In 1528—only a decade after the posting of the Ninety-five Theses—Erasmus asserted that “the Lutherans seek two things only—wealth and wives (censum et uxorem)” and that to them the Gospel meant “the right to live as they please” (letter of March 20, 1528, to W. Pirkheimer, a fellow humanist). From that day to this Protestants have been suspected of antinomianism, and their Gospel of “salvation by grace through faith, apart from the works of the Law” has again and again been understood as a spiritual insurance policy which removes the fear of hell and allows a man to “live as he pleases.”

Sanctification Twice Desanctified

The claim that Protestantism is essentially antinomian seemed to have an especially strong basis in fact in the nineteenth century. Industrialization and urbanization brought about social evils which were overlooked and rationalized by many professing Protestants. Inevitably a reaction occurred, and in the social-gospel movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries one encounters a textbook illustration of what Hegel called the antithesis. In its fear that Protestantism had become ethically indifferent, the social-gospel movement of Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch identified the Christian message with social ethics. From an apparent justification without sanctification, the pendulum swung to a “sanctification” which swallowed up justification. In their eagerness to bring in the kingdom of God through social action and the amelioration of the ills of the industrial proletariat, the social gospelers generally lost track of the central insight of the Reformation: that the love of Christ must constrain the Christian, and that we can experience and manifest this love only if we have personally come into a saving relationship with the Christ who “first loved us” (1 John 4:19) and gave himself on the cross for us (1 Pet. 2:24).

World War I burst the optimistic bubble of the social gospel; no longer did there seem to be much assurance that human beings had the capacity to establish a sanctified society on earth. But the reductionist biblical criticism with which the social-gospel movement had allied itself did not die as easily. So loud had been the voices of modernism against a perspicuous, fully reliable Scripture that in the most influential Protestant circles it was believed that a return to a propositional biblical ethic could never take place. The result was (and is, for the movement is by no means dead) an existential ethic.

The Protestant existentialists do not of course go to the length of the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre, who says in Existentialism and Human Emotions, “There are no omens in the world.” But when Sartre follows this assertion with the qualification that even if there were omens (as the Christian believes), “I myself choose the meaning they have,” he comes very close to the approach of the contemporary Protestant existentialist. The latter, unable to rely (he thinks) on a biblical revelation which is objectively and eternally definitive in matters ethical, must himself “choose the meaning” of Scripture for his unique existential situation. In practice he agrees with Simone de Beauvoir when she says that man “has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals” (The Ethics of Ambiguity). Right or wrong is never determined absolutely in advance; the Bible is not a source of ethical absolutes—it is rather the record of how believers of former times made ethical decisions in the crises of their experience. What distinguishes the Christian ethic from the non-Christian, in this view? Only the motivation of love. The Christian has experienced God’s love, and so is in a position to bring that love to bear upon the unique existential decisions he faces. This existential approach, at root highly individualistic, has in recent years been given a “group discussion” orientation by such writers as A. T. Rasmussen, who, in his Christian Social Ethics (1956), asserts that existential decision should take place in “the higher community of God,” where “Christian discussion” serves as “the channel through which the Holy Spirit moves in the dialectic or give-and-take of genuine spiritual intercourse to provide ethical guidance.”

The contemporary existential ethic in Protestantism is a second instance of desanctifying sanctification, for it inevitably devolves into ethical relativism. Sartre, when asked advice by a young man who, during World War II, was torn between a desire to join the Free French Forces and a feeling that he should stay in France to take care of his mother, could only say, “You’re free, choose, that is, invent.” Likewise, the Protestant existentialist can never appeal to absolute law; he can only say, “You’re free, choose to love.” But what does this mean in concrete terms? Theoretically it can mean “anything goes”—an antinomianism indeed—for each existential decision is unique and without precedent. Thus the housemother in Tea and Sympathy who committed adultery out of self-giving (agape?) love in order to prove to a student that he was not incapable of heterosexual relationships, cannot be condemned for her decision. As for Rasmussen’s ethic of social existentialism, one can see that it merely compounds the problem on the group level. George Forell has well characterized this approach as “inspiration by bladder control,” for the person who stays longest in the group discussion is frequently the one whose “responsible participation” determines the “contextual and concrete” ethic of the moment. The absence of an eternal ethical standard either in individualistic or in social existentialism totally incapacitates it for promoting Christian holiness.

Answer Of Classical Protestantism

In the Protestantism of the Reformation, antinomianism is excluded on the basis of a clear-cut doctrine of the Law and a carefully worked-out relation between the Law and the Gospel. The Reformers assert, first of all, that no man is saved on the basis of Law. As the Apology of the Augsburg Confession puts it: Lex semper accusat (“The Law always indicts”). Whenever a man puts himself before the standard of the Law—whether God’s eternally revealed Law in the Bible or the standard of Law written on his own heart—he finds that he is condemned. Only the atoning sacrifice of Christ, who perfectly fulfilled the demands of the Law, can save; thus, in the words of the Apostle, “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8, 9).

But God’s Law, as set forth in Scripture, remains valid. Indeed, the Law has three functions (usus): the political (as a restraint for the wicked), the theological (as “a paidagogos to bring us to Christ”—Gal. 3:24), and the didactic (as a guide for the regenerate, or, in Bonhoeffer’s words, “as God’s merciful help in the performance of the works which are commanded”). Few Protestants today dispute the first and second uses of the Law; but what about the third or didactic use? Do Christians, filled with the love of Christ and empowered by His Holy Spirit, need the Law to teach them? Are not the Christian existentialists right that love is enough? Indeed, is it not correct that Luther himself taught only the first two uses of the Law and not the tertius usus legis?

Whether or not the formulation of a didactic use of the Law first appeared in Melanchthon (Helmut Thielicke [Theologische Ethik] and others have eloquently argued for its existence in Luther’s own teaching; cf. Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions), there is no doubt that it became an established doctrine both in Reformation Lutheranism and in Reformation Calvinism. One finds it clearly set out in the Lutheran Formula of Concord (Art. VI) and in Calvin’s Institutes (II, vii, 12 ff.). It is true that for Luther the pedagogic use of the Law was primary, while for Calvin this third or didactic use was the principal one; yet both the Lutheran and the Reformed traditions maintain the threefold conceptualization.

An Essential Doctrine

The Third Use is an essential Christian doctrine for two reasons. First, because love—even the love of Christ—though it serves as the most powerful impetus to ethical action, does not inform the Christian as to the proper content of that action. Nowhere has this been put as well as by the beloved writer of such hymns as “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” and “I Lay My Sins on Jesus”; in his book, God’s Way of Holiness, Horatius Bonar wrote:

But will they tell us what is to regulate service, if not law? Love, they say. This is a pure fallacy. Love is not a rule, but a motive. Love does not tell me what to do; it tells me how to do it. Love constrains me to do the will of the beloved one; but to know what the will is, I must go elsewhere. The law of our God is the will of the beloved one, and were that expression of his will withdrawn, love would be utterly in the dark; it would not know what to do. It might say, I love my Master, and I love his service, and I want to do his bidding, but I must know the rules of his house, that I may know how to serve him. Love without law to guide its impulses would be the parent of will-worship and confusion, as surely as terror and self-righteousness, unless upon the supposition of an inward miraculous illumination, as an equivalent for law. Love goes to the law to learn the divine will, and love delights in the law, as the exponent of that will; and he who says that a believing man has nothing more to do with law, save to shun it as an old enemy, might as well say that he has nothing to do with the will of God. For the divine law and the divine will are substantially one, the former the outward manifestation of the latter. And it is “the will of our Father which is in heaven” that we are to do (Matt. 7:21); so proving by loving obedience what is that “good and acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2). Yes, it is “he that doeth the will of God that abideth forever” (1 John 2:17); it is to “the will of God” that we are to live (1 Peter 4:2); “made perfect in every good work to do his will” (Heb. 13:21); and “fruitfulness in every good work,” springs from being “filled with the knowledge of his will” (Col. 1:9, 10).

Secondly, the doctrine of the Third Use is an essential preservative for the entire doctrine of sanctification. The Third Use claims that as a result of justification, it is a nomological fact that “if any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). A man in Christ has received a new spirit—the Spirit of the living God—and therefore his relation to the Law is changed. True, in this life he will always remain a sinner (1 John 1:8), and therefore the Law will always accuse him, but now he sees the biblical Law in another light—as the manifestation of God’s loving will. Now he can say with the psalmist: “I delight in Thy Law” and “O how I love Thy Law!” (Ps. 119; cf. Ps. 1 and Ps. 19). Only by taking the Third Use of the Law—the “law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2)—seriously do we take regeneration seriously; and only when we come to love God’s revealed Law has sanctification become a reality in our lives. Ludwig Ihmels made a sound confession of faith when he wrote in Die Religionswissen-schaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen: “I am convinced as was Luther that the Gospel can only be understood where the Law has done its work in men. And I am equally convinced that just the humble Christian, however much he desires to live in enlarging measure in the spirit, would never wish to do without the holy discipline of the tertius usus legis.” The answer to antionomianism, social-gospel legalism, and existential relativism lies not only in the proper distinction between Law and Gospel, as C. F. W. Walther so effectively stressed, but also in the proper harmony of Law and Gospel, as set forth in the classic doctrine of the Third Use of the Law.

END

WE QUOTE:

RELIGION IN AMERICA—We see great increases in religious attendance, increases in the treasuries of religious organizations—but do we find the power, the manifestation of God’s will in the lives of our people?… Nothing in our Judeo-Christian faiths tells us that we are to isolate God into a little compartment.… Jesus Christ himself went out where the people lived and walked, where the people worked and played.… The apostles stood in the market places of that day and performed their tasks and enunciated their gospel.… They may be the real need of America … not the perfunctory following of a faith, but the performance of that faith within the daily walk, seven days a week, not one.… We have been caught up in American life, in my opinion, by words, words, words. We sometimes talk a problem to death. You know the old saying, “Anytime three Americans get together they elect officers”—we are so organization minded! But the words of our faith must take meaning and become rooted in action.—Governor MARK HATFIELD of Oregon to the Fourteenth Anniversary Dinner of “Religion in American Life.”

It has been shrewdly said that true greatness grows. It not only endures, but actually increases. The stature of those whose greatness springs from goodness (as the highest always does) is enhanced as the years go by, and succeeding generations recognize more and more of significance in their character and influence. This is a principle clearly distinguishable in the case of those whom God has chosen to be lights of the world in their several generations. “The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov. 4:18). It is so for him, as that Scripture suggests, but where greatness is allied to righteousness it seems as if that illumination is conveyed to after-ages.

Certainly this has happened with John Wesley. He has always been known as an outstanding figure in the history of the Christian church. But his stock improves as the march of time takes us further from his century, and it can be said that never was he more appreciated than today. We are beginning to realize the measure of his greatness. The judgment of Augustine Birrell that he was “the greatest force of the eighteenth century” is widely accepted. A recent editorial in The Times Literary Supplement has reaffirmed this conviction. “No historian can miss the immense raising of the nation’s spiritual temper by Wesley in his own movement and through its effects in the Church of England. When we review the nineteenth century we find the evils which we criticize in our own, sometimes in worse shapes, but we see a high seriousness and far less confusion of mind. The recovery of the national mind and character started with Wesley.”

This acclaim is not confined to Great Britain, of course. Wesley’s fame is universal. In the language of Gladstone, his “life and acts have taken their place in the religious history not only of England, but of Christendom.” It is from this broad standpoint that Professor Martin Schmidt has penned the latest biography. He sees in Wesley a man who lived and acted as an ecumenical Christian. He regards him as belonging to the whole of Christendom, since the last of the major ecclesiastical organizations to have come into being in the development of Christianity originated with him.

Amidst this deepening volume of applause, we must not overlook the fact that Wesley became the man he is now hailed as being through the intervention of God. No doubt many of his qualities already lay hidden within his personality, but it was only at the touch of the Spirit that they sprang to life and received their necessary integration. All that Wesley was and did can be traced back to a transforming experience on a never-to-be-forgotten day. If the Damascus road explains Paul the Apostle, if the Milanese garden accounts for Augustine of Hippo, if the Black Tower at Wittenberg gave birth to Martin Luther as the pioneer reformer, then Aldersgate Street, London, produced John Wesley as the world knows him today.

On May 24, 1738, as a young Anglican clergyman in much distress of soul, Wesley went very unwillingly, like Shakespeare to school, to a predominantly Moravian society meeting. There someone (probably William Holland) was reading from Luther’s preface to Romans. “About a quarter before nine,” recorded Wesley in his famous journal, “while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Dr. Henry Bett succeeded in tracing the precise passage from Luther’s introduction to Romans which must have so warmed Wesley’s heart. Here is how it runs: “Wherefore let us conclude that faith alone justifies, and that faith alone fulfills the law. For faith through the merit of Christ obtains the Holy Spirit, which Spirit makes us new hearts, exhilarates, excites and influences our heart, so that it may do those things willingly of love, which the law commands.”

It was the signal contribution of Wesley to the age in which he lived that he set experience in the foreground of Christianity. It is virtually a new term in the theology as it appears in his writings. He restored the element to the primacy it occupies in the Scriptures. “Wesley brought the whole Christian world back to religion as experience,” declares Professor George Croft Cell; “in religion, experience and reality come to the same thing.”

Some Significant Emphases

It must not hastily be supposed, however, that Wesley’s emphasis upon experience amounted to mere subjectivism or that he can rightly be regarded as the precursor of Schleiermacher and his school in this respect. Wesley was too scriptural to fall into such imbalance. His experiential theology was safeguarded at every point from subjectivistic deviation by counteracting features which derived from his own dramatic conversion in Aldersgate Street.

1. Experience was interpreted in terms of a divine-human confrontation. For Wesley, experience stood at the receiving end, so to speak, of God’s sovereign grace. He insisted, as much as Calvin ever did, that the divine will and the divine deed are alone determinative of man’s salvation. God takes the initiative. “It is plain that God begins His work at the heart. God begins His work in man by enabling us to believe in Him. Out of darkness He commands the light to shine.”

It is at the heart that God begins and continues his work, and not in a vacuum. He deals with sinners, and all Wesley means by experience is the reaction produced in the personality when God quickens it through his Spirit. It is his way of describing the new birth leading to the new life. Wesley preached regeneration as unremittingly as Whitefield. “It is the great change which God works in the soul when He brings it into life; when He raises it from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. It is the change wrought in the whole soul by the almighty Spirit of God when it is ‘created anew in Christ Jesus.’ ”

2. Experience was never divorced from the authoritative Word of God. Wesley was homo unius libri. The Bible was his criterion. A thorough study of his doctrine of Scripture has yet to be made, though in differing contexts both Professor G. A. Turner and Dr. H. D. MacDonald have made excursions into this field. Concerning the Scriptures, Wesley wrote: “Every part thereof is worthy of God; and all together are one entire body, wherein is no defect, no excess.” And again: “According to the light we have, we cannot but believe the Scripture is of God; and … [thus] we dare not turn aside from it, to the right hand or to the left.”

