the Gospel’s authority and at the same time to be conscious that we understand the Gospel only in part and have to be open to correction by others? This is the tension peculiar to dialogue. The tension is manifest in the Roman church as well as in our own. With us, as with them, readiness for dialogue does not mean shiftiness as to truth. The enormous divisions of the Church testify that there has been little openness to the possibility that “we” or “they” can stand correction. Pope Paul offers a clear example of a man who stands firm in his own convictions and yet is ready for dialogue.

But is such a combination of conviction and openness really possible? Is it in fact only a matter of personal congeniality without any genuine possibilities in it for greater church unity? The question warns us against an uncritical and faddish use of dialogue. For the Reformation churches the same issue is real. They do not have the dogma of infallibility that looms so large as a shadow over dialogues with Rome. But they do live out of strong convictions and insist that their life is based on firm foundations of churchly confession.

No matter how important and necessary dialogue is, it will have lasting meaning only as the Gospel remains a living power in and over us. For the Gospel is the only bridge between conviction and readiness for dialogue. With the Gospel, people can enter dialogue and make it more than conflict.

The dialogue that is controlled by mutual submission to the Gospel can introduce us to mutual problems that we face in a deep measure of unity and fellowship. Indeed, precisely at the point that the dialogue is genuine communication, it becomes more disturbing, more responsible, and more critical. For where dialogue is real, where it happens under a common trust in the Gospel, there corrections and reproofs are made by the Gospel, and no one escapes. Traditions are open to criticism when the Gospel is allowed to speak. And when a participant in a dialogue feels his tradition touched by the Gospel, he is in crisis.

The apparent openness to dialogue manifest in the new encyclical has given birth to conflicting comments. It has been proclaimed as a sign of new times. It has been sloughed off as empty and disappointing (especially on the basis of the Pope’s statement that the absolute primacy of the papacy is beyond discussion). The varied reactions to the letter give new occasion for us to ask how dialogue can be carried on creatively when the participants have unmovable convictions that are beforehand set beyond discussion. This is the question that keeps our hands full at the moment But we must be busy with this question. For we want to avoid the Scylla of making dialogue a fad and the Charybdis of entrenching ourselves in our own isolation. Either way, we make dialogue pointless. What we want is only a dialogue that the Gospel controls and makes truly significant.

This fortnightly review is contributed in sequence by J. D. Douglas, British editorial director, Christianity Today; Philip E. Hughes, editor, The Churchman, London; Harold B. Kuhn, professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky; G. C. Berkouwer, professor of dogmatics, Free University of Amsterdam; and Addison H. Leitch, professor of philosophy and religion, Tarkio College, Tarkio, Missouri.—Ed.

About This Issue: March 26, 1965

A dozen eyewitnesses to a shooting will usually come up with remarkably divergent stories about how it all happened. It seems impossible to re-create an event perfectly, even with such vast resources as those available to the special commission investigating President Kennedy’s assassination. What then about the Bible, in which the historical ingredient is essential to evangelical faith? What of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the light of the problem of history? To see how a group of Christian scholars recently confronted this question, read the panel discussion, “Faith, History, and the Resurrection.”

Religion and Race: The Clergy March on Alabama

Arthur H. Matthews

“The people of Selma will struggle for the soul of the nation,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, “but it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden. I call, therefore, on clergy of all faiths, representative of every part of the country, to join me in Selma for a ministers’ march on Montgomery.”

Not even the Vatican could have elicited a more prompt and enthusiastic response. Within twenty-four hours hundreds of ministers, priests, rabbis, and even nuns in many states were preparing to leave for Selma or already on their way. For at least one clergyman it meant death.

Said the Rev. Bruce Hansen of the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race: “We’re not sure that Dr. King’s appeal triggered response as much as photographs in newspapers and on television showing Negroes being clubbed.”

Hansen was referring to the outrageous event of Sunday, March 7, when club-swinging Alabama state troopers and local deputies fired tear gas and charged a group of Negroes engaged in a march in behalf of their right to vote. A crowd of white bystanders cheered the action.

