With Billy Graham’s Holy Week San Juan crusade, the Protestant church in Puerto Rico passed an important moment.

The cliché of Catholic domination came under strong challenge as the face of Latin American Protestantism began to emerge.

For eight days of meetings in San Juan and twelve “satellite” crusades held in major cities across the island during the preceding month, attendance reached just over 175,000. A total of 7,975 decisions were recorded.

All this took place on an island where less than 15 per cent of the 2.75 million population can be called Protestant. But more significant to the island’s religious life is the fact that even by Catholic estimates, no more than one-fifth of the baptized Catholics attend services regularly. And many Protestants claim that the real proportion is much lower.

“It is important to understand,” said Dr. Raymond Strong, president of Puerto Rico’s Evangelical Seminary, “that in Latin America, Catholicism is a minority movement. It’s a larger minority than Protestantism, but it is nevertheless a minority movement.”

The island’s religious majority—Catholics connected to the church by membership only—gets most of the attention. This group, perhaps 70 per cent of the population, is the church’s vulnerable outer shell. For the highly evangelistic Protestant church, this outer shell is the focus of much of its activity—and most of its success.

The crusade reflected the emphasis. Eighty per cent of the inquirers made “first time” decisions—double the normal Graham-team percentage.

The force of Protestant outreach is slowly being felt. Where the Catholic church once meant control, it now many times has to settle for only influence—and in some areas even this is diminishing. The shifting trends can most easily be seen in the political sphere. In Puerto Rico’s 1960 and 1964 gubernatorial elections, for example, church-backed candidates opposing birth control and favoring aid to private schools suffered significant defeats. A seven-year-old church-sponsored political party regularly gets less than 2 per cent of the vote.

Slowly, then, things are beginning to change in Puerto Rico and, to a lesser extent, throughout Latin America. On the island, Protestants have felt a sharp need for a symbol of the change. For many churchmen the Graham crusade provided the first important symbol.

If anything, the crowds would probably have been bigger had the crusade been held a different week. Many Protestants were forced to divide their support between the crusade and conflicting Holy Week meetings traditionally scheduled in the local churches.

The Rev. Rafael Boissen, president of Puerto Rico’s 300-church Evangelical Council (which endorsed the crusade) and a key member of the campaign’s executive committee, said that “it was a mistake to have the Billy Graham meetings at this time of year.” The view was supported by officers of most of the island’s major denominations. Even a Catholic priest in the office of the Archbishop of Puerto Rico agreed. “For attendance, Holy Week was the worst possible time in Puerto Rico for a Graham crusade.”

In a Latin American setting, Easter Week holds nearly as much cultural significance as religious. Nearly all Protestant churches schedule special meetings during the week, some every night. In Catholic churches, there is a service in every church every night from mid-week on.

The crusade was originally set for February, but was shifted when Graham’s schedule changed. Many of the churches opposed the switch because it would conflict with their own programs; but when faced with an Easter Week crusade or no crusade at all, most churches altered their plans so they could join the campaign. The local press, however, virtually ignored the crusade.

By the time the meetings began, there was a unity among the churches unusual even for a Graham crusade. Direct help came from about 500 churches—nearly half the Protestant churches on the island. Other churches too rural to participate indicated they would back the meetings with prayer.

The church support was particularly important in the twelve secondary campaigns. Graham-team associate evangelists and national preachers spoke to capacity crowds almost everywhere they went. When the meetings concluded, nearly 70,000 people had attended with 3,610 registering decisions.

The San Juan meetings that followed got off to a slow start. For two nights early in the week, the evangelist addressed crowds under 10,000—for the first time in a major campaign in nearly two years. But Wednesday was “youth night,” and the crusade attendance seemed to turn a corner. It began increasing and reached a peak of 17,500 in the 23,000-seat Bithorn Stadium on Good Friday.

The crusade was climaxed Easter morning with a 6 o’clock sunrise service, an event sponsored annually by the city’s Protestants. Despite the hour, the meeting drew 13,500 people—three times the normal turn-out. That brought the total attendance for the San Juan meetings to 105,700, with 4,355 recorded decisions for Christ.

San Juan (Spanish for Saint John), capital of Puerto Rico, is the oldest city under the U. S. flag. For the Graham team it meant not only opportunity but a bit of relaxation. Said the evangelist, “This is the most relaxed crusade I have ever had anywhere in the world.” Midway through the meetings, he jokingly inspected the faces of several staffers, declaring, “I want to see who has been working and who has been on the beach.”

The truth was that while they all worked, many got some time at the beach too. To conserve strength, Graham made no public appearances apart from the nightly services. His blood pressure was checked before and after each address.

WILLIAM FREELAND

Baptist Evangelism In Poland

European Baptist Press Service reported last month that evangelistic tracts are now being printed in Poland.

“The tracts apparently will be useful as Polish Baptists make ready for evangelistic campaigns,” EBPS said. “Every church has been assigned an evangelist and set a time for its participation.”

Thirty thousand tracts have been printed, the report said. Among the subjects are “Main Facts of Faith,” “Love,” and “Polish Brethren.” Polish Baptist Union President Aleksander Kircun was quoted as saying that the Brethren tract refers to a branch of Anabaptists highly respected in Polish history.

According to Kircun, the evangelists are being asked to hold special meetings for church officers, young people, and other specialized groups in addition to the general revival services. The auxiliary meetings will take place during the day and the main preaching services at night.

Kinshasa For Christ

Not since 1958, when Protestants celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of their missionary work in Congo, had the capital of Kinshasa seen a city-wide convocation of evangelicals.

Some 15,000 local church members and their families sang as they marched down Avenue Kasa Vubu, carrying banners and Bibles. The convocation was part of the “Christ For All” national campaign of evangelism, and it involved more than sixty-five churches and church-related organizations.

Nearly all the marchers wore colorful uniforms and waved flags and signs. Many hundreds of women bought new dresses for the occasion. Three bands provided the music for the procession to Reine Astrid Stadium.

In the stadium, many thousands watched as the marchers poured through two side gates and positioned themselves on the field. Among the dignitaries on hand was the minister of education for Congo.

The Rev. Howard Jones, an associate of Billy Graham who is a popular crusade evangelist among English-speaking Africans, preached. More than 600 persons recorded decisions for Christ.

Building upon a four-month literature-distribution program conducted in 1966 and upon tent rallies held in the latter half of the year, as well as upon the formation of hundreds of prayer cells, the parade and mass rally brought Christians to a new awareness of the potential of mass evangelism.

It isn’t easy to bring Christian compassion to Viet Nam. The war—which causes most of the need for compassion—is not the only problem. A sad case in point is the six-month battle in which refugees in Bien Hoa, led by a Catholic priest, have stopped World Vision’s attempts to build an orphanage for 2,000 children on government-granted land. A violent scene at the site shortly before Easter was filmed for national broadcast in the United States by NBC television.

In the melee, World Vision staffer John Weliczko had his arm fractured. One member of the knife-wielding mob crowded World Vision President Bob Pierce against a wall and said, “If you come back I’ll kill you.” Two NBC cameras were smashed, and cameramen were roughed up.

Pierce says “our problem at Children’s City really is a big Vietnamese problem in microcosm”—how to “overcome the bitterness, tensions, and friction built up during thirty years of war.” He said his evangelical Protestant welfare group had never before had such trouble with Roman Catholics.

At latest count, more than 1.6 million are homeless in South Viet Nam. Despite great interest, Protestant aid efforts budgeted for all of 1967 pale before the cost of even a single B-52. World Vision plans to spend $750,000; Viet Nam Christian Service, $481,750; and the National Association of Evangelicals World Relief Commission, $38,000.

The victims of Viet Nam are so important in the policy debate that they often seem to be publicity pawns rather than human beings. Anti-war propaganda makes much of civilians killed by U. S. soldiers. On the other hand, U. S. officials pointed out the week before Easter that so far this year the Communist Viet Cong have murdered thirty-three village chiefs, thirty-one government aid workers, twenty-seven national policemen, and 376 other civilians.

Reliable information on U. S.-inflicted suffering is difficult to get. In the January Ladies’ Home Journal, Martha Gellhorn contended that “civilian casualties far outweigh military casualties.” In the same month’s Redbook, Dr. Richard E. Perry said that between 1962 and 1966 the United States lost 1,500 men in Viet Nam, while the civilian population often has “this many casualties in a single week.”

Both Gellhorn and Perry made much of the disfigurement of children by napalm burns. Despite this and other publicity, New York Times medical writer Howard Rusk reported last month he could not find a single case of napalm burning in twenty hospitals he surveyed.

Of all the efforts by American Christians to counteract the ravages of war, none has gotten more publicity recently than an attempt by a group of Quakers to get a boatful of medical supplies into North Viet Nam. During a stopover in Hong Kong in mid-March, boat captain Earle Reynolds, an anthropologist, said he and crew members have been threatened with up to ten years in prison and $10,000 in fines under America’s Trading with the Enemy Act. White House pickets protested this threat.

Barring use of force by the U. S. Seventh Fleet, Reynolds said he intended to deliver his eighty-two boxes full of medical kits, purchased for $10,000 by the ad hoc Quaker Action Group. Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department put a ban on sending money to Canada for aid to North Viet Nam. Because of this, the Action Group’s bank assets have been frozen, setting the stage for an important civil-liberties lawsuit.

While Quakers aim to help both North and South, most of the Protestant aid in the South is administered by another peace group, the Mennonite Central Committee. It acts for Viet Nam Christian Service, an aid mission that also includes Church World Service, related to the National Council of Churches, and Lutheran World Relief.

The Mennonites began their work in Viet Nam in 1954, the same year the Geneva Conference set the terms for “temporary” partition of the nation and President Diem took over as ruler of the South. Enlarging with the war, Viet Nam Christian Service now includes sixty-four staffers from Western nations (fifty-five are Americans), and it hopes to make this eighty by the end of 1967. Projects include widespread distribution of U. S. surplus food, two medical clinics, six community-aid teams, and refugee aid.

An important Roman Catholic agency is Catholic Relief Services, which handles food for nearly one million people. Although most of this goes to dependents of Vietnamese soldiers, some refugees are aided also. Ten staffers from Western nations work with CRS.

The World Relief Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals is emphasizing self-help at its major new project, the Lay Leadership Training Center at Hue. Working with the National Evangelical Church of Viet Nam, which is affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, NAE plans to provide vocational and farm training and to help Vietnamese set up small industries. The program also includes literacy training and the distribution of clothing, medicine, and 1.7 million pounds of food this year. Similar education centers are planned in Da Nang and Khe Sanh.

Last month, when U. S. planes accidentally bombed out a village and killed more than 100 persons and injured 250, NAE responded to a U. S. Special Forces request and brought in six planeloads of food and clothing.

The direct relief activities of U. S. soldiers, usually administered by chaplains, are difficult to measure. At a recent Pentagon press conference, returning Navy chaplain Francis Garrett said soldiers hand out thousands of tons of food and clothing, as well as such things as building materials.

In late March, World Vision announced it would join the Evangelical Church in sponsoring child-care centers to accommodate 2,000 children. And despite the setback, Pierce said World Vision would continue its “desperately needed” Bien Hoa orphanage project, because of urgent appeals from “the South Vietnamese government, responsible citizens, and the Vietnamese military command.”

Sight-Saving In Cuba

Emory University eye specialist William Hagler, with State Department approval, made a secret trip to Cuba last month for surgery to save the sight of captive Baptist missionary Herbert Caudill.

Hagler said the retinal detachment apparently was successful. He had operated on Caudill in Atlanta in 1964 in an unsuccessful attempt to save the sight in his other eye.

Caudill, a 63-year-old Virginian and veteran missionary, directed Baptist work in Cuba until his arrest by the Castro government two years ago last week. His missionary son-in-law David Fite and forty Cuban pastors were arrested then also. Caudill and Fite were imprisoned on charges of illegal exchange of currency. Four months ago, Caudill got a conditional release from jail to seek eye treatment in Havana, and Fite recently was transferred to outdoor quarry work. Baptist Press reports that Fite’s parents left the United States for Cuba February 25 to visit their son and try to get him released. Hagler said the Fites have been treated politely and have seen both their son and Cuban officials. It was not known immediately when they would return to the U.S.

Canada: Evangelical Pallor

Last month’s second annual convention of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada drew a sparse 150 registrants, mostly from the Toronto area. Indifference among evangelical ministers was blamed for the poor turnout. The organization’s recent drive to enlist 5,000 members brought in only 600 and put the EFC heavily into debt.