It is significant that the Word of God, through the exposition of Romans, was instrumental in Wesley’s conversion. He could conceive of no Christian experience apart from the Bible. As Colin Williams has correctly observed, “in Wesley experience is not the test of truth, but truth the test of experience,” and that truth is equated with the revelation of Scripture.

3. Experience was regarded not as static but as a growth in grace. Determinative and seminal as was the Aldersgate Street conversion in Wesley’s spiritual biography, he refused to fix experience at this single point. Rather he saw it as the bursting of the rock from which the life-giving stream was to flow throughout the remainder of his career. With justification there came assurance, though Wesley recognized that this simultaneity is not apparent in every case. The witness of the Spirit is not always immediately realized. But this phenomenon is a factor of Christian experience, nevertheless, at some point, and normally not far removed, if at all, from conversion.

But for Wesley assurance itself was only a step on the highway of holiness. “Let none ever presume to rest in any supposed testimony of the Spirit, which is separate from the fruit of it.” The major objective was holiness of heart and life, and Wesley made it the main plank in his platform. “This doctrine is the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists; and for the sake of propagating this chiefly He appeared to have raised us up.” Although Wesley left room for a crisis in spiritual experience beyond regeneration in which a more complete consecration allowed a more conscious appropriation of the Spirit, he was careful to insist on the relativity of such expressions. Sanctification is basically a process extending from the moment of new birth to the redemption of the body. “Sanctification begins when we begin to believe,” he said, “and in proportion as our faith increases, our holiness increases also.” But the expansion of faith is itself a work of the Spirit; hence Charles Wesley’s prayer, which is always relevant: “Stretch my faith’s capacity.”

“All that the Wesleys said of permanent value to the human race came out of their evangelical experience,” affirmed Dr. J. E. Rattenbury. “All their distinctive doctrine was discovered in that realm of the Spirit—which had been supernaturally revealed to them in May 1738.” But this vital theology of experience was not disconnected from its essential rootage in the sovereignty of God, the authority of Scripture, and the energizing of the Spirit which has as its goal the reproduction of Christ’s image in the heart. As such it is relevant to our situation today as we seek to steer an evangelical course between the Scylla of synergistic subjectivism and the Charybdis of formalized orthodoxy.

END

Every student of Methodist, and indeed of modern church history, is familiar with the famous passage in which John Wesley describes the striking experience which he underwent on May 24, 1738: “In the evening I went very unwillingly to the society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; … assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death” (Journal, I, 475, 476).

How important was this experience in John Wesley’s spiritual life? Attempts have been made, especially during the present century, to play down its significance. For example, the Belgian Franciscan priest, Father Maximin Piette, in his book John Wesley in the Evolution of Protestantism, says this (p. 306):

This famous conversion, which has been called upon to play so prominent a part in the doctrinal life of the Methodism of the nineteenth century, enjoyed but a very modest role in the founder’s life and in that of his companions. In fact, whether it be considered in its preparation, or be studied in itself and its results, it would seem to have been merely a quite ordinary experience whose effects time was quickly to dull. Had it not been entered in the first extract of the Journal, it is quite possible that Wesley would have entirely forgotten all about it. In any case, subsequent appraisals, made after the lapse of many years, reduce to pitiable proportions the song of praise and victory which first accompanied it.

But concerning this opinion there are two things to be said. First, Wesley himself never had any doubt as to the crucial significance of the Aldersgate experience. For instance, writing to his brother Samuel in October, 1738, he said this:

With regard to my own character, and my doctrine likewise, I shall answer you very plainly. By a Christian I mean one who so believes in Christ as that sin hath no more dominion over him; and in this obvious sense of the word I was not a Christian till May 24 last past. For till then sin had the dominion over me, although I fought with it continually; but surely then from that time to this it hath not, such is the free grace of God in Christ. What sins they were which till then reigned over me, and from which by the grace of God I am now free, I am ready to declare on the housetop, if it may be for the glory of God. If you ask by what means I was made free (though not perfect, neither infallibly sure of my perseverance) I answer “by faith in Christ by such a sort or degree of faith as I had not till that day” (Letters, I, 262, 263).

Seven years later, when, so to speak, the emotional dust had settled and Wesley could view the matter dispassionately, he said this to a correspondent who has been identified as Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury:

It is true that from May 24, 1738, wherever I was desired to preach, salvation by faith was my only theme.… And it is equally true that it was for preaching the love of God and man that several of the clergy forbade me their pulpits before that time, before May 24, before I either preached or knew salvation by faith (Letters, II, 65).

Second, most evangelically-minded students of Wesley’s life have accorded to this Aldersgate experience a place of equally high importance in Wesley’s spiritual development. For example, the Englishman Henry Bett says:

Whatever you call the experience of 1738, it was that which made Wesley the man he was and enabled him to do the work he did. It really does not matter whether you call it his conversion or not. On any and every possible interpretation of it, it was a spiritual event that gave Wesley quite a new sort of religious experience, with an assurance and a power and a peace and a joy he had never known before, and it was this change which made him into the Apostle of England. Apart from it he might have been an eighteenth century clergyman of the best type, with a perfectly sincere religion of a rather formal, ecclesiastical and intolerant kind; but he would never have been the man who led the Evangelical Revival (The Spirit of Methodism, p. 35).

And the American W. R. Cannon agrees:

If conversion be defined in the sense in which Wesley understood and defined it—God’s own act in which a man is turned away from his former self, made to pass from darkness into light, delivered from the power of Satan unto God, made over in mind and spirit—then the experience at Aldersgate Street … must stand without dispute as the date of Wesley’s conversion (The Theology of John Wesley, pp. 67, 68).

But exactly what was the nature of this Aldersgate experience? Dr. Umphrey Lee contends that “attempts to interpret that experience as an evangelical conversion which transformed Wesley from a sinner to a saint, or from a naturalistic humanist to a Christian, are in contradiction to Wesley’s own judgment and misreadings of the facts” (John Wesley and Modern Religion, pp. 101, 102). Certainly there can be no doubt that Wesley had been devoutly religious, at least since 1725. He not only had become an ordained clergyman of the Church of England but also had lived a life which was in many ways exemplary in devotional practice. For example, at Oxford University he was a member of the so-called Holy Club, whose practices included regular attendance at public worship and weekly partaking of the Lord’s Supper, regular meetings for prayer and Bible study, visitation of the sick and prisoners, and the organization of classes for poor children. And in 1735 he had volunteered to go out to Georgia as a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. What difference, then, did Aldersgate make to Wesley’s spiritual life? Dr. Maldwyn Edwards gives this answer:

Despite the exceptional quality of his Christian living he did not (before this event) know peace of mind or release of spirit. Consequently he had neither a sense of acceptance with God, nor a sense of power. Upon his conversion, however, he had deliverance and assurance and strength. He expressed it in his own words as he ruminated on his conversion experience. “Herein I found where the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea fighting, with all my might under the law, as well as under grace. But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered: now I am always conqueror” (Journal, I, 477) (The Astonishing Youth, pp. 81, 82).

What Edwards says is undoubtedly true. But perhaps a more intelligible explanation is this: whereas before Aldersgate Wesley had known God only at secondhand, now he knew him at firsthand, in personal encounter and living experience. What had hitherto been a matter of intellectual belief now became a living reality, renewing Wesley in his inmost being and giving him both an assurance and a power which hitherto he had lacked. This helps to explain Wesley’s own description of this experience, namely, that he had passed from the state of a slave and a servant to that of a son. Bishop Francis J. McConnell rightly says that “this is the heart of it all, and this is the heart of the Gospel” (John Wesley, p. 63). This kindling and renewing experience Wesley simply could not keep to himself: he had to tell it abroad far and wide so that as many others as possible might be persuaded to enjoy it for themselves. Hence the great missionary crusades which Wesley conducted for the rest of his life, which changed the face of England religiously and founded the great Methodist Church. So the secular historian W. E. H. Lecky is not exaggerating when he says that “the scene which took place at that humble meeting in Aldersgate Street forms an epoch in English history” (England in the 18th Century, II, 558).

END

Sydney Smith, canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral, did not like Methodists. A few months before he died in 1845 he said: “I feel so weak both in body and mind that I verily believe, if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength or energy enough to slide it into a Dissenter.” Precisely 100 years later, I was present when another Church of England clergyman (the only chaplain in the area) refused Communion to two young RAF men on active service in North Africa—because both were “Dissenters.” The Church of England still discourages its members from taking Communion in a Methodist chapel, allows Methodists to communicate in parish churches only in exceptional circumstances, and insists on reordaining Methodist ministers who enter its ranks.

All that will be changed and a 224-year-old division healed if the two churches implement the proposals made in a report published jointly by the Church Information Office and the Epworth Press (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, March 15). Acceptance of the proposals in principle will commit both churches ultimately to full organic union. Until 1965 the question stands open: “if any man can shew just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.” The four distinguished Methodists who entered the minority report have already spoken, pointed up the tensions, and supplied a basis for discussion. I mention only three of the points they have raised.

1. Scripture and Tradition. It is ecumenically fashionable at present to talk about a revival of biblical theology in the church of Rome, and about an increasing realization by Protestants that the Bible can be understood only in the context of the Church’s life, i.e., within Tradition. Because these two streams have come together, we have the basis for true ecumenical dialogue. This is plausible if you say it quickly without defining terms, and a similar criticism is made of the current report which, says the Methodist minority, does not sufficiently acknowledge Scripture’s preeminent place over Tradition. We children of the Reformation tend too facilely to reject Tradition and all its works.

The souls of now two thousand years

Have laid up here their thoughts and fears

And all the earnings of their pain—

Ah, yet consider it again!

But the Anglicans and Methodist majority do not stop at showing the value of Tradition—they are at great pains to defend it, and one must ask why this is necessary. As Principal Rainy put it: “The Church of Christ has no liberty to become the slave even of its own history.” This report is a perilous guide in that it tries to subordinate both Scripture and Tradition to “the living Word of God.”

2. Episcopacy. Anglicans are asking Methodists to assent to a version of the “historic episcopate” which has no New Testament warrant and is acceptable only to the Anglican three per cent of Christendom. Some seventy years ago Bishop J. C. Ryle of Liverpool said: “We never will admit that the acts and doings and deliverances of any Bishops, however numerous … are to be received as infallible.”

3. Ordination. In the Service of Reconciliation proposed by the report, there is episcopal laying on of hands, and a form of words employed remarkably similar to that used in the ordination of Anglican clergy. The Methodist minority sees reordination in this rite, a view confirmed by the Church Times: “We shall be surprised if the rite here proposed is not found to contain all the essentials of Catholic order.” Thereafter the declaration of the absolution and remission of sins is to be regarded as “part of the priestly and ministerial office.” The report denies that this is a rejection of a Methodist’s previous ministry, and points out that Methodists later in the service lay hands on Anglicans. Lady Playfair, in the London Daily Telegraph, wrote succinctly: “Anglicans, by laying on of hands, believe themselves to be conferring an indelible sacramental mark by their part of the ceremony, while (presumably) the laying on of hands by the Methodists can do no harm if it can do no good. Only a very devious-minded Christian will be able to find edification in such a scene.”

Apart from the astonishing omission from the report of any systematic discussion of the nature of the Church, the other major problem highlighted is the “established” nature of the Church of England. Bishops are appointed by the State (twenty-four of them are members of the House of Lords), which has also the oversight of matters of doctrine and worship. Many Anglicans down the centuries have warmly approved this arrangement, and the Victorian Dean Stanley asserted explicitly that “the religious expression of the community should be controlled and guided by the State.” The less traditional Sydney Smith was, indeed, regarded as living up to his reputation when he said: “If experience has taught us anything, it is the absurdity of controlling men’s notions of eternity by acts of Parliament.” Contemporary evangelicals, who might have been expected to agree with this, are apprehensive lest the powerful High Church party use the Methodists as a bargaining point to obtain freedom from parliamentary control in order to raise the ceiling of the Church.

Church merger reports are peculiarly vulnerable things. In one sense they are not constructed to withstand close scrutiny, calling as they do for compromise. Whenever striking and imaginative variations are played around a familiar theme, the strident cry of heresy is heard in the land, and dark allusions are made about building new boats to founder on old rocks. But this present report is the work of twenty-eight men over six years, and it would be mean and dishonest to condemn it unread, as many did with the Anglican-Presbyterian report in 1958. On the other hand, an exciting document like this might prove to be heady wine and a subtle temptation to rash, unthinking activity. Like moving on when the cloud is still.

A BRUTAL SPORT—The Davey Moore fight is one more illustration that boxing is a brutal sport even under ideal conditions—if it can be called a sport.—GOVERNOR EDMUND “PAT” BROWN of California.

PROTECTING THE TARGET—Moore’s death is a terrible thing, but in this case the public interest can best be served by scientific inquiry, not by the hasty pronouncement of the governor. For a sport so bound up with physical violence, there has been almost criminal lack of controlled, scientific exploration in the area of protecting the target of a fighter’s fists, the human head. Prefight encephalographic examination—which California administers—and a quick look by even the most competent referee during the heat of a championship fight obviously are only part of the answer. If boxing is to survive, its supervisors need to know a lot more about it. More—and fast.—Sports Illustrated, April 1, 1963.

SUPERVISION OR ABOLITION?—Boxing is a terribly dangerous trade, as well as a savagely degrading one. Since 1945, Ring Magazine reports 216 boxers have died of ring injuries. Of this number, 14 lost their lives last year.… No human agency has ever succeeded in divorcing boxing from gangster domination, and on the evidence it must be assumed that no one ever will.… The committee [of the New York legislature] has already admitted that even the power and majesty of New York State is not equal to the task of policing the fight racket. Pending now in the legislature is their plea that the Federal Government take over the supervision of boxing. Washington bureaucracy is not the answer to the malodorous fight racket, any more than it was to prohibition. Boxing is squalid animal atavism, and the only sane answer to it lies in its abolition.—RICHARD STARNES, United Features columnist.

LIKE A PREMATURE MINE BLAST—I won the ring’s most coveted title by stopping a man much larger and stronger than I was—one who outweighed me 65 pounds. I blasted him into helplessness by exploding my fast-moving body-weight against him.… Exploding body-weight is the most important weapon in fist-fighting or in boxing. Never forget that!… I was exploding that weight terrifically against the giant. Even before the first round was finished, Willard looked like the victim of a premature mine blast.—JACK DEMPSEY, Championship Fighting, Prentice-Hall, 1950, p. 3.

A SIMPLE CONCUSSION—When one prizefighter hits another in the head, his objective is to render the opponent temporarily unconscious by a simple concussion, which usually leaves no permanent damage. But a hard blow can also bruise the brain, breaking some of its blood vessels and destroying nerve cells. This kind of damage can kill.… A long succession of moderate contusions (bruises), which cause slow, leaky hemorrhages, may permanently damage small parts of the brain, causing the “punch-drunk” state in veteran pugilists.—Time, April 13, 1962.

