THE EDITOR

In New Delhi the November narcotic of bougainvillaea and of fragrant roses swiftly gave way to the hustle and stir of an invading ecumenical Assembly. Among the Christian participants of all races from many lands there was little of the relaxed atmosphere of India, little time for its peaceful trees and its floating white clouds. The World Council of Churches’ Third Assembly was a wheels-within-wheels affair, demanding all the energies of its participants, and replete with bright and dull seasons of its very own.

In the Vigyan Bhavan Hall one spectacle or another deeply moved most of the delegates. In view of Christianity’s fragmented witness in the world, the uniting of churches whose fellowship long had been broken warmed many hearts. Since this global ecumenical gathering was the first of its kind in Asia it helped dispel the prejudice that Christianity is simply a Western religion. Participants lauded Bishop Newbigin’s manifesto, moreover, that only the spirit of missions informing and infusing the ecumenical movement can assure its meaningfulness and permanence. Delegates also realized that a dedicated group of evangelicals, however much a minority, were not running away from their privileges, but in dialogue and discussion took repeated opportunity to press their positions across lines. Nor could anyone escape the positive and evangelistic thrust of certain missionary churches, among them young churches like Indonesia no less than older churches like Brazil. Representatives of the evangelical press who covered the event not only traded impressions but implored God on their knees for some great and glorious turn in assembly affairs.

Approval And Anxiety

Anxiety ran as deep as approval. A fluid, ambiguous concept of authority (despite the WCC Basis) overarched the proceedings. The gap between Christianity and non-Christian religions was frequently underesti-mated, despite affirmation of the Gospel’s uniqueness; spokesmen like Dr. Joseph Sittler refused to declare unambiguously that salvation is impossible outside Jesus Christ. The dynamic enthusiasm of Evanston and Amsterdam (where Karl Barth called for renewal of the Church) was largely gone, and even some Council leaders carried a heavy heart. Neo-liberalism and neo-orthodoxy seemed more and more entrenched as a quasi-official theology; the gulf between the American and the more conservative European theologians remained. Nor was depth of concern matched by precise comprehension and formulation of the Gospel; often the Christian message seemed blurred and its dynamic uncertain. Alongside ecumenical inclusivism an incipient universalism rather commonly embraced all mankind in final redemption. Younger churches, surprised and even shocked at times by the drowning of the simple Gospel of saving grace in a welter of complex terminology, experienced their first doubts about ecumenical aspirations. Sometimes the broad concept of unity gave the Assembly the character of an ecclesiastical United Nations, or at least of an ecumenical-Bund. Smug power structures so fatal to spiritual unity also provoked some delegates to complain that “machine politics at this high level” at times gave them a feeling of being associated with a form of ecumenical Tammany Hall. The so-called “super-church” party wanted more churchly functions assigned to the councils. Ecumenism now offered new prestige and status to staff workers, and attracted personnel on this basis more easily than before. At the same time ecumenical leaders seemed more touchy than ever over internal criticisms.

Evangelical Dilemma

Yet some of these same problems plague evangelicals, too, even in interdenominational associations of their own: power blocs, personal aspiration, and, if not the reduction of classic Christianity, at least the shameful neglect of theology and of an adequate exposition of social ethics within the dimensions of the Gospel. Growing identification of the World Council with the quest for unity, moreover, added to the embarrassment of unaffiliated evangelicals; despite their insistence that the doctrinal consensus they possess is essential to spiritual unity, they remain excessively divided among themselves. Delhi stirred an uneasy conscience over evangelical ecumenism and demanded a new posture. Delegates from lands without an effective alternative insisted: “We evangelicals should enter into every discussion without losing freedom of thought and action.” They pointed to scores of men inside WCC who have “no qualms about historic Christianity” and pleaded for a charitable verdict which assumes their motives are good. Others cautioned: “Get in only if you have something to say and have the men with theological precision and evangelistic drive to say it. Their plea was for more evangelicals to press home the biting relevance of the Bible even if infiltration is the only way to do it. Beyond this expression, however, was a desire by some evangelicals to be identified with “the whole body of Christ”; for them evangelical fragmentation offers less than ecumenical inclusivism. The World Council’s appeal had been widened, some thought, by generalizations in certain fundamentalist literature that condemn ecumenism on bias rather than on critical assessment of principle; by the temptation of some conservative groups to rest their appeal more on what they oppose than on what they champion; by the ready tagging as nonevangelical all who are unaffiliated with some specific organization; and above all, by evangelicals’ failure to lead their own constituencies into deep theological renewal, into serious study of the doctrine of the Church, or into soul-searching concern over evangelical disunity.

Turning Point In Ecumenism

At the same time Delhi proceedings marked a turn in ecumenical destinies that more than ever may discourage evangelical identification with WCC. Admission of four additional Orthodox churches (Russian, 50 million members; Rumanian, 13 million; Bulgarian, 6 million; Polish, 400,000) presaged an end to the predominantly Protestant character of the World Council. Previously the WCC’s largest membership was claimed by The Methodist Church (U.S.A., 10 million). The membership of the Orthodox communions now admitted to the World Council in Delhi (exclusive of previously-associated Orthodox churches) is about twice that of the Protestant member bodies of the National Council of Churches, U.S.A. The strength of the sacramental-ritualistic tendency now prominent in the World Council includes also many Anglo-Catholics, and removes most obstacles to approaching the Roman Catholics. President H. “Pitt” Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary, New York, said at Delhi that there can be no effective world ecumenicity until the Roman Catholics are brought in. In principle, the WCC’s present outreach already sweeps far behind the Reformation and, in fact, points behind the cleft between Eastern and Western Christianity to an ecclesiastical complex evident over 1500 years ago. The Orthodox churches consider themselves the ancient font of ecclesiastical unity and, on the basis of a patriarchal encyclical issued in 1920 “on which the Ecumenical movement of the WCC is based,” credit themselves with giving impetus to modern ecumenism. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church greeted Delhi delegates with this reminder: “Ever since the disagreements with the churches of the Roman Empire at Chalcedon in A.D. 451, the Oriental Orthodox churches—the Armenian, the Coptic, the Ethiopian, the Indian, and the Syrian—have been obliged to tread their own ways to maintain and foster the Orthodox faith in its purity as handed down by the great Fathers.… The question of unity should continue to be studied at the level of the confessional and traditional units.…” After admission to WCC, Patriarch Alexis of Moscow and all Russia said that “the Russian Orthodox Church is prepared to strengthen the Orthodox witness of her Sister-Churches.” The Russian Orthodox are believed to be thinking in terms of influencing and mobilizing the Greek Orthodox.

Eastern Orthodox Churches

ISSUE 7:32

Three Acute Problems

Admission of the Russian Orthodox Church with its 50 million members confronts the WCC with three specific problems: ecclesiastical, political, and evangelistic.

1. Ecclesiastical. The Protestant character of the Anglo-Saxon ecumenical thrust is now influenced or qualified in a major way by the Orthodox sacramen-that Protestant Christianity, with its current lack of a common theology and ecclesiology, will henceforth be increasingly on the defensive within the ecumenical encounter.

2. Political. Admission of the Orthodox churches creates within the WCC an East Zone potential of almost 40 delegates who are directly exposed to Kremlin political pressures. Although Lutheran and Reformed tarian-ritualistic emphasis. This trend has been encouraged by Protestant liberalism, whose disinterest in revealed theology has been accompanied by a yearning for ritual. The great bulk of the Eastern Orthodox churches are now WCC-affiliated, exceptions being the patriarchate of Yugoslavia (Serbia), the Georgian patriarchate in South Russia, and some small churches in scattered lands. The Orthodox churches consider the Third Assembly as their entry into a new period of ecumenical relations, especially in matters of faith and order. Dr. Nikos Nissiotis, assistant director of the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, thinks the era of “ecumenical politeness,” when the Orthodox churches confessed their position only in an apologetic way, is over. He foresees, instead, their aggressive leadership in the exposition of an ideal pattern of ecclesiastical unity. The 17 members of Eastern Orthodox churches (five from the newly admitted Russian Orthodox Church) now comprise the largest single bloc in WCC’s 100-member central committee.

Christian Population Of The World

Main Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica 1960 Book of the Year

Accurate statistics on the present WCC constituency are exasperatingly difficult to get. At the Evanston Assembly that constituency was placed at 170 million. On the eve of the Delhi Assembly the World Council claimed that its “member churches represent approximately 70 per cent of the estimated 315 million Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican Christians in the world,” hence a constituency of 220,500,000. The post-Delhi constituency is sometimes pegged at 300 million, but ecumenical press aides privately concede that a case can be made (on the basis of one authority or another) for a figure ranging between 200 and 315 million. Constituency of the World Evangelical Fellowship is estimated at 25 million. Certainly any charting of the Christian population of the world leaves little doubt churches in Hungary, Poland, and Rumania have been WCC-identified, they have heretofore not been permitted full delegation representation. But at Delhi, where action was taken on the Russian Orthodox Church, all the churches were now permitted to send full delegations. The Orthodox applications by Poland. Rumania, and Hungary came to the World Council after that of Russia. Some leaders in churches that withheld support for admission of the Russian churches insist that more than half of the delegates from East Zone churches are Communist informants. When they left Geneva after their exploratory visit, the Russian delegates took back 1½ tons of WCC literature to duplicate, explaining that they would have to yield one set of materials at the border. In any event, the WCC now includes 16 delegates from Russia, six from Hungary, six from Czechoslovakia, five from Poland, four from Rumania, and one from Bulgaria. Could this development portend a Trojan horse of disaster for WCC? Should the Kremlin seek to embarrass ecumenical Christianity, it could at any time pressure Soviet-zone delegates to withdraw on the edge of a political issue, and thereby presumably split WCC leadership.

The Russian Orthodox delegation had declared in advance that its interest would center primarily in faith and order concerns. Its 32-year-old leader Archbishop Nikodim Rostov heads the office of Foreign Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate; prominence within his church has come so swiftly that many outsiders have questioned Nikodim’s freedom from state influence. The day after the Russian church’s admission, as the Assembly moved to section meetings on unity, service, and witness, Nikodim read a message from Patriarch Alexis of Moscow and All Russia declaring that the preservation and consolidation of world peace “is the basic problem of the times,” that “all Christians must resolutely call upon and induce all leaders of States to agree on universal and complete disarmament, with effective international control.” It was difficult indeed to catalogue this thesis under faith and order. Nor had the Russians given any advance indication that their participation would be wholly limited to doctrinal matters, although historically their church has had little interest in social action. Nikodim took every opportunity to stress publicly the Russian church’s freedom of interference from the state, although he tended to equate religious liberty with confessional freedom.

Of WCC’s 149 churches sending delegates to Delhi, only three voted against admission of the Russian Orthodox; four abstained. Opposition to admitting two Chilean Pentecostal groups was actually stronger than to admitting the Russian Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America and the Hungarian Reformed Churches in America abstained from supporting the Russian Orthodox application. Although the delegates representing the Hungarian refugees in America first wanted to cast a negative vote, they followed the lead of the Russian exiles, who argued that if among the 16 Russian delegates there was only one real believer it would be nobler to abstain than to oppose because of the sufferings of Christians in the Soviet. No debate of the question was permitted. WCC leaders refused to identify the other dissenters. According to Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, the ballots were impounded as soon as the tellers made their reports and nobody, he told the press, knew who voted against the Russian Orthodox. Speculation was that delegates from Korea, Formosa, and possibly the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. had either opposed or abstained. While the Russian Orthodox probably would not immediately be directly represented on the Central Committee, occasional WCC meetings were now virtually sure to be held in Russia. (See editorial, “Was World Council Blackmailed to Admit Russian Churchmen?” p. 21).

Now that the Russian Orthodox were affiliated, the question promptly arose whether WCC any longer possesses the capacity to condemn the evil of communism in depth. Said Evangelist Billy Graham, a Delhi observer, who had to leave the assembly at its midpoint, “Thus far the Assembly has been almost silent on the problem that militant atheistic communism poses for the Church.” Among the dynamisms threatening to engulf the world, neither the non-Christian religions nor secularism nor scientism holds the terror that communism does as an antichrist philosophy. WCC statements concerning communism will be scanned more critically now than ever.

In closed-door sessions of WCC’s International Affairs Committee, the controversial Czech theologian Josef L. Hromádka successfully plugged for a nongovernmental East-West conference to break the nuclear test ban deadlock in the interest of international disarmament. Hromádka last June chaired the Prague All-Christian Peace Conference exploited by Soviet peace propagandists who are strangely silent about Communist class warfare. In its Delhi turnover of six presidents, staunch anti-communist Bishop Otto Dibelius gave way to pacifist-minded Dr. Martin Niemöller, president of the Evangelical Church of Hesse—Nassau in Germany, on the WCC Presidium.

3. Evangelistic. The third problem now acutely faced by WCC concerns evangelism and proselytism. Throughout the Christian centuries, movements that reject the legitimacy of sacramental regeneration and that insist on the need for personal faith in Christ—both the despised “cults” outside medieval Romanism and post-Reformation churches—have viewed sacramentarian churches as an evangelistic and missionary objective. Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, on the other hand, have harassed and repressed evangelical effort. Soon after his church’s admission to WCC, Patriarch Alexis said, in fact, “The Russian Orthodox Church has always seen her sacred duty … in making [this heritage] widely known.… However, the Russian Orthodox Church has never identified this witness with proselytizing or other such non-Christian acts.”