Under the presidency of neo-Pentecostal J. Harry Faught, the EFC aims at setting up branches in every Canadian province as part of a national evangelical thrust. Faught called on members to “confess our fragmentation; our suspicions of one another and our quarreling with one another.…”

The two-day meeting stressed the need not only for a united voice for evangelicals and cooperation in national and foreign evangelism but also for a fully accredited, interdenominational seminary of evangelical persuasion.

In a fiery speech, the Rev. Hugh MacDonald of Knox United Church, Regina, criticized the heretical liberalism permeating his own United Church of Canada. But he also rapped evangelicals—for crude presentation of the Gospel, nauseating radio programs, sickening music and revolting financial appeals, and for hinging salvation on some isolated dogma. “In our zeal for Christ, we must not be guilty along with the liberals of making the Gospel unintelligible,” he said.

J. BERKLEY REYNOLDS

The Ominous Future Of Protestantism

Secular Christianity, by Ronald Gregor Smith (Haper & Row, 1966, 222 pp., $5), is reviewed by John A. Mackay, president emeritus, Princeton Thelogical Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

This book by a distinguished Scottish theologian, an admirer and devoted disciple of Rudolf Bultmann, witnesses to a present-day fact that is both tragic and ironic. At a time when Roman Catholics throughout the world are rediscovering dimensions of the Christian faith they had lost, and when the dynamic faith of Pentecostals in maturing and becoming increasingly relevant to basic issues in the secular order today, evidence grows that main-line Protestant denominations are losing the Christian insight and spiritual vigor that produced the movement that gave them birth.

In this volume we have an intellectual symbol of a decline that gives growing concern, and of ominous portents on the horizon of tomorrow. The concern I have in mind is this: The evangelical dimension of Christianity—using the term “evangelical” in no sectarian or other-worldly sense but as expressive of the luminous and dynamic core of the Christian religion—is tending to become disdained and abandoned in traditional Protestant circles.

Here is the basic thesis of Secular Christianity: We do not know whether history has a meaning or, if it does, what that meaning is. But we humans, if we so desire, can give history a meaning. And today is the historical moment when the “secular,” in its fullest dimension, must be accorded precedence over everything that has been traditionally associated with the “religious.”

Smith’s reasoning is this. History’s chief event is the “paradoxical reality of Christ,” who symbolizes, in his life and death, “the forgiving act of God and the meaning of love as powerless self-giving.” The resurrection of Christ, the author says, is to be regarded not as an objective happening but rather as “the symbol of the new life, a way of affirming the forgiving act of God.” Those who take this act of forgiveness seriously must become “people for others,” wedded to “secularity.” Only out of this wedlock can true meaning be given to history, so far as Christians and the Christian Church are concerned.

Let us be quite clear on a crucial point. The basic issue involved here is not the historical relation between Christianity and the secular order nor what that relation should be if Christians take their calling seriously. It is rather whether the relation between these two realities must involve, as Professor Smith demands, that we “demythologize” God as the decisive absolute in history and at the same time “divinize” man, who in becoming a “being for others” becomes thereby the creator and goal of the future.

According to this view, God, following his act of forgiveness in Christ, remains “incognito,” so far as human history is concerned. He is not a living power or presence through contact with whom a human being can experience “conversion” or enjoy “fellowship,” in the biblical connotation of these terms. God cannot therefore be made the meaningful center of a theological system founded upon his self-disclosure and the revelation of his purpose for mankind, “according to the scriptures.”

In consequence of this, creeds and confessions become meaningless. Man is solely and absolutely responsible for his own history. “Evangelism” has no validity. The missionary concept is utterly outdated. The Church as the community of faith has no real basis for its existence. Inasmuch as the sole absolute is “modern man,” the supreme role of a “Christian” is to become involved in “modern man’s” life and relations, but without in any way seeking to relate him to a living, redemptive Presence.

Secular Christianity presents a twofold challenge to all who take seriously the evangelical core of the Christian religion. First, Christians must have a theology that is centered in the crucified and risen Christ but is at the same time relevant to the total problem and concern of “modern man.” Second, they must themselves become truly incarnate in contemporary reality, not as “gods,” but with the supreme objective of making Christ and a community of Christians a meaningful and potent reality in the world of our time.

Reading for Perspective

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

• 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.”

• Christian Reflections, by C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans, $3.95). The devout faith and brilliant intellect of the late Cambridge scholar and Christian apologist illuminate vital topics of culture and religion. A must for C. S. Lewis enthusiasts.

• Theology of the English Reformers, by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (Eerdmans, $3.95). A compendium of writings by English reformers (e.g., Tyndale, Latimer, and Cranmer) that shows the biblical basis of their teachings.

The Knowledge Of God

Between Faith and Thought: Reflections and Suggestions, by Richard Kroner (Oxford, 1966, 203 pp., $4.95); The Saviour and the Scriptures, by Robert P. Lightner (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966, 170 pp., $3.75); and God’s Word Written: Essays on the nature of Biblical Revelation, Inspiration, and Authority, by John C. Wenger (Herald, 1966, 159 pp., $3.50), are reviewed by R. Laird Harris, dean and professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

The Reformers taught that faith could be analyzed into knowledge, assent, and trust. Kroner, adopting a usual post-Kantian dichotomy, suggests that one must choose between faith and knowledge as a basis for religious belief. Faith is contrasted at every point with knowledge. The way to know God is the way of mystical belief, where both knowledge and speculation fail.

Kroner, a German refugee from Hitlerism, taught at Union Seminary in New York and at Temple University in Philadelphia. He may be classed in the general neo-orthodox tradition. His analyses of Barth, Tillich, Heidegger, and others are capable and helpful, though brief. Kroner argues that just as the methods of natural science do not uncover all reality, so the speculations and thought of philosophy do not exhaust the remaining areas of truth. Some truths—specifically truths of God—can be reached only by reflection and the experiences of faith.

Kroner claims that life is full of absurdity that can be made acceptable to men only by faith—not by complex rational or dogmatic systems like Hegel’s and Barth’s. God is hidden. We can only trust in the “ultimate guarantor of meaning.” “True mysticism is truly religious.” But Kroner’s god must be spelled without the capital letter. “God … should not be conceived as being.” He is “not outer being.” God “does not dwell in a transcendent place outside us, except in metaphorical language.” Indeed, Kroner cannot conceptualize his god at all. One may well ask whether such a god can be maintained; is this not a long step toward a god who is dead?

By calling language in the Bible metaphorical, Kroner demythologizes as much as Bultmann. The eternal is not endlessness, he says, but a kind of “superanimal being.” Jesus is on a plane with Buddha, Mohammed, and others, but he is higher. “Jesus is called ‘Son of God’ because of his most intimate relation to God.” Of course, Jesus is not the God-man of orthodox theology. “The compassion with which Jesus meets the sinner is supermoral; it is the divine feature in him.” Man’s immortality is affirmed, but survival after death is denied; immortality turns out to be only meaningful life here and now. The resurrection of Jesus is only an image of reality. And “the image of resurrection does not correspond to any physical or historical fact.” No attempt is made to treat the biblical evidences for miracles seriously. We are left with no after-life, no knowledge of God, no really truthful revelation. Faith becomes a feeling that there is a “guarantor of ultimate meaning.” As the quip goes, one may now pray that the “guarantor of ultimate meaning” will bless you real good!

It is a relief to turn to the books of Lightner and Wenger. These authors do not take up the problems touched by Kroner but rather give a positive and helpful discussion of the origin of Scripture and its truthfulness.

Lightner’s book is popular and useful but mainly traverses ground others have already gone over. He rightly grounds inspiration—verbal inspiration—in the witness of Christ, giving the exegetical evidence rather fully. His special contribution is a consideration of opposing views—neo-orthodox, liberal, and new evangelical. The neo-evangelical denials of verbal inerrancy come in for special attention.

More solid, though perhaps not quite so strict, is the work of Wenger, who not only brings a fresh approach to the authority and truth of Scripture but also offers helpful discussions of interpretation, textual criticism, and the history of the English Bible. The book is very well written and full of a wealth of illustration and interesting sidelights that make the reading a pleasurable and profitable experience.

Heavy-Handed Inferences

The Theological Tendency of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis in Acts, by Eldon Jay Epp (Cambridge, 1966, 210 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Clark H. Pinnock, associate professor of theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

This third in a series of monographs projected by the Society for New Testament Studies is a model of careful scholarship. The author reveals intimate knowledge of the intricacies of textual criticism and history. The weakness of the work lies in the somewhat heavy-handed theological inferences drawn from often minute variations in the Western Text. Earlier studies into the peculiarities of Codex Bezae contented themselves with assessing the historical worth and originality of textual variants. Less attention was given a possible bias in the editor that might have prompted his interpretive changes. Professor Epp believes that a large number of deviations in the Western tradition ought to be explained on theological, rather than mechanical or historical, grounds. The common denominator to these variations can be uncovered by postulating an anti-Judaic bias on the part of the editor. Previously, scholars like J. H. Ropes, F. J. A. Hort, and Th. Zahn had attributed the changes to other causes than deliberate falsification for dogmatic purposes; e.g., two authentic versions of Acts itself, explanatory expansions, Semitic backgrounds.

The thesis here is not altogether new (P. Corssen noted some anti-Jewish tendencies in the Western Text of Acts in 1896), but it has never been presented before in so thoroughgoing a manner. “The present study takes this anti-Judaism as its focal point,” Epp says. The pursuit of this thesis is a worthy one, but at times the momentum of argument places heavy strain upon fragile lines of evidence. Codex Bezae has in the past produced some novel theories to account for its existence, as the author admits, and the reader is left wondering about the finality of this latest novelty.

The anti-Judaic tendency in Codex Bezae appears in three dimensions; (1) the text portrays the Jews and their leaders as more hostile toward Jesus than does Vaticanus; (2) the text devaluates the importance of Judaism in the origins of Christianity; (3) the text puts more stress on the hostility of the Jews to the Gospel. “In short, the Jews come out rather poorly in the D-text” (p. 166).

Much of the evidence for these conclusions, however, exists only in the field of Epp’s microscopic vision. Does the addition of ponerion in Acts 3:17 show a bias, or does it merely expand the sense of B-text? Has the omission of humon from Acts 2:38 really altered the sense into a direction of greater universalism? Even the famous change from “people” to “world” in Acts 2:47 reflects no bias but simply expresses the thought of tout le monde (a French expression for “everybody” which has an exact parallel in Jewish Aramaic). When Epp explained the frequent addition of kyrios as a slap in the face of non-believing Jews, I began to lose sympathy with the whole effort. Even the addition of “by you” to a verb that implies it anyway in Acts 4:9 is supposed to heighten the fact that the leaders of Israel were not pleased with the early success of the Christian mission. Such imaginative form of innocent textual variants leading to so bold a conclusion does not sit well with otherwise painstaking scholarship. If earlier students did not pause to give the possibility of an anti-Judaic bias in Codex Bezae a fair hearing, then an avenue of investigation was overlooked. But cure like this is as bad as the disease. For in this approach, an assumed theological bias is made an absolute, before which even the facts must humbly bow. A great deal can be “proved” by this means—to the satisfaction of a very few.

Unsilent Women In The Church

Women in the World of Religion, by Elsie Thomas Culver (Doubleday, 1967, 340 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Margaret Johnston Hess, minister’s wife and Bible-class teacher, Detroit, Michigan.

Anyone who has taken it for granted that woman’s position in America today is one of comfortable equality can learn much from this book about other times, other places where woman has been more “equal”—or less so. Mrs. Culver, an ordained Congregational minister who for fourteen years was director of public relations for the World Council of Churches, has written a book of closely packed facts about the history and present status of women in religion, from pagan priestesses to modern ecumenical delegates.

The book is thoroughly researched and well-documented; the author has a mind of remarkable scope and a broad background.

The value of the book for an evangelical is marred by the author’s critical view of the Scriptures. She has some fresh insights into the place of women in the Bible, especially in her treatment of the New Testament, but the chapter on the Old Testament is scarcely worth wading through.

However, this is only a small part of the book. There are also some twenty chapters that deal with attitudes toward women in the ancient fertility cults, in the Apocrypha, during the early centuries of the Church, and after the break-up of the Roman Empire. Mrs. Culver describes the rise of woman’s position in the eleventh century and the decline under Luther and Calvin.

One familiar with the modern church scene reads about Luther’s and Calvin’s attitudes toward women with a shock of recognition. At this point the book picks up speed, showing the strange and varied strands that make up the not wholly equal—nor wholly biblical—position of women in our churches today.

This book would be stimulating to anyone interested in using women’s talents to greatest effectiveness in the church—provided the reader compensates for the theologically liberal viewpoint.