HOPE AND ASSURANCE—The hope of “big money” is not sufficient reason for such a serious risk; even the assurance of large profits does not give a person the right to risk his soundness of mind and body to probable detriment.—GEORGE C. BERNARD, The Morality of Prizefighting, Catholic University of America Press, 1952, p. 126.

IS FIGHT-WATCHING SINFUL?—Thomas Aquinas knew nothing of professional boxing; but with an unerring knowledge of human nature he pointed out that to take pleasure in the unnecessary sufferings of another man is brutish. Anyone who has watched professional fights will know what Aquinas was talking about. The crowd has come for blood and the knockout. The knockout is the touchdown pass, the home run of boxing. The nearer it is, the more frenzied the howling of the crowd. As Nat Fleischer said simply of the first Patterson-Johansson fight: “The crowd, sensing the kill, went wild.”—RICHARD A. MCCORMICK, S.J., “Is Professional Boxing Immoral?,” Sports Illustrated, November 5, 1962.

WHEN THE CROWD COMES ALIVE—It is nonsense to talk about prize fighting as a test of boxing skills. No crowd was ever brought to its feet screaming and cheering at the sight of two men beautifully dodging and weaving out of each other’s jabs. The time the crowd comes alive is when a man is hit hard over the heart or the head, when his mouthpiece flies out, when blood squirts out of his nose or eyes, when he wobbles under the attack and his pursuer continues to smash at him with pole-axe impact.—NORMAN COUSINS, Saturday Review, November 5, 1962.

THE RANGE OF OPINION—DAVEY MOORE (the day before the fatal fight): “I’m a fighter because I like the sport. It pays well … it hasn’t done me any harm”; New York GOVERNOR NELSON ROCKEFELLER: “A manly sport”; MRS. DAVEY MOORE: “an act of God … that could have happened to anyone”; California Governor EDMUND BROWN: “I will strongly support legislation asking the people of California to outlaw professional boxing in the 1964 election”; POPE JOHN XXIII: “Fistfights … are contrary to natural principles. It is barbaric to put brother against brother. Christ engaged in neither sports nor politics.”

THE THIRST FOR BLOODLETTING—What annoys us about the sporadic, high-minded campaigns to outlaw commercialized boxing is the tendency to hand the blame for its low estate on racketeers, crooked managers, sadistic fighters, callous referees, etc. They are all, in a sense, only the hirelings, the performers of the game. The responsible proprietors are the public. Without their money, their eager collusion in this legalized mayhem, there would be no professional boxing.… It would be a far more encouraging manifestation of developing decency if pro boxing simply died of malnutrition—if it perished because people grew tired of the bloodletting, or ashamed of whatever in their nature draws them to the spectacle for the vicarious thrill.—Chicago Daily News.

WOULD BANNING END IT?—Banning boxing would not end it, any more than prohibition ended drinking. They would fight in barns and cowpastures, on boats in the river and outside the three-mile limit.—Detroit Free Press.

Every true pastor longs to engage in personal counseling. Except in method and in terminology, counseling is far from new. Parts of the Bible report many cases. In midsummer, if only to prevent a slump in attendance, have a brief course of counseling sermons. Why not base them on favorite psalms? As the hymnal of the Hebrew Church this book has about 50 Psalms of Praise—65 of Prayer—five of Teaching—and 30 of Testimony. Some of these from a single person; others, from a throng.

Leading up to a brief series, a sermon, “The Way to Enjoy a Psalm” (1:1). See it as a gift of God to the imagination. Since popular exposition calls for willingness to omit, deal only with the tree and the chaff. First the positive, and then the negative, by contrast. Put in the forefront what the hearer should remember; then, to heighten the effect, the opposite. I. The Tree: The beauty of being right with God—with others—with self. Here stress the singular. Then by contrast, the plural. II. The Chaff: Men with no roots—no fruits—no beauty. During such a sermon a girl nine years young drew a picture of a tree. Some day she will show it to her grandchildren and tell them about God. What if she had not come to church that day, and there learned to enjoy a psalm?

The bulletin should list a number of Testimony Psalms for home reading next week, with the topic (not the text) of the coming sermon. Subject of the brief series: “God’s Remedy for a Broken Heart.” First Sunday in July: “The Bible Remedy for Fear” (27:1). Amid occasions for fear, faith brings Guidance—Deliverance—Victory. Energy once wasted in friction now starts an automobile, keeps it running, lights it after dark, heats it in winter, and may cool it in summer. The God who gives a man such wisdom enables his servant by faith to conquer every fear.

“The Bible Prescription for Anxiety” (37:5–7). Occasions abound; so does God’s grace. By Faith Rely on the Lord—Help the Other Fellow—Enjoy Your Religion—Leave Results with God. That sounds simple! Yes, and it works, if a man trusts God. “The Bible Cure for Despondency” (42:5). For a Case turn to Elijah (1 Kings 19): A man of middle age—Strong—Useful—After a time of strain—So blue that life seems not worth living. The Cause: Trying to get along without God—Thinking about a worn-out body—Nerves all on edge—Apparent failure—Loneliness—Fear. God’s Cure: Rest for the body—Change of scene—Vision of God—Call back to work—Message of hope. Commit to memory this text. Use it when you begin to feel blue. See God!

“The Bible Deliverance from Guilt” (51:1). After this series, people will ask for another. Thank them, and take eleven months to prepare. Subject, much the same, with stress next time on soul security, through trust in God. “The Bible Secret of National Security” (46:1). The psalm seems to have come from 701 B.C., when the siege by Sennacherib was lifted with no loss of life. So trust God to keep our land today.

“The Bible Secret of Personal Security” (91:1). From the two main parts single out a few facts to stress: I. The Meaning (1–8): II. The Secret (9–16). Present only as much as the hearer can take home and remember for life. “The Bible Antidote for Loneliness” (122:1). Here deal with the home church as God’s way of diverting undue attention away from oneself. I. Show Loyalty to the Home Church by Your Presence: Desire—Delight—Devotion. II. Praises: Its Welcome—Worship—Work. III. Prayers: For its Peace—Prosperity—Pastor. By faith live this way; you will find friends both divine and human.

“The Bible Song for Vacation Time” (121:1). “The Traveler’s Psalm,” dear to the heart of David Livingstone. Also, “The Railroader’s Psalm” (v. 8). It all sings about God’s Providence in the life of a believer. Key word: “keep,” or “preserve.” In each main part keep God first: The God of the Waiting Hills—The Sleepless Watch—The Friendly Shade—The Winding Road. It guides at last to the unseen City of God. Thank Him for a faith that leads you to look up and sing about God’s Providence.

Next year the July series may deal with a few other Testimony Psalms, or with ones about Prayer, or else Praise. In a later year, chosen Parables from St. Matthew or St. Luke. No sermons will bring more delight to both pastor and people. They will give thanks for a minister with a heart as well as a head, and with a God-given love of beauty.

Better still, sinners will be saved, one by one, and learn to rejoice in the Gospel that sings. The saints will find more of heaven while still here on earth. When the people of God learn to love the best of the Psalms, they learn to love the God who used the Psalms in preparing for the Advent of Christ.—In the author’s book, Expository Preaching for Today (Abingdon Press, 1953), see in the Index, “Psalms.”

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Ps. 46:1; read vv. 1–11).

Who has not been moved by the “battle song of the Reformation”? In “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” Luther caught up the meaning and message of this psalm. The three parts all sing about our God.

I. Confidence in God (1–3). Why fear anyone or anything if we have God? The Refuge in whom we hide from the storm; the Strength to guarantee stability; the Help present every moment to lift, hearten, and save. Everything else man has claimed as a foundation is on the point of trembling.

Who but God can ward out fear? The believer is not dismayed by things that pursue, for God is his refuge; by things that weaken, for God is his strength; by things that frighten, for God casts out fear. Today Christ affords the basis for a personal trust that gives victory.

II. Relief During a Siege (4–7). A new picture with startling suddenness. Instead of dread and disaster, a dynamic vision of quiet and security. God not only is a source of safety; he supplies refreshing streams that bring new life and hope. God himself is the river of gladness. Quietly and gently streams of his grace flow into needy hearts and bring new life. We can come to this unfailing stream confidently, and find richer blessings than the Psalmist was able to picture, all made possible, by the death of our Saviour.

III. Deliverance Before Dawn (8–11). When day breaks the enemy has gone. Charred chariots, broken spears, ruined arrows! Few of us have looked on such unbelievable destruction. How senseless to struggle against God! He alone has the right to be exalted on earth. Today it is God’s desire that rebellious rulers turn to him and save their people from the horrors that await his foes. God’s ideal is a world peopled with men and women submissive to Christ as King.

The psalm is strangely applicable to our day. The night darkens. Fear grips our hearts. Who will save us? The answer comes that God is here. He knows. He cares. He is waiting to work out his plan in our lives. What a difference his presence ought to make! Through his life-giving river God sustains us, and through us waits to bless others. “The Lord God omnipotent reigneth!”—From Preaching from the Psalms, Harper Brothers, 1948.

SERMONS ABRIDGED BY DR. ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

KYLE M. YATES: God Our Mighty Fortress and

The Gospel from the Psalms

FRANK B. STANGER: The Golden Text of the Deeper Life

COSTEN J. HARRELL: God’s Hand Upon the Helm

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service (Rom. 12:1; read vv. 1–13).

“Boys and girls, if you remember nothing else, remember the Gold Text.” This you often heard in Bible school. Our Golden Text (vv. 1, 2) has to do with the deeper life, the Spirit-filled life. In their setting these verses tell three facts about the deeper life. It has—

I. An Exclusive Relevance to Christians, to “brethren,” who have been born again. They have experienced the mercy of God in forgiveness of sins. Now they also have the mercies of God through intelligent ministering to God. How many sinners are intelligently ministering to God?

II. A Demanding Relationship to your total being. “I beseech you”—here Paul appeals to the will. “By the mercies of God”—here to the emotions. “That ye present your bodies”—put them at the disposal of God, to be used according to his discretion. Here Paul refers to every part of the human person. In response to such total dedication of the self the Holy Spirit enters and becomes our Christian possession.

III. A Personal Rendition in Daily Living. In the Greek “a living sacrifice” is that which gives continuing evidence of being alive. Being filled with the Spirit is an inner experience; it is also a growing, developing life, with evidences of the Spirit’s continuing presence: 1. A dedication that is continuing. It is not enough to make it here and now; dedication has to be made again and again.

2. A transformation that is inward (v. 2). “Be not conformed”—not fashioning one’s self by another’s pattern. That would be worldliness: outward change with no corresponding inward transformation, a metamorphosis. 3. A revelation that is practical. To find the will of God for your life, and to do it. That is “good”—it pleases God; “acceptable”—pleasing to other believers; and “perfect”—achieving one’s appointed destiny. What an eternal significance! 4. An evaluation that is realistic. “Not to exceed the bounds of Scripture” in what we think about ourselves. Apart from the grace of God you and I cannot evaluate ourselves aright. 5. A cooperation that is binding. Clergy and laity alike are members one of another. When we realize that we belong to the body of Christ we cooperate at the deepest spiritual level.

Now I feel led to ask you a question. We have been thinking together about our needs today. Can it be that you personally need what we have called the deeper life? If so, here and now present your members a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service.—President of Asbury Theological Seminary, Methodist, Wilmore, Kentucky.

O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so (Ps. 107:1, 2a; read vv. 1–32).

Redemption is the theme. God’s main business has always been redemption. To redeem us men cost him more than anyone can ever know. He did so because he was good, and for this reason we should praise him now. The four pictures that pass before us in the psalm show some of the distresses from which God sets us free.

I. The Lost (4–9). In their distress these lost ones become desperate enough to pray. They need a guide. Unless someone leads them to God, they will never taste the joys of salvation. At once God answers. The very second the SOS sounds from the desert the great arm of the Good Shepherd reaches out to save. With him to lead, their fear fades, hope springs up, the way appears, the city soon is reached. Today the Psalmist whispers that the Father is waiting to hear and to save.

II. The Bound (10–16). Behold a group of persons languishing in prison, with daily suffering and distress. They represent a vast multitude who have fallen into the snares of Satan, and must suffer until rescued by the Redeemer. Some are in bondage because of rebellion against God. That was true of Israel as a nation, and godless living still brings bondage far worse than Babylon could devise. In response to prayer God sets men free from bondage to sin. So we should turn to him now with thanksgiving for salvation.

III. The Afflicted (17–22). Here see persons who by sinful deeds have brought on themselves terrible sickness. They represent an untold host who suffer from sin as earth’s direst disease. Before they die, some use their little remaining strength in crying out to the only Physician who can succor sinsick souls. The Lord heals them. Today Jesus heals all manner of soul-sickness. Our gratitude impels us to thank him, and offer him sacrifices of praise.

IV. The Storm-Tossed (23–32). Behold a group of sailors caught in a storm at sea. They know that they stand face to face with death. Hence they pray to God. Above the shriek of the storm God hears them, and sets them free from their distress. Thus the poet says that God is good to anyone who in distress looks to the Lord for deliverance from peril and death. Thank God for this Gospel from the Psalms!—From Preaching from the Psalms, Harper Brothers, 1948.

The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice (Ps. 97:1a; read vv. 1–12).

The anchor of the soul is a good man’s faith in God, in His unfailing love and righteousness. In a New England church hard by the sea, the fishermen who worship there look up to an anchor. Thus they turn their hearts to God with hope, as “an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.”

I. God Is in Control. The doctrine of divine sovereignty is of immediate and practical concern to every man. One God over all is the ground of the Christian’s hope. His hand is upon the helm. To speak of him as the One who “holds the whole world in his hands” is to acknowledge his magnificence, majesty, and wisdom. The God of discernment and decision, the “living God,” ever present and active in his world. Therefore we ask: What kind of God is he on whom the faithful depend?

II. God Is a Person. So he revealed himself in the long history of his chosen people. In the fullness of time he sent his Son. The central theme of Jesus’ teaching was God. Apart from the fact of a personal God, revelation would be a fairy tale. The Christian faith will admit of nothing less than this: God is a Person, the Everlasting Thou!

III. God Has a Plan. Where there is control, there must be a plan. His plan is no less evident in the world of men than in the wonders of nature. His plan is as extensive as his love. “Through the ages one increasing purpose runs.” At long last through his Son God has made known his purpose. Through the labyrinth of the centuries he purposes to “bring together in one all things in Christ.” In Christ the magnificence of God’s design is made known to us, and in this light we find direction for the decisions of every hour.

