It was very early Sunday morning, and Avery could not sleep. Thoughts about the Christmas cantata and the Sunday-school Christmas program made round after tedious round through his weary mind. Then he began to worry again about the gifts Janet was buying for the children. He knew they couldn’t afford them. But attempts to talk about the matter always seemed to end in irritated disagreement.

His sermon for that day was to be on hope for the hopeless, good news for the frustrated. Now he wondered whether he would be able to preach convincingly the new reign of peace in the lives of men through Jesus Christ, when he didn’t feel that peace.

Christmas had not been very enjoyable around the manse the past few years, he thought. It seemed to be a continual round of discussion, negotiation, ultimatum, and capitulation. As father and minister he felt that the spiritual values ought to outweigh the material aspects of celebration. But it was very hard to bring the season into focus this way, even in his own family.

The outdoor decorations should have been up by now. Lights along the roof line. A well-proportioned tree in the picture window. Just like last year—and how many years before that?

Where was the joy to the world—or the joy in his world anyway? What had happened to all the pleasant excitement of the Christmas pageant and the family tree and other familiar parts of the holiday season?

Avery got up, walked across the hall into his study, and stretched out in his lounge chair, as if to try to get a better perspective on God, the world, Christmas, the good news, money, God’s love, his family, and all the other things that were bothering him. Just what was the matter? Didn’t he like his people and his work? Didn’t he love Janet any more? Would leaving the ministry and starting a new life help them grow closer?

As pastor he had tried earnestly, he felt, to lead his people to a greater understanding of the meaning of Advent and Christmastide. He wanted them to look beneath the tinsel and bright paper and bright lights and find God’s answer for frustrated man. But he couldn’t see that his efforts had done much good.

Maybe the cause of his problem lay with him rather than with his wife, or his church, or the Christmas commercializers. Maybe what he really wanted to do was to come with the Magi and bring a gift to the baby-king and then leave for the kingdom in the East, never to return.

Maybe he was too involved in his daily schedule—visiting in the hospital, calling on members and potential members, writing sermons, working with the young people, taking part in PTA and other community activities, taking radio talks, meeting with the women’s council, sitting in on committee meetings. Maybe he couldn’t be both a good pastor and a good father and husband.

Critical members, family tensions, the sermon he didn’t really feel like preaching, unpaid bills, the gradual end of family devotions, jealousy—all these things seemed to settle into a thick fog of anxiety. Where was the creativity and inspiration, the firm trust in God and the accompanying self-confidence, that he used to think he had? If only his life were a story, he thought, he would walk out into the clear starry night and the heavens would speak to him, and guide him back to a stronger faith.

Avery reached over to pick up his Bible from the desk. It was open to Luke’s account of the Christmas story, which he had needed to refer to while finishing his sermon the evening before. “And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” He remembered a time many years ago when he had memorized this passage to recite at a Sunday-school program. He had had to limp up to the platform, because earlier in the day he had stuck a knife in his foot while playing a knife-tossing game with a couple of his friends.

“And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were filled with fear.” He thought of the moon shining on the snow one evening shortly after Pearl Harbor, long before he had met Janet. He was driving out to Sue Anne’s, and the radio in his ’39 Ford was playing, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” Later they had walked hand in hand under the stars and felt that God was very close. Would it take a heavenly vision to stir his belief now?

He read on. “And the angel said to them, ‘Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’ ” News of a great joy. During his last days in college everything had seemed right. He had a firm faith in God and enthusiasm to serve him. He had a college degree and a good job that promised a profitable future. And though he did not realize it then, the ground work was being laid for his decision to go into the ministry.

“And suddenly there was with the angels a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” A brief tour of duty in the business world was only a happy prelude to a decision to go to seminary. During this time he had met Janet. Their courtship had been rich and exciting, and they were married in a beautiful church wedding. Together they enjoyed the three years in seminary, good years of learning and personal growth, overflowing with service to God and man.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!” Peace here and now was the problem. Years had passed since seminary, and disillusionment had set in. Avery felt a dissatisfaction that people didn’t respond, that ideas didn’t blossom. The renewal he planned time and again didn’t come about. People continually disappointed him. His financial problem was always lurking in a back corner of his mind, ready to bother him in the small hours of the night. He remembered many times of deeply satisfying closeness with Janet and his family, but now he felt distant from them, overwhelmed by the goals he had set for himself.

“When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another. ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord made known to us.’ ” He thought of the stories he had written in the hope of recapturing the spirit of Christmas. Still Christmas seemed to stay on the tinsel and shiny-ball level. The Christmas Eve service never seemed to get through to many of the people.

“And they went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger. And when they saw it they made known the saying which had been told them concerning this child.” Was he holding back? Was he failing to go to the manger and lay his life at the feet of Jesus? Why couldn’t he and Janet seem to find time to pray together, or to read the Bible and pray with the children? Was it because he advocated things from the pulpit and didn’t do them that he felt depressed at Christmas?

“And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.” How long had it been since he had told the Christmas story anywhere but in the pulpit for anyone to “wonder at”—even his own children? How could he say that this was such great news, if he didn’t feel it was vitally important to him?

“And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” He put down the Bible. How was he glorifying and praising God? By being concerned about a Christmas bonus big enough to make ends meet? By becoming so involved with the theological implications—or lack of them—in the Christmas celebration that he missed the opportunities to show God in his best light?

Perhaps he had been trying to find his job at the crib, instead of going all the way through childhood and manhood with Christ—to the hillside where he fed the five thousand, to where he healed the lepers, to Jerusalem, scene of the triumphal entry, to the Upper Room, to the Garden, to Calvary, to the empty tomb, to the seashore. He began to realize that joy comes in sharing the suffering and the death and the resurrection, as well as the birth, which is only the beginning.

Avery knelt by his chair. “Dear God and Father, forgive me. Forgive my frustrations and anxieties. Take me, weak and miserable, and use me. Make me realistic when I am too confident. Lift me when I am depressed. But always keep me close to you.” He felt a little like the shepherds, who couldn’t stay long at the crib but had to get out and tell the story. He looked at the clock on the wall and saw it was a little after six. In a few hours he would be standing before his people. This time, he thought, maybe he could help them to see Christmas as the starting point of faith—to see Christmas anew.

Abraham Lincoln, I understand, once asked his debate opponent, “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs has he got?”

The opponent thought a bit and then said, “Well, if you count the tail as a leg, I guess you would say he had five legs.”

“That is precisely where you are wrong,” responded Lincoln. “Even if you call a dog’s tail a leg, it isn’t one. It’s still a tail.”

He was right, of course. Calling a tail a leg simply does not make it one. And that fact is worth remembering in a society where public opinion is so often equated with truth. There is no substitute for constant reference to the facts of the matter.

Even—or perhaps especially—in the Church of Jesus Christ this is so. We might be inclined to think that the spiritual nature of the Church somehow exempts it from the temptation to call a tail a leg. After all, isn’t Christianity “the word of truth”?

The Apostle Paul once prayed that discernment might be added to the love of the Philippian believers (Phil. 1:9). This suggests that Christians are not naturally endowed with wisdom. God must supply it. Discernment is precisely our great need today, because tails are too often taken for legs. Several ideas presently circulating about the Church and its ministry reveal this need.

Take, for example, that concern closest to evangelical hearts, the importance of spiritual conversion. The warm air of ecumenism and brotherhood in our time is tending to melt the firm conviction that men must repent and believe the Gospel.

In the midst of brotherhood weeks, union Thanksgiving services, and inter-faith seminars, an idea has taken root and is now bearing fruit. It is this: Since God loves all men and our baptism attests to our essential oneness in Christ, it is improper for one Christian to seek to convert another baptized Christian.

Consequently, evangelism, as most evangelicals know it, has come in for some scorching criticism in recent days. Some churchmen have compared counting decision cards with collecting brownie points for heaven. One Canadian minister wrote not long ago: “The desire to evangelize is unchristian.” Conversion-seeking, he said, is an application of Madison Avenue tactics to religion.

Since ecumenism is reaching out to embrace Jews as well as Christians, fundamentalist missionaries to the Jews may expect to be out of business shortly. Jewish evangelism is no longer in style. An associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches asked the Convention of Conservative Rabbis last year, “How can any Christian have the unutterable gall to invite a Jew to accept what had been the cruelest kind of hell to him and his forebears throughout all these years? When we add to this the fact that conversion itself has brought to the Jew far more misery than joy, how can we possibly be so callous and unthinking?”