Whatever the motivation, the response of the American clergy was remarkable. It illustrated the fact that not since the days immediately prior to prohibition has a single issue so preoccupied the men of the cloth as has the civil rights movement. The logical liberals who usually shun emotional religious experience found themselves locked arm in arm with their Negro brethren, swinging and singing, “We Shall Overcome.” Thousands of clergymen who did not venture to Selma thrust aside prepared sermons in favor of impassioned pleas for racial equality.

For many clergymen, involvement in the crisis in Selma extended the deepening controversy over the propriety of a minister’s demonstrative intrusion into a social struggle, even when there are moral considerations. Many still question the advisability of a minister’s projecting himself into alien situations in parts of the country with which he is unfamiliar. Others worry about the unity of their own congregations and about the impact of a strong stand upon their own wives and families.

Some ask how leading churchmen can be so vocal for civil rights and yet so squeamish about invoking church discipline against flagrant violators. The Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns champions the cause of the right of every American to vote. Yet Governor George Wallace of Alabama is able to remain a Methodist in good standing despite his implicit repudiation of the voting principle.

The situation in Selma called nonetheless for some sort of action by the American Christian establishment. For all the inconsistencies and fantastic proof-texting1Like referring to King’s appeal as a “Macedonian call” (Acts 16:9) and citing demonstrators as presenting their bodies “a living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1). of the clergy marchers, they offered a striking contrast to the host of evangelicals in America who remained silent. Evangelical churchmen almost universally deplored the brutality of Alabama police and shared sympathy for the Negro demand for full voting privileges, but many hesitated to identify themselves with clergy social-action pressures. They were not particularly impressed with the reliance on techniques of mob pressure rather than on judicial process. They shared concern about the growing weight of ecclesiastical example on the side of civil disobedience.

It would have been much better, some churchmen contended, had Alabama clergymen themselves stepped into the vacuum on a larger scale, and better still if lay churchmen rather than clergy had taken up the cause en masse.

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who on the eve of the Selma flareup was elected president of the Protestant Council of the City of New York, was obliged to take an immediate stand. He had been the target of a petition that criticized his candidacy, charging, among other things, that he has been too silent on the racial issue. As if in rebuttal to the charge, Peale was quoted in telegrams to President Johnson and Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach as calling upon the Chief Executive to take “appropriate action” to protect Negro demonstrators. A news release issued by the Protestant Council said that Peale also asked two council officials to go to Selma to support the cause of racial justice.

Clergymen in the Washington, D. C., area sought to set the pace by chartering an airliner the day after King’s appeal. Forty persons got on board, and a number of others were reportedly turned away. Some proceeded south via commercial flights.

Dr. George M. Docherty, minister of the historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in the nation’s capital, accused President Johnson of “straddling the fence” by avoiding federal intervention. “The one man who could have solved this problem remained in Washington,” said the Glasgow-born minister, now a naturalized American citizen. “He should have been at the head of the line of marchers, symbolizing by his presence his protest against an iniquitous, fascist system for which there is no place in the American Constitution.”

Other Washington clergymen turned their attention toward the Capitol and began using their influence upon Congress to pass a new voting bill. Dean Francis B. Sayre of Washington Cathedral and two of his priests went to the offices of Democratic Senator John Sparkman of Alabama and other congressmen to state their positions.

The National Council of Churches held a hurriedly arranged mass meeting of clergymen in Washington to dramatize the need for additional voting-rights legislation. An overflow crowd of more than 2,000 gathered at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill. A delegation of clergy leaders was dispatched to the White House to meet with President Johnson.

Methodist Bishop John Wesley Lord, United Presbyterian Stated Clerk Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, and President Ben Herbster of the United Church of Christ were among clergymen who conferred with the President. There were also Roman Catholic and Jewish representatives.

Back in Alabama, the demonstrators’ cause see-sawed in the courts. Marchers turned up at numerous points, and Wallace attempted to keep them in check. He seemed determined to shun the visiting clergymen’s protests.