IV. God Will Not Be Defeated. We put our confidence in God the Father Almighty. The Christian faith affirms that the universe operates under a “unified command.” We rest in the assurance that things never get beyond the divine control. A sinful race rebels against the Lord, but cannot defeat him. Amid all the ills that sin has wrought, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

“The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.” Because with mind and heart and intuition a Christian believes that God cannot be defeated, the child of God is an incurable optimist. The times are out of joint, but the man of faith does not lose heart. “Alleluia: the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”—From Christian Affirmations, Abingdon Press, 1962.

Rabbi, Why Torture The Pronoun?

The Torah, The Five Books of Moses, A new translation of The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic text (The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1963, 416 pp., $5), is reviewed by Jakob Jocz, Professor of Systematic Theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

With several new translations in recent years and with the New English Bible in the process of completion, it may come as a surprise that the Jewish Publication Society of America should venture upon yet another English translation. There are, however, good reasons for this special Jewish enterprise.

Any Christian translation of the Old Testament, no matter how scholarly, is suspected of Christological overtones. It is also a matter of scholarly pride as stated in the Preface of the 1917 version: “The Jew cannot afford to have his Bible translation prepared for him by others. He cannot have it as a gift, even as he cannot borrow his soul from others.” Furthermore, Jews believe that they have a flair for the Old Testament which is peculiarly their own.

If we may judge from this volume (two more are in preparation: The Prophets and The Hagiographa), the translation is in several respects revolutionary. Whereas the 1917 version was largely modeled upon the idiom of the King James Bible, the present translation is a complete departure from traditional language. Not only is it a new translation but a new rendering in modern terms. In some ways it is also a departure from established theological tradition. A case in point is the Shema which now reads: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deut. 6:4). The text is the locus classicus for the Jewish concept of the Unity of God.

The unevenness of style in the 1917 version was due to the fact that about 23 scholars had a hand in it. The present translation is mainly the rendering by one man, Dr. Harry Orlinsky of Hebrew Union College. His work was scrutinized by an editorial board consisting of two other scholars and three rabbis, with Dr. Solomon Grayzel acting as secretary. The presence of the three rabbis, each representing a section “of organized Jewish religious life,” is to ensure acceptance by the whole Jewish community.

We thus have before us a lucid text in modern English almost free of archaisms. Theological implications have been slurred over. At any rate, this was the intention. The result, however, is not devoid of polemical bias. The effort to avoid Christological allusions is evident. Thus Genesis 3:15 reads: “They shall strike at your head and you shall strike at their heel.” Yet the Hebrew text uses the singular pronoun. The same applies to Numbers 24:17, which reads: “What I see for them is not yet, what I behold will not be soon.…” This is a departure from established tradition. Even the 1917 version reads: “I see him but not now; I behold him, but not nigh.”

In cases where the text is controversial there are appended footnotes leaving it to the reader to make his choice. The name of God as disclosed to Moses in Exodus 3:14 is left untranslated: Eheyeh—Asher—Eheyeh. Consequently we are left with the following: “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, Eheyeh sent me.” The story of the Fall loses much of its deeper meaning by the description of the “tree of knowledge of good and bad.” In this context, “bad” is hardly the opposite of “good.” Here, as elsewhere, the lack of theology is only too apparent. It is a question whether the Bible can be adequately translated without a theological position.

This is an attractively produced book on excellent paper in large, easy-to-read type. The Jewish Publication Society of America deserves to be congratulated on an outstanding achievement.

JACOB JOCZ

Never Dull

Psalms of David, by David A. Redding (Revell, 1963, 174 pp., $3), is reviewed by James D. Robertson, Professor of Preaching, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

The minister of First Presbyterian Church, Glendale, Ohio, uses the searchlight of twenty-three psalms to probe the thoughts and intents of the heart of Everyman, and the result is a vast uneasiness. But this honest inventory of human deviations and foibles is preparatory to the release of that spiritual dynamo that is at the heart of the psalms. If the diagnosis is disturbing, the cure provided is ample. These sermons richly interpret the grace of God as expressed in the psalms, showing its relevance to all sorts and conditions of men. The psalms are presented as prayers—“the prayers of every man, every where, every time; earthbound but heaven-bent, blind, stumbling, feeling his lonely way in the darkness up to God” (xv).

The messages are rich in variety of allusion and aptness of illustration. The style is eminently contemporaneous—curt, direct, often colloquial, and never dull. Many sentences are almost epigrammatic: “Heaven comes in the same breath as death.” “Happiness is a thread hanging in a forest of flashing knives.” Some readers, however, will question the pulpit propriety of frequent expressions like these: “Pharaoh was making God furious, but God kept His sense of humor.” “Castro will say phooey to God once too often.” “Only God can wash behind the years.” Nothing stuffy about this language! It does succeed in calling attention to itself! For its wealth of provocative insight, however, this little book of sermons should be studied by the man who contemplates preaching on the psalms.

JAMES D. ROBERTSON

Too Spiritual

The Meaning and Mystery of the Resurrection, by Thomas S. Kepler (Association, 1963, 188 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Fred L. Fisher, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, California.

If one wants a book that summarizes all the factors which must be considered in a study of the Resurrection, this is such a book. If one wants a book which solves all the problems of the Resurrection stories, he will not find it here. Kepler views the resurrection of Jesus as a real, but bodily, resurrection which has left an indelible impression on religious culture; herein lies its meaning. He finds it impossible to express exactly what happened in the Resurrection; herein lies its mystery.

Many of the New Testament traditions of the Resurrection Kepler views as mythical stories to explain the Christian belief that the same Jesus who walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee has now become the living Lord of the churches. However, Kepler sees in such a view no reason to give up the comfort and assurance that are attached to the reality of the Resurrection. Many Christians will find it difficult to maintain their faith in the meaning and reality of the Resurrection if they must give up the historical reliability of the stories of the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus. Certainly, it would be impossible to fit a theory of the solely spiritual resurrection of Jesus into the theology of Paul, who insisted that both the resurrection of Jesus and that of Christians are bodily resurrections.

A major plus of the book is a good summary of resurrection beliefs in the ancient world and a careful distinction between the Greek theory of the immortality of the soul and the Christian doctrine of resurrection. This book will make you think, but be prepared to cross swords with a skillful antagonist.

FRED L. FISHER

Even Better Than Intended

New Insights Into Scripture: Studying the Revised Standard Version, by J. Carter Swaim (Westminster, 1962, 206 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by C. Ralston Smith, Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITIONS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLE

* The Reality of the Resurrection, by Merrill C. Tenney (Harper 8: Row, $4). The resurrection of Christ is vigorously defended as a hard, unshakable historical reality, and full treatment is given its many facets.

* New Testament Introduction: Hebrews to Revelation, by Donald Guthrie (Inter-Varsity, $4.95). A flowering of conservative scholarship of such excellence that others may measure their efforts by its standard.

* Dictionary of the Bible, edited by James Hastings, Revised Edition by F. C. Grant and H. H. Rowley (Scribner’s, $15). Thoroughly revised by scholarship ranging the theological spectrum as widely as did its original authors fty years ago. Excellent new maps.

The achievement of this book is better than its intention. It can be lifted above its immediate objective (to aid in the study of the RSV) to serve as an encouragement in the reading of the Scriptures in any of the many versions. Conveniently divided into 12 chapters, it might be used as a springboard text for a study group meeting over a year’s time. One might argue with some of the defenses of those areas of translation in the RSV which have caused concern. However, this would be to lose sight of the greater value of the book in encouraging an enthusiastic, humble, confident approach to the Bible as the authoritative Word of God. The style is quite simple and chatty, and one moves with ease through the pages. Many interesting illustrations from life in a pastorate season the teachings. It is helpful to have a Bible at hand for ready reference and understanding of some of the reasoning presented.

C. RALSTON SMITH

To Find A Method

Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology 1910–1931, by T. F. Torrance (Alec R. Allenson [Naperville, Ill.], 1962, 231 pp., $5; SCM Press, 25s.), is reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Torrance’s purpose is not to present a compendium of Barth’s early thought but to trace the course of Barth’s debate with modern theology. This is done in the hope that the superficial interpretations and tendentious criticisms so often leveled at Barth will be waylaid.

Torrance knows Barth’s thought inside out; this is prerequisite to his task of showing how Barth attempted to forge a theological method which would be wholly determined by the nature of its object: God’s revelation of himself in the time and history of Jesus Christ. Barth was convinced that the regnant theological method of the time was determined by man’s own religious ideas and consciousness, by the scientific and philosophical concepts then in vogue; he was equally convinced that this methodology produced a theology of culture and not a theology of the Word of God. Barth, therefore, sought to forge a method which would express a theology untainted by any idealogy. The quest was an agonizing struggle, one that traveled no straight road. Barth had to backtrack and rewrite his Römerbrief and undo his Die Christliche Dogmatik in terms of his Kircheliche Dogmatik. He had to retrace his steps to replace his original dialecticism and subjectivism (in which man was a “participant” in revelation) with an analogical (i.e., Christological) theology in which not man, but Jesus Christ was both the objective and subjective possibility of revelation, and also the Being as well as the Act of God. Further, his earlier analogia entis had to be displaced by an analogia gratiae.

The most decisive turning point in Barth’s struggle stemmed from his study of Anselm, a story told in Barth’s book on Anselm, Fides Quaerens lntellectum. From this point on (1931) Barth moved away from an abstract theology about God and away from a subjectivistic theology of man, toward a theology determined wholly by the consideration that God became man, and thus a theology of the Humanity of God, of Jesus Christ.

How well Barth succeeded in excluding all extraneous influences and in penetrating the reality of revelation to discover all the determinants for a truly Christian theological method will long be debated.

Torrance makes no attempt to evaluate critically Barth’s early thought, except in terms of the inner logic of its own development. Yet his overall estimate is obvious. He places Barth in the ranks of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther. More significantly, he asserts that at the great watershed of modern theology we must choose the basic method either of Barth or of Bultmann, adding that “there is no third alternative.” He writes further, “The way of Barth leads to the establishment of Christianity on its own solid God-given foundations and to the pursuit of theology as a free science in its own right; the way of Bultmann leads to the dissolution of Christianity in secular culture and to the pursuit of theology as an expression of a reactionary, existentialist way of life.” If indeed these are the only two choices, then for the biblical theologian there is but one.

Torrance has brilliantly presented the movements and outcome of Barth’s decades of labor to achieve a theological method befitting the object of its concern. In doing it he has demonstrated his competence to proceed to a critical evaluation of Barth’s method; if he will now do this, he will render another unequaled service.

JAMES DAANE

Crown Of The Orient

Ancient Antioch, by Glanville Downey (Princeton University Press, 1963, 340 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by James L. Kelso, Professor of Old Testament History and Biblical Archaeology, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This book is a condensation of the author’s earlier History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest—the most important book on this key city of the Near East. Antioch vied with Alexander for the honor of being second only to Rome. After the death of Alexander the Great, Antioch transplanted Greek culture into the Levant. Rome also complicated the picture when Pompey captured Syria and Palestine. The early Church had missionary headquarters in Antioch, and later this Church created a Hellenic theological pattern which subsequently came into full bloom in Constantinople—the city which replaced Antioch for both church and state.

Temples and festivals to Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, and Tyche emphasized the Greek nature of the city, and paganism fought Christianity here until the city’s decay in the sixth century. Antioch was full of famous churches and of church leaders, such as Paul, Ignatius, Basil, and Chrysostom. Seleucus Antiochus, Epiphanes, Tigranes, Pompey, Anthony, the Roman emperors, the Persian kings, and Queen Zenobia all contributed to the city’s story. Antioch was a major literary center; the books of its famous writers have been preserved and give a vast amount of detailed information about the city.

Antioch was the military center of the Roman Empire’s defenses against the Persians and the emporium for trade from faraway China and all lands between. Its wealth enabled it even to be lighted at night, and here pleasure and athletics vied with war, business, and religion. Riots were common, and even the Church factions used this technique. The city was often laid low by earthquake and fire; ultimately these two, plus the plague and a Persian sacking of the city, brought about the end of Antioch. Constantinople then became the master city of the Near East. The whole restless Levant with its interest in everything good and evil is excellently portrayed in Antioch, the city famed as the “Fair Crown of the Orient.”

JAMES L. KELSO

How Growth Goes

The Dynamics of Church Growth, by J. Waskom Pickett (Abingdon, 1963, 124 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Frank Bateman Stanger, President, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

Whenever Bishop J. Waskom Pickett speaks or writes it is always imperative for the Christian world to give careful heed. Now retired from the active episcopacy, but not from continuing Kingdom-labors, Bishop Pickett speaks out of a background of a ministry which was fulfilled in the context of Christian missions. He is truly a missionary-statesman, possessing keen insights into the relationship of the Christian faith to all other religions and of the Christian church to the new age being ushered into the world’s history.

As D. T. Niles states in the Foreword, in this volume the author writes concerning the urgency and possibility of Church expansion in the contemporary world.

The book contains seven chapters. Each chapter reveals a basic Christian conviction in the mind and heart of the author. In the opening chapter, “The Case for Rapid Growth,” the author declares his foundational emphasis upon the principle of community in successful evangelism among people of non-Christian cultures. Bishop Pickett has always been a firm believer in “group movements.”

Chapter II, “The Tragedy of Retarded Growth,” portrays the urgency of the present situation for evangelism.

The voice of experience sounds throughout Chapter III, “Assembled Lessons from Many Lands.” The author presents both mistaken missionary assumptions of the past and lessons learned in missionary experience.

No Christian person can afford to bypass the reading of Chapter IV, in which the author declares that Christianity is the most effective weapon against Communism. Even the chapter’s title allures the reader: “How Protestant Churches Obstruct and Counteract Communism.”

The author is convinced of the importance of the ministry of laymen. Chapter V is based on the thesis that “preaching is imperative but not sufficient.”

Chapter VI, “Yesterday’s Best Not Good Enough Today,” is an impassioned call to a new and deepened Christian dedication, both on the part of Christian individuals and in the life and program of the Church.

The closing chapter abounds with Christian optimism. In addition to the mention of nations now predominantly Christian, Sarawak, Korea, and certain African nations are discussed as “potential Christian nations of tomorrow.”

This is a book with a world perspective. Its major values lie in its insights for the advancing work of the Church in its program of world evangelization. But the spiritual principles and procedures discussed are no less relevant for the Christian worker in the local church and for the lay evangelist in the homeland.

FRANK BATEMAN STANGER

According To Philip

The Gospel of Philip, by R. McL. Wilson (Harper & Row, 1963, 198 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Gerald L. Borchert, Associate Professor of New Testament, North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Since the discovery of the codices from Chenoboskion (Nag Hammadi) our knowledge has been greatly augmented with respect to the period following the close of the apostolic age when the Gnostic heresy became a threat to the Church.