This crusade against conversion knows no bounds. Even those outside the Judeo-Christian tradition can relax. They too are no longer targets of evangelism. Many sections of the Christian community now feel that the missionary’s primary task is not “the preaching of the Gospel to those in darkness.” It is the seeking of common ground with members of the other great religions of the world and the building of a better social order. Many now feel that he is most Christian who says the least about it.

How is an evangelical Christian supposed to respond to this rejection of traditional evangelism? Is it unchristian to seek converts?

It may help to resort to that old distinction between method and message. Evangelicals may unhesitatingly join those who object to the use of emotional gimmicks, personality cults, high-powered propaganda, and imbalanced criticisms of other religions, all in the name of “evangelism.” There is, however, good reason to suspect that current attacks on the winning of converts go deeper than the matter of evangelistic methods. At times, Jesus Christ’s claims to uniqueness—such as “I am the way, the truth, and the life”—are diluted to mean little more than “Let’s be friends.” But if what Jesus said about his mission in this world is true, then it is not the part of courtesy to withhold from men the only means to personal forgiveness from God. To offer kindness as a substitute for truth is to call a dog’s tail a leg.

Another current kick in religious circles is the appeal for church renewal. On every hand we hear of the need to update the Church. The Church, we are told, has failed. It must learn to speak meaningfully to modern man, and this necessitates new forms.

Seldom does a message catch on unless there is some truth in it. It is so here. If the Church is to minister to people, it is fairly well limited to people living today. That means, of course, that those who communicate the Gospel will have to get close enough to those who are without a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ to be heard. And “closeness,” we all know, is not a matter of mere physical position.

That truth, however, is hardly new. It was underscored by Jesus a long time ago when he talked about physicians’ going to the diseased (Matt. 9:11–13). Evangelicals have no reason to reject appeals for renewal on this account. The fact of the matter is, many churches do have vested interests in some segments of society. Many churches have turned their backs on the poor or the rich, on the youths or the aged. Money and buildings, organizations and status do have a way of making us defensive when someone begins to talk about change—even though we know that people and institutions begin to die when they no longer listen to critics. That is what is right about the current call for renewal.

On the other hand, many of the criticisms of the old ways are made under the apparent assumption that there is something sacred about the new per se. Avant-gardism can easily become a new creed. The newest becomes the truest and the latest becomes the best, in the minds of those devotees of change who have been “born again” by confessing the sins of the past and surrendering themselves to a wide-open future.

This a-historical mood that fires the evangelists of change is more American than Christian. Dreams of a new tomorrow and visions of a second Eden here in America are not new among descendants of the Puritans, who long ago insisted that the Kingdom of God must come to the United States—and now!

The dangers such a mood presents to a historic faith like Christianity are obvious. It is not enough to demand change and to insist on new forms. We must ask how are the changes going to be improvements. The new is not necessarily better.

And what about the once-for-allness of the faith? Are we to update the cross? Do we have a modern form of the resurrection? Has God somehow evolved into a more efficient manager of the universe? To pursue this sort of questioning reveals how much of our search for renewal is calling a dog’s tail a leg.

One instance of this practice shows how great the need really is for Christian discernment. Consider the almost universal fascination with social action today. The Rev. Robert Raines, a Methodist pastor who wrote The Secular Congregation, said not long ago that the controversy between “secularists and pietists” is splitting churches all across the country.

By a “pietist,” Raines referred to the church-centered believer. He looks for God primarily in the sanctuary and is more concerned that the true faith be preserved than that it be relevant. He thinks of sin as private immorality; stealing, lying, and adultery are examples. Consequently, salvation too is considered in individualistic terms.

A “secularist,” on the other hand, is world-centered. He looks for God in the party precincts and in the shopping centers. He is more concerned about the relevance of the Gospel to the world than about its preservation. He thinks of sin in terms of public immorality—injustice and inhumanity—and of salvation in corporate terms.

We may question Raines’s particular labels, but we cannot deny the problem he raises. How does the Church serve in the world without being fashioned by the world?

The current view of the Church as a serving community seeking to lay down its life in the world of poor and deprived men is a welcomed corrective to the recent preoccupation with the faith as an antidote to anxieties, fears, and neuroses. God is more than the Great Personal Problem-Solver. He is the Lord of History.

Evangelicals in America, under the pressure of an individualistic pietism, have often tended to ignore the wider dimensions of God’s work in the world. Revivalism, which evangelicalism employed so successfully in the nineteenth century, is inclined to turn a personal Gospel into an individualistic Christianity. They are not the same thing. The Bible makes it clear that God has purposes beyond the individual. Christ, Paul reminds us, is “the firstborn of every creature” and “the head of the body, the church” (Col. 1:15–18).

At the same time, however, far too many advocates of the secularization of the Gospel and the humanization of social structures fail to keep man’s fundamental need central. In the light of the biblical indictment of “this present evil age,” we dare not fall under the spell of illusory kingdoms. Sin in the individual and in society is still rebellion against God. And God has offered only one remedy for that.

This is not to suggest that Christians are in the least exempt from the quest for social justice. It is simply to recall how easy it is to drift from a biblical course for social progress, especially when a storm rages all about us. In fact, one could argue that our crises have reached such depths that only a Gospel as radical as that preached in the New Testament is sufficient for our times. Take, for example, the universality of sin. All, both black and white, both young and old, have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). One may not have sinned as often as the other, but admission of fault, it seems to me, is the starting point for the reconciliation of two estranged parties.

The proper balance between changing society and converting sinners is a delicate one, and there is little doubt that evangelicals in the twentieth century have leaned awkwardly toward an unbiblical individualism. But to confuse earthly service with eternal security is simply another instance of calling a dog’s tail a leg. As Harvey Cox, no less, one of the founding fathers of the Secular City, said recently, “Once you transform everything into a mission for social action and lose the intrinsic joy of the spirit of worship, you are in danger of losing both.” Like most exhortations, that one must be aimed in the right direction; but it ought not to be dismissed.

Discernment! That is our need—as well as our conclusion. Evangelism, renewal, and social justice are difficult assignments in themselves. We only add to our confusion if we fail to distinguish legs from tails.

Reputable scholars as different in time and perspective as last century’s Edmund Gosse and our contemporary Roger Sharrock have thought that the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress was unconsciously a consummate artist. I should like to argue, however, that there is evidence aplenty that Bunyan was consciously concerned with the literary merits of his masterpiece. Undeniably, his primary purpose in writing was to teach and edify; but it is equally clear that both in theory and in practice he showed that art is no enemy of belief. In its fascinating story, its balanced structure, its living characters, and its generic features as an allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress shows the hand of a literary artist who knew what he was about.

Bunyan’s rhymed preface shows that he had done some thinking on the fictional and imaginative in relation to truth. (For all quotations from the work I shall use Roger Sharrock’s Oxford edition of Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim’s Progress [London, 1966].) He tells of the personal satisfaction this realm affords, of the delightful experience of having his thoughts come intuitively, and of the legitimacy of writing in the style he had chosen. Summoning the authority of the Old Testament writers and the teachings of Christ and the apostles, Bunyan insists that truth can be released through fiction. In the final section of his preface, he shows his perception of imaginative literature—its illusory quality, its nexus of meaning, its tragi-comic essence, and its power to evoke response:

Would’st thou be in a Dream, and yet not sleep?

Or would’st thou in a moment Laugh and Weep?

Would’st thou loose thy self, and catch no harm?

And find thy self again without a charm?

Would’st read thy self, and read thou knowst not what

And yet know whether thou art blest or not,

By reading the same lines? O then come hither,

And lay my Book, thy Head and Heart together [p. 145].

In theory, then, Bunyan asserts his confidence in the value of imaginative literature. And in practice he shows similar confidence.

Bunyan tells the reader that he purposes to “chalk out” the journey of a man who seeks “the everlasting prize,” and one of the strengths of the work is, of course, the fascinating story of that journey—a story that, as Professor Livingstone Lowes has observed, puts Bunyan’s allegory “not far from the kingdom of great fiction.” Bunyan loses no time in getting his story moving: His main character, Christian, has fled from the place of destruction and started upon his adventuresome pilgrimage to the Celestial City. Along the way he encounters Pliable and Obstinate, “wallows” in the Slough of Despond, meets histrionic Worldly Wiseman, receives instructions in Interpreter’s House, unburdens at the cross, “clambers” up the Hill Difficulty, crosses the plain Ease, fights with Apollyon, trudges through the Valley of the Shadow, suffers persecution in Vanity Fair, sinks in despair in Doubting Castle, converses with faithful and unfaithful pilgrims, catches a glimpse of the ultimate goal from the Delectable Mountains, and crosses the river of Death. Finally he triumphantly enters the Celestial City. Bunyan does not neglect the landscape through which Christian’s pilgrimage takes him. Consider the view from the House Beautiful: “When the morning was up, they had him to the top of the House, and bid him look South; so he did: and behold at a great distance he saw a most pleasant mountainous Country, beautified with woods, Vineyards, Fruits of all sorts, Flowers also, with Springs and Fountains, very delectable to behold.”