Not all the pressures on Alabama were from out of state. The day before the first march, a group of white Alabama citizens led by a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod clergyman gathered seventy-strong and walked twelve blocks to the Dallas County courthouse in Selma in support of the Negro voting drive. The Rev. Joseph M. Ellwanger, a white clergyman who leads a Negro congregation, read a statement from the courthouse steps deploring “the totalitarian atmosphere of intimidation.” Before he read the statement, a deputy sheriff stepped in front of him and read a statement from Dr. E. W. Homrighausen, president of the Missouri Synod’s Southern District, which made clear that Ellwanger was acting as an individual clergyman and not as an official representative of the church.

At the Missouri Synod public relations office in New York, it was pointed out that Ellwanger had conferred with Homrighausen in advance of the march. The two reportedly differed as to procedures to be employed in securing voting rights for Negroes but were in agreement as to the objective.

The Victim

The Rev. James J. Reeb, 38, fatally injured when attacked by a group of white men in Selma, was ordained a Presbyterian minister following his graduation from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1953. His first assignment was as a Presbyterian chaplain at the Philadelphia General Hospital. While living in Philadelphia he studied in the School of Theology at Temple University and was awarded a master’s degree in 1956. Following that he worked for a time as a YMCA youth director in Philadelphia.

Reeb, an only child, was born in Wichita, Kansas, and graduated from high school in Casper, Wyoming. After a stint in the Army, he enrolled at St. Olaf’s (Lutheran) College in Northfield, Minnesota, and graduated in 1950. That same year he married Marie Deason of Casper. There are four children, two boys and two girls, ranging in age from three to twelve.

Reeb came to Washington, D. C., in 1959 to accept an appointment as assistant minister in All Souls Unitarian Church. He left Washington last September and had been working in Boston as director of a low-income housing project operated by the American Friends Service Committee. He was highly respected both in Washington and in Boston as a friendly, outgoing man who worked hard for the underprivileged.

It was reported that Reeb had been obliged to forsake his Presbyterian credentials because of theological differences.

The minister’s wife had talked to him only a half hour prior to the attack. Reeb and a group of other Unitarian clergymen had just eaten dinner in Walker’s Cafe, a Negro establishment, when they were pounced upon while crossing a street. Reeb died in a Birmingham hospital forty-eight hours later.

Race And Rotation

Members of Second Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tennessee, have ended one phase of a struggle that has preoccupied persons both inside and outside the congregation.

National attention has been focused on the 3,650-member evangelical church, which was to have been the scene of the Presbyterian U. S. General Assembly in April. Citing racial policies of the congregation, 1964 Assembly Moderator Felix B. Gear declared early this year that an “emergency” existed and that the meeting would be held at Montreat, North Carolina, instead.

In a congregational meeting held after the shift was announced, the membership voted to limit the terms of the elders who govern the church. Life terms had been the policy; now one-fifth of the session will be replaced annually. The meeting was called when more than one-fourth of the membership requested it in a petition.

Results of the session’s “stand pat” attitude on the racial issue were seen as the reasons for the petitions and for the vote in favor of “rotation.” The congregational action (favored by 932 of the 1,530 voting) provided that the oldest elders would be the first to be replaced.

In the same meeting at which they received the petition, the elders hammered out a policy of admitting Negro worshipers and providing them segregated seating.

During the months-long debate over the issue, no policy was ever adopted that excluded Negroes as such. But officers strictly enforced a policy excluding “demonstrators.” Racially mixed groups protesting segregation repeatedly appeared at the church only to be turned away.

The demonstrations reached a climax last spring after the denomination’s General Assembly turned back proposals to change the 1965 meeting place. At the same time, Senator Richard B. Russell, brother of Pastor Henry E. Russell, was leading the opposition to the then-pending civil rights bill in Washington.

The pastor of the denomination’s third-largest congregation ended his long silence on the issue in January and asked for an end to any policy that might exclude persons from worship services. The vote for rotation was the congregation’s response.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Campus Centennial

The close of the Civil War found groups of Baptists from northern states traveling south in an effort to set up schools for newly emancipated Negroes. In Washington, D. C., they established the National Theological Institute and Wayland Academy. In Richmond, they founded the Richmond Theological School for Freedmen. These and other schools, including the Free Will Baptists’ Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, have through a succession of mergers become one and are now known collectively as Virginia Union University.