Among the 49 Coptic documents which came to light at Chenoboskion three so-called gospels have turned up, viz. The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Truth, and The Gospel of Philip. R. McL. Wilson has finally made available to the English-speaking world a very helpful introduction to the third of these so-called gospels. His translation of Philip seems to be slightly more accurate than the earlier work of Catanzaro-Schenke, and his sectioning or paragraphing of the text (e.g. #4) also seems to be more plausible. In addition to a translation, Wilson has included an excellent commentary, a short introduction, and a brief statement of the theology of The Gospel of Philip.

The author, a New Testament lecturer at St. Andrews, has given most of his attention to the commentary. He compares the ideas in Philip with what we know about Gnosticism from the church fathers and the early non-Christian writers, and he draws a number of helpful parallels to biblical, rabbinic, and other Chenoboskion texts. By means of these comparisons and parallels the commentator supports the view that Philip was probably written late in the second century by a Valentinian Gnostic.

This book will be read primarily by those interested in the field of Gnosticism or early Church history. It is nonetheless written in such a way that the clergyman who has first read R. M. Grant’s commentary on The Gospel of Thomas (The Secret Sayings of Jesus) will find that he is quite at home in this work also.

In general, as a commentary on the Chenoboskion discoveries Wilson’s book marks a decided advance over Kendrick Grobel’s fragmentary work on The Gospel of Truth.

GERALD L. BORCHERT

Moses In Mosaic

Old Testament Theology, Volume I, by Gerhard von Rad (Harper, 1962, 483 pp., $8), is reviewed by Merrill F. Unger, Chairman of the Old Testament Department, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

This brilliantly scholarly work is authored by the well-known professor of theology at Heidelberg University, Gerhard von Rad, and made available in English through the translation from the German by D. M. G. Stalker. Hailed as a pioneering figure in biblical studies, Professor von Rad offers the reader the most thoroughgoing application of form criticism to the pages of the Old Testament. Part One deals with a history of Jahwism and of the sacred institutions of Israel, and Part Two treats the theology of Israel’s historical traditions. There is no doubt that the author’s handling of his material on the basis of his critical presuppositions, his vast learning, and his technical skill, is masterful. Those who delight in a new approach, based upon latest critical theories, will hail the fresh and original manner in which Professor von Rad attempts to present Old Testament theology.

But the results of the author’s researches are certainly perplexing and disappointing to the student who sees the Old Testament as a historically reliable document. To Professor von Rad the Hexateuch (the Pentateuch and Joshua) came into being from a confessional arrangement of different complexes of conflicting and contradictory traditions. The figure of Moses, for example, is mixed up and blurred in these various groups of traditions, later forcing his way into narratives where originally he was a stranger. The best that can be done for Israel’s great lawgiver and type of Christ (cf. Deut. 18:15–18) for those who picture him as the founder of a religion, is that they can only reach back to “very ancient individual traditions which are difficult to reconcile with one another” (p. 14). If this is true of Moses, who figures so prominently in Old Testament theology and who can be traced so minutely as a type of Christ, what happens to the pattern of the rest of Old Testament theology, which is so intimately interwoven with New Testament theology and forms the basis? Brilliant but unsound handling of God’s Word in this manner will have its style and popularity, but will be forsaken when some new critical fad comes into vogue to capture scholarly fancy in Old Testament higher criticism.

MERRILL F. UNGER

Book Briefs

Journeys After Saint Paul, by William R. Cannon (Macmillan, 1963, 276 pp., $4.95). An excursion into history; the author travels every place connected with Paul and gives an on-the-spot description. Good reading.

The Great Promise, by Karl Barth, translated by Hans Freund (Philosophical Library, 1963, 70 pp., $2.75). Bible lectures Barth presented to students during Advent in 1934.

Daniel to Paul, edited by Gaalyahu Cornfeld (Macmillan, 1963, 377 pp., $13.95). A historical critical evaluation, tempered neither by fact nor by responsible scholarship. The kind of interpretation that invites psychoanalysis.

In Time … For Eternity, by G. W. Hoyer and J. P. Kretzmann (Concordia, 1963, 353 pp., $5.95). Sixty-eight sermons on the church year; to be read for their biblical thought and inspiration, not for their style.

Space Age Christianity, edited by Stephen F. Bayne, Jr. (Morehouse-Barlow, 1963, 191 pp., $4.50). An edited account of the lectures and discussions on “Space Age Christianity” which took place at the Seattle World’s Fair. A book of high interest for those who fear that the science of the space age is a threat to the Christian faith.

Sermons to Intellectuals, edited by Franklin H. Littell (Macmillan, 1963, 160 pp., $3.95). Sermons by, and representative of the theologies of, W. S. Coffin, Jr., P. Tillich, H. Thielicke, D. T. Niles, W. Herberg, and eight others. High in quality, they traverse the theological spectrum wide and free.

Job: Defense of Honor, by Roger N. Carstensen (Abingdon, 1963, 158 pp., $3.25). Job’s trials interpreted as a defense of man’s inherent worth and honor. Christian author sees similarities between the Book of Job and Greek drama.

Salute to a Sufferer, by Leslie D. Weatherhead (Abingdon, 1963, 95 pp., $2). Author gives some radically Christian insights and suggestions about human suffering. Written—successfully—for laymen.

George Washington and Religion, by Paul F. Boiler, Jr. (Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, 235 pp., $4.50). Was Washington a Christian? An extended examination concludes that if being a Christian means believing in Christ’s deity, atoning work, and resurrection, then Washington was not, for he was more unitarian than anything else.

The School Question, compiled by Brother Edmond G. Drouin (Catholic University of America, 1963, 261 pp., $7.50). A reference book for the literature that has arisen around the religion-in-public-schools controversy, 1940–1960.

Red China Prisoner, by Sara Perkins (Revell, 1963, 127 pp., $2.50). Firsthand account of the experiences of an American missionary in Old and in Red China. A story of faith versus Communism.

Luther, by Franz Lau, translated by Robert H. Fischer (Westminster, 1963, 178 pp., $3.75). A portrayal of Luther that finds the key to his life in his inmost spiritual struggles.

Visible Unity and Tradition, by Max Thurian, Brother of Taizé (Helicon, 1962, 136 pp., $3.50). The author, one of the three original brothers of the Protestant monastic community of Taizé, considers the already considerable visible unity of the Church, and calls for more.

Dogmatik, by Wolfgang Trillhaas (Alfred Töpelmann [Berlin 30], 1962, 581 pp., 36 German Marks [$9]). A substantial dogmatic work; by a German author who uses but refuses to be bound by theological tradition, and seeks to speak both to the Church and to the world.

Paperbacks

An Educator’s Guide for Preparing Articles for Periodicals, by James W. Carty, Jr. (self-published [order from Box 218, Bethany, W. Va.], 1962, 28 pp., $1). Teacher of journalism gives pointers to teachers on how to write an article that will be published and read. Also excellent for ministers with an urge to write. Its value dwarfs its size and price.

Positive Protestantism, by Hugh T. Kerr (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 108 pp., $1.75). Author sees the essence of Protestantism in a positive, constructive rather than critical affirmation of the Gospel that God was in Christ for man’s redemption. First printed in 1950.

How to Teach the Word of God, by Edwin J. Potts (Harvest Publications [5750 N. Ashland, Chicago 26], 1963, 104 pp., $1.50). Uncomplicated but pertinent short essays to aid the teacher of religious education.

Current Books and Pamphlets (Missionary Research Library [3041 Broadway, New York 27], 1963, 32 pp., $.50). All the new titles added to the Missionary Research Library between July 1 and December 31, 1962. Rules for borrowing books by mail may be had on application.

Reprints

The Birth of the Christian Religion and The Origins of the New Testament, by Alfred Firmin Loisy (University Books, 1962, 413 and 332 pp., $10). The last two great works of Loisy, excommunicated Roman Catholic priest and leader of Catholic modernism, in which he employs critical historical methods to the rise of Christianity.

The English Hymn, by Louis F. Benson (John Knox, 1962, 624 pp., $6.50). Survey of the development and usage of hymns in the worship of English-speaking churches. First printed in 1915.

Paul the Missionary, by William M. Taylor (Baker, 1962, 570 pp., $3.95). A biography of Paul. Evangelical. First printed in 1909.

STRANDED WITH THE BIBLE—“I am starting my adulthood with full knowledge or what I have to do. I wasn’t rescued until I understood, until I realized my sins and decided to make recompense for them.” So said Helen Klaben, adventuresome 21-year-old Brooklyn girl who with a 42-year-old Mormon lay preacher, Ralph Flores, survived seven weeks of sub-zero cold following the crash of their light plane in the Yukon Territory. Said Miss Klaben, who is Jewish: “It was Ralph’s Bible. I read both the Old and New Testaments. I know what I have to do, what my work is, what faith is, faith in God.”

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—A “Canadian Southern Baptist Conference” was organized at Kamloops, British Columbia, reportedly looking toward eventual formation of a Canadian Baptist Convention on a par with U. S. state conventions.

Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod will send 20 observers to the Lutheran World Federation assembly at Helsinki this summer.

Methodist Television, Radio, and Film Commission opened a Hollywood office. Shooting of two new episodes of a children’s television series is already under way. The new office is located near Hollywood and Vine.

New England Fellowship of Evangelicals is launching a program to combat juvenile delinquency. Executive Secretary Tolbert E. McNutt cites a threefold approach to counter delinquency—through social workers, a boys’ town, and parent education.

Lutherans are coming out with a contemporary English version of Martin Luther’s 430-year-old Small Catechism.

Newly released Church of Scotland Year-Book reveals a net loss of 8,663 communicants during 1961, the last year for which comprehensive statistics are available. The yearbook gives the total number of communicants as of the end of 1961 as 1,290,617. Population of Scotland is 5,178,490.

FOREIGN MISSIONS—Nine seafaring missionaries en route to Haiti were reported safe after their 100-foot vessel sank in choppy seas off the coast of Mexico. Leader of the rescued group was the Rev. Howard A. Smith, 51, minister of Calvary Church of the Full Gospel in Wilmington, California.

Presbyterian U. S. Board of World Missions will undertake long-range studies on pastoral care of missionaries and support of mission institutions overseas. The board has cited difficulty in meeting increasing costs.

The Evangelical Church of Laos ordained its first minister last month at a simple ceremony in Luang Prabang. He is the Rev. Moun Douangmala, who has been a Christian believer for some 30 years. The only other minister national in Laos is the Rev. Saly Kounthapanya, who was ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance mission in 1951.

Native New Guineans snapped up the first 15,000 volumes of the Four Gospels printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in pidgin English. An immediate reprint was ordered. Pidgin English is a simple language, based mainly on English, which is used in New Guinea and Papua and is the only common language in an area where hundreds of native dialects are used.

MISCELLANY—Excommunication of deposed Argentine dictator Juan Peron reportedly was lifted by the Roman Catholic Church. Aides of Peron, who took refuge in Spain in January, 1960, say he wrote to Pope John XXIII several months ago, stating he was a repentant and faithful member of the church and desirous of “reconciliation.” They report he was officially absolved in a private ceremony.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer declined an invitation to visit the United States this spring. Lisle M. Ramsey of Religious Heritage of America disclosed Schweitzer’s decision following a trip to the famed medical missionary’s station in Lambarene, Gabon.

Proposed legislation to ease restrictions on Spanish Protestants was treated pessimistically in Ya, the Roman Catholic daily newspaper in Madrid. An article written by Father E. Guerrero, S.J., asked whether an “easy and even cordial getting-along-together spirit [between Catholics and Protestants] may not finally result in the playing down of Catholic requirements and aspirations, ending up in indifferentism.”

Construction of a Christian settlement at Ness Anim in West Galilee was expected to start soon with the rejection by the Israel Parliament’s Interior Committee of demands from Orthodox Jewish groups to halt the project.

The Baha’i International Community submitted an aide-mémoire to the U. N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva asking assistance to obtain release of nine Baha’is sentenced to death and imprisonment in predominantly Moslem Morocco last December. The aide-mémoire called it “a clear case of religious inquisition.”

St. Louis University and Catholic University of Quito, Ecuador, will conduct an exchange of professors and students as well as teaching methods with a $400,000 grant from the U. S. Agency for International Development under the Alliance for Progress.

FBI reports a seven per cent increase in crime during 1962. Crime rates rose to record highs in all areas of the nation. The number of persons under 18 arrested increased by nine per cent.

PERSONALIA—The Rt. Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, disclosed that he was suffering from symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. He canceled all speaking engagements but said he would try to complete his term of office as presiding bishop—until the denomination’s next general convention in 1964.

The Rev. Charles Webster, Jr., was dismissed as Baptist Student Union director at Clemson (South Carolina) College. His ouster was announced following a congregational meeting of the Baptist Church of Clemson. The church finances Baptist student work at the Clemson campus, aided by a state convention appropriation. Webster said he was removed for befriending Harvey Gantt, first Negro to enroll at the school. Several church spokesmen insisted that other than racial issues were involved.

Dr. Markus Barth, son of theologian Karl Barth, appointed professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian).

The Rev. Oscar A. Anderson accepted the presidency of Augsburg College, Minneapolis.

Dr. A. R. Keppel resigned as president of Catawba College (United Church of Christ) to become first executive director of the new Piedmont University Center of North Carolina in Winston-Salem. Keppel was succeeded at Catawba by Dr. Donald C. Dearborn.

Dr. Jack S. Wilkes, Methodist minister and president of the University of Oklahoma City, elected mayor of Oklahoma City.

The Rev. George E. Kempsell, Jr., Protestant Episcopal rector whose outspoken stand against racial discrimination in Scarsdale, New York, attracted wide attention, named rector of St. Michael and All Angels Church in Dallas, Texas.

Bruce A. Brough, former editorial assistant at CHRISTIANITY TODAY, joined the staff of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration periodical.

WORTH QUOTING—“Communism is not a religion, because its dogmas are like shifting sands, or more properly the devil quoting the Bible. It can be compared to addiction much more than to religion or faith.”—John Santo, ex-Communist, in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Deaths

THE RT. REV. A. W. NOEL PORTER, 78, who served as Episcopal bishop of the Sacramento, California, diocese for 24 years; in Palo Alto, California.

DR. LYLE O. BRISTOL, 48, former dean at Eastern Baptist College and Crozier Theological Seminary; in Medford, Massachusetts.

COL. EDWARD P. FELKER, 71, general counsel for Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State; in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

BISHOP KAI JENSEN, 64, who last May became the spiritual head of the Lutheran Diocese of Arhus, Denmark; in Arhus.

Ever since the Cuban crisis last fall, the Kennedy administration has been under fire for the face it presents to the U. S. public. The attack focuses upon how and what the government says about itself. Critics consider the executive branch guilty of what they term “news management”—which can mean anything from release of information strategically timed for political advantage to employment of falsehood as a cold-war weapon.

The controversy turns on ethical issues, although for months nobody seemed interested in asking clergymen for their judgments. And the clergy seemed equally reluctant to offer advice.

Key figure in the controversy is Arthur Sylvester, 61-year-old Pentagon press chief who brashly or forthrightly (depending on one’s point of view) spells out his convictions.