While the Roman church has scorned Protestant proselytizing, it has maintained its own right to proselytize Protestants on the basis that there is no salvation outside the (Roman) church. Protestants, on the other hand, have never maintained that Roman Catholics cannot be true believers. Deference to Romanist views was evident here and there at Delhi. One delegate, for example, argued that Billy Graham’s upcoming evangelistic campaign in Latin America cannot be considered ecumenically successful unless Roman Catholics participate in it.

It is certainly obvious that churches underwriting Christian unity of the ecumenical movement cannot view other member churches as missionary objectives. Within the ecumenical dialogue, participating churches can still witness to each other (at this stage) in an educational program where evangelism is reduced to enlightenment, but to deny the validity of the Christian experience of affiliated constituencies is quite another matter. This ecumenical tolerance, in fact, is what sharpens resentment toward aggressive fundamentalist and evangelical groups. One bishop privately denounced fundamentalist workers in his part of Asia as divisive. “They say that Mohammedans and Buddhists are not Christians. They say I’m unconverted and a false prophet. They insist on a statement of faith.”

Against this background one can understand the drama that surrounded the Delhi entrance into the World Council of the first Pentecostal agencies, namely, the Iglesia Pentecostal de Chile and Mission Iglesia Pentecostal (Chile). On the one hand, WCC leaders rejoiced over “a Pentecostal breakthrough” (only 20,000 members were involved), especially since in the United States this prong of the so-called “third force” is intimately linked to the National Association of Evangelicals. The Chilean Pentecostals had become interested in WCC through the abundance of Church World Service relief supplies during an earthquake disaster. On the other hand, WCC member churches greeted the Pentecostal applications with as many abstentions and with almost three times as many outright rejections (eight) as the Russian Orthodox application (three). The opposition was said to come from the Orthodox type of church that resents aggressive Pentecostal evangelistic methods. (It was interesting that reporters were given this information about opposition to the Pentecostal churches, but were told that no one knows who opposed the Russian Orthodox entry.) Pentecostalists had now to decide whether in good conscience they could or could not continue to evangelize members of the ecumenical body.

An Evangelical Crossroad

Admission of additional sacramental communions which blurred the earlier Protestant character of WCC could hardly brighten the prospect of enlisting many more of the unaffiliated evangelical bodies. The WCC’s failure to enlist such groups remains particularly conspicuous on the American scene, where 24 million Protestants remain outside the National Council of Churches, including large denominations like the Southern Baptists, as well as constituencies of the National Association of Evangelicals and American Council of Churches. Although in 1961 the term “ecumenical” seemed less esoteric than at Evanston and Amsterdam, it still fell far short of being synonymous with the Church universal. Not only had regular contact been lost with the churches in Red China, but new applications for membership scarcely concealed the fact that the thin Latin American participation in World Council affairs also perpetuates a geographical weakness in the movement’s world-wide representations. Through face-to-face conferences and consultations, ecumenical leaders continue to probe the possibility of larger evangelical identification. The joint committee of WCC-IMC had also explored means of gaining closer touch with bodies espousing evangelical views. Special consultations on evangelism are aimed at “providing a place in the Ecumenical Movement where representatives of ‘evangelical’ church groups can make their contribution.” But the fact is that a considerable segment of world Christianity still does not look to the World Council as a desirable instrument.

At Delhi evangelical participants were being driven to ask more deeply than ever before whether the renewal of the Church is being achieved through the present ecumenical process of ecclesiastical elephantiasis. They were left with the vexing question whether the widening Orthodox ecclesiastical trend already so neutralizes the Protestant orientation that they, no less than unaffiliated evangelicals, may soon find the climate of WCC less compatible than will the Roman Catholics. Not a few were disturbed that ecumenical assimilation in many respects now looks more like a pious version of the U. N. than like a recapturing of the essence of New Testament community. The Statesman in Delhi observed that distinguished speakers were “confounding confusion” in their divergent approaches and proposed solutions to “the schismatic disunity of the One United Church.” As some leaders rebuked those who prize their separate traditions, others asked with fresh awareness whether the glory of particular denominational expressions does not lie in their recovery and preservation of Christian truths and practices neglected by the large groups. Yet the vital churches engaged in the Delhi encounter still seemed confident they would not lose their distinctiveness in the expanding sacramental-ritual atmosphere. They still encouraged unaffiliated Protestants to identify themselves in order to augment evangelical influences within; nowhere was discontent so deep as to breed the desire for detachment. Apprehension was evident, however, over Roman Catholicism’s becoming the next ecumenical target. On the one hand, evangelicals have more in common theologically with Rome than with ecumenical inclusivism; but they would have less in common with ecumenical ecclesiology were Rome to join the stream.

No longer was the question that of a new Protestant Reformation. Actually Protestantism in the Reformation sense is a crippled ecumenical force, since WCC presupposes that all adherents legitimately belong to the Church of Christ. Many Protestants supporting the ecumenical effort had in fact done so as a reflex of their revolt against the Reformation heritage. The real question to be faced was whether in the 1960s the Spirit of God might shape another evangelical revival that finds fresh churchly character, not through the monolithic merger of ailing communions, but in the New Testament revelation. In such a fellowship those who insist that Christ is the Living Head of a body of regenerate believers will find their place, no matter what their present connections may be, with one or another twentieth-century organization. If Delhi presented an enlarging sacramentarian-ritualistic picture, did it also pose the possibility of an evangelical realignment?

In Berlin, where this is being written, there met in July the Tenth German Kirchentag (Protestant Congress). A varied and gifted group of speakers dealt with a wide range of topics, some of which have vital interest to us of the American scene. While many of the sessions were devoted to problems of special concern to the German Church, there were notes struck at points which are crucial for Christians, of whatever land and from whatever denomination.

The most pressing question was that of the meaning of the Holy Scriptures in today’s world. In a setting in which science presents its claims with increasing authority (as it does also with us), devout leaders reminded us that God’s Truth cannot be called into question by the partial truths of scientific knowledge. Further, it was emphasized that there is more than one kind of scientific questioning: there is the reverent variety which acts under God’s mandate in Genesis to rule and subdue the earth—and this will include scientific research into the ways of the created world. There is also, it was pointed out, a type of questioning which arrogantly and foolishly asserts that research may be conducted more effectively in disregard of the Lord of all Truth.

It was recognized that the Bible has for its primary purpose not the giving of directive truth in every minute phase of human knowledge, but the affording of a “key of knowledge” in terms of which all things may be understood. This “key of knowledge” was identified as follows: it is the incarnation of the Eternal Son in human flesh, in Jesus of Nazareth. We were reminded that this was not a timeless event, hut one which is identifiable in history and in geography. This Incarnation was an act of love: it was a deed of God which bears its message above the tumult of history.

But how, men will ask, can men and women rise above the doubts which the modern scientific outlook has raised in their minds? Is there anything which signals this act of love in such a form that it can he grasped by the mind which is cluttered up with so much of the debris with which our age has filled the air? In other words, what is the central drive of the Christian Evangel? One of our speakers put his reply into crisp form: As a visible sign of God’s love, the Cross of Jesus Christ stands above all our doubts.

This is a daring thesis: many present in Berlin had relatives in the East Zone of Germany. A few had braved the threats of the Pankow puppet government and had crossed over from the East into West Berlin (now impossible since the building of The Wall, August 13). These persons raised understandable questions: How can God allow the things to happen which occur in the gray world behind the barriers, and how can we know that God’s love is operating now, that it is at work in such events as today unrolls before us?

At such a time, speakers cannot hedge, cannot evade. These are questions upon which hinge matters of life and death. It was heartening to hear men of undoubted stature declare that in Christ God confronted us with his own unimpaired Image; that at the Cross God made an answer so eloquent to man’s most profound problem that the man who will obey that which the Cross demands will find, in the depth of his soul, an answer-through-faith which will carry him through even the worst times.

It is as the bearer of this Message, of the Tidings of such a Redeemer, that the Bible cannot be called in question by “cheap questions or plump polemics.” The voice of history proclaims that God’s Word will erode and outlast all of man’s doubts concerning it. But the really meaningful problem is, to what kind of listener will God make himself audible? Over and over it was emphasized that obedience is the crucial factor, the decisive element. Over and over we were reminded that our Lord expressed the heart of the matter in the words recorded in John 7:17. It is, therefore, only the listening which is conditioned by a bent-upon-obedience which will lead to effective hearing.

Much attention was given to the relationship between biblical faith and a knowledge which seeks to do justice to facts. It was refreshing to hear men who combined a deep Christian faith with a genuine competence in the so-called secular areas of knowledge declare that a “biblical listening to God” does not render careful thought in scientific areas impossible, but rather includes it and gives to it its real dignity. We were reminded, over and over, of that which both Christians and non-Christian thinkers so easily forget, that we all “prophesy in part.”

Moreover, there was held up for close scrutiny the claim of modern science to be completely objective, to operate without any preconceived notions or principles. To the contrary, it was made clear that all thought operates within a framework of assumed suppositions, although these may be deeply concealed. And science itself is prone to forget that “its net of questions” is too small to include all of the realms of reality in which we must live.

Such declarations as these, if taken seriously, would bring down the pride of intellect which marks so much of the activity of our Western world. It is a strange contradiction that men succeed in their attempts at asserting their own self-sufficiency only in losing their real importance. On the other hand, we were assured, as man recognizes the living God (who in reality surrounds us all), the smallest detail of his life and being take on importance. When His voice becomes audible, through the written Word, as it brings us to the Incarnate Word, all of the features of our life become potential elements in our “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

By this time the reader is no doubt ready with the question, How can the emphases of the Kirchentag be squared with what we hear nowadays of the influence of Rudolf Bultmann upon German theology? The facts are that Bultmann was scarcely mentioned in the major discussions of biblical matters. This does not mean that the speakers were unaware of his work, or unaware that he is one of the great names. It does mean that this gathering was primarily the outgrowth of the spiritual concern of laymen, whose practical wisdom seems to tell them that such movements as the “demythologizing” of Bultmann is a theological fad, subject to the laws which govern most crazes.

There emerges from the Berlin Kirchentag a hopeful indication. It is this: that when the theologians may at times fail to see the forest for the trees, God gives to nonspecialists the unusual insight by which they may help the specialists to regain their perspective. And it is frequently in conferences sponsored by laymen that theologians whose messages are most vital are lifted into prominence.

Wanted: Constructive Defense

Intellectual Schizophrenia, by Rousas J. Rushdoony (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961, 133 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Cornelius Jaarsma, Professor of Education, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

It is easy, and not uncommon, to make one’s own views seem very plausible by contrasting them with a caricature of opposing views. This is the thought that occurred to me as I read this vigorous, militant little volume of attack and defense.

Of the intellectual schizophrenia in educational theory and practice referred to in this volume there can be no doubt. On the one hand current education speaks of man, his development and learning, in terms of uniquely human accomplishments. On the other hand man is described in biological terms, one with the natural world in which he moves. Man is a creator, but he has become a stranger to the world that has produced him. In spite of these dual phenomena, current educational theory tries to recognize a unity of personality, but the unity is merely organismic, that is, a behavioral unity. Christian education faces a challenge to point the way in educational theory and practice based on a scriptural view of man.

The cause of Christian education is not well served, however, when non-Christian views are inadequately or even unfairly presented. Unfortunately this is the case in several instances in this little volume. A few illustrations will point this out.

There is the frequent mistake of linking Dewey and “progressive education.” This is done uncritically and dogmatically. Dewey disowned “progressive education” on several occasions. This is not to say that Dewey’s philosophy was not a major contributor to the views that the “progressive education” movement followed for some time. It would be fairer to Dewey to discuss his views independetly of the later “progressive education” movement.

“The public school is now unmistakably a state school and its concept of education is inevitably statist.” From both the historical development of our public schools, and from their present organization this sweeping statement is easily refuted. It is simply not borne out by the facts. We have no national system of education and our state organization embodies a large degree of local initiative. It can be shown that the excesses of state initiative in education have come about by the failure of local communities, Christian as well as non-Christian, to provide for adequate educational opportunity. Even today the state has to put pressure on some Christian school groups to enforce standards. The point is, if one is going to speak of statism in education, the full truth should be told.

I mention one more illustration. Modern educational theory is referred to in several places as viewing the child as being passive in the learning process. Nothing is further from the truth. Christian education is learning a lesson from modern behavioral sciences on self-activity in learning. Recent Sunday school material is evidence of this. What is true is that self-activity in current education theory has the wrong view of the self. Here Christian education can make a contribution.

We need a strong polemic to point out the inadequacy, even fundamental error of modern educational theory and practice. We need, likewise, a positive, constructive defense of sounder views in education. Unfortunately this little volume fails to give either.

CORNELIUS JAARSMA

In Name Only

The Wild Goats of Ein Gedi, by Herbert Weiner (Doubleday, 1961, 312 pp., $4.50), reviewed by Sherwood E. Wirt, Editor of Decision.

Thirty-odd wild goats, nibbling at the crops of the new co-operative farm (kibbutz) at Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea shores, are a problem to the government of the state of Israel. They are rare goats and must not be killed. But what to do with them?