On its campus in Richmond last month, the university marked its centennial. The highlight was the formal launching of a $1,500,000 development campaign to finance major construction projects.

Virginia Union University now has a full-time enrollment of about 1,200 students, almost all of whom are Negro although there has never been an official no-white admissions policy. There are currently some twenty-five students in the School of Theology. A number of Baptist groups still contribute financial support.

Eutychus and His Kin: March 26, 1965

Eutychus II

THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE

Did you know that at the turn of the century they had a very colorful ministry in Edinburgh, Scotland, with Drs. Black, White, Brown, Blew, Greene, and Grey? They used to say that White would preach you black in the morning and Black would preach you white again in the evening. There was something for everybody.

It was Black who wrote the book The Gift of Influence; and the title, as well as the content, has stayed with me ever since I picked up the volume in a second-hand bookstore about fifteen years ago. The thesis is that your influence acts as action through people far beyond where your imagination can run. We are indeed “epistles known and read of all men.”

We subscribe to the Pittsburgh Post Gazettebecause I so very much like Al Abrams’s column and his editing of sports news. Apart from Daly in theNew York Times, there is no one who “suits” me quite the way Al Abrams does.

There have been all kinds of excitement about the Dapper Dan Dinner, and I wish there were some way some day for me to qualify. About 2,000 athletes get together for this dinner, and I would surely like to look upon such an array.

Among the pictures on the sports page was one of Buff Donelli, who illustrates my thesis about “the gift of influence.” Buff used to be a great soccer player, but he also coached for a while at Duquesne University. I just happened (if anything can “just happen” to a Calvinist) to see Buff working on the backfield one day over and over and over again on what turned out to be a perfect piece of timing. He taught me a great lesson without his knowing it, and I have followed his career at Columbia University just because of that one day. All-American Howard Harpster used to run and run and run; Hub Radnor used to run and cut. Joe Ferrara used to charge up hillsides. I guess one goes from slavery to the promised land a step at a time.

AESTHETICS AND ASCETICS

Dr. Frank Gaebelein’s appeal for a Christian aesthetic (Feb. 26 issue) is indeed timely. As he urges, “art … has deep spiritual and moral implications.”

The problem of formulating a Christian theory of aesthetics is unfortunately a thorny one. I am not at all sure how such a biblically based theory might be elaborated since (as Dr. Gaebelein admits) “the Bible says little directly about the arts or aesthetics.”

What the Bible does give us—and Dr. Gaebelein, I think, suggests this—is a point of reference from which to evaluate all human activity, including of course worldviews expressed in the arts (whether explicitly or implicitly). All art and all aesthetic activity has its presuppositions about reality, and biblical faith helps provide the means for critically articulating—even if not approving—the theoretical framework underlying such activity.

That all “good” art need not be explicitly “Christian” goes without saying. There is no reason why all art should convey truth of a certain specified sort. The “heresy of didacticism” is all too apparent a danger. It would seem, then (to take issue with Dr. Gaebelein), that the ugly may well be aesthetically and artistically expressive, if only in repelling us. Art need not be limited to “the expression of truth through beauty.” Art, to be art at all, must certainly be expressive. Whether its expressiveness must [always] be beautiful is a further question.

West Somerville, Mass.

Dr. Gaebelein’s article cleared the ground and should be welcomed; it was particularly gratifying to see his insistence upon both the importance of the arts and their degradation at the hands of some contemporary writers, musicians, and artists. His constructive proposals, too, deserve sympathetic consideration: a biblical aesthetic and the cultivation of a critical Christian good taste are urgent desiderata.

But Dr. Gaebelein’s mention of Protestant hesitation in work on aesthetics is not the full story. Evangelical suspicion of the arts springs from a historically pervasive ascetic tradition.… Even in an age when most educated people wrote, when Christianity was virtually unquestioned, and when the issues of the day were seen in Christian terms—even then, an evangelical Christian writer of the first rank was a rarity.