Last fall Sylvester was quoted as saying that news is a weapon the government can and ought to use in the cold war. On December 6, in a speech to the Deadline Club in New York, Sylvester said he had erred in asserting that news is a part of the government’s arsenal. But in reply to a question posed at the close of his address he uttered another line which has become famous (or infamous, again depending on the observer’s viewpoint). He said it is the government’s “right, if necessary, to lie to save itself when it’s going up into a nuclear war.”

How do the clergy react to Sylvester’s stand?

“I disagree,” said Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. “It is never proper to manage news.”

In the case of full-scale war where espionage is involved the circumstances are different, Blake declared. But he ruled out deliberate falsehoods in the present world situation.

“Withholding information should be limited to those cases where its disclosure would be really dangerous,” Blake added.

At a House inquiry last month, Sylvester sought to clarify his statement on the government’s “right to lie.” He said it had been a “shorthand answer” taken out of context. The government does not have a right to lie to the American people, he declared, but it does have a right in a time of extreme crisis to attempt to mislead an enemy. He added that this may provide some “fallout” that misleads the American people in the process.

Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, minister of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, said the nation must trust the judgment of its leaders in times of crisis.

“Later on,” he said, “their judgment may prove wrong. If so, you can turn them out.”

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

TRUTH AND THE CHRUCH

Reluctance of the churches to voice judgment on “news management” ethics may stem partly from the fact that they have yet to put their own house in order.

The problem is not new, but its importance remains. In every century the Christian church has been plagued by management of ecclesiastical news no less than distortion of the “good news.”

Major religious stories of our time have been hampered by an affinity for secrecy and seeming fear of truth by principals involved.

The English-speaking world did not learn of the immense significance of the debate at the Second Vatican Council until the information was leaked surreptitiously to The New Yorker magazine.

Until last month, secrecy also prevailed over deliberations of the Consultation on Church Union, which hopes to bring about a merger of six or more major U. S. denominations (see full report on succeeding pages).

Plenary sessions in Oberlin, Ohio, were finally opened to the press following extensive criticism of the closed-door policy. However, members of the consultation reaffirmed that preliminary discussion of reports would continue to take place in secret.

Dr. Daniel A. Poling, editor of Christian Herald, noted that “national safety makes secrecy imperative on certain occasions, but it is just about established that beyond such there have been occasions—and recent occasions—when Washington has not only sought to mislead other capitals and has succeeded in doing so, but has misled and I believe deceived our allies as well as our own people.”

Poling said his disagreement was not in principle but in the application and abuse of principle.

“Secrecy and deception are bipartisan,” he added. “The present controversy reminds us that the U-2 fiasco with its boldface deception belongs to the Republicans.”

Former Congressman Walter H. Judd, who served as a Congregational medical missionary to China, asserted that it is justifiable and necessary for the government to withhold information during an operation or during the planning stage. He added, however, that deliberate deception is wrong.

“I cannot conceive of a situation in which even the practical benefits, discounting the ethical implications, would outweigh the destruction of confidence in government,” said Judd. “Falsehood damages our government more than any foreign adversary.”

Dr. Gordon H. Clark, noted evangelical scholar, observed:

“That it is legitimate in time of war to deceive the enemy about impending military movements is a point of general agreement. But there is no general agreement that it is right for a government to deceive its citizens in time of peace.”

“The voters,” said Clark, who is a philosophy professor at Butler University, “cannot preserve their freedom and judge the honesty and wisdom of their officials if these officials are evasive or secretive.”

Sylvester, former New Jersey newspaperman, might have more ethical grounds for the government’s “right to lie” than the criticism would indicate. But he seems unconcerned about seeking out those grounds diplomatically.

Few would insist that deception is always evil, regardless of the form it takes and the circumstances (a very common deception is to ward off prowlers by allowing the lights to burn when one is away from home). The ethical question probably focuses upon when deception is justifiable. Some maintain that it should be limited to military warfare. Others contend that the present cold war is as real an international conflict as any military operation ever was, and that deception is therefore justifiable.

Blake Merger Plan And The Scriptures

Cardinal Newman once said: “Living movements do not come of committees.” But in Oberlin, Ohio, the Consultation on Church Union (recognized more readily by the term “Blake-Pike proposal”) was moving ahead surely and steadily as if toward a rebuttal of the cardinal, who once moved from one church to another without benefit of merger.

It was only the second meeting of the consultation—the first took place a year ago in Washington, D. C., and the third is due a year hence in Princeton, New Jersey—and delegates voted this time to ask their respective churches for “authority to enter into the development of a plan of union when and if the Consultation decides that it is appropriate.”

Since the first meeting two church bodies—the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ)—have joined in the talks with the original four—the Methodist, Episcopal, and United Presbyterian churches and the United Church of Christ. No further invitations to other churches to become participants are to be issued in the near future so that the consultation might be kept an “operable working group.” (The Polish National Catholic Church is still to act on an invitation.) But other churches had been invited to send “observer-consultants” to Oberlin, and 16 named representatives, including: the American Baptist Convention, Anglican Church of Canada, Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas, National Baptist Convention of the U.S.A., Inc., Presbyterian Church in the U.S., Reformed Church in America, Religious Society of Friends—Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and the United Church of Canada.

It was reported that a committee of representatives from the educational boards of the six participating denominations had been appointed to consider the feasibility of a common study course on the issues involved in church union.

In resolutions adopted at the closing session, the 54 delegates noted that the purpose of the consultation is to “explore the establishment of a united church” but stressed that they had “no desire to press for a premature decision” on the drafting of a union plan. “Nevertheless we are reminded that our very reason for being is challenged if we allow ourselves indefinitely to discuss unity in general.” Assurance was given that each delegation in securing from its church authority to develop a union plan would not thereby “be then committing itself to participation in the writing of a plan of union if the basis of the Consultation’s proposed plan were later judged unsatisfactory.”

The consultation is to move beyond the “exploration phase” to a plan of union just as soon as its members agree “that we have sufficient theological consensus to make such an effort promising under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

The Oberlin sessions revolved around three topics: “Scripture, Tradition, and the Guardians of Tradition”; “Analysis of Participating Communions”; and “The Worship and Witness of the Church.” Reports on each were adopted. Reporters applauded the opening of business and plenary sessions to the press, in contrast to the Washington meeting a year ago, but were not happy at being barred from discussion groups. During the irenic public sessions, the subject of Scripture and tradition engendered more discussion than any other, wherein a slight Presbyterian-Episcopal tension developed over the elevation of tradition relative to Scripture.

In neoorthodox terminology, the Scriptures are defined in the adopted report (see inset) as witness to God’s revelation but not as revelation themselves. They are declared inspired, but neither the nature nor the extent of the inspiration is delineated.

‘Scripture, Tradition and the Guardians of Tradition’

Here is the complete text of the report of the Consultation on Church Union on “Scripture, Tradition, and the Guardians of Tradition”:

1.

The six churches represented in the Consultation on Church Union recognize and acknowledge that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments have a unique authority.

The Holy Scriptures witness to God’s revelation, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and to man’s response to the divine revelation. They testify to God’s mighty acts of creation and recreation, judgment and mercy; they declare God’s saving purpose; they proclaim the gospel which is the power of God for salvation; they point to the glorious consummation of his Kingdom which has no end. They are the inspired writings which bear witness to the divine deeds in our history by which God has called into being and sustained his people and by which God calls all men to unite in his service and to share in his reconciliation of the world to himself.

Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, the living Lord and Head of the Church, is the center of the Holy Scriptures. In him, the promises of God are fulfilled; to him the apostolic writings bear witness. Because we confess Christ alone (solus Christus), in this way we affirm Scripture alone (sola Scriptura).

The churches represented in this Consultation affirm the Holy Scriptures to be canonical, that is, the norm of their total life, including worship and witness and teaching and mission.

2.

The members of the Consultation are agreed that there is a historic Christian Tradition. Each of our churches inevitably appeals to that Tradition in matters of faith and practice. But the clearer delineation and characterization of that Tradition is a task still to be completed.

The members of the Consultation, however, are aware that our perception of the relation between the Scriptures and Tradition is taking on new forms and new dimensions. A new understanding of Tradition is making it increasingly clear that Tradition cannot simply be equated with “the traditions of men”—teachings and practices which obscure or corrupt rather than express the revelation to which the Scriptures witness. By Tradition we understand the whole life of the Church, ever guided and nourished by the Holy Spirit, and expressed in its worship, witness, way of life, and its order. As such, Tradition includes both the act of delivery by which the good news is made known and transmitted from one generation to another as well as the teachings and practice handed on from one generation to another. Thus the Evangelist writes: “inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered (traditioned) to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also … to write an orderly account for you …” (Luke 1:1–3).

In such a sense, the Christian Tradition antedated the formation of the New Testament canon. The New Testament canon appears not as separate from or opposed to the Christian Tradition but rather as an expression of it. Certainly it is the case that in the Church, Scripture and Tradition are found together.

3.

There are at least three relations between Scripture and Tradition (understood as the whole life of the Church) which deserve consideration. (1) Scripture is itself included in the Tradition. The reading of and listening to the Scriptures in worship and the authority of the Scriptures over the teaching of the Church are essential in the life of the Church. (2) The Scriptures are interpreted in the light of the Tradition. The Church does not set itself above the Scriptures; but the Church reads and listens to the Scriptures as a community of faith. (3) The Scriptures are the supreme guardian and expression of the Tradition. This is what the Church intends by its acknowledgment of a canon of Scriptures.

4

The members of the Consultation are aware that we are confronted not only by Scripture and Tradition (understood as the whole life of the Church) but also by Scripture, Tradition and the traditions—those individual expressions of the Tradition which more or less characterize particular Churches and those customs of the Churches which have arisen in various times and places.

We have no doubt that such traditions must ever be brought under the judgment of the Scriptures. To bring its traditions under the judgment of the Scriptures is an inescapable obligation of the Church.

The Church acknowledges its responsibility for its continuing guardianship of the apostolic testimony to God’s act of reconciliation in Jesus Christ. For that guardianship, the whole Church is responsible. The Scriptures illuminated by the Spirit in the Church are the fundamental guardian as they are the source of new life and light.

The Consultation expects to explore further the role of symbols, such as creeds and confessions, and the role of the ministries which have special responsibilities for guarding the Church’s total life from distortion and corruption.

For further study on this subject we recommend The Christian Tradition and the Unity We Seek by Albert C. Outler (Oxford) and The Old and The New in the Church (Augsburg).

Tradition (with a capital T) is understood to mean something other than “the traditions of men,” which may corrupt revelation. Rather, it is described as “the whole life of the Church, ever guided and nourished by the Holy Spirit, and expressed in its worship, witness, way of life, and its order.” The Scriptures are termed “the supreme guardian and expression of the Tradition.” Episcopal objection to the word “judge” in place of “expression” was sustained.

Presbyterian Cary Weisiger ascertained that any tradition contrary to Scripture was thereby excluded from “Tradition” as defined by the report. A theological conservative, he later told CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “To some of us, the living Tradition of the Church as distinct from the traditions of men which may corrupt or obscure the Word of God is not a familiar concept. It is true that there was a Tradition of the Gospel, an apostolic deposit, which predated any of the New Testament Scriptures. From the Reformed viewpoint, this tradition was enshrined by inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament writings. It is also true that since the New Testament Scriptures were completed, the Holy Spirit has been guiding the Church. Insofar as this guidance is regarded as a Tradition in agreement with the Scriptures and under the judgment of the Scriptures, I recognize and rejoice in all that it signifies. The consensus at Oberlin has certain Scriptural safeguards written into it which should be carefully pondered.”

At close of the sessions, the merger plan’s originator, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., had this to say to CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “Most interesting and important was the consensus on the strong statement of the authority of the Holy Scripture under Jesus Christ, the head of the Church. This was something I didn’t know we could get as strongly stated. So a measure of understandable evangelical fear of this movement is thus far allayed.”

Certain evangelical fears would doubtless arise from the ambiguities of some theological language. The problem was described by Episcopalian Massey H. Shepherd, Jr., of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California, in a background paper prepared for the consultation: “The assertion is constantly made and defended, especially in Protestant circles, that the Scriptures provide a norm for testing the truth and authenticity of worship no less than of doctrine and ethics. This appeal to Biblical authority, however, can be ambiguous. To the fundamentalist, who holds a view of verbal inspiration, it means one thing; to those who accept the modern historical, critical approach to Biblical interpretation, it means another. In some traditions, the interpretation of the ‘truth of the Bible’ is subject to the Church’s magisterium, however that supreme teaching office is institutionalized; in others both Church and Bible are under some prior authority—whether conceived as some indefinable ‘Word of God’ or more precisely spelled out in canons of confessional orthodoxy. And in many of our Churches there are an increasing number who find the norms of Biblical authority by an inductive method of historical inquiry combined with subjective evaluations of inherent rationality and moral integrity. (An essential task for ecumenical discussion is the question of the authority of the Bible, especially among those who reject verbal inspiration, the use of proof texts, and the like, and who accept historical, critical methods, and the concept of ‘progressive revelation.’ The revolution in Biblical studies of the past century makes it impossible to approach the authority of the Scriptures in exactly the same way as did the Protestant Reformers … or the Fathers of the ancient Church.)”

F.F.

The Merger Road

Representatives of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Church formed five new committees last month to develop a plan of union for the two denominations.

The committees were set up by a Joint Commission on Church Union after its members agreed at a meeting in Cleveland that there were no insurmountable obstacles to the proposed merger.

Organized were the Committees of Faith and Ritual, Ministry, Ecclesiastical Program and Organization, Relations Outside the U.S.A., and Institutions and Property.

According to the present schedule for union, the committees are expected to prepare a basis of union for submission to the 1964 Methodist General Conference and the 1966 EUB Church General Conference.

Spring Thaw For Baptists

In Chicago springtime is always welcome. This year its cautious approach provided a setting for a conference on biblical evangelism at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, hopefully standing on the threshold of a springtime of its own.

Founded in 1913 by men concerned over “the tendency of pastors and seminaries to eliminate the Bible as the source of belief and preaching” and over “naïve beliefs in the inevitability of man’s progress,” Northern became a vigorous center of evangelicalism. From its doors the military services claimed more chaplains than from any other Baptist seminary in the country, North or South. Graduates in the pastorate number more than a thousand, those in higher education 200—more than a dozen of whom are college and seminary presidents.

Chicago today boasts more theological students than any other metropolitan center in the world, but Northern’s growth has recently been hindered by aging facilities set in a crime-ridden area. Merger with a sister American Baptist seminary was proposed, which would have meant departure from Chicago. Largely credited with saving the seminary as an independent entity is its popular president, Dr. Benjamin P. Browne, currently president also of the American Baptist Convention. His quiet dynamic was behind a move southwestward within the greater Chicago area. In Oak Brook a two-million-dollar campus is being designed and built by Harry Weese, whose American Embassy in Ghana won international acclaim.

