Page 6302 – Christianity Today (2024)

Ongoing Ashram

Dear Eutychus,

India at last! Here you understand what a population explosion means. Many of the roads are splendid, but such traffic! If you dislike passing trucks, wait till you try passing an ox-cart whose driver knows no vehicle code. It gives one a new experience of involvement.

Our little caravan is making famous progress, however. The jeep has held up well while hauling our Cosmic trailer, and our battered Olds is mobile again after a long delay when the universal broke down. The three of us from Oikos house entertain guests almost constantly; we are conducting our own rambling ashram.

It has been a voyage of liberation. What horizons open when one gets beyond Bultmann! I am so indebted to Frank Sanatana who joined our party a week ago. He studied in California under a most stimulating professor of religion, and can gain immediate rapport with Hindus.

You know, I had actually wished to be a delegate to the New Delhi conference, especially to be a mouthpiece for the younger men in our church, but now I’m grateful that the ecclesiastical cabal chose the familiar pillars instead. My change of attitude began when I tried to explain to some Hindus the ecumenical symbol I had painted on the side of our trailer. They didn’t know Greek, and I had difficulty interpreting the term oikoumene. They didn’t recognize the boat in the symbol, either. When I told them the story of the ark, they first thought I meant it literally. Then they wanted to know what the flood meant as a symbol. It seemed to them that the saving of eight souls was not very ecumenical.

Sanatana finally came to my rescue. He reminded them of the Hindu myth of Manu who survived the flood in a boat tied to a divine fish. Such myths all express the human dream of salvation, he said. In the mythical depths all religions are one. Any god becomes an idol if he requires a loyalty oath. All creeds are relative understandings of myth; true religion understands that no religion is true.

The Hindus were most enthusiastic. They had never met a Christian who had gone so far beyond the historical Jesus. We painted over the symbol on our trailer, except for the wavy lines. They provide a perfect symbol for that open, fluid, cosmythology which must engulf the partial perspective of every parochial ecumenism. At last I feel open to outer space.

ALBERT IVY

P.S. The universal went out again. Three “mechanics” have tampered with it, but no one in this village knows anything about automotive design.

A. Iv.

Amplification Assured

It would be hoped that the splendid article “Tax Churches on Business Profits?” (Oct. 13 issue) will be made available to every member of the United States Congress, and that ministers receiving your magazine might share their copies of this article with members of the various state legislators.

FREDERICK F. JENKINS

The Presbyterian Church

Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.

• The essay is condensed and reprinted with credit to CHRISTIANITY TODAY in the November issue of Reader’s Digest.—ED.

Thank you for publishing the article …; the issue seems seldom to be discussed. For churchmen to seek ways of helping their church institutions circumvent tax laws in ways which would be illegal if not done by such institutions seems morally doubtful at best.…

Let’s get about the Master’s business, and not make it our business to seek first the treasure of special discounts and tax rebates.

JAY V. GROVES

Chairman, Dept. of Economics

West Virginia Wesleyan College

Buchannon, W. Va.

Divisions On Devotions

In his article on the Christian devotional life (Sept. 25 issue), taking “neo-orthodoxy” to task for failing to produce “a positive attitude in the devotional realm,” John W. Montgomery seriously mistakes a passage in my Basic Christian Ethics.

That was a book on ethics, after all; and in it, of course, I stressed the way in which Christians are theodidacti “taught of God” in moral matters. The passage itself, incidentally does not fail to emphasize faith, humility, obedience, and all other possible or actual relations we have to God, and not only our relations to man or morality. And, of course, I hold that we are theodidacti “taught of God”—to pray.… He who runs while he reads should have known that my statement that “the Christian church is not a community of prayer but a community of memory” simply asserts that the church is not a community of prayer rooted in nothing but the natural religious aspirations of the human soul.

Montgomery also cites Karl Barth on The Humanity of God, and makes no mention of his writings on prayer, or of what he says at great length on the love and praise of God in Church Dogmatics. The devotional life is a common and central concern of all Christians, of whatever theological persuasion.

R. PAUL RAMSBY

Dept. of Christian Ethics

Princeton University

Princeton, N. J.

Any uncommitted reader of Ramsey’s Basic Christian Ethics, which is deeply in debt to the Lundensian school of Motif-forschung, will see that it points up the central devotional weakness of such agape-motif thinking, namely, that when Christian love is defined as Nygren defines it, it can be exercised properly only by God (toward man), and by man (toward other men, not toward God, who obviously lacks nothing and is the source of all good). Thus the biblical emphasis on loving God goes by the board, and we become uncomfortable if the God-relation is thought of in any terms other than faith or trust, and the church becomes a group of theodidacti rather than “lovers of God.” Heaven knows, I see the danger of concentrating on man’s love toward God (this can swiftly turn into anthropocentric religion and the Gospel thereby be terribly obscured), but we don’t solve the problem à la Ramsey by agapizing God and running away from the clear scriptural injunction to establish a love and prayer-love relation with him.

As for my use of Barth’s The Humanityof God, and no mention of his other works: I thought that this was being the most fair to Barth, since The Humanity of God is his recently-published corrective to the hyper-transcendence emphasis in his earlier writings. No one denies that Barth is personally a deeply devotional man; the issue is whether the essential thrust of his theology really contributes to or detracts from the biblical conception of devotion.

I think it detracts, and the paucity of really great neo-orthodox devotional works, hymns, etc., is pretty good reason to question the devotional value of neo-orthodoxy. Basically, the neo-orthodox thinks of himself as a theodidactus and grinds out vast and prolix works of systematic theology and ethics—and devotional concerns are really not very germane to his basic interests.

JOHN W. MONTGOMERY

Waterloo University College

Waterloo, Ontario

The kind of devotional life urged by Dr. John Montgomery … seems to me to be unrealistic and self-centered. Too much devotional life has centered on one’s personal relation to God without a similar emphasis on practicing one’s faith in love towards the world.…

The real devoted “saints” are not those who bury themselves in their morbidness, but who go out into the world as He who said, “I have come not to be ministered unto, but to minister.

JOHN E. ELIASON

Greensboro, N. C.

The list of 100 select devotional books seems to me to be particularly outstanding.

DONALD T. KAUFFMAN

Managing Ed.

Fleming H. Revell Co.

Westwood, N. J.

In making your selections, were the writings of Dr. F. J. Huegel considered? His Wondrous Cross and Prayer’s Deeper Secrets are among my favorites.

CATHERINE E. BOUTERSE

Richmond, Va.

The Newsstand Criterion

David Kucharsky’s article, “Relevancy in Religious Journalism,” and its appended bibliography (Sept. 25 issue), I read with interest and appreciation. I am moved to comment on the third paragraph which said in part “that not a single religious periodical has enough popular appeal to be available on the average U.S. newsstand.”

Two disparate examples of religious journalism do appear on newsstands in southern New England, The Catholic Digest as a magazine and The Christian Science Monitor as a newspaper. Regionalism may contribute to this. Roman Catholicism is numerically strong in urban southern New England from Boston to the New York state line. The Mother Church of Christian Science is in Boston, where the Monitor is published. But is this the only explanation?

The Catholic Digest, similar in format to The Reader’s Digest, is sometimes quoted in the secular press. May it not be conceded that the material quoted has some merit in editorial opinion? And may it not be conceded that The Christian Science Monitor has won a distinguished reputation by its editorial policy, ethical standards, and journalistic competence?…

I am really concurring with Kucharsky. When religious journalism produces something which the secular world is willing to call good, it commands attention.

STANDISH MCINTOSH

Trinity Episcopal Church

Lime Rock, Conn.

I am most pleased to see this attention of an important magazine like CHRISTIANITY TODAY to the field of religious journalism and appreciate what has been done. I called the attention of my religious writing class to the material.…

In general I agree with the points you made, especially about the inferior character of the Protestant press, and I hope you will stick to your views on this.… We have a religious journalism program here … and in our small way are making a little impact.

ROLAND E. WOLSELEY

Chairman, Magazine Dept.

School of Journalism

Syracuse University

Syracuse, N. Y.

Deluge And Debate

If you have read our hook, The Genesis Flood (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961), you know that we have attempted a serious, carefully-documented investigation of the Deluge from the standpoint of the biblical record and its scientific implications. You must also realize that the review of this book by Donald C. Boardman of Wheaton College (Sept. 11 issue) presents a highly biased and misleading picture of the book’s content and significance.

While endorsing the right of a reviewer to write critically about a book he is reviewing, we maintain that it also should be his responsibility to convey a true picture of its character. This is especially true on an issue so important and so controversial as that of the relationship of the current scientific theories of uniformitarianism and evolution to the biblical doctrine of origins.

Except for the first paragraph, Boardman’s lengthy review could just as well have been written by one who had never heard of Genesis. He ignores the demonstration of the first four chapters that the Bible teaches a geographically universal and geologically significant Flood. One can only conclude that for him the biblical evidence is irrelevant. Furthermore, he ignores the documented evidence of the inadequacies and contradictions of evolutionary uniformitarianism, as presented in the last three chapters. And finally, he ignores the significance of the Edenic Curse for paleontology, as discussed in Appendix I.

He accuses us of quoting from men who disagree with our viewpoint, while using their quotations to support it. However, we made it quite clear that this was the actual situation; in fact, it is a universally-accepted principle of effective argumentation that the strongest support for a position, if valid, can be obtained from the perhaps unintended admissions of its opponents. We made a careful attempt not to quote out of context, and have given full documentation in every case for anyone to check if he wishes.…

The bulk of Boardman s criticism is directed at two very minor points, treated very briefly in the last chapter. Even if his objections to these points were valid (which we do not admit), they would not invalidate the weight of the evidence accumulated otherwise. This technique of ignoring the main line of argument, while searching for minor flaws, has become standard with evolutionary and uniformist writers. This fact led us to plead at several points in the book (e.g., p. xxi, note 3) against just this possible reaction on the part of the reader.

Finally, Boardman quotes seriously out of context the writer of our foreword. Therefore, we append the following excerpt from the foreword, taken from the portion immediately following that quoted by Boardman: “Nevertheless the authors have made a strong case and this volume offers a serious challenge to the uniformitarian position. They have in no way distorted this position, but have opposed it in a courteous, fair and scholarly manner. I would suggest that the skeptical reader, in like fashion, before he dismisses the biblical-literal view point of this book as unworthy of notice, should at least give it a careful reading and evaluation. He will find that the essential differences between biblical catastrophism and evolutionary uniformitarianism are not over the factual data of geology but over the interpretations of those data. The interpretation preferred will depend largely upon the background and presuppositions of the individual student.”

JOHN C. WHITCOMB, JR.

Professor of Old Testament

Grace Theological Seminary

Winona Lake, Ind.

HENRY M. MORRIS

Professor of Civil Engineering

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Blacksburg, Va.

Holding Firm At Verdun

My appreciation for the article “The Holy Bible: ‘Verdun’ of Triumphant Christianity” (Aug. 28 issue).… As disturbing as it is to have men like Oxnam and Pike denying the very fundamentals of the Faith, … one could earnestly wish that their beliefs were confined to their two denominations.

Dr. Smith is indubitably correct in that a “return to, a full confidence in, and a loving obedience to the Holy Scriptures” is our only hope. This is not bibliolatry; … it is the logical confidence that all belief must be rooted in God’s infallible Word.… The Saving Jesus is known to us first only through the Bible. May God help us hold true to that which has pointed us to him.

GENE L. JEFFRIES

Harmony Heights Baptist Church

Joplin, Mo.

“Modern science … is today, for the most part, totally indifferent to the Christian faith.” This statement is certainly based on a lack of contact with many great scientists.… It has been my good fortune to have done graduate work in four great universities of this country and one foreign country, and I surely would say that I have discovered some great Christian souls among my teachers and other great scientists …

ROBERT E. MOHLER

McPherson, Kan.

Commentary On Pulpit

Dr. Carl Henry’s brief credo (Sept. 11 issue) leaves me with an uneasy feeling.… Surely many modem theatre productions and paperback editions speak more to the needs of men and women today than do many pulpits across the land. A life “attuned to glory” must be a life willingly submerged in the culture of our day seeking points of contact between Christian faith and daily living.

GEORGE BONNELL

Union Church of Bay Ridge

Brooklyn, N. Y.

Beautify And/Or Beatify

In reference to the article on the … beautification of women (Sept. 11 issue) … it seems nonconformity to the present day prevalence of provocative mode of dress and camouflage of bodily appearance makes a woman an oddity in the eyes of the world.…

Proverbs 31:30 tells us, “Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.”

MRS. L. RAYMOND JONES

Swayzee, Ind.

Return To Geneva

Your article “Has Evangelism Become ‘Offbeat’?” (Sept. 11 issue) is typical of a lot of shallow thinking among evangelical Presbyterians (I’m one!) on this subject.… If a Reformed writer wants to grapple with this problem, he must first grapple with the doctrine of infant baptism, then speak historically of evangelists in the Reformed tradition.

Why not begin with William Farel, the apostle of Geneva? J. T. McNeill’s description of him as the “red-bearded hot gospeller” should whet our appetites.

R. N. CASWELL

Newtonabbey, Northern Ireland

I do not believe that Mr. Manning’s questionnaire presents the whole picture of Presbyterian evangelism.… In regard to the city scene, the … church is seriously rethinking its evangelism.…

The book: God’s Colony in Man’s World, written by a Presbyterian minister, George Webber, … is far from being “offbeat”!

RALPH G. PFIESTER

McCormick Theological Seminary

Chicago, Ill.

Challenging Limitations

I regret that your editorial on Professor Koch’s advocacy of premarital sexual intercourse, “No Academic License to Pervert Moral Standards” (July 31 issue), muddies the waters of discussion.… Your simplicity overlooks two basic and important considerations. In the first place, Koch’s own plea contains self-imposed limitations …; he suggests sexual intercourse only if it is engaged in by mature persons, only if it has no social consequence, and only if it violates neither of the parties’ moral code. This reduces the possible participants to a handful, if that many! Obviously Koch’s recommendation can and will be exploited irresponsibly and immature sexual intercourse accompanied by social consequences and guilt feelings will continue to be practiced. But on the basis of his initial letter to The Daily Illini, Koch should not be called upon to bear the blame for the sexual behavior of students who conveniently choose to overlook the built-in and very significant qualifications of his position. For speeches and articles since his dismissal, however, Koch must perhaps bear more blame, inasmuch as he himself seems to have often overlooked those initial reservations. But the university cannot build its case on the post-dismissal Koch.

The second consideration which your simplicity ignores has to do with the current public and responsible discussion about such topics as legalizing euthanasia, private hom*osexuality, etc.…

DURRETT WAGNER

Kendall College

Evanston, Ill.

Escape To Hell?

Greetings from an unabashedly “natural man” at whom Dr. Van Til sneers theologically in his article on original sin (Sept. 11 issue).… It is an attack on those who … do not agree with him.

If, as Dr. Van Til implies, God has loaded the dice of our existence against us before we are born, … then this position posits a god whom I frankly cannot worship or love.

Under such circ*mstances (to be blunt) one can only hope that there is a hell, after all, in which one may find salvation from such a god.

JESSE J. ROBERSON

Brooks Memorial Methodist Church

Phoenix, Ariz.

A Relative At Court

May I express a bit of disappointment over the recent exposition of the book of Esther (Aug. 28 issue)? Professor Verhoef did not emphasize the book’s illustrative value. I could not quite call it typical but simply illustrative—and illustrative value is not to be overlooked.

Esther is God’s kindergarten course on imputation which gives the mental furniture we need to comprehend the principles of representation. It shows the value of having a relative at court who is qualified to be a mediator.

WINN T. BARR

First Baptist Church

London, Ky.

The Preacher:

Born in Chicago just before the turn of the century, the Rev. Manfred E. Reinke has had long years in the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod). He had to decline a scholarship to Columbia University due to the early death of his father, and went on to Concordia to graduate before the institution conferred degrees. He has ministered in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, and La Porte, Indiana, where for 30 years he has served St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. He has added more than 1,000 converts.

The Text:

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;

Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

What extensive preparations were made last year in the United States and Canada when word came from England that Queen Elizabeth, the ruler of the British Empire, would visit the North American continent. Human ingenuity left nothing undone to give her a royal welcome. Police were detailed to guard her safety; officials greeted her with pomp and parade; guns roared in a salute of her majesty; huge sums of money were spent on extravagant entertainment; and all along the streets, bedecked with banners and bunting, thousand thousands stood or sat on camp chairs in order to catch a glimpse of the Queen. Every word she spoke, every dress she wore, every step she took, every place she visited was carefully noted and minutely reported. Newspapers and magazines, radio and television, publicized every detail of her activities. Millions of people in our country, though far removed from the glitter and glamor of the sphere in which she moved, forgot everything else in their interest to hear or see or read the daily news of her social life. Such honor and homage were accorded the Queen of England!

“Behold, thy King cometh!” Advent nears, and this holy season tells us that a greater than Queen Elizabeth is coming! The epistles and the gospels, appointed from of old for the period before Christmas, are like trumpet calls. Again and again we hear the note;

Christ is coming!

He is coming soon!

Luke 21:25–28

The First Advent

And what kind of reception will He receive when in three weeks the Christian church will once again commemorate His first advent? When He was born in Bethlehem, the world greeted Him in sullen silence. Only a few shepherds and some eastern sages kneeled in adoration before His manger bed. The tragedy of that first Christmas is repeated over and over again in our age. With few exceptions, Christ’s Nativity—now as then—is ignored! Santa Claus has usurped the throne of Christ, our Saviour-King! The holy day, when angels sing again as once they sang in the fields of Bethlehem, has been turned by the world into a holiday of fun and frolic.

Be it not so with you. When the Advent trumpet sounds the glad note,

The Saviour comes,

The Saviour promised long—

May ev’ry heart prepare a throne

And ev’ry voice a song.

Decorate your homes with pine and spruce and holly, but oh! do not leave your hearts unadorned! Remember your family and friends with gifts, but do not forget to come to worship to thank God for His supernal gift! Show kindnesses and be rich in charity towards the less fortunate, but, above all, let the bright flashes of angel light that once came from the open heavens fill your soul, and let the joyous message of the angelic annunciation, “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is Christ the Lord,” direct your hearts toward Bethlehem, so that in the hustle and bustle of Christmas you will find time and thought for the manger-cradled Son of God:

for the mercy of His birth;

for the compassion of His life;

for the atonement of His death;

for the hope of heaven through His resurrection;

for the comfort and the consolation of His second Advent.

So to prepare your hearts will enable you, amid all the distractions and diversions of this season, to celebrate Christmas aright, and I can promise you that you will find your highest joy of that holy day in the birth of Christ

Who came with peace from realms on high;

And lowly came on earth to die.

The Second Advent

“Behold, thy King cometh!” The herald angels also trumpet another Advent of Christ when, in power and great glory, He shall come again to give an everlasting redemption to His people, to take them from the vale of tears, and to mete out to all their enemies and His the due reward of their deeds. Our world will not go on endlessly, like an ever-rolling stream. Not forever shall this earth continue under the dominion of sin, with men living their fleeting lives, momentarily happy, but often sorrowful, and always doomed to death. In majesty triumphant and in company of His holy angels, Jesus will return to this scene of turmoil and trouble to judge the quick and the dead. That you and I might meet and welcome Him aright when the arch-angelic trumpet sounds His second Advent, I should like to speak to you on the theme:

Christ is coming;

He is coming soon.

