This spring book issue evaluates the flood of religious books that appeared in 1964 and looks forward to 1965 publications. An editorial (page 32) discusses the reading habits of ministers.

The pastor of a Methodist church in Montgomery, Alabama, analyzes the changing order in the South and the reactions to it in the minds of whites as well as Negroes. See “The Falling Tower,” page 13.

Has your home been robbed? The master thief of the ages is abroad and at work. Our pockets are being picked, our homes robbed, our most treasured possessions rifled. Spiritual seed is being plucked from our hearts and minds, and in its place the seed of doubt and error is being planted.

Many of us are unaware of the robbery. Like birds that are fascinated by the glitter of a diamond but are equally fascinated by a worthless bauble, so we seem satisfied with things of this world, with human speculations and solutions, when we should settle for nothing less than what proceeds from God’s love and grace.

Like the victim of an adept pickpocket we have been robbed without knowing it. Like a householder walking in a dream we have been unaware of the removal of priceless treasures from our homes. Like the naïve prey of a flimflam artist we have permitted things of eternal value to be replaced by trivialities.

We ought to search our own homes to see whether they have been robbed. If they have been, certain important things will be missing, and things of no permanent value will have been put in their place.

The Bible. Almost certainly a Bible will be found somewhere; but if it is covered with dust or crowded into a bookcase with unused books, it might as well be a thousand miles away.

There will be many books in the home. Daily newspapers and news magazines will be there, of course, as will professional journals and various other kinds. But in the robbed house the Book of the ages will be absent as a lamp to keep the inhabitants from stumbling and a light to lighten their path.

If the Bible is absent, there will be ignorance where there should be understanding, uncertainty where there should be certainty, confusion where there should be peace, weakness where there should be strength, and—most serious of all—trust in man where there should be reliance on the Son of God.

The family altar. The victim of the master thief will find that there is no place in the home where the family gathers to read God’s Word and pray, no source of reference higher than self and other humans, no force to bind the home together in the face of the tensions that are an inevitable part of our world.

Communications. There will be a number of radios and at least one TV set. There will be a telephone, perhaps with extensions to various rooms. But all messages, incoming or outgoing, will be with people.

In the robbed house communication with God will be severed. There will be no two-way contact with the One who inhabits eternity, no asking for and receiving of divine guidance. There will be no time when with faithful and obedient hearts those who live in the house wait quietly to hear a Voice saying, “This is the way; walk ye in it.”

Yes, the robbed house will be devoid of one of God’s most precious gifts—the privilege and power of prayer.

Values. The house where Satan has had his way will be a place where values are utterly confused. There may be an abundance of material things, but the things that last for eternity will be absent. Fun will be substituted for joy. The praise of men will be chosen rather than a “Well done” from the Lord of the universe. The gratification of physical desires will be the chief interest, and anything that calls for self-denial will be rejected. Self will be paramount as Christ is crowded away from the door of the heart.

Discipline. Both self-discipline and the discipline of children will be absent. Parents will lack those disciplines that proceed from the Christian faith and that make personal example a witness in itself. Children will be denied the character-forming discipline they so desperately need during the developing years.

Grace at meals. A triviality? No, an acknowledgment of God as the source of all good things, and the very least we should offer as we partake of his bounty. The enemy of souls tries to rob our homes of grace at meals and of anything else that gives honor and glory to God.

The Lord’s day. In the robbed house Sunday is a holiday, not a holy day. Instead of physical rest and spiritual refreshment the day provides opportunities for catering to the body and to secular matters.

The Sabbath, a part of God’s economy and loving provision for mankind, is desecrated to man’s immediate and eternal loss. If God’s day is not honored, on Monday morning there is, instead of a refreshed body, mind, and spirit, only tiredness and frustration.

But a home need not be robbed. There are many modern devices that make robbery difficult. Alarm signals may be installed to warn when a burglar is at work. Doors and windows can be securely locked.

And just as one’s house may be protected against thievery, so the home may be made strong against the master thief—Satan. God has provided every safeguard for individuals and for their homes. When these safeguards are used properly, there is perfect safety.

At the top of the list is the two-way communication system, always open to and from our Heavenly Father. Faithful study of God’s Word brings both wisdom and warning. The prayer channel open at all times makes possible cries for help answered by words of encouragement and guidance.

What is necessary for the individual is also necessary for the family as a whole. When God’s means are used, the master thief finds himself thwarted. Many people know their homes are not safe; they know that they have been robbed of the things that count. Discouraged and frustrated, they turn to tawdry replacements. But others do not even know they have been robbed.

At the doors of heart and home there stands One who longs to enter and set up the needed safeguards. Christ wants to take over so that there will be no further robbery. He wants to instill in every heart and home the means of grace that enable us to distinguish between valuables and cheap substitutes.

In the things God has provided there is perfect and complete protection. There is an amazing provision for restoration of what has been lost.

Long before modern insurance companies thought of the protection provided in a “home-owner’s policy,” God had provided the perfect protection against the most wily of all thieves, the Devil.

He wants us to take out such a policy now!

The Christian meaning of the term “deity of Christ” is fairly clear. The Christian believes that there is a personal God, Creator and Ruler of the universe, a God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. So when the Christian says that Jesus Christ is God, or when he says that he believes in the deity of Christ, he means that that same person who is known to history as Jesus of Nazareth existed, before he became man, from all eternity as infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God, the second person of the holy Trinity.

Very different is the use of the term “deity of Christ” or the term “God,” as it is applied to Jesus by many leaders in the modern Church.

The Bible tells us in the first verse that God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth. Does it ask us to forget that when it tells us that Jesus Christ is God? No, it asks us to remember that. It says of Jesus Christ: “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.”

The Bible tells us that God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. Does it ask us to forget that when it tells us that Christ is God? No, it tells us to remember that. “I am Alpha and Omega,” says Christ, “the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” “Before Abraham was, I am.” “In the beginning was the Word.” “He is before all things, and by him all things consist.”

It has often been observed that before the time of Christ, there were two types of Messianic expectation among the Jews. According to one type, the Messiah was to be a king of David’s line; according to the other, he was to be a heavenly being suddenly appearing in the clouds of heaven to judge the world.

Now the glorious thing is that in the New Testament we find these two types of Old Testament promise about the Messiah united, in the fulfillment, in the same Person. How is it that one Person can on the one hand be a man, a king of David’s line, and at the same time be the Mighty God? The question is not fully answered in the Old Testament. But the New Testament answers it most wonderfully in the great central doctrine of the two natures in the one person of our Lord. Yes, the coming deliverer was indeed to be both Mighty God and a king of David’s line, because the Mighty God in strange condescension and love became man for our sakes “and so was, and continueth to be God, and man, in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.”

The New Testament does not present the doctrine of the Trinity, including the doctrine of the deity of Christ, as though it meant the introduction of a new idea of God. On the contrary, it presents it as being a revelation of the same God as the God who had revealed himself to Israel in Old Testament times. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is presented in the New Testament as being a triune God; but he is the same God throughout both the Old Testament and the New.

Hence it is only what is to be expected when we find that the New Testament applies to Christ Old Testament passages where the God of Israel is called by his holiest and most precious name, “Jehovah.” Could there be any clearer testimony to the full deity of Jesus Christ?

The annunciation to the Virgin Mary is partly in Old Testament terms. Mary’s son is to sit on the throne of David; and when it is said that of his kingdom there is to be no end, that also does not go beyond what the Old Testament had promised about the Messiah. But then a great mystery is revealed. The promised child is not to have a human father by ordinary generation, but is to be conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of a virgin mother. Even that—at least the part of it that sets forth the fact that the mother is to be a virgin—is found in Old Testament prophecy (in Isa. 7:14); but that prophecy had not been understood among the Jews. Now, just before the fulfillment, the prophecy is repeated in fuller and more glorious terms. The conception of this child in the womb of the Virgin Mary is to be a miracle wrought by the immediate power of the Spirit of God. That miracle is one of the things that will show the child to be rightly called “holy” and “Son of God.”

In what light does Jesus present himself in his public ministry? Here one great central fact stares us in the face. I think it would hardly be possible to lay too much stress upon it. It is this—that Jesus does not present himself merely as an example for faith but presents himself as the object of faith. That fact appears not merely in the Gospel according to John, which unbelievers reject as altogether unhistorical; but it appears also in the three Synoptic Gospels, and in the Synoptic Gospels it appears even in those parts which are supposed by modern criticism, rightly or wrongly, to come from the earliest sources underlying the Gospels. You cannot get away from it anywhere in the Gospels.

God grant that you may never treat Jesus with polite, patronizing approval! God grant that you may not treat him as a religious genius or as the founder of one of the world’s religions! God grant that, instead, you may say to Jesus, with doubting Thomas: “My Lord and my God.”—J. G. M.

‘DE GUSTIBUS’

A great many people have said something like this, but perhaps Thoreau said it best: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” I remember the story of some mountaineers sitting around a stove in a country store. One of the boys was telling about all the new puppies he had and what wonderful bird dogs they would grow up to be, when one of the men at the stove broke into the conversation. “I want to get my name in early,” he said. “I don’t want one.” There is a wonderful sense of freedom in being able to get what you want; there is also a wonderful sense of freedom in not wanting.

I thought of this the other day as I drove along the highway listening to the loud, enthusiastic word from one of our radio hucksters. There was a great contentment in knowing that I didn’t have to do a thing about what he was saying, even though he was highly convincing to himself, I suppose.