It is easy (but right) to criticize the low cultural standards of many (most?) Christians. But then most non-Christians have these standards too.… Culture has always been for a minority and probably always will be. The conclusion to be drawn, it seems to me, is that the Christian faith operates as an educational impulse only in the realm of the sacred. There is no reason to believe that it urges its adherents to secular study for non-vocational, purely aesthetic purposes.…

Wirral, Cheshire, England

The article is depressing. Certainly there is ample ground for its criticism of some aspects of current evangelicalism. But does not the suggestion for reform present a leisurely kind of Christianity, lacking in fervor and a sense of urgency, which finds so much time for the cultivation of the natural man that one wonders how much time would be available for saturation with the Word of God, for meditation and prayer, and for participation in church and other Christian activities.

Is not the real problem a spiritual one? Santa Barbara, Calif.

“Protestant icon” indeed. Mr. Gaebelein’s statements are indeed of a rhetorical nature. It is quite obvious that the “ever present head of Christ” referred to can only be that of Warner Sallman’s. Countless Protestants (and, I might add, Catholics) consider this to be among the finest and most inspirational of modern visual arts.…

At any rate, we who are appreciative of Sallman’s efforts can console ourselves with the fact that Mr. Gaebelein was kind enough to temper his allegation with “almost.” In all due respect and with appropriate bouquets, the article in general was excellent, timely, and thought-provoking without being in the pedestrian or prosaic trend.

Albert Lea, Minn.

I enjoyed it so much that I had to tell you of my enthusiastic agreement. It is wonderful that at long last we conservatives are getting excited about the aesthetic.…

How long must we endure the manifest dishonesty of those churches that pride themselves on their rendition of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion or Mass in B minor and so forth, without believing (as Bach so completely did!) what they are singing. When are those churches who do believe and are interested and able to perform such masterpieces going to honor the triune God whose Spirit so gloriously inspired these works? Second Christian Reformed Church

Grand Haven, Mich.

I am quite sure there is a relationship between our aesthetic appreciation, our worship, and our theology, and oftentimes even perhaps our standard of our Christian ethics.

You really have been most kind and patient in what you wrote of evangelical standards. I appreciated [the] reference to the “Protestant icon.” At least in Europe we are spared that romantic sentimental misrepresentation.

General Secretary

The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students

Lausanne. Switzerland

COMPARATIVE RELIGION

I have read with great interest your article “Less Ritual, More Religion?” (News, Feb. 26 issue).

The article is good; a fair appraisal, and I would hope that more and more emphasis, through this and other means, might be placed on the comparative study of religions.

Supreme Court of the United States

Washington, D. C.

IF YOU TAKE WINGS

Your coverage of “Flying Mishaps” (News, Feb. 12 issue) among churchmen is worthy of careful notice. I trust that it speaks loud and clear to someone who may be contemplating a move in the direction of flying his own plane or even riding with an amateur who does.

In the hands of a professional or equally experienced pilot, the risk of flying is not great. Beyond this, however, it sharply rises to dangerous proportions—sales claims notwithstanding. There is, of course, risk in everything that we do. Some actually prefer to live “dangerously for Christ” in order to get the job done. But there is a point of diminishing returns.

We who have spent many years of our lives in full-time aviation ministry, both at home and abroad, are increasingly conscious of the inadvisability of the itinerant Christian worker trying to use an airplane as he might his automobile or a public carrier.

Director

Missionary Technical Training

Moody Bible Institute

Chicago, Ill.

SOCRATES AND JAMES PIKE

With reference to “A Time for Christian Candor” (Editorials, Feb. 12 issue) and your quotations from the American Church Quarterly, I am in agreement with the criticisms of Bishop Pike’s theology but not with the expressed amazement that the bishop, “no longer accepting the faith of the Church, ‘does not propose that he shall thereby be debarred from enjoying the emoluments and accepting the honored and privileged dignity which accompanied his office.’ “This seems to me to be as unjust as it is uncharitable. Certainly Bishop Pike believes that he holds the faith of the Church. He believes also (I think mistakenly) that the faith (“the treasure”) must be detached from the traditional terminology in which it has been conveyed (“the earthen vessels”) if it is to be understood and accepted by our contemporaries.