America was stunned when Russia triumphantly announced the successful launching of the satellite moon. And justly so! It was more than a stunt without military implications. Our President put his finger on the real crux of the achievement when he said, “The Soviets have in their possession a very powerful thrust in their rocketry that concerns us more than the orbiting of the satellite.”

Our government was not slack in its duty! The Civil Defense Office soon issued pamphlets with instructions what should be done in case of an atomic attack. Many bomb shelters were built; air raid centers were designed; and, from one end of the country to the other, evacuation routes were laid out. How often, in recent years, have we not seen signs telling us that, in case of war, this or that highway would be closed. After the collapse of the summit meeting, thousands eagerly scanned the horizon for some gleam of hope that might allay their fears of war. People are afraid-afraid of tomorrow. On every hand we see fear on the faces and in the hearts of men as to what the next day will bring forth, for the entire world is in the grip of uncertainty and anxiety. Never, I believe, were the words of the prophet Jeremiah truer than now: “Fear is on every side.”

We can understand this terror! Again and again scientists have warned us that if there should be a third World War “there will be no more history to write.” We are told that an explosion of nuclear bombs, set off in different parts of the world, could begin a chain reaction of radiation that would lead to man’s extinction. It is never without a shudder that we read of the terrible destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where steel girders melted like wax. Peter predicted that, when the day of the Lord should come, “the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” Some theologians have voiced the opinion that an atomic war “could bring about the end of the world!”

God forbid that any should be idiotic enough to deny the possibility of an atomic attack or think America invulnerable, or, at least, mighty enough to discourage any foreign power from launching an aggression! It could happen! However, I do not believe that men will bring about the end of the world. The Bible tells us that it is God who will one day wind up earth’s bankrupt affairs. A day is coming when the heavens shall roll up like a scroll and the earth and all the elements shall melt with the fervent heat of the fires of judgment day. The world’s time, like our time, is in the hands of God. Yet, incredibly enough, the very men who fear the end of civilization by an explosion of nuclear bombs sneer at the prophetic references of the Bible which speak of the final day of doom when this world shall come to an end.

If men admit the menace of nuclear bombs, reason must surely admit that the last judgment poses no difficulty with God!

I grant that the imagination finds it hard to picture to itself this tremendous collapse. For thousands of years the world has pursued its accustomed course, and we find it hard to conceive this altogether unparalleled catastrophe when “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” But let us not forget the lessons of history. They tell us that GOD has always made good all His threats as well as His promises.

Can God be trusted? Has He ever spoken, and failed to fulfill His Word? There has never been a godless people in the history of the human race that was not eventually destroyed.

Where is Babylon with her hanging gardens?

Where are Sodom and Gomorrah with their unspeakable immoralities?

Where are Tyre and Sidon with their sins?

Today they are no more than heaps of dust. The wild jackals make their dens where their magnificence once gleamed in the sunlight.

Where is the greatness of ancient Athens?

Why is it that Rome had the scepter snatched from her palsied hands?

Why did Spain, and France, and Germany, in the course of years, lose both their prestige and their power?

There is but one answer. The Bible tells us that “the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” When their cup of iniquity was full to overflowing, His holy wrath fell on them to their destruction. And the “fullness of time,” of which the Scriptures speak, is applicable also to the Judgment. When the time of this world is full, when all the necessary probations are over, and all the measures of iniquity have overflowed, then the heavens shall open, and we shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory.

Signs Of The End

We can only watch and wait for the day of the Lord. But if the veil were removed from our eyes, I am sure that we would all take alarm at the many signs which shall precede the utter end and usher in the day of judgment. No matter where we look, we may see in all parts of the world unmistakable evidences of the great consummation which will culminate in the momentous issues of our everlasting destiny. The indications of the near approach of the final judgment should lead us to stand with our backs to the world, but with our faces turned towards the East, “looking for the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,” which will be as blessed for God’s children as it will be terrifying to all who reject the Saviour.

Christ Himself foretold some of the signs that would unmistakably mark the beginning of the end. He pointed to the darkening of the sun and moon, the falling of the stars, and the shaking of the heavens, which should precede the appearing of the Son of Man. All these predicted signs, which have already appeared, oblige us to believe that He will come soon to judge us.

Because we know so little of the heavens, which declare the glory of God, we may not be too impressed by what takes place in the starry heights. But we can surely recognize the signs of the times in the wild commotions and calamities which have engulfed the nations of the earth. There is now as never before in the world “distress of nations with perplexity.” I need hardly tell you that we are living in very mysterious and critical times. Day by day the world is verging towards a great and trying crisis. Where can we find “peace on earth, good will toward men”? Everywhere there are social, or political, or religious disturbances that interrupt our former prosaic life. In Cuba, in the Congo, in Russia, in China, in South America, in Europe, and in our own country, people are living in a state of unrest, of apprehension, of suspense, of fear, of ferment, and of portentous trembling. It would carry us too far afield were we to consider “the distress of nations with perplexity” in other parts of the world, and so we shall confine our attention to the turmoil of our own country.

Crime of all sorts has increased by leaps and bounds, and the certainty and severity of its punishments have been diminished. The progress and the prevalence of the grossest forms of wickedness are facts truly frightful to observe. The reports of J. Edgar Hoover are awful enough to make one’s hair stand on end. Unsolved murders, colossal robberies, swindles, defalcations, embezzlements, election frauds, are common occurrences. Our nation is sin-ridden. Think of the narcotic addicts, the prostitutes, the juvenile delinquents, the racketeers, and the unscrupulous union leaders that rob our country of her moral strength. One trembles as he listens to the news commentators or takes up the morning newspaper. It verily seems to us that the days of Noah, “when the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence,” had returned to us. Divorces, dishonesties, drunkenness, rapes, frauds, kick-back practices, and every form of immorality make up the headlines of the day. How fearfully have the words of the prophet been fulfilled: “The child shall believe himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable.” Our cities and our communities are sometimes manned by men who work in collusion with notorious gangsters. These verily are the days of which Paul prophesied when he said, “Men shall be covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, without natural affection, incontinent, fierce, traitors, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” We need no prophet to tell us that disaster is ahead, and that we are surrounded with perils, the end of which no human foresight can penetrate. We may be sure, however, that the words of David, “The Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth,” will be fulfilled. God will have the last word: the word of justice and of judgment.

Comment On The Sermon

The sermon “Christ Is Coining!… Soon!” was nominated forCHRISTIANITY TODAY’SSelect Sermon Series by Professor Alex Wm. G. Guebert, Professor of Homiletics Concordia Seminary (Lutheran-Missouri Synod). His overcomment follows:

“Christ is coming” is the Advent theme for the four Sundays preceeding Christmas. It became customary in the Church to preach on this theme from these four angles: Christ’s coming in the flesh; Christ’s coming in the spirit; Christ’s coming into each believer’s heart; Christs final coming in judgment. To deepen the understanding of the people for a proper celebration of Christmas the church lets the note of repentance and an invitation to prayer pervade the whole Advent season.

Pastor Manfred Reinke’s sermon was preached on the Second Sunday in Advent. His emphasis is on Christ’s coming for the final judgment. He is eager to lead his congregation of 2,400 fellow Christians to realize that preparation for a Christmas celebration is a failure, if it does not open eyes to see the ultimate reason for Christ’s coming. Christ came to save people from sin, sin that is as tragic and destructive today as it always has been. Modern culture has crowded God out of human life. It has made moral laxity commonplace and sin quite respectable. The love of ease, the fear of standing alone, the subtleness of pride, the viciousness of selfishness tucked away under much of our social life are evidence enough of sin that few people are willing to recognize.

Pastor Reinke uses Christ’s words in Luke 21 to point to numerous events in life that are clear clarion calls to repentance and a powerful appeal to step to the crib at Bethlehem and accept Christ as Saviour.

His vivid, colorful words, his significant illustrative material, his use of familiar contemporary facts, all hold the hearer’s attention and help pave the way for the Holy Spirit to persuade him to reach out to Christ now and hold on to Him for a safe journey out of the present to the throne of grace.

A. W. G. G.

And what is the significance of the terrible calamities and casualities that have left their mark upon this year? With hardly an exception, a whole plane load of football players from the West Coast met with sudden death in a neighboring state. Earthquakes and tidal waves, fearful explosions and conflagrations, destructive floods and disasters from swollen streams, the many, many sudden deaths and losses of life in highway or airway accidents are almost daily brought to our attention. Do all these things signify nothing because they may not have touched our lives?

And what shall we say when we look at the religious state of the world? What a sad eclipse has come over the Christian faith, and what laxity and uncertainty have taken possession of the minds of men. Thank God, there are still many who believe, and believe the truth, and earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to saints. Never before has the Gospel been so widespread. True Christians are spending millions to “preach the Gospel of the Kingdom in all the world for a witness unto all nations.” Nevertheless, with only too many their religion is but a sham, and not infrequently we find worldliness, unbelief, dishonesty, deceit, gambling, and gross violations of Christian faith and practice in the lives of those professing Christians.

No one knows how soon the warnings of Christ will become a most solemn reality. As the days pass, however, the Judgment is coming nearer and nearer. Most earnestly, I say to you in the words of our Lord, “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” You must abandon sin, or God will one day abandon you. Do not count on tomorrow as a more convenient season. When His trumpet call once sounds, it will be too late to seek salvation. In the twinkling of an eye, the whole question of our eternal destiny will be forever settled Well may we thank God, if we have not yet made our calling and election sure, that He who will judge us then offers to save us now. He has laid out for us an “Evacuation Route” by which we may escape all those things which shall come to pass. Knowing as we do, that the end of this world is not only possible, nor only probable, but close at hand, let us seek at once a refuge from the wrath to come. There is still time to take such fast hold upon His cross as to look forward without fear to standing before His throne. But, behold! Now is the accepted time. Now say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”

That thou doest, do quickly!

Urgency presses on our heels.

There is so little time.

Christ is coming.

He is coming soon. Amen.

Soli Gloria Deo

Old Bach,

asking divine aid,

writing in praise of God

on brown sheets of wrapping paper,

what have you to say to a world

which is laid out and curled up

in complicated blueprints?

Beethoven bartering with his publishers,

living in himself, his deaf universe

with its romantic curse,

appeals more to our generation

than dedication

to something concrete like the love of Christ.

Old Bach,

what secret of technique

keeps your strange joy alive today

each time men play your music?

Can it be that we get more

giving our soul to God

than selling it to the world?

TERENCE Y. MULLINS

When the clack of the gavel begins to echo through New Delhi’s spacious Vigynan Bhavan Hall next week, it will resound presumably for the one-third of the world’s population which goes by the name Christian.

Assembled in the modern capital of India will be nearly 1,000 church men and women from throughout the world—devout, sincere individuals who are deeply concerned about fragmentation of the Christian witness. Their very presence at the third and most important assembly of the World Council of Churches will indicate hope that some kind of new posture can be attained, particularly for Protestantism, if not for non-Roman Christianity as a whole. Could New Delhi signal a much-needed ideological breakthrough, and a transcendence of existing diversities? Many Christians feel that such a breakthrough can come through a recovery of the Church’s authority and mission. Others hold that a demand for organizational unity exists as a near-term requirement, although pressing questions of doctrine and order remain for future debate.

In the New Delhi assembly hall, originally built by the government of India to house a UNESCO conference, the move for unity will manifest itself most acutely in the apparently-presumed integration of the International Missionary Council into the WCC. The proposal, already endorsed by the WCC’s Central Committee and a majority of the IMC’s constituent national councils, will see the IMC organization emerge within the WCC framework as the Commission and Division of World Mission and Evangelism.

“The assembly,” according to a WCC press release, “provides the major forum for Christian leaders to discuss Christian unity.…”

Spokesmen for the ecumenical movement are already heralding the New Delhi assembly as a major step in the reunification of Christendom. Far in advance of the November 18-December 6 meeting, U. S. ecumenical leaders list among the “assured results” of the ecclesiastical conclave the virtual reunification of the missionary task force with the organized Christian (non-Roman) community.

Critics of the movement deplore this representation as highly exaggerated. They readily concede that New Delhi will emerge as an important episode in the ecumenical dream of restoring Christian unity through the progressive merger of existing denominations along theological and ecclesiastically inclusive lines.

Yet the setting and scope of assembly debate troubles many. Will there be a free and representative exchange of views on fundamental issues, they ask, or does the very process of organizational delegation militate against it or confine the pro-and-con to a limited sphere? In the organizational propaganda and ecclesiastical power gathering in New Delhi many critics are prone to see human planning and ecumenical contrivance at work, more than the Spirit of God breathing obviously new life and unity into the Body of Christ.

Does New Delhi symbolize an ecclesiastical injection of new strategy into the sprawling ecumenical movement? Or does it neglect a divine work of the Holy Spirit in the world-wide Body of believers over whom the crucified and risen Christ reigns as Head?

The answer to this question is of paramount importance, and American delegates to New Delhi bear an important role in shaping that answer. Since the formation of the Federal Council of Churches, predecessor of the National Council of Churches, American churchmen have significantly influenced the shaping of the ecumenical perspective. Their leadership, often heavily dominated by liberal forces, supplied much of the supportive pressure for inclusivism in theological and ecclesiastical concepts. It also directly involved American Protestantism in politico-economic programs that provoked sharp criticism by European churchmen who assigned greater priority to Christian faith than ever.

What stake have U. S. churchgoers in the ecumenical movement? To what extent does the movement represent American Christianity? Do the delegates now heading for New Delhi adequately represent their own constituencies? Does the proportion between clergy and lay delegates supply evidence that American churchmen are eager to assign a larger role in ecumenical affairs to the laity at grass roots? To answer these and other questions, and to provide an overall perspective on the significance of the New Delhi assembly for the American scene, CHRISTIANITY TODAY conducted an intensive study of the views of the American delegates compared with those of the constituencies they represent.

Of the 625 official delegates representing 176 member churches in some 50 countries, 160 delegates—or more than one in four—will come as delegates from the United States. Despite the emphasis on a voice for the younger churches, the massive organization and sheer weight of numbers of the United States contingent gives it staggering power. The United States remains one of the great Protestant lands of the world, despite the tendency of religious minorities to speak of a “post-Protestant era.” It is also the chief manpower source of the world missionary movement (only 31 per cent of the 28,000 U. S. missionaries around the world are NCC-related; see interpretative chart). Important questions may therefore be asked about the American delegates, who now carry much of the responsibility for shaping the immediate course of the directed mainstream of non-Roman Christianity, but who are well aware that distressing cleavages remain unhealed in American Protestantism.

These percentages were established by a scientific poll of American clergymen, across interdenominational lines, by Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, for CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The survey distinguished Fundamentalist and Conservative ministers in respect to their doctrine of Scripture; the former subscribe to total inerrancy, the latter either do not, or have doubts. Other historic Christian doctrines were not in doubt.

Do the delegates speak the spontaneous convictions of American grass-roots Protestantism, or is the slate otherwise slanted? From several considerations, their tilt toward prevailing ecumenical positions may be noted in advance. Of the U. S. delegates, all chosen by their respective denominational leaderships, 37 per cent come from within the influential inner circle of American ecumenism. At least 44 of the delegates are currently members of the policy-making NCC General Board; at least 14 others are past or present officers of NCC or paid officers of local church councils. Hence NCC official and staff representation may be said to bulk extraordinarily large in the list of U. S. delegates. The question naturally rises whether free and objective determination of the issues before the assembly can be expected from these participants. At any rate, critics who contend that the ecumenical movement’s ecclesiastical and theological pronouncements are largely shaped and controlled by an influential majority which holds strategic interlocking posts in NCC and its member denominations, seem to have an impressive case.

NCC General Board officers appearing as delegates are: President J. Irwin Miller (Disciples); Vice-President-at-Large Bishop J. Wesley Lord (Methodist); Vice-President-at-Large Mrs. J. Fount Tillman (Methodist); Vice-President, Division of Christian Education, Bishop Reuben H. Mueller (Evangelical United Brethren); Vice-President, Division of Christian Life and Work, Dr. Norman J. Baugher (Church of the Brethren); Vice-President, Division of Foreign Missions, the Rev. Earl S. Erb (United Lutheran Church in America); Past President, Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg (American Baptist); other members of the NCC General Board from the following denominations are among the U.S. delegates: African Methodist Episcopal Church—Bishop George W. Baber, Dr. R. W. Mance, Bishop Joseph Gomez, Bishop S. L. Greene, Sr.; African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church—Bishop W. J. Walls; American Baptist Convention—Dr. L. Doward McBain, Dr. John E. Skoglund, Dr. Edwin H. Tuller; Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church—Dr. Malvin H. Lundeen; Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ)—Dr. Gaines M. Cook, Dr. A. Dale Fiers, Dr. Virgil A. Sly; Christian Methodist Episcopal Church—Bishop B. Julian Smith; Evangelical United Brethren Church—Bishop Paul W. Milhouse; Greek Archdiocese of North and South America—the Rev. George J. Bacopulos, Charles Raphael; The Methodist Church—Dr. Harold A. Bosley, Mrs. Porter Brown, Bishop William C. Martin, Dr. J. Earl Moreland, Charles C. Parlin, Bishop Roy H. Short, Dr. Eugene L. Smith; National Baptist Convention U.S.A.—Dr. E. A. Freeman, Dr. C. H. Hampton, Dr. J. H. Jackson; Presbyterian Church in the U.S.—Dr. James A. Millard, Jr.; Protestant Episcopal Church—the Rt. Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger, Mrs. Theodore Wedel; Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America—the Rt. Rev. Bishop Valerian D. Trifa, Ivan Michelson Czap; United Church of Christ—Dr. Alford Carleton, Dr. Truman B. Douglass, Dr. Fred Hoskins, Dr. James E. Wagner; United Lutheran Church in America—Dr. Franklin Clark Fry; United Presbyterian Church—Dr. Eugene Carson Blake. Blake is a Past President of NCC. In addition Dr. Benjamin Mays (American Baptist) and Dr. Harry V. Richardson (Methodist) are past members of the General Board, and Metropolitan Athenagoras (Greek Orthodox) and Dr. George Florovsky (Greek Orthodox) have each served as past Vice-President-at-Large.

Besides these 48 delegates, the list includes 10 others who currently hold or have held strategic positions in the National Council or affiliated local councils of churches, including NCC General Secretary Roy G. Ross (Christian) and Dr. Irene Jones (American Baptist), associate executive secretary of the Division of Foreign Missions. Others are Dr. W. Barnett Blakemore (Christian); Church Federation of Greater Chicago, Chairman of Ecumenical Education Committee; Bishop F. Gerald Ensley (Methodist), President, Iowa Council of Churches; the Rev. Archie Hargraves (Congregational Christian), Brooklyn Division of Protestant Council of City of New York, Chairman of Racial and Cultural Relations Committee; Miss Frances Kaptizky (Evangelical and Reformed), Second Vice-President, Ohio Council of Churches; Dr. Ganse Little (United Presbyterian), Pasadena Council of Churches, Chairman of Community Worship Committee; Dr. Walter G. Muelder (Methodist), Massachusetts Council of Churches, Chairman of Church, State and Community Committee; the Rev. Robert W. Stackel (United Lutheran Church), Council of Churches of Greater Akron, Chairman of Evangelism Committee; Dr. Edward Ziegler (Church of Brethren), Virginia Council of Churches, Chairman of Evangelism Committee.