The manner in which Bunyan controls his fascinating story shows the hand of a craftsman. As he moves his character across an indefinite terrain of roads, hills, and valleys, he skillfully balances action with contemplative interludes. After Christian’s experiences at the Slough of Despond, his confrontations with Worldly Wiseman and Legality, and his chastening interview with Evangelist, there follows an interlude of study and reflection at the Interpreter’s House. After the incident at the cross and the rigors of Hill Difficulty, the “retreat” of the House Beautiful awaits Christian. The renewed confidence gained in conversation with Evangelist comes after the trials of the Valleys of Humiliation and of the Shadow of Death. The persecutions in Vanity Fair and the sufferings in Doubting Castle are followed by the quietness and peace of the Delectable Mountains; the Land of Beulah succeeds the Enchanted Ground. And finally, after the ordeal of crossing the River of Death comes the victorious entrance into the Celestial City.

Perhaps the most notable of Bunyan’s artistic achievements is his character depiction. Often he shows the essence of a personality with only a few strokes. Obstinate begins almost every speech with a remark ringing with finality; his mind is made up, and he needs no help from either books or people. He makes intimating assertions about those who fail to share his viewpoint, thereby confirming his disregard for knowledge. When Pliable indicates his inclination to follow Christian, Obstinate’s intimidating reply is, “What! more Fools still? be ruled by me and go back.…” Earlier he says to Pliable, “Tush, … away with your Book; will you go back with us or no?” Among many other well-drawn characters is By-ends, one of the most subtly depicted. Eager to impress, By-ends proudly says he is a “Gentleman of good Quality” and arrogantly gives the names of his family connections, an impressive roll call including such men as Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Anything, and Mr. Two-tongues. In By-ends’ own words, “Mr. Two-tongues was my Mother’s own Brother by my Father’s side.” Not only must he define his social position; he must leave no one in doubt about his religious distinctiveness. In only “two small points” do the By-ends couple differ from those of “stricter sort”: they never “strive against Wind and Tide” and they are “most zealous when Religion goes in Silver Slippers.” By permitting By-ends to become his own satirist, Bunyan shows how thoroughly hypocrisy is worked into this little man’s being. Even Christian himself is no plaster saint; he has a man’s magnificence and a man’s stupidity. He is complex and has within him something of Sloth, Mistrust, and Timorous—to name only a few of his fellow agents present in his own character.

As a literary form for his story of Christian, Bunyan chose the genre of allegory. Dorothy Sayers, referring to Bunyan as the last of the English allegorists in the great tradition, suggests that even though the extent of his reading in allegories of literary repute is subject to question, their influence is evident in The Pilgrim’s Progress in that all the distinctive features of allegory are present: the pilgrimage, the dream framework, the personifications, and the “debates” or dialogue.

Bunyan places his story within the framework of a dream. And, moving his chief character toward his goal while at the same time keeping his finger on the contending forces within Christian, he makes abundant use of personification. This is perhaps the allegorical feature least palatable to contemporary readers. But readers of allegory might well heed the counsel of C. S. Lewis that they keep in mind both the literal and the allegorical sense and treat the one not as a mere means to the other but as its imaginative interpretation. This could mean that those capital-lettered words are far richer than they immediately appear. Consider Talkative. What the word means is clear. But what has Bunyan done to create his Talkative? How and why does he “imagine” him? Even the slightest observation of Talkative reveals that he is excessively loquacious. According to him, his capacity for discussion stretches over an astonishing expanse of subjects. And what a keen, inquiring mind this loquacious man thinks he has! To talk “of the History or the Mystery of things” and on any number of subjects “is most profitable,” for by so doing, says he, “a Man may get knowledge of many things.” On and on he talks until his empty words catch him in a web of contradictions from which he finally extricates himself by accusing Faithful of being “some peevish or melancholly man not fit to be discoursed.” Bunyan shows his Talkative to be a pretender who lacks the qualities needed for the pilgrimage. But Talkative is not merely a conceptual equivalent; he is an imaginative interpretation.

Characteristic, too, of Bunyan’s allegory is the “debate” or dialogue. That he had done some thinking about dialogue is evident from his rhymed preface: “I find that men (as high as Trees) will write/Dialogue-wise; yet no Man doth them slight/For writing so.” His fondness for it is obvious in his story. Though at times his dialogue is hardly more than stereotyped conversation, at other times he gives it a highly dramatic quality. Many episodes might be cited: the conversation of Christian with Talkative, with Mr. By-ends, with Ignorance. But the dialogue between Christian and Mr. Worldly Wiseman has a special excellence. In a few paragraphs Bunyan reveals the self-satisfaction of Worldly Wiseman, his contempt for Christian’s thinking, his bland censure of Evangelist’s counsel, and his complacent confidence that Christian’s earnestness arises from weakness of the intellect and from following faulty advice. At the same time Bunyan shows a great deal about Christian, too: he is not quite prepared for Wiseman’s insidious counsel; he is nervous and uncomfortable in the presence of this man of worldly reputation and lacks the discernment to cope with Wiseman’s quality of mind.

In the dialogues that fill the pages of his allegory, Bunyan usually has an artistic purpose. Acclaim for the quality of his dialogue has come from numerous critics, and no less a dramatic critic than George Bernard Shaw speaks of the terse manageableness of some of the speeches and of the manner in which the sentences go straight to their mark. Even the long, drawn-out conversations, admittedly weak as dialogue, are not meaningless digressions, for as the pilgrims march toward their goal the chief subject of conversation is naturally Hopeful’s experience as a pilgrim.

Through his fascinating story, his well-balanced structure, his keen depiction of living characters, and his skillful handling of allegorical features, Bunyan shows his awareness of the artistic demands of imaginative writing. The story of the pilgrimage of Christian from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City is a masterpiece from the hand of a conscious artist.

Satan turned his smoke-wreathed face toward his underling and sighed. “Christmas again!”

“People are rushing around like mad,” said Fireball. “Crushing each other in the stores. Kris Kringle is back in the windows. The trees are lighted. They’re singing carols, with now and again that song about a red-nosed reindeer. Kids are talking about toys. Business is booming. Any number of people are getting drunk.”

Satan shrugged. “The usual thing. Man has no imagination. His capability for duplication astounds me.”

“Millions are celebrating, Majesty. But most of them don’t know why, I’m happy to say.”

Satan nodded. “Things look well for us, I trust.”

“Rather, sir. I feel nothing is happening that threatens our cause.”

“Look. Ignore the gift-giving, the cork-popping, even the stable scenes in the yards, the lighted churches, and all that. Just make sure you keep them away from the real reason for celebration.”

“You mean,” said Spitfire, “don’t let them think about its being the Enemy’s birthday?”

The devil frowned. “Let them think about that, if they wish. Let them read Scripture and sing hymns. Even let them wax sentimental over the Lord’s visit to the earth. Just don’t let them dwell on why he did it!”

“You mean …”

“Allow them to talk about peace and joy and all that. Just get them away from that word ‘sin.’ They must feel that somehow there’s an incongruity between that word and the happy holidays. This shouldn’t be too hard. Men don’t like to think much about sin at any time, particularly not at Christmas.”

“Sin—that is why he came, isn’t it?” mused Fireball.

Satan nodded. “That’s why we’ve got to keep them away from that theme. Keep them singing, trimming trees, shopping, throwing parties, even having church services—but shoo them away from the real significance of the Incarnation. They mustn’t see that the cattle shed was a starting point for Calvary.”

“Come to think of it, Majesty, that’s what the Book says—the Enemy was to be called Jesus because he was to save the people from their sins.”

“ ‘The Word was made flesh,’ ” grumbled the devil. “And that wasn’t just so he could rub elbows with mankind, or tell them about how the higher world lives. He had a specific mission, remember? He came to die. And for one reason, ‘the sins of the world.’ ”

“True,” muttered Fireball.

Smoke curled about Satan’s face as he went on with his explanation. “There’s that other thing, too.”

“Other thing, Majesty?”

“The Enemy didn’t come only to die. He came to come—again. That first coming was a prelude to the second. Now, this we must never let enter their minds—even if they do remember he came to go to the cross the first time. Keep them away from those Scriptures that say he will appear again.”