The author is not violently feminist. She calmly states and effectively supports her thesis that the Church is the poorer when it does not encourage women to use in the Church whatever talents God has given them.

Response To Vatican Ii

Challenge and Response: A Protestant Perspective of the Vatican Council, edited by Warren A. Quanbeck (Augsburg, 1966, 226 pp., $5), is reviewed by Charles A. Bolton, former Roman Catholic priest, now a Protestant teacher and preacher.

There is a refreshing candor in most of the ten essays of this survey of the recent Vatican Council. The message of the Reformation is again proclaimed with a pacific and sincere intention. Most of the authors carry with ease a theological or historical erudition and show themselves to have a real understanding of the Roman Catholic position. It is good to have Luther’s words repeated with a new if gentle emphasis. The authors claim that the best possible unity at present is “the unanimous testimony of brethren to Jesus Christ the Lord.” We should not forget, however, that the council speaks of “separated brethren.”

The book begins with a short account of the fourth and last session in 1965. Then follow seven evaluations of some of the main declarations of the council. Kristen E. Skydsgaard contributes a valuable review of “Scripture and Tradition.” He quotes usefully from Luther about Scripture as the living word of God, derived from the faith of the apostolic Church, and needing always to be interpreted within the context of a living church tradition. “Biblicism” is not enough; yet ecclesiology and tradition can be equally dangerous, as some of the more restive Roman theologians are well aware. “There can be no ecclesiology and that means no doctrine of tradition apart from the knowledge of the constant threat of the Antichrist.” Skydsgaard is afraid that too much traditional theology of the Roman school is in a magic circle that cannot be broken—it involves some Scripture but more of tradition and of the church. He asks how a prominent theologian like Rahner can maintain that all dogmas are implicit in the Bible.

J. Aagaard gives a good assessment of the new missionary endeavor. He is aware of the tensions (largely involving control of the millions collected by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith) between the Italians in Rome and the bishops in the field.

Quanbeck, while admitting the usefulness of the historic episcopate, cannot accept the council view that bishops have apostolic authority to teach, govern, and sanctify. He maintains the apostolicity of many church forms. Incidentally, he might have reminded his readers that in all probability the Roman (local) church was presbyterian until the second century, despite Rome’s efforts to derive a monarchical episcopate from Peter.

George A. Linbeck, writing on religious liberty, is disappointed that the council tried to cover up the historic crimes committed in the name of orthodoxy. And Oscar Cullmann seems discouraged by the many triumphs of the conservative and fanatical minority.

Challenge and Response is a thought-provoking work, with a polyglot background.

Treading The Tough Terrain

Religion in Contemporary Debate, by Alan Richardson (Westminster, 1966, 125 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by David Allan Hubbard, president, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Few theologians can move through the tough terrain of contemporary theology with the ease of Alan Richardson, Dean of York. With practiced eye he scouts the pitfalls of the modern views as he maps the approaches of Tillich, Bultmann, Fuchs, Ebeling, and Braithwaite, among others, and evaluates them in the light of biblical theology.

Although he salutes Tillich’s profound religiosity, Richardson lays bare the basic atheism of his system, which seems no closer to the Gospel than were the various Gnostic systems of the early Christian centuries. Bultmann’s demythologizing draws the author’s fire in a section that stresses the non-mythological character of biblical revelation and makes a strong case for the historicity of Christ’s resurrection. Heidegger, whose existential philosophy is fundamental to Bultmann and his successors, such as Fuchs and Ebeling, is severely criticized for his subjectivity and his failure to grapple with biblical categories like righteousness and obedience.

As a pungent and profound critique of modern theological trends, this book can evoke deep appreciation from pastor, layman, and especially university students. Richardson’s greatest drawback is his undermining of the historicity of certain hard-to-handle biblical narratives (e.g. Tower of Babel, Pentecost) by branding them parables.

A German Lutheran Views Dogma

A Short History of Christian Doctrine, by Bernhard Lohse, translated by F. Ernest Stoeffler (Fortress, 1966, 304 pp., $5), is reviewed by J. A. O. Preus, president, Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, Illinois.

Bernhard Lohse, professor of church history and historical theology at Hamburg University, writes out of broad experience in Germany, where more history of dogma has been made than in any other area in modern history. His book is not a profound piece of work that reveals tremendous new insights. It will, however, do good service for those who want something quite concise and objective.

Professor Lohse believes in the concept of dogma, both Catholic and Protestant. He points out that Harnack, for all his brilliance, really “saw in the development of dogma over the years nothing but a process of decay, which had allegedly led to the Hellenizing of Christianity.” He likewise breaks with the post-Bultmannians by criticizing Ebeling for saying, “Where Christology is concerned nothing may be said of Jesus which does not have its ground in the historical Jesus himself and does not confine itself to say who the historical Jesus is.” In its context, of course, Ebeling’s statement means that there is little or no dogma about which we may dogmatize. He points out that from the beginning, most history of dogma has been written by its critics. Lohse sets out to do the job from another standpoint, evident throughout his work.

He deals at length, but not in a wholly satisfactory way, with the question “What is dogma?” Although he gives an excellent summary of what others have said, he is somewhat unclear about what his own position is. He believes that dogma must be drawn from Scripture, that it has a propositional element, that it is historically conditioned. He stresses the good point that it is also a confessional act: to assert a dogma is to make a confession of faith. He also asserts that dogma always has an anti-heretical note. He disagrees with Rome’s claims of ecclesiastical infallibility. He seems to fail to come to grips with the point that a creed based squarely on clear Scripture can claim infallibility.

Lohse then proceeds to deal at some length and quite satisfactorily with the place of the biblical canon, which he calls the first dogma of the Church; with the development of creeds, which he approves; and then, in the usual order, with the Trinity, Christology, sin and grace, Word and sacrament, justification, dogma within recent Catholicism, dogma within Protestantism, and the present quest for outward unity and union in the Church. His treatment in most instances is correct. He takes a more sanguine view of the Marburg Colloquy than this reviewer. His treatment of the sacraments is good and shows his Lutheran orientation.

The author brings us right up to the recent developments in the ecumenical movement but offers no solution to the problems involved. Yet he is cautiously optimistic about the outcome. Like most German Evangelicals of our time, he takes a most favorable view toward the Barmen Declaration, which he calls a modern confession.

Readers of this valuable book will develop more respect for the confessional position of their own churches and for the place of confessions in the Church of the late Twentieth century.

Portraits Of Six Servants

Men of Action in the Book of Acts, by Paul S. Rees (Revell, 1966, 102 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by C. Russell Bowers, minister, First Christian Church, Charleston, Missouri.

The reality of Jesus Christ becomes more vibrant and vital to us today as we see him in the lives of men of the past. The examples of Christians who have faithfully served their Lord give other believers the desire to accomplish more as they too follow Christ. In this book Dr. Rees presents word pictures of six servants of Christ whose stories are told in the Book of Acts. He stresses a particular quality of each person. This approach offers readers guidance in certain crucial areas of life.

The life of Peter, “the rock,” was occasionally characterized by fear. As we examine his fear, we are led to understand what fear is and how, like Peter, we may overcome it through Christ.

Stephen shows what it means to have conviction. So often we find ourselves lacking in this quality. We tend to be “problem-conscious” but not “powerconscious.” Stephen had the winning conviction necessary in the time of trial.

Barnabas is an example of goodness. The key to his life is found in Acts 11: 24a—“He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” Here the reader is led to a fuller understanding of what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

To see faith in its fullness one need only look at the Apostle Paul. If we desire to capture for ourselves this great quality, we would do well to accept for our lives the key he used for his: “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”

These are all fine character sermons. Rees forcefully shows that God can take the most unworthy men and transform them into messengers of light.

Book Briefs

Frontline Theology, edited by Dean Peer-man (John Knox, 1967, 172 pp., $4.50). A compilation of articles in the Christian Century’s “How I Am Making Up My Mind” series, which prides itself in having triggered the death-of-God controversy. These “frontline” thinkers, so concerned to adapt Christian truth to current philosophical and sociological thought patterns, would do well to examine their own presuppositions. One finds that their outlooks are based more on philosophical speculation than on the revealed Word of God.

Theology and Proclamation: Dialogue with Bultmann, by Gerhard Ebeling, translated by John Riches (Fortress, 1966, 187 pp., $3.95). A “post-Bultmannian” consideration of the inter-relatedness of theology and preaching.

The Secularization of History, by Larry Shiner (Abingdon, 1966, 236 pp., $5). An analysis of the theology of Friedrich Gogarten in which secularization of the West is seen as the fruit of the desacralization of the world through the Christian faith.

Introduction to the Psalms, by Christoph F. Barth, translated by R. A. Wilson (Scribners, 1966, 87 pp., $2.95). Offers background data on the Psalms and states that literary categories should be applied to them, but not in a rigid way.

Understanding God: The Key Issue in Present-Day Protestant Thought, by Frederick Herzog (Scribners, 1966, 191 pp., $4.50). In his first book, Herzog examines significant strands of modem theology to show that a new quest for God is at the heart of the current debate. A good review of recent theology but its creative content is limited.

The Epistle of James, by C. Leslie Mitton (Eerdmans, 1966, 255 pp., $4.95). A worthy exposition showing that the Book of James emphasizes a vital phase of New Testament truth.

Jesus of the Parables: Introduction and Exposition, by Eta Linnemann (Harper & Row, 1967, 218 pp., $4.95). A student of Ernst Fuchs presents principles for interpreting parables that help the reader to recover Jesus’ intention in the original setting. Includes stimulating expositions of eleven parables.

A Guide to Modern Versions of the New Testament: How to Understand and Use Them, by Herbert Dennett (Moody, 1966, 142 pp., $2.95). Descriptions and evaluations of many modem New Testament translations—literal, colloquial, simplified, and expanded.

Paperbacks

A Defense of Biblical Infallibility, by Clark H. Pinnock (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967, 32 pp., $.75). In this 1966 Tyndale Lecture in Biblical Theology, Pinnock not only forcefully defends biblical infallibility but also contends that without it the principle of sola scriptura and the entire epistemological base of Christianity are undermined.

Biblical Studies in Final Things and Amillennialism Today, by William E. Cox (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967, 226 and 143 pp., $3.50 and $2.50). For Bible students grappling with eschatology, Cox presents the case for amillennialism and attempts to refute pre-millennialism.

Ears That Hear: Some Thoughts on Missionary Radio (Radio Worldwide, 1966, 85 pp., 4s.). Promotes the use of the vast resources of radio for spreading the Gospel.

Jewish Sects at the Time of Jesus, by Marcel Simon (Fortress, 1967, 180 pp., $2.95). A valuable little book that considers the status of Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, Essenes, and other strands of Judaism in the time of Christ.

Successful Youth Work, by Elmer Towns (Regal Books, 1966, 416 pp., $2.95). An analytical and comprehensive survey of the entire church’s ministry to today’s teenagers.

Sir William M. Ramsay: Archaeologist and New Testament Scholar, by W. Ward Gasque (Baker, 1966, 95 pp., $1.50). A survey of the vital work of the archaeologist-scholar whose discoveries established the reliability of Luke-Acts.

Instruction in Christianity, by John Calvin, translated by Joseph Pitts Wiles (Sovereign Grace Union [Redhill, Surrey, England], 1966, 196 pp., 12s. 6d). Reprint of the 1920 abbreviated edition of The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Third Session Council Speeches of Vatican II, edited by William K. Leahy and Anthony T. Massimini (Paulist, 1966, 334 pp., $1.45). Eighty-eight speeches on such topics as divine revelation, the Virgin Mary, religious liberty, the apostolate of the laity, and the church in the modern world reveal the diversity of viewpoints present at Vatican II.

Sex, Family, and Society in Theological Focus, edited by John Charles Wynn (Association, 1966, 256 pp., $2.25). Essays by notable writers that explore the issues involved in the sexual revolution and its impact on family life.

Cyrus I. Scofield was born in Michigan in 1843 and died on Long Island, New York, in 1921. A lawyer admitted to the Kansas bar, he was appointed United States attorney for Kansas by President Grant. That same year he experienced a dramatic conversion and began intensive study of the Bible, and in 1882 he became minister of the First Congregational Church of Dallas, Texas. Later he was minister of the Congregational Church of Northfield, Massachusetts, and president of the Northfield Bible Training School, at the insistence of his fast friend Dwight L. Moody.