The weight of ecumenical organizational influence will not be limited, however, to the delegates; it shows up imposingly in the extended list of consultants. The Episcopal delegation, for example, will also include: the Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, former Presiding Bishop, as one of the six Presidents of the World Council of Churches; the Rt. Rev. Angus Dun, in a consultant capacity as Chairman of the Committee on Proselytism and as a member of the Central Committee; the Rev. Canon Theodore O. Wedel, in a consultant capacity as Chairman of the Working Committee of the Department of Evangelism; and Charles P. Taft, in a consultant capacity as Chairman of the Working Committee of the Department of Information.

An interesting question concerns the delegates from the world of Protestant education. Some influential ecumenists increasingly view seminaries as an indoctrination center for theological inclusivism and for service in the restructured Protestant community. Among the 25 delegates (almost one-sixth of the total) who are seminary or college identified, some are distinguished in the academic world, but these constitute a conspicuous minority. President Nathan M. Pusey of Harvard stands out in the list—and is a symbol of the Protestant call for religious revival that runs as wide as Tillichian theology while neglecting historic evangelical commitments. (The evangelical voice is virtually suppressed today in Harvard’s United Ministry to Students.)

While there may be an exception or two, the viewpoint of virtually all U. S. delegates from the Protestant academic world is squarely sympathetic to the inclusivist vision. Schools whose main influence is theologically liberal so heavily dominate the picture that aggressively evangelical centers seem to have been bypassed.

Taken as a whole, the list includes only a few of the outstanding liberal or neo-orthodox thinkers, but it is heavily weighted along with Pusey with delegates from schools that register an inclusive theological influence: Andover-Newton (President Herbert Gezork); Colgate-Rochester Divinity School (Dr. James C. Miller); Pacific School of Religion (President Stuart Anderson); Oberlin College Graduate School of Theology (Dr. Roger Hazelton); Disciples Divinity House (Dean W. Barnett Blakemore); Boston School of Theology (Dr. Walter Muelder); Perkins School of Theology (Dr. Albert C. Outler); Princeton Theological Seminary (President James I. McCord); and so on. Dr. Blakemore is a successor and disciple of Edward Scribner Ames, the humanist. Dean Donald C. Dearborn of Catawba College, also on the list, is a layman thoroughly inclusive in his views, who clings to the outmoded liberal view that Paul perverted the Christian Gospel.

RATIO OF DENOMINATIONAL DELEGATES TO MEMBERSHIP

Number of Delegates to Every Million Members

One can also find, here and there among these delegates, some who bridge between neo-orthodoxy and evangelical views, such as Dr. W. R. Cannon of Candler School of Theology (Emory University).

Not a single president is included as a delegate, however, from the aggressively evangelical seminaries within, the NCC structure. Others whose theological positions cannot be dismissed simply as liberal but who strongly favor the present development of the ecumenical movement are included, such as President Paul Eller of Evangelical Theological Seminary. Some, while declaring themselves evangelicals, such as President Walter N. Roberts of United Theological Seminary, show little sympathy for evangelicals not wholly enthusiastic over NCC.

Except for an outright liberal like Dr. Joseph Sittler (United Lutheran Church), formerly of the federated divinity faculty at University of Chicago, the Lutheran educators on the whole appear to be among the most sturdily evangelical. President Alvin R. Rogness of Luther Seminary, St. Paul, and President E. C. Fendt of Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary, Columbus, Ohio, are widely regarded as conservative, the former somewhat more open to inclusive associations than the latter. Dr. Malvin H. Lundeen, the new president of Augustana, is a delegate, as is his predecessor there, Dr. P. O. Bersell, who has openly criticized the Blake-Pike proposal. President Alfonzo Rodrigues of Matansas Seminary, Cuba, a champion of evangelical evangelism, is considered one of the most conservative Presbyterian delegates. Nothing is clearer, however, than the predominantly inclusive theological and ecclesiastical temper of the great majority of the educators designated as delegates to New Delhi, and that institutions dedicated aggressively to an evangelical theological perspective within the ecumenical movement are left without great delegation strength.

Member Bodies Of National Council Of Churches

ECUMENICAL AFFILIATION OF U. S. DENOMINATIONS

MEMBER CHURCHES OF N.C.C.

(Mostly 1959 statistics from Year Book of American Churches for 1961)

The delegates include 112 clergymen and 48 laymen. While this represents a larger participation by the laity than in many ecumenical activities, American ecumenism has assigned the clergy about three times the representation given the laity in reflecting their constituencies to the New Delhi assembly. The division of lay delegates into men and women (31 male, 17 female) is more balanced. There is no lay representation whatever for the Church of the Brethren, Augustana Evangelical Lutheran, Christian Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Church.

When one looks beyond the statistical question, and inquires into the representative character of American lay leaders, some interesting facts emerge. Currently most influential is the NCC’s multimillionaire non-conservative lay president, Dr. J. Irwin Miller, whose radically liberal dissatisfaction with the conservative Disciples of Christ church in his home community led him to spearhead establishment of a rival church. American Protestant laymen who share his religious idealism mainly disavow Dr. Miller’s theological prejudices and his long-standing sympathy for church endorsem*nts of specific politico-economic programs.

Nearly 24 Million Protestants Outside N.C.C.

MEMBERSHIP OF NON-ALIGNED RELIGIOUS BODIES …

(List of those with 100,000 or more members)

MEMBER DENOMINATIONS OF N.A.E.

The National Association of Evangelicals is not a centralized organization, but claims a service constituency of 10,000,000 through its affiliated agencies. The National Council of Churches has service lines also, but lists as cooperating agencies those related to various phases of its work.

MEMBER CHURCHES AND INDIVIDUALS OF A.C.C.C.

The list of lay delegates as a whole is theologically conglomerate and predisposed toward the ecumenical structuring of Protestantism. The list therefore reflects the stance of Protestant leadership both in the ecumenical movement and in many affiliated denominations. It does not truly reflect the temper of the Protestant laity at grass roots. A recent sampling of ministers in NCC-identified churches yielded their acknowledgment that not more than 10 per cent of the members in most of these congregations are enthusiastic over giant church mergers. Yet nine of the lay delegates representing American Protestantism in New Delhi are now serving as members of the NCC General Board, and most of the others are enthusiastic supporters of the merger trend. Inquiry among lay leaders and clergy in one circle after another evoked such comments about their denomination’s lay delegates: “liberal as regards ecumenism”; “an inclusivist by disposition”; “he rides with the tide.”

The Lay Viewpoint

Protestant laymen in America are overwhelmingly conservative in their theological views. Yet the New Delhi lay delegation is heavily sprinkled not only with aggressive liberals like NCC President Miller and Dean Dearborn of Catawba College, but with laymen whose ecumenical enthusiasm exists alongside theological illiteracy. Inquiry about doctrinal convictions elicited comments like these: “a conservative of limited theological discernment”; “has the theology of an en thusiastic Rotarian”; “theologically not oriented”; and so on. One delegate, for example, remarked that he doesn’t “know enough about theology to tell” whether he is “neo-orthodox, conservative, or whatever else. After all, he insisted, “I’m a layman.” Another refused “any theological label,” preferring to identify himself with the “social application of the Gospel” which he equated mainly with pacifism.

But that is not to say that the lay contingent wholly lacks a concern for theological fidelity or for a spiritual view of the Church. For inquiry about lay delegates also paid solid tribute to some of the denominational representatives: “a conservative of good balance”; “a conservative who understands the issues all the way”; “a good type to represent the American Baptist laymen—theologically sound, radiant testimony, dedicated to the person of Christ, loyal to the Convention.”

An overview of other clergy delegates to New Delhi raises the question whether they are more prominently representative of denominational life and mood than the lay delegates. Their New Delhi participation will be eagerly followed by denominational colleagues who know that American ecumenism has faced widening protest with every merger plan. While organizational influence has loomed large in the determination of delegates, the complaint of one churchman seems exaggerated: “They would not have been selected as delegates did they not represent the controlling leadership of the denominations.” Nonetheless, the delegates are mainly professional ecumenists.

Not a few Presbyterian ministers thought the denomination’s New Delhi contingent to be rather obviously weighted with ardent supporters of the (so-called) “Blake plan,” although some of the group are known not to share this commitment.

The delegation of the Christian Churches (Disciples) is heavily weighted on the liberal side, including extreme liberal and humanist delegates. A survey indicates that of the 10 delegates, two represent a fairly wide segment of the membership while most of the others reflect militant minorities.

Deploring Conservatism

The Episcopal delegation too is held to be heavily weighted for the liberal side. Presiding Bishop Arthur Lichtenberger, a delegate, not only has come out strongly for church union, but deplores the rising tide of conservatism both theologically and politically, whereas another delegate, the Rt. Rev. Stephen W. Bayne, Jr., has already become executive officer for the world-wide “Anglican Communion” which some critics declare to be a structural nonentity.

Several ministers long constructively active in the American Baptist Convention agreed that only two of their ministerial delegates represent the denominational image at grass roots.

Some of the conservative delegates, assuredly, were depicted as inclusively disposed: “seldom theologically objectionable in public utterances, but always counted with the liberals” (of an American Baptist delegate). Some of the liberal delegates were marked as intolerant of evangelicals. A denominational colleague noted of one: “tries to stay middle-of-the-road, but is violently opposed to interdenominational groups such as Young Life, Campus Crusade, and so on.” Another sharp judgment: “a clever manipulator of everybody for the program.” The driving commitment of many of the delegates, however, is ecclesiastical rather than theological, so that many of the New Delhi participants are viewed as “a vanguard of tomorrow’s togetherness.” Here are some comments by fellow clergymen of their denominational appointees: “The leading exponent of church union in our denomination”; “a council of churches’ man for many years”; “a typical church bureaucrat”; “he works for the hierarchy”; “he looks on theology only as a matter of ‘order’”; “a saintly man who has not given serious thought to theology for many years”; “a theology bounded on all sides by the nace question”; “his theology is best called ‘secretarial.’”

The American Lutheran Church’s delegation is viewed as sturdily conservative. Some observers thought the Augustana Lutheran delegation “more conservative” than its seminaries.

In many of the major denominations at least one delegate could be found who is a highly respected conservative, and here and there a delegate to whom ministerial colleagues referred as “a rebel in the camp of the organization.” Among tributes to conservative delegates: “a good composite of the average American Baptist Convention pastor—evangelical, evangelistic, positive and co-operative.”

Many churchmen are convinced “that resolutions passed at these well-publicized assemblies overcome fragmentation by merger”; remarked another, “but the Church cannot legislate itself into well-being.” “One doesn’t win ecumenical friends and influence Riverside Drive [NCC headquarters] by being candid,” said another, but “some of these leaders are busier remaking the Church today than remaking the world.”

Confident ecumenists, assuming in advance that WCC-IMC integration would be approved, have had on schedule for many weeks a two-day “first meeting” of the newly-emergent Commission on World Mission and Evangelism to be held at the Vigynan-Bhavan, beginning the day after the assembly closes. Ecumenical promoters clearly had little disposition to wait in New Delhi for a moving of the Holy Spirit. WCC leadership long ago asserted that this meeting on mission, as well as the first meeting of the newly-elected 90-member WCC Central Committee, not only would be held, but that it would be held in secret (a memo circulated to accredited correspondents underscored the words closed to the press). The pre-Miltonian motivation of such an edict, which extends even to the friendly Christian press, was sure to yield a harvest of regrets. Many observers will wonder how Christian leaders presuming to plot the course of church history dare to lock out their constituents from knowing how they arrive at their conclusions.

The Organizing Momentum

Future church history will judge the delegates not simply by who they are, but by what they do. Many laymen—and not a few clergymen—are bewildered by an ecumenical organizing process whose momentum they cannot stop nor effectively shape, and they are distressed at the bold ecumenical steps to heal world Christianity while these same leaders have been unable to heal the fragmentation of American Protestantism.

While the delegates deliberate in New Delhi, millions of Christians the world over will storm the way to the throne of grace, the way that is never closed, to gain presence with Him by whom they shall never be denied. They will beseech the Lord of the Church, who loved her and died for her, that he not forsake her now, but through the quiet workings of his mighty Spirit who cannot be contained will grant such blessing at New Delhi as shall surprise Christians everywhere, not least those who labor for the unity, peace and healing of the Church.

Each period of history leaves ample room for improvement. Let’s thank God, then, that the “good old days” are always changing!

What 15-year capsule of time has witnessed such devastating and explosive challenges as the present atomic era? Two global wars had exhausted the initiative and idealism of our fathers. Now new things were coming to pass: expansion of military might, exploration of space, new treatment for physical maladies, new approaches in sociological matters.

The religious world, too, has experienced its share of revolution since the 1940s. The latter part of that decade was a turbulent season of transition for the churches. On the one hand the excitement of the war and its concomitant turning toward God had subsided. Attendance had not yet begun its phenomenal surge. Empty seats, small budgets, narrow vision, and tremendous appeals for restoration monies faced returning servicemen as well as those who had in local parishes “stayed by the stuff.” Again the Church was a tolerated institution rather than a transforming agency of life eternal. Only if notorious, was news of religious matters noticed. Front page coverage was negligible. Items that found their way into print appeared in the back pages together with obituaries and want-ads. Newsmen grudgingly used quips about churches as filler somewhere between legislative foibles and the weather reports.

It would be unrealistic to assume that this attitude is now reversed. Yet to ignore the overall improvement would be equally erroneous. While some churches are struggling for stable memberships and balanced budgets, they are the exception. Prospects and programs of growing dimension are the general rule. The swelling demand for leadership is known in all expanding denominations. This need has been met in part by returning servicemen who have turned to the ministry with sober thought and prayerful commitment to Christ. While the quality of theology has not improved noticeably, its study is again deemed respectable by the erudite. Once again the press views the affairs of man’s spirit as being of interest and of influence in the community. Rather than being relegated to seasonal observance, topics of moral and spiritual value find all-year welcome on platform and forum.

Awareness of “one world” has so captured us that in spiritual things we have finally eliminated the false tags of “home” and “foreign,” “we” and “they.” At last we see the true division of mankind as the Church of our Lord regardless of whether race or country aggressively assaults the legions of materialism and unbelief. Here we must admit only a partial gain, however. Some of the strength of this new advance has been drained off to serve lesser causes. Widening vision has sometimes led only to more complex, expensive, unwieldy and frequently autocratic organization. Quick action on the part of smaller groups and “fringe sects” to meet immediate needs has often been misinterpreted; “poaching” or even worse has been charged. With little enthusiasm or optimism the “standard-brand” denominations have watched the new dynamism of these groups and their amazing success. Perhaps an awareness that they themselves once employed this vital force dampens their appreciation. The fact is that these small aggressive groups simply insist on the conservative theology and scriptural discipleship written in the constitutions and creeds of the larger church bodies. They simply implement the cry, “Jesus is Lord,” a claim which too often we are content merely to have engraved on our best quality bond!

All who are spiritually sensitive praise God for the privilege of sharing in this flow rather than ebb of the religious tide. With great thankfulness we acknowledge that these blessings result from the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit. From him we receive these tokens of grace. They do not issue from the ingenuity of man’s mind, the purification of his motives, or some new resolve of his will. Yet, as always, our sovereign God chooses to make men the instruments of his peace. Of every race and clime he has raised prophets in our time to testify of things eternal. From martyr’s cell and bishop’s chair, from professor’s study and pulpit throne “their line is gone out through all the earth.”

A Singular Ministry

As in so many categories, in things spiritual, too, God has chosen an American for the leadership of greatest impact. Billy Graham has been thus singularly chosen. Now in his early forties, he has already accomplished a ministry of evangelism spanning 15 years and touching every continent of our globe. In a culture both blessed and blemished by evangelists of various sorts, Graham has been heard with respect and response. In a time marked and marred by arrogant mishandling of things once held sacred, he has faced materialism in society and modernism in theology with conviction and compassion. In a world made small by fellowship of spirit and scientific invention, he has successfully hurdled barriers of language, precedence, and local custom all over the world with apparent ease and grace.

Statistics are often cold, bold, and misleading. Yet it is noteworthy that since November of 1947 this unassuming leader has labored about 275 weeks in 120 crusades. He has proclaimed the Good News to 30 million persons and has seen nearly 900,000 souls making decisions to yield themselves to Christ! These numbers, of course, must be taken with the proverbial “grain of salt.” Actually the recorded totals are probably too small! They cannot possibly and do not include the vast radio audience around the world which for years has so eagerly listened to “The Hour of Decision.” Nor do these figures estimate the persons reached by relay and television chain extensions that are frequently used in connection with crusades in metropolitan areas. In the providence of God surely some souls have made life-changing decisions through these media. Whatever the exact calculations may be, the fact remains that this single evangelist has addressed more of his fellow humans than any man in history thus far.

If we use the preacher’s yardstick—the size of the crowd—as evidence of the smile of God upon this herald, some interesting comparisons can be made. In his hometown, Charlotte, North Carolina, Billy Graham has on two occasions been heard with honor. In November, 1947, 42,000 attended over a two-week period, and 1,200 recorded decisions. In October, 1958, a five-week crusade attracted 420,000 persons of whom more than 17,000 responded to the earnest invitation. In September, 1950, a Billy Graham crusade was conducted in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the site of the Association’s headquarters. In three weeks about 280,000 attended and approximately 3,700 made commitments to Christ. In the summer of 1961 about the same response was experienced in just one week! In our nation’s capital two crusades were held eight years apart. For five weeks in early 1952 an aggregate of 300,000 attended in Washington and in excess of 6,000 came forward in yieldedness. In June of 1960, a total of 140,000 crowded Griffith Stadium and in one week 5,000 made decisions. It was the eight-week crusade in Los Angeles in September of 1949 which first brought this amazing young man into national prominence. During that season of harvest, 350,000 heard and more than 3,000 responded to the claims of Christ. A few months ago this enviable record was surpassed in the first two weeks of the latest crusade in Philadelphia. Similar figures could be assembled to suggest God’s care and direction in other great centers like London, Melbourne, Glasgow, Berlin, and New York. “What hath God wrought!”

What Is The Method?

In my mind, the greatest single asset in the whole Graham enterprise is the crystal-clear humility of this evangelist. This rare quality weaves like a golden thread through his entire being. He has said repeatedly in public that he has no power in himself; and in no way does he presume to share God’s glory in the crusade. In private, he strongly manifests this same self-denial. The warm welcome to old friends, genial attention to new acquaintances, deference to others even in small things, disavowal of any claims to superiority, acknowledgment of limitations, recognition of others’ gifts—these traits of Graham come readily to mind and reflect the exceptional grace that marked the Lord who humbled himself and became obedient. What has been the result? Just what God promised! He has been exalted! This lanky, earnest preacher has found reception as a welcome guest and minister in the chapels of royal palaces, in the offices of heathen potentates and diplomats, on the bases of military forces, in the halls of government, at the world’s seats of learning, amid the avenues of high finance, at the tables of service clubs, in the homes of lofty and lowly, and on the campuses of theological study. At the same time, this man is possessed with a spiritual insight and incisive approach to human personality which enable him quickly to appraise a situation. This evaluation he makes not so much with a view toward judgment, as with hope that he may in some way provide help. A few lines from Rudyard Kipling aptly describe Graham’s well-balanced approach to life:

If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or talk with kings, nor lose the common touch;

If neither foe nor loving friend can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much.…

This description is the garment worn comfortably by the most humble man I have ever known.