Fireball nodded assent. “It won’t matter too much, then, if they preach eloquently about the birth in the cattle shed, or even on the great life he lived. Just so they don’t realize that nothing matters if he never comes again.”

“Precisely,” said Satan. “That’s the bastion we must hold at any cost, at any time—but it’s especially important that we hold it during the Yuletide. Little brother, I almost break out in a cold sweat every Christmas when I think how close the masses come to that big truth—he came once to die to save men so that he might come again and establish his Reign. But, thanks to me, they have usually been sidetracked. We must keep it that way.”

“It sure wouldn’t help our business if people got to thinking what that Incarnation really means,” agreed Fireball. “What I mean is, there’s so much involved. Not just his coming as a Baby to the earth but his resurrection, his coming again—even the Judgment!”

“Even the Judgment,” said Satan. “We musn’t let them think about that, either. But that won’t be too difficult. No one ever thinks of associating the Judgment with Christmas.”

“But they really belong together, don’t they?” said Fireball. “Those things all belong together—his birth, his death, his resurrection, his second coming …”

“Naturally,” growled the devil. “But that’s our business—to keep men from seeing the truth whole. We won’t be able to keep them from celebrating the Enemy’s birthday, or celebrating his resurrection, or quoting from his sermons, or talking about his good life. But if we can keep a curtain drawn over his coming again, we will have gotten ourselves a great victory.”

“Quite so, Majesty.” Fireball hesitated, then added, “There will always be some, though, who will see the whole picture.”

“I know,” said Satan, “but they are comparatively few. They have no loud voice and they aren’t very well organized. Their publicity is often atrocious. See that things stay that way.”

“Depend on me, sir!” Said Fireball stoutly. “I’ll try to see that Christmas remains meaningless!”

“Get going, then,” ordered Satan. “The shoving, jostling masses are out there, making ready for the big celebration. Invade them!”

Fireball chortled. “I’ll get right out and do my thing!”

Satan glowered darkly. “How often must I counsel you to forego that hippie talk? Off with you.”

Fireball started to scamper away, but paused. He grinned impishly. “Merry Christmas, Majesty!”

“Keep it merry, little brother,” growled the devil. “If they ever get serious about it we may be in trouble! Happy holiday!”—LON WOODRUM, Hastings, Michigan.

This article, which first appeared in the December 7, 1962, issue, is published again by request:

The evening shadows lengthened into night as a group of neighborhood children played together on the lawn. Bushes here and there made perfect hiding places, and the shrill voices of boys and girls gave evidence of carefree childhood, unaffected by responsibilities and unaware of a restless world about them.

An old man walked by and stopped to watch the children at play. A little boy was hiding behind some shrubbery close by the fence, and to him the old man said, “Sonny, my car broke down and I had to leave it at the garage down the street. Can you tell me where there is a place where I can spend the night?”

The boy turned and looked at the shadowy figure outside and replied, “Naw, I can’t. Run along. I’m busy.”

A crowd of teen-agers were out together. First a movie, then a stop for a Coke and dancing to a jukebox.

Crowding into their cars to continue the party in the basement recreation room of Dick’s home, they hurried by a boy walking manfully down the street with the aid of leg braces and two crutches. They all knew him, but his handicap kept him from joining in their fun. Only in his studies did he excel all the rest of them.

After the cars had started one boy remarked, “We should have asked Mark to ride. It must be pretty tough carrying yourself down the street with nothing much but your shoulder muscles.” “Aw, he’s all right. He’s used to it, and besides we haven’t got room in the car,” was the reply.

Across the town, students in the state university were busy preparing for exams. Many were affluent by the standards of the rest of the world; many were content with just getting by; all were enmeshed in the grind to cram enough information to graduate, in the hope of getting a good job one day.

There came a knock at the door of a room where two boys were slouched deep in chairs reading, and together they called, “Come in.” The door opened and a quiet fellow neither knew very well, though they knew some of the fellows spoke of him as a “holy Joe,” walked in. “I just wanted to invite you fellows to come over to the ‘Y’ tomorrow night to hear Dr. Ivan Cushman. He’s one of the world’s leading archaeologists, and he takes the Bible and makes it come alive in his lectures.”

“Who wants to hear an old gravedigger anyway?” asked Jim, with little politeness to their visitor. “And who wants to hear anybody stupid enough to believe the Bible?” Chuck chimed in. “Besides, we’ve got an astrophysics test day after tomorrow, and that’s all that counts. Toddle on and get some weaker minds to go with you.”

A beautiful woman, wife of a prosperous executive, was arranging the flowers in her home for guests who were coming for dinner—one couple particularly important because his influence could mean a large government contract for her husband’s firm.

The maid announced the guests, and in a few minutes gay laughter filled the air as cocktails were served and men and women mingled in the relaxed anticipation of good food and exciting companionship.

During the beautifully prepared and served dinner, a maid came to the hostess, leaned low, and whispered something in her ear. A shadow of annoyance crossed her face as she replied, “Tell them to ask someone else. This is no time to interrupt me. They should know that we have guests for dinner.”

The evening passed with laughter (some jokes few would have repeated in a mixed group a few years before), and with a friendly hand of bridge followed by final drinks before the friends left.

As they were preparing to retire, the executive asked, “Jane, what was the maid whispering to you about during dinner?” His wife replied petulantly, “Oh, those Smiths down the road had a sick baby they wanted to take to the hospital. It was too far for a taxi and the buses only run every hour. They asked if someone here could drive them in one of our cars. They should have seen that we were entertaining guests.”

A week passed. The midnight broadcast was about to begin, and across the city radios were turned on. Into homes and bars, cars and nightclubs, mansions and slums, there came these words of the first Advent: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”

A little boy in troubled sleep thought of an old man he had rudely told to “run along” because he was busy playing.

Some teen-agers who only a few minutes before had been gaily dancing to loud music suddenly remembered Mark shuffling down the street on his crutches and wished they had made room for him in their cars.

Two university students home for Christmas vacation paused to wonder whether they should have been too busy even to listen to a famous man who believed God and the Bible.

The executive looked at his wife, and she returned the uneasy stare. Had their guests been so important that they could not have spared a little time to help some poor neighbors, desperate because of a sick child?

“No room in the inn.” These haunting words carried their meaning to many people in many places.

No room for Christ? No time for him! No concern for things of the spirit! No love and compassion for needy people right at their side!

The broadcast concluded with these words: “How like the people of Bethlehem are many of us tonight! No room for the Christ child! But he is no longer a child. He grew to manhood and died on a cross for the sins of the world, and he arose from the dead—and he is coming again. He speaks to us: ‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.’ ”

In the dim recesses of many minds there came back these words: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

L. NELSON BELL

Much of the sickness of our modern world lies hidden until it explodes in emotional disorder. The minister-counselor must be prepared for distressing encounters that tax all his wisdom, patience, and prayer. Often he must work with medical resources in search of healing.

A young married man made an urgent phone call to me one Monday evening. He was highly intelligent and good-looking. He loved his wife and two children. He was in his last year of work for a Ph.D. and hoped to become an educational administrator.

He was suffering from attacks of panic at night, guilt over obscene thoughts, and fear of losing his eyesight. He had been reared in a very strict sect that emphasized eternal punishment, and he had the highest Christian ideals. He believed that a spot he had on one retina could be healed in only one way—by instantaneous divine touch.

I was relieved to learn that the young man was receiving psychiatric help at the campus health center. I arranged to meet with him for regular counseling sessions. During the eight months these went on, I tried to help him lay hold of salvation by grace through faith. Although reared in a “free grace” tradition, he was really under the burden of condemnation. I prescribed many passages of New Testament reading, and we discussed these repeatedly.

We had conversations about handling bad thoughts and about trusting God through the eye doctor to preserve his sight. He told me about the therapy at the student health center, which was an effort to reach his emotions through muscle tension and relaxation.

After several months, he no longer had attacks of panic. He smiled more easily and became more optimistic. He began to feel he could cope with final exams and the professional responsibilities that lay ahead. He seemed to acquire confidence that God had accepted him through Christ, that he did not struggle alone, and that his eyes were going to be all right. Our last session was one of thankfulness and quiet commitment in prayer.

There are times in counseling when no special wisdom is needed to recognize the cause of disorder. The baffling part is what to do about it. This is particularly true in cases of unhappy family relationships.