Is not the bishop’s concern that the Gospel reach the multitudes (“the sheep having no shepherd”) a judgment upon the complacency of the orthodox? If those of us who claim to hold the true faith were as zealous as Bishop Pike is for its communication, would we find as much cause to complain that “Bishop Pike gets the headlines”? That the common people hear him gladly may well be food for serious reflection. The white light of the Holy Spirit is refracted through the prism of human thought into many colors, each of which is partial and, by itself, deceptive yet essential to the whole truth. Our Lord promised that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. If he is still leading us, then “catholic” truth is still open to further enrichment. Is it not possible that James Pike (to change the figure) may be the Holy Spirit’s gadfly sent to rouse us from our lethargy and to spur us on to seek new insights? What we need is the faith once delivered in combination with Bishop Pike’s zeal and talent for communication. Perhaps this is just what the Holy Spirit is up to as he works to unite all things in Christ!

Suffragan Bishop

Episcopal Diocese of Long Island

Garden City, N. Y.

A MATTER OF CALL

Re the letter from Ward Gasque in your issue of February 12: I am “unordained” not merely because I belong to a fellowship in which the distinction between clergy and laity is not recognized. My vocation, as I am conscious of it, is to a lay ministry, and, so far as I can judge, I should have remained a layman no matter what my ecclesiastical attachment had been.

Faculty of Theology

University of Manchester

Manchester, England

CORRECTION

“Church History and Theology” (Feb. 12 issue) contains a major error of fact.… In referring to the fifty-six-volume series of the American Edition of Luther’s Works, Dr. Bromiley wrongly attributes dual publishing of the series to “Augustana-Muhlenberg.” It should read “Concordia-Fortress Press.”

Director, Public Relations

Concordia Publishing House

St. Louis, Mo.

THANKS

Thank you for your excellent article, “The Falling Tower,” by H. Eugene Peacock (Feb. 12 issue).

Executive Director

Division of Christian Social Concern

American Baptist Convention

Valley Forge, Pa.

I.F.M.A.

Our friend, Dr. Arthur F. Glasser, the home director of an honored member of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA), has presented some very helpful and interesting thoughts on the position of IFMA missions in today’s Christian scene (Jan. 29 issue). To what he has written a bit more needs to be added to present the IFMA position in a somewhat different light, or to fill in some areas that need more emphasis.

IFMA mission leaders are indeed aware that “winds of change are blowing with gale force.” The prevailing attitude in the face of these gales is one of optimism and confidence, and I don’t think that this arises from a “head in the sand” policy.

The following points are suggested by material included in Dr. Glasser’s article:

1. IFMA missions have in recent years recaptured the New Testament emphasis on the Church. While these missions have been very active in developing special ministries, such as radio, literature, correspondence courses, medical work, and other similar activities, they have come to realize that the New Testament pattern is evangelize, disciple, establish churches. This renewed emphasis on the essentials has resulted in the issuing of calls for more highly trained and dedicated specialists in evangelism, Bible teaching, and church work. The emphasis is on a partnership with the emerging younger churches in … establishing strong spiritual churches.

2. IFMA recognizes that many overseas Christians long for identification with other believers around the world. The very emphasis in the past on indigenous development now militates against an easy identification with Christians in the sending countries and elsewhere. The ecumenical movement seeks to capitalize on that longing, and the indigenous churches overseas are being appealed to very strongly. IFMA missions are alert to this need. One development has been the joint effort with the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA) in Africa where the Africa Evangelical Office, headed by the Rev. Kenneth Downing, has been established in Nairobi, Kenya. Mr. Downing, working with African leaders, has encouraged the setting up of evangelical fellowships in various parts of Africa. These efforts have resulted in a greater realization by the believers of their essential oneness in Christ with other believers in Africa and around the world. These fellowships are linked through their adherence to a conservative theological position and a common purpose in the work.

