Most people assume that when the Confession of 1967 comes before the 179th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the middle of May, it will be passed with alacrity. It can be assumed also that what is done at this assembly will have its effect on many other denominations, will open certain doors for renewed ecumenical discussions, and will bring joy or sadness to a great number of people.

Most of the opposition to the new confession has come from those who are considered conservative or fundamentalist. Many people thought the confession had departed too far from the established and classical position of the Westminster Confession, and much of the work of the revision committee was to “tighten up” the confession so as to make it tolerable to those who inhabited the right of the spectrum.

Yet a new note is creeping into the discussions, a note of opposition from the other side. The confession, even before it was revised, was not so liberal or radical as some theologians would like it to be. It certainly, as a committee operation, showed some signs of compromise. The work of the revision committee made it even more of a compromise and less palatable to those who were most anxious to have a new confession in the first place. An uneasiness is beginning to show itself among those who are dissatisfied because the new confession is not liberal enough. And, as Whiting Williams once put it, “the chrysalis of faint misgiving can soon become the butterfly of panic.”

A sign of this uneasiness is an excellent article by Dr. George S. Hendry, who has been Charles Hodge professor of systematic theology at Princeton since 1949. Hendry was a member of the original committee appointed to draw up the new confession and is considered by many the key theologian on that committee, as he is certainly a key theologian in the whole Presbyterian Church. In the Princeton Seminary Bulletin in October, 1966, there appears his sober, informed, non-polemical essay entitled “The Bible in the Confession of 1967.”

His thesis in general is that we can approach the Bible in two ways: as a functional aid in Christian living or as a formal authority in the definition of the Christian faith. He believes, and rightly, that basically the new confession emphasizes the function of the Bible as against its form, but that when the revisionists came along, allowance had to be made for the “form” of the Bible to satisfy those who base the authority of the Bible on its own “inspiration.” In more popular language, the shift is made between Christ the Living Word to the authority of the words of Scripture. Perhaps we understand this best in Hendry’s own words:

It is plain that the revisions which have been introduced in this section of the Confession [on Scripture] have been made for the purpose of conciliating those for whom the authority of the Bible is still bound up with the traditional view of the inspiration of the written word, and so of avoiding a revival of the controversy of which the Church had more than enough in the nineteen-twenties. The result, however, is a hodge-podge which attempts to combine the viewpoints of 1967 and 1647. Division in the Church has been avoided at the cost of an unstable theological compromise.

Some words here are notable, namely “hodge-podge” as a description of a basic document of the church. Then there is the point that many conservatives have been trying to make for years—that is, that “division in the Church has been avoided at the cost of an unstable theological compromise.” In trying to please everybody, we do not please anybody.

The plain fact is that the Presbyterian Church represents an increasingly wide spectrum of theological understanding. We have had considerable enthusiasm in recent years for increased lay participation in the church; but there continues in the Presbyterian Church, as in all other denominations, a shocking spread between the subtleties of theology given out in three years of theological seminary and the straightforward, black-and-white approach of the layman.

This point was surely illustrated in the national advertising of the Lay Committee, Inc., and the loud outcries of “foul” by those who thought that these laymen were getting at the whole problem much too bluntly. The laymen didn’t see the “whole picture,” it was said. There are nuances and niceties in theological language that the “amateurs” just don’t get. Surely no busy layman can move through Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, and the rest and thus be able to understand theology today. Therefore laymen mustn’t say things like, “The Bible is true or it isn’t,” “If it isn’t all true, it isn’t true at all,” and “I believe what the Bible says—that’s enough for me.”

Perhaps we are on safer ground if we refer to Dr. Hendry again (and I do not mean this as criticism of him; I use him only for illustration). His book, The Westminster Confession for Today: A Contemporary Interpretation (1966), was the first serious study of the Westminster Confession in a long time. In discussing the mentality of the seventeenth century, which he considers “less congenial” than the mentality of this century, he lists four uncongenial Westminster characteristics:

1. The manner of approach is excessively legalistic.…

2. The authors of the Confession, in common with most of the men of their age, thought it was incumbent upon them to deliver categorical answers to all questions that could be raised concerning the faith, and not only so, but they held the attitude that to each question there is one right answer, and all the others are wrong.

3.… the Confession tends to see everything in terms of black and white: there are no intermediate shades of gray.…

4. The Confession tends to review the drama of redemption as one that is played out between God and the individual.

In regard to the first three of these, we have our problem of “the word of God written” as over against “the Living Word.” Here again is seen the problem of those who want sharp definitions as against those who would sit loose in the existential situation. The fourth of these points has its own interest in reflecting the question of individual versus social salvation.

So here we are. That the thinking of the seventeenth century seems uncongenial to some does not mean that it is uncongenial to others. This is the debate—whether what is said in Westminster is relevant and binding or whether we need something more relevant and perhaps less binding. To put it in other words, we have the old debate over the possibilities or the validity of propositional theology. Although Hendry, and maybe others with him, can agree that the new confession is a “hodge-podge,” the situation is still very clear. Whether the confession is adopted or not, we continue to avoid division in the church “at the cost of an unstable theological compromise.” And what this means is that regardless of what happens at the General Assembly in May, nothing has really been settled about the “position” of the Presbyterian Church.

Legally, a pregnant woman can’t get an abortion in North America unless her life depends on it. The result: an estimated one million women yearly step outside the law and risk a felony charge (not to mention internal mutilation and even death) to rid themselves of an unwanted child.

But is it the women or the law that needs changing? Within recent months bills to revise abortion laws have popped up in at least fifteen legislatures.¹Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island; and Texas. The Canadian government is also proposing changes.

The debate over the issue has produced an open, often bitter, religious confrontation. Roman Catholics, with the solid backing of their church, oppose change. A number of prominent Protestants and Jews, mostly without such backing, give the revisions qualified support.

Generally the new proposals ask that abortion be legal if there is the possibility of “physical or mental” danger to the mother, if there is a chance that the child will be defective, or if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, as well as if the life of the mother is in danger—now the only legal reason for abortion.

Catholic opposition is based on the view that an unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception. Thus any act that wilfully ends that life is a violation of the sixth commandment and is equated with murder.

The Roman Catholic bishops of New York State put it flatly in a pastoral letter: “Laws which allow abortion violate the unborn child’s God-given right” to life. Carrying the point one step further, the bishops wrote that any liberalization of the law would invite a “new slaughter of innocents.”

To some Catholics the implications go even deeper. Bishop Russell J. Mc-Venney of Providence holds that once the principle that an unborn child’s life can be sacrificed to protect the mother is accepted, “it could be plausibly argued that if a middle-aged woman’s health is breaking down due to the strain of caring for an aged and infirmed parent, she may protect her health by killing her parent.”

Few Protestant or Jewish organizations will cross this clear-cut line Catholics draw. The broadly representative Synagogue Council of America, for example, like the National Council of Churches, has taken no stand. But the official silence has not altogether stilled support by important individuals.

Scoring the Catholic stand as a “harsh and unconvincing form of legalism,” Dr. John C. Bennett, president of Union Theological Seminary, New York, warned against the “invoking of one law or principle in isolation and without regard for other human circumstances” by Catholics, an action he claims reveals a “blindly one-sided form of morality.”

Murray A. Gordon, chairman of the New York Council of the American Jewish Congress, focused on the point most often presented in favor of abortion law revision: “The time has come to bring the law into line with social reality.”

The difficulty for Jews is that while rabbinical law clearly endorses abortion when the well-being of the mother is involved, the law is silent on the other issues raised in the proposed revisions. While Orthodox Jews would tend to reject any move for which they could not find explicit support in their law, other Jews are not willing to be so arbitrary. New York’s branch of the AJC was able to support liberalization, according to chairman Gordon, “as a matter of good medicine, good sense, and simple humanity.”

The same can be said for a growing number of Protestants.

While acknowledging that many people “equate the giving of the soul with the moment of conception,” the Rev. William S. Van Meter of New York City’s Protestant Council said, “It seems reasonable to recognize that many religious groups don’t share this outlook.”

Many Protestants find it difficult to take a solid stand because they see no clear New Testament teaching on the subject. The Protestant Council, reflecting this lack of consensus, emphasized sociology over theology and supported liberalization “as an essential and significant step forward in the solution of this difficult and complex problem.”

One complexity is the inequity the present laws force on the lower levels of society. The rich have no problem with the law. Money can buy almost anyone an abortion. For the poor, however, the alternatives are grimmer: they can either simply accept parenthood, or take their chances with a fly-by-night “doctor” or self-induced abortion.

But for both rich and poor, illegal abortion carries its risks. By the conservative standard of public health reports, at least 400 women died last year at the hands of inept abortionists—the nation’s largest single cause of maternal deaths. In perhaps thousands of other cases—unreported anywhere—the women survived but sacrificed their biological ability to bear children.

Also, according to some doctors, it is becoming harder and harder for a woman to get an abortion even if she fulfills the legal requirements. Despite a growing population, the annual number of “therapeutic” abortions is shrinking—to a total last year of 8,000.

The trouble, according to Dr. William B. Ober, a New York pathologist, is that generally a hospital committee must certify the need for an abortion to make it legal, and these committees usually “pride themselves on how few abortions they sanction.”

While these hospital committees are retained in current revision proposals, the hope is that new legislation will give more leeway for approving abortions.

As the debate continues, most polls show public opinion inching more and more toward liberalization. In a recent survey by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, 71 per cent favored legal abortion when the mother’s health is in danger, 56 per cent when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, and 55 per cent when there is a strong possibility that the child will be born defective.

But how much this growing public mood will be reflected in the current political debate is still unclear. Three states (New York, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island) have killed their measures. Only Colorado’s legislature has approved one. Says New York Assemblyman Albert H. Blumenthal of Manhattan, who is the author of his state’s proposal and last month saw it defeated, “Apparently, the political rule of the day is to abort abortion.”

Personalia

Agitation is brewing over dismissal of John Pairman Brown as Christian ethics professor at Church Divinity School of the Pacific (Episcopal). Reasons were “sparse” enrollment in his classes and doubts about his “teaching all sides of the problem,” said Dean Sherman Johnson. But angry students think it was his anti-Viet Nam war activities.

Promotion of Professor Frederick Ship-pey to acting dean of Drew University’s theological school, to succeed the deposed Charles Ranson (see February 3 issue, page 43), was greeted by faculty and student protests, and demands for ouster of Drew President Robert Oxnam.

Donald H. Tippett of San Francisco is new president of the Methodist Council of Bishops. President-elect (to serve in 1968–69) is Eugene M. Frank of St. Louis.

Eugene Carson Blake, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, was named Churchman of the Year by Religious Heritage of America.

Pacifist candidate Albert Q. Perry, a Unitarian-Universalist minister, drew few votes in the special Rhode Island congressional election last month but may have caused the virtual tie between the other two candidates.

C. A. Roberts, pastor of the huge First Baptist Church, Tallahassee, Florida, and president of the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference, was elected head of the evangelism department at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Phillip Hook, chairman of Wheaton (Illinois) College’s Bible and philosophy department, will become dean of students, replacing Richard Gross, who was named dean of Gordon College.

Franz Cardinal Koenig of Vienna won a $30 libel judgment from the right-wing newspaper Salzburg Volksblatt, which said he was a Mason—grounds for ex-communication from the Roman Catholic Church.

International Items

The Christian Council of Rhodesia passed a resolution against “provisions for separate development of our various racial communities” in the nation’s new constitution. The churchmen said separation of racial groups is an offense to Christianity and is against Rhodesia’s best interests.

U. S. Southern Baptists are busy lining up 100 preachers for a crusade in South Africa, but the Capital Baptist, official paper for the District of Columbia, urges reconsideration of assent to the government requirement that nobody mention race relations.