These crusades which have done so much to alter and improve our spiritual climate are not one-man-shows however. In this respect they differ from campaigns of famous predecessors. These crusades include the work of a team of devoted committee fellow laborers whose great mark is willingness to be used without fanfare. Wives and families who delight in this singular ministry deserve just recognition, too. Then there is a platform team of six or seven who from pre-service prayer to the helping of the last seeker night after night share an experience ever new and ever sincere. Years of working together have given these men unusual facility and sensitivity without robbing them of freshness and depth. Then, too, there is the corps of behind-the-scenes workers. Some arrive early to make campaign plans. Others do the necessary detail work during the crusade. A few remain behind to gather together all the fragments so that naught of the blessed outpouring be lost. Much of the smooth procedure results from careful and continued co-operation by the local committee. The clergy and lay people of the local committee often determine the atmosphere into which will come the evangelist and his helpers. More often than not, this committee’s general attitude is an accurate barometer that forecasts the climate of the services.

This summary brings us to the organization of the crusade, a matter that from the beginning has been an item of great concern. Very early in his experience Billy Graham made a careful study of great evangelists. Particular research was done to ascertain wherein each man’s strengths and weaknesses lay. Graham hoped to imitate the positive aspects and to avoid those practices that seemed fruitless or open to criticism. The result has been the most complete and efficient operation in the history of evangelism. Special committees on ushering, finance, music, counseling, property, arrangements for the handicapped and infirm, office management, publicity, foreign language groups, follow-up—these and other groups are carefully organized and trained. Strangely enough, this very efficiency has been a favorite target for the critics. “It is too professional, too much like a well-oiled machine, too much of a performance,” they say. Do these critics, we wonder, in their own small bailiwicks foster that which is careless and ill-planned? Do they feel that God puts no stock in efficiency, just so the motivation is high? We are inclined to agree with C. S. Lewis that any good works must also be good work on the part of the workman.

Another phase that is often criticized is that of follow-up. “They move in for a few weeks and are gone, and what benefits remain?” “What becomes of the converts?” Often these critics are preachers, pharisaical in nature. Actually, Billy Graham has done more to insure the continued care of the new-born Christian than any of his predecessors in this high calling of evangelism. Contacts are made in keeping with the convert’s stated church preference. Pastors are asked to call on these converts, and are given forms for reporting the calls. Only where no special church preference is indicated are contacts attempted at some nearby congregation of an evangelical nature. The real nurture of the convert, therefore, lies in the hands of the local Christian constituency, rather than in the evangelist’s. Any journey begins with a single first step. If the traveler does not continue his course with diligence and joyful persistence, this failure cannot be blamed on the one who gave the right directions in the first place.

Perhaps the most repeated and most groundless criticism of the crusades concerns finance. “How much will it cost?” “How much will they take out of the community?” are typical queries. These descendants of the Gadarenes who ask such questions still make the same infuriating choice as their ancestors: “When they saw the young man—and the bodies of the pigs—they asked Jesus to leave.” It costs too much! What, we ask, is the price of a soul? It would be interesting to learn what cost index these 120 crusades would provide. (In Oklahoma City in 1956, the price paid for each commitment was about that of a season football ticket at the university.) Even on the basis of dollars expended, 15 years of crusades have proved the fruits of these efforts to be real bargains. Finances are handled and audited locally. No “love gift” appeal, no wearisome squeezing by some team member plagues the visitors to the crusades. There is scrupulous avoidance of any suggestion of greed or avarice. This group of workers is a salaried team worthy of its hire.

Broad Local Support

One of the finest improvements made by Billy Graham over the course of time concerns his insistence on a broad base of local participation. The spotlighting of some particular personality has passed. Gone, too, is the unilateral approach to operations. I personally know that in more than one city Billy Graham has refused invitations offered by single strong denominations. Instead, he has waited with prayerful patience until some church council or federation has issued a joint expression of welcome. Though he seldom wears the badge of the much-labored word “ecumenical,” Graham demonstrates that spirit in its best sense. By the scope of his travels and the breadth of his attitude of co-operation, he manifests the meaning of the word more than many of its vocal champions. To insist on a broad base of support in local campaigns has been significant. Ministers have discovered a deeper spirit of fraternity; nonmember churches have found warm fellowship within councils of churches; nonco-operative groups have found opportunity to join in a concentrated effort to advance their most cherished doctrines. As one preacher of the Southern Baptist Convention confessed, “I found some other preachers believed the Gospel besides us.” By standing shoulder-to-shoulder in these crusades, weary, faltering pastors everywhere have gained needed encouragement of heart. A modern Jonathan, as it were, has sought them out “to strengthen their hand in the Lord.” This method of procedure has always been incorporated into the framework of the Church. Graham is no critic or competitor of the local congregation. He meticulously avoids entering ecclesiastical struggles for power. And he insists that his meetings in no way conflict with regularly scheduled services of worship. This practice is more than just good public relations. It represents the evangelist’s conviction that his mission is to strengthen and to supplement Christ’s work in the local church, to cause the body of Christ to leap rather than to limp because of his coming.

All in all, the method of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has made a major contribution to Christian witness in our time. Helpful tracts, syndicated question-and-answer columns, a respectable magazine, Bible helps and suggestions for Christian growth and service constantly augment the initial effort of the crusades. Such measures enable the babes in Christ to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

The Message Spoken

It is the message of the crusades that explains their success, for even the most efficient machine is cold and lifeless without proper fuel or power. What Billy Graham says is what God has honored. Others may preach the Gospel more eloquently than Graham, but they cannot preach a better Gospel! He has moved through the whole inhabited world with a Scripture-based message of man’s sin and need of Christ. Many of us rejoice over his repeated insistence on the authority of the inspired Word of God. “The Bible says” has sounded throughout the world, and on this firm foundation Graham has stood unafraid and unashamed. This basic conviction has given him a freedom of proclamation that many preachers have yearned to possess but which they find elusive. Graham has the same objectivity in declaring the whole counsel of God which the late Donald Grey Barnhouse used to express: “I’m just the messenger boy. If you don’t like the message, take it up with the sender, not out on me.”

This full conviction that God has spoken through the written and living Word has given this herald of our times the ready ear of the multitudes. His trumpet call is clear. The common people hear him gladly, even as once they heard the Lord. Here is confrontation in its simplest and most direct style. Whoever pauses to listen cannot say he has not been offered reconciliation.

One of Graham’s strong points is his interest in the individual. His sermons proclaim the worth and responsibility of each soul before God. This insistence on the personal approach is relevant because it brings variant human nature before the judgment of the constant truth of God. Such preaching is always up-to-date and always applicable to human experience.

It should be insisted, however, that the preaching of the crusades also has vast social implications and impact. Those who lament that Graham’s emphasis is too subjective and without social influence in our troubled world are simply and deliberately blind to the facts. Feature articles by Billy Graham in national magazines have discussed crucial issues of our times. Almost without exception he has met press interviews on “touchy” subjects with characteristic candor, directness, and modest restraint. Again and again he has publicly voiced considered opinions on both national and international crises. At times he has volunteered his services as an advocate of truth in situations that have sent others scurrying for cover.

The Call To Decision

In a time when life is more geared to feelings than ever before, “too emotional” is the broad umbrella under which nonparticipants have hidden from the crusades. Actually these meetings are less emotional than the average soap-opera or situation comedy. Like his Lord, Billy Graham begins his preaching with Moses and the prophets. In the light of the eternal law of God, he clearly interprets life as we know it. Then he invariably shows the grace of God in Christ as fulfilling the law for us, and offers the benefits of this work to all who will commit themselves to the Saviour by faith. This challenge to decision involves but a minimal expression of what might be called a froth of emotion. For me personally the most significant and sobering time of the meeting comes after the invitation. In the magnificent silence of that moment the truth of the message is stirring in men’s souls. Team members and other Christians are in prayer. Billy stands silent with head bowed in thanksgiving and intercession. Then with quiet strength he offers another “Come.” His appeal is to the will. Softly the choir sings the hymn, “Just as I am.” Then from everywhere come the searching souls. The waiting is over. From balconies and grandstands at arenas, ball-parks, and fairgrounds, they come to the altar with no tugging except that of the Holy Spirit of God. Enroute to the front they are joined by someone of similar age and sex who will give spiritual help when the meeting is dismissed. In the counseling room each person receives individual care, and faith is declared on the basis of God’s promises in the Book and not on feelings of the moment. Emotion: Only that of joy which the Spirit gives to those receiving the Good News!

To All Mankind

No one in our time has had greater opportunity to meet a cross-section of mankind than this traveling preacher from North Carolina. He has seen life from the vantage point of a door-to-door brush salesman and has stood before royalty as well. On all social levels he has shared the comradeship of humanity. He practices none of the artificial distinctions of age, race, financial or social status. The crusades therefore, appeal to all people. Graham speaks to youth without being maudlin, and a son of the manse responds. He speaks to the aged without special deference, and a gray-haired church trustee comes forward. He addresses the public without compromise, and both rich and poor yield themselves to Christ. He meets his critics without fear or rancor; some respond to his message, all respect him as a man. Liberty, authority, power, love, and humility are his arsenal as he battles for the souls of men. His compelling sincerity encourages all kinds of people to respond to the Gospel. We have seen the reporter who came to scoff, remain to seek. The young businessman who wanted success now trusts God for salvation. The sophisticated socialite now finds true beauty in holiness. The aggressive executive has brought his energies under the yoke of Christ. The hopeful seminarian who came to dissect remains to discover. The homemaker has the house of her heart set in order. “And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell.…”

We do not mean to suggest that these efforts have had unanimous support. Every community has had preachers blind and insensitive to spiritual needs and remedies. Such individuals have rejected the chance to co-operate, sometimes, as it were, disdainfully gathering their robes of righteousness about them. Almost without exception they have suffered, however, for their hungry, honest parishioners have bypassed them to find spiritual blessing. Some pastors who have been “too busy here and there” to accept the hour of opportunity have later matched their associates’ rejoicings with expressions of regret. There have been sincere opponents, too, of course, usually extremists. These groups have sometimes had their Goliaths who deliberately attacked Billy Graham as a preacher and as a person. It is sad indeed that they should thus prostitute God-given talents in futile and base conflict.

This total opposition is a rather small force, insignificant, really, from the larger view. Against these opponents the crusaders have used primarily the weapon of silence. Refusing to quarrel with some bumptious individual, magazine staff, or official, Graham has turned situations to his own advantage. Aligning himself with evangelical Christianity where the real thrust for God continues to be made, he allows his ministry to speak for itself. This it does, and with eloquence.

These crusades are serious ventures. Billy Graham knows that our era calls neither for the shadow-boxing of liberal, nor for the hair-splitting of fundamentalist leaders. He yearns to conserve and to cultivate the grass-roots interest which he senses. Here may lie the earnest of a true revival of spiritual power. These anxious days compel men seriously to consider eternal things and God’s eternal purposes. Seeing his hopes for world peace bum ever lower, man today may very conceivably turn his attention heartward. There, under the kindling and control of the sovereign God, he may find and nurture his own “little patch of peace.”

How Shall We React?

Let us rejoice, therefore, that God has privileged us to labor together with such an earnest and talented worker as Billy Graham. His efforts are singular but they are not restricted. The apostolic pattern still functions: “One planteth, another watereth, but God giveth the increase.” Sometimes Billy Graham is the sower; then again he puts in the sickle for the harvest after others have maintained faithful plowing and harrowing of the field. If everyone were a planter, the ripened grain would wither on the stalk. If all of us were harvesters, our scythes would rust in idleness awaiting the sowers.

Evangelism is the life-breath of the Church, and it has pleased God to equip some of his servants for the particular ministry of evangelism. Basic as it is, however, breathing is only one function of the body. It is a means rather than the end of operation. Evangelism and evangelists, therefore, are but means, also. They are to initiate rather than to consummate the vital activity of the Church. Repentance and renewal should stimulate rather than satisfy the Church. Those of us who claim bona fide relationship in the “beloved community” should seize our opportunity in evangelism with joy. That same Holy Spirit who brings life to a soul through the preaching of Billy Graham can build up that soul through the nurturing ministry of the congregation. This task is the challenge that awaits committed clergy and lay witnesses alike. While “our times are in his hands,” yet the quality of life depends on what we invest in these God-entrusted days. Let us all rejoice in God’s ministry through Billy Graham. Let us repent of our failure to accept the responsibility of supporting him and others like him. Let us faithfully intercede for all who sow, who water, and who nurture unto the harvest of God. Let us respond in depth to the continued desire of the Holy Spirit to indwell us to the exclusion of all else. Then indeed we shall thank God and take courage, “We saw one casting out devils in thy name” and we “thanked God and took courage.”

GRAHAM CRUSADE STATISTICS

Readers of current theological literature can hardly escape noticing a renewed interest in the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. Time was when most theologians regarded chiliasm as a fantastic, earth-bound eschatology. If they took time to argue their position, they usually pointed to the fact that Revelation 20 was the only biblical reference to a thousand-year kingdom of peace to he enjoyed by the saints on earth prior to the end of the age. A remarkable change has taken place in the attitudes of many theologians and exegetes in regard to the millennium. It can hardly be my intent in this article to discuss the millennium question, let alone make a judgment on it. But it may be worth the while to call attention to the renewed interest that thinkers in our critical and dangerous times arc investing in the millennium question.

Apocalyptic voices are always strengthened during times of great and acute crises. It is not at all strange, therefore, that in our own day the question of what faith has to expect in regard to the future of the earth is being asked with profound seriousness. Not only in urgent preaching, however, but in the quieter sphere of scholarly exegetical discussion, the question is being searched. Alongside the critique of millennialism by men like Althaus and Brunner (whose best word for it is “fantastic”), we note several New Testament scholars who have again made millennialism a serious option. I may mention here only Oscar Cullmann and Hans Bietenhard (in his Das tausendjahrige Reich, 955), along with M. Rissi (in his Zeit und Geschichte, 1952).

Characterizing all of these writers is their insistence that the “church history” interpretation of Revelation 20 (that is, the idea that the millennium lies behind us, with the life of the church signified by the thousand years’ reign of peace—an idea whose widespread acceptance was due largely to Augustine) is not really convincing. They argue that Revelation 20 clearly is concerned with an eschatological perspective of an earthly kingdom of peace which is not yet but which is promised for the future.

This is the first point of view which strikes one as important in the new eschatological literature. Another aspect in the current discussion is the willingness of those who dispute the specific doctrines of chiliasm nonetheless to express admiration in the motivation of chiliasm. What is meant by this is that, while the critics of chiliasm find its description of the millennial times objectionable and unacceptable, the same critics praise the chiliasts’ fidelity to God’s purpose for the earth. It is this motif, they say, which has made chiliasm a current that has never been wholly set aside in the Church. The chiliast’s hope for Christ’s kingdom on earth is sometimes called the anti-spiritualistic motif in millennialism. It is the faith that God’s salvation has meaning not only for heaven, but for earth as well. For this earth! There is really no place in chiliasm for cultural pessimism. Given its hope for the future kingdom on earth, chiliasm cannot be true to itself and give up wholly on this world and its culture. It must in keeping with its own genius point Christians to their responsibility for today’s world. Chiliasm is seen, then, not as a flight from this world, but as filled with hope for this world.

Perhaps it is remarkable that this motif is so sharply seen and underscored in the current eschatological discussions. It is clear, however, that the argument centering around the thousand-year kingdom is far from settled. The idea of the “first” resurrection also plays a large role in chiliasm. Hence, there is more to the thought of a thousand-year reign of Christ and his saints on this earth than its implication for our concern for this earth. Moreover, those who do not anticipate the millennium prior to the end nevertheless do anticipate the renewal of the earth (2 Peter 3:13) and with this anticipation they share a concern for the world and shun all culture-pessimism. The question that divides millennialists (or chiliasts) from others is not simply one of concern or no concern for, of faith and hope regarding, or a giving up on, this world. The question remains one of how the wonderful future awaiting God’s earth is to come about according to the Gospel. Does the line of history go steadily downward: apostasy, Anti-Christ, a cooling of love, increasing unrighteousness, and thus straight to the end. Or is there to be a kind of intermezzo, a kingdom of peace, prior to the end, which comes only after the final onslaught by the then unbound Satan? This is the question which controls the exegetical discussions of our day.

The issue finally boils down to the question of the basic thrust of the Apocalypse. How are we to understand the images of Revelation and how are we to relate apocalypse and chronology (for example in Revelation 19 and 20)? From his own leaning toward the linear notion of time and eternity, Oscar Cullmann arrived at his view of a future millennium. Even in Roman Catholicism, which generally follows in the line of Augustine (the millennium standing for the history of the Church since Constantine), there is the beginning of new attitudes toward the millennium question. None of us, indeed, regardless of our traditional positions on the millennium, can avoid the responsibility of participation in the current discussion centering around millennium. After all, it touches on the Christian expectation of the future in which all of us have a share.

How must we as Christians take our stance as we face the future? What kind of outlook is there for the world? The central question is not whether we believe in the eventual triumph of Christ over all powers. Herein all Christians—pre and amillennialists alike—are agreed. The question is, along which avenue shall this triumph become manifest? With this question we who live in the apocalyptic age must be very much at work.

Sin: A New Word In Psychiatry

The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, by O. Hobart Mowrer (D. Van Nostrand Co., 1961, 264 pp., $1.95), is reviewed by Theodore J. Jansma, Chaplain-Counselor of the Christian Sanatorium, Wyckoff, New Jersey.

Sin is as strange and taboo in modern psychiatry as witchcraft and demon possession. Such ideas belong to a bygone era of superstition and magic, and have no place in this age of science. Psychiatry is a medical specialty; it deals with sickness. It is heralded as part of modern enlightenment, that psychopathology is a sickness that can happen to anyone, like pneumonia or peptic ulcer, only much more complex, and the patient needs special medical treatment. As a science, psychiatry owes most perhaps to Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and he practically reversed the meanings of sin and virtue. Thanks to him, psychiatry became the friend of impulse and the enemy of conscience, the emancipator of the Id and the suppressor of the Superego. According to Freud, neurosis is rooted in the repression of natural and instinctive drives, especially the sexual drive, in the tyrannical prohibitions and inhibitions which society clamps down on the developing human organism, and the cure must necessarily be sought along lines of liberation from this tyranny of a culturally-imposed “conscience.”