3. IFMA missions are not without fault or weakness, and some may have to plead guilty to “an attitude uncritical of nineteenth-century paternalism and white supremacy.” But are they alone in this attitude? My observations lead me to believe there is development in the right direction here. IFMA missions have in the main promoted healthy indigenous churches, which development, by the way, is being threatened by a neo-paternalism or financial diplomacy through the inducements being offered from World Council of Churches sources in the form of scholarships and other helps.

4. IFMA missions are not hostile to cooperative endeavors overseas when such undertakings are sponsored by groups or individuals true to the historic Christian faith. Thus IFMA missions will be found in many cooperative spiritual ministries. Being realists, they know that the hope for stability in their work depends on building carefully and with materials of integrity. They do not overlook theological issues when considering cooperative endeavors.

5. Support for IFMA missions comes almost entirely from conservative evangelical churches and individuals. Where supporting churches are in some instances to be found within denominations having ties with the ecumenical movement, their support of IFMA missions arises from their desire that their missionary support go to those who stand with them in their own conservative theological position.

In Dr. Everett Cattell’s article reference is made to “some measure of cooperation” between the IFMA and the EFMA. While it is not considered essential or desirable that these two organizations merge because of the different nature of their constituencies and organization, it should be pointed out that there are at least seven joint IFMA—EFMA committees to deal with such subjects as comity, mission education overseas, area considerations, and other joint concerns.

With so much of the world yet to be evangelized, there remains much work for all evangelical missions to do. Certainly there is need for the emphasis which has characterized the work of IFMA missions, and there is confidence that God’s hand will remain upon this work.

President

Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association

Ridgefield Park, N.J.

LIFE’S ISSUE ON THE BIBLE

Our focus [in] … Life’s Bible issue … was not on man’s discovery of God (Editorials, Jan. 15 issue) but on man’s study of the Bible and the discoveries he has made about the times in which it evolved. From the response we’ve received, we know that many Protestant leaders—clergy and laymen—found Life’s issue a worthwhile discussion of the Bible’s history and meaning. Some have sent us copies of sermons in which they’ve recommended the issue to their congregations, and prepared special texts takens from its theme.

As you noted, the text of Life’sspecial issue was written by biblical authorities prominent in their own right, or by experienced members ofLife’sstaff with constant assistance and advice from leading scholars and theologians. You have assigned to Miss Seiberling a role different from the one that was actually hers: overall planning with special emphasis on illustration, taking advantage of her vast knowledge in the field of art history.

Life

New York, N.Y.

• As Miss Schubert implies, we erred in attributing to Miss Seiberling the opening essay of Life’s Bible issue. On the basis of the editorial note in Life attributing the planning and producing of this issue to Miss Seiberling, we incorrectly assumed that, as the person in charge of the entire issue, she wrote the unsigned introduction. We regret this mistake.—ED.

MILTON’S SOURCES

I read with pleasure the article by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott on “The Bible, the Classics, and Milton” (Jan. 1 issue). Your readers may be interested in two books that, taken together, cover the subject of Milton’s use of the classics and of the Bible rather thoroughly, at least insofar as the major poems are concerned. They are The Club of Hercules: Studies in the Classical Background of Paradise Lost by Davis P. Harding (Urbana, 1962) and The Bible in Milton’s Epics by James H. Sims (Gainesville, 1962). My book was reviewed by Professor Mollenkott for Seventeenth Century News (Spring, 1964), and a review of both of these books appeared in Notes and Queries (September, 1964).

Chairman, Department of English

Austin Peay State College

Clarksville, Tenn.

BEETHOVEN AND THE BEATLES

Just a word of thanks for the essay on “The Deity of Christ” (Dec. 18 issue). Yes, I am behind on my reading. But the morning before I read that, I had been laboring through a modern book connected with “church restructure” and various theological questions, taking the liberal view. The contrast in tone, and in the effect on my mind and spirit, between these two pieces of Christian literature was a real experience.

How can such writing on the fundamentals as this be dubbed obscurantist? This is sound and solid Christian doctrine. The other is words, words, words. This is Gospel, that is gibberish. This is Beethoven, that is The Beatles. The other book calls forth an occasional Hmmm, but this essay calls forth a fervent Amen.

Tokyo. Japan

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