Ecumenical Press Service says police in Rio de Janeiro arrested Presbyterian layman Waldo Cesar, editor of the new ecumenical monthly Paz e Terra, kept him in solitary confinment for a week, and questioned him about his participation in ecumenical meetings. His home was searched and various books and magazines were removed.

A U. S. Quaker Action Group boat with $10,000 in medical supplies landed safely at Haiphong, North Viet Nam, on March 29 (see April 14 issue, page 4), then returned to Hong Kong.

The Hungarian Reformed Church marks its 400th anniversary next month with the completion of a Bible translation in modern Hungarian and a five-volume church history.

The church relations committee of Britain’s 300,000-member Baptist Union Council has concluded that no church merger plan has been proposed “to which Baptists could unitedly, or near-unitedly, give assent.”

The Church of England named seventeen members of various theological stripe to a commission to consider revising or eliminating the Thirty-Nine Articles, the denomination’s doctrinal standard since 1562. Critics blame the Articles for the decline of ordination candidates and consider their stand against Rome an ecumenical offense.

A report of the Preparatory Committee for this fall’s 450th anniversary of the Reformation says that East Germany has approved a “generous allocation” of entry visas for visitors from abroad but that there seems to be little hope for Lutherans from West Germany.

Disbelief And Data

What do Unitarians and Universalists believe? Just about anything, in theory—since they have no requirements of belief—but an exhaustive survey of every fifteenth adult in the denomination shows an emerging orthodoxy of disbelief.

Less than 3 per cent now believe that God is a supernatural being who reveals himself in human history. Just under one-fourth believe God is real but not adequately describable, while 44.2 per cent think God is the natural processes in the universe.

The debate about Christ also seems to be dying out, with 59 per cent no longer considering themselves Christians and a majority believing we know next to nothing about Christ.

As might be expected, Unitarians and Universalists turn out to be individualists (but with pretty unitary liberal views on politics) and have education and income well above the national average.

Soviet children’s author Kornei Chukovsky has published a collection of “poetical legends taken from the Bible,” under the title The Tower of Babel. Chukovsky says students should get reacquainted with the Bible stories “because they are of high artistic value irrespective of their religious tendency, which naturally is absent in our book.”

Church Panorama

After a two-day discussion that they described as a “historic milestone” in U. S. ecumenism, representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the American Baptist Convention found considerable agreement on “the relation between believer’s baptism and the sacrament of confirmation; the nature of Christian freedom in relationship to ecclesiastical authority; and the role of the congregation in the total life of the church.”

Augsburg Publishing House, ruled tax-exempt as an agency of The American Lutheran Church, will make a voluntary payment of $6,700 to the City of Minneapolis for 1967, for fire, police, and other services.

Wisconsin voters approved a referendum to amend the state constitution and permit public busing for parochial students.

The Philadelphia Presbytery voted overwhelmingly this month to join those who question the constitutionality of deleting the Larger Catechism from the standards of the United Presbyterian Church (April 14 issue, p. 47).

The FBI is investigating a Maundy Thursday cross-burning at Mount Beulah, Mississippi, former college campus now used as headquarters for the National Council of Churches’ Delta Ministry.

Blue Mountain College became the second of four Mississippi Baptist colleges to sign compliance with the Civil Rights Act so students can get federal loans. Still holdouts are Clarke College (a junior college) and Mississippi College, where President R. A. McLemore resigned in protest over the policy but decided last month to stay on another year.

After a year of study, a restructure of the Protestant Council of the City of New York—largest local council of churches in the nation—has been charted (see March 4, 1966, issue, page 50). With “Protestant” dropped to leave the door open to Roman Catholic and Orthodox participation, the new council would be governed by two bodies, one representing denominations and social agencies, the other representing ninety-four neighborhood councils.

Emphasizing evangelism and social concern, in that order, the National Association of Evangelicals rolled merrily past its twenty-fifth anniversary convention. To the disappointment of some, delegates sidestepped growing pressures for wider evangelical unity.¹The NAE claims a direct constituency of 2.5 million and a “service constituency” (people organizationally unrelated but receiving NAE benefits) of ten million. Many additional millions of evangelicals have no common fellowship (see Feb. 17 issue, p. 52).

Convention speakers reflected social concern and made it a recurring theme. But a 977-word manifesto made clear the NAE principle of placing needs of the soul above those of the body. The document affirms the Great Commission as “the sole and sufficient preoccupation of the Church.” In a companion “covenant,” NAE’s common ground is given as “acceptance of the infallibility and plenary authority of Scripture.”

During the three-day convention, held this month in the Staffer Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles, plans were announced for a second World Congress on Evangelism, patterned on last fall’s meeting in Berlin. It is being projected for 1970, possibly in an Asian city. A North American Congress on Evangelism is also in the works, for 1968.

The Rev. Billy A. Melvin, until now the chief administrator for the Southern-oriented 173,000-member National Association of Free Will Baptists, was named executive director of NAE.

At $25 a plate, 1,000 persons jammed the hotel’s Pacific Ballroom for a silver anniversary dinner address by Billy Graham. The evangelist said “we have become complacent about our social responsibilities and are in danger of theological complacency.” He asserted that “doctrinal compromise also brings moral compromise.”

Clyde W. Taylor, general director of NAE, reported that “concerned evangelical fellowships are appearing in all the major denominations, united to preserve their witness to the Gospel.” These, he said, may serve as a bridge to wider evangelical fellowship. “The NAE has the door wide open to welcome and encourage them.”

Taylor cited NAE’s social consciousness as having broadened to include relief work and leadership training in Viet Nam, job training in Latin America, reclamation and resettlement in Korea, and welfare agencies across the United States.

The Rev. Aaron M. Hamlin, vice-president of the National Negro Evangelical Association, urged Christians to battle discrimination. “If Christians can feel the release of the Holy Spirit to fight the spread of pornographic literature,” he said, “they can also lift their voices in the cause of racial justice. It is true that it will not always be possible to agree on means to an end, but there is no excuse for not making earnest attempt to arrive at an end.” Hamlin said he was not calling for an emotional crusade “but for prayerful consideration of concrete ways to witness to racial minorities by concerned action as much as by passionate word.”

Resolutions adopted by NAE delegates voiced support of the proposed Dirksen prayer amendment in Congress and of existing laws that grant draft exemption to conscientious objectors. Alarm was expressed, however, at recent moves to liberalize the legislation on conscientious objectors.

Conservative Confession Of ’67

There’s another confession of 1967, and it came this month from the conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (358,000 members). In the first comprehensive doctrinal statement issued by the 117-year-old denomination, its theological commission asserts that the Bible is the “infallible authority and guide for everything we believe and do.”

Besides giving a long definition of Bible inerrancy, the twenty-four-page statement says the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds and confessions in the Lutheran Book of Concord (1580) give “expression to the true doctrine of the Scripture.” Like other Lutherans, the Wisconsin Evangelicals believe that “through Baptism the Holy Spirit applies the Gospel to sinful man, regenerating him,” and that “Christ’s true body and blood are received in the Lord’s Supper.” But Wisconsin rejects all evolutionary theories in favor of creation in “six normal days.” It also calls “organizational union” a “false ecumenicity,” and opposes civil disobedience.

President Carl J. Lawrenz said the confession was prepared after “requests from outsiders” for information about Wisconsin Synod beliefs.

Bucking The Baptist Tide

At a time when other Southern Baptists are hard put to support their colleges, the Florida Baptist Convention voted this month to start a new college near West Palm Beach that would be barred from accepting federal aid.

All trustees and administrators must be Baptists, and a “strong preference” will be shown toward Baptist teachers. A full-page doctrinal standard was dropped in favor of two “basic and over-riding principles” of belief: the Bible is “the inspired word of God and is a sufficient guide for salvation and the Christian life,” and “Jesus is the virgin-born son of God and the Lord and Savior of all who trust him.”

President Robert Spiro of Jacksonville University, a veteran Baptist educator, doubts whether the school can find enough good Baptist teachers with these beliefs to get regional accreditation.

About $750,000 has been pledged to the school, which may open by the fall of 1968.

In other school news, the Greek Orthodox Diocese of North and South America announced plans to strengthen liberal arts and eventually turn its Holy Cross Theological School in Brookline, Massachusetts, into a comprehensive “Hellenic University.”

And Seventh-day Adventists decided to work toward merger of two California schools: Loma Linda University (1,100 students in medical and health fields) and La Sierra College (1,700 students in liberal arts).

A Protest On Evangelism

Seventy-five New Jersey ministers in the American Baptist Convention have attacked the denomination’s evangelism secretary, Jitsuo Morikawa, asking the General Council to make a “re-evaluation” of the whole evangelism department.

The department under Morikawa has become permeated with “nascent universalism,” according to the statement, and his policies were blamed for both a decline in baptisms over the past decade and “increasing uneasiness” in local churches.

Issued one month before the denomination’s mid-May annual meeting, the document protests Morikawa’s views of salvation, quoting him as saying that the doctrine “has to do with a new society rather than a redeemed individual soul.”

Meanwhile, the Methodist Board of Evangelism, anticipating the denomination’s merger with the Evangelical United Brethren Church, asked that the united church formally make evangelism “the first business of the church.” Backing up the proposal, the board outlined a program of evangelism that could cost $5 million.

Opposition to that merger is being rallied by sixty-six pastors in the Methodist Southern California-Arizona Conference because it retains Methodism’s racially segregated jurisdictions.

Canada: Missions Upsurge

The United Church of Canada will appoint forty new missionaries in the current fiscal year—double last year’s total and the largest number since 1925, the year the denomination was formed through merger.

The number of missionary deaths and retirements has not been disclosed, so the net change is unknown. The United Church also set a goal of sixty new missionaries for the coming year and is optimistic about topping its budget.

Missions was a point of some controversy at last year’s General Council, and many conservatives see a radical change in the UCC approach. Donald Flemming, former Tory finance minister who is chairman of the missions commission, denied that his report reflected any “departure from the traditional evangelical emphasis.” But the United Church Observer challenged his assurances, pointing out that the report had little or no emphasis on “proclamation, winning, persuading, converting, making disciples of all nations, or ‘winning the world for Christ in this generation.’ ”

Dr. Norman Mackenzie, an agricultural missionary to India now serving as personnel secretary for the missions board, is not convinced that there has been a shift in missions ideology. “My basic concern is to serve mankind and to start where there is a need, believing that man’s deepest need is spiritual. I feel that most of us who go out are evangelists, though we differ slightly in emphasis,” Mackenzie said. But, he added that he did not take the initiative in evangelism and told people about Christ only upon inquiry.

J. BERKLEY REYNOLDS

Bishops Accede On Divorce

Canada’s Roman Catholic bishops, who represent half the nation’s population, announced they will not oppose proposed laws to broaden grounds for divorce (see April 14 issue, page 48). The bishops also gave free reign to Catholics to join the YMCA and YWCA, since their “pronounced Protestant evangelical tradition has gradually worn down and disappeared.…”

Disappointing Agenda

Roman Catholic liberals are disappointed in the advance agenda for the first synod meeting of world bishops this September. Included: mixed marriages, doctrine, and internal administration. Excluded: the celibacy requirement, birth control, ecumenism, war and peace, and even the poverty problems raised in the Pope’s latest encyclical.

At their meeting this month in Chicago, the U.S. bishops reportedly replied to a world-wide order from the Vatican for a search-and-destroy operation on heresy by denying there is heresy among American churchmen.

Mormon Waiver Watched

The General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel, a civilian church organization representing more than thirty denominations, is reportedly taking a wait-and-see attitude toward President Johnson’s executive order waiving educational requirements for Mormon chaplains. The commission supplies 1,600 of the nation’s 4,000 chaplains.