In 1902 Scofield retired from the pastorate and for seven years gave himself to the production of the reference Bible published in 1909 and then revised in 1917. Oxford University Press was its United States publisher, and it has sold more copies than any other title issued by that press in the States. The Scofield Bible has encouraged tens of thousands of people to study the Scriptures dispensationally and intensively. Even thousands who have not embraced Scofield’s dispensationalism have been blessed by a wealth of other material useful to Christians of various theological persuasions.

The Scofield Reference Edition of the Bible has been a formidable if not determinative force in fundamentalism for more than fifty years. When Oxford announced a revision was on its way, rumblings from Scofield admirers could be heard from Boston to Bombay. To some, change was unthinkable. Indeed, with several million copies in print, the Scofield Bible had attained an almost impregnable position in the hearts of multitudes. But the “new” Scofield has been now unveiled, and countless critics will compare the two versions.

Members of the 1967 revision committee were E. Schuyler English, Frank E. Gaebelein, William Culbertson, Charles L. Feinberg, Allan A. MacRae, Clarence E. Mason, Alva J. McClain, Wilbur M. Smith, and John F. Walvoord.

On the credit side much can be said for Scofield II. Although tied to archaic King James language, the revisers have made the best of this bad bargain by replacing antiquated words with up-to-date ones. This involves hundreds of words, and all such changes are marked by vertical lines. For example, “Replenish the earth” (Gen. 1:28) has become “fill the earth,” which is decidedly better; “let it forth” (Luke 20:9) has become “leased it” and “householders” has become “tenants”; “publican” (Luke 18:11) has become “tax collector.” Approximately six hundred changes in names have been made (mostly spellings) and these have been indexed. Ussher’s chronology has been abandoned; no dates are supplied for events prior to 2000 B.C., and those between 2000 and 1000 B.C. are approximate.

Footnotes or annotations at page bottoms have been identified by chapter and verse. This makes it easier to locate the verse from the footnote than it was in Scofield I. The index to annotations has been enlarged, for there are many new notes dealing with textual and critical matters as well as recent archaeological discoveries. Curiously, Scofield II, like Scofield I, makes no mention in the index or in the footnotes of divorce, a contemporary problem of great importance. Scofield himself was divorced.

The introductions to the sixty-six books have been completely redone and are vastly improved. Old Testament authors are identified wherever possible, something Scofield I omitted, and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is strongly asserted. The case for the unity of Isaiah does not appear in the introduction, where one would expect to find it; it appears in a footnote to Isaiah 40:1.

Some of the Scofieldians who have objected ardently to newer translations for omitting words, phrases, and verses that never should have been in the King James in the first place will be amazed to discover that Scofield II has often done the same thing. The closing part of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13) is a case in point; the footnote mentions the absence of manuscript evidence for its inclusion. Unfortunately, Scofield II does not do enough of this. For example, there is no adequate manuscript evidence for “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last” in Revelation 1:11; but the reader cannot learn this from Scofield I or II. Many similar examples could be cited.

Excellent maps accompany the new edition, and the concordance is splendid. A new simplified system of diacritical markings for proper nouns has been added. This is desirable, but unfortunately the system used will not be familiar to most Americans. Zebu’lun rather than Zeb’ulun, Aristobu’lus instead of Aristob’ulus, and scores of others suggest that all Bible publishers should get together and use similar pronunciations and the same diacritical marks for proper nouns.

The heart of the Scofield Reference Bible is its dispensational system of interpretation. Basically this system remains unchanged in Scofield II. The revision committee was charged to maintain the system and did so with remarkable fidelity. There are still seven dispensations, although the name of the sixth has been changed from Grace to Church. The definition of dispensation has been refined. The distinction between Israel and the Church continues. The Church is not to be found in the Old Testament. Scofield I had a very damaging note on Zechariah 9:10 (“Except in verse 9, this present age is not seen in Zechariah”); this part of the note has been deleted.

In eschatological outlook there has been no change. Scofield II is pre-tribulational and pre-millennial. The parenthesis between the sixty-ninth and the seventieth weeks of Daniel is continued, with the Church being raptured at the beginning of the last week. The secret, any moment aspect of the rapture of the Church is continued. The note on Daniel 9:24, however, seems to support the any-moment rapture only after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

Scofield II clarifies one pivotal point at which the earlier version was roundly criticized: the charge that in some dispensations men were saved by works. This arose from notes such as the one for John 1:17: “The point of testing is no longer legal obedience as the condition of salvation, but acceptance or rejection of Christ, with good works as a fruit of salvation.” Scofield II eliminates this and says: “Prior to the cross man’s salvation was through faith, being grounded on Christ’s atoning sacrifice, viewed anticipatively by God.” In the introduction to the 1967 edition, the revision editors carefully state that salvation in every dispensation is “by grace through faith.” Moreover, the revision acknowledges that dispensations cannot be strictly limited as to time and that they overlap.

Scofield I, in the note for Revelation 14:6, spoke about four forms of the Gospel: the Gospel of the kingdom, the Gospel of the grace of God, the everlasting Gospel, and “that which Paul calls, ‘my Gospel.’ ” The new Scofield deletes “my Gospel,” changes the order by beginning with “the Gospel of the grace of God,” and uses lower case for Gospel when speaking of “the gospel of the kingdom” and the “everlasting gospel.”

Scofield II has made concessions about the rigid distinction between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. In the footnote to Matthew 3:2 Scofield I did not appear to recognize the synonymous use of these terms. Scofield II indicates that they are “often” used synonymously. The footnote for Matthew 6:33 in which the same distinction is made in Scofield I is refurbished in Scofield II. Significantly, whereas Scofield I dogmatically placed forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:12) on “legal ground” and thus provided ammunition against the use of the prayer in public worship, the revision enlarges the footnote and opens the door wide to its liturgical use.

Of Acts 15:13, Scofield I said, “Dispensationally, this is the most important passage in the N.T.” Scofield II is reductionist; it reads, “this important passage shows God’s program for this age.” In discussing the message to the seven churches in Revelation 1:20, Scofield I laid down the dictum. “Most conclusively of all, these messages do present an exact foreview of the spiritual history of the church, and in this precise order.” Scofield II eliminates this dogmatic approach and uses softer phrases such as “illustrative of.”

The 1967 Scofield locates the footnote on the inspiration of the Bible at Second Timothy 3:16, whereas Scofield I had two major notes on the subject, one at First Corinthians 1:13 and another at Second Peter 1:19. The revision is excellent, preserving both the integrity of the human authors and the work of the Holy Spirit. It comes out flatly for Scriptures that are “authoritative and without error in their original words, and constitute the infallible revelation of God to man.”

A footnote for Second Kings 17:23 knocks the ground from beneath the Anglo-Israel heresy by asserting that there are no “ten lost tribes” of Israel, and that conjectures that these “lost tribes” are the Anglo-Saxon people, gypsies, and so on “arise from a misreading” of the Scriptures.

To render judgment on dispensationalism per se would be to go beyond the limits of a review comparing Scofield I and Scofield II. However, this much should be said: Those who have no use for the dispensationalism of Scofield I are not likely to view Scofield II with any greater enthusiasm: those who revered Scofield I may decide to argue with Scofield II but cannot ignore it; and those who appreciated Scofield I but viewed it with a critical eye will be pleased with improvements in Scofield II and the more irenic, less dogmatic, and certainly more sophisticated notes and other material it contains.—HAROLD LINDSELL.

We have all heard about people who are said to be “so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly use.” Perhaps there are a few such people. But most of those in this world—many Christians among them—are so wrapped up in the things of this earth that they have no time for heaven or eternal values.

The Christian should realize that he has changed his citizenship. In praying for his disciples, our Lord said, “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:15, 16, RSV).

When the seventy returned from their mission, they were rejoicing that even the demons were subject to the name of Jesus. The Lord’s reply was, “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).

Speaking of the heroes of faith, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (Hebr. 11:13–16).

Moses, the same writer says, “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.… He endured as seeing him who is invisible” (vv. 25, 27b).

And Abraham “went out, not knowing where he was to go.… For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (vv. 8b,10).

Christians need to know the place of their spiritual citizenship. It helps clarify many problems and prevent unnecessary frustrations.

But being a Christian involves far more than a heavenly citizenship; it also involves living as a Christian in this world. It means being the very best kind of citizen. It means showing the fruits of the Holy Spirit in daily relationships with other people. It includes not only love for God but also love for our fellow man. We should be concerned for our neighbor’s best interests as if they were our own.

Almost immediately after our Lord affirmed the heavenly citizenship of those who believe on him, he spoke of their earthly obligation to others through the story of the Good Samaritan. No degree of heavenly involvement can absolve us from our responsibility to be good neighbors.

What then, is the proper balance in the life of one who is a citizen of two worlds, so to speak?

Balance is established, first of all, by a firm footing. We can maintain a right relation with God and with man only by standing firm on Jesus Christ, the immovable foundation. There can be no right relation with men unless there is a right relation with God, and no man can attain this merely by being a good neighbor. Rather, he becomes a good neighbor by receiving Christ into his own heart. Then and only then is it possible for him to love his neighbor as himself.

This effective balance in life is the result of God’s grace in the human heart. It is God who puts life in proper perspective. He speaks to us in his Word about how to live with and for others and how to glorify him.

In the same prayer in which our Lord speaks to believers as being in but not of the world, he also speaks of “eternal life” as a gift and as a right apprehension of God through Christ.

The esoteric nature of this prayer is most enlightening, particularly when so many today are placing believers and unbelievers in the same category: “I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom thou hast given me, for they are thine” (John 17:9).

And then we read this remarkable and deeply significant statement, “I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (v. 14).

Were the disciples to rest in their assurance of eternal life and from then on merely wait for their translation into the heavenly Kingdom? Far from it. They had a message to proclaim, a work to do. Their lives would not be easy. They would be rejected as he had been rejected. They were to be witnesses because they had been with him from the beginning. Some hearers would believe the message; many others would reject it.

The life of the believer is that of a messenger with a message. Because he lives in an unbelieving world, one that crucified the Lord of glory and would crucify him again if he were here today in the flesh, the Christian must expect hostility toward himself and toward the Gospel he lives and preaches. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18, 19).

The Christian’s reaction to hostility must be one of love. For this our Lord has set the perfect example. Paul speaks to the problem: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to every one, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:24).

As a citizen of heaven, the Christian lives in enemy territory. He is involved in deadly warfare. He is up against, not a physical enemy, but “the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Eph. 6:12b, Phillips). In his own strength and with his own resources he is helpless.

But the battle is not lost. God has provided his own with an armor against which Satan’s wiles are useless. He has provided the one offensive weapon against which Satan can never stand, “the Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Where so many of us fail as heavenly citizens is in our attempt to fight with carnal weapons—criticism, invective, worldly wisdom, and a host of other things that are of the flesh, and not of the Spirit.

The Apostle Paul has put our citizenship and inevitable warfare in perfect perspective with his words in Second Corinthians 10:3, 4—“Though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds.”

Dear Job-Seekers:

“WANTED: versatile YOUNG MEN. For job opportunity requiring multiple skills,” announced the full-page magazine advertisement. Here, I excitedly thought, might be my big chance for a fantastic new career in the space program or corporation management. So I read on. “Applicants must expect to serve as teacher, counselor, administrator, psychologist, preacher, and brother to people in all walks of life.” How could any mortal handle such an assignment?, I mused. The ad further stated: “Compassion, understanding, patience and endurance necessary qualifications.” Finally came the appeal from the United Presbyterian Church Council on Theological Education: “Interested applicants should address themselves to: The Christian Ministry.”

I hate to reveal my naïveté, but I had always thought that basic requirements for the Christian ministry were Christian conversion and a call to this sacred office from God (rather than an advertising copywriter). But it seems that such hoary requirements may no longer be operational in modern Protestant seminaries.

Another ministerial recruitment ad apparently supported this conclusion. Placed by the Episcopal Seminaries, it was entitled, “He Didn’t Wait for Voices in the Night.” Under a picture of a thoughtful seminarian the ad stated, “Like most young men searching for a career he gathered all the facts he could … and made up his mind. But instead of deciding to be a lawyer or an engineer, he decided to be a minister.” How embarrassed, I thought, this seminarian would have been by divine illumination! The ad continued: “He didn’t see the ‘light flash’ or hear ‘voices whisper.’ Neither have most men in seminary! Because the call to the ministry is much like the call to any other profession, it doesn’t bowl you over.” Then, to assist inquirers, the ad offered the booklet, “Are You a Many-Sided Man?”

I asked myself, Am I a many-sided man? Certainly I deny being a square. But the four sides of the “now” minister do intrigue me. What other profession would allow one to serve as (1) the compleat expert on matters ecclesiastical, theological, political, and economic, (2) the enrobed prelate of liturgical renewal, (3) the courageous leader of marches that shake up placid communities, and (4) the symbol of religious good will at ceremonial occasions?