While the psycho-sexual theory of neurosis has been challenged by some of Freud’s closest associates, and considerably modified in the past three or four decades, yet the euphemism of “sickness” is now so firmly attached to psychopathology that even the clergy have been taken in by it almost completely. Perhaps it is well that we have dropped the words “insane” and “crazy,” but the substitute, “mentally ill,” which all “enlightened” people now use, only emphasizes the fact that “sickness” is now the universally accepted characterization of neurosis and functional psychosis. Of course, the inescapable implication is that a mentally-disturbed person, no matter how much he may speak of moral transgression and guilt, is really not guilty and cannot be held responsible for his condition, no more than one who suffers physical pain.

But something is stirring. Voices of protest that were raised but not heeded a few years ago are now becoming more persistent, and are coming from various directions inside and outside the field of psychiatry. Yes, “Sin” is coming back into the psychiatric vocabulary. A remarkable example of this is this latest book by O. Hobart Mowrer. Mowrer is no religious crank, nor even a theologian, but an eminent psychologist. He is research professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, taught at Yale and Harvard, was past president of the American Psychological Association, is widely known as researcher, teacher, and lecturer, and has published extensively on the psychology of learning, language, and personality theory. The book is a collection of lectures and papers which he has presented over the course of the past 10 or 12 years, and is, therefore, somewhat repetitious. But this very repetition makes Mowrer’s position perfectly clear, and quotations could be made from any chapter and almost any page not only to show his own “guilt theory” of neurosis, but also the support he draws from other writers and clinicians. Here is a sample: “The Freudians, of course, recognize that guilt is central to neurosis, but it is always a guilt of the future. It is not what the person has done that makes him ‘ill’ but rather what he wishes to do but dares not. In contrast, the emerging alternative—or, more accurately, the re-emerging one—is that the so-called neurotic is a bona fide sinner, that his guilt is from the past and real, and that his difficulties arise not from inhibitions but from actions which are clearly proscribed, socially and morally, and which have been kept carefully concealed, unconfessed, and unredeemed” (p. 126, Mowrer’s italics).

And here is a point for the clergy to ponder: “At the very time that psychologists are becoming distrustful of the sickness approach to personality disturbance and are beginning to look with more benign interest and respect toward certain moral and religious precepts, religionists themselves are being caught up in and bedazzled by the same preposterous system of thought as that from which we psychologists are just recovering” (p. 52).

As Mowrer’s theory of neurosis differs radically from the Freudian, so does his therapeutic approach. Psychoanalysis, and also the nondirective counseling therapy of Carl Rogers (as Mowrer points out), is aimed at “insight,” while Mowrer would aim at confession, atonement, restitution. The “sick” person needs to have released the healing powers inherent in the uninhibited organism; he must be liberated from the restricting fetters of an over-severe conscience. The “sinner,” on the other hand, must come to terms with his wicked behavior, he must confess and atone for his sin, and be restored in fellowship with the society which he has offended and from which his sin has alienated him (p. 78).

Now all this must be welcome to evangelicals. Mowrer uses language with a familiar biblical sound. However, though Mowrer seems to speak the language of evangelical Christianity, we must not be hasty to assume that he means what he seems to say. For one thing, he has some sharp words for Protestantism, especially Calvinism, which he charges with determinism (predestination) as killing as Freud’s and which he indicts as being no better than Freudianism for helping the neurotic out of his predicament (p. 159). It would take us beyond the scope of this review to point out how completely Mowrer misunderstands Calvinism in general and predistination in particular. But while Calvinism, especially as it is sometimes articulated by unrepresentative spokesmen, lays no claim to finality, we should certainly be put on our guard when Mowrer makes capital of the outworn alleged conflict between St. Paul and St. James (p. 109, 186 ff.). He refers to Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone as “cheap grace,” an expression he borrows from Bonhoeffer. In contrast he presents James as the advocate of action, works, and Mowrer takes his “stand with the Apostle James and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, against the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther” (p. 109).

This is naive superficiality. It does not take a biblical scholar to understand that Paul advocates works just as much as James, and that James advocates faith just as much as Paul. Paul is concerned to show that saving faith and reconciliation with God through Christ is the prerequisite to good works or godly living, that good works are the redeemed sinner’s way of showing gratitude to God for salvation. This is in complete harmony with James’ emphasis on good works as the way a genuine saving faith proves itself. Both Paul and James refer to the example of Abraham, Paul focusing on the root of Abraham’s faith and James on the fruit of Abraham’s obedience.

To be more specific, we must now ask what Mowrer means by sin, guilt, confession, atonement—terms rooted in the Bible and rich with evangelical significance. Of course, we do not expect a fully-developed theological formulation from the professor of psychology, but we do have a right to a clear definition, and this is hard to find, especially on sin and guilt which lie at the heart of his thesis. He defines sin almost exclusively in terms of the violation of one’s conscience or of the moral code of one’s society (p. 42). And he makes this pungent remark on Original Sin and, incidentally, on the Substitutionary Atonement: “… my untutored layman’s opinion is that this doctrine is nonsense, as is that of the Substitutionary Atonement, and has done much harm in the world” (footnote, p. 147). He does not relate sin and guilt in the first place to the divine Law, but to human relationships. Now sin certainly does have a horizontal dimension, and it does cause alienation from self and others. But it is first and basically an alienation from God: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God … this is the first and great commandment.” In fairness to Mowrer, it must be said that he does speak of the judgment and wrath of God (p. 28). At least he concedes that the sinner should be made to feel that the “Hand of God” is upon him. But even then he limits sin to known (and, in the neurotic, hidden) transgressions. Sin is thus a violation of conscience, the content of which need not be derived from God, but can be derived exclusively from society. Now we shall not argue the thesis that neurosis results from misbehavior, hidden and unredeemed; but it is important to mark the difference between misdeeds against society and sins against God. Of course, even an atheist can have a culturally-derived moral code, and he may become neurotic if he violates that code without atoning for it (if Mowrer’s thesis is correct). Mental health must then be defined in terms of social conformity, and a religious reference is rendered unnecessary.

But the evangelical Christian is in a quite different position. For him sin is always a violation of God’s objective and biblically-revealed Law, and violation of any other code is sin only if it is at the same time a transgression of God’s Law.

And this is not merely a semantic distinction; this must be emphasized not only for the correct definition of sin but also for the definition of confession, atonement, and expiation. Mowrer is right when he insists that these are important for the reconciliation of man to man, but he is wrong, or at least extremely weak, in failing to point out that, for the Christian at any rate, confession and atonement are indispensible first of all for reconciliation of man with God. And, inasmuch as he rejects the atoning work of Christ, he sets himself apart from any Christian concept of a “guilt theory” of neurosis. His “guilt theory” seems to fit better into the framework of Adler’s “Social Interest” (Gemeinschafts gefuhl), or into Sullivan’s “Interpersonal Theory,” rather than into the Christian context. His emphasis on the conscious rather than the unconscious, on misdeeds instead of instincts, on responsibility rather than helplessness, is, in our opinion, a salutary one. Indeed, he has given Christian psychiatrists something to think about, and it is to be hoped that the new direction which Mowrer represents will stimulate scientists with Christian convictions to make a distinctive contribution to the relief of human misery, and in a field that has been dominated almost completely by secular and even anti-Christian thought.

THEODORE J. JANSMA

An Alternative To Kant

Transcendental Criticism and Christian Philosophy, by Vincent Bruemmer (Franeker, T. Wever, The Netherlands, 1961, 258 pp.), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The Dutch scholar Herman Dooyeweerd must be credited with a profound enquiry into the universally-valid conditions which make philosophical thought possible, and which are required by the immanent structure of thought. In venturing to delineate a Christian alternative to Kant’s Critique of knowledge, and attacking Kant’s dogma that theoretical thought is autonomous, and projecting a searching analysis of the categories of thought from a religious-revelational point of view, Dooyeweerd has taken a commendable initiative in a neglected sphere of Christian scholarship.

Vincent Bruemmer’s doctoral dissertation at Utrecht is a critical exposition and incisive evaluation of Dooyeweerd’s position. He notes that it is divine cosmic law more than divine Logos that supplies the content of Dooyeweerd’s philosophic ground-idea. Dooyeweerd asserts that the speculative Greek view attributed prime significance to the intellect and hence, he says, tried to construe a rational harmony in the cosmos whereas the Christian view finds the unity of the cosmogonic order rather in a transcendent divine harmony in the will of God. The sovereignty of the divine creative will is affirmed in independence of the rational nature of God (cf. Bruemmer, pp. 143 ff.). The law is affirmed as absolute boundary between divine and human reason as well as between divine and human will (ibid., p. 149).

Dooyeweerd stresses that despite the knower’s ability theoretically to distinguish the various modal functions of the concrete act of knowledge, in the concrete act of knowledge the corresponding modal aspects of the cosmic meaning-structure are involved in their mutual intercoherence. Whereas theoretical thought because of its problematic character breaks up experience into various abstracted modal aspects, the naive “pretheoretical” attitude leaves intact the cosmic meaning-coherence and directs itself to concrete things and events. Bruemmer shows that this antithetical representation is unsatisfactory, and provides an inadequate basis for dealing with the epistemological problem of synthesis: “like Kant … Dooyeweerd initiates his philosophy by isolating the logical and nonlogical ‘modalities’: Kant does this through abstraction, Dooyeweerd through the principle of sphere-sovereignty. From the start the intrinsic coherence between the logical and the nonlogical appears to be problematic in the philosophies of both Kant and Dooyeweerd. It is hardly surprising to find both of them faced with the epistemological problem of synthesis between the various law-spheres, a problem which is central in the transcendental critique of both” (ibid., p. 160). Dooyeweerd in fact may be viewed as less affirmatively rational than Kant. While both affirm that the cosmos is an order of meaning, Dooyeweerd does not limit meaning, as Kant does, to logical meaning (ibid., p. 164). In fact, whereas Kant’s theory of antinomy presupposes the law of noncontradiction, Dooyeweerd rejects the universal cosmological relevance of this logical principle. Alternative to Kant’s denial of the ontic and noetic articulation of the cosmos by the divine Logos, and to Kant’s view that the logical consciousness of man produces the meaning-structure of the phenomenal world, Dooyeweerd limits the logical modality to one law-sphere in isolation from the others and denies that the ultimate cosmological principle is logical. Instead of insisting that the cosmic meaning structure has a logical character grounded in the divine creative Logos, Dooyeweerd considers cosmic meaning as a structure of divine laws. Hence Dooyeweerd opposes his cosmonomic Idea not only to Kant but also to Abraham Kuyper and other theologians who hold that the cosmos has a logical structure (ibid., pp. 175 ff.).

A prime criticism of Dooyeweerd is not his insistence that the relation between God and creation is that of purposive will, but the failure to stress that the divine sovereign will is rational, and that the cosmos owes its origin to the divine creative Logos. For both the Genesis creation account and John’s prologue refer the concrete realization of God’s purposive will to the creative Word. The assertion that the whole creation is grounded in the divine will requires, rather than disallows, the creation and preservation of the universe and its cosmic meaning to the Logos.

Bruemmer develops the self-defeating implications of Dooyeweerd’s position in a careful manner. His dissertation is a worthy contribution. The publication has some unfortunate typographical errors: “though” for “thought” (p. 13); “wich” for “which” (p. 103); “reserve” for “reverse” (p. 190); “oragin” for “origin” (p. 177).

CARL F. H. HENRY

T.V. And The Gospel

Religions Television, by Everett C. Parker (Harper, 1961, $4), is reviewed by Lee Shane, Minister, National Baptist Church, Washington, D. C.

Most of us read book reviews to discover if the book in question is one that would interest or be of help to us. Religions Television will be of enormous interest and value to anyone engaged in any phase of this media—ministers and laymen responsible for religious television programs, members of ministerial councils or councils of churches whose responsibility is guiding and planning religious programs for the community, people in the industry, station managers, program directors.

For the most part the book deals with down-to-earth techniques of program development from the germinal ideas, through the format, writing of script, casting, proping, directing, budgeting, promotion, and evaluating. This is a completely understandable and practical “how to” book and one quite indispensable to anyone seriously concerned with communication of the Gospel by television.

The first two chapters deal with judgments out of which religious television stems and propound new strategy for using the media. Aims and goals and obligation are stressed. The next eight chapters deal with broadcasting techniques and program ideas which all faiths using this media will find most helpful. The final chapter again points up judgments on the industry and deals with the ethics of mass communication.

LEE SHANE

Grace, An Afterthought

On the Eternal in Man, by Max Scheler, translated by Bernard Noble (Harper, 1960, 480 pp., $10), is reviewed by Cornelius Van Til, Professor of Apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary.

Max Scheler was, says I. M. Bochenski, “beyond doubt the most brilliant thinker of his day” (p. 471). Bochenski adds: “After St. Augustine, Scheler received the most lasting impressions from life-philosophy, Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Bergson, which accounts for his title ‘the Catholic Nietzsche’ (Troeltsch)” (ibid.).

The most important material of the present volume is that which deals with religion. Scheler is particularly interested in the relation of natural to positive religion.

By way of illustration we summarize what he says on “Repentance and Rebirth.”

Scheler finds that “the deepest understanding of the meaning and significance of Repentance is to be encountered in Christianity and, within Christianity, in the Catholic Church” (p. 63).

Repentance, says Scheler, “effects moral rejuvenation. Young forces, as yet guiltless, are dormant in every soul. But they are hampered, indeed smothered, by the tangled growths of oppressive guilt which in the course of time have gathered and thickened within the soul. Tear away the undergrowth, and those forces will rise up of their own accord” (p. 42). “Repentance, at least in its perfect form, genuinely annihilates the psychic quality called ‘guilt’” (p. 55). It thus enables men “to embark on new and guiltless courses. Repentance is the mighty power of self-regeneration of the moral world, whose decay it is constantly working to avert” (ibid.). There is “no Repentance which does not from its inception enclose the blueprint of a new heart. Repentance annihilates only to create. It is already building secretly where it still seems to destroy. So it is that Repentance forms the driving power of that miraculous process which the gospels call the ‘rebirth’ of a new man out of the ‘old Adam,’ the acquiring of a ‘new heart’” (pp. 56–57).

One wonders why Scheler needs anything further. What need is there, on his view, for the objective Atonement through Christ and for the application of that Atonement to sinners by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit? Even so, Scheler adds grace to nature. He adds God to his purely naturalist view of sin and redemption. Having completed the act of rebirth in its own strength, Scheler’s “soul” “looks up to God” and “learns to understand the renewal and peace of Repentance as the mysterious process known as ‘the forgiveness of sin’ and as an infusion of new strength from the Centre of things. Grace is the name of this strength” (p. 60).

Scheler is well aware of the fact that “the foregoing is still not specifically a Christian thought, and is far from resting on any positive revelation” (p. 61). At this point it is too late for him to add that “it is only through Christian teaching that we are able to understand why Repentance should possess the central function of Rebirth in the life of man” (ibid.).

Scheler exhibits in a particularly striking way the antinomy that confronts any form of the Roman Catholic method of dealing with the central truths of Scripture. The beginning is made on the assumption that man is self-sufficient. After that a futile effort is added to make room for the “primacy of grace.” Thus to deny the basic primacy of grace in order to reach the natural man is virtually to hold that the natural man needs no grace.

CORNELIUS VAN TIL

America’S Ailing Church

A Letter to American Christians, by M. J. Chen (Exposition, 1961, 55 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by E. P. Schulze, Minister, the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer. Peekskill, New York.

America is not Christian. Her Christendom is mundane. Her Church is not a Christian fellowship. Its terminology is in a semantic quagmire. Its preaching is neglectful of doctrine, is largely “positive” and humanistic; its teaching, frequently based on critical opinion, is pragmatic, and concerned only for the here and now. The social gospel elbows out the gospel of Christ. The fallacy of man’s brotherhood is rife. Faith and works are confused. People populate churches because they are born into “Christian” families or find temporal advantages in joining a church. Churches have degenerated into clubs. Missionary contributions, though comparatively liberal, are often regarded as fashionable.

Unfortunately this is all too frequently true.

Chen’s remedies are, in general, fairly obvious. Inter alia, he pleads for “the resumption of Christian fellowship” which means not syncretism but a concern for the invisible Church that strikes across denominational lines.

This letter, written by a former Buddhist who is now an American pastor, indicts “Protestantism” particularly, but “every Christian” should help correct the abuses.

E. P. SCHULZE

Protestant Social Ethics

The Protestant Search for Political Realism 1919–1941, by Donald B. Meyer (University of California Press, 1960, 482 pp., $6.75), is reviewed by Theodore Minnema, Pastor, South Olive Christian Reformed Church, Holland, Michigan.

A very competent historian has written this book. His competence is manifest in his concise and orderly arrangement of facts, those of main concern being restricted to a period in American Protestantism between 1919 and 1941. The author’s historical orientation is initially evident in the title word “search.” The searching, developing, and forming process of a political philosophy remains the prevailing theme throughout the book.

Between World Wars I and II, American Protestantism was in ferment. Usually this ferment is restricted to theology, and thus Protestantism between the World Wars is reduced too exclusively to a debate and controversy between theological orthodoxy and theological liberalism. Such a reduction obscures and may even distort subordinate but significant tensions in Protestantism. One of these tensions is that between religion and culture which in America became gospel and society. This gospel-society tension in Protestantism the book raises to its warranted place of importance and concern.

Beginning with the social gospel as originated and defined by Rauschenbusch, the author traces out the interplay, conflicts, and realignments between Protestant religion and socio-political thought. Protestant social concern was fostered on the assumptions of liberal theology. The basic liberal assumption of divine immanence was the point of departure. The absolute in some form was emerging in history.

In the Gospel Jesus revealed the will of God or the absolute for man and society. The problem to be solved was the conjunction of God’s will as revealed in the Gospel with some amenable immanent force or power in society. If an immanent power in society could be conjoined with the will of God then the Christian ideal could be realized. By assumption, such an immanent power should be available.

Protestant social concern spent itself in the “search” for a power that would realize the will of God. Capital, labor, and the church as centers of power eventually proved to be impotent in the fulfilling of the will of God in society and politics.

The frustration and disillusionment of unfulfilled ideals caused the social gospel movement to break up into diverging and conflicting currents, the extremes of which were pacifism and communism. Both continued to assume the availability of the absolute, pacifism in the form of means and communism in the form of end or goal.

Out of the social gospel turmoil evolved a third movement under the leadership of Reinhold Niebuhr. This movement arrived at the position of political realism. It claims to be realistic because power is no longer surrounded with the illusions of perfection and identified with the absolute. All power, it maintains, is subject to corruption, and the recognition of this reality must be basic to all political theory. Therefore, all forms of social and political power must seek perfection and fulfillment on some level of existence beyond themselves.

This book offers no final answers to the age-old problem of how to relate Christianity to culture, but it very adequately records and unfolds attempts to arrive at such answers.

THEODORE MINNEMA

God’S Acts In Genesis

The Message of Genesis, by Ralph H. Elliott (Broadman, 1961, 209 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Robert B. Laurin, Associate Professor of Old Testament, California Baptist Theological Seminary.

Christopher Morley once wrote, “Take your mind out and dance on it; it is getting all caked up!” Here is a book that will help a person to dance the right steps. One of the great difficulties in using the book of Genesis is discovering the intended message. Years of discussion about the problems of harmonizing science and Scripture often blind the reader to what the book is actually all about. The Message of Genesis should prove a steady and trustworthy guide to the primary theological teaching of the book.

Never denying the essential historicity of Genesis, Professor Elliott deftly and irenically shows how the “scientific” and “historical” statements are only vehicles to convey the more important theological message. The inspired authors often used myth or parable or paraphrased history as a teaching method. So the real infallibility of Genesis lies in its disclosure of God’s mighty acts in the creation and salvation of men.

The book, clearly sympathetic with contemporary scholarship, does not allow, in length, for adequate technical and theological treatment at many points. So if it is used along with a few detailed commentaries it should clarify the much-needed message of Genesis for the teacher and preacher.

ROBERT B. LAURIN

Nightmare In Retrospect

The Destruction of the European jews, by Raul Hilberg (Quadrangle Books, Inc., 1961, 788 pp., $14.95), is reviewed by Jacob Gartenhaus, Founder and President of International Board of Jewish Missions, Inc.

Many books have been written on the destruction of the European Jews, but none of them has given such a clear, comprehensive, and comprehensible picture of what actually happened as does this volume by Professor Raul Hilberg.

In the period between the years 1933–45, the German Nazis destroyed 6,000,000 Jews in Europe. So ghastly and gruesome was this wholesale murder that people away from the scene of events could not conceive of such atrocities. When reports became too evident, too insistent, too frequent, they were viewed as an inexplicable mystery by some, and as a nightmare by others.

This volume by Professor Hilberg, which is a product of 10 years of intensive study of the most authentic documents, removes the dark veil of this mystery and gives shape and dimension to the nightmare. The ghost takes on the body of a living creature.

The book is an eye opener and should be read by every thinking person. In it he will re-discover humanity with its frailties, its pitfalls, and rediscovering them he may invoke God’s grace to prevent man from ever being guilty of such crimes again.

Having recommended this monumental, impressive, and instructive work by Professor Hilberg, I feel that a word of caution is necessary to the reader. The author makes the same mistake which other Jewish writers have made over the years and which has been adopted by some Christian writers, that is, of blaming Christianity for most of the suffering of the Jewish people in the dispersion. This is a scurrilous libel which may please only those who fortify the wall of partition between Jews and Christians.

From the very first pages of the book, the reader gets the impression that the Nazis based their atrocities on the teachings of the Church. It is regretfully true that many who cried, “Lord, Lord,” acted in defiance of the Lord’s will. True, many of these “Churchians” were directly and indirectly responsible for much of the Jewish persecution; but this only points up that some people, despite Christ’s command to “love thy neighbor,” often give vent to stored-up atavistic, primeval passions.

The following two facts refute the libel that Christianity has been the main cause of Jewish suffering.

1. Long before the birth of Christianity there were those who sought the destruction of the Jews as, for example, Pharaoh and Hainan. If you read the book Contra Apionem (Against Apion) written by Joseph Flavius who lived in the time of Christ, you will see that already at that time there were several anti-Semitic books on the market. This Jew-baiter, Apion, a Greek Sophist from Egypt who lived in Rome, and who quoted other anti-Semitic writers famous in his time, assails the Jews and accuses them of almost the same sins and crimes as do modem anti-Semites. His slanders against the Jews (in his book Aegyptica) found their way to Tacitus and many other writers in Rome, and it is remarkable how the same defamations, with slight changes according to time and place, have been repeated to this day. The Nazis could have copied from those heathen sources rather than from church leaders whom they disliked no less than they did the Jews.

2. If Christianity were so inimical, so harmful to the Jewish people (as some of the hate-mongers would have us believe), why is it that the Jews have always preferred to live in Christian countries? Even now, only a few Jews live in non-Christian lands and they would escape from there if they could. Another indisputable fact refutes that lie: only Christian countries have helped in the restoration of the Jewish State of Israel, and if it were not for Christian support this State could not withstand the non-Christian world which would eagerly destroy it.

JACOB GARTENHAUS

Echo Of Liberalism

A Historical Approach to the New Testament, by Frederic R. Crownfield (Harper, 1960, 420 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Glenn W. Barker, Professor of New Testament, Gordon Divinity School.

This book, comprising the material covered in a course introducing the New Testament to the students at Guilford College, commands admiration both for its scope (canon, text, sources, backgrounds, critical problems, life of Jesus, early Christianity, Paul, and later Christianity) and its thoroughness. The material is attractively arranged and intelligently applied. The critical studies reflect use of the primary sources and in most instances include contemporary interpretation of the sources. An exception to this may be the substantial dependence upon Moore and Montefiore as the best interpreters of first-century Judaism.

One criticism that might be pertinent in the critical sections is the overuse of what may be designated “reversal” conclusions. Since it cannot be absolutely established by historical evidence that the Gospels were written by apostles, it does not necessarily follow that the opposite is established, namely that “the Gospels were written by people who were not eyewitnesses, a generation or two after the events they tell about, far from the scenes they depict, in an alien language and under the influences of a strange culture” (p. 73). Moreover, even if this conjecture should be accepted as a reasonable possibility, the conclusion is misleading, for it fails to raise the more significant question of the character of the sources from which the writers ultimately drew their information.

The treatment of the life of Jesus is somewhat unusual in that it reflects in a very able fashion the type of liberalism most popular 10 to 20 years ago. Jesus is best understood as a prophet whose loyalty to his own insight cost him his life (p. 189). The church owes its origin not to Jesus but his followers (p. 143). The ultimate value of the Christian faith is to be found simply in the message of Jesus which “challenges us to give our allegiance and trust to a God who gives good gifts to his children and who, despite the absoluteness of his demands, freely forgives the repentant sinner and even seeks him out while he is still in his sin” (p. 189).

The Suggestions for Further Reading are extensive (15 pp.) although somewhat one-sided. The paucity of modem interpretations of Christianity, the omission of the splendid contributions of Roman Catholic scholarship to critical problems, and the neglect of the more conservative studies must be noted.

Beyond the immediate purpose of the author, the book is significant in revealing both the strength and the weakness of the so-called “historical approach” to the New Testament.

GLENN W. BARKER

A Christian Novel

The Missionaries, by G. W. Target (Duckworth, 1961, 218 pp., 16s.), is reviewed by J. C. Pollock, British author and Contributing Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

There is such a shortage of good novelists who are Christians (as distinct from scribblers of “Christian novels”) that the emergence of the young British writer G. W. Target is to be warmly welcomed, not so much for the considerable performance of this book as its splendid promise.

The Missionaries explores, in the colloquial of the South London lower-middle income group, two barely related themes. A missionary doctor is released from a London jail after serving sentence for being mixed up with Central African terrorists who are supposed to have murdered his famous Schweitzer-like colleague. The ex-convict is befriended by the narrator, a young office clerk on the fringe of the Denomination (a rather improbable denomination), and his wife. In their jolly home, where a fourth child is expected, the clerk extracts the true story behind the doctor’s unjust conviction.

This book is scarcely what the blurb claims: “a grim and tremendous novel of modem Africa,” for Africa is dealt with at long range, intermittently. But it is exceedingly worth reading for the exploration of the other theme—the mind and home of the narrator. The gradual unfolding of what the young clerk and his wife are like is well done indeed and gives Target the right to be called a novelist, not a mere story teller.

The South Londoner is genuine all through. He is a man of compassion and insight, whimsical, a delightful friend. He can detect hypocrisy without being cruel or pompous. His Christian faith is as realistic as himself, and carries the same conviction as the daily goings-on in his household.

If Target can find a subject more of an entity to which he can bring his vivid imagination and grasp of character, he will become the Lloyd Douglas of the younger generation—with a far more biblically-based and satisfying faith.

J. C. POLLOCK

Brilliance In Disarray

Religion, Culture and Mental Health, a symposium by the Academy of Religion and Mental Health (New York University Press, 1961, 157 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Lars I. Granberg, Professor of Psychology, Hope College.

This book contains the proceedings of the third Arden House symposium which had as its topic the relationship between religion, culture, and mental health. Participants were drawn from the clergy, theological professors, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and education. Some are Protestants, some Roman Catholics, some Jews, some religiously uncommitted.

The topic is approached from the sociological, the anthropological, and religious standpoints. Each approach is initiated by a statement from the discussion leader, which is commented upon by designated discussants. This is followed by general discussion. The caliber of the participants may be seen in that Talcott Parsons led the discussion from the sociological viewpoint, Margaret Mead the anthropological perspective, and those participating in the discussion included Gordon Allport, Otto Klineberg, Goodwin Watson, Noel Mailloux and many other persons who are recognized leaders in their fields.

Among the many topics given thoughtful treatment one finds discussion of the move away from positivism in this generation of social scientists, the relationship of society and religion, role relationships of ministers and psychotherapists, the importance of faith and hope in mental health, and even some interesting thoughts on visions, miraculous cures, and magic.

Those who insist upon tightly organized, systematic presentations leading to definite conclusions will most likely find this an irritating book. But it is a rich source of information and insight at many levels which will be a delight to those who can tolerate the disorderly creativeness of brilliant conversation, with its inevitable unevenness, disconcertingly sudden shifts in topic and openendedness.

LARS I. GRANBERG

Patmos Revisited

A Revelation of Jesus Christ, by J. B. Smith (Herald Press, 1961, 369 pp., $5.75) and The Postman of Patmos, by G. A. Hadjiantoniou (Zondervan, 1961, 149 pp., $2.50), are reviewed by Charles C. Ryrie, President, Philadelphia College of the Bible.

A few months ago this reviewer expressed in another periodical the opinion that we are seeing today a revival of interest in prophecy. Here is further proof! Though a Mennonite, J. B. Smith, also known for his Greek-English Conordance, has produced in A Revelation of Jesus Christ a commentary in the finest of the Plymouth Brethren tradition. It is premillennial and pretribulational, but less symbolic than some of the Brethren commentaries. In this respect it is not unlike Newell’s work. Completely exegetical, it does not attempt to sidestep problem passages as too many purported commentaries do! As a matter of fact, 22 appendices throw additional light and often fresh insight on the problems. The work is further distinguished by its statistical analyses of the use of various words in the Revelation. Undoubtedly this book will become a mainstay for the futurist school of interpretation for many years to come. The reviewer intends to recommend and use it in his own classes on Revelation.

The Postman of Patmos is a sermonic presentation of the messages of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3. One might expect that the Greek background of the author, who is pastor of the Second Greek Evangelical Church in Athens, would provide him with insights not usually found in similar works. Occasionally it does, but not to any great extent. These are popular sermons, almost too popular—some important verses are entirely omitted (e.g., Rev. 3:10), and in many places parallel Scripture references or footnote citations used need to be included. The author rejects any use of the seven letters to illustrate the periods of church history, and concentrates his attention on the Lord’s knowledge about and promises to each of these churches. Though obviously not exhaustive, the presentation is clever and the message contemporaneous.

CHARLES C. RYRIE

The following report was prepared by Dr. James DeForest Murch:

In an atmosphere of ecumenical urgency 11,000 Disciples of Christ met in Kansas City, September 29-October 4, for the 1961 assembly of the International Convention of Christian Churches.

From the opening address by President Perry Epler Gresham through the bold ecumenical message of J. Irwin Miller, Disciple president of the National Council of Churches, the theme of Christian unity hung over the assembly, largest in history.

Historically the Disciples communion had its inception in the Declaration and Address, an ecumenical document written in 1809 by Thomas Campbell, then a Presbyterian minister on the Allegheny frontier. Traditionally the Disciples pleaded for the unity of all Christians through restoration of the New Testament Church in doctrine, ordinances, and life. Their fellowship grew with amazing rapidity to become one of the largest religious bodies in America. Today the movement is fragmented into three schools of ecumenical thought with a total membership of some 5,000,000. A Kansas City segment is led by left-wing interpreters of “the plea” who have abandoned the “restoration” concept and joined the mainstream of the modern ecumenical movement.

Miller, who is the first layman and the first Disciple to be an NCC president, said “Christians for 1,500 years have gone to the Scriptures, selected an inference here, a verse there, skipped over passages which didn’t quite fit in. and each has come up with the right answer and the correct blueprint and has said, ‘I belong to Christ. I have all the answers.’ The only problem is that nearly everyone has come up with a different answer and a different blueprint.”

Added Miller: “When we say, as the Corinthians did, ‘I belong to Christ,’ implying that we have the final truth, that ours is the correct theology, that our answers in church practice are right in some final unchangeable way, then we are commiting ourselves to a static, finished religion whose members can hope only to look back, only to contemplate an ever receding past. When we admit that our knowledge is imperfect, then we hold before ourselves and all men the exciting prospect of adding to our knowledge and enlarging our understanding of our heavenly Father and his purpose for us.…”

President Gresham was respectful of Disciple heritage, while expressing unqualified approval of all efforts toward realization of a united church embracing all followers of Christ. “I welcome,” said Gresham, “any means to promote this end insofar as the Bible is not replaced by human creeds and the absolute Lordship of Christ is not called in question. It is my view that all Christians could unite under the constitution of the New Testament more readily than sovereign denominations could merge. The heritage of the Christian churches continues to call for the union of all Christians everywhere on the basis of one Lord, one Bible and one Fellowship.…”

Assembly Upholds Congregational Autonomy

In contrast to long-range denominational plans which may spell the end of congregational autonomy, the 1961 assembly of the Disciples of Christ upheld the right of local churches to operate as they please.

A proposal urging the National City Christian Church of Washington, D. C., to speed up racial integration was overwhelmingly defeated on the grounds that such action would violate traditional Disciples polity.

“This is not to be construed as a disposition on the issue of segregation or desegregation,” said a statement of the convention’s committee on recommendations.

The real issue before the assembly was whether the church’s unique relationship to the convention (it had been built with funds raised through the convention) made it subject to convention control. The assembly action resolved the issue in favor of local autonomy.

The Washington church is located on the edge of a Negro area. The congregation is predominantly white, although a few Negroes worship there regularly. The congregation has an integrated vacation Bible school and a Negro superintendent in the Sunday school.

“No one has ever been rejected for church membership,” said the Rev. George R. Davis, minister, “and I shall accept anyone who comes down the aisle.”

Delegates of the assembly voted to enter into conversations with the United Church of Christ looking toward merger. But Disciples are plagued by a congregational structure in which local churches are not bound by decisions of the assembly. As an editorial in the August 9, 1961, issue of The Christian Century noted, “… the loose and haphazard structure of Disciples organization is such that the denomination cannot act as a church in relation to union, no matter how hard it tries and no matter how large a proportion of its members are ready to put their historic principles into ecumenical practice.”

The leadership of the International Convention moved at Kansas City to remedy this situation through a plan to “restructure the brotherhood.” A commission was set up which will work out ways and means and report to a later assembly.

The idea of restructure had its origin in the biennial meeting of the Council of Agencies at Culver Stockton College, in July, 1958. The committee dealing with the plan was appointed by the Board of Directors of the International Convention. It polled 1,000 carefully screened ministers, lay leaders and seminary students and learned that there was a “strong demand” that outmoded procedures be scrapped in favor of a new and imaginative church structure.

The committee’s work gate rise to actions taken at the last three Disciples assemblies: a resolution (Number 34) passed by the Denver assembly two t ears ago, a report (Number 30) received by the Louisville assembly last year, and another report (also Number 30) received by the 1961 Kansas City assembly. These actions constitute the initial step toward restructure.

The committee proposed developing a new theology of the nature and mission of the church looking toward restructure for bigger and broader involvement in keeping with an “over-all master plan that will relate each part to the whole.” 4 his new structure would extend beyond Disciple borders, including their “historic concern for Christian unity.” Every level of Disciple structure would be involved in a new denominational structure—“its church members, its ministry, its functioning, its authority, city unions, district and state conventions and organizations, its International Convention and all agencies reporting to it, colleges, seminaries, benevolent homes, national planning bodies and involvement in all ecumenical bodies.” Each of these units would be properly related to a central government. “Autonomy” and “self government” would be replaced by “interdependence” and “responsibility” to proper official authority.

A tentative blueprint of the new denominational structure is already being drawn up for presentation to the churches in an intensive program of education, propaganda and legal action. There will be conferences and consultations, speakers in conventions and institutes, lectures in seminaries, articles in the religious press, study courses, books, brochures and tracts. An “informed and experienced” cadre of denominational leaders will be “at the heart of the restructuring process,” directing and guiding the operation.

The undertaking will be of such magnitude that it “should probably involve the Brotherhood for most or all of the decade of the 1960s.” This does not mean that there will be delay in inaugurating important phases of the overall plan. “It is probable that some reorganizational moves will be made effective within three or four years.” Each will fit nicely into the whole design which is already well conceived in the official “inner circle” of the convention leadership. By 1969 the new ecclesiasticism will be complete and will be ready to move legally in effecting merger with the United Church of Christ.

Objective observers, while admitting the feasability of restructure and merger, in view of liberal control of the convention, also feel that ecumenical achievement will bring a split in the communion. A large segment of local churches and ministers have long ago ceased to cooperate with the convention in protest against theological liberalism and emergent ecclesiasticism. It is estimated by some observers that at least a million communicants may defect.

Miller’s church is a good example of what is happening. He was an elder of First Christian Church, Columbus, Indiana, one of the largest in the state. His views on theology and ecumenicity were not shared by his pastor. Finally he and 200 members of the congregation withdrew to form the North Christian Church, leaving 1,500 members of First Church to carry on with traditional conservative policies such as do most Columbus area churches.

Protestant Panorama

• Dr. Robert Lindsey, American Southern Baptist missionary who was injured while trying to smuggle an Arab youth from Jordan into Israel, was returned by Jordan authorities for treatment in the New City of Jerusalem. Official Israeli circles indicated that no formal charges would be preferred against Lindsey, who underwent amputation of one foot after he stepped on a land mine in no man’s land.

• The General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. will be asked to rule on the suspension of a Presbyterian pacifist minister who for more than 10 years has refused to pay a major portion of his income taxes. The Cincinnati Presbytery suspended the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin for ignoring an Internal Revenue Service summons. The Presbyterian Synod of Ohio upheld an appeal made by McCrackin, but ordered that the suspension remain effective while the presbytery carries the case to the General Assembly.

• Missouri Synod Lutheran churches are marking the 150th anniversary this month of the birth of Dr. C. F. W. Walther, first president of the Missouri Synod.

• A Greek court ruled unanimously last month that Protestant clergymen have the legal right to use the title of “Reverend.” The decision was handed down in the appeal of the Rev. Spiros Zodhiates of New York, a Baptist minister who is general secretary of the American Mission to Greeks. A lower court hid convicted Zodhiates in a suit brought by Greek Orthodox Archimandrite Christopher Kalyvas, who maintained that only priests of the Greek Orthodox Church had a right to use the title. Zodhiates has purchased space in Greek periodicals for evangelically-oriented messages over his name and that of his mission.

• A meeting between Pope John XXIII and the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), Dr. Archibald Campbell Craig, now appears likely for next year. Special committees of the Scottish church have authorized a courtesy call on the Pope if an invitation is extended when Craig goes to Rome for celebrations marking the centenary of the Scots Kirk (St. Andrews Church) there.

• Mennonite Brethren College of Winnipeg, Manitoba, has become an affiliate of Waterloo Lutheran University of Kitchener, Ontario. The relationship provides that the students at the Winnipeg campus may receive degrees from the Kitchener university. Similar academic standards and regulations will prevail.

• A nonprofit organization headed by evangelist Billy Graham is establishing a 10,000-watt radio station at Black Mountain, North Carolina. The Federal Communications Commission has assigned to the group a commercial license with a wave length of 1,010 meters and the call letters WFGW.

• The new Conwell School of Theology, located on the Temple University campus in Philadelphia, opened its classroom doors for the first time last month. A successor to the Temple School of Theology, the new interdenominational seminary is named for the late Dr. Russell Conwell, a noted Baptist clergyman who founded the university. It is independently incorporated.

• Dr. and Mrs. Charles E. Fuller are marking their 50th wedding anniversary this month. Fuller has been the voice of the renowned “Old Fashioned Revival Hour” for nearly 37 years.

• A new theological journal, independent but Lutheran-oriented, is scheduled to make its debut in January. Dr. Carl E. Braaten, professor at Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary, has been named editor. The magazine, to be called Dialog, will be published, promoted, and distributed by Sacred Design Associates, Inc., an independent religious publishing house in Minneapolis.

• A 34-voice “Korean Orphan Choir” is touring North America under the auspices of World Vision.

Visiting The President

Greek Orthodox Patriarch Benedictos I paid a visit to the White House this month to bestow upon President Kennedy a decoration which includes a tiny fragment of wood said to be a piece of the cross on which Christ was crucified.

It was the first meeting ever to take place between a U. S. president and a Greek Orthodox patriarch.

A citation praised the president for “your endeavors in the name of the God of peace and justice.”

Two days earlier, Kennedy received a delegation of United Presbyterian officials led by State Clerk Eugene Carson Blake. They discussed plans for a multi-million dollar National Presbyterian Church and Center in Washington. Later the delegation met with former President Eisenhower, who is honorary chairman of the sponsors’ committee for the project.

Clergy Confidences

A new law in the District of Columbia prohibits examination of any minister in connection with any communication made to him in his professional capacity, without consent of the party to such communication. The exemption is similar to that enjoyed by attorneys and physicians.

Religion And Labor

The Religion and Labor Council of America formally opened a new national headquarters in Washington, D. C., last month. Dr. Kenneth Watson, Methodist minister, is executive director.

Exemption Regained

The Methodist Publishing House in Nashville, which has an annual income of some $18,000,000, regained tax exemption last month from the Tennessee Board of Equalization.

The board’s latest ruling prohibits the city of Nashville from imposing property taxes on the publishing house. It affects only the 1961 assessments, however, which the city had set at $1,674,600.

Last year, the board cut in half a 1960 assessment of $1,546,300 on the publishing house property. Methodist agencies have appealed the 1960 decision in court. An assessment of $694,050 for 1959 is also pending in court.

In its most recent ruling the state board said the 1960 decision was made because “the only proof presented to the board showed or indicated that 50 per cent of its (the publishing house’s) total income was realized from business which was beyond the scope of its religious purposes.”

However, it said, the proof before the board this year clearly indicated that only about $200,000 to $300,000 of the publishing house’s annual income of $18,000,000 “could be considered by any rule to be beyond the scope of a religious purpose.”

Since the income derived by the publishing house from “not strictly religious activities” is “only incidental,” the board said, its entire properties should be exempt from taxation.

Rosary Crusade

What was described as the “largest religious gathering ever to take place in the United States”—a crowd estimated at more than 500,000—jammed San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Sunday, October 8, for a rally of the Family Rosary Crusade.

The service was led by Father Patrick Peyton, director of the crusade, with the rosary and family prayer.

Assistant Police Chief Al Nelder said the attendance was more than a half million people on the park’s vast polo field and adjacent lawns and roads.

Auxiliary Bishop Hugh A. Donohe of San Francisco said the rally was “the greatest religious gathering ever to take place in the United States.”

‘King Of Kings’

MGM has produced a new “King of Kings.” The cast is new, the producer new, and much of the story of Christ’s life is new. Woven part from history, part from the New Testament, and part from fancy, this newest version of the life of Christ moves its steady slow-moving pace across the wide screen for three hours in technicolor. It was three years in making, and none who remain to see it all will doubt it.

The picture is king-size, no doubt necessitated by Hollywood’s additions to the New Testament. There is the prolonged insurrection led by Barabbas—with Judas’ benediction—which occurs on Palm Sunday. There is the defense of Jesus’ legal counselor (the Centurion) before Pilate, Herod Antipas’ unconcealed affection for Salome, and Jesus’ visit to John the Baptist in prison, to mention no more. Such license with the life of Jesus is taken no doubt to heighten the dramatics; yet tis folly. Those not awed by the life of Christ without the additions, will not be induced by them to go to the box office, and millions of Christians will be disturbed by such distortion.

Few would object to some padding in a dramatic presentation of biblical text, providing it does not change the texture of the material. But from both a religious and literary point of view such alteration of the biblical material as occurs in the script of “King of Kings” is inexcusable. Judas, for example, is hardly to be recognized. He is not chosen by Jesus, but requests a place among the twelve. Nor, as this suggests, is he a bad man. He is merely a zealot with a burning desire that his people be free. Nor is Barabbas really a bad man; in the cause of freedom he merely baits his traps for the Roman “wolves.”

With its technical skill and expert craftsmanship, one wonders why Hollywood does not have the ability to recognize the most dramatic story ever told and then simply produce it. For millions of people there is no more moving, profoundly dramatic story than the life of Christ. There was indeed more political intrigue involved in the death of Christ than many Christians know. But this is but the more reason for the playwrights and producers to seize its tremendous opportunity to recreate on the screen the greatest story ever told, without fanciful additions, alternations of script—and without omissions.

Omissions. The charge has been made that the intent of “King of Kings” is to clear the Jews and place the responsibility of the death of Christ squarely on the Romans. This may not be the intent. Yet additions and omissions to the biblical script lend credence to the charge. The film begins in 63 B.C. with the Roman soldiers wasting the Jewish countryside landscaped by Jews on Roman crosses, piled in death, or thrown to the flames. There is no Jewish crowd whipped by priests to demand the crucifixion of Christ, no trial before the Sanhedrin with its judgment that Christ was worthy of death, no Jewish mob but Roman soldiers who seize Jesus in the Garden, no Jewish mockers at the Cross. Nor is Pilate presented as one who at least struggled to be just. All this tends to lend life to the charge that “King of Kings” is made to serve a racial purpose.

One omission which all Christians will find strange is the omission of the word “church” in Jesus’ statement that he will build upon Peter.

What of import does the film say? The only discernible theme is the perpetual conflict between violent tyranny and man’s love for freedom. A written prologue given the viewer states both the film’s basic theme, and the role and character of both Jew and Roman. “As it is today, so it was in the turbulent times before Christ, that the menace of pagan tyranny shadowed the hearts of men who would be free. In their quest for truth, their unquenchable thirst for knowledge and faith, they brought down the wrath and might of Roman blasphemy.”

The “King of Kings” suffers from miscasting. Jeff Hunter conveying sincerity also conveys an effeminate and unconvincing Christ; Peter looks more like a French Mephistopheles than a Big Fisherman, John, like a college sophom*ore. Salome (16-year-old Brigid Bazten), whose dance is brief but vulgar, is a sex kitten who would never go so far as to demand a man’s head.

The producers have attempted a reverential treatment, but something went wrong. John the Baptist is a strong character, and Barabbas perhaps the strongest character of all. Yet at times the Gospel breaks through. Christians will see more of the biblical truth than is really there. Others will be, if not confused, then misinformed. But all who see it through to the end will learn patience—and that after all is a Christian virtue.

If instead of trying to gild the lily, Hollywood would use its monumental know-how to present the divine Word become flesh—without embellishments—it might well produce the greatest picture ever filmed.

J. D.

Prelude To A Prelude

An Eastern Orthodox ecumenical council, presumably of a scope comparable to one proposed within Roman Catholicism, is in the offing. It will be preceded by a preparatory pro-synod, the groundwork for which was laid last month on the Greek island of Rhodes in a Pan-Orthodox conference of some 65 prelates from 12 of the 15 major Eastern Orthodox churches.

The specific aim of the week-long Rhodes meeting was to agree upon an agenda for the pro-synod. The agenda was finally drawn up despite distractions occasioned by the presence of the Russian Orthodox Church representative, the assertive Archbishop Nicodim, identified as head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign relations department.

The young (in his early thirties), bearded Archbishop Nicodim sought to seize the initiative throughout the proceedings with the characteristic Soviet line. He demanded and got two votes, claiming to represent the Georgian Orthodox Church also. He electrified the opening session with a speech criticizing what he termed the “enslavement” by the state of Orthodox churches in various countries, but observers said he clearly intended to exclude from his criticism the domination which Moscow exercises over Russian churches. He insisted that the pro-synod agenda include matters with political overtones, but successfully fought for the deletion of an item concerning methods of combatting atheism (the final agenda includes such items as “Orthodoxy and racial discrimination,” “Co-operation of Orthodox churches in the application of the Christian ideas of peace, brotherhood, and love,” and “Orthodoxy and Christian duty in areas of rapid social change”).

The conference agreed to renew theological talks between the Orthodox churches and the Church of England which were interrupted in 1931.

Archbishop Nicodim also had urged the assembled prelates to set a date for the pro-synod. He was overruled, however, and a date is still to be worked out.

According to Religious News Service, Archbishop Nicodim comes from a nonreligious family, the son of a Soviet farm manager. He was a student at the Ryazan Pedagogical Institute when he left to enter an Orthodox monastery. In 1950 he became dean of a church in the ancient town of Uglich, near Moscow, and started a correspondence course offered by the Leningrad Theological Academy. He graduated in 1953 and began work as a priest in Jarislav Cathedral. Three years later he was sent to head the Russian Orthodox Church’s mission in Jerusalem. He is the youngest of all Eastern Orthodox bishops.

Archbishop Nicodim won the foreign relations post last year, succeeding Metropolitan Nicolai. He had only been in his new post for two months when he accompanied Patriarch Alexei of Moscow on a month-long tour of the Near East which included visits with numerous Eastern Orthodox officials.

Ecumenical observers expect to see a lot more of Archbishop Nicodim.

Tour Of The Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are to be exhibited in museums throughout the world, according to an announcement by Dr. Awni Dajani, director of the Jordan Antiquities Department.

Recently Jordan King Hussein issued a ban on permanent export of any of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Winners

Yemenite Rabbi Yihyeh Alsheikh of Israel won the second International Bible Contest in Jerusalem this month by defeating a Brazilian mother of four, Senhora Yolanda Da Silva.

The final question called for the two finalists to name seven Bible verses mentioning the exile or return of the Israelites.

The American entrant, 33-year-old Tovia Goldman, placed third. The Israeli-born Goldman, son of a rabbi, is a life insurance consultant in Cincinnati.

Runners-up in the contest’s last round were the Rev. Jacobus J. Kombrinck, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher from South Africa, and Edmund Read, a New Zealand teacher.

Bishops Or Not?

Methodist Bishop Gabriel Sundaram of Lucknow, India, declared this month his opposition to a plan for a United Church of North India and Pakistan which was to have included Methodists.

He urged that Methodists reject the plan on the ground that Anglicans were failing to recognize Methodist bishops. He cited the fact that Anglican bishops declined to attend a conference of Protestant bishops at Madras to which Methodist bishops had been invited.

Sundaram declared that Methodists had been led to believe that they were

uniting with the Anglicans “in terms of equality.”

“The constitution of the proposed church laid down that both these churches were linked with the church of apostolic times,” he added. “However, the plan of church union for North India and Pakistan is capable of double meaning. It means one thing to the Methodists and an entirely different thing to the Anglicans.

“It is now clear that in the minds of the Anglicans, Methodist bishops are not really bishops. It is equally clear that the services proposed for use at the inauguration of the new church are really services of supplemental ordination which will regularize the ordination of Methodist bishops and ministers.”

Sundaram concluded that the “decision of the Anglican bishops not to recognize the ministry of the Methodist church leaves it no other option than to reject the plan.”

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. Weldon F. Crossland, 71, Methodist administrator; in Rochester, New York … Dr. Alfred Haapanen, past president of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America; in Houghton, Michigan … the Rev. Henry R. Van Til, professor of Bible at Calvin College; in Grand Rapids, Michigan … Dr. Archibald G. Adams, retired American Baptist missionary to West China and former professor at Temple University; in Philadelphia … Dr. Arthur C. Darrow, 86, retired American Baptist missionary to Burma and an administrator of mission hospitals; in Newark, Ohio … J. Reuben Clark, Jr., 90, first counselor in the First Presidency of the Mormon church; in Salt Lake City … the Rev. Brian Hession, 57, pioneer of religious films in Britain and noted campaigner for funds to fight cancer; in London.

Resignations: From the presidency of Ewah Women’s University in Seoul, Korea, Dr. Helen Kim … from the editorship of the Youth for Christ Magazine, Warren Wiersbe.

Retirement:Dr. Clayton E. Williams, pastor of the American Church in Paris, effective next summer.

Election: As president of the International Convention of Christian Churches, Dr. Leslie R. Smith.

Appointments: As president of Central Baptist Seminary of Toronto, the Rev. E. Sidney Kerr … as professor of missions at Columbia Theological Seminary, Dr. C. Darby Fulton … as chairman of the Baptist Jubilee Advance for 1962, Dr. Joseph H. Jackson … as executive director of the National Council of Churches’ Department of Social Welfare, the Rev. Sheldon L. Rahn … as general secretary of the Southern California Council of Churches, Dr. Forrest C. Weir.

Tools For Study

The student who wishes to use the book of Joshua in a pastoral ministry or as source material for a Sunday school class, will be well advised to consult a good Bible atlas to equip himself with a knowledge of the geography and topography of Palestine particularly in the time of the conquest. For this purpose two works may be recommended, the Westminster Historical Atlas by Wright and Filson and the Bible Atlas by Charles F. Pfeiffer. Commentary material is not plentiful since the book of Joshua deals largely with statistical material and is not as replete with prophetic utterances as some other books of the Bible. Among older works the commentary by Keil and Delitzsch is excellent as is the material in the Bible Commentary. Among more recent titles, the New Commentary is a very fine one-volume work prepared by devoted Christian interpreters. The volume in The Interpreter’s Bible will be found useful at a number of points although it discounts some of the miraculous elements in the book and is inclined to be overly interested in literary division. A study of the person and work of the man Joshua, as described not only in the book of Joshua but in the earlier parts of the Old Testament, will enrich every man of God who wishes to be thoroughly furnished unto every good work.

DAVID W. KERR

Professor of Old Testament

Gordon Divinity School

“Thou shalt call his name Joshua.” Thus the angelic command to Joseph might well read in our English versions of the Bible, for our Lord bore the name of the great captain of Israel in ancient times. Indeed, the confusion in interpretation which resulted from the use of the Greek form Jesus in the fourth chapter of Hebrews, is well known. Most scholars are agreed that the Jesus of Hebrews 4:8 is the Joshua of the Old Testament, while the Jesus of 4:14 is, of course, our Lord. Joshua, Jehoshuah (as the name occasionally appears), Jeshua and Jesus are all variant forms of the name which means Jehovah saves. The form Hoshea is also found in Deuteronomy 32:44.

Place In The Bible

The book of Joshua has always been placed after Deuteronomy in the Old Testament except in the Syriac version where the book of Job usually intervenes. The insertion was made, no doubt, in the interests of chronology which was based upon the tradition that Moses was the writer of Job. Since the book takes up the story of Israel from the death of Moses to the death of Joshua, it is natural that it should stand where it does in the Hebrew and English Bibles.

Old Testament Studies

Ancient tradition ascribed the authorship of the book to Joshua himself. For this there was some evidence in the use of the first personal pronoun in Joshua 5:1, 6. The manuscripts do not all agree here, however, and such parts of the book as the accounts of the deaths of Joshua and Eleazer could not have been written by him.

In the course of modern studies Joshua has been included as a unit with the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch), and the whole is called the Hexateuch. A few men in the ancient church had followed a similar practice but not for reason of literary criticism. Recently Joshua has been included with the books of Moses because it was thought that the same literary strands, called by the critics J, E, D, and P, which were “discovered” in the Pentateuch also continued through Joshua.

Some, however, among the present generation of scholars, have presented the view that Deuteronomy through II Kings is an historical unit. The view is supported partly by the fact that there is a continuous narrative in the books, beginning with Israel’s history as propounded by Moses in Deuteronomy 1–4, and also by the fact that the philosophy of history which is found in these books is the same. It should be recognized, on the other hand, that the account of Israel’s origin which is summarized in Deuteronomy 1–4 is the same as that which is found in detailed fashion in Exodus and Numbers, and that the biblical philosophy of history is substantially the same throughout.

The book of Joshua uses a quotation from an old epic called the Book of Joshar, Joshua 10:13. It is quite probable that the author used other historical accounts, some of which may have come from eye-witnesses, such as the account in Joshua 5 of the crossing of the Jordan River. The accuracy of the stories of the Israelitish conquest is supported generally by archaeological findings. There is considerable disagreement among scholars as to the dating of some sites. There is, moreover, no mention of Joshua himself outside the Bible—though there is no mention of Moses either. Some of the information contained in the book may have been passed on to the author by oral tradition, which in the Near East can be amazingly accurate. At any rate, though the book in its present form cannot be from Joshua himself, it is older than much of the Old Testament materials and seems in its written form to come from a time reasonably close to the actual events.

Contents

The book depicts the faithfulness of God in fulfilling under Joshua’s leadership the promises he had made to those who left Egypt under Moses. This theme is introduced in the first paragraph of the first chapter, 1:3, 4. It is summarized toward the close of the book, 23:14–16. A convenient outline of the book is as follows:

I.Introduction 1:1–9.

II.Entrance into Canaan 1:10–5:15.

a.Preparations for crossing the Jordan 1:10–2:24.

b.The river is crossed 3:1–4:24.

c.Encampment at Gilgal 5:1–15.

III.Conquest of the Land 6:1–12:24.

a.Capture of Jericho 6:1–27.

b.Achan’s theft 7:1–26.

c.Capture of Ai 8:1–35.

d.The southern campaign 9:1–10:43.

e.The northern campaign 11:1–23.

f.List of the conquered kings 12:1–24.

IV.Division of the Land 13:1–22:34.

a.Command to divide a land not fully possessed 13:1–7.

b.Territories of various groups 13:8–19:51.

c.Cities of refuge 20:1–9.

d.Levitical cities 21:1–45.

e.The altar of witness of the eastern tribes 22:1–34.

V.Joshua’s Farewell 23:1–24:33.

a.His first address 23:1–16.

b.Renewal of the Covenant 24:1–28.

c.Death of Joshua and Eleazar 24:29–33.

It may be seen that the book is a fairly well-knit unit and that, whatever its place among the other annals of Israel’s history, it may also stand as a composition by itself.