“Our raising a public protest over the erosion of standards for chaplaincy candidates seems to have lessened the problem,” says A. Roy Appelquist, executive secretary of the commission. “Most of us thought there would be a large increase coming in under the waiver, but that has not been the case.”

Appelquist says there are “only about nineteen or twenty chaplains in all three services” representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon).

Appelquist says the commission has always recognized the right of the Chief of Chaplains to grant individual waivers for candidates who did not meet the seven years of required training. But he says many churches oppose the blanket waiver given the Mormons by President Johnson last year. Mormons do not require seminary or comparable training beyond the four-year level.

Dedicating A $16 Million Campus

In a notable display of evangelical unity, Oral Roberts and Billy Graham shared the same speaker’s rostrum at this month’s dedication of the $16 million campus of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. The ceremony was attended by 20,000 persons.

Among other participants were Oklahoma Governor Dewey Bartlett (a Roman Catholic), U. S. Senator A. S. Mike Monroney, Tulsa Mayor James Hewgley, Jr., and state education administrators.

City officials say the 420-acre campus has become Tulsa’s biggest tourist attraction since it opened nearly two years ago (see Sept. 24, 1965, issue, page 47). The ultra-modern campus has seven major buildings focused on a ten-story prayer tower faced with mirrors. Seven more buildings are on the drawing boards.

Roberts, who was installed as president in the ceremonies, said he expects the present student body of 550 to increase to 3,000 by 1970. The university has state accreditation but will have to wait until it graduates its first class in 1969 to gain regional accreditation.

A sign of the quality of ORU’s facilities is the comment by Ford Foundation consultants on the six-story Learning Resources Center they helped plan: they call it “one of the two most creative facilities on any American campus today.” The computerized information-and-retrieval system permits students to obtain maximum information on a subject. They can sit at telephone-type booths and dial recorded lectures they want to review. Some lectures are even videotaped when illustrations are important.

Graham commended Roberts and other ORU officials for seeking academic excellence coupled with a distinct spiritual emphasis. He predicted that ultimately ORU “will be able to compete with any secular university in the world.”

“God has given Dr. Roberts some unusual gifts, and he is utilizing them to the fullest,” Graham said. “I believe all evangelical Christianity is proud of what is happening here today.”

Graham, who has long harbored a dream to establish a similar institution, said in an interview he is now thinking more in terms of an international Bible college than a liberal arts university.

BILL ROSE

Indonesia: Fastest Missions Frontier

After turmoil and a national blood-bath in which hundreds of thousands died, Indonesia apparently is now the fastest-growing frontier of world Christianity. At the end of March, world mission leaders returned to Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States with appeals for emergency funds to help the over-crowded churches.

Addison J. Eastman, Asian missions director of the National Council of Churches in the United States, said membership in Indonesia’s Protestant churches has grown by 150,000 in just eighteen months. Various sources report local results in the multi-racial nation of 3,000 islands, which has the world’s fifth-largest population:

East Java: 30,000 converts in a few months; fifty new Bible-study groups formed in the capital of Djakarta. Central Java: thirty new congregations in largely Muslim towns. West Java: 4,000 persons newly professing Christ in the city of Bandung. Sumatra: 19,000 baptisms last year in the North; Protestant membership up 50 per cent in one year in the Karo-Batak region, with 6,000 more being prepared for baptism. West Borneo: thirty new congregations. Celebes: three new independent denominations with a membership of 60,000.

One reason for this growth is the large campaigns in main cities, a form of evangelism virtually unknown before in Indonesia, with its strong high Calvinist tradition. In addition, Eastman says new members hope “the Christian Church can provide a base from which to work for meaningful and humane social progress for the entire nation.” The Church, he said, is filling a “spiritual vacuum” after years of extreme political turmoil climaxing in the revolt against the Communist Party in the fall of 1965. Another result of the shake-up is the downfall of President Sukarno, who kept Islam from becoming the official state religion even though the population is 90 per cent Muslim.

The city of Montreal—just recovering from a typical winter of towering snowdrifts and sub-zero temperatures—is taking the wraps off the pavilions at Expo 67, which opens this week. While the 150,000 planted shrubs on the two-island site soak up the warm spring sun, visitors from the tropics will be able to photograph the surging St. Lawrence River yielding its ice floes to the mighty tides churned by large ocean-going ships.

Nestled among the huge pavilions at the first major North American fair recognized by the International Exhibitions Bureau are two contrasting centers of Christian witness. Moody’s “Sermons from Science” pavilion got in on a scientific ticket. (An application from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which was at the New York fair along with Moody, was refused because only a single “Christian Pavilion” was to be permitted.)

The united pavilion is a major ecumenical breakthrough for Canada. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, United Churchmen, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans have joined forces to put up a $1.3 million pavilion which some observers think will be the most controversial in the whole of Expo.

The only religious symbol, a T-shaped “tau” cross (the form most likely used in the Crucifixion), stands at the gateway. From there, the total-communication theme of Canadian communications prophet Marshall McLuhan takes over. The “medium is the message,” in photos of contemporary events, surrealistic pictures, variated sounds taped in New York City, and changing light patterns.

Visitors will be led through three stages. Stage one shows life as it was before the Fall: a garden of beauty, tranquility, flowers, and a pool (which is to represent baptism—if anybody can make the interpretation). Stage two is life as it is. A multitude of pictures in four-dimensional squares depict almost every conceivable area of life, from the innocence of a newborn baby to the non-innocence of a strip-tease joint. A gentle slope leads to a dungeon-like area of weird sounds, frightening screams, and pictures—pictures of hideous brutality, of dead bodies lying on the streets, of concentration camps, of segregation and race riots, of atomic explosion, of earthquake and its aftermath.

A fourteen-minute film showing man at his worst climaxes this experience-in-the-deep, which one newsman described as “a Christian trip to Hell and back.”

The Rev. H. E. Bartsch, a Missouri Synod Lutheran who is deputy commissioner of the pavilion, says “people will want to run from this scene to the next stage, where by Christ, through Christ, and in Christ, man finds his answer.”

Stage three provides the “answer”—if you are good at interpreting imagery. It is supposed to be a message of hope, with a modern-day presentation of Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and Pentecost, through the use of large paneled pictures on which Scripture verses are flashed.

The man who designed the presentation from axioms drawn up by a theological committee was Charles F. Gagnon, 33, whose church affiliation was unknown at the pavilion office. Gagnon has said that the last stage is “where people will find the answer without being told the answer. We will implant psychological intonations that will make them discover what the film is about and what Christianity is about.” Officials know this is an experiment, and they will have to wait and see if the message is in the medium.

There will be no spiritual counseling at the Christian Pavilion. Those who want it will be told by a hostess where to find a church in downtown Montreal. The pavilion has no provision, either, for prayer or meditation. Bartsch explains, “The approach we are following is the best under the circumstances. It is a miracle that we have come as far as we have.”

In contrasting approach, but fully as contemporary as the Christian Pavilion, “Sermons from Science” commands a prestigious corner lot in the midst of the Arab-Jewish architectural confrontation and is flanked on one side by the towering Russian pavilion. The Moody project is geared for an expected 8,500 spiritual inquirers, and more than 2,000 counselors have been recruited across Canada. “Sermons” uses six languages, compared to two or three in most other pavilions. Expo is expected to draw 15 million visitors from around the world, including sixty heads of state, and Moody planners estimate three-fifths of them will pass by their pavilion’s main entrance. Thus they expect a greater proportional response than they had at New York. “Sermons,” which cost half as much as the Christian Pavilion, will use the direct approach in presenting the Gospel, as it did at New York and Seattle. The program includes Moody science films, live demonstrations by George Speake, and a nine-minute film talk by Leighton Ford.

Arthur Hill, a prominent physician in Sherbrooke, Quebec, thinks “Sermons” will be one of the greatest evangelistic efforts ever made in that province. By one estimate, 2,000 of the multitudes of nominally Roman Catholic French Canadians will accept Christ. But pavilion director Keith Price says that “there will be no proselytizing done at Expo. Everyone will be directed back to the church of his choice.”

The United Church of Canada Observer has regretted editorially the “tragic disunity” represented by the two pavilions. But the Christian Pavilion’s Bartsch, after touring “Sermons,” said, “I think they have a valid presentation.” And despite the Observer’s appeal for a boycott of the Moody effort, many United Churches are in support.

One is St. James in downtown Montreal, one of the most sophisticated, posh churches in the denomination. Its two evangelical clergymen, Douglas Pilkey and Newton Steacy, are not only backing the Expo efforts but also running a little theological Expo of their own, with two dozen big names on as many Sundays. Steacy says, “Our people want to know what men like Bishop Pike and Harvey Cox are saying”; but these much-traveled gadflies will be balanced by such conservatives as Leighton Ford, Harold Ockenga, Richard Halverson, David Hubbard, and George Duncan.

Germany: Still Astride The Wall

Protestant church leaders in East Germany withstood pressure from Communist political bosses this month and retained organizational unity with pastors and congregations in West Germany. The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKID), to which most Protestants belong, still straddles the East-West border, though since the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 the church has had to hold separate synods. The Eastern churchmen have been urged by their government to break off ties with the West.

At the latest meetings the churchmen had to resist harassment to perpetuate a semblance of unity. As a token of their link, they elected a politically quiet figure, Bishop Hermann Dietzfel-binger of Munich, to the supreme office of council chairman. He succeeds Bishop Kurt Scharf, who had been nominated for re-election but who declined to be a candidate against Bishop Hanns Lilje of Hanover, who also was nominated. The anti-Communist Lilje could not get the necessary two-thirds majority, so the delegates tapped Dietzfel-binger as a compromise.

Western delegates met in West Berlin, the Easterners thirty-five miles away in Furstenwalde. The Eastern delegates had planned to meet in East Berlin but were forced to move at the last minute. The agendas at the two meetings were alike, and the churchmen tried to coordinate matters through secret couriers. Some messengers from the West were reported to have been intercepted by Communist police officials.

About four out of five of East Germany’s 17 million people are said to be at least nominally Protestant. Among the 59 million West Germans there is a considerably higher proportion of Roman Catholics. There has also been pressure on East German Catholics to declare their independence from the West.

Viet Nam: Under God?

At the last minute, the men who wrote South Viet Nam’s new constitution bowed to Buddhist pressure and eliminated a reference to God, according to U. S. Catholic Press. But when the National Assembly finally promulgated the constitution this month, the deity had been re-inserted.

The preamble adopted March 14 declared that “the Vietnamese people must assume responsibility before the Supreme Being and before history for renewing the tradition of independence and accepting new ideas.” The monk Thich Tam Chau, head of one of the nation’s two major Buddhist factions, sent a letter of protest that was read to the National Assembly. Four days later, a majority reopened discussion and voted to drop the words “Supreme Being.”

In reaction, a crowd of about 3,000 Roman Catholics, including many priests, surrounded the Assembly building for several hours, protesting the “godless constitution.” After Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, a Buddhist, said he had no objection to the reference and would try to get it restored, the crowd dispersed.

There was no objection to another provision, that no faith will be the nation’s official religion.

Clearing The Papal Air

A mistranslation is causing wide misunderstanding of a key passage in the Pope’s latest encyclical, according to an educator from Rome. Father Felix Morlion said in an interview with Religious News Service that a passage that seems, in English, to be an attack on the capitalist “system” is actually directed against extremist “opinions” on laissez-faire capitalism. Morlion is president of the papally approved Pro Deo University in Rome.

The passage in question reads, in the English translation: “It is unfortunate that on these new conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation.”

In the Latin text of the encyclical, the word “opinions” corresponds to the English text’s “system,” according to Morlion.

The priest said that the encyclical, known as Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), which calls for more compassion and social responsibility toward the downtrodden, does not condemn capitalism as a system. It is said to be aimed at “only those egoistic, laissez-faire opinions which are indifferent to human life and dignity and would subordinate all this to profit, competition, and private property made into absolute values.”

The chief of last summer’s World Conference on Church and Society in Geneva, Paul Abrecht, said there are parallels between the papal message and the conclusions of the meeting conducted by the World Council of Churches. These parallels, he said, offer “the prospect of a united Christian social thinking on a broader range than ever before seemed possible.”

Meanwhile, Reuters news agency reported that the Vatican had rejected a suggestion that Populorum Progressio approved government birth-control campaigns in non-Catholic countries. The Pope’s ambiguous remarks on the population problem were interpreted widely as an easing of traditional strictures against artificial contraceptives (see April 14 issue, p. 45).

Rescue Mission Stew

In a “first” for the era of demonstrations, down-and-outers boycotted a rescue mission in Marysville, California, that requires men to attend evangelistic services to get food.

It began in mid-March when the Rev. John Baker, 28, of St. John’s Episcopal Church—one of twenty-eight sponsors of Twin Cities Mission—invited the men to his church for coffee and donuts each morning “with no strings attached.” Over at Twin Cities, the Rev. C. W. Renwick dished up breakfast to those who had tickets handed out at worship the night before.

Baker’s breakfasts became gripe sessions about Twin Cities, followed by voluntary one-hour prayer services that drew about one-third of the men. About fifty men began boycotting Twin Cities, while a mere half-dozen stuck with the mission (where they get overnight shelter; the strikers are left to their own ingenuity). As the news spread in the town of 10,000, non-churchgoer Gail Zimmerman opened her used-goods store to strikers for evening meals and voluntary, after-dinner services run by laymen.

Renwick, who is sponsored by the Pentecostalist Full Gospel Businessmen, says Baker is “stirring up dissension among the men and giving them the impression that food is more important than the Gospel.” Advice to “hold out” came from his board chairman, Yuba City carpenter Raymond Tiner, and from Clifford Phillips, Fresno mission operator and president of the International Union of Gospel Missions.

Baker says “human dignity” and “freedom of worship”—not theology—are at stake, and thinks narrow mission policies distort the true image of Christ. Although an anonymous Indiana lawyer has offered funds, he denies plans to start a rival mission. He says he just wants Twin Cities Mission “to listen.”

So on Easter Sunday, down-and-outers at Zimmerman’s had chicken and dumplings followed by a voluntary service. Renwick’s mission served a sermon followed by stew.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Extracting The Cotton

What is the function of the religious press today? To be “more theological and pastoral than it has been in the past,” Roman Catholic publisher Phillip Scharper told the mostly-Protestant Associated Church Press meeting in New York this month.

The appearance of Scharper, a layman who is editor-in-chief of Sheed and Ward, coincided with the admittance of new Catholic members to ACP and announcement of a joint meeting with the Catholic Press Association in 1969.

Scharper said Christian publications fail to communicate with those “outside the church in this technological age.… You cannot sit with cotton in your ears and ignore the world God so loved.”

As if to extract the cotton, the aim of this year’s ACP program, said United Church Herald’s J. Martin Bailey, was “to introduce the role of denominational journals in the controversial age in art, war and peace, and political involvement.”

Scharper also urged the religious press to discard “trivia,” “ecclesiastical doodling,” and a “house-organ orientation.” To serve a broader function, the religious press, according to Scharper, will have to pare away these elements and replace them with “ever more deep theological editorials and columns” in many sectors, both Protestant and Catholic.

ACP’s annual awards went to Mississippi’s Baptist Record and the American Lutherans’ Scope for physical appearance; to the Church of the Brethren’s Messenger for improvement; and to the Methodist student monthly motive for content.

T. E. KOSHY

The Word That Rings True

Ring of Truth, J. B. Phillips (Macmillan, 1967, 125 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Paul Rader, evangelist, Reality Evangelism, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Today the key issue in theology is the authority of Scripture, and particularly the New Testament. Is it true? Are the records historically accurate and reliable? Are they authentic?

All kinds of critical studies and attacks have been made on the divine authority of Scripture, the only source of knowledge about Jesus Christ and the foundation of faith and practice. Whatever the motives of the critics, a result they have often achieved is doubt. The “hath God said?” of the deceptive serpent in Eden has been amplified a thousand fold through efforts to humanize and demythologize the New Testament. Often critics have not fully realized the way in which their destructive criticism has led people to reject the authority of the Bible and to consider its message to be unworthy of an educated person. The results have sometimes been tragic. Zealous and gifted evangelists have suddenly abandoned their call. Pastors have left their charges. Eager missionary candidates have turned back disillusioned. And some men have even taken their own lives.

Just such a case triggered the righteous anger of the Rev. J. B. Phillips and caused him to write this book. An elderly, retired clergyman read and listened to the irresponsible “experts” of the “new theology.” His beliefs and faith were so undermined that he took his own life, having concluded that his life’s work had been founded upon a lie. Upon learning of the tragedy, Canon Phillips made his decision:

I … felt it was high time that someone, who has spent the best years of his life in studying both the new Testament and good modern communicative English, spoke out. I do not care a rap for what the “avant-garde” scholars say; I very much care what God says and does. I have therefore felt compelled to write this book.

Evangelicals will be glad he did.

In his response to the modern doubting of the New Testament, Phillips shows incisively not only the authenticity of the sacred record but also the disrespect, arrogant pride, irresponsibility, and spiritual ignorance of many liberal critics. In the foreword, he writes,

I am no anti-intellectual, any more than St. Paul, who wrote so penetratingly that “the world by wisdom knew not God.” But I say quite bluntly that some of the intellectuals … who write so cleverly and devastatingly about the Christian faith appear to have no personal knowledge of the living God. For they lack awe, … humility, … and the responsibility which every Christian owes to his weaker brother. They make sure they are never made “fools for Christ’s sake,” however many people’s faith they may undermine.

As the silversmith hears the clear ring of true metal when he taps with his hammer, so J. B. Phillips in twenty-five years of diligent study and translation of the New Testament has heard the ring of truth from the inspired book, its writers, and its subject, Jesus Christ. Candidly, he admits to being astonished and surprised at the penetrating vitality of truth he discovered. This “Translator’s Testimony” records the impact of truth upon him: the truth of experience, the truth of the Letters, the truth of the Gospels, the truth of Jesus, and the truth of the Resurrection.

His reasoned and experienced conclusion is “that we have in the New Testament words that bear the hallmark of reality and the ring of truth.” And he communicates his insights and reasons and his “happy and unexpected discoveries” (which he calls “serendipities”) with clarity and precision.

Like his friend and informal mentor, C. S. Lewis, (who he claimed appeared twice to him after his death) Phillips as an apologist has the ability to hold interest while making crystal clear the great truths of the faith. By logic and imagination, he is able to appeal to the minds of many who would not normally read the New Testament and to present forcefully its great doctrines centering in Jesus.

This book might well be used as a first step toward interesting agnostic or indifferent friends in the New Testament. Indeed, Phillip’s testimony to the historicity and reliability of the New Testament should find wide reception among those who may have advanced knowledge of material things but who lack understanding of spiritual matters. The book has the ring of truth.

Diverging Theological Streams

The Divided Mind of Modern Theology, by James D. Smart (Westminster, 1967, 240 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is an informative and highly readable work for the serious scholar, rich in biographical and historical as well as theological content. It scans the years 1908–1933 with an eye on the early interaction and widening split between Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, whose diverging views have divided contemporary theology into two streams.

The author recognizes, rightly, that the central issue parting Barth and Bultmann was whether theology should be based on faith that responds to the Word or, as Barth insisted, on the Word to which faith responds. Continued evasion of this issue, Dr. Smart warns, will worsen the schizophrenic mind of modern theology. He appropriately notes, moreover, that Bultmann’s approach has as yet yielded no theological dogmatics.

But when Smart’s own views emerge, the volume becomes less statisfying.

He shares the Barthian notion that recognition of divine revelation in the created order requires natural theology. This emphasis, in my opinion, flows not so much from an exaltation of revelation as from a depreciation of reason.

Despite the increasing prominence of analogy in later writings, Barth nonetheless, as Smart detects, never abandoned his use of dialectic; to have done so would have necessitated an entirely new methodology. I think that the deeper issue must therefore be raised, whether the rejection of revelation in the form of scriptural truths—common to Barth and Bultmann—distorts the apostolic heritage, so that any stable and authentic theology must be found behind rather than through their views.

Smart hints, however, that he has no interest in returning to the evangelical view of scriptural revelation. He joins those who assail Barth for not recognizing “the theological necessity of a thoroughly historical and critical understanding of Scripture if men are to be free to hear what the text really says” and deals more softly with Bultmann’s attempted distinction in the New Testament of that which is culture-bound from that which witnesses to the eternal Kerygma. If Smart has found a reliable way to identify the revelational content within the Bible by a new standard, he ought to tell the world promptly. Failure of the dialectical and existential approaches to provide any objective criteria for picking and choosing between the texts is a prime factor in the present theological unrest.

The reader will, therefore, not be surprised that Smart dislikes Bultmann’s rigidity (seen in his abandonment of the futurist element in eschatology and the tendency to regard certain principles as fixed and final) and prizes Barth’s relativizing of all theology. “Because God and the human situation are both in constant movement, a theology that absolutizes anything in its own structure is unfaithful to its task.”

If Smart is here speaking his own mind as well as speaking for Barth, he has devoted several hundred pages attempting to learn from the past what, in any event, cannot undo the predicament of theology in the present and future. For not to know the truth about God seems to be a requirement of a theology subject to change without notice.

Analyzing A Psychoanalyst

Erich Fromm: A Protestant Critique, by J. Stanley Glen (Westminster, 1966, 224 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Gary R. Collins, associate professor of psychology, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Erich Fromm is one of the best known and most widely read contemporary psychologists. Trained as a psychoanalyst, he has written a number of books on modern society that have articulated the feelings of many people. In an age of growing automation, Fromm has written about man’s concern over his loss of freedom. As our society has become more and more impersonal, Fromm has discussed the problem of loneliness and man’s need for relatedness. With the growth of destructive nuclear power, Fromm has speculated about the nature of man and his capacity for good and evil.

In this “Protestant critique,” J. Stanley Glen (whose qualifications include doctorates in both psychology and theology) has written a summary of Fromm’s thought followed by a more extensive evaluation of Fromm’s psychology seen in the light of Scripture and Protestant Reformation theology. Glen shows, for example, how Fromm’s view of the Gospel has been distorted. By misinterpreting Scripture and by considering only portions of the works of Calvin and Luther, Fromm has developed the idea that the Gospel—instead of being good news—is a doctrine that enslaves men under the omnipotent control of an authoritarian and unforgiving God. When Fromm describes this God as an illusion that results from man’s projection of his own good characteristics, Glen shows that such thinking is neither good theology nor good psychology. The book also considers the biblical doctrine of original sin and compares it with Fromm’s view of man as a creature who is basically good but who has been corrupted by capitalistic society.

Glen discusses in detail many of the basic ideas in Fromm’s system, such as his views on loneliness, religion, authoritarianism, humanism, and love. The reader might have appreciated a further evaluation of what Fromm calls the five basic needs or of his view of the perfect society (which he calls humanistic communitarian socialism). However, Glen has limited his discussion to those aspects of Fromm’s system that have a bearing on “the message and theology of Protestantism” and has not attempted to appraise Fromm’s whole psychological system. Although the book is primarily a criticism, the author occasionally shows that Fromm raises some questions that evangelical Christians should consider.

Portions of this book are difficult to follow, especially without a good knowledge of philosophy. Nevertheless, Glen has written a thought-provoking volume for the serious student of religion and contemporary psychology. At present, such evangelical appraisals of psychological theorists are rare.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

• Biblical Ethics: A Survey, by T. B. Maston (World, $6). Maston traces the development of ethics in the Scriptures, shows their climax in the life of Jesus and the writings of Paul and John, and argues for their contemporary authority.

• The Other Son of Man: Ezekiel / Jesus, by Andrew W. Blackwood, Jr. (Baker, $3.95). Blackwood relates Ezekiel’s message to current problems and considers the prophetic background of Jesus’ designation as the “Son of Man.”

• Service in Christ, edited by James I. McCord and T. H. L. Parker (Eerdmans, $6.95). Essays presented to Karl Barth on his eightieth birthday by a host of scholars on the Church as a servant to Christ and mankind.

Oohs And Aahs Must Come First

An Offering of Uncles: The Priesthood of Adam and the Shape of the World, by Robert Farrar Capon (Sheed and Ward, 1967, 182 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by James W. Sire, associate professor of English, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska.

Robert Farrar Capon, an Episcopal parish priest and dean of the George Mercer School of Theology, has written a delightful book. His approach to modern man’s predicament is summed up in the preface (which Father Capon, consistent with his own rationale, puts at the end): “We do not need to have either God or creation explained to us; we are already sick to death of explanations. We have forgotten, you see, not what reality means, but how it smells, and what it tastes like.” So rather than developing a profound argument, he writes a witty meditation on man as a priest in the modern world. As he says, “God and the world need to be held up for oohs and aahs before they can be safely analyzed.”

Thus the book proceeds by indirection. First comes a picture of a driver on a thruway (a man in no place), then a glimpse of a man in some place, a man walking and learning the sights and sounds of his home town and its environs, Father Capon’s own Port Jefferson on Long Island. Out of the second picture a tall marsh reed, cut off close to the ground and comically held in the hand, mysteriously emerges as the symbol of man’s priesthood. This subtle shifting from specific detail to symbolic import sets the tone of the work and does precisely what the author wants. It gives the reader the sense of taste and smell—the feel of the world, something we lose with shod feet and tight-fitting necktie. But the detail is so ingeniously chosen, in the case of the marsh reed so archetypal, that before the reader is quite aware of it, Father Capon is talking theology.

An Offering of Uncles investigates the relation between God, man, and the world by plumbing the countless ramifications of the analogy between a layman in his ordinary capacity and a priest in his. As Father Capon puts it, “I want to refresh the sense of the priesthood of Adam, to lift up once more the idea of man as the priest of creation, as the offerer, the interceder the seizer of its shape and the agent of its history.” Taking his cue from Genesis 2:15, he investigates the significance of Adam’s task—to dress and keep the garden of Eden. Adam was to offer up all things to God. When he failed, when as a priest he offered up the right things in the wrong way, he became a renegade priest; death was his unfrocking.

But perhaps I am giving too much away. Suffice it to say that the analogy between man and priest is developed in relation to modern Adam, the discussion covering such topics as the status of things in general, the body in particular (even faces and beards), marriage (the subject of his earlier Bed and Board), friendship, cousins, and uncles.

Father Capon’s delight in life does not prevent him from a clear vision of evil, which operates as a black Mass and is ultimately dealt with only by the ultimate priest, the Second Adam, who saves history from Adam’s bad priesthood through the Passion and Resurrection.

Perhaps the weakest chapter of the book is a polemic against a few selected views opposing Christianity. One gets the notion that Father Capon has created straw men. But he has a witty match, and the straw men burn brightly. Perhaps the most striking chapter is his argument for the historicity of Adam.

As for the title, I shall allow each reader to discover how uncles are offered. This book, like a work of art, loses too much in the paraphrase. Ministers and laymen, students and wives, cousins and uncles: these and many other priests in God’s world will find An Offering of Uncles a book to be savored in the reading.

Prescriptions For Prayer

The Cycle of Prayer, by Ralph A. Herring (Broadman, 1966, 80 pp., $2.50), and How to Pray, by Francis E. Rein-berger (Fortress, 1967, 138 pp., $2.50), are reviewed by C. Ralston Smith, director of development,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

These are intriguing and attractive books that attempt to treat a vast subject in a small space. One of the reasons for their attractiveness is their unusual approaches to the well-worn theme of prayer. This basic manifestation of the Christian life continues to be a problem, both in understanding and in undertaking. These men, one a Baptist and the other a Lutheran, make their pages shine with originality.

Dr. Herring brings to the author’s desk a vast training and experience. He was the son of missionary parents in China, was educated in Baptist institutions in the United States, and served a twenty-five-year pastorate in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His denominational services have culminated in his present post, director of the Seminary Extension Department of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Herring uses a circle to illustrate the nature and function of true prayer. A jagged line across its diameter indicates the level of human experience, intercepted by the Incarnation at the center of the circle. The quadrants are labeled with significant phrases: God enthroned, Point of Need, Crisis of Faith, and Joy of Receiving. If this seems nebulous, do not despair, for he also elaborates upon high doctrine down at the level of understanding. Sound and simple examples, chiefly scriptural, are used to point up the tremendous power available through this communication with God.

Mr. Reinberger has had campus experience as professor of practical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, and is now the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Frederick, Maryland. In six of the nine chapters, the road taken is already well-trodden. The high calling of audience with the Almighty is treated, as well as such mundane things as posture, place, and time for prayer. Then follows a brief study of how Jesus prayed, including an interesting analysis of John 17. The Lord’s Prayer is the theme of still another chapter, and the concluding section contains a suggested liturgy, a brief closing exhortion, and a treasury of prayers collected from sources ranging from St. Patrick to The Student Prayer-book.

However, the unusual feature about Reinberger’s book is the art work. With great taste and imagination, the text is interspersed with halftone reproductions of line drawings of postage stamps from across the world. Nearly all these government-issue stamps have religious themes, including portrayals of biblical characters, church fathers, reformers, and theological leaders of latter days. There are also reproduced famous works of art, such as a detail from “The Creation of Man” by Michelangelo (United States, 1958) and “Descent from the Cross” by Peter Paul Rubens (Belgium, 1939). This art work, carefully done and appropriately spaced, greatly enhances the appearance of the book, and indicates a facet of scholarship that shines infrequently.

While neither of these small volumes adds significantly to the vast literature on prayer, either one would be a helpful gift.

Straddling The Fence

Comprehensive Handbook of Christian Doctrine, by John Lawson (Prentice-Hall, 1967, 287 pp., $7.75), is reviewed by Gordon R. Lewis, professor of systematic theology and Christian philosophy, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

Although no single volume can be comprehensive of “all important issues” in theology, this one by an associate professor of church history at Candler School of Theology (Emory University) effectively introduces the serious, nonprofessional reader to the field.

Lawson objectively compares and contrasts many historical and contemporary viewpoints. Amid all the debates he discovers “a central, comprehensive, and balanced position of Christian interpretation.” He writes:

The historic Christian theological tradition is an intellectual and spiritual system so spacious, so well balanced and well articulated, and so tested by experience, that it well merits the deep respect even of those moderns who do not personally accept every part of it.

Lawson seeks to mediate between extreme positions and so he adopts an irenic Arminianism as over against Calvinism and Catholicism. On all sides, of course, such an arrangement is debatable.

Concerning the authority of Scripture, the author rejects radical criticism on the one hand and the complete truthfulness of the Bible on the other. Yet the bulk of the biblical witness to Christ is “consistent, majestic,” and continuous with Christian thought. Mixed in with the biblical narrative, however, are interpretive elements from the Church that Lawson says are not objectively true. He fails to see that the interpretive elements may also be the product of divine inspiration and true expressions of God’s redemptive plans and purposes. Since he cannot follow Christ in accepting the truthfulness of the whole Old Testament (Matt. 5:17, 18; Luke 24:25–27), it is hard to see how he can claim that Christ’s teaching is normative. And though the book includes an extensive index of Scripture references, it does not fulfill its aim of supporting its articles of belief with comprehensive Scripture “proofs.” The appeal to the passages seems to be less determinative than the appeal to critical evidence.

The impossibility of a mediating position on the authority of Scripture is clearly seen in Lawson’s discussion of the Lord’s virgin birth. He sees clearly that one who starts with a bias against the miraculous and for radical criticism will find grounds for rejecting the traditional doctrine. On the other hand, he sees that one who starts with a reverence for the authority of Scripture and the integrity of the Church’s creed will find equally good ground for upholding the doctrine of the Virgin Birth “as a historical event as well as a divine sign.”

What then does the author recommend? On this we are not to be “too dogmatic.” This is hard to reconcile with the historian’s commendable stance on the problem of the Jesus of history. “The Faith,” he said, is “an authoritative witness to events which actually happened, which are the saving acts of God performed in the course of the history of this world.”

The resurrection of Christ is affirmed with less tentativeness. But it is accepted, not on the inherent authority of the biblical witness, but on the basis of historical criticism. The early belief in the resurrection “could not have arisen in the first place apart from the outward physical sign of God’s saving act.”

The limits of historical methodology become more evident in connection with Christ’s second coming. We are told that it is “incautious” to affirm dogmatically a visible return of Christ. Admiring Lawson’s “reverent reserve” on some details, we must nevertheless warn of the dangers of irreverent reserve concerning the Bible’s view of itself.

Know Your Competition

Alternatives to Christian Belief, by Leslie Paul (Doubleday, 1967, 227 pp., $4.95), and Religion in a Modern Society, by H. J. Blackham (Frederick Ungar, 1966, 229 pp., $5), are reviewed by Howard A. Redmond, professor of religion and philosophy, Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington.

Alternatives to Christian Belief is an expansion of a series of lectures originally given at Kenyon College, Ohio, by Leslie Paul, professor at Queen’s College, Birmingham, England. It critically examines the various philosophies (and theologies) men have held and now hold as substitutes for Christian faith, including humanism, evolutionary optimism and pessimism, utopianism or Marxism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, positivism, and the death-of-God cult.

In general approach, there is little that is strikingly new or different about this book. But some of the sections contain material of special value. How widely is it known, for example, that Wittgenstein virtually repudiated his famous Tractatus, so long considered the holy book of the linguistic analysts? And though we all know of such existentialists as Sartre, Heidegger, and Marcel, how many of us have any knowledge of the personalistic existentialist Emmanuel Mounier? The chapter on Marx and Engels is also rich in background and analysis, as are brief sections on Toynbee and Teilhard de Chardin. In short, one could learn something about the modern world’s most important intellectual movements by reading this book.

But this strength is also the book’s weakness. If good writing is the selection of the significant and the exclusion of what is not directly relevant to an author’s purpose, this book leaves something to be desired. There is a serious question whether all the views discussed in this book are really live options to thinking people today. Evolutionary optimism and pessimism, for example, are surely possible alternatives to Christian faith; but they are hardly serious rivals today, though at one time they were. The same can be said of Freudianism; if our age is post-Christian, it is also largely post-Freudian.

Also, Professor Paul seems reluctant to consider the ideas of Americans. Except for the death-of-God theologians, American thinkers are given short shrift: one paragraph on Dewey, and not a word about Reinhold Niebuhr (whose penetrating analyses of Communism would have enriched that section) or William James (whose pragmatism is at least as much an alternative to Christian faith as, say, Spencerian evolutionism). Occasional British spellings and idioms (Tillich, Bonhoeffer, and others are said to be “not all of one kidney”) either mar or merry the verbal landscape, depending on one’s tastes. To sum up: the book is a compendium of much useful and sometimes little-known information, but is also slightly archaic in places, if one is concerned with alternatives to Christian faith in 1967.

