Unfreedom Of Speech In The U. S. S. R.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn could teach us a thing or two about responsible dissent. In a recent interview with Associated Press and Le Monde of Paris, the celebrated author said he feels the cause of individual freedom in the Soviet Union is at a low ebb. He told of threats on his life and continued harassment. He denounced the tactics used by the government to silence criticism. Yet he has continued to persevere within the system. He has been prophetic in the best contemporary sense of that term without returning evil for evil.

Solzhenitsyn also helped Americans put their current domestic problems into better perspective: “It is strange to hear that in some places arguments take place about whether the President has a right to order electronic bugging equipment installed for the defense of military secrets of his country. And a man who has leaked such secrets even gets vindication in court. But in our country, any person who once loudly voices an opinion contrary to the official one is considered guilty even without trial.”

Anxiety Among The Lascivious?

In a recent issue, Der Spiegel, the most influential publication in West Germany, devoted several columns to what it calls a worldwide “Revolt of the Prudes.” Of course the landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court permitting the restriction of pornographic publications and films was cited, but Der Spiegel’s ferret-like researchers did not overlook even the fulminations of the sheriff of rural Albermarle County, Virginia, against Playboy magazine in chronicling what they consider a mass movement of “prudes” the world over to suppress certain of the grosser forms of pornography. Against these “prudes,” Spiegel “reports” in favor of pornography, that it “macht Spass” (provides fun) and, even more significantly, brings in money by the barrel.

We are not entirely surprised that Der Spiegel, like many other profit-hungry mass-communications enterprises, vehemently opposes this particular example of “legislating morality” (although it endorses many others). After all, pornography and its trappings make not only Spass but a great deal of money for the media. But it is a bit surprising that Der Spiegel can see nothing but prudishness behind what it admits is a growing, worldwide feeling of disgust. Can religion, ethics, psychology, and criminal law provide no arguments worth mentioning in a news magazine? It is certainly not absurd to suggest that pornography may have contributed to the recently discovered homosexual torture murders in Texas, as it evidently did to the celebrated Moor murders in Britain a few years ago.

It might be thought less than fair if we characterized the near-hysteria of communications czars and certain intellectuals over the Supreme Court decision as “anxiety among the lascivious.” We are willing to recognize that opposition to censorship of pornography is not necessarily motivated by lasciviousness or greed. And we would like to see the pro-pornographers admit that some people may in fact support restrictions for reasons more substantial than mere “prudery.”

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

Grain shortages, high prices, prolonged famine in West Africa—Christians are vividly reminded of one of the principal petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. All men are dependent upon God for their daily bread. Many do not acknowledge it. Many do so only perfunctorily. But we dare not take it lightly. At any time the planet is only a season away from famine. Up to now blights and pestilence, flooding and drought have never been simultaneously universal. But the number of food-exporting countries, never large, is shrinking. Countries that were formerly self-sufficient are now heavy importers. Government policies, meant to help, seem to end up harming more often than not. We cannot take for granted that we will always have an adequate supply of food. Like the rain that falls beneficially on both the just and unjust, so when famine strikes, the just as well as the unjust suffer.

An Experience To Pass Up

Pan American World Airways, which likes to bill itself as “the world’s most experienced airline,” has begun giving evidence that not all its “experience” is pertinent to its business of transporting people safely and comfortably. According to an Associated Press report, the airline now offers “a new service for passengers—printed cards telling how and where to meet prostitutes in New York, London, Paris, Rome and Amsterdam.” If PanAm ever goes bankrupt, we imagine that the epitaph John wrote for whorish Babylon might aptly be uttered for the great corporation: “The merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo any more, cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls … horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls” (Rev. 18:11–13). That kind of “experience” we don’t consider a recommendation.

Lord, When Did We See Thee Hungry?

Addressing a luncheon group in Washington, ex-Communist author Nathaniel Weyl (Red Star Over Cuba, The Jew in American Politics) predicted that the United States would continue its present policy of supplying foodstuffs to the Soviet Union, because the U. S. S. R. is an immensely powerful nation and we have some interest in keeping it tranquil. But Africa, he lamented, has little to offer us and will probably be allowed to starve.

At the present time, millions of Africans are starving, and—with a few laudable exceptions—very little is being done about it by affluent Americans. The Africans, unlike West Europeans and Japanese, have no hard money with which to pay for our food; unlike the Russians, they do not have the power that makes us deem it prudent to supply them with government subsidized grain. And—also unlike the Europeans, Japanese, and Russians—without generous help they will not merely go a bit hungry. They will starve to death by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions.

Most Christians in America today—like most other Americans—are concerned about the rapidly rising cost of quality, convenience, and gourmet foods, as well as of staples. But very few of us are in serious danger of having to do without the basics. There is a lot of fat in most Americans’ food budget, which could be trimmed and the savings spent for food for Africans on the brink of starvation. Christians will do well to remember the wrath of the Lord against those who see people hungering and do not feed them.

Agencies that will rapidly channel contributions to famine relief in Africa include the following:

Sudan Interior Mission

Cedar Grove, New Jersey 07009

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

1300 Harmon Place

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55400

World Relief Commission

National Association of Evangelicals

P.O. Box 28

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

C. A. R. E.

660 First Avenue

New York, New York 10016

Church World Service

475 Riverside Drive

New York, New York 10027

Designate contributions for famine relief in Africa.

If Only Stalin Could See Them Now!

The outspokenly Hindu monthly Mother India (Bombay), in its August issue, attacks the arming of Middle East nations by both the United States and the U.S.S.R. That the policy is questionable, we may well agree. The motivation that Mother India sees behind the Middle East arms race, however, comes as a surprise to us, and would certainly cause the late Joseph Stalin to turn over in his grave: “The Muslims of this area will first unite to finish Israel and India—the Kaffir countries—and then start killing each other.…” By these tactics, according to Mother India, Soviet and American Christians will destroy the Islamic Arabs and obtain all the oil in the world for themselves.

We have often been embarrassed when Christians and non-Christians overseas have blamed actions by the United States government on Christianity, because “America is a Christian nation.” But if Christianity has to take the blame for Soviet actions as well, that’s a bit too much.

Christian Drunks

When Paul arrived in Ephesus, he challenged the disciples of John there with this question: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They obviously had not, for Paul had to tell them about Jesus Christ, after which they were baptized in water and, after the laying on of hands, received the Holy Spirit.

Later, in a letter to the believers in Ephesus, Paul gives a theological interpretation of those events (Eph. 1:13, 14): “In him [Christ the condition] you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation [=the message], and have believed in him [=faith], were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit [=indwelling of the Holy Spirit], which is the down payment [=evidence] of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory [=end].” These Christians have received the Holy Spirit promised in the Old Testament, and experienced since Pentecost. The Spirit’s agency affords a foretaste of bliss, for his presence in the believer partakes of the quality of that in heaven.

Paul as usual is not content for his hearers to live in clouds of doctrine, and in Ephesians 5:18 he drives his message home. “Do not get drunk, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit.” This text addressed to Christians does not contemplate the once-and-for-all reception of the Spirit but Christians’ continuing responsibility and privilege of being (passive) filled with the Spirit. They are to be like the disciples at Pentecost, so filled with the Spirit that people thought them drunk.

The hot climate of Asiatic Greece, prolific in the fruit of the vine, fostered the mercurial temper of its inhabitants. Excessive indulgence in wine had hastened the death of Alexander the Great. As the Corinthian believers so recently won from paganism needed to separate the food offered to an idol from its pagan connotation, so the Ephesians must not confuse being under the influence of drink with life in the Spirit. The pagan tended to see his drunkenness as the state of being under the influence of the god Bacchus.

The contrast is not directly between wine and Spirit, as the order of the words shows, but between the two states. Paul is not here attacking the use of alcohol but describing two life styles, one Christian, one pagan (4:17–24). The life style the Spirit manifests in us will lead away from drunken singsongs; instead, we will want to praise God with all our hearts in spiritual songs (vs. 19). Furthermore, it will foster an attitude of thankfulness (vs. 20). It will express itself in humility as we subject ourselves to one another in the Church, family, and society (4:21–5:9).

Finally, followers of this style of life will not be wholly absorbed in the material world but will be able to recognize the demonic influence behind the actions of men. In response Christian “drunks” will not grab for the nearest weapon like a drunk in a bar but will put on the whole armor of God and stand up and fight (6:10 ff.).

Dorothy L. Sayers belongs to that loose association of writers known as the “Oxford Christians,” along with men like C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and J. R. R. Tolkien. The four are variously similar: all were Christians, all medievalists, and all wrote popular fiction. But while the fantasies of Lewis, Williams, and especially Tolkien have caught both popular and scholarly attention, Sayers’s fiction seems to have generated less excitement.

This may be explained in part by the kind of fiction it is. Beside the ambrosia of fantasy, detective stories may seem as prosaic as porridge. Instead of cosmic voyages or wars in (and over) heaven, Sayers wrote witty, blood-and-logic murder mysteries; instead of Frodo Baggins or the Pendragon, she chose as hero a British nobleman named Peter Wimsey. The novels are classics of their type, disarming, swiftly plotted, and ingenious. But some of the magic of the “spiritual shocker” is plainly lacking.

Nevertheless, a sensitive reader may feel there is a deeper and less predictable dimension in these novels. As Roderick Jellema has shown with his anthology of her work, Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World, Sayers was a blunt and literate champion of Christian orthodoxy. Now, the detective novels are not in any explicit sense religious. Neither Wimsey nor his closest associates are Christians. But Wimsey’s experiences with guilt and innocence, with malice and love, lead him in the direction of profound personal change; this change, as it develops in successive novels, recalls the psychological pattern of Christian conversion.