A housewife came to my office from time to time over a period of three years in despair over her husband. She was a very sensitive person, eager for a spiritual emphasis in her home and Christian training for the children. Her husband, a rough, outdoors type, had very little concern for religion in the home. He occasionally attended church as a concession to his wife but refused to have anything to do with marital counseling.

One day the wife appeared at the church without an appointment. She sprawled in a chair in deep exhaustion. She had no strength left and had difficulty concentrating on a conversation, and she plainly needed medical attention. Her husband, a professional man, was reluctant to admit that she needed help. But he did agree that she needed a change. Finally she arranged a trip and in a distant city entered a hospital.

After a few weeks she returned home, somewhat rested and stronger. She tried again to achieve some compatibility in the home. This attempt failed. Before long, she had to go to a hospital for shock therapy. Now through a formal separation she has some degree of peace. The children are divided between her and her husband.

The distressing question keeps recurring: Could there have been a better way? A faithful group is praying for a better solution to the family’s problem. God is the God of patient process, and there is always the hope of intervention that will succeed where man has failed.

Sometimes people have curious disorders that defy understanding. One is a strange drive toward failure.

An excited young man called one evening. He said he had been smoking marijuana daily but was scared and had resolved to kick the habit. For several months we had fortnightly sessions. He came from a church-related home and was attending college in our area. He had been withdrawing from people and could not concentrate upon his studies.

I stressed the possibility of a whole new direction for his life. He seemed pathetically eager to experience a personal relationship with Christ. As the weeks went by he expressed amazement at the way the Bible was speaking to his needs. He broke completely with smoking “numbers,” as he called them. His grades improved markedly. He made the college baseball team and seemed to have new purpose and confidence. He established a warmer relationship with his parents by mail.

He was unable, however, to find a Christian friend for regular prayer fellowship and discipline. What he told me about his inability to find supportive fellowship pointed to a tendency to be a loner and to get discouraged. After a time he began to miss appointments. I conferred with a friend in the college administration and with the help of the baseball coach we tried to develop a pattern of support and responsibility that would motivate him to succeed. His father came to see him several times and showed love and patience.

But despite all this effort, the young man was unable to hold on to a positive attitude. He felt he could not graduate, and he dropped one or two courses so that in the end he did not graduate. At no time did he show hostility toward any of us. He was compliant but dreamy and indecisive.

He is now living at home in another state, taking some college work and receiving professional counseling. He seems to have a strange will to fail, along with an inability to sustain effort, though in both studies and athletic work he has shown considerable ability. Yet he retains a certain idealism and wants to be in service-oriented work.

These examples reveal some of my basic convictions in counseling: (1) Conflicts and anxieties must be brought to the surface and faced squarely; (2) everyone needs a clearly defined relationship of trust with the Lord Jesus Christ; (3) the Spirit of power, love, and self-control is always the ultimate resource in therapy; (4) the patient needs the ability to use prayer and the Scriptures, always with reference to the supportive community of faith; (5) all available human therapeutic resources should be used; (6) pressure should be eased as much as possible during the early time of recovery; (7) some people have to live with a very limited ability to take strain; (8) the Christian counselor looks beyond the first months and even years of healing effort to Him who “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.”—The Rev. CARY N. WEISIGER III, minister, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, Menlo Park, California.

Dear Friends And Foes Of Eutychus Iii:

My stint as your bumbling but persistent correspondent ends with this final column of 1968. Following my illustrious Eutychus predecessors, Edmund Clowney and Addison Leitch, I now shed the ill-fitting cloak of anonymity and pass my quill to another phantom writer. Like Eutychus of Troas, who fell asleep during a long-winded, post-midnight sermon by the Apostle Paul, fell to his death from a third-story perch, and then came back to life after Paul embraced him, my successor Eutychus IV and his kin of letter-writers will undoubtedly come to life with lively comments on current ideas.

Service as assistant editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY under Carl Henry and Harold Lindsell, two of Christ’s most able servants and finest men, has been a great experience. But my path this year has led back to the college classroom as a member of the speech faculty at California State Polytechnic College in San Luis Obispo. Classroom teaching offers what I like—direct give-and-take with sharp, uninhibited students—whereas the role of an editorial desk jockey provides very limited feedback. Busy readers rarely “talk back” when a writer has struck a responsive chord, provoked a flush of anger, produced a bored ho-hum, or perhaps evoked a chuckle or two. Furthermore, the college campus provides one of the most fertile fields for Christian witness, and I’m glad to be back.

I’ll miss the kicks gained from covering the religious kooks for this column. I have at times found a certain satisfaction in spraying a bit of journalistic gas on the sacrosanct or ridiculous termites infesting parts of the religious woods. But I’m sure the California campus rumpus with Black Panthers Cleaver, Murray, et al challenging Reagan, Rafferty, and the Regents will forestall academic stupor.

My Eutychus III experience has made me realize that evangelicals are not as square as often depicted. We seem to be improving in our ability to laugh at our foibles. I have found, too, that satire is an effective means of deflating phony liberalism and getting under the skin of its reputedly broad-minded, but all too often narrow-minded, advocates. I hope the next Eutychus will sharpen my dull quill and use it deftly to satirize all religious figures who deserve it.

My thanks to you all for putting up with me. Remember to keep those cards and letters comin’ in!

Cheerfully and appreciatively,

Communicating Now

I believe that we can meet George Patterson’s dazzling challenge about gospel transmission during the “Communications Revolution” (Nov. 22); within twenty years (a conservative estimate) we can raise the millions of dollars required, build and equip all the suggested communications centers, and ready the gospel satellites for blast off.

But I also believe another communications operation can begin tomorrow: (1) Scattered throughout the world, 5,000 Christians commit themselves to win at least one person to Christ every year; (2) each new convert, personally nurtured, commits himself likewise.

Within ten years the circle of 5,000 would increase to five million! In the twenty-first year we could call off the gospel satellite countdown.…

The point: Can we be dazzled as well by the challenge (and potential) of personal communication? (I am not suggesting a boycott of mass-media means.) The problem: Where is our commitment, what are our priorities?

Park Presidio Baptist Church

San Francisco, Calif.

George Patterson, by launching off on the way-out subject of communication satellites, threw an exciting challenge to Christians. In my doctoral dissertation under way concerning the use of communication satellites for education, I have found our materialistic society unable to come to grips with the implementation of satellites for domestic or educational use in the United States.… Perhaps Christians interested in mass communications can agree more quickly on a program of action and get on with what I believe to be the most important use of satellites, namely, proclaiming the Gospel of Christ!

Knoxville, Tenn.

Death And The Church

Thanks for the good article, “Are Funerals Dying Out?” (Nov. 22). I find myself more and more in favor of holding the committal service before the funeral service in the church. The cemetery is a place of death, separation, and sorrow, and no words there are able to overcome these associations.…

Moving from the cemetery to the church is moving from the place of death to the house of the Resurrection. After the ordeal of the grave is past, the mourner may be more open to the hope, peace, and joy, the comfort and the love offered by the congregation and the building itself as well as the service of worship. Having the church service last would also eliminate questions of the open casket … the banks of flowers, and painful processions.

Maysville Presbyterian Church

Buckingham, Va.

Why should anyone (except a mortician) complain if Christians are moving toward “simpler, less expensive funerals”?…

Nothing in the Bible even suggests the necessity of having a funeral “service,” much less that this is a function of the Church.…

From a Christian point of view, what is the purpose of viewing elaborately preserved bodies in expensive coffins? Even the traditional flowers are in some cases being replaced by a more meaningful remembrance: a contribution to a favorite charity of the deceased given in his memory. This serves the living as well as the dead.

MRS. KOULA B. HAZELL

Durant, Okla.

A.C.C.C. Response

In your November 22 news article entitled “Rift In McIntire’s Movement,” I feel that you have misrepresented my position in several areas.

First of all, I am not an “anti-McIntire leader.” I regret that Dr. McIntire has misunderstood our motives and has chosen to air administrative differences before the public. It is methods like these that I am hostile to and which, I would hope, those presently in the ACCC and those considering this fellowship would seek to avoid.

Since your article deals with Dr. McIntire’s attack on the ACCC in a general way and the Beacon reports it in a biased way, may I suggest that those desiring an official statement from the officers of the ACCC can obtain it upon request from our office, The American Council of Christian Churches, 15 Park Row, New York, N. Y. 10038.

General Secretary

The American Council of Christian Churches

New York, N.Y.

Truth And Deception

Having read with interest “Man’s Search for Truth,” by Leland Ryken (Nov. 22), I want to make a few comments.