Maybe I will answer those advertisements after all. With my versatility, multiple skills, and no-nonsense approach to this challenging career, I could give God a real lift and possibly lead the Church to heights unknown since Constantine secularized Christianity.

Your would-be man of the cloth, EUTYCHUS III

Insights Into The Impasse

I appreciate Mr. Kucharsky’s insights (“Confronting the Impasse in Evangelism,” Mar. 3) into the present-day impasse in evangelism. He sees through our programs as an expression of our sense of guilt at not being a Nate Krupp or a D. L. Moody.

I wish he could have pursued this idea of guilt to a solution instead of leaving us condemned before a Christ-less world. One reason evangelical Christians don’t witness is that in spite of all our preaching on assurance of sins forgiven, they are not at peace about their standing with God. Decades of condemnatory preaching have produced Christians who are paralyzed by guilt and almost totally devoid of the New Testament keynote: joy.

We should know by now that we can’t witness to something which is not vitally real to us.

TIM SHUMAKER

Missionary Intern

Spring Arbor, Mich.

The article … is food for thought for every evangelical, and liberals, too.

ROBERT W. SCHWARTZ

The Pittsburgh Press

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Your article ends with the haunting question, “Where do we go from here?” This is a question which bothers all who are concerned about world evangelism.

The only answer it seems to me is how to get Christians reading the Gospels again and sharing their findings. I long for the day when someone will come up to me and say, “I just read an incident in the life of Jesus Christ and God spoke to me through it.” I must confess that this is rare in my evangelical circle.

JAMES E. BERNEY

Richmond, Calif.

The reticence of evangelical Christians may not be because they have not been taught how to witness but because not having found the Christian life in practice as abundant as they were led to expect (a fact they dare not admit openly) they simply cannot commend what has been a disappointment to them with enthusiasm to others.

W. FRANCIS B. MAGUIRE

Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd

Bonita, Calif.

You have rightly, in my estimation, pointed the finger of responsibility, or lack thereof.

JERRY BEAVAN

Vice President

Rexall Drug Company

Los Angeles, Calif.

How Many Jews?

I admire your magazine.… But you say (“Evangelical Failures and the Jew,” Mar. 3), “Hitler’s dastardly extermination of six million Jews.…”

I have seen that quote in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and considered the irresponsible source.

For God’s sake, please don’t be a “copy cat” of such publications. Who says there were 6,000,000 Jews exterminated?

FRANCIS H. DUNN

Rockville, Md.

Et tu, Brute: the great myth of the six million Jews killed by Hitler. Wrong is wrong, against whomever committed. And let the facts at last become known. The legend has no factual basis. You, perhaps, would be willing to give space to truth.…

We had hoped that CHRISTIANITY TODAY would be the clear counterpart to the anti-Christian, Communist “ecumenicity” of the entire system of the World Church. A part of that “ecumenicity” is the sacredness of all things Communist, including Zionism—the brain and leadership of Communism—and all things damned that are anticommunist, such as Germany.

JOHN F. C. GREEN.

Pastor Emeritus

Evangelical Congregational

McKeesport, Pa.

• In his meticulous study The Final Solution (1953), Gerald Reitlinger put the figure at 4,194,200 to 4,581,200. The post-war Anglo-American Committee used the figure 5,721,800 in preparing the Nuremburg indictments. At the trials, two S. S. officers testified that Karl Eichmann, chief of the Gestapo’s Jewish Office, said that between five and six million Jews had been killed. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), William L. Shirer reports there were ten million Jews living in Nazi territory in 1939 and “by any estimate it is certain that nearly half of them were exterminated by the Germans.”—ED.

Hard-Headed Witness

James Warwick Montgomery’s “Inductive Inerrancy” (Current Religious Thought, Mar. 3) was a delight. His hard-headed egg-headed witness to faith in the written Word is always a refreshing thing to read.

WILMA LITTON

Espanola, N. Mex.

It was good to learn … that he accepts the priority of induction.… I was pleased to learn that even the gestalt must be inductively derived.

After this initial concession, however, he appears to muddy the waters. To be explicit: any gestalt which decides ahead of time that certain phenomena are not compatible with a proper doctrine of inspiration can hardly be an inductively derived gestalt.…

The other point which calls for rebuttal is the implication that the serious exegetes who wrestle with the literary problems of the text do not trust Scripure in the same way as Jesus and modern evangelical dogmaticians. An unwillingness to smooth over textual difficulties in no wise means a “doctrine of limited biblical authority.”

ROBERT H. MOUNCE

Dept, of Biblical Literature

Bethel College

St. Paul, Minn.

Montgomery’s comments are unconvincing for the following reasons, among others.

1. Choosing a gestalt to facilitate understanding is itself an inductive procedure.…

2. Mr. Montgomery makes the factual material (such as genealogies and other lists) seem relatively irrelevant, whereas it is probably more relevant than any other kind of information, if it can be had.…

3. In any case, there is no such thing as the gestalt any more than there can be one and only one (legitimate) explanation for some event or class of events. Bloomington, Ind.

ALLEN HARDER

There is no need to bolster the authority of either Christ or the Bible by making the kind of sweeping assertion that he makes. I wish that our dogmatists could stop making us look ridiculous. The Bible will argue well enough for itself if people will stop waving red herrings. Prestwick, Scotland

PHIL PETTY

We who do not believe that the Bible is absolutely inerrant also follow the Lord Christ.

PAUL H. SEELY

Philadelphia, Pa.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Your editorial, “An Infallible Hatred” (Mar. 3), is barking up the wrong tree. What arouses antagonism on the part of those this editorial condemns is not the idea of biblical inerrancy but the arrogance it so often produces in those who embrace it with idolatrous devotion. I can understand how the adjective “demonic” might come to mind in such instances.…

That some “liberals” find it easier to regard the pope as a Christian brother than some Protestant fundamentalists is easily explained. They see signs of the Catholic Church moving away from concepts of its infallibility as interpreter and applier of Scripture teaching, while fundamentalism is moving in the opposite direction. The Catholic Church in due caution limited infallibility to one person at a time, the pope, while fundamentalism tends to disperse it among all its adherents.

MARCIUS E. TABER

Delton, Mich.

Reading the dully familiar meanderings of Willis “scribal mentality” Elliott on the “proper” use of the Holy Scriptures is about as interesting as a posthumous interview with Laura Secord. His kind ought to be crowned. Hard!

ARTHUR DURNAN

Scarboro, Ont.

I am forced to write this letter (I really couldn’t hold it back!) by the beautiful editorial on “An Infallible Hatred.” I hope you keep repeating it until the ecumenists are forced to take a stand on the dogma of an infallible pope.

JACK E. MARTIN

Eatontown, N. J.

Two things:

1. Dr. Elliott is not “a spokesman for the United Church of Christ.”

2. We must be patient with his overzealousness as he comes to us from another denomination and as a “convert” is likely to overdo at times.

PAUL DOUGLAS

St. Paul’s United Church of Christ

Mineral City, Ohio

Two matters of some substance:

1. In the opinion of every Catholic intellectual I personally know—and that is not a few—the doctrine of papal infallibility is a preposterous fraud perpetrated by a Tridentine council (Vatican I) which, because of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, did not have time to produce the polar balancing doctrine of conciliar authority (though that arm could not have established a real balance, anyway). Of course it was not inappropriate for Vatican I to pronounce on the authority of the papacy, but it was tragically inappropriate and excessive to set that pronouncement in the infallibilist frame. This, too, is precisely my opinion. But let me now put my objection to biblical infallibility similarly: it is tragically inappropriate and excessive to set the doctrine of Scripture in the infallibilist frame. (Bible and pope both suffer from the overclaim.) Your editorial’s implication that I am hard on biblicism and soft on papism has, in its second member, nothing to back it. I am, and have been for more than a quarter century, hard on all claims of historical infallibility. But this does not prevent my working closely with Rome: soon I shall be working in the Vatican as a Protestant theologian (in a consultation on the faith and the new leisure). Nor would it prevent my working closely with evangelicalists if they would permit it. From another angle: within the Roman church so many so high-placed voices are denouncing papal infallibility that recently the pope has been making noises that sound suspiciously like “I am too infallible!” Among evangelicalists no comparable groundswell of intellectual leaders against biblical infallibility exists. Rome may well let God deliver it from its idolatrous primitivism before the evangelicalists are willing to surrender theirs—and this for the simple reason that, like monolithic Communism (now, Maoism), evangelicalism liquidates internal criticism. I need not tell you that instant ostracism occurs when an evangelicalist openly denies biblical inerrancy, though I might remind you that it happened to me four times.

2. In a previous letter I told you of a woman (incidentally, the wife of America’s most exciting lay theologian in the Roman church) who gave up individual infallibility (inner-light Quakerism), then biblical infallibility (Southern Baptist variety), then papal infallibility (since Vatican II). She, a gay and creative Christian if I ever knew one, was recently discussing with me these three deliverances.… She has let go three times, and each time has gained.…

WLLIS E. ELLIOTT

United Church Board for Homeland Ministries

New York, N. Y.

You quote my fellow United Church minister, Dr. Willis Elliott, regarding hatred of biblical inerrancy.

You conclude by suggesting that it is evangelicals whom we ecumenically minded dislike.

Precisely.

I prefer not using the word hatred at all. But honestly I’m more ill at ease in the company of evangelicals any day than in the company of priests (Roman Catholic).

Probably there is a good psychological explanation for this feeling, but I’ve noted many of my fellow United Church ministers who feel the same malaise with evangelicals, so it is not a private discomfort.

Individual evangelicals I like, respect. Their doctrine, as for instance that often delineated in “A Layman and His Faith,” is quite obviously the kind we dislike, as you so clearly observed.

Impasse? Yes, so long as evangelicals insist upon the old Calvinist essentials, however modified.

But then we ecumaniacs are doctrinaire too, aren’t we? Nobody’s perfect. First Congregational

BRADLEY LINES

Moravia, N. Y.

I could not help wondering whether the antagonism which exists between we new evangelicals and the ecumenical movement is caused not by our possession of an infallible Bible so much as our supposedly infallible opinions regarding ecumenism. Possibly the reason the ecumenists have closer liaison with the Vatican than with the evangelicals is because of less recalcitrance on the part of the former.

There are areas, for instance, where the NCC and the NAE could find a certain fraternity, especially in the area of diakonia. But instead we go to the expense of establishing our own “evangelical” counterpart of such things as “The One Great Hour of Sharing.” We may have our reservations about the ecumenical movement, but let’s leave the uncharitable opposition of this movement to the members of the International Council of Christian Churches. The possibility does exist that the Holy Spirit who worked at Berlin can also work at Geneva, and even Vatican City!

ALAN R. HARLEY

Free Methodist

Goderich, Ont.

It’S No Monkey

The Elder Board of the Bibletown Community Church has asked me to write you expressing the shock we received when we read the news report, “Under New Management” (Mar. 3). We want your whole staff to know our auditorium is not a monkey (“the biggest monkey on Bibletown’s back is a 2,500-seat auditorium …”).

For your information Dr. Eshelman was not removed. For three years, he had asked to be released from his duties. This year he insisted on doctor’s orders.

C. E. GANNON

Secretary, Elder Board

Bibletown Community Church

Boca Raton, Fla.

A Brilliant Parody

“Amos Goes to Washington” (Mar. 17) was a brilliant parody, with accurate and disturbing insights. It most certainly ought to be reprinted as a tract.

C. R. STEGALL, JR.

Westminster Presbyterian

Fort Walton Beach. Fla.

Lon Woodrum’s modernization of Amos was very clever, managing to make Amos sound like a “right-winger and extremist” saying “naughty, naughty!” to LBJ and a seedy cast of bohemians. Carthage Christian

ROBERT B. LEWIS

Cincinnati, Ohio

Persecution After Affluence?

Your pictorial presentation of “Hindrances to Evangelism Through the Ages” (Mar. 3) attracted my attention. I am not sure that it was intentional, but it certainly leads one to the sobering thought that the next phase in the cyclical trend to follow affluence is persecution.

RALPH GIANNONE

Wyckoff, N.J.

Combatting Anti-Semitism

My sincerest congratulations to Geoffry W. Bromiley for the article, “Who Says the New Testament Is Anti-Semitic?” and to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for the splendid editorial, “Evangelical Failures and the Jew.” The latter was a particularly penetrating analysis of a very sensitive and complex issue. Such publications cannot help but aid in spreading a mutual understanding between Christians and Jews.