While looking ahead to building completion by next September, the seminary’s conference on evangelism recalled also the biblical imperatives which formed its motivation and dynamism through the years. The conference was widely interpreted as raising the seminary’s standard against the doctrine of universalism, a subject currently agitating the American Baptist Convention. Implicit in addresses and discussions was an evangelical uneasiness over possible universalist severing of the delicate nerve of evangelism. This was coupled with a disapproving frown toward a phenomenon which the seminary’s founding fathers had earlier opposed: “the substitution of social action for evangelical preaching.”

Conference addresses combined heartwarming devotional spirit with militant stress upon the urgency of the evangelistic task. Keynoter was Dr. J. Lester Harnish, pastor of the fast-growing First Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon: “It is when the servant of God is filled with the love of Christ to the point that he is constrained with compassion for the lost that his ministry becomes flaming with an evangel otherwise not known. It is then that the preacher appears not as a captain of a little company of people, not as a petty organizer or denominational leader or executive of an institution or a psychiatric counselor, but as a seeker after souls for Christ’s sake.” Societal and individual problems were referred to the Gospel, “which is adequate for the problems of race, class, family, moral control, lusts of the flesh, self-mastery, and the social, political, ethical headaches of all mankind. These find their answer in Christ.”

Andover-Newton Seminary’s Culbert G. Rutenber, speaking on the doctrine of man in biblical evangelism, pointed to man’s radical sickness, apart from which the Gospel is superfluous. “Man is lost now because of sin, which means that he will be lost in the hereafter. He is thus a fit subject for a power beyond himself to do what he cannot do—this is the will of God in the Gospel.”

Asked by President Browne whether he could harmonize this view with the universalism taught by his Andover-Newton colleague, Nels Ferré, Dr. Rutenber replied, “I do not harmonize my view with his.” He added his conviction that fellowship should not be broken over differences at this point. “If I believed in universalism, it would affect my evangelism. Though some of my friends tell me it does not affect theirs, and I believe them. On the other hand there are some who oppose universalism but who are not doing much about it in the way of evangelism.”

In the background of the conference a controversy shaped around the figure of Jitsuo Morikawa, director of evangelism for the Home Mission Societies of the American Baptist Convention. Many Baptists feel that under his leadership historic Baptist views on evangelism are undergoing change at the official level. They complain of the leaven of Barthian theology and universalism, and of a shift in emphasis from primary concern for individual salvation to preoccupation with economic, political, and social issues.

Pointing to racial segregation and prejudice in the Church, Dr. Morikawa told the convention in 1959: “The Church, as we are, does not merit the right to be heard. And the kind of gospel for which we stand is not worth proclaiming to the world.”

Continuing exchanges are seen in denominational journals. In the American Baptist newsmagazine Crusader, the Rev. A. Scott Hutchison of Philadelphia’s Third Baptist Church declared, “Dr. Morikawa states that man, until his decision for Christ, ‘was like an acquitted prisoner living in prison, unaware of his new freedom.’ The Bible says, ‘He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already’ (John 3:18). Unregenerate man is not a prisoner who has been pardoned, but a prisoner still under sentence!”

Dr. Morikawa replied: “The crux of the theological problem here is whether we understand the good news of the gospel as gloriously unconditional or restrictively conditional.

“One way to frame the Christian message is: ‘If you will respond, God in Jesus Christ will love, accept, forgive and redeem you, but if you do not He will reject and damn you.’

“Another way to proclaim the gospel is: ‘God in Jesus Christ loves you, has redeemed you, has already accepted and forgiven you, therefore respond to Him in joyous gratitude and faith.’

“Both recognize the urgent importance of decision. The one is made out of the threat of being rejected and damned unless you respond. The other is made out of liberty and freedom of joyous gratitude. Both involve repentance. The one is repentance in order to be given the status of a son. The other is repentance of a son who has dishonored his father.”

Editor John C. Slemp of Missions, 159-year-old convention magazine, has challenged the universalist concept that all are saved whether they know it or not: “The new life in Christ is not ours whether we know it or not.… Salvation does not come automatically, with or without our consent. It requires human response—an act of the mind, the heart and the will in joyous surrender, in full commitment, to Christ.”

One observer who has recently traveled among American Baptist churches commented that among pastors the universalist controversy is pressing toward the explosive stage. Only two of the convention’s state executive secretaries are said to favor Dr. Morikawa’s retention as the convention’s evangelism director. Said a Chicago pastor: “Signs indicate the pendulum may be swinging back to a biblical evangelism. But the universalist issue could bring about the biggest split our convention has ever suffered. We cannot afford another exodus like that of the Conservative Baptists.”

As for Northern Seminary, her conference on biblical evangelism had clearly recorded her opposition to universalist tendencies both inside and outside the American Baptist Convention.

F.F

Henrietta C. Mears

Dr. Henrietta C. Mears, 72, whose career was one of the most remarkable of any woman in the field of Christian education, died last month following a heart attack.

During the time she served as Christian education director at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Sunday school enrollment grew from 400 to more than 6,000, largest in the denomination.

In 1933, Dr. Mears founded Gospel Light Publications, non-denominational publishing firm. In 1938 she founded Forest Home Christian Conference Center in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Dr. Mears died in her home in Bel-Air, suburb of Los Angeles. She never married and leaves no close survivors.

Freedom And Order

Father Hans Küng, boldest young reformer in Roman Catholicism, made his American debut last month with a plea for freedom.

The 35-year-old German theologian proposed that his church abolish its index of forbidden books, its advance censorship of religious publications, and all secret inquisitorial proceedings.

His remarks won an ovation from the crowd of 3,000 persons who had come to hear him at Jesuit-maintained Boston College. Among those on the platform were Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Athenagoras of Canada.

He said that in contemporary times the church must avoid “even the appearance of authoritarianism, totalitarianism or absolutism.”

Since the Reformation, Küng declared, Protestants have advocated “freedom in order” while Catholics have stressed “order in freedom.”

“We challenge our Protestant brethren to meet us courageously in working out the defenses of the two concepts,” he added.

Küng was one of the four leading Catholic figures banned from participation in a lecture series at Catholic University this spring. University officials explained they did not want to appear to be taking sides on issues facing the recessed Second Vatican Council.

Role Of The Campus

The Danforth Foundation is launching an exhaustive study of church-related colleges to define their distinctive function in a predominantly secular culture and educational system. The study will run for two or three years.

Mail And The Court

Mail continues to pour into the Supreme Court Building as the U. S. citizenry awaits the court’s decision on the constitutionality of Bible reading and prayer in public schools. The court has been getting as many as 50 letters a day on the topic.

This is an extraordinary amount, according to court spokesmen, who declare that it is quite improper to try to influence the court by ordinary mail. Any citizen may file an argument on any case as amicus curiae—“friend of the court,” but such an argument is considered only when it meets technical specifications (for example, it must be printed, must run at least ten pages, and must be introduced by an attorney who is a member of the Supreme Court bar). The idea is to point out to the court facts and points of law which might be otherwise overlooked. Sheer argumentation is out of order because the judiciary, unlike legislatures, makes decisions on determination of fact and interpretation of law, not on public opinion.

In the two Bible reading-prayer cases argued before the court in February (Murray v. Curlett, Maryland; and Abingdon Township v. Schempp, Pennsylvania), a brief amicus curiae favoring the exercises was filed jointly by the attorneys general of 19 states. Significantly, not a single Christian organization availed itself of the opportunity to file. Six organizations¹American Jewish Committee, whose purpose is “to prevent infraction of civil and religious rights of Jews”; Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, dedicated to protection of freedom of religion; Synagogue Council of America, representing three divisions of Judaism; National Community Relations Advisory Council, a co-ordinating body for national and local Jewish organizations concerned with community relations; American Ethical Union, representing a religion which neither categorically denies nor dogmatically affirms the existence of a Supreme Being; and the American Humanist Association. All but the last group also filed briefs amicus curiae in the 1962 New York Regents’ prayer case. argued against the exercises.

Another religion-in-public-schools case (Chamberlin v. Dade County Board of Public Instruction) has been submitted to the Supreme Court and is awaiting initial action. It appeals a 7–0 decision of the Florida Supreme Court holding Bible reading and Lord’s Prayer recitation constitutional.

In Baltimore, meanwhile, a city judge refused to issue a warrant for assault against a minor charged with heckling one of the principals in the Supreme Court case, 16-year-old William J. Murray III. Murray sought the warrant against another 16-year-old, Brent McCully. Judge Howard L. Aaron ruled that heckling was not a crime.

An Impossible Bridge?

Speaking to biblical scholars at Princeton Theological Seminary last month, Dr. William F. Albright rejected publicly the theory of Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon that the Minoan and Eteocretan dialects of Crete and southern Greece are Semitic (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 15, 1963, p. 575).

“Professor Gordon has performed a real service, pointing out that the Greek world must be considered in Old Testament scholarship,” Albright conceded, but “Gordon’s translation of Linear B … [and] the mixture of biblical Hebrew are impossible.” The remarks came in response to a question following an address by Albright, professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University and a world-renowned Bible scholar and archaeologist.

In the earlier lecture, striking for clarity and breadth of scholarship, Albright pictured present Old Testament biblical scholarship as in a state of suspended animation. The cause, he affirmed, is four dominant fallacies of the last 20 or 30 years of Old Testament research: the theory of late origins, the assumption that the consonantal text of the Pentateuch has not changed since Ezra, the interpretation of the Old Testament from the perspective of philosophical idealism, and the rejection of the possibility of any early Hebrew theology. These errors, Albright believes, are now being refuted by momentous discoveries in the fields of archaeology and linguistics.

In observations of interest to conservative scholars, Albright listed as irrefutable the conclusions that many parts of the Pentateuch are older than 1300 B.C. and that biblical Hebrew was no longer written after the sixth century B.C. These conclusions do much to confirm traditional dating of Old Testament books. Many scholars maintain that some of the Psalms and other parts of the Old Testament were composed centuries after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.

Princeton also played host last month to Heidelberg’s professor of New Testament, Dr. Guenther Bornkamm, currently on world tour. Addressing himself to “The Epistle to the Romans as Paul’s Last Will and Testament” the German scholar rejected efforts to view the epistle as Paul’s anticipatory dealings with the problems of the Roman church. He said that the epistle is correctly understood only as a summary of the Pauline theology, based on the experiences of Paul during his far-reaching missionary activity.

Cuban Tribulation

Some 12,000 Bibles were destroyed by Cuban authorities following a recent seizure, according to an account given Missionary News Service.

The MNS report quotes a Christian correspondent in Havana who said he was writing “to inform you of the actual tribulations that are being suffered in Cuba.” His name was withheld to protect him against reprisal.

“A few days ago a great shipment of Bibles was received from Mexico, England, and Canada,” the correspondent wrote. “The majority of these have already been taken to the national paper factory and there they have been ground up, and taken to be converted into cardboard, to be used in making posters and notices, with which they plan to convert the minds of the Cubans to Communism. So far, 12,000 Bibles have been destroyed.”

Meanwhile, the Cuban government arrested several missionary families, charging they had engaged in anti-government activity. Eleven of the group were subsequently ordered out of the country and flown to Miami.

The Rev. Floyd Woodworth, veteran leader of Assemblies of God missionary work in Cuba, was reported to be confined in a Havana prison as of the end of March. His wife and two children were among those deported.

Several Jehovah’s Witnesses missionaries also were returned to the United States in the same plane.

Among charges leveled at the Assemblies of God personnel was that they had trained counter-revolutionaries at a Bible school in Manacas Las Villas, that they failed to teach Cuban history, and that they refused to fly the Cuban flag (the missionaries said they could not obtain rope).

Biblical Baseball

Venezuela is known for baseball fever. It was hardly surprising that newspapers made a big play over major leaguer Felipe Alou. What astonished fans and reporters alike was that he showed up not only with bat and glove, but with a Bible.

Thus the Spanish-speaking Alou’s visit a few weeks back provoked the same question everywhere:

“Why have you come to Venezuela?”

To which the agile San Francisco Giant outfielder replied that he was there to take part in a Scripture distribution program of the Pocket Testament League. He said he wanted to point out that there is no basic conflict between playing big-league baseball and living a consistent Christian life.

A native of the Dominican Republic, Alou is that country’s first and greatest contribution to the majors.

“When I left my country to come to the States to play baseball,” he said, “a Christian friend gave me a Bible. I carried it with me but did not take seriously the importance and necessity of a definite decision to take the Christ of that Bible as my personal Saviour.”

Alou recalled that during spring training in 1958 he met a pitcher “who knew the Lord, loved him, and wasn’t ashamed to talk about him.”

“I knew he had something that I had heard about but didn’t have for myself. I started to read my Bible and the light began to dawn.

“On my first day in the majors, in a hotel room in San Francisco, I knew a decision had to be made. I opened my Bible and began to read. God did something for me that day. I received Jesus Christ into my heart. My whole life has taken on a new and higher purpose. Christ is first in my life.”

It is a matter of record that Alou had his best season last year. He was one of the top hitters in the National League and led the Giants in batting. During the World Series Alou so impressed Ralph Houk that the New York Yankee manager cited him as one of the best outfielders he had ever seen perform in Yankee Stadium.

At the invitation of PTL, Alou spent eight days in Venezuela. He took part in rallies which drew from 3,000 to 10,000 persons. He held numerous baseball clinics and spoke at several military installations.

The project was part of a five-year effort by PTL to distribute 5,000,000 Scriptures in connection with a continent-wide campaign of preaching missions. Thus far more than a million Scriptures have been handed out in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. A PTL team climaxed the Venezuelan effort last month and is now moving into Bolivia.

Radio Evangelism

Evangelicals in El Salvador are building a new 5,000-watt radio station facility. Transmitters are located on the campus of an Assemblies of God school in the suburbs of San Salvador. Participating in the project are technicians from Latin America Mission, and Central American Mission, as well as personnel from American Baptist and Church of God missions.

The Uniting Church

Merger of Australia’s Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches moved an important step toward reality last month with issuance of a 90-page report by the churches’ joint Commission on Church Union. The merged body would be known as The Uniting Church in Australia and would have a membership of more than 2,000,000.

The 21 members of the commission recommended merger, but were sharply divided on proposals to create bishops and to enter into a concordat with the Church of South India, which has bishops.

A majority recommended that the projected Uniting Church appoint presbyters (a term used in preference to the more general word “minister”), who would be ordained by the laying on of hands by a bishop and at least three other presbyters. It was suggested that presbyters, in turn, could be appointed bishops, who would fulfill a function slightly different from that of bishops in Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and be answerable to a church council. Moreover, the Uniting Church also would move or transfer bishops as it wished.

One-third of the commission—three Presbyterians and four Methodists—recorded themselves opposed to the proposals for a concordat and creation of bishops.