The Bible speaks of those who will not receive a love for the Truth (I believe it means the whole Truth), giving them up to their own delusions so they will even believe a lie. One translation says he will send them strong delusions so they will even believe a lie. Those ministers who are not declaring the whole counsel of God explaining the Scriptures through the power of the mind rather than by the Holy Spirit thereby deceiving many simple souls, will once stand before God in the day of judgment.…

Another great deception is the sin of failing to teach self-denial and the bearing of the cross. Jesus says he that does not take up his cross is not worthy of him. God is going to hold all ministers of the Gospel accountable to believe, practice, and teach the whole counsel of God as it is in Christ Jesus.

Hillsboro, Kan.

Integral Christianity

Thank you for the fine article on missions by Dr. John M. L. Young (Nov. 22). It is the best article I have seen in your magazine. The Christian community needs more such thinking in order to see the integral character of life when viewed from a Christian perspective.

Philadelphia, Pa.

On The Election

In your editorial about Nixon (Nov. 22) you said some good things, but perhaps we can add other thoughts. Mr. Nixon did win by a majority vote. If Wallace had not run, Nixon would have won overwhelmingly. The Nixon vote plus the Wallace vote shows that the conservatives far outnumber the liberals in this country. There is no need for a coalition government. We ought to rejoice and be exceedingly glad.… God has vindicated Mr. Nixon, and he who laughs last laughs best. It was not for nothing that I fasted and agonized in prayer until victory had been assured.… We had a victory dinner at our house. Yes, all things work together for good to them that love God and do his will. Our ecstatic exuberance over this colossal defeat of left-wing politics should know no bounds. With God’s help we can work for, and be assured of, not only four, but eight years of the fresh air of freedom. Thanks for the good things you mentioned about Nixon.

Trinity Methodist Church

Ashland, Ky.

Controlling Birth

Your November 8 issue on the subjects of sex, birth control, abortion, and the like is excellent and worth the price of renewal.

Zion Lutheran Church

Houston, Tex.

I consider such plebeian, flesh-featured, and sex-oriented subjects are wholly alien to a periodical supposedly dedicated to evangelical emphasis and to the exaltation of the Word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ. Such articles serve no fundamental purpose no matter by whom they are authored.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Why was the question of God determining and limiting the number of children in a given family of believers not mentioned even once in the articles on contraception and abortion?

Is the answer, in fact, that we cannot trust that he has that much interest and care for us? He can redeem and nurture our eternal soul, but would not truly make his power effective in deciding if our sex life should bring forth offspring.

I am personally convinced that the question of bearing and rearing children has always been, and is still, the direct gift and prerogative of God, not of man.

Tigard, Ore.

It is one thing to write an article concerning this subject, but to place the title in big black letters [on the cover] does not allow one to place it on the arm of one’s chair.…

I shall certainly take mine to a sheltered place for keeping. It is knowledge that all should have.

MRS. IVAN L. LEECH

Modesto, Calif.

Dr. Waltke reaches a conclusion on God’s attitude toward sterilization based on Deuteronomy 23:1; however, he might wish to alter his conclusion in later publications if he considers Acts 8:38 and Isaiah 56:3–5.

At least one should point out that salvation is offered to sterilized persons.

North Augusta, S. C.

In “The Relation of the Soul to the Fetus,” Paul K. Jewett swatted at the ball many times, but the best he hit was a foul tip.…

God made man in his own image.… According to Genesis 2:7, God breathed into man “the breath of life.” This same verse reads on that upon this act of God man became “a living soul”.…

God gave man his soul once, for all. When a child is conceived, along with the elements which will bring the formation of a body is his soul from God’s original act. The soul never dies. As life is passed in procreation, so is the soul.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dr. Walters’s article “Contraceptives and the Single Person” is a good piece of work, and I think he has addressed himself constructively to an important issue.

Dept, of Church History

Asbury Theological Seminary

Wilmore, Ky.

I was shocked at the permissive attitude toward abortion expressed in “A Protestant Affirmation on the Control of Human Reproduction.” I cannot agree that “the risk of severe defect in the child should constitute a fetal indication for abortion.”

What gives us the right to say that the thalidomide babies, for instance, should not have been born? I’m sure that many of them, when fitted with artificial limbs, will be able to live useful lives.

Maplewood, Mo.

Old Testament Capsules

Archaeology and the Ancient Testament, by James L. Kelso (Zondervan, 1968, 214 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Gleason L. Archer, professor of Old Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

The subtitle for this interesting little work by one of America’s foremost archaeologists is, “The Christian’s God of the Old Testament vs. Canaanite Religion.” Dr. Kelso’s extensive experience in Palestinian archaeology and in the Old Testament department at Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary would lead the reader to expect an emphasis upon areas of Old Testament study that have been illumined by excavation. But this is not his intention in this volume, which he says is written especially for laymen. The aim here is to capsulize the essential message of each of the Old Testament books (except Jonah and Amos, which Kelso dealt with in an earlier work). His usual method is to bring out a few highlights of the book under discussion, illustrated with a few significant quotations.

Two emphases appear in these brief analyses: (a) the polar contrast between the divinely revealed faith of Israel and the humanly invented religions of her pagan neighbors (this rules out the possibility of borrowing or mechanistic evolution in the development of Hebrew religion); and (b) the preparation for the New Testament Gospel contained in the successive revelations of the Hebrew Scriptures (this gives continuity and organic unity to the two Testaments). The material is presented in a vivid, personal way, with a careful effort to make the ancient authors and heroes seem relevant to our lives today.

There is a bit of unevenness of treatment. Lamentations and Obadiah are granted only a single paragraph each, and Zephaniah rates only two, largely quotations. Some of the interpretations are, to say the least, questionable. For example: the Egyptians had no tradition of the Flood (notwithstanding Plato’s report of the Egyptian account in Timaeus); Jacob used Mendelian techniques in influencing the birth of ringstraked sheep but employed peeled rods as a bluff to “mislead competitors”; Rameses the Great is the Pharaoh of the Exodus (there is no discussion of the difficulties this creates with 1 Kings 6:1; Judges 11:26, and Acts 13:19, 20, all of which indicate a fifteenth-century date for the Exodus, rather than 1290 B.C.

At times the author draws rather dubious inferences from silence. For example, since there is no explicit reference in Ugaritic literature to the application of the blood of a sacrifice to the altar, he confidently asserts that this “did not occur in Canaanite sacrifices.” And he says: “No music was used in Israelite services until David introduced it,” a fact of which we have no certain knowledge. He seems to imply brutality on the part of the Levite “who butchers his concubine and parcels her out to the twelve tribes”; what he fails to mention is that the concubine had been brutally murdered by others, and that the Levite dismembered her corpse as a forceful appeal for vengeance against her murderers. Surely the interpretation of David’s census of Israel as “an attempt to destroy the tribal system and make the federal state everything” calls for a little more supporting argument than merely a footnote reference to an earlier work. Highly debatable also is the assertion that Psalm 29 “is actually a converted Canaanite poem where Yahweh justly replaces Baal as God of the natural world”; this should have been carefully supported. Quite astonishing is the information that Daniel was thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace along with his three friends; this is hard to reconcile with the King’s amazement at seeing a fourth figure walking about in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Kelso sedulously avoids discussion of higher critical problems. He assumes the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and the unity of Isaiah without the slightest indication that these are treated as moot points in the Sunday-school curriculum of his own denomination. On Solomon’s authorship of Ecclesiastes and Canticles he has nothing whatever to say, and he makes no attempt to put them into a historical setting of any kind. He interprets the apparently cynical or anti-religious sentiments of Ecclesiastes as contributed by some skeptical member of an assumed discussion panel, rather than as the pronouncements of the authoritative chairman, who leads the discussion to the orthodox conclusion of 12:13. Without mentioning any other theory as possible, the author assumes that Joel is a fifth-century prophet, even though he presupposes a ninth-century set of adversaries menacing Judah (Phoenicians, Philistines, Egyptians, and Edomites) and makes no mention of Assyrians, Chaldeans, or Persians. Likewise questionable is the interpretation of Yahweh as a Creator God (“the One who causes to be what comes into existence”), even though Elohim is the term constantly used of God in creation contexts.

In a few places, insights from archaeology are used with telling effect, as in the quotation of Albright’s vivid assertion that the bloody brutality of the Canaanite goddess Anath shows the extreme degeneracy of the culture that Israel overthrew. Kelso points out that infant sacrifice was practiced in Carthage (a Phoenician colony) until its final destruction by Rome in the second century B.C. He makes effective use of an anecdote of his experiences in Palestinian excavation in the opening paragraphs of his chapter on Job, which is perhaps the finest part of the book, with its profound analysis of the difficult final section that records God’s direct confrontation of Job.