WILLIAM C. WILLIAMS

Kearny, N. J.

It is a valuable contribution towards a better understanding between Jews and Christians. Both Jewish leaders and anti-Semites, although their aims are divergent, have been misquoting and misinterpreting various passages to prove that the New Testament is an anti-Semitic book.…

Jewish leaders who seek to discredit the New Testament as being anti-Semitic would do a real service to their people if they would credit it as being the most pro-Jewish book in the entire world. It is certainly more pro-Jewish than the Old Testament. If they really wish to promote good will between Jew and Christian, they should advocate the study of the New Testament. It is a fact that wherever the New Testament is revered and studied, as for example in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries, the Jews have prospered. On the other hand, in those countries where the New Testament is little known and revered, the lot of the Jew has been most deplorable.

JACOB GARTENHAUS

Founder and President

International Board of Jewish Missions

Atlanta, Ga.

‘Scarcely A Report’

Your report about the American Baptist Evangelism Team’s biennial meeting (News, March 3) left much unsaid. In fact, it scarcely could be considered a report at all. The team … adopted three major areas of work for 1967–69, as follows: (1) the new American Baptist Curriculum, known as the Faith and Work Plan; (2) promotion and use by local church planning conferences of the new book by Paul L. Stagg, The Converted Church, and (3) continued emphasis on programs previously introduced: (a) ministry to Baptists who change residence, (b) relational visitation with biblical studies, and (c) area-sponsored preaching missions.

FRANK A. SHARP

Director

Department of Public Interpretation

American Baptist Convention

Valley Forge, Pa.

Mergers And Vows

Your report (News, Feb. 17) on the merger plan for the Reformed Church in America and the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. leaves one mistaken impression. After quoting the first of the proposed ordination vows for a merged church, you say that “Presbyterian ordinands now are asked if they ‘believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.’ … The draft follows current RCA forms for clergy ordination except that the vow omits the promise to ‘reject all errors’ contrary to the Bible and doctrinal standards.”

As a matter of fact, the proposed ordination questions deviate from the practice of both denominations by the omission of any vow specifically asserting the divine origin of the Scriptures. RCA ordinands have heretofore affirmed that they “believe the books of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God and the perfect doctrine unto salvation …,” paralleling the PCUS vow quoted above. The absence of such a vow, presently required in both churches, will certainly be one of the most serious weaknesses which the drafting committee will be called upon to correct before presenting a final draft.

TOM STARK

University Reformed Church

East Lansing, Mich.

Most Helpful

Hermann Sasse’s challenging article, “Sin and Forgiveness in the Modern World” (Mar. 3), was most helpful.

JOHN V. MOORE

Charleston, W. Va.

Is sin and forgiveness any different today than it has been at any time from Sinai until today?… Please thank Mr. Sasse. I have extracted sixteen very useful thoughts from the three pages. It is well worth the time to read and restudy.

L. E. MORRIS

Norfolk, Neb.

The Institute Marches Forward

Please accept from the Evangelical Covenant Church Sunday School the enclosed gift to go toward the proposed Institute for Advanced Christian Studies.… We are all fully cognizant of the importance of this ambition to the growth of evangelicalism in our age.

EUGENE H. LOWE

Sunday School Supt.

Evangelical Covenant

Pasadena, Calif.

• The action committee is proceeding toward early incorporation of the Institute. This $25 gift, the first from a Sunday school class, lifts the total to $798, including interest.—ED.

Enclosed you will find my dollar. I believe it is of utmost importance that such an institute be established for the greater glory of God.

BRUCE EDWARDS

Roxboro, Que.

Please keep reminding subscribers to send in their dollars for the proposed institute. We had forgotten. Enclosed $3 for our family of three.

ANNETTE BOOMKER

Oak Park, III.

Enclosed please find two dollars from my wife and myself.

FRANK L. ARNOLD

The Brazil Presbyterian Mission

Sao Luiz, Maranhao, Brazil

[Contribution enclosed] for the Institute of Advanced Christian Studies.

STEPHEN TSUI

Hong Kong

I am enclosing my check for $5.

J. FURMAN MILLER

Bryan College

Dayton, Tenn.

Forward!

JOHN, FRANCES,andALLEN HARDER

Marshalltown, Iowa

Sorry to be so slow in sending my dollar.…

JACK FRIZEN

Executive Secretary

Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association

Ridgefield Park, N. J.

Evangelism And The Ncc

If evangelism consisted of a constant running and negative attack on the National Council of Churches, you are indeed evangelical.

If evangelism is down-grading, perhaps even falsifying, the work of the National Council of Churches, you shall surely be known as the evangel.

If evangelism means publishing a magazine that has little to contribute editorially other than to lean on the National Council of Churches, you are evangelistic. (If the National Council of Churches should go down, you’d really have to dig for an idea of your own.)

W. T. HORST

Brunswick Methodist

Crystal, Minn.

The Funeral Problem

The Christian vs. sinner funeral-service dilemma to which Duane H. Thebeau refers in his virtually textless “Are We Burying the Gospel at the Grave?” (Mar. 17) is another example of un-scriptural tradition. Scripture does not support the Church’s dabbling in the heathen-oriented … funeral service. Bible Study Chapel

W. F. HADEL

Mountain Home, Ark.

Mr. Thebeau, as well as others who share the problem he raises, will be interested in knowing that the Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America provides a service “for one who has lived apart from the church.”

ARIE R. BROUWER

Bethel Reformed

Passaic, N. J.

The funeral when rightly conducted is a worship service in which we worship our wonderful risen Lord. This is at least true of the saved who are present at the funeral. In this respect the funeral can always be Christian. The service at the grave can very easily be geared for the benefit of the living without making any consignment of the departed’s soul. First Baptist

SEIDE B. JANSSEN

Tuscola, Ill.

Do we need a Consultation against Church Union?

The Consultation on Church Union, which will hold its sixth annual meeting during the first week of May, has in fact become the Consultation for Church Union. By its very nature, the consultation is preoccupied with the favorable aspects of uniting the ten denominations now participating in the negotiations. Its reports, two booklets, several pamphlets, and other communications deal mainly with the positive side of the issue.

This approach may have been necessary at first, but the time has come for presentation of the opposing view. The need for a dialogue—pro and con—on union is evident from a study of various statements issued by COCU. In the foreword to a booklet containing reports of the first four meetings, the Executive Committee says, “We feel that we cannot now turn back from the road to unity, but must press with all our power to have the millions of our fellow-churchmen know and share this same experience.” The inside cover says the COCU denominations “are seeking organic union.” Such statements reveal the strong conviction within COCU that organic union has already been accepted as the proper goal for all the churches involved.

A change in the mission and purpose of COCU occurred at its 1965 meeting, according to this same booklet: “At Lexington the Consultation passed from the phase of conversation to negotiation.” At the fifth meeting, in Dallas last year, the consultation approved an outline of a time schedule and procedure for the merger called “The Steps and Stages Toward a United Church.” The schedule is summarized as follows:

1. Establishment of the consultation in 1962.

2. Adoption of “Principles of Church Union” at the 1966 Dallas meeting.

3. Preparation of a plan of union, and its adoption by the denominations acting severally.

4. Unification of ministry and membership.

5. Writing and adoption of the constitution of the united church.

If this time schedule represented only a possible procedure, there would be no cause for alarm. However, the schedule was approved at the Dallas meeting and apparently is being implemented by COCU as if it had already been approved by the denominations involved. The “Steps and Stages” statement says that as a result of the Dallas meeting, “we are entering upon the third stage of this journey.” COCU is committed to the formation of a union church. It has become a Consultation for Church Union, moving within an already determined timetable and striving for an already accepted goal.

The COCU idea was originally suggested by Eugene Carson Blake in his historic sermon in San Francisco on December 4, 1960. The intended purpose of the consultation that resulted was to discuss the possibility of organic union among the churches involved, originally The Methodist Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. The Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) and the Evangelical United Brethren Church accepted subsequent invitations, and since then, four other denominations have joined: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

At the early stage of COCU, only three denominations gave their delegates authority to begin negotiation (United Presbyterian, Christian Churches, and United Church of Christ). Methodist delegates were authorized only to converse about union, not to negotiate or form a program. But soon an attempt will be made to change this. The 1968 Methodist General Conference will undoubtedly be asked to grant official negotiating powers. The Episcopal General Convention will vote this September on whether to authorize the negotiation stage.

Since COCU has become a Consultation for Church Union and has already greatly influenced the upper power structures of Methodism and possibly other denominations, it is time for us to have a Consultation against Church Union to represent the other side. The denominations are either in stage three or on the brink of it. If all the churches involved give official negotiating status to their COCU delegates, a plan of union will be drawn up and then promoted from the top down through the denominations. This will make dissent even more difficult and unpopular than it is now. Before this crucial step is taken, Protestants must consider such questions as these:

1. Will union result in a setback to unity? An aggressive movement to unite the churches from the top down would only create more division. Methodism already has a splinter group, the small Southern Methodist Church, which stayed outside the 1939 north-south merger. More than 100,000 Congregationalists left before the United Church of Christ was formed in 1957. The wrong approach to ecumenism will result in further division—and for valid reasons.

2. Will union achieve the main goal of its proponents? The scandal of Protestant division does hurt the work of the Kingdom to some extent, especially on the mission field. However, most of the overt divisiveness comes from aggressive, sectarian groups that are not involved in the proposal for a united church. The denominations participating in COCU are already sharing in cooperative enterprises. Their union will not necessarily bring more harmony into Protestantism since the sectarian denominations are not involved.

3. Will union repeat the mistakes of the past? We had organic union in western Christendom in 1500. However, theological perversion, ecclesiastical rigidity, and political involvement dominated the Church. This led Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers to attempt to renew the Church through a return to biblical standards. Our American heritage with its religious liberty, evangelical piety, and separation of church and state is one of the obvious fruits of this reformation. In the minds of many, organic union would be a step backward. The scandal of theological differences might be minimized by a united church, but past ethical, social, and political evils would be encouraged to reappear. It is still true that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

4. Will union minimize an important benefit of denominationalism? Protestantism in America is now characterized by competition. This has definite benefits, especially in a culture with a Christian majority. In fact, friendly competition in an open society is fundamental to the free-enterprise system. Union will minimize creative competition in Protestantism. If business monopolies, labor monopolies, and government monopolies are bad for our democratic society, then religion monopolies would also be bad, and for much the same reasons.

5. Will union really result in renewal? There is much talk about the renewal of the Church today, and many schemes have been proposed to achieve it. A basic part of the answer to renewal is to be found in Jesus’ idea of pruning the tree to produce fruit. The Church must set higher standards of discipline for itself if it is to be vital and respected in society. Union may bring more regimentation, but it will not bring more discipline. And by its very nature, union will lead to the compromise of doctrinal and ethical standards.

6. Will union lead to a loss of individualism? Individualism is on the wane in our urban, technological society marked by mass communication and mass advertising. Conformity is the order of the day, and persons are losing their identity in our secular age. Church union will tend to destroy individualism in religion. Conformity in doctrine, conformity in worship, conformity in religious education, and conformity in organization will further depersonalize our society.

The Consultation against Church Union should begin its work immediately. The months ahead are critical for Protestants. Now is the time for Protestant clergy and laity to be warned of the dangers of a united church.

In the prologue to his Gospel, addressed to Theophilus, Luke states that his purpose is to “set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us.” In this second half of the twentieth century, the Christian world is besieged by writers on theology who believe most surely in very few things other than their notion that there is not much to believe anymore. It is difficult to determine whether they address Christians to convince them of the insubstantial presuppositions that have beguiled them, or the unbelieving multitudes to assure them that they were right all the time in rejecting the historic Christian faith. The “God-is-dead,” “church-is-irrelevant” writers confound the saints and confuse the sinners. But they would hardly agree to the terms of this charge, since they are actually most skeptical about sainthood and most dogmatic in repudiating the biblical concept of sin.

These vocal copy-suppliers for the seekers after “religious news” are in plentiful supply in nearly all communions. On the surface they are champions of honesty in thinking about supra-rational matters. They are eager to be regarded as destroyers of ancient ikons that have diverted the faithful from a true faith. They seek to revamp the historic faith so as to make it respectable for man “come of age.” Christianity is a subject rather than an experience; a theme to be debated with academic objectivity, not a way of life to be commended as the one that incorporates the ultimate meaning for human existence and the only peace that can survive what Shakespeare termed “outrageous fortune.” Christianity is reduced to “religion” (or one of the “historic faiths”), a proper item on a college or university curriculum, to be sure, since in ways somewhat incomprehensible to contemporary debunkers of the faith, the Christian religion has greatly influenced the development of Western civilization. The documents of the Christian faith must be subjected to the same critical study given all other historical data. There is no place for any notion that the Scriptures are to be understood only in the context of the reality of a supernatural order and only from the vantage-point of a belief that “the Spirit breathes upon—and through—the Word,” nor for the notion that reason must be supplemented by faith in interpreting and in accounting for the Scriptures.