In an essay on Dante entitled “… And Telling You a Story” (1947), Sayers described Dante’s conversion in these terms:

One has only to compare the Dante of the Convivio with the Dante of the Vita and the Commedia to see what it was that had happened to him and then unhappened. The Dante of the Convivio has everything that the other Dante has—the great intellect, the great curiosity, the great poetry, the great piety, even—but without humility and without charity. The sin is not primarily girls or anybody’s system of philosophy; it is simply the thing known as hardness of heart … not “a” sin, but simply sin.

Dante’s conversion produces a radical self-revaluation:

He stopped justifying himself and admitted that he was a fool and a miserable sinner. He took down the defensive barrier with which he had shut the “blessed and glorious” Beatrice out of the Convivio. He … accepted [a] dreaming, enthusiastic, gawky, and slightly absurd young man as his inalienable self.

Now plainly this is no theological definition; it is more a description of how conversion feels. It does not answer “What must I do to be saved?” but rather “What would happen to me if I were?” The thawing of the frost in his heart, the sudden access of charity, humility, and self-knowledge, could only follow Dante’s recognizing his own guilt, pride, and vulnerability. He learns to accept himself; and he learns properly to love Beatrice—which is to say, he stops defending himself from her love and the truth she offers him.

Christian or not, Peter Wimsey faces a similar change. He too recognizes his inadequacy and guilt, and finds refuge, finally, in love freely accepted. How Sayers arranges for this “conversion” within the formulas of a detective novel is both surprising and instructive.

First, Sayers clearly perceived the opportunities for ethical investigation built into her genre. Every mystery concerns itself with the effort to detect guilty realities beneath innocent appearances. Hence the criminal’s recurrent “perfect alibi.” Hence the detective’s encounter with guilt and its practical and spiritual consequences: Who did it, how, and why? Can he prosecute, punish, or absolve with justice? How is he to judge the criminal he tracks down?

Sayers heightens these ethical overtones by placing her crimes in retired or sheltered settings: a country village, a resort, an exclusive London club, or even Oxford, the haven of intellect and decorum. “Stir up the mud of the village pond,” says Peter bitterly, “and the stink will surprise you.” However intensely the inhabitants of these artificial Edens may want to hush it up—murder and suicide are only “unpleasantnesses” at the Bellona Club—the obsessive violence of human nature may surface anywhere.

Some of the Wimsey stories end on an upswing of triumph or relief. Less predictably, others end in desolation, weariness, or disgust, with Wimsey facing the grim consequences of crime both for its victims and for himself. “On paper,” a mystery may seem intricate, intriguing, like a picture puzzle. In reality, an unsolved crime only initiates a grinding round of work, doubt, emotional shock, and frustration. Neither wit nor wealth nor professional “security” can exempt the sleuth from sharing the guilt and tragedy of the people around him.

Enter Wimsey of Balliol and Picadilly. Rich, single, cultivated, clever, he “owns the kingdoms of this world.” Comfort and security are given: he takes to crime-solving for excitement, mental stimulation, to escape routine. His betters and relations disapprove: they think his hobby a dilettante’s game, unworthy of a peer—bad form as well as bad press. But Peter’s vacillation between the roles of dilettante and detective helps to define the lesson he must learn.

For Peter to enjoy his hobby, he must try to minimize the ugly or tragic aspects of a detective’s work. His worldly sophistication is therefore bent toward maintaining a sort of innocence, like the apparent innocence of a country village. His nonchalance, his dandified wardrobe and flippant charm, hide a basic fear of human involvement.

The Christian convert must “open up” and let the knowledge of himself and of God invade his self-righteousness. Wimsey must open up and allow the ugly reality of human motives to destroy his witty detachment. The murders will not stay “on paper”; they pull him into involvement, into knowledge of others and of himself.

Twice, for example, he becomes the cause of crime. In Unnatural Death, he advertises for information on the guess that a murder has been committed. The ad’s only result is the immediate death of a girl who could have answered it. But this theme is most completely realized in The Nine Tailors. The venerable art of bell-ringing, practiced in English churches for centuries, provides this book with a wonderful esoteric vocabulary and a brilliant gimmick for murder. But the book is actually “about” innocence and guilt.

For Sayers turns the typical detective plot inside out. All suspects turn out to be—technically—innocent; the true murderers are a group of innocent bystanders who sincerely try to put the blame on someone else—Wimsey is one of these. By novel’s end, all characters involved are either physically innocent and guilty by motive, or physically guilty and innocent by ignorance. All are innocent, all are guilty. And the “change,” as Sayers would say, “is taken out of” Peter Wimsey, the stirrer-up of mud, the passerby who finds he is a death-herald as well. Not only does he solve the crime—he also shares the guilt.

This accounts for half the conversion archetype with which we began, the half about guilt and self-knowledge. But both Dante and Peter Wimsey go on from here. In four of the eleven Wimsey novels, Peter defends, woos, and finally marries Harriet Vane. The courtship is a long one—six years of repeated proposals and patient good will—but Peter and Harriet are complex, reticent people. The painful growth by which they come to understand each other, to accept their mutual dependence and become open to the consequences of love, parallels the second step of conversion—the thawing of the hard heart by which Dante came to self-acceptance and self-surrender.

In Strong Poison, Peter meets Harriet and collapses at once—love at first sight. But Harriet, severely hurt by one traumatic affair, wants to be left alone, free of emotional obligations. She offers Peter gratitude, in reasonable proportion, but not love.

To say that Harriet has suffered, however, does not fully account for her unwillingness to give in. Nor is this simply shyness. There is in her independence something of what Thomas Merton calls the “pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate … will to reject disinterested love for us [as it seems] to imply some obscure kind of humiliation.” What Harriet resists is the implication that she needs Peter. She is desperately anxious to have no debts, to prove she can “make it on her own,” with pride intact. She can’t, of course; neither can Peter; nor can anyone else.

In Gaudy Night Harriet must come to grips with her dilemma. The “artificial Eden” here is Oxford: Harriet, an alumna of a women’s college, returns for a reunion and finds herself the object of a campaign of threats and obscenity. With Harriet’s help, Peter traps the poltergeist; but as the detective plot unfolds against a background of leisurely conversation, Oxford becomes a metaphor for Harriet’s own stubborn self-possessiveness. In essence, Peter offers her a choice between Oxford and himself: between proud independence and love, between an easy escape and a difficult involvement, between the kingdom of this world and a bet on the next.

To offer such a choice, Peter must lay aside his own possessiveness and become vulnerable; but it is only when Harriet chooses in his favor that his action can be completed. Like Dante, the couple must learn to be loved as well as to love. Their self-erected barriers against fallibility—the armor of wit and material security with which they try to defend themselves—must be abandoned. They must accept the awkward humility of being fully human.

This self-surrender is completed by their discovery of the strength and confidence of love—human love, not divine. For the grace in these stories is strictly terrestrial. One of the favorite ideas of the Oxford Christians was that human love is a reflection, at least, of divine love. But Wimsey does not become a Christian; he becomes, rather, a more complete human being, by a conversion whose terms recall, though they do not duplicate, those of a religious conversion.

Nevertheless, one might say that the novels close with an eucatastrophe, the experience of loss and gain in which a man who risks everything may have that everything restored, with the added light of joy. Peter Wimsey plays the delicate games of detection with flair and success; but the lessons he learns are the Christian ones of guilt, self-surrender, and redemption by love. Lionel Basney is associate professor of English, Houghton College, Houghton, New York.

He Is There and He Is Not Silent, by Francis A. Schaeffer (Tyndale, 1972, 100 pp., $3.95, $1.95 pb), and The Openness of Being: Natural Theology Today, by Eric L. Mascall (Westminster, 1972, 278 pp., $9.95), are reviewed by Harold O. J. Brown, associate editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

If philosophy was once called the handmaiden of theology, since Immanuel Kant at least it has been a treacherous one. Traditional theology and apologetics before Kant made much of the so-called proofs of God’s existence; Kant claimed to have refuted them, and post-Kantian Christians learned to look for God only in the realm of subjective experience and of moral values. The movement of so-called neo-orthodoxy initiated by Karl Barth launched a massive attack on the use of philosophy, denying that there is any way in which it can help us to know or acknowledge God. Natural theology, i.e., the approach to God apart from special revelation, has been branded a contradiction in terms.

There is certainly some validity in this skepticism concerning the ability of the human reason, with its innate tendencies to self-worship, to find God. Yet if this world is God’s creation, it would be surprising indeed if it bore no traces of his handiwork.

In an earlier book, Escape From Reason (1968), Schaeffer warned against accepting a two-story view of reality, dividing it into the natural and the supernatural, and granting autonomy and self-sufficiency to human reason on the natural level. In this sense, he has to stand against the traditional scholastic opinion that reason alone can establish the reality of God. But once this conceit has been overcome, he maintains, reason can tell us something.

In the present volume, Schaeffer warns against reading the three books in his now completed series in their order of publication. One ought rather to begin with The God Who Is There (1968), go on to Escape From Reason, and then read He Is There … But perhaps Schaeffer’s chronological order was also the psychologically correct one: particularly for the intellectually and academically inclined, whether Christian or not, it is important to destroy the illusion of the autonomy of human reason before proceeding to show that God does present himself, in a limited but imposing way, in the external world of objective reality.

In He is There … Schaeffer argues the metaphysical, moral, and epistemological necessity first that God is, in order to make objective reality intelligible, and then that he speaks in historical and propositional revelation, in order to give us a place as children rather than strangers in the world of created reality. The arguments are simple, straightforward, and in my opinion very persuasive. Although they resemble the traditional cosmological and moral arguments, they do not repeat them but rather seek to help the reader gain the insight that God’s answer is indeed the only answer to questions that man cannot entirely suppress within himself. Non-technical, Schaeffer’s writing appeals strongly to the cultural and existential experience of modern man, to his awareness of estrangement, meaninglessness, and anxiety, and it does this in lucid language that virtually everyone can understand.