Kelso’s special strength in this work lies in drawing practical applications from the Hebrew Scriptures, such as this: “New Testament service, just as Old Testament service, still demands 100 percent allegiance to God, at least one-seventh of our time for His worship, and more than one-tenth of our income devoted to His service.” And: “The ‘simple ones’ of Proverbs are the ‘teen-agers’ of every generation. They are the people who think that good and bad can be learned only in the school of experience. They are totally unaware that Christ knows infinitely more about sin than anyone who has ever experimented with it.” Thus the author of this book, for all his technical training and his decades as a classroom professor, turns out to be an earnest pastor at heart, deeply concerned to convince those whom he teaches not to substitute intellectual comprehension for heartfelt obedience and the practice of the holy life.

A Shaky Bridge

The Dialogue Between Theology and Psychology, edited by Peter Homans (University of Chicago, 1968, 295 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, professor of health science and lecturer in psychiatry, University of Illinois, Urbana.

Can psychodynamic theory as elaborated by the personality sciences help to clarify the nature of faith? This symposium, originating in a 1966 centennial conference at the University of Chicago Divinity School, offers an answer. Most of the eleven authors studied with Seward Hiltner, to whom the volume is dedicated. As the introduction forecasts, the contributors all reflect in some degree the Chicago school’s position on the psychology of religion and theological liberalism.

The tone of the symposium is set in the editor’s essay, “Toward a Psychology of Religion: Via Freud and Tillich.” Homans notes the demise of the traditional psychology of religion, attributing its decline to the rise of psychoanalysis and Watsonian behaviorism, which removed the conversion experience from the domain of psychology. At the same time, theology rejected religious experience in favor of an existential approach. The resultant splitting of the psychology of religion into theology and psychology produced the pastoral-psychology movement, which is deeply committed to a psychoanalytic orientation. Pastoral psychology has substituted psychotherapy for the conversion experience. Still an applied discipline, it lacks adequate theological integration, recalling the similar plight of the religious-education movement.

Homans proposes to transcend the traditional view of theological anthropology, that there is a realm of reality beyond the processes open to psychological categories and methods. Seeking to formulate a dynamic psychology of the self that will include the subject matter of theology, he points to the propriate striving of Allport, the self-actualization of Maslow, the fully functioning person of Carl Rogers, and the identity formation of Erikson, as lying within the proper territory of theology. He finds in the use of the superego concept by both Freud and Tillich a common element that he believes is amenable both to psychological analysis and religious interpretation.

The dynamic root of sin in the human personality is the subject of an essay by Fred Berthold, who believes that Protestant discussions of sin have refused to face the question of why man turns pridefully away from God. He finds an answer in the psychoanalytic concept of narcissism, which is traced to the “primal anxiety” of the nursing period. The child responds to his awareness of helplessness and maternal dependency with anxiety and aggression, and seeks to turn away from the mother in independence and mastery. The feelings of guilt and unworthiness that follow evoke inordinate self-love to compensate. The basic sin of narcissism is therefore a response to one’s feeling of smallness and unworthiness. Berthold does not clarify the source of the child’s aggression.

For several of the essayists, Erik Erikson’s concept of ego-identity becomes the medium of synthesis between theology and psychology. Psychotherapy concerns itself with insight into identity, and theology concerns itself with revelation. Since both processes lead to transfiguring knowledge, concludes Charles Stinnette, they represent not human achievement and divine gift but one process of knowing. “Christ enters man’s biographical history as the ultimate answer to man’s quest for identity and meaning.” For Leland Elhard, faith and identity coincide. “Both point to the self-in-God, where one is fully God’s self and fully one’s own self at the same time.”

The chapter by Leroy Aden on pastoral counseling stands out because of its simple thesis and its lack of ambiguity. Pastoral psychology has been more concerned with a psychological than with a theological perspective. A psychological framework such as the Freudian or the Rogerian has displaced the counselor’s own faith. Since Christian faith is the dominant concern in the pastor’s profession, it should be the distinctive mark of pastoral counseling. The client’s basic struggle is with finitude, alienation, and guilt. These must be met “in the light of the revelation which is disclosed and embodied in Jesus Christ.”

The essayists make a strenuous effort to bring theology and psychology into some kind of synthesis. They succeed in placing the two disciplines near each other and throwing across a bridge built of myth, symbol, and elements of personality theory. But the bridge is hardly solid enough for traffic and is not likely to satisfy either side. Indeed, no synthesis is likely to succeed so long as psychology insists upon being rigidly empirical and so long as the Cross remains a scandal.

Should We Guarantee Income?

Guaranteed Annual Income—The Moral Issue, by Philip Wogaman (Abingdon, 1968, 158 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz, staff member, The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.

An individual may be impoverished as the result of an unfortunate chain of circumstances, but if a society is poor the reason is low productivity. The general level of material well-being of a people can be raised only by increased production, which calls for working harder, using natural resources more wisely, and having more and better tools. These limitations and requirements are marks of our creaturehood, and so we rebel against them.

There’s no room for magic at this level—at the level where goods come into existence only as the axioms of economics are obeyed. But at the next level—at the point where produced wealth is taken for granted and the economic problem is viewed simply as a reshuffle and a new deal—fantasy has a field day. Schemes for the redistribution of income and property are much more exciting than plans to increase production, and, because they need not be pinned down to any verifiable reality, there are many more of them. A number of these redistributionist schemes are described in Mr. Wogaman’s book, together with the rationale which makes them attractive to a minority of Americans.

Wogaman cites a poll that shows 60 per cent of the people opposed to a guaranteed income, with another 12 per cent undecided. He admits that there is a moral case against redistribution, but thinks it is weak. Those who believe that a man should not receive an income from the government, apart from services rendered, are bemused by the “Protestant ethic” (italicized in the book). That is to say, they believe in work as a virtue as well as a necessity, and they practice thrift. Furthermore, they string along with the old-fashioned American disposition toward individualism and personal liberty; and they believe that an injustice is done to the man who is deprived of his property for another’s assumed benefit. The case against the guaranteed annual income is much broader than this, but these in themselves are strong arguments—far more cogent, in my view, than the reasons Wogaman marshalls to support his contentions.

The Christian does have a binding obligation to respond sensitively to the needs of his neighbor, and this includes sharing his material possessions when required, as an act of love. But this does not mean society should be organized for the political redistribution of the existing stock of goods. The two situations are not congruent. The love commandment, translated into political terms, is the rule of law. In a society of equal justice under the law, men are free, and each man may pursue his own goals. Such a society is far from perfect; but we were never promised the Kingdom on earth. As a matter of record, societies that have tried to approximate the ideal of freedom under law are uniformly more productive than those that turn their backs on this ideal. These latter may promise a guaranteed income, but they do not produce the goods; only free societies do that.

Telling It Like It Is

Black and Free, by Tom Skinner (Zondervan, 1968, 154 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by John E. Steeg, Jr., general missioner, Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Vividly, honestly, without compromise, evangelist Tom Skinner tells it like it is. Black and Free is a prophetic call to the body of Christ. As Mr. Skinner sees it, evangelical Christians’ indifference to the plight of the black man is bringing on a catastrophe.

Skinner’s estimate of the current scene is devastatingly accurate. He lays bare the total hypocrisy of the racism that exists in many who claim Christ as their personal Saviour. Through the eyes of this black brother in Christ we see the shame of “trial by color.”

After developing his case with commendable spiritual honesty, Skinner appears to advocate “hit-and-run evangelism” as a simplistic answer to the problems. There can certainly be no quarrel with his emphasis on the Gospel as the cure for racism. However, pharisaism is no more acceptable in 1968 than it was in our Lord’s lifetime. Without Christ-centered concern for the welfare of the total man, a cold understanding of John 3:16 and Romans 3:23 makes a mockery of God’s love.

A “for real” Saviour who was wounded for our transgressions and who poured out his life for the least, a compassionate Christ, truly God and truly man—this Christ rings true to the perceptive black man fed up with pie-in-the-sky churchianity and a middle-class white Jesus. I wish Mr. Skinner had said this as forthrightly as he said many other things. Nevertheless, his book is one that should be read by every serious Christian.

Book Briefs

The New Testament Era, by Bo Reicke (Fortress, 1968, 349 pp., $5.75). An internationally known New Testament scholar and historian presents a concise history of the period from the Jewish exile (500 B.C.) to the completion of the writing of the New Testament (A.D. 100).