Herbert W. Weiner, a Reformed Jewish rabbi from Orange, New Jersey, has written a fascinating story about the religious “wild goats” of Israel who—also—must not be eliminated, but somehow put up with. An able religious reporter, he interviewed leaders of nearly every sect in Israel, not to discuss politics but to investigate and assess the religious life.

The result was disappointing to him. Rabbi Weiner found that the Holy Land was holy in name only. “More than the doubtful authenticity of the historic sites or the petty bickering over who can whitewash which stairway, more even than the quarrels about status quo and religious freedom, is this sense of spiritual lifelessness in a land which the religious heart has always associated with the power of rebirth, the dream of the utterly new.…”

Amid all the paradoxical encounters of the various faiths there is a vast disinterest in prayer, theology, and the deeper dimensions of spiritual life. Traditionalism is strong, notably in orthodox Jewry but spiritual creativity is lacking, Weiner found. I would, on the basis of a brief visit, be inclined to agree, but would add that the one locus of potency is the Baptist Arab community in northern Israel. And even there the potential still lies buried and untapped.

In so many ways the Israelis have made tremendous strides, but spiritually—as the rabbi freely admits—a new birth is needed. Too many are like the Coptic Christian lady of Jaffa, who told the author she was “not particularly religious,” and added, “All people are the same, and it’s a different age now.”

SHERWOOD E. WIRT

Greek In Perspective

Beginning Greek, A Functional Approach, by Stephen W. Paine (Oxford, 1961, 322 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by Robert C. Stone, Professor of Classical Languages, North Park College.

The student of New Testament Greek misses a vital part of his training if he gets nothing of the broader aspects of the language: and the classical student needs to see the language in its historical perspective. This volume skillfully combines the study of these two facets of Greek.

The approach is inductive: vocabulary, forms, and grammar are presented as they are met with in the readings. The latter are unaltered selections from Greek literature. Portions of the Gospel of John comprise the first half of the book; the second half contains selections from Xenophon’s Anabasis, accompanied by adequate explanatory notes.

Well-ordered presentation of the material, clear and concise explanations, numerous charts and other aids for the student, as well as a superb printing job, mark the volume. Author and publisher are to be commended for making this excellent text available. It deserves wide use, though perhaps it is best suited for teachers in church-related schools or colleges.

ROBERT C. STONE

China

The Awakening, Revival in China, 1927–1937, by Mary Monsen (Lutterworth, 1961, 128 pp., 5s. 6d.), is reviewed by Frank Houghton, Missionary Bishop in China and now Vicar of Drayton, Banbury, England.

At a time when men of God in every land are warning us that nothing but a revival of true religion on a national scale can meet the grim situation in which we find ourselves, the production of this factual record of the revival in parts of China in the years 1927–1937 deserves a wide circulation and prayerful reading. Miss Monsen is a veteran Norwegian missionary who sailed for China soon after the Boxer Rising of 1900. She became increasingly conscious of the deadness of the churches to which she ministered. Even among the pastors, and among missionaries also, there were those who had a name that they lived, and were dead. In answer to the prayers of many years the Spirit of God began to work in central and northern China, until over wide areas the churches were transformed. Miss Monsen admits that she was not a great speaker, yet where-ever she went men and women were broken down before God. This little book should stir us to a consciousness of the need in our own churches—perhaps in our own hearts—and stimulate in us a living faith that the God of the impossible can as easily revive American and British churches as Chinese or Korean.

FRANK HOUGHTON

Establish The Rebel?

The Noise of Solemn Assemblies, by Peter L. Berger (Doubleday, 1961, 189 pp., $1.75), is reviewed by Marvin C. Baarman, Executive Secretary, Christian Reformed Board of Home Missions.

In reading this volume one is reminded of the prayer of Peter Marshall, “Lord, comfort the troubled, and trouble the comfortable.”

This book serves both purposes. In its appeal for a realistic view of society, as well as in its sharp analysis of the religious establishment in America, it disturbs the thoughtful Christian caught in the inertia of uncritical pursuit of the status quo. Religion has suffered dilution in this establishment. According to Berger, the answer to the dilemma lies in a deliberate dis-establishment which makes room for the individual and the rebel in the American religious scene. Religious establishment tends to prevent our encounter with the Christian message. The antidote is personal conversion or confrontation.

Berger, a Lutheran, has given much food for thought to those who really desire to see the Gospel function as salt in a sick world. Particularly significant is his analysis of modern domestic missions and church extension. He charges that the criterion for missions is economics and social status rather than the Christian Gospel. He suggests that too often the motive for missions is potential success and political advantage rather than the biblical mandate and love of Christ.

Perhaps Dr. Berger errs in seeking the solution to the irrelevance of the Church outside of the church. Radical alteration of the form of the church or a deliberate by-passing of the Church is less desirable than bringing the Church itself back to its scriptural course.

MARVIN D. BAARMAN

For Children

Children of the Bible, by Norman Bull (Evans Bros., 1961, 96 pp., 10s. 6d.) and The Story of Christianity in Britain, by Elfrida Vipont (Michael Joseph, 1960, 191 pp., 12s. 6d.), are reviewed by Elizabeth Collie, Educationalist and Graduate of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University.

Mr. Bull is an experienced and prolific writer in many areas of religious education. Here he retells 12 Bible stories about children, six from each Testament. The language is simple, and his imaginative recasting should make the episodes attractive for infant school youngsters. Elfrida Vipont unfolds the drama of the Faith in Britain for a slightly older group, and she arranges her history round a series of individuals. This method may well impress the image of certain great figures on the minds of the young readers, but there are risks involved. In the opening chapter the dream of a cathedral representing all religious groups in one harmonious whole underlines the dangers, not always avoided here, of blurring deep cleavages among Christians. But is it fair to blame the author when so many learned textbooks write the same “ecumenical” history? The story moves with a charming flow, and, as in the other volume, the illustrations have an appealing dignity. Both books should play a part in winning the rising generation for Christ.

E. COLLIE

To Amplify The Mission

Education for Mission, by J. Allen Ranck (Friendship Press, 1961, 159 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, Vice President of Fuller Theological Seminary.

Ranck, who is general director of the Commission on Missionary Education for the National Council of Churches, has written an elementary but highly-commendable volume on missionary education for the local church. The purpose of mission is described, and he deals in detail with the question “how” to get through to the local congregations with the missionary story so that the people will give, pray, and go. He suggests ways in which the success or failure of the educational process can be checked to determine if the parish members are getting “educated.” The volume is written within the context of the NCC setting and fails to take into account the whole stream of missionary endeavor and the educational materials and techniques of groups outside the NCC. His ecumenical horizons are limited to the NCC and the WCC.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Qumran Community

The Scrolls and Christian Origins, by Matthew Black (Scribner’s, 1961, 206 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Ralph Earle, Professor of New Testament, Nazarene Theological Seminary.

The book is divided into two parts. The first, “Historical,” has to do with the identification of the Qumran sect. The second, “Religious and Theological,” traces the beliefs and practices of the Qumran community which seem to bear some significant relation to Christianity.

Professor Black endorses the prevailing view today that the Qumran sectarians are to be identified with the Essenes. As to the much-debated question of the date of the scrolls, the author feels that we cannot be more certain than to place them between the second century B.C. and the second century A.D.

That the Essenes, like the Pharisees, are descended from the ancient Hasidim is probable (p. 15). But the Qumran community was opposed by both Pharisees and Sadducees (p. 24).

One of the valuable contributions which Professor Black makes is his critical evaluation of the descriptions of the Essenes given by Josephus and Philo. These Greek historians (Jewish, but Greek in outlook) emphasize three main characteristics of Essenism: monastic asceticism, community of goods, and rejection of animal sacrifice. The author notes that the first is “nowhere expressly attested or even implied in any of the texts so far published” (p. 27). But he thinks it likely that this priestly sect would react against the loose morality of that Hellenistic age. With regard to the second, he finds evidence of private property in the Qumran community (p. 35). Yet he thinks it was organized as “a kind of welfare state” (p. 37). There is some evidence that the Essenes worshiped at the Temple, but they thought of their community itself as a spiritual Temple (p. 42). This bears striking similarity to Paul’s concept (1 Cor. 3:17).

Professor Black’s originality is shown in his contention that the link between the primitive church and Qumran was not through the Hellenists of Acts, as Oscar Cullman holds, but through the Hebraists (p. 167). He shows that the Qumran emphasis on a baptism of repentance and on frequent sacred meals shows close affinity with Christian origins.

RALPH EARLE

Book Briefs

How to Help Through Understanding, by Josephine Robertson (Abingdon, 1961, 124 pp., $2.25). Practical, wisdom-ripe suggestions on how to be truly kind in the many and varied inter relationships of daily life.

Reconstruction in Religion, a symposium edited by Alfred E. Kuenzli (Beacon Press, 1961, 253 pp., $3.95). “The contributors … do not concern themselves with the supernatural—the orthodox reader, dedicated to traditional prescientific religious formulations, will not be happy in this company” says the dustjacket.

Everyday Devotions for Youth, by Walter L. Cook (Abingdon, 1961, 110 pp., $1.75). Very fine devotional material addressed to where teenagers actually live: right in the middle of the problem of bringing home the girlfriend for the first time, or standing in front of a mirror looking at ears that stick out too far and deciding he does not like girls anyway. Highly recommended.

Our Father, by E. Margaret Clarkson (Eerdmans, 1961, 117 pp., $2.50). Essays geared to children to make plain the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer; artistic production.

Say ‘Yes’ to Life!, by Anna B. Mow (Zondervan, 1961, 152 pp., $2.50). A novel pleading for a Christian affirmation of life.

Minister’s Service Book for Pulpit and Parish, by Jesse Jai McNeil (Eerdmans, 1961, 212 pp., $3.25). Seeks to meet the liturgical needs of ministers in non-liturgical churches.

This Is Protestantism, by Arthur W. Mielke (Revell, 1961, 127 pp., $2.50). Published radio sermons asserting basic principles of Protestant vs. Roman Catholic Christianity.

Use Your Head, by Sidenham Lambert Huffman (Higley Press, 1959, 97 pp., $2.50). An amusing, well-written little book with 17 practical lessons taught with humor. Points from personal finances to moral standards are covered. For clergy and laymen alike, candy-coated sermonettes with more than a little common sense added.

Good Friday 1963, by Otis Carney (Morrow, 1961, 123 pp., $3). A dramatic literary journey into the heart of one man—and into the soul of a nation.

Bay Windows into Eternity, by A. Graham Ikin (Macmillan, 1961, 117 pp., $2.95). A devotional roadmap to spiritual maturity, with foreword by J. B. Phillips.

The Winning Move, by J. S. A. Wor-boys (Christopher, 1961, 142 pp., $3). Heartwarming sermons culled from a preacher’s life of preaching and writing.

The Quiet Crusaders, by Henry L. McCorkle (Friendship, 1961, 175 pp., $2.95). Written with a descriptive finesse that makes sight and sounds clear, the author sketches the biographies of evangelical Christians whose lives are a gentle revolution in many Latin American countries.

The Robe and the Sword, by Kenneth M. MacKenzie (Public Affairs Press, 1961, 128 pp., $3.25). Has Methodism played the same decisive role in U. S. extra-territorial expansion as it long played an important role on the edge of the frontier in continental expansion?

Paperbacks

The Date and Route of the Exodus, by C. de Wit (Tyndale, 1960, 20 pp., including map, 1/6). Brussels Egyptologist examines rival theories about the Exodus and finds the evidence inconclusive. He favors a date under Pharoah Merneptah and the southern route.

The Bodmer Papyrus of the Gospel of John, by J. N. Birdsall (1960, 18 pp., 1/6). Birmingham University lecturer and textual expert shows how even the Bodmer Papyrus, our best complete manuscript of John which can take us back into the second century, is still far from any pristine purity.

Some Great Christian Doctors, by W. Melville Capper (Tyndale, 1960, 24 pp., 2/-); Christian Initiative and the Future of Medicine, by S. Farrant Russell (Tyndale, 1960, 19 pp., 2/-); Keeping Faith with the Patient, by A. S. Aldis (Tyndale, 1960, 16 pp., 9d.); Contemporary Psychology and Christian Belief and Experiences, by M. A. Jeeves (Tyndale, 1960, 16 pp., 1/6). Four new monographs produced by the Christian Medical Fellowship.

As You Go, by John Howard Yoder (Herald Press, 1961, 36 pp., $.35). Pleads for migration of Christian families to other lands as effective modern way to carry out the Great Commission.

All Ye Who Labor, by Wade H. Boggs, Jr. (John Knox Press, 1961, 288 pp., $2.50). A Christian interpretation of daily work.

Light the Dark Streets, by C. Kilmer Myers (Doubleday, 1961, 149 pp., $.95). Author shares his experiences as Vicar of St. Augustine’s Chapel in New York’s Lower East Side.

Steps to Improved Evangelism, by Carl M. Sweazy (Challenge, 1961, 70 pp., $.85). Psychology applied to evangelism by an author who was converted at 16 and held his first revival meeting two weeks later.

And God Said, “No,” by Lael Cappaert (Augustana, 1961, 143 pp., $2). Story of the anguish which struck parents when polio struck their two year old.

Juju Gods of West Africa, by Linn Haitz (Concordia, 1961, 113 pp., $1). Story of one lay missionary who gave up an established business and went to Africa.