Mascall, by contrast, is an academic theologian, an Anglican strongly rooted in the Thomist tradition. The Openness of Being is a rather technical book, with frequent references to the works of other scholars. Mascall is unwilling to abdicate the exercise of human reason to the atheist and agnostic, and of faith to what he somewhere calls the “extreme revelationist,” i.e., the Barthian for whom God is always “totally other.” He defends the ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury—without altogether adopting it himself—against the common charge that it is mere meaningless verbal sleight of hand. With skill and precision he puts down the linguistic analysis that tries to stamp not merely Anselm but all “God-talk” as meaningless, and defends some of the traditional theological categories (such as Creator/creation) against the rhetoric of modernists such as the Roman Catholic Leslie Dewart, who would dismiss them all as useless Hellenistic baggage and opt for “fluid” truth. There are useful chapters on “Being and Truth” and “God and Time” in which Mascall deals with Dewart and with process theology.

Originally delivered as the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1970–1971, the book is loosely structured and contains such disparate but interesting material as appendices on Boyce Gibson and sociologist Peter Berger, grace and nature in East and West, and body, soul, and creation. The breadth of Mascall’s knowledge and the rigorous but fair way in which he defends his Thomistic brand of Christian orthodoxy are, as usual, impressive.

Misleading Title

History of Israelite Religion, by Georg Fohrer, translated by David E. Green (Abingdon, 1972, 416 pp., $10.95), is reviewed by R. K. Harrison, professor of Old Testament, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, Ontario.

This book, written by a German scholar, boasts its own lengthy history of transmission, being based on Hölscher’s Geschichte der israelitischen und jüdischen Religion, first published in 1922 and finally revised by Fohrer after Horst and Hempel had died while undertaking that task. The work is a synthesis of liberal views about facets of Hebrew history and religion, and there are very few references to conservative authors.

Fohrer takes for granted the existence of such unproved entities as J, E, D, and P; limits the work of Isaiah ben Amoz to the first thirty-nine chapters of the prophecy; regards the legal code presented to Josiah as an early form of Deuteronomy; and with great precision and assurance places Daniel in the Maccabean period. The uncritical acceptance of these positions, combined with only one passing reference to Qumran, places the literary-critical views of the author at the turn of the present century.

Following Gunkel, Gressmann, and others, he has little regard for the historicity of the patriarchal narratives, appearing to think of the persons described therein as highly idealized figures who in some manner are recipients of revelation. If he knows anything of a theory that the patriarchal narratives were transmitted in tablet form to constitute accredited ancient Near Eastern historiography, he studiously ignores it.

The book contains a useful survey of Canaanite religion, but the author does not seem to grasp the appalling depravity of the worship, nor the crisis it brought about in Israelite life generally. In discussing the religion of the monarchy, he quite rightly criticizes the “amphictyony” concept, makes it clear that the Old Testament traditions know nothing of a “New Year Festival” of the Babylonian akitu variety, and shows that the prophets did not think of Israel’s history as Heilsgeschichte. He does not seem to know Albright’s study of Samuel in relation to the start of the prophetic movement, and actually makes relatively little reference to Albright throughout.

While the book is not extreme, it is not distinctive either, and when contrasted with Kaufmann’s masterly Religion of Israel (1960) it appears for what it is, namely, a cautious balancing of one liberal position against another. Despite the title, it is not so much a history of Israelite religion as a study of what liberals have had to say about the supposed “evolutionary” development of Hebrew religion, which for Fohrer reached its height between 800 and 500 B.C. For the reviewer the chief value of this book lies in its footnotes.

For Scholars Only

The Pastoral Epistles, by Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann (Fortress, 1972, 175 pp., $10), is reviewed by D. Edmond Hiebert, professor of New Testament, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, Fresno, California.

This attractive volume makes effective use of the printer’s craft. The pages, nearly square, present the material in double columns with only the left edges of the lines aligned. Numerous footnotes, generally on sources, appear in smaller type at the bottom of each page. A fresh translation of the Pastorals is printed in paragraphs, only one column to the page, leaving considerable blank space for the reader’s own jottings. The translation reflects the exegetical views of the authors; it has its strong and weak points. A bibliography lists twenty-eight commentaries, twelve in English and the others in German or French, and four columns of monographs and articles.

Twenty-two excursuses of varying length deal with such subjects as “Myths and Genealogies,” “The ‘False Teachers’ of the Pastoral Epistles,” and “The Situation of 2 Timothy.” The comments, given verse by verse, are strong in tracing the origin and usage of terms and expressions in non-biblical literature. The wealth of references to various scholarly works cited in the footnotes forms a valuable feature of the commentary. But there is generally little attempt to give a systematic exposition of the biblical text as it stands.

In the introductory section on the authenticity of the Pastorals, all three letters are stamped pseudonymous. This judgment is said to be based “less on a single argument than on the convergence of a whole series of arguments.” The external evidence is dismissed in the simple remark “it is not very strong,” and only points of silence in the external evidence are mentioned. The arguments employed are all based on internal evidence. The authors recognize that the personal element in these letters forms the strongest argument for authenticity; they simply assert, however, that these references need not be accepted as real history but are rather literary devices employed to clothe the letters with Pauline authority. Since the view of two imprisonments by Paul is rejected, no place for these historical references in Paul’s life can be found; therefore they are unauthentic, the fictional invention of the unknown author to give his work apostolic authority.

The student looking for a treatment of the Pastorals that sees them as pseudonymous and provides scholarly views in support of that position will find this a stimulating work. But the ordinary Bible-believing reader will find it confusing, and the conservative pastor looking for a thorough, sympathetic exposition of these epistles to help him provide spiritual nourishment for his flock will probably think that this volume was not worth its price. The editorial observation concerning the “Hermeneia” series to which this volume belongs, “the rewards … will accrue chiefly to the field of biblical scholarship,” is fully applicable to this work on the Pastoral Epistles.

Specific Answers

Answers to Questions, by F. F. Bruce (Zondervan, 1973, 264 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Russell Chandler, journalist, pastor, and teacher, Columbia, California.

In this compendium, the noted British evangelical scholar distills answers to questions that appeared over a twenty-year span in the Harvester, a British magazine. The book is well classified and indexed; half covers questions on biblical texts, the other half pertains to Christian doctrine and biblical subjects. The book was first published in Britain, and the American version retains a number of British idioms and spellings.

In the biblical-text portion, the reader will find specific answers to specific questions rather than a verse-by-verse exegesis or exposition. There are, therefore, gaps in continuity.

The topical section mirrors the background and interests of Harvester readers. Therefore many matters current in American Christianity are not treated. On the subject of speaking in tongues, for example, there is only one direct question-answer, though even at that Bruce’s remarks are helpful. There are five entries on justification; one answers an ambiguous question, but several would be helpful to a minister preparing a sermon or Bible study on the subject.

Answers to Questions is a useful reference book, not a volume to be read through systematically. Bruce’s insistence on the authority of Scripture as an underlying premise stamps integrity on his strong exegetical ability.

The weakness is the specificness of the content. If your question or the text for which you seek enlightenment isn’t included, you must seek help elsewhere.

New Looks At Inspiration And Revelation

Biblical Inspiration, by Bruce Vawter (Westminster, 1972, 195 pp., $9.95), and Unfolding Revelation, by Jan Walgrave (Westminster, 1972, 418 pp., $9.95), are reviewed by Thomas H. Olbricht, professor of biblical theology, Abilene Christian College, Abilene, Texas.

The authors of these books are both Roman Catholic professors, Bruce Vawter at De Paul, Chicago, and Jan Walgrave at Louvain, Belgium.

Vawter in Biblical Inspiration surveys the history of the doctrine of inspiration in both Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions and ends with his own formulation of the doctrine. He gives attention to the highlights of the biblical concept, patristic thinking, the scholarship synthesis, scholastic and post-scholastic Protestant thinking, and contemporary positions. He moves through the history offering critiques along the way but withholding his constructive position until the final chapter, hence forcing the reader to struggle on his own with the various positions on inspiration offered at various times in the history of the Church. Notes to each chapter are found in the back along with a bibliography and several indexes.

A basic thesis of Vawter is that only scholasticism has offered a theology of inspiration. The result, in his view, is that certain biblical perspectives have been ignored and theologians have been unable to cope with the nature of biblical materials as discovered through biblical criticism. The presentation of Vawter’s critique, which he bases upon his objections to the scholastic doctrine of inspiration, will indicate why he proposes a synthesis at the end that moves beyond scholastic theology.

As Vawter sees it, a crucial biblical vision of its own inspiration is that in these documents “the spirit of God has spoken through men.” Although this is true, the employment of the Old Testament in the New indicates that early Christians refused to be governed by the letter of any text, so that the product of inspiration was never conceived to be “the oracular utterance of a delphic spirit, a word voiced from heaven fixed and immutable, once for all.” Even in the New Testament a recognition shines through of the variety of biblical materials and different senses of inspiration. Furthermore, the scholastic concept of inspiration failed to recognize that some biblical documents went through various stages of development and incorporated materials from scattered sources. A doctrine of inspiration that presupposes single authorship is thus defective. The fathers of the church viewed the Scriptures as oracular, and though the scholastics were more flexible, they centered upon God as the instrumental cause of the Scriptures. The result is that scholars take positions along a spectrum from maximal cause, in which God dictates specific words, to minimal cause, in which God only supplies the basic thoughts.

Because of these weaknesses in the scholastic instrumental cause, Vawter proposes that inspiration needs to be viewed from the context of the living community in which God is at work. He proposes this as a definite theology of inspiration. Through this means, human participation in Scripture is given full recognition. This is the case first of all since no claim is made for inerrancy, inasmuch as “a human literature containing no error would indeed be a contradiction in terms, since nothing is more human than to err.” Second, multiple sources and authorship is viewed from the standpoint of the community, not from that of individual authors.

Evangelicals should read this work. From it they will learn how current views of inspiration emerged in historical settings so as to fulfill certain apologetic needs. They will also come upon explanations of inspiration that they have not entertained before. But most significant they will discover that most affirmations on inspiration are a priori and fail to take into account the actual manner in which biblical documents came about. Unfortunately, despite attention given to Protestant views, Vawter formulates his conclusions to answer chiefly Roman Catholic objections.

The book supplies more questions than systematic answers. It is not clear, for example, why some documents produced by the living community in which the Spirit of God is at work are inspired while others are not. Nor is any answer forthcoming as to the manner in which materials cited from secular documents become the Word of God.

A certain systematic rigor pervades Walgrave’s Unfolding Revelation. By his methodology it is obvious that he is a theologian rather than a biblical scholar. In the first chapter he poses the problem of the manner in which revelation is to be viewed. In the second chapter he sets out a number of definitions. If one is unfamiliar with the delineations of Newman, the importance of these definitions does not become clear until later.

In the second part of the book Walgrave sets out concepts of doctrinal development in patristic and medieval theology. He has to struggle to discover the idea in this period, and though he admits that the evidence is meager, he concludes with a strong affirmation. He is obviously more at home in the last two centuries of Christian history than in the earlier ones.

In Part III Walgrave discusses logical, transformistic and theological theories of development. In each chapter he traces the theories historically. The logical theories are pin-pointed in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and his followers. The transformistic theories are found for the most part in Protestant liberalism. The theological theory is identified with J. H. Newman and his intellectual heirs. It is this section, making up about three-fourths of the whole, that is the most impressive. Walgrave decisively pinpoints the manner in which various philosophical traditions have contributed to the idea of doctrinal development in modern theology. In a final chapter he presents his own position on doctrinal development. Notes, bibliography, and an index of proper names appear at the end.

Walgrave characterizes the biblical notion of revelation as “a living comprehensive view of God’s dealing with man insofar as it is a gradual manifestation of His hidden nature and of the mystery of His saving condescension.” This definition is significant, for Walgrave modifies traditional views by arguing that doctrinal development is more than conceptual or propositional. He admits that “Protestant theology has not occupied itself intensively with the problem of development of doctrine.” One of the difficulties with the book emerges at this point, since it appears that Walgrave hopes to formulate conclusions for both Protestants and Roman Catholics. He admits that Protestants who emphasize doctrinal development have a different goal in mind. Roman Catholics are interested, as is Walgrave, in explaining how later developments in Christendom are from God and compatible with Scriptures. Protestants emphasize the evolution of higher forms of Christianity and devaluate the authority of the Scriptures.

Anyone who reads this book will invest a large amount of time, but it will be time well spent. At minimum, he will discover how numerous thinkers in the history of Christendom have justified doctrinal development. As a Protestant he will be confronted by the fact that his theology has been tinctured by two thousand years of biblical interpretation. One need not agree with Walgrave that “a contemporary theology cannot go back; it can only go onward, consciously prolonging the ongoing impetus of tradition.” But he cannot ignore the fact that he understands the Scripture as he does because of his current position in Christian history. He must in some manner account for this development in his theology.

One final problem cannot go unnoticed. If God is involved in the ongoing development of Christian doctrine, is he responsible for all the varieties? If not, does he provide a means for identifying mutant strains? Welgrave answers this problem by positing a living church permeated by the Spirit of God that delineates true doctrine from aberrant forms. Walgrave thus fails to account for varieties of theology that Vawter locates in the Scriptures. But some of us are suspicious of a means of delineating correct doctrine that to us appears to have generated new species.

Newly Published

Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy, by Walter Kaufmann (Wyden, 274 pp., $7.95). The author is one of the few professors of philosophy who seem capable of generating truly new and radical ideas, and is certainly among the most gifted stylists treating serious subjects today. He here continues his epic struggle against religion, especially the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and any authority superior to man. He is often very incisive in his analysis of human evasions and abdications of responsibility, and in attacking religion he makes it clear that not only guilt but justice depend on it. He calls for a heroic kind of human autonomy and ruthlessly exposes the immorality of both right- and left-wing political enthusiasm. Beautifully done, but overlooks the reality of God. Therefore his fundamental theory is false despite the brilliance of many of his points.

The Unpredictable Wind, by C. Brandon Rimmer and Bill Brown (Aragorn [212 N. Orange St., Glendale, Calif. 91203], 69 pp., $1.25 pb). The gentle manner of the authors and sound biblical exposition make this a very valuable book on the filling of the Spirit, especially with reference to speaking in tongues. (The authors espouse neither a requirement of speaking in tongues nor the ceasing of tongues as a valid spiritual gift for our age.) Highly recommended.

Introduction to Theology, by Owen Thomas (Greeno, Hadden [168 Brattle St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138], 218 pp., $7.50 pb). A beginner’s survey by an Episcopal theology professor. A well-organized presentation of key doctrines, though a little weak on biblical authority. Provocative discussion questions follow each chapter.

Forbid Them Not, by Louis Cassels (Independence [P.O. Box 1019, Independence, Mo. 64051], 94 pp., $2.95). A senior editor of United Press provides eight suggestions for the Church on how to attract and hold young people. Perceptive and brief.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and James and Jude, by John Calvin (3 vols., Eerdmans, 326, 306, and 345 pp., $7.95 each). Calvin is one of the very few commentators whose work is still quite useful after generations. The first three Gospels are treated in one sequence. Commentaries on two short letters are appended to the third volume. These volumes bring to completion the twelve-volume, up-to-date Torrance edition entitled “Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries.” (A century-old translation remains in print.)

Philosophical Issues in Religious Thought, by Geddes MacGregor (Houghton Mifflin, 500 pp., $10.95). An impressive textbook in the philosophy of religion, concentrating on general problems of religious sensitivity and belief rather than on specific issues that distinguish revealed, biblical religion. MacGregor deals with the subjects he discusses very fairly, but he slights historic biblical Christianity and many of its representatives (ten references to Bertrand Russell and nine to Teilhard, but none to Machen, Mascall, or Dooye-weerd).

Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, by J. Barton Payne (Harper & Row, 754 pp., $19.95). A comprehensive synthesis of predictive Scriptures and fulfillments. Includes verse-by-verse discussions, topical summaries, statistical appendices, five indexes, and a bibliography. The methodology is specified and the biblical chronology is of conservative scholarship. An excellent reference tool for those of all eschatological perspectives.

The Phenomenon of Religion, by Ninian Smart (Seabury, 157 pp., $6.95). A study of religion by a philosopher. He presents a complex methodology followed by discussions of religious phenomenology, myths, and concludes with a proposal to accept a neutral phenomenological view of religion as opposed to commitment-oriented “theology.” He seems to want to “save” religion from the ravages of scientific study.

What the Church Needs Now, by B. J. Chitwood (Revell, 160 pp., $4.95), and Share the Word Now, by Albert McClellan (Broadman, 128 pp., $1.50). Chitwood sees church renewal as the product of a “recovery” of distinctive biblical approaches to all segments of the ministry from evangelism and discipline to “culture contact.” McClellan emphasizes vigorous instruction in the Scriptures linked with lay evangelism as the means for renewal. Both authors are practical and persuasive.

The Religious and Philosophical Foundations in the Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Ernest Lyght (Vantage, 96 pp., $3.75). A master’s thesis tracing the growth of King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Develops and discusses King’s key purpose as the linking of Christian love and Gandhian methods of nonviolent disruption in an attempt to stir the American “conscience.” A useful companion to biographical presentations of King.

Violence: Right or Wrong, by Peter Macky (Word, 210 pp., $5.95). Argues that violence breeds violence in a never-ending cycle unless it is “absorbed” in nonviolence as exemplified in the Beatitudes or in Christ’s death. Stresses education and organized Gandhian-type resistance to violence as solutions. Draws heavily on biblical material but does “violence” to a proper understanding of God’s use of armies and the like in the Old Testament.

To Live and to Die, edited by Robert Williams (Springer-Verlag [175 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. 10010], 346 pp., $12.95). Provocative essays by twenty-one specialists who reevaluate life and death in light of technical advances and population pressures. Topics include genetic engineering, euthanasia, and birth control. The editor and largest contributor (seven essays) provides a philosophical context that discards the soul as a product of the mind, hence precluding any afterlife. Some disturbing conclusions that deserve careful evaluation.

Worship is man’s foremost duty and his greatest privilege. In worship man makes two affirmations: he affirms the existence of a being higher than himself, and he affirms his own capacity for worship. In brief, worship is an affirmation of God and of self. The person who worships God will not exclaim with Swinburne: “Glory to man in the highest!” Nor will he agree with Stevenson’s description of man as a mere “disease of agglutinated dust.” Rather, in worship man gives recognition to the “worthship” of God as creator and redeemer, and to his own worship as creature and object of redemption.

The last decade has brought a spirited resurgence of interest in religion and transcendent reality. Unfortunately, we have not seen a corresponding revitalization of the Church’s worship. If anything, interest in corporate worship appears to be waning.

Modern definitions of worship all too frequently reflect the mood of the day. Interest is focused more on the “psychology of worship” than on the “theology of worship.” There is, of course, a subjective side to worship. The worshiper experiences feelings of love, joy, confidence, and submission. More important, however, is God’s objective self-disclosure in Jesus Christ, and man’s response to this divine self-disclosure. Christian worship is inseparably linked to our understanding of God, the nature of divine revelation, God’s way of communicating with man, and the nature and mission of the Church. Such understanding comes to us through the Scriptures. True worship then occurs at the point where the objective revelation of God blends with the subjective experiences of the worshiper.

The word for worship is used in the Bible in some form or another no fewer than two hundred times. More than twenty times the people of God are explicitly instructed to “worship the Lord.” When the early Christians organized as a visible body of believers, their main reason for organizing was worship. In the words of A. B. MacDonald, the believers “possessed nothing tangible beyond their worship assemblies. They possessed no buildings; no sacred book that was distinctly their own; no defined creed, nor any rule, such as Benedict or Bernard left—nothing, except their worship assemblies, that could serve as a rallying-point for their loyalties” (Christian Worship in the Primitive Church, p. 17). All that the early Christians possessed that could be said to be distinctly Christian were a few burning convictions, born out of their experience of God’s redeeming work in Christ. Before them lay the immense task of thinking through the significance of their experience, of fitting their experience into the thought forms they had inherited from Judaism, and of finding new forms to express what had not been expressed before.

Much of what we observe in early Christian worship was taken over from the synagogue. But there were important differences. Christians worshiped in the “freedom of the Spirit.” They read, in addition to the Old Testament, the writings of their esteemed leaders. They observed the Lord’s Supper. Most of all, they brought to their worship thoughts and emotions not found in the synagogue.

The New Testament nowhere prescribes a detailed order of worship; however, it has a great deal to say about the content of worship. Worship in the early Church consisted primarily of teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers (Acts 2:42).

According to Acts 2:46 the early Christians went daily with one accord to the Temple. The purpose was threefold. In the first place, they continued to take part in Jewish worship. Second, these Jewish services gave them excellent opportunities to witness. And third, Christians used these public gatherings to receive instruction from the apostles. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, speaks of the custom in his church for the president to exhort the worshipers to imitate those things that had been read from the Scriptures. Unfortunately, we have no example in the New Testament of such apostolic teaching or exhortation. The sermons recorded in Acts are mere summaries of missionary preaching directed to unbelievers. It is generally assumed, however, that much of what the apostles said in these worship assemblies of the believers was later committed to writing and is contained in our New Testament epistles.

Teaching or preaching plays a dominant role in Protestant worship; nearly half of the time of the worship service is devoted to the sermon. In this we show that we are children of the Reformation. Luther was a great preacher; no fewer than 2,300 of his sermons have been preserved. But increasingly cries are heard in our churches for more worship and less preaching. Good preaching is not inconsistent with worship in its purest and most spiritual form, but poor preaching may indeed interfere with worship.

One reason why preaching is often inadequate is that modern shepherds spend too much time mending fences and not enough time feeding the sheep. More effort is put forth in perfecting the organization than in building the Christian personality. In a day when many are turning to nature-mysticism and occultism, good preaching—doctrinal preaching of high caliber—is essential to the well-being of the Church.

It is not that people are implying today that the preacher has nothing to say; rather, they would like to hear more plainly what is being said. In Jesus’ day, nearly all information was communicated orally. This is no longer true. Preaching in the age of television needs to be supplemented by other forms of communication.

Worship in the early Church also included fellowship. Worshipers were not passive recipients, they were active participants. They were not only gathered in one place but were also of one accord (Acts 1:14; 2:46; 4:24). It was in Christian fellowship that the individual believer was best able to realize and demonstrate his fellowship with Christ. Hence, absenteeism was considered to be spiritually disastrous (Heb. 10:25). Among the strongest appeals that early Christianity made to the world was its human warmth and fellowship. Such fellowship was not merely a fruit of worship; it was an integral part of worship.

In the pragmatic climate of America, fellowship is seen too much as a product of activity and interaction, and not enough as a matter of relationships. One might well find in a church bulletin the notice, “After the worship service we will have fellowship in the lower auditorium.” But the purest and most spiritual form of fellowship takes place in the sanctuary when God’s people unite in worship. By participating in corporate worship, the worshiper avails himself of the healing powers of Christian fellowship. It is interesting that the name disciple is used in the New Testament approximately 230 times before Pentecost and only 28 times after. By contrast, the name brother is used approximately 30 times before, and more than 230 times after, Pentecost. True discipleship inevitably leads to brotherhood.

A third element in early Christian worship was breaking of bread. It appears that Christians observed communion whenever they met for worship. However, it never became an addendum to the preaching service. Rather, it was the climax of worship. The significance of communion was derived not so much from historical antecedents—whether Jesus ate the passover, or a kiddush meal, or a chaburah supper—as from the meaning Jesus attached to the event.

The early Church thought of Christ in terms of the past, the present, and the future (1 Cor. 13:13; Heb. 13:8). Communion, which was the symbolic representation of Christ, had the same threefold orientation. It was first of all remembrance: “This do in remembrance of me.” As the Church celebrated communion from Sunday to Sunday it recalled the atoning work of Christ. Communion was also proclamation: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death.…” Participation in communion was an act of preaching. It was proclamation by symbols other than the spoken word. The communion table was not a place where Christians lingered in spiritual ecstasy; it was a point of departure. Finally, communion was an expression of the hope of the Church: “… you proclaim the Lord’s death until he come.” Communion was an affirmation of the Church’s faith in the second advent of Christ.

Symbols can help us formulate ideas and awaken feelings appropriate to worship. Our feelings are not under the direct control of the will, but our actions are. Using suitable images and doing things that in the past have been associated with feelings of worship can help us develop feelings of awe, reverence, and submission. Even a child who can not understand the full meaning of communion may nevertheless experience feelings and attitudes that can help him in his Christian life.

Our extreme dependence on words (verbal symbols) tends to confine our worship to patterns that can be verbally expressed. The symbols of bread and wine in communion and the symbol of water in baptism possess a quality that allows for mystery and development. They not only touch the worshiper in his mundane experiences but also take him far beyond these experiences.

But when symbols are used repeatedly, they tend to seem common, routine, and ordinary. They lose their power to evoke the expected response. Much of the current agitation against the traditional worship service is due to this “symbolic collapse.” The solution is not to devise new symbols, as some are advocating, but to interpret symbols freshly in the language of our day.

Early Christian worship also included prayers. It appears that prayer followed the reading of Scripture and preaching, an order adopted from the synagogue. Prayers of the early Church contained notes of praise and thanksgiving, confession of sin, intercession, and petition.

The favorite word in Jewish worship was eulogein, meaning to praise or bless. It suggests the idea of homage paid by a subject to his king. The term the early Church adopted to designate its prayers of praise and thanks to God was eucharistein, a warmer, more intimate term. It suggests the feelings of gratitude and love that a child has toward his father. Although the prayers recorded in Acts reveal dependence on the Old Testament and Jewish liturgical tradition, they also reveal a great deal of freedom from the restraints of rigid forms and fixed modes of thought.

In many of our churches today, prayers have largely been removed from worship and placed in the context of a special midweek service. Since these midweek services are poorly attended, it may well be that our worship has lost an important element. God meets his people in the Word, in Fellowship, in communion, and in prayer. All four must be permitted to function in worship, although they may receive varying emphases depending on the nature of the occasion and the participants.

Should the Church of the twentieth century advocate a return to the simple, spontaneous worship of the early Church? Impossible. In the first place, says B. H. Streeter, “in the Primitive Church there was no single system of church order laid down by the apostles.… Uniformity was a later development” (The Primitive Church, p. 261). In the second place, there are signs that even the primitive Church toward the end of the first century moved toward a more structured and formal service of worship. We can never recapture the exhilarating sense of newness that characterized the experience of the early Christians. What we can strive for, however, is a recovery of the early Christians’ sense of the immediacy of the action of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit still leads his people to the Word, to fellowship, to the communion table, and to prayers.

Worship in the freedom of the Spirit is Christ-centered worship, for the Spirit glorifies Christ (John 16:14). The early Church remained in the apostles’ teaching because Christ taught his disciples; they had fellowship because they all belonged to the Church, Christ’s body; they celebrated communion because Christ ordained it; they prayed because Christ taught them how to pray. The early Church did not detach its religion from historical roots, nor did it sublimate it into a system of idealism or a religious philosophy. When Christians united for worship, their thoughts were centered on actual happenings in history—things that they had seen with the eye, and heard with the ear, and touched with the hand (1 John 1:1).

Worship in the early Church was for believers. Christians met in homes to receive a new mandate from the Lord for the week ahead. Evangelism happened in the world. For us the relations between worship and evangelism is somewhat unclear. Evangelical practice reflects the influence of the revival movement. As revival swept westward in America, the pulpit became more an instrument of evangelism than of instruction. It would undoubtedly be of benefit to us if we returned to the New Testament pattern, in which worship preceded evangelism; evangelism was the fruit of worship. If we fail in worship, we will inevitably fail in evangelism also, for we cannot meet the world until we have met God. If we succeed in leading people into a vital experience of worship, we will discover anew the dynamic thrust of New Testament evangelism, for the early Church worshiped daily and the Lord added daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:47).

THE MIDNIGHT PASSING

Once on a midnight, two were three,

Resting on a hollow tree,

The one, long blind, but could he see?

Imprisoned, yet, was he free?

As for the other, he was me,

Present, though an absentee,

With eyes so light he couldn’t see,

Shackled, though he held the key.

After the resting, he and He

Parted from my company.

Then down the lane toward dawn went he,

Just the opposite of me.

ARTHUR G. McPHEE

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Masada is more than a mountain. This squat, sugar-loaf rock, “Gibralter of the Dead Sea,” is a symbol, perhaps Israel’s most eloquent symbol. For religiously non-observant Jews its significance may eclipse even that of the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Hundreds come daily to prowl over this national shrine. Some snake up the “serpent path” on the eastern cliff, the only practicable access route before A.D. 73, when the Romans raised an earth ramp with a negotiable slope against the west face of Masada. Before the spring of 1971, when a cable car began ascending the east side, most visitors hiked the still remaining ramp to reach what some call Israel’s “super Alamo.” The names of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, who perished in the Texas Alamo, are no more familiar to Americans than the name of Eleazer ben Yair, Masada’s Zealot leader, is to Israelis.

Masada looms large against a desert background some thirty-five miles southeast of Jerusalem and twenty miles north of Sodom. Its twenty-three-acre plateau towers about 1,500 feet above the surface of the Dead Sea two miles to the east, but only about 150 feet above the level of the Mediterranean Sea many miles to the west. The landmark crouches over the lowest place on earth. From the top a breathtaking vista unfolds eastward to the mountains of Moab across the elongated sapphire of the Dead Sea almost opposite the northern tip of the peninsula of Halashon (the Tongue), which projects into the water from the eastern shore in Hashemite Jordan. Yigael Yadin, Israel’s commander-in-chief during the War of Independence in 1948–49, who turned archaeologist and directed the excavations at Masada, described the 1,900-foot-long summit which stretches at its broadest point to a width of 650 feet as “a rough rhomboid, shaped rather like a ship with a very narrow prow in the north, somewhat less narrow in the south, and broad in the center.”

David may have holed up here when he was hounded by King Saul’s posse. Zev Vilnay reports surmises by some scholars that “the hold” where David hid and welcomed recruits to his commando band was at Masada. W. L. Emerson boldly designated the craggy stronghold as “once a refuge of David from the murderous designs of King Saul.” The identification seems precarious, however, even though the Hebrew word translated “hold” in First Chronicles 12:16 is Metzad, just an a short of Metzada, the modern Hebrew name of the citadel.

The Israelis acknowledge a grudging debt to King Herod the Great for building the water system and storehouses that made possible the saga of the Zealots’ last stand. About 37 B.C. his engineers constructed a network of channels in the cliffs of nearby wadis and a combination of dams and aqueducts that diverted seasonal flash floods into huge underground cisterns scooped out of the rock. With the reservoirs for trapping rain water, the storage capacity reached 1.5 million cubic feet!

Herod’s fourteen storehouses stockpiled weapons for more than ten thousand and food supplies the Zealots’ seven-year occupation hardly dented. Josephus, who left the world its only record of Masada, wrote, “These fruits were also fresh and full ripe and no way inferior to such fruits newly laid in, although they were little short of a hundred years from the laying in of these provisions (by Herod) till the place was taken by the Romans” in A.D. 73.

No Roman annal, inscription, triumphal arch, monument, or coin commemorated the Empire’s conquest of Masada. The Romans wanted the world to believe that Judaea was completely subjugated with the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The Arch of Titus in the Forum at Rome, the triumph celebrated by Vespasian and Titus, and coins minted and circulated with the inscription “Judaea capta” contributed to the illusion that Jewish resistance to Rome had been ruthlessly crushed. But the garrison of Zealots held out at Masada, from which they launched lightning raids against the Romans. The nuisance of such effrontery prompted Judaea’s procurator, Flavius Silva, to take steps to wipe out this last pocket of enemy resistance.

Silva and the Tenth Roman Legion, helped by conscripted war prisoners who did the heavy work, ringed the mountain with a siege wall to choke off escape by the defenders. That six-foot thick circumvallation still surrounds the rock like a noose. It is equal in length to the present-day walls of the old city of Jerusalem.

Silva also established eight army camps around the stronghold. From his headquarters, Camp F, almost under the shadow of Herod’s hanging palace on the north cliff, Roman propagandists likely launched a harangue against the Jewish defenders at the top, reminiscent of the Assyrians’ tirades directed to soldiers on Jerusalem’s walls during the siege in Hezekiah’s day. Archaeologists discovered amazing acoustics in that sector, enabling those excavating Camp F to communicate easily by shouts with colleagues on the plateau above.

“One of the most remarkable siege structures of the Roman Army which exists in the world today” says Yadin about the earth ramp Silva’s slave labor raised against the west cliff. If the storehouses and water system made the Zealots’ stand possible, this ramp made Masada’s fall possible. Now heavily armored soldiers could clamber up the slope to within 150 feet of the summit. A rock superstructure and iron-plated tower with siege engines and battering ram scaled the remaining height.

When on the afternoon of April 15, 73, the battering ram burst a breach in Masada’s west wall, the defenders frantically plugged it with wood and dirt. The Romans hurled torches to set this blockade ablaze. The Jews rejoiced when a sudden shift of the wind drove the flames toward the Romans, forcing the soldiers back and threatening to engulf the siege engines. Jehovah was fighting for them, they believed. But another sudden change in the wind brought the fire back against them, and that was the last meteorological change. The Zealot leader concluded that Israel’s God had abandoned Masada’s defenders. The Romans praised Jove.

While the Romans withdrew, intending to follow up their advantage with total victory on the morrow, Eleazar ben Yair convinced his followers to die by their own hands rather than suffer death or captivity from the Romans. Josephus relates how each man fondly embraced his family before personally putting wife and children to death. Ten were selected by lot to kill the men. Archaeologists believe they have recovered the very lots used, pottery chips with names or nicknames written in the same handwriting. Then one of the ten put the nine others to death, set fire to the compound, and fell on his own sword.

Two women and five children escaped the wholesale slaughter by hiding in an underground cavern. Without their recital of events to the Romans the next day, the world would have no idea what happened at Masada.

Today new recruits of the Israel Defense Forces’ armored units take their oaths of allegiance atop the storied citadel. But when they swear “Masada shall not fall again,” they use Masada by synecdoche to mean Israel.

But Bible scholars are not so sure Israel will not fall again. “The time of the Gentiles is not over” seems to reflect a rebound of opinion after initial enthusiasm about Israeli occupation of all Jerusalem subsided somewhat among prophetic authorities. Jerusalem seems definitely to be trodden down again by Gentiles in Zechariah 14. No literal fulfillment of circumstances foretold there has materialized to date. Some expect Jews to make their very last stand at Petra during the tribulation. Dr. Louis Talbot, chancellor of Biola College, W. E. Blackstone, the “Unknown Christian,” Clarence Larkin, and countless others of the past and present look up on that Edomite stronghold as Israel’s “last Masada,” the Jews’ final city of refuge, reasoning that Petra will be to the great tribulation what Masada was to the Jewish War. Jesus warned people in Judaea to flee to the mountains when the abomination of desolation desecrates the holy place (cf. Matt. 24:15, 16). Dr. Talbot insisted that Petra is the only area in the Holy land that answers the biblical description of the Jews’ “place prepared of God” (Rev. 12:6) to host Jews fleeing Antichrist. And Daniel 11:41 names Edom, where Petra nestles in mountains, as an area the Antichrist will not penetrate.

Whatever may be the prophetic dénouement, Masada fairly screams the warning that if a once godly nation forgets God and stretches forth hands to a strange god, the Almighty surely searches this out (cf. Psalm 44:20, 21). Perhaps the best peroration to the tragic story of Masada was written before 1857 by a man who never had the “privilege to visit that celebrated castle,” the explorer William M. Thomason. In The Land and the Book, which may still be the best volume of its kind about the Holy Land, he expressed his sentiments about Masada’s last stand:

Such tragedies are far more than mere incidents in man’s general history. They are the voice of the Almighty One, setting the seal of truth divine to a thousand admonitions and prophetic warnings scattered everywhere through his holy Word; and, thus regarded, there is no stronger evidence of the divine origin of the Bible than the seven books of Jewish Wars by Josephus.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

The new Pentecostal movement seems to this observer to be a genuine movement of the Spirit of God renewing his church. I speak as an observer who, though standing outside the new Pentecostalism proper, has learned to appreciate it from personal involvement in charismatic groups, both Protestant and Catholic. From these experiences I have emerged a stronger and better Christian. I agree with Karl Barth that there may often be too little of the pneumatic in the Church, but never too much. Therefore, it thrills my soul to see multitudes of people allowing the Spirit to operate freely in their midst.

No useful purpose would be served, however, if I limited myself to an uncritical commendation of the movement, nor would I fairly represent the actual opinions of those evangelical Christians who stand outside it. The new Pentecostalism has occasioned a division, sometimes quite bitter, within the evangelical community. I wish to enter into a discussion with the movement on some of the issues that divide us. It may be that through discussions such as these we will come to understand each other better, and penetrate the mind of God more exactly, so that a more perfect unity and cooperation will result for the good of the Church and of all mankind.

Our Gratitude To God

According to Scripture the Church is a charismatic community. It is the human assembly that has received the eschatological gift of the Spirit. There would be no Christian existence at all were it not for this blessed outpouring. One of the most fundamental things the Bible has to say about the church is that it is the creation of the Holy Spirit. Evangelicals who place the highest value upon a personal relation with Jesus Christ through the Spirit in the fellowship of his Church can hardly fail to praise God for the vivid appreciation of this truth within the new Pentecostalism.

For too much of its history the Christian Church has been “binitarian.” It has neglected, theologically and practically, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. If we are honest, we have to express our shame at the worldliness and spiritual ineffectiveness of a large portion of Christendom, both yesterday and today. The Church needs nothing more than it needs a supernatural visitation of the Spirit of God.

The new Pentecostalism has arisen to meet this need. Because of this, evangelicals outside the movement can only lay aside their objections and thank the living God, who is once again renewing his people. For the emphasis with fresh urgency that believers be filled with the Spirit of God we are deeply grateful. And the fruit of this movement is unmistakable. I find a renewed devotion to Jesus Christ, a new steadfastness in the faith, a new authority in witnessing, an expanded prayer life, and above all a fresh exuberance of joy in walking daily with God.

Evangelical religion in our day has tended to become overly intellectualized and “Apollonian.” We have become insecure in the presence of the strange, paralogical powers of the free, dynamic Spirit. And instead of lamenting our deficiency we have sought to restrict the outpouring of the Spirit to the first century so as to direct attention away from our own spiritual poverty. As Rodman Williams has observed in Era of the Spirit, we shrink from the unpredictability of the Spirit; we crave blueprints that will map his operations and leave us at ease; we prefer our quiet lethargy to the explosive situation in which anything might happen. The new Pentecostalism is a well justified protest against the cold and impersonal form that institutional evangelicalism has often taken. It is paralleled by far less biblical reform proposals that also press for “Dionysian” religion of a more ecstatic kind (e.g., Harvey Cox, Feast of Fools; Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, III, 114–20). Unlike them, this movement is likely to have staying power, because it is at root an invitation to recover the authentic doctrine of the Spirit in its full biblical context.

Theological Questions

Alongside our real appreciation, evangelicals outside the movement also experience some hesitation theologically. For it appears to us as if, despite the best of intentions, there has taken place a degree of doctrinal malformation at certain key points in the new Pentecostal theology. For this reason, a minority of us (this observer not included) have been completely turned off and have sought to discredit the whole movement. But a growing segment of evangelical opinion would like to see a doctrinal development that would break down the walls that divide us and at the same time represent the biblical concerns of both sides more adequately than has as yet been possible. For it would be little short of catastrophic if there were to develop an ever-widening rift among fellow believers. Only Satan could be pleased with such a turn. The way to avoid this, it seems to me, is to keep on probing into the central issues, not separately but cooperatively, in order to find the mind of God, which none has yet exhausted, and if possible to achieve a clearer and more accurate articulation of the authentic religious values that grip us all.

1. The subsequence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. A basic element in the theology of the new Pentecostalism is the teaching that the believer ought to seek a post-conversion baptism in the Spirit, in order to obtain full power for Christian service and to receive the full complement of charismatic gifts. Historically this emphasis on a second work of grace stems from the Methodist-holiness movement, mediated by its vigorous daughter classical Pentecostalism.

Evangelicals cannot see how such a concept can fail to detract from and demean the initial encounter with the Spirit through saving faith in Jesus. If we wish to speak of the baptism in the Spirit, surely we must reserve the expression for the initial saving encounter which is Christian conversion. To be a Christian at all is to be baptized by one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13) and to receive Him as a gift (Acts 2:38). Through Jesus alone we receive the promise of the Spirit (Gal. 3:14). According to Peter, the baptism of the Spirit was what the disciples and the three thousand received on the day of Pentecost (Acts 11:15–17). It looks to evangelicals as if the new Pentecostals, like the old, are setting up a two-plateau schema of the Christian life, with faith in Jesus admitting one only to the lower and inferior level. Any doctrine that gives that impression is either unscriptural or, as I think, defectively formulated.

At the same time, “baptism” is a flexible metaphor, not a technical term. Luke seems to regard it as synonymous with “fullness” (Acts 2:4; cf. 11:16). Therefore, as long as we recognize conversion as truly a baptism in the Spirit, there is no reason why we could not use it to refer to subsequent fillings of the Holy Spirit as well.

This later experience, or experiences, would not be tied in with the tight “second blessing” schema but should be seen as actualization of what we have already received in the initial charismatic experience, which is conversion. On such an understanding, evangelicals could be united. The weakness of the Church, the abnormality of so much contemporary Christian living, would not be seen as the failure to go beyond saving faith and seek something beyond Christ. It would be understood as the failure of Christians to appropriate on a day-by-day basis all that we really have in Jesus (Eph. 1:3). The fullness is in him, and to him believers must be urged to go. We are complete in him (Col. 2:10).

Is not the genuine thrust of the new Pentecostal movement, not calling Christians to a second experience of grace, but calling them to the charismatic fullness of the first? Such a refinement of emphasis, if it is acceptable to the movement, would have a healing and irenical effect upon the Body of Christ in our time.

2. The conditions of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. An unfortunate result of this undue emphasis on the second work of grace has been the teaching of the conditions under which the experience may be received. Inevitably, if we suppose that only some believers enter into it, the reason must be that these have met the conditions of the baptism and others have not. This teaching could even go so far as to imply that some deserve this blessing while others do not. In short, the movement could very easily degenerate into something for which the least appropriate term would be “full gospel.”

Evangelicals find the New Testament very clear in stipulating that the only condition for receiving Christ, and his Spirit, is simple faith. Believing in Jesus releases the fullness of his Spirit (John 7:37–39). Through faith alone this promise of the Father comes to us (Gal. 3:3, 14). The obedience Peter refers to in his answer to the high priest is the obedience of faith in Jesus the Christ (Acts 5:32). On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit did not fall only on some of the disciples, those who had fulfilled certain conditions; it fell on all of them. No one was passed over because he failed to meet some condition beyond that of faith. Even their waiting was as unstrenuous as possible.

Yet precisely here the new Pentecostals can teach the broader evangelical community. Faith once and for all in Jesus is not the way to fullness and fruitfulness. There must be an abiding in Christ and a walking in his Spirit, an ongoing trust and openness to all that God has for us.

The new Pentecostal movement calls other Christians to give up their practical unbelief in the power of the Spirit and to adopt a stance of openness and expectancy—in short, the stance of faith, the one condition without which the Spirit is not free to work. On this point both sides must change. New Pentecostals must refrain from any semblance of making the gift of the Spirit dependent upon human achievement, and other evangelicals must begin to appreciate the fullness that God has indeed poured out upon his people.

3. The evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The new Pentecostals do not agree on this subject. Some of them insist that the baptism in the Spirit be attested by the physical sign of speaking in tongues. But others remain flexible on the subject. They can envisage the possibility of Spirit baptism apart from glossolalia. But even they usually go on to say that the tongues experience, though not normative, is nonetheless normal and valuable. They seem to believe like the others that everyone touched by the charismatic renewal is meant to speak in tongues. To sum up, for the new Pentecostals speaking in tongues is either the indispensable or else a highly desirable evidence that one has received the coveted baptism in the Spirit.

All non-Pentecostal evangelicals would question the biblical basis for making glossolalia the normative sign of the baptism in the Spirit. A minority of us (this observer excepted) would go further and argue that all supra-normal gifts ceased being given after the close of the apostolic age. This view, first developed by Augustine, has become influential among present day evangelicals through the writings of B. B. Warfield.

The new Pentecostal movement, in my judgment, is entirely correct in repudiating this theory. Even if it could be established (which it cannot) that the supra-normal gifts were withdrawn, we could not safely conclude that the Spirit is incapable of bestowing them again should the need for them arise. We have no right to try to bind God’s hands with a tenuous theological theory that has the effect of denying him the power to grant spiritual gifts to his Church. It is entirely misleading to distinguish arbitrarily between normal and supra-normal gifts, and to assume that the supra-normal gifts were marks of the apostles. According to First Corinthians 12, they are marks of the body of Christ, and as far as tongues are concerned we can do no other than to follow Paul’s command, “Forbid not!” (1 Cor. 14:39). We may request legislative controls for speaking in tongues in a public assembly, but we may not forbid the phenomenon altogether. It is this closed-mindedness on the part of many evangelicals outside the new Pentecostal movement that poses the greatest threat to the unity of our life and witness.

But let us now focus upon the issue on which evangelicals do not disagree, namely, the normativeness of glossolalia. This teaching is wrong in two ways. First, Scripture does not teach that the only sure sign of the baptism in the Spirit is in tongues. If it did, Luke’s silence on the matter in reference to the three thousand saved at Pentecost and to the experience of the Samaritans in Acts 8 is inexplicable. And, surely, their occurrence at Caesarea was a sign, not because they were expected or usual, but precisely because they were unexpected and unusual. Only the most irrefutable proof would convince bigoted Jewish Christians of what they ought to have accepted without a supernatural sign. Non-Pentecostal evangelicals cannot accept the idea that glossolalia is the normative initial sign of the baptism in the Spirit.

The second objection to this notion is that it is theologically misdirected. The New Testament epistles have a good deal to say about the initial evidences of an encounter with Jesus Christ by his Spirit, and nowhere do they make supra-normal gifts the sign of it. Confessing Christ as Lord, ascribing diety to him—this is the test of genuine charismatic experience (1 Cor. 12:3). The ability to cry “Abba, father” is the evidence of the Spirit of Christ (Gal. 4:6). It is our experience of the love of God that assures us of his outpoured Spirit (Rom. 5:5). It is in our relations with our neighbors that the authenticity of our spirituality is tested (Gal. 5:25 f.). Is it not Paul’s evident concern in writing to the Corinthians that they ought to concentrate on love and gifts that edify the Body rather than promote a sensational, but not very profitable, gift? It is a very common misconception to think of gifts as principally exceptional or miraculous phenomena. Paul would have us concentrate on those everyday duties, that, though they are unobtrusive, build up the Church. Self-edification is not a high Christian goal. Prophecy is preferred because of its ability to serve the people of God.

I would like to appeal to the new Pentecostals to correct a one-sided emphasis on tongues-speaking. Many of us outside the movement are quite prepared to grant that glossolalia ranks in the list of bona fide spiritual gifts that God is pouring out on us in these days. Would it be out of the question for its leaders to drop the teaching of the normativeness of tongues, if in return non-Pentecostal evangelicals were to admit freely the full range of gifts and evidences that the Spirit has given? For my part, the new Pentecostal movement has been raised up, not to divide the Body on a spurious doctrine of normativeness, but to open our eyes to the diversity of spiritual manifestations of which we had hitherto been unaware.

Words Of Caution

In conclusion, I should like to add three cautions as a theologian observing with great interest and concern the new Pentecostalism.

1. Just as there has been a unitarianism of the Father and of the Son, so there can be a unitarianism of the Spirit, in which everything is subordinated to personal experience and intuition. There is a certain tendency within the movement for people, when pressed on questions like those above, to appeal to personal experience. The exegetical difficulties are more than balanced by the experiential proofs in Christian lives. I submit that this is a dangerous procedure. The Spirit who indwells us is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Jesus of history and the Christ of Scripture. He is the same Spirit who speaks infallibly in the words of the Bible (Heb. 3:7), and he does not contradict himself. One of the alarming features of liberal theology today is its tendency to reduce the Gospel to existential concerns, and to confuse the Word of God with the opinions of men. It would be sad indeed if the new Pentecostalism were for some the door into the theology of human subjectivity.

2. It is easy to equate the presence or absence of the Spirit with our changing human emotions. God’s promises concerning the Spirit should not be devalued in this way. He is with us always, in every situation (John 14:16; Matt. 28:20). Do we need more than his Word for it? This insatiable desire for tongues sometimes seems to stem from the desire to prove God’s promise when we ought simply to believe it. A passion to know that one has been baptized in the Spirit often comes through. Why is not the promise of our Saviour and the witness of the Spirit in our hearts crying “Abba!” sufficient for us? Can it be wrong to walk by faith and not by sight?

3. The impression is sometimes given that we ought to engage in two movements of faith, one in Jesus for salvation and one in his Spirit for power. The New Testament, however, contains no command to believe in the Spirit for the simple reason that the Spirit is Christ’s and in Christ. Not only does this double-faith idea detract from the full sufficiency of Jesus; it also tends in the direction of tri-theism. According to my understanding of the trinitarian dogma, we do not have communion separately with the three personae of the Godhead. Rather, we trust in the one triune God, who is eternally a Thou to us, and who is not known in one of his modes of existence except as he is known in the others as well. To think of establishing a faith relationship with each of the personae of the trinity separately seems to me inescapably tritheistic in its implications.

Let me make a final appeal. Let us not permit Satan to use the occasion of the new Pentecostal revival to drive evangelical believers from one another as he has used eschatology, social practices, and the sovereignty of God in the past. Now that some old wounds have healed, let us not create any new ones. If schism is to be avoided, evangelicals outside the movement must abandon their unscriptural resistance to the truth that is in it, and the new Pentecostals themselves will have to press on to theological formulations that conform better to the biblical standards.

It is commonly charged that the new Pentecostalism breeds division in the Church. I would not want to conclude without indicating where I think the greatest problem lies in this regard. Undoubtedly some of the blame may be attributed to the movement for failing to show that all its emphases were unequivocally biblical. But the greater problem lies with the non-Pentecostal evangelicals themselves. We have not taken the movement seriously as a work of the Spirit of God. At best we have tolerated new Pentecostals in our churches, at worst driven them out. We have not exercised mature Christian leadership in this matter. It is high time that evangelical leaders begin to think about how to integrate the charismatic movement into the life of the Church, and stop treating its members as spiritual lepers. The Roman Catholic Church and the liberal denominations have far surpassed us in maintaining the unity of the body.

Having posed some questions to the new Pentecostalism in the name of non-Pentecostal evangelicals, I wish to direct one to them: How can our professed openness to the fullness of the Spirit be reconciled with our overall negative attitude toward a movement that in its deepest intentions desires nothing else itself and gives abundant evidence of possessing a spiritual fullness that we desperately need in our own midst?

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Five hundred years ago, on February 19, 1473, Nicholas Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland, the youngest of four children. No one in that little town on the Vistula River could have guessed that little Nicholas would advance a theory that would be recognized for centuries as a turning point in human thought. Indeed, his ideas were not widely known even in his lifetime and were opposed for years after his death.

Nicholas’ father died when the boy was only ten, and the children were adopted by their maternal uncle, a Catholic priest in Prussia. In time Nicholas was sent to the university at Cracow, where he became interested in mathematics, the calendar, and astronomy. The age of discovery had begun, and Columbus discovered America while Nicholas was a university student. Also, the age saw the rise of a new learning. In 1453 Constantinople had fallen, and many scholars from the East had fled to Italy. Among the books brought to Italy at that time was the Almagest of the astronomer Ptolemy (ca A.D. 150). The work had been known in Arabic, but now it became available in the original Greek and was soon translated into Latin.

Copernicus studied for a while in Bologna, Italy, and visited Rome in 1500. As early as perhaps 1512 he wrote a short synopsis of his new views and circulated this “Little Commentary” to a few of his friends.

About this time he drew up his great work, Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, but he did not publish it until thirty years later and then at the instigation of his assistant, Rheticus. In the meantime he revised it and added further observations. Then the new views of the Lutheran reformation spread to Prussia, and the controversy touched Copernicus, who was a canon of the Cathedral of Fraudenberg. His friend Giese wrote a book against Lutheran ideas that Copernicus supported. But the two were more tolerant than some others, and they deplored the wars and persecutions of the times.

It is commonly supposed that all the theologians of the day denounced Copernicus’s new theory of a heliocentric universe and that he dared not publish his work for fear of persecution. This opinion has been broadcast largely on the basis of references in the quite unreliable History of the Warfare of Science with Theology by A. D. White. White quotes Calvin as saying, “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?” No source is given, though reference is made to Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis. About the quotation Hooykaas remarks:

There is no lie so good as the precise and well-detailed one, and this one has been repeated again and again, quotation marks included, by writers on the history of science, who evidently did not make the effort to verify the statement. For fifteen years, I have pointed out in several periodicals concerned with the history of science that the “quotation” from Calvin is imaginary and that Calvin never mentioned Copernicus; but the legend dies hard [R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, p. 121],

Indeed, Calvin’s sentiments in his Commentary on Genesis are quite otherwise. Dealing with the fact that Saturn is larger than the moon, Calvin says (on Genesis 1:16):

Moses wrote in a popular style things which, without instruction, all ordinary persons, endued with common sense, are able to understand; but astronomers investigate with great labor whatever the sagacity of the human mind can comprehend. Nevertheless, the study is not to be reprobated, nor this science condemned, because some frantic persons are wont boldly to reject whatever is unknown to them.

Luther is quoted by White as saying of Copernicus, “This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth.” White gives his source as Luther’s Table Talk. The Table Talk was compiled from students’ notes of Luther’s “off the cuff” remarks, and this section was “only printed (from the memory of his guests) twenty seven years afterward (1566),” (Hooykaas, p. 122).

More details about Lutheran views on Copernicus are given by John W. Klotz in his Modern Science inthe Christian Life. It turns out that two friends and disciples of Copernicus were on the faculty of Luther’s university at Wittenberg. Rheticus (also spelled Rhaticus) was a professor of mathematics there. In 1539 he went to work with Copernicus. “No one interfered with his going; indeed, his position was held open for him.… In 1541 he returned to Wittenberg, resumed his work as a professor, and was named dean of the arts faculty” (Klotz, p. 88). It should be noted that in the meantime, 1540, this Rheticus, a Lutheran professor, published his brief Narratio Prima, the first published exposition of the new Copernican theory! Later Rheticus left Wittenberg, but obviously not to avoid persecution for his views, as White says. He went to Nuremberg, a Lutheran city. There he helped oversee the printing of Copernicus’s great work, a copy of which reached Copernicus on his deathbed. Then Rheticus went to Leipzig to teach in another Lutheran university.

Another professor at Wittenberg who espoused the theory of Copernicus was Erasmus Reinhold, who became dean of the arts faculty in 1547 and rector of the university in 1549.

Of course, no one claims that Calvin and Luther were perfect in wisdom and judgment. Yet it should be recorded that in leading Protestant circles the new and somewhat startling views on astronomy were not heavily assailed. Different persons reacted in different ways, of course, but the Copernican revolution was not generally condemned or its progress hindered. Melanchthon condemned it in a book in 1549 but removed that condemnation in the second edition a year later.

In Catholic circles, tied as much to Aristotle as to the Bible, the new views had harder sledding. They were approved by one pope, attacked by the next, and placed on the Index for some time. This was doubtless due to principles of authoritative approach taken by the Roman church in distinction to the Protestant method of searching the Scriptures to see whether these things were so.

The theory of Copernicus concerned only the position of the sun and the motion of the heavenly bodies. A surprising number of people assume that almost everybody before Copernicus thought the world was flat. Naturally, in illiterate areas of Medieval Europe many people thought little about this subject and may have assumed flatness. But in New Testament times and in the Graeco-Roman world, the sphericity of the world was well established. Ptolemy in A.D. 150 gave the argument in an offhand way: a ship’s hull disappears before its mast, heavenly phenomena are seen in the east earlier than in the west, and so on. Ptolemy had calculated the circumference of the earth (though he made it somewhat too small). The Greeks held that a circle was a perfect figure. They pictured the planets and stars as rotating around the earth in concentric transparent spheres. Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth quite accurately in 250 B.C. (for the details of his method see the Eycyclopedia Brittanica). Actually earlier Greek astronomers had advanced the heliocentric theory of astronomy, but the Ptolemaic geocentric view was advanced with much learning, and the great name of Ptolemy carried the day for centuries.

Copernicus did not have accurate instruments, and his observations were not exact enough to prove his view without question. It remained for Galileo with his telescopes to clinch the matter and for Kepler to show that the planets move in elliptical orbits, not circles, as Copernicus thought. So one discovery followed another. Protestant theologians, at least, were open to and often encouraged the new science. And Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo all sincerely professed the Christian faith, though Galileo suffered at the hands of Rome for his views.

A CONVERSION (1741)

Nathan Cole quit his plow

& hurry’d to hear Whitefield preach

& found his religion useless ash

before the stern words

“election” “grace”

“Hellfire hellfire

ran Swift in my mind

“And while these thoughts

were in my mind

God appeared unto me

and made me Skringe: …

and I was Shrinked away

into nothing”

And in that nothing

Nathan Cole burst

with light, found

Farmington, Connecticut

ablaze with matter for praise:

all walls & common fences

weeds, trees,

and vines in special;

stones he’d earlier envy’d

for lack of soul—

now were new tongues to hymn

Election’s glory,

Jehovah’s sure salvation.

Selah.

EUGENE WARREN

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

The hot, humid, and busy month of August included for me a side trip to preach at the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, which our board member Robert J. Lamont leaves to become president of the oldest life-insurance company in America. His replacement is John Huffman from the Presbyterian church in Key Biscayne, Florida.

I had also a splendid two-day retreat with the faculty of Evangel College (an Assemblies of God school in Springfield, Missouri). They are doing a fine work and are to be commended. Tom Zimmerman, the Assemblies’ general superintendent, is a long-time friend of mine.

Labor Day Sunday brought two treasured opportunities: preaching at Park Street Church in Boston and visiting with my daughter, her husband, and two of our grandchildren. Then my wife and I went on to New Hampshire to spend two weeks at a cabin on the shore of beautiful Lake Winnipesaukee. Now I am back for our annual staff retreat and looking ahead to the fall with great anticipation.