The United States Office of Education reports that 1,341 institutions of higher learning conferred 411,058 earned degrees during the year 1956–57. Of this number 61,955 were master’s or professional degrees, representing from five to seven years of post high school study, and 8,756 were doctorates, representing seven years or more of post high school study. The balance consisted of four-year baccalaureate degrees. Honorary degrees, granted by these institutions, amounted to less than one per cent of the total.

How many counterfeit degrees were granted by illegitimate institutions and “diploma mills” is not known. But indications point to a large number, many of them going to ministers of the Gospel. In fact, considerable traffic in worthless degrees is being promoted by schools that claim to be “evangelical and conservative.” Fortunately, most preachers are discerning men and able to spot a fake degree as quickly as they would a phony three-dollar bill. And many lay leaders are equally discerning.

Some years ago the pulpit committee of a strong denominational church in the Midwest was shocked to find that the candidate about to be recommended as pastor had accepted an honorary degree from a “diploma mill.” Although he had been virtually assured of a call, his name was immediately dropped.

Unfortunately, however, not all church boards detect the false from the genuine. In my files I have the following formal invitation: “The P—— Church of P——, invites you to attend the special conferring service on the occasion of the completion of work by the pastor, Rev. John Doe, for the degree Doctor of Theology from the P—— Theological Seminary, on the morning of May 20, 1956 at 10:45 o’clock at the P—— Church. The Doctor of Divinity degree will also be bestowed honorarily.” The seminary referred to is a notorious “diploma mill” operating under several names. Its operator some time ago issued a reprint on the merits of correspondence study and pointed out that 10 million people have taken such courses. The implication was that all such courses must therefore be good. Clergymen who had not completed college and seminary were invited to earn degrees by correspondence. It was noted that this has been possible in England for 50 years. What was unsaid is that credits earned from this particular “institution” are not recognized by any reputable school, and that it is not the practice of accredited institutions in the United States to offer degrees by correspondence.

Several years ago an institution which had operated as a “seminary” in Delaware moved to Florida and continued operation under the same charter as a “liberal arts vocational college” and as a “theological seminary.” It offered 1,000 “Home Study Scholarship Awards,” reducing a year’s “tuition” from $120 to $90 if used within 15 days. As “honorary members” they listed several world-famous men. It is doubtful that these men knew how their names were being used. Many other good men have lent their names to similar projects apparently without investigating the institutions. In some cases an institutional charter changes hands repeatedly and its seat of operations moves from city to city and even from state to state.

Fraudulent Schools

In 1949 the Department of Higher Education of the National Education Association established a Committee on Fraudulent Schools and Colleges for the following purposes: 1. To make the public more aware of the continued existence of fraudulent institutions. 2. To encourage the teaching profession to warn youths and adults against such unscrupulous institutions. 3. To encourage state education officials to assume more responsibility for securing and enforcing legislation designed to eliminate so-called schools that give no real educational service to students.

In the New York Times (February 7, 1951) Benjamin Fine, school editor, estimated that more than 1,000 questionable or outright fraudulent schools and colleges exist in this country. The fraudulent institutions include so-called universities, colleges, seminaries, and schools lacking adequate libraries or laboratories, lacking standing with reputable institutions of learning, and engaged in the “racket” of selling degrees and diplomas. Some institutions make a pretense of having a few requirements, but it appears that any person with the “fee” can meet these without difficulty.

The NEA Committee believes that fraudulent institutions are in operation because “fraud in education has proved to be a profitable business for unscrupulous persons and because there are men and women who want to buy cheap degrees in order to deceive their employers or their associates by claiming degrees and credentials.” The Committee also finds that the laws of most states governing schools and colleges are so lax that racketeers are able to operate with impunity.

Suggestions offered for improving the situation include the following: 1. Stricter state laws. 2. Prosecution of fraudulent schools. 3. Insistence on honesty in advertising. 4. Requirement of evidence that a degree is from a reputable institution. 5. A deepening of conviction that it is dishonest to use any certificate, diploma, or degree issued by a school that lacks adequate recognition by appropriate educational authorities.

These are the standards of the world. The man standing behind the sacred desk can ill afford to bring reflection upon his message by employing lower standards in his personal life!

With shame we must admit that our conservative brethren in the ministry are more susceptible to worthless degrees than are the liberals. Why this should be true is difficult to understand. But many advertisements stress the orthodoxy of schools offering degrees by correspondence and thereby widen their appeal to evangelicals.

Tricks Of The Trade

To give a semblance of respectability, some schools will advertise themselves as members of a nonexistent educational association. One advertises itself as a member of the “National Association of Bible Schools,” another the “World University Association of Schools.”

One Chicago institution has been hailed into Federal court repeatedly by the Federal Trade Commission. When ordered to cease and desist, it merely changed its name sufficiently to get by the law and has gone right on advertising “courses.” A Federal court order instructed this institution to stop

representing, through the use of the symbols indicating academic degrees after the names of members of its faculty, or by any other means, that members of its faculty are educators duly qualified by a higher education, when the degrees so indicated are not the result of study pursued in residence at recognized colleges and universities duly authorized to grant the respective degrees indicated, or when the symbols of academic degrees used do not represent degrees actually granted by such institutions to such members of its faculty for attainment in the field of knowledge, and when the persons to whom the degrees represented by the symbols used are not teachers, educators, or persons of high educational attainment.

To begin with, this institution advertised itself as a “University.” When ordered to drop that name, it substituted the term “Graduate College” for “University.” Its next step was to drop “Graduate College” and add the word “Schools.” It then became a “Foundation.” The last title merely referred to it as a corporation. While not in the headlines recently, the same people seem still to be operating out of their Chicago office.

Fees vary anywhere from $15 or $20 “registration fee” (plus a contribution) up to $300 for a Doctor of Philosophy degree as advertised by a “seminary” in Nevada. To escape prosecution for selling worthless degrees some institutions suggest “monthly contributions” to cover expenses.

Correspondence Opportunities

Correspondence study has its place. Accredited courses given by reputable institutions may be taken by correspondence for college credit. In no case, however, will an accredited institution give a degree merely on the basis of correspondence study, and in most cases not more than one year or 30 semester hours of correspondence credit may be applied toward a four-year liberal arts degree. In practically every instance, the final year of work for any degree in an accredited school must be resident study. Some well-known correspondence schools have been operating on the highest ethical plane for many years, mostly on a high school or professional level. These are members of the National Home Study Council with office at 1420 New York Avenue, N.W., Washington 5, D. C. Much valuable training is available through these schools especially set up to teach by correspondence. The Council never recommends that students take correspondence courses if they are in a position to go to a resident college.

Although most correspondence courses are offered on a high school or professional level, many state and some privately endowed universities have extension departments offering correspondence study for college credit. “A Guide to Correspondence Study” may be secured for 25 ¢ from the National University Extension Association, University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. A few reputable seminaries and Bible schools also offer correspondence studies. Not one, however, offers a degree by correspondence.

The Minister And His Study

That a pastor should be well trained none will deny. His interest in bettering himself and extending his preparation is to be commended. We would not imply that extension work should be discouraged nor that all training must bear the label “accredited” to be worthwhile. The writer believes in accreditation and feels that any school is strengthened when it achieves accreditation whether local or national. Yet we must distinguish between a school that is carrying on a reputable program, even though it may not yet be accredited, and the institution of doubtful standing which advertises correspondence courses that are leading to a degree, neither courses nor degree being of value to anyone.

No other major country is as lax as the United States in permitting shyster schools and diploma mills to sell certificates and degrees. Although the Federal Trade Commission has successfully prosecuted a number of “diploma mills” on the ground of unscrupulous and dishonest advertising through the mails, it has been able to do relatively little with local situations. To close down unscrupulous institutions is largely the responsibility of the several states.

At least 19 states required no state charter or license for a school to operate on the college level in 1953. However, 35 states issued lists of approved colleges in an effort to combat fraudulent institutions.

As Christians, what is our responsibility? First of all, we should do everything possible to deepen the conviction that it is dishonest to use any certificate, diploma, or degree issued by a “diploma mill.” The religious press has been strangely silent on this issue. Some have even carried “diploma mill” advertising! One denomination, however, went on record 10 years ago as “disapproving the acceptance of any academic degrees except such as have been earned in a recognized institution of higher education, or honorary degrees which are conferred by such accredited schools.” The step is certainly worthy of emulation by every denomination.

It is also a duty of Christian citizens to report bad practices to the Federal Trade Commission, Washington 25, D. C. Copies of letters, advertising, or catalogues should be included with these reports. The Commission will make investigations without involving the informant.

END

Preacher In The Red

PREACHING ON THE IMPOSSIBLE

Fresh out of the Seminary, I entered my first pastorate determined to make the best possible use of the local weekly newspaper in putting my church and its activities on the map. One feature of the weekly paper was a section devoted to church notices.

Approaching Mother’s Day, I thought I had a passable idea for a sermon: one that would deal with the way motherhood reaches outward, reaches forward, and reaches upward. How to gather these ideas together under one good catchy title? I finally settled on “The Farther Reaches of Motherhood” and hurried to the newspaper office with the Mother’s Day church notice.

Alas! The paper came out with the somewhat startling announcement, “Rev. Robb will preach on ‘THE FATHER REACHES FOR MOTHERHOOD.’ ”—The Rev. G. M. ROBB, Kansas City 3, Kansas.

Enock C. Dyrness has been Registrar and Director of the Summer School of Wheaton College since 1928. He holds the A.B. degree from Wheaton, A.M. from University of Chicago, and LL.D. (Hon.) from Houghton College. He is President of the National Association of Christian Schools.

Field service or, as some would rather call it, “field education” is rapidly coming to be a vital, relevant, and necessary part of theological education. The importance attached to this discipline has increased greatly since a recent survey, headed by Dr. Richard Niebuhr of Yale, which showed that the most rapid advances in theological education in the past two decades have been in this area.

To state it simply, field service is the process of learning the vocation of Christian ministry through experience under guidance. It is education by actual contact with people in situations of Christian service. The student through such training learns the arts of communication and interpretation, and acquires the skills necessary for competence in his vocation.

Such education is prevalent enough today that churches need not think of a graduate from theological seminary as a novice in the ministry but rather as a young minister who comes with experience and skills to carry out the service for which he has been trained.

Uniting Theory And Skill

Field education is now a regular part of the seminary course. The work of the student in churches, on campus, in institutions, and in clinical experience is as much a part of seminary education as regular academic curriculum. In fact, more time is spent in this training than in any other course. Field service is looked upon as an instructional course which seeks for training, experience, adjustment, and the acquisition of skills which the minister must have for professional competence.

Those who are directing field education maintain that the division between learning and doing was a false dichotomy. The educational theory which held that the so-called “content” courses were of more value than the operational or skill courses was not true. The old division between factual and practical courses was not a valid distinction. Certainly those who teach the “content” courses do not wish to admit that they are not practical, and those who teach in the “practical” fields will not for a moment admit that their courses do not have content. Therefore, field service has tended to unite things in theological education which never should have been separated in the first place, namely, knowledge and practice, theory and skill.

A young man in the Presbyterian Seminary at Louisville, when asked to state what had been the chief benefit of his field training, said: “Field work has served to make all of the courses of my theological training relevant.”

Supervision And Integration

With this new dimension in training, the seminary has moved into the church. Hundreds of pastors have become associated with the seminary faculty in the training of men and women for the Christian ministry. At the same time seminary students have taken their places on the staffs of churches or institutions or as student ministers to contribute to the life of the church while they are ministers in training.

Field supervisors in churches and institutions where the students are employed represent a key link in the chain that connects theological education with field experience. They are extension members of the seminary faculty, and are related to the students as pastors in the churches where students work, as moderators of student churches, as chaplains in hospitals and penal institutions, and as district superintendents in charge of centers where ministers in training may labor.

There are two points with which field education is most concerned. These are supervision and integration. There is common agreement that field service becomes genuine education in proportion to the amount of supervision young men receive in it.

Field supervisors are now frequently brought to the seminaries for conferences or for periods of instruction and consultation in the requirements of supervision. This promotes the potential of field work as a proper part of the training process for the Christian ministry.

The first published volume on this whole area of theological education (Ministers in Training, Theological Book Agency, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey) appeared last year. It is used as a textbook or reference work in many seminaries, including several in the Far East, Latin America, and other lands. The volume is a symposium covering the various aspects of field education, and is aimed to instruct both the supervisor and the student.

Seminary supervision is accomplished in many ways. In seminaries such as the Southern Baptist, Louisville, where hundreds of student pastors go out for training each week, the supervision takes the form of written reports and interviews. Both reports from the students and from the field supervisors are important. These are supplemented by interviews on campus, visits to the field by seminary faculty members, and by discussion meetings of students in practice or observational groups.

Variety In Field Service

The ideal arrangement is to give the student as wide a variety of experience as possible. During his first year in seminary he may work with a closely supervised group and the following year have more independence as an assistant pastor or youth director in a church. Then in his senior year he should acquire preaching experience and an opportunity to learn the skills of pastoral visitation, counseling and clinical work.

Obviously, this much experience would be impossible within the limits of the regular seminary course were it not for the well-supervised summer service and the year of full-time internship which quite a number of seminaries are requiring before granting degrees.

This whole matter of integration depends upon supervision, for the student needs direction in order to see the proper relationship between the seminary curriculum and the actual work of the ministry. There is also the important matter of the integration of the student’s character for the vocation of a Christian minister. Properly directed field service will aid in the accomplishment of good integration.

When a student enters upon field service, he has three ends in view. First, he has his service to Christ and the Church. Unless this be the basic motive he will lack the necessary spiritual foundation for his ministry. In the second place, he has the responsibility of gaining the education and training he needs as part of his preparation for the Christian ministry. In the third place, he will receive remuneration from the church, in some instances also a scholarship from the seminary, to make it possible for him to meet the expenses of his education. Certainly in cases where students are married and have children to support, the matter of finances can pose quite a problem.

A good field director will keep, however, the emphasis and direction of the student first of all upon his academic work. The reason for this is to keep students from doing too much in their field service. Students are to be continually reminded that they will be in seminary but once, while, God willing, they will have the opportunity to live and grow through practical experience during their service in the ministry.

It may be said, by way of conclusion, that students have now emerged from the ivory tower of the seminary into the life of the church. Thousands of young men are out working every weekend and during the summers and internship periods. Pastors and others who supervise them have become an extension faculty of the seminaries. Certainly all this makes for a new dimension in theological education.

The time has passed when a man is considered ready for the work of the Christian ministry, no matter how excellent his academic training has been, if he has not had real experience in learning professional competency in church situations with people and under proper guidance. Field service is helping to produce Christian ministers who are well-adjusted; mature and skilled; and for this reason it can be considered as valid, important, and necessary as the other disciplines of theological education.

It is a complicated process to communicate to ministers in training a proper understanding of God, Christ, the Bible, and the Church, and their interrelatedness and application to life and to service. It is therefore the task of seminaries and supervisors on the field to aid those who will combine learning, skill, and experience into a creative ministry that will be blessed by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

END

Committees In Heaven?

Does God work by the committee method?

Does He summon members from the far-spanned spheres

To sit together in celestial counsel?

Are agenda carefully prepared by appropriate bureaus?

Does He invite reports from heads of departments,

Call for this opinion or another?

Do they cull and distill from extensive field researches?

Does He request statistics regarding the involved mechanics

Of the very important cosmos?

Finally, when the meeting adjourns, does He send them forth,

All highly pleased with the workings of the group process,

Bestowing the plaudit, “Well done, good servants,”

Amidst the reassuring murmur, “We surely accomplished a great deal today!”?

KENDIG BRUBAKER CULLY

J. Christy Wilson is Dean of Field Service at Princeton Theological Seminary. For 20 years he was a missionary in Iran and other Middle East lands. He is author of many articles and several books (three of them written in Persian).

One predominant idea, and perhaps the most provocative, resulting from increased discussion of American public education, is that well defined goals are no longer to be achieved. To say that “life adjustment” or “education of the whole man” are satisfactory goals is to cloud the horizon with platitudes.

Caught between a decline of “Deweyism” and an attempt to re-establish “traditionalism” in education, American public education today has a large “gray ghost” area. The future of America in scientific technology and social behavior hinges on what we can do about the goals of public education.

The organization which has long sheltered the “gray ghosts” is the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. Arm in arm with the National Education Association, PTA has limped along on innumerable half-hearted goals for over a quarter of a century.

The end result has been that the organization founded in 1897 as the National Congress of Mothers and dedicated to the welfare of the child in home and school has unwittingly sponsored and underwritten not only a mediocre public educational curriculum but also has created a curious parental neglect of children by making the school responsible for their social and moral development. One recalls the anecdote of a child who, seeing both parents depart for an evening PTA meeting, remarked, “I wish you and Daddy would stop doing so much for us at school and do something with us at home for a change.”

The statement of PTA goals seeks “to develop between educators and the general public such united efforts as will secure for every child the highest advantages in physical, mental, social, and spiritual education.” Another part of the Permanent Platform reads: “Active Spiritual Faith-Religion has a fundamental place in our American tradition as a basic factor in personal and social behavior. Every child has a right to a religious faith.”

In practice this goal is far from specific. In order to offend nobody, this issue is usually not only skirted in discussions but avoided in programs presented to the membership. Eliminating this aim or diluting it beyond recognition, many public school systems in this country have divested American public education of its essentially Christian foundations.

The PTA manual itself illustrates how the ideal of an “active spiritual faith” has been turned into a weapon which is slowly but inexorably stifling any spiritual or moral development that could be part of American public education. On the surface, a Christian climate appears to be favored. For the impact of religious training in character growth is recognized. The manual recommends daily Bible reading, prayers, and grace at mealtime—in the home. The local chairman of this activity (and I would welcome news of a local PTA unit that has such) is to relate some inspirational experience at each PTA meeting. This may take the form of some patriotic expression, or recognition of such organizations as the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and Brotherhood Week sponsored by this group. On the World Day of Prayer, silent prayer may be encouraged. An appreciation of the Bible as literature and history may be fostered. Music and art appreciation are possibilities. Participation in interfaith services may be advocated. Membership in a church or in a “character building” group may be encouraged. United Nations is recommended for support. International education projects may be an outlet requiring “spiritual” activity.

This approach to spiritual problems in terms of general language and broad aims reveals the “cloudy” principles responsible for the vacuous neutralism in spiritual things that characterizes current PTA activities. The local PTA unit is not helped by the recommendations in the manual. There is no “straight and narrow.”

No wonder that neutralism in American public education has advanced to the point where reading the Bible may be held to be unlawful. Secular neutralism is the avowed religion of the public schools today. The PTA, with its back turned upon our Christian heritage, is incapable of leadership. The “gray ghosts” have assumed command.

END

John Wesley Clayton is an experimental taxicologist with the Haskell Laboratory for Industrial Medicine and Taxicology of The duPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware. He holds the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in zoology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was assistant instructor, and has been active in P.T.A. affairs in his home community.

SELF-SERVICE SCHOOL?

Will Johnson came upon the test paper quite by accident. His eighth grader had left her stack of school books, gym equipment, notes, purse, and miscellaneous effects on the back seat of the car, and when he stopped suddenly to avoid crushing her bike in the driveway, the pile cascaded to the floor. The red pencil marks caught his eye as he was collecting the debris in a basket.

The test covered a unit on personal adjustment. Pamela had not done well on it. Was it best to study: (a) on the floor in front of the TV, (b) on the kitchen table while mother prepared dinner, or (c) in a quiet place with good lighting. Incredibly, Pam had chosen (b).

What should a student do about a course he does not like? Pam had lettered briefly, “drop it.”

Only one question received full credit. “What are your social needs?” Pam answered, “Acceptance, affection, achievement.” Each was defined; achievement meant, “doing something better than others.”

In the interview between father and daughter which soon followed, Pam explained that she had goofed deliberately. Writing the test, she said, had given her a wonderful sense of achievement. Even her teacher had overlooked the advantages of study in the kitchen, for example. What could better satisfy Pam’s hunger for acceptance, affection, and a little food before dinner? It didn’t interfere with achievement in anything but math, and a remarkable combination of low interest and low aptitude made it clear that math was not an area of achievement for Pam. Her advisor had admitted as much. Why should it interfere with her delightful kitchen adjustment?