The Recovery of Confidence, by E. H. Robertson (Association Press, 1961, 63 pp., $1). A study of the place and use of the Bible in the churches and a gauging of the Bible’s recent “comeback.”

Bible Weeks, by E. H. Robertson (Association Press, 1961, 80 pp., $1.25). A detailed account describing Bible Week in Yeovil (England) and Buffalo (New York) and suggestions as to what would have made them even better.

The Modern Reader’s Guide to the Book of Revelation, by Martin Rist (Association, 1961, 128 pp., $.50). Claims to present common sense approach to “Revelation” which, when properly understood, is among the easiest of the books of the Bible to interpret.

God Blessed Me With a Heart Attack, by Richard G. Dunwoody (Zondervan, 1961, 62 pp., $1). Spiritual and down-to-earth observations by a minister who was blessed by God with a coronary failure.

What Youth Are Thinking, by W. Gordon Smedsrud (Augsburg, 1961, 65 pp., $.50). Far more than half of 2000 Lutheran high school youth admitted in Lutheran Research Inventory the word sex was a dirty word, and for three out of four justification by faith meant trying to live a good life.

How Protestants Differ From Roman Catholics, by Stanley I. Stuber (Association Press, 1961, 126 pp., $.50). Concise adaptation of author’s full length Printer on Roman Catholicism for Protestants.

One Lord One Baptism (Augsburg, 1961, 79 pp., $1.25). Commission on Faith and Order of WCC reports on Trinity and the meaning of baptism as participation in Christ and in his redemptive history.

Altars from Genesis, by Robert A. Happel (Christian Education Press, 1961, 115 pp., $1.50). A series of biblical devotions based on Genesis, for family use.

Creation and Evolution, by John G. Balyo (Regular Baptist Press, 1961, 23 pp., $.25). Two sermons against evolution, neither of which became any better when they evolved into essays.

The Christian Calling, by Virgil Vogt (Herald Press, 1961, 48 pp., $.50). Lecture delivered at 1961 Mennonite Board of Missions to stimulate Christian vocation.

The Complete Book of Birth Control, by A. F. Guttmacher, M.D. (Ballantine Books, 1961, 152 pp., $.50). A book which claims to be the first with all the facts, and comes with the commendation of W. H. Genne, National Council of Churches.

The Spirituality of the Church, by E. T. Thompson (John Knox, 1961, 48 pp., $1). An interesting study of the nature of the Southern Presbyterian Church (in this its centennial year) as related to racial integration and to its northern counterpart.

Introduction to Judaism, by Lee A. Belford (Association Press, 1961, 128 pp., $.50). An account of beliefs and practices shared by Jews throughout the world.

Calendar of Christianity, by Allan Hauck (Association Press, 1961, 127 pp., $.50). Informative discussion of the origins and meaning of Christian holidays and holy days.

Communist Tricks for Enslaving the World, by Claude Bunzel (Twentieth Century Evangelism, 1961, 107 pp., $1.50). A general survey of Communist strategy and tactics. Originally prepared for Armed Forces Radio and TV Service.

Was Christ’s Death a Sacrifice? by Markus Barth (Oliver and Boyd, 1961, 55 pp., 7/6). Markus (son of Karl) Barth’s article first appeared in Scottish Journal of Theology.

The Book of Isaiah (Parts 1 and 2), by John E. Huesman (Paulist Press, 1961, 126 and 96 pp., $.75). Brief Roman Catholic expositions of the Book of Isaiah with Quiz and True-False questions to aid learner.

In a colorful but unspectacular service in New Delhi’s Vigynan Bhavan Hall, first erected by India for a UNESCO conference, the 13-year-old World Council of Churches absorbed the International Missionary Council in historic action on the opening day of the WCC’s third assembly.

Only the Norwegian Missionary Council disapproved merger with the ecumenical movement, whose “integrated” character was hailed as “a tremendous contribution to the mission of the church.”

So fully had the merger plan been publicized in advance that the program seemed routine, despite addresses laboring its significance by Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft and Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, who becomes director of the World Council’s new Division of World Mission and Evangelism. Hereafter this division incorporates the IMC membership of 38 national Christian councils and national missionary councils.

Russian Orthodox Church Voted Into Wcc Membership

During the long week preceding the opening sessions of the World Council of Churches’ third assembly, one topic dominated almost every discussion. But when Britain’s Ernest Payne gaveled the Monday morning business session into action, only 31 minutes were required to dispose of what may go down in history as the most significant action of the assembly.

Anticipations of the delegates for fiery rhetoric went completely unrealized when the application for admission to the World Council by the Orthodox Church of Russia was presented. Speeches of approbation by other Orthodox groups were greeted by enthusiastic applause. Two speeches of abstaining votes (Hungarian Reformed Church in America and Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in North America) brought only stony silence.

Ten minutes after the voting, an interim report stated that already far more than the necessary two-thirds majority had been received.

Final tabulation of the vote to admit the Russian church was announced as 142 for, 3 against, and 4 abstaining. Those voting against were not identified.

Delegates showed brisker opposition to the admission of Pentecostal churches in Chile than to the Russian Orthodox. Eight churches voted against Iglesia Pentecostal de Chile and against Mission Iglesia Pentecostal (Chile) with three abstaining in the former case and four in the latter.

Outside the fence surrounding the Vigynan Bhavan, two men paced back and forth with placards reading “AGENTS OF K—NOT SERVANTS OF GOD” and “RUSSIAN CLERGY—COMMUNIST AGENTS.”

One Ernest Zingers from Latvia declared, “The Russian Orthodox Church is controlled by the Kremlin and not by Jesus Christ.” He added, “The Soviet government is sending out spies and agents of their conspiracy under the cover of clergymen. No one is able to come out from Russia who is not going to follow the Communist line.”

The Russian application significantly enough was followed chronologically—not preceded by—the applications for admission from churches in other “Iron Curtain” countries. Questioned as to why the Russian application was admittedly delayed for some time, Dr. Franklin Clark Fry stated that the Russians found trends within the World Council that they did not like—those trends being according to Fry an overemphasis on social activity and an under-emphasis on things purely spiritual.

Fry commented wryly that these were the same objections raised by the ultra-conservative groups and that it was amazing how the extremes finally emerged so closely together.

The prospects for the Russian church in council activities are encouraging. Members are eligible for appointment to WCC commissions and to membership on the powerful Central Committee, the number to be determined in a numerical ratio to the membership of the church said to be about 50 million.

Some future WCC meetings will undoubtedly be held in Russia, but the Russian church has with the capitalistic colleagues the responsibility of contributing financially to WCC coffers. Strange commentary on the overwhelmingly favorable vote was the fact that privately few delegates seemed in favor of it.

One top representative of a major American denomination was shocked to learn that each church was entitled to only one vote. He was totally unfamiliar with the man voting his church bloc in favor of the action and began trying to determine when or where his church had caucused to emerge with a favorable vote on the Russian admission. When the interim report assured the admission of the Russian church, Zingers leaned his placard against the fence and gave up his pacing—at least for this assembly.

At a press conference following the vote, the Russian delegation’s leader, 32-year-old Archbishop Nikodim proved an agile dodger of questions. To repeated questions on the same theme he maintained that there is no interference in church affairs by the Soviet government, that priests are free to preach as they will and that the Gospel, not the government, determines church policy.

The limiting of questions mainly to representatives of wire services and secular newspapers virtually excluded the religious press from asking significant questions. Nobody asked Nikodim whether he agrees that a Christian cannot be a Communist in theory and practice. Questions were cut short after a half hour. Nikodim gave more candid answers privately than publicly.

Much of the world missionary task force, however, remains deliberately outside its orbit. Of American personnel serving abroad, only about 9,000 of the 28,000 missionaries, or some 31 per cent, are affiliated with the National Council of Churches in the U.S.A.

In the opening worship sermon on the day of the action, the secretary of the Burma Baptist Churches Union, the Rev. U Ba Hmyin, declared that spiritual realities are better understood through “feeling and will” than by “reason and intelligence.” He called for “a universal theology” utilizing a synthesis of oriental and occidental “structures, ways of thought and life.” As illustrations of oriental modes of apprehension of potential value in formulating Christian theology he pointed to the system of Yoga and the disciplined will. He said this would “enrich our Christian religious thinking based solely on the Bible.”

In a critical comment the Indian evangelist Akbar Haqq, an observer associated with Billy Graham’s evangelistic thrust in Southeast Asia, declared that “the New Testament gospel has the status of universal truth and has universal appeal,” and that “any rejection of reason which would make contradictories equally acceptable issues is a religion serviceable only to schizophrenics.”

The opening day was marked by noticeable deference to the Greek Orthodox church when the “filioque clause” was deleted in the use of the Nicene Creed.

Missionary merger was made during the afternoon business session by Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos, one of the World Council’s five presidents, whose communion historically has not been distinguished by missionary zeal and has on occasion resisted evangelical missions in Greece. Evangelical leaders hoped the merger might spark a new missionary concern. They were perplexed by the confessional insensitivity to Protestant member churches in the World Council.

An Anglican bishop commented that deletion of any article of the creed in worship establishes a precedent which could suppress alternate articles objectionable to other influential ecumenical blocs. Deletion of the creedal connection of the Son and Holy Spirit also disappointed them because of the World Council’s growing Christological rather than merely theological emphasis. The IMC has in fact looked with favor upon the proposed trinitarian expansion of the ecumenical statement of basis.

Neither the flame nor wind of Pentecost stirred the merger ceremony, the only unusual aspect being the earphone translation to each of the participants in three languages.

Newbigin pronounced the placing in the context of the WCC the “organized missionary effort of the world” as a great decision and a natural development. He declared that unity cannot itself serve as an end and that integration adds the dimension of mission to that of ecumenical unity.

The merger, however, promoted a new network of ecumenical relations through the fact that IMC has been a council of councils, and its integration now promises closer World Council ties with the national councils which were in the IMC.

Pressures to widen the World Council’s incorporation process are considered inevitable, subject to the availability of necessary funds and staff.

The council already has a world program of theological education. Integration of ecumenically organized missionary activity into the World Council came 50 years after the first ecumenical expression of missionary activity (Edinburgh 1910). The almost wearying reiteration of these past roots left little doubt that the modern missionary effort is specially tied to nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. But it failed to answer the question whether the present witness coincides adequately with the ecumenical vision of missionary pioneers.

Two main arguments against merger were that a strong concern for mission might deflect the World Council from its driving interest in church unity and, alternately, that missions might get only secondary attention from an integrated body.

Active missionaries in Delhi wondered what might have been William Carey’s reactions to merger proceedings, inasmuch as 1961 marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the small town cobbler who is buried in tropical India. Carey was mainly interested in proclaiming the Gospel to lost souls. The Delhi decisions would be judged both by pragmatic results of merger in terms of new converts, churches and life, and by the fidelity with which the Gospel would be addressed to pagan lands.

In contrast to Carey’s arduous trip, delegates could reach Delhi from almost any spot on earth in little more than a day, and they came from all continents and races. But 98 per cent of India’s population remained outside Christ, and some younger independent churches were drifting from missionary motivations and methods which gave them birth.

At the same time the World Council’s study book asked: “How can this Assembly, meeting in India, proclaim Jesus Christ as the Light of the World in a country where ‘light’ is a religious symbol familiar to the non-Christian population?” The future alone would tell.

Ecumenical Roots

Evangelist Billy Graham declared upon arrival in New Delhi last month that “the ecumenical movement had its birth in the work of mass evangelism” and that its roots lie less in “organizational ties” than in a “simple, warm and living faith in Christ” and in forgetting denominational distinctions long enough to labor together “to reach those outside of Christ.” Graham was on hand for the opening of the New Delhi assembly as an observer at the invitation of WCC officials. He is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is not affiliated with the World Council.

The evangelist had toured India six years ago. He says he remembers the people as “the most tolerant in the world.”

Here are excerpts of his statement in New Delhi:

The assembly should not overlook the fact that there already exists within the Church a true ecumenical movement which crosses all denominational, national, and social barriers—an ecumenicity which proceeds from a common faith in the Christ of the Scriptures, of history, and of personal experience.… This assembly should also not forget that the Church is essentially a great missionary society—that her primary task is to witness to the redemptive work of Christ.

While the influence of the great evangelists has waned in the World Council, I am hoping that some of that influence can be preserved. I am hopeful that during the next 10 days I will have the opportunity privately to exert influence in the direction that the early leaders hoped and prayed for.… I feel that the present world crisis makes it imperative that Christian leaders from every corner of the earth work together while there is still time to touch the world for Christ. I believe it is possible to evangelize the world in this generation.… Not in history has the Church had such a magnificent opportunity to challenge and appeal to the world … divided as it is by theological, national, and racial tensions, and trembling on the threshold of the nuclear extinction of the human race. There should be a world-wide evangelistic effort in which all Christians are urged to participate.

However, we must be certain of the Gospel we proclaim. If we go out with an uncertain sound we will add to the confusion in the world today.

This world assembly can be either a Babel or a Pentecost. Should this historic meeting return to the faith and message of the early Church, hopes for peace would immediately brighten.… The Church today stands sadly in the midst of the ever-increasing ruins of the civilization she helped to create, with little power to save it. This could all be transformed here at New Delhi. On the other hand, New Delhi could be so compromised by the influence of those who no longer hold to the apostolic message that the Church may find herself yet further weakened and her witness muted as a result.

While all of us lament the scandal and shame of the disunity of the Church, we are also obliged to confess that an even greater scandal and shame is the disloyalty of some areas of the Church to Jesus Christ and His Word. The person and work of Christ cannot be minimized. His exclusive concept of salvation cannot be dismissed. Therefore I am hopeful that the assembly will spell out in no uncertain terms its faith in the divine authority of the Scriptures, the deity and lordship of Christ, his atoning death for our sins, the lost condition of the world apart from saving faith in Christ, his bodily resurrection and his personal return.

I would like to see this assembly reaffirm the authority of the Scriptures.… Do not the Holy Scriptures declare Christ’s message for the world? The Scriptures are to be studied that Christ may be properly obeyed.

I would also like to see this assembly proclaim the prophetic truth that Jesus Christ is coming back to this world. The Church has often failed to keep divine objectives in view because she has neglected the prophetic message of the Scriptures. As a result … the human race has been left without a social program of authority and … men and nations have been experimenting with their own national and international goals, endeavoring to bring about unrealizable world utopias which are not of God. This results in periodic national collapse and world-wide calamity. We are in one of these collapses at the present hour.

This assembly should also recognize that the Church is not a political organization nor a social reform society. Individually and collectively Christians may work for political and social justice.… But Christ’s Church must keep on the main highway outlined in the Scriptures and witness before the nations concerning the truth of salvation in Christ and also concerning the program of God for the whole world, especially witnessing to the grand consummation of the age.

This assembly should also warn that world about antichrist.… Had the Church in Germany been faithful in preaching the Christ of Luther and warning of antichrist, there would have been no Nazism there. We should shout for all the world to hear from New Delhi that the future great ruler of the world will be the Lord Jesus Christ. The Church during the next few years must keep this message clearly, plainly, and consistently before the nations of the earth.

This assembly should call the Church back to her true message and true program. Dare this assembly allow the Church in the world to deviate from her proper spiritual orbit?

We should also reaffirm that every knee shall bow not to the Church but to Christ … The Church does not redeem; it only witnesses to the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.

The World Council should also listen carefully, prayerfully, humbly, and attentively to the large groups of Protestants in many parts of the world that are outside the ordinary councils. The World Council should ask: Why is 37 per cent of Protestantism in America outside the National Council of Churches?… Why are over 60 per cent of the missionaries from America from denominations outside the National Council? These masses of Christians have something to say to the World Council if the council is humble enough to listen.…

What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better organizations or novel methods, but men whom God can use. Everything … will depend on the spiritual character of the delegates. It is my prayer that out of this assembly will come heroic, stalwart, toilsome, soldierly, saintly, self-denying, self-crucifying men who are willing to die for the faith once delivered to the saints.…

Congo Beatings

The Board of World Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. says that two of its missionaries were beaten and arrested last month by Congolese troops in Luluabourg.

Injured were Dr. J. B. Jung of Alexandria, Louisiana, a dentist, and Dr. W. Grant McIntosh of Edinburgh, Scotland, a physician.

The board also reported that two other of its missionaries were ill-treated by the soldiers and arrested: Dr. Mark K. Poole and the Rev. William C. Washburn, both from Texas.

A fifth person, Miss Nolie McDonald, an X-ray technician in the mission hospital at Lubondai, was “slapped and insulted” but not taken to jail, the board statement said.

All four men arrested were later released. Washburn has since returned to the United States on regular furlough.

Jung and McIntosh reportedly were attacked by mutinying soldiers, tied to a tree and beaten with gun butts, then taken to prison.

Budding Buddhism?

Selection of U Thant as Secretary General of the United Nations is evidence of the growing influence of Buddhist thought in relation to world problems, according to Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.

In an address last month at Phnom Penh to the sixth conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, the Cambodian head of state called upon Buddhists everywhere to “lead the struggle for peace and truth.” He said Mr. Thant’s qualities “are essentially those of a faithful disciple of the Buddha.”

The acting U. N. Secretary General is known as a devout and practicing Buddhist. He is believed to have a private shrine in his upper East Side apartment. His 22-year-old daughter was married in a Buddhist ceremony last year.

Conciliatory Compromise

A resolution favoring “closer relationships with all other branches of the Church of Christ” was adopted at autumn sessions of the Church of England Assembly in London.

The resolution, which “warmly welcomes the conversations being undertaken with the Presbyterian and Methodist churches,” was a compromise between a suggested motion by Gervase E. Duffield of Oxford and an amendment to it by A. T. Macmillan of London, brother of the British Prime Minister.

The subject had been raised originally with an eye to the Church of Scotland, whose relations with the Anglicans since the ill-fated “Bishops’ Report” of 1957 have been marked by coolness and misunderstanding.

“It may be that the Church of Scotland are a little touchy,” said one speaker, “but let us look at our own faults and our own sins and not criticize them so readily.”

He went on to make severe criticism of an Anglican journal’s article on John Knox which, full of historical inaccuracies, had offended the Scots.

Apparent in the assembly’s discussion was a spirit of conciliation and friendliness which augurs well for future relations.

J. D. D

Christmas Pilgrimage

Some 15,000 Israeli Christians are requesting permission to cross the Jordanian border to participate in the traditional Christmas pilgrimage to Bethlehem.

This number represents about one-third of all Christians in Israel.

Last year, 10,000 applied for permits to attend the annual observance at the birthplace of Christ, but authorities in Israel and Jordan granted only 3,500 permits.

Tv Blackout

For the second consecutive year, the West German television network will dispense with its programming between 6 and 8 p. m. on Christmas Eve, the traditional family gathering time in German Christmas observances. (The high-point of the Christmas season in Germany is Christmas Eve, when families join under lighted Christmas trees, carols are sung and gifts exchanged.)

Last year there were some protests of the blackout which cited the fact that West Germany’s television audience would have to rely upon telecasts from the Soviet Zone.

A New Religious Issue?

Some Washington observers are saying that a religious controversy may develop in the selection of a successor to the late House Speaker Sam Rayburn.

Leading candidate for the post is Representative John W. McCormack of Massachusetts, a Roman Catholic who has been widely criticized for championing his church’s views on public policy.

A comment by Representative Albert Rains of Alabama, who said he was “considering” opposing McCormack for the office, added to reports circulating in the nation’s capital to the effect that a religious controversy might be involved in an intra-party scrap between House Democrats. Rains is a Baptist. Earlier it had been reported that Southern political leaders were favoring McCormack.

Dr. Glenn L. Archer, executive director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said there would be widespread Protestant concern over McCormack’s candidacy.

Archer said McCormack “has consistently demanded government support for sectarian schools; he was the leading advocate of the appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican; he denounced the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the separation of church and state in 1948; and he has been the sponsor of many bills in Congress conferring financial benefits upon his church.”

If elected, McCormack would become the first Roman Catholic ever to hold the Speaker’s post. A 1947 law made the Speaker second in line of succession to the President when death causes a presidential vacancy. He draws the same pay as the Vice President, $35,000 a year plus $10,000 for expenses, and has the use of a limousine and a chauffeur.

McCormack holds the highest papal decoration awarded to any Catholic layman, that of Knight Commander, Order of St. Gregory the Great, with star.

Rayburn’s successor probably will be nominated January 9 at a party caucus of House Democrats and elected by the House when it convenes the next day for the 1962 Congressional Session.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy itself provoked widespread criticism from Protestant leaders last month when it reaffirmed its stand on federal aid to education. The hierarchy’s statement opposed any program of such aid which failed to include parochial schools.

Sources close to the prelates maintain, however, that a new school of influence took over last month in the annual meeting of the U. S. Roman Catholic leadership. In terms of their stand on federal aid to education, there are said to be two opposing power blocs, one led by Cardinal Spellman and the other by Cardinal Cushing, and it is reported that the latter gained the upper hand. Archbishop Karl J. Alter of Cincinnati, who sides with Spellman and who as chairman of the administrative board of the National Catholic Welfare Conference has demanded parochial school provisions in any federal aid-to-education program, was dropped from the board altogether. The chairmanship was given to Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle of Washington, who has never issued any public statements on aid to education. O’Boyle and Archbishop John J. Krol of Philadelphia were named to the 16-member board for the first time. Both are comparatively liberal on social issues and O’Boyle is a strong advocate of Protestant-Catholic cooperation in the fight against communism who tries to avoid controversy which might undermine such effort.

Secular Or Religious?

The U. S. Supreme Court was asked last month to review legal decisions which have revoked the tax-exempt status of the Scripture Press Foundation, publisher of Sunday school materials and other religious literature.

The Internal Revenue Service ruled in 1953 that although Scripture Press products are of a religious nature, “the manufacture and supply [of such materials] does not constitute a religious activity in itself but is a business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit.” Courts have upheld the 1953 ruling.

Lawyers for Scripture Press say the ruling could be applied to the Methodists and their Abingdon-Cokesbury Publishing House; the Baptists and Broadman Press; the Disciples of Christ and Bethany Press; the Church of God and Warner Press; and many others.

Scripture Press has no specific church affiliation, but its materials are evangelically oriented.

Washington Voice

The Union of American Hebrew Congregations reaffirmed last month a 1959 decision establishing a Reform Jewish center in Washington. The center, in effect a lobby, has been opposed by a number of Reform Jewish congregations. Its personnel will appear before Congressional committees and give views on pending legislation.

The reaffirmation came in a majority vote among 1,300 delegates to the union’s biennial assembly in Washington. Highlight of a four-hour debate was the reading of a telegram from Secretary of Labor Arthur J. Goldberg supporting the center. Goldberg is a newly-elected union trustee.

Interfaith Harmony

President Kennedy publicly praised the National Conference of Christians and Jews last month, suggesting that it has done more than perhaps “any other factor in our national life to provide for harmonious living among our different religious groups.” Kennedy spoke to some 100 leaders of the NCCJ who called on him at the White House at the close of the conference’s 33rd annual meeting in Washington.

Purpose of the visit, as explained to Kennedy by NCCJ President Lewis Webster Jones, was to inform the President of a new four-year “project in religious freedom and public affairs.” The project is designed to raise the general level of public discussion and understanding among religious groups differing on issues of public concern.

“It has always seemed to me,” said Kennedy, “that when we all—regardless of our particular religious conviction-draw our guidance and inspiration, and really in a sense moral direction from the same general area, the Bible … we have every reason to believe that our various religious denominations should live together in the closest harmony.”

Urging Expansion

Bishop Joseph A. Synon, general superintendent of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, told the 52,000-member denomination’s quadrennial General Conference in Richmond, Virginia, that Pentecostals must find more efficient means of getting their message across to the world.

He said the church needs to strengthen and stabilize its foreign missionary, evangelistic, and educational programs. In addition, he said, the denomination must expand its printing and publishing potential.

“We need also to take advantage of the favorable influence of our church, wherever it is known, to establish new congregations in expanding housing projects,” Synon declared. “We need to follow our people into new areas.”

The Progressive Convention

A group of Negro Baptists split off from the National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., last month and formed a new organization to be known as the Progressive Baptist Convention of America.

In organizing the new convention at a meeting in Cincinnati, delegates from 14 states stressed that new officers would observe their terms of office. Disagreement over this point was given as the reason for the break with the National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc.

This was interpreted as a reference to the re-election of Dr. J. H. Jackson as head of the 5,000,000-member Baptist body. Jackson had been the center of a controversy which began in 1960 when Dr. Gardner Taylor claimed he and not Jackson had been elected president. At the 1961 convention in Kansas City the dispute led to a near riot which resulted in the death of one of the delegates. Jackson was finally elected to his ninth term as president.

The new Progressive Convention chose as president Dr. T. M. Chambers, Sr., pastor of the Zion Hill Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

No membership figures are available.

Church Giving

The annual report of the National Council of Churches’ Department of Stewardship and Benevolence shows an increase of 5.5 per cent in the giving of 39 bodies whose figures can be compared to those of the previous year.

Most principal denominations submitted a financial report for inclusion in the tabulation. The biggest exception is the Roman Catholic church, which never discloses its receipts or disbursements. Also holding out this year were Seventh-day Adventists, who are known to be among the leaders in per-capita giving (a spokesman said Seventh-day Adventist leaders have decided against release of figures for fear that they be interpreted as “boasting”).

Here are 1960 per-member contributions for all purposes as given in the report:

In 1924–25 existentialist philosopher Heidegger, New Testament scholar Bultmann, and philosophical theologian Tillich were colleagues at the University of Marburg. All three have had a marked interrelated influence on twentieth century thought and all three have utilized the now well-known existentialist approach to the “human predicament.” Actually, Bultmann tends to adopt Heidegger’s anthropology directly and (according to Tillich) limits himself to an ethical interpretation of theology. He differs from the older Ritschlian moral liberalism, however, in that he asks for a personal decision concerning the Christ of the cross, concerning the Christian kerygma or message, because of its relevance for “meaningful” existence. Tillich, too, delineates this existential-ethical approach in his discussions of God as man’s “ultimate concern.” Since 1925, however, Tillich (in contrast to both Heidegger and Bultmann) has been developing an ontological interpretation of theology that centers in the Being of God and requires man’s participation in the New Being manifest in the Christ. This fact points to important philosophical differences between Tillich and Bultmann, despite their theological agreement about the necessity of form criticism and demythologization to arrive at a kerygma that is communicable to the “modern mind.”

This summary indicates the extensive similarity between Tillich and Bultmann both as to theological method and as to existentialized doctrine. Whether a merger of the two can take place is really beside the point because in a fundamental sense one already exists. One reason Bultmann has not stirred America as he did Germany after 1941 may be in part Tillich’s development in this country of a similar theology that has been projected in a more positive, cultural context. Perhaps the current effort to translate Tillich’s works into his native language will extend the effectiveness of this type of existentialist theology in Germany too and thus prolong the seeming eclipse of Barth. In any event several ways may be noted wherein Tillich launches beyond Bultmann. The question of their joint impact upon the immediate development of religious thought in America is also significant.

Any comparison of Bultmann and Tillich should include the positive as well as the negative aspects of their existentialist theology. Even those who resent the apparent negativism of demythologizing Scripture must acknowledge Tillich’s and Bultmann’s help in sharpening today’s need for new ways to communicate the “good news” of the Bible. What these men (especially Tillich) have been trying to do for communicating the Gospel must not be lost in discussions over what they may be doing to the Gospel. Making the Word relevant to the needs of men is the special business of preachers, and using existentialist hermeneutics positively is an old and well-known tool of their trade. Reading Bultmann’s recently-published sermons, This World and the Beyond, and comparing them with Tillich’s The Shaking of the Foundations and The New Being should indicate just how successful Bultmann has been in retaining a “positive” message. Preaching must present Jesus Christ as Lord in such a manner that it places before the hearer “the decision whether he will remain the old man or become a new man” (Bultmann, “Preaching: Genuine and Secularized,” Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, ed. W. Leibrecht, p. 242). “To communicate the Gospel means putting it before the people so that they are able to decide for or against it.… The Christian message is the message of a new Reality in which we can participate and which gives us the power to take anxiety and despair upon ourselves” (Tillich, “Communicating the Christian Message,” in his Theology of Culture, pp. 201, 208). Both men use Heidegger’s terminology to describe the tragic sense of life that engulfs many persons in our “Age of Crisis,” even though philosophers have rightfully indicated the ambiguities and onesidedness of this pessimistic approach. Tillich justifies existentialist language pragmatically because it provides in our time a persuasive way to pose the question about life’s deeper religious meaning. Indeed, Tillich’s perceptive analysis of various phases of our culture, art, literature, and psychology are much more convincing for many Americans than Bultmann’s more restricted efforts as a critical student of the New Testament.

The Bultmann series in CHRISTIANITY TOHAY has called attention to the negative side of his work. The writers of these recent essays, not unlike Barth, Cullmann, Thielicke, and other right wing critics, have warned about so demythologizing that Scripture no longer does justice to the reality of God and of Christ. Despite Tillich’s ontological emphasis, perhaps his writings, too, fail to give assurance about the personal, objective-historical basis of Christian faith. Nor does the conservative find much comfort in hearing that Bultmann is still not the most radical deviate in Christian theology. In The Scope of Demythologizing, a very stimulating study of Bultmann and his critics, John Macquarrie of Glasgow says that the kerygma of “the event of Christ” is the top limit in Bultmann’s method for demythologizing the Scriptures. Bultmann’s left-wing critics at Basel (philosopher Karl Jaspers and especially theologian Fritz Buri) feel he is quite arbitrary in stopping short of dekerygmatizing the “saving core” too. Such criticism is what Barth has aptly called “uninhibited radicalizing of Bultmann’s radicalism” (see Macquarrie, p. 131). Buri represents the danger implicit in pushing existentialist hermeneutics negatively. In this approach the Christ-myth has nothing whatever to do with fact and history but remains only (with apologies to Tillich!) a symbol of human possibilities for “authentic” existence.

Tillich’s Reconstruction

This reduction of theology to philosophy, existentialist or otherwise, is exactly what Tillich contests. He also holds Bultmann partly responsible for this problem because Bultmann leans toward an existential-ethical theology that fails to examine seriously the ontological basis of biblical religion.

How has Tillich tried to reconstruct neo-liberal theology? As noted he concurs in Bultmann’s attack on the “obsolete world view” of the Bible. At the same time Tillich warns against using the shifting status of modern science as the absolute criterion over the Bible. To those right-wing critics who wonder about really trying to remove the skandalon of the Gospel, Tillich has this to say: any effort to reduce the logical and super-naturalistic offence of preaching is justified if it helps prospective Christians confront the real “offense” or “stumbling block” of the Gospel, namely, the paradox of the cross of Christ. The real religious offense for men of all time is that God should have appeared in history with all of its estrangement, sin, and death. In short, Tillich contends that demythologizing is pragmatically justified if it helps men by-pass “unnecessary blockage” in coming to participate in the New Being manifest in Christ. By the same token, Buri’s dekerygmatizing is untenable because it removes the essential offense of calling men to genuine decision for or against reconciliation to God. Without this call one has philosophy but not Christian theology.

Definition Offered

So far as the Scriptures go, Tillich defines the real problem not so much as a matter of getting rid of myths as a task of “breaking the myth” (Dynamics of Faith, p. 51), or of deliteralizing the “genuine” religious myths in the Bible. For Tillich a myth is always a cluster of symbols; it serves as a literary medium whereby God’s transcendent reality is drawn into the categories of human temporality. Symbols and myths constitute the language of faith. Contrary to Bultmann, Tillich feels one should not try to replace myths with more acceptable scientific substitutes; rather one should deliteralize the mythical elements in the Bible, doctrine and liturgy, and thereby discover the “real” religious significance of these symbols. For Protestants, he says, the problem is to keep these symbols as full and rich as possible so they retain their power to point men beyond the symbolic material to God, who is the Ground of all being and the true object of man’s “ultimate concern.”

There is no question that Tillich succeeds in getting his religious symbols to “point beyond” in a mystical-ontological fashion. Just what they point to and whether they are “rich” enough to be comprehensively Christian are issues which Tillich’s critics have raised. Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, questions the possibility of comprehending in ontological categories the mysteries of God’s operation in history. With all of Tillich’s talk about symbols pointing to something, perhaps the greatest difficulty is that we are never quite sure what they point from. This fact is particularly significant when we consider the historical basis of the gospel concerning Jesus Christ. In volume two of his Systematic Theology Tillich claims that while Bultmann stops with the “historical element” in the words of Jesus—the message of the kingdom of God to which man must respond in his own “history”—he himself has been able to emphasize the reality of the being of Christ. This Tillich has done by using the symbolic power of biblical language to point to the ontological reality of Christ as he is accepted by faith, even though this reality cannot be verified by strictly scientific historical research. Tillich will say only that “Christological symbols are the way in which the historical fact, called Jesus of Nazareth, has been received by those who consider him to be the Christ” (p. 152). While Tillich seems to add something significant to Bultmann by referring to Christ’s resurrection as the central Christian symbol which must be accepted as both symbol and event, the “event” actually turns out to be no different from Bultmann’s. The “event” has nothing to do with the physical appearance during 40 days of the same Jesus Christ who died about A.D. 30. The “event” is not a matter of historical conviction nor of biblical authority; it rests rather on “the certainty of one’s own victory over the death of existential estrangement,” on experiencing the presence of New Being and the eternal presence of God as Spirit (p. 155). A new gnosticism (via Heidegger) confronts us if we ask about the historical reality of the “mighty act of God” from which the eschatological symbols point. Tillich and Bultmann have merged again.

A Future for the Merger?

So far as America goes, Tillich’s impact stems not primarily from his advocating a neo-liberal theology akin to Bultmann’s. His reception, rather, results from his attempt to define a theology that recognizes the philosophical and cultural challenges to Christian faith in our century. He tries to meet these challenges on their own ground by using his talent as an ontologist, existentialist, idealist, and romanticist. He applies his “principle of correlation,” his “Protestant protest,” his sensitivity to the religious foundation of history and culture (“theonomy”). He employs depth psychology. Above all Tillich has a passion for interpretation in terms of the symbols of Christian faith. It is his knowledge of the world in which we live, and for which the Gospel must be shown to have relevance that wins even those who disclaim any value for the existentialist framework or who doubt that Tillich has retained the “whole counsel of God” in his kerygma.

It is quite possible that while Tillich will and should continue to get a respectable hearing, the radical use of demythologization will have less and less appeal. This conjecture comes not from wishful thinking but from evaluating the fundamental shift from the old liberalism toward a more biblically-oriented theology that has been developing in America in the last quarter century. (See my “Has There Been a Shift in the Presuppositions of Criticism?” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society, Fall, 1960. While the works of Frederick Grant and John Bright are especially emphasized here, scores of others could be cited. We suggest also Donald Rowlingson’s “Let’s Reinstate the Bible Historian!” The Christian Century, July 5, 1961, which calls for return to Jesus of Nazareth, and to his words and deeds in history as a prerequisite for any existential application.) L. H. DeWolf’s The Case for Theology in Liberal Perspective illustrates what we have in mind.

DeWolf reasons that even if some demythologizing is found to be necessary, one must also determine what aspects of the New Testament best portray the unique reality of the Christ-event (pp. 65–67). DeWolf concludes that neither vagueness about the personal character of God (as in Tillich) nor about the historical reality of Jesus Christ can provide a theology for the living church.

This trend in theology seems to indicate an increasing realization that theological presuppositions for biblical interpretation must rest on reasonable inference from scriptural evidence. It means, too, an increasing awareness that when man responds the Bible will fulfill the purposes for which it was given as divine revelation. What Albright calls the “substantial historicity” of the Bible is receiving serious attention in diverse quarters. While all of this can occasion rejoicing on the part of evangelicals it also provides a challenge. It marks a challenge to conservative scholarship co-operatively and constructively to restate its case in a way that shows an understanding of the changing position of these alternative theologies. The problem of biblical authority and interpretation has been raised in new ways by men like Bultmann and Tillich and the answers must be correlated with the actual questions which perplex them. Only with continued reclarification of the dynamic saving message of the Bible can there be effective communication to our generation. This kerygma must include the “saving history” which Bultmann denies and the miraculous Gospel at which Tillich stumbles.

WILLIAM W. PAUL

Department of Philosophy

Central College

Pella, Iowa

When R. C. Moberley spoke of the Incarnation as “the crucial doctrine” of Christianity, his adjective completely gave his case away. “Crucial” is from the Latin crux, “a cross.” So whenever we say, “This is the crucial point” or “The crux of the matter is this,” our language means “just as the Cross is central to Christianity, so the point I am making is central to the present discussion.” The centrality of the Cross to the Christian faith has shaped the language we use.

Right at the heart of Christianity there is a cross, and on that cross the Son of God wrought man’s salvation. Put simply, the atonement means that Jesus Christ in his death dealt completely with the problem that man’s sin had set. Whatever had to be done, He did it, and now those who come in faith may enter into full salvation. Throughout the centuries there have been many theories current in the Church as to how this was done, and none of them has been able to command universal acceptance. This leads us to the conclusion that there is an essential mystery about the atonement so that men cannot know completely how it works. But there are some points that the Bible makes very clear and any satisfactory understanding of the atonement must reckon with them.

The Love of God. The first point to notice is that the atonement proceeds from the loving heart of God. In the best known text in the whole Bible we read that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). With this, accord the words of Paul: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). This line of teaching could be traced through the whole of Scripture, for it is fundamental that the atonement takes place only because God’s love leads to it.

Notice that the passages we have cited do not speak of the love of Christ, which we would perhaps think more natural. It is the love of the Father that is seen in the Cross (the love of the Son is, of course, seen too, but that is not the point in the passages under discussion). This is important in that it shows us that our salvation comes to us with all the majesty of God the Father behind it. It is a divine work in the fullest sense. It is important also in that it shows us that in this work of salvation the Father and the Son are completely at one. Sometimes, with the very best motives in the world, theologians have given the impression that God the Father is a stern judge, just, it is true, but stern. He lays down his requirements, and when men do not reach them insists on punishment. Into that situation comes the loving Son who intervenes in such a way as to save men from their judge. This is not the scriptural teaching at all, and must unhesitatingly be dismissed as a caricature. The atonement takes place because God the Father loves us and makes provision in his Son for our salvation.

The Sin of Man. Paul gives as one of the fundamental pieces of the Church’s teaching (it had been given to him: he did not originate it), that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). This, too, is teaching that could be widely documented, for the early Church was sure that Christ’s death and man’s sin were closely connected. So frequently do we find the two linked that it is more or less a commonplace of New Testament teaching on the subject, and it could be passed over quickly were it not for the fact that in modern times the church has often lost sight of this altogether. Many think of Christ as a martyr, and of his death as taking place because he was not understood, or because his teaching was rejected, or for political reasons or the like. “Explanations” of this type are legion, and they make a strong appeal to many in our day. But they are out of keeping with the New Testament, There it is clear that, humanly speaking, Jesus could have avoided the Cross had he so chosen. But he did not so choose, for this was the divine way of dealing with sin.

Sometimes the New Testament speaks of Christ’s blood as shed “for the remission of sins” (Matt. 26:28). This same blood “cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Christ “purged our sins” (Heb. 1:3); he “bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). And there are other expressions. Whatever had to be done about sin, he did it. And he did it perfectly and finally for “where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (Heb. 10:18).