We hope that the “realistic” challengers of the historic faith are well intentioned. Yet even if they are, we cannot help believing that they will stimulate doubt rather than faith, confusion rather than confidence.

Some time ago I spoke to a Baptist gathering about the need for “a Baptist Reformation.” I urged that this would involve a rediscovery of something very old rather than the discovery of something new—the positive preaching of a Gospel revealed by One “who knows what is in man”; a renewed emphasis upon the priesthood of all believers; a controlling conception of the Church as the household of faith rather than as a political pressure group. When I had finished, one preacher berated me for being reactionary and obscurantist. (If you cannot counter what a speaker has said, call him bad names!) A year later I learned that his own church is badly divided, and that many are leaving his world-centered ministry. I am sure that he will not find a diagnosis of his church’s ills in my analysis, for decriers of historic Christian convictions are often consoled by the liberal remnant that stands by them, swift to condemn those who persist in holding to a faith now 2,000 years old. This preacher was ready to subject me to an inquisition because I have more faith in pietism than in jazz masses, in a given body of doctrine than in a flux of current opinions, in the Lordship of Christ than in the supremacy of social demands, in the authority of the Scriptures than in that of the latest popular theologian.

In saying these things, I do not wish to be accused of indifference to the need for many social and economic reforms aimed at the correction of gross evils and inequities. No man in his right mind would have such an indifference. I simply assert that, as a proponent of the Christian faith and a servant of the Christian Church, I would make personal salvation a precondition of social change and a seeking of the will of God the pattern for such change. I advance no “either-or” proposition here but simply plead that “the right order of going” be observed. Let the non-Christian world-orders try as they will for social change, but let the Christian Church specialize in the life-changing of men and women by the redemptive power of One who is greater than the passing scene and political fashions. The Church’s this-worldly influence will in the long run be measured by the reality of its other-worldly orientation (see John 17).

This brings me to a “hard saying.” I am obliged to express the belief that many glib revisers of the Church’s faith have, in effect at least, repudiated that faith. They seek to discredit a faith they themselves have lost. They seek to substitute for the historic faith of the Church a “new version” lacking the vital elements of the Christian tradition, and bearing the authority only of their own rationality and intellectual adroitness. The “faith” they offer is alleged to satisfy the modern mind, if not the modern heart. It is a faith supposed to be beyond logical rebuttal, but it also goes beyond personal appropriation (it is not intended for that anyway; religion is primarily a subject for discussion, not for commitment). The “faith” advanced by many critics of the faith of the Christian generations is not a personal one, for, after all, they are writing “about religion” and not witnessing to a religious experience. Intellectually respectable writers on theological subjects must not commit themselves anyway—a rival publisher of theological tabletalk might, all too soon, write a better best-seller that would make one’s own passé! So any tone of assurance or finality is bad theological protocol.

Perhaps I sound unduly harsh. Perhaps I have written with too much impatience. Perhaps I have not done full justice to some who are deeply committed to the faith that holds me and are seeking to make it more intelligible to those who must hear the Gospel in their own idiom. I readily admit these possibilities. But I write with sober seriousness when I call into question all efforts to fit the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world’s specifications, all attempts to substitute social pressures for an evangelistic approach to the needs of men and women one by one, all ingenious strivings to substitute the wisdom of men for the wisdom of God, and to make men wise on every subject except salvation itself. I write with deliberation when I question scholarship concerned with a faith that need not be personally held; with a religion-become-philosophy that makes all faith subject to and limited by reason, that gives human speculation priority over revealed truth, and that makes skepticism more virtuous than faith. “It is easier to squander Christian capital than to accumulate it,” as Sir Arnold Lunn once put it.

I believe that the Church must recover some of the assurances it has for the moment lost before it can discover more relevant and revolutionary ways to minister in the second half of the twentieth century. Some old wells must be redug and some old paths followed before new victories of the faith can be won—indeed, before they can even be attempted. Above all, our answer to the question of John the Baptist, “Shall we look for another?,” must be an unqualified “No!”

Partisans of infant baptism probe a middle way. Supporters of believers’ baptism worry about youth. Here a Lutheran theologian defends “believers’ baptism of infants” while a Southern Baptist theologian voices anxiety over evangelistic compulsion of the very young.

In recent years the time-honored Protestant controversy over infant baptism has been renewed in much of its Reformation vigor. Karl Barth, who belongs to the Reformed camp, has aligned himself with Baptists. And the late Emil Brunner, though he did not adopt the radical attitude of Barth, wanted no part of the traditional Reformed arguments based on the corporate conception of the family, the doctrine of prevenient grace, and the covenant sign of the Old Testament. Brunner dismissed these arguments as “biblicist” but suggested keeping infant baptism as a sign pointing to Christ. Others ask if Brunner’s views were “biblicist” enough.

The Lutherans are fighting a private battle on baptism among themselves. Here the famous protagonists Joachim Jeremias and Kurt Aland exchange broadsides over the New Testament word oikos (“household”) used in connection with the baptism of families in Acts. Jeremias contends that oikos includes children and that thus they too were baptized. Aland, with as much elaborate evidence and with some of the same documents, attempts to prove the opposite.

For all practical purposes this battle promises to end in a stalemate. Although these inconclusive results do not mean that the New Testament has nothing to say about infant baptism, they do mean that oikos and the words related to it apparently cannot resolve the issue. Even if Jeremias, the champion of infant baptism, should be shown to be correct, the victory would only confirm the Reformed position that the family was included in the faith of the head of the household. And although the result might bring some comfort to the Roman Catholics with their theory of substitutionary faith, it would hardly be of comfort to the Lutherans.

Thus, in spite of the renewal of the controversy in our day, baptismal practices themselves remain in question and the underlying problem is unresolved.

The fundamental issue in the controversy over infant baptism is essentially the same as it has always been since the Reformation. It is the question of how faith relates to baptism. The baptism of New Testament times was obviously administered in faith. And even before Luther asserted that the sacraments were ineffectual for the individual without faith in Christ, the Roman church had at least recognized the importance of faith in baptism and had tried to sidestep the issue by substituting the faith of the church for the faith apparently lacking in the child. The Reformed theologians referred to the faith of the parents or to the child’s future faith in their teaching on baptism.

All these attempts only verify what the Anabaptists contended in the days of the Reformation and what many scholars assert today about the subject. Certainly the New Testament does not explicitly state that everyone baptized had faith. But there is not one shred of evidence of the baptism of a person without faith.

In our day the relation of faith to baptism has become particularly prominent as a result of the influence of existentialism on Christian theology. Faith and membership in the church, at least according to Barth and Brunner, depend largely on a personal “confrontation,” understood as the conscious meeting of the individual with God. With this philosophical orientation, many, like Karl Barth and his son Markus, have rejected infant baptism. And the emphasis itself has accentuated the problem for many pedobaptist Protestants and Roman Catholics. These groups are caught between the apparent evidence of the New Testament, especially the Book of Acts, and their own practice of infant baptism, which is administered, as it is frequently admitted, without the faith of the recipient. Many observers of this problem conclude that infant baptism is perpetuated only for continuity within the institutionalized church.

Is there a way out of this dilemma? Or must we choose between the apparently conflicting poles of “believers’ baptism” and infant baptism? It is axiomatic that any satisfactory solution must do justice to the New Testament evidence, especially as it is incorporated in the sola gratia and sola fide principles of the Reformation.

This dilemma, which bothers all Protestant denominations, including the tradition-minded Episcopalians, is based on the presupposition that it is impossible for children or infants to have faith. But does the New Testament as well as our empirical evidence prove this?

Emil Brunner rightly criticizes the Roman practice of uterine baptism, baptism of foetus. But is he correct in saying that the unborn or newborn child is incapable of the personal act required to receive salvation? Luke 1:44 says that the unborn John the Baptist leaped for joy in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary, the mother of the Lord, spoke to her. Certainly “leaping for joy” was, according to Brunner’s terminology, a “personal act,” and joy is one of the fruits of faith in Christ.

Luke also records the bringing of infants (Greek: brefte̅; not teknon, “child”) to Jesus for his blessing (18:15–17). What kind of blessing was this? It must have been an offering of the grace of God (sola gratia), as Calvin maintained. Yet no blessing or grace is received without faith, and to deny faith absolutely to these children is to fall into the Roman Catholic concept of blessing inanimate objects and persons incapable of faith. That the blessing of the children involved their faith is further reinforced by the remainder of the pericope, in which the infants are held up as examples for those desiring to enter the Kingdom. Certainly faith is the only key to the Kingdom, as even the Baptists, Barth, and Brunner would maintain.

The modern understanding of New Testament baptism has faltered somewhat in interpreting these incidents from the gospel records. But it has faltered even more in developing an adequate theology on child psychology. Is it really proper to say that an infant or young child lacks sufficient consciousness or mental development to make coming to faith possible? Even apart from the Gospels, which speak about children and infants in the Kingdom and of “the little ones who believe” in Jesus, is it really possible on the basis of child psychology to say that even the most limited children cannot receive knowledge from the outside or, more particularly, that saving knowledge which comes “from above”? It is noteworthy at this point that even the Baptist theologian Johannes Schneider has been ready to lower the traditional age of accountability from twelve years to six. Can we really apply an intellectual test at any age? Is God’s grace limited by supposed human limitations?

Apart from the New Testament, which in my opinion offers conclusive evidence for infant faith, many Christian parents recognize evidences of faith in their children even in the first years. Although the stammering of the name “Jesus” is not conclusive, who can positively deny that even here the Holy Spirit may be at work? For St. Paul taught that calling Jesus “Lord” was evidence of the presence of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). No wonder that even those Reformed and Lutheran theologians who are convinced that the baptism of the New Testament was for believers are nevertheless reluctant to deny this sacrament to children.

The middle way in this dilemma—of having to choose between what appears to be the New Testament baptism of believers and the baptism of infants—is suggested in the Lutheran doctrine of infant faith. Since the days of rationalism in the eighteenth century this doctrine has received only occasional “Lutheran” support, but recently it has been backed by Peter Brunner of Heidelberg, Hermann Sasse of Australia, and the late professors Rudolf Hermann of Berlin and Peter Brinkel of Rostock. By maintaining infant faith in connection with infant baptism, we need not choose between “believers’ baptism” and infant baptism. With infant faith, infant baptism is in fact a baptism of believers, and other essential New Testament teachings are upheld as well.

First of all, this teaching recognizes that children are included under the universality of sin, as are adults, and that they also need faith to be saved. An astute analysis of the sin of children is given by Robert L. Short in his Gospel According to Peanuts:

Seeing the infant as a sinner, however, probably never has been nor will be a popular point of view. It may be, therefore, that the modern “cult of the child,” which holds to the child’s “original innocence,” is partly a reaction against the doctrine of Original Sin. “Those who hold that human nature is essentially good (‘unfallen’) and corrupted only by society,” writes H. A. Grunewald, “regard the child as an unspoiled bundle of life which ‘goes wrong’ mostly because of bad things happening in the ‘environment.’ ” Wherever they can, even the youngest Peanuts children are crafty enough to take advantage of this point of view.… As Grunewald points out, the myth of the innocent child strongly resembles the myth of the noble savage—savage perhaps, but not too noble [pp. 52 ff.].

Secondly, the doctrine of infant faith provides all children with a means of the grace of God. To deny children a means of grace would deny their inclusion under the universality of God’s saving grace. As mentioned above, in the case of John the Baptist and the blessing of the children, children can be objects of the grace of God.

Thirdly, infant faith avoids the possibility of having God’s grace offered without any real chance that the child will receive it. Traditionally, there has been no quarrel between Lutherans and Baptists on the application of grace through faith. If baptism is going to be effective in the individual, it must be “believers’ baptism.” This would also correspond to those recent exegetical studies showing that the baptism of the early Church was given in faith.

Fourthly, infant faith is based on what the New Testament writers and Jesus have to say about the relation of children to the Kingdom and their coming to faith.

The recent influence of existentialism on theology has made the idea of infant faith even more unpopular among the pedobaptists than it was in the days of rationalism. But if the pedobaptists are not willing to accept this doctrine, then it must be granted that the practice of the Baptists in baptizing only mature persons is more in keeping with the New Testament practice. Without faith it is impossible to please God—and this applies to children as well as to adults.

But to deny infant baptism, and with it infant faith, would be to limit what God obviously does not limit. The choice before the Christian world is not between infant baptism and “believers’ baptism,” but between believers’ baptism foe both infants and adults and no baptism at all.

Surprisingly, the “people called Baptists” have not been the most outspoken interpreters of the New Testament teaching on baptism. Until very recent years, Baptists were almost silent on the subject, despite the fact that baptism has become an increasingly live issue in Christian debate and has emerged in ecumenical discussions from the pronouncements of Vatican II to the expression of variant viewpoints among Pentecostal groups. There are at least two reasons for the tardy entry of Baptists into this crucial discussion. First, the majority of Baptists throughout the world have not been directly involved in the World Council of Churches or any other forum of Christian discussion where their views of baptism are strongly challenged and clearly heard. And second, for decades Baptists have been preoccupied with serious controversies about baptism among themselves.

The Campbellite Controversy

For more than a century, Baptists in the southern part of the United States have carried on two sharp doctrinal conflicts over baptismal meaning and practice. The first of these is the Campbellite controversy, which from the 1830s onward split Baptist churches by the hundreds and spilled over into other loosely organized “free church” groups. The followers of Alexander Campbell, a sometime Presbyterian who had become a Baptist preacher, arose in churches throughout Kentucky and adjoining states to proclaim that baptism is essential to salvation or that salvation is completed, if not actually conferred, by baptism. It is extremely difficult to document this sacramental concept of baptism in the writings of Campbell himself, but this clearly was the popular understanding of the “Campbellite” doctrine among his followers and his opponents. Most Baptists saw in this view a kind of Roman Catholic sacramentalism and a “works salvation.” Whole churches were captured for the Campbellite movement, however, and many more saved their buildings and the battered remnants of their congregations only after losing many members.

From the viewpoint of world Christendom, this strife could not have mattered less; but it certainly diverted Baptist energies and attention from the wider task of interpreting their view of baptism to the Christian world at large. This world would not take it for granted that the form of immersion was involved in the meaning of baptism or that the act of Christian confession and faith was essential in the baptismal subject.

An ironic footnote to this internal conflict among the immersionists is that almost none of the modem Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), which trace their descent from Alexander Campbell, will proclaim their view of baptism in the old sacramental terms. Even the Churches of Christ, an ultra-conservative split off the main body of Disciples about the turn of the century, speak with something less than a firm and unified voice on the explicit sacramental character of the baptismal rite. Yet the debate goes on while the basic question has been shifted, and most of the disputants continue to ignore the wider forum of ecumenical discussion.

The Landmark Movement

Another internal controversy began in the middle of the nineteenth century with the writings and activity of J. R. Graves. This influential editor of the Tennessee Baptist developed such a rigid doctrine of the Church and church succession that only those churches that exactly reproduced the New Testament pattern and could trace their institutional succession from biblical days could qualify as true churches. From Graves’s point of view, only Baptist churches could qualify as true churches, and not even all of them could qualify. The result of these views for the doctrine of baptism has been a devastating debate on whether it is proper to receive believers’ baptism by immersion performed by other Christian churches.

Not even Graves maintained that the Baptist name was necessary to make scriptural baptism valid. However, his restriction of the word “church” to Baptist churches only amounted to virtually the same thing. Thousands of Southern Baptist churches have adopted the pattern of receiving only Baptist baptism as the simplest way of guaranteeing that the person “received by letter of recommendation” into the local church fellowship has, in fact, been baptized with the proper form, meaning, and authority.

Even a casual reader of church history realizes that just as the Campbellite movement tended toward the Roman Catholic doctrine of sacramental (or saving) baptism, so the Landmark movement tended toward the Roman Catholic doctrine of institutional succession as the necessary hallmark of the true Church of Jesus Christ. It did not matter that neither Graves nor anyone else has ever demonstrated the unbroken succession of a single Christian institution throughout the 1,900 years of ecclesiastical history. The succession that was so important to Graves was simply affirmed as an article of faith. Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church (Matt. 16:18), and these “succession-minded” persons could only interpret that to mean that a Christian congregation was authentic only if it stood in an unbroken line of organic, institutional succession from the first century. They forgot that the Spirit of God might depart from an ecclesiastical institution even though it had an unbroken line of succession, as did the Temple and national Israel. And they forgot that God can call a people into being by his own sovereign act in his own good time, as he did with Israel and as he did with the Christian Church as the New People of God.

Similarly, others of the sacramental persuasion forgot that while God can use any means to reveal himself and to accomplish his holy purpose, he is never trapped within the bounds of ritual, to be dispensed like a holy potion in response to a magical formula. Both distortions of the Christian Gospel attempt to limit God, the one to a particular organic institution and the other to a particular religious ritual. Both philosophies seek to limit God to ecclesiastical control.

The Church As Baptists View It

Preoccupation with these internal controversies has deterred Baptists from wider involvement in current Christian discussions. But where does Baptist thought go from here as these controversies fade into the past? What will be the determinative factors in the years ahead?

What is most distinctive about the Baptist denomination? Contrary to the opinion of many people, it is not their view of baptism. The most distinctive tenet of the Baptists is their belief in the direct and immediate call of God to the individual soul and the direct and immediate response of that soul to God without the official administration of a priest, a ritual, or an institution. It is this doctrine that will ultimately determine the Baptist stand on baptism vis-à-vis the non-Baptist denominations.

If God calls men directly into a saving relationship with himself—upon the basis of the atoning work of Christ, which is made effective in the individual heart by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit—and if this takes place without the necessary mediation of any human priest, ritual, or institution, then it follows that God directly calls into being that fellowship of believers which is Christ’s body, the Church, of which Christ is also directly the Head and Lord. This direct and unmediated Lordship of Christ over his body is the basic understanding of the Church among Baptists and explains the characteristic Baptist rejection of all priests or bishops. Although most Baptist confessions of faith have clearly affirmed the ultimate concept of the Church as the body of Christ, composed of all the redeemed of all ages, they have also maintained that this Church is manifest in the world only in gathered communities of believers. According to this dominant view, the name “church” cannot be applied to any denomination, convention, or association of churches but only to a local congregation, a gathered community of believers.

Realizing this basic view of the nature of the Church, one can predict with reasonable certainty the outcome of current debates about baptism among Baptists and between Baptists and the wider Christian world:

1. On the issue of the authority for baptism, Baptists will eventually come down firmly on the presence of Christ in the local congregation as the only valid locus of authority. Eventually, they will reject all attempts to validate baptism through the denominational name (Baptist) or through affiliation with any particular convention. After all the debate and confusion about institutional succession and alien immersion (immersion by non-Baptist churches), Baptists will eventually receive scriptural baptism by those congregations that they recognize as churches. Either they will do this or they will repudiate their basic understanding of the Church.

Before they recognize a congregation’s practice of baptism as scriptural, most Baptists will continue to insist (1) that the practice be in essential agreement with their own and (2) that the congregation’s understanding of salvation and the Church mark it out as a genuine New Testament church, by whatever name it may be called. It is now a matter of fact that some congregations that do not wear the Baptist name embody this historic Baptist understanding of salvation and of the Church far better than some Baptist churches. In any case, Baptists will be forced to let local congregations decide about receiving other scriptural baptisms. If they transfer this power of decision to an association or convention of churches (actually made up of “messengers” from the local churches), they will be making the convention or association itself into a church and thereby denying their basic understanding of the Church as the local congregation.

2. On the issue of the form of baptism, most Baptists will continue to insist upon immersion—not only because it was certainly the New Testament form, but even more because they believe that the form is bound up with the meaning.

Virtually all biblical scholars acknowledge that the meaning of the Greek word baptizo is “to immerse,” that the context of baptismal passages in the New Testament clearly indicates immersion, and that the historical evidence conclusively demonstrates that immersion was the original form and the prevailing one for centuries. But since many New Testament patterns have changed with the passing of the years, it might have been possible to accept the more convenient form of sprinkling or affusion had it not been for the meaning reflected in the form of immersion. The burial of the believer in the waters of baptism is seen as a visible gospel sign, a vivid declaration of his spiritual identification with the burial of Christ (Rom. 6:4). His resurrection from the waters of baptism is a powerful proclamation of his resurrection with Christ to “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4; Eph. 2:5, 6). Because Baptists reject any conception of saving power or sacramental value in the ritual itself, everything depends upon preserving its significance as a Christian sign and confession. If, by changing the form, it loses its power as a witness to the Christian’s death and resurrection with Christ, then it becomes empty and meaningless. Without this meaning it is not New Testament baptism; and without this form it has lost its meaning as a gospel sign.

3. On the matter of the baptismal subject, Baptists will continue to stake everything on the conviction that the person must be a believer in Christ. Baptism is the way a person makes his public declaration of belief in Christ. They read the recurring New Testament formula “baptized into [Greek: eis] the name of Jesus Christ” and understand this to mean that through the act of baptism the early Christians were declaring their identification with their Master. It was their regular way of confessing before the world that Jesus Christ was their Saviour and Lord.

Baptists will continue to reject infant baptism because they believe that it began in church history with the expression of the doctrine of original sin as condemning even the infant and emerged as a sacramental rite to remove this “original sin” as soon as possible after birth. Even when it is construed as a “covenant sign,” replacing the sign of circumcision in the old covenant, Baptists believe this contradicts the plain teaching of the New Testament that baptism comes only after one has “received the word” of the Gospel (Acts 2:41). They also believe that the attempt to connect baptism with circumcision is a frantic effort to preserve a baptismal practice that arose later in church history by reading into it a meaning nowhere found in the New Testament.

Baptists, however, have found themselves confronted by a problem that is intensified by their own strong insistence upon believers’ baptism. The pressure of evangelistic campaigns and the strong emphasis upon child evangelism in younger Sunday school classes has brought younger and younger children to the church altar, “trusting Christ” and requesting baptism and full church membership. Several reports from Southern Baptist churches indicate that children as young as four or five years of age have been received as “candidates for baptism” and full church membership. On every side the charge is heard, “You Baptists have come full circle—right back to infant baptism.”

Many articles and books have sounded a warning cry that “regenerated church membership” is being undermined. More than one church and more than one Sunday school leader have been wrestling with this problem. How old must a child be in order to make a responsible decision to confess Christ as Lord and fulfill the minimum requirements of membership in his church? Drastic suggestions have been made: Hold back children until they have reached puberty, because only then have they reached a point of psychological maturity where they can think abstractly of the Lordship of Christ over life; or withhold baptism until this level of maturity is attained in adolescence, even though the child may have come earlier into a kind of “probationary” church membership.

With the dominant Baptist concepts of salvation, baptism, and the Church, it is not difficult to predict with reasonable confidence where this discussion among Baptists will come out. Baptists will never consent, in any great number, to the postponement of baptism until a pre-determined level of Christian maturity has been reached. They cannot do this because they believe that baptism is the sign of Christian beginning. It would be emptied of its meaning if it did not stand at the threshold of the journey with Christ. On the other hand, there is going to be increasing Baptist concern to remove external pressures that may push a child into a false response to a highpowered evangelist or an over-zealous Sunday school teacher. Because Baptists believe that a person is saved by the genuine response of that soul to the inner working of God’s Spirit, they will try to protect their children from external pressures that might produce a counterfeit response. Nevertheless, they will refuse to set an arbitrary age at which they will “permit” the Holy Spirit to work this miracle in the life of the child, and they will demand more and more evidence that it is a genuine response of each soul to God rather than a coerced “decision.”

4. Finally, all discussion about baptism will turn at last upon the question of meaning. For Baptists, everything is bound up with the conviction that baptism is the believer’s public declaration of his death and resurrection with Jesus Christ. Because it is a testimony given before the world, Baptists will take a dim view of those persons who say, “Well, although my church teaches that baptism saves you, I have always privately believed that it is an act of Christian obedience and confession of Christ, exactly as you Baptists do.” Such a private belief, in the context of a public interpretation that contradicts it, is confusing, to say the least. The vast majority of Baptists will also stoutly maintain that because of what baptism means, the form of baptism must continue to be immersion and the subject must always be a genuine believer.

All Baptists will continue to proclaim that all who have truly believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour are redeemed and are their Christian brethren, no matter how they have been baptized! They cannot deny this because it is their most basic belief. And most Baptists will continue to affirm that the real test of this redemption in our lives is how much Christian love and understanding we demonstrate toward those brethren who sharply disagree with us on such doctrines. Nevertheless, it will forever remain true that all the water in the world cannot help a person who has not been baptized in the heart by the redeeming work of God’s Holy Spirit!