Problems

A few problems have been raised for the Christian conscience by some matters which have the divine approval in Joshua. One of these is the punishment of the sin of Achan. It would appear from a reading of the account that not only Achan himself but his whole family was involved in the deception which brought disaster upon the young nation of Israel. The amount of contents which was hidden in the family tent was sufficiently large that scarcely any member of the family could have been unaware of its presence. The hiding of these items was no doubt a matter of agreement among the members of the family and the punishment which fell upon them is very’ similar in nature to the punishment which came upon Ananias and Sapphira who agreed to lie to the Holy Spirit as recorded in the book of the Acts: It is, of course, also true that in the time of Joshua the family was considered to be a unit but it was also considered to be a part of the larger family which was emerging as a nation. It was necessary’ that a holy nation should judge sin. There could be no compromise in the struggles in which they were involved and to allow a sin with social implications to go unjudged would be a moral disaster. Another of the problems in the Book of Joshua is the matter of “holy wars.” In the campaign against Jericho and various other towns, both the material goods and the population were “devoted.” In ancient parlance this means that they were to be set aside as the right or property of God or in the case of heathen nations of a god. The people were not to pamper their pride either by enslaving the population or by enriching themselves with the plunder. A part of the explanation lies therefore in the ideas of the culture involved. It is to be kept in mind, however, that the acts of total destruction are given the divine approval and this means that we cannot simply explain away the holy wars which were aimed at the extinction of native groups. It ought to be remembered that the inhabitants of Canaan had espoused a type of religion in which sexual promiscuity played a very prominent part. One such fertility rite is described in the book of Numbers, chapter 25, in which the children of Israel were led to participate in a sexual orgy in honor of Baal-Peor. Every practice related to such religion was an abomination to God and would certainly offend the moral sense of any modern man, Christian or otherwise.

One of the most influential men in our specialized society is the critic. His function hi every field of artistic development appears well defined: he is a sampler, a professional taster for millions. With few exceptions the masses of theatre-goers, collectors of art, and book readers rely upon the published reviews of established critics. The names of many of these men (and some women) have become as familiar to the American household as are the names of the celebrities whose works they analyze. Every day Americans may be kept informed of the expert opinion of their cultural peers, who are dedicated wholly to the task of surveying the artistic horizon for signs of better and better things.

Professor Carlos Baker of Princeton in a recent issue of The New York Times Book Review wrote that it is the critic’s social responsibility to see that we miss as little of the best art of our time as possible. The immediate problem raised by this definition is in the phrase “the best art of our time.” Here indeed is a relative remark. It may well be argued that to anaylze our present flood of degraded literature, immoral and bluntly obscene, and to find any superlative degree of comparison in it may be the same task as the classification of decaying refuse into levels of corruptness.

And yet each weekend the literary reviews of our major newspapers carry plaudits and praises for third-rate novels by third-rate writers. Bolstered by the apparent acceptability of his initial work with its typical sequence of passion and p*rnography, the third-rater flashes through another manuscript. Before the serious reader has had a chance to recover from the first bout, the trusted reviewers are encouraging him back into the ring for a rematch with this “finest genuine talent” or “sparkling new artist.”

Nor are the critics content merely to extol the praises of these pint-sized minds with their single track of plot and stereotyped characters. The critics have gone farther: they have heaped recognition upon shoddy forms of literature by awarding respected prizes to authors of shallow samples of the decadence of unregenerate mentalities.

Not all of America’s famous reviewers have been taken in by the prevailing trend in fiction, poetry, drama, and criticism. Upon occasion—such as Malcolm Cowley’s devastating mauling of Leslie Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel—an honest critic will permit his offended sense of natural morality to give vent to his long-suppressed ire. All too often, however, the critic is more conscious of a supposed obligation to twentieth century fad and style than to his real responsibility to society.

In the preface to his courageous commentary on contemporary writing, Man in Modem Fiction, Edmund Fuller meets this inconsistency among his fellow-critics head-on: “I distinctly attack the canon of critical values which elevates the mandegrading books to claims of literary-artistic eminence.”

More such voices crying in the wilderness are needed today. Weak as our evangelical novels may be, our supply of Christian critics is weaker. The evangelical writers who can phrase a line of dialogue or rhyme a Petrarchian sonnet may be few, but the paucity of Christian critics is even more striking. One may almost count on his fingers the number of conservative American Protestants whose book reviews or critical comments are being published in the major magazines and newspapers. Edmund Fuller, perhaps the most frequent contributor to the prominent publications, always brings to his reader a forthright picture of the aims and achievements of an author in language that is both intelligent and direct. Elis scope of influence has been widespread: as a teacher at the Kent School; as publisher’s consultant, textbook editor, and author of professional articles on teaching, as well as top-ranked critic. In all of these areas he has demonstrated a Christian faith that meets the need of the intellectual.

Along with Edmund Fuller one should mention Clyde S. Kilby of Wheaton College, who has gained distinction for his studies of C. S. Lewis, as well as for his text Poetry and Life. He has also been greatly responsible for the “Conference on Christianity and Literature,” a loosely-federated group through which Christian teachers may exchange views and opinions on literature.

Randall Stewart of Vanderbilt University, the editor of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Notebooks, ranks as the finest literary historian and researcher from the Christian view in America. His work American Literature and Christian Doctrine should be read by every Christian interested in classical American literature.

Two other men, both frequent contributors to this magazine, have established themselves as qualified scholars and writers. They are James Wesley Ingles, Professor of English and Head of that department at Eastern Baptist College, and Calvin D. Linton, Professor of English Literature and Dean of Columbian College at George Washington University. Professor Ingles has specialized in the study of Victorian literature, while producing five novels of his own. Dean Linton has concentrated much of his critical focus upon Elizabethan drama, as well as supplying scholarly reviews and critiques of hooks and trends in current literature.

In the particular area of poetry evaluation and in his close analysis of C. S. Lewis, Chad Walsh of Beloit College has made a remarkable contribution to scholarly criticism with Christian tenets. As College Poet and editor of the Beloit College Poetry Journal, he is an influential figure among active poets.

Although he is known as a philosopher rather than a critic, some of the most searching criticism appears in Emile Cailliet’s The Christian Approach to Culture, as well as in his last book, The Recovery of Purpose.

The passing in 1956 of Henry Zylstra, the Reformed critic and scholar, removed one more evangelical voice that we should surely have counted on our roster of Christian critics of literature. Even so, the wealth of his wisdom has not been lost to us, for by virtue of the posthumous publication of his speeches and essays, Testament of Vision, “he being dead yet speaketh.”

The work done by these men whom we have named constitutes a basis on which to build the structure of Christian criticism. The high quality of scholarship and the honest, unequivocating manner of writing sets a good example for others to follow.

It is important to recognize that in some of the writings of so-called evangelical critics, a disturbing theological blandness exists alongside their admitted literary skill. It is not sufficient for the highly-trained university professor, who would analyze literature having theological problems, to deal with those problems merely in general terms. His knowledge must be more than an elementary or cursory acquaintance with faith and doctrine—à la A Handbook of Christian Theology. One may not attain complete critical excellence by over-simplifying or avoiding crucial theological issues that arise so frequently in the consideration of literature. All who would attempt to evaluate literature in the light of Christian perspective must possess an acute awareness of the shifts and slants in theological views. An evangelical approach to literary criticism must include an incisiveness that penetrates to the heart of all problems, whether they be linguistic, artistic, moral, or spiritual.

What can be done to enlarge the number of effective Christian critics? To begin, a greater effort must be made by Christian teachers of language and literature, principally those in our Christian schools and colleges, to have their critiques published in whatever influential organ they can, though it be simply a journal sponsored by the creative writing class of their own institution. Eventually it is to be hoped that many more of the critical reviews and quarterlies would have on their lists of contributors the names of recognized Christian teachers and critics.

In the classrooms of our Christian institutions we must introduce our students to standards or criteria by which they may learn to assess for themselves the worth of the literature of this or of any time. To do this will require a more intensive and comprehensive study of theology by our literature students, matched by an increased emphasis upon literary values by our seminarians.

But until the whole of the Christian public becomes a thinking and reading public, able to judge for themselves the distinctions between “good” and “bad” in the cascade of literature that pours in upon them, it will be necessary to find worthy men to serve as guideposts.

More reporters of that which is “of good report” must be trained to augment the group enumerated above, as well as to counteract the existing trend toward a limited view of God and man in literary criticism. Together, and with a definite sense of Christian mission, a vast enlargement in the effectiveness of the Christian critical view of contemporary writing will speak forcibly against the present godlessness in literature.

Director of Music

Stony Brook School

Stony Brook, New York

The Church of Christ in the days of Luther was spiritually in bad shape. The structure and the life of the Church was so skewed and overladen with foreign elements that the sound of the Gospel was muted and the glad tidings of liberation from sin and guilt could scarce be heard. The Church was hardly recognizable as a refuge for sinners, as a place where the smitten conscience could find forgiveness and acceptance by God. I he situation cried for a reshaping of the Church that the form of her life and orders might again be an articulation of that forgiving grace God offers in Christ to grant release and freedom to sinful men of tortured conscience.

But how was this to be accomplished? By direct and official action? By the adoption and projection of a plan of action as would give rise to the Reformation as we know it, and to the establishment of Protestantism? Luther had no such plan in mind. The Reformation as it in fact occurred was not on Luther’s agenda.

The 95 theses which Luther nailed to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg contained no suggestion for the establishment of a Protestant Church. They were no blueprint for the Reformation. Had they been, they would not be something which few Protestants have read or even seen. On the contrary, his theses were unspectacular, void of anything sensational. They suggested nothing new and contained no hint of what was actually to occur. They were not even heretical. Luther cried against the abuse of indulgencies and not against their use. And, in any event, nothing he said about indulgencies could have been judged heretical since they had not yet been officially defined by the Church. The thought of making protest against the impurity of the Church and giving substance to it through the establishment of a Protestant Church did not even occur to Luther on that October 31 of 1517. The idea of assuming the role of an ecclesiastical architect mapping blueprints for a new form of the Church in the shape of Protestantism, was further removed from Luther’s mind and intent than outer space. Separatists who leave the Church because of the spiritual shape it is in in order to create another of purer form will scarce find justification in Luther. This is apparent from the judgment Luther leveled against the Bohemian followers of John Hus who had left the Church. Luther declared that they had divine right on their side as regards their point of disagreement with the Church, but that they ought not to have left the Church.

Luther did not plan and design the Reformation. When it occurred, it came as an act of God, as a surprise of Providence, not as an objective set and a goal attained.

Luther had just learned that the just shall live by faith and that no work performed by him could give him life, or justify the life that he lived in the flesh. He had learned that only by ceasing to strive and casting himself upon the mercy of God that life and peace could be found, in humble trust and in faithful acceptance of the Word of God, his salvation came to him as a gift of grace from the hand of God. Caught up in this profound religious experience with its newfound joy and its knowledge that God is Saviour and he alone, Luther was in no position to entertain the notion that it was incumbent upon him to save the Church by giving it the shape and the form that we today call Protestantism. Luther had learned that he could not save himself; how much less the Church. Salvation is not a goal to achieve, but a gift to accept. For him it was but incumbent to walk in the way of faith in simple trust and loyalty to the Gospel whose secret he had learned to know. It was through Luther’s belief in the Word of God and through his loyalty to the gospel of God’s free grace that God himself wrought his work and reshaped the Church according to the imperatives of the Gospel. What God through Luther wrought came to Luther as surprise—as one is surprised on receiving the reward of a prophet for the giving of a cup of water in a prophet’s name.

Roland Bainton says about Luther what Karl Barth said about himself, “He was like a man climbing in the darkness, a winding staircase in the steeple of an ancient cathedral. In the blackness he reached out to steady himself and his hand lay hold of the rope. He was startled to hear the clanging of a bell.”

The sixteenth century Reformation of the Church is related to Luther’s strivings, as the gift of justification and life is related to the Christian’s faith. The former, in each instance, does not occur apart from the latter; but in each instance the latter has its cause not in the former but in the power and grace of God. In the sixteenth century the sola gratia was spelled out on the broad stage of history, so that the very manner in which the Reformation occurred and Protestantism was established was a historical parable of the Reformation theme: salvation through faith but by grace alone.

All who love the Church must be pained by her present condition. The present status of the Church, the Church for which the Son of God died, leads many to doubt that the death of the strong Son of God is as mighty as the sacred page teaches and the Church claims. The Church today is torn by strife, often confused and uncertain in her utterances, divided and subdivided into rival and often competing groups. To the majority of men living with the threat of destruction, the Church seems to possess no alternative to futility, no solutions for an age of crisis and revolution, no peace for men world-weary and homeless. Even in the eyes of a Christian, the Church scarce appears to resemble the hope of the world.

For the healing of her own diseases and brokenness, and for the task of meeting the new requirements of the grand and awful age she enters, the Church needs again to be reformed. Her life and orders must acquire such shape that her very form and life will be a demonstration of the truth and power of her message to a world entering a new era in history.

But how shall this be accomplished? Who shall refashion her that losing her shame she may reveal her glory as the Body of Christ, a body willing to serve, even to lose the historic form of its life for the salvation of the world?

The remaking of the Church will not be accomplished by planned scheduling, new projects, or decisions adopted by ecclesiastical boards and conferences. Nor will the Church be fashioned anew by contriving and compromising efforts to coalesce denominational structures (which are at best human creations for the expression of the oneness of the Church, and at worst embodiments of religious self-pride and power, and instruments to guarantee their perpetuation). When a new shaping of the Church occurs, it will again be an act of God. But this divine act will only occur when the Church bow’s once more before the Word of God, and in faithful service to it proclaims the presence of the free grace of God in the Word that became flesh, died for our sins, arose for our justification, now lives to make intercession for us, and shall one day return to judge the world, and through judgment, redeem it.

No man can reform the Church. Being a part of the Church, he himself needs reformation. Reformation is something accomplished by God, something that happens to us. Ours is but to follow Christ in faith and obedience. And it may then please God to surprise us anew by some fresh work of his grace. To seek ourselves to do what God wills to accomplish through our faithful service to his Gospel, is folly. Neither by taking thought, nor by direct action or resolve, can we give the Church the shape and the form it needs. This, we take it, is what some evangelicals mean when they say that what the Church needs is not the Reformation but regeneration. And this, we think, is what Karl Barth meant when as a guest speaker at the first meeting of the World Council in Amsterdam in 1948 he quoted Isaiah and shocked the assembly with these words: “You may take counsel together; but God will bring it to nought.” And this too is what Luther meant when he wrote: “Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing; Were not the right Man on our side The man of God’s own choosing … And He must win the battle.”

Flood Tide Of Obscenity On American Bookstands

Publication in America of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (Grove Press) has produced the expected results among most literary critics. By the droves reviewers have hastened to hail the appearance of the long-banned record of a man’s meanderings through Montparnasse.

Among the critics who have leaped to defend Miller against the obscenity charges properly leveled against him are Karl Shapiro, Harry T. Moore, and the late Ben Ray Redman. Mr. Shapiro, who wrote the introductory essay to the current edition of Tropic of Cancer, seems to have lost the poetic touch of discernment that made him an honored name in American letters. His adulation of Henry Miller is the most grossly exaggerated flattery since Whitman’s preface of thanks to Emerson in the 1856 Leaves of Grass. Moreover, it is anti-Christian, anarchistic, and unprincipled. Shapiro says, “Let’s put together a bible of Miller’s work … and put one in every hotel room in America, after removing the Gideon Bibles and placing them in the laundry chutes.”

Professor Moore is one who sees in Henry Miller the signs of “a deeply religious man” and for proof reminds us that Miller has quoted from the Scriptures. The citation is noteworthy, for it proves again the propensity of sinful men to quote God’s Word in their own behalf. In his essay “Obscenity and the Law of Reflection,” Miller writes, “By a law of reflection in nature, everyone is the performer of acts similar to those be attributes to others.… In Romans 14:14 we have it presented to us axiomatically for all time.” The reference, of course, is to Paul’s statement concerning the eating of meat, but as is typical of the opportunist who employs the Bible only for his own benefit, Miller has misused the verse tom from its context. It further strikes one as blasphemous for Miller, a man whose tongue is full of cursing and vulgarities, to state, “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself.” Miller has forgotten that it was this same Lord Jesus who extended the limits of the Mosaic law from the act of fornication to include looking and lusting. And it was this same Jesus who said to the adulteress, “Go, and sin no more.”

It is regrettable to see so many major critics abasing themselves before such an idol as Henry Miller. Finding no other means to make an author’s crude work palatable, they employ one sweeping appraisal sure to make legitimate the vilest prose and plot: it becomes “religious in theme” or “morally significant.” Can they really agree with Shapiro in calling Miller “the greatest living author’?” These critics, who have read and studied the works of true artists yet living—William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, Graham Greene, Alan Paton—remind us of Gertrude, to whom Hamlet said, “What judgment would step from this to this?… But sure that sense is apoplex’d.”

Tropic of Cancer is an obscene book. But restricting the sale of a book like Tropic of Cancer never prevents its distribution and only serves to enhance its salacious reputation among prurient book-browsers. The tragedy of this book’s history is not that it has now been allowed legal publication. The tragedy is that it was ever banned, for it is only a sophom*oric display of smut mixed with a dash of pseudo-mysticism and expatriate name-dropping. Its wild melange of crazy, formless expressions, its metaphors of sewage and disease have little subtlety and less taste. The imagination of the author is overripe, like that described in Genesis 6:5. Had this childish transcript of life among the vermin of Paris been ignored by its well-meaning censors, long ago the book would have met the fate which it so richly deserves. The demise of many books far less ineptly written than this has been noted by their appearances on the 59c tables in book stores. Instead, Tropic of Cancer is priced and selling at a level usually reserved for medical dictionaries or outlines of systematic theology. But not for long, we predict. The going rate for Lady Chatterley dropped to one dollar within a year after her legal entry into America, and Henry Miller, possessing none of D. H. Lawrence’s basic skill, cannot hope for better sales.

The past months have marked the passing of some of the world’s great figures of literature—Hemingway, Pasternak, Camus, Lampedusa. It is incredible that a man scarcely worthy to change their typewriter ribbons has achieved a renown at the very time when the world most needs strength to answer life’s demands. It is significant also that at this same time two other priests of secularism long absent have reappeared on the literary scene. Mickey Spillane, now a convert to Jehovah’s Witnesses, writes a slightly watered-down version of his tough-guy, tough girl paperbacks, The Deep. J. D. Salinger, whose caricature of life in a secular boys’ boarding school offers the best possible reason for Christians to support Christian secondary education, has released two stories in book form.

Disguised under the humorous title Franny and Zooey are two highly serious slices of modern life. Zooey’s lecture to his sister Franny on the person of Jesus Christ is a heart-rending view of unbelieving man’s attempt to understand the mystery of Christ’s mission, message, and methods. Although certain incisive points applicable to the Christian reader are made, Salinger’s whole approach to Christ is that in the Bible nobody “besides Jesus really knew which end was up.”

We may well expect a flood of obscene, even p*rnographic, literature to hit the American bookstands in the wake of Tropic of Cancer. In fact, Grove Press has promised further publication of Henry Miller’s trash. It is to be hoped that the American public, particularly the educated Christian public, will greet the arrival of future books of this kind with a campaign against the critics whose judgment we can no longer accept. The authors will drift into the obscurity to which all such peddlers belong.