The New Testament witness is clear. The death of Jesus was connected with the sin of man. And the death of Jesus was the perfect atonement for man’s sin.

Penal Substitution. The way this is effected in the traditional evangelical statement of the position is by Christ’s bearing the penalty that sinners had incurred, by his taking their place. It is true that the New Testament never uses this term, but it is difficult to explain such a passage as Romans 3:21–26 any other way. Here Paul says that the Cross shows us the righteousness of God. His point is that the truth that God is righteous was in danger of being obscured because in earlier days God had not always exacted the penalty for sin. “Remission” in verse 25 (KJV) is better “passing over”; the meaning is that God had passed over men’s sins without punishing them; therefore he might appear not to be just. But in the light of the Cross, such an accusation can never be leveled again. What does this mean if it does not mean that the penalty of sin has been borne?

Substitution is to be found in many places. We see it in the saying of Mark 10:45, “The Son of man came … to give his life a ransom for many.” The expression lutron anti pollon expresses a substitutionary thought, as, indeed, does the whole saying, for the meaning is “Because Christ died the many do not.” Again, the agony in Gethsemane taken with the cry of dereliction (Mark 15:34) points to the same thing. Why should Jesus be in an agony as he contemplated death? He was no coward, and many lesser by far have faced death calmly, including not a few who have been in spired by him. It was not death as such that he feared, but the death that was the death of sinners, that death in which he should experience the horror of being foresaken by him who is of purer eyes than to behold evil (Hab. 1:13). Paul is surely referring to the same thing when he says that God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). This identifies Christ in his death in the closest manner with the sinners. He died the death of sinful men. So Paul can say, “one died for all, then were all dead” (2 Cor. 5:14). And the same truth underlies his words, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). This must surely mean that Christ bore the curse that we should have borne. And this is substitution.

Twice Christ is said to have borne our sins (Heb. 9:28; 1 Pet. 2:24). In modern times this is sometimes understood to mean that Jesus put up with the frustrations and difficulties involved in living among sinful people. But that is not the biblical meaning of the term. It occurs often in the Old Testament in contexts showing plainly that the bearing of penalty is in mind, as when Ezekiel says “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father …” (Ezek. 18:20; see also Num. 14:33 f., etc.). The expression then means that Christ bore our penalty. He stood in our place.

Substitution is also in mind when John records the cynical prophecy of Caiaphas “it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” (John 11:50). Caiaphas spoke out of a worldly political cynicism, but John records the words because they were an unconscious prophecy of the significance of the death of the Lord (vv. 51 f.). His death is a substitute for that of the people. We must surely understand the references to Christ as “the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2; 4:10) in the same way.

Thus the evidence that the New Testament regards Christ’s saving work as substitutionary is considerable and varied. He took our place. This is not the whole story. His death is an example for us (1 Pet. 2:21). It is a display of God’s love (1 John 4:10, etc.). There are other aspects. None can be dismissed as unimportant, and all must be kept in mind if we are to obtain the complete picture. But an emphasis which is usually overlooked in modern theological writing is this substitutionary one which is found throughout the New Testament, and which is so fundamental. Whatever it was that Christ did for us, he did by taking our place. He bore what we should have borne and we go free.

Those who deny this do not usually reflect on the consequences of their denial. But there are only two possibilities. Either Christ bore the burden of our sin, or we bear it. There is no middle course. Thus to deny that in any sense Christ took our burden means that the whole idea of Christianity as a redemptive religion must be abandoned. Substitution may need to be understood carefully. It is not some crude, external thing. It includes the thought that the Substitute is on the one hand one with God and on the other, one with sinful men. Believers are not saved as detached units; they are “in Christ.” But the fact that we need to understand substitution carefully does not mean that we are at liberty to abandon the concept altogether. It is too deeply rooted in the Scriptures and too imperatively demanded by the logic of the situation for that.

The Triumph of the Crucified. As he comes to the climax of his great treatment of the Resurrection, Paul exults, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” He answers his questions, “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law,” and immediately proceeds, “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55–57). This note of victory runs through the New Testament treatment of the work of Christ. The gospels do not finish with the Cross, but go right on to speak of the Resurrection. The Acts pictures the early Church as living in the afterglow of the same fact, and the extent to which it dominated their thought is revealed in the speeches that Luke records. In the epistles the same triumph is depicted, and this rings on to the last book of the Bible where the note of triumph sounds forth clear and sustained. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the New Testament writers conceived of their Christ as having won for them a complete triumph over all the forces of sin and death and hell. “We are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37).

Throughout the New Testament it is assumed that man’s salvation rests entirely and only on what God has done in Christ. The atonement is the very central doctrine. Without Christ’s saving work men are lost. In Christ they are triumphantly saved.

Bibliography: J. Denney, The Death of Christ (probably still the best conservative work; R. V. G. Tasker has produced a revised edition); The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation; R. W. Dale, The Atonement (a standard work; and the various writings of P. T. Forsyth on the subject are still useful); H. E. Guillebaud, Why the Cross? (slighter, but valuable).

Warden

Tyndale House

Cambridge, England

In areas where moral and spiritual values are concerned, neutrality is that twilight zone of irresponsibility which plays directly into the hands of evil.

We hear much of neutrality in nations today. History shows that there have been only a few nations which have remained “neutral” in times of international conflict, and this neutrality has often paid off handsomely in material advantage.

Today neutrality is assuming increasingly ominous proportions, for many who call themselves “neutral” are actually unwilling to commit themselves for or against communism, and in so doing they have left the free world to carry the burden while they themselves reap benefits from both sides.

The basic philosophy of the so-called neutral nations became even clearer during the recent Belgrade conference. At that time these nations were willing to denounce any act of the West which could be interpreted as preparation for defense against Moscow while the renewed nuclear testing by Russia was largely ignored.

A Christian’s primary concern, of course, is not in the realm of international politics. We are subjected daily to the temptation of remaining neutral in the area of spiritual and moral issues. This is a deadly sin.

In the Revelation we read our Lord’s comment to the Laodicean church: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”

Many characteristics of the Loadicean church are to be found in the churches of America today and these characteristics are but the elongated shadow of those who comprise her membership.

The affluence of our churches today is a deadly menace.… Are we not wretched in our wealth and sophistication, miserable in our lack of spiritual perception, blind to the opportunities, privileges, and responsibilities which are ours? Are we not naked as we stand revealed in the clear light of God’s judgment?

Too many of us are indifferent when we should be deeply concerned. We affirm our belief that Christ is man’s only hope and then spend dollars on self-gratification and pennies, if anything, on making Christ known to a lost world. This very indifference may some day rise up to smite us as God finds it necessary to use other channels for the proclamation of the Gospel.

These are days when Christians should act, but because we are infected with a deadly spiritual ennui we wait complacently for the world to be evangelized, and hope that it will be accomplished without our having to do much to further the end.

Few of us have ever made a clear-cut decision to serve God regardless of the consequences. Few of us have exercised our priestly authority over our own homes and with Joshua declared, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Neutrality in spiritual and moral matters makes us fearful when we should be fearless, and silent when we should speak out. The forces of evil are in evidence on every hand, but few of us speak out against them, nor do we dare stand up and be counted when the issue is drawn by others.

Woe to the individual who feels he can be neutral when to do so means that he takes his place on the side of evil. Sins of the spirit and of the flesh are all about us. We cannot be neutral even if we so desire—for silence gives consent to the thing against which we should take a stand.

It is impossible to be “neutral” about Christ, either we are for him or against him. To ignore him is to take one’s stand on the side of his enemies.

Furthermore, it is not possible to be neutral about vital Christian doctrines, those which have to do with the person and work of our Lord. In every generation there are those who deviate from Christian truth and there are those who accept these deviations without protest.

We are not speaking of areas of the Christian faith on which good men can and do differ, that is, areas which have nothing to do with salvation itself. We are speaking to the necessity of convictions and actions where the Bible itself leaves no doubt as to the Christian’s duty.

Our Lord confronted Peter with a query as to whether he too would turn away from him. There was not neutrality but a ringing certainty in Peter’s reply: “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

In Christian faith there can be no neutrality. And in Christian practice there is no room for the deeds of Satan. Christianity and the Church have been gravely compromised with the world by those who are unwilling to take a stand for righteousness.

What is the cure for the disease of neutrality in the face of spiritual and moral demands?

The Laodicean Christians were counseled first of all to recognize their own pitiful state: they were naked when they thought they were clothed, poor when they thought they were rich, blind when they thought they could see. Then they were told to seek the cure for spiritual blindness.

Certainly one of our greatest needs is spiritual discernment and judgment. One’s Christian witness can be gravely affected by a lack of either. There are many situations where the Christian should remain silent, just as there are others where silence involves denial of our Lord and his truth. It is in this realm that spiritual discernment is so greatly needed and comes solely by the presence and illumination of the Holy Spirit himself.

Another need is convictions resting squarely on God’s revealed Word. That we live in a time of theological uncertainty and compromise none can deny. No longer do the clear affirmations of the Scriptures carry full weight with many people who stand in the breach between the living and the dead. Because of a neutrality stemming from theological compromise too many persons are placing their emphasis on secondary rather than primary matters.

We witness the strange phenomena of men affirming and acting on the strongest kind of convictions on social, economic, and political matters while at the same time equivocating when it comes to basic truths on which the eternal destiny of men depends. This neutrality with reference to the eternal verities is causing men to waver and turn away. Because of the uncertain sound of the trumpet the battle of the ages is, from the human standpoint, in doubt.

Nothing could do more to revitalize individual Christians and the life of the Church than a shift from neutrality to bold faith on the side of the One who someday will triumph.

His future is certain. Is ours?

Meet The Magi

Where is he?

Where is the promised King?

Why do you ask? We knew him well,

For once he passed this way.

He healed our sick, he preached for us,

And came to dinner, too.

Indeed, it sometimes seems

That he is with us still,

We have such memories.

That star you followed we

Have set in galaxies

Of Christmas incandescence

To twinkle on our skylines.

Your quest for him we know;

In effigy you ride

Across our lawns and windows.

But look about you, Magi,

For where has he not been?

That cathedral bears his name,

These hospitals have grown

From a story he once told—

We tell it still to children.

But where is he?

We do not know.

If you find him, bring us word

For we might worship too.

Where is he?

Where is the Lord’s Anointed?

He has gone. We broke his yoke;

We have cast away his cords.

Like the corpse of our dead god,

Stalin, we have flung him out

From the people’s mausoleum.

Above your phantom star

We raise another, red

With blood of Bethlehem.

To us, and not to him has come

The East, and all its treasures.

Where is he?

Where is Christ the King?

We know. Thus it is written,

And thus it came to pass—

His sufferings and glory.

We know where he has gone,

The way we also know;

He lives, he rules, he comes;

All power on earth is his

And we are witnesses.

We know, and since you ask,

We point you to the Scripture.

You must excuse us now—

It is a busy season.

Just follow the star to Bethlehem—

You can’t miss it.

EUTYCHUS

Kenosis

Thank you and the author for sundry stimulating suggestions in the article on “The Kenotic Theory” (Oct. 27 issue). But may I raise two questions?

First, if “God certainly limited himself with reference to future choices and deeds of free moral beings,” what does one do with such passages as Matt. 10:30; Eph. 1:11; Isa. 14:27; 43:13; Dan. 4:35; and such doctrines as providence, petitionary prayer, predictive prophecy?

Secondly, in addition to this doctrinal question there is an exegetical one: What becomes of the theory if one accepts the exegetical position set forth by Professor J. Jeremias, TWNT, V:708, to the effect that the “He emptied himself” of Philippians 2:5–11 is simply the Greek rendering of the Hebrew text of Isaiah 53:12, “He poured out or surrendered his life unto death?” On this interpretation the “central passage” on which the kenotic theory is built refers to the death of Christ and not at all to the Incarnation.

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON

Columbia Theological Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

The New Ecclesiarchs

Let us face it. “The values of the marketplace are the values of the church.”

William Henry Anderson, Jr. did a remarkable piece of work in “The Organization of the Church” (Oct. 27 issue). The Unitarians and the Universalists are now merged … and we have a “guide” of 50 pages, the introduction to which says, “The new mood is to blend together all the independent parts of our movement into a comprehensive system (the italics are not mine).

I believe that, with few exceptions, the new ecclesiarchs are dwelling in such a dream world that they might even be called psychotic. They have no relation to reality and are not concerned about it. Papers, reports, but where are the people?

E. L. THEODORE POPP

Unitarian Church

Grafton, Mass.

Anderson’s essay needs but this fresh, modern, headquarters-approved dash of poetry to make it crystal-clear that the essential difference between any particular church and its corporation god lies in the fact that while the church intones “Have faith in God,” headquarters translates it to “Have Faith in Goals.”

Have faith in goals

You need not preach the Word.

Have faith in goals

The print of the great speckled bird,

Have faith in goals

Or get thrown out at third.

Have faith, dear friend, in goals.

Have faith in goals

When quota sheets get boring,

Have faith in goals

Our spirit sweetly snoring,

Have faith in goals

Our first love: cash-adoring!

Have faith, dear friend, in goals.

Have faith in goals

Old Laodicea’s boon,

Have faith in goals

Each year a bigger spoon,

Have faith in goals

Launch cash-nik to the moon.

Have faith, dear friend, in goals.