One of Professor Paul’s alternatives, humanism, is presented in Religion in a Modern Society by H. J. Blackham, director of the British Humanist Society and secretary of the Ethical Union. The book is a humanist blueprint for the place of Christianity and the Church in contemporary society. The best of Christianity, Blackham argues, has been secularized or laicized, and all pretense of a supposed Christian foundation of society should be abandoned. Society should be characterized by “the coexistence of absolutes,” in which various conflicting systems live together in peace.

If sociologist Will Herberg is right, this has been largely realized in American religious pluralism. Indeed, it is often difficult to see what relevance the book’s argument has for American Christians (despite an introduction to the American edition that tries to show such relevance), for most of what the author says is directed to British society. Many of the points for which he argues were decided for Americans as long ago as the Bill of Rights and various historic Supreme Court decisions. To argue them anew is to beat a dead dog.

Yet there are some real values in this work. The comparison of the theories of Christianity and society held by Coleridge, Maritain, and T. S. Eliot is probably the finest thing in the book. And some of the author’s criticisms of institutional Christianity’s role in British society seem eminently reasonable. But the book’s basic anti-theistic, humanistic philosophy will draw a negative response from evangelical Christians, particularly when it advocates, a la Northrop and Toynbee, a syncretizing of the best insights of the world’s great religions.

It is helpful to know of the various roads to truth men have taken other than the way of historic Christianity. But the Christian is thankful for the Way with a capital W—the Way that leads us to the Truth and the Life.

Book Briefs

The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll, by J. A. Sanders (Cornell University, 1967, 174 pp., $10). The Psalms scroll, said to be “the most interesting and intriguing ancient biblical scroll ever discovered,” is translated and analyzed by a Union Seminary (New York) professor.

Dynamics of Doubt: A Preface to Tillich, by Arne Unhjem (Fortress, 1966, 128 pp., $2.95). If you don’t quite grasp the meaning of “ground of being,” “essence,” “existence,” “correlation,” “ultimate concern,” “theonomy” and other Tillichian concepts, this interpretation of Tillich’s doctrine of God will be helpful.

An Introduction to Mennonite History: A Popular History of the Anabaptists and the Mennonites, edited by Cornelius J. Dyck (Herald, 1967, 324 pp., $5.75). Mennonite scholars collaborate to present a readable account of the vision and progress of the Anabaptist movement from the sixteenth century to the present.

The Relevance of Physics, by Stanley L. Jaki (University of Chicago, 1966, 604 pp., $12.50). An analysis of the field of physics: its various theories of the world, its major themes of research, and its relation to other disciplines. Jaki emphasizes the changing nature of the field, points out its limitations and incompetence in dealing with certain areas of knowledge, and warns against scientism—“the profoundly unscientific attempt to transfer uncritically the methodology of the physical sciences to the study of human action.”

Paperbacks

Interpreting the Atonement, by Robert H. Culpepper (Eerdmans, 1966, 170 pp., $2.45). A substantial work on the atonement which is thoroughly biblical, well acquainted with historical perspectives on the doctrine, and theologically informed. All ministers and serious Bible students should own it.

The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal, by Conrad Cherry (Doubleday, 1966, 270 pp., $1.25). A long overdue appreciative appraisal of the covenantal theology of the man known to many only for “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

The Sermon on the Mount, by W. D. Davies (Cambridge, 1966, 163 pp., $1.65). Davies considers the Sermon on the Mount from the settings of Jewish messianic expectation, contemporary Judaism, the early Church, and the ministry of Jesus and claims that it spans the arch of Law and Grace.

The Ruin of Antichrist, by John Bunyan (Reiner, 1966, 324 pp., $1.50). Bunyan’s view of the doom of the Man of Sin remains in focus for today’s Christian.

The Greatest of These Is Love, by A. A. van Ruler (Eerdmans, 1966, 111 pp., $1.45). An inspirational verse-by-verse treatment of First Corinthians 13.

Each of the three methods of sermon delivery has had effective users; yet one is the most desirable …

To be good, a sermon must not only have fine content but also be delivered effectively. It isn’t enough for the preacher to have something important to say: he must be able to say it in a way that compels attention. In other words, he must be able to communicate his message. The late Charles R. Brown, at one time dean of the Yale University Divinity School and one of the greatest American preachers of his day, put the matter aptly:

Here in the delivery of your sermon the nourishment which you have brought for a hungry congregation is either eaten with satisfaction, relish, and resultant strength, or it is left on the plate as a bit of cold victuals, useless and repellent. Take heed, therefore, how you deliver! [The Art of Preaching, p. 155].

Books on preaching usually list three chief methods of delivering a sermon—reading from a full manuscript, using only an outline or notes, and dispensing with manuscript altogether. There can be no doubt that each of these methods has had its effective users. Any list of the great preachers of the Christian Church would have to include Jonathan Edwards of eighteenth-century America, Phillips Brooks of nineteenth-century America, Thomas Chalmers of nineteenth-century Scotland, and Herbert H. Farmer of twentieth-century England: and all these read their manuscripts closely. So a read sermon is not necessarily a dead sermon. The fact remains, however, that the most desirable—because the most effective—way to preach is to dispense with manuscript entirely and speak freely with no notes.

The reason for this is quite clear. Any manuscript, even a partial one, is a non-conducting medium for communicating with a congregation; it is a barrier to effective communication. The preacher who can deliver his sermon without referring to a paper, who can look his congregation in the face, has eye contact that will give him a close rapport with his hearers not possible otherwise.

There can be no doubt that congregations prefer their preachers to be as free from manuscript as possible. Charles R. Brown in his autobiography describes his early efforts as a young minister to preach without notes, a practice in which he came to achieve great ease and effectiveness. He always took long passages of Scripture as his text so as not to run out of material too soon—on the principle once laid down by John McNeill: “When pursued by one Scripture passage, flee to another.” One Sunday evening, however, Brown ran completely out of ideas after preaching for only eleven minutes. Having no more to say, he stopped abruptly, announced the closing hymn, and pronounced the benediction. Some of his church officers, thinking that their minister must have suddenly felt ill, came up to him to express their sympathy. Next day, however, Brown plucked up courage to go to his leading layman and tell him the truth. This layman, a trial lawyer by profession, replied: “Keep right on, Parson! We would rather have eleven minutes of this sort of preaching than half an hour of the other. I would never risk a case in court by taking along a carefully prepared manuscript to be read to the jury. You are appealing for much more important verdicts than it has ever been my lot to secure. Keep your eye on the jury and talk right at them” (My Own Yesterdays, pp. 65, 66).

Not only do congregations prefer manuscript-free preaching; at least some preachers who have read their sermons have wondered whether they would not have done better by preaching without paper. For example, Jonathan Edwards in later life regretted his practice of reading sermons and sought greater freedom from manuscript. John Daniel Jones, who was minister of Richmond Hill Congregational Church of Bournemouth, England, and one of the most distinguished British preachers during the first half of this century wrote all his sermons and read them very well. But when, after retiring from the active pastorate, he came to write his autobiography, he said this: “If a man can dispense with manuscript and look the people in the face, that is the most effective style of preaching (Threescore Years and Ten, p. 27).

How can a preacher acquire freedom from dependence on a manuscript? First, he should write out his sermons in full—more than once if possible. Such exceptionally gifted preachers as Arthur J. Gossip and Frederick W. Norwood used no manuscript in their preaching and did not even write out their sermons until after they had been preached. But for any preacher not so gifted as these pulpit masters, writing sermons in full is desirable and even necessary, partly to clarify his thought, partly to determine the length of the sermon, and partly to fix the sermon in his mind.

Second, he should develop his sermonic ideas in such a way that it is easy to follow them—i.e. simply, clearly, and logically. Some famous preachers have organized their sermons under three “heads” or points; Alexander Maclaren of Manchester and James Black of Edinburgh are outstanding examples of preachers who have thus “fed their flock with a three-pronged fork.” But whether this plan is adopted or not, every sermon should have clear, orderly, logical development. James S. Stewart of Edinburgh, who himself preaches without notes, says this:

It should be quite possible for the preacher, without the stiltedness of mechanized memorizing, to get a sure grip and clear conspectus of his own sermon, provided that certain conditions have been observed in the writing of it. These conditions are clarity of logical structure; well-defined divisions and subdivisions; exclusion of irrelevances; short paragraphs, with a single clear-cut thought in each, not long unbroken stretches where a dozen ideas jostle; balance and progress and development; with one or two strong and vivid illustrations marking out the track. The point is that freedom of delivery will tend to vary in direct proportion to accuracy of construction. If you can fashion a sermon which stands out clearly in all its parts before your mind, the tyranny of the manuscript is broken [Heralds of God, pp. 181, 182],

Third, the preacher should go over his manuscript several times before the sermon is due for delivery. If the sermon has been clearly thought-out and logically developed, imprinting it on the preacher’s mind should not require too much study. As long as he gets the main ideas and divisions clearly before him, he can leave to the inspiration of the moment the exact words with which to clothe his ideas. In this way, he may have to sacrifice literary finish and elegance; but he will be more than compensated for this loss in the face-to-face directness and close rapport he will have with his congregation. Having mastered the sermon, the preacher will sleep over it on Saturday night; and if he does, the congregation will be unlikely to sleep over it on Sunday morning.—The Rev. NORMAN V. HOPE, professor of church history, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

Numerous outposts in South Viet Nam are manned by only a few soldiers. These posts are surrounded by the enemy, and the soldiers live in constant danger.

Although these men are isolated, nevertheless they have a vital link with their command post: two-way radio sets. Through this communication setup they can pass on intelligence and call for reinforcements or for air strikes.

Like soldiers at an outpost, surrounded by the enemy and in constant danger, so Christians find themselves in enemy territory and subject to attack. For this situation God has provided the means and blessing of two-way communication—that is, prayer.

Immediately after Christ told his disciples about how certain, sudden, and final his return to the world would be, he turned to the subject of prayer—the importance of importunity and the spirit in which we should pray.

Our neglect of this privilege is one of life’s greatest mysteries. Through prayer we communicate with God, the Creator and Sustainer of life. Often, even as we pray he speaks to our hearts. Prayer is as necessary for spiritual life as breathing is for physical life. When we pray, God in his infinite wisdom and love releases his power for our good and his glory.

The analogy between soldiers at an outpost and Christians is a valid one. The Apostle Paul graphically says, “Our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Eph. 6:12, Phillips).

But to the believer God gives this comforting word, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.… For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you’ ” (Isa. 41:10, 13, RSV).

How do we keep in communication with the one who has given us this promise? By prayer!

Prayer generates faith and faith generates prayer. God answers in his own time and way. He is utterly faithful. His answers, when delayed, are always delayed for a good purpose. There are times when he answers immediately. And there are times when he meets our need even before we pray. If there is a delay, still we realize that he knows best, for he sees everything at the same time—past, present, and future.

At the control tower in any airport there stands a man who may delay the takeoff of a plane. He knows about the other planes that are in the air, about to land, and in the process of taking off. At precisely the right moment he gives the word, and the waiting pilot and his plane can then take off safely.

God knows our hearts. He knows when our prayers are not for our good or for his glory. His answer, whether “yes” or “no,” is always given in love.

Persevering prayer is an exercise in faith—faith in the goodness, love, and wisdom of God. But there are times when he expects us to act rather than pray. Before prayer can be effective, we must deal with sin in our lives.

To Joshua, on his knees after Israel’s defeat at Ai, God said “Arise, why have you thus fallen upon your face? Israel has sinned …” (Josh. 7:10, 11). God would not hear his prayer until the cause of defeat had been removed.

The Psalmist says, “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 66:18). Many prayers are ignored by our holy God, who will hear only after there is penitence and confession.

Importunity has its sure reward. George Mueller prayed for one man for sixty years and did not see his conversion. But within a week of Mueller’s death, this man came to Christ.

Along with persistence in prayer our Lord stresses the attitude of the one praying. He told a vivid story about a Pharisee and a tax-collector, both of whom went up to the Temple to pray (Luke 18:9–14). We read it, agree that the Pharisee was wholly wrong, and then go right ahead and act just like him.

Standing in pride and self-righteousness, the Pharisee thought he was praying when all he was doing was complimenting himself. There was in his heart no sense of sin and need, no confession with acknowledgment of guilt, no petition for mercy and grace—only the audacity to boast to God how good he was. And as he praised himself, he despised another.

Like a leper insensitive to pain, the Pharisee was unaware of his sinfulness. Like a ship headed for the rocks while taking its bearings from another doomed ship, he judged himself by earthly standards, even “religious” standards. He was unaware of how far he was from meeting God’s holy requirements.

But the tax-collector uttered a prayer from the heart: “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” Here was real petition, a direct and personal prayer, a prayer, offered in humility, asking for mercy and grace. His cry was like David’s, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions” (Ps. 51:1).

How distressingly present is the Pharisee in all of us! How prone we are to compare ourselves favorably with other persons! Self-righteousness is the family disease of all the children of Adam.

Like the tax-collector, we need daily cleansing, daily forgiveness, for we sin again and again in thought, word, and deed and need renewed grace and mercy from the Saviour.

Prayer is a personal thing, just as our relationship with Christ is exceedingly personal. When the tax-collector asked, “God, be merciful to me a sinner,” he placed himself in the direct line of God’s mercy and forgiveness. How prone we are to evade this kind of direct confession by using “we,” “our,” or “us”! We forget that “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Jas. 4:6). How we need to guard against and repent of the spirit of the Pharisee that lurks within the heart of each of us.

Nothing can do more to give us a right perspective than the realization that God knows all that is in our hearts. Proverbs 28:9 tells us, “If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination.” The cure for self-righteousness is self-knowledge, comparing ourselves with the sinless Christ and casting ourselves on his love, mercy, and grace.

Prayer is a precious privilege, a way into the very presence of God, always open in the name of his Son, and always available to the humble and believing. There is such a thing as “praying ground”: no sin unconfessed and unrepented; a right motive; reverent boldness; a submission to the holy will of God in all things.

Like the isolated soldiers in South Viet Nam, we need to keep our two-way communication channel always in working order. And we can claim the promise: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9).

Reverently and thankfully we say, “Roger, over!”

My Dear Turned-Off Brothers:

Theological reflection turns up in most unexpected places these days. Perusing the Berkeley Barb, the underground tabloid of California acidheads, I was confronted by the headline: “Did Jesus Turn On?” Stationed as I am on the frontier of contemporary theology, I could not avoid this article, especially since it claimed that “psychedelic or alchemic enlightenment may have supplied the mystic heart of Western religion with its life blood.”

Authors Thaddeus and Rita Ashby, recipients of a research grant to investigate LSD and creativity, assert that psychedelic plants are referred to in the Bible and that these may well have been responsible for many biblical events better described as LSD experiences. For example, the manna from heaven may have been “magic mushrooms.” And did the Israelites dig those crazy toadstools!

Our psychedelic theologues hypothesize that Jesus’ first contact with drugs came from the wise men’s myrrh. From this opiate he may have “graduated” to psychedelics. They further claim that Jesus probably had more than his share of natural LSD so that he was divinely “turned on in front” at birth. But Jesus’ superior endowment of natural LSD did not prevent him, they say, from “turning on artificially” by eating herbs and wild psychedelic flowers.

The Ashbys, however, would not have us think less of a prophet’s authority and visions now that we have a scientific explanation of alchemic inspiration. No, sir! After all, did not William James say, “We judge trees by their fruits, not by their fertilizer?”

Before you summarily turn from the acidhead school of theology, consider the service the psychedeliacs have rendered for the community of professional theologians. To men who have become weary playing games of theothanatology, linguistic scrabble, hist and myth, hip religion, and sacralization of the secular, the apostles of pot open up a new dimension of technicolored existential awareness. How can new theologians resist the experience of turning on?

Come to think of it, maybe I should begin packing for an LSD trip. Anybody know where I can find a wise man with some myrrh?

Wondering if this trip is necessary, EUTYCHUS III

The Easter Event

It was refreshing to read Klaas Runia’s article, “The Third Day He Rose Again” (Mar. 17). After all, what else is the basis of Christianity today?

PAUL KOCAK

St. John’s University

Collegeville, Minn.

There are two statements which do not seem to be in full accord with the generally strong, orthodox tone of the rest of the article. The author speaks of “the great day of the general resurrection, at the end of the ages.” Would it not be more in accord with the Scriptures to make the distinction our Lord made in John 5:29 between the “resurrection of life, and … the resurrection of condemnation”?…

He also says, “this new life comprises the whole man, soul and body.” Is this not contradicted by the inspired description in First Thessalonians 5:23, which says that “your whole spirit and soul and body” are to be preserved until the resurrection of the believer at the coming of the Lord?

F. W. HABERER

Detroit, Mich.

Dr. Runia made the assertion: “According to the Bible, when man dies, he dies with his whole being: body and soul.”

The biblical view does not appear to imply that death means the annihilation of all persons, i.e., the non-existence of both body and soul. Instead there seems to be an acceptance of physical death without a corresponding death of the soul or psyche.

C. DENNY FREESE

Carbondale, Ill.

Please convey to Dr. Runia my heartfelt appreciation of his Resurrection apologia.… Reprints should be made of it and sent to all ministers. It is a defense sorely needed in the neo-Platonic, religio-philosophical days in which we live.

WILLIAM G. WIRTH

Pasadena, Calif.

HELP! And please pardon my ignorance.

I have just read “The Third Day He Rose Again …” and three times find the word “kerygma.”

All my dictionaries including the New Century and Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged) failed me. On this point I feel like the eunuch who to Philip’s question, “Understandest thou what thou readest?” answered, “How can I, except some man should guide me?”

Can you help me?

CLARENCE D. KENNEDY

Berkshire Hills Baptist

Lee, Mass.

• Kerygma means the apostolic preaching, hence the content and/or proclamation of the Gospel.—ED.

Dr. Runia … states that “to use the terms ‘proofs’ and ‘based’ is not to take the resurrection out of the realm of faith and make it an event that everyone can verify on purely objective, scientific grounds. Such a verification is impossible for the simple reason that the appearances themselves belong to the realm of faith.” This is the same old diatribe that we have been forcefed for centuries; that we cannot have verification of the crucifixion and resurrection, but that it must be wholly accepted in faith.…

If we make an accurate, painstaking, and thorough study of the Gospels we find that they are true, and that a verification of the crucifixion and resurrection can be made on purely objective, scientific grounds.

I challenge the demythologizers and any others who wish to attempt it to disprove this fact.

DONALD L. MORSE

Portland, Me.

Well Worth The Price

For years I have been annoyed by having to throw away your magazine, for which I had not asked and which I found not worth reading. [See “New Circulation Policy,” Editorials, Mar. 17.]

But in the last year or two your magazine, it has seemed to me, has been greatly improved. I have found myself reading it more and more frequently and finding the reading worthwhile. Therefore I am sending my five dollars.

CHARLES THORNE

Mount Vernon, N.Y.

I note that complimentary subscriptions will be terminated during this year.

As one of the “more than 50,000 ministers who are paid subscribers” and one who is listed in your records as a charter subscriber, I heartily endorse your new policy.

STEWART B. SIMMS

First Baptist

Greer, S. C.

Enclosed you will find a check.… I would like to enter my subscription to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for one year and to obtain the New Testament which is offered with the new subscription.

I am grateful to you for having sent me CHRISTIANITY TODAY for the past few years. I have read it faithfully, for it has helped me to keep faithful to the Word and to maintain a biblical approach in my preaching, which is so greatly needed in these critical days when the authority of the Bible is ignored by so many within and without the Church.

PAUL E. RICKABAUGH

Dayspring Presbyterian

Yonkers, N. Y.

I hope your new policy of discontinuing free issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY for pastors does not include distribution to seminaries. I attend Perkins School of Theology, SMU, and have noted that the fifty copies sent to us are picked up within two or three days. Your magazine keeps us informed of the conservative side of issues and provides a needed and welcome sounding board for evangelical Christianity. Please keep ’em coming.

GRANVILLE E. TYSON

Euless, Tex.

• We will continue to send bundles to theological seminaries.—ED.

A Schismatic Group

Your report that in Cameroun “a group of the pastors had walked out of their General Assembly, vowing to continue their denomination in defiance of a merger vote” (News, Mar. 3) is inaccurate. No merger has taken place in Cameroun, or been approved. The General Assembly did vote to continue preliminary union discussions, but this took place after the walkout, which occurred at the beginning of the assembly, after the election of a new stated clerk. The dissidents are not the continuing Presbyterian Church after a merger, as your report implies, but a schismatic group which has left the historic and continuing Presbyterian Church.

RICHARD C. ROWE

Presbyterian Fraternal Worker

Lausanne, Switzerland

‘Now’ And Then

While I was reading the editorial, “Reaching the ‘Now’ Generation” (Mar. 17), some thoughts on the subject popped into my mind. These thoughts are not in disagreement with the editorial opinion at all but rather in addition to it.

The early Church … did not make any such statement as, “For the person who is unreached by the Gospel before age twenty, the statistical chance of becoming a Christian is fractional.” They probably never heard of statistical chances and for that reason it didn’t bother them. So what did they do? In their ignorance of statistics and their knowledge of the work of Jesus Christ, they preached the Gospel to everybody alike, young or old.…

The early Church grew miraculously without a Sunday school, paid staff workers to concentrate on the “Now” generation, special evangelistic efforts to grade-school children, or radio and television programs. Not that there is a thing wrong with any of these but that there is evidently something lacking in today’s evangelistic thrust that was possessed by the primitive Christian evangelists in large quantities.

CHARLES H. OTTO

First Methodist

Haskell, Okla.

A careful study of the strategy of the New Testament churches will reveal, I think, that all age groups are reached best by giving priority to adults. To be sure, “today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders,” as you pointed out. The hope of the Church tomorrow does lie in reaching the “now generation.” But there will be no Church tomorrow unless today’s churches have strong leadership and adequate financial resources. These are supplied by adults.

C. FERRIS JORDAN

Nashville, Tenn.

[Your editorial] asked the question, “How can we reach young people?” You gave some worthy suggestions and concluded by stating, “Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders, and they must be evangelized now.”

Our small Baptist church [is] located immediately adjacent to one of the large high schools of our city. We have a deep and settled conviction that God placed us here for a purpose.… We … are now constructing a building to serve the Christian education needs of our church, and also provide an adequate room for conducting one “seminary” class each period of the school day, or as many periods as seem advisable. Our master planning calls for remodeling our present chapel into a “seminary” building where we can operate a full Christian instruction program for the students of the high school.

ROBERT VANCE

Washington Heights Baptist

Ogden, Utah

The Third Force

I greatly appreciated “Reviewing the Restoration at Abilene” (Mar. 17). In gaining a complete view of the Restoration Movement today, it would be well to note the existence of a third force within the movement which exists on a middle ground between the International Convention Disciples of Christ and the Church of Christ. Some of them are known as Christian Churches and some are known as Churches of Christ. These churches have no organization beyond the elders of the local church, though they do support certain cooperative ventures.…

In the 1966 “Directory of the Ministry of the Undenominational Fellowship of Christian Churches and Churches of Christ,” published in behalf of the independents, there are some 4,516 churches in the United States and Canada listing a total estimated membership of 1,008,988.… I believe that this middle group will soon emerge as the largest of the three.