The majority opinion said the role of the Uniting Church with the Church of South India should be “more than the cooperation of separate churches in particular activities, and less than a merger of the two churches.”

It added that such a concordat would hasten unity with the 3,700,000-member Church of England in Australia.

A final vote on merger may still be five years away.

The Devil’S Advocates

Evangelist Eric Hutchings, who held a campaign in Brighton last year, called the town a “center of demon worship throughout the whole of Britain” and opined that “worship of this kind is almost invariably accompanied by sexual malpractices.” Authenticated occurrences of organized Satanism in modern England are comparatively rare, probably because devotees are careful in their choice of time and location and afterwards remove all evidence of macabre goings-on.

This makes all the more surprising a discovery made at the lonely ruined church of St. Mary, Clophill, near John Bunyan’s Bedford. The bones of a 22-year-old surgeon’s wife, who died of smallpox in 1770, were taken from her tomb in the churchyard and arranged symbolically around an iron spike crowned with her skull. Five other graves, all of females, had also been opened. On the inside walls of the tenth-century church there was painted in red at two points a cross within a circle—sometimes regarded as the Mark of the Beast. On what was formerly the church altar were found the remains of what could have been a sacrificial cockerel (the remains of a fox’s meal, say local sceptics). Police called in to investigate reckon that it must have taken six men to remove even one of the heavy stone slabs in the graveyard.

Some have seen in this evidence of a Black Mass, a blasphemous celebration in honor of the devil, usually enacted by an unfrocked priest. This is a police idea, apologetically explains the local rector, the Rev. Lewis Barker, who spent some years in Africa and remains unexcited by the national interest in his parish. As he brought the bones down from the old to the new church about 11 P.M. one Saturday he said, “It’s the first time in my life that I’ve been out late at night with another man’s wife under my arm.”

Pope John XXIII surprised the whole world when on January 25, 1959, he announced the first Ecumenical Council to be called since 1870. After three years of intense preparation, the Second Vatican Council became a reality on October 11, 1962, and for the next eight weeks the eyes of Protestant and Catholic, believer and unbeliever alike, were focused on St. Peter’s Basilica. Universally acknowledged as the most important religious event of the twentieth century to date, this council owes the success of its first session primarily to the personality and concern of one who was at first expected to be little more than an interim pope. Even now, although the council is officially in recess until September 8, various theological documents are being prepared by theological commissions and studied by prelates all over the world in preparation for the second session.

Protestantism has undoubtedly paid more attention to this council than it did to the two others held since the Reformation, Trent (1545–63) and Vatican I (1869–70), both of which were highly significant for Protestants and Protestant-Catholic relations. The reason is obvious. For the first time since the Reformation, the Catholic Church is showing itself to be officially concerned about those millions of Christians outside its jurisdiction. The very presence of a number of Protestant observers in the council congregations is overt evidence that the Twenty-First Ecumenical Council will be of tremendous significance to Protestant Christians everywhere. Now that we are between sessions, it is perhaps apposite to engage in both a backward and a forward look at Vatican II.

What the Council Means

The most important aspect of this council is the fact that the Catholic Church recognizes to some extent that it needs to be brought up to date—an outlook not widely anticipated in some Catholic circles, where talk of a council of reform struck many ears as most surprising and unprecedented. Some American bishops who looked forward to being little more than rubber stamps were also surprised during the council’s first session by the freedom of discussion and the expressed desire for an internal renewal of the church. It was Pope John himself who spoke of an aggiornamento, a need to make the church more relevant to the present age. There are, of course, many areas of belief and practice with which the first session of the council did not deal, but concerning which Protestants are most interested. Such questions as the celibacy of the clergy, the relation of the church to religious freedom, the rules governing mixed marriages, the continuing growth of Mariology, and the future role of the laity in religious affairs are of utmost concern to every Protestant, and, it is hoped, will be items of major importance on the agenda of this fall’s session. One or two definite conclusions can already be made on the basis of discussion during the first session of the council, of course. We may expect to hear English used in the American celebration of the mass. Such a change will mean that the Roman Catholic liturgy will strike many Protestants as much more similar to Anglican and Lutheran rites than it has in the past. Even more important for Protestant theology, if somewhat less spectacular, future formulations of the doctrine of revelation will undoubtedly avoid any rigid division of Scripture and Tradition into two distinct sources. Now that the liberal Cardinal Bea is working with the integralist Cardinal Ottaviani, whose schema attempting to repeat such a strict dichotomy was rejected by a majority of council officials, informed observers expect to see the relationship between Scripture and Tradition spelled out in terms which will be more acceptable to Protestant thought. Some Catholics have even gone so far as to suggest that the rejection of Cardinal Ottaviani’s schema on revelation marks the end of a 400-year Protestant-Catholic cold war. As if to bear out this claim, a few of the council’s schemata have already begun to show an ecumenical preference for biblical rather than controversial scholastic language.

The most significant results of this council, however, are the more intangible ones. Protestants have seen a new openness, flexibility, and charity in the Roman church which they did not anticipate. No longer can the image of a monolithic structure, partly promoted by certain segments within the church itself, be maintained. These conservative segments have pointed with pride to the absolute uniformity of Catholic teaching in the face of the great diversity of Protestant thought; the mentality and even beliefs of the more “progressive” bishops at the council, however, gave a much more varied or “Protestant” picture of Rome to the world, and made it patent that even Rome is not as immune as some would pretend to such changes as the liturgical movement, the biblical revival, and the patristic renaissance which have made deep inroads into the French Catholic Church. It is, in fact, primarily the bishops from northern Europe (France, Germany, Belgium, and Holland) that are changing the stereotype of Catholicism which has existed among Protestants since the Reformation. They are the real agents of that renewal of which Pope John spoke, and they give the promise that a more liberal, more biblical, more “Protestant” element will play a much greater role in future Catholic thought. Among them are the church’s greatest living theologians, Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Hans Küng. It seems likely that the “fresh air” the Pope seeks will come from these men, rather than from the archconservative members within the Roman Curia (the Vatican civil service).

It is most significant that this more progressive segment of the church is largely from northern Europe, the region in which Catholics have perhaps had the most contact with Protestantism. The “dialogue” which has been going on in these countries can be expected to increase in America as a direct result of the council, and to have a direct and dramatic influence on those countries where Protestantism is now experiencing the greatest restrictions. The Protestant monastery at Taizé in France, though not an accurate barometer of Protestant-Catholic dialogue, is one significant example of such European interaction. The recent words of Cardinal Bea (director of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity) on religious liberty, and his forthcoming book, The Unity of Christians, join with Spanish Foreign Minister Castiella’s attempts to guarantee greater religious liberty for Spain’s Protestants to further underline the fact that there are Catholics who sincerely desire to destroy stumblingblocks to a union of Christians against their common enemies, Communism and materialism.

One of the prickliest problems likely to come up when the second session of the council opens next September is one which the 1870 Vatican Council never handled, namely, the authority of bishops. Many feel that if invading Italian troops had not unceremoniously terminated Vatican I, the doctrine of infallibility would have been extended to include bishops in council as well as the pope. Writers on the 1962 council often speak of the “renewal of the episcopate”; whether such a renewal will involve a broadening or a redefining of the whole concept of infallibility (as in the case of biblical infallibility) to make it somewhat more palatable and acceptable to Eastern Orthodoxy and to Protestantism is the big issue, of course. One often has the impression that growth and development takes place within the unchangeable Rome primarily because theologians do pour new meaning into ancient papal encyclicals. It is hard for a Protestant, for example, to feel that Pius X, who condemned Modernism in 1907, would approve of some of the developments in Catholic biblical studies today. Nor is it likely that Pius XI, who condemned the Protestant ecumenical movement in 1928, would approve of current developments in the doctrine of the Church to include Protestants in the “hidden wealth of the Church’s unity.”

It is also significant that the present Pope desires to do away with some of the church’s traditional pomp and ceremony, with the love of bigness and temporal power, which tend to repel many of those outside the Catholic Church who point to the simplicity and humility of the early Church and its Founder. No one can yet say whether the council as a whole will come to a more spiritual and less material view of the Body of Christ as a result of the Pope’s concern; but if it does, Protestants might be justified in inferring that after many decades a more spiritual emphasis in the doctrines of grace and the sacraments might also result in a more conciliatory view of these beliefs, both so crucial to any material progress toward union. If so, of course, Martin Luther’s great solicitude for a more spiritual definition of these two doctrines will have at last been more amply rewarded; such a conclusion is now only idle speculation, it is true, but Protestants should keep their ears open for the possible emergence of such trends on the council floor next September. Already some Catholics are confessing that the Counter-Reformation promulgated a one-sided emphasis on the visible, juridical, and hierarchical at the expense of the invisible and spiritual which the Reformers stressed. Unbridled optimism is ruled out, however, by the fact that as recently as 1943 Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici Corporis emphasized a doctrine of the Church that is at times inimical to a rapprochement with the classical Protestant view.

Also of significance is the changing composition of the council itself. In 1870 Italians made up more than one-third of the official membership of the general congregation, more than all the rest of Europe. Non-Europeans were represented at this council only by Europeans, rather than by national bishops. Vatican II has cut back the preponderance of Italian influence considerably, for today out of over 2,600 prelates from around the world only 313 are Italian. That Italy is still too heavily represented, however, is apparent when it is realized that the rest of Europe has a total of only 415. But the fact that there were participants of every color and race gave a genuinely intercontinental flavor to the council for the first time in history. One of the most urgent demands is that the Curia be likewise internationalized to eliminate the overwhelming percentage of Italian hegemony. Reform of the press information services is also being demanded, with some American Catholics expressing the faint hope that a small number of official reporters will be admitted to future sessions of the council.

What the Council Does Not Mean

At the same time, it should not be forgotten that official statements have been made pointing out what the council does not intend to do. For example, the Pope himself has emphasized the fact that the purpose of the council is not to define new dogmas, nor to pronounce anathemas against doctrinal errors. Rather it is to relate the church and its teachings more closely to the modern world, and to emphasize the pastoral side of the church’s ministry. Thus Protestants are not to expect anything like an approval of the doctrines of the Reformation—although at least one Protestant, the secretary general of the French Reformed Church, has said that the reasons for reformation are even greater today than they were in the sixteenth century. As one studies the council, however, he is almost forced to conclude that if doctrinal changes will not be officially proclaimed at the end of the council, at least the seeds of such changes will have been planted. Nowhere is this more evident than in conciliar discussions of the relation between Scripture and Tradition.

Nor should Protestants assume that the council has brought or will bring about a union of divided Christendom. One Catholic has wisely said that if the union of Protestants and Catholics is ever to take place, it is still centuries away. Another Catholic has acknowledged that many Catholic theologians, especially in the United States, are still apprehensive of the very idea of ecumenical dialogue and union. But the very fact that such an idea is being widely entertained is ample proof that the council has done more than anything else in four and one-half centuries to thaw the icy silence between these blocks of Christians. The Pope’s aim is apparently that the church will so clean house that union will be attractive to those now separated from it. Evangelical Protestants would universally agree that if Rome could become truly biblical, such a union would become theoretically possible. However, they also feel that such a development is not on the horizon of possibility in the immediate future. The main problem is that for most Catholics unity means something quite different than it does for Protestants, an important point which is sometimes forgotten in discussions on unity. To the majority of Catholics reunion involves an acceptance by Protestants of Roman Catholic teaching, whereas Protestants tend to think of reunion as the result of much debate during which spiritual truth would be slowly and painfully constructed on a biblical foundation. One English Catholic theologian said recently, for example, that before union can ever take place Protestants will have to recover in its entirety the doctrine of the change of the elements of communion into the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Yet another Catholic theologian admitted that Catholics are now beginning to realize that they too must change. Objectivity forces us to admit, therefore, that the new Rome seems to promise greater latitude to its own theologians than it has allowed in the past. And who can deny that the presence of over 200,000,000 Protestants within a future united Christian Church would inevitably result in some revolutionary changes in the outlook and belief of the whole Church? If Catholic theologians can pour new meaning into such old ideas as infallibility, who is to say that the day will not come when Protestants and Catholics can come to an essential agreement? In a day when numbers of Catholics are admitting that they are to some extent responsible for the present and past division of the Church, such a day might be nearer than we think.

A third caution to unwarranted optimism, however, is the fact that the archconservatives or hyper-fundamentalists, known in Catholic circles as “integralists,” are still a force of major dimensions in the Catholic Church. The basic attitude of this group is the “preservation of the purity of Catholic doctrine,” which many Catholic writers opposed to this movement suggest amounts to little more than excessive enthusiasm for the thought forms of the nineteenth-century manuals in dogmatic theology. While evangelicals appreciate the importance of orthodoxy and theological conservatism in a way not shared by radical Protestantism, they cannot easily sympathize with a mentality which seems to enshrine the thought of the past and refuse to interact with the developments of the twentieth century. This is the impression which integralist thought, with its elevation of “preservation” to the pinnacle of importance, sometimes leaves with the evangelical reader. The integralist projects an image of rigid refusal to consider any kind of dialogue with Protestantism. He looks equally askance at Reformer and Modernist, and wants no intercourse with either. Italy, Spain, Latin America, and the United States are areas in which integralism appears to be strongest.

Evangelicals and the Dialogue

What stance should the evangelical take to the “fresh air” which the Second Vatican Council has ushered into the Catholic Church? By and large we have not played a significant role to date in any dialogue which has taken place between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Yet we do in fact stand in an ideal position to mediate between radical Protestantism and Catholicism. Although we are Protestant, we uphold essentially the same doctrine of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ as does the Catholic. We are closer to Rome than to the World Council of Churches in our attitude toward the Nicene Creed. And like Roman Catholicism we feel there is a fundamental distinction between truth and error. These are just a few of the central beliefs which Rome and the evangelical have in common with the classical Protestantism of the Reformation.

Regardless of what happens during the second session of the Vatican Council, it seems probable that the world of the future will see a Catholicism which is more biblically oriented and a Protestantism which has a greater concern for doctrinal purity. We may admit that neither group yet shows the effect of such tendencies on its laity to any marked degree; we may even feel some justifiable pride that classical orthodoxy has maintained both emphases. Far more important, however, is that we try to understand what both Roman Catholicism and radical Protestantism are saying, because at times our polemic has been shallow and offensive, reflective of a ghetto mentality we should by now have outgrown. The new approach of the Catholic Church is one with which evangelicals can agree ex animo: know what the other side believes, know what it thinks we believe, know what it thinks we lack, speak a language it can understand, avoid language that will give unnecessary offense, and refuse to engage in bitter polemics. In the current ecumenical atmosphere, we as evangelical Protestants need to be aware that Jesus Christ is challenging us to demonstrate that we as the people of God are the real Body of Christ, the Church invisible, to which both radical Protestant and Roman Catholic are invited to return, not in slavish submission but in believing, apostolic faith.

LESLIE R. KEYLOCK

Research Assistant in Religion

State University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa