Prayer is a supernatural phenomenon, a direct communication between man and God, and must be approached as such.

Without question prayer is the greatest untapped source of power in the world, for through it the power and resources of God are released.

That He should have placed this privilege in our hands is an evidence of his love and concern. That we neglect or disregard this blessing is an evidence of the ignorance and perversity of human nature.

We are not speaking of the failure of a pagan (be he American or aborigine) to pray, for that is to be expected; we are thinking of the Christian’s neglect of prayer.

Prayer opens up a new dimension, one which reaches into the depths and intricacies of the unknown, but a dimension where God lives and moves and has his being.

Because prayer is a two-way communication system between God and man, and because the channel is of God’s devising, not man’s, it is imperative that we understand what our side involves.

The writer has used long-distance telephone communications extensively, frequently from other parts of the world to America. Only recently we talked (with an excellent connection) from Jerusalem to a loved one in Alabama. In each case certain laws were observed.

First of all, we knew telephonic connections were available. We also knew there were procedures to be followed, such as giving the operator our credit-card number, the area code and number of the person called, and the person’s name. In a remarkably short time such calls can usually be completed. In every case the available means are used by people trained to render such service.

That which science has made possible in the field of communication today fades into insignificance when we realize that man can communicate instantly with his God, and that where it is for God’s glory and the good of the one praying, there can come an instant reply.

In the book of Nehemiah we find an illustration of such communication and reply. The king first asked Nehemiah the cause of his sad countenance, and then what he requested for his ruined city, Jerusalem. The Bible tells us of Nehemiah, “So I prayed to the God of heaven”; he followed his prayer immediately by a request to the king that he be sent to Judah. God heard that prayer, and the king granted Nehemiah’s petition.

Basic to a fruitful prayer life is the necessity of keeping the connections open. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me,” the psalmist declares (Psalm 66:18). Unconfessed and unrepented sin can break the circuit. James tells us, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (4:3). Let us never forget: When communications fail it is man that has failed, not God. We say it reverently—God is always waiting at the other end of the line, anxious that we should pray to him.

One of the basic misconceptions about prayer is that it is primarily asking God for things. The closer we live to God the more prayer becomes a way of life, a realization of his nearness and availability at all times.

But this side of heaven prayer will always be mysterious, although very real. Today we make seemingly unlimited use of electricity even though we find its nature difficult to fully understand or explain. So it is with prayer—mysterious as it is, it is nevertheless real and available to all.

That effective prayer depends on the attitude and spiritual condition of the one praying is axiomatic. Not that the sinner cannot pray, for it is God’s will that he should pray; but basic to the unregenerate’s prayer is the plea for forgiveness. “God be merciful to me, a sinner” is a prayer God is always anxious to hear and answer.

The mystery of prayer is wrapped up in the very nature of God, for it involves every aspect of his being—his sovereignty, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, love, and mercy, to mention but a few.

What comfort to us with our limited power to know that we can pray to the sovereign God of the universe, the One to whom belongs all power! It is he who created all things and who holds all things in his hand.

What a comfort to know that the One to whom we pray is omnipotent! And what a deep mystery that finite man can commune with such a one.

What a comfort to grasp the truth that the one to whom we pray is omniscient, knowing all of the past, present, and future at the same time, so that he can and does answer in the light of his totality of knowledge.

What a comfort to know that the One to whom we pray is omnipresent! Human communications and agencies break down because of technical or human failure, but God is always present, anxious to hear and answer his children.

And what a comfort to know that the One to whom we pray regards us with infinite love and compassion. “How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!” says the psalmist (Psalm 139:17).

One of the mysteries of prayer is the necessity of using a password: the name of Christ. Our access to God is through the name and merit of his Son. How often we hear prayers offered without reference to the name that is above every name. Do men—yes, Christians—forget that only in the name of the living Son of God can we come into the presence of our heavenly Father?

It is a mysterious and glorious fact that prayer changes things—that in this sophisticated scientific age prayer continues to bring about changes for God’s glory and man’s welfare.

If the reader will pardon a personal reference: Some time ago the writer included on his prayer list the names of persons in positions of great prominence within a certain denomination. The prayer has been that these individuals, and many other unnamed ones, might be emptied of self and filled with the Holy Spirit, and might in that power go out to do great things for the spiritual welfare of the church and God’s kingdom. It has been a joyous experience to see this prayer being answered; again and again, often apparently by “chance,” we have seen or heard of God’s doing things in the lives of these men which demonstrated beyond a doubt that these prayers were being answered.

Coincidence? Not one bit of it. God, in his mysterious way and for the glory of his name, has been answering prayer.

The Christian should make part of his prayer life seasons of thanksgiving and praise, for such is God’s due. And along with giving praise and thanksgiving, he can let his wants be known.

Prayer is mysterious. It is also gloriously practical in its results.

There are five personal devils the modern preacher must fight: indolence, snobbery, emotional instability, sycophancy, familiarity. “Get thee behind me, Satan” has its present-day counterpart. Many a minister has felt that the devil has not only his street number but a key to his parsonage as well. The temptations themselves are not new, of course, but the clergy man’s position and responsibilities make him susceptible in ways often quite unfamiliar to the layman. Awareness of these major temptations may provide laymen with greater understanding of, even sympathy for, their pastor. Let us look at them.

1. Indolence. The lazy preacher is not very common. There is something about a minister’s high calling which keeps him quickened and motivated. Many pastors, indeed, do not know the word “restraint,” and provide poor risks for insurance companies. A high sense of urgency, inner compulsions which laymen seldom know, and a spirit of dedication drive the average pastor on. Every minister knows, however, that without a time clock to punch and without boss and counselors to exact from him his total capacity, he can become lazy.

The slothful minister becomes a master of alibi and evasion. Under the guise of, “Oh, I pride myself on being an administrator,” he likes to set up his program so that the other fellow does the legwork. Not willing to work too hard, he dodges responsibilities rightfully his with the protest, “Why, my program is overloaded right now.” He may even cry, “Hasn’t a preacher a right to be human?”—then putter around the house while others are sweating out the day.

2. Snobbery. Instead of being a man of prayer, he may be a prima donna. Snobbery is the second devil a preacher must fight with all his might. Being much in the public eye, he may receive too much adulation. Many preachers have become vain and conceited, and were it not for the humanizing influence of their wives, they would forget from whence they came, and where they are heading.

A pastor’s wife, fed up with her husband’s temperamental nature, once exclaimed, “I tell you, you preachers can be a spoiled lot!” Because their position grants immunity from certain responsibilities and allows privileges often denied others, preachers may come to present an unlovely front. They may sniff at the opinions of others, hold infringements of the niceties of life up to undue scorn, and regard themselves as superior to those who do not fit into their personal pattern of thought and action.

It is refreshing to see a spirit of humility and gentleness in a man so set aside by life. And it may be said to the credit of most of the brethren that they are the soul of unselfishness and selflessness. They have long since learned to prefer others to themselves. Of each of these it may be said, “Here was a man sent from God.”

3. Emotional instability. In a recent lead article in a pastoral journal this modern problem was spotlighted by the author’s insistence that “there are thousands of disabled ministers.” Here again, the circumstances in which the preacher is compelled to live are accountable for so much of the difficulty. Here too is a devil which ministers—and priests and rabbis—must fight almost constantly. With no shoulder to cry on, with few to understand, with pressures which only fellow pastors can know, the present-day minister must stand a lot of emotional gaff.

Unfortunately, unsympathetic and unimaginative laymen, leaders of his church, sometimes add fuel to the flames. They literally “raise the devil” with him. Although his leaders may be inexperienced, untrained, hard-headed, and ambitious, the pastor must bear the brunt of their impossible demands. Preachers used to be about the best health risks in the professional world; not so anymore. They have to fight against hypertension and its consequences with every known means. How many have cried out, “My nerves are my devil!” Their families know how truly they speak.

4. Sycophancy. “Licking the boots of others” is one of the modern devils a preacher must fight. So often, the man must seek and—he hopes—find security and favor by flattering people of means, position, and influence. Something within him cries, “Oh, God, if I could play the man!” His fears and justifiable anxieties eventually may drive him to stoop to conquer—and how low he must stoop! Servility and flattery are paths which lead to the altar with the golden calf.

The servile pastor hides this sycophancy under the guise of a superior expression or pose—only to know that he is doing something beneath his manhood. The devil in this army—as in others—tempts him to fawn at the one above him, and boot the one beneath him. While he is feeling high and mighty, he rides the pack. When novelty wanes and familiarity begins to breed contempt, he yields. And here again, he does so under the personal justification of, “There are those whom one must respect, aren’t there?” “There are those who do not cause men to respect them.” How far one may stray from his Master in this regard! The minister at this stage reads the story of the temptation of Christ with profound humility.

5. Familiarity. By the very nature of the ministry, the preacher is confronted with yet another devil: a too free and intimate behavior. Familiar with divine things, the preacher may say with Lord Lytton, “The devil, my friend, is a woman.” Drawn to close family relationships, which often include the tenderest of friendships, the minister may find the line of demarcation between propriety and unprofessional behavior growing dim. And then, as Emerson put it, “Alas for the unhappy man that is called to the pulpit and not given the bread of life.” It is hard to be a living sermon of the truth one teaches. As with Uzzah and the Ark, there is danger in treating sacred things with careless hands and thoughts.

Be this said, however, to the glory of hosts of men of the cloth: they are honest and pure in a sincere cause, and this is the high mark of their calling.

The miracle of the ministry is this: how many escape the encroachments and the dangers of devils which are distinctively those of the preacher! But nonetheless those devils are there as big as a woodchuck, and most preachers know it. Longfellow once said, “It is by the vicar’s skirts that the devils themselves climb into the belfry.” Well, a new breed of men, with virtues and awareness, together with a sincere dedication, are by their very lives declaring, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Belfries are for the birds, anyhow.—F. B. McAllister, retired Baptist pastor, Cincinnati, Ohio.

For some decades now it has been a vogue to disparage the confession that the Scriptures are the very Word of God with the claim that since the Bible is made up of “propositional truth” it cannot constitute the living, dynamic, existential, and therefore real Word of God—which is, it may be added when this claim is made, exclusively Jesus Christ himself. The claim has a certain plausibility, the line of reasoning being apparently something like the following: the Bible is full of statements; there is something fixed about a statement; much that is fixed is inert and dead; but the real Word of God is “living and active.” The claim has also notable conveniences. No particular assertion need be faith fully adhered to as a word of God. It is also fraught with fearful liabilities. For instance, even in regard to Jesus Christ, what single definite promise can he be said with assurance ever to have made? Or, for that matter, how can we be sure that even he deserves to be called the Word of God? It is a cardinal truth that the Scriptures cannot be known apart from Christ. But it is just as true that Christ cannot be known apart from the Scriptures. Fantastically presumptive is the readiness of the past one hundred years and more to delineate Christ, both popularly and academically, right out of the blue of fancy and prejudice.

The claim is also sophistical, and it is its sophistry that I would like to expose.

Actually, better words than “propositional” can be used in this connection. By common usage, that is “propositional” which can be entertained for assent or denial, such as a list of resolutions for debate. But though interminable lists of propositions for debate can be formulated out of biblical material, the Bible itself is no such list; it consists of assertions made simply in order that all men might believe them to be true. Thus when the reader of the Scriptures comes to the words, “And it came to pass that …,” the intention is that he should believe that “it came to pass that.…” I shall therefore speak of “assertions,” “statements,” and “predications” rather than “propositions.” My argument is with those who claim that the Bible cannot be the true Word of God since it is made up of definite and repeatable statements.

It is to be observed that one implication of this claim is that no utterance of the Incarnate Logos made in the presence of his disciples or the multitudes was the Word of God except perhaps the syntactically amorphous groans that he emitted before the grave of Lazarus.

The metaphysics corresponding to this claim is the view that reality is not truly comprehended by predication. But this is fallacious. Surely there is no part of reality that does not have its true account as opposed to false accounts. Indeed, even he who disputes the possibility of covering all reality by predication rejects the predicationist’s account only by assuming that there is a better account—but any account is only assertion or predication. Nor need we be troubled over the adequacy of the account that is possible for any part of reality, the whole of which has been seen to be accountable, for if no part of reality is without its true account, no part of any part of reality is without accountability. The possibility of predication thus covers indeed all being. For cognitive purposes it is all a matter of associating all subjects with all their proper predicates, and in the nature of the case there is nothing that cannot be known.

But the association of all subjects with all their proper predicates is a work of God. With him, however, speech is more than reporting. It is itself causative of its object, creative, for before he spake there was nothing, and when he speaks it is neither a lie nor futility. “For He spake, and it came to be” (Ps. 33:9a).

God’s “I AM” is a speech particularly pregnant with marvel. The case is not that God at the commissioning of Moses said, “I am, and I send you to the people of Israel to deliver them from Pharoah.” It is that He in response to Moses’ request for the Commissioner’s self-identification directed him, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” This “I AM” is the preeminent characteristic of God. God does not utter it only when addressing an inquirer like Moses; it is God’s eternal speech, Moses or no Moses, the eternal soliloquy apart from which there is no God. Of the manner of its utterance as divine monologue we can form no just notion; by consideration of its meaning we soon plunge ourselves into the dizziness of a mental fainting spell; but of it we can nevertheless affirm nothing less than that it is true speech, apart from which God is not God, and by which he is what he is. His “I AM” is his essence. So far is God from indulging in anything anthropomorphic when he says, “I AM,” that we should rather say that man, reflecting on his wholly derivative being, is faintly theomorphic when he weakly and falteringly echoes, “I am.” There is no cause to be condescending when talking about assertion and predication!

Patently much of God’s speech besides his soliloquizing “I AM” is transcendent. How his Son is his Logos is a mystery. Even much of what he addresses directly to our hearing is beyond our full comprehension. If he works and creates by speech, consider how thoroughly all our existence and sustenance and every movement are taken up in his speech and to how much of it we are totally deaf!

Speech from the Transcendent

But not all God’s speech is transcendent. Capacity to speak transcendentally does not imply incapacity to speak untranscendentally, nor is it beyond God to say something that is not beyond our hearing and understanding. A biochemist can talk for days entirely beyond the comprehension of his little son, but he can also say, “Johnny, when we get to the park you shall have a sandwich.” Nor are the to-Johnny-understandable words about the sandwich unworthy of his bio chemist father. To love children is to want communication with them. He who can speak exclusively over the heads of angels would be a poor father of men and a poor communicator to them if his speech to them were such that even those who prayed for his help to understand what he said would have to say that though it was all very vibrantly over whelming, not a single assertion could be captured by man for exact retention and repetition. In view of our obtuseness and fickleness we need words of God that can be gone over again and again in the mind, and in view of the dark silence as regards divine truth that prevails over the majority of mankind we need words of God that can be repeated to the ends of the earth with assurance that we know exactly what God has said. Therefore God has to speak to us as to men. Speech to men need not be restricted in such a way that in its upper reaches of meaning it does not far outdistance man’s grasp, but unless in its lower levels of intention it makes such sense to man that he can distinguish it from variant speech and repeat it, it is not beamed to man’s kind of receptivity nor can it be a speech to man. But if the kind of hearer man is places a limitation of a kind—the presence of a reachable nearer boundary—upon the transcendency of God’s word to him, the kind of speaker God is places the necessity of being unreservedly true and good upon all his word to man. Even talk about sandwiches must be true to be his talk. After all, claiming for something that it is the Word of God in the normative and authoritative sense is claiming for it something more than that it is the word of godly men, even men most thoroughly instructed, for instance, in the facts and meaning of the whole course of God’s saving work in Christ for man and most sensitively participant in the Christian community. We have whole libraries of the latter category of words.

God’s Word and the Time Barrier

Another point about which there is confusion that has led some to reject the possibility of definite Scripture statements’ being the real Word of God is the relation of statement to time. It is asked, “How can statements two and more thousand years old be the contemporary Word of God?”

Whatever the time of the making of a statement, that statement is of course repeatable as true for as long a time as the fact to which it gives expression remains a fact. If anything ever was true, it will obviously always be true that it was true, and thus true history will always be true history. But of ongoing situations it may always be said not only that at one time the situation did obtain, but also that for as long a time as the situation obtains, a statement of it as current situation is repeatable as true. The continuing force of once-made statements of continuing situations underlies the principle that laws once gazetted are deemed binding until repealed, without the need of repeated gazetting. Nor do we require that the sign “30,000 Volts!” be painted freshly every morning in order that its deterrence may have a current force. Written words have a particular character in this regard. Though the act of writing is definitely dated, the words have a quality of being uttered afresh every time they are read. Thus written words have a peculiar fitness for the in definitely repeated expression of definite and unaltered statement. Where the speaker has veracity and adequate knowledge, including, where it is relevant, knowledge of his own power, whatever he says is true for whatever time he says it, regardless of the time he says it.

Take the case of a well-operated airline. The published schedules of services and tariffs are conclusive for the period concerned regardless of date of printing. One learns as much from these printed schedules as from the viva voce proclamations of the announcer, or indeed from the very roar of the jets warming up on the apron. If fussy travelers with a light opinion of printed timetables insist on face-to-face encounter with the executive, they may be admitted to the inner office or they may not. If they are, it may well be only to be told: “It’s all in the published schedules. Let’s see what they say.… I wish you a very pleasant flight.” In fact, reading a timetable is a true encounter with the executive as regards his present will in all the essentials of the services as far as they concern the prospective traveler. If the latter will conform to the announcements, he will find the executive and his organization doing everything that was said in the printed word.

Misapprehension may also exist in regard to the motive potential of the indicative mood. It may be asked, “How can a book so largely written in the inert story-telling mood have a dynamic appropriate to the true Word of God?” But consider, for instance, that in the former British colonies of Africa—as, presumably, elsewhere in the Common wealth—a large “L” (for “Learner”) displayed on the front and back of a car actually means, “Give this driver a lot of room.” So imperative is this indicative that it is printed in bright red. I have read somewhere that in the Chinese Revolution of 1911 the wells of the great Manchu garrison cities were stopped with the bodies of Manchu women and girl suicides. It is probable that the stimulus to this tragic wave of self-destruction was—perhaps next to example itself—more often the plain but terrible indicatives, “The Revolutionaries are now in the next compound,” or, “They are breaking down the gate,” than the formal imperative, “Go, jump in the well!” The difference between “30,000 Volts” and “Beware of High Tension Cables” is entirely formal; one is as deterrent from careless action as the other. Indeed, imperatives are powerless apart from sanctions that can be directly described only in the indicative. Hearing the cry “Jump in the well!” no one will comply unless he is ready to put this (mistaken) evaluation on his case: “Something worse than perishing by my own leap is overtaking me.” The dynamics of words therefore depends on the hearer’s view of the relation between the matter they indicate, or seem to indicate, and his own well-being, not on grammatical mood, nor on the actual time of enunciation, nor yet on decibles, except insofar as these bear upon the attention-getting property of the words. Did men and women not fade so quickly, a marriage proposal of forty years past might be reread with more inclination to acceptance now than when first received. “You are beautiful, my beloved, truly lovely” (Cant. 1:16)—these are probably the most consistently moving words of courtship ever expressed. And of course no wooer uses a mega phone.

Not only does the dynamics of words depend upon the hearer’s estimate of their bearing on his own welfare: their motive power will be in proportion to the degree of such bearing. The things that the Scriptures say make them the most dynamic words ever addressed to men. In fact, no more powerfully moving words are conceivable than those of the Bible. By way of warning they threaten the ultimate in woe: everlasting destruction of man’s being, body and soul, through eternal separation from the Source of life and bliss, and this plight consciously sustained forever with the self-judgment that it has been justly imposed by the holy and perfect wrath of God in retribution for breaking his holy and perfect law and for spurning his offer of full and free forgiveness through Jesus Christ. By way of heart-lifting assurance they offer the ultimate in weal and bliss: everlasting salvation of man’s entire being through the forgiveness of sins, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, and the imparting of the life of God which is victorious over the flesh, the world, Satan, sin, and death, the enjoyment of this life of God and with God to begin right now, to be consummated at the end of the world and at Christ’s return in fullness of glory, and to endure ages without end, all for the sake of Jesus, who through the eternal appointment of God’s love died on the cross in payment of the penalty of sin and in appeasement of God’s righteous wrath—all this to be had for the mere taking in faith, the very faith for acceptance being offered with the object to be accepted! Surely these are words to raise the dead. If any heart is stonily deaf and impassive to such words, what kind of words could it possibly hear? Were the rejecters of the possibility of definite statements’ constituting the true Word of God not spared from compliance by the very terms of their rejection, we should certainly press them for a sample of what they consider a more dynamic word, a true Word of God.

But we face the enigma that these most powerful words that can be conceived do in fact bring only the minority of men to repentance and faith. In further definition of the dynamics of words we may distinguish between the estimate hearers actually make of the bearing of the words in question on their own welfare and the estimate which that bearing ought to lead them to make, for as far as most men are concerned the motive power of the words of the Scriptures can be said to be the greatest possible only with the latter estimate in mind. This distinction may help one to see how it is true both that the Word of God is always efficacious unto salvation—God has said things that should always move men to repentance and faith and with such words he offers the grace to be so moved—and that nevertheless it does not always accomplish the effect of salvation. But the distinction does nothing to solve the mystery of men’s various responses to God’s saving Word. Why some are alerted by repeated flashings of timetable particulars on the closed-circuit screens of their innermost consciences or by the solicitous tap of an attendant’s hand and so come to with a start and a dash for the ramp, while others doze glassily on right through their whole day at the airport—this is one of the abiding mysteries of theology, one of the most baffling and most inscrutable. The management has offered no explanation.

Outer or Inner Word?

An explanation has been attempted by distinguishing between an inner and an outer word: the outer word fails to effect a hearing; the inner word, on the contrary, or the word that reverberates in the innermost tympanum of the ear of the soul, that gets through and awakens a man from the sleep of death and brings him to spiritual response. Those who are saved have all heard the inner word; those who are lost have heard nothing but the outer word.

This explanation implies one of the strangest confusions in theology and if consistently followed through is seen to embrace the most pernicious tenets, for it involves a transfer of the blame for man’s monstrous unresponsiveness from himself to the Word of God. Actually it is compounded confusion. In regard to man, while recognizing his deafness, it locates this affliction not in the inner ear, where it belongs, but in the outer ear, where his hearing is quite perceptive. Market reports, political forecasts, lascivious stories, prudential ethics, even Red Cross appeals and formal religion—these all get through and move to appropriate action. It is the inner ear, an ear for the things of the Spirit, or rather for things spiritually reported, that is utterly deformed in natural man. Further confusion lies in a division of God’s Word that that Word will not bear. It is true of God’s Word that it has an aspect which is naturally, not supernaturally, grasped, and to which no man is deaf. Thus a devoted Buddhist might make political and ethical observations of considerable penetration on reading the biblical account of the Jewish monarchy—he might even make religious observations of some truth and insight. But the same Word, even that relating to the history of the Jewish monarchy, has another aspect by which it calls unto a thorough brokenness of heart and a living confidence in God, which aspect is spiritually perceived and to which natural man is totally deaf. But there are also words of God of which the former aspect is so largely swallowed up by the latter that one is driven to ask, If they are not addressed to man as intended for the most spiritual communion with God, how else could they be addressed to him? Such words are, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,” and “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” These words touch a man only at a point where he is dealing with his Creator, Judge, and Saviour, and if words which resound through that location do not deserve to be called “inner,” what words would? Even if a man rejects them, that is where he does so. And if God would have all men be saved, why should he first employ a word which has no chance to get in where the critically important hearing must take place if it is to take place? Why should he not immediately have recourse to the only suitable medium, a better word? The doctrine of the inner word exalts man and degrades both God and his Word.

But a turning from the Scriptures to the chimera of a better Word of God that is more dynamic, more penetrating, more compulsive, is inveterate with man. God, however, has denied the existence of such a word. In answer to Dives, who in his post-mortem missionary interest distrusted the Scriptures and showed strong existentialist leanings, our Lord puts into the mouth of Abraham the categorical dictum that where Moses and the prophets are not heard, nothing will be heard even if it comes straight from the other side.

A True Means of Grace

Where God does get himself a hearing, it is not apart from Moses, the prophets, and the evangelists, but by them as a true means of grace. Why some remain deaf when others do not is a mystery, but why any at all hear is simply because the Scriptures, like the voice that cried, “Lazarus, come forth!,” themselves confer upon the dead and the deaf the hearing by which they are heard, and this hearing God is always pressing to confer by them. The Word accomplishes its own hearing and reception. Luther’s preface by attention to the reading of which Wesley’s heart was strangely and determinatively warmed was to the Epistle to the Galatians. The words the great saint and doctor of Tagaste read at the personalized command, “Take up and read”—by which words he was introduced to the City of God—were from Romans 13, verses 13 and 14: “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh.” Even our Lord, Jesus Christ, whose word was directly and authoritatively God’s without his quoting the Scriptures, nevertheless deigned to use the Scriptures. The matter he “opened” by his talk to the Emmaus-walkers was the Scriptures. Indeed, he, the Personal Word, by whose opening of the written Word they were brought to such a pleasurably burning state, charges their whole befuddlement and sadness to the folly of being slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken.

There is an existentiality without being smitten by which the soul goes on in death, but it is an existentiality of the Scriptures, an overpowering aliveness of the continuing relevance of what the Bible says, a peremptory self-assertion of the Scriptures as the speaking of God, as God’s talking to me, as his calling for my trustful obedience to what he tells me, and that in the moment that now is, and with the momentous issue of eternal life or eternal death.

H. DANIEL FRIBERG

Lutheran Theological College

Usa River, Tanganyika, Africa

Countdown On Cholesterol

Dr. Grandiose Slugs, who is a friend of Bill Vaughn (and if you don’t know Bill Vaughn, you are completely uneducated—you probably live a provincial life on the East Coast or the West Coast), makes the following statement: “You ask me what is the future of science, sir, and I reply that science is going to be a con founded nuisance, sir.” This is a view point with which I heartily concur.

Two weeks ago we put in our air conditioning and switched over for a couple of hot days; then the temperature dropped to around freezing, and we switched back. That, it seems to me, makes sense. But the new air conditioning blew out the pilot light; and when they came to fix the pilot light, they cracked the furnace; and when they fixed the furnace, they had to re-do the air conditioning. In the meantime, something has gone wrong with the TV, and the men who were fixing the furnace stepped on two of our petunias.

The Atlantic Monthly, some months ago, described the ultimate traffic jam in New York City, with the traffic backed up for over four miles in every direction. It looked to them as if the ultimate solution might be to have a perfect traffic jam and then to pave over the tops of the cars and start all over again. At times it does seem as if we are not far from the ultimate solution.

People are killed by thrombosis. I am beginning to theorize that this is the way nations die, too. It could happen to education; and if you don’t think religion is getting complex, you haven’t been reading the papers when they sort out for the news mediums what it is that actually goes on in assemblies and conferences. It isn’t much, but there is a tremendous “heave and ho,” not to mention salaries and travel accounts, just to keep circulation going. Whether we are keeping things in circulation fast enough to get rid of the poisons and pass out the nourishment is a question that worries me even on my better days. Life is such a wonderful thing that it will be a shame if it turns out to be nothing but a confounded nuisance.

EUTYCHUS II

Mission To Military

Your last issue, “Ministering to the Military” (May 24 issue), is the best yet. Never before have I been privileged to see such a great problem covered so completely.… One testimony in particular was wonderful: the testimony of General William K. Harrison.…

Cedartown, Ga.

While I enjoyed your issue … I was a little disappointed at its lack of insight. It seemed to repeat over and over again with plaintive voice that these are just boys away from home and that they are an above average group of Americans. I am not so sure that it is all that simple. To begin with, this is the worst “above average” group I have ever been in; no less than five of the men in my basic training platoon had the choice of either jail or the Army. Even educational and awareness levels were below those of men with whom I worked as a laborer during summers between academic years. Interests in the world and this country were very slight, and the Army presentation of any important issues or events was so watered down or dry as to not stir any one’s concern—even more dogmatic statements were not able to stir the intelligent.

Chaplain’s Assistant

Ft. Belvoir, Va.

Chaplains in the military certainly have a fertile field in which to operate, but it is pure hypocrisy for religious leaders to advocate “praising the Lord, and passing the ammunition.” It is not possible for mature Christians to reconcile Christ’s teaching and militarism.

New Bloomfield, Mo.

Though like most of its undertakings, it is exceedingly well done, on the part of the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, it nevertheless … appears that though the field to be approached is the enlisted man, the opinions of the enlisted man are not sought out. I think this one factor is what has been wrong with the church over the centuries as well as what is wrong with all sectarian magazines, including non-sectarian magazines—the thoughts, the meditations, the concepts of the little man in the street … are not sought out.…

Philadelphia, Pa.

A word of congratulation.… This issue was outstanding.

Chaplain

Second Training Regiment

Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

Christian Servicemen’s Fellowship, Officers’ Christian Union, Navigators, and Christian Businessmen’s Committee are all doing their share in reaching the military for Christ. I think your readers would be interested and inspired to know just how.

For instance, the Navigators focus upon developing all-out Christian leaders as they witness generally.

The Christian Businessmen sponsor Christian Servicemen’s Centers all over the world where men are challenged for Christ in a social and recreational setting.

The Officers’ Christian Union, to which my husband (an Army colonel just retired) belongs, operates through small prayer and Bible study groups plus, of course, personal witnessing seven days a week. Led by Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison, U. S. Army (Ret.), this Union includes commissioned and warrant officers of all branches of our Armed Forces and students training for commissions who subscribe to the following affirmation of faith:

“Inasmuch as I am a sinner and deserve the wrath of God, and since Jesus Christ died for my sins, was buried and has been bodily resurrected, according to the Scriptures, I have accepted Him as my personal Saviour and am saved by His grace alone.”

Because Union members are in positions of authority in the military as the powers that be scatter them around the globe they have unique opportunities to obey the great commission, “Beginning in Jerusalem … to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

OCU Bible study groups operate in eighty-four of the state-side military installations. There are Bible study groups in the Washington, D. C., area, thirty-six states (including Alaska and Hawaii), Bermuda, Greenland, Iceland, Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Guam, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Okinawa, and the Philippines. Also, our OCU cooperates with the OCUs of Great Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Fin land, Sweden, South Korea, and Ghana.

Several years ago, OCU helped found the Christian Servicemen’s Fellowship, patterned after OCU and made up mostly of enlisted men with a few officers, usually chaplains, belonging also. CSF is now sponsored by the Chaplains’ Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals. OCU and CSF, along with evangelical chaplains, work in cooperation with the Navigators and Christian Servicemen’s Centers whenever their paths cross.

Very significantly, the four lay missions to the military I have described include active church and chapel members from all the major Protestant denominations.

Alexandria, Va.

Thank you so much for your timely [issue]. Among the effective organizations dedicated to reaching servicemen is Overseas Christian Servicemen’s Centers.…

Minister to Youth

First Baptist Church

South Pasadena, Calif.

Agony In The South

Reference in your May 24 issue [Editorials] seemed to reflect one-sided information about the racial disturbances in the South, particularly in Birmingham. You speak of dogs lunging at Negro demonstrators without mentioning the fact that these demonstrations were illegal and were practically turned into riots. You also failed to mention that they threw rocks, bricks, knives, and everything else available at the police, some of whom were seriously wounded.

Here in Nashville we witnessed the so-called non-violent Christian demonstrations. The Negroes blocked doorways of businesses for hours; they shoved the police back against the walls. The police were ordered not to retaliate in any way. They injured several persons, knocked completely innocent white persons down inside and outside of the stores.… Mind you, Nashville is already integrated. The schools have been integrated for several years and most of the stores are. There is practically no Negro unemployment, but nevertheless the rioting and incitement to riot continue making a complete farce of their claims to be guided by Christian motives.

Nashville, Tenn.

A word of appreciation and praise for such a statement of conviction. For myself, as one at work in the Deep South, it rang clear and I might add loudly! It was what needed to be said and was stated thusly! All I might add to this note would be one resounding word … amen!

Back Bay Mission

Biloxi, Miss.

You go altogether too far out in your one sided condemnation of those who sought to uphold the law in Birmingham. You make much of those who were restrained by the police and the means used by the police. But what have you to say about those who caused such disorder—those who recklessly brought about the very scenes you describe?

Lutheran Church of the Epiphany

Montgomery, Ala.

Your recent editorial … amazes me. Could it have been written on the basis of snap-judgment, or a desire to stigmatize the South? Yes, the Birmingham situation is ugly. No one of either race will deny it. But you seem to be oblivious of its background in the radical and subversive social agitation which has produced it. Do you not know that the Communist movement has decided to make a break-through in America, using the race question in the South as the crisis issue?

First Presbyterian Church

Opelika, Ala.

We have integration at our Missouri University in Columbia. Negroes enroll freely and move about the campus without molestation. But, let white students talk to them freely, as though they were human beings, and that is something else.… My twenty-year-old daughter would not date a Negro but believes otherwise in equal treatment for him and speaks as freely with Negro students as white. She must work to eat, and during this semester this is what she has faced: turned away from a number of jobs she was qualified for; accused by a girl who frequented Student Union of being a dope pusher; fired from a job at medical center she was happy in because of her “association with colored students at the Union”; referred to in clandestine student publications as setting up a prostitution business in Student Union; ordered out of Student Union finally, though she went there for company rather than ride around in the dark with amorous swains. In spite of all this she calmly continues to treat Negroes as though they were human beings. There is still a price to pay for being true to your convictions. My daughter does not drink, smoke or dance, is active in church, and church youth work—but it does not save her from the vicious smear campaign that “hate” students are capable of, ridiculous though some aspects of the campaign may be.

The Methodist Church

Fairport, Mo.

God bless you for your editorial. The backing-and-yelling or even outright racism of many Southern leaders, even about Birmingham, has been a disgrace to Christ. Thank goodness you’ve taken this clear, strong stand.

Nashville, Tenn.

Like A Crazy Quilt

We appreciate the writeup concerning Churches of Christ (News, May 24 issue). Having been born and bred within this element of Christendom, I must say that your reporter has made some keen observations.

One problem any reporter faces in talking about the so-called Churches of Christ is to ascertain just what faction among us he happens to be with at the time. Right here in my home state of Texas we must have fifteen or twenty different “loyal” Churches of Christ, hardly any of which will have any fellowship with any other.

We are divided over premillennialism, institutionalism, teaching methods, missionary methods, Sunday schools, cups for Communion, wine for Communion, Freemasonry, divorce and remarriage, and I don’t know what all. Presently a major division is in the making over the Herald of Truth program [you] mentioned.…

And all this is our trouble. As of now, divided like a crazy quilt, we are not fit to unite with anyone, the Christian Church included. First, we must unite ourselves, and from the way things look, that will take a long time. But I am happy to report that from all the segments among Churches of Christ there is a concern to attain the unity for which our Lord prayed. There is a kind of grass-roots underground movement among us that beckons us to join the Christian world. A case in point is that a lot of us read non-Church of Christ stuff like CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and that is really something for us! Give us another generation, then check.…

Professor of Philosophy

Texas Woman’s University

Denton, Tex.

Allow me to commend you for your very fine and fair report of our lectureship at Abilene. L. Nelson Bell was at his best in his article, “Faith and Obedience.” It was excellent, and should call many back to the real New Testament meaning of faith. It is imperative that a man not only have faith but he must live by that faith.…

La Vega Church of Christ

Waco, Texas

Precocious Pair

Re the letter of Willis Bergen (Eutychus, May 24 issue): In 1899, William James was in Germany. Then Karl Jaspers was sixteen years old and Martin Heidegger ten years old. Did they really come in touch and discuss philosophical problems?

Philadelphia, Pa.

A Look Back

The special report on the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (May 24 issue) is most revealing with respect to the divergency which can exist between a denomination’s standards and its practice. When a minister of this denomination, I fought hard to have the church abridge this gap where personal freedom and justice were concerned. The findings of the General Assembly’s Permanent Committee on Christian Relations, as included in your special report, point to a continuing basis for this need in the Southern Presbyterian Church.

Plymouth Congregational Church

Corona del Mar, Calif.

Campus Legislation

I am writing to add my hearty agreement to your editorial, “Morality on the Campus” (May 10 issue). Having recently been graduated from a Christian college, I have seen first hand some of the fallacies of “legislated Christianity” as you described.… One senior from our school told me personally that she did not understand why her denomination believed a certain thing, but was accepting it anyway because “it must be right.” One would think that after four years of Bible training, a person would be able to give something of “a reason for the hope that is within them.”

Spring Lake Missionary Church

Manito, Ill.

The editorial … had a very wholesome emphasis upon freedom and personal conviction as opposed to legalistic systems. In several respects it did not go far enough, but it was a welcome step in the right direction.

Kingston, Ont.

God’s law inherently forbids promiscuity in love, and certainly promiscuous love is a contradiction in terms. But we must recognize the truth, and say so, that normal sex drives are good. It is in the application of properly interpreted biblical truth for the control of these sex drives that balance is attained. This should be our message to both evangelical youth and to the unbeliever. Young people will love, and will inevitably want to express their love. It is our responsibility to show that God’s law is for all men the controlling principle for a full and happy life, and not what it has been made to seem: the law that is impractical, irrelevant, and condemnatory of that which is best in human experience.

The failure of the Church to interpret God’s law for today’s youth is evidenced by growing promiscuity on the campus, backsliding among our evangelical youth, and disillusionment and despair of the young who seek a truth which has living relevance.

Glenside, Pa.

White Face Or Red Face?

To the best of my knowledge, we did not then or at any time recommend the book mentioned in the letter (Apr. 12 issue) to CHRISTIANITY TODAY.…

Assoc. Dir.

Office of Information

National Council of Churches

New York, N. Y.

“A bibliography, ‘The Negro American—A Reading List,’ was prepared in 1957 by the Department of Racial and Cultural Relations of the National Council of Churches. It was intended solely for leaders and students of Negro history, for them to read and determine for themselves whether or not they wished to make use of the books on the list, just as a library makes available its reading material without comment.… It is now out of print, and there are no plans to re-issue the bibliography.… No book on the list has ever been held to be obscene by any duly constituted and competent agency, public or private” (release by NCC Office of Information, April 25, 1961).

“Some time ago an article was written for Eternity, attacking the National Council of Churches for some literature which one of the NCC Commissions seemed to espouse.… We showed it to the proper NCC officials, who were quite red-faced about it. The material was printed without proper authorization, they admitted with some embarrassment … and no more would be printed” (editorial in Eternity Magazine, June, 1963).

“Four ‘shameful, filthy, morbid and obscene’ books should be removed from the Fairfax County Public Library, a lawyer in the county says.… Named as defendants in the suit were Bucklin Moon for his book ‘Without Magnolias’; Storm Jameson, author of ‘A Month Soon Goes’; Margaret Halsey for ‘Colorblind’ [sic], and A. B. Guthrie, Jr., who wrote ‘The Big Sky.’ All four books deal with love affairs between different races …” (The Washington Star, May 17, 1963).

I should like to comment on the letter of Mr. James Moore, associate director of the Office of Information of the NCC, in regard to “The Negro American—A Reading List,” that “to the best of my knowledge, we [NCC] did not then or at any time recommend the books”.…

Mr. Moore says relative to my letter, “We do not know where he got his in formation.” If Mr. Moore had looked on pages 4 and 5 of the reading list which the NCC published, recommended, and promoted, he would have seen where my information came from.

Now as to the NCC contention that “no book on the list has ever been held to be obscene by any duly constituted and competent agency, public or private”: this is refuted categorically by the fact that Llewellyn D. Crandall, acting postmaster of the United States Post Office at Larkspur, California, stated in a letter to Mrs. Anne Smart the following ruling concerning three of the books appearing on the NCC reading list:

“Dear Mrs. Smart:

“Your attention is directed to the mimeographed circular, mailed in this office March 24, 1956; entitled ‘To the leaders of the Community’—sheet number: two—March 12, 1956.

“The material identified above is non-mailable under section 1461 of Title 18 U. S. Code.

“You are cautioned against depositing such matter in the mails in the future. Very truly yours.”

Now, for your information, Section 1461 of Title 18 of the U. S. Code reads as follows: “Obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy publications or writings or mail containing or concerning where, how, or from whom such may be obtained, and matter which is otherwise mailable but which has on its wrapper or envelope any indecent, lewd, lascivious, or obscene writing or printing. Any mail containing any filthy, vile or indecent thing.”

My information, therefore, came from an official source which declared at least three books recommended by the NCC as “obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy publications.” The National Council has evaded this issue repeatedly for apparently they do not wish to acknowledge even the existence of the error.…

I will be happy to document Postmaster Crandall’s letter with photostats if necessary.

Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies

King’s College

Briarcliff Manor, N. Y.

From The Pew For The Pew

I have been sitting in the pews. Due to a throat operation I have been sidelined for four weeks. I have attended a number of churches, large and small, and frankly, I’ve been terribly disappointed.

I have gone hopefully. I have left discouraged. I have looked about me at the people. During the sermon they shift in their seats or study the stained-glass windows. Some sit straight and seem to be listening respectfully, but I wonder whether they really are listening.

Every time the sermon begins, I look for a word from God. I want help. I want to hear something relevant. I don’t hear it. The minister is off in a world by himself. He is talking, but not to me. He is talking about Christianity, but he is not saving anything to me!

Why not? Is it me? What do I want?

I want help. I want forgiveness. I want strength. I want to know how to cope with life; that I have to cope with life I know already. I want to know how to live in this world; that I must not become an alcoholic, I know. That I must not give in to temptation, I also know.

But how do I fight temptation? Nobody tells me. Not in the churches I attended.

Sometimes the minister is biblical. He puts together a number of Bible stories and quotations. But it turns out to be a crazy quilt—many different patches with no one message. It really hasn’t “warmed” me. Sometimes there is so much non-biblical material that it seems like the Reader’s Digest in a backwards collar.

Or the delivery is so monotonous that I can’t believe the preacher himself is interested in the Gospel. Why has it failed to grip and excite him? And when that unimaginative exhortation follows a good anthem—usually the music is very inspiring in our churches today—I could hardly consider what followed, preaching. What did it proclaim?

I also heard a man with a good delivery and impressive voice. The opening five minutes were worth hearing. Then he wandered off and tried to say something about everything from personal sin to race relations, from Christian living to world tensions. I asked myself as I walked out, what was his point? What does he want me to do? To believe? I did not know. I went away confused.

No wonder these churches had everything but filled pews. They were small, large, old, new, one service, two services, suburban, city, and small town churches, with choirs, soloists, preachers (sometimes assistants), teas, clubs, youth activities, and weekday programs—but empty pews.

No wonder! We’re emptying our churches with colorless, unimaginative, unrelated, unnecessary, and irrelevant sermons. And what is worse, we ministers think we know what the man in the pew is thinking. Do we? Then why don’t we help him and talk to his deep problems, his searching questions, his inner self?

This man who comes to visit us some Sunday is really sincere. He wants help. He wants “know how.” But if week after week we fail him, he is going to go elsewhere—or nowhere.

I can’t blame him. If I had to listen to the drivel (excuse me) I’ve been subjected to for these four weeks, I wouldn’t last as long as most of our new members who keep slipping out of our back doors at an alarming rate.