It’s a good game sometimes to speculate about how many activities in this land of ours would fail if they depended on customers like me. I know we have to keep the wheels of industry spinning; but when you get around to thinking about it, you realize there are whole areas in life that you never touch. I am athletically minded, but I have never seen a professional wrestling or boxing match; and the only horse racing I have ever seen has been at a small county fair. I think television would curl up if it depended on me, and so would liquor, gambling, hunting, and a great many other things. Of course, if I had the money, the travel business would thrive.

The other side of this coin is, What worthwhile projects would succeed if everyone involved in them were as faithful and hard-working as I am? A little serious thinking on that side will nick you where it hurts.

THE CAMPUS

I would like to express my appreciation for the January 15 issue and especially the articles by Dykstra, Redding, and Alexander.…

My patience has dwindled low seeing how the churches and the religious centers sit ominously across the street from the campus waiting for people to come to them. Instead of [involving themselves] in campus life the campus pastors sit in judgment on such groups as Inter-Varsity. How wonderful it would be if more Christians would be the ideas that Dr. Alexander wrote in his article, “A University Professor Writers His Pastor” …

I have been associated with a doctor at the Medical Center here who has a concern and a burden for college kids. His vitality and insight have led him to go on campus, into the dorms to meet kids and invite them to his house to meet his family. Every Sunday night we have twenty to thirty guys out at his house in an informal discussion. We have big problems with transportation, yet we are involved with some 100 students.…

More Christian families are catching glimpses of what they can do for Christ on campus because of the doctor and his family …

Gainesville, Fla.

Your issue … evoked both pleasure and unease—pleasure because some campus issues were so perceptively outlined, and unease because so much remains to be said.

Though your contributors may have refrained from the blunt assertion, it is possible that some may feel confirmed in the flattering assumptions that intellectual doubt is merely a rationalizing smokescreen for willful sin, and that it is anti-Christian presuppositions rather than real issues or difficulties which drive a damaging wedge between church and campus. I would not for a moment question the element of truth in these assumptions, but other factors must be underscored to balance the picture.

Doubtless all our mental vision is clouded by the sin of the race, but this is not to assert that individual loss of faith is explicable by individual moral delinquency any more than an individual’s sickness is a consequence of his particular shortcomings. Maybe it is the student who is sternest in his intellectual integrity who is hit the hardest as hitherto unrealized facts unfold, and those who emerge with faith unscathed may include some who have never bothered to think: they may simply accept Christian and non-Christian beliefs alike and fail to see their incompatibility. Nor is doubt necessarily founded in ignorance of the scriptural data. It may be that it is the devout Bible-reader who wrestles most with the time-honored problems of “Old Testament morality,” massacre, expressions of hatred, and contradictions real or apparent—the accounts of Judas’ death, for instance. Nor will he be able to ignore social issues, or the unfortunately recurrent confrontation of science and Scripture. Will his views necessarily remain unmodified if he reads that giants of the Reformation as well as the Roman Catholic hierarchy fought the sphericity and motion of the earth with biblical texts, or that Christian leaders such as Luther, Calvin, and Wesley denounced demonstrative activism (let alone the American Revolution) as defiance of the plain meaning of Romans 13? It is not enough to assure a frustrated student that such questions will dissolve away as he leaves adolescence behind, or that a bit of practical Christianity will banish the doubts generated by “intellectual theorizing.” It savors too much of drowning one’s sorrows in drink! Nor need it be thought that some of the all-too-popular reconciliations of science and Scripture or even denunciations of “scientism” will close the question for an honest scholar. He knows full well the merited skepticism which will greet any affirmation that the vast panorama of geological history can be deposited between the gap so conveniently discovered between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis, and will wisely refrain from confronting his professor (or his students) with the assertion that it is all a result of the Flood and that centuries of patient analysis must be dismissed as figments of uniformitarian imagination. Far too many students have been trapped between the extremes of biblical “literalism” and rationalistic “naturalism.”

No, I don’t presume to know all the answers; I wish I did. But somebody must say, in plain English, that the problem does not lie solely with the campus, and that vulnerable viewpoints, dogmatically asserted, are going to add to the spiritual shock which follows removal from a home where life is focused on one faith to a campus where different faiths (secular as well as religious) are presented in parallel lines. We may legitimately protest the not infrequent distortion of our faith, but our problems will not be lessened if anti-intellectualism looms large in the Christian community, if special pleading is evident in our apologetics, and if false accusations are given credence. Even liberal intellectuals have their ideals, not excluding academic freedom, racial equality, and the search for truth unfettered by any “dogma.” The Christian who sees faith in Christ as a great integrating force illuminating every facet of life may have his work cut out on a secular campus, but his task can sometimes be embarrassed as much by the opinions and attitudes of his allies as by the threatening undercurrent of anti-supernatural scientism and secularized humanism. If it is a conservative Christianity which we seek to proclaim, it must be an informed and tenable one.

Assoc. Prof. of Geography

San Fernando Valley State College Northridge, Calif.

On the whole, it is a satisfactory issue. However, I would seriously question the introductory article, “The Christian Student in a Secular Milieu,” by John W. Dykstra.

Now Mr. Dykstra is himself a teacher in such a “secular” institution. Certainly the kind of concern he manifests for the real needs of students would help change the atmosphere of any “secular” setting. I gather that the primary intention of his article is to describe some of the factors that create difficulties for the average Christian student.

Unfortunately, his opening paragraphs may leave the impression that he is renewing the old attacks upon the “god-less university.” Such a description of the state university is patently false. In the very same issue … you note that the new executive of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship comes from an academic post at a state university. The secular university is peopled by all kinds of professors and instructors, many of them confessing and witnessing Christians.

In short the secular university, if it is truly objective, does not hinder a Christian concern on the part of the dedicated believer. It asks only that a man be competent in his discipline and that he deal fairly with all of his students. Indeed, universities today encourage a positive interest in students on the part of the faculty. We can help such concerned faculty persons by thinking through and demonstrating a theology of “Christian presence” within the secular structures of our time.

Executive Director

The University Christian Association University Park, Pa.

My most humble thanks for another fine issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. AS a Lutheran pastor who has had some of the experiences of struggling with all the so called theological “insights” of the “up-to-date” theologians, especially the ones of my own denomination, it is indeed refreshing to get a view of things which appreciates history and the struggles of the giants of past centuries for what they are, and for their contribution to our age as well. The depreciation of all that has gone before, with an insistence that we have now arrived, has always seemed quite hollow, for in my simple estimation, the problems of man have always been the same, albeit the outward circumstances may have changed.

I am awaiting the outcome of my application for a year of study in Finland. The article by Montgomery, “On Taking A European Theological Doctorate,” has clarified many things for me, and thus I now look forward to this opportunity with even greater desire if granted.…

Mass, Mich.

ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Almost everything that Addison H. Leitch says is worth consideration, and I usually agree with him.

But his adulation of Albert Schweitzer (Current Religious Thought, Jan. 15 issue) I cannot accept. When Dr. Schweitzer uses his “masterful reasoning powers” in his book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, his “masterful reasoning powers” lead him to the astonishing discovery that Jesus was fallible, that Jesus made mistakes!

The trouble with Dr. Schweitzer is that he does not know that “masterful reasoning powers” are altogether insufficient to discover the truth about the historic Jesus.

There was a man in the New Testament who was reminded of this when our Lord told him that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

Albert Schweitzer and DeGaulle appear to have much in common. They can never see their mistakes. The insufferable pride of man disgusts me. JOHN R. STEVENSON Saxman United Presbyterian Church Sterling, Kan.

I must write now while the experience is fresh. [The article] regarding Albert Schweitzer is without doubt the finest, most humane (and most Christian!) appraisal of that famous man that I have ever read. It touched my heart and my mind. Only today I completed a study on Schweitzer for … one of our Lutheran publications. I wish I had been able to show the insight into this amazing man Mr. Leitch has shown.…

Newberry College

Newberry, S. C.

FOR THE FREE MARKET

I would like to … [comment] on the article by Dr. Kuhn regarding poverty and unemployment (Current Religious Thought, Dec. 18 issue). We have made a fetish of higher and higher wages, reduced work week, and wage control (minimum wages) as if these factors improve the lot of all. It just is not so. Wages ought to be arrived at in a free-market competition. The totality of what we have to share amongst ourselves in the way of goods and services, can never be more than the sum total of our productivity; the sharing ought to be commensurate with one’s [productivity], and not based on what some may obtain by means of coercive action of governmental action (e.g. minimum wages).…

Then also, we hear again from various quarters about the need of a shorter work week and higher minimum wages, but this will not solve the problem, rather aggravate it. Higher wages do not improve the lot of the masses because the cost of their production rises at the same percentage factor. High wages in a free economy are the result of, and reflect the efficiency of, the industrial system; it is not—as some maintain—the artificially forced wage standard which improves the standard of living. Someone will have small productivity and receive less than the one with the higher productivity, but he still adds to the sum total of the goods and services enjoyed and shared by our entire society. To deprive a marginal worker front this opportunity to work at some wage reduces thereby the quantity of goods and services to be enjoyed by all; it is demoralizing and against all common sense and Christian morality. By what Christian ethic can the standpoint be defended which claims that a man must not be allowed to work except at a certain wage which he is not qualified to earn?…

Marblehead, Mass.

THE SECOND TABLE

I was amused at Lawing’s cartoon (Jan. 15 issue) showing an evident Moses holding the Ten Commandments. The caption reads: “Aaron said perhaps you’d let us condense them to ‘act responsibly in love.’ ”

But as I chuckled, I began to realize that this was essentially what Jesus did. Remember his remarks when asked what the greatest commands were? J. HOLLAND VERNON Montana Conf. District Superintendent The Methodist Church Great Falls, Mont.

It seems to me that Matthew 22:37–40 closely parallels what many mean by “act responsibly in love.” This would certainly be true for the second table of the Law.…

First Covenant Church

Billings, Mont.

Those who reduce the moral law to love and then redefine love so that the moral law is altered (and such notions as pacifism, socialism, government welfare, and antinomianism justified on that basis) can learn a great deal from that cartoon.

Los Angeles. Calif.

BOTH GOODNESS AND SEVERITY

In spite of your continuing articles on Communism, racial prejudice, emotional illness and mental retardation, campus educational needs, theological trends, ecumenism, church-and-state relations, et al., those of the liberal theological perspective—beyond Sadducceism—are still harping on your fine periodical as lacking modern “relevant” social ethics for Kingdom citizens.…

To me, this is like having black before your eyes and calling it white.

Maybe this is their withdrawal symptom from a truly relevant ethics that has both, as the Apostle Paul might say, “the goodness and severity of God,” which is based upon the Reformation principle of Holy Scripture only instead of personal relativism. First Baptist Church

Menard, Tex.

A SUGGESTED STRATEGY

A few months ago I was in the study of a well-known evangelical in the States. I reminded him that the last time we were together was the night on which we had heard that Machen had been put out of the ministry in the Presbyterian Church. And then I also recalled that when on that night in 1936 I had said that I was going to leave the Presbyterian Church, he had said that I was making a mistake—that “we” are staying in for a few years and [later] lead a big group out.

His response to my recalling this was that the separatists had accomplished little in the almost thirty years which had passed since then. In general I tended to agree with him, but noted that those who had stayed in had not done anything much either. Then we were on a ground which made a constructive conversation possible.

In the May 22, 1961, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY I wrote:

In the 1930s liberalism in the United States reached a point where it led to a division among the evangelicals. One group followed a historic emphasis, especially in Reformed Churches, and separated when the liberals came into control in most of the major denominations. The other group did not separate.

In surveying the first group, one must distinguish between a strong acceptance of the principle of the commanded purity of the visible church and what has happened in the intervening thirty years among those who have separated. There is cause for sadness in the results of the separated movement. While the criticism does not apply to everyone who took this position, yet the organized leadership of “the separated movement” largely developed an expertness in preparing a kind of lawyer’s brief which has the end of “winning one’s case at any cost” by choosing that portion of the facts which is convenient to this end, and in using this lawyer-brief mentality against liberals and true Christians equally.

In surveying the second group, one must distinguish between staying in an ecclesiastical unit at any one specific point of history, and the surrender of church purity as a principle. There is cause for sadness in the historical results of the action of this second group of evangelicals. For their ecclesiastical contacts have tended to “bridge-building” in wider areas of cooperation, and then tended to theological contacts of a “bridge-building” nature.

Since four years have passed since this was written, something more can be added. It is ever more clear that there remain two kinds of separatists; and on the other side, “bridge-building” among some evangelicals has reached the stage where the term “evangelical” has become meaningless. The surrender of emphasis on the purity of the visible church has led to wider and wider areas of evangelistic cooperation, and theologically, in many parts of evangelicalism, a widening tendency to compromise the doctrine of Scripture. There is an increasing tendency to lose the sense of antithesis, and with this how will the great antithesis of justification finally stand?

The hopeful thing is that a second kind of evangelical is appearing who knows something is wrong and is trying to do something about it. The danger is that such men will do “something” in limited areas, but simply continue further along in the historical situation—like a man who keeps crawling but with the ice always breaking beneath him—repeating the basic mistake of losing the sense of antithesis.

It would seem to me that the only solution is a total one—on both sides of the division of Bible-believing Christians which has existed since the thirties:

First, recognize that the basic principle involved is not “separation” but the principle of the purity of the visible church. Begin talking privately and publicly about this principle and discuss and pray together as to what our responsibility concerning this is. When we do this, we are back where the present difficulty in the general evangelical ranks began.

Second, place purity of doctrine (and life) with love at the center, instead of having Christian activism and evangelism in the center.

Third, analyze what is the total world situation we face today. Realize that history has moved since Warfield and Hodge—that Hegel’s presuppositions have won in the twentieth-century world, and that the monolithic culture (secular and religious) is one of relativism, syncretism, and anti-Law. We will then be ahead of our times instead of training men for fifty years ago, and it is not far-fetched to say that our Christian colleges could leap-frog into being true twentieth-century educational institutions. Missionaries trained in them could catch up with the “natives” they are trying to teach, and Christian parents and educators would not feel confused by the gap between themselves and the next generation. In our moment of history an emphasis on antithesis as against relativism is the true offense of the cross against the world and the general world-spirit about us. This is facing a total culture, as the early Church faced their total cultural environment as it rested on false religion and false philosophy. This is also preaching Christ today—missing the presuppositional changes from a previous day largely leaves us in communication only with the upper middleclass, while the workers and the intellectual and creative people are left ignorant of the Good News which is for all men.

The point of contact for evangelical renewal should be the principle of the purity of the visible church, even though we may not all have the same light on the specific application of the principle in practice. The link between those who believed in the practice of the principle of the purity of the visible church was unfortunately smashed; instead, there has grown up a general evangelical framework which tries to act as though it does not matter if the principle of the purity of the visible church exists or not. The question was swept under the rug, and evangelism and Christian activism went on undisturbed. It has gone on toward an increasingly contentless and unevangelical evangelicalism. Now thirty years later, with the new evangelical view of the Bible increasingly separating the total authority of Scripture from the things of the cosmos and the events of history upon which the Bible touches, such “evangelicalism” has come in a circle to a place not greatly different than the view which B. B. Warfield opposed so rightly in the case of Henry Preserved Smith in the days when liberalism was first entering the Presbyterian and other churches, just before 1900.

Surely this is not the moment either to think only of individual salvation or to retreat to a defensive position. Is it not possible by the grace of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit, to go back on both sides and pick up the pieces?—To find contact between those across the lines who agree that the past thirty years have brought much less than the people of God in the thirties thought properly would be ahead; those who accept the scriptural principle of the purity of the visible church as a principle for which we are responsible under the leadership of the Spirit, each one considering “what God would have me do about it in practice in my generation”? We are fewer in numbers now, unhappily, than thirty years ago, but to take such a position and practice would put us in step with many throughout the world; for example, the evangelicals in the Church of England who openly face the possible tearful meaning to them of this principle in the days ahead. That is very different from our American and related evangelicals who act as though organizational continuity takes precedence over the doctrinal purity of the Church.

Chalet les Melez

Huémoz sur Ollon, Switzerland

EXCITED … AND APPALLED

Michael Green’s “Preaching the Advent: A Contemporary Approach” (Jan. 1 issue) is incredible. Reading the article through twice, and three times, I must admit I became excited—but also appalled. Imagine a key article such as this on the Second Coming—and directed at ministers at that—with not even a mention of such crucial concepts as the pre-tribulation rapture, the seven-year tribulation, and the millennial reign of Christ.

Green stimulated my thinking and guided me into fresh considerations of the importance of our Lord’s coming for my own personal life. However, my excitement was soon dampened considerably.

Relevance in preaching is, I suppose, a worthy goal. But far more important than to communicate the spirit of a moving truth to the present generation is to declare dogmatically the minute details of correct doctrine which alone render the Second Coming the “Blessed Hope.”

Fresno, Calif.

Michael Green … says regarding the doctrine of the Advent, “The New Testament does not isolate it like that. It does not speak of a Second Coming.” In Hebrews 9:28 it says, “… unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” This is the only place in Scripture where our Lord’s Return is specifically designated as “second”; but that is enough, and the idea pervades the New Testament.

East Williamson Reformed Church East Williamson, N. Y.

WRITTEN WORD AND LIVING WORD

I would like to express my appreciation for … the stimulating article, “The Minister and His Work” (Jan. 1 issue).

I appreciate Dr. Gaebelein’s emphasis on preaching Christ. His reason for it, however, deserves a second look. There may be somebody in the audience “who may never have another opportunity to hear the message of salvation,” but is this the basic reason for mentioning Christ in every sermon? True preaching of the written Word must always reveal the living Word. When the preacher has not found Christ in his text he must start to dig deeper. Admittedly a difficult task, but is it permissible to preach the Word without preaching Christ?

Surrey Christian Reformed Church

North Surrey, British Columbia

STRICTLY TYPOGRAPHICAL

In the article “Revelation as Truth” (Jan. 1 issue) you quote Adolf Koberle as saying, “In the New Testament the great deeds of God are proclaimed like news: ‘The battle is finished: the victory is won; the trespasses are forgiven.’ Then the reader is called to appropriate this subjectivity and to realize this good news for himself.” I wonder if you intended to use the word “subjectivity,” or did you intend “subjectively,” which seems to me to fit the argument better. The whole point is that the Gospel has an objective, historical basis which in turn is to be realized subjectively. I fail to understand how this can be termed “subjectivity.”

Second Street Presbyterian Church

Albemarle, N. C.

• Reader York is wholly right. Dr. Köberle’s word was “subjectively.”—ED.

CRY FROM THE CROSS

God bless you for including the material on the deity of our Lord … by Drs. Bruce and Martin in your December 18 issue.

Regarding their remarks on Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46 (page 17), it seems to me that one of the most important issues recorded in the cry of our Lord is omitted. The authors point out that Christ cried from the cross in Aramaic rather than the Hebrew of Psalm 22. The words of Christ, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” contain the Aramaic word lamah, and it is translated “why.” This particular word for “why” means “to what purpose.” The other Aramaic word for “why” is maddo and means “for what cause.”

Christ did not ask “for what cause” (maddo), but “to what purpose” (lamah), his heavenly father had forsaken him. Here is a subtle assertion of the deity of the fulfiller of the great messianic twenty-second psalm.

Minneapolis, Minn.

To refer to F. F. Bruce and W. J. Martin as “laymen” is exceedingly misleading. As you noted, one is professor of New Testament and the other of Old Testament.

They are “unordained” only because the fellowship to which they belong (Plymouth Brethren) does not recognize a special clergy-caste. Both are, however, recognized as able ministers of the Word of God in this fellowship.

Pasadena, Calif.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH

Thank you for the excellent article by James Taylor, “Born of a Virgin.” In these days of doctrinal vagueness his clear-cut acceptance of this important scriptural teaching is most refreshing. With respect to his treatment of Isaiah 7:14, however, I must express disagreement. It is not correct to say that bethulah “can mean only ‘a virgin pure and unspotted.’ ” Actually, the word can mean a virgin, a betrothed virgin, and (as attested both by Scripture and by extra-biblical sources) a married woman. The word almah is perhaps on the whole the general equivalent of English “maiden” or “damsel,” although it is never used of a married woman. In Isaiah 7:14, all factors considered, it is best rendered “virgin.” Had Isaiah wished to speak of a young woman he could have used the colorless word naarah.

Nor does it do justice to the prophecy to say that the birth of the Child “was to be a God-given sign to King Ahaz indicating conquest of the kingdoms by the king of Assyria.” This is not the basic meaning of the prophecy, nor was the sign given specifically to Ahaz. The prophecy had a far deeper meaning, and serves as the mother or fountain prophecy upon which subsequent Messianic prophecy in Isaiah is based.

Hence, it is not correct to say that this prophecy finds an immediate fulfillment in chapter 8. It is the mother who names the Messiah, but it is the father who names Maher-shalal-hash-baz in chapter 8. Furthermore, if chapter 8 is the fulfillment of 7:14, why is the mother called almah in 7:14 but nebiah in chapter 8? The whole idea of a double fulfillment of the prophecy really rests upon a misunderstanding of its true meaning and significance. Hence, there is no need to speak of two virgin births.

Three points must be considered if we are properly to evaluate this passage: (1) The birth is said to be a sign; (2) the presence of God is seen, not in the deliverance from Syria and Israel, but in the birth of the Child; (3) the use of the strange word almah, which can only be satisfactorily explained when this wondrous passage is regarded as a prophecy of the supernatural birth of the Messiah.

Professor of Old Testament

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

The difference, if any, between bethulah and almah is so slight that even today practically every Jewish-edited Hebrew-Hebrew or English-Hebrew (but not Hebrew-English!) dictionary makes the two words virtually synonymous, as in the Ugarit. For example, the leading English-Hebrew dictionary defines “virgin” by “almah or betulah” (An English-Hebrew Dictionary, edited by Efros, Kaufman, and Silk, published by Dvir, Tel-Aviv). And bethulah is defined by “almah, a woman who has not known a man” in the four-volume definitive Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary by A. L. Shushan (Kiryat Sefer Publishing Company, Jerusalem). This same work defines almah as “a young woman, especially an unmarried one,” an obvious attempt to be accurate, even though the editor could not bring himself, as a Jew, to use the word “virgin.” Incidentally, in modern Hebrew, a “Miss” is an almah.… Staten Island, N. Y.

Sixth in a Series (Part I)

If one fact is clear from the twentieth century, it is that evangelical Christianity gains nothing from a ‘reaction theology’! Because it falls short of a full biblical emphasis, ‘reaction theology’ is powerless to confront the alternatives and always proves weak in the next generation.”

So comments the Dutch theologian, G. C. Berkouwer. One of the real tasks of evangelical Christianity, he feels, must be to move beyond old boundaries to new frontiers of theological enterprise. “The distinction between theological conservatism and progressivism is no longer serviceable,” Dr. Berkouwer says. “The words are no longer useful because everybody wants to ‘conserve’ and to ‘progress.’ Lack of progress is no characterological feature of our theology. We need to face the future unafraid. Faith need not fear in the face of danger. An openness in confronting modern problems in the wrestling of this century will not destroy or dilute the Word of God, but rather will give it free course.” From another quarter—L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, where Francis Schaeffer works with intellectuals on the agnostic fringes of modern life—comes another warning to evangelical forces. “For many of ‘the doubters’ in our generation the accepted religious vocabulary no longer conveys what the words were intended to mean. So the ‘general evangelicals’ are often articulating slogans rather than communicating ideas. They need therefore to step into the twentieth century.” “Worse yet,” says Schaeffer, “some segments of the evangelical movement have fallen prey to the irrationalistic spirit of the age, and they see no real possibility of intellectual answers. They are losing a battle they do not even realize they ought to be fighting. They give away key chunks in their armor to the existential and dialectical philosophies, and rely on piety and zeal to win the day. Or they combat the new theology on too narrow a strip—not seeing its connection with the line of despair that characterizes modern thought.”

These tendencies—first, a ready reliance on reactionary negation rather than on the counter-thrust of creative biblical theology; and second, a spirit of accommodation that simply erodes elements of Christian belief less rapidly than more radical views—largely account for the present predicament of evangelical theology in Europe. The collapse of rationalistic liberalism in European theological thought was forced not by traditional evangelicalism but by the crisis-theology; it was the lack of a vigorous evangelical theological thrust relevant to the spirit of the times that furnished Barth and Brunner their opportunity to speak in the name of biblical theology. Now that the existential-dialectical framework is increasingly strained and a search for new alternatives is under way, the question arises whether European theological history will again neglect a sound evangelical option—and if so, why.

There is little doubt that evangelical scholarship on the Continent is less formidable today than in earlier times of struggle against modern critical theories. In German theology there have been traditionally two streams of conservatism in biblical-exegetical scholarship. First, there was the confessionalistic theology centered throughout the nineteenth century in the conservative Erlangen Heilsgeschichte school. (Paul Althaus, who also reflected the influence of Martin Kähler, carried this witness forward into the present generation.) The second trend, the pietistic movement, has taken two directions. Originating in Halle, where leaders like Francke and Tholuck combined Lutheran theology with pietism, one stream claimed Martin Kähler and Julius Schniewind among its significant figures, and in our generation has Otto Michel of Tübingen, one of Europe’s able New Testament scholars, as its outstanding representative. Another stream, which under A. Schlatter combined Reformed theology with pietism, has Karl Rengstorf of Münster and Adolf Köberle of Tübingen as leading present-day exponents—the latter reflecting also the influence of the late Karl Heim, another representative of this movement.

Almost all these lines of thought have been somewhat influenced by historical criticism. Moreover, even in their dissent from dialectical theology, they have in recent years found some reinforcement in the writings of Barth and Brunner, so that some evangelical indebtedness to the crisis-theologians cannot be denied. It is true that former Erlangen giants like Hermann Sasse and the late Werner Elert took the position that what was valuable in Barth could be found in the Bible and what was false—including the dialectical structuring of theology—should not be commended to divinity students. Although Elert once said he wanted “no piece of bread” from Barth, the younger conservative theologians acknowledged a debt to Barth for his bold assault on rationalistic modernism, for his role in the Kirkenkampf against Nazi socialism, and for occasional fresh insights into biblical positions. In fact, in their struggle against modernism the conservative forces had to draw much of their ammunition from Barth, because their own theological leadership in the Protestant faculties had been decimated. Thus it developed, as one evangelical put it, that “Barth injected a dose of quinine into the blood of the theologians, and while this checked much feverish speculation, it also encouraged them to survive by means of dialectical infusion.” This turn of events explains why any checklist of evangelical stalwarts in Europe almost invariably includes the names of scholars whose moderate adjustments to biblical criticism or accommodations to recent theology set them apart from American fundamentalism. It accounts also for the mood of moderation in conservative critiques of dialectical theology, as reflected in the works of Althaus. The list of evangelical spokesmen, therefore, is often enlarged beyond the non-dialectical theologians to include scholars like Peter Brunner and Edmund Schlink of Heidelberg, whose formulations retain a dialectical structure, or Helmut Thielicke of Hamburg, who resists the Barthian theology but whose preaching and popular writing seldom reflect his full critical viewpoint.

The evangelical critique of dialectical theology has nonetheless been maintained along several lines. There is the continuance of the Erlangen salvation-history tradition by Althaus and now by Walter Künneth. The Tübingen line of Schlatter and Heim is continued by Adolf Köberle. There are the biblical exegetes specializing in Judaistic studies (Gustave Dahlmann, Hermann Strack, Otto Michel, Paul Billerbeck, Joachim Jeremias, Karl Rengstorf), and there are also some younger theologians (among them Hans Schmidt, docent for systematic theology in Hamburg, and Adolf Strobel, privat-docent in New Testament at Bonn) who criticize on biblical grounds the philosophical presuppositions of the new theology.

The difference between the conservative and mediating camps, therefore, tends sometimes to become merely a difference of emphasis. Jeremias warns, for example, against drawing too sharp a line between the traditional conservative scholars and the Heilsgeschichte scholars. In part, this plea springs from the fact that, although they resist extreme critical positions, many conservatives are not averse to accepting moderate critical views. So Jeremias assigns Formgeschichte the role of distinguishing “Palestinian from Hellenic layers” in the New Testament. But the plea is based also on the validity of the fundamental concept of salvation-history, to which the recent Heilsgeschichte movement does less than justice. European conservative scholars have learned not to discard valued terminology just because somebody temporarily cheapens it. “The old way, the Heilsgeschichte approach, was correct,” Jeremias insists. “The method did not put the stress on the anthropological side but on the theological. It regarded the main task of hermeneutics as the understanding of the message of our Lord himself with the help of the biblical-Palestinian environment. It took the message of the Gospel without imposing external philosophical presuppositions.”

Then too, the Heilsgeschichte school itself includes an exegete as conservative as Oscar Cullmann, whose theologically positive views embarrass some salvation-history scholars. In fact, just this extensive theological diversity within the modern Heilsgeschichte movement is one feature that differentiates it from the conservative camp. The salvation-history scholars are actually less unified in perspective than their mutual interest in historical revelation might indicate. They represent a wide variety of viewpoints and interests, although at this present time in the theological debate they manifest a common concern. Eduard Schweizer of Zürich is really a post-Bultmannian, Ulrich Wilckens of Berlin is numbered in the Pannenberg school, and Eduard Lohse of Berlin reflects much of the position of Jeremias, his former teacher.

Wanted: A New Methodology

Amid the growing recognition of the methodological crisis in European theology, conservatives venture little radical criticism of the presuppositions now dominant. It is doubtless true that, as Emil Brunner remarks, “the methodological alone has never changed the church line; the theological is decisive.” Yet in almost every camp some scholars now recognize that the presently controlling methodological premises are under great strain because of the chaotic condition of Continental theology. The Bultmann devotee Hans Conzelmann aptly describes the present tumult as “a trouble of methodology.” And Werner Kümmel, spokesman for the Heilsgeschichte scholars, unhesitatingly calls for “a new methodology” to replace the Bultmannian misconception of the task of hermeneutics with a renewed interest in what the New Testament actually teaches. Yet even among the more conservative scholars there is little evident disposition to attack Formgeschichte in more than a general way.

Whatever criticisms are sounded, however, are significant and include a rejection of Bultmann’s premise that the form-critical method immediately elucidates the formation of the contents of the New Testament. Otto Michel of Tübingen has spoken openly of the need for a new and different methodology, and calls for a scriptural rather than a critical norm. While in New Testament criticism Michel confessedly retains much the same methodology as Bultmann, he emphasizes the historical roots of early Christian phenomena and achieves a theological result that is evangelically sturdy. “It is customary to draw certain contents (kerygma) from the Bible,” he notes, “but not to draw categories of thought from the Bible, nor to check our categories of historical criticism from it.” A somewhat similar complaint can be found in the writings of A. Schlatter, whose untranslated criticism of modern philosophy from Descartes to Nietzsche should be better known.

Difficulties Facing Conservatives

One reason for the limited initiative and impact of conservative scholars is that their representation on the university faculties is in meager disproportion to the theological outlook of the generality of Lutheran and Reformed church members. For this reason some mainstream ministers and churches are increasingly disposed to establish centers of theological learning independent of the universities. They complain that conservative forces are not adequately represented. They charge that on retirement conservative scholars are replaced by non-conservatives. Only here and there does an isolated scholar make a mark for the evangelical cause. Among such is the New Testament professor Johannes Schneider, a Baptist, recently retired from Humboldt University in East Berlin.

Time pressures on the conservative scholars are such that their literary output often lags. Moreover, the theological situation often requires their engagement on a more technical level than polemical debate. Yet Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann all knew the value of closely reasoned textbooks supporting their positions. A time of theological transition requires coping with the concerns that engage the influential theologians. If evangelical Christianity is again to acquire mainstream theological power, it cannot perpetuate itself by remaining in ideological isolation from dominant trends of thought. Furthermore, the paucity of conservative theological literature frustrates evangelical students. Because there is little else, the dogmatics of Barth and Brunner, appropriated critically, serve as the main theological supply of many conservative students, while Von Rad’s Old Testament theology fills much the same vacuum in that area. Yet the picture is not wholly dark. A few valuable works have appeared from the conservative side, among them Michel’s commentaries on Romans and Hebrews. Long a publishing house for pietistic literature, Brockhaus Verlag in Wuppertal has now widened its program to include the publication of theological works.

Thanks to authors who had the “bite to write” and thanks also to cooperative publishers, CHRISTIANITY TODAY can again present its readers with its Spring Forecast of new books. We trust that this forecast will be useful to all who want to know what will be published in their fields—to students, to ministers, to college, seminary, and university professors, and to librarians and others whose profession is books.

As any minister knows who has tried to organize his personal library according to subject matter, books, like life, overflow any system of division. Where, for example, would you put Roman Catholic publisher Sheed and Ward’s Generation of the Third Eye (their director, James F. Foster, “simply gave up”) or their How to Peel a Sour Grape, by R. Frisbie, described as “an impractical guide to successful failure” and as something for the “Aspirin Age”? And now that the demands of what is also the Ecumenical Age have been met, we can proceed to more manageable titles.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE: Beacon Hill will publish A Christian Perspective of Knowing by E. E. Barrett; Devin-Adair, Catholics and Birth Control: Contemporary Views on Doctrine by D. D. Bromley, introduction by Richard Cardinal Cushing; Eerdmans, The Burden of Sören Kierkegaard by E. J. Carnell; Harper and Row, Hymn of the Universe by Teilhard de Chardin; Hawthorn, Linguistics, Language and Religion by D. Crystal and Towards a Theology of Science by L. Bright; Herder and Herder, In the Field with Teilhard de Chardin by G. G. Barbour; Houghton Mifflin, Beyond the Outside by C. Wilson; John Knox, Pascal’s Recovery of Man’s Wholeness by A. N. Wells; Philosophical Library, A Philosopher Looks at Science by A. N. Whitehead; Scribners, Religious Philosophies of the West by G. F. Thomas and The Arts of the Beautiful by Etienne Gilson; Seabury, The Crisis of Cultural Change by M. B. Bloy, Jr.; University of Michigan, Culture and Anarchy (Matthew Arnold’s masterpiece of political and social thought) edited by R. H. Super; Westminster, A Layman’s Introduction to Religious Existentialism by E. B. Borowitz; and Yale University, Heidegger, Being, and Truth by Laszlo Versényi.

BIBLE COMMENTARIES AND DICTIONARIES: Cambridge will print The Gospel According to John by A. M. Hunter and The Gospel According to Luke by E. J. Tinsley; Eerdmans, The Epistle to the Romans by J. Murray, Volume II from the “New International Commentary on the New Testament”; Macmillan, Pictorial Biblical Encyclopedia by Cornfield; Sheed and Ward, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew by A. Jones; Westminster, I and II Samuel by H. Wilhelm and Young People’s Bible Dictionary by B. Smith; and Zondervan, The New English Bible Concordance by E. Elder and The Epistles of John and Timothy, Titus and Philemon by W. E. Vine.

BIBLICAL STUDIES: Abingdon will present The Compassionate Christ by W. R. Bowie and His Hidden Grace by R. A. Harrisville; Harper and Row, Bible Key Words, Volume V, by G. Kittel; Herder and Herder, Original Sin: A Biblical Interpretation by A. Dubarle, O. P.; McGraw-Hill, Collected Old Testament Studies by G. von Rad; William Morrow, The Bible as History by W. Keller; Prentice-Hall, The Romance of Bible Scripts and Scholars by J. H. P. Reumann; Revell, Great Personalities of the Bible by W. S. LaSor and Things Which Become Sound Doctrine by J. D. Pentecost; Westminster, Our English Bible in the Making by H. G. May; World, The Epistle to the Romans by F. J. Leenhardt and Farrar’s Life of Christ by F. W. Farrar; and Zondervan, The Invisible War by D. G. Barnhouse.

CHURCH HISTORY: Abingdon will be coming out with Charles Wesley—The First Methodist by F. C. Gill; Bethany, The Church and Its Culture by R. M. Pope; Cambridge, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine by R. E. Dodds; E. P. Dutton, The General Next to God: The Story of William Booth and the Salvation Army by R. Collier (on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Salvation Army); Eerdmans, Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin translated by P. E. Hughes, The Reformation by O. Chadwick, and A History of Christian Missions by S. Neill; Exposition, Church and Clergy in the American Revolution by L. D. Joyce; Harper and Row, The Athanasian Creed by J. N. D. Kelly and The Heritage of Christian Thought edited by R. Cushman and E. Grislis; Herder and Herder, John XXIII, Pope Paul on His Predecessor and a Documentation by the editors of Herder Correspondence; John Knox, John Knox by L. E. Percy; Little, Brown and Company, The World of Josephus by G. A. Williamson; Macmillan, The Anguish of the Jews by Flannery; Moody, Blood and Fire (William Booth and the Salvation Army) by Edward Bishop; Scribners, The Spirit of Anglicanism by H. R. McAdoo; Sheed and Ward, Luther and Aquinas on Salvation by S. Pfurtner, O. P., and The Division of Christendom by C. Dawson; and Westminster, The Lord of History by W. C. Loper and The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith by H. Gollwitzer.