Ferdinand Christian Baur—On the Writing of Church History, edited by Peter C. Hodgson (Oxford, 1968, 380 pp., $8). An English translation of two earlier works by the founder of the Tübingen school.

Peril by Choice, by James C. Hefley (Zondervan, 1968, 226 pp., $4.95). The story of Wycliffe Bible translators John and Elaine Beekman as they translated the New Testament into the language of the Chol Indians, a primitive tribe living in the remote Mexican state of Chiapas.

The Missionary Between the Times, by R. Pierce Beaver (Doubleday, 1968, 197 pp., $5.95). A helpful study of the role of the missionary in a rapidly changing world with suggestions for developing more effective means of carrying out the Great Commission.

A City Set on a Hill, by Theodore A. Aaberg (Evangelical Lutheran Synod, 1968, 299 pp., $5.95). An up-to-date history of the fifty-year-old Evangelical Lutheran Synod.

Radical Christianity and Its Sources, by John Charles Cooper (Westminster, 1968, 171 pp., $5.95). The author of The Roots of the Radical Theology offers a less technical work in which he criticizes the Present-day Church and calls for a new reformation stressing the activism of involvement in political, social, and international activities.

When Death Takes a Father, by Gladys Kooiman (Baker, 1968, 171 pp., $3.95). A young widow and mother of eight children shares her deepest feelings—from heartache to triumph—after the death of her husband. Particularly helpful for those who have undergone a similar experience.

Land of Christ, by André Parrot (Fortress, 1968, 166 pp., $5.95). A renowned archaeologist offers a tour of the Holy Land with photographs, biblical texts, description, and archaeological and historical notes that bring the setting of the Gospels to life.

Paperbacks

The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, by Albert Schweitzer (Seabury, 1968, 411 pp., $2.95). Schweitzer’s monumental work on Paul, first published in 1931.

Introductory Studies in Contemporary Theology, by Robert L. Reymond (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1968, $2.95). The theological systems of Mascall, Wieman, Brunner, Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich evaluated from a biblically oriented frame of reference.

Does Inspiration Demand Inerrancy?, by Stewart Custer (Craig, 1968, 120 pp., $3.50). A defense of biblical inerrancy, defined as “that characteristic of Scripture which renders it without mistake and therefore infallible, not just in religious matters, but also in matters of historic and scientific fact.”

Christ and the Jews, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1968, 99 pp., $1.95). A thoughtful comparison of Jewish and Christian thought clarifying the fact that response to the person of Christ is the irreconcilable issue that separates Judaism and Christianity.

Dialogue in Medicine and Theology, edited by Dale White, 1968, 176 pp., $1.95). Papers presented at a Convocation in Medicine and Theology at Mayo Clinic in 1967. A provocative give-and-take discussion in an area of great importance.

Tinder in Tabasco, by Charles Bennett (Eerdmans, 1968, 213 pp., $2.95). A well-documented account of the growth and problems of the Church in the Mexican province of Tabasco. Especially helpful in showing how a church becomes static.

DEAR ASTRONAUTS BORMAN, LOVELL, AND ANDERS:

Your Christmas trip to the moon needs an evangelical booster. Before you blast off, tack this note next to your fuel gauges as a reminder of the energetic prayer support you’ll get from Christians around the world.

Not that all churchmen are behind you. Today’s physics and metaphysics stand far enough apart that many wonder whether this trip is really necessary, or right. Despite all the contemporary clamor for Christian relevance, few of the Church’s intelligentsia have ventured any serious study of the moral ramifications of space travel. Ignorance breeds suspicion, and we have it in both pulpit and pew in a dimension that crosses theological lines.

The critics ask whether humanity can justify enormous space expenditures while so many earthbound dwellers suffer from the lack of basic necessities. They cite the risk of cosmic contamination, and the international tensions that go along with the space race. They lament the military overtones. And they wonder what there is to gain besides a Pandora’s box of new problems if life is found on some extraterrestrial body.

Some Christian leaders have very deep reservations about the whole space program. They question man’s motive in this endeavor. Some say it grows out of national pride. Others have attributed it to pure selfishness.

One of our leading religious editors, Dr. Sherwood E. Wirt of Decision magazine, author of a recent book on Christian social ethics, is very blunt. He accepts our “toying with the moon” but considers interplanetary travel “a waste of time and contrary to the will of God.” “It would be criminal to go to another planet,” he says. “People aren’t made for that. God wants us to live here on earth until he gives us another body.”

From a Christian perspective, no one has written more extensively about space travel than the late C. S. Lewis. When queried on specifics, however, Lewis would only say that he dreaded contact with other inhabited planets. He once told Dr. Wirt in an interview, “We would only transport to them all of our sin and our acquisitiveness, and establish a new colonialism.”

This will strike you astronauts as a bit much. Be assured that dissent is not the whole of Christian thought on the matter. There are those who believe the Bible to be God’s Word to man and who find space travel readily compatible with this revelation. The biblical view does not insist upon divine grace that is earthbound.

As a matter of fact, the biblical writers invite man to study the wonders in the skies as tributes to God’s handiwork.¹If you take a Bible along, you might try these daily readings: December 21—Genesis 1; December 22—Psalm 8; December 23—Psalm 19; December 24—Psalm 139; December 25—Luke I and 2; December 26—Hebrews 1 and 2; December 27—Revelation 21 and 22. And the Apostle Paul declares under inspiration that “God chose to reconcile the whole universe to himself, making peace through the shedding of his blood upon the cross—to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, through [Christ] alone” (Col. 1:20, NEB).

The noted English Bible scholar F. F. Bruce says that “the more that men discover about the universe of God, the more cause they have for admiring his wisdom and power.” An American Christian philosopher, Gordon H. Clark, states, “God’s first command to Adam contained the injunction to subdue nature. Shooting the moon, therefore, is a divinely appointed task. Unfortunately, however, the ungodly are generally reputed to have obeyed this commandment more successfully than devout Christians have.”

This is not to minimize the problems connected with your venture into space or to try to squelch legitimate anxiety. Most of the questions, however, revolve around what might ensue but doesn’t necessarily have to. We don’t abolish automobiles because they contribute to death and delinquency.

The high cost of the space program gives cause for pause when one thinks of the hungry millions. Ultimately, however, space exploration is in their best interests, too. In the meantime, we can dispense with a number of luxuries if we want to tighten our belts conscientiously in behalf of the have-nots.

The really big question is whether man must go to other planets eventually to survive! We may not face that necessity in our lifetime, but one need not ponder long to realize that some future generation must. And if that is the case, and we presume that God wants man to exist in his present state, at least for a time, should we not act responsibly now on behalf of human beings not yet born?

Congressman George P. Miller, chairman of the House Space Committee, has said, “The basic unarguable fact is that we are irrevocably committed to exploring space and to sending men out into the stark and hostile vacuum of space for one reason only. That reason is survival, the survival of ourselves and our children as free people.”

He might have added that it is only a question of time until the earth runs out of resources. Twenty, fifty, a hundred years? Maybe more. But also only a question of time until space travel becomes an operational necessity.

One alternative for the Christian would seem to be merely to trust that God will somehow intervene and provide all that we need right here on earth. If we take that attitude, however, we ought also to renounce all purchases of insurance and all canning of fruits and vegetables and freezing of meats. Trust God? Of course. But God has given man the ability as well as the responsibility to look out for himself, to take measures in line with the realities of nature.

That brings up the whole question of the purpose of creation. Were the heavens designed by God merely to serve as nocturnal decorations for earth-dwellers? Or could they have been put there specifically for man’s eventual use?

This still leaves the decision whether to try for space now or later. The answer is again that it is only a matter of time until we will have outgrown or used up our world, and God alone knows how long it will take us to make a transition from a dependence solely upon earthly resources to the use of what is in space. Development of interplanetary supply routes may take centuries. Who is to say that it is too early to start? We may already be too late.

To come back to the Church’s special stake in space, we can at least say that in the past God has used the heavens as an instrument to bridge the gap between men and himself (e.g., the Star of Bethlehem). Surely we can pray, “Lord, do it again.” Perhaps one great Christian task is to interpret your findings in space in a biblical perspective; there is good reason to believe this would serve an evangelistic purpose. Dr. Bernard Ramm, a leading Christian thinker, has suggested the possibility of collecting enough data to win a verdict for creation from even the most skeptical scientists. “Perhaps the day will come,” said Ramm, “when we have enough evidence from physics, astronomy, and astrophysics to get such a verdict from the scientists.”

All of which is to say that some of us are for you. Bon voyage.

In the name of the One who traveled farthest,