I’m pleading for a resurgence of genuine, Christian preaching. God’s Word to man’s need—simple, direct, challenging, personal, relevant! I’m going to ask myself about every sermon: What is my point? Have I made it clear? Have I honestly faced the problem? Have I given helpful answers? Am I presenting Jesus Christ, not in trite, rote phrases, but with clarity, conviction, and concern for those who come to worship?

I make one other suggestion. Taperecord next Sunday’s sermon. One month later listen to it. Invite a good friend to share in the listening. Ask him to give you his frank opinion. Then, be tough on yourself!

Please, let’s try to do something about our empty pews.

South Hollywood Presbyterian Church

Hollywood, Calif.

For a long while I have wanted to write a short message on a subject which we read about in every edition of our religious magazines: the modernist-fundamentalist debate. To be sure, each article in our religious press does not take form in such bold and concise structure. Yet the theological biases of the authors underlie all the articles, and the writers usually can be placed into some general category. I do not object to this. In fact, I do not object to being classified myself, if I am classified correctly. What I object to is the false classification of men, and worse yet, the usually erroneous definition of one of the vital classifications. I refer to that of historic contemporary fundamentalism, or, if you want two better terms, the old fundamentalism, or the old evangelical ism. It does not seem to occur to most of our scholars that there are such animals as these yet living; yet if I am not mistaken, they form the largest group faithful to the Word of God today.

Before going further in our definition of this group, however, I myself would like to fall into the sin of making some classifications. In Protestant Christianity today there are five classifications: (1) the new liberalism, (2) the new orthodoxy, (3) the new evangelicalism, (4) the new fundamentalism, (5) the historic contemporary fundamentalism.

The new liberalism finds its chief exponent in Bultmann and his effort to demythologize Scripture. The new orthodoxy is now quite old, finding its chief exposition in its greatest theologian, Karl Barth, and becoming utterly confused in Paul Tillich. The term new evangelicalism was coined by Harold John Ockenga but has been driven to further and perhaps dangerous extremes by some of its more recent exponents. The new fundamentalism is found amongst the ultra-separationists who are anti everybody who doesn’t think as they do on both cardinal and peripheral matters. We will say more in a moment about historic contemporary fundamentalism.

Now I myself am not interested in the first two groups, for I find no binding fellowship in them. However, I am very perturbed over the unhealthy and unchristian attitudes among the latter three groups, which comprise the evangelical forces of Christianity. But the thing which bothers me most is that the new evangelicals and the new fundamentalists are constantly taking potshots at each other, apparently unaware that they are both fringe groups and that the majority of evangelical forces are in the center. Whether or not these center forces have a name, they are in reality old fundamentalists. We are the people who hold tenaciously to the cardinal doctrines of the faith, to a vital missionary passion, to an educated clergy, and to a concern for the world around us. Frankly we are tired of the ostrich-like attitude of new evangelicalism, which found a few fundamentalists wanting in intellectual interest and societal concern but continues to speak of fundamentalism as if it were still lacking in these areas. New evangelicalism might well examine itself lest it go too far in trying to swing the pendulum to the right, for it has some tenets which are dangerous if they are driven to their logical conclusion. The vast majority of fundamentalists today have corrected the errors of fundamentalism, and indeed there were some of us in the process of doing this before Dr. Carl F. H. Henry wrote his excellent book about our uneasy conscience.

On the other hand, we have great heartbreak over the fact that some of our brethren have gone on to require tests of fellowship which our fathers never required. They have become Pharisees, in that they have added to “the law.” They have now demanded for fellowship assent to peripheral matters which was never required by the old fundamentalism. They have made issue over eschatology, and have demanded a secondary separation. This they have the right to do! But by so doing they have earned for themselves the name new fundamentalist, because they have changed and departed from historic fundamentalism.

My main thesis in this paper is to get our own contemporary writers to understand that there is a group, a large group—perhaps the largest of all—which still holds to the historic Chrisian faith, the historic fundamentals, and has also a societal concern, an intellectual interest, and a missionary passion. I believe that the major part of the evangelical church falls into this group. I have called it historic contemporary fundamentalism because it is the historic fundamentalism today, just the same as it always was, and so it really is the old fundamentalism or the old evangelicalism, or just plain fundamentalism in the best sense of the word.

Perhaps we can pray that the forces on the periphery can come together with us and join in one great evangelical movement, for our Lord Jesus Christ and for the historic Christian faith based on the five fundamentals of the faith, plus a societal concern, and an intellectual interest, and a missionary passion for the souls of men. Is it possible for us to pray and work for that, or am I too naive?—The Rev. KENNETH MCCOWAN, Pastor, Elm Street Baptist Church, Everett, Massachusetts.

Prophets, speak for man where other voices belittle and vilify man. Although the pathos of men marred by sin pierces your minds, let God’s action to heal the broken thrill your hearts. Learn that moral renaissance, not pessimism, is the Christian answer to wrong.

You know what sin is. You are familiar with its grief when the jokes turn sour and the memory becomes a nightmare. You know sin’s deceit, its hurt and its guilt, and you know its victims yearn for healing, for more life, for life with God.

You understand the vitality of the human spirit. You see its origin in God and its urge toward God, and you understand its anguish when alienated from God. Speak, prophets; speak from the joy that knows sin cannot forever divide what God determines to unite, namely, himself and man. Stand up and point to Christ, who activates a people to champion man’s reconciliation with God, and with man.

Does leniency toward licentiousness or deference to “respectability” deter you from working for man’s moral renewal? Take those empty hearts, tormented minds, and outraged bodies to the community of grace. Prove that sin can be excised and persons incited to grow toward the stature of Christ. Quit dallying with growth in grace as a mere dogma: show that it is Christ achieving love’s verities in the common experiences of life. Illustrate the facts that lives stymied by sin’s tyranny can be released to total trust in Christ, can be sustained in the fellowship of shared strength, and shall become Christ’s new creation. You often proclaim the comfort of the Holy Spirit; good—now let your personality reveal that the joy of heaven has already penetrated earth’s sorrows. Inform the fallen that they do not need boot strap courage or dark despair: show them Christ has come to them!

Prophets, tell man he has immediate access to the Christ-way for his daily walk. Portray Christ’s holy love and moral purity in your own Christian manhood. Pick up the defeated from the shadowed valleys, and call down the haughty from the plains of ease. You lead the way up the road of virtue ribboning across the crags of vulgar violence against humanity.

The Christ to be preached to the face of sin is in your lives for healing, on your lips for speaking, and at your hands for helping. The Holy Spirit has been given. New life has come and is here: live it! Say on, prophets, say it: challenge men to be what Christ has made them—a servant people, a holy people, his body. Advance beyond the platitude that grace is God’s justifying persons. State the practical truth that grace is God’s enabling persons to do his holy will. Infiltrate the filth of culture with the visible truth that no hour is so horrible but what a man can be true, true to the God who is forever true.

Does zeal drive you to the frontiers? Excellent! But take another look. The Master is ahead of you, standing yet on the Judean hills. He calls you back to the true frontier he staked out in Palestine: the wasteland of anxious and aimless hearts. Man your posts there, stemming hell’s tide, parrying Satan’s enticements, structuring love’s unities, and erecting purity’s guidon. Look at your own battle scars and state that Christians who emerge unscathed by evil’s flame simply came to the fray as spectators, not as Christ’s legions for man’s liberation.

Does impatience propel you to join the avant-garde? Good! Let the light of Christ’s love on you be a piercing preview of the promised fulfillment of all life’s joy. Dare to think through the dazzling truths of eternal wisdom that undergird the reasons of the heart. Go on to the hearts that need you; the Christ will meet you there. You should be in the avant-garde; true heralds have always appeared there. You know your exploratory work is nowhere else but at the heart of the Gospel, and in human hearts. Quit thinking you should hold back; you have not yet gone far enough.

Prophets, tell those loved of God that it is not their job to sit about waiting for others to love them, to pamper and soothe them. Inform them that it is their duty to extend the beauty of love to others—to lift, to share, and to give. Divine love has come to Christians; warn them to stop keeping it and to start giving it. Remind Christians that they were unworthy and without status when they received God’s love. Have them cease looking for a return on their investment of love; specify that they are to spend and be spent without thought of recompense. Remind them that the love channeled through them comes from an inexhaustible source: God. It can’t be wasted. Dare them to be reckless with that love, or know they are doomed to lose it.

The cities lie waste beneath the facade of modernity. Lust, greed, and crime breed horrendous havoc in the land. Hating life, our culture gulps down “the bitter mingled cup of ancient woes” (Aeschylus). The Spinner of the centuries cries, “NOW, now loose men and women of compassion in the earth, loose them for Christ and for the healing of life.” Say it, prophets, and say it again: Human life is made to glorify God and to enjoy him forever; all else is hatred against humanity.

Prophets, make way for the healing grace that swells to surge through human lives. Put into public view Christ’s life already given to man—out with it now!

Prophets: speak for man!

END

Antagonists of the World Council of Churches and of the ecumenical movement as a whole need no longer polish up arguments pointed at the adversary’s battlements. The fourteen contributors to the symposium Unity In Mid-Career, An Ecumenical Critique (edited by Keith R. Bridston and Walter D. Wagoner, Macmillan, 1963, 211 pp., $4.95) have carried their ecumenical critique so far that self-examination on their part has turned into self-indictment. The task has been so thoroughly done that it would be hard to improve upon it. Whatever criticism may be directed at it, the Bridston-Wagoner team is to be given credit for a great show of intellectual honesty.

At the outset, Liston Pope gives a foretaste as well as a promise of what is to come, with a candid admission that member bodies of the World Council of Churches have little in common theologically except a confession of “the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour,” the same confession being subject to diverse interpretations. In actual practice, most of these inter pretations are dominated by a concern for self-preservation. Quite a paradox in an organization primarily devoted to church unity! The problem of reaching the actual membership of the churches puts in an early appearance in the same paper, and the fact that it is raised again and again throughout the volume bears witness to its importance. Thus Walter Leibrecht finds it quite pathetic to see how little of the “fine work” done in the various departments trickles down to the congregations and their individual members. Indeed, the purpose of the WCC is no longer clearly under stood by the people. The popular image of the Council is that of “an organization of its own, an entity in itself.” In the same setting, the local minister has become “the Cinderella of the Ecumenical Movement” (Robert Paul). His chances of ever representing his denomination at a major assembly prove nonexistent unless he is the minister of a large and “successful” parish. Local youth workers fare worse still, according to John Garrett, who borrows the title of his paper, “Oikumene and the Milkman,” from the exclamation of the correspondent of an international wire agency: “I’m wondering what all this is going to mean to the Kansas City milkman.”

With the formation of the WCC, the ecumenical movement is becoming institutionalized. The difficulty of this transitional stage, according to Bridston, may be partly explained in terms of the Bismarckian comment: “Politics is the art of the possible.” But then, how can one forget that in pre-WCC days, the basic activity of Faith and Order derived its dynamism from a youthful independent leadership such as was then found in the Student Christian Movement? There was in evidence among churches in those days the pioneering and renewing power of a truly prophetic tradition. In this situation, the WCC may well appear as a potential hindrance to the ecumenical movement because it is both an institution—and as such tends to resist change—and an ecclesiastical institution, which may well become a super-organization, a kind of ecclesiastical monstrosity. Indeed, the WCC would seem to be susceptible to at least some of the common ecclesiastical afflictions Nicolas Berdyaev had in mind when he wrote of the ecumenical councils that “few things are more expressive of human pettiness, treachery, and fraud.” The least that can be said on the subject is that, as Leibrecht puts it, “lifting the councils to ecclesiological heights” will hardly “serve the progress of the ecumenical cause.”

Politics Or Bureaucracy

The problems faced by the WCC are not only those of a political organism—from bargaining for seats to control by self-perpetuating executive cliques—but those of the only alternative to politics, which is bureaucratic domination. Linder a bureaucratic regime, then, problems of politics are turned into problems of administration, and arbitrary decrees are often the result. Programming boards mushroom on every side and make themselves indispensable. This proliferation of boards and councils at every level adds up to a top-heavy machinery which must be fed by ever larger budgets. Thus the National Council of Churches in 1962 surpassed the dimensions of the WCC (staff, 650 vs. 202; budget, $15,414,110 vs. $1,297,000). According to Henry P. Van Dusen, the National Council of Churches has been described as “beyond challenge, the most complex and intricate piece of machinery which this planet has ever witnessed.” No wonder John Garrett feels like quoting a perceptive collector of dreary Council draft documents who once said: “In the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century, the Word was made paper.”

The fact of the imbalance just pointed out between the NCC and the WCC has naturally led to the charge that the entire organization is a vehicle of the West in general and the United States in particular. Discussing the issue “Regionalism or Centralism?” as it appears east of New Delhi, U Kyaw Than, a Baptist of Burma, is sadly amused to see churchmen from Asia regarded by those of the West as representing younger churches as well as new nations, while the truth is that a number of Asian churches trace their history back to the apostolic days, “long before Columbus discovered America or England first heard the Gospel.” In a somewhat similar mood, Elizabeth Adler exposes the superior attitude of the Westerner to the Eastern Christian. But then an Orthodox priest, Alexander Schmemann, articulates the same kind of complaint with regard to the position of the Orthodox churches in the World Council. His thesis is that “in spite of all official pronouncements, affirmations or actions, the Orthodox participation in the WCC … encounters a deeply rooted suspicion and hostility.…” Going to the root of this attitude, Schmemann ascribes it to an initial faux pas.

Truth Over Unity

As he views the whole ecumenical issue, it is truth and not unity which should be the immediate goal of the movement—or rather, unity is “nothing else but the natural consequence of truth, its fruit and blessing.” A possible ground for ecumenism was to be found in the living tradition of the Church, but it was ignored. The ecumenical problem and preoccupation was no longer the content of the tradition, but the very fact of its existence. The ultimate choice between truth and heresy was displaced by the presupposition that ultimately all “choices” are to be integrated into one synthesis. “The word ‘heresy,’ in fact, is absent even today from the ecumenical vocabulary, and does not exist even as a possibility.” Hence the fundamentally false position of the Orthodox Church in the WCC—false, that is, both theologically and institutionally, “and this falsehood explains the constant Orthodox ‘agony’ in the Ecumenical Movement, the anxiety and the doubts it raises in Orthodox consciousness.”

For most of the contributors to the present symposium, unity is something to be achieved by human effort. In the words of Lewis S. Mudge, Jr., “Ultimately, the churches themselves must decide what the one great Church is to be, and, in conversations with each other, seek to achieve it.” For what purpose, may one ask? William B. Cate points out that in the last analysis one is to look “to the day when enough unity will be realized so that all churches in a community can sit down together and, in the light of relevant and sociological facts viewed from various religious perspectives, begin to plan the total mission of the church for Main Street.” But even this down-to-earth conclusion seems to be too ambitious. As Walter Leibrecht looks at the record of actual achievements, all he can say is that “in spite of all the optimism displayed by some conciliar association enthusiasts, we have through our ecumenical effort only reached the state where churches begin to be polite to one another”—which sounds like the year-end evaluation of what the local church Sunday school has achieved.

No Biblical Reference

What most impressed this reader as he waded through so much organizational manipulation was the absence of any basic biblical reference to that which constitutes the Church. He has missed the victorious outcry, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them.” There unity arises as genuine disciples acknowledge the presence of one another. As Rudolf Sohm put it in his little classic, Outlines of Church History, “It is by no means essential to the Church … that it should have a legal constitution, with Pope and Bishops, Superior Ecclesiastical Council, and Superintendents, after the fashion of the State. On the contrary, if every congregation of believers represents the Church, that is, the whole of Christendom with Christ its head, then no single congregation has any legal authority over another. And if Christ alone is the head of Christendom, that is, of the Church which is Christ’s body, then no man may presume to make himself the head of the Church.” And the same applies to groups of men. Therefore, as a subtitle of Ralph Hyslop suggests, it remains for the churches to discover the Church.

Wherever and whenever bodies of Christians, however small, in the grace of God acknowledge one another’s discipleship in His name, there and then is the unity of the whole represented. There and then does Oikumene come into its own. And lo and behold, it is all of the Lord’s doing. This evangelical approach to the subject has steadily been upheld by men of the calibre of John A. Mackay, who has done more than any other living American I know for the cause of genuine ecumenism, and whose absence from this symposium may or may not be purely coincidental.

END

A world Christian leader and past co-president (1954–1961) of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Otto Dibelius at 83 remains—for lack of a successor acceptable to both East and West—the Bishop of the Protestant United Church of Berlin, the city of his birth. As stated by Time magazine’s Henry R. Luce, Dr. Dibelius “has kept the flame of Christian hope alive for his people under two tyrannies, Nazism and Communism.”

Born in an era swept by Protestant liberalism, Bishop Dibelius’ ministry has spanned beyond two world wars to the division of his homeland. When the German government in 1933 dismissed him from his church post he became a leader of the “Confessing Church,” which opposed the Nazi-dominated church government. Then came the partition of Berlin and the hoisting of the hammer and sickle over the Brandenburg Gate. Bishop Dibelius not only deplored the totalitarian tyrants but also called the Church to renewal as the only means of hope for the future. He sees at stake in the fate of Berlin more than the outcome of the struggle between world powers; he sees at stake also the spiritual fate of humanity in our times. Communist absolutism he interprets as the extension of Nazi-Fascist totalitarianism.

Interviewed by special arrangement in the Washington offices of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Bishop Dibelius was accompanied by Dr. J. W. Winterhager of Berlin Ecumenical Seminary.

Q. Bishop Dibelius, what is the religious situation in East Germany? What of the vitality of the churches? Are the Christians able to reproduce themselves? What about the young people in the churches? Is the picture depressing or are there encouraging elements?

A. I can’t say that the overall impression is encouraging. The Communistic, atheistic attack directs itself primarily toward the young people. And when the youth in school never hear anything but the Communist ideology, and the parents are never seen the entire week at home, so that there is little parental indoctrination, it is unavoidable that the Communist propaganda will bear fruit. Our church youth work continues in spite of thousands of prohibitions and restrictions by the state: free assembly is forbidden, and so forth.

Q. How effectively does Christian conviction survive?

A. We have the impression that by and large the youth today are still rooted in the same general Christian atmosphere as formerly. Even among those who participate in Communist activities the inner protest against the Communist representations remains unalteredly strong. Church attendance, which even formerly was not great among the youth, has not increased everywhere—but also has not decreased. Some of the youth are still available for confirmation, so the youth in East Germany show a very considerable inner opposition to atheistic indoctrination. And the Bible study groups are much more alive. The intensity of Bible study and the desire to gain inspiration in the laymen’s work is a thing we did not have half a century ago. This study of the Bible started with the persecution of the Church under Hitler and is now increasing all the time. But the Communist majority holds these Bible groups in contempt.

Q. What is the nature of the persecution?

A. It’s not open persecution of the Church. It is harassment all the time. Worship is not forbidden, but it is made extremely difficult on Sunday morning owing to special meetings for workers and premium bonds and all that sort of thing.

Q. Bishop Dibelius, have you not said that a state which does not consider itself bound by the laws of God does not come under the scope of Romans 13 and that Christians therefore need not obey such a state but should rather resist and overthrow it?

A. I have said that such a state is not in a biblical sense an authority functioning in the name of God. But I have never preached open resistance—much less, revolution. Rather I have interpreted the situation, because this kind of government brings a conflict of loyalties. And in a conflict of loyalties we must obey God rather than man. Instead of preaching active disobedience, I have preached the priority of obedience to God’s commandments according to conscience. We have the Bible. If there is a conflict of loyalties, God comes first.

Q. Do you take this general position to be Luther’s also?

A. This is exactly the standpoint of Martin Luther. Read the new book by Professor Johannes Heckel (professor of ecclesiastical law of Munich University), Lex Caritatis (“The Law of Love”). There you will find all the citations of Luther. Luther did not shrink from open resistance where there was tyranny in the Catholic totalitarian authority. Today the Lutheran Church no longer preaches this kind of open opposition for two reasons. The first reason is that the atheistic totalitarian states have learned a great deal from history, particularly that it is not very intelligent, not even clever, to create martyrs. The Church has always gained through martyrdom. So the totalitarian states throughout the Soviet orbit now seek to avoid open persecution of the Church wherever possible. They do not wish to have martyrs for the faith. They are always finding some pretext to intimidate, harass, and even exterminate the witness of the Church for other reasons. For instance, they will try to prove that some individual has been subversive in political attitude or has committed an economic crime, such as accepting aid into the church, or anything that is against the economic legislation of the totalitarian state society. And it is not very difficult in a totalitarian state where everything is regimented to find some item for which a church leader may be and can be and is arrested. That happens all the time. But this is an indirect persecution. We cannot prove openly that this particular church leader is arrested for his witness for Jesus Christ. Today no totalitarian state in East Europe persecutes the Christian churches because they are Christian churches. Bishops are arrested on the ground they have infringed on some economical or political regulations; they are never arrested because they are bishops and because they preach the Gospel. Never. And the second reason the Lutheran Church does not preach opposition is that modern society is not as homogeneous and clear-cut as in former times. The atomic age brings some interchange of realities and also a mixture of ethical, professional, vocational responsibilities. And with this changing of the standards of modern society—so complex now—it is not so easy to say that here are the pure Christians, puritanical in their behavior, clear-cut, with their little sphere of a wonderful kingdom of God, and on the other side there is a purely Satanic kingdom, as Luther had it. Rather there is an interacting all the time, and the devil is finding ways to increase this confusion. The circumstances are no longer so simple that here one finds exclusively Christians and there, exclusively atheists. One finds quite a few atheists among the Christians, and one finds quite a few Christians among opponents of the Church. In view of this complex situation, the Church, humiliated and historical in its continuity, would not say we can project this simple, clear-cut, late medieval situation upon modern times, but we must carry on a dialogue with this complex world in which we try to apply the new findings of the modern mind to the Christian concept of life which we share—which we share with a great number of modern men outside the Church. As a consequence it is no longer the Church’s province to fight against a closed atheistic power. The Church has learned that she can no longer operate with force, but only with a message presenting the whole Christ to the whole world.

Q. In this relationship, does the Church’s strategy presuppose Christian coexistence with Communism and presuppose areas of compatibility between Christianity and Communism?

A. Do you mean, can peaceful coexistence—a peaceful coexistence with the Communist authorities—be a new basis for a new Christian ethic and for a new Church life?

Q. Are there levels of compatibility between the two? Are there points of connection where agreement is possible between these differing philosophies? Is a compromising and peaceful working together possible?

A. Only about 5 per cent of the Christians see logically clear-cut alternatives, can say this is Christian and this is not Christian, and the witness has to be one or the other. The other 95 per cent of the population rather tend to make a compromise. There are only a few who say, “Here are two views which are logically contradictory—consequently, I must say no to the one and yes to the other.” Perhaps only 5 per cent of the people are like that. The other 95 say, “One must not take everything so seriously. In the ancient Church, in pagan Roman times, the Christians were asked to throw a kernel of wheat into the fire in front of a bust of the emperor as part of emperor worship. And the lapsed Christians thought, ‘Why not throw the kernel of wheat into the fire as an act of adoration, because no one takes the emperor seriously any longer?’ ” Well, what of it, after all? So they threw a kernel of wheat into the fire and thought nothing of it. Why does one have to dramatize everything? Compromise is always a temptation to take it easy. For instance, confirmation. The atheistic Communist state does not say, “I forbid confirmation.” But it introduces a new act concomitantly with confirmation, and establishes the same kind of liturgical elements in its ceremony—only instead of a confession of commitment to Christ it requires a confession of commitment to the state. And then it says, “Every young person must come to the ceremony of commitment to the state.” The Communists say this is a political, social affair; confirmation doesn’t interest them—do what you like about that. But the Church said at first, and today still says it in 90 per cent of the cases, “One can’t do that. One can’t dedicate oneself one Sunday to atheistic Communism and the next Sunday dedicate oneself to the Lord Jesus Christ. That won’t do.” But 90 per cent of the parents say, “Oh, go without qualms to both. A dedication which is forced and which does not come from the heart does not have any significance anyway. So go ahead and do it. And then go to the Church and let yourself be confirmed. For the state will never arrest you for letting yourself be confirmed, but it will arrest you—or in any event oppress you—if you don’t come to the state ceremony.”

Many young people from Christian families undergo this absurd ritual of Communist youth dedication—taking an oath. No one takes it seriously. They take it easy just for the social, promotional features tied up with that oath of allegiance to the world revolution. But religiously no one takes it very seriously. Many people pay lip service, and all this is an adjustment. But no one believes in it. In Germany we have learned something from Hitler’s materialism, and how dangerous this totalitarianism is for the issues of life.

Q. How do the Communists view this adjustment?

A. The state reckons—just as Islam did in Africa, that eventually the social and political significance of the state ceremony will prevail because from the Church ceremony—as we say in German—there is “no flower pot to be gained”: it contributes nothing toward one’s material existence; it is simply a matter of internal life “from which no one profits.” So the church life—says the state—will gradually deteriorate. In North Africa in this manner the Christian church actually disappeared, although it once bloomed there.

Q. But what of the real possibility of peaceful coexistence?

A. Coexistence would require a clear, logical confrontation of two parties—a clear-cut field of responsibility for a Christian on one side, rationally explained and limited, and on the other side a partner that confronts you with a field of his responsibilities and claims. Coexistence between the lion and the lamb is only possible if from time to time the lamb is resupplied! So it would be for peaceful coexistence between Communism and the Christian church. If Christian people undergo these rituals of the Communist world religion, this doesn’t mean real coexistence; it is only an adjustment to the promotional aspects. All this bargaining with the rituals of this Communist religion is not a matter of deep commitment; it is much more a matter of practical expedience. And probably the Christians might perish if they did not give in at some point just for the promotional aspect.

The temptation exists also that we dodge serious intellectual decision, so that there is no intellectual honesty. But the Church does not really give in. The Church watches these young people very carefully. It doesn’t discard confirmation. The young people come and prove that their compromise has been achieved under pressure of the promotional aspect or for politico-sociological reasons. The Church, in fact, still takes confirmation and the sacraments so seriously that they are more respected now than they used to be. The Church takes its own sacramental life much more seriously than it did in former years.

But this doesn’t mean coexistence in the philosophical sense of the word. This coexistence is only an adjustment, which secures the survival of people who are persecuted when they make too much of the political realities of the Church, which does not conform to the totalitarian standards. It is not a compatibility of the two concepts of man. The totalitarian state does not welcome the disparagement of its pseudo-religious Communist ritual as a bogus thing. But as long as Communism means a totalitarian state, coexistence is impossible. And there is a text from Scripture, you will remember, the words of Jesus Christ: “I send you as sheep among the wolves.” That is a terrible phrase. A terrible phrase. Because, naturally, the lambs will surely be torn apart by the wolves. They will be sent to a certain death. If we were to proclaim any coexistence other than a day-to-day adjustment, this is what would happen, as long as Communism is in possession of such a pressure-force as the modern totalitarian state. That is exactly what happens when coexistence is called for and Communism abides by its viewpoint of a totalitarian state which subjugates the ideas and feelings and the wills of men to its power.

Q. Can the Christians then complain if the Communists likewise take part in the Christian ritual just as a matter of convenience without really giving their hearts to the Christian realities?

A. If you are asking whether Communists in the same way say, “We will accommodate ourselves to the Christian practices while underneath we remain Communists,” my answer is that there are few convinced religious Communists. There are very few convinced Communists who really come to the light.

Q. Can anything be done by the Church or by international diplomacy to ease the Red-oriented ideological pressure upon the Christians in East Germany?

A. Ideological pressure can be eased if the churches study and publicize the actual situation in the Eastern orbit. Nothing is dreaded and feared more (by a totalitarian state) than publicity. Outspoken prayers of concrete intercession would also be a great help.

Q. What is the attitude of the East German Christians toward property rights? Do they consider property rights a human right?

A. You mean, is it a God-given right to keep property as formerly? In biblical thinking, especially in the New Testament, there is hardly any room for the property rights of the human individual. We should be ready to sacrifice at any time, also to sacrifice our property. The human individual is not entitled to store up property rights or privileges for himself. This is unchristian, and we simply have to learn that anew. Sacrifice, sacrificial love, self-effacing surrender of individual privileges is the basic attitude of the New Testament. There is one consideration which prevents the Church from saying no to property, and that is the responsibility we have toward other persons. The father is responsible to give his children the best possible rearing. Property is justifiable when there is a human individual’s responsibility for people and for furthering God’s kingdom. Certain property is necessary or else one would have to leave all such decisions to the state. But if this entrusting of property does not serve the upbuilding of His kingdom, then it will be and has to be destroyed and given up.

There is a second aspect of this responsibility which will in certain cases make private property justifiable. There has to be progress in human society, progress through scientific research, and exploration of the world potential to help further the relationships of human beings. Now we have cases in totalitarian states—particularly in Soviet Russia—where a great researcher achieves an invention of his own, but he cannot develop it because under a Communist regime he can have no property. He can only apply to a government office to accept the invention. But if the officials say that this does not interest them, or consider it to be impractical, then the matter comes to nothing. He has done the research and he comes forward and wishes to have his invention registered with the totalitarian state, which is of course unspeakably bureaucratic (we in the free world cannot even imagine what it is like), and which does not allow him to handle the potential of his research, much less the results of his research, without the red tape associated with the totalitarian machinery. In such cases inventions have come to naught, and this is a setback. The free society, the open society, provides the possibility for an individual to further these inventions for the good of mankind by the support of friends in society who join to further a good cause. But always we must reckon with the responsibility for bettering mankind in the sense of Christian partnership.

Q. How would you balance human freedom and government regulation?

A. In one sentence, I think that all Christian ethics would say: as little state as possible and as much freedom and liberty as possible for responsible activity of men. Property should not be taken over by the state. Property in itself is not a divine reality; it is only an instrument. But the state—especially the totalitarian state—tends to mishandle this instrument, making it something not furthering the good of mankind, not helping the souls of men, and not discharging the responsibility man has to his neighbor.

Q. To what extent do the churches of Germany get across this message of property as a divine stewardship to the Christians of West Germany?

A. In West Germany the Church gives the same emphasis. Certain technicalities in a progressive society may possibly fall under control of a democratic state. West Germany is a progressive state with a fairly high economic standard (but not as high as many people in America think). Certain controls are necessary. Sometimes a well-organized democratic state applies responsibility better than private ownership. As our church preaches to a particular congregation, or speaks to the big bosses in the Ruhr district, it is very lively against the capitalistic excesses of an irresponsible handling of the gifts of God.

Q. What effect has materialistic success had upon the spiritual life and outlook of West Germany’s people?

A. We in Berlin do not live in West Germany. Our atmosphere is much more Eastern; although we enjoy Western protection in Berlin, we are situated entirely in Eastern surroundings. You must also bear in mind that public opinion and public atmosphere in West Germany is much more determined by the Roman Catholic Church than it is in Berlin. But the responsibility for maintaining the Church as the Church is much more alive throughout Protestantism than it was in former years. Another factor which makes the Protestant church very much alive to the complex situation and much more humble in its witness is the ecumenical movement. In West Germany we have very prominent leaders of the ecumenical movement who speak for the whole of the Church and who not only attend conferences but also apply the findings of the ecumenical movement. Bishop Lilje, for one, but also Pastor Niemoeller, reflects an ecumenical sense of partnership which really means a Christian outlook different from simply the national outlook, or the empire outlook, or the Roman outlook. This ecumenical outlook is never totalitarian in its aspirations, but always awake to the dangers of a complex society in this atomic age.

Q. Do you see the Communist situation differently than did Pope John XXIII?

A. Basically, I see it in very much the same way: treat the human individual in the Communistic world like a created being of God, but do not make compromises with the system. Remind the Communist dictators that they are responsible for human beings who basically belong to God. This is what Pope John had in mind. Many are not Communists, they are human beings with a longing, with a craving, with a searching. The Communist has nothing in Communism to preserve his soul.

Q. But Pope John’s plea for greater mutuality was followed by a big vote for the Communists in Italy, and many Christian Democrats blame this development on the Pope’s statement. Your policy has not resulted in an open sympathy on the part of churchgoers for the Communist party in East Germany. Where is the difference? Did the Pope apply a false strategy in Italy?

A. I cannot say anything about the Italian situation. Whether this accusation or reproach of the Christian Democratic party in Italy that John XXIII went too far in approaching the Communists is justified—I do not know. I am convinced that the Pope was not interested in entering into a compromise with the Communists, but that, rather, at the decisive moment he planned to introduce the definite Catholic requirements.

Q. What is your feeling in the matter of eventual Protestant-Catholic reunion?

A. I can give the answer in one sentence. Perhaps it may be in God’s design that after five or six hundred years the question of uniting the churches will become a real issue. During these next five hundred years very little is likely to happen in regard to organizational union with Rome.

Q. What significance do you attach to the evangelistic crusades that have gathered momentum through the ministry of Dr. Billy Graham?

A. The campaigns of Dr. Graham are unique and their effect was great. They had a lasting effect while he was there, and have strengthened the Church. But we Germans have not developed a similar method of evangelism. It is still a bit alien to the Lutheran Church spirit that is prevalent in East and West Germany.

Q. Tell us something more about the local activity in evangelism that goes on at grass-roots level in the churches of Germany.

A. There is less evangelism in the American sense of that method of work and witness. But there is Pastor Heinrich Giesen: he is doing what we call Volksmission and Stadtmission—reaching out to the townspeople who live on the fringes. This effort grew out of the laymen’s movement of the big Kirchentag. Besides, there is excellent Bible-study work on the parish level.

Q. Do you welcome this growing interest in evangelism? Does it reach the workers?

A. Assuredly. Since the Memorial Church was rebuilt, we have had services every afternoon for the people coming home from work, with ever increasing attendance. In Berlin, we work right through. We have a short five o’clock service and another at half-past five. In recent weeks we have added another service (shorter than the others) at one o’clock near the shopping center, just for people finishing their purchases. Every Saturday there is a musical service. This is the first time we have tried to bring the evangelistic work into the church itself, and through different congregations. We learned this approach from America, and from England, where I was in the pulpit rather often at one o’clock in Coventry and other places to speak to the people working nearby. Other congregations began to follow our first Berlin example, and we think this will provide a certain spark for renewing the evangelistic forces and powers in our church. Then we also have telephone methods, as you have in America. We have a telephone pastoral service. People come to the “Telephone Cure of Souls” when they have troubles. Several numbers are now available through the church where people can discuss their troubles. It is partly anonymous.

Q. Is this personalized, individual counsel?

A. Yes.

Q. What about missionary vitality in the German churches? How many missionaries are being sent? What is missionary giving, and how does it compare with the giving of a generation ago?

A. Prominent areas of foreign missions in East Germany were Pomerania and Silesia and nearby areas. All of these are now lost for this kind of work, since they are no longer able to give any more help to the mission fields. They are not allowed to give money. The Communist-ruled areas give no passports to those wishing to go as missionaries. They are seldom allowed to send parcels of books. They are not able to print books in East Germany now without a license. So the whole responsibility has fallen again to the organized church. As members of the same church (Lutheran) we in West Berlin can do something in the name of the eastern provinces now ruled by the Communists; in this way the western churches try to do the work once done by the congregations and the mission societies of East Germany. West Germany has its own missionary societies—of Barmen, and in the south of Germany, the missionary society of Basel. There are also Hermannsburg, Brecklum, and various other societies.

Q. To what extent can the work in East Germany be directed from West Berlin?

A. To a great extent. For a long time I have served as the head of the East German Leaders Conference. Now my former assistant curate, Bishop Krummacher, is the head of the East German Bishops Conference. Nothing is really done by the bishops in East Germany without consulting Christian leaders in Berlin. The office of the Berlin Missionsgesellschaft is in East Berlin. Recently I ordained two new pastors—we call them Heimatinspektor (home inspector)—whose duties are to make new efforts regarding missionary interests in West Berlin, which is now cut off from the mission administration located in East Berlin. Although the head of the mission is still nominally in East Berlin, these pastors in West Berlin are making a fresh start to stir the missionary spirit in both parts of the province with cooperation from the East Berlin office. And this could not be done without church leaders officiating in West Berlin. The method of missionary work is now changing, as you know. The missionaries come from the young native churches themselves, and our responsibility now is not to send missionaries, but to send advisers. My own church, Berlin-Brandenburg, has for several years had one superintendent who is building an evangelical academy in Tokyo with Japanese Christians.

Q. What ecclesiological significance do you attach to the World Council of Churches?

A. The World Council is, as it says, a “fellowship, a Koinonia of churches.”

Q. Is it a church?

A. It is not a church. It is not a super-church, so to speak. But it is a union—I should say, rather, a federation—for certain purposes. One of its purposes is to discuss questions of faith and to find a common ground. Another is to bring churches together for practical cooperation in matters of life and service. Nothing else.

Q. Some ecumencial leaders (Dr. Van Dusen, for example) say that the World Council has at least as much right to be called a church as any of the historical churches.

A. Well, that is his statement, but it is not the recognized statement or the ecclesiastical definition of the World Council of Churches. The Toronto document says very clearly that the World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches—plural—which confess according to Scripture and according to their confessions of faith (this we have reaffirmed in New Delhi), not which individually (subjectively) accept, but which confess historically in their confessions, in their histories, Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour of the world. The individual witness of the historic churches still has a place, but they must be reminded of their membership functions in the universal body of believers in Christ.

Q. Is the ecumenical development moving toward one church?

A. No one can prophesy what the future will bring. No one can prophesy what influence the young churches on other continents will contribute to Christian thinking and feeling throughout the whole world. I personally think it out of the question, and not even desirable, that we have one church for the Christians of the whole world. We must have a variety which will fructify itself. That is much more in God’s design than to have one super-structure of the Church.

Q. Does the ultimate success of the ecumenical movement depend on a common basis of faith and on dedication to the Christian mission rather than upon finding a single structure that will be superimposed upon all of the churches?

A. Effective propagation of faith in Christ rather than any pride in current structures will ultimately decide whether the ecumenical movement is of God and will succeed. A single world church would not be desirable. All our efforts to come together with other churches will have one advantage; that is, if every church respectfully thinks upon what the other churches have been given through God’s grace, and continually asks, Can we learn something from what God has given the other churches for our own life under God’s hand?

The whole sense of our ecumenical gathering is that we learn from one another, respect one another’s traditions as individually given traditions from our fathers in different situations, and question one another; united in a common responsibility in the dialogue with the world, and standing as witnesses to Christ, over against the world, we belong to a body that has many members, each of which is alive and works with the others in its own way.

Q. Would you agree with those who say that inclusion of the Orthodox churches into the World Council has lessened its predominantly Protestant orientation?

A. The inclusion of the Orthodox Churches in WCC membership in New Delhi does not mean very much theologically. At least, I can see no danger for the Protestant orientation of the World Council.

Q. What is the theological situation in Germany at present? Does Bultmann stand as tall as ever? Will he continue to overshadow Barth?

A. The influence of Barth can yet be felt among our pastors. The influence of Bultmann is still at its peak. Yet one cannot say that the whole German church stands on Bultmann’s side. I am accustomed to viewing things from the overall standpoint, and I would like to look at Bultmann’s influence in a rather larger perspective. In our dialogue with the world we discover a kind of peculiar desire for what is new and unprecedented. Modern art, for instance, discloses a kind of twisted regard for the unprecedented, the unhistorical, the abstract, the non-existent. In the realms of art and literature there is presently a search for something very new. The wish and determination to be different is a great desire in our generation, and this is reflected in Bultmannism—in this entirely unprecedented, unheard of, unhistorical, uncommitted, and demythologized approach. In theology the younger generation desires to start afresh. This intention has occurred before in history but has been overcome every time. Christian thinking is not a sequence of unanchored balloons; all “balloons” must be held fast by the Bible. By means of the true Evangel which we are to preach, a balloon, whenever it wants to drift too far away, will be tugged back by the strings of a biblical foundation. The biblical foundation prevails in every generation, and will prevail in Germany now, too, against all new experiments. Throughout history and from the perspective of the continuity of the Christian movement the Word of God has always had the coercive power to tie down whatever popular balloons fly into the superspace of unreality—as Bultmannism tends to do; these balloons go out of bounds, and only the Word of God remains to anchor the human being to the realities of life.

Q. What evidences are there in Germany today of a new power of the Word of God in the pulpits and among the theologians?

A. Well, there is the sense of continuity, the sense of fellowship, the sense of responsibility as a minority, the missionary sense of the diaspora, like what developed in the Confessing Church under Hitler.

Q. What was the aim and result of the crusade carried on by the “Confessing Church”? We have been told that the Confessing Church was based on a rediscovery of the confession of the Church, the doctrine of the Reformation, and the recovery of the Bible as the Word of God. What was the practical outcome?

A. The Confessing Church has been the heart of inner resistance to totalitarian systems.

Q. Is the Evangelical Church in Germany—which unites all territorial churches of various confessions, and in whose formation in 1948 you were a leader—based on a confession, on the consensus of the faith, or on national interests? Is it a federation of churches? Or is it a church, and if so, what is its confession?

A. “Resistance to the totalitarian state” does not necessarily imply the organizational unity of the church. Organic unity can never be achieved as a parallel to national unity. In the ecumenical movement, I have always advocated oneness in faith with a wide diversity in order. We do not claim to be an established church having in our hands the whole body of our national unit.

Q. Turning for a moment to the matter of small churches or “free churches,” are not these, in your view, automatically deplored as sects?

A. The free churches are a recognized factor in Germany’s Christian life and work.

Q. As a bishop concerned for the Church’s doctrine in our time, what would you say to ministers of the Gospel around the world?

A. I would say, God did not start speaking to people yesterday. Rather, he has spoken through Christ for the last 2,000 years, and by means of every great witness for Jesus Christ, whether it be Wesley or Wycliffe, Augustine or Francis, Luther or Calvin—all belong to the same Christianity as we do. We must learn from their experiences under God in obeying the living Word. And so church history will come to the fore again to shed light on our present experiences in following the living Christ, and to prod us to demonstrate the living reality of our vocation by sharing the inheritance of our fathers in the faith. Jesus Christ is our only hope against becoming lost in our own self-made ideologies and in our own religious ideas. We must continually be drawn back into the realities of God’s revelation. To continually adhere to the biblical revelation is our only protection against the rationalizations of men, and our only protection against the efforts of modern thinkers to lure us away into human speculation. The living Christ is our only hope against adopting the inhumanity of modern ideologies. The living Christ alone will keep us from over-rating our own strength, will keep us from becoming totalitarian in an earthly fashion. He alone can preserve us as his fellow-laborers—he in whom are all the promises of freedom and he who has proved that he is our help.

Q. What place do you believe the Scriptures to have in the Church?

A. A living Christianity is possible only when one lives in the Bible. The Christian witness is relevant only if it is oriented to the Bible. A Christian worship service is not possible without the testimony to truth provided by the Bible. Personal piety is not possible unless a person lives with the Bible in his hand and in his heart. One cannot be a Christian and relax all day in privacy. One must get new strength daily from God’s Word and try to make real for one’s life and for the life of mankind as a whole what is written in the Bible. The Bible, as the living Word of God, must guide and must re vitalize our hearing. In the modern world we must hear the Word of God ever afresh.

Q. Bishop Dibelius, do you face the future with pessimism or with optimism?

A. Pessimism and optimism are secular terms. The world is doomed to die. There is no hope but the risen Christ. If the moment ever came when I could no longer say, “The Risen Christ is triumphant,” I would resign as bishop.

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