DEVOTIONAL: From Abingdon will come The Suffering Servant by C. Marney; Augsburg, Pathways of the Passion: Daily Meditations for the Lenten Season by P. Lönning; Baker, Building Your Spiritual Strength and Secret of Christian Family Living by R. Heynen; Christopher, Moments with Jesus by R. E. Haltner, Sr.; Eerdmans, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure by D. M. Lloyd-Jones; and John Knox, Splendid Moments by B. W. Stoffel.

ECUMENICS: The Second Vatican Council continues to spur production in this area, with an assist by the Jewish question. Augsburg will publish Dialogue on the Way: Protestants Report from Rome on the Vatican Council edited by G. Lindbeck; Doubleday, What’s the Difference? by L. Cassels (religion editor for United Press International); Exposition, The Heresy of Pope John XXIII by U. Oxfort (a book that would seem to have another spirit than that of 1870); Hawthorn, Twentieth Century Catholicism by L. Sheppard; Herder and Herder, Updating: The Church Tomorrow by G. H. Tavard; Oxford, Rome and Reunion by F. C. Grant and We Jews and Jesus by S. Sandmel; Prentice-Hall, Ecumenics: The Science of the Church Universal by J. A. Mackay; United Church Press, Vatican Diary 1964: A Protestant Observes the Third Session of Vatican Council II by D. Horton; and Westminster, Jews and Christians: Preparation for Dialogue by G. A. F. Knight.

ETHICAL AND SOCIAL STUDIES: Baker will offer Family, State, and Church by Paul Wooley; Bethany Press, Christian Faith and the Church by H. J. Forstman; Broadman, Conversion and Christian Character by S. Southard and Marriage and the Bible by E. White; Harper and Row, All Things New by A. C. Biezanek; Hawthorn, What Is Society? by G. Zahn and Labor and the Church by J. Cronin and H. Flannery; John Knox, Communism, Christianity, Democracy by S. Singh; David McKay, Unmarried Love by E. Chesser; Macmillan, The Authentic Morality by Lepp; Moody, God Is for the Alcoholic by J. Dunn; Philosophical Library, Reverence for Life by Albert Schweitzer; Prentice-Hall, Toward an Understanding of Homosexuality by D. Cappon, D. P. M.; Revell, Twelve Angels from Hell by D. Wilkerson; Scribners, Tangled World by R. L. Shinn and Honesty in the Church by D. Callahan; United Church Press, A Door Ajar by J. M. Benton; University of Michigan, The Dropout: Causes and Cures by L. F. Cervantes; Westminster, Conquest by Suffering: The Process and Prospect of Nonviolent Resistance by H. Siefert; and Zondervan, The Jew Returns to Israel by A. Darms.

LITURGY: Concordia will issue Ceremony and Celebration by P. Lang; John Knox, Presbyterian Worship: Its Meaning and Method by D. Macleod; Prentice-Hall, Liturgy and Christian Unity by R. P. Marshall, O. S. L., and M. J. Taylor, S. J.; and Westminster, The Protestant Case for Liturgical Renewal by K. Phifer.

MISSIONS (EVANGELISM): Baker will be publishing Apostle to Inland China (J. Hudson Taylor) by J. S. and V. B. Kiefer; Christopher, Ambassador to the Saints by C. S. Rice; Doubleday, Christian Encounter with a Changed World by R. P. Beaver; Herald, Sense and Incense by O. Eby; Little, Brown, The Forest Calls Back by J. Mendelsohn; Macmillan, Witness in the Desert: The Life of Charles De Foucauld by Six (a name, not a number); Moody, The Bible Basis of Missions by R. H. Glover and Missionary Legal Manual by C. M. Bishop; Nelson, We Two Alone: Attack and Rescue in the Congo by Ruth Hege; Princeton, Christian Missionaries and the Creation of Northern Rhodesia, 1880–1924, by R. I. Rotberg; Westminster, Missions in a Time of Testing by R. K. Orchard; and Zondervan, Victory in Viet Nam by Mrs. G. H. Smith and Nothing to Win But the World by C. Cooper.

NEW TESTAMENT: Baker will print The Testimony of the Evangelists, Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice by Simon Greenleaf; Cambridge, The Elements of New Testament Greek by J. W. Wenham; Eerdmans, The Letters of Paul: An Expanded Paraphrase by F. F. Bruce, New Testament Times by M. C. Tenney, and A Survey of the Life of Christ by T. L. Fraser; Harper and Row, The New Testament by W. C. Van Unnik, Epistle to the Hebrews by H. W. Montefiore, Christianity in the Computer Age by A. Q. Morton and J. McLeman, and The Structure of Luke and Acts by A. Q. Morton and G. H. C. MacGregor; Herder and Herder, The Moral Teaching of the New Testament by R. Schnackenburg; Moody, The Acts of the Apostles by T. Walker; Philosophical Library, The Questing Christ by A. O. Steele; Scribners, The Central Message of the New Testament by J. Jeremias; Seabury, The Origin of I Corinthians by J. C. Hurd, Jr.; Westminster, The Theology of the Samaritans by J. MacDonald; and Yale University, The Composition and Order of the Fourth Gospel: Bultmann’s Literary Theory by D. M. Smith, Jr.

OLD TESTAMENT: Baker will put out History of Syria and Palestine to the Macedonia Conquest by A. T. Olmstead and A Short History of the Ancient Near East by S. J. Schwantes (the winner of Baker’s twenty-fifth-anniversary manuscript contest, Mr. Schwantes will appropriately get an all-expense-paid trip to the Holy Land); Eerdmans, A Survey of the Old Testament by T. L. Fraser; John Knox, The Praise of God in the Psalms by C. Westermann; and Westminster, Second Isaiah by J. D. Smart, Introducing Old Testament Theology by J. N. Schofield, and Irony in the Old Testament by E. M. Good.

PASTORAL THEOLOGY (PREACHING, PSYCHOLOGY): Abingdon promises Preaching to be Understood by J. T. Cleland, The False Prophet by D. E. Stevenson, and Jesus and Logotherapy by R. C. Leslie; Beacon Hill, Illnesses of the Modern Soul by R. V. DeLong; Harper and Row, The Healing of Persons by P. Tournier and Suicide and the Soul by J. Hillman; Moody, Introduction to Church Music by J. Wilson; Oxford, The Image of God by T. P. Ferris; Prentice-Hall, Understanding and Helping the Narcotic Addict by T. L. Duncan; and World, Miracles of Achievement by W. J. Smart.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: In this field Augsburg announces Pre-Seminary Education: Report of the Lilly Endowment Study by K. R. Bridston and D. W. Culver; Exposition, The Rise of Religious Education Among Negro Baptists by J. D. Tyms; and Westminster, Education for Renewal by D. J. Ernsberger, The Educational Mission of the Church by R. J. Havighurst, Freedomand Faith: New Approaches to Christian Education by J. G. Chamberlin, and The Church in Search of Education by K. B. Cully.

SERMONS: Abingdon will issue God’s Time and Ours by L. Griffith, The Thickness of Glory by J. Killinger, and Thunder on the Mountain by T. C. Myers; Eerdmans, Adventures of a Deserter: An Exposition of the Book of Jonah by J. Overduin; Herald, From the Mennonite Pulpit by P. Erb; W. A. Wilde, Great Sermons on the Death of Christ by W. B. Smith; and Zondervan, Law or Grace by M. R. De Haan.

THEOLOGY: Augsburg will offer The Word and the Spirit: Essays on Inspiration of the Scriptures by R. Prenter; Baker, A Bibliographical History of Dispensationalism by A. Ehlert; Eerdmans, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume II, edited by Gerhard Kittel, Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology edited by P. E. Hughes, and The Law and the Elements of the World by A. J. Bandstra; Harper and Row, No Rusty Swords by D. Bonhoeffer, Ultimate Concern by D. M. Brown, and Christ and Ourselves by R. Hazelton; Harvard University, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists by J. T. Noonan; Herder and Herder, Word and Redemption: Essays in Theology 2 by H. U. von Balthasar and The Preaching Word: On the Theology of Proclamation by O. Semmelroth, S. J.; Macmillan, The City of the Gods by Dunne and Human History and the Word of God by Connolly; Moody, Dispensationalism Today and The Holy Spirit by C. C. Ryrie; Oxford, Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine edited and translated by C. L. Manschreck and God and Incarnation in Mid-Nineteenth Century German Theology edited and translated by C. Welch: Princeton University, Worship and Theology in England: The Ecumenical Century, 1900–1965, by H. Davies; Sheed and Ward, Theology for Renewal: Bishops, Priests and Laity by Karl Rahner, S. J., and Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon by A. Grillmeier, S. J.; and Westminster, The Christian Natural Theology by J. B. Cobb, Jr., and The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology by G. S. Hendry.

PAPERBACKS: Abingdon will print The World of St. John by E. Ellis, Epistle to the Hebrews by W. Barclay, General Epistles by G. Beasley-Murray, and What Christians Believe by G. Harkness; Augsburg, Kierkegaard and Bultmann: The Quest of the Historical Jesus by H. C. Wolf; Baker, 2500 Sentence Sermons by C. B. Eavey and Simple Sermon Outlines by C. M. Pentz; Beacon Press, The Formation of Christian Dogma by M. Werner; Bethany Press, Eyes of Faith and The Kingdom and the Power by P. S. Minear; Cambridge, The Gospel According to John by A. M. Hunter and The Gospel According to Luke by E. J. Tinsley (both also in cloth); Concordia, On Trial—1965 Lenten Book and Luther on Education by F. V. Painter; Doubleday, Church and State in Luther and Calvin by W. A. Mueller; Eerdmans, The Grace of God by S. J. Mikolaski, The Wrath of Heaven by C. R. Schoonhoven, Descent Into Hell by C. Williams, By What Authority? by B. Shelley, The Mark of Cain by S. Babbage, The Anatomy of Anti-Semitism and Other Essays on Race and Religion by J. Daane, The Lord from Heaven by L. Morris, The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis, and Church Growth in Nigeria by J. B. Grimley; Friendship, The Word with Power by S. de Dietrich and Babylon by Choice by M. E. Marty; Harper and Row, The Man from Nazareth by H. E. Fosdick, Prayers for the Christian Year by W. Barclay, and The Books of the Old Testament by R. H. Pfeiffer; Herald, A Death in the Family by J. C. Wenger and Our Neighbors South and North by P. Erb; McGraw-Hill, The Teaching of Contempt by J. Isaac, The Religious Speeches of Bernard Shaw edited by W. S. Smith, and The Catholic Church in Nazi Germany by L. Guenter; Macmillan, Ethics by Bonhoeffer, Faith and History in the Old Testament by MacKenzie, Doing the Truth by Pike; Moody, God Is for the Alcoholic by J. Dunn; Morehouse-Barlow, The Right and the Wrong by J. H. Jacques and Lent with John Wesley by G. S. Wakefield; Nelson, The Genesis Octapla edited by L. A. Weigle; Princeton University, A Short Life of Kierkegaard by W. Lowrie, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine by R. M. Frye, and The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures by J. B. Pritchard; Scribners, God Was in Christ, by D. Baillie; Standard, Understanding the Bible by R. Palmer; United Church Press, The Mystical Presence and Other Writings on the Eucharist by J. W. Nevin, edited by B. Thompson and G. H. Bricker (an unabridged edition of Nevin’s celebrated work, The Mystical Presence, A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist); Upper Room, Places Christ Hallowed by H. H. Sheets; Westminster, Christian Responsibility in Economic Life by Rasmussen, The Theology of Karl Barth: An Introduction by H. Hartwell, and The New Reformation by J. A. T. Robinson; and Yale University, The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today by J. Courtney-Murray, S. J.

The best evangelical contributions of 1964, in the judgment of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, are listed below. The selections propound evangelical perspectives in a significant way or apply biblical doctrines effectively to modern currents of thought and life. These are not the only meritorious volumes, nor do they in every case necessarily reflect the convictions of all evangelical groups.

ARCHER, GLEASON L., JR.: A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Moody, 507 pp., $6.95). An introduction to the books of the Old Testament and an appraisal of more liberal critical positions.

BARNHOUSE, DONALD GREY: God’s Discipline: Romans 12:1–14:12 (Eerdmans, 230 pp., $4.50). Practical religious essays based on material from Paul’s letter to the Romans.

BRUCE, F. F.: Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Eerdmans, 447 pp., §6). A distinguished piece of biblical scholarship; useful to laymen and clergy.

BUSWELL, J. OLIVER, III: Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture (Eerdmans, 101 pp., $2.50). Buswell effectively blasts the alleged “biblical” grounds for segregation.

DIBELIUS, OTTO: In the Service of the Lord: The Autobiography of Otto Dibelius (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 280 pp., $5.50). A story of courageous opposition to Nazism and Communism by the former Bishop of Berlin.

DOUGLAS, J. D.: Light in the North (Eerdmans, 220 pp., $3.75). The story of the Scottish Covenanters’ insistence against the state that Christ alone is the Lord of the Church.

GREENLEE, J. HAROLD: An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Eerdmans, 160 pp., $3.50). A serviceable primer for beginning students of New Testament textual criticism.

GRIMM, ROBERT: Love and Sexuality: Sexual Maturity in Protestant Thought (Association, 127 pp., $3.50). An excellent, theologically grounded discussion that lost nothing in translation from the French.

HAKES, J. EDWARD, editor: An Introduction to Evangelical Christian Education (Moody, 423 pp., $5.95). An investigation of multiple facets of Christian education by thirty-two evangelicals.

HARRISON, EVERETT F.: Introduction to the New Testament (Eerdmans, 481 pp., $5.95). A broad presentation of the background and message of the New Testament.

HENRY, CARL F. H., editor: Christian Faith and Modern Theology (Channel, 426 pp., $5.95). Twenty stimulating essays on the state of theology today, with particular reference to some basic Christian doctrines.

HENRY, CARL F. H.: Aspects of Christian Social Ethics (Eerdmans, 190 pp., $3.95). A competent and provocative evangelical examination of Christianity’s proper role in modern social concerns.

KILBY, CLYDE S.: The Christian World of C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans, 216 pp., $4.50). A sympathetic and interpretative presentation of Lewis’s religious thought.

LADD, GEORGE ELDON: Jesus and the Kingdom (Harper and Row, 367 pp., $5). A competent book dedicated to the thesis that the eschatological Kingdom that comes later is already dynamically present in Christ and his mission.

LINDSELL, HAROLD, editor: Harper Study Bible (Harper and Row, 2,100 pp., $9.95). Monumental study Bible with introductions, footnotes, outlines, cross-references, index, concordance, and maps. Done with painstaking competence.

LONGENECKER, RICHARD N.: Paul, Apostle of Liberty (Harper and Row, 310 pp., $4.50). A rewarding presentation of Paul the man, his teaching and practice.

PFEIFFER, CHARLES F.: Egypt and the Exodus (Baker, 96 pp., $2.95). Material that portrays the historical and geographical dimensions of the Exodus.

PLANTINGA, ALVIN: Faith and Philosophy (Eerdmans, 225 pp., $4.95). Essays that probe the relation of the Christian faith to philosophy and philosophical ethics.

SMALL, DWIGHT HERVEY: The High Cost of Holy Living (Revell, 189 pp., $3.50). A moving plea to work at the task of achieving personal holiness.

STOTT, JOHN R. W.: The Epistles of John (Eerdmans, 230 pp., $3). An example of fine evangelical scholarship; any student of the Bible will find this helpful.

TURNER, GEORGE A., and MANTEY, JULIUS R.: The Gospel of John (Eerdmans, 420 pp., $8.95). A sound biblical commentary in the tradition of Matthew Henry.

VERDUIN, LEONARD: The Reformers and Their Stepchildren (Eerdmans, 292 pp., $5.75). A defense of the rather novel thesis that the separation of church and state stems from the Reformation “radicals” rather than from the Reformers. Reads like a novel.

In May, 1940, Virginia Woolf read a paper on “The Leaning Tower” to the Workers’ Educational Association in Brighton. She set out to account for the difference between English writers in the nineteenth century and those in the first half of the twentieth. Her thesis about the nineteenth-century writers was that because they lived in a serene and protected world, they were bound together by a likeness that overrode individual differences. She called this world their tower:

If we want to risk a theory, then, we can say that peace and prosperity were influences that gave nineteenth century writers a family likeness. They had leisure; they had security; life was not going to change; they themselves were not going to change. They could look; and look away. They could forget; and then in their books remember. Those then were some of the conditions that brought about a certain family likeness, in spite of the great individual differences, among the nineteenth century writers. The nineteenth ended; but the same conditions went on. They lasted, roughly speaking, till the year 1914. Even in 1914 we can still see the writer sitting as he sat all through the nineteenth century looking at human life; and that human life is still divided into classes; he still looks most intently at the class from which he himself springs; the classes are still so settled that he has almost forgotten that there are classes; and he is still so secure himself that he is almost unconscious of his own position and of its security. He believes that he is looking at the whole of life; and will always so look at it [The Moment and Other Essays, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948].

World War I, however, marked the end of the old order and the beginning of the new disorder, and 1918 became the great divide. The tower, so long secure and serene, began to lean. Its tilt forced the writer to look at life from a new angle. The landscape no longer appeared level and stable. Strange new towers that were raised here and there changed the landscape. Writers were forced to leave their ancestral towers in order to keep sight of human life, which had fled them either for new towers or, more likely, in startled confusion. Miss Woolf described the effect this had on the new generation of writers from about 1925:

When they looked at human life what did they see? Everywhere change; everywhere revolution. In Germany, in Italy, in Spain, all the old hedges were being uprooted; all the old towers were being thrown to the ground. Other hedges were being planted; other towers were being raised. There was communism in one country; in another fascism. The whole of civilization, of society, was changing. There was, it is true, neither war nor revolution in England itself.… But even in England towers that were built of gold and stucco were no longer steady towers. They were leaning towers. The books were written under the influence of change, under the threat of war.

Miss Woolf followed her analysis with a venture into the risky and uncertain world of prophecy, and she has proved to be a better analyst than seer. She dared valiantly to dream that the post-war world would be a world without towers or classes, “without hedges between us, on the common ground.” We can forgive her if her prophecy was based more on wishful thinking than on hard realism, for she was among a noble company of dreamers who have longed so earnestly for the time when men “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” that they have mistaken the yearning for the realization. How could she have anticipated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fall of China to Communism, the cold war, the rise of the colored races around the world and the sudden dissolution of great empires, Castroism in Cuba, or the social-renewal movement in America? Towers have fallen in every society on earth, and often even the rubble has been carted away. Those towers that remain are shaky and are leaning so far out of plumb that their fall seems inevitable. Universal sensibility of such accelerated change may explain why recent shifts of the Leaning Tower of Pisa have commanded world attention and have sent engineers scurrying to their drawing boards in search of ways to arrest the threatened collapse. Tower-dwellers are always the last to accept the inevitable process of change. When the tower tilts, they look out from a different angle but do not abandon the tower; and when it falls, they cower in bewilderment or lash out in futile fury. Seldom do they seek causes; even less often do they have the imagination and will to erect new towers better adapted to an emergent or new society. This is true of much of the South under the impact of the social-renewal movement that began there and has been spread throughout the United States both by the contagion of revolution and by the mass migration of Southern Negroes to cities in the North.

Many Southern white people simply cannot comprehend the movement. Recovering from the shock of defeat in the Civil War and emerging from the humiliation of Reconstruction, the white South built a social structure whose hedges were a bit untidy but whose tower, as far as any could tell, was strong and secure. In many ways, it was a good and comfortable life. The hedges, though untidy, were defined and generally accepted. The pace of life was measured and deliberate. Human relations had the simplicity and hence the warmth of a way of life whose well-worn paths were trod with confidence and only minor complaint. This was the Establishment, or so it seemed to the white Southerner, and the eruption of the social-renewal movement took him by surprise and confounded him. It has left him bitter and resentful and has hardened him to stubborn, if futile, resistance. Witness the swing of several Southern states in the recent national elections away from their traditional Democratic affiliation to a new alliance with the Goldwater brand of Republicanism.

The Challenge Of Collapse

The greatest danger, however, is not the white Southerner’s intransigence but his apparent inability to accept the challenge that the collapse of his tower presents—the challenge to review, rethink, and renew the social order. The first rumblings of social revolution produced a Pavlovian reaction. A case in point is the public school in an educational system deeply intrenched in the separate-but-equal doctrine. It is now generally acknowledged that at the time of the Supreme Court’s historic decision which in effect ordered desegregation in the public schools, the public school system was more separate than equal. When the social-renewal movement attacked the public school, it was not seen at first as a challenge to the educational system per se. Many assumed that the movement could be stopped in its tracks simply by rectifying inequalities and leaving the separateness intact. A concentrated effort was made to equalize teachers’ salaries and to bring Negro schools to a par with white schools. Teachers’ salaries were equalized in most places, and, as a result of new construction, in many communities Negro school facilities were made superior to white ones. It must be admitted that this was a major achievement in the time given in states whose financial resources lagged stubbornly behind the national average. Many Southern states were investing a higher percentage of their citizens’ personal income in public education than were their more affluent sister states in the Union.

Then, however, came the greatest and most disillusioning revelation of all. The Negro was not pacified. His appetite for better things was merely whetted. The white Southerner discovered that the movement was not an educational rebellion but a social revolution covering the entire spectrum of society, and that the Negro would not be satisfied until the hedges were uprooted and the towers thrown down throughout the whole Establishment. The white Southerner was outraged, indignant, and thoroughly bewildered by it all. In his fury he sought a hidden, alien enemy. His hurt reaction produced cries of “Northern politicians,” “outside meddlers,” and, inevitably, “Communist agitators.” Undoubtedly, there is a measure of truth in all these charges; the fallacy lies in his reluctance to examine the social-renewal movement dispassionately and to apply to it the creative imagination that produced the South of Jefferson and Madison and later rescued the South from the shambles of defeat and the incredible vengefulness of Reconstruction.

A Problem In Understanding

The riddle demanding an answer is how the white Southerner can understand the modern Negro as well as his grandfather understood the nineteenth-century Negro. Of course, he thinks that he does understand him and that he is the only one who does. Has he not lived with him longer and in closer contact, worked with him, watched over him, sheltered him, and known him better than any other American? Has he not regarded him with genuine affection and cherished him as a friend? The white Southerner is convinced that the social upheaval that has invaded his domain would vanish as the morning dew if alien forces would withdraw and leave him and the Negro alone to resume their former ways of tranquillity, to trim the hedges and shore up the towers. And the white Southerner is so sure his analysis of the situation is correct that he is almost totally unprepared to understand the new Negro and his purpose in the social-renewal movement. He is prepared to improve the lot of “Uncle Tom” and to do so with warmth and affection, but he is not prepared to change his image of Uncle Tom—and there’s the rub. Even as the hedges are uprooted and the towers thrown down, he clings to the old image of the Negro “in his place” and the white man in his, both places chosen and defined by the white man. The fatal flaw in this thinking is that the white Southerner persists in deluding himself with the belief that this is what the Negro really wants. He persuades himself that if he will hold out long enough, agitators will finally go away and everything will return to normal.

The fact that must be faced is that this old order exists only in the tortured imagination of the white Southerner. The hedges have been uprooted and the towers thrown down. The old order has passed, never to return. The breakdown must come with new insight on the part of the white man into the depth of the Negro’s new self-awareness. To a large degree, the white Southerner’s problem rests with his failure to comprehend the modern Negro’s image of himself. He does understand somewhat the Negro’s new awareness of the world of things and his demand for a larger share of it, and he is willing to grant him a larger share as long as the landscape is not radically altered. The thing that baffles and upsets him is that the modern Negro’s new awareness does not stop with the world of things nor even focus primarily on this world; it extends to himself as a person. He is no longer the smiling, docile man of yesterday who politely doffs his hat and keeps to his place. He has become aggressive and demanding and has acquired an insolence and tenacity of purpose that are downright irritating. His new awareness of himself carries implications far more radical than any appetite for material improvement. When the white Southerner senses the revolutionary implications of the Negro’s new awareness of himself as a person, it shakes him—the hedge-planter and tower-builder—to his foundations. He reacts vigorously, sometimes violently. Depending on his intellectual and cultural qualifications, he builds his defenses on a line ranging from hysterical warnings against “racial mongrelization” to extreme political conservatism, all of which is designed to freeze the status quo and impede the flow of time and change.

In fairness, let it also be said that the white Southerner is not alone in this. The racial problem has long ceased to be sectional. It seems simple only where a minority race composes a negligible portion of the population. As the percentage of Negroes in the population of cities in other parts of the country has approached the percentage of Negroes in the South, similar attitudes and strategems have appeared in those places. Racial prejudice knows no geographical restrictions.

Religious Roots Of Renewal

Meanwhile the Negro pursues his goals, not always clear even to him, with the passion of religious fervor. Indeed, superficially it appears that the social-renewal movement is a crusade born of a religious revival. This obvious deduction, however, can easily be misleading. It is true that the Negro churches are closely associated with the social-renewal movement, but it is also true that before the movement got under way the Negro churches were largely moribund. The movement has had more effect on the churches than the churches on the movement. If asked whether the churches helped to create the movement, we must reply with a qualified affirmation. Nevertheless, there is a more fundamental sense in which the social-renewal movement stems from religious origins, especially as it expresses the Negro’s new self-awareness. The yeast of religious beliefs and values folded deep into Southern society rose in the Negro’s life and revealed him to himself as a man like other men. He became not just a faceless integer in a suppressed minority but, for the first time in his modern history, an individual. This profoundly religious concept is the artesian source of motivation and power in his bid for equality. Boris Pasternak has a passage in Dr. Zhivago, words wonderfully luminous like the soft light of sapphires, that describes man’s spiritual progress from facelessness to individuality:

When the Gospel says that in the Kingdom of God there are neither Jews nor Gentiles, does it merely mean that all are equal in the sight of God? No—the Gospel wasn’t needed for that—the Greek philosophers, the Roman moralists, and the Hebrew prophets had known this long before. But it said: In that new way of living and new form of society, which is born of the heart and which is called the Kingdom of Heaven, there are no nations, there are only individuals.

The more perceptive leaders of the social-renewal movement understand its goals. They strive for a free and open society because they realize that men can become individuals only in a climate of freedom in which hedges are not barriers and towers are not citadels. Hence they do a service to all men, for the hedges impound those on both sides and the towers become prisons to their occupants. This is what the white Southerner must come to understand.

On the other hand, the Negro must keep constantly before himself the fact that uprooted hedges and demolished towers are only preliminary steps to self-realization in a free society. He has effectively used legal measures, political pressures, and public opinion to remove the barriers, but this is only the beginning. These steps have gained him access to what was forbidden ground, but he must understand that access does not mean acceptance and recognition. He can remain isolated in a society that is legally and politically free. Whatever legal victories may be won, they will not rid society of racial prejudice. Once the barriers are removed, the Negro must win acceptance for himself as an individual if he is to achieve his goal as a full member of the human race. There are overtones of tragedy in a desegregated school where Negro pupils have gained entry by legal means but remain in a state of practical segregation. It may well be that the Negro’s hardest battles lie beyond the legal victories, in the situations in which he must prove himself an individual and earn his acceptance in the face of entrenched prejudice and established social patterns. His newly acquired freedom introduces him to a new dimension of responsibility wherein self-discipline and dedication to his highest ideals are of chief importance.

It is in this new condition in which the old hedges have been uprooted and the old towers thrown down that the Christian ethic of sacrificial and redemptive love will play its most important role for both the white man and the Negro. The final victory will be won, not in the street or in the courtroom, but in the human heart, which lies beyond the reach of the demonstrator and the jurist. This fact must send us all back to our knees to confess our sins and seek divine forgiveness. It must send us back to the Scriptures to search out anew the word of God for us in this day. It must lead us to personal and social renewal in the light of Jesus’ two great commandments: first, to love God, and then, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

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