Her father’s response furnished Pam with a vigorous social experience of authoritarian parental control. She now studies in her room. At the PTA, Mr. Johnson’s account of the incident led to spirited debate about the “social needs” approach to education. At the end, the discussion became theological, as Pastor Peterson urged self-sacrifice instead of self-service. He had seen too often what the quest for satisfaction of personal needs could do to marriages!

EVANGELICAL RESURGENCE

Your “Resurgence of Evangelical Christianity” (Mar. 30 issue) is thrilling!… Your magazine is like wheat amid the chaff of liberalism, like a rock amid the sand dunes of neo-orthodoxy, and like the sun amid changing moons of non-biblical scholars.

Northern Baptist Theological Seminary

Chicago, Ill.

“Evangelical Christianity” in your article turns out to be revivalism and biblicism, both of which have a weak theology. The Roman church has pre-empted the word “catholic” and now fundamentalism usurps the word “evangelical.” In both instances Lutherans protest.

Hamma Divinity School of Wittenberg College

Springfield, Ohio

Timely article … I am only one voice—but at least one—and I am happy to lift it in protest against the path down which we are being led by our wretched standards of music, which have been taken from American culture rather than Christian culture … I join you in heart in your fine stand.

New York, N. Y.

EVEN MACHIAVELLI

In regard to your March 30 editorial …, there are many things that Tillich says that are good. Even I, a simple pastor, readily admit that there are good emphases, relevant correctives, and spiritual stimulus in the vast majority of theologians. Although we might differ radically, no man in his personal intellectual humility would say that, for example, Aquinas, or Nietzsche, or even Machiavelli were totally devoid of constructive elements for every man.

Paterson, N. J.

In his Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 205, Tillich writes, “God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him.” My understanding of Tillich is that he means that the verb “exists” cannot properly be used to predicate the God whose “being” is beyond our conceptions of existence. Rather than denying the existence of God, I believe Tillich is pointing to his transcendence.

Pierce Memorial Presbyterian Church

Farmingdale, N. J.

It is good to see some publication that has the courage to tell the truth about Prof. Tillich, who does not present the Truth. He has done and is doing great harm to Christianity …

Wilmington, Del.

Your words about Paul Tillich … were very good.

The First Baptist Church

Marissa, Ill.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Your editorial, “The Dangers of Social Engineering” (Mar. 2 issue), calls attention to a grave danger to political and religious freedom. However, it was inadequate on two points. First, the discussion of the theory is far too short. Second, you completely omitted all examination of actual legislative proposals to commit the “ideologically unsound” to mental institutions. It would be a service if you could have this written up.

Butler University

Indianapolis, Ind.

• Some modern “social revisionists” are now so bold as to consider as candidates for mental institutions all who do not hold quasi-collectivistic social theories and who cherish the Christian religion in its biblical form. Mental health is being associated with enthusiasm for compulsory legislation that dissolves voluntarism, while those who have doubts about economic programs that weaken free enterprise traditions are regarded as mentally ill. Dr. H. A. Overstreet, in his The Great Enterprise—Relating Ourselves to Our World, asserts that people who angrily oppose “… public housing, the TVA, financial and technical aid to backward countries, organized labor, and the preaching of social rather than salvational religion … may appear normal … but they are, we now recognize, well along the road to mental illness.” We would tremble indeed to have this “progressive philosophy” dominate expanding government intrusion into “mental health” activities. It is characteristic of dictator states to brand as neurosis whatever is inconvenient to their totalitarian schemes.—ED.

The [editorial] entitled “Have We Passed the Summit?” falls into the familiar pit of identifying the Reformation with the preaching of “The Christian Gospel” as purely theological, and contrasts it in the following article with “The Dangers of Social Engineering.” One wonders if … the fact that the religion of the local prince became the religion of all the people in his province is this “liberating power” we are told about; if the persecution and rejection of the Anabaptists, done in the name of this theology, was any better than the possible results of Dr. A. H. Overstreet’s analysis of the symptoms of mental illness? Have the editors forgotten the theocracy of Calvin at Geneva with its complete theological, social, and political structure? Is it possible they do not know that our founding fathers (to whom we popularly and oratorically attribute our separation of church and state) tried to set up a similar theocracy in Massachusetts and for many years supported the church with tax money and decided many theological points in the legislature, allowing no one to vote who was not a church member—that is, a member of the right church?

First Congregational Christian

Muncie, Ind.

Having seen and used a splendid reprint from your magazine in my campaign against this mental health racket, namely, “Do Humanists Exploit Our Tensions?”, I am wondering if you will have any reprints of “The Dangers of Social Engineering” in your current issue.…

Petersburg, Va.

THE FAITH AND THE ETHIC

As a subscriber and occasional contributor to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I am constrained to voice protest against an attitude which has found expression repeatedly in the pages of your magazine for the last six months. It is that of elevating total abstinence in reference to fermented beverages to the status of a principle for the Christian. The latest example of this is in the issue which has just come to my hand (Feb. 2) in which tolerance “about the use of alcohol” is placed in the same category as tolerance about “delinquency,” “divorce,” “wickedness in high places,” “immorality,” “crime,” and “godlessness” (p. 3). The implication must be that “the use of alcohol” is to be condemned along with these other moral evils. I cannot stress too much the pernicious wrong of this attitude and I shall give my reasons for this judgment.

No sensitive Christian can but condemn and deplore drunkenness and the evils which follow in its wake, whether it be the drunkenness of the occasional inebriate or that of the alcoholic. Every sensitive Christian surely knows the pang of grief that pierces his soul when he sees a drunken person. And there is no disposition on my part to defend many of the methods of the liquor traffic. CHRISTIANITY TODAY has sufficiently exposed the disastrous consequences of some of these methods. Why then such severe judgment upon the attitude referred to above? It is precisely because it is aimed at the heart of the Christian faith and the biblical ethic.

Roland H. Bainton (July 7 issue) has shown admirably by appeal to Luke 7:33–35 that Jesus came drinking wine and that this must have been the fermented beverage denoted by that name (p. 5). It is impossible to adopt any other interpretation. This is the heart of the issue. We dare not impugn the integrity of our Lord nor the relevance to us of his example. It is futile to appeal to the changed conditions under which we live to get away from the relevance to us of our Lord’s example in this particular. Our Lord is the supreme example of virtue and the only example of perfect virtue. If we deny the abiding relevance here, where are we to land? Subtly, though the proponents are often unaware of what they are doing, the tendency, not to speak of the attempt, to elevate total abstinence to the position of principle and to invest it with the sanction of necessary virtue is a direct assault upon our Lord’s integrity and upon the relevance of his example. That is why it is aimed at the heart of our faith. And it is aimed at the heart of the biblical ethic, too. It lies at the center of all ethical discrimination that we may never condemn the use because of the abuse.

Perhaps, Mr. Editor, you will permit one word more. How distorted has become the appeal to the weak brother! Into this distortion even Bainton falls (cf. p. 6 in the article cited above). The “weak brother” of Paul’s teaching (cf. Rom. 14) is not the person who “either for physical or psychological reasons” is “in danger of the Lost Weekend” but the person who on religious grounds is a total abstainer. How strange is the exegetical casuistry to which Scripture is subjected!

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

The diatribe of Baptist Editor C. R. Daley in your issue of December 22 just arrived here is typical of intemperate extremists masquerading as temperance advocates. As Fr. Mangrum points out in the same issue of your paper, the historic Church knows of no such compulsory restriction, and this includes the vast majority of Christians. It is high time that those who stand for true temperance spoke out against the fanatical type of teetotalers who are driving people from religion by their intransigent attitude.

All Saints Rectory

Gordonvale, Queensland, Australia

GEOGRAPHICAL YEAR NEEDED

Perhaps it is a good thing that your editor is so unfamiliar with gambling centers. But still, New Mexico should not be blamed for the open and legalized gambling in Nevada (March 16 issue, p. 21). You have the wrong Las Vegas!

Grace Lutheran Church

Bishop, Calif.

I agree that gambling should be opposed.… However, I am a proud ex-son of New Mexico.… Recommend a trip to the nice little city of Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Leonia, N. J.

The theology of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is good, but the geography is bad!

Fuller Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

FRUIT OF CYNICISM

I am glad you have come out with strong protests against the cynical play, “The Third Commandment,” recently presented over NBC’s Kaleidoscope series (Mar. 2 issue.) Upon seeing it advertised, I made a special effort to watch the play, and sat in stunned amazement at the blasphemy of it. Not only was there blasphemy against God, but the insinuation that evangelists are obtaining wealth through commercialized revivalism revealed the attitude of author Hecht. Knowing of so many fine evangelists who have been forced to leave the field of evangelism because of inadequate support by the churches, I was especially shocked at this false portrayal.

Los Angeles Baptist City Mission Society

Los Angeles, Calif.

And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:18–20).

By these words the missionary office is bound upon the Church through all ages, till every part of the earth shall have been evangelized.

Once the tempter took Jesus to a high mountain, to show him the kingdoms of this world and their glory, in order to induce him to flee the cross in obtaining the Kingdom. Now Jesus himself shows his disciples the kingdoms of this world, after the cross had been borne, and points out the conquest his sacrifice and love shall achieve through the gospel.

He must have supreme and truly divine dominion, who commands eternal life to be promised in his name, the whole world to be reduced under his sway, and a doctrine to be promulgated which is to subdue every high thing and bring low the human race. And certainly the apostles would never have been persuaded to attempt so arduous a task, had they not known that their Protector and Avenger was sitting in the heaven, to whom supreme dominion had been given.

Teaching Them

We are not to invent anything new; nor to change anything to suit the current of the age; but to teach the baptized believers to observe “all things whatsoever” our Divine King has commanded.

CHARLES SPURGEON

Baptism is a mere ceremonial and initial act of obedience to Christ, which should be followed by a lifelong obedience to all his commandments. The person who is discipled and baptized is only started in a course of Christian living. Notice that it is not simply teaching them the commandments of Christ, but teaching them to observe his commandments. They who disciple and baptize men must teach them the duty of obeying Christ in all things; and the Christian instructor has still fallen short of his task unless those whom he is called to instruct have both learned what Christ’s commandments are, and have learned to observe them.

JOHN A. BROADUS

As they were to baptize men in the name of the sacred Three, no doubt they were first to make known the persons and offices of the holy Trinity. They were to declare “the Father, as our offended, but reconciled, God and Father; they were to make known “the Son,” as the sinner’s advocate and propitiation; they were to set forth “the Holy Ghost,” as the enlightener, comforter, and sanctifier of God’s elect.

CHARLES SIMEON

“Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of this things.”

LUKE 24:46–48

The glorious fact of the unbroken presence of Christ through all the ages is the true Apostolic succession, an irresistible evidence of Christianity, and an unfailing source of strength and encouragement. The promise has never been revoked, never forgotten, it is fulfilled day by day, hour by hour, amidst the alternations of joy and grief, of success and failure, and will be fulfilled to all true Christians as well as the Church at large, until the King shall appear in His visible Majesty to reign with his redeemed people in the new heavens and on the new earth for ever and ever.

PHILIP SCHAFF

Presence Of Christ

The Saviour might have said I will be, but he chooses to say I am. He is ever-present. There is never a time when He needs to come from afar. He is ever at hand, anticipating his servants’ presence, wherever that may be. In his Spirit, in his own co-ordinate Personality, in his living loving self, he is everywhere present, everywhere except within the consciousness of unbelieving men. He is round and round the consciousness of all men, pressing in upon them, and knocking at the door of the heart.… He will bless them to the full, perfecting his strength in their weakness, so that “through Christ who strengtheneth them, they can do all things” (Phil. 4:13). It is, as Chrysostom remarks, as if the Saviour had said to his disciples, “Tell me not of the difficulties you must encounter, for I am with you.”

JAMES MORISON

Only the living Christ himself was able to conquer the fear, perplexity, and doubt of his disciples and to prepare them to enter the world as preachers of the glad tidings. And in like manner today it is only the risen Saviour himself who can banish all fear from our hearts, and give us the inward rest and peace to enable us to act as living witnesses of our living Redeemer. And all the spiritual equipment that we need, he gives us through the Spirit, already given to his church in his fullness on that first Pentecost and to every believer in the moment of regeneration. And now there rests on every regenerate man and woman the responsibility of being so completely surrendered to him and so looking up to him in faith and obedience, that he will from moment to moment equip us with his divine strength for the task to which we have been called.

NORVAL GELDENHUYS

His unseen presence and power make the perpetual miracle of church history and Christian life. It is a strange thing that since he vanished from the view of the disciples he has never been seen again by mortal eyes, never again, save by one man—Paul. But there is a far stranger thing than that. It is an infinitely more wonderful thing that He has done all his most wonderful works among men since his visible presence was taken away, and without showing himself at all. Millions of men and women in every period of Christian history have been moved and inspired by the unseen Christ than the most devoted of his disciples were moved and inspired by the sight of his bodily form. He is to the moral world what the vital forces are in the natural world. No one can see those vital forces or explain how they work. We can only see the results. They clothe the landscape with verdure, they cover the hedges with blossoms, they change ugliness into beauty, and waste places into a garden of delight.

J. G. GREENHOUGH

[Note—This editorial has been awarded a second-place prize by the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge.]

The world is intrigued by the scientific progress made in outer space, with an assault on the moon a very real possibility. In almost every realm of human endeavor new discoveries and their exploitation open up vistas for the future, limited solely by the boldness of imagination and the willingness to explore.

To minimize present achievements or to question their ultimate dwarfing by those of the future is utterly foolish. In the writer’s own specialty (surgery), the advances of the last dozen years have opened up fields which at one time were thought to be beyond the realm of successful approach. As an illustration—that which is being done in the area of cardiac, vascular and neurosurgery is so startling and successful that the public is but vaguely aware of it. For all of this we should thank God and take courage in the knowledge he has given us.

But it is imperative that we shall not have our perspective warped either by that which has been accomplished, or by that which yet lies in store for the future.

It is desperately important that we arrive at and keep a proper perspective as we think of man and of God, the Sovereign of this universe.

Man has never discovered, nor can he, anything which the Creator has not himself made and placed in his own creation. Because of this it is vital that God be accorded his rightful place in his own universe.

That he is so often ignored or relegated to the shadows by the assertiveness and blindness of man is but a reflection of man’s sinfulness and need of redemption in Jesus Christ.

What shall it profit if we successfully conquer outer space, set up a station on the moon, and even attain a domination of these hitherto unattainable areas of the universe, if at the same time we do not learn of him through whom alone the inner reaches of the soul are cleansed and disciplined?

For a generation we have worked to establish the highest living standards the world has ever known. Gracious living has become a reality for millions. Compared with the rest of the world we in America wallow in material prosperity. But what shall it profit us should we lose our national soul in the process?

No amount of religiosity, pious affirmations or participation in church programs can compensate for the lust, selfishness, and pride which are gnawing at the vitals of our moral and spiritual lives.

Enamoured with the achievements of today, and the promise of yet more ease of living for tomorrow, we need to stop before it is too late and ask ourselves the question: “What does all of this profit if Christ is left outside the door?” How bleak and hopeless the future without Christ! And yet, our desires seem so largely centered on the present and on the material.

We are concerned about the problems of education. We are frantically trying to recoup our lost supremacy in the realm of science. We recognize the very real danger of becoming a second-rate power from a military standpoint. These and many other problems rightly deserve our concern and should enlist our support of every legitimate and fruitful effort to improve the situation.

But while we do this let us also remember that a nation’s strength is to be found primarily in the character of its people, for it is righteousness which exalteth a nation, and sin which drags it down. The trend in America, so far as moral and spiritual standards are concerned, is down and not up, of the flesh and not of the Spirit.

Because of this it is of vital importance that the Church shall maintain her spiritual vision and discharge her rightful functions. We have no fault to find with those who would have the Church exercise upon the contemporary social order her influence for righteousness, provided there shall be a comparable zeal to maintain the personal message of redemption for sinners.

The Holy Scriptures leave neither to the imagination nor the interpretation of men the content of the Gospel message, and in the forefront of that message is the fact that out of Christ men are lost sinners in need of his cleansing and redeeming salvation; and that the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord to all who will believe.

It is the dilution, the evasion of, or the substitution of something else for the message of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come which is the most ominous sign on the horizon of contemporary Christianity. We are rightly concerned about a Christian view to race relations, about a just social order, and about a concept of brotherhood which recognizes the needs and aspirations of the less fortunate. We long for a just and durable peace, and sanction a multitude of humanitarian activities, all of which are good and for which we should strive. But what shall the attaining of all of these things profit us, or those for whom we are concerned, unless at the same time Jesus Christ is received as Saviour from sin and made the Lord of our lives?

The primary task of the Church is to preach Christ crucified, risen and coming in triumph. What shall it profit men if the Church neglect this task or dilute the content of the message while helping to usher in a new world order still in the clutches of the devil?

We are in the gravest danger of continuing to treat world symptoms while we neglect the cause of those symptoms—sin in the human heart for which there is but one remedy, the preaching of which we alone are responsible.

Looking through the astigmatic lenses of immediate problems we are in danger of losing sight of those things which are ultimate and eternal. The Apostle Paul reminded the Corinthian Christians that he had put first things first: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” It is because this is no longer the primary message of so many pulpits across America that we as a people, and the Church as the Church, stand in jeopardy. God will not be mocked. The salvation he wrought out in the counsels of eternity and brought into effect on the Cross of Calvary is God’s way, and there is no other means whereby men may be saved.

In every activity and emphasis the individual Christian and the Church should ask the sobering question: “What shall it profit if I carry this through to a successful conclusion only to lose my own soul and the souls of those who need the message that Christ died for our sins?”

What shall it profit?

NEWS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

North America

Citizens of Atlanta, it is said, look upon General Sherman as a fellow who was rather careless with fire. There were indications in the Georgia capital April 23–28 of a feeling on the part of the National Council of Churches that its Fifth World Order Study Conference in Cleveland had been playing with fire. The occasion was the 99th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern), and the Cleveland conference’s pronouncements favoring U.S. recognition and U.N. admission of Red China in general overshadowed all other issues in producing the longest and most vigorous debate of the annual meeting in Druid Hills Presbyterian Church.

Chief firefighter on the scene was Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, associate general secretary, National Council of Churches, who in committee session and before the assembly (as a fraternal delegate) emphasized the manifold services of the NCC apart from the study conferences it calls from time to time and which, by their nature, it cannot control. But his efforts were unavailing in face of opposing overtures from 11 presbyteries. A majority report of the Standing Committee on Interchurch Relations called upon the assembly to “register its disapproval” to the NCC for the action taken by the Cleveland conference on Red China. This the assembly did, the measure passing by a large majority after reports were heard concerning some repercussions of the Cleveland pronouncements in the Far East: divisiveness within the Southern Presbyterian church in that area and Roman Catholic pretensions in Formosa of being the only effective bulwark against communism. The majority report was amended to embrace a minority report which had “reaffirmed” the right of conferences of Christians to give “consideration to moral and spiritual problems inherent in world relations,” and at the same time expressed unequivocal opposition to “the atheistic dictatorship and other evils of communism, whether in recognized Soviet Russia or in unrecognized Red China.”

But this did not end the matter. A second minority report was presented, this one scoring NCC leaders for socialism and opposition to U.S. defense programs through the years, and voicing distaste for NCC political lobbying. “History … warns that, if the church presumes to dictate to the state, soon the state will control the church.” Five overtures had come to the assembly requesting withdrawal of the church from the NCC. This report asked that these overtures be answered by the assembly’s requesting each presbytery to “express its desire as to continued membership” in the NCC in order to give guidance to the 1960 General Assembly for proper action. (In 1931 the church pulled out of the Federal Council of Churches but returned in 1941.) After lengthy debate, the assembly rejected the minority report 341–116, and then approved the majority report which answered the five overtures in the negative.

At the assembly’s opening session, retiring Moderator Philip F. Howerton, a layman, distinguished himself with an address on the historic influence of the Reformed faith upon American political philosophy and upon citizens, emphasizing that the reformation of society can come “in no other way” than through reformation of individuals. As to the present, he challenged the more than 500 commissioners (evenly divided between ruling and teaching elders) with the fact that 1167 churches for an entire year have been unable to report a single profession of faith. And the report of the Board of World Missions spoke ominously of a continuous decline in proportionate giving for benevolent causes to the present “critical” point where the church’s past great emphasis upon world missions is in danger of becoming secondary in the denominational program.

On the other hand, the 872,000-member church, planning an emphasis on evangelism as part of its 1961 centennial observance, was able to report the organizing of some 60 churches per year in its territory of 16 states and the District of Columbia. And the assembly served notice that it had set no geographical boundaries for the church’s work, these being limited only by the ability of the synods and presbyteries, and urged these to extend their work to any “contiguous unchurched areas.”

Presiding over sessions of lively debate with a gifted impartiality was the newly-elected moderator, Dr. Ernest Trice Thompson, since 1925 professor of church history at Union Theological Seminary, Southern Presbyterian institution in Richmond, Virginia. The assembly paid special tribute to its stated clerk, Dr. Eugene C. Scott, retiring in June after 23 years in that office. His successor, Dr. James A. Millard, now professor at Texas’ Austin Theological Seminary, was elected last year.

The problem of divorce and remarriage faced the assembly this year as last. The 1958 assembly had voted to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Book of Church Order to allow for remarriage of divorced persons when a pastor is convinced that there is repentance for earlier failure and determination to build a new marriage upon Christian foundations. Remarriage of divorced persons has previously been permitted only for the innocent parties in cases of infidelity or willful and irremediable desertion.

To the surprise of many, the individual presbyteries over the past year voted 69–13 to approve the revision. To be finally enacted as church law, it needed only the approval of this year’s assembly, which it got despite notable opposition.

The Rev. Robert Strong of Augusta, Georgia, eloquent in defeat, moved the appointment of a committee to restudy and rework the revision, charging ambiguity of statement and lack of adequate consideration of certain relevant Scriptures. It was not worthy, he said, of inclusion in the “marvelous piece of Bible study” which is the Westminster Confession.

In rejoinder, the Rev. E. L. Stoffel of Charlotte, North Carolina, saluted the revision as “containing the forgiving spirit of Christ” and being a great element in “evangelism and reclamation.” He suggested that the Southern Presbyterians were thus raising the Standard “much, much higher” than the level set by the Westminster divines on this matter.

The possibility of further revision of the Confession was requested by the Presbytery of Charlotte in relation to the subject of double predestination. The overture called for appointment of a committee to study the matter, and this was approved.

Another overture called for assembly reaffirmation of the church’s adherence to its doctrinal standards. This was prompted by critical statements on the floor of the 98th assembly, the extent of which some declared to be unprecedented. However, reaffirmation was declared superfluous.

But two other overtures asked appointment of a committee to prepare a “contemporary statement of faith,” with relegation of the Westminster Confession to the role of “historic statement.” These were answered in the negative.

But it would seem that dissatisfaction with the church Standards in some presbyteries extends beyond questions of divorce and double predestination. For a big jump is involved in moving from attempted revision of certain points in the Confession to a desire for a new statement of faith. Even the mightiest leap is unable to span a non sequitur.

F.F.

Anglican Communion

Number 2 Episcopalian

Delegates to last summer’s Lambeth Conference agreed on a bold, new bid for more centralized authority among the world’s 40,000,000 Anglicans. As made public last month, the bid provides for appointment of an “executive officer” for the global Anglican communion. The position is to be filled by appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher. Fisher’s first choice: The Right Rev. Stephen F. Bayne Jr., bishop of Olympia diocese in Washington.

Bayne will thus become the second most influential Anglican figure, according to church spokesmen. Anglicans have no international hierarchy. Fisher is respected as Anglicanism’s top spiritual leader, but he has no formal power outside the Church of England.

Lambeth delegates, it is now evident, felt that church ties across national borders need to be strengthened.

“The bishops came to a united mind,” Bayne says, “that unless our Anglican communion learned how to work together far more closely than we now do—work together, think together, plan together—we must increasingly fall short of the vocation with which we are called.”

Bayne added that if the Anglican communion “is to bring to the world the witness to Christ and his truth with which we are entrusted, we need far more than a meeting every ten years.”

“We need to learn to act together more and more as a world church rather than merely as a group of national churches of the same tradition,” he said.

The Lambeth Conference, a decennial meeting of the world’s top Anglican churchmen, cited especially the need of more coordination in missionary strategy.

Bayne’s specific tasks in his new post will include administration of the Advisory Council of Missionary Strategy, which serves as the central planning group for world-wide Anglican missionary work, and the Consultative Body of the Lambeth Conference, the organization behind the decennial meetings.

Presiding Bishop Arthur Lichtenberger of the Protestant Episcopal Church (U. S. arm of Anglicanism) said Bayne will also serve as head of the Convocation of American Episcopal Churches in Europe. In that office he will be bishop-in-charge of 11 Episcopal congregations in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In addition, Bayne will retain membership in the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church and his chairmanship of the council’s Christian Education Department.

Bayne, a native of New York City, will be 51 May 21. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Amherst College and bachelor and master of sacred theology degrees from General Theological Seminary. He was rector of Trinity Church in St. Louis from 1934 until 1939, then went to St. John’s Church at Northampton, Massachusetts. After that he served as chaplain of Columbia University for four years and two years as a naval chaplain. He became bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, Washington, in 1947.

Bayne will resign from the Olympia diocese as of December 31 and will move with his family to London, headquarters of the new post. He will assume his new duties early in 1960.

Roman Catholicism

Warning From The Vatican

The Vatican hierarchy is warning Catholics that they may not vote in elections for Communist fellow-travellers.

Vatican Radio said the decision was drawn up by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office on March 25 and approved by Pope John on April 2 during an audience granted to Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, pro-secretary of the congregation, which is Roman Catholicism’s supreme tribunal in matters of faith and morals.

“In the choice of the people’s representatives,” the ruling said, “it is illicit for Catholics to vote for parties or candidates who in actual fact join the Communists and favor them with their action, although they themselves do not profess principles in contrast with Catholic doctrine and even describe themselves as Christians.”

The Vatican station said the decision of the Holy Office was taken on the basis of a previous decree of July 1, 1949, which replied to the question: “Is it lawful (for Catholics) to become members of Communist parties or to support them?”

“The most eminent and revered fathers,” the station said, “have decreed that the answer should be in the negative. Communism, in fact, is materialistic and anti-Christian. The leaders of communism sometimes declare that they do not fight religion, but in fact and theory and by action they show themselves to be hostile to the true religion and to the church of Christ.”

Vatican Radio said the latest decree is a move to block votes for “collaborators” of the Communists who, “while outwardly pretending to be everything but Communists, secretly and in many ways support them in election campaigns.”

Violation of the decree will be considered a sin, but there have been no threats of excommunication.

Time magazine called the situation that brought on the decree “essentially a local one.”

“In Sicily,” the magazine said, “an aggressive, spectacled politico named Silvio Malazzo had broken away from the mainland Christian Democrats to lead an alliance of Christian Democrats, Communists, Socialists and Fascists. He is facing his first electoral test in June, and Sicily’s Ernest Cardinal Ruffini had asked the Vatican for ammunition.”

Subsequently in Rome, the Italian Communist party tabled for debate in the Chamber of Deputies a question which challenged the new warning from the Vatican.

The party demanded to know whether the prime minister will take steps to “guarantee electoral freedom” and whether he does not “deem it his duty to protest to the State of Vatican City in the face of this fresh interference in the internal life of the Italian state designed to strike at the constitutional and democratic basis of the republic.”

Anniversary Events

Reformation In Retrospect

From Geneva to Grand Rapids, programs are being planned in memory of reformer John Calvin. This year marks the 450th anniversary of his birth and the 400th anniversary of the final edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion.

At Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Calvinistic Action Committee, affiliated with the International Association of Reformed Faith and Action, is sponsoring a “Calvin Memorial Conference,” to be held June 3–4. Speakers include Dr. Gwyn Walters, noted lecturer from Wales; the Rev. Harold Dekker, professor of missions at Calvin Seminary; and the Rev. J. Marcellus Kik, associate editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

In Geneva, Switzerland, a commemorative “Festival of Sound and Light” will be staged nightly, weather permitting, throughout the summer, beginning May 31. A local committee is planning the program, to be staged in front of the Reformation Monument, a wall set off by statues of Farel, Calvin, Knox, Beza, and other historical figures of the Reformed faith in Europe.

The figures on the wall will be cast into relief by lights. Recorded voices, accompanied by background music, will tell the story of the Reformation in retrospect. In deference to tourists, the program will be aired in several languages.

Other events planned by the Geneva committee, which is working with the World Presbyterian Alliance, include a Sunday morning rally at the Reformation Monument and the Swiss premiere of a new film on the Reformation by French director Roger Leenhardt.

Scofield’S Golden Year

A handsome booklet is being distributed by Oxford University Press to mark the 50th anniversary of the widely-known Scofield Reference Bible. Author of the booklet is Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, headmaster of Stony Brook School, Long Island, whose father, Dr. Arno C. Gaebelein, was a consulting editor for the publication of the Scofield Bible in 1909.

Cyrus Ingerson Scofield was born in Michigan in 1843. In his early years his family moved to Tennessee. After a stint in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, Scofield took up law. He was converted in St. Louis in 1879 and three years later became pastor of the First Congregational Church of Dallas. Later he became pastor of a Congregational church in Massachusetts and president of the Northfield Bible Training School, but returned to Dallas in 1902. He retired a year later to devote his time to prepare the reference Bible.

The Scofield Bible sold steadily. In 1930 it became the first publication of Oxford University Press, New York, to pass the million mark and it has continued to be a best-selling Bible ever since.

Since 1954, a committee of nine Bible scholars headed by Dr. E. Schuyler English has been at work on a new edition. Publication is scheduled for 1963.

People: Words And Events

Death: Dr. Louis W. Pitt, rector of Grace Episcopal Church in New York and chairman of evangelism for the Protestant Council of the City of New York.

Elections: As Bishop of the Lutheran Church of Iceland, Dr. Sigurbjorn Einarsson … as chairman of the General Commission on Chaplains, Episcopal Bishop Henry I. Louttit … as first executive secretary of the Committee on Television, Radio and Audio-Visuals of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., Dr. Ernest J. Arnold … as president of the New York City Mission Society, Jesse H. Blair.

Appointments: As associate professor of biblical theology at California Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. David Wallace … as deputy executive director of Church World Service, Dr. A. Russell Stevenson … as chairman of the music department at Philadelphia College of Bible, Alfred E. Lunde … as a secretary of the International Missionary Council, the Rev. Victor E. W. Hayward … as director of the Presbyterian National Missions Homes, Inc., Dr. Roy E. Mueller.

Nomination: For the presidency of North Park College and Theological Seminary, Dr. Karl A. Olsson.

Resignation: As director of ministerial recruitment for the Methodist Church, Dr. Harold T. Porter.

Award: To Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, the Upper Room Citation for 1959.

‘Minimum Representation’

Eastern Orthodox Churches would accept an invitation to the Ecumenical Council summoned by Pope John XXIII only if the rest of the Christian world is invited to send representatives, Patriarch Athenagoras of Istanbul declared last month.

The supreme leader of some 150 million Eastern Orthodox throughout the world said the “minimum representation of the other Churches would be their collective representation through the World Council of Churches.”

Patriarch Athenagoras’ pronouncement was disclosed at the annual meeting of the U. S. Conference for the World Council of Churches by Archbishop Iakovos, the former Metropolitan James who is now head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America.

Earlier in his address, the archbishop told the conference that “it should always be remembered in all ecumenical circles that there are no churches, but one.”

He urged that the ecumenical movement “be brought down from the level of the ecumenists to the level of the people, from the complex terminology used by theologians to the language understood by the faithful.”

Several weeks before the WCC’s U. S. Conference meeting, held in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, Archbishop Iakovos became the first Greek Orthodox archbishop to have an audience with the Roman Catholic pope in 350 years.

Ecumenical Concern

A top ecumenical figure was expected to be on hand May 11 in Geneva for the foreign ministers conference.

Dr. O. Frederick Nolde said he would represent the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, a joint agency of the World Council of Churches and the International Missionary Council.

Nolde said his presence would be designed “to symbolize the concern of the churches and to offer to the principal participants—in person or by letter—the encouragement which can be provided by this expression of concern.”

Call For Evangelism

From Miami Beach last month came a Methodist plea, addressed to the World Council of Churches, for a “World Congress on Evangelism.”

At an annual meeting of the Methodist Church’s Board of Evangelism, General Secretary Harry Denman urged the WCC to call such an “evangelism congress” as a means of “stirring the several denominations to launch a world evangelistic movement.”

Denman also reaffirmed an earlier plea that Methodists themselves undertake a “Decade of Dynamic Discipleship for Evangelism.”

“If we are to be an evangelistic church,” he said, “our percentage of increase must not merely keep pace with that of population; it must be larger.”

Bishops In Washington

Fifty-one Methodist bishops spent four active days in Washington last month. They (1) conferred with top politicians, (2) broke ground for an eight-million-dollar hospital and nursing school, and (3) dedicated a 750 thousand dollar chapel-administration building at Wesley Theological Seminary.

At semi-annual business sessions, the Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church installed Bishop Marvin A. Franklin as new president, succeeding Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam. Bishop Gerald Kennedy was elected president-designate. Franklin is from Jackson, Mississippi, Kennedy from Los Angeles.

Kennedy’s selection means he will preside at the opening of the next quadrennial General Conference of the Methodist Church in Danver next year.

While in Washington, the Methodist bishops arranged separate sessions with such notables as President Eisenhower, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Vice President Richard Nixon, several cabinet members, and Senators John F. Kennedy, Hubert H. Humphrey, and Lyndon Johnson. The bishops were said to have discussed “public questions” with the government leaders, but details were not disclosed.

Bishop Herbert Welch, at 96 the senior Methodist bishop, spoke at the campus dedication. All the bishops were taken on a tour of the new seminary grounds, located adjacent to American University in Northwest Washington. Both schools are Methodist-affiliated. The seminary had been located at Westminster, Maryland, until last September.

A groundbreaking ritual written by Oxnam, now recuperated from injuries suffered in a Christmas traffic accident, was employed at the site of the seven-story, 350-bed Sibley Memorial Hospital, related to the Woman’s Division of the Methodist Board of Missions. Its school of nursing will be affiliated with American University. Site is near the Potomac River in Northwest Washington. The hospital until now has been located in downtown Washington.

A Year’S Respite

Princeton Theological Seminary narrowly escaped public censure from the American Association of University Professors last month. At an annual meeting in Pittsburgh, the AAUP voted to withhold censure of Princeton for a year despite a committee’s charge that the seminary “was clearly unjustified” in terminating the appointment of Professor Daniel Theron in 1957.

“No formal charge appropriate to the termination of a tenure appointment was brought against him,” the committee said. “The administration of the Princeton Theological Seminary is therefore censurable. However, under an incoming president there is an expectation of substantial changes in faculty-administration relations. [The committee] consequently recommends … that censure be withheld for a year to allow opportunity for (1) the adoption of an acceptable tenure system, (2) evidence of acceptable faculty participation in the formulation and operation of such a system, and (3) an offer of reinstatement to Professor Theron.”

Delegates to the AAUP meeting at the same time voted to censure Fisk University and New York University for actions related to faculty dismissals.

The AAUP action regarding Princeton bore similarity to a report brought by the American Association of Theological Schools against Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville. The AAUP and the AATS are not related.

AATS findings against the Louisville seminary likewise brought a year of virtual probation during which the Baptist school is expected to “repair the damage” caused by dismissal of 13 professors. The AATS questioned the “character of administrative procedures” which led to the dismissals, and still threatens to drop the seminary from its list of accredited schools, even though the dismissals have been rescinded and the professors asked to resign instead.

Although both the AATS and the AAUP have raised similar issues, the two groups have not shared each other’s concerns. An AAUP spokesman said there is no record of any investigation of the Louisville dismissals. The AATS, in turn, has never publicly expressed any anxieties about the Princeton dispute.

Unanimous Endorsement

Dr. Clyde P. St. Amant will become dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, June 1. The school has been without a permanent dean for several years. St. Amant has been professor of church history at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, having served at the school since 1943. He holds a doctorate from New College, Edinburgh.

Selection of St. Amant received the unanimous endorsement of the present seminary faculty, a spokesman said.

Announcement of the appointment came from seminary President Duke K. McCall, himself the recipient of a new distinction this month. On May 31, McCall will preach the baccalaureate sermon to the first graduating class of the new Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colorado. President Eisenhower was expected to deliver the commencement address.

Continent Of Australia

On To Adelaide

With the scheduled windup this week of a record-breaking, month-long evangelistic series in Sydney, Billy Graham and his team prepared to begin shorter campaigns in other Australian cities.

Response in Sydney appeared to have shattered all precedent for a Graham crusade—in attendance per service, decisions, and church support. Historians could rank the Sydney meetings with the greatest of evangelical impacts.

A crusade in Adelaide was scheduled to begin May 13. Associate evangelist Joseph Blinco was to conduct the crusade for the first 11 days, with Graham addressing the three final meetings on May 24, 25 and 26.

In Perth, meetings were to start on May 15 with associate evangelist Grady Wilson speaking at the first six meetings and Graham addressing the two final rallies on May 21 and 22.

The schedules represent an adjustment of the original Australian crusade timetable. Changes were made after consultations with crusade committees.

Associate evangelist Leighton Ford will initiate the crusade in Brisbane May 17. Graham will conclude the series there May 29, 30 and 31.

In Melbourne, where the opening series of the Australian campaign is still having positive effects, Dr. James Stewart, professor of New Testament at New College, Edinburgh, arrived from Scotland to take up a 16-week guest appointment at Scots Church. Stewart was quoted as saying that Scotland was feeling even yet the impact of the crusade there four years ago. The professor was reported to have said that Graham’s message is based upon “a fairly profound theology of the Christian faith.”

Protestant Panorama

• For the 1958–59 term, the U. S. Office of Education estimates an enrollment of 5,695,000 pupils in elementary and secondary grades of non-public schools. Nearly 90 per cent of these attend 11,170 Roman Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Missouri Synod Lutherans lead Protestants in the number of such schools with 1,188. Seventh-day Adventists are second with 1,115 and Episcopalians are third with 232.

• American Baptist missions officials announced last month that two Congolese nationals have become the first officially ordained pastors in the history of the denomination’s work in the Belgian Congo.

• Religious groups in many countries paid tribute last month to George Frederick Handel, one of the greatest of all composers who was noted for his religious works. The occasion was the 200th anniversary of his death.

• Hartwick College, located in Oneonta, New York, and related to the United Lutheran Church in America, is recipient of a bequest of $1,700,000 from the estate of the late Miss Marion Yager, former resident of Oneonta who died in Italy last February … Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia is designated to receive $473,000 from the estate of a Rochester, New York, woman who died last year.

• Hawaii’s first congregation of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. was organized last month at a service attended by some 400.

• A Roman Catholic archbishop’s edict prompted sponsors of the “Miss New Mexico” beauty pageant to cancel their public swim suit competition. Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne of Santa Fe ruled that no Catholic girls could enter beauty contests involving bathing suit competition.

• A Religious News Service comparison of government statistics shows that Americans spend about 15 per cent more for tobacco products than they give for religious and charitable purposes. Latest annual figures show: for tobacco products, $4,262,000,000; for charity (including all religious giving) $3,746,000,000.

• Upland (California) College announced last month that it has been accredited by the Western College Association.

• An agency of the United Church of Canada says 166 new church buildings will be needed in the next four years.

• A new four-year program leading to a bachelor of arts degree will replace bachelor of theology and religious education programs in the undergraduate division of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicago, beginning in the fall.

• Wheaton College will build a new chapel costing some $1,500,000. Officials hope the chapel will be completed in time for the June, 1960, centennial commencement.

• The Council of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia is suspending all youth conferences at its “Hemlock Haven” summer camp grounds for a year. Clergy and lay elements have failed to reach agreement on whether to integrate the youth camp.

• A 45-church Mennonite organization which dates back more than 100 years will henceforth be known as the Bible Fellowship Church. Its congregations are located in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

• Fresh fish from the Sea of Galilee were flown to Chicago to grace the menu at last month’s “National Church Design and Building Conference.”

• Miss Lillian Hamer, 47-year-old British worker for the China Inland Mission, was reported shot and killed, apparently by bandits, in Thailand’s northern Chiengmai province.

• The British and Foreign Bible Society is distributing a new translation of the four Gospels in colloquial Russian. A group of Russian scholars associated with the Orthodox Institute of St. Sergius in Paris had worked eight years on the project.

Far East

Anglicans In Japan

A public rally attended by more than 4,000 highlighted initial centenary observances of Japanese Anglicanism this month. (For other anniversaries, see page 36.)

A host of Episcopalian dignitaries from all parts of the world were on hand for the rally, held in a Tokyo gym. The three-day opening ceremonies of the year-long commemoration included a communion service held in conjunction with the 26th General Synod of the Anglican church in Japan.

Ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary of Protestantism in Japan will be held in the fall.

The Nippon Seikokai (Japan Holy Catholic Church), as the Anglican organization there is called, has 10 dioceses, 33 educational institutions, and five hospitals. The Rev. Michael Hinsuke Yashiro is presiding bishop.

Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, used the occasion to call for “an unparalleled conquest” over sexual habits so that families will not have more children than they can bring up decently and without making “undue demands” on society.

Also present were Dr. Arthur C. Lichtenberger, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, Archbishop Reginald Charles Halse of Brisbane, Australia, and Dr. Ivor Norris, bishop of Brandon, Manitoba, Canada.

The Anglican church in Japan was founded by two American missionaries, the Rev. Channing Moore Williams and John Liggins, in May of 1859.

Continent Of Africa

Christ And Islam

Eighty-three churchmen from 21 countries assembled at Asmara, Ethiopia, last month to pool ideas on what should be the Christian approach to Islam. Delegates came from many parts of Africa and the Near East and from as far as Indonesia and the Philippines.

Study groups considered “methods and implications of the experience of conversion,” “the church’s follow-up of conversion,” “the bearing of modern tendencies and developments in Islam today,” “religious experience in Islam and its relation to the Christian faith,” and “the relation of the churches of the Middle East to Islam.” Functional groups discussed other aspects of the missionary enterprise and Dr. Kenneth Cragg of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem led a Bible study.

The conference was sponsored by the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. and 13 other national church bodies with predominant Presbyterian representation.

Outcome of the assembly was a 10-point “message” to sponsoring churches and “all our brothers in Christ.”

“We call upon all the Christian churches in the Middle East to play a full part in national self-fulfillment,” the statement said, “and upon their members to share wholeheartedly in that disciplined citizenship which is the expression of true love of one’s nation.

“… We believe that the Christian church can and should play a prophetic role in the Middle East today, that Christian ideals of the dignity of man and of justice, and Christian programs of social welfare are vital to Middle East governments as they battle with the problems of poverty, disease, ignorance, and human greed.”

An appendix to the “message” called for high, modern educational standards in Christian schools operated by local churches and for promotion of Bible teaching wherever possible. The appendix stressed a need for renewed programs of “evangelism and church nurture,” for more competent Christian leadership among both laymen and clergymen, and for better literature and more student centers.

Frontier Facilities

A printing plant which can turn out 30,000,000 pages of Christian literature annually was dedicated at Lagos, Nigeria, last month.

The new building will house the printing and publishing facilities of the Niger-Challenge Press, operated by the Sudan Interior Mission.

Three hundred guests representing Protestant churches throughout West Africa attended the dedication. Congratulatory messages were received from a number of African government officials.

The Niger-Challenge Press is a merger of the eight-year-old African Challenge organization and the 49-year-old Niger Press. Its new staff numbers 38 Africans.

The African Challenge is an evangelical monthly with a popular appeal sold at hundreds of newsstands over the Dark Continent.

Guest speaker at the ceremonies was Sir Francis Akanu Ibiam, council chairman of Nigeria’s University College.

Special Report

American Presbyterianism edged closer this month to a doctrinal test on the virgin birth involving the presidency of one of its major schools, San Francisco Theological Seminary in suburban San Anselmo, California. The issue may reach the floor of the 171st General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., in Indianapolis, May 20–27.

In the background of the dispute stands the famed Westminster Confession, which states: “The Son of God … did … take upon him man’s nature, … yet without sin: being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance.”

Immediate occasion of Presbyterian concern is an editorial by president-elect Theodore A. Gill, in which he asks, “What of us who make the Virgin Birth no part of our personal confession, however often liturgical obedience involves us in its public repetition …?” (April 2, 1958, issue of The Christian Century, which Gill served at the time as managing editor). The editorial is unsigned, but Gill acknowledges its authorship (see an appraisal in “Review of Current Religious Thought,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, April 13, 1959, issue).

Glendale (California) Presbyterian Church, distinguished for its benevolences and missions support, has memorialized the General Assembly, by unanimous action of its session, to deny confirmation of Dr. Gill’s appointment. The memorial is being circularized to the 200 churches of Los Angeles Presbytery urging them to take similar action. The session’s Committee on Christian Education had threatened to withhold financial support from the San Anselmo seminary until doctrinal uncertainties were resolved. The church has a membership of 3,150. Its minister, Dr. Clarence Kerr, recently retired after 16 years service, had interrogated Gill about his theological views. Kerr regards Gill’s appointment as a grave threat to the “peace, unity, and purity” of the church.

The Glendale memorial states: “This session has heard with great concern the statements made in print and otherwise by the present acting president of San Francisco Theological Seminary … We particularly refer to the editorial … entitled ‘A Choice of Miracles.’ … We find that no one could possibly recite the Apostles’ Creed with honesty and still agree with the expressed liberal beliefs of Dr. Gill; and the thought of subjecting our ministerial students to such bizarre biblical interpretations is extremely objectionable. We therefore request the General Assembly to deny the confirmation of Dr. Gill to such a position in our denomination.”

Dr. William D. Livingstone, whose First Presbyterian Church of San Diego is the second largest in the denomination (membership: 5,121), voiced anxieties over the San Anselmo situation in a Sunday sermon heard by a radio audience and three morning congregations.

“I feel compelled,” said Livingstone, “to express my own concern over the allegedly doubtful views of one of our new seminary presidents regarding the virgin birth of Christ. Now this may not mean anything to you. You may not be a Presbyterian or perhaps the problem doesn’t interest you. But surely no president of a Presbyterian seminary with the responsibility of training our young ministers ought to hold any other than the fullest and most affirmative view of the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus.”

He called it a “strange thing when the debate of scholars is set over against the authority of the Bible itself.”

Other ministers discussed the matter with lay leaders, and some commissioners to the General Assembly were prepared to cast protest votes against any ratification of Gill’s appointment.

Gill conceded that the “peace and harmony of the church are at stake.” For this reason, he said, he is reluctant to answer charges against him. He says he welcomes discussion on the virgin birth, but stipulates that any exchange of views be in accordance with established procedures within his denomination. “The church,” he asserted, “says what is discussable.” Gill’s critics, in turn, claim that it is he who originally stirred up the controversy by publication of an editorial which differed with the Westminster Confession.

Gill was asked by a reporter if he believed that Jesus Christ had a human father, a question which he had answered previously to Kerr’s dissatisfaction. The president-elect refused to answer the question, noting that he would not be drawn into discussion of the “mechanics” of the doctrine. “I draw a curtain of reverent mystery around the birth of Christ,” he said.

Through personal contacts Gill is known recently to have convinced a number of strongly evangelical ministers that he holds the historic doctrines.

Education And Character Building

Public Schools and Moral Education, by Neil Gerard McCluskey (Columbia, 1958, 315 pp., $6), is reviewed by James DeForest Murch, author of Christian Education and the Local Church.

One of the most crucial problems in American public education lies in the field of the philosophy of values. There has been much debate among educators as to what values should govern the school in its efforts to form character and inculcate value judgments. The problem has been complicated because of the shifting and highly dynamic religious pluralism of American society.

In the absence of any clear cut philosophy and policy and because of the growing secularism and scientism in American thought, morality and religion are at an all-time low in the public system.

Dr. McCluskey, although a Roman Catholic, traces with eminent fairness the trend from early commitment to the Judeo-Christian code of morality as basic to character formation to the present-day amoral and secular concept of education. His treatment of the theme centers about three prominent educators whose lives span the history of the American public school: Horace Mann (1796–1859), William Torrey Harris (1835–1908), and John Dewey (1859–1952).

Mann, often called “the father of the American public school,” was a member of the Christian Church and deeply religious, although often characterized by his enemies as a supernaturalist-rationalist. He believed that God and God’s law were normative and that they are found in two books, the book of nature and the Holy Bible. There was never any question in Mann’s mind that religion belonged in the school as the fundamental basis for the formation of character and that moral instruction is indispensable to an effective curriculum. Mann felt that all religious elements in American life could agree upon a synthesis of essential doctrine as foundational to moral instruction with the understanding that the home and the church were primarily responsible for education in the distinctives of religion. Despite the bitter attacks made upon him by hyper-Calvinists and Arminians, he was able to enlist popular support for the public school idea from all sectors of the religious community, and establish it firmly as an effective American institution.

Harris won his educational spurs in the Saint Louis public school system. He was a disciple of Hegel and maintained that Hegelian idealism was the foundation of faith in God, freedom, and immortality and the strong wall to preserve the public schools from the inroads of agnosticism and determinism. He opposed religion per se in the Saint Louis schools, even to the reading of the Bible. In many masterful essays and addresses Harris defended Hegel’s institutional morality and ridiculed Mann’s concept of a morality firmly based on religion. Strangely enough Harris clung to surface symbolic Christianity which he was wont to state in Hegelian terms. His influence proved to be decidedly on the side of a complete separation of religion from public school education, both on primary and secondary levels.

Dewey, a close friend of Harris, and in his earlier years a member with him of “The Saint Louis Movement” in the field of philosophy, completed the trend toward godlessness in the public schools and the disappearance of Judeo-Christian morality as basic in character building. Dewey developed an instrumentalist philosophy upon which modern “progressive education” was built. Dr. McCluskey characterizes Dewey’s religious philosophy as an utter rejection of a super-natural world with a transcendent deity and personal immortality. He says “it wrests its values and ideals from concrete social experience. Its hope lies in the unlimited individual and social perfectability of the race through the medium of science, and its charity is found in the bonds uniting it to the fecund nature from which mankind is constantly evolving” (p. 219). Dewey recognized no fixed set of moral values but believed that they arise out of experience and flow naturally in meaningful directions. Ultimate moral motives and forces, he says in The Challenge of Democracy to Education, are to be found in social intelligence at work in the service of social interests and aims. Faith in these capacities of human nature is Dewey’s foundation of social integrity. His tremendous impact on modern public education has resulted in an increasing secularism and an amorality that borders closely on immorality.

This book is “must” background for all who would deal intelligently with the question of morality and religion in the public schools. Some Protestants would evaluate it as a subtle plea for Roman Catholic parochial education. It may be that, but a great host of evangelicals who see the Judeo-Christian way of life as irresplaceably central in any valid educational theory and practice would agree with the author that the present American public school does not reflect American society as it is and that unless there is serious effort to give adequate consideration to religion and morality as important in education “the American public school will of necessity become increasingly secular.” The time has come for us to face this problem.

JAMES DEFOREST MURCH

Objective Reality

Risen Indeed, by G. D. Yarnold (Oxford University Press, New York, 1959, 134 pp., $2.25), is reviewed by W. Boyd Hunt, Professor of Theology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

This is a book written more for the careful exegete than for the theologian. The subtitle, “Studies in the Lord’s Resurrection,” indicates the nature of the volume. In addition to six chapters interpreting the narratives of the principal resurrection appearances, there are chapters on introductory matters, the empty tomb, the ascension, and the risen life of the Christian community as the body of Christ. The volume concludes with 12 pages of helpful appendices (on such subjects as “Communication of the Miraculous” and “The Ending of St. Mark’s Gospel”) and an index. The author is identified as “Warden of St. Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden.” The volume was originally published in Great Britain.

In the introduction Dr. Yarnold positionizes himself with reference to some of the critical issues related to the interpretation of the resurrection narratives. We read that “the view is gradually gaining recognition in critical quarters that the tradition embodying the life and teaching of Christ, so far from being a product of the community, ever increasing both in volume and in supernatural content, was preserved by the early Church with scrupulous care,” and “is to be trusted” (pp. 1–2). Towards Bultmann’s demythologizing “our attitude will be cautious and conservative” (p. 3). Wherever the difficulty in harmonizing the resurrection narratives is insuperable, “critical analysis may properly give way to theological interpretation” (p. 8).

The biblical interpretation is reverent and suggestive, as the following references will indicate. The resurrection faith was born at the empty tomb, before the risen Jesus had been seen (p. 12). In fact, the disciples had begun to think of the Cross as a victory even before the Resurrection had taken place (p. 14). Mary Magdalene was not able to recognize the risen Christ because her mind was on herself (p. 27). The visible presence of the Lord was withdrawn after the Emmaus disciples had recognized Jesus in order to prepare them for the Lord’s final withdrawal of his visible presence in the ascension (p. 41). Since Thomas “uses to the Lord words which sum up the devotion of the whole Christian Church” he is unjustly labeled “the doubter” (p. 63). We are probably on safe ground if we do not attempt to distinguish the different Greek words “to love” which are employed in John 21 (p. 75). As Christians we are to “become in practice what we already are in principle” (p. 114).

As would be expected there are places where some readers will disagree with the author. He is skeptical for instance, of the appearance of angels: “Not all that the gospels appear to record as outwardly occurring fact is necessarily to be taken as such. An instance of symbolic presentation, which can hardly be disputed, occurs in the passages which refer to the visible manifestation of angels, and their communication with the women in the empty tomb” (p. 49). There also seems to be here and elsewhere a disparagement of the value of the women’s witness (pp. 21, 37). Prophecy is not history written several hundred years before it happens (p. 38). Each believer is said to be grafted into the Church to become a sharer of its life through sacramental experience.

On the whole, however, it is refreshing, in view of current tendencies to minimize the objective aspects of our Lord’s resurrection, to read that “at the central point of the Christian faith it must be possible to assert that objective events occurred, which carried absolute conviction for the eleven.… [The narratives we are considering] are totally devoid of significance unless they are records of an historic, objective, encounter with the Risen Christ” (p. 50).

W. BOYD HUNT

Expository Material

Luther’s Commentary on Genesis, by J. Theodore Mueller (Zondervan, 1958, 2 vols., 766 pp., $11.90), is reviewed by F. R. Webber, Author of The Small Church.

This is not a part of the 55 volume set of Luther’s writings, in the process of publication by Concordia and Muhlenberg. It is a separate undertaking and was prepared several years ago; but due to the schedule of the publishers, it was only released last year.

Editor J. Theodore Mueller is well qualified for the task of translating Luther’s famous Commentary on Genesis from the original Medieval Latin into English. In 1920 he became professor of systematic theology at Concordia Lutheran Seminary, St. Louis, and is still on the faculty of this institution as professor of Christian doctrine and New Testament exegesis. Among his writings are a Commentary on Romans (1954), The Lutheran Confessions (1954), and an unabridged translation of Luther’s Commentary on Genesis (1956).

These two volumes on Genesis are somewhat abridged in order that the average reader may get what is essential in Luther’s well-known lectures on Genesis which he delivered between June 1535 and January 1544.

Dr. Mueller’s translation places into the hands of clergymen a wealth of expository material. For those whose studies require the same material in greater detail, the superb Weimar edition of Luther’s writings, in 80 volumes, will provide them with the full Latin text plus copious critical notes.

Luther had the happy gift of combining careful exposition with homiletical, practical, devotional, and doctrinal material. His Commentary on Galatians has been available in English to many generations of clergymen in all denominations, and now we have a good English translation of his Genesis. Luther deals admirably with the prophecies of man’s salvation through Jesus Christ. He shows, for example, that the Hebrew original of Genesis 4:1 reads: “I have the Man, the Lord.” Eve believed the first Messianic prophecy, and when her first son was born, she actually thought that he was the Man, the promised One, sent to bruise the head of the serpent Satan, and she praised God.

This treatment particularly of the Messianic prophecy should suggest an excellent sermon.

Dr. Mueller has translated Luther in good, lively English, and has used the familiar Authorized Version for quoting texts.

F. R. WEBBER

Significance Of Suffering

From Tragedy to Triumph, Studies in the Book of Job, by H. L. Ellison (Paternoster Press, 127 pp., 10s. 6d.), is reviewed by J. A. Motyer, Vice-Principal at Clifton Theological College, England.

Readers of earlier books written by H. L. Ellison will find in these studies all those elements of shrewd and perceptive comment which they have learned to expect and appreciate. These studies in Job are like the earlier studies in Ezekiel—they are far too short to satisfy the appetite they have created.

Originating as contributions to the Hebrew Christian Quarterly, this book still manifests the same form, containing the full Revised Version text of Job in sections and interspersed with comments. Seeing that the reprinted text takes up about 40 of the total of 127 pages, it may be seen how justifiable is a lament over the brevity of the commentary.

None can fail to be benefited by reading this, however. Even those familiar with the book of Job will gain many illuminating insights into its meaning and relevance. Those who are new to it will gain even more. This is exactly the book to stimulate interest in a part of the Bible that presents an exterior of forbidding obscurity to the new convert.

Ellison accepts the historicity of the story of Job. He holds that the book as we have it is not “a verbatim report” but “a poetic transformation of the original prose narrative … not that ‘Job’ is a mere invention … or that the author has so transformed his hero that he would not have recognized himself”, but that just as David in the Psalms told his individual experience in a way that could express the experience of the godly man of all ages, so “the sufferings and strivings of Job … have been touched with a gold that makes them speak to all generations.” It will be apparent, therefore, that he has no time for attempts to sunder the poetical from the prose parts of the book, such as W. B. Stevenson has suggested. However, smaller dislocations of the text are wisely admitted, as in chapters 25–27, even where no solution can be offered. Contrary to the practice of many, the speeches of Elihu are regarded as integral. The crux of chapter 19:25–27 is frankly faced and the author finds these verses to teach the blessed hope of life after death. This is a topic which is further subtly introduced later in the book in that, while Job’s earthly possessions are doubled, “by giving him only ten new children God assured him that he would yet meet those he had lost beyond the grave.”

This is a fine and beautiful study of Job. Would that the book were twice as long!

J. A. MOTYER

Warmly Devotional

Thine Is My Heart, Devotional readings from the writings of John Calvin, by John H. Kromminga (Eerdmans, 1958, 360 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by G. Aiken Taylor, Minister of First Presbyterian Church, Alexandria, Louisiana.

Here are 366 selections from John Calvin, arranged for daily devotional reading. The material is taken from the entire field of the Reformer’s writings.

Calvin is not here being cast in the role of a second Catherine of Sienna, and these are not hitherto undiscovered treasures, exhibiting a new Calvin. Dr. Kromminga, president of Calvin College, has sought to show how warmly devotional are the writings we already know.

This reviewer can remember how pleasantly surprised he was when he first discovered how readable the Institutes were. This book will convey similar pleasure to all who read it.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

For Our Day

Jerome’s Commentary On Daniel, by Gleason L. Archer, Jr. (Baker Book House, 1958, 189 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Edward J. Young, Professor of Old Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary.

A genuine service has been performed by Dr. Archer in this excellent translation of Jerome’s commentary on Daniel. Anyone who has had experience in translating Jerome will realize and appreciate what a difficult task it is for a translator and will also agree that here is a translation well done.

Jerome has much to say that is of use for our own day. We feel satisfaction when we read his comments on Daniel 10:4: “Therefore those critics should leave off their foolish objections who raise questions about the presence of shadows and symbols in a matter of historical truth and attempt to destroy the truth itself by imagining that they should employ allegorical methods to destroy the historicity of rivers and trees and of Paradise” (p. 112).

Refreshing indeed is Jerome’s attitude toward Porphyry. He did not regard Porphyry as a man who was making “contributions” and having “insights.” Nor did he think that in the light of Porphyry’s novel approach he as an “evangelical” should rethink the Christian faith. Rather, with an earnestness that reminds one of Luther, Machen, and other heroes of the faith, he roundly condemned Porphyry and his Scripture-destroying views.

There is a most interesting discussion of the seventy sevens of Daniel in which Jerome makes clear one point, namely, that he does not believe in a millennium. We could wish that he himself had had more of a positive nature to say on the interpretation of this passage. But he does permit us to see what the Fathers said.

Among evangelicals there is a tendency to neglect older works. A serious student of Daniel, however, should derive much profit from Jerome’s comments. And this work will also serve for devotional reading.

EDWARD J. YOUNG