Have faith in goals

Behold the golden calf,

Have faith in goals

Join Ahab’s dancing staff,

Have faith in goals

God weeps and devils laugh.

Have faith, dear friend, in goals.

W. F. HADEL

Mountain Home, Ark.

For Whom The Toll?

O. K. Armstrong’s article on taxation of churches (Oct. 13 issue) is very apropos—so far as it goes—but kindly tell us what is fair or just about exempting the church buildings, etc. This forces the many millions of good citizens who are not communicants of any church and have no interest in them to pay added taxes. A substantial number even think the church harmful. How must they feel over being taxed for the propaganda which they regard as nonsense?

IRA D. CARDIFF

Yakima, Wash.

Your article … brings up a subject of great interest to me. About 10 years ago I was a County Commissioner, and selected chairman of a fact-finding committee (on tax exemption). I found some real eye openers, under difficulties.

While newspapers and periodicals were eager to print my findings … I found many obstacles placed deliberately in my way by churchmen, both Protestant and Catholic; also by educators and unions. They were bold in their attempts to suppress my reports.

I was even written up in a state college paper as being opposed to religion and education since I had none of my own:

And yet I was a church deacon and member of the alumni of the college at the time.… I don’t go to church any more. I feel out of place. I am doomed to the everlasting punishment, so I have been told. So be it.

O. M. JORGENSEN

Manhattan, Kan.

A short time before I read your article … was the first I had known that our church (Latter-Day Saints) did not pay taxes on business operations.

I do not feel that this is right or honest. It happens not only in Salt Lake City, hut all over Utah as well as in other states.…

M. C. LEARITT

Neola, Utah

Historicity Of Genesis

I was perplexed with the review … of The Message of Genesis by Ralph Id. Elliott (Oct. 27 issue). Dr. Elliott was my professor in the seminary, and his book reflects the denials which he declared in class. This book has caused no little stir among those of us who subscribe to the complete historicity of Genesis and to the correct interpretation of Genesis by the inspired writers of the New Testament. The book naively ignores the New Testament’s view of the Old Testament.

GENE L. JEFFRIES

Harmony Heights Baptist Church

Joplin, Mo.

Macartney And Machen

Please permit a brief footnote to G. Hall Todd’s attractive review of the new autobiography of Clarence E. Macartney (Oct. 13 issue). The book should he widely read because of its firsthand report of the doctrinal controversies of the twenties and thirties as well as for many other features to which the reviewer draws attention.

Particularly gratifying in my judgment is Macartney’s evaluation of the character and witness of J. Gresham Machen which may serve to correct certain persistent distortions. Yet one statement of Macartney’s in this context is highly disturbing. It is that after Macartney offered to act as Machen’s counsel before the Permanent Judicial Commission in 1936, Machen declined, “saving that if I defended him, he might be acquitted, and that was not what he wanted” (p. 189). The full correspondence is available to myself and shows that at this point Macartney’s memory failed him. In a letter of about 1200 words Machen, while expressing deep gratitude for the offer, declined on the ground that he felt that his counsel, who would be his spokesman in connection with the subsequent appraisal of the trial regardless of its outcome, had to be a person who would “represent my view in the most thoroughgoing way,” which, to Machen’s distress, Macartney did not do.

At this time indeed (May 9, 1936), after many years of struggle for reformation from within, Machen had come to believe that the denomination was apostate and he longed for a separation. Nevertheless, as this letter also emphasizes, Machen’s sense of obligation to fulfill his ministerial vows was such that he could not condone the evil involved in his anticipated condemnation even though it might become the occasion of good. In his own words in the letter, “But I cannot acquiesce in that evil for a moment, and therefore I am adopting every legitimate means of presenting my case even before the Modernist Permanent Judicial Commission.”

NED B. STONEHOUSE

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadephia, Pa.

Articles Of Religion

Pastor J. B. Cain, in his letter (Oct. 27 issue), quotes what he states is from the Methodist “Discipline” as to Holy Scriptures containing all things necessary to salvation. Be it known that this is the VI Article of Religion, 1562: “Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation,” of the Church of England, and repeated also in the Articles of Religion of the Episcopal Church.

And, as regards Pastor Mueller’s article in the same issue: “Luther’s ‘Canon Within the Canon,’ the same Article VI goes on to list as Scripture the 14 books of the Apocrypha, with this statement: “And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.…”

ROBERTS E. EHRGOTT

St. John’s Episcopal Church

Mount Prospect, Ill.

Stewardship Of Time

You certainly have dared to review the picture “King of Kings” honestly and sincerely from the Christian’s point of view (News, Oct. 27 issue).

Yesterday on my way to church, I heard the local program of the Church Federation of Los Angeles praising the picture—in fact, taking more time to praise it and a very questionable French picture which deals with adultery and fornication … than they gave “Question 7.”

JAMES K. FRIEDRICH

President

Cathedral Films, Inc.

Burbank, Cal.

Part 1

“The church of the living God, the pillar and ground L of the truth … the household of God … built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone …” (1 Tim. 3:15 and Eph. 2:19, 20).

A pronounced characteristic of modern Christendom is its confused doctrine of the Church. This confusion reveals itself in extreme expressions of Protestant individualism, of Roman Catholic sacerdotalism, and of the “ecumenism” of councils of churches, extremes which often embody and “glorify” the visible differences between communions. Any extreme tends to be harmful, of course. In the case of the Church, the above mentioned extremes tend to diminish both the New Testament fellowship described as “filled with the Holy Ghost … [and] of one heart and of one soul …” (Acts 4:31, 32) and the New Testament task of witness to the Gospel commanded by Christ, even to “the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

What is being taught about the Church that would diminish its nature and mission? In the first place there are those who describe the Church as just another man-made social organization, a loosely-bound group of like-minded individuals. They feel the Church has social relevance only as individual members give it import and meaning. The most commonly accepted but no less erroneous modern teaching sees the Church as an invisible entity (an abstract divine ideal) toward which Christians strive. Then there are those who describe the Church in such strictly mechanistic or authoritarian terms that they seem at times even to presume on the prerogative of the Holy Spirit.

What shall we say to these trends? The Roman Catholic extreme is best referred to the Holy Spirit, while non-Roman Christians universally proclaim and teach a strong apostolic doctrine and fellowship. Let us turn our attention rather to the extreme teaching that Christendom sprang from the post-Ascension era to modern Protestantism full-blown. This concept shows little concern for the New Testament Church and for the subsequent glorious history of Holy Spiritled martyrs, apostolic fathers, and bold bishops who changed the course of human history. Perhaps the basic reason for Protestant confusion is the lack of real concern about any doctrine of the Church. Such ecclesiastical deprivation can be remedied only by careful and thorough inquiry into the Holy Scriptures under the tutelage of St. Paul, the Church’s greatest theologian, missionary and pastor. From such study the following descriptions of the Church will be obvious:

1. The Church is the special community of believers in Christ who through faith in him and by baptism into him through the Holy Spirit are made one with Christ and with each other. Indeed, “the promise [‘Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost’ at baptism] is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:38, 39). St. Paul describes this fellowship of the Holy Spirit as “the church of the living God” (1 Tim. 3:15), the outward manifestation of the special individual and social relationship of those in Christ. “He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ—He gave us the very life of Christ Himself …” (Eph. 2:5, Amplified New Testament).

A Unique Institution

This special community of the redeemed in Christ is a unique institution, for it is composed of those who, through God’s saving grace in Christ, have experienced both reconciliation with. God and enfranchisement within the redemptive fellowship. Thus they are “no [longer] strangers … but fellow citizens with the saints …” (Eph. 2:19). As “God’s own people … we are joined together harmoniously … in Him—and in fellowship with one another” (Eph. 2:21, 22, ANT). An evidence of the deep concerns of the early Church is the active healing and confessional ministry recorded by St. James (Jas. 5:13–15).

2. The Church is also the visible society in time of those living (abiding—see John 15) in Jesus Christ, nourished and sustained by the Holy Spirit. Members of the Apostolic Church are “called of Jesus Christ … to be saints … (Rom. 1:6). It was this sense of personal invitation and close identity of the Church with Christ (called his “bride” by the writer of the Revelation 21:9; 22:17) which led John Calvin to observe, “St. Paul calls Christ the Church.” This is indeed an accurate observation of fact. It is erroneous to say that the disciples formed the Church to perpetuate the high ideals and lofty teachings of an unusual Master. Jesus Christ is the Church and unto himself he calls (invites and bids) and draws not only the Jewish disciple/apostles but also those “of the Gentiles … [who] shall be called the children of the living God” (Rom. 9:24, 26). It is the “church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).

Fellowship Foremost

Such a dynamic organism must be visible. Members as well as initiation and liturgical rites; formularies of faith, order and discipline; new Spirit-directed life; and missionary labor compose this Church visible. But first and foremost the Church is a fellowship of Christ’s men (Christians), a fellowship of his followers and of the brotherhood of which he is the Head. St. Paul reminds us that “He … is the head of the body, the [his] church;” in him “all things consist [are held together]” (Col. 1:18, 17); God “hath put all things under his feet and gave [appointed] him to be the head over … the church” (Eph. 1:22).

Among the many essays submitted to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, this exposition of the doctrine of the Church is one of the most significant. Those who do not share its Episcopal orientation will be rewarded nonetheless by its firm reach for New Testament realities.

Further, the Church possesses the assurance of victory already won by Christ Jesus, eternal Saviour and King. Even the gates of hell “shall not prevail [hold out] against Christ’s Church (Matt. 16:18). The final, most glorious assurance of all is Christ’s promise of victory over death to believing and abiding Christians because of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. St. Paul thus sings the Church’s triumph song: “Death is swallowed up [utterly vanquished] in victory.… Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord …” (1 Cor. 15:54, 57, 58).

3. As the very “body of Christ” divinely established by God in Christ, the Church is commissioned to fulfill his mission under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is the absolute minimum description of St. Paul’s doctrine of the Church (see the Apostle’s great teaching in Romans 7, Ephesians 3, 4 and 5, and 1 Corinthians 12, as well as that of Philippians 3 and Colossians 1). The New Testament Church considered itself the continuing instrument of God’s purpose and plan begun in Christ and now evidenced within its “new life” fellowship and witness. God intends “the perfecting of the saints [all baptized and abiding Christians] … for the edifying [the building up] of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith” (Eph. 4:12, 13). “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus …” (Eph. 2:10). It is from the mighty acts of God in Christ (incarnation, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension) that the Church derives its true life and its dynamic proclamation and missionary witness. In a brilliant autobiographical passage St. Paul describes the common apostolic stewardship: “… who now rejoice in my sufferings for his body’s sake, which is the church …” (Col. 1:24).

4. The Church is both a universal and a local entity, “his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:23). The apostles established each local unit to be a reproduction, a microcosm, of the “one body” “established in the faith” and “confirmed” (strengthened and disciplined) by the apostles as they on their visits delivered “the decrees … that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem” (Acts 15:41; 16:4, 5). St. Paul seems to know nothing of the modern anomaly of “solitary Christians.” Fie counsels Christians, “… brethren, become followers [imitators] of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus …” (1 Thess. 2:14). The Apostle cautions individualists: “Do not let yourselves be [hindrances by giving] offense … to the church of God” (1 Cor. 10:32). It is obvious from the pastoral letters of St. Paul that he considered his apostolic-episcopal office as Spirit-inspired authority within the body of Christ, the Church. This is a far cry from modern individualism which resents any external authority in faith or morals, even if it proceeds from the Church, directed by the Holy Spirit himself.

5. The Church is both an institution and a doctrine. It is “the household of God … built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone” (Eph. 2:19, 20), an organic institution entrusted by Christ with the mission of witnessing to the Gospel and of converting the world under the direction of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The institution is comprised of all baptized Christians who, through Christ, “have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). The doctrine of the Church is best outlined by St. Paul (“I speak concerning Christ and the church”) in his letter to the church at Ephesus (5:23–32):

a. “Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body” (v. 23).

b. “Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water [baptism] by the word” (vv. 25, 26), “That he might present it to himself a glorious church … holy and without blemish” (v. 27).

c. “The church is subject unto Christ …” (v. 24).

d. Christ “nourisheth and cherisheth … the church” (v. 29).

e. “… we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (v. 30).

In chapter 4 of his Epistle to the Ephesians, St. Paul pinpoints the divine work of Christ’s Church as the attainment of “the measure of the stature and the fulness of Christ … [and] speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body [the church] fitly joined together … maketh increase of the body into the edifying of itself in love” (Eph. 4:13, 15, 16). Further, the essential unity of the Church is the person of Jesus Christ. The acknowledgment and confession of our One Lord, Jesus Christ, “Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16), the Christian’s Saviour, King and Lord of life, bring in “the dispensation of the fulness of time … [that] he might gather together in one all things in Christ” (Eph. 1:10). “For we [no matter how numerous we are] are one … body: for we are all partakers of that one bread [the communion of the body of Christ]” (1 Cor. 10:17).

Because Christians have unity in Christ both the rule and peace of God are acceptable “to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful” (Col. 3:15). Such an historic view of the Church needs to be recovered by the contemporary but no less special society of the redeemed in Christ, his “One Body,” that Body of which he is indeed the head and organic unity. The closer we come to the New Testament doctrine of the Church as a divine, Spirit-directed fellowship in Christ, the more apparent will be the unity we seek.