GARY K. DAVIS

Napa Valley Christian

Napa, Calif.

Your news report provides a very concise and objective view of current trends and developments in the Churches of Christ.… Personally, I think it is time that Churches of Christ come out of their isolationism and exert a greater influence on the religious world, especially the more conservative Bible-believing segment of Protestant Christendom.

TED CLINE

Church of Christ

Weatherford, Okla.

An ancient question assumes new vitality in the face of the rapprochement of liturgical and non-liturgical traditions

Who gives the Holy Spirit? Under what conditions does the Holy Spirit come to the Christian and to the Church?

While it is not often discussed publicly, the question of the gift of the Spirit in relation to the claims of episcopacy and of the evangelical understanding of the Gospel is crucial to inter-church dialogue.

Questions of church order are important, and not simply the matter of whether churches should have pastors, or priests and bishops. There is a deeper question, the answer to which draws evangelical episcopal Christians of the Reformation tradition, evangelical non-conformist Christians, and Reformation Christians together, against the claims of the catholic tradition in the Anglican communion, in Roman Catholicism, and in Eastern Orthodox theology expressed through its more than twenty distinct churches.

This is the question: Does the Spirit come in response to faith in Christ through the Gospel, or does he come through rite or invocation in specifically designated religious ways at the hands of priest and bishop? Let no one underestimate the significance of this ancient question or its vitality in contemporary church-union discussions. At issue is not only church polity but also the theology of the Holy Spirit.

Most Christians agree that the Holy Spirit was given to the first Christians and to the Church at Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2. But thereafter there is little agreement on the working of the Spirit. Deep and vexing questions have troubled the Church from the earliest centuries. In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, great stress has been laid on the function of the episcopacy in the gift of the Spirit, and on the role of the sacraments in the gifts or graces of the Spirit. Two aspects of this teaching that illustrate the point are Chrismation and the Epiclesis in the Eucharist.

In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions (commonly called the liturgical traditions), Chrismation is the event when the Holy Spirit, at the hands of the bishop and priest, comes upon the baptized person. This is also expressed by saying that the baptized person is anointed with, or armed by, the Holy Spirit.

The interrelation between church order (the essential role of the bishop), sacramental teaching (the essential role of the sacraments), and the doctrine of the Spirit has been clearly established in the liturgical traditions by centuries of usage, though there are significant differences among them.

The Serbian Eastern Orthodox usage (in which I was born and reared) illustrates this. In the catechism the following points link to form a chain of reasoning: (1) The procession of the Spirit from the Father (alone) as Lord and Life-giver is declared. (2) Claim is made of the “lawful hierarchy, i.e., the unbroken chain practice of transferring the grace and authority in the Church from the apostles to bishops and from bishops to priests and deacons by the laying on of hands.” (3) Next, Holy Chrismation is defined as “a divine Mystery through which a baptized person is armed by the Holy Spirit with strength and wisdom and other gifts to keep the right faith and to live a holy life.” (4) The administration is by the priest, who anoints parts of the body of the baptized person with holy chrism, saying, “The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” The parts anointed, which represent sanctification of the whole man, are forehead, breast, eyes, ears, cheeks, mouth, hands, and feet. (5) The final point is that the priest performs Holy Chrismation after baptism, but not without the bishop’s part in it: “The bishops prepare and consecrate the chrism, without which a priest cannot perform Chrismation.”

Parallels to this rite in the other liturgical churches are clear. Even in the Anglican communion, so strongly influenced by the Reformation, the presence of the bishop at Confirmation is mandatory. The claims of the Roman pontiffs on these questions are already well known, both in ancient pronouncements and in encyclicals of recent Roman Catholic history.

The other aspect, the Epiclesis, concerns the invocation of the Holy Spirit, especially in the Eucharist. Liturgical dispute centers upon whether the Epiclesis of the Spirit in the Eucharist was earliest upon the oblations or upon those who offered them; i.e., is it upon things, people, or both in different ways? But a wide range of practice developed in which the Holy Spirit was invoked upon the faithful at times other than in the Eucharist.

In the Anglican communion, the significance of the words, “Come, Holy Spirit” (derived from the medieval hymn Veni, Creator Spiritus) has been debated: Is he to come because not present, or to come because present, and then, upon what or upon whom? However, many Anglicans treat the doctrine with reserve, and some deny that there is such a doctrine among them. They hold that the invocation seems to come into the Communion service rather incidentally in the sense that all Anglican formularies are strongly trinitarian in character. In the Ordinal it is invoked upon people, not things, and that as part of a larger way of life. Party differences within the Anglican communion might lead some, especially those of the Catholic wing, to construe the doctrine differently.

Many evangelicals see an incipient danger in the practice of invoking the presence of the Holy Spirit, especially when the action is tied to the idea that the Spirit is given through the Church and its clergy.

The importance of these ideas in the history of the Church cannot be exaggerated, especially for established churches that claim their ministry to be the only true one. In the Montanist dispute of the second century, a key issue was: Can the true Church exist without the properly consecrated and consecrating bishop, or is the Church a charismatic society? Throughout the Middle Ages until late medieval times, and even after the Reformation, the empire-church hegemony paralleled the bishop-sacraments conception. Dissent was ruthlessly extirpated. These questions are no less important today, especially for the liturgical churches, which always find self-criticism an agonizing process because of their prior claim to indispensable episcopal succession, even of infallibility.

Evangelical teaching, based on the New Testament, is that the gift and working of the Holy Spirit indispensably involve the preaching of the Gospel. Evangelicals proclaim Christ to men as their Redeemer and Lord and to the Church as its Lord, and call for the appropriate responses of faith and obedience. Evangelicals are reluctant to embrace some features of the ecumenical movement because they wish to honor the prior claims of the Gospel, not simply because they resist Catholic or Orthodox episcopacy. The following points may be noted:

1. The New Testament teaches that the Holy Spirit is Christ-centered, not successionist-centered (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:14; Rom. 8:9–11). This truth runs a collision course with successionist church claims that the Holy Spirit is ministered via the sacraments and sacramentals. The claim that the episcopacy succeeds the apostles includes the claim to exercise the Spirit. But in the New Testament, the Church is subject to Christ, its head, through the Spirit (Acts 2:32–36). The role of the Church therefore is to be subservient and to serve, not to exercise religious and temporal authority, which concept has characterized the ancient centers of Catholic and Orthodox power. We know the Spirit only indirectly through knowing Christ.

2. The Holy Spirit is where the Gospel is (John 14:27; Acts 1:8; 2:37, 38; 3:19; 5:31, 32; 13:2, 5; Col. 3:16). The New Testament exhibits an interest not in the Holy Spirit alone, but in the Gospel of grace as the first interest and work of the Spirit. Many successionists claim to continue Christ’s work (via the Mass, for example). This doctrine undercuts the completeness and finality of Christ’s Cross. Nothing short of gospel integrity, gospel concern, and gospel ministry can be the prime function of the Church and prime interest of the Spirit. The stress in Scripture is on the Gospel that has been received and that is to be transmitted by preaching. The Holy Spirit is related to the ministry of the saving faith of Jesus Christ, not to the exercise of princely authority in religion.

This does not deny that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper also represent and proclaim the Gospel. Nor does it deny that the ordinances are means of grace—only, however, of the one grace of God that is also ministered in other ways (such as in the singing of a hymn), and that is therefore not restricted to the action of episcopally sanctioned persons.

3. The Holy Spirit confronts the Church with her Lord (Acts 9:31; 20:28; Rom. 10:9, 17; 2 Tim. 4:8; Heb. 13:20; 1 Pet. 5:2–4). Jesus Christ is the only Lord of the Church. The Spirit’s work is to establish the Lordship of Christ, not the authority of the Church. Traditional Catholic theology is concerned with the authoritative ministry of rites that convey grace. Conversely, New Testament theology is concerned to ensure that the Church proclaim grace and live grace under the authority of the Gospel.

4. The Holy Spirit creates the one koinonia of the Church (1 Cor. 12:13; Eph. 1:13; 2:18, 22). The Church is commonly the koinonia or fellowship of the redeemed. This contradicts an essential principle of hierarchical, successionist religious organization. The Holy Spirit is not transmitted hierarchically (ad ecclesia or extra ecclesia, so to speak) but is the common possession of the redeemed in Christ. Both the Lordship of Christ and participation in the Spirit are the common experience of New Testament believers, on one plane of fellowship. There is no discernible distinction on these points between ruler and ruled, between clergy and laity, or between hierarchy and believer-priesthood.

5. The Holy Spirit addresses the Church via the Gospel (Acts 5:5, 9; 15:6–12, 19, 20, 22, 28; 20:28, 32; Eph. 3:14–19; Col. 3:23, 24). If the bishop administers the Holy Spirit, who addresses the bishop, or the pope, or the patriarch? That they have needed speaking to is clearly established from the long record of history. Who stands over the bishop? History attests that often it has not been God. In the New Testament, not only does the Church speak the Gospel, but the Gospel is spoken to the Church. The claim to esoteric, ecclesiastical authority in the Church is really a curious form of “private judgment,” because it lays claim to apostolic authority while missing the authority of the public apostolic Gospel. Even the apostles stood under, and appealed to, the truth of the Gospel.

6. The distinctness of Christ, the Spirit, and the Church is maintained in the New Testament (Act 9:31; Eph. 3:7–13; 4:1–16). When the Church claims the authority to minister grace, these distinctions are blurred. The claim of the Catholics and Orthodox that they assume and continue Christ’s mission and authority in the world must be resisted. The New Testament proclaims that Christ alone finished his own work of redemption through the death of the Cross, and that the Church must now proclaim this Gospel. No question of succession arises, except of the Spirit who makes the Gospel effective to the consciences of men. Christ promised that he would be succeeded by the Paraclete and not by the apostles. It is a mistake to blur the distinction between Christ and the Church, and between the Holy Spirit and the Church; but it is blasphemy for men to claim the sovereignty of Christ which belongs to the Holy Spirit alone.

7. The Holy Spirit works through the Word of truth respecting the crucified, risen Lord (Acts 2:1–3, 22–24, 36–39; 1 Cor. 12:3; 1 Pet. 1:2–5; 1 John 4:1–3). Scripture, Gospel, and Holy Spirit form a trilogy. The claim to immediacy of episcopal relation to God tends to eclipse the historical Word of truth. It is a highly subjective claim to being right, rather than a claim to faith under the Gospel.

In evangelical teaching, the claim to “private judgment,” or “soul liberty,” or “liberty of conscience,” is never esoteric, as is sometimes alleged. It is always conscience, liberty, and faith under the Word of God. It is not conscience alone, but conscience bound by the Word of truth. Word and Spirit go together. The Holy Spirit is given to bring the historical Jesus Christ, now glorified, to the faith of every man through the sequential conditions of time by means of the Gospel.

8. The Holy Spirit functions independently of the sword (Acts 4:7–12, 23–31; 26:1, 15–18, 24–26, 31; Eph. 6:10–20). The Church under the Holy Spirit must be free of the state and must not employ the arm of the state to further its cause. Through the Holy Spirit, the Gospel is its own authority and vindication. It needs none from man. The Holy Spirit suffices.

While this discussion raises questions about church order and sacramental claim and practice, its main points converge on the issue of whether bestowal of the Spirit can be confined to the action of episcopally sanctioned persons. The contrasting evangelical claim is that the Holy Spirit comes into the believer’s life when he receives Christ by faith. For this reason, evangelicals see the interrelation of Gospel, Holy Spirit, and faith as indispensable. Further, they insist that this issue must be recognized as crucial in ecumenical discussion, in the face of growing pressure for rapprochement between the non-Catholic Christian world and its Catholic and Orthodox counterpart.